I can't stop watching Shia LeBeouf's livestream: http://hewillnotdivide.us/ It's like a who's who of society's leftovers.
Does anyone remember the Monday night wars of wrestling?!? Fucking Disco Inferno on a Saturday morning what a time to be alive
Back when wrestling was "cool" and everybody was allowed to be into it? There are many ingrained memories from my adolescence of hanging out at friends houses on Mondays, going to the live events whenever they came into town. And I'll admit this knowing full well that I'll likely be mocked for it, but I still watch wrestling pretty avidly even to this day. In fact, I'm actually excited for tomorrow's Royal Rumble for the first time in a long time, as it's really wide open on who might win. (And yes, I know it's "fake", but it's still entertaining to keep on as a background type of show when I'm doing other things.)
So I ended up buying another knife (You can never have enough knives.) It's claimed to be hand-made, full tang, Damascus steel (I always thought that would be a great name for a metal band.) I got it in an e-bay auction for $16.49 including a sheath and shipping, so I'm not holding my breath on it being a great knife, but I'm hoping it's decent. Spoiler
Fuck this day and everything associated with it. I'm just now getting home from work managing a technical release that was supposed to take 3 hours to validate. 14 hours in and we've called it a night, only to resume tomorrow morning at 9am. At this point I'm drinking my dinner, which means with these 8% IPAs, I'll probably be hammered after 2 1/2 beers. Oh, and also add me to the list of board members that will be bringing a future TiBette into this world in 2017. Apparently there was a whole lot of horizontal mamboing taking place in November/December.
In case you're wondering, that's part of the joy of being self-employed. I just finished a work deliverable, and the next phase isn't scheduled to start up until half-way through March. "On Vacation" is code for "don't have anything else lined up". In this case, I'm more than OK for the time off and will be using it to build out my new work shop.
I don't consider myself a food snob but I wouldn't consider Cheesecake factory fine dining by any means. My buddies wife and her friend were going on and on about how good the food is and about how varied the menu is. Maybe I have become a bit of a food snob, but a place that offers everything and big portions usually isn't an indicator of quality to me. And fuck me I'm tired. Went out with my friends all day and all I want is a cocktail and some good sleep.
I was just discussing this with a friend of mine recently about how as children what we considered "upscale dining" was essentially just our parents tricking us into not taking us out for shitty food as kids. For example, I remember being a kid and thinking that going out to Red Lobster was a considered a special occasion only treat from my parents. These days, you couldn't pay me to go there and eat their "quality seafood" if my life depended on it. Maybe it's because I learned a long time ago that with enough practice I can make meals at home better than 95% of the chain restaurants out there at 1/3 of the price, or people in general are just better at identifying good food these days, but I haven't had what I would consider an above average meal at a chain restaurant in years.
So much this. I enjoy cooking and find it therapeutic. When you use excellent ingredients, you can make a "gourmet" meal for pennies on the dollar, without the crowds at a restaurant, and you can drink a bottle or two of wine without worrying about driving. I still like going out to a nice restaurant every now and then, but I find more and more I prefer to cook/eat at home.
I've actually spoiled many a family member and my girlfriend due to the fact that they've all had my cooking enough to make the comment that after a meal at what is supposed to be a high end restaurant, they'll say that I could have done better. That being said, any time I have a meal somewhere that I feel as if the chef has made a solid preparation that is above my skill-set, I try and make it a point to not only recommend that place to others, but also give compliments to the chef for their work; which I feel is a lost practice in today's dining experiences. We all need reassurances in life. If you have a really good meal when you're out to eat, let someone know. It doesn't even have to be the chef (although that's where you should start), maybe recommend it to a friend that's looking for a new place to try. Most food based operations are primarily driven by word of mouth and it costs literally nothing to tell others about their work if it's quality.
I also try and learn from really good meals. I had a phenomenal potato-leek soup just before Christmas that had caramelized and picked onions as garnish, and it was the best I've ever had. I tried like hell to figure it out, and asked the waiter if he knew how it was done. The chef ended up coming out and explaining it to me, and he seemed really happy to have someone take interest. I made it later for my family and it was a huge hit.
Speaking of chefs, I had the Naked chicken chalupa from Taco Bell for dinner tonight. For those of you unfamiliar, instead of a Taco they use fried chicken shaped like a taco. It was excellent.
^This. If you really are impressed by a dish, 99% of the time the person preparing it will be more than happy to share their recipe with you. And if they won't, it's either because it's got a bunch of shitty things that they don't want you to realize is in there or they're just genuinely an asshole. My favorite recipe that I have to make wings is from asking the chef at the restaurant if he could tell me how he made them because they were my favorite in town. He was more than glad to share the recipe with me, and while I can get them close, until I can somehow install a commercial fryer in my house, they'll never be exactly the same, but I at least can get their sauce recipe at home. That being said, I still go to their restaurant as often as I can and recommend it to as many people as I can so they get the business because their food is that good.
Once I got over the hump of learning to cook a few decent meals, I felt silly over a few things: I realized how EASY and CHEAP it is to make good food. And I don't mean Hot Dog Fried Rice. I think people are intimidated that they'll suck at making real meals so they either keep it easy or eat/order out, but cooking isn't hard, and there's a lot of great meals that take less than twenty minutes. And of course, that satisfaction of making something that tastes better than what you'd order at a restaurant is as great as the food itself. Like you said, therapeutic.