Considering Opening my Own Zoo

I’m thinking I should put up a food forum at Manly Grub. I have considered running a forum in the past, but I always decided against it. Now I think it’s a good idea.

Give me your opinions. Would any of you be interested?

I may as well say in advance that the forum would be moderated. Comments would appear immediately, but I wouldn’t put up with obscenity or endless flame wars.

Clog Your Arteries Correctly

I put up an error page over at Manly Grub. There is at least one error in Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man – The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook, and someone suggested publishing corrections, so here you go.

Not much there, as of today. Just the cornbread error.

Put Some Gravy on That Tofu

I wrote the world’s unhealthiest cookbook. To compensate for the evil things I was eating, I started having vegetables, pita, hummus, and eggs for breakfast. Then today I was too lazy to boil eggs, so I substituted a leftover fried, breaded pork chop.

Am I deluding myself, or just being smart and frugal?

I am Big in Jerusalem

Poor little recovering Leah Friedman put an ad up for my book! Look.

There is probably nothing in there she can eat, so that was nice of her. Thanks, Leah.

Leah’s friend Mish Weiss also plugged the book! Thanks, Mish.

Makes me wish there were some kosher recipes in there.

Come the Revolution, These People Will be Spared

Can’t recall whether I mentioned Kenny from Gorners, so here is a link.

Chris Byrne graciously linked, and a reader emailed to ask if I knew of a place other than Amazon where the book could be had. I searched a zip code in his city (Phoenix), and I came up with 15 Barnes & Noble stores that stock it. You don’t have to order it online; you can just buy it. I like Amazon buys because they pump my Amazon rating, but do what’s best for you.

I think Jeffro linked, but I can’t find it. Whatever. For some reason, I could not find him on my blogroll, so I added him. Maybe he’s in there twice now.

Did I already mention Elisson? Could be.

Baldi gave me a free Blogad, after all the mean things I said about Pajamas Media. Do I feel guilty? Not really.

I don’t remember whether I thanked Helo for mentioning me at Drumwaster’s Rants, but here is a link.

Okay. THANKS.

Bet I forgot someone.

Really

Give me a minute here, and I’ll try to catch up on links to people who linked to my book. I don’t want to wait until tomorrow, because nothing sucks like a Friday link.

If I fail to blogroll you at Manly Grub, feel free to remind me.

Woe is Me

This is fricking upsetting.

I decided to make my own pita, because I was too lazy to go to the store. I figured I would be satisfied if it was edible. But it came out so well, from now on, I am going to be utterly bummed when I have to eat the store stuff. The taste was better. The texture was infinitely superior. It didn’t resist at all when I peeled it apart for dipping in hummus.

Damn it.

There was one small problem. I use my whole wheat flour so rarely, it went a a bit “off.” I think this is the reason white flour was invented. It lasts forever without spoiling. Not sure. Anyway, I need new flour, but the pita was still a thousand times better than any pita I’ve had outside of Israel.

Sometimes when things go right, you’re worse off than when they go wrong. I cook so many things well now, I am constantly surrounded by temptation. And I have the willpower of Amy Winehouse.

I guess you’ll want to know what I did.

I looked briefly at a web recipe, which you can find here. Then I ignored it, mostly. I stole the baking technique.

INGREDIENTS

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tbsp. gluten (my all-purpose flour is pretty weak)
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. sugar
2 tbsp. olive oil
6 ounce water
1 tbsp. dry yeast

This is very much like my pizza dough. I dissolved the sugar in the water, which I had heated for 20 seconds in a microwave. I added the yeast, dissolved it, and waited for it to foam. I put the other ingredients in the food processor and blended them quickly. I set a timer for 3 minutes and turned it on. I turned on the food processor. I poured the yeast mixture in slowly, waiting for the flour to form a coherent glob. Turned out I needed more water; I think whole wheat flour is thirstier than all-purpose.

When it formed a glob, I quit adding water. This was at about 2:20. I blended until 1:20. Then I formed the dough into a ball and put it in an oiled dish to rise. I preheated the oven and baking stone to 400.

When the dough was nice and puffed up, I divided it into six pieces. I rolled three pieces into flat circles, using as little flour as I could. The circles were very thin; each one was around 6″ in diameter. I tossed them on the stone and baked for three minutes or so. I turned them to get them toastier on the top side, and they were out by five minutes. I baked the others the same way. They were perfect. They come out with a little flour on them, but you can knock it off.

This would be really good if you could sour the dough.

Reader sent me a funny photo. Remember me worrying about squibs in a revolver? This is apparently what happens, if you don’t notice that the bullets aren’t leaving the gun. I have to wonder what would happen if you had a few squibs in an automatic weapon.

My Hobbies

Breakfast has been delayed this morning, due to a combination of adventuresome…ness…and laziness. I had no pita in the house when I got up, so I decided to try and make some. Anything to avoid going to the store. It will probably be another 45 minutes before I find out if I succeeded.

I think I should put up a post at Manly Grub, exposing myself as a tremendous fraud and hypocrite. I should put up a photo of the breakfast I eat five days a week. Piles of fresh vegetables, pita bread, cottage cheese, sour cream, hummus, and boiled eggs. The only things in there that are even slightly unhealthy are the eggs and sour cream.

What am I supposed to do? If I ate good food every day, my BMI would be a googol. So I eat crap. Rabbit food. Shh. Don’t tell anyone.

On Saturday, I fully intend to have a mouth-watering Mickey D’s breakfast, to get the salad taste out of my mouth. And I plan to make a pizza this weekend. Until then, I will suffer.

I can’t understand how Mickey D’s makes such great breakfasts. Their other food is just sort of okay. If they quit making McMuffins and bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits, I am going to have to kill myself. There is no sound alternative. I have to have my biscuits and McMuffins, and I have to dip them in a big glob of Hunt’s ketchup while I eat.

There is something addictive in that Mickey D’s grease. It’s not like bacon grease. It’s not like butter, lard, or Crisco. Maybe it’s lithium grease. That would explain the mood-elevating effect.

An hour after eating this stuff, I get a headache and feel depressed. Maybe it’s an MSG thing. But even though I’m depressed, I’m happy. Because I’m depressed for a good reason.

You can be depressed and happy. The hippies tell us you can have global warming while temperatures drop all over the world. If that’s true, I can be depressed and happy.

A reader told me to put butter beans in my hummus to make it smoother. I thought he was high, but it works. This week I used one can of cheapo garbanzos plus a can of Winn-Dixie store brand butter beans. And the hummus is very good. I was too lazy to cook the garlic before adding it, but it doesn’t seem to matter. I’ll give you the ingredients again.

2 cans garbanzo beans, drained OR 1 can garbanzos, 1 can butter beans
juice of 2-3 lemons
several cloves garlic, pressed
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon salt
2-3 tablespoons tahini
hot peppers (seeded) or hot sauce to taste
2-3 tbsp. olive oil

I think that’s right. I just blast it in the food processor. If it’s too dry, I put back some of the water from the beans.

Thank God I like vegetables. Maybe they will in some way balance the other junk I eat.

I’m hoping to slap another 50 rounds of .357 ammunition together today and hit the gun range. I haven’t gone in two weeks. The weather and other factors have deterred me. I can’t wait to take the new old 27-2 out and see what it can do. I just hope I don’t have any squibs. I think I’ll take some .40 S&W ammunition and a Glock, just in case.

Deliberately

I am behind on acknowledging blog reviews and links for Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man – The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook. Sorry. I’m going to catch up.

I just got a great review from TC, over at Beer in the Headlights. Read it and find out what you’re missing.

Thanks, TC.

Unless Lying Would be Better

If you love me, and you love Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man – The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook, take a minute and write an Amazon review. Be sure to use the link to the new book, not the old one.

And for God’s sake, don’t try to buy the old version.

Try not to Drool

I never thought I’d sink this low. I am now a purveyor of pornography. I am putting up a gallery of food photos over at Manly Grub.

It’s very slow work. Only two albums up.

Hold Onto Your Sitemeters

I have been blogrolling people at Manly Grub. I have to type the entries in one at a time, so expect it to take a solar year.

Not Happening

I give up on store cheese. This is my second pizza topped with bagged dairy-aisle cheese, and they both tasted a bit like vinyl. The deli cheese was much better, and the cost was roughly the same. With toppings, questionable cheese is okay. Without, the flaws are too obvious. The deli cheese was oily, but the texture and flavor were magnificent.

I still can’t believe how much you have to water commercial pizza sauce down. If it’s thick enough to hold a small peak, it will be overpowering. Like ketchup.

Adding one tablespoon of gluten to two cups of flour killed the tossing problems.

Putting whole-milk cheese over part-skim cheese reduced the burning, but it didn’t eliminate it. Interesting effort, in any case.

Now someone, come take the rest of that gallon can of sauce away.

Do I Still Got It?

This will surprise you. I decided to make a pizza for lunch.

I was annoyed that the last two were imperfect. I’m supposed to be telling other people how to do this, so I need to stay on top of my game. I might have told someone to toss a pizza crust with no fat in it, and when it looked funny, my grand reputation would have suffered.

I stuck some olive oil in the dough this time. I’m also going to try my trick of mixing part-skim and whole-milk cheeses, with the whole-milk cheese on the top to reduce burning. Wonder if that will work.

I wish I had Mike’s confidence with tossed crusts. He knows no fear. He throws them around like they stole something. But he had to eat maybe a ton of pizza to develop that skill.

He makes a really neat crust. I can’t remember whether I Youtubed it. His crust has a big roll around the outside, and the inside is a film. When it cooks, the inside part is very, very thin, but you get a big balloony handle to hold it with. I love that. Wimps who refuse to eat crust wouldn’t like it, but I do.

I also consulted my book for the sauce recipe. I’ve tried so many, they run together in my head.

I’ll let you know if it’s any good. I have done well with Sargento cheese in the past, but it was combined with toppings, and toppings make bad cheese seem better.

Catastrophe

I am starting to think this flour is just too low in gluten to form into a decent pizza. I bought all-purpose Martha White, figuring it would be good for biscuits. Ordinarily, all-purpose flour for biscuits makes a fine pizza, but this stuff may be too extreme. I can’t figure it out. The crust started holing on me at 10″.

I give up. I added a tablespoon of gluten to the next batch.

I made a few rolls with the failed dough. Very nice.

Don’t Forget the Oil

It’s amazing how helpful it is to write down your recipes.

On Saturday and Sunday, I made pizza, with hand-tossed crusts. And I had a couple of problems. The main problem was that the surface of the crusts dried out as I worked it, giving a peculiar texture and increasing the probability of holes. I also forgot to add vinegar to the first batch of sauce. It was still very good, but it’s hard to believe I forgot.

I generally like oil-free crusts. I think pizza should be a little leathery, and withholding oil does the trick. But I started making oil-free crusts back when I was rolling pies out with a pin. A pin won’t let the surface of the dough dry and break up. I guess it mashes the dry bits on the surface against the wetter bits inside, and you end up with a smooth crust. When you toss a crust, you don’t get that effect, so you can have problems. From now on, I’m putting oil in my tossed crusts. I think this information is in the book, but I didn’t remember it until the pies were made. The pizzas were still good, but they were not as pretty as they should have been. And I had one crust tear so badly, I gave up on it and made rolls out of it.

I think you absolutely have to have oil in your dough when you make rolls. A pizza has a lot of stuff on it that compensates for a lack of oil in the crust, but you don’t want to bite into a roll and taste oil-free dough.

Yesterday’s pie was experimental. I wanted to try part-skim mozzarella mixed with whole-milk provolone. I made a pizza on Saturday, using whole-milk cheeses, and it was a little oilier than I wanted, so I thought I’d see what cutting the oil in the mozzarella did. It wasn’t that great. The cheese burned in some areas because it lacked fat. And the texture was not as good as sliced whole-milk deli cheese. The mozzarella I used was bagged Sargento cheese, and the provolone was Land O’ Lakes sliced cheese.

Now I wonder: what if I put mozzarella on the pie and then covered it with a thin layer of provolone? The high-fat provolone should prevent the cheese from burning.

I can’t remember whether I tried different temperatures when I was writing the book. Some people seriously recommend 425 degrees, which would reduce burning, but maybe their recipes are no good. And maybe they recommend lower heat because they use bad cheese.

I don’t know. Sooner or later, you have to say a recipe is finished. You can’t keep working on it forever. I’ve made one great pie after another. That’s good enough.

I had some interesting thoughts about guns this weekend. Last week I realized that the notion that longer barrels were more accurate didn’t really make sense. At least, the idea that a longer barrel provides better guidance doesn’t make sense. You may not understand this if you don’t think like a physicist or an engineer, but it should be obvious to people with the right background. A bullet is in very tight contact with a barrel, right up to the muzzle. If there are directional deviations in the parts of the barrel before the bullet gets near the muzzle, they will be completely erased by the last inch or so. Think about it. Say a bullet is headed in a certain direction two inches before it reaches the muzzle, and then there is a bend in the barrel, amounting to a fraction of a degree. What’s the bullet going to do? It can’t keep moving in the original direction. It would have to go through the side of the barrel to do that. It will have to change direction and adopt the path forced on it by the last two inches. You would expect the last part of the barrel to determine the direction the bullet takes.

Again, this will be a tough thing for people who gave up science after high school to understand. I’m trying to make it as obvious as possible. Either you see it or you don’t. One of the great frustrations of physics is the difficulty of explaining things to stubborn lay people who are positive their wrong ideas are right. My mother went to high school with a girl who said it was possible to exceed the speed of light, because she was able to turn off her bedroom light and get in bed before the room got dark.

I Googled around, and sure enough, I found a page in which a gun expert said he shot very small groups at fifty yards, using 3/4″ of rifling. I suppose you still have to have a certain amount of length, to get the velocity up, but it looks like added length doesn’t help guide the bullet.

So I started to wonder. What was the point in having any twist at all in the first half of a barrel? You would think it would add resistance to the bullet’s motion. I wondered why it wasn’t possible to make a barrel with rifling that was straight up to a certain point, with the twist added toward the end. You’d think the bullet would gain velocity faster, due to the lower resistance, and you’d get a more efficient gun.

This idea has been rolling around in my head since Saturday.

It occurred to me that maybe a bullet can’t take the stress of a sudden twist, when it’s already moving fast. Maybe it would come apart, or maybe it would slow down to the point where you could blow up a barrel. That led me to wonder whether it was possible to make a barrel with a progressive twist. It could be nearly straight at the breech, and then it could turn faster as you approach the muzzle.

I don’t know. This stuff is really interesting. I know that if I knew where to Google, I’d find that all of these ideas have already been considered.

Anyway, now I believe I understand how my short-barreled Glock 26 can be as accurate as my 1911s.

I think I may get the crown on my Smith & Wesson 686+ done. Since the last part of the barrel is so critical, I would like to have a recessed crown I can’t ding up. And God knows what I’ve already done to it in the past, with cleaning rods.

Nothing with guns is simple, I guess.