twodoebs

I'm DETERMINED to prove to Paula that customized meat branders were a better gift to get my groomsmen that a leatherette toiletrey kit. AND G raised an interesting point about white meat vs. steak for great results. So I thought--in hopes of inspiring the other proud owners of these tools to take them out, give 'em a try, and send me pictures of how much fun you had--I would aggregate pictures of everything I've branded, then put all my tips for sucess in one place:

A pork chop	A steak
A chicken breast	Sweet Kati's shoulder

As for those branding tips, here goes:
1) I DO prefer white meat (or Caucasian skin)--I guess the rational is kinda obvious 'cause-a the contrast, but I also think the meat just brands cleaner, too.
2) I like to coat the branding iron in olive oil prior to heating it up . . . I've found that PAM doesn't work anywhere NEAR as well.
3) I like to cheat a little and heat my branding iron on my stove (I put it right in the fire of my gas stove, but JR said that he had one of 'em fancy glass top ranges and it looked as if HE had some pretty great results) THEN take it out to the grill.
4) I find that I get the best results from a combination of HEAT, PRESSURE, and TIME--that is get the thing pretty damn hot, push it into the meat pretty damn hard, then leave it sit there for a good while (not gonna HURT anything).

Once again, send me pictures . . . I wanna see how it worked out for everyone!

. . . it's the question I hear most often these days. At the same time, I had a conversation with Big Rick yesterday where he threatened to stop reading twodoesb if we didn't get some new content up here.

SO, pictures being worth the thousand words they are, I thought I'd put together a little photo-montage of what Doebette and I have been up to in the last 10 weeks. (In the romantic comedy movie that IS our life, this should--of course--be set to music . . . so please find some appropriate light and fun-ish adult contemporary song to play in the background as you read forward.)

Without coming off as callous or insensitive, I guess the biggest difference I notice about being married is that we EAT better. I'm not sure if it's that we've got more time to cook or that we're so excited about the new Fairway that opened in Red Hook, but we are.


Kati's been taking advantage of all the summer parties to perfect her deviled egg recipe.

And I'VE been perfecting my branding skills--this one's a pork chop. (BTW, many thanks to JR for sending us this picture of a steak that got HIS mark . . . here's hoping that a few OTHER groomsmen'll send me pictures of their successes:)



THEN, Sweet Kati and made this big, fancy meal and got ourselves all dressed up JUST so we could eat off all the new china everyone was so kind as to buy us!


Kati's been testing out her green thumb and doing lots of hard work to make our back deck look great!


AND, we had our first party as a MARR-ied couple (there you go, Big Rick . . . not only can you DEMAND a new posting, you're also prominently FEATURED!).


G, this one's ALL for you!


And at the end of it all, Doebette finds herself a great place to take a webber out on the deck!