High-Tech Hobo Stew

Who hasn't heard of "Hobo Stew?" I mean, is there anyone in The United States that has not, at one time or another, at least heard about this legendary dish? Hobo Stew is a very tasty and incredibly easy stew to make. It's not even a stew really...

According to the amount of people that will be eating this delight, take a chunk of ground beef and throw it into a glass casserole dish, disposable aluminum pan or perhaps a Dutch Oven. With that chunk of ground up goodness, you add potatoes, carrots, onions, celery, fresh garlic and black pepper. Bake it covered at 375 degrees for about 90 minutes. At the end of this adventure, you will have an incredibly tasty dish.

If you are not accustomed to eating this type of food, you will be in the bathroom for quite some time! The hamburger grease will run through you like a laxative and what follows will be a freight train of misery.

The older I get, the less I can tolerate greasy food. It makes me feel terrible immediately afterwards and later on, when the squirts begin...I would just rather avoid all of that.

So, I pre-cook the meat and then I drain it. I use just a little bit of butter to keep the taters, carrots, onions and celery soft and tasty and it's better for you! You don't hover over the commode for a while this way.

Now, you can substitute and instead of using ground beef, you can use beef chunks that people generally use for beef stew, chili, etc. This works out great, too. Just cook them up with a liberal amount of black pepper, garlic powder and onion powder in a skillet and then add them to your pile of vegetable goodness with a smidge of butter and you are ready to go.

If you want to Cajunize, add Cayenne red pepper and some Chili Powder.

If you want to Italianize, add a smidge more garlic and some Oregano if you want HOT Italiano, add red pepper flakes...it's easy to make good food.

Another thing...before you seal up this masterpiece and bake it, add three ounces of water and a couple tablespoons of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce. If you want some kick, add in a couple tablespoons of Tabasco, Crystal or Texas Pete - Tejas Pedro for you people down South. 8-)

Another favorite of mine is Pick-a-Peppa Sauce - LOVE IT!

Three ounces of water, have some class, use a shot glass. This, along with the butter and additional sauces steams the vegetables very, very nicely!

Here are some preparation pictures from the other night. We were so hungry, I forgot to take pictures of the cooked dish! Use your imagination!

Wal-Martalists

Wal-Mart and its Ozark Trails brand of camping and outdoor merchandise are the skidmarks in the underwear of survivalist gear and disaster preparedness.

The aisles are littered with the most low-quality, Chinese junk and when you run into something from Coghlan's or Coleman, you breathe a sigh of relief...and that's not saying much at all because there is very little gear from either one of those companies I would trust my life to. Coleman sure as hell isn't the Coleman brand of the 1970s and early 1980s, I can tell you that.

I cannot for the life of me begin to understand why someone with any outdoors experience whatsoever would choose a lensatic compass from Mal-Wart.

(And, NO, I don't like that company and I don't appreciate what they have done to my country so, yeah, when I get a chance to bust their ass and be honest about it, I'm going to do it!)

Worse yet are the rocket scientists on various survival-based forums who think that a "fish-eye" compass like you can find at China-Mart is "serious survival gear." And they get their ass up on their back if you inform them otherwise, too.

You know, if there was a massive strike against the United States involving dozens, or perhaps hundreds, of thermonuclear weapons and the only thing I had was a fish-eye compass or a piece of shit lensatic compass made by some slave named Wan Hung Lo that I found lying in the street, so be it! But I would not choose to go into a survival situation with that type of low-quality, shitty gear.

It's just me...

..and I hope you, too, or I might be wasting my time talking about this sort of thing. Why even have a blog at that point? To tell people how great garbage gear is and how overrated real gear is?

I am NOT the kind of guy that has to have a Busse survival knife because ESEE Cutlery and Beckers are not good enough, that's just goofy to me. The increase in quality is nowhere near the increase in cost. Yet, I see people who have these "Bug Out Bags" and they just have them packed with trash because it's easier to go to China-Mart and drop less than $200.00 to buy a bunch of stuff than it is to spend a few hundred over the course of months or a few years purchasing real gear.

"Talk & Toss" Phones

Jeff Randall of ESEE Cutlery (formerly RAT) fame wrote something about these over a year ago or so. I don't know if I have that stuff saved or not. However, I have been looking into this sort of thing more and more for emergency gear, disaster preparedness, etc.

"Talk and Toss" Wireless Phones

A couple of these cheap, disposable wireless phones along with a couple Pre-Paid Calling Cards and some Pre-loaded Visa cards - all of which can be purchased at various little shops generally where checks are cashed, lottery is played and Western Union and MoneyGram and Money Orders can be had. In short, shady little places in strip malls that smell like criminality. 8-)

Ten Long Years...

I really can't believe it's been ten years...a decade. That's a long time. My son was five years old when it happened. I have friends in their early, almost mid-20s now, they were about the age my son is now when it happened back then. September 11, 2001 has taken on the kind of power that only certain tragic incidents in our history develop.

Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, murdered November 22, 1963.

There are more. Some of them not tragic but triumphant as well.

Watch...remember...

From a different angle...

"Lonely, ten second journeys..."

That second, horrible piece of video reminds me of part of "Have You Forgotten?" by Darryl Worley

"They took all the footage off my T.V.,
said it's too disturbing for you and me,
it'll just breed anger that's what the experts say,
if it was up to me I'd show it everyday,
some say this country's just out looking for a fight,
after 9/11 man I'd have to say that's right...

Have you forgotten how it felt that day?
To see your homeland under fire,
and her people blown away,
have you forgotten when those towers fell?
we had neighbors still inside going thru a living hell,
and you say we shouldn't worry 'bout bin Laden...
have you forgotten?"

Yeah, all of our "betters" have decided that we don't need to see two people, facing being burned alive, deciding to hold hands and take that final step towards eternity...we don't need to see that. 

On the other hand, a lot of the stuff that has been going on with so-called, "security" in this country is the sort of thing that you read about in a George Orwell novel. As the modern saying goes, "It was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual." Referring to Orwell's novel, "1984."

A lot of my countrymen have confused jingoism with patriotism. They're not the same...but to many people...they are. 

"The Remnants of Tropical Storm Lee" a/k/a Agnes Redux

While I was watching Hurricane Katia, I never really considered that Lee would be a repeat of a legend - Hurricane Agnes. Throughout all of my childhood, storms were judged by the destruction of "Hurricane Agnes" or simply, "Agnes." My mother and father were always telling me stories about how Mr. Such and Such was going to buy groceries in his flat bottom boat. How my Dad drove a Mack dump truck with water up to the running boards through the flood waters.

Every summer we went to a small, privately owned campground on a creek off of the Susquehanna River. I can't quite recall how far below the Conowingo Dam it was, but it was a ways. I almost got killed on more than one occasion, due to my own stupidity, on that portion of the river.

So, tonight, thirty-nine years and a few months later, what is being referred to as, "The Remnants of Tropical Storm/Depression Lee" is threatening to repeat the devastation of "Agnes." Please take the time to read the links on Hurricane Agnes and The Conowingo Dam in this entry. They are simply fascinating.

The area is saturated, before the arrival of "Lee," we were pretty well soaked. If you read the history of Agnes, you will see that this is basically a repeat of the event so far. The only thing left is for everything to max-out and then to observe the aftermath of it all. Who knows what is going to happen tonight or over the next 100 hours or so.

Hurricane Katia

It's been really interesting watching Hurricane Katia. At one point the other night, she dropped to a Tropical Storm and when I checked her the next morning, she was a Category Two Hurricane again. Up and down and all around. In this neat graphic I have altered slightly, you will clearly see that if it were not for the incredible stench emanating from the Washington, D.C. - Baltimore Corridor, Hurricane Katia would not have been so easily repulsed. It's as if the cesspit stench were acting like a protective force-field for the Delmarva Peninsula causing her to almost do a U-Turn.

Fruity Police?

So...uh...Apple Employees can search a person's home while the police wait outside the residence? This country just keeps getting more and more bizarre every week. Link.

Jobs Report for August 2011

9.1% Unemployment rate. No jobs created in August. This whole unemployment rate thing just gets me. I can't believe they are still lying about this. I guess as long as the American People are buying the lies, the government is going to be selling them. It's between double and triple the 9.1% they are citing. When people no longer qualify for unemployment or they don't sign up for it, they are not considered "unemployed." How convenient!

Hurricane Kat(r)i(n)a as of September 2, 2011 @ 11:00 P.M. EST

"Katia?" Seriously? You can't make this kind of stuff up. Good grief.

Hurricane, dropped down to a Tropical Storm, now she is a Hurricane again.

The dreadful phrase, "...poses no threat to the United States..." has been used.

Some of you might not remember this and I'm sure that some will say it's misogynistic or something, but hurricanes, for years, only had female names. Why? Well, because they were unpredictable, that's why!

So, at a straight shot, looks like the border between North and South Carolina but who knows if she will continue to be a storm at all or where she will go? She could continue to strengthen and take the same path as Hurricane Irene.

In Maryland? As of 3:00 P.M. Friday afternoon, 28,000 homes were still without electric, six days after Irene passed.