All Activity

I wonder why our results were so different?

@JoNorvelleWalker that's a shame. you might iPot them for stock ? adding the tough spare ribs ?

These thighs were skinless -- not what I ordered. Sometimes Whole Foods is like that. Now for the sad part: the thighs were removed from smoke after exactly six hours. They were dry, hard, and practically indistinguishable from my most recent sparerib disaster. They hurt my teeth. Nothing like your drumstick pictures. The Penzeys spice rubs were nice though.

Trader Joe's had a nice private label Bandol rosé earlier this summer @12.99. I polished off my last bottle over the weekend. Unfortunately, I think it’s sold out now but it’s worth trying if you happen to spot any.

I really should know a ton of things that I don’t. Pizzeria Bonci looks terrific. I was only there to drop the kid off and he had a list of wants including Chicago Pizza and Italian beef. Anyway, I just catered to him. But I’ll check out Bonci if I’m ever back in Chicago and I appreciate the recommendation

Nor would I.

You should know that there are 3 locations of the fantastic Pizzeria Bonci in the greater Chicago area.

I've mentioned that we have largely gone away from using our grow-out cages on the lawn for our adolescent bunnies, because we'd had a problem with the coccidia parasite (adults survive it handily, but it's dangerous for the growing youngsters). We've modified one of the cages so it stays up off the ground, and have used it for our current litter of half-grown kits via Hazel (the "princesses" and their brothers were a slightly older litter from Hilda, and they mostly were sold as pets). This cage isn't made of all wire, like the ones I've built. My father-in-law constructed it with a wooden frame and chicken wire on all six sides. It's a good piece of equipment, though I plan to modify it this off-season to make it more practical. A little while ago, just after I returned from NS, a few of the bunnies were sorely tempted by the fresh clover growing just out of their reach, and pushed hard enough on the wire in their attempts at snacking that the wire (now rusted in a couple of places) gave way. We retrieved all but one escapee, and there was enough slack in the wire that I was able to re-staple it to the frame using a less-rusted area. Well, this morning when I went to feed them, I found that they'd repeated their efforts and there were no fewer than four of the little guys happily roaming the lawn and, in one case, patrolling the space between my garden beds (but not, thankfully, eating the garden itself). Now, I've mentioned in the past that handling our bunnies frequently has many benefits, up to and including the day of our final, fatal betrayal of their trust. This morning provided a really vigorous endorsement of that strategy, because when the little ones saw me coming with my bucket of water they all hopped happily right to my feet, and waited to be picked up and cuddled. I don't need to tell you, this scenario was vastly superior to chasing the little critters around with a net or some such. It came close on the heels of an endorsement from the lady in Nova Scotia who'd bought four of the "princesses" from me at the end of June. They were for her and a friend, and they're utterly in love. She's bought rabbits from other growers down in NS before, and ended up rehoming them, because they simply weren't human-friendly enough to fit in as pets. That was not at all an issue with ours, of course. She says she'll be buying from us exclusively in future, for herself and her friends, because ours are so sweet-natured. So that was nice. As I mentioned upthread I'm keeping a spreadsheet this year, to monitor our expenditures and income re the critters and the garden. It's a work in progress, and I keep tweaking it as I go, so that it reflects our income and expenses with some reasonable degree of accuracy. At present we're sitting at a modest -$470-odd year to date, with sales keeping us reasonably close to the break-even point. That's not entirely accurate, because the running total still includes what I've spent on my garden, and I want to split that off from the amounts involved in the rabbits and poultry. With the critters, I want to get a handle on how our expenses and sales balance each other out, without taking into account the "deemed market value" of the meat itself. It's all well and good to know that a frozen rabbit sells for +/- $10/lb, but I want to know what our actual costs are when year-end rolls around. At that point I'll have a cumulative total of our meat harvest for the year, give or take a few quail. Once I know how many pounds of rabbit and chicken we put in the freezer, and how many quail, I can do subtotals of my cost for each critter and work out what our actual cost was per pound of meat. We'll also look at the approximate market value for those same pounds of meat, and as long as they're close we'll call it a win (because of course ours will be higher-quality than what we'd usually get at the store). That "deemed value" reckoning will also apply to the eggs we get from the quail and hens, with supermarket cost running around $5/doz (I think) right now. Our actual cost for the eggs will be hard to figure, but I'll probably work it backward from the percentage of our flock that will become year-round tenants (a dozen or so, plus five or six silkies that are just pets) vs the number we're growing out for the freezer (40-ish). I'll know what our total costs are for the birds, and just declare that percentage of it to be our cost for eggs. With the garden harvest it's another whole story, of course, because we don't sell any of that as we do with the rabbits, birds, and eggs. In that instance I'm just recording our harvests as I make them (ie, 700g of green beans yesterday), and I'll work out a "deemed value" from the supermarket pricing. We should come out to a reasonably favorable position, because I focus less on commodity things like carrots/potatoes and more on those items that cost us more at the supermarket. Bunches of chard or kale, for example, typically run $3.99 for most of the year, so it doesn't take long for a freezer full of greens to add up to a lot of saved money. If our costs are outrunning our sales by >$500 at this point, I'm pretty happy with that. We'll have 40-odd chickens in the freezer at 3-4 pounds each, so that's 120-150 pounds. Current price in my neck of the woods is about $6.99/lb IIRC for chicken (when not on sale), and higher for boneless, skinless breasts, so we're easily looking at upwards of $700 in value there (not counting the premium one would ordinarily pay for locally-raised, not water-chilled, etc etc). Add in the dollar value of a couple of hundred pounds of rabbit at $10/lb, and the quail at... whatever figure I decide on, per quail... and we're probably coming out well ahead by year-end. One final note, which will amuse some of you. When we had our early-season litters my GF carefully picked and segregated a number of breeding trios, consisting of one buck and two unrelated does, which we offered up for sale to anyone wanting to raise their own rabbits. If we sold them all we'd do it again, and if not, well, we'd call that trio our next-generation set of breeders. We did, in fact, end up with one trio left over, consisting of a black doe, a brown doe, and a white buck. As I've mentioned, my GF tries to keep the names coherent within a given generation, and we're currently on names starting with H. So when I walked into the room, one day recently, she was contemplating H names for the buck. "Hector? Horace? Harvey?..." and she was startled when I burst out loudly "Harvey! Yes, perfect! The white buck *has* to be Harvey!" She was mystified, until I sent her this link. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042546/

@JoNorvelleWalker, I recall you are wanting/needing the meat to be soft. Give the 3-2-1 concept for ribs a shot. This method is supposed to produce very soft/pull off the bone meat. Rough idea- 3 hours at 180F (IT of 160). Then wrap the ribs in foil (or pink paper) with a liquid- beer, apple juice etc and cook another 2 hours @225F (IT of 205F). Then unwrap the ribs, cover with sauce and cook another hour. I do not cook ribs this way but I know many that do and swear by it for softer meat

Congrats to the nephew on grad school in Chicago. I just dropped my oldest off at University of Chicago (my undergrad) for a week at a course on civil discourse. its a super city for students. Attached some pictures of pizzeria Due. Only pics without the kid in them. (I don’t post pics of the kids online) sorry to make it two posts. I’m too dumb to make the text the way I wanted (not a ringing endorsement of my selection of schools, but not really their fault)

bacon&eggs for dinner . . .

BTW MC likes to get involved when the IDS is used : even the prep :

@C. sapidus I just figured it was a long trip.

Bandol La Bastide Blanche rosé. From the importer: From my retailer: Chambers Street was running a 15% off special on all rosés a week or two ago, which put this wine right at the sweet spot - about $20 a bottle.

Pasta al pesto, with green beans and yellow wax beans. Sauté of corn, sweet onion and tomato alongside.

1/2 lbs RocheBro 85 % ground beef ( very fresh , service meat counter ) RB ColeSlaw ( nice nip of horseradish ) Tj's Campari , w Penzey's Salsa & Pico . forgot the window green onions. Burger was deglazed with 19Crimes Red , 10 years old ! https://19crimes.com/collections/wines/products/19-crimes-uprising-red-blend but a different label , of course. it was $ 5 back then , 6 bottles got lost in the basement. allthough 10 yo is not Petrus , still a table wine , but quite a peasant surprise smooth , mellow , lots of grape flavor . the entire bottle disappeared !

@JoNorvelleWalker did you trim out the fat ? I was thinking of thighs as the next project , however , in my area there is a flap of skin//fat always included that , after removal , is about 40 % of the CkThigh. Ill keep an eye out for S%S , as their drums were significantly better than MarketBasket.

... not read the delivery app more carefully. I attempted to restock on my favourite jellyfish snack which I buy in these 150 gram bags, So, I happily ordered four bags. 30 minutes later I received 600 grams in one pot. They weren't selling it bagged for rehydration! I'll never get through this lot before it goes off.

Chickpea Salad with Chicken and Tomatoes - chickpeas are mixed with diced, seared chicken breast and cherry tomatoes. Vinaigrette is made by mixing olive oil, lemon juice, jalapeno, parsley, onions, and cream cheese.

Another stop for tacos on the road, this time chorizo tacos with a zingy green salsa from a taco truck. Much more manageably filled this time . . . What looks like a Foley bag (medical folks will know) is actually a plastic bag full of passion fruit juice, with a straw tied in for drinking. Disappeared quickly on a warm day.

TJ's Steamed Pork Shu Mai With a nod to Sunset Magazine I grab these dumplings a few times a year, and tonight, as I was prepping to steam them, I remembered a recipe from Sunset Magazine that was published in the 1970s: Pepper‑Steamed Chicken With Roasted Onion Sauce. This evening, I riffed on that recipe and steamed the dumplings with an infusion of green onions, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, black pepper, and red pepper flakes. When cooked, I drizzled just a little of the "sauce" over the dumplings. Ended up with a kitchen filled with pleasant aromas and a very tasty, nicely flavored and nuanced, bowl of dumplings.

For many years I have made my beer money by writing and translating for one of China's top wine trade publications. The editor-in-chief is an old friend. This is one such article of mine which appeared bi-lingually in their flagship magazine, several years ago. I have spared you the Chinese version. What makes a wine memorable? What makes a wine stick in your memory in a way that you can recall every nuance of its bouquet, colour and taste even decades after you have drunk it? The depth and quality of an expensive fine wine? Perhaps. Or maybe a perfect match with a perfect dish in a perfect meal in a perfect restaurant? Yes, it could be that, too. Or sometimes, it is the company or social circumstances that you find yourself drinking in that remains with you. I suppose one should remember the Champagne at one’s wedding, but in fact, few people do. I can’t even remember what we drank. Although, I’m sure it wasn’t tea. Thinking about this recently, I racked my brains trying to think of examples of wines which remain with me, not necessarily for their great quality. It doesn’t have to be a wine which has had the critics in ecstasies, although those, too, can be memorable, of course. But, perhaps surprisingly, I decided that the wine I remember most vividly is a simple cheap wine which I drank from a plastic cup n the middle of a rather smelly fishing port dock area. I was sitting on an abandoned and broken chair which threatened to collapse at any minute. The food, eaten from a paper plate, certainly didn’t match the wine even remotely and the whiff of rotten fish and gasoline hardly contributed to the experience. But it remains one of my happiest wine drinking memories. About 25 years ago, I went on a family holiday to a tiny resort village on the French Mediterranean, near to Perpignan on the border with Spain. This is Languedoc-Roussillon territory, home to Vin de Pays d'Oc and the world’s largest wine producing area, responsible for more than one third of all France’s wine. No one will pretend that the wine is in the top grades, but it produces some perfectly acceptable everyday drinking wines. So armed with my high factor sunscreen, I settled down to a lazy couple of weeks by the Mediterranean. Parts of my body which hadn’t seen sunlight for years (i.e. most parts) were exposed to the elements and I spent the first few days doing nothing very much at all. But all that lying around doing nothing quickly became boring, so we took to strolling into the nearby village, visiting the market and generally being tourists. We stocked up on beautiful breads, local cheeses and grabbed flagons of what appeared to be the very local vin ordinaire wines. The locals would look at the cheeses we had selected and make their wine recommendations, which we were happy to go along with. They were dirt cheap, but a fine accompaniment to our simple lunch. The afternoons were happily spent sleeping off their effects. We got in a bit of cultural tourism by fitting in a couple of day trips into the mountains and to the beautiful city of Perpignan where we temporarily abandoned France and, bizarrely, had a lovely meal in an Indian restaurant which had been recently opened by someone from London! I’d be astonished if it were still there. We visited the ancient historic walled city of Carcassonne, where we had a more sensible traditional meal of the local specialty, cassoulet, a slow cooked dish of preserved goose, local sausages and beans. This was again washed down with a local wine, but sadly I can’t tell you what it was. I doubt it had a name, as such. It was served from a jar and everyone in the restaurant had the same wine. It was the kind of place which doesn’t do a menu. There is one dish and one wine. And both were delicious. Towards the end of the first week, while wandering near our holiday apartment, we turned left instead of right and found ourselves in a less picturesque area. This was clearly where the locals really worked when not looking out for the tourists. There were car repair places, decorating material shops, carpenters, metalworkers, stone masons, builders etc. And coming from the centre of it was the most wonderful smell. Garlic, wine and herbs and the unmistakeable smell of fresh seafood. It was a little early for lunch and far too late for breakfast, but we forced ourselves into this tiny shack and asked for the menu. When we did, the woman serving us pointed to the wall where it said a) 20 Francs Déjeuner; b) 25 Francs Déjeuner; c) 30 Francs Déjeuner. We were greedy people, so we went for the 30 Francs lunch for two. (The kids were playing on the beach.) Huge shivering plates of seafood arrived. Lobster, crabs, mussels, oysters, clams, prawns and much more. Again, this was served with anonymous local wine which matched the food perfectly. We went back every day for the rest of our holiday. On the last week, we discovered from the woman in the restaurant shack her restaurant would be closed that Friday for Feast of the Assumption, the Catholic Christian festival and that this was to be celebrated in the traditional manner. Further questioning revealed that this consisted of the local fishermen supplying the entire village’s lunch. We were assured that we would be very welcome and she kindly pointed out the location. The empty loading yard on the dock beside the main fish market. So, on the Friday, we rolled up at noon to find the place packed. The fishermen and their families had set up long barbecue grills along one side of the square where they were grilling sardines so fresh they had realised they were dead yet. There were tables piled high with crusty French baguettes, then more tables piled with fresh peaches. Then, barrels and barrels of wine. The locals were picking up paper plates, loading them with smoking hot sardines, grabbing some bread, a plastic cup of wine and finding anywhere they could to sit and enjoy this simplest of lunches. Then they would go back for more. And I did too. The wine was a red Pays d'Oc and probably not the best match for grilled sardines or for peaches. But I sat on my broken chair, looking out over the Mediterranean lying behind the boat sheds, feeling exquisitely happy and very, very full, but ready for just one more cupful. What's your most memorable wine experience?

Chicken thighs are out of the blast chiller and into the Profile. The plan is to smoke with cherry, 93C for 6 hours. Two thighs were rubbed with Penzeys Jerk and another two with Penzeys Singapore seasoning. Sadly I've forgotten which was which.

Cats are people too.