SEPTEMBER 2014
Sunday 2014.9.28
Electronics
I've blogged before about my occasional need to repair something electronic. Thankfully I am not all thumbs when using a soldering pencil.
Some of the things I've repaired include my TV when it suddenly died. I read on a web site that Samsung was using one inferior capacitor and the site even showed a photo of where to locate it inside the TV. I bought a better cap for $1.61, soldered it into the circuit board, and the TV has been working fine ever since. It has been more than three years. I soldered a new lamp into my flash gun for my Nikon camera. I also repaired my favorite camera lens, which required a little bit of soldering to connect one wire.
This time it was my Sony headphones. I love those headphones. At 63 I am losing a little of my hearing. I've been lucky. Both my father and his mother started wearing hearing aids at an early age. I don't need hearing aids, yet. Like most people my age, I am losing the higher frequencies. That's normal. But I also have difficulty sometimes hearing conversations when there is a lot of background noise, such as in a restaurant. My headphones make watching a movie on TV much more enjoyable, especially an indie film that wasn't made with good technical values anyway.
Those headphones cost me more than $100 about ten years ago. I got my money's worth out of them, but I didn't want to part with them. A new set would probably cost me almost double at today's prices. The only issue was the little connector that plugs into the socket on my computer or other audio device. The problem was intermittent. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. Twisting the wire near the plug helped.
So I went to the electronics store and bought the few things I needed: Shrink tubing, more solder (I was running low), and test clips. I needed the test clips to figure out which colored wire goes to which part of the connector. If you're familiar with that plug, you know there are three parts — the tip and two conductor areas along the prong. That's how stereo headphones work — each ear cup gets a different signal.
I had some sort of computer audio cable (actually several of them) with the right connector at each end. So I hooked up a battery, used my little volt meter, and figured out which wire in the cable goes to which wire in the headphones cord — the copper wire goes to the copper wire, the white wire goes to red, and red goes to silver. Wouldn't it be nice if they standardized these things?
After some delicate soldering and shrinking the insulation into place, I plugged in the headphones and tested them. They work beautifully. No intermittent connection problems. Total cost for the stuff (with plenty left over for future repairs) was $16.35. I'm not cheap, but if something expensive can be repaired economically rather than buying something new, why not?
As far as cooking: Other than baking my ususal bread, I've been doing very little cooking lately. I'm reheating foods stored in the freezer. I did receive one recipe that looks promising. Many months ago Curt in upstate New York asked me to come up with a recipe to use apples, other than the ubiquitous apple pies, turnovers, and pastries that everyone makes. Someone sent me a scan of a recipe in an old magazine. It was for an apple bundt cake, which is then glazed with a caramel frosting. It looks very good and I have the perfect bundt pan for it. And I still need to work on a pudding recipe sent by Bryson.
And I also received another bread recipe. As the contributor says, "You can never have enough bread recipes." True. Her family has its own bee hives and jars its own honey. She offered some. I'd love to have it, but I just bought a huge jar of honey at Costco. It will last for many years. I don't use honey often. I need to get into the practice of using it in my breads.
The weather here is still too warm for baking, but those days are numbered now. Already the nights are getting cooler. A little longer and I'll be warming up my home by baking again.
Wednesday 2014.9.24
Privatization
I don't put much faith in conspiracy theories. They tell us more about the people who believe in them and promote them than they tell us about the suspected conspirators themselves. I did read George Orwell's 1984 when I was in high school and I was fascinated by the prospects. Could such things really happen?
It might have taken 30 years longer than Orwell predicted, but the lack of privacy is definitely here. I'm okay with the loss of some privacy if it means national security. I was deeply affected by the events of September 11 in 2001. I ended up seeing a therapist to talk about it. The impossible had happened and I was shaken by the thought that anything, no matter how much of an atrocity, was not only possible but probable.
I'm not an intensely private person, but I do protect the little privacy I have. For example, I have an unlisted phone number. I don't need to keep it private. I'm not avoiding creditors and I'm not hiding from the police. However, when I had a landline telephone I was annoyed nearly every evening by telemarketers. And then there were the "friends" who would call at the last minute to ask for a favor. "Come pick me up and take me to the store; I don't feel like walking." I bought one of those Caller ID devices that show you who is calling and I wouldn't answer the phone unless I knew who it was and it was someone I wanted to speak with.
I even have my cell phone set up to warn me who is calling. I love my phone. It's an old BlackBerry smart phone. Besides liking the clamshell design (compact and I can open it with one hand like the guys with their communicators on Star Trek), it allows me to use custom ring tones. I don't download them; I attach a microphone to my computer and record my own. "Darcy is calling." When my phone rings, even if I'm in the other room, I know who is calling. I don't need to get up and look at the phone.
This week something new happened. For many months Google has been trying to get their hands on my phone number. It's unlisted and I want to keep it that way. I was not "verified" to upload a video to YouTube Sunday morning until I gave Google my phone number to receive an authorization code. What to do? I very seriously considered ending my YouTube uploads altogether. They have been more of a burden than a pleasure during the past year. Maybe this was the final nail in the coffin for my YouTube channel.
However, I acquiesced this one time. I received my code and published the video. Now what? What will be the fallout? Will I start getting calls from telemarketers again? Will I start receiving advertisements in my text messages? Two and a half hours later I received my first unwanted text message — something with a URL to a foreign web site I did not recognize. It was probably a phishing attempt. I immediately called my cell phone provider and changed my number.
Now that I'm validated with Google, do I still need the same phone number anyway? How long will my validation last? I'll know when I try to upload my next video — Spareribs with Coleslaw, scheduled for October 5th. If I cannot publish it without giving Google my phone number, that will be end of my YouTube channel.
I actually got away with protecting my number for many years. Everytime I needed to provide a number, such as when getting one of those discount cards at a store, I gave out my college phone number. I don't know who might have that number now. They're probably being annoyed with telemarketers anyway, unless they listed it in the Do Not Call Registry database. And if I needed to give out my email address, I gave them my spam address. I created an email account on Hotmail that is only for spam. I never check it.
It still urks me that Google finally succeeded in getting my phone number, even if they only had it for 2½ hours. I had avoided every one of their past attempts. But this week they finally got me. The Google Giant is too big a Big Brother to give them my number.
If my YouTube channel has seen its last upload, all I can say is: "Thanks for the memories."
Sunday 2014.9.21
Toys
I'm sure you've heard the expression, "Boys and the toys," which I'm sure can apply to many women as well. Some guys like jet skis, other like cars — whatever. This week I bought a new toy for my kitchen. It's a citrus juicer attachment that fits onto the front of my Kitchenaid stand mixer.
If you're not familiar with the mixer, it has a port in the front to which you can add an attachment. The mixer's motor drives the attachment. There are many attachments available, but I never ordered any of them — until I burned my right hand.
With my hand in a bandage and not much use this week, I wanted the juicer because my stock of lemons was increasing rapidly. My neighbor's tree has produced abundant fruit this summer. I've been drinking lemonade all season. The flavor of lemonade made with fresh tree-ripened lemons is the best. The tree is still doing well. As I pick lemons I see little green ones just starting to grow and there are flowers in many places. I'll have lemonade for many months to come. I even made a large pitcher for the neighbor. There is more than enough to go around.
The juicer works great. I easily went through about two dozen lemons to fill a jar that holds about two cups. Some of her lemons are large. It's a strange tree. It produced many normal sized lemons and a few that are almost as big as grapefruit, with sizes in between. As long as they're ripe, they're good, no matter the size.
DVDs
Another project I've been working through is my collection of videos on DVDs. I have more than 40 of them, each with four to six videos per DVD. A few have navigation problems on the menu. It's an easy task to fix them, but it requires that I pull the archived videos out of storage and copy them back into my computer to build a new DVD. Although tedious, it didn't take more than a few hours to fix the few that had problems. And just to be certain, I checked the entire library. All 41 DVDs now have fully functional menus.
What's Next?
The weather is cooling gloriously. Happy happy. I'm getting excited about cooking again. I occasionally follow the comments on my YouTube videos. Someone commented on my Finger Lickin' Chicken video, saying that she and her husband use the recipe to cook pork chops. They eat them faster than they cook them. I sooooo want to try that myself. People have been commenting on my Texas (Beef) Chili again. That is one of my earliest videos, done more than four years ago. No one is indifferent to chili — they either love the way it is made or they hate it. Thankfully, my recipe is given their approval. The original source for that recipe was Craig Claiborne, one of the USA's most recognized aficionados on good Texas chili. I make it every winter and I'm looking forward to eating it again.
Curious Revisited
Wednesday I blogged about Curious.com never responding to my proposal. They must read my blog. The contacted me on Friday with a recommendation to make the lessons a little better. It will be easy to fix. I only needed to shoot one video, which I did yesterday. So the proposal hasn't gone away yet. Maybe the lessons won't make it onto YouTube after all. Time will tell.
And Finally, a Festival
This weekend is the annual Lemon Festival here in town. I go every year, but I don't stay for long. It is too crowded, but I enjoy looking for people I know and catching up with them again.
Wednesday 2014.9.17
Curious
Many months ago I received a query from Curious.com, a web based teaching company based somewhere up in the Bay Area. Their concept was easy enough. Visitors could buy "coins" that they could then use to view teaching videos. Contributing artists would receive a percentage. I wasn't interested, but I wanted the company to succeed. I gave them ten videos. So far I have not received any royalties, which is okay. My expectations have been kept low.
Starting a few months ago I started receiving invitations to submit a proposal for a video lesson program. It would contain at least ten teaching videos of 10 to 12 minutes each, each building upon previous lessons, along with supplemental materials. It seemed like a lot of work, but the invitation offered a $1,000 advance on royalties. I am by nature suspicious of Internet money deals. You've seen them in your email:
"Hi you. I am Russiun and I must get 200 millyun dollers into USA. Send me name of your banc, acount number, and pin number to tranfer money into your bank. You keep half."
If I respond at all I write: "I'd be glad to. Send me the name of your bank, account number, and PIN. I'll withdraw the cash and hold it for you." I don't hear from them again.
So the invitation to submit a proposal had me wondering if the offer of $1,000 was merely a carrot on a string. My suspicion was that people would submit their proposals and the company would choose the best ideas to produce themselves, cutting out the artist/contributor.
Intrigued, I submitted my proposal, and then just in case the offer was legitimate, I starting shooting the videos. I ended up with 11 lessons. A month has passed since submitting the proposal. I received no response, even though they promise to reply in 5 to 7 business days. You are free to draw your own conclusions. However, there is always YouTube.
So I've been editing and encoding the lesson set for uploading to YouTube where visitors can view the program for free. I might even create a new YouTube channel. My target date is October 1st.
Meanwhile, summer is not going to "go gentle into that good night" (Dylan Thomas). The weather here so far this week has been in the mid to high 90s again. On Monday, and again yesterday, my home reached nearly 100 degrees. I had prepared the swamp box cooler to be stored for the winter, but I filled it with water again and I've been sitting in front of it for the past two days.
I don't mind that it is too hot to cook. I can't cook anyway, as I'm still waiting for the blisters to go down on my right hand. I have a few recipes planned. October will be a good time to start cooking again.
On the other hand, the evenings are warm and pleasant enough to sit on my neighbor's porch and share our ideas about possible future gatherings here in the park. I don't mind providing the space, but I don't like hosting. I get overwhelmed easily. I enjoy inviting one or two people to dinner, but as soon as my neighbors start trying to invite themselves, I start shutting down. "What about me?" they ask. Two becomes six, eight, even ten if I'm not careful. It's my home. I can have a quiet little dinner for three of us if I want. I'm not obligated to invite all my neighbors too.
Lemons
Occasionally I mention my neighbor's lemon tree. I've been enjoying a tall class of fresh cold lemonade almost every day this summer. With two fingers of my right hand bandaged, I haven't been able to do much. So I ordered from Amazon a juicer attachment for my Kitchenaid stand mixer. I'm hoping to have that by the end of the week. I'm stocking up on lemons.
As for the little burn on my right hand: The blisters are starting to go down. I took the large bandage off this morning and now I'm experimenting with a couple band-aids (plasters).
Sunday 2014.9.14
Rebranding
Lately I've been thinking again of changing this web site's URL. Even thinking of "rebranding" for this web site is comical. Rebranding is typically a major endeavor to better position a product or company for investors or to target more consumers. My web site is a little vanity site. Except for the few who clicked the "Donate" button to give a gift of support, this site has no investors. And the few "consumers" who come here get what they want for free. As one fan recently pointed out: "It's too easy. You don't even ask anyone to register."
If there is an investor, it's me. I invest my time and money, but only as a pastime. I don't reap any financial gain. The few donations received are still held by PayPal. I won't use them until the time comes to renew my hosting subscription. That will be $166.80. I have about $135 tucked away. As you can see, no one is getting rich.
So why the rebranding? I'm thinking if doing another year of TV shows with a local station. I didn't submit any shows for 2014 because I didn't have enough content. And I also felt the need to take some time off. Fulfilling a contract for 45 shows, all submitted before deadlines, was a lot of work. During 2014 I have built up some content — not enough for 45 shows, but enough to fulfill a large part of a new contract.
The TV show is titled The Mobile Home Gourmet. That is why the home page bears that name. However, the URL is still white-trash-cooking.com. I own the URL mobilehomegourmet.com and it links to this sight. I am thinking of switching the two URLs in January. Everything will look the same. Most people won't even notice a difference. All that will change is the linking.
What's involved? A lot of work. There are currently 487 HTML pages in this web site. Nearly all of them are titled "White Trash Cooking." I've changed several pages, but I have a few hundred to go. The find-and-replace function is my ticket to an easier job. You don't see the change unless you look at the title of each page. The change is in the HTML coding.
Thinking about rebranding makes me wonder where I'm going, and why. When I restructured the web site last fall, I had a clear goal in mind — make the site more user-friendly. The changes also make the site better organized — I like organized — which makes it a lot easier for me to maintain.
What I'd really like is a better TV show. I don't want to go big, like a network or the Food Channel. I would like, however, a small paid show done through the little commercial TV station we have here in town. My shows have been on the public access station, but just about anyone can put a show there. I've watched many of them. Some are good. Some are, well, amusing where they don't intend to be. But I like them. I appreciate a little nonprofit station giving us a free, or nearly free, broadcast space. To put 45 TV shows on air during 2013 cost me only $50 for the entire year.
It was a good deal for the station too. They have a studio. They have all the equipment and staff. They run the cameras and do all the editing and encoding to get a show on air. I do all the production work myself. I deliver the finished shows on DVDs and all they need to do is copy the video files onto their server and schedule the broadcast.
What if I were to do that for the commercial station? Besides getting paid, I think it would be fun. However, I feel like it is one of those situations in which you need to know someone who knows someone. I don't know anyone, at least not the right someone who knows how to make things happen. However, there is always hope. So, meanwhile, I'll make a few changes to the site. I'll probably also create a new YouTube channel named Mobile Home Gourmet.
And, lest I forget, there is also one other little thing to report. When setting up my coffee maker Thursday morning I accidentally shot my right hand with a hot blast of steam — hot enough to cause a second-degree burn. It blistered and hurt a lot, as you might expect, and so now my latest cooking adventures are on hold again. By the evening the pain had settled down and I taped my two burnt fingers together with a little wedge of rigid roam between them so that I wouldn't prematurely burst the blisters. I'm healing okay, but supposedly burn blisters take several weeks to heal. Life happens.
Wednesday 2014.9.10
Requests
I do accept requests, but I can't fulfill many of them. Besides the lack of time, there is also the lack of skill or experience. Contrary to the beliefs of many, I'm not as good a cook as some might think. I know what I know, but there is much knowledge that is lacking. Although I have built only four computers in my life, I feel more confident with computers than I do with some cooking. Many might not agree, but I think computers are easier.
When I first started this web site four years ago, I began with the recipes I'd made dozens of times. I knew those recipes well. White Bread, Almond Biscotti, Eggplant Parmesan, Texas Chili, Pasta From Scratch — the list was long. Some recipes go back to my college days. I've been cooking them for 40 years. Friends knew me from those foods. It was those friends who encouraged me to write a cookbook (which I eventually did and it's free for download on this web site), but I started with a web site first.
Having exhausted my library of its tried and true recipes, I needed to expand into uncharted waters. Recipes like Timballo and Lamb Briouats were new, but I knew the ingredients that go into those recipes. Who doesn't know how to prepare rice? I've been cooking with lamb for years. So even though the recipes were new, the food wasn't. It was simply a way of combining familiar foods in new and interesting ways.
However, unfamiliar waters can get deeper and deeper until you're in over your head. I think the most challenging recipe was Gâteau Paris-Brest. I'm not ashamed to admit I suffered through 14 failures, wasting about 60 eggs, before I finally worked out all the details. Although pâte à choux (choux pastry) is supposed to be easy (it is often explained toward the beginning of baking textbooks), I found it difficult.
My latest recipes are coming less often because 1) I needed a break away from cooking for a while and 2) I don't know what I'm doing. Take the Spareribs I made during the weekend. I never purchased ribs before. I never made barbecue sauce before. I never made coleslaw either. Although I have certainly eaten ribs and coleslaw many times, and enjoyed them (when they were done right), everything about them was foreign to my experience. I can honestly say I bought a head of cabbage for the first time in my life.
A friend of mine wants me to roast a saddle of lamb. The idea petrifies me. I know lamb, but I've never cooked a saddle. It's supposed to be the best part of the lamb, and therefore the most expensive. It isn't available in the stores; it must be special ordered. I have no idea of the cost per pound, but I do believe the cost is too high for an experiment. What if I fail?
I'm not afraid to waste food, although admitting it is difficult. If I told my neighbors that I threw two large racks of cooked pork spareribs into the trash on Sunday (they were way too fattening to keep) after doing the video, they would attack my home with torches and pitchforks. If I were a member in any religion I would be excommunicated. As difficult as it might be to admit, it's true. However, spareribs are a lot less expensive than a saddle of lamb. If I had to throw one of those in the trash, I'd tar and feather myself.
Why not give the spareribs to my neighbors? Because many of them are like dogs. Feed them and they never go away. "The spareribs were delicious. What are you giving me next?" Been there, done that. If I were to tell them that maybe they should reciprocate, I would hear: "Oh, I could never cook for you. So, what are you feeding me next?" It's better to quietly toss the food in the trash without telling anyone. Besides, I don't like their yappy dogs.
And so, when a request comes in, the first question that goes through my mind is: "Can I do this?" Sometimes I can. I just received a request for a pudding that not only looks delicious, it looks easy too. That one will go onto my list of future projects. Many others, however, get printed, but they always seem to make it to the back of my Projects binder. That's where the low-priority recipes go.
Sunday 2014.9.7
Summer's Last Weeks
Summer will be ending soon. The days and nights are starting to become cooler.
Many years ago it perplexed me that July and August were warmer, even though the days were shorter. The longest day of the year (actually, they're all 24 hours, but you know what I mean) is the first day of summer, typically around June 21st. So if the days are getting shorter in July and August, why are they warmer? After contemplating the problem for a while, I figured it out.
Even though the days are getting shorter, they are still longer than the nights. Heating takes place during the day; cooling happens at night. So there was more heating than cooling — a buildup of heat with nowhere to go. By the middle of September the nights are as long as the days — enough cooling to take away each day's heat. In winter, the days get longer after Christmas. However, January and February are colder months because the heat is off more than it's on — the nights are longer. The northern hemisphere gets colder and colder until around the middle of March when the days are long enough to start warming up the place again. Spring arrives.
With the cooling of the weather my mind is returning to thoughts of cooking. I don't know that I can maintain the same pace I kept when I was uploading a new video and recipe each week, but I'm starting to do more cooking.
A while ago someone suggested I do a video about ribs. I did some research, and then a funny thing happened. Only a few days within each other, Robert Irvine on his Restaurants Impossible TV show and Anne Burrell on her Secrets of a Restaurant Chef show did ribs. They did them in very different ways.
Irvine made a rub, but he combined it with liquids — soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce — which he used to season the ribs. Then he wrapped them in plastic and slow roasted them, still in plastic, for 2 hours in a 250°F (121°C) oven. The plastic doesn't melt at that temperature. He finished the ribs by garnishing them with barbecue sauce and broiling them for a few minutes to caramelize the sauce.
Burrell seasoned the ribs with a dry rub, wrapped them in plastic, and put them in the refrigerator overnight. She roasted them the same way the following day, but she unwrapped them, placed them on a baking sheet with sides, and added a bottle of beer to the pan. She covered the pan with foil and baked them the same as Irvine. Meanwhile, she made her own sauce. The ribs were coated with sauce and grilled briefly to finish.
Buy a rub or make a rub? The choice is yours. Bing or Google "Recipe Pork Rub" (or Ribs Rub) and you'll find recipes for all manner and shapes of rub. I bought a small jar of rub to taste it. I also bought some Old Bay seasoning, again for comparison, and I gathered the ingredients to make my own rub.
Yesterday I assembled my rub and seasoned three large pork rib racks (about 3+ pounds/1.45kg each) and put them in the refrigerator. I also made my own barbecue sauce because I don't care for ketchup, except on French fries, and I'm not fond of vinegar either. I made my sauce with tomato paste (like Burrell did) and less vinegar, substituting with some bourbon instead. I also added a little extra smoke flavor (Wright's Liquid Smoke). The BBQ sauce was the most delicious one I'd ever tasted. The flavors were balanced the way I like them, nothing too strong or weak. This will go into the book as my favorite barbeque sauce.
I'll roast the ribs today and, if I remember to, I'll add an addendum to this blog to tell you how they came out. I'll also post a photo on the Facebook fan page. Right now, I need to go shopping to buy some ingredients to make coleslaw.
Cooking time is here!
Addendum
The ribs were delicious. I gave some away and I ate all I could. I prefer foods with a more delicate flavor; so I would use about half the rub if making these for myself. If you prefer a bold spicy flavor, these ribs were excellent. The coleslaw was perfect — the right balance of sweet and sour without swimming in too much dressing.
Wednesday 2014.9.3
Barbecue Sauce
I don't like most barbecue sauces. But first, let's get one thing out of the way. I'm certain most of you already know you don't grill chicken, pork, or hamburgers with any tomato-based barbecue sauce already spread on. The reason is the tomatoes. They burn at a relatively low temperature. And therein lies the rub (no pun intended) — most barbecue sauces are made with ketchup. I don't like ketchup, except on French fried potatoes.
French fries (chips in some countries) and ketchup belong together. Some people like vinegar and chips, and, well, what can I say? I'm sure they have their rationalizations. I like French fries with ketchup (which contains vinegar; so I'm not too far away from those other people). I only eat ketchup when I can have it with French fries. The two were made for each other from the very beginning of time, or shortly thereafter. When God made the tomato he immediately thought of, and created, the potato. That's why the names are so much alike.
Getting back to barbecue sauce: Is it really necessary to have all that vinegar in the sauce? I did some research and downloaded some recipes for homemade barbecue sauce. I should also mention that I know someone who doesn't like most barbecue sauces because of the sugar. I can deal with that too.
I'm working on an idea for ribs. I saw Robert Irvine make them in one of his Restaurants Impossible TV shows. What impressed me was that he wrapped them in plastic wrap after seasoning them, and then put them in a slow oven (250°F/121°C), plastic and all. The plastic, he says, doesn't melt. I want to experiment. Four racks of ribs are required. Wrap two in plastic and two in foil. Then compare the results.
He seasoned the ribs with a mixture of herbs that included a rub. I have some rubs. Look at the ingredients and many of the same herbs are already in the rub. Why add more? Again, I think an experiment would be worth it. Season two racks with just rub and the other two with the rub and herbs mixture that Irvine uses.
He finished the ribs with barbecue sauce and broiled them briefly for a little caramelization. So this is where the barbecue sauce comes in. (Speaking of sauce, I watched Noah this past week (he was on the sauce toward the end). It was a laughably awful movie.)
What if I were to use a little less sugar? Maybe use a juice with a little honey. And what if I were to substitute some of the vinegar with a liquor like bourbon? I've used bourbon in the past to make a reduction for my Meat Loaf with Bourbon Sauce. It works well. Meat loaf doesn't need to be boring.
All of this depends, of course, on the weather. At 250°F, the oven will not be so hot that it would make my home unbearable in summer's heat. But with the oven on for two hours, that might make my home uncomfortable. There is a lot of cooking I want to do, but I really need cooler weather.
And, finally, I added a new experiment to my Minute Meals. I was in Costco this morning and saw their Seasoned Rotisserie Chickens for only $4.99 each. A pair of whole raw chickens would cost me $14 to $15. They'll need deboning and roasting. Why not buy the pre-cooked chickens, remove all the meat for portions, and put the bones and other trim in the freezer for stock? I bought two cooked chickens and put 19 portions in the freezer for about 50¢ each. And no cooking.