The Graduate

In the last 24 hours, I watched The Graduate for the very first time. As a movie, I truly appreciate all the acclaim bestowed upon The Graduate. Few films in history have managed to paint such a vivid portrait of a character. After an hour and forty-seven minutes, I feel like I know Benjamin Braddock as well as I know my own brother. His growth over the course of the film, from a shell-shocked, wide-eyed kid not even old enough to drink, into a confident, charismatic young man who is in control of himself and his emotions (if not his life in general) is marked and remarkable. Unfortunately, I don’t much care for Benjamin Braddock the character.

Braddock is seen as an archetype of the baby boom generation. He is disillusioned with the vision of America that his parents created, and unprepared to deal with the pressures they place on him now that he has entered adulthood. He is a little worried about his future, but he doesn’t seem all that interested in doing something about it. That is, until he gets to know the Robinson family. His relationship with Mrs. Robinson is pretty weird, but I guess I can understand why he would do it. She is a hard woman to say no to. On the other hand, his relationship with Elaine is pure petulance. He wants to be with her simply because her mother forbids it. Or should I say simply because his current lover forbids it? The fact that both of those statements are true is more than a little icky.

By the end of the movie, Braddock is a self-obsessed hound-dog who will do and say whatever it takes to get what he wants, no matter the consequences to other people. If he really was a defining character of that generation, it’s no surprise that our younger generations will be left cleaning up the Baby Boomers’ mess long after they are gone.

In truth, however, Braddock is the unchanging portrait of the early-twenties American suburban WASP. The accusations lobbed at him have been repeated to every generation since the Baby Boomers. Lazy, directionless, self-absorbed. And where does he get the money to pay for all those nights in that hotel room? What does it say that Benjamin Braddock could easily be a Gen-Xer, or a Millennial? It says that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Perhaps this should give me hope. After all, Baby Boomer Benjamin Braddock and his contemporaries now run the country. I am Millennial Benjamin Braddock, and I look at my parents’ generation with a blank stare when they say to me, “One word - Plastics.” In the real world, Benjamin Braddock has become just like his father. It stands to reason that since I stand in Benjamin Braddock’s shoes today, I will someday follow in his footsteps and look down on my children as lazy and aimless.

Except this metaphor is flawed. I am not Benjamin Braddock. I would not make the same choices he did. I understand that boring people like me don’t make for good book and movie characters. If you wrote a book about my life so far, you would have trouble selling it to dentists to put in their waiting rooms. I understand why the Benjamin Braddocks of the literary world exist. They make for fun stories. It discourages me a little bit, however, that the world is run by Benjamin Braddocks.

Smoked Turkey

Yesterday, I smoked a turkey. Well, just a turkey breast, if you want to be picky.

A few weeks ago, I made a roasted tomatillo salsa (the whole salsa was roasted, not just the tomatillos). Since I had to make a trip through the produce department, I grabbed two onions and two red peppers. I put the red pepper on the grill with the rest of the veggies for the salsa, and threw the onions in a pan to caramelize them. Always good to have roasted reds and caramelized onions on hand, right?

Searching for something to do with them, my wife mentioned that she had a hankering (my words, not hers) for a turkey sandwich with smoked gouda and roasted red peppers. I'm not the kind of guy to pair good cheese, fresh ingredients and good bread with deli counter lunch meat, so I wanted to prepare my own turkey. I am also working on my smoking chops, as is everyone else these days. I have successfully smoked a couple of chicken breasts on our grill, but I wanted to step up my game. The results were...encouraging.

I read several recipes online that involved complicated brines. Unfortunately I do not have the patience or the cold space to store the turkey in a brine. Besides, I looked at the bag, and saw that it was packed in a solution of salt, sugar and water. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's a brine, right? Besides, I was more concerned with smoking it properly than I was with getting the world's best finished product. You learn to play an instrument with etudes, not with the masterworks, you know what I mean?

I want to get a smoker for our back porch eventually, but what good is a smoker if you don't really know how to use it, right? I wanted to try my hand at some smaller smoking projects before I stepped into the real world. Currently, we have your standard three-burner propane grill. But isn't a smoker just wood chips (chunks, logs) fired by some heat source to produce a flavorful smoke that permeates and flavors the meat you are smoking? As I found out, a propane grill might be the perfect smoking tool for the non-expert.

To provide the smoke, I bought a bag of chips from the supermarket (hey, non-expert here), and used a couple of disposable aluminum loaf pans to hold them, with perforated heavy duty foil as a lid. Below is an after picture, because I didn't think to take photos during. Didn't expect it to become a post, you know.

The bag said a turkey of this weight should be roasted at 325 for about three hours, so I needed to figure out how to adjust that time for a 250-degree smoking environment. It ended up spending two hours in the smoker and then as long as it took to finish in the oven. Two hours of smoking required four of these little boxes of chips. I soaked the first round, but the decision to go beyond an hour in the smoker was made on the fly, so I didn't soak the second round ahead of time.

I put the turkey in a cast iron pan on one side of the grill, and I took the grate off the other side. I only lit the indirect burner and put it on low. Once I had figured out where my knob needed to be to maintain 250 degrees, I put these boxes of chips directly on the burner cover. The first two were there for about an hour before they were all burned up, and the second two covered the second hour. With the lid closed, it was almost like I had a real smoker.

The end result was a turkey that was obviously smoked, but maybe not thoroughly smoked. If I were to do something that big again, I would probably want a real smoker with a wood fire box on the side. I wouldn't want to waste the propane that a three or four hour smoking session would require (or even longer for a brisket). I know propane-powered smokers exist, but I am a purist.

The resulting sandwich was as follows:

Smoked turkey, (not smoked) gouda, spinach, roasted red peppers, caramelized onions and mayo on a whole wheat roll. No pictures - they were gobbled up much too quickly to have gotten a photo first.

As I mentioned earlier, for someone who wants to smoke meat but doesn't have the chops or the cash to invest in a true smoker, the regular old propane grill is definitely the way to go. The heat source is VERY easily controllable, which is a must when smoking. Less than 200 and you will probably have a hard time burning the wood, and above about 275 you are roasting, not smoking. Electric smokers exist, but they are uni-taskers. Wood-fired smokers usually have a place to put coals if you want to grill instead, and guess what - my propane grill is a grill if you want to grill instead, too. An electric smoker can only smoke. Only running one burner just a tick above low, my propane tank, which had been used quite a bit before yesterday, is still kicking. I dare say I have found a new hobby.

Android App Developer?

I became an Android App developer. Or at least an aspiring app developer. Those are practically the same thing, right?

My idea is a simple one, and the execution hopefully isn't all that difficult. It's a simple little text-based game, based on the complete lunacy (and I say this with all the love I can possibly muster) of a guy I used to work with. He is the living, breathing, embodiment of the millennial generation. His daily dose of crazy is sadly missing in my life.

So look out, world. Get ready for Junior (the App).