• Stew is the bedrock of my winter meal plan. Part of my family dislikes soup, but is okay with something thicker. Stew is the way to go! Stew is basically a protein (chicken, beef, lamb, etc), a fat (bacon grease, olive oil, veg oil, etc), vegetables (onions, carrots, celery, etc), and a starch (rice, beans, potatoes, etc). In whatever combination you like, mix together, and you have stew. Of course there’s a bit more to it, but that’s the basic “stew recipe.”

    Because stew was usually made with leftovers or scraps, the little bits that weren’t enough for another full meal, we don’t really have written stew recipes.  A good stew is different every time you  make it, because the ingredients will never be exactly the same. That is the right way to do it! So let’s make a nice, hearty chicken stew.

    Ingredients

    • a cut up chicken, or several thighs, bone in and skin on
    • 1 or 2 onions or leeks, rough chopped
    • 3 large carrots, coined
    • 2 ribs of celery, diced
    • 4 cloves garlic, rough chopped
    • white wine (optional)
    • 1 purple top turnip, diced
    • 2 parsnips, coined
    • 2 to 3 cups shredded cabbage
    • 1 cup barley, well rinsed
    • spices (salt, pepper, oregano, parsley, dill, sage, rosemary, etc.)
    • oil for searing
    • water to fill the pot

    In a large soup or stock pot, add a drizzle of oil (olive, safflower, or vegetable) and bring up to a medium heat. Add the chicken and brown it all over, then remove it from the pot (set it aside on a plate). Add the carrots, onions, and celery, and cook until the onions soften and begin to brown very slightly. While they’re cooking, you may need to add more oil. This mixture of carrots, onions, and celery is called a mire poix, and it’s the basis of most good quality soups and stews. You want to scrape any of the browned chicken off the bottom of the pan (that’s the fond and it’s part of what makes for a rich flavor later). Add in the garlic and saute until they are fragrant, usually less than a minute.

    Drizzle in some of the wine (or chicken broth if you don’t do wine), and deglaze the pan entirely. Once that’s done, add the rest of the vegetables and allow them to cook for 2 to 3 minutes. Add all the remaining ingredients, and enough water to cover everything, plus 3 cups (this is to allow for the barley to absorb some of the water – you may want to try a bit more or less, to make it the thickness you prefer). Add in some salt, pepper, and other herbs to taste, and bring to a boil, then allow to simmer for a minimum of an hour.

    Check for flavor, then add more spices as necessary. The above are only suggestions, and you’re welcome to try whichever spices you like! Simmer for another hour or more, until the chicken is falling off the bone and shreds easily. You may wish to pick out the skin and bones at this point, or serve it as is. Serve this up with fresh baked bread for a hearty and healthy meal.

    Notes:

    You can make this recipe with diced chicken breast if you prefer. I like the added flavor and the moistness of the meat when I use bone-in, but not everyone likes bones. I almost always make this recipe with either a full cut up chicken, or with chicken legs with thighs attached. It comes out meaty and delicious!

    Recipe by M. Allyson Szabo, author of The Re-Enactor’s Cookbook (available on Amazon).

            

  • Allyson had picked up a wooden box a few years ago to take to events. It was a plain wooden box with just a bit of decoration and a porcelain knob attached to the sliding top.

    The knob and screw holding it are not period. The rest was pretty period. Or more precisely, it was period-20.

    It looked period at 20 feet.

    Over the years, it has taken a beating. This knocked the back off, pulling out the brads.

    She asked me if it could be repaired. TiteBond III to the rescue. I pried the back out enough to get glue where it was needed. Clamped the entire thing closed and called it a day.

    Until I decided that it could be better.

    Today, we use petrochemicals to create high-quality, strong, enduring coatings for our cabinetry and furniture.

    Modern finishes are long chain polymers that have all the right characteristics for a long-lasting, shiny surface.

    I’ve used polyurethane finishes. They can be polished to a near mirror like finish.

    But that is the modern world? What were they doing 100 years ago? 200? 300? They were using some of the same finishing methods we use today.

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  • I’m trying to export a video from OpenShot-community, and it is refusing to cooperate. Switching to a filler article.

    Poor Ricky, he thinks that government inspectors keep us safe from bad business practices. Maybe he should ask about all the mandated state inspections of Gosnell’s medical facilities?

    MSNBC is likely lying by omission and by intentionally ignoring the rest of the story.

    It isn’t that this one person posted a video, that may or may not be a correct interpretation, it is that there are now many such reports.

    According to my leftist sources, this is Biden trolling Trump. I think they are half right. This is Biden trolling Kamala.

            

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  • Are you ready for what happens after the apocalypse? I’m not talking about the zombie apocalypse here, nor am I referring to the next pandemic. The apocalypse I mean is the one that’s currently predicted: Harris winning the election. I know some of you are laughing, but please don’t. I am quite serious about this. What are your plans for if she wins?

    There are so many moving parts to planning for a Harris win. We have to consider the possibility (likelihood?) of social unrest. There may be a repeat of January 6th, this time with weapons, even if Harris is a clear winner (which I think is unlikely). More importantly, we need to plan for the economic downfall of the country.

    It’s time to stock up on some basic things. From now until the election, prices have eased slightly. Harris is trying to buy votes. I know money is tight, but it’s really time to go and buy up all the canned goods you use in a year. Pick up extras of all your dry goods. If you can, order a half cow and stash it in your freezer. I have a funny feeling that if she wins, the country is going to get very expensive, very fast.

    I always say, prep what you eat, and eat what you prep. This isn’t for a long-term emergency, though. This is food that you expect to eat over the next year. So look at what you use on a regular basis. For me, in the canned goods department I use a ton of canned tomatoes (both regular and the type with the chilies in it). I use canned beans (black, red, chili, garbanzo, etc.) as well as dry ones. I use rice, specifically Jasmine or Basmati. My family likes sausage, and I can usually find them on sale, so I will buy extras and toss them into the freezer. Last week, I found turkey breasts on sale for 99 cents a pound, and I bought the limit.

    (more…)

            

  • Wednesday was a good day, sort of. I was able to shut down my K8S cluster.

    The amount of grief this new fangled thing has given me cannot be overstated.

    Bluntly, most of the issues could have been resolved by throwing more money at the problem. K8S does work for large infrastructure solutions. The sort of infrastructure where you have 10+ nodes and each node has 32+ GB of memory.

    What does this mean for Troglodite? We are moving sideways to a different type of infrastructure. This is built on more VMs but smaller.

    “The” debate happened. It was the first presidential debate I’ve watched in years. I had to tune it out about 15 minutes in, when the referees tackled Trump for the second time. I.e., did a fact check and reported Trump lied when he had not.

    It was the three on one that I had hoped not to see.

    The number of manipulative things that were done to make Trump look bad.

    His microphone was louder. This makes him sound more aggressive.

    They were keeping his microphone muted after Kamala stopped talking, he started talking into a dead mic. A second or so later, his mic goes live, but it makes it sound like he is talking over Kamala when he is not.

    They asked him questions that were phrased in the negative, they asked her questions phrased in the positive.

    The fallout on the debate was surprising. Immediately after the debate, there were all the cheerleaders claiming that Kamala won and talking about how bad Trump was. Many claiming that the fact checking proved that Trump does nothing but lie.

    This filled my X feed. More leftist noise than I normally see in a month, all in that first 5 hours.

    But, the discussion has morphed into “How bad was ABC? Can we give them a -5 on a scale of 1 to 10?”.

    Not just on the right, but CNN is holding up the ABC debate as proof they aren’t leftist. When you lose CNN, you are really messing things up.

    Social media, thank you to all of those that are following .

    It is sad, I check the number of followers I have a few times a day, looking for those triple digit follows.

    More federal judges are twisting the words of the Supreme Court to get the outcomes they want. Most of those are ending up in court, and losing. Even the Ninth Circus is putting up (temporary) wins for The People.

    Have a fantastic weekend!

            

  • I’ve been advocating for the Right of The People to keep and bear arms for decades now. After the Sandy Hook shooting, I was in a discussion with somebody on Google+. They were attempting to come up with a “common-sense gun safety laws”.

    After a couple of days going back and forth, they asked “Well, what law would you propose?”

    “A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

    He didn’t reply.

    Regardless of what anybody tells you, the supreme law of the United States is the Constitution, as amended. It is not a document locked in amber, nor is it bright, transient dots on a display, it is the bedrock of our country.

    It is difficult to modify, there have been only 17 amendments since 1791 when the first 10 were ratified. That is a very stable foundation to work from.

    The problem that leftest have with The Constitution is that it is too stable. It does not progress as they would like to see.

    If it doesn’t progress, then it must be thrown out. According to them.

    So we have endless arguments about “well regulated”, and “being necessary” means it is a collective right.

    They modify the meaning of the words so that they can twist the foundation of the Constitution. I fear for our grand children. They will have to depend on the translations of others to know what our Constitution actually says.

    Consider this for a moment, how many times have you heard or heard of somebody saying that the King James Bible holds the words of Christ?

    I promise you, it does not. Jesus Christ did not speak English. I can’t tell you what he spoke, it is not relevant.

    My point is that most people cannot read the original Bible because we don’t read that language. I can read some Latin. I know others that can read ancient Greek. Those scholars are few and far between.

    Words have meaning. Leftists don’t care what the meaning of a word is. They choose the meaning of the word as they want it now. Which can change in 10 minutes, or less.

    So the arguments always start from the same place: How can we get away with breaking the law?

    In Heller, the Supreme Court said that the Second Amendment protects the core right of self-defense.

    So for 22 years we had people breaking the law because their needs were more important than the law. Justified by saying they weren’t hurting “the core right of self-defense too much”.

    They were breaking the law, and they knew it. They knew it then, they know it now.

    Shall not be infringed? Well, it isn’t too much. YES, it is too much. You are breaking the law every time you infringe on my Right to keep and bear arms.

    A machine gun isn’t an “arm” under the plain text of the Second Amendment? Why? Because it isn’t used for self-defense.

    Is it an arm? It is a firearm. This makes it an arm. FULL STOP.

    We’re not going to take away your Second Amendment rights — we’re going to prevent your kids from getting shot at school. — Tim Walz
    For nearly 50 years, @Bradybuzz has been fighting for common-sense gun laws, but we must also tackle the Big Lie that makes people believe owning a gun makes them safer — and if that were true, America would be the safest country in the world. (2/2) — Kriss Brown, Brady
    Together, we passed the first bipartisan law addressing gun violence prevention in nearly 30 years, but we have more work to do.

    We must pass an assault weapons ban, universal background checks, and red flag laws. — Kamala Harris

            

  • I admit it, I’m struggling. I don’t understand a lot of this. I know what I thought and said four years ago. I know what I felt during Trump’s first four years. I know that I had a small inkling into the lies of the Left, but not enough to make me change. Now? Now I see so much, and I wonder how I could have been so stupid.

    I’m constantly being blasted with headlines like What If Trump Wins? (“The safeguards that kept Trump in check during his first term have collapsed — starting with the MAGA-fication of the Republican Party. “We know from the first administration that Trump was an amateur and lots of people stopped his most radical actions,” says Jason Stanley, a Yale professor and author of How Fascism Works. He underscores that Trump’s darkest ambitions were present from the beginning — from the Muslim ban to the coup attempt of Jan. 6. “The only thing that stopped him from being a full-on dictator was other people,” Stanley says. “We know that that’s not going to happen anymore.”), Pelosi suggests Trump might skip presidential debate against Harris: ‘I know cowardice when I see it’ (“Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested former President Trump could skip the upcoming presidential debate because of ‘cowardice’…”), and Trump warms up for debate by threatening to jail election officials (“Trump warned he will jail election officials he considers cheats; is complaining Pennsylvania’s voting is a fraud; vowed to pardon January 6 rioters; railed against women who accused him of sexual misconduct; and spent hours in recent days on sometimes incoherent rants that raised questions about his state of mind.”).

    The so-called news doesn’t seem to match the reality. When I go and research things, it turns out that words are taken out of context, lies are being told, and things are being blown ridiculously out of proportion. I’m especially confused by the comments about “incoherent rants” that I keep hearing about. I tried to listen to Trump back when he first ran, and I found it difficult. His speaking voice was uncomfortable in pitch, and he tended to ramble. He’s gotten MUCH better. I admit I wondered if it was my own bias that made it seem less coherent before, but I went back and listened and a lot of what he said on campaign tended to be difficult to follow. He has either taken lessons in public speaking, or has been practicing. Regardless, his ability to stay on topic is much better. That aside, when you hold up Biden or Harris beside him, the term “incoherent” should not even be considered. Good grief.

    (more…)

            

  • This is an attempt to cleanse my palate after watching part of the debate.

    The magic of the can…

    Or better stated, the how to preserve food.

    We are spoiled today, we go to the local supermarket and purchase almost any type of food we want, regardless of the growing season. It will be fresh and safe to consume.

    My parents would not have dreamed of such luxuries when they were children.

    We have a tradition of putting an orange into our Christmas stockings. Today, no big deal. When the tradition started, in my parents’ or grandparent’s time, it was a big deal. Those oranges were brought from far away at great expense. It was fresh and taste.

    Yesterday, my wife went grocery shopping. We don’t eat as well as we did 4 years ago, inflation has eaten much of our purchasing power. Still, she was able to pick up fresh avocados and a bag of oranges.

    If we don’t want fresh food, we can buy our food frozen. Still tasty. The quality is good, actually. Much better than I remember as a child.

    But that food is not “shelf stable” and it will not last if the power goes out.

    Smoked and dried foods will last a long time, but they too have issues, one of the large ones is that they are unprotected from the elements. It is no fun to find that your dried goods have been eaten by some critter.

    Canned goods are, generally, shelf stable. They do lose nutritional value over time, but that time is measured in decades.

    (more…)

            

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