Damn it! I’ve had way too much Old Gregg influence lately. I
regularly catch myself responding to things in my head with creepy Old Gregg
quotes. I may have a problem…
Another problem that I have… my apartment is freezing!
Luckily I was recently given an electric blanket, under
which you can be sure to find me whenever I am home.
Soooo, the reason for this post (second one this week…
complete madness!) is to let the few of you that read this know what’s going on
with me besides flying.
Big news… well, more like tiny, adorable, huggable news! My
sister had a baby!
Avery is a perfect little lady. Probably helps that she has
a plethora of badass women in the family, she’s bound to soak some of that up.
Obviously I’m going to be an amazing aunt, maybe a little of
a bad influence sometimes but everybody needs a bit of that ;)
Next big news item….
I’m opening a food cart. That is right… being a pilot isn’t
enough for me. I need to run a business too. I am insanely excited and
passionate about this and I have a Kickstarter.com project going for it right
now! You can search Kickstarter for Plane Pastries or you can just click on the
logo at the top, right corner of the page.
Share the project with your friends, on your facebook,
twitter, blogs, local sidewalk chalk painting. Any help is super appreciated.
Wow, it has been quite a while since I last updated this
thing. I’ve been a busy lady the past year or so.
After finishing up culinary school, I was lucky enough to
still have education benefits through the military. Not wanting to waste such a
wonderful benefit, I decided to find a way to use it. If you know anything
about me, I love a good challenge, and don’t want to settle for the easy route.
So…. What did I do? I signed up for flight school! That’s right, can’t seem to
keep my feet on the ground.
I started flying in June of 2011 and that’s what I have been
doing in the meantime. Well, that and working multiple jobs and getting another
degree… no big deal.
Although it seems like I just started flying, I am almost
done with all my training. I have earned my private pilot’s license, instrument
rating, commercial pilot’s license, and am days away from getting my instructor
rating. Not a bad year, if I may say so myself.
Just a quick post to give some updates and get back in the
swing of this blog. Hopefully, I will get this shit together and update this
thing regularly!
This is my first official “not because I have to post”! I started this blog as an assignment for culinary school and am going to try and keep it going… so show me some support, you mother-effers, and spread the word!
Alright...
Well, I’m still in school and thanks to a mix of severe senioritis, my sweet multitasking skills (made so much better by my military job) and a slight addiction to this websiteI spend most of my time stumbling… which led me to a recipe for fried pickles!!! FRIED FUCKING PICKLES!!! If you’ve never had these little discs of delicious delight than you are missing out my friend.
Also, if you don’t watch this you are missing out…
I found this song through this websitewhere you can pick what kind of mood you’re in and it will provide a play list to match. My chosen playlist for the evening was “Let’s Party” which involved a lot of dancing around my kitchen, kinda dangerous while frying stuff but I came out unscathed cuz I have some mad skillz!
Dancing on a fountain skillz
I was first introduced to these at one of my favorite bars in Omaha… The Dundee Dell…
My old roommates at The Dell!!! Jim Jam...
...and Burge. Don't let him fool you, he's sitting on a booster seat.
oh how I miss those people and that place. I went there thinking it was the first time I had been there and was happily munching away on fried pickles and a veggie platter when a light was turned on in dark, little, foggy corner of my brain; I started to remember the real first time I had been there… more than a year prior, when I was underage, I remember sitting by the jukebox sipping off my friends drinks since the waitress wouldn’t serve me, probably a mix of my age and the fact that I definitely did not need any more alcohol, but was cool enough to let me stay. Point being, The Dell fucking rocked and fried pickles are one of the best drunk foods known to man.
So, I ran off to the store and bought all the necessary supplies for my trip down memory lane….
All the shit (recipe at bottom of post)
My little assembly line... remember "dry hand, wet hand"! Useful lesson from culinary school
Ready for their hot oil bath
Be sure to keep checking your oil temp since it will go down once you add stuff to it
Yessss!!!
Perfect little nommy nugget
Yay! Fried pickles… damn delicious!!
Plus, you should all watch this video mashup by DJ Faroff… pretty fucking awesome if you ask me but it is 2 in the morning so don’t take my word for it.
Pickle Recipe:
For dipping sauce mix together the following:
1/2 cup mayo
a few chopped pickles (I used 3)
1 Tablespoon pickle juice
chipotle in adobo sauce to taste (chopped, I used 1 tablespoon I think)
Breading line:
1st pan (flour) - 1 cup flour + 1 teaspoon garlic pepper + 1 teaspoon salt
2nd pan (batter) - 1 cup flour + 2 cups buttermilk + 12 oz beer (I had leftover beer... but not for long :)
3rd pan (panko crumbs)
Dab pickles on paper towel then bread them.
Heat oil to 350 F and use metal tongs to add pickles to oil until golden brown (about a minute)
Set pickles on paper towels or brown paper bag to drain excess oil... nom nom time!!
So, it took me a while to figure out what I wanted my next post to be about. I had a list of possible topics but none of them caught my interest at the time. Finally I decided to get my friends together for dinner and hopefully find some inspiration… lucky for me my friends came through and we enjoyed a tasty meal at Brazil Grill.
The red eyes were bugging me so I played with the color... not a bad result :)
Mmmm... grilled pineapple... soooo good!!
I love shrimp!
While trying to coordinate and get everybody together I came up with the idea of having a contest… get everybody together and see who can eat the most, though we didn’t end up actually having the competition we had fun anyways and inspired me to write a post about competitive eating. I’m gonna start this off with this ridiculous video!!
So, what do you think of when you hear about competitive eating? The local county fair where people are stuffing pie into their faces, likely with their hands tied behind their back?? Or, maybe the popular hot dog eating contest? A few years ago I saw a TV show about competitive eaters and apparently the competitions are very serious business. People actually travel all over the world to compete in these battles of epic intake. The show that I watched focused on a guy from Japan, Takeru Kobayashi (who was also mentioned in one of the videos in this post and in is the star in the above video, or is the bear the star?), who has taken the “who-can-shove-more-shit-in-their-faces” world by storm. What I found amazing after researching this “sport” is that a lot of the competitors are in decent shape, with many of the champions being downright skinny. Like these two ladies:
Sonya Thomas
Gal Sone
First of all, Sonya is also known as The Black Widow, which is epically fitting since female black widows tend to kill their male spiders after the “act”.
After watching a bunch of videos and searching around the interweb I started to wonder how these people actually get that much food in their tummies without putting on a disgusting demonstration of their gag reflux doing what it does best. Apparently, people (amateurs) tend to barf pretty regularly and receive judgy looks from the seasoned pros while they continue to chomp on those hot dogs and soggy buns.
Despite what you might think a lot goes into competitive eating events and participants. It all started at local fairs and gatherings as a form of messy entertainment and eventually evolved to focus on speed. In 1997 the International Federation of Competitive Eating formed (IFOCE). Seriously, there is an international federation for stuffing your face... they even have rules! Each contest usually last 10 to 12 minutes and the winner is the person who eats the most during that time. Each competitor can eat the food however they choose, for example, eating the hot dog separate from the bun or dipping the food in water. Personally, if I cannot stand to eat soggy bread… it just grosses me out… so I don’t think I would do very well with that aspect. At the end of the timed period any food that is already in the eaters mouth is considered eaten as long as they eventually swallow it. Afterward the competitors are allowed to get the brick of food out of their stomachs however they want… ewww…. By the way, if somebody barfs his or her guts out it’s called a “Roman Incident” for whatever reason.
Wait... that's not right
Awww, that's more like it
These gladiators of gluttony have come up with a few tried and true techniques for consuming an unnatural amount of food. Like I already mentioned, the water dunk is a popular tactic and Kobayashi pioneered the style known as the “Solomon Technique” or “Japanesing”… yep, “japanesing”, this involves breaking the food up into smaller pieces so that more can be shoved into the mouth. By breaking a hot dog in half they can eat a whole dog at once since an intact hot dog would be hard to chew and swallow… feel free to insert all inappropriate jokes here while I insert these...
Nom Nom Nom
That's a happy weiner...dog...
Serious eaters will often train their stomachs by eating large meals once a day or by drinking a lot of water… both are frowned upon by the IFOCE because I guess you can die. Kobayashi has said being a champion eater means you don’t die… well said Kobayashi. There have been ideas as to why competitors that are in shape do better than those that are overweight. The theory is that any extra layers of fat over the stomach restrict it from expanding to the extent that is necessary.
Still not convinced that competitive eating is a sport? Here are five reasons that will make you eat your words: 1. You have to train to be good
All the other sports out there require you to train and practice over and over again if you want to be successful at it. There is absolutely no difference when it comes to competitive eating because you have to train hard to eat. 2. There is Technique
Every sport has some sort of technique or specialty move that helps people surpass the competition. It’s just the life of the technique. Most players will follow the same techniques, but there are signature players that have their own special techniques that help them win. 3. You Have Competition
You can’t be in a sport if you don’t have competition to mop the floor with, right after they mop up all that vomit. 4. There Are Winners and Losers
Someone has to win and someone has to lose. It is our desire to achieve and succeed that drives us to push ourselves to new heights; or would it be new lows in this case? That is what makes this such a great sport. 5. Huge Fan Base
What sport wouldn’t be complete with the people that come out to watch the events both in person and on television? Someone has to be enjoying the competition for it to be a sport or it just wouldn’t exist. I guess people got ape-shit over some of the top competitors, wearing t-shirts to support their favorite. Also, it’s a hilarious bonus that the eaters don’t take themselves serious but add humor by pretending to take themselves very seriously. Once the competition has started its actually pretty gross to watch so the real entertainment comes for the announcer who fills the time with jokes and over-the-top antics.
If you’re sitting at your computer thinking… “Shit, I like to eat. I could totally kick some ass in this” here are some reasons you are very, very wrong: 1. You Think Liking To Eat = Good At Eating Competitions
I think this is the biggest mistake people make when it comes to competitive eating. I know this is about eating food, but liking to eat food doesn’t mean shit. It has been proven over and over again that skinny people tend to do far better in the competitions… maybe I have a chance!!
This is more about your ability to eat a huge sum of food in a very short period of time. That requires methods of fast consumption and maximum storing capacity, a hollow leg wouldn’t hurt. 2. You Don’t Treat This As A Serious Sport
I know that it can be very easy to view this as just some event that you would do at a carnival for fun, but the competitors you face are training. Just because you aren’t lifting weights are doing laps around the track doesn’t mean this isn’t a sport that requires training. 3. You Don’t Train Properly
The only way you can properly train for any event, you have to identify exactly what you’re eating. If you’re going into a hotdog competition, than you just can’t grab any hotdog from the store and start practicing with it. You need the exact size and the exact weight of hotdogs to train.
Typically events will be sponsored by the very food you’ll be eating, so it shouldn’t be hard to track down exactly what you’re expected to eat. 4. You Lack Mental Toughness
You’re going to feel things that you know you have to ignore. You just have to tell yourself that you’re going to keep going and that is all there is to it. In other words, when you really want to barf your brains out you’re gonna have to hold it in, mind over matter, right? 5. You’re Not Systematic
If you look at all the successful competitors out there for any competition, they’re all systematic. That means that they eat in a very continuous fashion. They’re putting food into their mouth, just as they finish swallowing some. Basically their consumption of food is consistent. You can’t rush at the start and slow down. You have to consistently do the entire competition, just as a marathon runner goes consistently.
This post was written by one of my classmates. She has a blog about various aspects of vegetarian diets (http://mmmplants.wordpress.com/). There’s lots of cool info in her blog that you might not know about. For the past four or five years I've had a growing interest in long boards. I got my first and only board my sophomore year of high school and haven't parted with it since. Now for those of you who don't know long boards are similar to regular skateboards but are used more for distance and speed [bombing hills] opposed to skateboards that are used more for tricks. I think it’s a great sport because not only is it faster than walking and awesome fun but it’s also great exercise. Even though I know my fellow long boarders and I are getting good exercise [when the weather permits it] I don't think many of us are eating healthy enough to sustain a good amount of energy to keep us going.
I've talked to a few long boarder friends to see what they eat when they're on the go like: chips, tea, soda pop, taco bell, burgers, beer, candy, donuts, pretty much a bunch of junk food and fast food.
So I thought it would be a good idea to show these kids some more healthy/nutritious snacks that are just as easy to carry in your back pack and are good for you like: granola, fruit bars, dried or fresh fruit, crackers, rice cakes, nuts, trail mix, protein shakes, protein bars, yogurt, juice, string cheese, bagels, homemade sandwiches, veggies! [baby carrots, celery sticks]. Really it only takes a second to ask yourself whether you want to bring a bag of chips or a tasty sandwich on your journey. When you think about it should be pretty obvious which of the two is going to give you more energy and taste better!
It’s me again…
The only experience I have with long boards is from when I lived in Omaha with a bunch of guy friends and we would get drunk and end up bombing the hill outside our house… I typically sat on the board with my dog, Charlie, in my lap and flew down the hill, often crashing and being a horrible but hilarious dog owner… neither me nor Charlie ever got hurt, mostly because I was drunk and could feel no pain and he is just a badass little dog. More often than not the long board to drunk person ratio was off and I relived my childhood by pogo-sticking like a champ… I was the best pogo-sticker on the block…haha, NBD! ~ Kris
Ok, this post is inspired by some shit that got on my nerves in one of my recent classes at culinary school. Obviously people come in all shapes and sizes….
Kids that are extremely overweight make me sad... they eat what their parents give them :(
Ummm, bit on the extreme side
SEE!!
Now what gets on my nerves are people complaining about their body or weight but not doing shit about it. This goes for both overweight and underweight people… for example (and if you don’t like this then quit hatin’) I have always been thin but never had any eating disorders… just a fast metabolism… if you know me I’m usually eating constantly. Before I could leave for military boot camp I had to gain weight and was able to get to a healthier weight. I never hope to lose weight, cuz at my size that would be fucking ridiculous, and in order to gain weight I actually have to work out… gaining muscle. So, realizing I needed to gain some weight I got off my ass and started doing something about it. I go to this gym and it is wonderful… not a ton of cardio, which is perfect for me. www.recreatefitness.com
In one of my recent classes there were a number of people talking about wanting to lose some weight and what they were doing to reach that goal. The HCG diet was brought up by a few people, saying that they had tried it and it worked out great… good for them, right!?! Well, without getting into the major details of what happens when you take HCG, it works by decreasing appetite and utilizing stored fat in the body. Curious, I asked the people in my class that had used this diet what they were doing for exercise and they all said that exercise wasn’t necessary… personally I think that is bullshit. It’s great to lose weight but at some point during the weight loss I would hope the fat would be replaced with muscle.
Anyway… for your viewing pleasure, and the real point of this post, here are some of the craziest diets out there today. Some of them are just ridiculous but others are fucking disgusting!!
The Chewing Diet
Nom Nom Nom
This diet was started by Horace Fletcher, because he believed that food was only properly absorbed by chewing each bit at least 32 times. Apparently he lost 40 pounds in 4 months. At first this sounds awesome, just chew your food 32 times and lose weight, right?... wrong, once you have chewed the prescribed number you are supposed to tilt your head back and let the food trickle down your throat, anything that is still too big to swallow you must spit out…soooo, you don’t actually get to eat all that food you worked so hard to masticate, instead you just end up with a sore jaw, spending hours on each meal and probably a case of malnutrition.
The Tapeworm Diet
Ewwwwwwww!
(Trust me, there were a lot more disturbing pictures but I just couldn't put you guys through that)
I can’t believe that people actually think that this is a good idea… “Mmm, yes I would like to purposely ingest a parasite so I can lose a few pounds. Hopefully it doesn’t kill me!!” This ridiculous idea started in the early 1900’s and is apparently popular among horse jockeys. Having a worm in your system is said to cause nausea, headaches, infections, diarrhea… all great ways to a healthier you!! Yeah, fucking right… another side affect could be death… NBD.
The Cotton ball Diet
Mmmmmm... deeee-licious!
Wait... that kinda looks fun... just a little.
Ummm, no real explanation needed… you’re supposed to just eat cotton balls, which are apparently pretty filling. What does need to be explained are the people that actually practice this… I mean, seriously, how dumb do you have to be?
The Alcohol Diet
Back in 1087 William the Conqueror in England was embarrassed by his bulging waistline and the taunting of historic “meanie-heads” who joked that he was so fat that he was going to break his horse’s back. After all this ridicule he decided to go home and replace food with alcohol. I guess it kinda worked since he was able to get his still fat-ass back up on his horse but soon died from complications of falling off his horse… fucking ironic if you ask me. There was also a variation of this diet promoted in the 1964 book, The Drinking Man’s Diet.
The Master Cleanse Diet
Alright, who wants to live off of a tasty mix of lemonade, cayenne pepper and maple syrup? Sound appetizing… for 10 straight days? Toss some laxatives in there and have fun! Besides lacking a ton of your needed nutrients you’re likely to turn into a raging bitch of supreme crankiness. If anybody I know is planning to give this a try please warn me so I can avoid you till you’re done. I guess Beyonce used this to lose 22 pounds before filming Dream Girls but quickly gained the weight back after she started eating like a normal person again. So, it might work to help lose some weight but you’re gonna gain it all right back.
Obviously there are a lot more diets out there and everybody is gonna need to tailor their diet and workout to their life... my suggestion is choose your diet carefully if you must pick one or you could just try to eat healthy and exercise regularly... Good luck!!
So, I’m not feeling particularly motivated after 3 straight days of training; 11 hours a day… ugh, please shoot me! Anyway, its Monday now and I’m recovering from a weekend of complete boredom and now I have to think of something to write about. Luckily this blogs assignment was to post a bunch of links so I went out and found some shit that I found interesting, entertaining or informative… hopefully you like the links too but I am in no mood to give a shit today so whatevs…
Alright, I found most of these links through one of the most amazing websites ever…
Basically, you sign up and check the boxes of shit that interests you and click stumble. The site will randomly find stuff on the internet that relates to your interests and help you procrastinate for hours and hours... which probably contributes to the fact that it took me days to write this blog. Also, you can save your favorite stumble pages and go back to them later.
Here are some of my recent favorites!! A little random comedy, some food stuff, and random other shit… http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2zQuay/www.dailydawdle.com/2011/03/funny-dogs-oh-no-you-didnt-pic.html
I’m opening a food cart. That is right… being a pilot isn’t
enough for me. I need to run a business too. I am insanely excited and
passionate about this and I have a Kickstarter.com project going for it right
now! You can search Kickstarter for Plane Pastries or you can just click on the
logo at the top, right corner of the page. 
