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.

Show Your Pass at the Gate

Tomorrow is shaping up to be an exciting day, by my standards.

I have doubts about the Bouncer flour I’ve been using to make pizza at church, so I put a couple of pounds in a bag, and I’m going to make test pies tomorrow. I also took a pound of Sorrento cheese and a pound of Arrezzio cheese, which is distributed by Sysco.

We had toppings that were not going to make it to Sunday, so I took some of those, too. I had to chuck a lot of sauce due to age considerations, so I stuck some in a bag, and it’s in my fridge. This stuff will be fine tomorrow and Friday, but by Sunday, it would be too risky to use it.

I have to see if either cheese compares to Kirkland, and I also plan to do a sauce experiment. If it works, I should end up with the tastiest pizza sauce imaginable. Mike was jealous when I described it to him. I have a secret ingredient.

Pizza hobbyists have been needling me because I make dough in an hour, instead of letting it ferment for days. In the past, when I’ve tried leaving dough in the fridge overnight, it has been a little better than usual (I think), but not enough to justify the aggravation. And who can plan pizza a day in advance? That’s insane. Meatloaf, you can plan a day in advance. Because you don’t care if you ever see it on the table. But pizza is too good to put off.

I’m going to slap some dough together today with less yeast than usual, and I’ll let it rise for a day. We’ll see what happens.

I know sourdough would be worth the wait, but plain old yeast?

Pizza nuts talk about “poolishes” and “preferments.” I’d be pretty excited about those things, if I were not already making the best pizza I know of.

Mike may be here on Saturday. If so, Sunday will be interesting. I’ve threatened to turn him loose in the church kitchen, making garlic rolls. Should be a blast. I was hoping he’d be here early enough on Saturday to help me make test pies, but maybe we can do that on Monday.

I have to hit the store to get my secret ingredient. In fact, I need to get two versions of it. Hope it works.

Free Pizza

Last night, I believe I moved 6 pizzas, not including two I had to bake and give away. The cafe didn’t get much business.

The pastor who does the Tuesday services has a policy of locking the cafe doors while he’s preaching, to keep people in the sanctuary. That means you sell maybe two pizzas before the service, and then you get another chance at around 9:30 p.m., while people are leaving. So there is a limit to what you can do.

A couple of weeks ago I sold around 20 pizzas on a Tuesday. I’m not sure how that happened. I think they promoted it during the service.

Anyway, I’m thinking I should drop Tuesdays. It’s not worth it to drive up there and spend six hours just to make the church $60. And that figure is reduced when I have to throw out ingredients due to bad business. I can show someone else how to do it. I’m planning to write a manual.

Trinity is a church, not a restaurant. That means they want people in the sanctuary, not the cafe. I believe I overestimated their interest in making the cafe run at a profit. The church has a huge mortgage to pay, and the impression I got from what I was told was that they would like the cafe to do well, but now I think I may have misunderstood. I think they just want a credible cafe that runs briefly for short periods on Tuesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, and if it runs at a loss, it’s okay, as long as it’s not a big loss.

I have to get serious about finding people to do what I do. I’m supposed to be an armorbearer, and the head armorbearer needs me on Sundays, so I need to free myself up. Knowing the way the church runs, I know the cafe might not exist in three months, but the armorbearers will always be needed. I want to be where I’ll do some long-term good.

We could net the church $50,000 or so per year if we made an effort. More, if we really tried. But maybe that would require putting too much energy into business.

It can be frustrating, trying to help a church. People get very excited about projects when they start, but after a short time, the energy tends to disappear, and things just peter out. I had a warehouse full of construction materials I wanted to give the church, and they were interested at first, but over a year later, nothing had happened. I couldn’t get anyone to come check it out. In the end, all this stuff was given away to the person who cleaned out the warehouse. I could have sold it myself and given the church the money.

Maybe the best way to help a church is not to give them your ideas. Maybe the smart move is to keep your ideas, make the money yourself, and give out of the proceeds. The cafe is never going to make money running twelve hours a week, but a pizzeria could make me money, and I could support the church out of the profits.

I’ll say this. I’ve learned a great deal working at the cafe. I’m much more efficient than I used to be. Last night I arrived at 5:30, and by 6:30, I had a whole bunch of crusts rising in pans, and there was pizza ready to eat.

Our new mixer will be here next week. Once we get that, I should be able to come in early, make 20 crusts, and then leave the rest of the work to other people. That should get me out of the kitchen so I can do my other job.

I don’t know where we’re headed, but so far, it’s been tremendous fun.

Pope Prius I Drops a Curse on Me

Mike has failed me. He was supposed to be in Miami this week. We were going to cook at church, possibly leading to our being held hostage by the crowd and forced to continue cooking until the gas ran out.

It’s a big week, too. First of all, next week is the Jesus of Nazareth play, so attendance will be good. Easter brings the contrite out of their holes. Second, I have new sample cheeses to try.

Our Sysco rep brought Sorrento whole-milk mozzarella and Arrezzio mozzarella. I heard a rumor that Arrezzio is the same as Kirkland, so I had to try it. I wanted to bake a bunch of test pies, with Mike’s help. And he’s not here…because his PRIUS is sick.

I asked him what he was doing for clean laundry. [rimshot]

He said lived across the street from Sears, so he just walked over there and bought new huskies.

I had forgotten huskies. The only thing worse than being a kid who wears fat pants is being a kid who wears fat pants with the word “HUSKY” attached to the waistband.

Anyway, if he can get his Prius working (I think the agitator is bent), he’ll be here this weekend. If he could be here on Saturday, it would be tremendous. We could occupy the church kitchen and have the armorbearers judge the cheese.

Speaking of fat pants, I won’t be wearing mine any time soon. By the end of the week, with God’s help, I’ll probably be down 28 pounds from August. At that point, if I still look bad, it will be because I’m ugly, not fat. There’s a difference.

The cast of the play will need food. Mike HAS to be here. We can try to kill them. Talk about epic. Pray for Mike’s Prius!

What should I make for the cast? Just pizza? I was thinking ziti, chili, macaroni and cheese, brownies, and maybe cheesecake. Not all of these things at once. But I was thinking I might make some of them.

I still have to try Cento cherry tomatoes on pizza. They’re sitting in my kitchen cabinet. I’m sure they’ll be no good, since other people have tried them, but there is no substitute for personal research.

These are the exciting things that occupy my mind today.

Let’s all Take a Deep Breath

Yesterday I wrote an entry about working in the kitchen at my church, and I pointed out that I had to be careful where I left a sharp Chinese cleaver, because the women who worked there were liable to injure themselves with it. I mentioned a lady who cut herself with it because she used it as a spatula. And I noted that women don’t seem to do very well with sharp knives.

People seem to think I was expressing contempt for the people in the kitchen, particularly the lady who cut herself. Sorry if I gave you that impression, but that wasn’t the point. As a matter of fact, the lady who cut herself is an unusually sharp and classy person. Speaks three languages fluently. The fact that she doesn’t know what to do with a Chinese cleaver does not make her stupid.

As for the generalization about women and knives, I’ve found it to be true. Most men are bad about sharpening their kitchen knives, but I’ve only seen women complain about knives being too sharp. Men tend to like sharp tools.

The safety concern is very real. When you work in an institutional kitchen, everybody shares equipment, and if the workers are volunteers, they often don’t know what they’re doing. No one who goes into a church kitchen is going to expect to pick up a knife that will pop the tiniest hairs off an arm and leave nothing behind it. They’ll assume it’s dull like all the other knives. One of the most likely ways to learn differently is to carve up a hand.

I can’t go to church and line everyone up and ask who is going to defy my expectations. I can’t hold a knife safety class. That means I have to make sure that if I have a sharp knife, nobody gets a chance to use it without asking me first. I should never have left my cleaver where other people could see it.

I ordered a cleaver for the church because I’m not willing going to suffer, using the church’s horrible knives to chop pizza toppings. I guess I’ll get a diamond hone, too. And I’m getting a Chinese Chan Chi Kee meat cleaver and a smaller Chinese vegetable cleaver for myself. I’m sold on the cheap Chinese stuff. You can put a fine edge on a Chinese carbon-steel cleaver in ten seconds, and my cleaver outperforms a Shun by a mile.

My Shun cleaver hasn’t been used since maybe a month after I bought it. That was years ago. There is a reason for that. Experience proved it wasn’t a very good cleaver. If it had worked well, I’d still be using it. Sometimes you have to admit the pretty toy you bought was a waste of money.

I guess I could donate the Shun to the church. But I don’t believe in giving God hand-me-downs I wouldn’t want for myself. There’s always the Salvation Army. They could sell it, along with the chipped Shun santoku I never use. And my Tojiro nakiri.

A commenter recommended Old Hickory carbon-steel knives. One of the few things I got from my grandmother’s house was her old rusty butcher knife. I don’t know if it’s an Old Hickory or not. I’m afraid to use it, because it’s kind of a museum piece. Fortunately I have a huge Forschner scimitar knife to fill the need.

Plus More Food Network Fail

I had a fine day of pizza-making at Trinity Church.

Today I decided to go Hawaiian. I made pizzas with pineapple, onions, ricotta, and ham. They were very good, but for some reason, Hawaiian toppings seem to work best on thin pizza. And the people at my church are addicted to pepperoni. I had a hard time getting rid of the Hawaiians, except for the few highly cultured people who knew the score. They were thrilled.

I also made pies with kalamatas, onions, green peppers, and ham. I am told a lot of people at Trinity have problems with ham, because it’s “slave food.” Arrggh. Where did this myth come from? Slaves ate pork. No doubt about it. So did their rich masters. In the South, pork is not considered poverty food. Everybody loves it. So giving someone pork to eat is not a sign of disrespect.

The crazy thing about the “slave food” idea is that Muslims like to push it. And who treats black people worse than Muslims? They were big in the slave trade. Still are! And Mohammed was a red-headed white man.

Whatever. I’m not going to quit putting pork on pizza. I wonder if people realize pepperoni is pork.

There is nothing like pork. No other readily available meat can begin to do what it does. Pork is magical. Pork means ribs, bacon, country ham, prosciutto, serrano ham, chicharrones, biscuits, cream gravy, redeye gravy, salt pork, lechon asado, and ham hocks. We’re talking about some of the finest eating available. I love a good prime steak, but other than that, beef isn’t in the same league.

I wish I hadn’t brought this up. I’m planning to start a fast soon. Ordinarily, I don’t like to talk about fasts with much specificity, because Jesus cautioned people about passing themselves off as hyper-righteous while fasting. But since I admit I’m fasting for purely selfish reasons, and because I don’t pretend to feel spiritual while I’m doing it, I have no problem mentioning this fast. I plan to whine pretty much continuously. That’s just how I roll.

I’m fasting because I want more power and freedom in my life. And I want God to help my dad and my sister. To me, it’s like taking a flea dip. It’s all about me and my needs. I got some good stuff when I fasted before, and I want more. How’s that for asceticism?

We still have no slicer at church, so I took my $10 Chinese cleaver. Don’t be foolish and buy a Shun or another high-end Japanese vegetable cleaver until you’ve tried the Chinese carbon-steel jobs. This thing has nice hard steel, it sharpens fast, and it will take an edge so fine you can hold a paper towel in front of you and wave the cleaver through it like a light saber. Okay, not quite like a light saber. But it will cut all the way through in one easy pass.

A lady volunteer thought it was a spatula, and she pried a slice of pizza off a pan. Later, when I realized this, I told her to watch out, because it was actually a razor-sharp knife. Then she showed me the cut on her hand. She was lucky; it was tiny. You could easily cut your self to the bone with this thing before you realized you had a problem.

It’s frustrating, having sharp kitchen knives around women. They never expect knives to be sharp, and it seems like whenever a woman picks up a sharp kitchen knife, the blood starts to flow. You have to watch them and hide the knives. I tried to keep mine to myself today, but she found it anyway.

My mother used to get mad at me for sharpening knives. Can you imagine?

The Chinese cleaver has mysterious powers. For some reason, you can mince with it, much faster and better than you could with a regular knife with an edge of the same length. You can load food on it and move it. You can cut food–even big food–in slices so thin they’re transparent. It’s sturdy enough to cut meat. It’s thin enough to cut potatoes and yuca without being dangerous. It adds iron to your food. And when you use it, you look like Bruce Lee.

I’m getting one for the church. But where will we store it to keep women from killing themselves while using it to flip pancakes? I’m also getting a smaller cleaver for myself. Six bucks. I mean COME ON. How can I not? You can find them at Wok Shop.

I have a Shun and a Tojiro. The Shun is worthless. Alton Brown is a fine person, but the Shun is still worthless, as is my Shun santoku, which chipped badly from the terrible stress of sitting in a dishwasher. The Shun cleaver is the wrong shape and size for anything you will want to do with it. I’ll bet I haven’t used mine in three years.

The Tojiro is a nice cleaver for big jobs, but it was very expensive, and I’m afraid to use it, and you can get a Chan Chee Ki for like $25.

The down side of Chinese cleavers is that they rust, IF you can’t figure out how to use a paper towel. However you don’t have to worry about big pieces falling out of them because the dishwasher is just too stressful for their dainty constitutions. Alton Brown hand-washes his Shuns, handling them as though they were booby-trapped hemophiliac burn victims with painful fractures that needed to be set.

No wonder. If you let one drop into your sink, you would find chunks of it on the bottom later.

The crazy thing about Brown and his washing technique is that he demonstrates it in a video intended to sell Shun knives. “Look what a pain it is to take care of these! And a set only costs three thousand dollars! Buy a bunch of them! Wait, come back!”

My Shun bird’s beak paring knife is also worthless. My $5 Forschner holds a better edge and sharpens faster, and it’s a more useful size and shape. And it’s tougher. I’m not quite sure what it is about the Shun that’s supposed to make it desirable.

If you like cool knives, buy Shuns. If you like to cook, buy Chinese.

No, don’t buy Shuns no matter what. They are the beige minivans of Japanese knives. There are far cooler knives available on the web. If you’re going to buy cuteness instead of functionality, do it right. Go to Japanesechefknife.com and look around. Check out the Mr. Itou knives. You’ll wonder why anyone ever bought a Shun.

I wonder why I did.

God is really something. Imagine a being who could give me something so wonderful after a fast that I would come to look forward to fasting. I am determined to move forward and build on what I have.

I better have some pie.

More

Turns out my Japanese bird’s beak knife is actually a Tojiro, not a Shun. Whatever it is, it does not hold an edge, and the rest of my comments still apply.

It Never Stops

Life continues to improve. Seems like I say that every day.

This morning, I thought about a problem many people have. They work all their lives and achieve things that are important to them, and then they slow down, and finally, they are no longer able to do what they used to do. They sit on the sidelines and reminisce and feel ignored. Nostalgia makes them suffer, which makes sense, since “nostalgia” is formed partly from a Greek root meaning “pain.”

A Christian who walks by faith should not have this problem. When you walk by faith, God never stops challenging you and putting you to use. Your function may change, but you’ll always have to get up in the morning and set your heart on obeying God. You’ll have to make a conscious decision to ignore the ever-present deceptive evidence that he will not stand by you and help you. Faith is a job from which you can’t retire. And because it never stops, you should expect to keep growing as long as you live, barring dementia.

That’s a wonderful thing. Maybe nostalgia for your glory days is a sign that you were chasing the wrong dream. Christianity is about progress; it’s not about amassing a certain number of achievements and then waiting to die. It’s always about the present and future. Maybe this is what the Bible means when it says God will renew our youth like the eagle’s.

My pastor makes our worship team learn new songs all the time. It’s annoying, because probability guarantees that new songs are not as likely to be good as old ones, and because you can’t sing along with a song you don’t know. But he does it anyway, because he wants us to continue renewing our minds. He mentioned it last night. He said he didn’t want us to get Alzheimer’s. He understands the need to keep moving.

Whatever a Bible-believing, Spirit-filled Christian may lack, he always has something other people may not have: a bright future. There is nothing you can do to us that God can’t turn into a great blessing later on. Eleven of the Apostles were martyred, but they died in victory, because their futures were assured. How can you top that?

Worldly people and Satan own the things that dissolve and pass away. God and his servants own everything else. If you don’t believe, you’re like a passenger clinging to a sinking ship. You can take supplements and have yourself injected with cells from aborted babies and have plastic surgery and exercise compulsively, but the ship will still sink. Sooner or later, you’re going to be in the water. The thing that makes you feel secure is going to vanish. The thing that makes a Christian feel secure can never be touched. We’re like the Whos down in Whoville. You can’t steal our Christmas. You can’t take away a reward which is in a world you’ll never be allowed to enter.

Paul used a word meaning “dung” to describe the things he valued before he came to Christ. Can a man with that attitude ever feel nostalgia? Can he ever feel that his past was better than the present? I don’t see how.

So anyway, life continues to improve.

The church has a new mixer on the way. A commercial mixer was too expensive, so we’re getting a Bosch Universal Plus with a stainless bowl. This will be fantastic. I’ll be able to make dough for 14 pizzas at a shot. If I run this thing twice in a day, I’ll cover my needs. This is going to get me out of the kitchen.

I’m also preparing to do pizzas with better toppings. Pepperoni isn’t solving all our problems, but I didn’t want to do toppings on demand, because it would require maybe ten bowls of prepared toppings, and it’s also a logistical impossibility, since most people won’t wait long enough for specially prepared pies. I realized I could put together toppings for a loaded pizza and then add them to pies as needed. I’d only have to prepare toppings once a day, and we’d have some variety. I’m thinking I’ll do a mix of ham, black olives, onions, and green peppers.

I can also do other varieties from time to time. I need to find out whether people will eat pineapple. If so, I’ll do pineapple, ricotta, onions, and ham.

In fact, I think I’ll do that whether they ask for it or not. Sometimes people have to be trained.

Mike will be in town soon. That will be a blast. I’m going to put him to work making garlic rolls for the church.

I’m thinking about making a trap for my BB gun, so I can put targets up in the garage and do rapid-fire drills. A frame about two feet wide and three feet high should work. I think point-shooting skills will be a great asset to me, and it’s much more fun than slow fire.

My weight loss continues. I’m down 26 pounds now, and I’m doing virtually nothing. It’s all God’s work. I’m getting into clothes I couldn’t wear for years. I haven’t been this thin since about 1996.

My social life gets better and better. I feel like part of the church now. I don’t wander in and out unnoticed. I enjoy the people tremendously, and their wonderful outlook is a powerful remedy to Miami rudeness. It’s hard to tolerate Miami when you never get a break from the hostility, but now I have a stronghold to which I can retreat.

Christianity is not just about avoiding hell or getting dribbly bits of help in a catastrophe. It’s about a God who will show his power in your life every day, in proportion to your devotion and willingness to pray. The God who fed Elijah and parted the Red Sea and made Solomon rich and reanimated the rotten corpse of Lazarus is still in business. I’m a witness, and I have nothing to gain by telling you.

Hope your day will be as blessed as mine. Or more.

Blessed is the Pizzamaker

Sometimes when God gives you exactly what you asked for, it can be very hard to realize it.

There is an old story I’ve heard and read more than once this year. A flood comes. A guy is trapped on his roof. He prays for God to help him. A kid goes by in a canoe, and offers the guy a ride, but he turns it down, saying God is going to rescue him. Two men in a bass boat go buy and offer to help. He turns them down, saying God is going to rescue him. A National Guard helicopter arrives, and a cable comes down with a harness, and the crew signals for him to put it on. He turns them down, shouting that God is going to rescue him.

He drowns. He asks God why he didn’t rescue him. God says, “I sent a canoe, a bass boat, and a helicopter.”

What’s the other side of the coin? You get the help you need, and then you tell God, “Never mind! It worked out without your help.”

Lately I’ve had concerns about a piece of doctrine that may be heresy. A well-known pastor who has a TV show has been telling people to “loose angels” to fix their problems. He says he ordered angels to bring him money for his ministry, and a man showed up with a five-figure check, almost immediately. On top of that, he doesn’t command one or two angels. He’ll issue orders to a hundred thousand, which seems extravagant, given that one angel killed the firstborn of Egypt in a single night, and one angel killed 185,000 Assyrians between sunset and sunrise. How many angels do you need to bring you a check?

I know of no Biblical example of a person commanding an angel. Even Jesus said he would ask his father to send angels, which is not the same thing. I think commanding angels is idolatry. You may think you’re commanding angels of God, but what if you’re commanding demons without knowing it? I will not take part in this practice without confirmation that it’s correct.

In spite of this concern, the new doctrine has reminded me that you can ask God to send his servants to help you. So I do that. These days, I ask him to send out his servants, both spirit and human, to deliver me and my family from trouble, to bring us blessings, and to teach us so we can avoid chastisement. I have no problem doing this. I’m not presuming to tell an angel what to do, nor am I asking for venal pleasures or things the flesh can put to bad use. I just want protection, guidance, and growth. It’s like asking your company to send consultants or new employees to help you get its business done. It’s to advance God’s goals, not mine.

Last night I made pizza at the church. This is a gargantuan job for one person. I have to arrive two hours before the first pie is served, driving through 18 miles of Miami traffic. I have to mix the yeast and water. I have to make dough over and over. Prepare 10 pans. Make sauce. Get pies ready to go in the oven. Bake them twice. Slice them and put them on the steam table. I have to clean up after myself and others. One person can’t do it well.

People have been offering to help, but they haven’t come through yet. Some are busy. Last night, however, a guy named Anthony showed up to work in the cafe, and on his own initiative, he started helping in the kitchen.

I taught this guy almost everything, and boy, did he make a difference. I never had to show him anything twice. He did everything well. He anticipated needs that would come up in the future, much better than I do. With his help, I had so much dough ready to bake, I was able to sit down for maybe forty-five minutes. At the end of the night, we had to bake two pizzas and give them away, because he was too efficient. He had prepared more than we needed. He also worked the fryolator; the pastor who usually runs it couldn’t be there, and nobody else knew anything about it. He kept me going, he kept the fries going, and then at the end of the night, he washed things up before I could get to them. I literally had a hard time finding things to clean up.

I couldn’t get much information out of him. He said it was his first night at Trinity! He hadn’t bothered with the service. He had gone straight to the kitchen. Nobody does that. He said he had been going to Pentecostal Something or Other, on 7th Avenue. I tried to promote the church to him, listing the things it offered.

I could barely get him to talk. Most of the time, he just said, “Okay,” and started getting things done.

There were times when I truly wondered if he were a human being. God sometimes clothes angels in flesh and sends them to do things. At the very least, he was an answer to my prayer for human help. Not just an answer, but an extremely appropriate and effective answer.

As for the leftover pies, one of the girls said that if I boxed them up, she’d see if she could find some homeless people to give them to. That’s not waste. These people would be receiving food from a church, worked and shaped by the hands of people baptized with the Holy Spirit. That has to be a good thing. You can’t tell me God doesn’t work through objects that have come into contact with anointed people.

In my opinion, the extra pies were a blessing.

Naturally, I’m all freaked out.

I don’t want to be like the guy on the roof. I’m not going to wait for a helicopter and still think God is ignoring me. I think Anthony was the kid with the canoe.

If Anthony is on the job, what about the other helpers I’ve asked for? They must be at work, too. God has told us his angel encamps around those who fear him, and that the angel delivers them (Psalm 34). God says he gives his angels charge over us (Psalm 91). God has never lied.

My testimony seems to get better and better, regardless of the challenges I face. I keep going out on a limb of faith, and God keeps holding me up. I leap into space over and over, and he catches me, even though my faith is not perfect. It’s incredible, but it’s true.

It’s important to note that my faith is not perfect. Neither is my behavior. You should always work to have faith and avoid sin, but God can be extremely powerful in your life even when you have doubts or chronic transgressions. Never let anyone tell you you have to be perfect to get God on your side. Think of the people Jesus healed. He didn’t heal the Apostles. He healed drunks and beggars and so on. It’s always better to be good, but your failures won’t destroy you as long as you stay on the path. I believe the trend, not your current location, is what matters.

Moving on to another subject, I had a very odd dream last night. I was trying to cook something, and I noticed lizards had befouled a measuring pitcher I was trying to use. In Miami, this can actually happen. I started cleaning it up at the sink. I reached into a cupboard for something, and I saw a lizard’s toe hanging down into view, and I grabbed some sort of ceramic vessel, like a cup with portions cut out of the sides, and it was full of lizards having group sex. This, too, can actually happen, although the group size is limited to two!

I walked this thing to the back door and shook the lizards out into the yard. At this point, somehow, they had become a single lizard. It landed on a tree by the door, which was covered with snowy white cockatoos. I knew the lizard was in trouble. A cockatoo started climbing down to get him, and he leapt into the yard, where a bluejay grabbed him and took off. Birds do that here. There are lots of bugs for the lizards, and lots of lizards for the birds.

Last night, before going to bed, I saw a gecko in the laundry room. These are very creepy lizards because of their appearance and movement. Though dry, they appear slimy, and they undulate like snakes. This wasn’t one of the usual house geckos we have here. This was a new kind. Bigger and creepier. Every year, something new shows up in town.

It took off down the wall to get away from me, and I told it that it was welcome to hang around and poop wherever it wanted, as long as it ate plenty of roaches. The lizards in the dream were Jamaican anoles, though.

I wonder if the dream has significance. I see the lizards in the cupboard as household demons, making trouble. They interfere with things that need to be done. I see the cockatoos as angels, guarding the “gates” of the house. I see the bluejay as a warring angel that carried off a demon and got it out of my life.

Was the house a house, or was it me?

I guess this has no relevance, but I insure my vehicles with GEICO.

Today I’m waiting for UPS to deliver the ridiculous Makarov BB pistol I ordered. I have to get my point-shooting up to speed. Sadly, UPS requires me to be here to receive it, to prevent punk kids from getting annoying toys via mail order. It ought to be tremendous fun. But I have to sit here all day or miss it. And knowing UPS, there is a good chance it won’t arrive before I have to leave for tonight’s volunteer meeting at church.

I think I’m going to recommend this to the other armorbearers. Can’t hurt.

No Heat

This is a black day.

I made pizza at church on Sunday. The main oven pooped out. I was supposed to make pizza tonight, at a service which usually draws over a thousand people. I called about the oven, and it has not been fixed.

Tonight hundreds of people who are hungry for pizza as well as righteousness will show up at my church, and they will not be filled.

I guess it’s a good thing. I can relax and stay home tonight. I’d like to go to the service, but I have another one tomorrow, and attendance is mandatory.

I still have not received my gun parts. It’s killing me. I have to see my Vz58 properly dressed, with a pretty green laser and a strobing 200-lumen flashlight that causes nausea and disorientation. Surely I don’t have to explain.

It turns out the cheap Vz58 rifles selling at Classicarms.us are made by Century Arms, not D-Technik. This is why they cost around half as much. Caveat emptor.

Dang. The church just called. The oven MAY be working, so I have to go see what I can do.

Bye.

Fasting to Resume

When are my gun parts supposed to get here? I know they’re coming from Israel, but it’s taking so long, you would think they’re carving them from bar stock with a Dremel tool.

I guess you can’t carve plastic parts from bar stock. But still.

There should be plenty of stuff to keep me busy until the parts arrive. Tomorrow I’ll be making pizza at church again, assuming the oven is working. I hope they get it fixed. It’s depressing, making ten portions of dough, baking six, and throwing the rest out while customers wonder why we won’t sell them pizza.

I’m also working on a handbook for the armorbearers at my church. The big hindrance here is that I’m a lowly, relatively new armorbearer, and I’m the one writing the book. The higher-ups know much more than I do. My strategy is to lay out the chapters, fill them with blather that seems right to me, and then go to my superiors and work with them to fix it. Editing is always easier than writing from scratch.

Okay, it’s usually easier. Sometimes the best thing to do with something a person wants you to edit is burn it.

The church is putting on a play pretty soon. A passion play. Today the head Servant Leader asked for armorbearer volunteers to help strike the set on the Sunday night after the last show. I had to refrain from signing on. The last time I tried to help strike a set, the stage was filled with volunteers who had no leaders and no directions, and somebody dropped a huge piece of plywood scenery on me and left me with an injury that hurt for weeks. I feel that my career as a stagehand has come to a close. But I did send a return text, mentioning the possibility of cooking.

I got out my book and started looking for likely dishes, but all I could come up with was baked ziti. My other real crowd-pleasers have wine or liquor in them, and I would feel a little funny slinging a bottle of Marsala around in a church kitchen.

Baked ziti is a fine thing. That is especially true when you use pizza-quality ingredients. But I’m not sure it’s far enough from pizza.

I could do chicken curry, but while the Jamaicans and Trinis would eat it, the Haitians would probably think I was trying to poison them. Not everyone in the Caribbean appreciates a good habanero.

All I know is, I don’t want any more sets falling on me.

I’ve decided to get more serious about fasting. Last year, I got permanent deliverance from gluttony after a fast, and my behavior improved in other respects. But fasting started cutting into my week very badly, and I scaled back. I think I’ll do a good long session. I truly believe ordinary people have demons assigned to oppress them, and that these things show up in bad habits that are hard to control. I know of three proven examples in my own life, plus an illness that left as a visible spirit fled my body, and I’m sure I’m not alone. And I’m not the only person who believes this. You don’t have to be running around naked in a cemetery, eating rats, to be under the influence of a demon.

Maybe the way I was fasting last year was wrong. Maybe fasting a lot every week is not as good as long fasts, farther apart. I’m supposed to do one partial-day fast each week as an armorbearer, but other than that, maybe it’s not a great idea to clutter every week with fasting.

I look forward to this, because I know how powerful fasting is. I hate every second of it, but look what it does for you. I make pizza semi-professionally twice a week, and I’m still losing weight. Slowly, sure, and with little fluctuations, but it’s happening. And yesterday while I made pizza, guess what I ate? Two crummy protein bars, half a tuna sandwich (forgot to eat the second half), and half a chocolate bar.

Fasting evicts trespassers. I think the story of Jesus’s forty-day fast is an example for everyone. Even Jesus was oppressed demonically. His demon was Satan himself, and after the fast, Satan gave up and left, just like lesser demons fled the people Jesus and the disciples freed. It was after the forty-day fast that the real power began to flow. I suspect that the same principle applies to all of us. God probably doesn’t want to drop major power on people who are subject to a lot of malevolent influence from hidden co-pilots.

How long would the average bariatric surgery patient be willing to fast, in order to get what I got? It’s an incredible blessing. In my own small way, I know how people who have been healed of cancer feel. It’s fantastic to get free of something you ordinarily would be unable to conquer. The general rule with fat people is that they stay fat and get fatter. And the worst part is, you do it to yourself, and you can’t stop.

I love being free. What if I can get free of the majority of my big behavioral and attitudinal problems by fasting? From what I’ve seen so far, it’s highly likely. It’s clearly worth a shot.

When I fasted last year, some beings that were accompanying me through life realized I was going to be doing this kind of thing for the rest of my days, and they said, “We have had ENOUGH of this guy. We QUIT.” I need to resume deportations.

God willing, my testimony is going to be even better later this year than it is now. I can’t wait.