Cocktail Confessions

Yeah, I know it really doesn’t have much to do with cocktails, BBQ’s, or overall general craziness, but I wanted to go ahead and promote my new blog: Willoughby Junction.

What?,  A guy can’t have multiple hobbies?

Yeah, that’s right.  On top of entertaining my friends, being a foodie (and a amateur mixologist), I like to build model trains.  “But wait..”, you say, “Isn’t that an old dude’s hobby?”  Well, it’s not like I lock myself in a basement for the winter, don an engineer’s cap, and watch my trains go in a circle.  As a matter of fact, I don’t even have a basement.

No I enjoy the ‘modeling’ aspect of it quite a bit.  Meaning, I like to build ‘craftsman structure’ kits….realistic looking buildings based on actual structures built over the last 100 years.  It’s a hobby I can do by myself, in my spare time, and require a lot of patience.  I kinda look at it as therapy….somewhere I can tune the rest of the world out for an hour or so at a time and really get involved in my miodeling skills and not have to worry about anything else.

So head on over to Willoughby Junction if you like model trains, structure kits, N-scale, Ho-scale, etc.

Well, I didn’t get to all the posts I wanted to do, but I did make some progress on some other fronts:

- First and foremost, I’ve been hitting the gym again…like I used to some ten years ago.  It’s been surprisingly good to me, the fact that I’m feeling pumped up and good after a workout, and just 10 days into the new year, I’m already seeing some results (or is that just wishful thinking on my part?).  When I bought that digital scale on January 3rd I was weighing in at approx. 236 and some change.  As of yesterday morning (1/9), I weighed in at exactly 231 pounds.  So in the course of 7 days with me hitting the gym 5 of those days and riding the bike at least 20 minutes each time in addition to lifting weights, I dropped around 5 pounds.  Now some of that may be water weight, but that’s hard to determine as I’ve also been increasing my water intake and by hitting the weights harder than usual, I wonder how much lean muscle mass I used to have started to come back.  My body is a mixture of being sore and energetic at the same time.  The last few nights I’ve been sleeping better and feel a bit more awake during the day, but I’ve noted I’m a little stiff in my joints including my lower back….but damn….this may sound highly egotistical, but the look of being pumped up and full of endorphins while standing in front of the gym mirror makes me want to try even harder.  I’ve also began eating earlier dinners and keeping my portion sizes down all the while while eating healthier as well.  A second benefit of all this is that I think my wife is secretly resenting my success and thus driving her to work out again.  This past week she attempted jogging at least once, and also rode the bike and walked the treadmill at her woerk.

The one thing I can tell you that I’m jonesing is the whisky.  Friday night I had an extreme urge to pop open one of my bottles and have a stiff drink or two of Maker’s Mark or Jim Beam, but I didn’t..  I had to put the bottles in the liquor cabinet so their labels weren’t staring at me…mocking me….seducing me….with their oakey and carmel aromatics.

Last night I kinda cheated with the food though.  I had two turkery burgers (healthy), but I has some mayo and cheese on them as well (no other sides), but finished the evening with three chocolate chip cookies.  Tonight I’ll be havings teamed veggies and salmon and maybe some fat free/sugar free Jell-O for dessert.

- I listed some items up on eBay and Amazon to sell off and make room in my spare bedroom for my train set.  I always feel good about getting rid of excess stuff in the house, especially when I can make a few dollars, but I’m excited to go to a train show on 1/22 and I plan on buying a beginners book on ‘benchwork’ possibly tonight to push me even further into getting my ass in gear.

- Yesterday my friend Al and my wife and I went to a RV lot and looked at various class-C campers and looked at even renting a RV for an upcoming camping trip I’m trying to plan for all my friends sometime this late Spring or very early Summer.  I’ll detail that more in an upcoming installement.

- I still need to post some New Years Eve photos here, and got a great article and drink recipes for a stellar Bourbon I got for Christmas (and finished New Years Eve by the way).  I have a podcast episode to edit and post soon, and taking a renewed interested in some techy gadgets as well as really looking forward to the BBQ’ing season.  I’m already thinking about smoking some ribs or another brisket in the coming months.

- My step-daughter is planning on moving out soon, which I think is a good idea and I’m not going to stand in her way.  She really needs to get out into the world and experience how tough things really are and get a dose of ‘reality’ and learn the value of money and hard work.  If she moves out, I need to get my wife to “buyin” that she is on at least a 6 month moritorium before she can come back if things get too tough.  Our house is not going to be a safe-haven or flop-house because things didn’t work out teh way she thinks they will….especially because we are trying very hard to give her advice, guide her, make her think of certain things and all we get back in return is attitude and the “I know this already, old-man” look I get.

This past Saturday I had the opportunity to attend the Huck Finn Jubilee out at Mojave Narrow’s Campground in Victorville, CA.  It was myself, my wife, my good friend Brian and his fiancee, Shea.  I plan on posting some future installments here about the jubilee itself, but there was one small thing I wanted to get out of the way first, the food at Vittle Village.

Now to our overall disapointment, there was absolutely no beer to be found at any of the vendor booths.  That makes one heck of a long day to be sitting out at a beautiful campground, listening to various bands based on early Americana bluegrass and country, with the smell of BBQ in the air with no way to purchase any beer.  There seems to be a lack of verifiable information on whether it was sold or not in the past.  Depending on who I spoke to in my desperate search for amber nectar, I was was pretty much told down the middle there was/wasn’t any beer the year before.

In the hopes of having some really good country inspired food, I had failed to eat breakfast that morning running on only about three cups of coffee until we made our way to the ‘foodie’ area of the fair at around 1pm.  Sadly to say the options were a tad limited.  If I can recall correctly there was on corndog/hotdog stand, one funnel cake vendor, one bratwurst/sausage kiosk, a tent that sold roasted corn on the cob, and another tent that had some plates of BBQ chicken and ribs.  The one that caught my eye was Ptrains BBQ which emphasized hot wings and a wood smoked BBQ chicken pizza.  Each vendor sold cans of soda or bottled water although there were two specialty drink places: one that sold either fresh lemonade or strawberry lemonade, and the other  homemade craft soda’s such as rootbeer and cream soda among some of their offerings.

I gravitated towards Ptrains because of the very large custom made BBQ pit shaped like an 1850′s era style steam train engine, and of course the smell of the wood laden fire.  In addition to my fondness of BBQ and cooking, I also enjoy model railroading, so the chance to learn more about this epic one-of-a-kind custom train pit and the sampling of some good ‘ole BBQ seemed perfect for me.

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Ptrains is a family run business based out of Rancho Cucamonga, CA.  You can go to their site and read the family story about Ptrains all there.  By looking at their schedule, it appears they travel to various events all over the place with pit in tow.  I can tell you that the whole family seemed very genuine and nice.  I had a chance to talk to one of the daughters who was overseeing the wings being cooked and she was very pleasant and was happy to share with me the story of the train.  The train itself happens to be a relatively new addition, being only a few months old and was custom built by a gentlemen in Houston, TX.   The man who built it (name escapes me right now) has built other well known grills including the famous Six-Gun Grill, and took so much pride in this train creation decided to drive it out himself to deliver it to the client only a few weeks back.  The Ptrain pit cost roughly $50K and duplicates steam era sound effects as well.

I’m not exactly sure what they offer to grill on the circuit, but on the menu today was only the pizza and chicken wings.  I hope in the future if I run into Ptrains again, they may offer up some brisket, ribs, or pork items.

Anyway, my buddy Brian had the wings and offered me one, but I declined.  I’m sorry that I did in retrospect because I would have liked to have included that experience here as well, but I can tell you Brian said he enjoyed his and they had a pleasant glaze and wasn’t too spicy.

I myself decided to try the wood fired bbq chicken pizza.  I can tell you it had a lot of potential, but just wasn’t there.  It wasn’t the taste per-se because Ptrains ketchup based bbq sauce is indeed mighty tasty (although not too spicy), but the execution of the actual pizza was a tad off.  First, even though the wood smoking induces a mouth watering aroma to the pizza, the crust itself wasn’t completely done.  It wasn’t as crisp as I would have liked it to be and a tad doughy in parts, as if it wasn’t cooked all the way through.  It probably could have stood a few more minutes on the grill to firm up a bit more.  Secondly, it was a bit over-sauced in the BBQ department.  I’m not exactly sure if they were trying to highlight the chicken or the sauce, but it came across as little heavy on the sauce.  Maybe because it was their first time here and it was a busy part of the day or they are still working the kinks out in the recipes, but I could have used a bit less sauce and a bit more chicken.  That being said, it wasn’t bad, but definetly room for improvement.