Quest for "The Ultimate Wine Bag" - Saddleback Leather

Quest for "The Ultimate Wine Bag"
by Tony Arnold

As the husband of a certified sommelier, I am the designated wine pack mule for lugging wine to more dinner parties, events, and restaurant outings, than I care to remember. My marital task drove me on a two-year quest for a better wine bag and littered my basement with dozens of bags in all shapes, sizes, and styles. Until recently all the bags failed me in one or several areas of function, durability, capacity, style or utility, however the search is finally over for the "ultimate wine bag".

Over the last two years, I made some observations about all the bags I tested. Functionally, I looked for a bag to safely and comfortably carry the magic three bottles of wine. Duffle bags had the capacity, but I broke at least two bottles from bottles tossing around inside and a duffle is not the most stylish of things.

The three bottle capacity out'ed more than a few stylish briefcases and the combined requirements of durability and style made me pass on anything synthetic or trendy. Messenger and computer bags held the wine, were durable and offered daily briefcase and computer lugging utility outside of wine toting, but lacked a timeless style and made me look like a middle-aged graduate student.

Hours of web surfing netted bag salvation in the form of a classically styled leather messenger from Saddleback Leather. Saddleback focuses on classic legacy quality leather suitcases, briefcases, and messenger bag designs with a promoted slogan of "they'll fight over it when you are dead". Saddleback's classic styles remind me of a time long gone when bags were functionally built tough to last generations instead of months with the ability to show daily wear and tear as beauty marks of pride instead of scars.

Given my growing "Imelda Marcos" type bag collection, I thought why not and picked up the Saddleback Messenger bag. In an era of marketing hype, the Saddleback Messenger bag surpassed my highest expectations. Not only did it hold three wine bottles perfectly, but it was the epitome of durability. The bags are made from 1/8" thick full grain leather, thick industrial thread, and has no zippers or snaps to break - imagine a messenger bag made to Harley Davidson leather specifications and you get the idea. That type of quality is not inexpensive. Saddleback's Messenger is priced at $350, which is just under upper tier'ed leather competitors such as Cole Haan, Coach and Hartmann. The difference is that Saddleback delivers a different type of product, where Coach and Cole Hahn deliver more of a purse quality feel and Hartmann more of a luggage style, Saddleback has a feel of classic brutal durability. When you are hauling around $1000+ worth of wine, the security of knowing the bag will not fail is the most important feature, but this messenger bag has style as well.

The 14"x 12 3/4"x 4" pictured bag has now endured almost a year of torture and still looks great, hasn't lost a thread, split a seam, or popped a rivet. It has survived being tossed & thrown, dropped, an attempted tug-a-war theft, daily commutes and numerous cross-country trips. It has hauled untold amounts of wine, pulled daily duty as a laptop case and even used as a food transport cooler - slip a 9x9 panned gratin into the messenger and it will be piping hot at the party. The Saddleback leather messenger has become my Leatherman multitool of bags and even has room for said tool, wine key, and pens in the internal dual pockets. On the exterior, a couple exterior pockets are perfect for sunglasses and electronics and rear stash folder pocket is handy for my earplugs, iTouch, and blackberry or when I am just too lazy to open the bag. The Backpack conversion feature is especially handy just as you realize you are late for your connecting flight... at the other end of the terminal and need to dash. Sometimes perfection is simple, handmade craftsmanship, full grain leather, and a size that is perfect - I think I have found bag'utopia. The Saddleback Messenger is so good you don't have to wait until I'm dead, I'll fight you for it now.

Sources - www.SaddlebackLeather.com

Grocery stores have better food than most restaurants.

It's sad but true that most grocery stores have better, fresher, and better tasting foods than most fast food chains. Today I was faced with the option of eating fast food or finding some fresh 9 grain bread to make my patented PB&J, I choose to roam the isles of my local mega-grocery mart - this one happened to be one of the largest in the US. Along with whoring liquor and wine at market killing prices, they had a bakery and deli that would make Whole Foods jealous.

Although I had my 9 grain bread in hand along with a dark chocolate bar (can't resist and it has zero cholesterol and high in anti-oxidants), I stood in front of the deli counter where they were offering sandwiches fresh made. $4.99 Diet Coke included - not a bad deal, so I relented thinking this should be a flavorless fun adventure in sandwich tasting.

Ohh my choice of bread, Asiago cheese bread please, fresh sliced turkey, muenster cheese and all the other Subway'esk sandwich accessories. Presented to me on a plate, yeah a real freaking plate and I was politely pointed over to the cashier by a lady who reminded me of my mom. The dinning area reminisced of an old HoJo, Perkins, or Bob Evans, but way better than I have seen before in a grocery store. The sandwich was excellent and fresh.

Contrast my grocery store sub with the absolute food quality wasteland of your average McDonalds or Burger King meal kicks out with chemically altered focus group tweaked foods and you would have to agree that the grocery deli counter may be a better option.

I am a skeptic of almost everything, especially documentaries and docu-drama's, however two of my latest rentals changed the way I look at food - Food Nation and Super Size me.

I was 28, 285lbs., with a cholesterol level of 265, why because I did eat at least two meals a day for almost two years at either McDonalds or Burger King. After being put on Lipitor at 28, I decided a BK Whopper was not an appropriate food choice and didn't eat a single fast food meal for almost two years. I simply ate a reasonable balanced diet, limited my red meat intake, and drink 2 glasses of red wine each day. The result was being taking off Lipitor completely and dropping to 225lbs. Think fast food isn't killing you? Try finding other alternatives to fast food even if it's the guy down the street that makes burgers by hand or the deli at the grocery store and you will be blown away how great you feel.

I watch too much Iron Chef...

I have been lax in posting regularly, but a food related dream last night drove me to post again.

I hate Rocco DiSpirito, in my mind the guy is a cocky prick. On the other hand I somehow feel that he has had some truly bad advice along the way that resulted in a series of PR nightmares created for the benefit of ratings. Let's be honest here, if the guy wasn't such a constant ass he wouldn't have developed such a knack for committing PR suicide.

He clearly got paid out of the that stupid Resutrant Show deal, if he just would have walked away and said that stupid resturant show was good entertainment and fine editing and leave it at that, one of the big networks would have picked him back up, but he didn't and nobody likes a hothead. Now he is on Top Chef and pulling the same crap, but this time with a new face - a really tight one at that. Seriously dude you look like a freak.

So back to my dream and a LIVE Iron Chef challenge between Rocco Dispirito and my Iron Chef hero Mario Batali, (another cocky prick, but one who knows who signs his checks - smart guy). Somehow I was selected as a judge and my wife Aimee Arnold (a Certified Sommelier) was doing all the wine pairing for the meal which were supposed to be Syrah/Shiraz based wines - neat concept anyway.

The three judges were me, a wino and lover of almost all things food, Ted (from Queer Eye), and that lovable ass Jeffrey Steingarten. As I remember the secret ingredient was bacon and in reality was a key ingredient in my stew dinner I had last night before bed.

As time went on in the competition, Mario was whipping up a dozen dishes of pure freaking bliss, one right after another and the smells were amazing. On Rocco's side he was using all these secret ingredients and frankly the smell made you want to retch. With a grimaced face Alton kept asking what is that ingredient or that one, and Rocco with that motionless botox's face said it's secret. Rocco ended up presenting four dishes.

All of Mario's dishes were incredible, a few a little edgy but all very interesting and good. His food paired well the Syrah/Shiraz that Aimee has selected and provided to the chefs and he explained why he chose each.

Rocco, presented his first dish, a salad with bacon vinaigrette dressing except before we all took a bit Ted said this smells like ammonia. Rocco noted, well I wanted to add some creativity I know you will like, I used my own urine to make the dressing emulsion rather than white wine vinegar. We all pushed the plates away except Jeffrey who nibbled a small piece and then winced and pushed the plate away.

Next up was this horrible smelling soup, which caused both me and Jeffrey to fight back gag reflexes and Ted disapeared with a background sound of him barfing. Rocco presented this dish straight forward as a bacon manure soup which was topped with a bit of pig bile aioli and followed with demanding "I know it's shit but I made it so you will eat it an like it." Jeffrey quipped "you first". Ted screamed from back stage "if that shit's still there when I come out, I'm leaving." My comment was "I think he's telling us to eat shit and die."

The last and final dish was again something as vial but far less revolting, biscuits and bacon gravy but he used yak's vomit as the gravy base. Wonderful I said, looks like you have a theme here you can call it "exit cavity" food. I stood grabbed a full bottle of Two Hands Bad Impersonator Shiraz and chugged it as I stumbled off staged it to fight back the gag reflex.

Food Network people started swarming on Rocco as he was screaming is some crazed rage. "I am the best chef on television - everyone loves me..."

Alton comes on an closes the show, with:

"Folks sometime you hear a lot of shit, smell a lot of shit, be here in kitchen stadium we are not going to eat or take this shit from Rocco here today. Fellas fire up the big pot, I think it's hog boiling time (a reference to the movie Fried Green Tomatoes where they killed a guy and then hog boiled and served him)."

Bobby Flay and Alton Brown hold Rocco Dispirito upside down while Mario Batali casually slits Rocco's throat, to drain his blood, and then starts dismembering Rocco in a calm and indistrious fashion and begins the butchering process.

A screen flash comes up and says "Next, A very special Iron Chef - cooking with Rocco Dispirito"

Funny, I woke up and wasn't hungry at all.

Vegas Baby...

Vegas Baby...

We roughed it at the Bellagio hotel... what a beautiful hotel. The service was a little lacking, not much of the "it would be a pleasure sir" attitude that we get at the Ritz, but good service never the less.

Went to Vegas over the weekend, to get away, decompress, relax, enjoy, eat, drink, and live a little. Was I shocked at the prices, yes and no after all it was Vegas and this was not my first trip, or my second, in fact I have been there quite a bit. Vegas has changed for the better and the worse since my last trip.

For a while there Vegas was becoming, in my opinion, too family oriented, to kid friendly, and at the same time less and less ... Vegas. If you want to ride on amusement rides and not see the fun areas of the human body because little Susie might freak out, go to Disney world. If you want to go to the one place in the world that is all about being an adult all wrapped up in glorious indulgence, excess, sex, lust, greed, shopping (according to my wife), and entertainment, Vegas is the place. Although I like (not love) to go and always enjoy myself in Vegas, I do enjoy the normalcy of my life and look forward to getting home after our typical four day vacation. One thing I have noticed is that Vegas is noticeably much more adult oriented and less kid oriented than our last trip a couple years ago, not in your face about it, but subtly. This time the shows (non-jiggle based shows) were showing or giving the appearance of more skin. More of the show promos for what I would term as non-erotic show were classily showing more.

Entertaining overall was more adult based as well as the food. Last time I remembered lost of kids menus and kid friendly fair on the menus, not this time. Honestly, that's they way it should be in a town like Vegas. In my opinion Las Vegas has some truly outstanding chefs and restaurants, however you will pay the price more than any other city. We ate a Segio's the first night which was about 1-2 miles off the strip. A reasonable priced, but stellar authentic Italian restaurant although the manager/host tipped himself or couldn't do math to calc the change back from dinner. We later took a seat at the Bellagio, caviar bar and had some drinks and shared some deserts. The chocolate cake to the right was topped with a crusted caramelized cookie dipped in dark chocolate with citrus cream sauce. Delightful! Caviar was up to $1200 a serving, the stuff is expensive but that is nuts.

The second day we started off with the Bellagio Pasty Shop/bistro, OJ, yogurt, danish, bran muffin, and a coke... $37.00 (Absolute robbery, good food but come on! The OJ alone was $7??). Lunch we hit Pucks at the Venecian, the beef goulash was outstanding and service was impeccable.

One of the surprises was Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill at Caesars for brunch the following day, Bobby has always struck me as a real cocky asshole with how he acts on the food network, but this under $15 a person "grill" was first class all the way. White table cloth and cotton/linen napkins, was the absolute best service we received anywhere in Vegas, even better than Aureole. Believing that upscale southwestern food in an oxymoron, the brunch/lunch food blew us all away. Tuna tar tar was wonderful.

Aureole for dinner the third night was good, actually very good, but the wife and I just though we have had better for less money. We all opted for the $75 a person dinner, apps, main, and desert, plus an outstanding wine.. Meal total was around $450 with tip for the four of us. By no means cheap, but a good meal and a beautiful restaurant. Also, used Aureole's handy dandy pad pc used for their wine list to check my e-mail during my high rent dinner...surreal.

What we had:
TRIO OF AHI TUNA “HARVEST FLAVORS”mustard fruit tartar, walnut crusted loin, harissa infused in mission fig
AUREOLE’S CHILLED SEAFOOD “LOUIS”Florida stone crab claws, green lip mussels, jumbo shrimp and market oysters with spicy watermelon granite ($5 supplement)
MESCLUN SALAD100 year old balsamic vinegar, apple chips, caramelized walnuts
WILD MUSHROOM RAVIOLIroasted chanterelles, sweet garlic, organic swiss chard

PROSCUITTO CRUSTED PORK TENDERLOIN
fettucini “carbonara,” twice cooked egg, truffle vinaigrette
AUREOLE “SURF AND TURF”
spice seared tuna loin, tender beef shortribs, horseradish potatoes
RACK OF COLORADO LAMB WITH SWEET GARLIC
flash grilled vegetable “tian,” tender lamb stuffed piquillo pepper

TASTING OF CHOCOLATE AND PISTACHIO
fudge brownie, vanilla pistachio ice cream, pistachio macaroon
CITRUS SCENTED CHEESECAKE WITH HUCKLEBERRY COMPOTE
crème brulée ice cream, maple brown sugar sauce
ORANGE VANILLA SCENTED CRÈME BRULEE
cinnamon spice cookie
FRESH RASPBERRIES OR STRAWBERRIES
sweet cream, chantilly, crème fraiche


The best deal for food on the stripe I believe is the Stage Deli in the forum shops at Caesars. Four of us for breakfast for under $40. Believe me that is doing pretty good in Vegas these days for food.

Great trip, just wish I would have had the stomach, time, and budget to hit more of the restaurants.

An Eye Opening Low Salt Christmas Feast

My wife and I decided to fill the house this Christmas and invite her brother and sister-in-law and of course my father. It was wonderful to have family around during the holidays.

Due to some dietary restrictions, my wonderful brother-in-law (yes he really is a great guy) requested that we prepare all food salt free or at least low-sodium. The challenge, begins...

Now, I don't know about your family, but mine could live the rest of the year solely on our salt intake from the customary Christmas ham, chicken and dumplings, and everything else that hits our stomachs in that four-day period of gorging and eating out.

The Christmas Ham - As we all know hams are salt cured, and salt cured for a reason, the salt draws in the smoke and/or other "curing" flavors into the ham and makes ham taste like ham rather than simply a pork roast. After some checking around I found out that if the ham is not "cured", it is referred to as a "fresh" or "green" ham (green meaning uncured or un-aged - not the Dr Seuss thing in your mind). I defy you to find one of these without extra effort and cost. Secondly after talking with my local butcher, who could obtain one for me, I was informed that if I was looking for the flavor of a traditional ham in a green ham, I would be sadly disappointed and that indeed I would get the flavor of a pork roast. Since I prefer to brine (salt and water soak) my pork to get more moisture and flavor into them, it seemed I was running myself in a circle. My wife, seizing a chance to eat something other than ham for Christmas and break tradition, suggested that we opt for a seafood feast.

From local butcher to fish monger we went. Our plates overflowed with seafood Christmas Eve with crab claws, mango habanera Chilean sea bass, cedar plank salmon, fresh jumbo shrimp cocktail, and a no salt added twice-baked potatoes. Although fish is pretty easy to go no-added-salt on when cooking as are the potatoes, salt can be added later to taste by each person. The surprisingly hard part was cocktail sauce, prepared cocktail sauce has 30% + sodium (yikes!), so a equivalent had to be made. My wife and I have started making our own, cocktail sauce lately, so we put together our favorite recipe (wasabi/lime cocktail sauce) but substituted additional lime juice for the salt. It worked and provided the salty taste without adding salt.

Christmas day feasts included a family recipe of chicken and dumplings and of course salt. Instead of adding salt as required in the recipe, I double the spices and herbs included in the dumplings.

Our low sodium Christmas, turned out great. Yes the rest of us may have put a shake or two of salt on our food, however we ended up consuming far less than on previous holiday feasts. How do I know, for the first time in Christmas history, I didn’t bloat up and feel like a huge water balloon by the 26th. In fact I think I could do it all again.

Thanks mr brother-in-law, it was not only a great Christmas, but an enjoyable and tasty one with celebrated with less… salt that is.

Have a happy holiday and wishing you the best “lo-so” holiday.

Easy Pasta 101

I hear a lot of people tell me that making good pasta is complex. It isn't, you just need some ground rules, just like when you were a kid playing in the sand box. Don't do that, do this,…etc. I am here to help.

Easy Pasta starts with boiling about a half gallon of water, yep get the big pot and let er get boiling. Add enough salt to make it taste like the sea, salty, but not “I could soak my feet in this” salty (about 6 TBS).
Find some pasta, any pasta, not egg noodles or rice. Any Italian style pasta, spaghetti, macaroni, the curly pasta things, whatever will do just fine.

Rule #1: Pasta waits for no one.
Rule #2: Sauce will wait for everyone.

Guess which should be almost completely done before you begin cooking the other? The answer is the Sauce. Always start the sauce first and have it within 5-7 minutes of being done before dropping the pasta into boiling water. If you do it the other way around the pasta will usually end up being over cooked, soggy, or worse cold.

Rule #3: Pretty much anything can be a sauce – preferably something you like.
Have some extra chili, yep that will work, cheese dip, works to. Think of sauce like pizza, anything goes for a topping.

The Standard Sauces -

A Quick Red Sauce:
½ lb ground beef (cooked), 4 TBS+ of Oregano, a couple minced garlic cloves, ¼ minced onion, hot pepper flakes, salt and pepper to taste, add a can of tomato sauce after everything else is combined, I also like to squeeze the juice of ½ a lemon in to brighten things up.

Going Naked:
¼ - ½ cup olive oil med/med high, add sliced garlic, artichoke hearts, sun dried tomatoes, cubed or sliced grilled chicken, and pepper to taste. Simmer together until heated. Add a little starchy pasta water a couple minutes before the pasta is done. This will thicken up the oil and give it some body. Mix with your favorite drained pasta and serve with fresh grated Parmesan cheese. Going naked never tasted so good.

Cooking Pasta
Cooking pasta is easy, that is if you can read. The pasta maker has painstakingly and scientifically tested how long it takes to cook pasta in boiling water. The pasta maker then inscribes this time on the package of pasta. Usually goes something like this, bring water to boil, add pasta, bring back to boil, set timer, once timer goes off, drain and serve immediately... er... no I mean now. There shouldn't be OK the pasta is done let's get the table set, get the wine open, then wait for everyone to get at the table. The pasta should be served to the recipient within seconds of the timer going off and being drained.

Buon Appetito!

Stihl Chainsaw User Safety Manual IQ Test

I think there should be an IQ test for the purchase of any mechanized/motorized machine.

Take the chainsaw as an example is a potentially deadly tool in the hands of an idiot or even a less than cautious person.

My father willed me his ancient Stihl Chainsaw model 031AV - circa 1970's. A little history - This thing has been through hell and back, I know because I was there for most of those years side by side with my father clearing and maintaining our family's land. Originally, my father had it fitted with a 24' bar - the chainsaw has seen big trees and lots of cutting.

I recently moved into a new home and the adjacent lot was filled with the trees cleared when preparing my home lot prior to building. Noticing my fire pit and seeing the chance for free firewood, my father brought the old trusty Stihl chainsaw over. Although my father now has a new chainsaw, he has been using the Stihl as his "dirty work" chain saw. Amazingly and a testament to the absolute durability of the Stihl's, it runs great even after over 25 years of hard use.

My father has been using it to do the really crappy jobs like cutting fence posts with nails, situations where you will be cutting into the dirt, etc. By the way this type of "dirty work" is considered highly abusive and is really hard on a chain saw, its a miracle the chainsaw still works, but it does. In fact fired on the second pull. After having the chain resharpened, the old Stihl zipped through a truck load of firewood. Quite a bit of cutting during my three evening cutting stint, I ran through nerly two gallons of gas.

Did I have any problems/incidents/accidents? No, like a young Jedi appretice in Star Wars, my father taught me well. Safety goggles, heavy leather gloves, heavy boots, ear plugs, constantly be aware of where the blade is, how it is contacting the wood, maintain control, and watch for and be ready for binding and kickback.

Prior to my cutting escipade, I did decide to get the chain sharpened, tweak the carborator, regap and clean the spark plug and provide the chainsaw an overall check up cleaning and oiling. After all my father had been cutting who knows what, and I wanted to assure it would be safe for the huge cutting chore at hand.

Stihl.com does have a great website. Although I was a little ticked off that I couldn't download a copy of the ancient Sthil 031 user manual, I was plesantly surprised that I could have one mailed to me - for free. The manual arrived within a couple days and I was off propery tuning the chainsaw.

In the midst of reading through the manual, they did have some pretty funny picutures that you don't see in manuals these days.

Here are a few examples of what not to do according to my old Stihl's safety and user manual. Let the IQ test begin. I love the drunk guy in the middle with what apears to be a large bottle of Colt 45.

Blog Spam for SEO Ratings - A Perfect Example

The other day while I was at Work at PHG, I noticed while fixing an early lunch with a dull knife that I needed a kitchen knife sharpener, a really good one like the Spyderco Tri-Angle Sharpmaker 204MF. The kitchen knife I was using was very dull.

After using the super easy to use Spyderco Tri-Angle Sharpmaker to sharpen the knife. I was able to cleanly cut my bagel all the way through to the Totally Bamboo Bar Board - Bali .

Over lunch we discussed that the Mac Knife Santuko knife and the Mac Knives Santuko Paring Knife were highly rated by Cook Illustrated, and PremiumKnives.com has the best price on these knives anywhere.

Accourding to my Website aarnold.com Anthony Arnold, this type of reciprocal linking has greatly improved the ranking all all sites associated with it. Recently this idiot, now has a program that blogspams all blogs with open comments with your ad. Interesting to see how Google will handle/filter this issue. With this tool (?) it may be that blogs will become contributor only comment postings in a very short time.

Hmm great guerilla marketing and SEO or just plain old garbage marketing.

How to keep a dog occupied

Ingredients:

1 - 85lb. heavy chewing dog
1 - Almost completely empty jar of Peanut Butter
3 - Hard dog treats

Stick the 3 treats in the bottom of the jar and screw lid on tight. Serve to dog.

Watch the fun.

The lid stays on for about 10-20 seconds. Screwing the lid on seems mean but only slows him down momentarily.

The above right photo, the dog has most of face in jar and needs to be reminded to occasionally breath.

Below, yes that is that same tongue he does "everything else" with.

Stuffed peppers. One of the great pleasures in life.

After a trip to see my father and then a subsequent trip to a real (non-chain/Mexican owned) Mexican restaurant, I was craving a great recipe for stuffed peppers.

Although the picture to the right is not front cover of Bon Appetite quality, it turned out spectacular. And the flavors, they just rocked!!

Again following my "use what ya got" philosophy of cooking, I grabbed the ingredients or what I had as an equivalent:

2 - large red bell peppers (yeah I know, supposed to use pablanos, but didn't have them)
1 - 8 oz. block cream cheese
2 - chicken sausages (loose or shredded pork is the obvious choice, but use what you have)
Kosher salt and pepper
1 - jar of your favorite salsa - I used a roasted red habanero salsa that I have.
4 - TBS each of Flour, Corn Meal
1 - Egg
1 - Cup Olive Oil

Smoke em if you go em.... Charring the peppers.
Using a long thin knife (boning knife works well), cut the top out of the pepper so that they can be stuffed without tearing the sides of the pepper. Use the blade to cut as much of the internal membrane of the pepper out as possible and remove/rinse out the seeds.

The idea here is to get that nasty wax like cover off the pepper to reveal the tender sweet meat underneath and give it a nice smoky flavor at the same time. The easiest thing to do it to put them directly on the grill on max or on your stove's gas burner on max (electric won't work) and char the living heck out of them. Rotate the peppers as needed with metal tongs. The outside should look like uniformly black piece of coal when you are done. Remember we are not attempting to cook them we want to char the outside thoroughly, so we need the highest most intense heat possible. Some chefs will even do this with a torch or under the broiler on high, but I find the grill or a gas stove burner is easier. Remove peppers once charred and immediately transfer to large bowl large enough to hold the peppers. They can be relatively tightly packed in the bowl. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and let sit for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes or so, the steam built up in the airtight bowl should have loosened the charred skin. Under running water, rinse off the all the charred pepper skins to reveal the tender peppers meat. Towel dry. They are ready to be stuffed.

Meanwhile...
Cook your sausages in the microwave/oven/grill/skillet and when done chop finely into 1/4" cubes. If you have loose sausage instead of sausage links that will work just perfect and omits a chopping step. Put cooked meat into the rinsed bowl the peppers were in, add about 3 oz. cream cheese per stuffed pepper with a pinch of salt and pepper. You are more than OK to add anything else you like at this point to the stuffing. Just remember that that pepper will add a ton of flavor all by itself, but shrimp and hamburger also good meats to use. Mix with your hand until combined, yeah it's squishy but your hand is the best tool for this job.

Spoon or ice cream scoop the filling into the peppers dividing evenly and taking care not to rip the tender peppers skin.

Combine flour and corn meal, add salt and pepper to taste, (you can also add some extra kick by putting some cayenne pepper into the flour mixture at this point). Lightly dust the peppers with the mixture. Add beaten egg and just enough milk (about 4 TBS ) to the flour mixture to make the batter just thin enough to just drip from a spoon/fork.

There are two schools of though on the next part. You can cook them in the oven or fry them first then cook them in the oven to melt the cheese. I opted for the second, because it gives a crisper batter. Your choice.

Heat large skillet with 1/2 - 3/4 inches oil in bottom on Medium to Medium High (or what ever you normally fry things at)

Coat peppers with batter and careful place into heated fry pan. If coating exposes the pepper's meat, add a little extra batter on top of the pepper before turning. Fry to golden brown. Transfer to cookie sheet and bake at 400-425 about 10-15 minutes or until the cheese starts to melt and bubble. (If you are using the bake only method - simple bake until the batter coating is golden brown, turn and brown the other side

Remove from oven and transfer to a plate and top with a couple spoonfuls of you salsa (heated in microwave).

Serve, eat, enjoy!!!

Tony

The US Postal Service Saving you Money!!!

I was down at the PO the other day and had to take a picture of this. Three empty tape rolls taped together for a pen holder.

This probably saved us tax payers about $1000 for the mil-spec version of a freaking pen holder.

Go US Post Office.