Picture a Day-Day 49

Like the toys in a toy shoppe or the sprinkles in a bakery after the lights are out the equipment in a lab gets up to some strange stuff.
It's a magical time when liquids start to solidify, gels dry out, and that experiment you were sure would be just fine sitting on the bench somehow catches on fire. You can almost smell the pixie dust and Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate in the air.

The lab equipment plans something a little special tonight. Though first they all need a quick run through the hot and steamy autoclave to rid them of any bugs: Once everything is set, the eppi tubes all got their caps on and the pipetteman got a fresh rack of tips everyone jump onto the cart. We're going to the major lab party in Animal Science!I fear the worse at that party as we have not seen our huge centrifuge since. RIP eppendorf centrifuge with the refrigeration unit, you shall be missed.

Ring madness take two

Over the weekend I again tried to make someones engagement ring look as pretty in pictures as it is in real life. This time it was Katie's from The Indecisive Bride.

Again mine is on the right the original on the left. The last two were some layering I made.I'm attempting to work on Melissa's now though hotmail is angering me. It keeps blocking and losing e-mails (if you see this Melissa, I got your three off your blog but I'd love the original other ones as well).

Anyone else got some fancy little ring pictures I could maybe mess with?

Picture a Day-Day 48

Why is it that the best of intentions are always the surest way to drive one mad; dribbling down the road clutching tightly to a newspaper mumbling something about having to fricassee a tire?

I got a smoker from my Dad (well okay he actually gave it to my hubby) a few years back but we haven't used it yet. I should probably preface this with some backstory, eh?

For a long time I was under the assumption that every family would routinely smoke ribs, pork loins, or even cheese for celebrations or even just randomly cause they could. Then I visited my in-laws and was shocked to find that no, they'd never even thought of doing something as radical as taking wood chips and putting some warmth to them to get a smoky flavor into meat.

So while my husband is the excited food scientist getting to play with meat I'm actually the one who knows more about different meat preparation techniques. This whole sausage thing was my nice way of trying to give him a little push.

Into our little outside storage shed I went to get the smoker. For those of you that were not as spoiled growing up as me this is what it looks like:
The top part is where you stick your tasty victuals and the bottom is where the heat coil and wood chips are stored (wood chips I might add that were also a pain in the ass to find):
So, we had all the equipment. The wood chips were ready to go, and the sausages had cured nicely overnight.

All that was left was to plug the thing into our little apartment outer outlet and wait for it to warm up. And wait. And wait some more.

After a quick tirade against our crappy apartment complex (I could write a small pamphlet on all the crap that is broken at our place due to shoddy craftsmanship) and how it can't even handle warming up a small coil we made a quick trip to get a nice extension cord so we could plug the thing inside while leaving it outside (something that makes smoke inside a small apartment is an equation for a hilarious disaster).

We got it all nice and plugged in and warming up quickly. Then we went about our usual chores on a "Sunday." Just as my husband was plugging in the vacuum (he's so sweet, braving the vacuum just because I'm sick) the entire place went dark.

That's right, our shitty apartments cheap fuses can't even handle a little electric smoker. We quit. Just completely gave up. I turned to painting to get out my frustration while he killed things in PS3 land (maybe I should have tried killing things too).

But I promised pictures of a cooked and edible sausage and I shall provide. For while the smoker idea failed miserably we at least still had our oven (God, don't let that die next).
It was pretty tasty inside, a bit too salty (which was mostly due to the recipe calling for 3 lbs of meat and us having 2.6) and the old preserved casings just didn't work at all (very chewy, very very chewy. Even the garbage disposal couldn't take it). When we try it again we'll probably use a bit less spice, get some fresh casings, oh and move to a damn house.

Good luck to all you out there braving the cold in Washington D.C. You're much braver than I.

And I promise no more long stories about sausages. It'll probably be a long while before we try another wild food adventure.

Painted Fingers

I'm realizing something as I try painting more, paintings look a ton better in real life.

Taking a picture somehow kills the layers and makes it look a bit flat and dull. Or maybe I've just completely lost my mind and need to stay away from paint fumes.

Well here are the two that I painted this MLK weekend, one on paper and another on canvas. One started to look like crap when I started and the more and more I looked at it the more I liked it.

The other is still on my bad side, but maybe with time I'll come to like it more (no promises). Feel free to guess which is which.And painting on canvas is an interesting learning experience.

Picture a Day-Day 47

Most normal couples when faced with a three day weekend are going to plan a little getaway or get around to cleaning out the cupboards or wrestling Bigfoot and Nessie in the same ring (okay maybe not so much the last one).

Us, we decided it was a perfect time to make sausages.This was our first attempt at making a fancy sausage with not only the kit (which comes with everyone's favorite Polish spices, cure and natural casings) but also a stuffer (seen later). So it was a learning experience for both of us.

Word of warning, if anyone is grossed out by pictures of meat or anything meat in general you may want to click away. If there is one thing sausage making is it's a whole lot of meat being manipulated and shoved into small weird areas it doesn't want to go into.

The first order of business with Mr Polish sausage was to get out the natural casings and get them soaking. Then while my hubby cubed up the meat we'd chosen (3 lb's of brisket, we're gonna have some fancy sausages) I attempted to mash up the spices that became congealed in the box.

After all that we were ready to start grinding. As you can see by this picture I have a horrible secret, I actually have four arms!
The first stage of grinding over it was time to move onto carefully mixing in the spices and cure into our ground up mess. I have since come to find out that this is a very delicate and artsy process that we probably completely bungled in our first attempt.

Oh well, live and learn.
Now onto more grinding! That's right, you don't get to grind sausages just once you get to do it over and over and over again (okay so really just twice). The first time is to get it to a manageable size to then turn it into tiny chunks of ground hamburger.

And if you just can't get enough grinding here's a little movie clip of us doing just that.
The sausage has been chopped and pulverized down into a fine small brown goo, time to move onto the smelliest portion of our sausage making: the natural casing.

For those not in the know, natural casing = pigs intestine. And who boy does it smell like pig offal. Here's our little pig intestines all hanging out in the bowl ready for their next big life.
Which is to be carefully smooshed onto the tip of the stuffer (It looks pretty naughty too, but then again those pigs intestines are known for getting around).
Okay so we got the ground meat, we got the natural casings on the horn. All that's left is to combine the two together. Sounds easy right?
Yeah not as much as you'd think. Talk about back breaking labor trying to force meat through that tiny little hole. I was generally on the sausage catching end trying to be encouraging yelling out "Push, honey, push. I can see the head crowning."
After about two hours of hard labor, tons of grinding, and a kitchen that smells like pigs here is our final display of sausages.
They get to sit in the fridge overnight as the cure sets then tomorrow a nice warm smoke to get tasty and preserved.

Dare I ask has anyone else attempted the making of the sausages in your own home kitchen? Or better yet, just what do you do on your three day weekends and how much meat is involved?