Steamed Hams are an Albany Thing

Ted’s Restaurant of Meriden, Connecticut has been serving steamed hamburgers since 1959. And I thought “steamed hams” was an Albany* thing!

*One of my life goals is to start a hole in the wall burger place in Albany, New York called “Steamed Hams.” It would probably just be a pop-up which is another description for a temporary restaurant. And what restaurant is not temporary? What place do you know of that has lasted 20 years, or ten, or even five? Congrats to Ted’s on 64 years.

Problematic Plastic

Lego™ is a great toy that enocurages creativity but unfortunately Legos are made out of plastic. I’m ashamed to say that as our children graduate from Lego to adulthood we are left with three full Amazon bins full of Lego pieces. This will be a great donation for a kid or kids less fortunate than our own. Not great to consider that there are thousands of pieces of plastic here that will take hundreds of years or more to degrade as they transform from useful toys into harmful microplastics.

Three bins full of legos. The top bin is full of tiny non-lego toy pieces, most of which are also plastic.

Pork Safety First

An inexpensive (plastic) food thermometer ordered from Amazon helps make sure that food produced in the Nirvana Wok kitchen is safe for human consumption.

Nirvana Wok Pork Meatballs:
Ground Pork
Ground white and black pepper
Garlic
Bread soaked in milk
Egg
Parsley
Secret spices

Broil in oven or pan fry in olive oil.

Full Nerd Disclosure: I’m a Podcaster

Another life goal of mine is to set up a card table outside our local supermarket so I can hand out Nirvana Wok literature. I won’t be collecting donations but I’ll be competing with another group of people who will. You can hear about them (with names changed) on this episode of my Doomed Planet Podcast: The Child Feeders Grift (A sex offender and a man once falsely imprisoned for rape run an elaborate panhandling scheme in Seattle).

Billions of Billious Blistering Barnacles

Speaking of podcasts, this year I launched my second effort: Bad Billionaires. The first episode is about coffee baron Howard Schultz (Union buster, failed presidential candidate, employer of bad ghost writers, misunderstander of basketball, irritating neighbor, producer of crappy coffee on a massive scale - Seattle billionaire Howard Schultz has failed at everything). The second episode is a survey of The Sordid World of Billionaire Romance Fiction (Olivia Hayle has made millions of dollars selling her formulaic billionaire romance novels on Amazon. This is her smutty story).

WARNING: If you think Obama was a good president, or that the American empire has been doing a good job with our various wars lately these podcasts are not for you.

–Alex

Remember when billionaires had a sense of noblesse oblige? When the yacht of even the richest man in America was not really that giant? Those were the days.

Not soliciting donations right now but if that ever happens here’s our setup:

Donorbox • Patreon • Venmo