Newt Olbermann

It's the glasses.
I prefer Olbermann, although there is a little bit of the ranter in each. No particular point; just goofing around.
Sqirlz morph

"We Supply it in Board-Feet"

"Not square feet."

Hardwood flooring, that is. When I had my flooring company, I ran into a few suppliers who gave me this line. Now, a board-foot is defined in the dictionary as lumber measuring one square foot one inch thick. But what it doesn't say is that's un-dried. After it is dried it shrinks, and after it shrinks it loses more volume in the milling process. Pine shrinks more than hardwood.

An actual board-foot of dried hardwood flooring which is ¾" thick, the standard, yields by the dictionary definition 1.33333 square feet of flooring. But, as I said, it is what the product is milled from initially that the supplier is defining. In this case, it is fresh moist wood blanks measuring 1" thick x 3" wide. (To become standard 2¼" strip flooring.) Which means you should measure the square feet of the room(s), figure how much you will have to scrap, (about 5% works), and then, instead of multiplying by .75, divide by it. Or to put it another way, instead of dividing by 1⅓, multiply by it.

Confused? Who wouldn't be?

Now I'm good with a calculator, better than most, but this is about one of the most confusing things I've come across. And I even understand it. But I often had to call in my orders at the end of a very long exhausting day. One of the joys of management.

I told my regular supplier I wanted his computer-printed invoices to print square feet on them and that I would be ordering by square feet. I told him fatigue was often a factor and I was a customer so customer service demanded we would be playing my game, not his. So he did it. (Easily, by the way.)

Several other suppliers tried this with me. I told my second-most steady supplier the same, and he complied: he used to install flooring himself before he went into sales and knew exactly where I was coming from.

I tried this on a third vendor I was trying to work with, and they refused! "We supply it in board-feet."

I pulled my tape measure from my belt and said "See this? It's marked in feet and inches, and when I measure a floor, I come up with square feet. There are no board-feet on this tape." They refused to convert any orders routinely for me, so I said goodbye and left.

. . .

My theory is that many vendors benefit from this confusion, especially when selling to homeowners and innumerate carpenters and builders. Plus, guys want to be in the select fraternity of lumber guys who know what board-feet are. If they don't, they will fake it. The chances are high that they will order incorrectly, and either buy too much (plus an extra factor for scrap which the salesman, sensing blood in the water, will always remind the customer about! Usually recommending 10 -20% extra on top of that!) or, the customer will err the other way and run out of wood before the job is done, and order more, giving the salesman another chance to run his routine, and maybe do it again!

In the process, the customer, if a tradesman, runs the risk of angering the homeowner or contractor because of the delay, about which the salesmen who practice this lucrative humbuggery don't care.

Not only that, leftover hardwood usually gets stored somewhere humid, swelling it up and making it unsuitable for installation in climate-controlled homes and buildings, because it will shrink back to more stable dimensions eventually, leaving gaps between the boards. Eventually that finds its circuitous way back to the unwary contractor or homeowner, who again will suffer.

I see all this madness as an arena. An arena in which two great forces battle for the soul of American Capitalism: one side sees their way as the American way: screwing the customer, they say, is as American as apple pie. The other side, the one I'm on, says you succeed by offering the best product and service you can provide.

How's my side doing?

Cooking Perfect Tortillas

When I lived in south Texas I had flour tortillas lightly toasted on occasion, but most of the time they were taken and used cold from the package, and breakfast tacos, burritos, or fajitas assembled from them. I think the local distributors baked them just a tiny bit longer than some companies do, so they wouldn't really be "raw" tasting.

Incidentally, in Texas I saw few Mexican-Americans eat corn tortillas unless it was at Taco Bell. At regular restaurants, almost everyone had flour tortillas for bread. There, as you see in many Mexican restaurants, they are served in a covered bowl, lightly steamed. Kind of pasty to my taste.

It wasn't until North Carolina acquired a larger Mexican population that I experienced corn tortillas cooked on a griddle. The first time, I stopped at a restaurant that had tongue tacos - "lengua" - and ordered a plate. Each taco was served in two corn tortillas browned on their griddle. I was hooked.

At home, I soon tried to duplicate this but didn't have much luck. The corn tortillas, almost raw in their big bagged stacks (nice and inexpensive) from the regular groceries, which had began to stock them, got hard and leathery on my frying pan. Not good. So for a while I eschewed them and either fried my corn tortillas or ate flour tortillas.

Eventually I learned the trick. Here's how:

To make four tacos, since I was impressed with the double-wrap technique using corn tortillas, place a stack of eight on the griddle. I use a big cast iron frying pan. I also brush both sides of each tortilla with a little mix of a spoonful of water and some olive oil before I start. I don't want much oil, just a tiny bit.Place the entire stack of eight in the hot pan. On medium heat, the bottom-most corn tortilla, #1, browns on one side, just right. I flip the whole stack over with my spatula, keeping the stack lined up nicely, and begin browning tortilla #8. Then with my thumb and forefinger, I flip the done side of #1 which is now on top, over, exposing the uncooked side. When side a of #8 is browned, I flip the stack, begin browning side b of #1, and when it's done, flip the stack again, and brown side b of #8. At this point, like you, my mind begins to wander and - pay attention now!

At that point, I grab tortilla #1 and #2, and flip them both over. I then flip the whole stack again. #8 on top gets flipped along with #7. Now, both #1 and #8 are headed for the center of the stack.

So on, finishing #2 and #7, and then turning the top three. Bringing in turn #3 and #6 to the top and bottom of the stack. If you are counting, that's 16 flips to get them all. Note that if you cooked them one at a time, you would still have that same amount of flipping to do. The process of dealing them into the pan will be reduced to once.

The advantage to all this, is that as the stack begins heating up, you are steaming the tortillas. The browned portions of your stack, as they are moved towards the center, lose their leathery dry texture and become quite tender.

Eventually the last, tortillas #4 and #5, are browned on both sides. You are ready to remove the whole stack and stash it in a covered bowl and assemble your tacos, or fajitas, or what-have-you. (Slices of Texas-style slow cooked brisket come to mind.)

Once you master that, you can do your flour tortillas the same way. By the way, I never use a double-tortilla if it's a flour tortilla.

Or did I imagine it?

I distinctly remember this symbol was around when I was a kid. (The æ with the ring around it. Or, I should say, the ea with the ring around it.) I would call it the "each symbol" or the "at each sign."
Or is my mind playing tricks on me? In any case, I don't think it's on the internet.

Return of More Shocking Dip

Homemade chili barbecue sauce is what I had in a glass jar with a metal lid, in the fridge.

A labor of love. I made it last week by cooking, after cleaning, a few different varieties of dried Southwestern-style chilies from cherry-sized to big, and onion, a trace of tomato in the form of ketchup; garlic and oregano and vinegar and mustard, with molasses. (The vinegar included some homemade vinegar I made from homemade Chilean red grape wine, which I made specifically from leftover grapes to make vinegar from.) I strained the sauce through a strainer after I pulverized it in the blender after cooking.

So that's what I dipped the tilapia in before breading it in half self-rising flour, half cornbread mix. With black pepper and some salt. And fried them golden brown in canola oil in the iron skillet.

On the side to fill the tacos with is a mix of fine slivered iceberg lettuce with an equal amount of fine slivered cabbage. With red vinegar and lime juice squirted on it, lightly salted right before adding it to the fresh Mr. Stripey tomato picked a few hours ago, washed, chopped lightly, and lightly salted. And a pile of similar sized avocado chunks, with salt and lime juice. And the chopped jalapeño.

Bruiser Bites Off More Than He Can Manage

The horror. Went to lot of trouble making bread; weighed the ingredients vs measuring (the first time I'd done this), used sponge letting it get feisty all yesterday afternoon, assembled and kneaded by hand for full 6 minutes by timer, let dough go overnight, turned out and made two French-style loaves, and set them out on the breezeway to final rise in the afternoon heat. A mere twenty minutes later, ready to bake them, I went out and - no loaves in sight. Examining my dog, and chastising her for this theft, I nevertheless knocked on my neighbor's door to see if her dog Bruiser had done the deed. Apparently not. Neighbor said so, and I didn't see him around either before or after.

My dog , I assumed, toppled the tabletop and ate both raw loaves. I hoped she would know why she would be getting a very bad stomach ache soon. But I was concerned, too, that she might burst.

I soon began to doubt it was my dog; her belly was quite trim. I even suspected a shockingly bold coyote, or more likely the red, foxy chow from up the street who regularly comes by, the temptress, to lure away her pal Bruiser, the boxer next door. But it wasn't her.

It was Bruiser. His window of opportunity had been narrow - very narrow. But he took advantage of it, seemingly inhaling the loaves of dough in mere seconds before returning to his owner's side. A heist worthy of Simon Templar.

He later, I was finally told, expelled a quite monstrous mass - his owner, alerted previously but theretofore having no knowledge that it was him, described it as a "large perfect loaf of dough" - although it was two - (I thought then) - from his mouth. That seems to have solved any remaining problem of mine. His owner had a different problem. But that problem too had been already dealt with by the time I learned the whole story.

All's well that ends well. I even shopped for more King Arthur's flour - it's made from hard red summer wheat - and made two more new loaves in time for dinner. For the record, I let the loaves do their final rise in the cab of my truck with the windows up. Dinner, by the way, was slow cooked pork roast with a paprika bark, sweet potato, corn on the cob, and the hot bread.
I gave my dog a bit of the pork as an apology.

As it turned out, however, Bruiser had not expelled the first loaf he ate. In the middle of the night, he became quite ill. Vomiting and diarrhea. Staggering and whimpering with pain.

Update, many months later: It seems the fermentation of the bread dough in his guts was making him dangerously drunk; alcohol poisoning sufficient to endanger his life. His owner had to make an emergency trip to the veterinarian in the wee hours. They had to put him on I.V. life support. It was bad.

I wrote the majority of this the evening before when the sequence of events was unclear and all we foresaw was a stomach ache for the poor fellow.)

I feel the bread dough arising.
I feel burping on the way.
I feel stomach aches disquietin'.
I feel bad bloats today.

Don't come near tonight,
It's bound to be a fright,
There's a dog with a sad surprise.

(Thanks to Talitha for the song!)

Bruiser survived with not more than a bad hangover. He and I are now good buddies.

Value of Retrograde Motion

As a chess player, I learned it is good to be able to return to earlier lines of thought. One studies the board, comes up with some lines of play, but continues study: I will get back to that other good move and use it, if there is nothing fruitful in my further ruminations. So before the clock runs out it's best to keep organized.

I noticed also, long ago, how conversations seem to take side-detours. Whether a conversation is a delightful one has little to do with its final map, of course; it usually depends on the quality of the company. As an experiment, I cultivated an ability to backtrack in conversation. To be the guy with the most skill in bringing back what was set aside or even lost; to return the thread to its place. All the while, surely, being tongue-in-cheek about the often unimportance of actually doing so. But often this satisfies both me and my partners in conversation. In the cases of more utilitarian conversations, it's even more useful to return to the main track until it concludes, I think. Even there excursions are useful and do happen, of course.

When I first got a good internet connection, after a hiatus in the '90s, nearly some 12 years ago, about the time Google came along, I was like an untrained chess strategist or conversationalist.

Oh, I wheeled and soared and swung and chased the shouting wind along, through footless halls of data.

I would explore and take twists and turns, and test the equipment, and revel in it all. I just never seemed to get anything done during these fanciful explorations. Sure, my productivity expanded with email and word-processing and amassing actual useful files, and organizing my life. And organizing my ephemera.

But the actual surfing was wild and distracting. Used this way, nothing holds the attention for long. But I finally learned how to track back and then keep going from there. When I needed to, which was often enough.

This is what I think is affecting those current writers of the thesis - you've read it - that computers and the internet are making us unfocused. I don't think so. No, I think we are witnessing newbies, newcomers to the internet, getting lost. Who are they? Why are they late? We have all dealt with them, I think. Especially in general business management, and the newspaper business, in particular, who scoffed at the internet for years. Technophobes, or some who got burned from a lack of skill at separating wheat from chaff. The usual suspects.

I expect they will get over it.

Giant Squash

Here are some huge volunteer squash plants, likely offspring of butternut squash, which arose from the composted kitchen scraps. The leaves, however, I have only seen associated with pumpkin varieties, on the internet. I have not had much luck in the past with winter squashes, as they tend to sprout early and reach maturity far earlier than the recommended October harvest time. I don't see how varmints won't find these monsters before then.

What I have read says when the stem dies, then it's time to pick. Also they reportedly need a few weeks of aging after picking to reach maximum flavor. I can do that this time.

See some earlier posts on squash and pumpkins.

UPDATE: August 27 2010 They have all turned the delicate cream color they are supposed to be. I have eaten one, mostly, but still have pie remaining from it. The big one in the picture I harvested a few days ago, and it's hardening up in the kitchen.

Catalogue

Sqirlz morph

More Shocking Dip

For some frozen boneless tilapia fillets I made a standard sort of breading: half cornbread mix and half self-rising flour, augmented with salt, pepper, and some onion powder, and a healthy teaspoon of cayenne pepper.

Where I broke ranks with tradition is the dip I concocted to wet each fillet prior to applying the breading. I put 3 TBS. of yellow mustard, 2 TBS. of brown mustard, and a splash of beer - Sierra Nevada brand - into a bowl and whisked it up. It was a tad runny so I adjusted it with some sprinkles of the breading mix, whisking, until it was thick enough but not a "batter" by any means. Dipped, then breaded the fillets.

I heated an inch of canola oil in my cast iron dutch oven I use for a fryer, and fried the fillets to light brown perfection. Served with a squirt of lime juice on each. (On the side I had some sweet potato I skinned, baked in the microwave, and then thick sliced and browned each side in a skillet with butter. Also some baked beans from a can. What the heck.)

The fish is one of the best things I have had in a long, long time. Highly recommended.

The Unintended Spill

A high ranking State Department official today revealed in a private press conference that a simultaneous hacking attack at Google, Facebook and several other internet companies' central databanks has been carried out by unknown foreign operators. "The entire databases of several corporations were downloaded over a period of weeks without detection," the source said. This includes large and diverse databases such as every book scanned by Google and all saved data on repeat users, as well as all Facebook's social network information including names, email addresses, saved history, contacts networks, interests, etc., and includes dates of birth, and various other indicators such as hometowns where listed, product loyalties, social preferences, racial makeup, etc.

Now, not only do large corporations and U.S. surveillance agencies have an entire list of almost everyone in the Western world's most revealing data, Al Qaeda or another unfriendly or criminal organization inevitably does also. This includes easily identifiable data on political views and identifications.

Officials of Google and Facebook we reached expressed outrage over the spill, and both claimed in nearly identical language that it was "unavoidable" and "unfortunate." The Facebook representative also stated it was "unforeseen." "We expect the hackers to be denied access shortly, and to curtail more file downloading soon."

Cherry Barbecue Sauce

Wash the 1/2 lb. of cherries. Pull the stems out, cut the cherries in half, and remove the stones. Add cherries and a bottle of Malta Goya (coke or pepsi if you have none of this, which you probably don't) and a teaspoon of sugar to a sauce pan and begin simmering. Add a bit of salt. Black pepper. Cut up a dry red New Mexico pepper, discard the seeds, and add pepper pieces to the sauce. Once it's all cooked down, simmering about 25 minutes at low heat, remove and drape the pieces of pepper over the pork loin. Pour the sauce and cooked cherries over pork loin and cook it all wrapped in foil as close to sous vide temperatures (140° F.) as your oven will go. Mine runs as low as 170° F. which I thought was too high for this but I cooked the loins for 8 hours.

Then early next morning I poured off the liquid, brought it back to a simmer, added some red wine vinegar - maybe a quarter cup - and the pieces of pepper, the cherry pieces, some onion powder, dash of cayenne powder, some minced garlic, a bit more salt, and finally a tablespoon of blackberry jam. And a tablespoon of some brown mustard. After simmering and some reduction again, I let it cool, pulverized the sauce in a blender, and ran it through a sieve, discarding what little remained after mashing it through with a a spatula, vigorously, back into the pan.

Before serving, brush some sauce on, brown the outsides of the already cooked pork loin, either on a very hot grill or on a hot skillet, then remove, slice, and pour a dollop of the remaining sauce over it.

What it is.(conspiracy theatre)

Sunday, May 30, 2010

What it is.(conspiracy theatre)

It looks like forces hostile to the U.S. switched from terrorism to the deliberate attempt to bankrupt the country. Using bribery, the strategy is similar to the old Soviet concept that America will sell them the rope they use to hang us. Meanwhile, the fascist forces have been fantasizing about Ayn Rand, and, seeing themselves as modern day John Galts, have joined forces with the Bin Ladens of the world to drive us to our doom.

Using fundamentalism here in the U.S. similarly to the way the Saudis and the Bushes and Cheney use Al Qaeda, certain forces are put into play using people such as Murdoch, etc. The rise of teaparty idiocracy gums up the works, allowing certain acts of corporate terrorism to occur: deliberate crashing of the markets by corrupt financial leveragers after skimming vast amounts of money placed in offshore accounts.

Angertainment. Hateriotism. Rageaholics. I bet you can find Saudi money funding the Tea Party "movement."

From an anonymous post on the web: (If by some chance the author sees it, tell me what to do.)
'Oil rolls gently in the sea merely 20 miles from the Florida Keys. The Louisiana coastline is now a garish reminder of the greed of a corporate mindset with only one goal: Do it now and do it cheap. Your unborn children and grandchildren will not know the joys of coastal fishing villages. You will never again enjoy the sea bounty of the Gulf of Mexico. But, wait and listen and on the wind you will the mindless platter of idiots singing on the wind, “drill baby drill.”
If you do not feel a sense of frustration at this moment of the short-sightness of the milling humanity of the greatest nation on earth and their inability to comprehend that the wrong set of rules is governing the process by which we consume resources, then you are dead—or will be soon.
Not only do the Gulf’s oil resources serve as the ultimate reservoir for the fossil fuel required by the military of PAX Americana, the latest world empire, that same Gulf coast houses fellow countrymen of our great nation who saw their livelihood totally collapse and, today, their hopes for resurrection of that way of life vanish.
Why we live this way is no longer a question. The race for energy at all costs to fuel our desire for more consumption of things we do not need has a rationale. It is implanted in the minds of all who salute a way of life has no regard for the ultimate cost of satisfying every whim. That rationale is called stupidity. It is also disguised as “liberty” and “freedom” on this holy day of memorial for those who have given the ultimate in our country’s wars over the years. It is a way of life that must change. Many regarded Timothy McVeigh as a terrorist of the first order, particularly when he referred to the deaths of innocent children and others in the Oklahoma City bombing as “collateral damage”.
There is little difference between the McVeighs of this world and leaders of a societal system that create a corporate structure that simply views the death of the Gulf of Mexico as “collateral damage” in the ever elusive pursuit of profits. Make no mistake about it; such is the view of those corporations that seek to continue to provide fossil fuel energy regardless of the impossible to total cost in lives and life styles for the folks and environmental resources that are sacrificed.
The answer is, per the popular song, my friend is “blowing on the wind.” The question remains: “When will they ever learn?”' - anonymous

BIG CONSPIRACY THEORY:
BP did it on purpose. Plot: spend one or two billion on rigged spill in Gulf; politics leads to opening Alaska's previously protected zones (Anwar) to drilling, resulting in up to a half-trillion dollars in oil. LIKELIHOOD: slim

Looks Like

It looks like forces hostile to the U.S. switched from terrorism to the deliberate attempt to bankrupt the country. Using bribery, the strategy is similar to the old Soviet concept that America will sell them the rope they use to hang us. Meanwhile, the fascist forces have been fantasizing about Ayn Rand, and, seeing themselves as modern day John Galts, have joined forces with the Bin Ladens of the world to drive us to our doom.

Using fundamentalism here in the U.S. similarly to the way the Saudis and the Bushes and Cheney use Al Qaeda, certain forces are put into play using people such as Murdoch, etc. The rise of teaparty idiocracy gums up the works, allowing certain acts of corporate terrorism to occur: deliberate crashing of the markets by corrupt financial leveragers after skimming vast amounts of money placed in offshore accounts,

Fragments from the Past

I remember the one that almost got away from us one night. Down near the Mexican border. At around midnight. It started kicking and I told the hands to "get ready to shut her in." On orders from the engineer, they didn't try to kill it until the "mud kicked up to the crown" (top of the rig) - that was his order before he turned over and went back to sleep - and when it did, I told the hands to shut her in AND THEY HAD NOT GOTTEN READY. They had to charge up a big compressed-air tank to power the rams. I never spent a longer 15 minutes as it kicked several more times. Meanwhile they were adding weight to the mud, and I was afraid some higher zones would succumb to the added weight, so I made them add lost-circulation material too. It was the right thing to do. And they shut it in (finally!) and began circulating under pressure and all was well.

Nightmare

The students, myself among them, were given a cheap edition of a book. The book was printed on poor quality paper, and had both instructions for the exam and the coded text, which was in normal English yet seemed like normal course material. It was not. In the text were placed occasional plastic three-dimensional pieces affixed to the pages, with inscrutable colored stripes and squares on each piece, which were of various sizes akin to the "houses" and "hotels" one sees in the board game Monopoly. I was reminded of the color codes of electronics components such as resistors, capacitors, etc., a code I have never learned.

Several blocks of text were repeated in a different font. This was part of the code, too. The book instructed that the final analysis should contain sufficient footnotes. It contained numerous footnotes itself, all inscrutable.

Included was a list of various flavors of ice cream the students were instructed to buy and taste. This too was part of the coded clues to decipher. The code seemed monstrously complicated and difficult.

There was a long line to get the ice cream, and I fretted that I had wasted time waiting. While in line, I reviewed some general University policies, and saw in a footnote: "¹ Students should be aware that some courses are not required for graduation despite being listed as required courses." I thought some government policy had forced them to reveal this. After I acquired my ice cream samples, I saw I could have saved much time by simply walking around to the back of the purchasing area, a mere extra block by sidewalk.

I fretted about all the footnotes required on the final exam to a friend, who chided me that professionals are expected to use footnotes and that students are expected to become professionals. I ate the ice cream and identified the flavors without enjoyment. I had no idea how to decipher the code but had to hope that I could make some progress later.

More More Malt

Recently made some chili, as I noted in a previous post. Having one of those bottles of Malta Goya on hand, and being familiar with the practice of using beer as the added liquid in some chili recipes, and also being familiar with a bit of sugar in some recipes to balance the bitterness of large amounts of hot chilies, which I do love, I decided to use the malty sweet barley drink as base of that particular batch. All I can say is, it was perfect.

More posts about malt in cooking.

Trip to Lemuria

Sqirlz morph

Chimp Man

(Here's part of a letter I wrote to Jeremy Jones, an associate of Xiberpix, the maker of the fine program Sqirlz Morph, which I use in making some of my art.)

Thanks for your comments. You are not the first to claim the images unsettling, including other artists, so I thought I would explain (it is past time to do so, I see!)

My impression is that actual animal-human hybrids are impossible by the nature of DNA, and even if possible, unethical for many reasons, at least until some future transformation of ourselves into a far kinder and gentler and knowledgeable human race. If the pictures merely suggest some future human body-modification fad for aesthetic reasons, what will be will be, and I suppose some will be shocked, likely for similar reasons I'll outline:

If you will notice, many of the pictures involve threatened species. My goal is to suggest we extend our sympathy and protection to these creatures to a further extent which many withhold at present, seeing a boundary of compassion beyond which they will not extend their identifications.

I would love to show elephants, for example, as more co-equal to us. I can't figure out how to deal with the trunk, unless I get into 3-D which I have not done. See this article on elephant intelligence, for example.

If I'm successful, this disturbing feeling will prompt some to ponder their obligations towards other life here on our planet. That's what I hope. As an artist I don't want to simply shock, although plenty of people do like to be shocked and astounded simply for the sake of excitement, so I can't complain.

Also, some of the pictures seem so far fetched I regard them as merely possible beings from other planets. I am a science fiction reader.

A few are just for fun. The "cat wolf" pleased me because I think he's beautiful.

Thanks for prompting me to write this.

Why Love Wikipedia?

My love affair with Wikipedia grows more with time. I suppose everyone is familiar with the problems of Wikipedia: the vandalism, the impossibility of seriously citing it as an authoritative source, the risk of well-intentioned - or otherwise - misinformation presented as truth.

In the 1970s my parents bought Encyclopedia Britannica. I was on my own then, but I did move back in with them a couple of times during the '70s and like my father had discovered, I could lose myself for hours at a time reading almost randomly in the volumes. I suspect my mother, no intellectual slouch (quite the contrary), was more focused, and would go to them with more specific goals in mind.

Such an investment was out of my reach. And it was out of the reach of about every one of my peers. I never met anyone my age who had a set that I knew of. We mostly went to college and had information coming out of our ears; too much to idly seek general knowledge very often. And of course I was a reader of fiction. Wonderful fiction.

For a long time also I've been aware of a sort of textbook mafia. In college one is of course appalled at the price of textbooks, and one reads of the big companies that seem to control the public school textbook market too. (No doubt private schools buy from the same sources as well.)
Lobbyists, state boards, salespeople: all jacking up the prices for books. And the university-oriented periodicals: $50 - $100 a year for a single subscription to any advanced journal in any field.

Until Wikipedia, there was only one alternative: a drive to the closest university library. Which I did on occasion when my profession indicated. Later came the interlibrary loan system, in which the community libraries promised to get me any book I desired. I confess I never took much advantage of this, for several reasons: a reference book is not much use when one has only a month or so to peruse it. And I tend to be hard on books. I read while eating, while at the beach, where dogs and children jump on me, even in the tub. It's not responsible citizenship to ruin a public book.

And the news archives. Looking up something that I saw in the newspaper years before required another drive to the public library and getting comfortable with the microfilm reader machine. I did that some, too. Even just for idle curiosity; if something nagged at my mind enough and I knew I could find out by viewing the archives, I'd go down there and look.

Wikipedia also appeals to my understanding of the circumstances of people in the wider world. Textbooks are even more expensive, relative to poverty, for hundreds of millions of people around the world. Wikipedia, for all its flaws, is revolutionary: nowadays, for the cost one tenth of a single set of encyclopedias, (a small reader) offers access to far more general knowledge than ever before.

The same philosophy also leads me to support the "$100 laptop," the Kindle, and all the various lower cost clones of these.

My own pleasure in simply finding stuff out is, of course, why I started my other website More Best of Wikipedia.

Tiger man

Sqirlz morph

The Other Website

My new website has temporarily taken some of my motivation away from this one. I apologize to my regular readers. Most will sympathize with the fascination I have found on at least some of these other topics, whether chosen by me or by the (former?) author of Best of Wikipedia which I linked on a sidebar of my own new site, More Best of Wikipedia. Hey, I think I'll link to them from here.

Let Them Eat Snakes

The Food Network has decided to broadcast "competitive cooking" for much of its entire programming day. This is colossally stupid.

Competitive cooking was fun, new, and freakish the first few times because it was rare. But doing it all the time is wrong on several levels.

Cooking is peaceful, intelligent, sentimental, delicious, interesting, primal, and fun. Often honest. Not a competition. Competitive cooking is almost a parody of what the stereotypical "moronic male" would do to a cooking channel: ruin it.

And then there are the cakes. I can't stand the shows about these cakes. These horrible, horrible cakes, made out of sugar and industrial foodlike substances. Every cake is a monument to the systematic denial of food to a starving child somewhere overseas. True abomination.

So to Hell with the Food Network, and I mean that literally.

Nic Cage as Flo the Progressive Insurance Girl

Of course this is a submission to the strange site "Nic Cage as Everyone."

Posole - Corny Story Part II

When I first made hominy and then masa dough for tamales out of the hominy (see Corny Story), I had fun and it was delicious. Not wanting to trek around in strangers' cornfields, this time I sought a source of dried field corn for sale close to home.

I made a few calls and couldn't find any wholesale yellow corn for sale. Finally I recalled that a local outfit sold corn stoves, and I called them and they said they had 50 lb. bags of corn for fuel. I meant to go by there and get some.

But the other day at the hardware store, the real old one that has outlasted the pressures imposed by the Home Depot and Lowes, I was getting my purchases together and noticed a man inquiring about the "deer corn" they sold. So I said I'd get a 50 lb. bag of it. The price was $10. Note that comes out to 20 cents per pound, which is a whole lot less than a pound of corn flakes, for instance, and a lot less than a pound of masa meal. And then I heard the other customer gripe that he didn't want a whole fifty pounds. "I'll split it with you," I offered and he quickly agreed. We asked for a bag and got a trash bag from the proprietor, and I had a stronger bag in my truck. Jay (we shook hands and introduced ourselves) and I split it up in front of the hardware store. He said he lived down in South Carolina and wanted it for luring deer so his family could bag some venison.

Back home, I called the company in Georgia that wholesaled it, and told a lady I was a writer doing an experiment making hominy and if it was safe to eat (I figured it was, but there are overturned trucks on the interstate, and salvage operations, or resales after freak contamination events and things like that, and I wanted to be sure.) She was interested and called me back after telling her bosses about my request, telling me they assured her it was safe to eat, it being just corn.

I took about a half gallon and rinsed it well, and began soaking it. I changed the water a couple of times and let it soak about 28 hours. Then I made hominy. And like last time, it took longer than the internet sources I read said it would. Simmered in lime water, then another soak overnight in it, and next morning it was still tough so I began simmering it again. I had to add water two more times; it kept swelling above the waterline in my big stainless steel pot. Finally I had to transfer it to the Big Pot, my new four-gallon stainless steel baby. After another two or three hours simmering it was done. Then I rinsed it and rinsed it, removing the limewater.

I have to note that my hominy still had the skins attached. There was one article that said you could cut the little cob end off each grain by hand and they'd come off easier. Yeah, right! But I didn't take them off last time and it was still good then.

Then, following this recipe at one of my favorite food sites, Homesick Texan, I made posole, a Mexican pork and hominy soup. I used bacon and pork loin cubes instead of pork shoulder and ham hock. Everything else was the same. Delicious! The soup was so flavorful I added more hominy than she did and it was just right. I served it with julienned scallions and cilantro.

Here's the leftover hominy, soon to be ground into masa dough for tamales in a few days. It should keep in the refrigerator for a week. It's hard to tell but each of these grains is about twice as wide as it originally was.

Update 5-5-10 The chewyness of the unseparated corn hulls finally got to me, as I froze several servings separately and reheated later. However, this has led me to re-introduce myself to several brands of store-bought hominy such as Bush's, and theirs is very good. I'll save the homemade for when the Apocalypse comes around, or find a correct corn variety (more likely, as the first time I made hominy it was better.) In any case, I liquefied the last batch of thawed-out posole in my blender and made a fine chili out of it, adding in the extra ingredients along with ground beef. Sure made a great chili.

Update 2: August 2010 I haven't made it clear, but the first time I did this using the field corn I picked myself, I had a better result. The deer corn was of lower quality overall. This taught me the difference between low- and high-quality dried corn, anyway. Next time, I'll go for some field corn from a local guy who has agreed to hook me up with some of his own he grows.

Thai Soup

One TBS. miso paste
One TBS. chicken boullion
Quart of water
One TBS. garlic
One can coconut milk
One half a dried Thai pepper
One tsp. dried ginger powder
salt, MSG
Grated peel of one lime.
Simmer.
Juice of half a lemon, and half the lime, added right before serving.
Garnished with cilantro and julienned scallions.

Success! Delicious. Think I'll have another bowl.

This is a fine base for adding other things. I'm thinking shrimp. Or, for another taste, peanut butter. Which I have here now.

(With all the citrus, when I put a dab of peanut butter in the leftovers next day, it unbalanced the flavors. I would suggest saving the peanut butter for another recipe.)

Update: 2-21-10 I recreated the soup and this time added some shrimp which I first boiled, in a spicy bath comprising Old Bay seasoning, a little lime juice, and a few grams of Dave's Insanity Sauce in salted water, for two-and-a-half minutes. Then I put them in a salted ice water bath. Then I drained them and peeled them later. When the soup was ready I put them in just long enough to get hot. Served this time too with scallions and cilantro and lemon and lime juice added right before serving.

Update: 4-27-10 Again I made this same basic recipe. I omitted some of the citrus juice but this time added some roast chicken meat I had pulled off the bone, and a couple of tablespoons of adobo sauce, which comes packaged with sesame oil. Delicioso! (not pictured here; the photo is of the shrimp version, my second selection.)

Mediterranean Wintertime Fish

Hearing some descriptions of a dish from my sister, I promptly forgot the recipe except for a few themes, and created this.

(To warn you right away, this is the story of a failure.)

Sautéed two chopped small onions and stalk of celery, two pinches of whole mustard seeds, 1/4 jalapeño in a skillet I had just fried two pieces of bacon in, reserving some of the bacon fat for later endeavors.
Then, once that began to brown, I added a couple of spoonfuls of water, a tin of anchovies and broke that up in the center of the sauté pan, and 1 TBS. each of minced garlic and capers. This simmered about 8 minutes and the anchovies pretty much dissolved. I added a tin of sardines (3 in the tin) and a handful of chopped arugula, the cooked crumbled bacon, and a can of clams, drained. I decided to add some thyme and black pepper. I put the lid on and simmered this for maybe 3 minutes, wanting the clams piping hot but not cooked any longer. I added a cup of heavy cream, put the lid on, turned off the stove, and cooked my pasta, some farfalle, also known as "bow ties."Could have used some more cream. In fact, it would have benefited by leaving out the capers, replacing the sardines with some other fish. Parsley would have worked better than arugula. Come to think of it, tomatoes would have been better than cream. And the sardines were the wrong kind. Mustard sauce. I rinsed them but really, I should have left them out today.

This recipe needs work. A lot of work. Verdict: minor failure. It was good food, but the flavors were not balanced.

More Malt

Today being a cold one, I loaded up the stove with wood and cooked myself a big pot of oatmeal, and when it was done I poured malt syrup all over it and dug in. Delicious!

I started out when young putting brown sugar on my oatmeal. That trick, which more people ought to know, lifts oatmeal into the realm of excellence. Later, when I learned that brown sugar is just a premixed blend of granulated sugar and molasses, I just began buying molasses. And putting that on my oatmeal. I also make my oatmeal with milk instead of water.

I have also tried maple syrup on the oatmeal, and that's pretty good. But today the malt syrup went on there. I pronounce it a success. It rivals my favorite, the molasses. Call it a tie.

This is part of a slowly evolving series I'm doing about cooking with malt. You can use the handy-dandy search box to find all my articles about "malt."

The Ride

The usual way was to pile a bunch of boys in a car and get to the camping ground that way. But on this day, for whatever reason, the boy and his father rode unaccompanied by others in the family car.

It was a sunny day, and it wasn't winter. They headed north into Wisconsin. He realized he wasn't often alone with his father on these Boy Scout affairs. Usually they would split up; the boy would would spend these camp-outs erecting tents, going on the hikes, doing the rest in a cluster of friends; getting signed off on various Boy Scout instructional lessons which impart some actual useful skills and are designed to keep the boys on the right path. His father would meanwhile be doing father things with the other men - moving logs, fueling lamps, unpacking chests of food. Each of them enjoyed the company of those who were not seen every day.

He was always slightly afraid of his father. A gentle man who probably feared his own anger, mild as it was, more than he feared any other man, he had really only spanked the boy, or his brother, once or twice, years ago, and perhaps whacked his backside once long ago with a belt - enough so that in later years he only had to frown and touch his belt buckle, and he and his brother would quickly realize they were on the wrong side of a line.

A transplanted Southerner, one day over the supper table he had announced a new deal. He had detected some disrespect, he said. The children became serious. He went on. From that point on, the children were to say "Yes sir" and "No sir" and "Yes ma'am" and "No, ma'am." Over the next several months, he even trained the boys in the rudiments of military formation. And the boys, like dogs, loved it.

But mostly it was a vague feeling of not wanting to disappoint. The boy let the moment dissolve in the sun and the road. It was good, too, to have his father all to himself. The quiet between them became comfortable. After a while the boy spoke:

"Why don't you tell me a story about when you were in the Army?"

"Once in Alaska, I had night time guard duty, and I had to walk around the outside of the fence. Yes, it was very cold. We wore parkas over our uniforms. I turned the corner and came face to face with an Arctic timber wolf. I think it surprised both of us. They aren't like a dog; they're big, maybe 80 pounds."

"I was very scared, because he didn't run away; he just sat there looking at me. So I drew back the bolt on my rifle. I didn't even see him go. One second he was there and then he was gone. He just disappeared. They're smart. He knew that sound, what my gun was; they know about man."

"I'll tell you about a fellow I knew up there. He was an older man. I was a little older than most of the other men but he was a lot older. He didn't get along with the younger men very well. In his forties I guess. He was a writer. Books, detective stories. Yes, I read some of them after the war. They were all right, I guess."

The boy's interest faded a bit; he looked out the window for a few seconds. For some reason the man raised his voice a bit, and lightly slapped the steering wheel. "Listen! This is important!"

"I was his only friend. But he was always complaining about the Army's ways of doing things; about how there were better ways or how stupid they were. I finally told him, 'Hammett, it just doesn't do any good to complain; you may as well try to look on the bright side of things.'

"He looked at me like he had never thought of it that way. Yes, I think he was a little better after that.

"What happened to him? Well he got out of the Army when the war was over, just like all of us! A few years later he died and your mother and I were invited for me to speak at his funeral service. His wife sent a letter. No, we didn't go. He was a communist. At that time, if I had gone, they would have thought I was a communist too."

Just then, the man and the boy saw part of the convoy of Boy Scouts had stopped a couple of cars at the side of the road at the turn off, signaling to the car that this was the turn onto the dirt road that led to the camp ground. The story was over.

Flo, the Progressive Insurance Chick

Flo, whose name I had missed until today, knowing her only as the Progressive Insurance chick, is in reality Stephanie Courtney. I, too, am fascinated by her allure.

However, it is this scene pictured here which I believe has inspired a whole trend of wacky body language. This stance of hers is very odd, to the point that it amuses me, no matter the context. It says, "hands off, come and get me!" Nicely paradoxical, and very feminine. (Here come the thrown shoes. Oh hell.)

However, my prediction - the reason for this post - is that exaggerated body language as a conscious element, inserted into the current zeitgeist, is already here. We will see much more of it soon, and the first imitators and bandwagon-jumpers are coming into focus on the scene right now.

Flo has lots of commercials they don't play in your area.

Name the Artist

Here's an image by a well-known artist. The game is simply be the first to identify the artist.

My thinking was that since there is, as far as I can tell, no easy way to Google the answer, it's not susceptible to cheating. Same with Wikipedia.

UPDATE: The game is a good one but this one was just way too obscure! No one but a specialist would have ever guessed that this artist painted this work. I think the next one should be easier.

Unnatural!!!

Every so often I hear some smug holier-than-thou type telling me it's unnatural to drink milk. I drink milk, and they don't: ergo, they are superior beings.

Without fail I notice these people eat cheese. Which, I must point out, is one step further removed from "natural." Not only are they harvesting hetero-species-ical milk, they are curdling and aging it and allowing bacteria and mold grow in it. So how natural is that, Mr. and Ms. Natural?

Granted, I'm not happy with the growth hormones and such in modern milk. And I even sympathize with vegans. Still, that's not what these kooks are talking about.

Plus, they act like they are somehow "grown up" which is why they eschew milk. You and I both know these people wouldn't drink milk even when they were kids, causing their mothers' to worry about their diets and give them Bosco and Ovaltine and stuff normal kids never had to learn about. Which worries were justified, because now that they are all grown up they live on diets mostly of coffee, booze, chocolate, cigarettes, soda pop and pizza. Grown up food. You know, the natural way of doing things.

I hope their hips don't shatter. Must be tough eating that required half-pound of collard greens per day to get the calcium. What with their preferred diet. Oh, wait, that's right: they eat the cheese. Lots and lots of cheese.


Here is a being acting naturally. I'm not so sure about this or this, but live and let live: that's my motto.

Paneer Breakfast

Deciding on an attempt to eat a healthy breakfast, I knew veggies were paramount. I know this puts me at odds, in general, with most of the U.S., for whom breakfast vegetables are usually limited to potatoes, onions, and, rarely, to what is included in a Spanish omelet - tomatoes and peppers and such. And of course, a bean breakfast burrito. Or the mushrooms, or spinach in other kinds of omelet. All of which is starting to sound not too awful, actually. All right, I surrender: there are more healthy options to American breakfast than I realized.

Anyway, I had some paneer left over. I made it using this recipe from The Paupered Chef. Using the sour milk (yogurt, actually) to curdle the fresh milk was a clever trick which, although thousands of years old, had eluded me. When I made it, I used it in an eggplant and potato dish, but didn't document any of it.

But for today I planned this breakfast dish last night and early this morning, and fine tuned it as I made it. Here's what we have:
One last poblano from the garden, a small green one the size of a big jalapeño; and a small onion, chopped and begun browning in butter. Meanwhile, I began heating a 6" iron skillet to toast some spices in. But first I measured out a half teaspoon each of mustard seed and cumin seed, and tossed that in with the cooking onions. Then I measured out the following:
1/2 a dried Thai red pepper, chopped
1 tsp commercial garam masala powder (this has some cinnamon in it.)
1 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds
6-7 black pepper corns
2 cloves
5-6 cardamoms
1/2 tsp coriander seeds
and toasted it in my little skillet. I kept it moving and tossing; the turmeric and garam masala powder needed the toasting most but was most likely to burn first, so I watched it. Then I emptied my little skillet full of toasted spices into a coffee cup, and as soon as it cooled I ground everything into a spice mix in my coffee mill / spice grinder.

Before it cooled, I had diced up the leftover paneer - a chunk about as big as a tennis ball- and begun browning it. And then added the generous handful of frozen green peas. Stirred in those spices. And finally, some diced leftover sweet potato which had been made the previous evening with a sprinkle of sugar and drizzle of molasses (which equals "brown sugar;" I usually make my own when I need it.)

I stirred for a few minutes, wanting everything to brown just lightly, and when it had I added a splash of water, a little salt, and it was done in another minute.

If you want some Indian recipes, check out Tigers & Strawberries, one of my favorite food sites.

There are some paneer options I've just begun to ponder, such as adding heavy cream for a richer paneer. I could have made my own yogurt, too. Sometimes I'll buy some and start a batch with one spoonful of the store-bought mixed in a quart of milk.

Milk used to be more heavily subsidized in this country. Dried milk used to be substantially cheaper than whole milk. Still, money can be saved if it's bought in the big sizes and I'll champion homemade yogurt made from dried milk as being good as any other.

Shocking Dip Part 2 - Szechuan Sauce for Breading Chicken

Last night, continuing this train of thought, I dipped some chicken in Szechuan sauce before I applied my mix of pankoesque crumbs with flour, salt, pepper and a tad of cornbread mix. I used a different brand than Kame, because I can't find it around. A good Szechuan sauce is fermented all together, in my opinion. It has soy and hot red pepper flakes or powders, and also other flavorings such as plum, garlic, ginger, sesame. I'm no expert on how to make these sauces; all I know is the brand Kame sold a few years ago was really good. I think they changed the recipe; it was not available for a few years and then all of a sudden I saw it again. Just not lately. So I used Asian Gourmet brand Szechuan stir fry sauce.

This made very tasty fried chicken. It almost browned too fast but I turned down the heat, and kept flipping it in the pan, and let it finish on low. I may never dip chicken in egg dip again.

Malted Chocolate Ice Cream

This is another example of using malted barley syrup for uses other than making beer. Here I poured some "amber" malt syrup over some chocolate ice cream. No hops in this syrup, of course.

Malt seems to be a big mystery to lots of people. It used to be sold as syrups more widely. All I can say is follow the malt link and learn. It's widely used in the mass-produced candy market, but no longer a common home ingredient. A malted milkshake is a milkshake with malt syrup or dry malt powder added.

It's a similar taste to caramel, but it is distinctly itself, a different flavor of sweet. It's often blended with caramel sugar, and can be caramelized itself.

"Malted milk" powder is a bit different. It's malt sugar mixed with dry milk powder. And wheat, apparently. I say, why pay for the part that's dry milk when I already have my own milk and ice cream to mix with the pure malt sugar and syrups?

Some use pure malt to sweeten waffle and pancake batter. I think it would make a great syrup on waffles and pancakes. Or both in the batter and on top. It's also used to provide a boost to yeast in breads and rolls.

Before sugar cane or sugar beets, it was known and available as a sweetener in Europe and surrounding parts. I don't know if it was widely used that way much historically. It would take extra fuel to extract pure sugar syrup or crystaline powdered malt sugar. Beer would be easier to make from malted grains.

Here's a link to beer making.
A short orientation about sweets in the Middle Ages.
Maltose.

Oh, the ice cream was delicious.