I’ve been watching a bunch of performances on YouTube lately by fiddler John Specker, often with his daughter Ida Mae Specker. Check out their version of The Battle of New Orleans. I love the intensity of this performance.
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The Sauce
I’ve had a mixture of chilies, tomatoes, and some garlic fermenting in two mason jars for the past couple weeks. This evening, I blended together all the veg with enough of the brine that I could get a smooth puree. I put the puree through a strainer, getting all the liquid I could through.
After fermentation, the brine and the veg smelled very good. I tasted at the puree stage. I’d call the final sauce hot but not crazy hot, and very flavourful, with a bit of a sour edge, the result of the lacto-bascillus converting the sugars in the chilies and so on into lactic acid. I understand the sauce will continue to slowly ferment in the fridge. From the two jars of chilies, tomatoes and garlic, I ended up with about 2 and a half little bottles of hot sauce. I enjoy hot sauce with many things, so I imagine they won’t last long.
I still have quite a few chilies in the garden, so maybe I’ll ferment one more batch.
Listen to the latest episode of The Agency Podcast right here or find it at all the good places.
The Agents get an overhaul, make hot sauce and wonder why they are still using social media platforms.
Please tell us what you think about Facebook, Google and privacy…or anything else you’re thinking about. What good movies or tv have you watched lately? Email the Agents anytime.
Making Hot Sauce
Making hot sauce is a fool’s game. I know this to be true. There are many great hot sauces available. They aren’t super-expensive, and a bottle lasts for some time. I’m making hot sauce anyway. We have many more chiles in the garden than we can keep up with. Plus, at least for me, the process is fascinating and the results will hopefully be great. I’ve made fermented hot sauce once before and I’ve also made fermented dill pickles.
This time, I was prepared with 2 jars with fermentation caps. When gas needs to escape, it can, through the blue tops.
The process is called lacto-fermentation, and it is used to ferment kimchi, dill pickles and sour kraut, as well as for making great hot sauce. Here’s a very basic explanation of what it is all about. It turns out that nasty, harmful bacteria don’t like salt baths, which is good for us. A brine is poured into a jar full of whatever you want to ferment. It kills the nasty bacteria, and a friendly bacteria called lactobacillus takes over. The friendly organism converts sugars in the vegetable into lactic acid. The lactic acid preserves the vegetable and makes it taste great.
Each of the jars has a few cloves of garlic and 2-3 different peppers. As well, each of the jars has some tomato. I used my garden chiles and supplemented those with some scotch bonnets and some jalapenos. I know that the goal of some people who make hot sauce is to make it poisonously hot. That doesn’t suit me. I’m good with hot to very hot.
Fermentation apparently starts pretty quickly and bubbles will form in the jar. I’ll let it ferment for a couple weeks. After that I’ll separate the brine and puree the chiles etc in a blender with just enough brine added to make it blend well. Then the plan is to press the puree through a sieve, releasing the finished hot sauce into a bowl below.
This will be as far as I am taking this batch. I’ll bottle the sauce and keep it in the fridge. Fermentation will continue slowly in the fridge and the taste of the sauce will change some, apparently. I’ve read it keeps in the fridge for several months. Some people do what some commercial hot sauce companies do. They add vinegar and cook it to kill the active lacto-bacillus and stabilize the sauce for longer shelf life.
There are many people out there providing resource material online about fermenting and lots of people with a ton of knowledge. As I continue to experiment, no doubt I’ll learn a great deal by reading websites and watching videos. Meanwhile, I’ll be really happy if I manage to make a yummy hot sauce.
I’m so popular on Instagram…..but
Each day, my Instagram account is followed by several young and astonishingly attractive women. I’m so popular, these folks find me irresistible. Not only that, when I follow these folks back, within seconds, they send me a personalized greeting by direct message. It’s nice to be popular, ain’t it?
It’s hard to believe that at the same time as these new followers are massaging my ego, I’m seriously considering ditching more social media. Why would I do such a crazy thing? To start, greedy social media companies want to block links to Canadian journalism. Why? Because our government expects these companies to ante up to support the folks who report the news while they feel entitled to use this work however they like, without having to pay a dime. That stinks, doesn’t it?.
Let’s look at some positives and negatives. What does social media do for me? The best things about Facebook are groups and pages that connect me with people who share some of my slightly obscure interests, such as playing old time music or playing go. Of course having some kind of connection platform is welcome in itself and every now and then is even handy. I’d enjoy Facebook much more though, if it wasn’t full of memes and political jabs. I found myself commenting on a political meme I disagreed with earlier today. Later, I thought, what was the point of commenting on the post? It only gave it more attention. I guess sometimes it’s difficult not to engage.
I spend a good deal of time on YouTube. For someone like me who enjoys listening to folk musics, there is so much available, just a click away. For some time I posted videos in which I played my banjo for anyone interested (a few people are, most people aren’t), but these days I post very few videos but watch many. Maybe one day I’ll make some fiddle videos, who knows. I also follow various other Youtubers and I enjoy that quite a bit. If you want to learn how to do almost anything, there is a video on YouTube which will help you out, almost for sure. I can say with some certainty, that although there are things I dislike about YouTube, I find it indispensable these days, particularly in relation to my my folly, trying to learn fiddle.
On the negative side, the various social medias are chock full of cranks, fakers, assholes, trolls, haters and liars, not to mention truckloads of disinformation, dangerous memes and bad ideas. Not only that, they are all busy mining my data in an effort to sell me stuff I don’t really want to buy. The other big negative is that the social medias suck a tremendous amount of time that might be spent doing something more worthwhile.
I dumped Twitter, which in my experience is the nastiest of the bunch, at some point after that silly squillionaire bought the company – and I haven’t looked back. In fact, I can say I don’t even miss it a little bit. As for the others, I’m holding on for now, but don’t be surprised if one day I pack in Facebook and Instagram along the way.
What do you think? Are the big social media companies your friends? Have you considered walking away from the whole bunch of them?
Making a living, not a killing…
Blog TO reports that you can get yourself some Taylor Swift tickets for next year in Toronto for just $20,000 a pop at a re-sellers site. WT(actual)F? To be clear this rant isn’t about Taylor Swift in particular. There are no musicians I can think of I would pay 1/20th of that amount to see. The way we experience music has become so desperately, desperately, horribly, irrevocably broken.
I recall back in my high school days when, along with a bunch of other kids, I camped out at Yonge & Bloor to get tickets for a Bob Dylan show. We were irate because the best tickets we could get were 3/4 back on the floors. In the fullness of time, it seems we did OK. Tickets were at least affordable for a kid without a lot of budget. Today, an entire distribution system has evolved that supports scalping ahem….. I mean “surge pricing”.
At that time we used to have a venue in Toronto’s Ontario Place called the Forum. There was a revolving stage and you could sit in the seats or on the hill, where you could spread out a blanket and enjoy a picnic while you watched the show. There was a modest admission to Ontario Place but no special charges for watching the show. Imagine that – it was great!
I remember heading over to Ontario Place very early one day in a effort to get great seats to see Pete Seeger perform with Arlo Guthrie and Shenandoah. I had no idea what a treat I was in for. Pete and Arlo did a long soundcheck that was like an alternative concert. Where in the show they did Mr. Tambourine Man, for instance, in the “soundcheck” they did Eight Miles High. Arlo talked about how he used to like to take his 12-string into stairwells with plenty of echo and pretend he was the Byrds. While Arlo was singing one song, Pete walked way up to the hill to make sure everyone up there could hear well. I’ll never forget that.
As with so many aspects of our society, the business of music increasingly funnels wealth to a small group of people, and it is become increasing difficult for people who are not the designated “hitmakers” to scrape out a living making music. Some performers have figured out ways to pivet, using YouTube, live streaming, Patreon, and teaching to get by. I have a ton of respect for musicians who continue to plug away outside of the “star-maker machinery behind the popular song”, to quote Joni Mitchell.
I think this situation is one of reasons I found traditional music an attractive alternative along the way. I’ve enjoyed some of the best performances I’ve ever heard, sitting in a circle under an “Easy-up” portable shelter playing tunes we own together. That is, after all, what folk music is all about isn’t it? We own the tunes together. They change along the way. Lyrics get added. Regional approaches can develop. Some tunes have several names. A few people manage to record some music. Others post material on YouTube so more people can learn the tunes. Occasionally someone accidentally becomes popular.
Here’s the late great U. Utah Phillips, the Golden Voice of the Great Southwest, on making a living, not a killing.
Eric Noden’s Blues
Listen to the latest episode of The Agency Podcast right here or find us at the usual spots. The agents spend some time with Eric Noden, American Roots musician, with an international following, talking about his work, music and travel tips. We appreciate you listening and hope you enjoy this great conversation. Eric plays for us too!
For more info about Eric Noden, check out his site.
The Killers
Listen to the latest from The Agents right here or find the new episode at all the good podcast places.
What’s it like to get a letter from a serial killer? Why are we obsessed with serial killers, murder podcasts and Dateline? We talk to serial killer expert and aficionado Eva Staton this week. Please join us.
Email the Agents anytime.
Just how many types of fiddle tunes are there, anyway?
Here are 20 types, demonstrated by a remarkable player, Michael Burnyeat. He also has videos demonstrating many fiddle styles. Check out his channel.
Chain Reaction
Check out the latest from The Agency Podcast right here or find the new episode where you get your podcasts.
The Agents see Oppenheimer, go to Chicago for The Bear and time travel with Indiana Jones.
Thank you for listening. Email the Agents anytime.
27th Street 