Instant Pot experiments: Beef Stew, take 3

With the weather cooling down again, it struck me, mid-grocery-trip, that some beef stew would be a fine idea, and proceeded to get all the necessary ingredients while I was there to give the ol' Instant Pot another whirl.  As if... as inevitably happens with on-the-fly shopping decisions like that, I forgot a few things entirely.  Most importantly, I forgot the beer!

Well, I wasn't looking to head out again, so improvisation was the name of the game.  Surprisingly, it actually came out better than I had any cause to hope... enough so, that this (with a bit of tweaking) is likely the "base" from which I'll make any further experiments.

Preparation

• Dissolve 1 beef bouillon cube in 1c. of water (mug and a Keurig works well for this)
• Re-hydrate about 2c. of dried mushrooms, and reserve 1c. of the resulting liquid
• Peel and quarter about 1lb. of potatoes
• Skin and cut an onion into wedges (8 worked fine for me)

Procedure

• Heat Instant Pot on Saute setting
• Add 3T. butter, allow to melt
• Add onion wedges, knock them about a bit with a wooden spoon while they soften to let the layers separate.  Once the onion has started to soften
• Add 1lb. cubed stew meat, brown on all sides.
• Add 3T flour and stir to absorb the liquid fats in the pot
• Add the reserved "mushroom water", use to de glaze the bottom of the pot
• Add the following ingredients and stir to complete the sauce/soup/whatever:
• Prepared beef bouillon
• 1c. off-dry mead (just because I don't have beer, doesn't mean I don't have anything useful lying around!)
• 1t. thyme
• 1t. garlic salt
• 1T. Worcestershire sauce
• 1T. steak sauce
• Add the mushrooms, potatoes, and a 1lb. bag of baby carrots to the pot, and stir to combine
• Top off with some fresh-ground pepper
• Cancel out of Saute mode, close/lock the lid, and hit the Meat/Stew button.  In my case, it was done cooking about 40 minutes after that.

And the results... good flavor overall, good mouth feel for the soup, and everything cooked through nicely.  Well... in truth, the carrots, for all they were fork-tender, still tasted a bit underdone, and the mushrooms, while tasty, were still a bit chewy.  I don't think the right answer is to wait for a natural release on the pot per se (that would just make mush of the potatoes), but it might be worth waiting for 5-10 minutes before doing the quick release next time, just to see what difference that makes.  Oh, and of course, if I do have beer handy, probably best to use that to replace the mead and at least some of the mushroom water, especially if I have fresh mushrooms handy to work with as well.

Sony, Sony, Sony... *facepalm*

Over eight and a half years since Sony decided to play a nice game of "we have altered the deal, pray we don't alter it further" with me, I finally get to put my grudge to rest... kind of.  My settlement check came in today's mail.  They did stick with their plan of offering "up to $65" per claim, depending on the number of claims, but my prior unease about how they came up with that number looks to have been spot on, since the check I got was a whopping $10.07.

So, yeah, I've gotten some compensation, years after the fact, for the feature Sony removed, so I don't have any direct reason to keep them on my "no buy" list any longer.  That said, implying a $65 payout and delivering a $10 payout doesn't make me eager to give them my trust any time soon.

What's this, just desserts?

I put Vizio on my no-buy list back in 2015, when they were caught spying on their customers and colluding with advertisers to even more intrusively track them on other devices they owned (link).  I pretty much just forget them after that... I mean, consumers rarely see anything resembling justice these days, so why cause myself heartburn, right?

Well, I just happened to stumble across a new article today... looks like a judge is going to make Vizio post a pop-up notification on all the affected Vizio TVs, informing their owners about the spying and instructing them on how to get on board with a class-action lawsuit.  Mind you, it's not perfect, class-action lawsuits tending to be both slow and mainly a means of enriching the lawyers, from what I've seen... but it tickles me to see a misbehaving company forced to let their customers know, in a hard-to-ignore way, that they've been had.  Should be fun to see what happens with Vizio hereafter.

Today's mini-rant: web advertising

Let's make one thing clear from the start:  I absolutely despise most advertisements.  That's because they tend to be nothing more than cheap manipulation of our more primitive urges to try and get you to buy something you neither want nor need.  That said, I can understand ads having a place in supporting "free" content that would otherwise be unavailable, whether that's broadcast TV and radio, or the various websites that support themselves with ads.  However, advertisers have taken liberties with their web ads, to the point where the unscrupulous can damage the computers of the people being advertised to.  Not surprisingly, tech-savvy end users have worked out ways to interfere with ads, and in some cases have made "ad-blockers" available for the public to download and install without needing that much tech-savvy.  Advertisers have taken issue with that (with some validity, since it's their ad dollars that are paying for the content that's being delivered), and have been working with their website developers to find ways to counter those ad-blockers.  All very cat-and-mouse, much the same story that plays out in, for example, computer security.  However, I've recently run into one tactic that I disagree strongly with.

Some websites have taken it upon themselves to try and detect whether your computer is running an ad-blocker... and if it is, they'll call you out on it, and demand that you turn it off for their website before they will let you see what you've come to see.  In theory, that's entirely reasonable, and a suitable answer to the advertiser's concerns... but that's only if they're remarkably good about detecting the presence of ad-blockers.

Me, I don't use an ad-blocker... but I do use a little tool from the Electronic Frontier Foundation called Privacy Badger, whose sole purpose in life is blocking misbehaving advertisers (and their tracking cookies).  They're more than welcome to shoot any ads my way, they just don't get to do so with embedded payloads of tracking nastiness to follow me from one website to the next.  Mind you, because nobody seems to want to use a "default" ad these days, I rarely see much in the way of ads at all, but, frankly, that's their problem, not mine.  At any rate, now I've got some websites (including at least one that I rather enjoyed) demanding that I turn off Privacy Badger for their site... and frankly, if you're a web developer, and you think that's a reasonable request to make, I want nothing to do with your website.  So, here's hoping this particular ad fad doesn't gain any more steam... and I hope those websites that maybe lose traffic from this change their minds, and somehow let us know.  Maybe with a nice static ad banner somewhere?

Risk Legacy - fun, but I can't recommend it

So, you know Risk, right?  World conquest, 3-on-2 combat dice action, these days it's practically Baby's First Wargame.  So, take that, spin a tale of an alternate Earth being invaded by a bunch of human factions that can't share, each with special powers to give them distinct flavors, add victory point rules to make the game end in a reasonable time frame, and you're basically there.  It's fun, it's not super deep, and, as any legacy game should, it has various piles of stuff to unlock, to add more flavor/depth to the game... but that's where it falls apart.

You see, I picked up the game well after it released (say a year or more), and in our copy... two of the unlocks were mixed up, so we got an unwanted preview of things to come.  That's not something you can fix with errata.  So, yeah, we'll keep playing for a while at least, but if the manufacturer can't get their ducks in a row a year on, I can't justify telling you to spend your money on them.

So, it's been a few months...

...and honestly, not a whole heck of a lot to report at this point.  Our injured player is still rehabbing, so we can't really gather in our usual gaming spot with the huge table... our game sessions are pretty well limited to things that will fit on a folding card table for the time being.  Between that and various scheduling conflicts that have arisen, I don't see us getting back to playing Seafall any time soon.

Turns out, however, that a folding card table is just big enough to play Risk Legacy on, so a few of us started giving that a go this past week.  It's a bit different from your regular game of Risk, even at the get-go, what with different factions with different abilities available... but it'll probably take a few games before we decide whether it's really a better game.

Seafall Hiatus

So, we finally got the still-healthy members of our group together to play last night... and decided that we just weren't feeling it.  As such, we're putting Seafall away for a while, hopefully to come back to it later this year.  Sorry for the inconvenience, but anybody looking to find out what happens when that last box is unlocked might want to look elsewhere, since who knows when we'll get back to this.

Seafall Interruptus

For anybody waiting with bated breath for the report on the next round of Seafall... well, keep on waiting, I'm afraid.  The player hosting our get-togethers had a bit of an accident shortly after our last game, putting it on hold for a few weeks, and no sooner did we try to get together again, he had another, putting him out of commission for the foreseeable future.  We were going to get started again last night with the remaining four players, but one of us was a no-show... and another player is going to be gone for our next session.  So... we'll get back to playing as soon as we can, but, well, life and all that.

Instant Pot experiments: Beef Stew, take 2

While the end result of this experiment wasn't at all bad, I'm still going to classify it as a failure.  Changes from last time:

• Doubled the butter and flour to thicken the sauce.
• Chopping the onion into 8 was a definite improvement.
• Switched out soy sauce for steak sauce
• Multiple additional ingredients at the "rest of ingredients" step:  1 pack sliced mushrooms, ground pepper, 2 cloves garlic, 1T dried parsley, and a can of tomato paste.

First problem... might be I added too much stuff to the pot this time around, or might be that the internals hadn't dried out enough from my using the pot for a separate chicken experiment two nights before, but the float valve never sealed.  Ended up running it through a second half-cycle to get anything reasonably "done", and even then the carrots were slightly under-done.

Second, while it wasn't bad at all, the tomato paste definitely took the flavor outside of what I would normally call "stew".  Between it and the added flour and butter, the mouth feel of the sauce was wonderful, but it added sweetness and, well, tomatoey-ness, that just wasn't what I was looking for.

So, next time... drop the tomato paste, use half as much carrots and potatoes. maybe knock back the beer to a cup even...that should be more stew-like, I'm thinking.

Spoilerriffic! Seafall, game 13

Yeah, this game didn't go terribly well for anybody, excepting the player who started in second... he burned through nearly all of the research cards he had accumulated, did a fair amount of tomb raiding, and racked up glory like nobody's business.  Worse, he outdid my own "overkill" maneuver from a prior game... having met the score target, he also came into possession of a new tablet, which gave him the first "decode" of one of the hidden entries on the tombs map, which turned out to be the "Secret of Gold" milestone, worth an extra 6 glory.

Not everything went their way though... coordinated efforts from a couple of other players managed to sink one of his ships and relieve him of the relic he was carrying.  In the meantime, I managed to relieve another player of another tablet, improving my position in that race.  So, glad that game's behind me, but next game... as always, it should be entertaining, but I think we're likely to see some major changes coming as well, once I start "sharing" tablets with the current Princess and work to regain that title for myself.

Instant Pot experiments: Beef Stew, take 1

One of the things I got for Christmas is an Instant Pot.  For those unfamiliar with the concept, it's a saute-capable, slow/pressure cooker combo with electronic controls and presets... pretty much, it's made for cooking whatever you want, however works best, with a minimum of dishes to do after.  Well, I mean, it's not built for grilling or broiling, but it does have rice-cooker and cake (!) settings, so it's pretty versatile.

After a failed attempt at one of the recipes included with the device (a refried beans variant, which I blame on the ancient beans I have in my cupboard), I figured I should try something I would get more use out of... and Beef Stew sprang to mind.  It's been years since I dusted off my old recipe, so I started out by looking around online for recipes... and there are several, each with their own twist to the basics, usually involving something I don't have floating around my pantry already.  As such, I figured it couldn't hurt to try my hand at making just a "basic" beef stew for my first attempt, and iterate from there... so, here's what I came up with:

• Prepare a beef bouillon cube in 1c. of water (mug and Keurig works for this)
• Heat Instant Pot on Saute setting
• Add 2T butter, allow to melt before adding
• 1 medium onion, quartered... knock it about a bit while it softens to separate layers.  Once it starts to soften, add
• 1 lb. stew beef, cubed.  Brown in butter on all sides (and of course, the occasional stirring will help further separate the onion).  Once browned, add
• 2T flour, stir to combine (basically a roux), by the time all's said and done the bottom of the pot should look basically dry, with some residue on the bottom. At this point, add
• 1 12-oz. bottle of beer (Fat Tire Belgian Style Ale this time) and use it to deglaze the bottom (it's going to be a "by feel" process, but the pot is deep enough that the presence of beef and onion chunks shouldn't matter much).
• Add the remaining ingredients:
  • 1T Worcestershire sauce
  • 1T Soy sauce
  • 1t Rosemary
  • 1t Thyme
  • 1 lb. baby carrots (or, if you want the extra prep work and leftover carrots, just 1 lb. peeled and cut)
  • about 1 lb. russet potatos (3-4), peeled and quartered
• Stir to combine... should end up with everything mostly submerged, but not a lot of excess liquid.
• Cancel out the saute mode on the pot, put on/lock the lid, and hit the Meat/Stew button... there will be a delay while the pot comes up to pressure, after which the program cooks for 35 minutes.
• If you try to wait for things to cool down and de-pressurize on their own... well, you'll be waiting a while.  I tried waiting for 15 minutes with the pot's "keep warm" function going, and another 10 or so with it turned off, before resorting to the "quick release" valve.

End result was... pretty good, actually.  Meat and veg were all cooked to perfection,  the soup maybe a bit on the thin side, and a good basic flavor, but with room for improvement.  Things to keep in mind for the next attempt:

• All the things I neglected/forgot from my original recipe this time around... don't know how much garlic would add to this, but it couldn't hurt.  Salt was pretty well covered by the bouillon cube, but pepper was definitely missing.  Mushrooms, of course... if needed, could easily cut back on the carrots to make that happen.  Bay leaf or steak sauce?  Both called for in my original recipe, again don't know how much difference either would make.
• Darker beer might improve the body of the soup and alter the flavor profile a bit.  Or, if I really want to get experimental, a nice ginger beer instead could get interesting...
• Other recipes than mine call for other add-ins... Tomato Paste I could see as a good thing (in fact, I was going to add that this time, but let's just say the ancient can in my pantry didn't age well and leave it at that).  Paprika?  Brown sugar (reinforces the ginger beer idea a bit)?  Vinegar?  Sage?  Dried Parsley?
• Of course, there's always room for process improvements as well... I think cutting the onion into 8 would make sense from a getting-layers-to-release-early standpoint, without going to the bother of chopping (and I do like the large onion bits in the final product).  Also, I should definitely be in less of a hurry to both get to the deglazing, and to finish the deglazing... but in my defense, I was pretty hungry when I embarked on this last time!  Lastly, on the final stir, be more aggressive... ended up with much more meat at the bottom of the pot last time I did this, which isn't entirely bad, but more even distribution never hurts.