The Stall

My brisket fell into the stall at about 10:00 Sunday morning.  The stall persisted for about two hours before the internal temperature of the brisket started dutifully climbing again.

If you are unfamiliar with the process of smoking a beef brisket, you have likely not heard of “the stall.”

I will explain the stall in a moment.  First, I would like to tell you about the strategy for smoking a brisket.  Obviously, you need a smoker and wood chips or pellets.  But the primary key to success has to do with temperature.  You want to use a fairly low temperature for smoking.  My chosen temperature is 220°F.  This typically translates to something near 1½ hours of time in the smoker for every pound of brisket.

I shoved my brisket in the smoker at 4:30 in the morning.  The brisket didn’t reach my desired internal finish temperature of 180°F degrees until about 3:30 in the afternoon. 

It is important that the brisket reaches 180°.  If you pull the brisket out any earlier, you are going to have a chewy product.  By reaching 180°, you allow the fat to breakdown and tenderize the meat.

This is where the stall comes in.

The stall will begin at an internal temperature between 150° and 170°, depending on the size, shape, surface texture, moisture content of the brisket, and type of smoker and humidity within.  Once the brisket stalls, the internal temperature stops rising even though you are still applying heat.  A brisket may stall for up to as many as five or six hours under some conditions.

My brisket stalled for about two hours before the temperature once again climbed toward 180°. 

The stall is caused by evaporative cooling within the brisket.  At the point of stalling, evaporating moisture cancels out the heat being produced by your smoker’s fuel.  This forces the internal temperature to plateau until the evaporative process is complete.

You’ve got to be patient and you need to trust your thermometer when dealing with the stall.

My Finished Brisket

—Mitchell Hegman

40 Years, 30 Years

While digging through shelves and cardboard boxes in my garage, looking for a missing chisel, I discovered a bunch of specimens from my original childhood rock collection.  Upon spotting one of my favorite rocks from back in the day, I set aside the box.

After locating the missing chisel, I unpacked the box I had set aside.

Good stuff!

I had forgotten about several particularly striking specimens.

Here is the weird part: the date.

Yesterday was November 28, 2021.  When I got to the bottom of the box, I found a newspaper I had used to line the bottom of the box on the day I packed the rocks up for long-term storage.  The newspaper was dated November 28, 1981.  That is 40 years ago to the day.

But that is not the end of the strange.  Exactly 30 years ago, on November 28, 1991, Thanksgiving Day, Uyen and Helen and I spent our first full day and night in this house after building it.

Newspaper from 1991

Part of My Rock Collection

—Mitchell Hegman

Baking Stolen Soil

I stepped up my game a little.  As mentioned in previous blogs, my neighbor, Kevin, and I routinely lift pretty rocks from each other’s property.   I have escalated from lifting rocks to heisting soil from Kevin’s garden.

I didn’t take a lot of soil—just enough for a small houseplant.

After filching a bag of soil from Kevin’s garden, I hiked back home and baked the soil in my oven for a few minutes to kill any viable weed seeds.

As luck would have it, Kevin stopped to visit me not long after I slid my pan of dirt on the upper rack and closed the oven door.

“I stole some dirt from your garden,” I confessed to Kevin after inviting him in for a sit-and-chat in my kitchen.  “I need to mix it with some potting soil.”

“You might want to bake it first to kill the weeds,” he responded.

“Ha!” I ejected.  “It’s in the oven right now.”    

Kevin will not have much luck retaliating by stealing soil from around my house.  I live on a pile of rocks. 

The rocks, however, are fair game.

Freshly Baked Soil

—Mitchell Hegman

From Glorious Dreams

From glorious dreams of slaying dragons and chasing after Greek gods I awaken.

On this side of the dream, the dragons are long-sleeve shirts hanging in the partially open closet beside my bed.

The gods are nothing more than impulses of air pinging through my hydronic heating system.

I am reminded that I need to have my propane tank refilled.

—Mitchell Hegman

My Thanksgiving Dinner with Desiree

I had a lovely and somewhat non-traditional Thanksgiving dinner with Desiree.  Our dinner was shared by means of video connection.  Additionally, Desiree is upside-down in time for me.  My late afternoon is her early morning—which made our shared meal her breakfast.

My main course consisted of baby back ribs and Cold Smoke beer.

Desiree ate a firm pudding.

Next year we plan on a traditional American Thanksgiving.  Desiree will be here by that time and we will share our dinner in the sunroom.

Cheers!

Ribs on the Grill

Our Shared Meal

Desiree’s Pudding

—Mitchell Hegman

Practice Snow

While sitting in full sunshine inside my sunroom, I studied the last of a skiff of snow melting outside under the pine tree at the corner of my house.

We are not in full-blown winter yet.

Around here, you know winter has arrived when you see a truck scooting across the frozen surface of a lake, or your cat freezes to the deck when you let it out, or a snow shovel is required to reach the birdfeeder.

This was practice snow.

—Mitchell Hegman

Soundproof

I visited an audiologist and underwent my first ever hearing test.

Funny thing.  I enjoyed the test.  “This is kinda cool,” I told the good doctor halfway through the process.

She laughed.  “I am happy you are enjoying it.”

In the Mitch-world way of thinking, there was plenty to enjoy about the hearing test.  First, I was impressed with having a soundproof room all to myself.  And the room was filled with all kinds of wires and electronic gadgets for me to look at.

I found the audio tests interesting in the way pure sounds found input to only one ear at a time.  This is not a normal sensation in daily life.  The sounds ping-ponging from ear to ear intrigued me, if nothing else.

Best of all, the test results indicated that my left ear—which I injured a month ago—is picking up sounds nearly as well as my right ear.  Additionally, the audiologist is convinced the slight loss in my left ear is the product of fluid remaining in my inner ear as result of an ear infection following the injury.

“It may take as much as three months for the body to absorb the fluid,” she informed me, “I don’t think the loss you are experiencing is permanent.”

This is pretty good news.  Before visiting the audiologist, I googled for information relative to ear problems similar to mine.  Most hits offered only grim outcomes.  I was pretty convinced I and anyone who touched me in recent weeks would have permanent hearing loss stemming from my ear infection.  

—Mitchell Hegman

Herding Marbles

I spent several minutes sweeping the floor at a checkout station in one of our local grocery stores yesterday.  Thing is, I am not an employee of the store.  I was there to purchase a pie crust.

Before I tell you about that, I am going to do something I rarely do.  I am going to offer some unsolicited advice.  Here is my advice: Never tear open a bag filled with five pounds of bulk popcorn kernels while loading your goodies onto the checkout belt.

That’s some sage advice right there.

A woman did just that directly in front of me at the checkout.  The event seemed more like a popcorn explosion than anything.  Kernels sprayed in every direction and showered all over belt and the floor around us.

“Well, that didn’t go as planned,” I suggested.

The checker, a man notable for his lack of urgency, moped off to fetch a broom and (too small) dust pan.   Upon his return, I offered to clean-up the floor while the woman continued checking out her heaped cart.

“Thank you,” the woman said.

“No problem.  I don’t have anything better to do at the moment.”   

Popcorn kernels, it turns out, are rounder than I suspected.  When I tried to sweep them into manageable piles, they quickly scattered in all directions—almost is if the kernels were repelled by the broom.

I felt as if herding marbles.

I quickly adopted a strategy of, whisking kernels directly into the dustpan.  By the time our checker was ready to run me through, I had a respectable number of kernels rounded up.

“Thanks for helping and not getting mad at me,” the woman told me when the checker turned to my items.

“You’re welcome.  And now our day can only get better from here.”

—Mitchell Hegman

Show Metal

Today, I am posting photographs of my version of “show-metal.”

Ironworkers use the term show-metal to describe building metal that uprights quickly and makes a little work look like a lot is being done.

My version of show-metal is the finish product on my sunroom walls.  Piecing together the materials took 2½ days.  

Up next (in a few weeks): the soffit and some custom lights I am making from conduit.

Partially Installed Metal

Metal and Heaters

Ready for Beer

—Mitchell Hegman

Something Eleanor Roosevelt Said

— Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.

— It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.

— I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.

Metal and Beer

My living room has once again become a construction staging area.  With the arrival of the metal for finishing the two pony walls in my sunroom, I needed a place where I can spread things out and do my “figuring.” 

Metal is entirely unforgiving.  There is no covering over poor cuts, scratches, or any other mistake.  When working with metal, I measure, mark the metal, and measure again before cutting.

Deliberation is key.

Yesterday, after assembling everything I need for the project, I grabbed a Cold Smoke beer and then stood amid the materials sipping and considering my approach.  You should be able to locate my beer in the staging photograph I posted at the end of the blog.

I will continue my policy of hiding things within the framing and finish work.  For this phase of construction, I will be leaving the receipt for my metal on the wall behind the metal panels.

Staging in My Living Room 

Metal Trim in Place

The Receipt for the Metal

—Mitchell Hegman

My Disorder

Can a cure be concocted?

Perhaps a witch’s brew.

Gather for me these: a snip of bonsai juniper, mother-of-pearl, sand from a white beach, a palm frond, root of ginger, the petal of a sampaguita flower, and a single strand of black hair.

My disorder is definite and it runs deep.

Late in the night I am awaked by feverish dreams.  To sleep again, I imagine mango and coconut and the ocean at all sides.

The island girl, I have come to understand, has become both my sweetest affliction and my only cure. 

—Mitchell Hegman

For Desiree

Off-Center

I routinely reheat cups of coffee in my microwave.

I am thinking my microwaving style might be a bit abnormal.  I would guess most people place their cup at the center of the carousel before closing the door and punching in a precise time.

Not me.

I set my cup at a random point along the outer edge of the carousel plate and throw the thing in gear after poking in a similarly a random heating time.  The end game is not just to heat my coffee.  I also want to see if the cup will land at the front of the microwave when time runs out.

I have been on a losing streak this week.  In five out of my last five re-heats, the cup has stopped at the back of the microwave.

Being so far off-center is surprisingly entertaining.

My Cup at the Back of the Microwave

—Mitchell Hegman

The Gregorc Style Delineator

 My learning (and thinking) style is a bit off—at least, unusual for an electrician.

To determine my style, I used the Gregorc Style Delineator.  The delineator is based on a test that requires only 5 minutes of time.  It is a matter of answering 15 questions, assigning yourself scores on a horizontal and vertical axis, and plotting lines through 4 quadrants based on the scores.

My Gregorc Result

I have taken this test several times over the last few years.  My results are always the same.  I am long on the vertical axis, but very nearly balanced equally in all quadrants. 

The balance in all quadrants is what makes me unusual.   

As an instructor, I had several dozen apprentices evaluate themselves with a Gregorc Style Delineator.   Very few found balance in all four quadrants.  Most scored heavily in the sequential quadrants.  Furthermore, they tended to reside heavily in only one sequential quadrant.

I should note, I also loved teaching electrical code, which most apprentices felt was a bit strange.

There is no “wrong” quadrant.  As an instructor, the Gregorc scores and graphs told me I needed dynamic lessons to reach every quadrant: lecture, reading, visual displays, group activities, and plenty of hands-on work.

Following is a graphic explaining the quadrants.  If you are interested in seeing where you land, I have posted a link to an evaluation PDF you can download.

 

Learning Styles

—Mitchell Hegman

Quadrant Image: Gregorc Style Delineator Website.

Test Link:  http://wp.auburn.edu/biggio/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/learning-style-test.pdf 

Suman sa Ibos

Let’s be frank, clubbing to death a chicken and then butchering the thing is not particularly artful.  If you reflect on a lot of what we eat, the process that brings food to our table is more than often a little messy.

There are exceptions.

Some food preparations are both satisfying and lovely in presentation.

This sounds ridiculous now, but when I was a kid, I was dazzled the first time I saw an advertisement for the veg-o-matic food chopper.  The way the chopper converted whole potatoes into fries with one push verged on magic to me.  I was so enthralled, I insisted we get one as a Christmas present for my mother.

My tastes have evolved some since the veg-o-matic.  It takes a bit more to impress me.

Recently, Desiree shared photographs of Suman sa ibos, a type of Filipino rice cake made from glutinous rice mixed with coconut milk and wrapped in coconut leaves.  The wraps are then boiled.  The cooked rice is often paired with ripe mangoes.

Suman sa ibos is beautiful.

Freshly Wrapped Rice

Cooked Wraps

A Satisfying Dinner

—Mitchell Hegman

Normal Creepy

Something I call “normal creepy” happened at my house.

Normal creepy is when you see or experience an event that freaks you out until you figure out an explanation from the realm of normal occurrences—you know, something like unexpectedly catching a glimpse of your own reflection in a mirror, which startles you for an instant.   

The latest normal creepy event occurred when I walked into my kitchen and found my refrigerator door bleeding from the handle.

I must admit, the sight of it struck panic in me for a second.  I literally froze in my tracks for a moment.  And then I realized I must have grabbed the door with my hands wet.

Next thought?

I need to scrub around the handle more often.

Normal creepy.

—Mitchell Hegman

Jigsaw Puzzle Warning

Some jigsaw puzzles should come with warnings.

A cartoon puzzle I completed a couple weeks ago should have warned me (just to pique my interest) I would be finding a tiny nude woman on the front cover of a magazine one of the characters was reading.

“Well, I’ll be darned,” I said when I snapped together the two pieces depicting the nude girl. 

The puzzle I am piecing together now also needs a warning.

This puzzle, purchased from Costco, is a 1000-piece depiction of a Costco store.  And the warning should to be this: WARNING: THIS PUZZLE WILL MAKE YOU HUNGRY!

I keep seeing all kinds of delicious food as I work on the thing.   After a few minutes of working on it, I am compelled to trot into my kitchen and grab a snack from among the “grazing” goods I purchased at Costco earlier this week.

The displays of chips have been especially problematic.

—Mitchell Hegman

First the Birds, Then Me

I have, over recent weeks, been reading about birds.  Specifically, I have been reading things here and there about how many species of birds are being pushed to extinction.

All the usual reasons for that: loss of habitat, over-hunting, pesticides and herbicides, housecats, wind turbines, glass buildings, and on and on.

We need only talk about one bird to fully understand: the passenger pigeon. 

In the early 1800s, some 6 billion passenger pigeons filled the skies of North America.  They were the most abundant bird on the continent.  Migrating flocks of them painted colors across the skies for hours.

And they were good eating, which proved their undoing.

By the latter half of the 1800s, market hunters had set forth, some dispersing across the country by train to shoot and sell the birds.  The birds, very much a flock creature, tended to remain in tight formations and made themselves a cinch to find.  They also clustered together in trees to roost.

Easy marks.

Between gross over-hunting and loss of habitat, the passenger pigeon was utterly doomed by the turn of the new century.  The last passenger pigeon, a female named Martha, died in 1914 while being cared for at the Cincinnati Zoo.

Today, far too many bird species are on the verge of being lost, and my give-a-damn level for everything else suffers for it.  I don’t care about the latest political hatchet job, the next new app, or much of anything else.

Without birds, we are nothing.

—Mitchell Hegman

Nevertheless (The Horizon Becomes My Garden)

The thought struck, as I sat in my sunroom watching clouds wipe overtop me, that we are nothing to them.  Hike to the nearest hilltop and try to stop even a single cloud.    

Remember what Wallace Stevens wrote in his poem, The Death of a Soldier:

Death is absolute and without memorial,

As in a season of autumn,

When the wind stops,

When the wind stops and, over the heavens,

The clouds go, nevertheless,

In their direction.

Watch the clouds for an hour and they become everything.  This one a cat ready to pounce.  That one a fish nosing against a stone.

And there.

Look there.

As sun descends into the mountains, the horizon becomes my garden, and there bloom the most ephemeral, but also loveliest, of all roses.

—Mitchell Hegman

Deer Falling from the Sky

Deer, jumping my fence, which is out-of-sight from my bay window, land in front of the window in plain sight of me and my cat.  This makes the deer appear as if they have simply fallen from the sky.

And now they are standing there. 

Two doe mule deer.

After watching the deer magically appear, my cat studies them with what I register as concern on his face.  He is likely worried deer will next start falling into the living room with us, or, worse, take a run at his food.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Creepiest Parasite

Parasites are creepy in principle.

Consider, for example, tapeworms.  There are six types of tapeworms that can attach to a human host.  Some are capable of living for decades within the intestines of their host.  And they can grow quite long.  A man from India, after complaining about months of abdominal pain, had an 82-foot-long tapeworm removed from his gut.

But I think I found the creepiest parasite of all.  It’s an isopod (a type of crustacean) called a tongue-eating louse.  The tongue-eating louse lives in the mouth of a host fish and can grow to over an inch in length.  Eventually, it detaches the tongue of the fish and will use itself as a replacement.

The louse the survives in the fish’s mouth by feeding on the host’s mucus.  The tongue-eating louse does not kill the fish.  This is the only known example of a parasite replacing an organ of its host. 

I have posted a short and more interesting than creepy video about the tongue-eating louse.

A Tongue-Eating Louse in the Mouth of a Fish

—Mitchell Hegman

Sources: David Moye (huffpost.com), wbmd.com, healthfacts.blog

Video Link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=327-bwMQI-Y

Photo: australian.museum

Finders Keepers

As mentioned in several previous blogs, my neighbor, Kevin, and I make a point of trying to find pretty rocks on each other’s property.   The rule of “finders’ keepers” applies to such finds.

The ultimate goal as to make one another a little envious of the find.  I know we both fib about finding rocks on neighboring property just for fun.

Adulting has never been our strong suit.

When Kevin stopped by with my paper yesterday, I told him I thought we needed to cut a few rocks at his place.  “I’ll walk down in few minutes,” I suggested.  “I need to get out of the house for a bit,”

A half-hour later, we were at the saw in his garage.  I sliced through a couple rocks that turned out somewhat plain-Jane.  Kevin sliced into an absolute stunner.

“Wow, that is fantastic!” I told him when he showed me the first cut.  “So…where did you get that rock?”

Kevin smiled.  “Was in the middle of the road on your property.”

“Right.”

Kevin at the Saw

Kevin’s Find

—Mitchell Hegman

Tracks in the Snow

When I arrived at my cabin property early yesterday morning, the first thing I noticed was a swath of small pawprints in a skiff of snow on the roadway.  The prints extended under my gate and across the bridge toward my cabin.

The lower cross-rail on my gate is only a foot or so above the ground.  In order to walk under the gate, the critter had to have a fairly low profile.  Given the size of the prints, my first guess was a member of the weasel family.  The prints looked somewhat like those of a raccoon, but the backside was not filled-in as racoon prints are.  And I have never seen a raccoon anywhere near my cabin.   

After opening my gate, I captured several images of the tracks I saw with my smarter-than-me-phone.

I have long imagined that much of our writing might have been inspired by our ancient predecessors seeing the written language of tracks.  Tracks in snow tell particularly long and vivid tales.

A tracker I am not.  Only after I studied the images upon arriving at home, did it occur I had pictures of the crossing of two different animals. 

On the bridge, the individual prints for one set of tracks were much bigger, they projected in a straight line, and the foreclaws were showing in front.   I am thinking fox on those.

I am not sure about the smaller print (pictured near my hand).

I need to learn how to read the written language of tracks in snow.

Print Next to My Hand

Hand With Many Prints

Tracks Across the Bridge

—Mitchell Hegman

A Bad End

As a general rule, birds don’t explode.  Given that, when I find what looks like an explosion of feathers, I assume another sort of bad end has occurred. 

Posted today is a photograph of a splay of feathers I discovered near the lake.  The scene of a kill for certain.  A close inspection led me to guess an American robin met its demise.

Robins are a fine bird.  Not strikingly colored, but they are plenty friendly and good at eating bugs.

No telling what got the bird.  Might have been Kevin’s cat, but something about the clean kill suggested fox or bobcat to me.  My game camera picked up a fox within a few feet of the kill spot not so long ago.

If a fox or bobcat harvested the robin, that is a natural thing.  If Kevin’s domestic cat snatched the bird that is another matter.

Our pet kitties have devastated bird populations.  A Google search will result is a variety of estimations of loss.  But even the lowest estimates are astounding.

At https://abcbirds.org, I read this: “In the United States alone, outdoor cats kill approximately 2.4 billion birds every year. Although this number may seem unbelievable, it represents the combined impact of tens of millions of outdoor cats. Each outdoor cat plays a part.”

I have always discouraged my cats from killing birds and located bird feeders where I did not provide points of ambush for my cats.  My 20 pounds of housecat, Splash, has never been one for killing birds.

Billions of birds matter to me.

—Mitchell Hegman

Metal and Rocks

Yesterday, my friends Patrick and Mary came out to my property for a day of metal detecting and rock collecting.  They are fans of both activities. 

I have often talked about the amazing variety of rocks here.  The amount of metal to be found here is also surprising.  A couple of nearby homesteads (long gone now) provided for a lot what we found.  Along with old cans, we found what appears to be parts from old farm equipment.

The most interesting find: a penny from 1973 detected two inches under the blue grama grass 50 yards from house at the edge of a timbered gulley.  Patrick’s small spade turned up part of a fancy glass bauble alongside the penny.

What story could these artifacts tell?

We agreed to partake in another such session soon.  Plenty of property remains unexplored and I know there is more metal out there.

We finished the day by hiking down to the lakeshore to sip a beer, grill some brats, and try a little fishing.  While nobody caught a fish, we managed some pleasant conversations and enjoyed the late afternoon sunshine.

Patrick Detecting, Mary Seeking Rocks

Some of Our Finds

Fishing

—Mitchell Hegman