Ambergris

Ingredients: Cooked beef, water, salt, sodium nitrite. Reviews: High

Well. I found my big canner, the 23 quart I think it is, the one that holds two layers of jars. The bottom is round. The pop-out plug is popped out and loose. But mostly, the bottom is round, like the kind of kettle you hang over a fire. It will never again sit flat on a stove eye. It could possibly work somehow as a pot with a fire-ring to hold it up, but not by my hand. I tossed it. I think I will hide the little 16-qt canner.

Oxtail with rice.

First thing I ever "cooked" was those big old butter beans. Actually re-warming them from the fridge when my mother was sick in bed. I had to get on a chair to read the knobs on the stove and stir the pot. I was not in kindergarten yet. My older brother and I argued over which number on the knob was the three. I don't remember enough to say who was right, but I was the cook.

Last minute packing, with charged electronics, this morning. No purse. Was given a suitcase with two nesting carry-ons that fit inside it. Laptop won't fit into the smallest carryon, so the middle-sized one is my free-wheeler and the little one is getting stuffed with everything else I'm packing, and then is getting stuffed into the big one for cargo. The "everything else" mostly includes my medication (apart from my one-week supply), tax software, and various documents I picked up last time I was in the US. I will pick up more documents in the US and actually do the work next week while I'm there. After lunch, H is swinging back by with Mr. H, who will drive us to the local airport, a few hours to the west on the other side of the mountains in a town called Catamayo. This is a hot, dry area and has a reputation as a high-crime town. I keep looking around corners for Clint Eastwood in a poncho. Mr. H would not think of having H and me go alone. We will most likely have a light supper there. At 5:30 I will (I hope) take the last plane to Quito in the far north of the country, arriving around 6:30 p.m. I have since been informed that taking the last flight is risky, as it might be canceled if not enough tickets are sold. This weighs on me, but the other flights of the day are already sold out, so it's not likely to be under-populated. My plane from Quito leaves right before 11 p.m. tonight, giving me plenty of time to get through the processes with one nearly-empty suitcase and one roller-carryon, even if I get selected for extra inspection. Do you have anything to declare? Yes, I have two tribal baby bracelets and half a pound of Amazonian chocolate. I will probably eat again as table rent at Johnny Rocket, one of the cafes in the airport, as it's pretty quiet and pretty comfortable there. I should get to Atlanta with I think a little less than three and a half hours before my final leg. Given the fact this is the Atlanta airport, that's basically a reasonably comfortable time to get across the airport to the vicinity of the next gate, get through the bathroom line, and get something to eat so I can have my medication. Unfortunately, the good breakfast places won't be open when I land, so I'll take cookies or something from Catamayo for the pills and if the line isn't awful maybe get an egg and biscuit once the breakfast places do open, although I'd have to rush through my bag of food if I do. I should get on home around 9:30 tomorrow, and be sitting down to brunch before 10:30.

If stretching your neck like a turtle (or a ballerina) several times a day for several days doesn't make a difference, it is likely not your neck. Around here, the egg yolk is "the gold" of it, and a double yolk is "a double gold." I bet the people are as every bit as grateful as they seem.

Happy day!

Miss you, John

Note that when this dance originated, underpants were generally sewn as more or less a pair of tubes connected up by the waist. ONLY up by the waist.

Lima beans with sausage and a nice crusty cornbread is one of my all-time favorite meals.

Taxation of Social Security started in 1983 as part of Reagan's plan to save it after robbing it for years to fund other projects. The plan was flawed as it did not adjust for inflation. In his day, the thought of benefits being taxable for people bringing in a total of $25k a year meant the same thing as benefits being taxed for people bringing in a total of $78k a year for our times, according to Amortization.org. So while they planned to tax only the richest, now they tax right at half the people who get Social Security.

Some information I got today: Sealed guaifenesin tablets stay potent for an average of about seven years after their use-by date, per the FDA. "It's a relatively stable chemical," says Dr. Apgar. However, when guaifenesin is in liquid form, the label date is the real expiration date. So this bottle I have that has a use-by date of Feb 2021 is unopened, so we can open it today and use it within the year while um, expecting normal results.

GD, offer to trade her a half-day of childcare for a day of heavy labor in your house, and see how she responds. Put it in writing (like a text message) for extra laughs. A phobia is not ridiculous. It's real. It doesn't have to be logical to be real.

I throw (or threw) a bone into soup or beans pretty often, which of course puts it off limits for vegetarians,

Work party is heading up the hill. I have been kindly disinvited, either because I slow everyone down so much or because they are afraid of me hurting myself up there. Or both. Actually, there was a wall of fixed grins and wide eyes, and a "you are coming with us?" when I came out dressed to go, which let me know the answer should be "no," so I said "no," and they were all clearly relieved to hear it. At that point I was able to see into the lunch basket, and it was packed to feed the three of them, not the four of us. Okay. So I guess I am going to study plant profiles and do a little artwork today. Maybe watch some episodes of Kosem.

I like to throw at least one bone or piece of cartilage (breastbone) into each jar even if it's naked, because it will thicken up the broth without adding thickeners.

There has been a fatality attributed to Alaska pox, which seems to be a variant of smallpox or monkeypox or ... mousepox? Does mousepox exist? Mousepox is my word, but that's what I would call it if I was naming it. They don't know if it can be passed from human to human, but it typically spreads from small wildlife. It has been tracked since 2015. Most of the cases, which haven't been many, have been discovered near Fairbanks. What else have you heard?

Supergeeks know the ides of any month is the 15th and the calends (from which we get calendar) is the first.

After the applesauce with cinnamon debacle, they started looking into all the cinnamon, and found tons of nasty surprises.

Pureed chickpeas are used for yogurt here. I tried to make aquafaba merengue, but it kept falling flat/melting.

So Tyndall was a 19th century physicist and his name is used alongside Pasteur's in much of the world. I've seen it, but associated it with something else. In India, Tyndallization is used as a standard practice. Here's a pretty representative Indian text: https://rbrlifescience.com/moist-heat-sterilization-principle-types-advantages/ There are references to when it fails, but I can't find any numbers as to how often that happens, and whether it can be traced to proper technique, such as not making sure the stuff in the middle of the bottle has been held at the proper temperature for twenty minutes during each of the three consecutive boiling days. And, yes, the science sources as opposed to the cooking sources say three consecutive cooking days. The information I am getting indicates it is about as effective as pressure canning, assuming each is done correctly, but much more time consuming, and is preferred for things that cannot handle the pressure or temperatures of a pressure canner. But people putting out a video on this technique WOULD say it is effective, right? That's a self-selecting bias.

The videos I was watching said to boil for an hour and a half to --in one video-- four hours, and in between boils to remove from the water and keep it at room temperature, then repeat the next day (and sometimes a third day) to kill any spores that might have hatched. I so not see how twenty minutes of boiling would hope to bring the center of a bottle of meat to a temp high enough to do anything. What struck me was that this combined the Amish very long processing of meat with something that appears to make sense--bring the cans back and re-process to kill anything that might have hatched, since what hatches is much easier to kill than anything still in spore stage. However, what appears to make sense does not always work out once you take it out of theory and apply a microscope to what actually happens. What I want to know is whether anyone has applied a microscope and found that this does not work, because they have people in white lab coats (which anyone can buy, rent, or borrow) saying it does work. Some of them were pouring small amounts of "nine percent vinegar" into the jars, which I don't think you can even get here. Much of it was soups, stews, and chicken-based stuff you pour over rice to be used within the month, although they often say "can be kept in a cool dry place for up to a year." Some was bottled meat (pork, beef, chicken, sausage) that was largely done in German, although a good bit of the Indian stuff was really concentrated on the chicken. One of the people bottling meat (pork, as I recall) crammed it in and/or used a lot of fatty bits in various segments, which had me going "yeah, right" a lot of times, but then said "this keeps in the refrigerator for a very long time" and otherwise made a point that it was not intended to be shelf-stable. With some people, like the one doing meatballs in thickened sauce, I had to go through my history and click to remove all their videos so Youtube would stop suggesting them to me, because of putting thickeners in sauces and so on. That let me know I couldn't trust anything else those particular people said.

I came across this in a non-US video while trying to find out how to can with the jars available to me. I found a ton of videos explaining it as effective, almost all of them coming from India, sounds like. Knowledgeable canners, what is the consensus on this?

Megafauna, ho!

Another article: Urgent health threat? Passenger drops dead mid-flight after 'liters of blood erupts from his mouth and nose’ by: Pat Droney 2024-02-10 Source: Law Enforcement Today Editorial Editor note: There are a lot of questions still open surrounding this story. At this time, our sources tell us that not a single one of the passengers was believed to have been quarantined - but rather went on to travel on other planes shortly after. Although officials have not released ANY information about what caused the man's death - healthcare experts who are sources of Law Enforcement Today have raised concerns about exactly what it may have been - and encouraged us to read up about hemorrhagic fevers. We'd encourage you to do the same. Education is the best tool we have to protect our families - no matter what this turns out to be. Bangkok, Thailand- A disturbing story in the New York Post tells of a passenger on board a flight from Thailand to Germany who suddenly had blood begin gushing out of his mouth and nose. That passenger died from the massive loss of blood. The passenger, a 63-year-old German man, boarded the Lufthansa Airlines flight in Bangkok shortly before midnight. According to sources, the man was visibly sick as he boarded the aircraft, with “cold sweats” and “breathing much too quickly,” according to Swiss German outlet Blick. Initial reports say the man’s wife claimed they had been in a rush to catch the flight, explaining why he wasn’t feeling well. However, that didn’t sit well with Karin Missfelder, a nursing specialist at the University Hospital in Zurich, who told a flight attendant that the man needed to be examined by a doctor. That led a young Polish man, who claimed to be a doctor, to examine the man, who asked the male how he was feeling. Told he was ok and only checking his pulse, the “doctor” claimed the man was okay. “They gave him a little chamomile tea, but he already spit blood into the bag that his wife held out to him,” said Martin Missfelder, Karin’s husband. That was only the beginning of the horrific episode, as blood soon started streaming from the man’s mouth and nose. “It was absolute horror; everyone was screaming,” Martin Missfelder said. Missfelder believed the man lost “liters” of blood, with much of it splattering on the cabin of the Airbus A-380. The man soon went into cardiac arrest, and flight attendants performed CPR for about a half-hour on the man, even as Karin Missfelder knew it was hopeless. After attempts to revive the man failed, the captain announced the passenger had passed away. The cabin crew carried him to the aft galley of the plane, and the airliner turned and headed back to Thailand. In a statement, Lufthansa Airlines praised the cabin crew and those who assisted the stricken passenger. “Although immediate and comprehensive first aid measures were taken by the crew and a doctor on board, the passenger died during the flight,” the statement read. “Our thoughts are with the relatives of the deceased passenger. We also regret the inconvenience caused to the passengers of this flight,” the statement continued. According to flight data, the airliner departed Bangkok at 11:50 pm local time on Thursday and landed in Thailand at 8:28 am Friday. Passengers said they waited approximately two hours after landing back in Bangkok before getting rebooked on another flight to Germany. Kristin Missfelder regretted not intervening earlier, although it is unknown if that would have made a difference. “I should have intervened, but I saw that a doctor was looking after him, so I didn’t want to get involved,” she said, admitting that “the man looked so bad, I don’t understand why the captain took off.” Lufthansa was criticized for their handling of passengers, including the victim’s wife, after the incident. Martin Missfelder said Lufthansa staff left passengers to fend for themselves upon returning to Thailand. “She stood there all alone and apathetic and had to endure all the formalities,” Missfelder told Blick, according to the Daily Mail. The airline offered the traumatized passengers only the equivalent of a $12 voucher for their inconvenience. It is unknown what caused the sudden loss of blood of the victim. No further details have been released, including the name of the victim or if an autopsy was performed.