38 thoughts on “July 25, 2020: We Won’t Settle”

  2. Ohtani was the first extra-inning runner on 2nd base—got thrown out immediately on a ball hit sharply to the first baseman and thrown to third baseman, rundown ensued.

  3. 😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣

      2. I feel bad for the players, but given that the NYK are my least favorite franchise in all of the four men’s major professional sports, I’m borderline giddy.

        1. I just feel bad for fans getting stuck with crap like that -- even if the fan base can be really annoying. Like Dolan deserves it, but random NY basketball fans don't.

  6. On the smoker tonight.... I'm making some tofu burnt ends. Yeah, yeah, yeah I get it. The dude with meat as his handle has gone to the dark side. Just hear me out. Press the water out of the tofu, then marinade the tofu in some white miso (I used paste diluted by water), remove from miso cut in half lengthwise and then into 1 inch cubes. Now toss in any kind of bbq suace (John Hardy's delivers.... just sayin'), and set on the smoker. I've got the beast up to about 235 and holding. This is really just to smoke the crap out of these nuggets until the outside is a firm texture. I'll toss them in the sauce once they're "done" and hit them with a bit of high heat to set the sauce. I'll likely eat these just off the grill as is without grilling some pineapple and throwing them into a bowl with warm rice and veg because they're like meat candy without the cardiologist shame.

    Oh, and I'm smoking two sides of wild caught sockeye salmon. I'm john hardy's glazing one side and the other gets the honey / brown sugar / cayenne treatment. I'm looking forward to smoked salmon salad sandwiches on hot dog buns the last loaf of Bellegarde whole wheat sour dough I may ever get. (I'm seriously bummed about this as they were purveyors of the best stone ground grits, cornmeal and a variety of flours in town, and their bread is just so freaking good.... that sandwich is going to be epic)

    1. Okay, without being able to compare this to anything else, the smoked tofu is one of the most delightful things I've ever made. Just superb.

      1. Okay, I'm very intrigued by this, noted.

        Just confirming - you toss them in the sauce twice, once for smoking and once for high heat? How long were they on the smoker?

        1. Good question. I marinaded the whole block in the miso for ~two hours. (I was watching the twins and then fell asleep for a hot second and then they were behind by like a million runs ) I then cut up and sauced them for another 30 minutes or so and then smoked the bits for 2 + hours with a toss of sauce in the middle. I didn’t really hit them with high heat because time and vodka soda, but did pull them off the smoker and dump them back into the Tupperware with residual sauce from the second coat before devouring. I was consistently holding 240 degrees, and John Hardy’s medium sauce isn’t over sugary which keeps the tofu from burning.

          1. Really the time on the smoker is about how firm you want the end result. I didn’t press the tofu too hard (and i have access to locally made tofu which is superior in texture and flavor to anything commercially available)(but I am certain this treatment will produce good results with any tofu) so the moisture content will determine your time on the big smoke.

            I also smoked this with cherry chunks, and not that much - maybe a total of 5 oz for both the tofu and salmon.

    2. I don't have a smoker, but have been playing with one a buddy owns. He wanted me to smoke some prime rib for his daughter's grad party a few weeks back. We did a practice run a few weeks earlier that turned out ok. I think he had the temp set too high (220 degrees) and I pulled it too early (120 degrees which climbed to 130 as it rested). For the grad party I smoked them at 195 degrees for a longer period of time. I also waited until the roasts temped out at just over 130 degrees to pull them. After resting the were just shy of 140 degrees. Texture of smoked beef at "rare/med rare" is a bit off. Smoking it to "med rare/med" was perfect. My buddy said all his friends and family said it was the best prime rib they ever had. I did serve it with a port au jus, which have it some more complexity.

      I may have to purchase one for myself, and meat's tofu recipe above intrigues me. I will have to give that a try!

      1. I have a Bradley electric smoker that wasn’t too expensive and works pretty well. My brother has one too, but he replaced the heating element and he says it’s really a lot better. Mine is a four rack smoker, my brothers is a six rack. He also has a four rack that he bought off Facebook market for $50. They use these wood biscuits that are somewhat pricey, but work really well.

        1. My buddy with the Tahoe house has a Traeger knock-off. We did reverse-sear Ribeyes last weekend. About 25 minutes of high smoke, pulled the steaks, cranked it up to max temp (he didn't have any propane for his sidesear thing) and seared them for about 3 minutes per side. Turned out a beautiful medium rare almost edge to edge.

          I liked the pellet smoker. Doubt I would get one, because the charcoal snake method works to well for me. But I liked it.

          1. What I like about the pellet smokers is you set the temp and can basically walk away for a while. One day we loaded my buddy's smoker, then drove 45 minutes out to his farm to do some errands and came back 3 hours later. Set it and forget it.

            1. charcoal snake is the same. But probably not adequate for, umm, commercial uses.

  7. According to the interwebz, the actual Minnesota Nazis are apparently out shopping in Walmart today. Ugh.

          2. They kind of look homemade, but that begs another question: who puts that much effort into making Nazi masks just to go to Walmart?

    2. I was pleasantly surprised on our first day with the mask mandate. Only had a couple tables walk in without masks. Both groups gave a bit of an eye roll but still were willing to put on the disposable masks I have up at our host stand. Everyone who got up to use the restroom masked up. Those of you who follow me on the book of face may have seen that we also had some new technology installed into our current HVAC system. It's basically a unit that injects positive and negatively charged ions (which are harmless) into our atmosphere. This causes all our smaller particulate (like viruses, smoke particles,etc) to clump together and they get filtered out by our regular filters in our HVAC units. The claim by the manufacture is that independent testing concluded that 94% of the Covid-19 virus is removed within 15 minutes. 99.4% after 30 minutes. I am a bit skeptical of those numbers, but I figure for a $2,000 investment, it's worth it if it removes a good amount of the virus at all.

        1. Appreciate that. We just finished our 2nd busiest week in 5 years. Never did I dream we would be this busy during this craziness. Especially when my inside seating is really only about 35% with proper social distancing.

          1. Are you getting a lot of "closer-to-home" vacationers in the area, or is your community doing most of the uplifting there?

            1. Both. Lots of metro people staying up here and working from the cabin. Lots of out of state license plates all over town. However, seeing more locals in the summer than typical.

              1. working from the cabin

                Now we're talking. I can't decide, though, if that sounds heavenly, or if it would be perpetual frustration.

              2. However, seeing more locals in the summer than typical.

                In extremely related news, we're getting more use out of the family's lake cabin than ever before.

                We're still not dining in anywhere, so alas you probably won't see us. The entire community did a really good job during the lean months, I think, of making takeout a higher priority than usual. That's still our chosen method.

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