Monthly Archive for November, 2005

We were gonna play cards tonight with Grandma so I wanted to try making chips (we usually have a little snack along with the cards). The first batch I used the mandoline (AKA, a cheese grater) to cut the Russet potatos but the thickness varied on each chip so when I cooked them, the thinner parts burned while the thick parts weren’t even scathed).

Oh, I forgot to mention, I put the pieces I cut into a bowl and poured canola oil over ‘em. I got another bowl and tossed the potatos by slopping the potatos in one bowl and them pouring ‘em back in the other. After they were lightly covered, I put them on a tray and sprinkled finely chopped rosemary over them.

Anyway, as I said, when I took them out, the thinner parts wre cooked more than the thicker parts. I tried the thinner parts. They tasted fine. I couldn’t really taste the rosemary too much so I sprinkled some fresh rosemary on one chip and tried that. It was pretty strong but after I ate that, I got desensitized to it and so the rosemary didn’t seem too strong. In fact, I couldn’t even taste the rosemary that I cooked into the chip.

Since I wanted the thickness to be more even, I got out ol’ Cuisinarto. Since the tube (where I fit the thing I want cut) was small, I had to really cut down the potato which really made the chips small (about an inch by a half inch). Anyway, after I repeated the mixing process, I put ‘em on another tray, they came out rather burned but still tasted good. The rosemary even cancelled out the burned flavor! I made another batch and put ‘em on a wire rack. When I took ‘em out, they were much better. The parts of the potato that were touching the wire got very , very crisp (polite term for burned) and the parts that weren’t touching the wire were soft so when eaten, the texture was crispy. I put a lot of fresh rosemary on it.

When it came time to play cards, we tried ‘em out. The rest of the folks weren’t prepared for the rosemary as I was. They thought I put quite a bit on. I did put a lot on but I couldn’t really tell. Grandma said it tasted like Vick’s Vapor Rub. I’ve had my pickles called “It’s like Draino, but in a good way” and my chips called “It tastes like Vick’s!” I’m buildin’ up a solid culinary reputation!

The day before Black Friday, I printed out our Black Friday Shhooooppiing-g-g-g-g list. Luke originally didn’t want to go at 5:00AM to hit Circuit City. He just wanted to sleep in. By golly, you can sleep any but getting up at 5:00AM to go to a store! . . That’s something you don’t do every day. We managed to rope him into going a few minutes before going to bed. Our plan is to go to Circuit City first (since it opens at five) and then go to Staples after that (Staples opens at six) and finally OfficeMax which opens at seven. We’d have an hour at each store

I woke up at 4:00AM and fell asleep every ten minutes. At 5:07, I woke up and got prepped. We eventually left at 5:15. There wasn’t any traffic. When we got to CC (circuit city), we noticed that there wasn’t a single parking spot. We parked at a CLOSED blues club and walked to CC. Sweet Fancy Moses! I’ve never seen a store that crowded. On the news, I always see them (mostly women) pouring through the doors but I’ve never seen ‘em inside. CC’s credit card systems were down so it was just packed! We decided that we weren’t gonna spend another minute there ’cause . . . well, do I need to give a reason? We decided to come back in a few hours.

Let me take a break from the story to address something. It’s interesting how these Creativists say how we aren’t related to animals. Well obviously, they’ve never been Black Friday shopping. They don’t know how all the shoppers chaosly rush in the store and how the shoppers who trip actually get trampled by other shoppers. If they knew all that, they would realize that we share a direct connection to buffalo. Ok, back to the story.

We were originally thinking to go to CC at 4:45AM so we’d be able to get there in time for the “opening” but since we weren’t gonna stay inside that mad house, we would’ve had to wait a whole hour before Staples would open. It’s a good thing we got there at 5:25 ’cause when we left, Staples was almost open. We quickly (but not too quickly) rushed home to get the camera and we got back to Staples with time to spare. The crowds there were soooooo much better than at CC. They had a nice single file line going in and it wasn’t hectic inside. We managed to get a 19″ LCD monitor, a $10 512MB QuickDrive and a $20 DVD player.

So, so far, the Crowd Scale ranks Circuit City as the Most Crowded. Staples is right below them in the scale.

We went to OfficeMax. Boy! You wouldn’t even think it was Black Frday. There was hardly any people. Even the parking lot was baren. Last year, there was plenty of people since there was a lot of free stuff but today, whoo! Nobody! We got a cheap hard drive there and a $60 digital camera for Ma (’cause she wants one that’s easy to use). The store was a nice change from the other stores. It was nice and quiet.

We came home for an hour and then went back to Circuit City. The crowds were much smaller but it was still plenty crowded. I bumped into somebody and said “whoops! Sorry ’bout that” but she didn’t even notice me ’cause she was arguing with the cashier. We took a look around and left.

I think most of the early Black Friday shoppers are people who didn’t eat that much the day before. At 5:00 when the comfortably full people were shopping, the people who stuffed themselves silly on Thanksgiving were on the couch with moaning from a overloaded stomach pleading to die. (we all know that feeling from those holidays like Chistmas or Thanksgiving where eating ’till you puke is tradition) By 8:00, the stuffed people’s stomachs feel better and then they go shopping only to pick up the scraps of what the 5:00 shoppers left behind.

We were riding to the beach to do Yoga. I kinda scraped my toe when we set off and half way to the beach, while I was riding, I looked down to see how it was (to check for bleeding or anything). Well, while I was looking down, I ran right into this pole which threw me off (well, it didn’t throw me off, I kinda threw myself off so I wouldn’t fall) the bike and caused me to scrape my other toe even worse. At least they’re symmetrical as Luke says.

Fortunately, the crash didn’t make a scratch on my new bike!