Back on the Horse

The last time I cooked in a crock-pot it imploded.

So, I had to get back on that horse, buy a crock-pot,and make something in it.

Today I made chili. I love chili. So today I followed some structure and a basic recipe, then tweaked it a little.

Below is the chili cooking in our new crock-pot:



Here's the what I did:

Ingredients:
• 3 pounds ground beef, browned (can substitute some beef for sausage)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 cups chicken or beef broth
• 2 15 oz can beans (red, pinto or both)
• 1 14 oz can diced tomatoes (do not drain)
• 2 15 oz can tomato sauce
• 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
• 2 stalks of celery
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 7 oz can fire roasted green chilles or 2 Anaheim peppers, diced
• 6 cloves garlic, minced

Chili Powder (a little spicy):
• 1/2 tablespoon chipotle chile powder (medium hotness)
• 3 tablespoons pasilla chile powder
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2-3 tablespoons ground cumin, (3 Tbls can be a bit strong, but I like it)
• 1 pinch fresh thyme
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon black pepper, ground
• 1 teaspoon salt, then add to taste

Tom’s Chili Recipe Directions:

In a skillet on medium heat, add olive oil and cook onions until soft and yummy. Add the celery and peppers and cook for a few more minutes.

In a large pot, brown the ground beef, making sure to continuously break up large pieces with a spatula. Once browned drain fat off of meat. Return the ground beef to the pot.

Add onions, peppers, and celery to meat.

Add the chili powder. Heat over medium heat with stirring for 15 minutes.

Add it all to to crock-pot and turn to high heat.

Pour in the broth, beans, diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, cider vinegar.

Stir it up good and cook a long time.

Final Day- Beer Judge

Final day of beer judging here in Lodi.

I started the day out tasting porter type beers. A porter is traditionally an English style but there are also American, Russian, and Polish types. This is a great style to drink. It is bold but very drinkable.

After the porters, I was judging a category called Sour Ales. These are something I have had before, but I don't drink very often. I can appreciate these for the difficulty and the balance needed to not be overwhelming and puckering.

Most of these sour beers come from Belgium, however one style called Berliner Weisse of course comes from Germany. These can be refreshing, some are deeply complex like a good wine, and others are more artistic and funky even downright nasty.

The category that is strangest is the Belgian Lambics. It is a tart and sour beer style. What makes it interesting , to some, is that it can be described as smelling like a barnyard, gym socks, or as I said when I was judging, "an old leather shoe. Sounds yummy right? In this style, these are compliments to the beer quality.

If you want to see what styles of beer are out there, check the BJCP styles.

So, that's my weekend and if you want to know more about beer judging go to the Beer Judge Certification site.

Day 1 - Beer Judge

It was a long drive to get here. Out in the middle of Northern California in the town of Lodi.

I am here to be a part of a huge national home-brewed beer competition call the National Homebrew Competition. It starts out in several regional competitions through the US, then the winners at the regionals go on to a national judging panel to determine who has the best beer in America. I entered two beers myself, a Kolsch and an American Brown Ale.

My day here started out judging beer in the "stout" category. I tasted about 8 of these dark, roast coffee and chocolate flavored beers. Along with tasting I filled out a sheet with my comments about aroma, appearance, flavor, mouth-feel, and overall impression. I then assign a score somewhere from 13 to 50 points. I then discuss the beer with a fellow judge and we talk about the beer to make sure we had a similar experience.

After a great lunch, I acted as a judge assistant, called a steward.

It was a great and fun day tasting many types of homebrewed beer. Most of the people were great to work with.

Now I am back in the hotel about to take a nap. good night

When Samsung LCD TV's Go Bad

Over the last 6 months, our Samsung 40" LCD has declined to work properly. It worked, but you would turn it on, hear clicking sounds until it finally turned on. The time to turn on has slowly increased over time. When it does come on there were blue dots were all over the screen.

Click to enlarge picture

As you see, even the cats watch TV at our house.

To temporarily fix this we would just turn it off and on again and it was ok to watch. Since it seemed to be getting worse I looked into fixing it.

I found thousands of people out there with the same problem. One thing they all had in common was the 1 year waranty was up and Samsung basically said "Screw you" to most people who asked for help.

The problem is a group of capacitors on the power board. For some reason, the capacitors "wear" out, the tops bulge up, and even some of the black electrolyte fluid leaks out.

According to a consumer affairs site "Samsung installed 10 volt 1000 micro Farad capasitors on a 12 volt bus of the power board."

After looking at our TV, we found all four 1000 uF capacitors were dying and fluid leaking out of the tops.

Click to enlarge picture

My thinking here is that I have three options:

1) Repair it myself for about $12 plus any soldering equipment I needed.

2) Buy a new power board for $100 from a place like http://www.partstore.com/Default.aspx .

3) Have a certified repair person fix it for who knows how much ($200 to $400 is common).

So, after some great information on the problem and a great YouTube video from a guy who shows us all how to do it, I was ready to fix it myself or blow up the TV trying.

Video Part 1 , Video Part 2

I removed the power board, heated up and removed the old capacitors, then soldered the new ones into place.

After completing the work and putting the TV back together, we tried it out...

It works! No clicking. No abnormal lag time to start up.

I'll keep you posted if it catches on fire.

Next time I think I'll buy a Sony.

When Good Crockpots Go Bad...

There was a sound in the kitchen. The sound was glass braking. I looked to see where the two cats were. Both were sleeping soundly, not causing trouble. Huhhh...I wonder what that was?

Where is the lid to the crockpot???


The lid imploded into the spaghetti sauce. The cause: 30 minutes before I had chipped the edge of the glass lid. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can see the round handle from the lid in the center of the mess. Should I even be aloud into kitchens? That is a rhetorical question, thank you.

On a good note, I made baklava that was yummy the night before and nothing exploded.

What you see on the plate was my dinner Wednesday night.