I’m a big fan of free and luckily there is no shortage of free real time anti-virus and anti-spyware utilities available to Windows users. The big news of the week was Microsoft’s beta release of Microsoft Security Essentials. As part…
I picked up Stalin’s Ghost on the bargain table at a local bookstore. Martin Cruz Smith rang a bell but I couldn’t place it; the description sounded interesting. Here’s the official blurb: Investigator Arkady Renko, the pariah of the Moscow…
I still had a lot of 35% creme in my fridge so I was looking around for things to do with it and came across a recipe for creme fraiche. Let me start off by saying I’ve never had creme…
A few weeks back I discussed smoking on my Big Green Egg and using indirect heat: I was able to accomplish this by using the Plate Setter. For indirect cooking you remove the grate, insert the plate setter with a…
Several years ago my ISP’s DNS servers were down and I went looking for a replacement and came across OpenDNS. I found web sites responded faster and I was very happy with the service. Unfortunately I barely scratched the surface…
Delving further into Charcuterie I had been thinking about confit: slow cooking meat in a fat at low temperature. Traditionally it’s done with duck legs in duck fat but I had neither so I used what I had: a big…
This site is made possible because of WordPress. I had started eBabble.net with NetObjects Fusion many years ago but wanted to move to a platform that would let me add and edit content from anywhere. My first attempts were with…
It was a tough decision but I’m making the switch from individual issues (weeklys) to trade paperbacks. The idea was percolating in my head for about a year and the rationale is twofold: new comics aren’t worth anything and there’s a lot…
Our freezer was getting overcrowded with pork so I decided to take out sixteen pounds and make some sausage over the weekend. My family seems to like smoked sausage the best so I made Hunters sausage (forgot the German name, sorry). …