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Turkey accompaniment
25 Nov 2005 21:29 EDT
I tried this, billed as the “World’s Best Cornbread Dressing” for Thanksgiving this year. Five stars on the taste: bourbon and bacon, yummy! But it was a bit too crumbly; two stars on the texture. I prefer my stuffing/dressing more breadlike.
Roast Turkey and vegetable chili
24 Nov 2005 20:39 EDT
Thanksgiving-style chili made from roasted turkey and vegetables. The perfect snack food while watching the Lions lose!
Ingredients
- Roast turkey (not ground)
- Olive oil
- Roasted corn on the cob
- Roasted bell peppers
- Roasted onion
- Fresh celery
- Fresh red jalapeños
- Lots of garlic
- Ground cumin
- Mexene chili powder (half a jar!)
- Dried oregano
- Ground cayenne pepper
- Black pepper
- Kosher salt
- Fresh carrot
- Bay leaf
- 2 lg cans stewed tomatoes
- 2 sm cans Ro-tel tomatoes & chilis
- 1 can red or kidney beans
Roast the turkey in the oven like you would for Thanksgiving. This chili uses ½ of a turkey breast. Let cool, then chop roughly. Reserve the bones and make turkey broth for later by boiling the bones with some carrot, celery, and bay leaf.
Coat the vegetables for roasting (corn, peppers, and onion) in olive oil, salt, and pepper, and roast for 20 minutes at 400°. Chop the veggies and cut the kernels from the cobs.
In large stock pot, heat olive oil. Sautée garlic, celery, jalapeños along with the roasted peppers and onions. Add the chopped turkey. Now add a LOT of chili powder as well as cumin, cayenne, oregano. Sautée until the chili powder begins to cook. All at once add the stewed tomatoes, Ro-tel tomatoes, and turkey broth. Bring to a boil; reduce to a simmer. Add corn kernels. Salt and pepper to taste. After a few hours of cooking, add the beans. Simmer for at least 12 hours. Serve with croutons and American beer.
i won! well, honorable mention anyway.
17 Nov 2005 19:33 EDT
I am so ashamed. Aquaman liked it, though.
my entry
06 Oct 2005 03:35 EDT
o, biker!
o, soldier!
o, native american!
o, cop!
o, cowboy!
o, construction worker!
o! people of our village,
ye iconic archetypes,
sing to me amid gyrations!
send your harmonies spurging over me
as you weave a tapestry of tales
of life within the young men’s christian association
penetrate me with your
timeless percussive beats
set to stories of naval service
Messrs. Felipe, Alex, David, Ray, and Eric
How can you live without Glenn? Without Glenn?
Glenn who now rides in his leathers forever in a world without prejudice or hate
and to hide my sorrow
i’ve got to be un macho hombre
“It’s fun to stay at the YMCA”
indeed.
indeed.
Lego CAD
05 Oct 2005 15:35 EDT
What is LDraw?
LDraw™ is an open standard for LEGO CAD programs that allow
the user to create virtual LEGO models and scenes. You can use it to document
models you have physically built, create building instructions just like LEGO,
render 3D photo realistic images of your virtual models and even make
animations. The possibilities are endless. Unlike real LEGO bricks where you are
limited by the number of parts and colors, in LDraw nothing is impossible.
Registration page: http://www.ldraw.org/user.php?op=register&module=NS-NewUser
Medieval weaponry for kids?
04 Aug 2005 17:54 EDT
So here’s the deal. Got a 9 year old 4th grader who is very into medieval contraptions and weaponry. Loves LOTR, etc. Even Monty Python’s Holy Grail. He wants to build a trebuchet or onager or some such, a la:
The question is about safety. Just how big and strong can these things get, and is building a working model something that is safe enough for a 9-year-old? Yeah, I know all kids are different. But it’s kinda bugging me…
Astronomical Updates
04 Aug 2005 17:44 EDT
Of course … just hours after my last astronomy posting, another even more exciting discovery was made. Another transneptunian body has been found, even bigger than Pluto:
Astronomers have found a tenth planet, larger than Pluto and nearly three times farther from the Sun as Pluto is today.
Temporarily designated 2003 UB313, the new planet is the most distant object yet seen in the solar system, 97 times farther from the Sun than the Earth is. It also is the largest body yet found orbiting in the Kuiper belt, the group of icy bodies including Pluto which orbit beyond Neptune.
Like Pluto, 2003 UB313 is covered by methane ice, and at its present distance is chilled to just 30°C above absolute zero…
According to some theories, there may be hundreds of large transneptunian objects out there of significant size. Some theories predict at least one body as big as Mars out there…
Should these be considered “planets”? Of course, “planet” is our term, not nature’s. Nature doesn’t care what they’re called, She just makes ‘em. But it is becoming apparent that our ancient nomenclature is, well, ancient, and no longer appropriate given the new discoveries and kinds of discoveries we are making. Like Linnaean nomenclature in biology, the old “planet” terminology will eventually be relegated to layman’s usage or restricted pedagogical usage.
Update: Oh, also. Titan is dry. Looks like the hoped-for oceans of hydrocarbons may once have been, but are no more.
The Cassini spacecraft has also observed intriguing liquid-related features. It has detected dark, river-like channels since it neared the moon in 2004. And the Huygens probe, which was dropped down to the moon’s surface, sent back detailed photos of channels near its landing site. But Cassini’s visible and infrared cameras have failed to find the reflections expected from surface liquid. These instruments measure wavelengths of light ranging from about 0.25 to 5 microns (or millionths of a metre) long.
Now,astronomers observing 2.1-micron-long infrared light at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii have reported similar findings.
It was wet, it was dry, it was wet, it was dry. Certainly a lot of us humans, looking up from our own largely liquid world, had our imaginations captured by the thought of Titanian oceans, even oily ones. But looks like it may (the jury is of course still out) have been wishful thinking. That’s ok though. Reality and truth is better in these cases since it increases our understanding and still leaves room where the imagination can dwell.
Recent Astronomical News
29 Jul 2005 20:17 EDT
[I]mages…taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show a patch of water ice sitting on the floor of an unnamed crater near the Martian north pole.
…The unnamed impact crater is located on Vastitas Borealis, a broad plain that covers much of Mars’s far northern latitudes, at approximately 70.5° North and 103° East. The crater is 35 kilometres wide and has a maximum depth of approximately 2 kilometres beneath the crater rim. The circular patch of bright material located at the centre of the crater is residual water ice. This white patch is present all year round, as the temperature and pressure are not high enough to allow sublimation of water ice.
My comments are: more water on Mars? Very auspicious; both for the search for life (paleontological or present) on the Red Planet, as well as the prospects of future human exploration there. Additionally, I’m simply awestruck by the resolution and clarity of the pictures we are getting from Mars Express’s cameras. Full color images at 15 m per pixel! That’s almost google maps resolution we’re talking here, folks. Can Google Mars be far behind?
Large transneptunian object…as big as Pluto?
Lots of recent buzz about another potential large Kuiper Belt object!
Details of the object are still sketchy. It never comes closer to the Sun than Neptune and spends most of its time much further out than Pluto. It is one of the largest objects ever found in the outer Solar System and is almost certainly made of ice and rock.
Since the initial reports of being potentially bigger than Pluto, its size estimate has been downgraded.
The first data made public about the object suggested the object could be up to twice the size of Pluto, but newly revealed observations indicate the object is about 70% Pluto’s diameter.
But…it has a moon!
Newly disclosed observations of the giant world revealed on Friday to orbit
in the outer solar system show that it has a moon.
Kudos to the very many people contributing to this discovery. The way minor planet discovery seems to work is that many independent groups contribute important observations and data for many years, and over time the discovery emerges.
Limericks
28 Jul 2005 20:48 EDT
This…
A young man named Cholmondeley Colquhoun
Kept as a pet a babolquhuon
His mother said: “Cholmondeley
Do you think it quite colmondeley
To feed your babolquhuon with a spolquhuon?
…unfortunately inspired my own variations…
There once was a dog at the lb.
Who could speak! Thus did problems comlb.
For the dogcatcher there,
Who was forced in despair
To listen to Fido exlb.
—
There once was a Cardinal Wojtyła
Who became Pope, the Church’s renyła.
As John Paul II
His fate thus was reckoned.
Now in heaven his worries are fyła.
—
There was an old hare with a ct.
And two sons who stood to inherit.
The first took an oz.
But the elder did poz.
For the bunny did not want to share it.
—
etc.
about mark beadles
I write the things you read here. Polymath renaissance redneck. I build software, stories, and young men. More...on the desk
around the web
in the vault
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