Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

You'd hope people would be smart enough to know that, but you never know....

Trappers and hunters in California are killing wild pigs, and upon butchering them, finding the meat inside to be bright blue! That would be a bit of a shocking discovery.

From the Gizmodo article: “I’m not talking about a little blue,” Dan Burton, owner of a wildlife control company in Salinas, California, told The Los Angeles Times. “I’m talking about neon blue, blueberry blue.”

YEESH!

Apparently the pigs are raiding squirrel-control stations that have a rodenticide containing an anticoagulant that is dyed blue to make it obvious to its handlers that 'this is poison'. The dosage isn't high enough to cause problems for the pigs, but secondary exposure to people consuming the tainted pig meat could be problematic.

https://gizmodo.com/wild-pigs-in-california-are-turning-neon-blue-on-the-inside-officials-warn-2000639638

https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/08/09/033255/strange-wild-pigs-in-california---what-turned-their-flesh-blue

I've mentioned before that I have a new favorite ice cream: Godiva's Midnight Swirl. An amazing chocolate ice cream. There's one problem with living at 9,000' - well, there's many, but one in particular with ice cream. IT EXPANDS. So in addition to it thawing a bit because it takes half an hour to get home from the grocery store, the lid pops up a bit. In the warmer months it also dribbles. In the freezer, I put it on the bottom under a metal shelf, which means - shucky darns! - you gotta eat down the ice cream a bit or the puffed-up bit will get squished down and make a mess.

Oh, horrors! You have to eat some ice cream before you put it away!

I called Russet into the kitchen as I also got her some chocolate strawberry which had the same problem.

We were both trying to come up with a bad joke - I have thoroughly corrupted her in the almost 20 years that we've known each other - I finally came up with 'We must suffer for our just desserts' which she liked and she was trying to come up with something along the lines of the Dessertderata which prompted me to say 'Go placidly amongst the noise and haste and remember the value of really high butter fat quantities' to which she told the poodles 'Will somebody go over and bite the man?'

That's how long it took me to make a batch of gazpacho, from getting down the food processor to opening the can of tomatoes, peeling and cutting up the cuke, cutting up the bell pepper, smashing a clove of garlic and skinning it, measuring out the EVO and balsamic, then blending it all and pouring it into storage containers and popping it in the fridge! There was a bit of sampling and adding some more balsamic. Used basil EVO and lemongrass mint balsamic....


I also pickled half an onion - Russet used the other half in something else - and went a little nuts. The recipe calls for half a cup of water, a quarter cup of white vinegar, a quarter cup of apple cider vinegar, a tablespoon and a half of maple syrup (Vermont Grade B, natch), and a teaspoon or so of salt. Instead of the white vinegar, I used two special balsamics: peach and apricot.

And the onions taste very nice!

Yes, I've spent a lot of money on special EVOs and balsamics, but I REALLY like the results that I get!

I was planning on doing burgers tonight, but I've got a lot of homework to do, plus I have to be in at work three hours early, so we're doing fish sticks and we'll do burgers tomorrow night. I made the gazpacho for lunch tomorrow, I've got some cornbread left over from earlier in the week and I might take some saltines, too.

(edited to clarify that it was lemongrass MINT balsamic vinegar in the gazpacho, not just lemongrass.)

If you like or should eat yogurt but have a problem with dairy products, I had a different kind of yogurt tonight: a "coconut yogurt alternative" called CoYo.

It's dairy-free and very thick like the Icelandic style whose name I cannot remember. I had a vanilla bean which had actual flecks of what I hope are vanilla beans and it was pretty good. The label says "Live cultures, non GMO, gluten free, no refined sugar, vegan, dairy free" and under ingredients it lists the probiotic cultures present as: B. bifidum, B. lactis, L. acidophilus, L. casei, L. delbrueckii subsp bulgaricus, L. rhamnosus, and Streptococcus thermophilus.

Certified kosher and made in Albuquerque, so you don't even have to turn left! www.coyo.us.

It's just under 90 minutes before midnight here, and I plan on being in bed and possibly asleep before midnight: I'll be up at 4:15am on Tuesday and need to get back in cycle. I got back a bit ago from the observatory, the spouse is working tonight and tomorrow. We celebrated Chile's New Years 2.5 hours ago via Skype: the other telescope at the observatory, the Sloan 2.5 meter, has a twin down there and we had some fun with them.

I made three types of tacos: standard ground beef, ground pork with toasted slivered almonds and diced raisins, and shredded chicken chipotle cilantro. I arrived at about 5:30, when I left about 4 hours later there was nothing left of the beef, maybe 2-3 servings of the chicken, and the pork was almost untouched! I was surprised, I expected the chicken to be cleaned out. I brought the pork home, we have no problem finishing that ourselves and it'll give us dinner for most of the week!

The beef tacos are a straight forward spice mix, the pork tacos are a bit different with their spice base focused on cinnamon and cloves. The chicken is bonkers: there's the chipotle for heat and the cilantro for its flavor, but the chicken is cooked in orange juice! It gives it a sweetness, and with the sauce being reduced, there's a concentration with the spices and cilantro that doesn't make the orange juice obvious.

I also made the chocolate eggnog cookies and got the recipe dialed-in. The ideal cooking time for my oven is 325 degrees for 23 minutes: 11 minutes, rotate the trays, 12 minutes. Rest for 10, remove from tray. They're still soft when they come from the oven, but they firm up well during the cool-down but remain a little toothy. This is the third time that I've made them. The first time that I made them I did it correctly, but I had some procedural flaws due to a poorly written recipe. The second time that I made them for Christmas, I accidentally used only one stick of butter instead of two, and I tried 2.5 tbs of cocoa powder instead of just 2. The cookies tasted fine, but they didn't spread because of the lack of butter. So now I know what to watch out for!

So good food all around.

For New Year's Day, I hope to make madelines, and I have a laptop to back up. And then it's back to work Tuesday. Whee. ;-)


Have a happy one, all y'all!

Was a bit of work. Roasted vegetable balsamic glaze meatloaf, glazed carrots, and mashed potatoes with a Josephsbrau Radler. I did cheat and used instant mashed potatoes, I go the full distance for Thanksgiving and Xmas when it comes to mashed.

Quite yummy. Sadly, my iPhone did a lousy job photographing it. I told it to focus on my plate, instead it focused on the plate that we were serving the meatloaf from.



The meatloaf is a Bobby Flay recipe from Throwdown With Bobby Flay. He lost, but I love the recipe. It contains two bell peppers, a zuchini, balsamic vinegar, panko bread crumbs. It calls for a pound of ground chuck, a half a pound of pork and half a pound of veal, but it's hard to get veal 'round these parts, so I use a pound of pork. Tastes great! The carrots is an Alton Brown recipe where the carrots are cooked in butter and gingerale and also contain chili powder! It calls for the carrots to be cut 1/4" thick, but I now use a mandoline to slice them 2mm thick.

My wife is working Christmas and New Years, so I'm making dinner at the observatory. Our friend Dave is driving down from Colorado tomorrow and staying until after New Years, so we're going to get a lot of gaming in which will be quite awesome. There's some advanced scenarios for Flash Point: Fire Rescue that I've been wanting to play that I hopeexpect we'll get to.

Anyway, on to the menu!

The main dish is Alton Brown's City Ham. This is a bit of a preparation: you take a ham, cut a shallow (about a quarter inch deep) diamond pattern in it, do a short time bake to loosen the fat, then trim the fat off. Dry it, paint it with brown mustard. Cover it with packed dark brown sugar. Spritz it with bourbon, then pack it with powdered ginger snap cookies. Bake until done, rest it for half an hour, cut and serve. Quite yummy, in fact I bought a special pump just for spritzing the bourbon. Takes about six hours between the two bakes and all the work, so it's not a quick dish.

First side dish: glazed carrots. Another Alton dish, this one is unique as it uses ginger ale as its main cooking liquid. Also contains a bit of brown sugar and a small amount of chili powder. VERY good, I made it for Thanksgiving this year and it will definitely be a regular at my table.

Second and final dish for me: German potato salad. This particular one is an Anne Burrel recipe, I've made it several times and it is very nice.

All three recipes are available on FoodNetwork.com. And the ham bone will become a lentil soup at some point in January most likely. I had originally planned on doing a turducken or a quaduckant, but it turns out we'll only have five people, so I'm doing a lot more work. Oh, well.


New Year's will be a taco bar with recipes from America's Test Kitchen.

You may be fortunate enough to have an actual dairy/creamery in your area. If so, I'm thoroughly jealous. We're stuck with Walmart.

My wife and I were perusing the ice creams recently and out of idle curiosity, we looked at the ingredients for Breyers. In the past it's been heavy cream, sugar, chocolate or whatever. Very simple and always easily pronounced ingredients. Well, they now have a line that on the front says Frozen Dairy Dessert instead of just Ice Cream, for example, their Rocky Road. These particular ones do not have the nice and simple list of ingredients that I came to love Breyers for.

So just keep an eye out when you're shopping if you care about this. As far as I can see, Ben & Jerry's is still keeping it simple.

What's sad is that around here there's a regional brand called Blue Bunny, and a lot of people think it's just the best. And it sucks. Food tastes over here are sometimes really weird.