Cooking with Kim

So if you guys don't know, we have been cooking at home a lot for the past couple of months. We have saved a TON of money by staying at home and cooking instead of getting take out. We have been watching Food Network and playing around on foodnetwork.com quite a bit searching for recipes that sound tasty. Our favorites include Rachael Ray, Paula Dean, Emril, and my personal favorite is Malto Mario. Let me tell you something... cooking with Kim has been a blast!!! I didn't realize how much fun it is to cook with her. We have gone out and bought new kitchen gadgets, utensils, and especially knives. I bought her a really expensive chopping knife a couple of Christmas' ago because the set that we had was junk. It has been her knife until now. We found a set of two Rachael Ray knives on the Internet for $100 that she liked. It's the ones that Rachael uses on her shows. We found the same set plus a knife sharpening tool at Costco for $79. I picked that set up for Kim and now those are her knives and I inherited her old one. We have found and tried a bunch of recipes and let me tell ya, we have made some AWESOME meals. I definitely recommend cooking with your significant other. Have fun with it. We crank up the music which has lately been The Brian Setzer Orchestra "The Dirty Boogie"and Def Leppard "Hysteria". We even have some recipes that the kids can help with. We bought a food processor and both kids like helping us slice veggies, mince garlic, shred cheese, and pretty much anything that can go through the processor.

As far as poker goes, I have been playing on the Internet, but the ole' bankroll is dwindling. I played in the $2500 guaranteed tourney on UB on Saturday. Started out really well and tripled my starting stack within about 15 minutes. Then the Qwest guy came to check out some problems that we were having. Anytime it rains, our cable, phone, and Internet start having issues. We have had them out several times in the past couple of weeks with no resolution. By the time they get to the house, the rain is done and everything is working just fine. Well this tech decided to actually trouble shoot every system....including Internet. I am in the middle of the tourney and he shuts it down. DOH!!! After about 15 minutes he gets in his truck and leaves to go check some central box on Hayden Road leaving us without service!!! By this time I am going on tilt because I am in the middle of the tourney and getting blinded off. Lucky for me I have a laptop, so I go over to the neighbors house and plug into their Internet. When I finally get back online at their house, I had missed about 30 hands and lost about 800 in chips. It must have been an action table because when I see my first hand there were only 2 people that were at the table when my service went down to when I logged back on. Ugh!!! After that I really couldn't get anything going. Made a couple of moves and had a couple of hands, but they were all small pots. I finally get back to my house and get pocket K's UTG+3 and raise 4x the big blind. I get two callers and see a flop of A-7-4 rainbow. I bet half the pot to find out if one of the other guys has an ace and the guy immediately to my left re raises all in. Bingo, found the Ace. The other guy insta calls and I have to fold. The hands get turned up.... the first guy that called my raise pre flop shows 7-4o (now mind you he had NO money in the pot before my raise), and the other guy showed A-2o!!! WOW!!! Good fold by me for getting away from my Kings, but 7-4 and A-2? Now I am down to about 2850 in chips and the blinds are 300-600. A few hands later I see AQo and push all in for my 2850 and a guy with 5600 chips calls me. He flips over A6o and I think I am in good shape until the 6 hits the board an no Q to help me and I get knocked out. UGH!!! Damn cable guy screwed up my mojo. I signed up for the Pokerstars Pokercast tourney on Sunday, but CJ started running a fever on Friday after school and the tylenol only gave temporary relief, we decided to take him to the urgent care on sunday. We left the house an hour and 45 minutes before the tourney was to start. After spending 3 hours in the urgent care, we got home after we had gotten blinded out of the tourney. Oh well, CJ got his meds and is feeling better today after staying home from school today and that is all that matters. After we got home and got CJ his meds I went down to the darkhorse for the Sunday poker game. I think I am going to stop playing down there. The new owner told me she and her fiance were going to get involved with the game, but after 4 weeks they haven't been around at all. She was at the bar when I got there, but after our first break an hour into the game, she was already gone. I agreed to run that game because my cousin Ron was the owner of the bar and he would at least say thank you to me for running it and sometimes throw me a few bucks towards my tab. The new owner has been really difficult to deal with when it comes to getting the nightly prizes and it just isn't worth my time to drive all the way down there for a possible $400 Visa gift card 11 weeks from now. I might as well take that money to the casino on Friday and play in a real tourney. So that is what I am going to do.

Played in the $2500 qualifier today and played in two hands. The first one was my AKo in the big blind. 5 limpers so I raised the pot and one guy called. Flop came K-2-7 with two hearts. I bet pot and the other guy goes all in for a couple hundred more so I called. He had J-8 of hearts for the flush draw and hit his flush on the river. Takes me down to about 600 chips. Next hand I was in the big blind with Q-8o and 4 people called. I checked. Flop was Q-Q-9 rainbow. Checks around and the turn is an 8s putting two spades on the board. I bet pot and one guy re raises to put me all in. I call with my full house hoping that the person was on the flush draw and just wanted to isolate me. Nope, he had Q-9 for a flopped bigger boat. DOH!!! Nothing I could do there. Next I played in the bounty and just couldn't get anything going. Went out just before the first break. Oh well. I am going to play in the first $2500 qualifier at 10:30 tomorrow morning so hopefully I will do better tomorrow.