This is my blogchalk:
United States, North Carolina, Carrboro, English, Paul, Male, 56-60, All Music, All Food.

Subscribe to this blog in Radio:

Wednesday, December 24, 2003

The best Christmas carol ever Merry Christmas! 6:16:07 PM    comment []

Three veggies browning…   I hate the word “veggies,” BTW. Reminds me of the Vegetable Moonie type with wire rims and braids. It’s too familiar. “Vegetables” puts them on the table where they belong. Anyway, this mirepoix thingie for the bangers is a bit of inspiration. The recipe calls for stock, why not make a good one? The engineer approach to the kitchen says, “Add water to sausage to facilitate stuffing” and it’s true. The drunk says “add a little wine” and that seems like a good idea too. The cook says, “add stock,” and that’s even better, “leaves more wine to drink,” he adds, winking slyly.   The big light bulb overhead today was the seasoning – in this case white pepper, ginger, sage, salt, and the elusive mace (had to go to 4 stores to find it). Make a good stock and add the sausage seasonings to that. Let’s you correct the flavor balances before you commit to it. The flavors are already developed and they’re liquefied, just waiting to embrace the ground meat. Why didn’t I think of that?   Wait a minute, I just did…but I’m sure I’m not the first. The mirepoix has the added benefit of filling the house with intoxicating aromas, perfect for Christmas. 3:25:28 PM    comment []

Liz says that bangers are an acceptable part of Christmas dinner, though they are more often served with goose than turkey. She also advises that they should be fingerling size, not the bratwurst-like 32-35mm size given below. I happen to have some small sheep casings that I purchased way back to make slim jims, so that’s what I’ll use. The stuffing tube is a special one, handcrafted by my friend Jim from one too large for my stuffer (I never thought about Jim “slimming” this tube before right now – coincidence?). The recipe below is from Rytek Kutas, the legendary godfather of homemade sausage. Liz advises emphasis on the sage and she knows what she’s talking about, having grown up in York, UK. I found a pork butt for 89 cents a pound and will boil the bone with a mirepoix for the pork stock while the chunked meat chills in the freezer (always chill meat thoroughly before grinding!). Don’t try a Google on “bangers” unless you want a lot of references to porn sites. Here’s the recipe:   ENGLISH BANGERS   INGREDIENTS FOR 10 LBS.   2 tsp. ground white pepper 1 tap ground ginger 1 tsp. sage 1 tsp. mace 3 ozs. salt (about 6 tbsp.) 6 ozs. bread crumbs 10 lbs. fat pork butts   PROCESSING PROCEDURE   Meat is chilled to 32-34 degrees F and ground through ¼” grinding plate. All ingredients are mixed very well with about 2 cups of water. When possible, add cooled pork stock in place of water. Meat is then stuffed into 32-35mm hog casings and whatever sausage not used up is frozen   English hangers are a very tasty sausage served at breakfast time. much the same as American pork sausage   The above formula may be used to make all beef breakfast sausage. Use any kind of beef or trimmings, 70% lean and 30% fat. 11:06:48 AM    comment []

Fear Is Good!   People afraid of identity theft buy shredders and sign up for special protection from their credit card companies (“Say, that’s a nice lookin’ credit card you got there, it would be a shame if somebody ripped it off”). People buy abstract shit and that’s good for the Aerican economy because we don't make any real shit anymore. Materialism is dead or possibly passé; long live The Economy. Let us pray. 6:24:30 AM    comment []

Seattle Skyline with Concentration Moon 5:10:33 AM    comment []

Sheep Entrails For Dummies I don’t normally read Mickey Kaus because, like many liberals who became neocons while supposedly Damascus bound, he irritates me. The gotcha tone is reminiscent of Neal Cavuto and I can practically imagine a smarmy blue suit, smartass grin, and a self-congratulatory delivery. People like these need to spend a summer working at McDonald’s (here, I must confess, I am grabbing both my typing hands in a maneuver I call “The Double Strangelove” to avoid going into a rant). The forwarding link from the front page™ of Slate says More on Whither Wolfowitz and that just reinforces my premonition that I’m about to be treated to some more Potemkin Village on a Slippery Slope neoBuckleyesque right wing drivel (“Whither” is the giveaway), but I click anyway… Today seems to be Wolfowitz Day: 1)    WaPo's Tom Ricks has a Wolfowitz profile that doesn't get into at least three questions you'd want a Wolfowitz profile to get into: a) Is he on the outs or not? b) What is his explanation for the evident failure in post-war planning? c) Is he really in favor of pressuring the Israeli government to make a peace deal, as rumored before the Iraq war? (Hmm. I don't want to get too conspiratorial, but is that why the guns are now turning against him?) ... But Ricks does get a highly-inflammatory derisive quote from retired Marine Gen. Hoar. .... The list continues (go there to read it, no permalink available) and Word™ wants to indent and put a “2)” on this paragraph, but I read on for evidence that Wolfowitz is “on the outs.” The observations have a familiar ring – anonymous sources, obscure links to the discredited opposition, disclaimers, but ultimately a reference to “Mr. Official Leak” himself, Bobby Novak, meaning that everything you’ve read irrefutably comes from the inner circle and Wolfowitz is undeniably BSE-infected dead meat. This school of political observation has an important historical precedent. At the height of the Cold War, before Reagan “won” it with a dramatic slumdunk on an alley-oop right at the buzzer, high-dollar political voodoo analysts over here would pore over the trail droppings leading to The Kremlin in an effort to determine where the power mass was aggregating. Yes, boys and girls, we have met the enemy and he is us. We have progressed beyond an unusually secretive government and now have our own Politburo. Thank God we have witch doctors like Kaus to figure it all out for us. 4:17:10 AM    comment []