Posts Tagged ‘Food’

The Schedule of a Productive Morning

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

This morning, I had a glimpse of the habits that it will take to succeed. My morning was very productive and invigorating. This was a step to success.

This may seem odd and trivial at times, but it was very much planned out.

My alarm went off at 5:46am this morning. After a minute or two of clock radio, I hit snooze, which resets the alarm for 9 minutes. I got out of bed at 6am. Stumbled into the bathroom. My joints were stiff, my feet didn’t want to carry weight yet, and my eyes were half shut.

I got into my kitchen at 6:04. I started my laptop, started a pot of coffee, and opened my fridge to pull out some juice, a peach, and a nectarine. I drank a glass of grapefruit juice (the last of the container – I need more), and cut up the peach and nectarine and put the slices on a plate.

I told you there were going to be some trivial bits in here.

It was 6:10 at this point, and I spent 5 minutes stretching. I was determined to be able to touch my toes by the time I was done stretching. Mission accomplished.

While I was stretching, I thought about writing, and tried to figure out what I was going to write about.

At 6:15, I sat down in front of my computer with my sliced fruit and mug of coffee, and fired up my text editor of choice.

In 20 minutes I banged out a blog post about what my 101 Woodblock Series is about, and got it formatted for the web and posted by 6:50.

At this point I put on some shorts and a sweatshirt and left my apartment to move my truck. I was out and about last night, and got home fairly late. I parked in a meter spot the night before and had to find a street parking spot this morning. It took about 15 minutes. This situation only happens about once a week.

I got back in front of my computer around 7:05, and whipped out another post for another of my blogs (written with a pen name) in about 20 minutes. I already had half of the content written for this post, and it took about 20 minutes to get it up and ready to post.

7:25 rolled around, I fired up my email, cleared out my inbox, read a little news, then started to get ready for work. I packed up my lunch and mid-morning breakfast (when I eat breakfast this early I need an early morning breakfast and a mid-morning breakfast), and made it to work about 15 minutes earlier than usual.

So why bore you with these details?

This kind of habit that will lead to being successful.

I have a time management problem. I work 8 hours a day, and when I get home, it is difficult to focus on writing. When I get home, take off my suit and tie, and get some dinner in front of me, I want to relax.

My ability to focus drops significantly after 5pm.

I can’t focus on writing while I am at work, and I usually spend my lunch break exercising.

Mornings are really the best time for me to get my writing done.

I also realize that writing is the limiting factor to the growth of my projects. Every one of my projects revolves around content driven marketing, information products, or something that is written.

Without writing, my projects stagnate.

My goal, then is to create a morning habit of writing. If I can dedicate 1 hour every morning to writing, I will accomplish quite a bit.

Yes, it was deliberate

I actually wrote this schedule out on paper last night. Habits can be difficult to change, so I thought through every bit of my morning, and wrote down what and when I would do.

Seriously. I scheduled waking up and going to the bathroom. I even scheduled hitting the snooze button.

I had the piece of paper with this schedule on it sitting on my nightstand so I could grab it and reference it in the morning.

It worked this morning, and worked pretty well. Two blog posts in a morning’s work makes me pleased.

I’m planning to keep the schedule on my nightstand again tonight, to repeat the process again tomorrow. The real test will be next week, when the momentum of motivation from trying something new decreases.

Anyway, expect updates.

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Yo Soy El Mejor Cocinero!

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009

I’d like to think this isn’t my fault, but here I am in the midst of it.

It started innocently enough, when I went for a jog at lunch with my co-workers, Sam and Allison. Sam started talking about his chile verde recipe, how easy it was, and how delicious it was.

The real reason I haven’t been too productive the last couple days? I’ve been thinking about chile verde ever since. How am I supposed to focus on heat load calculations when all I can think of is tender cubes of pork, slowly simmered in a mouth watering sauce of tomatillos, jalapenos, and garlic? I knew that if I were not to make a batch of chile verde soon, these thoughts would consume me.

Today, I couldn’t take it any more, and I decided to give in to these culinary urges that have been building in me. I went to Whole Foods after work, bought a big chunk of pork shoulder, a couple pounds of tomatillos, some jalapenos, and a few other necessities. I got home and went to work!

Some of the raw ingredients. The Tecate is to maintain sanity during the process.

Some of the raw ingredients. The Tecate is to maintain sanity during the process.

I learned some things about food today.  Tomatillos have a strange paper coating that they grow in, and they are sticky on the inside (I don’t know why).  There are a couple different cuts of pork shoulder.  There is the picnic cut, which is a fatter cut, and tends to fall apart when you cook it.  This is good for shredded pork in stew, or pulled pork.  The cut I got, the butt, is leaner, and holds together better when you cut it.  Further, even though the butt is leaner, there is still a bit of fat in the sucker.  I feel like I threw away a good quarter of the pig that was just fat when I was cutting it up into cubes.

So here was my basic plan of attack: cut the tomatillos, jalapenos, and the lone pasilla in half, and roast them in the broiler.  The tomatillos roast about twice as fast as the peppers, so take them out early.  Throw a couple cloves of garlic in there to roast too.

While that is getting broiled, cut the pork shoulder into chunks about 1-inch square.  Throw these in a pan with some olive oil to brown off the meat.  Apply salt and pepper.

Oh, man, don’t forget about the peppers in the broiler!  Take them out, remove the skin, and put the tomatillos, peppers, and garlic in the food processor.  Mix until it looks like salsa, then dump it in a pot and heat it up.

Now the pork cubes are getting hot, and the pan of salsa is getting hot, this seems like a perfect time to put them together!  I added a cup of chicken broth to add some liquid to the mixture.  Since I am gonna cook the pork through by simmering it in this mixture, I want the liquid to fill up to the top of the pork cubes. Dice up some cilantro to throw in there, make sure you dump in a bunch of oregano, and mince up more garlic, and things are good.

El trabajo del mejor cocinero

El trabajo del mejor cocinero

Now it is time to kick back. Grab your tecate, listen to some Voodoo Glow Skulls, and maybe write a self-congratulatory blog post. It’s all good at this point, the coast is clear. After simmering for an hour or two, I added more chicken broth because the liquid had been boiling off. When that is boiled down a little bit, I am gonna eat.

Preliminary tastings prove the title of this post, this very well could be the best chile verde ever made. My apartment is filled with the sweet smell of roasted jalapenos, with the juicy smell of roasting meat. It is sweet, with some spice, with a little zing from the lime I put in there. The meat is soft and tender, and is starting to take on the full, sweet flavor from the tomatillos and peppers.

Oh man.  I just took a writing break to try it out, and every time I taste it, it is better than the previous taste.  It is about time to eat this.

I apologize if you have ruined your keyboard by drooling all over it while reading this post.

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