Month: April 2010

Water Buffalo is TASTY

/ hsoi / 8 Comments

So a couple days ago I harvested a water buffalo.

I took the bulk of the meat to the butcher to be processed, but I kept a couple smaller pieces for myself to try out. I assume these are the tenderloins. You know the backstraps? They’re on the back of the spine. These cuts came from the front of the spine, down by the hips. Not very big.

I left them sitting in a pan in the fridge for about a day. The meat is red, very akin to beef. But there’s almost NO fat, no marbling. Maybe saw a dot of white here and there, but it’s mostly all just red meat.

I took the loins (I’m going to assume that’s what they are), cleaned them up, then cut off a couple small pieces (maybe 1/3″ thick?) and threw them into the frying pan. Totally plain. All I wanted to do was taste the pure meat with nothing to season it: no salt, no pepper, no smoke, no nothing. I want to know what this meat tastes like pure and simple, then we have a baseline and can figure from there what to do with it.

Oh Lord. It’s delicious. 🙂

It’s almost beef. I can’t put my finger on just what it is, because it isn’t cow beef. But it’s amazingly close in flavor. I figure if someone didn’t know what they were eating, they’d figure by the flavor they were eating cow beef. I want to say it’s a little richer tasting, a little stronger, but like strong in a good flavorful way… not like strong “gamey” or anything like that. Basically if you like beef, you’ll like this. Nothing to be afraid of.

Texture tho is different. I don’t want to say the meat is tougher than beef because I don’t think that conveys the right impression. It’s tender; sure cooking affects this and in my case it was in a medium heat pan for minute or two on one side then flip and another minute or two, just until you started to see the juices sweating through the flesh on the “up side”. But there’s certainly a little more chew to it than beef. Now, when we cut the loin to make these pieces we just cut. Looks like we ended up cutting with the grain. We made a few more slices against the grain and tried those. Made a fair improvement, but Wife pointed out something. Going against the grain helps on the initial chew, but after a little chewing it’s still the same sort of “chew” feeling in your mouth because the slicing only breaks it down so far… the rest of the breaking down that chewing does well, it’s the same in the end. But don’t let this deter you. It’s really not that bad, just different from beef.

Frankly, I’m stoked! 🙂

So, we’re about to commit heresy in the eyes of some. We’re chicken frying it. 🙂  Slicing up the loins against the grain, about 1/4″ to 1/3″ thick. A little flour, salt, and pepper (no heavy crust, just dusting), then into the pan they’ll go. Should be damn fine eating. Yeah it’s not high class, but I really don’t care. I’m about to wind up with a lot of it in the freezer… I’ll be able to be high-class and low-class and everywhere in between.

I’m certainly curious to see how the rest will turn out. For instance, how will steaks be? How will low and slow cooked roasts be? A beef roast in a crock pot could take 6 hours… would this need 8 or 10? A lot to figure out, but it’ll be fun.

Happy Earth Day

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Go hug a tree or something.

Me? I shall probably celebrate by dining on an animal I harvested myself… deer, hog, or more likely, sampling that water buffalo. Talk about your free-range organic meat.

I need your help identifying an animal

/ hsoi / 12 Comments

Frequent readers know we have a lot of muscovy ducks around our house and neighborhood.

A few weeks ago one of the hens that really likes our house set up another nest. She’s nested here before. This nest has maybe 12-15 eggs in it now. She was a very dedicated mother. And of course, the kids grew very attached to her (named her “Nessie”).

This morning we checked on the nest. Nessie wasn’t there, which is unusual. I saw a lot of feathers around the nest, not just down, full feathers. I looked around a bit more and saw more feathers in a line going back to my neighbor’s backyard gate. Then you could see how the dirt was moved, indicating something was dragged/pulled under the gate. I opened the gate, saw an egg shell, but no more “line” of feathers. But as I got towards the neighbor’s back fence, I saw a mess of feathers in an area. At this point in the back fence there’s an obvious area under the fence that something can squeeze under, and sure enough there were more feathers on the other side of the fence… off into the greenbelt.

So as far as I can tell, Nessie was attacked, dragged off, and eaten last night. 😦

Of course, this is life, this is nature. Kids understand that, but it’s still a sad day as Nessie has been around for quite a while and been a dedicated mother. Plus now the kids wonder about the nest of eggs… will another duck adopt them? We actually have a second nest from another hen also at the house and we’re thinking about moving the eggs to her nest. We’ll see. Still to be determined.

The bigger question is…. what could have taken her?

This is where I’m requesting your help.

Raccoon? Maybe. Fox? Maybe. While my reading says they could take a duck, it’s unlikely they would. Muscovy’s are larger ducks. They have claws in their feet (they are perching ducks). They can make noise and put up a fight. These are not the sort of targets for a raccoon or a fox, especially when there’s a ton of eggs for easy pickings.

Possum? No.

So… what? Could it be a coyote? Possible. We do hear them howling every so often, but haven’t in some time.

Bobcat? That’s my father-in-law’s guess.

If that’s the case, I’m not happy about that. I don’t need a bobcat around.

I have a game camera. I’m going to set it up. Maybe too late for that, but my hope is whatever it was will know this is a spot with food and will come back within the week to try again. Hopefully I’ll catch something on film.

Updated: Game camera set. We’ll see if it turns up anything.

The area under the fence gate measures about 4″. Not a problem for some things to wiggle through.

Went looking in the greenbelt for more traces. Oldest found something that looks like scat and could be bobcat scat, but we aren’t 100% sure.

Present signs are pointing to a bobcat. Just what I need….

Verbose booting

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

While the Mac prides itself on being so user friendly, it’s a computer like any other… written by humans… worked on by humans… and so, there’s always a chance for problems and things to go wrong.

One handy thing to do is to set your Mac to boot into verbose mode. This way when your Mac boots, instead of just seeing the spinning daisy and other pretty non-informative information, you can see all this stream of geeky stuff going by. You probably won’t know nor care what most of it means, and that’s fine. But there will come that day when something odd will happen. Maybe you installed something new, maybe something on the computer decided to go south, and now the machine acts strange at boot time. This is when you’ll be happy to have booted up in verbose mode. Even if you don’t understand what’s going on, being able to relay that information to your local geek helper can be useful towards remedying your problem.

There are two ways to do it.

The simple way is to hold down a key combo at boot time: command-v. That is, hold down the command key and the “v” key as soon as you hear the restart chime. The command key is the key immediately adjacent to the spacebar, with the Apple and little “cloverleaf” symbol on it (I tried to display the symbol here, but WordPress is acting strange). The verbose mode should start immediately and most obviously, and then you can release the key combo. The benefit of this approach is it’s on-demand, but the downside of this approach is it’s on-demand; once the boot sequence starts, you cannot press cmd-v to see what’s going on so if something ugly happens during the boot process you won’t see it.

A more permanent solution is to launch the Terminal.app and enter this command at the prompt:

sudo nvram boot-args="-v"

Which will pass the “verbose” option to the boot arguments stored in the nvram of the machine. This way every time you boot your machine it will boot in verbose mode. This is how I set every Mac I own. 99% of the time I don’t care what’s scrolling by on screen, but there are days when I’m glad to see the information going by.

One thing to note. If you zap your PRAM (command-option-p-r at the boot chime) it will clear the nvram and your verbose argument will be lost. So when zapping your PRAM, zap it, and as soon as the machine chimes again immediately press cmd-v to go into verbose mode. Then once the machine is properly started up and you have logged in, launch the Terminal.app and enter the nvram command.

BUG transition practice

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

Do you carry a BUG (Back-Up Gun)?

Do you practice with the BUG? By that I mean all the same skills you practice with your primary piece.

Do you practice drawing the BUG from where you carry it? Do you carry your BUG in an ankle holster? Do you practice drawing from it? Maybe you can’t at the range, but at least you can dry practice it at home. Can you draw from this location? Do you carry in a pocket holster? Can you get the gun in a good grip, out and on target in time? If not, reconsider your BUG carry location, or at least acknowledge to yourself the limits and constraints of the location and work within those bounds. Or perhaps you just may need more practice.

Do you practice transitioning from your main carry gun to your BUG? In the heat of a confrontation, transitioning to the BUG may involve dropping your carry gun on the ground and going for the BUG. If the S is H’ing TF, I don’t care what happens to my main gun (i.e. hits ground and breaks), but in practice I do care. I will practice this sort of transition over the bed, so when I drop I know my main gun is landing safely. This isn’t practicing so much about dropping my gun as it is drawing the BUG, but I also want to allow myself to know “yes it’s OK to just drop the gun… don’t waste time trying to find it a home like in the holster… the ground is a perfectly acceptable home when the fur is flying.”

If you carry a BUG, by definition it’s a second gun. That means the likely way you’ll get to it is because your first gun is no longer operational, thus transitions are something to practice. And don’t forget, practice going the other way too (BUG to primary) because sometimes it may go that way.

Sunday Metal – Broken Teeth

/ hsoi

OK, so maybe it’s not metal like Meshuggah, but hey… Austin, Texas’ own Broken Teeth kicks ass.

What I love about this video for “Viva La Rock, Fantastico” is well… the video. McMaster’s got an iPod in his ear for the audio feed, then a camera in his hand, and appears to just be wandering the streets in downtown Austin filming. Kinda cheesy, kinda cheap, but also kinda cool. 🙂

Check more details at Blabbermouth.

I feel safer, don’t you?

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I knew they were starting them at a young age.

Meet America’s tiniest terrorist: 6-year-old Allison Mosher, who’s landed on the nation’s No Fly List alongside mad bombers and other villainous thugs in a mind-boggling snafu that could scuttle her family’s Grand Canyon vacation, her outraged dad says.

We’re assured the list is accurate. So I guess little Allison must have seriously threatened someone that took her pillow at naptime or brought her white milk instead of chocolate when it was time for snacks. I guess Al Qaeda is infiltrating our playgrounds, making swing-sets the next big target.

But the list must be accurate. The TSA told us so:

Ann Davis, a TSA spokeswoman, said that because there are no children on the No Fly List…

No children on the No Fly List, like 6-year-old child Allison Mosher, who is on the No Fly List.

Yes yes. We have nothing to worry about. This is all for our safety.

Ronald Reagan said it best:

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.

BBQ Not Found

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

A few days ago I was in a business that had lots of old vehicle license plates decorating the walls. Some were just plain plates, others were vanity plates. One in particular caught my eye. Given it’s age (well before the Internet) I have to assume it the combination of letters and numbers was coincidence. I forgot to get a picture, but I can’t forget what the plate said:

BBQ 404

All I could think to myself was “BBQ not found? How sad.” 🙂

Tips from the blotter

/ hsoi

From time to time, scan your local Police Blotter. Sometimes you find directly useful tips to avoid crime. In other cases, you could try putting yourself into that situation and figuring out what you would do. It’s a tip from Tom Givens… figure out the plays beforehand so you have a script (and one that’s debugged) before it happens to you.

While reading this morning I came across this entry about two men arrested for a Craigslist scam.

Police said victims would see an ad on Craigslist for an iPhone and would contact the seller to meet. All four meetings were set up in a business parking lot between the hours of 10:15 and 11:30 p.m.

Police said Jenkins and Anderson would get the victim to an isolated area in the parking lot and then rob the victim using weapons and physical force.

Business parking lot is good, as it’s a public place and likely well-lit at night. But that’s also a problem: meeting at night. As well, you should stay in a very public part of the lot, not be taken to an isolated area. The blotter entry echos these tips:

Police are advising that people follow the following safety tips when meeting someone to sell or buy something from an online ad: arrange the meeting in very public places with plenty of people around; avoid, at all costs, being directed to an isolated area of a parking lot; attempt to obtain as much identifying information on subject prior to meeting; do not go alone, take people with you; avoid meeting after dark.

All good tips.

Daughter recently sold a collection of toys on Craigslist. The buyer lived in Lockhart, so when we went to arrange details for the transaction I figured it wouldn’t hurt to go to Lockhart — exchange the goods and pick up some awesome BBQ. When I went to arrange the details, we met on a Sunday morning around 10:00 AM in the gravel parking lot of Smitty’s BBQ. That’s a high traffic area, given it’s right on US-183 — the main road through town; plus, it’s Smitty’s on a Sunday, which is going to have the church crowd and the weekend visitors all around. It was for the safety of both the seller and the buyer. Make it as public and safe as possible. All things I pointed out to Daughter. Good things to learn.