Greetings and Salutations!
OK… so it wasn’t the fuel system after all.
It was our friend, Mickey Fucking Rat again!!!
The shop called Sapper this A.M. and told him that it was the mass air flow sensor as well as the wiring harness. Plus the air cleaner box! You couldn’t see it from just popping the hood however… it was all ‘under and out of sight’.
The sonofabitch chewed it ALL up in there.
To the tune of $800 in parts alone. This was the point when Sapper flipped his shit, and I did a quick goolag search and found that the fuckers at the shop were not just overcharging, but “Bending over and assraping us” in overcharging. The Mass Air Flow sensor? Theirs: $125. Amazon for an OEM? Try $39.99. The air box itself? They wanted $225!!! We found it on one of the parts houses for less than $100.
Sapper went down and chewed some serious ass. The fucking guy behind the counter tried the “Well all our parts have a xyz warranty!” and all this shit. Then tried to say they wouldn’t use parts that we supplied… I wasn’t there but in the end the Manager got involved and now? Well they’re using OUR parts and the bill is going to be oh-so-much less now.
I’m sooooo weary of “The Grift™“
Like is there anything or any place in this fucking country that isn’t trying to fuck you up and over for your cash? I mean even the church… I completely cut the Catholic Church here dead because of the number of times that the Collections Plate(s) went around…
“This one is the Mother Church collection!”
“This one is for our Overseas Missions!”
“This one is is for the building of the New Church”
“This one is is for….”
What the fuck ever dude…
You lost me for good now man…
I mean it was just like horrible man. The “Overseas Missions” in particular chapped the fuck outta my ass. The “Mission” in question? It was to help the Catholics in Costa Rica… The way they played it up… OMG… like it’s a completely unsettled Third World country or something. The big problem I had was that the areas that they were talking about going to and ‘helping’ weren’t exactly the poor areas… Nope… they were going to places like Jaco… which to someone unfamiliar with the area wouldn’t know that’s some primo beach and vacation area there.
It’s right down the street from Punterenas. That’s exceptionally well known as ALL the west coast cruise ships stop there IF they have Costa on the itinerary. Essentially they were collecting dinero to take vacation trips on the parishioners dime, and by doing a few days of helping out with building a new school or handing out bibles or some other sort of ‘justifiable bullshit’ and gee… they get a fantastic Vay-Kay out of it.
I know of what I speak as The Other Countries Lil and Middle are located in Esparza which is about 20 miles inland directly up Route 1 on the InterAmericana Highway. My last trip to see Middle Country I spent a weekend with him blasting up and down the Highways and Byways on his Harleys. He’s got two of them, so I got to do “The Motorcycle Diaries” in real life. Needless to say, some of the most fun I’ve had in eons back then…
Telling you, this kind of grift is why I bailed on the church. Nevermind the padre who married me and the X who got ‘perp walked’ a few years after for being a fucking kid diddler…
Can you blame me?
So tonight is another quiet wife-less evening. I can’t update y’all for a few more on her mission, but I will when OPSEC is no longer an issue. The cool thing about her being gone is I get to make the food she doesn’t like, like tonight’s chow, oven Baked Tilapia.
I should call it buy it’s correct name “Oven Baked Butter/Garlic Soaked Tilapia with a Hint of Lemon”
And of course we have a recibee and pics.
The start:
Two pounds of fresh Tilapia. Any fish will do, but this was on sale at Publix and never frozen and fresh caught supposedly. NOT Chinese stuff… again supposedly. Either way, those are some magnificent filets.
Then, it’s time to season them:
Salt and Pepper of course (not seen) and then the Thyme, Paprika and Oregano. You have to liberally coat both sides of the fish:
Then it’s time to get the Butter/Garlic (and Lemon) all put together. I scraped the entire exterior of one of the lemons for the zest before I sliced them up:
I ended up with about a teaspoon worth, which is fine. Then, I melted a stick of salted boo-tard as I like to call it:
And yeah, I need to clean the microwave LOL
I’m so tall I don’t see the roof of it, so I have the think about it when I’m cleaning, otherwise it gets funky like that. That’s the spatter from the leftover meatballs I had for lunch yesterday I reckon.
So after the melting of the butter, I added a 1/4 cup of lemon juice, the zest, and two heaping honking spoonfuls of the minced garlic:
Then I blended it all using the ‘boat motor’ as my X used to call it:
Now, one picture I forgot to take was before I put the fish into the pan. I added a very thin layer of seasoned Panko:
After the Panko went in, I -then- layered the fish:
You can see the Panko there in the pic.
After doing that, I poured the melted and blended garlic/butter/zest/lemon juice over the entire thing. I made sure that a nice coat was layered on each filet. After that, I followed up with another thin coat of the Panko, and placed the sliced lemon on top:
Then it went into the oven for about 15-18 minutes at 400 degrees. It was a wee bit longer because the filet were extra thick, and I didn’t want it underdone. I checked the thermometer and it needed to be (at the thickest part of the filet) at 145 or above. It hit 150, and I pulled it:
The side was ‘double dipped’ thin cut french fries, extra crispy due to the double dipping. It came out plated like this:
Super light, OUTSTANDING flavor and nice and flaky as a well done Tilapia should be. I think it’d be even better with Cod or Haddock, but currently the prices on those are insane AF, so I’ll have to wait until it comes down in price, or get farmed and frozen which I’m not a big fan of…
Either way, I’m pleased for an off-the-cuff ‘mess’ of things…
I hardly ever measure ‘stuff’ and just sort of throw my recibees together, and hope for the best. The only thing I didn’t add which I realized after the fact was some Aleppo Pepper, which would have only added to the awesomeness. I keep forgetting to add some ‘kick’ to the food here as Gretchen can’t ‘do’ hot spices because of her stomach issues, so my default setting for a lot of my cooking is ‘meh’ on the heat.
I think the next meal I cook up will be a bit ‘hotter’… like maybe some ghost pepper chili as my bro Cowboy gave us some that he grew, and that I subsequently froze as at the time, I wasn’t going to use them…. call it the ‘rainy day ingredients’ so to speak.
So that was dinner.
Otherwise, I’m off for an early bedtime tonight.
More Later
Big Country
Man that looks delicious BC, definitely having the wife make that. Glad you got the truck sorted, definitely hit me up anytime you have vehicle troubles, troubleshooting is one of my specialties and I’ve got access to a lot of tech info.
Roger that my Brother from Another!!!
At least Sapper doesn’t have a 15 year old Honda.
Some genius decided that soy based wiring in the vehicle would be GREAT.
Unfortunately rodents thought it was yummy and would devour all of the wires in your car.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/honda-s-soy-based-wiring-covers-irresistible-rodents-lawsuit-n504746
Best of my knowledge, all manufacturers went to soy-based wiring. Friend back in the Texas ‘burbs had all her wiring chewed on her 21018 rav4 while it was in her garage. We had some chewed wires when we had to park one of our 2020 ravs in the driveway because we we sorting things to move and half of it was staged in the garage. Our garage up in the woods now is also full of furniture and ‘stuff’ that won’t fit in the tiny house, as well as the side by side and the zero turn. We had a squirrel nest in the air filter of our rav, but thus far they seem to be leaving the 4runner alone.
Tilapia is almost all farm raised. Some stocked as panfish in us ponds/lakes instead of bluegill, crappie, etc., but color me a skeptic of publix’s claim. Though possible fl has some tilapia farms/ponds with “line catch” contraptions…
For whitefish, we go wild pacific flounder as a cheap option these days or panfish we catch ourselves out of clean waterways. Sometimes pacific cod or Atlantic haddock is affordable at sams or costco…
Yeah, mechanics you’re paying msrp and for parts shops’ single item delivery in their little trucks… So why ordering own parts and doing preventative maintenance is so much cheaper than fixing once broke…
Maybe invest in an owl house and some native non-venomous snakes to release around the abode?
I live in the woods. lots of mice around maybe some rats too. so, when we moved here. there was 3-5
feral cats around. I told the wife to set out some food for them so they stay around like.
they did. but with a steady food supply, they started dropping kittens. didn’t want or need that many !
we ended up getting 14 of them fixed at 25 a pop. some state/county thing to control feral cats.
anyway, since then. we have had no problem at all with critters. other than picking up the dead ones outside and tossing them in the woods.
wife has named them all. YUP. but unlike my neighbors I do not have mice in my house or shed.
or squirrels near by. or any birds to speak of bear us at all. but my neighbors sure do !
they kill everything for the most part. 3 years ago had some mice find that my blue 94 4runner was a great home. put some cat food near it and it was “over” for a while. but I did find out that some mice started living in my exhaust system (??) guess it was a “safe” place from the cats of murder inc.
you might want to check out Rock Auto for parts. they about the cheapest spot I found.
but, anyway. we down to about 10 cats now after 7 years. still they do a great job keeping the place critter free. still get a racoon now and then. old Slim was great at “getting rid of them”
funny, he never messed with any other critter but the damn coons. big old roadie ridgeback of a easy 110 pounds of bone and muscle. my neighbors still tell Slim stories. he was a great dog. a pound pickup
found on the streets of west Philly. skinny as any dog I ever saw. he filled out fast though.
finding a good and fair shop is like find a gold mine these days. takes a while, but if you do. treat them like the rare thing they are. took me 8 years to find the shop I use now.
the fish looks great. but it something I can not eat. unless I have a death wish.
Tilapia are like lobster. They’re good at converting turds and dead hookers into tasty meat. Deal with it. Yes the pedigree of a pack of it is sometimes shifty. It’s still good.
So, I’m a halfway decent neurophysiologist, or I was once, before I got into huffing #6 fuel oil full time. Along the way since I was into kinky shit like chemical manipulation of tissue growth and development, I used fish since they were cheaper than mice.
One secret is that you can lace baby tilapia’s first feedings with methyltestosterone and it’ll make them all male, mostly sterile and grow faster. It’s not legal in the US but it is elsewhere… and Boston’s a college town where science nerds are, and old geezers arrange play dates (conferences) where the yoots can socialize and look at nerd boobs.
I spent a year designing an indoor tilapia farm for the New England Aquarium, in 2000 I think. The idea was to design a perfect filtration system so it didn’t need an EPA discharge permit to deal with the ammonia (piss) and shit and recycled the water.
Only catch was they gave me a building in Roxbury, Boston’s ghetto, and all my employees were, and this is no bullshit… homeless black single mothers on probation.
So yeah, of course it failed. I had to sleep sometimes and go home. And when I did, one of the illiterate criminal savages killed or destroyed something. I got the blame, not the sainted hoodboogers, so eventually I said fuck off, I’m going to work on a ship and sail far away from nerds, low class black women and liberal do-gooders. And I have.
Anhways, I like cilantro-lime tilapia a lot. And methyltestosterone-laced fish feed makes them taste like they smoked a Newport before being filleted for about 90 days, so it has to be done and stopped early before harvest. It’s fine.
My recent experience with “the grift”. Took my 07 Tacoma in for an oil change. They said it needed an alignment. Said OK do it. On the way home heard noise from the from the front end. Took it back, they looked at it and found the left sway bar link was broken and missing the bushings. If they even did the alignment why didn’t they see the problem? Won’t go back there again. Went home, called the dealer. Quoted $450 to replace both links but they would have to use after market parts because 2007 is too old for OEM. Watched videos on YouTube, decided to do it myself. Bought 2 links from Rock Auto for $40. Needed jack stands, so two for $40 at Rural King. Took 2 hours to replace both links. I used to do all my own vehicle maintenance but I will be 72 this July so I have got out of the habit. The 07 Tacoma only has 107K miles so I will keep it until I leave this earth.
I suggest swapping out the regular paprika for some smoked paprika – I use it on everything.
Back in the 80s, when blackened Redfish was all the rage, I had the great idea to make some. The recipe called for butter-soaked filets to be set in a hot skillet.
Homemade smokebomb.
Now you know what Protestants were protesting against. The Roman church just isn’t compatible with Anglo-Saxon ethics.
Had a Red Tailed Hawk dive bomb me at 6:45 this morning. Was surprised to see him speeding away to the woods behind the house. Third sighting this year. The local mouser cat moved away to Memphis three years ago and now we have tree chickens and maybe mouse problems. An owl moved in last year but has not been seen for a while. Next door neighbor has multitude of bird feeders but not a lot of birds. Circle of life I guess. Would the resident doggos tolerate a putty tat? You are going to have to kill the mice who have a taste for wiring.
Good Luck;
Spin
MAF sensors can be a bitch. About 6 months ago, had one fail on one of my cars and resulting in a “starts up then dies immediately” condition. Funny thing is that by just unplugging it, the ECM substitutes a default value, and the engine started and ran ok, just not at ideal operating parameters (some loss of fuel economy). I found a NOS OEM sensor for about $90, as I won’t buy the new aftermarket ones because they are Chineseium shit that dies in a couple of years. Same car had a failed throttle position sensor about a year ago, did the same deal and found a NOS OE part on eBay for a replacement.
Years ago I had mice nest in the engine bay of one car over the winter (it was covered and not driven for a while). Little fuckers chewed up the wiring harness to the ignition control module, which is big connected with something like 16 wires. Managed to replace only the leads that were damaged, instead of having to cut off and splice on an entire new connector. Was still a real pisser. Also found some vacuum hoses damaged from chewing in that incident.
Looks great, BC! I don’t eat tilapia, but I’m in TN–I can do that with catfish! Those fuckers we have everywhere.
Not to defend the garage for grifting, BUT……
did those prices include labor and install?
That would make a lot more sense for the higher prices.
Absolute insistence on using OEM-only parts is a longtime grift at Officially Licensed™ dealerships; independent shops, not so much. Fish looks awesome; might consider trying some Tony Chachere’s Creole seasoning if you wanna try for blackened, N’awlins style. Gotta go kinda light on that stuff, though, it’s really heavy on the salt. Paul Prudhomme makes a blackening seasoning that’s supposed to be pretty good, but I never have tried it.
Oh yeah, sorry I missed your call, BC, I was sleeping like a big ol bag of rocks after being released from the hospital. Try me again tomorrow if you can.
Link to Chef Paul’s Blackened Redfish recipe: https://www.magicseasoningblends.com/shop/seasonings/blackened-redfish-magic/
According to the reviews, they say both the Redfish and Blackened Steak recipes are NOT too heavy on the salt. Might have to finally give ol’ Paul a try at long last, I’m thinking…
Pretty sure I told ya about the NYC butcher shop on 1st Ave around the corner from our apt on 13th back in the day. When I went in asking about andouille sausage, a quest I had just about given up on as completely hopeless at that point, the counter guy yelled for the owner, who came out front snatched down a link from the ceiling, cut me off a slice, and had me try a taste. Turns out, the guy trained under Paul Prudhomme when he was just starting out. From the taste of that andouille, he was a damned good student. 😉
I live in the woods and store my toy car in the garage when it’s too cold to ride topless. The trick I learned is dryer sheets. Mice hate them and I festoon the engine compartment, passenger compartment, trunk and any other place they can hide. Never had a mouse problem yet. I always buy a new box of the stinkiest ones I can find when it’s time to put the toy car to bed. Cheap insurance. Pitch the rest of the box.