[Mike Nolan]

My wife isn't fond of corned beef and cabbage, and making a brisket is a lot of work, so our St. Patrick's Day meal the last few years has been bagels with corned beef. 🙂

[Mike Nolan]

The serious brisketeers I know say 12 or more hours of smoking is the only way to go, but that's not something I have the equipment or experience with.

I tried my hand at making Montreal Smoked Meat once (think 'pastrami with an attitude') if I ever got serious about it I'd want a real smoker.

[Mike Nolan]

There was an article in the WSJ recently saying that lobsters have hit a record high, nearly $7 per pound straight off the boat.

That's impacting those who sell lobster dinners, even the historically low-priced lobster roll.

We went to a restaurant that opened last fall that we haven't been to yet that features lobster dishes. We shared a lobster pizza on a cauliflower crust ($18) and a lobster roll ($22). The pizza crust seemed really chewy, my jaws were getting tired. At that price, I hope they're making money. They were good, but seemed a bit short on lobster taste.

We also stopped by the Wahlburgers that opened in town recently and got some of their thin onion rings. Very good, but we both had indigestion well into the night. There was something like chives sprinkled on them, I think next time I'd ask they leave that off.

So tonight we went with fairly bland fare, Diane had a peanut butter sandwich and I had some tuna salad on bread.

[Mike Nolan]

I've tried several, they always seem to be really fatty and the meat doesn't slice well. Not sure what I'm doing wrong, maybe the wrong cut of brisket?

I'll just buy some sliced corned beef at the deli for St. Patrick's day. (My wife doesn't like cooked cabbage anyway.)

[Mike Nolan]

I need to make semolina bread today or tomorrow, I got the last chunk out of the freezer last night.

[Mike Nolan]

We had left over pot roast and some of the chocolate chess pie.

[Mike Nolan]

The crust on my chocolate chess pie is maybe a little underdone in the center. Filling is great, though, sort of a melding of brownies, pudding and mousse for taste and consistency.

If I do this again (and I'd say there's a good chance I will), I'd think about either par-baking the crust a little or giving it longer in the oven.

[Mike Nolan]

Here's the chocolate chess pie:

My thumb kind of got in the way when I was taking it out.

The recipe I used called for a can of evaporated milk, it wasn't until I had it mixed that I noticed they say a can is 5 ounces, the ones I have are 12 ounces. So I added an extra egg. Fortunately, it fit in the 9 1/2 inch pie pan. Not sure why the crust shrunk the way it did, it went all the way to the rim before baking.

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[Mike Nolan]

More of that going on than baking, it seems. 🙂

I made a chocolate chess pie today, smells great and seems to have set up well, it needs to cool before we can cut it, though.

FWIW, the Nebraska Legislature voted 40-3 today to advance a bill that would put Nebraska (both time zones) on daylight savings time 12 months a year. That requires Congressional approval and also requires that several border states also change. (Wyoming has passed a similar bill, the other bordering states have not yet done so.)

[Mike Nolan]

My plan is to make a chocolate chess pie tomorrow.

[Mike Nolan]

We spent a night in Danville IL once, they're on the eastern edge of the central time zone. Our iPhones kept switching between central time and eastern time. I don't know how locals cope with it.

[Mike Nolan]

I'd let it dry out for a day before freezing it.

[Mike Nolan]

We tend to buy the half-gallons of milk because the gallon one is just too heavy for my wife.

The half-gallon of 1% (house brand) was $2.59 the other day, the gallon (also a house brand) was only about 30 cents higher.

I've tried decanting milk from the gallon jug to a half-gallon one, but it never seems to last as long after that.

[Mike Nolan]

People at the western end of a time zone, like folks in eastern Indiana and central Nebraska, are less likely to be excited about full-time DST, because the sun rises a lot later than it does for those further east.

However, I suspect the major population center, like NYC, Chicago, Denver and LA are all in the eastern half of their time zones.

[Mike Nolan]

There are the usual flurry of news stories about why daylight savings time is good, why it is bad, why it should go away completely, why it should be permanent all year, etc. The Pandemic and working from home features in this year's crop of articles.

States can opt out of Daylight Savings Time completely, but Congress has to act to allow states to implement it 12 months a year.

The one thing I'm pretty sure of is that Congress won't do a doggoned thing about it, because Congress seldom does ANYTHING except spend money they don't have. The Wall Street Journal had a short list of earmarks in the latest budget bill (2700+ pages long with more earmarks than anyone can count, Senate Leader Chuck Schumer put in 140 of them), among my favorite is $3 million for a museum in Houston TX devoted to Mahatma Gandhi.

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