Borepatch gets all lyrical.
Springbok neck recipe
The new hunting season is almost upon us, and I still have a couple of hunks of springbok left in the fridge from last year. Including a whole neck.
So I found this recipe. It calls for neck chops, I had the neck whole… ah well, let’s try it anyway.
Mixed up the marinade of an onion, some garlic, 500ml red wine, didn’t have port at hand so left it out, fresh rosemary, forgot about the bay leaf, 1 tablespoon vinegar, 4 tablespoons soy sauce, some paprika — blended that all together, stuck it and the neck in a ziplock bag in the fridge. Used a tin of cranberry jelly I had kicking around, and some sugar to compensate for the extra tartness.
Removed neck from bag, browned some bacon, browned the neck in the bacon fat, removed it from the pot. 500ml of stock, the marinade, some tomato puree, bring that all to a boil, float the neck back in, oven at 180 for three hours or so. Didn’t bother with the onions, we were hungry.
Good stuff.
Don’t ditch the sauce. I ended up with quite a bit of meat left over, so I boiled two potatoes and four carrots (sliced and cubed) in the sauce, added the meat back in, and made 36 pies. They freeze well, pop ’em in the oven for half an hour, serve with chips or mash and gravy.
Haunted House
No, not the one we live in, but my pinball machine.
The upchucker and the 5-bank reset were not working, and the replacements have been sitting around for a while, waiting for a rainy day. Well, today was that day.
Replaced the upchucker coil with an A-4895 as per Clay’s notes* (the manual calls for an A-5194) and the fuse with a 2.5A slow-blow (again, Clay’s recommendation) and it worked about three times before the relay arc’ed and the fuse popped. I might need the pop bumper driver board modification, but I’ve been thinking about it and I don’t think it’s necessary.
SW31 tells the CPU that there’s a ball to be up-kicked, and the CPU then pulses the K relay once which kicks the ball… once. This is what the pop bumper driver board also does, except using a one-shot (74121 originally, 4538 in the Rottendog replacement) and not a CPU (well, except for the www.homepin.com solution, which uses a PIC).
My problem is that the K relay is failing, and replacing that with a modern transistor should do the job. This seems to be what’s happening here, as far as I can tell that’s a PNP/NPN pair driving the coil, the capacitor provides extra oomph locally, with the oomph held locally by the big-arse diode. It might be a hack, but I think it’s a good hack.
I also replaced the 5-bank reset solenoid, no joy. Clay (again) notes that the transistor is very likely to fail, so I replaced it with an MJ2955 I had kicking around and all is well.
Under playfield transistor on right hand side of lower playfield — this transistor is driven by a lamp (low current) output and drives the 5-bank reset coil.
* Which I downloaded way back before he went commercial. Seems one has to pay for them these days. I would. They’re really good.
Five years
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=louXPUW7tHU
Yup, I started this blog when we bought the house, on the first of April 2008. (I backdated the Browning post because I’m a geek like that).
Opel Meriva headlights
This is the second time I had to change a headlight on Tanya’s Opel Meriva. I learned this trick the first time:
Yup, remove the headlight cluster. Two 8mm bolts at the top, and one underneath.
Then, it’s easy to undo the clips and change the light(s).
It’s not so clear on the picture, but the arrow marked “Haut/Up” should point towards the engine to install the cover (which you have to do after putting the cluster back in). For the bottom one, up is up. For the top one, not so much.
Slow-cooker poached quince
My boss gave me some quinces and a (stovetop) recipe, but I decided to poach them in the slow cooker.
First you gotta peel them. This is the hard part.
Make a syrup with a litre of boiling water and a cup of sugar. Add some vanilla (pods are of course gorgeous, but I used some bourbon vanilla extract I have kicking around). You can add some lemon juice too.
That does not look appetizing at all, does it? But after a day’s slow cooking…
Serve with custard. Tip: buy two litres of custard, hide one under your bed.
Ostrich neck in a pot
Volstruisnek-potjie, translated because I’m sure one can use the same basic recipe should one have a hunk of kangaroo handy.
I found some ostrich neck at a good price. Undoubtedly because the EU didn’t want it, but hey. Ons is nie bang nie.
So, in my black pot, I browned the meat in some oil in two batches. Then, some onions, on a low heat, went off, loaded some ammo.
Now you layer some potato slices or halved baby potatoes and some carrots. Then about a teaspoon of fresh rosemary, then some baby marrows, grean beans and two/three chopped tomatoes, or a tin of same.
The potjiekos thing is the layering, and the no stirring.
Some salt over the veggies, and two cups of chicken stock with a bit of lemon juice added into the pot. The original recipe adds vodka as well.
Heat until the stock is boiling, then cover and simmer slowly for two hours or so.
Serve with rice and a green salad.
And whatever you do, don’t stir the pot.
So much for being “connected”
I just learned that Ann Rabson, co-founder of Saffire —The Uppity Blues Women passed away back in January.
When I grow up I want to play the piano like Ann Rabson.
Even more competenter
Yes, I did another bunch of competency exams. This time, the four “Handle and Use a [Handgun | Shotgun | Manual Rifle | Self Loading Rifle] for Business Purposes”.
I had to study — everything I know is not quite the same as the answers in the book, and of course the answers in the book are always right — for example, the four rules of gun safety, in order of importance, are:
1. Always keep the firearm pointed in a safe direction;
2. Keep your booger hook off of the bang switch;
3. Always treat guns as if they’re loaded; and
4. Know your target and what’s behind it.
Now, I learned those in a slightly different order, but it’s simple enough to remember what order the examiner considers correct.
Also, I only ever learned four colour codes, but the course adds black. And not the USMC one, no, black is apparently when people are trying to kill you. Sho sho, I’ll try to remember that next time someone tries to kill me…
Anywayz, the general setup is still the same. Get the book, read through it, do the open book exam at the back. Pitch at the venue, write a closed book exam on the easiest three quarters of the open book exam. Identical questions, (presumably) identical answers, and they leave out the tricky bits like identifying the parts of the firearms by name (except they did ask what you call the lever used to open a double barrel shotty (the “break neck lever”. I suspect I might have misremembered that. And I had to look it up for this post)). Also, “what’s the difference between a boxer primed case and a berdan primed case?” “You can reload the boxer” is not the right answer. The right answer mentions number of flash holes and stuff about the anvil — all stuff I know, but who cares, “berdan cases stuff up your decapping pin” is important.
Then I had to prove that I can shoot. 10 shots with a CZ75 at about 7m, all shots must be on an A5 page. 10 shots with a scoped 22 rimfire boltgun at 7m, all shots must be on an A5 page. 10 shots with an LM5 (semi-auto 223, peep sights) at 7m, all shots must be on an A4 page. And three shots with a shotty, all shots must hit the berm. Didn’t have too much of a hassle with that…
Now I need to make an appointment at the cop shop to apply for a competency to deal in firearms (actually, I just want to store some ammunition for a friend, but this is what’s required).
Busy, but not in a good way.
Some internationally known damn fool goes and shoots his slightly less but still internationally known extremely photogenic girlfriend on Valentine’s Day and the email starts ringing off the hook.
So far I’ve been quoted in the Metro newspaper, Time Magazine and Global Post.
Edit: And CNN (2012-02-25)
In the mean time, the campaigns for victim disarmament are claiming that only the police should have guns (really? Are you kidding?) and that “Very few people successfully use firearms to defend themselves” (really?).
For once I am in perfect agreement with Pierre de Vos:
Meanwhile another women is dead today. Because Oscar Pistorius is famous, I fear that many of us (including many in the media) will forget this. Oscar is not dead. Reeva Steenkamp is. We should not forget that. Neither should we forget that many women are abused or killed by their partners every day.