Kaimusailing

I attempted to reconstitute my chicken black bean and rice soup. The chicken part was in a zip lok bag in the fridge. The bean and rice part was in a large pyrex pitcher in the fridge. My goal was to skim the fat off the top, cook the mirepoix consisting of leeks, carrots, and celery, in Irish butter, and then put all the ingredients together in a large pot, correct the seasoning, and have soup for dinner.
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First the pitcher of black beans and rice went into a saucepan with about 2 cups of water. Once hot and bubbly, the fat was skimmed off. The mixture went back into the pitcher and the liquid was left in the pot. The chicken was then dumped into the pot along with another 2 cups of water. When it came to a boil I broke the chicken thighs apart, removed bones and skin, discarded, skimmed the top again to remove any remaining chicken fat. The chicken and the rice mixture were set aside. The big pressure cooker was used as a soup pot. A chunk of Irish butter was melted and the mirepoix was dumped into the pot.
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After the mirepoix steamed for a while the chicken and the rice mixture were added and the whole thing was mixed. It simmered for a while, then I had a bowl of soup. Edible. And lots of it. I had as leftovers 5 zip lok bags of 3-3 ½ cups of soup each. When I put a couple of bags into my little freezer compartment I found a frozen bag of pork already there. Thought I had finished the pork.
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The next day the new bicycle tires came in and I rode the marina loaner bike to get them. I was not going to take the girlie bike around town. It was not that I was too embarrassed to ride it, the seat was way too low and impossible to adjust.
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When I got back I removed the bad tire from the front wheel and the tube, also blown. The new Chinese tire was somewhat stiff and difficult to install on the wheel. After getting the first bead on and the new tube on the rim I used table knives, not very sharp, to pry the second bead on and thus assemble the wheel with its new tire and tube. I put about 30 psi in the tire and worked any kinks out of it, making sure the tube was not pinched between the rim and the tire, and making sure the valve stem and its section of tube was pushed up into the middle of the tire. Otherwise there will be a lump in the tire after inflation. Then I pumped it up to 70 psi and installed the wheel on the bike.
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I tried to pedal my bike while leading the marina bike but could not do it. Instead I returned the bike lock key to the office, told them about the seat that wouldn’t adjust, and they said they would pick it up with the maintenance truck.
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For those of you who are callous enough to enjoy the tribulations I had with the little girlie bike, here’s Jonathan Winters dealing with a similar situation in his movie debut:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=CFqERGi4bk8&feature=share

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I guess I always needed a punctuation mark at the end of each paragraph because Sailblogs would just run everything together. But how do you put a punctuation mark at the end of a URL without ruining it? Please check and report after this is up.
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I unfortunately had been out of wine and had to endure a conversation with my brother while he was dissolving his troubles and I was high and dry. We talked about me bicycling and thinking I would not need the surgery I now need, and he said when he had his hip surgery they replaced not only his hip, but his femur and knee, all in one go. He has a tricycle that is problematic. He goes and gets his mail. He is unlikely to crash that thing, unless the crash is due to rust.
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I went to the wine store and there was a shiny red tricycle bicycle with a powered front hub, disk brakes, a mount for the cell phone, a gps device, I could find out inside. I asked who is the tricycle and the lady at the counter said, mine. OK, talk about the provenance, the powered front hub is aftermarket, she said it’s fun. I said you are fun too, yes I am she said. I was glad to get my wine.
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The next day I called my brother to tell him how to convert his rusty old tricycle bicycle with a powered front hub and I got my wonderful sister in law who said, “He’s pullin’ your leg, he just got hip replacement, not all the other stuff.”
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It turned out it was another Tuesday Taco Night, just like last week, but I got shrimp tacos this time. Belinda, who I hadn’t seen in ages showed up with her friend Ruthie, and we carried on. A fellow who wanted to be in with us pulled up a chair, didn’t matter, you couldn’t grab on the thread of the conversation, not with both hands. Ruthie reminded me of Giovanni’s restaurant up in Connecticut, she had nice eyes and wit, Belinda was talking about the Chamber of Commerce and the City Council. It’s like Pitcairn Island. Some guy respectfully shook my hand and apologized for what “he done’, an uncomfortable situation.
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The barmaid wanted to restrict me. I was limping, not impaired like the rest of these people. Maybe next time. I rode the bike back to the marina, entered the code, got in, and cycled back to SUNSPLASH. I want to go somewhere else but I also want to stay. The little community. No secrets.
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The submersible disaster at the wreck of the Titanic is an amplification to me of the dictum, don’t design or make the object that kills you. That goes for submarines, aircraft, boats, and some cars. There are also devices to hang yourself from, don’t want to go there, chemical events, the Oops Event, “what do you mean by oops, I know what I mean by oops, what do you mean by oops.”
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The next day I had food from the Snack Shanty, this year’s substitute for the beloved Red Shell Shanty, the menu now doesn’t include hamburgers or Orange Crush drinks. Boo hoo. I now had a hot dog for 6fifty with relish and mustard. I took it to the boat and feasted with some Black Box Pinot Noir.
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Some time ago I saw Dr. Richard Feynman’s interview in which he talks about his “Tuva or Bust” endeavor. He died before he could get there, but strangely, the musician Lyle Mays had an event at, I think, Cal Tech, where he hosted a Throat Singer from Tuva, which is near Mongolia by the way. Mays was not just a musician, but also an architect, and I can see how Richard Feynman and Lyle Mays could have a bond. However, this is just the backstory. I listened to a remarkable YouTube video by Bela Fleck and sent it to a friend who replied thanks, and the next video that came up on YouTube was Bela Fleck and a throat singer from Tuva. Eerie. Like the AI folks at YouTube have me dialed in. Like no others. No need to post the URL for the video, I guarantee it will be the only one you will get if you search Bela Fleck Tuva on YouTube. The actual title is Bela Fleck and the Flecktones with Ondar Kongar-ol. No, you can’t make this stuff up.
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My culinary reconstitution of the chicken soup disaster reminds me of baby food. The vegetables are cooked to a mush. There is that background flavor that I associate with Campbell’s Beef and Barley Soup. It’s just the mirepoix doing its job. The chicken meat was stringy and way overcooked. Black beans and rice: mush. Maybe they’ll be feeding me stuff like this in just a few years. Here I am feeding it to myself.
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Food is not a game, it is part of the art of living. I can’t paint like an artist, but I can take a photograph. I’m having trouble cooking like a chef, but what is the photography equivalent, frozen food? You have to take it for what it is. I don’t want to have a great dish or a great meal be an anomaly and I don’t want to process out very good stuff, but with no variation, nothing new. Like with the recent pizza dough.
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So, the pizza dough situation is that the more you work the dough, the stronger the dough gets, and the harder it bakes, becoming ultimately like a rock. Too much work, too much crunch, not enough work, flimsy flabby dough. I had been making dough by hand and reading all I could on how to make it better, but sometimes it would come out very hard out of the oven. A dog would like it. I wanted to avoid that.
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An Italian guy said to me, don’t work the dough too much. I guess the time frame is from 5 minutes of kneading to over 10. I want to get all the flour moistened and so I work the dough until it has some strength and there are do dry spots in it. Also the dough should not stick to anything except itself and should pull off any remnants in the mixing bowl. That’s when you know you have some good dough. But by then you are close to the Italian Cement version of pizza dough. You won’t know until it comes out of the oven.
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So, my recipe that I have been focusing on is the one everyone is using, Martha Stewart, the pizza guy she stole it from in Arizona, it is THE generic pizza dough recipe: 5 cups of flour, 2 cups of water, yeast, sugar or honey, salt, and that’s about it. I don’t use salt in the dough and use about a tablespoon of honey. The yeast is a dense sprinkling, you will know when there is enough.
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I thought I had it perfected. I knew to hydrate the flour for 22 minutes, so I would put three cups of flour in the bowl with the two cups of water that was warm and had the honey and maybe tbsp of yeast. I would let the water, honey, yeast thing sit for a while until the yeast realized there was honey there and they could commence action. Then into the flour and mix with a spoon until all the flour was moistened. Half hour later dump in another two cups of flour, olive oil my hands and wrists, and knead the dough into submission. That was until now.
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The previous method occasionally resulted in a bomb proof pizza crust. This time I was trying to remember how much flour to put in in the beginning. I was focused on the hydration and I only put in two cups of flour. I was lackadaisical and hadn’t prepared the yeast/honey/water thing, so I threw them in and mixed with a whisk. I had to knock down the dough a few times. It was stickier than ever and I didn’t want it to stick to the plate covering the bowl. The remaining flour and my oiled hands mixed and mixed for about 6 or 7 minutes. I didn’t know exactly how much to knead it, but I kept remembering the Italian’s rule to not work the dough too much.
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Because I intelligently kept quality control on the Pinot Noir, I was about only good for making the dough. Lighting the oven was like an old WWII movie, “You pull the pin, Pilgrim, and you got about ten seconds, from NOW!”, and it lit with sufficient pyro-stuff that they would probably still let me do it again, not wanting to die, themselves, in a fire they created.
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The oven, according to its thermometer, did not pin the needle or get much above 800. My inspection of pizza remnants the next day showed sufficient heat to burn the dough to a crisp. I thought about it. I’d have to work dough 7 minutes, 8 minutes, etc., and each time get a feel for that perfect amount of dough work. It probably isn’t quantifiable by time alone, there is the ambient temperature, the humidity, and there is the most important factor: Luck.
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A week has gone by since the pizza night. The reconstituted chicken soup is all gone. I need to go shopping but the SSW wind is 15-20 and that would be awful to pedal against on the way back from the grocers. Likewise, the triangle run from the marina to the grocers to the Legion and back to the marina would suffer on two of the legs including the two legs of mine that would have to pedal against that wind. I was out of water and wine so stopped at the wine shop who had water as well. I stocked up and noticed a certain single malt scotch whisky and took a photo of 3 bottles that were different versions. I will consult an expert before buying this stuff.