perfidy

Summer's coming, and with it, a desire for lighter and fizzier beers that both taste great and are less... filling. I haven't made a light beer since the fall, having stashed away enough stout (sort of stout, anyway...), porter, and Belgian strong ale to last me through the cold months. But with the warmer weather it's time now for lawnmowers, short pants, and deck chairs, and with them, brews like...

Atlantic Pale Ale

Ingredients:
5 lbs Munton & Fison Pale Dry Malt Extract
1/2 lb Crystal malt, 40L
4 oz Crystal malt, 20L
2 oz Crystal malt, 60L
1 1/4 oz Northern Brewer hops, 7.6% AAU
1 oz Cascade hops, 6% AAU
1 oz East Kent Goldings hops, 6% AAU
White Labs #0001, California Ale Yeast (liquid)

Steeped crystal malts in muslin bag in 1 gallon water at 155-170 degrees for 45 minutes as I brought 2.3 gallons water to a boil in my main brew kettle. Added steeping water to brew kettle and swirled muslin bag in water to get all the delicious, delicious malt flavor out.

Brought wort to a boil; added 1 1/4 ounces Northern Brewer hops and started the brew clock. At 40 minutes, added 1/4 ounce each Cascade and EKG hops for flavor. At 55 minutes, added 3/4 oz each Cascade and EKG hops for plenty of aroma.

Cooled brew kettle in bathtub with cold water and 25 lbs ice and a few freezer packs just for the heck of it. We got down from 212 to 110 degrees in about half an hour. Added wort to fermenting bucket and added 2 1/2 gallons chilled boiled water to make up about 5.2 gallons total. Pitched yeast at 76 degrees and stashed in the closet where the hot water pipes run. Let's see how this goes...

OG: 1.049

I'm going for a pretty standard American Pale Ale, on the golden side of the color spectrum and with a good balance of light malt sweetness and a forward but not overpowering bitterness. Cascade hops have that characteristic citrusy/floral scent that we all know and love from Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and East Kent Goldings have a grapefruity, fruity, spicy flavor that melds well with them. One's the defining hop of American brewing, one's the defining hop of some of the greatest beers the Empire ever produced, so, Atlantic Pale Ale.

[wik] Fermentation began in about 12 hours and the 24 hour mark is going nuts. Nuts!! Moved it out of the closet to a cooler area once fermentation began - I don't want to make the yeast overexcited so that they produce funny tastes. It's fermenting at about 74 degrees, which is a little (lot) high. Ehh. It'll be fine.

[alsø wik] At bottling it was... fine. In fact better than fine. Totally delicious. Fantastic. Unbelievable. Ambrosial. So that's nice. Um... ahem. Primed with 4 oz corn sugar at bottling. Made a short recipe - only about 4.75 gallons at the most for some reason. Hm. Better make more!!

Er, Monopoly. New adventures in Monopoly.

It's America's favorite socially acceptable expression of raw capitalism, made manifest in cardboard and psychedelic currency. No other single gaming product better teaches the lesson that it is good to be a have, and that, by definition, the have-nots are losers.

Everyone has a copy somewhere, and most of you probably know where it is- closet, basement, attic- maybe even still set up from the night before on the big spool table in your living room. Maybe you still have the bits from your old set pressed into new missions: board to cover broken window; plain ol' "dice" turned into 2D6 and working for a Gary Gygax product; desperately gripping the racecar token- your final tangible asset since you sold off your last duplicative organ for real money- and used the last of the game money to kindle your hobo cooking fire and reflect on how you lost at life just as you lost every game of Monopoly you ever played...

Sssooooo.... yeah.

Hasbro is soliciting votes here for new spaces on an updated gameboard. And let's face it, we're due. However boring the gameplay is going to be, having Depression-era landmarks and cultural cues have not helped keep it fresh and interesting. And shit I've never even BEEN to Atlantic City. Matter of fact, the last time I went that far down the Garden State Parkway I wound up at the no-diamond-rated, non-luxury accomodations of the Department of Defense, a guest at Fort Dix' training barracks and the 4th Battalion, 39th Infantry. Not in a hurry to get back, thanks.

So. Among some of the changes are updated Chance and Community Chest cards to make them more relevant to our place and time. Maybe they replace "won $10 in a beauty contest" with "finalist on American Idol" or something. Gone are the railroads, in favor of airports like O'Hare and Hartsfield-Jackson.

What I don't get though are whether the sites that Hasbro is asking participants to vote on are the ones that will be bought and sold. I mean, you can't very well build a house on Hoover Dam, or sell Beacon Hill. I doubt there's enough raw currency in circulation on the planet to buy Beacon Hill, anyway. So if that's the plan, I don't like it. I respect efforts to modernize the look and feel of the game, but can't get behind the landmarks thing.

I think it would be better for each purchasable property on the board to represent an entire, actual city. So instead of just Atlantic Ave on the classic board, on the new board you'd buy Atlantic City. Keep it going: the purple spaces would be, say, Newark and Detroit; Hartford and DC would fit right about where Connecticut Ave is now, maybe closer to Baltic. Er, Detroit. Updated utilities might include Comcast or other high speed cable/ISP. Boston...hmmm...I'd say somewhere in the high yellow, into green properties. Maybe L.A. for Park Place, NYC for Boardwalk? Jail could still be jail, I guess; maybe zazz it up by making it Pelican Bay. Well, except then you'd probably never get out. Maybe instead of jail, it might be "debt", so that as long as you're "in debt" you pay the bank 27.99999999% interest on all your holdings? Then again, I don't want to work that hard computing interest to play a game.

Come to think of it, I've already worked too hard thinking about this game which I'm never going to play anyway.

If you care, go vote. If you don't care, you're a well-adjusted adult who outgrew Monopoly decades ago and I don't blame you. Or you're a communist, and hate the game anyway on principle.

Ziggurat now for great justice! The new Carnival of the Recipes is now up at a very fascinating website, The Ziggurat of Doom. They are a like collective of evil-doers and evil-averters, apparently working along a similar eschatological path as your very own Ministry of Minor Perfidy. They would do well to pay a friendly visit to the Catastratorium for dinner and vetting; this plane of existence is hopefully, but not assuredly, big enough for the both of us.

Otherwise, we will be forced to set up them the bomb.

Ministry readers are no doubt familiar with Yale's recent exercise in diversity admissions by enrolling former Taliban official Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi. Yes, it is in a non-degree program for non-traditional students, which some folks might feel makes it not so bad. But yes, he served the Taliban in an executive capacity and remains largely unrepentant of his earlier career in oppression, which rather trumps the details of whatever program he's in.

Yale continues to stonewall, issuing only a 100-odd-word statement to inquirers. The fallout over that extraordinarily poor decision, and the lack of response to critics of it, is like stepping in a big pile of poop. Then pretending that you don't smell it. Then when someone asks why you smell like that, you ask, "like what?"

There are some folks out there that have moved beyond shock and horror at this decision, and have gone straight into retribution. I don't know the stats, but certainly alumni giving will be down this year. It will have no effect on Yale's larger economic picture, given it's wealthier by far than a significant portion of the nations of the world. But at least by not giving to Yale this year you're not supporting an institution that rewards terrorists.

Others have been considering who better might be worthy of a free education at Yale, non-degree or otherwise. If someone were to ask me, "GL, who better to go to Yale for free than a former Taliban quasi-ambassador?", my first thought might be, "Um, everybody else other than that guy." After some thought, I was leaning toward my cat, Marco, who as half-Siamese and half-Burmese gets the South Asian tip, is neutered so in a sense transgendered, and is, I must emphasize, a cat- a trifecta of diversity goodness. He would be the only cat enrolled in the institution's history, would surely represent the feline perspective in campus life, and could work toward exposing the intolerance and ending the hate. Toward cats. And I should add that the Taliban in question has only slightly more formal education than my cat, so there's that too.

Upon more serious reflection though, I would answer General Khatol Mohammad Zai. General Zai is the only female general in the country, the only airborne soldier in the country (she's made 500-some jumps which is, in military jargon, nuts), and a single mom to boot. She does not command any men, and probably never will. But she has been a military officer for decades, and is certainly a symbol, perhaps an example for young women to emulate. Not sure about her earlier days as an officer at least nominally supporting the Russians in their fight against the mujaheddin, but hey, what's the worst that could happen- she's an old communist? Lord knows she wouldn't be the first of those running around New Haven.

Yale, give her a call. Invite her over. Give her an honorary degree or something. Just make some sort of effort to recognize that it's not OK to give free educations to people complicit in mass murder.

[wik]You know what, screw the honorary degree. Upon further reflection it would be much more valuable, both to broader society and Yale specifically, for General Zai to come to campus not to receive her Doctorate of Humane Letters, but to parachute in and just kick the shit out of Yale's precious Taliban man. I mean, to have a female Afghani paratrooper tear the ass out of the guy...well, that just makes sense to me.

Allan Janus: Puzzle or Enigma?

The Ministry realizes that most of its readership consists largely of rude and unsophisticated bumpkins, militaristic weapons fetishists, and bohemian music lovers with a sadly circumscribed mental horizon. As part of our ongoing attempt to provide at least a facsimile culture and erudition, we present part one of the Ministry Culture and Arts series.

Today, we focus on the works of Allan Janus, photographer, tintypist and occasional freelance dirigible pilot. A native of the Washington, DC, area, Janus cast a wavering eye on the life and landscape around him. He attempted to capture that vision on film. While the art establishment rightly ignored him, he soldiered on in near total anonymity. Over a period of decades, punctuated by the metronymic regularity of rejection notices, Janus acumulated an impressive (if only in bulk) body of work.

By far the most important collection of Janus' work is held by the Janus Foundation of Washington Grove, Maryland, which maintains the virtual Janus Museum. The Janus foundation is attempting to catalog Janus' work, but is hamstrung by a tragic lack of ready grant money or the generous support of wealthy and indiscriminate patrons.

Some examples from the Janus oeuvre:

Gaggle Advancing, Accokeek

Sheep may Safely Gaze, Accokeek, Maryland

Landscape with Devon Cow, Accokeek

Chef has departed the sunny highlands of South Park, Colorado for parts unknown. The reason? South Park has become infested with religious bigotry. While I might sympathize with Isaac - religious bigotry is not a pretty sight - one might have made with equal force the claim that South Park is banal and tasteless. Or homophobic, racist, speciesist, discrimatory towards those with mental, physical and spiritual handicaps, and in general highly offensive to celebrities.

In the words of Nathan Arizona (nee Huffheim), "that's its whole reason de etra." But is this the whole story? Did Chef realize only last Tuesday that the show is offensive to the faithful? SP co-founder Matt Stone has a different perspective:

He didn't come right out and say the word, but Stone is hinting strongly that Hayes is being a hypocrite when he says he's leaving "South Park" because of the way it treats religions. Stone says he feels Hayes' beef with the show stems only from the fact that the musician is a Scientologist and last year, the show began poking fun at his religion.

Stone said, "This is 100 percent having to do with his faith of Scientology. He has no problem -- and he's cashed plenty of checks -- with our show making fun of Christians."

Stone said they never heard a peep out of Hayes until they did a show on Scientology.

Well, if that is the case, I am not particularly surprised. Scientologists are a prickly lot. I imagine this is a natural result of maintaining faith in an artificial religion created by a hack science fiction writer on a bet.

I haven't watched the show in years, so Chef's departure will cause me no pain. Nevertheless, I am sure that the Ministry will join me in wishing Chef well as he ventures into the wide world beyond the borders of South Park. And maybe convert to a sensible religion, like The Church of Elvis, or the Mormons.

Last week it came to light that Yale had admitted a former quasi-ambassador of the Taliban. The Wall Street Journal was on it from the get-go, and new media outlets and bloggers are getting more heated about it. Jim Kouri at Sierra Times has a good summary of the issues and arguments at play here.

The chain of events seems to have gone that two apparently influential alumni talked a Dean into admitting the guy, despite his rather obvious connection to the Taliban, his lack of formal education, no visible means of support, and total unwillingness to divorce himself from Taliban-ic philosophy. A Yale rep later explained that they had already lost “one” (terrorist? jihadi?) to Harvard, and were eager to get one of their own.

We’ve all played the admissions game, and we’ve all lost it somewhere along the line. Aside from being the wrong race, and a veteran- already two tremendous hurdles to overcome- I always felt that I didn’t have the extracurriculars to really stand out in my applications. No captain of the football team, never started a homeless shelter, not once did I even help an old lady cross the street. Never in a million lifetimes though would I have thought that collapsing walls on homos and executing women for being slatternly would have put me on the fast track in the admissions office. Well it’s too late now.

What really got up my ass about it though was that he’s going for free. He must be. There is simply no way that this man has the economic resources to float any amount of time at Yale. Period. He’s not a citizen, so he isn’t borrowing from the gubmint; no Staffords for him, or Pells. I am highly skeptical that any private monies from a foundation or other grant-issuing organization would have anything to do with him. So there is no doubt that at least the huge majority of the cost of his attendance at Yale is being paid for by Yale.

But big privates like Yale get their money from private contributions, primarily from generous alumni giving. Shrewd investing of huge gifts grows the school’s endowment, which at the end of FY04 was closing in on $13 billion. That kind of bread means Yale can afford to put anyone it wants through for free, should the administration wish.

In essence, Yale’s own alumni are paying for this terrorist to go to Yale.

At this point in the discussion, it’s probably best to sit back and let things stew for a bit. Reflect on the links, the arguments, the themes and meta-themes at work, and then in a mellow and rational manner, quietly contemplate how best to exact vengeance.

Clinton Taylor at Townhall is on the right track, equating punishing the university with denying it donations. He recommends sending fake red fingernails to the Development Office, in recognition of the Taliban’s persecution of women who wore nail polish. The only very obvious problem is that he wants people to send these things to Development, which doesn't admit students. Admissions does. You’d be better off getting them to the President, or better yet, the Trustees, to send the message you want to send. And I can tell you what Yale is going to do about the uproar regarding this clown:

Nothing.

The university is sticking with its original story, that having an executive-level member of the most reprehensible government in recent memory attending is good. We can learn from him, you see. And the administration will wait for it to go away. Eventually attention will be diverted, things will calm down, and it’ll all be forgotten. The guy’s going to finish what he started, the Dean’s going to keep his job, no one’s going to look bad, and the world will continue to turn.

But Development is the right path to take to voice your displeasure. Fake nails aside, withholding donations is pretty much the only thing that gets a school’s attention in a serious and meaningful way. Money talks, people, and higher ed is a business. The problem with that tactic is that Yale is filthy stinking rich, and unless you’re prepared to mobilize thousands of wealthy alumni to withhold future giving, or renege on pledges already given, you’re not going to do much real damage.

But at the very least, by not giving your few dollars, you guarantee that no more of your own donations will go toward putting terrorists through your alma mater.

For the last two years or so, I have been carefully feeding and nurturing a collection of wild yeasts and bacteria that I call "Herman" and that other people can more comfortably call my sourdough starter. Kept in the refrigerator and taken out for occasional feedings, he's strong, hard-working and makes delicious bread. And writing about Herman in this way suddenly makes me feel like a bit of a creep.

Anyway. Any manservantish strangeness aside, I have developed a recipe for whole-wheat sourdough that I'm very fond of, and that's well suited for people who are new to working with sourdough cultures and the stickier doughs they create.

Johno's Miche

This large loaf is deeply flavored and rich with sweet, grainy and sour notes, and keeps for about a week at room temperature. It is modeled on French country loaves of past centuries, which would of course have been made with a nearly whole-grain flour and natural leavening. If you have trouble wrangling a 4-lb loaf, you can divide into two or three smaller loaves (reducing the baking time accordingly).

The recipe is based loosely on the famous pain Poilane of Lionel Poilane as adapted by baker Peter Reinhardt. Enjoy!!

Firm starter:

7 oz. well-fed and active barm (loose sourdough starter)
4.5 oz bread flour
4.5 oz whole-wheat flour OR 2.5 oz whole-wheat flour plus 2 oz medium rye flour
4 oz water, room temperature

Mix together and knead 2 to 3 minutes until all ingredients are well incorporated. Let rise about 4 hours at room temperature in bowl covered with plastic wrap and then put in refrigerator for up to 24 hours. This time in the fridge has two effects - to let enzymes in the flour go to work breaking out complex sugars from the starches, which gives immense depths of flavor, and to promote the growth of acetic-acid producing bacteria in the starter, which will tend to give a sharper sour flavor to the finished loaf. A full discussion of sourdough cultures and how to manipulate them will have to wait for another time - for now just do as I say and everything will be juuuuust fine.

Main dough:
16 oz bread flour
16 oz whole-wheat flour OR 12 oz whole-wheat flour and 4 oz medium rye flour
3 1/4 tsp (.8) oz salt
about 2 1/2 cups water (20-22 oz), lukewarm (about 90 degrees)

Cut the starter into about 10 chunks and let come to room temperature covered with oiled plastic wrap, about 1 hour. Combine flours and salt in a large bowl and combine thoroughly. Add starter chunks one by one and coat with the flour mix. Add 20 oz of water. Mix well in the bowl, then turn out onto a counter and knead for about 15 minutes until dough is tacky and supple and more or less passes the windowpane test*. This is not a sticky dough, but it at first should be decidedly clingy; adjust water and flour if necessary to achieve the desired texture. Your target dough temperature is 77-81 degrees.

If you have a large and powerful stand mixer at home, you can also use this to mix the dough. Begin with the paddle attachment, and switch to the dough hook just as all the ingredients come together roughly. I say again -a large and powerful stand mixer: one of six quart capacity and a big engine that won't burn up under the strain. I have a KitchenAid Professional 600, and it's up to the task though not without some thrilling engine noises.

Transfer dough to a lightly oiled large bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise 3-4 hours or until about 1.5 times its original size. Wild yeasts work much more slowly than commercial yeast, but the extra time results in much more flavor in the finished product.

When dough is fully risen, remove to a lightly floured counter, press down lightly on it with your flattened hands to de-gas it a bit, and shape it into a large boule (round loaf). This is a great time to work on your shaping skills, with a loaf that is large but forgiving.

Line a large mixing bowl with linen or flour-sack towel. Sprinkle liberally with flour. Place the boule in this bowl, bottom side up. Cover bowl with plastic wrap or another bowl and let rise for 2-3 hours or until nearly doubled.

Preheat oven to 475 degrees for at least 45 minutes. For a gas oven, put one rack in the lower half of the oven, and place a pizza stone on it. Remove the other rack; it'll be in the way. For an electric oven, place the racks on the two lowest levels, placing the pizza stone on the upper rack. Heat an old cast iron skillet or cake pan you never plan to use again on the floor of the oven, or on the lowest rack if using an electric oven.

When dough is ready, turn out carefully onto a full sized half-sheet pan (measuring about 18x13 inches, not a little cookie sheet) lined with parchment paper or a silicone liner. Let stand 5 minutes as you heat 1 1/4 cups water on the stove. Slash the dough in any pattern you want; the traditional way is a box cut - four slashes in a square, almost at the edges of the loaf. (Use a sharp knife, and make confident cuts that go about 1/4 inch deep into the dough - no more.)

When the water is boiling, transfer to a pyrex or plastic measuring cup and don your oven mitt.

Place the sheet pan on the stone, and pour the boiling water into the waiting pan. Be careful! - steam burns are bad news. The steam this produces will keep the starches in the crust from gelatinizing (hardening) while the loaf rises in the intense heat of the oven. If you are afraid of pouring water into your oven, you can use a few ice cubes instead, placing them in the pan when the loaf goes in, though this does rob the oven of heat. You can also use a spray bottle to mist the dough with water prior to going in the oven, and then spray the oven walls quickly with water at two-minute intervals for the first eight minutes or so of baking. This method also leads to great heat loss, so tack a few more minutes of baking time on the end.

Close the oven door and immediately reduce heat to 450, unless using the spray-bottle technique, in which you turn the oven down immediately after the last spraying. Start a 25-minute timer when the bread goes in the oven.

After 25 minutes, rotate the loaf 180 degrees. Reduce heat to 425 and bake another 30-40 minutes. If the bottom is browning too much, put an upside-down sheet pan underneath. If the top is getting too brown, tent some aluminum foil over top.

Remove from oven and cool on a rack. Do not cut for three hours.

This bread is phenomenal. The crumb is a bit dense and chewy, and full of subtle flavors that change in the mouth and linger for a good half hour after eating. Better yet, the flavor changes day by day, so week-old miche, which will still be fresh if stored properly at room temperature (NEVER refrigerated), will taste discernibly different from its first-day counterpart.

* The windowpane test: with relatively clean hands, cut off a walnut-sized chunk of dough from the main mass, and form it into a disc with your fingers. Then, holding the edges of the disc, pull it apart so that the center becomes thinner and thinner as the surface area increases. If you can achieve an unbroken membrane that's translucent all the way across, your dough passes the windowpane test, and for most recipes can be considered sufficiently kneaded. For this recipe, you'll have trouble getting a perfect windowpane. This is because the bran in the whole wheat flour and the optional rye flour tends to cut the strands of gluten that hold the dough together, sabotaging your nice windowpane. Don't worry about it - close to a windowpane is perfectly sufficient. This a rough, ugly country loaf, not a refined effete persnickety bourgeois baguette dough we're making here!

Welcome to the 79th edition of the Carnival of the Recipes, hosted by your friends and eventual overlords here at the Ministry of Minor Perfidy.

This Carnival is a bit of a departure for us. For more than thirty centuries, the Ministry has been the leading institution for Eschatology (end-times studies) worldwide. We have been monitoring man's inhumanity to man and measuring the potential for pan-species disaster - especially the threats posed by zombie invasion and giant fighting space robots - since before Hammurabi was in short pants. We spend our days in the John of Patmos Memorial Library and Gift Shop staring into the chthonian depths of human depravity, and our nights in the Carl Sagan Observatory scanning the heavens for the sinister telltale glint of diffuse starlight on titanium skin.

All this gloom and doom does tend to wear on the soul. It is easy to lose perspective. As they say, when one stares into the abyss, the abyss looks into you. This is actually literally true, by the way; when one is involved in tendentious cross-dimensional profit repatriation negotiations with elder powers, you don't have much time for pizza and beer. When Dread Chthulu is your opponent's lead counsel these things don't seem to matter as much as girding your psyche against gibbering madness from beyond.

However, it is important to remind ourselves that to most people things like pizza, beer, and volleyball do matter. When the apocalypse comes and the select few among you who we allow to take shelter in our Catastratorium, the nerve center of our global operations, need to eat, it is crucial that we have more than protein pills and MREs for you.

To that end, I have been leading a task force dedicated to perfecting the art of eating well under duress. Ancient crafts like brewing, baking, cheesemaking and animal husbandry are being adapted for long-term viability in underground caverns. Our best gnostic chirurgeons have teamed with our most elite scientists to make stunning advances in vat-grown meat and high-yield hydroponic farming. I think you will be well impressed, those among you who survive, when you are sipping a fine Dortmunder-style lager as the atomic bombs pound the surface far above.

For this, you see, is my stock in trade. My compatriots are stockpiling arms and radiation medication as we speak. And though I certainly have made sure I know where my 12 gauge, .45 revolver, and Louisville Slugger are, I also feel it is crucial to remember the finer things that buff the rough edges off a painful existence. If we met on the Serengeti, I would be the man in the impeccable linen suit with a camp table and a shaker of ice-cold gin. If we met in deepest space, we would dine in fine casual luxury on pizza margherita preserved indefinitely in hard vacuum and baked in the intense heat of fusion engine exhaust. And when the zombies roam or the robots maraud at will, when humankind must stand side by side with our greatest allies, the dolphin and octopus, to fight a proxy war against the menace that threatens to end us all, you (some of you, at least) will take some solace in the small homely comforts we provide.

For to live on in the face of disaster is merely animal. To live well, with panache and élan in the face of the grimmest apocalypse, well, that is human!

So come! Cross the threshold of the great double doors of the Catastratorium!

Come! Don a grey guest tunic and take a seat at the polished obsidian slab in the main cavern!

Come! See what elite guests have gathered for stimulating conversation and nonpariel apres-doom cuisine!

Come! Admire the unique and curious artifacts we have collected over three millennia! But don't touch that! It would be better if that statute of Yog-Soth-Oth didn't instantly cast your mind into insanity , don't you think?

Come! Taste what toothsome delights our kichen staff have concocted, marvel at the astonishing variety of potluck the guests have brought!

Come! Raise your glass and toast the indomitable spirit of humankind!

To the future!

Now... what have we to eat??

Amuse gueles, hors d'oeuvres and lighter fare:

Marsha Hudnall of A Weight Lifted brings us a sort of Napoleon, a stacked dish of foccaccia, grilled vegetables and scrambled eggs that they call Veggie Egg Foccaccia.

Jacqueline Passey sends along a Costa Rican recipe, Gallo Pinto, which is a rice-and-bean based dish good for breakfast, side dish, or hangover cure. Salud!

Accompaniments and sidekicks of the primarily taterific variety:

The BBQ General gives us his first submission ever to the Carnival, with The General's Home Fries, an exacting and detailed recipe for delicious-sounding fried potatoes full of sound advice and culinary information. Moreover, the General seems a resourceful and detail-oriented type, the sort who would do well in a secret underground lair. Lucky for him, it is easy to maintain oil at a steady 375 degrees Fahrenheit when your heat source is a small fusion generator.

The Blog d'Elisson sends a dinner postmortem run-down that includes a recipe for oven-fried potato wedges. In my youth in Ohio, we called these jo-jo potatoes, only G-d knows why. You may call them anything you want, as long as you call them delectable.

From the Glittering Eye we get a recipe for the great French classic pommes Anna. I can offer some advice for aspirants to this culinary height: wait. Having wrestled with this recipe a few times, I have learned that the most important thing you can do is go read a book and wait, wait, wait for the timer to go off. Trust your skills. Trust your stove. Pommes Anna takes time and patience, and both are rewarded. À votre santé!

The Course Where We Get Down To Business and Dispose Of the Quisling Spy Among Us (Main Dishes)

Once our servants have cleaned up the mess (our apologies...), sit back and enjoy a dish of Ad-Lib Indian Lentil Stew from Allan at AllanThinks. It's simple, it's cheap, it's easy. And, knowing lentils like I do, I know for a fact that this recipe is infinitely extensible. Kale; tomatoes; cinnamon, cardamon, turmeric, and cumin; peas. Whatever, really, you like. Apki Lambi Umar Ke Liye!

The Technogypsy gets back to his rural roots with Bambi Loaf and Bambi Stew, two great-sounding venison dishes. You kill it, you eat it; Dick Cheney nearly feasted on long pig.

Shawn Lea of Everything and Nothing proffer a very quick, simple, and tasty Mexican chicken soup. Salud otra vez!

The Physics Geek increases the thermal energy underneath a kettle of continental bean soup. Physics Geek gets it; soups and stews are perfect candidates for fusion-exhaust cooking. After the meal, please follow the green line on the floor to your new assignment. I trust you will find it... amenable.

Triticale, the Wheat/Rye guy, gives us a bifurcating recipe which is first a simple chicken breast in salsa, and can be turned into the spectacularly delicious Thai soup, Tom Kha Kai. Asian food is the key to happiness; I know this to be true.

Ever the resourceful sort, Minister Buckethead has found a number of recipes made with the contents of US Military standard-issue MREs (Meals Ready to Eat). Here is Pizza, several desserts, a number of fairly involved recipes, an old post from Blackfive, the paratrooper of love on this topic, and this page on survivalist food in general. The McIlhenney company has a book for sale of MRE recipes using the little bottle of Tabasco Sauce that comes in some versions. To be honest, we at the Ministry aspire for greater things than this, but we acknowledge that sometimes keeping body and soul together means doing what you must.

Breads, the Love Of My Life

Sun Comprehending Glass has a great-sounding recipe for honey wheat rolls made with sourdough starter. After the robots come, all bread will be naturally leavened. She will do well to perfect this recipe.

third world country submits a bread machine recipe that is both hearty and delicious. I am reminded of Ezekiel bread, but without all the hectoring righteousness.

I myself submit a recipe for miche, a rough country French sourdough loaf of impressive size. It is based on the famous bread of Lionel Poilane, but I like to add a little rye flour for extra dimension. Get used to this one. It will one day be your daily bread.

Degustational denouments:

Annamaria of Bunny? submits a recipe for Cherry Cobbler Upside-Down (or How To Take Care Of Sick Husbands) that apparently has curative powers. Impressive... she will do well on our team of chirurgeons.

Mensa Barbie has a Rum and Berry Danish Tart. The Danes really do know their stuff.

From The Headmistress at The Common Room comes a wheat-free egg-free orange and chocolate chip pound cake for the wheat allergic among us. There are many fine people in this land advancing the cause of alternative cuisine. Whether motivated by celiac disease, veganism, or Biblical mandate, they are making great strides in perfecting toothsome recipes that, though they lack what we commonly understand to be the necessary culinary requirements, are just as (if not more) nutritous) as the originals and display an amazing ingenuity. Support your local organic farmers, craft brewers, bakers, and cheesemakes, and your local homeschool association! When the zombies come, they will be the foundation on which we all stand.

In The Headlights has one of my favorite simple desserts, a French country confection called clafoutis. She makes it with cherry, which is the classic choice. It is also wonderful with blueberries, apricots, peaches, and (seriously now...) stewed prunes.

KeeWee's Corner has brought a perfect capper to the evening: Bailey's Irish Cream Cake. I am not normally a fan of boxed baked goods mixes, but they do definitely have their place. One of these places is liquor-soaked bundt cakes. Slainte!

Next week, things get a bit brighter as Sun Comprehending Glass hosts the next edition of the Carnival of the Recipes. Send your submissions to recipe.carnival@gmail.com by noon Saturday for inclusion. If you wish to host a future edition of the Carnival of the Recipes, send an email to the same address with the word "host" in the subject line.

As the meal comes to an end and you, our esteemed guests nibble on nuts and sip digestifs, it is time to reflect on what we have accomplished. You are reading this thanks to a stupendously complicated set of cooperating technologies nearly inconceivable twenty years ago. Yet, no matter how much our world changes in superficial ways, some things abide. Lentils are still cheap, fried potatoes are still delicious, and all of us put on our pants one leg at a time. Except our dolphin readers; they don't wear pants.

Thank you all for coming; I do regret to inform you that you cannot leave. The areas not converted to radioactive glass by the robot's first attack are crawling with brain-eating zombies. There is no escape, but there is hope. Through that door you will find your new quarters, and Ministers GeekLethal and Buckethead are waiting to show you to them. Later, Minister Patton will give you your new assignments. Life is simple here; pitch in or feed the zombies. When Minister Ross returns from the surface, we will have a better idea just how long we are going to be here.

Our problems are all behind us. It is now up to us to fight the future.

Did anyone bring a guitar?

The new Carnival of the Recipes is up at Physics Geek.

Next week, the Carnival will be hosted by yours truly, the Ministry of Minor Perfidy. Come and see what foods we will enjoy when the apocalypse befalls us.

This video takes me back a little to my days playin' the Dungeons and Dragons in high school, and it turns out that memory lane is girded about by ouchy thorns and stuff.

Although I was certainly never quite that geeky - not compared to this - I probably shouldn't disavow my role-playing gamer past too loudly, consideratin' that I have been named dorkiest Minister by popular acclaim. But still, that video is teh funny. LOL and whatnot.

Thanks to texasbestgrok's JohnL, who is also way beyond this kind of thing.

This week's chocolate-themed Carnival of the Recipes is up!!

In a couple weeks, the Carnival will be coming through the Ministry... check in and see what evil lurks in the hearts of artichokes.

Murdoc's a bright guy. I know that because I read his blog nearly every day. Today he transcended himself and came up with a profound little condensed nugget of truth. While discussing the 38th anniversary of the Tet Offensive, and the still lingering effects of the stupendously biased reporting on it (we won that battle, in case you don't know) Murdoc closed his discussion with this:

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. One man's Tet is another man's Bulge. It's all in the eye of the beholder, and don't make the mistake of believing that YOU are the beholder. We are usually beholders not of events but of reports, and students not of history but of interpretations. [emphasis mine]

That's exactly right; and surprising in an era where awareness of media bias is growing, that hardly anyone - even on the right - really thinks about that. That sentence should be a caption for every single media report, like a Surgeon General's warning on a pack of smokes.

Once, in a brighter age, I was a movie afficianado. I saw everything. I loved good movies, and I loved bad movies. The badder, the better in many cases. (Evil Dead, They Live for example.) Today they announced the Oscar nominees. I have seen 1 (one) movie nominated for major awards. That's it. Okay, two if you count the Best Animated Film category as a major award. Ten years ago, I would have seen all but maybe one of the movies up for the big ones, and most of the movies up for the technical awards. This year, it's the exact inverse.

The one movie I've seen is "Walk the Line," the Johnny Cash biopic. And, of course, the Wallace and Grommit Curse of the Wererabbit flick. And "March of the Penguins," nominated for best documentary. Aside from those, I saw "Batman Begins," "War of the Worlds," "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," "Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith," which were nominated for assorted technical awards.

The real reason for this cinematic apathy is not a a decling interest on my part in movies. Or even the widely rumored decline in the quality of films produced. The reason I don't see movies is about three feet tall and named John Christian. Three year olds don't behave well in movie theaters. And the prospect of paying out the yin yang for a sitter just to watch a movie I may or may not like is simply inconceivable.

The only time Mrs. Buckethead and I actually go see real movies in actual movie theaters is at the big holidays, when we have family (read: free babysitters) to watch our spawn. The very limited opportunities for movie watching has had a drastic effect on how we choose which movies to watch. Generally speaking, we only watch movies that we can be sure ahead of time that we will really enjoy. And among that small group, we are likely to pick the movie that woould be the most impressive on the big screen - in order to maximise our movie experience. In other words, we'll watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire twice before going to see something like "Syriana" or "Good Night, and Good Luck." Not to pick on Mr. Clooney, but if he wants to see us watching his movies, he really ought to star in a big budget special effects extravaganza with lots of explosions.

As John has gotten older, his impact on our movie watching has only increased. For the first couple years of his life, we could watch more or less anything on video. He was simply unaware of what was happening on screen. This eased the process of accomodation - we were able to wean ourselves off the movie crack gradually. But after watching "Christmas Vacation" and having John ask, "Where's the Kitty?" we realized that even that option had been closed off. And since John is a night owl like Mrs. Buckethead and myself, the only way I'll ever watch my Sin City DVD is if I get up at five in the morning and watch it before I go to work. Which isn't really an option at all.

Seeing as we have another spawn cooking right now (she'll be done sometime around the end of March) it will be at least another five years before I can watch movies again. If we have another kid, that day will be pushed back to sometime after 2012. Hopefully by that time they'll be able to beam movies directly into my nob.

The Carnival of Personal Finance #33 is now up at Fat Pich Financials, who is apparently an ardent devotee of Warren Buffett's and Seth A. Klarman's value investing philosophies.

The 76th Carnival of Recipes is up at Triticale, the Wheat/Rye guy. The theme is potluck, so make up a tuna hotdish and head on over. (Wait... you're not from the Midwest? Then bring mac and cheese.)

Al Bundy may well have been on to something when he said, "It is good to hate the French," and indeed it is easy and often pleasureable to do so. But it is important to compartmentalize. I do get riled at French government, French foreign policy, and French collective opinions. But the French themselves, and the wonderful bon-vivant culture they have created.... now, those are wonderful things.

For Christmas, I was the beneficiary of an extraordinarily generous gift, a gift certificate to Formaggio Kitchen, a store over in Cambridge who are serious about food. Dead serious.

Yesterday I ventured over there, and aside from a small bottle of 20 year old balsamic vinegar (which is the culinary equivalent of a fine Cuban cigar) and a few impossible to find odds and ends like grey Normandy sea salt, preserved lemons, and black sesame seeds, I picked up dinner for tonight. To wit: a very nice and somewhat pricey Burgundy, a hunk of aged goat's milk cheese from the same region, a hunk of Trois Laits, which is a soft and stinky three-milk cheese also from the same region, and a quarter loaf of pain Poilâne, the signature bread from the most famous baker in France.

Formaggio Kitchen aren't messing around. The cheeses I bought were purchased green from the source, and aged to perfection in a stone cellar purpose-built for that in the basement of the Cambridge store. The bread was baked Wednesday morning and flown via Federal Express to Boston. Lionel Poilâne himself claims that his signature pain Poilâne, a large round three-build sourdough loaf made with 85% extraction flour which he calls a miche, is best eaten about three day after baking, so I'm in business.

Tonight I will sit in my little kitchen in Salem, Massachusetts, and I will eat bread, cheese and wine from Burgundy and Paris nearly as fresh as if I were there. It is modern times, and it is good to love the French.

[wik] N.B. I did try a slice of pain Poilâne last night, and I see what all the hoopla is about. Holy crap. And I, I have the recipe.

Brew #7

For this beer, I was lucky enough to have access to the strain of yeast used by a famous Belgian-style brewery in Cooperstown, NY. In fact, this brew is a more-or-less clone of their signature ale. It is intended to be a Belgian Strong Ale, and as such is absolutely packed with fermentables - about 8 to 8 1/2 pounds of sugar in the batch as opposed to the usual 5-ish. The suggested 70 degree fermentation temperature is a challenge in my apartment, but I hope that by wrapping the bucket in a blanket, I can keep it nice and warm enough. Perhaps it's lunacy to think I can make a Belgian ale in the cold of a New England winter, but dammit! I wanna!

Both hops are straight from the source. The guy I get my supplies from has a friend in the Czech Republic who buys the local hops and ships them direct to the USA. Thus, they are as fresh as they can get. I need to exploit this connection while it lasts, as really good Styrian Goldings are hard to come by, and absolutely delicious.

As for naming this batch: Last week was the third birthday of Trogdor The Burninator. Make a more different S.

Trogdor The Burninator "Consummate V" Belgian Strongbad Ale

9.9 lbs Munton & Fisons extra light liquid malt extract (3 cans)
8 oz light Belgian candi sugar
2 oz Styrian Goldings leaf hops, 4% alpha acids, bittering
1 oz Saaz leaf hops, 3% alpha acids, flavoring
8 oz aromatic malt
8 oz crystal malt, 60L
2.5 oz chocolate malt
2 oz honey malt
1 Whirlfloc Irish moss extract tablet (clarifying agent)
EasYeast Cooperstown Belgian Ale liquid yeast

Steeped grains for 1 hour at 160 degrees +/- 10 in 1 gallon tap water.

Broght 3 gallons filtered tap water to boil. Added steeping water, LME, candi sugar, and Styrian Goldings hops. At 42 minute mark, added the Saaz hops. At the 45 minute mark, added the Whirlfloc tablet.

Cooled wort in ice bath. Added 2 gallons chilled water to fermenting bucket. Oops... a little too much. Ended up with about 5.5 gallons of wort, which is a little dangerous since I'm making a Belgian-style that will ferment vigorously, producing lots of foam and attended gases. I really, really don't want to blow the top off my bucket. Headroom is paramount!

It took hours and hours to get the wort to a good pitching temperature (73 degrees). This is because I'm an idiot.

Instead of an airlock, which only lets a trickle of air out at at time and would therefore lead to a beer explosion, I used a blowoff tube to vent this batch, made from the 3/8'' plastic tubing from my siphon setup and a short length of 1/4'' brass pipe, with the end of the tube submerged in a bucket of water. This turned out to be pointless, as the seal between the brass pipe and the grommet in the lid of my bucket was imperfect, allowing gases to escape around it. This is really not that big a deal, as the outward pressure of the fermentation will keep the bad things on the outside. I will just need to put an airlock on there once things slow down a bit.

[wik] So far so good. A very vigorous fermentation and a batch temperature of 70-73 degrees. Yay! Now all I have to do is get my porter out of my other fermenting bucket before it's time to rack this stuff to secondary. Hrm......

[alsø wik] A word about the yeast I used this time: EasYeast is a one-man company, a microbiologist from the University of New Hampshire who ranches brewing yeast on the side. He markets the strains locally in pitchable amounts (meaning you can just dump them as-is into your wort), and also sells small amounts of sterilized wort for those of us too lazy to make starter worts for our other, inferior brands of liquid yeast cultures (I'm looking at YOU, Wyeast).

[alsø alsø wik] HOLY CRAP!! Good Beer!! As of May, it's a delicious, malty, bracing, crisp, delicious Belgian Strong style with a nice backdrop of Saaz and a foreground of spicy esters. It's well-balanced, complex, and deceptively easy-drinking. Ohhhh, I kick ass.

[wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?] As of October, the last six pack of this stuff is really nice! Fading, mellower, but taking on lovely pear flavors. I bet I could get a good year out of this. Outstanding.

10. "Rise, my friend."

9. "Open the back door!"

8. "Hey, point that thing somewhere else!"

7. "It's just a dead animal..."

6. "Not bad for a little furball."

5. "How can they be jamming us if they don't know we're coming?"

4. "Come here, I won't hurt you. You want something to eat?"

3. "Keep on that one, I'll take these two"

2. "I want you to take her. I mean it, take her!"

1. "I don't think the Empire had wookies in mind when they designed her, Chewie."

• 10. "And I thought they smelled bad...on the outside!"
• 9. "Possible he came in through the south entrance."
• 8. "I must've hit it pretty close to the mark to get her all riled up like that, huh kid?"
• 7. "Hurry up, golden-rod..."
• 6. "That's okay, I'd like to keep it on manual control for a while."
• 5. "But now we must eat. Cum, good food, cummm..."
• 4. "Control, control! You must learn control!"
• 3. "There's an awful lot of moisture in here."
• 2. "Size matters not. Judge me by my size, do you?"
• 1. "I thought that hairy beast would be the end of me!"

10. "She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid."

9. "Curse my metal body, I wasn't fast enough!"

8. "Look at the size of that thing!"

7. "Sorry about the mess..."

6. "You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought."

5. "Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?"

4. "You've got something jammed in here real good."

3. "Put that thing away before you get us all killed!"

2. "Luke, at that speed do you think you'll be able to pull out in time?"

1. "Get in there you big furry oaf, I don't care what you smell!"