A five alarm fire at the headquarters of synthetic biology startup Custom Creature Creations caused one hundred million dollars’ damage and destroyed the entire facility. Five fire fighters were treated at a local hospital for smoke inhalation after helping to extinguish the blaze. No other injuries were reported.
According to Dr. Stanley McEldridge, president and founder of CCC, the company’s technicians were attempting to create a small fire breathing dragon to demonstrate the company’s capabilities at an upcoming trade show. All appeared to be going well. But when technicians arrived this morning they found a hamster in the synthesis tank where they had expected a dragon. They immediately assumed the worst: that a competitor had broken into the facility overnight, stolen the dragon, and replaced it with a hamster.
After notifying security of the break-in, they removed the hamster from the synthesis tank and placed it in a cage located in another part of the building. About an hour later, one of the lab technicians opened the cage to remove the hamster, and received the shock of his life. The hamster, startled by the technician’s hand reaching in to grab him, backed up and, according to the technician, hissed.
“When the hamster hissed, fire came from its mouth and singed my hand.”
Then the hamster’s whiskers caught on fire, followed quickly by the poor creature’s fur. Squealing and still belching fire, the hamster jumped out of his cage and knocked over a large container of ethanol nearby. The flaming hamster ignited the ethanol, which spread across the room.
Investigators are still trying to determine how the fire spread from there, although they do point out that pure oxygen was piped to the room and that if one or more of the valves was leaking, it could have turned what should have been a minor fire into a conflagration.
The real question is how the lab managed to create a fire breathing hamster. Dr. McEldridge and his staff at Custom Creature Creations would not respond to questions, saying that they are reviewing their procedures and will issue a report when their investigation is complete.
Dr. Alfred Swain, a leading opponent of synthetic biology technology, speculates that the cause was faulty sanitation procedures.
“You have to be very careful with this stuff. Any bit of contamination can lead to unexpected and potentially disastrous results. If one of the technicians working on the project was handling his family’s pet hamster before coming to work, and failed to follow the protocols before entering the clean room, you could very well end up with hamster DNA contaminating the experiment. This is just one example of the things that can happen when we try to create new life forms. I have warned about this kind of thing in the past, and I will continue to lobby for the abolition of all synthetic biology experiments.”
The price of gas has dropped about $1.50 per gallon in the past couple of months. The other day I paid $1.85 per gallon for regular unleaded. Inflation adjusted, that would be like paying $1.35 in the year 2000. Not an historic low (I paid 95 cents per gallon back in November 2001), but it’s down almost 50% since June.
With that reduction in gas prices, people are already thinking about how to spend their savings. Car dealerships are reporting a large jump in sales recently, and buyers are citing the low price of gas as one reason for their purchases. And it’s not the economy cars that are selling. No, people are buying big ol’ gas guzzlers, conveniently ignoring that the price of gas is volatile and quite likely to climb back to $4.00 per gallon as quickly as it dropped. It might be a year or more before the price goes up, but it will go up. I will have no sympathy for those who, two years from now, complain that they can’t afford the payments on their SUVs or to buy gas to drive the silly things.
Not that I expect people to do anything other than what they’re doing. It seems most people will spend just a little more than they can afford on a car, regardless of what they really need in a car. Why spend only $15,000 on basic transportation when you can spend $30,000 on a cool new whiz bang monster SUV with all the bells and whistles? After all, the finance company wouldn’t let me borrow more than I can afford. Right?
Politicians, too, aren’t afraid to say and do stupid things in response to this latest drop in the price of gas. Democrats and Republicans alike are making noises about instituting a “carbon tax” on gasoline. To the tune of 40 cents per gallon! The argument is that gasoline is under priced, with the price not reflecting the full cost of the product. That is, the damage done to the environment by burning the fuel. One is supposed to believe, I guess, that if such a tax were instituted, the revenue would go towards some method of combating climate change.
The truth is somewhat different. Republicans are looking at an increased gas tax as–wait for it–a means of reducing income taxes. This is one of the best examples of double think that I’ve seen in a long time. Conservatives who historically look at any new tax or reduction in tax deductions are seriously saying that taxing consumption rather than income is a solid “conservative” principle that they’ve been advocating forever.
Now I’m not saying that Democrats would necessarily use that additional revenue to combat climate change. No, they’d be more likely to put forth bills that fund all manner of additional social programs, few of which have any chance of doing anything but making people think Congress is Doing Something About The Problem, and most of which no different than programs that have failed in the past.
It’s all a bunch of short-term thinking. Knowing how Congress works, they would project revenue based on consumption of gas at the current price, without taking into account that consumption decreases as price increases. Adding 40 cents per gallon will immediately reduce consumption, and the inevitable price increase in the next few years will reduce it even more. Any proposed legislation to squander the ill-gotten gains would be dependent on the projected tax revenue, and when that revenue decreases those programs would be under-funded.
What Congress should do is … nothing: let us consumers enjoy this temporary respite from the high price of gas. Let suppliers sort things out, and when demand increases or the Saudis decide they need more money, the price will start going up again. But Congress is money junkie with all the self control of a drug addict. The primary difference being that we prosecute drug addicts but we condone and even encourage Congress’s addiction even though they do way more harm than good.
Environmental groups should concentrate on encouraging more sustainable energy supplies, and ignore the temporary increase in fossil fuel usage. The sooner we burn all of the readily available fossil fuels, the sooner their alternative energy sources will be in demand. If the environmentalists’ projections are right in regards to climate change, a few years’ increased consumption isn’t going to make much of a difference anyway. They might as well spend their limited resources (time and money) on developing alternatives rather than on fighting a losing battle against consumption.
The other day I overheard two women talking about baking cakes. I wasn’t eavesdropping; they were sitting at the table next to mine. Nor was I paying much attention to the conversation, engrossed as I was in the technical manual that so often serves as my lunch partner. But then one of the women said: “You bake from scratch?” That totally broke my concentration. It was time to go anyway.
As I walked back to the office, I got to wondering what this magical “scratch” stuff is that people make things from. I often hear people say that they bake from scratch, but that’s not all it’s used for. I hear programmers and builders say they’re going to “start over from scratch.” In almost every field I’ve examined, there’s somebody making things from scratch.
It took me a while to track this down, but what I discovered flies in the face of all the science we’ve been spoon fed over the years. Scratch builders have learned how to transmute matter and make wondrous things from seemingly nothing. Science teaches us that you can’t turn lead into gold–that you can’t change the fundamental properties of matter. I haven’t seen a scratch builder turn lead into gold, but I wouldn’t put it past them. Why would they want to, anyway, when they can take beans from a plant, add some butter and sugar, and come up with chocolate? Gold has nothing on chocolate, right?
Scratch is, despite what your science teachers will try to tell you, the basic building block of the universe. Forget chemistry and quantum physics with all their arcane formulas, quirks, quarks, electron orbitals, and difficult math. Those fields of study are just red herrings intended to divert your attention from where the real action is. You won’t see “Scratch Studies” at even the best universities because the powers that be don’t want the word to get out. They don’t want just anybody knowing how to transform scratch into all the wondrous things that we see every day.
The Scratch Police let amateurs dabble in the field–baking cakes or building clunky radios from spare parts. They do this because it turns out that the principles of scratch are quite simple and they can’t stop people from discovering them. But they keep a close eye to ensure that a baker, for example, doesn’t figure out that he can use the same principles of scratch to make a CD player, a car, or anything else. If that knowledge got out, the economy would crash like nothing you’ve ever seen before.
But it’s time the word got out. We can no longer be held hostage by the Scratch Police and the small group of people who hold so tightly the knowledge of scratch. My life is forfeit, I know. The Scratch Police will come track me down when they see this blog, and I doubt that Charlie will be able to protect me from them. If you see this blog, please copy and email it to everybody on your address list. Help spread the word and free us from the tyranny of those who would keep this fundamental knowledge to themselves.
During the dot-com boom (1998 or 1999), one of my coworkers overheard me discussing stocks with another guy in the office. He later asked me for investment advice–a fairly odd experience for me. Even now, my investment knowledge is rudimentary at best. But I knew from previous discussions that my coworker (we’ll call him P) had some pretty significant credit card debt. The conversation went something like this:
Me: P, I can guarantee you 18% on your money.
P: Really? What stock?
Me: No stock. Just take the money you were going to buy stock with and pay off your credit card.
P: But … but … I’m wanting to save money. Invest!
Me: You’re paying 18% or more on your credit card debt. If you’re lucky you’ll average 10% on your stock investments. So even if you do well, you’re losing 8% per year. If you pay off your credit card debt, then at least you break even.
After that we got to the real issue: P was looking for tips on stocks that would skyrocket. 18%? Bah! He was looking for 1,000% gains. I told him that if I knew how to do that I wouldn’t be slaving away at the pixel mines.
I’m no investment guru, but I understand basic math.
Friends fairly regularly ask me where I find the time to do my wood carving. Some seem to think that I’m some great time management guru. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’ll admit that I’m terrible at time management. I’m easily distracted if I’m not very interested in what I have to do, and if I do get interested I’ll get lost in whatever I’m working on. It’s not uncommon for me to look at the clock and find that it’s 3:00 AM when I thought it might be approaching midnight.
Time management is not one of my strong points.
But finding time to work on my wood carving is no problem at all, and I suspect most of the people I know could do the same thing. How? Turn off your television!
According to recent Nielsen data, Americans aged 35 to 49 watch an average of 33 hours of television per week. 33 hours? That’s nearly five hours a day! And that number increases as we get older. Americans older than 65 watch an average of seven hours of television every day. What a waste.
I’ve mentioned this to people before, and they look at me like I’m crazy. “Give up my <insert name of favorite show here>? No way!”
No skin off my nose. But if you’re sitting in front of the idiot box and wondering where I find the time to do things, maybe you should re-think your priorities. My dad used to say, “We find time to do the things we think are important.” In my experience, that’s true. And if the Nielsen data is reliable, most of the people asking me where I find the time are spending five hours a day staring at the answer.
It’s thunderstorm season again. The overly cautious are telling everybody about the dangers of lightning, and the brave and clueless are spreading misinformation. Dangerous misinformation, at that.
First of all, the disclaimer: lightning is dangerous. In the United States, there are about 400 injuries and 40 deaths due to lightning every year. Those numbers were much higher in the past. They’ve declined as the country has become more urban and people spend more of their time indoors.
If you can hear thunder, then a lightning strike in your area is possible. The likelihood of a strike is another matter, but if you want to be safe and follow the NOAA guidelines: “When thunder roars, go indoors.”
I’m not nearly that cautious. After all, bee stings kill 25% more people per year in the U.S. than does lightning.
That said, if you decide to stay outside despite the NOAA’s advice, there are some things you should know. You shouldn’t be near the tallest tree or structure in the area. If you’re in the middle of an empty field, you’re at a much higher risk of being struck by lightning. Follow the NOAA’s outdoor guidelines.
Most importantly, don’t think that wearing shoes with rubber soles will help you. Sure, rubber is a good insulator, but all insulators have voltage ratings. Lightning melts thick glass insulators. Your wimpy little 1/2 rubber sole might as well not exist when it comes to a million-volt lightning strike.
And don’t think that cars can’t be struck by lightning. If you believe that the rubber tires on your car are protection against lightning, take a look at this video of a moving pickup truck being struck by lightning.
The vending area in my office building contains a snack vending machine with the screw-type dispensers, and a soda machine with eight lines. I typically walk down there around lunch time to get a drink, and sometimes I’ll get a snack.
My first choice for a drink is Coca-Cola. There are two lines of Coke (no jokes, please) in that machine, and about half the time I go to select a Coke, there isn’t any. There’s always a Coke Zero, though, and most times there’s a Dr. Pepper. I suspect the other drinks (Orange soda, Diet Dr. Pepper, and some others) are available, too.
The snack machine suffers a similar fate. Snickers bars go quick, as do the M&M’s and a few other things. I commonly see that snack machine with six or more empty lines, and the remaining selections are far down on my list of desirable snacks.
As far as I can tell, they refill these machines every two weeks. The Coca-Cola runs out in a week or less. Same with the Snickers and other popular snacks. Whoever’s operating these vending machines is losing a whole lot of potential sales. It is not true that people will select something else if their first choice is unavailable. When I want a Snicker’s bar, for example, I probably won’t settle for something else. I’ll just put my dollar back in my pocket and walk away. Cheese and peanut butter crackers are not a substitute when you’re craving a Snickers.
My dad and uncle owned a vending company back in the early ’80s. I worked there briefly between the time I left school and when I got my first programming job. They would get upset about one empty line on a vending machine. I can’t imagine what they would have done if they found one of their machines out of the most popular products for an extended period.
Once again, a whole month has passed without a blog entry. Blogging seems like such a heavyweight operation these days, compared to tossing something out on Facebook. I find myself posting short notes rather than exploring a topic in detail. Maybe I’m just getting lazy.
I started a new job at the beginning of April. I’m now working for a small company called Syvance, writing control and data acquisition software for laboratory equipment. I’m learning all about auto samplers, mass spectrometers, gas chromatography, and other equipment used in science labs, and writing software that drives the instruments.
You’d be surprised at just how old some of the software I’m working with is. My first project involves adding support for a new device to a program that was originally written in C for Windows 3.1. The program has been upgraded over the years, but it’s still C and much of the original code remains. In particular, there’s a cooperative multitasking scheduler that was written because Windows 3.1 didn’t have threads.
The manufacturer of the instrument I’m working with has supplied .NET assemblies for controlling the device, and some .NET GUI controls that display status, etc. Calling those from the main program involves making calls to a mixed mode assembly that has some MFC and some C++/CLI. That DLL in turn calls into .NET assemblies that implement the actual machine control. So I’m writing code in four different languages: C, C++, C++/CLI, and C#.
You could think of C++/CLI as C++ with a few extensions to support the .NET runtime, but it’s not really that simple. There are distinct differences. I’m almost ashamed to admit that I don’t fully understand how the whole mixed mode thing works. I have a general idea, but there’s a lot I don’t know. That will have to do for now, because finishing this project is more important than understanding all the nuances of the underlying platform. I have to say, though, that all those different layers make me nervous.
I did quite a bit of carving in May. I’ll have to post pictures at some point. There’s another bird in a branch, a whimsical house carved from basswood, a hummingbird pin, a couple of Tiki carvings, a bowl that’s almost done, and I’m sure something else that I can’t recall at the moment. I hope to have pictures of those in the next few days.
It seems as though we’ve had more rain this Spring than any time in the last 8 or 10 years. It’s also been much cooler. Here we are at the end of May and we haven’t topped 100 degrees yet. It would be nice to have a wetter and slightly cooler summer. The only drawback is that I’ll have to mow the lawn more than in previous years, but I can live with that.
Debra and I discovered the joy of Renaissance fairs earlier this Spring, and spent last weekend at one. I do need to write about that and post some pictures.
Living life and loving it. I’m busy with work, enjoying my hobbies, and mentally feel better than I have in years. Debra is training for another competition, and she’s looking better than ever.
I drive a 1996 GMC Sonoma pickup truck that we bought new in February 1996. The truck has about 190,000 miles on it. It’s been wrecked and repaired twice, and I put a new engine in it at 120,000 miles. I keep up on the maintenance so the truck still runs well, and it looks much better than you’d expect an 18 year old truck to look. A few minor dents here and there is all.
Debra drives a 1996 Nissan Maxima that we bought new in December 1996. It has about 235,000 miles and is starting to show its age. She has to drive around town for work sometimes, so the car has to be reliable. We’ve kept up the maintenance on this car, so it runs well. But we haven’t fixed the dents from the minor wreck she had a few years ago. We had planned to replace the car by now but every time we think of getting something new we decide to wait another few months.
Debra’s new car will have to be something with four seats. We really like the Maxima and might get another. We both have a tough time with the price range, though: $30,000 to $40,000 for a car just seems crazy. There are lots of good cars in that price range, and even some nice ones in the $25,000 range (the Nissan Altima, for example). Debra wants four doors and plenty of space. Other than that, we haven’t narrowed it down. A 4 door sedan? Minivan? SUV? We’ll be looking for a long while.
I on the other hand just need basic transportation. The truck is handy for hauling things, but in truth I don’t often carry anything in the back. So I’m looking for something small and inexpensive to take me to work and back. I looked at the all electric Nissan Leaf, but can’t justify the $30,000 price tag for a basic commuter car. Even the Smart and the Fiat 500 are pretty expensive for what you get, but they’re less expensive than the Leaf and I can actually go places if I want to. The Leaf’s 100 mile range is a real drawback.
About six months ago I ran across Elio Motors, a company that’s gearing up to produce a small, affordable, and high mileage car. Last I heard (earlier this week), they expect to start shipping cars in the fourth quarter of this year.
It has two seats (front and back) and gets 80 MPG on the highway. City mileage will be about 50. It’s a 0.9 liter, 3-cylinder engine. The best part: $6,800. Yes, $6,800. It’s the perfect little commuter car.
Today’s post is guest-written by my wife, Debra Mischel.
My health had been going downhill for several years. With a high stress office job that kept me chained to a desk most of the day and no motivation to get up and move, I was packing on weight. The doctor put me on high blood pressure medication in 2009, and by 2012 I was feeling old, fat, and awful.
There is a history of heart disease and type 2 diabetes in my family, both conditions that are primarily triggered by obesity, and I was heading right down that path. At 5’3″ and 160 pounds, I wasn’t “obese” according to the Body Mass Index, but was close. I didn’t look very good, and I felt terrible.
Like many people, I had had a gym membership for several years, but good intentions don’t take you very far. It seems one has to actually go to the gym in order for the membership to do any good. But doing something requires motivation, and the heavier I got the less motivated I became.
I turned 49 on February 22, 2012, and I knew that I didn’t want to feel this bad when my 50th birthday rolled around. I also knew that I couldn’t make the transformation on my own, so I went to the gym and asked for some help. They set me up with a personal trainer, and we got to work. They gave me diet recommendations that I followed (nothing terrible, mostly just portion control and avoiding the really high-fat, high-sugar foods), and a training schedule.
My training schedule consisted of one hour weight training with a trainer three days per week, and an hour or two of cardio (treadmill, stationary bike, stair climber, or classes) twice per week. On weight training days, I would do a 30 minute warmup on the treadmill.
By July of 2012, I had lost more than 30 pounds and was off the blood pressure medication.
I had met my original goal of getting my weight down to 125 pounds and I felt better than I had in years. But by now I was hooked. I still had some excess fat, and I wanted to build some more muscle. So I kept working with my trainer, stayed with the diet, and kept up the schedule. On my 50th birthday, almost exactly a year after I started my exercise program, I did a five hour weight training workout. I weighed 115 pounds, was stronger than I’d ever been, and felt better than at any time since I was in high school.
At that point I decided to enter the Figure competition at the Naturally Fit show in July. In order to compete, I would have to lose all my excess fat, and build a bit more muscle. I stepped up my workouts so that I was working out twice per day four days per week, heavier on the weight training and a little light on the cardio. The other three days were rest days to let my body recover. I also went on a 20-week “contest prep” diet that consisted of approximately 50% protein, 30% carbs, and 20% fat.
Getting up on that stage in front of hundreds of people, wearing the smallest and most expensive bikini I had ever owned was scary. But I did it. I placed third in the Novice category against six other women, all younger than I, and first in the Masters 50 and Over category.
*
It’s about taking control of your life and responsibility for your own health. I spent years making all the excuses: no time, too expensive, too old, too busy, body hurts, too fat. This transformation cost me, on average, about an hour per day for a year, and then about two hours per day for five months. It cost me some TV time during the week and a few hours of couch potato time on the weekends during contest prep to get my meals ready for the next week. I didn’t even miss it!
You can change your life. It takes hard work, sure. But the benefits are well worth the effort.
I went over to my friend Mike’s place one day and he was cooking up some ranchero sauce. Think “thick and chunky salsa,” or look it up. It’s good stuff. Mike was kind enough to tell me how he makes it, and I’ve made four or five batches since then. I’ve modified his recipe, of course, and am still playing with it.
Before you get started, understand that this is not a quick thing to make. It’s going to take you three or four hours of cooking, plus prep and cleanup time.
Equipment you’ll need:
A 12-quart stock pot. Don’t use one of those enameled stock pots. You’ll be scraping the bottom and you’re likely to start scraping off the enamel. I use my aluminum brew pot.
A potato masher. (Yes, really)
A steel spatula for scraping the bottom of the stock pot.
An oven mitt or other glove to cover your hand while you’re scraping. It gets hot in that pot. Optionally, get a long-handled spatula, but I’ve had better luck with a short-handled one.
Canning jars. I would suggest pint-sized, but you can go larger or smaller if you like. The ingredients below will make between one and two gallons of the stuff (see below for details).
Recommended: An outdoor propane cooker, sometimes called a cajun cooker. You can cook this stuff indoors if you want, but be aware that your house will smell strongly of peppers for days afterwards if you do. In addition, your typical electric stove won’t generate as much heat as the propane cooker or gas stove. This will take a lot longer on an electric stove.
Optional: A smoker if you want to smoke the veggies before cooking them.
A bag of corn chips, for sampling the sauce as it’s cooking.
The first couple of times I made the ranchero sauce, I didn’t smoke the veggies and it turned out just fine. But one day I was smoking a brisket and thought I’d throw the peppers on the smoker for a bit before putting them into the sauce. If you like smoked salsa, it’s definitely worth the trouble.
The ingredients list below is necessarily vague. The number of tomatoes you use will depend on their size. The number of jalapeños will also depend on size and how spicy you want the sauce. I like things with a bit of a bite, so I don’t scrimp on the peppers.
It’s also hard to say how much sauce the ingredients will make. A lot depends on how long you let it boil down. If you like your ranchero sauce kind of runny, this will make about two gallons. Debra and I like ours a lot less runny. The batch I made today made about five quarts.
Ingredients:
12 to 18 large tomatoes. Get the biggest tomatoes you can find at the supermarket. I used 18 today because they were smaller than the gigantic tomatoes I’ve found there before.
A dozen or so jalapeño peppers, again depending on size and how hot you want the stuff. I’ve been known to line the entire bottom of my stock pot with them, but Debra doesn’t like the sauce quite that hot. You can use other peppers if you want. I made one batch with a mixture of Ancho chilis, jalapeños, and serranos that turned out just great.
Two bunches of cilantro. More or less, depending on your taste.
Two big yellow onions. Really big. Use sweet onions (vidalia or 1015) or red onions if you like. I prefer the stronger yellow onions.
Two heads of garlic. No, not just two cloves. Again, to taste. Debra and I both love the taste of garlic, so we go a little strong on it. Even three heads of garlic isn’t too much for a batch of ranchero sauce.
Salt to taste. I’d suggest starting with two tablespoons. If you’re sensitive to salt, start with one.
A small amount (one or two tablespoons) of vegetable oil.
Clean the cilantro and chop it. Include the stems. How fine you chop it is up to you.
Peel the garlic. I know, peeling garlic isn’t fun. Well, peeling garlic the traditional way isn’t fun. But there’s a much faster way. You can peel a whole head of garlic in about 10 seconds. Just watch this video.
If you only want to peel a few cloves, throw the cloves in a glass jar, attach the lid, and shake it a few times. Peeled garlic. No muss, no fuss. I showed that to a friend of mine who’s been working in restaurants for over 20 years, and he was just amazed. I think people would use fresh garlic more often if they knew that peeling it didn’t have to be such a pain in the neck.
Oh, before you do anything with the tomatoes, be sure to peel the labels off of them. For some silly reason, every tomato gets a sticker on it. Drives me crazy, especially when the adhesive is too sticky. One of these days I’ll just give up on the supermarket tomatoes and buy them from the local farmer’s market.
Smoking the veggies
If you’re not going to smoke the veggies, you can skip this step.
First you have to decide just how much smoke flavor you want. That will determine how many of the veggies you smoke. The first time I did it, I just smoked the peppers. Now, I smoke everything.
I cut the tomatoes in half before I smoke them, and I quarter the onions. The peppers and garlic cloves (after they’re peeled) go on whole. I’ve experimented with quartering the tomatoes, but that’s kind of messy. I’ve also sliced the peppers in half the long way before putting them on the grill.
The peppers, onions, and tomatoes go directly onto the grill. For the garlic cloves, I use a disposable grill screen or a small cooking basket. If you quarter the tomatoes rather than halve them, you might consider putting them on a screen, too.
Close the lid and smoke for an hour or hour and a half. You want to smoke at a pretty low temperature, certainly not hotter than 250 degrees, and preferably under 200. The idea here is to smoke the veggies, not cook them. I start the fire and throw on just one or two pieces of mesquite, keeping the temperature well under 200 degrees for an hour or so.
Cooking
Put a tablespoon of vegetable oil in the stock pot and coat the bottom. Then, put the peppers in to the pot. Put the tomatoes on top of the peppers. If you didn’t smoke the tomatoes, just put them into the pot whole. No need to cut them up.
Put the lid on the stock pot and put the pot on the burner. Turn the heat up a little bit, but not too high. The idea here is to build up heat inside the pot, but you don’t want to char the peppers too much and make them stick to the bottom of the pot.
Let this cook for a good 30 minutes, at least, and possibly up to an hour. This will soften the peppers and the tomato skins will start to split. Don’t be in a hurry here. Let the thing cook.
While the peppers and tomatoes are cooking, chop up the onions and garlic. Dice the onions, but don’t make the pieces too small; they’re going to cook for a while, and you don’t want them to cook totally away. Chunk size is a matter of taste, so I’ll leave it to your discretion. The garlic, too, is a matter of taste. Some people like big monster chunks of garlic. I prefer smaller pieces.
When the tomatoes have all split open and they’re getting really soft, take the potato masher and mush them all up. Really smash things, pressing the potato masher to the bottom of the pot and turning it to help split up the peppers. It’s going to be hot in that pot, so wear an oven mitt or other protection on your hand. And be careful when mashing things. If you press too hard near the edge you’re likely to dump the pot over. Balance things with your other hand on one of the pot handles.
After the first mashing, you’ll still have some big clumps of tomato and large pieces of pepper. Put the lid back on the pot and let it cook some more. Adjust the heat to give it a low boil. Cook for another 30 minutes, mashing occasionally.
You’ll also want to scrape the bottom of the pot with your steel spatula. That will loosen the charred bits that stick to the bottom. You can pull the charred bits out of the sauce if you want, but it’s fine to leave them in.
After many mashings, when you’ve broken up all the big tomato clumps and the pepper pieces are the size you want them, add the onions, garlic, and cilantro. Stir the additions in and put the top back on for 15 minutes or so. Then, remove the top and adjust the heat so that the sauce is at a low boil. Add the salt at this time.
Now you’re just boiling away the excess water. If you don’t like charred bits in your sauce, you’ll need to stir frequently, especially as more water boils off. If you don’t mind the charred bits, scrape the bottom of the pot periodically–every 10 minutes or so. Otherwise you’ll get large chunks of charred stuff. Small pieces are okay. Big charred chunks are not.
This is where you need to break out the corn chips. Spoon some of the sauce into a bowl and let it cool for a bit. Check the consistency. Pull out a corn chip, dip some of the sauce, and taste it. If you think it needs more salt, add some. Repeat until the sauce reaches the consistency that you desire.
Take the pot inside and begin filling the canning jars while the sauce is still hot, and seal the tops. I don’t do the boil bath with the jars, so I let them cool overnight and then put them in the refrigerator. Once sealed, the jars will keep in the ‘fridge for many months. But if you open a jar be sure to finish it off in a week or two. Otherwise it will start to mold. That’s why I don’t recommend jars larger than a pint. One can finish off a pint of the ranchero sauce in a week, two at the outside. But a quart lasts a long time unless you’re a real salsa fanatic.
If you cook up a batch, let me know how it turns out. I’d also be interested in any changes you make to the ingredients or the process.
