Outside the dugout: What's cooking?

I have had some great Chinese food just outside Atlanta. Not so sure about Jasper. Hope it is good.

 

Tuesday was gyros from Gyros Plus before going to the basketball game.

Yesterday was leftover turkey tetrazzini with friends for dinner with a salad.

We still have left over turkey tetrazzini so I will warm that up tonight and sever it with a side of sauteed rapini.

 

Tonight my wife is meeting a friend at Mi Apa for coffee and bringing home cubanos.

Fixed a stereo problem today. When I was playing vinyl recently there was a low level hum. Being that my turntable is over 40 years old and the hum persisted when I changed cartridges I thought it might be corrosion on the tone arm. Nope. It was a broken ground wire from the turntable to the amp. Probably from a rodent.

 

Nope. The ground wire from the turntable to the amp. Easy fix because years ago I had to use a wire nut to lengthen the ground cable to my amp and the break was such that I could use everything from before. It now has very little wiggle room.

I should have thought of this first because it did sound like a ground loop problem.

 

A turntable can generate static charge and needs to have a good ground.

 

My Stanton 681EEE stylus bit the dust. NOS OEM replacements are very hard to find and pricey. IIRC they were made by Pickering. There are some good aftermarket stylii that work but none are the tip shape of the original. My Grado G+ that I just mounted is long in the tooth and I am getting some inner groove distortion that annoys me. Maybe time to spring for a new cartridge.

Even though my turntable is over 40 years old it has a great tonearm and can do justice to a decent cartridge. Since I don't have a $1000 phono preamp I shouldn't spend thousands of dollars on a cartridge. I have a Sony PS-X50. The lowest level Sony turntable with their legendary tonearm. It can raise and lower the tonearm pivot to properly align the stylus which is critical with some stylus shapes. Looking at an Audio Technica VM95SH at about $200. About the same price as getting a decent replacement stylus for my Stanton. One cool thing about my turntable is that there is an alignment protractor on the flip side of the mat so I don't have to buy one for about $10 and then lose it.

 

Tonight will be pork chops and rice. My wife will be making some sort of Shanghai baby bok choy with noodles and chili oil.

My original plan was to make Vietnamese style pork chops with a fish sauce marinade but I forgot that my wife hates fish sauce so now making the pork chops rather plain.

 

Corn meal is so varied and the right kind is very important for both Southern and Mexican cuisine.

Also important when I make suet blocks for bird feeding. The birds that I get prefer a coarse grind like you get from Goya. They will accept the Quaker Oats grind or Bob's Red Mill but Bob's is getting a bit pricey for feeding wild birds. These are all yellow corn. White corn is another ball game. Don't get me started on making tortillas.

 

I took the plunge with the Audio Technica cartridge. Probably the sweet spot cartridge with my set up. My gear may be old but it is first rate. My tuner is a Sansui TU-717 that I bought new well over 40 years ago. Still great but doing a recap on it might make it even better. Got a pair of B&W DM7 speakers below cost because my stereo store had some demo models that they had to sell. Doesn't produced the lowest pipe organ notes correctly but still a damn fine set of speakers.

 

Got the KJ set up with the "divide and conquer" set-up. One grill is low and the other is high over a semicircular heat deflector. Going to grill some boneless ribeye steaks that were on sale at Publix.

BTW our local Publix had the most incredible sale on stand rib roasts recently at $6.99 per pound. My wife bought a five or six pounder for the upcoming holidays. Standing rib roasts were a Christmas tradition in my family when we were growing up. My mom would buy a magnificent piece of meat and then every year turn it into shoe leather. She just couldn't help her self.

 

My wife is in charge of dinner tonight. I am sure it will be great.

Mounted the new phono cartridge today. I was a bit worried because a nude Shibata stylus needs to be perfectly aligned. My turntable (Sony PS-X50) allows for adjustment of the tonearm pivot height so I made sure that was spot on. And it was because that shouldn't change. And then getting the correct placement of the cartridge on the headshell requires the use of a special protractor. My turntable mat has one on the flip side so I didn't need to buy one. I either have mad skilz or and I am just damn lucky but I nailed the cartridge placement on the first go. Maybe The Force is strong in me. LOL.

I will miss the sound of my Stanton 681EEE. I had it in storage for about 40 years after using a Grado as my workhorse cartridge through at least three stylii when I could still score them on Ebay for cheap and have used the Stanton extensively the last few years after my Grado started sound like crap. I like the sound of the 681 EEE because it was the cartridge that FM stations used for the most part and so I have fond memories of that sound. There are aftermarket stylii that are very good for that cartridge but they won't sound exactly the same.

I know that I am in the break in period with my new cartridge but it sounds like a major upgrade in sonic quality but will never have the sound of the 681 EEE.

 

Tonight will be Chicago dogs minus the poppy seed buns. I did fake that recently with brushing melted butter on some buns and sprinkling poppy seeds but not really worth the effort unless for effect. Real deal Vienna Beef hot dogs BTW. Every time we go to the Midwest we leave some suitcase space to bring home some Vienna Beef hotdogs and Usinger's brats. Hebrew National dogs and Johnsonville brats are both really good but to my palate just not quite the same.

 

Yesterday I made green chicken posole. Lots of work. The "green" is from tomatillos.

Tonight will be stir fried flank steak with broccoli florets with a side of stir fried Shanghai bok choy. We had this recently and my wife loved it so much we are having it again. The marinade and cut of the flank steak is key to the dish as well as my wife's wokking skills. BTW on our Blue Star range we can get woks really into the gas flame and get them really hot. It does make a huge difference.