My family has just left. I’m exhausted. I’ve been cleaning and cooking since about 11 AM this morning. Though I did my baking last night.
One of the butcher shops in the area where I get meat and chicken from regularly has grass fed beef short ribs for a reasonable price. Since my brother, sister in law, twelve year old twin nephews (begun, the clone war, has), and my Mom were coming, I bought two cryovac packs of the beef short ribs. Which is four racks of three ribs each. And I smoked them. Except for one rack, which I did in the oven at 250 degrees Fahrenheit because the Mominator doesn’t eat smoked meat, chicken, turkey, etc. I also made latkes. The Mominator made her arugula and beet salad with goat cheese and avocado. And I made a no sugar added, sweetened only with agave pecan pie cheese cake. Pictures of everything but the salad below because I didn’t get a chance to take one before people started dishing it out. Once I hit publish, I’m going to collapse. And it has been raining steadily since last night, so I had to do this on the enclosed and screened in back patio, which is why my house smells like BBQ pit.
Here’s the rack of ribs that I did in the oven. They’ve, as well as the other three racks, been minimally prepped. I removed the silver skin, then liberally kosher salted and freshly cracked black peppered the four racks. Then I wrapped them in paper towels, sealed them up in a very large tupperware tub, and left them in the fridge to form a pelicule for 48 hours. What you see below is how the meat looked just before going in the oven and on the grill. You can see the other racks wrapped up behind it just waiting to go out.
And here are the other racks just placed on the grill and before I put the lid down.
I don’t have a dedicated smoker, so I did the 60/40 approach. Or 70/30. The coals went on the far right near the bottom vent, once they’d burned almost to white the apple wood chunks went on. The ribs went on the rest of the grill with an aluminum pan full of water below it to help moderate the heat, keep everything moist, and catch drippings. I inserted a wired, probe thermometer into the deepest portion of the largest rack, then I dropped the lid, adjusted the air vents, and let them smoke slowly at 250 degrees Fahrenheit. From about 1 PM to 5:30 PM.
They came out perfect!
Smoky, juicy, tender, and perfectly cooked!
I modified the latke recipe I learned from my Dad a bit. First, I made sure not to include any knuckle blood from grating my hands instead of the potatoes on the box grater! Then, instead of grating all the potatoes, I grated half and boiled and mashed half. I then mixed the mashed and grated potatoes with one large onion diced finely, salt and pepper to taste, and let the mixture sit in the fridge covered for about an hour before I made the latkes. I pan fried them in about a 1/4 inch of oil in a high sided 12 inch diameter pan on the stovetop.
Here’s the mixture pre latke formation:
And here’s the first batch frying in the pan:
And here’s a beef rib and some latkes all plated up:
Finally, we have the cheesecake. The crust is made with Kedem vanilla tea biscuits, which have very little sugar (it was about the least amount I could find that didn’t have sugar alcohols). I ground up one package, mixed it with melted butter, and formed it into the cheesecake crust/base. The cheesecake is just my standard cheesecake recipe, with one modification – no white sugar. Instead I used half a cup of agave. The recipe is below.
Cheesecake:
Ingredients
3 8 ounce packages of cream cheese.
3 eggs
8 ounces of sour cream
Vanilla to taste
1/2 cup of dark brown agave (add more if you want it a bit sweeter). And if you don’t have an issue with sugar, just use one cup of white sugar.
Directions
Preheat oven to 350. Grease a spring form pan. Whip the cream cheese and the eggs together one package of cream cheese and one egg at a time until combined and smooth. Add the sour cream and whip until incorporated and smooth. Add the vanilla and the agave and whip until incorporated and smooth. Cover and refrigerate.
For this cheesecake, I wanted something a bit different. And since I didn’t get to make or have pecan pie on Thanksgiving as my Thanksgiving this year was whacked (don’t ask, I did a good deed for someone, but it meant I got none of the traditional foods, and I wasn’t feeling particularly well either), I decided to pecan pie my cheesecake. In a high sided sauté pan I melted a stick of unsalted butter. Then I added agave to taste and brought it to a boil. I then added 3/4 of a cup of heavy whipping cream, whisked everything together, and added a cup and a half of pecans. Stirring the entire time to both thoroughly coat the pecans and to keep the pan caramel from scorching. Once everything was turning golden brown, I took it off the heat, arranged the candied pecans on top of the crust, poured the cheesecake batter on top, and then swirled the warm caramel into the cheesecake batter. Once that was done, it went right into the oven for an hour. At the end of the hour I turned the oven off, cracked the oven door open, and let the cheesecake cool in the oven for an hour. The third hour it spent cooling on the counter and then when that hour was up it went into the fridge. The pictures are below. And before someone from NoLa (cough, lamh, cough) says something, yes, this is more like a pecan praline cheesecake than a pecan pie cheesecake.
Here’s the pecans and caramel setting up:
And here are the candied pecans layered on the pie crust:
The batter in the pan with the caramel swirled in:
The cheesecake ready for serving:
And, finally, a slice of the cheesecake!
If I had to do one thing differently, and I will for next time, it is that I’m going to lightly chop the pecans and swirl them into the cheesecake with the caramel rather than layer them on the bottom. That one issue aside, it tasted amazing! You’d never know there was no white sugar in it.
So everyone who celebrates have a happy and healthy Hanukkah! If I don’t do a post tomorrow, I’ll be covering on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day as I won’t be celebrating, but I am going for Thai food.
I’m exhausted, so I’m going to crash. Though not quite this tired!
I may or may not check into the comments later.
Open thread
jane2
Happy Hanukkah! What a delicious-looking worthy-of-a-big-holiday feast.
zhena gogolia
Wow. It all looks great. We had some delicious (pork, sorry) ribs at a Russian’s house the other night.
I’ll be making my brisket & cranberries for Christmas. A nice cheese store opened up in our little town so I got some good stuff for pre-dinner. And dessert is my totally corny Fannie Farmer pecan pie with Karo syrup. Don’t @ me, whatever that means.
Steeplejack
You’ve got the meats! It all looks great.
I’m thinking about doing a brisket to follow the prime rib success on Thanksgiving.
raven
Happy Hanukkah! Dawg! Been missing ya.
Patricia Kayden
Yarrow
Happy Hanukkah! Your meal looks delicious. I ate potato chips out of a bag. Does that count?
Agave hurts my stomach. I do sugar, maple syrup and honey. Everything else I mostly avoid. I heard on the radio that peanut butter can now have sugar alcohols in it, like xylitol, and that can make dogs sick. So you gotta read the peanut butter labels before you feed it to a pupster.
NotMax
Merry Hanukkah!
No eggs? No baking powder (or potato starch)? No matzo meal (or flour)? Potato pancakes, then, but not latkes.
;)
Steeplejack
I’ve got 320 open tabs in Firefox! That’s a new record for me. I blame all the Twitter links that are attached to posts and comments like so many barnacles on the hull. Also, to be honest, a lot of Balloon Juice threads that I thought “I’ll read later,” but then who wants to go back and read week-old Trump bullshit when there’s always so much new Trump bullshit? Rhetorical question.
Think I’ll get the housecat to help me do some pruning over coffee and cat food tomorrow morning. Don’t feel up to it tonight.
Mary G
That all looks delicious. Happy Hanukkah!
mrmoshpotato
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Glad I have a pot roast in the slow cooker.
And now time to read – and salivate. (Sorry not sorry.)
Adam L Silverman
@raven: It’s been a funky week.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: You can use honey in place of the agave. I can’t have refined sugar, and yes, I know technically that honey is a refined sugar. But neither honey, nor agave mess me up.
Amir Khalid
I’m full just from reading about that meal.
raven
@Adam L Silverman: I’ve been sick as a dog. I still feel like shit and I feel way better. Hitting the road to VA in the morning will be swell.
eclare
Great British Baking Show – Holidays marathon here. Although unfortunately all they have shown so far were filmed after Mary Berry and the two female cohosts (Jen and Sue?) left. Their replacements just aren’t as good. Still entertaining.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: The potatoes come with their own starch
funlady75
@Amir Khalid: \
Good post Adam…..I am full too…lol
Lapassionara
That cheesecake looks fabulous! Oh, my! Thanks for sharing.
mrmoshpotato
Happy Hanukkah! (I will be hounding you for that pecan pie/cheesecake recipe. Pecan pie AND cheesecake in one?!) (Collapses in amazement)
mrmoshpotato
@eclare: But was it crashed by Eddie Murphy? ?
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: I find agave has a bitter taste, as does every sweetener that isn’t the above three. I can pick them out every single time.
I read that agave isn’t always agave. It got so popular that some of the companies started cutting it with something else–corn syrup, maybe?–so you weren’t getting the real thing anyway.
West of the Rockies
Hey, if anyone is still looking for gift ideas (or promising book titles), surf over to Daily Kos. They’ve got a post up about black children’s and YA novels and a great interview with author Tomi Adeyemi.
ThresherK
The ribs look great. I should get into a place where we can have a grill so I can practice my hand at stuff like this.
We have a NY Strip roast, now pasted with goodness, ready to make tomorrow night.
Watching Christmas in Connecticut on AMC on demand. This movie takes fourteen minutes to introduce every other character, then it gets to Barbara Stanwyck and the central conceit of the film–America’s best-loved homemaker doesn’t actually cook and doesn’t have a farm (let alone husband and baby) in the CT countryside.
Do modern movies have the confidence to wait and build up like this?
mrmoshpotato
@Steeplejack:
How much money is 1.21 gigawatts of memory?
Also, you’re nuts. :)
Honus
You’re killing me. That rib looks great.
Elizabelle
Happy Hanukkah. Looks like a marvelous feast. I might have to try those latkes one of these days. Rest up.
@raven: Hope you feel scads better. Leave lots of following distance. Virginia is in the news today cuz — 69-car pileup on 64 near Williamsburg. Treat fog with respect. (And then these tailgating fools ran into early morning ice on a bridge.) That’s a bad stretch of road. Very few lanes (two, in a lot of it), and people do not appreciate your driving at less than bat out of hell speed.
Yarrow
@Elizabelle: Yeah, it made the national news. Looked awful.
Dorothy A. Winsor
The food looks fabulous. I don’t know how you manage to remember to take the pics when the food is inviting you to dig in.
raven
@Elizabelle: I was just looking at that. We’re going to Roanoke and then Lynchburg. We’ll go 85-77-81 is no picnic but it’s better than the Richmond area. It’s supposed to rain until we get to Charlotte but we’re in no hurry. I am especially in NO hurry. Another holiday with my in law family.
Elizabelle
@raven: Puppers going with you?
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack:
Is it the deal on Britbox that you can only watch episodes once? We tried to go back to rewatch the part we fell asleep in, but there doesn’t seem to be an option for that. I’m on hold with Bangalore, but they don’t seem to know anything.
opiejeanne
@ThresherK: First one that comes to mind is “Up!
ETA: the main character for the rest of the movie is in the first 15minutes, though.
raven
@Elizabelle: Oh yea, we really don’t go anywhere without them anymore. They require so much care it wouldn’t be fair. I found an air b n b on Smith Moutain Lake that’s affordable and I might get to wet a line between car rides.
Anne Laurie
Happy Hanukkah, Adam, and here’s hoping for a better 2020. Hope your family appreciates all you do for them!
trollhattan
Good god y’all, I’m so hungry now. Yummmm.
opiejeanne
@raven: Your priorities are right.
ThresherK
@opiejeanne: Yeah, I should narrow that down (no pun intended). Up is way up there when it comes to craft and care.
I guess I’m talking about mainstream, more ordinary, movies, not Oscar nomination sorts.
steppy
Adam, I simply cannot believe that you put together a meal like that for your family and STILL posted pictures and recipes. I’m Catholic and I cook for the family for Easter, and when it’s over, I am a puddle on the floor. You are definitely made of sterner stuff than I. Please enjoy the remaining days of the Festival of Lights.
Adam L Silverman
@raven: Travel safely!
Amir Khalid
Water supply disruption in my neighbourhood for the past couple of days. Be glad you’re not within smelling distance of me.
Seriously, it’s a bad time for it. It’s disrupted Winter Solstice celebrations for Chinese families living south of KL, and Christmas is coming.
raven
@opiejeanne: I made a big baked pasta to take and carefully made a small veggie one for a special nephew. Otherwise I just have to be charming and try not to get into trouble at the Blacksburg UU Christmas Eve service.
raven
@Adam L Silverman: Six bills on a new alternator, plugs and wires so we should be good. As the Commander said “Brakes are good, tires are fair”!
Steeplejack
@mrmoshpotato:
Hey, they just mount up!
If you close Firefox and restart it, the tabs don’t get loaded until you actually open them. So there are a lot that are floating in limbo. Still, point taken.
It’s battle fatigue. I feel like I should “keep up,” but part me just says, “Screw it, let’s do a crossword.”
frosty
@raven: You can get in trouble at a UU service? That would take some doing, I’d think.
Adam L Silverman
@mrmoshpotato: The recipe is posted up top. Enjoy!
mrmoshpotato
@Amir Khalid: Were you able to fill up on potable water beforehand?
bemused senior
In the words of my 4 year old grandson: “Happy Harmonica!”
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
Oooh, I saw about that earlier on CNN. What a mercy nobody was killed.
lollipopguild
@raven: Hot Rod Lincoln! Commander Cody and the lost Planet Airmen.
Adam L Silverman
@steppy: I’m pooped!
eclare
@Amir Khalid: Is there ever a good time for a water disruption? Seriously that sounds awful!
Mainmata
Happy Chanukah, Adam, you are a treasure on this site. I’m sure your ribs turned out great. I do them opposite: slow braise in a flavored and a little spicy broth then blasted at the end to get a nice crust. Latkes are wonderful; the key is to make sure they aren’t soggy. That’s tricky.
raven
@lollipopguild: My favorite version but Charlie Ryan wrote and recorded it in 1955.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
You should be able to rewatch, I think. I had BritBox only for a short trial period a while back, but I didn’t subscribe because I was dithering between that and Acorn. They have a maddening amount of overlap. Maybe not overlap but “Hmm, which one is better?” ?
I think I’m about to the point of casting caution to the wind and subscribing to both of them. ? If only long enough to binge some series that I’m way behind on.
And, as my brother has pointed out, I am fretting about $10-20 a month, as a person who never goes to Starbucks, hasn’t been inside a dry cleaner’s in years and has to gas up the car only about once a month.
Amir Khalid
@mrmoshpotato:
This was not a planned interruption — the water supply agency said something vague about shutting down the treatmen plant over “odour pollution concerns” — so there was no advance warning.
Steeplejack
@raven:
I think I see the problem. ?
Amir Khalid
@eclare:
Over the past few years we’ve been getting quite a lot of water supply disruptions here in the Klang Valley, which is the largest and most populous urban area in Malaysia.
mrmoshpotato
@Adam L Silverman: Ah. Missed it on the stream of deliciousness. Thanks!
JaySinWA
Hmm, fresh BS or aged manure? I think I’d pass on both. No fart pun intended.
debbie
Good Yontov! I miss latkes.
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
In town they had a huge problem when an industrial chemical spilled into the river that supplies water for WV American Water system in Charleston, and it turns out, a ton of other smaller towns all around. They shut the system down for quite a while, and I still see people at the big grocery buying big blocks of drinking water.
Then, more recently, while my knee was blown out and wife had two broken ribs, our reliable farm well water system went south, off and on for a week or two. I finally called an industrial maintenance outfit to send a master electrician out to see why we weren’t getting water most of the time.
He did a good job, we have had water ever since he put in a new panel on the power drop pole. I haven’t gotten the bill yet either…
Adam, that pecan cheese cake looks wonderful. A good friend did a sugar-free cheese cake for last night’s solstice party, I tried a tiny bite and it was pretty good. I did fried apples with cranberries and maple syrup. I thought it was pretty good, but it wasn’t a big hit.
Another good friend did a Ginger-Bread Stone Henge, a duplicate of the Olde English monument in dessert mode. Wonderful dessert and archaeological masterpiece!
Anne Laurie
I’ll have to show your comment to my tech expert (aka, the Spousal Unit). Every time I get over approximately 85 tabs in FireFox-emulator Pale Moon, my homebrew system crashes. He *claims* that’s the fault of the program, but I think he’s just trying to sneakily discourage my OCD…
Adam L Silverman
@J R in WV: Thanks. Glad your water is working.
I love ginger bread!
UncleEbeneezer
Those look delicious! Happy Chanukah to all who celebrate it!
Since this is a Silverman post, good NYTimes piece on data tracking that features my own neighborhood of Pasadena. Sadly, when my police reform group tried to organize with the ACLU about the potential danger on the policing side of Big Data, we got little/no interest from most people.
HRA
Happy Hanukkah, Adam!
Now I want both latkes and potato pancakes. I had my recipe for cheesecake in my hand yesterday when deciding the desserts for Christmas and put it aside. Your version is more to my liking and will copy the recipe. Thank you for sending it.
Bill Arnold
@Steeplejack:
“23 windows with 3739 tabs” (numbers displayed on exit, browser set to restore previous session)
TBH, this is near the limits of Firefox. I have to reap 50-100 per day else Firefox starts becoming non-responsive. Also it’s a few years of accumulations, only about 30 percent news. Sort of an exo-memory.
In Chrome i use “Great Suspender” which reduces the memory footprint a lot, but Firefox has better plugins so it gets most of the action. (alt browsers include Brave, Opera, Tor Browser, Midori, others)
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: Yeah, so far.
That stretch of 64 really intimidates me. So much traffic, and the drivers are way too fast and aggressive. I hope a lot of them got wake up calls off this one. Always wonder why they think their luck is always going to hold.
JaySinWA
@Anne Laurie: Are you still running a Pale Moon that hasn’t been upgraded in a decade or so on a similar vintage computer? It might not be a fair comparison to a current Firefox on a more recent machine. ?
NotMax
Inspired to write a note reminding myself to dig out the tried and true recipe for quickie latke-like potato pancakes,. Everything can done in the blender. Although now that have a full size food processor might try that instead.
Jay C
Happy Hanukkah, Adam!
And thanks for the delicious pix.
My only question is that with two twelve-year-old boys over for dinner, how did anyone else get any of the ribs??
susanna
At a loss for words, Adam. Looks luscious! Happy Hanukkah!
chopper
had my chanukah party yesterday. somewhere around 80 or so people. last year was bigger, broke a hundo. frying chicken and making everything else for 80 people is a job. was working from 5:00 am til i finally got a break around 7pm.
on top of that all the kids demand latkes and those guys can’t be made ahead of time.
i’m still exhausted.
Adam L Silverman
@Jay C: They each ate one apiece. They’re getting tall, but they’re slender.
NotMax
@NotMax
Which also means dusting off the large 1950s-vintage electric frying pan. Only thing it has ever been used for is latkes.
Also just remembered there’s some schmalz buried in the freezer to use for frying.
chopper
@NotMax:
have a few pints of it in the freezer reserved for latkes and matzo balls.
NotMax
@chopper
One set of grandparents would use it as a sandwich spread instead of mayo.
SiubhanDuinne
I’ve just discovered the charming Isaac Bashevis Singer short story, “A Parakeet Named Dreidel.” I hope you enjoy it.
https://his-israel.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/The-Parakeet-Named-Dreidel.pdf
Kayla Rudbek
@Adam L Silverman: I’m going to have to see if I can find any non-dairy cheesecake recipes that I can modify with this. Maybe this one for starters: https://www.theppk.com/2011/11/pumpkin-cheesecake-with-pecan-crunch-topping/
Adam L Silverman
@Kayla Rudbek: I don’t see why you couldn’t. What you want is to find a silken tofu plain cheesecake recipe then you can adapt it however you like.
Adam L Silverman
I’m going to rack out. I’m worn out from a very long day. Catch everyone on the flip.
Ken
The younger generation, no respect for tradition…
Steeplejack
@Anne Laurie:
My ecostructure is pretty vanilla, bordering on obsolescent: Lenovo X130e notebook, which dates from about 2012. I did goose it up to 8 GB of RAM, and it’s running the current version of Win10. Firefox with Adblock Plus. That’s it.
As I said, when you close Firefox and then restart it, it doesn’t actually load a Web page until you open its tab. So right now only about 20 of my 320 tabs are “active.”
I have to close Firefox and reboot the computer every day or so because the housecat has taken to sleeping on the keyboard at night and has been conducting experiments in butt-typing. Even though I “lock” the keyboard to the Windows log-in screen, there are some key combinations that go directly to the computer, bypassing Windows, so I have been greeted with such things as “Do you want to turn on caret browsing?,” on-screen keyboard, high-contrast mode, airplane mode and even the computer completely shut down.
The worst was when she somehow engaged the “screen magnification” mode and had it where the Windows arrow cursor was taking up about 40% of the visible screen. ? Had to reboot on that one and was praying that it wouldn’t come up in magnified mode again. I have compiled a list of keyboard fixes for her various modifications. But I don’t understand how someone who weighs under six pounds and has no bones can hit these weird key combinations. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Steeplejack
@Bill Arnold:
I try to move “keeper” stuff to bookmarks under a variety of categories, but there’s a constant fire hose of new stuff coming in, and just doing triage can get overwhelming.
Right now I’ve got Balloon Juice posts going back to December 5, as well as a load of links under “Christmas shopping,” “I need a new cable modem,” recipes and miscellaneous flotsam and jetsam. And lots of Twitter links.
Gin & Tonic
@Steeplejack: I have a radical suggestion to resolve the cat issue: close the laptop when it is not being used.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack:
After 45 minutes somebody was able to explain it to me. It should have taken 30 seconds.
SiubhanDuinne
File under Actual Fuck, What the:
Gin & Tonic
@SiubhanDuinne:
He’s not wrong, you know.
Steeplejack
@Gin & Tonic:
Thank you for pointing out the bleedingly obvious! Here’s the thing, though. The housecat is old (19), frail and skinny. She has a heating pad wrapped in a throw at her workstation beside the computer, but it times out after two hours. I think she gets on the notebook keyboard because of the heat, although I think there’s something else going on as well, because sometimes she tries to get on the keyboard while I’m using the computer (with separate [awesome] Das Keyboard) and her heating pad is still on.
Anyway, I am willing to leave the computer on if it gives her some comfort during the night hours. I am due for a new computer anyway—probably after New Year’s—so I will move this one to the side, unplug it from the Internet and leave it to her. Who knows? Her research may yield some useful results.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
My condolences. But at least you got it fixed (I presume?).
Yutsano
Dad decided to do Mexican food out tonight so we went. Still haven’t had a margarita in forever mainly because I end up driving. Gonna have to fix that some day…
חֲנוּכָּה שַׂמֵחַ
Gin & Tonic
@Steeplejack: Figured there had to be a reason you weren’t doing the obvious thing. Glad to give you an opportunity to elaborate.
chopper
@NotMax:
i’d make fun but i had about a pint of gribenes yesterday so i have no room to talk.
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
Source for that?
Maybe years in the future historians and researchers will have instant access to video for everything, but I sometimes wonder what people in the future will make of the transcripts of Trump’s musings. They are so much . . . starker in print.
O. Felix Culpa
@SiubhanDuinne: Yikes! Linkie? Not because I doubt you, but because I want to see if anyone within hearing distance acknowledged that the emperor is demented.
Steeplejack
@Gin & Tonic:
Sorry if I came across too strong. Meant in good humor, and I hate using the // sarc tags. (If you have to use them, you’re not doing it right.)
Gin & Tonic
@Steeplejack: No offense taken here.
Aleta
@Steeplejack: Uses it as an acupressure mattress? https://www.amazon.com/Spoonk-Magenta-Acupressure-Massage-Carry-Bag/dp/B0052YK8MY
Joking, but now that I think of it, sometimes I have to fight the 13 y.o. cat off of my Japanese pillow (buckwheat hull) all night long.
Btw there is a site for cats w/ kidney disease that compares canned food composition, for cats with low kidney function. I think it’s called “Tanya” something. A good way to get extra water into them is to mix extra water into the canned food if they will eat it that way.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack:
Yes. It was very stupid, but then I’m stupid. But so was the person I was talking to for 40 minutes.
Ken
@SiubhanDuinne: IIRC the leading theory is a combination of genetic and environmental factors that trigger the development of the amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles.
Aleta
@Steeplejack: Here it is, though some foods may have changed.
https://felinecrf.org/canned_food_usa.htm
Other information is there too.
Cornell veterinary site also has some basic information,and perhaps Tufts vet hospital site.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
If you’re using an external keyboard, then you can disable or uninstall the laptop keyboard.
Go to Device Manager, expand the Keyboard entry there, right click on the keyboard you want to make inert and left click on the option you want (there may or may not be a choice of disable – if not, you can choose uninstall). Click OK on the prompt. Note that if you uninstall it, when you restart/reboot the laptop Windows will auto-install that keyboard, so you’d have to repeat the procedure if desired.
If the laptop is password protected, as an alternative you could use the shortcut of pressing both the Windows key and the L key. This will revert to the password entry screen, and you can clear the password field until such time as you want to go back in. Chance of the cat accidentally entering your correct password and then Enter is for all intents and purposes nil.
SiubhanDuinne
@Steeplejack:
@O. Felix Culpa:
Sorry about that; I always mean to provide links or sources but just plain forgot this time.
Mediaite, via someone on Facebook. Here’s the Mediaite link: https://www.mediaite.com/trump/trump-attacks-windmills-in-speech-to-conservative-group-i-never-understood-wind/
Steeplejack
@Aleta:
Cats have their own ideas about feng shui, their environment, etc., and sometimes you just have to roll with it. For years the housecat would retire with me at night and sleep on a faux sheepskin throw on the bed. But a few months ago she abruptly started camping out at her workstation. Stays there all the time now except to go to the litter box. Go figure. I serve her meals there, and she has a water bowl, too.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’ll look for the kidney-related site. The housecat has some kidney problems, but the “special diet” food I got from the vet was soundly rejected.
O. Felix Culpa
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
Don’t feel bad. A lot of technical problems are like that: completely impenetrable until the solution makes you feel like an idiot. My whole software career was like a highlight reel of that.
Steeplejack
@Aleta:
Thanks!
Carol Albert, “Sun’s Out.”
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
That’s a great idea! I’ll check into that tomorrow.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
Les Sabler, “In the Light.” Crunchy guitar and a fat horn section.
Steeplejack
@Aleta:
Send me the deets on your Japanese buckwheat pillow!
My RWNJ brother in Las Vegas has an amazingly comfortable pillow on his bed that I get addicted to when I housesit for him. No labels on it, and he truculently “forgets” any details about where he got it. Grr! I think it’s in the same genre you’re talking about.
Bill Arnold
@SiubhanDuinne:
Delivery is better than the transcript, or the semantics. There are a lot of lies and untruths mixed into it.
This directly addresses DJT’s false claims:
Wind Turbines Are Not Killing Fields for Birds (Sep 3, 2019)
An enterprising journalist might estimate the number of birds killed by D.J. Trump’s buildings, or the Wall if it were to be built, and ask him about it in a press conference.
This is a little older and uses older order-of magnitude underestimated cat bird kill numbers:
The avian and wildlife costs of fossil fuels and nuclear power (Benjamin K. Sovacool, 12 Dec 2012)
The fossil fuel number includes climate change effects.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
That’s what I do, but, as I said above, there are certain key combinations still available to her, mostly to do with sound, display and “accessibility” settings.
Also, she can get into a butt-typing position where Windows thinks she is trying to enter a password, she fills up the field, and then there is a constant beep-beep-beep as she keeps “typing.” There was one night in particular when I had to keep coming out and rearranging her ass to stop that, and finally I did turn off the computer.
I think there’s a potential market for a Fisher-Price “your cat thinks it’s real but it’s not” computer.
The Pale Scot
Any latkes left over? Cash offer. It’s all about the finlyest sliced onion
I’m down the in Charlotte Bay Area, no Challah to found for love or money.
Barbara
@raven: 81 can be foggy, but nothing beats 64 going over Afton Mountain, near Charlottesville. There are fog lights on the highway. It sounds like you will be well south of there.
J R in WV
When I do latkes I just grate the big russets and the sweet onions together with salt, and fry them in olive oil (usually). I know egg and flour or some other starch are traditional additives, but potatoes are starch. Sometimes I add some garlic powder and spice it up with curry powder or a paprika based spice mix. I’m not all that traditional anyways.
Bishop Bag
@Adam L Silverman: Hey Adam, I made the Cheesecake for Christmas and followed your previous suggestion about chopping the pecans. I spread about 2/3’s of the praline pecan mixture on top of the crust and mixed the remaining mixture in the cheesecake batter. Oh my God!!!! Everyone who tried the cheesecake said it was the best they have ever had. My friends 16 year old daughter called it Food Pornography! It was that good she wanted a cigarette after trying it
And those ribs look great!