Cottleston Pie

I found a very interesting description of how to make a habanero flavored oil with controlled heat content, with a long interesting trail of comments.

This helpful hint by Diane Duane is worth preserving as I think I might find very useful at some point:

Re: touching chilies and dealing with the aftermath

When treating so-called "Hunan hand" in the emergency room, the treatment of choice is a weak bleach solution (approx. 1 tablespoon to a liter of water). Soak your hands in it briefly. The chlorine in the bleach breaks the capsaicin molecule and renders it non-hot. The pain stops immediately.

For those who get the stuff in their eyes (or for gentlemen, somewhere else they, uh, shouldn't have touched before soaking their hands in bleach...), the specific treatment is contact lens wetting solution. This also breaks the molecule.

The last couple days, I've been enjoying a jar of Mrs. Renfro's brand "Habanero Salsa" from Fort Worth, Texas, but found on my local HEB shelf here in Austin. Excellent flavor.

I'm really telling this all backwards.

A month or two ago, I started picking up "hot" HEB salsa picante, but the "hot" label seemed something of a joke. I would describe it as "strong mild." So, I bought the "extra hot" HEB Habanero salsa picante which uses habaneros rather than jalapeños for spicy flavor. The difference is dramatic: it's a lot hotter and has a much more burnt/seared pepper taste (meaning pepper as in bell pepper rather than peppercorn). I'm not too fond of the taste straight-up, which is good because it's too hot for me anyway. I found that mixing a little habanero in with the regular picante spiced it up and improved the flavor a lot.

So, after that whole little experiment, I decided to try some other local (Texas) salsas that were available on the shelves of HEB. I picked up a jar of Jardine's brand "Cilantro Texasalsa (hot)" and also a jar of Jardine's "Queso Amarillo (flame roasted flavor)" for variety. Jardine's is from just down the road in Buda.

The Queso is horrible. It looks like there's some cheese involved, but it smells and tastes a heck-of-a-lot like ranch dressing. A few chips of that and the whole jar was immediately promoted to the garbage.

The Texasalsa is great. I finished it off quickly and have another jar in my pantry.

It was then that I found Teresa's post about making the habanero oil and between that enticing discussion of the joy of the resultant flavors, I decided to try the Mrs. Renfro's Habanero Salsa, another success.

If three's the charm, an average of about 6.3 seems to be the laugh. On both The Family Guy and American Dad, the writers use a comedic technique of repeating something several too many times to make it funny. I'd guess I'd seen this before, but never so often repeated. I guess that's the writer's meta-joke -- if we can give jokes extra oomph by having a punch line repeated ad nauseam, let's do that ad nauseam! I'm not complaining. Just noticing. I think both shows are hilarious and if all goes well, will be taping them both tonight while I go play frisbee.

A few weeks ago, a friend called and suggested we go see "The Aristocrats."

I immediately said, "Sure," and with enthusiasm.

He was surprised.

The fact that I don't swear like a sailor occasionally gives some people that idea that I'm more sensitive than I am. I tend to swear more like a scuba diver -- looks like I'm happily blowing bubbles while ranting away inside my head like a sunken sailor.

So, he confirmed, "You do know what movie I'm talking about? The one about the dirty joke? Not the one with cats in it?" Yes, yes, I knew what it was. And the stellar reviews made me think it was worth watching.

At the box office, I realized that I've probably said "aristocats" as a word more than "aristocrats." When I went to buy the tickets, I correctly asked for "The Aristocrats," then second guessed my myself, asked for "Aristocats," heard the error and quickly confirmed, "Aristocrats." Geez.

The movie was hilarious. The audience as a whole obviously thought so. Naturally, some comedians were more funny than others and to different people. For myself, when I wasn't laughing, I tended to feel bad for the comedian for being so embarrassingly unfunny. In particular, would someone take Andy Dick out? (I was going to say "of his misery," but I think it's more a case of his inflicting misery on me than feeling it himself, so I'll just leave that request with the mob-ish ending.)

There were lots of brilliantly funny stuff though. In the end, I was saying that the movie lived up to the hype from all the great reviews.

Some of it was by comedians or actors I knew. Some by those I didn't know. Unfortunately, it was such a large cast of characters, I largely still don't know who's-who of the people I didn't know before the film. One of the most funny guys wasn't a stage comedian or actor himself, but was, I think, a writer.

An exception to my continued ignorance is Sarah Silverman. She was a brilliant highlight. Turns out she has a film coming out this November called "Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic" coming out which was screened at SXSW. (And there's a longer trailer that it playing before The Aristocrats. Both trailers feature potentially offensive humor.) I can't wait to see it.

Update: Not unrelated NYTimes article: Almost Before We Spoke, We Swore

pallet jack

A group from my company spent today volunteering down at the Capital Area Food Bank. (And other groups were volunteering elsewhere as part of an annual "Day of Caring" event.) It was fantastic. We were doing food salvage in an assembly-line environment. I was stacking full boxes of food on the appropriate pallet and when the pallets were full, I logged the full pallet, plastic-wrapped it, and took it out into the warehouse on a pallet jack. I also did various other tasks, running stuff that needed to be moved around on pallet jacks. And I spent a chunk of time taping new flat boxes into shape. Maybe 80 of them? It was a lot.

It was a nice change of pace and I had a great time and can't wait to do it again next year. I'm glad IBM let us do it today on company time (in that way, it was a significant donation).

I well may not need to wait all the way until next year of course if I do it on my own time (there can be logistical difficulties with this, but not completely insurmountable I would guess). And my dept may do some different activity next year (we did a different activity last year and it didn't work out nearly so well). I wish the the CAFB weren't very much on the opposite side of the city.

I had the pleasure of seeing two great movies this weekend. I've spotted Out of Africa on the shelves of video rental stores for years. I finally saw it. Brilliant. The extras on the DVD are excellent as well. The film stands on its own, but stands taller when thinking about the themes: of possession, control (which cuts both ways: wanting some control of what we love and loving that which we can't control), and love (not just of and between people, but of ways of life and of continents).

I should probably write a letter and suggest it for the big screen as a summer movie classic at The Paramount. It would be great on the big screen. Even better if you've a honey, 'cause it's quite the romantic flick.

Speaking of which, I also had the joy of following that up with State and Main. Hilarious. Um, now where to I find a cute and quirky bookstore owner like that? ;-)