Johnsonville Breakfast Sausage link changes; all about casings

Update: 11/28/2010: I think I have spoken to soon in the post below about a change in Johnsonville's sausage casings. In fact, I experienced only one package where the casings were of the harder-to-remove variety as I wrote. Also, I did send a brief note to Johnsonville's on their web site and they responded that they hadn't changed their casings. I appreciate the fact that they took the time to respond. So the experience I had with different casings appears to have been in just a single fluke package.

Original Post from 10/16/2010:

I've been eating Johnsonville breakfast sausages (in moderation) for most of my adult life. I really like them; they're a perfect breakfast meat to complement, for example, a nice cheese and mushroom omelet. As long as I can remember, they have come in a package containing 14 links, weighing just less than a pound.

Something happened to them in the last couple months, though: first, I could swear that the links are now slightly smaller than they used to be (by maybe 10%). I don't have any of the "before" links left so I can't measure them to be certain, but I think they're slightly smaller. I don't really mind this much; serving and package sizes change all the time and we're pretty used to it.

Second, the casing has changed. The casing is the thin, semi-transparent layer of skin-like material that surrounds each link and holds the meat together while it's being made, transported, sold, and cooked. I believe that sausage casing is typically made from some part of animal intestines and is mostly fat. Without the casing, the sausage links would just be a little pile of nondescript gooey meat and would likely not retain their "link" shape.

My method of preparing these link sausages has been basically to boil them. I typically will put half a package (7 links) into a small pan containing enough water to cover them, then I bring the water to a boil, usually quite long enough to ensure the sausages are thoroughly cooked, about 17-20 minutes. I use this method instead of just frying them in their own fat because it seems to cook the sausage links' insides more thoroughly, and it creates less of a mess to clean up. As the water boils away during this process I will occasionally sear the links slightly to give an appearance of frying.

Now, while the sausage casings are edible, I don't like to eat the casings. This is because it just adds that much more fat to my diet, which I don't need, and because I don't really like the texture of them in my mouth. To me, it sort of ruins the experience of eating the actual sausage meat. Therefore, near the end of the boiling process I always remove these sausage casings from the links. By this point, the links will no longer fall apart if the casing is removed.

The way I remove the casings has always been pretty easy. The process of boiling the links has usually caused the external casings to maybe shrink up just a bit, and migrate toward one end of each link. Therefore, I could pretty easily take a fork and insert one tine of the fork underneath the casing, whose end is now easily accessible near the middle of the link, without spearing the meat itself. Then I brace the end of the sausage against a table knife, and slip the casing off the sausage quite easily. I could usually slip all the casings off of 7 links and then just throw them out within maybe 30-45 seconds or so.

However, the casings have changed, and have made the process of removing and discarding them more difficult. For the past couple months, now when I cook 7 links I have found that near the end of the boiling process when it's time to remove the link casings, the casings themselves now cover the entire sausage link, and they don't sort of shrink a bit and move toward one end of the link like they used to. In fact, the casings cover each link entirely, and the ends of the casings extrude a bit over each end and shrink up over each end. So the process of removing the casings has become much more difficult compared to the method I've used for the past few decades. Using a fork tine as before, I now need to dig around the end of the sausage link and maneuver the tine up above the meat but below the casing, then try to pull the casing off the entire length of the link instead of half. In short, it's now much more of a chore to remove these longer casings. Yes, I'm aware that I could use my fork/knife combo to actually try to cut the casings off instead of slipping them off whole, but that turns into even a messier process and causes my knife or fork to sometimes make contact with the pan, perhaps even slightly damaging it. And yes I know I could simply leave the casings on and try to remove them while they're on my plate, but that makes for messier eating as well.

Anyway, I know this may be silly to complain about, but I'm really, really curious about why, after a very long time of having shorter casing links on the breakfast sausage, that Johnsonville has made this change. Was there something wrong with the shorter, easier-to-remove casings? Have they just built a new processing plant that will only put out full-length casings? Why the change?

--SDP

Glenn Beck is a boob

Glenn Beck is a boob.

The reasons are too numerous to mention, and I'll admit that he's well-read in terms of American History, but that doesn't change the fact that he's a boob.

He recently spouted in his regular oblique way that he was pissed that incandescent bulbs may soon stop being manufactured in favor of Fluorescent bulbs (compact fluorescent light bulbs, commonly known as CFLs). He cited that he doesn't LIKE fluorescent bulbs. WAAAAAAAA!

Well, Glenn, I'll tell you that CFLs are not like the fluorescent bulbs of old at all. They emit light right away, and under normal circumstances, they will actually be *brighter* than their counterparts at only about 1/7 the electrical cost. I haven't liked fluorescent lighting either, but CFLs are not the old elongated tube-like bulbs we all know. They're already in 2010 as normal as any incandescent. I save around $60 to $120 per year using CFLs and they've already paid for themselves several times over.

I suppose if an automobile fuel came out that was only 1/7th the cost of gasoline and only 1/7th the harm to the environment, you'd insist on using the old stuff. If a new kind of chocolate came out that was just 1/7th the amount of sugar, calories, and fat, you'd still buy the old stuff too. I guess when you make 100 times the average salary in the US that you can afford to do that, and that's fine. I predict that die-hards like you will continue to be able to buy incandescent light bulbs well into the future.

BTW, Glenn: I have a horse and buggy for sale, an old telegraph unit, and a TV made out of vacuum tubes. I assume you're interested in purchasing all of these things for your personal use; please contact me for pricing.

And oh, yeah: when you and I both reach the pearly gates together, how will you respond when you learn that global warming was for real and that you were a boob for preaching otherwise?

--SDP

* NOTA BENE: Other boobs: George W. Bush, Jim Florio, and many many other politicians.

A Good Day

I had a good day today. Since so many folks routinely experience *bad* days, I thought I'd share this.

Mostly it was a good day because I felt a sense of accomplishment, doing a couple things on my property that "needed doing": weeding, and working on my car (SUV).

Weeding: weeds have been the bane of my existence ever since I became a home owner some 17 years ago. And I don't want to be the guy in the neighborhood known as the "weed guy". Nonetheless, I once again let my non-grass-covered back and side yards get overrun with weeds this season and I've known I have needed to do something to make my yards more acceptably beautiful.

My city has helped with this. Previously, any weeding work I've done (since I live in Wyoming I prefer to think of this as "clearing brush" instead of "weeding") has out of necessity caused me to have to pack the weed refuse into 30-gallon yard trash bags and then dole them out on trash day one at a time. But my city recently has put in place several nearby large collection bins for yard waste. Therefore, instead of having to pack weeds into a smallish garbage bag, I've been able to just clip and pull them then throw them on a tarp. Then when I'm at the end of my stamina I just roll the tarp up , throw it in back of my SUV, then drive to one of these nearby receptacles and dump the contents into it and retrieve my tarp for the next load. This is excellent because it means I can do more work with less effort (not having to pack weeds into a bag), I don't use bags (which saves me money in the long run), I don't have to store full bags in my garage then dole them out one at a time on trash days, and, perhaps most importantly, I'm not contributing to yard refuse and more plastic bags in our local landfill (which the city estimated had previously accounted for around 20% of landfill usage). So yay for less work, and thanks to the city for providing this good solution to yard waste.

Car work: I've never been much good at working on an automobile. I don't change my own oil (mostly because of how dirty a job it is, I don't know how to collect and dispose of used oil, and it's not too expensive or inconvenient to go to an oil change shop and have them do the job for me), and I'm pretty much lost as soon as I pop the engine hood. Yeah I can gas up my SUV, clean it inside and out and check the oil level, but beyond that is beyond my skill level.

So last week when my battery died in a McDonald's parking lot after closing (I swear I was gonna order a salad), the local Nissan shop helped me out by giving me a ride and changing in a new battery. I paid for this service, of course, and it was expensive. But the new battery gives me hope that it might last longer than the average of 4 years per battery I've had in this SUV since 1998. This is my fourth battery.

But in the process of them coming to my rescue, we also noted that the hefty neutral/ground/black cable that attaches the battery terminal to the metalwork in the engine was very very corroded and almost ready to fall off by itself. Luckily, it just barely worked with the new battery. The shop didn't have a replacement cable in stock, so they ordered one for me--dang $55 bucks for a cable--then called me a couple days later to tell me it had arrived.

Originally I was going to have them install the new cable for likely another $40 or so, but when I looked at the cable it didn't seem like it would be over my head to do the work myself, so I elected to try replacing it myself.

Seems like nothing is ever quite as easy as it looks. First time I tried to replace this cable a couple days ago I got stuck by not having all the right tools for the job. In particular, I discovered that the nut/bolt combination that held the old cable on the battery terminal was long, and the nut was a bit corroded itself. So while I do own a couple sockets sets and I did have the correct size for the nut (it's a Japanese car so they use the metric system--10mm in this case), I had no way to do even the first simple step of removing the nut on the bolt that holds the cable to the battery terminal. I tried using a couple different adjustable wrenches for the job, but they weren't very good quality wrenches, and there really was no room for me to use them to extract the nut.

The tool I needed was a 10mm combination wrench. At the time I didn't know the right size and whether I needed metric or US sizing so I brought the replacement cable with me to a Walmart and figured out the correct size myself. Of course they don't sell this kind of wrench individually so I had to buy a set of 6 combo wrenches for about $13. Not too bad though I guess: still $27 cheaper than if I had the shop do it for me, plus I get to keep the wrenches.

Anyway, so I managed to replace the cable. It took me maybe 40 minutes, removal of the battery, some serious torquing to release a couple bolts that hadn't been touched in 12 years, and a few minor scratches on my hands and arms, but I managed to get the job done and I was ecstatic when I started the SUV after I was done and everything worked. Of course I had to reset the car's clock again, but that's a minor thing.

Now, I'm certain there are tons of auto enthusiasts out there just laughing their asses off about what a big deal I've made over changing out a car's battery cable. But hey.... like I said, I'm not comfortable inside a car's engine. I can take apart and put back together a computer with ease, but a computer won't careen off a bridge and kill me if I do something wrong. So I'm pretty proud of myself :-) .

And now I might be more confident to take on more complex engine work in the future! :-)

So, accomplishing these tasks successfully today made me feel good and I hope you had a good day too!

--SDP

Conan O'Brien's "Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour" Map and Dates

After being very publicly humiliated into leaving the Tonight Show, Conan O'Brien appears to be getting back on track, going on a stand-up tour this Spring, then beginning a new show on TBS in November.

I like Conan; I've watched him occasionally ever since he got his first NBC TV late night show 15 years ago and I think he totally deserved to inherit the Tonight Show, and did a pretty good job with it. And despite Jay Leno's seemingly innocent explanation of what happened, I despise his actions in this incident and I think Jay's a real donk for what he did (though I still like and will continue to watch the "Headlines" segment on Monday nights).

But these days I'm much more of a Ferguson and Letterman fan than I am of Conan.

I put together some maps of Conan's Spring 2010 tour so you can easily see if and when he'll be in a city near you. Click on each image to enlarge:

Map 1: Cities and dates. Each City is marked with a number showing the order they'll be visited:


Map 2: Same as map 1, but with arrows.


Map 3: Just numbered markers and arrows.

Dell Computer Woes

In April 2007 I purchased a Dell Dimension E521 directly from the Dell website. This computer was a pure workhorse, perfect for me as a home production computer. I had been so pleased with this computer's performance, in fact, that I had even planned on posting at least a blog entry about its reliability.

Then one morning in October 2009 I went to boot this computer as I'd done every day for the previous two and a half years, but the computer didn't boot :-(. I fiddled around for awhile and eventually the computer did boot and of course I immediately did a full backup of all of my data. I'm thankful that I was able to do this, of course.

The computer continued to boot only intermittently (maybe 10% of the time), then eventually died completely about a month later. Luckily I had purchased a Dell Inspiron 15 (1545) laptop shortly before this time and I was able to essentially use this laptop as a desktop replacement. By hooking it up to an external monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers, I was able to replicate my previous environment, except that the Inspiron is somewhat slower than the Dimension. Even though it has more memory, its Intel dual-core processor has a slower clock speed than did the AMD dual-core that was in the Dimension.

Trying to figure out what to do, I researched the problem at the Dell and Cnet support web sites and figured out that my motherboard had died. No problem--just replace the motherboard, right? I could get a new motherboard from Dell for about $200 or a replacement from Ebay for about $60. Of course I tried the cheaper option, but I have no idea how these folks on Ebay can sell motherboards so cheaply.

The motherboard I ended up purchasing from Ebay was a slightly different model number than my original board, but I had been assured by supposedly knowledgeable folks on the Dell forums that this motherboard would indeed work just fine as a replacement.

I've been assembling and pulling apart computers since the early days so I had no problem doing the work of replacing the original broken board with the one I got on Ebay. And directly after the swap, things were looking very good. Previously, the E521 wouldn't even get to the POST (Power-On-Self-Test). But with the new board inside, it did indeed immediately go into POST and everything passed just fine: the motherboard could see all the components--the CPU, PCI cards, disks, etc. and it was able to complete a full memory test as well. This was very good news.

But when the newly installed replacement motherboard tried to boot the operating system (Vista) from the hard drive, it failed. Some further internet research told me that the reason for this was likely due to an old version of firmware. That is, early versions of the firmware would boot XP, but in order to boot Vista (which I had on my disk), the firmware had to be updated.

Now here's where the story gets a little bit interesting. In order to boot Vista, I would have to upgrade the firmware on this replacement motherboard. However, in the process of researching the problem originally, I had run across posts by folks stating that when they did a firmware upgrade on their motherboard, the motherboard stopped working in exactly the same way that my original board broke: that is, it wouldn't even go into POST.

A real catch 22 here: don't upgrade the firmware and I can't use my computer. Upgrade the firmware, and I risk ruining a second motherboard. I had no choice unfortunately, and of course when I tried to upgrade the firmware, the motherboard immediately stopped working.

I finally tried again calling Dell support to see if they could help, and basically their response was: "If you had purchased our $200 board instead of the $60 from Ebay, it would work".

I had become extremely frustrated throughout this whole process. I was disappointed with the support I got from Dell (essentially zero support--no responses to my forum postings, and no help at all via phone). And I'm extremely disappointed that (a) the older version of the firmware would not boot Vista and (b) upgrading the firmware hosed the motherboard. My frustration continues because there are likely some Dell engineers out there who are very familiar with this issue and might even know about a fix for me, but they won't talk to me because this particular computer is no longer under warranty.

This whole process has left me with a very bad taste in my mouth concerning Dell computers, and it very likely means that I will not ever purchase another Dell. I've owned four Dells over the years, but this incident has likely ended my relationship with Dell. I still have a ten-year-old Acer laptop that still runs just fine and I thus suspect I'll be looking to Acer for future computer purchases.

The only recourse remaining is for me to take the Dell apart and try to sell the (working) components on Ebay myself. Not the two motherboards, of course, both of which are basically hosed beyond repair, but certainly the memory, PCI boards, CPU and Power Supply. Hopefully my misfortune in this adventure can be someone else's good fortune in getting cheap working components. I will likely get an external USB dual-drive enclosure that supports SATA disks to try to re-task the two 250-GB hard drives.

Oh Dear God you gotta be shittin' me: the Brady Bunch television series ended in 1974? That was 36 years ago. OhMyGod I'm old.

Two more great NFL games this weekend

Well, I was 3 out of 4 this weekend for predicting games, a 50% improvement over Wild Card weekend! The stage is now set for the AFC and NFC 2009-2010 Conference Championships: The New York Jets at the Indianapolis Colts and my Minnesota Vikings at the New Orleans Saints.

I have to predict that my Vikings will conquer the Saints, thought it'll be a tough game in New Orleans. But for the AFC I'm sticking with my prediction of the home team winning, so I pick the Colts even though the Jets have surprised us the past 2 weekends by beating both home teams (the Bengals and the Chargers). If the Vikings win the NFC title, then I hope the Jets win the AFC because I think they'd be easier to beat in the Super Bowl than the Colts.

Here's the schedule for the AFC/NFC championships:

Sunday, January 24:

• Game #1: AFC Championship. Coverage starts at 2:00 PM Eastern and will be broadcast on CBS. It features the New York Jets (9-7) vs. the Indianapolis Colts (14-4) in Indianapolis


• Game #2: NFC Championship. Coverage starts at 6:00 PM Eastern and will be broadcast on FOX. It features the Minnesota Vikings (12-4) vs. the New Orleans Saints (13-3) in New Orleans

Go Vikes!

Best Weekend of Football ThisWeekend

OK; the wildcard games are finished, and there are 7 playoff games left for the 2009-2010 NFL football season: 8 teams remain so there will be 4 games this weekend January 15th and 16th, 4 teams and 2 games next Sunday the 24th (these are for the AFC and NFC Conference Championships), then 2 teams left for the final game on February 7th, Superbowl 44 (XLIV).

There will also be an 8th game, the Pro Bowl played in between the Conference Championships and the Super Bowl on Sunday, January 31st. The Pro Bowl used to be played a week or two after the Super Bowl, but they changed it this year to be a week *before* the Super Bowl, presumably to get more people to watch and therefore to get better ratings. However, players who were elected to the Pro Bowl but will be playing in the Super Bowl will not be participating in the Pro Bowl lest they get injured. Also, the Pro Bowl is usually played in Hawaii and is sort of just for fun, but this year it'll be played in Florida. I don't particularly agree with them moving the game from after the Super Bowl to before it. We ought to be able to watch all the Pro Bowl players selected for the season in the Pro Bowl, but this year for the first time ever, we won't get that opportunity.

So anyway, here are some statistics/facts about the games coming up this weekend. First, the Schedule in the order the games will be played:

Saturday, January 16:

• Game #1: Coverage starts at 4:30 PM Eastern and will be broadcast on FOX. It is an NFC game featuring the Arizona Cardinals (10-6) vs. the New Orleans Saints (13-3) in New Orleans
  


• Game #2: Coverage starts at 8:15 PM Eastern and will be broadcast on CBS. It is an AFC game featuring the Baltimore Ravens (9-7) vs. the Indianapolis Colts (14-4) in Indianapolis
  

Sunday, January 17:

• Game #3: Coverage starts at 1:00 PM Eastern and will be broadcast on FOX. It is an NFC game featuring the Dallas Cowboys (11-5) vs. the Minnesota Vikings (12-4) in Minneapolis
  


• Game #4: Coverage starts at 4:40 PM Eastern and will be broadcast on CBS. It is an AFC game featuring the New York Jets (9-7) vs. the San Diego Chargers (13-3) in San Diego
  

This is the weekend we've all been waiting for, folks! The best 8 teams out of the 32 in the NFL, all great teams with good records. The two worst records are the two away teams that won wildcard games last weekend, the New York Jets and the Baltimore Ravens, both at 9-7.

Like last week, I'm predicting once again that the 4 winning teams will be the home teams. Each team is arguably better than its opponent, has a better record, plus they're playing at home.

Only two of these eight teams have won a Super Bowl in the last 10 years: the Indianapolis Colts and the Baltimore Ravens. However, the Arizona Cardinals went to Super Bowl 43 (XLIII) last year, but lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Assuming I'm correct in my picks of home teams winning this weeked, (Minnesota, New Orleans, Indianapolis and San Diego), then I think Minnesota and San Diego will win the Conference Championships next weekend and will go to the Super Bowl. And of course the Vikes will win the Super Bowl for the first time ever!

Go Vikes!

2009-2010 NFL Wildcard Weekend Complete

Wildcard Weekend in the NFL for the 2009-2010 season is complete! The first 3 games were blowouts, but finally Green Bay vs. Arizona was competitive with Green Bay coming back from a huge deficit, the game going into overtime and ending with an Aaron Rodgers fumble recovered by Arizona and taken in for a TD.

I was 2-for-4 in my picks; I had guessed the home teams would all win, but Baltimore and the Jets took away home-team advantages in both AFC games. I've never really liked the Jets, but I like their coach this year, Rex Ryan. He might be right--they could be huge spoilers over the next 2 weeks!

I'm a Vikings fan and I'm looking forward to next weekend vs. Dallas in Minnesota! I've liked the Vikes having Favre this season, but I'm worried at their weak end-of-season and Favre's seeming complacent attitude in the post-game interviews of the games they lost. Having Favre in the lineup has been awesome, mostly because I've been able to see most of the games even though I no longer live in MN.

Go Vikes!