The Amazing Luis

Our friend Luis Escobar has worked on over a dozen (thirteen? fourteen? a whole lot) seasons of The Simpsons television show as an animator. A couple years ago when we were visiting California he took us on a tour of the studio, and it was the coolest part of the trip. He’s a dedicated family man, Catholic, and overall great guy.

Luis also also a blog that I check quite frequently and he’s surprised us on more than one occasion by doing a cartoon just for me and Jennifer. Once again, he drew something on his blog that got a great big belly laugh out of me last night.

Luis always draws people as short little stubby people, but he always draws me as this huge towering giant.

I never get tired of the gag.

Check out Luis’ blog and look back in the archive for other drawings he’s done, including one when I finished my marathon last Thanksgiving, and when we hung out at the Podcast and New Media Expo last year.

And thanks, Luis, for the awesome new drawing (see below)! We really need to get these framed!

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Box O’ Equipment

Yesterday we received our box of new studio equipment for The Catholics Next Door. As we were getting ready to start the show last week, somehow the equipment (except for the much needed ISDN box) got somehow misdirected. So we’ve been using our podcasting gear to do the show.

So we were thrilled yesterday when the new stuff showed up. I’m not sure if I’ll get it hooked up this week, but definitely by this weekend. There’s headsets in there! It’ll be interesting using headsets instead of table-top microphones. Either way – new equipment always gets us excited!

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Guests from September 8-10, 2008

Hey, we have a new email address for the show. You can always leave comments here, but now you can also send your comments to [email protected]. We hope to hear from you!

We’ve had some great guests so far this week, and many more to come. In case you missed it, here are some links to their websites and other resources:

As always, thanks for listening! Tell your friends 🙂

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Big bread is a Willits’ Family Favorite!

A few times a year, I like to bake a fresh loaf of bread. It’s called Jewish Egg Bread. It always rises so nicely in the oven and it appeases the children when I serve 15 bean soup – a recipe they can’t handle. This bread is incredibly soft and warm and comforting. Yummmo!

When dinner was over, all that was left was one lonely slice.

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The Co-host Under The Desk

An unknown fact: During almost every show recording, our dog Jody walks in and out of the studio.

We live in fear she will suddenly start barking while we’re on the air.

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Singing Jennifer

Jennifer is singing. It’s for tomorrow’s show. You’ll have to tune in to hear it 🙂

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Sunday’s Dinner: Homemade Sliders

We REALLY didn’t need to know this was possible. I really didn’t need to know how easy it was to make these things.

On Friday’s show we discussed what we’d be eating for dinner this week. I was brainstorming some dinner ideas to save Jennifer the brain cells, and I came up with the idea of making homemade sliders. Basically, these are little cheeseburgers.

Back in college after a late night of…we’ll just call it studying…I often went to White Castle and would get a bag of their mini-cheeseburgers, affectionately known as “sliders,” because of the way their greasiness made them slide so easily through one’s digestive track.

As I’ve gotten older, I try to avoid these things. Down here in the south we don’t have White Castle, but we do have Krystal, which I consider to be a sub-par knock-off.

But now, I feel like I don’t need either. We can make our own, and they were far superior to both.

The way we did it was pretty easy.

We started with 2.25 pounds of hamburger and flattened it out into a great big flat rectangle. I then cut the hamburger into 18 somewhat equally sized patties. I knew they’d shrink during cooking, so I made the patties a little larger than the size of the bun.

The boys wouldn’t like onions, but the way they did it at White Castle was to actually cook the hamburger on a bed of onions. We chopped up enough onions for me and Jennifer, and let me tell you, this way was FAR superior to the ones without onions. I tried both, and the onions were incredible.

We chopped up the onions very small, and very, very fine. Then we spread out a generous bed of chopped onions on the griddle and placed three patties directly on the onions so both cooked together. The other patties we just fried on the griddle.

I flipped them back and forth until they were pretty much done and then put a layer of cheese on each of them.

We used King’s Hawaiian Butter rolls, sliced in half, for the buns.

Pure bliss.

Tommy whined and complained until he saw how much his brothers loved them, and then he finally relented and ended up liking them, too.

To make things even worse for our dietary needs, we fried homemade potato chips.

It was unreal. They were just too stinking good. We don’t need to be doing this too often.

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Breakfast at Chik-Fil-A Dwarf House

All you can eat Chik-Fil-A chicken on Saturday mornings. ‘Nuff said.

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Adventures in Imperfect Living Catholic Podcast with Rosary Army founders Greg and Jennifer Willits

Notes from Friday, September 5, 2009

Thanks to Angel Aloma from Food for the Poor. If you can, please help them!

And, as promised, here’s the Willits Menu for next week. Maybe it’ll help in your menu planning:

  • Arroz con Pollo
  • Grilled Kilbasa with onions and peppers
  • Pork Chops with Grilled Potatoes
  • Rice and Eggs
  • Bean Soup and a Loaf of Fresh Bread
  • Homemade Sliders (Burgers on the griddle with Hawaiian Sweet Bread Rolls) and homemade chips
  • Family Fun Night (probably pizza takeout)
  • Thanks for hanging out with the Catholics Next Door. We’ll talk to you Monday morning at 10AM EST with a brand new show!

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Other pleasant duties of a radio producer’s job

“Yo, Adam the Producer, I’m not feeling funny this morning. Tickle my feet, will ya?”

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