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Kurabuta

So this is a cool random discovery.

Pork is an interesting meat. In my experience it’s often dry and funky. And there’s a variety of cultural reasons for and confirmations of this:

  • Trichinosis – a parasite that develops in pigs when they’re used as garbage disposals. Killing the parasite requires cooking pork to temperatures that make it dry.
  • Pigs fed garbage diets develop of funky flavor.
  • Heavy seasoning is often employed to mask funky flavors (brine, sausage, smoke).
  • Marketing pigs to the mass consumer population led to the development of streamlined pig diets that reduce funky flavor and trichinosis. This also led to pig meat becoming less fatty in nature, but with less fat the meat dries out even quicker.
  • People were slow to change their cooking habits to account for trichinosis elimination and drier meat.

Ergo – the pork we’re used to now is either heavily processed or very dry and lacking depth of flavor.

Then I discovered kurabuta pork!

Perusing the meat cooler at my local upscale grocer, I noticed what appeared to be beef due to its deep red color, but in the form of pork shoulder chops. Fortunately the internet was available in my pocket and revealed the mystery: a specialty breed of pig fed a non-grain diet. Free-range/grass-fed or something to that effect.

It’s juicy and meaty in flavor.

The pork revolution is at hand! Keep an eye out for this stuff. Down with boomer pork!

–Simon

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Canine Yuckies

A dogger does love a stinky treat. So for a minor project I fried up the salmon skin from the Lox.

They are smelly to the point of nauseating, and apparently so delectable to a furry carnivore that their odor induced uncontrollable salivation onto the kitchen floor. Fantastic. The price of being a dog dad.

–Simon

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Vernal Anticipations

Spring is coming, and to celebrate I smoked a salmon! This time, I used quick cure (the kind I make bacon with – the one with sodium nitrate) instead of plain salt for the brine.

Few fish preparations are as tasty as Nova Lox – brined, cold-smoked salmon. On a bagel. It’s also something that can be closely replicated at home! I don’t technically cold-smoke, since I don’t have that equipment and don’t want to rig something up. Cold-smoking is technically done around 80 degrees, but you can’t generate smoke at that temp so you have to create hot smoke and then cool it before it touches the fish.

Or, you can smoke at a temperature just high enough – say 150 – on very cold fish that’s only barely fully thawed. Combined with the brine, it’s juicy and salty, and the sodium nitrate preserves the bright orange-pink color. Cooked to an internal temperature of 130 (I deep-froze it to -40 beforehand to make it safe for “raw” consumption), then cooled, it’s a damn close facsimile to true Lox. It made for a nice faux-spring day.

–Simon

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Hocus Crocus

I have a fondness for crocuses (…croci?). They are the first of the perennials to bloom in the spring, and they were always out in the yard at the Lubbock house, so childhood nostalgia there. They represent the first marker of seasonal change with a dramatic splash of color – a much appreciated change from the brown and grey winter, and they do so at the most needed moment: the heart of suicide month (or at least they do now anyway, what with climate change and all).

They also indicate a phenologic marker! Time to plant radishes. We don’t really eat many radishes, but as the first cold-weather crop that can be grown, I plant them for the sake of planting them.

Also, the crocus bulbs are planted on the whippet graves, so there’s a bit of an “awwww” factor as the blooms remind me of dogs past. Rest in peace, you naughty dogs.

Tori
Faye

So here’s some pics to celebrate and mark the occasion, as well as honor late canines!

Historically, daffodils will be next.

–Simon

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Bonus Bias

A man’s mark of success is in his ability to pay for family necessities.

Well, that and to work hard for that money. But also to have a rewarding career doing something he loves and will change the world. But mostly to be able to take care of his family. But not that that means his wife shouldn’t also have a career, because that’d be sexist. But she shouldn’t be forced to if she doesn’t want to. But don’t suggest that she not. And be ready to pay the bills if she wants to be a housewife which she could totally do if she wants but that’s her choice but it’s a man’s responsibility to support her if not, not that there isn’t anything wrong with being a househusband if that makes more sense economically but know that you’ll always be judged for not being able to take care of your family financially even though it’s totally acceptable in these times to be a househusband except that it isn’t. And you’ll be identified immediately as a pedophile if you go anywhere in public with a kid and there isn’t a woman around, because all men are either rapists or potential rapists. Especially if you’re a loser who doesn’t have a job.

(I couldn’t help but eye-roll a little at Ferrera’s breakdown monologue in the Barbie movie. It sounded pretty juvenile. The double standards exist in the manosphere too. I guess she just needed to vent and the pretext of the fantasy world she was in justified it.)

Fortunately for my own societally-defined personal sense of worth, I’m a high enough level at work to get an annual bonus! And I have the honor of spending it on family necessities, so I get to keep my man card! Necessities such as Invisaligns, dog dental work, and federal taxes! Woohoo!

Meanwhile, Liz spent hers on this:

New couch, coffee table, shelving, and whatever you call that narrow table shelf thing against the wall.

I admit things do look nice.

So I think I need to buy another gun after all. I need a selfish gift for…motivational purposes. Yeah. A man needs to feel reckless at times too. And the gun would be able to protect the family. Wild man energy combined with a protective instinct. Total man card points there. Internal contradiction resolved.

Damn is proving my manhood exhausting. I think I’ll take a nap on that couch.

–Simon