We are all made of stars

Not much to report here this week except that we had another barbecue today. I’m pretty sure I’m going to make this into a weekly thing, just because it kicks so much ass. Among other things, I cut up whole chickens and marinate them in soy sauce, sesame oil, fresh ground ginger, and a bit of sugar, then grill them at high temp. This caramelizes the sugar and makes the outside crispy and the inside tender and juicy. Most Thais just do not understand this flavor. That is, they cannot appreciate it because they either say it is salty (which it is on the outside), or does not taste Thai. This makes me sad.

 

Something that really tripped me out this evening was drinking beer and watching the stars with this farmer dude. I told him he was lucky to be able to see the stars so clearly every night, unlike in the city. He was all like, the stars are there no matter where you travel, right? I told him they are there, but you can’t see them because it’s too bright in the city and the sky isn’t clear like this. Homeboy had no idea what the hell I was talking about. This made me very happy.

permission denied!

So this new anti-spam approach is such that pretty much all automated spam attempts are junked… but in less than a day, I’ve recorded over 20 spams entered by hand just on this blog and my brother’s! The funniest part of this is that none of those spam attempts were published to our blogs; they were automatically held for our approval by the system… Hell yeah!

Take off, you hosers.

Tweaks and Countermeasures

I’m fiddling with software settings in the background here, mostly to alleviate some of the hits our site is taking from comment spam, but also to improve usability on the admin side. If you have any problems with comments or notice anything strange, please let me know.
I have also folded my moblog and the School of Rice blogs into archives here and here to simplify things (since they are no longer updated).
Categories (on the sidebar) have been rearranged, but remain a poor way of finding specific posts. Using the search function is better for that. You can always contact me if you need help finding something; I can usually find specific posts fairly quickly.
I will get around to making this blog a bit easier on the eyes when I have the time (I’m quite tired of seeing this default MT template myself), however, function over form, as they say.
Update:
I’ve decided to disable all incoming Trackbacks, too. It was a long time in coming, but truly a pity. Fuck you, spammers.

I saw the sign

As I said in my last post, the cows in my backyard were a sign, and who the hell am I to ignore a sign?

Either God or the cows were telling me to have a barbecue.
So I fired up my brand new GhettoGrill and much meat was consumed, and all was good with the world: T-bones (from NZ, frozen), pork ribs, fresh (still wriggling) prawns, hulihuli chicken (at least as I remember it), and assorted extras, including pumpkin, which as you can see above, I cared little about.
By the way, it was one of the most pleasant evenings I’ve ever experienced here, with a cool (everyone else said “cold”) breeze.

Cows in my backyard update

There are more cows in my backyard!

The sound of bells means the cows have come for a visit.
I haven’t seen them since the last time I wrote about it, mostly because they usually stay on the far side of the irrigation ditch that separates our back wall from a dirt road running parallel to it, about 200 meters away. BTW, I love that old tree in the photo above as I have no idea what kind of tree it is, or even an inkling as to how old it is.
This time, there was a dog herding them around, butI couldn’t get a clear photo of it.

This one came to graze right under my balcony.
This must be a sign.

Important Yoshida Update

Maven asks: Do I know about Mr. Yoshida’s sauce?
Just a bit.
Just enough to stay away, that is:

“Junki proved himself a consummate brawler, slashing and battling with a ferocity notable even by lower Kyoto’s brutal standards. First he ran with a gang, then he ran his own. He picked up both a collection of knife scars and a nickname derived from the American tough-guy films he loved: One-Eyed-Jack Junki.
He had lost his right eye in an accident when he was three years old. A Buddhist priest had told him, “Junki-san, God has taken your eye and replaced it with his own. You will have a special insight into people.”
But the only thing special about Yoshida’s life seemed to be its difficulty. At 18 he failed the exam for entrance into the university system, the kiss of death for a young person in Japan. A life on the streets awaited Yoshida, a violent and likely brief career shaking down construction workers for the Yakuza, the Japanese version of Cosa Nostra. He decided instead to borrow money from his mother for a plane ticket to America, the land of second chances. He touched down in Seattle on a January day in 1968. The first thing he did was cash in his return ticket. He had resolved not to return home until he had achieved success.”

That’s not the childhood of a typical sauce maker; that’s Kill-fucking-Bill, Say Hello to My Little Friend-caliber. Watch who you fuck with, yo.
Or at least, that’s what someone should have told the Oregon lady who just sued him for $2 million!
I find it quite ironic that a year earlier, to the day, the same news site linked above ran quite a different kind of story on this man: Newsweek names Troutdale’s Junki Yoshida one of the 100 most-respected Japanese
(Need a login? Get one here.)
………..
So what does this all mean to me? Well, I guess I will never be able to market a line of Asian cooking sauces in the Pacific Northwest under my own name. Cosmic Teriyaki Co., LTD., here I come!