Rourke's Random Musings

If you’re flying with travel sized liquids, don’t forget your one quart, clear, zip-top bag. TSA isn’t kidding when they say all travel sized liquids must be in such a bag or they’ll be confiscated. Over the course of the last few weeks I’ve seen three people asked to throw away all their liquids and gels because they weren’t in a baggie. Thankfully these folks were all business travelers and managed to throw away the (new) toiletries without throwing a fit.

Do you enjoy bagels with smoked salmon, cream cheese, onions, and capers? If you do, then you’ll really like this dish.

You’ll need the following to serve two:

• 8oz. smoked salmon, cut into small rectangular pieces (I like the sockeye, personally)
• 2tsp. capers
• 1 yellow onion
• 1/2 lbs of pasta (angel hair work well)
• 1 lemon, zested
• dill
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• pint of cream
• 1 clove of garlic, minced

Make the pasta, drain, toss with 1tbsp of olive oil and set aside.

After breakfast one morning at the Ferry Building Farmer’s Market, Jen and I wandered into Golden Gate Meat Company. They had an unusually large amount of game meat, so we spent some time salivating over the selection and trying to one up each other by finding cool and unusual meats. We ended up walking out with about a pound of ground elk.

I reshaped the ground elk into proper, thick burger patties. Jen showed me how to do this by mushing them up into balls in my hands and then flattening them some by throwing them from hand to hand. I then placed the patties into a griddle pan over medium heat (6-7 on our stove) with a little olive oil.

US airports are now allowing folks to fly with up to 3oz of any number of liquids. The catch is that you must remove the liquids from your carry-on luggage before going through security the liquids must be in a clear zip-log baggie and must go through the x-ray machine separately from the rest of your luggage.

Earlier this week I flew for the first time since the new TSA restrictions went into place.

The fellow sitting next to me had carried his bags on. He explained, in a matter of fact way, that he’d asked his secretary make 43 copies of his toiletries kit and mail those 43 copies to all of his company’s global offices. His travel always takes him to the local office first, so this was the perfect plan. How nice for him.

Cooking steak is hard. Why did I think all you had to do was slap the meat on the grill for a few minutes, pull it off, and eat it? It’s not that simple. I managed to spoil two nice pieces of grass fed, dry aged New York strip steak in the last week.

What did I learn?

• using a thermometer inside the steak doesn’t make things easy
• you can’t tell anything by looking at the outside
• you can’t tell much by cutting it open and looking at the inside