Labors of the Day
Sep. 3rd, 2007 11:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lwood[Dear ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
purplevenus et al, I make much talk of cooking meat, although also some of okra; you may not want to have entered.]
It being Labor Day, I was not in attendance at my beloved Mad Scientists' Home, but instead spent the day at home withcountgeiger. To celebrate the sendout of summer, and to strenuously avoid the Ignition of the Oven, we had a pleasant enough breakfast, and then departed to the local Safeway which, as a union shop, would be lavishly paying anyone working on that day and thus did not engage any white-collar guilt--on that score, at least. As we were barbecuing, for which we alloted five (5) minutes of Fret about the Carbon Load, offset by the small comfort of knowing that every single vegetable had come just Saturday from the Farmers' Market.
At said Safeway, we obtained of a tri-tip roast and a flank steak and a few other choice ingredients, on which more later.
The tri-tip was to be marinated a few hours, then gently grilled alongside a foil packet of potatoes, and served with a dish taking full advantage of the fruits of the season.
The flank steak had been chosen for glory, thus:
A prepratory ACE Hardware raid of that same Saturday had won us a new grill, some lump mesquite charcoal, an elementary box fan, four furnace filters to precisely fit over the box fan, and bungie cords.
According to directions of His Magnificence, I made a doubled batch of the marinade of his beef jerky. One bottle of this stuff was just enough for the purpose.
I can now tell you, from empirical study, that said marinade also does wonders for a tri-tip steak and that my local Safeway, bless it, has two flavors of liquid smoke: hickory and mesquite.
"We are in the West!" I declared, and bought the mesquite.
Now we had Too Much Food. But we also had Science, so we not only inviteddpaxson to dinner, but also her eldest grandson, who at nearly thirteen is quite old enough to fuss with meat and with appetite enough to deal with this Too Much Food issue.
Except for the okra and tomato thing. "It tastes all right, but the texture, it's, um..."
It's all right, you can say 'slimy'...'" I offered.
"Yeah. Slimy."
Mind, this same dish had been hailed by several at a recent event as "not as slimy as okra usually is, yum!" except for the gent who grumbled that it wasn't slimy enough for okra, dubbing it as "okra for damned Yankees".
Once dinner (during which we watched the Good Eats special "Eat This Rock"†) and bifurcated dessert (akavit juleps* for the grownups, black raspberry ice cream for the underaged) had been dealt with, the flank steak had sat long enough. After a careful study of "Urban Preservation II: The Jerky", it was time to prep, and use, the drying rig of Alton Brown's invention (after determining that yes, Beef Floppy, aka fully marinated but not yet dried jerky, is quite tasty)--and once that was all set up, I demonstrated Care and Feeding of a Worm Bin‡, prominently featuring the vegetable trimmings of dinner.
Then they left--next time, perhaps we'll get into the care and feeding of yogurt, which is what I tended to after they left, although the making of bread or sauerkraut were also suggested.
In their wake, my house smells most pleasantly of beef jerky in progress. It'll have to go alongside the morning yogurt...
What a lovely day!
-- Lorrie
* - This is a mint julep, in every way identical to how The Honorable Senator Henry Clay brought it to a grateful Washington, save that instead of proper Kentucky bourbon, one adulterates the poor thing with freezer-chilled akavit instead--a stroke of innovation suggested bygnowun at a birthday party at my house some years ago, when we had run out of bourbon just as dpaxson was coming up the walk.
† - With pauses to explain things of relevance to a young pagan lad of some heathen bent. "Diana has the cutest little salt cellar, it looks just like a wee silver Viking ship. Hey, Diana, what does it mean to sit 'above the salt'?" --also-- "Oh, right. You wouldn't know about Lot's wife. Well..." --and-- "The suffix -wich means it was a salt town, huh? There's something else we can say about Greenwich, though...(explain Greenwich Mean Time)."
‡ - With side notes like, "I converted my Maglite to LED's!", proper display of healthy red wigglers, and related topics.
purplevenus et al, I make much talk of cooking meat, although also some of okra; you may not want to have entered.]It being Labor Day, I was not in attendance at my beloved Mad Scientists' Home, but instead spent the day at home with
countgeiger. To celebrate the sendout of summer, and to strenuously avoid the Ignition of the Oven, we had a pleasant enough breakfast, and then departed to the local Safeway which, as a union shop, would be lavishly paying anyone working on that day and thus did not engage any white-collar guilt--on that score, at least. As we were barbecuing, for which we alloted five (5) minutes of Fret about the Carbon Load, offset by the small comfort of knowing that every single vegetable had come just Saturday from the Farmers' Market.At said Safeway, we obtained of a tri-tip roast and a flank steak and a few other choice ingredients, on which more later.
The tri-tip was to be marinated a few hours, then gently grilled alongside a foil packet of potatoes, and served with a dish taking full advantage of the fruits of the season.
The flank steak had been chosen for glory, thus:
A prepratory ACE Hardware raid of that same Saturday had won us a new grill, some lump mesquite charcoal, an elementary box fan, four furnace filters to precisely fit over the box fan, and bungie cords.
According to directions of His Magnificence, I made a doubled batch of the marinade of his beef jerky. One bottle of this stuff was just enough for the purpose.
I can now tell you, from empirical study, that said marinade also does wonders for a tri-tip steak and that my local Safeway, bless it, has two flavors of liquid smoke: hickory and mesquite.
"We are in the West!" I declared, and bought the mesquite.
Now we had Too Much Food. But we also had Science, so we not only invited
dpaxson to dinner, but also her eldest grandson, who at nearly thirteen is quite old enough to fuss with meat and with appetite enough to deal with this Too Much Food issue.Except for the okra and tomato thing. "It tastes all right, but the texture, it's, um..."
It's all right, you can say 'slimy'...'" I offered.
"Yeah. Slimy."
Mind, this same dish had been hailed by several at a recent event as "not as slimy as okra usually is, yum!" except for the gent who grumbled that it wasn't slimy enough for okra, dubbing it as "okra for damned Yankees".
Once dinner (during which we watched the Good Eats special "Eat This Rock"†) and bifurcated dessert (akavit juleps* for the grownups, black raspberry ice cream for the underaged) had been dealt with, the flank steak had sat long enough. After a careful study of "Urban Preservation II: The Jerky", it was time to prep, and use, the drying rig of Alton Brown's invention (after determining that yes, Beef Floppy, aka fully marinated but not yet dried jerky, is quite tasty)--and once that was all set up, I demonstrated Care and Feeding of a Worm Bin‡, prominently featuring the vegetable trimmings of dinner.
Then they left--next time, perhaps we'll get into the care and feeding of yogurt, which is what I tended to after they left, although the making of bread or sauerkraut were also suggested.
In their wake, my house smells most pleasantly of beef jerky in progress. It'll have to go alongside the morning yogurt...
What a lovely day!
-- Lorrie
* - This is a mint julep, in every way identical to how The Honorable Senator Henry Clay brought it to a grateful Washington, save that instead of proper Kentucky bourbon, one adulterates the poor thing with freezer-chilled akavit instead--a stroke of innovation suggested by
gnowun at a birthday party at my house some years ago, when we had run out of bourbon just as dpaxson was coming up the walk.† - With pauses to explain things of relevance to a young pagan lad of some heathen bent. "Diana has the cutest little salt cellar, it looks just like a wee silver Viking ship. Hey, Diana, what does it mean to sit 'above the salt'?" --also-- "Oh, right. You wouldn't know about Lot's wife. Well..." --and-- "The suffix -wich means it was a salt town, huh? There's something else we can say about Greenwich, though...(explain Greenwich Mean Time)."
‡ - With side notes like, "I converted my Maglite to LED's!", proper display of healthy red wigglers, and related topics.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 11:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 04:27 pm (UTC)-- Lorrie
no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 01:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 04:40 pm (UTC)Gas is a more efficient burner, with fewer emissions, but on the flip side there's that whole "nonrenewable resource" issue. It also imparts less flavor.
As a foodie, I prefer charcoal--and even so, lump over briquette, and lighter fluid does not darken my doorstep. Briquettes do use up a certain amount of sawdust and other wood waste, but are bound up with things like coal dust and borax, which one doesn't want to eat. Lump charcoal should be sustainably harvested when one can manage it--Lazzari says they do this on their site, and Char-Broil picked up some random environmental certification for it.
So, occasional looks to be the way to go--whatever fuel source you're using.
-- Lorrie
no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 04:41 pm (UTC)-- Lorrie
no subject
Date: 2007-09-05 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-06 06:51 pm (UTC)-- Lorrie