Confirmation Bias: A Dominant Factor In Nutrition Blogging

I had a lot to say on this topic, but can't quite pull it together into coherent writing yet, and haven't had time to do so. Didn't want the title to go to waste. The tempest in a teapot nature of subject-specific blogscape is sometimes amusing, sometimes just silly and tedious. But hey, I loves me some confirmation bias as next as the next guys, so party on, Garth.

Anyway, on a somewhat unrelated subject, I'm more recently on a mission to get some folks I know to stop taking statins. But I don't want to succumb to confirmation bias and am willing to admit I might be wrong. Anyone have a pubmed reference to a study actually showing all-causes mortality benefits of statin use for men in their seventies? Anyone?  Bueller...? Didn't think so. (What about life expectancy for men over 70 with really low total cholesterol? Whoops....)

Butchering Half A Pig

I recently had a go at butchering half of a dressed pig carcass. Various relatives-in-law had raised 3 pigs this year. They got up to slaughtering weight while I was there on holiday. They were taken to a small processing place to get turned from live pigs into frozen packages of various cuts and sausage, but my father-in-law was kind enough to have them reserve half a carcass for me to work on.

It was fun. Quite gratifying. Harder than it looks but easier than you think. I first separated the tenderloin (and the kidney), then cut the ham off. Then split the remainder of the carcass lengthwise, leaving the belly side and the loin side. Cut the front shoulder & spareribs off and split that up into smaller cuts. Cut the hock off the ham. Separated some ribs from the belly to leave a bacon-ready cut. Cut a stack of chops then separated the rest of the loin into ribs and a boneless loin.

Rendered a couple big jars of beautiful, pure, white lard from various fat bits I cut off. Trimmed the loin and the chops to yield quite a lot of lovely, firm back fat. Made a nice pate out of the liver. The sausage turned out well. The pork chops were great. Lots of folks sampling quality pork for perhaps the first time. It's supposed to have flavor! These were happy pigs, well raised in a good-sized outdoor foresty pen, fed organic meal with lots of supplemental offcuts from the large vegetable garden.

Day 1: butchered the carcass, including some rough cuts for sausage, rendered some lard, made a rustic pate out of the liver. Pork chops for dinner.

Day 2: made 9 lbs of sausage, started the belly curing into bacon

2 Wallet Strategy

As noted a few months ago, I gave up on carrying my old leather wallet. I've been using a vastly thinner wallet for a while now and it's great. I use the Big Skinny "World bifold" wallet. Love it. Holds 7 cards, one of which in a clear pocket (for ID if desired) and money, plus you can tuck addl cards into it if needed. I rarely use all 7 individual card slots so not an issue. Even fully loaded, it is almost 2D compared to the old beast. I still use the old wallet as a storage wallet. It holds the cards and such that I don't need on a given day. I generally don't need to switch on a daily basis. This mostly comes into play on international trips, on which I may need a different set of cards and IDs than I normally would need with me. So I pack the storage-wallet and wear the carry-wallet. Overall, much more comfortable, lighter, flatter, more flexible, looks better. Recommended.

Gulf Coast SPFathon

I get sunburned if a single photon lands on exposed skin. Spending a week at 30 degrees north in August not the best environment for me, but I didn't want to spend all day indoors, so I tried an extensive range of sunscreens. Least favorite: nutragena spf 110. I forget the exact name, but it was supposedly sweatproof, but that was not my experience. Coppertone Sport Ultra Sweatproof lotion was the reliable go-to product -- worked well even in the water and sweating. Generally I used spf 50. They make an spf100 spray that is basically like coating yourself with a layer of polyurethane or really good furniture wax. Weird and hard to get off later, but seemed to work ok. My overall favourite, although not nearly as cost effective as the coppertone sport, was Bullfrog Marathon Mist Continuous Spray (spf 50). I would go through half a bottle in a single application, but it went on quick and easy, worked well, felt ok going on and smelled ok as well. Expensive but good.

Gulf Coast

Down in the redneck riviera. Very encouraging: loads of life in the water. Lots of big blue crabs (surprisingly scuttling around in the water on the gulf side, normally they are more likely to be found in the bay side), fish of all shapes and sizes -- catfish, ladyfish, spanish mackerel, and many others. Even some dolphins.

UPDATE: also swam with a southern stingray, shovelnose guitarfish, and some bigger fish that looked like sheepshead. Plus a bunch of smaller ones I couldn't identify.

UPDATE2: the bad news: conspicuously absent are the donax, little clams that always used to be everywhere here. They are supposedly quite sensitive to pollution.

Brew Britainnia: Better Late Than Never

British brewing is about 20 years behind the US. In the past few decades, the US has witnessed a thriving and maturing brewing scene. The enthusiasm has been both broad and deep. The canonical brew, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, is what I'd call an APA, an American Pale Ale. But the market has not limited itself to even a narrow range of styles. Everything's been fair game -- from Belgianesque ales to wheat beers to fruit beers to light lagers to all manner of porter and stout. Beers invented in Britain but not brewed here for a long time were revitalized in the US and are finally being picked back up by British brewers (thanks to Will Hawkes for excellent coverage).

Seems to me that cheap lagers have been eating the lunch of the brit bitter brewers. Why so much complacency? Hard to say. I was astonished in the 90s to see so much budweiser in the isles. Would it have killed the breweries to put out some decent lagers, properly chilled? They really only have themselves to blame. And CAMRA needs to share the blame. Cask-conditioned "real" ales are a fine thing and worthy of preservation, but all that enthusiasm so narrowly directed, while opportunity after opportunity passed by ungrasped.... The same enthusiasm in the US translated into support of the whole craft of brewing, even for the "unreal" avenues. The brewers were slow to adapt. The enthusiasts too dogmatic. The decline of the pub has been well-documented, but beermakers were way too slow to respond to competition from bars and slow to push into the home market. Craft brewing sells well in the US. Is this because there's been a craze for "pubs" sweeping the states? Err, no. Not at all.

Fortunately, the long idiotic slumber of the British Brewer seems to be ending. Inspired by their American Cousins, they are churning out new beers, new types, new marketing efforts. And small brewers are popping up! Not regional ones that simply churn out a localized bitter (yawn), but ones showing a bit of wit and creativity. As with the US in the early 90s, it won't all work. Some will be in it for marketing rather than for the craft (long ago famously labelled "markebrewers" as opposed to "microbrewers" by my friend Zim, no shabby homebrewer himself). But many are diving in for love of the craft and it's about time!

First, please bring on the APAs! They are good cold. I hear that refrigeration is sweeping the nation here in the UK, and many homes hope to have these new-fangled devices before too long. Beer is good with food. You can buy beer in bottles, put these in your "fridge", and have them at hour leisure. You don't have to belly up to the pub rail with bearded blokes and tedious dipsticks like James May to enjoy a good beer. Uncap your cold, carbonated ales, pour your ports, let loose your lagers, stock up on your stouts! "Were they the sons of tea-sippers, who won the fields of Cressy and Agincourt, or dyed the Danube's streams with Gallic blood?" Hell no, they were beer drinkers!

Some signs of the change

Sign from a nice little boozer on Goldsmith Row, in Hackney. Not a posh pub, not a posh area, but SNPA! Even more surprising, Brooklyn Brown!! British breweries should be embarrassed.

Brodies -- an East End brewer in Leyton. Their Seven Hop IPA is nearly great. It's hopped to American levels, would make Three Floyds proud, but the big flaw is that it's well over 7%, halfway to a barley wine! Too strong. Keep the hops but dial it down a couple notches and this could be remarkable.

Camden beers are solid. I'm also enjoying Meantime Pale Ale from, you guessed it, a Greenwich brewer that seems to make consistently good beers.

Small brewer from Bermondsey. To be honest, this tasted like a so-so homebrew effort, bit sour and flat but with potential. Happy to support them because London needs more brewers.

Proof that the beerpocalypse is upon us. Yes, an "American Double IPA"... with a TESCO label! Holy mother of hops. I prefer my APA term, but "American Double IPA" works. Or, it would work if this weren't completely undrinkable. It's 9.2%! Seriously, it's undrinkable. Good hops but if you actually make a barleywine you need to round it off a bit. How did they brew this? Or did they just pour vodka into a stolen case of Anchor Liberty Ale and rebottle it? But hey, if this isn't a kick up the backside to the big British brewers, nothing is. Get on with it!

Bacon #2

Simple cure with maple, hot-smoked over hickory. Success! Curious now about cold-smoking. But even after hot-smoking, was nice sliced and fried.

Holy Smokes

Rural South in the US displays vast diversity of quality of food on offer. On the one hand the cheapest, most horrid, engineered, factory-extruded not-really-food food is available in abundance. On the other hand, I found a really nice unpasteurised organic cheddar at a regular grocery store. On the third hand, some of the finest fresh produce, fish, game, etc. can be easily and cheaply gotten. Had some freshly caught bluegill the other night. Loads of homegrown tomatoes. And a fantastic hickory-smoked chicken that was organically raised by our relatives here.

Speaking of hickory smoke, we also just finished a successful canadian bacon experiment, using a huge (and cheap, this was not a high-quality piece of meat) pork loin that we brine-cured (with, among other things, bunches of fresh sage and thyme from the garden) and then smoked. Turned out great. Disappeared quickly. Next up: a maple cured and hot-smoked bacon. Procuring the pork belly was harder than I expected, doesn't seem to be a common cut here for some reason, but we got one and it's curing now.

Amsterdam Travel Report

Thanks (again) to seat61.com, had a successful mission to Amsterdam in which getting there was part of the fun instead of something to dread. Took the train from London to Harwich -- relatively fast train from liverpool street station to manningtree, then an easy switch to Harwich International. We arrived a few minutes before boarding opened for the Stena Line ferry. A bit after 20:30 we were onboard, for a 23:15 sailing. The cabin was great. Comfy beds with nice bedding -- better than many hotels I've stayed at. Good sized window plus an en suite with a good shower. Another hit: TV with satellite channels plus some onboard cams -- fore & aft along with a puppy cam on the pet kennel. Cute.

We had a late dinner in the a la carte restaurant. The food wasn't all that good but miles better than airplane food and a lot more pleasant. Might've been better in one of the other restaurants on board. Had a really good sleep and then a buffet breakfast, which was much better far then the dinner. It's an early breakfast. Next time we'll eat dinner before boarding and get to sleep earlier, still going for the breakfast.

Exiting into the Netherlands was really easy, and moments later we were on a short train towards Rotterdam. Switched to a train into Amsterdam, walked to the hotel but it was quite early in the day still. Stayed at the Ambassade Hotel. The staff were friendly and welcoming, the room spacious and comfortable, and the breakfast the next morning was great. Lovely place.

Had a really nice time in Amsterdam. Sunday went home by ICE train from Amsterdam to Brussels, and eurostar from there. The ICE train was great -- good a/c, roomy, comfortable seats. Eurostar was annoying as always. The only good thing about the eurostar is the journey time. Checking in as if it were an airplane is pointless and infuriating. You end up stuck in a shitty waiting area with overpriced crappy choices for food. Train travel should be about walking up to the thing moments before it leaves, having wandered around a hopping train station or local neighbourhood to dine or amuse yourself prior to your departure time. Instead you get a little waiting room hell experience. Then the train itself is unfailingly stuffy and cramped. Bleh. It's a lot better than flying still, but we decided we'd much rather spend a few more hours on the return trip and go back by the boat again (the day boat, even).

Shabby HVAC

The British seem oddly incompetent when it comes to getting air the right temperature. My office building, not even 30 years old, is routinely too hot or too cold. This despite an external temperature range that is not excessively broad over the course of a year. Tubes are notoriously stuffy. There are brand new buses on the route I take to work and they come with ventilation in the upper deck. Not air conditioning, just powered ventilation. It seems to make no difference whatsoever, except to be really loud. 78 decibels! For no benefit. This would be unacceptable in Germany, but maybe somebody here is proud of this great advancement in bus riding discomfort (there's also a curved rail on the stairs, which makes no sense, but I might save that rant for another post).

Fireplaces are done well here, but anything involving forced air ends up a bit of a crapshoot.

Apps Update: Evernote, Omnifocus

I'm still really liking Evernote. Well worth the price for the premium edition. Glad to see they are doing well and raising more money. Maybe with that warchest they can buy Omni Group, if for no other reason than to integrate (the excellent on iPad) Omni Focus with Evernote. That seems to be a much-requested feature that's more down to Evernote's not providing easy (e.g. URI) access to notes than to any shortcoming of Omni Focus.

Virtual Planespotting

My new favorite app: planefinder/planefinder HD. Immensely gratifying geek credibility enhancement moment: displaying type, heading, speed, altitude, route, airline, recent path, and, if available, some snapped photos of the actual plane that's just interrupted your conversation by flying overhead.