Saturday, October 04, 2008

Posole and a poser

With cooler weather, my thoughts turn to hearty stews and soups. The smell of roasting chiles is in the air, and snow is falling on the mountains.

One of my favorite crockpot recipes is green chile or posole. Probably I break all sorts of rules in making either one. To me, the difference between them is simply the addition of hominy. Without it, I've got green chile, and with it, posole. Whatever. The results are tasty and you can call it whatever you want.

I take a hunk of pork, about 2 1/2 pounds' worth, and cut it into bite-sized pieces. Toss them with salt, pepper and a little flour, then brown them in batches, deglazing the pan each time with some water or broth. In the past I've minced onions, carrots, celery and garlic and sauteed those, but to save time I used Alecto's method of chopping/pureeing it all in the food processor and sauteeing the result until it's dry and browned a bit.

Throw everything in the crockpot with some vegetable broth and water, and minced, mild, Anaheims that have been skinned and seeded (they were already roasted). And a big can of rinsed hominy. Let it cook for a day or so. Maybe add some frozen hash-browns (the little-bitty chunky kind) or some frozen corn. (I didn't have any in the house, but maybe I'll stop at the grocery.)

Serve it with shredded cheese on top, if you like, and tortillas.

OK, that's not great recipe documentation, I know. I just make it up as I go along, every time. But you get the idea.

And now the poser. As in question, not fashion model or pretentious git. I've learned from my last coffee post that if you put a certain word in a post title to indicate that you are offering something for free, your post will get picked up by one of those aggregator sites that list all the sites with contests and offers, and you will be inundated by people who have no interest in your blog, just in the stuff that you are offering. They're not the "faithful readers" you wanted to reward (and specifically mentioned in your post). They toss in their comments and will likely never visit again, except to see if they've won.

So what do you do? Thanks to Sitemeter, you know exactly which commenters came from that aggregator. Do you include them in the random drawing or not?

16 comments:

  1. Since you were the one who was nice enough to decide to give out something free anyway, I think you can do whatever you feel like and that would be right, you know? It's your contest. You could say "hey, I only want to give this to someone who has 3 vowels or more in their name" and that would be fair. :) Your loyal readers will stay your loyal readers and on the upside, maybe you'll have lured some more regulars from that other site's posting. :D

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  2. Include them all. Next time (if there is a next time), just don't mention the giveaway in the title or the first couple lines. :-)

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  3. Include them! Because you're a better person than they are. (Then give the prize to DG.)

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  4. No including! The point of having your own blog isn't to be fair, it's to be bossy. You aren't Publisher's Clearing House; just rig it.

    Fuck 'em. And send me the coffee!

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  5. I'd like to revise my comment, based on re-reading your original post. You said you'd throw all the comments in a hat, and pick a winner. You never said the first one you picked out of the hat would be the winner. Keep picking til you get DG.

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  6. make it fair and balanced and send it to a faithful reader -

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  7. and the posole sounds about right, with corn - posole, but with tripe and foot - menudo with posole, take it all away - its chile

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  8. Do what you want. It's your giveaway. How would we have known, anyway? You could rig it or not, and we'd never know. It's the beauty of teh interwebs.

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  9. I think you should act queenly and boot them out of your kingdom. And add my name instead... one of your loyal subjects. :)

    I have a great chicken posole recipe. I know what you mean about the cool weather foods - Hungarian Goulasch on the menu for tomorrow at my house. Yum!

    Dani

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  10. Sacre bleu! 88 comments? You should charge them rent. ;)

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  11. put your feet up have a nice cup of coffee and do whatever you like it's your blog and your coffee

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  12. I must admit I often read and don't comment..mainly because I spend far too much time on here as it is..
    I didn't even know such sites existed..you must be pretty desperate to search for comps!
    I like Vicki's (2nd) answer! Best of luck with your decision :D

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  13. I say include them this time and then offer the caveat from here on out...

    And then send the coffee to me.

    Does the site-meter know I visit if I normally view through Google Reader or do I have to click through for that to show up?

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  14. Though to be fair, I doubt I really need the coffee. To quote one of the bartenders at Vesuvio in San Francisco, "I'm an addict, not a connoisseur."

    Send it to someone that'll dig it more.

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  15. Thanks for the input, everybody. I'll ponder on it some more.

    I notice there haven't been any weigh-ins on this question from anyone from that site. It's not like I'm gaining subscribers from it.

    db, thanks for the posole clarification!

    Jesse, I'm not really sure if Sitemeter counts feed readers who don't click through. It's hard for me to test. And it doesn't provide me with a lot of specific information about visits (since I'm not paying for premium service). But I can see the referrals and match up the comment times to see who's coming from that site.

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