Mac Fam

I am cursed with a SEVERE shellfish (shrimp, lobster, crab…) allergy so I have to cook a lot at home. Most chain restaurants serve shrimp or crab of some variety which means I can’t eat at most family style restaurants. If the shrimp is fried, I cannot eat anything fried in the same oil like french fries or chicken fingers. Most steak places offer grilled shrimp and/or lobster tail and most of them don’t grill fish and meat on different parts of the grill, so I can’t eat there either. If you think about it, I can’t eat at most places without risking the consequences. I will easily go into anaphylactic shock and possibly die! My allergy is so intense just the small of shrimp sends my body into a reaction. I have decided to blog the recipes I invent, on the suggestion of my sweet husband. So here is number 1!
Guac Gobblers:
Turkey burgers – the bun + delicious sides

Things you will need:
Turkey burger patties
Sliced munster cheese
2 whole Idaho potatoes
Italian dressing seasoning packet
Avocado
Pepper/Onion blend
Lemon and Lime juice
Spices

Step 1
Preheat oven to 350. Wash and cut potatoes. Coat with oil/cooking spray and season with italian dressing seasoning. Place in preheated oven.

Step 2
Season turkey burgers. I used: salt, pepper, garlic, cayenne pepper and a quick splash of lemon juice.

Step 3
Throw burgers on grill. I used a foreman!

Step 4
Shell and pit an avocado. Slice/chop into small pieces. Drizzle with lime juice and sprinkle with coarse salt.

Step 5
Turn burgers over. Season other side. They should look a little something like this:

Also stir around your potatoes in the oven. The bottoms may be stuck to the bottom of the pan a bit. This is normal and will make them crunchy!

Step 6
Put onion/pepper blend in pan over medium heat, drizzled in lemon juice and sprinkle with salt.

Step 7
Remove burgers from heat and put slice of cheese on them. Allow to melt.

Step 8
Stir pepper and onion blend with lemon juice until hot and peppers are soft.

Step 9
Remove potatoes from the oven. Stir around in pan, as they may be stuck to the bottom of the pan a little!

Step 10
Enjoy! Cover burgers with flavored avocado, and use peppers and onion as a side dish! A dollop of sour cream goes great with the potatoes!

We put an offer on this joint a few days ago and it was accepted. All that’s left is the home inspection! Assuming things go well, we will move in Feb 26th. Who wants to come to a moving party the following weekend? It’ll be fun!

Now that Lydia and I have had a little time to shake out the kinks, our home media setup is working like a champ. We had quite a few hurtles, which I will talk about below.

The hardware we’re using:
TV: Panasonic 50″ Plasma
Audio: Samsung 5.1 HT receiver
Game: Xbox 360
Media: Mac Mini
Remote: Logitech Harmony One

and the software on the mac mini:
Plex
Handbrake

And finally, on our iPhones we occasionally need to use:
Air Mouse Pro (along with the required listener on the mac mini)

SETUP
The hardware setup is fairly straightforward. The mac mini is used for pretty much all of our entertainment. Plex allows you to stream from numerous online services. I particularly like using Pandora radio, Hulu, Netflix instant, and youtube. It will also play (almost) all of your local media. It scrapes the internet for data relating to your media, and displays it in a very nice format.

HARMONY ONE

I cannot say enough good things about the Harmony One. If you are unfamiliar with it, please go read about it. It’s expensive but it’s worth every penny. Our 3 custom activities are “Plex, Watch TV, Play Xbox”. Each activity automatically turns on the pertinent devices, and changes the input settings on the TV and receiver automatically. No more clutter (we went from 4 remotes to 1). Plus it has a nifty docking station which A) charges the lithium-ion battery, and B) ensures that we always put it back so it doesn’t get lost between the couch cushions!

Setting up the Harmony One was fairly straight forward, but the Mac software is definitely buggy. I’ve read that the Windows software is much better. The interface is fine, but it crashed probably a total of 10 times on me. Annoying, but it still only took around 15 minutes.

PLEX

Lydia and I have gone the straight and narrow and will not download any pirated music or movies. I could go on ranting about this, but let me sum it up: I don’t really have a problem with it at all, I just don’t want to deal with the hassle of my ISP flagging the behavior. Plus, we’re fortunate enough to have the money to buy the media we want, so fair is fair. Anyhow, this presents a problem because iTunes video is DRM laden. Consequently Plex will not play iTunes content, which is unfortunate because I’d love for it to be the end all. The Harmony One can be programmed to work okay with iTunes, and iTunes can even be launched from within Plex, it’s just an annoyance.

GOING DIGITAL WITH HANDBRAKE

So now Lydia and I have the monumental task ahead of us of converting our entire DVD collection to digital. I need to make one more purchase to complete the setup- a 1.5 TB External drive to store our movies. But with both of our macbooks and the mac mini working at once using the excellent Handbrake software to rip our DVDs, it shouldn’t take more than a few weeks to have this completed.

CONCLUSION
So far the experiment is a resounding success. I think we’ve worked out pretty much all the kinks now. We’ve spent some money up front, but saving $100 a month on our cable bill will quickly make up for that.

I like to think of us as media pioneers.

For a good year or so now, Lydia and I have been enjoying Netflix Instant via Xbox. We found ourselves using Comcast Cable less and less. In fact, all we did was DVR shows that were available- for free- elsewhere, especially on Hulu.

Combine that with my insatiable nerdery, and we decided to drop Comcast Cable TV, and bought a Mac Mini as our media server.

So far we’re incredibly happy with the results. So let’s get into the nuts and bolts of how it works.

What we’re using:
HARDWARE
Panasonic Viera 1080p 50″ Plasma
Samsung HT-Z320T 5.1 Home Theater System
And of course the Mac Mini

The mac mini comes with a mini display port to DVI adapter. We had to buy a DVI to HDMI cable to plug in to the TV.
We also needed a 1/8″ to RCA jack for audio.

Initial setup was a breeze, except for one annoying issue. The resolution wasn’t quite right. With the “overscan” option on, too much of the screen was cutoff, but with it off the full TV wasn’t being utilized. After spending some time trying to find a software option (Tried two apps: SwitchRes and DisplayConfigX) but couldn’t fix it. Then I had a “duh” moment and checked the TV settings. Within seconds I found an option to account for Overscan and everything was beautiful.

SOFTWARE
Initially I intended to use Front Row with plugins for Netflix and Hulu. While it was working, it was clunky and unpolished. Which led me to Boxee. Boxee is a phenomenal program bringing in tons of different programs and feeds into one very nice interface. On it we can watch shows hosted by Comedy Central, NBC, MTV, Hulu, and Netflix streaming + many more. You can listen to internet radio, and Pandora. It also has a great browser for your local media and iTunes folders. The icing on the cake is that it has a built in torrent client.

Controlling the mac mini from the couch is a cinch using a combination of Air Mouse Pro, and Boxee Remote, both apps for iPhone.

So far the experiment has been wonderful. Total cost is under $700. Cutting cable TV will save us $70 a month, so eventually not only will it be nerdily cool, it might save us a few bucks.

Steven graduates from VCU today! Yay! I’m so proud of him!
My mom, Kevin, and Vanessa are coming and so is Steven’s fam from Lynchburg. I’m excited to see everyone!
We’re having a party around 3:00. Its the first party I’m hosting at our new place! I have a roast in the crock pot and a cake being made!
Bring on today!

And just because they’re cute: