Here is the money quote:
“If I see three or four young black men walking down the street, I have to stop them and check their names,” said Mills, who is white. “I want them to be afraid every time they see the police that they might get arrested.
— Homer Police Chief Russell Mills
I just finished making beef stock for the first time. It smells amazing and is nice and gelatinous. I wanted to drink a cup of it but refrained, for now. The pure white layer of fat that congealed at the top was beautiful. I saved the fat, not sure what to do with it though, it seemed a shame to toss it.
The stock was cloudy, I am not sure if I should be worried about this or not. I basically made it the way Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall describes in his The River Cottage Meat Book (a fantastic book BTW).
I started with 2 marrow bones, then roasted about 5lbs of misc beef bones (neck mainly) in the oven, to this I added my collection of beef trimmings, maybe about 4 lbs of meat, sinew, and fat. I added a handful of bay leaves, carrots, celery, and onion. I had it at a tremulous simmer for about 6 hours. I then cooled in an icy water bath and stuck in the fridge overnight. I defatted it this morning and put it in 2 cp portions into the freezer.
I am planning on making a French style Pot Roast (Boeuf à la mode) today and using some of the stock for the sauce. I am using a recipe from Cooks Illustrated that uses unflavored gelatin and bacon in place of the calves foot and lardons respectively. Cooks Illustrated usually is pretty good with these streamlined braises so my hopes are high. I will try my damndest to post tomorrow with a post mortem on the dish.
Sometimes big decisions by others force you into making big decisions of your own. After 12 years of slinging code in the software industry (all with crazy start ups) I am leaving my career. After much deliberation, hand wringing, number crunching, and other such stuff, my wife and I have decided to make some major life changes. First, I am not going back to work in the foreseeable future (maybe some small freelance stuff here and there, but that is it), my wife has upped her consulting hours (behavior analysis/modification for children with autism) and will be the bread winner. She will be able to keep her hours down so that she still gets time with our two wonderful kids.
This also means that we will have to make budget cuts (now if only we could get the god damned government to do the same!). One of our largest expenses is Montessori school for our oldest son. We have loved having him there but we think that we will like having him at home even more. Yes, we are going to homeschool our kids. Seems crazy to many I am sure but we really feel that this is the right answer for our family. Public school sucks and private school, besides being hideously expensive, is really just a better version of public schooling. The attitude that it is all about preparing for college, preparing to become a cog in the machine, is not what we are after. I want my kids to learn to learn, love to learn, and not feel that their path forward is riding the rails of cookie-cutter American success. So look for more home schooling (unschooling?) blogging.
My last bit is about food. I love food. I love cooking it, reading about it, watching it being made/eaten, and eating it myself. I have spent the last 12 years exploring food primarily through the wealth of great restaurants that we have here in the Northern Virginia area (only secondarily via my whim driven dabbling in cooking). Eating out is expensive. A tighter budget means less eating out. Which also means more eating at home. More cooking, more exploration, more getting my hands in it and my head around it. I am really loving this aspect of being “Mr. Mom”. I have been baking (cookies, bread, pizza), curing meat, creating my own “recipes”, mixing, matching, and melding flavors, all while providing a meal for my family. My freezers are full of stock, bones, chunks, cubes, sausage, etc… (all examples of meat thrift a concept seemingly lost in this age of cheap meat). I definitely want to blog more about this. Maybe when the kids are a bit older I can even start a new career in food.
I bought 2 ~9lb pork shoulders (blade). These broke down into:
I also bought a ~12lb pork belly. It broke down into:
This is some thing that I found in my scraps folder on my hard drive… I think that it must have been inspired by a contest that Weird Tales magazine held:
March 6, 1925
Dear Sir,
I am writing this letter to you in the hopes that it finds you in the greatest of moods. The news that my mail carries to your promised ears is to be the news that is good to us all. Before I ramble on in my own way let me take a time to introduce myself, I am Hutulc Thanafg, a former ambassador’s son of most upstanding. My father has passed on to the world of the beyond; he puffs his pipe with the spirits of the land. In this death he has left me the key to the thing which you call that thing which shall not be named. I am sure that you have heard of this and I need not mention any more the import of what it is that I am saying. This provides us with an opportunity of unequaled providence. I only need some bits of information before I can engage you in a time that will be unforgettable to you and your family.
I trust in you that the key to that which is unnameable will be guarded with all your appendages. Without this I can not promise to you that the deal that we will enter will be a wonderful deal for you. As I made mention of earlier, all I need is some details of your home address, bank post information, and the location of your first born son. With this information in hand I can make post haste the arrangements to have the key sent to you across the expanse of the ocean. It is hard for me to imagine losing sight of the key but your name has been recommended to me by those in the positions of the highest standing in my country. I know that you will not do anything other than protect the key until my imminent arrival in the United States. For this small favor I offer to you the sum of $5 million dollars to be deposited in the account linked from the information requested above.
Looking forward to your fondest reply,
Hutulc Thanafg
———————————
March 16, 1925
Mr Thanafg,
How can I let this opportunity pass me by? Please find enclosed the details that you requested. If you need anything else please write me as soon as you can. I am waiting.
Patiently Yours,
H.A. Wilcox
———————————
March 21, 1925
Sir Wilcox,
With this letter the key that was mentioned before shall be found. Please guard it and let it not from your sight.
Graciously yours,
Hutulc
———————————
March 24, 1925
Hutulc,
What I have done? How can I right the wrongs of my curious ways? Hutulc, it is only you that I can turn to in this darkest hour. Please help me…
HAW
———————————
April 3, 1925
Foolish Mortal,
You have failed. Your ancestors will rue the day that you used that key to unleash my indescribable horror. I will escape this dark continent and claim the flesh of your children and the wilted flower of your wife as my own.
Hutulc
Are there finer words to be found on the website of your local Latin grocery store then these?
We sell whole pigs, whole lambs and whole goats, anything edible on a cow or pig is for sale in our meat shop.
I have been obsessed with the craft of charcuterie for nearly a year. This obsession has been purely theoretical up to this point, in that I have only read about it and eaten the end products and not actually done it myself. As of last Sunday I moved from theory to practice.
I bought 3 pork tenderloins, stuck them in some salt and brown sugar for about 15 hours, then created a rub consisting of cognac, herbes de Provence, and cracked black pepper, and finally wrapped them in cheesecloth, tied them and hung them up in my basement. Here we are at day 5 and they smell wonderful and none of them have reanimated!
The idea and the recipe are from the book Chez Jacques with further inspiration from the excellent food blog The Paupered Chef.
