Sweater Project


class Geek(Earth) {
}


(For non-coders – that says “the geek shall inherit the Earth”.

Tonight I made jambalaya.

I started with some really nice Vermont butter and flour to make a roux. Then I added the holy trinity of onions, bell peppers and celery, followed by tomato paste, diced tomatoes, black pepper, rice, water, and andouille sausage (sorry Cari, it’s not vegetarian) and let it simmer.

The verdict? Epic fail.

The aroma is right on. When the trinity hit the roux, oh my – I love that smell. That smell could be methadone for all those cooks out there who have been huffing bay leaves. It’s just wonderful.

The taste is good – very good. The smokiness of the andouille is permeating the dish, and the toasted flour from the roux is giving it this great savory tone and it’s just delicious.

The texture feels like some kind of horrible accident involving milled wheat and a personal lubricant. I completely screwed up the roux. It hasn’t separated exactly, but what should be a nice velvety thick body to the dish is instead this mealy slickness. It’s not bad enough to render the batch inedible. This is going to provide lunch for the next week. But there’s no way I’m going to serve this to anyone else (unless they really piss me off).

Anyone got good tips on making a proper roux? I lack experience here.

A friend called me a word geek in a chat today. That prompted the following outburst:

Sentience is really cool – once you become self-aware, you’ve got the ability to perceive your environment as distinct from you and something that you can proactively influence and manipulate.

But when you add a population with language on top of that, you get a massive network that can act in concert to influence the environment.

And when you add written language to that, you’ve got a population whose knowledge can be transferred across inhospitable environments to other populations, survive calamities, and even persist past extinction.

Language is fucking awesome.

With the possible exception of Java. Fuck Java.

The little girl can put on a scary face when she wants to. Or when she’s yawning.

I have a beautiful brunette living with me.

It was cold and rainy this weekend . . . perfect soup weather.

No, this is not really a mint roast. But such a pretty shade of green!

I was reading the back of a Morton Kosher Salt box a while ago and it had a recipe for a salt-crusted roast beef that struck me as really tasty. Basically you marinate your roast in olive oil, basil, marjoram, thyme and pepper overnight, then you put it in a roasting pan and coat it with a mixture of water and salt that creates a paste. Bake it until it’s done and then crack the crust off and voila, tasty food.

So, why is mine green?

All that tedious mixing of salt and water to get the right consistency . . . I figured it would just be so much simpler to throw a couple handfuls of seeded jalapeno peppers into my food processor and then add salt until it was the right consistency and use that instead.

Will it be tasty? Or will I have committed another brine against humanity? Only time will tell.

Update
Two things – one, I’m happy to report that I have had no problems with the Kapoosh knife block. No issues with the plastic rods flaking – and I keep my knives very sharp.
Two, this roast probably would have been okay if I hadn’t overcooked it. Sigh.

I’m going to miss Rhinebeck this year. First time in four years I won’t be there. I’ve really come to love that festival and all the people, but alas, time and money are not in great supply this year.

Someone please pet a sheep for me.

I took a short vacation this weekend and knitting saved my sanity. Seriously.

I was flying to Houston on Continental airlines and there were thunderstorms on the way. Mild turbulence makes me a little uncomfortable, so I pulled out the sock that I was working on to distract myself.

I was happily cranking away when the turbulence got worse. A lot worse. At one point the plane dropped so suddenly that my butt left the seat, and then the plane made this stomach-churning yawing motion that seriously made me think we were going to crash. My hands were shaking so badly I almost had to stop knitting.

But I kept at it. Focusing on controlling my hands enough to keep knitting was all that kept me from having a severe panic.

Knitting protects sanity. Sock pics to follow.

It’s evenings like this that I’m glad that I’ve bothered to figure out how to use my camera a little bit.

There are heat storms swarming all around the city tonight. I was getting groceries earlier and one of them threw down a lightning bolt like a petulant child complaining about a lost toy. They’re huge and magnificent and sublime and completely without regard to the people scrambling around below.

I’m only happy when it rains.