Holidays in the Sun

Went to visit my favorite daughter who doesn’t play bass or cello and does live in London. It was cold, windy, cloudy and rained on and off on our last full day. The main reason for the trip was to attend her Graduation ceremony.  Just a few photos here, maybe a hits and miss list of museums later.

Canal boats at Camden Lock.

Some photos taken near Spitalfields Maket, don’t have the Lamb curry, you have been warned. Swiss Re Building aka The Gherkin.A real Mini Cooper.

On the way to Spencer House, near Green Park.

Liverpool Street Station    TR6Spencer HouseSmall garden off Green Park. St. Barts the GreaterSt. Barts pipe organThe extent of stained glass at St. Barts. A beautiful church none the less.Layout of St. Barts before dissolution. Only remaining sections are the Lady Chapel,, crossing and the Presbytery.

Digby Stuart Chapel, site of “The Graduation”.Digby Stuart college exterior.Grove House at Roehampton University, Froebel College.

Fullers Brewery tour, very excellent. Tour guide and us three.Old tank and old fermenting square.Keg(pasteurized beer) filling line with robot. On a tea break.Cask (real ale) filling line.     Some ale resting in old whiskey barrels. 

Outside the Household Calvary museum.

Liberty Department store on Great Marlborough Street near Oxford Circus.

Something else to fix

Like I need a repair project on top of the list of build projects I have queued up. I saw lots of cool trunks, suitcases and containers in Camden Stables Market and amongst them I saw a case that would fit some of the longer tools I have or I could make it into a traveling drinks case. Actually, I was looking for a tweed hacking jacket or a tweed vest, but had no luck there. I looked at the case and walked on and kept thinking about it and finally went back to look at it closer.

It was pretty clear it was a violin case, but I didn’t expect there to actually be a violin inside. The interior of the case was purple and the violin was a 3/4 model. This gave me further pause, there actually being a violin involved, but I decided to buy it anyway because purple is my favorite color. The price was 30 quid and the guy wasn’t budging, it would have been more but the sound post  (dowel between the front and back panels) was loose and the bridge had been broken by a previous gawker who dropped the case. They must not have know there was a violin inside either.I will probably take it to the local small instrument repair guy and get an estimate. If it worth anything I will have the work done by a professional and if not I will try my hand at being a luthier. There is a small crack in the case, but that is well within my abilities to repair. If it ends up being playable, I will give it to my favorite daughter that plays bass and cello and doesn’t live in London and if not it will sit on the book shelves with the Golden Lion tamarin monkey skull egg cup and endangered eagle claws.

But, I’m keeping the case.

Tastes like Bacon

So it was quite easy and tasty to boot. After letting the pork cure for about a week, I smoked it today. I used apple wood chips and smoked the little piggie at around 225 degrees for 2 hours and then left it in the big green egg an additional 20 minutes (without smoke)to reach an internal temperature of 150 degrees. I added more damp wood chips about every 20 minutes, except for the last 20 minutes. I probably could have stopped adding wood chips 40 minutes sooner.

After taking the bacon out of the grill, I trimmed off the skin and tried some of the meat left on the skin. I was a bit worried because it tasted more like cured ham than bacon. Since we had bacon(I hoped), we decided on “breakfast-for-dinner” and so we had bacon and eggs. Once in the frying pan, it smelled like bacon and once on the plate it tasted like bacon. Success. If only everything in life was as simple as converting a piece of fresh pork bellie into bacon.

Pre-CurePost-Cure, 8 ounces of liquid was removed from the pork by the dry cure.  Post Smoking Skin side Sliced Bacon Tastes like bacon and didn’t shrink or curl up. It was difficult cutting thin slices, but I prefer thicker slabs of bacon anyway. It wasn’t as salty as some supermarket brands, had a nice smoky taste, was sweet enough, maybe a tad too sweet, but I didn’t taste the maple. So next time I would skip the brown sugar and use just maple sugar added to the dry cure and expose it to less smoke.

We didn’t finish all the slices we cut and cooked today (they were thick and meaty) and we saved part of the remaining slab for other breakfasts and cut some chunks for general cooking use. Looking forward to making more bacon.

The only drawback was that I smelled of smoke all day.

Mmmmm Bacon*

Just made a batch of bacon. Seems easy to do, let’s hope it tastes good. First difficult item to procure was the curing salt, difficult to get just a few ounces. Curing salt #1 or pink salt, is dyed pink and is 93.75 % salt with 6.25% nitrite added. It can be ordered online and for the amount I wanted the shipping was more than the item cost. Next, it was difficult to get the pork bellie for the bacon. Finally was able to get some today at Fairway market in Red Hook, Brooklyn. I tried several local butchers and pork stores and tried Western beef(that was an almost) and also tried Whole foods which was an almost as well.

First you mix up a batch of a dry cure which is one part pink salt, 4 parts sugar, 8 parts kosher salt. Put the pig in a ziplock bag, add 1/4 cup of the dry cure. Shake it all about. Add some seasoning (I did 1/4 cup maple sugar, 1/4 cup brown sugar) and then let it sit in the fridge for a week. It is supposed to firm up as it cures. After it cures you can put it in a 200 degree oven for 2 hours or until the internal temperature gets to 150 degrees or smoke it to the same temperature. I plan on smoking it, not sure which wood I plan to use. I have several different bags of wood chips that I received for Christmas one year. I’ll probably go with something subtle. Like me. The ingredients.Looks like bacon already and I didn’t do a thing. A 2.87 pound slab of pork bellie.I have to say, the skin side looks kinda gross, it gets discarded later. I had a rucksack made of pigskin. It was very nice.Finished product for today, just wait, smoke and eat.  

I have a day off today, so I am making the most of it.

*Credit to The Simpsons

Second Spring Flower

And I was wrong on both accounts. The second was another bunch of Snowdrops, peeking up out of the snow. How pretty.

This guy seems to be asking to be pulled out of the snow.

The rest of the yard is covered in snow and looks pretty blah. So I am planning on ordering a couple of red stemmed dogwoods for the back yard. I’ll put one in to the left of the Lilac in the corner

and another in the vicinity of the down spout where we have a bed of Peonies. A friend has them in her yard and I think they will add some color to the yard.I also plan on ordering more Cyclamen for the Peony bed as well. The flowers in late summer into fall and the foliage through the winter months looks nice. Except when covered in snow.

Trudee guarding the castle during the blizzard.

First Spring Flower of 2010

I knew they(it) would be first, but not quite so early. We had 2 days in the 40s and this spot gets some sun most of the day.

It is a Snowdrop (Galanthus elwesii) and there is another nearby, but not with a bud. This week looks to be in the 40s all week so maybe the remainder will come up as well. I should have planted them all in one spot, but divided them up into 3 groups. The label said 6-8” but this specimen is only about 3”.

Nothing compared to the ones we saw at the Chelsea Physic Gardens last February. The garden runs the English Gardening School and they have a Distance Learning program that includes Garden Design and A Practical Course in Horticulture. Something to remember when thinking ahead to another career.

The Garden had special open weekends just to view the Snowdrops and other winter flowers, otherwise the Gardens are only open April to October.  There were Snowdrops galore, all kinds and sizes and lot and lots of them. They also had Cyclamen and Winter Aconite in bloom. I only have fall blooming crocus (I want more) and only one Winter Aconite(Eranthis Hyemalis). I started with a hand full, but possibly disturbed them while planting other things in the garden later in the season.

What will be next? Either my lone Winter Aconite or some Crocus possibly.

2009 Retrospective

Family Outings

• London in February to visit the eldest.
  • Canterbury
  • Kew Gardens
  • Greenwich
  • Little Venice, Michael Bond lives around there as we found out from his last letter to us.
• Intrepid Air & Space museum, finally
• NJ Botanical Garden and Skylands Manor exterior
• Biking on Governors Island
• Polo on Governors Island, amongst the hoi polloi.
• Harbor Day NYC (celebration of the Dutch in America)
• Guggenheim

Outings with Friends and by myself

• Henry Hudson Fest and the annoying Water Pod hipsters
• The Cloisters
• Christmas Fairs
• Staten Island Botanical Gardens (many many times)
• John Nobel Museum at Snug Harbor avec ma mere
• Clove lake park with Trudee
• Greenbelt Native Plant Center (our old farm)
• Fleet week Parade of Ships

Education

• Cask of Amontillado (Sherry tasting), learned I don’t like Amontillado as much as Oloroso.
• Networking for Introverts (NYU Continuing Ed)
• Career Match (NYU Continuing Ed) I’m a Gold/Green (reduced set of Myers/Briggs type indicator)
• IEEE PES, VTS and CS meetings
• Coffee Break French

Music

• Last LaGuardia Symphony Orchestra Concert
• Richmond County Orchestra’s Nutcracker
• Something Cool (Jazz and Blues)
• Aurora at The Cup and The Cargo and The Knitting Factory
• Big Frank and the Healers

I never seem to get accomplished as much as I would like, but looking back I’ve done more than I thought.

Hoping to do more in 2010