Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Non-halal

Classes might as well have never stopped. Things are all well and good – except that I'm most definitely not going to be able to take that Intro to Logic course I'd been planning on forcing my way into. The professor made it eminently clear that if you weren't enrolled for real by Friday, you weren't in the class. Considering I haven't even made it on the waitlist yet, I've decided to throw in that particular towel. So I spent the rest of the class thinking about pork.

Pulled Pork and BBQ Sauce
in a crock pot. Delicious, cheap and easy.

Pulled Pork

Ingredients

1 pork shoulder roast
1 onion
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
Worcester sauce
brown sugar
salt
pepper

Quarter onion and sweat, then place in bottom of crock pot. Place roast in pot on top of onions, with the fat pack on the bottom. Add vinegar to pot, splashing some on the roast. Also add Worcester sauce, a bit less than the vinegar. Finally, pack roast liberally with brown sugar. Cover, and cook on low for 8 hours, flipping over halfway through if desired.

When finished, take pork from crock pot and put into new (large) bowl. Remove and discard excess fat, and shred with a pair of forks. Salt and pepper to taste (you will use lots and lots and lots of both).

Sauce

Ingredients

Drippings from crock pot
1/2-1/3 cup ketchup
1 tbsp liquid smoke
1.5 tbsp cornstarch
1 cup water
salt
other seasonings (cayenne pepper, garlic powder, etc.)

Take drippings from crock pot, ladle off excess fat and discard. Remove onions. Put remainder in saucepan and simmer. Add ketchup and liquid smoke, whisk into drippings. Mix cornstarch and water together well, and whisk into sauce. Reduce to desired consistency, then salt and season to taste. Don't season before the reduction, otherwise it will be over-seasoned when it's reduced. Use sauce to mix with pork for sandwiches or what have you.

This is in the pot right now. I've made more rudimentary pulled pork in the past, but I've decided to step it up a notch. I'm going to need to go down and pick up some more cornstarch seeing as I accidentally dropped mine out the (fourth story) window. Very exciting.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Bloggin' like my daddy taught me

Earlier today sitting at an auto race exposed in the blazing sun my dad made some remark about video games and I defended the medium because I speak my dad's language and most video game people don't, and also because it's really satisfying to disagree with someone who's shaped your thinking and guided your intellectual growth.

I remember the first time I disagreed with my dad. Well, I may or may not remember. I remember the feeling of disagreeing with him, but the topic escapes me. However, I do remember disagreeing with him about gay marriage, and I think I'm just gonna call that the first time, since who's gonna say otherwise?

Dad said (this was a few years ago, mind) that he was getting frustrated by all the hullabaloo about gay marriage, that it wasn't the right issue for the time. Setting this aside – since I didn't take issue with it at the time – he continued to argue that the issue of marriage wasn't what the gay movement was about anyway, and that for anyone from back in the day (70s-ish I guess), the idea that gaining the right to marry would be some kind of major milestone was totally off-base. That wasn't what the whole thing was about.

"That's totally ridiculous, Dad. Most people aren't in 'Movements.' Most people are boring – they want to get a good job, find someone nice, get married, maybe have kids. Some of these people are gay. Movements are fine, whatever, but this isn't about a 'movement.'"

Bear in mind this is reconstructed and phrased in my current voice – I'm pretty sure I had different speech patterns when we had this discussion.

Dad likes to take bold stances, which I do as well and which I probably got from him. He supported the Soviet Union's communist experiment, and unlike every other semi-communist out there he doesn't immediately cave the instant you bring up Stalin, or take the coward's way out by saying "If Trotsky had won out it would have been better" or whatever intellectually-dishonest backtracks people use. In fact, the only thing he regularly criticizes the Soviets for was their treatment of art and artists – but that's just his way.

This has gotten tangential. He took a bold stance on gay marriage because bold stances surprise people and make them think. I thought, and I disagreed with him. I like disagreeing with Dad because it means I'm not a parrot, even though I by and large share his views; because he's a lot older than me and can argue much more effectively than most I've met; and because I like to surprise him and make him think.

But really Dad? "Gay movement" are you serious? Come on.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Posting with my eyes closed

I can't focus my eyes.

I started noticing it about an hour ago and begged out of a couple of IM conversations to give them a rest. It's really hard to do anything while you're resting your eyes. You can't read a book or do a puzzle or play a game. What you can do, it turns out, is turn on music, turn off all of the lights but one, and lay on the unfolded futon couch with your head buried in a hood and your arms scrunched up beneath you. Also, it turns out this is over all pretty boring.

So I'm here, making my first blogpost with my eyes closed, glancing occasionally if I think I've made a typo, but for the most part blind typing. It feels different than regular typing.

Okay, I've opened my eyes now. They seem to be focusing — wait now they're closed again. I wish they would just get rested and be done with it. Stream-of-consciousness lol.

I'm too self-conscious to blog.