First Post: Bolognese!

Hi all!

Sawsheezle invited me to start posting here, so I guess you're all stuck with it now. Today, we're making bolognese. Prep time: 3.5 hours.

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 carrot
• 1 celery stalk
• 1 white onion
• 1.5-2 pounds ground beef (or pork, be creative)
• 2 oz tomato paste (half a can)
• 2 cups red wine
• 1 cup chicken stock
• 1 cup milk
• 28 oz can crushed tomatoes
• parmesan for garnish 

• Herbs to taste. I recommend some combination of basil, rosemary, sage, and bay leaves.

• Pasta of your choice. I'll be using fettuccine.

The first (and most important) step of any cooking adventure is a solid drink. You're not going to spend the next three hours sober are you?

Tonight, I'll be drinking a variation on the classic dark and stormy. Rather than lime, I add a few dashes of bitters. I'm using Zafra Master Reserve rum which is aged in bourbon barrels. The combination of flavors imparted by the aging of the rum and the addition of bitters makes for a sharper, more biting cocktail. I much prefer it to the traditional incarnation.

Random unrelated bit of trivia, the glass pictured is the exact make/model used by Harrison Ford's character in Blade Runner. There's a guy online that imports and sells them. They were gift a long time ago, and I still think they're awesome!

Anyways, on to the recipe! You're going to want to start by getting out and washing all of the veggies and the garlic. Chop them finely and toss them in a bowl for later.

Heat up the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Toss in the veggies. You're going to cook these until they're nice and soft. 10-15 minutes should do it. More won't hurt. At the same time, you'll want to start browning whatever meat you've decided on. Tonight, I'm using ground beef.

At the last minute, I realized I had a few slices of prosciutto leftover, so I decided to toss that in too. After all, when has prosciutto ever made something worse?

Once the veggies are soft and the meat is browned, you'll want to drain the meat and then combine the meat, veggies and the tomato paste in your pot and stir until the paste covers everything evenly.

Go ahead and add the chicken stock, milk, red wine and crushed tomatoes and then bring the mixture to a boil.

After your sauce reaches a boil, reduce the heat to a low simmer. At this point, add whatever herbs you'd like. Better make yourself another drink because now is when the waiting begins. You're going to simmer uncovered for 2.5-3 hours. Basically, you want to reduce the sauce down to something nice and thick. How long you simmer is personal preference, but in my opinion: the longer the better.

Two hours in, you can see how much it has reduced down.

When your sauce is about 20-30 minutes from done, get some water boiling and cook your pasta. (I'm omitting specifics as you can use any type of pasta you'd like).

Allow the pasta to rest for a couple of minutes after straining, then plate the pasta and add your bolognese. Garnish with parmesan and fresh basil.

Enjoy!

Whelp. That about does it for my first post here, hopefully there are more to come. I hear tell of investment and home improvement discussion in addition to cooking, so I look forward to that.

Jalapeno weekend part 2: cowboy candy

This is the second part in our series: Jalapeno Weekend. Presented here is a recipe for candied jalapenos.

First, acquire a massive amount of the spicy green peppers. Begin cutting them up into desired chip sizes. Also, somehow roundup all of these other things too.

1 lb Jalapenos
3.5 C sugar
1.5 C apple cider vinegar
a healthy amount of crushed garlic
a squirt of mustard
a spoonful of turmeric

We need to make the syrup. Add all other ingredients to a sauce pan and bring to a boil.

Since we intend to can these puppies, boil jars in a separate pot. This will prevent them from cracking.

When the syrup starts to boil, add in the jalapenos, cover the pot reduce heat and let simmer for 15 minutes or so.

Put them in the jars! Also, in the background reduce the syrup concoction until it is thicker and more syrupier.

Pour in remaining syrup and twist on those lids. Put jars in the fridge. As they cool, you will hear the lids "pop down" as they seal in the freshness. Enjoy on your favorite pizza or pulled pork sandwich.

Spark Plugs Season Finale

To see the first post on how to change the spark plugs on a chevy malibu: click here

So, I have been needing to conclude the spark plug series, and I think part of the reason I was putting it off is that there is not much left that is new to say.  By replacing the front three spark plugs first, you should understand the process.  The process for the back three spark plugs is the exact same, only the space is more cramped as the position of the engine block routes the spark plug boots up against the firewall with little clearance.

So your spark plugs and boots are somewhere back here (in the direction of the red arrow).

By dropping my camera in the direction of the arrow in the picture preceding this photograph, I was able to grab a picture of two of the three rear spark plugs.

Really, even after removing the alternator to free up sapce, I would say I mostly relied on feel to replace the rear three spark plugs.  You can find the spark plugs by following the wires from the ignition coils to the spark plug boots.  I then used pliers and a wrench placed underneath the pliers for leverage to loosen and remove the boots.  Once the boot is removed you can lead the spark plug socket to the spark plug for replacing.  Once you screw the new spark plug in place, you can feel the new spark plug and lead the boot back over it.

So in the end, this was not a very useful post, but the spark plug series is now complete.  Congratulations, you should now be able to change your spark plugs on your 2000 or 2001 Chevy Malibu.  

If you happen to own a Saab 9-3, you will get a considerably shorter post in the coming months as the spark plugs in this make/model are considerably easier to access.

And a Loot Crate

Loot Crate is a company that sends you a box of random "nerd/geek" stuff once a month. Imagine a beer or coffee of the month club. I've liked some of their past crates and have wanted to try them for awhile. Groupon recently had a deal for a one month subscription for $10. They also had a coupon for $5 towards any Groupon purchase if you played a little game on their Facebook page. I bit and decided to try it out. Each month has a theme and December's was "Anniversary." It also promised to be one of their biggest ever. I knew Ghostbusters and Batman both had big anniversaries this year (30 and 75 respectively) so I was pretty pumped. My crate came today and I thought I'd show you guys what I got.

First off, we have a Joker-Batman figure. I like the colors and design. It's certainly not your typical Batman figure. Apparently it's a Loot Crate exclusive.

Next we have Groot socks. I'm going to be giving these to my sister for Christmas.

Then we have a sweet Simpsons Mighty Wallet. I'd never heard of Mighty Wallet before but apparently they are tough wallets that you can stuff and stuff and it won't break (more details here). It has two inside pockets, two "cash" seperated areas, and two outside slots. I would hate for stuff to slip out but I'm switching over to this wallet immediately.

This was a little booklet explaining the loot in said crate.

I was really hoping for something more robust for Ghostbusters since it's one of my all time favorite franchises. All I got was a door hanger.

Next we have a Batman comic. I don't know if the comic itself is exclusive to Loot Crate or if it's just an exclusive cover.

Some Tetris stickers. Kinda neat.

An Avengers Assemble Captain America air freshener. I was hoping it smelled like freedom, but it says vanilla. Oh well.

Some deal coupon for Loot Crate customers for Crunchy Roll, which I'm pretty sure is like Netflix for anime.

They included a mini candy cane for Christmas. I thought it was pretty cool.

Here's the inside of the box which you can use with the Batman figure to play around in.

That's it. I don't know if I'll continue my subscription with Loot Crate. It costs ~$15 a month and I just don't know if it's worth it. What do you guys think?

About a cast iron skilet

I've always heard good things about cast iron skillets. They last forever, amazing to cook in, no stick, etc. I've just never gotten around to buying one. My grandpa knew about my quest to acquire a cast iron skillet and always kept an eye out for me. In his apartment building, everyone has a storage locker in the top floor and there's a "free for a good home" area for people to place items that they don't necessarily want to throw out but offer to other people who may want/need it. This is where he found my new Favorite Piqua Ware 10" skillet. When I first got it, it wasn't in the best of shape. There was a little bit of rust in the bottom of the skillet, the seasoning was uneven or nonexistent, and there was quite a bit of burnt on goodness around the sides. All it needed was a bit of TLC and it would be good as new. I kept putting it off and putting it off... until now.

I read about a couple different ways to "reset" cast iron and decided on using an oven with a self cleaning feature to just burn everything off and start fresh. So over to my dad's I went. Unfortunately I'm a dummy so I did not get any pre-oven pictures, but here are some after it was in the oven for an hour.

Notice that deliciousness on the sides there. Yum. So after the oven, I just used some SOS pads to scrape away all the ash and junk from the pan. Took quite a while to get it to where I was convinced that everything that could come off, did. Here's what it looked like after scrubbing.

Absolutely amazing right? Couldn't believe how much that worked. Even all that baked on crust on the side came off with no problem. The bottom is incredibly smooth. The underneath looks beautiful as well. Now time to season it. I decided on canola oil after a little research (plus I already had it on hand). Here's the pan before the oven for seasoning.

And here it is after two more coatings and trips to the oven.

I did a little research about Favorite Piqua Ware and found out that they produced cast iron pans from 1916-1935. Here are a couple of different logos that they're had. I don't know if that site has listed their logos in chronological order or not but I would assume that the first one, with it being so simple, is from an earlier time. I would guess that my pan is from around 1920. Overall, I'm very happy with my finished product and hope you had fun reading.

Ryan takes apart a Keurig K-Cup

I think everyone here understands my contempt for Keurigs by now. But I decided to take one of the K-Cups apart just to see what makes these things so shitty.

These first five pictures are me dismantling it before brewing:

So it really is just a compact coffee filter. I figured as much but it's cool to see it all open. Now here's after the brew:

In order to brew, the Keurig pokes a hole in the top and one in the bottom for the water to mingle with the "coffee" grounds then squirt out the bottom. Again, nothing we didn't already know but still neat to see. One thing I thought was interesting was how dry the "coffee" grounds were. If you've ever used a Keurig, you'll notice that almost as soon as you hit "Go," coffee starts coming out the bottom. That's not good. You want the grounds to steep for a little while in order to extract flavor and all the other goodness. Due to the very short steep time, this is why I believe Keurigs make such horrible coffee. Even automatic coffee makers brew a bit slower.

Stay tuned for my next post where I restore a rusty cast iron skillet!