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Winning Friends And Influencing Enemies Part I

Frank Grimes

MarkR is obsessed with me
Ultra-Premium
That's right. This post is about how to become popular. The steps are simple and I will show you how.

First, you need a few things. For this lesson we will need onions, Johnsonville bratwurst, and beer. I also recommend horseradish beer and brat mustard, relish, and sauerkraut but that is optional. No need to make too many friends too fast I suppose.



Start by pouring a strong flavored beer into a good sized pot and setting the temperature of the burner to somewhere between medium and high. You will notice I have several different kinds of beer in the photo. This is because the friends I have made like to make it look like they can drink a lot of beer. The truth is they can't and I usually end up with their excess and cannot find anything better to do with it than cook stuff with it. Make sure you have enough beer to cover all of your ingredients.






While waiting for the beer to come to a boil you can start chopping up onions. It is imperative that you get the strongest flavored of onions. This might seem counterintuitive to making friends but in this case it isn't. The more flavorful the onion, the more flavorful the brat. I personally choose large strong yellow onion. If you don't have a river of tears flowing while chopping up the onion, you have very weak onion. If tears do not stop flowing after 24 hours, please consult a gynecologist. Here is what two of my five chopped up onions looks like:



Add half of the chopped up onions to the boiling beer:



Now you want to unwrap your Johnsonville brats and add them to the boiling beer and onions. Often times a mean spirited or hateful person or perhaps even a cheap person will try and substitute another brand of bratwurst for Johnsonville. This is because that person really isn't a good friend. By making this substitution this person is telling their prospective friend(s) that the friendship isn't worth much and they feel the friend(s) are so stupid they can be fooled into accepting second best. Is this the message you want to send? I didn't think so.

With half of our onions and all of our brats in our boiling cauldron of friendship, add the remaining onions. As the beer, brats, and onions boil together it will create a unique and tasty flavor. Subconsciously you are telling prospective friends that while we are unique individuals with different talents and abilities we can come together and through our pooled resources we can accomplish much. Our sum is greater than our parts.

Allow the brats to boil for some time until they are cooked all the way through. You may need to turn the temperature down on the burner. If you bought precooked brats, you are telling your prospective friend(s) that they are not worth your time to do things right. They will usually pick up on this right away and in the course of an evening will strip you of your clothes, hog tie you naked, and drop you off in the ghettoest of ghettos late in the evening. You don't want this to happen do you? Show some respect and it won't! Here is our finished product:



Now hold on their little Jimmy, we aren't done yet. With out brats cooked we now need to grill them. But wait! We are going to be wheeling with our prospective friends in a few days and that is what the brats are for. Not to worry! Grab your trusty tupperware and create a bed of onions like so:



Then put a layer of brats down, then cover those up with more of the beer soaked onion, repeat until the container is full or you run out of brats. Then fill the container with beer so the brats will continue to soak in the beer and onions. A bad friend at this point would not take the time to be so concerned and merely toss the brats in the container with no thought towards pleasing the prospective friend(s) with the enhanced flavor.



Now put the lids on your container(s) and stow them in the fridge and/or cooler for storage and transport. When dinner time comes you will want to open your containers and grill the brats. A bad friend would serve up boiled brats. A great friend who is well respected will always grill them over charcoal before serving them because he cares about his prospective friends.



After grilling be sure to serve with tasty condiments designed to heighten the pleasure of your new found friends. One requirement is Silver Spring Beer'n Brat Horseradish Mustard. This will make even the staunches enemy your friend.



You can usually tell if one of your new friends is gay if they ask for a different kind of mustard. But that is no problem. Be sure to have plenty of condiments on hand for everybody to enjoy. Also keep the beer soaked onions to serve with the brats and you will be well on your way to Winning Friends and Influencing Enemies!
 

Frank Grimes

MarkR is obsessed with me
Ultra-Premium
And here is the end result. I wish I had taken a picture of em when the grill was covered with brats. These were the last few.







I think I made some friends with them. :)
 
And here is the end result. I wish I had taken a picture of em when the grill was covered with brats. These were the last few.







I think I made some friends with them. :)
What you failed to mention is the fact we forgot charcoal and were in the middle of nowhere, NC and had to use actual wood coals to char the brats. Extra points for ingenuity.
 

Frank Grimes

MarkR is obsessed with me
Ultra-Premium
What you failed to mention is the fact we forgot charcoal and were in the middle of nowhere, NC and had to use actual wood coals to char the brats. Extra points for ingenuity.
Actually, we had used up all the charcoal on your burgers the night before. They were damn good too. I think we eat the best food on our trail rides. :agree:
 
Hot food was a welcome addition to my cold belly. I could've done without that freakin hot sauce Loose Screws brought. That chit burned like mad on chapped lips.:squint:
 

Frank Grimes

MarkR is obsessed with me
Ultra-Premium
Hot food was a welcome addition to my cold belly. I could've done without that freakin hot sauce Loose Screws brought. That chit burned like mad on chapped lips.:squint:
He likes to carry that habanero sauce with him wherever he goes for some reason. Probably the reason the lil bastard is only 4' tall.
 
Actually, we had used up all the charcoal on your burgers the night before. They were damn good too. I think we eat the best food on our trail rides. :agree:
Forgot about that. The burgers were meh. I hated to have to freeze them for the trip out there. Cooking frozen burgers is asking for a charred puck just to get the middle cooked. I just didn't have any more room in the heep for another cooler. My fat bastid trail whore passenger packs like a girl. Who needs two large suitcases for a 3 night camping trip?
 

Frank Grimes

MarkR is obsessed with me
Ultra-Premium
Forgot about that. The burgers were meh. I hated to have to freeze them for the trip out there. Cooking frozen burgers is asking for a charred puck just to get the middle cooked. I just didn't have any more room in the heep for another cooler. My fat bastid trail whore passenger packs like a girl. Who needs two large suitcases for a 3 night camping trip?
I don't know too many dudes named Carey. :jump:
 
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