Archives for November,2003
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Thursday, November 27, 2003
Skipped beats and farting
I've been very lazy (again) and haven't posted in a long time. So to satisfy y'all, I've put up this post and a bunch more Thanksgiving recipes.
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Web site logs are amazing things. If you've never looked at yours I'd highly suggest you do. They can be the funniest things around.
After Dunstan and I chatted about them, he put up this post about searching through his logs. He was amazed at the things people searched for to find his site and the phrases that he ranked high on Google for. I was going to make a comment at the bottom of his page the strange searches that my site comes up for, but it was long for a comment so I thought I'd do my own post.
I think one of the funniest that comes up regularly in my logs is people who search for "skipped beats and farting". At least 4 whacked out people have found my site using that phrase (I've lost some of my logs along the way so there's probably more). My site comes up number one in Google for that phrase. Don't ask me why. Other interesting search phrases:
- "Spanking Tara" (on the 5th page in Google) and "Spanking in Cleveland" - you kinky people!
- "How to do the Cleveland Hustle" (#3 in Google).
- "gave ultimatum to marry me or break up" (don't know what that one's from - 13th in Google).
- "Honeymoon photos" (surprisingly I come up 44th out of 695,000).
- "kissing" is the word that's 5th most popular on my list (on Google image search a pic of my husband and I come up 404th) of course, if you search for "wedding kissing" we come up as the 11th image.
- I get a ton of variations on "sister in underwear" for a post I did about my sister and I as kids.
- There's also a ton of variations on "shipwreck photos".
- Of course there's lots of searches with speling misstakes that I made and the searcher made. So misspell your important but often-searched-for-terms and you'll get more visits than if you didn't misspell them ;-)
- Someone searched for "there are no leaves on my magnolia tree" and managed to find my site. The phrase "there's a hole in my bucket dear liza" was also found.
- How about the person who searched for "'honda civic hybrid' bra"? I wonder what they were looking for? I come up 13th for that phrase in Google.
- Or "belly hair photos" ? What's with that?
- Who searched for "tara shut up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"???
- And Marlene Bruce - I caught you red-handed! - searching for link:http://digitizethis.com/journal/ !;-)
- And HOW ON EARTH did I come up 20th in Google for "dirty sex on mac osx"!!!
Posted by Me @ 04:44PM [Link]
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Thanksgiving Recipe #6 - Roast potatoes
My grandma makes these better than anyone else in the world - I'm not sure what her trick is exactly, but this is her recipe and it'll still taste amazing even if you don't have her magic cooking hands
Ingredients
- White roasting potatoes (2 small ones per person or one large one) - cut into quarters or halves if they're too small
- White flour
Directions
- Par boil the potatoes for about 5 minutes - they should just be getting a bit soft
- Drain them and let them cool for a bit
- Flour them lightly
- Put them around the turkey and baste with the turkey
- OR -
Put them in their own roasting container in the same oven as the turkey (make sure your oven is big enough for both) and baste them a little every time you baste the turkey. - The potatoes should be in the oven for the last 45 minutes to 1 hour that the turkey's in.
- Serve
Posted by Me @ 10:36AM [Link]
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Thanksgiving Recipe #5 - Turkey Gravy
Okay this is assuming you've followed the recipe for Turkey (Thanksgiving recipe #4) or at least that you have a roasting pan with turkey juices in it.
Ingredients
- Turkey juices
- 2 cups Chicken or vegetable stock
- 2 tbs Cornstarch
- white or red wine (optional)
Directions
- With the turkey out of the roasting pan, put the pan on the stove and heat up the turkey juices
- Add the 2 cups of stock - if you are using wine, add one cup of wine and one cup of stock
- Stir it around and loosen up any bits of turkey on the bottom
- Add the cornstarch and continue stirring - try to get any big lumps of cornstarch out
- Keep heating and stirring until the cornstarch does it's magic and the gravy starts to thicken
- Pour it out through a wire-mesh strainer (Not a pasta strainer) into a gravy boat or other pouring device
- Serve with turkey
Posted by Me @ 10:28AM [Link]
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Thanksgiving Recipe #4 - The Turkey
Okay... so I've been slacking a bit with this thanksgiving recipe thing. What can I say? Here's the most important recipe, just in time for American Thanksgiving. The turkey.
Ingredients
- 1 turkey - preferrably free range, 10 -25 lbs. You should allow at least 1 pound per person (I usually do 2 per person for leftovers)
- Fresh thyme, rosemary (Go easy. It's pretty strong tasting), marjoram or other fresh herbs - you can use any combo you think would be nice
- Carrots (peeled) and celery - chopped into largish pieces
- 3-4 lemons (4 for a larger bird)
- 5+ cloves of garlic - cut in half so they are as flat as possible
- 2 cloves of garlic - chop into bits or crush
- Salt, Pepper
- Olive oil and soft butter
Directions
Note: you should always be careful about
salmonella and other bacteria when handling raw poultry. Ensure that you employ proper
handling techniques and make sure the bird is
fully cooked before eating.- Make sure the cavity of the bird is empty. You can throw away the stuff inside for this recipe or keep it if you want to make something with it
- Wash out the bird with cold water in the sink
- Pre-heat the oven to 325° F or 162° C
- Put into a large roasting pan - don't worry if you don't have a pan with a lid, or if the lid won't fit on top, you can always put aluminum foil over the bird. There should be some room around the bird for roast potatoes.
- Take the zest off two of the lemons. Take half of your herbs and chop them up. Leave the other half "au naturel". Put the zest, chopped up herbs and garlic in a little bowl and set aside.
- Cut the other lemons into half then the halves into half (ie quarters :-).
- Put the lemons, celery and carrots into the bird cavity with the "au naturel" herbs
- Truss the bird
- Push the halved garlic cloves under the skin all around the bird. You may need to make little incisions in the skin in order to space them out well.
- Rub the soft butter all over the turkey
- Rub the herb/garlic/lemon zest mixture all over the turkey
- Sprinkle salt and pepper all over the bird - don't use too much salt it's really nasty if you put too much on - a pinch or two should be enough. Sea salt and freshly ground pepper are best, but use whatever you have on hand.
- Drizzle olive oil over the bird and put into the oven.
- Baste every 15-25 minutes
- It should take about 10-12 minutes per pound to cook
- If you've put stuffing into the bird instead of veggies the stuffing must be at least 160°F (71°C) before the bird is done
- Using an instant read thermometer, put the thermometer into the thigh (it's better if it's not touching bone) and it must read 175°F (80°C) to 180°F (82°C)
- Once it's cooked, take the bird out of the oven and let it sit for about 20-30 minutes
- If the bird isn't too big, pick it up and hold it so the juices drain out into the pan
- Carve and serve
Posted by Me @ 10:21AM [Link]
