Weekend Recap and introducing the new chef’s kitchen feature

OU recap:

This was my first OU weekend as an alumni, and it didn’t disappoint. This was the first time I visited the legendary “West End” and was actually horribly underwhelmed. Its amazing that a place like the West End is still standing after 100+ (the west end didn’t come around until the 1980’s so that might have something to do with it) years of Red River (shootout) rivalry. Here is how it works, every fraternity guy / sorority girl / + thousands of others come to Dallas on thursday / friday night before the game and go to the west end. Here they get unbelievably drunk, and then yell hateful things at those wearing crimson (or if you’re an OU fan, those wearing burnt orange). So now we have the combination of (this is a stereotype) macho cocky drunk eager to fight frat guys + really crammed + heated rivalry = the perfect storm for something really bad to happen. My first adventure i saw a few scuffles, but no punches thrown (i think that had something to do with last year about 20 guys were facedown with handcuffs as riot police chose the umbrella “arrest everyone remotely near the scene” method deterred anything from really happening. I was actually intimidated by the shear volume of OU fans, they absolutely dwarfed the Texas crowd, i think during the 5 straight years of losing (some of those losses by a tidy 50 points) Texas fans made the decision to pull out of the west end and move it to uptown. I dont blame them, i just wish that was communicated to everyone. 

Then the game happened on saturday, and unless you’ve just awoken from a coma you know that Texas achieved what i believe to be their 2nd greatest win (well this is a tie, our win in 2005 AT ohio state was pretty big as well) since my UT career began in the fall of 2004. I would really like to see the statistics of traffic traveling north / south on I-35 correlated to who won that year. My feeling is, if you lose (especially if you were oh say ranked #1 coming in to the game) that one wouldn’t feel much like going out and facing especially giddy and hostile (which undoubtedly came out in bigger numbers on saturday night) and would go home either saturday night, or early sunday morning. Whereas the winning team would undoubtedly be out until the latest hours of the night and wait until 2pm when they wake up in some random place to begin the process of finding a ride (or their car for that matter) and trudging on home. Of course the more i think about this, these are college kids so i think both winners and losers will fit into the “winning team theory”.

Thoughts:

I have yet to spend a weekend in houston (last weekend hardly counted because i had a lot of wedding duties to attend to) since august. In fact, i think the only weekend i’ve spent in houston was the dave matthews concert, and i wasn’t even living in houston at the time. But that fact will come to a sudden (at least thats the plan so far, if i somehow stumble onto missouri/texas tickets i will be in austin) halt as all of the reasons that have pulled me away (bachelor parties / weddings / football games / etc) have run dry. So as i said my goodbyes, this time felt much different. Not sure if they did to the people i was saying them to because i keep showing up every weekend, but this time felt much more final.

 

From The Chef’s Kitchen:

Last week’s experiment with eating cheaply had some unexpected results: continued hunger. Its one thing to think that you can make it off much fewer calories because you’re not getting much aerobic activity, and its one thing to actually do it. Plus the spaghetti was kind of bland so i really tried to step it up with this week’s menu.

1 Package Penne Pasta: 2.49

1 jar Vodka Pasta Sauce: 2.00

1 Package Frozen Vegetables (Fiesta Mix) 1.89

1 package Chicken / Mango Sausage: 5.50 (you might be thinking to yourself chicken/mango sausage??? What the heck is he thinking?? I too, thought that until i got a sample while at Randalls and was immediately won over. It slams, the mango gives it a sweet taste, and its healthier because its chicken sausage and not pork/beef sausage (though i do love it all). This goes to show, i CAN be won over by samples, and the sample people should never overlook me when assessing the overall buying power of the consumer (i might be giving them too much credit on how discerning they are) in question on wether or not to offer the sample.

Total cost of the ingredients: 11.88

Divide that by 5 (the number of equal portions i created): 2.37 per meal!!

Here’s what i did, first i boiled the pasta (this isn’t single serving, this is one of those boxes that a mom would buy to feed a family of 4) in a big 4 qt pan. While thats boiling away (for about 11 minutes) i used a flat iron pan to cook the frozen veggies (takes about 5-7 minutes) until they are fresh and crisp. I actually timed it right so the pasta finished boiling, and the veggies finished cooking at around the same time. Drain the pasta and then stir in the sauce (since i was mixing other things in, i decided to go light on the sauce, which means 2.37 is actually a high number, because i only used < 1/4 of the jar meaning i have plenty for next week.), make sure its mixed in good then mix in the vegetables, mix and let sit. Next i used the flat iron pan to grill my sausage links, they were pre cooked so really i just used a low-medium heat to heat em up and give em that nice grilled look, then i sliced up the sausage as you would normally slice a sausage. I divided the pasta/vegetable mixture into 5 equal containers, then added the sausage, sealed and BAM. Lunch is ready for the next week. Now i’m not sure how this is going to taste, i liked all the ingredients separately but sometimes two good things don’t necessarily add up to another good thing. The little bits of tasting i was doing tasted great, and even my sister had high praise for what i was concocting. I’ll let you readers (maybe 3???) on how it works for me, i’m hoping the addition of meat and vegetables will pack enough punch to get me through the rest of the workday.