Fryday 2008

Results from the second annual Fryday
which actually spanned into Saturday


Scotch Eggs - "Greeeeat Success!"
-more photos to be posted on the regular site as time progresses-

Friars In Attendance:
me
Brother Mike
Brother James
Chris

Fryday Night's Frying:
TACOS DORADOS - success!
- beef cooked with onion and spices wrapped with cheddar and Sriracha hot sauce in flour tortillas then fried
- totally delicious, crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside, and they looked spectacular

TEXAS BACON HOLD'EM FINGERS - success!
- boneless chicken breast strips wrapped in bacon then double breadcrumbed and fried
- delicious crispness and teeming with bacon flavor

RICE ENCRUSTED WASABI MUSTARD MEATBALLS - failure!
- partially cooked beef wasabi mustard meatballs coated in cooked rice and fried
- rice was too crunchy and meatballs fell apart

MUMMSIE'S PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES - failure!
- Mom had James bring up some peanut butter cookies and said we were not to fry them so naturally we had to
- absorbed the cooking oil and fell apart, gross

DEEP FRIED CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE DOUGH - failure!
- Hannaford's brand cookie dough tossed in the fryer, no breading or battering
- mostly melted/dissolved, not even really possible to try

PLANTAIN CHIPS - success!
- somewhat thinly sliced plantains fried and salted
- somewhat crispy, nice flavor, we also successfully had this on Fryday 2007

DEEP FRIED ICE CREAM - success!
- vanilla ice cream with several graham cracker crusting layers fried
- the inner ice cream held up while the crust was nicely crisped in the oil

SOFT FRIED EGG - take it or leave it...
- whole egg (shelled and all) dropped into the hot oil
- ended up with a poached egg, which is cool if you're into that sort of thing

Saturday Morning's Frying:
SCOTTISH EGGS - success!
- hard boiled eggs wrapped in sausage breaded and fried
- these were an absolute show stopped / heart stopper, probably one of the worst things you could do to your body is eat these, but they were outstanding

SPECIALTY STUFFED JALAPENO POPPERS - success!
- fresh jalapeños stuffed with mozzarella, cream cheese, scallions, and bacon then doubled breaded and fried
- delicious filling and nice crispiness from the peppers and crust, some peppers were much spicier than others

FRIED CORN ON THE COB - take it or leave it...
- corn on the cob, shucked and cut into manageable chunks then fried
- cooked the corn well enough, but there's no real benefit from cooking it this way

Saturday Lunch Frying:
CORNDOG ANIMALS! - success!
- cut up hotdogs with cornmeal batter deep fried with kabob protrusions
- tasted like corndogs, but in strange animal/depth charge/Sputnik shapes due to the kabob protrusions inserted to keep the dogs from settling on the bottom of the fry pot

FRIED GRAPES - take it or leave it...
- cluster of red grapes breaded and fried
- hot, sweet, juicy, and crispy, it was worth a shot but probably won't be repeated

Dumps Like a Truck

This is me in front of the Sebago Brewing Company delivery truck that I drive every once and again when making deliveries to the pubs.
Pops came up for the day and spent the night. I gave him a quick tour of the brewery at the end of the day and he snapped a shot of me and my ride. Later we checked out some lighthouses, had some sushi and sushi mi, and then some beers (me) and scotch (him). Good times.

Recycling = Hero

Here in Portland you can recycle everything! Plastic numbers 1 through 7, cardboard, paper, glass, cans, animals, EVERYTHING! Sure, that may not sound too impressive for you peoples in Cambridge or Brattleboro or California or wherever, but here's the rub - there is no free garbage removal, everyone in Portland needs to buy special Portland Trash bags (at a special cost) to have their regular garbage removed which really creates an incentive for people who may not normally care as much to recycle as much as possible to reduce the cost they pay for garbage removal. Also, like Massachusetts and some other states, there are 5 and 15 cent deposits for beer bottles, wine bottles, liquor bottles, soda bottles, cans, etc. which also encourages people to reduce garbage and recycle to collect on those redemptions. It's all singe stream, toss it in one bin and they'll do the rest, receipts, labels from cans, cans, milk caps, cancer inducing Nalgene bottles, etc. Outstanding!

This is a big deal for me. Sure I've lived places where recycling is encouraged, but a lot of places it's still not available/utilized. In Wyoming there was no recycling at all. NO RECYCLING. All the beer/wine bottles from the bars in Sheridan were thrown away, land fill style. Some people (very few) would save aluminum cans and drop them off at a trailer parked in a public place which would be driven somewhere so a local charity could get some cash from the scrap, but that was about it. In Keene, NH at the Keene Sentinel Newspaper, the only thing they recycled was newsprint paper, not regular white office paper. Any office that doesn't recycle paper should be shamed. SHAME ON YOU KEENE SENTINEL! Emerson College had a limited recycling program, and when I lived in the North End and Alston, most residential places disposed of bottles, cans, etc. with their regular garbage.

So, that's a bit of a rant, but too late, you read it. Anyway, every time I toss some junk mail, plastic keg dust covers, pasta boxes, small bits of papers, plasticized cardboard toothbrush packaging material, etc. into that blue recycling bin I feel like a hero - I am Captain Planet. Okay, that's a stretch and I know it, but seriously, it's rediculous how much this reduces garbage. On account of the thoroughness of the recycling and because our compost pile we have only needed one regularly sized trash bag since we've moved in here (over 3 weeks). I think we could have gone another week, but it was starting to get a bit funky so I drew the line.

Mainiac

Mom, James, and I visited Grams at the nursing home today. She has been pretty out of it recently, not very responsive at all, but after my mom told her I was visiting her from Maine she turned and said, "So you're a Mainiac now?"

That Grams is awesome!

Hoppy Birthday to me

Today is my birthday (birfday, awful definitions). Anywho, Beatrice gave me hops to plant, among a couple other things, to celebrate the occasion. She bought two rhizomes each of the Perle and Sterling varieties. I sure do hope they grow this year, it might be little late to start them and normally they would go in the ground instead of big pots, but I'm an optimistic sort of fellow. Also, hops take about 3 years before they're fully productive, but generally they do produce a usable, but small, first year crop. Hurrah!