It was another great weekend for the foodie in me. The new grill and I played well together each day. Friday was grilled Cornish game hen that was marinated in Chinese five-spice, soy and sesame seed oil. Saturday, we enjoyed a rather messy burger called a Jucy Lucy. This burger is popular in Minneapolis at two bars, Matt’s Bar and the 5-8 Club. They have been featured on the Food Network and the Travel Channel. Now, back to the burger, it consists of two thin patties that have a mound of grated cheese placed in the middle. The meat patties are carefully sealed around the cheese and then cooked. The cheese melts during the cooking. As advertised, the first bite is an explosion of flavor and melted cheese as it spurts out of the burger. We enjoyed it but in the end prefer our cheese on top and measured with each bite. Finally, on Sunday, I gently smoked a Kansas City Strip and Filet Mignon for an hour or so with indirect low heat using apple wood. The idea was to add smoke to the steaks not cook them. Removing the burned wood chips, I cranked up the grill to high and cooked to our desired degree of doneness. The steaks were fantastic. You should definitely give this idea a try. However, the recipe of the week is a dish that my mother used to make for breakfast, potatoes and onions. My addition to the dish is my white seasoning mixture (salt, pepper, onion powder and garlic powder). I do not use minced garlic in this dish as it is inclined to burn. Potatoes and onions are a great side dish or an addition to either and omelette or frittata. Potatoes and Onions, enjoy!

Google goes to Kansas City, Kansas

Previously, Google announced that it was conducting a survey/analysis to select one lucky city in the country to build out a high performance fiber to the home network. While the size of the city was always to be between 50,000 and 500,000 citizens, I did find it interesting that Google chose the not so well known side of Kansas City. Kansas City, Kansas is about a third the size of Kansas City, Missouri. This will be a great feather in their cap as they will be able to crow about the fastest network in the country in 2012. Google’s objective is to deliver 1 Gbps to each home. In doing so, Google insists it does not want to become an ISP or ITSP like Broadvox. The objective is to provide a networking environment where application developers can push functionality and purpose to unseen levels.

It will be interesting to see what results from this effort. Google is not going at this alone. Two groups KCNext and the Kauffman Foundation have also been invited to participate. KCNext has the mission of bringing innovation to Kansas City and the Kauffman Foundation is devoted to entrepreneurship. Both missions fit quite well into this projects stated objectives. I look forward to seeing what innovative ideas come out of this collaboration.