More Progress

Forget everything I have told you about garlic rolls and do this.

INGREDIENTS

1 cup high-gluten flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar
4 ounces water (roughly)
1 level teaspoon instant yeast
1 teaspoon juice from sour cream or yogurt or kefir or something similar

Scale this up if needed; it makes 6 rolls about the size of racquetballs.

Mix everything but the yeast. You want it a little sticky, but you should be able to handle it without much trouble. Don’t knead it.

Plop it into a bowl and cover it with foil. Let it sit for at least two days. Room temperature.

Fold the yeast in. Doesn’t have to be perfectly mixed, but do a good job. It’s okay if some grains of yeast hang off the dough.

Flatten into a 6″ by 9″ rectangle. Cut into 6 long strips. Pull a strip off, stretch it to a foot in length, double it, tie it in an overhand knot, and put it on a seasoned pan. Repeat.

Oil the rolls lightly (cheap olive oil) and let them rise (covered with something airtight) until they are as big as racquetballs. The rise may take 2-3 hours. Bake at 550. Takes about 6 minutes. Toss in a mixture of pureed garlic, cheap olive oil, salt, and parsley flakes. Lots of garlic; maybe a third as much garlic as oil, by volume.

This is very similar to the recipe I put up a day or two ago, but this time, the sour cream bacteria woke up and made it a little sour. I think you could actually make an acceptable starter with that stuff. The dough formed tiny blisters when it baked, and that made the rolls better.

The only ways I can think of to improve this are as follows: 1) fresh grated cheese, 2) pizza sauce for dipping, and 3) anchovy sauce for dipping. I don’t have a recipe for anchovy sauce. That one just came to me. But it would be good, wouldn’t it? Hmm…anchovies fried in oil, with garlic puree tossed in at the last minute and also fried. With mashed pine nuts. Maybe.

Mike and I were thinking it might be possible to speed up the rise by mashing the yeast up with a little water before mixing it in, but you might have trouble mixing it in, and you might lose the blisters. I don’t know.

These are tasty. Give them a shot.

Boy, do I smell.

New Shorts

I went to Old Navy. Got four pairs of size 30 cargo shorts. I am not happy with the new belt I got at the Gap, and it’s too messed up to return, so I looked at belts. Found the perfect item marked down to $8.99. Size? “S.”

I am wearing the belt and a pair of the shorts now. This is fantastic.

Now all I have to do is settle on a garlic roll recipe, so I won’t have tempting test batches lying around.

Chewy and Tasty

Okay, try this. Make garlic roll dough, but leave the yeast out. Keep oil away from it. Dump the yeast on a flat surface and knead the dough into it, folding the yeast into the dough over and over.

You don’t have to make the blending perfect. Just get it in there pretty good. Like 90% mixed. Make sure it’s instant yeast, not active yeast.

Make the rolls, using the recipe I gave you earlier.

It will take a long time for these rolls to rise. Maybe three hours. That’s okay, though, because they’ll be very good.

I don’t know if this is autolysing or what, but the baked dough has a nice leathery, chewy quality, and the flavor is better. I’ve added yeast late to pizza dough, and it works fine, even without a significant interval between the mixing of the dough and the addition of the yeast.

To make sauce, use about a quarter-cup of garlic cloves. Add around a quarter-cup of oil, a teaspoon of parsley flakes (dry is fine) and a lot of salt. Oops. Before you add the parsley, grind the garlic and oil in a tiny processor. I suppose you can nuke this stuff to cook the garlic, but you don’t have to.

I made rolls using this recipe, and I ate them. All six. Man, they were good. I wish I had time to use this recipe at church, but the day would be over before the crusts rose.

I would post photos, but there is nothing left to photograph.

MAN, I can cook. Pizza and rolls, at least. This is amazing. God will give you some strange and unexpected things. There has to be a reason for this.

Roll Experiment

Yesterday I decided to try a garlic roll experiment. Big shock, I know.

I have noticed that I get good results when I add yeast long after making the dough, and commenters and other web types have been offering reasons for this. For one thing, there is a phenomenon called “autolysing,” which means letting your flour and water sit for a while before you add the other stuff. Supposedly it improves flavor and texture.

Last night I decided to mix flour, water, and salt, and I added a little fluid from a container of sour cream, hoping the lactobacillus would do something. I stuck it on a table overnight. I’m going to add yeast in a while and make rolls. May also add some sugar. I intended to do that last night, but I forgot to put it in with the other ingredients.

This isn’t the right way to do it, but I wanted to try it anyway, because the right way involves omitting salt, and that would be a pain.

We will see how well it works.

Tic Tac, Please

I’m dying, here. I just made more rolls, and this time I pretty much got it right. I had to eat SIX GARLIC ROLLS. I could not stop. This is the way I usually become aware that a recipe is out of the conception stage and ready for public consumption and fine tuning.

I’ll just tell you what I did. Why keep this from the world?

INGREDIENTS

1 cup high-gluten flour
1 teaspoon instant yeast
3/8 cup water (roughly)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar

I do not know why, but it seems like bread tastes better when you make the dough without yeast and then knead the yeast into it. If you have the patience to do that, go for it. Mix everything but the yeast, using whatever method turns you on, and then fold the yeast into it. It’s okay (preferable, in my opinion) if the yeast is distributed in the dough a little unevenly.

As for the water amount, you want dough that is wet enough to work but not too sticky to handle. You’ll figure it out.

You can go two ways from here. You can make a dough ball, oil it (cheap olive oil, not green) and let it rise, or you can roll the dough out, make it into rolls and then let it rise under a sheet of plastic. The second way is how I just did it. The first way may be a little better, since you get two rises and more yeast flavor.

Either way, you will eventually want to flatten the dough into a rectangle about 9″ by 14″. Cut it down the middle, the long way. Cut each half into three strips. Pick a strip up. Double it back on itself. Tie the resulting double strip in an overhand knot and put it on a seasoned pan. Repeat with the other strips.

Cover the pan and let the dough poof up until it looks ready to bake. Put the pan in a preheated 550° oven. Rolls this size will bake in about 5 minutes.

SAUCE

3 oz. (weight) peeled garlic cloves, pureed or pressed
3 oz. oil
salt and parsley to taste

You don’t have to cook the sauce. Mike taught me that. Just dump the hot rolls in a bowl, pour the sauce over them, and toss. Use lots of salt.

If you can use less yeast and let the dough rise for a day or two, it may be a lot better. I will never have the patience to find out.

I truly stink. I have probably eaten an ounce and a half of garlic today. I love it.

Make sure you let the rolls rise enough to prevent them from being heavy and hard. Do NOT put oil in the dough. It adversely affects the flavor of the rolls.

I am dizzy with pleasure. And I can quit making rolls now, since I have the puzzle beaten.

God helps me with this stuff. I am convinced of it.

No photos. I ate the rolls before I could get the camera out.

Stank

I am working on garlic rolls, in hopes that I will be able to produce a recipe that in some way compares to the one Mike uses. My church NEEDS garlic rolls.

I made a couple of batches today. The first batch came out great, but I was not satisfied. They tasted wonderful with the sauce, but without it, they were pretty ordinary. That’s no good. I don’t want mediocre rolls made great by sauce. I want great rolls and great sauce.

The second batch was about the same, except for two things. I cut the dough in thinner strips and doubled them before tying the knots. That makes the rolls more complicated, which is a good thing in rolls you pull apart. I also sprinkled them with kosher salt before baking.

The kosher salt was a really bad idea. It was too much.

Now I’m working on a third batch. This time, I made dough by hand and then kneaded dry instant yeast into it. This makes wonderful pizza crust, so it might be good for rolls. I also omitted the oil from the dough. In the first two batches, I used one tablespoon per cup of flour, and I thought the flavor was inferior to that of the pizza crusts I usually make with this dough.

I can make great garlic rolls already. But what’s the point in making great rolls when you can make rolls that make people faint? That’s a much better goal.

I smell incredible. I wonder how long that will last. I bet chicks will dig it. Yeah.

So Far

These are the rolls with kosher salt. I omitted parsley because I didn’t have any.

He Will Nail You if You Spill the Beans

I have this feeling. I can’t shake it. The feeling tells me that today, I have to WORK ON MY GARLIC ROLL RECIPE.

Can the feeling be right? I better go to the kitchen and see.

Sunday was not a good sales day at church. A young man showed up to be instructed in the black art of pizza-making, and it turned out that the teaching made the process so slow, we missed part of one rush. But I did make progress toward the day when I don’t have to be in the kitchen every single minute, and I helped a young person learn a vital and rare skill.

Jesus the crazy parking lot volunteer showed up and told the young man that if he revealed my secrets, he would be hunted down like a dog. So I guess he won’t be blabbing.

Down here about 25% of the men are named Jesus. This particular Jesus is a lot of fun. He’s not really crazy, but he can easily convince you otherwise. And he has a tattoo.

Learning is my Bag, Baby

I’m baking a test Sicilian.

I bought Sinatra and 6-in-1 tomatoes at GFS, and I also got Primo Gusto flour and Primo Gusto mozzarella/provolone mix. I have tried 6-in-1 before, and I’ve tried the cheese, but sometimes it’s nice to go back over old ground.

The flour sack says “high gluten,” and this flour is rumored to be about the same as All Trumps high-gluten, but the protein box on the bag says 3 grams, not 4.

I’m dividing the pie in thirds. Each third will get a different sauce. It’s a big pie. I’m using a half-sheet pan.

The Sinatra tomatoes taste great out of the can. I was impressed. But that means absolutely nothing. You have to bake sauce before you can judge it.

I am so industrious. I deserve a medal. Who else would spend all this time making pizza and trying it? It’s hard work, but then I am what George Bush was talking about when he kept telling us about “good people doin’ a hard jawb.”

No praise is necessary. It’s enough to know I deserve it.

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Here’s the deal.

1. Primo Gusto flour makes excellent Sicilian pizza. Maybe I did something different this time; I don’t know. But the crust browned beautifully, and it formed nice big irregular gas pockets. Very nice. Now I know I don’t have to fool with exotic flour.

2. Sinatra tomatoes are good enough to use for pizza, but they’re not a dream come true. They seem to lack the complexity of real San Marzanos, and that’s really all San Marzanos have to offer, in my opinion.

3. The 6-in-1 tomatoes are better than Sinatra tomatoes. They’re sweeter and they have more of a round, fruity California taste.

4. The Primo Gusto cheese tastes okay, but it doesn’t seem to cook and melt the way it should. Too much cellulose, maybe. Or maybe I didn’t preheat the oven enough. But if that were the problem, the crust would have been raw.

5. Saporito is still the king. It was fruitier and tastier than the 6-in-1 tomatoes, and they were better than the Sinatras. Maybe the Sinatras would be better if they were boiled down a little. They are pretty runny after you puree them.

This was a grueling experiment, but I did it anyway, because that’s how I roll. I don’t expect gratitude or admiration. But I won’t object if you foist them upon me anyway.

Some guys are working in the yard, so I managed to give most of the pie away instead of dumping it. They must think Americans are insane.

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Pizza gallery:

Oh, Wait. Was He a Great Big Fat Person?

I did a very bad thing today. I hit GFS on the way home from church.

I’ve been making pizza for our Tuesday night services, which are enormous, but they lock the cafe during the services, so instead of selling 20 pizzas, I’ve been selling 8. That seemed like a waste of time, and I need to free myself up so I can work as an armorbearer once in a while, and I recently learned they’re opening during the week for lunch. So I went in today and cooked.

I don’t think this was a great idea. I sold 5 pizzas. They scared me by talking about a lunch time rush, so I made 12 dough portions, but I ended up throwing 6 out.

At least I got on the road to go home early.

The kitchen was very low on olive oil, so I decided to visit Gordon Food Supply. I went to the one in Little Havana. For some reason, they have an exceptional selection of pizza products.

I bought Sinatra brand Italian tomatoes, on a gamble. I thought they might be like Cento Italian tomatoes. I don’t need them. In fact, they’re too expensive to use at church. But I got them anyway, because I JUST HAD TO.

I bought a can of Escalon 6-in-1 tomatoes. I tried them a long time ago and decided not to use them, but I couldn’t resist refreshing my memory.

I got a 25-pound bag of GFS Primo Gusto flour. It’s supposed to be sort of like All Trumps, which makes excellent Sicilian. I got bags so I can freeze the excess. I know this is crazy, but it beats paying a much higher per-pound rate for dubious grocery flour.

I picked up FOUR GALLONS of pomace oil for the church. Now I can relax for a while. And I bought my new secret sauce ingredient. Which is a secret.

I got a can of Saporito sauce. I use it at church, so I think it’s best to use it here when doing research. I also got some Primo Gusto 50/50 mozzarella/provolone. That was stupid, but it had been so long since the last time I tried it, I could not resist.

I had to make a pie with Sorrento cheese today, because we ran out of Costco cheese. I have to say, it’s very good. Nothing wrong with it. Just as good as Grande, as far as I can tell. But the flavor is as mild as Grande. If you like that, buy Sorrento. It’s the real thing. It’s just not Kirkland!

Now this stuff is sitting here, staring at me. I can’t make pies and stuff myself. All I can do is make test pies and eat tiny amounts, possibly even spitting the food out before I swallow it. My intellectual and artistic curiosity will be satisfied, but nothing else will be.

I can’t make thin pizza because I blew up my stone in an experiment worthy of Beavis and Butt-head. I need to get to Bed Bath and Beyond so I can buy a new one.

When I left GFS, I took a photo of the food I had bought, and I sent it to Mike. This is what male friends do. We make each other suffer. I had no choice.

I actually ate pizza for lunch. These days that rarely happens. I had a slice and a half. I feel like a glutton. The first slice was mainly for sustenance and partly to test the Sorrento cheese. The half-slice was just a test. My lovely beverage? The usual. Water.

Even though the pie had sat on top of the oven for a long time, it was sublime. I am sure God’s hand is in the recipe. Who else could make me love pepperoni?

I’m glad God has given me control over my diet. Thrilled and amazed, actually. But when I describe what I eat, it sounds pretty boring.

I’m thinking I’ll have wings for dinner. They’re fairly harmless from a caloric standpoint (if you go easy on the butter and dressing), and I could use something tasty and light with lots of meat in it.

Today at church, one of my friends ordered two slices and dipped them in a mixture of wing sauce and ranch dressing. I couldn’t believe it. It was a little gross. But brilliant.

Deep in your heart, I know you agree.

Here’s an unexpected reward that came from watching him eat: I saw how beautiful the underside of the pizza was. I don’t get to see much of that when I’m eating, since I hold the slice right-side-up. It was breathtaking.

Have to go Make Pizza

Reader blindshooter says:

I feel like a prayer bum asking again but please add my Dad to your prayers, he is getting a heart cath today.

Unleaded Starts my Day

I think I’m falling in love with decaffeinated coffee. I can get up and drink as much as I want while I start my morning routine, and nothing happens.

A while back, I started feeling I should give up caffeine abuse. I’m attention deficient, and I quit taking drugs about 14 years ago, and when I got to law school, caffeine helped me overcome the boredom and concentrate. It also helped in my practice. But lately it has been keeping me up nights, and I think it makes me crabby during the day.

For a while, I’ve felt like God has been cleaning me up. I had to quit smoking cigars because they kept me awake. Who ever heard of such a thing? But it happened. Now coffee is out. I am a man without vices. It is a strange sensation.

Drugs connect us with the spirit realm, somehow or other. Tobacco was a ritual herb smoked by pre-Columbian heathens. Peyote and psilocybin are used in worship. Hippies used to get high and say they had seen God.

I don’t think cigars and coffee are going to give me visions of demons, but there must be something about them that God doesn’t like, because I really had to quit. I had no choice. Something would not leave me alone, and I think it was God.

Maybe weak drugs are sharp tools Satan uses to open little holes in your temple. Search me.

I suppose this is undeniable: drugs that affect your mind are substitutes for things you should be getting from God. Maybe that’s the problem. God fixes people, better than caffeine ever could. Maybe caffeine was in the way.

I don’t have any reason to think other people should give up cigars or real coffee, but it seems to be true in my case.

Coffee is a comfort drink. If I can’t get up and have hot coffee when I first turn on the computer, my morning is damaged. Decaf solved that problem.

Coffee–even real coffee–is supposed to bring health benefits. So I suppose I’m still getting those.

I have been getting comments about the AR rifle. This has been bugging me lately. I don’t need any more rifles, and I don’t think an AR will change my life significantly, but I feel this nagging urge to get one.

I’ll tell you something weird. I think God is driving his people to arm themselves and prepare for hard times. Over and over, I see it. I’ve written about it before. I have a new friend who works for a religious charity, and she travels the country talking to Christian donors. She says lots of people–and this is not a tea party thing; they’re independently motivated–are getting guns and tools and rural land. She told me she met with two elderly sisters in northern Florida who inherited a ranch complete with a gun range. These women are retired missionaries! They can’t figure it out.

I do not believe God tells people to shoot at the FBI or the mailman or any other federal agent. I don’t think we’re going to have a last stand where we all go down fighting, while Janet Reno watches on cable news and claps her hands. I have no interest whatsoever in shooting people. In fact, I am not sure I’d shoot in self-defense, since a criminal is likely to need time to repent and turn to God, while I’m ready to go. I’d shoot to defend others; that’s a moral obligation. But I can’t swear I’d kill someone to protect myself. Still, I think God is somehow involved in the increasing interest Christians have in firearms.

If we are not intended to use these guns against others, I’m not sure what the purpose is. But I think that purpose exists. I suspect it, anyway.

Getting back to the AR, a commenter says a couple of interesting things.

1. I should get an AR15, because 5.56/.223 is sort of mandatory. I don’t really understand that, but there it is.

2. Good AR15s are “cheap” right now, so I should get a Rock River and then add a Grendel upper later.

I know almost nothing about the AR15. I know there are “uppers” and “lowers.” I think that means the lower is the part we think of as a gun, and the upper is the barrel and some other stuff. But I don’t know how interchangeable these things are, or whether combining parts from different companies is a good idea. And I don’t know what he means by “cheap.” Are prices about to shoot up? Have they been reduced recently? No clue here.

I don’t know why I need a 5.56. I’ve seen people call it a “poodle shooter.” For self-defense, I really like my Vz 58 in 7.62x39mm, which is fairly powerful yet easy to shoot. What are the advantages of the 5.56? Do they really exist, or is it one of those things, like a 1911 in .45 ACP or a .22 rifle, that you just have to have, no explanation needed?

I looked at my PSL last night, and sure enough, the hammer is in backwards. I think the same could be said of my brain. I’m going to reverse it and take the gun to the range, but I’ll need ammunition first. I’m not going to shoot the rest of my 7N1 until the Russians release more of it. I could sell the remaining rounds and buy a Corvette.

I don’t know where I can get cheap accurate ammunition for it now. There is lots of surplus out there, and Wolf is not too expensive, but I would really like something that will do 2 MOA out of an ideal gun. That way, I can work on my shooting without wondering if the ammunition is holding me back.

I guess I could drive over to Samco and see what they have.

The glass for the AR is a problem. The gun itself is not cheap, and I would want a scope which would work well at long ranges. Prairie dog range, in case I ever get off my butt and go varmint hunting. I assume such items are not cheap.

Maybe the urge will go away.

Shooting poodles…isn’t that a public service? Is there some way we could train them to pop out of prairie dog burrows? Just a thought.

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To clarify, I would like an AR in a good long-distance caliber, so whatever I get, I want it to work with a varmint barrel and a good scope. But if I also get a 5.56 upper for shorter ranges, do I have to worry that the original lower will not be appropriate for long-range shooting?

You Know Who is in the Details

I got a nice comment on my Sicilian pizza recipe. I felt I should point a few things out.

1. You don’t absolutely have to have a stone to make this dish. If you get the right pan and find the right distance from the lower heating element in your oven, you will end up with a perfect crust, without removing the pie from the pan. It will fry on the bottom with no problems. I like to touch it up anyway, purely out of neurosis. If your pan is not perfect, you will want a stone to correct the crust.

2. You don’t need a mixer to make this dish. Just all the dry ingredients in a bowl; make sure you use instant yeast, not “active dry yeast.” Add the water and mix until you have dough. It does not have to be kneaded. You don’t even have to mix it very well.

If you don’t have a Publix supermarket near you, I can’t tell you where to get the pan I use at home, but here is some info from an email their customer service sent me:

At the present we do not have a new supplier for = our Publix Premium Bakeware 9 x 9 Cake Pan (GTIN-4141562056). We last received a shipment for this product in April 2008 and that product is comprised of:
99% Steel / 1% Aluminum Powder
Whitford Non-Stick Coating K4326 Champagne Gold Pewter.

Maybe you can find the same pan under a different name. High heat doesn’t faze it, so I’m not afraid to use it in the house with Marv and Maynard.

3. If you have given up looking for Stanislaus tomato products, fear not. Buy Cento D.O.P. San Marzano tomatoes and mash them up, or use Cento “Italian” tomatoes, which are supposedly better.

4. Costco mozzarella cut 50/50 with sliced provolone will send you straight to heaven, but you can also get good results with sliced mozzarella from your grocer’s deli counter. I suggest adding some grated cheese if you do that, because it seems like no other mozzarella has Costco’s wonderful flavor. I realize how crazy that sounds.

5. The cheapest olive oil you can find is probably best. The other day I learned that extra virgin isn’t really intended for cooking. I never liked the cardboard aftertaste it gave my pizza, and it turned out there was a reason it didn’t work. The chemicals that give extra virgin its flavor burn easily and then taste bad. I now use pomace oil, which is so cheap they don’t even call it olive oil. It has no off flavors at all, and you can get it for around $15 a gallon. That’s less than half the price of Costco extra virgin. Mike used it in garlic rolls the other day, and it was fantastic. I like extra virgin in rolls, but this stuff works great, although with less flavor.

For a 9″ square pie, I use 1.5 cups of flour, four ounces of mozzarella, four ounces of provolone, and around 5 ounces of sauce. You need a lot of sauce and cheese on Sicilian. You might consider increasing the dough.

This is not hard to make. You just make the dough and put it in a covered, oiled pan to rise a little, and then you shape it to fit the pan and let it rise again, and then you bake it right over the heating element at 550. Pop it out and put it on the stone for a little while to crisp up, and you’re done. The pan I use never sticks at all, so getting the pizza out is no problem.

I use cheap GFS (Wear-Ever) pans at church because I don’t want to spend a lot of their money, but the Publix pan is much better, and I didn’t have to bake seasoning onto it.

You could roll the pizza out and make it fit the pan at the start, avoiding the second rise, but for my purposes, this would work out to be harder and messier than the method above. I have to make lots of pizzas, and I don’t feel like messing up a counter with a rolling pin and flour. If you’re only making one pie, you may find the rolling pin saves you time and labor.

I know of no Sicilian that even comes close to this one. I have had lots of pizzas in lots of places, and nothing compares. This may not be the world’s best pizza, but it is definitely adequate.

On the Loose

I have free time! I have free time! Can you tell? Was it a clue when I blew up my pizza stone in a pointless backyard experiment?

Mike’s visit is over. I will not be making pizza at church today. I do not have to serve as an Armorbearer tonight. I do not have to get up super-early tomorrow or go to bed late tonight.

I have free time!

I think I’ll hit the garage and try to finish the butt attachment thing for my Saiga 12. Look out for flying swarf.

The Urge to Annoy Nerds Overcomes Me

I guess I’m childish, but I can’t help wanting to poke a hole in the Neapolitan pizza fad.

In case you aren’t up on your fads, Neapolitan pizza is thin pizza cooked at over 700 degrees. The really cool places go a thousand. The pizza is very thin, it’s burned (understandably), and it tends to come with disgusting, silly toppings like goat cheese, arugula, and squash blossoms (I’m guessing on that last one).

Mind you, I’m talking about American yuppie Neapolitan. For all I know, the stuff they eat in Naples actually tastes good.

Pizza nerds cut up their Weber kettles all the time, trying to jack up the heat. It makes a real mess, and it’s a lot of work. When I saw them talking about this on a forum, I asked why they didn’t just go on Craigslist and buy used pottery kilns. For a couple of hundred dollars, you can get a 120-volt deal that will cook a pretty big pizza at 1500 degrees. If that’s what turns you on. They didn’t get too excited about it, though.

Yesterday I got the urge to tinker. Propane burns at nearly 3000 degrees. I’m thinking I should be able to get to a thousand or so by putting a stone on my cajun burner. I’ll need heat from above, too, so I’m thinking I could make a thin steel box to cover the stone (with room for a pizza inside) and hang a second burner above the box, aimed downward. Might work. Heat would go out the sides, but I think a good hot stone and radiant heat from the box above ought to more than compensate. I could put some kind of thin metal deflector under the stone to keep the center from getting too hot.

Will it work? I don’t know, but it would cost about fifty bucks to find out, and it would be fun to prove that you don’t need to bankrupt yourself or make a mess to get bona fide nerd pizza. I should be able to put the box and burner on a shelf in the garage, neatly out of the way, unlike a hacked up Weber kettle full of fire bricks.

I guess the first step is to put the stone directly over the heat and see if it explodes. If not, the project may work. If it blows up, I spent twenty bucks to find out I had a bad idea.

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Okay, let’s file that under “bad idea.”

Rest, at Last

I can’t believe I went two days without blogging.

A Mike visit is always a whirlwind of food, guns, and church. You end every day exhausted. We went to the gun range. We tried Five Guys. We hit Sonny’s barbecue. We ate at Krystal. On Saturday, we went to my 8:00 a.m. prayer meeting, and it turned out the head Servant Leader from our church was qualifying some Armorbearers on the pistol range, and I was invited to that. Then we went to a classic car rally. Then I attended church on Saturday night. Yesterday, we got to church at 8:30, and we made pizzas until 3 p.m.

Now I can’t move. Mike just left for Delray.

I’m thrilled that I got Mike to go to the prayer group, because most of the benefit of belonging to a church comes from things you do with other church members, and I wanted him to see what I was getting from time with my friends. I’m not knocking sermons, but pastors can’t be with you 24 hours a day, and you can’t expect to prosper on forty minutes of teaching per week, with nothing more.

Easter services at church were insane. They did one on Good Friday, the regular Saturday service, the three regular Sunday services, and an extra Sunday service. The place was so full, they put chairs in the cafe. Yesterday we recorded 922 salvations. Not bad.

Mike volunteered to make garlic rolls, so I turned him loose with the old Kitchenaid mixer, and I made pizza. By the end of the day, we had sold 22 dozen rolls and 19 pies. We ran out of dough. I’m almost glad they closed the cafe before the last service.

The rolls were unbelievable. You can’t get rolls that good anywhere in Miami. I don’t know why. It’s not brain surgery. But people raved about them.

Not only did he make the dough and sauce from scratch; he tied each roll in a knot before baking it. Very fancy.

We set the roll price too low, at $1.00 for four big rolls. A local chain called Mario the Baker is known for rolls, and they get $4.00 for half a dozen. And Mike’s rolls are bigger and much better. We should have charged fifty cents a roll. As it is, we netted somewhere around sixty bucks. Should have been over a hundred.

Five Guys is very good. The food is a little better than Wendy’s. The fries are much better, because Wendy’s makes really bad fries.The big problem with Five Guys fries is that there is almost no oil on them, and they get no flavor from the fat. The portions are too big, too. Their regular fry order comes in a large drinking cup.

The preparation was very slow, and they had the radio on so loud we couldn’t talk, and they had no drive-through. Other than that, very nice.

I didn’t see any shakes on the menu.

When I went to the range with the Armorbearers, I only fired 50 rounds. The range allows rapid fire, so I practiced three-shot drills. I did very well. I have no doubts about my ability to deal with any assailant within 25 feet, and I would be very surprised if I couldn’t do well at 75 feet. Better than a crackhead who shows up without training, anyway. That’s the kind of person we worry about.

Some of the newer guys need to learn shooting fundamentals. I offered to go out with them and get them up to speed. I don’t think they need to be doing rapid-fire practice before they can shoot well slowly.

I read the book of Amos on Friday. It was very disturbing. In this book, God is angry with just about everyone. He pronounces judgment on Israel’s neighbors, and then he lays into Samaria and Israel, complaining of idolatry, backsliding, and corrupt departures from social justice.

Here is some stuff from chapter 4, directed to Samaria:

Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to their masters, Bring, and let us drink.

The Lord God hath sworn by his holiness, that, lo, the days shall come upon you, that he will take you away with hooks, and your posterity with fishhooks.

And ye shall go out at the breaches, every cow at that which is before her; and ye shall cast them into the palace, saith the Lord.

Come to Bethel, and transgress; at Gilgal multiply transgression; and bring your sacrifices every morning, and your tithes after three years:

And offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven, and proclaim and publish the free offerings: for this liketh you, O ye children of Israel, saith the Lord God.

And I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your places: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord.

And also I have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest: and I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city: one piece was rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered.

So two or three cities wandered unto one city, to drink water; but they were not satisfied: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord.

I have smitten you with blasting and mildew: when your gardens and your vineyards and your fig trees and your olive trees increased, the palmerworm devoured them: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord.

I have sent among you the pestilence after the manner of Egypt: your young men have I slain with the sword, and have taken away your horses; and I have made the stink of your camps to come up unto your nostrils: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord.

I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord.

That made an impression on me. It reminded me of what we have gone through since 2001.

Fishhooks symbolize weapons that lure us in. When God chastises us, sometimes he creates situations that are so inviting or even compelling, we can’t resist. Then we feel the pain. A housing bubble is a great example. When you see your neighbors making five or six figures flipping houses, or you see them taking equity loans based on inflated values, it’s tempting to jump onboard. Then when the air leaves the bubble, you have the debt but not the assets to cover it. A lot of Americans did this over the last few years.

“Cleanness of teeth” refers to hard times, as does “want of bread.” We’ve seen a lot of that since 2007.

The reason this passage bothers me is that we have not learned anything. We have a socialist President, trying to finance our present by bleeding our future, and when you turn on shows about finance and investing, you’ll see that many “experts” think he’s succeeding. Mind you, these are the people who didn’t see the tech crash or the housing crash coming.

We don’t hear many people telling us to repent, or that our sins are connected to our problems. As far as I can tell, we haven’t changed. In fact, we are offending God more, in all likelihood. Socialism is inherently anti-Christian; it attempts to replace voluntary giving with taxes, and it tells us man, not God, can lead us into an age of prosperity. Our treatment of Israel now borders on persecution. And our morals haven’t improved at all. I have to ask: are we better than Samaria? Does God love us more than he did the ancient Jews? Should we expect to avoid judgment?

Tradition says Amos was murdered by King Uzziah, presumably because Amos refused to prophesy pretty lies about his people’s future. No surprise there. Today, we still heap scorn on any clergyman who has the guts to connect sin and misfortune.

This morning I read the book of Hosea. The idea came to me while I was praying, and I decided to go with it.

Hosea married a prostitute named Gomer. God ordered him to do this. Some believe Gomer was not a full-blown prostitute. They think she was merely an immoral woman whose flaws did not become known to Hosea until after he married her.

Needless to say, Gomer was not a faithful wife. Her purpose was to symbolize God’s people, who were also unfaithful. God gave them wealth and peace, and they backslid and turned to idolatry.

After Gomer ran off, Hosea redeemed her from her new man for thirty shekels, which was the standard price of a slave. Half the payment took the form of grain. I have to wonder if shekels are the same as the pieces of silver that constituted the price of Jesus. If so, there would appear to be prophetic significance to the figure’s appearance in Hosea’s story.

Gomer was a “bigger, better deal” girl. She gave her attention not to her husband, but to those who gave her money and things. She forgot her husband as we tend to forget God when we do well financially.

A lot of the book is devoted to God’s method of dealing with unfaithful backsliders. Hosea had two children, Loruhamah (“no mercy”) and Loammi (“not my people”). Through Hosea, God told them:

Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband: let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts;

Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born, and make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst.

And I will not have mercy upon her children; for they be the children of whoredoms.

For their mother hath played the harlot: she that conceived them hath done shamefully: for she said, I will go after my lovers, that give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink.

Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall, that she shall not find her paths.

And she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them: then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now.

Shortly thereafter, he says:

Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her.

And I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope: and she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt.

The message seems to be that God will afflict believers in order to get them to turn back to him so he can bless them. That’s encouraging.

Some of the language following this part suggests that a day will come when God will remove the Adamic curse and give us peace and plenty. It may be that this refers to the Messianic Age. It clearly follows repentance.

I don’t think America’s problems are ending. I think Barack Obama has managed to delay them and increase them. Denial is like a loan; you always have to pay interest. I believe we should be trying to clean ourselves up. Instead, we’re behaving exactly the way we did before the towers fell.

Maybe we’re getting a little time to pull it together, so the people who have chosen to return to God can get themselves prepared for the problems that lie ahead.

Amos 5:13 appears to describe the time of chastisement as “an evil time.” Psalm 37 says, “The Lord knoweth the days of the upright, and their inheritance shall be forever. They shall not be ashamed in the evil time, and in the days of famine, they shall be satisfied.”

Incidentally, The Jerusalem Post is offering a subscription deal for Americans. You get their Christian edition, their international edition, and something called the Jerusalem Report. I believe it’s $49 for a year. I had a hard time understanding the guy on the phone. I decided to sign up. If you’re interested, email me and I’ll give you his email address.