Thanksgiving Cooking Notes

Very much in the vein of last year, and following on from previous year. 6 adults on Saturday, plus kids, one of whom eats as an adult now.

Friday:

• chestnut dressing, same as last year except added some ceps and oyster mushrooms browned in butter.
• green bean casserole (same as last year)
• poached turkey legs in goose fat, also did 4 chicken legs with them for good measure
• roasted and made stock (onions, garlic, celery, bay leaf) out of the back of the turkey

Saturday:

• made brownies (with pecans), same as last year
• made gravy by thickening turkey stock with a roux
• roasted the turkey (5.6kg whole), as last year, 45 minutes back up at 220C, then flipped and cooked at 200C until done, then rested for 30+ minutes
• mashed potatoes (about 5 lbs worth; butter, double cream)
• while turkey was resting, heated at 180C+fan: dressing (uncovered), green beans (uncovered), legs (covered)
• JJ made fresh cranberry salad

Timing worked out great. Turkey turned out really well. There was plenty for everyone and enough for leftovers.

School of Bruce

All rockstars should be Bruce Springsteen. Seriously, is it too late to sign Keith & Mick up for some remedial tutoring?

Still waiting for the NFL to make an edict that all superbowl halftime shows must either be Bruce or be a marching band.

chicken wings

After occasional cravings, I finally took a stab at making buffalo-style chicken wings. Turned out to be incredibly easy. Prepping the wings is simple if you've got a knife with a bit of rigor to it. I went with baking instead of frying. They'd probably be a bit better fried, this worked great. Overcook on a rack in a roasting tin (I went 200C for maybe an hour or so), most skinful side up, and finish under the broiler to really crisp up the skins if they're not crackling enough for you. Toss hot in large bowl with sauce, which, simply enough, is a tabasco, melted butter, and white wine vinegar mix at (officially) 5:4:1 ratio. Unofficially I just mix roughly equal parts of melted butter and tabasco and then put a splash of vinegar in. Mix then toss (don't skimp!) piping-hot wings in a bowl, serve, eat.

F1 goes ficto-futuristic

Armored cars, gun-toting bandits... yes, somewhat insane, but maybe it's only a matter of time before we get to see kung-fu fighting in the pit lane.

What a Relief!

Oklahoma passed an anti-Sharia law. Phew! That must've been a close call for them. Next up: I'm proposing ballot initiatives to ban monsters under my bed.

NFL Getting Harder To Watch

The quantity and extent of injuries seems to get worse every year. An unofficial count puts the number of consussions this season so far (and we're not even halfway through) at 46. And long-term health data indicates most NFL players will end up with long-term health problems and shortened lives (and not just the ones with brain damage from concussions). Being party to that weighs on the conscience more heavily each season.

Football is the most telegenic sport out there [while porn is at the front of the adoption curve for many entertainment-related technologies, I think football was the driver behind early adoption of HDTV in the US], but I'm not sure it can be saved. Size, speed, and specialization have increased to the point that it's unlikely any rule changes or further equipment development will make any difference. In the mid-80s, "the fridge" was a novelty because he was over 300 pounds. Today Chicago has at least 11 players on the roster over 300 lbs, and that's typical, if not slightly small, for NFL teams. And the big guys have gotten faster. The big guys are the ones who can barely walk by age 50 with neck, spine, hip, and joint injuries. The smaller guys are concussing themselves into permanent brain damage. Players like to puff themselves up with blabber about it being a man's game and all. Now that I'm older, and a dad, this comes off as youthful bravado, and I can't help wondering how much strut the same guys will have a decade or two after playing, when walking properly or living without pain on a daily basis might be the biggest challenge.

What can fix it? Better equipment won't do it. Some rules changes would help (e.g. eliminating the 3-point stance). The only real solution is to get rid of the protective equipment. The consequence of the equipment has been greater injuries. (Rugby has vastly fewer injuries than the NFL. It's not as telegenic, but it's close enough to football in some aspects to be instructive. And yes, they play all-out in a rough, manly way despite there being rules about what types of tackles are dangerous and disallowed.) But moving away from a technology-based solution is so un-American that this will never happen.

Are You Feeling Sorry For Him Yet?

I love it when well-off folks threaten to work less because of taxes. Hilarious! I especially enjoy the weaselrific use of "in effect". Let me see if I can do that, too. If I were taxed less, I'd have an extra dollar to win the lottery, which would yield my children tens of millions of dollars. But instead they get nothing. In effect, my family's absolute [let alone marginal!] tax rate is thus virtually 100%! How demotivating. I think I'll work less. Or switch jobs to one better for tax avoidance.

A Slow Chili

A few weeks ago I made confit of beef cheek -- poached, pulled, and potted. Still getting great returns on the holiday goose fat. Sunday I roasted a variety of fresh chilies, tomatoes, and garlic, and then cooked them with some more onions, garlic, tomatoes until I had a fairly thick paste. Got it to a fine consistency in the food processor, then broke out the jar of beef and folded them together. The beef was incredibly tender and rich, a nice offset to the sharp/sweet/spicey roasted chili paste, yet they blended well and settled in to make a very nice dish.

Adobe & Microsoft? Please no!

Despite my loathing of flash-based websites (which long predates the Jobsian jihad on Flash), I really like Adobe. They are one of the best ever large development shops. Adobe Lightroom is in my apps hall of fame. Recent rumours of an acquisition by Microsoft are now fading. Let's hope they dissolve completely. I can't imagine a happy partnership. Adobe's more Apple-like on focus on functionality, while Microsoft is a monument to mediocrity and bloat. 

(Although microsoft does in fact produce some astonishingly good technology, mostly in the realm of dev tools and core technologies. One of the great mysteries is how the same place can craft such great stuff for software development and then develop such awful software.)

More Trains On The Way

I'm disappointed by the estimated three more years until this is operational, but will be great to take a single high-speed rail line from London to Frankfurt.  I'm also dreaming of a revival of sleeper service trains, having now enjoyed such to Edinburgh and Penzance. A proper sleeper service from London to, say, Zermatt, or Berlin. Now there's a dream.

Scanner!

I ponied up for a good one, a Fujitsu S1500M. Despite free delivery from the UK version of buy.com, it arrived less than 20 hours after ordering(!), and I've set it up and started scanning. I still expect devices such as this to be rickety and error-prone. So far, it is vastly exceeding my expectations. It is slick, quick, and does pretty much exactly what I want it to do. And I've used the included software to set my default profile to one that automatically shunts scans directly into evernote. So I put a doc in the feed try, press one button, and a few seconds later I have a new pdf in evernote. I've scanned some old school reports from the boys, one of which was A4 on thick stock, color printing, comb bound. After pulling out of the binding, I dropped it in and pushed the futuristic blue scan button. It automagically performed dual-sided scanning. Another was on thin A5, stapled, with some bent corners. No problem. So far, it just works.

Virtual document archival is a problem I've been pondering for years. Seems like a good time to be able to sort it finally.

Zero History

Gibson's latest: highly recommended. Good to read Pattern Recognition and Spook Country beforehand, but not mandatory. In fact, I read Spook Country first, then PR, now ZH. Was a bit sad getting near the end, as I suspect the characters won't be appearing in any further books. But well worth it. Does not edge Spook Country off its pedestal for sheer brilliance (reading that was pure revelatory bliss) but not far off. Charming and a pleasure to read.