I put 5 whole heads of garlic chopped finely in a quart jar with 3 tablespoons of cayenne and a bottle of tabasco.  I then filled the rest of the jar with water, covered and let it sit out and stew at room temperature for two days.  Then I uncapped it and it smelled like garlic and hot pepper, it almost smelled good enough to try it.

I then diluted it 1/4 cup of the mix to a quart of water, strained it and put it the spray bottle and applied it liberally to my remaining peppers and tomatoes.  So far it seems to be working, my sprayer is a little clogged but next time I will use a coffee filter or something else to get the chunks out when loading up the spray bottle.

Until I get somewhere where rabbits can be shot at will or trapped and released into the yards of unsuspecting victims, I will have to stick to the dragons milk until the rabbits change their taste.

The iPad looks great, in fact, I want one and will be buying one as soon as it is feasible.  In the mean time I am left to wonder, as a foodie-geek or geek-foodie or food nerd or whatever I am, how will this work as a cookbook?  Will the screen stand up to some abuse?  Can I wipe it off with a rag when I get oil, grease and juices on it?

Starting at $499 it is a rather expensive toy and an even more expensive cookbook but it holds promise if it will stand up to the abuse of living in a kitchen.  In the mean time I have downloaded the SDK and hope to begin plugging away shortly to hook the iPad into my existing recipe database.

Time will tell whether or not the iPad will catch on but with Apple’s cult following surely they will sell millions of these devices in its first year of availability, however, with a  built in stand by battery time of a month it seems that Apple has already counted on these devices not being used daily.  Perhaps CraigsList will end up flooded the used iPads for cheap.

Tonight we had Chicken and Broccoli Stir Fry over white rice.  The first time we made this dish we did not have any soy sauce and so we had substituted Dale’s Marinade for soy sauce, Dale’s imparts quite a different flavor to the dish than does straight soy sauce, you should try it both ways.

The recipe we used to create our chicken and broccoli stir fry was derived from several recipes online for chicken and pork stir fry and is as follows:

Ingredients
1 pounds boneless skinless chicken breast (cut into 1/2 inch cubes)
1/2 tbsp red wine vinegar
4 tbsp soy sauce
1 c beef broth
2 tbsp white sugar
1 tsp ground ginger
2 tbsp cornstarch
6 c broccoli florets
1 c water
1 tbsp canola oil, divided
3 large cloves garlic, pressed

Instructions
In a medium bowl toss chicken with 2 tablespoons soy sauce and red wine vinegar until evenly coated.  Set aside.  In another bowl combine remaining soy sauce, beef broth, sugar, ginger and cornstarch.

Place broccoli in a large skillet over high heat with water.  Cover and steam until tender.  Drain and transfer to a plate, set aside.

Heat oil in same skillet over high heat until it sends up wisps of smoke.  Add chicken, stir-fry until cooked through.

Return broccoli to skillet and add garlic.  Stir-fry until garlic is fragrant (about 2 minutes).  Pour in broth mixture and cook until thickened, stirring constantly.  Serve immediately over white rice.

In order to the consistently great rice I use a Cuisinart 4 Cup rice cooker with a touch of canola oil in the bottom of the pan and use a 1 to 2 ratio of rice to water and a pinch of salt.  Great stir fry should be accompanied by great rice, every time.

Ingredients
For the dough
2 c flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 c vegetable shortening
1 egg beaten
1/2 c milk

For the filling
1 lbs pork sausage
1/2 lbs ground beef
1/4 c bread crumbs, made from bread dried in the oven and crumbled
2 tbsp cream
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions
Sift together dry ingredients, cut in shortening.  Mix in beaten egg and milk.  Turn out onto a floured surface, knead dough about 10 times until uniform.  Divide into two sections, roll each to 1/4 inch thick and cut out 15 2″x3″ rectangles from each, set aside.

For filling, blend all ingredients together by hand, until uniform.  Roll into 30 rolls of meat, think sausage links.  Wrap dough around each “link”.

Place on brown paper bag on cookie sheets with sides, bake 40 minutes at 350°F

If you are afraid it is going to be too bland, spice it up with some hot and spicy whole grain mustard.  This will become a Christmas, and most likely year around favorite for me.  What are you favorite Christmas time dishes?

I have been getting used to StrongMail at work for the past week, and am starting to get up to speed and become fairly confident in using it for the basic things I am doing at the moment (reoccuring mailings feeding off a SQL View and transactional mailings initiated from C# (.NET 3.5)) anyhow today in a moment of desperation I sent out a Tweet experessing my frustration and much to my surprise a Tweet came back.  Awesome! I didn’t really have a question at the time to ask but it was cool to know StrongMail is listening.  Way to go StrongMail, its good to see companies leveraging emerging (and emerged?) media outlets to support their customers and improve there product.

So thats it, StrongMail is a pretty freaking sweet product, it does what it says it does, and then some.  Its fairly easy to use, easy to hook into and seems to work pretty reliably.

Note: Adding Google Campaign tracking into email sent from StrongMail is extremely easy.