MMMmmmm Good

Team Jones is doing ten pounds of bone-in picnic pork roast.

Peel and cut four apples into rings (red delicious this year).

Sea salt and coarse ground pepper

1/2 cup fresh pressed cider
tbsp extra virgin olive oil
tbsp BRUTAL oak aged balsamic vinegar
tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
teaspoon soy sauce
dash tabasco

1/3 cup dried ground onion (we forgot to buy a fresh sweet onion)
tbsp garlic powder (you can use cloves of garlic, but powder seems to work better in the slow cooker)
dash paprika
dash ginger
two scruples parsley flakes (gives contrast to dried chopped onions/forms nice coating on meat)

Some recipes call for putting in two bay leaves and removing them after some time interval. The last two times I tried this, I left them in too long and was not impressed with the result.

To cook:

Get all your ingredients located. Locate the meat thermometer. Go down to your daughter’s room and steal back your heavy gauge extension cord so you can put the six quart crock pot on the end of the long kitchen bar.

Sear the meat in a dutch oven. You want it smoking hot with just enough oil to coat the bottom of the oven. The roast will shed enough fat to do the rest of the job. Have your big honking fork and heavy mitts on hand (so to speak) BEFORE dropping the meat in.

Mix the wet and dry spices and set aside.

Turn on the crock pot - set for “High” tempature for 3 hours.

Place 3/4 of the apples in the bottom of the pot.

Take the seared roast out of the dutch oven and place on a cookie sheet or platter. Rub pepper and salt to taste (less salt is always better - look at all the other spices already in the broth). I fork the heck out of the meat, and cut a shallow slit in the top as well, to allow the spices to penetrate. Fat side up with pork, always.

Place meat on top of apples, skin/fat side up. Place remaining apples on sides/top of meat.

Pour spice broth over meat, cover, and cook on “high” for 2-3 hours, then reduce to low heat for about 3-4 additional hours, until a meat thermometer pushed to center of roast reads 150f. According to some recipes you may remove from heat now and let stand, and then serve when temp reaches 160f. We usually leave the roast in until the temp actually registers 160f.

Make sure to argue with your spouse about whether or not to reduce the fat that will accumulate in the pot; every body needs a Thanksgiving tradition, you know.

Serves four adults with generous leftovers for sammiches.

Warning Order

Weather permitting, this Saturday morning at 0900 The Team, friends, and a random number of FYM*, will be on the ground here:


View Larger Map

We will be in the clearing shown in the center of the map, with the tube set up at about 6 o'clock oriented WSW to have the ridge as a back stop.

Yes, Virginia, it's time to shoot cannon. And Mosins. And whatever else we decide to throw in the truck.

The forecast is better than we expect for late November, but rain is still a possibility.

Anyone who is interested in this outing, or simply interested in going shooting, can contact me at tmjutahAThotmailDOTcom.

Bonus: There is a 1943 Izhevsk arsenal retired PU at the West Jordan Big 5. It is on sale at $99 dollars right now, and will be marked down to $89 from 0500 to 0900 on Black Friday. This rifle has excellent rifling, a pristine, compound radius crown, and I believe that the stock is custom to this action. By this I mean that the wood to metal fit exceeds any example of Mosin I've seen to date, that key dimensions are "fat", most notably the wrist and fore end diameters, and finally that I think the wood may not be birch but some other hard wood. The shellac finish is very well done, with no flaking.

The receiver marks are clear, with a lined-out seven digit serial number on the left side above the wood. There are the typical welded holes visible through the open receiver. Matching numbers throughout, including the bolt. It appears to me that the straight bolt handle was attached to the originial sniper bolt. I have never felt an action so smooth on a Mosin. I didn't have my scale with me, but the trigger felt like it broke clean at somewhere around four pounds - sweetly clean, too.

I have called a few friends about this one but money is tight. I also found a 1935 Tula retired PE in Sugar House today, and it did follow me home. I considered trying to sell Mrs. Tmj on getting both rifles, but she remembered that there are already two 1943 Ishevsk retired PU's downstairs.

Happy Thanksgiving to you!

Keep your powder dry.


*Fine Young Men. The Goddesses always have a few following them around.

Blink

Jerry Pournelle has observations on last night's house vote here.

I left my some opinions here.

My wife of twenty one years will not speak of politics or the economy with me any more. She will not understand that “Healthcare” isn’t about care, it is just another brick thrown on the back of a national economy and society about to break.

I have failed as a husband here; I cannot protect my family from a threat they will not see.

Range Day

I will be at the Lee Kay Hunter Education Center in West Valley City tomorrow, hopefully arriving between noon and one.

My veterinarian friend is coming out (if he's not needed in surgery) with his P17 and my partner from work will be there around two as well. No word at this time if Mrs. Utah will be up to a session or not, or if the Goddesses or their Fine Young Men are interested and/or available, either.

I will shoot. I will coach. I will not think much, frankly.

What a week this has been.

God bless the dead of Ft. Hood, and may He keep and comfort the survivors and the wounded.

God help us all in this country under siege. We are a nation bending dangerously under the weight of an evil and corrupt administration. We are a society weakened by generations of sloth and ignorance and these are sins that will be paid for.

We will bear the burden of a defeat by retreat in this round of the war against Islamist fascism. Our elected representatives fully intend to shove this war behind socialized health care and American Idol.

Our economy and our freedom are under attack. The crises are upon us, and they are indeed just too "good" to waste. In 1982 unemployment topped ten percent but 83 and 86 saw tremendous growth... after tax cuts, easing of government regulation across many sectors of the economy, the dawn of the information age, and most importantly the appeal from the chief executive to the citizenry to be Citizens.

The Obama insurgency is not about any of that. Incompetence or mere corruption would be bad enough but this administration truly sees itself as the instrument that will end the republic. Make no mistake about that.


God bless and keep you in the dark, dark days ahead.

Sunday (Updated)

I got her back from the smith later Thursday. I had the barrel flutes peened in hopes that she would return to reliability without the purchase of a new op rod or gas cylinder. Saturday at Lee Kay I divined that Something Was Wrong. The bolt wouldn't open far enough to lock into the receiver. Wouldn't open far enough to accept a clip, for that matter.

I took her apart on a table at Lee Kay to find that the clip release tab wasn't connected correctly over the follower assembly. It's been literally years since I've taken her down to pins and springs, so I just put her back together with the tab in the "right" spot and headed back in to see if she would shoot. The bolt went all the way to the rear but the clip would not seat. I declared surrender and waited to get back home and the reference books to figure out what was going on.

Last night I found that the follower assembly was installed backwards. The fact that it had fallen out instantly when I detensioned the operating rod spring earlier at the range should have been a give away. So I put it in correctly and loaded a dummy clip with zero problems.

This morning I fired three clips with one FTF. In the course of this action I noticed that the front sight on my rifle is no longer stamped "NM" for National Match.

***UPDATE: Upon further review of my records, I found that the only part that bore an actual "NM" stamp when I purchased this rifle in 1987 was the operating rod handle. Old age is creeping up on me.***


I will discuss these ***assembly*** issues with the smith on Monday. (That didn't happen - got home after dark again.)

Well, I Wasn't That Into The Show Anyway

CBS is trying to piggyback on the success of NCIS with a star power spin-off set in LA. LL Cool J and Chris O'Donnell work at it, but two episodes I watched before tonight required more suspension of disbelief than even a Kucinich voter might marshall.

Then tonight, the shark jumping moment came when the crack NCIS psychological profiler opines on why a former Marine, recently in the employ of a private security outfit and working Iraq, beat a victim to death and left him hanging in the back of a gun shop instead of just stealing the missing pistols.

The babe with large breasts and legs up to her shoulders ponders (paraphrasing; I wasn't listening real close): "The report says he was beaten to death; why go to the trouble? Why not just steal the guns?" And the Dr. Freud character drops this line on the room (which contains LL Cool J's character, a multi tour SEAL)

"He was an interrogator in Iraq. He might have gotten a taste for it."


And everybody in the scene nods sagely, because EVERYBODY knows that Marines just love hanging sand n**** ass from a hook and beating it all bloody, over there in the sandbox. Or where ever that Evil Boosh war is still sputtering along.

Nobody in the room of full of crime solving geniuses wonders why the dead guy was dead... or why the suspect, whose only link to the victim was that of being a childhood friend, was automatically the killer. We're halfway into the episode at this point and nobody has thought to ask why the guy was shot AT at the airport... when he wasn't a deadly threat. Or why he carjacked a car by gently pushing a woman out of the way instead of incapacitating or abducting her.

The night wasn't a total waste. From now on I get another hour on Thursday night to do something productive.

Clarity

The Obama presidency isn't merely a bumpy stretch of road in the American journey.

It is intended to be an end to the Republic and a beginning of utopia.

"Whatever Barack and the people he has surrounded himself with may profess with their mouths at any particular time, their actions show they still loathe America and our standing as most powerful nation on earth, as well as our free enterprise, individual liberty, reverence for family and local communities, Main Street, the U.S. military, Christianity, and every other hallmark of the traditional culture and values of Western civilization.

And now they think they have the power and position to do what they've always wanted to do - tear it all down and remake it in their millenarian image of Leviathan. As philosopher Erik Voegelin would say, they don't merely intend the immanentization of the eschaton, they are securing the appropriations and regulations to make it happen.

Viewed from that assumption, things become so much clearer. On foreign and military policy, Obama's dominant principle is to apologize, to reverse a previous course - thus disavowing the intrinsically moral role of America in protecting freedom - and to seek rapproachment with our enemies on their terms."

I can't talk politics or finances with my wife any more. At all.

Will I have a job a month from now? Will we have capital in any form other than what's on the shelves in the basement or in the cans next to the safe?

And I grew up thinking that watching the wall fall was the pivot of my generation. Not nearly. Not even close.

(via Instpundit)