Monday, 8 January 2001 11:45pm
S
o it's been a few days since the last update. Well, I guess I'll recap really quick first. First of all, I have been sick every single day of the new Millenium. I'm almost better though. I'm sure by tomorrow, I will be 100% or damn close. Secondly, we signed a lease on our apartment. This means two things. One, the rent is going to go down by like $150 a month, which is well worth it. It also means that I have signed away the next 12 months of my life to living with Cami.
Twelve more months of the asian and half-asian Al and Peggy Bundy living together. Although the relationship has changed a bit due to recent circumustances from being Married With Children to more like Who's The Boss with Alyssa Milano and Tony Danza as her overprotective dad. You can read about these circumstances (or at least as much as she wants to talk about them) on cami's page.
My new NikeID shoes came in today. They are actually exactly the same as my old ones, except with orange trim, and the back reads "BRYBRY26" instead of "2SIX" which is what my old ones say. I haven't worn them yet, it was wet and rainy outside so I just kept wearing the old ones. You can order shoes with customized colors and whatever you want on the back from nike.com; they come in about 3 weeks. These are my second pair.
So Cami said something about Glenlivet being in that Nicholas Cage movie. I have a bottle, it's on the kitchen table. Until she mentioned it tonight, I haven't had any in many weeks. Cami came up with an idea that I should mark the dates along with the level of the whiskey. She thinks we can gauge how difficult or depressing certain times in my life will be by seeing how fast the level goes down. So I drank a little, but enough to get it below the level of the label to start this experiement tonight. Mmmm. Scotch.
After reading about it on comabound, I decided to buy a George Foreman Grill on a whim tonight. I just went out to Target and bought it, and on the way back from Target, I bought a new york strip steak from Vons so I could test it out. I got the little one, it costs $25 at Target. I got the last one. These are very popular! Anyway, I wanted to see if it was really as good as everyone has been saying it is.
Well, I am pretty satisfied with my purchase, and I am pleasantly surprised to find out that it really does do pretty much everything that they claim on TV. This thing only takes about 3 or 4 minutes to preheat, so you really don't have a lot of waiting around to do. I put the steak on the grill, straight out of the package, without any seasoning or any marinade whatsoever. I wanted to see exactly how this grill would treat the steak. I didn't want any artificial factors involved, especially anything that might make the grill seem better than it really is.
During the grilling process, I expected to see streams of fat pouring out from the machine. But the steak I bought was already pretty lean, so I only got a few drops out of it. It smelled pretty good, without stinking up the whole house too much. And it cooked the steak to about medium in just 5 minutes. Yes, really in 6 minutes. To get a steak this size to cook to medium on a regular grill, cooking one side at a time would probably take you about 15 minutes. Once the grill was ready to take the meat, that is. So it was definitely very quick!
So the moment of truth arrived and I sliced the steak open to find it medium, after 6 minutes. I was actually shooting for medium-rare, but the suggested cooking time in the manual ended up being a bit too long. I believe the comabound chick ran into a similar over-estimation in the manual for hamburgers. Due to not having been marinated or anything, the meat proved to be slightly on the tough side. Actually, I wouldn't really call it tough, but it certainly wasn't tender. On the other hand, it was very juicy, with every bite exploding with juice.
I am sure that if I had taken more time to prepare the meat before cooking (i.e. marinate it), it would have come out even more tender and juicy than it did, in which case it would be really great. Cleaning up was pretty easy, using the little spatula thingy that came with the grill, a wet sponge and some paper towels, as directed in the instruction manual. Fairly quick and painless.
The overall verdict? As you would expect, the meat did not taste as good as it would if it had been cooked on a real grill over real charcoal or wood (assuming you actually know how to cook over a real fire). On the other hand, it probably took less time to preheat the George Foreman Grill, cook, eat, and clean it up, than it would have taken to light coals and wait for them to ash over. This thing is quick and certainly lives up to that part of the deal.
The meat was not bad at all, and I really cannot emphasize just how quick this thing is. And the cleanup was much less involved than using a real grill. Of course, you are missing the taste you get from real smoke from a real grill (not those cheesy gas grills either), but with a lot less cleanup. This small version is barely big enough for two small steaks, so if you have medium to large sized cuts, you can only cook one at a time. But there's only me and cami living here, and as fast as this thing is, you can easily cook two, one at a time, in the same time it would take to cook one steak on a regular grill. On the other hand, a regular grill can probably cook 6 or 7 steaks at once... so... it really all depends. But the price is right, if you ask me, and I would definitely use this thing again, not just for steaks, but also for stuff like salmon steaks, in which case, cleaning this thing is WAAAY better than cleaning a baking dish!! I like it!
By the way, in case you were wondering, I didn't just eat this steak by itself. Although I didn't eat much with it. Since I was just trying this thing out and plus I just wanted a little snack, I also bought a little prepackaged single serving of potato salad. And I had Pepsi to drink.

Wednesday, 10 January 2001 2:30am (thursday morning)
T
onight, it may be quite a challenge for me to fall asleep. The old lady that lives downstairs has this crazy floodlight that periodically turns on and off. It is extremely bright and even with my blinds closed, fills my entire room, it seems. The thing is, it's stormy out, and this light is on a motion sensor and she has a potted tree that sits right in front of the sensor. So as the wind blows the tree around, the tree sets off the motion dectector and the light just turns on and off. Ugh. Plus she has wind chimes. And then there is the sound of the wind. Yup.
So tonight I tried out the George Foreman grill again. This time it was chicken breasts that I did actually take the time to do some preparation with. I just used some pre-bottled marinade with the chicken. Anyway, once again, the grill heated up quickly and had the food cooked in no time. And man, was it really good. This was one of the juciest chicken breasts I ever had. But, there was one slight problem. The marinade I used was very sweet, and carmelized on the grill. Cleanup was not a snap, but re-heating the grill a little helped. And the food was still good and was still prepared in no time. So the verdict? I still like it. Notice how in the photo, the chicken here looks like the beef from the day before yesterday. I don't know why that is. Maybe it is the flourescent lights or something playing a trick on the white balancing. Actually, it's the other way around, as lan pointed out -- the beef looks like chicken.
Kinda weird and strange how lighting works like that. Hmmm. So the wind and rain both just picked up, and the light really is going to flicker on and off all night. Hmm. Well that really sucks. But the rain and wind is okay with me. I mean, it's a nice break from the mundane monotony of having pristine and perfect weather every day like we do here in San Diego (*snicker*). Plus it hasn't rained much at all this winter, so we could really use it.
That reminds me -- I took some pictures of the sunset down at La Jolla Shores last weekend. They are in my big repository for now. The best ones will probably also make it to the La Jolla Sunsets page in the colors section of my site. And again, that link isn't always up, especially at night when I'm sleeping.
Comabound mentioned the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie. Uh oh. I hope she doesn't get too obsessed with that. Not for her sake, but for my sake. But I don't think it's sold anywhere in stores, so my chances of buying one of those on an impulse like I did with this George Foreman grill are pretty slim.