Yep that’s my neck of the woods. Ava! Even smaller than the town I grew up in, and it was pretty dang small. :)

Yeah, adding a little bacon fat can’t be a bad thing!

Here in downstate IL we have an even easier and quicker version. You get a roast that will fit in your slow cooker, add an envelope of dry Italian dressing mix, some beef broth, and a jar of either giardiniera or pepperoncini (what we usually use), and let it cook until dinner time. By then you can pull the meat apart…

I’m 56 now, and it’s been 20 years since I played paintball, but a couple of the times I did play are the absolute most fun I’ve had doing anything ever. It’s a grown-up version of the all-time best game: tag.

The Firecracker is a pretender to the Bomb Pop throne.

I recommend, as I would for baking any cookies, that you not use a non-stick pan or any pan with a dark color. What I’ve found works by far the best for baking cookies is a simple heavy-duty commercial-grade aluminum cookie sheet, ideally one without edges. I usually still set the pan on a rack so air can get…

I don’t think this is a fair assessment. Before this, app developers didn’t have to provide any information at all about what they do with data. This seems like at least a small improvement. Disclosure: I am a developer myself with a pretty successful app in the Play Store, but it requires no permissions and never…

As some others have said, with any luck it will be a few years before I need another vehicle, and at that point I can get something small and electric for commuting. I’m dailying my SRT-4 currently, and while I don’t plan to ever sell that car, it gets about 26 mpg on my commute, and something a little more efficient…

I’m in Southern IL, about an hour east of STL. :)

They’re all pretty tasty, but my favorite kettle-cooked chip is Krunchers, especially their mesquite BBQ flavor. I can’t always find Krunchers in stock, so my second choice is actually Walmart’s house brand kettle chips. I haven’t tried Utz, mentioned by another commenter, but they sound good.

In downstate IL we also call it soda. When I was a kid, it was not unheard of for any kind of soda to be called coke, but I don’t hear that much these days.

So I really do need all these infusions of the blood of children!

I never got bent out of shape about the SRT-4/Neon thing, but it does make me wonder, did people argue about whether it was an Impreza or a WRX, etc.? Maybe they did. It’s kind of a dumb argument. I mean the one is a subset of the other in both cases.

Wasn’t Ralph Gilles CEO of Dodge at one point, and not just head of design?

“I thought that if the world was going to end we were meant to lie down or put a paper bag over our head or something. That’s what they told us in the army.”

It’s the lake formed by the Hoover Dam.

In fairness, a whole lot of them were bought by people...a lot younger than me...and they tended to do dumb things, beat them up, and wreck them left and right. I was 37 with 3 kids when I bought mine, already a long-time turbo Mopar guy, and I knew what I was getting. I’d been waiting a long time for Dodge to put a…

Yeah, for me it’s my SRT-4. It’s always been a super-fun little car. I bought it new and have over 240K miles on it now. Mine’s both a little more wild and a little more tame than stock. With some simple but judicious suspension changes, Stage II turbo upgrade and BWS turbo, light-weight forged wheels, and full…

You must be in a low-humidity location? 83 degrees here takes your breath away when it’s humid.

For a similar but slightly different flavor, I bet you could use smoked mayonnaise instead of cream cheese. When I was coming up with my own onion dip recipe, I found that some mayo was just the thing it needed to give it the flavor I was looking for. Some smoked paprika might be good in there, as well.