Apple Season: Pork Roast and Home-Made Applesauce
This has been sitting in my drafts since September. The reason, I meant to upload more pictures. I will update this post when I do that.
During a few hour break from work (yes, I know it's Sunday), Christine and I went and ran some errands to the garden store and out to Bishop's Orchards to pick some apples and enjoy the wine tasting.
I picked up a center cut piece of pork that had a nice thick layer of fat still on it. It's dinner tonight and I expect to enjoy a pulled pork sandwich or two this week.
For the roast itself, you will need:
1 piece of pork (mine is just over 2lbs)
2 Tbsp olive or vegetable oil
1/2 onion
1/2 fresh pepper
1 apple
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/8 cup chili powder
1 clove of garlic
salt, pepper
To make applesauce, you need:
8 apples (cored, peeled and sliced into eighths)
1 1/2 cup of water or apparently apple cider
1 Tbsp cinnamon powder
1 Tbsp honey
To make a sponge cake, you need:
1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of butter
3 eggs
1 cup of flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
splash of vanilla if desired
1 tsp of honey if desired
So let's cook this delicious meat dish. When slow cooking pork, I recommend beer even if you're not smoking the meat.
- Preheat the oven to 275F. I would use a slow cooker if I had one, but as I lack one I am just going to use low heat.
- Place the meat in a pan. Use a rack if you have one. Rub the meat with the sugar and spices. Ideally, do this the day before you are cooking and let it sit covered in the fridge with the rub overnight.
Ready to cook!
- Finely chop the vegetables and apple and cover the meat with it. I lined the pan with foil and greased with butter. Add a couple of tablespoons of oil to the top.
- I place into the oven and set my timer for 20 minutes. When the timer rings, cover the meat. If you have the time, lower the temperature down to 225F.
- Your cooking time will vary, but if you have the time to do it at 225F for 6+ hours... do it. I went with a 3 hour roast myself.
Let's make some applesauce or apple sauce if you don't like the look of it as one word.
- While the roast is in the oven, put the apples, water (or apple cider if you remember to buy it, unlike me), cinnamon, and honey into a pot. I'm by no means an exact chef unless baking, so I am guessing at the amount of cinnamon and honey. You can also put in other spices like nutmeg and brown sugar.
- Place over medium heat and cook for 20-30 minutes until soft. It will smell awesome.
- Pour most of the apple mix into a food processor if you have one. My blender has the attachment and I mix for 15 seconds until it's smooth enough.
- Pour from the mixer into a container to store in the fridge.
I then take some of the unblended apples and place them on top of the pork roast. Do it later in the cooking time, if you are rushing things for dinner then just toss it in whenever you have it.
Serve with baked potatoes or any side of your choice. Be sure to offer apple sauce too.
Next is the sponge cake.
- Put half a cup of butter into a microwave safe container and melt the butter.
- Pour the butter into a good sized mixing bowl (large for messy people like me) along with the sugar.
- Whisk it well... or use a mixer if you have one.
- Add the eggs. I sometimes count wrong and add an extra or less and get pleasant results. Three is generally good.
- In a separate bowl, I mix the flour, baking powder and salt.
- Pour a third of the flour into the mixing bowl. Do it slow. Mix the flour into the mixture.
- Add another third of the flour, repeat.
- And add the rest. The original recipe emphasized doing this slow, but frankly since I am mixing by hand I have no reason to rush things.
- In a sauce container, microwave two parts butter with one part honey when ready to serve.
Put into a cooking container and place into the oven. Thirty minutes is generally right, but check it with a fork or toothpick.
At other times, you might want to make sponge cake with fresh blueberries, nutella, or basically anything sweet you might stuff into a crepe. Even pineapple works if you prepare it well. I'll try to remember to write about this in the future.
Serve with applesauce and vanilla ice cream and/or whipped cream. Top with honey butter if you can handle it.
Why Google Sorta Sucks
I was reading this article in Wired (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-07/ff_facebookwall?currentPage=all) about the Facebook vs Google rivalry and how Facebook is attempting to take over the world.
I do have several thoughts on the matter, particularly the fact that Facebook is too niche. It's a social network for personal data. I use it to keep in touch, and really rely on it for the infrequent communications. The truth is, I use it a lot more frequently than that... but when I am busy and drop off for a few days or weeks few people will do much more than comment to me when I return that they haven't heard from me in a while. The connections that are fostered on facebook are those that otherwise might not be, and that's great... but it's still not that personal.
I am not going to divulge my inner most secrets on Facebook. I don't mind sharing some personal information that matters little, like my thoughts on the weather or some boasting about how much fun I had doing X or Y. Much of that is acceptable information for the general public, which means it may as well be on Twitter or my blog. Everyone is different, but I find that few people are talking about their massive hangovers openly, even on Facebook on a Friday morning while you might find people at the office complaining over their morning coffee. A little venting amongst colleagues is acceptable. There is an unspoken understanding there that keeps the matter mostly private. That doesn't prevent someone from writing about others online, but usually names aren't provided so we're all pretty content with the level of gossip.
So for many topics like finding a doctor or planning a holiday destination, Facebook and Twitter are great tools. But there are some topics that people don't openly discuss. Some topics aren't discussed at all. If I am going to learn about coping with incontinence, I am not going to do that through a social network.
But what about other queries that aren't private but are too specific to a group of specialized people? If I am working on a programming problem, I can't rely on a social network to provide the answers. I need to go to many sources (articles, forums, etc etc) and especially don't want a record of it if it is for confidential projects at work. That's when we have to turn to a service like Google.
But Google sucks.
Google has too much out of date information. I run into the problem all the time when solving technological problems. I need the answer that works TODAY, not the answer that worked FIVE YEARS AGO.
Google has a lot of very old, out of date information in its database. I get by on using good queries, but expiring data in the index is such a challenge.
Facebook is a proprietary system that controls how data comes in. This allows them to do a lot of neat things to calculate the validity and usefulness of data.
Obviously I don't have a solution for this problem. Unless people start validating the usefulness of their results I am not sure we will have a solution (unless the google toolbar tracking our every move can deduce enough). Personally, I wont run toolbars and I'm just as lazy as everyone else in that if I need an answer in a hurry I am not going to spend my own time to rate the results. Maybe Google can give me a fraction of a cent every time I do it. Those that are dishonest will have all of their usefulness data expunged from the system... How 'bout it?
Sesame Ginger Salmon with Cinnamon Corn
I cooked up a quick dinner the other night that I don't want to forget. It required:
- 1 1/4 pound of fresh atlantic salmon
- 1 bottle of sesame ginger marinade
- 1 can of sweet corn
- Rosemary
- Salt
- Pepper
- Butter
- Cinnamon (1 Tbsp ground cinnamon)
I also cooked up a quarter chicken (breast) in case that wasn't enough salmon for 3 people. The above will serve three people though.
I put the salmon in a dish, put a healthy amount of fresh ground pepper (1 tsp?) and salt (1/2 tsp?). I doused the fish with the sesame ginger marinade and gently rubbed it in a bit. I covered the dish and put it in the fridge and spent the next 20-30 minutes hanging out watching TV with Christine. I made for us a pair of papaya cocktails (Ceres Papaya juice, vodka, ice).
I then placed the salmon on a hot grill and turned the heat down to medium or just under, which is perfect for this Weber and the salmon.
Preheat your oven for 350F. Now it's time to make a bit of glaze. I took a small plate, poured a small amount of the marinade onto the plate. I then spiced it up with rosemary, salt, pepper, and a hint of cayenne. Stir it up and put it aside.
Strain the can of corn after opening it and place it into a microwave safe dish. I spice up my corn with salt, pepper, rosemary, and usually other seasonings. Tonight I decided to add some cinnamon. Not a lot, probably about 1/2 tsp worth. I then add a healthy chunk of butter (mMmm, butter). Stir it all up so everything gets some spice. Cover the dish and place it into the microwave for cooking.
After about 10 minutes on the grill I did flip the salmon gently to sear the top. I left it flipped for a couple of minutes only.
I then glazed the fish with a brush. I left it in the oven for 5 or 10 minutes until the fish was done. When it was nearly done, I microwaved the corn for 90 seconds. I then stirred the corn again, and put it back in the microwave for another 90 seconds.
Money Buys Happiness
I was recently forwarded a CNN article (http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/07/bregman.money/index.html - Commentary: Don't confuse money with happiness) from a good friend of mine, Matthew C. Devlin. There are some parallels in both Matt's life and mine to the article. For better or worse, we were too young to ride the dot-com wave and entered the arena after the collapse, with several aftershocks going on around us. There were four of us who moved to California that autumn. Several other friends later migrated to southern California as well.
We never had it easy, and the struggle kept us lean. We didn't get the millions in venture capital; we didn't even try to get that VC money. We lived on a tight budget. Matt discovered how to buy 10 frozen pizzas for a few dollars at a shop near Echo Park in Los Angeles. When money did come in, it was often wasted. Los Angeles is an exciting city, and when the cash is burning a hole in your pocket it's easy to find ways to throw it away. The Hollywood night life gave us brief stints of pleasure outside of our respective apartments. We went through a series of ups and downs like everybody else in the world.
Because of that, I feel extremely well prepared to weather the current economic situation. All of us in that group that made the move west years ago are currently employed and standing on our own. For the most part, I believe we're all happy too. The reason might have something to do with the lack of huge bad debt. Mortgages for one. I don't think any of us are amongst the group of millions of Americans that have accumulated tens of thousands in credit card debt.
We went through our credit card maxing days making a go of things out west, and learned a lot about money and ourselves from it.
I would say money does buy happiness only because money keeps the vultures at bay. I am quite happy knowing that if I lose my job, I don't have an enormity of debt that will take out my 401k (which, by the way, I only started a year ago) or prevent me from continuing to live my life.
I know I am not going to retire by 30, but I also know I am not going to go bankrupt by 30 or need goverment assistance. Money, both lack there of and having it, has bought a level of freedom and independence that makes me happy and extremely fortunate.
Contract Programming… Fun?
I recently came across a blog post (http://www.antipode.ca/2009/the-california-guys/) that was unfortunately not news to me. In summary, the author, one Allen Pike (who I don't know) writes about some bad experiences doing contract programming.
When the Internet first got going, I was more than intrigued. I remember getting a magazine in 1994 or so that stated that Gopher was dead and this thing called HTML was the wave of the future. It was cool cuz it blinked a lot.
So I got involved, and quickly found a circle of people that was involved in some of the lower level Internet services (DNS for one) and by 1996 I was doing contract CGI programming. While in middle school and high school, being taken advantage of wasn't a problem (though should be really). I bought in though and offered my services as a devloper (self taught and young). During those times, the money earned could be very lucritive and no one knew what was possible yet.
By the time I graduated high school several years later, things had changed. It was much more commercial, and Yahoo was no longer updated by humans. The search engine vultures appeared before I realised that real money was available on the World Wide Web, and I sort of got in before the bubble burst. My custom programming services expanded to a level that included a large number of outsourced developers around the world.
Anyway, enough back story.
When folks see dollar signs, they stop thinking. They demand a lot and don't expect to pay for it. The hours spent go easily for a developer enjoying the project. It's all so wrong.
A doctor will attend many years of schooling for a mature science that no longer is changing rapidly. They will generate huge incomes because they have learned this large scope of knowlege and can put it to practice, despite the fact that most must specialize because general medicine is too broad to maintain anymore.
Software is not yet mature and requires a lot of energy to be spent on learning. Software doesn't build itself, and you end up burning the midnight oil. Yet at the end, you walk away with very little money or respect.
Some might say to hang in there. The value of the programmer will be seen down the road. I personally don't think so, but that's another conversation.
The bottom line is a simple suggestion that's hard to follow through on: Write up a contract and include requirements.
That's it.
A doctor can go into an operating theatre to "look around", and you'll wind up in the hospital missing an organ or worse. A $10k procedure will turn into $100k.
Developers screw themselves by agreeing to do a lot more work than initially agreed upon. This is pretty much 100% of the time too as pretty much 100% of clients don't know what they want.
Perhaps developers should get more psych training. Classes in mind reading would help.
My advice, just know that the majority (upwards of 80% sometimes) of what a client demands is not going to meet their mental requirements.
Passion helps.... a client that can make you believe in the product is both awesome and dangerous. Getting caught up in that passion, and still failing ultimately because the idea was flawed can be a great experience... no better way to learn than from mistakes, right?
The bitter cynic does not help.... that's why I stopped taking a lot of contract work. The pool of outsourced developers I had became sour and lazy.
My final thought: There aren't many great projects out there. I hope you get a great one, but if you don't be level headed about your approach and the expectations you set. Passing on jobs can work out well... the most lucritive jobs I had were fixing the messes created by other developers.