First collard greens, plus adventures in LED.

[azurelunatic]

I have now made collard greens!

There's a local group that has a line on excess produce, and gives it out for free at various places around the city. We were actually in a place to do something about that this time, and came back with potatoes, bananas, and two bundles of collard greens.

It's been on my list of things to try, because it appears on various How Southern Are You? Find Out In Thirty Iconic Foods type lists. And we had bacon in the refrigerator.

I was a little limp and giddy after this morning's successful and moving inauguration. (I sobbed in abject relief after he took the oath, but was still jumpy at various pauses in the audio feed. I woke up early, and once Belovedest was awake, I turned the volume up. We listened in the shower. I crawled back in bed and listened until the crucial part was over, then collapsed and took to Twitter and reviewed highlights.)

So I looked up some recipes, decided against using the instant pot, defrosted the bacon, and got things going.

* I will be more careful about getting the bacon fat rendered before putting the onions in
* The dish really calls for a few large chunks of meat to be shredded, not the little fatty bits that should be crisped.
* Bacon, onion, garlic, Montreal
* I used one of the two large bundles of greens, and while that filled the pot before they wilted down, I should have used both
* my set of greens was exceptionally free from sand
* they're brassica!
* the apple cider vinegar was hiding, but I found it eventually
* brassica plus apple cider vinegar smells enough like sauerkraut that Belovedest had a concern
* if it's too bitter, adjust the salt and vinegar, one at a time, stirring thoroughly
* I can entirely see how this could have been a food of extremity, and then honed by generations of resourceful cooks to an art form and set of best practices
* respect the pot liquor
* it goes really well with a generous helping of freshly crisped-up bacon scraps
* a loaf of parbaked crusty sourdough should go in the oven with or after the bacon
* RESPECT THE POT LIQUOR


Ev asked me what I wanted for Yule. I originally had my eye on an embroidery machine, but they vanished and/or went out of the price range. And then seperis was posting about fun with home automation and lights. So I picked out a set and shared the list with Ev.

The box arrived on Tuesday, and there was so much fuss and feathers. I was missing a few of the essentials for the hub (namely, a spare network cable and power outlet in the same place), and I sent Belovedest on a wild goose chase for the little network switch I knew I had at some point. (It will probably turn up at the bottom of a suitcase in mid-March if I know our luck.) We eventually got that figured out. And then I realized that I'd requested the wrong lightbulbs.

We are, as a couple, against the idea of wifi-enabled light bulbs that could take down the network if it went rogue. So isolating any smart bulbs on their own private segment (and having plenty of bulbs that aren't smart) was the correct idea.

I'd put the wifi bulbs on my list. D'oh.

So I set up a return and made an 11pm trip to go drop them off at a pickup point.

The hub was up, though, and I had ordered an LED strip. I will be gleefully playing around with the colors, and I have it hooked to IFTTT. I'm a little shaky on the javascript that IFTTT has started to allow, but I *think* that I should be able to take the time I show up back in the radius of home, compare it to the time of local sunset, and drop any light-turn-on events that happen before sunset.

I haven't quite committed to putting this strip light under the mantlepiece, but it's a reasonable place to have a light, and if it's placed correctly, it probably won't glare in anyone's eyes.

Comments

[kore]

I cooked collard greens for the first time this Thanksgiving! It was this "recipe" only I added garlic and didn't use as much vinegar and simmered it for much longer. It was a HUGE hit and probably the best dish I made. https://www.blueapron.com/recipes/edouardo-jordan-s-thanksgiving-sides-serves-6-to-8

He realized that his light fixture had burned out, and was trying to tell the hub that it needed attention. To do so, it was sending continuous requests that had overloaded the network and caused it to freeze. "It was a classic denial of service attack," says Rojas. The light was performing a DoS attack on the smart home to say, 'Change me.'"

....there's gotta be a joke about "How many smart houses does it take to change a lightbulb" there

[krait]

Congrats on getting the hub set up! And avoiding rogue lightbulbs, a sentence that kinda delights me to type. :D


I'm glad you finally got to try collards, too! I am not a fan, myself, but my mother is, so I'm familiar with the "WOW, it SHRUNK!" reaction. :)

[jesse_the_k]

Huzzah for protecting from rogue LED software!

Parboiling in the microwave made all the difference for my collard technique.