hooklineandskillet

I love the Islands, and the concerts.  Mike hooked me up with an evening with Dave and Tim

In our family there is a double secret competition to be the first to make real bread from scratch.  Connor is leading the charge.  He grew his own sour dough starter and was kind enough to share.  You have to feed it every day and stuff.  Its like a pet.  Anyway, this was my first attempt.  Im feeling pretty good.  Im turbo feeding the starter and am hoping to retry on Thursday or Friday when the yeast is robust.  I only let this rise for 2 hours.  I did however hand knead it for 20 straight minutes which was brutal.

Ringing in the New Year with great food and even better friends and family.  Laura crushed it with Cacio E Pepe – all made from scratch, past included.  topped it off with crab legs, filet, and a dance party.  Mom didn’t disappoint with home made zeppoles right out of the frier at 12:30am..

Made roast beef on the smoker.  Took 8 lbs of top sirloin cut, it was about $3 a lb.  As cheap as could be.  Did a basic rub and cooked it at medium heat until the center was just under 130 degrees.  It was phenomenal with a little horseradish on a cold windy day.

Headed down to Birmingham to attend the Bama v LSU football game. Got into town and checked out Saw’s Soul Food and BBQ.  We just did a little tasting which seemed wasteful but we have along weekend ahead of us.  I was very impressed by the quality.  Everything tasted refreshing which isn’t really a word you use for BBQ but it was all homemade with love.  The “Pork over Greens” was true pulled pork over collard green and cheese grits.  each component stood on its own.  It wasn’t just a sloppy mess.  The “Colonel’ is their Famous sandwich.  lightly battered ‘sweet tea’ chicken right out of the frier, tomato, pimento cheese, pickles, and white BBQ sauce.  It was insane.  Fried okra was also the best I have ever had.  it was a corn meal crust and not slimy or greasy at all. One of the better BBQ places I have been- now I see why New York Times listed it as one of the 52 places to visit in 2017 (along with Greenville)

Great BBQ in Ridgefield, maybe the best in CT

The Nashi cider is ready.  It is ok, not that great.  Very dry and don’t love the aftertaste.  I think the problem is I used whole foods pasteurized cider- and the apple pears just diluted the flavor.  you can taste them but it prob would have been better to just to use the Nashi/Apple Pear.  I have 3 mason jars of the cider an plan on putting one in the freezer.  Maybe ice wine will be better- or at least quicker to drink ; ).

On to the next one.  we stopped at a 93 year old apple press in Milford, CT.  What a find! Opened by John Jajer as the Berkshire Mill in 1900, the cider mill originally was in the area of today’s Water Witch Hose Co.No. 2 fire station. The year it was moved to Park Lane is unknown, but it has been estimated as 1924 by Trust member Loretta Kretchko. The mill still has the original 1924 Farquahar cider press that was made in Chicago.  We picked up a gallon and a half of UNPASTEURIZED cider, so with a little champagne yeast this thing should take off.  It is also very sweet.  Hopefully this is the good stuff and I can scale up next year.