Tiny Jars of Magma

Okay, I have canned. Maybe.

I filled four half-pint jars with various peppers. I was going to use water and salt instead of vinegar, but I decided to use lime juice. I have so much. Why not use it? It doesn’t jar recipes the way vinegar does.

This pressure cooker is not easy to regulate. Apparently you have to twiddle the stove knob and find just the right position to get the pressure you want. This is not easy. It’s like steering a freighter. It takes a long time to respond, so you tend to over-correct. The canner spent a good deal of time at 14 psi, and then it spend some time at 9. The goal was 11, which I reached for most of the process.

There are things I don’t get. Headspace, for example. What happens if you screw up the headspace? I tried to leave an inch above the peppers, as per the recipe, but peppers stick up sometimes.

What’s the deal with air bubbles? The whole top of the jars were full of air. I’m not sure why I care whether there are bubbles elsewhere. I am trying to find out.

I didn’t can any Trinidad Scorpions. I realized half-pint jars are pathetic for peppers. You can get like eight of them in one jar. I’m going to use pints for the Scorpions. I figure I can put up at least two pints. What I’ll do with them, I can’t say. It might be fun to can them in pineapple juice instead of water or lime juice or vinegar. I don’t know what color the resulting deal will be, however.

I’m going to cool the jars down and see how they look. In a day or two I’ll open one to see what the peppers are like.

I have to make pork sausage! I have to. Surely you can understand that. And pickled beans. And pickles.

Maybe in a month or two, I’ll look into food dehydration.

No Biscuit Today

I love my weekly McDonald’s breakfast. I got in the habit back when I observed “fat day.” I limited my calories during the week, and then on the weekends, or just Saturday, I ate whatever I wanted. You can lose weight this way, but if you’re not careful, one day of gluttony can overcome six days of starvation, and you’ll add fat.

I don’t do fat day any more, but I still like to have my Mickey D’s on Saturday morning. My yankee uncle taught me that ketchup and eggs go together, and when I eat McMuffins and McDonald’s biscuits, I dip them in ketchup, and it’s heavenly. The rest of the week, I eat senior citizen fiber cereal, to avoid becoming a colonic casualty. Cereal is okay, but it’s not exciting.

Today I decided not to go to McDonald’s. Just because I had the power to say no. God delivered me from gluttony, and I’ve lost a lot of weight, but I’ve eaten a little more than I should on Saturdays, and I’m afraid I may have plateaued. I’m not having that. I want to lose thirteen more pounds. For the first time in my life, I have complete control over what I eat and drink, so I’m flexing my muscles and saying no.

I feel like I’m showing off, spiritually. Not to you, but to myself. It’s almost a snotty thing to do. I’m confident there are little beings assigned to me to make me overeat, and this is my way of shouting, “In your FACE.” I would rather enjoy that than have the food. Yesterday my sister said she wanted to get ahold of a demon some day so she could beat the tar out of it. What Christian hasn’t felt that way? I wish I could pummel one, too, but for now, I am enjoying frustrating them by not gorging.

I don’t care if I ever have another McMuffin. I suspect I will. I think you can bet on that. But if I don’t, I do not care. God has made McMuffins my McFootstool. I got something better than McMuffins.

Which is really saying something.

I picked up some canning equipment yesterday. It was either that or throw out a great number of hot peppers. I’m going to try to can them today. When you can stuff, you can do it at 212° for acidic foods or 245° for non-acidic foods. Acid keeps botulism down; if you don’t have acid, you need high temperatures to kill the spores. I don’t want to put vinegar in all my peppers, because it will affect the flavor when I use them in food. That means 245°, so I’ll have to use a pressure cooker.

I already had a pressure cooker, but it’s an expensive Magefesa with a small bottom. Not great for canning. I picked up a much cheaper Presto yesterday. I doubt it will get as hot as the Magefesa, but it will be fine for canning.

It amazes me that I found this stuff locally. No one cans in Miami. Everyone in Kentucky does it. There are some foods you pretty much have to can for yourself, if you want to have them at all. Pickled beans. Canned pork sausage (way better than it sounds). Sweet pickles that beat the daylights out of store brands. My grandmother and aunt and lots of other female relatives canned stuff. Some men up there can, too. Women aren’t the only ones who like food. Anyway, canning supplies would be easy to find anywhere in rural Appalachia, but finding them in Miami…that’s shocking.

The place I went to is called Goodman’s. I found it on Ebay, and I noticed they were in Miami, so I saw no point in doing mail-order. They were very helpful. The girl who took my order even carried my jars to the truck!

I think I’m supposed to get a special chemical to keep stuff crisp. Calcium chloride or something. Other than that, I’m all set.

My dad and my sister will be all excited. They miss home-canned stuff as much as I do. I can’t wait to try my hand at sausage. I loved that stuff. I thought I’d never see it again.

The jars are insanely expensive. I suppose intelligent people amass collections and take good care of them. I got 24 half-pints and 12 pints. I don’t think quarts are practical for me. Maybe if I start making tomato juice. If I could find ripe tomatoes, I could make incredible tomato sauce. Maybe I can use grape tomatoes. They’re fantastic, and they’re fairly cheap at Costco. Cheap enough to justify the effort.

I got a couple of pepper recipes. We’ll see how it goes. If it works out, beans and sausage and pickles won’t be far behind.

Local Find!

I can’t believe this.

1. I turned on my DVR’d Robert Morris show from yesterday, and it was all about grace. Same thing I wrote about today. He even mentioned Abraham, the same way I did.

2. I looked for canning supplies on Ebay, and I found a store…FIVE MILES AWAY.

Canning supplies? In Miami?

Amazing.

Reaping

I got a nice email from Robert Morris. I used their contact info to send a message saying how much I had enjoyed and agreed with his work, and he emailed me personally and said this blog post (I had sent him a link) was “great.”

That was a good outcome. He didn’t call me a heretic or anything.

I’m reading his book on the power of words right now. Very sobering stuff. Things like gossiping, complaining, and criticizing can cause real problems for us. When you do these things, it’s like planting poison ivy in your yard. Problems arise later. If I can’t gossip, complain, or criticize, it almost amounts to a total ban on communication. I might actually forget how to write and talk.

He also noted that James advised us not to become teachers. The problem is that God holds teachers to higher standards. This is disturbing. I try to write about my testimony all the time, but it’s nearly impossible not to veer into amateur teaching.

Please forget everything I have ever written.

I don’t know if that will get me off the hook. It was worth a shot!

I keep thinking about fat Christians. I was afraid that I would come off like a judgmental kook, saying obese people are under bondage, and that where one bondage exists, others may be present, and that this might be a good reason to avoid accepting teaching from fat preachers. But the more I think about it, the more I think it’s right.

Addiction isn’t physical. It’s a mental illness. A cigarette smoker will say things that are just as crazy as the nonsense that comes out of moderately messed up mental patients. “The studies don’t prove anything.” “Some people can smoke forever and never get sick.” “I can’t quit until I get through this stressful problem I’m dealing with.” This stuff is pure idiocy. Fat people say, “I know how to lose weight. I just don’t do it.” “All men put on muscle after they hit thirty.” “I have big bones.” The dumbest thing they say is, “I’m on a diet.” If you’re on a diet, obviously, it’s a temporary solution. Fat is a permanent problem. Temporary can’t defeat permanent. You don’t need a diet. You need to not be a fat person any more. You need to have the fat person drive removed.

If food can make you think stupid things about food, who is to say something else isn’t making you think and say stupid things about religion?

So I am still leery of obese preachers.

Today I was watering my plants, and I realized I had to harvest some more peppers whether I wanted to or not. Here is the result.

The big ones are limes, obviously. The branches are from my gigantic prig ki nu bush, which I had to trim to save the habanero gold bush.

Here’s how it goes, in clockwise fashion. Yellow peppers: yellow habaneros. Next, habanero golds (hot, sweet, and delicious). Then Trinidad Scorpions. Then Tobago Seasoning peppers. Then assorted Home Depot cayennes and habaneros grown from seeds taken from Publix peppers. I didn’t harvest any prig ki nus other than the ones still stuck to the branches. There are a couple of Fatalii peppers in among the limes.

I throw limes out these days. I can’t keep up with the tree. The limes get ripe and start to rot before I notice them.

Is this the law of sowing and reaping, at work? Dunno. I gave the church offerings of every pepper you see here except for fataliis and Publix peppers. I gave limes, too. And here I am, with this pile of produce. My banana trees have two bunches on them, and a third just started growing. One of my plantain trees now has a bract starting. My nam wa banana trees aren’t fruiting, but the biggest one now touches a power line, and it has lots of pups.

Here’s news that will make a tingle run up your leg. I’m giving the church pork chops! Long story, but I have eight pounds of frozen pork chops I need to get rid of before they get freezer burn. If giving the church peppers helps my pepper harvest, and giving the church limes helps my lime harvest, what will happen if I give them pork? Paradise, I suppose. Yards and yards of country hams, ham hocks, lechons, and maybe even Slim Jims.

I’m not saying it works that way, but I do have a whole lot of peppers.

I’m trying to give a considerable number of these peppers away. If I can’t do that, I have to freeze them or something. Or–hey!–time to start canning! Oh, man. That would be just sick. Power tools, a big truck, guns, frozen Costco prime beef, and to top it off, jars and jars of marvelous exotic canned peppers.

But for now I just need to get these things off the table.

The Belt of Truth is Too Big

Today I have to go shopping. I have to give up on my size 34 Old Navy cargo shorts. They are too danged big. They’re going to charity.

They’re not really 34″ shorts. I would guess they’re more like 36s. Retailers know fat people like to pretend to be smaller than they are, so sometimes they put misleading labels on their clothes. Still, I am swimming in these things, and it’s getting on my nerves. I also need to replace my aging Abercrombie & Fitch 34″ belt. I’m on belt loop number six, and there are only seven. A couple of months ago, I was on three. Now the loose end flaps around when I walk. On top of that, between the belt loops, the waistbands of the shorts are sneaking out and wandering around because they don’t fit where they used to.

It’s all God. I haven’t done much of anything. I don’t have the old craving for carbs and grease, so now I can choose what I eat, without fighting an addiction every time. I still want food, but when I have a choice to make, the ratio of willpower to desire is much, much higher than it used to be, so I win consistently.

I think there are stages of iniquity and bondage. If you weigh 800 pounds, it’s pretty easy to get down to 300. It’s harder to go from there to 200. If your proper weight is 170, the last thirty pounds will be impossible to lose, or nearly so, and if they come off, they’ll jump back on in one month of backsliding.

This stuff is spirit-driven. I have no doubt of it. Jesus was referring to diet rebound, among other things, when he said that when an evil spirit leaves a man, it wanders, returns, and brings seven worse spirits with it. I seriously believe this is why there are plateaus in weight loss. The really stubborn enemies keep the final pounds on you. The wimpy ones are not hard to beat.

I don’t care who thinks I’m crazy. Bondage is bondage, whether it’s cocaine or cheeseburgers. Don’t tell me people get up over 400 or 600 or 800 pounds simply because they’re lazy. When you let something that terrible happen to you, you have a major, major problem. If it were just a laziness issue, in most cases, the sight of the blubber in the bathroom mirror would be sufficient to motivate people to change. I’m sure there are some people who are too sorry to care, but lots of fat people live in utter misery and would do almost anything to fix themselves. At my worst, I’ve probably been 55 pounds overweight, and it drove me up the wall.

I brought the bondage on myself. I ate like a pig, and I had other problems, like self-righteousness and unforgiveness and selfishness and general backsliding.

My big problem now is that I eat so little, I tend to eat a higher proportion of unhealthy food. Last night I came home from the prayer meeting, and I decided I absolutely had to have a Coke. So I got one, and I drank it, and I ate half of a big Hershey bar with almonds. In the morning, I ate a small bowl of fiber cereal that tasted like fiberglass insulation, and in the afternoon, I had a Granny Smith with some peanut butter. Those things were okay, but the Coke and the candy were not optimal choices. It happened because I didn’t fix dinner; the prayer meeting got in the way. I need to plan better.

My blood pressure is going to drop. I’m going to feel lighter. My gall bladder and digestive tract will be healthier. My blood sugar will not be an issue. My knees won’t be stressed. Doctors will consider my visits a waste of time. I’ll be able to move without my gut getting in the way. If I ever had circulatory issues, I can forget about them now. I’ll look a whole lot better. This is an astounding gift. Surely you can forgive me for writing about it all the time.

It would be great if I had a dramatic story about being deaf and blind for twenty years and then suddenly being healed. It would be wonderful to be able to say I was delivered from a meth addiction after living behind a dumpster for a decade. I know fat isn’t as exciting. But this is magnificent! There are no words big enough to express my gratitude and amazement. I didn’t deserve this. I didn’t earn it. It was dropped on me like a pallet of airlifted MREs.

I wonder if I’m going to be able to help anyone else get this, or something like this. I wonder if anyone will be impressed enough to listen. If it will work for fat, shouldn’t it work for lust, greed, drugs, booze, violence, compulsive spending, chronic anger, racism, and other types of bondage? Why not? Fat is a pretty tough nut to crack. Getting over it is no joke. People die from gluttony every day, and they don’t want to. It’s a powerful thing.

I think I know why I’ve had so little success in talking to other people about God. The main reason is probably that I was such a phenomenal idiot, I made an unacceptable representative. But now that I’m cleaned up a little, he seems to be bringing people to me. Maybe I’m less embarrassing than I used to be. And the fat thing is a tremendous selling point. Nobody wants to hear from a Christian whose life is messed up. If it hasn’t worked for you, why would I expect it to work for me? Now I have a triumph to point to. In fact, I have a number of things. I haven’t listed all of them here. If I have something that will make people jealous, maybe they’ll be more inclined to try to get it.

I would have serious doubts about listening to a preacher who was obese, or who smoked cigarettes, or who routinely said mean things, or who had a mountain of debt. Anything like that. If you can’t win, how can you teach other people to win? If you don’t realize you have a problem, how can you identify other people’s problems? On the other hand, I would not want to hear from a guy who was born perfect (with one obvious exception) and who had a trouble-free life. If you haven’t been oppressed, you don’t know what other people go through. And your skills for fighting oppression may not be strong. Some people who have no major problems are in serious trouble. Their problems exist. They just haven’t manifested themselves yet. When people like that crash, they’re probably like bubble kids without immune systems. Like Nebuchadnezzar, who went insane and grazed like a cow for seven years.

Mmm…cows…steak.

I guess one cheeseburger won’t hurt me.

Nor for the Cheesecake that Flyeth by Day

Back in August, after a fast, I experienced an odd result. I no longer felt compelled to overeat. I had fasted many times in the past, but this change was unprecedented. It had nothing to do with my stomach shrinking or any other physical explanation. And I also found I had more peace, and that I had new and near-perfect self-control in some other areas of my life.

I believe I was under the influence of hostile spirits. Robert Morris says that when we have an evil inclination, it may be demonic, and that it may occur because of our sins or the sins of our ancestors. At that stage, it’s an “iniquity.” When it becomes uncontrollable, it’s a “bondage.” That appears to be what happened to me. I could beat it temporarily, but it always came back.

My dad has a terrible weight problem. My sister has had her struggles. My dad’s sister is worse than either of them. These things go after the children of families they know to have vulnerabilities.

Yesterday I got worried because before lunch, I grabbed a half-empty pint of ice cream and finished it. Breakfast had consisted of a small bowl of cereal, and I was hungry. I wondered if I was asking for trouble. A little voice in my head told me my victory over gluttony was a delusion. It reminded me of the big meal I had cooked on Saturday.

At lunchtime, I wasn’t very hungry, but I had to have something, because I was feeling a little weak. I decided to have a PBJ. I started to think about all the calories in the peanut butter. I decided to use one slice of bread instead of two, so I could make a half-sandwich. And I didn’t feel the old familiar internal urging, telling me to go ahead and have the whole thing because I had been good all week.

When dinner time rolled around, I realized I wasn’t hungry enough to make cooking worth the trouble! So I skipped dinner.

Today I got up and weighed myself. I’m down two more pounds! I’ve crossed another “zero threshold.” You know what I mean. Every time you go past a zero, like from 230 to 229, it’s a threshold. “If I could only be under 200 again.” “If I could only be under 150 again.” If you’re fat, this is how you fantasize.

Overeating was a major problem for me. I could control myself well enough to avoid obesity, but that was about it. In fact, I sometimes crossed the line into obesity. It was a royal pain. My face got big and wobbly. My pants always felt like they were cutting me in two. I felt uncomfortable when I exercised. I was about as attractive as Jabba the Hutt in a wig. I can’t believe it’s gone. I have been supernaturally delivered from it.

I’d give anything to get the same thing for my dad. I don’t want him to spend his remaining years putting up with something that ruins his enjoyment of life.

The other day I was watching Robert Morris, and he said something fascinating. He listed the three things Jesus told the disciples to do when he sent them out. They were to preach the gospel, heal the sick, and cast out demons. Healing the sick and freeing people from bondage were so important to him, he ranked them right up there with preaching salvation by faith. How many churches limit themselves to the gospel? No wonder life is so hard. Everyone on the planet has demons assigned to him, and only a tiny percentage of us have the tools to break them.

Mentioning demons in a mainstream church is a great way to get funny looks from people, but Jesus dealt with them constantly. Was he crazy? Was he just an eccentric character? No, he was God. If God says there are demons, why do we ignore them? I’ve seen the nasty things with my own eyes. I don’t need to be told they’re real. Why are we embarrassed to talk about them and admit they’re part of our lives?

We’re supposed to be able to alter our inner drives, so obedience comes easier. Once obedience and trust are in play, blessings come. Chastisements stop. A Christian who stops at salvation never gets to the point where God can do all the good things he wants to do. I believe it. I’m seeing it in my own life.

I still have some things I want to get rid of. I want to be less cranky and judgmental. I would like to be more empathetic. I don’t want to trust money more than God. If God can make me stronger than pizza, he can do anything. Surely help is on the way.

As things improve, I become more convinced that I have to watch my behavior. The more power I have over myself, the more blameworthy I am when I screw up. And I think any person who gets delivered attracts the attention of the enemy, and when I stumble, he’ll be there to slip in through the crack I made. He has always had a special hate for me; I remember supernatural attacks and hostile manifestations that took place when I was three and four years old. The Bible says God turns people over to torment when they disobey. There are forces out there working to take this away from me and make me sorry I wrote about it, and I don’t want to help them. I’m trying to remember that I’m on a short leash.

Lately, when I’ve prayed in the morning, I’ve asked God to make me and my family the devourer’s devourers. The destroyers of the destroyer. I want us to ruin his harvest, the way he has ruined ours. I want to be his lice. His cockroaches. His fire ants. His leprosy. His cancer. I want other people to get what I’m getting. This was the mission Jesus started; all the jibber-jabber about being nice and not hitting anyone back is just part of the picture. Without the rest of the plan, it’s garbage. Utterly worthless. You can be the nicest, fairest, most honest person on earth and waste your entire life and live in defeat. If it were about being nice, Jesus could have skipped being born and crucified and allowed us all to become Buddhists.

I feel like we’ve all been ripped off, and it’s time to put a stop to it. There are junkies and alcoholics and perverts out there who can’t help themselves–who genuinely want help–and here it is, waiting for them, and no one knows how to get it to them. If a guy who loves food like I do can put down the fork by God’s grace, even crackheads have hope.

Check out Robert Morris’s stuff and see what you think. It seems like the purest message I’ve seen.

Fall Cleaning

What a night I had last night.

As noted in a previous entry, I cooked for a friend of my dad’s. This man has had a run of misfortune running back to the Eighties. I don’t want to get into it. You wouldn’t believe it. Now he’s having all sorts of physical problems. When he arrived, he was walking with two canes. He could barely get around.

I was going to make stuffed pork chops, but prime beef caught my eye while I was shopping, so I got a four-rib roast! Ten pounds of it. Overkill, I suppose. I cooked it to an internal temperature of 125º (115º next time) after rubbing it with garlic and butter and salt, and it was sublime. I also made baked potatoes and apple pie. On the side, we had garlic butter, chives, sour cream, and horseradish sauce (whipped cream, prepared horseradish, salt, pepper). My dad took out a bottle of 1990 Pommard he had been saving, and his friend is a wine nut, and they both raved over it.

The pie seemed a little dryer than it should have been. I think the crust was a little too thick, and I didn’t brush a wash on it, which would have made seem moister. Instead of a nasty egg wash, I use the liquid from the filling, and I sprinkle the pie afterward with turbinado sugar. The liquid makes it stick.

Inevitably, religion entered the conversation. My sister and I mentioned Trinity Church, and we got a few plugs in, and he said he would be happy to go with us! I never expected that. Many people respond to overwhelming suffering by hating or denying God, and it’s hard to think of anyone who has suffered more than this man. But he’s still open. So we’re going to try to get him to go next week. That would be phenomenal. Satan lets most Americans have fairly good lives, probably because they don’t threaten him much. Other people suffer misfortune after misfortune, even though their sins are not remarkable at all. Some of us are more hated than others. That’s just how it is. When you know a person like that, you feel empathy and frustration because you know what they need, and you know it may be hard to lead them to it. When you get a taker, it’s extremely gratifying.

I can’t believe it. Suddenly, I find myself able to reach people. I was never able to do that in the past. My take on this is that God has decided I’m no longer such a tremendous idiot that I should not be allowed to participate in his work.

I had a funny dream last night. I’m not sure what the difference between a dream and a vision is. I would tend to call the first part of last night’s experience a vision, because I was fully lucid and all my senses were operating, and I felt as though I were in the physical world, not a dream universe. My dreams tend to be somewhat less intense.

Whatever it was, it went like this. I was trying to sleep, and I started hearing noises in the room, as though something was there with me, deliberately waking me up and trying to scare me. Then I found myself wrestling and being thrown around by something invisible. I overcame it and found myself able to fly, and I was able to see things that did not exist in the physical realm. Some I saw clearly. Others were appeared as ripples and disturbances in the world around me. I chased them around and gathered them out of the air. Their strength was negligible compared to mine; I folded them up in my hands like limp cloths. Then up near the ceiling, all around the room, I found wispy, semi-visible beings resembling cobwebs, and I grabbed them, too. Then I saw musty, smelly objects up in one corner, like some kind of egg sacs that had been left there to hatch. I pulled them down and flew out of the room to the back door, and I went out and expelled the whole mess. Then I started to fly above the neighborhood, and when I looked down, I realized I couldn’t see all the houses. At that point, I knew I wasn’t in the real world. I couldn’t see the houses because I can’t imagine the whole neighborhood from above. It’s not in my memory.

After that, the house became the house I grew up in, fifteen miles north of here. I experienced nothing but misery and failure in that house. The same goes for my family. For some reason, it was now full of people from my church. Apparently, they had obtained it from whoever owned it. They were remaking it. And they were having a huge sleepover. The place had been divided up into temporary compartments, using curtains, and there were portable beds set up all over the place. My pastor’s son and his wife took the master bedroom. They had remade it for themselves. I think they were in charge.

I found the hole in the wall in the upstairs hall, from the shot I accidentally fired when I was a kid. I was looking at my mother’s .38, and it went off. My solution was to cut a tiny piece of wallpaper from an inconspicuous area and glue it over the hole. It worked. My parents never found it. In the dream, a new owner had painted over the wallpaper, including the patch. The new paint was patterned like wallpaper. It looked a little like a Mondrian painting. It was a product intended to cover and replace wallpaper, at a lower cost. But you can’t make paint that makes multicolored geometric patterns when you slop it on with a brush or sprayer or roller. Very strange.

The yard was full of new construction. There were areas that had walls and furnishings but no roofs. These areas were full of people, and it was as if they were preparing for an outdoor celebration.

I found a bed beside a window. I wanted to be able to see the landscape pass by. The house had become a train, and we were going to travel around the south.

At this point, someone from the church introduced me to a woman. It seemed like they were trying to fix us up. I didn’t catch her name. It sounded something like “Mickey-O.”

Then my neighbor’s dog woke me up.

It was a wonderful dream. Or vision. Or whatever. It was about renewal and victory.

Maybe the houses symbolize me. In the Bible, houses are people. Maybe the things I fought and expelled are the supernatural forces that have been hindering me all my life, ruining the things I try to build. Maybe the people from the church are the angels, Christians I’m getting to know, and the Holy Spirit, filling the space the evil things used to occupy and undoing their work. Maybe the eggs represent bad things I sowed into my future, which are now cancelled because of my faith and obedience.

A journey means hope. No one ever takes a trip unless he or she has a hope of some sort.

When I went to bed, I felt as though something was being pushed out of me. I felt as though it was resisting desperately, like someone being shoved out of an airplane. Sometimes it was mostly out, and sometimes it was mostly in. I wonder if that’s related to the dream. I know this: I feel great today.

Time to dress for church.

Ribs Roasting

I had a crisis. I forgot to buy new lard. Luckily I was able to persuade my father to go run an errand for me. He went to five stores to get the right brand. Here is the result.

Not too shabby. I’m not sure what those spots are. I must have gotten something on the crust. Sadly, I didn’t have the wash ready when I put the pie in the oven, so it’s just turbinado sugar up there.

The crust looks really nice. Flaky and airy. I hope it’s like that on the bottom of the pan.

I should use a real pie pan, but the added capacity of that straight-side pan is hard to resist, and it’s Teflon, too.

Because of the crisis, the roast didn’t get in the oven until about 2:40, so I’m thinking dinner may be an hour late. I guess 7:30 is not unheard-of.

This should be one of the finest feasts in history, provided I can figure out how to bake potatoes at 450 while roasting at 200. That’s something of a puzzle. I think the answer is to finish the roast at 450, which will take some time, and throw the taters in above it. That will buy me 20 minutes of 450 for them, and I can let them finish while the roast rests. I am highly skeptical of the “resting” theory, however, since it’s completely wrong with regard to steaks. A total waste of time. Steaks should be sizzling outside and warm inside when they get to your table. Resting the meat makes that impossible, and it provides no benefits whatsoever, as I proved in a Youtube experiment.

Maybe the answer is to put the potatoes in the oven a couple of hours before I expect to eat. They’ll cook most of the way at 200, and then 450 will finish them off with a nice crispy jacket.

I found an easy horseradish sauce recipe, so I guess I’ll hit the store and buy some cream. In the past, I just dumped horseradish on the meat, straight from the bottle. But I really like horseradish. I assume most people prefer it toned down somewhat.

Some people don’t trust me when I say to put two tablespoons of vanilla in a pie, but it works. Although I suspect that my tablespoons are undersized. So maybe it DOESN’T work. When you have a real tablespoon.

Anyway, I better hit the store.

Mere Mortals are Undeserving

Is there anything better than waking up early, spending time in prayer and study, eating a tasty McDonald’s breakfast, and then sticking a prime rib roast in the oven to warm up? If so, it probably takes place in heaven.

I guess I went a little overboard on the prime rib. I bought 10.4 pounds for four people. I figured one rib per person. I wasn’t really hip to the practice of cutting the bones off and tying them to the roast while you cook, so you end up with an easy-carve roast when you’re done. If I had done that, I could have gotten by with a smaller piece of meat. But it’s still, what, a little over a pound per person when you get rid of the bones and the larger bits of fat? Not excessive. Well, maybe a little.

Anyway, it looks better with the bone in it, and the meat next to the bone is really good.

I think two pounds (bone included) is about right for a serving of prime rib or a rib eye steak. The rib eye is the king of steaks, but you can’t eat all of it, so a lot of the weight ends up in the garbage, not in your guests.

I have to get to work on the pie. I’m a little nervous. My recipe–I thought it was in the second edition of my book, but it isn’t–is very good, but because I make it so rarely, I’m not all that proficient with it. And I still have to get lard. The store has disgusting Goya lard, which smells like a hog lot in July. I need El Cochinito. I have a can, but I doubt it’s still usable.

If you’re in Miami and you need El Cochinito, the Winn-Dixie near Ludlam and Bird has it.

Cook’s Illustrated says to sear the the fat side of the meat with a hot pan before you cook it. That’s a lot of work. I’m sure it’s good, but I get fine results by cranking up the heat at the end of the roasting. And I have a MAPP torch.

Here’s something that will make this day a lot easier. I have an apple peeling machine. They run about $25. In a few seconds, it will turn an apple into a peeled and cored coil of pure fruit flesh. That beats spending half an hour peeling apples.

Someone emailed me about Marv and Maynard. They’re still here, squawking to beat the band. I was going to put up a new video to prove it, but I can’t do that until I locate the charger for my camera. Here’s Marv’s most popular video. Please excuse him; somebody taught him some questionable material before his owner cleaned up his own vocabulary.

I am considering getting some 6″ work boots to keep me alive the next time I try to help out with a job at church. The injury to my ankle is still not quite closed. An 8″ boot would have prevented it completely. A 6″ boot would have helped. Hard choice. In any case, the fat is continuing to slide off of me, so I won’t have to buy jeans any time soon.

Butter, Beef, Garlic…Paradise

I am swooning.

I unwrapped my gorgeous rib roast and set aside the free fat they gave me so I could vacuum-seal it for later. I salted the roast down pretty good. Then I decided to go crazy.

I generated around a quarter of a cup of pressed garlic and nuked it with half a stick of butter. I added salt and smeared the resulting concoction all over the salted roast.

The smell of this house…the temple in Jerusalem–God’s barbecue joint–could not have smelled any better when they were roasting bulls and sheep by the dozen. This thing is going to be phenomenal!

Tomorrow in the morning, I’ll get the roast out and put it on the counter. At around one p.m., I’ll stick it in the oven. Then I’ll get to work on the pie.

Who says cooking for guests is hard?

Okay, the pie will be hard. But the roast is a joke.

Now I have to figure out how to make horseradish sauce.

The Ingredients of a Good Blog Post

My dad wanted me to cook for an old friend who is having a rough time. I went to the store to get ingredients to make stuffed pork chops. Which are unbelievable. They’re in my cookbook.

While I was there, I saw prime rib priced at $12 per pound. This is not an amazing price, but it’s not bad, and the meat was crying out to me from behind the glass, begging me to take it in my loving arms and bring it home with me.

I cracked. You know I cracked. I don’t have to tell you that.

I made the grocery guy go back and find me a new roast that had four contiguous ribs on it, and he hacked one out for me. Then he started trimming the fat and THROWING IT OUT. I put a stop to that in a hurry. I never turn down free fat. It went in the package with the beef. Just because I’ve given up gluttony doesn’t mean I’m going to cook lame food every day. Rib fat is magical. It’s the duct tape of beef.

The meat guys love being ordered around by people who know food. I think it makes them feel appreciated. There was a woman working there, and it disturbed her that I wanted a cut that wasn’t on display. The man…he understood. No surprise there. It’s a rare woman who understands prime beef.

Anyway, I brought this gorgeous piece of prime meat home, and then I was informed that my dad’s friend had not yet confirmed. After the chest pains subsided, I got on the phone and made sure this guy was coming. Although it would have been okay if he had put it off for a week, because that would have given me time to age this magnificent chunk of cow.

I’m going to go salt it down now and rub it with garlic. Tomorrow, it will be fragrant and ready to play.

This was a good move, except for the enormous expense. Prime rib is like boiling water. Anyone can do it. It’s much less work than stuffed pork chops. The pie crust is going to drive me nuts, so I don’t need any other problems.

The baking potatoes were beautiful today, so I grabbed some of those, plus a tub of sour cream.

My dad and my sister both like their meat burned. This is a tragedy, but since the roast has four ribs, I figure I can give them the outer ones. I’m going to cook the meat to 125º inside, and if the beef-incinerators complain, I’ll cram theirs in the microwave. Why not? If I cook it until it’s grey, it will be ruined regardless of how I do it.

Man, this is going to be good. And I got to send a photo of the roast to Mike, so he could eat his liver and be miserable and envious. I owed him that, as a friend.

Here’s how you make perfect prime rib. I’ve done it like twice, but it’s so easy, I’m qualified to tell other people how to do it.

INGREDIENTS

1 prime rib roast, preferably prime (not choice) beef
5-10 crushed garlic cloves
salt

If you have time, dry the beef and put it on a wire rack in your fridge, covered with a clean cotton cloth. If you can keep the cloth above the meat so it doesn’t touch it, do it. Change the cloth daily. Keep the temperature at or below 35 degrees. Give the meat a week if you can.

Three days before you cook it, salt it down well. This will not dry out the meat. Shut up. It won’t. Don’t put a crust of salt on it. I did this once, and it was incredibly stupid and made the meat too salty.

Preheat your oven to 250º. Rub the meat all over with the garlic. Use as much as you want. Butter it, too, if it makes you happy. I think I’ll do that this time! I’m tempted to cook a roast at 225º. I’m sure it would be better.

Put the meat on a broiling pan, cover it with a foil tent or something, and roast it with a probe in it until you get the internal temperature you like. I did 133º last time, in deference to my dad, but this time it’s going to be 125º, which is still higher than I’d like.

When the meat is ten or fifteen degrees below the end temperature, rip off the foil and jack the heat up to 550º. If this makes your broiler turn on, use the highest temperature that doesn’t make it do that. Or leave foil draped over the meat. Or something. Don’t burn it with the broiler. That’s the point. And you may want to do this earlier than fifteen degrees prior to the end temperature. Ten degrees worked okay for me, but as I recall, it was close.

When you cut into this baby, juice is going to pour out. The smell will summon the angels. And it won’t be tough and dry. Pay no attention to “experts” who tell you to cremate it at 325º. I tried that, and it was awful.

Just to remind you, here’s how I bake potatoes. It’s much better than using foil or greasing the skins, which makes them limp and soggy. Preheat your oven to 450º. Scrub your potatoes. Put salt in your hands and rub it all over the potatoes while they’re still wet. Bake them on the top rack for an hour, if they’re under a pound each. Big potatoes go 75 minutes. Try to have something between the heating element and the potatoes so they don’t char. I serve these with garlic butter AND sour cream. And salt.

In other news, Natchez Shooter’s Supply just put out a great sale bulletin. If you’re not a snob who won’t shoot Wolf ammunition, you can do pretty good on 7.62 x 39 and .40 S&W right now.

More

Why do I ever listen to conventional thinkers when they talk about food? The Food Network (usually disappointing) says to cook prime rib at 325º, which is ignorant and positively heinous. On my own, using common sense, I came up with 250º. Now, via Google, I see that Cook’s Illustrated recommends 225º. Those guys are not fools. They don’t pass on gossip and old wives’ tales, like 95% of the professionals. If they say 225º works, you better believe they’ve put it to the test.

Hmm…I’m checking their site, and in 1995, they recommended 200º! I love it.

Food Avalanche

I was going to attend to some lingering responsibilities today, but instead, I decided to try to unwind a little. I spent a leisurely morning with the Bible, and then I decided to slap together some desserts for the church. I’ll be working at the cafe tomorrow, unless they move me, so I figured it was time to show them what I can do for them.

I was going to make cheesecake, but the berries are pathetic right now. I can get good blueberries, but they’re about ten bucks a pint, and strawberries are only half ripe. There goes that idea. So I’m making brownies and flan and banana nut bread.

The banana nut bread is mostly for my own satisfaction. I was not happy with my last (second) loaf. I changed the recipe again. I’m disturbed to see that I left sugar out of the recipe the last time I posted it. Here is what I’m using right now.

INGREDIENTS

3 ripe bananas, mashed (I used two Orinocos)
2 1/4 cups non-rising biscuit flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. soda
2 eggs
1 1/2 sticks butter
1/2 cup chopped pecans
pinch nutmeg
pinch cloves
pinch cinnamon
1 tsp. vanilla

I cut the cinnamon back, jacked up the butter, and took out the coconut oil. I also cleaned the teflon pan carefully and greased it with butter. I hope the loaf doesn’t stick this time.

I’m confident this one will be very good. They’ve all been good, but this one won’t have the obvious flaws the first two had.

I guess they’ll think I’m doing too much, but this is recreation for me.

I got a letter from Perry Stone Ministries. The man does not ask for money. He says he refuses to beg, because he doesn’t like doing TV. He believes God told him to do it. I can understand that. I’d do TV if an angel ordered me to, but it must be a hassle and a complete abdication of your expectation of privacy.

The letter was a thank-you to his supporters. He says other ministries are laying off, but he’s doing fine. Is there a lesson in that? Probably. If all you do is beg and holler “SEED GIFT! SEED GIFT!” all day, you shouldn’t be surprised when people start watching and supporting shows that give them something more. Perry Stone is incredibly prolific. I don’t know how he does it. He seems to write a book every ten minutes, and if you bought every sermon series (and they’re not expensive), you’d probably blow almost a thousand dollars a year.

I think God may be sifting out a number of the less-profitable servants. Some people take issue when I indicate that I believe that the things you do here on earth can have timely and identifiable consequences, but I was thinking about it today, and they’re wrong. Look at the Bible. Achan took stuff from Jericho, and the very next time the Jews fought, they lost. Delilah shaved Samson, and the next morning, his enemies held him down and gouged his eyes out. Ananias and Sapphira lied to God, and the Holy Spirit killed them immediately. Judas died miserably shortly after his sin. Sometimes God gives you a lot of space to repent, and sometimes you get slapped down in a hurry, and you know the reason.

I suspect that the more God plans to do with you (and therefore FOR you), the shorter your leash will be. Look at Moses and David. If you’re a jerk all your life, and everything goes well for you, maybe it means there was never any hope for you. Things went great for Hitler for decades. The Bible says, “Fret not because of the man who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.” It says, “Wait on the Lord, and keep his way, and he shall exalt thee to inherit the land. When the wicked are cut off, thou shalt see it.”

This morning, I went back over Psalm 5, which I was no longer able to recite, and I saw this: “Lead me, O Lord, in thy righteousness because of mine enemies. Make thy way straight before my face.” I used to think it meant, “Lead me around the traps,” but now I think it means, “Prevent me from sinning, so I don’t lose your protection.” God promises to guard his servants. “Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him. I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.” “A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.” But sin–especially iniquity, or habitual sin–is an open door through which the enemy is permitted to enter.

I feel like my behavior is being sculpted by chastisement. First in broad and painful strokes, and then in progressively finer adjustments. I’ve made changes, and I’ve gotten victories, but there has been room for improvement, and I think that’s why I haven’t seen every triumph I hoped for.

The farther I get into it, the more Christianity makes sense. People always talk like we know very little about God’s mind and his plans, but that’s not true. A lot of information is out there, if you’re willing to look. Seeing through a glass, darkly, is not the same as wandering in total ignorance. It surprises me, how much is known about God.

I can’t believe how much I’ve learned from memorizing the Psalms. I should not be surprised. Jesus quoted them to Satan when he was tempted. They’re not just silly poems. God reveals his secrets in them. The Apostles quoted them. All this stuff about actions and consequences, I put together from my knowledge of the Psalms. I just finished 91, and I’m working on 27. Take a look at it, if you want to see how appropriate it is. And I haven’t even memorized twenty percent of them. I have to wonder what it’s like to have a real Biblical library in your head. Supposedly, in Jesus’s time, Jewish boys memorized the Pentateuch by the time they were bar mitzvah’d.

I have to drive to the store to get more eggs. I can’t believe I took a list and still screwed up.

If you want to see progress in your life, try this. Get the baptism of the Spirit, pray in the Spirit every day, and start memorizing. Stuff will come together inside you. Seriously.

Try Bacteria

I took a bunch of Tobago seasoning peppers, pureed them, stirred in a spoonful of yogurt and a little pressed garlic, and put the mixture in a container on the kitchen counter. A smart person would have nuked them first to kill whatever exotic bacteria were clinging to them, but you know me. I smirk at death.

After a week or two of fermenting, they smelled fantastic. But I couldn’t figure out what to do with them. Today I plopped a load of this stuff on a sub, and it was fantastic. Much better than banana peppers.

I didn’t make this idea up. They do it in the islands. Some people leave it in the sun to rot.

It would be even better with Home Depot cayenne peppers.

Give it a shot.

Second Effort, With More Grease

I have a big pile of Orinoco bananas, with more on the way. I made banana nut bread to get rid of some of it. My sister is not taking food seriously enough. She seems to think she can turn food down because it’s not exactly what she wants. Not the right approach when you’re on chemo and starting radiation therapy. Who knows if she’ll be able to eat in a week? The banana nut bread ought to be helpful.

Here’s what I’m trying.

INGREDIENTS

3 ripe bananas, mashed (I used two Orinocos)
2 1/4 cups non-rising biscuit flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. soda
2 eggs
1 stick butter
1/4 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup chopped pecans
pinch nutmeg
pinch cloves
1/8 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. vanilla

I think that’s all of it. I mixed it and dumped it in a Teflon bread pan, and I’m baking at 350º for one hour and fifteen minutes. You stick a toothpick in it to see if it’s done.

Last time I added a shot of banana liqueur, but this batter was too wet for that. Maybe if I added another quarter-cup of flour.

I’m hoping this will be moister than the loaf I made last time, which was excellent but not sublime.

I’ll tell you if it’s any good.

More

The bread is very good. I’m not sure 350 is the right temperature, though. It seems a little dark. Maybe 325 is better. Also, I think I’ll omit the coconut oil next time and just use butter. The salt needs to be increased. And I definitely need to get out the PAM and quit being brave. This loaf stuck to the pan.

Prosperity is a Lot of Work

I must have 25 bags of frozen lime and key lime juice now. I wanted my trees to be productive, but I’m starting to wonder where the juice is going to go.

I just put away five half-cup bags, after slicing and freezing a Costco beef loin. I’m turning into my grandmother! I have a pressure cooker, I grow food, and I’m considering learning to can. What next? Knitting?

You have to be a good steward. That’s the pitch. Back in the 80s, they used to say God would bless you with prosperity and health as long as you sent Jim Bakker and Robert Tilton enough money. It didn’t really matter what you did the rest of the time. And of course, it did not work. Oddly, God did not reward people for buying evangelists purple Bentleys and mink toilet seat covers.

These days, the message is somewhat more balanced. Give alms; don’t just send checks to questionable TV preachers. Repent. Pray. Fast. Go to church. Behave responsibly. Robert Morris writes and speaks about this stuff, and I think he’s right. It’s a little insulting to claim you can be a monumental jerk and get God to bless you, but it’s also insulting to say God doesn’t reward people. So anyway, I am afraid to throw out the fruit and herbs I grow, and I try not to spend like a total fool. Hence the freezing and bagging.

It seems to pay off, at least with regard to bananas, limes, herbs, and peppers. Actually, things are going very well with me in general. People close to me have it harder than I do at the moment. I can’t talk about every good thing that’s happening in my life. Wish I could.

Hey…what if I had paid more attention to my elders when I was a kid? I would have been doing a lot of this stuff a long time ago. Doh!

I’m going to try to get a flu shot now. I was going to take two friends to church, but they both got the flu. Coincidence, I’m sure. It’s not like there are any forces out there that try to keep people from turning to God. Never. Couldn’t happen.

We’re still on for next week.