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Wednesday, June 11, 2003

Let's hear it for Julie/Julia! 8:33:37 PM    comment []

I'm no expert in either, but this is beginning to look more like roadkill than "roadmap". That's always been a problem in the Middle East, where angels fear to tread nowadays, and where both sides only seem to understand half of what you're trying to say. Yeah, vehicles on roads, nice targets! This message is being brought to you by the online community for Middle East peace, which will now self-destruct. So long, sucker! 7:52:32 PM    comment []

More Intelligence From Chalabi!   (1)     Saddam has $1.3 billion in cash and is paying a bounty for US soldiers killed. (2)     Saddam is moving in an arc from <1> Diyala, north-east of Baghdad, around the Tigris River toward his hometown of <2> Tikrit and into the <3> Dulaimi areas to the west of the Tigris. (3)     Regarding the presence of WMDs in Iraq, the INC leader reportedly said that US troops had "moved too slowly" to seize the top officials and scientists who knew their whereabouts.   Assuming that Mosul, home to the Al Dulaimi tribe (a group of Saddam loyalists), is the “Dulaimi area”, I’ve drawn a little map of Saddam’s lethal arc. Do you think it might be the beginning of a smiley-face like Luke Helder tried to do? Nah...he wouldn't do anything that silly. A crescent moon maybe, but not a smiley-face.   By the way, you might notice that the Chalabi stories are all bylined New York, New York - as if it were up to them! Wonder if he's wearing his vagabond shoes? 5:20:40 PM    comment []

Here’s brine for Canadian bacon:   5 quarts ice water 6 ounces powdered dextrose 2 ounces curing salt (“Prague Powder #1”) 8 ounces salt   It’s from “The Kutas Book”, Great Sausage Recipes and Meat Curing. I happen to have some powdered dextrose, so I’ll be using it.  I’ve substituted brown sugar in the past and it’s worked just fine. Dextrose is not quite as sweet as regular sugar, though both help cure the meat by osmosis. The spray pump will be used to inject about 12 ounces of the brine into the pork loin, which will then cure in the remainder for 4-6 days.   The tricky part is stuffing the loin into a synthetic casing. I was third rate at cussin’ until I tried this the first time, now I’m in the drunken sailor league! I’m shooting for a casing with a diameter about the same size as those egg rings (equals English muffin size) with Eggs Benedict in my mind for sometime in the future.   I’m planning to leave the layer of fat on the pork loin. After trying some store bought Irish bacon a few weeks ago, I’m convinced that’s the right thing to do. Liz agrees and she’s looking forward to sampling some of this stuff when it gets ready. The cured bacon heats at 130F for about 4 hours without smoke, then 3 hours at 150F with smoke, then 160F until the internal temperature reaches 142F. Not a whole lot of work or a whole lot of money to produce 7 pounds of Canadian bacon. A little trivia here: “peameal bacon” is pretty much the same as Canadian bacon, but is coated with corn meal. For fans of Bob & Doug McKenzie, yes, this is back bacon. Beauty, eh? 1:20:42 AM    comment []