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Like any Winter ensconced fish-belly white New Englander we enjoy the occassional foray into spicy, south of anywhere, foodstuffs. This weekend it was Buffalo Wings. Not very southerly as recipes go but the ingredients made up for the geographic transgression. Instead of buying Tobasco or some other vinegar based and adjective laced hot sauce I go with good old Tapatio's, which is cheap and hot...just what you need.
If you haven't made Buffalo style wings here's a quick primer:
Throw a stick of butter in a pan along with a quarter cup of hot sauce. I kid you not. I don't know how people come up with things like this, but butter and hot sauce it is. Heat until butter is melted, mix well and set aside.
In another pan put an inch of frying oil (we use Canola) and proceed to fry a whole pile of wing pieces (temp around 300-375). Fry for about 10-15 minutes each for frozen wings.
Drain the wings well on paper towels or using your George Forman kitchen centrifuge. Dip each wing in the butter hot sauce mixture, coat well.
During all of this have someone else get out the Mayonaisse, sour cream, blue cheese, and a little lemon juice. Mix a half cup of the mayo and sour cream together, add a little lemon juice, some more hot sauce, and plenty of crumbled blue cheese. Wash and cut up some celery sticks. BTW, celery sticks are used as mini fire extinquishers.
Curl up in front of the TV with wings, dip, celery sticks, napkins, and plenty of cool beverage. Once you start on the wings you have to keep going or the hot sauce catches up.
I once worked with a fellow in Bangor Maine that loved spicy foods. His favorite saying was that it wasn't really hot unless it burned in both directions. I'll let you fill in the specifics and make your own mental image. These wings pass the test.
Snow, snow, and maybe just a bit more snow. It's been a pretty incredible winter thus far and I bet it's not even close to winding down. Usually we get snow, rain, snow, rain, rain, maybe a bit more rain and sleet which makes for a rollercoaster of winter moods and driving conditions. Not this winter. With a three foot snow base we have had only one rain storm and that was quickly followed up by more snow. The last week has seen a small snow shower almost every morning. I suspect the city's snow plows are worn down like old toothbrushes, completely unfit for the job at hand, being pushed around mostly out of habit.
We are starting to worry about the roof again. We spent a couple of days shovelling it off after the big snow storm, but the little snow flurries have been slowly adding up and it is probably time again. That and we insulated the attic a few weeks ago so any chance of the snow being melted from below is gone.
Insulating was quite an experience. The lumber yard delivered a dozen oblong plastic wrapped packages of insulation. Not the rolls you might be used to, but semi-rectangular bricks measuring three feet long, a couple feet wide, and a couple feet thick. They were held together in bundles of four using this super strong plastic band. Cut the band and it exploded from pent up insulation pressure, the bags expanding in all directions. Cut open a bag and ten stacked sheets of insulation (unfaced) expand from a cramp two feet into a four or five foot pile. Like those promotional business cards that turn into a sponge when wet.
To enter our attic there is a barely two foot square hole in the hallway closet. Right off the bat we are grunting and sweating just trying to get the insulation into the attic. Then you open the plastic bag, stand back lest it smothers you, and start laying the sheets out. We wore gloves, glasses, and air filters to keep the itchy insulation at bay. It was five below outside and maybe ten degrees warmer in the attic.
Our attic already had a few inches of insulation, almost filling the gaps between girders. So while Faith wrestled with the ever expanding stack of insulation and tossed sheets to me, I crab walked into the recesses of the attic and layed the new insulation perpendicular to the old. Dust, dead flies, the empty nests of a hundred wasps, and even a few piles of bat poop marked the otherwise cramp and cold attic. We hit our heads repeatedly, almost stepped through the roof, called the world and each other a few choice names, and yet somehow managed to finish it all in a day. With the new insulation down it looked like a pretty comfortable place to curl up and sleep.
All this to say that I sure hope the roof doesn't cave in and mess up our nice insulation job.
Just reading that makes me cringe. That sounds like a total pain in the ass job -- but probably left you feeling like you accomplished a lot in the end....
Dear Jer, I am interested in making your ginger beer recipe. (I got hooked on it while on vacation in NZ and cannot find a commercial source in Savannah, GA). If I follow your recipe, how long can I keep it in the fridge? I read one recipe that said to not drink it after 3 days and another that said don't even refrigerate it for 6 days.