Smallest Minority Beer Bread

After making the Trader Joe's beer bread, I decided to try the recepie from Kevin Baker at The Smallest Minority. Very easy, very good, just a touch sweeter than I would prefer.

I modified his recepie a bit, cutting back on the sugar and adding butter to the top:

3 cups self-rising flour
2 tablespoons sugar (one tablespoon less than Kevin's)
12 oz beer
1 tablespoon melted butter



Mix the flour, sugar and beer. You will wind up with a stiff batter.








Put in a buttered loaf pan and smooth the top a bit. Dump melted butter on top, bake at 350 for 1 hour.

A couple of weeks ago in the middle of the night, something started chirping, then turned to a constant beep. I finally got out of bed to figure out where the noise was from, but it stopped before I could find it. Went back to bed, and of course it started up again a bit later.

It turned out that one of the buttons on my electronic deadbolt was intermittently pressing itself. The lock took this as someone trying to break the combination, and complained. I took the batteries out and went back to bed.

Later, 10 minutes on Google didn't turn up any parts available, and I'm trying to be extra frugal, so I decided to roll my own.


I found an old Princess-style phone in clear plastic--I could see that the keypad was a separate part, not molded into the case. With about 45 minutes work with a soldering iron and a multimeter, I had this mounted to my front door:

I did make sure the redial button doesn't actually work...

Trader Joe's Beer Bread

Trader Joe's beer bread mix. Surprisingly good, even made with cheap malt liquor. Dense, good crust, not quite as stretchy or chewy as I'd like. A little too sweet to use as a sandwich bread, but really good with butter. 45 minutes to bake, about 5 minutes prep time--Add beer to mix in a mixing bowl, stir until mixed but not too much, dump in a greased loaf pan, dump melted butter over the top, bake. Directions claim anything carbonated will work, I don't think I would use sweet pop, but plain seltzer might be good.

Triangle of power

The traditional political spectrum is left vs. right. This is overly simplistic. A slightly more nuanced view is 2 dimensional--the same left vs. right, but also an up/down, with libertarian/anarchist at the top, and authoritarian/statist at the bottom, giving a square diagram.

I forget which episode, but on the Vicious Circle podcast someone said that the proper diagram would be a triangle--As you move towards libartarianism the left vs right difference matters less and less, because there is less government, and therefore a larger chance that whatever it is you are worried about will fall outside the scope of government intervention.

I used to work with a very fundamentalist Christian-According to him, the bible says it is wrong for women to rule over men, homosexuality is an abomination, etc.. I wound up convincing him that religion should not be a basis for government policy by asking him "What do you think the chances are that the particular version of government Christianity used will match yours?" The same basic thought works regardless of belief system.

Trader Joe's Plantain chips

These plantain chips look like Banana chips, but taste pretty much like slightly nutty potato sticks. If you are expecting banana, the first bite is very strange. Once you clear your expectations, they aren't bad. Probably won't get them again, but I'll finish them.


(Once again filler, not a paid endorsement)