Okay, so this weekend I went out and bought me a nice foodsaver vacuum bag system, and a bunch of tri-tip and strip that was on sale. I went through two rolls of bagging stock, then bought a pork loin and a bunch of chicken breast and made up 5 dozen tamales and bagged them. Now my freezer is stuffed, the wife says I can't buy anymore food until we get rid of what I already have. In the meantime, I am planning on rebagging a bunch of ziploc'd bags of food in the freezer.

I named my tamale recipe "Big Ben's carne chango tamales". I haven't finished transcribing my notes, I pretty much perfected the recipe as I went.

Anyone here know what carne chango is? In my recipe, pork loin and chicken breast are a substitute.

don't know about any food that's south of Rochester MN but from this and other posts i'm tempted to pop for that system and replaced the zip lock canoe chow with the vacuum bags--

Carne de Chango: Meat of the Monkey.

I believe it's actually Pork these days, or it's more PC these days not to cook a monkey... Something like that.

I hope you post the recipe!

Yep, Big Ben's Monkey Meat Tamales.

I will try and get the recipe posted tomorrow. I brought a few in to my hispanic co-worker (her parents own a mexican restaurant here in Denver) and had her try them out. She pronounced them quite good. Guess that means it'll do.

Anyways, I figure the name might get some folks' attention. She laughed when I told her.

BTW, I have been officially grounded until I get rid of at least 30 lbs of stock out of the freezer. To get started on that, I grilled up some tri-tip last night and was pleasantly punished for my effort.

I guess the sausage grinder will get a break for a couple weeks now. It's time to focus my attention on the garden now I reckon anyways.

I guess my next big endeavor will be to study my old high school chem class notes and see if I can recall how to make a still again. Or maybe just get into beer making.

Damn, this consumption business is getting interesting.

Warning - do NOT talk in public (a forum like this) about a still except in "theory"

The BATFE does not have an exemption allowing the making of distilled sprits in home quantities (unlike home brewing). You would have to get the extremely expensive tax license to even make a few Ozs of distilled spirits.

Don't want you running afoul of the law now. (particularly admitting it in public)

All too true. I wonder how we got away with it in high school chem class. We sure made a lot of hooch for them alcohol burners.

Maybe the prof wasn't on the level with the BATFE at the time. Lessee, what was that man's name that gave me the C- again...

Was he denaturing that alcohol?

If he was, I'm not sure that the ATF would do anything. In fact, as long as the purpose is clearly not to produce a drinkable product, I'm not sure they have a leg to stand on. We certainly produced it in college chem and there are some home-brew folks that generate it for their hybrids (presumably right alongside the home-brew biodiesel folks and that's a dangerous operation if not done properly).

I think the sticking point is mention of it right next to home beer brewing.

I'm not sure of the law, but I gotta assume it's to prevent bootlegging and blinding of innocents due to your misguided attempts. A person with suitable knowledge could probably form their own S-Corp boutique distillery and get it licensed appropriately. Let us know when the first crispy bottle of Benjammin Sauce comes off the assembly.

In theory this might help:

http://homedistiller.org/

http://www.homedistiller.org/photos-reflux.htm

http://www.ces.purdue.edu/extmedia/AE/AE-117.html

Note:
Pot stills are not for producing the high purity fuel alcohol like reflux stills.
Pot stills do produce the flavored liquors like brandy or whiskey that most people use for drinks.

I don't recall him ever adulterating the distillate after we collected it. We began using some of it almost immediately as fuel to keep the still going, so at least the stuff we put our hands on was pure. It took us almost half a dozen tries before we got the proof up over 190. I can tell you, had he not been present while we were making it, there was a couple times we could've imbibed, and also a few times we could've caused ourselves grave harm. You gots to be careful when workin' with such things. They kin be a might tuchy...Blast would know

So since I was banned from cooking for a while, the wife decided she wanted to make up some loaves of quickbread this weekend. So we made a couple pumpkin spice loaves and a couple banana nut loaves. Tomorrow she has muffins on the agenda. Funny thing is, she wants to cook these things, but she doesn't really cook, so it ends up being me in the kitchen again. Well, long as she is happy, who am I to question.

Oh yeah, we also made a batch of old fashioned vanilla ice cream today. Tomorrow we make some chocolate.

Did I mention all of this is no sugar added. We are using splenda. The ice cream turned out excellent. Quite a thing to be eating homemade ice cream while it is snowing and blowing outside.

Nope, I don't support mexican agriculture. That is good cured long leaf by the name of "Diamond Crown". I still have a nice wooden box more than half full that I've been working on slowly. Good brandy dippers.

Yes YoDuh, but that ain't mexican agriculture, least ways not the kind I was referring to. I am after all a native born Texican, so you should know I would appreciate a good set of melons.

Stick with homebrew... Pretty easy to do and makes a nice relaxing hobby...

A few rules:

1) It is easy to brew a good homebrew
2) It is also easy to mess up a homebrew
3) You should be drinking a homebrew when making a batch of homebrew

I've done several batches over the year, but haven't had time of late to do another.

I belive the keys to making homebrew are:

1. Good ingredients. Like good ingedients improve the dishes one cooks, good hops, malts, waters and yeasts improve brews. Trying having the right one of each for the type of brew you are making;
2. Know what your ingredients taste like. If you do not know what it tastes like going in, how can you figure out what an ingredient did to the flavor of your brew;
3. If you are ever in doubt, wonder or simply have a moment with a free hand, relax and drink some homebrew right then and there. If you do not have homebrew, something made by someone else will need to suffice until you do, substitute liberally.

Yes Dan, but in your item 2, as with my sausage making, sometimes you just gotta experiment and see what comes out the other end.

One other key for brewing...

Sanitation -- Those nasty beer loving microbes won't screw up your first (or second) batch of homebrew -- but they turned my fourth batch into a nasty tasting, self-decanting mess.

Yeah, sanitation is paramount. The one-step sanitizer is great stuff and you don't have to fully rinse it either.

Hmmm... getting thirsty...