Laugh Dammit

Posted on 20/03/2016 by Grumpa Joe

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  1. A Marine in a Nursing Home

The family of a retired Marine Master Gunnery Sergeant with 32 years in the Corps reluctantly decided that at age 92, he needed more care than they could provide. The only  decent place close to their home was a nursing home for retired  soldiers. They approached the facility and were told that, while Army vets got first choice, they would take vets of the other services if there happened to be an opening; which, by good fortune, there was.

A week after placing the retired Marine there, his sons came to visit.”How do you like it here, Pop?” they asked.

“It’s wonderful,” said the old Marine. “Great chow, lots to do, and they treat everyone with great respect.”

“How so, Pop?”

“Well, take Harry, across the hall, 88 and was in the Air Force. He hasn’t worn the uniform in 30 years, but they still call him ‘General.’

Then George, down the hall, used to lead the Army band. Hasn’t conducted a note in 40 years, but they still call him ‘Maestro!’

And Bob used to be a surgeon in the Navy, has not operated on anyone in 20 years, but they still call him ‘Doctor.”

“That’s fine for the other guys, Pop, but how do they treat you?

“Me? They treat me with even more respect. I’m 92, haven’t had sex in 10 years, and they still call me, That F***ing Marine!”

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This one is why I’m on the Government’s Blacklist.1.jpg

2. Five surgeons from big cities are discussing who makes the Best patients to operate on.

The first surgeon, from New York, says, “I like to see accountants on my operating table because when you open them up, everything inside is numbered.”

The second, from Chicago, responds, “Yeah, but you should try Electricians! Everything inside them is color coded.”

The third surgeon, from Dallas, says, “No, I really think librarians are the best, everything inside them is in alphabetical order.”

The fourth surgeon, from Los Angeles chimes in: “You know, I like Construction workers…Those guys always understand when you have A few parts left over.”

But the fifth surgeon, from Washington, DC shut them all up when He observed: “You’re all wrong. Politicians are the easiest to operate on. There’s no guts, no heart, no balls, no brains, and no spine. Plus, the head and the ass are interchangeable.”

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3 sons

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A father told his three sons when he sent them to the university “I feel it’s my duty to provide you with the best possible education, and you do not owe me anything for that. However, I want you to appreciate it; as a token, please each put $1,000 into my coffin when I die.”

And so it happened.  The sons became a doctor, a lawyer, and a  financial planner, each very successful financially. When they saw their father in the coffin one day, they remembered his wish. First it was the doctor who put ten $100 bills onto the chest of the deceased. Then came the financial planner, who put a $1,000 bill there, too.

Finally, it was the heartbroken lawyer’s turn.  He dipped into his pocket, took out his checkbook, wrote a check for $3,000.

He put it into his father’s coffin, and took the $2,000 cash.

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  1. Heartwarming Story

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A man lost an arm when his golf cart rolled over on him on a down slope. He became

very depressed because he loved to play golf. One day in his despair, he decided to commit suicide and end it all. He got on an elevator and went to the top of a building to jump off.

He was standing on the ledge looking down and saw this man down on the sidewalk skipping along, whooping and kicking up his heels.  He looked closer and saw that this man didn’t have any arms at all. He started thinking, “What am I doing up here feeling sorry for myself?  I still have one good arm to do things with.” He thought, “There goes  a man with no arms skipping down the sidewalk so happy, and going on with  his life.”

He hurried down to the sidewalk and caught up with the man with no arms. He told him how glad he was to see him because he lost one of his arms  and felt useless and was going to kill himself. He thanked him for saving his life and said he knew he could make it with one arm if the guy could go on with no arms. The man with no arms began  dancing and whooping and kicking up his heels again.

He asked, “Why are  you so happy anyway?”

He said, “I’m NOT happy. My balls itch.”

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Why did the chicken cross the road?

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DONALD TRUMP: We will build a big wall to keep illegal chickens from crossing the road. We will have a door for legal chickens.

JOHN KERRY: We will trust the chicken to tell us whether it crossed

the road or not.

CHRIS CHRISTIE: We need to water board that chicken to find out why it crossed the road.

RAND PAUL: It’s none of our business why the chicken crossed the road.

NANCY PELOSI: We will have to wait until the chicken crosses the road to see what it says.

CARLY FIORINA: Hilary Clinton lied about why the chicken crossed the road.

BRIAN WILLIAMS: I crossed the road with the chicken.

BEN CARSON: This isn’t brain surgery. To look for pyramids… it wanted grain.

SARAH PALIN: The chicken crossed the road because, gosh-darn it, he’s a maverick!

BARACK OBAMA: Let me be perfectly clear, if the chickens like their eggs they can keep their eggs. No chicken will be required to cross the road to surrender her eggs. Period.

HILLARY CLINTON: What difference at this point does it make why the chicken crossed the road?

GEORGE W. BUSH: We don’t really care why the chicken crossed the road.

We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road or not.

The chicken is either with us or against us. There is no middle ground here.

BILL CLINTON: I did not cross the road with that chicken.

BERNIE SANDERS: That little chicken will pay 80% income taxes no matter what side of the road it’s on. He’s got to help finance free college even for those that just want a four year vacation.

AL GORE: I invented the chicken.

AL SHARPTON: Why are all the chickens white?

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If you didn’t at least chuckle at something here you are not inclined to humor.

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CATALOG CHICKS

Posted on 01/04/2011 by Grumpa Joe

Grumpa Joe loves chickin’. He likes it roasted, broasted, grilled, fried, cooked in soup, and diced into a salad. All his life he had chickens to eat. His mom raised chickens for many years in the backyard coop.  She stopped when she finally discovered that it was cheaper, and easier, to buy a fresh chicken from the chicken store.  Until then, she raised chickens for our consumption.

Every spring, in March, the mail man arrived with a large, flat, box with holes all around the sides. The box made noise because inside there were two dozen newly hatched chicks ordered from the Sears catalog.

 

The chicks, squeezed into the box, were yellow, and furry. They hatched just a few days earlier. The cute fuzzy cheepers were fun to watch.  Outside, the temperature was still too cold to put the chicks into the coop, so Mom kept them in the house.

She got a large cardboard box with tall sides from the store, lined it with newspaper, then took it upstairs to my brother Will’s bedroom. The chick’s new home was near the window, and next to the heat vent.  Mom put a watering dish into the box with a feed tray.  She fed them finely chopped, boiled eggs. Figure that one out, which came first?

To keep them warm, she placed a light bulb over the box to give them more heat and light. As the chicks grew, she switched their diet to chicken feed. In a couple of weeks, the chicks doubled in size, and began to get their feathers.

When the weather got warmer, Mom moved them outside to the coop. There, they grew up to provide us with eggs. Eventually, they made it to our Sunday dinner table; yum, yum, yum.

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I Love My Nu-Wave

Posted on 13/03/2011 by Grumpa Joe

I Love My Nu-Wave Cooker

Cooking is something that eluded me until I was forced into it. Then, I wanted to be Emiril overnight. I began watching cooking shows on TV to learn. Between the Food Channel with Emiril, Rachel, Mario, Bobby, Paula, Julia, Martha (yes I confess I watched Martha), and the memories of watching my mother in the kitchen I learned the basics.

Hunger is the mother of all cooking, and it became necessary to reinvent myself as a chef to satisfy that basic drive.

Over the past ten years, my appreciation for cooking gadgets has become overwhelming. First it was a proper knife and cutting board, then a whisk, a thermometer, a timer, and a salad spinner. I learned to use olive oil to saute (fry). Peggy showed me a vertical rotisserie for roasting meat, and a electric roaster oven.

The challenge was to use them all to cook, not just good, but great meals. The rotisserie was the first adventure with a whole chicken. Man did it turn out juicy. The success with the chicken led me to try a beef roast; it became another juicy success.

Thanksgiving turned into a challenge. We invited the entire family; all twenty-four of us. The volume of items being brought to the house in combination with the turkey and stuffing put a strain on our oven. That’s when we broke out the roaster oven and used it to make the turkey.

Among the best cooking gadgets ever invented is the George Foreman Grill. What a great way to heat meat evenly. Our first Foreman grill is worn out. It still works, but the Teflon is gone. During our winter hiatus to Arizona, we missed the Foreman so much we bought a new one.  We used it daily. The new one has removable plates and is easier to clean.

Two years ago, we visited friends in Georgia. I chronicled the trip in a post called Needed Downtime. Our hosts, Lou and Lori made us a huge breakfast of bacon and eggs. They cooked a pound of bacon to perfection in a record time without a mess.

“How did you do that,” we asked?

“We used our Nu-Wave cooker,” said Lori.

“What is that?”

That started them raving about this really cool gadget. They told story after story of how they use this thing to cook chicken, steaks, and even vegetables. Of course, we got a demonstration on how easy it is to use, and to clean.

“I’ve got to get me one of those,” I told them.

Fast forward one year.

Peggy and I are tourist shopping in Branson, Missouri. I should restate that, Peggy was shopping, I was gawking at the young ladies behind the counter and trying not to look conspicuous. The next thing I see Peggy walking toward me with a huge box.
“I bought you a Nu-Wave.”

My reaction was that of a normal husband, “you did what?”

“I bought you a Nu-Wave cooker.”

“How much was it?”

“Never mind, just take it, this box is heavy.”

So began my love affair with the Nu-Wave. We’ve had it nearly one year, and I have used it to grill steaks, chicken, pork chops, pork roast, turkey breast, sirloin-tip roast, potatoes, and fish. The feature I love best is the cooking card that gives me cooking times for both defrosted and frozen items.

Very often, we make our menu decision on the spur of the moment. We can take rock-hard frozen pork chops and put them on the Nu-Wave. I set the timer for ten minutes, then turn them over for another ten minutes, and wallah, we have tasty tender pork chops. While the chops are grilling, we microwave a couple of small potatoes, and some broccoli.  In twenty minutes, we went from freezer to table and made a meal fit for a king.

Here are some photos of a whole 5.5 pound chicken fully defrosted and the Nu-Wave. The cooking time is 15 minutes per pound. In seventy-five minutes the meat temperature is right on.

My Nu-Wave is now the favored appliance in the kitchen. At Thanksgiving, the turkey is in the roaster oven and a turkey breast is in the Nu-Wave.

We still use the grillerator, but steaks, roasts, and whole chickens are better on the Nu-Wave.

ANALOG Model Nu-Wave Infrared Cooler

 

Fully Defrosted Chicken

Chicken Rubbed in Season Salt and Emiril's Essence

Chicken Rubbed With Season Salt and Emiril's Essence in NuWave

NuWave Cooking Chart

Cook Times for Poultry

Control Panel With the Power Locked on FULL, and the Timer Setting

Fully Roasted Chicken With the Meat Thermometer

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CITY FARM

Posted on 20/01/2011 by Grumpa Joe

My family lived on South Avalon Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. They call the neighborhood Burnside.  Mom and Dad raised us in a small house, with a porch across the front. The property was small, only twenty-five feet wide, and one-hundred twenty feet long. It was a typical city lot. Our house was a small, wood framed, two-story with seven steps that led from the porch to the city sidewalk.  Between the porch and the sidewalk, was a narrow bed of flowers, and a patch of grass.  The parkway between the sidewalk and the street had grass. Sometimes there was a tree there too.

All of the houses were very close to each other. The narrow space between houses called a gang-way was only wide enough for one person to walk through.  On the end of the gangway, at the back of the house, Dad installed a gate to close off the back yard.  At the back of the house we had another porch which Dad walled in to make a three-season room.  Behind the house, was Mom’s farm. It extended between a very small lawn surrounded by flower beds, and vegetables that extended to the garage and chicken coop.

At the end of the lot stood Dad’s one car garage. He built it directly on the ground without a foundation. It had a dirt floor.  Ma’s chicken coop hung off one side. Together the garage and the coop stretched across the lot.  The chickens roamed in a small space in front of the coop.

In this precious plot of ground, Mom and Dad squeezed a front lawn with a flower bed, a three-bedroom house, a back lawn and flower bed, a good-sized vegetable garden, a chicken ranch, and a garage.

Mom grew most of what she needed to feed the family right in her backyard.   The garden produced tomatoes, onions, kohlrabi, cabbage, corn, beans, peas, lettuce, radishes, cucumbers and more.  What we couldn’t eat immediately, she preserved, by canning.  The chickens provided fresh eggs, and meat for Sunday dinners.

Mom grew flowers from seed she got from friends or by taking cuttings. In Spring she had tulips, and by Fall the same bed was a sea of chrysanthemums.  Mom had roses, snap dragons, petunias, dahlias, bleeding hearts, marigolds, zinnias, carnations, and pansies to add a mix of color.  She planted any flower that she could get, and propagated them to keep it going.

My love for flowers, came from watching Mom’s delight at seeing things grow. She loved bright colorful flowers, and grew as many as she could. Mom kept a garden on her father’s the farm too, but there it was mostly vegetables, fruit, and berries, as opposed to flowers.

Her knowledge of plants came from watching other gardeners, and by experimenting  with seeds. She never turned down an offer of new seeds or cuttings from friends. Her trial and error approach, taught her the best methods.

Mother kept her gardens going until she was into her eighties. When her heart began to slow, so did she. She began to lose her sight, and memory. Her gardens became smaller and smaller. The loss of energy killed her desire for the garden, and the city farm was no more.

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