The Secret To Good Grilling

How To Make Perfect Pulled Pork BBQ

Memphis-Style (Dry Rubbed) Baby Back Ribs

NC-Style Barbecue Sauce

SC-Style Barbecue Sauce

Barbecue Spice Rub

Easy Grilled Flank Steak With Chimichurri Sauce

Homemade Brazillian Picanha With Farofa

Grilled Portobello Burgers

Making Griddle Burgers At Home

Perfect Pork Chops

Rosemary Chicken Grilled Under A Brick

Greek Grilled Chicken

Bacon-Wrapped Shoulder Tender Roast

Roasted Vegetable Relish

The Best Baked Beans

Sweet & Spicy Cole Slaw

Homemade French Fries

Homemade Russet Potato Chips

Homemade Sweet Potato Chips & Garlic Aioli

 
To browse through more of my recipes, click here. I also did a post similar to this one last year that featured some of my woodworking.

Below are 15 words that are so overused, or used incorrectly, that they really don’t mean anything anymore. They’re catchall words for those with limited vocabularies. Working in marketing, I see several of these catchall words used in advertising copy and it drives me nuts.

1. Moot
   Moot ≠ inarguable
   Most people think that an argument is “moot” when there’s no point in arguing about it. But moot actually means that the topic is in fact debatable. So just about everybody uses this word incorrectly.
2. Decimated
   Decimated ≠ devastated
   Decimation was a punishment in the ancient Roman military whereby soldiers would number off and the first nine had to kill the tenth. So if a thing has been decimated, that technically means it’s lost 1/10th of its mass. In modern practice, decimate just means that a portion of something was destroyed. If a town is completely wiped out by a tornado, then it has been devastated—not merely “decimated.”
3. Peruse
   Peruse ≠ skim
   Most people seem to think that “peruse” means to quickly skim over something. If you ask, “did you hear about [BIG NEWS STORY]?” Someone might reply, “I perused an article about it yesterday,” meaning that they glanced over something on the topic. But if they actually perused it, then they would have paid very careful attention to each and every word in the article. The word is used correctly when lawyers ask their clients to “peruse this contract,” meaning to consider it very carefully.
4. Sustainable
   Sustainable ≠ better than the status quo
   I’d love to hear people explain what they think sustainability means before they’re allowed to incorporate the term into their branding. How many times have you been to a restaurant that boasts the use of sustainable ingredients? Aren’t all farms sustainable if they can replant? How many companies install a few solar panels on their property and then claim that they’re “committed to sustainability?” It’s ridiculous.
5. Literally
   Literally ≠ added emphasis
   Not long ago, a girl was telling a story about how hard she laughed at something or other. She followed it up with, “I literally died laughing.” Literally?
6. Ironically
   Ironically ≠ coincidentally
   If you moved from Oregon to New York only to fall in love with another native Oregonian, that’s not ironic. It’s a coincidence. Pretty much nothing in Alanis Morissette’s song, Ironic, is actually ironic.
7. Racist
   Racist ≠ disagrees with my sociopolitics
   I wish social activists and political pundits had to first explain how they define racism before they were allowed to throw the term “racist” around with reckless abandon.
8. Artisanal
   Artisanal ≠ premium brand
   How many grocery stores use the word artisanal to market their premium brands? Was the $12 loaf of “artisanal” sourdough made by an artisan skilled in the ways of traditional baking, or is it just the same old sourdough with some flour and cracked grains thrown on top? Hand-blown glass is artisanal. Marinara sauce bottled by Kraft is not.
9. Organic
   Organic ≠ pesticide-free, healthier
   I’m specifically referring to the way the term organic is used to connote healthfulness, or at least lower risk. If you wash or peel your produce, then an organic apple is no different whatsoever than than a non-organic one. Slapping “organic” on the label has less to do with provenance than fashion.
10. Epic
    Epic ≠ memorable
    The Trojan War was an epic clash of civilizations. Odysseus’ trip home from it was an epic journey. The look of embarrassment on someone’s face might be memorable, but it’s not exactly “epic.”
11. Ethnic
    Ethnic ≠ non-WASP culture
    I’ve had someone ask me, “do you like ethnic food?” The questioner was baffled when I responded, “ethnic to what?”
12. Vintage
    Vintage ≠ old
    Forget the fact that this is a term used for describing wine. Even when it’s used purely to describe antiquated items or practices, it’s only be applicable to things that have enduring appeal. A beat up, old couch isn’t “vintage” unless it’s still in demand. Otherwise, it’s just a beat up, old couch.
13. Tolerance
    Tolerance ≠ endorsement
    I get so tired of hearing people complain that others are “intolerant.” Almost every time, the people they’re complaining about are perfectly tolerant in the sense that they aren’t actively obstructing anything. To disagree is not to be intolerant—it’s to tolerate without endorsement.
14. Hilarious
    Hilarious ≠ mildly amusing
    How many times have you heard someone (especially in writing) describe something as “hilarious?” Then, when they tell you what actually happened, you realize that hilarity did not ensue. Why can’t people just use words “amusing,” “entertaining,” or “funny” to describe something? Why does it have to be exaggerated to “hilarious?” If there wasn’t thunderous laughter, then it was just funny. That’s okay.
15. Whatnot
    Whatnot ≠ ?
    What is this word supposed to mean? I think people use “whatnot” as a discourse device because they think it’s the boardroom iteration of yada yada yada or blah blah blah.

Bonus words and clichés

Irregardless
Most people say this when they mean “regardless.” Irregardless means “without lack of regard,” which is a roundabout way of saying “with regard.” So irregardless is not a substitute for regardless at all.

It is what it is
I think people employ this cliché because they think it sounds profound. It doesn’t. You can glean as much information from this saying as you would if someone told you, “well, blue is blue.” If people really mean, “there’s no use complaining about it,” then they should just say that.

I could care less
People say this when they don’t care at all about something. But they’re actually implying that they care at least enough to have room to care less, meaning that they do in fact care. It makes no sense.

Random observations

Whenever I hear people say, “I’m an alumni of X,” I immediately think less of their school. “Alumni” is plural.

— Chad Chandler (@chad_chandler) November 14, 2012

Another expression I don’t get is, “there’s more than one way to skin a cat.” Who skins cats? How many ways are there?

— Chad Chandler (@chad_chandler) January 20, 2012

If the first person present form of “to be” is “am,” then why do we say “aren’t I?” Shouldn’t it be “amn’t I?” Spread the word.

— Chad Chandler (@chad_chandler) February 8, 2011

Feel free to follow me on Twitter for more inane ramblings.

Not much has really changed

The wife and I have always watched more films than TV shows (I’m not a big fan of lawyer/doctor/cop/reality shows). After cutting the cord, we still watch just about everything that we used to watch. In that sense, the conversion has been a success. But our set-up has some drawbacks.

The Roku 2 XS has been great little device for connecting streaming apps to our HDTV. It works seamlessly with the biggest and best services. It even has Angry Birds, which is controlled with the bluetooth remote. That came in very handy when the nephews were getting stir crazy at my place a few weeks ago.

We also have an HTPC pluggined into the TV to get around the limitations of the Roku, but we don’t use it very much. Occasionally, we’ll watch a show on a TV channel website or on YouTube or something like that, but almost everything else is accessed via the Roku or the BluRay player.

The Roku can be a little buggy sometimes. About once per month, it will freeze and I have to reset it. There’s a handy reset button built into the remote (in the covered battery tray), so it’s not a big deal, but it’s still disruptive when it happens. A new user interface is supposedly coming to Roku that will allow for cross-platform searching—a feature that is badly needed. But, most of the time, we just turn on the TV, open the streaming service that has our watchlist/queue of movies and shows, and we pick something to watch. In most ways, it’s the same as it used to be when we browsed through our Charter DVR queue.

I might buy the new Roku 3 and move this Roku into another room (it can be hard-wired or wireless). The Roku 3 has a 3.5 mm jack built right into the remote control that lets you listen to your programming via earphones.

That would come in handy when the wife is running a loud sewing machine in the same room and I’m about to tear my hair out from the constant pausing and playing and pausing and playing and pausing and playing…

Another drawback is that we’re now using five remotes to access all of our media. We mostly just use the TV remote for volume and the Roku remote for watching our content, but there are times when we need to use the other remotes as well. That’s a real pain in the ass and the wife reminds me how confusing it is every time she gets frustrated. Remote control technology (along with batteries) is an area that has seen strikingly little innovation over the last twenty years. If you ask me, it’s time to abandon infrared and move everything to bluetooth. I should be able to program one minimalistic remote to control everything very simply, and that remote should not involve a flatscreen that I have to look at to use.
 

How we watch our content

Sadly, it’s going to take at least twenty years for media delivery to evolve away from the “TV channel” format (with pre-scheduled, serialized shows) to on-demand content that users can consume at their own pace. Despite a few very public (and very limited) forays into online access, networks and cable providers are being dragged kicking and screaming into the world of streaming. It upsets the existing power structure and they simply don’t know how to monetize it properly yet. It’s the same problem that publishers have been facing since the internet starting eroding their paid subscribers.

As a result, different media companies are joining forces to create competing streaming services that they hope will capture the small but growing market segment that eschews cable altogether, as well as to ward off the pirates who are already torrenting and streaming their content anyway. Some of these streaming services are better than others. We probably consume 95% of our media via the following five services.

1. Netflix ($8 per month)
   Netflix.com is probably the best known and most successful paid streaming service out there. Netflix offers a pretty extensive archive of old seasons of TV shows, documentary films, and it has a hit-or-miss selection of feature films. Their offering depends on their current contracts and can change with little warning. If you’re looking for current entertainment, Netflix is not your best bet. But at only $8 per month, it’s worth having just to push through commercial-free seasons of old shows that you never got around to watching live. Netflix is doing more than anyone else to create new content that’s only available online. They went so far as to develop a fourth season of the cult-classic show, Arrested Development, which will premier later this month. The best thing is that they release the entire season of proprietary shows at once. If you ask me, that’s the way it should be. Books aren’t released one chapter per week, are they? Plus, treating a show like a long movie allows producers/writers/directors to make a more complex and engaging storyline.
2. Hulu ($8 per month for full access)
   NBC, Fox, ABC, TBS, and several other networks/studios are on board with the ad-supported Hulu.com. This is your best bet for watching current content outside of watching it live over the air. New programs usually appear on Hulu the day after they’ve aired. Hulu offers a tiered service that starts with a limited, free version and moves up to a paid subscription service. Even if you have the paid service, offerings are tiered even further. Some content can only be streamed on a laptop while others can be streamed on laptops and set-top boxes and tablets. Inexplicably, some content is restricted from mobile entirely. It really does’t make any sense, especially since the lines between laptop/tablet/smartphone have blurred lately. To make things even more confusing, some shows offer access to every archived episode and others only offer access to the last few episodes. And no matter whether you’re using a free subscription or a paid one, you’re still forced to endure commercials throughout the programs. These are the main drawbacks to Hulu, and they’re very annoying.
3. Amazon Prime Instant Video ($79 per year)
   Amazon’s Prime Instant Video service is more like Netflix than Hulu. Most of what you can access is old and commercial-free, but Jeff Bezos is busy making deals to bring more and more content to the service’s virtual shelves. If you order several products via Amazon each year anyway, then it makes sense to be a Prime subscriber. You get free two-day shipping on most products, and you get access to Prime Instant Video for free. There’s a lot of overlap with the Netflix and Hulu archives, but there’s also a lot of content that’s only available on Amazon.
4. HBO (Free with cable subscription)
   I’ve been telling people for years that if HBO and ESPN would just allow users to pay $5 per month to stream their content, then hordes of American families would drop cable TV overnight. HBO Go only allows people who currently subscribe to HBO via cable to access HBO programming online. This is the kind of contract entanglement that will take twenty years to undo. It’s said often that a lot of Netflix users borrow other people’s login credentials to watch an occasional show or film. No matter what percentage of Netflix users are “borrowers,” the rate must be much higher for users of HBO Go. The business model simply makes no sense. If you can get access to HBO Go, you’ll be treated to tons of feature films and HBO’s entire archive of shows, which is extensive.
5. Crackle (Free)
   Columbia Pictures, TriStar Pictures, Screen Gems, and Sony are on board with Crackle.com, another ad-supported streaming service. This is more like Netflix than Hulu, although Crackle does offer some older shows and original series. Crackle features a pretty low-tech interface that crudely interrupts whatever you’re watching at pre-determined intervals to force you to watch an advertisement. It’s a free service, so there’s not much room to complain, but it’s distracting nonetheless.

Most of the other 5% of our media consumption comes from the occasional movie rental or purchased TV show that I’m too impatient to wait to see on Netflix or Amazon Prime Instant Video. We usually stream movie rentals via Amazon Instant Video (which is not free like Prime). It costs about $5 per movie. You have something like a month to get around to watching the movie, but once you actually start it, you only have access to it for two days. We usually rent a movie or two the week before a long trip and download it to the wife’s Kindle Fire HD. Then we watch it on the plane or in the hotel room. We always travel with an earphone splitter and a micro-HDMI cable that allows us to watch our Kindle content together directly on the tablet or on our hotel room TV.

When I buy a TV show, I usually pay around $3 per episode and I can access it the day after the show airs. It’s not the best solution (a fifteen-episode season is around $45!), but I usually let the episodes pile up so that I can plow through a bunch of them on a rainy Sunday. There are plenty of other streaming systems, such as Walmart’s VUDU, Apple’s iTunes and Google’s Play Store, but I stick with Amazon because of Prime. If you’re heavily into Apple or Google, then it makes sense to stay within your ecosystem for video purchases and paid rentals.
 

Successes and failures

We cut the cord primarily for cost savings. We used to pay Charter $186 per month plus $23 for Netflix. As of now, we pay $55 for a 30 Mbps internet connection. We pay $8 each for Netflix and Hulu, and another $15 for DVDs by mail from Netflix for newer releases (I don’t factor in the Amazon Prime membership because we make that up in shipping savings). That’s $31 on top of the internet fee, which comes to a combined $86 per month for all of our entertainment. So we have savings of $123 per month over our old cable bill, which amounts to almost $1500 per year. That adds up to a free vacation each year.

Sadly, much of the content we pay to stream is redundant across platforms. But because of a key show or two, we’re still bound to stick with all of these paid platforms for the time-being. What’s sadder still, we’re forced to watch commercials on Hulu, which is a step backwards from DVR playback. But since Hulu has pretty much replaced our DVR queue, the $8 we spend pales in comparison to a monthly cable bill—even a basic one.

Honestly, I think the entertainment set-up we have is good enough and it’ll only get better as more and more services adapt to capture the younger demographic that will never buy cable service at all. An unexpected benefit is that I’m more discerning with my TV time. Because I can’t passively stumble upon programs mid-way through, I don’t get sucked into watching the end of Rocky IV once per month like I used to. And I don’t waste my time watching infomercials about Time Life’s newest “Sounds of the 19[INSERT DECADE]s” CD collection or the latest iteration of the FlavorWave™ Oven.

We get a lot of HD network channels over the air, but I almost never watch live TV anymore. That’ll change when football season rolls around, but it just doesn’t occur to me to browse through channels at all. As a matter of fact, having digital cable reconditioned me to browse through menus rather than channels anyway, so moving to streaming wasn’t that big of a leap. When you consider that most of my cable TV experience consisted of watching DVR’d programs anyway, there’s really not much of a difference between then and now.
 

The future

There’s still ample room for someone to put everything in one box—a single, customizable, DVR-style interface for over-the-air channels, streaming apps, rental services, and owned media.

Microsoft has probably come the closest to a complete system with Media Center, but it’s a very long way from being easy for the average person to install and use. Word is out that Amazon is working on a set-top box, but they need to unclutter their existing user interface before they push into new territory. Rumors have also been swirling that Apple is working on a TV solution of some sort, but nothing reliable has emerged about it. Apple might be the only company with the clout necessary to set some fair and universal standards across the industry, much like they did with the introduction of iTunes for music a decade ago.

Several other start-ups are trying to take the baby steps necessary to get the ball rolling, but they’re being fought at every turn by the powers-that-be. CBS is even threatening to cease broadcasting on the public airwaves and move to cable to keep companies from being able to implement a single-box solution.

Like I said before, it will take twenty years before the existing power structure is sufficiently demolished. It’s been about twenty years since the Internet went mainstream, and book, magazine, and newspaper publishers are still struggling to adapt.

Now, if only I could play better…

I’ve never liked brussels sprouts. It’s probably because I didn’t eat them growing up and have rarely had good ones since. Brussels sprouts are cruciferious vegetables along with cauliflower, broccoli, and cabbage. I’ve developed a real affinity for caramelized cauliflower and roasted broccoli, and I like to grill some bok choy as a side for my barbecue, so I figured I’d try to roast some brussels sprouts as well. The results were better than I hoped. I don’t always prepare them the same way, but this is my basic recipe.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

• 1 pound brussels sprouts, halved and stem ends removed
• 2-3 tablespoons olive oil (just enough to coat the sprouts)
• ½ teaspoon each kosher salt and black pepper
• Season to taste with grated parmesan cheese and/or lemon zest (optional)

This is really easy and healthy. Start with a pound of brussels sprouts. They look like little cabbages.

Trim the stem ends off of the brussels sprouts and chop them in half. Don’t worry about the leaves that fall off unless they’re discolored like the yellow leaves of a dying house plant, in which case you should discard them. Drizzle the olive oil, salt, and pepper over everything and toss to coat.

Place in the center of a 400° oven and roast for about 35 minutes until tender. Once or twice during the cooking process, gently flip and rotate the brussels sprouts with a spatula. When the sprouts are done, you can serve them as-is, or top with a little freshly grated parmesan cheese.

These are really good. I never thought I’d say that about brussels sprouts, but the secret lies in roasting out the bitter, sulfur taste. A little freshly squeezed lemon juice and/or lemon zest are good complements as well. You could also use bacon fat instead of olive oil to add a smoky flavor.

I usually stand over the stovetop eating these with my fingers. It’s common for half of them to be gone before they ever hit the dinner plates.

Do you remember when I wrote about my weight management regimen last month? This has nothing to do with that. It’s also so easy that I’m not going to write out an ingredients list.

Just buy a bunch of jalapeño peppers—the bigger the better. Split and seed them. I always wear rubber gloves for this step, as I rub my eyes more frequently than a tiresome toddler. You can keep the stems on or cut them off, whichever you prefer. Next, use a spoon to stuff the jalapeño halves with cheese. Resist the urge to overstuff them. The spread will just melt out of the pepper and onto the baking tray.

You’ll need as many pieces of bacon as whole jalapeños. Cut the strips in half so that you have a piece for each pepper half. Wrap the stuffed peppers and space them evenly on a lightly greased baking tray.

Place the baking tray in the middle of a 400° oven and bake for 20 minutes or until the bacon is as crispy as you like. Move the poppers to drain on a paper towel and serve warm or at room temperature.

Since the peppers are roasted, almost all of the heat is cooked out. Still, there are always one or two peppers that magically retain that jalapeño heat, making for a great (or terrible) surprise.

I still haven’t mastered the art of making good pizza crust. Much of my disappointment stems from the fact that I can’t replicate a domed, brick oven at home. There are all kinds of hacks to superheat the top of a conventional oven, and I’ve tried some of them, but this pizza is good with store-bought crust as well. That’s all you need for this recipe.

These pictures were a bit of an afterthought late one night last week, so they’re not very good. I was just so pleased with the results that I thought I’d write down the precise cooking process before I forgot. My white pizza is loosely based on a recipe from Serious Eats insofar as I always start the pizza with minced garlic in olive oil. Everything else usually depends on what I have on hand.

White Pizza

• 2 tablespoons olive oil plus more for greasing a pan
• 1-2 garlic cloves depending on the size, finely minced
• 1 ball (8 oz) fresh mozzarella, diced into 1/4″ cubes
• 8-10 spoonfuls ricotta (maybe 1/4 cup?)
• 2 tablespoons grated parmesan

Instead of using a pizza stone, preheat the oven to 450° with a pizza pan on a rack about 6 inches from the top. Give it a good 30 minutes to really heat up.

Finely mince a large clove of garlic and put it in a bowl with the olive oil. The longer the garlic can meld with the oil, the better.

For convenience, use a pre-made thin crust from Boboli. Drizzle the garlic oil over the crust and brush it evenly over the whole pizza. Then spread the chopped mozzarella all over, leaving some space at the edge of the crust. Sprinkle the parmesan over everything. Finally, use a little spoon to drop scoops of the ricotta randomly around the pizza. The little peaks will flatten during the cooking process.

Once your pizza is prepped, pull the tray out of the oven a pour a little olive oil into the pan. It’ll smoke a little. That’s okay. Use a folded napkin or something to spread the oil in an even layer around the pan and carefully place the pizza on the tray. It should sizzle. Place the tray back in the oven and bake for 8 minutes. At the 8-minute mark, turn the oven from bake to broil at 450°. Crack the oven door just enough that the heating element remains active. Cook for 2-4 more minutes.

When the cheese starts to rise and form brown spots, take the pizza out of the oven. Move it to a rack or a cutting board and let it cool for a few minutes. Then slice it however you like. I usually cut the pizza into bite-sized rectangles and serve it as an appetizer, but this time I cut it into wedges.

This is the base recipe that I use. If I have small amounts of other ingredients languishing in the fridge, such as goat cheese, good tomatoes, or fresh herbs, I’ll add one or two of those as well. The only way you can screw this pizza up is by adding so many ingredients that you can’t taste the garlic oil anymore. This is supposed to be an austere little pie.

The old adage still rings true; you can’t manage what you can’t measure.

I stress to my clients that they should make a point to log into Google Analytics at regular intervals to compare recent activity with their own historical data. I also urge them to incorporate UTM data (code that indicates which of your tactics are converting impressions to visits) into their marketing so that they can establish ROI for their campaigns. That feature is already baked right into Analytics just waiting for you to take advantage of it.

Learning to sort through Analytics requires a little practice. It’s a robust tool with a bevy of options. But once you’ve learned to navigate it, you can understand so much about your visitors. You can see who came to your site, where they came from, and how long they stayed, and which pages they visited. You can also delve deep into technicalities like how many of your visitors came via mobile versus desktop, and which browsers and operating systems your visitors are using. You can even see their monitor resolution and their cell phone brand.

Analytics is always changing and new features are added frequently. One feature that’s fun to play with is Visitors Flow in the Audience subsection. It offers you a visual representation of how most visitors navigate your website.

In this view, you can sort by all of the usual parameters, and you can hover over certain steps for more information.

This is a fun tool to play with and it provides a bite-sized view of the typical customer experience. If you’re losing visitors before they hit the shopping cart, this will show you where they’re aborting. And if your most popular pages aren’t promoting your core message, then you can see where you need to make some changes.

If you manage a website and you’re not currently using these tools, then you need to sign up for them. If you think you need help doing that, you can always contact me for assistance.

The wife and I recently took a business/pleasure trip to the Pacific Northwest. The business part consisted of the wife competing for a spot on Sew It All TV at an expo near Tacoma, Washington. After that was over, we drove to Gig Harbor on Puget Sound to have dinner and drinks. The next day, we headed down to Portland, Oregon, where we took in the downtown sights and toured the Lan Su Chinese Garden. We spent the next couple of days exploring Seattle before flying back home to a very welcome three-day weekend.

The wife has posted some pictures and a summary of her experience at the Sew It All TV Casting Call over at her Project Blog. Drop by and check it out: Sew It All Casting Call Finalists

If you’d like to bookmark or browse through the wife’s website, click here. If you’d like to subscribe to her blog posts, click here. You can also click here and enter your email address to have new posts sent directly to your inbox.

The wife and I love wiener schnitzel. Every couple of months, I’ll wreck the kitchen by preparing a table full of schnitzel, spaetzle (mini dumplings), sweet and sour cabbage, and German-style potato salad. My only problem with schnitzel is that veal is so expensive. And when you’re buying scallopini, you pay even more for less. At some point—I’m not really sure when—I stopped using veal in my recipe altogether.

Frying foods is a bit of a production. If you’re going to go through the hassle of pounding and breading meat, then you may as well make a lot of it. Since I rarely feel like dropping $60 on veal for a big dinner, I’ve started using pork instead. Actually, I use cube pork steaks instead of pork loin. It has more fat, more flavor, is already tenderized, and it’s cheap. Really cheap.

I can buy 8-10 cube steaks of pork for about $12. I used to pay that much for 2 comparable pieces of veal. Just so you know how much meat this is, consider that the cutting board is 17″ x 14″.

Every time I’ve ever served this version of wiener schnitzel (technically, it’s called wiener schnitzel vom schwein), my guests have raved. Even though it’s a low-end cut of meat, it tastes high-end because of the preparation. Here’s how to do it.

Flatten each pork cube steak. Get them thin, but not falling apart thin. The cubing disappears completely.

Lay the pork out and sprinkle kosher salt liberally over each piece. The salt draws water out of the meat, the water dissolves the salt, and the salt is pulled back into the meat. This keeps the pork moist and tender without tasting salty. As you can see, I also sprinkle on a little coarse-ground pepper.

Set up a 3-part breading station of flour, egg wash (4 eggs mixed with 1 tablespoom of dijon mustard), and breadcrumbs. I make my own breadcrumbs from stale bread/buns that I keep in the freezer, but you can use panko. It helps to have an island on wheels.

Place a baking rack in a 200° oven. Heat a tablespoon each of olive oil and butter in a 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat. You’ll do this for each batch that you fry. Dredge a pork cutlet in flour, shake off the excess, dunk it in the egg wash, drain off the excess, coat with breadcrumbs, and shake off the excess. Drop it in the pan and cook for about two minutes per side. This piece of pork completely fills my 12″ skillet.

Remove the cooked schnitzel to drain. I drain fried foods on old paper grocery bags. The thick paper really wicks away the oil. It’s also free, which is nice.

It helps to have a helper in the kitchen, but you can get into a rhythm by yourself. Don’t try to get clever and pre-bread all of the pork before you fry them. The flour will draw moisture out of the meat and you’ll end up with a soggy crust. You can coat one or two cutlets before frying them, but that’s ab out it. Transfer the drained schnitzel from the paper bag to the oven rack to stay warm while you cook the rest.

I usually have to wipe out the pan halfway through the cooking process. As breadcrumbs fall off in the pan and burn, they discolor the oil. That oil will taste burnt and will really darken the breading on the remaining cutlets.

When I’m finished cooking the pork, I pour out the oil, but I don’t wipe out the pan. I pour in the remaining breadcrumbs from the breading station and toast them over medium-low heat. Later, I add the boiled speatzle to the pan and fry them with some butter. It’s the perfect complement to the schnitzel.

All in all, this meal costs around $12 for the pork, and there’s maybe $1 to $3 worth of olive oil, butter, and lemons (assuming I already have the eggs and flour). Since I make my own breadcrumbs, that’s all this meal costs. I can feed 6 so people for about $15 bucks. That’s pretty cool. It’s doing the dishes that’s the pain in the ass.

When the wife and I were at the Lu San Chinese Garden in Portland, we sat down for some tea and snacks. I ordered a marbled tea egg, which is an egg that’s been hard-boiled and simmered in a mixture of tea and soy sauce and other aromatics. I thought it was delicious and decided I’d try to make some myself.

Apparently, The marbled tea egg is the Chinese equivalent of the American hot dog. It’s sold in malls, at sporting events, and on street corners. I can’t decide if that would smell better or worse than onions, relish, and sauerkraut.

I should start off by admitting that I’m not a big fan of hard-boiled eggs. Being a southerner, deviled eggs have been shoved in my face at every get-together since birth. I make a pretty decent batch myself, but I’ve never been able to eat more than one or two of them. There’s just something about the smell and texture of the egg white that puts me off. By cooking the eggs in this Chinese style, the flavor of the tea and the savoriness of the soy sauce gently overpower the rubbery egg white in a very good way.

Chinese Marbled Tea Eggs

• 6 eggs
• 1½ quarts water
• 2 tablespoons loose leaf (or 3 teabags) black tea
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1 stalk green onion
• 1 star anise
• 1 teaspoon peppercorns

There seem to be as many recipes for Chinese tea eggs as there are for Italian marinara sauce. The important thing to remember is that you need water flavored with about a 2:1 ratio of soy sauce to tea leaves. Everything else is just a minor additive that you may or may not be able to taste at all. Remember, 99% of each bite is egg.

To begin, just hard-boil the eggs like you normally do. If you’ve never hard-boiled eggs, then let me give you a couple of tips that I learned the hard way:

1. Older eggs are easier to peel than fresher eggs. If you can buy your eggs a week before boiling them, then make a point to do it.
2. The night before you’re going to boil your eggs, turn the carton on its side in the fridge. This will center the yolks in the whites, which makes for a more attractive presentation.

If you don’t know how to hard-boil eggs, all you have to do is pour enough water into a pot to cover the eggs. Turn the heat to high. Once the water reaches a rapid boil, cover with a lid and slide the pot off the heat (with the lid still on). Let the eggs rest in the hot water for about 15 minutes. It’s impossible to overcook them this way.

Take the hard-boiled eggs out of the hot water and place them on a towel or in a cold water bath. Pour out the old cooking water. You just want the eggs the get cool enough to handle. Normally, this is when you’d peel them. But for this recipe, you’re going to knock the eggs against the counter top or whack them with the back of a spoon to shatter the shells without breaking them off. It’s better to have more cracks in the shell than fewer. Next, gather all of your dry ingredients.

Refill the pot with fresh water. Add all of the ingredients and warm everything over medium-low heat. As soon as the water starts to gently simmer, turn the heat down to low. Keep it at a very slow simmer for about an hour (with the lid off). The sauce will leak through the cracks in the egg shells and give the whites that marbled look.

Anyone who’s ever over-boiled eggs has had to deal with green yolks. The yolks darken because of the high temperature of the water, not necessarily because of the cooking time. As as long as you don’t let the pot get too hot, the yolks should stay soft and yellow in the center.

After the eggs have simmered for about an hour, remove the pot from the heat and allow the water and the eggs to come to room temperature.

Serve either whole or halved. At the Lu San Chinese Garden Tea House, they served my egg sliced in a bowl with the shell so that I could see the marbling. They also garnished their egg with soy sauce, sesame seeds, pickled peppers, seaweed, and sliced green onion. Here’s a picture.

I just garnished with soy sauce, sesame seeds, and sliced green onion. My eggs turned out just as good as the ones from the Tea House.

These are so much better than plain hard-boiled eggs. It seems like a big production, but it’s really not. There’s about 10 minutes of actual activity. The rest of the time, you can do something else while the pot simmers and cools.

This is tasty way to rejuvenate your appetite for hard-boiled eggs. And at a time when high-protein diets are all the rage, this is a great way to pre-cook a bunch of snacks for the work week. Honestly, I never imagined hard-boiled eggs would go so well with toasted sesame seeds, soy sauce, and a little sriracha.

Here are 25 more misconceptions that I wish people would stop spreading:

1. Consuming local honey helps with allergies.
2. George Washington wore wooden teeth.
3. Calories consumed right before bed are worse for you than calories consumed earlier.
4. Twinkies never go bad.
5. Women have one less rib than men.
6. More babies are born during a full moon.
7. Hot water freezes faster than cold water (such as in ice cube trays).
8. Swimmers should stay out of the water for 30 minutes after eating.
9. Stretching will help to prevent sports injuries.
10. Coca-Cola is some kind of super-acid that dissolves everything.
11. Cinco de Mayo is Mexico’s Independence Day.
12. A little oil in the pasta water keeps the noodles from sticking.
13. Searing meat seals in the juices.
14. Pork isn’t safe to eat until it’s well-done.
15. Water drains counter-clockwise in the southern hemisphere.
16. Portable electronic devices can interfere with the cockpit controls.
17. Vegetables lose all of their nutrients when boiled.
18. A really hot shower will take the sting out of a sunburn.
19. Consuming beer/wine/liquor in a particular sequence will stave off a hangover.
20. Eating greasy food after a night of drinking will lessen the hangover.
21. Cell phones can cause cancer/tumors/radiation poisoning.
22. Adding sugar to iced tea will make it sweeter.
23. The word history is sexist because its etymology is “his story.”
24. Not wearing a coat, or walking around outside with wet hair, invites a cold.
25. Organic produce is more nutritious than non-organic produce.

I’m willing to bet that a majority of Americans are under several of these delusions, but believing in them doesn’t make them true. If you’re skeptical about some of these supposed truisms, then do some research for yourself.

It’s impolite to correct people when they spread these harmless myths. If I ever have the urge to challenge a popular misconception, I usually just recite my favorite quote from Thomas Jefferson:

“You can put your faith in God, or you can put your faith in man, but you should never put your faith in anything you read on the internet.”

President Thomas Jefferson
1743-1826

Enough with the things people know about that aren’t true. Let’s focus on a couple of truths that most people don’t know about:

1. Potatoes, tomatoes, and corn are all American plants. The rest of the world didn’t know they existed until explorers and conquistadors brought them back to Europe in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. So there’s no ancient tradition of the Irish eating potatoes, the Italians eating red sauce, or the Spanish eating anything made of corn.
2. Oranges were introduced from Asia around the same time. As a matter of fact, the very concept of the color orange didn’t exist in Europe until the fruit showed up. Because of linguistic tradition, we still use terms like “redhead” and “goldfish” to describe orange things today.

Sorry for the long rant. Urban legends are a pet peeve of mine.

We’re in an odd time right now with regard to web design. I like responsive designs that stack content boxes to accommodate various screen sizes (example), but I also think it’s a stopgap development. It can make sites seem disjointed and difficult to follow. Confusing or annoying the user is the last thing we want. Too often, mobile sites deliver the user a more limited experience than they would get on a computer. That’s one of the reasons why so many mobile users opt for the desktop view.

Over the next few years, I think the pendulum of popularity will swing away from native apps and toward mobile apps.

I think it’s safe to predict that, in the future, everyone is always connected to the internet. If you’re always connected, then what’s the difference anyway? I think the trend will be to meet in the middle between apps and websites and develop slimmer, more intuitive portals that act like branded picture frames around content. That’s not so different from the way apps are currently laid out, and consumers have voted with their wallets for more app-like design. As users get more comfortable with smart devices, and with gestures like swiping and zooming, more of those features will be built into hardware in general, and software in particular, to take advantage of cleaner design.

But content is still king. Even the shiniest wrapper won’t sell shit chocolate for very long.

It’s time to give the users what they want and try to stay out of their way. Microsoft realizes this. That’s one of the reasons why they redesigned Windows 8 to be touch-centric, and why they shook up their OEM community by launching the Surface line of tablets. Google made a similar move with the Chromebook Pixel, a touchscreen laptop that’s entirely cloud-dependent.

Let’s recap this. Microsoft jumped head-first into a new, touch-capacitive version of Windows aimed at retaining corporate clients, and then released the ARM-based Surface RT? Then Google released what’s essentially a mobile tablet with a keyboard and loaded it with the web-based Chrome OS rather than Android? These are odd moves, but they’re the obviously best moves that Microsoft and Google think they can make at this odd time. It reeks of fence-testing, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

The problems with these products is that they’re trying to serve two masters, desktop and mobile, but desktop and mobile have neither fully merged nor fully diverged. That’s why these devices seem awkwardly targeted and poorly positioned. I think we’ll look back on them in a few years the same way we look back on the Palm Pilot.

Only with hindsight can we see that the Palm Pilot evolved in the odd era between dumbphones and smartphones. And only with hindsight do we recognize the Palm Pilot as an expensive toy that was both ahead of, and behind, its time.

Tech is rapidly evolving. Web design is racing not only to adapt to the emerging tech, but also to users’ ability and expectations. Ten years ago, the internet was filled with websites built on frames and flash. Those are mostly gone now, thanks to Google and Apple, respectively. The popularity of some coding languages and content management systems have risen and declined in that same time. Style is always changing, and we have to change with it. It’s just another operating expense.

It’s no longer good enough for things merely to function. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” doesn’t work with e-commerce. Websites today must look and feel current because perception is a bigger motivator than fact.

If I walked into a dentist’s office that had musty carpet and smelled like cat piss, I wouldn’t stick around to get my teeth cleaned no matter how good the dentist was. My perception would be that if the dentist was successful and respected, he could afford new hardwood floors and a better air filter. How many times have you backed out of an online purchase because the website seemed insecure? How many of your prospects have backed away from you?

Good examples of websites that are leading the way with responsive design are USA Today and Mashable.

For example, click on this article from USA Today that echoes some of what I’m saying about this being a time of great transition.

Do you see how the website layout is doing its best to get out of the way? It’s putting the content first, and it’s the same user experience for someone on a desktop PC and a person on a tablet. It still resorts to some stacking for small smartphone screens, but the stacking and the mobile navigation don’t get in the way of the content. The New York Times is currently trying to get out of their readers’ way as well.

Now look at Mashable’s scalable design.

Scroll down the homepage. You’ll run out of interest before the website runs out of content. Do you notice how minimal the actual site is? It’s just a bar at the top. The bar changes for desktop versus mobile, but it doesn’t change all that much. It may seem like a simple layout, but this interface presumes that the user is an intelligent person capable of gaming out the menu. It’s bold, really. It stands in stark contrast to so many layouts and systems that assume the user is an idiot.

These websites aren’t perfect. They’re reacting to the same challenges that we face, and they’re failing at some of those challenges.

I should stress that being current is not the same as chasing every trend. I consider myself to be a pretty “current” guy, but you won’t see me walking down the sidewalk in skinny jeans and a grumpy cat t-shirt. Those are fads, not trends. That’s why stackable, responsive designs seem so awkward; they’re fads too.

They’re not quite the old thing, but they’re obviously not the new thing either. Like the Palm Pilot before, they’re just a product of the odd time we’re living in.

If you find yourself at a Morton’s fork where you have to deliver your mobile users a non-responsive website, or deliver everyone an awkwardly responsive website, then go with the non-responsive one for the time-being. It’s better to save your money now and do it right next year than to do it twice in two years because you and your customers are unhappy with the compromise. Mobile users are pretty good at pinching and zooming their way across desktop sites these days. Better solutions will come along in time.

If you manage a WordPress.org website, then it’s simply a matter of waiting for a theme to come along that works well for you and your customers. In the meantime, get your current website into shape. Lose the fluff. Cut your word count by half. Drop the blogroll. Focus less on your features and more on the benefits to your customers. They’ll appreciate your direct approach, and you’ll appreciate the spike in traffic.