Post by secretlyevil on Dec 22, 2014 8:43:17 GMT -5
Starbucks gave me ff milk instead of soy. This is a very bad thing. I didn't take a drink until I got to work. ::overly dramatic sigh:: My Monday is ruined!!!!
Post by eponinepontmercy on Dec 22, 2014 8:50:41 GMT -5
My parents' new dog is adorable, but freaked out when our dog came in the house and backyard. We're pretty sure it's just that she is so new (they only got her 2 weeks ago) and still settling in. She was great when they were in front of the house, but got sort of aggressive inside.
She is great with the dog next door to them, and has been great with dogs outside the house. We're hoping that once everything calms down we can try again. Thank goodness DH thought to do this before we drove up there on Wednesday.
She is such a cutie pie. She definitely has lots of puppy craziness, but is so smart and sweet. She jumped on DD a little, but was really good with her.
Please send happy thoughts that the vet has room so we can board Hudson for Christmas.
I'm really judging my mom. She breeds dogs and she rehomed my old dog (and a few others) and hasn't told me. My dad was the one that told me and he wasn't even supposed to (he thought I already knew). It just means now that she is going to get new dogs to replace the old ones since now they have the room.
Post by Skyesthelimit1212 on Dec 22, 2014 9:06:53 GMT -5
We're sitting in the car stuck in traffic on Sat, a statie flies by with sirens and lights, DD says "I didn't do Nothin!" She's 2 (well, on Xmas Eve, lol)
I'm really judging my mom. She breeds dogs and she rehomed my old dog (and a few others) and hasn't told me. My dad was the one that told me and he wasn't even supposed to (he thought I already knew). It just means now that she is going to get new dogs to replace the old ones since now they have the room.
wow. Did she not give you a chance to adopt your old dog? Poor things. Is that, like, puppy mill behavior on your mom's part?
DH's friend's wife died yesterday unexpectedly. She was 39. Her husband said she died peacefully and FB commenters said he was doing CPR until the ambulance got there but there was no brain activity at the hospital. Just died in her sleep. I mean that is a nice way to go but not at 39 with a 5 year old at home.
A FB comment indicated she had a heart murmur. She was overweight. But other than that she lived a very full life (skiing, etc).
I am so sad for their family. I don't know WHAT DH would do if the Same happened to me.
I'm really judging my mom. She breeds dogs and she rehomed my old dog (and a few others) and hasn't told me. My dad was the one that told me and he wasn't even supposed to (he thought I already knew). It just means now that she is going to get new dogs to replace the old ones since now they have the room.
wow. Did she not give you a chance to adopt your old dog? Poor things. Is that, like, puppy mill behavior on your mom's part?
We can't take a dog. We don't think our cat would do well with a dog (kitty's previous owners got rid of her because of anxiety), and we are moving in a few months and having a dog and a cat is going to make it a lot harder to find an apartment. Add in that H and I are gone most of the day and it wouldn't have been fair. If she had waited a year or two so we could get more established and to get a bigger place where we could have split up the pets, we probably could have taken my dog.
And honestly, wrt puppy mills it kind of feels like it. I know you need young dogs to be able to have puppies, but it just feels cruel to have a dog for 6-8 years and then get rid of them when you can't get puppies out of them anymore. Especially when she goes on and on about how these dogs are her family and are treated so well.
As I headed, late, to work and was loading my card DH came outside and asked if Something I do every morning in a parental capacity was done. Seriously? You are OFF. Wtf are we even having this convo? It is one day that I don't have to do some parental nagging. One. Day.
This weekend was Meat Insanity 2014. Our annual food Christmas gift making extravaganza. It went pretty well. Still need to grind, stuff and smoke and package the kielbasa, and make some pate and then package up 10 more lbs of sausage and we're done.
We started out with 60+ lbs of meat:
25 lbs (??) of pork shoulder 10 lbs of pork belly 7 lbs of lamb shoulder 9 lbs of veal breast 6 lbs of fatback 6 ducks 4 lbs of duck breast
Ended up with (finished weights approximated where necessary):
7.5 lbs of bacon 4 lbs of hot smoked duck breast 9 lbs of tasso 15 lbs of bratwurst 5 lbs of merguez 5 lbs of duck and bacon sausage 5 lbs of kielbasa to be 6 lbs of duck confit and the fat it was cooked in a few ramekins of duck liver pate to be half gallon of suuuuper concentrated duck stock cubes (6 carcasses in my 5 gallon pot down to deep brown duck jello cubes in a gallon ziplock) a quart or so of lamb stock dinner last night - lamb scraps+pasta, marinated artichokes, sundried tomatoes, olives, lamb stock, fried capers, asiago cheese. (that was a Oh hell, we've been cooking all day, what the fuck is for dinner moment. Yay random jars of stuff in fridge!) and 6 duck hearts I sautéed in duck fat and ate as a snack
aaaand two chunks o' pork to be crockpotted down the road and random chunks of fatty ass veal to be....I dunno. Somethinged. Veal breast is a REALLY fatty cut. We usually use shoulder, but our meat dude was out. No clue what to do with chunks of mostly veal fat with a bit of meat mixed in.
MH wants to ramp up sausage production next year since the 15 lbs batch of brats wasn't significantly more effort than the 5 lbs batches, but I'm putting my foot down on the ducks. 6 ducks is enough ducks. It took a full day for all the fat to render and then I maxed out my biggest dutch oven for the confit and it was still burbling duck fat all over my oven. Last time that happened I ended up lighting my oven on fire.
The only bummer about this is that it's only a fraction of what we usually do since there is SUPPOSED to also be some jams and jellys and truffles and peppermint patties. But I just didnt' find time to make the chocolates, and the jams and jellies were supposed to happen back in the fall and just didn't. We do have hot sauce and infused vodka though.
Post by eponinepontmercy on Dec 22, 2014 10:14:28 GMT -5
I need to become BFFs with wawa and her DH before next Christmas.
I made hot chocolate mix (pro tip: do not put cocoa powder in the food processor) and marshmallows. I haven't tried to get the marshmallows out of the pan to cut them yet, thought. That's going to be the hard part.
This dude just sent these stock photographs of female students and their hair and makeup is just terrible. WTF Shutterstock you are lowering your standards.
Post by 2curlydogs on Dec 22, 2014 10:31:43 GMT -5
Guess whose orders via some crappy Amazon third party that I placed mid-week last week were just CANCELLED with no notice and now I have to scramble to find replacements?
Which means entering the 9th Circle of Hell, also known as Toys R Us, 3 days before Christmas.
I'm going to have a brain aneurysm from this thread this morning.
it's cause I give that much control of my life to caffeine, isn't it? It's a disease. Just when I think I've kicked it, the craving comes back with a fierceness.
I really should have taken this whole week off. I don't have much to keep me busy and I have no motivation at all. There's also a lot of things I could be doing elsewhere, like raiding wawa's fridge.
wawa What do you use to grind your pork? We have a KA attachment and it sucks it for pork (works quite nicely for beef though).
DH wants to become the homemade sausage/brat king but our current grinder situation is making him sad/angry/insufferable.
We use the KA attachment. The pork has to be really really cold though. We chunk it and put it in the freezer while we prep everything else. If it's just fridge cold it squishes. We also freeze the grinder attachment itself so it's also cold. And if we're going more than 5 lbs at a time we pause and stick the grinder in the freezer again to rechill.
We were talking about getting a dedicated grinder - but the electric ones powerful enough to make a separate appliance worthwhile are really expensive. Doing stuff like the 15 lbs of brats really pushes the KA though - it gets HOT. We might get a hand crank grinder though just for the hell of it since they aren't that much.
ETA: I assume you have a standalone stuffer, yes? Because the stuffer attachment for the KA grinder is worse than useless.
wawa What do you use to grind your pork? We have a KA attachment and it sucks it for pork (works quite nicely for beef though).
DH wants to become the homemade sausage/brat king but our current grinder situation is making him sad/angry/insufferable.
We use the KA attachment. The pork has to be really really cold though. We chunk it and put it in the freezer while we prep everything else. If it's just fridge cold it squishes. We also freeze the grinder attachment itself so it's also cold. And if we're going more than 5 lbs at a time we pause and stick the grinder in the freezer again to rechill.
We were talking about getting a dedicated grinder - but the electric ones powerful enough to make a separate appliance worthwhile are really expensive. Doing stuff like the 15 lbs of brats really pushes the KA though - it gets HOT. We might get a hand crank grinder though just for the hell of it since they aren't that much.
ETA: I assume you have a standalone stuffer, yes? Because the stuffer attachment for the KA grinder is worse than useless.
We have the KA stuffer and it sucks ass. DH wants a stand alone one but has no idea which kind to get. Do you have any recommendations?
We use the KA attachment. The pork has to be really really cold though. We chunk it and put it in the freezer while we prep everything else. If it's just fridge cold it squishes. We also freeze the grinder attachment itself so it's also cold. And if we're going more than 5 lbs at a time we pause and stick the grinder in the freezer again to rechill.
We were talking about getting a dedicated grinder - but the electric ones powerful enough to make a separate appliance worthwhile are really expensive. Doing stuff like the 15 lbs of brats really pushes the KA though - it gets HOT. We might get a hand crank grinder though just for the hell of it since they aren't that much.
ETA: I assume you have a standalone stuffer, yes? Because the stuffer attachment for the KA grinder is worse than useless.
We have the KA stuffer and it sucks ass. DH wants a stand alone one but has no idea which kind to get. Do you have any recommendations?
We have this: www.lemproducts.com/product/5lb-stainless-steel-vertical-sausage-stuffer/sausage-stuffers Totally recommend. It's super easy to use. And it's easy to clean - though we also got the cleaning kit just so we'd have brushes that fit in the tubes and a spray can of food grade silicone. If you have two people you don't even need to clamp it down - it cranks so smoothly that it just takes a hand on top steadying it and it doesn't move an inch. If you clamp it down you can easily stuff solo. And the plunger goes all the way to the bottom of the cylinder so you have next to no unstuffed excess - just what's still in the tube.
I remember hemming and hawing over spending that much (ours was like....5? years ago so it might have been a bit cheaper, but still) but we don't regret it a bit. The KA stuffer attachment makes shitty sausage and is a nightmare to use compared to this.
I've also been pleased with LEM's customer service, and they sell replacement parts for all their stuff which is cool.
I need to become BFFs with wawa and her DH before next Christmas.
I made hot chocolate mix (pro tip: do not put cocoa powder in the food processor) and marshmallows. I haven't tried to get the marshmallows out of the pan to cut them yet, thought. That's going to be the hard part.
I'm envisioning a brick-colored cloud wafting through the house, LOL
wawa Thanks! That is one that DH has on the list of possibilities. But the price has been holding us back, this may be the push to just get it. But we get a shitton of meat every year (whole pig/1/4 steer) that we have to come up with stuff to do with it and sausages and keilbasas and brats are a great way to do that.
I need to become BFFs with wawa and her DH before next Christmas.
I made hot chocolate mix (pro tip: do not put cocoa powder in the food processor) and marshmallows. I haven't tried to get the marshmallows out of the pan to cut them yet, thought. That's going to be the hard part.
I'm envisioning a brick-colored cloud wafting through the house, LOL
It made a bigger mess than when I use the food processor to grind up candy canes for peppermint meringues. There was a thick ring of cocoa powder on the counter. It was one of those moments that make me question my own intelligence.
wawa Thanks! That is one that DH has on the list of possibilities. But the price has been holding us back, this may be the push to just get it. But we get a shitton of meat every year (whole pig/1/4 steer) that we have to come up with stuff to do with it and sausages and keilbasas and brats are a great way to do that.
Oh then hell yes you should get it. I've not tried any other brands, but generally, all metal, stainless removable cylinder, vertical stuffer is what you want. MH was even making noises about upgrading to a 15 lb model, but I don't think that really needs to happen.
Question - when you get a whole pig - how specific can you/do you get on the butchering? And what does the overall price per pound end up at? And do you get the trotters and head, or no? And what do you do with the hams?
(can you tell we've been thinking about getting a whole pig?)