The Penalty Box

The Stanley Cup Playoffs are awesome, but because of the limited commercials (that are also terrible) running during the breaks, I now wish East Side Mario’s to burn to the ground. I also curse the marketing department that created that abomination to the ninth layer of Hell. SING LA LA LA WHEN YOU BURN THEN, SING LA LA LA THEN!!!

Ahem. In short, commercials suck. You may now return to your regular scheduled programming.

This is a Shanghai dish I’ve often enjoyed whenever I have visited a restaurant with food of that region of China. It’s essentially a meatball dish with some vegetables, often cooked in clay pots. I don’t have a clay pot (although they are useful for making some really awesome rice dishes) so I used a casserole dish instead. The meatballs represent the lion head while the vegetables surrounding them represent the mane of the lion. It’s a good dish to serve with rice and is pretty quick to make.

Ingredients:

• Half a pound of bok choy leaves, spinach or siu choy (you can ball park with a couple of handfuls)
• 1 pound of ground pork
• 2 green onions, minced
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 teaspoons of ginger, minced
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon white granulated sugar
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce (1 for meatballs, 2 for sauce)
• Black or white pepper, to taste
• 3 tablespoons cornstarch or flour
• 1 can of chicken broth
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Process:

1. Wash and drain your vegetables
2. In a large bowl, mix your ground pork with green onions, ginger, salt, sugar, pepper, cornstarch and 1 tablespoon of soy sauce. Beat the egg in a separate bowl and add. Dive in with your hands.
3. Form the pork into 4-6 meatballs.
4. In a pan, heat the 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil. Brown the top and bottom of the meatballs, five minutes per side. You want a nice crust on them first.
5. Put the chicken broth and 2 tablespoons of soy sauce in a casserole dish (the kind that can go in the oven). Bring to boil.
6. Add meatballs to casserole dish. Cover and reduce heat to simmer for 10 minutes.
7. Add bok choy around and on top of meatballs. Cover and continue simmering for 15 minutes or until the meatballs are fully cooked through.

Here’s a picture of the final product with my customary attention to plating detail. Happy eatings, folks.

For those of you that didn’t see it on Saturday, this is a reason to love hockey. A no-look tip pass resulting in a between the legs shot for a goal.

Can’t wait for the playoffs.

I’ve been on the job near four months now, and these are a few things my co-workers have taught me (or attempted to):

• Chicken from the McChickens and Chicken McNuggets come from egg laying hens who are past their egg laying prime. One of the Flash developers lived on a farm as a kid, and apparently the chickens get chucked into this thing that’s similar to a tree chipper. It pulls the feathers off of the birds while killing them and deposits them into the back of a waiting truck. Apparently this is the most humane and efficient way of doing it. 9 year old kids are paid to carry the chickens to their fate, two at a time. The dogs on the farm love rolling around under the machine because blood and guts sorta rain down while this process goes on. Oh, and some of these chickens also go to Purina. Yep, that’s right, your McChicken is also dog food grade chicken.
• Apparently the world would be a better place if everything was ActionScript 3. I happen to disagree.
• You can make a stun gun out of a disposable camera and some cheap wire. This can melt skin.
• A good cleanse involves drinking enough liquids to pee every 45 minutes.
• One of the most important things in life is to give a girl a big rock. I would love to introduce her to my buddy Jesse, who can rant for hours on African blood diamonds.
• The biggest KKK group in Canada is in Salmon Arm. I thought it was in Prince George, but that’s probably Hedy Fry’s fault.
• It is a bad idea to sniff the air near a woman and say, “Your scent is different today.” It is a really bad idea to attempt to explain that it is a joke afterwards. It is an even worse idea to say that your “joke” was a quote from a movie about a serial killer that kills women and makes perfume out of them. Fortunately, the girl in question was a pretty good sport about it and passed it off as the guy being a giant dork.
• You can captivate the patrons of Starbucks for an entire hour just by playing Stepmania on your laptop.
• It is probably a bad idea to date the part owner of your favourite restaurant and have a messy breakup. And keep going there for lunch. While she’s on shift.

I must say, it certainly hasn’t been boring, nor is the cast of characters that I interact with every day.