En bee-uh toooooo?

As our friend Ben put it back when we were still in Boston, "Ellis has whole phrases and sentences, but the words just aren't there yet." This continues to largely be the case, but everyday he is picking up new words and working them into chatter.

"Beer" continues to be his clearest word and even that comes out "bee-uh". Its like those couple months in Boston gave him the blue collar New England accent. At the site of a glass of liquid darker than lemonade he immediately and confidently calls out "bee-uh".

It seems that he is learning the meanings of words very quickly based on the fact that he is able to execute more and more complicated instructions from us and the fact that you can ask him to point to things in his books that he has never said and he knows what they are. However, he only tends to say words that consist of sounds he has strong control of. For instance, he won't really say words that start with "L", but will say words that include an "L" sound in the middle. After seeing his second cousin two days ago, he must have asked a hundred times, "Where Bel-la go?"

Another useful advance for us is the fact that he understands temporal prepositions well enough that when he wants to read books in the evening we can say, "Before books we need to put on your jammies," and he clearly understands and REMEMBERS. You can't tell him, "First A, then B," and hope that A will distract him or make him forget. He will call you on it.

He seems to pick up food related words the fastest, which isn't surprising when one considers who his father is. The other night we had Asian Salmon Patties (one of his favorites) and he asked for "mo'h patty" when he was ready for his third serving.

Perhaps his best abstract language acquisition is the concept of "too" in the sense of "also". It began with him calling out, "toooooo," when he wanted to join in something you were doing. It was sort of an abbreviated, "me too". Now he will often use it as a way to indicate he would like something else in addition to what he has or another person to join him in his next activity:

"Ok, Ellis, time to get out of the car."
"En dada tooooooo?"

Or

"Ok, let's go read some books."
"En, boo tooooo." (Boo is his stuffed cow.)

And best of all:

"Ellis do you want some meat and noodles for dinner."
"En bee-uh, tooooooo?" (smiling and nodding confidently)

Wild-life

Well our backyard is full of wildlife these days. Before we even put up the bird feeders we had seen a raccoon, bunny, squirrels and chipmunks. Ellis looks for the "coooon" and "bunna" everyday and is routinely disappointed that they cannot be called as Scout is called.

Far more impressive is how quickly we have gotten a tremendous turnout at the bird feeders. We started off with just a single cardinal, then his mate. Now they are nesting in the bushes behind the house. Since then I have identified (either at the feeders or in the yard) two pairs of goldfinches, a pair of white-breasted nuthatch, a single titmouse, several pair of morning doves, a downy woodpecker, two red-headed woodpeckers possibly arguing over a female, a pair of house finches, a whole slew of white-throated sparrows and a bunch of robins.

The website www.whatbird.com is a pretty good tool for identification, especially for the birds that aren't pictured on the bird clock or the birds where the male and female differ in large measure.

Rachel has started her job, so we have a toe in the water with our new crazy life. I am enjoying a few days at home with Ellis, looking out the back window hoping to add new birds to our list. I promise pictures of the house and a post on Ellis is booming language skills yet this week.

no mentions of pork in this post

Just checking in after a long period of no posts (from me). Well, we're finally back in Ann Arbor after a nice, long visit with my parents (and too short visits with Lucy and Catherine). We are trying to get settled into life here and I believe this calls for, yes, a bulleted list.

• I got a job.
• The job is with a company started, in part, with technology that I helped develop in my thesis. What do you know- could grad school actually be paying off?
• The company is a start-up, meaning it could be a really great opporuntity for me to develop a broad range of skills. And I already know several of the people involved so it's not a total unknown. However, it also means that Trey and I are both the first employees of our respective companies. Yikes, yikes yikes!
• Speaking of yikes, yikes, yikes, I'll be working full time and Ellis is headed to daycare. We found a Montessori school that runs a toddler program. It's housed in a former elementary school that was shut down about 20 years ago under school consolidation, so they have lots of space both indoor and out. We really liked what we saw there, though I can't help worrying about the "work-based" curriculum making Ellis into some kind of super-serious kid. This worry is unfounded but I've been home with him his whole life so far, so I have to find something to freak out about.
• The house we rented is nice. It has a yard which Ellis LOVES. There is even a little pond type thing in the backyard and we were thinking we might clean out and get a few goldfish.
  
• Last night we saw a raccoon splashing around in the pond. Thus we may have to nix the fish. And possibly invest in traps instead? Seriously, I have no clue what, if anything, I'm supposed to do about raccoons in the city.
  
• Ellis is being seriously cute lately. I want to write soon about his language development and his burgeoning love of all things outside. Until then, here's a picture of him getting in some ATV practice at my parents:

Are those natural?

Our charcuterie work continued this week with sausages. We started with a simple fresh bratwurst seasoned with ginger and nutmeg. At left you can see us stuffing the bratwurst. Those are natural casings if you were wondering. Specifically, they are called "hog middles" in the lingo. "Middle" refers to the stretch of the pig's small intestine that these come from, and this is roughly indicative of size. We ordered them from the internet and a few days later got a sack of tangled, salted guts that were remarkably oder free. Once you get a stretch of casing separated from the knotted mass, all you have to do is soak it in tepid water, rinse it twice, and thread it onto the nozzle of the stuffer and you are ready to fill the sausage. Preparation of the meat for putting it in the casing varies a lot depending on the type of sausage you are making, but in both cases here, the meat and spices were ground together, briefly mixed with the Kitchen Aid and then put into the casing.

The bratwurst were good after a gentle boil in beer and followed by a brief grilling. The pork we are starting with is so lean that I have had to add fat. If I do the bratwurst again I would add even more. In addition to the cream, dry milk and eggs called for in the recipe, 20% fat was barely enough. It would be nice to compare the sausage we made which didn't include veal to one that did. But with so many sausages and so little time, we might not revisit this recipe for a while.

Today we went a little crazier and made a smoked hunter's sausage seasoned with mustard seeds, garlic, coriander, black pepper, ginger and nutmeg. Additionally, half of the meat was coarsely ground while half was left very rough to create a coarse meaty texture. After stuffing, these sausages hung for an hour in the cooler and then were moved to the smoker. I was unhappy with the smoking temperature, which was intended to be 200 deg. F in order to cook the sausage while smoking it. (Apparently, adapting a cold smoker back to being a hot smoker isn't as easy as I had hoped.) As a compromise, we smoked the sausage for several hours and then moved them to a 200 degree oven for finishing.

The hunter's sausages turned a nice pink reminiscent of commercial kielbasa. As recommended, we tried them cold. I liked them this way, finding them to be similar to some of the sausages we had eaten in Germany. Others found the coarse texture of the sausage, which included little pieces of fat and meat, a little off-putting when cold. Grilling or pan-frying these sausages should soften the texture and result in something more like what we call Polish Sausage in my family.

From the bacon advisory board

Overheard by the photographer:

"Ellis, do you know that bacon for breakfast makes folks more cooperative?"

"Really Scout, I didn't know that, but I do know that you don't mind me pulling your tail as much when you have a mouthful of bacon."

"I s'pose that's true, Ellis. It is that perfect balance of fat and protein that leaves us satisfied and content. A yank on the tail just doesn't matter with bacon heading into the belly."

"You sure ain't kiddin'. When I have bacon for breakfast, I never wear it out before lunch time."

"Speakin' of which, Ellis, don't I hear your grandma hollering for lunch just now?"

"Oh, yeah, wonder what we are having. Dad made some new sausages this morning. Maybe he will grill them wrapped in bacon."

"One can dream I guess. Hey Ellis, do you think it is all the nitrates in the bacon that makes it so we can talk to each other?"

"No Scout, mostly it is me growing up. But, brain development requires fat and I am sure the bacon is supporting advancements in my language centers and maybe in yours too."

"Ok Ellis, but....um.... just in case it is the bacon directly, make sure your dad keeps it coming. I would miss our little talks terribly if a dwindling bacon supply caused us to not understand each other anymore."

"Oh don't worry Scout. Dad won't go without bacon and he won't deprive us of the benefits either."

As promised

Here it is folks: The much awaited bacon post.

Anatomy: If you didn't know it, bacon is the side meat from a pig, sometimes called the belly. If you you didn't cover pig anatomy in home economics, go and have a look.

The one thing nearly all bacon has in common is that it is cured in some fashion with salt and often sugar. Variations in bacon are generally created by the addition of spices, different types of sugar and a flavor whose attraction defies common sense: smoke. The use of curing salt goes beyond simple NaCl (table salt) to include nitrates and nitrites which not only act to preserve the food, but also to change the texture, color and to some extent the flavor. Historically, saltpeter (potassium nitrate) was used in cured meats, but has been more recently replaced with the sodium salt of nitrate, called pink salt due to the color added to prevent confusion with simple table salt.

The basic procedure was to rub the side meat with the salt, package it in a large bag and allow the salt to pull liquid from the pork which then formed a brine. Generally, after the curing, the meat was rinsed, dried and smoked. Prior to smoking, the surface of the bacon was allowed to dry thoroughly to form a pellicle, or a dry surface layer to which the smoke sticks, creating a smoke layer that prevents pathogen penetration.

Since my pigishness is only surpassed by my nerdiness, we decided to do a factorial experiment to optimize our procedure. Our variables were our cure recipe, our post-cure handling and the amount of smoking time. The first curing recipe used maple syrup for added sweetness and included pink salt. The second came from the famous TV food nerd Alton Brown and used brown sugar alone for sweetness and didn't use pink salt at all. After the curing, one batch was washed extensively by diluting the brine 10 fold with water. Finally, one batch was smoked for 6 hours and another for 12.

Summary of results: The secondary wash reduced the saltiness to a better level and the longer smoking did little to change the flavor at all. The biggest difference was between the batches that utilized pink salt (nitrates) and the one that didn't. The bacon that contained nitrates was a deep red in the meaty streaks and looked more like commercial bacon. The nitrate-lacking bacon remained a whiter color, even when cooked, reminiscent of a pork chop. It also had a notable porkiness in its flavor which wasn't off putting, but also was unexpected.

Surprisingly, nearly everyone who tried the bacons liked the nitrate-free bacon better. I was the lone exception who preferred the bacon with nitrates and maple syrup cure. All who tried them agreed they were both quite good, especially when cut thick and cooked in the oven at about 350 degrees. The four strips at the top contain nitrates and this accounts for their slightly pinker color.

Who you callin' a hillbilly?

I am now driving around Ann Arbor in a borrowed truck with a broken exhaust and a rear window whose hinges are broken. Temporarily reattaching the window involved dowel rods, black tape, wire, ratchet straps, vice grips and sockets. I have to say, I am pretty proud of the result and the fact that I resisted the urge when things weren't lookin' so good to just say f### it and tape a plastic bag over the whole thing.

I also managed to move back to Ann Arbor during NPR pledge week. On at least five occasions I have glanced at the clock and thought to myself, "hey, there is a half an hour left in Morning Edition and I didn't miss Great Lakes Radio Consortium", only to flip on the radio and be greeted with, "you pay for cable TV; you pay for that service; now we are asking you pay for this service that you use everyday; that you rely on for your news and information while taking the kids to soccer practice." Why don't they just say, "if you listened to NPR last month and you DON'T send us some money then you are a thief! Are you one of the 27 million Americans who stole NPR programming last month? How long are you gonna keep stealing our information? Huh, stealer?"

Now, I generally would feel like we do use NPR enough that we should make some contribution. However, I would have liked a week of peace and quiet upon returning to Ann Arbor, not to mention that no one can argue that the underwriting spots are anything other than commercials at this point. Between the droning of pledge week, I have caught some actual programming and that just isn't the same either. I may be outgrowing NPR. Further evidence for this comes from the fund-raising banter itself. While statements like the one above trigger a reflexively guilty response from my liver area, today, the following pitch left me cold, not a twitch of understanding or empathy for the situation described:

"Now maybe you decided to buy a bigger Ipod than you needed because in order to get the color you wanted, maybe the green one, you had to go with a more expensive model. Wouldn't it have been better to get the smaller one and contribute that fifty bucks to your public radio station?"

When I heard this, I think I had a small stroke that destroyed the little patch of my brain that released endorphins when the All Things Considered music poured forth at 4 pm. (Fortunately, the part of my brain, that being the majority, that releases endorphins when eating bacon was left completely unharmed.) I can't even wrap my brain around caring what color an Ipod is, especially to the tune of $50. After my stroke, I tried to picture someone driving in their car and saying to their spouse, "ya know hun, they really are right. We didn't need the mauve Ipod or the extra gigs. Turn here and we will go to the Mac store and take that back and get that old-fashioned Ipod. I bet the Ipod-Femto that they released last month is on clearance now. We can send that extra money to NPR. And, with our tax rebate coming, we will even be able to afford a day sponsorship. I do hope Piper's birthday is still available."

Is consumerism so pervasive in our culture now that a pitch aimed at our camaraderie as consumers , from public radio no less, creates a sense of belonging so strong that we might reserve a little of our disposable income for public radio? If this is a successful ploy with the general NPR listenship, and their programming is designed to satisfy the demands of such a group, then I am not surprised that I find the programming a lot less satisfying and the commercials that pass for underwriting a lot more irritating.

I'll be out milking