I’m really sorry I haven’t been posting. It’s not that my life has been boring, it’s the opposite - I’ve been incredibly busy* and just haven’t found the time.

I decided today I was excited enough about this SxSW thing that I’d write about it. South by Southwest is a huge music festival in Austion, Tx, and the have an interactive event going on this weekend.

 Through a bunch of general nitwittery that I couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to, Phreak Radio is streaming the audio for this event in cooperation with the Electric Sheep Company. It should be pretty cool, so check it out if you want.

/taco

*mainly doing foolish things and being befuddled.

I’m sorry i haven’t posted lately here, i’ve been busy with the holidays and with the family business.

 It just occured to me I have never told you all the family business! Sigh, where to start? At the beginning i guess.

Bertha Haffner-Ginger, my maternal grandmother, documented the recipe for Tacos in her 1914 California Mexican-Spanish Cook Book. Back then, they sealed them in with eggs and deep fried them, meat and all.

Nana Haffern-Ginger’s husband, Colonel “Pickles” Ginger (C.S.A.) got his money the old fashioned way, he carpet-bagged it. Yes, it’s THAT Ginger family. We invented Ginger in the 1820s, but lost the patent just before the War of Northern Agression.

Anyway, nana invented the Taco, and I get .003 cents for each one sold. It’s pretty sweet.

Ok today, i made caldo verde. This is a kind of soup, it’s the national soup of portugal, and for you portuguese-deficient, the two words translate as: caldo=really fucking tasty and verde = goddamned soup.

 Alright first off, throw out every recipe you can find online about it, because they are all wrong. Well, they’re technically accurate, and it’s what they eat over there, but my family recipe is WAY better, and thus, should be what you’re doing.

 Note this this isn’t like a summer afternoon in the hamptons type of soup, this is a ‘crap fall’s here, it’s getting cold, probably will rain for another 5 months, and i gotta do laundry today too’ soup. you know, a comfort food type of thing.

 Here’s what you need:

couple potatos

couple yellow onions

couple linguica*

some beef broth**

can of garbonzo and can of red kidney beans***

kale****

* Linguica is a garlicky sausage in the meat section of your grocery store. It’s traditionally pork, but if you can find a turkey one and you don’t eat pig, it’s perfectly fine to substitute. It’s also the best sausage in the history of mankind. and NEVER EVER question what’s in it - we’re a hotheaded culture and don’t take criticism very well.

** Personally i go 50/50 on beef broth and vegatable broth. I’ve used chicken stock too - whatever you like, just not tap water for it, the soup won’t be as rich. Try to get the least salty kind you can find - we’ll get to that later.

*** yeah it’s ok to use cans - just wash the beans out in a colander first, and wonder what causes all those weird bubbles while you do, and think ‘man i’m glad i’m not eating whatever caused those bubbles’

**** Kale is the new asparagus - see notes on that at the end.

 alright - so here’s the stuff we’ve got so far:

k get a soup pot heating up, with a bit of olive oil in it. In the meantime, slice up the onions and the linguica. When the pot is hot, add the linguica slices, and cook them for about 4 minutes, until they start to brown. Then toss in the onions, and let those two cook for a another 3 or 4 minutes, until the onions are wilted.

while this is going on, go to your pantry, which you keep very organized, and get out some stuff.

seasonings - ok we need to talk about them, but it’s kind of complicated. Here’s what i got out:

there are some real variables in caldo verde - stuff like ‘how spicy is the linguica’ or ‘how salty is the broth?”  can affect the soup, so you’ll note that while the onions and linguice are cooking in a little olive oil, i’ve not added stuff yet - we’ll sample a lot and figure it out as we go along. for now, i got out salt, saffron, cayanne, tobasco, basalmic, pepper, and the oil i used to get the sausage and onions cooking.

 Ok now cut up those potatoes, into chunks about the size of your big toe. Also, strain and rinse the beans. chuck all three ingredients into the pot. see? not hard at all:

and let it cook another 2 minutes or so. then add your broth.

and let’s taste it - one thing i KNOW you need to add is saffron. Buy the spanish kind, it’s just as good and you can get it for like 1/10th the price of mideastern saffron.

i know you’re going to need pepper too, and i always put a little cayanne in as well. the basalmic we need later, and the tobasco we’ll check at the end for, so that just leaves salt. Taste the damned thing, if it needs salt add it, if not, don’t.

 toss the lid on it, set it to low, and leave it alone for about 45 minutes. I spent, for example, my 45 minutes today crying in a corner of the bathroom. do whatever you like with your time.

ok at this point the potatos should be really soft, and the onions i don’t know what happens but they always dissapear and then i worry i didn’t actually put them in - this camera is great as i can check. I guess they just fall apart. now, and this is weird: TURN IT OFF AND LEAVE IT ALONE.

you want to wait half an hour at least to let all the tastes merge more. then turn it on low, and when it’s simmering, add the kale, which you chopped up:

kale’s great - it will turn like BRIGHT green when you put it in. i mean like drunk-irish-go-punch-your-grandma green. and by putting it end at the end, it doesn’t fall apart - and it’s like good for you, vitamins and stuff.

now a splash of basalmic, stir it all up and eat it. I have red wine while i eat it and also rustic bread, but that’s just because i’m smarter than you and know what to eat a caldo verde with; you can do whatever you like.

Alright as i was finishign this, my personal assistant Bob came home with his groceries….and look at this:

what the hell? it’s like food but it’s all in a bag? see if you make your own stuff you can then scoff at this. After I shamed him, he retreated to his room. I went to ask “hey what’s this bag of crap on the kitchen?”. this was his response:

that’s it! the end. Oh yeah one last thing i promised: WHAT THE HELL IS KALE AND WHY IS IT THE NEW ASPARAGUS?

alright kale is a leafy vegatable - ti’s not unlike mustard greens, or a bushier parsley. It tastes really good, and it’s dirt cheap.

when i was a kid, i ate artichokes all the time - then you non central valley california natives decided you liked them too, and now artichokes are through the fucking roof in price. So abut 20 years ago, we all switched to asparagus - which was the new artichoke for us. cheap, plentiful, delicious - and you’re screwing that up for us too, so i’m declaring kale to be the new asparagus.

ok now i’m done, have a nice day.

p.s. and added 2 hours later - why the HELL did i forget garlic? yes of course you need to put in about 4 cloves of garlic when you toss in the onions. now i’ll have to go eat 4 cloves raw to catch up. god i’m stupid.

The first key is to lose a poker tournament the night before. Also, being hungover really helps. Then, make poor choices early - that way, you can’t get out of the hole you’ve dug for yourself.

Instead of hanging out with the guys paying attention, like these guys:

make sure to hang out with guys drinking beer in the back yard, and distracted simps, like these guys:

after you’ve screwed up any chances you had this year, convince your drunken friends to have a push-up contest:

finally - and this is key for almost everything - have a personal assistant. Mine is named Bob, and he does most of my bidding. You can tell he’s always very organized, detail oriented, and with-it.

Ok the first key is to fly at least 400 miles away. That way, you’ve already lost the airfare.

Then, knock everybody but two people out. Oh, and be the money leader, too, that helps.

Final step, lose a statistically sound hand. The one I chose to lose, I had a 15/16ths chance of winning.

That way, chumps like this:

come in 2nd, and chumps like this:

 and they all laugh at you, while you chew on your cheeks and curse the fates:

win all my money. fuckers.

(And yes, I got two of them, one is a present). Pretty rad.

Ok did you know you can make pickles? it’s not hard, even i can do it. Here’s how to do it. Make sure an adult is with you, or that you’re your own adult!

What you will need:

Stuff to make pickles*

some jars and stuff

A half a ham**

beers

smokes

one dozen eggs

a couple hours

* Did you know that pickling cumbers are a summer treat? I forgot, and am making this in the fall, like the r-tard that i am. So i had found about 15 good pickles, but had to use a bunch of peruvian asparagus for batch two.

** get this if you want to smoke a ham at the same time, like I did.

ok here what you want to do is this, get 3 pots going. The big pot is for canning them (that means boil the closed cans afterwards), the middle pot is for the brine (thats the stuff you put into the jars) and the little one is for the lids.

Then, take all the lids and start boiling them. Wait not yet! First, get your smoker going. Use mesquite, and pour half the tall beer into the pan in it:

ok then take the jars and run them throught he dishwasher. Make sure it’s set to rinse them. When they’re done, chop shit up:

OK now get some cheesecloth and put in the stuff you’ll throw into the brine. this is garlic and peppers and pickling spices:

throw that intot he brine pot with like 9 cups of vinegar and 1 cup of distilled* water, and a bunch of salt.

FUCK! I forgot the dill! that’s ok, a second cheesecloth thing covers that:

* you want distilled water because even a little copper in tap water will make the garlic go blue. While Copper Blue is an excellent album, you don’t want your garlic that color,

ok so this should be the brine, right?

steamy!

alright now check the ham. Oh fuck you forgot about the ham didn’t you? ok here’s the ham: buy a half ham that’s precooked. Then give it a bath for a while. I bathed mine in mustard, salt, pepper, and maker’s mark bourbon, for a couple of hours. then i put it on the smoker. Don’t forget to turn it! Don’t forget to drink beer during all this.

alright, so we’ve cut up our stuff. have a smoke and take a minute because we’re really gonna be busy soon. Next, we shove all the vegetables into cups and ladle the boiling brine onto them like this:

then, we take out the lids from pot 3 (pot 3 is the best pot of all you’ll see later), and we seal all the cans right? Then we put the cans into the HUGE pot of boiling water (the canner, remember?) for 8 minutes. It’s ok to do that in batches.

ok so then when we’re done - 8 minutes each, these bastards will be really hot, we take them out and let them cool for a couple hours on the counter:

and we check the ham again. Ham’s done too (no picture but it’s good i promise). Ok so clean up? not yet man, pot 3 to the rescue! this was the pot of just boiling water that we sterilized the lids with right? ok throw a dozen eggs in there now, and get them hard boiled. maybe 12 minutes. then cool those eggs and peel them. Ok throw them in a big ol’ jar, now pour the last of the brine over them, and chuck them in the fridge.

OK NOW clean up. You’re done. you’ve just smoked a ham, made pickles, made pickled asparagus, and pickled eggs, all at once, plus you have a mild buzz from the smoke, vinegar fumes, and the beer. WAY TO GO!

thanks, Ruby, for helping me figure out how to make it take pictures. I’m still not sure where the film goes Anyway, I’ll monkey with it more later.

this is my “office”:

I picked this guy at random, as that’s important to me.

testing a 2nd time, i’m hard as nails weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

FUXK I FEELS OLD