Filed under “when circumstances and good manners require that one attend a philosophy talk one would never in a million years otherwise attend.”
Neurons have dispositional properties. Who knew?
Animals
At Powerline’s The Week in Pictures
Smart?
Yesterday the Farmhand was trying to extract some nails from a 2×4 without a proper hammer. (J-Man! Where are all of my hammers?) I procured a tool from the depths of a tool box that would help with the final phase– the part where you’ve reverse-hammered the nail back into the wood but now have to pull it out. So he holds the 2×4 with one hand and tries to pull the nails out using the tool in the other. I suggested he put the board on the ground, put his foot on it, and use the tool and both hands to pull. One tug. He proclaimed that I was smart. Simple physics.
This is a relatively true statement, most of the time.
This morning, I looked at my personal weather station and it said it was 50 degrees out there. It was not. I fretted about this. Upon careful examination, I realized there was no signal, so I unplugged it. Still no signal. Weird since there was signal yesterday.
Raise the antenna you dummy! Duh. Four whole bars!! Common Sense.
OMG! It even tells me how many lumens the sun is spitting out!
Carry on.
A Banner Day!
With all due apologies to those not having banner days, life goes on.
Again, please pray for folks who need prayers.
That said, today was a banner day here on Farther Along Farm!
My personal Weather Station (PWS) arrived. My new Farm Hand arrived. And tomorrow, The J-Man arrives with that old hippy Gil and his young protege Bebe!
A Blog I Read
There’s a blog I read religiously, American Digest. A little of this, a little of that. Poetry, music, stories, personal history, thoughts on current and past events, occasional Monty Python. It’s smartly written by Gerard Van der Leun, edited by Olive.
Gerard’s mom, who is 104 and looks fabulous in red, is not well. If you are the praying sort, please include them in your prayers.
Recipe: Venison Sauce
VENISON SAUCE
“Keeps weeks in the refrigerator. Appropriate for seasoned lamb or mutton, or for furred game, such as game steak.”
Ingredients
- 1 lb raw venison scraps or trimmings “if used for mock venison, the trimmings of mutton or lamb”
- 1 quart cold water
- 2 whole cloves
- ½ tsp powdered mace
- 1 tsp scant ground nutmeg
- Dash generous cayenne
- Salt
- 1 bouquet garni composed of 1 large bay leaf, 8 sprigs fresh parsley, 2 small sprigs green celery leaves, and 1 sprig thyme, all tied together with kitchen thread
- Generous pinch juniper berry powder if available
- 3 Tbsp red currant jelly
- 1 C red wine hot
- 2 Tbsp meat extract commercial
- Seasonings as desired
- A little Roux see instructions in this section, if needed
Instructions
- Combine meat trimmings, cold water, cloves, mace, nutmeg, cayenne, salt to taste, bouquet garni, and powdered juniper berry (if using) in a saucepan, bring to a boil slowly, stirring occasionally, then let simmer very gently until liquid is reduced to half its original volume (that is, to about 2 C). Strain mixture through a very fine-meshed sieve into a clan saucepan, stir in jelly, hot red wine, and meat extract, taste for seasonings, and thicken with Roux, if needed. Let sauce boil gently for 2 minutes. serve, or store in refrigerator in a sealed glass jar until needed.
Notes
“The expression “Watered Stock” is believed to have originated with Dan Drew, old-time Wall Street operator who got his start as a cattle dealer after the Civil War. According to the story, Drew, who sold his cattle by the pound, did so immediately after they drank a quantity of water. —Master Chef Louis P. De Gouy, The Gold Cook Book (1947)
Recipe: Indonesian Peanut Sauce
INDONESIAN PEANUT SAUCE
Makes 1 ¼ C
Ingredients
- 1 Tbsp onion chopped fine
- 1 clove garlic minced
- Oil
- ¼ C chicken stock preferably homemade
- ½ C peanut butter
- 1 Tbsp molasses
- ½ tsp lime juice
- ½ tsp soy sauce
- ¼ tsp ground ginger
- Few drops Tabasco or more, to taste
Instructions
- Heat a small amount of oil and cook onion and garlic until tender but not browned. Blend chicken stock with peanut butter in a bowl, stir in onion mixture and remaining ingredients, and heat, stirring, until thickened slightly. Season to taste with additional Tabasco, if desired.
Recipe: Champagne Sauce
CHAMPAGNE SAUCE
Makes 1 ½ C (enough for a 5 or 6 lb roasted bird)
Ingredients
- ¾ C chicken stock
- 1 Tbsp cornstarch h mixed with 2 Tbsp cold water for thickening sauce, if desired
- ½ C champagne
- 1 ½ Tbsp fresh tarragon leaves chopped (optional)
- ½ C heavy cream
- Kosher salt freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- Tiny pinch cayenne optional
Instructions
- Remove roasted bird to a platter, and pour or spoon off fat from roasting pan. Add stock and bring contents to a boil, scraping bottom of roaster vigorously with a wooden spoon. Let reduce by half. Pour deglazing liquid through a fine sieve into a medium saucepan. If a thicker sauce is desired, pour a little of the hot deglazing liquid into the cornstarch mixture, blend, and stir mixture back into mixture in saucepan. Add champagne and tarragon (if using) and bring mixture to a boil. Reduce heat to very low, add cream, salt, pepper, and cayenne (if using), and cook over lowest heat setting for 2 minutes or until heated through.
Notes
“Champagne sauce is a simple deglazing sauce that sounds fancy because it includes Champagne. For me, that is usually something flattish left over from a party. Any good white wine can be substituted. The fancy notes are straining the deglazing liquid and using white pepper to avoid dark splotches.”—Barbara Kafka, Roasting: A Simple Art (1995)
Learn to freakin’ write, people.
… to the soldiers who stormed the beaches of Normandy during a campaign stop…
No. It does not matter that I *know* what the author of that sentence *meant.* That someone can write that– let alone (presumably) re-read it– and not be aware that it is f*cked is almost beyond belief.
But I live in a different world, I suppose.
“During a campaign stop in Iowa, Dem … .” How freaking hard was that, you idiot?
Recipe: Beet Sauce
BEET SAUCE
“Serve sauce over green string beans that have been cooked in salt water (no meat).This sauce will keep in the refrigerator for several days.”
Ingredients
- 1 pint beets cooked, chopped fine (can use canned)
- 1/3 C onion chopped fine
- 1 C celery chopped fine
- 1 C mayonnaise
- ½ C chili sauce
- 1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce “Lea and Perrins”
- Pinch salt
- Small amount garlic juice
Instructions
- Mix together beets, onion, and celery. Combine mayonnaise, chili sauce, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and garlic juice, and stir in beet mixture.
Notes
“Delicious!”—Mrs. Guy Robinson, Bayou Cuisine: Its Tradition and Transition (1970)
The Rainbow | an interspersion
Image from Wikiart as in the crappy old book, Grandma Moses ( Otto Kallir, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, New York, 1973).
Recipe: ANTOINE’S HOLLANDAISE SAUCE
ANTOINE’S HOLLANDAISE SAUCE
Makes 4 portions
Ingredients
- 1 C clarified butter
- 2 Tbsp tarragon vinegar
- 1 Tbsp water
- 1 Tbsp onion minced
- 3 pepeprcorns
- 4 egg yolks
- Juice of ¼ lemon
Instructions
- Place vinegar, water, onion, and peppercorns in a saucepan, and cook over very low heat to reduce liquid to one teaspoon. Remove pepeprcorns and cool. Add egg yolks, beating sljghtly. Gradually add clarified butter, beating constantly. Add lemon juice and serve immediately.
TO CLARIFY BUTTER
- “Slowly melt butter, and let stand until clear part can be skimmed off easily.”
Notes
“Antoine’s … Oldest restaurant in the United States, this world famous mecca for the epicure was established in 1840 by Antoine Alciatore … In the heart of New Orleans’ famous and ancient French section, it now is owned by Roy Alciatore, grandson of the founder. It has entertained kings, presidents, the great, and the near great.”—Louisiana’s Fabulous Foods and How to Cook Them (date unknown)
Recipe: Anchovy Sauce
ANCHOVY SAUCE
Makes 1 1/3 C
Ingredients
- 2 sticks 1 C butter
- 1 Tbsp anchovy paste
- 1/3 C sherry
Instructions
- Melt butter in saucepan, stirring in paste until it melts. Add sherry gradually and heat to boiling. Simmer 5 minutes.
Notes
“Serve with veal or pork chops.”—The Encyclopedia of Cooking Complete in 24 Volumes, Volume 8: 250 Ways to Prepare Meat (1953)
Recipe: How to Make Sauces
As I mentioned at the AosHQ pageover on Gab.com, today’s Recipe Tuesday will be devoted to the Horde of Deplorables who are able to cope with sauces.
What follows is a sauce-making primer from Grand Diplôme Cooking Course, Volume 2 (1971). [For ease of reading, I’ve omitted quotation marks.]
Let me remark that after having read all this, that poor little idiot is missing out on some good stuff.
Sauces are the foundation of French cooking but there is no mystery to their making—this simply depends on the perfect balance of ingredients. If proportion of flour to liquid is wrong, no amount of cooking will give a sauce the right consistency.
An inventive sauce can transform a simple dish into something superlative and, once you are familiar with the ‘mother’ (mere) sauces you can make an infinite number of variations. Sauces fall into three groups—white sauces with white, velouté and béchamel as ‘mother’ sauces; brown sauces with Espagnote as the ‘mother’ sauce; and butter sauces with Hollandaise, Béarnaise and sauce blanche au beurre as ‘mother’ sauces. Some of these sauces appear elsewhere [in this book] but, to make this lesson complete, we are repeating them or versions of them.
We also discuss liaisons in greater detail; these are mainly used for making white and brown sauces from liquids and gravies.
Consistencies
The proportion of flour to liquid in a sauce can vary its thickness for the following different uses:
Flowing: for serving as an accompanying suace—1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon flour to 1 cup liquid.
Coating: slightly thicker consistency for coating fillets of fish, eggs and vegetables—1 ½ tablespoons butter and 1 ½ tablespoons flour to 1 cup liquid.
Panada: thick sauce for binding which is used as a base for croquettes, fish or meat mousses—3-4 tablespoons butter and 3-4 tablespoons flour to 1 cup liquid.
Liaisons
Liaisons play an important part in the making of sauces. The word itself means a binding together and refers to ingredients which are used to thicken sauces and soups.
There are various ways to bind sauces:
- Kneaded butter (beurre manié) is a liaison mixture of butter and flour in the proportions of almost twice as much butter as flour, worked together on a plate with a fork to make a paste. It is added in small pieces to thicken the liquid in which food has been cooked, i.e. fish stews, casserole, etc.
This is a useful liaison to use when quantity of liquid remaining in a dish is unknown, thereby making it difficult to estimate how much flour alone should be used for thickening.
Kneaded butter should be added to hot (but not boiling) liquids. Shake the pan gently and when butter has melted (indicating flour has been absorbed into the liquid), reboil. If the liquid still is not thick enough, repeat the process.
- Feculé, i.e. arrowroot or potato starch, should be mixed to a smooth paste with water or milk and stirred into the nearly boiling liquid off the heat. Once added, bring just to a boil and remove from heat. Use with ragôuts and casseroles as well as brown sauces.
- Cornstarch can be used instead of arrowroot or potato starch but gives a slightly heavier result (most often used for sweet dishes, e.g. custard). It is added in the same way but must be simmered 3 minutes to cook thoroughly.
- A mixture of egg yolks and cream may be used to thicken and enrich velouté sauces and some cream sauces. The yolk or yolks are worked thoroughly tether with the cream and 2-3 tablespoons of sauce are stirred in, a little at a time. When well blended, this mixture is gradually stirred into the main bulk of the sauce which is then stirred continuously over low heat. This allows the egg yolks to cook slowly and gives a particularly creamy consistency to the sauce. Never boil the sauce or it will curdle.
WHITE SAUCES
Points to remember:
- The volume of fat and flour should be equal to give a soft liquid roux (the foundation of a flour sauce).
- If the roux is hot, the liquid should be warm or cold; if the roux is cold, the liquid must be warm. This makes blending easier and avoids a granular mixture.
- For a béchamel or white sauce, melt fat gently (do not let it sizzle), take from heat and stir in the flour (to make a white roux)
For a velouté sauce, cook flour in the fat over a low heat for a few seconds until it is a pale straw color (a blond roux) before adding liquid.
For a brown sauce, cook the flour in the fat over low to medium heat for several minutes, stirring occasionally with a wire whisk, until the flour is a rich brown (a brown roux).
- The fats used may be butter, margarine, meat drippings or oil, according to the type of sauce being made.
Brown and butter sauces below the fold.
Recipe: First You Make a ROUX
As I mentioned at the AosHQ page over on Gab.com, today’s Recipe Tuesday will be devoted to the Horde of Deplorables who are able to cope with sauces.
First You Make a ROUX
From Belle’s Bayou Bounty (1969)
Ingredients
- 3 Tbsp shortening or oil
- 2 onions chopped very fine
- 6 Tbsp flour
Instructions
- In large flat pot, preferably iron, add flour to hot oil and over moderate heat stir constantly until deep golden brown. Add onions and continue to stir until onions become soft and browned. Flour will continue to brown while onions cook, so continued careful stirring is necessary to keep the roux from burning.
Notes
“In Creole cooking the foundation for many dishes is the “roux,” defined in dictionaries as a thickening for soups and sauces, and sometimes cooked until flour is brown.”
Modern Living
Betty Jane Johnston, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1965.
(a gift from Daughter C!)
Did you see #10? Plug-in vision-phone. How cool would that be?
What is the thing above #5 that has a line but no number?
[Betty Jane has a Ph.D. by the way, so that’s Doctor Betty Jane to folks like you & I.]
Crappy old books such as this are good for a laugh. How could they have been so wrong about the near future?
Crappy old books such as this can teach a valuable lesson. How could they have been so wrong about the near future?
Before we look at a couple of “well-chosen” appliances, let’s examine the drawing, shall we? Those are cloth diapers hanging on the line. Pampers were introduced to US markets in 1961; the “modern” double-gusset version in 1973 (from that infallible source which has the whole history of diapers). Further, in 1965 there was not an electric dryer in every home. Dr. Betty Jane encourages you to purchase one. See that big pot piled high with bottles and a pair of tongs? That’s what this poor wretched homemaker used to sterilize the baby’s glass bottles, nipples, and rings. And would you look at her shoes! Believe it or not, in 1965 one wore flip-flops only to the pool or beach. One last thing. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that teddybear has button eyes, and the ABC block has lead paint.
And now, to the appliances that will deliver our wretched homemaker from her personal hell of drudge work.
Nothing much has changed in the design of these appliances, has it? Today’s may have a magnetic safety feature on account of the crying little girl, but they still have removable probes.
I iron a lot of table cloths and similar items. The cord holder and extensions would be very useful accessories.
2019. 1965. One the one hand, only 54 years ago. On the other, more than half a century has passed. But things were so thoroughly modern, don’t you know?
Similar post regarding photographing your favorite TV scenes here. Go just to see the picture. It’s great!
12. Use definite, specific, concrete language.
A period of unfavorable weather set in.
He showed satisfaction as he took possession of his well-earned reward.
It rained every day for a week.
He grinned as he pocketed the coin.
The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr., With Revisions, an Introduction, and New Chapter on Writing by E.B. White (1959)
“Sixty-three words that could change the world”
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.
William Strunk, Jr. The Elements of Style (1919)
From the Introduction to The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr., With Revisions, an Introduction, and New Chapter on Writing by E.B. White (1959).
ADDED: I like WP just fine but I’d like it to do what I tell it.
Must not have a Walgreens
Our little town– not the village, the town– has three pharmacies. When we moved here, we chose to do business with the small, not-a-chain one. Customer service was pretty good (although screwups were made) and there was a nice little selection of drug store stuff. Soon after the passing of a certain piece of legislation, it was bought up by a company in the business of buying small, independently owned drug stores. The selection of stuff diminished but customer service remained consistent, and we remained customers.
About a year or so after the transition, the company in the business of buying companies was itself bought up by a national chain and the formerly independent drug store was now “powered by Walgreens.” Things went down hill from there, and rather quickly.
With the first buying up, the staff remained the same– not so when Walgreens came to town. Obnoxious young pricks, some were. There was clearly animosity between the sanctioned-by-Walgreens folk and the old timers who had worked with the independent owner. And everyone had to wear stupid smocks of different colors so each employee’s place on the totem pole was advertised. Of course, there was the introduction of the new computer system, and the new system of identifying pharmacy customers by DOB, mother’s maiden name, first grade teacher’s name, SS#, phone number, etc.– and God forbid if you were picking up a prescription for someone other than yourself!– all of which those in the know knew were going into Walgreens database. And the security cameras. Right.
But the thing that finally got to me was this.
[Tetanus angle below the fold]
I certainly never said this!
Found at Ace of Spades HQ Sunday Morning Book Thread
Take a look at the featured library. It’s beautiful.