Hottie Of The Day: Shannon – May 17, 2012view gallery

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What wouldn’t you pay to see an actual match with these gloves?

A lot of girls have ripped someone’s heart out, but very few actually do it by hand. Sizzling hot chef Rochelle Bilow gave us the bloody rundown on what it’s like to slaughter your own chicken dinner…and then wear your meal as boxing gloves for some down-home country fisticuffs. She also furnished us another easy recipe you can make to impress a lady with your simple but superior cooking skills. 

Caution: some graphic photos lie within, but you’re an adult and able to face where your food comes from, right?

Is it wrong to find this arousing?

Oh man, do I love springtime. The sun is out, the trees are budding and there’s a certain friskiness in the air that gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “… like rabbits.”

That’s all great stuff, but the real reason this season rocks is because eating suddenly becomes a whole lot more fun. If you eat a diet that can be even remotely described as “local,” then you understand the last of the winter months offer a whole lot of nothing: stored root vegetables, beef and pork are pretty much what we’re looking at right up until April.

But then – all of a sudden, it seems – green things start appearing. Ramps, or wild leeks, garlic scapes and fiddlehead ferns are the first to appear and (despite sounding obnoxiously fussy) are absolutely delicious. Early produce inspires a rabid following among locavores, but there’s something that often gets forgotten in the flurry of spring fever: meat is a seasonal product, as well.

Murder Crew #7, hard at work

Chicken and lamb both make their first appearances a month or two after the first produce pops up at farmer’s markets, a fact that might bore you if you’re accustomed to buying meat at the supermarket where everything is available all the time. And hey, if that’s your thing, I can get down with that. But it’s worthwhile checking out chicken from a local farmer, or at least bringing home an organic one (chicken, that is. Or farmer, if they’re cute.) It’s tender and moist in a way that no industrially-raised bird is, and, if you’ll forgive me for being a little flowery about the whole thing, is a taste that just sings “spring” in a way few other meals do.

There it is, boys! Red gold! We’re rich beyond any carnivore’s wildest dreams!

I work on a farm that raises, grows and produces meat, vegetables and dairy, and May 7^th was our first chicken slaughter of the year. Every month until September, we’ll kill, clean and package a few hundred chickens, putting them in customers’ hands as early as the next day.

It was my first chicken slaughter – ever – and I was honestly a little worried about the whole thing. Having spent a few misguided years as a vegetarian as a teenager, there was a lingering sense of worry that I’d freak out about the amount of blood and death.

Ouch. We prefer to choke rather than decapitate

Turns out, I did just fine. The entire farm crew came together to work, with a few teamsters killing, scalding and removing feathers from the birds before the rest of us cleaned each one. I began by slicing off their feet and removing their heads (to do so, all you have to do is yank and twist, by the way), before moving onto eviscerating a few.

If you have a weak stomach, cleaning out the internal organs of any animal can be a challenge. But as the farm owner walked me through it, I was in a heady state of bliss. It felt incredible to be so close to food I’d eventually eat, and I got a little overzealous. As he instructed me to work my fingers between the neck and ribs to separate the esophagus, I reached my hand in further, coming out with a small red package about the size of a silver dollar. “Um, is this okay?” I asked, inspecting it.

Wasn’t this in the Bible?

“Wow. That’s the heart,” he said as the rest of the crew laughed.  “You yanked it out through its throat.” I blushed a little – but not too much – and made an incision at the base of the chicken to properly remove the rest of its organs.

I didn’t cook chicken for dinner that night, but the next day I butterflied two and seared them in fat before roasting them to a golden-brown, delicate crisp in the oven. Food has never tasted so good.

No better place for a haymaker than a barn

Spatchcocked Chicken Recipe from Rochelle Bilow

If I’m being honest, I’ll admit that “spatchcock” is just weird culinary word for “butterfly.” Essentially, spatchcocking means cutting out both the backbone and the chestbone of a chicken, rendering it flat and pliable. The benefits of doing this are bountiful: not only does it facilitate better browning and more even cooking, you get to say the word “spatchcock.” As many times as you want.

• 1 chicken, preferably organic, around 3 ½-4 pounds
• 1 tablespoon coarse salt
• ½ tablespoon ground black pepper
• ½ teaspoon ground coriander
• 1 tablespoon neutral oil (such as canola or vegetable)
• 2 tablespoons butter

Special equipment: Heavy oven-proof skillet or cast iron pan, kitchen shears or sharp scissors

Rinse the chicken well, both outside and inside its cavity. Drain any excess water off and pat dry.

Place the chicken on a cutting board, breast-side down with its back end facing you. Using shears, make a cut on the left-hand side of the tail, directly next to the spine. Follow the outside of the spine with your scissors all the way up to the neck, then repeat on the right side of the spine. At this point, you should have completely removed the spine from the body. Save it for stock or just throw it in the pan when the chicken roasts. It’s delicious.

Flip the chicken over onto its back so the inside of the bird is facing upwards. Clean out any excess bits of gnarly-looking stuff from the flesh (like excess cartilage or liver. Hey, it happens.)

Locate the long, off-white bone in the middle of the chicken’s chest – it’s the width of about two fingers. Use a sharp knife to cut down either side of that – like you did to the spine – then wiggle your knife  underneath the bone: in between it and the flesh. Hold the chicken steady with one hand and yank upwards on the bone with the other; it should snap out. The meat might look a bit mangled at this point, but we’re totally in the trust tree and no one’s judging you.

Once that’s done, you have a spatchcocked chicken! Celebrate by saying it out loud. Now, to cook it:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Meanwhile, place an oven-proof skillet or cast iron pan on a stovetop burner over medium-high heat. Add the oil to the pan while it warms up. Season the chicken with salt, pepper and coriander on all sides.

When the pan is hot and the oil has a sheen to it but is not smoking, place the chicken skin-side down in the pan. Sear for 3-4 minutes, until the skin is browned and crisp. Flip the chicken over so the breast faces up and rub the butter all over its skin.

Slide the pan into the preheated oven and cook for 40-45 minutes, until a thermometer inserted into the thigh reads 165 degrees.* Remove from the oven and let cool slightly before portioning and serving.

The triumphant results

* It’s worth mentioning that I don’t actually advocate cooking a chicken to 165 degrees. Sure, there’s those FDA guidelines, but I find that 165 is just dry and chewy – words we definitely don’t like. When I cook chicken at home, I pull it out of the oven as soon as it reaches 150 degrees; it will continue to cook as it cools, anyway.

Teach us

Rochelle Bilow is a freelance food and wine writer. To read more of her recipes and thoughts on eating and drinking, visit her website at rochellebilow.com

Don’t stop there! Learn Rochelle’s recipe for beer-braised spicy pork tacos that make themselves while you play video games all day. –>

Thrawn already figured out 17 ways to win this popularity contest, yo

Grand Admiral Thrawn, obviously. That dude could not be defeated except by his own hubris. But since that’s a foregone conclusion, here are a bunch of other characters who would like you to elect them The Internet’s Favorite Star Wars Character.

Han Solo, is currently in the lead, but Vader’s only number 6! And neither of the Fetts nor Yoda cracks the Top 10. You need to go vote that list to its correct assortment right now. 

Hottie Of The Day: Jennifer – May 16, 2012view gallery

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Say goodbye to your social life

Yesterday saw the release (and the subsequent launch problems) of Diablo III. Now that your body has forced you to surface for bathroom, food, and sleep, we’d like to entertain you with an oral history of how the Diablo franchise turned role-playing into a respectable activity–or a remorseless addiction. It’s a matter of perspective, really. 

Video games have had a consistent, if not odd, evolution through the years. First there were the arcade games, like Asteroids and Pac-Man, where beating levels really just meant the screen changing colors and the geometric shapes and ghosts moving a hell of a lot faster, until you eventually lost all of your lives. The point of the games was amassing an unbeatable score so that your initials would stay at the top of the leaderboard forever, or until the machine was unplugged.

It all began here sixteen years ago

Classic Diablo

The game that jump-started popular MMORPGs was probably the purest game in the Diablo franchise. Using three different characters (warrior, rogue, and sorcerer), a player could literally use any item and cast any spell, provided they screwed up their character attributes enough to make it work. The game itself was straightforward in regards to “winning”. Levels never looked the same or even used all of the same quests each time you would play through, but there was an end. You kill Diablo, you win the game.

That wasn’t enough for most gamers, so the idea of gathering stronger items in the game, which would drop at random, was made a part of the game’s re-playability. Oh, you didn’t collect your Windforce bow and Royal Circlet? Well, play again noob.

Look at all you achieved in your younger days!

Another game perk that helped re-playability was being able to kill other online players within the game as well as monsters. This led to players spending weeks trying to get their characters maxed out at level 50 to give them just enough edge to kill a player with the same junk as you equipped.

That wasn’t enough, however, as pirate programs called trainers were invented, and used to max out characters past their respective attribute caps, create weapons that dealt hundreds of thousands of damage points, and officially ended Diablo’s reign as the supreme online game when people got bored when two hacked rogues lined up to battle based on the luck of whose Blood Star spell hit first.

The Grim Reaper — More frightening than the Devil? Discuss

Diablo 2 and Diablo: Lord of Destruction

I’m sure that Blizzard entertainment could have fixed classic Diablo if they had wanted to, but they were already working on a new project: Diablo 2. With it came more characters, more items, and a new age in gaming: buying and selling items and even characters for real money, thanks to Ebay.

Initially, hacks were created that helped dupe the more powerful items, like Silks of the Victor, the Windforce bow (again), Gull daggers to help with the new magic-find attribute to help you find even more good stuff, and the Stone of Jordan ring, a level-increasing ring that became a form of currency in the online community of Diablo. Blizzard did its best to stop the corruption of the game with these hacks but not before the duping of godly items, rare weapons, armors, and rings that were insanely powerful.

The answer is C) Some sort of hybrid Devil-Death monster

These items became so powerful that they were sold on eBay for actual money, some for as high as $20 at times, as well as character accounts that were already at level 99. The point of actually playing the game in order to achieve online godliness came to an end, as any schmo with a credit card could easily become an elite character in the game. Play the game? Who needs to waste all that time?

And what did people do when they achieved these levels? They repeatedly entered Cow Runs in order to get even more items, and once in a while killed a PVP character solo or in a guild war. Sure, you killed Diablo or Baal once in a while, but only because they dropped some bad-ass loot. The game became secondary to the collecting.

This…this is what mankind was made to do

If you’re going to charge a monster, lead with your spear

Diablo 3 

It’s hard to say where Diablo 3 will take its fans, but Blizzard is already doing what individual gamers did in Diablo 2, and what the company did in its other hit sensation, World of Warcraft. They have set up an auction house so players can buy and sell their loot for real money. AGAIN.

While the idea is not as sketchy as buying an item from a random person on the internet, then waiting for them in a Battlenet region to make the real trade and hoping that they don’t just say, “Yeah, I just gave it to you. Your online connection may be screwy,” thus screwing you over for $10.00 (not that this has EVER happened to me), it still makes a gamer wonder how great the game really has to be if the end result will be about the same as Diablo 2. How many people are actually going to play through the game instead of having friends help them get up to the level cap so they can press that button so they automatically win the game? Will Windforce return?

I’ll let you know. Of course I’m going to play it. You know…for research.

FX/Courvoisier

Patrick Emmel is a mediocre gamer who plays better with a bottle of Lagavulin and always blames his bad gaming performances on lag. You can see some of his work at www.theineptowl.com or heckle him on Twitter @Patrick_AE.

Patrick previously deciphered which alcohol your favorite Archer characters are. –>

“Let me craft you a drink I originally mixed for the Queen of Bialya…”

Cocktails turn drinking into a skillset. Offering a lady your bottle of Fireball won’t impress her, even though it’s incredibly generous because if that’s what you’re drinking it’s probably all your Earthly possessions. Offering a beer is just basic courtesy (and let’s be honest: James Bond doesn’t drink beer for a reason). But offering a cocktail says, “I know how to do complicated things which will make you feel good.”

Unfortunately most “beginner” cocktail guides put the word “beginner” in quotation marks for a reason. They promise to introduce the most essential recipes and then start throwing around terms like “simple syrup” and “fresh lime juice.” That’s like asking a new student to arrive at karate class with the guns of four muggers. Those are things he’ll definitely have when he’s an expert, and he’ll will enjoy it, but at the beginning all it does is ensure he’ll never get to the dojo.

That’s why we’re offering a real beginners guide to drinks. Every drink below is easy to make, every ingredient can be bought in bottles at the the liquor store or supermarket, and those bottles can be used for many other drinks. No need to thank us; just remember to name any children after us who were conceived after pouring one of these for a lady.

Now that’s a dawn worth getting up for

Tequila Sunrise

A famous name, fun going down, absolutely beautiful and almost no effort. It’s the mixed drink equivalent of dreaming about Milla Jovovich. The Tequila Sunrise is an oil painting in a glass, and despite invoking the name of Mexican Mistakewater it’s easier to drink than an alcopop and much better tasting.

‣ 1 ½ oz clear tequila
‣ 6 oz orange juice
‣ ½ oz grenadine (red DESCRIPTION syrup, you’ll find it in the soft drinks and diluted-stuff aisle of a good large supermarket)
‣ OPTION: 2 – 3 oz club soda for a fizzier and lighter drink

 Shake tequila and orange juice, pour into ice-filled tall glass. Pour grenadine into the glass. Serve quickly so that they can enjoy the beautiful rippling effect.

 This drink is the overlap between experts and amateurs and both sides love it. Non-mixers are impressed with the visual effect, the alcoholic equivalent of a lava lamp, and unlike most modern colored concoctions it’s great-tasting and has decades of history. The Tequila Sunrise is one of the few things to party through the 70s and still be cool today.

Also acceptable

White Russian

You already know this drink from The Big Lebowski, and when you try it you’ll understand why it’s the one thing even a stoned Jeff Bridges deigned to remember.

‣ 2 oz vodka
‣ 1 oz Kahlua
‣ 1 oz cream

Stir vodka and Kahlua in an ice-filled old fashioned glass (wide and short, but hell, use a mug or whatever. Drinkers abide, man.) Pour cream over the ice. An excellent drink for those lightening up by lighting up as the resulting patterns turn this into an alcoholic lava lamp.

This is less a classic cocktail than it is a life improvement formula, and it’s an extremely classic cocktail. If we were still allowed to drink at work this is what water coolers would be filled with, and the banking crisis would never have happened. Coffee, alcohol, and calcium – when COFFEE GUY, Don Draper and Mr. T agree on a drink no-one could dare object. The combination of caffeine and ethanol makes a mockery of the alcoholic energy drinks, all of which taste like an Alien bled over a candy factory. This drink combines both sides of the “liquids which make your brain better” spectrum. UP

No cocktail hardware or special steps, just pour and stir. If the ingredients were any more easily available you’d be be breathing them. This is an easier way to feel better than falling asleep.

Just like the real thing, this Godfather can solve all your problems — but the method might cause problems in the future.

Godfather

‣ 2 oz scotch or bourbon (or any whisky you like, though it drink claims to have a different name then. No points for guessing what’s used in the brilliantly-named Canadian Bastard.)
‣ 1 oz amaretto.

Shake and serve in ice-filled glass

This is the only cocktail which can still cause introspection and deep thoughts about the direction your life is taking even if you can’t make it. Because if you don’t have any scotch or bourbon in the house you’re doing something wrong. (Experienced barmen are meanwhile laughing at the “or” in that sentence.) It helps you get over the amateur idea that Scotches are to be respected – if any English speaker believed that their history would have been very different.

It’s also an excellent recycling option, as exploring the fruits of Scotland and Kentucky will inevitably lead to a few violently bad things. Just like exploring the real places. This mix can reprocess even the most undrinkable firewater, and is outright gorgeous when made with decent stuff. No-one knows what it’s like with really good Scotch, because anyone stupid enough to make it didn’t know enough about drink to explain the taste.

Thankfully, this contains no actual blood or sand

Blood and Sand

‣ 1 oz scotch
‣ 1 oz orange juice
‣ ¾ oz cherry brandy (preferably cherry heering)
‣ ¾ oz sweet vermouth

Shake all ingredients with ice, pour into chilled cocktail glass

The easiest way to fool people into thinking you’re an expert, and sort of being right, because anyone who serves us this drink can call themselves whatever they want. Scotch is known to be a tricky cocktail ingredient, but scotch and orange juice is outright heresy – which is why you’ll look like a genius when it works. This easy-mixing but complicated-tasting drink has something for everyone, easy to drink for everyone but enough sophisticated flavor to shut up anyone even thinking about being a drinks snob.

It’s a glass of pure class. It’s named for a black and white silent Rudolph Valentino movie about a Matador having a threesome, and paralleling a famous band. Both the movie and drink were made during the Prohibition, showing exactly what bartenders thought of that bit of historical stupidity.

It requires a couple of odd extra bottles, especially the vermouth, but when these drinks get you into cocktails you’ll find those very useful.

Step 1: Hire a nude woman to do all the shaking

Luke McKinney knows booze & video games. Follow him on Tumblr. 

Now that you know how to make some great drinks, perfect your technique with Luke’s Man’s Guide to Mixing. –>

Hottie Of The Day: Rani – May 15, 2012view gallery

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Save Knuckles the Puggle! (credit: Craig Dershowitz)

So this fella Craig Dershowitz bought a puggle — a pug/beagle mix — and named him Knuckles, because why wouldn’t you? Just look at that scrappy fella there, head cocked all all to the side, as if to say, “We play more now?”

Anyway, life happens, as it does, and Dershowitz broke up with his lady, Sarah Brega. She took Knuckles with her to California, and the custody battle began. Brega claims Dershowitz gave her the dog, but he says on his fundraising page Rescue Knux, “The courts gave me custody already but, sadly, the system is too complex and expensive to make anything that simple and easy.”

Dershowitz blames the protracted battle on Brega’s wealthy family supporting her “filing crazy, frivolous motions just knowing that I can’t afford to respond even after the judge has ruled in my favor.”

Now we can’t say what the story is, but we can say any guy who spends $60,000 really wants his dog back and will make a great owner. He’s raising funds in hopes of concluding this legal battle, and he’s got tons of donors offering neat swag for your escalating donations.

The guy already suffered a break-up. Now it’s gotta cost him sixty large and he still doesn’t get his best friend back? Be a guy and chuck in a sawbuck to help Dershowitz rescue his dog. Your dog would do anything for you, so let’s man together and help him do the same for Knux.

Irwin, La Broad, & Pudlin / Wikipedia

Professional athletes are the pinnacle of human physicality. They spend tireless hours in the gym, perfecting their bodies to push their physical limits, all so we can feel entertained while we chug another beer. Athletes have the bodies that we wish we had. At least, most athletes do. Occasionally, a professional sports human (I find it hard to always use the word athlete to describe them) will hobble along and capture our attention. Perhaps it’s exceptional skill, immaculate accuracy, or complete blind luck; unfit athletes have a certain spell over us all. A gravy covered, one more soda spell. Who are the most successful, least athletic athletes in the history of athletics? Let’s take a look.

Babe Ruth - The man who started it all. The Great Bambino, the best baseball player in the history of baseball or players. One of the first five people inducted into the baseball hall of fame. A notorious hot dog, boozer, and late night gallivanting legend was rumored to show up to games hungover or tipsy, and then hit the ball out of the park. In 1922 he was forced to sign an addendum to his contract that actually put a limit on his drinking.

Note: you can make an offer on this item here.

Ruth would smoke cigars, be seen out late into the night and could barely run the bases, but went down in history as the greatest of all time. Perhaps he even motivated the more contemporary sports participants (athletes?) coming up in our discussion.

Prince Fielder – His dad Cecil wasn’t exactly slim, but Fielder’s 250-pound listed weight seems like a massive understatement. Prior to the 2008 season, Fielder decided to become a vegetarian in an attempt to become more healthy. This was, however, short-lived. In his press conference with the Detroit Tigers in January 2012, Fielder commented on the matter: “I’m not a vegetarian. I was, for like three months.” Okay, then.

John Daly – Golf isn’t exactly the most physically excruciating sport. You swing a club, walk a bit, swing a club. Sometimes you even drive between shots. Daly, a victim of alcoholism and a gambling addiction, pushed a weight in the high 200s for most of his gold career. Often synonymous with out of shape lifestyles, Daly has turned things around. In early 2009 he had lap-band surgery, limiting the amount of food he could intake. Daly is now under 200 pounds, and living proof that even if you become more healthy, you still shouldn’t wear ridiculously orange pants.

Albert Haynesworth – Haynesworth became the highest paid defensive player in NFL history at the time, and less than a year later couldn’t pass a conditioning test to play football. A conditioning test that was created for 300-pound lineman; it’s not like this was a Tour de France conditioning test. Haynesworth let himself go so much, he wasn’t even in good enough shape to be a person who takes up space sometimes.

Kneel before Blumpkin of Merchandisea!

Kyle Ayers has advice for those of you who play most of your sports on the couch. You can follow him on Twitter @KyleAyers. 

Want more Kyle? Hear his reasons Why Wrestling Sucks Now, or learn the art of the sale from the Master of Craigslist. –>