I have had to put in a lot of sweat to using Boost.Python well, and I found that experience frustrating. The documentation really only takes care of the basics, so here I'm showing an example of some things that weren't too obvious. I developed this with Visual Studio 2010 and Boost 1.47. For Linux, you'll have to eliminate the stdafx and the _tmain crap, which you've probably had to do before to work with other peoples' examples.

I am trying to learn how to make etouffee, and they called for creole seasoning. After looking around, I came up with this:

Whole ingredients (Optional in parenthesis):

• 1 T white whole pepper corns
• 1 T black whole pepper corns
• 1 T dried minced garlic
• 1 T dried minced onion
• 1 T dry thyme
• 1 T dry bay leaves
• 1 T dry parsley
• (1 T dry basil)
• (1 T cumin seeds)

Powder ingredients (Optional in parenthesis):

Here's a recipe for something you shouldn't eat. You will have to look around special for most of these ingredients. It's even a little bit of a pain in the butt to get ethyl alcohol, but it does a pretty good job of mixing with the essential oils. I can tell you that water doesn't work. Vodka does work, but it gets expensive and you could use that stuff for... something else.

• 200mL ethyl alcohol or vodka
• 10 drops patchouli oil, Wyndmere brand
• 5 drops cedar oil, Wyndmere brand
• 20 drops bergamot oil, Wyndmere brand

Saturday, March 3, 2007

I got some steam-crimped barley at ~$8.00 for a 50# sack awhile ago. I didn’t know the condition of the barley at the time, but my intention in buying it was to try malting it. When I opened the sack, I saw the barley was destroyed and in no shape for malting. I even did a test malt to prove this. However, I decided to try to brew with it anyways. I had to get rid of it, so I needed to use a lot of it. Something like a Belgian Tripel would be OK.