for comparison's sake

Compare my naan to this machine-made naan that I picked up in Itaewon:

See what I mean about the oval shape? Naan don't have to be oval, as I explained in my previous post, but this is how most such flatbreads look. Here, below, is the backside, with the "stripes" that give away the fact that I didn't bake this bread:

Once reheated, the store-bought naan had almost the same consistency (and lack of bubbling) as my own naan. See why I like naan as a substitute Greek pita?

Speaking of Greek stuff: I had to test out my gyro meat tonight, so I cut twelve strips of the meat and fried the strips on my griddle. I crumbled some feta tonight, and I also made tzatziki (perfect on the first try—no tweaking this time), so I cobbled together a quickie gyro. Result: delicious. The gyros will be even more so on Friday once we add the olives, tomatoes, lettuce, and (gack) onions for those who like onions.

Anyway, there's the store-bought naan versus my naan.

Note to self: cut thicker strips of meat so they can be a bit moister after frying.

yet another who had to #WalkAway

And from Evergreen State College, no less:

moving out of my comfort zone

My friend Charles gave me a recipe for naan. I followed it as well as I could, so if you assess my work with your professional baker's eyes and see problems, assume the fault is completely mine. What follows are mostly pictures of bread-making—my first-ever attempt at making real bread and not merely baking something from a kit. There are, however, some non-bread-related pictures in this photo essay, so please bear with me.

I began by making the dough. The original recipe was for four flatbreads; I had to multiply the ingredients by 2.5 to create ten pieces of naan. The amount of dough didn't seem to be all that much, even after the multiplication. Below is the dough after it came together:

Next up, we see the dough proofing. Or as they say in England, proving.

First distraction from the bread: fresh-made chimichurri. It was too tangy at first; the 3:2 oil/vinegar ratio (seen in several recipes) struck me as way too potent, so I added a tiny bit of sugar plus a lot more oil, making for a roughly 2:1 oil/vinegar ratio. I think this change was a vast improvement. The sauce also included fresh garlic, chili flakes, some salt and pepper, and of course the basil, cilantro, and parsley that give the sauce its soul. I'll be taste-testing the sauce Wednesday afternoon to see whether it goes with beef. If yes, then no problem. If not, then the sauce will need tweaking. I think it ought to be fine.

Chimi me, baby:

A closeup of the larger chimi container:

I'm bizarrely proud of my smoky baked beans with thick-cut bacon and hot dogs:

And here's my cole slaw. I seem to be moving away from the mayo-based version:

Freezer pic below. Barely visible under all that frost (right side) are the "patties" or "steaks" of gyro meat, now frozen solid. I've decided that I'll slice the meat while it's frozen (just as I did when making andouille for gumbo), then pan-fry it directly, thus skipping the baking step. A lot of fat will render from the pan-frying, and that will serve to keep the meat moist when I store it for transport. Also visible, below, are some frozen, pre-cooked chicken breasts (far left) and a package of Mexican chorizo (center, the red sausages) that Costco is currently selling. Couldn't say no to chorizo, which my buddy Tom got me hooked on years ago. Voilà:

Back to bread-making. Keep in mind I'm making naan flatbreads. Below, I've divided about 770 grams of proofed dough into 77-ish-gram dough balls. Each ball will be rolled out into a tortilla-like flatbread. As you see—and it's not often that a man can say this—I've got ten balls.

Note: the dough didn't really rise, despite the presence of yeast. I assume this is because I'm not currently heating my apartment, so it's cool at my place. Next time, I'll encourage rising by placing the proofing bowl in a larger bowl of lukewarm water.

Charles's instructions didn't say whether to roll the balls out on a floured surface, so I assumed that flouring would be necessary, especially given how sticky the dough was. So I floured my rolling pin, floured the surface of my Costco foldable table, with its worrisomely rough and dough-snagging surface, and patted a tiny bit more flour onto each dough ball as I rolled it. Below is the very first flatbread I've ever made in my life:

It's a bit of an abortion, really, as were the other nine. I didn't roll the balls out into consistent shapes—partly because of lack of experience, and partly because, well, I didn't want to. I was experimenting, you see. Most professionally made naan comes out looking fairly oval—but an uneven oval, like an egg, with a fat end and a slightly "sharper" end. My flatbreads ended up ranging from circular tortillas to the sort of long naan they sell at Everest, the Indo-Nepali resto in downtown Seoul.

Here's a stack of rolled-out naan:

And a closer look:

I decided to cook on my griddle, the one I had bought while I was in the States last August. That pan has seen a hell of a lot of use since I brought it back to Seoul. I still chafe when I ponder why it's so difficult to find exactly that sort of pan here. Korea is the goddamn land of cheol-pan, so you'd think they'd sell a cheol-pan shaped like my griddle. But no. Ah, well... a rant for another time. Below, some slight bubbling:

I think I was a bit too timid with the heat. I did eventually crank the heat up so as to cook the flatbreads more aggressively, but the one below came out with only a slight suntan, and if you look carefully, you can see it's puffing up like a pita:

Thus do I begin placing the cooked naan into a tray:

Some major bubblage:

The freaky, long, Everest-style naan:

The stack grows:

Finally, below, a shot of one sacrificial flatbread to test for edibility/palatability. This bread is dressed up in French butter and has been lightly dusted with garlic powder. While this isn't the best naan I've ever had, there was a sense of accomplishment at having finally made some bread, and the bread did turn out to be edible. The fact that the naan never rose may have worked in my favor since I'm planning to use this bread for gyros, and the Greek pita normally associated with gyros is flat, a bit thick, and rather pliable—all qualities of my batch of bread. Per Charles's advice, I've stuck the naan in my freezer to store it since, apparently, refrigeration is the quick way to ruin bread. (Charles mentioned this, and when he did, I suddenly remembered watching a Martha Stewart video that said the same thing.)

So I bagged up and froze nine little flatbreads. I'll thaw them Thursday night, and will maybe finish them off Friday with some garlic butter. Getting the timing right while preparing what are, essentially, two completely different and separate meals has been somewhat stressful, but I think it's all going to work out. I wonder how real caterers deal with the differing prep times and prep methods and storage demands of the foods they deliver. (Maybe that's why so many caterers specialize in easy things like cold sandwiches.)

two via Bill Keezer

I don't think 2020's going to be quite this much of a landslide as the pic below suggests, but I understand the sentiment and don't think the Dems have come up with a viable candidate yet. Doubling down on the craziness isn't helping. If I were a mainstream, middle-of-the-road liberal, I'd be wondering (just as NeverTrump Republicans are) where the fuck my party went:

Related: "How Media FRAMES The Narrative To Make Trump Seem WORSE":


Keep in mind that Tim Pool is not a Trump supporter. He is, however, a rational leftist. The more I listen to him, the more I respect him. In fact, I'm discovering that I like this whole subculture of leftists critical of the left. They're the ones who represent sanity to me.

tonight's challenge

Tonight, and at long last, I try my hand at making bread—flatbread, in this case. My buddy Charles gave me a recipe for naan last March; I had said I'd make the naan by summer of 2018, but a year went by, from March to March, and I did absolutely nada. Well, karma catches up to us all, and I can no longer procrastinate. So tonight, naan it is.

#TongueFlick, #FlickingTongue, #SplitTongue, #TonguesForEyes

gyro-meat prep, first stage

With gyro meat, the prep stages are:

1. Blend together meat, spices, and seasonings to make a meat paste.
2. Shape into loaves. Freeze until you're ready for the next step.
3. Bake, and/or
4. Slice and finish in a frying pan. Store meat in its own juices for transport.

I've done stages 1 and 2. No pics of stage 2, unless you really want to see frozen meat in the freezer. I won't initiate the final stages until, oh, Thursday night. Meanwhile, here are a few pics of stage 1.

Below: spices and seasoning to be incorporated into a 50-50 mix of ground beef and ground lamb. We've got paprika, cayenne, salt, pepper, cumin, sugar, basil, and oregano. Forgot the turmeric, but since turmeric is a somewhat late addition to my usual spice blend, its absence isn't tragic. The ground meat I used was fairly lean, so to amp up the fat content, I also included olive oil. A lot of this oil will cook out during baking.

Below, you see a new addition to my family of gadgets: a food processor that I bought last night. It's some no-name Korean brand ("HiBrand"), and it sucks: the motor began to smell of burned circuitry only a few minutes into the blending process. Stank up my entire apartment for a good hour. It also failed to churn the meat well enough to blend the top layer, and the machine's top doesn't have a hole into which one can introduce a spoon, etc., to poke and prod whatever's being blended. I have a feeling I'll be chucking this loser in favor of a good old Cuisinart sometime soon. If I can find a Cuisinart in Korea.

Lastly, a pic of two batches of meat in the initial stages of being mixed together. The first batch, which looks brown because of all the spices and seasonings, got the full brunt of all my magic powders (plus the fresh onions that I pureed before adding meat on top of them). The second batch—which looks red—was simply meat, and after I had mixed it as much as possible without making the food processor's motor start belching smoke (an actual concern as the burned-circuitry smell intensified), I threw everything into my giant metal bowl and began combining the meat batches with wood spoons. When that proved inadequate, I washed my hands and switched to manual mixing.

The idea, with gyros, is to produce a paste that will harden into a solid block of fairly homogeneous meat. Once everything is frozen, you can either bake the blocks and then slice them, or slice them while frozen and then pan-fry the slices, thereby simulating how gyro meat comes off the rotisserie.

I formed the mixed meat into loaves, wrapped the loaves in plastic wrap, then stuck them in the freezer. The loaves look like giant burger patties, but once they've been frozen, they'll slice into plausibly shaped strips of gyro meat. I've already done a test cook of some of the meat to make sure everything is properly spiced and seasoned. This time around, the meat is much spicier than what I've done previously, but it still tastes fine. I have high hopes. Hell, I might even slice the meat now, then re-bag it in giant Ziplocs so that, when the time comes to pan-fry, I can simply bring out the bags and get right to it. One less thing to worry about.

the left eats its own; it's righties who defend Chelsea Clinton

More from the ever-remarkable Tim Pool:

sex vs. gender redux

A rapper (temporarily) identifies as a woman and goes on to easily break a women's weightlifting record in order to prove a point regarding the "absurdity" of the trans movement's insistence that trans women are ultimately no different from cis-women.

Enjoy the wackiness:

I've already written a couple posts laying out my own position on the whole "trans" thing. To recap: I'm fine with gender fluidity, gender spectra, etc. because I take gender to refer to a social construct, i.e., something that comes from the mind. Because it comes from the mind, gender is infinitely polymorphic, and as linguistically annoying as that's going to become for those of us who like our sex-binary pronouns, we're all going to have to learn to deal with this new social reality. That said, chromosomally speaking, sex is binary—period. A trans woman is basically a chromosomal male, and when you put a trans woman into the MMA octagon with a cis-woman, you're going to see what it's like when a man beats up a woman. Do you think that's fine? If so, then our discussion is over. Go in peace. If, however, you're horrified by the notion of a man's using his closed fist to repeatedly strike a woman until her bones break (as I blogged about), then you'll agree that the trans issue still needs to be fleshed out.

Chromosomal men and chromosomal women are different. In most ways, men are physically superior. True: there are individual exceptions. If you were to put my doughy, untrained ass in the octagon with Gina Carano, there's no doubt she'd beat the snot out of me. But put Carano in the ring with a male fighter who has equivalent MMA training, and she's toast. She won't suddenly show off any superhero magic: she'll be lucky to walk out of the arena on her own two feet. So, yes: rapper Zuby is making a legitimate point in the above video—one that should be heeded for the sake of women and women's sports.

another #WalkAway story

She's easy on the eyes and a bit more articulate... not only did she start off as a liberal, but she's also from a Buddhist family! Now, it could be that the Buddhism she internalized was the typically folkloric kind, full of magic and spirits and deities—all the stuff that Western converts to Buddhism swear doesn't exist in their belief and praxis. (Don't listen to people who tell you "There are no gods in Buddhism." That's bullshit, and it's bullshit because they're talking about their own Western-style, stripped-down-to-a-bare-bones-philosophy version of Buddhism. Buddhism, taken as a whole, is plenty theistic.) Whatever the case, she sees her "conversion" away from the left as a kind of awakening. Her words aren't particularly substantive, but they do give the viewer some insight into the intellectual and psychological dimensions of conversion-away.

She outs herself as "Asian," but I'm guessing she's half-Korean, mainly because of the thoroughly Korean way she divides Christendom into "Catholics" and "Christians," a hilarious division that I haven't heard elsewhere. (Feel free to fill my ignorance in.)

toilets as a test of extroversion

I can't understand the dude who, when faced with three toilet cubicles in the men's room, one of which is occupied, chooses to sit in the cubicle next to mine. I always choose a far-edge cubicle, thus giving the next man the choice of sitting either next to me or two cubicles away, which would be my preference. Most dudes choose the other far cubicle, thus putting some space between us (as is only proper), but every now and then, some needy, clingy asshole decides he'd rather sit right next to me. What's up with that? Does he crave companionship? Is he some kind of twisted extrovert who can't stand to be away from people when he has to shit? What drives a man—a man!— to sit next to me in his time of need? By the same token, what drives a man to choose the middle cubicle when no one else is around, thus guaranteeing someone will sit next to him? Does he want someone to sit next to him? Pervert.

NB: to be clear, this post is half in jest. I used to be the type of person whose asshole would pucker shut if someone else came into the men's room. These days, I don't give a fuck. And I'm already on record regarding unisex/"omnisex" restrooms: I honestly don't care who might be next to me while I'm dumping.

Tim Pool on guns and gun control

Tim Pool stands pretty much where I do on the matter of gun control, and he points out a rural-versus-urban difference in thinking that only one politician I know of has been perceptive enough to mention himself: Rudy Giuliani (pre-Trump-loopiness phase of his career). Listen to Tim here:

#WalkAway

Meet Alan Lai. The guy stumbles a lot in articulating his reasons for walking away from today's left, but he's worth a listen:

clicking "no" to word verification

I'm supposed to be exempt from word verification ("click on all the images containing bicycles") as the admin of my own blog, but I have to go through that nonsense, anyway, as long as I keep it activated. Since I'm now as annoyed by that feature as many of my commenters are, I'm turning off word verification but keeping comment moderation on. This means I'll see a huge increase in spam comments, but they'll never see the light of day because I can delete them all before I publish legitimate comments.

Sorry to all and sundry for the inconvenience of word verification. If, however, the spam proves to be a torrent, then I might have to turn that function back on. Just FYI.

Tim Pool talks (tangentially) about Christchurch

Tim Pool is a left-liberal journalist who has a few channels on YouTube, as well as a presence in several other forms of online media. He recently experienced a boost in his celebrity status when he appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, sitting next to Rogan and across the table from Jack Dorsey (Twitter's CEO) and Dorsey's right-hand lady Vijaya Gadde ("VIH-jyuh gaddy"), a lawyer who is deeply involved in determining who gets banned from Twitter and why. Pool and Gadde ended up doing most of the talking, with Rogan interjecting now and again, and with Dorsey saying little to nothing. At first blush, Pool might sound like a rightie, but he is a self-identifying leftist (he talks about his leftism on Dave Rubin's show, The Rubin Report, filmed only one day after the Rogan podcast) who happens to be critical of where the American left has been going—what he calls "the insane left." Pool speaks in a rapid, clipped, somewhat high-voiced nerdy tone that's very reminiscent of how mighty-mite chatterbox Ben Shapiro talks a mile a minute. I've seen only a few of Pool's videos at this point, but I've found the man to be tough but generally fair in his assessment of global goings-on, and I've subscribed to two of his YouTube channels. Pool produces videos more prolifically (and somewhat more professionally) than does my regular guru, Styxhexenhammer666. Here he is below, talking—at least tangentially—about the Christchurch massacre and about media censorship in general:

By the way, they're saying that the "armed" congregant at the mosque didn't fire the weapon he managed to acquire during the massacre: he brandished it, and then maybe threw it at one of the attackers, causing the attacker to hop into a car and flee. The death toll has also clicked up from 49 to 50.

oh, I almost forgot

Happy Saint Patrick's Day to ya'!

no promises

There might be photos of cooking tonight. After finishing up my second round of shopping, I'm probably going to be prepping the gyro meat (beef + lamb) tonight. I might also try my hand at a naan recipe sent to me last year by Charles (I've come to use naan instead of the puny local pitas when making gyros). I confess that I bought naan yesterday—just as a Plan B in the event that I fail at making the homemade naan. Charles's recipe yields four flatbreads; I'm multiplying that by 2.5 to get ten. Tomorrow or Tuesday night, I'll likely do the baked beans; those ought to keep just fine until Friday. On Wednesday, I'll buy the fresh herbs needed for chimichurri; on Thursday—the night before the Friday luncheon/goodbye party—I'll brine the brisket, make the chimichurri, and do the oven-roasted potatoes.* Friday morning, I'll get up early, bake the brisket, slice and toast up the ciabatta, and prep the vegetables to top the gyros (lettuce, tomatoes, onions, olives).

With the work spread out over the week, there ought to be less pressure to git 'er done, so to speak. I might end up shifting some of the to-dos around as necessary.

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*In Greece, gyros often come with french fries on top. I know that fries will end up soggy in transit if I cook them, throw them into an airtight box, then trundle over to the office. Oven-roasted potatoes, by contrast, come out of the oven super-crunchy, so they can survive a taxi ride without becoming overly soggy.

what madness is this?

Something freaky is happening on my blog's right-hand sidebar. Here, look at a blown-up image of my Followers' list:

Did these people delete their thumbnails? Is this part of some sinister un-following campaign? And if so, why not simply unfollow instead of deleting a thumbnail image while retaining a Follower's link to their profiles? No entiendo nada.

heh

Joe Biden has his own website... whether he wants one or not.

Styx on the topic:

James Gunn is back on for GOG3!

The Ides of March can't be bad for everyone, apparently: the Hollywood Reporter, as of March 15, is claiming that embattled director James Gunn is back at the helm of his pet project, "Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume III." Personally, I'm glad. He should never have been crucified for tweets he'd made ten years ago.

The GOG3 project went into limbo when Gunn was fired by Disney. A few talented directors' names were tossed around as people mulled over possible replacements, including the name of Taika Waititi, who did an excellent job with "Thor: Ragnarok." But it wouldn't have been right for anyone else to take over a project that Gunn himself has been so passionate about. Gunn is a comic-book fanatic who has a genuine love for the Guardians; he put together a mint cast and has, thus far, given us two very good movies that are among the crown jewels of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). Assuming the Hollywood Reporter is correct, I'm glad he's back on board, and I'm sure his cast—all of whom love him—is glad as well.

A juicy tidbit from the article:

In the weeks after firing Gunn, there was speculation around town about who could replace the filmmaker, with agents lining up clients but by mid-fall, any perceived search seemed to have petered out, with many thinking that the project was on the back burner. What almost no one knew was that Marvel and Disney had never undertaken a search and had gone back to Gunn and made a deal ... in secret, according to insiders.

After the firing, Gunn moved on to Warner Bros. and DC to write and direct The Suicide Squad, which has Idris Elba set to star and an Aug. 6, 2021 release date. Gunn plans on doing both films, with The Suicide Squad coming first, according to sources.

After the news broke, Gunn — who has been silent on Twitter since his firing — tweeted a statement.

"I am tremendously grateful to every person out there who has supported me over the past few months," Gunn wrote on Twitter Friday. "I am always learning and will continue to work at being the best human being I can be. I deeply appreciate Disney's decision and I am excited to continue making films that investigate the ties of love that bind us all. I have been, and continue to be incredibly humbled by your love and support. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Love to you all."

Christchurch attack update

Well, this is interesting: an armed congregant* in the Linwood mosque fired back at attackers, scaring them away. No more than ten people were shot there; elsewhere, another 39 were gunned down. (Of the ten people shot at Linwood, seven died.)

Also interesting, according to the above-linked source:

The manifesto left by the terrorist — whose name I don’t think deserves mentioning** — is a mishmash of ideas. He calls himself an “Eco-fascist,” one who combines environmentalism, racism and authoritarianism into one repulsive package. In his mind the world is dying from over-population, but over-population of the “wrong” kind. He hates capitalism, free markets, and free trade but he loves the Communist Chinese government and fascism. He takes the racist rhetoric of Donald Trump and mixes it with Marxist rhetoric about the poor workers of the world.

In his fevered imagination alleged “over population” is directly tied to “mass immigration” and “sub-replacement fertility” among whites. The culprits who deserve the blame, he says, are the “corporate entities” who “invited” immigrants to “replace the White people.” It’s Paul Ehrlich meets Adolph Hitler, Bernie Sanders in cahoots with Benito Mussolini.

He says global warming and immigration:

…Are the same issue, the environment is being destroyed by over population, we Europeans are one of the groups that are not over populating the world. The invaders are the ones over populating the world. Kill the invaders, kill the overpopulation and by doing so save the environment.

He calls for a form of “Green Nationalism” which will save the planet by stopping “the continued destruction of the natural environment itself through mass immigration and uncontrolled urbanization, whilst offering no true solution to either issue.”

Along with that, here's some news from the Daily Mail, in listicle form:

• Australian-born Brenton Harrison Tarrant, 28, has faced a Christchurch court charged with a count of murder
• Daniel John Burrough, 18, is also charged with 'exciting hostility or ill-will' in relation to the mosque attacks
• Tarrant, Burrough, as well as a man and a woman were arrested on Friday after the violence
• The third man has been released and is not thought linked, while the woman remains in custody
• Tarrant allegedly live streamed himself on Facebook as he opened fire on the Al Noor Mosque at 1.30pm AEDT
• During a brief appearance in Christchurch District Court he smiled faintly and offered a white power gesture
• New Zealand authorities have confirmed that at least 49 people have been killed, with dozens more missing
• Alleged terrorist posted an online manifesto filled with Neo-Nazi ideology and hatred for Muslim people
• Tarrant 'worked as a personal trainer before travelling the world to North Korea and Pakistan as well as Europe'

This article, meanwhile, points out that Tarrant, an Australian-born personal trainer who lived for a time in Dunedin, NZ, took time off to travel the world after his father's death. He visited North Korea and Pakistan, and he had high praise for Pakistan and the Pakistani people: "...an incredible place with the most earnest, kind-hearted and hospitable people in the world."

Sounds to me like one very confused individual who thought he was Thanos, dispensing population-diminishing mercy through mass murder. He's being billed as a "white supremacist," but he wanted to take a few years to go see the (largely non-white) world. He supposedly made a "white power" gesture in court (an upside-down "OK" sign, in this case), but he's also apparently some sort of environmentalist who is concerned about the impact of overpopulation on the global ecosystem. Yes; all this makes a lot of sense.

As far as I know, Tarrant's GoPro video of the shooting was instantly suppressed, but since it was supposedly streaming live on Facebook during his part of the 17-minute event, I imagine someone must have caught it and will soon be releasing it through one of those murder-porn sites like Ogrish.com or LiveLeak. Will I watch it? Maybe. Hell, I watched Budd Dwyer's suicide on LiveLeak. That, by the way, was a scarring experience. Not recommended.

The Guardian has a rough, first-impression breakdown of the "nationalities" of the shooting victims. The list "includes people from countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Jordan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia." Styx had claimed, in his video on the topic, that half the victims were white. I'm not seeing substantiation of that claim, so I remain skeptical. As I wrote in an email to a Kiwi buddy of mine, "Interesting if true."

Here's Styx on Christchurch:

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*It could be that the congregant was armed because he had wrested away a firearm from an attacker, then used the weapon against the terrorists.

**Brenton Harrison Tarrant, 28.