9:28 a.m.: Roll out of bed. Stub my toe.

9:43 a.m.: Do my toothbrushing-facewashing thing while I check the BBC News Android app for news of the world and Chicagoist mobile site for news of the Windy City. Have wife tell me to stop playing with that damned phone already and come eat breakfast with the family.

9:51 a.m.: Finish light breakfast of cereal, fruit and tea to prime my stomach for the rest of the day. Warming up is important before a strenuous workout.

10:01 a.m.: Everybody’s finished and just chillin’ on their own around the house, so read my phone some more — this time, Deadspin and ESPN to prepare for the day’s three NFL games. Think about how adding a third non-Dallas / non-Detroit game has nothing to do with Thanksgiving traditions and is just a brilliantly underhanded way for the NFL to shoehorn a game onto its own network, thereby avoiding the need to share any revenue at all (even advertising) with the networks.

11:17 a.m.: Finish up a round of NFL reading and jump in on the food prep. Search for “mashed potato recipe” in my Gmail phone app as I forget my mom’s recipe for the 4th year in a row. Simultaneously celebrate and bemoan the fact that my phone fits me so well as a brain-augmenting device.

11:20 a.m.: Argue again that using a pressure cooker will mess up the potatoes because they don’t get enough potato-starch glue without boiling. Volunteer to clean up the pot later for being a pain in the ass and producing so much starch-glue.

11:44 a.m.: Look up a recipe on the Epicurious phone app in response to a query about yams, find an interesting-sounding ingredient, then decide this ingredient is too much work because it’s not directly in front of my lazy ass. Substitute butter instead.

12:02 p.m.: Chop celery for the stuffing while I pick at the bowl of cashews nearby. I’m finally looking at something that isn’t my phone.

12:30 p.m.: First NFL game begins in Detroit. On goes the TV while I find the mute button for when Terry Bradshaw and/or Nickelback appear. I really hope Joe Buck isn’t calling this one, but he usually sticks to Dallas thanks to the Troy Aikman connection. I already hate the Cowboys, so it’s not like he’ll ruin that game.

12:31 p.m.: Start checking the NFL scores against the Yahoo! Pro Football Pick ‘Em page because I forget the spread every five minutes. (For the record, I like Green Bay giving 6, Dallas giving 7 and San Francisco getting 3.5.)

3:14 p.m.: Lounging around for hours gives way to a guilty need to excuse the lounging around for hours. Hit the treadmill for an intended 45 minutes but laze out at 30. Track it on JEFit. Have some crotchety old-guy resident yell at me for making too much noise when I unstrap the velcro on my armband. (Florida!)

4:30 p.m.: Shower. Fit my belt one notch looser than normal. Google “history of potatoes” and find the tubers’ Andean origin fascinating.

5:30 p.m.: FOOD.

7:30 p.m.: Food aftermath involving the loosest pants I can find. More NFL. More spread-checking. Curse myself for not picking Detroit and Miami after they cover the spread and leave me 0-2.

8:01 p.m.: Finally have room for dessert: three kinds of pie, minimum. Cherry remains unsurpassed.

9:33 p.m.: Awake to a start from food/football coma. Realize Baltimore is blowing out San Francisco. Check the weather on my phone for tomorrow and call it a day — A DAY OF SUCCESS.

Happy Thanksgiving, all.

Also, the shells remind me of the plant from Little Shop of Horrors.

(I really got nothin’ these days.)

Burnt ends: Apparently a localized barbecue delicacy, burnt ends are the most delicious form of barbecue I’ve eaten yet. They’re the ends of the brisket that collect all the smoke, fat and salt into chopped, charred cubes of edible beauty, mixed with a little barbecue sauce to add sweetness and tang. It’s been a while since I found a mesmerizing food, but with the emphasis on char and seasoning, it’s like these things were invented with me in mind.

Founders Double Trouble Imperial IPA: And speaking of foods invented with me in mind, this beer has both the appetizing citrus bouquet and the bracing extra-bitter IPA bite that I’ve always valued separately in beers, only to find together in this dream of a brew. I tweeted that this was my perfect beer — and it’s even from Michigan. Good job, Grand Rapids — I feel like a solid 5-10% of my friends somehow hail from you, and now you produce the world’s most sublimely balanced beer. Sadly this beer seems to be just a tough-to-find seasonal, but big ups nonetheless.

If you’re grossed out, you could always picture nuggets as fried strawberry soft-serve. (Or you could use my healthier nugget recipe, which preceded Jamie Oliver’s. Dude needs to stop biting my style.)

And yet I know I’ll still end up eating them.

(Is it weird that the footlong burger looks pretty awesome to me? “You can really taste the length.”)

A few days ago, a friend asked, “What’s that called when you have an area that’s contaminated with hazardous waste and there’s some federal money to clean it up?” and I instantaneously chimed in with “Superfund“.

You can take the dude out of Pittsburgh, but you can’t take the Pittsburgh out of the dude.

KFC tests out new bunless burger to rave reviews in America’s heartland, Vancouver Sun, Aug. 25

My favorite part is how the Canadian paper made sure to get “America” into the headline as an ever-so-subtle dig at our fatness. Yeah, we’re fat as hell, but what are you going to do about it? Try and fail to buy back an NHL team from our ice-free desert?

(And for the record, this is what I meant by the title.)

But as a young dude, I want to keep fit and look good for the lady. (Lady there is singular these days, being married and all.) So I hooked up this simple recipe for nuggets that are relatively good food and aren’t processed as all hell, with all the fun chemicals and fatness that come with that. Here you go:

Healthy Chicken Nuggets
1 lb. boneless chicken parts – thighs or breasts
1 1/2 cups bread crumbs
1 1/2 tbsp Tony Chachere’s Creole seasoning – you can also just use salt to taste
2 dashes chili powder
1 or more dashes cayenne pepper

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Slice the chicken up into pieces roughly 1 1/2 to 2 inches square. Put the breadcrumbs, salt/Creole stuff, chili powder and cayenne into a bowl and stir it all up with your fingers. Take the chicken pieces and roll ‘em around in the breadcrumbs until you got them good and coated on all sides and in all the crevasses. Brush down a cookie sheet with some vegetable oil and arrange all the pieces evenly.

Put the sheet into the oven for 12 minutes. Take it out and turn over each piece with tongs. Put it back in for another 8 minutes and you’re done. Makes ~ 2 servings.

Eat them with some hot sauce, ketchup, BBQ or Maggi Hot and Sweet from the local Indian grocer. The latter comes with mad recommendations from me. And I just made myself hungry again.

No Grapes, No Nuts, No Market Share