Ya know, I took this Sunday evening, last night. Was kinda shocked it came out so crazy vivid, so decided to post it! I had some sort of little poem to delight, and then? AND THEN ??? My goddam internet connection died.
Oh man did that suck, I was quite displeased. I mean, what the hell good is a computer without an internet in it? So, all I have to share at this point is the stunning sunset grabbed with my old D200 with a 70-300 VR.
Happy bloody Monday,
Biggles
There’s a non-meat product in my smoker !!!
Pretty, huh?
I know I’m behind the times, people have been tossing nearly every food product on the grill or in the smoker since the beginning. Yeah well, not me. I know this might sound a little odd, but I enjoy the contrast of the heavily smoked meat product, then the lesser beings (peasant food) to be cooked elsewhere, by others. Understand?
Luckily, Sunday morning found me at the local whatever mart shopping for the coming week’s food. Wanted to grab a few racks of ribs so Zoomie could get her fill. I ain’t payin’ no 18 dollars for a damned slab of pork spares, so it was the country style for me. Almost 8 dollars for a huge mound of fleshy goodness, I picked the one with more fat in it.
I’m not sure what happened or why. But I wanted to go back to the lousy produce section and find me some citrus or a pineapple to toss in the smoker as well. As you can see, the p-apple made it in!
I sat and pondered the unfriendly feeling thing for a while. How to slice? Extra virgin? Salt? Chile pepper? Thin slices and get juice everywhere? Peel? Cut it’s head off? I just love cutting the heads off of things. I opted for the simple approach, cut in half lengthwise and use some kosher salt on the inside. I knew the smoky goodness would not penetrate through the thick halves, but didn’t want to deal with all these fussy little slices falling all over the place.
It was pretty fricken good, for a fruit. Warm, smoky on the outside, tender on the inside. The heat had broken down something molecular on the inside and tenderized the little dear. Slurp! Guess what? It was excellent cold the next day too. Slurrrphah !!!
Biggles
ps – I don’t know how long it was in there, maybe a few hours or more, not less.
I do apologize
How much does it suck to have a blog’s post say something timely, and have that specific time (such as Friday) come and go by days?
A lot.
Which is why I’m posting this, it’s not fricken Friday anymore you bone! The boys and I visited good friends up in Calistoga this last weekend, great time. Here we have fresh corn over mesquite in a hole in the ground.
More to come …
Your friend in meat, happy friday everyone!
Dang, where’d that week go? Yeah, I dunno either. I haven’t spent much time in the kitchen, nor at the grill. Sure tore it up last weekend though! Here’s Saturday at Chilebrown’s celebrating his new sauce, The Good Reverend Dr. Biggles’ Bucktooth Revenge BBQ sauce.
Oddly enough, I meant to stop by last Friday too. Creepy E gifted me an older electric skillet and I did up some pork chops! Here’s last week’s Friday in Meat that you never saw.
And, to make the pot that much sweeter, this just in from a Meathenge fan, Snowbuggie.
The Pig
In England once there lived a big
And wonderfully clever pig.
To everybody it was plain
That Piggy had a massive brain.
He worked out sums inside his head,
There was no book he hadn’t read.
He knew what made an airplane fly,
He knew how engines worked and why.
He knew all this, but in the end
One question drove him round the bend:
He simply couldn’t puzzle out
What LIFE was really all about.
What was the reason for his birth?
Why was he placed upon this earth?
His giant brain went round and round.
Alas, no answer could be found.
Till suddenly one wondrous night.
All in a flash he saw the light.
He jumped up like a ballet dancer
And yelled, “By gum, I’ve got the answer!”
“They want my bacon slice by slice
“To sell at a tremendous price!
“They want my tender juicy chops
“To put in all the butcher’s shops!
“They want my pork to make a roast”
And that’s the part’ll cost the most!”
They want my sausages in strings!
“They even want my chitterlings!
“The butcher’s shop! The carving knife!
“That is the reason for my life!”
Such thoughts as these are not designed
To give a pig great piece of mind.
Next morning, in comes Farmer Bland,
A pail of pigswill in his hand,
And piggy with a mighty roar,
Bashes the farmer to the floor…
Now comes the rather grizzly bit
So let’s not make too much of it,
Except that you must understand
That Piggy did eat Farmer Bland,
He ate him up from head to toe,
Chewing the pieces nice and slow.
It took an hour to reach the feet,
Because there was so much to eat,
And when he finished, Pig, of course,
Felt absolutely no remorse.
Slowly he scratched his brainy head
And with a little smile he said,
“I had a fairly powerful hunch
“That he might have me for his lunch.
“And so, because I feared the worst,
“I thought I’d better eat him first.”
The Pig by Roald Dahl
xo, Biggles
Has the battery gone south in your gidget? Are you sure?
Not too terribly long ago one of my camera batteries stopped holding a charge, or couldn’t accept one. It pissed me off because the darned thing was only 3 months old. “That’s what I get for buying a 3rd party battery,” said the Biggles.
I saved it so I could dispose of it properly, I figure there’s enough nitwits tossing such things in to our landfill. 2 days out I remembered a trick taught to me by a long since disappeared friend and technical guru. I was fussing with a full height floppy drive, when they only held 360k worth of data, attempting to get the beast to transfer that all important data. It wasn’t working. He came over, looked at the drive, closed one eye, looked at me and said, “Pull off the ribbon cable, take this pencil and clean the contacts on the drive with the eraser.”
I did the same with my camera battery, charged right up! That was months ago with many charges since. So, the next time your battery doesn’t want to cooperate, try cleaning the contacts.
Biggles
Ith Pretty
For the year of 2008, as many know, I just mowed my garden with a 6.75 hp, gas powered mower. I didn’t/don’t have the time and the water rationing put the lid on the coffin. So what! Throughout this year I’ve received fruits, vegetables and root things from tons of nice people. Pears, zucchinis, bacon, maters, apples, garlic …, uh and others.
Ain’t gifts just the best?
Biggles
ps – Didn’t have enough dumb words to fill the space, really wanted to share the pretty garlic that Big D gifted me the other day. Ith Pretty.
Rub a dub, dub. I’m done with rubs, I have a new love, yay!
I’m no different from many people who grill or smoke their food, often. I’ve got a pantry filled with chile powders, herbs and spices that all go in to any rub I care to make at any given meal. I’ve got versions I like better than others and sometimes just like to strip it down to the basics and enjoy the meat & smoke.
Yeah well, when I was at the Fatted Calf Picnic this year Taylor used 1 ingredient for his dry rub and I’ve been experimenting ever since. Even took some slabs of babybacks to a food blogger picnic a few weekends ago. So far, I’m at 100% approval rating for this ingredient.
Care to come see?
“How come they don’t want our ribs, Papa?”
It was just me and Tiny E on Sunday, we had plans. One of which was installing and making right our new 55 gallon fresh water aquarium, the other? Smoking a slab of babybacks in the wood fired pit. That post will be up here soon, but it’s what happened after we smoked the ribs that shook us both and forced me to spill my guts here. I just need to get this off my chest.
See, we got the ribs smoked perfectly, Tiny E tends a good fire. I pulled them to rest for about 20 before I cut in. Holy crap they were good, real good. The smoke was gentle, but definitely full of deep tangles worth of flavors. Meat was tender, tasteful & beautiful all at the same time. But I could only eat about 1/3 to 1/2 the rack myself, Tiny E don’t eat much so that portion don’t count. What to do, what to do.
Give it to neighbors! I sliced up the ribs, so they could eat them right away, nothing impaired, no fuss. Rip the foil open and dig in, that was my mission.
Yeah well, all the neighbors I know were gone, out and just plain not there. All except for, Those Neighbors. Who are they? I got no idea, truly. I’ve been here 8 years and never once exchanged any verbal communication. OH sure, there was the initial smiling and waving, but they returned a dead stare with a finish of moving on as though I wasn’t there. I know who the owner is, and he’s got roomates. I can see their good people, exceptionally well built, hunks if you will. Different women coming and going each month. But they communicate with nobody, it’s as if we don’t exist. K, got it?
After checking out my friendly neighbors, I noticed one of the roomies at Those Neighbors house and his girlfriend were out on the front stoop having a light conversation in the early evening light. It was calm and I figured I’m holding some solid, “Howdee neighbor! I have quality hardwood smoked pork ribs here if’n you’d like to partake” type of greeting. I was on a mission (remember?), after 8 years they were going to know who I am, or was or whatever.
Um, do you own a dog? Do you know someone who owns a dog? Picture this neighbor roomy saying “NO” to me as though I was a dog at the table begging for scraps. By the second “NO” I grabbed my booty, the boy and I left to our warm, happy abode. As we were walking back home Tiny E said to me, “How come they don’t want our ribs, Papa?” In a hushed tone I replied, “Because they’re vegetarians honey.” Tiny E sighed and said under his breath, “That’s too bad Papa, that’s too bad.”
I replied in a Ward Cleaver sort of way, “That’s okay honey, in this country we can treat others very badly because of our personal beliefs. It has nothing to do with respect or courtesy, they’re making a statement about how they feel about something. Sometimes it doesn’t matter if they kill other people, animals or harm them in a very bad way. They feel their views are right and just, so it’s okay for them.”
Tiny E responded with a quick, “Um, yeah but we got the ribs.”
xo, Biggles
Breakin’ the law, breakin’ the law – When cooking is more art than anything else.
I can remember days when I just this high, I Iook back and they were pretty darned fine. All except for … art. This could be music, drawing, painting and/or dancing. I have 4 internal metronomes all going at once, all at a different rate. When I play the drums or a stringed instrument, both hands do the same thing. If I attempt to split the strummins? My brain splits in half, fall over and I curl up in to a little ball. As I got older, I got smarter and started using rulers to draw, anything. I still have some of those in the garage somewheres. Drawing trees with a ruler is dumb, just in case you wanted to know. By the time I was in high school I’d pretty much given up on this whole art thing, done and over with says me.
Towards the end of high school I discovered cooking and photography, That is to say, I’d been doing those things for years, but realized that as I got older and better, my food and photography didn’t suck as much as it used to.
For today’s entry, there is no recipe, no procedure you can follow. It’s pure art, feel it, study, listen, poke & prod. You have to become one with your beef roast, zen that s.o.b. until you own its soul. MmmMMm, beef soul.
When you’ve spent many years studying your chosen form of art, you know the rules and your ways as second nature. The best part though? Is when you can break those rules, and have a masterpiece presented. This, my good people is just that. I broke one of the all-time huge rules of cooking roasts, don’t put a frozen hunk of meat in the oven.
A pork, a salt and a blow torch. One of these things …
This was one of those meals when you only have 45 minutes to get ready, the sun is setting and the children want food now. The pork roast I bought was completely devoid of visible fat and figured just cook the damned thing and get dinner over with. I had originally purchased it for the smoker (was going to wrap it in bacon). All that, and I was tired, cranky and my back was a little sore, grrrrr. Get it? Grrrr?
It wasn’t until I turned the little gem over to reveal the reversed side was completely covered in a nice layer of fat! Um, make a u-turn Biggles and get back on track. And you know what? I did just that, and quite a bit more. I totally rule, come see why.
If you had fat to rub?
Where would you put it?
This fat rub went on a beef roast, rosemary, salt, pepper, fresh lemon juice.
xo, Biggles
Heat source, does it matter? A pork rib experiment from the lab.
The argument in regards to wood versus briquette, versus propane, versus electric heat sources in smokers has got to be way older than the one on PC versus MAC, and that’s saying something. We know that for grilling, there is an exceptional difference, but does it matter for hot smoking (approximately 200 to 250 degrees F)? It doesn’t for cold smoking (90 to 110 degrees F). I’ve always stood by the age old ways of saying, “Yes nitwit, the fire does make a difference and it’s noticeable. Real wood, charcoaled or not, does make a difference.”
Over the years I’ve had quite a few propane lovers extol the virtues of their propane powered rigs. My eyes cross, I hear buzzing in my ears and go back to my old ways of using wood to power my smokers. I never even remotely considered buying in to the procedure, especially after tasting what I pull out of my smoker. Sorry pal, you can’t reproduce this, no way, no how.
On Sunday I decided to put my cold smoker to use, finally. Instead of 100 degrees, I jacked it to 212 and hot smoked a slab of baby backs using only an electric hotplate and a smoke generator.
Please click through to read the rest of the story, “Heat source, does it matter?”
USS Hornet – Alameda, CA – OH Biggles …
Oh Biggles, don’t you cook anymore?
Um, no. No I don’t, only run the dishwasher once a week or so. Mostly full of cups, flatware and a whisk or two. Been up to other things and food hasn’t been a part. Don’t sweat it though, I’ll be back and am eating well in spite of not cooking.
Guess where I went Saturday morning? The USS Hornet at Alameda Point (old Naval base & home to St. Georges), that’s where. I knew the Red Oak was in Richmond, just needed to get off my ass and get down there. But I had no idea that Alameda housed a real aircraft carrier. Much less an aircraft carrier museum!
It ain’t cheap though, not like the Red Oak. This one is 14 bux per adult to get in and you must be led about by a docent. No wandering around on your own to stick your nose in here and in there, pull this and open that. Which is fine, it’s a dangerous place and you don’t want to die er nothin’. Especially when you pay 14 bux to do it. It kinda reminds me of the Winchester Mystery House. A huge place with tiny rooms & even smaller walkways.
If you’re interested in visiting, check out the link above. And if you’re interested in the history surrounding the Hornet, go for it. I’m not going to pretend as though I’m someone I’m not, this would be an American history buff. I know how to build a fire and cook food over it. History to me is a fire pit filled with pork rib bones and beer cans scattered about.
Here are a few snapshots of the USS Hornet I took along the way. And yes, that’s an escalator. It goes from the flight deck down a few levels. I spose the pilots were all woozy from flying and needed a safe way to descend to rest. And the cool exposure was a “mistake”. I had my camera all set from a small studio shoot I did Friday morning. It was after this shot I sat down for a bit and reset all the dials, buttons and menu choices.
Biggles
Red Oak Victory Ship – Richmond, CA
Okay, how many of you know where you live? Raise your hands. How many of you know you live in the San Francisco Bay Area? Raise your hands … good. How many of you know the SS Red Oak Victory Ship is located at the Richmond Ship Yards and is totally accessible to the general public for adventure? Yeah, I didn’t think so.
This is a P.S.A., a Public Service Announcement.
This last Sunday morning at 10:30 am found the Biggles making his way down to Pt. Richmond and then the Richmond Harbor/Ship Yards for a little adventure. I’d been about 3 or 4 years ago and it was time for a little readventure.
“Launched on November 9, 1944 as the SS Red Oak Victory, and commissioned as the USS Red Oak Victory (AK235) in December, 1944, the Red Oak Victory is the only vessel built by the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, California that is being restored. The ship saw service in World War II, Korea and Vietnam and has the distinction of being the only ship operated by both military and civilian personnel during her career.
In 1996, by an Act of Congress, title to the SS Red Oak Victory was conveyed to the Richmond Museum Association. One of the primary goals of the museum is to preserve, restore and develop the Red Oak Victory into a viable asset that can be used, enjoyed and appreciated by the citizens of Richmond and the surrounding Bay Area communities.”
– Lifted from their web site – Photographs are mines
Holee crap this is a beauty of a ship and they’ve done an amazing job at bringing her back to life. When I arrived back in ’04, she was rusty from one end to the other, a photographer’s dream. She’s all shiny now and still the same dream come true. It’s generally a self-guided tour and you have access to nearly every part. You can climb ladders, stairs, anywhere. Plus? I was the only one there wandering about, sticking my nose here, my lens there.
There is no better place to spend 5 dollars in this entire area. You should go. When friends or family come to town, you should go. Bored some weekend, you should go. However, if you have small children or can’t safely climb gangways or ladders, you should not go. You have to keep your wits about you and pay attention to the fact you’re on a real ship, not at Disneyland. It’s so exciting!
Interested in seeing more of her? Check out the rest of my images of Red Oak Victory Ship.
A Grand Day Out, indeed.
xo, Biggles
ps – So I can redeem myself here and include a food related point, they do have pancake breakfasts scheduled on the weekends as a fundraiser. Contact them or visit the ship for details.
No image required
Yow, been really busy, can you tell?
Early Saturday morning I found myself making coffee, quiet house, sun not quite up yet. All that could be heard were my feet across the creaky old floor and some clanking of dishes. With the kitchen door open to the outside, crisp bay air was flowing through the house with glee.
Oh boy, I can hardly wait for that first cup!
No half and half, oh well. Chores & coffee, the day was looking up. I set my cup on the butcher block table to the right of the stove. This table houses large jars of wooden and shiny metal implements, salt pig and a scattering of items that either need washing or putting away. On the wall at the back of the table are at least a dozen kitchen knives and 4 sharpening steels, looks cool and very functional. Above, is an open cabinet filled with boxes of cocoa, oatmeal, coffee supplies, all kinds of kitchenny stuff. This, is my command center.
I stand at this table and go for that last glug of coffee. You know the one? The last slam of goodness that signals the next step in the day. The one that sends you in to overdrive, inspiration to get your day on!
GLUG, … hiccup, burp, COUGH. All at the exact same moment.
Normally, it’s not such a big deal. Gross, I’ll admit. But with a mouthful of black coffee? That’s right, I got a 3.5′ cone of black coffee spewed over all. Up in the cabinet, covered the knives & steels and whatever was on the surface of the little table was covered.
If that wasn’t bad enough, it began to drip. Yup, drip. So, not only now was everything splattered, but it was now running down the wall, down the blades, down the wooden spatulas and in to the jars and gently soaking in to my kosher salt.
Bring it on Monday, I can totally kick your ass.
Biggles