Category Archives: Uncategorized

Hot Stuff

Last night, the strangest thing happened: I won a chili cook-off.

It was part of a wedding-shower party for some friends. And there were 15-ish different chilis, in three categories: traditional, non-traditional & vegetarian. Good times.

Since I don't really have a specific recipe to share (I don't keep track of what I do - I just add things until it's right) - I will tell you what I think made my chili stand out: I don't use ground meat; I use steak. No, not ribeye or tenderloin, just chuck steak, scraps, trimmings, what the store sells as 'stew meat'. Sure, it takes a good three hours of simmering to get the meat tender enough, and the tomatoes and onions will have completely dissolved, but it's worth it. All the judges who talked to me afterwards mentioned the 'steak'.

Nobody mentioned my carefully cultured intricate and enticing blend of exotic flavors: cinnamon, chocolate, four kinds of fresh peppers, four kinds of dried and smoked chiles, balsamic vinegar. People just really dug the little chunks of stew beef. Good! I like 'em too.

So that's my chili contest advice: use chunks of beef, not ground beef.

My favorite of the night, and the winner of the non-traditional chili category, was the Nepalese Green Chicken Chili. It had a flavor somewhere between Indian and Chinese: complex, with a nice bit of ginger. Pretty spicy. Very unusual. Totally delicious.

Carbon Records : CR200 Comp

My good friend Joe runs a small but very cool record label, Carbon Records, and for the 200th release, he wants to do a very special package to commemorate the artists . But, to cover the up-front cost of that, he's doing a Kickstarter thing.

I'm asking for your support to help make this release as great as it can possibly be. Pressing vinyl is expensive, and doing that, on top of getting 4 cassettes duplicated, and all of the packaging involved, is an ambitious venture. Your support will also enable me to give more copies of the release to each of the contributing artists as compensation. Normally with a compilation, since there are so many people involved, a label can only give a small number of copies to each artist, in order to keep the unit-cost / break-even point reasonable.

Give it a look.

Ain't No Smurf

Found out today that I've hit my monthly limit for pseudoephedrine ! My wife and I have been going through the stuff like crazy this winter, but the state of NC won't let me buy any more.

Sniff. Literally.

Not gonna be happy if I end up with a sinus infection...

"Mostly True"

Self-appointed fact-checker, Politifact tells us what is true:

For 2011, Gallup found that the largest group of Americans identify as conservative, at 40 percent. Another 35 percent identify as moderate, while 21 percent identify as liberal.
...
Rubio said that the majority of Americans are conservative. A respected ongoing poll from Gallup shows that conservatives are the largest ideological group, but they don’t cross the 50 percent threshold. So we rate his statement Mostly True.

So, it's "mostly true" that 40% is a majority.

Is it mostly true that Walter Mondale won the 1984 election ? I guess it must be!

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