Nom!

This week I'm sharing with you guys one of my marinades. This one is my homemade Teriyaki marinade. You'll need:

Soy sauce
Brown sugar
garlic
hoison sauce
sesame oil
pepper
ginger

So there's no real measurement to this, I always mix it to taste. If you want a more salty taste, go heavier on the soy sauce. Sweeter? Heavy on the brown sugar. Spicy? Go super heavy on the hoison sauce.

1. Put soy sauce in a bowl. Measure between .5c and 1c depending on what you are marinading.
2. Dump in about .25c of brown sugar.
3. Mince 2-3 cloves of garlic, and dump in the bowl.
4. Add a spoonful of hoison sauce, a splash of sesame oil (don't pour for any more that 1 second), and a sprinkle of pepper and ginger.
5. Mix it all up

One of my favorite applications of this marinade is pepper steak. For this you'll need a steak that you would marinade (I typically choose thin sirloin). You'll wanna start out by slicing the sirloin against the grain into thin slices. (Against the grain means perpendicular to the lines that run through the meat.) You'll then want to marinade this for 2-3 hours, it shouldn't take long with the thinly sliced meat. Once they are done vacationing in the marinade, turn a skillet onto medium heat, and put the meat into the pan. Cooking the meat shouldn't take too long. You'll want to keep the meat moving periodically so all the pieces cook evenly, and it should only take between 6-10 minutes. As you are cooking the meat, you'll wanna prepare some rice whichever way you feel is easiest. If you wish throw some slices of green pepper into the meat once its halfway through cooking.

Now you have an awesome new marinade and one application to use this with. However, the marinade works well with chicken, or any other meat or vegetable dish. Try it and happy noms!

If you're gonna be careful with your privates in real life...

Why not be careful with them online?

Before reading this post, I'd suggest reading this article just to get a bit of a background on what I'll be talking about: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32467318/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/

This article brings up a strikingly good point: If you're going to put something online you want to keep private, yet show to a selected public, you have to be smart and careful about it. The article phrases it best when saying "you are responsible for where you choose to put your private information." Seems simple and straightforward, right? Then why are there so many issues with online privacy, and what site such as Facebook and Twitter are allowed to use for their own commercial use? Below I've listed what I think are relevant issues in the debate of online privacy:

1. Nothing is for free. So Facebook provides what some would argue is an amazing service to its users; a free online social networking site that allows you to stay up to date with friends, share pictures, send messages between one another, essentially making the phrase "Keep in touch" a whole lot easier. But is it really for free, I mean Facebook has to be able to run their business somehow. Domain names (the way Facebook is actually identified as Facebook), copyrights, iPhone apps, maintenance, innovation, all of these things cost money, yet we're able to use it for free. How so? This leads into my next point.
2. Contractual agreement. Yeah, that thing you just check off that you've read when we all know that probably only 1% of the population actually reads those things fully. I mean, I'm signing up for a Facebook account, not for the loan on a car, I don't have to worry about anything tricky in the contract? Wrong. I believe the current state of Facebook's EULA is that they have limited use of anything you post on their site. They're providing a service for you to put your private information on their public servers. Its no surprise that just a couple months ago they tried to change their contract to where they owned anything you posted on their website. By you putting your private information on their website, you're also saving a copy of it on the computers they own. That fact alone makes stuff that's private feel a little more public.
3. And finally, the modern day expectation for technology to work the way we expect it to. Call it a consequence of the dot com boom, the slow evolution of Lazy America, or sheer lack of knowledge of how the stuff in the background actually works. Its becoming more and more common in America for technology to automatically work the way we expect it to.
   

Restaurant review

So since I got the mobile app for blogging I decided to blog at restaurants I eat around dc. Restaurant of the day is Pho75.
It's this Vietnamese restaurant where the menu consists of soups with noodles and some form of beef. The soup had a nice, light taste to it with basil and parsley and nice cooked meat. Also the food only costs $5. Amazing price, amazing deal.

-- Post From My iPhone

Nom!

Here's another Noms. Quite possibly in my top 3 desserts. It's called Smores Brownies!



Crust:

6 Tbsp melted butter
1.5 c crushed graham crackers (plain flavor)
2 Tbsp sugar
Dash of salt (to bring out the flavors)

Brownies:

Favorite Brownie mix

1 bag of Small Marshmallows

1. Preheat the oven to 325, and spray or butter your square pan.
2. Crust: This is the most complicated part of the entire recipe. Mix all the ingredients in the square pan, then flatten the mixture out into a flat crust. The way I do this is I either just use my hands, or butter the bottom of a flat cup and use that.
3. Bake the crust for 20 minutes.
4. Mix the brownie mixture while the crust bakes, and pour the batter into the crust when the crust is done. Bake for about 40 minutes, or until the brownies are done.
5. Remove the Brownies and turn the oven onto Broil (this simulates a grill in your oven by the way)
6. When the oven is ready, cover the brownies with the marshmallows, and put the brownies back in for 1-2 minutes, until the marshmallows are nice and toasted. ENJOY!
   

Best SNL Skit of the 21st Century