There was a tradition started long ago by someone, somewhere that says eating pork on New Year’s brings good luck (probably started by the pork people). I like good luck, but I’m not a huge fan of pork (roasts, etc.,), so I ventured as close as I really wanted to into the world of pork and made my Soiled Bolognese Sauce on New Year’s Day, which just so happens to include about a 1/2 pound of ground pork along with a 1/2 pound of ground chuck. Win.
Last week I made some pasta with (jarred) marinara sauce and homemade meatballs. As soon as I started eating it I found myself on my knees shaking my fork towards the food gods above, cursing them for letting me make pasta and jarred red sauce. Almost every time I eat it I end thinking it’s too salty and an evil bout of indigestion will be waiting for me within minutes of finishing. The only red pasta sauce I REALLY like these days is my homemade Bolognese sauce. With that said, I was in the mood for pasta today and remembered a recipe I made once last year that was pretty darn good and avoids straight up red sauce.
It’s been a while since I’ve been mentally challenged enough to bore you with talk about food and my Cat 5 Cooking, which is my less than witty way of saying that I’m a cyclist who likes to cook; mostly foods that are white trash, bastardizations of proper foods. Case in point, Wednesday’s vat of Not So White Soiled Chamois Chili.
Some days it’s fun to go out and pedal through the drizzle, mud and crisp fall winds; the past two days were not those days.
Long time Soiled Chamois readers (all two of them) are probably familiar with my early summer Cat 5 Cooking project entitled The Soiled Burger Project; a meaty attempt at making a burger that was tastier to my aging, dulling taste buds. In my opinion, the results were great and I eventually settled on a burger that I really enjoy eating and turns out perfect for me on a consistent basis. However, I started to enjoy a few too many of them. Many pounds of ground beef were happily eaten. Then, just as I started looking into buying my own cow, and just shy of developing SCOMS (or as it is unrecognized by and not at all referred to by the American Medical Association: Severe Chronic Ongoing Meat Sweats) I decided that I had found my burger and it was time to move on… time to move on to something a bit more, how should I say this… vegetarian?
The Soiled Burger Project is over (hold your applause, please), and I gotta tell you, it all seems sort of anticlimactic. I made more than a few burgers over the last month or so, surely upped my cholesterol a few points and no doubt ingested my fair share of bovine antibiotics, that will most likely prevent me from fighting off future illnesses and leave me dying of consumption in the winter to come (again, hold your applause).
All those burgers, all that meat, all that grilling and it has come full circle to the Burger 01.
Sunday night as I prepared to watch the emotional roller coaster that was the US vs Portugal match, I put down my burger spatula, picked up my wiener tongs (NOT to be confused with wiener tongues! Thank you spell check for helping me avoid some awkward page hits from folks looking for something a bit different) and grilled up some bräts.
Earlier this week I grilled a sriracha sauced up burger. The burger was not horrible, yet only earned a 4 out of 10 on my Soiled Burger Project taste scale. I lamented the “shoulda” and “coulda” things about said burger and planned to make it again with said changes at a later date. Well, that later date was Thursday and it was a complete and utter tasteless failure.
My plan on Tuesday was to get a nice long-ish (for me v.2014) ride in during Wifey’s day working from home. However that plan was–not so sadly–ruined by a series of ball rattling thunderstorms that rolled through Michiganderburgh. So I ran. OK, that’s a lie, I alternated running and walking on the treadmill for three miles. Then I made a hamburger on the grill for lunch and stoked my belly (the one I had just felt flopping from my waist like a flaccid penis for 35 minutes) with every calorie I had just burned and then some. Such is life… such is life as a cyclist who seems to ride less and less with each passing week, eats more and more with each passing day in the pursuit of a tastier burger and writes an almost certainly unread, pointless blog post series called the Soiled Burger Project… On, get this, A CYCLING blog! What the fuck?
Last week, I introduced The Soiled Burger Project; my attempt to up my burger grilling game. In my opinion, Burger 01 was a success to my ever growing belly and dulling taste buds.
I was set to continue the pointless, calorie rich project as the week went on, then I ran out of propane, then I was out-of-town for three days, but hey, I’m back in town now, with some fresh ‘pane and I’m set to continue on with Burger 02, a spicy, sriracha sauce tinged, hunk of ground meaty goodness on a bun. Or at least that’s what I had hoped.
