Friday - Fake Happy Hour: Faux Mojito

Here is how you make a fake mojito (if for some insane reason you are inclined to do so).  Makes a refreshing drink here in the late summer.

Muddle 1.5 ounces of simple syrup (you can use 1 oz if you want it less sweet) with about 5-6 fresh, washed mint leaves.

Add ice to the top, then add 1.5 ounces of lime juice and approximately 3 ounces of club soda (I top it off with the club soda and 3 ounces does the trick).  Mix it once or twice (I dump to another cup and back) and voila, faux-jito.

Enjoy!

September Cooking Experiment: Jamaican Jerk Chicken

Tried cooking some jerk chicken and festival last night, reviving our "cuisines of the world" experiments from last year.  The chicken turned out pretty good - definitely tangy - though our experiment with festival (a Jamaican fried bread) was less than successful, mostly, I think due to frying in a little oil instead of deep frying, and frying too hot.  Our result was a little bit too hard and somewhat burned on the outside.  Served that up with a salad, and it was pretty good.

But the best part of the meal?  Well, that was our dessert.

Pineapple upside-down cake.  It really ended up pretty good.

All of the recipes came from this Jamaican Travel website, and are listed below.

Jerk Chicken - we did this pretty faithfully, but had to use 3 jalapenos instead of the 6 scotch bonnet peppers, and used 4 chicken thighs and 2 breasts instead of a whole chicken.  Could have used more peppers, I think, but was pretty good.

Festival - Again, deep fried over lower heat, this might have been edible.  Could use more vanilla AND sugar if you want to sweeten it up - otherwise it was kind of like a naan ball.

Upside-Down Cake - This turned out just fine - if anything at all, we could have used a slightly smaller pan (note the overlapping pineapples in theirs, and the side-by-side in ours) and gotten a thicker cake, but it was still good.

Enjoy!

Game of the Week: 2012 Week 2

So, sadly, it is another low-impact week on the schedule, which means the game of the week could be Florida vs. Texas A&M (but it's not).  Even though it's the Aggies' welcome basket to the SEC and season opener after the delay of their game last week, I'm not sure that game will mean much long-term - I could be wrong.  That game is 2:30 on Saturday on ESPN.

I probably would prefer to watch Air Force at Michigan (ABC/ESPN2) or Purdue at Notre Dame (NBC) at the same time.

The ACTUAL game of the week for me is Georgia @ Mizzou (6:45 PM Saturday ESPN2).  Missouri's welcome to conference play in the SEC, their first opportunity to knock off a big SEC East contender and make a run for it, or an utter smackdown if they really aren't up to the caliber of the SEC defenses.  We'll see.  I think it is worth an evening watch of a quarter or more.

Runners-up: Pitt @ Cinci (Thurs 7:00 ESPN), Utah @ Utah State (Fri 7:00 ESPN), UNC @ Wake Forest (Sat 2:00 PM ESPN3) and the Air Force/Michigan and Purdue/Notre Dame mentioned above.