D'oh! Running late ...

Originally published at Larry's Blatherings. You can comment here or there.

Whilst shopping for my New Year’s Day Open House, I found salmon on sale at the Uptown Lunds. They had sides of both Coho and, I think, King. Both were richly colored and dark, but the Coho was much, much, much cheaper. Back in the meat department, I asked if they had a good sized side, and I ended up with about a two-pound piece. I also purchased some coriander, just to ensure I already had some, and another hunk of dill.

2 teaspoon whole white peppercorns
2 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
2 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon allspice berries
4 tablespoons sea salt
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 2-pound salmon fillet, skin on
1 cup chopped fresh dill
absinthe

Gravlax is essentially salt and sugar cured salmon. Dill is the standard herb, and pepper, that other essential Scandinavian spice, is the second. The outline of the recipe I used, DILLED GRAVLAX WITH MUSTARD SAUCE also added coriander, which is why I bought some. I’m going to guess that any of the bitter herbs and spices would work: fennel, caraway, tarragon, licorice, anise, etc. As usual, I opened up several online recipes and kinda winged it. I did not make the mustard sauce. Why ruin good salmon?

The main recipe said to toast the spice. I toasted two teaspoons black and white peppercorns, coriander, and some allspice berries. I put them in the mortar and had at them with the pestle. When they started getting toward crushed, I threw some of the salt on it and pounded away a bit longer.

I ended up using a wire nippers to pull the bones out of the salmon, and I gave up about a third of the way to the tail. (You want to leave the skin on the fish for cutting.)

I washed and coarsely chopped a mess o’ dill. The dill is traditional, and it’s good, but it can be used in almost any amount.

I mixed the salt and spice mixture with brown sugar (about equal to the salt). I’m sure there’s a level of salt and sugar that you don’t want to go below, but as long as you’re above that, the salt and the sugar amounts, kind, and type are up to you.

The recipe says to prick the skin of the salmon, which I did since the fish is firmly dead anyway, although I don’t think I have before. You simply rub the spice, sugar, and salt cure all over the salmon, and the dill on top. Most recipes will ask you to weigh down the salmon in a non-reactionary pan, but I find a good old plastic zip-lock bag is a lot simpler. After I got the fish in the bag, I tossed in a good glug of absinthe. If the salmon is too long for the bag, just fold the tail over. When the fish goes into the fridge, it’s dry, but the salt and sugar rapidly draw fluid from the fish, and turn to liquid. You’ll want to keep the salmon submerged in the liquid. You can submerge it in water to get the air out, or just fold it. The goal is to cure the salmon by keeping it in the liquid, and you can perform any ritual you want to ensure this.

After a couple of days, the color of the fish will have turned darker, and you’ll want to slice it against the skin. You can clean the salmon before slicing if you want, but we did not. The absinthe, which was quite strong if you sniffed the bag, was merged with the peppers, coriander, and allspice. It was a lot more peppery than the gravlax I’ve made before, but I really liked the flavor of the fish, and it was gone by the end of the night.

Originally published at Larry's Blatherings. You can comment here or there.

Originally published at Larry's Blatherings. You can comment here or there.

My last day at work was Tuesday, March 15, 2016. I’m still in a bit of a holding pattern, spending a great deal of time getting quite little done. I still have not unpacked the things I brought home from my desk at work, although the lemon cookies seem to be vanishing, and I don’t think it’s mice getting into them.

1.0. Medical Insurance. The great wasteland of America where Republicans think you can so easily shop for on your own so they have created a maze that would do a Minotaur proud. You must choose A, you may choose, B, or C, and possible D, but if you choose B, you’re locked out of C, and if you didn’t do it yesterday, we’re gonna fine you.

2.0. 401k. Move the old company 401k account over to the regular accounts. Even my index fund strategy has not been doing great against the vicissitudes o’ the market this year.

3.0. House projects. I have two started and one more I hope to add.

3.1. Gas fireplace liner goes in on Friday, or so it’s scheduled. Someone hates the wood fire, and, in truth, the damned wood fireplace smokes like the chimney was bricked up or partially obstructed. While before the winter storm warning for the southern part of the state would have been nice, I won’t cry too hard if it does not get much use this spring.

3.2. I’m having the stair handrail extended down to the first step. It’s not going to match the upper run of balusters or the handrail for that matter, and the staining is going to be up to me, but it should be close enough. It’s switching to over-the-post at the bottom and the newel post will be considerable different than the other two. (They have told me they can’t use the elaborate volute I’d dreamed of with it’s circled wagon of balusters at the bottom that I’ve been jonesing for.) The 1907 red oak balusters taper from the middle to each end, and I could not find them, although they could be custom made — in three sizes of course and four sets of three sizes for the short run of the steps. So, the balusters I asked them to get only taper to the top.

3.3. When the weather improves a wee bit, pick up something to run a new handrail up to the upstairs upstairs. There’s a piece hiding in the upstairs upstairs that ustta be there, just a plain pine handrail, but I didn’t like it, and if I remember right, it was poorly attached to the wall. Anyway, it has been up there since shortly after I moved into the house. I’m so used to using the narrow stairs, that they don’t bother me, although other people seem not to have the same feeling about them. I’d looked at some fancy handrail brackets, but would like to do something just with wood. Pigs ear would be nice, but seems unheard of this side o’ the pond. I think I’d like to do something more rectangular and boardy, if that makes any sense.

3.4. I have long dreamed about replacing the upstairs upstairs door with a set of double doors. When the current door is open, it partially obstructs my office door. I’ve gone out several times on the internet to price two double doors, and generally come close to fainting when I looked at the estimated price. Of course, I’ve always had five panel doors quoted, which would match the plethora of other doors on the second floor. Before I left for the Caribbean, I checked at Menards, who used not to be able to get doors as small as I needed, and asked them to price a single panel doors with the goal of using wood to divide the single panel up into five panels on each side of each door, which is something that I think I can do. (Ain’t no way I’m going to make two five panel doors.) Menards called me when I was on the island, and, while I swear I wrote down the quote, I can’t find it, and neither can they, but it was much more, err, reasonable than the other quotes. (Just lacking four panels on each door.) So, that may be worth attempting. I’ve a friend who’s a handyman and can help cutting the hinges and the mortise work.

Originally published at Larry's Blatherings. You can comment here or there.

I see that my home town credit union is using the Euro-style chip cards to replace my Visa card. My last card had a bill from an unfamiliar merchant in China. Now it is entirely possible that I ordered something on eBay or Amazon from a merchant in China, but probably not at a woman’s specialty store in Shanghai, especially since the bill was not enuff for a boi-toy.

Originally published at Larry's Blatherings. You can comment here or there.

WordPress updated itself and took out the theme I was using. Or, the theme I was using took out itself.

I gotta new printer yesterday, and it’s bigger than a breadbox. Quite a bit bigger. I also got a bunch of the biggest paper it handles, which I think is 13 X 19″ I figure I can print one or two blizzard scenes before I run out of ink.

Originally published at Larry's Blatherings. You can comment here or there.

We had some weather come through Our Fair Cities last night around midnight. It’s been raining a bit lately, and the first thing Minnesota trees like to do after it’s raining and a good flat wind comes through is fall over. And so they did, although some claim it was the lightening that done it. Since I had offered to help cut up trees that one day at the Hennepin County History Museum, I knew that my chainsaw had oil, my reciprocating saw had a wicked pruning blade in it, and I’d found an extra 50′ of extension cord hiding in the basement. In short, I was ready to cut trees — well, except, of course, that I could really stand to put a new chain in the chainsaw, but we don’t hafta go there. I made a couple o’ offers, only one of which was excepted, for which I am quite grateful, and off I went to adjust the chain on the chainsaw, and load it all up in the trunk of my Baby^tm car so I could drive the two blocks to help chop up a tree that had not only knocked a fence down, but that had the temerity to fall on a garage!

When I got there with my chainsaw and my reciprocating saw, and my two extension cords, my friends’ neighbor was attempting to cut up a mulberry tree that had collapsed on top of the garage roof and just about filled up their yard. He’d ran out and bought a Ryobi saw, in that nice fluorescent green that they use, and he was manfully chopping off branches with a little bitty multi-purpose blade designed for cutting through anything, like iron pipe or wood with lottsa nails in it, but that would take a month o’ Sundays to chop off much of that mulberry tree with a four inch blade.

My reciprocating saw, which I bought from Sears on a Slickdeals price alert, also came with a small multi-purpose blade, but when I knew I was gonna cut me some trees down at the museum, I ran to Menards to find something with teeth — and long. Ain’t nothing makes a man feel gooder than a wicked toothed saw blade that’s long too. Well, OK, it also cuts through green wood real slick, although the first nail you hit would probably strip half a dozen o’ those wicked teeth off the blade, but until you hit that first nail, it’s like going into town on Saturday night. So anyway, we cut wood. In the full sun. On a hot day. In a back yard where this damned mulberry tree just fell over on account of it being wet, rotten, and hit by a flat wall o’ wind. (I think I used my chainsaw only once, to cut through a really thick branch.)

After about an hour of cutting wood in the hot sun in the back yard, I think I started to notice it was warm. One of the first clues was the sweat that started dripping into my eyes. Working as I do under an air vent in an air-conditioned office (for some values of air-conditioned — ittsa green building, which is really funny when you think about it ’cause ain’t none of it painted green nor green carpeted either — and for goodness sake, let’s not start talking about the toilets.) So anyway, we drank some refreshments, and I kinda hid under the umbrella for the last half hour of the tree cutting, but by then it was pretty much chopped up and off the roof, except for the big trunk which is laying across the yard. When I left, I left the long blade with the wicked teeth.

Originally published at Larry's Blatherings. You can comment here or there.

To hear music tonight. Oh my.