Cocktail Confessions

Getting around to this entry has seemingly been an effort with no real excuse for the delay.  It just feels like I have been so busy as of late that there just aren’t enough hours in the day anymore to get done what I want to get done.

Case in point is not only making a few pounds of sausage, but then sharing this with you.

As I alluded to earlier in the year, I wanted 2011 to be the year where I start getting back into the various hobbies I find enjoyable and used to dabble in. I’ll be brewing beer in a few weeks from now (early March), I’m currently working on my train layout, been reading a lot more books as of late, and finally got back into making sausage.

My cousin Jayne sent me an old family recipe from notes her grandfather had when he used to make Italian sausage from the old country when he came over here to America. It’s pretty straight forward: 1 part pork to 1 part beef, a can of mace, some red wine (most likely chianti), and a few other spices.

On the surface, while this recipe sounds simplistic enough, after reviewing it a few times in my head I noted that I was getting more and more unsure about it as some key information seems to be missing.  Namely, what the hell is a ‘can of mace’ and what is its measurement? And as long as we are speaking measurements, how much wine are we talking about? How much and what other spices (I assume salt, pepper, and maybe some fennel) are required for equal parts beef and pork?

Well, it’s easy enough to find out what ‘mace’ is, that still doesn’t tell me what a ‘can’ of mace is. Is that 6oz? 8 oz? 12 oz? And another key ingredient seemed to be missing altogether….fat.

Fat is what gives a good sausage its moisture content. Too little fat can result in a very dry sausage, while too much may make it too greasy and a cardiologist nightmare.

To my families disappointment, I shelved the family recipe for the time being (I will eventually have to experiment with this on my own, coming up with measurements by trial and error), promising to get to it at a later date.

Earlier in the week I had called my local butcher and had him reserve for me roughly 4 lbs of pure pork back fat. I also grabbed 10 feet of natural hog casing (which is made from the intestinal lining of a pig) which resides in a small plastic bin of water and some brining fluid. *While hog casing can be frozen and will keep for a while prior to usage, I tend to like to use it as fresh and as chilled as I can. When it starts to warm to room temperature and left out for a bit, you can sometimes detect an odor. I don’t particularly care for this odor and since I worry a lot about accidental introduction of bacteria, I try to limit the handling of fresh casing until I start stuffing, and I try and make it as quick as I can and then return to the refrigerator or freezer when not on use.

In the meantime, I broke out an old standby, my ‘Complete Sausage Book’ by Bruce Aidell. I’ve had this book for a number of years, and while it’s a no frills book, it’s an excellent source of information and tons of regional recipes. In the past this book has guided me through Mediterranean and Southwestern fare, chicken sausage, turkey with pesto and artichoke, and many more.

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Looking in my pantry I saw that I had the dry spice ingredients to make two different varieties: Hungarian hot links and one of my old favorites, Mexican (although not chorizo).

Friday night it happened to be raining, so it was a great excuse to make my first batch, the Hungarian hot links. I broke out my Krups meat grinder, and went ahead and ground my fresh pork shoulder and beef chuck. I also added a good portion of pork fat, all my spices, mixed thoroughly and set in the fridge, covered, overnight to let the flavors blend and stabilize. It was the next morning that I went ahead and stuffed my casings. It was a little more laborious than I remembered only because the feed plate to the hopper kept coming off the base due to a vacuum effect of pulling and pushing the manual stuffer with one hand and guiding the actual output into a casing with the other.

While it can clearly be done this way, its definitely can proceed much faster with two people: one person feeding the hopper with the other guiding and controlling the casings. I will enlist my wife on round two.

Now with the first batch done, I turned my sights to the second batch, the Mexican varietal. What gives this variation its distinct flavor is the inclusion of ground chipotle and cumin along with some Negro Modelo dark Mexican Ale (my all time favorite beer) added for additional flavor and moisture. I think in the future when I make this again, I may also add a small can of pre-chopped jalapeño into the mix as well for some additional kick. (If not jalapeño, then maybe some mild diced pablano pepper instead just to bring a tad more south of the border flair to it.)

I more or less followed the same procedure and broke it up into two stages for overall ease. Saturday afternoon, I ground my meat and fat, added fresh ground spices and beer, mixed, and placed in fridge overnight. I also had a couple of Negro Modelo’s at this point to aid in the cleaning up process. Finally Superbowl Sunday morning came around and I got my wife to volunteer her services. She’d be placing the meat in the hopper and feed tube, and I’d be guiding the casings. In the end, it was much faster to produce almost twice as much finished links as it did when I made the Hungarian links the day before.

The final result: We tried the Hungarian hot links and they were very juicy and tasty.  The Mexican sausage had a great flavor, but maybe because my friend may have slightly ‘over grilled’ them, they were a bit drier than I expected (not enough fat?).  Although the weekend after we threw a sauage party at my house and I grilled them again with a few other varities as well, and they seemed to be much tastier and plump, but lacked the ‘kick’ I really wanted.  But it was my neighbors and friends that were the final judge.  I seemed to have gotten a thumbs up from everyone and a few of my neighbors are still talking about them today, so I’ll take that as a good sign.

Yeah, it’s a little late in the making, but today’s a great opportunity for an update and catch up on recent activities due to the rainy weather.

I’ll be working on a new entry dedicated to my sausage making shortly (maybe even later today).  I just off-loaded some pictures from my Droid phone that I took while in the kitchen while making them, and they turned out pretty good for not having touched a meat grinder in over 5 years.

Work has been slow….mind numbingly slow…so slow in fact, I’m fantasizing about other careers.  The good news is (and don’t tell my boss), it’s allowed me to start reading in earnest again and I’ve been able to finish a true crime book in about two weeks, and I started a new science fiction novel two days ago and I’ve already been able to get through the first 100 pages…just at work (albeit most of it has been during lunch breaks).  I’m getting more and more interested in buying an Android tablet (when the price is reasonable…they are just too expensive right now for a 10″ tablet) and start carrying digital books around, much like a Kindle.

My diet is still plugging along, although this past weekend I cheated a bit more than I would have liked to have and it affected my Sunday weigh-in for sure.  Saturday I spent the afternoon with a few friends ‘beering’ at a local brewery, Cismontane, and had a few pints of some heavy handed beer.  This included a rare chili-cheese dog for lunch.  Dinner that evening consisted of having a ‘sausage’ party (Yeah, I can hear all the jokes right now).  I grilled 4 different types of sausages for my friends and neighbors and this was followed by a little Jack Daniels drinking and some Oreo cookies.  But when it was all said and done, I came in the next day at 224.8 lbs, still slightly down from the previous week.  However, earlier in the week I did have two days where I was 223.8 which had me excited, but it didn’t last. 

Speaking of beer, I’m still on track to go to Brew Bakers with my friend Brian on March 12th, about 2pm and we’ll be brewing and tasting some beer.  My friend Joe had an excellent play on words for a beer, and after massaging the idea a bit and brainstorming some visuals, he came up with an excellent mock-up picture for the label.  I liked it so much that I’m going to give him a few suggestions to tweak, and I’ll end up using it for my own.  I don’t want to reveal it hear just yet, but I am excited to debut it later…it’s pretty damn funny and a collaborative effort, but Joe for sure came up with the spark.

Finally, I also started my train benchwork layout after many months of sitting idle. 

Two weekends ago I bought most of the wood, except the actual table top as Home Depot’s arm-saw was broken (I’ll go back at a later date), and other hardware.  This past Saturday I got up and started measuring, re-measuring, and then triple-measuring before I made cuts with my miter saw and began the first stages of assembly.  I ended up with a 3.5′ x 6.5′ butt-joint assembled frame (pictured) .  That’s a pretty decent beginner size for a N-scale (1:160) train layout.  I’ve already cut the legs too, at 3.5′ tall when fully assembled.  I’ll attach those this weekend and maybe get the side bracing done, then finally back to Home Depot to get the actual top.  From there, it’s trying to find sheets of pink extruded insulation foam, and then the real fun/project begins.

We also got a new TV about a week back as the old plasma died.  Well, it’s finally mounted on the wall and had Cox Cable come out and got a new DVR (more storage and HDMI compatible).  This has allowed me to ditch some cables and finally get rid of my VCR as well, so we’ve freed up some space and got rid of about a third of the cables.  I have an idea to hide the rest of them, but that’s a project for another day.

Overall, not too shabby of a start only a month and half into the new year.  Big items left to tackle is getting involved (volunteering) at an animal shelter in the area, actually take a few days for a mini vacation, cleaning out a bit more of the house and purging stuff we don’t use anylonger (there’s been a discussion of a neighborhood garage sale in the coming weeks), and a few other smaller things (like a new podcast entry).  But so far, so good, but I still feel like I need another day in the week to catch up for everything I either want to do, or just rest because the other days seems so busy.

The last few days have been a whirlwind of small personal triumphs (I’ll take them where I can get them, thank you) and frustrating moments.  Most everything here deserves a small entry in their own right, and perhaps I’ll expand on some of them in the coming days.  It all really depends on how busy I am at work, or for that matter how bored I am…which has been the predominant theme as of late:

-         My weight loss plan started out good, but came to a stall this past week.  After five weeks of eating semi-solid food (oh, how I miss the ‘crunch’), riding the bike more often at the gym, and trying to really monitor my overall diet amongst other things, I’ve lost just shy of 12 pounds.  But this past week I lost nothing at all which is a little disheartening, but no reason to get into a tizzy just yet.  I did have a few drinks over the weekend, but I don’t think enough to ruin my regime; but then again since I didn’t lose anything at all, so maybe it did after all.  The other issue is that my shoulder has been nagging me again and causing some slight discomfort overall.

-         I was able to make roughly 7 lbs of sausage, over the weekend, and brought some over to my buddies house yesterday for Super Bowl.  Not sure if they may have been grilled on the BBQ a little too long, but despite great flavor, they were a tad bit dry.  That’s weird, because with the left over meat that I didn’t stuff in a casing, I made a patty which was very juicy.  It was a lot of work, and while not my best sausage to date, the effort involved after not making for close to 6 years still was an accomplishment in my book.

-         Made my way over to Home Depot on Saturday and bought a lot of wood to start my train layout bench work.  On the downside, however, their arm saw was broken so I didn’t get any cut plywood that would have been the base of my layout, nor did I get any pink extruded foam because despite the online website stating they carry it, when I was there in person, they told me they didn’t.

-         My wife said that her sink at her vanity in the master bathroom was leaking.  A leak I can’t yet find, but there was water about underneath and onto the carpet.  Yet another item that needs to be fixed at the house that I wasn’t expecting.  Sigh.

-         My 7.5 year old plasma TV died on Sunday.  While I’m excited to buy a new TV, we weren’t planning on it until the end of the year when we had more money.  Another untimely expense in my book.

-         My job has been sucking bad this past week.  I’m at an all time low for morale right now.  My managers (yes, plural), cannot make a decision or a stand on anything if their life depended on it.  It is so frustrating to work under those who can’t commit to anything and seem wishy-washy on anything thrown their way.  I wake up in the mornings imagining ways to get out early or to look busy, but neither I nor my wife are in a position to quit right now.

-         The Motorola Xoom tablet is going to be too expensive for me to purchase here in the next few weeks.  Rumor has it that it will retail for $799.  As much as I would like one, I can’t justify that price right now, especially with a dead television that is going to be replaced.

-         I am reading a lot again.  Not my comics that I used to enjoy so much, but I’m plugging away at hardcover books (especially used ones I get from the second hand market) as of late. 

-         My efforts in organizing a camping trip with friends has been dashed due to my friends inability (sorry guys if you’re reading this) to agree on a date.  In my final attempt, I threw out 3 separate dates for April/May coming up (3 months advance notice at that), and no one has responded.  I give up.

-         Saturday, March 12^th, I have a date to brew beer up in Huntington Beach.  Another mark in the ‘Win’ column for my 2011 bucket list.

-         Looks like there’s going to be some turn over in my neighborhood.  One neighbor has finally had their house reposed by the bank (I won’t miss them), but my next door neighbors just told me they are trying to sell their house via ‘short sale’ which means it’s a gamble on who it may attract.  I like my neighbors now…they are nice and quiet and even younger than us.  The potential outcome is making me a tad nervous.

This rings true for me more times than not.

A cleverly crafted letter, or a direct phone call to the people that matter (without losing your cool), that spells out logical points and is based on a solid argument generally works out in your favor more often than you’d think.

Over the years I’ve been able to get out of a myriad of CC late fees, fraudulent billing statemnts, and other similar infractions that had any semblance of being in a ‘gray’ area. 

When it comes to actual product mishaps, disappointments in performance, design flaws, or whatever, the same principal also applies.  I have gotten my share of free meals, charges reversed, complimentary samples, upgrades, shipping credits, etc. based on solely on my confidence and persistence.

Like your mama may have told you as a life lesson:  ”It’s easier to catch flies with honey than shit.”  Well, on second thought, that’s probably a bad analogy, because I can never recall a time where a fly turns down a nice fresh pile of steaming shit, BUT, the principal is there:  Striking while the iron is hot and fresh and doing it in a calm and rational way will generally give you the results you want.

I could launch into a plethora of examples for you, but let me combine my most recent one with a product review at the same time.

About 6 or 7 months ago, possibly longer, I purchased a set a ‘cheap’ headphones from Best Buy by a company called Skullcandy.  I spent all of $19.95 on a pair of Ink’d earbuds for my Zune player as the default pair that Microsoft includes with their players are cheap and very uncomfortable in their own right.

Anyway, as it turns out, Skullcandy earbuds are pretty much like all other earbuds out there other than the fact with a few jazzy color schemes, some slick marketing and a creative name, they seem to command a slightly higher price.  That doesn’t mean they are actually any better than other OTC earbuds under $50, but they make the consumer ‘believe’ their product is superior through an above average presentation.  Another selling point is that they supposedly have a good warranty program in placeas well.  But let’s be honest, we aren’t talking about a personal computer or new plasma television set.  How many people actually fill out the warranty card or even take the time to register $19 earbuds with any company?  I’d wager to say less than 10% and I even think that’s being generous.  Most people don’t register hardware products under a certain value as it just seems easier to replace them by buying new ones.

Now before I get into the meat of what I’m dropping here today, let me do a quick review of the Ink’d earbuds themselves:

I read an article not to long ago that led the reader to believe that all OTC earbuds and portable earphones are pretty much supplied and manufactured by one company in China.  That’s right, in the end it doesn’t matter if you buy “ABC” brand’s metallic glow-in-the-dark, or “XYZ’s” Shiny Sound 2000′s….they are all made by the same company, they just get fancy names and pretty paint jobs by those that sell them domestically.

I’m not sure if that also rings true for mid-level and high-end earphones, but all the ‘low-ends’ are pretty much the same.

My experience with my Ink’d's are as such: they sound a little ‘tinny’ or hollow to me.  Don’t expect deep bass sounds (there’s no huge magnet driving these puppies).  They come with three different size silicon ear inserts, and by default the mediums are installed.  I did find these a bit uncomfortable after long periods of wearing them.  I’m a tad lazy in swapping them out for the smaller inserts, and for all I know the smaller ones may fit my inner ear better and be more comfortable in the long run.  But I give Skullcandy credit for including three different sizes….most brands don’t, so they must figure everyone has the same size ear and thus just accepts the feel.

The wires themselves are coated in a silicon like rubber that aren’t smooth and give the earphones a feel that they may be a bit more rugged and weighty; an impression that they may be more durable.  It’s my experience there really is no added protection to the internal wiring underneath this sheathing.  I noted that after a few months, something exposed a little piece of copper wire and they get just as tangled up, if not more so than all other brands.

The biggest problem with all these damn earphones is where the wire meets the RCA jack itself.  I’d say 90% of all earphone failures all happen here.  No one has been able to design a rugged enough ‘sleeve’ around the RCA plug itself and the internal wiring.  Overtime this thing just gets bent and disconnected somehow.  You’ll sit there like a dolt wiggling the wire back and forth, trying to tape it in place for a few weeks, but eventually they’ll give out.  This happened to me and to just about every other headset I’ve ever owned in my life. 

What Skullcandy does have for it, as I mentioned earlier, is a vast array of color schemes that go beyond the standard black or white ones that we’ve all seen 1000 times. 

So my final take? Eh, you end up buying them for their color schemes first, and maybe the ear insert second, but I see no real difference in sound quality themselves, which makes sense, if they are indeed all made by the same Chinese company.

Now back to my initial issue.  My headphones broke at the common point of failure where the wire meets the jack.  I can’t even remember when I bought the damn things and the simple thing to do is just to buy another pair.  But since I wanted to try my hand at the warranty and see if I could get a free replacement, I went ahead to the Skullcandy website.

While the website itself may look ‘cool’ and relatively simple in design (less is more), all the darn pictures take a bit longer than I’d like to load.  Doesn’t matter what PC I use (work vs home), or what browser (IE vs Firefox)…it just takes longer than you expect to load, but no big deal, unless you use the forward and backward buttons to check out individual products…then the page refresh gets old fast.

First I had to create an account, validate my email, blah, blah, blah.  Then I had to register my product, but since I can’t remember when or did I keep the receipt, I made one up in the probable time frame.  So far so good.

The problem starts when you have to get an RMA number.  They pretty much discourage a calling at this point  and request you fill out a warranty claim and get an RMA number via email.  You then have two choices for a claim: 1) aggressive enjoyment (?) -or- 2) manufacturer defect.  I didn’t know what to select and since there was no guidelines I chose #1 (mistake – more on this later).

Once you get your RMA, your instructed to place your damaged earphones in a padded envelope and mail to them along with a tracking number.  Thank goodness the tracking number is optional, because if I had to pay for Fed Ex to give me a tracking number, it’s already too much work and additional investment for $20 headphones.

I press on.  I mail my earphones and am instructed to wait for an email upon their receipt.  Should take 3-4 business days, but for me it took at least 6 – 7 business days (not weekends either).  My email said it would take 4-6 weeks processing.  Stop right there.  4-6 weeks to process a request for a replacement of $20 ear phones….after waiting for over a week just to get confirmation they received them?  Buying a new pair seems highly plausible as this point.

I call them up and am put on hold for a good 10 minutes until I get an actual person.  To Skullcandy’s credit, I will say that everyone I spoke to was both nice and spoke English, and for those two facts alone, I hung in there.  I told the first guy I spoke with that this 4-6 week processing seems unreasonable.  You look at the earphones, you plug them in to see if the work or not, and you make a determination on the spot.  There are no moving parts here, nothing radioactive or needs DNA screening to my knowledge.  He said it’ll probably be faster just hang out a few more days, so I agree.

Sure enough a few days later I get an email stating that my claims was processed and I’ll get 50% value credit to their online store.  Okay, that’s ‘cool’ I guess, but why not 100%?  Not my fault that the internal wiring breaks.  I call up again, wait another long period of time and this time get a young lady who is equally nice.

Now here’s the moral of the story folks….this is where persistance pays off (note: the first time)……I remainded very cordial and made my case and she agreed.  In realtime right then and there, she credited my not only 100% ($20) but gave me free shipping as well.  When I asked her why I only got 50% the first time, she said because I chose ‘aggressive enjoyment’.  If I would have chose ‘manufacturer’ defect, I would have most likely got 100% credit the first time around (read: they don’t check or test their claims…probably not worth the time and effort for a quick cheap replacement).

Armed with online store credit, I chose a new pair, but then here’s where I ran into issue #2.  Again, whether I tried either IE or Firefox, their website rejected my home address and asked me to ‘try again later’.  Well, I tried off and on multiple times over the course of two days, each time double checking my own address which I lived at for the past 7 years, and each time my address was rejected.  Screw this, I’m calling back.

And yet again, I get the nicest guy on the phone.  I tell him the issue, and he says he’ll be happy to fix it and push it himself…which he does and even before I hand up the phone with him, I get an email confirming my address and….get this….an additional 20% off my next purchase.  How awesome is that?

So while I may have had to jump through a few extra hoops, and do the leg work myself, in the end I got a full replacement plus a 20% coupon to boot.

In the future, I probably wouldn’t buy a new headset unless it was in the mid-tier ($60+), but Skullcandy customer service was a positive experience.