The Beckyan Deli

Roast Turkey

2011-11-28T22:20:00.000-08:00

Okay. So I haven't posted to this blog since January. And Thanksgiving was last Thursday. But that doesn't mean I can't post my roast turkey recipe now! And if I do it now, it'll be written down before I forget it again next year.

There are many schools of thought on cooking a turkey. But something that everybody who knows something about cooking turkey knows is: you'll get much better results if you don't stuff it.

The "traditional" method (that is written on the side of the frozen turkey bag) has low heat (325F) for 15 minutes a pound. But this doesn't actually yield very good turkey, and 325F isn't hot enough to brown the skin to give you that nice roasted-turkey look.

But then there are people who say you should put it in high heat first, then low heat. Or low first then high. Or you should deep fry it. (This is slightly dangerous, but yields a good turkey).

Anyway, what do I do for Thanksgiving every year? That I can answer. I learned this method in my professional cooking class. It works well, and can be applied to any bird, though I've only roasted chickens and turkeys. You need to keep an eye on the bird -- the cooking time depends on the size of the turkey! But it's considerably less than the canonical 15 minutes per pound. This Thanksgiving, the 20 pound turkey took about 2 hours and 40 minutes.

Dry-Brined Roast Turkey

Turkey
Salt
brining bag (plastic bag large enough to hold the turkey and be closed)
roasting pan large enough to hold the turkey. No need for a special rack!
kitchen string
Onions (3-5 large onions)
Shallots (2-3)
Carrots (see below)
Celery (see below)
Rosemary
Thyme
Other Herbs

First: the "dry brining". There are a few schools of thought on brining a turkey (which is basically salting it in advance.) The eminent food scientist Harold McGee doesn't like brining. But I figure: you're going to salt the bird, so why not do it in advance so that the salt can penetrate the skin which helps it keep moisture when it cooks?

The easiest dry brine is the "Judy Bird". First, remove the neck and giblets from the turkey. (Use the neck to make stock for gravy if you wish, but that will have to be another post.) Then, wash the turkey inside and out and pat dry with paper towels. Then take 1 Tbs of salt for each 5 pounds of bird (e.g. our 20 pound bird required 4 Tbs of salt). Sprinkle some on the inside, and then rub the rest liberally around the full bird. (See the link for excruciatingly detailed instructions.)

Note that if you don't have the full amount of brining time (a couple of days), at this point you don't need to go through the whole rigamarole. But no matter what you do, you will want to rub salt on the bird! If you have the time, put the turkey in the brining bag, close it up, and put it in the fridge for 1-3 days. At least 8 hours before you will start roasting, take the bird out of the bag and put it back in the fridge. This will help dry out the skin which will help to give it the nice color. A couple hours before roasting, take the bird out of the fridge to bring it closer to room temperature.

We will be roasting the turkey on a mirpoix, which is a mix of 25% coarsely chopped carrots, 25% coarsely chopped celery, and 50% coarsely chopped onion. How much you will need will depend on the size of the roasting pan. A typical roasting pan will require a 2-3 onion mirpoix.

Next, chop some aromatics for the inside of the turkey to add some flavor. I recommend some sliced onion, shallot, rosemary, and thyme. This should be very coarse.

Chop off the wings. These are useless except for propping up the turkey.

Put the aromatics inside the turkey and tie the legs closed with kitchen string. You want the turkey to be as compact and non-flapping-about as possible (hence cutting off the wings).

Lay out the mirpoix in the roasting pan, put the wings on the mirpoix, and then put the turkey breast side down. You should also pour ~1/4-1/2 cup water in the roasting tray so that the bottom is moist. This will keep the turkey moist and the veggies from over-caramelizing (eg. burning). Occasionally check during cooking to make sure that there's liquid on the bottom of the pan (Eventually this will be tasty turkey juice).

Heat oven to 350F (195 C).

Put turkey in the oven breast side down for 45 minutes. (Note that I did 60 minutes for the giant 20 pound turkey.)

After 45 minutes, turn oven to 400F (220 C) and flip the bird so that it is breast side up. This is a bit of a challenge, but can be accomplished if you're careful! It should roast breast side up for ~60 minutes until it is nice and brown and the internal temperature in the thigh is 158F (88C), and the juices run clear. If it's over-browning you can turn it down. During this phase I recommend rotating the pan (not flipping the bird!) every 20 minutes to ensure that both sides of the turkey get equal heat. Often turkeys can be large enough that they impede the flow of air in the oven making this necessary.

Take the turkey out of the oven and cover with a foil and a towel for ~15 minutes to let it rest and finish cooking.

And that's it!

Pumpkin Bread

2011-01-29T14:57:00.000-08:00

Some time ago, I posted a recipe for courgette (zucchini) bread, inspired by a particularly successful loaf of pumpkin bread that Mike V. and I baked in Tanzania. And I'm sure everybody has been wondering...but what about that pumpkin bread?

Well, at long last, here is a fantastic pumpkin bread recipe, adapted from an article by Christopher Kimball, the editor of Cook's Illustrated. I recommend using fresh pumpkin, the preparation of which I described on my pumpkin pie recipe.

Pumpkin Bread with Fresh Pumpkin

Makes 1 9x5 inch loaf

1 pie-appropriate pumpkin, roasted (or 1 15 oz can of Libby's pumpkin)
2 cups (10 oz) unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp fresh-grated (or ground) ginger
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1 cup (6.5 oz) granulated white sugar
8 Tbs (1 stick) unsalted butter, browned and cooled (see here)
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease the loaf pan with butter, line the bottom with parchment paper, and grease the parchment paper. Dust with all purpose flour.

Line a baking sheet with 3 layers of paper towels. Spread the pumpkin (fresh and baked as from here, or canned) on the paper towels, and lay another 3 layers on top. Press gently and evenly all around until the paper towels are saturated. Peel off top towels, and transfer pumpkin to medium bowl, and toss the towels.

Put dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices) in a large bowl and whisk to combine. Put wet ingredients (pumpkin, sugar, browned butter, eggs, and vanilla) in bowl and whisk until smooth. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients, and fold together with spatula until just combined. Transfer to greased loaf pan and bake until the top is brown and a toothpick comes out clean, around 55 minutes. Cool in pan on rack for 10 minutes, remove from pan, and cool on rack.

Want To Make Bread? There's No Knead!

2010-07-15T21:37:00.000-07:00

In November of 2006, Mark Bittman introduced the world to Jim Lahey's No-Knead Bread. This recipe totally rocked my world, and demoted the bread machine to a sad, unused corner of the kitchen. And it wasn't just me...everybody I knew who baked was talking about it. Four years later, it came up at lunch, which inspired this post.

And what is this Wondrous Bread Without Kneading of which I speak? A homemade bakery-style boule, with a wonderful crust, open crumb, and the feel of a real loaf of bread. There's no complicated technique, no sophisticated equipment. Though you do need a 6-8 quart covered dutch oven (cast iron, glass, etc.) that can withstand a 450 degree oven, and time to mix the dough a day in advance.

The secret behind the no-knead method is water. To get a good bakery crust, you need a steam-injection oven, which most people don't have in their home. Jim Lahey realized that if you have a relatively wet loaf of bread in a covered pot...you get the steam for free! His next insight was that when you mix up the wet dough you don't need to physically knead it. Over a long stretch of time (12-24 hours) the rising dough will naturally stretch out the gluten, and when the dough is wet the gluten molecules are free to assemble themselves into alignment and create the network necessary for a great loaf of bread.

In December, 2006 Mark Bittman posted a follow-up article with some tweaks to the recipe, and later Cook's Illustrated picked up the baton for their "Almost No-Knead Bread" (subscription required) in the January 2008 issue. Both of these contained key insights to improving the technique, and I've added a few tweaks of my own. One suggestion from Cook's Illustrated that I tried once and didn't find very useful was to replace 6 Tbs water with mild-flavored American lager. Unfortunately, as mild-flavored American lager is like making love in a canoe, I didn't find this to be very useful.

No-Knead Bread

Note that you need to mix the dough the day before you bake it; it requires 14-24 hours total rise time. Don't be intimidated by the length of the recipe; it's not that many steps, but I wanted to make it unscrewupable.

Ingredients
3 cups+ (430 grams+) bread flour
1 5/8 cup (345 grams) water, minus 1 tablespoon
1 Tbs white vinegar
1/4 tsp yeast
1 Tbs salt

In a large bowl, combine flour, yeast, and salt. Put water and vinegar in microwave and heat to luke-warm temperature. Add liquid to flour mixture, and stir with spatula until blended. The dough should be "almost too wet to handle", and you may need to add some additional flour depending on the humidity. Although the recipe is unlike normal bread-baking in that it is very forgiving, I've had the best results when it is slightly-too-wet-to-handle rather than soupy.

Cover bowl with plastic wrap and allow dough to rest 12-18 hours at room temperature. Dough is ready when the surface starts to get bubbly.

Lightly flour work surface (don't be shy!) and peel dough out from the bowl and put it on the surface. Sprinkle a bit of flour on top and fold it over on itself a couple of times (oh noes! this is almost but not quite "kneading"). Cover loosely with plastic wrap (I hope you didn't throw that wrap out!) and let rest about 15 minutes.

The next step involves letting the dough to rest for a couple of hours. Your best bet is to take a wide skillet and put a big piece of parchment paper on it. The parchment paper is a key addition that will facilitate dough transfer and prevent sticking. Lightly flour your fingers and gently and quickly form the dough into a ball. Place dough seem-side down on the parchment paper, dust with a bit of flour, and cover with a cotton towel.

After 2 hours, put the covered dutch oven in the oven, turn it to 450 degrees, and set a timer for 30 minutes. Put the oven rack as high as you can and still fit the dutch oven in; I've found that otherwise the bread gets too much bottom heat and can overbrown on the bottom.

After a total of 2 1/2 hours of rise time, remove the dutch oven and take off the cover. Use the parchment paper to transfer the dough ball to the dutch oven, and try to be careful and not burn your fingers. The parchment paper will also keep the dough from sticking to the dutch oven. Cover and bake in the oven for 30 minutes. Remove lid, and cut a vent in the top of the loaf. Continue to bake uncovered for another 10-15 minutes until loaf is nicely brown. Remove and cool on a rack.

Enjoy!

Black Bean Veggie Burgers

2010-06-14T21:42:00.000-07:00

Back in Ann Arbor, Becky and I would grill all through the summer grilling season. And one of our favorite things to grill on short notice were the Morningstar Farms Spicy Black Bean Veggie Burgers. These are exceptional veggie burgers because they don't try to taste like fake burgers. (Becky doesn't eat meat, and I like real burgers.) With black beans and corn and spiciness, they are delicious and full of protein. And they are not available on the west coast. And the grilling season lasts all-year round here! It's tragic.

So this has forced us to roll our own.

Spicy Black Bean Veggie Burgers

Scouring online, I found this recipe, and used that and the comments as a basis for what are tasty veggie burgers. In order for them to work, these need to be made in advance and frozen.

Makes 6-8 patties

Ingredients:
1 cup dry black beans
1 red pepper
1/2 medium onion
3 cloves garlic
1 egg
1 Tbs chili powder
1 Tbs cumin
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 cup (commie) panko bread crumbs

Soak the black beans overnight in unsalted water. Drain the beans, cover generously with water, and boil for ~2 hours until tender. Drain again, and mash the beans with a potato masher.

Coarsely chop red pepper, onion, and garlic and put in food processor or mini-chopper. Put blended mixture in a fine-mesh strainer to drain excess water. Leave in strainer for at least 10 minutes and discard excess liquid.

Whisk together egg, chili powder, cumin, and salt. Add egg mixture and veggie solids to mashed beans, followed by panko. Stir until mixed.

To make the patties, take a square of plastic wrap and place a ball of bean on it. Shape into a patty and wrap in plastic. Repeat for the 6-8 patties. Put in ziploc bags and freeze for at least one day.

To cook the patties, put a folded piece of foil on a hot grill. Unwrap frozen patty/ies and place on foil. (This is necessary to keep them intact). Cover grill. When the bottom is crispy, flip (carefully!) and put on cheese. Serve on toasted buns with your favorite condiments. And may I recommend a side of spicy corn!

Ramble On!

2010-05-29T22:11:00.000-07:00

When we started this blog, I pitched it to Eli as a place where we could share recipes, pictures, and travel stories. But my ulterior motive was getting Eli to blog about the financial meltdown. And it worked! Temporarily.

Meanwhile, we used my Flickr account for sharing travel photos and stories. And when Sam was born, we figured people were more interested in pictures of him, so we use Flickr for his pictures, too. We have posted lots of recipes on this blog, though, so at least that has been useful to us (and hopefully to you!).

However, I really wanted to have a personal website, with a blog. I've wanted to rant about all sorts of things, but some of them didn't quite seem right for a shared blog. So I'm announcing (after only three paragraphs) that I am now blogging at www.rebeccastanek.com. I'm not yet sure what I'll be focusing on, but please come along for the ride!

Telling the Internet to get LOST

2010-05-22T14:34:00.000-07:00

Like some people in this article, I will be going on an internet blackout at 6 p.m. PT tomorrow night. And if you don't know why, then I must ask you what cave you've been living in for the past six years.

With the rise of VCRs and then DVRs, the networks have been worried about people time-shifting their shows and skipping the ads. But now, people are connected by Facebook and Twitter, and having real-time conversations about shows. So why not start simulcasting the biggest events -- like awards shows (as has been done recently) and big finales -- in all time zones? Wouldn't that increase the buzz even more? I know that NBC is full of epic fail when it comes to this, but I can't think of a better time for ABC to take that kind of risk.

At one point I threatened to start a "Simulcast the LOST finale in all timezones!" campaign. I half-suspected that was why ABC was airing it on a Sunday. But I never had time to do that, so instead, I will avoid my internet tomorrow night, and catch up with everyone on Monday morning. Maybe when the next Big Television Event rolls around, I'll be able to watch it live with everyone.

S is for Sam, and for Santa Barbara ABCs!

2010-05-16T14:02:00.001-07:00

The ABCs of Santa Barbara
Originally uploaded by R Stanek

Back when I was pregnant, I wanted to make an alphabet poster for [untitled], using letters from signs around town. Well, Sam turned 7 months old today, and I finally finished the poster! We hit up many local Santa Barbara institutions, particularly the nearby neighborhood joints (Derf's, Los Gallos, etc.) that we frequent. And this was definitely a joint effort: I took nearly all the pictures, and dealt with cropping and scaling, but Eli did the assembling of the poster in Photoshop. In my defense, there is no way my laptop could have handled it.

I can't wait to see the poster on the wall. Happy 7 months, Sam!

(Week 20 of Project 52.)

Careful!

2010-05-16T13:57:00.001-07:00

Caution!
Originally uploaded by R Stanek

I just really love the bright red sign against all the blue and gray. Also, the breakwall does get very slippery sometimes, yikes.

Week 19 (yes, I know it's late, but there's a good reason) of Project 52.

True Love is Forever. Apparently, so is The Gap

2010-05-05T16:05:00.000-07:00

I just realized that today Eli and I are both wearing the same shirts that we did on the day we got engaged.

In October, 2005.

What's sadder, that I remember this*, or that apparently neither of us has gone shopping in four and a half years?

*There are actually pictures, which is how I remember. Also, Eli's shirt is really orange. I'm not losing that brain cell any time soon.

The solitary flower and/or photographer

2010-05-03T22:24:00.001-07:00

Scrubbing bubbles
Originally uploaded by R Stanek

I know I said "no flowers", but I'm using this picture because it actually has a story behind it! I was lagging behind the rest of the family while walking in Santa Monica, and wanted to get a picture of these great flowers. While I was doing so, and older gentleman came up to me and we had a chat about trees, California, photography, etc. I learned that this is a bottlebrush tree, which I'm sure saved me some time that would have otherwise been spent with a National Audubon Society Field Guide.

Most of my hobbies and interests are naturally solitary pursuits -- reading, photography, jogging -- and that often suits me. That doesn't mean it's lonely, though. I enjoyed the photowalk I did with local Flickrites, and people often approach me while I'm out and about with my camera. And I don't take pictures of other people, generally, so it's not even because of that. People just want to talk about cameras and trees and art, and I've started to enjoy that.

(Week 18 of Project 52. Uh. Did I say I was going to stop taking backlit pictures? Sorry about that.)

Busy Busy!

2010-04-25T21:44:00.001-07:00

Busy
Originally uploaded by R Stanek

It's busy everywhere right now. Busy on the blog! Busy at home, now that Sam's eating solids and we're making baby food! Busy at work! Busy with photography, as I'm working on an alphabet project for Sam's room.

So I thought this busy photo was appropriate. I'm still going through the pictures from last weekend's photowalk, and experimenting with the post-processing, and some conversions to black and white. Hopefully some of those will see the light of day!

Courgette (Zucchini) Bread

2010-04-25T12:56:00.000-07:00

Back when I was in the Peace Corps (I know, I know) I took spring break 1998 to visit Mike V. on Mafia Island, a small island off the coast of mainland Tanganyika. Mafia is exactly what you would expect from a desert island in the Indian Ocean, complete with a fantastic coral reef. Luckily, V was friends with the folks who ran the scuba dives from the main resort on the island. Which means...free scuba diving!

Yet it does seem kind of rude to just tag along on a dive trip, especially since the resort prepares lunch for the guests, so we had to bring our own lunch. Since it was pumpkin season on Mafia (who knew?) we also decided to bring some homemade pumpkin bread to barter for some better food. Although we lacked a real oven, it's possible to make quick breads by building a very basic "convection" oven. You put one sufuria (a pot without a handle) on a three piles of coins inside another larger sufuria which is placed on a kerosene stove. When you cover the large sufuria, convection will bring heat all the way around the bread. It works pretty well, although temperature control is a fine art that depends on the temperament of your kerosene stove.

Joining us on the dive trip that day (pictured above) were the resort folks, Sam (who was British), and a woman whose name eludes me for the moment (who was a white Kenyan). The paying guests were a nice family from Denmark who were very blond. At lunch we brought out the pumpkin bread, and everybody was baffled. Bread made with pumpkin? Nobody had ever heard of such a preposterous thing! Sam said incredulously, "what other crazy things do you Americans make...courgette bread?"

Indeed we do!

In spite of their apprehension, everybody enjoyed the bread and I got two more free days of diving that week.

Courgette (Zucchini) Bread

The following recipe is adapted from Jillicious Discoveries, where it was adapted from Baking Illustrated, where it was adapted from Cook's Illustrated. Apparently you can add nuts to this, but I say "nuts to that!"

Ingredients:
2 cups (10 oz) all-purpose flour
3/4 cup (5.5 oz) sugar
1 lb zucchini, or courgette, depending on where you're from
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup plain yogurt
2 eggs
2 Tbs lemon juice
6 Tbs unsalted butter, melted

Cut off ends of zucchini and grate on large holes of box grater. Mix 2 Tbs of sugar with shredded zucchini and put in a large strainer over a bowl to drain for at least 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Take a 9x5 inch loaf pan, and grease it. Cut out a piece of parchment paper for the bottom of the loaf pan, insert, and grease and flour the whole thing, tapping out excess flour. Whisk flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder in a medium bowl. In a separate medium bowl, whisk sugar, eggs, yogurt, lemon juice, and butter. Take the zucchini and squeeze in paper towels to remove as much moisture as possible. Gently mix dry ingredients, wet ingredients, and zucchini together with a spatula. Pour into loaf pan, and bake for 45-55 minutes, until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean.

The Truth About Pandering

2010-04-22T22:07:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about Michael Steele is that he often accidentally speaks the truth, like in his mention of the GOP's infamous Southern Strategy. In return, a conservative blogger complained, "Steele’s job is to make TODAY’S GOP attractive to voters, not to declare that we haven’t pandered enough to any group."

Let me spell this out for Mr. Cargosquid. If the only demographic your party consistently attracts is white men, maybe the problem isn't that you're not pandering to other groups. Maybe the problem is that you've been pandering to white men. Remember when I pointed out that in many circles, male is the default? Well, to the GOP, white men are the default, and everyone else is a special interest group.

(Special interest groups who should stay in the kitchen! Ah, Medina.)

Walking around

2010-04-19T22:57:00.001-07:00

Hanging around
Originally uploaded by R Stanek

Yesterday I met up with a few other local Flickr people and went on a photowalk at the harbor! I love the harbor so much. It got overcast, and then it got cold, so we didn't last very long. Long enough, though! I took tons of pictures, and uploaded quite a few after my first pass through them.

This one was my favorite. I love the way the pink bucket stands out against the masts and the background.

(Week 16 of Project 52. As I said, this was a stupid resolution. But I may as well keep going. I'm going to try to keep with the spirit of the resolution -- no holding back pictures with the intention of uploading them at a later date).

Whimsy and Whining

2010-04-18T14:42:00.001-07:00

Takin' it to the streets!
Originally uploaded by R Stanek

Boy, this was a stupid resolution. Uh, this is from my archives, which are running a bit thin. Anyway, I think this is cute, and there are worse things in life than being whimsical.

(Week 15 of Project 52.)

Lining

2010-04-04T21:54:00.001-07:00

Lined
Originally uploaded by R Stanek

I know, more diagonal lines! But, much like Sam, the heating vent kept catching my eye. I love the weird patterns made by the rust, and . . . okay, maybe I should dust it. Whatever.

Week 14 of Project 52. I'm caught up! We'll see how long that lasts.

Barriers

2010-04-04T21:51:00.001-07:00

Barriers
Originally uploaded by R Stanek

I know I keep doing these backlit shots, but I can't stop -- it's a sickness! I promise, this will be the last one for a while, but I like the over-exposed nature of this one, plus the spiderweb at the top.

Week 13 of Project 52. (Yes, still catching up. Taken on or before 3/28/2010.)

Balanced. Maybe

2010-04-03T16:24:00.001-07:00

More Tivoli Lights
Originally uploaded by R Stanek

Another picture from Tivoli! This might be the last Tivoli picture, but it's not like I could ride any of the rides there, so I spent the entire time taking pictures.

Sorry for all the archived pictures, but except for pictures of Sam (which, in addition to sunsets and flowers, don't count) I didn't manage to take any pictures I actually liked in the month of March.

(Project 52, week 12. Taken on or before 3/21/2010.)

People in the Picture

2010-04-03T12:07:00.001-07:00

Stop. Lights.
Originally uploaded by R Stanek

It's been a crazy couple of weeks here, but I'm finally catching up on blogging and resolutions. Here's another picture from Tivoli -- I spent so long wandering around with my camera it's a shame how few pictures I posted back in June! Normally I'm quite shy about taking pictures with people in the frame -- street photography is definitely not my thing -- but for whatever reason I didn't mind that night.

I should get braver about street photography, because I think the people in the frame make this a lot more interesting than some of my other Tivoli pictures. The other pictures might be prettier, but I think this is more interesting.

(I know I'm behind on Project 52. I'm not going to cheat as I catch up -- this picture was taken before 3/14/2010, and so counts as week 11.)

Silly Girls -- the Internet is for Boys!

2010-04-01T11:50:00.000-07:00

It's April 1, meaning that it's time for technology blogs -- and it's always technology blogs -- to pull out that tiresome old canard of making their site women-friendly. It wasn't funny when Slashdot did it, and it's not funny now that PetaPixel has done it. Yes, how hilarious to market technology sites towards women! After all, we know that the internet is for the menfolk!

On a related note, many sites nowadays have user icons. But what if you don't upload one? What sort of "default" icon is provided for you? In most cases, it's a male icon. Sites with male default icons include, but are not limited to:

Amazon
Facebook
Television Without Pity
The Consumerist
BeyondMegapixels
PetaPixel (even in their silly girly pink theme for today!)
Jezebel (which is "for women", for chrissake).

It is possible to have gender-neutral default icons. Flickr uses an emoticon. Twitter has a bird. Typepad has abstract designs. Why have a masculine default icon when you could have a neutral one? Clearly no one -- not even Jezebel -- would ever have a feminine default icon.

This is why I cheered when Nancy Pelosi said, "Being a woman will no longer be a pre-existing condition." Because I'm tired of the meme that the default status is male, whether in health care or on silly blogs online.

Two is just the same as one

2010-03-07T16:19:00.001-08:00

Linked
Originally uploaded by R Stanek

I've been meaning to learn to make diptychs forever -- I even have a folder on my computer with pairs of images, intended for future diptychs. Well, now I've finally done one in GIMP. I hate GIMP, but I think the biggest problem is the lack of patience between keyboard and chair.

ANYWAYS. I love fencing, and layers of fencing, so I love the diptych of the two takes on the same field of view. I know that's about the most obvious diptych that one could possibly make, but hopefully I'll branch out this year as I get more comfortable with GIMP.

Looking back on the past

2010-02-28T17:32:00.001-08:00

Reflection of another lifetime
Originally uploaded by R Stanek

I took this picture last fall, shortly before Sam was born (but after his due date!). Why there was a giant mirror in the backyard, against the garage, I have no idea. But I like the sunlight in the corner, and how it takes a second glance at the picture to register that it's a reflection in a mirror.

Week 9!

New Picture; Old Subject

2010-02-21T17:45:00.001-08:00

It's a Zoo Out There!
Originally uploaded by R Stanek

This isn't the first picture I've taken of this awesome carved elephant -- in fact, it was one of my first subjects when I got my camera. But I love it with the lion valentine in the background. Thanks to V for the elephant -- a gift from a while ago -- and to J for the valentine!

Week 8 of Project 52, and a picture I actually took today! Woo!

NBC Fails at the 21st Century

2010-02-18T21:31:00.000-08:00

I remember watching the 1988 Winter Olympics, and being completely entranced by speed skater Bonnie Blair. Ever since, I've been an Olympics junkie -- especially speed skating. But it's not 1988 anymore, so I don't know why NBC is broadcasting them like we're still back in the ~~Stone~~ pre-Information Age.

I emailed Dick Ebersol, and while I'm sure none of these emails get read, it was still therapeutic:

Mr. Ebersol:

I am writing to request that you do away with the ridiculous tape
delay of Olympic coverage for the West Coast Olympic fans. This
prevents a quarter of the country from enjoying the coverage with
friends in the rest of the country via Twitter, Facebook, or even the
phone. Why should I watch when I already know the results? It's not
1964 anymore.

And why the emphasis on prime-time coverage? Those of us on the West
Coast are used to live sporting events starting at 5 or 6 p.m.! 100
million Americans watched the Super Bowl, and it wasn't because it was
tape-delayed on the West Coast. We watch Sunday Night Football and
Monday Night Football and the World Series in the early evening -- in
fact, we're not used to staying up until 11 p.m. watching sports!

Please, for the love of god, stop tape-delaying your Olympic coverage.
And remember that the highest-rated broadcast of all time in the U.S.
is the Super Bowl, not some soft-focus feature about how someone
raised by a single parent survived cancer and a torn ACL and an epic
crash in the 2006 Winter Olympics. All we want is live coverage of
the sports, so we can enjoy every thrilling downhill run and crazy
speed-skating collision with the rest of the country.

If you want more anger, check out the nbchate tag on Deadspin. And hope that ABC -- or hell, anyone who's not NBC -- gets the rights to the Olympics someday.

Stringing everyone along

2010-02-16T18:24:00.001-08:00

Strings
Originally uploaded by R Stanek

I know I'm late on this week's picture. In my defense, I have a million excuses, including (but not limited to) traveling, the holiday weekend, family in town, and going back to work.

Enough of that. Look! It's another picture with diagonal lines! And as I dig through the archives, I've noticed there are a few colors I'm always drawn to -- mostly oranges and browns. I'm not sure why I never uploaded this picture -- I really like the text on the interior of the piano.

(Also: I've flossed all but two days so far this year. Yay!)

Walking on sunshine

2010-02-07T22:15:00.001-08:00

Backlit
Originally uploaded by R Stanek

I'd been wondering how I was going to find time for photography, now that I'm going back to work. And the answer is -- weekend walks with the whole family! Of course. We're having a great winter -- enough rain that the mountains are green again, but lots of sunny days. And apparently I just can't stop looking into the sun. The glow in the late afternoons is perfect.

Pretty in Pink

2010-01-30T14:28:00.001-08:00

Scarves
Originally uploaded by R Stanek

I've started wearing scarves on breezy days to stay warm. In fact, I try to always have earrings and a scarf on when I leave the house -- since I don't wear makeup, it's a good way to feel less frumpy, and to make sure I'm taking care of myself. Anyway, I love the feel of the light scarves, and the fringe, so when a weekly theme group on Flickr chose "colorful", it was an excuse to finally get off my ass and take a picture of the scarves!

I'm not super-thrilled about this picture -- maybe I should have lowered the contrast? -- but it's fun and bright and I like the fringe.

(Maybe this will end up being the year that I get much better at post-processing?)

Tilted a New Way

2010-01-22T19:43:00.001-08:00

Lined up
Originally uploaded by R Stanek

It's been raining here for the past week, so time to dig into the archives again. I love the Santa Barbara Harbor (Marina? Does it have an official name?), and yet for all the happy times I've wandered around there with my camera, I've only uploaded about half a dozen pictures. At the same time, three weeks into my Project 52, and I noticed that a lot of my pictures rely on diagonal lines. Too many of them, perhaps.

So here's a picture from the harbor that's nothing but horizontal and vertical lines! I really love the parallel lines here, but I'm not crazy about this picture. I can't quite put my finger on how it could have been better. Different focal length, maybe?

Pining for more time

2010-01-13T18:19:00.001-08:00

Spiny Piny
Originally uploaded by R Stanek

What is this? A picture actually taken in this calendar year? You don't say!

Sam will be starting daycare in three weeks -- eeek! -- and while he won't be there full-time, he still has to get used to taking his food from the bottle, instead of directly from the tap. We're still at the point where I have to leave the house when Eli feeds him, and luckily it's been nice enough for me to wander around with my camera. I may not have a chance to download and edit the pictures right away -- which is why my resolution is to upload pictures, not just take them -- but I'm glad to have the opportunity to take them in the first place!

When walking this past weekend, I was absolutely taken by the sunlight through this pine tree. I dug out my trusty National Audobon Society Field Guide to Trees, Western Region, and . . . well, it's some sort of pine. Maybe a Knobcone Pine, I don't know. I just love the needles and the golden light, and I'm pleased to get good pictures at noon -- a notoriously difficult time of day for photography.

(I know most of you are already seeing my pictures via FB or Flickr, but if I don't blog about it, I might not keep up the resolution!)

Mexican Rice

2010-01-11T19:08:00.001-08:00

You can't have cheese enchiladas without rice and beans! So here is our favorite Mexican rice recipe, which can be made in parallel with the enchiladas. (I must admit here that we usually use canned refried beans with the enchiladas, although I promise to post our refried bean recipe in the not-too-distant future). The recipe has been adapted from here, with many modifications.

Mexican Rice

Ingredients:
1 cup white rice (we use basmati)
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 onion, finely chopped
1 tomato, grated
1 1/2 cups water, hot
1 Tbsp chili powder
1/2 tsp salt

Heat 2-3 Tbsp peanut oil in a heavy skillet or saucier (a saucier works great because it's harder for the rice to get stuck in the corners). Heat oil over medium-high heat until hot. Add the rice, and stir continuously. If it begins to stick a lot, add a little more oil. After about 2 minutes, add the onion and garlic. Saute until the rice is golden brown. Add the tomato, hot water, chili powder, and salt. Bring to a boil, then cover. Cook on very low heat for 20-25 minutes. Remove from heat and let sit covered for 5 minutes. Stir and serve!

Grating Tomatoes

2010-01-11T18:40:00.000-08:00

In my last recipe, for cheese enchiladas, I said that the tomato for the chili gravy should be "grated". (We also use a grated tomato in our saag paneer recipe as well as the forthcoming recipe for Mexican rice). This has caused some confusion and consternation amongst the legions of fans of the Beckyan Deli, so I am posting this here as a primer.

Grated Tomato

Ingredients:
1 Tomato

For the method, it's easiest to go back to the source: Madhur Jaffrey's excellent World Vegetarian cookbook. Take it away, Madhur!

How to grate a tomato: When a coarse tomato puree is required, the easiest way to get it is to hold a ripe tomato over a bowl and grate it on the coarsest part of a grater. The skin stays in your hand while the puree collects in the bowl. Sometimes the tomato slides along the grater and does not engage with the sharp holes. In such cases all you do is cut a thin slice off the tomato. This will get it going.

We use a box grater, and it works great!

Cheese Enchiladas

2010-01-10T20:29:00.000-08:00

Some time back in 2004 or 2005 Becky and I first tried to make cheese enchiladas. I've loved cheese enchiladas since I was a kid, and this is a fantastic and fun vegetarian meal. We first tried the recipe from the Sundays at Moosewood cookbook, and it was awful. Bland, unsatisfying, strange, and dry.

So we turned to the Internets!

I found a much better recipe online here. I've continually adapted it over the years, and now I'm finally ready to share it with the world. The construction of the enchiladas usually takes two of us. Stay tuned for our recipe for mexican rice for the side!

Cheese Enchiladas

Makes 12 cheese enchiladas

Ingredients:
12 corn tortillas
1 1/2 onion, chopped
2 cups shredded cheese (cheddar, Mexican mix, etc.)
3 Tbs butter
3 Tbs flour
2 cups water or vegetable stock, hot
1 tomato, grated
1-2 Tbs chili powder
1/4 tsp cayenne
salt
pepper
canola oil

Start by cooking the onions over low heat in a couple tablespoons of oil until soft. It helps to start this before making the chili gravy.

For the chili gravy, start by making a roux by melting the butter in a small saucepan. The saucepan should be large enough to accommodate one of the corn tortillas. Stir in the flour and whisk over medium-low heat for a couple of minutes. Slowly whisk in the hot water or vegetable stock until fully incorporated. Add 1 Tbs chili powder, tomato, and cayenne. Taste for salt and chili powder, while cooking down the gravy for about 10-15 minutes, whisking frequently to keep it nice and smooth. When it has thickened satisfactorily (it needs to adhere to the corn tortillas), remove from heat.

Now prep the enchilada station. Grease a 9x13 inch oven-proof dish, and preheat oven to 400F. Have cheese, onions, and chili gravy ready to go. Heat oil over medium heat in a frying pan, deep enough to easily cover a tortilla. The oil is ready when a piece of tortilla dropped in sinks to the bottom and immediately resurfaces.

For each enchilada: Pick up a tortilla with tongs and place into hot oil for 15 seconds to soften tortilla. Dip tortilla into chili gravy, covering both sides. Place tortilla in 9x13 pan, putting cheese and onion on, and rolling it up. (Use the right hand for the onion, left hand for the cheese, right hand to roll it up and slide into place, and left hand to drink beer. Any other combination will leave you with "club hand".) Make sure each tortilla is seam-side down. Repeat for all 12. Pour remaining chili gravy on top of enchiladas, making sure that the corners are moist so they won't burn. Sprinkle remaining cheese on top.

Bake for 10-15 minutes until cheese is bubbly. Remove from oven and let them sit for a few minutes (like pizza, digging in too soon can be hazardous to the roof of your mouth.) Enjoy!

Cleaning Up and Looking Back

2010-01-08T17:34:00.001-08:00

Lighting the way
Originally uploaded by R Stanek

I've never met a hard drive I couldn't pack to the gills. Even so, in 2007, when I got my current laptop, 160 GB seemed like an enormous amount of space. That was before I got a DSLR with 12 MP, of course. Two thousand pictures later, some of them need to be cleared off the harddrive -- I was down to 6 GB of space left on my harddrive.

Going back through old pictures was good. It was reassuring to see that as time has gone on, there are a higher fraction of pictures from each day worth keeping. And I also found some pictures from my travels last summer that didn't make it online, due to my rush to get pictures online. So here's a picture from Tivoli Gardens, which is a small amusement park in Copenhagen. The rides are okay -- although being 5 months pregnant at the time, I couldn't ride any of them -- but it's absolutely lovely at night, when all the lights are turned on. And dear Eli was very patient as I spent several hours wandering the park with my camera.

In related news, I have flossed every day in 2010. (Full disclosure: daily flossing was a New Year's resolution of mine in both 2001 and 2006. Maybe the third time's the charm?)

Wine Tasting with Aunt Amanda!

2010-01-03T12:49:00.000-08:00

Eli's sister Amanda visited for a few days, so what did we do, as we do with all our guests when I'm not pregnant? Wine tasting! It was a gorgeous day on the central coast for some wine tasting.

We started at Zaca Mesa, whose viognier we really love. The wines, and my brief comments on them:

2008 Estage Z Gris. I'm generally not a fan of rosé, but this was the driest I'd ever had. It wouldn't be bad with cheese and crackers on a summer afternoon.
2008 Estate Viognier. Love!
2006 Estate Roussanne. I didn't think I liked this -- it tasted kind of strong to me -- but it had a really nice finish.
2006 Estate Grenache. I was surprised by how much I liked this, since I don't tend to like the light, sweet reds.
2006 Estate Z-Cuvee. Unmemorable.
2005 Estate Syrah. Extremely disappointing. But when an employee overheard us complaining about it, she then poured the 2006 Estate Syrah, which was amazing -- best wine of the day. Crazy! It's only become available in the last few weeks, and that's just in their tasting room -- it won't be available elsewhere for a while yet. What an astounding difference between the two years.
2005 Estate Z Three. Eh. I'm not big on blends.

After lunch in Los Olivos, we headed to the Qupe tasting room, as we are big fans of their syrah. They were also pouring tastings of Verdad and Ethan wines. I didn't like any of the whites, but the three syrahs we tried were all very nice:

Qupe Syrah - "Santa Barbara County". Only available in the tasting room. It was my least favorite of the three syrahs, but still good.
Ethan Syrah "Rancho Santa Rosa Vineyard". This was fantastic. Only 100 cases of it were made, and the guy claimed that only 11 bottles are left.
Qupe Syrah "Alisos Vineyard". Nearly as good as the Ethan syrah, but a much higher alcohol content. Whoa. I've never been able to hit more than two wineries or tasting rooms in a trip to wine country, so things always kind of blend together by the end of the day.

We had a lovely, lovely time, and it was no problem taking Sam. We're learning that when going out, we need to budget an extra 45 minutes every 2.5 hours for feeding Sam, etc. But on a lovely day like yesterday, there are far worse things I could be doing than sitting in the sunshine at a winery and nursing Sam. What a wonderful day.

(Picture: Eli, Sam, and Aunt Amanda, on the Zaca Mesa grounds.)

New Year's Resolutions

2010-01-01T21:21:00.001-08:00

The more the merrier
Originally uploaded by R Stanek

Last year I made two New Year's resolutions -- see more live music, and go to the beach more often -- and I kept both of them. Hooray! So here we go for this year:

Floss every day.
Upload one picture a week to Flickr.

Now, that second resolution may seem like nothing to those of you who are doing Project 365. But I have a two-month-old, and I'm going back to work in February, so I need to be realistic about my time. On the plus side, I have this crazy idea that having a kid will make me a better photographer, because I have to get the picture right the first time. I can't count on having a chance to go back with a different lens or at a different time a day -- it's now or never. So hopefully that will force me to be more careful about setting up the shot in the first place.

Besides, this is what happened en route to uploading a picture today:

Edit a few family pictures, while I'm at it.
Wonder why DPP doesn't seem to save my changes when I convert to JPG.
Swear a lot at the computer.
Feed the baby.
Eli, tired of my complaining, looks into the issue.
Eli figures out that it doesn't save the white balance if I use Color Temperature to adjust it, but everything else works.
I edit and upload pictures to my liking using other settings.
Feed the baby.
I look for an update to DPP.
I download and install the update to DPP.
Since the DPP update requires rebooting my computer, I figure I may as well run software update.

All that just to get this picture online. But I quite like it, and hopefully there'll be many more to come.

Happy New Year!

AOL and a blast from the past

2009-12-08T14:19:00.000-08:00

I'm back from my epic blog hiatus because I couldn't stop laughing at this post on AOL revamping its image. See if you can spot what's wrong with this:

Although the AOL logo itself will be constant, the backgrounds will change continuously in an effort to suggest the breadth of AOL’s content. Hundreds of backgrounds are ready to go, among them depictions of a fish, a skateboarder, a View-Master, a leaf, a lovable monster, a Polaroid camera, a high-heel shoe, a head-banging rocker and a kissing couple.

Because nothing says "forward-thinking" like a View-Master or a Polaroid camera.

Although to many, AOL “signals your father’s Internet,” he added, the new brand identity retains the name.

I'm not sure how using one's father's toys in the logo is an improvement. Seriously.

Pumpkin Pie

2009-11-29T13:38:00.000-08:00

The first pie that I learned to make is one of my favorite: good old pumpkin pie. I don't make it as much as I would enjoy, since a certain unnamed person for whom I do most of my cooking doesn't like pumpkin. But come Thanksgiving, Pumpkin Pie is a Rykoff family tradition, and sorry unnamed person, but if I only make one pie it will be pumpkin.

I've refined the recipe over the years, improving my crust technique (I used to -- gasp -- use store-bought crust), and tweaking the filling. The basis of my filling recipe is my grandmother's famous pumpkin pie. One of the last years that my grandmother made pumpkin pie somebody was helping her, but they were flummoxed because she couldn't find the famous pumpkin pie recipe. It turned out it was on the back of the Libby's can of pumpkin.

The most recent iteration, which I record here for posterity, is a pair of hybrid recipes. The crust has the basis in a Cook's Illustrated recipe (but with all butter -- I'm morally opposed to shortening, and also we don't eat pork, so no lard), but with the clever rolling method from Alton Brown. The filling merges Libby's recipe (with a fresh pumpkin!) with an old New York Times recipe. Although you can substitute a can of pumpkin (not "pumpkin pie filling") if you wish.

Crust for Single-Crust Pie

Makes 1 9-inch pie crust

Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups (6 1/4 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbs sugar
10 Tbs unsalted butter (see below)
2-3 Tbs cold water
2-3 Tbs cold vodka

Equipment:
Food processor
Rolling pin
2+ gallon "jumbo" ziploc-style bag
2 pie tins
1 cookie sheet
3 cups dry beans or pennies for pie weights

Chop butter into small pieces, put in a small bowl, cover and put in freezer to chill it for a few minutes (at least). Mix together 3/4 cup, salt, and sugar in a food processor (reserving 1/2 cup). Add butter and process continuously for about 10 seconds, until mixture resembles cottage cheese. Put in remaining 1/2 cup flour and mix with 4-6 quick pulses until incorporated.

Mix vodka and water together. Move flour/butter mixture to a medium bowl. Sprinkle 4 Tbs mixture with flour and use a rubber spatula to incorporate. If the dough is not sticking together (this depends on humidity, altitude, etc) add more vodka/water mixture. The vodka is used because the alcohol will evaporate in the oven, allowing a wetter dough to be mixed that won't end up with a tough and chewy crust. When the dough sticks together, form into a 5" disk and place in the jumbo ziploc bag. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour, as much as 2 days.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Place two pie tins and cookie sheet in freezer. Remove dough from freezer and put on a large table. Roll out the dough inside the bag. This helps keep everything together. You'll have to unstick the dough from inside the bag every several rolls. When the dough is rolled out (enough for a tin plus 1" + margin), remove pie tins and cookie sheet from freezer. Put the bag with dough on the frozen cookie sheet. This ensures that the crust stays nice and cold. Cut off the top half of the bag. Put one of the pie tins right side up on the dough. Flip dough and pie tin over, so that you have the dough draped over the back of the tin. Peel off the rest of the plastic bag, and put the second pie tin on the first and press dough into place. Flip over and remove outer pie tin. Tamp down bottom circle of crust. Trim overhang to within 1/2 inch, fold over edge and make a nice fluted edge. (Optional: put in fridge to chill for 15 minutes.)

Put aluminum foil in crust and weigh down with dry beans or pennies. Put in oven and make for 15 minutes. Remove foil and weights and bake for another 5 minutes until lightly browned.

Pumpkin Pie with Fresh Pumpkin

Makes 1 9-inch pie

1 pie-appropriate pumpkin
3/8 cup (3.5 ounce) white sugar
3/8 cup (3.5 ounce) packed light brown sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp fresh grated ginger or 1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/8 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp nutmeg
2 eggs
5/8 cup whole milk
5/8 cup half-and-half

Preheat over to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Take 1 medium sugar pie pumpkin or winter luxury pumpkin or french roasting pumpkin or (as I do) whatever they recommend at your favorite pumpkin-monger at the farmers' market. Cut in half lengthwise, and scoop out the seeds and stringy bits. This is a bit of a pain, and may require a paring knife as well as a spoon. However, getting out the stringy bits makes a much better pie! Line baking sheet with foil and place two halves of pumpkin pumpkin-side down. Bake for 1-1.5 hours until domes noticeably soften, but before things start getting very brown. Scoop out pumpkiny goodness from the shell into a bowl, and mash with a spoon. It may be fairly wet, so put the mashed pumpkin in a sieve to drain excess liquid. (I usually do this before I start the crust). (It is, of course, possible to skip this whole thing and use 1 can of pumpkin). Update: To effectively get the excess liquid out of the pumpkin, Christopher Kimball recommends lining a baking sheet with 3 sheets of paper towels, spreading the pumpkin, and then covering again with 3 more sheets. With some light pressing the paper towels will get saturated, and you end up with a nice sheet of perfectly textured pumpkinny goodness.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Combine sugar, salt, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg in a small bowl and whisk to mix. Beat eggs in medium bowl. Add sugar mix and whisk together. Wait a few minutes and whisk again (to ensure that sugar dissolves completely). Whisk in mashed pumpkin. Slowly add milk/half-and-half mixture and whisk to mix completely. Add filling and put in oven. After 15 minutes, reduce heat to 350 F. Bake for an additional 30-40 minutes until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool on wire rack.

Ultimate Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

2009-11-22T21:20:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, Becky said "I'd like some oatmeal raisin cookies". And seeing as I can't feed Sam directly, I do my best to oblige her requests. Of course, I looked for a Cook's Illustrated recipe first. And I found this online, which purported to be the Cook's Illustrated recipe from 1997. (I'm not actually going to pay to get through their paywall, am I?) The cookies were good, but there were a few problems. Not enough salt. Baking two trays at once led to severely uneven cooking. And the flavor just didn't have enough punch.

Then I thought...what if I use the methods from their fantastic chocolate chip cookie recipe (adapted here). The goal there was to make big, chewy, flavorful cookies. Isn't that what we want in an oatmeal raisin cookie? I think it is! So I put the two recipes together, made a few fixes, and here we are. Becky agrees I can call these the Ultimate Oatmeal Raisin Cookies*.

Ultimate Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Makes 18 Cookies

Ingredients:
16 Tbs (1 cup) butter
3/4 cup (5.5 oz) granulated sugar
1 cup (7.0 oz) light brown sugar [updated]
1 1/2 cup (7.5 oz) all-purpose flour
2 eggs
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp nutmeg
3 cup (8 oz) rolled oats
1 1/2 cup raisins*

Preheat oven to 350. Whisk flour, baking powder, and nutmeg together. Heat 12 Tbs butter in a wide saute pan until melted (a couple of minutes), and continue to cook until brown (a few more minutes). Remove from heat, and add to remaining 4 Tbs butter in a big mixing bowl to melt. Whisk sugars and salt with butter in mixing bowl. Add eggs and whisk until sugar lumps are gone, about 30 seconds. Let stand 3 minutes, and whisk again for 30 seconds. Repeat stand/whisk process 2 more times. (This ensures that the sugar is fully dissolved and the cookies will develop a richer caramelized flavor.) Using spatula, stir in flour mixture until incorporated (but try not to over-mix). Stir in oats until incorporated, and finally stir in raisins.

Split dough into 18 big cookies. Put 9 on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, and bake 22-25 minutes, rotating sheet halfway through. For most consistent results, bake only 1 batch at a time. Transfer cookies to wire rack to cool, and leave for at least 30 minutes to set.

*I like raisiny cookies, but apparently Becky thinks that 1 1/2 cups of raisins is too many. Becky is CRAZY.

Apple Muffins

2009-11-07T22:09:00.000-08:00

While she was pregnant, Becky needed lots of continuous food input. And it doesn't seem to be slowing down now that she's breastfeeding Sam. So I made lots of quick snack foods, including dozens and dozens of muffins. I adapted this apple muffin recipe from Alton Brown's basic muffin technique. They're apple-y and tasty and aren't too sweet. These are muffins, not cupcakes! Note that the cinnamon levels given are not very high...Becky is sensitive to cinnamon, so if you want them more cinnamon-y then you probably should add more cinnamon!

Apple Muffins

Makes 12 muffins.

Ingredients:
4 small apples (1 3/4-ish pounds)
1 stick cinnamon
1/2 tsp lemon zest
303 g (11 oz) (2 1/4 cup) all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch salt
105 g (3 3/4 oz) (1/2 cup) sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 whole egg
1 egg yolk
1 tsp lemon juice

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Two of the apples are going to be used to make applesauce. Peel and chop coarsely. Put in small saucepan with 1/4 cup water, the cinnamon stick, and the lemon zest. Bring to boil, cover, and let simmer on low for 15-20 minutes until apples are soft and can be mushed into applesauce. This should yield ~ 1/2 cup.

The other two apples should be peeled and brunoised (small dice) yielding about 1 1/2 cups.

Put the dry ingredients -- flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt -- in a mixing bowl and whisk together to aerate. Alternatively, you can use a sifter, but whisking does the job just as well and is a lot easier to clean than a sifter!

Put the wet ingredients -- sugar, vegetable oil, yogurt, eggs, lemon juice, and 1/2 cup applesauce -- in a second bowl. If you are short on applesauce, add a bit more yogurt so that yogurt + applesauce = 1 cup. Whisk together until fully incorporated.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, and mix with a spatula until the flour is mostly dissolved. Try to be gentle and not overmix! Add in the 1 1/2 cups of apple bits and fold together. All the flour should be incorporated at this point.

Prepare a muffin tin by spraying with your favorite canola-oil based cooking spray. Spoon 12 roughly equal portions of batter into the muffin tin. They should all be approximately full. Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean, turning the pan halfway. Immediately transfer muffins to drying rack when done.

Variation: Lemon-Poppyseed Muffins

Substitute 1 cup yoghurt for 1/2 cup yoghurt and 1/2 cup applesauce.
Add 2 Tbs lemon juice and 1 tsp lemon zest (from 1-2 lemons depending on their size) to the wet ingredients.
Add 2 Tbs poppyseeds instead of the apple bits.
And you probably don't want the cinnamon.

So much for a clean program

2009-08-30T12:47:00.000-07:00

After reading this article about how Ohio State is by far the strongest program in the Big 10, Eli commented that it was no surprise, calling Tressel the dirtiest coach in the Big 10.

And of course, later that day, the story of NCAA violations at Michigan broke.

I'm not sure what's more annoying: the shattered illusions, or the fact that the extra practice time clearly hasn't been working.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

2009-04-13T22:49:00.000-07:00

I've always been one for the good ol' Toll House Cookie recipe. It certainly has withstood the test of time since its invention in the 1930's. But there is always room for improvement. I like my cookies mounded and chewy in the middle, but I've never figured out how to do this consistently. One option is to use Crisco instead of butter, but (a) this makes them taste like Crisco instead of butter and (b) the partially hydrogenated oil is not good for you. (I care a lot more about (a) than (b)). Alton Brown suggests refrigerating the dough before baking it, but this doesn't seem to help either. So what to do?

Cook's Illustrated to the rescue! By experimenting with every possible variation on the recipe, they've hit on the secrets for a superb cookie that's chewy, mounded, and has rich buttery, toffee flavors. The key modifications to the basic Toll House recipe are: more brown sugar; melted, browned butter; 1 egg + 1 yolk (remove an egg white); clever pauses; and larger cookies. (To be honest, I usually make my cookies larger than the recommended size, so this isn't much of a change for me).

Try this chocolate chip cookie recipe, adapted from Cook's Illustrated. You won't be disappointed. The only hardware required is a whisk, a spatula, a saute pan, and a few bowls. You don't need any electric equipment! (Unless you have an electric stove, I suppose.)

Makes 16 cookies.

Ingredients:
1 3/4 cups (8 3/4 ounces) all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
14 tbs unsalted butter
1/2 cup (3 1/2 ounces) granulated sugar
3/4 cup (5 1/4 ounces) packed dark brown sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg + 1 yolk
1 1/4 cup semisweet chips.*
3/4 cup nuts (optional, and why would you want to ruin these cookies by putting nuts in them?)

Preheat oven to 375. Whisk flour and baking soda together. Heat 10 tbs butter in a wide saute pan until melted (a couple of minutes), and continue to cook until brown (a few more minutes). Remove from heat, add remaining 4 tbs butter to melt. Whisk sugars, salt, vanilla, and butter in a medium bowl. Add egg and yolk and whisk until sugar lumps are gone, about 30 seconds. Let stand 3 minutes, and whisk again for 30 seconds. Repeat stand/whisk process 2 more times. (This ensures that the sugar is fully dissolved and the cookies will develop a richer caramelized flavor.) Using spatula, stir in flour and baking soda for about a minute. Finally, stir in chocolate chips. Split dough into 16 cookies, each about 3 tbs. Put 8 on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and bake 10 to 14 minutes. For most consistent results, bake only 1 batch at a time. Transfer cookies to wire rack to cool.

* Cook's Illustrated recommends Ghirardelli 60% chips, and these are fantastic. Notably, they're the only chips that use the same formula as the associated chocolate bar, only they are half the price for the same weight of chocolate. Who knew?

Sad Days in California

2009-03-05T16:46:00.000-08:00

Everything about the arguments about Prop 8 in front of the California Supreme Court is making me grouchy today. Let me enumerate:

It's a reminder that 52% of voters decided to take away the right to gay marriage, after 5 months of couples getting married and society not collapsing.
It seems so freaking obvious that Proposition 8 is a revision to the state constitution, and not an amendment.
So just maybe this court case should have happened before the damn election, but the No on 8 people were useless, and I don't know where Equality California was before the election.
Some of the signs carried by the Yes on 8 people are depressing. How cold-hearted do you have to be to draw a red circle and slash through a picture of two people kissing, because both people happen to be men?

At this point we just have to wait. At least it looks like the 18,000 marriages from that 5-month window won't be invalidated.

No astronomy for average Americans!

2009-02-28T11:41:00.000-08:00

Someone apparently showed John McCain -- and by "John McCain", I mean, "one of his aides" -- how to twitter. So we've been treated to a list of his Top 10 Porkiest Projects in the 2009 Omnibus Spending Bill. Most of them are science projects, but nothing makes me more irate than his #2 pick:

#2. $2 million “for the promotion of astronomy” in Hawaii - because nothing says new jobs for average Americans like investing in astronomy

I love the elitism here, that average Americans shouldn't bother with any interest in astronomy or any other science. For a variety of reasons, astronomy is a field that gets people excited about science. It's a great gateway to get people interested in other, related sciences, such as physics, chemistry, and biology. It's great motivation for the relevance of math classes. From here, we can get more people in STEM careers, and so on. What good comes from mocking science outreach to average Americans?

Is McCain bitter about this -- and, as we heard during the debates, the planetarium projector at Adler Planetarium [PDF] -- because it's astronomy money that's not going to Arizona? Or did he fail an astronomy class at some point in his life? Either way, I am so tired of the persistent anti-science attitude from the Republicans.

(I realize this was all over the blogs yesterday, but I have only just now calmed down enough to post without flailing about in all caps.)

Ponzi Scheming on the Beach

2009-02-15T12:29:00.000-08:00

The other day there was a new report on an investigation into a possible Ponzi scheme, this one run by R. Allen Stanford, a "flamboyant Texas billionaire" who claims to be related to Leland Stanford (Jr.) (but that also seems to be a fraud). The key point which has led to this investigation is:

Several federal agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the F.B.I. and the Internal Revenue Service, have spent “many months” looking into the business activities of the Stanford Financial Group, which is based in Houston, and Mr. Stanford’s bank based in Antigua, which issues high-yielding certificates of deposit, according to two individuals briefed on the investigations who were not authorized to speak publicly.

The focus of the investigations appears to be how the bank could issue C.D.’s that pay interest rates that are more than twice the national average.

This story reminded me of a conversation I had with a guy sitting next to me on an airplane, back in 1999 or 2000 (pre tech-bubble crash). This guy told me about a fantastic investment opportunity he had gotten involved in in the Caribbean at one of these off-shore tax havens such as Antigua. He went down there on one of these investment/timeshare type cruises where you get a couple of free nights as long as you listen to the hard sell (which he bought). Apparently, there's a shadowy international banking cabal that controls all of international finance. Most importantly, they control the Federal Reserve, whose sole duty is to sabotage the US economy and take all our profits. (We didn't need the Fed for that, although Greenspan certainly didn't hurt!) (For a summary of the conspiracy theorist myths and rebuttals, see this link, although I found this through google, and can even google be trusted...?)

So what these people were selling was a way to invest outside the US and get much better interest rates than were available in the US, because you weren't at the mercy of the manipulations of the Fed. And all this guaranteed with no risk, of course! But there was an interesting catch. In order to access his money, he had a regular ATM card attached to some bank account somewhere. And (a) all ATM cards have per-session and per-day withdrawal limits and (b) they warned him if he brought too much money back into the US, the IRS would find out and take all the money away, because we can't have people thwarting the shady banking cabal, can we?

But what a fantastic way to run a Ponzi scheme! Ponzi schemes are of course even more susceptible than real banks to runs...and if you can ensure that people can't withdraw their paper profits, then you can keep dancing a hell of a lot longer. Also, as Madoff showed, if you keep the promised returns modest then you can keep these running for years. This scheme also ties into the same sort of greed that leads people to fall for the Nigerian schemes, in that you need to do this offshore to avoid taxes, but with an interesting twist that the IRS are now fully corrupted, so avoiding taxes is a patriotic duty of sorts.

I'm not sure if this has anything to do with J. Allen Stanford's investments. Or if his investments are truly fraudulent. But there's certainly been some Ponzi scheming on the beach.

Thank God I was wrong!

2009-02-02T17:43:00.000-08:00

Back in June, after the Lakers lost in the NBA finals, I said:

I can tell you right now that the Dodgers will make it to the World Series and lose in six games, Michigan football will finally beat Ohio State only to suffer (another) embarrassing loss to USC in the Rose Bowl, and the Steelers will lose in the Super Bowl after some sort of epic third-quarter collapse.

OH MY GOD I was way too close to getting that right with the Steelers. But! They pulled out the win after a nearly-epic fourth-quarter collapse. GO STEELERS!

^{James Harrison joins me in needing oxygen.}

(Hey, don't you all love how optimistic I was about Michigan's season? That's so adorable.)

The hell with Pluto (the dwarf planet AND the minor Disney character)

2009-01-29T19:26:00.000-08:00

I was recently reminded that I simply do not understand the emotional attachment that people had to Pluto as a planet. It's another dinky ball of ice in the Kuiper Belt! I don't want to get caught up in semantics, but we should at least lump it in with similar objects in terms of composition and formation.

But I have a serious question here: is the attachment to Pluto a symptom of bad science education in this country? Have we failed at conveying that science is a system of inquiry, and not just a list of facts?

I give the reviews 5 stars!

2009-01-23T09:38:00.000-08:00

There are few things online I find more delightful than the Amazon reviews for wacky products. I recently was pointed to the reviews for uranium, which include the classic line, "I would have given this product 5 stars for the teeth and the project on embracing diversity, but I deducted one star because of the giant mutant ants." Some of my other favorites include milk, a wedding chapel ("if you live anywhere but the mountains you will have to provide your own snow and trees"), and of course, the classic Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank:

Well, this has been a real mess for us. We had been shopping for a land cruiser/tank and after reading the reviews on Amazon, we decided on the JL421.

The problems started when we tried to take delivery. UPS left a note on the door and we arranged to be there the next day and they did not show up when they said that they would, so we ended up having to go to the UPS pickup office to get the Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank.

This item will not fit in the trunk of a Corvette.

We ended up unpacking the JL421 there in the UPS parking lot and they were kind enough to dispose of the packing. I was pulled over twice on the way home because of not having tags and driving a vehicle that wasn't licensed for public roadways. We got off with warnings when we explained to the officers about our difficulties in getting the tank delivered to the house.

What are some other classic reviews out there?

Will, Fully Obtuse

2009-01-21T19:26:00.000-08:00

On the NY Times site yesterday, William Safire complained about a line in (President!) Obama's speech:

He skirted the controversy about harsh interrogations with a facile “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals” — when there are times when that painful choice cannot be “rejected.”

Safire is missing the point entirely here. It's not that Obama was looking for a nice turn of phrase here: he was saying that the choice is always rejected. Torture is always wrong. Etc. But Safire chose to see that line through a prism that is willing to sacrifice liberty in order to gain security, and we should all remember what Ben Franklin has to say about that.

(Full disclosure: I still have a grudge against Safire from the time he partially blamed the decline of marriage on "nubile women postponing weddings to pursue careers.")

Comedy in a Post-Bush World

2009-01-17T16:20:00.001-08:00

Just as 9/11 killed comedy, apparently so will the Obama administration. The NY Times interviewed a bunch of comedy writers on how they planned to cope with the apparent upcoming comedy drought. (Full disclosure: I would totally watch Letterman do household safety demonstrations.) I particularly liked the point made by an Onion editor:

Too many people had one Bush-is-dumb joke and thought that made them the next Mark Twain. The arrival of a president fluent in English should raise the bar.

Although, to be fair, there was an awful lot of mileage from the Bush malapropisms:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Childrens Do Learn

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

(Three more days!)

Tortured Logic

2009-01-15T21:18:00.000-08:00

The NY Times recently posted a range of opinions on torture after the report of torture at Guantanamo. I disagreed with much of what Andrew McCarthy had to say (including his definition of what is and is not torture), but the logic of this particularly escapes me:

On that last score, even those of us who have argued that there is a place for enhanced interrogation techniques have insisted that those techniques should be limited to intelligence gathering in dire threat circumstances; they are not for gathering trial evidence. You can call a proceeding in which coerced confessions are used many things; one thing you can’t call it is a “trial.”

Why shouldn't coerced confessions be used in a trial? Besides the obvious reasons of them being biased, fruitless, and, of course, torture?

I would love to know McCarthy's precise reasoning for not wanting coerced confessions used in a trial. I cannot conceive of a reason that could disqualify them from trial proceedings and yet still yield useful intelligence. If you're going to destroy America's reputation by torturing prisoners, you should at least be able to back it up.

Senator Stuart Smalley!

2009-01-05T13:04:00.000-08:00

It is with great glee that I note that Al Franken has officially won his senate race. Not only will C-SPAN2 be more entertaining, but this is the final bit of proof that we live in our own alternate universe. I think a switch got flipped back in 1998 or so, giving us, among other incongruities, Dubya instead of Jeb. (Also, in the alternate universe we elected a black guy named Barack Hussein Obama. Seriously! Look it up!)

I think I'm obsessed with alternate histories -- mostly from WWII to the present -- because I don't have a good feel for exactly how stable our society is. How could the past eight (or fifty) years been different, for better or for worse? Where is the tipping point where we slide into totalitarianism? What if 9/11 never happened? What if it was worse? What if Kerry won in 2004? What if Bush died, and Cheney had been president since 2002? I've inhaled Jo Walton's alternate histories, as well as some Philip Roth, and I cannot wait for people to start tackling Bush years.

Happy 2009 to you all. Let's make sure this alternate history doesn't get shelved under "dystopia".

Unsustainable Lending (part II)

2008-12-31T13:25:00.000-08:00

News has certainly slowed down at the end of the year (and the Bush administration has checked out entirely), but the Fed just announced that it will buy $500 billion in mortgage backed securities (MBS) by the middle of next year. There are a few obvious questions that I have: (a) isn't this what the TARP was supposed to do?; (b) are they just printing money to do this?; and (c) what is the risk we're taking on? Leaving these questions aside, I've been trying to look into what's in these. Is it simply that these distressed assets are severely undervalued, and it's purely an overcorrection in the (illiquid) MBS market? Or are we purchasing something more akin to Madoff "assets"? Again, as I reminded you in part I that I'm just a simple astrophysicist bumpkin...

The mortgage backed security (MBS) is the simplest of the fancy derivatives that have run rampant over the past few years, and the only one that I vaguely understand. (And I'm not sure that anybody really understood the credit default swap (CDS), let alone AIG). In an MBS, individual mortgages are bundled up and sold to investors. In theory, mortgages of borrowers of similar creditworthiness are bundled together, and although some small fraction of these might default, this will be built into the credit rating. In practice, I believe people played fast and loose with bundling these mortgages, especially non-traditional subprime and alt-a mortgages such as the option ARM. The MBS itself has value based on (a) the underlying assets, that is, the houses that were mortgaged, and (b) the interest paid by the borrowers. These MBSs may then sliced up some more, traded around, etc. None of this trading is done on an exchange, however, and thus these are illiquid assets. If you can't find anybody to buy the security, it's hard to tell what it's worth.

As house prices have declined, the values of MBSs have tanked. First, the value of the underlying assets has gone down. Second, with such thinly traded assets, if you need to sell in a down market the buyer has a distinct advantage. But a bigger problem is that the MBSs built on option ARM type mortgages are pretty much a complete sham. As I described in part I, the only way for a borrower with one of these loans to possibly afford it after the introductory teaser rate is to refinance or sell the house. And with prepayment penalties and negative amortization, house prices need to go up by at least 4% annually--without interruption-- for this to be possible.

Meanwhile, there's a wave of foreclosures that still hasn't fully crested. And massive foreclosures are devistating for neighborhoods, driving up blight and driving down prices even further in a painful cycle. In a half-assed attempt to arrest this in November, the Bush administration put together a "plan" to renegotiate some mortgages to keep people in their homes. Some other banks have also signed on voluntarily. For the owner of a mortgage, this can be a good deal: foreclosures are expensive, and houses are sold at fire-sale prices. If you can renegotiate and keep people in their houses, then everybody wins. (Or at least everybody loses a little, rather than everybody losing a lot.)

However, this plan did not help the large numbers of homeowners whose mortgages had been bundled up into MBSs. Instead, the bondholders flatly refuse to allow the mortgages to be renegotiated. This is a many-headed problem. Most notably, when your mortgage has been split up and is owned by thousands of investors, who do you talk to about renegotiating terms? But I think there's the additional unwillingness to fess up that renegotiating the underlying mortgages would show that the current distressed values of MBSs are actually the true values.

Again, there are two ways to calculate the value of the MBSs. The first is the underlying assets -- the houses -- and these have gone down in value, and are probably worth even less if you assume all of them are foreclosed on (of course a worst-case scenario). The second is the cash flow coming from the borrowers. On paper, this looks great: after the initial teaser rate, these borrowers will be paying out like gangbusters! 6%! 8%! Sounds fantastic! But in reality, the borrowers can only really afford that teaser rate. So any renegotiation of terms that will be affordable will end up either (a) fixing the interest rate at the teaser rate of 2% or (b) with a reasonable fixed rate of ~6%, by reducing the value of the mortgage by ~40%. Either way, the MBSs no longer appear to be such a hot deal, barring a sudden and unlikely reinflation of the housing bubble. (But you can't unscramble an egg.)

Right now it looks like the bondholders stonewalling on any renegotiation will work: they'll get bought out by the Fed, without having to admit that the securities are worth much less than they claim they are on paper. We'll all be stuck with the bill, and regular people will be kicked out of their houses. Of course, many of these people took out loans that appeared too good to be true...and were! Others were fleeced. And we all pay the price.

Unsustainable Lending (part I)

2008-12-30T22:01:00.000-08:00

I've been doing way too much reading about the mortgage crisis, and it's kind of depressing how we got ourselves into this mess. The numbers just don't add up...but I guess it never mattered for the people driving us into the ditch, since they get paid based on short-term results, long term be damned.

There are a couple issues that I've been musing about over the break, which I'll break into a couple of posts. The first has to do with prepayment penalties for subprime mortgages, and how they ensure that things were going to blow up even if house prices remained stable. The second (related) issue is why the institutions who own mortgage backed securities (MBS) don't support renegotiating underwater mortgages. Keep in mind that I'm just a humble astrophysicist, and I really don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to these issues.

The stereotypical subprime loan was an "option ARM" where there was a low introductory teaser rate (say, 2%) which lasted a year or so, followed by a reset where the rate would go up significantly (to 6-8%). Notably, the interest rate on the loan would usually reset before the payment rate, so the first year or so would have negative amortization, where the principle on the loan was actually increasing over time. For a modest $100,000 loan, the introductory payment rate would be $370/month, and after the first year or two, this would increase up to $740, or a factor of 2. Although I think I could afford this modest $100,000 loan, in general I don't think I could afford a doubling of my housing costs.

So what's a borrower to do? It seems obvious to me that the only option is to refinance the loan after the teaser rate expires (or sell the house). And this will only work if the price of the house hasn't decreased! But of course the lender doesn't want to see the borrower refinance every year or two to grab the 2% teaser rate over and over again. Other than the fat fees that are grabbed by the brokers, the main impediment to doing this is the prepayment penalty, which is typically 5% of the loan amount, which is $5000 for our $100,000 loan.

Some of this is laid out in this recent (Oct 2008) paper Did Prepayments Sustain the Subprime Market? [pdf] from the St. Louis Fed (mad props to them for using LaTeX!). As they point out for subprime mortgages over the past 5 years, after a reset "prohibitively high rates [leave] the borrower little option but to prepay either by selling or by refinancing," or end up delinquent and finally in foreclosure. As house prices turned around over the past couple years, these subprime borrowers could no long refinance, and were forced into foreclosure, and the authors conclude that "the boom in house prices...was largely responsible for sustaining the subprime mortgage market by allowing distressed borrowers to prepay mortgages."

What the authors don't seem to explicitly state is that because of prepayment penalties even if house prices plateaued, and didn't even decline, these people would be forced into foreclosure. By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, with a 5% prepayment penalty, if the rate resets 2 years after the start of the mortgage, the house price must have increased by at least 2.5% (before any broker fees!) to make a refinancing possible, because you need to pay back $105,000 on your $100,000 loan. It's even worse for the vast majority of subprime loans that start out with negative amortization. In those case, house prices must go up by at least 4-5% to make this all work.

And yes, by some magic, house prices have increased over the long term. But (a) price/rent ratios were so out of whack, it was clear we were in a bubble that couldn't last forever, and (b) even if we weren't in a bubble, there have always been short-term plateaus, declines, etc. But all it takes is one year of trying to pay over 50% of your income toward a mortgage and you'll find yourself broke and out of a house.

Stay tuned for part II...

Worst. Cookies. Ever.

2008-12-14T10:36:00.000-08:00

Last week, Mark Bittman posted a new recipe for The Mother Of All Butter Cookies. His point was that this recipe was akin to a mother sauce and an easy and flexible base that could be turned into butterscotch cookies, chocolate chip cookies, citrus cookies... Sounds great, huh?

Some of you might ask: the Tollhouse Cookies are an all-time classic for a reason, how can you possible improve on them? Good question. I'd like the cookies to be a little more fluffy, but I'm not sure how to do this without using shortening, which I don't like.

There were a few things in the recipe that are certainly unusual, but conventional wisdom in cooking is not always right. First of all, the dough is mixed in a food processor. But this works well for pie dough. Second, it has a lot of cornstarch. Cornstarch? The reason Bittman gives is "to avoid overdeveloping gluten" and to add a "silken quality" to the cookies. Finally, it has unsalted butter, but only calls for a "pinch" of salt. Is that enough? On the other hand, it has a larger butter-to-flour ratio than the tollhouse cookies, and butter is good.

Well, the food processor appeared to work reasonably well; it was definitely cookie dough that came out (though my kitchenaid was standing there watching forlornly). But the cookies? The recipe suggests baking for 11 minutes at 375 F (and our oven is reasonably well calibrated). After 10 minutes, the bottoms were brown and the tops were uncooked. The chocolate chips weren't even melting. After a total of 15 or 16 minutes we just took them out. They were completely uncooked in the middle; the chocolate chips were barely warm; they had the texture and flavor of raw cornstarch; there was no flavor (possibly related to the lack of salt).

I wouldn't serve these cookies to my worst enemies. I put a comment on the Bitten blog, and it's still awaiting moderation. My guess is that the moderator is overwhelmed with people complaining that these are the

Worst. Cookies. Ever.

UPDATE: My comment has finally made it through moderation, along with a few more comments agreeing that these cookies suck.

Does the religious right also not get that the Colbert Report is a parody?

2008-12-11T19:42:00.000-08:00

Even if you didn't watch Tuesday's Daily Show, you probably saw the second half of Jon Stewart's interview with Mike Huckabee linked on one of the million liberal blogs out there. I was curious as to what the conservative blogs were saying, though. What did they think of Huckabee's performance? Or about Stewart's line, "Religion is far more of a choice than homosexuality."?

I googled "jon stewart" "mike huckabee" and scrolled through eight pages of links to blog posts on the interview. Not a single one of those blogs was a conservative blog. So what's the deal? Was no one happy with Huckabee's performance? Is Mike Huckabee just not on the conservative radar right now? Or is The Daily Show itself not on the conservative radar? Among the religious right, Newt Gingrich, Ralph Reed, and Bill Bennett* have all been on the show multiple times. So they're not ignoring the show.

However, there are no results when searching for mentions of the Daily Show on the websites of the AFA, Focus on the Family, the FRC, or the Concerned Women for America. These are groups that send out weekly alerts on the latest "pro-homosexual" and "anti-Christian" content in pop culture. I wasn't expecting them all to have found something to be offended by in the program, but I thought at least one of them might have mentioned the show in the past ten years. It's not like basic cable is beneath their notice.

I'm just surprised that a show that is a staple of the left's culture, and that has been a steadfast supporter of gay marriage for years, has been completely ignored by the religious right. Is the religious right really unaware of the influence of the Daily Show? Or am I the one who's missing something?

* That two-part interview with Bill Bennett might be my favorite Daily Show moment ever. What? Like you don't all have similar mental lists.

Share buybacks!

2008-12-10T20:14:00.000-08:00

A-ha! In my previous post on owning stocks, I had completely forgotten about stock buybacks, when the company uses excess cash to buy outstanding shares. In this sense, the company itself is placing real value on the stocks, and this gives them some intrinsic value other than (a) producing dividends or (b) liquidation.

The traditional reason for a stock buyback is apparently that the company claims this is a better way to invest its cash than anywhere else...and it gives an advantage to existing shareholders by boosting the share price, and when these shares are sold the profits are taxed at the lower capital gains rate (while dividends are taxed as income). But buybacks can also be used to manipulate the topline numbers in earnings reports (the earnings per share goes up if you remove shares!). I think that buybacks can also be used to prop up a sagging share price...kind of like a central bank propping up a falling currency, which can be an expensive proposition that doesn't always end well.

In any event, as stock prices have fallen in the past year, there have been a lot of stock buybacks. And apparently, over the past four years S&P 500 companies as a whole have given out more money in stock buybacks and dividends ($2.6 trillion) than they have gotten in earnings ($2.4 trillion). I suppose that (a) that can't be sustainable [but hey, a good reason to have stocks as long as you sold them!] and (b) probably involved a lot of leverage.

But I wonder how much of this money going back to shareholders has been due to companies going private, such as the Tribune company. There was a case that Sam Zell borrowed a lot of money to buy out the shareholders, and now Tribune is bankrupt under all that debt...even though all of the Tribune holdings are profitable!

Group hug! (Grupo abrazo? グループの抱擁 ? ryhmä hali?)

2008-12-10T11:17:00.000-08:00

I was looking at the 2008 Google Zeitgeist for the U.S., and there were no real surprises about which search terms were the fastest-rising. However, I was surprised and delighted to see which five terms made it in Google Translate:

Google Translate - Fastest Rising (U.S.)

1. you
2. what
3. thank you
4. please
5. love

Aw! That is going to get me through today -- I'm seriously grinning like a fool here.

More thoughts on the stock market

2008-12-09T21:52:00.000-08:00

This week, The Economist asks the question: Where have all your savings gone?, with a picture of a guy staring down a bottomless pit. But they're relatively upbeat, now's the time to buy, things will recover, etc. But they also had this nugget:

In demographic terms, asset markets could be seen as a pyramid scheme, in which each generation aims to sell its accumulated savings to the next. Provided the next generation is larger than the one that preceded it, the savers can sell their assets at higher prices. That was the case for much of the 20th century.
Illustration by Brett Ryder

The baby-boomers will upset the pattern. If they retire at 65, they will start offloading their assets in 2011. And even in America, which has fewer demographic problems than Japan, there are not enough new savers coming along to replace them. Some hope that emerging markets will solve the problem, by acting as buyers of developed market assets and a source of higher returns for investors in rich countries, but the theory is unproven.

Yet another way the boomers will screw us all!

The article goes on to talk about a recent report which hypothesizes that Japan's flat market for the past two decades has been because their population got older sooner than in America.

What's the purpose of owning stocks?

2008-12-03T22:58:00.000-08:00

Something I was thinking about the other day...what is the value of stock in a publicly traded company these days? According to the wise people at wikipedia:

A share of stock is one of a finite number of equal portions in the capital of a company, entitling the owner to a proportion of distributed, non-reinvested profits known as dividends, and to a portion of the value of the company in case of liquidation.

But these days, companies don't really pay dividends. I think this trend started during the tech bubble, when people still bought stocks even when there wasn't any revenue, and therefore there weren't any dividends...so other companies said "wait, what? We don't have to pay dividends?"

So the only value to a stock is if the company is liquidated (or sold). If the company is liquidated in the usual sense (bankruptcy) then the stock is worthless.

It seems to me that the only reason to buy stock (in most companies, where you don't have any voting rights to determine the direction of the company) is to speculate that the value will go ever upward. This sounds a lot like the foundation of sand underneath the financial crisis, that everything would be fine as long as house prices went up forever. And if they didn't? Well, we didn't even contemplate what would happen.

I am certainly no economist, and the more I read the less I understand. But it's another sign of the way our whole economy has divorced itself from producing anything, and is more about moving money back and forth and making money by taking a cut of every transaction. That can't bode well.

Mac & Cheese

2008-11-10T21:27:00.000-08:00

At long last, here is my Mac & Cheese recipe. It's not fancy, but it certainly gets the job done. Unless, of course, you are lactose intolerant. Sorry Becky! This can be made with any firm cheese. I usually use sharp cheddar, but I've found a mix of garden-variety cheddar and smoky English farmhouse cheddar is very good.

Ingredients:
3/4 lb macaroni
3 tbs butter
3 tbs flour
2 cups milk
1/3+ pound cheddar cheese, grated
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp nutmeg
worcestershire sauce
freshly ground black pepper
salt

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Put water for pasta on the stove. When it is boiling, add the pasta, cook until al-dente, and drain.

Meanwhile, bring milk to a simmer on medium-low heat (try not to scald the milk). As the milk is heating, melt butter in a saucepan or saucier pot on medium-low heat. When it is melted, whisk in flour to make a roux. Whisk and cook for a few minutes. Slowly pour in hot milk, whisking constantly to keep lumps from forming. Keep whisking while the sauce is cooking; if it starts to boil then turn down the heat. Add cayenne (adds a nice kick!), nutmeg (apparently a hint of nutmeg brings out the j'ne sais quois-ness of the sauce), and several drops of worcestershire sauce to taste. Grind in black pepper and salt to taste. After 5-10 minutes the sauce should thicken. When it has thickened, turn heat to low, and add the grated cheese and mix it in.

Pour macaroni and cheese sauce into a baking dish, stirring to coat the macaroni. (Adjust macaroni to cheese sauce ratio to taste). Grate cheddar and parmesan cheese on top. Put in oven and bake for 30 minutes. Enjoy a tasty, non-low-fat treat!

Sometimes, putting family first means putting it off

2008-11-02T15:01:00.000-08:00

This article on red state and blue state attitudes towards sex didn't really tell me anything new. But this jumped out at me:

Maybe these choices weren’t originally about values—maybe they were about maximizing education and careers—yet the result is a more stable family system. Not only do couples who marry later stay married longer; children born to older couples fare better on a variety of measures, including educational attainment, regardless of their parents’ economic circumstances.

I think the choice to wait to marry and start a family is about values. It's about valuing family so that you wait to marry the right person, not just the one you're with when you're 18. Building a family because you want to, not out of obligation, makes it stronger.

I'm pro-family, which is why I'm voting against Proposition 8. I want everyone to have the chance to put together the family they want.

Change (is) how the story ends

2008-10-30T15:17:00.000-07:00

Right now we're all excited and hopeful that things will go well on Tuesday, and that Barack Obama will be elected president. But before we get too complacent, let's look at what we said in 2004 before the election:
Vinay (via email) said:

It's very 4:56 in the AM, I'm about to leave for my 1st of (right now) 3 shifts for election protection.

I'm wearing a medium-size shirt that's more like a small.

And to top it all off? I'm wide awake.

Have fun 'yall. :-)

In response, I said:

Woo!

I'm also about to leave for my 16-hour shift of election inspecting, and
I'm listening to R.E.M.'s "I Believe":

"and change is what I believe in ...."

A lot of that sounds awfully familiar (and not just because I was apparently four years ahead of the game). We had spent weeks obsessing over the campaign, reading about it, blogging about it, and working on it. We had one last epic day of the electoral process ahead of us, and although it wasn't a sure thing, we really thought Kerry could win it.

Let's look at how that all turned out. After the election, Eli said (all quotes again via email):

I bet Swift blows up on the launch pad just to make this one of the worst months ever.

Vinay, after reading coverage of the election:

I want to stab myself in the eye. A lot.

Oh! God! My eye hurts!

and Melinda, summing it all up for us:

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKETY FUCK.

I know the polls look good right now, but if there's any year in which something could go completely haywire in the next five days, it's this year. Make sure you vote and get out the vote, and try not to relax -- or even take any deep breaths -- until Wednesday. I don't want to spend another election night watching it all slip away. I want happy emails in my inbox this year. I want change, dammit.

Not Our American Dream

2008-10-29T11:59:00.000-07:00

Andrew Sullivan linked to a long article from 1985 on a couple building their dream house. Reading about all the space the couple wanted in their house was almost shocking. About a year and a half ago, we downsized from a 3.5-bedroom house in Michigan to a 1.5-bedroom apartment in California. We love our current home, and there are two things we've learned along the way:

The less you have -- and the less space you have -- the less you want. It is so refreshing to not have rooms upon rooms waiting to be filled up with stuff. And because we don't have mud rooms and dining rooms and home offices, we're not tempted to want more specialized rooms.
This only works because we are big fans of using community space -- both inside and outside the home. We have cookouts with friends at parks. We take the dog to the beach. In the evenings, we hang out together in the living room, even if it means one person works while the other watches television. Hosting a wedding in our home is not even on our radar.

I'm not sure what this says about our politics (are we sober fiscal conservatives, via #1? or hippie pinko commies, via #2?) or our marriage. All I know is, we both get a bit perplexed any time people start waxing rhapsodic over large houses. And maybe a bit nervous, because needing more and more usually doesn't end well.

The Shining Rays

2008-10-23T23:13:00.000-07:00

I don't want to jinx anything (too late!) but the Rays prevailing over the Red Sox has given me hope about Obama's prospects...

Let me explain.

For tracking the polls, the best place by far is fivethirtyeight.com, which uses some hardcore statistics to combine polling and demographic data to forecast the election results. The guy who runs the site, Nate Silver, has a day job doing hardcore statistics for Baseball Prospectus. Way back in February, Nate forecast that the Rays would be the most improved team this year. And he was right!

In the ALCS (Nate was not so bold as to predict the Rays would make the post-season, let alone the World Series) the Rays were up 3 games to 1 against the Red Sox. Building a 7-0 lead in the 7th inning, the Rays were roughly where Obama is right now. But it ain't over til it's over. And the Red Sox came back and won the game. And won comfortably in Game 6. It looked like an epic collapse was at hand...but in the end, the Rays prevailed!

Similar to the calculation of safe lead in college basketball, an extremely unlikely series of events has to occur for McCain to prevail now. And the Rays/Sox showed us how unlikely that is.

(Of course, I probably jinxed everything now. But if Nate was right about the Rays...)

The Climate of Fake America

2008-10-21T11:06:00.000-07:00

Until last December, I had lived my entire life in the Upper Midwest (Michigan and Ohio) and the mid-Atlantic (Pennsylvania). When I was getting ready to move to California, lots of people -- friends, family, and strangers alike -- made all sorts of denigrating comments about California and Californians. I was warned against becoming a crazy driver, becoming a hippie, dying in an earthquake, turning into a self-absorbed asshole in general, you name it.

But once I got here, I saw that Californians couldn't be lovelier. When I say I grew up in a small town in Ohio, they don't say, "Oh god, how did you ever survive?" They say, "Hey, I was in Cleveland recently, and had a good time." When I say that I come from a religious family, and grew up going to church weekly, they don't say, "Ew! How oppressive!"; they talk about their own religious experiences (or lack thereof).

All this "real America" rhetoric from Republicans has rankled me. Growing up, my family was one of the few liberal families in a conservative town, and those "real Americans" would say awful things about us. We ate dinner together every single night, but apparently lacked "family values" because we were Democrats. Now I live in what is unequivocally not real America, and all the fake Americans I know have much more goodwill towards the rest of the country -- not just the parts that look and think like they do.

The culture wars have become one-sided, which bizarrely gives me hope. The McCain campaign has been using them as a last-chance tactic, and it doesn't appear to be working. If Obama wins, they might actually be over.

Ohio will always haunt me

2008-10-10T11:40:00.000-07:00

Right now, I am so mortified to be from a small town in Northeast Ohio. Strongsville is a mere 12 miles up the road from where I grew up, and I haven't watched the video, because I'm afraid I'll recognize someone.

This is no exaggeration -- I am not surprised at all by what people in the crowd were saying.

I am really curious as to how Medina County will vote in this election. Summit and Cuyahoga* Counties will definitely go for Obama. Wayne and Ashland Counties will definitely go for McCain. But Medina County is on that border, and is growing more and more due to sprawl from Cleveland and Akron. For a while I thought that was enough to tip it to Obama, but now, with that video, and the conversations that my mother tries to avoid yet overhears, it seems that I'd forgotten a lot about my hometown in the past 11 years.

*Okay, Strongsville is actually in Cuyahoga county -- along the southwest edge of the county, and at the edge of the Cleveland suburbs. In general, the suburbs to the south and west of Cleveland are more conservative than the suburbs to the east, which is probably correlated with how white the south/west suburbs are. Anyway, if you take Strongsville, and make it more rural and more conservative, you get Medina County. Whee. (And thus ends this edition of At This Point You Should Just Be Glad Becky Hasn't Started on About School Funding in Ohio.)

The Game Would Just Be Redundant

2008-10-01T11:26:00.000-07:00

Like many people, I've been gleefully looking forward to the VP debate. I was going to make a drinking game of it, but realized it was nigh-on impossible for two reasons:

If you drink every time Sarah Palin says something incoherent, or every time Joe Biden is historically inaccurate, you'll be hammered in fifteen minutes.
You're already going to want to drink every time Sarah Palin says something incoherent, or every time Joe Biden is historically inaccurate.

So raise your glass of Yuengling if Scranton gets a shout-out, but other than that, you have no choice but to make some popcorn and brace yourselves for a bumpy ride.

A Few Words about Washington Mutual

2008-09-27T14:47:00.000-07:00

Washington Mutual went under on Thursday, in what was "by far the largest bank failure in American history". This certainly wasn't a big shock, and it's been a long time coming. WaMu was heavily involved in subprime and Alt-A and other dubious lending practices. Here is my story of how I took advantage of this.

When I originally bought my house in Ann Arbor in the summer of 2000, I got a loan through a mortgage broker. It was a "no income verification" loan, which I was able to get with a good credit score and by putting 20% down. I got a 5-year fixed ARM, and the broker assured me he'd help me refinance for free after a couple years. The broker took care of everything, and there wasn't a hitch.

At the end of 2002, rates had gone down significantly, and I called up the broker again to refinance. Of course, his previous offer to help me refinance for free was just a load of bullshit; he wanted to charge a lot and the deal he offered wasn't very good, so I went off on my own to refinance. I first called Wells Fargo (I think) but never actually got through to anybody. I then called Washington Mutual, and they were only too happy to help.

Washington Mutual offered me a great rate, so I was going to save about $350/month for another 5-year fixed ARM. Thankfully, this wasn't a super-gimick loan where I was paying interest-only, but after 5 years it was going to reset to a significantly higher rate. However, I was fairly confident (correctly so!) that wouldn't still be in Ann Arbor in five years, so this wasn't going to be a problem.

Anyway, I fill out all the paperwork, and it all looks good since I have a good credit score, and a significant amount of equity in the house (I wasn't taking any money out). But I still needed to fax them a table listing my sources of income-- they weren't going to verify any of the sources, but they still wanted this on record. I wrote down an honest list, faxed it to the loan officer, and got a call back:

Loan Officer: The income you've listed here isn't sufficient to give you the loan.

Me: Wait, you aren't verifying it, does it matter?

Loan Officer: It matters for our records.

Me: So what can I do? That's my income.

Loan Officer: Do you have any other sources of income? Perhaps there's a Rykoff Family Trust that provides you with income?

Me: What?

Loan Officer: Is there a Rykoff Family Trust that provides an extra $5000/year income?

Me: A Rykoff Family Trust???

Loan Officer: That's right, is there a Rykoff Family Trust?

You could hear her winking over the phone.

I wrote down what she told me to; I got the loan; and sold the house before the rate reset. But they were so eager to give me the loan, and were actively encouraging how to doctor the application. And so it's no surprise that they got swallowed up in this mess.

Signs of the times

2008-09-24T16:28:00.000-07:00

The Obama campaign is all but ignoring lawn signs in some battleground states -- so they can focus on silly things like voter registration -- and it's starting to backfire in Virginia. From my anecdotal survey of two voters, it's also starting to piss off Ohio supporters, too.

I think the campaign is underestimating how emotionally attached people are to signs, especially in swing states or conservative areas. It's not just about declaring your support: it's about saying "Fuck you"* to your neighbors, because you're freaking tired of hearing the 19 percent-ers impugn your patriotism.

* I am not implying that my mother would actually say "Fuck you" to anyone.

Polling the family

2008-09-22T21:27:00.000-07:00

Talking to my parents about the election is always interesting -- Eli and I are in California, surrounded by Obama supporters, so we are perhaps overly optimistic about the election. Meanwhile, my parents are in Ohio, surrounded by conservatives, and, well:

Down here, Friday afternoon is when you wash the sheets. Saturday is when you hang them out. Sunday is when you wear them.

(Quote from a supposed Obama supporter. BUT STILL. I can see why my parents are so fed up and pessimistic.)

Waiting (for 11/4/08) is the hardest part

2008-09-19T18:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning, we saw Joe Biden in Canton, which was entertaining (despite starting 1 1/2 hours late). There were two opening speakers: Governor Ted Strickland, which was a pleasant surprise, and then . . . John Boccieri. Who? Well, he's running for Congress in a district where the 30-year incumbent Republican is retiring, and he has a pretty good chance of winning.

Plus, he released this awesome video some time ago:

I wish I could vote for him!

I don't understand 25% of the country! But not the 25% you might think

2008-09-14T21:33:00.001-07:00

I don't particularly care or worry about the 20-25% of the population who still approves of Bush. They're lost causes.

What does concern me, if you believe the polls, is the 25%-ish of the population who disapproves of Bush but is planning on voting for McCain. I am baffled by them! When has there been any indication that McCain will change the direction that this country is going in? Not in 2006, when he voted for the Military Commissions Act, which lets the president authorize pretty much everything. Not in 2007, when he voted for Bush policies 95% of the time. Not in 2008, when he explicitly voted against a ban on waterboarding.

He even hired Bush's speechwriter from 2000 (start at about 4:50):

(In a related note, Jason Jones has been growing on me!)

There's no ice in Florida!

2008-08-31T22:13:00.000-07:00

By far, the most egregious move by the NCAA Ice Hockey Committee is placing the 2012 Frozen Four in Tampa, Florida. Tampa. FLORIDA. 674 miles from the nearest Division I hockey team, and nearly 1,000 miles to the second-closest Division I hockey team.

Of course, there are still regionals and the 2011 Frozen Four in Minnesota, but they have a bit of an advantage (emphasis mine):

“We focused on selecting sites that have NHL size ice sheets and are in neutral buildings,” said Ice Hockey Committee Chairman Joel Maturi, the AD of Minnesota. “We really feel that each of these buildings will showcase college hockey, give our student-athletes a tremendous experience and help take our championship to another level.”

Yes, what a tremendous experience playing for the championship in an empty arena in Florida. Awesome.

If the NCAA was serious about expanding Division I ice hockey, they wouldn't be scheduling tournaments in Missouri and Florida. They would spend all their free time wooing Penn State. Pennsylvanians not only have two pro hockey teams, but are aware they have two pro hockey teams, so you have a built-in hockey fanbase. Michigan, Ohio State, and Notre Dame have hockey teams, so you can have games against known rivals to bring in casual fans. There are only two Division I hockey teams in the state, both in the western part. And there is nothing to do in State College in the winter.

Sure, it's expensive, and you'll have to add women's water polo or rowing for Title IX, but long-term it would be good for college hockey. I almost suspect that the NCAA is trying to kill college hockey. I mean, Florida?

(link via The Blog That Yost Built)

Arugula for all!

2008-08-24T12:03:00.000-07:00

While the Obama campaign has had lots of fun mocking McCain for not knowing how many houses he had, the McCain campaign came back with . . . an arugula reference. Because a year ago, Obama had the nerve to mention the price of arugula.

I find it unbelievably frustrating that worrying about the price of vegetables makes one elitist. I don't know why someone would take pride in not being able to spell it. It's healthy! It's tasty! And it is a goddamn crime in this country that organic arugula is $4 for 5 ounces (or $7/lb for non-organic), while mac and cheese is $1.58 a box. Vegetables should not be luxuries, and I wish someone would actually say that for once.

Punk'd!

2008-08-24T12:01:00.000-07:00

Yeah, we got punked.

But Biden has had two of the funniest lines of the campaign, so this should be fun. With

Your kitchen table is like mine, you sit there at night after you put the kids to bed and you talk about what you need. That's not a worry John McCain has to worry about. He'll have to figure out which of the seven kitchen tables to sit at.

and

Rudy Giuliani. There's only three things he mentions in a sentence -- a noun, a verb, and 9/11.

I can't wait for the VP debates!

Evan Bayh?

2008-08-22T15:14:00.000-07:00

So apparently there are Obama-Bayh bumper stickers being printed up in Kansas (h/t Mark Ambinder). And then I checked and www.obamabayh.com redirects to http://www.barackobama.com/learn/meet_evan.php. There's no obababiden.com, or obamasibelius.com, or even obamaclinton.com.

You heard it here first.

Those are some elitist bootstraps, I guess

2008-08-21T21:43:00.000-07:00

Plenty of bloggers and journalists, not to mention McCain himself, have called Obama "elitist" at various points throughout the campaign.

I would just like to point out that in politics right now, the two greatest examples of living the American Dream -- of starting from nothing and working hard from there -- are Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. I don't know why a grandmother in Hawaii makes Obama an elitist, while two houses on Coronado Island doesn't make McCain and elitist, but whatever. And do not even get me started on arugula. There will be a whole 'nother post coming about why caring about the price of arugula makes you explicitly not an elitist.

NBC Doing Well with Olympics, the Bastards

2008-08-17T22:05:00.000-07:00

Apparently the Olympics have been ratings gold for NBC this year. Swimming and gymnastics have been extremely popular, and everyone has been talking about the Olympics.

What this article doesn't mention is that the West Coast isn't getting any of that live primetime coverage. Nothing but tape delays for us!

NBC said Saturday’s prime-time broadcast — featuring Mr. Phelps’s eighth gold medal win — was its most-viewed Saturday program in 18 years. From 11 to 11:30 p.m., when the Americans swam in their medal-winning medley relay, 39.9 million viewers were watching, according to Nielsen Media Research.

That would have been from 8 to 8:30 p.m., if aired live on the West Coast. Would that have been so awful? Half the time, there's nothing good on until 10 p.m. ET, so give the West Coast a live feed then (7 p.m. PT), and throw all the crap in tape-delayed later. Better to tape-delay some stuff than everything, especially when things are finishing around 1 a.m. ET.

Clearly people are watching the Olympics, and talking about them. And I am freaking tired of having to avoid the entire internet after 5 p.m. PT to avoid Olympic spoilers. I complained to nbcolympicsfeedback@nbcuni.com, but they shockingly haven't emailed me back. Lo, how I miss the CBC!

What were the other 19% thinking?

2008-08-11T18:33:00.000-07:00

I know August is a slow sports month, what with only preseason football and pre-pennant race baseball, but it's still a pleasant surprise to see how many people are paying attention to the Olympics. In the ESPN.com poll (to which I cannot directly link, and can I file a complaint about that?), over 80% of the respondants cited the men's 4x100 freestyle relay as the highlight of the weekend. Now, I didn't see the other three events, but that relay was awesome, and Lezak was incredible.

If you missed it, you can watch it here after installing the Silverlight plugin. (Hooray for Mac support this year!) And while you're at it, watch the women's 400m freestyle final, which also had a close and crazy finish.

Whee!

Saag Paneer

2008-08-10T17:17:00.000-07:00

We've made saag paneer (or palaak paneer, as they call it in Southern India) many times, using a combination of two recipes. Both recipes are from Madhur Jaffrey: one in World Vegetarian and the other in World of the East Vegetarian Cooking. We don't like either one by itself, so now that we've finally adjusted it to our liking, here goes:

The paneer:
2 quarts whole milk
3-4 Tbsp white vinegar or lemon juice
1/4 tsp garam masala
1/8 tsp salt
1/8 tsp cayenne

Line a colander with several layers of cheesecloth, making sure you have plenty of cloth.

Bring the milk to a boil over medium high heat. When it begins to boil, turn the heat to low, and add 3Tbsp of vinegar. Stir. If the mixture does not begin curdling (the thin, yellowish whey separating from the white curds), add the last tablespoon of vinegar. Stir again, then pour into the colander. The whey will drain out and you'll have the curds left in the colander.

Gather up the ends of the cheesecloth and squeeze out as much water as possible. Tie the bundle shut, and lay the cloth on a plate. Place another plate above it, with a heavy book, for about five minutes. Just five minutes is all you need!

At this point it will keep for a day or two in the fridge. But once you're ready, slice it into cubes and fry it in a bit of oil. After slightly browning all sides, set aside. Sprinkle with the salt, cayenne, and garam masala. (The frying is optional, mostly because it sticks to the pan like crazy, no matter how much oil you use.)

The saag:
2 10-oz. bags of spinach
1 Tbsp of dried fenugreek or 1-2 handfuls of fresh fenugreek (if you can get fresh fenugreek, it is SO worth it)

2-3 Tbsp peanut oil
4-5 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
A 1-inch cube of ginger, chopped finely
1/2 - 2 small green chilis, chopped finely. (we use 2 Thai chilis, but whatever you have that you like)
1 tomato, grated

3/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp cayenne

Bring 1/3 cup of water to boil in a large pan. Put in the spinach and fenugreek, and cook gently, covered, for 25 minutes.

START MAKING RICE NOW. (We have forgotten to make rice on at least three occasions.)

About 10 minutes after you've put the spinach on, start heating 2-3 Tbsp peanut oil in another frying pan. Add the ginger, garlic, and chilis, frying them until they start to brown. Then add the tomato, and cook over medium-low heat for about 10 minutes, until the texture thickens.

After the spinach has cooked for 25 minutes, mash it a bit with a potato masher or wooden spoon. Stir the tomato mixture into the spinach mixture, then add the salt, cumin, and cayenne. Stir to mix, cooking gently for 5 minutes. You may need to add a tablespoon of cornstarch here, but we usually just try to remove any excess water.

Add the paneer, stir, and cook gently covered for another 5 minutes. Taste for salt.

Serve hot, with rice.

Yum!

Dorky Fun with Wordle

2008-08-06T19:48:00.000-07:00

It seems that wordle is all the rage these days. And I decided to look at what comes out of the RSS feed of astro-ph. Let's take a look (click image to enlarge):

I didn't realize that "magnetic" would be number one!

In case of emergency, please try again later

2008-07-29T19:29:00.001-07:00

This morning we had a moderate earthquake in the LA area. It was strong enough that we felt it 150 miles away in Santa Barbara, but not so strong as to make us feel like we were in danger.

After this minor event, it was almost impossible to make a cell phone call into or out of Santa Barbara for the next 3 or so hours. I understand that it's not economical for the phone companies to build enough towers and bandwidth so that every person on their network can make a phone call at the same time. However, it is a bit troubling that even after a minor earthquake such as this that we're not able to use our phones. What will we do if something serious occurs?

Birthday tradition!

2008-07-17T11:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we went out for sushi for Eli's birthday. In honor of the yummy sushi, here is the very funny "Japanese Tradition" video about how to eat sushi:

I'm not sure if they're aimed at Japanese people, or people learning Japanese, or what, but I really enjoy the "Japanese Tradition" videos. There's also a very funny one about chopsticks, and one about origami that starts off funny but then meanders.

Planet: A self-gravitating body that is nearly round

2008-07-14T22:27:00.000-07:00

The other day I was looking at the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) database table on photometric classification. I needed to recall which type was a star and which was a galaxy. So I was interested to see the following two listings in this table buried deep in the SDSS information:

Galaxy: An extended object composed of many stars and other matter.

Star: A a self-luminous gaseous celestial body.

I guess I was just surprised at how pedantic it was.

Running to the center is not leadership

2008-07-10T15:36:00.000-07:00

Gail Collins is correct when she notes

You liked Barack because you thought he could get us past the old brain-dead politics, right?

But those of us disappointed about the FISA vote aren't disappointed because we don't understand what a compromise is. I'm disappointed because Obama wasn't only talking about bipartisanship and building a consensus -- he was talking about reducing the influence of big business in politics. He has a strong history of supporting civil liberties. I had hoped that an Obama administration would be less corrupt and bloated than the current executive branch; now, I'm not so sure.

Last week I realized that I wouldn't exactly be able let my ACLU membership lapse after an Obama victory. And even though the Democratic party is slowly limping to the left, it's going to be a long, slow battle. I'm hoping someone has their eye on Dianne Feinstein's Senate seat for 2010, because I swear I am ready to starting working on that one now.

No news, so here is some bad press!

2008-07-08T15:38:00.000-07:00

The Santa Barbara Independent has had excellent coverage of the Gap Fire, but I decided to look for more information elsewhere. A lot of shit went down with the Santa Barbara News-Press before we moved to town, but I thought I should given them one chance. Although the News-Press has an extensive online section for fire coverage, what happens when you actually try to read one of those articles?

This current article requires registration and login to view. You may also purchase the article without a general registration. Click here to proceed to the login, registration or article purchase page.

I emailed them to complain about the lack of free online information they had about the natural disaster in our backyard, and to be fair, I was a little sarcastic, concluding:

We have a wildfire in our backyard, and you can't manage to provide updates on your website? For free? To everyone?

It's 2008, and every other paper in the U.S. has managed to figure out how to put free content online. Get with the program.

To my surprise, I did get an email in response:

Dear website user.

Certain sections of the website currently require login (user needs to be a subscriber in order to access). Please note that a number of sections in the site are FREE of charge such as: News Video coverage on www.newspress.tv, AM1290 Radio station, Classifieds, Special Sections, USA Weekend, House & Home, Our Home, El Mexicano, Goleta Valley Voice, Smart Clips, Photo Galleries, etc, etc.

Okay, I love the "etc, etc." at the end. That is genius. But I was procrastinating, so I decided to email them back:

Thank you for your prompt response. I am very glad to know that the next time there is a natural disaster in Santa Barbara County, I will still be able to peruse the real estate listings in the News-Press. In the meantime, I will get my local news from the Santa Barbara Independent.

I'm very proud that I refrained from complaining about their webpage resizing my browser window. But why bother complaining when I'm never going back to the site again?

Happy Fourth of July Three-Day Weekend

2008-07-06T11:13:00.000-07:00

Between Guantanamo and FISA, I'm not feeling particularly patriotic this year -- when everyone else is singing along to that hideous Greenwood song, I'm thinking of e.e. cumming's "next to god of course america . . . ".

However, I do like this country, quite a bit, so I will polish off the holiday weekend by reminding my senators -- and everyone else -- of the Bill of Rights. Particularly Amendment IV:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

And the clear and concise Amendment VIII:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Happy Birthday, America. Maybe this year will be a good one.

Now batting for Pedro Borbon...Manny Mota! (mota! mota!)

2008-07-05T12:55:00.000-07:00

I'll admit it, I've been spending way too much time paying attention to the crazy political goings-on this season. Even after the endless Bataan Death March Obama-Clinton showdown, I've continued to pay attention. But the relentless echo-chamber, especially on the right, but also on the left, is completely out of control, and blogs have made it worse. As has been pointed out many times, it really doesn't matter what anybody actually says. From Al Gore "inventing the internet" to Wesley Clark "insulting McCain's service" to Hillary Clinton "advocating the assassination of Obama", it doesn't matter that none of these things actually happened. But all of these events can at least be directly attributable to deliberate misquotations, distortions, and spin.

But two recent spin-ups have occurred that were not even based on a mis-quotation, but appeared spontaneously from the vacuum. On one side was Obama's "complete reversal" on Iraq, and on the other was the "terrorist fist-jab" (which does have the advantage of adding a new entertaining term to the lexicon.)

First, Obama on Iraq. Suddenly the blogosphere was abuzz with right-wing claims of Obama reversing completely on Iraq, and saying we'll be there forever, a-la McCain, etc. So this claim of reversing course on Iraq? It comes from sources like this. Which has great statements like:

In Baghdad, Mr. Obama will get a chance to meet with Ambassador Crocker, who is leading negotiations with the Iraqi government on the presence of American troops. Mr. Crocker will likely tell the senator that our position is not to keep bases permanently but to lease them for 10 years from the Iraqi government, whose lawmakers, he'll report, privately hope the bases will be used as barracks for our GIs.

So this is all based on what will happen? Are you serious? But all it takes is one blog to say something, and then you have a reference for whatever you might want to say. And it echoes back and forth and you don't even need to distort an existing quotation!

Second, and much less serious, is the "terrorist fist jab". Where did this (admittedly great) phrase first come from? I first heard about it from Andrew Sullivan, who linked to this posting at Slate which claimed that Cal Thomas at Human Events called the Barack-Michelle pound "a Hezbollah style fist-jabbing." A subsequent edit at Slate admitted that Cal Thomas had not made that accusation, but it was instead one of the commenters...but which one? As best I can tell, the only comments on Cal Thomas's post referring to a "Hezbollah style fist-jabbing" were left-wingers responding to the ludicrous accusation. Somebody, somewhere, accused Cal Thomas of a ridiculous statement...commenters responded without actually RTFA...and everything started cross-posting and a meme was born.

But it was (of course) Fox News who brought it to the air and cemented "terrorist fist jab" in our language. Thank you, E. D. Hill.

Smoke before fire, but both before information

2008-07-02T10:29:00.001-07:00

We were visiting family this weekend, and spent a fair amount of time assuring them that we weren't affected by any of the California wildfires, as they were hundreds of miles north of us. And then last night, a fire broke out maybe ten miles from where we live.

The Santa Barbara Independent -- a free, weekly paper -- has had excellent coverage of the fire, with lots of updates on the fire and the status of the evacuations. Their only flaw has been in saying, "For more information, visit the county Fire Department’s website."

I have visited said website, and nowhere is there a mention of the current fire. BlogaBarbara pointed to the Google Group for alerts. A Google Group. In 2008. Please. Nevermind the fact that the only post yesterday is a freaking test of their red alert system, and not an actual post about the actual fire that is burning in the county. I'm sure right now they're a little too busy to set up a blog, or some alert system on their homepage, but maybe they should get it ready for next time. The Independent coverage is good, but it would be nice to have a direct source for the status of the fire and the evacuations.

He had me until the word "not"

2008-06-30T17:21:00.001-07:00

If you were under the age of 35 ( . . . which most of you are), and were reading the paper with your breakfast, would you continue with an article that started like this:

I do not unconditionally celebrate the Internet, particularly its intrusion into classical music. As replacements for the record store, Amazon and iTunes have become necessary evils. Typical commercial downloads are sonic shadows of the superior sound of CDs. Blogs ghettoize critics. YouTube is pretty much a toy.

I am not an expert on the business model for classical music, but in general, the problem is not the internet's "intrusion into classical music" -- the problem is the classical music community not embracing the internet. If you're not happy with the classical music offerings online, do something about it yourself. But if you don't embrace the internet, you'll never reach that next generation of fans.

Easy Check In! Just Click Right Here, Please

2008-06-25T18:18:00.001-07:00

Easy Check In! Just Click Right Here, Please
Originally uploaded by R Stanek

We're leaving for Pittsburgh tomorrow (family wedding! woo! seriously!), and I wasn't paying attention as I was checking in. You know how it is, you have to go page by page re-confirming your seat, etc.

Well, United knows how it is, too. And they're hoping you'll mindlessly click on the arrow, hoping to go to the next page, but instead paying $29 for the privilege of not sitting with your knees under your chin.

(I didn't click it.)

(But only because Eli caught me before I did.)

Second place is the first loser

2008-06-17T21:07:00.000-07:00

It's been a tough two months of sports for us here. In April, Michigan lost in overtime to Notre Dame in the Frozen Four, ending a wonderful, unexpected rush of a season. A few weeks ago, the Penguins lost to the Red Wings in the Stanley Cup finals, four games to two, after an impressive run in the playoffs. And tonight, the Celtics utterly shellacked the Lakers (sorry, Eli), winning the NBA championship in six games.

I can tell you right now that the Dodgers will make it to the World Series and lose in six games, Michigan football will finally beat Ohio State only to suffer (another) embarrassing loss to USC in the Rose Bowl, and the Steelers will lose in the Super Bowl after some sort of epic third-quarter collapse.

I'm really sorry to all of our fellow fans, but our household seems to be cursed this year.

Playing around with time

2008-06-16T22:14:00.000-07:00

I feel like time-lapse videos are everywhere lately, and "Players" is my new favorite:

Players from Sam Javanrouh on Vimeo.

Sam Javanrouh is the photographer behind the excellent [daily dose of imagery] photoblog, which is wonderfully moody and urban.

Now if I could just find a good time-lapse video of density waves in traffic jams, I'd be all set . . .

But that just raises more rumors!

2008-06-12T16:05:00.000-07:00

While I'm glad that the Obama campaign is ready to combat the crazy rumors about Obama and his family, I'm disappointed that the campaign was pressured into releasing Obama's birth certificate. (Not that anything will ever be enough for some people.) And no matter how much people insist that they just want to know if his given name was "Barack" or "Barry", or if his middle name was originally "Muhammad", I don't think that the mildest of those rumors would be flying around if his name was John* Smith.

Either the commenters haven't realized that Barack Hussein Obama is just as likely to be a natural-born U.S. citizen as John Smith, or they're aware of it and very, very bitter. Sorry, but the guy butchering names at Ellis Island retired in the last century.

What could people possibly ask for next? I'm afraid to ask, as it's only June, and the crazy xenophobes have plenty of time to write breathless emails about Obama being Muslim/Kenyan/racist/OMGBLACKWITHFUNNYNAME!

* I realize that there have also been some quibbles about McCain's eligibility for President, as he was born on a military base in Panama. But the Senate voted to declare him a natural-born citizen, and no one is disputing his birth name or his place of birth.

Is there a Top Geeky Chef?

2008-06-11T23:31:00.000-07:00

On tonight's Top Chef finale (no spoilers here, don't worry), Richard bragged that he was using liquid nitrogen to make ice cream, and that "only a dozen top chefs in the country" do that sort of thing.

Top chefs, pffft. Even I've made liquid nitrogen ice cream on multiple occasions. In fact, other than procuring liquid nitrogen, it's one of the easiest desserts out there. Clearly Richard should have noted that "a dozen top chefs and thousands of physics geeks" use liquid nitrogen in their cooking.

That was MY template!

2008-06-09T21:35:00.000-07:00

So I was distressed today to see a blog posting on the McCain campaign PowerPoint on a "Path to Victory" (warning: NSFW). Apart from the ridiculous strategizing going on at the McCain camp (I'm not too worried after seeing their plan) I was surprised that the McCain people don't actually use PowerPoint...they use Keynote!

And not only that, they use the same template that I do!

I guess I need to find a new template.

Spicy Corn

2008-06-05T21:59:00.000-07:00

As the summer grilling season begins (but in Santa Barbara it never ends!) corn on the cob starts to appear at the market. And there's nothing we love more than Indian-style spicy grilled corn. I learned this recipe and technique from my neighbors on Tappan St. in Ann Arbor, some time in the last millennium. And after Madhan and Pravina showed me how to make this recipe, it's been my favorite way to eat corn on the cob.

Ingredients:
Corn on the cob, husked (see below)
Coriander chutney (from a jar, available at Indian grocers)
Fresh lime
Salt
cayenne pepper, to taste

Fire up the grill. Husk the corn, and save a few inner husk leaves (whatever they're called), which we will make into a basting brush. Cut the very thick, white end off the leaves, and then make 1-inch slices into the ends of the leaves to make a brush-like head. Peel off another 1/2 inch wide strand of husk, and use this to tie the base of the brush together. Or, if you're feeling lazy, you can just use a regular brush, but the husk-brush is disposable and biodegradable!

Squeeze the juice of 1 lime (enough for 3-4 ears of corn; this recipe scales well) into a small bowl. Put a tablespoon or more of coriander chutney, a healthy pinch of salt, and ~1/8 teaspoon cayenne (to taste) in with the lime juice. Stir. If it's too thick it can be loosened with more lime juice, water, or whatever beer-like beverage you happen to be drinking.

Put the corn on the hot grill, and baste the top of the corn with the mixture. After a few minutes the bottom of the corn will begin to blacken, rotate the corn, and baste the top again. Repeat until the corn has been roasted and basted all the way around.

Enjoy!

A beautiful edit

2008-06-04T18:50:00.001-07:00

I am a total sucker for good editing and good transitions, even in commercials. The first great example of this -- and still my favorite -- that I can recall is the Nike "Move" ad from 2002. There are two recent ads that have also caught my eye:

This Stanley Cup ad is neat, if on the choppy side:

And this camera ad is a great mix of photography and film:

It's almost enough for me to reconsider my opposition to Flickr adding video.

What other brilliantly edited sequences -- from ads, movies, whatever -- do you love?

Dean gets it, and gets votes

2008-06-02T14:56:00.000-07:00

I read that the Democratic National Convention is giving full press credentials to hundreds of bloggers, including one locally-focused blog from every state. This is yet another example of how Howard Dean gets it, the 21st century, and I still can't believe that the Democratic Party actually, for once, did the smart thing when electing him DNC Chair.

Maybe it seems like electing Dean was a no-brainer, or that even poorly-trained monkeys could have been elected to Congress in 2006 if they had a D next to their name. But if you paid any attention to the RBC meeting this weekend -- or tried to avoid news of it -- it's worth noting that Harold Ickes was a contender for DNC chair. If you just emerged from the cave you hid in this weekend to avoid the RBC updates, you might need to go back into it to cope with even the thought of Ickes as DNC chair. (It's also delightful to note that the linked blog -- which just happened to be the first google hit for this -- thought that Dean would be a disaster as DNC chair. If this is a disaster, I'll take it!)

Meanwhile, the Republican Party will also be issuing press credentials to bloggers, but they don't sound enthusiastic about it:

How many independent bloggers are ultimately credentialed will be determined by several factors - including interest; space available; the reach and influence of a particular blog; the amount of original content the blog typically generates; and other factors.

The difference in tone is remarkable.

I believe the poles are shifting . . .

2008-05-31T14:48:00.000-07:00

We saw R.E.M. on Thursday night, and it was awesome -- they put on a great show, as always. But we can't believe that on this tour, in 2008, they're not playing "I Believe".

I mean, Obama's campaign slogan, "Change we can believe in", is practically a lyric from the song! Michael Stipe is (to the surprise of no one) supporting Obama! This would be the most obvious song to play to get people riled up and excited about voting, but instead they're playing "Ignoreland" (which admittedly is pretty good live).

Maybe no one can play the banjo intro anymore.