Let’s face it…you suck as a cook! But if there is one thing you need is a “signature meal” to wow your potential partner. A few weeks ago, I wrote about a “signature cocktail drink” you should be able to make all the time. Now we will discuss having a signature dish. If you can cook, that means you just step up a notch on the ladder of life.
But if you can’t cook, you can still trick them into thinking that you know how to cook with a signature dish. That one dish you can cook with your eyes closed AND it tastes amazing. You need a foolproof dish. A dish that any moron (like myself) can make. It needs to be easy and tasty. A dish that melts in your mouth, that causes the taste buds to explode with desire for the next bite!
If you are a really bad cook….I suggest a slow cooking process like a crock pot meal. My friend Mark is an excellent cook and he gave my wife (who is another excellent cook) a recipe for Mississippi Pot Roast. Easy, simple, and very tasty. Even I could make it; it’s that easy.
Plus you’ll have leftovers you can make some sandwiches for tomorrow’s lunch at work! Double score!
Keep in mind that a crockpot recipe is a slow cooking recipe. Always read the recipe and pay attention to the cooking time.
Now throw in a decent bottle of red wine and a wonderful tossed green salad (hey, we need our vegetables, right?). You have yourself your signature dinner and you are one step closer to closing the deal!
Do you have an easy recipe you’d like to share? One that won’t make your guest puke? Share it in the comments section below!
Here in Washington State, our school kids don’t go back to school until the last week of August or the first week of September. In fact, my kids went back to school on August 28. In comparison, the Seattle School District started yesterday September 3, 2014. This makes a heck of a lot more sense than starting August 28, going to school for two days, and then having Labor Day weekend off. It puts a bitter taste on the last week of August and Labor Day. You can’t milk summer out for a bit longer. Instead, you must think of getting your kids back in time for starting school on Thursday before Labor Day weekend.
It isn’t like anything is done the first two days of school when you have Labor Day weekend right there. Everyone knows that Thursday and Friday (before the Labor Day weekend) are “throwaway” days of education. You might as well let the kids watch TV because they sure aren’t paying attention to the teachers during those two days of school.
Labor Day Weekend wasn’t ruined for me. I always have fun. This year instead of heading to Anderson Island for the three day weekend, we went camping at Sun Lakes State Park. It was a good choice because we left the rain behind. Sun Lakes is located on the eastern side of Washington, roughly three hours away from our house. While western Washington might be experiencing rain and misery, the eastern side of the state will have sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns. Well, maybe not unicorns and rainbows but you get the idea. The weather is nice. We don’t have lots of rain and huddle under blue tarps. In eastern Washington, we don’t do the “blue tarp” camping made famous on the west side of the state. In eastern Washington, you slap on the sun block (SPF 45) and a big hat
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What lurks beneath the waters of this lake?
It’s all fun and games until someone falls off the cliffs!
On the negative side, it was windy in the evenings and the state park was full. Truth be told, it was very windy and miserable in that respect. The first night was bad. The tent was flapping around, keeping both myself and my wife wide awake. You would drift off to sleep, and then a gust of wind would pop up and wake you up. The second night, the wind was just as bad but I wore my ear plugs and I enjoyed the evening a bit more.
Sun Lakes State Park has a few different lakes within the park boundaries. On Sunday, we hiked along the Deep Lake Trail which was about 2 to 2.5 miles round trip. It goes right along the lake and is an easy hike. There is an opportunity to do some cliff diving or jumping off the cliff edge but we didn’t do it this trip. Perhaps next time we can jump off some basalt rock cliffs into the water below, have a scary monster grab us and drag us under.
I did manage to get some swimming in Sun Lake itself with my daughter and her friend. The weather was a bit cloudy, the wind was blowing, and the water was a little colder than I would have preferred. However, it was probably going to be the last swim of summer so I toughed it out. I’m not a little baby (well, I really am but I try to act tough).
My son and I also did a twilight walk where he was almost hit by a bat. Lots of bats on the Park Lake Trail, however I can’t complain about the bats because they keep the bug population down. Go bats!
Overall, the camping trip was a good one. No flat tires, no lost sleeping bags. The drive home wasn’t too bad. I’d go again but probably opt for a RV campsite further and with less wind.
Thanks for reading and your comments are always welcome!
It is a Snow Day here in the Seattle area. It snowed roughly 3-4 inches around our house. Sadly, it is quickly disappearing due to the temperature rising to a blazing 36 degrees. What is a person to do? Enjoy it the best you can.
We don’t get a lot of snow here at 500 feet elevation. Sure, we have a few wonderful mountain ranges around here (mainly the Olympic Mountains and the Cascade Mountain Range) that you can go and enjoy the snow. However, we have had a terrible winter for snow and the skiing areas just recently opened up. It is a pleasure to have snow today for us. And by this evening it will be gone and the kids will be off to school (on time) tomorrow.
In the meantime, I was able to make a snowman with my daughter, we then launched a successful snowball attack against the neighbor kids, and finished off with a nice lunch inside the house. Nothing beats a nice warm house after getting all wet and cold outside on a snowy day.
Later on, the whole family is headed to the “Twisted Cabaret Comedy Show” for the afternoon show. I’ll give a full report when I return…or I manage to remember to blog about it.
If you are bored or need a reason to express yourself, drop a few comments in the comments section and share your wisdom.
I sometimes forget that I am here to help my readers in their life. Now, I know everyone doesn’t have kids in school and some of my readers look to me as an inspiration to when they make the choice to have children. Seriously, I am an awesome father that knows how to raise awesome children. Who wouldn’t want some worthless advice from me?
For those of you with children, you will probably learn from my worthless parenting advice that you have been raising your children all wrong. Yes, you are incorrect in the way you parent your offspring. Perhaps there is still time for you to reverse those bad parenting habits you have learned from the so-called “experts” out there.
One of the major things we worry about is when our kids go to Back to School and whether they will survive. Will they be able to make it through a day without us?
To prep your child for the first day of school (and the beginning of another exciting year of learning! Oh yeah!), you should set up an imaginary school at home.
Bullying:
Have your children dress up in the worst possible clothing combinations and make fun of their clothes. This teaches them that bullies come in all shapes and sizes and they aren’t safe anywhere….even in their own home!
Lunch:
Ask your kids what they want for lunch. To simulate a school lunch, take these tips to heart. If they want hot pizza, make sure it is cold and half cooked. If they want a cold sandwich, warmth it up so it taste terrible. Make sure the milk is warm too. Nothing like that taste of spoiled milk to ruin your child’s appetite!
School Supplies:
Do you get those crazy school supply lists? We do. I merely view them as suggestions. If every parent bought everything on the list then the teacher would have way too many school supplies. You should be that one parent that holds out and refuses to be a puppet in the educational supply purchasing machine complex that is controlled by our robot overlords.
Backpacks:
One way to strengthen your child’s back is to overload their backpack with useless stuff. Throw in their favorite rock you collected from your back yard. Add in a brick from the neighbor’s walkway. Have them take cans of food back and forth to school. What doesn’t break their little spines and spirits makes them stronger!
Reading:
Did your kids read during the summer? Well, if they didn’t your kid is probably in the same boat with about 80% of the other kids in their class. Not to worry, you can still have them read a cereal box or an old phonebook. That counts as reading doesn’t it?
Good luck with your student this year! Only 179 more school days for my kids until Summer Vacation 2014.
Today was the first day of school for the Kent School District here in the rainy Puget Sound area. To be honest, I cannot remember any first day of school being so rainy. Sure, maybe we did have a rainy day on Kauai when I was a kid but usually in the Seattle area we luck out with no rain on the first day of school. Most years, we enjoy a nice September of great sunny weather (and wish our kids were out of school in September instead of rainy June). Last year, we had awesome sunny weather until October 1st.
That doesn’t mean that our Labor Day Weekend is always good. We’ve had Labor Day Weekends full of solid, miserable rain where we were stuck in the lake house the whole three day weekend. On the bright side, this upcoming Labor Day Weekend is looking fairly good according to the TV weather folks.
Yet happiness has returned to our household with the first day of school. Over the summer, the kids did argue and have a few fights. I know that is shocking considering what an awesome father I am and how well behaved my children are. I also may have forgotten to feed my daughter lunch a few times during the summer. But in my defense, she is 10 and knows how to make a sandwich. Besides, I was doing yard projects and my hands were dirty….well, not really I wear gloves…gotta keep my hands soft.
The kids returning back to school is always a mixed bag for me. I like having my kids around but I need them to go back before I go nuts. The internet and Xbox can only entertain your kids so much during the summer before you actually have to do something with them. You know, take them to a beach, do a vacation together, etc.
However, our summer is now over. It just blew by in a hasty mess of activities, summer camps, vacations, and trips and still left me with the feeling that I didn’t do enough with my kids.
So for the next 9 months of school, I’ll plan a really fun summer of 2014. We’ll do a bunch of hiking, road trips, vacations, river rafting, and stay weeks on end at fancy resorts paid by my hugely successful Blog of Worthless Advice! So hit that “Like” button now. Make some insane comments and have your cute photo below this post!
But if you can’t cook, you can still trick them into thinking that you know how to cook with a signature dish. That one dish you can cook with your eyes closed AND it tastes amazing. You need a foolproof dish. A dish that any moron (like myself) can make. It needs to be easy and tasty. A dish that melts in your mouth, that causes the taste buds to explode with desire for the next bite!
Kevin Hellriegel's Blog of Worthless Advice 