Three-Dog Nights

I’m back. I was busy with Christmas.

I have an aunt. I will call her Polly. She has a lot of problems, and she has been rejected by the family. She has been divorced for many years. Her daughter, whom I will call Mabel, has also suffered a lot of rejection, as has the daughter’s son, whom I will call Larry.

When I took my dad’s ashes to Kentucky earlier this year, I spent a fair amount of time with Polly and Mabel. All three of us felt we were no longer integral parts of the overall family circle. A few years back, my other living aunt called during the fall and told me how she, four of my cousins, and their families had gotten together for Thanksgiving, and she apparently didn’t think about the fact that she was talking to someone who hadn’t been invited. My dad and I didn’t make the list, which seemed odd. Since then, I have had the impression that we no longer had insider status.

While I was in Kentucky, I told Polly and Mabel they were welcome to visit me over Christmas, and I said they could bring Larry, too. I figured I would probably be entertaining friends as well. In the end, some of my friends could not make it due to work conflicts and another could not be here due to difficulties with an interesting parent, so I only expected Polly, Mabel, and Larry. They had committed to come 9 months ago, so I thought they were serious.

Not long ago, I talked to Mabel, and she said Polly had suddenly changed her mind about coming. She has arthritis, and she didn’t want to travel. At this point, it was starting to look like attendance was going to be limited to me, my parrots, and the squirrels.

People change plans. This is normal. It’s a little out of the ordinary to announce you’re calling off a holiday trip right before it’s supposed to happen.

I wanted them to come. In Kentucky, Mabel and I had talked a lot about God, and she had accepted Jesus. I prayed for her in her mom’s driveway. I told her about the benefits of baptism, and she said she wanted to do it. I suggested she go to a Last Reformation event, but she insisted she wanted me to do it. I thought this was a bad idea, because you should be baptized as soon as you receive salvation, but it was what she wanted. I let her know about some events she could attend, but she didn’t go. I ended up pinning my hopes on the Christmas visit, and it looked like it was not going to happen.

I prayed and encouraged them to come, and they decided to do it. I didn’t understand what I was asking them to do. The only decent car they had belonged to Larry, and it was a mini-SUV. They had two golden retrievers and an Australian cattle dog, and they weren’t happy with the boarding options that were available at the last minute. They had to jam three adults and three dogs into a pretty small car.

They didn’t want to put three large dogs in my house, but I told them to bring them. I was not going to give up that easily. Baptism is important.

When it came time to leave, Polly said she had a bunch of errands to run, and they were determined to make the 11-hour drive in one shot, so they ended up arriving at 4 a.m.

Polly and Mabel both smoke, and the dogs are big, so it was an interesting time. No one smoked in the house, but when you smoke intensely, you can change the atmosphere in a house just by being in it along with your belongings. The dogs behaved, but you can’t have three big dogs in a house without issues.

I didn’t care. I wanted to get the baptism done. How often do people with dysfunctional families get to fight back with real weapons?

Polly has some firm views on religion, and she tends to take a dim view of new things. I had told her about TLR in March, and since then, she had done some Googling. TLR and its leader, Torben Sondergaard, are getting very intense persecution from a wide variety of nutcases here and overseas, so there is plenty of unflattering slander out there for anyone to read. My aunt got the impression that I had joined a cult, and she thought Torben was a wanted criminal in Denmark. Maybe he is, if full-gospel Christianity is a crime. The authorities passed a ridiculous new law because he and his friends were casting demons out of people.

I don’t belong to TLR, and Polly and Mabel had been told this. I think TLR does a lot of good work, but I don’t join denominations or churches, and I think there is a strong chance that TLR will become corrupted and overly regimented soon, as virtually all other denominations have. Polly already had her bad impression, however.

I have Googled TLR a lot this year, trying to find out if they have ever done anything wrong, and all I have seen is prevarication and innuendo. The people who attack them are just like the people who attack Trump. I’ll post a video I found, to give you an idea what I’m talking about. It’s basically hysteria.

That’s a video in which some person uses a video of a completely different ministry to “debunk” TLR.

Here’s an even weirder one. You will see TLR’s own footage, which they post for the purpose of ATTRACTING people, used for the purpose of “exposing” Torben. It’s truly bizarre. Torben and TLR want people to see this footage, so clearly it’s nothing that makes them look bad. It’s Torben and others, helping kids receive deliverance. The kids are happy as they can be when it’s done. No one is forcing them to do anything. They’re glad to participate.

When I was at the TLR event in Raleigh, I was part of a group of people who cast a spirit out of a woman who foamed at the mouth and screamed. Two little girls came over and got involved. I don’t think the oldest one was older than 7. They were working right along with us. They weren’t disturbed at all. Afterward, they accompanied my group on an outing in which we healed people. They continued to pray for people, and they performed some healings. It was their own idea, and they had a great time. The idea that you should hide Christianity from children is a little hard to understand, especially when you consider the fact that we routinely expose them to toxic things like occult videos, Halloween activities, violent entertainment, video games, and the Internet.

The people who post these things appear to be unbalanced fanatics. They evoke visions of torches and pitchforks. There are a lot of truly ill and dangerous people among the ranks of the charismatic-haters.

It’s unusual to see enraged charismatics, but the people who are against charismatics are often extremely angry, to the point of being out of control. There is a reason for that.

The TLR saga is a very interesting thing to watch. The irrationality of the critics is an indicator of a supernatural cause, and this is characteristic of persecution, the flames of which are lit and fanned by spirits.

I fixed prime rib, scalloped potatoes, cheesecake, and Texas trash for Christmas, and we did as well as we could. Things were complicated by the dynamic between Polly and Larry. They had always gotten along in the past, but for some reason, Polly was laying into him over various things, and Larry kept reacting by going to his room and staying there with a video game device. He would come out the next day early in the afternoon, which made group activities difficult.

My understanding is that he spent a lot of time contacting friends, trying to get someone to buy him a ticket home.

My take is that Polly was 70% responsible, with the remainder of the fault belonging to Larry. Polly refused to give an inch, and Larry didn’t do a lot better. It’s a shame, because she won’t be around forever, and they should be trying to create better memories. Larry has a great deal of potential, but he needs to take on the responsibilities and attitude of a man.

I talked to both of them, but I didn’t make significant headway. It’s a shame, because until recently, they had a very warm relationship. Larry has a heart deformity, and he had lots of problems as a kid, and Polly was always there for him, fighting to get him what he needed.

Pettiness is extremely destructive, as I have learned from practicing it. It seems like modern Americans don’t understand how forgiveness works or why it’s necessary. They also don’t understand the principle of the extra mile. It’s okay to let yourself be wronged a little.

Anyway, you know it’s a real family Christmas when people keep making things awkward with what appears to be very little justification. It could have been worse. All over America, cops responded to domestic violence reports on Christmas. Ho, ho, ho.

Our challenges were compounded by my refrigerator’s sudden decision to fail, with many pounds of holiday food in it. Luckily, my spare refrigerator was already turned on. Mabel got down on the floor with a tiny shop vac and cleaned the fridge’s coils, and then I got on the web and figured out what was wrong: the bearing in the circulation fan motor was going, so the fan flopped around and got stuck. With Mabel’s help, I removed the fan and motor, and I used my belt grinder to make the fan’s blades smaller so they didn’t catch on things. The fridge resumed working, and I ordered a new fan and motor which should arrive on Monday.

Speaking of pettiness: really, Satan? You went after my refrigerator?

Last night, Mabel started talking to Polly about baptism for some reason, and they got into a very long conversation about doctrine. Polly made some veiled jabs at my beliefs, and I didn’t respond. I just waited. And waited. I would say she went to bed at around 12:00, which is two hours later than I like to go to bed. I stayed up, avoiding participation in the conversation, because I was determined to get Mabel baptized if at all possible.

When Polly went to bed, Mabel started talking about her reservations and problems, and I told her what I knew. Eventually, she decided her baptism didn’t have any relationship to her mother’s progress as a Christian, so she changed clothes and got in the pool, which was freezing. I had suggested the jacuzzi tub, but she wanted the pool. It probably took her 15 minutes to get into the water because it was so cold.

In the end, we got it done, and Larry was there to witness it. Finally. I guess I got to bed at 2 a.m.

I didn’t care about anything but the baptism. It was done, so I was happy.

They wanted to start driving home today. Polly has a green thumb, and she was not happy with my plants, so when I strolled out at maybe 10:30, after compensation sleep plus prayer and a shower, I found Polly and Mabel fixing up the plants on my patio, which was very nice of them. They also insisted on cleaning their linens and straightening up the house. Larry came downstairs at around 1:15.

I didn’t know what to think. If I had a long drive to make, I would want to leave in the morning, but they do things differently. They had things in the washing machine, so I knew they weren’t leaving for a while. I offered to take them out for barbecue, which I did. I would guess they got off my property at 4:45 p.m.

Until I saw them pack the car, I didn’t realize what they had gone through to get here. There were things stuffed in the footwells. It was very tight. If they have an accident, the EMT’s will need the jaws of life to get them out, even if the car isn’t damaged. With those big dogs in the car, they don’t need airbags.

Whatever. Mabel got baptized. That’s the important thing. Now maybe she can mature and work with Polly, who is extremely unhappy.

Long before all the difficulties arose, I told Mabel to expect Satan to throw everything he had at her to prevent her from coming, and boy, did he come through. But he lost. I prayed, and she prayed, and God listened.

Buy Yourself some Nice Jewelry Instead

Thanksgiving dinner is over.

My Texas trash recipe is excellent. Much better than last year. If you can find it in the post I wrote yesterday, you might as well save it, because it works.

Most Texas trash recipes are underseasoned, and they don’t contain nearly enough peanuts. My recipe has lots of Worcestershire sauce and other stuff. I used a cup of cocktail peanuts per family-size bag of cheddar Chex Mix, and I could have used three and gotten away with it.

My turkey came out great, as always. I think using Aidell’s andouille in the stuffing was not the best choice. Plain old Hillshire Farms beef sausage would have been better. Still, I have never had stuffing anywhere that compares to mine, so I guess it’s okay.

Here’s the big bombshell: everyone agreed that my Honeybaked ham clone blew the real thing away. Not even close. That’s a wrap for Honeybaked. I will never buy one of their hams again.

The recipe I posted works. Just be careful not to burn the crust when you torch it. You want it to harden but not blacken. You’re welcome.

You may not believe my recipe is better, but it is, and it costs 20% as much as the real thing. You may think people all over America wouldn’t be paying Honeybaked prices if they could do better at a small fraction of the price, with a few minutes’ work, but it’s a fact. Here’s something else that’s weird: the Smithfield ham I started with is better, regardless of crust or seasoning, than the meat inside the Honeybaked crust. It’s not as dry, and it’s more tender. You would think Honeybaked would at least try to provide the best meat available.

Spiral-sliced ham crusted with sugar, cloves, and spices is now cheap. You just have to be willing to work for 10 minutes instead of spending 30 minutes buying a ham at a store.

My guests were friends I made at Trinity Church. Their youngest is my goddaughter Gabby. She is really something. Totally fearless. A real firecracker. Runs up to people and grabs them. The thought of rejection is not part of her programming. They have four other kids, and they’re all a pleasure to be around.

We went through a lot at Trinity. We were treated badly by the pastors, of course. When my friends’ son was very young, he got burned while in the care of Trinity’s nursery staff. The burn was on his face, and it was large. The leadership clammed up and refused to talk to my friends. There was no admission of fault, and there was no offer of help.

Of course, when my friends took the boy to the ER, they were treated with suspicion. There were insinuations that they had burned him. It would have been nice if someone at Trinity had had a spine and a heart and could have backed them up.

They left the church. Later on, another child was burned in the nursery. That’s how Trinity is. Nothing changes. Everyone lives with blinders and a muzzle on. The leaders feel that if they pretend everything is fine long enough, eventually the people they hurt will go away and not sue them or otherwise inconvenience them.

My friend was an armorbearer at Trinity, as I was. He remembers spectacularly shabby behavior the Wilkerson family displayed toward me. For example, I put in a long day working for nothing, and then I made the mistake of driving home with Rich Wilkerson’s car keys. I lived 20 minutes away, and that’s in optimal traffic. Instead of showing a little class and gratitude and offering to send someone, like one of his two oldest sons, who did not have real jobs, for the keys, Wilkerson insisted I bring them back the same day.

You would think a grown man would have at least one copy of the key to his main vehicle.

Today we joked about Trinity. I said I wondered who had cooked Thanksgiving dinner for the Wilkersons. We had a good laugh about that. My friend speculated it was some black family still under the Wilkerson spell.

We left Trinity at about the same time, and we ended up in a church run by a man who was an active pedophile. One day that pastor came to church with a Christmas ornament he had bought for my friends’ second-oldest daughter, who would have been maybe eight. My friends thought it was a creepy thing for a middle-aged man to do. When the mother of the pastor’s victim blew the lid off things, my friends were glad they had left the church before anything happened to their daughter.

Being abused by the same preachers can really help people bond.

We cooperated today. I provided the turkey and a couple of pies, and my friends brought sides and soft drinks, plus two unexpected pies. This is how normal Christians do it. They don’t manipulate other people into cooking their food and then stroll in after someone else does all the work.

We had a lot of fun, even though my friends’ rescue dog, Pumpkin, pooped on my carpet. I can pretty much count on Pumpkin leaving me a present on every visit. I have a fair amount of equipment for taking care of a dementia patient, so I was well prepared for any type of spill.

Their eldest daughter stayed in the kitchen most of the afternoon, working on her studies. She had a scholarship to one of Florida’s best private colleges, but she had to turn it down because they don’t offer a pharmacy program. She wants to do the 6-year program at FAMU. Her mother complained that all she did was study. What a terrible problem for a parent to have!

She’s a tremendous young lady. Really restores my faith in young people.

The boy who was burned will be starting baseball next year. His dad had him out in my hard today with a tee-ball set.

When we were done eating, my friends and their kids did most of the clean-up work. The reward for the kids was pie, plus being allowed to shoot coconut-flavored Reddi-wip directly into their mouths.

The conclusion today was that if I’m still here next year, we will do it again, and they will spend the night. Everyone was paralyzed after dinner. They did not want to climb in the car and drive home.

I made them take most of the leftovers. It’s not safe for me to be around that stuff. They made the mistake of leaving an entire pecan pie. I will probably throw it out. That will hurt.

I’m expecting my aunt and cousin for Christmas. We somehow ended up outside the circle of relatives who were invited to family get-togethers, so we will gather here and have better food and weather than everyone else.

I hope your Thanksgiving has gone well. I have to go downstairs now and talk to a couple of birds.

And Messing With Texas

Just when I think I’m out, they pull me back in.

I went to Wal-Mart today to pick up some items I needed, and while I was there, I thought about the total lack of snacks for tomorrow’s Thanksgiving meal. I felt like I had to do something. I fell back on my old standby: Texas trash.

Texas trash is Chex cereal mixed with a lot of other stuff and baked. It’s supposed to be acidic and spicy.

I like to start with prepackaged Chex Mix, simply because it’s most of the way there when you buy it. You don’t have to add crackers or anything. The Chex people took the peanuts out of Chex Mix a long time ago, so that’s the main solid ingredient you need to add.

Two years ago, I found a recipe online and changed it (because it was sad and lame), and I was pretty happy with it. Today I looked at it, and I decided it was not manly enough. Seemed like there was too little of everything in it. I came up with this:

INGREDIENTS

family-size bag (5 cups) cheddar Chex Mix
2 cups cocktail peanuts.
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
3 tablespoons Frank’s hot sauce
1 teaspoon chipotle powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon celery seed
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon prepared mustard (I used French’s)
1-1/2 tablespoons brown sugar

I heated the butter and liquids and stirred the seasonings into the mixture. I put the Chex Mix on a roasting pan, tossed it in the mixture, and put it in the oven at 250°. Last time, I baked it for one hour. I don’t think that’s enough. I want it to have some crunch. I’m going for 1-1/2 hours.

The mustard made a huge difference. It added more acid, and it contributed zing without heat.

If I were making this for myself, I would double the chipotle powder.

Bacon grease might work better than butter. Black cardamom might be a good addition.

I don’t know how it will come out, but at least I can say I have one snack to offer.

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I tried the trash, and I could not stop eating it. I had to drag myself off of it. I liked it so much, I decided to double the sauce. I edited the recipe to say 1 bag of Chex Mix instead of 2.

Now how do I keep from eating it once it’s ready?

“I’ll have a Quart of Pie Filling and an RC”

It’s 11 a.m., and I’m already cooking for tomorrow.

I was asked to make a sweet potato pie this year, but I decided to exercise my veto power and make two pecan pies instead. Pecan pie is better, and I don’t know how to make a sweet potato pie anyway. This morning, before breakfast, I started putting my ingredients together.

It’s very bizarre, having a talent I don’t particularly care about. I do not have much interest in good food, but somehow I am still capable of producing extremely tasty dishes without any training and without much effort. I throw things together, and the results are just crazy.

I generally use the recipe on the side of the Karo syrup bottle, with little modifications. Today, out of laziness and curiosity, and because I had a new ingredient on hand, I changed things more than usual.

First, I added some corn starch to the recipe. I always put liquor in my pecan pies, and I don’t want the texture to suffer because of the added liquid. I added half a teaspoon of starch to each pie to make sure it doesn’t go wobbly. They have never gone wobbly in the past, but the starch still seemed like a good move.

Second, I used brown sugar instead of white sugar. I used up nearly all of my white sugar yesterday while coming up with a better substitute for Honeybaked ham, and I did not want to wait around today until I could get to the store. I had dark brown sugar, so I used it. I also used dark syrup, as I always do.

For all I know, I always use brown sugar. It sounds like me. I can’t recall.

Third, I used an expensive type of vanilla extract. I’m not sure I ever knew what real vanilla tasted like until I got this stuff. I’ve always used things like McCormick and Kirkland extract, and they smell exactly like the stuff my grandmother and mother used. My new bottle is from a company called Sonoma, and it has a different smell to it. I decided to try it.

Fourth, I added salt. Good cooks don’t make sweet things without salt.

I gave up on making my own pie crust years ago, simply because I didn’t want to. If I were to make a pie on a random day in July, I would make my own crust, but there is something about an obligatory holiday meal that makes me want to cut corners. This year, I went with frozen Pet-Ritz crusts, which Internet sources seem to favor. Of course, homemade crust would be better.

I mixed my ingredients up, filled my pie crusts, and set my timer. Then I decided to wash the mixing bowls (one per pie) so I could use them later for cornbread. Needless to say, I had to taste the pie mix that was clinging to them

I can’t describe how wonderful this stuff is. I ate every drop I could scrape up. I could not stop. I kept thinking of things I wanted to do with it. I want to make a batch and put it on ice cream. It’s astounding.

For quite a while after I finished cleaning the bowls, I found myself announcing, “MAN, that was good!”, at random intervals.

I feel like making a batch without eggs, heating it to activate the starch, and then beating eggs into it.

I assume it will make good pies. There is no reason why it shouldn’t. I can post the ingredients.

INGREDIENTS

1 cup dark Karo syrup
1 cup dark brown sugar
3 eggs
3 tbsp. butter
1 shot Knob Creek
1 tsp. high-end vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. starch
1/2 tsp. salt

Yes, it has raw eggs in it. I don’t care. So does zabaglione. So does the real recipe for key lime pie. If you’re afraid of raw eggs, you’re going to miss out on a lot of good food.

I wonder if I should have used more starch.

Cook’s Illustrated says 185° is the magical final measurement for pecan pie filling. They also say to heat the filling before putting it in your crust. I did not know that. I would have tried it. They tend to be right about things like that.

Some people say to tap the pie and see how much it jiggles. That sounds like very poor advice. Judging a digital thermometer reading is a lot easier than trying to guess what “jiggle” means to someone else.

If the pies turn out to be as good as I think they will, I will follow up.

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My pies are done. Wouldn’t you know it? The Karo recipe goes overboard on cooking time. I reduced it and still ended up with pies that were hotter in the center than I wanted. They’ll be fine, though.

I have to go buy new glasses now. While my dad was alive, we used Mason jars because they were cheap and hard to break, but now I can have real glasses. I also need a giant platter for my oversized turkey.

Still not happy about that.

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It looks like I took notes when I cooked last year’s food. I used a tablespoon of vanilla per pie, and it worked very well. I should have done that this time!

Welcome to the Real Clone Wars

I can’t resist a puzzle.

I decided to try my hand at faking a Honeybaked ham, using a ham from a local store plus whatever I had in the kitchen. I think it will be very good.

INGREDIENTS

1. Honey glue

1/2 cup orange blossom or other light-colored honey
2 tbsp. prepared yellow mustard
1 tbsp. butter

2. Sugary crust

1 cup caramelized sugar
1 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. cloves
1 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. allspice

First, I had to make caramel sugar. It did not really work. I put sugar on a pan and baked it at 300°. After a couple of hours, it began to turn brown, but it also started to melt, which it’s not supposed to do. I think the pan got hotter than 300° because I had it too low in the oven. It would probably work better if I put the pan on a high rack with a sheet of foil on the rack below it to keep radiant heat off the pan.

I scraped as much of the sugar off the pan as I could and chilled it to solidify it. Then I ground it in a coffee grinder (so I didn’t have to drive 10 miles for more sugar). I got caramel dust. I was shooting for granules.

I figured I could fix the problem by mixing it with brown sugar, which is granulated, so I did. It worked reasonably well, but it was not the answer I wanted.

The measurements for the crust spices are as close as I could get while working frantically and making mistakes. I was surprised to see that the crust needed salt, because earlier today, it did not seem to work.

When I opened up my ham, I saw my first challenge. It was floppy. Spiral-cut hams are not very stable. I tied it up with twine to make it hold its shape, and it worked pretty well.

I turned the cold ham downward so the cut part was on the bottom. I covered it liberally with the honey mixture. Then I patted the crust stuff all over it.

It didn’t look too good. The finely ground caramel sugar looked like chalk dust. I was afraid it would be like mud. Also, the color didn’t look like the old Honeybaked hams I remember. It was sort of beige.

After the ham sat for a few minutes, the juice soaked through the crust. Suddenly the color was perfect, at least where the juice had finished soaking in.

I slapped the ham on a plate, covered it with foil, and put it in my spare fridge. It has two days to do its thing.

Why didn’t I bake it? Because it was already baked.

Honeybaked does not bake its hams after applying the crust. How do I know this? Because the crust on mine has no cuts in it. A ham can’t be cut until after you bake it. The ham was obviously baked, sliced, and then covered with crust ingredients.

If their hams were baked with the crust in place, the crust would not be crunchy. It would melt.

I think the honey coating may have been a waste of time. A lot of it slid off, taking the mustard with it. I’m not sure yet. Maybe it’s better to put mustard powder in the crust mix and forget the honey and butter.

The flavor of my creation is wonderful. Whether it turns out to be a good clone or not, it should be very nice, as long as the sugar doesn’t fall off or melt completely.

The underlying Smithfield ham is fine. It’s tender and tasty, and it’s already spiced. No problems there.

The ham came with a packet of glaze. I decided to try it, to see if the pros would shame me. I almost spat it out. It was disgusting. It had a chemical taste to it, as though someone had contaminated it with mop water. Do NOT use the glaze packet that comes with a Smithfield ham.

Now I have around 14 pounds of ham, including one bone. Not sure what I’ll do with it. Do I keep my homemade version for myself and start eating it tonight, or do I share both with my guests? The Honeybaked ham is guaranteed to be okay. Mine still has not passed the final test, so maybe I should withhold it.

I think it’s safe to say I will never buy another Honeybaked ham. There is no reason to. Preparing a crusted spiral-cut ham is obviously very easy, and you can save $60 doing it, which is astounding.

I may try darkening the crust with a torch, since people who claim they worked at Honeybaked say this is what the chain does. Unfortunately, I have seen people lie before, claiming they have KFC’s secret recipe and so on, so I don’t know how reliable the torch info is. I can’t do it with the twine on the ham.

There is a lady who claims she has the real Honeybaked recipe, and she published it. Sure, sweetheart. The company just tells random employees its most important secret. That totally happens, because unlike every other food company with secrets, Honeybaked somehow needs to tell grunts and peons everything.

No, here is what Honeybaked does. They mix their ingredients behind closed doors in a single facility, they ship the mix to stores, and no one who works at a store has ever been involved in the mixing process in any way. Take that to the bank. I guarantee it. Anyone who claims to have the recipe is pulling your…ham.

If people actually had the recipe, they would look at Honeybaked’s $80 hams, realize they could get rich selling the same thing for $40, and open stores. That has not happened. Whenever a company overcharges dramatically for a product or service someone else can provide, someone else provides it, fast.

If you try making a clone, mix a test batch of the ingredients and try it on a ham sample first. I’m concerned about the amount of powdered cloves I used.

Maybe you can find a source of granulated caramelized sugar. I’m too lazy to look. It would save you some pain.

I’m glad I found out about caramelized sugar. I can think of a lot of uses for it. The burned sugar I already knew about is bitter, and caramel flavor without bitterness is a good tool to have.

Even if it turns out my recipe needs work, it’s still time for you to join the ham revolution. Nobody should ever pay $80 for a spiral-cut ham.

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I decided to try using a torch on the ham. I was wondering how to get around the twine, but then I realized that as long as the ham was face-down, it would support itself without help, so I cut the twine off. I should never have tied the ham up. It was unnecessary.

I applied the torch. I didn’t want to blacken the ham, but I did want a little burning here and there, and that’s what I got.

Here’s what I think: it’s a mistake to burn the crust at all. Something in the ingredients–maybe cloves–does not react well to burning. Maybe it’s the nutmeg. After all, people smoke clove cigarettes, and they don’t complain. Whatever it is, it gives off a non-helpful odor when it burns.

I think the key is to heat the crust until it starts to melt and then hardens into a sort of scab. Then stop.

After the torching was done, I found neat little crust flakes came off the ham when I fiddled with it, just as they used to back when I ate real Honeybaked hams. There was a little bit of the burned flavor in the ham, and I could do without that, but it was still pretty impressive.

Apart from using too much heat, I can’t find anything to complain about. The ham tastes wonderful. I hate to say it, but a little voice keeps telling me to get another one and see if I can do the torch bit more skillfully, just to show that Honeybaked can be defeated with ease.

If I do this again, I’ll let the ham sit and drain for an hour before I start. Smithfield packs its hams in water, and they release it after you cut the bags off of them. If you don’t release it into a pan, it will be released into your crust.

This has been a great experiment. Very empowering. It will be a long time before anyone sees me spending $11 per pound for ham again.

Let’s Bust up the Honeybaked Cartel

I wrote a long post yesterday, but I deleted it because it seemed too negative. I complained about the cost of holiday food. I have a lot going for me, and I have good friends who are coming to share a meal with me, so I should not be crabby. I should never be crabby, really. Crabbiness is not a fruit of the Spirit.

That being said, I have to confirm the primary thesis of the post I deleted, to wit: Honeybaked hams cost way too much!

This year, I’m sharing food expenses. My friends are bringing sides. I’m on the hook for a turkey, a ham, and two pies. I figured the meal would be cheaper than usual, but then I went shopping yesterday and spent over $130.

There were four reasons the food cost so much.

1. I could not get a normal-sized turkey because people who fry turkeys snap them up early. I had to get an 18-pounder, so I paid for three extra pounds.

2. I bought Korbel brut to flavor the turkey and dressing. Poultry without white wine is wrong. We should probably be marinating fried chicken in it.

3. I bought pecans for pies. Nuts are crazy expensive. I don’t know if there was a nut blight or what, but the only cheap nuts now are peanuts. I spent $11 on 16 ounces of pecan halves.

4. I bought a Honeybaked ham. It seems pretty well established that all the other brands are inferior, so I paid the price for the real thing. For a tiny 4.5-pound ham, I paid about $50.

This is a lot of money for a tiny ham. Even Omaha Steaks, which is basically a scam operation that preys on people who have no sales resistance, sells hams cheaper.

Omaha Steaks and other food truck scams have an annoying and insulting Jedi trick they play on people. The guy parks his freezer truck in your driveway, and then he comes to your door and says, “Come see what I’ve got in the truck.” He starts walking backward while looking at you to motivate you to follow. It’s definitely something they teach in their training. The natural response is to follow. The countermove is to shut the door while they’re backing away, and if you want to keep it civil, say, “No thanks! Have a great day!” They will not come back to your door. It’s too awkward. Walking away is supposed to compel you to follow, like the motion of a fishing lure, but it also establishes their motion toward the truck, and once you shut the door, they pretty much have to continue.

I feel for the truck people. I know exactly what happened to them. Someone from Omaha Steaks convinced them to finance a truck and a bunch of substandard food, on the assurance that their methods can’t fail. They work up their courage and go out and try it, and people like me shut the door on them. Ouch.

No one likes to be treated like a cat chasing a laser pointer. If I don’t cooperate, it’s on you, buddy. Welcome to sales.

I’ve actually had their steaks. Thin frozen cuts of what appeared to be plain old supermarket-grade beef. Not good at all.

Of course, I’m assuming all the truck salespeople who pestered me were real Omaha Steaks affiliates. Maybe they were not. But if you Google around, you will find some pretty sad-looking photos of real Omaha Steaks frozen wonders. They look just like the ones I tried.

To get back to the Honeybaked story, my local grocery is selling similar hams right now for under $20, or $4 per pound. They sell bone-in spiral hams for $2 per pound, which is a monumental discount over Honeybaked. I can buy sliced, packaged country ham shipped to me for something like $7 per pound. Clearly, $11 per pound is too much for a Honeybaked ham.

I thought about it yesterday, and it occurred to me that a smart person should be able to duplicate (and improve upon) the taste of a Honeybaked ham at home. I went to my kitchen and mixed up some ingredients.

My efforts were based on the way I remember Honeybaked hams tasting in the distant past. I haven’t had one in years, and I can’t break into the one I just bought. The ones I’ve had tasted like sugar and cloves. That’s about all.

There are clone recipes on the web, but they don’t look good. Some include onion powder, and I don’t see that working at all. At least one includes cinnamon. Honeybaked hams do not taste like cinnamon.

I fiddled around for a while, and I think I can tell you what was in the glaze on the hams I remember: white or light brown sugar, light honey, cloves, nutmeg, mustard, and caramel. Allspice may also be in there somewhere.

For mustard, you can use whatever you have. I used French’s yellow mustard, which is as unpretentious as mustard gets. I would not use mustard powder, because the acidity of prepared mustard is helpful.

You may be wondering how to get caramel to put in your glaze. I learned some new things about caramel.

It’s always possible to burn sugar in a pan to get caramel. The problem is that you end up with a hard piece of sugar glass. It’s not easy to break up so you can apply it to things. Also, it will have some bitterness, which you may not want.

What if you want caramel-flavored granules with no bitterness? You just bake granulated sugar at 300° until it turns brown. It stays in grain form, and it doesn’t get as bitter as burned sugar.

I’m thinking you could use this in your glaze as an addition to plain sugar, or, by controlling how dark it gets, you could replace the plain sugar entirely.

It’s supposed to be an excellent cookie ingredient. Look it up.

Do NOT put cinnamon in your glaze. I tried it, and it makes the glaze smell funky, like something that has been sitting at the bottom of a laundry hamper for a month. It’s a very bad idea.

I looked at some copycat recipes, and while I reject their ingredients, I think their cooking methods aren’t bad. It appears that you just smear the ham with honey, bake it until it’s warm, apply the rest of the glaze ingredients, and then broil it or use a torch to set the crust.

One lady suggests applying butter with the honey. I don’t think the Honeybaked people do that, but it sounds like a good way to one-up them. Nearly everything needs butter.

I can’t tell you how much of each ingredient to use, but you should be able to figure that out by trial and error. I would say maybe 1/4 teaspoon of cloves per ounce of sugar, to start. You don’t want much mustard at all. You want it to be a subtle background ingredient. You don’t want much nutmeg, either.

I would use prepared mustard and mix it with the honey.

If I were doing this, I would use orange blossom or sourwood honey. You don’t want a dark honey with a strong flavor. The honey is mainly there to hold the sugar mix in place.

Don’t put salt in the glaze. It makes it taste worse.

I feel like trying this just to stick it to the man, even though it will cost me more money and I don’t want another ham.

If Honeybaked charged half as much as they do, they would still make a killing, and people like me would not be scheming to outwit them.

I may try this. It’s bugging me.

Bring on the Styrofoam Containers

Last night I was in prayer, and I spent some time thinking about the negative effects popular culture has on me. I thought about the things I still need to clean out of my life.

I thought about the nazirites. I don’t know much about the concept, but in the Old Testament, a nazirite was a person who was dedicated to God. They had to obey conditions going beyond the Jewish law. Samson was a nazirite from birth. He was not allowed to drink wine, let a razor touch his head, or touch a dead body.

It seems like Spirit-led Christians have to be a lot like nazirites. You can’t listen to rock or let your kids have a Pirates of the Caribbean DVD like everyone else, but on the other hand, you get to know God personally, and he gives you things like the ability to heal, prophecy, and the ability to work miracles. He warns you about things that take other people by surprise.

I thought about the verse in the 91st psalm, which says, “A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.”

When I think about this verse, I am glad to know I’m protected, but I also think about the other people–the vast majority of the earth’s inhabitants–who are not.

In God’s eyes, “the wicked” can be defined this way: “those who have rejected Jesus Christ.” That’s all it takes. You can feed the sick. You can give a stranger a kidney. You can give to the poor. That’s not what God looks at. It doesn’t help. What matters is whether you accepted the sacrifice. It’s not about what you’ve done, because the evil you do is expunged from your record when you receive salvation.

There are reformed pedophiles in heaven, but Mother Teresa, who spoke against faith, may be in hell.

I am not a mushy person who cries at movies, but last night it disturbed me to think of the problems unbelievers are headed for. I felt the sorrow of the Holy Spirit. For a minute, I held my head in my hands and thought about the future of those who won’t listen.

It can’t be repeated often enough: hell is not for “bad” people. It’s for people who don’t listen.

Heaven is for bad people. Jesus was crucified for bad people. If people had been good, he would have had no reason to be crucified, so he would not have done it.

Heaven is for bad people because there is no other kind of person.

If it weren’t for bad people, heaven would be empty except for God, the angels, and people who either died before they could sin or had some issue that made it unreasonable to require them to accept Jesus. It would be full of aborted children, the retarded, and people who lived on secluded islands or in rain forests.

There are a lot of Christians out there who are in danger of hell. I’ve known plenty of Christians who lived in fornication even while serving at church. They thought it was okay to live with people they weren’t married to. I’ve known Christians who used drugs. The world is full of Christians who participate in other religions, such as astrology, fortune-telling, and yoga. I wonder what will happen to them.

I saw a testimony from a Christian who claimed she had visited hell. She said God had told her she was going there because she lived with her boyfriend. How many Christians would believe that today?

There was a young lady who used to sing at my last church. She was single. She had a baby. Okay; I could accept that. People who choose to fornicate repent, as I did. Sometimes people have children in marriage, and then they end up single. No problem. And it was good that she didn’t have her baby killed.

Then another baby popped up. I thought maybe she had slipped. Then she came in with a third one. I was only there for three years, so she was maintaining a high level of production. I can’t even guess how many kids she has now.

The pastor had no problem with putting her on the stage as a corrupting example, because he liked her voice. She must have thought she was doing fine, but she was continuing in a major sin, knowingly and without coercion, without repentance.

God forgives just about anything, but you’re supposed to repent. You can’t go to Jesus and say, “I plan to visit a prostitute this evening, so could you go ahead and forgive me now?”

We’re so terrified of “judging” that many of us have decided anything goes. That’s not how it works. For example, you can be a homosexual and be forgiven, but you can’t get saved, marry another homosexual, and then expect God to tolerate it.

Wrong is still wrong.

I keep seeing people on Youtube, talking about their recent rapture dreams. It’s shocking how many people are dreaming of the rapture. It happened to me in 2016, and now there is a wave of others who have had the same experience.

When I think of the way technology is destroying free will, the astounding filthiness of modern culture, and the tide of rapture dreams, I feel that time is very, very short, and only a small percentage of Christians are ready.

Missing the rapture is a big deal. You will have to live on a planet that isn’t protected by the prayers and presence of God’s children. The terrible things God keeps away from the world today will be released. Plagues that used to go away will rage without hindrance. Meteors that used to miss the earth will land here. Storms that would have missed major cities will strike them and rest over them. And if you profess faith in God, you will be executed.

This is all bad, but there is more to think about. If you’re not fit for the rapture, how can you think you’re fit to be saved when you die? It doesn’t make sense.

Many preachers teach people that all you have to do to be saved is to raise your hand and ask, and Christians like to believe it, because it means they can go on enjoying sin. It’s a very dangerous teaching. You’re supposed to change. The word says you’re supposed to become the righteousness of God. Should you really expect God to reach down into your bedroom and lift you off the earth while you’re lying in bed with your girlfriend, smoking a joint, and playing a violent video game?

We should be looking for ways to do a lot for God, but instead, we keep trying to find out how little we can do and still avoid hell.

Jesus said very clearly that we would not see him coming. He said he would return at a time when we did not expect it. That means we will not know when it’s coming. Any human being who tries to pin down the date will be wrong. But he did tell us there would be signs to tell us when the end was near. We keep seeing those signs.

What does “near” mean to God? To me, it would mean a year or less, but I’m just a man. For all I know, to God, “near” means a century from now. But with the end of free will approaching quickly, it’s hard to believe we will be waiting that long.

We shouldn’t be trying to guess the date so we can sin until the previous week. We should live as though he were coming this afternoon. Living for God is always the right thing to do. You shouldn’t have to be motivated by a crisis.

It’s a weird time to be alive. One way or the other, it will be a relief to see things reach a resolution.

I have to go get a turkey and a ham now. Friends are coming for Thanksgiving. I don’t want to cook at all, but I can’t stand the thought of a lame turkey with bones in it, so I’m going to bone and stuff a bird. My friends have agreed to supply the rest of the food. They’re planning to go to Cracker Barrel for it. I’m all for that.

There was a time when I would have rebelled at the thought of eating restaurant food on a holiday, but those days are done. I am somewhat tempted to abandon the turkey project, if the truth be told. Even without side dishes, the turkey will be a two-day effort.

I’m so tired of cooking and cleaning, I don’t look forward to the food.

I think we make too much of holidays. I know I’ve written about that before. People go into debt on Christmas. That’s ridiculous. We celebrate the birth of the one who told us not to borrow…by borrowing. Holiday meals are also over the top.

When my dad was alive, I had to cook a ton of stuff. He insisted on cranberry sauce, which is sad and inferior compared to relish, and he demanded oyster dressing, which is, quite simply, disgusting. I always made sauce, relish, oyster dressing, and normal dressing. Then there were the other dishes. Yams, potatoes, beans, two kinds of pie…it’s just too much.

I can’t understand why anyone would put nasty canned oysters in dressing. Why not toss a few slugs in there while you’re at it?

Maybe it tastes great, but I can’t get past the smell.

I have been asked to fix a sweet potato pie. I have no idea how to do that. I figure it’s a pumpkin pie made with yams. I think I’ll just crank out two pecan pies instead. They’re much better, and the preparation time is only a few minutes.

Someone asked me to make a sweet potato pie a few years back. They had invited me and my dad to Thanksgiving dinner, so I was happy to do it. I told them I didn’t know how to do it, but they were okay with that. I substituted yams in a pumpkin pie recipe, and everyone was happy.

Here’s something you need to know, if you can’t cook. When you know a good cook, and you want them to fix something for you, you do NOT ask for something they’ve never cooked. They’ll just open a cookbook and use someone else’s bad recipe. Being a good cook doesn’t mean you can cook anything anyone wants, on demand. It means you can cook certain things you’re familiar with.

I knew a professional chef who collected cookbooks. She was willing to cook anything on a one-off basis. It generally did not work well. It all depended on which recipe she used. She didn’t write recipes, so when she needed a dish, she just cracked a book. Most cookbooks are bad. When she happened, by chance, to find a good recipe, she did okay, but she couldn’t hit the gong consistently.

Make me work out of cookbooks, and you will get similar results.

The sweet potato pie I made was not good. It was sort of okay.

A good cook isn’t someone who can take a cookbook, follow it precisely, and make good food. A good cook writes or improves recipes. You can also fake being a good cook by collecting proven recipes.

I look forward to seeing my friends. That will be great. The food, I could not care less about. When I think of big meals, I think of dirty dishes and trips to the dump. I picture myself in the kitchen, alone, at 10 p.m., with a pot in one hand and a brush in the other.

The best holiday meal, to avoid hard work, is prime rib. You only use two things: a roasting pan and a serving platter. You salt and season the meat, roast it at 200° until it’s around 95° inside, remove the foil, crank the heat to 500°, and brown it. Done. Cleaning up after prime rib is easy. Of course, many people I know will not eat properly cooked beef, so prime rib can be a problem.

Women, especially, tend to reject beef unless you ruin it by serving it well done. When I used to give my dad prime rib, I had to put his perfectly prepared serving in the microwave and ruin it first. If you only eat beef well done, you might as well buy the cheap stuff, because you have the palate of a terrier.

I don’t care much about food any more. I don’t know anyone who can cook well enough to make me happy. I don’t know of any restaurant that prepares food that compares to my own. I am tired of doing dishes and cleaning the stove. It’s hard to get excited about a turkey.

Today I’m roasting a chicken because I could not think of anything else I wanted badly enough to work on. Throw it in the oven with seasonings and vegetables, take it out three hours later…done. Good enough.

We should really abolish mandatory holiday meals. It’s so much better when you can share a meal whenever you want, just because you want to. Making giant holiday meals and splurging on Christmas gifts is like going to homeless shelters to feed people on Thanksgiving and Christmas. If you’ve been a jerk all year, go ahead and ruin your holiday, because you deserve it, but we should be charitable all year long.

I wonder how people who run homeless shelters feel about folks who drop by to hand out food on holidays. I can guess. They resent them for not showing up the other 364 days of the year. It’s like going to church on Easter and Christmas to make up for backsliding. You just make the volunteers mad and jam up the parking lot. And those awful hats. No one can see around them.

Okay, okay. I will be grateful. I have wonderful friends. I have a beautiful house in which to host the meal. I can afford good food. I will work on my attitude. I really will.

I have to get up. The turkey and ham aren’t going to buy themselves.

Coercion Results in Welding Table Purchase

It seems like the exciting news never stops. I have made a decision regarding buying a welding table.

Why am I buying a table at all? I still haven’t finished painting the grinder pedestal I welded together. A fine fabricator I turned out to be. I keep putting things off.

The finish on the top is going to have to be sanded and repainted at least one more time. I also need to enlarge or replace a couple of holes for the bolts that hold the grinder on. I put them in the wrong places.

I really will finish the pedestal. I could use it right now (after using the drill twice). I just want it to look a little better.

Anyway, I had a couple of table ideas in mind. One was to build my own table, which would be somewhat challenging…without a welding table. Another was to buy a Fabblock table from Weldtables.com and assemble it myself. The Fabblock I wanted, plus legs, runs $800 plus shipping. Ow.

There was a third alternative, but my opportunity to try it was temporary, and I let it slip by. Now I have another opportunity, so I’m pouncing.

Northern Tool sells Klutch tools. I think it’s their house brand. They have a welding table that usually sells for almost $400. For some inexplicable reason, they put it on sale for $179. I noticed it a while back. Then, while I was fighting temptation, they took it away! Fiends!

This is a very nice table. The top is 4mm thick, which means it’s around 1/6 of an inch. It has 16mm holes all over it. It comes with a bunch of clamps and fixturing tools. You can open the box, put it together, and start welding without buying a single clamp.

People say the top is generally very flat, but you may get a lemon with a 1/16″ crown or dip. I think it’s worth the risk. It might be possible to improve a warped table, and in any case, it shouldn’t be hard to shim workpieces and get them flat. A 1/16″ bend is not hard to compensate for.

Is it the table of my dreams? No, but it’s very cheap and very good, and if I move to Tennessee, it will be a lot easier to move than a Fabblock. If Northern Tool kills the sale price again, I should actually be able to sell it locally for more than I paid. Then I can buy a Fabblock when I’m firmly situated.

I can use this table to build a bigger table, if I want. That may actually be the best move. My milling machine is about to be returned to me, so preparing slats for a shopmade table will be easy.

Northern Tool made it impossible to say no. They brought the low price back, and then they sent me an email saying they would give me a $10 gift card for ordering online (code 268178). That brings the price to $169 plus tax. The other day I spent $180 on a lame restaurant meal. How can I say no to a welding table that costs $11 less?

Strong Hand Tools makes wonderful [Chinese] stuff, and their version of the Klutch table costs about $430. Strong Hand is actually kind of disturbing, because it’s one of those companies that show us the future. Their products are Chinese, but the quality is really good. I have their version of the famous Bessey clamp, and it looks like an improvement to me.

I can’t wait to abandon my Harbor Freight table. For the money, it is a stellar tool, but when you consider what they cost, that’s faint praise. It’s wobbly, it’s not flat, and it’s small. I may keep it for use as a portable, which is the purpose it’s made for. I do not plan to weld on it in my shop unless I have no choice.

Now I need to get wheels for the new table. Once that’s done, I’ll be sitting pretty.

Speaking of Chinese, I finally have a good source of Chinese food. The only local place I have tried was a disaster. It was hot and dirty, and the proprietress kept screaming at the cook in Chinese. Their kung pao chicken was pretty bad, and instead of cooking the peanuts in sauce, they just dumped dry raw peanuts on top of the food.

Small towns are known for terrible Chinese, as is Miami. My area had only one decent place, and they tore it down to build something or other.

I know good Chinese food. When I was a student at Columbia University, I had access to very good Szechuan places. For example, I used to eat at the Hunan Balcony on upper Broadway. I also know bad Chinese food. The oil smells rancid. The meat always seems to be nearly spoiled. The smell when the kitchen door opens is scary. All the sauce is basically duck sauce. The seasonings are off.

I found myself a recipe for kung pao chicken, over at Epicurious. It’s from a book by a lady named Kuan. I used Epicurious because I’m not a Cook’s Illustrated subscriber any more, and I hate Cooks.com and the Food Network’s revolting recipes. When I think about the Food Network, I always think about Bobby Flay’s inept 325° prime rib recipe. Don’t buy a rib roast and cook it at 325°. Just buy some liquid rubber, pour it in a roast-shaped mold, and let it cure for several days. Same result.

The recipe called for a couple of weird items. It called for black vinegar and hoisin sauce. I went to an Asian grocery to pick up the vinegar. I told the girl there the local Chinese food was heinous. She said it wasn’t Americanized. I can understand why she would stand up for her pals, but no, it has nothing to do with being Americanized. Bad food which is authentic is still bad food.

I can’t tell you what authentic Chinese food tastes like, and I’m not sure I want to find out, because authentic Mexican food is garbage compared to American Mexican food. I can tell when a person is a bad cook, however, regardless of the cuisine.

She sold me a big bottle of black vinegar for $4. I would say it tastes like malt vinegar that has been strained through dirt. I don’t like it. I suspect her brand is really cheap.

I got my hoisin sauce at a supermarket. They had several brands. I don’t like buying prepackaged sauces, but in order to make hoisin sauce, you have to ferment soybeans. Not going to happen. Also, let’s face it: Chinese cuisine standards are pretty weak. I have zero doubt that I have never had a Chinese meal that wasn’t made with stuff from bottles and cans.

Making the dish was not easy. It did not require skill, but there were a lot of ingredients, and the recipe was confusing. Basically, you marinate chicken, prepare sauce ingredients in another bowl, fry the chicken, throw the sauce in, throw in a few more ingredients, and call it good.

The recipe said to put corn starch in the chicken marinade. I am not a Chinese chef, but I’m not an idiot, either, and I don’t see how this can work. If you put starch on meat and then throw it in a hot pan, what happens? The starch burns instantly and sticks to the pan. This is what happened to me, and it was not a surprise. I ended up with a layer of burned stuff on my skillet.

I don’t have a wok. I don’t even have a burner that will work with a wok. I used a 14″ stainless skillet. I don’t think the food really fried all that much, because I don’t have a way to provide that much heat, but here’s the thing: the texture and so on were exactly like what I’ve experienced at good Chinese restaurants, so if I’m doing it wrong with my skillet, they’re also doing it wrong with their fancy woks, and it doesn’t matter at all.

The recipe had virtually no vegetables in it, so I added diced bell peppers, both red and green. So much for authenticity.

I also tripled the sauce recipe. People who commented over at Epicurious said the recipe was extremely dry, so I took their advice and multiplied by three.

The result was very nice, but there was a dirt aftertaste I did not like. I considered the hoisin sauce and the dirt-tasting black vinegar, and I chose the most likely culprit.

Yesterday I made the dish again. I made a lot of changes. No corn starch in the marinade. I halved the black vinegar and made up the difference with balsamic. I cut the number of chiles in half. I also added a can of baby corn, because I like baby corn.

I figure I can add whatever I want to the dish. Here’s a known fact: all spice Chinese chicken dishes taste nearly alike. Kung pao has peanuts. Ta chien has baby corn. Orange chicken has citrus peels. Other than little differences like these, they’re pretty similar. I like baby corn, and I think it belongs in kung pao chicken, along with tasty bell peppers. So there. I would have put little Asian mushrooms in it if I had been able to find them. I think water chestnuts would also be good.

How was the food? Amazing. Best “Chinese” food I’ve ever had, hands-down. There was still a slight dirt taste from the awful black vinegar, which I plan to eliminate next time by blending malt and cider vinegars, but other than that, it could not have been better. I especially liked the way the tiny bits of fresh ginger exploded in citrusy flavors when I bit down on them.

There was too much starch in the sauce. The recipe called for an obscene amount, which I knew was wrong, but I gave the author the benefit of the doubt. The sauce was clumpy and didn’t flow well. Next time, I’ll use half as much, if that.

The recipe calls for one pound of chicken and supposedly feeds 4 people. I am totally serious. I used two pounds, and I plan to get a total of three dinners out of it.

Here is what I learned: professional Chinese chefs are not very good. They must not be putting their hearts into what they do. No surprise. Anyone who has smelled the rear of a typical Chinese joint knows they’re not doing everything they should.

I can’t cook any Chinese dish except this one, and I’ve only cooked it twice, and my recipe still needs work, yet my version blows the real thing away. That’s a scathing indictment of restaurant chefs.

If I decide to learn how to cook anything else, it will be pan-fried dumplings. I can’t think of any other Chinese dishes I like enough to learn how to cook.

I can’t understand why professional cooks are so bad. It’s not just Chinese cooks. It’s nearly universal. It’s like cooking school fundamentally does not work.

I don’t feel like buying a wok or a propane burner, because my food comes out nearly the same as wok-cooked food. I don’t know if stir-frying is really frying, except when there are only a few little things in the wok. Adding a lot of food pretty much moves you into the simmering arena.

What a beautiful future I see stretching out before me. Myself, seated at a wonderful welding table, consuming the best Chinese food in North America. It’s hard to imagine how things could get better, unless I moved a couch into the shop.

Now there’s an idea.

More

I went and got the table. The box was very difficult to get in the car. The weight is only 73 pounds, but it hangs way out there when you’re trying to wrestle with it, and the Northern Tool cart kept trying to scoot around the parking lot while I maneuvered the box.

I thought I felt something going funny in my back, so I slowed down and tried to use common sense. I hate that. Prayed in the car on the way home, and my back seems okay.

I can’t tell you whether it’s a good table until I use it, but things look okay right now.

The top is not far from 3/16″ steel, which is very good for a cheap table. It’s also nearly flat. It looks like it has a 1/32″ crown in the middle. It’s hard to get upset about that. I doubt I’ve ever welded anything that warped less than 1/32″.

The legs have a funny rectangular brace that goes around them. It’s held on by friction, which is not good. The frame has little hooks which fit in holes on the legs and pinch them. I figure I can stabilize it by drilling holes and adding some screws.

The legs have M10x1.5 threaded holes for the feet. I am looking around for casters that will screw into those holes. The table is light enough to pick up and move, but casters would be better.

I can tell it’s going to fit well in my shop, because I’m already using it to hold things I should put away instead.

The square inchage is 864, which is considerably better than the Harbor Freight table, which comes in at just under 600. Also, because the table has round holes instead of long slots, I should not have any problems with objects falling through it. That was always a concern with the other table.

If you follow the directions, the table takes an hour to assemble. If you just guess, you can do it in about 15 minutes.

I have not tried the clamps yet, but they must work, because people are not howling about them all over the web.

I sprayed it down with lanolin and mineral spirits. I want to keep the top shiny and silvery for as long as I can.

Not much to complain about here. I finally have enough tools to weld relatively well. Now all I need is skill.

This is Why People Move to Tennessee

The Cone of Certain Death is narrowing, and I am sorry to say it’s narrowing around me.

Originally, Dorian was forecast to hit the coast to my east and then move toward me. Then the forecast path took a huge veer to the south, putting the center of the cone over Boca Raton, more or less. This was great news for me, because it gave the storm a long time to poop out over dry land before getting to me. Now they’ve decided it will still travel a long way over dry land, but they insist it will still have 75-mph maximum winds when it’s maybe 30 miles to my east. That’s just barely a hurricane, but it counts.

Wunderground.com is predicting maximum sustained winds of 40 to 60 mph here, for a few hours. I disagree, for reasons I will put forth below.

In prayer, I get very strong faith for no tropical-storm-force winds at either of my residential properties, but just in case, I have pulled out the big guns: Hillshire Farms smoked beef sausage.

I didn’t want to resort to this, but my hand was forced.

I have a lot of propane and butane, and I expect to have refrigeration no matter what happens. That means I’ll be able to grill. The truth is that I grill most hot meals now; I’m very spoiled by the lack of kitchen cleaning. I prefer the grill to the appliances. If I lose power and can’t rely on my electric stove and oven, I’ll go on with life as it is now, blasting everything with propane.

A couple of days ago, there was very little bottled water available around here. I just went to Publix (major grocery chain) and found pallets of purified water, so I got three cases. That brings me up to 5+, and I’m also going to fill a cooler with clean water on Tuesday night, if the forecast doesn’t look cheery.

They had the smoked sausages on sale for half price, so I snapped those up. It was probably a stupid thing to do, since grocery stores will be open next week no matter what, but it made me feel proactive and manly.

I’ve soured on hot dogs. They’re very small, and they don’t taste that great. Smoked sausages and brats are a lot better.

I got myself a wire for the generator, along with a plug and receptacle. The little 30-amp stuff sold out 15 minutes after Dorian was named, but I am a smart guy with a lot of stuff in his garage, so I didn’t need any of that. I can use one of my welder adapters to hook the generator up to a homemade 50-amp cord, and that will allow me to put the generator outside the workshop.

I’m not assembling the cord yet. I don’t think I’m going to need it, and I would like to return the parts to Lowe’s. I’m stuck with the wire, because they don’t accept wire returns. Maybe I’ll use it for something in the workshop. I still need to set up one more 20-amp socket.

I got myself 6 gallons of socialist ethanol gasoline. The station that sells real gas was out, of course, so I couldn’t buy it for my outdoor power tools. I could have gotten 11 gallons of toxic commie gas, but I didn’t want the hassle of trying to put it in my car’s tank after the storm misses us. I figure I can grab some more if things start to look bad.

While I was at Lowe’s, I met the realtor who sold my dad this house. He was buying romex, so I figured he was rigging up a generator. No, he is building a new workshop. His wife took over his existing shop. He talked about how great my property is and how he hadn’t seen anything else like it. He says the value is going up. I hope so.

He isn’t worried at all about the storm. He thinks Irma wiped out most of the loose trees, and like me, he lacks confidence in Dorian’s ability to stay strong after 200 miles of travel over land.

One nice thing about Dorian is that it’s very small. It may look big on satellite photos, but almost all of what you’re seeing is peripheral clouds that don’t amount to squat. The actual hurricane appears to be less than 10 miles wide. That means that if the eye is over 5 miles away, your winds are below 75 mph. Move out to 20 miles, and they’re much lower.

They say the storm will get bigger, but it’s not going to be a large storm. If it doubles in size, it will still only be 20 miles across, so you will have to be within maybe 25 miles of the eye to get whacked. This means most people in the dreaded cone aren’t going to have any problems at all.

If you watch the computer animations, you will see that Dorian isn’t expected to grow. Journalists say it is, but they always get it wrong. It may well be that the pack of weak, irrelevant clouds around it will grow in diameter, but that stuff is all horse manure. There is very little wind in it.

Journalists say the storm will grow. Guess where their information comes from? The same computer models I’m looking at, and those models say it’s going to stay small.

A storm under 20 miles across has to be pretty accurate to hit you with any real power.

Andrew was a murderous storm with winds not far below 200 mph, but it barely covered the lower half of Dade County. It was not big at all. People in Hollywood, a few miles north of the county line, just got a stiff breeze. Dorian is small and also much weaker than Andrew.

The GFS and ECMWF models are predicting something like 25 knots at my house. Even the places where it is expected to be strongest at this latitude are predicted to get 29 and 33 knots, tops.

Things are looking good. I believe God has told me my properties will be fine, and even if I’m wrong, this is a tiny, weak storm which is expected to miss me.

And I have smoked sausages.

If it quits raining, I will probably go out and confirm that my generator is working. That will be my 15 minutes of work for the day.

I see I forgot to write about my generator’s reanimation.

This generator had more than one problem, and that, coupled with my lack of knowledge, made it hard to diagnose. At first, it had a carb clogged by socialist gasoline full of environment-damaging ethanol. It also had gas in the crankcase. This was caused by the design of the machine, or, rather, by my failure to take heed of it. It has a fuel tank situated above the carb, and gravity is always pushing the gas down toward the engine. There is a valve that allows you to shut off the fuel supply, and if you don’t use it, gas can push past the carb’s float needle and into the crankcase.

I am used to modern engines that don’t flood their crankcases with oil, so I didn’t shut off the fuel petcock. Now I know better.

The original carb was also badly cast and machined, so it was hard to seal.

While I was working on the machine, and before I knew there was gas in the oil, I flooded everything by cranking the engine for long periods with a drill. That made the engine less likely to start.

On top of all this, I worked on the engine with the air filter removed. It would be torture to install and remove it 50 times during a repair job. Removing the air filter won’t keep the engine from starting, but I found out it will make it run lean so you can’t operate it with the choke off. If you do this for long periods, the excess fuel can thin the oil so much you get internal damage.

The first carb was a lemon and also full of ethanol crud. The second carb was probably fine until I worked on it. The third carb had no problems, but by the time I understood what was happening, there was gas and fuel in places where they were not supposed to be.

I finally got the engine running last night, and after it died a few times, I learned that I needed to put the air filter on it in order to make it run correctly. As far as I know, it’s fine now.

Using the drill to crank the engine was a stroke of genius. I plan to modify the generator so I can do this without removing the pull cord apparatus. I may just drill a hole in the apparatus cover, large enough to admit a socket and an extension, which would be attached to the drill.

Here is help for people with Honda-clone engines like mine.

1. Do not use ethanol gas.

2. If you use ethanol gas, use Biobor EB to treat it. Sta-bil does not really work.

3. Do not leave any gas in the generator if you’re going to let it sit for more than three weeks. Run it dry, but don’t stop there. Run a little pure Sea Foam through it, or take it apart and clean it with carb cleaner, including inside all the tiny fuel passages, or do whatever else you have to do to keep it clear. Running it dry, all by itself, will not necessarily prevent varnish from forming. I kid you not.

4. If your engine gets clogged, buy a Chinese carb on Ebay and replace it. They’re very cheap, and they’re generally exactly the same as OEM carbs.

5. If you have a gravity-feed generator, put a fuel filter in the fuel line. It’s very simple. It’s amazing that the manufacturers don’t do this.

6. If you have to work on the engine, remove the cover for the pull cord and crank the engine with a drill and socket.

7. If everything looks good, but the engine won’t start, pull the low-oil sensor wire. It’s on the side of the engine near the oil cap. These sensors screw up and give false readings.

8. If you leave your fuel valve open by mistake, check your oil. If it has gas in it, you need to change it before running the engine.

9. Your local car parts store won’t take oil with gas in it, so buy a galvanized bucket and use it to burn the oil outdoors. I didn’t tell you this.

10. Once you get the engine running, install the air filter before evaluating the speed and mixture and so on. The filter affects these things.

You now owe me more than you can ever repay. Good luck.

My Help Cometh from the Lord, Which Made Heaven and Earth

It looks like my guests for this weekend are postponing. They have some work to do around the house, and they have a guy coming over. I can’t complain. Having overnight guests three weeks in a row throws off my routine.

Sensing that things are slowing down, I spent the morning looking at Tennessee properties on the web.

It looks like buying in Tennessee will be more complicated than buying in Ocala. The population density is lower, so there are fewer properties and sales. That means it’s harder to put a value on a piece of land before you buy it.

I’ve been using real estate websites, obviously. Some of them assign value estimates to properties. It’s alarming when a property I like has a price of x and an estimated value of x/4.

Nobody wants to end up like Mr. Douglas. Remember him? He and his wife bought a farm in Hooterville, which is a town in a state bordering Tennessee. Their realtor, Mr. Haney, assured them they were getting a great deal on what turned out to be the old Haney place. Then they found out they were getting a lot less than they bargained for.

One of my favorite Youtube evangelists, Tom Fischer, made a sudden move from South Florida to Tennessee. One month, he was talking about his arrival in South Florida, and it seemed like he would stay there. I thought he had made a huge mistake. The next month, he was wandering around eastern Tennessee. While he was there, someone gave him a piece of hillside property, and he said he was planning to build on it.

The other day, I saw a new video in which Tom said his lot had turned out to be unsuitable for construction (hence the gift, one surmises). That’s not surprising, but I was startled when he said the property was in Townsend, Tennessee. That’s the area I’m excited about.

Coincidence? Probably not. God is moving Christians to that area.

Sometimes I start to worry that I’ve waited too long to look for a place. Property values are going up in eastern Tennessee. God is on my side, though, and if he told me I’m going to have a nice Tennessee home, then I’ll have it. No one can call him a liar and get away with it around me.

This week I have gained a deeper sense of the importance of knowing God. This is something Christians don’t emphasize enough. Jews and Muslims don’t emphasize it at all. They consider God very distant. I know God isn’t distant. I communicate with the Holy Spirit every day, and Jesus visited me twice. Distance is for limited people. God can treat every Christian like an only child. He isn’t busy.

Christians are taught that God is their father, and we are told to ask him for things, but what kind of child asks his father for things yet doesn’t socialize with him? The purpose of creation was reproduction; God wanted children. If you have children, obviously, you want to spend time with them so you can enjoy each other’s company. If your relationship with your parents consists of obeying rules and asking for support, you have a very sick family. God must want more than that from us.

Many times, I’ve cooked for friends, and more than once, people have left my house right after they finished eating. It’s one of the reasons I got tired of cooking. I was being used. I don’t want to treat God that way. I want to spend time with him without asking for anything. I want to love him for his personality, not just the things he does for me. I believe this is where favor comes from.

If God wants to show his favor by leading me to a nice property in Tennessee, I’m all for it. I hate relying on my own guesswork.

I may visit Tennessee very soon. I have no strings on me. I want to look around before the leaves fall.

Slouching Towards Bugtussle

Today I surprised myself. I contacted a realtor about a property in Blount County, Tennessee.

One of the problems I’ve had since my dad died is a reluctance to take ownership of things. For example, sometimes I say “we” when I’m talking about things we used to own together. “We have two wells.” “We have a pool.” Things like that. Sometimes I feel like I’m just managing things for my dad. I have even been reluctant to change the bad landscaping at my house, just because I feel like the previous owners knew something I didn’t and would disapprove.

I can tell you something that has helped me. Sometimes I say, “My dad moved to a far-away country and gave me everything he owns here.” This is true. He owns nothing in this world.

The idea of selling properties and moving to another state by myself is slightly intimidating. I wouldn’t be asking anyone’s permission. I would just go. I didn’t think I’d start looking for a new place so soon.

I was waiting for God to give me ideas about where to go. The older I get, the more I realize we screw up our lives by putting ourselves in traps God had nothing to do with. We choose horrible husbands, wives, careers, and homes. Then things go badly, and we’re stuck. You can’t just drop a spouse like a bruised peach at the supermarket. You can’t make a better career appear instantaneously. If you’re in the wrong home and the wrong area, you probably have a mortgage, and that means you’re stuck like a coyote with its paw in a trap. I don’t want to “follow my heart” or “go with my gut.” I don’t want to trust my ridiculous judgment. The world tells us to do those things, but worldly people live in defeat and regret. I want to get guidance from God.

I felt he was telling me to move to Tennessee, but I couldn’t figure out where to go. I knew I didn’t want to be in a flat area or a city. I wanted to know I was in Appalachia. I didn’t want to be in a county where they still had Klan meetings. I didn’t want to be close to Gatlinburg or the other tourist traps.

This morning I started to think he wanted me to move to Blount County.

I read up on it after I got this impression. It seems like a nice place. Good climate, nice hills, and real stores within a reasonable drive. Land prices are cheaper than they are here. I could set myself up on hundreds of acres of woods.

This week the nightly lows will be in the sixties in Blount County. That would be nice. I love Ocala, but it’s up around 95 degrees every day right now, and it’s only going down into the upper seventies at night. Working outdoors during the day is nearly impossible. You can put a couple of hours in, pausing frequently, and then you have to quit.

The human body is funny. When you overheat, you get tired, even if you’re not working hard. Your body will refuse to give you full performance, and it will make you breathe hard as if you were exerting yourself. It’s not helpful when I’m trying to cut downed trees or dig up a boulder.

I contacted a couple of real estate brokerages online about a property, and in my messages, I said, “No calls, please.” Both called within seconds. They apparently refuse to deal with me over the web like normal people. I sent the calls to voicemail.

Real estate agents are really annoying. When you call about a property, they don’t see you as a person who wants to buy that property. They see you as a lead. They want to turn you into “their” customer. Then they get 3% of the sale price of any property they tell you about.

I wanted to see what the property was shaped like. A lot of big properties are long and skinny, and I’m not having that. It doesn’t do you much good to have 300 acres if your neighbors are 100 yards away in both directions. I found the property on a government website, and it’s shaped like a lizard. No good. Oh, well.

I see where the term “gerrymander” comes from.

I got tempted to stray from Tennessee, and I looked at a place in North Carolina. It’s remarkable. It has two well-kept, very livable buildings. One is the main house, and the other is a sort of shop with its own kitchen. Really nice. It only has 40 acres, though. The number 300 keeps rolling around in my head. I really like big pieces of land. I always have. My favorite of all my grandfather’s farms was around 300 acres.

I am sorely tempted to spend a few days in Tennessee, just looking around.

In other news, I made real progress with my grilling. I went to Home Depot and got me a Bernzomatic TS8000 torch. I already have a Turbotorch, but it’s for the workshop. The Turbotorch was recommended to me as the best torch of the type, but it has been balky ever since I bought it, and it doesn’t seem to burn any hotter than the one I just got.

Today I made two 6.5-ounce burgers (because I had exactly 13 ounces of meat) and put them on the grill at its highest post-modification setting. As I grilled, I applied the torch to scorch the outsides of the burgers. It worked very well. I got some deep browning as well as a little crunch, and the insides of the burgers were hot and juicy. One had very little pink in it, and I always shoot for medium, but burgers are not steak, and medium-well is still very good. Medium can actually be a little mushy.

I have a Searzall tool on the way. I think I wrote about it. It’s a torch attachment for searing food evenly. Once it arrives, I should be all set. Regardless of the appalling shortcomings of propane grills, I’ll be able to put a good sear on the outside of every piece of beef I cook.

It’s amazing that the grill industry makes such feeble products.

I sound like I’m knocking my new grill. I think it’s an excellent product, as propane grills go. I believe it cooks as well as a $2000 grill. I should know; I had one. I just think the entire industry should be doing better. A $2000 grill should make amazing steaks, and when you buy a $100 grill that cooks as well as a $2000 grill, it should produce the same result. I have a $100 grill that, as delivered, cooked steaks just as well as an industry-leading, yet disappointing, $2000 grill.

It would be nice to have an electric salamander some day. That would put an end to the striving.

I still plan to get a square cast iron griddle for the butane stove. Frying puts a magnificent crust on a steak. I guess I could fry and then touch up with the Searzall! That would be interesting.

The feeling I get is that grilled burgers need to be at least an inch thick before cooking. Otherwise, the insides cook too fast. It’s just physics. I think the torch allows me to do a better job with thinner burgers.

I wonder how a propane knife forge would do. Someone needs to try that. It sounds stupendous. I guess the melting fat would be a problem, because it would run into the insulation and burn.

There’s a Youtube video of a lady cooking a steak using a forge. She’s not much to look at, she has a whisker problem, and her miniskirt is too short for a woman of her years, but she may be onto something.

Poor thing. It must be hard landing a man when you look like that. You have to give her credit, though. She’s in there punching. Takes good care of herself. Look at those toned legs.

I’m sure I’ll report on the Searzall when it arrives. Try to contain yourselves.

Modern Grills Better at Preventing Lawsuits Than Cooking Food?

I am trying to develop skills with my new propane grill. Today I tried something easy: burgers.

There are a lot of fancy burger recipes. I’ll tell you what I like. Mix salt, fresh garlic, and a little pepper into ground chuck. If you’re not afraid to eat nipples and tonsils, go with ground beef. You want beef with some fat in it. Ground sirloin makes terrible burgers.

My grill is a Pit Boss portable. I removed the wimpy gas regulator and replaced it with an adjustable model made by Loco. I adjusted the air shutters on the gas valves to give me much higher flames.

I decided to grill my 1/3-pound burgers on [what is now] medium heat. I didn’t think I wanted a raging inferno on the first trial, so I used the Loco regulator to keep the flames from getting really high. I would say they were higher than they would have been without my modifications, but I didn’t go for the gusto. The burgers came out pretty good, but they were well done. I wanted medium. It appears the Pit Boss will not give you medium burgers unless you modify it and crank the flames way up. Next time I’ll know better.

Here is how gas-cooked burgers should be: pink in the middle, with a dark brown crust which is caramelized but not crunchy. Dissenters will be ignored. It appears that the Pit Boss ships set up to cook burgers very poorly. If you took a Pit Boss out of the box, hooked it up, and cooked 1/3-pound burgers on the highest setting, you would get light brown burgers with grey insides. You really need to change the regulator and let it rip.

You can’t make a factory-adjusted Pit Boss cook decent burgers. Simply not possible.

My burgers were about 3/4″ thick, which means they cooked more slowly on the inside than all-too-typical skinny burgers. It should be easy to get a nice, charred exterior on a thick burger. The Pit Boss, as delivered, will not even come close, and if you grill tiny, disgraceful, thin burgers on it, you can pretty much count on eating well-done (ruined) meat.

I plan to burger again tomorrow. I’ll increase the heat and see what happens.

I don’t understand the modern phobia of properly cooked beef. Restaurants all over the US serve steaks with pink and red insides, and everyone is fine with it, but burger chains generally fry the life out of meat, and the grills most of us buy generate very little heat, assuring that all beef cooked on them will be unfit to eat.

You can get better performance with lump charcoal, but who needs the aggravation? I have acres of land, but I am not willing to dedicate any of it to a giant pile of charcoal ashes. Propane has been with us for decades. Grill manufacturers should have figured out how to make their products work correctly by now.

Maybe lawyers have advised grill makers to detune their products. When drunken idiots burn themselves and sue, the lawyers can say, “Your honor! Lab tests show our products won’t burn ANYTHING!”

It doesn’t matter for me. By replacing parts and adjusting my grill, I have created a machine that will do what it’s supposed to. But what percentage of consumers will do what I did? Less than 1%, I would think. The rest are stuck with grey beef or the horrors of charcoal.

I’m very happy with the grill. I love not having the clean the stove. I love the added flavor grilling gives meat and vegetables. I don’t have to worry about the smoke alarms. Maybe this is how cooking should be: an outdoor pursuit. Maybe kitchens should be set up so we can prepare food for cooking indoors and then whisk it outside to be subjected to heat.

Women have messed up the American kitchen. It’s all about quaintness and homeyness. A kitchen is really just a workshop for making food, and it should be set up accordingly. It should be easy to clean and hard to damage. Like a real kitchen in a restaurant.

I figured out how to grill chicken without toughness or a 1-hour wait. Yesterday I marinated chicken in orange juice, garlic, salt, and tarragon. I baked it in a Pyrex dish at 300 for two hours. When it was finished, I put it on the grill with vegetables. It was very tender. It worked, and I didn’t have to sit by the grill for an hour.

Next time, I’m going to bake it for an hour and 45 minutes. The chicken I cooked yesterday was good, but it was so tender when it got to the grill, it started to fall apart. It will work better if I bake it less.

I could save myself work by baking it in the oven and omitting the grill, but finishing it on the grill adds a lot of flavor.

I will continue reporting on my propane adventures until I feel I know how to use the grill correctly. I’m very glad I got the grill. It’s liberating to know I don’t have to clean a stove.

On the Grill, Beef is King

I am continuing to work on my cheap grilling station.

I bought myself a Pit Boss portable stainless two-burner propane grill. It was fantastic, especially for the price. I put a Loco adjustable regulator on it and adjusted the grill’s air shutters to turn it into a high-horsepower steak-grilling machine. No problems. I also bought a one-burner Coleman butane stove, which works very well for steaks and doesn’t grease up my kitchen.

Obviously, I needed a platform. I had these items on the bricks on my porch, and it made for poor ergonomics.

I decided to buy a $39 folding table from Home Depot. These tables are great. They’re pretty light, you can adjust the height, and they don’t seem to have any glaring defects. Today I put the grill on one side of the table, and I put the stove next to it. Perfect.

I ate a bunch of steaks right after I bought the stove, and I was looking for something other than fat cuts of beef, so I decided to try chicken leg quarters. They were surprisingly hard to find. I guess they’re not trending well with hipsters.

If you like grilling chicken, you’re living in a bad time. Most of chicken’s flavor is in the skin, and it’s getting hard to find good cuts with the skin still on. It’s like castrating your dog. It used to be optional, but now people get self-righteous and freak out if you don’t fall in with the rest of the sheep. They get really angry, as if it’s somehow wrong to not castrate your dog. It’s as if testicles were birth defects or bombs that went off and killed children. You can amputate a dog’s healthy tail and ears, and no one will try to stop you, but if you try to leave your dog alone, people bunch up their faces, cross their arms, and throw tantrums, as if it’s somehow their business. You have to castrate your dog, and you have to eat chicken with the delicious skin removed.

There are people who refuse to vaccinate their kids, which is a major health threat to the rest of humanity, and I don’t bother them. Whatever happened to minding your own business?

I know I’m digressing, but now I’m thinking of sailfish. They are very common. I’ve caught a bunch of them. It’s customary to release them, but it’s not mandatory. You’re allowed to eat them, and they’re delicious. Still, if someone in South Florida catches you steaking a sailfish, you can expect a torrent of verbal abuse, even though what you’re doing is legal and ethical. It’s really annoying, dealing with self-righteous herd creatures.

Skinless chicken cutlets are everywhere. They dry out fast, and they lack fat, so they’re not that great. You have to add fat to them if you want them to taste good. It’s kind of stupid. You throw fat out in order to be healthy, and then you add new fat to correct your mistake.

I got lucky and found 4 big leg quarters locally for under $5. I grilled one last night and one today.

I have decided I am not excited about grilling chicken. The results have not been good.

I can prepare a steak in under 15 minutes on the grill. When I grilled my first chicken quarter, it took about an hour. I had to use a thermometer, because rare chicken, unlike rare beef, can send you to the ER. When I finally finished, I found the chicken tasty but tough.

Today I came up with a plan. I nuked the chicken for 6 minutes prior to grilling it. When that was over, the chicken was cooked and safe to eat. It just needed some grilling to fix the skin and add flavor.

It was better than the chicken I ate last night, but still not great. It was not tender enough. Maybe I need quarters from a different type of chicken. Maybe I have roaster quarters and I need fryer quarters. I don’t know.

I have a new plan. If I bake the chicken for three hours at 300 degrees and then grill it, it should be tender. I think it will work, but it’s a royal pain.

My feeling is that I should forget chicken and stick with beef and fish. Chicken is harder to cook than other meats.

The vegetables are working out much better than the chicken. I had forgotten how great grilled vegetables are. I’ve been slicing onions, peppers, and zucchini and grilling them with olive oil, salt, and pepper. They’re not as good as steak, but they’re definitely better than chicken. The grill brings out flavors you wouldn’t think could be found in vegetables.

I think this may not be true for people who don’t like vegetables as much as I do. I’m not sure. Many people–Cubans and Puerto Ricans come to mind–have a bizarre aversion to vegetables.

I need to try grilling eggplant and squash. Maybe I’ll have grilled pineapple for dessert.

I learned something new about my grill. I thought it couldn’t hurt whatever it was sitting on, because the heat didn’t project downward very well. Turns out this is wrong. Since I souped it up, it can project a lot of heat toward the table. I plan to get something to put under it, like a couple of quarry tiles. Glad I figured this out before melting my table.

I’m very happy with my setup. I’m somewhere around $200 in the hole, and I have an excellent grill plus a very convenient stove burner. The whole rig is light and portable, and there is nothing I can’t replace for $120. I can put the whole thing in the car and grill at a friend’s house if I want. I would rather have this than a big, overrated “professional” grill that starts to cough up ruined parts in two years.

I still need a second propane tank. That’s how you deal with propane. You don’t buy one tank and wait for it to die during a cookout. You buy two, and when one dies, you attach the other one.

I wish someone made a portable propane broiler or “salamander.” That would be wonderful for steak. Broiling will char a steak without fat flareups. Maybe there is one out there, if I look.

I have a MAPP gas torch, and I’m considering using it to sear steaks. More than one way to skin a cat.

It’s very sad how the grill industry has convinced people it’s okay to eat grey and brown steaks. Completely wrong. A waste of meat.

I highly recommend this grill and the Loco regulator. Just be careful. Once you take the brakes off the grill, anything can happen.

Grey Steaks are for Prisoners and Old Women

Today I adjusted my new Pit Boss portable propane grill so it was fit for a MAN to use, and I already have the results of the experiment.

I hit Walmart today because I needed a tackle box for my leathercraft stuff, and while I was there, I found a fat rib eye on sale. They were dumping it because it was too old. A sticker on the package said it should be cooked no later than tomorrow.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

If you know anything about steak, you know that aging only makes it better. Walmart aged a steak for me and then charged me LESS for it. Unbelievable.

Steaks are aged in two ways: dry and wet. A dry-aged steak is allowed to age while exposed to the dry air of a refrigerator. It loses water, concentrating the flavor, and supposedly, enzymes naturally present in beef tenderize it. I don’t know if that last part is true. Of course, bacteria will work on it while it’s aging, and my opinion is that as long as they’re friendly bacteria, they will improve the flavor.

Wet-aging is the same process, except you wrap the steak so water can’t evaporate. It produces a juicier steak which is not quite as tasty. Women have pushed the market toward wet-aging, because they have bad taste in food and like things that are soft and juicy.

Walmart wet-aged my steak for me. If you want to wet-age a steak, here’s how you do it: leave it in the refrigerator. That’s all there is to it. Leave the plastic on it, and check it from time to time to make sure it’s not turning green.

I’ve been eating frozen broccoli with cheese sauce with my steaks lately, because I have a bizarre fondness for the dish, but today I decided to man up and prepare something better. I bought a big red pepper and a white onion. I cut the pepper in half. I cut the onion in thick slices. I smeared both with cheap (not extra-virgin) olive oil, and I salted and peppered them. Extra-virgin olive oil is not for cooked foods. Heat ruins its flavor.

I salted the rib eye heavily, added a touch of pepper, fired up my souped-up grill, and made myself dinner. I’ll post some photos.

Here, you can see flames curling around the heat diffusers in the grill. Yesterday, there was no way to make that happen. The grill had polite little flames just barely big enough to cook a steak. When I adjusted the grill today, it was hard to tell how much of a difference it made, but now that I see the grill in action, I can tell it’s much, much better. It turned the heat diffusers red hot. I love it.

Actually, maybe you can’t see the flames from the burner all that well, because they’re much smaller than the flames from burning fat. Anyway, the flames are way higher than they were yesterday.

Here, you can see the steak after I turned it. There are some issues that need to be dealt with. The employee who cut the steak for packaging made the disgraceful error of trimming the fat off of most of it. That left it with a pointy end that had more fat than the main part of the steak. The pointy end dripped a lot of fat on the heat diffuser, and the resulting flames burned the pointy end too much. I need to work around things like that in the future.

Mind you, the pointy bit still tasted wonderful, but it would have been better with a bit less carbon.

Here is the steak on my plate. I charred it as much as possible without going all the way to medium. It was not perfect, but it was very good. There was nothing at all wrong with it, but there could have been more that was right.

The steak had a medium-rare appearance, but because it was cooked on high heat, it was surprisingly hot inside. That’s much, much better than hot outside, cool inside.

Resting steaks is very stupid, so I don’t do it. I eat herd creatures; I do not behave like one. I dug into this steak as fast as I could. The outside of a steak should be very hot. If you really wanted a perfect steak, you would have to eat it right beside the grill, when the outside is hottest. This steak, although consumed a few minutes after coming off the flames, was nice and hot outside. Just as it should have been.

Steak chillers…I mean “resters”…complain that failing to rest a steak makes the juice run out of it. When I was done eating, there was probably less than a teaspoon of beef juice on the plate. I know, because I kept staring at it. I wanted to drink it. It was beautiful.

The whole resting nonsense is a ludicrous myth that claims millions of victims every day.

The vegetables were magnificent. That’s the thing about grilling. Everything is good when you grill it. I took a ferocious, sharp-tasting white onion and threw it on the flames for a few minutes, and it came off the grill sweet and juicy. The pepper was equally tasty. They really complimented the taste of the meat.

The increased heat didn’t hurt the grill at all. Nothing melted. Nothing that should have been cool got hot. The grill can take it. I got a winner here.

Now that I’ve conquered the grill problem, I can quit eating steak every day. Maybe I won’t even grill tomorrow. Or maybe I’ll grill something small and tame, like a chicken quarter. I can get some more vegetables. Maybe squash sliced lengthwise. I don’t know if it would hold together, but I can find out.

Very nice. Outstanding.

Don’t let the grilling nannies hold you back. Don’t rest until your grill will burn the outside of a steak while leaving the inside a glorious, intense pink or even red. Life is too short to eat lame food foisted on you by a food industry comprised mostly of people who cook very poorly.

Grill Hack Plus Powerful Testimony

I have been a very, very bad boy.

I got myself a stainless portable grill from Pit Boss. Very nice grill. It will make a credible rib eye, IF you let the fat burn off the heat deflectors and add additional heat to the meat. Otherwise, it’s not quite optimal. You have to play around a little to make it do an acceptable job using the racks, and it’s definitely too weak to heat a cast iron griddle for steaks. The propane flames are not very high when you use the grill as adjusted by the factory.

I got myself a Loco-brand high-pressure regulator to increase the flow, but when I tried to use it, the burners wouldn’t accept the additional gas. The flames blew out. I figured it was time to take the regulator back to Lowe’s.

Today I Googled, and I learned something great: gas grills have carburetors.

A carburetor mixes air and fuel in the right proportions. You can’t just pump propane through a burner and hope for good results. You have to have the carburetor (“air shutter”) adjusted correctly.

Guess what I did?

An air shutter is just a metal sleeve that’s open on one side. Air flows through the open space. You rotate the sleeve to get the right size space. Sometimes grills need adjusting, and you’re supposed to adjust the air shutter to fix them. You’re supposed to do this while the grill is on low heat.

Right. Low.

Again, guess what I did?

I got me a Philips screwdriver, LIBERATED the air shutter on my right burner, turned on the gas, and adjusted it until the burner would support a really decent flame. When I saw that this worked, I did the other side.

Will my grill still work on low heat? Who cares? Why would you want a grill to work on low heat? What possible benefit is there in that? Are you planning to heat baby food on the grill? Grills are for charring meat and other food, period. If you’re cooking things on moderate heat in a grill, you made a mistake. What you really wanted was a toaster oven.

This is exciting. I may be able to produce correctly cooked steaks on the grill now, both with the rack and with the griddle.

I hate the way hippies and lawyers ruin grilling. I know they’re behind the pathetic limitations on gas grills. They’re behind everything that ruins fun.

A grill that doesn’t heat up enough is like a Mustang with a 4-cylinder engine. What is the purpose? There is none.

I was going to try to have something other than steak for dinner tonight, but you can probably guess what I’m going to do. I’m off to the store shortly.

I’m not one of those people who think all meat has to have a black, crunchy layer of carbon on it, but grey steaks or brown steaks with a few wimpy black grill marks are just wrong. Burgers should also have some charring.

I admit, I like fried burgers from Wendy’s and Five Guys, even though they’re not really cooked correctly. Somehow, these chains make grey, well-done burgers work. But a good grilled burger with some charring is a whole lot better.

I am really pinning the Smug-O-Meter today.

Will the excess heat destroy the grill? I don’t care. The experiment is too important to drop for the sake of a grill. This is for science, people.

In other news, I have a testimony. My friend Travis got released from probation, unexpectedly. I have his permission to tell about it.

I can never remember whether I’ve revealed his name here before. Often, I use fake names for people, and I can’t keep track. Anyway, he is house-sitting in my dad’s old house while I sell it.

A few years back, he did something that wasn’t very clever. He tried to move a car across town with an expired tag. These days, cops have scanning machines that look at license plates, and when a scanner sees a bad tag, it lets the cops know. Travis got pulled over, and because he had some license issues already, he panicked. He took off. That’s a felony. The cop claimed he tried to hit him, which is a great way to pump up the charges. That’s also a felony.

Travis got five years of probation, and it has been very hard. He can’t travel without permission. He had to do miserable manual labor at a park. He had to meet with his P.O. over and over. His P.O. and the other people with oversight kept screwing up and causing problems for him. For example, the people at the park failed to record a bunch of his hours.

His P.O. violated his probation because he failed to meet with him. Travis had gone to his office and called him many times, but the P.O. wasn’t there when he was supposed to be, and he didn’t return calls. Travis had to go to a hearing today. The big danger was that they would revoke his probation, give him a felony conviction, and put him away.

Of course, I have been advising him all along. I don’t give him legal advice, per se, but I tell him obvious things. Never complain. Never look angry. Always sound grateful. Be polite. When you have to go to court or to see your P.O., be on time. Keep records of everything. Take responsibility for what you did. Do everything they tell you to do. I also gave him all sorts of spiritual advice.

We have been praying about his hearing. Today he called me while I was planting dwarf podocarpus shrubs, and he gave me the amazing news. The judge terminated his probation instead of revoking it. He is done. No conviction. No more meetings. No more working at the park.

He said he was nervous because the judge was crabby. She had been laying the smackdown on people before his turn came. When he was called, he had all his papers. He was polite. He didn’t interrupt. She told him his probation was terminated as of today.

Sounds good, right? It gets much better.

His dad has MS. He is in a bad nursing home. He has been steeped in bitterness, pride, and anger for years. When his son got a scholarship to the University of Miami, he did virtually nothing to help. Sometimes he told Travis he wanted him out of his life.

We have been praying for his dad ever since I can remember. Travis was afraid he would die before he turned back to Jesus. This week, his dad was hospitalized for an infection caused by a catheter, and he was intubated. It looked bad.

I asked God about it, and he seemed to say Travis’s dad would repent.

We prayed and spoke blessings and curses, and yesterday, unexpectedly, Travis’s dad repented and gave his life back to Jesus. Now they pray together. You can’t imagine Travis’s relief, but I can. My dad finally gave in this year at the age of 87, a few weeks before he died.

Pretty good week, wouldn’t you agree?

As Travis said on the phone today, this stuff really works.

I’m amazed that God has been able to make good use of me. I think of myself as a selfish and solitary person with few human interactions, but somehow I have found myself at the center of a small group of people who listen to me, and when I tell them about the things God has used to change my life, he changes theirs, too. God used me to help Travis, and he used Travis to reach his dad. Travis has a lot of friends he’s influencing, too.

The Bible says people will know God’s children by their fruit, and people misinterpret this and say it means their works or their personalities. In reality, it refers to other human beings they reach. Jesus said he was the true vine, and we were the branches. He said any branch that didn’t bear fruit would be cut off and burned. What is the purpose of a branch? To bear fruit. What is fruit? It’s a means of reproduction. God uses us to reproduce his nature in human beings.

This is a good day.

I’m off to Winn-Dixie. Hope they have some nice cheap rib eyes.