Ploafmaster General

Resurfacing an old post because it’s that time of year…

ploafmaster.com/2014/11/3…

The best part of Thanksgiving for me this year was celebrating at home. The last time we were here was 2020, so not having to drive? Great. Cooking a nice, full meal in my own kitchen? The best. It was mostly simple, but I can’t remember the last time I had the chance to make a large scale meal. So here’s what we had and how it was:

• Turkey: I tried to get fancy here, and it didn’t quite pay off. I dry-cured a few thighs and legs for 2 nights over a week ago and poached it all in chicken fat for 5 hours. It hung out in the fridge until today when I warmed it enough to liquify the fat. I threw the turkey under the broiler to crisp up the skin. It was…pretty good—but not so good that I feel like it was worth the trouble. I still have some left and it’s back in the fridge with the cooking fat where it can hang out for up to a few more weeks. We’ll see whether it improves…
• Rolls: I don’t really bake, so I just bought some brioche dinner rolls from Whole Foods. They were pretty good for store-bought rolls and served their purpose of sopping up gravy just fine.
• Cous cous: My kids requested this because they don’t like mashed potatoes (like…seriously…). But it’s quick and easy to make it. I use pearl cous cous, and I toasted it in some of the poaching fat before cooking it in some turkey stock. I only tasted it to make sure it was good. The kids seemed to enjoy it.
• Stuffing: Just a bag of Pepperidge Farm cornbread stuffing. This is mostly because Valerie wants stuffing, but I eat some, too, and leave out the onion/celery. I do add celery seed and dried garlic to get some of that flavor, and I used my fresh turkey stock for the cooking liquid and a little of the turkey’s poaching fat when I baked it in a dish. It’s fine, but mostly it’ll be nice when I use it in turkey hash with the leftovers.
• Cranberry sauce: the jelly stuff in a can. My wife and daughter’s request. My son and I don’t really eat it.
• Gravy: I always forget how dang long it takes for the gravy to thicken up. I try to use just enough flour in my roux, but that means more time on the stove. The fat here was also some of the poaching fat, and of course more stock to add volume. Pretty good, but not my best.
• Mashed potatoes: Necessary, and boy do I still got it. This is probably my wife’s favorite part of Thanksgiving dinner, so I always get her approval before I call them “done”. They were fantastic.
• Brussels sprouts: Accidentally the most successful part of dinner. I can roast some tasty sprouts, but this time I a) tossed them with some of the poaching fat in addition to olive oil, added some lemon zest but, crucially, tossed them with some lemon juice when they came out of the oven. Balanced, roasted just right, and delicious. My wife and I loved them, and maybe some day I’ll get the kids to try them :-P
• Dessert: My wife got a free apple pie from a rep at work, but we’re all pretty wiped out after the meal, so we’re saving it for tomorrow.

Now we’re all loafing in the family room while we digest. Probably gonna fall into a food coma in the next hour or so…

I’ve had way more coffee than I usually do and I am flyyyyyiiiiing

I can tell which of my friends don’t do much/any of the Thanksgiving cooking when I see their turkey day bike rides on Strava…while I’m in the kitchen :-P

After I stumbled upon the in-progress painting of buffered bike lanes on Dumbarton Road during today’s ride, I started wondering about what Henrico County has going on with bike infrastructure. Like so many American localities, Henrico’s bike lanes are a disjointed, often ponderous collection of paths, two-way cycle tracks, and paint-as-infrastructure. But I ride around the greater Richmond metro area a lot, and so I see the progress—such as it is—as it happens.

Well I finally did the sensible thing and hit the ol' web search, and found Henrico County’s bike page. They have links to their current map of bike infrastructure and a draft bike plan map. The current map says it was updated in May 2025, but I’ve already seen a few areas with new lanes and cycle tracks from the draft plan map. The draft plan is ambitious, and the county page on bike infrastructure doesn’t really indicate what’s in progress or actually approved to move forward, but I’m happy to see these projects as they are implemented. For now, you can check their projects page. It includes all DPW projects, even the car-centric stuff, but you can see bike and pedestrian work on there.

Nice new bike lanes (paint only, so far) in Henrico on either side of Dumbarton Road from Brook all the way to Byrdhill. It would be pretty great if the city continued this on Azalea all the way east to the racetrack.

Shakedown ride on the resurrected Space Horse is a ding dang treat.

So, uh…new Strong Bad Email for the first time in years!?

This is my first Thanksgiving at home since 2021 and most of the food will be kinda simple/standard: mashed potatoes, cranberry jelly, cornbread stuffing, roasted Brussels sprouts, turkey gravy. The kids wanted couscous so I’ll make that with some of the turkey stock. But the turkey itself? I’m trying a confit using almost entirely chicken fat. It’s already been in the fridge for a while, and on the holiday I’ll extract it from the fat and crisp it up under the broiler. This isn’t my first time cooking with this method, but the first time with turkey for sure. I’m sure I didn’t invent this and it could all be a bust, but I’m excited to see how it turns out.

I never liked them when the downtown Lowe’s first got them, but I seriously hate the proliferation of these telescopic security camera stands with flashing, blue, fake cop lights. I see them all over the place in Richmond these days, from construction sites to parking lots.

Okay package thief, I hope you enjoy your ill-gotten aerosol cans of brake cleaner and Boshield T-9 rust protector.

My mother-in-law lives in Wilmington, NC. Well, outside Wilmington in a suburb called Leland. It’s nothing but freshly expanding exurban sprawl with stroads and isolated subdivision neighborhoods spreading into formerly rural wetlands. In the roughly 15 years that she’s lived here I had mostly written off this town as not having much of an interesting coffee scene. But now as her time in the region draws to a close, I have coffee on my face.

Many years ago we stumbled upon Bespoke on Princess Street downtown. They served Counter Culture at the time (but switched to Black and White eventually) and provided the sort of coffee bar experience I enjoy. I think there were a couple of other places in town that weren’t Port City Java (regional Starbucks wannabe) but were more of a “place to get breakfast and coffee with it” than a place for fussy coffee dorks like me. I’m sure I’ve missed some things, but Bespoke was close enough to Leland that it was easy for us to pop over there when visiting my mother-in-law. So I just sort of grew comfortable with what we knew and stopped looking.

We’re almost done with a weekend in North Carolina for my mother-in-law’s birthday, and yesterday morning we went to Bespoke. Some time in the past year they changed ownership and, while they still have a full coffee bar, the concept has dramatically shifted. The interior is more of a dark cocktail bar, and the vibe on a Saturday morning is off. I still had good espresso and the pastries they have now are a markéd improvement (from a new-ish place called Pie Slayer that seems awesome), but the shift in atmosphere shocked me out of my stupor and got me looking again.

Well it seems like there’s plenty of good coffee to be had around town now, and I need only have looked. Years ago. There’s a place called Maven that roasts specialty coffee in town, but I ran out of time to check them out. And this morning I drove way out to Ogden (30 minutes from Leland) to Casa Blanca since they were open on Sunday, and they just flat-out rule. Solid espresso and cortado, and really nice pour over on my way out. I bought a bag of beans to take back up to Richmond.

I suppose the lesson for me—which I should have learned already when I was shocked out of complacency in Richmond this year!—is to always keep an eye out for what’s going on in a town’s coffee scene. I like to be a good regular customer at places I enjoy, but I still like checking out new joints when they arrive. I’m sure I’ll have to re-learn the same lesson in the future!

Always a little upsetting when I watch cycling videos from people in Germany, New Zealand, Malaysia, Japan, etc. and they’re all complaining about the same things I do with drivers and bike lanes and what-not. It can be especially bad in the US, but it’s bad everywhere.

Sitting two rooms away from my mother-in-law at her house, slowly developing an eye twitch as I hear the absolutely alarming bullshit blaring from Fox News on the television.

Parents (me included) love introducing their children to favorite media. My wife and I showed our first born Star Wars movies perhaps a bit too early. Between both of our kids we’re at various stages of introducing The Simpsons, superhero movies, Clueless, etc. I’m pretty sure we’ll start watching Gilmore Girls with the middle schooler in the near future, while my son—more tolerant of frightening stuff—has started enjoying MonsterVerse movies.

But at some point this past year our daughter introduced us to something new: Mummy Joe, by way of a li’l green undead fella named Zobny. Our entire family still loves this video, and we eagerly check out every new one that comes out. Sometimes it’s a baby reading your horoscope or a poor, confused skellyton. We even enjoy digging through the back catalog, learning about Deathface the Horsey, weewee, or the full Kid Vampire saga.

But there’s one video that, while maintaining the general goofy nature of Mummy Joe, hits a bit emotionally harder. And that’s about Blorgween:

This video has all the Mummy Joe hallmarks: silly mispronunciations/spellings, tight and cohesive storytelling, and bit of realness wrapped up in absurd humor. But it also digs deep on the feelings of fading childhood and the loss of innocence that comes along with acquiring knowledge and maturity. That sounds pretty “exitenshal” I guess, but it’s neatly presented with the right mix of humor and melancholy.

I fear I’ve started down a dark path…I just purchased my first bike component from eBay (a Shimano 600 Arabesque front derailleur).

After a year since his last video Eric Marth returns with a gorgeous and clever resto-mod of this early 70’s Raleigh.

Today is my wife’s birthday! Happy birthday Valerie!!!

I’ve lived in Richmond since 1999, but only in the past 7-ish years have we started to see some decent bagel shops opening around town. I’m a Jersey-born bagel lover who’s had my fair share of tasty dough rings around the tristate area. I’m not an expert, but those are my bona fides. Here’s my current Richmond, VA bagel rankings, highest to lowest (not for fidelity, but rather just how good they are for texture, plain flavor, etc.):

1. Julio’s - I’m lucky enough to live super close to this place, and their coffee bar is excellent, but the bagels themselves edge out Chewy’s just a bit. This is probably down to preference in flavor. But it’s an excellent sourdough base making for a bagel that’s delicious even when it’s a plain one without any schmear. I think they could stand to stretch them a little more so there’s a discernable hole, and I hope they someday add poppy seed, but these are reliably delicious bagels with solid flavor, served warm.
2. Chewy’s - Like I said, I think it’s just preference that this is in the #2 slot, but it’s no criticism. These are fantastic bagels where the passage of time and cold fermentation is evident, and the shop is actually quite a bit faster at delivering your order than Julio’s. Nothing like the speed of a NYC or NJ bagel shop, of course, but pretty good. They have a much bigger selection of bagels and schmear options as well, so if that is important to you (which I’m sure it could be) this may be your spot for the best bagel/toppings combination.
3. Nate’s - The folks who run Nate’s are great people and, full disclosure, I’ve known them for some time. But their bagels aren’t what they used to be. When they first opened they had a skilled bagel roller and they were cold fermenting their dough for at least 24 hours. But it became clear that, as demand and their popularity surged, production and throughput increased in priority at the expense of flavor and texture. Where Nate’s still performs is with their sandwiches: properly loaded like a Northeastern breakfast sandwich ought to be, with bonus points for offering pork roll, egg, and cheese (perfect with a poppy seed bagel). The softer texture of their bagels actually serves sandwiches well, yielding more easily to the bite so as not to squish all the filling out the sides.
4. Baltik’s - Man, I dunno. I’ve had these from a package that I bought at Union Market in Church Hill, more than once. They were pretty tasty! But then I’ve also visited the shop in the Southside to get some “fresh”. That’s in quotes because my salt bagels were kinda tough. They didn’t look overcooked, but something was off. Despite plenty of visible salt the bagels had little flavor. I’ve heard folks rave about this place, but I don’t see it. They’re fine.
5. Sunday Bagel - The only reason these are so low on the list is because I think they only qualify as bagels because of the shape. I feel like they misunderstood the assignment here; this is what happens when you make some decent bread and shape it into rings rather than recognize that texture is an important part of what makes bagels distinctive baked goods. It’s my understanding that they’re in the process of opening a brick and mortar shop, so I’ll have to revisit once they’ve stabilized.
6. Cupertino’s - These are okay. I think they’re kind of a baseline for what I’d by in a grocery store in New Jersey. Points to them for offering the first passable bagels in the Richmond area that weren’t Einstein’s or Panera.

“Would you…like…an atom bomb?”

I don’t know how long this show will stay this good, but when the entire supporting cast is great (in addition to Seehorn of course) I’ll keep enjoying the ride.

Yes, yes, I’m sorry. I’ve allowed my 9YO to become a fan of The Smiths. He’ll be more insufferable than his old man in no time, I’m sure.

You know I watch too much niche bike YouTube when my son says something like, “this guy makes Dangerous Dave look like Probably Riding” 🤪

I spent the first 28 miles of my ride thinking my bottom bracket was clicking; the rhythmic sound matched the frequency of my pedaling and stopped when I coasted. It was only after I climbed back on from my final stop that I realized my keys were clicking my my vest pocket 🙃

The Smokey Mug currently has a pastry they call a “brookie”—your sort of typical brownie batter with cookie dough baked on top, or vice versa—but with a critical twist: this one has a layer of Rice Krispy treat on top of all that. It’s, uh, well, I guess I have plenty of sugar for my ride :-P

I think a lot of Jansen’s strandbeest videos recycle old imagery while incorporating his latest work, but I always love watching them; he may be one of my favorite contemporary artists. Here’s the latest, and it’s scored by “Adagio” from Spartacus Suite No. 2 by Khachaturian. It’s magnificent as ever, though the video cuts off oddly at the end.