Heather made Buckeyes! Peanut butter and chocolate has to be the best combination ever thought of.

This recipe was pretty simple. The tricky part was melting the chocolate. Heather came up with a creative setup, she took a spaghetti pot, flipped over the strainer lid and then put a glass bowl on top of the strainer with the chocolate in the bowl. It worked perfectly! No need to invest money for a double boiler when you’re married to a genius!

Here’s a picture of a Buckeye compared to a Reese’s miniature peanut butter cup. There’s a lot of peanut butter in a Buckeye!

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Okay, you got me. I use the slogan “I love cheese” a lot. Here’s why:

Link: The Power of Cheese Commercial

The commercial dates back to the 1998/2000 elections and was used for the “Ahh, the power of cheese” series of commercials. Check out the actor who plays “Hayes for President”, he later was president in the TV show 24 a few seasons back.

And in all honesty, I do love cheese except for a couple specific cheeses, such as Feta and any cheese that’s moldy except for Parmesan. Parmesan is supposed to be moldy, right?

Tiny URL: http://tinyurl.com/2of2ws

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It’s been a while since I blogged anything. I’ve been very busy. Here is my update of what is going on in my life.

RawVoice
Been very busy working on a number of projects as usual. We are about to launch a new web site on Monday, January 14, 2008. If things go well, we’ll be launching some new service each Monday for the rest of the month. We’ll see if I can keep up.
http://www.rawvoice.com/

Spaceblue
I reprovisioned the server the day after Christmas, I am happy to report that I finally have everything on-line and running strong. I quickly got the crucial items on-line. I mainly had to get web stats and a few other little things setup after the new year. Setting up the new server took much longer that I anticipated since I switched from using Apache to Lighty web servers. It is paying off though, the server is handling the same amount of traffic without using all of the system resources.
http://www.spaceblue.com

PodCamp Ohio
I’ve been leading up the charge to organize PodCamp Ohio. Over the past month, we’ve secured a venue location and launched the web site. I am pretty happy with the core podcasters participating, they are really on the ball and have no problem taking charge of items they are good at. PodCamp Ohio will be on Saturday, June 28, 2008 from 9am to 5pm at the ITT Technical Institute in Hilliard (just west of Columbus), Ohio. More details are available on the web site.
http://www.podcampohio.com/

Association for Downloadable Media
Last fall I was elected Chair of the Measurement Committee of the Association for Downloadable Media. The entire process is exciting. I purchased a copy of Roberts Rules and have been slowly coordinating all of the members of the committee. After 12 people joined the committee, I was looking for the board members to set a limit to the size of the committee so it would not become too large to manage. The consensus of the board is to allow as many ADM members to join the committees as possible. I understand the motives, as the podcasting community is oriented in a way that encourages participation, it just makes managing the committee that much harder. I am up for the challenge and started devising ideas how to manage the situation. My position as Chair of the Measurement Committee could not be more perfect for the Association since I have both a technical background with Internet Engineering and vast experience with measuring podcast downloads.
http://www.downloadablemedia.org/

The House
Dad was in town two weeks ago when I was about to fix a shower leak. The work started with Dad reminding me to buy the tool recommended to remove the faucet cartridge in the documentation I printed out. A couple of minutes later, I broke the cartridge trying to remove it with pliers. Lesson learned, still listen to your parents! At this point I think Dad was convinced we would have to call a plumber, but my plan was to buy the removal tool and a screw tap. My plan worked luckily, with the help with an extra long screw replaced in the recommended tool. The rest of the process of installing the new cartridge went smoothly. I am happy to report the shower no longer leaks! If any family or friends need to fix a Moen shower/bath leak, let me know cause I have the recommended tool to remove the cartridge. Definitely don’t try to remove it with pliers!

San Giorgio Pasta Choo Choo Wheels
I told Heather a long time ago about Choo Choo Wheels Pasta and she looked at me rather strange. Two weeks ago I came across a package of San Giorgio brand Choo Choo Wheels and snagged a box. Sam Giorgio is my preferred pasta brand. The back of the box has a recipe for spaghetti meat sauce, so I thought I’d give it a try. I don’t have all of the details here, but the main ingredient are 2 large cans of whole pealed tomatoes, 2 small cans of tomato paste, 2 teaspoons of sugar, 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese, graded and 1 pound of ground beef or sausage. I used a 1 pound roll of Bob Evans Italian Sausage. Cook the sausage, then mix everything except the Parmesan, bring to a boil then cook on a medium/low heat for 30+ minutes. When you are ready to serve, add the Parmesan, which will thicken the sauce. I like thick sauce, so stumbling upon this tip has revolutionized my spaghetti sauce making abilities!

Anyway, the sauce on the back of the Choo Choo Wheels box was awesome and so far is the closest thing I’ve been able to get to taste like real home made spaghetti sauce the way Grandma would make. She would cook the sauce for hours and have 3 different types of meats in the sauce. It is the standard which I use to judge all other sauces. Funny how that works.

What’s Next
I’m going to restart my Compiled Weekly podcast. The recent work I’ve been doing moving blogs around for RawVoice and reconfiguring the Spaceblue server with Lighty has given me a lot of content ideas for the show. I got a lot of knowledge to share about Lighty and tips with server management. I got just about everything automated so I don’t have to manage anything now.

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We got a quesadilla maker as a wedding gift. We made some earlier in the year but this was the first time we got the ingredients to make good ones. How do they look?

This was the first time I tried rice from a can. It was horrible and will never be doing that again. Next time I’ll take the time consuming route when making the rice.

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Heather and I made our first Turkey today for Thanksgiving. We got a 7 pound Honeysuckle brand that didn’t have all the extra stuff inside of it. We rubbed olive oil with a touch of garlic, thyme, salt and pepper all over the turkey before putting it in the oven. We then cooked it at 500 for 15 minutes, then we put the temperature at 325. We glazed 3 times at about every 45 minutes. The turkey took about 3 hours to cook.

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I did some shopping for Thanksgiving last Thursday and came across a display of a new Winter Chex Mix that contains a variety of coco flavored snacks mixed together. All I can say is WOW!!! This has to be the most delicious snack I’ve ever randomly tried. And I try a lot of these new snacks that float on the ends of the isles.

Looking at a random portion from the bag, there are about a dozen tiny marshmallows blended with 10-15 coco flavored corn/wheat chex, pretzels, vanilla bread stick and, my favorite, yogurt covered chex.

This stuff is awesome. I am going back to the store and picking up a half dozen more of these Holiday Chex Mix bags. Anyone visiting over for the holidays is in for a surprise this year!

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So I am now working at home and it has its advantages and disadvantages. The biggest advantage so far is the food. Check out some of the things I’ve made for lunch.

Club Sandwich, two layers of ham and turkey with lettuce, tomato and mayo.

Hot Pepper Cheese Burger, yea it’s hot!

Cheese Coneys, It’s Skyline time, not quite as good as actual Skyline though!

Yea, Ty wants some.

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So I saw the Dr yesterday, and I have high cholesterol. Of course I knew that already but I also found out that I can eat Avocados and guacamole! My last doctor gave me an information sheet for my diet which put Avocados at the top of the list of things to avoid eating because they are high in fat.

I was aware that doctors have now classified two types of cholesterol; a good one and a bad one.  Even though Avocados are high in fat, it’s the good fat! Read more here: http://www.goaskalice.columbia.edu/0656.html

The looser in this post is sour cream. I love sour cream, especially when I eat Mexican. I also love Guacamole. Typically I use either or both to add some flavor and moisture to an otherwise bland burrito or fajita. The past few years I have avoided guacamole and used sour cream, sort of a less of two evils decision. Now I know better, the sour cream is out and the Guacamole is in! Yea baby!!!

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I bought a T-bone steak this evening from the local Wal-mart Superstore. I have been hesitant to buy meat from Walmart but since the steak was almost a pound and less than $8 I figure it is worth a try.

IT’S CRAP!!!

I can’t drench enough Worcestershire sauce on it. There is this awful aftertaste with a lot of salt. I wonder if they drench their meats in some sort of tenderizer with preservatives. What ever they do, it tastes nasty.

I have had better steaks frozen from Aldi’s!

Recommendation: Never ever buy meat from Wal-mart.

I believe they don’t have a true meat department because they did not want their meat department employees to unionize. That is up to debate, but it certainly ruins what could be a pretty good one stop store.

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I always loose my chip clips! I was at the store yesterday to buy some more and they wanted $2 for each one! Forget that!

So the other night I got the idea to use a binder clip. And guess what? They work great! Not only that, you can buy a ton of them for the price of one chip clip!

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