Packer Super Bowl Fare...

Ok, so the Packers are in the Super Bowl, vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers.  I love both teams, but of course am cheering for the Packers as any good Cheesehead would.


Lots of you out there might be planning a Super Bowl party and wondering what to make.  I have no idea what constitutes Pittsburgh Cuisine, but I do know a thing or two about what is traditionally served in Titletown, USA for such an affair.

I offer you three options, all good!

Green Bay Style Chili is a little like Cincinatti chili, but spiced differently.  In Texas, Green Bay Chili would be considered grounds for a hanging in some circles.  Basically, it's a fat-heavy finely diced brisket and spice sauce spooned over spaghetti noodles.  Beans, if you want them, are spooned over the top of that, and optional additional condiments are finely chopped onions, cheddar cheese and a shake or three of malt vinegar.

Supposedly, "Chili John", the man who brought this style of Chili to Green Bay's dockworkers at the turn of the last century, also invented the Oyster Cracker.  He wanted a small cracker for his customers to put on their chili.  John Madden never missed a stop at Chili John's for a bowl when covering the Packers.  More info on Chili John's at http://www.chilijohns.com/   You can also mail order the meat sauce, heat it up and dump it over your own noodles and try to crack the secret yourself.  Lots of people have tried, lots of people have come very close.  The recipe below gets closer than most.

Green Bay Style Chili

2 lbs. ground beef

1/4 lb beef suet

(or use really fatty ground beef...I grind my own so it tends to be leaner than that in stores...this is a greasy chili by design)
1 medium onion, pulverized in a blender.
2 T chili powder

Dash of Nutmeg
1 T cumin
1 T garlic powder
1 tsp. salt
1 T. cayenne pepper
1 oz. unsweetened baking chocolate
2 cups water

Brown the beef (and melt suet), dice up fine while cooking.  Add the rest of the ingredients, simmer for a bit, adding a little water as needed.  Transfer to a crock pot and put the rest of the water in.  Best if prepared in the morning and allowed to simmer all day on low, or set on high and leave in crock pot for a couple hours before serving.

Serve in a bowl over spaghetti, or beans and spaghetti. I actually like angel hair or linguini myself.  Serve with lots of oyster crackers. Other recommended condiments: more chili powder, malt vinegar, finely grated cheddar cheese, chopped raw onions, sour cream.  Huy Fong Rooster Sauce isn't authentic as a condiment, but damned good.

Booyah is a weird combination of French and Belgian cuisines so unique to Green Bay that most people outside of a 30 mile radius of the town have never heard of it.  It is traditional fare at Catholic church picnics in the Green Bay area, along with lots and lots of beer, bratwurst and polka bands.   Most people I know from 'Da Bay got drunk, high or laid the very first time at a Catholic church picnic, so the festivals are quite...er...secular in nature.  Booyah is a hearty, thick chicken stew, usually served up with "Sheboygan" rolls, which are a hard, chewy Kaiser roll, with butter.

I've never known anyone to make Booyah in a small amount...it's festival or party fare.  Here's a recipe that makes 5 gallons:

Green Bay Booyah

7 lb. chicken, diced

1.5 lb beef, diced

3/4 lb. pork, diced

1 large soup bone

1/2 cup Navy Beans

1 chopped cabbage

1.5 bunches of chopped celery

3 lbs chopped onions

1 qt. wax beans

2 lb. sliced carrots

5 lb. potatoes, cubed

1 16pz bag frozen peas

1/3 cup lemon juice

1 cup corn

1 qt. canned tomatoes

1/2 cup salt

2 T pepper

1/4 cup rice

Put meats, bone and beans in large pot.  Cover with water and salt.  Cook 2 hours.  Add carrots, onions, celery and wax beans.  Boil 2 hours.  Add more water, cabbage, potatoes, peas and rice.  Boil 2 hour.  Add tomatoes, corn, salt and pepper, lemon juice and more water if needed.  Adjust seasonings.  Simmer til done.  Better the next day.  Traditionally done in a big pot over an open fire, but works good in a big tub on a turkey fryer as well.

Finally, the Wisconsin Bratwurst...traditional tailgating fare at sporting events and the backyard favorite all around Wisconsin.  Our state was settled by a lot of Germans, however our bratwurst evolved in a bit of a different direction than the traditional German bratwurst.  This is the kind that they talk about when they mention Brats and Packer games.   There are many commercial brands available, my personal favorite being Klements.  Johnsonville gets the most notoriety, and many local delis, meat counters and supermarkets pride themselves on their own (try Trig's supermarket in Rhinelander, Wausau or Minocqua...state champion bratwurst winner last year).  Pick any you like, just don't get the pre-cooked ones, they're terrible.  And, wonderful as Usinger's sausages are, their bratwurst is the traditional German style, not the good ol' Cheesehead Tailgater.  If you can't buy authentic brats in your area and know how to stuff sausage casings, or just want to make your own brats, here's my recipe for a Klements - style bratwurst.  If you don't know how to stuff casings, you can just make this mixture into brat patties, also.

Wisconsin Beer Brats:

4 lb ground pork (I use lean cuts, but traditionally it's fatty, like a back roast, or you can add fat to it)

2 T salt

2 T sugar

1 tsp Nutmeg

1 tsp Coriander

1 tsp Celery Seed

2 tsp Black Pepper

2 tsp Ginger

1 tsp Marjoram

4 T real maple syrup

2 tsp crushed red pepper

2 tsp minced garlic

Grind raw ingredients and stuff casings, spinning links to bun-sized lengths.

To prepare for eating, simmer in a pot filled with beer to cover and float brats, along with one sliced up onion and, depending on how much beer (usually 2-3 cans for 8 or so brats), about 1 tsp garlic salt.  Simmer til cooked, don't over cook.  Then grill on your barbecue grill.  When finished, throw back into the beer bath, let them sit in there and soak for at least a half hour before serving.  Note:  It's also tradition in WI that if you are also serving burgers, the finished, grilled burgers get thrown into the beer bath as well.  :D  Also, brats are served on brat buns, which are a little heftier than hot dog buns, though hot dog buns will work in a pinch...use bakery hot dog buns though.   Ketchup, a good spicy german mustard, raw onions and/or sauerkraut for condiments.


All three of these recipes are in my forthcoming book, "The Cookbook For Guys".  Watch this blog for details!  

Go You Packers GO!!!!

Cookbook For Guys - Excerpt

Ok, gang, I'm back hard on the case of finishing up the Cookbook for Guys.

Here's an excerpt... How To Use This Book:


Well, there’s a lot of ways that one can use this book.  You can squish a spider that is annoying your better half by whacking it a good one with the book, for instance.  Or, it makes a fairly good read on the john, though your better half might start up about bringing germs into the kitchen if you carry your cookbook into the crapper and then back out to your kitchen.  Ignore her if she protests.  There are germs everywhere.  Don’t let it bother you one bit.

It’s not quite thick enough for youngsters to sit on at your Thanksgiving meal.  But you might wedge it under a table leg to level it out.  However, that would be a pity as then you wouldn’t have it handy to use in the kitchen.  And having it handy in the kitchen is, after all, it’s intended use, Bucko.

So, assuming you actually are going to use this book in the kitchen, there are some things you need to know.  Well, you probably don’t need to know them, you’re not even reading this part.  You’ve jumped ahead to things like making Ribs and the Wisconsin Friday Night Fish Fry, because you’re a Guy.  Only girls read the damned instructions.  But on the odd chance that the lady in your life has happened to pick up the book and look at it while you’re making an enormous mess in the kitchen, I’m putting this information here on the chance that when you get stuck and are going, “What the &#*(@?”, she can help you out by first steering you in the right direction and then telling you to read the *&@$%! instructions.

IMPORTANT - Stuff that’s actually important, or at least that I, in my infinite wisdom, feel are important will be in bold, as in this example.

How This Book Is Arranged - I’ve labored a lot over this point.  I spent a couple of months in a barroom brawl with myself on how to arrange this book...do I do it by ingredients, such as Meats, Fish, etc.?  Do I do it by ethnicity as in Mexican, Chinese, etc?  Do I do it alphabetically?  Do I throw it all together in one big hodgepodge and include a blindfold for you, the reader, to put on and flip thru blindly and point at a page?

In the end, once again my wife Carol stepped in as the Voice of Reason (VOR).  She said, ‘Why don’t you just stick them in alphabetically in the second half of the book, and write the first half of the book more on technique, equipment and entertaining scenarios like “Tailgating”, “Date Night”, “Guys Weekend”, “Deer Camp”, etc. and then cross reference all the recipes?   Brilliant.  That’s why I married you, my dear.  Well, that’s *one* of the reasons I married you.

For the most part, I’ve also left out desserts.  Most cookbooks are full of bars, cookies and cakes because...let’s face it...most cookbooks are written by chocolate-gobbling broads.  Since this book is not titled “The Cookbook for Chocolate-Gobbling Broads”, the omission should go more or less unnoticed.

Measures - All measures will be in standard U.S. units based on the 8 oz. Cup.  There’ll be none of that subversive, Un-American Metric Crapola around here, Mister!  If you insist on cooking using those obviously communist-inspired terrorist measurements, there are plenty of good conversion calculators on the Internet.  Find one.    Ok, I really don’t believe that the Metric system is all that, but it’s a nice way of justifying in my own mind why I don’t need to learn it to support the crux of the matter...which is that I’m too damned lazy to bother.  End of story.

Serving Size - I live in Wisconsin, a state settled around the middle half of the 19th Century by mostly Krauts and Polacks, with a few Norskis and Swedes here and there.  Big, Nordic people.  The kind of people that laugh heartily when they read the body mass indexes for height and target weight that are created by tiny little East Coast doctors and insurance actuaries.  We have big appetites to match our broad shoulders, towering heights and impressive beer guts - some with their own postal code.   So if you live on the East or West Coast. you’re probably going to want to read “Serves 12” when I say “Serves 8”.   You’ll get the hang of it next time you cook up a storm for your local Lollipop Guild, little person.

Ok, that’s enough for this part of the book which Guys won’t read anyway.  The rest of the stuff is in the important parts that you might actually skim over while taking a dump.

Go Back To Chicago (the Waunakee song) - A. L. Kammen and Bachelor Pad

The Cheesehead Song

You don't have enough Miracle Whip to repost this...

A new popular post on Facebook dares;

A boy writes a letter to God. "Dear God, why do you let bad things happen in our schools?" God replied " Dear Son, I'm not allowed in your schools." I challenge you to re-post this...

First off, these types of 'challenges' annoy me.  I do not care to be 'guilted' or 'shamed' into being a good little lemming and repeating anyone else's thoughts, lest the number of testicles I possess come into question.   To those that put forth such 'challenges', I in return challenge them to think for themselves instead of letting a mindless internet meme speak for them.

Secondly, God (however we perceive him/her/it to be) is in our schools, if God is in our hearts.  The separation of Church and State is not to keep God out of our schools. It is to keep Organized Religion out of our schools.  As Ghandi observed, "I like your Christ...but I don't care for your Christians".  No other concern in the history of man has caused more suffering, more bloodshed and more despair than Organized Religion.  It was because of Organized Religion that our forefathers sought a new life free of it in America.

Freedom of Religion is a basic principle on which this country was founded. Religion-based schools aka parochial schools are free to do as they choose. Public schools should not favor one religion or another, nor should the moral code of a student be the sole responsibility or even the primary responsibility of the educational system. Faith, morals, honor, decency are all values that should have had their foundations laid within the student long before he or she set foot in Kindergarten by the parents. Of course, these days parents are too involved in selfish pursuits to properly take part in their children's upbringing and education.

It used to be that the education system was merely supporting the values taught at home. Today, the parents expect The State to rear their children while they go off on a drunk or take trips to faraway places, or just veg out in front of violent movies with trash language or mindless reality shows on the couch...or even worse things that I won't even mention here.

It is not the responsibility of The State to rear children. The State can provide education, assistance and guidance, but the responsibility is that of the parent. Blaming any institution for the problems of today's society is a cop out. It starts at home, it roots at home, it grows or dies at home and at home is where the blame lies.  If we as a society are looking for a direction to point the finger, we need only turn it inward on ourselves.

My (hopefully) Final Favre Rant

And another Monday has come and nearly gone.  After a long weekend of working on my manifesto at my Kaczinski Shack, I returned earlier today, unpacked, got settled and started reading the headlines of the day.

First, of course, I broke my New Years Resolution (no more NFL!) and read accounts of the great games I listened to on the radio out at the shack.  That *amazing* Packer victory on Saturday night (and subsequently was disappointed once again that Slocum STILL has not been fired as Special Teams Coach) and the equally amazing rally put forth by the New York Jets to sink Tom Terrific and Bill Bullshitchik's hopes of glory.

And then I saw it.

There it was, leaping off the page at me.  The biggest news to hit the Pro Sports World since...since...er...last January.  And the January before.  And the January before.  That's right, folks, Brett Favre is going to retire.

And like a round of gunshots on opening morning of deer season, Facebook was ablaze with the news.  Granted, it was mostly in jest, but I couldn't help questioning once again why we (as puppets to the media, and thusly, Favre) were paying any attention at all to a washed up has been drama queen who burned all of his bridges several years ago already.

And here I am, ranting about *that guy* again, adding to it.  I'd be ashamed...maybe I still should be...other than I think that now, on the cusp of his (hopefully) final retirement, it might be a good time to revisit the reasons why I never want this shitbag asswipe pile of human garbage to *ever* grace the halls of the Packer Hall of Fame.  Oh, sure, he'll make it into Canton, the National Favre League will make certain of that.   But please, oh please...on Lombardi's Playbook I plead to the Powers That Be...don't put this festering turd in the Packer Hall of Fame at least until he's left this world.

Let's review, shall we?

Favre came to the Packers from the Atlanta Falcons.  Mike Holmgren was in his first year as Green Bay's head coach.  Don Majkowski, after battling back from injury after injury, had lost his edge and finally was hauled off the field a final time.  Favre impressed the hell out of everyone with his raw talent and his amazing arm...but I remember Jim and Max in the booth quite critical of the boneheadedly stupid moves Favre would make.   Holmgren would go apeshit crazy every time this happened.

Holmgren, over the next few seasons, made a great quarterback out of Favre...mostly because Holmgren could keep him under reigns.   But it was clear that Favre wasn't the sharpest crayon in the box of 64 and this would only continue.

Favre was a known hard partier around the Green Bay night scene (that is, if you consider Green Bay to have a 'night scene').  He womanized.  He developed an alcohol and painkiller addiction.  It is at this point that we begin to see a pattern develop...that of a man with an addictive personality.  Favre is a tragic character who is hell-bent on self destruction...except at this particular point in time, he's too big to destruct--his legendary status won't allow it.  The people of Wisconsin, the team and the press all see him as an Emperor with Beautiful Clothes, not a naked guy in a sedan chair.

Holmgren leaves.  Ray Rhodes enters.  One can only look back on the Rhodes year (yes, one year) as Head Coach and speculate what might really have been going on, armed with hindsight.  I suspect it was a battle of ego between himself and Favre.  Favre undoubtedly saw Rhodes as an opportunity to shed the control that Holmgren had over his position and Rhodes seemed to dig in.  By mid-season, they had reached an unproductive impass that affected the whole team.  After the dazzling success of the Holmgren era, it seemed fitting to fire Rhodes after a disappointing 8-8 season.

Then all hell broke loose.  On April 8, 2000 Favre's best friend Mark Chmura was accused of having sex at a Waukesha Catholic Memorial High School party with the then 17-year-old babysitter of his children.  What was initially reported by WTMJ 620 AM Radio was that both Favre and Chmura were at the party.  Within the first hour of the newscast (between 7 am and 8 am) Favre's name was dropped from further reports.  Nothing more was ever said, no explanation was ever given as to why Favre was initially mentioned and why he was suddenly dropped from the report.  One can only speculate that since WTMJ 620 AM was and is the flagship station for Packer broadcasts, perhaps a call was made from the offices on Lombardi Avenue to the station.  After a lengthy trial, Chmura was tried but found not guilty of all charges.  Two days after being acquitted of child enticement and third-degree sexual assault, Chmura acknowledged that his behavior at a post-prom party "wasn't something a married man should do."   No mention was ever made again of Brett Favre's presence at that party.  Chmura was clearly thrown under the bus, as his career-ending injury just months before made him expendable.

By this time, the monster had been created...Favre must have felt invincible.  He had a coach he didn't like fired.  He got away with the kiddie pool incident.  He had been addicted to drugs and alcohol, yet the fans still loved him and looked the other way.

Enter Mike Sherman.  If Favre's issues at this point were a bonfire, Mike Sherman was the White Gas.  Mike Sherman, it was observed by one top source within the Packers organization (who will remain nameless here) was afraid of Brett Favre.  And so the dance went on between Sherman and Favre, with Favre leading.  And the predictable disastrous results...time and again, stupid decisions by Favre on the field went unchecked...until the team had become a mere shadow of it's former self at 4-12.

Late in the Sherman tenure, Favre was already playing the entire organization like a Stradivarius, hinting at retirement even then...several years before he actually 'retired' from the Packers.  He'd dance around his intentions, finally committing later and later with each season, messing up Packer drafts and leaving things largely unsettled first til June...then July...then August.  The mold had been cast, and Mike Sherman ran the foundry.   Moreso than any other figure excluding Favre himself, Sherman is to blame for what this guy became in the end.  He allowed it to happen because he couldn't stand up to Favre.

When Thompson was hired, and the following firing of Sherman and replacement with Mike McCarthy, a brief return to the Holmgren days of discipline and control was realized, but only for a short time.  Favre clearly resisted at first, then went along with it, then resented it and rebelled, culminating in that disastrous NFC Championship Game interception that, unfortunately, he would repeat once again with the Vikings.  Most of the rest of this more recent history we all know and have been brow beaten to death with.  But it all makes a lot more sense when you look back and study the development of how this all came to be.

In the end, we have a sad, almost Shakespearian figure.  My prediction is that his addiction to the limelight will be his downfall.  Once he reaches the point where he can't get any attention from his career, he'll probably get attention in other, unhealthy ways.  I would not be surprised to find in 10 years that he had lost his home, family, etc. and was a common drunkard living from friend to friend on handouts.

But do I feel sorry for him?  Hell no.  Ye reap what ye sow.   The things he said about the Packers and Packers fans while he was wearing green, then purple...unforgiveable.  And then today, after reading the story on his 'retirement', he has the unmitigated GALL to congratulate the Packers and say how they are the best team in the NFL and how he hopes they win it all?   What an insult to our intelligence.  That arrogant prick thinks he can get in good graces with the Packer Nation that easily?  Fat chance, fuckface.  We're not going to retire #4 EVER, if I were to have any say about it (which I don't).  I'd reassign it to a goddamned punter.

We have long memories here in Wisconsin.  We're fiercely loyal...but once that loyalty is betrayed, look out.  We owe Brett Favre nothing.  He owes us everything.  And he pissed down our backs and told us it was raining.

Don't go away mad, Brett.  Just go away.

Cookbook for Guys - Update

As some of you might be aware, I've been working for some time on a a cookbook with the working title of "The Cookbook For Guys".  You might be wondering, with the bulging glut of cookbooks overflowing in kitchens, libraries, bookstores and thrift stores, what the hell the world needs another cookbook for?  And you would be right, except that I aim to produce a different kind of cookbook.

The way I see it, most cookbooks currently fall into one of two categories...the "Church, Organization, Workplace or Club Cookbook", which is usually packed with a 60:1 ratio of cakes, cookies and bars and should be titled, "The Cubicle Whale's Path To Fat-Ass Wonderment", and the "Look At Me, Look At Me And My Kitchen That Cost More Than Your House Cookbook of Recipes Using Expensive and Exotic Shit, Aren't I Wonderful" cookbook, which is pretty much self explanatory.  We've all seen them, most of us have a box or two of them that sit in the basement or crawl space or perhaps even the kitchen, mostly for show.  Not very useful, only 3 or 4 of the dozens of cookbooks I own actually have recipes in them that I've actually tried, and only a couple do I regularly ever refer to.  I aim to break away from either of those categories.

One of the things that chapped my hide before I *learned* to cook is the number of assumptions that the average cookbook makes about it's audience.  In the Cookbook for Guys, I'm going to attempt to spell everything out...in technique, tools, spices, amounts, the whole nine yards, in a way that Guys can understand.  Guys being the sort of Dave Barry-esque creatures who are more comfortable with a vise-grips and a roll of duct tape than a wire whisk and a spatula.   I'm also going to keep the ingredients as simple as I can.  I live in the Northwoods, so common spices and ingredients are usually all that's available unless I plan ahead and bring them from my trips to distant and exotic lands...like Wausau or Stevens Point.   And, being sort of a new-age hillbilly living on not a lot of cash, I'll keep things on the cheap also.  And, being that this is a cookbook for Guys, there'll be NO bars and NO cookies and cakes.  A few pies, maybe, because I like pie.  Pie is a guy thing.  Cakes are a girl thing.  There won't be a ton of casseroles, either.  If most cookbooks have 60:1 desserts to everything else, than casseroles usually make up 75% of what's left.   You can only make a 7 layer salad so many ways...we GET it!  What will be in the cookbook are great recipes for things that guys...or at least THIS guy, likes to make and eat.

We've had our house in Tomahawk up for sale for about 6 months now, in preparation for our move to our off-grid cabin and land over near Prentice.  We've had numerous tire-kickers, but the general complaint is that our kitchen isn't large enough or needs updates.   Apart from being pissed off by the general feeling of entitlement that everyone under 40 seems to have (and WTF do you expect for under 6 figures, Wolf appliances and granite countertops?), the thing that really irks me is when the complaint is followed with, "and they like to cook".   I'm telling you here and now...if you can't cook in my kitchen, you can't cook.  I've cooked meals in tents, in the rain, over campfires and in the galley of a sailboat, which is about the size of a broom closet.   Yuppified pukes with an 80,000 dollar kitchen where they heat a frozen burrito in a microwave probably won't need or appreciate this cookbook.  But anyone with a cutting board, an old stove, a few sharp knives and an enjoyment of making their own tasty, healthy grub from scratch will.  That is the purpose of writing this book.  If you can barely boil water, this book will hopefully take you from there to Chef in nothing flat.

I hope to have it done sometime this Spring, and I hope that you enjoy it.