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John Cheever

I do read, despite my mother’s oft-mentioned false memories which indicate a contrarian stance.  I am, however, bad at committing to novels, for which this blog’s section is dedicated.  So while I might not be consistent with chronicling verbose prose, I spend a good deal of time learning to fix things around the house, or…studying contemporary male psychology and the implications of its general neglect.  I could easily explain why mass shootings occur in America, and it has little to do with gun control.  But where’s the fun in an Occam’s Razor thesis?

I jest, naturally, at my own parent, whose escapist romance-themed decade-long reading preference created a self-deluded elevation of the genera to great literary status.  In the artistic form, I might enjoy a photo of a beautiful naked woman, and while I might tell myself that it’s an appreciation for the perfection of human evolution and an esthetic experience, no one’s going to buy that explanation when they find my adult media stash.

Or they wouldn’t, anyway, when I was young enough to have one.  Such is age.

But back to the subject at hand: I read a novel!  Or rather, a collection of short stories: The Stories of John Cheever.  I chose this work as I’m attracted to Americana, so “Great American Novelists” pull me in.  Specifically, I wanted to read his short story, The Swimmer.  Now, as a product of the American school system, I’ve read The Jungle and Heart of Darkness, but 5 or so short stories into this collection and I was ready to kill myself.  Good lord was this guy negative.  Here are the core themes of everything he’s ever wrote:

  1. Capitalism is exploitative (cue Upton Sinclair here).
  2. Nothing you ever do will get you ahead in life.
  3. Being rich disconnects you from the rest of the world around you.
  4. Class divisions will always undermine an attempt to understand one another.
  5. Self-delusion is a powerful coping mechanism (see above).

When I did finally reach The Swimmer, it proved to be a decent story in its own right, but by that point the above themes were so hammered into me that I set the book aside. The story itself is about a once-wealthy socialite who takes a literal and metaphorical journey through his past and back to a home that will never exist again how he remembers it because of his own actions. Sort of a “you can’t go home again” thing going on, but it’s all the protagonist’s fault. And self-delusion. And with a heavy dose of how badly people speak about each other behind their backs. And wealthy people are terrible.

So, not light-hearted by any means. But it’s telling of the time period – the dying social divisions of the Guilded Age, and the lack of unity in the country following The Great Depression. It’s definitely Americana, but with none of the warm fuzzy postwar bit.

(Also no nighttime lovemaking to the backdrop of a rainstorm, lightening flashes briefly illuminating masculine bulges and such.)

–Simon

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Migration

(Reposted from my prior domain.)

Alas, but a man must face his waning energy.  Six years ago I started this blog on my own server.  It was an experiment in maintaining an auto-prosaic chronology.  I’m happy to say it was successful.

But maintaining the server itself has proven exhausting, and while it has provided me many lessons, I must acquiesce to my age and accept that I now have more money than time.

I’m not upset with that shifting ratio.

So I am migrating this blog to a hosted service.  Its domain is at least now finally appropriate for the name of the blog itself:

ephemerality.net

All content will now be stored there.  Eventually the redirect will be automatic, and little change should be apparent to the end user regardless.

See you on the other side.

–Simon

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Meat Myths

Little knowledge is firsthand, especially of the internet variety.  Historical pithy quotes are especially notorious, and usually taken out of context, or lost in translation – then regurgitated with finality in an argument or rhetorical discussion, with the effect of all parties present concluding that their interlocutor is an idiot.  The conversation then ends, with the idiot now deluded into thinking their witty prose triumphant, when in reality the other parties are just choosing to disengage from an idiot.

But occasionally the idiot finds a like mind, and the quote spreads like chain mail, its original meaning lost until someone, finally, uncovers the primary text.  But by then it’s too late.  The false quote has entered public knowledge, even if factually incorrect, and continues to perpetuate.

https://moorheadfamily.net/wordpress/2018/02/08/see-the-light/embed/#?secret=kTJkkp78PA

Cooking knowledge is not immune to “factual” misinformation.  So for the benefit of the internet, I’ve compiled a short list of common falsities that the internet’s puerile mind can digest.  Falsities I’ve seen repeated so frequently that they warrant callout, because they’ve intersected with my hobbies and I can give demonstrable firsthand knowledge.  Here they are:

  1. Smashing burger meat
  2. Cooking meat cold
  3. Flipping bacon

Burgers

First, the oft-repeated advice: “Never smash a cooking burger down with a spatula.”  The reasoning?  It makes the burger dry.

I think this advice originates from the declining quality of commercial grinds, wherein the fat is added after the fact to extruded lean beef.  This system makes fat content easy to measure and highly adjustable, but the fat isn’t part of the grind and, once heated, liquefies out and separates.  This makes it easy to push out with manual force, thus smashing burgers makes for dry burgers.

Add to this problem that commercial grinds hold most of their moisture as added water (rather than naturally within the cells), and any little pressure will rapidly dehydrate the end product.

The system by which grinds are “assembled” creates a patty whose meat, fat, and water content are only held together by the mixing process – and easily denatures with over-handling.  Thus, don’t smoosh it.

https://moorheadfamily.net/wordpress/2021/07/09/fuck-yeah/embed/#?secret=V51KQQjTjI

A higher grind quality doesn’t suffer nearly as badly from these issues.  And in fact benefits from being smashed to intentionally dry it.

Also, not all cooking methods suffer the same problems.  Smash burgers are typically made on griddles at lower temperatures than grills.  The lower temperature prevents the meat from crisping as completely, and holds the excess fat and moisture within the burger due to the flat cooking surface, which further prevents crisping and makes for a greasy product.  Smashing a burger of quality grinds overcomes these limitations without over-drying, with the added bonus of making a cool flat diner patty.

I’d never smash a burger on a charcoal grill.  That would dry it out and cause flareups.  But it’s always better to take the smash approach when using my griddle or cast iron.

Of course, if you insist on buying cheap commercial grinds, then don’t smash your burger – fine.  But don’t say universally to never smash a burger under any circumstances.  That just tells your guests that you’re feeding them cheap meat and you don’t know how to cook.

Setting out meat

I find it especially amusing when I hear this one: “Meat should be room temperature before cooking.”  Ew.  Leave perishable food in the danger zone for hours?  The reasoning: even cooking.

Here’s why this is dumb:

  1. Uneven cooking is often desirable.
  2. Uneven cooking, when undesirable, is usually just the result of using too high a temperature.

Say I want something seared without overcooking it.  Consider again the humble burger.  How does one accomplish a crispy outer layer with a juicy interior?  Why, cook it cold of course!  I even partially freeze my burgers before they hit the grill.

And what about a roast?  I’m not leaving a 10lb turkey on the counter to hit room temperature.  And I’ve never seen a turkey recipe that calls for high heat.  The cold meat issue has never been an issue.  It’s been long figured out.  It’s okay to cook cold meat!

And consider smoking meat.  Starting cold lets the meat stay in the smoker longer.  So if you want really smoky smoked meat, no setting it out before cooking.

Flipping bacon

This one I just plain don’t get: “Only flip bacon once for even cooking.”  I don’t get it because it’s as incorrect as incorrect can be.  Unless you’re oven-cooking, which I think is blasphemous for my own reasons, pan-cooked bacon curls down, lifting the center of the slice.  The edges burn while the middle stays raw.  Constant flipping places the middle of the up side down, whereby the curling process repeats and is soon lifted, requiring another flip.

Maybe this advice came from oven bacon, or those who use a bacon press.  But whatever the reason, it’s now accepted as universal fact, and leads to burnt and raw bacon with the classic pan fry method.

Conclusion

Don’t blindly accept cooking advice.  It can lead to lackluster results, but more importantly it can be a food safety issue.  But most important of all, it can make you look like a real doofus.

–Simon

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The Way is Shut

The Dads do not suffer the dogs to pass.

Easement Acres gets its share of odd projects.  And this time it’s for muddy paw mitigation.

Say it’s nice enough to leave the door open.  Say I want to enjoy the deck.  Say I also want to let the dogs enjoy the weather because I’m an awesome dog dad.  But also say that the backyard isn’t dry, and say the dogs like to run and I can’t keep grass growing back there so it’s’ a mud pit.  And finally, say that politely instructing dogs to not leave the deck has little effect.  What to do?

Simple.  Shove a kiddie pool against the stairs and wedge it with the grill.

Or, something slightly less trashy…

A gate!

Not a novel solution I suppose.  Somewhere along the line someone figured out barriers need access points and invented such a device.  But I still had to create one that fit my exact needs, so I still get man points!

Behold, my adjustable retainer! The bolt can be loosened to account for changing tolerances.

And another fine application of an existing invention.

A gravity latch. Oooooo.

The whippet has since thanked me by peeing on the floor.  But what she hasn’t realized yet is that I can also lock her in the yard, thus depriving her of deck furniture cushions in the sun once the weather warms.  We’ll see who has the last laugh then!

Naughty dog projects.

–Simon

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String Lights

I’m not sure if we’re going for a roadside shanty theme, but our growing string light setup is certainly more pleasant to look at from afar than the standard suburban system of single-bulb external illumination.  The overlapping fields of small-lumen bulbs provide a less invasive experience to the human eye, which I’m finding quite superior to everyone else’s practice of buying the brightest bulbs available to replace their standard garage and patio fixtures.

These are people who’ve forgotten how to use their outdoor space, and in an act of suburban paranoia, take crime-reduction advice to an extreme.  Yes, illuminating your entire property with theater stage lights will indeed make any criminals visible, but someone still has to see the criminal to know he’s there, and that system relies on other people in the neighborhood.  But with lights so bright now, I’m gradually planting bushes and constructing barriers to block those critical views.  You might have sufficient light to land helicopters, but now no one can see your yard to report crime, including you, because you’re inside.

Also I hate you now, because you’re making my own outdoor space less relaxing.

But enough of the grumbling.  Here’s our new deck lights!

It does make things a little cozier.  The prior lights were strung along the eaves, but the effect was a backlight that brought the deck in rather than inviting its full space.  I’m looking forward to their shining through the hydrangeas.

But waste not!  The old lights got a renewed purpose on our front porch.

Both sets are on light-sensing timers, so bonus in that I don’t have to remember to turn on lights for delivery services either.

All in all, their aesthetics might suggest rustic homeliness, but I’ll take the alternative to the typical sterile prefab over-lit house theme in these here parts.

Also I make good crab cakes.

–Simon