Still have Technical Difficulties with Photos

Sorry. I am working out the problem. However, I will be away from my own computer tomorrow night, so it will have to wait until Monday.

Technical Difficulties

I am having issues with my computer that are keeping me from being able to post photos. I should be able to figure out what is going on by tomorrow evening, and Pig Roast Part 2 will go up then, fully illustrated. Sorry about the delay.

Swim Meet

I haven't gotten around to downloading those pictures, because we have been insanely busy: swim meet today (Amalia dropped two of her Long Course 50 m times considerably), and we had to be there from early in the morning to late, as Melanie and I are USA Swimming officials. Fathers' Day tomorrow means I get to cook a fun dinner. Perhaps afterwards, if the wine doesn't flow too freely!

If any of my readers have children involved in swimming, I highly recommend training to become and official. It is the most interesting way to pass the time at a swim meet, besides swimming or coaching, you meet a lot of good people, and you learn a lot about the sport of swimming (even those of us who were swimmers learn the rules that we had internalized in practice many years ago). Sure, the clothes are a bit dorky (white polo shirt?!? I have not worn one of those since I was in grade school, mainly because I HAD to wear one every school day for five years!), but they let you wear shorts! Also, if your child's team requires a certain number of volunteer hours, this is much better than being clerk of course or any of those more monotonous tasks (although computer geeks probably thrive at the Colorado system).

Roast Pig Adventure...We Pause for Technical Difficulties.

Part Two will have to wait until tomorrow. When I went to download my pictures, I found that the camera's battery was extremely low. Recharge. Downloading tomorrow, then Part Two.

I could tell you amusing anecdotes about my cat, but no one besides the cat's owner cares about amusing anecdotes about a cat. Someone ought to tell Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll that. I assume he is still writing. I gave up on that rag years ago.

Amusing

One of my old posts that continually generates comments is the one with my oxtail soup recipe. I am quite clear that what I am posting is an Alpine oxtail soup recipe, but, as we know, the Englisch are not so smart. They keep commenting that I am getting it wrong, that it need not be so complex, that I don't know anything because oxtail soup is an Englisch dish (as if no one thought of eating that part of the cow before the Englisch got to it), etc.

Let me spell something out for my dear Englisch readers:

When you say that a dish need not be complicated, you should examine your cuisine (if we dare call it that) first. Trust me when I say that, yes, yes, indeed, it does need to be that complicated, unless you are satisfied with Englisch food!

How to Roast a Whole Pig, Part One: the brine

For the Feast of St. Anthony of Padua, the St. Anthony of Padua Institute held a pig roast. We all got around, drank Manhattans, and people took turns telling funny things about the pig. No. Not really. We dunked a 90 lb. hog in brine for three days, then attached it to a spit and roasted it over a fire of mesquite chunk charcoal and cherry wood. It was delicious. I took pictures, but not of the first day. Someone took pictures, and as soon as I get a hold of some of them I will post them. We also took video and will edit that for some future release, probably on YouTube.

What do you marinate a 90 lb. pig in? We looked at the various storage containers out there, but nothing was big enough. Our butcher suggested a bathtub, but the folks who kindly hosted the event need their bathtub for, well, bathing. We ended up buying a 50 gallon plastic trash can. It worked great. Make sure it is new (obviously). We scrubbed it with soap and water and made our brine directly in it.

To avoid having to stoop deep into the pit to stir in the salt and sugar (we forgot to bring a paddle or a wooden spoon large enough to reach the bottom), we dissolved salt and sugar in a pot and then dumped the pot into the vat. We used 2 or 3 five pound bags of sugar, 5 or 6 two pound boxes of kosher salt, 4 1.5l bottles of dry red wine, a jar of dried thyme, a handful of bay leaves, a few branches of fresh rosemary (we could have tripled the amount, as far as I am concerned), the peeled cloves of about six heads of garlic, a jar of fennel seed, a handful (about a cup) of whole peppercorns, and a third of a cup of whole allspice (we were going to add some dried chilies, but we forgot them). We added the pig, tail down, and enough water to cover, and finished it with ice, which was also added daily. Because I did not want any part of the pig sticking out of the brine, we put a board over the pig and weighted it down with a pot, into which the daily ice went.

The pig went into the drink on Wednesday afternoon and was allowed to sit in there until Saturday morning. The salt and sugar levels in the finished product were good, although the rosemary could have been more pronounced.

Tomorrow: The fire pit, adventures at 4am, the trussing, and the importance of drinking beer while roasting a pig.

Here is a Schedule for you...

Tonight. Rehearse half of my ad hoc choir. Go to Berkeley.
Somewhere between what normal people would call Tonight and Tomorrow. Wake up early and drive to Concord.
Early Tomorrow. Build a fire. Remove 90 lb. pig from vat of brine. Dress pig for battle. Truss pig. Tie pig to the spit and roast it. Go to Oakland. Rehearse choir. Sing at mass for St. Anthony. Somehow figure out some time to do some paint touch ups on statuary so that it looks good for Feast of Corpus Christi on Sunday. Go back to Concord. Make pasta. Eat pig. Eat pasta. Go home.
Sunday. Go to Oakland. Sing at mass and procession for Corpus Christi. Go home. Make beer in the afternoon.

So, the next person who comes to me and says, "hey, do you have a free moment?" should be warned.

Roasting a Whole Pig

For the Feast of St. Anthony of Padua we are roasting a whole pig. I have never done this before, so I have to admit that the 90 lb beast that is in a vat of brine is slightly intimidating. We will be putting the whole hog on a spit and slowly roasting it over a wood fire. Wish us luck!

Torn.

I admit it: I am torn. On the one hand, North Korea is a loathsome Commie dictatorship, worthy of scorn and all manner of ill will. Kim Jong Il is the very picture of what happens when folks let toads run the world.

But on the other hand, two journalists under the employ of the Tennessee Toad Al Gore were sentenced to 12 years hard labor. It sucks to be them, but if they want to play around with the notion that journalism is somehow heroic, then there ought to be occasional consequences to its practice, so that they don't look too foolish (not that it is difficult to call someone foolish who is playing around the border of a known psychotic state).

So, let us assume that the two journalists are smitten with the myth of their own trade, or that they just took the job with Al Go' because they needed the work, and that 12 years of hard labor in a Commie concentration camp might be a little excessive. With that in mind, I have the perfect solution: a trade. We give them the girls' boss and he serves both of their sentences. They come home and give up all this muckraking, and Al Gore toils in Korean salt mines for twenty-four years. Sounds like a win-win to me.

Remember the St. Louis!

Remember this:

1. Francisco Franco welcomed Jewish refugees from Germany and Collaborationist France.

2. On this day, seventy years ago, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, that great lover of freedom and ally of Joseph Stalin did not.

Verdolagas.

Verdolagas is a succulent herb also known as purslane, pig weed, hogweed or pusley. It was fairly common in the Middle Ages, but faded out of fashion. I had read the name "purslane" in literature, but had no idea that it was also the verdolagas of Mexican cuisine. One never sees (or rarely sees) verdolagas in the markets, but I had been told that if you have the right conditions it grows like a weed. In fact it can be quite invasive.

Well, when we moved to Vallejo there was this pretty succulent that popped up in the back yard. We decided to let it grow to see what it became. It had pretty yellow flowers and interesting-looking foliage, but it also grew something around the speed of bamboo and seemed to spread at mint-like speeds. We tore it out and threw it away. It came back. Tore it out. Came back. Tore out. Came back.....and so on.

A couple of weeks ago, Melanie thinks that we should plant it in this patch of thin soil in the front, under a tree. Nothing grows there, and something that would take over might be just the thing. I hesitate, thinking that it could be a Californian kudzu.

Anyway, today Amalia and I are in a nursery (where we found, to my great delight, healthy little specimens of Artemisia absinthia) browsing through the edibles. I do a double take at a peculiar little succulent. Amalia! That is that thing that keeps popping up in our back yard. They are selling it?

The tag identifies it as "purslane," says that it is a good source of vitamin C and omega-3's, and adds a pleasant tang to dishes and can be sauteed or stir-fried to good effect. I take a close look at the plants they are selling, and taste a leaf. When I get home, I confirm the identity of the plant in our yard. I taste a leaf. Yep. So I start researching this plant and find out that it is the "verdolagas" that I have been looking for.

Hooray!

Now, I am looking all over for different purslane recipes. If anyone has anything, please send it my way. I will be quite grateful.

Mr. Ed

Because we live with a horse-obsessed 7 (almost 8) year old, we figured that it might be fun to rent a DVD of the old Mr. Ed show. I had probably seen it once on the UHF channel many years ago, but all I really knew was the premise and the theme song (it is amazing how well known that theme song is). I was pleasantly surprised to find the show well-written, well-acted, and very funny. It seems like the perfect candidate for a remake, because who doesn't like talking animal shows? Anyway, the DVD's we rented were The Best of Mr. Ed, Disc One (a two sided disc, with lots of episodes) and Disc Two. Even if you are not horse-obsessed, you should find these shows amusing.

Maker Faire Bay Area

Yesterday we went to the Maker Faire at the San Mateo County Fairgrounds. It is the sort of thing that gets the gears in the head rolling. It is also the sort of thing that requires a couple of days of rest to recover from. A lot of walking and observing and playing mostly out doors in the sun takes its toll (not to mention not sleeping well, because you are trying to figure out what seem to be gaps in the explanation of how something is built, but not wanting to get up and work it out on paper because, well, you are trying to get to sleep). I did not take pictures, but plenty of other folks did. I will try to find some online photo galleries of the event. Start here.

Needless to say, we are eagerly awaiting next year's Maker Faire.