Outside the dugout: What's cooking?

Making a change to a recipe that we like. I make a spicy sundried tomato, roasted red pepper, parmigiano reggiano and heavy cream sauce with basil, garlic and crushed red pepper that I serve with shrimp over penne. My wife asked me to add some spinach. Sounds good. I'll give it a try.

 

The spinach addition was OK.

Today I am smoking two chickens for tonight and other things later on like chicken salad (smoked chicken is so good for this) and chicken enchiladas.

Mashed potatoes and green beans for a bland comfort food dinner.

 

Leftover chicken, mashed potatoes and corn on the cob. Easy peasy and good.

 

Super simple tonight. Hebrew National dogs before watching the Panthers/Lightning hockey game.

 

Last night was chicken barley soup/stew with leftover smoked chicken. It was much like a Brunswick stew and very tasty.

Tonight is an early Gator hoops game to attend so some kind of snack before the game and maybe SquareHouse pizza after the game. I have all the fixings for victory margaritas.

Worked on my vintage Sony PS-X50 turntable today. It has had an intermittent speed "wobble" issue that would come and go. Most likely a bit of corrosion on one of the six carbon potentiometers for setting speed and setting the quartz lock phase loop. Used Deoxit F5 because it has lube that Deoxit D5 can wash out. Giving it time for the solvent overspray to the boards to flash off before I power up and give it the smoke test. Took pictures of the original potentiometer settings and matched them the best that I could.

The action on the pots was really smooth so I am hopeful that this fixes the problem. No leaking or bulging caps so probably not that. Resisters can go bad but not very often.

 

Pork tenderloin with Texmati rice and stir fried broccoli tonight.

More work to do on my turntable. I was hoping that cleaning the speed control pots and returning them to their original positions would work. Speed control is off (pitch wobbles) so I will have to take the bottom off the turntable off so that I can access the trim pots while the machine is running and make adjustments. This would be easier if the strobe light still worked. Sigh. Going to try it by ear first.

 

Turntable is fixed! I really didn't want to spend over $1K to get a turntable that was almost as good.

Dinner tonight is leftover turkey tetrazzini.

 

Pics of the presentation!

 

Last night my wife and son were down in Sunrise to watch the Panthers. They looked tired after an epic comeback down three goals with 10 minutes to play the night before finishing with OT and a shootout.

I stayed home and had a Paul Newman's pizza to eat during the hockey game and the Bears v Packers game. That football game was epic! And as a former Chicagoan and current Packer hater I loved the outcome.

Tonight going to dinner with some friends. Thai take-out I think.

Bought a very nice 3.5+ pound beef tenderloin today for Christmas dinner. I had to pay extra per pound because a whole tenderloin was was too big. Maybe I should have bought the whole one and put what I didn't use in the freezer as filets for later.

Personally I am not a huge fan of beef tenderloin. I prefer ribeye and NY strip.