Here's The Beef

As everyone knows, it is St. Patrick's Day. As everyone knows, on St. Patrick's Day, it is traditional to eat corned beef and cabbage. As not all may know, though Sarah and I have gained moderate renown for our pioneering corned beef chili recipe, I have never before attempted to make corned beef and cabbage. I did so last night.

This was a serving of the result, which I ate about a half hour ago:



I don't know how well you can see the different ingredients, but this, I presume - never having made corned beef and cabbage before - is not a strictly traditional assemblage. It contains about a pound or pound and a half or corned beef (left over from previous chili) and about 3/4 of a medium head of cabbage (I used some before in a stir fry) and:

• 1 small onion (sliced)


• 6 or so ounces of sliced mushrooms


• 1/2 small can of butterbeans


• a handful of raisins


• small amount of chopped garlic, 2 small bay leaves, a pinch of red pepper flakes, and seasoning packet that came with meat


• water to cover, plus a little apple cider vinegar

After letting the meat defrost in the fridge for a day and then out of the fridge for an hour to get it to room temperature, I seared it on all sides on the stove (left whole), 2 minutes or more per side, until nicely browned. In the meantime, I chopped the cabbage roughly, sliced the onions and mushrooms, and created a thin layer of a mixture of those on the bottom of the crock pot. Then deglazed the pan off the heat with vinegar, scraping up the "fond." On top of the veggies I lay the seared meat, scattering additional veggies around it and poured on the pan liquid. Then the beans mostly on top and the raisins scattered in, then a scattering of the seasonings, tucking the bay leaves into the veggies. Cold water to cover, plus a little more vinegar. Heat on high.

I left the crock on high for about 4 hours while I was awake, turning to low overnight. When I awoke this morning, the apartment was rank with cabbage smell. Attempting to flee the odor, I hopped into the shower. However, I am now fully convinced that the vent fan over the stove merely empties through a shared duct into the bathroom (the possibility of which I had heretofore pondered), opening a freeway for the stench to follow me into the lavatory, and thus creating in the steamy and enclosed shower an unpleasant phenomenon which I have disdainfully coined an "Irish Sauna."

I was afraid that all three layers of my tri-shade green fashion ensemble would be dank with the scent. Luckily, it was not that bad. I was also surprised to discover that the meat was still fairly tough. I left the heat on low while I went to work, turning the meat over to evenly braise top and bottom. When I returned, the pungency of the cabbage confirmed yet another fact about the air-flow mechanics of the apartment - that the back door is very drafty or at least permeable. This reality became clear to me about halfway up the four-step patio, when I suddenly found myself awash in the same thick stain that had befouled my olfactory sense 9 hours previous.

But the biggest surprise was that it actually tasted pretty good. The meat appeared to have shrunk considerably, leeching much of its salty volume into the broth. The beef was extremely tender. The vegetables were mushy but flavorful. And luckily, today's temperature reached about 70 degrees, allowing me to comfortably air out the apartment by opening all of its windows. After about an hour, the smell seemed mostly to have evaporated. Either that, or my sensory perception has been severely damaged.

In all, a pretty good first effort.

Ah, bachelorhood

With Sarah out of town for the week, I have spent almost all of this weekend in the bachelor position - lazing on the couch, remote by my side, bowl of cereal in hand. The few times I have ventured out of that space have mostly been to go the Redbox down the street to pick up or return movies, specifically some of those outside Sarah's cinematic taste. I watched two, which, coincidentally, also fell mostly outside the bounds of palatable cinema. They were The Karate Kid (remake) and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.

The Karate Kid might have been ok if it was about 20-30 minutes shorter. Most of the excess fat came at the beginning - a boring, flavorless 40 minutes of exposition about the Kid and his mother's moving from Detroit to China, struggling to fit in, and being the victim of a 10?-year-old martial-arts expert bully. Nearly needless to say it was high on dramatics, and low on actual drama. At about the 45-minute mark, we finally see Jackie Chan, who takes on the master/teacher role in the reboot, step up and defend the kid, demolishing the previously mentioned bully and 5 of his punk friends. This is also the point at which the film becomes watchable.

We all know where it goes from here. The Kid, played by Jaden Smith (son of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith), begins training with the maintenance man/martial arts maven, eventually going on to challenge and defeat a series of the kid goons in a Kung Fu tournament, culminating, of course, with the chief bully. The story is spiced up from the original with the bullying theme, the inclusion of the rival dojo's "wrong way" methods, the replacement of the master's "wax on, wax off" teaching theme with "jacket on, jacket off," and maybe? some subtle political theme about U.S. international economic policies. In all, it was bad. Jaden Smith was terrible for the first third of the film, then adequate the rest of the way, and pretty decent in the martial arts scenes. But he brought no depth to the character. Nor did Chan, who compensates by still looking darn good kicking bully butt at his relatively old age. The biggest highlights come during the concluding tournament, which features both comical jumbotron animation of the dueling competitors and, much to my delight, a Mortal Kombat-esque command from the evil dojo's master during the final match to "FINISH HIM!" That the movie studio allowed the film to register at over two hours is inexcusable.

G.I. Joe is much easier to sum up. A ludicrous villain uses ludicrous technology to execute a ludicrous world-domination plot. The dialogue is poor, and the acting sinks to its level. Channing Tatum plays the lead, Duke, and is wretched. Other pretty faces fall flat in delivering their lines as well. Interestingly, two LOST alumni, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Mr. Eko) and Saïd Taghmaoui (Caesar) appear as members of the Joes, but they are generally not good. The only really respectable actor in the flick is Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who portrays Rex/The Doctor, the evil scientist behind the evil plot. Unfortunately, all of his lines are spoken through a voice modulator/breathing instrument, which he needs as a result of an utterly predictable connecting twist seen in flashback, thus rendering his dialogue virtually emotionless. In all, it was bad. The film ends with a dramatic reveal setting up the presupposed sequel. I guess I really should not criticize the movie too much, as I honestly did not pay a lot of attention to about three-fourths of it. I had hoped to get a dollar's worth of entertainment from it. I got about a quarter.