I love it when everything turns out smashingly.
I've smoked corn now a few times—highly recommend it, though it's probably impractical in NYC to own a smoker.
Does "Kim" abbreviate Kimchee, or is this an exception to your usual practice?
I laugh a haughty laugh at use-mention.
2: Yes, in fact, it does. Though she is not Korean.
it's probably impractical. . . to own a smoker
Especially after they passed that pesky 13th Amendment.
The Cameron stovetop smokers are amazing.
In Amsterdam on the street, they sell chicken and stuff in triangular cone things with spicy peanut sauce all over it -- beats a hotdog. Thanks for bringing back mems.
I hear Novak says Rove outed Plame to him.
Nah, Rove confirmed it -- as yet unnamed Admin Official X gave Novak the original tip. (Or so I read third-hand.)
I built a smoker of the weekend of the 4th. I had a barbecure on the third. I did a couple racks of ribs and a whole chicken. They turned out excellent.
Then the insulating cement board panel popped loose from the MDF front of the smoker, super-hot air got behind it, and the damn thing started on fire.
I only have to replace the front, and maybe add another layer of internal insulation inside, but FUCK.
<worship>Sounds cool, Chopper.</worship>
Dude. So easy.
200 bucks in materials, a few basic hand tools, a few hours, and anyone can do it.
If I'd been thinking, I woulda done a build log. Of course, If I'd been thinking, I would have built it on the ground rather than on my deck, as it's supposed to live in the garage when not in use and it's 250 pounds, easy.
I thought this would be part 2 of the chatty farty nude model bathroom story from the thread below.
Cooking is butch, building your own cooking apparati is the butchest.
Maybe if you post more nude pictures of women on your blog you'll feel more butch.
I put myself in their nude toes, and it brings out the femme in me bigtime.
Adam, let me tell you about my juicy plump 9-inch homemade pork sausage...
I built a smoker of the weekend of the 4th.
Chopper, do you subscribe to Make magazine?
My two favorite projects so far are the guy who built a monorail in his backyard and the person who turned an old VCR into an automatic cat-feeder.
I would, but all of the projects seem so esoteric. Most of the things I do are practical, like tiling a basement floor or putting in a new fence post. I'd rather spend my less than copious free time on other hobbies--photography and food.
David Hahn, the kid who was building a breeder reactor in his back yard for a scout merit badge.
I didn't make the corn, because we had no margarine, and when I tried to make it days later it had become kind of nasty.
Yeah, corn is only good when it's very fresh. For boiling, ideally you should start heating the water then go out into the field. I'm not sure how that translates to grilling, though (light the coals?).
Stick with the supersweets. They have a long shelf life and are sweeter than that locally grown farmer's market corn- which is hard to tell from field corn.
Or cheat and drop a tablespoon of white sugar into the boiling water.
Why must you ruin my folksy corn advice with your decadent urban perversions?
Yamamoto, I don't know what markets you shop, but I've never had the problem you describe with my farmer's market.
Of course, if you really want the good stuff, drive through a small town and look for the old F-150 pulled up by the side of the road on the main drag.
I'm in the middle of corn country these days, Chopper. I'm even growing a little, this year.
I'll be in Chicago tomorrow, I'm forgetting the corn and making a stop at Intelligentsia.
like tiling a basement floor or putting in a new fence post. I'd rather spend my less than copious free time on other hobbies--photography and food
<proposing marriage>Sounds cool, Chopper.<proposing marriage>
I am possibly embarrassing myself, a la Becks style, in front of Lindsay Beyerstein. Whose boyfriend (it must be sais) seems cool.
re: 21
Ah. photography. My hobby too. Have you succumbed to camera addiction yet?
At this point, we all want to marry Chopper, or trade in our spouses for him.
Down metrosexuals, up Chopper!
32: I just got a Canon D30, but can't afford any lenses yet (other than the one that came with the kit). So yes, but not completely realized.
I'm actually kind of worried that apostropher will abandon his wife and kids for Chopper.
re: 34
Ah. Stay away from the madness that is old, vintage, second-hand cameras! They are fun, and cheap, but addictive.
Incidentally, loads of old/cheap manual focus lenses will mount on the D30 with an adapter. By cheap, I mean lenses than can be had for $10.
Speaking of photography, have y'all seen Dagger Aleph's? I'm a moderately OK amateur. DA is beyond professional and into serious artist land.
How old/cheap? I have some nice lenses for my AE-1, and I know there's an adapter available, but from what I read it sounded like the match-up was less than ideal.
FD lenses, like for the AE, don't mount on EOS cameras.
Old screwmount lenses -- M42 lenses -- mount just fine with an adapter. Some of those lenses are kind of crappy, but some of them -- Pentax super-takumars, Carl Zeiss Jena, etc. -- are very good (optically) and mount with a cheap adapter and can be used in manual or aperture-priority mode.
Nikon lenses also mount on EOS bodies with an adapter and old manual focus Nikon lenses are good and cheaper than modern autofocus EOS lenses.
Manual focus only, though.
I use an EOS film camera, an old EOS-650, which has the same lens mount as the D30 and I use loads of 2nd hand lenses from cheap-to-midrange Japanese brands, mostly 1970s vintage, and the results are excellent.
Lenses from names like Chinon, Rikenon, Tamron, etc. can be really cheap -- as in under $10 -- and the Pentax and Carl Zeiss ones more like $50.
37: Yeah, her stuff is amazing. Her photographs of Egypt elicited such a strong reaction in me that I was homesick for days.
Matt--
Sounds like you know a lot more than me. I flatter myself that I'm pretty good with composition and I have a decent eye for interesting angles, but I know squat about the technical stuff. I'm gonna have to do some digging on e-bay. You woudn't happen to have a model number for the adapter mount, would you?
For screwmount lenses you just need to search for:
M42-EOS adapter.
I think I paid about 10 UK pounds for mine, including shipping.
Some of my photos are up on Flickr here:
http://flickr.com/photos/85361107@N00/sets/72157594143970505/
http://flickr.com/photos/85361107@N00/sets/72157594163348117/
http://flickr.com/photos/85361107@N00/sets/72057594124140407/
Most of these are taken either with old cameras -- some 30 or 40 years old -- or with the EOS-650 with old lenses on it. All on film.
37: Wow, thanks Chopper! That's such a nice thing to say. Though what you're seeing on Flickr are the very best shots culled from thousands and thousands, most of which are crap.
Vintage cameras are so great. Years ago I bought a Rolleiflex from the 50s for about $500. It looked like it had never been used. The lens is fabulous and it takes amazingly sharp photos.
If you like urban photography, my friend ttractor is truly gifted, and does great pictures of NYC. (Check out the July 1 pic in particular.)
I have a Flexaret -- the Czech copy of the Rolleiflex -- which is great and also takes good pictures.
Mostly I use a bunch of old Soviet-made Leica and Contax copies. Cheap but surprisingly good.
do the Soviet-made Leica copies also have the quiet shutter?
It's quite quiet, yeah. It's a cloth focal plane shutter like a Leica. I haven't had much chance to compare it to a real Leica. I've fired a Leica III a couple of times. I don't remember it being particularly quiet compared to the Soviet ones.
The Contax copies have a metal shutter which is also quite quiet. It has a sort of low-pitched 'chunk'.
None of them are as quiet as leaf-shutter rangefinders. The Japanese ones from the late 60s/early 70s are super quiet.
I haven't used my Rolleiflex in over a year. Digital sort of made me lose interest in film photography (and in photography in general, actually, except for pedestrian purposes). But now I'm thinking I should take it out one of these weeks.
I also have exposed infrared film a-mouldering in my closet from a year ago that I haven't bothered to develop. I guess I should do that, too. I don't even remember what's on it.
Do you do your own developing/printing, Matt?
I don't shoot digital at all. Partly because I can't afford to buy a good digital camera -- it'd cost a lot to get one that'd match the quality I can get from my film cameras as a couple of my film cameras/lenses are really pretty good. But also, partly, because it's a hobby and something I do for fun and I like the 'craft' of working in the old fashioned way.
I used to like a lot of the photos I was seeing on photoblogs that were taken on digital cameras but after a while that highly-saturated colour with huge depth of field -- everything sharp from near to far -- started to sour on me.
Yeah, I develop and print my own stuff. A lot of the time I just develop the negatives and then scan them on a film scanner but if I want prints I have an old (1950s) enlarger that works and can be set up in our bathroom.
Never shot infrared though, I ought to try that.
Indulge me for a moment--most of my Flickr account is taken up with baby pictures and my brother's wedding, but I do have a few artier-type ones snuck in:
here, here, here, here, here, here, here, andand here.
Also, Matt: really great stuff! I'd admired your photos before, just not as recently as DA's.
DA: I really like this shot of ttractor's. Plays into my personal sensibilities quite a bit.
The pictures taken from the air are good. Needs a double take to be sure what the abstract shapes are.
Chopper: Feed Corn and Parking Lot is really cool. I'd think it was a desert, if not for the tree branches in the background.
My personal ttractor favorite is this. Well, not my favorite as a photo, but the sentiment is good.
Matt: I wish I could just set up an enlarger in my bathroom. I used to use darkroom space in Manhattan for $10 an hour. In St. Louis I had a darkroom in the basement and I would spend hours and hours a day down there. It's such a great hobby.
Unfortunately, I fear that eventually my favorite film will no longer exist because there's no market for it any more.
Infrared is really fun. It's really fussy and you have to use a tripod, but I've gotten some really dramatic effects .
I wish I could just set up an enlarger in my bathroom
Sometimes I set up an enlarger in my bathroom. IYKWIM.
re: enlarger in bathroom.
We have a tiny bathroom, and it's still possible. The enlarger comes apart so, when I'm not using it, it can live tidied away somewhere. I just stick the developing trays in the bath, and that's it.
I only print at night though as there's no way to make the room properly light tight.
I don't print as often as I'd like though, it still takes half an hour to set it all up and half an hour to break it all down again.
re:: films, a lot of classic films are now being manufactured in eastern europe: croatia and the czech republic, mainly. You can still even pick up film in wierd or more or less obsolete formats.
I purchased an adapter ring last night on ebay. $13, including shipping.
Now I just have to figure out what cheapy lenses to buy. Are Sigmas OK?
My primary interest is in a decent zoom lens and a decent macro lens. However, a lot of lenses seem to be fixed focal length. What's the advantage of fixed length lenses? Do they have better optics? (I'm really showing my ignorance here, aren't I?)
Tia -- I made this tonight and it was fabulous! I had peanuts, not peanut butter, and that ended up yummy as well. Thanks!
58: Chopper: fixed focal length lenses are less convenient than zooms, but take better quality photos.
I had a photography teacher who told me that it's a good idea to consider getting one telephoto, one wide-angle, and one medium focal length lens. When people have zooms they tend to use the two extremes exclusively and not so much the focal lengths in between.
I have a Sigma 24mm lens which was good (or good enough for my purposes), and significantly cheaper than the fancy-brand wide angles.
Did you grind the peanuts up in a food processor or something? I probably should have mentioned that when I made it I used smooth peanut butter, not crunchy. That site is recommending itself well. I make this every Thanksgiving and it is yumlicious, although I never know where to find liquid smoke and I think it's bad for you anyway, so I use some BBQ sauce, I usually do different spices each time, and I actually don't recommend the gravy.
I recommend this gravy (I would link, but the recipe appears to be offline since vegweb.com tinkered around with their site. It's kind of tragic if they lost a bunch of recipes. Some other things about that site don't seem right anymore, like a bunch of reviews and comments got deleted; it's not as useful as it used to be):
Vegan Gravy
Ingredients (use vegan versions):
* 8tablespoon vegetable oil
* 3-6 cloves of garlic, squashed and minced
* 3 slices of yellow onion, chopped
* 8tablespoon all-purpose flour
* 2tablespoon nutritional yeast
* 4tablespoon low sodium soy sauce or tamari
* 2 1/2 cups water (to start)
* 1/2 teaspoon ground sage (dry)
* Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
* 1/4 cup vegan red wine (optional--but a huge help. I like cabernet sauvignon) and 2tablespoon
* balsamic vinegar
* 6 sliced mushrooms (optional)
Directions:
I can't take all the credit for this great gravy. Unfortunately I cannot recall exactly where I came upon it. My apologies to the original source. I made some slight adjustments. It was a HUGE hit with my family--even the meat eaters!
In a medium saucepan heat oil on a medium or medium-low heat. Add garlic and onion and cook until slightly tender and translucent.
Add the flour, yeast and soy (or tamari) to make a paste or roux. Be careful not to let it burn. GRADUALLY add the water, stirring constantly. With frequent stirring, bring the gravy to a boil and allow it to thicken. Add pepper, mushrooms, vegan wine and balsamic vinegar. If you don't want to add vegan wine, you might try a bit more balsamic vinegar or a red vegan wine vinegar in its place.
If the gravy is too thin (unlikely) add a small amount of cornstarch which has been dissolved in some cold water. (Dissolving the cornstarch in water first will prevent lumps.)
You can add more water to the gravy if you want a lighter gravy for certain dishes. The flavor is very strong and can easily handle the extra liquid. It's even better if you let it sit in the fridge overnight and gently reheat it. This is great over a lentil loaf, bisquits, potatoes--just about anything you would want to smother with a rich gravy! Enjoy!
Serves: Approx 4 cups
Preparation time: 15-20 minutes
