Fumbling Toward Culinary Talent: Eggy Spaghetti

It has been a long time since I made this makeshift dish that one of my fraternity brothers showed to me decades ago. 

It's basically a scrambled egg and spaghetti mash-up that is great to eat after a hard night of drinking. 

I didn't have a drunken night, but I have lots of leftover spaghetti, and I didn't feel like eating it with my homemade pasta sauce. 

Ingredients

3 eggs

A healthy dollop of sour cream

Leftover spaghetti

Avocado or canola oil

A healthy sprinkling of parmesan cheese

Salt and pepper to taste

Process

Grab a couple of good handfuls of leftover spaghetti and put it in into a cast iron skillet. Chop up the spaghetti with a spatula, so the pasta is in smaller pieces. Heat the skillet to medium and coat the pan and pasta with oil.

Crack your eggs into a bowl and add in the sour cream, which makes scrambled eggs fluffy. Add in salt and pepper. Blend with a fork. 

Once the pan is hot enough, pour the egg mixture over the spaghetti and treat it like scrambled eggs. Sprinkle a healthy does of parmesan cheese on top when you plate the dish. 

Random Notes from a Crank

Michael T. Klare's "Carbon's Counterattack" is a worthwhile read over on TomDispatch. This ¶ stood out to me: 
But this vision, like so much contemporary advertising, is based on a lie: in this case, on the increasingly bizarre idea that, in the twenty-first century, humanity can burn its way through significant parts of the planet’s reserves of fossil fuels to achieve a world in which everything is essentially the same -- there’s just more of it for everyone.  In the world portrayed by Exxon, it’s possible for a reassuring version of business-as-usual to proceed without environmental consequences.  In that world, the unimpeded and accelerated release of carbon into the atmosphere has no significant impact on people’s lives.  This is, of course, a modern fairy tale that, if believed, will have the most disastrous of results.

For a much different perspective, read Grist's article on recent peer-reviewed scholarship published in Nature: "Leave the Damn Fossil Fuels in the Ground, Says Big Nerdy Study." 

Regardless, here's a quotation from Rebecca Solnit: "To me, the grounds for hope are simply that we don't know what will happen next, and that the unlikely and unimaginable transpire quite regularly. And that the unofficial history of the world shows that dedicated individuals and popular movements can shape history and have, though how and when we might win and how long it takes is not predictable." 

Over the holidays, the Nasty family got into watching game shows, namely Family Feud and The Price is Right. Since I primarily do the grocery shopping in the family, I enjoy The Price is Right. I remember that show being a big draw at my fraternity house. It and Supermarket Sweep. 

My son, a first grader, starts his basketball season this month. It should be entertaining. I hope he's better than I was and he grows taller than I am (eventually). For whatever reason, in junior high school, I went out for the basketball team a couple of times. I stunk. So many kids went out for basketball that West Junior had three teams: A, B, and C. It's not hard to guess what team I suited up for. I should have gone into wrestling instead. 

Music Friday: "Welcome to the Jungle"

Early this week I received good news about a major writing project. Yesterday I received annoying news about a different writing project. 

As much as the good news is really good and that writing project is much bigger than the other one, the annoying news has given me a grumpy attitude.

So I look to music, as usual, for help.

In commemoration of my fraternity's chapter's annual founding-day celebration this weekend, I offer "Welcome to the Jungle" because the song is fun and it makes me happy.

Why you might ask? 

None of your business. Just enjoy some classic GnR.

Post-Kirksville Thoughts

As some of the "regulars" of PlannedOb know, Mrs. Nasty and I went up and over (mostly over) to Kirksville, Missouri for my fraternity's 40th Anniversary celebration. We imported my mother-in-law from Florida to come up and watch the kids while we were away for the weekend festivities.

What follows are my so-called thoughts based on my experience in Kirksville this past weekend. If you also traveled to Kirksville for the same shindig, feel free to react or provide your own observations in the comments section.

• For a local fraternity to stay continuously active for forty years, hence never having issues that shut it down [knock on wood], that's pretty darn impressive. In fact, I'm told it's pretty rare. I'm sure there have been times, in fact I know of some, where the viability of the chapter has been sketchy, but forty years in a row is impressive. 
• I observed young people doing stupid stuff I once did. 
• Ronzas rule. Head-to-head, a ronza beats a calzone every time. Not even a competition.
• I was struck how my old haunts are gone, mainly The Flamingo and Bogie's. 
• Having a downtown Arts Center for Kirksville is a major deal, I think. But the lack of variety of dining establishments surely deadens that happy addition to Adair County.
• I had forgotten how bad roads are in that town. Yikes. 
• As for my local fraternity house, I just don't get it. There's a perfectly good basement for the actives and other people to have fun in, but they choose to ruin the upstairs foyer for their shenanigans. Using the main foyer as a party area has many ramifications on the smell, appearance, and viability of the house. If you extrapolate the causal chain for many years, the consequences are not good. Major complaint right there. 
• I hadn't been back to Kirksville for what probably is about seven years when Mrs. Nasty and I stopped by on our way traveling from Iowa to St. Louis. If I can make it, I hope to get together with other alumni and actives this summer for one of those work weekends. We'll see if the date works for me though. 
• The Dukum Inn, what was considered somewhat of a "townie bar" or an expensive bar during my time there, has changed impressively. It's tripled in size, and the drinks don't seem as expensive anymore. Or maybe I just have money now.
• Meeting my brothers from college days makes it clear that we don't change all that much. We just get older and perhaps somewhat wiser.
• Then again, I am impressed with the diverse professions and accomplishments of my brothers. 

I Thought It Was a St. Louis Thing

For Father's Day yesterday, one of my presents was a washers set, the mass produced type pictured above. Mrs. Nasty and the kids got the set from our local Rural King

For those of you who aren't familiar with the game, it's a variation on horseshoes except players use large washers and square boxes with part of pvc tubing in the middle of the boxes. You set the boxes twenty feet apart and toss the washers to their destination. A washer that goes into the tube scores three points, and a washer that goes into the box outside the tube scores one point.

I was first introduced to the game at a party maybe during my sophomore year in college. I don't recall exactly, but it was somewhere in that time period. Since where I went to undergraduate was/is lousy with all kinds of folks from the St. Louis area, I assumed washers was a St. Louis thing, a game born of the working class in South City, a game played outside in the small backyards of the city where Busch and Bud flow freely and alleged pork "steaks" are grilled.

As a side note, I'm surprised South City does not have its own Wikipedia entry and I have to link a "Neighborhoods of St. Louis" page instead.

Maybe I'm mistaken in assuming that it's a St. Louis thing since the International Association of Washer Players in based in Birmingham, Alabama. Then again, when I lived in Alabama, I never saw anyone play washers, and after reading up on their version of the game, it's not the washers game I'm familiar with. I'm used to seeing homemade boxes for the game, not pits.

For example, when we played washers at my fraternity house, we used someone's homemade boxes, and if you wanted to play a game involving pits, you went to the back edge of the backyard for horseshoes.

Regardless, we played a game yesterday, and the Hannah and I were victorious over Mrs. Nasty and Quinn. It was fun and brought back memories. I'm certainly rusty though. I need to get some practice in before late April for the 40th Roseball in Kirksville.

Even though they're a mass produced deal, the boxes seem pretty sturdy. I guess if they do break down, I can always follow the instructions on YouTube for "How to Build a Washers Game."

Last Lecture Series

As probably many universities are doing now, the University of Alabama is doing one of those last lecture series. At UA, students submit votes on which professor they want to deliver a lecture, and that person presents at the end of the spring. This year's winner is a Professor of History who specializes in the antebellum period. Click HERE for a short PR blurb from the university if you're interested.

I really like this idea, especially how a person is selected by students. But there is a herd mentality that goes on with colleges and universities. The "one book ~ one college" phenomenon has been happening for a good while on college campuses, and those initiatives have sometimes strong and sometimes limited success depending on the book. At least with the last lecture deal, it's an honor, whereas the one book ~ one college concept has issues since students get tired of talking about that book by usually about midway through the fall semester. You get to, say, November and "That horse, he dead."

When I read or hear about a last lecture series though, I get a grin on my face because it reminds me of a story of the "senior lecture series" that my fraternity did one year before I had joined. At that series, all seniors would have to deliver a lecture at a designated party (I believe it took place at a house affectionately called "The Stove"), and they would have to present while standing on top of a keg. I'm told one of the best presentations by a fellow who eventually earned his PhD in Chemistry was titled "Chemistry, Beer, and You."

That's higher learning.

Yet I wonder how many professors would be willing to deliver an entertaining and thought provoking lecture while teetering atop a keg of the Beast.