Gip's Front Yard

There are more than seven, of course. But these are the first things that came to mind. These are seven of the things I have that I never really thought I would.

Life takes mysterious and interesting turns all the time. As I’ve navigated the ride of my life, I’ve picked up:

A tablet computer. Don’t I sound old calling it a “tablet computer” instead of just a tablet? The original version of the tablet computer came and went in the late 1980s and early 1990s. No one found much need for one. Today, I own a simple $80 tablet I picked up at an electronics store. I can download YouTube videos and read Kindle books with it, and that’s all I need to do. I don’t have an iPad or anything fancy. That just wouldn’t fit my personality — or my budget. Besides, I do my real work on an old-fashioned desktop computer.

A George Foreman grill. I rarely give in to consumer pressure, but I wanted a George Foreman grill because I’d read how you can make great grilled vegetables using one of these machines. And supposedly, hamburgers take half the time as in a skillet. The problem is that I don’t like my food pressed down and dried out, and skillet cooking is actually quicker in many cases. So I’m having trouble figuring out what to do with this well-regarded and carefully promoted device.

A beard trimmer. Who knew I’d ever be able to grow a respectable beard? It took a while. Every guy owes it to himself to get the best stubble trimmer, best beard trimmer and best hair clippers available. When I was a kid, stubble wasn’t in, but things change. Attitudes change. The large number of attitude shifts since I was a kid extend far beyond facial hair — and that’s a very good thing. Plus, my writing work has involved researching stubble trimmers more times that I care to admit.

A Weed Eater. I always assumed I’d live in an apartment in town. But when the rent on the apartment we lived in for 11 years went up by more than $100 a month, we decided to try out the semi-rural life. We spend just as much time in the heart of the city as ever, but we sleep a few miles outside the big city. And after more than a decade of that, I’m ready for something else. The weeds are taking over the house anyway — because although I have a string trimmer, I don’t use it very much.

A stable of websites. I can never remember how many websites I have, but I think it’s 21 or so. Each of them makes me money in one way or another. Many of them are Amazon affiliate sites, but one of them — Fort Worth Copywriter  — is simply a site that tells people I’m a writer. I haven’t been actively promoting it for very long, and it’s already brought be a few writing clients.

A writing career. I never thought I’d make it as a freelance journalist, but I did for a while. Then when I returned to writing a few years ago, I never thought I’d make it as a web content writer. But I have. It’s a great feeling to work every day doing something I really enjoy — and something that improves the world. Many websites need much better content than they have now, and I can help with that.

A good life. I never really saw much future for myself. But armed with my George Foreman grill, 21 websites and my clunky little tablet, nothing can stop me. That may not be exactly what you require for happiness, however.

Your life probably involves many things you never thought you’d have either. A bit of unpredictability makes life interesting, doesn’t it?

One of the keys to a good life is to shed the people and things that weigh you down and fill your life with things that matter to you. That’s not something to be taken lightly and is, in fact, serious business.

Since discovering a recipe for an everyday chocolate cake in an old Everyday Food magazine, I’ve made it several times. But it never seemed quite right. Unless you add frosting, the cake never seemed to have much going for it.

After some experimenting, however, I’ve come up with an everyday chocolate cake recipe that you can make from things you probably keep in the house — with no milk, eggs or refrigerated ingredients. In fact, depending on how you feel about sugar, this could even be considered a vegan recipe.

And since you mix it right in the baking dish, there’s less cleanup than with most cake recipes.

Here’s the simple recipe:

Preheat over to 350 degrees.

Whisk the following ingredients together directly in an 8-inch square baking dish:

1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/3 cups sugar
4 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Once combined, push the dry ingredients to the outside edge of the dish and add the following to the middle:

6 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1 cup cold water

Using a whisk and a spoon if necessary to get into the edges, combine the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients until a relatively smooth batter forms. Then cook for 35 minutes. Cool before cutting.

Here are a few tips:

• It’s essential that you cool this cake before serving it, and it will stick to the pan a bit.
• If this version still isn’t sweet enough for you, you can make an icing or use a canned icing. You can also drizzle with chocolate syrup — preferably one without high fructose corn syrup.
• If your vanilla extract is a good brand, you may not need quite so much of it.
• Keep in mind that this isn’t a decadent restaurant-style cake, nor is it a diet recipe. But it makes for a good dessert to have a couple hours after a quiet dinner at home. And it won’t leave you feeling guilty.
• This recipe makes excellent muffins. Just decrease the cooking time and add chocolate chips, peanut butter chips or nuts, if you like.

So there you have it. A simple pantry chocolate cake you can have at your home every day. In fact, you probably have everything you need to make it right now.

And since there’s essentially no cholesterol or animal products, there’s no reason not to have a second slice.

It’s interesting how some things that I thought I’d put on the Internet years ago never actually found their way into cyberspace. Fortunately, I never delete anything that I create, so lost-in-time items like this one are always around when I remember to introduce them to the world.

My simple and quick green chile stew recipe was created in an attempt to duplicate and perhaps improve upon the version of this dish served at Pancho’s Mexican Buffet, a mostly defunct chain of mediocre Mexican food places. (Only a dozen or so loosely connected locations remain.)

While much of the food at this chain was lackluster or worse — accounting for its disappearance from most markets, I’m sure — the green chile stew was uncomplicated and very good. And I suppose it still is at the remaining locations. I haven’t actually been to one of the chain’s restaurants in years.

So here’s the recipe. With nothing to do but brown some meat, cut some potatoes and open some cans, you can have this ready for dinner in 30 minutes or so.

Quick Green Chile Stew

Brown in a stew pot:
1 pound of pork stew meat in some olive oil with salt and pepper

When done, add:
6 ounces (½ bag) frozen seasoning blend vegetables (onions, bell peppers, celery, parsley)

When cooked through, add:
1 can mild Hatch green chile enchilada sauce
1 can diced tomatoes (do not drain)
1 can chicken broth
1 can water
4-5 medium potatoes, diced in chucks small enough to fit on a spoon
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon salt

Cover and bring nearly to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until potatoes are done, about 15 minutes.

Allow to reduce without lid for 5 to 10 minutes. Adjust seasoning, if necessary.

Here are a few notes that may help you in preparing this recipe:

• Those are 14.5-ounce to 16-ounce cans, so adjust accordingly if you get your products in different sizes.
• If you can’t find anything called “seasoning blend”, just use onions. Or make up your own collection of aromatic veggies to add to the soup.
• If you can’t find pork stew meat, you can cut up a pork roast or pork country style ribs. The recipes tastes great with chicken or beef as well.
• Potatoes don’t freeze well, so I don’t recommend freezing this stew. But it’s great after a few days in the refrigerator.

So there you have it: my long-awaited green chile stew recipe.

It’s actually better than the version that Pancho’s served, as it should be. When you’re trying to copy a recipe, you owe it yourself to make it better. While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, I’m not trying to flatter anyone. I’m trying to make good soup.

I’ve been trying to find a good dentist recently, and that got me thinking about why I want to choose a new one. The one I went to last — years ago now — was competent enough, I suppose, but we don’t take the same approach to life.

And after I first visited him, I found out he is also a low-level politician. That turned me off.

Call me old-fashioned, but I’d like a dentist who is focused on his practice rather that on his political ambitions. But that’s not why I want to find someone else.

The political dentist from which I’m fleeing got off on the wrong foot with me the first time I visited him by asking the stupidest question I’ve ever heard from a professional: “What are your goals for your teeth?”

It was the first thing he said to me after telling me his name. Then he grabbed me by the forearm with both hands and shook me a bit, apparently avoiding the awkwardness of a handshake.

“I’d like to keep them,” I answered, perhaps too quickly.

Maybe he was trying to politely ask if I was interested in a whitening procedure since my teeth were looking a bit dingy. It could be that he was trying to ask if I wanted my crooked front teeth straightened. He might have wondered if I have some kind of higher ambitions in life and thought my average-looking teeth were holding me back.

But instead of asking me to honestly discuss what I expected of him, he asked me if I had any goals for my teeth

Truthfully, I returned to him a couple of times after that first cleaning appointment. But I never felt right about him or his practice.

When I visited last, he has upgraded to digital x-rays. That’s actually a smart idea, right? But he and his staff had also started wearing little headsets so they could talk to each other without actually looking anyone in the face. It seemed like something right out of NASA — or the Taco Bell drive-through.

Could it be that this dental practice was more interested in gadgets, gimmicks and aspirations than in cleaning and repairing teeth? Or am I just being old-fashioned and judgmental?

Whichever is the case, I really need a new dentist. This guy put me off medical people — more than I already was. I don’t like dealing with these kinds of situations anyway. And there’s nothing I dislike more than disingenuous, disinterested and dismaying people.

The only health professional I’ve seen since visiting this dentist for the final time a few years ago is an optometrist who prescribed me low power reading glasses. He didn’t ask me about my goals for my eyes.

Still, though, the optometrist wears a very strange toupee, and I wonder how well he can see if he wears something that looks like that on his head. But that’s a story for another time.

I’ve been experimenting recently with how to make things in an electric waffle maker besides waffles. As it turns out, almost everything I’ve tried has been a success, and there’s no simpler way to make a really good grilled cheese than in a waffle maker.

Stay with me for a minute and I’ll tell you how to do it, but as with most everything else I write, there’s a bit of story first.

Other Uses For Your Waffle Maker

It all started a couple of months ago when I bought an Oster Belgian waffle maker. I can’t even remember what got me interested in having one, but since I don’t like gadgets and I don’t like having useless junk around, it took me a while to decide to buy one.

Then, I set out to find other uses for a waffle maker besides just making waffles. As it turns out there are many. The only thing that hasn’t worked very well is making brownies, but that’s a story for another day.

Any kind of bread can be cooked in a waffle maker — including canned biscuits and crescent rolls. And I’ve heard you can even reheat pizza — although I haven’t tried that yet.

While a waffle maker is sold as a single-use machine, it isn’t. It fits perfectly into my simple lifestyle and my strained budget.

Making A Grilled Cheese In A Waffle Maker

After some experimentation, I found that the best way to make a grilled cheese sandwich in a waffle maker is to slap it together and cook it for 90 seconds. That could be the end of the story, but I’ll explain a bit more.

My preferred way to make a grilled cheese has always been to butter two pieces of bread, then start toasting them butter side down in a hot skillet. I add two slices of cheddar or American cheese to one piece of bread, then put the other butter side up over the bread and cheese. Then, I smoosh — that is, squish them together with a spatula. A quick turn to make sure both sides are toasted evenly and the process is complete.

I tried using buttered bread in the waffle maker, but that just made a greasy and wet sandwich. I found that two slices of cheese between two slices of wheat bread (or something with a bit of sugar in it) works best. Smash the waffle maker closed slightly but not all the way and cook for a minute and a half. If your waffle maker is conditioned well, you don’t need any oil or spray.

That’s it. Process complete. And although I like a long story as much as anyone, there’s really nothing more to say.