Winter Is Here

Winter is coming.....

Winter is here??!!! Oh F@#$@#@#!!!!!

I hate winter.  It happened to come on the busiest driving day of the year in America, the day before thanksgiving.  A good ol' fashioned Nor'easter.  This is somewhere in New Jersey.  Plows had yet to hit the roads and people where fishtailing all over the place.  At least this time we were in a mid sized Toyota Sonata.  The average speed for a long time was 20 mph or less.  Not fun and took a long time to get home.

Winter Driving Fun from Jason Raish on Vimeo.

my childhood room

My mom working with Brody on his tracking skills for another one of her crazy dog lady tests they have to do.

I didn't get down low to take jen's photo but it would still look the same because she can't get hang time like I do!  If I didn't have those boots on I would be on the moon right now

bob's homemade cream of mushroom soup was super delish.  Make sure you tell him because he was super proud of it.  Things keep escalating higher and higher and bob always begrudgingly agrees to go along with it.....only he secretly likes it!  This time I said we had to make the green bean casserole as homemade as possible and he did a bad job at hiding the fact that he wanted to make homemade cream of mushroom soup for it.  You can be proud of this one bob cuz it kicked arse.

So we have basically taken Thanksgiving from our parents and probably ruined it for them by being pretentious little kitchen pricks raised in the era of modern cooking shows, food photography, and over all foodie culture afforded by the sacrifices that our parents had to make to improve our lives to the point where we complain if the green bean casserole is made with cambell's cream of mushroom soup from a can and not homemade with shitake, porcini, and portabella shrooms.  I can get out of that run on scattered sentence because this is my blog!  Anyway, my parents do the turkey, gravy, and 24 hour salad and we take care of the rest now.  This year bob went above and beyond and made homemade stuffing too.  We also have: Garlic mashed potatoes, improved olive plate, green been casserole, biscuit failure, sautéed corn.

thanksgiving at home for 2 years in a row now, I could get used to this.

If you're really dedicated you will muster the strength from the depths of your soul after apple and pumpkin pie and wine to throw the turkey carcass in a pot with leeks,  garlic, and anything else you can think of to make a killer broth.  We made a quasi-kal gook su (korean hand cut noodle soup) the next day out of it.  Success was had.

When i made the rental arrangement 2 months before hand I couldn't believe that a ford mustang was the same price as a sh!tty car so I jumped on it.  I totally didn't expect them to have a ford mustang for me at the tiny tiny airport by my parents house.  But low and behold they had this 2014 Ford Mustang waiting for me.  It features the awesome fuel efficiency of 15-19 city 26-29 highway miles per gallon (which if you didn't know is horrible).  But this is classic american muscle and i'll probably never get to drive another one again.  It's a pretty sweet ride and totally douche-y but if its the same price as a Ford focus I'll take the mustang and be douche-y for a day.  What the F#$@@$# you say to me brah!!!???

Baked Camembert requires good Camembert or else it won't be nice and gooey it will be a weird gross consistency.  You just cut some slits and shove garlic and thyme or rosemary in there and top with olive oil and salt and throw it in the oven at 350 for 20 minutes and you're good.  Eat with some toasted bread like baguette rounds or something.  Want to hear a funny story about a baked Camembert disaster?  Keep reading

This is the era we live in now.  The selfie stick era.  Mel and Gerald with child.

So the Olsen's had a christmas party in their apartment and it was at least 60% people we didn't know and at least 20 people crammed in a new york sized apartment.  I thought making a baked camembert would be perfect!  There is a sweet cheese shop on the first floor of their building but they didn't have Camembert that day and recommended this other cheese I had'nt heard of, Epoisses.  it was $21!  I should not followed through with the plan once I opened the cheese and found out how smelly and already soft it was.  The first clue should have been the orangish "rind", always the sign of a truly stinky cheese.  I few people were taking interest in my preparation of this never before seen french delight.  I thought, awesome this is going to be great and everyone will love me.  What's the best way to ruin a party and alienate your friends and people you don't know?  by throwing a $21 stinky cheese into and oven that's already going at an unknown temperature and having it explode and then seeing someone take it out of the oven barely able to withstand the stink while it's at the perfect temperature to keep dispersing cheese stink through out the small NYC sized apartment, that's how.  It sat there, all exploded on a baking sheet on the counter top for all to see, and they certainly could smell it.  I claimed no ownership of it, I stood across the kitchen sweating, wishing it would dissapear.  When no one was looking I wanted to throw the whole baking sheet out the open window to stop the spread of more and more stink.  But the apartment was packed, there wasn't going to be a "when no one was looking" moment for hours and hours.  In the end only a few interested parties knew it was my doing and free flowing alcohol eased the situation.  I also hid in Cori's room with the asian crew jen, mel and gerald until the situation literally blew over.  It's like a scene from a movie what happened.  The only way it could have been more of a perfect storm is if I got kicked out of the party 

great busker's make waiting forever for late night trains alright.

first time ice skating ever at the Standard hotel for a MyHabit holiday party.  I eventually let the penguin be and was able to skate around very slowly.  I fell straight on my back twice and no one else did.  this post could be titled: "How to Alienate your friends and acquaintances as an Adult".