Winter IS for cooking

The Universal Antagonist

There is an underrated movie from 1967 called “The Presidents Analyst”. It tells the story of a presidents analyst who cannot talk with anyone about what he knows. This creates more anxiety than he can deal with. It leads to catastrophic paranoia. In the meantime, various government agencies are trying to kill him. The phone company (a unit with the same power as Facebook, google, and other large personal data collecting monsters) wants what he knows to further their cause of power. He ends up being protected by a suburban “Liberal” family that has more guns the the “right wing wackos” they are protecting themselves from. With many crazy mind bending plot twists that were common in the movies of the late 60’s, the kind that Austin Powers liked to spoof, in the end, the main character realizes the “it’s the phone company” behind all of the evil in their lives, behind all the evil in the world. Hollywood was serious about their message in an insane package. This movie wa...

The Coffee Chronicles

I like to hike. I also love my coffee. While I can get away with choking down instant coffee on the trail, there is nothing like freshly brewed coffee to make that experience so much more robust. In 2018 when the Crawford family was hiking the Appalachian Trail, Ben Crawford the dad, mentioned people that he saw using an Aeropress coffee maker and made the statement I feel like I’m missing out on something. Ben's words intrigued me and I had no choice but to buy one on Amazon. If you don’t know what an AeroPress is, the best way to describe it is like a wide syringe that holds coffee grounds and water and after a rest time allows you to push the water out into your cup using the syringe plunger. I then took the aero press with me on a family canoe trip and impressed myself and others with this amazing coffee. Three years have passed. Many pieces of hiking gear that I bought three years ago have not been used in quite some time. When it comes to cooking, this can be ver...

The pressure is on

What happens after one writes an entry in a blog for 7 days in a row? The inclination is to pull over to the side of the road. To reflect. To analyze what just happened. But then I remember my thought process from 7 days ago. I was asking, why can’t I be more consistent in writing? It is then I know pulling over is not the answer. This thing has a second gear and it is time to use it. There is a bigger picture here too. Too many times when it comes to cooking I have done this symbolic pulling over to the side of the road. I will devalue my abilities before I move into the next gear because I get stuck in my own head and allow all of the obsolete traditional voices to beat me down into uncertainty. I have learn though some very interesting facts recently. Before COVID began, 16% of all Chinese restaurants closed permanently. This was due mostly to the generation of people running these retiring with no one able to carry on the legacy. COVID-19 did far more damage. By mi...

Fight 4 Taste

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