Food – Mike's Life

Monster cookies

I enjoy baking and cooking, and I have certainly gotten my share of new kitchen adventures over the past three months.

I have done slow-cooker bread. I have learned lots of new recipes for our fairly new Instant Pot. I have made my fudge that I call Hurricane Fudge, as I usually make it when I am riding out a hurricane, but I consider this current disrailing of life an acceptable substitute for a named storm. I have even taken my initial plunge into homebrewing, of which I can give you an update in a couple of weeks.

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Take me out to the ball game

I just attended my first Major League Baseball game in almost 25 years.

You must be thinking, wow, Mike, you are clearly not a baseball fan.

Au contraire.

I am a huge baseball fan. My first job ever was before I was old enough to work, and the owner of a baseball card store near my house figured out a way to game the system and, rather than pay me to work, let me have store credit if I “volunteered.” At the end of each week, he would tally up my volunteer hours and gift me a store credit. One week, my entire pay … I mean, gift … was a single baseball card, a 1980 Topps Ricky Henderson.
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Gone fishin’ (and eatin’)

My son loves to fish. Loves, loves, loves to fish. If I gave him the option of having a roof over his head or fishing, it’s pretty much time to tell him goodbye.

He fishes in the morning. He fishes in the afternoon. On plenty of occasions I have called him and said, “Dude, it’s dark. How are you still fishing.”
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Florence fudge

Hurricane Florence is now behind us, and at least we can all agree on this: the fudge was pretty tasty.

Now, lest you think I took a piece of storm-powered debris to the noggin, I’ll make sense of the fudge later.
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Thanks, Thanksgiving

Dear Thanksgiving,

I just wanted to tell you that you are not forgotten.

I know you see when the Christmas decorations start appearing in stores around August.

And I know it makes you sad. But you don’t complain, because that’s the kind of holiday you are. Stoic to the end. That’s you, Thanksgiving.
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PEE-can, PICK-ahn – the debate continues.

Here are some things that take about 30 minutes:

Viewing a network sitcom
Cooking some chicken
Watching about 1/10 of “Gone With the Wind”

Here is something that should NOT take 30 minutes:
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A cut above

Nobody likes line cutters. Well, at least no one who is adhering to the actual rules of the line.

I am a fan of order, so I think a nicely formed line is something to be admired and find it abhorrent when people cut in line. However, I am not sure how to handle it when I become the line cutter.
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To serve and deflect

If there is one thing in life I have learned, it’s that yelling at your server will rarely yield positive results.

I base this on the fact that (a) I have been a waiter before and (b) I’m a fairly decent human.
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No kidding

I recently read an article about a restaurant that was under fire for posting on Facebook that it would no longer allow “small screaming children,” adding that the establishment is “an adult themed restaurant that caters to those who enjoy food and are out to enjoy themselves.”
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Looking for health food in all the wrong places

Pop and Parker ready to enjoy their Varsity meal.

During a recent visit to Atlanta, my father-in-law, son and I made one of our routine visits to The Varsity in downtown Atlanta.
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