Pecan Smoked Honey Garlic Chicken Wings

Delicious

1.   two-hundred and sixty degrees for about two hours, turning once. 
2.  Two cups of pecan shavings in a foil pouch down on the element.
3. Sauce:
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 cup honey
• 2-3tbsp hot red pepper flakes
• salt to taste
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce or soy sauce 
• 1 tbsp sriracha
• quarter cup water or beer -- thin honey and simmer ingredients together 5-10min
4. after 2 hours are up on wings, toss the sauce and wings
5. replace in smoker or oven and set the glaze on the wings 5-10min

Maine Chicken Wings vs Grocery Store Chicken Wings

Darker wings at right are Mainely Poultry

Helen and I go to the farmer's market every week. Unlike Saint Louis, Maine has an extensive system of farmers markets. We live in Bath, Maine-- but the Brunswick farmer's market is only 15 minutes away. While Brunswick is far larger with about 40 vendors including year round vegetables, Bath actually has 3-4 "chain" vendors found at both markets which makes either acceptable for our weekly needs. Among these is "Maine-ly Poultry"-- predictably, they offer all parts of the chicken as well as farm fresh eggs at reasonable prices. This week, Helen and I decided to compare chicken. We bought 6 wings from Mainely Poultry, and 6 from Shaw's (our local supermarket). Shaw's rang in at 2.39/lb, while Mainely Poultry came in at a stately 3.38/lb. From that price coupled with their description of "broiler chickens", I'd expect that Mainely Poultry is raising non-heritage chickens in a more humane way.
Now, if you're a practioner of the wing religion, you will know that the best wings one can make are deep fried (thanks Slayer).  This crisps the skin in a way hard to duplicate in the oven, it allows the fat to fry the skin which creates pockets that can hold sauce as you continue through the wing process.  That being said,  we do not have a fryer large enough to accomodate ~24 chicken wings at once, so we emulate this process through baking.
The rough recipe is as follows:

Mainely Poultry is on the *left* now

1. Separate all drums from true "wings" with a knife, saving wing tips for stock production later
2. Toss the wings in vegetable/peanut oil.
3. Roast the wings at 430 (or the smoke point of your oil, if higher)  for 30 minutes, turning once
4. coat the wings in 75/25  Frank's Red Hot and butter (shake in between two large bowls)
5. roast 5-10min to set the sauce
6. if you have left over sauce, repeat and reglaze





Mainely Poultry is still on the leftserve with celery and dips

As we cooked them, we noticed the Maine-ly Poultry wings started and stayed darker throughout the whole proceeding.  Typically darker chicken meat is an indication of greater fat content, although it could also be a function of a healthier chicken, i.e. more red blood cells, more iron, etc etc..    After cooking, you can see that  it is tougher to tell the difference, but perhaps the Maine-ly Poultry wings still have a slightly darker sheen.  Our total cooking time for this batch was about 26 minutes per side,  dip into franks red hot and butter, 5 more minutes, dip again, 5 more minutes.

Fully prepared for luxury dinner what what

Taste review:  Even a blind taste tester would have no problem selecting the Maine-ly Poultry wings as more flavorful.  While both sources produced acceptable wings, the local wings had more taste and were approximately the same size after cooking as Shaw's wings.  Additionally, the store wings felt softer even though the cooking times were identical and the Maine-ly Poultry had been previously frozen (by us) and the chicken wings had not.  Perhaps if we altered our cooking methodology we could get a similar doneness result from the store-bought wings,  but across the board we noticed improvements in the local wings, predominatnely in color, taste, and texture.

For a dollar extra per pound, we recommend you buy local.

Snowshoeing After Nemo

Feetsies and Polesies

Helenator

Always wrap it up

About a month ago Helen and I signed up for the L.L. Bean starlight snowshoe.  This three hour course teaches you the basics of snowshoeing as well as general cold weather survival tips.  There's a few tricks to dressing in winter weather that you have to remember: First, you should never use cotton as a baselayer or top layer, and its use is generally discouraged.  Cotton can't retain heat once it gets wet, and it stays wet for a long time.  In contrast, wool and synthetic fibers are hydrophilic and actively move water out.  (Thus begat the buzzword 'wicking' for all thermal underwear technology.)    Second, you should have a way to quickly add and remove layers as you work harder.  The goal of winter exercise is to never sweat.  Translation: everything you buy should have a zipper if you don't want to die.  

Anyway, we learned all that, and we learned how to snowshoe.  We liked it well enough that once Nemo hit, we went to Walmart and got the gear to do it on our own.  Note that we didn't love it, or we would have gotten the $200 dollar a person gear at LL.Bean right after the fact.  We spent about half that to get geared up at Wally World.

Crazy Snow Formation

Our HUGE Tracks

Another one bites the dust

Because we are entirely noobs and we live in a secluded rural area, we just walked around outside our house.  The wind during Nemo was so extreme that many parts of the ground were bare, while other snow drifts were likely deeper than six feet.  It was very hard to tell depth and what lay beneath the snow as we walked around, we could well have walked over dangerous stuff liked rusted wires and glass.    We worked our way through the old sawmill and approached the large body of water beyond it.  I think it might be the Kennebunk river or the Old Mill Pond, but I can't find a way to get a name for it from google.  I should ask a local.  Another thing that happened was preordained by our guide from LL Bean many moons before: Helen fell down.   I was following her when I believe her shoe hit a rock or got trapped by a rock or something, anyway, she sort of crumples so slowly that I said: "Was that a joke for my benefit?" and she sort of sigh-yelled "NO I FELL" at me.  I still think she might have done it on purpose.
While we were out in the woods I made some panoramas.  One of them uses Photosynth which is a Microsoft online product.  I'm not sure how I feel about it yet.   Actually, the others use Microsoft Research's ICE product also, so its all Microsoft all the way, baby.

 In conclusion, snow shoeing is a great form of exercise, it can be damn aerobic. Check it out next time you get three feet of snow, fellows.

Blizzard Nemo's fingerprint

Nemo Done? 4:30PM

Deep and calm

Front Door During Blizzard Nemo, 8:30 AM

Front Door 8:30AM. Spot Cleared for Phil to pee.

Our Visit to the International Museum of Cryptozoology

Over the weekend Helen convinced me to go to the International Museum of Cryptozoology.  This in fact is the world's only museum dedicated to same.  To prevent any of you from having to hit the dictionary, cryptozoology is the study of animals whose existence has not yet been proven.  It is almost universally regarded as a pseudoscience.  The cost was $7 per person--  she agreed to pay, if I agreed not to verbally browbeat any museum employees, or bring up the recent Bigfoot DNA paper.

The deal was made, and we set off. 

The entryway

This is the main entrance.

Main Room of the 2 room museum. Loren Coleman at left, bigfoot in distance

We were greeted by Loren Coleman, proprietor and main employee of the museum.  Mr. Coleman is the author of numerous books on various improbable animals, including but not limited to: the Yeti, Bigfoot, Mothman, the Dover Demon, and the Maine Mutant.  As far as I understood him, he well understands that at least some of these animals are either hoaxes or better explained by species we already know about.  I didn't get a picture with Loren while were there because he was often busy greeting a slow flow of new visitors at the door.  However, I did take a picture of his cryptozoology trading card:

Yeah, you can talk shit about him when you have a fuckin' trading card with YOUR face on it

Note the jury rigged cabinet filled with saber toothed tigers
(which are real,  you damn skeptics!!!)  (No, but really they are real.)

Cabinets like the one above were plentiful in the museum, little to no explanation of the contents and their connection to cryptozoology was not obvious.  In many cases the animals featured have already been proven to exist.  Some of the cases seemed to suggest that in the same way that we once thought some of these animals were fake, so too might Bigfoot eventually win his independence from doubters and enter the world of fact.  Again, to be fair to Mr. Coleman, he is not a fanatic-- he specifically said "skeptics and true believers are the worst kinds of people to have on an expedition, neither will be swayed by any kind of evidence."  He also said the most popular attraction was the bathroom.

I'm pretty sure he's wrong on that one:

I'll eat my regular-sized foot
if this isn't the most popular attraction

Yes, he does have a life size Bigfoot that resembles the Easter Island statues, at least in the nose and mouth.  Across from that were Bigfoot footprint castings from pretty much all the known hoaxes and more:

Feets!

Fish Photograph

Around here the Patterson-Gimlin film was playing on a loop, which was actually pretty cool.  If you're looking for something to read at lunch,  check out all the crap that people waste their time arguing about in this film.  That page also mentions Loren Coleman actively pursuing hoaxers, again to his credit.

Giant Beavers -- still alive?
Indiana Jones knows the truth.

The photograph and caption above are typical of the level of detail the museum was prepared to go into on most of their exhibits.  In the case of this photograph, it seems that Mr. Coleman also has no idea.

The next room was the hoax room.  This also had some real gems.

looks hoke...hoaxy

The day I learned jackalopes were fake
=
The day the music died

Fiji mermaid from P.T. Barnum freak show...  I'd hit it

I can't remember what this was, but it's eyeball is out,
and the Vietnam cap puts it right at the level of incongruity
that gets my blood going

I refuse to believe that  the Iron Giant is a hoax

.

In closing, I'd like to commend Mr. Coleman for his public service work.  No, I don't mean his work with youths at risk for suicide.  (This is serious, he has a master's in social work and is consulted on ways to handle violence in youth).  I mean his Maine cryptid sighting map:

Each pushpin represents a mystery cat, a sea beast, or other
highly dangerous yet reclusive animal

The bad news is,  the sightings for the various types are essentially randomly distributed across the state of Maine.  I don't know if cryptids routinely engage in people rape, but if they do, hide your kids and your wife.

Popham Beach State Park

Helen found the beach within a few days of coming to Phippsburg

Rugged Adventurer

Filthy Tourists

fuckin maine conservation bullshit

so goes our search for the black pearl 

other filthy tourists

softly gleaming still proceeding we three kings of new england are

We are lost, but we brought Phil to eat in an emergency, although we told her it was just a normal walk

Reverse snow footprints

Unusual Weathering Patterns 

More Really Strange Weathering

A FRACTAL STRUCTURE OF SAND ICE NANOBOTS HAS BEEN REVEALED GET THE HEPA FILTERS

We flee this land of nanobots and ice