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<h2>Cooking</h2>

During the past year or two, I've developed an interest in cooking 
and preserving foods to go along with the <a href="garden.html">gardening</a>
habit.  As I expand the library of things that I've tried to prepare,
some have interested me a lot more than others.  Brewing beer, for example,
is a fabulous masculine passtime.  Making ketchup is simply a pain in the
butt.<br>
<br>
<h3>Generic Advice</h3>
<ul>
  <li>Follow the recipe.  I trace any skills I may have in the 
      kitchen to my realization that the cookbook probably knows better
      than me which flavors go well together. 
  <li>Some things can change, some things cannot.  For example:  
      If the recipe calls for 15 small onions and 15 green peppers,
      it's totally okay to use 13 mid sized onions, 12 huge bell peppers,
      and 2 sweet peppers.  On the other hand, omit the baking
      soda from your bread, and doom on you.
  <li>Do it once planning to ruin it.  You will anyway, just like
      in software.
  <li>If there is any doubt in your mind, use the larger pot.  Seriously,
      it's immeasurably easier to just start out in the bigger pot than 
      to transfer your boiling, sticky mix from the nearly overflowing
      too-small container. 
  <li>If there is a "simmer until reduced" step, allow all freakin' night.
  <li>Boiling water shatters cool glass.
  <li>In baking, the humidity in the air affects the moisture content of 
      your mix.  
</ul> 

<h3>Preserves</h3>

Preserving and canning is great fun.  It can be almost meditative,
and there's a satisfaction that goes with creating food that will 
keep without refrigeration.  Maybe it's just that the winters are 
so long and cold up here.  

<ul>
  <li>2002
  <ul>
    <li>Pepper relish (habaneros added to an ordinary sweet pepper
        relish. Yummy!)
    <li>Habanero hot sauce ("Goat Afloat")
  </ul>
  
  <li>2003:
  <ul>
     <li>Bread & Butter Cucumber Pickles (MN State Fair)
     <li>Dill / Garlic Cucumber Pickles  (MN State Fair)
     <li>Pickled Beets (MN State Fair)
     <li>Ketchup (no fun at all, really)
     <li>Spaghetti Sauce 
     <li>Pickled Watermelon Rind
     <li>Pepper relish
  </ul>
</ul>

<h3>Beer</h3>

All the batches I've brewed have been about 5 gallons.  They've 
been extract brews, except for Freeman's Blue Ribbon which we mashed
and sparged. .

<ul>
  <li>"Freeman's Blue Ribbon" Pale Ale
  <li>Belgian Triple 
  <li>Nut Brown Ale
</ul> 

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