Chili Fail

One of my favorite cooking shows is Tyler Florence Ultimate.  Mr. Florence had a show last week about his best Texas style chili recipe.  It looked great so I thought I'd try it out over the Thanksgiving weekend.  It had a lot of ingredients.  I think it cost something like $30 for all the ingredients.  Spices sure are expensive.  So I got it all home and spent about 3 hours on Saturday putting it all together.  After the allotted time was over I eagerly picked up a spoon and tasted it.  My first reaction was that it was really spicy.  This was a surprise because one of the ingredients was 2 tablespoons of ancho chili powder, which I forgot to get so it was never added.  I could have overlooked that if it had tasted good but really it was just spicy and had no real chili flavor.  It was a bit of a disaster.

As I was writing this I wanted to reference the recipe that I followed.  Low and behold I think I discovered the problem.  This is the recipe that I looked up online:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/beef-chili-recipe/index.html

Notice that it is on the official food network site and has tyler florence at the top of it.  Looks legit right?

Now look at this one:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/tylers-texas-chili-recipe2/index.html


This is what I believe was the correct recipe.  On the surface they both look fairly similar but they are not.

One thing I know I got wrong was the 3 canned chipotle peppers in adobo sauce.  I read that as 3 cans of chipotle peppers.  I actually only had 2 cans but I put them all in.  This was quite an effort.  Someday I'll try again.

Lunch Run Proposal

On Monday I decided to go on my favorite 6 mile run.  From DD to the Marina jetty.  It was maybe the worst run ever.  Most likely it was a perfect storm of factors that contributed to this run being so bad.  First, I am still getting over this cold/cough thing and my stomach has been really irritated the last few days.  Second, I had a small bowl of cereal and a glass of a day old smoothie for breakfast, that was all I had until I ran at lunch time.  The one thing that I didn't do wrong (or so I thought) was good ol rule #1 when going on runs.  Always go to the bathroom right before you run.  Well, I had already gone around 9 in the morning, but not wanting to break the rule, I tried and did go.  I don't think I made it a mile before I had to go again.  Then again at mile 4.  It was awful.  I walked probably 20 minutes of it because my stomach was cramping up so much.  A run that usually takes me about 50 minutes wound up going over 1.5 hours.

Tuesday, I took the day off.

So today I decided to head down to the pier and maybe say hi to my friend the pull up bars.  Got rule #1 out of the way and headed out.  This time I felt a lot better.  No cramping, no urges, and no wind.  I made my way up the stairs of the pier and down the side of the pier where the roller coaster is.  I was nearing the corner where you turn to go onto the main walkway when I noticed a couple standing near the railing.  When I was about 40 feet from them, the guy goes down to one knee, holding a small box.

It was a good day.

That's them down at the very end.

Back to Venice

I have been temporarily relocated back to the Venice office.  The one thing that stands out to me about this place is how alive it is compared to Playa.  Playa feels like a quiet retirement community in Irvine.  Venice feels like a hipster college town.  I really miss running on the beach here so today I decided to go on out.  I have been running on the treadmill for so long that I think my body has adapted to it.  Mainly to the cushioning or give that my treadmill provides.  With every foot strike on regular pavement it felt like a shockwave going through my body.  Like somebody was shaking me every time I took a step.  It took about 2 miles for that to ware off.  Unfortunately, this might have been the windiest run I have ever been on.  Wow, was it windy.  Tough going out, easy coming back.  Another thing I have been wanting to do is stop by my old nemesis, the pull up bars.  You may recall that my old best on the bars was 7.  Today I did 10.  I have a feeling I could have done more if I hadn't run 3 miles to get to the bars.  I am satisfied with 10.  I would have been happy with 12.

Sure feels good to be working again.

Had my white balance set wrong so the picture go messed up.  Windy day.

The Redskins Rule

Today I learned about something called the Redskins Rule.  The Redskins Rule states that if the Washington Redskins win their last home game prior to the US presidential election then the political party who won the popular vote in the last presidential election will win the election in the current year.  This rule has accurately predicted the winner of the presidency in 17 of the last 18 elections since the Redskins moved to Washington in 1940.  The one time that it didn't work?  When Bush beat Kerry in 2004.

This weekend happens to be a Washington home game so this would be the one that determines the Redskin Rule.  Washington plays Carolina.  Both teams are not great but Washington is most likely the favorite to win.  If this happens then Obama would be the Redskin Rule winner.