Mere Mortals are Undeserving

My sister’s birthday is this week, and tonight my father and I planned to take her out to eat. Problem: my dad had a couple of skin cancers burned off, and he does not consider himself presentable while they’re healing.

SO…

Champagne chicken and strawberry cheesecake. I just bought the stuff. Florida berries are in season, so they’re good and they’re cheap.

Don’t you wish it was your birthday? We’ll be hogging down chicken and fettuccine and Champagne, with garlic bread made from a sourdough baguette. Then comes the cheesecake. Too much.

In other news, I have gotten some drill press info. I located a Buffalo #18 press, which at this point is my absolute favorite kind. It looks very nice, and it has the lamp, which usually gets lost. It’s 3-phase, which means I have to spring for a VFD, but I planned to do that anyway, so I could bypass the belts and get a good low speed.

Tool people: what do you think is a fair price for one of these things? Shipping will run me a little over $300. If I could get it here for $550, I wouldn’t feel violated. On the other hand, if it was local, I would hope to do considerably better.

Plus More “Coincidences”

I just had a treat which I could not have predicted last week: Turkish coffee. I used to drink it in Israel. They sold it in little funny cans with coffee beans on the label. It’s just coffee ground to a very fine powder. I don’t know if it’s finer than espresso, but it’s pretty fine. The Israelis simply dumped it in hot water, stirred, and drank. That’s what I did today. I don’t think that’s the correct way to do it, but I wasn’t looking for the correct way. I was looking for the past.

It’s not the world’s finest coffee. It’s a hundred times better than instant, but a good cup of espresso or American coffee would be better. But it’s fast and easy, and it reminds me of Israel. I wonder if I can find the Israeli brand on the web.

I have Googled. My best guess was that the brand name was “Elite.” That’s what I seemed to remember. And look what I found!

Click to visit The Jerusalem Gift Shop!

Man, this is an odd coincidence. Funny how those happen to me all the time these days. I feel a little woozy thinking about it.

Check this place out. I know about as much about it as you do, but it appears to be run by Christians in Israel. They have a newsletter about Israel, and all sorts of items from Israel, including this pendant (hope they don’t mind me stealing the picture):

That is fascinating. When my sister and I began communicating again, it was because of Christianity, and almost as soon as we started, she brought me a book by Perry Stone (The Meal That Heals) and a home communion kit with that symbol on it. According to Stone, that symbol is very old, and it was used by early Christians. I suppose there are many Jews who would be horrified by it, but anyway, there it is. You can click the link and buy that pendant.

We are part of prophecy; no doubt about it. The growing interdependence of Christians and observant Jews is a wonder to behold. We help Israel with its physical needs, and the Jews bless us with spiritual enlightenment. Just as Isaiah predicted.

I had no idea I would end up writing about this. I planned to write about coffee.

Check that site out. Wonderful stuff.

More

In case it’s not obvious, in the symbol above, which is referred to as the “Grafted In” symbol, the Magen David is formed by the base of the menorah and the tail of the ichthus. Nothing extra is added.

What Would Aslan Eat?

I just got back from church. My sister really likes late services, and we had lunch on the way home.

Interesting experience today. A preacher named Darrell Hines was speaking at Rich Wilkerson’s church, and my sister wanted to hear him. But soon after we got there, she started feeling the presence of God, and she was pretty much inert for the remainder of the sermon. Kept asking me if I felt it. When we got up at the end, she was barely coherent, and she kept talking about it all the way home. She kept asking why people were interested in the things of this world, when they could have God’s presence instead. That’s exactly how I always feel when it hits me.

I felt it today, too, but not to the same extent. At one point while she was in this state, she bumped my arm, and for a time after that, I felt pretty wobbly. Very strange.

She said she didn’t hear much of anything Darrell Hines said.

This is what I like about this church. The music is too loud, and the sermons are good, but not mind-blowing, but God sits on this place like smog on Los Angeles.

We stopped at an Arab restaurant and grocery on the way home. I made some buys. I got some mamoul cookies. These are butter cookies filled with dates. Made in Saudi Arabia. I did not realize I could buy a single cookie, so I got a box. They’re not bad at all. I also picked up some Turkish coffee. This is what they drink in Israel. It’s very finely ground, and the Israelis dump it in hot water like instant coffee. It leaves a layer of mud on the bottom of the cup. I bought it for nostalgic reasons. I also bought a box of Turkish delight. I had to try it. When I was in the first grade, my teacher Mrs. Schabacher read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to my class, and ever since then, I have wondered what Turkish delight tasted like. It’s very good. I was surprised.

Some pastries somehow ended up in my shopping bag. Funny how that happens.

I think the presence of God is the missing ingredient that has caused American churches to become so weak, perverted, and worldly. A typical church is not much better than a Moose lodge or a YMCA. It’s no wonder no one wants to go. The supernatural is what fills pews. Without it, what is Christianity? Unrewarding self-denial, plus prayer and study that accomplish absolutely nothing. Wouldn’t you go to church if you knew you would sense God there? That’s a pretty big draw.

He’s still with us, if you’re willing to look for him.

Journalism

Today people are talking about Joe Wurzelbacher’s new assignment as roving Mideast correspondent for Pajamas Media. Needless to say, many people have low expectations, and it seems like a bad idea. The liberal media managed to convince the public that Sarah Palin was stupid, and the smell has rubbed off on other conservatives. We really don’t need to give them another weapon with which to club us.

Nonetheless, the deed is done, so I suppose the correct thing is to pray for his safety and that he surprises us.

I don’t blame him for taking the assignment. It probably seemed like a great idea, and from his perspective, maybe it’s a real opportunity. Fame has monetary value, and while PJTV is obscure, it is possible that some of the few people have the power to help Joe move on to bigger things, and maybe one of them will come up with a gig for him.

It probably beats laying pipe in Ohio in the winter. And Joe deserves a little success, after the vicious treatment he received from the press.

I’m already rethinking my router insert/table saw extension. I really enjoyed using the Mag-Switch featherboard, and it would be nice to be able to use it while routing. That means cast iron is required. I have to see if anyone makes an insert that is exactly 28″ wide. Peachtree Woodworking makes one with a 27″ width, which seems crazy. How would you fit that between my rails? You would have to fill the missing inch somehow.

My readers are bad influences on me, and now I have returned the favor. Reader Ed complained that he had not been able to lay his hands on his late father’s table saw. Inspired by my shopping, he got on the web and found a saw just like his dad’s, and he bought it! Pretty cool. It would be better if he had received his dad’s saw, but this is a pretty good substitute. It’s funny how often things that should be handed down to certain people in families go to the wrong people, and then to the dump. I’ll bet this happens more often in families that are away from God. This phenomenon has an Old Testament smell to it.

Speaking of the Old Testament, Elisson has a post concerning his relationship with pork. Elisson believes in God and belongs to a synagogue, but when it comes to bacon, he might as well be a Baptist. He even eats whale bacon.

Finally, Pam Anderson says you can send food to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Is this true? I would think brownies would ship pretty well in winter.

It’s Everywhere

I’m about to get ready for our late Christmas Eve lunch. I just started preparing the rib roast for tomorrow.

I’m completely in love with prime rib. I wish I were more than one person, so I could justify cooking it every week.

My sister felt that Publix and Winn-Dixie would not cut the mustard, so I ended up getting a roast at a local grocery called Milam’s. I don’t usually shop there. They had rib roasts on sale for $8.00 per pound. Unfortunately, they were all huge. They were Angus beef. I don’t know how big a deal that is. The folks who market it claim it’s amazing, but I have owned cattle, and I happen to know that an Angus is just a kind of cow. My grandfather–from whom I inherited my interest in a bunch of beef cattle–had a few Black Angus, and he may have had a few Red Angus. His stock was mostly Charolais; these are big mean white cows from France. The Black Angus cattle seemed very good-natured in comparison. Can’t tell you whether they tasted any better.

I got a nice surprise when I unwrapped the roast. It definitely smelled. So it’s not a brand-new roast. It has some age on it. That’s a break. I made a pile of pressed garlic, and I salted the roast and rubbed the garlic all over it. I wrapped it in foil, and it will be ready to cook tomorrow. I have heard people say you shouldn’t salt meat before you cook it, because it sucks the water out. Thing is, that doesn’t really happen.

I am wondering if wet-aging is better for rib roasts, since juiciness is so important.

The food will be very good; I’m not worried. Can’t be sure it will be outstanding, but very good is fine with me.

I am Done

I got all of my pre-Christmas-Eve errands done. At one point, I found myself at PetCo, evaluating toys for my sister’s dog. She felt it was imperative that our pets exchange gifts.

Either my heart has grown three sizes this year, or my brain has done the reverse.

I now possess a decent-looking rib roast. That should be enjoyable. I’m making potatoes au gratin with it. When I was a kid, my Uncle Jim used to cook Christmas Eve dinner for the family, and he always had some nice beef and a giant bowl of potatoes au gratin with mushrooms and lots of pepper. The mushrooms I can take or leave, but other than that, I miss those potatoes. And Jim. And being together with the family.

I have my own recipe, which is very much like my recipe for macaroni and cheese. Tell you what. I’ll paste it below. Maybe you can find a better way to brown the potatoes. I suggest increasing the cheese.

Potatoes au Gratin

Here’s the recipe for potatoes au gratin. You might want to pimp it out with bacon or mushrooms or something, but it’s great as is.

INGREDIENTS:
3 cups half and half
1 tsp. salt
3 tbsp. butter
3 tbsp. flour
1/2 cup minced onions
2 cloves garlic
4 tsp. pepper
3 egg yolks
12 oz. shredded Cheddar + extra for topping
dash hot sauce
3-4 big russet potatoes

Peel the potatoes and cut in slices less than a quarter of an inch thick. Arrange the slices on a cookie sheet in a single layer. Salt and pepper them and brush them with butter (both sides). Brown them under a broiler (I gave them 5 minutes per side at a distance of 6 inches, but your broiler may be different). When you remove them, lower the heat to 350.

Melt the butter in a saucepan on medium heat. Saute the onions in the butter. Add the flour and stir it in. Cook for a few minutes, until the flour is no longer raw.

Divide the half and half in two equal portions. Beat the egg yolks into one portion and set it aside. Pour the other portion into the flour, butter, and onion mixture. Cook while stirring, until the mixture bubbles. Now you have cheese sauce.

Use a whisk to mix the rest of the half and half into the contents of the saucepan. Get it bubbling. Add the cheese, salt, pepper, garlic, and hot sauce and mix it all in.

Butter the bottom of a casserole dish. I suppose a 2-quart Pyrex job would be ideal. Add a layer of potatoes. Cover them with cheese sauce. Repeat until the dish is full, and make sure the top layer of potatoes has sauce on it. Bury the dish in shredded Cheddar and pepper it generously. Cook at 350 until nicely browned. At least 30 minutes.

Soon I’ll be headed off to lunch with my sister and my father. Right now I’m listening to a Brooke Fraser CD that arrived today. I think it’s important to have some good Christian music on hand.

Now This is a Church

I gave up trying to write music; I’ll pick it back up tomorrow. Software issues aggravated me for so long, I didn’t really have time to write anything. My computer’s audio circuits must have had corrupted drivers or something; I had to go to Asus’s infuriating site and download things. I think it’s okay now.

I got the birds out and listened to a disk I got in the mail. It came from Wayne Cochran. He and his crew are good about communicating with people who visit their church. They send emails and snail mail.

The thrust of the sermon was that we needed to set aside more time to spend with God. And he also talked about a couple other things that surprised me. He mentioned the book of Enoch, which I’ve been writing about, and which I bought recently. It seems like a lot of Christians are taking an interest in it these days. And–I think this may be the best part–he talked about pork. I am not kidding.

Toward the end of the sermon, he started talking about the kind of food he liked. He said some of the best eating he had ever had was cheap food. He mentioned fatback and biscuits and red eye gravy. You think I’m bad? He said he used to eat fatback and biscuits with Karo syrup. I loved hearing that stuff. My sister is anxious to visit his church again, and she has given up pork, and she wants me to give it up. I guess she has a surprise in store.

He also said he had a .357 by his bed and a Chinese assault rifle. And he has a motorcycle.

I don’t know if Wayne Cochran has the best doctrine, but I know this: as long as he keeps his accent and talks about pork and guns, I’ll be comfortable sitting in his church.

Witness the Depravity

My good friend Elisson has outdone himself. He has a recipe for turkey legs floating in fat. I am not kidding. Go to his blog, where you will see the meat in question, swimming in a big container of pure duck and goose schmaltz. Where he got that much bird fat is beyond me.

One of my favorite lazy-day dishes is roasted turkey leg with stuffing. I take a crappy turkey leg, season it, put it on a pan, surround it with stuffing, and bake. I don’t know why I make that so rarely. I think it’s because the price of turkey legs went up. I resent having to pay big money for dark meat, even though it’s the best part of the bird.

Good Food is Still Cheap

I finally did the math. Shopping at Costco, buying their wonderful shredded mozzarella, I am paying about one dollar for a pizza’s worth of cheese. Two dollars, if I feel like heavy cheese.

I finally did a fairly accurate sauce-cost calculation. There are about 109 ounces of sauce in a can, by weight, and a pizza takes around 2 ounces. A can costs five bucks, roughly. So the sauce cost is somewhere in the vicinity of a dime.

Flour? Can’t say. But it’s cheap. I would guess a pie costs less than two dollars, including all ingredients except toppings.

I just took a bag of Costco cheese and broke it up and froze it in 6-ounce portions, vacuum-sealed. The phone made me do it. I programmed it in there yesterday, and today it beeped and made me get to work. I already had frozen sauce packets. I have thirteen pie setups, ready to bake, at my convenience! I just hope the cheese freezes well.

Now, if I could just find a way to make cheese pizza as colon-friendly as oatmeal…

Soup & Planers

The stuff from Woodpeck.com arrived a while back. It looks pretty good. Maybe it was stupid to get a router lift, but people who use them seem to like them.

I got my sliding miter saw set up on the woodworking table. I am still amazed at how big the saw is. I’m worried it may interfere with some router work, because it’s to the left of the router. But it will only matter for pretty big items. I think the answer is to mount the miter saw using lag shields and easily removed bolts. That way I can yank the saw off the table when necessary.

One problem: the table has an edge near the right side of the router, but the left edge is over three feet away, and between the router and the edge, there’s a saw. So I can’t use a conventional router sled. But I can think of ways to get around that.

I need a jointer. Or rather, I need boards that aren’t crooked. I know very little about tools, but I have learned that you can avoid buying a big, noisy, expensive jointer if you are willing to buy a hand plane and use a clamp. You learn something new every day.

The vegetable soup came out great, although I should have stuck some herbs in it. I know absolutely nothing about vegetable soup, but it seems to be programmed to taste good no matter what you put in it. One hazard I am aware of: soup made with red cabbage looks so disgusting it’s hard to eat.

It’s really sad; for 13 bucks I made like a gallon and a half of soup that is like ten times as good as anything you can get in a can, and I am sure a person who actually knows how to make soup can do it much better than I did.

Fling Ingredients at Will

I have been worried that I don’t eat enough fruit and vegetables. I have made a real effort, but there are days when my only vegetable is a nuked potato with butter. Luckily, this morning I remembered I had a bunch of rib-roast bones and a bacon wreath in the freezer.

Why is this lucky? Because these are things you can use to flavor vegetable soup.

The wreath is something I created when I was making bacon grease for Thanksgiving. I nuked a bunch of bacon strips laid out in a circle, and they contracted into a nice coherent ring. I also refer to these as “bacon pucks.”

I tossed these items in a pot containing tomato soup, and I proceeded to add vegetables.

Here’s a question: is it even possible to make bad vegetable soup? I have no recipe. I throw things in almost at random. It’s always good. Here’s what I used today:

Bones from 6-pound rib roast
bacon wreath
bottle of cheap tomato juice
can of cheap corn
2 cans cheap peas
3/4 head of cabbage, sliced
4 carrots, sliced
2 yellow squash, diced
4 red potatoes, diced
1 lb. fresh green beans, broken
1/2 cup wild rice
1 Jamaican hot chocolate pepper, sliced
sea salt
splash of Carlo Rossi Paisano
2 cloves garlic
water

I think that’s it. It’s blerping away on the stove. I may have to adjust it later. I suppose I could throw in some herbs. The only fresh ones on hand are rosemary, thyme, and sage. I have fresh oregano, but it tastes disgusting. I hate to admit this, but after tasting thyme over and over, I am still not quite sure what it tastes like. It’s one of those flavors that are so boring it’s hard to remember them.

I have another question. Are we buying cans from China now? Seems like every time I try to open a can, it folds up so the opener misses some places in the lid. Something is wrong, and it smells Chinese.

One-Oven Blues Get me Down

People who only have one oven should be shot and put out of their misery. I am juggling potatoes and dressing and a turkey, trying to get everything done at roughly the same time without burning or undercooking anything. Not easy.

My turkey pan has some kind of rack in it that holds the bird off the bottom. I had to remove it in order to have vertical clearance for the turkey plus two dishes of dressing. That meant the dressing was on the bottom rack, next to the heat. I had to take them out and put a hollow baking sheet under them to keep the bottom of the dressing from being burnt.

I have a mound of delicious garlic mashed potatoes in another dish. It’s at about 90 degrees now. I’ll have no choice but to nuke it. My sister made a sweet potato dish that will have to be warmed up somehow. And I haven’t even discussed rolls or gravy.

It will work. You wait and see. I will MAKE it work. I always have.

Don’t Forget the Founder of the Feast

Tell me you don’t love America. It’s Thanksgiving morning, and the kitchen smells like oranges. And it’s not because I’ve been making cranberry relish. It’s because I used Flush-Out to clean one of my rifles on the dining room table. Are there scenes like this in homes in Europe? Not many, I’ll bet.

I think things are going okay on this end. The turkey is odd-looking, but I think the brining will fix it up. I considered adding baking soda to the brine, because the dark meat of organic hippie turkeys is said to have a fishy flavor that needs to be killed. I changed my mind because I didn’t want to take the flavor out of the white meat.

Because our nation is a mess and we have just elected a socialist President, who will exacerbate things if he succeeds in implementing his policies, this is a very important Thanksgiving. People don’t think of Thanksgiving as a religious holiday, but it’s a day dedicated to thanking God. We have been very ungrateful, and we have insisted on doing our own thing, and my belief is that our current problems are caused by our foolishness and rebellion.

The purpose of this day is to thank God for the abundance and security with which we have been blessed. I hope everyone who reads this will join me in remembering who gave us families, homes, and all this glorious food.

Happy Thanksgiving.

I KNEW It

I decided to log in to the Cook’s Illustrated site to get the lowdown on fresh turkeys, and wouldn’t you know, they turned out to be the worst turkeys available?

Here’s the scoop. Turkeys have to be dropped to 26 degrees after slaughter, even if they’re sold as fresh. At that temperature, the water in the meat freezes, but the meat does not. Supposedly. While your local ripoff upscale grocery tries to keep the bird cold without freezing it hard, it is likely to undergo a bunch of cycles in which ice crystals form inside it and thaw. They break up the meat so it doesn’t hold water when you cook it.

On top of that, fresh turkeys tend to be spoiled. They get more exercise than factory birds, so they’re in better physical condition, and that adds up to tough meat.

Great. I hate it when a turkey turns out to be a challenge. My practice is to buy the cheapest factory bird I can find, and my turkeys are always perfect. Now I have a mutant Greenpeace bird that may taste like a brick.

Yuppies are never right about ANYTHING.

If you can find it, you want a fatty turkey. That means you don’t want the breed most packers use. You want a breed called Heritage.

If you have a fresh turkey, get it into some brine NOW. SCHNELL! And don’t buy one next year, unless you think expensive + bad = good deal.

The turkeys they liked best were Walters Hatchery (Heritage turkey) and Rubashkin’s Aaron’s Best.

Next Year, Bring on the Hormones and Antibiotics

The cornbread is magnificent. I managed to avoid eating more than one slice, and I decided to give Marv and Maynard a piece of the action. Now I’m fixing pecan pies.

I like pecan pie, but there is something basically wrong with eating a pie which is mostly sugar. It’s just an odd thing to choose to do. These should be pretty good. I jacked up the butter, and I added JD. I used Kirkland pecans. So the blessing of Costco is upon my pies.

I am going to brine the turkey. I just don’t trust all-natural meat.

Oh boy. I’m worried. I just read an article suggesting my fears are justified. It says fresh turkeys can be bland and “heavy,” whatever that means. Dang it. I knew better than to take a hormone-free bird grown by filthy hippies at face value.

I may as well get to it.