The Gorman Goulash

 

I discovered this recipe a while back and there are many different ways that you can make it.   Props go out to the Naked Chef Jamie Oliver who inspired me to create this breakfast meal that I make whenever I want to start the day off right.  I have found that the Goosh works best on weekend mornings when you are entertaining guests for breakfast. 

 

What you Need:

            As big a pan as possible, flat but high sided.  You can probably use a big frying pan, but just make sure that it is oven proof.  When Brad and I made it last Sunday we used a Wok because we made it for 10 people. 

 

The Ingredos:

            This is not an exact recipe and you can try various ingredients as you see fit. 

The following amount will comfortably feed four people:

 

Olive Oil

4 cloves Garlic – minced - you can use garlic powder too but this does not do this dish justice. 

1 white onion – diced

4 slices of bacon – cut into ½ inch cubes

1 sausage – sliced – I like using hot Italian sausages.  DO NOT USE THE CRAPPY BREAKFAST SAUSAGE.

1 red pepper – diced

½ bag of diced hash browns – I’m talking about the small cubed hash browns.  McCain is the best. 

Salt and Pepper

6 eggs. 

Fresh Parsley – chopped roughly – Parsley is the best kitchen herb you can have.

Mozzarella cheese – cut into small cubes.

 

You can add what ever you want really but the above recipe is the best combination I have had yet. 

 

What to do:

1)      Heat your pan at medium high and add the onion, sausage and bacon and sauté for a couple of minutes. 

2)      When the onion and bacon start to brown drizzle some of the olive oil and add the garlic.  Stir occasionally and cook for about 3 – 5 minutes. 

3)      Add the red pepper and frozen hash browns until there is an even layer of them in your pan.  Lightly drizzle some more Olive Oil around the hash browns so that they cook evenly.  Stir until everything is mixed nicely together and cooked, stirring occasionally until the hash browns are almost finished cooking. 

4)      Taste and add salt and pepper to taste.  Add the chopped parley next and stir until the Goosh looks nicely sprinkled with green colour. 

5)      Now here comes the most difficult part – which isn’t very difficult at all.  With your wooden spoon, make pockets in the mixture and then crack a whole egg into those pockets.  Try to leave the Yolk intact but try to slightly spread the uncooked white into the surrounding potato mixture to bind it together to the egg.  Do this for all 6 eggs as best you can spreading evenly.

6)      Then sprinkle the Mozzarella chunks sparingly on top.  Note: This is not a cheese dish so don’t completely cover the top with the cheese.  It is just used to give it an extra level of flavor. 

7)      Put the mixture in the oven and heat at about 200 – 200 degrees F until the egg is cooked. 

 

Dig in.  This meal is really hard to stop eating once you start and there is usually never enough. 

I usually have mine with toast and a can of brown beans. 

 

Please let me know how you make out on this recipe if you decide to make it.  I can tell you it is really good and I have not had one complaint about it yet. 

 

Cheers.                   

As I write this, I am at work and I feel a bit retarded because of all the beer that I drank over the weekend.  Looking back now, I had one hellova weekend drinking binge partay and I will probably be recovering for the next couple of days.  No regrets though. 

 

It started Friday night, when an hour before I got off work there was a huge, and I mean huge crash of thunder that rocked the Galleria to its foundation.  I didn’t know it then, but now I think that Mother Nature was sending everyone a message with that bang, and the message was it is going be one shitty ass long weekend if your camping. 

 

Saturday I had a great time over at the Robertson’s house with members of GD, we drank some beer, hacked the sack, and pretty much shot the shit.  Following that, Brad and I jumped in the car to make our way up to Brett’s cottage to take in as much of cottage country and good-times-away-from-civilization as we could.  The drive up was long, dark, rainy and long (yes I said that twice).  Whoever removed the signs in Toronto indicating the exit to the 400 Highway towards Barrie, you suck.  Missed that ramp, had to back track and that is something that I think I had more than my Grandpa’s Deviled Eggs.  We actually had to make two “detours” on the way up to the cottage cause when you go North of Barrie, the highway and highway sign conditions deteriorate quickly, and when you are in the middle of no where with no map, only directions scribbled down on a piece of paper, and slightly stoned from the small bowl you just smoked, then you can imagine what it was like.   

 

Brett’s cottage is built on a huge rock as far back into the woods as you can get without going jumping in the lake.  The boys were still up and drinking in a circle around a campfire and for us, the party had started.  We drank until 630 in the morning I think, the Sun was coming up and we all went up to this huge flat rock on top of a cliff over hanging the entire lake and you could see cottages on the far side.  I wish that I had a digital camera so I could share the view.  It was amazing.  I was like the rain stopped long enough and the clouds parted just enough for the Sun to break through at that moment.  Throw in the fact that the 12 of us passed around the biggest splif I have seen in a long time and I sure was blazed. 

 

Sunday the skies opened up and poured water all day, and just when I thought Mother Nature didn’t have any more rain to throw at us, it rained harder.  We started the day with a pot of the Gorman Goulash, the Goosh for short.  I will give you the recipe for the Goulash tomorrow, cause I don’t feel like writing it out now.  I will tell you though, that it is my favorite breakfast to make and works when you have 2 people to feed, or 15.

 

For the rest of the day, we stayed inside for obvious reasons.  Drank a hell of a lot of beer…7 half sized kegs full of various brands of beer and 3 cases of bottled beer…not only did we down those over the course of the day, we also chugged a lot of beers using the funnel method while people chanted whoever was drinking's name. IE: "Gorman, Gorman, Gorman, Gorman!  As the beer rushed from the funnel directly down my throat.  Everyone had a turn and only one or two people that I saw puked.  I also cooked a big ass steak dinner with assorted grilled vegetables and taters for supper.  When I got down I had this far off, glazed look in my eyes and I couldn't move off the couch for 20 - 25 minutes.   

 

Despite the rain we did manage to fire off a bunch of assorted fire works to light up the night sky, fly around the country in Mike’s ATF4x4, and get stung a million times by mosquitoes, so the day wasn’t a complete waste.   

 

Surprisingly, no one was any worse for wear Monday morning…no one had a hangover, but we did have a big mess. 

Brad and I did our part to clean up and then we took off for home at 11 in the morning.  On the way back to Coldwater (the town by Bretts cottage) we stopped and grabbed some buffalo steaks from the Universal Game Farm, I am barbequing that buffalo next weekend and I am looking forward to that.  Never had Buffalo?  You are missing out.   

 

On the way back we managed to see downtown Coldwater under water.  I guess someone had the brilliant idea of building a town right on top of a river, and after raining all weekend that river became an angry river, and the results were pretty somber for some of the residents.  Seeing a house that was on dry land the day before slowly sinking with the family standing in front, you can't help but feel bad.  Great long friggin weekend huh.  I'm just glad

 

We managed to roll into London at 230 PM, just enough time to chill for an hour, unpack all my crap, and then get ready for work.  All around it was great weekend.  One to remember, I could go on but my hands are tired and I need to help some customers so, I hope you’ll understand. 

 

Ward. 

I want to be different, like everybody else I want to be like
I want to be just like all the different people
I have no further interest in being the same,
because I have seen difference all around,
and now I know that that's what I want
I don't want to blend in and be indistinguishable,
I want to be a part of the different crowd,
and assert my individuality along with the others
who are different like me
I don't want to be identical to anyone or anything
I don't even want to be identical to myself
I want to look in the mirror and wonder,
"who is that person? I've never seen that person before;
I've never seen anyone like that before."
I want to call into question the very idea that
identity can be attached
I want a floating, shifting, ever changing persona:
Invisibility and obscurity,
detachment from the ego and all of it's pursuits.
Unity is useless
Comformity is competitive and divisive and leads only to
stagnation and death.
If what I'm saying doesn't make any sense,
that's because sense can not be made
It's something that must be sensed
And I, for one, am incensed by all this complacency
Why oppose war only when there's a war?
Why defend the clinics only when they're attacked?
Why are we always reactive?
Let's activate something
Let's fuck shit up
Whatever happened to revolution for the hell of it?
Whatever happened to protesting nothing in particular, just
protesting cause it's Saturday and there's nothing else to do?

That is some pretty deep shit right there. I did not write it, I did like it though.  It is a song written by the band King Missile.  It is a song that I have remembered fondly as I used to listen to it a lot and I remebered it Friday night and thought that I would share it.  And since it is Saturday, and the song is called It's Saturday, then it just made sense.  I am off to drink beer now.  Party on Long Weekend, Party On.
 

We made it.  From last weekend to this weekend, this work week is almost over.  For many of you, work is almost done and you can begin your weekend.  For others, like myself, we still have to go to work, and that sucks bawls.  But at least I can take solace in the fact that this is Friday, and there ain't nothing gonna drag my spirits down on Friday. 

Every Thursday I am going to put in an entry on people, famous or not, who have made an impact on my life in some small, or large way...for no other reason than because....that's why!

This week on Celebrity Corner is a famous Doctor of Journalism, a Champion of Fun. 

The following is a desciption from an eye witness describing him entering one of his seminar's:

LADIES...AND...GENTLEMEN, WOULD YOU PLEASE WELCOME DR....HUNTER...S....THOMPSON, THOMPSON!

"Gonzo!!...Gonzo!!"

The audience has become frantic. The self-described Heavyweight gonzo Champion of the World is led onto the stage by one of his beautiful young assistants--more like someone reluctant to be lowered into a pit of adders than a man confident of his universally-sanctioned title. He is a tall fellow, with the gangly physique of a longshoreman far gone into serious yoga, and he jerks and twitches in a spastic kind of kinetic motion, which gives him the appearance of a brutish marionette. A pair of grey-tinted shades shield his dilated pupils from the painful glare of the spotlights. I can hear him repeating to his assistant: "You're going to have to help me...I'm blind as a fucking mole up here."

I always picture Hunter S. Thompson as Johnny Depp for some reason, though I can't figure out why. 

Thompson has covered the Hell's Angels, Presidential Elections, written in magazines from Vanity Fair, to Rolling Stone.  One of my favourite Books of all time is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas which was his first work of fiction.  Anything he writes is usually off the wall and mesmerizing.  He can make cat food interesting.  I especially like his work in ESPN covering various sports, most like basketball unfortunately, but he can even make that interesting. 
For more information on this rogue journalist there are some links below:

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/5752/
http://www.gonzo.org/
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/archive?columnist=hunter_s._thompson&root=page2

---

"The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others --- the living --- are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later.

But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. The association of motorcyles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions." --- HST '65

---

Have a good day kids!

 

 

Half way to the weekend, and this week is just not going fast enough.  As you can tell if you have opened a window or been outside today, it is really nice out and these are the days that going to work is the hardest.  Please let it be like this come Saturday, please oh please oh please. 

Today I setup the tent I bought for the weekend.  It is a three man tent that I got from Canadian Tire for the May 24 week to split with my bro Bard.  It was on sale so I only paid 40 bucks for it which, in my book, is a deal. 
I had to waterproof it though for roughly 24 hours so I set it up to take a look and spray this waterproof stuff on it.  Pretty boring but that was my day. 

I also sent my resume to Toronto to my good friend Laura who is going to put in a good word for me with her boss.  I think it might soon be time for the next chapter in my life to begin, Toronto I'm looking in your direction.  Only time will tell and I am keeping my options open, but when I try to look into the future at where I'll be five years from now, I fucking don't want to still be working at Teletech unless I had made Supervisor or something else.  And still, I hate Teletech and a change is very much needed. 

In closing, I bring you a guy that if you bother him enough, will eat your cursor and then you'll be srewed: 

Just clickety click on the linkety link:  http://www.yonkis.com/mediaflash/cursor.swf

Ward!

Since my brother downloaded and installed Play Tiger Gaming at http://www.playtigergaming.com I have been playing Texas Holdem with people from all over the world into the long hours of the night, and into the morning.  It is addictive, and fun, and free.  When you download the software and create your free account you get $30000 of play-money, only $10000 of which you can bring to the table at any one time.  If your looking for something to do and there nothing on TV, then I would recommend checking it out. 

Last night I was playing some dude in Australia and a couple more guys in Western Canada. 

Here is a really small picture:

Monday, Monday...So Good To Me...

My weekend was just about as good as it could have been.  I got going Saturday pretty early, 2 PM in the afternoon.  We loaded up the Car and headed out to KEMF VIII at the McKean Farm. On the way Heiko, Shane, and Myself stopped to pick up my our good friend Clint at the liquor store where he was begging for change again.  Actually he caught a train from the T-dot for KEMF and the liquor store was the meeting place as we all had to get the all important alcohol component for the party.  While waiting for everyone a slick Lotus Espirite drove into the parking lot and parked right beside my car.  The owner, and rich looking bastard, just got out and walked around his car with a smirk on his face the entire time.  I guess it would be hard not too if I had one of these cars.    Here is what the Espirite looks like: .  The owner probably brings this thing out like once or twice a year and only to show people.  This is definately not a "Point A - Point B" kinda car.   

Once we made it to the farm it was a bit colder than it was supposed to be.  It was about 5 to 10 degrees with the wind chill.  The Sun was able to peak through the clouds every once in a while and warmed things up a bit.  We got some good games of Hacky Sack, Catch, and Horse Shoes in and with alcohol thrown in, who had time to feel the cold? 

The best things I remember about KEMF VIII were:
a) Corsets...I've never seen a girl where one up close and now that I have I think it should be mandatory for each KEMF, each woman everywhere for that matter. 
b) The Smith's pulling into the drive way with Chris yelling profanity like only he can...it was trully awesome to finally see him and Anastasia again. 
c) The Music...each DJ stepped up and proved they have the talent and authority to take it to the next level of wickedness. 
d) Corsets...Best thing ever!

Other KEMF notes: Scott's visual effects were kick ass out of this world.   When Smith brought out his gear, Mike turned to me and said "I feel like a kid in a Candy store".  His eyes were huge, and I think I saw some drool on his chin.  When the Sun went down everyone moved inside for some good old time GD hanging out.  I am sure that everyone had a good time, except maybe Heiko's girlfriend who looked pretty tired.  Thanks Mike for once again upping the ante on the KEMF stage.  I am looking forward to the next one, and hopefully warmer weather. 

Sunday can be summed up one way...perfect.   The weather was great and I was trying to make the day last as long as possible.  We went down to the dam by my place and watched one fisherman pull in fish after fish after fish.  He got some pretty damn big ones too.  The highlight of the day though was the meal.  We ate at 8:30 Sunday night, but started preparing at 1 PM.  As I write this Monday after noon I am still full.  What did we have?  See below:

Hickory Smoked Beer Can Chicken and Rum Soaked Ribs

The Ribs were a really good recipe I found on the http://www.foodtv.ca site.  Here is the direct link to that recipe: http://foodtv.ca/recipes/recipedetails/recipe%5F4196.asp. 

When the ribs went back into the fridge with the dry marinade that when we washed and rubbed the chicken all over with Salt, Pepper, and Club House Montreal Chicken:  and marinated that for an hour at the same time as the Ribs.  Both took the same amount of time to cook from that point on. 

If you haven't had Beer Can Chicken before, or even if you have, I guarantee that it is not as good until you smoke it with Hickory.  The truest meaning for barbequeing is to slowly roast the meat with low, indirect heat, over a long period of time.   This is what we strived to do Sunday.  Only turning on one side of the barbeque grill, we put the Hickory Chips, after soaking them in water, directly on the hot coals.  We put the Chicken and Ribs on the side of the grill that was off, and closed the lid.  When the hickory started to smoke we turned the heat down to medium low and let her cook.  I cannot even describe what it smelled like, other than to visibly drool.  Roasting time took roughly two hours. 
When it was all said and done with,  the skin of the chick was crispy heaven, the ribs came right off the bone.   Through in some Roasted Tumeric Potatoes with sauted Bacon and Onion and your choice of Grilled Vegetable and you have a Spring time Sunday Feast on your hands.  Really good.   

Word.

What's Up Ya'll?

It's finally Friday!  Like most weeks, Friday took really long to get here, but when you look back it doesn't seem like it was a long time between Moday and today.  What makes this Friday even more special than other Fridays though, is that it is also Payday, uh huh, payday. 

Payday allows me to go out and buy stuff again...like food.  I have been on a tight budget for the last few days.  I was a bit reckless with my money the last time I got paid as there happened to be a bachelor party and instead of going to the bank and depositing the money Brad gave me for Rent like I should have, I went to the party with $300 in my pocket.  Add in alcohol and I was buying rounds for everybody as well as a couple of things I should not have bought at Solid Golds.  It was a fun night though. 

This weekend I am taking it easy and just relaxing with friends.  Saturday my friend Chris is in town from the City of Angels, Los Angelos, CA.  He is here with his wife Anastasia who he moved down there to marry and grow old together.  I am really looking forward to seeing him again.   The venue is KEMF.  For those who don't know what that is, it stands for Kerwood Electronic Music Festival and it is put on about three times a year during the warmer months.  All my friends get to together for outdoor stuff like volleyball, barbeque(of course), horse shoes, camp fires, and loud loud music.  Many of my friends are DJ's and this is their chance to showcase what they can do on the turn tables.   

Here are some featured pics of Groud Dynamic at KEMF V which took place August 25th 2002:


  


Chris is in both Pictures, even though the top is supposed to be the ladies, which makes me kinda wonder about Chris sometimes...

On Sunday I plan on having Chicken and Ribs for the first time at my place.  I am putting in the time and effort to smoke the Ribs with hickory on my bbq after marinating it in dark rum/cinnamon mixture for a couple of hours.  If it tastes good, then I'll put the recipe up on this here blog.  I picked up the ribs today from Loblaws for pretty cheap: $10.58.  There were more expensive brands but I figured since this is the first time, I better take it easy.  

I don't really have anything else to add at this time so I'll leave you with a quote I heard from a comedian I watched last night:  "Women are the number one reason I am not a homosexual".  It makes sense.

Cheers everyone!  Have a fan-fucking-tastic weekend! 

This is Celebrity Corner! 

Does anyone remember the Swedish Chef from the Muppets?  Bork Bork Bork!  I swear that guy made the best food evar, and he did it while singing and dancing.  For those of you who know him, love him, and appreciate his efforts in the culinary arts like I do, I would like to offer up a toast...I wish I had a glass of Fat Bastard right about now...To the Swedish Chef!

Here is an audio clip and picture of the Chef making Chocalate Mouse:  Sorry, you probably won't be able to do this at werk...but the picture is still funny.

          http://www.almac.co.uk/chef/chef/picsound/chef1.au

Click the link under the picture to listen to the Master of Desserts while he makes Chocolate Mouse.

On to a more serious topic: What the hell is going on May 24?  I definately need to go somewhere where there is a patio/deck, beer, and beautiful women...but where?  Some plans must be made, must be set in motion.  My friends are talking about taking off to Niagara falls for the weekend.  I was thinking more like beach.  Not in the water cause it would still be too cold, but beach.  What's up at Niagara Falls anyway, freaking water going over a cliff?  Woopee!  I have actually never been to see the falls and I would like to, but May 24?  The term "May 24" is us3d in association with beer, camping, outdoors, and Nature like stuff.  Not tourist attractions.  Maybe I'm wrong but going to the beach/park/barbeque/with beautiful ladies, oh and friends, suits me just fine. 

Word.