AAAh it is that time of year again - I like to start baby chick season with this video:



I especially like the tasteful way they address the chicken waste issue.

Found a few places in Nashville to get your chick as well - they are listed in this article I wrote for Examiner.com as the
Nashville Country Living Examiner.

Examiner.com just made me the Country Living Examiner for Nashville!

A few weeks ago, Melissa and JP came out to the holler for a quick visit. We had a great time and Melissa advised me through my first home made pasta adventure with my Kitchenaid.

The food was fabulous!

Melissa also brought a brown rice salad that was to die for. Here it is on her cooking blog!

http://www.strawberryberet.com
/2009/03/brown-brown-rice.html

Driving to the store for a carton of sour cream is not economical when the nearest store is 12 miles away. Yet green chili rellenos (baked from the frozen stock of the summer) just don't taste as good without the creamy additive in the rice. 

This video has it all - food, politics and even a chicken reference! H/T to Liberty on the Rocks' video crew.

Here is a photo of my home-made T-Shirt Tomato Strainer Bag. For the record, I bought NEW undershirts for this purpose.

H/T Ben Cunningham

As many know, I have been on a hard road schedule the last 4 weeks. I was lucky enough to have a fellow blogger friend fill in while I was out and about.

For those of you who have not seen Lannae Long's blog, you should check it out. She has a number of great restaurant reviews, photo documented cooking adventures, and she even manages to post blog entries when she is on the road. She is so good at blogging that local chef's invite her to their pre-release tasting sessions!




Please help me thank Lannae for posting to this site to keep things rolling!

This just in from my favorite real estate agent who is also a musician:

THE REDNECK YACHT CLUB sets sail this weekend at Hurricane Marina on Center Hill Lake! We play at 7pm. Here are the directions! From I-40, take Exit 273 toward Smithville / McMinnville.

Follow TN-56 South for 3.5 miles. Turn RIGHT onto Floating Mill Road, and follow the signs towards Hurricane Marina.

A friend of mine, Steve Williams, wrote a country song entitled "Redneck Yacht Club" with a buddy of his named Tom Shepard and it was a big hit single a couple of years ago by Craig Morgan.

Now Steve and Tom have starting doing gigs calling their act "The Redneck Yacht Club".

Most of the gigs are at marinas as they're playing up the "boating" thing. That's what this is all about. We're doing songs they've written along with some Jimmy Buffet tunes and other fun stuff.

Tell everybody to come out!

The 2005 Song performed by Craig Morgan:

More importantly, a performace by the BAND:

photo of my coffee from Bongo Java

Hi there!  I am Lannae from LannaeLong.blogspot.com, and I get to be a guest blogger on Nicole Sauce's blog.  I get to blog about whatever I want on Nicole's blog, so I decided to blog about my coffee cup.  When I was in college, I drank a lot of coffee to stay awake as much as I could.  I probably drank between 1/2 a pot to 2 pots of coffee per day.  I had THE original travel mug, and it was attached to my hand at all times.  I would walk around campus that way, and everyone knew me as the one with the coffee mug.  The mug was red plastic, it once had writing on it but that paint chipped off, it only held up to 12 oz, and the base of the mug was a disk shape, so it could fit into the mug holder that could be glued to a dashboard of a car.  Since I did not have a car when I had this mug, I just carried the mug by its handle.  That travel mug got me through 4 years of college, 3 years of grad school, nearly 10 years in Philadelphia, and about 4 years in Nashville.  Where that mug went, I am not sure.  I sure wish I still have it because it, filled with coffee, got me through all of college and my 20s. Sometime during grad school, I bought a 2nd plastic coffee mug, but this one is bigger,  it is 16 oz, and it came from one of the hundreds of Dunkin' Donuts in Boston, it is as spherical in shape and it has that disc at the bottom for the dashboard, and this plastic travel mug had "The Big One" painted on the side of it.  I still have that Dunkin' Donuts mug, but the paint has chipped off the sides, and ti looks like it says | -  \ . _ ) ' |_` instead  of The Big One.  I actually use the Dunkin' Donuts mug everyday at work, and it has been my work coffee mug for over 10 years now.  Day in and day out I use the same mug.  This mug is attached to my hand most of the morning, and co-workers expect to see me with this mug in my hand.  Since I am older now, I can't tolerate full caffeine anymore, I drink only 1/2 caf and 1/2 decaf now.

So I guess I want to say that today is Earth Day.  Even before I knew what Earth Day was, I used my coffee mug to get re-fills from the student union, from the coffee shops and from my own coffee maker.  I really don't care to use paper or styrofoam cups because that just don't hold up as well as my old faithful coffee mug.  I also like using my own mug because I am cheap, and and many places offer discounts on coffee if you bring your own mug.  Believe me, as a poor college student, getting a discount was a big motivator to make something like reusing a coffee mug a habit.  I am so glad my cheap ways fall in line with Earth Day, so this blog post can tie in my coffee mug with Earth Day.  Other than that, I really don't have much to say about Earth Day accept reduce, reuse and recycle.  I am sure good at reducing the number of coffee mugs I use, and I have been re-using it everyday for definitely over 10 years.  I have no need to recycle it yet, as it is still a perfectly good mug. 

Guess what we learned how to cook?

We've all seen people get into big trouble on the Internet because they were traced via their IP address. Especially folks who post commentary on politics from work, which is traced to their company.

Luckily, the Internet has solved this problem for us (along with many other ones).

HideMyIP.com is one way to mask yourself. You can hide behind a thicker screen of anonymity. It is wonderful.

Just a tip for the day.

I am heading into the great traveling void for 2 weeks and will post infrequently. Anyone care to be my guest blogger while I am away? There needs to be more cooking content for awhile.

Oh yeah - coming soon - my first attempt at grass fed pork chops!

This article from TechCrunch is interesting. Their mother effing pop up ads are annoying though.

So, we all hear about how special interests are controlling our government. You know - BIG OIL - PHARMACEUTICALS - ETC...

(Tee hee hee - I just realized the word "harm" is in pharmaceuticals...)

In any political discussion, you will hear about some industry that represents their interest through bribery or lobbying to glean special favors through the coercion of government.

Well, don't get me started today on the role of government in the business world - I am sure that is a different Thought of the Walk.

No, no - What I wondered yesterday was this:

• Why don't these same people get outraged when the specials interest of an ever growing government are preserved at the cost of its citizens? You do not hear complaints about "GOVERNMENT MONOPOLY INTERESTS."
  
• Why don't people RAGE about the teacher's unions becoming so intertwined with the government that they not only do not help children learn, they also do not HELP TEACHERS TEACH?

If you get pissed off about special interests of BIG OIL being represented, then you should be outraged when the GOVERNMENT MONOPOLY keeps you from getting decent internet service, or worse, causes a mother and child to be separated because of national origins.

---

On no particular schedule, I take a walk. Each time this happens, I have a thought. This is Nicole Sauce's Thought of the Walk.

Spend all weekend adding your favorite 80s tunes to a playlist, then embed it in your blog:

From the comments field:

Jenni wrote:
"Free the Grapes" is supporting direct shipping from wineries.

If you want to be able to purchase wine in Tennessee grocery & convenience stores, show your support at www.redwhiteandfood.com
Reply to this

Can we add booze too?!!

Well, Lannae just tipped me off to the good news: Trader Joes is FINALLY coming to Nashville!! Read the article here.

Now, I can understand why they chose the former Wild Oats building in Green Hills: Trader Joes always seems to try to move into pre-built places with parking lots. However, I am dismayed that they did not consider the other side of town.

Yes, I will fight frickin' traffic and no decent freeway access just to get a year's supply of coffee and a case of pasta sauce every so often, but had they chosen a more accessible location, I would have fit them into my regular rounds.

Now the next question is: Will they built a separate entrance to sell 2 buck chuck?

As we all know, Tennessee's State Government thinks that wine is so extremely dangerous to our populace that they safely stow its sale away in specialty stores with liquor. Beer, on the other hand, is ok for general consumption seeing as you can't get drunk off of it. (These people make no sense.) 

Does this piss you off too? Check out Free the Grapes.

...and ANOTHER thing.

Leftover fish and rice are very good when combined with spinach, fresh tortillas, grated cheese, and enchilada sauce, then baked at 350 for 20 minutes.

Just ask Nicky Cheese if you don't believe me.

---

On no particular schedule, I take a walk. Each time this happens, I have a thought. This is Nicole Sauce's Thought of the Walk.

I was talking to a friend today and realized that realists and idealists need each other.

In my little world the realist needs the idealist to spout of what seems an impossible dream to make their more realistic solutions seem possible.

On the other hand, the idealist needs the realist to find compromises to the ideal in the interest of avoiding complete catastrophic failure.

You see it everywhere - a CRISIS:

• Health care crisis: “The best thing people can do for me is to write their Congressmen about the health care crisis,” White concluded. “Insurance is too expensive for even working families to afford. Baby boomers alone could change the laws if all of them would use their voice.”
  
  
• Global warming crisis: "This climate crisis is so interwoven with habits and patterns that are so entrenched, the elected officials in both parties are going to be timid about enacting the bold changes ..." (Sorry about the ad you have to look at before reading the article.)
  
  
• Obesity crisis: "How bad is the obesity crisis in the United States these days? Well it is approaching critical ..."

The crises pile up to no end. They form a giant heap of fear driving us to take action. In most cases, the suggested solution is to enact government controls:

• Health care crisis = Socialized health care system
  
• Global warming crisis = Legislate all consumption and mobility
  
• Obesity crisis = Legislate food production and consumption

What I want to know is this: Why are the solutions to all our crises about legislating OTHER people to change? Why are they not about looking at what you, the XYZ crisis activist do to CAUSE your alleged crisis to begin with? And what YOU should do to fix it?

If everyone would look inward and take responsibility, instead of blame others, there would be fewer crises...

...and don't get me started on the legitimate definition of crisis.

---

On good days, I take a walk. Each time this happens, I have a thought. This is Nicole Sauce's Thought of the Walk.