Osso Buco

I gotta get into the kitchen and turn on the oven, I'm making my Osso Buco Fiorentina recipe from Mark Strausman's cookin' book The Campagna Table. It's killer-good and I gotta get started chopping on the miripoix... I took pictures, I could blog this if anybody was interested.
UPDATE: Ok, here goes with the bandwidth-chewing pictures.
What's with using the diddly French-cook's word miripoix? It's just onions, carrots and celery. A good strong German word like gemüse could drive over it like a Mk. V Panzer in Normandy - except you don't want all the radishes, turnips, and cabbage that goes along for that particular ride.

What you do want is a ratio of 1:2 - I think...anyhow you want a pile of onions, and another pile of carrots and celery that should equal the onion-pile.
Then you salt and pepper the veal-shanks, and drag 'em through some flour.

The pot you're using has to go in the oven, so plastic or wooden handles obviously are out. The one we have is a 5-ply layered, 18/10 stainless-steel that distributes the heat nicely without any hotspots. Just remember when you take it out of the oven that it's damn freakin' hot.
Fire it up and pour in enough oil to braise the meat. It's supposed to be just vegetable oil, but all we had on hand was some fairly decent olive-oil from Costco so I used that.
Brown the meat on each side and the edges to seal-in the juices for later, and then pull them out and dump in the onions-carrots-celery - I included some garlic when it had cooked down and "melted" the onions, because dammit it's Italian and it has to have garlic.
Adding the onions allows you to de-glaze the pot and absorb up all the sticky tasty meat residue - the "fond" - and instructions actually call for cleaning out the pot and starting with fresh oil, but to me that's just a waste of time and effort so I shorten that step.

After that cooks down a while I add-in the tomatoes - these are diced and the recipe calls for crushed, but I figure it's gonna cook-down anyhow and I like my sauce a bit chunky. Also I couldn't find the chicken stock so I just used the whole can of chopped tomatoes, liquid and all - it's going to be saucy enough. Also a half-bottle of "dry red wine."

The recipe calls for a whole one but I usually make too much liquid-goop with the large amount of onions-carrots-celery, and I want less so I add less. Here it's an unfinished bottle of Cabernet I had open. Never use "cooking wine" because God-knows what's in that crap - if you wouldn't drink it you sure as hell don't ever want to put it in your damn food!

And finally the zest - a couple skin-slices of lemon chopped up add a tangy bit of flavor. This is when you also throw in chopped Thyme, Sage, and Oregano - but since I didn't have fresh herbs either, I used some dried Herbs De Provence we had on the shelf - whatever, it's still gonna be good.

Stick that sucker in the oven for two and a half hours at 325° - and remember to use some potholders when you mess with that bastard pot, like if you go to scoop it out on the stove-top afterwards don't grab the handle bare handed. Ouch!
So enjoy, mangiare!

Autumn Chill

With Daylight Savings Time having flipped the card, it's now dark early and the lights around the neighborhood have come on, little yellow pools against the dimming twilight. With my window open I feel the cold, and down the walkway and across the fence in the cool of dusk a neighbor child calls for attention. I hear him (it's definitely a "him") often throughout the day whenever he's outside, and the kid has only one vocalization repeated at various intervals and cadences; "Mommy, waaaaah!" It's irritating as hell and I wish the neighbors would do something but they don't, so I take the initiative and yell out the window, "Hey, shutup!" Damn.

I Want One of These

I'd like to get behind the wheel (sticks, controls - whatever) of one of these eight-tracked behemoths and rumble around the countryside wrecking havoc. Besides a wall to keep-out illegal aliens, let me dig a moat. Kewl! The rear tire on my dirtbike pales in insufficiency.


I found the pic about a year ago (?) when people were arguing about which sized caterpillar tractor the Israelis should use to crush nitwit protesters and those who hide in underground tunnels smuggling bombs - or something like that. I think this one would work real good.

Dirtbike Electricity

After the bike got hot and stopped working, a half-mile down the black-diamond trail called Troll Trail, we figured it was the stator. What the hell is a stator and what does it do? It doesn't do nothing, it just sits there while the flywheel spins around it. On the flywheel however are some magnets, and as the flywheel spins wickedly around the wound-up stator it excites the coils on the stator which delivers the throbbing electrical juice. Whoa!
On a KTM that juice travels out through a rubber grommet-thing that flexes, expanding and contracting with the heat, and that sits in-line with the front wheel which splashes it with sand and dirt and water and mud depending on the conditions, so it gets really groty in there.
The trick is gettin' at it - it's behind the flywheel which is covered by a plate held on with five-bolts, and the flywheel is held on with a reverse threaded nut that's cranked-down but good. It helps to have a buddy with the properly threaded flywheel-puller device, and air-compressor and an impact wrench to remove the flywheel. The bolts that hold the stator plate also have to come off too, and then the stator itself - unfortunately the stator was held in place with evil, soft, and groty-headed Phillips screws - but we managed to get them off without damaging the tender heads.
A couple cans of brake-cleaner (well, just one) and the wire-brush on a Dremel worked to clean-out the insides and the plate. With the old one removed, we fed the wires back through the plate and re-secured them with the rusty little wire-clamp doohicky.

After that we fed the wires down a tube to protect them from heat and vibration, and re-routed the wires so they'd be easier to get-at. While we had everything apart I also took the opportunity to gut the restrictive thermostat in the cooling system, since this bike never sees any street riding and doesn't really require a warm-up circuit. Does it work? It was time to re-install the tank, shrouds, and seat and see if it ran. Yes indeedy, Mike can wheelie. Whether that solves the overheating problem - most likely yes, but we won't know until an extended ride takes place which should be soon if the weather cooperates and we get some rain. This bike with its long wheelbase and generous power output is outstanding in the mud and muck.

(Professional redneck-rider on a closed-course, don't try this at home or without a helmet)

Lousy Buttons and Pockets

All my cargo pants have blown-out pockets, usually within the first two or three washings - and I don't wear them for weeks at a time between washing. Maybe twice at most because they get worn while I'm laying on my belly in the dirt, dust, and powder residue of the range.
And always the fly-buttons go, they just drop off - it's a real pain to sew this crap back on all the damn time, and now my pockets are getting smaller and smaller, but the fabric just frays out into cobwebs.
They're not supposed to come pre-fatigued, WTF's up with that? So, who makes a better pair?

Exercise

I rode my bicycle to the downtown Post Office and popped a card in the mail to a friend who's been stationed in Dushanbe (formerly Stalinabad), Tajikistan. It was a short workout for the sciatica that tends to set-in when sitting here doing nothing but computer crap.
I grabbed the old Giro bicycle helmet down in the garage and plunked it down over my Zouaves ball-cap (ball-cap to prevent scalp-freeze). The helmeted bicyclist is a dorky concession to changing times and demographics, which point to the fact that about one-quarter of the car-drivers nowdays here are uninsured - so the odds in favor of a successful outcome or experience are reduced and we must take action to fend for ourselves.
It was sunny out but a cold wind has been blowing down from the north and cargo shorts and a t-shirt while stylish aren't cuttin' it anymore - summer is over. I rode-cold anyhow simply to defy Nature (and because I was already dressed and lazy). Approaching the reflective glass doors of the Post Office I caught a glimpse of a goofy looking old fool. At least I was wearing sunglasses to hide my identity. I don't know if a new helmet is a sufficient wardrobe change or diversion to diminish the goof-appearance but there's no way in hell you'll catch me in the stretchy spandex of the Bicycleta Campagnoloistas. There's just not enough closet-space to endure that.
My older brother is a two-wheeled pedalin' fiend from Marin County (now), and gave me the bike for Christmas some ten years ago seeing that at the tender age of 38 I had none - not noticing the absence was deliberate or caring whether I even wanted one actually. It's a decent, road-style 21-speed, made in the People's Republic like so much else to a price-point and marketing strategy.
I don't really like the bike that much since it's rake is too steep to ride no-handed comfortably, with the result being that I'm forced to bend over and crane my neck, distinctly uncomfortably. Since it has no suspension I added in a flex-stem to absorb the hard-edged road irregularities that otherwise get directly transferred up the arms to the neck and back.
Unlike my brother who moved to a non human-powered vehicle quickly during High School and who may still harbor a gauzy romantic nostalgia about bicycles, I had no motorized transportation of my own until the end of college when I blew $600 - half of my "Student Loan" - on a '60 Karmann Ghia that was a bondo-bandit rustbucket, but one that ran (barely) uphill without me pedaling.
Until then I had to ride a damn POS steel-lunk Schwinn Varsity everywhere, and if I wanted to go anywhere, including lugging 50+lbs. of groceries in a backpack up a steep hill to my housing. All this effort amid the burgeoning class of BMW-owning Spandexified hair-groom product elites on featherweight bicycles who rode only for fun. Great. I replaced the turned-down bars because they hurt my neck since I was riding uphill all the time (both ways), and installed upright bars just so I could see. In addition I put on thick, thorn-proof tires and inner-tubes, because I took short-cuts across fields and open lots to save time - all before there were "mountain bikes." Eventually the forks broke while I was jumping off a small ledge and the bike was done-for. I have no illusions about bicycles - or about the glories of shared public mass-transit, having also had to endure long bus-rides among the shrill cacophony of drooling mental patients, and the glowering intimidations of wannabee gangster thugs. Screw all that.

Muslim Pacifists?

The Hindus of couse have Ghandi after whom many have hitched their wagon, and the West has most (recently) noticable the Amish, as an entire group. What or who has Islam produced on the non-violent side?
Just wondering.

Leftoid Lit-Crit and Identity Politics

More a-musing ruminations...
Next to the piquant Freshman study of Irony (oh-so delicious, so ironic), Allegory stands tall as the Sophomore 8th Grade Intro-Lit. level of appreciation, a state so compelling that beyond it the Left never bothered to venture - it completes them and their favorite narrative apex (and cul-de-sac): Das Kapital. Dude, it almost sounds English!! Whoa! But it gets straight to where the Left indexes - on themselves. Simple allegories are what the Left is all about, confusing literary transubstantiation and the staple diet of their "best" poets and playwright like the much overrated Arthur Miller. He bonked Marilyn Monroe!! Woo-ee-ooo HOT! The Crucible was a beat-you-over-the-head blunt-object allegory, made famous for one word which the Left repeated until finally popular in the lexicon, "Witch-hunts."
Inspired by a purely "Identity Politic" post at Trickish Knave I repeat my comment here (with some minor punctuation alteration), that I've been trying to work-out the whole identity-politics thing (but not very hard). Not being a member of one of the "Oppressed Castes" makes it hard to access, but it seems to me to be about assigning blame and then extorting demands. You gotta get the identification right first, "Proud, Ethnic-Group-Name, Union Worker, etc." and then pile on the demands" for "Social Justice," "Economic Justice," "Freedom from Want," blah blah- the list is huge, in order to balance-out whatever historical oddity cast them up on the beach that way... Like all things Leftoid it's a matter of yammering rhetoric and framing the argument. Such a buzzkill.
The Left has staked-out the turf of Victim-Grievance-Rhetoric as theirs and with it a calculus of Guilt and Oppression, to be used as a lever to move money and property from one domain to the other, and from people -- from whoever has it, to the Left. This is Hugo Chavez' and Robert Mugabe's game, and Kim Jong Il too, and not far from the Mullah's ploy.

Leftwing Brownshirts and Islamonazis

Musing a bit but here goes: The events at Columbia University, where free-speech was shouted-down and surpressed by the intemperate but impassioned Leftists reveal a crucial piece of the puzzle. Because of the Left's deliberately confused and distorted narrative about itself, Fascism is always (and conveniently) shown as an opposition-element, rather than an outgrowth of Leftism - because it's simply easier and less conflicting to take (and dispense) that way. This could be what links the Left and the Islamists so strongly. Both are rigorous, rigid, and very structural ideologies with an internal struggle component of jihad or kampf. As public pathologies they each express that internal struggle (and disconnect) externally as revolution, in order to exorcise their own demons and justify their existance. Seen in that light it's hard not to also see them as sophomoric and adolescent ideologies, barely able to tolerate let alone understand the ironies they present.
Just sayin'

Yes, that's an apron, a shop-apron.

It takes up 41-inches wide by 19-inches deep. The guest-bed/couch got shoved over and my bookcase which had stood in that place moved to the other wall. The blue Dillon sifter on the floor gets kicked back and forth in an eternal battle for footspace. In the slot between the bench and the wall I slid my light-table that I used for drawing and cartooning, and the hand-vac sits on top of that. I have a hundred cases to deprime before I fix dinner. After that they get trimmed down to a length of 2.494" and the primer-pocket cleaned and uniformed. Then comes the turkey-stuffing.

My Monster Grows Wild in the Rain

Know this, I am not a farmer, nor gardner, nor adept at vegetal husbandry - plants die for me as I sweep them with my black thumb. But this is a different animal.
Some weather blew across the Pacific from Hawaii, and cooled by the arctic dropped in meandering rain. You could smell the must and dirt and oily asphalt that hovered suspended in the low pressure. We last had a fizzle of wet three months back in July, and no real showers going back to May. Somewhere in between then and that I put the Monstera out on the deck where it thrived in the heat. Maybe I can train it, like Young Frankenstein, to dance along the wall.

Optics Obsolescence

Some guys have all the latest bells and whistles, tuned to perfection, polished and oiled like a well-honed machine - you should know by now not to confuse those people with me.
Part of the shooting tradition that I continue to maintain at the 19th Century Mk.III-eyeball level is sights and optics. All my stuff is iron-sights only. I was flabbergasted by the price of a set of fancy (but obsolete) competition sights for a nicely made (but obsolete) rifle, the Swiss K-31. I like my K-31 and it's a damn fine gun, but jeebus! The W+F clamp-on diopter sights are beautifully (Swiss) made and accurate (Rolex) as hell - and cost $450 -- whoa! That's four times what I paid for the rifle, plus $50 for the big jar of Vaseline. Put some lipstick on and gimme a kiss me if you're gonna do that, ok?
So I shoot without artificial enhancements. Maybe one day I'll move into this 21st Century, or even the latter part of the 20th. But old-stuff is old-stuff and I did find this scope at a dusty old gun-shop and paid a few bucks for it. It's still pretty clear with a simple cross-hair reticule, but it's obsolete too. I don't know what I'd do with it. It really won't go on the 1898 Krag, or the '44 Garand, or the K-31, or the 1931 .22 WRF pump-action Model 90. Maye it could go on a spare handguard for the '43 M1-Carbine...? I'd hate to ruin a good gun by driling a bunch of holes all over it. I guess pretty much all my stuff is obsolete and non-tactical.

Aw crapsicle!

Somehow I blew-up my humongous list of Bloggy-Bookmarkers.
All the ones I keep separate from the blog itself, maybe it was just too many bookmarks and folders for Firefox to handle?
All the Blogworld bookmarks covering folders from Britannic (including ScootsMacBloog) to Baharatiablogalnadu, to the Canuckasphere to Euroblogiques to the Mid-East with Heebskiblogovitch, and the rest.
All the Chick-Bloggers, Dude-Bloggers, Edubloggers, FreeperBlogs, and Gunblastic Blogs. The Humor & Satire, Media-Bloggies, MillBlogs & Strategeristics, and Scientistical Professoratsia-Intelligensus Blogs...sheesh, a freakin bunch.

It's good to start over, what the hell, there were too many damn blogs anyhow, and most not even blogrolled, just bookmarked. Maybe I accidentally dragged them off to some weird corner, but they're not showing up...
So I'm starting over.

Carbine Match

We shot the Mike Campbell Memorial Carbine Match on Saturday. About twenty guys showed up and blasted away in two stages from the 50-yard line. We shot sighters then got seriouys: ten rapid (90 seconds) from prone. Then twenty rapid seated, in two ten-shot/90 second strings. Most guys finished with 30-seconds to spare! Then twenty rapid standing, in two ten-shot/90 second strings. I shot a 490-15x -- Jeebus I like shooting the 200-yard targets at 50-yards! Heh. Dammit I was 11th. My buddy the Expert cleaned it. He kept everything inside the ten-ring, and so the made him do it again with the second stage of guys and he got tired and dropped one into the Nine for a 499 - I forget how many damn X's he got... Next year we'll probably shoot it on the 100-yard line instead of the 50 to make the scoring lower.
I came away favorably impressed with the 50-yard accuracy of the little guns, I mean I put 15 shots into a 3-inch circle.
The bottom pasters are where my sighter went before I got out the spotting scope, I was holding on the 9-ring bottom, with the sight set as forward as possible, believing that they would shoot high at such close range. I was wrong. So I held on the center for the rest of the shooting.