Sunday, July 24, 2011

Too many days since my last blog and too much of everything else. Things are incredibly busy the past few days and are going to stay that way for the next couple months. The immediate reason is that I'm moving out of my apartment. The new place is just about half a mile away and so it isn't a terrible logistical switch. And I'll only have one roommate rather than the current three. The difference is that after about the first three weeks of the new living arrangement I'm getting married to my new roommate. This will add a new wrinkle to any roomie squabbles that follow because the stakes are a little big more long lasting than a squabble about dirty dishes with a person who is summer subletting or lives in the room down the hall.

I'm ok with this.

We have already spent many weekends living at each other's apartments. We've also started evaluating our belongings before and during the first stages of the moving process and she is ok with a lot of my stuff. Me likewise with hers. Our tastes conflict on some points but in general it is a good mix. Though I am not sure she is ok with a stuffed moose head in the family room. This is probably an understandable point of discussion.

Luckily our romance contains much understanding regarding storing such eclectic and fun things as animals in various states of life (her cat) and afterlife (my bears and lake trout)

The location of where the moose will remain dead is still in question. The soon-to-arrive mountain lion is another story. Details pending delivery.

All that fun aside, I'm glad that I'm getting married. It is and ending less sudden than being shot. And much, much more pleasurable. But kidding aside, we're both looking forward to it. I'm glad to be losing several roommates, not that they are rotten people, I'm just glad not to have to live with strangers anymore. I think that we'll have a good time together in our new place, Mrs. Indy and I. And her cat will love the view from the moose's antlers!

Monday, April 18, 2011

The Glory of The Long Weekend

Today was Patriots Day, a Massachusetts state holiday that is known locally for the running of the Boston Marathon and a midmorning home game for the Red Sox and a Monday with no work for many of us. That was the case and I enjoyed three days of not working. However, upon reflection that is not entirely accurate. If I was reminded of anything over the course of this long weekend it was that I spend a good chunk of my down time moderately busy with chores (if not actually working my tail off) or in the midst of thinking up ways to make my free time busier.

Friday night began with a quick beer after work. I met up with the lady and a coworker and chatted for a bit, venting off the remnants of the week. Another friend stopped in and after a little more chatting lady and I went off to find something to eat. Decided on a Japanese hot pot place. While we ate we chatted about what to do for the rest of the weekend. Specifically, I described several outside projects that I hoped to start over the next three days so long as the weather permitted.

Up bright and early Saturday morning. Brewed coffee, made breakfast, discussed meal ideas for the next three days and made a shopping list, then we got cleaned up and sped off to Home Depot. I needed to get a ton of supplies. Actually it was only a quarter-ton. The edge of my house's driveway has become a giant muddy sinkhole and I am determined to fill in and pave the spot. So at Home Depot I loaded up two carts with bags of gravel, bags of sand, a slew of paving stones, a tamper, and 120 pounds of topsoil to aid me as I seed part of the front lawn. The load filled the car so we went back to my house and stacked all the building materials in the garage before heading to the supermarket.

Another hour was spent running through the market getting the stuff we needed for Saturday's supper and meals for the next two days. Then it was back home to unpack everything and walk around the corner for two other quick errands. Following a quick lunch I saw that the weather that afternoon was not going to permit me to work outside. So I did a bunch of indoor cleaning and before to long it was time to prep supper. We were going to have chili and then began a spell of cutting up onions and garlic and softening them over low heat while I sliced up steak. We browned the steak and then piled it into the Dutch oven with beans, added water and spices and walked away. Minding the chili til 10pm (we each had a bowl for supper around 8pm when it was cooked but not yet at it's chili-est prime) kept me busy in between playing games on the Wii and making mental plans for my paving project.

Sunday began with making breakfast and then a quick drive to a friend's house. We delivered a birthday present to him and then returned to my place and we checked on the hot dog rolls that we made after breakfast. I popped some hot dogs under the broiler while we listened to the Red Sox game on the radio. After a little while and a beer two chilidogs later (on freshly baked buns!)
I headed outside where I spread grass seed on the patchy corner of yard. Then I dumped out my three bags of topsoil and spread it about with a rake. Add some more grass seed, gently walked across the surface to tamp it down and then watered it. Next I watered the back yard after overseeding it also. I joined the lady on the porch and read for a bit but before long I found myself climbing a tree to cut off some limbs that bothered me. That particular crab apple tree constantly attempts to crowd over a lovely lilac tree growing by the corner of the garage. I sliced off a limb, then cut it up and cleaned up the pieces. That should allow the lilac space and added sunlight to grow even more during the course of the next year.

Stuffed from chilidogs I eventually had popcorn for a 9pm snack, did a load of laundry and researched and double checked technique and supplies needed for home driveway paving. Thanks to the internet I also double checked the products available at Home Depot to ensure that anything else I might need I would be able to find with little hassle.

Finally, Monday was the one true slow day. I slept in and was treated to a delicious breakfast and piping hot coffee. Somebody woke up alert and cheerful and I welcomed the treat of breakfast. We finally lazed about for a morning, watched most of the Red Sox game- a sound shellacking of the Blue Jays. We watched the conclusion of the women's and men's leaders of the Boston Marathon (including a world record finish by the men's winner) and then continued doing nothing. Besides making a supper of grilled flank steak with a fantastic salad that the lady created, we did little else but watch fun but silly television shows via On Demand and several episodes of No Reservations because Anthony Bourdain is just incredible. We even caught the premiere of the Boston episode at 9pm. Three days of little to do except the whole list of things we found to do. Fun and tiring and relaxing.

Now it's back to work again tomorrow.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Sausage Party

This was a fun weekend. So much meat for me to manhandle. Porking, porking, porking.

Yesterday morning I woke up and headed downstairs and started pulling my meat...out of the refrigerator so I could cut it up. Thus began the sausage making process. My lady friend arrived a few hours later after a quick stop at the supermarket and she had with her a nine pound pork shoulder. I set about to butchering that sucker up too. Snicker-snack went the knives and after a while of (fun, but occasionally tedious) slicing and dicing nine pounds of bone-in pork shoulder had become five pounds of clean pork, one pound of skin and fat, three and a half pounds of bone, and half a pound of slimy gristle.

Soon, I had a bowl filled with roughly six pounds of lean pork meat. Next I added in a pound of sliced up pork fat and churned up the fatty, meaty mixture and brought out Gertrude. She is a bulldog composed of roughly fifteen pounds of flat gray metal power. She's a hungry beast and I ram a feeding tube onto her and jam all this meat and fat through it and watch her chew. It. Up.
Ok, so Gertrude is a Kitchenaid mixer. But she is gorgeous and not only kneads up bread dough but the grinder attachment churns meat into sausage in no time.

Well, that's not true. The meat was ground but the mixture- which was divided into roughly 1/2 pound fat to 3 pounds pork was not sausage. The next step on the road: Seasoning. We decided to try making breakfast sausage and a batch of Italian sweet sausage. We had recipes but while my lady friend likes following recipes to the letter, I'm prone to riffing. Like the Pirate Code, the recipe can be more of a set of guidelines. Arrr! Uh, sorry.

Anyway, we separated the meat mix into two bowls and seasoned each according to the respective recipes, with some substitutions according to what herbs and spices were on hand- No coriander seeds? Fine, we'll grind up some star anise and maybe add a dash of cumin. Hmm, no, lets not since cumin is pretty strong. So no cumin in the Italian mix. And during this mixing process we had a hot skillet on the stove in which we would toss in a bit of the seasoned meat mixture to cook up and then taste. Not only did this provide us a little snack during the cooking process but we could test our sausage progress. I don't believe I just wrote that. Therefore I'm keeping it in the blog.

The Italian stuff seemed to finally work. But geez, there's something missing from the breakfast sausage. And I'd already tossed in some rosemary not because it was called for but just because I like the flavor in sausage. And there were both sage and marjoram (called for by the recipe) and brown sugar- hey! It didn't taste sweet enough. Yeah! Breakfast sausage, especially if it isn't already maple flavored, needs to taste sweet and smooth on its own but also act as a perfect vehicle for that extra maple syrup left from your pancakes or waffles. But the first meat mix was positively begging for extra sweetness. Since we had no maple syrup we added more brown sugar (all amounts were guesstimated since we were dealing with proportions larger than those described in the recipes- coloring outside the lines once again). Smoosh smoosh, sizzle, taste...Bingo!

And then the stuffing.
Sausage stuffing is fun. It is also a odd couples activity. It went like this, "Ok honey, I'll load the raw meat into the tube. Great. Now, I'm...ungh, ok, I jammed the tube in place. It's locked in. Ok, you've got the crank ready? Great. Turn it and lets press the air out of the cavity. Oh! No! Wait! You're going to fast...there, yeah, the slow setting. Ok, yeah, the stuffing is...there it goes through the hole. Keep feeding me, I've got the skins ready. Slower, slowslow! Ok, I can take it faster now. Niiiice, I'm getting used to this speed. Wait, oh too much there. That's it. We've got it now. Good, oh...what? you're all out? Ok, lets get set for the next round."

No, I'm not exaggerating. Making sausage in a kitchen sounds like the dialog above. Just picture saying the words while your hands are covered with a thin layer of pork fat. To those of you who aren't used to skinning animals in the wild, it is better than you might think. And we did it for two batches of sausages. The pleasant surprise is that after two rounds of stuffing we had two batches of roughly a dozen links of sausages. And they looked good! Into the fridge went out made meat and off we went to sleep.

This evening was the test. How would the sausage hold up to cooking and more importantly, eating? I think the experiment was successful. Several hours ago we cooked four links of out Italian style sausage and then tossed it with a mix of cherry tomatoes, red bell pepper, homemade bowtie pasta and some basil, parsley, grated cheese and lemon juice. The result was very tasty and best yet, we are exhibiting no signs of food poisoning or any food-borne illness. I call this progress. I call this a successful experiment.

We've put all the extra in the freezer and you can't have none.

Ok, ask nice and I'll think about slipping you some of my sausage.