Category: Family

Beef Kebabs

I am shocked, shocked I tell you! that my children actually enjoyed this recipe.  I’m not sure why, perhaps they have given up all hope of enjoying a decent meal from my kitchen and now sullenly submit to my demands that they eat the goddamn food that I paid for and worked hard to put in front of them and it’s not like you do any chores around…  Ahem.  I got a little off track here.

Whatever the reason, they ate this one on my first attempt.

These are basically middle-eastern meatballs.  You can cut in other things with the meat, serve them in a variety of ways, whatever floats your boat.  (I rather enjoyed wrapping them in some naan with rice.)  It’s a meatball.  It’s the spices that make it.

The oven instructions are below.  We haven’t grilled them yet, but they should do great, just use a little grill-sense.  It’s a reasonably easy and fast recipe, ~20 minutes to prep and ~20 minutes to cook.

The recipe plus rice and other sides makes enough for 6-8 people.

Ingredients

  • 2 pounds of ground beef – don’t get a lean mix!  80-85% seems good
    • mix in other ground meats as your fancy takes you, but you need some fats – don’t go too lean
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley, or 1/4 cup dried
  • 1/2 small onion, diced fine
  • 1 red bell pepper, diced fine
  • Garlic, 3-4 minced cloves
  • Paprika, 1 tsp
  • Salt, 1 tsp
  • Cumin, 1/2 tsp
  • Pepper, 1/2 tsp

Directions

If you plan on skewering the meat, and you’re using bamboo or wood skewers, soak them in water for ~30 mins.

  1. Preheat oven too 350°
  2. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl (don’t overmix)
  3. Form the mix into oblong patties, about kielbasa-thick
    • If you’re skewering, shove in the skewers now or form the patties around the skewers
  4. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes, or grill for ~20 minutes, flipping at least once
  5. For the last couple of minutes turn on the broiler to brown the meat

Usual disclaimer with ground meat dishes: make sure the internal temp is at least 160° before serving.

Serve with some traditional middle-eastern sides, like:

  • Naan bread
  • Tabbouleh
  • Cucumbers and cherry tomatoes
  • Rice

kebab with rice and naan

Stir-Fried Udon Noodles with Pork

Pan-fried Udon Noodles with Pork

Delicious noodles
Print Recipe
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Course Main Course
Cuisine Asian
Servings 4 people
Calories 570 kcal

Equipment

  • 1 Skillet large, like 14" cast iron
  • 1 bowl heat-safe

Ingredients
  

  • 3 tbsp Sesame oil
  • 1 bag Slaw mix, dry or about 4 cups chopped cabbage
  • 14 oz Instant udon noodles discard flavor packets, if included
  • 1 pound Ground pork
  • 1 bunch Scallions roughly half-dozen stalks, chopped and separated green from pale
  • 2 tsp Ginger Finely grated or minced
  • 1 tsp Crushed red pepper flakes
  • 1/3 cup Mirin
  • 1/3 cup Soy sauce
  • 1 tbsp Sesame seeds optional

Instructions
 

  • Put on a pot of water to boil, for the noodles later
  • Heat a tablespoon of oil in your skillet over medium-high heat
  • Add cabbage/slaw to the skillet, tossing often, until edges are brown. Reduce heat and continue cooking until thickest parts of the cabbage are tender.
    Remove from heat and transfer cabbage to bowl
  • Wipe out skillet, add a tablespoon of oil, and bring back to medium heat
  • Add pork to skillet, break it up, and cook until browned. Once the meat is broken up, don't keep fussing with it, give it a chance to get browner bits.
  • Once water from step 1 is boiling, turn off heat and add noodles.
    Let noodles sit for 1 minute, then drain. Toss with 1 tablespoon of oil and transfer to bowl with cabbage. Mix together.
  • To the pork, add the pale scallion bits, ginger, and red pepper flakes. Toss for a minute or so, until scallions start to soften.
  • Add noodles and cabbage, mirin, and soy sauce to skillet. Mix until noodles are well-coated with sauce.
  • Remove from heat and toss in green scallion bits and sesame seeds (if desired).

Notes

  • Requires a large skillet.  Our 14″ cast iron is the perfect size.  It’s not quite a one-pot meal, because there’s a swap of ingredients in the middle, but it’s close.
  • Mirin is like sweet sake syrup.  The Japanese equivalent of cooking sherry, you should be able to find bottles of it in the grocery store.
  • The original recipe was pretty strict about amounts, but we’ve found that this recipe is pretty tolerant of variation.
Keyword cabbage slaw, ground pork, noodles

Adapted from https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/stir-fried-udon-with-pork

Quarantine: Reflections From Week 1

After the first full week of quarantine, some observations.

  1. The public has gone completely crazy.

    By last weekend people had purchased all available stocks of toilet paper, paper towels, kleenex, and ibuprofen. Store shelves were completely bare across the nation.There was no real shortage. Panic buying and speculation rules the day. Stores have mercifully instituted per-person maximum purchases to ensure availability for the unlucky or slow-to-act, so paper products are starting to trickle back onto the shelves.

    whateverToday the shortages are pasta, rice, french fries, and pepperoni. We couldn’t find any presliced pepperoni in Market Basket.

    The veggie aisle continues to be well-stocked, except bananas. (but that’s not completely out of the ordinary.)
  2. Unemployment claims are rising precipitously.  Experts are warning that we could reach 20% unemployment this year.
  3. Street traffic has ticked up a bit.  Presumably people are starting to venture out, but not soon enough to save local small businesses.
  4. Restaurants are still closing, but takeout pizza joints are booming.

    We decided to relax and order pizza from Tremezzo’s Pizza last night.  Megh called in an order at 4:40 pm.  It took nearly an hour for pickup.
  5. Starbucks, as one of the last remaining food service businesses open, is at least as busy as before.  It’s limited to drive-thru and pre-order service (nobody allowed inside) and the line of cars just about reaches the main road.
  6. The kids actually wanted to go out for a drive.

    Last night we went across the street with our pizza and salad for a very fun dinner with Debbie and Tom, followed by a round of cribbage.

    mild shockWhen we got back home around 8 pm the kids asked us to go out for a drive.

    They haven’t been in a car for over a week.  They’ve been outside, but there’s nowhere to go so none of us have been further than the grocery store.  Their friends can’t come out.  It’s weird to go so long without going anywhere, I think it’s comforting to do something familiar like sit in the car.

    We swung by McDonald’s for a treat and just… drove around, the four of us.  We went out to North Reading, swung through Reading, and came home.  It’s weird, but I have to admit that it was relaxing to drive.

    Bonus: there were hardly any cars on the road.

Looking ahead, it seems that we might have to collectively hunker down for months, perhaps a year, perhaps more.

Family Chronicle: COVID-19

“The real winner of this pandemic are the nation’s dogs, who are experiencing unprecedented levels of People Being Home”

If you’re reading this far enough in the future, a bit of context may be needed.

As SARS-CoV-2 entered the United States a few weeks ago, we collectively looked at the ongoing experiences of China and Italy and jokingly compared it to Captain Trips.  Meghan and I studied the history of the Spanish Flu looking for parallels and worst-case scenarios.

The lessons learned from 1918 are being applied by health officials right now, in an effort to avoid a healthcare-system-crushing pandemic.  We can’t avoid contracting the virus, that is clear, but perhaps we can prevent everyone from catching it all at once.

In the middle of last week schools in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts started closing as a preemptive measure.  Many businesses did as well, including my own.  A few did not until they were ordered to. This all mirrors the experiences (and failures) in other countries that were hit by the virus first.

dogs experiencing unprecendented levels of humans being home

As I write this, the governor has ordered all schools closed for at least three weeks.  Large gatherings are prohibited, originally capped at 250 people and now capped at 25.

“These gatherings include all community, civic, public, leisure, faith-based events, sporting events with spectators, concerts, conventions and any similar event or activity that brings together 25 or more people in single room or a single space at the same time.”

— Governor Charlie Baker, March 15 2020

The ban also prohibits eating at restaurants (take-out and delivery are still allowed).  By extension that essentially closes most bars, since you can’t take drinks to go.  Bars garnered a lot of bad press over the weekend as people noted lines “out the door” at many downtown Boston establishments.

So basically we could go out if we really wanted to, but there’s no where to go right now.

Grocery stores are still allowed to be open, so people can buy things eat, but the doomsday preppers have effectively cleaned the shelves.  Stores have struggled to keep essentials in stock, including (oddly) paper products like toilet paper, kleenex, and paper towels, as well as the true essentials that never spoil, like bread, milk, and eggs.  Meghan witnessed someone buying five gallons of milk on Saturday. It’s like snow is coming.

french toast alert system updates for corona virus

Some businesses are instituting, or are relying on, work-from-home policies; unfortunately others, especially service-oriented jobs, are sending people home without pay.

I’m fortunate that I can work from home.  We’ve cleaned out the office so I can get real work done, and made a spot for Butter to curl up.  Meghan’s situation is a little murky, but so far as we can tell she will continue to be paid for the duration.

The kids are starting to get remote assignments from school.  I expect the pace will pick up now that a longer, mandatory stay-at-home order is in place.  Some schools in harder-hit areas have stayed open because they support homeless and needy children, providing much-needed meals and warm places to wash up.

Baba has been asking for advice on what social events to attend.  (answer: zero.)  My own parents have continued to live like nothing has changed, though they’re a bit less social than Baba.  All three grand-parental-units are in multiple high-risk groups.  Connecticut has been less affected by the outbreak so far.  I’ve got my fingers crossed that they’ll come through without contracting it.

SpeedSnail! Where are you?

I got a fish tank a year or so ago. It’s one of those Back to the Roots garden tanks that support a betta and three plant buckets. We had an alge problem, so we added a snail. He gets around a lot, so we call him the SpeedSnail.

(The fish is Fish Stick. It’s what was for dinner the night we brought him home.)

Yesterday, I noticed that the tank walls were getting a little brown. I decided today was the day to clear the counters and do some maintenance on the tank. The first part of that maintenance is to take out the plant pots.

So, I take out the middle pot. The roots are a little long, but not bad. Take out the far left pot. That one is ew and I may need to invest in new growth rocks. Then comes the one with the spider plant in it. This was an experimental plant. I look in the pot and notice one of the rocks looks strangely smooth. And round.

We collect shells. I have several snail shells from various beaches and our yard. So the obvious first thought is, “who put one of the shells in there?”

Then I look at the tank, and all the alge. I look at the tiger-striped shell in my pot. And SpeedSnail took a quick trip back into the tank.

He must have climbed up the feeding tube, gotten across the rocks, and discovered there was no water up there. He sealed himself up, and waited for the water to come back.

I watched him for a while before I left to meet Quinn for lunch, and spotted him sneaking a peak from inside his shell. When I got back to the house, he was busy hoovering up alge as fast as he could.

So, the snail had an adventure. The tank will get nice and clean again. FishStick can make aggressive moves against a tank-mate that can’t care less about what he’s doing.

All is well.

A project elided

After a few too many close calls, I approached the town about making our street and another into one-way lanes.  A counter-clockwise, 1.7 mile loop around the lake.

SilverLake, Wilmington MA
Silver Lake, bounded by Main, Lake, and Grove

The town said “no” for some very good reasons.  I knew they would, but I had to give it a try.  They paid the courtesy of taking it seriously, giving me a meeting with various officials, and explaining the reasons.

I had put an actual proposal together in case this went further.  I include it here for posterity.  Read it here: Better Traffic Around Silver Lake

Anchors Aweigh!

Living where we do, with a high water table, houses are obligated to have a large hole in the floor of the basement called a “sump“.  For those lucky enough to not know, a sump’s job is to collect groundwater before it seeps up through the floor of the basement.  You then evacuate the water with a pump, colloquially (and quite logically) known as a “sump pump”.

A sump pump is a replaceable part.  The typical lifetime is supposed to be around ten years, give or take.

We last replaced our pump in 2014.  I purchased a replacement unit from “Watchdog” that proclaimed it’s longevity, speed, and reliability.  This is that same unit, a mere five years later:

decrapitated watchdog sump pump
Notice the hole in the side of the housing. It was not there when I purchased and installed the unit.

The unit continued to work in some condition, until it didn’t.  It completely failed during a heavy December rainstorm this weekend.  I came into the basement early Saturday morning to find ankle-deep water on the floor.

Woe unto the person who does not have a water alarm or redundant standby sump pump.  That person would be me.

The pump is now replaced with a unit from a different manufacturer.  Hopefully this one stands up to the elements a little better.  We’re working on a water alarm as well.

Winter, New England Style

Ah, winter in New England. Go home, winter, you’re already drunk and it’s barely December.

Last week we had a snowstorm and we were home-bound for three days.  School was cancelled on Monday and Tuesday.  I worked from home both days and slowly dug out in the afternoons.

Snow on the back deck
We finally leveled out with over a foot of snow

A week later, temperatures reached 60° F.  I was walking around in shorts and flip-flops.  (I might be weird, but you have to admit that it wasn’t weather-inappropriate.)  The clouds dropped two inches of water on us.  With nowhere for the water to go, there are puddles and ponds everywhere.

Last night, the temperature rapidly dropped, the rain turned to snow, and we got a couple or more inches.  At least the end of the day cleared up with some sun.  The snowmelt, which became treacherous as night fell, was downright beautiful for a while.

Ice caught in mid-freeze
This water on the back of my car hadn’t finished freezing when I walked by.

Tonight, as I left the house to take the dog for an icy, slippery walk, I saw signs that we had some visitors during the day.  A hawk snatched a meal from our front yard.  Meghan left our Thanksgiving bundle of corn out for the birds and squirrels; it seems that we’re feeding the whole neighborhood instead.

Imprint of hawk wing in snow
Some small animal and a hawk came to our front yard expecting a meal. Only one of them was disappointed.

By this weekend we’re expecting to be back in the 50s with more rain.  The rollercoaster that is our local weather continues.  Whee!

Its been a while

I haven’t been posting much lately. Lets see what I’ve bee up to:

  • I’ve repaired 6 Chromebooks this week. There will be more tomorrow.
  • Apple is replacing a damaged iPad because I am wicked polite and prepared with documentation.
  • I’m not going up the 20′ ladder. Just no.
  • I’ve finished yet another stocking, except for the name. I’m putting it off because I’m not sure about placement. Probably, I should make it easy to remove and change if they want to.
  • Accidentally ruined my favorite hiking boots.
  • Took some pictures.
  • Knit a hat.
  • Bought Christmas cards. I’ll start filling them out as soon as I’m done with the stocking.

All in all, life has been pretty good!