Unrelated to the previous but I wanted to put it down, there's an Aldi market not far

from the house, and I noticed they had some frozen apple strudels that looked good, so I picked up a box(two inside) to try them.

That's pretty damn good.  My oven seems to run a touch warm so I have to watch it not to burn the edges, but very tasty.

Pies and ballistic matching

On the latter, Kevin at Smallest Minority had a piece he did years ago on ballistic fingerprinting, it's still available, and very good.  

I hadn't baked pies in quite a while, and I think I do need to go back to butter and flour on the pan.  Cakes and such always had, why I forgot it on pecan pies I don't know.  And thanks to everybody on that.

About that pie pan stuff,

I had an idea and asked daughter, who loves to cook: would it help to put parchment paper on the bottom before put the crust in?

She had no idea, but said might be worth trying.  So I tried it.

No, won't be doing that.  I'm going to go back to Sailorcurt's suggestion of greasing the pan.

I've got two pyrex or whatever glass pans, and aside from the sticking with some pies they work well.  

This is also making me wonder about other pies.  Which sound good.

Few years ago I picked up a smoker

Small one, it'll hold a good-size brisket or a couple of chickens, you won't be putting a pig in it.  And it does a great job.

Part of learning this was adjusting the air intake on the firebox and the cover on the smokestack.  Which wound up being downright strange:
One day I'd gotten a good fire going, it was ready to put the meat on except it was running about a hundred degrees hot.  Aha, says I, and fiddled with those adjustments, which had no results.  More fiddling, and with the intake closed and the smokestack with just a little sliver open, it got to a perfect 225 degrees(assuming that gauge is correct) and sat there.  The charcoal burned longer, lots of tasty smoke produced, and the brisket... oh, it was good.

I think there's enough air leakage around the intake and the doors that it takes that much restriction to get the temp I wanted, which is find now that I knew it.

One more thing: guy I used to know had grown up in a restaurant family and done a lot of cooking, one day mentioned that with most meat 1-2 hours of smoking will give you all the smoke flavor you'll generally get; after that you can cover it tightly in a pan and finish it in the oven.  Which seems to work nicely.

One last thing: I don't care for briquets, they leave a huge amount of ash, so some years ago I bought a bag of raw charcoal and never wen't back.  Check around to find it, the best price I've had locally is at a big restaurant supply store, 40 pounds of mesquite for about $20 last time I bought(I'll probably be shocked next time, it's been a while).

I rarely drink beer, but on occasion one is good,

 like with some meals.  Years back a girlfriend in Texas wanted to go to a pub and listen to the band playing that night, and as we sat I picked out a meal of a platter with soda bread*, sliced sausage, and cheese, and she suggested a Honey Brown to wash it down.

Oh, she was right.  That's been a favorite combination for years.

And now, it appears the distributors for this state aren't bringing it in anymore.  Yes, there's Harp, and Guinness(not my favorite, but not bad), but it's just not the same.  Dammit.



*I will state, without equivocation, that I make better soda bread.

"These two foods will kill you!

Current version!"  The part that stands out to me:
'We advise that people eat less overly processed, high in saturated fat, sugar and salt food. This includes food like cakes, biscuits, pastries, crisps, sugar-sweetened drinks, and fast food like pizza and burgers.

'These types of food have no fibre and contain virtually no essential nutrients, they should only be eaten occasionally and in small amounts.'
Too much of most things can be bad; but burgers and pizza 'have no fibre and contain virtually no essential nutrients'?  Really?  That I would describe as a load of crap.  But it's great for the "Eat only what we say is good" people.

"Don't worry, commoners, we'll adjust your diet to fit.

It's all to Save Mother Gaia, y'know!"
Food production could fall by 25 per cent in England under the most ambitious plans to reduce carbon emissions, a Government study has concluded.

Experts at conservation body Natural England who looked at nine scenarios to change land use found that it was not possible to deliver a strong reduction in greenhouse gas emissions without reducing the food supply.

Their report said: 'At the UK scale, there is a strong trade-off between emissions reduction and food production.'

It added: 'Under the most ambitious climate change mitigation scenario, food production is expected to decline by up to 25 per cent.

How much would you bet that the 'elites' will still eat whatever they want?  And plenty of it.

It's going to be a while, but this recipe

is going to be tried.

You like food? Like cooking?

You should watch this.  My son told me about the man, and I could lose track of time watching his videos

Chilly, overcast and damp;

yeah, it's December.

Visiting friends east of town meant getting back kind of late yesterday, and I was saved from starvation by a place called Basil in OKC.  Mediterranean food, good stuff.  Recommended.

And it was a good, just too short visit.

And now, your morning bitching:
Today, ethics watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust announced litigation against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for denying a series of records requests related to involvement of FBI officials in the censorship of American citizens as revealed in the Twitter Files exposés. Despite the heightened level of public interest in these records the FBI refused to comply, even though records available in the public domain acknowledge the existence of these documents.
The short version is "Yes, they're supposed to be public, and you have a right to see them, but we already look like crap for what all we've been doing and we don't want to give you more ammunition. So here are our excuses for not doing what we should."


More on the terrorists we're supposed to sympathize with, and who claim they know best for us:
“I think we made the point. We came here, we disrupted the event, we canceled Christmas, so give it up for yourselves,” yelled a protester as a pro-Muslim mob stormed a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The mob completely ruined the celebration and terrified children. At one point the grown Muslim sympathizers chanted, “America is a terrorist state.”

“Christmas is canceled everywhere until Palestine is free,” another protester yelled. Watch videos below.

The mob later broke into a building housing a local children’s choir. They yelled and screamed as the children tried to sing Christmas carols.
Yeah, mess up Christmas ceremonies and scare kids.  Oh, you're great people, sure.
Oh, and throw in that the people doing this in some places were carrying national socialist swastikas.  Nice touch, assholes.

Here's a bit of baking I'm going to have to try

Ah, the joys of watching other people on bikes in warm weather,

while knowing you don't dare ride yet.  All it would take is one sudden stop and having to shove that left leg down hard...  It sucks.

As a number of you are aware, every time the PT guys throw in something knew, the knee/leg starts aching in a new way for a few days.  After which the next new stuff will come in.  Etc.

Yes, I have made sure the bike stays charged up, and is run occasionally, and moved around to change the tire positions.

Work has been quite accommodating, the three days I was back.  With several people watching for a reason to say "Don't push it", or "Go home", it's like having Mom around, without the cooking.

Couple of days ago I hit a local store, having decided "It's been WAY too damned long the smoker hasn't been hot, this has to end."  Amazingly I found a small brisket that wasn't way overpriced, and about noon it went in.  Right now it's in the oven finishing, took longer than planned to get home from doing laundry(but for a good reason) so it started smoking about an hour later than planned.  And I'd forgotten, when they have a nice thick portion, how long it'll take to get up to proper internal temp.  However, I was able to try part of the flat, and it's good.

And now I have to do some PT crap, and stretching, and then clean up before I collapse.

It's been a while, this reminds me

that I need to make bacon again.

Fast food has been around

a long time.

A pork loin experiment is in progress Progress report added

Brined a piece over night, then sprinkled it somewhat heavily with Brown Sugar & Bourbon spices and let it sit for most of an hour, then into the smoker.

 

After a couple of hours I'll put it, tightly covered, in the oven to finish.

 

I'm looking forward to the taste test with great anticipation. 

Progress report:

Damn.  Tender, moist, tasty.  And enough drippings from the pan for some nice juices to add back in.  I'm going to have to do this again.

I haven't had time to finish this article on steak,

but the Shooter's Steak is something that definitely sounds worth trying. 

Oh joy, the food police are changing their minds again

This time olive oil is the culprit.

Screw these bastards, bacon grease and tallow it is.  And if I make some focaccia, it'll be olive oil I dip it in. 

The food police might be wrong(again)?

One more time.

Few years back, when the FP had another reversal on something, I did some reading.  Then did some more.  Came to the conclusion that they were full of crap, and went back to using butter, and saving bacon grease for cooking, and stopped worrying about eating meat.

Couple of years after that my doctor insisting I should get a full physical, and when the results came back he'd written on the bottom "Whatever you're doing, keep doing it".  So I have.

I suggest as a start, if you're interested, the book mentioned in the post, The Big Fat Surprise.  That's one of those I ran across, and it has a real good look at the history of the nutrition research* that got us into this mess.
Added: here's another one

*Some of which is a disgrace to the name.

"Organic food is better!" Overall, no; and then there's this:

"The greater land-use in organic farming leads indirectly to higher carbon dioxide emissions, thanks to deforestation," explains Stefan Wirsenius, a Swedish researcher working on the study. "Our study shows that organic peas, farmed in Sweden, have around a 50 percent bigger climate impact than conventionally farmed peas. For some foodstuffs, there is an even bigger difference – for example, with organic Swedish winter wheat the difference is closer to 70 percent," says Wirsenius.
So annoy a local vegetarian/vegan/organic food nut today.

This just in: vegetarians were known as 'The deceased'.

They found ibex adipose tissue as the most likely fat source. Half the stomach contents were composed of adipose fat. They expected the high-fat diet because of the extreme alpine environment where the Iceman lived and was found.

"The high and cold environment is particularly challenging for the human physiology and requires optimal nutrient supply to avoid rapid starvation and energy loss," said Albert Zink, who also participated in the study. "The Iceman seemed to have been fully aware that fat represents an excellent energy source."
No shit?