:bowrofl:

I remember having a conversation similar to this with my sister a few years ago, after I purchased my first good knife. She was (and still is to this day) in the habit of using the common table setting knives for prep, and expressed concern that using an actual sharp knife seemed dangerous.

My experience to date has been that a sharp knife allows one to work with greater focus and less effort.

Said the wise old man: "We'll see..."

Dull knives are dangerous. That's what I've always heard.

Yep. Have to use way more pressure to cut through things, then if it slips because it's too dull to cut worth a damn, you have so much force behind it you just cut yourself nicely.

How I feel sometimes:


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I thought I was too. I had knives when I was a kid. There were sharpening stones around. My dad "collected" sharp shit and somehow no real knowledge of the proper way to do it sunk in. The problem is that I was shown the motions of how to sharpen (whatever conventional wisdom of the mid 80s was) but never why or how it worked. The result was never a sharp knife.

This time, I used Professor Internet, found discussions on technique, found scanning electron microscope images of various sharpening methods, and dug in to the point where I understood what was going on with the steel and angles and specific goals at each stage of the process. Now I feel like I can do it properly and I know where TF I'm going.

I think I learned dull tools are dangerous for sure. But sometimes, even with a sharp knife, you're cutting something that's just too damn tough for the blade to cleave in twain. Some of the super crusty bread we get from the farmer's market has crust like that. You're slicing hard crust and it's sloped at an angle and shit's just waiting to guillotine your thumb. In her case, it was some hard gouda with an even harder rind. A different knife would have been a better choice. We have a skeleton-ized, serrated cheese knife for such things. It has teeth to grip and less surface area to reduce friction. The knife she was using was a large slicer. She said she was cutting apple and didn't want to dirty another knife. Maybe the right tool for the job is lesson two after "dull tools are dangerous".

By the way, this cheese really is one of the hidden TJ's gems. It's tangy and has those little teenie crunchy salt bits and everything. Some water crackers and salami and mm.

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Is there no other aroma so pleasing as peppers & onions?

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While I will eat peppers by the bushel raw, I despise them cooked.

And while I enjoy the smell of onions, they tend to give me the kind of gas that clears a room.

This is proof that God hates you, and wants you to be sad.

You have my pity.

Peppers, onions, and MUSHROOMS!

I have acid reflux. All of the good things in life trigger it. Garlic, onions, tomatoes, sugar, cheese, fat, chocolate, caffiene, mint....

I just basically have heartburn permanently.

butter and garlic.

So Alli did "grocery pickup" at the store yesterday. She put a 10 lb turkey in the request, as we are only having 2 friends over for Turkey day this year.

I help her unload the groceries when she gets home.....................yeah. We have a 23 lb turkey thawing in the fridge.

got a friend with a band saw? slice it in half and save half for another day.

I think we are just going to go ahead and roast the whole thing. Send our friends home with plenty of leftovers, freeze what's left, and keep the carcass and bones to make a big batch of stock with.

This is why I do my own shopping. I'm also afraid they'd give me junk produce.

I bought a 20lb for me and my dad. Plan on smoking it for 12 hours or so. I've done that in the past then just sliced the remainder for sandwiches for the next week.

We usually do. Just been a busy couple of months. Our dog sitters are happy people.

So, a dilemma. It's Thankgiving day. I've been at work (well, "on duty," in the sense of standing outside in the freezing cold downtown, rather than in my comfortable studios) since 3am, on account of having to supervise setup for the parade broadcast. It went fine, aside from the rather daring robbery which didn't affect us directly. And bear in mind that I didn't get home until 10pm last night, on account of troubleshooting a flaky ASI fiber circuit with AT&T. To their credit, when you're dealing with their Broadcast Services department, they have actual competent people, in your actual city, on call 24/7 via a local number, who actually know how to fix things quickly. Even the night before Thanksgiving.

Santa's float crossed the finish line at 10:54am today, and I was off-site by noon. Tired as hell, and in no mood to prepare a fancy meal.

And yet I know from experience that my dear sweet mother who lives in Florida is going to call at some point this afternoon, to ensure that I'm having a nice turkey dinner, because to not do so would be an affront to God. (This is the same woman who still sends me fuzzy pajamas every Christmas, because she's not yet accepted the fact that I'm capable of recognizing that, in winter, one ought to dress warmly, and then take the appropriate steps necessary to acquire warm clothing. I'm not complaining, mind you. I couldn't ask for a better mom. The fact that she didn't murder me by the age of 10 is practically grounds for sainthood.)


I'd been noodling on the idea of a pork meatloaf for a while. Not entirely sure where that idea came from, but nostalgia was involved. As with every other white (well, white-adjacent) kid who grew up in the US in the 1970s, meatloaf was a thing. I simply wanted to jazz it up a tad. (Ricotta, crushed red pepper, swiss, cayenne pepper [not pictured] and lime juice [not pictured] were never part of the Betty Crocker version.)

Well, heck, you can buy ground turkey just as easily as ground pork, right?



Stopped by Mariano's on the way home and picked up a few ingredients, plus some Kahlua.

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Half a large yellow onion, four cloves garlic, 1 lb turkey, and a pretty generous shot of everything else shown, except the crispy onions. Those would be used later.

(Also not pictured were two eggs. I was already fairly inebriated by the time this photo was taken, on top of being quite sleep-deprived, and didn't want to rick them rolling off of the countertop.)



This much later, specifically, both atop and beneath a slice of Swiss cheese. (I'll admit that I put this into the microwave for 30 seconds, after taking the photo, to melt the cheese more fully.)

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So, yeah. I got to have a very pleasant phone call w/ Mom (they spent the day at Busch Gardens) and was able to not lie to her about making the socially-acceptable dinner choice on this day when we commemorate the appropriation of land by Europeans who were not our ancestors. And you know what, it was pretty damned good. It came out so moist and delicate that it practically falls apart, and by some miracle of luck, it's a perfect blend of sweet, savory, and spicy. Not a "clearly, God is dead, and all hope is gone" spicy, more of an "I can discern that this has flavor" spicy. Simple ingredients in generous proportion.

Very happy that I have extra. The ingredients shown above produced four individual loaves, cooked to an internal temperature of 155° (it reached 166° at the core after being removed to rest) which took about 20 minutes at 425°.


This is my first ever meatloaf, and one of my very few forays into what I would refer to as rust-belt cuisine. But sometimes, the simplest things can be worth doing.

So, yeah. There's my semi-non-traditional Thanksgiving feast.


The playlist was pure, unashamed bubblegum 80s. Twisted Sister, A-ha, Huey Lewis & The News, Starship, Journey, Brian Adams, Culture Club, Prince, etc.



And my glass runneth dry.

Our turkey turned out well..........I'm glad we bought an actual probe thermometer to monitor the cooking vs going off "formula times." What we could find said 5-6 hours for a bird that big. It was done in less than 4 hours IIRC. No wonder people have such dry, crummy turkey on the holidays.

The two friends that joined us both "partake" as well, so by the time the turkey was ready much wine/edible/flower had been consumed. So forked up a few things with a couple of the sides. But still a good time was had.

You need a thermometer to cook a turkey properly, those "popper" things (sometimes) pop up only when the turkey is overcooked. This year I used the new Bon Apetit method, and separated my turkey (cut off legs and wings, cut out spine), and cooked a 24 pound turkey in 2 hours. It was also the most tender and flavorful turkey I've ever done.

Also, if you have a convection oven, throw your cook times out the window if you're following an old recipe.