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.

Guns, Sun, Fun, Memories

I’ll tell you what. I had a severely blessed day today.

Mike was in town with his son Ben, and we decided to go to the range. I got my dad to go, too. He brought the Glock I bought him for Christmas. Ben had never fired a gun before, and Dad had never used the Glock.

The weather was astounding. Clear skies, lots of sun, dry air, and temperatures in the low seventies.

We loaded up the giant Dodge diesel and took off for Trail Glades Range, which has been renovated. It’s magnificent! They have a real roof now, made from pressure-treated lumber and aluminum. They got rid of the old podiums, and now they have a marvelous wooden structure divided into stalls. They even have hardware-cloth screens between the stalls to deflect shells. And they have labeled target stations now, and the old steel target frames are gone. Now they’re all wood, and they can’t spin when the wind blows.

The berms have been built way up, and there is a new pistol-side berm about fifty yards out. Incredible.

I brought my Glock 26 and SW1911, and Dad brought his Glock 26.

Mike and I got started while my father and Ben took the mandatory safety course. I shot the 1911 pretty well, but I had a box of reloads that weren’t sized well, and they kept jamming the gun. Mike shot better than last time, but he still needs to practice to get his eye back.

When Ben saw the targets at seven yards, he complained that they were “way too close.” Then he started shooting. Hey! It’s not this hard on TV! After a few shots, he realized he had been conned by TV and movie shooting scenes, and we started coaching him. I gave him a few pointers, and he started putting shots in the black, and I said, “You are now better than 90% of the people out here.” Which was true. Most people will never ask for or receive instruction, so they’ll be bad shots until they die.

My dad had some trouble with the Glock misfeeding, but it turned out he wasn’t holding it firmly enough. Once he got it together, he and the gun did fine. I’m glad he finally has a decent weapon for self-defense, as well as a carry permit. I feel good about the financial contributions I made, which got him to this point. No older person should be unarmed.

We finished up the day at El Exquisito in Little Havana, where we had fried masitas and Cuban sandwiches. Dad and Mike talked about horse racing. They do that pretty much continuously, unless I stop them. Mike used to be a trainer.

Mike is driving Ben back to his mom right now, and I guess I’ll see him tomorrow, and we plan to cook at church on Sunday. Should be a great week.

I’m so glad the four of us got to shoot together. Outside of church, there is no better activity for family and friends.

I learned some new stuff about the Glock. Hard to believe. Before I started shooting, I prayed we would be safe and that we would learn, and danged if God didn’t come through. It turns out a lot of my perception of how tightly I’m holding a gun comes from my index finger, so it’s easy to let the other fingers get too loose. By thinking more about the third and fourth fingers, I was able to tighten things up a little. I’ll post a gallery. The target all by itself shows what 20 shots from the Glock look like.

I was very happy with that. The Glock is a fantastic shooter, and it’s nice to see it getting closer to its potential.

I guess I have some work to do before I overcome pride. Today I realized it would disappoint me if I went to the range and didn’t have at least one range officer stand behind me and watch me shoot. But I managed to attract one, so I didn’t have to face utter disgrace.

Potential Right-Wing Terrorist Takes his HOME ARSENAL to a Known Gathering Place of Obama-Deniers

The Bosch Universal Plus worked great. I made a nine-pound dough batch, plus a six-pound batch. The mixer had no problems with these amounts, and cleanup was a breeze compared to the Kitchenaid.

Mike and I are taking his son to the gun range. The boy’s mom managed to prevent him from firing a gun until today. Hard to believe. I still remember Mike and me, hanging out in his room among a big pile of firearms. No parents in sight. Somehow we lived.

Might get my dad to go with us. Finally, some supervision.

Weekends are for Work

I had a fine time making pizza at church yesterday.

The pastor has moved the Sunday services up to 9:00 a.m., so I get to sleep half an hour later, and I’m also getting more efficient, so I no longer have to arrive two hours before the pizza is needed. That adds up to a scenario where I can sleep until the decadent hour of 6:00 a.m. and still get a decent prayer and study session in before I leave.

I used All Trumps flour for most of the day. It’s a high-gluten brand GFS sells. It makes very nice Sicilian pizza. It seems to brown up a little faster than the other stuff. But it seems sticky. I had a couple of pizzas that fought with me when I tried to remove them from the pans.

So far, I think Golden Tiger is the best choice. It works easily and doesn’t stick too much, and the pizza is good.

Maybe I just need to improve the seasoning on my pans. I’m working on that.

I sold a good number of pies, but I don’t know how many. I could have done much better, but they closed the cafe before the last service. We were putting on our popular Jesus of Nazareth play, complete with a mule and some goats, and that meant four services on Sunday instead of three.

The pastor says 344 people came to Christ this weekend, by the church’s figures. Not bad. Our goal is 100,000 by 2020.sysc

I can’t figure out how they kept the animals from pooping in church.

I could have stayed later yesterday and helped them strike the set, but I have bad memories of being squashed by a falling object the last time I tried to help. And I am concerned about their current efforts to keep the workers safe. I think everyone should wear hard hats and boots, and every job should be carefully choreographed in writing before they do anything. Until they make some changes, I won’t be comfortable working on sets. I don’t run the church, and I respect those in authority. I am not going to agitate or complain. But I’ll be volunteering for things that don’t make me so nervous.

Mike is headed for Florida. I was hoping he would be available tomorrow afternoon and evening to work in the cafe and help me test the cheese samples Sysco gave us. Unfortunately, he misunderstood my schedule, so he has conflicts, and it’s not clear when he’ll make it. He was going to make garlic rolls. Now he says he feels God pressuring him to go. Don’t know if he means it, but it would be great to have him there.

We have an interesting story in the news. Florida strawberry farmers are destroying their crops because they’re so cheap. This is sad, because food is going to waste. But it’s also great, because I can make strawberry cheesecake for the cafe, at a low price. I can also buy lots of berries to freeze. They won’t be any good for use as berries, but they’ll be fine for making the goop that holds the berries on top of the cheesecake. So later in the year, when prices go back up, I’ll be able to use cheap berries for the goop and expensive berries for berries, and the price will average out to a lower figure. I think.

I guess I should find out what Sysco charges for frozen berries. Maybe this is pointless. But in any case, this is a good time to make cheesecake.

I could also do strawberry shortcake. I love this stuff. It’s basically a giant biscuit made with sugar and butter, topped with berries in goop. You slop whipped cream on it. Wonderful. Or I could do strawberry pie, which is berries in goop in a pie crust. But I don’t want to make pie crusts. It’s a pain.

The church’s new mixer should arrive today. I’m having it delivered here. Will I be able to resist the temptation to fire it up? Probably not. Hmm…it takes 9 pounds of flour to fill it. Maybe resisting will be easier than I thought. But I’ll definitely want to hold it and love it.

My new plan is to get 10 more quarter-sheet pans and season them. Then I can make 15 or 20 crusts early in the day and put them in pans to rise. That will allow me to run off and do other things while other people put the pizzas together and bake them. I have to get myself free of the kitchen one day a week, and this should make it possible.

I picked up a De Santis Speed Scabbard to wear in the sanctuary. One of the younger guys shamed me by getting a nice belt holster, so I broke down and made the purchase. I guess this is better than digging in your pocket when trouble comes.

I had a funny feeling when I left church yesterday. I was tired, but I was sad to go home. I’ve prayed that God would weave me into the fabric of the place, and it looks like he has done that. I’m getting to know a lot of extraordinary people, and I feel much less alone than I used to.

If you’re a Christian, and you feel like you don’t fit into the secular world, you’re right. It’s not where you belong, and it will never accept you unless it can neutralize your Christianity first. The friends you’re waiting for are at church, and you should go meet them.

Look What Happened in Two Years

Here I present more evidence that the Chinese are going to eat our lunch.

I have been cooking in my church’s kitchen. Like most kitchens, this kitchen contains no decent knives. The other day, I took my cheap Chinese cleaver up there to slice pizza toppings. I decided to get a cleaver for them to keep.

I ordered my cleaver a few years back, from The Wok Shop. I probably paid ten bucks. That’s what they charge now. It’s carbon steel, which means it rusts. It sharpens up like a razor in less than a minute. It holds an edge a good long time. It minces garlic better than any American or European kitchen knife. You can scrape stuff with the end. It will cut onions in slices as thin as a business card. You can carry chopped food on the side of it. You can tenderize meat with the dull side. Don’t get me started. It’s a miracle knife.

I placed a new Wok Shop order. Today the new cleavers arrived. I got one just like mine for church, plus a meat cleaver and a smaller (supposedly) vegetable cleaver for myself. All three knives were sharp when they arrived. Two were sharp enough to shave with.

Here’s a photo.

My old cleaver is the one on the left. Notice the crappy workmanship. There are lots of odd dings in the steel. The weird bands of oxidation are irregular, too. It works great, but the workmanship screams “CHINA.”

Now look at the pretty cleaver next to it. The stamped characters are done much better. The bands are even. They’ve made curves on the edge and back. There are no dings in the metal. It looks sort of polished. It’s like the two cleavers came from different planets.

Now, maybe the Wok Shop found a new supplier, and nothing has happened in China. But I don’t think that’s what happened. Chinese goods are getting better, across the board. If you buy tools, you already know this. My old cleaver just turned three, and it’s nothing like the one I just bought.

Incidentally, a lot of people get excited about Chan Chi Kee cleavers. I wouldn’t put much faith in them without trying one first. Back when I got my cleaver, very few people had heard of Chan Chi Kee. Nuts on knife boards were starting to talk about them. They got a lot of publicity over the web over the last couple of years. Now people act like Chan Chi Kee is the gold standard. Maybe it is. I don’t have one, so I can’t tell you if they’re the best Chinese cleavers. I very much doubt it. In China, commodity goods like this typically come from very similar factories, and they tend to be of pretty uniform quality. And Chan Chi Kee cleavers were cheaper before people started asking for them. Maybe there is a physical reason why they cost more now, but I suspect the main reason is PR.

I don’t see how a Chan Chi Kee could be any better than the one I just bought, or my old cleaver. I don’t think the Chinese are lying awake nights, reinventing carbon steel.

Oh. This is disturbing. My old cleaver cost twice as much as the new one. I just looked it up. Same product, better workmanship, half the cost.

Some day, little American kids will think we’re lying when we tell them unskilled union workers used to get $75 an hour. The Chinese will see to that. Some people claim the Chinese will eventually have to charge more for their labor. Sure, when they find jobs for 1.5 (or whatever it is) billion hungry people. Until then, my bet is on the law of supply and demand. And if the Chinese multiplied their average wage by ten, they’d still beat our butts.

Then there’s India.

I plan to enjoy the great cheap tools until I have to go live in a government-subsidized hole.

Correction

Turns out the heavy cleaver on the right is Taiwanese. Their labor rate is 8 times China’s, according to the owner of Grizzly Industrial, yet they managed to supply a very nice heavy cleaver which retails for $20. I assume, then, that a Chinese job would be considerably cheaper.

Reproducible Pizza Results

I made another pizza with both Sorrento and Arrezzio cheeses. I learned that the cheese conclusions I drew the first time I made one of these are still true. Hey, it may sound like I achieved nothing, but this kind of research is important. No matter how big a drag it is. Making delicious pizza. Over and over.

I also learned that everything I concluded about overnight pizza fermenting was nonsense. I fermented this baby in a couple of hours, and it was very much like the one I fermented overnight. So I still don’t see what the fuss is about.

That Publix pan is a wonder. It fries the bottom of the crust beautifully. The texture is breathtaking. If you live near a Publix supermarket, try one. I no longer recall the exact name of the thing, but it’s about 8″ square, with sides maybe 1 1/2″ high. The inner surface is some kind of nonstick, but it’s not Teflon. I believe it’s aluminum oxide. Sounds crazy, but it works, and you can’t burn it.

A cast iron skillet won’t do this, unless you go through a lot of pointless work. The Publix pan works like this: put dough in pan, let dough rise, put sauce and stuff on dough, put pan in oven. Bam, as Emeril says. You have a perfect crust, except possibly for a little stone touch-up. No pre-baking, no preheating the pan. I suggest you try it.

I put the pan as close to the lower heating element as I can, and I bake for 9 minutes. I make sure the lower element is cycling on when I put the pan in, so the element will be red-hot for part of the time the pan is over it. When the pie is done, I pop it out and give it 30-60 seconds on the stone, but you really have to watch it, because the pan gets it very done, and the stone cooks the pie fast.

The pie I just made was beyond bizarre. I used my usual no-oil recipe (oil added to the outside later), but instead of activating the yeast, I sprinkled instant dry yeast over the dough as soon as I got the water and salt and pepper mixed into it. Then I mashed the dough around and folded it until the yeast was pretty much inside the dough. Sounds nutty, but it was great. There was yeast stuck to the outside of the dough, and I thought it would be nasty, but it was perfect.

I’m starting to wonder if there is a wrong way to combine pizza dough ingredients.

I got some new stuff for the garage today. A while back, I got a 16N Jacobs chuck, because the used 14N I bought to save money was junk. The 16N was a new chuck some guy had bought but not used, and while I got the chuck, I did not get the key. Today a new key arrived. It’s so big, you could literally use it as a tiny hammer.

Now I can actually use my chuck.

I also got several new center drills. All but one are cobalt. The other is carbide. I have HSS center drills, and they’re crap. I keep hearing how great HSS is. They’re crap. I’m sorry. I can’t help it. It’s not my fault. After you use one twice, it stops working. When I finally bought a big drill bit set, I went with cobalt, because the difference is very obvious, and the cost is not much different.

Maybe the HSS bits I’ve used were lame imports, and that’s why they got dull so fast. Maybe I applied too much pressure. I don’t care. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life trying to prove everyone who promotes HSS to me is right. If I’m wrong, I’m out maybe a hundred bucks I didn’t need to spend, and meanwhile, I have tools I can actually use. If my bad technique is the problem, isn’t the smart thing to buy tools I can’t hurt with bad technique? Obviously, I should try to do things well, but every little bit of insurance helps, and it’s extremely annoying to have to quit a job because a 30¢ drill bit is fried.

I tried to use my drill press to take the lower handguard retention pin out of my Vz 58, before I was persuaded to beat it hard enough to drive it out with a punch, and I learned something. Drill presses are not rigid. I knew that already, but I didn’t know how true it was.

I have a big industrial Rockwell press with a cast iron head, and the drill bit still wandered all over the pin. Even when I tried a thick center drill, it wandered. Some of this may be due to a need to tighten up the head, I suppose, but I can tell this thing will never drill like a mill. So if you’re looking for serious drilling technology, my recommendation is to get a drill press and a small mill. I may be wrong, but that seems like the way to go. You can get a little used mill for a few hundred bucks, and on those occasions when you need a mill or a rigid drill, you will get down on your knees and thank God you bought it. When you need a mill, you NEED a mill.

Truthfully, I’m a little worried that the drill press will turn out to be useless, but I guess that’s just neurosis. I’m sure it’s fine when you’re not trying to drill rock-hard Eastern Bloc steel that came from melted-down Trabant pistons.

I ended up putting my drill press vise in my milling machine vise! That was my strategy for drilling the pin out. But when I mounted the giant chuck on the mill, I realized I had no key. I tried to tighten it as best I could, but I couldn’t get it tight enough to do the job. The bit kept receding into the chuck. That’s a good thing, because otherwise, I would have wasted three hours trying to drill an inch-long pin out.

Those pins are insanely tight. You have to beat them so hard, it’s scary. I marred mine up, but instead of buying a new one for three bucks, I think I’ll make one on the lathe, slightly thinner than the original, with some means of yanking on it. Maybe a loop in one end. I realize pins in guns should be tight enough to resist falling out when the guns fire, but this thing was way past that degree of tightness, and anyway, my gun is semi-auto, so it’s not like it’s getting pounded ten times a second.

Now that I think about it, a brass or aluminum pin might not be a bad idea. Easy to make, easy to hammer out, and it won’t hurt anything around it. Brass would be pretty, too. And I have lots of 360 brass. I don’t know if brass galls when it contacts steel. Something to consider. I also have 304 stainless. That would work, and I wouldn’t have to blue it.

I am a Dedicated Servant

Yesterday I made a test pizza with Sorrento and Arrezzio cheeses on different sides. It was an 8″ square pie, baked in a phenomenal Publix pan with lots of oil. The dough was allowed to ferment overnight, with very little yeast. I put provolone under the mozzarella to simulate my church blend.

These are great cheeses. They bake up beautifully. The Sorrento barely browns, and the Arrezzio browns more, but less than Costco cheese. They taste very good, but the flavors are not very strong. They seem less bland than Grande, though.

My conclusion? Sorrento is probably the better of the two. It seems to taste better. Still, nothing compares to Costco Kirkland mozzarella! That stuff is touched by the hands of the angels.

The all-night ferment gave me a chewier crust than usual, with a very nice crunchy outside, but some of the new qualities may have been due to the large amount of oil I used and the dough’s failure to rise as high as usual.

Research is arduous. Fortunately, I am highly industrious and have an incredible capacity to endure suffering.