Month: June 2008

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Great Wild Bird Rub!

from my hunting days
I was thumbing my way through a huntin’ magazine recently and some great animal eater was talking about a ‘great rub’ (‘seasoning for you non-cooks) that took me back to the days where I would actually hunt and bring back wonderful game. You see here in California, they try to discourage such practices.

In any event, I found this seasoning recipe that took me to the kitchen to put it together… it was simple and didn’t need much tinkering… but wonderful… try it on your next chicken or turkey breast you barbecue! Here are the basic proportions:

8 tablespoons sea salt

4 teaspoons ground garlic powder

4 teaspoons coriander

2 teaspoons white pepper

4 teaspoons ground coffee

Brings me back to Houston!

Roger Freberg

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Cal Poly Graduation : “Be Coul, dude ! “

President Warren Baker of Cal poly in full regalia!Cal Poly’s administration is fraught with troubles. Terrible troubles, indeed! The fact is that a massive wave of ‘coulrophobia’ has surged over the campus, sending faculty to their drawing tables!

The dictum has come down from on high: “NO MORE CLOWNS!”

However, from what I hear, a celebratory ‘t-shirt’ is being produced to reduce the coulrophobes anxiety through what Psychologists refer to as ‘flooding!’ I can only imagine what it might look like… maybe something like what is pictured here, allegedly of our Cal Poly campus President and otherwise great guy, Warren Baker.

Obviously, there are more issues than a ‘fear of clowns’ pervading the administration tower. There is a fear of not connecting their link firmly enough with that bastion of human rights Saudi Arabia. We give them advanced engineering technology… and they give us?

Meanwhile in clown central, the current Dean of Engineering has singled me out for special consideration in a memo sent wide and far to his “leadership team”. As readers of my blog know, I do not work at Cal Poly, so this special recognition is a great honor…. Indeed!

So when I received a copy of the memo that Dean Mohammad Noori sent to the world of Cal Poly Engineering… I looked with anticipation to see if it mentioned my name? Ahhhh… and here are parts of it…

Is this BIG Givernment McCathyism or what?
Obviously, I wrote him back and said that I said no such thing… I really didn’t … although I brushed it off thinking that Mohammad seemed distraught, overwrought and in dire need of a ‘clown suit’ to cheer himself up!

Although I found the memo darkly amusing, the concept of a state entity potentially unleashing the troops against a private citizen is disturbing. This resembles concept of ‘McCarthyism’ which has been characterized by many as an abuse of governmental authority over private citizens… so did Mohammad step over the line by mentioning me in such a derogatory way to his ‘colleagues’ in an official Cal Poly memo? What was he really asking them to do?

Makes you think…. because I have been here before.
Roger Freberg

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YOUR space & MySpace

Rogers MySpace

Okay, I finally put up a MySpace page for no other reason than to show the next generation of family members that I could do it too!

Here it is!

I think it has some value for folks that already have web sites of their own because it is a venue by which one generation searches for their friends… add to this Facebook and a young professional’s site is complete. My daughter Karen has links to both of her sites to sites on Facebook and Myspace.

Interestingly enough, MySpace asks you several times what you want your ‘myspace url’ to be … and warns you that it can not be changed! Hopefully this prevents naming a site that one might be a bit embarrassed about later on.

The Internet is staying interesting

Roger Freberg

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the Art of Russian Cuisine

Classic Russian Cooking!

Here is a great cookbook that not everyone is familiar ….”Classic Russian Cooking” by Elena Molokhovet … A gift to young housewives. Originally published around 1861, this book was held as ‘decadent’ and viewed as a curiosity during much of the Soviet regime where the variety of foodstuffs were limited and seasonings nearly non existent.

Today this book stands out as one of the truly marvelous additions to modern cooking , providing wonderful glimpses into an age gone by where time, effort and quality made a difference in cuisine!

Obviously, before I dived into the cookbook, I thumbed my way to find:

Beef Stroganoff with Mustanrd (Govjadina po-strogaonovski, s gorchiseju ) which contained the central themes of every Stroganoff …although much simpler… with ‘allspice”, sour cream and “Sareptskaja” mustard! This type of mustard is also known as Indian Mustard or Brown Mustard (Brassica Juncea) and can be found growing in the United States and considered , interestingly enough , a ‘weed.’

This is certainly a cookbook that won’t break the bank as you can probably pick it up for 20 – 30 dollars on Amazon.

One common criticism of Elena’s recipes was that they ‘contained too many ingredients and required too much time in preparation.” However, I did not find this the case, unless you unfortunately prefer one of those 30 meals in 30 minute books.

This is for someone who enjoys exploring another time…

Roger Freberg