BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

As you are all well aware, E K  and I celebrated our 22nd anniversary on Halloween this year. Many of you already know there is a long and involved story behind the courtship, wedding, and our forgetting that costumed kiddies would be knocking on our door during the ceremony – the ceremony and reception were both held at our house. For those of you who may be new to this blog, you can read about it here (if you so desire) – The Mahwage Blogs

The other thing you long time readers know is that I am the cook in the family and that the kitchen is my domain. On our anniversary we usually go out for dinner, but sometimes circumstances dictate that we stay in for the evening. Such was the case on this recent Halloween 2009.

But, stay in or no, we are talking about Evil Kat here and a celebration of my 22 years of indentured servitude to her redheaded evilness, so obviously dinner needed to be something special or terrible and horrible things would happen to me.

So, I fixed a dinner fit for an Evil Redhead and all was good. After said meal,  being ecstatic that I would live to see another day, I posted the following Facebook status update:

Much to my surprise comments were flying left and right with folks jokingly begging invites to my house. However, among the comments were also requests for the recipes, and one of them came from Reverend Alicia Lyon Folberth who wanted to know if she could include them in an upcoming cookbook being produced for her temple.

Since many of my dishes are created spur of the moment, I didn’t necessarily have a recipe at hand and wasn’t quite sure where to start, especially since a good portion of this particular meal relies simply on knowing how to cook a steak. However, after ruminating a bit I managed to jog my memory enough put something on paper for her. And, since there were many others who won’t have access to the cookbook proper, I thought maybe I’d post the recipes here.

Besides, if her supreme evilness decides she wants this again I might need to refresh my memory with my own blog…

E Kay’s 22nd Anniversary Dinner

Irish Whisky Marinated Ribeye Steaks with Crab, Feta, and Herb Butter
Grilled Vodka-Lime Portabello Mushrooms
Steamed Broccoli

(Serves 2 – adjust ingredients as needed for larger group)

INGREDIENTS:

2 Good Quality Trimmed Ribeye Steaks – I prefer Black Angus, dry aged

2 Large Portabello Mushrooms

1 Large Head Fresh Broccoli

1 6 oz Can Lump Crabmeat (Unless you have access to fresh)

1 4 oz Container Crumbled Feta Cheese

1 Large Head of Garlic

Sun Dried Tomatoes

1 Fresh Lime

¼ Lb Sweet Cream Butter (1 Stick)

2 Tbsp Sweet Cream Butter

Olive Oil

Worcestershire

Vodka

Pepper Vodka (Optional)

Bushmills Irish Whiskey

Dark Brown Sugar

Salt

Pepper

Paprika

Basil (Dried)

Onion Powder

INITIAL PREPARATION:

The following should be done 2 to 3 hours prior to cooking

For The Crab-Feta Mixture –

Soften ¼ Lb (1 stick) butter. Drain crabmeat and place in bowl with softened butter and 4 ounces of crumbled feta cheese. Add dried basil, 2 minced garlic cloves, 1 Tbsp minced sun dried tomatoes. Mix until fully incorporated. Refrigerate.

For The Portabello Mushrooms –

Remove stems and gills from mushrooms. Clean and rinse in cold water. Pat dry. Place in bowl. Add juice of one lime, 2 minced garlic cloves, and ¼ cup olive oil to cup and mix well. Pour over mushrooms, seal bowl and refrigerate.

For The Broccoli –

Rinse, chop into florets, peel and chop stem. Rinse again, drain, refrigerate.

For The Ribeye Steaks –

How far ahead you do this step is entirely dependent upon the level of flavor you are seeking from the whisky marinade. I suggest 3 hours, however, I have done it at 30 minutes for a milder flavor or even as long as 8 hours for a stronger flavor.

Mix 3 Tbsp dark brown sugar with 4 ounces Bushmills Irish Whisky. If necessary, microwave for 10 – 15 seconds in order to gently warm and fully dissolve sugar. Place steaks in a shallow dish and Spoon one fourth of the mixture over steaks. Flip steaks and spoon another one fourth of the mixture over them. Reserve remaining Whisky marinade. Cover and refrigerate steaks unless you are going to be cooking them right away.

COOKING:

Remove all items from refrigerator 30 to 45 minutes prior to cooking.

Place broccoli in steamer basket and steam in covered pan with 2-3 inches of water. OPTIONAL: Add an ounce of pepper vodka to the water as well. Melt 2 Tbsp butter. When finished steaming, drizzle broccoli with melted butter, salt and pepper to taste.

Heat a grill pan or stainless steel skillet and add 2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil. Using tongs, sear mushrooms in hot oil, approximately 5-7 minutes per side. Remove mushrooms to shallow dish. To the hot skillet add remaining marinade from bowl and 2 ounces vodka. Deglaze pan. Allow to reduce by ¼ and pour over mushrooms.

30 minutes prior to cooking drizzle both sides of ribeye steaks with Worcestershire. Season liberally with onion powder and paprika. Salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle with remaining whisky marinade. Preheat Oven to 500 degrees or use broiler if you prefer.

Quickly sear steaks in cast iron or all metal skillet, approximately 3 minutes per side. In the center of each place a generous dollop of the crab-feta-butter mixture. Place skillet in oven or broiler and cook to desired level of doneness.

Allow steaks to rest 5 minutes before serving.

Quickly, while meat is resting, separate oil and grease from the liquid in the skillet (I have a separator cup I use). Discard grease and oil. Place skillet over high heat, return juices and 1 ounce bushmills to pan and deglaze. Reduce by ½ and pour over steaks immediately before serving.

Notes:

Multitasking is a pre-requisite, as you will end up doing all of the above simultaneously.

Mix tall vodka tonic with twist of lime for your spouse and one for yourself.

Eat your dinner.

Clean up kitchen.

Hand out candy to trick or treaters while working jigsaw puzzle with wife and daughter.

Have pre-purchased Ben ‘n Jerry’s for dessert.

You will likely have some of the crab-feta-butter mixture left. I generally will use it for a crostini or on crackers.

More to come…

Murv

I suppose I’m a bit of a voyeur in some respects. I think all authors are. We watch the world around us with a kind of personal fascination. Everything we see becomes fodder for a book somewhere along the line. Maybe not right that minute, but perhaps in the future. We tend to log these things away in the darkened corners of our brains just in case we might need them.

I am guess it is because of the whole “voyeurism” thing that I keep tabs on the search phrases and words that land folks at my website and blog. Yeah, sure, it initially started out as one of those optimization things. You know, using tags and keywords that brought me traffic. But, I figured out early on that web-traffic isn’t always good. If it isn’t qualified traffic, it is just eating up your bandwidth for nothing. Kinda like trying to sell a high-end TV to a homeless person. They don’t have money, or even a place to put it, so you’re working a dead lead…

Damn… I’m having a flashback to my days in sales at VideoConcepts… Now I need a drink…

But, let’s see if we can move on… Like I said, I figured out early on that some of this keyword stuff really does you little good. Unfortunately, in some cases, even though it is a valid keyword that actually has plenty to do with the blog post, there are searches going on out there that seize upon it for different reasons, yet again driving unqualified traffic your way. Such was the case with the word “handcuffs”. You see, when I wrote that little piece of Twitter Flash Fiction and posted it here to my blog, it contained the word handcuffs. It also had a picture associated with it. Very suddenly, and without warning, my blog started receiving all kinds of traffic. I mean, insane amounts of traffic. From all over the world, even.

The problem was, all of it was people looking for pictures of handcuffs via Google Image Search. They were never coming to the blog. They were merely hotlinking the image.

Not exactly qualified traffic, know what I mean?

So, anyway, I got that all cleared up by changing some keywords, jpg names, and petitioning google to remove a couple of now-nonexistent links. It took a week or so, but finally it was done.

But, of course, the handcuffs aren’t why I called you here today. You see, since I skulk around peeking through virtual curtains and the search phrases which bring folks to my blog, I thought maybe I’d share a few of the more esoteric entries with you. So, here goes…

• Clark Kent

Why Superman’s alter ego brought someone to my blog I have no idea.

• John Glenn Moon 1962

John Glenn I understand. I did, after all, write a blog on my birthday which mentions him rather prominently given that I was born on the day he orbited the Earth in Friendship 7. However, simply reading that phrase makes me wish I had a slice of the action, because my guess is that someone was trying to verify facts for a bet. BTW, NO Virginia, John Glenn never went to the Moon. Now pay up.

• Bound Pentagram Sacrifice Nude Virgin

I’m sure all of these words connected up with various key elements of the sample chapters from the RGI series I have here on the site. But, something tells me that’s not what they were looking for, and that just scares me.

• Wife In Stockings
• Sagging Stockings
• Women In Seamed Stockings
• feeling your stockings

Of course, all of these landed on the page “Fool For Your Stockings...” from the Mahwage blog series. Again, I don’t think that’s what these Googlers were looking for…

• how to deal with a pain in the ass wife

This one brought the searcher to “E K Is A Real Pain In My Ass…” for obvious reasons. I have to wonder if his so called “pain in the ass wife” checks his search history when he isn’t around. If she does and ends up back here she needs to contact E K. Something tells me The Evil One could give her some pointers on how to deal with her “pain in the ass husband”.

• “regular housewife”

My guess is, this is what the numb-nuts above is looking for. But where’s the fun in that?

• I damaged my ass
• what is pain on my butt
• pains in my right ass cheek
• my butt aches after I take a crap

I like to call these the “pain in the ass” searches. Again, they ended up at the most recently mentioned entry, which I am sure was of no help to them whatsoever. But (pun intended with extreme prejudice) I have to say, I’m a bit concerned for the person whose butt aches after defecation. That doesn’t sound good at all… I have to admit I’m also just a bit curious about the “I damaged my ass” person.

• nathan fillion practical jokes

This one had me momentarily stumped until I remembered I had written a blog about Fillion’s new show, Castle…

• bad ass bitch in heels
• devil angel redhead
• devil woman
• heels, ass, biker

Where the whole “biker” thing came in, I have no idea. But, these quite obviously landed the Googlers on just about anything where E K is mentioned, but most especially the “Somehow Satan Got Behind Me…” blog, due to the included “devil woman” graphic. I’m sure they were looking for much more explicit pictures and didn’t really find anything that fit what they REALLY wanted, but if they took time to read the blog entries themselves… Well… They might be afraid now. I know I would be.

• sindromul edison
• pagkain

What good would a search keyword log be without some gibberish as translated from another language. Other than Edison (This is Edison Carter… blog entry…) I have no clue what they were after…

• novel peanut butter dan jelly

My kid used to watch a cartoon called P B and J Otter. But, I can’t imagine there being a novel. Also, I am going to assume that is supposed to be “and jelly”… Because if it’s actually supposed to be “Dan Jelly”… Well… Given the possible connotations, I just don’t wanna know… At least they didn’t type in jam…

• before after combover makeover

I’ll go bald before I do a combover. Enough said.

• ass animation
• Butt Cheek Images
• men getting spanked

Here we have the second round of “ass searches” which brought folks to the “E K Is A Real yadda yadda…” blog, again quite obviously because of that lovely three letter word. I grouped them together for that very reason, although I think #3 had a something different in mind as compared to #’s 1 and 2. In this case, due to the joke and cartoon at the beginning, #3 might have actually found what he or she was after…

Something I found to be of particular note is the fact that the vast majority of the searches for #3, or some permutation thereof, such as “women who spank” or “wifes (sic) spanking husbands” come out of the UK, France, and Italy, in that order.  At least, that’s what the IP addresses say. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

• Paranormally Warped

Unknown to this poor internet searcher, all he or she needed to do was type in M. R. Sellars to get this… Of course, it doesn’t matter. All paranormal warpedness leads straight to me anyway…

• Satan Poke Poor Soul

I have theories, but they make my brain hurt…

So, there you have it… Yet another round of Google weirdness that brings people right here to Murv Weirdness.  I guess those search engines actually do work…

More to come…

Murv