Category: Food

Father’s Day Has Never Been a Big Thing for My Dad and Me

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My mom was killed by a drunk driver when I was 14, so we’ve always made a bigger deal over “Mutha’s Day,” since he raised me from that point on.

I always call him on Mother’s, and it’s usually an overseas call, as he typically hits Europe that time of year.

I’ve been doing that for years.

We actually got together for a cookout today, though his and my step-mom’s being here was about their annual trip out east for a conference in DC and not Father’s day.

Neither of us remembered until my daughter, Natalie, made mention of it.

I did up lamb chops for everyone but Charlie, my son, who is not a big fan of meat, so I did a Cornish game hen for him.

Of course, I used my Indian spice rub and plum barbecue sauce.

We hung out, shot the breeze, he gave lots of advice (he is my dad, after all), and a good time was had by all.

My wife and kids are going out for ice cream in a bit.

Passover Hell

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So it’s Chol Moed Pesach*, and we had an early morning meeting. About 20 people in the room, and what seems to be a box of donuts for each person, along with soda†, and I can’t have any of it.

Chametz, technically leavened bread, but really anything not certified as kosher for Passover, is forbidden, so I have water, and peel myself an orange.

At another meeting, someone brings in a couple of boxes of left over Easter candy, and I cannot have any of that.

*sigh*

Sometimes, I am seriously Jonesing for leavened bread products right now.

*Not a Yom Tov, in the case of Passover, days 2-5 of the 8 days, so you can work.
†Also not allowed, corn syrup, don’t you know.

Anatomy of a Right Wing Hysteria Campaign: HR 875

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HR 875 is a fairly innocuous bill, trying to make sure that food, both domestic and imported, is safer, but a campaign by the National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association (NIFCA), which opposes any regulation of food, and a couple of right wing conspiracy theorists, and suddenly the bill is an attempt by Monsanto to shut down every farmers market in the nation.

Well, it’s not. Go read the article for the full scoop.

What I Had for Dinner

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Well, Sharon* got some Tuna steaks on sale at at the grocery store, and we cooked them. It was dead nuts simple, I dusted it with my curry spice rub, let it sit for about 10 minutes for the spices to mingle, and then seared each side for about 5 minutes in a hot pan with a bit of olive oil, and served.

There was just a bit of pink in the middle, and it turned out very nicely.

*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

Politically Kosher: Don’t Mix Meat and Milk

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Sometimes, the pork in the stimulus package is beef.

In this case it was an attempt by the Dairy industry to have the government purchase about 300,000 of milk cows and sell them to slaughter houses in order to arrest the recent declines in the cost of milk.

The dairy farmers wanted this, but the beef farmers did not, and when all was said and done, it ended up on the cutting room floor, but not before I made hay of the situation.

Don’t have a cow, man!

‘Roo, It’s What for Dinner

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But not in my house, it’s not kosher, but it looks like there are people in Australia who think that a greater reliance on Kangaroo meat will reduce global warming.

Kangaroo meat, which has a taste similar to farmed venison, was banned from sale for human consumption until 1995 on Australia’s eastern seaboard, including in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, according to Kelly of the kangaroo association.

So it doesn’t taste like chicken.

Funny Strange, Not Funny Ha Ha

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Mithras notes:

Know What’s Funny?
Upper middle class white liberal bloggers who think that their political opinions matter to people trying to win an election. That is really funny.

Actually, I’ve now thought of something even funnier (again, funny strange, not funny ha ha): Why upper class white conservative pundits keep trying to give electoral advice to Democrats.

As to my giving advice to anyone, this upper middle class Jewish blogger’s opinions don’t even matter to my Sharon*….And they matter to my 11 year old daughter even less, but she takes after her mother at her age.

My almost 9 year old son though, he cares what I think….but we are both science geeks, and we talk science, and I am an engineer…..But he keeps asking me about things like quantum entanglement (really), and I have to tell him, “call uncle Stephen, he’s the physicist.”

Actually, they all respect my cooking skills though, which is some consolation.

*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

Neat Tech: Telescoping Ammunition Rounds….And Beer

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Telescoping rounds have always theoretically been a very useful concept: Put the round and ammunition completely within the case, with the space not taken up by the round being filled with propellant:

The idea is that when the round is fired, the ignition charge kicks the round into the barrel.

The round is more compact shorter, and the full cylindrical shape is packs more efficiently.

The devil has always been in the detail, and people have been working on this for about 30 years, and the folks at BAE Systems have apparently worked out the kinks on a 40mm autocannon:

It feeds through the trunnion, the pivot point for elevation, and then rotates 90 degrees to be inline with the barrel. This means that the feed point never moves relative to the turret, you don’t have to deal with flexible feeds.

In any case, the telescoping round allows more propellant and more explosive charge in the round, so the performance for BAE’s MTIP 2 (Manned Turret Integration Program 2) has a punch equivalent to a 50mm round, but the cannon is about the size of a 30mm cannon.

Pretty neat, and even neater is where they got their feed concepts:

The cylindrical rounds also pack more efficiently and are easier to handle, which is where the brewery comes in: BAE Systems designers visited a local brewery to gather ideas for automated storage systems and conveyors that would be used in the turret’s autoloader.

Beer, it does a cannon good.