And a Happy St. Patrick’s Day to everybody. It’s the one day of the year where everyone is at least a little bit Irish.
Today will be my annual corned beef cooking event. Getting good briskets of corned beef is pretty much limited to this month of the year and the prices of them are lowest now with the stores putting them on sale. So what I do is buy about four of them and cook them all up at once. After corned beef is cooked, you see, it can be frozen. So I’ll hold out enough for tonight’s dinner and leftovers tomorrow, then I’ll cut the rest into smaller chunks and freeze them. Later in the year I can just pull one out now and then for some goooood corned beef sandwiches.
Speaking of corned beef sandwiches, my favorite is the Reuben sandwich. Now that I think about it, I should save some out of today’s batch so that I can make Reubens later this week. When I make them, I’ll share the instructions (can’t really call it a “recipe”) with you. I’ve got it simplified without losing the quality of the sandwich.
It was great to learn yesterday about the appointment of Glenn Gaines to Deputy Assistant Administrator of the USFA. And a surprise, too, that he will immediately become the Acting U. S. Fire Administrator. I can assure you that there is nobody with more ability or integrity capable of handling that task.
It was my good fortune to have worked with Glenn throughout my entire career and when I retired he was the Fire Chief by then. One thing that you will hear from anybody who knows him is that he is the “real stuff” and is noted for his always doing things the way you would like to see them done. Or as some might put it, “A fireman’s fireman.”
I don’t know what the plans are for filling the top spot at USFA. Perhaps Chief Gaines is being given the chance to see how he fits into it. But so often those way-up-top positions are handed out to political favorites as a kind of reward for previous political activities. Glenn has always worked very well with politicians (thus his success), but he has never been a politician. It’ll be interesting.
Now let’s get this equipment checked out. I’ll go start up the Irish Coffee. (heh, heh. You can do that when you’re retired.)
