Making ramen more special - with spices, meat slices, and canned sweet yams.

Ramen,  although cheap in the stores,  is also a highly celebrated Japanese form of socialization,  as one would come to understand for visiting DTLA's local corner locality of Little Tokyo at night.  Ramen is a common night out affair for the young adult crowd.

Given that,  restaurant-style ramen is significantly fancier than packaged ramen from the store.  Here,  I've assembled a tasty mock-up recipe of a beef ramen base - it includes thin beef slices and candied yams (canned). Don't use the whole can or two packages of ramen,  of anything like that.  It's a hearty enough meal,  in and of itself.

In addition,  other embellishments I made,  as far as spice-wise - these spices really do the dish bowl justice,  for a meal that otherwise is about a quarter per serving / meal.

The spices I had used were turmeric,  several shakes, dusting the top of the ramen while it cooks. Same with African Berbere, a slightly spicy and richly fragrant substitute for standard cayenne pepper (if still desired,  I recommend just a tiny pinch). The final spice ingredient I used in addition to the standard spice pack is grated dried ginger.

 I cooked the soup over the standard amount of water and some cooking oil.  It comes out great! Very tasty. 

A blowout great year for my Google Domains Blogger page, and a quick look forward to the new year.

By Jay Ammon

December 31, 2019

A quick overview of my year, here on iPigeon.institute, on Google Blogger, and looking forward, as it's New Year's Eve, today, in sunny Los Angeles, CA, USA.

It's been a graciously fortunate year,  and a growth-driven looking forward to future readership interactions and perhaps monetization of my Google Blogger and Google Domains sites,  with iPigeon.institute being the main publication site.  

This month has shown itself to have been my strongest month yet,  readership-wise. I feel like I've perhaps broken in to a new demographic for having placed a calculated marketing effort on craigslist, one week.  craigslist still proves to be a powerful medium for establishing localizable and targeted marketing promotions efforts. 

A look at the yearly readership stats.  I'm excited to see readership showing strong upward momentum on my publishing efforts.  Thank you,  everyone who's read,  commented,  and contributed in one way or another, to my blogging!

What will I be doing for this New Year's? Probably nothing much,  aside from collecting recyclables,  heading through Echo Park,  maybe look at the light installment at Grand Park,  DTLA (there is a well-attended New Year's Eve party at Grand Park, traditionally).

... 🤔 say hi to familiar faces (hopefully). I did come across one of my Facebook friends earlier,  on Skid Row. He'd been wanting to hang out. A fortunate sign; this serendipitous chance interaction.  

I'm excited for this upcoming month's expense budget and devices list update of a new 2019 iPad,

Indianapolis. Current location of my 128 GB Gold iPad (7th Generation) 2019 version. Slated to arrive in-store on the 8th of January. Hooray! Design| work in style,  with plenty of storage. [I couldn't quite afford the iPad Air 3, latest model,  with my credit card program fees,  with First Premier Bank] ($49 program fee and $125 annual card fee for the first year). (They are offering me a total of $500 credit,  though,  and it's nice to have a credit card).

a couple of small credit accounts, and a new home at a place just up and around the corner from my apartment and first site of iPigeon.institute (that location is hereby closed).

The new place offers food - a much welcome and appreciated amenity.  I've established some good face-to-face friends with the local RV  (recreational vehicle) parkers, nearby the local "pit."

Here's some photos of the local pit - for locals. 

Deal on now at Ralph's for pork loin, only $1.99 a pound.

I've got a great collection of spices and ingredients from a move-out trash dive at one of my pidginHub Landings - an alley behind the SB buildings on 6th at Spring.

It's an Indian sub-continent array of flavors; 

I'm going to cook up this pork loin on a slow roast: 200-275 or so, for several hours. 

A delicious large pork loin (spare ribs) from Downtown Los Angeles Ralph's.

The main theme of the flavor will be a coconut milk wasabi sweetened soy sauce, with a slight curry aspect about it.

This dish should prove to be a very delicious mildly sweet meat, good with white rice.

Update: 

Too soon, but first, too bad. The preheated oven was dialed down upon smelling the dish cook. Then I set the temperature in the oven to near-broil. After about 30 minutes, or so, I have a succulent and tender white meat - placed meat-side down to soak in the liquid broth - it's a good mixture, tasty and healthful, with bone marrow liquids seeping out of the bones and in to the broth.

I cooked the first slab a bit quick, on accident. This pork loin was cooked near broiling for about 30 minutes. The marrow is bloody, still, and it's seeping out. 

Having lifted and inspected what I'd been working on, for the dish, I realized that I would single-handedly be able to finish two racks of pork loin before it goes bad, so I got the second one out of the fridge to cook it.

A vertical view of the bone marrow juices as I throw on another slab of ribs in to the pan

I lit a corn husk and let it smoulder inside of the oven to give this pork rib recipe some authentic smoke flavor.

Mmm... Nice and juicy pork chops with rice.

Thin slices off of the large rack.

The two racks of ribs stayed well in the fridge, (and still juicy) for 5 days. I just finished the meat, now I have bones for pork marrow soup.

I keep getting put out of my spot where I can charge my device and get online; now I'm on the corner trying to get some money.

CanOn top of that, I had my bag of warm clothes stolen from me the other day, 

and I was yelled at, in the restroom, at Target at USC, for no particular reason except that I was homeless and smaller than a larger man.

I had supposed that it was not that disparaging, since the man was Japanese, and he had a particularly expectable Asian restraint on himself, as far as an immediate violent threat was concerned,

yet he was threatening, nonetheless, and it's a bit strange to begin with. On one hand, it's so ostensible of a dysfunctional family life that he lives out, of any sort of thing to consider about himself. Aside from that, I would suppose that he takes drugs, every now and then, just like I do, except that I'm in the more acutely threatened and disparaged situation and circumstance in life. 

I was followed to GP Recycling Center by black people. It's turning out, in all sorts of ways, that black people simply choose to fuck with me and my family, and supposedly it's alright; then Hispanic and Mexican young people pick up the slack and hold it down for minorities against a Chinese / white / Eastern European guy. 

It's simply been so many simply minorities and blacks, and whites, and Asians, of various sorts, that I can't much but help significantly being of an oppositional and hateful sort to so many people. No one has ever apologized about it, and people have been glorifying breaking in to my home and disparaging my works of art and literature. 

I got some real pigeons; a fantail and an Arabian.

They're a breeding pair,

I walked them most of the way home, to ensure their stability and safety during rush hour traffic. I was notably stalked by at least some individual, who keeps pulling over on the street and talking to me, and meanwhile, the presence of police activity as they showed up, was significantly up and down my specific beat, the windy corridor.

They did fairly well, coming home. I think that they are going to be faced with a significant burden on their stability, being that there's a local roost of pigeons nearby and I've collected their dry poop as guano, which has been curing here, and it has a significant attractive of molecular energies quality to it, as the wild pigeon roost poop is raw materials and wild birds don't notably have a source of water to drink, that I know about, around here; I believe that there will be some significant strain on domestic pigeons such that I've purchased, for the fact that perhaps simple osmosis of energies will take place between this pair and the wild population, outside.

Aside from that, I hope that the birds will herald an opportunity for creating a nice home here, and many pigeon homesteading adventures as a process of learning.