Mattazuma's Revenge

Back to Good Habits & Leaving Town

Well, I've been gone from here too long.  Yes, I am lazy and it's too easy to just post some dumb little blurb on Twitter instead. I'm MattVolk on Twitter.  I post inane things there on a semi-regular basis.

It appears that starting sometime next week, I will be in Charlotte, NC for the foreseeable future. I think it's at least six months, but who knows. My company is trying to figure out a way to not screw us due to North Carolina's oppressive income taxes. Their top rate is 7.75%, vs a 3% flat rate in Illinois.  I figure by next Wednesday I'll be down there.

I've come up with some goals for the 'adventure' in NC:

1. Never eat dinner at a national chain restaurant. There is too much good local food in this world to settle.
2. Work out at least three days a week. It is way too easy to sit in the hotel room or in a bar a be a lazy bum. I've done it before. Also, I made the mistake of using a scale last week and really didn't like what it said.
3. Learn to program. I have an idea for a useful application for the forthcoming iPad and so I need to learn how to program in Objective C to build it. I haven't done any real programming since college, and that was in Fortran, which is practically a dead language these days, so I have much learning to do.
4. Eat breakfast every day. I'm hoping to end up in a hotel with free breakfast, if it doesn't I'm going to attempt to go get a real breakfast of some sort.

I'm also pondering buying an old Miata. I've always wanted one, and there seem to be a bunch of relatively cheap late '90s cars on EBay. It would be easier to have a beater to drive around down there instead of taking my nicer car down there. It's either a Miata, a really old 3-Series or a Civic SI. The main requirement is a manual transmission.

One thing I won't miss about Chicago:

Vegas Vacation Plans

Can't believe the Vegas trip is only 3 days away! Here is my rough schedule.

Thursday:

I'm getting in at 5PM.  I'm staying at the Monte Carlo this time, which had its poker room featured in the Amazing Race finale last night. I didn't even know they had a poker room.

Next stop after checking in is dinner at Bouchon at the Venetian.  I figure I'll get over there between 6:30 & 7 PM. If anyone wants to come with, hit me up & I'll make a reservation. Otherwise, I'll be eating at the bar. It is my favorite restaurant in Las Vegas & I go there on every trip.

After that, I'm heading over to the Imperial Palace to drink with the poker bloggers.  I'll also probably play some Pai Gao and craps. Look for me around the Geisha Bar after 8PM until whenever I get too tired to hang around.

Friday:

I'm going to spend Friday morning in a sports book, either at the Monte Carlo or Caesar's, betting the ponies from Aqueduct. So if you want some free bloody mary's track me down because I'll end up with more drink tickets than I can possibly use.

Friday afternoon I'm probably going to play tourist and take a bunch of pictures. I have a new camera and am trying to use it as much as possible.

Friday night, I hope to have dinner somewhere at least ok. Around 9, I'm going to head over to the MGM for mixed games & beer with the guys.  Again, craps may be on the agenda after poker if I can find a $5 table somewhere.

Saturday:

The only thing planned for Saturday is the WPBT poker tournament at 1PM at Caesars Palace.

Sunday:

Looks like the plan for Sunday is to hit the Venetian & spend the day in a 'box' in their sportsbook. The only constant for me when it comes to betting on football is losing, so I'll probably not bet very much.

Monday:

Get up, go to the airport & fly home.

Other things I want to do at some point:

Get up early & hit one of the fancier buffets.

Get a big hunk of cow from Craftsteak, or similar place.

Place a bet on the US to win the 2010 World Cup.

Baconfest 2009

I got a little lucky and scored two tickets for the first Baconfest Chicago Pro cookoff last Saturday, Oct. 24.  The very nice people at the Publican hosted the event.  Ten Chicago restaurants participated in the cookoff, and Paul Kahan of the Publican picked out beers to go with each item, with one exception. Each chef made an bacon or pork belly based appetizer.

First up, we tried One Sixty Blue's chicken fried bacon sandwich on a pretzel roll, with bacon fries and a concord grape catchup. The sandwich was good, but the portion was a little large for an appetizer.  The bacon fries and the grape catchup was very good.  Much better than I expected.

The Goose Island Brewpub made their own bacon for their appetizer.  They used barrels from the production of their Bourbon County Stout beer to first cure the pork belly and then they use the wood from the barrels to smoke the bacon.  They served their bacon with some frijoles, and some chilis and carrots that were cured in vinegar.  This was served with their smoked bock beer.  The bacon was somewhat too salty for me, but everything else was excellent.

Here's their bacon:

The restaurant that tried hardest was David Burke's Primehouse.  Chef Rick Gresh really got into the spirit of Baconfest.  He made his own beer and came up with the only handout to eat afterwards.  His inside-out corn dog was good but a little dry and his bacon apple fritter was excellent.

Yeah, he made bacon fun dip.  I'm saving mine for a rainy bacon-less day.

Mmmm, beer

My favorite dish of the day was a black mole infused pork belly from Boka.  It came with some bacon and some semolina gnocchi and a quince sauce.  The spicy & sweet mix was great.  I now want to check out Boka & see what the rest of their food is like.

 

The goofiest thing I tried was bacon ice cream with a caramel-lard frosting and a bacon crumble on top from Chalkboard. It was a little weird on its own, but was great with the paired beer, a New Holland beer called "Brother Jacob". Here are the ice cream makers:

The winner of the people's choice award was Eve.  They came up with a pumpkin-bacon waffle with pork belly and maple syrup.  It seems simple but it was amazingly good. The people at my table, other than me all picked it as their favorite and it was my 2nd favorite. We went to Eve earlier this month for dinner and really had a nice meal.  I recommend it highly.

Here are the winners:

 

The Judge's picked the dish from the Bristol as their winner.  They made a Bracole with egg wrapped with sausage which was wrapped in bacon.  It was plated with some kale and bacon maple juice. It was good, but I didn't like it as much as the waffle or the mole dish.

Here's the video I took of the announcement:

Baconfest Chicago 2009 Pro Cookoff Winner Announcement from Matt Volk on Vimeo.

It was a great time, and I can't wait for Baconfest Chicago in April of 2010!

My Hamburguesa con Chorizo

So, I was on the Twitter last month and I saw the following message pop up:

 

Hmm... chorizo in a hamburger, I've gotta try that! Well, today was that day, and here are a few pictures from a successful meal.

I first cooked up some chorizo, I really like Paulina's chorizo but as long as its Mexican chorizo, it should be ok.

 

Let it drain & cool down & then mix it up with the ground beef.  I also coated the patty with ancho chili powder & some salt.

 

I threw them on the grill and them served them up on buns with guacamole, tomato, jalapenos and some chipotle salsa.  Yeah, I used yellow cheddar instead of a Mexican cheese because that's all I had :)

 

Here's a close-up:

  

The burger came out great.  It had multiple layers of spice between the chorizo, the ancho powder and the jalapenos and the guacamole was an excellent counterpoint.  The potato salad is a very good Bobby Flay recipe off the Food Network site.

Some More Amazon Praise

Had an interesting Amazon experience this week I wanted to share.  I have Amazon Prime, which is an awesome service that gives you (and 4 friends) free 2 day shipping^* for everything Amazon sells.  Worth every penny of the $75 a year it costs.

I am also using Amazon's "Subscribe & Save" program to buy some grocery items.  It gives you a 15% additional discount and automatically ships more to you on a schedule of your choosing.  I.e. Resend every month, every 2 months, etc.

So I saw the shipping notice on Tuesday that they had shipped my reorder, but they used regular shipping instead of the 2 day.  For a couple boxes of cereal it didn't really matter when it was going to show up, but I shot Amazon an e-mail asking why they didn't use the free 2 day shipping.

I got an e-mail the next morning stating they had made a mistake and they gave me a $3.99 promo code to use on a future order.  $3.99 is the cost to upgrade an Amazon Prime shipment to next day delivery.

Here's the kicker, even with the regular 'slow' shipping, the box showed up on Wednesday.

* The 2 day shipping is normally UPS ground.  I think it's called 'premium ground' on the shipping labels. It always arrives within 2 days, with around 30% of the packages arriving the next day.

At the Rangers Game 7-3-09

In the Rangers ballpark, the dots are live!

 

There was a Marine induction ceremony before the game:

 

It was 99 when the game started, but there was a place to get a Guinness if you wanted it:

 

The Rangers broadcasters were very good about signing autographs:

 

And the 8PM temp was:

Rangers ballpark was pretty nice but it's hard to be really comfortable when it's still in the 90s and somewhat humid after the game ends at 10PM. It's probably great in April, May & September, which is pretty much the opposite of baseball in Chicago.

Two Plays at the Plate

Out!

 

Safe!

Post Game Buffet

The birds like the day games.

Who needs 2 cold ones?

Vacation Part 1 - Chicago to Tulsa, OK

Day 1 - Chicago to St. Louis

We took off on our little adventure on a Wednesday evening.  The original plan was to drive to Springfield and spend the night there.  We had a hotel room reserved in Tulsa for Thursday night, so our goal was to cut down how long we had to drive on Thursday.  We got to Springfield in a little over three hours & I was feeling pretty spry, so we pressed on and ended up spending the night a little west of St. Louis on I-44.  We were in a Holiday Inn Express across the highway from a shuttered Chrysler plant.  The phone in the hotel room had a dedicated button to call the factory, which was a little depressing when you thought about all of the people who used to work there.

Around midnight, I asked Jonnell "did you bring the Rangers Tickets?" (since I forgot), "Oh crap" was her reply. I came up with a solution after half an hour but neither of us slept very well.

Day 2 - St. Louis to Tulsa, OK

As was the norm for the trip, we didn't roll out of bed until 9 or so.  We then had to rush a little to get downstairs before their free breakfast ended.  At least Jonnell did, I had my eye on breakfast from the Sonic down the street from the hotel.  I wanted to try a Texas Toaster sandwich.  It was pretty good.

Thursday morning was the last time we felt temperatures below 80 degrees for the duration of the vacation.

Around noon, I gave the Rangers ticket office a call and explained that we didn't have our tickets.  The people I spoke with were very nice and had the tickets reprinted and held at will call for us. 

As we reached the western edge of Missouri, we started seeing billboards for the Precious Moments chapel.  Jonnell was already somewhat aware of the place because five years earlier I ended up staying at the Precious Moments hotel (by accident, really) when I was driving my EBay purchased car home from Fort Worth.  So, I was prodded to drive to Carthage and check it out.  It was both creepy and interesting.

 

There were lots of these mostly naked child angel statues around the grounds.

 

This is pretty creepy.

 

There were also a surprising number of Native American children in the stained glass windows and figurines.

We probably spent an hour there wandering about, Jonnell got a kick out of it & bought some souvenirs.

A few hours later we ended up in Tulsa.  We again were in a Holiday Inn Express, a bunch of middle age bikers were staying in the hotel as well. We ate dinner at the Elote Cafe, which is a little Mexican place in downtown Tulsa.  It was great, if you are in Tulsa you should check it out. I also had a few beers from Marshall Brewing in Tulsa which were good.

Tomorrow - Arlington, TX & Austin