You may call it an "Armoir"...I call it an Entertainment Center

Last weekend I finally made the big jump into the world of HD TV in our living room. Incredible...there's no turning back now! One of the reasons it took so long is because we couldn't find the right piece of furniture to house all my stereo equipment and TV that would fit in the awkward nook in our living room. We've searched for the right piece since we moved into this house about 3 yrs. ago!

One evening earlier this year, we had some great friends (David and Ruthe Ball) over for dinner and were explaining how difficult our search had been. After discussing our unique needs David offered to help design the piece and build it. David and I worked together when I first moved to Austin so I've known him for 13 yrs. and have a ton of respect for his design skills and obsessive attention to detail. I've also seen some of his woodworking and the furniture he built for his house so I knew he had the ability. Eager to get rid of my old bachelor TV and stereo setup, Michele and I quickly accepted the offer and we began the design phase the following weekend.

I have to say, what David built is certainly the nicest piece of furniture we own and is one of the finest pieces I've ever seen...no joke (click on the image too see a larger version). The function of the piece is absolutely perfect. It nicely houses my TV as well as my stereo receiver, cable box, blue ray, Wii, front speakers, center channel and sub-woofer with plenty of additional storage. The design, hand carved doors and header are incredible. We could not be more pleased with the result. Click here for a couple additional photos.

If you live in the Austin area and are in the market for a piece of furniture but can't find what you are looking for or you just want a piece that is completely unique and a one of a kind quality heirloom, you should get in touch with David Ball. He is fair, honest and incredibly talented. You can reach him via e-mail at david@davidballdesign.com or at 512-293-4668.

Thank you David!

The St. Paddy's Day Cheers Project

For those who I'm connected with on Facebook, you've probably seen my "Cheers..." photos over the last year or so. For those who are not familiar, let me quickly explain. I have a strange urge to want to take a photo of me and whomever I'm with hoisting a glass, pint or bottle at some random tavern or event and then uploading it to Facebook for all the world to enjoy....see the photo on the left. At first, I was just testing the upload from mobile feature on Facebook but after a few "Cheers..." photos, people started telling me that they liked watching where I might show up next. Now it seems like I upload a "Cheers..." photo every time I'm out!

As you all should be aware, St. Paddy's Day is right around the corner, which means you can count on at least one new "Cheers..." photo from me and a group of folks at some Irish pub here in Austin. This time, I want to make it interesting. I want to see your "Cheers..." photos from where ever you are in the world. Here's how it will work;

1. Snap a photo of you and your crew raising a drink anytime on St. Paddy's day.
2. E-mail the photo to again18take@photos.flickr.com. I'd suggest adding this e-mail address to your phone now so you don't forget!
3. In the subject line of the e-mail, let us know where you are...City, State and name of the bar (or home).
4. Put your name in the body...not mandatory, feel free to be anonymous if you prefer. You can also let us know who you are with if you like.
5. Check out the photos anytime at www.flickr.com/photos/spdcheers/ .

Please feel free to forward this to as many people as you like. The more the merrier! The goal is to get as many photos from different folks as possible. I will be sending a few reminders on Facebook and Twitter over the next week. For those of you on Twitter, please use the #spdcheers hashtag when commenting. Given the fact that my blog currently has fewer than 30 readers, I have fewer than 50 followers on Twitter and probably only a handful of friends on Facebook who know how to send an e-mail of a photo taken on their phone, I'm guessing the participation will be low, but what the hell. You never know until you try!

For the record, I plan to have my first pint with a traditional Irish breakfast at Fado' on March 17th in Austin by 8 am. You can expect to see a photo by 8:30 am. Who else is with me?

"All are equal"....really?

I, like millions of others around the world, watched Obama's inauguration speech several weeks ago and let me say, that man can deliver a message. He may be the best communicator in the office since Reagan. While I genuinely could not care less about the color of the mans skin, it was hard not to get caught up observing history being made by swearing in the country's first black president.

Overall, I thought the speech was well written and very well delivered however, there were a couple things I heard and later validated in the transcript that made me very uncomfortable. Obama's speech included the following statement.

"The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness."

At first glance, the statement seems pretty straight forward and even a bit inspirational. But if you give it a deeper look you'll notice that Obama chose to slightly alter the noble idea he refers to which is outlined in our country's Declaration of Independence. The statement in the Declaration of Independence is the following.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

In life, all are not equal, rather all are created equal. From the time we are born, choices are made for us by our parents that will affect our lives. At some point, we take complete responsibility for our own lives and make our own choices. The choices we make will take each of us to very different places in life. In fact, very few, if any of us, are truly equal in our adult lives. A very simple example; those who chose to get an education, work hard, live frugal and retire wealthy are certainly not equal to those who chose not to get an education, live above their means and retire broke.

While we possess the right to pursue happiness, we have to choose to do so. Those who choose to pursue happiness will earn their own chances and opportunities. Those who do not deserve nothing but the choice to begin the pursuit.

The statement made by Obama reflects a sense of entitlement that many Americans seem to have. The lack of individual accountability pervasive in our society today is arguably the primary reason we are in this financial mess. The idea that everyone deserves the American dream of owning a home finally failed and with it went the rest of the economy. Let this be a lesson learned that that which is truly earned is far more valuable than that which is given.

The Great Debate

I've been known to engage in a little political debate with friends and random folks who happen to be sitting next to me at the bar. Living in Austin means that my conservative lean rarely goes unchallenged and my competitive spirit rarely let's me walk away quietly....especially after a few drinks.

Most of my friends who sit on the other side of the political isle are educated and pretty well informed. These folks are great for a lively and cordial debate. I win some, I lose some and some end up in a stalemate, but I generally learn something in the process and occasionally completely re-evaluate my stance on a particular topic. That's the beauty of a healthy debate with respected peers who may not share your view. It's an essential part of how we form our opinions.

And then there are those who clearly get all their ideas and talking points from one of a few extreme sources like Olbermann, Maddow and Maher on the left and Limbaugh, Coulter and Hannity on the right. Listening to these "analysts" as a sole source for forming your opinion is just flat out lazy. Those who do this are easily detected by those who don't. Their arguments are generally shallow because they relied on someone else to do the homework and they generally resort to weak debate tactics like diverting the discussion with personal stabs, getting overly emotional or trying to hide behind humor. The best you can expect from this person is a hell of a laugh or a lot of frustration.

While I've learned a lot from those who can clearly present and defend a position, I've learned just as much from those who can't. Here are a few basic suggestions to keep in mind when forming your political opinion (or any opinion) and defending it.

1. For those of us who did not get our candidate into office, resist giving the current administration the same level disrespect the last administration received from it's opposition. Have a little class.


2. If you disagree with a particular point, voice your opinion clearly and support it with facts.


3. Don't position something as a fact if you are not certain and please don't make something up just to make a point. "It's better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." Not sure who said that originally, but I like it.


4. Avoid the obnoxious personal stabs. It screams desperation.


5. Dropping highly charged opinion bombs and hiding behind humor can potentially make you funny, but it does not make you credible. Know the difference.


6. Be as objective as possible. Seek information from a variety of sources and then form an opinion...not the other way around. Relying on a single talk show host, comedian or news outlet to spoon feed you your opinions makes you a puppet.

We've all been "that guy" to some level in the past. With everything going on in our lives, it's hard to keep up with current events and continue to educate ourselves on history. The level of noise from all the different types of information sources available today is higher and more difficult to filter than ever before, but you have to try.

Keep yourself informed. Don't be "that guy". Good luck and good debating.

"You're Abe Froman? The Sausage King of Chicago?"

Uh...yeah. That's me..??

A couple months ago I went on our annual deer hunt with some buddies. The annual deer hunt deserves an entire blog of it's own so I won't go into detail here...other than to say that I did not get a deer. In fact I didn't even see a deer, but I did see and shoot a 125 lb. ferel hog. I've eaten wild hog before and thought it was OK but never really good, so this time I decided to process the hog myself. We dressed and quartered the beast at camp and put it on ice. When I got home I spent an hour or so re-cleaning the and vacuum packing the shoulders, hind quarters, back strap and tenderloins and put 'em in the freezer. Then I began studying how to make sausage from wild hog meat.

As luck would have it, I remembered my family telling me that my grandfather made excellent tasting sausage at his farm in central Illinois. After talking with my aunt and grandma, I got his old recipe and gave it a shot. I thawed, de-boned and trimmed all the fat from one of the hind quarters, which yielded about 5 lbs. of meat. I read somewhere that removing the fat will cut down on the strong game flavor so I added 2 lbs. of domestic hog fat to make up for what I trimmed. I cut the meat into two inch cubes, added my grandfather's seasoning mix and ran it through the grinder a couple times. I fried up a little patty, just to see how I was doing. It looked like ground sausage, smelled like breakfast sausage and to my surprise, it tasted like really good breakfast sausage!! I was definitely on the right track.

Finally, it was time to make the links. I decided to use natural casing....I figured, if I'm going try to replicate and old process, I might as well go old school. I put the casing on the stuffer and began to run the ground sausage through one more time. I made the links about the length of my hand and gave each link about 3 or 4 full twists. Next thing you know, that one hind quarter produced about 25 links! Fortunately, that night was a dry 34 degrees outside. I twisted the links off in pairs and hung them outside to dry. The following morning, I packaged and refrigerated them. I've since grilled and eaten most of them and I'm happy to say that they were excellent! Next time I'll start experimenting with other types of sausage...Italian, boudin, brats, etc.

I gotta say, there something pretty damn satisfying about controlling the entire process from the field to the plate. I think my days of taking wild game to the processor are done. It's really not that difficult to do it yourself and there is something to be said for cutting out the middle man....not just because it's cheaper but because it's good to understand what goes on behind the scenes of your local butcher shop. Besides, if you put in a little effort and are willing to experiment, you can make some pretty incredible stuff!

Oh, and thanks to Grandpa for the recipe. I hope I did it justice!

The Portuguese Dream

Last night I had the classic "unprepared" dream. I was cramming for an exam that was scheduled to take place the following morning. I felt comfortable that I was ready for the majority of the test but suddenly remembered that a portion of the test was going to be on the Portuguese language....this is when the panic sets in. I then realized that not only had I not attended any of the courses on the topic but I didn't even have the right text book! For a brief moment I began to rationalize that my background in Spanish would help me fake my way through it. Wait...first of all, I haven't spoken Spanish in over 10 years and second, even if I still had a working knowledge of the language it's still not going to help much with Portuguese!!! Dammit! At this point, I'm pretty well freaking out....I HATE-THAT-FEELING. Fortunately, I was brought back to reality by the sound of my 13 month old son crying. Ironic...I know.

The good news is, while I don't have all the '09 planning complete, I do have all the necessary items listed and am making good progress checking them off. Here we go!

Behold...the Einstein of BBQ pits!

If anyone can break down a process with a logical and repeatable approach, my brother in law, Bruce, can. This year he's taken barbecue to a level I've never seen. He purchased a Traeger smoker, which is a wood pellet pit....never heard of such a thing?? Either had I. It has a container on the side of the pit that holds the pellets with an auger at the bottom. The auger is controlled by a digital thermostat. For example, set the thermostat to "Smoke" and the auger will put the perfect amount of pellets into the fire pot to smolder and smoke but not flame up. The fire is initially lit with an electric heating element. Turn the thermostat to a higher temp., say 275, and the auger will continuously put just enough pellets in the pot, combined with an air induction fan (also electric) to maintain that temp.

This was Bruce's first attempt at making brisket and I can honestly say that it is one of the best homemade briskets that I have ever had....I know that's a strong statement but I stand by it. The irony is that I had to leave Texas (best BBQ in the country) and go to Oregon to get it! Surely my buddies back home will have a few things to say about this. The reality is that this smoker is a no brainer....in other words, if you don't know how to operate an old school wood smoker and don't care to learn, the Traeger is the smoker for you. It's low maintenance and you can't really screw it up. The only variables are the quality of meat and your recipe. If you enjoy the process of adjusting vents and continuously adding the right amount of wood to the box for 6 to 12 hours, the Traeger is not the smoker for you. It does take some of the art out of the smoking process.

So, two thumbs up on the brisket and turkey that Bruce and the Traeger produced. One thumb up for the process....while I appreciate the "set it and forget it" capability, there is something about the old school, hands on process that makes the experience great. Two thumbs up for the business idea. Not only has this company built a great smoker, they also produce and sell the wood pellets necessary for smoking! Brilliant. Oh..and if you don't think TX has the best BBQ, come on down. I can suggest a bunch of old small town restaurants and meat markets that will make you a believer!