Category: Announcements

Posted on

Turkettas-giving

Turkey is a strangely non-favorite traditional food. I don’t know if it’s truly the taste, or that mothers everywhere overcook the things. A combination of generational food-safety paranoia combined with the Americana requirement of needing to present a turkey in its whole form to the table (white meat is done at 160F and dark meat at 175F), tends to yield less than satisfactory results. Plus, everyone tends to grab cheap turkey deals. So everyone grumbles a little at the turkey, yet also demands one be served.

So this year’s Thanksgiving attempt experienced some deviation from the norm, and I contemplated a turkey roulade. And according to the internet, I wasn’t the first to come up with this idea. That was encouraging.

But first, a turkey needed procurement. And some internet pointers. The key ingredient for this method was skin, and since I have yet to see turkey skin being sold as a standalone item, that meant an additional turkey breast to accompany the whole turkey. We were certainly going to have turkey!

But not just any turkey. A Bowman Landes turkey! Because why not? Go with famous local free-range turkey! We were hosting after a 2-year hiatus, so let’s make it special.

Turns out, the additional turkey breast, needed for the skin, contained an additional half breast. We didn’t need that much, so the remainder is frozen now awaiting a smoked turkey summer evening. Three were sufficient, butterflied and rolled with butter, herbs, and some de-boned thigh meat.

Then rolled in plastic and refrigerated overnight to set the shape.

Then rolled in the saved skin.

Baked.

Served.

And plated.

How was it? Not too bad. Certainly easier to eat and less mess at the table, although the white meat was still a tad dry anyway. However, the gravy soaked into the leftovers overnight and solved that issue. Some preparation lessons were learned, and it was more work up front, but worth the effort for something new.

Happy Thanksgiving!

–Simon

Posted on

Herr Murderburger

Ever notice how those who buy guns appear to be the least able to afford them? I will grant you that, outside sporting use, a self-defense gun is a ubiquitous right and should remain as such. But, when Foodstamp Frank begins to grow his collection beyond that, I start to wonder if preparing for a statistically unlikely scenario is really the best use of Frank’s money.

Shopping for guns is an interesting experience in that regard. Like perusing the aisles of TJ Maxx, there might be a good deal amongst the overflowing selection of crap – one that everyone else is trying to grab – because their type of clientele has more time on their hands than money. And just like the old lady who pushes me out of the way to see what I’m looking at in the cookware section in an attempt to snipe a bargain in front of me, so too does Foodstamp Frank always immediately ask to the see the gun I’m looking at in the glass case.

But unlike TJ Maxx, the gun in the case is usually just a display sample for the boxes of identical factory mint duplicates in the back room. But there’s no way to know for sure. It could be the only example in the store – like Suburbia. And Foodstamp Frank can’t take that chance, even if it’s at the expense of his children being able to eat that week. And to compound the problem, Foodstamp Frank is attired in the gun-buyer’s archetype: torn jeans and a T-shirt with far right propaganda, so he always seems to get service first. Khakis and button downs don’t elicit the same kind of response from gun counter employees.

Fortunately I was at a chain, not an independent gun shop, so the queuing process was more democratic. Plus it was staffed by old men, and I had my dad with me, so I got some cred there. And my whimsical fantasy turned into reality when I saw this:

Walther PPK/S .380

Ignoring the pseudo-panache of the James Bond character who most famously carried a variant (requesting a shaken martini just means you don’t know how to drink well, and awkwardly flirting with every female colleague is hardly a sign of a well-bred gentleman), the gun itself is very elegant with its perfect simplistic German design and all-steel construction – something rare to find in the American sub-compact handgun market. Although, it must still be growing in popularity, seeing as they’re now being manufactured domestically in Arkansas as a branch of the original German company as of 2013 (apparently they were previously being made in the US under license with Smith and Wesson, during which time they obtained a bad reputation for reliability).

Whatever the reasoning or hokey Hollywood mythology, it fills the niche that I was pursuing casually: a small and concealable pistol, not made of plastic. And no – I don’t want to argue about stopping power with 9mm Parabellum fanboys (I really like this writeup on that topic though, for some additional light reading: https://www.buckeyefirearms.org/alternate-look-handgun-stopping-power).

I haven’t shot it yet though, so the verdict’s still out on its handling. But it does bring some additional elegance to the safe. Which it why it’s been christened “Elegance”.

Plus there was the added bonus of needing to buy another ammo can and ammo!

–Simon

Posted on

That’s a Noif!

I wanted a knife. A bigass noif, if you will. Because I buy vacuum-packed whole primals and break them down. Why? Well, if you can afford the upfront cost, it’s cheaper long term. I also like the flexibility of determining the size of my cuts (sure, I could ask a butcher to cut me something exact, but that’s a bother for both of us). And lastly, I enjoy the opportunity to maintain certain butchery skill sets.

But, I am an anomaly. No one puts themselves through such tasks voluntarily, even if they possessed the skill sets. Consequently, it was somewhat difficult to find the type of knife I was after. I could have gone to commercial knife vendors, but I also wanted a knife that looks nice. No wide-gripped nonslip ugly white plastic polymer handles for me! Something elegant please.

Alas, Wüsthof does not make such a blade in their Classic Ikon set (the design that I prefer). What’s a former part-time professional meat cutter/deli clerk to do?

Fortunately, Dalstrong makes a design that’s very close. I don’t like the steel as much, and the handle doesn’t quite match, but it’s close enough and I can live with it, despite the hokey marketing-ism terminology they so love (“Lionshield treatment”?).

And it comes with a pin! So I can wear a badge of honor that I was able to fork over $139, I guess. It kind of reminds me of those plastic captain’s pins they used to give out to kids on airlines. I also get stickers with some products. I guess we all need a little bit of psychological validation these days?

Anyway, so here we have it with the Wüsthofs:

Close.

It’ll work.

–Simon

Posted on

AI Search and Cotyledonic Polyembryony

I’ve started to embrace AI engines. The aging crank that I am has been reluctant to jump aboard too soon, but it turns out I was thinking about it all wrong. Instead of using it to lazily bypass the process of basic internet research, as its main purpose appears to be, I discovered that I can instead use it to bypass the bullshit copy/paste non-researched web articles themselves. A simple query returns aggregated, compiled, and distilled information; which I can then use to better refine my internet searches to find the actual information that most websites simply scrape and regurgitate. It was, perhaps, a slow revelationary process on my part.

Here’s a good example. One of my tomato starters had three initial leaves. I had never seen that before. My standard internet searching revealed that these first leaves that reside within the seed are called cotyledons. Sounds like a dinosaur to me, but okay. And as a seasoned gardener, I know that tomato seedlings have two cotyledons, not three. What was going on? It was time for Wikipedia to bestow me with closure.

But it didn’t. It just talked about the leaves themselves and their purpose, though not why there would be a non-standard number on a plant. Genetic mutation? Monsanto? Government conspiracy? Tell me!

That isn’t right! It’s some Damien shit right there. Mark of the beast!

But again, it didn’t. So I used an AI engine, and asked it why a tomato seedling would have 3 cotyledons. And it promptly told me that it’s rare, sometimes from genetic mutation, but usually resulting from polyembryony, which happens when more than one embryo forms within a single seed. Furthermore, it’s apparently a non-issue long term, though it causes early variations in normal growth patterns. Now that’s useful information, and also kind of fascinating.

And to drive the point home further, another one germinated, from a completely different variety!

Something in the water?

Most of the seeds I plant are ones I’ve saved, so this double occurrence is intriguing. Perhaps attributed to a statistical Poisson distribution, it could be an unintentional result of my decades-long solanum eugenics project.

Whatever the cause, I’ll be keeping a close eye on these samples. Maybe I’ll have developed new varieties! Or, more likely, the bigger achievement here is that I’ve finally dabbled in AI.

–Simon