Lemony BBQ Pork Chops

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I’ve cooked a few things, but until last week, I had never cooked a pork chop. Oh, I’ve eaten pork chops several times, but I’ve never actually made a pork chop meal for myself. That changed on Friday, as I purchased two nice big slabs to do with as I pleased, along with a little shaker of BBQ Grill Mate. Here, then, is my quick and dirty recipe for BBQ-sprinkled lemony pork chops.

  1. Sprinkle pork chops with BBQ Grill Mate.
  2. Drizzle with olive oil and squeeze a lemon or two over it.
  3. Leave to marinate in refrigerator for the afternoon.
  4. Broil at 450°F for 12 minutes. Use a proper drip tray to let the fat and excess olive oil drip out.
  5. Serve with optional apple sauce.

As with most of my cooking, all times and quantities are arbitrary. If you’ve got a grill or a George Foreman, grill away; it saves you the step of dripping off excess fat and olive oil, which I had to do since I don’t have a proper broiling drip tray.

Curled-Up Paws

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Sometimes the cat sleeps like this, and while she’s dreaming, she starts batting at the air.

Wasp On Sign

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Little wasp crawling around on a wooden sign in Harpers Ferry, WV.

Recent Reading: Manhunt, the 12 Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer

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Just finished reading: Manhunt, the 12 Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, by James Swanson. As a dramatized compilation of historical accounts, Manhunt is excellently done, giving us a matter-of-fact chronological narrative of the assassination of Lincoln, the flight of John Wilkes Booth, and his various accomplices and adversasries along the way.

As literature, however, Manhunt does not get as high a mark. To its credit, the language is pithy and straightforward, very readable, but his prose occasionally goes on topically awkward, nonlinear rambles. There are also a few instances of his using the past tense for in-story flashbacks which I think should more correctly be rendered in the past perfect, and at least twice I noticed that he lapsed into the present tense, confusing characters’ thoughts or dialogue with the flow of the story.

All in all, Manhunt is an easy read which I would recommend to anyone interested in American history but still unacquainted with the specifics of Booth and the Lincoln assassination. I wouldn’t rank it as a pulse-pounding page turner, but that’s a good thing in my view, as the story suffers little unnecessary embellishment added to its written and oral sources. The wrap-up chapter at the end provides an informative synthesis of the places of Booth and Lincoln in history, and the eventual fates of those connected to them.

Further reading: Laura Keene, the actress at Ford’s Theater who cradled Lincoln’s bleeding head in her lap after he was shot; Boston Corbett, the more-than-slightly-bonkers self-castrated Union Soldier who shot John Wilkes Booth; a summary of Booth’s escape route from NPS.

Now seems an apropos time to post this photo of a Civil War banner at Harper’s Ferry:

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Mushroom

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Mushroom growing out of mulch near the rails on Virginius Island, just north of Harpers Ferry.

Harpers Ferry Day Hike

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This is Harpers Ferry, WV, the famous little historical town situated at “the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac” (as it is traditionally referred to), right on the borders of Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. I and a few folks from church came for a day hike on Saturday, to check out the Split Rocks / Jefferson Rock trail and take in some of the history. (We actually lost the Loudoun Heights section of the trail, as it is rather well hidden along the road, so we ended up walking about 2.5 miles along the shoulder of US 340 back to Harpers Ferry from the Potomac crossing. But the rest of the hike from where it converged with the Appalachian Trail was great.)

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Here’s me at Jefferson Rock, the very spot (though not the exact same rock) from which Thomas Jefferson took in the view of the river and valley. (The four red pillars are there to keep visitors from rocking the rock, as it has not been entirely stable on its perch through the centuries.)

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IMG_7531.JPGThere were Civil War reenactors there, too, camped out in tents by the rails between the Lower Town and Virginius Island. One of the best scenes of the day came when a group of Army personnel in fatigues (possibly with the Army band, who were playing that day) dropped in on the Union troops to talk history. Soldiers from the future!

We were not able to visit Harper House or John Brown’s fort. One day I will return to Harpers Ferry one day to linger a bit longer in the town and bask in its history. More photos here (a few of which will be highlighted in coming days in the photolog), and more on hiking in the Harpers Ferry area here.

STS-121: The Shuttle is Back in Action

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The Space Shuttle Discovery lifted off successfully on the Fourth of July, and STS-121 is now underway. It’s still kind of annoying that so much mission time has to be devoted to boom-mounted camera tile checks and damage assessment backflips, all to compensate for a system which subjects the vehicle to a rain of debris on every launch. But in these twilight years of the aging shuttle program, safety must come first, especially after Challenger and Columbia.

I have Nasa TV open in Quicktime on my iBook so I can watch the mission live while I work on my PC. Right now, the Shuttle and the Space Station have docked and their hatches are now open to each other. In a few moments, millions of tiny astronauts will wriggle into the space station’s airlock, fertilizing it so that in nine months, a new baby space station will be born, continuing the magical dance of life in space.

DC Fourth of July Fireworks 2006

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IMG_7335.JPGFirst Street NW in front of the Capitol is not the best place in DC to watch Fourth of July fireworks, as Amy and I learned firsthand two nights ago. The crowd is thick and nasty, the road is hard, the variety show on the Capitol lawn never finishes on time, the fireworks are far and low over the horizon, inconsiderate people always stand up in front of those who are sitting to get a better view, and even if you remain sitting, people behind you will complain that you are in front of them no matter what you do. I normally enjoy being around tourists, but next time we stay in DC to watch the fireworks we will be avoiding this infested stupidity-magnet of a location, and go to the much better viewing spots around Constitution Gardens, as we did two years ago. (Also see the excellent vantage point I had last year from the Department of Labor roof deck.)

The good news is that full zoom and a six second exposure with the camera sitting on a tripod served me well once more, and all the people standing and milling around between the lens and the fireworks made for some interesting overlap effects, too:

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More Fourth of July 2006 photos here.