This will be a combo post because well, my life isn't always so interesting.
Things have changed a lot with the introduction of an air-fryer into my life though and I have been extremely happy with it up to this point. The only thing that I was disappointed with and will recommend that people NOT do is the time I cooked bacon in it. I think we have already nailed the best way to cook bacon in a frying pan and when I cooked the bacon in the air fryer it took much longer than simply frying it and it made a huge mess. I should have seen this coming because we all know how much shrinkage happens with bacon and how much fat or grease is contained inside of it.
Well I have always liked pork chops and pork is probably the best meat readily available in Vietnam. Beef comes in two varieties here: Really expensive and crap. So normally I steer away from eating beef even with my super magic air fryer.
Speaking of the air fryer, I may as well showcase it because I presume it is made in China and available all over South East Asia.
It's made by a company called Nineshield and perhaps the inclusion of my toaster will give you an idea about how small it is. It is a 9 liter air fryer and I have no idea why they measure them like that since as I discovered the other day, you are not meant to cook liquids in this particular model. This unit, including shipping was just a bit over 500,000 VND, which is roughly $20. Quite a deal. I didn't expect it to work as well as it does considering the price but thus far anyway, it has worked wonderful.
I have very low standards when it comes to cooking meat at home but for this one the flavor was all in the meat itself so that BBQ sauce, which was extremely inexpensive, barely got used. The rub I used on it right before cooking it consisted of
- garlic powder
- onion powder
- paprika
- black pepper
- salt
Then I used a little bit of canola oil just to get the seasoning to stick to it. Then I put it in the air fryer at 180 degrees (C) for 4 minutes, flipped the chop, then cooked for another 4 minutes.
It was juicy and wonderful but still not amazing. Whatever, it was protein and it filled me up as a snack for the afternoon. They tell me to avoid carbs if I want to lose weight and this didn't have any in it.
Nadi got a bit of it as well, as you might expect.
I just love that it takes so little time to cook something in this thing and since the interior seems to be made of a non-stick material, cleanup is a snap too. I will admit that I do not clean it every time. I'm single and I live alone so I don't have to do that.
Now on to the other thing that is in the title of this post: An excavator on the roof of a building was spotted today during a dog walk and I had to look twice to make sure that I wasn't imagining this.
I could hear it before I saw it but you have to look closely. There is an orange excavator on the top of that building and as I got closer I could see that has some sort of jackhammer attachment that is tearing down the upper floors of this building.
To me, this is just nuts but hell, it must work or they wouldn't do it. That street that it is located on is normally very full with traffic so I can't even imagine how difficult it must have been to bring in a crane large enough to actually get it up there. I can't think of any other way that they would be able to get it up there.
I do feel bad for anyone that lives in that neighborhood and especially anyone that has the misfortune of living in it. I can't imagine how loud that must be seeing as how I could hear it several blocks before I actually found the origin of the banging sound.
Safety rules certainly are different here than in the west because with my experience dealing with heavy equipment in the past you would probably get sued by OSHA just for suggesting that putting a several ton machine on the top of a building for demo work is a good idea. Well if it doesn't fall down I suppose it was a good idea because even though it is extremely loud, the hand tools that would be required to do this the manpower way would take weeks and this will probably bang it out in a day or so.
I still think it is a bit crazy to see something like this. If this is normal in the country that you live in I would like to know about it.