Anything You Can Do, I Can Do ... Similar

So we recently ordered Domino's new "sweet bbq bacon" specialty chicken with a medium pizza.  The chicken was good but seemed at little bit expensive given our current budget.  If you look at the components of any of the specialty chicken, it is not hard to reproduce or be inspired to create your own unique "specialty chicken."  All you really need to start with is breaded, cubed chicken.  If you are being lazy, you could use chicken nuggets but why not make it entirely your own from the beginning.

I started with three boneless, skinless chicken breasts washed and cubed then breaded using an altered version of Oven Fried Chicken III, regular or Panko bread crumbs work as well.  This recipe is good but if you don't have the time to mix the breading and spices together, Zatarain's Bake and Crisp 8 oz breading mix works just as well.  I used the Seafood mix because that was all that was available at the store at the time and I wanted to use my coupon.  If you look at the ingredients for the Chicken and Seafood mix, the latter has fewer spices but either will work because most of the taste will be covered by the BBQ sauce.  The BBQ sauce I used was the one on hand: Rufus Teague "Honey Sweet"; and for the cheese, pre-shredded cheddar.

Product Placement!

Here is a faster run-down:

1. Turn oven on to 350 - 375 degrees F.
2. 3-4 boneless chicken breasts, washed and cubed ... skin on or off will work.
3. In a bowl or bag, smear chicken with "edible adhesive" - meaning, egg wash, mustard, mayonnaise or whatever works for you, just choose one to use.  You need this to make the bread crumb mix stick.
4. In another bowl or bag, cover chicken completely with bread crumb mix.
5. Depending on the size of the bowl or bag, you may need to repeat steps 2 & 3 a couple of times to cover all of the chicken.
6. Line all sides of a 13" x 9" pan and glaze with your favorite oil that can stand oven temps.  I highly recommend lining the pan with Reynolds Pan Lining Paper: the bottom is foil and the top is parchment paper - the best of both worlds and no mess to clean up at the end of the meal!  Foil is okay but you will need the thick foil and watch for burning.  For the oil, I used vegetable oil.
7. Place breaded chicken in lined pan and bake for 20-30 mins or when meat thermometer reads 180 degrees F with three pieces on it.  If you are not sure, cut one of the pieces open to check for "done-ness".  You will need to rotate the chicken so that all sides are cooked evenly.  The batting may slip a bit from the chicken and that is okay; a wooden spatula may be best for turning.  

   

   Fully cooked chicken with Zatarain's breading and mayonnaise "glue".

8. Once chicken is fully cooked, take out the pan, turn off the oven but leave the oven door closed.
9. Drizzle BBQ sauce over cooked chicken such that all the tops of the chicken are covered.
10. Next layer is pre-shredded cheese, use as much as you think your stomach can handle or at least covers all of the chicken.
11. Finally, the bacon: coarsely broken bacon (or bacon bits) sprinkled on top.
12. Place pan back in warm, turned off oven.
13. Ready to eat in ~5 mins or when cheese is melted but not burned!

Hopefully you can see the steps you would need to change to make the Specialty Chicken your own brand of special.  Make it a party treat by doling them out on platters with toothpicks.  You are only as limited as your imagination!

These reheat in the oven with foil
just fine the next couple of days though not past a week...
assuming you have any left!

Have any great combinations you would like to share?  Comment below or develop a whole menu and open up your own restaurant, just let us know where to get your version.

Bit Off More Information Than You Can Chew

In the past couple of weeks, I have tried to finish off one class and start four others on Coursera.org.  I bet you can already see where this is going...and you would be right, just look at that "About Me" bit to the right  -->.  
I have been trying to finish off the second Virology course on top of starting the following: 

• Programming for Everyone (University of Michigan)
• R Programming (Johns Hopkins)
• Getting and Cleaning Data (Johns Hopkins)
• The Data Scientist's Toolbox (Johns Hopkins)

Which would be okay if I already knew or had some experience with the associated programs.  As I learned last year (2013) at SAMSI's Undergraduate Modeling Workshop on hurricane data, I am not as good as I would like to be at R Programming (I know what needs to be done, I just cannot often implement that in R).  The current courses listed above are good but too much for an "old timer" like me at one time.  On the plus side, Johns Hopkins is offering a specialization track on Data Science, which means that all of these courses will be repeating every three months for the next 9 months (including this month).

I can get through the first and the last on the list but the other courses are a bit difficult to get through what with stumbling around the new programs.  Those new programs are: Python, Git, Github and RStudio.  There is not too much difference between R and RStudio ... alright, there are a number of differences and nice things about RStudio but I still want my "Run" button, damn it!  ...And Git!  Git reminds me of Lotus 1, 2, 3 and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz command line game from 1985!  Yeah, I am that old.  I guess I should also point out that I am not really a programmer; I don't even do html!  It is a lot to take in at one time and different ways of thinking about data & information...this is probably why I am drinking three to four mini pepsi's a day right now.

Frustration (usually with myself), limited time and desire to do all my hobbies (i.e. sewing, reading, cooking, baking, human languages (Russian, Korean, Latin, Cajun, etc), knitting, genealogy, finding a job *is that really a hobby?*, ...) does not make for a good learner. *sigh*

Decision: I shall try to keep up with the quizzes, videos and assignments for the Python programming and Toolbox courses but probably wait for the other classes to come around again, taking part in as much as I can.


Post Script: 
Let's hear it for 5.25 floppys, when floppys were actually floppy!  

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Floppy_disk_2009_G1.jpg

....Ummh, that takes me back to the days of Reader Rabbit, Carmen Sandiego and Oregon Trail!

After Four Mini Pepsi-s...

The fifth anniversary of my Father’s death is coming up in the beginning of June.  Part of me would like to go back to California and visit his grave, then sit along the ever changing edge of the Pacific and sandy southern beaches.  I could stand there and let the wind and light and earth pass through me.  I could let them swallow me in their solitude and just be.  No thoughts, no good, no bad, just tons of particle-like wave packets vibrating about in a fixed point of space and time.  Don’t worry, this is merely a thought experiment.  If you can imagine it, does it mean it is possible?  (…and what if you cannot imagine it?)

            Alright, if we take the western view of time as linear with the current inability of large living organisms like ourselves to be able to move freely about time, what happens to a person after they die?  Do the dead continue to exist so long as there are people to remember them?  And how does the way a person remember us shape who we are whether living or dead?

            I cannot help but think about The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares when I think of anyone, past, present, living, dead or even those on the distant shores of the Milky Way.  The story of the Invention is about a man alone on an island which periodically plays the three dimensional images of people long since deceased.  A week of their life recorded and played out over and over whenever the tide is high.  Is that what is like to be yourself in someone else’s memory?  Just a moment in time that you are a part of with them which can be played over and again?  And is that how we are all connected, through shared memory of individuals linking to one another?  …This last thought seems to have gotten away from me.

            The thing is, I know I do not need to be in the physical space where my Father is buried to feel whatever I need to feel on an anniversary.  I cannot go back and change anything.  And with a vivid imagination, I can feel the same beach sunrays whilst basking in desert sunrays, if I close my eyes.

            Another part of me doesn’t want to go back.  I did this the other day using Google Maps, slowly dragging myself along the streets I grew up with for twenty years.  Minor changes had occurred but nothing too big, not so much that I couldn’t find familiar landmarks and haunts.  But being on that street view was like traveling down every single memory I had on that street concurrently.  Memory piled on top of memory; good moments with painful ones.  So much stuff that I had put away and moved on from came tumbling back.  I wasn’t prepared for it.  - Nobody told me about the dangers of traveling down Memory Lane alone!

            Shall I feel my fear and let it pass through me?  What else can you do?

The best part of Anna Karenina is the very end when Konstantin Levin states:

            I’ll go on getting angry at Ivan the coachman, I’ll go on arguing, go on expressing my ideas inappropriately, there will still be a wall between the inmost shrine of my soul and other people, including my wife; I’ll go on blaming her because of my own fears, then repent…but from now on my life, my whole life, no matter what happens to me, every second of it, is not only not meaningless as it was before, but it has the incontestable meaning of the goodness I have the power to put into it!

Thank goodness we have control over Memory Lane…

Here is some music to go with your travels, M83's Midnight City.

Rambling Philosophical Confession, of sorts

In recent days I have been reminded about extended travels to non-US destinations; people living in foreign countries for an extended period of time and who are roughly my age.  I am tad bit envious for a moment, usually because it is a place I want to visit, but then I pull my head up from the computer screen and look around my room.  I can see my wealth around me, the money I have put into my vast and diverse mini library.  It would probably fill about six bookcases if I had money enough to display them all.  I love my collection; I love being able to walk five steps and physically touch and smell the information of visionaries past.

My favorite pen drawing of
Dr. Frankenstein by Bernie Wrightson
from his illustrated version of
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

            It is a diverse collection, comprised of classical fiction, some modern pieces that are worth keeping, obscure Russian literature and collections through other countries I have yet to become obsessed about.  On the top shelves there, you can see the historical fiction series I am unwilling to break up or put in alphabetical order.  Just below it is the small amalgamation of plays, prose and poetry.  Over there are the philosophies, social and national histories; genealogy, diseases and migration, ArcGIS and mapping, astronomy, chemistry, physics and Sherlock Holmes.  The anthropology, skeletons and archaeology take up nearly half a case in and of themselves.  And don’t forget about the growing knitting and sewing sections…oh, and the math and statistics, quite delightful once you get to know them.   My most recent book fetish though has been for mid-century or earlier language books.  I love the illustrations and scenes of life I will never get to experience unless I meet The Doctor.  It would probably behoove me to learn some of these languages before I turn forty.  Or have a child for each of the languages I want to learn and live vicariously through them.  Ehh gads! That is ten children...better double up on the language to kid ratio.

            If I truly wanted to, I might be able to pare down to those books I could not live without, but that is just the thing: these are the books that keep me from feeling lost in a digital desert.  If the internet crashed tomorrow I could still feel connected to other distant worlds and people because I have some of their stories around me.  I can still explore the world even at my poorest depths or stuck in a small town with little diversity.

            I could and have lived without all my books for a time.  It felt weird; that same strangeness when you haven’t seen a good friend in a while and you are not sure when you will.  Then I imagine that these people who are able to pack up and move to a new country have a place they can come back to.  That all the objects and mementos their parents have kept all these years are safely stored there and which will continue to collect dust for at least another couple of decades before they will have to deal with them.  I wish I had that security.

            Maybe it is the hording gene that prohibits me from taking the other path - those who have not felt a secure home as a youngster become a rolling stone themselves, moving on when the moss begins to grow.  They see objects and tools of the home as things which can be easily borrowed, bought and sold; that nothing is truly sacred and being attached to objects may limit the amount of experiences one can have.  I can see their point.  I can also see that a stone free of moss could lose a sense of belonging, a place where you feel you at home.

            Then again, if you felt home within yourself, shouldn't you be able to call the place where you are home?

Perhaps this is a circular argument I will never be able to convince myself wholly of one way or the other…may haps I should not even try.