Only 18 bucks for all those cukes. Time to get my pickle on:
Food
Apparently the Blog Took a Siesta!
I have no idea where all the other front pagers have been since Tony Jay’s guest post. I know where I’ve been. I had a teleconference on a project I’m involved in, then I went and ran an errand for the Mominator, then I came home and worked out, then I walked the dogs in the steam room we call the outdoors here, and now I’m typing this. As soon as I hit publish I’m going to go get the grime off, turn on the Avs game, and have something to eat.
In the meantime, I have baby wild turkeys!!!!!!!!
They’re SOOOO CUTE!!!!
Also, I really think I have a chance to win this year!
Annual Pyongyang Burrito Eating Contest begins in 57 minutes.
— DPRK News Service (@DPRK_News) June 4, 2021
I don’t care what the odds makers say!!!
Odds makers say Marshal Kim Jong-Un is heavy favourite.
— DPRK News Service (@DPRK_News) June 4, 2021
Open thread!
So I Came Up With This New Dish
My dad makes this cold curry shrimp salad with peas that I just adore, and I was going through my cabinets to eat some of the stuff I bought during the pandemic, and I found two cans of salmon. So I made a tuna salad, but with salmon instead of tuna.
1 can salmon
mayo
diced red onion
diced celery
peas (frozen, but thawed and not cooked so thy pop)
salt
pepper
curry powder
Put it on toasted wheat with some tomato and a nice bib lettuce.
It’s delightful. I ate it with a sliced red peppr with on the side with a little salt and some kalamata olives.
I don’t know if this is already a thing or I made it up, but it is amazing. The curry just brings it to the next level.
Recipe Open Thread: Foolproof English Muffin Toasting Bread
This is a NO-Knead recipe. Simple and quick.
I decided I wanted to make English Muffin Bread and my first stop was King Arthur Flour’s recipe site. Their recipes have never let me down. Including awesome Bagels and JeffreyW’s Perfect Buns.
I used this recipe for the bread: English Muffin Toasting Bread _ King Arthur Baking
And it was so simple and darn near perfect. If you’re looking for a yeast bread that’s foolproof, this is it. No kneading, just mix up, add to a loaf pan and let rise. Bake, cool and eat!
Even better toasted with a good cup of coffee. This one will be made again. And probably often.
Open thread
Recipe Open Thread: Foolproof English Muffin Toasting BreadPost + Comments (92)
Butter Lamb Open Thread
This year’s edition:
I dropped it off yesterday for my mother-in-law, who is now fully vaccinated but still being careful about gatherings because she’s a kind person who is not an idiot. She’s having Easter dinner with other fully vaccinated friends in her quarantine pod.
When I stopped by, we talked about how this is our second pandemic Easter. Last year, I wore gloves to pick up the sanitized cooler that contained her butter lamb, and I left it and a Cloroxed package of paper towels at the end of her driveway. We waved and shouted “love you!” from a distance before I drove away.
Yesterday, we had an outdoor conversation, and MIL expressed hope that next Easter, we can have the family all together again. I hope so too. But I think my husband will be nostalgic for pandemic-related restrictions on socializing and get-togethers for the rest of his life. He dreads big holidays.
Happy Easter to all who celebrate it!
PS: If you’re wondering what a butter lamb is, there’s an explanation (and tutorial) here.
A Real Problem
Since I bought this wok and have been cooking delicious spicy dishes and curries and all sorts of wonderful stuff, I have lost my taste for other foods. I had a nice steak last night with smashed potatoes and broccoli and beets and goat cheese and when I finished all I could think was “BORING.”
I mean why eat that when you can have spicy shrimp with vegetables or thai chicken and cabbage noodles or all that good stuff that is healthier?
Passover 2021: We Were Slaves In Egypt
Passover 2021 has arrived. I can tell by the festive masks!
This year in quarantine.
Next year in Jerusalem.#UnleavenTheCurve#Passover2020 #Pesach #virtualseder #covid19 #passover #matzah #facemask pic.twitter.com/uFaza8BCQW— Hannah Simpson חנה הייה-לב סימפסון (@hannsimp) April 8, 2020
(This is Ms. Hannah Simpson*. The Instagram with her original and initial post of the image is at this link.)
For those of you who celebrate Passover, as well as for those that don’t, like a lot of Jewish holidays it can be boiled down to: “(Insert name of oppressive ruler or nation here) tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat!”
The longer version can more accurately be distilled down to two key parts. The first is that the ancient Hebrews were enslaved by the Egyptians when a new dynasty came to power, eventually rose up, and, through a successful slave revolt that featured a lot of the hallmarks of what we today think of as irregular and asymmetric warfare, gained their freedom. The second is that the reality, that our religious forebears were enslaved simply for being who they were – a distinct community – has a relevance for all Jews in every generation in terms of both understanding the world and relating to it. While the Passover ritual, the Seder (Hebrew for order), focuses around why this night – the first night of Passover in Israel and the first two nights everywhere else – is different from all other nights, the lesson is that, in truth, this night isn’t all that special. That some three thousand years or so ago, depending on which dating schema one subscribes too, our forebears were enslaved. That we, their spiritual successors should consider ourselves to be in their place; hence the constant use of “we” throughout the Seder. And, as a result, we need to understand that the world of 2021 isn’t all that different from the Egypt that enslaved the ancient Hebrews as there are far too many who are still enslaved discriminated against, and/or subjugated for simply being a distinct community.
The lesson here is one of empathy leading to action. It is recognizing that the inequalities and inequities that our fellow Americans, regardless of faith or ethnicity or race experience, and that non-Americans face every day is exactly the same as what our forebears experienced in Egypt. The ongoing attempts by those who lost the Great Rebellion, now doing business as the Civil War, on the battlefield to win the post war peace by consolidating minoritarian, white Supremacist rule through reimposing and reinforcing the Jim Crow system first created in the 1870s to keep Black Americans functionally enslaved in a legally permissible manner given that slavery was and still is technically illegal and unconstitutional is one example.
The abuse of those non-Americans fleeing tyranny, oppression, and political, criminal, and/or domestic violence to reach the US is another. As was the case with the Hebrews led by Moses into the desert, no one grabs whatever they can carry, takes their children, and flees from danger through danger for shits and giggles. They do it because they have no choice. Because staying put is not a viable option. And, in the case of those fleeing to the United States, because they know if they can make it to the end of their journey, they’ll eventually reach the border and, if they’re seeking asylum, a US government facility flying the American flag. They know that if they can make it to the end of their journey, if they can survive fleeing from danger through danger, they’ll eventually see the American flag, like a pillar of smoke by day or a pillar of fire by night, and they’ll know that they’ve reached safety. Because they believe to the point of knowing that where that flag flies, there is hope and safety and the chance for something better. A modern promised land even if those of us living in it all too often take it for granted and we fail to live up to the ideals that inspire non-Americans to risk everything to join us here.
The intolerance, discrimination, and abuse of LGBTQ Americans, especially the recent shift of focus to discriminating and abusing Americans who are trans, is a third example. Since the political and judicial battle regarding gay marriage has been lost, the same bigots, or simply political and religious hucksters seeking to enrich and empower themselves through the use of a wedge issue, have decided that transgender Americans make a useful target. Exact same type of bigotry with brand new packaging and marketing to continue a grift that puts people lives at risk.
Passover teaches us, in the words of Faulkner, that the past isn’t dead; in fact it really isn’t past. But where Faulkner’s turn of phrase was meant to illuminate the benighted nature of the south that was the Confederacy, for Passover it has, or it should have, a different meaning. Specifically, that because our forebears were slaves then, which has to be understood as we were slaves then, that we cannot forget what it means to not be free, to fight for one’s freedom, and to make sure that we continue to help others do so until everyone is free.
And now, if you’ll indulge me, I will put on the emergency tiara, the new grill gloves (rated to 1,427F!), and the frilly apron so I can regale you with the culinary part of Passover 2021.
I just got a new 22 inch Weber Master-Touch Kettle Grill. And I inaugurated it this afternoon by doing an indirect heat roasted boneless leg of lamb and roasted root vegetable medley of multi-color fingerling potatoes and carrots for my Mom and myself for a small, COVID-19 safe Passover meal. I did the reverse sear method. So I brought the lamb up to an internal temperature of 125, removed it from the indirect heat side of the kettle, wrapped it in silver foil, and let it rest for half an hour while my oven warmed up to 500F. Then I reverse seared it for 15 minutes until it was nice and crackling crisp on the outside, removed it, and sliced it. I had the indirect heat side of the grill at a consistent 278 to 283 degrees and the direct heat side around 375 or so. It took around 2 and a 1/2 hours from lighting the charcoal chimney to doing a 20 minute burn off to prepare the grill, to actually roasting the lamb and the vegetables, to resting the lamb, to reverse searing it, to slicing and serving it.
Here’s a picture of when I opened the kettle to put the potatoes and carrots on:
And here’s the finished product ready for serving:
It came out perfect. You could really taste the difference between doing it over coals versus in the oven. I’m sure I’ll be doing steak or chicken on it over the next couple of days, but the next big project for the kettle grill will be to do a hybrid brisket sometime in the next couple of weeks. Basically, this’ll be for my mom who doesn’t really like smoked foods other than pastrami and lox. So while I’ll set the kettle up for an indirect heat as if I was smoking something, the snake method of setting up the coals, I’m not going to add any wood chunks for smoking, just the all natural chunk wood charcoal. And I’m going to prep the brisket like I would for in the oven: trim the hard fat that won’t render, then apply kosher salt and black pepper in a dry brine/rub for 12 to 24 hours prior to cooking to form a pelicule. Then a light wet rub of mustard with a little tomato paste or ketchup and bed it down in a roasting pan on thinly sliced onions with more on top just before roasting time. This will go on the grill and I’ll use the indirect heat to do it low and slow. So not a Texas style smoked brisket, but sort of a hybrid of how I’d do it in the oven with doing it over hot coals. I’ll do a post to let everyone know how it turns out.
Open thread!
PS: Last night when I removed the lamb from the shrink-wrap so I could dry brine it, I managed to splash lamb’s blood all over my face and head. So I’m pretty hopeful that the Angel of Death will definitely be passing over tonight.
* Update 11:30 PM 4 APR 2021: Ms. Simpson reached out and contacted me, via the comments, which, of course got caught in the SPAM filter for a week and would’ve gone completely unnoticed if WaterGirl hadn’t been in there trying to recover a regular commenter’s comment that had been eaten out of there. She wanted to let me know that she was both the creator and the model for the image in the original post and, of course, to be properly acknowledged as such. I’ve updated this post with her tweet of the image and a link to the original image she posted at her Instagram and done a new post giving her explicit credit and apologizing for not attributing the original pic because I had no idea who it was.