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Jim Letourneau's Blog

Retired Life

Investing, Technology, Travel, Geology, Music, Golf. I think that covers it.

Self-Isolation Salmon Salad

I only have two seven year old salmon cans left. I get some joy every time I open one as per my Self-Isolation Salmon Burgers post. Turns out I prefer salmon salad to the burgers because it is slightly less messy to prepare.

Canned salmon keeps for at least 5 years. I've eaten several cans that were packaged 7 years ago and so has my wife, Julia (but I didn't tell her). If the can you open smells like canned salmon, you can continue with this recipe:

  • 1 can salmon (or leftover fresh salmon)

Dump in a bowl and add ~1/4 cup mayonnaise. 

Mix in chopped (pick a few of these):

  • Green onion

  • Chives

  • Cilantro

  • Parsley

  • Shallots

  • Celery

  • Dill

  • Capers

  • Dill pickles

  • Pickled peppers

  • Jalapeño

  • Avocado cubes

Add some lemon juice or hot sauce if you have any. Think about Palm Springs and fondly recall those lemons.

If you want to keep it simple, serve your salad over lettuce, crackers, avocado halves, or throw it between two slices of your favourite bread.

PS - If you want to make salmon burgers, mix in an egg and bread crumbs (or almond flour) and divide into 4 patties. Fry them up until golden brown.

Batman's Bold Move

My small group of friends has self-organized into a Google Hangouts group. It is a pretty easy way to check-in with your self-isolated tribe. There are lots of potential discussion topics including:

  • Waking up

  • Making coffee

  • Eating lunch

  • Afternoon nap quality

  • Tales of walking outside in unfiltered air

  • What’s for dinner?

  • Going to sleep

  • Virtual happy hour

The sky is the limit! My favourite activity our online improv group sessions… Yes, and….!

Yesterday we riffed on purple martins and their living arrangements,

Today we did superheroes. There was a huge controversy over the use of costumes. This is a subject that evokes strong opinions. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail and we can get back to having fun.

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Blindman's Bold Move

I’m a big fan of Blindman Brewing and I’ve dropped by their Lacombe location on my rare trips between Calgary and Edmonton. They have made some great barrel aged stouts using their massive Ichorous Stout as a base. I’ve had good look finding their best products at Kensington Wine Market.

All that changed today when they offered to deliver their beer to my door. I’m on a 14 day lockdown and to be honest, I’m not going to be drinking heavily during this time but they are offering to bring their beer to my door, OVERNIGHT! Not only that, they’re delivering it in as safe a way as possible:

Delivery driver will be wearing gloves and mask,
and will drop beer outside your door.
Every item will be sanitized with isopropyl alcohol.

I feel for delivery guys:

Everybody looks at me now like I'm a rat during the bubonic plague
—— A Day in the Life of a Delivery Guy

However, I might make you sick. You might make me sick. Let us respect that for now and we can hug it out with unwashed hands later.

I decided to raise the bar today (once we got a printer cartridge) by printing this sign for our door to complement my wife’s handwritten note:

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One of the best ways to support your favourite providers through this epic slump is to buy gift cards or get their products delivered to you. My little fridge is almost full but the more robust beers age well and there will be a very big party when the all clear (for real!) is sounded.



Self-Isolation Salmon Burgers

For the first day of self-isolation after being in sunny Rancho Mirage, I decided to go deep into the pantry. I have some canned salmon from a trip to Langara Lodge back in the fall of 2011. It was an awesome trip with memories of orcas, eagles and even a few wild line caught salmon. Some of my catch was frozen and the rest I had processed at St. Jean’s Cannery which shipped it to me later. When times are good even the best canned salmon might fall off the radar as a menu option.

I was a little nervous when I opened the first can but it smelled exactly like canned salmon. Nothing remotely off putting. The recipe below would have benefitted from an egg to help bind the burgers but there were none to be had today. I show some lemon juice in a photo but I forgot to use it.

Mix together:

  • 1/2 onion chopped

  • 1 garlic clove minced

  • 2 cans of line caught wild salmon

  • season with salt and pepper

  • find and egg mix in - if you’re allowed to leave your home

Form into 4 patties and fry in olive oil.

I served these over greens with a lemon pepper dressing.

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Good memories and a great lunch courtesy of couple of 8 year old cans of salmon. My happy experience inspired me to order some canned salmon and mussels from St. Jean’s. They do it right.

Letourneau’s Limoncello

It seems like a year ago but it was only last week that I took my third crack at making limoncello. When life gives you lemons…

Life is short, so I opted to use lemon zest and a sous vide cook to accelerate the process. we are blessed with tons of organic lemons in our Rancho Mirage backyard. I combined a sous vide style recipe from DadCooksDinner with critical information from the informative Limoncelloquest website.

Letourneau’s Limoncello #3

  • Zest of 23 lemons

  • 1.75 litres Of 120 proof (60% ABV) Everclear

  • 720 ml water

  • 306 g sugar

I was aiming for a 37% end product so I used the Limoncello Alcohol Proof/Percentage Calculator for guidance.

I poured the Everclear over the lemon zest in a large mason jar and put it in a 133F water bath for 2.5 hours. I combined the water and sugar over high heat to make simple syrup. I filtered the lemon mixture using a coffee filter.

Collecting the lemon zest.

Collecting the lemon zest.

Zesting the lemons is time consuming. The best tool for zesting is a microplane zester. Other shapes were not as effective.

Lots of zested lemons. Don’t zest the white pith!

Lots of zested lemons. Don’t zest the white pith!

Everclear over lemon zest is the essence of making limoncello.

Everclear over lemon zest is the essence of making limoncello.

Swing top bottles ready for gifting.

Swing top bottles ready for gifting.

A stronger less sweetened limoncello. I found this version to be clean and smooth.

A stronger less sweetened limoncello. I found this version to be clean and smooth.

I only had a glass of this over ice right after I made it. Normally limoncello is sticky sweet. This version was cleaner tasting and very smooth. Deliciously dangerous.

As a Canadian visitor to the USA, there was an urgent call to come home which we eventually heeded. During stressful times it is important to have things to look forward to and one of them for me will be sharing a glass of this limoncello with friends down the road.


Limoncello #1 was pretty close to the above method but without filtering and and ABV closer to 30%.

Limoncello #2 is where I foolishly decided to use lemon juice instead of water as the simple syrup liquid. I didn’t think this through, probably because I rarely make lemonade. This batch was harsh so I promptly doubled the sugar content. It is now in the “mixer” category. More sugar was the opposite of what I was going for but it led me to the amazing Letourneau’s Limoncello #3.

I might try a double pass at filtering next time just to see but if I ever get through what I’ve already made, I’ll be going back to this recipe. Some day when I become more patient I might skip the sous vide component and do a conventional version.

Eggs on the Egg

There is a whole lingo used by users of the Big Green Egg kamado-style grills. As an egghead, I’m always looking at the various forums and finding great tips. The best Big Green Egg forum is the EGGhead Forum.

Recently, I was curious about appetizers and I ran across a a whole “new to me” set of options.

Commercial names for these types of appetizers include jalapeno poppers or sausage slammers (as seen on QVC).

Whenever I look up a recipe, I make sure to do an image search to help me decide what I’m up against. The links above will show you what the finished product will look like. So far I’ve tried Sea Turtle Eggs, Pig Shooters and a bacon wrapped version of Armadillo Eggs.

Shown below are the bacon wrapped Armadillo Eggs. I cut each one into 4 pieces which still makes for a hearty mouthful. Many of these recipes suggest using Jimmy Dean Sausage but not all stores carry it. Jimmy Dean Sausage is mostly ground pork. I’ve had great results using straight up ground pork (which you can spice up as you wish) or pork chorizo sausage. Do not try using any low fat sausage options as you won’t be able to mold the sausage meat very easily.

In the example below I used a pound of chorizo sausage for 6 jalapeno peppers which were cored and stuffed with a Mexican cheese blend. That makes for a relatively thin sausage coating. You can always add more. You can rupture a jalapeno trying to stuff cheese into it so next time I might try the “Sausage Slammers” method of using 1/2 of a pepper stuffed with cheese.

Once I molded the sausage meat around the cheese stuffed pepper, I wrapped each Armadillo Egg in 2 slices of Kirkland Signature Sliced Bacon. I smoked them at ~275ºF for a couple of hours and they were completely delicious.

What I like about this happy family of Big Green Egg appetizers is that there are numerous combinations to try and it is hard to imagine any of them not being awesome!

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KFC and Me - Amazing Fried Chicken Recipe

My wife told me that we were invited to a potluck on Friday night. I recently had some amazing chicken wings and I thought it might be nice to bring some fried chicken. The wings had a distinctive spice profile, most likely from paprika.

Costco had giant 6 packs of drumsticks (6 drumsticks per package) on sale a few weeks ago for the low low price of $6.81. I immediately put them in the freezer for future use. One of the drumsticks was broken in one of the packages. I pictured the bird running for freedom and getting wounded by her captors…

Cheap chicken! This 3 out of the 6 packs that sold for a total of $6.81.

Cheap chicken! This 3 out of the 6 packs that sold for a total of $6.81.

I had long wanted to make the legendary KFC fried chicken recipe and its reliance on lots of paprika gave me comfort that things would turn out nicely. This KFC like recipe comes from an article in the Chicago Tribune by Joe Gray. The list of spices is long (11!) and the quantities large. This makes for a good excuse to do a spice inventory. One day you think you have a lifetime supply of paprika, the next day it is off to the closest, most expensive grocery store so you can finish all the measuring for the precious spice mixture. While it is posh to serve salt and pepper (s and p is the spice for me!) from grinders, it is a pain in the ass to grind up pepper and salt in larger quantities so I'm ditching the s and p grinding and the mortar and pestle work on the basil, oregano and thyme in future iterations.

I’m not going to be a dick and require you to scroll down 20 pages to see the recipe.

Fried chicken with 11 herbs and spices

INGREDIENTS

  • 1) 2/3 tbsp Salt

  • 2) 1/2 tbsp Thyme

  • 3) 1/2 tbsp Basil

  • 4) 1/3 tbsp Origino (sic)

  • 5) 1 tbsp Celery Salt

  • 6) 1 tbsp Black Pepper

  • 7) 1 tbsp Dried Mustard

  • 8) 4 tbsp Paprika

  • 9) 2 tbsp Garlic Salt

  • 10) 1 tbsp Ground Ginger

  • 11) 3 tbsp White Pepper

  • 1 cup buttermilk

  • 1 egg

    Mix the 11 spice mixture with 2 cups of white flour.

    Whisk the egg in the buttermilk and soak chicken for several hours or overnight.

    Dredge chicken in the spice mixture and let it set on a wire rack.

    Deep fry at 350 F for 8-15 minutes

While I ground up some bay leaves using a mortar and pestle, I would encourage you to use basic off the shelf spices. You can lose a lot of time just grinding pepper and salt into tablespoon quantities.

All the spices

All the spices

I honestly haven’t made a recipe that used up this much spice before so I was encouraged.

Sand Art?

Sand Art?

I soaked the chicken in the buttermilk/egg mixture overnight in freezer bags.

I put these in the refrigerator overnight.

I put these in the refrigerator overnight.

I used fresh peanut oil for the fryer. After dredging the drumsticks in the spice/flour mixture and letting them set for 15 minutes, I was able to put all 18 drumsticks into the fryer at once without any drop in the 350ºF oil temperature.

You may have some spice/flour leftover so fill your dredging pan on an as needed basis. I put my excess mixture in a freezer bag and stored it in the freezer.

I used a Waring digital rotisserie turkey fryer (Model TF250). If your frying set up is smaller you might have to cook your chicken in batches. Lower oil temperatures are the enemy of crispiness. I cooked these for ~12 minutes and the internal temps were at 170+ºF well past the 165ºF food safety temperature and pretty close to perfect for dark meat.

I needed a quick shower before the potluck so I put these on a wire rack in a 250ºF oven. I transported then over to the party loosely tented with foil. I didn’t want to go through this process and end up offering up soggy fried chicken.

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This chicken tasted great and I will definitely be making this recipe again. Whether it is the same spice mixture that KFC uses is besides the point. It is a great recipe and I don’t see myself making any changes to it.

An ancient Chinese secret about deep frying food was passed on to me by a friend… do it outside of the house if possible. Even though I used an indoor fryer, I know from past experience that the odours from frying will linger.


I also made some Armadillo Eggs aka “sausage slammers” more on those down the road.

Dead Sea Sinkholes

Today we left Jerusalem for a day trip to Masada plus a float in the Dead Sea. The geological highlight besides being at the lowest elevation on Earth (look it up), was the presence of numerous sinkholes. Sinkholes in this region are popping up at a fantastic rate. Lightning fast in geologic time.

Explanation for Dead Sea Sinkholes

We never got a good view of a sinkhole long enough for a good photo but the only highway in the region had to be diverted around a region of sinkholes. The above photo shows an abandoned date farm near the highway.

The holes tended to coalesce into linear features. They disrupted the smooth gradual slope to the Dead Sea.

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Western Wall

One of our stops in The Old City was the Western Wall. Men and women have separate sections that they are allowed to visit but my wife took pictures through the fence. I took a closeup of one of the blocks. All the cracks are filled with messages.

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Holy Real Estate

The Old City of Jerusalem is packed with history. Layers upon layers of it. We toured many of the culminating with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the afternoon. It is hard to feel spiritual when you are shoulder to shoulder with other pilgrims and tourists.

Even the Mormons have a toehold here but as latecomers they are across a small valley from The Old City.

Packing Hack

I’m still travelling with 30% too much stuff but at least it’s pretty organized thanks to packing cubes.

Cubes

Cubes

Here is an anonymous person’s suitcase. This person did not use packing cubes.

Anonymous person’s suitcase.

Anonymous person’s suitcase.

Some people bring a cube just for dirty clothes. I’ve been putting dirty clothes at the bottom of my cubes I think my system is fine for drier climates, like Israel’s. In a hot humid place it would make sense to further isolate the smelly from the clean.

I Have Seen the Future

My home town of Calgary introduced e-scooters this summer. I see the same companies (Bird and Lime) operating in Tel Aviv. There is a broad “bicycle” and pedestrian pathway that runs along the beach. In the mornings the pathway is filled with joggers and a few cyclists. That changes dramatically as the day progresses and warms up.

Julia and I walked the pathway in the afternoon and it was a bit jarring. The maximum e-scooter speed in my home town of Calgary is 20km/hr. In Tel Aviv the maximum legal speed is 25km/hr. Modifications are common and there also lots of modified e-bikes. I saw a few e-bikes that were closer to Harleys than bicycles. I’d estimate that only 25% of the bike lane traffic was conventional bicycles. The rest was a mix of e-bikes and e-scooters and some of them were capable of 30+km/hr speeds. The “bike” lanes are in close proximity to the pedestrian walkways so it’s an adventure to stroll along the beach here.

Rounding up the e-scooters.

Rounding up the e-scooters.

For Calgary’s summer 2020, I see ever increasing e-scooter traffic and a huge increase in e-bike traffic. There will be some high profile accidents/deaths. Increased regulation and/or the promise of increased enforcement will follow. Decreased compliance and hacking of e-scooters and e-bikes will become commonplace.

PS in a perfect world I would have taken a time lapse video of the traffic while sitting at a beachside cafe.

Hotel Change

My wife loves nice hotels. Today we reluctantly left the small boutique Drisco Hotel for the much larger Dan Hotel Tel Aviv.

I hear the James Bond Theme whenever I’m looking at all the design features of this stately hotel.

The Dan Hotel Tel Aviv has great views of the Mediterranean Sea and the beach.

Not All Heroes Wear Capes - A Man and His Boat

It’s not the nicest boat in Jaffa Harbour but he’s berthed adjacent to a wide seawall promenade that hundreds of people per hour pass. This guy seems pretty comfortable with who he is. At first I was distracted by the mannequin holding a surfboard, the bicycles, helmets, the expandable lattice fencing, and the grill. I noticed the cabintop sofa later...

I fired my designer.

I fired my designer.

Zoom view of cabintop sofa.

Zoom view of cabintop sofa.

I like to think that I can take a nap anywhere. Front row of a geochemistry class… check, Plane, train, automobile… check. The theatre… check. Not sure I could do an open air sofa with crowds of people 10m away.

A man comfortable in his own skin.

A man comfortable in his own skin.

Day 2 in Tel Aviv

We had a great breakfast at the Drisco Hotel. I’ve been devouring the local shashuka which is basically poached eggs in tomato sauce. More varieties of that are in my future.

Nice design features in the Drisco Hotel breakfast area.

Nice design features in the Drisco Hotel breakfast area.

We decided to check out one of the hotels that we will be staying at after our group tour, The Jaffa. We had drinks in the courtyard and then a light lunch.

Not surprisingly, it is a short walk from The Jaffa to the Port of Jaffa. Lots of interesting sites.

The winner of the best decorated boat contest was taking it easy today.

Jim vs. Jet Lag Part 1

I’ve been experimenting with fasting to help with the negative effects of jet lag. I know from personal experience that I have crazy amounts of energy during a fast. I’ll often wake up 2-3 hours earlier than usual if I’m fasting.

Research by Dr. Clifford B. Saper (summarized here) suggests the following approach:

  • Avoid all food from the time you get to the airport (i.e., about two hours before departure)

  • Don’t eat during the flight — but still drink plenty of water

  • Eat soon after you land, as close to a local meal time as possible

I throw in my own twist which adds a caffeination window around breakfast time at my final destination.

To provide context, I was in Kauai for a week, followed by 4 nights in Los Angeles. I’m currently in Frankfurt in transit to Tel Aviv which is a 10 hour time difference from Los Angeles. This should be a good test. My last meal was a pork packed dinner in Los Angeles at a Thai street food place called Night and Market WEHO. I quote from their menu.

  • Fried Pig Tail - the perfect proportion of skin, fat, tendon and meat. Crispy and chewy.

  • Chiang Rai Herb Sausage - homemade spicy pork sausage served with nam prik noom (aka Thai salsa) and cucumber *specialty*

  • Chiang Rai Style Larb - earthy northern style larb of hand-chopped pork, pork liver, pork blood and a dry spice mix hand-carried back from the motherland by Chef Kris

I did my best to sleep on the plane and get some coffee after 6:30AM Israel time.

My flight left LAX at 3:30 PM and lasted 11 hours. I’m currently in the middle of a 6hr 25 minute layover in the Frankfurt airport. Next on the agenda is a 4-hour flight to Tel Aviv which arrives at 11:00PM.

To summarize, a 10 hour time difference with close to 24 hours between hotels. I’m going to start eating again tomorrow at breakfast in Tel Aviv. I’m feeling pretty bagged at the moment but if I can approximate a night’s worth of sleep in Tel Aviv I’ll be off to a good start.

Pinball!

I was unable to crack the top ranks in one of the largest open pinball tournaments in the world this afternoon (INDiSC). 7 years of college wasted. I hadn't played pinball in over a year so I'm just glad I didn’t finish last. Any excuse to visit the Museum of Pinball will do.

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There is an overhead camera recording each game. You play 5 games out of a bank of 14 machines. The 5 games you choose to play complete a card. You can buy as many cards as you want. The event was impressively well organized. It was fun to watching people get upset once their games ended. I became one of those people after sewering a ball after 30 seconds of play. Mostly I was bemused at my ineptitude.

Once you’re finished you have to raise your hand.  You feel shame.  Then the scorer comes over and enters your score. Once your score is entered, they call the next person in the queue. In spite of a few very low scoring games, the scorers were very friendly and professional.

I got the Iron Man and Iron Maiden machines mixed up which was a little embarrassing. In my defence, they had taped some instructions over the “iden”. 

There were 100s of pinball games on free play as well but I got too wrapped up in lining up for tournament games.

Special Sky

Yesterday, we all went to watch Peter Jackson’s “They Shall Not Grow Old”. Jackson repurposed archival WWII footage into a fascinating account of what life was for the average soldier stuck in a trench. At the end of the film there was a mini-documentary on Jackson’s process. Of course he just happened to have a personal collection of military uniforms and artillery which were used to enhance the film. It was clearly a project he was passionate about and well worth watching.

It was close to sunset as we left the theatre. A cool wind was blowing. Clouds covered most of the Coachella Valley but where there were gaps, the sun reached the reaching the ground created a stunning . Many people were taking pictures of the sky in the parking lot and I’m sure most of them were like me and unable to capture how truly splendiferous it was.

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