Back up to 100

Reps, that is. Continuous reps.

I finished jury duty a few days ago; what a dumpster fire. God in Heaven, the Boston PD could not investigate their way out of a wet paper bag. I got picked as an alternate juror at the end of the trial, which is good, because I still don't know if the defendant was guilty or not.

Thanksgiving went relatively well. I cooked a big meal for the folks at work, and a few extra people showed up too. The turkey turned out well, but I think the major success was the brownies. I used the malted forever brownies from Dessert Person, but I used a 50/50 combination of milk and dark chocolate chunks to mix in at the end. I also didn't find malt powder exactly, so I used chocolate ovaltine.

I recently registered my name as a .com domain. I figure it might come in handy, and it was reasonably cheap. I'm considering having CPR masks or something like that printed with the web address and using them as business cards.

I made a gallon of good turkey stock from the turkey carcass. I'm wondering about making a turkey ramen; stock, dark meat, that sort of thing. Speaking of, I had an absolutely fantastic tonkotsu ramen the other day at a place about a block from the park T station. Good Lord, it was good.

Anyway, this morning, I reached 100 reps of each of my exercises with no pause. It's been almost two weeks since I hit 100 reps, but I had been pausing part way through; resting in the up position on my pushups and situps. I also ran to work with a pack today, with a few detours to increase the distance. It was very satisfying.

I'm experimenting with making popcorn in the instant pot max. I've seen videos of people making popcorn in pressure vessels, but the trick seem to involve very sudden release of pressure. If I can get the settings right, I think I can make popcorn with no burning involved. From there, I'd like to try making puppy chow with popcorn instead of chex. If it works out, I may have invented a new snack. Chicken feed? Eh. I'm not a marketing guy.

My cat has been very snuggly lately.

More cooking

Yesterday, I was called away while the aromatic oil was cooking. I turned it off, and came back a few hours later to simmer it some more, until the garlic and shallot were browned; the oil was then strained into a bottle. I also made some tare; 10 grams of "eden selected" toaster sesame oil, 40g each of marukan rice wine vinegar, lee kum kee mushroom dark soy sauce, and lee kum kee double fermented soy sauce, 80g of honteri non-alcoholic mirin, and 160g of san-j organic tamari. I made four hard-boiled eggs and added them to the ramen egg jar, below the existing two eggs.

I also managed to make two more batches of brownies yesterday. Today, I made a sort of stovetop stuffing clone. Mix 30g of cornbread crumbs, 100g of dried bread cubes (I used ABI5 sourdough), 10g each of onion flakes, dried celery, and dried carrots, and 1t each of dried thyme, oregano, parsley, sage, garlic powder, salt, and nutritional yeast. When ready to prepare, boil 450 mL of water and 30 mL of olive oil; when boiling, add mix and reduce to a simmer. In about 10 minutes, it will be done. The stuffing will have a bit of chew to it; for a very tender mix, add another 50 mL of water and simmer longer.

Cooking

It's not quite 9 in the morning, and I've already made a batch of the malted forever brownies from dessert person, complete with chilling/cutting/wrapping them, a batch of the ginger coconut cookies from Yeung man cooking (they did not turn out well), and a batch of vegan fudge. The fudge was 2/3 cup sugar, 1 cup coconut milk, (2) 10-ounce bags of dark chocolate chips, and a tablespoon of coconut oil mixed well in a double boiler, then whisked with a teaspoon of vanilla extract and poured into an 8x8 cake pan that had been lined with coconut-oiled aluminum foil. It's chilling in the fridge now. Hopefully, I'll be able to make two more batches of brownies. I'm going to give some to a co-worker later this week, but the fudge and  and some brownies are for the Thanksgiving meal at work.

Other than more brownies, I want to make some sort of tare and aroma oil today. I already have some good ramen eggs, and a few servings of dried noodles. With some chopped scallions and a sheet of nori, I'd be just a bit of stock away from making a very respectable bowl of ramen.

Later (around 10:30); I just added 180 grams of sliced scallions (2 medium sized ones) and 45 grams of crushed garlic cloves (1 head) to 1 cup of soybean oil in a small covered pot on very low heat.

A full day

Thanksgiving approaches. Today was spent mostly on cooking and buying things to cook. This morning, I made a batch of cornbread and a loaf of sourdough, then cubed them up and put them in the dehydrator for possible stuffing mix. I went shopping in the afternoon for raw ingredients, mostly. I've been reading about and enjoying ramen lately, and around lunch time I actually noticed a local ramen place by smell first. I didn't just smell something good, I quite distinctly noticed a ramen place. It was very good, but I think perhaps they had too many toppings.

Anyway, right after I got home from shopping, I got called in to work. While I was there, I got a box of things I ordered from Japan. Mostly gifts for a couple people, but I splurged and bought a Japanese bowl and spoon that seem ideal for ramen. I intend to make some good stock over the next day or two, and I've already had good success making cured eggs. I might try making some tare and aromatic oil tomorrow.

After I got home from work, I made cranberry relish, raspberry sauce, and russian cream. The russian cream was a bit of a new recipe. I warmed 1 quart of heavy cream over medium heat, stirred in 1 tablespoon of gelatin powder that had already been mixed very well with 1.5 cups of sugar, and stirred to dissolve. I then added 16 ounces of sour cream, stirred to combine, turned off the heat, added 4 teaspoons of vanilla, stirred to combine, and poured the result into 11 jars to the 150mL line. The twelfth jar (one of the things I bought today was a case of half pint jars) held the raspberry reduction sauce almost perfectly.

For the cranberry sauce, I blended 350 grams of cranberries, 90 grams of honey, and the zest and pulp (but not seeds or pith) of 1 large orange together. I used a hand-powered blender, but otherwise it seemed a satisfactory recipe. Tomorrow, I'll make brownies, ginger cookies, and possibly mushroom gravy.

A lot has happened

Since last I posted. I'll almost certainly miss a great deal, but that's okay; this is just for me.

I'm all healed up from surgery, and working my way back up in terms of running long distances. Last week, I had 3 8.6km runs; it was the third consecutive week of regular running, so this week I'm taking a rest week and dialing the total back. Today was my biggest run of the week; I ran to work, with pack, for the first time in a long time. Today was also the first day since my surgery that I did 100 reps of all my strength training exercises. I think I'll settle on that for the rest of the week, and possibly next week, and then bring the 10-pound weights back into the crunches and squats.

There was a protest and a counterprotest in Boston not too long ago; the usual extremists versus extremists nonsense. I went as a street medic, and helped out with a few minor things here and there. There's definitely an established street medic group, but they left me alone and I left them alone. Good. They almost certainly have the same political leaning as every other such group I've encountered, and I want nothing to do with any group that might restrict the sort of person I would be able to help.

I tried making and dehydrating a couple pasta shapes. One was a sort of miniature lorigghitas (yep, that's spelled wrong), and the other was just some random whatnot shape made with a fork. Both dehydrated well, and they cooked up okay. I think I need to spend more time kneading the dough. I've also been dehydrating a lot of vegetables (asparagus did not go well).

This last Saturday, I went to a Korean BBQ restaurant; it was fantastic. Makgeolli, maybe two dozen sides dishes, pork belly, beef...it was fantastic. Earlier that week, I went to Wisconsin, and had one of the best steaks I've ever had (not that that's why I went). I really need to get to the H-mart up in Burlington and buy the ingredients for a truly big batch of kimchi. The dehydrated kimchi I made a while back has been a fantastic addition to various things, particularly instant noodles.

I bought a massive chunk of beef suet, straight from the cow. I rendered half of it using a wet method, and half using a dry method, both in a crockpot. Frankly, the results seem comparable, and the dry method was easier, so I'll probably use that going forward. Now I just have a few big slabs of tallow in the fridge and freezer at work; I'll probably bring in some jars, melt the tallow into them, and bring them home to keep at room temperature.

I've also been reading a good deal about ramen; not the instant noodle kind, but the seriously filling and delicious kind that's assembled from various ingredients. This morning, I boiled 3 eggs for 7 minutes (complete with the pinprick on the large end), stirring them for the first 2 of those, and then quenched them in ice. I then peeled them, put them in a jar with water to cover, an added 10 percent (ish) of the combined egg/water weight in tamari, and 8 percent of that weight in mirin. They should soak/cure for a couple days before I try them. I also put 5 grams of kombu to soak in 500 mL of water at room temperature; I plan to try boiling some dried shiitakes in the water, then adding some good miso to see if I can get a good broth. I also made some "baked soda", or sodium carbonate, by baking some baking soda for an hour at 350F. It could come in handy for making ramen noodles.

I bough a squeezo food mill; I can hopefully use it to make tomato paste and crabapple leather, among other things.

I'm sure there's more, but I can't think of it right now.