Randy’s Recipes: Chicken Strips in Soy Sauce and Garlic

For two or three appetites!

Place a fairly large boneless chicken breast in a gallon size freezer bag and smash (I use a short length of 2x4).

Cut the breast into strips, lengthwise. Put the strips in a baking dish (rinse them in cold water and dry with a paper towel, first). Add ½ cup of soy sauce. Chop 2 cloves of garlic, add to the dish, also, a little coarse ground pepper. Add a tsp. of olive oil. Mix it all up with your hands, cover and put in the fridge for half an hour.

Slice a large baking potato on a grater. I used the side that makes potato chips or scallops. Watch your knuckles!

Heat a large pan. I use a 3-½ qt. non-stick stainless steel saute pan by Cuisinart. No aluminum and copper is sandwiched into the bottom. It spreads the heat evenly and it you condition the pan with mineral oil once a month or so, use wooden utensils, wipe it out with a paper towel or wet sponge, no soap, it’ll last forever.

½ c. olive oil to the pan.

Put the potatoes in first. Once they get going, clear a space in the middle of the pan and add the chicken. Work on the chicken, turning it so it cooks evenly. I happened to have some smoked bacon on the bone. I cut off the fat and added a little to the chicken.

Mix in the potatoes, then start adding the veggies. I used the following:

soy beans (shelled)
baby carrots
green onion or chives
mushrooms

I didn’t use it, but chopped, fresh kale is also good in this dish.

Because of the flavor of the soy sauce, the only spices I used were coarse ground black pepper and a little minced onion and garlic.

Salt only after you place the food in serving bowls. Add a tablespoon of Earth Balance spread and enjoy!

Carrie: Double-Edged Sword

It’s a great photo, isn’t it?

Carrie Prejean is a beautiful girl.

And the “other” photos? You’ve seen them. They’re posted all over the I-net. I’m not a Christian woman but if I were, I wouldn’t have made the choice she did. Why? There are limits and for Christians in particular, within those limits there is Joy.

I know this is true. I go out of the limits – I told a couple of good friends earlier this week I hope God gives me a mulligan for having looked at porn.

Yeah, very funny. Carrie’s pictures bring home a lot of things. I do believe God has used her, in her flaws and in her beauty, and with the choices she’s made. And in a way that only He can do.

She’s shown the world its hypocrisy. And I'm right in the middle of the pack. No, I’m not homosexual, let alone homophobic, at all. But does it make it all that better to drool over someone of the opposite sex rather than the same sex?

I didn’t drool over Carrie, but I don’t agree with Trump’s statement about her semi-nude photos being fine because it’s the 21st Century. If that were true, it’d validate all the relative morality arguments. Truth is truth – it’s an absolute – deal with it.

And don’t the gays and the libs and the agenda-driven media know that? They do, it’s God’s word that we all know right from wrong. Everyone. Believers and non-believers alike. He created ALL of us. It’s somewhere in the Old Testament, in Deuteronomy or Leviticus that those laws are written inside our hearts, undeniably and indelibly. Right and wrong, black and white, they are our laws, from Him.

Through Carrie Prejean, God is showing us that we're ALL hypocrites – not gays, not libs that Christians, by definition, disagree with. We’re NOT any better than one another. Kind of gives us a basis of love for fellow man/woman, doesn’t it? Hate their sin and hate ours as well. Because we’re on an equal playing field.

I’m learning a lesson.

BTW Carrie, take all the photos you want, semi-nude or in your birthday suit. Paste them up all over you and your husband’s bedroom, once you’re wed. The marriage bed is pure.

Somewhere

Regretfully, I couldn't find the photo of my mom that I wanted to run today.

She looked beautiful. It was taken before either I or my sister, who's five years older, was born. It may have even been shot around the time my folks were married or right before my dad went into WWII.

It was before the verities of a long marriage had set in: raising two kids, managing the finances (she socked it away in envelopes to pay the bills and put what was left in the bank before dad said a word), the cooking and the cleaning over and over again, planning all those parties and family events, dealing with a husband with post traumatic stress syndrome well-before that term was coined or anything was in place to help returning vets with those problems.

There are no lines or wrinkles on her face in that photo. She was in her early 20s and the ravages of her 2-pack a day cigarette habit was more than a half century away from taking their final toll. She had already lived through the Depression and you couldn't tell that she had to live in an orphanage with her sister when she was four because her mom had gotten paralyzed scrubbing floors in a factory in the winter with the windows wide open.

And she didn't have to pray and hope and worry yet over a son who would stay in college during the riots of the late 60s-early 70s, drive a bus on the old 41 route through Cabrini Green and then backpack and hitch hike through Europe with the money he'd earned. It was either that or the Navy and Vietnam.

Rather she looked like she was posing for a portrait for her new husband. She had that Gibson-styled hair (no, it doesn't mean she had a guitar on top of her head. The "Gibson-girl" look was pretty popular in the 40s). Her makeup was perfect. And she wore her famous raccoon coat. I remember when it got damaged beyond repair in a flood in the basement at the old house. She had stored it in a trunk along with love letters from my dad and other memorabilia from the early years of their marriage. It was almost all lost.

The flood was around 1990 -- their 50th wedding anniversary. Losing those items was a turning point, because by the end of the decade, Mom and Dad were both gone. Mom first.

That picture is somewhere. And so is Mom.