Making Biltong

Biltong is a South African dried meat, similar to jerky, but it’s dried at room temperature. It is phenomenally tasty. Here is my guide on making biltong (videos to follow).

  1. Obtain London broil. Cut broil into strips about an inch thick.  Thinner will dry faster, but it shrinks down as it dries.
  2. Spray or rub meat with a brown vinegar (apple cider is most often recommended)
  3. Sprinkle coarse salt on all sides of meat (optional sprinkle some coriander and black pepper at the same time)
  4. Refrigerate overnight; pour off any water that comes out of the meat
  5. Scrape most of the salt off; add a little more vinegar
  6. Season with 4 parts coriander to 1 part black pepper (I also put about ½ part salt; you can add other spices to taste)
  7. Hang meat in a cool, dry place for 4 – 7 days to taste (thicker takes longer; drier takes longer)
  8. When ready to test, remove meat and cut off a few slices
  9. Store…hahahaha…okay, just eat.

Tips/insights

  1. Traditionally it is done in the dry season under trees. The purpose of the coriander was to keep flies off the meat.
  2. Biltong has been eaten as long as fifteen years later with no deleterious effects.
  3. An air conditioned home is the perfect temp/dryness for making biltong. Alternatively, your garage in January would probably fit the bill.
  4. To hang the meat, I strung a line with knots tied in it (to keep the meat from sliding and touching each other) across a walk in closet. I used large paper clips as hooks for the meat (boil them if you feel like it, since they will be touching parts of the meat that did not receive the vinegar/salt treatment. If you have a closet with wire shelving, the wire shelving is a perfect place to dry it.
  5. Alternatively, you can make a biltong box to dry it in: box with a low watt bulb and a fan with dowels in it to hang the meat from. You can make one or buy one. But this raises the temperature slightly because of the bulb.
  6. Or you can do it in a spare bathroom (the shower bar makes a great rack) but don’t do it if you take showers in the bathrooms as it increases the humidity too much.
  7. Turning on a fan will help to dry the biltong faster.
  8. Some people like their biltong drier and some like it wetter. Generally beef is made a little wetter, while game (like elk, antelope) is made drier. You can gauge the dryness by the redness: pinker/redder = wetter; blacker = drier.
  9. A friend from South Africa says my biltong is pretty spot-on, and some friends who have lived in South Africa say they like my biltong better than what they got in South Africa.
  10. Your wife may think you are crazy for doing this and worry about bugs in the house. Don’t worry; they are not going near your meat.
  11. Fun fact: MS Word’s spell check contains the word biltong.

Here are some other videos on making biltong:

This series is the most informative. Unfortunately, it’s not done yet:

  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DltkGVzqrWI
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhdJmFZomks
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uOHCbHQwFM
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HANx8a0p8E
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJvynEvhQVM
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj578FsdvTs

In the closet:

  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-BOsNA6NDU

In the bathroom:

  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwvVZJpmNCw

With a biltong box:

  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb-YwyLTQTo

Profit is not a dirty word

Another reason not to send your child to school.

The primary purpose of school is conformity. Children who do not conform are labeled slow, dumb, troublemakers. One of the major themes of indoctrination is that of selfless cooperation, volunteerism, altruism. They are taught that profits are selfish, crass, even immoral. Students displaying entrepreneurial bent are especially singled out for conformity training and medication. In reality, most of the good in the world is not the work of selfless volunteers, but the work of profit seeking entrepreneurs. These heroes seek out humanity’s unmet needs and find innovative ways to meet them, improving the lives of billions of people, thus fulfilling the words of Jesus, “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.” – Mark 9:35

In this video, Cameron Herold tells his story and gives tips for encouraging your child’s inner entrepreneur.

My favorite tip:

Don’t give your child an allowance or even pay him to do chores. That simply teaches him to be dependent. Instead, allow him to find things that need to be done and come to you with them and negotiate a fee for their completion. This teaches him to be observant, proactive, and incentivizes performance.

Fun with Selective Colorization

I’ve been fascinated with photo editing for a long time. Recently, I’ve been experimenting with sepia tones and selective colorization. Here’s my latest masterpiece. It’s pretty nifty. You have to click on the photo to get the full effect.

logan3a_med.jpg
And another:
Logan's Eye in Sepia

Video Introduction to Austrian Economics

An Introduction to Austrian Economics

by Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Jörg Guido Hülsmann

Mises and the Austrian School by Jörg Guido Hülsmann

Value, Utility and Price by Jörg Guido Hülsmann

Division of Labor and Money by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

The Theory of Banking by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Capital and Interest by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Praxeology: The Austrian Method, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Business Cycle Theory, by Jörg Guido Hülsmann

The Economics of Deflation, by Jörg Guido Hülsmann

Theory and History, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

The Foundations of Welfare Economics, by Jörg Guido Hülsmann

Law and Economics, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Hans-Hermann Hoppe [send him mail] is distinguished fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and founder and president of the Property and Freedom Society. His books include Democracy: The God That Failed. Visit his website. Jörg Guido Hülsmann [send him mail] is senior fellow of the Mises Institute and author of Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism. He teaches in France, at Université d’Angers. See his website. See his Mises archive.

How to tie a bow

Here’s a little video for all the husbands and fathers out there who have daughters who want them to tie “pretty bows” for their dresses.

Black sapote

One of my hobbies/interests of late has been producing my own food. I’m starting small with fruit trees. One of my first scouting trips took me to Excalibur Fruit Trees where among other things I was exposed to the Black Sapote. The owner told us that when ripe, the fruit actually tastes like chocolate pudding. She gave us an unripe fruit to take home and try. This video records the reaction of my parents trying it for the first time.

Okay, now that you’ve seen the video, the fruit doesn’t have that much flavor. It is very mild but does taste mildly of watered down cocoa without much sugar. The owner told us she likes to add sugar and mix it with cool whip. Alternatively, she likes to put it in baked goods, especially banana bread.