JB's Miscellaneous Ramblings

I'm voluntarily skipping squares tonight because it is too freaking hot to dance in an air-conditioned room. (Walker Memorial, for those who know.) This is a thing that basically never happens but today's heat combined with going easy on air conditioning the house because electric bills, and thus the fact that I have been working most of the day between two fans and only in my underwear… Yeah, I can't. *sigh*

I don't actually have passover plans this year as yet, but for reasons I'm making soup and charoset. Tonight was soup nite one. Using the same Serious Eats recipe as here - https://jbsegal.dreamwidth.org/568055.html - and after 5 initial batches of (3 [surprisingly meaty] backs, and 2 smallish legs) - about 4.5 pounds, and about 2.5q water so the overnight "this won't fit in the fridge and there's no snow outside" simmer is of about 12.5q. Parsnip, Carrot, Bay, Onion, Dill.

( It's long, but it's not (yet) a meme )
If you know of more I forgot, let me know...

Edited: 2018/01/09 (not: and re-crossposted.)

The Baitcon Invitation is up, Registration is open, and the excitement is building! I hope to see you there! (If you don't know what to do to register/be invited, and you want to, please DM me. Here (dw), FB, Hangouts, iMessage, whatever.)

It’s just not actually frictionless enough for quick-n-trivial posts, which might not, in fact, be what the site is best for but if it’s going to supplant FB for me it has to be able to do that. :(

As a step in that direction, I HAVE added a desktop shortcut on my iPad for this posting page.

Speaking of which, is there a style I could set my reading page to which will expand comments in place without having to either forward-and-back, or new-tab it?

Posted yesterday, and then corrected 3x in quick succession, on FB.

I believe this to be a complete list.
Six of the locations are almost 'traditional' at this point. 3 are part of the insane birthday trip.
Oh, and if I were totaling the nights up, it'd be 364, as there was a night lost to travel and tourism in Iceland.

• Somerville, MA
• Boston, MA
• Acton, MA
• Warwick, RI
• Troy, NH
• Foxborough, MA
• Pawling, NY
• Pittsfield, MA
• New Lebanon, NY
• Holbæk, Denmark
• Vejle, Denmark
• Copenhagen, Denmark
• Bay Lake, FL
• Falls Church, VA
• Fairlee, VT

The oddest part of all of this was the ~6 months I spent living alone, which is far and away the longest time I've ever spent in such a state.
I'm still not sure how I feel about this, but it's been a pleasure welcoming Robin to the LSE.

It's an annual ritual, I know, but one I could live without.

We're 5 weeks from Baitcon and we haven't come near making our minimium
numbers as yet. If you're planning on coming, PLEASE rsvp asap?

http://wp.baitcon.org/baitcon-xxvii/registration-payment/

Thanks,
JB

The invitation is now live and registration is now open for our 2nd take at Baitcon XXVII, D.M.I.C.

We're back at The Abode again, and as promised last year the dates are 23-26 June.

Details, the invitation, and the reg link, as ever, are at http://wp.baitcon.org/

We hope you can make it! If you have any questions, please ask away, here, or in mail to bcc.

JB and all of BCC


baitcon is also a good place to chat.

When you finally get around to doing your taxes (Hey, at least it's > 24h in advance of deadline (when I started, at least)) and you get to the Filing part of it, and the online system you're using locks up, such that you can't actually DO the filing... and when you log out and back in and try it again (having to repeat only a few minor steps, luckily), it locks in the same place.

I'm sort of going to assume their ops folks are NOT happy right now and I'll try again tomorrow, but STILL...

So, I wasn't hosting a seder this year, but I was planning on providing soup and charoset at one, one which ended up not happening.

Subsequently, I've had a lot of leftover soup and matzah ball mix, and charoset left over.

Soup: I've noted elsewhere: "I have always started with an initial boil of various lengths (Mom called for 2-3 hours), I've varied over the years from that to ~6) that produces something that's never right to begin with - no matter whose meat/water/veg proportions I use.
It's then strained.

It's worth noting that even when I've precisely followed Cooks Illustrated's recipe precisely, this 1st boil has always completely failed to produce something that is like soup to me. I'm... always sort of perplexed by this. Ok, utterly confused."

This year, being the year of the Instant Pot, I decided to start with iPotted stock, via http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2017/04/pressure-cooker-chicken-stock-recipe.html - modified by adding dill and a parsnip, subtracting the garlic, and taking the celery out after the 1st batch, because it wasn't right.

... and by 1st batch I meant 1st 3 batches. Thanks to kimberlogic and ahf, I had 3 pots to work with, and then did a 2nd run for 6 batches in total, 12Kg chicken, and just about 12q of water. I believe what came out of the 1st boil was something like 12-12.5q of broth, and about 1q of shmaltz. Yes, more stock than water.

... And that stock was... still not right. Tastier than average for my 1st boil, but still not what I want for my end product, or even for a soup I'm ready to eat then. I still don't understand it at all.

---

As for matzah balls, when I got home from the emergency backup seder I went to on Monday, I boiled up a batch as the seder had been sadly soup-free (but otherwise lovely!) and I wanted some.

They were rocks. They're usually dense, but this was ridiculous. Also, somehow despite all the salt I'd put in, they were nearly salt-free in taste.

Over the next couple of days, I asked everyone with experience for their matzah ball recipe. It seems to be that mom, back when she was giving me the full instructions for her seder experience, halved the amount of fat that goes in to them. I went and added enough extra fat to bring them in line with normal recipes, and more salt.

And then I went and asked if anyone had ever pressure cooked matzah balls. The answer is Of Course They Have, and tamidon pointed me at http://foodsforlonglife.blogspot.com/2017/03/instant-pot-matzo-ball-soup.html and so, mindful of the caution pookfreak had about not overboiling due to the time bringing cold soup to boil, I brought the soup to low pressure and immediately opened it, then added the mix. 15 min high pressure, quick release... voila, they were _excellent_. Ok, still not enough salt, but other than that...

---

On to the haroset: 1# of Macintosh (4 small) to .5# of Granny Smith (1 large), 1# walnuts, WAY more nutmeg than I usually add, due to an more-aggressive than I'm used to grater, cassia, and wine... worked excellently! MAYBE a bit less nutmeg, or a bit more cinnamon.

---

And FINALLY! Allison was feeling driven and stripped off all the chicken meat (cardboard as usual, as its been boiled free of ALL its flavor, fat, etc.) so I contacted old family friends for the chicken croquettes recipe that for years was the standard destination for such chicken meat in my childhood. I got that yesterday and haven't yet had a chance to make it - it's just a thick white sauce, mix in the shredded chicken to the right texture, bread (or matzah meal) and fry. I hope to do this soon.

So yeah, despite not actually serving food to people, I've had good progress this year in making everything better for next year. Yay!

(NOW let's see how this wall of text looks when it's cross-dumped to FB. No cut.)

... via IFTTT.com and their RSS feeds. Let's see if it works...

I know I say this every year - including noting that I say this every year - but it's more true than ever at the moment:
We have a minimum we need to be able to afford to do this, while paying our contract with the site and we need that minimum well in advance.

That deadline is approaching. Please! If you're intending to come to Baitcon this year, hie yourself to the website and register soon.

Hope to see you there!

I almost never remember having dreams, let alone what they are, so this one was multiply odd - odder still that I remember it 9 hours later.

Basically, it was an extended period of hanging out in a (very dark?) house, trying to convince the very nice but very persistent vampire couple who lived there - but who I never actually saw, just felt in the dark - that no, they really didn't want to bite/feed on/turn me. Were I to relax and stop insisting/preventing, they would've gone ahead with it and I didn't want that.

They might've had a cat, too.

I FEEL like I was half awake for most of this, but that it took forever for me to get to the point of "I am REALLY not enjoying this, and if I wake All The Way up (say, by getting up and going the bathroom) I can probably not pick this up again when I go back to sleep", and in fact that worked.

It wasn't a nightmare, as much as an extended stress-ball of a thing. It certainly Means Something.

{sigh}

Somerville, MA
Boston, MA
Seattle, WA
Wenatchee, WA
Sunnyvale, CA
San Francisco, CA (2 locations)
Troy, NH
Foxborough, MA
West Springfield, MA
{Munich Airport}
Prague, CZ (2 locations)
Elmshorn, DE
Copenhagen, DK (3 locations)
Vejle, DK
Slagelse, DK
Pittsfield, MA
New Lebanon, NY
Danbury, CT
Northampton, MA
Fairlee, VT
Falls Church, VA

That's one SF convention, 4 square dance events and (for CZ, DK) surrounding tourism, a work trip and surrounding tourism, 2 family trips, a getaway weekend, {a napcab in the airport during an extended (unplanned) layover}, and Baitcon

I just spotted an Infinity-Heart tattoo on the neck of an employee of Vermeer during a How It's Made segment on circular hay balers.
http://www2.vermeer.com/vermeer/NA/en/N/

I'm amused.