Cooler. Overcast opening to nice later.
There- that almost guarantees that we’ll get rain.
Yesterday was overcast, cool, and windy most of the day. Not unpleasant. Just unusual.
Ventured over to my secondary location to move some things, and collect a couple of small items for projects here at the house. Sold a piece or two to a friend while I was at it. Then hit two other friends just to touch base. Meatspace. Still important.
Today, here, we’re having a special meal to celebrate Mother’s Day. I’ve got half that elk roast defrosting, and I’ll figure out how to cook it. I guess the sides will be similar to either lamb or beef, but I’ll know better after reviewing a couple of books. Paper books, just as an exercise.
Dinner last night was grilled over a small fire in the back yard. We used the firepit/grill I’ve mentioned before and it worked great again. Nice bed of hardwood coals from backyard tree waste. Kids had hotdogs, my wife and I had homemade sausage, half deer, half wild pig, that the neighbor gave us at our Neighbors’ Night Out a year and a half ago. It’s been vac sealed and in the freezer. I also made sliced red potatoes with butter and seasoning in foil tucked in the ashes and coals. A bed of saute’d onions went under our sausages. S’mores for dessert, natch.
WRT the coming unpleasantness, my gun store buddy told me to ‘make a list’ of anything I might want. “Lots of guys in the oil patch” are starting to consign their guns for sale. So it’s already starting. Fancy guns and hunting guns, musical instruments, “man” toys- stuff with motors, boats, etc should be first. RV’s, trucks, and tools will probably be last. You can live in an RV, you need a truck for work, and tools (especially if you use them to make your living) are always useful.
Garden is… continuing. Potato towers are going gangbusters. The bag o dirt is about 2ft high now, and I’m running out of dirt. That might be as high as I go this year. The other stuff I planted as seed is coming up, wherever the squirrels didn’t eat the seeds, and where I have metal mesh to keep it safe… I don’t have enough metal mesh, that’s clear. Either that or the seeds just didn’t germinate. My ‘window boxes’ are a big disappointment. No sprouts, and the onion starts have been disappearing at the rate of one a day. Did I mention I need more mesh?
Blueberry ‘bushes’ have fruit ripening. I planted different varieties for pollenization, and because with different maturities, we should be getting berries for a longer season. So far, 4 berries have been harvested and eaten. They are very tasty, if not exactly going to fill buckets…
Last year’s pepper plants continue to provide a bounty. Delicious sweet peppers, without a hint of heat. Cabbages look sturdy, but are all leaf and no head at this point. Broccoli is a bit spindly, but the other dark green leafy (either brusselsprouts or collards, can’t remember) are starting to grow. They stayed the same size while something eats holes in the leaves for the last couple of weeks but are finally getting bigger. The grape vine looks caterpillar free at the moment, so I think I got that in time this year. The other grape vine is staying short, having died back to within a foot of the ground. I’m not hopeful for that vine coming back. It’s just not and never was, as vigorous.
Citrus is doing well, where the tree rats leave it alone. Something stole the oranges off my potted orange tree, and can’t even eat them as they are only golf ball sized. Damn spoilers. The lime does still have one or two fruits developing. The Meyer Lemon is set to produce well, but then they do very well here in Houston. And the other orange still has at least one fruit on it, and the grapefruit tree has a bunch. Still hopeful for that one. No flowers on the peach tree, but it’s fully leafed in. Not a garden that would feed the family, that’s for sure, but it will hopefully provide at least a bit of variety and tasty nutrition.
We are in this for the long haul, here at Casa de Nick. I hope you are too.
Keep stacking, keep building skills and knowledge, and do what you can to maintain your meatspace relationships. Call your mom if you can…
nick
re List of fantasy mysteries:
Yah, there’s a reason I read hardly anything from the big publishers and don’t pay much attention to “best of” lists from random people.
A fantasy mystery my daughter and I recently read and liked very much is Mother of Learning, an amateur work published on a couple free websites. (Fiction Press and Royal Road) Beware: it’s long, 800k words, and just recently completed. The author’s thinking about whether he wants to clean it up for proper publication. Don’t be dissuaded by that, though: mechanically the book is better than most commercially published fiction (which is damning with faint praise, I’ll admit) and while if I were editing it I’d have him tighten up a few sections it’s very good as is. Strongly recommended. (If you prefer to read on a reader rather than online, you can use Calibre and the FanFicFare plugin to make a .mobi or .epub from the FictionPress link. It’s not available in print yet.)
More broadly, most of the fiction I read is from either amateur authors, possibly with amateur editing, or from self-published (pro, semipro, or wanna-be-pro) authors on Amazon and free websites. It’s not a matter of money — I’m perfectly happy to send the author money if they have a “support my work” link and my daughter or I liked their story — it’s a matter of the NYC publishers’ agenda being crammed down my throat. As a young adult I was socially liberal (though fiscally conservative and always in favor of accepting the consequences of one’s choices) but, to modify the quote, I didn’t leave the socially liberal, the socially liberal left me and went completely off the deep end. Publishing novels with gay characters: fine. Mandating that not only must every novel have a gay character in one of the lead roles but that gays may never be the villains and anyone criticizing them must be negatively portrayed: not fine. Ditto for non-white characters, mohammedans, strong women fighting the patriarchy, scientists standing against the commercial forces who deny climate realism, and so on ad nauseum. Message received, publishers. You don’t need my money. I’ll look elsewhere. Amateur fiction has plenty of good writers and, while you can find positively-portrayed gay main characters if that’s what you want, you can also find positively-portrayed religious conservatives with strong traditional family values if that’s what you want.
If there’s interest I can ask my daughter to tell me which of the amateur/self-pub stories she recommends, as fantasy mysteries, science fiction, or whatever. She reads much more fiction than I do.
If Musk did pull out of Cali, he’d just be the latest in a long string. Maybe it would be a wakeup call for Cali politicians? Naw. They’ll just double down, raise taxes, cut a few services, and increase their poverty farming efforts…
And scream for a federal bailout.
California received big federal bailouts in the form of the mortgage settlement 10 years ago and the tobacco settlement 10 years before that.
The problem with cutting them loose is that a lot of the private 401(k) and pension plans are heavily invested in CA tech companies — FAANG, FAAMG, … choose your iteration — and real estate. Newsom knows the Feds can’t simply let the state crater.
Mandating that not only must every novel have a gay character in one of the lead roles but that gays may never be the villains and anyone criticizing them must be negatively portrayed: not fine. Ditto for non-white characters, mohammedans, strong women fighting the patriarchy, scientists standing against the commercial forces who deny climate realism, and so on ad nauseum.
Too much SJW mars “What We Left Behind”, a documentary filmed to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the end of “Deep Space Nine”.
DS9 had plenty of Prog idealism as it was, but the writers, reunited for the documentary, including Ronald D. Moore, couldn’t leave well enough alone. And , of course, Orange Man Bad had to be in there since impeachment was still a possibility — an editing decision which will date the flick horribly.
@Lynn — think Garak on DS9 is gay? That’s one of the less uncomfortable pieces of revisionism. The message is: Never mind his relationship with Ziyal which was progressive in its own way … for 1998 … BTW, Orange Man Bad and we couldn’t write Garak as gay because the portion of the audience that eventually voted with hate.
Still, I do recommend the documentary for the HD footage and the interviews.
Five years from now, your harvests will be better. What I have found is that things have to be in the ground for several years before they finally kick in and start producing. No one talks about that, least of all the pros who sell us books, articles, or plants, but it is true.
And, it is true even when we buy “fruiting age” plants – a shorter wait on those but still a wait. The past two years, we’ve finally gotten a robust supply of asparagus from roots we planted in 2009 along the alley fence. It went from skinny pencil-size in past years to big fat stalks, and I gathered a double handful each day for a month or more. Put some out behind the garage out of the way. Even if you don’t like asparagus, home grown is a whole nuther vegetable.
The same with peaches. I planted an Elberta in 2009, and for several years it kept blooming too early and getting frostbit. But it has finally acclimated and since 2017 it sets such a large crop that I have to prop the branches. I also have to wrap it in several layers of deer netting because the deer will come eat a hundred a night while they are still green. Winter before last, I planted another Elberta, a 3 year old “fruiting size” tree, and although it survived quite well and is looking good, it has not yet bloomed. At the same time I planted two large fig trees. The Brown Turkey died back to the ground but is putting forth new branches, so that is fine – figs bear on new growth. The Celeste branches all survived the winter and are leafing out. I do not know when they bloom. I wish I had planted them 5 years ago, because even as large as they are, it may take that long to get fruit – we’ll see!
I am going to try some blueberries in tubs when I can buy plants again this fall/winter. We have alkaline soil so they tell me we need to grow them in tubs to get enough acid in the soil for them.
Tyler Durden cowardice. The auto journalists know the deal with The Real Life Tony Stark (TM), but there are no more Brock Yates.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/final-straw-elon-musk-says-hes-suing-alameda-county-moving-tesla-texas-or-nevada
Having trouble with my garlic crop, and I’m not the only one. I’m asking everywhere if anyone knows what caused this, did a YT video about it even, so I will ask here too:
Locally, this is not quite time to harvest but getting close: mid-May into June. But this year something weird has happened to my garlic, and others have reported the same thing. All of the cloves in each bulb have sprouted in the ground, sending up skinny leaves in bunches that look like a clump of ornamental grass or broom. And the outer leaves have not formed skins around the pods/bulbs, so they are attached but not enclosed.
I’ve grown garlic for about 8 or 9 years now, it always does well, and have never had a crop fail until this year. I did everything the same as usual. Other people have been saying the same thing happened to theirs. It was a warm winter, and very warm March, but not shockingly so. I hope I can find out what caused this to know if it is preventable.
Well, for many years when I was rolling my own desktops, I used to as a matter of course set them up with Windows whatever and Ubuntu. (And was often glad I did, as I needed the Ubuntu to fix something on the windows partition).
This would be on a three year old tippy top of the line LG laptop. From what I can Google, Ubuntu should be okay with that. For most metrics I would use for okay.
This would be on a three year old tippy top of the line LG laptop. From what I can Google, Ubuntu should be okay with that. For most metrics I would use for okay.
Ubuntu or one of the derivatives. Among those, I’m partial to Linux Mint and the current LTS Pop! OS (18.04).
My home server has run Fedora for over a decade. Except for occasional Wayland issues, Fedora just works for that purpose.
Just judging by who’s dragging him, I’d have to be on Musk’s side.
” Tyler Durden cowardice. The auto journalists know the deal with The Real Life Tony Stark (TM)”
Just judging by who’s dragging him, I’d have to be on Musk’s side.
Most of the media has been complicit until recently. Don’t mess with CA-bound rentier skim checks.
I suspect a lot of auto and tech journalists were part of the group of Tesla stockholders secretly … oh, heck openly hoping and campaigning for an Apple bailout.
I’ve had the big grapefruit and orange in the ground for about 5 years, maybe a bit more. They are 5 – 6 inch in diameter at the base of the trunk. I trim them so they are wide, thin, and short to fit the space on the edge of the property line, and so I can cover them if it freezes. The trees are VERY sturdy at this point, but are only starting to produce.
The peach is about 3- 4 inches in diameter? It’s in a spot with very wet soil, and that may be an issue, I haven’t looked into it because I can’t move it at this point.
When we had the long freeze a couple of years ago, I lost the lime I’d had in the ground for several years. It was JUST starting to produce heavily when it froze.
Planting trees is by nature a hopeful act. Not my normal nature, btw, but I recognize that you have to plant them now if you want them later.
One other thought, we must have had a bumper crop of squirrels. We’ve always got a lot around but they haven’t rooted up my gardens like this in a few years. Stripped the pecan, yes, eaten every seed, no.
n
@pecan corner, I don’t have any garlic in the garden, but my chives did weird stuff underground this year too. The stalks are much more symmetrical, and like a decorative water fountain the way the leaves peel away and curl from the center. They taste ok though and are almost impossible to kill.
n
Maybe ʻOumuamua is involved.
–been saying this since February. That and we STILL don’t know if you get lasting or even temporary immunity. You don’t want to get this and “just get it over with.”
n
BTW,
USA 1,350,853
new cases +3,544
tot deaths 80,125
recovered 238,148
active 1,032,580
critical 16,816
If you are sick enough to be hospitalized, the US is currently running 3:1 recovered vs died. That’s up from 2:1 but I suspect there might be some change in the way the counting is done. That’s a 25% chance of dying in the hospital btw. And it’s WAY better than many, if not most countries.
It took us an extra week to get to 80K, so we’re definitely slowing down, but now that we’re at the worst possible flu season deaths, and have months left to go, can even the worst “it’s just the flu” people acknowledge that it is in fact worse than the flu?*
n
*yes, there are places where they added some people to the total that shouldn’t be there, but the evidence so far, from studies not anecdotes, is that we are UNDER counting Covid-19 deaths. By a lot.
Is there a guideline somewhere on how a death is classified? How about how a death that is classified as “from the flu.” I feel something wonky is going on with reporting. Not doubting people are dying, but at the end of the year I will be curious to see total deaths this year compared to previous years.
@MrAtoz, yes there is a guideline. While it was in their interest to minimize the number, they only counted deaths confirmed with a CDC lab test. When it became clear that shenanigans were going on, they changed it again, then again and again. The definitions and time of reporting/lag are why there are many different sources rolled into the John’s Hopkins charts.
Aesop looks at the study that looked at “excess deaths” and links back if you want to go another layer deeper.
https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2020/05/hopeium-futures-take-another-hit.html
At 80K I think we’re far enough past any “margin of fraud” wrt the magnitude of the problem. Some people keep moving the goalposts though. First it was “flu kills 40K, and this is no where close” then it was “in a BAD year flu kills 80K and this is nowhere close” and I’m sure that there are people typing comments somewhere RIGHT NOW that “the 80K isn’t REAL, like the flu numbers” (hint-they’re approximations too, for all the same reasons CV numbers are somewhat an approximation), or even “well to be REALLY worse than the flu it would have to be 120K deaths…”
In a little over two months we’ve gone from 0 to 80K deaths in the US. People continued to die of other stuff (at varying rates) too. And the real issue is that since it’s “novel” the potential pool of infected is “everyone”.
Add to that, “Herd Immunity” isn’t immunity. People have been throwing that term around like they understand it, but clearly they don’t. There isn’t some magic number of infected where suddenly you are immune. It just means that the pathogen has a harder time finding new hosts and dies out. Look at measles, for which we DO have local ‘herd immunity’… when someone brings it into the local ‘herd’ it proceeds to infect everyone who isn’t ACTUALLY immune from having had it or having had a successful vaccination. The only thing that stops the outbreak is isolation, and lack of people to spread to.
Once (and IF) we achieve the state called ‘herd immunity’ in some places, if the virus gets in, it will STILL run wild thru the locals. No matter that Sweden has enough sick that they achieve local ‘herd immunity’, as soon as some vibrant immigrant visits home, and returns to Sweden with the virus, there will be an outbreak among the people who haven’t had it yet.
In other words, herd immunity isn’t immunity. It just means that in your LOCAL area, there are too few hosts to support the spread of the virus and it temporarily dies out, IN YOUR AREA. As soon as it’s re-introduced you have sick people again.
n
Lock down and Linux servers: It’s nice to occasionally reap the benefits. Our Ubuntu server and NAS are at my “work” apartment, but I’m doing home-office in our temporary place near the building site.
The server is running Owncloud, to give us access, and just chugs along. I haven’t had to touch it in months. An off-site backup is overdue, but that’s all.
Musing about COVID: what jobs have been eliminated? Which of those should come back, really?
Looking around here, I imagine that tourism will never recover – it was already struggling, because “budget” tourism just doesn’t exist here. That’s hard for the people in the industry, but really only accelerating a decades-long trend. Ski-lift operators will go the way of typesetters: to the extent the function is needed, it will be automated.
OTOH there are plenty of jobs. They just don’t involve sitting in a comfy booth doing not very much. Lots of need for machinists, carpenters, welders, machine operators – positions in industry and the trades. Good money, but you might get dirty. Maybe this will cause more people to consider such jobs…
There’s dirty, and then there’s dirty. We all have our aversions. I couldn’t stand working on a farm, but a machine shop is fine. So is blacksmithing and working on cars.
But I get your point. I have been a fan of Mike Rowe for a long time. He advocates working in the trades.
Is the current number of deaths due to COVID an undercount? I think the only good way to look at this is using excess deaths. No one does a very good job of cause of death anymore. There was a time when many more autopsies were performed and that usually gives a definite cause. But autopsies require doctors and they are expensive, so few are still done, and I believe it depends on the local jurisdiction for how many or why they are done. As well, at a time when there are many more deaths than usual (like now), there is no time to analyze a specific cause of death for every single person. For purposes of statistics and tracking, excess deaths are good enough. That won’t help if you absolutely need to know if Mr. XYZ died of COVID, but excess deaths allow for a simple and fairly accurate way to understand total deaths due to COVID. 100% accurate? No, but you don’t need that. 95% would be good enough to understand what is going on and perfect is the enemy of good enough. Be a pessimist about the numbers too. If excess deaths were not how the count was derived, the count is hardly ever revised down, (and that is not due to some conspiracy – too many of those theories around) and why excess deaths provide the best number to work with. It is not pretty.
In reference to Greg’s previous notes about Musk moving Tesla to Austin, “Elon Musk: Lockdowns unconstitutional, threatens to pull Tesla out of California”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/10/elon-musk-lockdowns-unconstitutional-threatens-to-pull-tesla-out-of-california/
“Guest “I can’t believe I’m praising Tony Stark XXXXX XXXXX Elon Musk” by David Middleton”
“Elon Musk Tells Joe Rogan: Lockdowns Are ‘Unconstitutional’”
“During a recent interview on the Joe Rogan Experience, Tesla CEO Elon Musk called recent Wuhan coronavirus shelter-in-place orders “unconstitutional” just days after reports appeared implying that Tesla’s Fremont plant may begin production again soon in violation of lockdown orders.””
I just went to Best Buy to get a new TV for my daughter for her birthday. The store is closed but they are doing curbside delivery. They were the only ones (Sam’s Club, Costco, Walmart, Target) to have the 40 inch Vizio tv that we got for her. There was about a dozen vehicles picking stuff up while I was there.
BTW, Best Buy required my government issued id in order to pickup the tv I bought. Amazing, having to prove that who you are. But certain people want people to be able to be able to vote and get “free” government services without proof of who they are.
I just went to Best Buy to get a new TV for my daughter for her birthday. The store is closed but they are doing curbside delivery. They were the only ones (Sam’s Club, Costco, Walmart, Target) to have the 40 inch Vizio tv that we got for her. There was about a dozen vehicles picking stuff up while I was there.
We did our traditional Mother’s Day trip to The Salt Lick in Driftwood today. The dining room wasn’t open, take out only, but they were not chasing people out of their patio seating. About half of the tables had been removed, however, and the crowd was nowhere near the normal Mother’s Day numbers.
I cut the grass. Need to start looking at dinner needs.
n
WRT the coming unpleasantness, my gun store buddy told me to ‘make a list’ of anything I might want. “Lots of guys in the oil patch” are starting to consign their guns for sale. So it’s already starting. Fancy guns and hunting guns, musical instruments, “man” toys- stuff with motors, boats, etc should be first. RV’s, trucks, and tools will probably be last. You can live in an RV, you need a truck for work, and tools (especially if you use them to make your living) are always useful.
Welcome to The Greater Recession.
Welcome to The Greater Recession.
The real estate silly season in Austin usually happens at the end of the month. A house just down the street from me suddenly went on the market on the first, and another has a For Rent sign out front.
Tyler Durden cowardice. The auto journalists know the deal with The Real Life Tony Stark (TM), but there are no more Brock Yates.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/final-straw-elon-musk-says-hes-suing-alameda-county-moving-tesla-texas-or-nevada
I will guarantee you that various counties in Texas and Nevada are gearing up right now to move a 4,000 person factory to their counties. Everyone knows what the future is bringing and the competition for jobs will be fierce.
I am surprised that Musk did not have a get out plan for Tesla from California. California is the most business unfriendly state that I have ever seen. We just got the PG&E bankruptcy documents for my father-in-law (he is a shareholder). Another of my customers in California went bankrupt last year owing my business money for services rendered. The state prevented them from replacing an old pipeline and it leaked and blew up of course.
I am surprised that Musk did not have a get out plan for Tesla from California. California is the most business unfriendly state that I have ever seen. We just got the PG&E bankruptcy documents for my father-in-law (he is a shareholder). Another of my customers in California went bankrupt last year owing my business money for services rendered. The state prevented them from replacing an old pipeline and it leaked and blew up of course.
Musk has essentially been a ward of the State of California since the first Tesla rolled off the assembly line. Beyond the tax credits offered to every buyer, the state mandated every car company to produce and sell EVs.
Yup and yup. 4,000 are probably champing at the bit to *leave* Kalifornia for wherever the plant ends up. However, The Real Tony Stark ™ is known for shooting his mouth off too soon.
I will guarantee you that various counties in Texas and Nevada are gearing up right now to move a 4,000 person factory to their counties. Everyone knows what the future is bringing and the competition for jobs will be fierce.
Simply moving the HQ would be a multi year process, similar to Toyota’s relocation to Plano or AT&T’s move up I35 from San Antonio to Dallas. Execs get buyouts of their houses and generous relo packages to find new homes.
Moving the factory would be more difficult and time consuming unless Musk has a deal in the works now to take over one of the existing car plants in Texas. Toyota in San Antonio is not NUMMI, and the truck division is within striking distance of the F150 after 20 years. GM Arlington has design and marketing problems, not quality of the end product, and retaking #2 in trucks isn’t impossible if management simply realized that a lot of people use work vehicles for *work* (imagine).
Simply moving the HQ would be a multi year process, similar to Toyota’s relocation to Plano or AT&T’s move up I35 from San Antonio to Dallas. Execs get buyouts of their houses and generous relo packages to find new homes.
Moving the factory would be more difficult and time consuming unless Musk has a deal in the works now to take over one of the existing car plants in Texas. Toyota in San Antonio is not NUMMI, and the truck division is within striking distance of the F150 after 20 years. GM Arlington has design and marketing problems, not quality of the end product, and retaking #2 in trucks isn’t impossible if management simply realized that a lot of people use work vehicles for *work* (imagine).
The factories are modular. These are brand new lines, the automated line and the manual line in the tent. I suspect the manual line could be moved in a week.
Tesla got the Shanghai line and running in less than three months. Simply amazing. The German line is reputedly going to be up and running by the end of the year. Or not, I see that the greenies have struck Tesla out for now.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51525673
But, they are back to work now.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/21/german-court-tesla-can-clear-trees-car-factory
@TV
I agree that excess deaths are a useful metric – but urge caution. We are seeing a significant portion of ‘excess’ deaths in the UK which are not attributed to Covid19. A suggestion is that people are dying of illnesses as they are reluctant to visit a hospital (Emergency services are well down in terms of numbers). Also, medics are warning of the upcoming impact due to the absence of early intervention in heart and cancer conditions, which will, in theory show over coming months in additional deaths. It could be (does anybody know?), that deaths from the treatment (lockdowns and moving resources to dedicated Covid19 treatment) may end up being the same order of magnitude as the problem, Covid19? As it is, from a UK political perspective, the government will likely be blamed for all excess deaths – no win!.
The factories are modular. These are brand new lines, the automated line and the manual line in the tent. I suspect the manual line could be moved in a week.
The tent was easy because Fremont had the infrastructure in place for the line right next door.
Musk is bluffing. Newsom will fold.
Cuomo-Newsom 2024 depends on both getting reelected in 2022.
I finally wrote the essay on high-trust societies that I mentioned last month, or maybe the month before. It took me stinkin’ forever because my uninterrupted time tends to be measured in minutes and it’s a bit of a challenge to write a coherent essay a few minutes at a time. (I’m not fully satisfied with it as it is, but that’s normal.)
Posted at Daily Pundit (preferred) and at Burke’s Tavern, a new site positioning itself as a home for thoughtful stories and nonfiction.
@SteveF
I look forward to reading it. I had a thought for your homemade masks: a Hitler moustache. BwaaHahaha
Now I’m all mad that I didn’t think of that.
Not only the mustache but the hair. With an 8 1/2×11 piece of paper, I have plenty of room for creativity.
Husband fail! No elk for dinner. All of the recipes say cook for 3-5 hours, except Joy of Cooking. Now, JoC is my ‘go to’ cookbook, but I checked a dozen books on wild game, and they were all the same, almost no matter what the recipe included, they all had cook times for elk roast at 3-5 hours.
So I made lamb lollypops instead, and we’ll eat the elk tomorrow. Delicious lamb.
Wife was pleased in the end.
All ends well that ends.
n
Husband fail! No elk for dinner. All of the recipes say cook for 3-5 hours, except Joy of Cooking. Now, JoC is my ‘go to’ cookbook, but I checked a dozen books on wild game, and they were all the same, almost no matter what the recipe included, they all had cook times for elk roast at 3-5 hours.
Steiner Ranch Steakhouse here in Austin has Chicken Fried Elk on the menu.
We always opt for the more conventional entrees, but there’s a suggestion for elk preparation
My wife hit HEB this evening. Still limiting customers on meat items, but most things were available where Costco was picked clean yesterday except for lamb and high end beef such as ribeye steaks.
The son came over for Mother’s Day. We went out for dinner at our local Mexican food restaurant who has reopened the dining room. It was nice to go out ! I got my beef fajitas and three grilled shrimp. Just after I finished my shrimp, the son looked over at my plate and wanted to steal one of my shrimp. Too late !
All of the employees were wearing masks and gloves. I have no idea if that is the new rules or whatever. I left them a $20 tip. There was a constant line of people coming in to get takeaway food so the kitchen was very busy.
@ PaultheManc
I agree there may be some additional deaths in that count that may be due to hospital avoidance. I am unsure as to the numbers here but I don’t think (I don’t know of course) they will be a significant number when you see situations where weekly deaths are triple the norm. Excess deaths is an imperfect number, but it is the best easy number to work with (and all the other numbers are imperfect as well). It has the advantage of not understating deaths and it is important that people take this situation seriously. It is also a number I think won’t be constantly revised (even with your point above) which gives it credibility. The situation frankly sucks, and will continue to suck for some time. As some others have been saying: embrace the suck. Most of us will catch this. The idea is to catch it as late as possible to allow hospitals to adjust and not become overwhelmed, to allow new and better treatments to be found so when you catch it you have a better chance of surviving if you do need the hospital, and to make time for vaccine discovery and distribution for those who have managed to completely avoid it.
I was reading some comment by a Californian, saying that no Californian business could move to Texas, because the climate in DFW or Austin is so hot as to be unbearable. I remember when I moved to Austin, having spent several years up North: it took a full year to adapt. But after that, even active sports in the full sunshine were no problem.
You just have to be willing to make the effort, and not grouse about it. Yes, it’s hot. Yes, you get sweaty. So what?
OTOH, from more recent visits to Austin, I wouldn’t want to go back. It has gotten way too big, and definitely way too progressive. Too many Californians did make the move…
I think of Austin as ‘California lite’….
And the ‘weird’ that is fun with a few locals quickly turns dark and sinister with a lot of strangers. I worked in Hollywood before they did all the upgrades to make it a tourist destination. It was full of the weirdest kid from every high school in America. They got to Hollywood and discovered they weren’t so weird after all, and had to double down. Weird and quirky goes dark and scary very quickly.
n