Monthly Archive for January, 2008

Thing-a-Day

Published
by
beef
on January 31, 2008
in Entertainment
. 0 Comments

Ed sent me this link - thing-a-day

You create one thing a day for the entire month of February and post it on the shared blog. If you see this before midnight, Jan 31, give it a try.

We’ll see what wackiness ensues. I’ll post links from time to time with my various posts. And if you can imagine it - i’ll post under beef.

SadRobot and Prettypirate are two other friends that I know are going to try it.

EDIT: Here’s February 1 - Comic Strip

Shows 2008

Published
by
beef
on January 29, 2008
in Music
. 0 Comments

1/29 - Orgone - Nectar

2/12 - Super Furry Animals - Neumo’s

3/22 - Dengue Fever - Neumo’s

3/26 - Vampire Weekend - Neumo’s

4/18 - blitzen trapper/fleet foxes - Neumo’s

5/2 - Tim and Eric’s Awesome Tour - Neumo’s

7/12-13 - SupPop20 - Marymoor Park

7/13 - King Khan and the Shrines - Tractor Tavern

7/28 - sharon jones and the dap kings - wooodland park zoo

9/1 - Bumbershoot - Seattle Center

10/3 - Jamie Lidell - Showbox

10/4 - Santogold - Showbox SODO

10/11 - Tokyo Police Club/Mt St Helens Vietnam Band - Nuemo’s

books 2008

Published
by
beef
on January 29, 2008
in Books
. 0 Comments

Twinkie, Deconstructed - Steve Ettlinger

All Tomorrow’s Party - William Gibson

Valiant (The Lost Fleet, Book 4) - Jack Campbell

The Prefect - Allistair Reynolds

Zoe’s Tale - John Scalzi

Agent to the Stars - John Scalzi

Anathem - Neal Stephenson

Saturn’s Children - Charlie Stross

My Mercedes is Not For Sale - Jeroen Van Bergeijk

The Short Bus: A Journey Beyond Normal - Jonathan Mooney

Black Mischief - Evelyn Waugh

upcoming shows

Published
by
beef
on January 27, 2008
in Entertainment and Music
. 2 Comments

a few things i’m looking at going to see this winter/fall - slow going over the holidays so i decided to make an effort to figure out what is coming up in the near future. most these bands will probably have shows in your area. if you can - i would check them out.

1/29 - Orgone - Nectar

2/1 - Crack Sabbath - High Dive

2/12 - Super Furry Animals - Neumo’s

2/13 - Los Amigos Invisibles = Neumo’s

2/22 - Blitzen Trapper - UW Hub

3/9 - The Raveonettes - Neumo’s

3/22 - Dengue Fever - Neumo’s

3/26 - Vampire Weekend - Neumo’s

4/20 - Caribou - Chop Suey

4/24 - Simian Mobile Disco - Chop Suey

i’m also contemplating this shows. i’ve got to listen to a little bit more of them before i make my final determination

4/22 - Hot Chip - Showbox

bread

Published
by
beef
on January 26, 2008
in Food and Good Times
. 5 Comments

as a compliment to my newly acquired meat production skills, i bought a book on bread making called The Bread Bible. I’ve always loved bread. The hard, chewy, flavorful kind. It’s amazing the science behind breadmaking. The right combination of salt, flour, water, and yeast can create vastly different products.

My first attempt is a prosciutto ring loaf. I picked this first as a form of instant gratification. Just mix up the dough, let it rise for an hour or so, and then cook for 30-40 min.

Here is a before the rise

prosciutto ring

Here is a finished product

finished

A good number of the bread recipes require a starter to help the yeast start moving before you add all of the flour and water. You can make the starter, refrigerate it and then use it the next few days to complete the loaf. The first one I’m trying is a ciabatta. Currently, the starter is rising for 12-24 hours. I’ll then stick it in the fridge over night, bring it out an hour before, mix in the rest of the ingredients, let it rise again, bake it and hopefully have a nice ciabatta when I’m done. I post pictures of that when it’s finished.

edit: here’s the ciabatta. It didn’t rise as much as I had hoped but that’s cause it’s freezing in our house. The book suggests having it rise in a room at a temp of 75-80 degrees. Granted the author is working in a kitchen that has action going on all the time. But in the blurry second pic, you can see some of the lattice work like structure the ciabatta is supposed to have.

ciabatta wholly

meat

Published
by
beef
on January 26, 2008
in Food and Good Times
. 3 Comments

Mainly, I was inspired by my trip to Spain this last summer. I’ve always enjoyed cured meats and this trip made me decide to try my hand at this craft. I browsed the internets looking for a good book to help me out. I wanted to start out simple and then try to do something more difficult.

The first book I came across, Cooking By Hand, was a good start. I cjecked it out from the library, read a bit of it. However, my inspiration was lacking as I had to return the book. Being the goofy engineer that I am, I’m comforted by directions and instructions spelled out.

Christmas came around and Megan bought me Cooking by Hand and Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing. This book was incredible. Now that I had a copy of my own, it was time to determine what I wanted to try first.

Due to the quick turnaround time and the short curing process, I was decided to give bacon and pancetta a try. Next, I had to find places to access the required pieces of the process. The main two things I needed were - pork belly and curing salt. Uwajimaya was my source for the pork belly and a small restaurant supply store south of Safeco Field had the curing salt.

Both processes were quite easy. About a 1/4 cup of the curing mix (regular salt, curing salt, and sugar), throw it in a bag in the fridge for a week or so. Remove from the fridge and wash the cure off. The bacon was then smoked for a couple hours in my smoker and the pancetta was rolled into a loaf and then hung to dry for a couple of weeks.

I’ve eaten some bacon I’ve already made. Quite tasty and smoky delicious. I fried some of it up but there wasn’t enough fat/grease released to cook it very well. I baked it the next time which turned out excellent.

The pancetta still has another week to cure. I need to figure out what kind of tasty meal I’m going to include that with.

These pictures show the bacon curing in the fridge and the pancetta hanging in the garage,

pancetta curing bacon

I may move on to sausages and salamis next. I would like to do a prosciutto at some point but I need to figure out the logistics of where to hang and cure. I’m contemplating the crawlspace beneath the house but I need to build a sturdy cage to hold it in.