Jessica is presently in the other room schooling the 4 year old. How did the girl turn 4?! Blows my mind. Anyway, she’s being schooled on greater than and less than and I think she’s got the concept down. It tends to really register once you put the lessons in candy form. Fortunately its autumn and the season calls for candy.

Next month I hope we can teach her pie charts with real pecan pie.

I’ve added one more blog to my wide array of places that I’m probably going to write fewer articles to.  I’ve started a food blog because I’ve had some interesting reading lead to some different conclusions than I’ve been applying to my life in the last 8 weeks or so.  If you’re not subscribed to the Planet Randy RSS feed you can check out the food site here.  At that site you will read about what I’m thinking about food, food related projects such as home made bacon, gardening for fruits and veggies, and restaurants and recipes with good food.  Also, food sources.  Those are important.

Jessica has been suggesting I eat healthier foods for some time, but it wasn’t until I read “In Defense of Food” which Jason’s Deli sent me as part of a contest that I was shocked into action.  If you want to see what motivated me so much you can get the book at the library or buy it on Amazon.com.  I suggest it as good stimulating reading, but don’t do something because I did it, think about food yourself.

1. Admit you are powerless over your Food TV addiction
2. Believe that a power greater than Alton, Emeril, Paula and Rachel exists, and can restore your sanity
3. Make the dish, I mean decision, to turn all authority over to God
4. Make a fearless search of your pantry shelf self, morally
5. Admitted to God and others, but not including Tyler Ramsey, the exact nature of yourself
6. Be ready for God to remove the defects of your chiffon character
7. Humbly ask God to remove your shortcakes shortcomings, and maybe break your TV remote on the Discovery channel.  Mythbusters is safer than Good Eats.
8. Make a grocery list of all the people we harmed, maybe bake them an apology cake
9. Apologize to them, include gift cake, also bring celebratory home made ice cream, unless they’re diabetic
10. Continue to make ingredient inventory, and when you are wrong or unsure, buy extra
11. Pray for God’s will in your kitchen and television, and all other areas of your life
12. We try to carry this message across the internet to other addicts by digging it, stumbling it, or otherwise twittering it

At the end of the above video is a grape letting off a gaseous flame. I showed the above video to an 11 year old boy and he announced, “Oh! They made it better!” In boy terms there is nothing better than first making flames from a grape in a microwave – except to be able to make the flames float up in succession. That’s just magical.

I began the ribs for Father’s Day dinner. They will be absorbing wonderful flavor from the rub* for over 24 hours and then Saturday they will start the cooking process. They’ll be smoked with pecan chips. Which is to say that the ribs will be smoked until just shy of temperature and then finished on Sunday afternoon to make sure that they’re still moist and yet pass FDA requirements for human consumption. We’ll be heating for dinner in an apple juice/jack daniels bath, which adds even more flavor. Yummy! I’ve yet to determine whether we’ll be having the espresso barbecue sauce, or some other sauce. We might even depart from the norm and offer two sauces. It will be father’s day of course, which means that we’ll be making other tasty treats, but I don’t have a final menu off the top of my head.

* For those of you who live in or visit Texas, I got the base rub recipe from the guys who cater the company barbecue events and its just awesome of them to share. Email me and I’ll get you the recipe. If you’re not part of the inner sanctum, I cannot share, sorry :)