It is so cool that we all love love love Alton Brown. Unlike some other Food Network stars (and I won't name names), Alton's recipes have never failed to produce excellent results. Have you tried making his chewy chocolate chip cookies? Be warned though, making these cookies might make it impossible for you to ever eat or enjoy non-Alton-chewy-chocolate-chip cookies. I swear no other chocolate chip cookies live up to these. Hmmmm.... I think I have something new on my schedule now for tomorrow. CoOkIeS! (If you make them, I'd suggest baking for only 8-10 minutes, not 14!). But back to the jerky... the jerky is awesome. Of course I have very little basis for comparison because this is my first ever jerky (not just first ever homemade, but first actual jerky of any type). Kevin assures me that it is on par with very good store bought jerky. Yes, your place stinks up like meat during the drying process, so I wouldn't recommend doing this in the winter or other times when you have your house/apartment all closed up. You definitely want the windows open, but the smell disappears quickly after the drying (or maybe we've just become accustomed to it). Other than the smell, the process is so easy. Kevin wants to try again making a more peppery-spicy marinade, and I want to make a more garlicy marinade. But as soon as we find a cheaper supplier of furnace filters (Loew's is much too expensive for frequent jerkying... of course the filters reusable, but with the meat smell, not good for long term storage. In other words, you can keep reusing the same filters for continuous jerkying, but if you aren't going to jerky for a couple of days/weeks... get new filters), we'll be doing more jerkying.
No knitting yesterday, I've been bit by the cleaning bug. Not just the cleaning bug, but the clean-and-purge bug. The cleaning bug alone means some cleaning but not much change. The clean-and-purge bug means lots of trash, recycling, and emptier cleaner rooms. Our storage room was cleaned over the weekend and you can now walk about 3/4 of the way into it without splunking gear. Last night I cleaned out the front/sun room (which had also been primarily storage requiring mountain climbing gear to enter). Now it is totally accessible and with a quick reorganization of the yarn stash (Ha! that's never quick), I'll post some pictures of it because I actually can set up (and use) my sewing machine in there. (I really ought to have taken some before pictures). Unfortunately the clean-and-purge bug needs to be put on hold until Monday when Kevin and I can haul an old dead huge TV (which has been sitting in our bedroom for 2 years) and some useless dead computer monitors and assorted equipment to the monthly consumer electronics drop-off. We've been meaning to do this for a loooooooooong time, but didn't know when or where to drop the stuff off. After asking around and searching on the internet, we found a county program and then missed the monthly day for several months. This month, we'll be there! Hopefully after the electronics are gone (and hopefully the clean-and-purge bug will still be around, because sometimes these motivations are fleeting), I'll still be motivated to attack the closet stuffed full of crap, to weed out and donate clothes I don't wear, and to weed out and donate books that are taking up space in the bookcase (so I can reorganize my knitting books!).
Finally, yesterday I went for a 9.9 mile bike ride around one of the local parks, so be expecting a photo essay of biking in the park in a future post (when I remember to take my camera on my next bike ride).