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.
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.
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.
One Friday evening I was pacing around the house, trying to think of something to do. It’s rare I feel boredom, as my expanse of hobbies and family obligations keep my working memory filled with tasks that I spend a lot of time triaging while staring out the window. And it was in this rare moment of boredom that I went against my better judgment and dared to offer a dissenting opinion on a benign topic of conversation I was at that moment casually having via text message with my sister.
Single people have a lot of time on their hands, and how they choose to fill it can be downright confusing to the married and parenting counterparts. They seem to all feel the need to subtly justify their life choices by offering commentary on their busy schedules and how important they are in their professional lives, and always without any prompt to do so. I assume that it’s just an insecurity, combined with the lack of a close personal relationship with someone comfortable enough to tell them to shut up.
These people also feel the need to bait you into an argument. Under the pretext of academic discussion. So that they can use their vast amounts of free time to fight their insecurity by trying to demonstrate a moral or intellectual superiority.
I somehow managed take the bait on this occurrence because I didn’t think there was an argument, because I wasn’t disagreeing necessarily. The discussion was on whether the novel Dune was a ecology story. This was rationale, apparently, by our father to get my sister to read the book (they’re both ecologists). I was amused by this, and pointed out that there would be a large amount of bias behind this categorization because of our father’s background. I posited that sure, that’s one of the themes, but one of the lesser ones compared to the larger story, whose themes included psychology, philosophy, anthropology, economics, and metaphysics. It was not the correct answer to end the conversation.
(Amusing aside: the Dune story came up at work and someone mentioned their take, that it was “a deep look into human psychology, culture, behaviors, politics, relations, etc.” Interesting. I guess that makes two of us that are wrong.)
Fortunately, my out arrived in the form of a ceiling light in the remodeled bathroom that had dislodged from its mount and was holding position only by the attached Romex. Having been pulled abruptly back to the land of the sane, I realized the absurdity of having a literary discussion about a novel with someone who hadn’t read the novel, and I stopped responding. There were more pressing matters now at hand. I’m sure she went on to torment other people via text, so I don’t feel bad. She’ll be fine.
Now back to the project.
In a continuation of the previous Idiot Homeowner’s work, the light had dislodged because the mounting bracket was installed to a junction box that wasn’t actually attached to anything. I hadn’t noticed previously because I used the existing bracket, which had just enough tension on it to give the illusion of proper mounting. But time, and me trying to open the fixture later to change the lightbulb, overcame the drywall. And so, left with the dilemma of not being able to remove the mounting screws from the light because they were inside the fixture that wouldn’t open, I took a Dremmel with a cutting wheel and ground through the screws. The wire had been spliced into the main lightswitch, so there never was a way to control it separately. And with the main lights being more than sufficient to illuminate the bathroom, we decided to decommission the run, rather than install a new light. I properly cut, capped, and boxed the wire terminals, and Liz patched the hole.
The wires, naturally, also lacked a proper ground. It’s probably best that this wire run not be used anyway. One more fix for the books.
I would hazard to say that safe food storage temperatures are general knowledge. If you don’t know what they are, then I’d encourage you to pay more attention to food safety, unless you enjoy full digestive purges:
<0 F for frozen food
>32 to <40 for refrigerator food
But these temperatures are for static storage. 0 F isn’t cold enough for the act of freezing, because it’s too slow and allows big ice crystals to develop in the food during the process. Sure it’ll still be safe to eat, but the quality will suffer. This dilemma has long bothered me as a gardener, hunter, and possessor of meat-cutting skills. How do I freeze that which was never frozen without adversely affecting its cellular integrity?
Vitrification would work, but I’m apparently the first person to ever search the internet for “how to vitrify beef”. So I’m guessing it’s not practical, or perhaps it’s very expensive.
That option ruled out, I’m left with one choice: cool things as quick as possible. I surmise 3 methods:
Flash freezing
Blast freezing
Just freeze things in as low a temperature as possible
I’m not going to source liquid nitrogen, so option 1 is out. Nor will I go buy dry ice every time I want to freeze things. Blast freezers are more assembly line industrial systems, so obviously I’m not going that route either. Which leaves option 3.
Sushi restaurants accomplish option 3 with medical-grade freezers, which get as cold as -123. They also cost thousands, which I didn’t want to spend. But in my searching, I found a growing market for ultra low-temp consumer grade freezers. Apparently enough people wanted these that they’re available for reasonable prices. And so, I got this little number:
Cute, isn’t it? I like the frostbite warning placard.
3.5 cubic feet, with a low temperature setting of -40. Not bad. And after adding some cold packs to stabilize it, and using an expensive thermometer that could actually read temps that low without malfunctioning, it goes even lower.
That’s pretty darn cold.
So far I’ve only used it a couple times, and I haven’t eaten what I froze in it yet, so the verdict is still out. I’m hopeful though. Here’s to some non-mushy frozen food!
