South Florida Needs a Proper Hoagie, Come on Down, Wawa!

Forget that Subway stuff, it's a pale imitation.  The bread is just too Poofy and Bland.

That's the problem, they will tell you here.  The "water is just wrong" to get a good bread.  I will say that there are some places that make some amazing artisanal breads here.  I know, I search them out.

I also make my own bread and sometimes the crust is "right" with just the right amount of crisp.  It's fine for what I use it for, pizza crusts, dinner rolls, and the like.

The last time I had a Proper Hoagie, I was in the Wawa in Orlando.  My best guess is that Wawa has licensed the Amoroso Roll recipe and "process" because the roll in the Wawa there tasted just like I remembered them back in Philly.

A Hoagie.  Not a Sub, Grinder, Zep or what have you.  The name is from Hog Island in Philadelphia.  It came from the Italian Immigrants who worked on Hog Island at the Shipyards during and before The World War One and later.  The women would send their husbands to work with a characteristic sandwich of meats and vegetable on a torpedo roll, and the non-Italians would get jealous. 

Mind you, this same kind of sandwich was popular anywhere you had the lucky accident of Italian families, good cold cuts, the right rolls and the right recipe.  Typically in the Northeast US, Philadelphia, New York, and nearby cities would specialize in these "Italian Hoagies".

They were so common growing up that we never really thought twice about them.   We knew where to get The Best ones, often made with home made meats and cheeses.  Talk about Artisanal food, you can't get much better than sopressatta made by grandpa in the basement, some fresh capicola, proscuitto, extra sharp provolone or Scamorza, parmesan cheese.  Add all that with Lettuce, tomato, and onion, oregano, extra virgin olive oil, and wine vinegar.

The Wine Vinegar would be from Mom's bottle of Chianti that she'd leave a little in the bottom for cooking.  It never went "bad" it just turned into vinegar for sandwiches.

Don't waste that stuff, it's good for you! I would hear.

Food here in South Florida is excellent, but it is not the same.  There are a few Italian Markets, but I'm not seeing what I was used to in those claustrophobic little places near THE Italian Market on 9th and Catherine in South Philly.  Here we have amazing seafood, wonderful Cuban food, and more Thai than I could shake a Bangkok Lady Boy at.  They're all wonderful in their own rights.

But sometimes, you just want that oddball bit of strange food that mom would slap on the table with "Try it, it's from The Market" and you knew you were in for a treat.  Four ingredients and you would have a salad, take the tail end of the salad and add a little meat to a roll and you've got your basic hoagie.

Again, Don't waste that stuff or mom would throw a wooden spoon at you.

I guess that's how I got to be 6'4", finishing off all that food.

But I still haven't stumbled across a Hoagie here in South Florida that would be as good as the "common" Wawa Hoagie.  Wawas were everywhere and what you grew to love when you needed a quick hoagie fix.

When I traveled through Orlando to get to Deltona to get the dog from the rescue, we detoured an hour just to hit that "Southernmost Wawa" on South Semoran Blvd.  It was a flashback for me.  The hoagie was just as good as the little Wawa that used to be five houses down from my home in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. 

I sunk my teeth in and realized "They Got The Roll Right".   In Florida, they got the roll RIGHT!

They weren't shipped in either.  These rolls were made on the premises and I could not taste a difference from the Amoroso's Rolls from my youth.  Heaven on a Foot-long roll in a cabinet coming out dozens at a time.

Getting That Roll Right has been a challenge for me.  It's gotten me started baking again.  I don't have the recipe down, which is fine.  It's right for other uses, and head and shoulders better than the usual "Bakery" rolls down from the supermarket.

But it just doesn't beat a Wawa Hoagie.

The Panda - Humor

The Panda

A panda bear walks into a bar and orders a sandwich. The waiter brings him the sandwich.
The panda bear eats it, pulls out a pistol, kills the waiter, and gets up and starts to walk out.

The bartender yells for him to stop. The panda bear asks, "What do you want?"
The bartender replies, "First you come in here, order food, kill my waiter, then try to go
without paying for your food."

The panda bear turns around and says, "Hey! I'm a Panda. Google it!
The bartender goes into the back room and does a Google search for Panda, which comes back with:

"Panda: a bear-like marsupial originating in Asian regions. Eats shoots and leaves."

Four Short Relationship Jokes - Humor

Ok, try not to read the third one like "Bob and Doug McKenzie", eh?


Spent Paycheck

Wife: Okay, Friday's pay day. Where's your pay envelope?
Man: I already spent all my pay. I bought something for the house.
Wife: What? What could you buy for the house that cost $580?
Man: Eight rounds of drinks.


Attractive

While reading the newspaper, Walter came across an article about a beautiful actress and model who married a boxer who was not noted for his IQ.
"I'll never understand," he said to his wife, "why the biggest jerks get the most attractive wives."
His wife replied, "Why, thank you, dear."


A Canadian
... is walking down the street with a case of beer under his arm.
His friend Doug stops him and asks, "Hey Bob! Whacha get the case of beer for?"
"I got it for my wife, eh." answers Bob.
"Oh!" exclaims Doug, "Good trade."


 He said
.. Do you love me just because my father left me a fortune?
She said.. Not at all honey, I would love you no matter who left you the money.

Hiding from The Parrot Zone

We had just returned from our dog walk, and were settling in.

Rack was through with his Perimeter Search, had a few whines at the closed door to the bathroom, and then went to the den between the couch and the coffee table where he'd be for the rest of the morning.

I made my Honey and Cinnamon drink, and turned on the internet radio.   I was in a Retro Mood this morning, so it was going to be some Disco.

Taking the first sip of the sweet concoction, I grabbed the laptop and did some professional research.   My mornings are geared around keeping Professionally Fit, so there's a lot of reading to do.

The music was playing in the background until there was a song I hadn't heard in a while.   That particular song really hit the spot.  I was in a Cerrone mood.  Some Symphonic Disco for the morning routine instead of the usual Uplifting Trance.

That was when I decided to try to push the music just a bit louder.

Oscar the parrot has a constant background chatter.   There's a trick.  Try to get the music so he isn't getting into the whole groove of it all.   After all, Parrots do Dance. 

If you want to listen to anything loud here, get the headphones out.  Noise cancelling headphones are the best for that.

However, this day Oscar was having none of it.

Why?  Well, this Green "Old Buzzard" does a pretty passable imitation of a String Section in an old Disco hit.

Between Cerrone's Paradise playing a rhythmic background and Oscar joining in to add an extra Violin-whistle, this house was anything but quiet.

Instead of begrudging the old bird his pleasure, I did the next best thing.   I grabbed those headphones, then searched for the track below.  Happily cancelling out the background noise once the radio went onto another song that I didn't care for, I changed the channel to some uplifting trance, then stopped it.

Headphones on, I was able to get my fill while letting the green bird have his.  Besides, every time I get stuck on Cerrone, I end up listening to more than just that one track.  Force of habit I'm afraid.

How Rack Found His Lost Voice

For an 8 month old dog to be silent, there has to be a reason.

In the case of Rack, the Ridiculously Photogenic McNab Dog, it was his history.

Rack was an owner surrender at around 6 months.  He was bounced around between some shelters that seemed more like concentration camps by description.

He then wound up at The Dog Liberator, an excellent rescue specializing in Herding Breeds in Deltona, Florida where Giselle began to repair the damage to his psyche.

That was where I came in.

For two weeks there was not a single sound out of this dog.  Not even that weird grunting that some dogs do when sleeping was heard.

After being told by some breeders of McNabs out in California, that no this isn't normal, but not to worry he'll start to relax, he did exactly that.

Walking Rack, we noticed that he liked other dogs.  By that, I mean REALLY likes other dogs.  He sees them and started to wag his tail, and then start to dance, then finally made a sound.   A plaintive little whine with his mouth open in a full yawn.

Silent no more.

This got more and more intense as the third week went on.   He met The Girls, two Samoyeds around the block who have the reputation of being two of the most playful and bouncy dogs you could meet. 

Men, cover yourself, the girls are here... OOF!

Rack met other dogs and unless they were acting grumpy toward him, he would always become very excited.   Not every dog liked a bouncy black and white puppy bounding towards them, so I remembered that I really do have control over this and started watching closely what the other dog's owner did in response. 

For the most part, walks were exciting places where other dogs were until we hit the chaos and noise of Wilton Drive.   He'd cringe as trucks would pass, try extreme avoidance tactics over noisy grates, and walking past the bars meant my arm was stretched out to the limit as he tried to avoid the front doors and any patrons inside.

We're avoiding the bars directly, people aren't his favorite, and frankly I don't care about your dog you left behind in Ohio or Colorado, bring them next time.

The whole while, my house was in uproar.   We had a massive line of thunderstorms come through and ruin the water heater.  The repairs took two solid days of drilling and workers in the house.

Rack was not amused, he made himself scarce by running into the back bedroom and hiding in his crate, or just curling into a DogBall (TM) between the coffee table and the couch.   I guess the little guy just wanted a den.

Finally the chaos was too much.

Eric the plumber wanted to talk to us after coming and going a couple times.  He needed to run out to the big box stores just a mile away for supply and approached the front door. 

A soft knock and... BARKBARKBARKBARK!

Yes, four strong barks from a voice stilled by abandonment and trauma. 

Our little boy is healing!

Just four.  It wasn't excessive, someone had stepped inside HIS house and he was warning his dads that this was happening.

The look on our faces as well as Rack's was shock and a little confusion.   Even he didn't know he could do that. 

Sheepishly, the shepherd dog looked at us for approval as we both were laughing.  I guess it's OK to use my voice.

This repeated itself about 4 hours later when Eric stuck his head in the door after a quiet tapping on the door.  BarkBarkBarkBarkWOOWOOWOOWOO!

OK, boy, I get it!  You can talk now!

Sure, it will be a training issue, but our boy is relaxing.  He's home.  His home, and home is a good thing.

Sweet Hawaiian Crock Pot Chicken Recipe

Right off.... for my Vegetarian and Vegan Readers - swap out Tofu or similar for 2 to 3 pounds of chicken.

Want an easy dinner?
Something you can throw together in 5 to 10 minutes?
Only Four Ingredients for the main course?

The only complaint I had about this recipe was that it was quite wet.  I will make it again, but I'll cut back on the Soy sauce.   It made up about 10-12 ounces of a sweet brown sauce that went well with the chicken, but it was too much even if you served it on top of rice.

So here you go:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup pineapple juice
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/3 cup light soy sauce
• 2 pounds chicken breast tenderloins.

Directions:

• All ingredients into the crock pot.
• Cook on low for 6 to 8 hours.
• The chicken will fall apart on the fork when done.
• Serve on a bed of rice, optional.

When I did make this, I used a mix of chicken breasts and thighs.   Personally I'm a thigh man.  Always have been. 

It's a mildly sweet recipe, so it should work well with any poultry, as well as being interesting with Pork.

Windows Update Makes Me Miss Bill Gates

I've been using Windows since the bad old days of Windows 3.0. I even used some of the older versions once or twice. Those were truly ugly, but things have changed over the years.

Back then, things would crash once you launched a program... or they didn't. It was part of the charm of using Windows. Software would get better, and there were alternatives.

 I disliked that "charm" of Windows so much that when OS/2 came around I happily jumped ship and stayed there much longer than most. It was A Better Windows than Windows, and remained so until Windows 2000 came out.  I also embraced Linux and still use that daily to this day.  Developing software and web pages on Linux have a freedom that you just don't get in some other environment.

Around that time we started seeing updates on a regular basis. Some would work, others not. Thanks to the politics of Microsoft, we were forced to install some rather onerous protection schemes inside of Windows whether we wanted it or not. It didn't protect the person sitting at the computer, just Microsoft.

 That would be another reason why I stayed with OS/2 as long as I did. Windows update would run whether you wanted it to or not, unless you went in and told it not to. But you dare not do that. Never do that because we know what you really want, really we do...

By the time everyone was happily running Windows XP, including me, we learned how to dodge the whole Windows Update nightmare until we wanted it, taming the beast just enough to get work done.

I went from XP to Windows 7 in a leap and I've been very happy with it.  They changed that Windows Update beast to allow you to tell it not to restart immediately.  Now you can delay it for up to Four Hours, and keep repeating that delay.

We won't talk about Windows Vista or Windows 8.  Those were a mistake and hopefully will go away without another word.  That's what happens when you let Focus Groups and Marketing run rampant within a software organization.

That delay is a very good thing since it would take that much for me to close up all my programs and windows and get to a "Logical Breakpoint".  It also let me hide insipid software such as the Bing Desktop and Silverlight.  Useless software from my view.  

All of this came into my mind today in a flash when I saw the helpful little bubble in the lower right asking me if I wanted to update my Windows.   *shudder*

The thing is that there was an update to Windows that said "This may require a restart".   That's why I miss old Bill Gates.  He may have ruined my nice little OS/2, but he also was a force to reckon with.  There's a story or an urban legend about him that said if you had a change that would require a restart of Windows, you had to present it to Bill Gates himself.   Climb that Ivory Tower to the Executive Suite, prostate yourself, and put your neck on the line.  Hopefully you didn't have that neck chopped off!

Things have gotten a bit more sloppy since Bill Gates went on to being a professional philanthropist.  I've noticed a forced restart once or twice, and that sent me back on my little tirade.  Damn Windows!

Luckily, today wasn't that kind of an update.  It took things in stride in my case.  I went in and hid the Bing Desktop (Yuck) and the Silverlight (useless software that slows down Windows 7) and went on my way to do the other updates.

The computer later blew a bubble at me saying Windows Update had completed and I smiled at the little black Asus laptop.  I was up to date and I didn't have to close the five windows of Firefox with over 100 tabs open, three copies of Excel, one of Libre Office, and all the rest of the work I was deeply involved in.

Now if they could just get rid of that wart called Internet Explorer.  I truly hate when I have to run that piece of slop that has worked its way into Windows like mold in cheese.

But that is a rant for another day.

Thanks, Bill Gates... I'll get back to work now.

Signs Your Rescue Dog Is Coming Alive - Picture and Video

The other day my dog, Rack, was whining.

We have only had him for 2 1/2 weeks at this point, and that was the first sound we heard come from his mouth.

It wasn't a pain whine, we all know that blood curdling scream you hear from a dog when they're hurt.   This was a plaintive high pitched squeak.

My little guy was bored.  Bored is a good thing.

When The Dog Liberator had rescued him, I had a rather scary story about his history.  Basically we had a very smart dog that was an owner surrender who went through some very bad shelters. 

A Shut Down dog resulted.   That's more likely in intelligent breeds like my Mc Nab, and others like the Border Collie, Aussie Shepards, Poodles and so on.   Less intelligent breeds would go with the flow and bark away.

As time went on in those first few days, we noticed that Rack really enjoyed his walks.  He was still afraid of loud noises, but he handled them better each day.   The walks would be accompanied by a similar sound coming from him when he would see another dog, what we called a Whine of Joy.  He would get so excited that he would lapse into a dancing and bouncing performance complete with little open mouthed sounds.

We realized that he loved his walks and other dogs.  That's a big plus because recovering a shut down dog without a motivator is decidedly difficult.   Making the walks as long as we could manage was the best thing we could do for the little guy.  These days the walks stretch very close to 2 miles each.

I'll be getting some new sneakers as a result.

That has outside taken care of, but what about indoors?

The usual tricks of bouncing a ball or offering food just didn't work yet.   I tried the tennis ball trick where you slice one open and put a cookie inside.  As long as he saw the cookie he would go for it but not work for it if it disappeared inside the hollow ball.

The toys did eventually wear him down.  An old vinyl ball that squeaks when you squeeze it was his first toy that he took to.  This was followed by a beat up teddy bear that he managed to chew the nose off in short order.

Playtime is very important.  When you have a dog that refuses to play, it's an abnormal situation.  They have to relax to their environment.  In our case, getting to tearing the teddy bear apart only took 15 days.

As for that teddy bear, its done it's duty before.  There's a black stitching down its back where my old dog Lettie had shredded it once before.  It will get shredded again.   Soft toys are best for that sort of thing since you'll notice very fast when you find little clouds of stuffing all over your living room.

After all, a destroyed toy means a happy dog, and a happy dog is what we're after.

The proof is in the video below - complete with The Minute Waltz!

A Blond and a Horse - Humor

A Blond and a Horse


Standing beside a valiant stallion, a beautiful blonde decides she must ride this animal despite having no previous riding experience. Soon, she finds herself atop the horse's back, galloping through a lush green meadow.

Unsuspecting, the horse suddenly picks up speed and she finds herself euphoric over the freedom she is experiencing.

Once again, the magnificent animal picks up speed except this time her inexperience gets the better of her. She finds herself barely able to hang on.

The startled horse is now in a dead run and the beautiful blonde finds herself hanging off to one side of the horse, her head just inches from the ground... catastrophe seconds away.

She begins to frantically scream for help when all of a sudden.........

Frank, the Wal-Mart door man, calmly walks up and unplugs the ride.

Jesus and Satan - Humor (for geeks)

Jesus and Satan have a discussion as to who is the better programmer. This goes on for a few hours until they come to an agreement to hold a contest, with God as the judge.

They sit themselves at their computers and begin. They type furiously, lines of code streaming up the screen, for several hours straight. Seconds before the end of the competition, a bolt of lightning strikes, taking out the electricity. Moments later, the power is restored, and God announces that the contest is over.

He asks Satan to show what he has come up with.

Satan is visibly upset, and cries, "I have nothing. I lost it all when the power went out."

"Very well, then," says God, "let us see if Jesus fared any better."

Jesus enters a command, and the screen comes to life in vivid display, the voices of an angelic choir pour forth from the speakers.

Satan is astonished.

He stutters, "B-b-but how? I lost everything, yet Jesus' program is intact. How did he do it?"

God smiled all-knowingly, "Jesus saves."