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May 8, 2024 – It’s Not the Time…

May 8, 2024 /

In December, one of my culinary book club peers gave me a sourdough starter. He is a tremendous bread maker and everything that he has shared seems nearly perfect. He says that the starter is over forty years old. Clearly, his efforts are the result of years of effort.

I didn’t ask for it, so I suspect that my wife did. Because as far as I knew, it was unsolicited and therefore I felt a sense of duty to keep it alive. Since December, I have made probably ten or so loaves of bread. All of them pretty marginal if I say so myself.

Like many of the things I do, I push the boundaries. I also don’t like waste. About a year or so ago, I accidently purchased some whole wheat flour. People in my house refuse to use it for anything, so I have been doing a half bread flour and half whole wheat flour loaves. The thing about whole wheat is that it does not develop the same gluten reaction and it comes out dense.

As a result, I have been messing around with the rise variables. The problem with sourdough is that left too long, it becomes gummy and thin, not bread at all but pancake batter. If not allowed to rise enough, it is a rock. Neither are desired results.

Ideally, this loaf would be 50% larger. I didn’t have time to let it sit for extra days nor did I actually have time to bake it properly. Hence, chock it up to another failure. But for every failure knowledge is gained. In this case, I used the oven off function because we had a doctor’s appointment to go to. All the while, the oven wasn’t on it continued to slowly dry out. It wasn’t a total puck but a 1/4″, rock hard crust all the way around.

Now to my point about time. Looking at the recipe, the only time listed as the bake time. It needs to bake at 400 degrees for approximately an hour. But, bread by its nature is way more complicated than that. Let us look at the variables and conditions.

First there is proofing time. This has been what has mostly been burning me. I find that in the winter, the kitchen temperature is not warm enough for dough to rise properly over night. This in turn puts it in jeopardy before I get started with meal planning. I think commercial operations use a proofing device or room for more consistent results.

Baking time is pretty straight forward. Some variability is expected but it is more or less along the time of the recipe. Another thing that burns me is bread needs to be done at least an hour before dinner. You cant just take it straight out of the oven to the table. I think if you are planning to eat by 6:00, bread should be done by 4:30.

Working backward, to be done by 4:30 it needs to be in the oven by 3:30. And don forget that the oven needs time to heat, so that means the oven needs to be turned on by 3. This means that the bread has to be risen by 3. If you check your progress at 12:00 and you don’t have the proper proofing, you are likely out of time to make perfect bread. So, you need to know whether you are going to gamble or throw in the towel for another day.

End Your Programming Routine: Now that I have written this all down, it seems simple. Hopefully, I can get my timing down such that all I really need to be concerned about is the proof. I am still working on that too. It is a good thing that I have to waste sourdough starter every week and I still have five pounds of wheat flour. Maybe I will get this figured out.

May 7, 2024 – Will It Juice?

May 7, 2024 /

When you start to get some age on you, unfortunately some people we once new are no longer with us. Also some people that we know are also survivors. In this case, one of my wife’s friends is a cancer survivor and she said that juicing was a key part of her treatment process. The first couple of weeks she brought some juice by and then she bought my wife her own juicer.

This is a nice piece of equipment. It is Breville which means that it is pretty high dollar (and well made). My first thought is where is this going to be stored? Then looking at it a little more, how much of a pain in the butt is this going to be to clean? It is my opinion that a healthy life tips the balance more towards a diet of whole foods. I think juicing is a short cut in a sense, but it certainly must be better drinking things that came from a can or bottle.

Putting my reservations aside, my wife wanted to use it so I set out to find some recipes to try. I found two that were advertised as ‘Energy’ and ‘Anti-Cancer’ so that is what I set about to do. Will it juice?

These recipes are for one batch which seems to produce about a cup worth of juice. The first one is Energy.

  • 1 stalk celery
  • 1 apple
  • 1 lemon
  • 4 leaves of kale
  • 1/2 cucumber
  • 1 inch of peeled ginger

The second one is cancer fighting.

  • 2 carrots
  • 4 stalks celery
  • 1 lemon
  • 1/4 head of cabbage

This is the output of the second one. Once everything is stirred together it is a very vibrant orange. Left to its own devices, it will separate again in about a day. It appears that a very fine degree of solids is allowed to pass through the screen and those solids float to the top.

I tasted both of them. Neither were bad. I have to say that the green grass taste of the ‘Energy’ was less appealing, but not horrible. I could see having a glass of this every breakfast or something like that. I would probably want to try some other recipes to find what I really like. There were some recipes that contained rhubarb and that stuff grows like a weed from my plants. It seems like a good strategy when gardens start to become prolific.

I made a couple of batches with the thought that they might last the week. I have to say committing to this uses a lot of produce. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Some might say it is the point of juicing. Just be prepared that finding a steady stream of vegetables are going to have a financial impact.

After trying things, there are still two downsides. The first is to find a home for this machine. I don’t want it living on the counter for the rest of my life. The second is cleaning. The catch barely holds a double batch and there are a lot of parts to wash. The filter screen has to be scrubbed because the fine fiber tends to plug the screen with each use. It definitely takes more time to clean than to use. Not ideal. There is a fair amount of waste generated. This makes excellent compost fodder or even chicken food. Since I have neither at the moment, I feel bad about throwing it out. But beware, you will have to deal with that as well.

End Your Programming Routine: Will I ever become a juicer? Probably not. I could definitely see making some custom Bloody Mary mix though. Think about it, the possibilities are almost endless. I am committed to making juice while my wife goes through treatment. I am going to sneak in a few things that I want to try while I am going through the effort to do this. I have to say that it is kind of fun and amazing to see the amount of water in celery.

May 6, 2024 – Addicted to Outrage

May 6, 2024 /

We Americans have a problem. We are addicted to outrage and that doesn’t lead to anything productive. I have to say that participating in outrage is the very tool that controls us. Join me to today talk about what to do about this.

May 3, 2024 – The Divine Comedy, Purgatory, Canto XX – XXI

May 3, 2024 /

In all of my years of reading, I have never seen this word before. The word is avarice. Apparently, it first appeared in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. I guess I missed that in high school because I had to look up the definition. According to Webster’s in the intense desire for wealth. If you are not used to reading the word like I am, I will call it greed from this point forward.

Another quasi difference I see with my version of the book is that it calls these levels of Purgatory as Cornices where everywhere else I read them as Terraces. Along with the names and mythology, this book has some of the most challenging vocabulary in any book I have ever read. It is modern English, but it is very highbrow. There are a lot of esoteric words that I have to look up if it is not noted in the footnotes. I don’t know if that is because this is a poem and the word is used for meter or not. I don’t recognize it as such, but the formatting is certainly grouped as poetry.

The big todo in these two Cantos is the earthquake that happens in Canto XX. It is not totally clear what the significance really means but it seems like the consensus is more along the lines of a soul leaving purgatory and heading into heaven proper. Another interesting debate in my noted section of the book was that when souls leave this Cornice, they start to gain some freedom.

This freedom means that the purification process is succeeding. Thus, souls are allowed some more self governance when it comes to sentence and repentance in Purgatory suggesting that they can ascend at their own rate. This all goes back to what I was saying about how sin is organized last week. The next three levels (including this one) belong to loving too much.

We cannot get by without discussing the sin and the atonement of greed. On this level, it was jam packed with souls. So much so that there was really no room to maneuver. I am speculating that this represents greed where the only thing left in their heart was the pursuit of wealth. I haven’t really seen it discussed anywhere but that seems intuitive to me.

There is supposedly one significant interaction here to. They meet someone called Statius. Apparently, he will be with Dante and Virgil until Dante moves to Heaven. Statius is a Roman Poet who wrote several classics which makes him a minor celebrity. As the legend goes, Statius is a converted Christian and represents redemption. So now we have Virgil as logic (and free will) Dante as humanity and Statius as redemption.

End Your Programming Routine: We are getting very close to closing out Purgatory. There are two levels left, gluttony and lust. Next week will be covering Cantos XX – XXIV. Just as promised, things have lightened up quite a bit since the beginning. This is good because I don’t want to read and write a downer for a whole year. I think that I am also expanding my vocabulary too.

May 2, 2024 – What Is the Source Of My Recent Unholy Radio Obsession

May 2, 2024 /

In 2015, I got voluntold that I would be on a walking relay called Portland to Coast. The idea was that twelve of us would walk continuously from Portland to Seaside on the beach (128 miles). I was already training for the half marathon anyway so I did it. It was actually pretty fun.

Each leg was about 3-5 miles and there would be an exchange point. There would be bathrooms and refreshment at a minimum. Some of the major exchange points would also have food, showers a place to sleep and a radio operator. When you get into the mountains here there is no such thing as cellular service.

I thought that it was pretty cool that people would do all the work of setting up antennas and things and volunteer their time for something like this. What I didn’t really understand was that this was their time to compete as well. They were policing the course for the lost, stragglers and medical emergencies. The only way to get effective, real time communication was radio. I have now observed that many races have radio operators.

Going back a further, to about 2006 my current neighbors moved in. He is a former sheriff’s deputy and runs a police scanner. Since I live on Main St., I can hear all of the sirens when the when the vehicles turn west leaving the station (the siren sound is directional). Some times when there are a lot of vehicles I will go over and ask what is going on.

Next, came my techno-junk pursuit. I talk frequently about it, so I won’t go deeply into it. But, I was trying to figure out how to buy/build antennas for AM reception. I ran across an antenna advertised for short-wave usage. It was at that time that I realized that short-wave frequencies also included AM radio. So, I started to research this further.

I was actually reading the comments and reviews for the antenna that I purchased. One of the comments said something to the effect of ‘watch where you put that thing or you will end up with an Rocket Propelled Grenade in your window’. It was at that moment that I realized radio is a weapon. It is not the kind of weapon that hurts people, but it is communication that prevents friendly fire, a weapon of information.

Radio is a force multiplier, not a missile. Think of it like a shotgun choke. While one pellet might be effective, more would be better. So if the shot is concentrated on the target the more likely it will be lethal. On the other hand, sometimes having a more open choke is better, you have a better chance of hitting with a wider pattern. Radio frequencies are the same way. They have their advantages and disadvantages but make no mistake firing without a choke causes the shot to spray everywhere quickly.

Aside from being regulated by the FCC, no other outside infrastructure is necessary. Strictly speaking, it can be used without licensing either. In times of natural disaster, radio will be there regardless of internet, phone lines or cellular service. My wife even mentioned that we should get our own scanner. This is what spurned me to try out Software Defined Radio (SDR). As you know, I am still working on that but I can tune in a channel on the SDR and hear when I talk on GMRS channels. So, I am close, I just need to get the right configuration setup to listen to emergency broadcasts.

End Your Programming Routine: I don’t know if I will ever be a guy that sits in front of a radio talking to strangers at night. One video I watched recently said that developing scanning channels requires time. That is one thing that I feel like I have little of. But, radio does appeal to my technical, scientific and preparedness side. I definitely want to work on going a little deeper just for the ability to say that I know how to do it and can do it competently.

May 1, 2024 – Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking

May 1, 2024 /

Ratio by Michael Ruhlman is the Left Coast Culinary Book Club selection for May. How about that, it is the first of the month and I am already done? Well, you can guess that I have had a lot of reading time lately. It is waiting in the waiting room for doctor’s appointments or sitting by while my wife watches TV or is sleeping. Consequently I finished this month’s book and I am way ahead on Dante’s Divine Comedy.

I didn’t know it at the time, but growing up I was spoiled. My Grandmother was the best pie maker that I knew. The truth is, everybody on that side of my family made good pies. It was only when I got exposed to store made pies that I realized not all pies were equal.

One day I asked my Grandmother what the secret was and she said that my Great Grandmother was a pie maker for a diner and she said that the ratio of the crust was not only easy but also the secret. It was 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup shorting and 1/4 cup water. That turns out to be 4:2;1 in terms of ratios.

Not long after that, I assumed the role of process chemist. I spent a lot of my time scaling batches between the lab, the pilot reactor and full scale batches. I soon learned that it wasn’t the units of things that made a difference but the ratios of ingredients. Once I had the ratios figured out, I could convert to the exact units of measure to my hearts content.

I was excited to read this book. I intuitively knew that ratios were the secret but I had never given much thought to it other than the pie crust. After reading it, I have more mixed feelings about it. Here are some of my thoughts.

First, I would say that probably half of the book was about baking. While I don’t want to split hairs, typically baking and cooking are different disciplines. Certainly at home, it is often the cook is also baking but it set some different expectations from the title and the content. To cement matters, I am not much of a baker nor do I have a ton of interest in it. That is not to say I don’t enjoy a good desert, but I just don’t crave them much along with the clean-up that goes with it.

Of some of the items in the cooking one example was stock making. I find it a stretch that there is a proper proportion of bones to water. This is especially true when Ruhlman agrees with Samin Nosrat that if you cannot use homemade stock, you are better off using water than store purchased stock. I use what I have on hand and that is just fine with me.

Many of the final items were pretty highbrow. There were more French dishes in this book than I have ever read. Many of them I had never heard of either. The final chapter was about custards and he goes on to describe a smoked salmon custard with shrimp halves. Additionally, he talks about making crème brulee. I am not saying home cooks shouldn’t attempt this but it after you make your shrimp custard to top steak, who is making crème brulee?

Finally, I disagreed with some of the ratios. I tend to think that ratios are a starting point in cooking. If you don’t have 2:1:1 ratio of onion, carrots and celery, is it still mirepoix? I think so. Sometimes I use the half of onion that is already cut rather than a whole one. Sometimes I want to finish off the old bag of carrots or celery that is long in the tooth.

Lest you think that I am totally down on this book, I would suggest that for people that are clueless in the kitchen this is a good resource. He does freely state that ratios can be modified in most cases. But, if people do not know how to start, this is a gateway to the science of cooking. There is freedom in not being a slave to a recipe. You can’t get the freedom until you understand each ingredient’s place in the dish.

End Your Programming Routine: As a former chemist doing chemical engineering work, I see ratios in recipes. I find myself scaling for the ingredients on hand or eaters. So, maybe this book isn’t for me necessarily but it might be for you. Especially if you are struggling in the baking department or fine French food. It may change your perspective from a mystery to an art.

April 30, 2024 – My Life As a Country Song

April 30, 2024 /

No, my wife didn’t run off and my dog didn’t die. But, last week was a different kind of tough. The week before, I was dealing with the side effects of chemo and being a full time caretaker. But, we were mostly at home and sheltering in place. Last week as there was more getting out and about, it seemed like everything was going wrong.

My wife likes to say that I am ‘a glass half empty’ person. I don’t really think so. I like to think of myself as analytical and balanced. I like to see the full spectrum both good and bad. I suppose that to people who don’t like to see both sides, that is construed as negative. I fail to see how always being positive even when the odds seem low is a better trait that viewing the whole picture optimistically.

I say that because I am not complaining. I am going to get to a point by the end today. I think helpful advice is that we cannot change or dwell in the facts. My wife has cancer and we are doing what we can to combat it. All the ‘why me?’ in the world isn’t going to change a thing. It does however make life much more complicated.

This process is moving at an extremely disjointed manner. One day chemo is scheduled every other Thursday, then it is every other Friday. Take this medication before chemo, no don’t take it at all. Come in for this reason, no see this specialist. They are still doing diagnostic testing for goodness sake to determine if they are proceeding in the correct direction. Every conversation is musical chairs in who is running this process and is this information actually correct. This is the background for what I am dealing with.

Then, my son calls and says ‘my car has a problem’. He is about 45 minutes away. So, I have to drop what I am doing to go get him at 10pm. Due to a large coolant leak, I decide the best coarse of action is to have it towed home rather than risk a warped cylinder head. Imagine that I am trying to get my wife ready for an all day procedure that she is extremely nervous about while dealing with the tow truck driver at the same time because the car is locked and twenty minutes from the hospital.

The next day, my SSL certificate updates for altf4.co. Every 60 days this happens. But, it also follows with calamity. It seems like every time I go in there the user interface changes and I struggle with this process. I have come to anticipate the suck, but it does make it frustrating. This time I could not get the DNS provider to recognize my security documents. I tried and tried until I finally broke down and reached out to support. The problem was technical, I am not sure that there was anything I could do.

I was trying to setup my walkie talkies so that I could give one to my wife and I could hold onto one. This would give me some freedom to be out and about the house but still be in communication. This was the whole reason why I went through the licensing requirements that I talked about last week. One of them I couldn’t get to work. I bought new battery packs, I swapped batteries, no go. Finally, I took it apart to find some of the internal components fried.

No problem, I will break out my second set. They are not doing any good squirreled away in my emergency box for years anyway. One battery was dying, so I ordered new battery packs. Low and behold, there are a lot of aftermarket batteries that are similar but not the same on Amazon (even with the same battery model number). So, now I have two new batteries that don’t charge in my radios since I already opened them and threw away the packaging.

Last week it felt like everything was an obstacle. Everything I did had unintended consequences and nothing worked as planned. But, I want to go back to the beginning here. First, I don’t know what God has planned. I also know that I am handed scenarios that I can handle and learn from. As I am writing, things are getting better. My website is running, the batteries are cleared up, the problem is diagnosed with my son’s car and I think we have all the testing done and the path is clear on chemo.

More so than that, when things are not working right we just have to compartmentalize and be objective. Most of these things were not life altering problems. Take the problems and triage, then prioritize the work to solutions. The list might get longer before it gets shorter but we have to focus on the important things first.

End Your Programming Routine: To be truthful, I wasn’t exactly happy while all of these things were going on at the same time. But, being able to step back, it wasn’t huge problems. I suppose it is fortunate that more bad things didn’t keep happening at the same time. Mostly, step back and analyze the problems to the best of your ability. I am no electronics expert but I can see and understand burnt capacitors, Time to cut your losses and move on.

April 29, 2024 – It’s Not Where You Go…

April 29, 2024 /

Graduation is just around the corner. It certainly is in this household and I am separating the future reality from the bull. It is unfortunate that our kids spend at least 12 years in the school system just to get programmed with false information. In fact, the people that don’t take the straight path are sometimes the smartest.

April 26, 2024 – The Divine Comedy, Purgatory, Canto XVII – XIX

April 26, 2024 /

I failed to realize it last week but we are a little over halfway through the book in terms of Cantos and pages now. It is hard to break things up correctly without reading and knowing the story. Canto XIX in my book says both the fourth cornice and the ascension to the fifth. In hindsight, Canto XIX probably belongs more to the fifth than the fourth. Oh well, I am not going to talk about it much anyway.

This cornice is about a misunderstood sin, the sloth. When I was reading about this in hell, I dismissed the sloth as lazy. When we use the word today we often mean slow, lazy and often dirty or unkempt. That is probably not actually fair to the animal, it is probably more appropriate to say deliberate. But, this is not actually what Dante meant by the term.

Believe it or not, the sloth really means to see an opportunity to do good but not to act on it. So, the modern day equivalent makes me think of the John Quinones show What Would You Do? I know that this is a bit of a tough area for me. I very much tend toward the live and let live philosophy. Aside from that, I am not sure I know enough details to get involved without a direct ask. It turns out that this is defined as a sin.

Very little is actually described about cornice four. There are really no meaningful interactions. The souls here are constantly running. That is running toward those that need help. Not only are they anti-sloth by running but also atoning for their sin.

Much of the the first two Cantos discuss love, free will and sin between Dante and Virgil. This follows exactly the structure and grouping of hell. Just as a recap of what was said. Here is the following types of love. First there is natural and un-natural love. Natural is what you would think. Unnatural love has three categories within it. There is love of an object, then there is loving too little or loving too much.

The first three levels pride, envy and anger represent the first three levels as well as unnatural love of objects. Loving to little is the sloth (level 4). Loving too much is defined as greed, gluttony and lust. And there we have the definition of the layers of hell. and purgatory. Although they don’t seem to be in the same order between the two. Maybe that will reveal itself in the future.

End Your Programming Routine: Very educational. I have been ignorant to the sin of the sloth every since high school when I first read the Inferno. I am curious to how it is exactly judged because it leaves me wondering if there are some kind of test just like What Would You Do?. But then again, one of Jesus’s main messages was charity. Failing to do so might land you on Cornice four.

April 25, 2024 – Familiar is Comfort and Comfort is Best

April 25, 2024 /

For some reason, my son thinks I need more knives. He made me a cleaver for my birthday and he recently bought me an assisted opening knife while on a trip. I have never had one of those before. It is kind of a fun novelty to continuously click it open while I am sitting and staring into space.

I live in the knife capitol of the world. Gerber, Leatherman, Benchmade, Kershaw and CRKT are all headquartered here. As a result, I have some unique opportunities like the annual seconds sale at Kershaw. There are fifty dollar knives that sell for $5. Some of them are defected while others are models that just didn’t sell. It has been a number of years since I went to the sale. The truth is I can only use so many knives. I love the idea of buying a deal and getting something cool but why…? Besides that, a lot of the knives I have have been given to me. Like the two below in the picture.

These are my two newest folding knives. Both of them were given to me. The gray one is the one I was saying that my son gave to me. The old fashioned one I was awarded by the local state representative that I was helping with his trap fundraiser. When I got it, I thought, what am I going to do with this? I keep it in my office to open boxes and packaging. The truth is, it is not a locking blade and so I am leery of putting it to real, hard work.

I have often thought that I want to buy a real barbeque show piece. I can afford it and I should have a heavy-duty tactical knife for the zombie apocalypse. But then I think about how torn I am to surrender the $15 Leatherman at TSA and I think not a chance I would carry around a $400 knife to possibly lose it.

The knife that I carry 99% of the time is the same knife I bought in middle school. I like it, it is comfortable. (read more about it october-22-2020-tacticool-thursday) It is not the best steel, it is scraped to heck back on my first amateur attempts to sharpen and it doesn’t even have a pocket clip. Those were just being invented at that time in the 1980s. My brother bought one about a year later that did have a clip. But, it does lock.

I think one of the things that I do like is that it doesn’t have a clip. That makes it slim to fit in my pocket and doesn’t catch on other things when I pull it out. I would be very, very sad if I lost it (wouldn’t be the first time). This always gets me thinking about buying a replacement Everyday Carry knife. Each time I do, I find myself going back to what is familiar and comfortable.

The only knives I have lost since becoming an adult have been because they were taken from me at the airport. However, as a kid I lost track of the number of knives that I have lost. I think two Swiss Army knives, a Boy Scouts branded folder and an Opinel given to my from our French exchange student we hosted are amongst the list. Part of the reason this is true is that it is carried every day so I always know where it is.

One time I bought a very nice looking, titanium clad knife and I carried it a while. It turns out that I hated using it because the pocket clip bit into my hand while using it. Another time I bought an expensive (for the time) knife off of e-bay. When it showed up, I was in shock. It was tiny. It is also uncomfortable to use. This was about the time I was learning that I needed to see things before buying them because the dimensions provided did not translate well in my head.

End Your Programming Routine: I probably will switch over to this new knife for a while. I don’t have the same emotional attachment to it so I am less worried about whether I will lose it or ding it up doing things it wasn’t designed to do. I doubt too that this will be the last one either. But, don’t be surprised if I go back to my old faithful either.