Monthly Archives: December 2006

Chocolate Brown

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The color of roux for gumbo. This year’s is the best batch ever. I’ve said that before. This year I really mean it. I don’t know what is the best practice method for stopping roux from cooking when it’s ready. A cast iron pot will continue to cook even after being removed from the stove.

My method is:

  • remove the kettle from the heat
  • quickly add the trinity1
  • stir like mad

    • That works well for us. And this year, it turned out to be a 1.5 beer roux. Now, what am I gonna do with half a beer. Oh, wait, I know. To the teevee, then.

    -k-

    1 – the trinity = onions, bell pepper, celery.

    UPDATE: The seasonings are in the pot, with the previously-browned chicken. I laid off the hot sauce a bit this year, the andouille being more spicy than usual. It’s hard to adjust seasonings early in gumbo cooking. Last year, I leaned a little heavy on the hot sauce early on. It was a little hot. SWMBO said that at the time. I’m admitting it now.

    Gumbo Day

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    SWMBO and I prepare a non-traditional, though extremely tasty Christmas meal, consisting of shrimp remoulade, chicken and andouille sausage gumbo, and a dessert. When you’re empty nesters, you can do things like this. We’ve had this meal on Christmas day for 6 or 7 years, so it’s our tradition now.

    We’re kicking the meal ahead a day this year, Christmas falling on a Monday, and having other things to attend to tomorrow. So, the shrimp are boiled, seasoned and peeled, the cast iron pot is warming up, and in a few short minutes, I’ll be doing one of Emeril’s legendary two beer roux.1 Sometimes they turn out to be three beer roux. They have always been good roux, and I’m hoping to continue the streak.

    -k-

    According to Merriam-Webster the plural of “roux” is also “roux”.

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    One Away from Being The Dean

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    The Texas Tech Red Raiders men’s basketball team defeated Bucknell 72-60 this afternoon. The victory gave the Raider’s coach Bob Knight his 879th coaching victory in Division I basketball, and ties him with the venerable Dean Smith for the all-time coaching win record.

    And the best is yet to come:

    Knight’s first chance to own the top spot all by his sweater-wearing self comes Thursday night at home against UNLV.

    I’ll be watching, and rooting. I’m inspired by people who love what they do; I’m even more inspired when they rise to new heights.

    -k-

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    The Twelve Days of Christmas

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    We’ve all heard the song countless times. Ever wonder about significance of the lords a’ leaping, et.al.? From my favorite e-mail jokester from Brown City MI, an explanation. And we all know that everything spread by internet email is a chiseled in stone fact. Right or wrong, I thought this was appealing, so without further ado:

    From 1558 until 1829, Roman Catholics in England were not permitted to practice their faith openly. Someone during that era wrote this carol as a catechism song for young Catholics.

    It has two levels of meaning:
    the surface meaning, plus a hidden meaning known only to members of their church.
    Each element in the carol has a code word for a religious reality which the children could remember.

    “The partridge in a pear tree”…. was Jesus Christ.

    “Two turtle doves”…. were the Old & New Testaments.

    “Three French hens”….stood for faith, hope and love.

    “The four calling birds”….were the 4 gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

    “The five golden rings”….recalled the Torah or Law, the first five books of the Old Testament.

    “The six geese-a-laying”….stood for the six days of creation.

    “Seven swans a swimming”…. represented the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit-Prophesy, serving, teaching, exhortation, contribution, leadership and mercy.

    “The eight maids a milking”….were the eight beatitudes.

    “Nine ladies dancing”….were the nine fruits of the Holy
    Spirit…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.

    “The ten lords a leaping”….were the Ten Commandments.

    “The eleven pipers piping”….stood for the 11 faithful disciples.

    “The twelve drummers drumming”….symbolized the twelve points of belief in the Apostles Creed.

    -k-

    The Faulkneresque Bowl

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    In trying to find my Kansas Jayhawks basketball game tonight, I stumbled across a football bowl game. I know nothing about the teams, Northern Illinois and Texas Christian, and am not disparaging either of them. Going to post-season bowls is a Good ThingTM.

    They were playing in, take a deep breath, the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl.

    In San Diego, natch. NASCAR in all its glory hasn’t rendered a name such as this. Follow that name up with “presented by Ford Credit”, and you’d have the real deal.

    -k-

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    Full Court Press Squeezes Me Yet Again

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    I had a schedule which erroneously listed the Kansas vs. Winston-Salem State mens basketball game as being scheduled for last night. OK, the schedule was free, downloaded from an iCal sharing place, and imported into iCal, synced to the Palm, and noted during yesterday’s pre-work GTD daily review. I’m not upset, this was doubtless an honest mistake on the calendar creator’s part.

    I couldn’t find the game last night, checked the KU Athletics website, and found the game is on tonight. No problem. A keyword search for “Kansas” on the TiVo reveals nothing. I’m still OK; pre-season games are sometimes not broadcast; I don’t like that, but such is life.

    So tonight, after Emeril Live, I’m trolling through the ESPN Pay Channels, only to find the game early in the start of the second half, the fact that the guide for that channel failed to show the game at all to the contrary notwithstanding.

    Now, I don’t mind the hundred bucks we pay for this, but I’d think for that, I wouldn’t have to scour every channel where it might be just to find what I paid for. And, I also don’t know whom to blame, ESPN for not providing schedule data, or DirecTV/TiVo for failing to get the schedule updated. I do know that it’s not worth my time to find out. I also know I’ll remember this incident when the ESPN’s Full Court Press comes up for renewal next year. It could then be time to vote … with the remote. And listen to the games on the internets.

    -k-

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    Ex-Speaker, Current Rambler

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    I hate to post some more from Newt Gingrich, but here is more detail on his First Amendment views:

    Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich yesterday in Manchester said the country will be forced to reexamine freedom of speech to meet the threat of terrorism.

    Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, said a “different set of rules” may be needed to reduce terrorists’ ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message.

    “We need to get ahead of the curve before we actually lose a city, which I think could happen in the next decade,” said Gingrich, a Republican who helped engineer the GOP’s takeover of Congress in 1994.

    Talk about pandering and fear-mongering. Freedoms apply to all; even to those groups and views we’d most like to suppress. That’s why they’re called freedoms. We can reason, we can argue, but until someone acts on their views, and breaks the law, they are free to express them.

    Read the rest of the article; Newt is losing it big-time.

    -k-

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    Stop speaking, Mr. Ex-Speaker

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    I guess all the post-election goings-on are getting everyone whipped into a lather. This includes ex-Speaker Newt Gingrich, who was in New Hampshire speaking over the weekend.

    His comments included such pearls as this, in reference to the Muslim clerics put off a plane in Minneapolis a week or two ago:

    “Those six people should have been arrested and prosecuted for pretending to be terrorists,” Gingrich said.

    Pretending to be terrorists? This makes zero sense to me. And while the particulars of that case aren’t that fresh in my mind, it struck me that people were frightened by these guys’ behavior. If the Muslims did anything wrong, it was “disobeying a flight attendant”, not that they had a group prayer on the plane. Oh, and people were scared, meaning that all these imam’s actions therefore were “suspicious.” Talk about the terrorists’ winning.

    But what really got me was the last paragraph of the article; I don’t know how I missed hearing about this:

    Gingrich said last month the United States might have to accept new curbs of First Amendment rights to fight terrorism.

    Looks like Newty has gone from the “Contract with America” to the “Contract on America.”

    -k-

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