Reeces PB&J Cookies

Prep Time: 30min – 1hr 15min

Cook Time: 9 – 11min

Servings: 5 dozen cookies.

Ingredients

- 2 1/4 cups flour

- 1 teaspoon baking soda

- 1 teaspoon salt

- 1 cup (2 sticks) softened butter

- 3/4 cup sugar

- 3/4 cup brown sugar

- 1 teaspoon vanilla

- 2 large eggs

- 2 large Tablespoons peanut butter

- 1 1/4 cup strawberry jam

- 12 reeces peanut butter cups

Directions

1. In a bowl mix the flour, baking soda and salt.

2. In a second bowl beat the butter, sugar, brown sugar and vanilla.

3. In the second bowl alternate mixing in the two eggs and the flour mixture.

4. Chop or blend the peanut butter cups into small pieces.

5. alternate mixing in teh peanut butter, and peanut butter cup pieces into the cookie dough.

6. Optionally, place the dough onto some wax paper and roll into a log. Place log into fridge for at least an hour. Doing this allows you to cut uniform slices of the dough.

7. preheat an oven to 375* . On an un-greased cookie sheet, either cut 1/4 inch slices from the rolled cookie dough or scoop teaspoon sized balls of dough.

8. In the center of each cookie make a depression with your thumb. Into each depression place a teaspoon of strawberry jam.

9. place the cookies in the oven for 9-11 minutes, or until golden.

10. Allow cookies to cool for at least 30 minutes before eating.

That’s all that is to making these quite tasty cookies. To truly enjoy them I recommend enjoying with a cold glass of milk.

wild rice with chorizo bacon and mushrooms

Prep Time: 10-15 min

Cooktime: 25-30 min

Servings: 2

Ingredients

- 3 cups wild rice

- 1 Tbl butter

- 2 chorizo sausages

- 4 strips of slab bacon

- 3/4 lb of button mushrooms

- 1 1/2 Tbl olive oil

- 1 3/4 cup water

- salt & pepper

Directions

1. In a pot add your butter and water and get to a rapid boil.  Once water is at a boil, add your 3 cups of rice. Once it has returned to a boil, set to a low heat, cover and let it cook for about 20 minutes (or until the water has been absorbed) stirring occasionally. Once cooked fluff with a fork.

2. Take your chorizo sausages and cut them length-wise in half.  In a pan heat up 1Tbl olive oil. Once hot, add the chorizo sausages and set to a medium-high heat. Cook the chorizo until browned, flip and do so to the other side.  Remove chorizo from oil and place on paper towel to absorb some of the excess grease. Then place them on a cutting board and cut into bit sized pieces.

3. In the oil left over from cooking the chorizos, add your bacon.  Cook until crispy and then pat dry on a paper towel.  Then cut into bit sized pieces.

4. Clean and then cut your button mushrooms in half. Heat up a pan with 1/2Tbs of olive oil and lightly saute them. Once sauteed, take 1/2 of the mushrooms and set aside until rice is cooked. Take the other half, and place in the pan containing the chorizo/bacon grease.  Fry the mushrooms in the grease for about 5-10 minutes or until darkened.

5. Once the rice has finished cooking, mix in 1/2 of the mushrooms and the bacon pieces.

6. Place a serving of the rice on a plate, and from the cutting board slide the pieces of one chorizo on top of the rice (so the pieces retain the sausage shape). On the side,  add a serving of the fried mushrooms.

7. salt & pepper to taste, eat and enjoy.

There you go, a meal that is relatively simple,easy to make and delicious. enjoy!

Before you disregard me as some sort of nut let me provide some back story. (Although if you think I’m a bit strange you are on the right track). It’s common knowledge that developers (myself included) run on energy drinks. Unfortunately I do not enjoy the taste of most energy drinks, with the exception of Rockstar Pomegranate. This stuff, I could drink by the case (if my heart could handle that much caffeine) unfortunately they do not sell it in stores anymore. Talking about it with a fellow co-worker a few weeks ago, she found out that you could order cases of Rockstar Pomegranate directly from the rockstar website. with out delay, we split a case of 24. Flash forward a few weeks, and the wonderful case of developer-fueling goodness arrives and we began to drink it.

So I began to think, what can we do with the empty cans. We cant just throw them out, each can represents a badge of hard work. We need to display them, somewhere.

Back to the Shower..

I’m in my shower when the idea comes to me, why not build a pyramidal stack of cans between our desks? This is where my mind starts going down it’s nerdy path.  I’m going to best recreate my thought pattern, so you can get some insight into how strange my mind works.

” Ohhh.. we could build a pyramid of cans! there is plenty of room against the wall between our desks. Hmm… I wonder how big of a pyramid we can build, how many cans in the case?.. 24. well, the top level would be one can, the second row would be two cans. I wonder if there is a formula for figuring out the total number of items in a pyramid stack? So one can, obviously is one. three cans equals 2 rows, a row of one can, and a second row of two cans. Three rows equals 6 cans, 4 rows equals 10 cans.  What would the formula be? Well if  t equals the total number of cans, and r equals the number of rows how could I find the value of r using the value of t. For t = 1, r = 1. for t = 3, r = 2 and for t = 6, r =3. So then r = t divided by?..um, well for one, it’s divided by one and for 6 it’s divided by 2, so for 3 it’s divided by 1.5? that doesn’t seem right. there is deffiently a pattern, which means there is a formula. I guess I could look it up on google. Screw that. I’m smart, well I’m not google smart, but smart enough where I can figure it out. I bet I could program the solution.  did I already shampoo my hair?”

So you get the idea.  I left the house that day, stuck on figuring out this problem. I could clearly see that there was a pattern, I just had to figure out the formula that create that pattern.

Here is the process I went about solving it, I received some help from co-workers and the internet.

First thing I did was write out the permutations I knew the answers too.

Right away I could see that the number or rows was equal to the number of cans in the bottom row.  So r = number of rows AND number or cans in bottom row. I could also see that only certain numbers could be used to produce a pyramid.

1,3,6,10,15,…

There was a pattern to them,

1 (+2 = ) 3 (+3 = ) 6 (+4 = ) 10 (+ 5 = ) 15.

I was not sure if that would be helpful, but I kept note.  As I worked, my mind kept working on this problem, by the end of the day I had my first formula:

r = (t+x)/y

where:

r = number of rows/cans on bottom row

t = total number of cans

x = (some value, or 0)

y = some other value.

Concrete I know. but I was on to something, the formula worked for my examples

It seemed like y = 2, and x= well that was less concreate. Eventually I realized this forumal, although working for my examples, was not correct.

The next day during lunch I talked with some of my co-workers about this problem I was working on. Lucky for us, we have a black board in our lunch room, and as I rambled to them I wrote down my examples.

With there help, we came up with this formula:

t = (r(r+1)) / 2;

Which I took a step further to :

t = (r² + r) / 2.

That’s great and all if I was trying to take the number of rows and solve for the total cans (it’s an arithmetic sequence). But I wanted to do the opposite. Well, that should be as simple as taking the formula and solving for r.  It’s harded then it looks. Let me show you a few of the steps I went through.

t = (r²+ r) /2

2t = r² + r

2t – r = r²

√(2t – r) = r

OK, great I’ve solved for r. the problem is that r is in the solution. That’s like providing a word in its meaning, not helpful. I was stuck  I could not get past this part on my own, I’m just not that good at math.  Enter Wolframalpha.

Wolframalpha is this great statistical/mathmatical search engine. It’s one of the closets things we have to skynet.

So first I fed it my t formula and it provided me with all these great graphs and numbers.
(Here is a link)

Now how was I going to get help solving for r ?  Well I under estimated how smart wolfram alpha is.  My next query was simply “t = ((r^2) + r)/2 solve for r”  and here was what it came up with

So it looks like I had found my answer.  the formula I was looking for was:

r = 1/2 (√(8 t+1)-1)

I doubt I would have been able to figure that solution out on my own.  So I took our number of cans 24, and plugged it into that formula. the result is 6 (well it’s not, if t = 21, then it would be 6, 24 does not work for a pyramid). Now i know we’ll be able to build a pyramid of cans 6 rows high).

wouldn’t it have just been easier to start with one can and work my way down, until I ran out of cans. Well, yes it would have been extremely easier. But I am a developer/nerd. My mind thrives on problem solving. It’s fun, at least I think so.

So next time you are in the shower and you start to think about a problem (work safe problems). I suggest roll with it, you might have fun and you could learn something new.

Prep Time: 15-30 min
Cook Time: 11-12 min

Chao. Pig Cookie Ingredients

Ingredients:

- chocolate chip cookie dough (store bought or homemmade)
- maple cured bacon, 3-5 pieces

Instructions

First things first, the bacon. You want to get maple cured bacon, it’s sweeter and will add great flavor to the cookies. (But regular bacon will work as well). Dont get thick-cut, it remains too chewy and in the end, it seems like there is a wadded paper towel in the middle of your cookies. I find you need 2.5 – 3 strips of bacon per dozen cookies.

Cooking Bacon

You want to cook the bacon in a pan until crispy (when done cooking hang onto the greese), and then place on some paper towels to soak up all the grease.

Crispy Bacon

Crush up the bacon into pieces and set aside.

Bacon Bits

The cookie dough, I’m lazy so I bought some premade cookie dough. If you make your own, when it comes time to add the chocolate chips, also add you crumbled bacon, (and you can skip the next step).

Ready to make cookies

Take about a tabelspoon worth of cookie dough, and form into a ball in your hand. Then use your thumb to make a depression in the middle. Place a few bacon peices into the depression, and then fold the dough on top of it. Dont worry if you have extra bacon pieces left over, you can munch on them while the cookies bake.

Raw Choc Pig Cookie

Get a cookie sheet. For the ultimate experience, take some of the bacon grease and use that to grease the pan, otherwise just use some regular oil, or a cooking spray. Take your teablespoon cookie balls, and place n the pan.

Ready to bake

Set your oven to the tempreture your cookie dough recipe says (mine was 375*). Place the cookies in the oven and cook acording to the cookie dough directions, add an extra minute to the cooking time.My directions said, 9-11 minutes. I placed my cookies in for 12min, but cook until cookies start to turn goled brown.

Smells like bacon goodness

When done cooking allow the cookies to cool on a wire rack.

Powered By Dunkin

Look at ‘em. Go ahead eat one, tell me it does not taste 1000x more awesome. The bacon adds a subtle salty sweetness to the cookie, and if you used mable cured then the maple flavor melds with the chocolate.

Now onto the power of this Baconology experiment. There are a number of variables at play here. The Cookie dough recipes, the type of bacon you use, cookie time, tempreture. But no matter the variables the equation holds steady.

B = F * 1000

F = Flavor rating of the food
B = Bacon

So for the time being, if you want to read what I’ve been up to check my twitter feed.

I’ll get the motiviation to start bloging again at some point.

So in the past 5 months I’ve had a lot of big changes in my life, that I’d rather not get into (If you actually know me, then you already know whats was up). Instead I want to talk about one of my favorite things in life,.. food. But this is not a ‘OMG.. this stuff rules’ type of post. Oh no, this is all about ‘WTF? why do they even make that’.

Let’s start with the food that sparked this post. The ‘Buttered Popcorn’ Jelly Belly jellybean.

Seriously, WTF? why do they make this flavor? I don’t think I know anyone who actually likes this jelly bean. It’s like the equivalent to grapefruit in fruit salad. If you eat it along with a handful of other, delicious jellybeans.. no dice. The nasty buttery flavor takes over and ruins the whole experience. Even worse is that it looks similar to the toasted marshmallow jellybean, so even if you pick out all the buttered popcorn, you have to check every 3rd one to make sure, thus subjecting yourself to the horribleness.

Next up.. I’ve never had this product, yet I dont think it needs any explanation why I wonder ‘WTF? why do they make this’.

It’s Chelada by Budweiser. Let me break this down for you. It’s Budweiser (or bud lite) mixed with Tomato Juice+Clam Juice. Yeah… I dont really wonder much, why I’ve only seen this product offered for $2.49 at Walmarts’ in New Hampshire. Jennifer Eblin at associated content, wrote up a good review of her attempt to drink one. read it here

So once again, Budweiser…WTF? I’d rather drink a budweiser + rockstar energy drink + champagne. Which my buddy Mike did on a dare (and won $100 from of me), and it is now offered at our bar with the name ‘the shithead dumbass’ (pronounced she-deed do-moss). And yes I have a bar in my apartment (Something I did during my absence and will surely be writing about).

Honestly I think that’s all I can stomach for the time being (oh the puns). also, I can’t think of anymore at the moment. But fear not I shall be back and I’m positive in the future there will be other eatable items I come across that make me say ‘WTF?.. why do they make that.’

The next day on my way home from I stopped at Walgreen and took a look at the hair trimming products they offered (all top of the line I’m sure). I found a product that was not only affordable ($5), but it was non-electric, durable and therefore eco-friendly (I thought Jill would like that).

Conair Hair Trimmer

So basically it is a comb with a razor blade in the middle.  In my not so capable hands what could go wrong.  So excitedly I get home to show Jill my smart purchase.  After I show it to her, she looks at me with a bit of disbelevment, but I assure her it’ll work great.  We head out to the back deck with the new trimmer, a comb and a pair of kitchen sissors and attempt to cut my hair.

Everything goes ok.  Jill gets the hang of the (as we quickly realized) crappy razor-comb and get my hair trimmed to a respectiful length.  I head into the bathroom to rinse my head, while Jill gets ready for a community meeting she has to go to.  While I’m washing my head, the back feels a bit long to me, no problem I think I can handle this.  So I take the razor-comb, and with out any sort of mirror I use it to shorten the back of my hair.  I also shorten my sideburns a bit, and end up taking out a small chunk of hair. “Uh oh” I say out loud.  Jill, knowing that I’ve done something stupid when I say that, comes running to the bathroom where she sees this.

bad hair

Jill begins to laugh so much she nearly pees her pants.  I have her take a photo so I can see what I’ve done, she says I should just shave it off, but I assure her I can fix it.  Jill runs off to her meeting, and I attempt to do my best to fix my hair, again on my own with out a second mirror.  I manage to get it straightened out, but it looks like I have the haircut of a monk (with a few chunks missing).  But I press forward, put on a baseball cap and deal with it.  It’s only hair and it’ll grow back.

For two days I show people my haircut (or hide it from them) and everyone insits that I should shave it all off.  So finally on saturday night I’m watching TV with Jill and Mike, rubbing my oddly cut head and say, “alright lets do it, lets go shave my head”. We head into the bathroom I stand in the tub and using Mike’s electric hair trimmer (He had one under the sink), Jill shaves off my head. It’ll be no big thing I think, it’ll just look like I have a buzz cut.  But when Jill was all done I step out of the tub, look in the mirror and exclaim “Gah! My head!  I look so weird!”.

So it’ll be something I have a few months to get used to (while my hair grows back).  On sunday Mike and I took a trip to costco and I bought a full trimmer set, so by december when I need a haircut we can do it right. (We also ended up buying an ice maker and a mini fridge for our bar, go figure).  It’s not easy trying to be cheap, but it can lead to some fun/funny situations.

Shaved Head

Most people wouldn’t take me as someone who would want to be a bartender, or have a bartender’s skills.  I think that is because of a misconception in thinking.  People hear someone is a bartender and thinks “well, they must really like booze”, but that’s flawed, a bartender doesn’t get themselves booze, they serve it to others.  I’m not a big drinker, but I’ve always been enticed by what a bartender can do.  They can be given some seemingly random sentence (for example “Give me a wet gimlet with rocks on the side”) and give someone the exact drink they are looking for (A martini with extra lime juice, in a martini glass with the ice in a side glass) it is the perfect pairing of art and science.  In fact I believe Bartending is one of the only literal meanings of a ‘social science’. Think about it, bartenders are mearly social chemists.  They take common elements (almost every drink is composed of one or more of the 5 following alcohols: vodka, Gin, Rum, Tequilla & Triple Sec).  By combining these elements in different ways they produce thousands of products.  It’s truly amazing.

For years I’ve seen flyers for Drinkmasters Bartending School and I have heard great things about the school.  But with the $500 price tag for the course, it was out of my reach finacially.  But a few weeks ago I was on groupon.com (which I visit everyday) and saw that you could enroll in the Drinkmasters course for only $150.  So for $150 I could enroll in a $500 course, get my bartending license and have alot of fun? that’s a no brainer, so I purchased it. (As did my good friend Mike Matterra).

The course was only a week long, four hour classes every night from 6pm-10pm.  You would think that a four hour long class would be brutal, but the way the instructors teach the classes it goes by quick and is wicked fun.  There is no pressure, your there because you want to learn, the instructors are there because they want to teach and everyone has a great time. And the max in each class is only 16 people, so you get to know your fellow classmates and joke with them (just how you would as a real bartender)

Every class started with drink drills (where we would stand behind the bar and the instructor would yell out drink orders and we had to make them).  Monday and tuesday night, nearly everyone struggled to make even the basic drink correctly (including handling the glasses, ices, serving the drink to the customer) but by thursday we were all nearly pros.

I surprised myself, most of the time I can be a bit of a klutz…. I tend to drop things.  But everything clicked for me behind the bar, I was scooping ice, grabing the right bottles, shaking, serving the whole nine yards.  I know I keep saying this, but it was alot of fun.

The course went over the whole spectrum of bartending, from how to properly take a drink order all the way to how to identify and pour wine.  We learned how with just a little bit of knowledge we could make any daqauri, shot, mixed drink & margartias.

Friday night was the big night for the course, it was exam night. Where we would see who would go home a bartender and who would go home a customer.  The exam consisted of a written test and a practical.  The written I found was easy, it was only 25 questions and I knew the answer to all except 1.  I was more nervous for the practical, where you had to actually make drinks.  In fact Myself, Mike and our friend Justin were so nervous that we had arrived at 3pm (3 hours before class started) on Friday to just practice our drink drills.

After the written there was a quick break, and then we had the practical.  Myself, Mike & Justin and two others (our new friends Nellie &  ‘P’) were in the first group of bartenders-to-be to take the practical (it was split up into groups of 4/5 at a time).  I was feeling confident, the instructor explained the guidelines and then gave us each our first drink orders.

I cant exactly explain what happened next, it’s all a blur I was in the bar tending zone. I heard the drink orders and it seamed that before I was even done repaeting the order back to the ‘coustomer’ the drink was made and served and I was getting the next order.  It was… I have to say amazing, I was truly impressed with my self and my classmates.

We all finished our drinks (I was first to finish) and then we’re sent on a break (so that the last waiting group could not grill us on what it was like).  Taking advantage of the 45min break we had and the adrenaline we all had pumping we decided to go around the corner to a local bar.  The one thing about the bartending course, is al week we have been making these colorful, exotic drinks but with colored water.  So they looked good, but were completly undrinkable.

One drink, in particular I had been wanting to try all week, it’s known as a planters punch.  When we first learned it the instructor told us that not many bartenders know how to make this drink and it would be hard to find.  So at the bar I asked the bartender for a planters punch, and what do you know but she didnt know what it was.  I explained how to make it and she proceeded to try. The ting about learning something is that you notice when others are doing it wrong.  For example when the bartender was making me my planters punch I could see all the flaws in her technique, and was taken back (of course it’s no big deal since she did manage to make the drink).  But it was just a wonderment to myself to know that when ever I go out in the future I’ll see these flaws.

After our break we went back to class, when the instructor tallied up everyone’s grades and presented all of us with our certificates of achievement (that’s right 100% of the class passed!). We were all excited.  the instructor then explained how the school should be the resource to us for finding bartending jobs, and that we can comeback at any time for free refresher courses or to practice.

Certified Bartender

Does this mean I’m going to quit my job and become a bartender? Of course not, I love my job and using my college degree.  But if in the future I know that I have a second set of skills in case I need to make extra cash.  For now it’s just a great party trick.

Excited with our new sets of skills Mike and I proceeded to get all the necessary tools to make our home bar an actual bar (as opposed to a cabinet with liquor bottles).  Mike purchased a bartenders kit online with all the tools, and saturday went up to New Hampshire to  get all the tax free booze we would need (about $200 worth).  And sunday we went to the christmas tree shop and bought all the proper glassware.

Home Bar

We now have a bar that any bartender would be proud of, and proceeded to christen it with a couple of home made margaritas. (with no pre-made mix, and they were perfect for the heat wave we had over the weekend).

Margaritas

The whole experience was great.  I learned a lot, made some new friends and had a lot of fun. So before I head to my home bar to make you a margarita I need to know, do you want rocks & salt?

America!

Tacky enough?

Awaiting for me in the basement was a huge pile of junk:

Basement Junk

It was quite alot of stuff to go throu, but I had the whole day (and the new chickenfoot CD to listen too) to go throu it all.  As I started going throu it I started snapping some photos of items so that I could share some of my past with the internet. Because I know the internet wants to know all there is about michael miles.

First up, my trophy from the only year I played little league (have never been a big sports guy).

1993 F.L.B.L Peanut League

You might notice the bat is broken, that’s because I use to use this trophy for science experiments in my bedroom.  I would clip DC chargers from my remote control cars to it and plug them in, to see if I could electrify it? (I don’t know what I was trying to do, guess I’m lucky I never electrocuted myself).

Next up are the race cars I made in middle school shop class (7th grade & 8th grade).

race car 7th grade

race car 8th grade

I never got a change to race them, but I’m sure with my knack for engineering they would of each won. Speaking of middle school I also found my middle school year book.  Looked up my photo, I looked pretty geeky (I was still a wet rag on a coat hanger back then).  Also I found Jill’s photo (hilarious) but she wont let me post it.

FHS

Coming up next, some stuff that is pure badass.   First off are my dog tags from battleship cove, because what kid does not want their own pair of dog tags?

dog tags

To show you how much of a nerd I was am. This is what the dog tags say :

Mike D Miles
USS Matrix B77
Weapons Expert
Framingham MA

Next up is from when I took a trip with my friend Joe and his family to Six Flaggs New Jersey.  Joe and I got one of those olde time photos of us as western badasses.

Wild Wild West

Who at one point in their lives have not gotten an olde time photo?  I think its something everyone experiances once (ony once because after that you realize what a ripoff it is, like getting a characture).

OMG… I cant believe what I found, something my dad helped me put together… A bit of back story before I show the pics.  As a young boy growing up in the 90′s there were two action packed shows I loved.  One was the animated classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  The other.. you guessed it Power Rangers!!

Go, Go Power rangers, du nu nu nu na.

Go, Go Power Rangers, Du nu nu, nu na.

Go, Go Power Rangers you mighty morphing power rangers!

Sorry a bit of nostalgia crept up on me. So yeah I loved the power ranges. Watched them every saturday morning, had the action figures and the trading cards.  Which leads me to my next discovery. ready?

Its my Mint Condition Complete first edition Power Rangers trading card collection (including all the foil cards)!!

Power Rangers!

mint condition

Quick to ebay! Ok after searching ebay I found that this collection is only worth about $15.00 .  I’m sure their value will appreciate in time.

Next up I came across my highschool year book.  The class of 2004.  Highschool not the greatest time in my life (again I’m a nerd and that equals not poular in high school).  But I did have some good time with my friends, speaking of which my friend Janelle was the only one to sign my year book, but I think its a great entry.

FHS

Janelle yearbook sign

For those of you that dont know I was involved with some less then legal co-curricular activities with my firends.  Which was the case when this was written.  If you cant read it it says (children cover your eyes!)

Yo, I dont no what makes you so damn funny but all I know is I laugh so fucking hard wen u talk. AHHHH too many words. MY leg is vibrating.

- Janelle (June 1st 2004)

Although I’ve always been a funny guy, and could make my friend laugh at any point (I almost got Janelle to pee her pants, I’ve also gotten Jill to almost pee her pants)

The summer I graduated high school, was the first summer Jill and I started dating.  For some fun summer activities we held a MGA tournament (Miniture Golf Association).  We tried to go to as many miniature golf courss as possible, and at the end of the summer the winner would get a golden putter. (What ever Jill tells you, really I’m the one who won, its not about points its about style.)

MGA

This next guy is a monkey Jill won for me our first year of college when I came to visit her in Springfield and we took a trip to six flaggs.

green monkey

He’s also featured in one of my all time favorite photos of Jill.  I took it while we were driving back to her dorm.

(When I find the photo I’m talking about I’ll upload it here)

Nothing much more worht writting about.  I went through alot of my books (again, big nerd, big reader).  Here is a shot of about half of them.

books

A box of krusty-o’s I got from 7-11 when the Simpsons movie came out. (they are just really bland frut loops)

KrustyO's

At the end of the day.  I went from that huge pile of junk (See first photo) to this:

cleaned

I was able to relive alot of great memories, get rid of alot of junk, and listen to some great tunes (again check out the chickenfoot cd if you get a chance).