Misc.

Satuday’s and Sunday’s are for Nascar and a pot o beans. I get out the old cast iron dutch oven and soak some beans. My friends and family are always asking for my recipe. Well, there really is no recipe as I just soak whichever beans look good to me – usually decided by their color and dependent on my mood. Ingredients are decided in the same way and dependent on availability. I have been accused of holding my recipe’s back. Once again, I say, there is no recipe I just throw whatever in the pot.

I learned how to make beans while camping and fishing with friends. Some from Maine, others from Arkansas with many of them born in the 1890’s.

This subject, cooking beans, led me on an internet quest to find out how many types of beans there are. I have quite a collection but how many are there really? There are over 14,000 species of the Fabaceae family (formerly called Leguminosae) but only some 20 types are actually grown in any quantity as a human food. Each type as many varieties. I have started to compile a list – I know – retentive.

If you have read this far you might like these recipe’s from old cookbooks:

Pork and Beans
–Take two quarts of dried white beans, (the small ones are best,) pick out any imperfections, and put them to soak in cold water, more than to cover them, let them remain one night; the next day, about two hours before dinner time, throw off the water; have a pound of nicely corned pork, a rib piece is best; put the beans in an iron dinner-pot; score the rind or skin of the pork, in squares or diamonds, and lay it on the beans, put in hot (not boiling) water to them, add a small dried red pepper, or a saltspoon-ful of cayenne; cover the pot close, and set it over a gentle fire for one hour; then take a tin basin, or earthen pudding-pan, rub the inside over with a bit of butter, and nearly fill it with the boiled beans, lay the pork in the centre, pressing it down a little; put small bits of butter over the beans, dredge a little flour oer them, and the pork, and set it in a moderately hot oven, for nearly one hour…”
—Mrs. Crowen’s American Lady’s Cook Book [New York] 1847 (p. 115)

Mrs. Goodfellows Cookery, 1865

What would beans be without Johnnie Cakes (Hoe Cakes) that Confederate soldiers enjoyed with their meals.

Johnnie Cakes

two cups of cornmeal
2/3 cup of milk
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon of salt

Mix ingredients into a stiff batter and form eight dodgers (biscuit-sized). Spoon the batter into hot cooking oil in a frying pan over a low flame. Remove the corn dodgers and let cool on a paper towel, spread with a little butter or molasses.

Now that the EPA has decided that my Teflon coated cookware (not the cheap stuff either) needs to go I might just convert back to the old cast iron ware. NO perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) lurks in my old skillet. Just think how much stronger my arms will become lifting the pans and pots off ceiling rack. Now there is another problem the rack. Ok, switch to a wall rack.

I remember how to “season” the cast iron skillets. My favorite bean pot (Dutch Oven) was recently re-seasoned. It is rather a challenge on a boring rainy day, see how well seasoned you can get your skillet, how shinny the surface is when you are done. Cast iron gets hotter than my Teflon skillets do. I always figured that settling for less browned chicken was better than stuck like glue onions and potato’s.

I have never read an article about cast iron pans being carcinogenic. My grandmothers cooking never found its way into the drinking water or polar bears. Although a California bear did get supper one night while we camped. My Grandfather banged a skillet with a spoon to scare the bear and just about everyone else in camp.

There is stainless steel cookware. However, it has been found in studies to release substances such as nickel, molybdenum, or chromium that can cause allergic reactions.
Ceramic-coated pots chip. Aluminum pans make the food taste funny.

My egg skillets coating has reached its end of proper functioning. I guess I will visit the local thrift store and buy one of the cast iron skillets like the one I donated years ago.

Sometimes to progress forward you have to look backwards.

The bots are marching on, and on, and on, as my firewall log screen is almost rolling. Yesterday and the day before, I had more warnings in one hour than I usually get in one day. The botnet was working overtime.

A botnet is a collection of computers that are running programs ( usually worms, Trojan horses) on computers that have been compromised/infected and are now under the control of someone else other than their owner. They discreetly take hold of a user’s computer on and remain hidden while they launch their malicious attacks. Typically, a botnet can range in size between 10,000 and 100,000 infected machines.

I traced back (ping) the source IP addresses in my warning log and a pattern emerged. Almost all of attempts originated in China – no surprise there. But, what is going on that all of a sudden I see this increase and is it happening all over or did my poor little computer let down it’s guard long enough to get noticed?

Tue Mar 7, Reuters, in an article titled “Cyber criminals stepping up targeted attacks”

“China is also fast turning into a major source of botnet attacks likely due to the rapid growth in broadband Internet connections there, the report said.
During the last six months of the year, botnet attacks originating in China soared 153 percent, which is 72 percentage points above the average increase, the report said.

I read an article a while back (can not remember where, sorry) that made a case supporting the idea that this problem would grow in proportion to the Chinese governments censorship of it’s citizens internet access. The more desperately the citizens wanted to find a way past government controls on access more botnets would be created. More firewall warnings and infections of Western computer systems would lead to the Western worlds blocking of Chinese IP addresses. And round and round it would go. A firewall of it’s own.
Make sure your firewall is properly set up, and, anti virus and operating systems have the latest updates installed. And, do not use your dogs name as a password for your blog.

Check your firewall security here: Shieldsup

Create a secure password here: Password Checker Mircrosoft

Live information on latest threats: DShield

Just one of the IP’s that have busy with my firewall has 383126 reports of abuse against it at one reporting service.