Rhosgobel: Radagast's home

Office hours vs. review sessions: the power of a name and a little prep

2010-09-30T09:43:00.000-07:00

My campus requires all faculty members to hold four office hours a week. During these office hours I'm required to be in my office (or some other location), available to any student who wants to come by.

The idea is a great one: there are many reasons why students might want to come and see instructors outside of class, and office hours give all students an opportunity to do just that. So, in my dream world, I would sit in my cozy office chair sipping tea while student after student came into my office asking thoughtful questions about biology and my advice on transfer possibilities (and bringing me artisan cheese to sample).

But in reality, office hours quickly turn into just another hour to get work done. Students almost never came by, and when they did it was usually for a few questions that were quickly answered before the student went on their way. Oh, sure, anytime there was a major assignment due a handful of students would come by to ask about it, but that was at most four or five students every few weeks (I tend to have about 70 to 100 students a semester in my courses).

The lack of student attendance was frustrating, because I knew they could use help (shockingly, they don't all score 100% on my exams, despite my amazing in-class instructing), and I also knew that they wanted help, as there was always a constant chant of "Can you hold a review session?" whenever an exam came up. I often would hold a specially scheduled review session, while in the back of my mind thinking, "Wasn't that what office hours should have been for?".

And then last year it clicked. Students desperately want to go to review sessions, but most couldn't care less about office hours. A quick e-mail to my dean confirmed that there is no requirement to actually call office hours "office hours", and an idea was born: I no longer hold four office hours a week; instead I hold four hours worth of review sessions each week.

I hold the review sessions in the lab I teach my courses in, scatter the hours through the week (to minimize scheduling conflicts), and publish the hours on my syllabus. I also don't just sit there and wait for student questions; each week I come with prepared slides that list what I can go over that day (e.g., what I think are tough topics), a few new things to talk about (e.g., a preview of material to come, or another example of something we've talked about), and a set of test-like questions from the prior weeks' content aimed at promoting discussion of core topics. I then ask the students what they want to do, and we go from there.

The weekly review sessions have been a huge hit. For the primary class I teach (majors' biology), I had four students attend during the first week of the semester (I've never had students come to office hours during the first week to ask about anything other than enrollment issues), in the third week I had seven students attend (even though I had cancelled both review sessions due to being off campus, and only announced that I would be holding one an hour before it was scheduled to start), and last week I had 14 students show up. This week I haven't even held all the review sessions yet, and I've already had 13 students show up.

In the first four weeks of the semester I had more students come to my review sessions than I typically have come to my office hours in an entire semester. The students are active and engaged; most stay for the entire time asking me questions and working on my sample questions. I'm also getting lots of positive feedback ("These are really helping, Prof. Radagast"). And, as an added bonus, since I hold the review sessions in the lab room, students know that they can use the review sessions to give themselves extra time to look at lab specimens, if they need it.

One challenge to this concept is that the review sessions must be specialized for each class. So, I had to split up my office hours to target each class I teach (luckily I only teach two separate courses), and I've made it clear that I'm happy to schedule office appointments for anyone who can't make the review sessions for their class. It's not ideal, but the extra attendance and engagement by the students make it worth it.

I think there are three interacting factors that contribute to the success of the review sessions:

The name - Students think about "office hours" in a completely different light than they do "review sessions".
The location - Instead of walking into my office and interrupting me while I'm doing some probably meaningless, but important-looking task, students instead walk into a room designed for teaching, and see me sitting at the front doing nothing but waiting for them to arrive¹.
The preparation - While students end up asking me lots of questions, at the start of each session I usually just get blank stares. Having a few slides prepared with sample test questions, extra content, and a list of what I think is tough helps break the ice and get the session going. The sample exam questions are especially liked, and much of our time has been spent going over them.

As an added bonus, I'm enjoying the time much more. Instead of guiltily doing administrivia during office hours, I'm now interacting with my students and helping them learn the content. Which is, after all, why I'm here.

¹ Or, more likely, they're waiting at the lab door and see me rushing from my office to the lab 15 seconds before the review session is scheduled to start.

Plum frozen yogurt

2010-09-26T16:20:00.000-07:00

It's hot here in southern California this weekend¹, and thus on Friday I broke out our ice cream maker and made some plum frozen yogurt. Friends have told me that they haven't had much luck making frozen yogurt at home, as they find it tough to get the yogurt strongly flavored enough with the bits of fruit they add. I've never had that problem with this recipe: by adding more plum than yogurt, this frozen yogurt ends up filled with plummy goodness, peppered with blended bits of purple skin and small chunks of plum.

This is my favorite homemade frozen yogurt recipe, and it makes an excellent refreshing snack or dessert.

This recipe requires an ice cream maker; for more background on home ice cream makers, see this post.

6 plums (3 to 3 1/2 cups coarsely chopped)
1 3/4 cups whole-milk, plain yogurt (unsweetened)
3/4 - 1 cup sugar

1) Remove the pits from all 6 plums, leaving the skin on.

2) Peel the skin off one of the plums, saving the skin for step 3. Finely chop the rest of the plum (you should have about 1/2 cup), and set aside. These plum pieces will be added to the frozen yogurt as it freezes in step 5.

3) Coarsely chop the remaining five plums (you should have about 2 1/2 to 3 cups coarsely chopped) and add them to a blender with the yogurt, sugar, and skin removed from the plum in step 2. Blend until smooth.

4) Add the plum and yogurt mixture to an ice cream maker and start it up.

5) Partway through the freezing (once the yogurt has started to solidify), add the plum pieces that were set aside earlier (in step 2).

6) Once the ice cream maker has finished (~10-15 minutes in ours), spoon the frozen yogurt to a pre-chilled container (or containers) and freeze for at least an hour or two. I like freezing the yogurt in small glasses, as it makes serving easy and helps keep it soft.

Notes:

This recipe comes close to overfilling our ice cream maker; be sure that the mixture will fit into yours (remembering that the concoction will increase in volume as it freezes).

The amount of sugar you should add depends on how tart the yogurt is and how sweet the plums are. I find that around 7/8 of a cup seems like a good amount to make it quite sweet, but that will vary based on your own taste and ingredients. If you have any doubts on the sweetness, add less sugar to start with and then taste the yogurt before adding to the ice cream maker.

My SO prefers this without the pieces of plum added, but I enjoy them (as they give a burst of plummy goodness every now and then, and add texture to the yogurt). If you prefer a smooth frozen yogurt, just skip step 2 and add all the plums to the blender in step 3.

¹ And no, by "hot" I do not mean 83F. It's actually over 100F in most of the area!

Who knew Paperboy was based on real life?

2010-09-25T10:28:00.000-07:00

While I teach my favorite course on Friday, I'm basically in the classroom prepping, teaching, or cleaning up all day long. So, come 5:00 I was exceptionally happy to be able to head home (and also exceptionally wiped out). Unfortunately, though, I didn't know that a video game was awaiting me on my street:

As soon as I turned onto my street, I had to slam on the brakes thanks to two dog owners who were chatting while wrangling their large dogs into the open door of their SUV. Said dogs were on leashes, but extended into the center of the road.
After realizing that said dog owners weren't going to get their dogs into the SUV anytime soon, I moved into the opposite lane to drive past the dogs.
Immediately after passing the dogs, a young teen on a bike rode out from between two cars in front of me, and slowly crossed the road.
Shortly thereafter a woman closed her car trunk while carrying a large bag of groceries. Without looking, she crossed the street right in front of me. (Sadly, there wasn't a baguette or bundle of celery sticking out of the grocery bag)
After avoiding the woman (and now going extremely slowly), I noticed a squirrel a few yards ahead of me on the side of the road. The squirrel darted out into the road as I approached. Luckily the squirrel thought better of it and darted back.
As I neared home, I saw a teenager on a skateboard riding down the sidewalk next to a child on a bike. Said child was clearly just learning how to ride a bicycle. The pair slowly wobbled forward, reaching our driveway just as I was ready to turn into it.

Amazingly, nothing happened when I parked.

Cheese!

2010-09-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

In the past few years my SO and I have been bitten by the artisan cheese bug. We started out sampling the cheeses at Trader Joe's; buying Basque Shepherd's cheese at Trader Joe's was probably the seminal event in our cheese-eating lives. Our friends have learned of our addiction to cheeses, and so for my birthday a few friends went to a cheese store and bought me a selection of cheeses that I'd never tried before.

Clockwise from upper left: Beemster extra old (Holland, cow), Lagrein (Italy, cow), Humbolt Fog (California, goat), and Cashel Blue (Ireland, cow)

We broke out the cheeses the day before yesterday, serving them with good bread, almonds, and honey. Since I know my friends are dying to know how these tasted, here's a quick summary. Note that I'm no cheese expert, so if you're looking for good descriptions I'd suggest you try another source :)

Beemster extra old: This is an aged cow's milk Gouda from Holland. It's hard to see in the picture, but the cheese is studded with crystals, and thus is fairly showy. We've had some aged Goudas in the past that were so strong that they were best used for cooking; eating them raw, even with bread and/or honey, proved unsatisfactory. This Gouda, however, is a perfect eating cheese. It's filled with good aged flavor, it's caramelly yet savory, but is mild enough that it's great all by itself or with a piece of bread.

Lagrein: This is a cow's milk cheese from Italy, made by the Mila co-op. The cheese is bathed in red wine and spices, and has a very distinctive purplish rind. And, oddly enough, it tastes just like a good salami. I found this cheese to be perfect all by itself; eating it with bread or other sides overwhelmed the moderate flavor, which I wanted to savor all by itself.

Humbolt Fog (front) and Lagrein (back).

Humbolt Fog: This is a classic California aged goat milk cheese, which I'm embarrassed to say that I hadn't tried before this tasting. I'm a sucker for ash layers (I've loved the Morbier I've tried), but the ash seems like it's just for show (I didn't notice much of a flavor difference around the ash). The cheese itself is a delicious melding of two distinct flavors. The gooey outer region has a savory, pungent taste with an almost blue flavor from the rind, while the center has a milder, tangy goat cheese flavor. And since the two flavors are spatially separated, you can decide for yourself which flavor(s) you'll get in any given bite. We both loved this cheese, and we ate the entire chunk in just one sitting. The cheese reminded us of Le Chevrot, though the outer gooey portion of Le Chevrot we've eaten has been stronger in flavor.

Cashel Blue: This is a cow's milk blue cheese from Ireland. Until a few years ago I disliked blue cheese; the classic "blue" flavor just turned me off. But, I kept trying them, and my first favorite was Roaring Forties, which I had at The Cube in Los Angeles (my favorite cheese restaurant). Cashel Blue reminds me a lot of Roaring Forties: it's a creamy blue, and was just delicious on bread either by itself or with a dab of honey. I don't have a lot of experience eating blues, so can't say much more than "I liked it!"

The cheeses made for an absolutely delicious meal; thanks for the present!

Follow a chemical oceanographer!

2010-09-19T04:30:00.000-07:00

A good friend of mine just started a post-doc at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and for his first week at work they decided to throw him on a month-long cruise aboard the RV Atlantis. He's blogging about his adventures over at The Daily Bucket.

Image by Steven Beaupre

If you've ever wondered what it's like to live and work aboard a research ship sampling water from the depths to analyze for carbon isotope composition, now's your chance!

Homemade chicken pot pie

2010-09-18T14:41:00.000-07:00

My SO and I almost never roast meat, but recently we ended up getting two chickens for free. So, we roasted them and served them with a delicious gravy. By the time a week had gone by, we'd already made a number of delicious chicken sandwiches, so were excitedly looking for another way to use the leftovers. Enter chicken pot pie.

Before we made this, I was never a fan of pot pies. In fact, I'll admit to having to be dragged kicking and screaming into cooking this. But then I went back for thirds. In my defense, most of the pot pies I've had were either frozen vegetables and bland chicken in a sauce that tasted like unseasoned flour topped with cardboard, or were salt-fests with mushy tops.

Crust: (this is essentially a three-quarters batch of my standard pie crust recipe, made without sugar)
1 7/8 cups white flour (1 3/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons)
3/4 teaspoon salt
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon cold water

Filling:
3 cups cooked chicken, coarsely chopped (we used a mix of dark and light meat)
1/2 pound frozen corn, defrosted
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter (reduce salt added if using salted butter)
4 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
2 medium onions, peeled and coarsely chopped
3 medium cloves garlic, peeled and minced or pressed with a garlic press
1/2 cup flour
2 cups chicken stock (we used homemade)
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 cup milk
1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt (plus more to taste; we added probably ~1/4 teaspoon more)
pinch cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

To cook this recipe, you'll need to sautee the vegetables, make the white sauce, make the pie crust, and then bake the dish. Try to time everything so that the pie crust has been chilled for at least a few minutes and the vegetables are finished sauteeing by the time the white sauce is finished.

Making the pie crust:

1) Put the flour and 3/4 teaspoon salt in a large bowl and mix. I typically use a pastry blender to do this, though a fork or whisk also work.

2) Cut the butter into approximately tablespoon-sized pieces, and add to the flour mixture. Use a pastry blender, fork, knives, or your fingers to cut the butter into the flour, stopping when the largest chunks of butter are pea-sized and most of the butter is in very small pieces. Be careful not to melt the butter; if the butter is starting to melt, put the covered mixture in the fridge until the butter has solidified again.

3) Add the cold water and cut the water into the dough with a spatula (or table knife) until the dough starts to hold together. If there is still a lot of dry flour in the bowl, add another tablespoon or two of extra water (I often end up adding 1/2 - 1 tablespoon extra).

4) Compress the dough together with your hands and pat into a disk. If the dough is relatively warm and sticky, wrap it in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for a short period (~15 minutes) until it is firmer, though I find the dough is usually cool enough to roll right away if I've worked quickly enough.

5) Use a floured rolling pin on a well-floured work surface to roll the dough into a circle approximately 1 to 2 inches wider than the pan you'll be using to bake the pot pie in. Rolling the dough takes a bit of practice to do well, though I've found that even when I have apparently fatal flaws, they're rarely apparent in the final dish. If the dough develops holes or cracks, you can usually moisten (with water) another piece of dough, press it on top of the crack, dust it with flour, and then continue rolling the crust as normal. I'll slip a rimless baking sheet underneath the dough every now and then, adding some flour underneath the crust, to prevent it from sticking to the countertop. Joy of Cooking has a very useful section on rolling pie crust if you've never done it before.

6) Slide the pie crust onto a large, flat surface (I use a rimless cookie sheet) and put it in the fridge. Cover with plastic wrap if it will be in the fridge for more than a few minutes.

Sauteeing the vegetables:
1) Melt 4 tablespoons butter in a wide pan over medium-high heat.
2) When the butter has melted, add the carrots, onions, and 1/4 teaspoon of the salt, and cook, stirring nearly constantly, until the onions are turning brown and have started to caramelize (~10 minutes). Letting the onions and carrots begin to caramelize is key to the flavor of the dish, so don't rush this step.
3) Add the garlic and cook, stirring constantly, for another minute or so.
4) Remove the onion mixture from the heat and put into a heat-proof bowl.

Making the white sauce:
1) In either the same pan you used for sauteeing, or in a separate pot, melt 4 tablespoons butter over medium-high heat.
2) Add the flour to the butter, and cook, stirring constantly, until it starts to become golden and nutty-smelling (~2 minutes).
3) Remove the pan from the heat, and let rest (stirring occasionally) until the mixture (roux) stops bubbling (approximately a minute or two).
4) Add the chicken stock, return to the heat, and stir until well mixed and thickened.
5) Mix in the cream and milk, and continue cooking and whisking (nearly constantly) until the sauce thickens (~5 minutes).
6) Mix in 1 teaspoon of salt, and set aside until everything else is ready.

Assembling and baking the dish:
0a) Preheat your oven to 400F.
0b) Butter the bottom and sides of the pan you'll be baking the dish in (we used a large oval casserole pan, but a 9x13" pan should work fine).
1) Combine the chicken, corn, sauteed onion mixture, and white sauce in a large bowl; mix thoroughly.
2) Test for salt level by tasting a bit (yummy!), and add more salt if needed.
3) Pour the mixture into the baking dish, and level the surface.
4) Gently slide the pie crust onto the baking dish (I do this by sliding it off of the rimless cookie sheet I used to store it on in the refrigerator). Trim off any portions of the crust that overhang the edges of the pan by more than a few inches, and then tuck the overhanging pieces down the sides of the pan (forming a little outer-edge to the filling). See note about cutting vent holes.
5) Bake at 400F for 25 - 35 minutes, until the top is golden brown and the filling bubbling.
6) Remove from the oven when finished, and let rest for at least 20 minutes before serving.

Notes:

I did take some pictures of the finished product, pot-pies aren't the easiest subject to photograph. So, if you're curious about what ours looked like, look here and here, but I'll warn you ahead of time that it's not the most beautiful thing ever (until you taste it, and then it's just gorgeous).

I typically make my pie crust by hand with a pastry blender, but you can also make it with a food-processor using frozen butter following the directions in this recipe (but using the ingredients specified for the pot pie crust).

I'd recommend using good, homemade chicken stock for this: the stock is one of the primary ingredients that leads the white sauce to turn from a bland flour sauce into a rich, savory sauce that you can't get enough of. We don't salt our homemade chicken stock ahead of time, so if you're using pre-salted stock you may want to reduce the salt added to the white sauce in step 6 (of "making the white sauce"), and then check the salt level of the dish during the assembly (step 2 of "assembling and baking the dish"), adding more salt if needed.

Joy of Cooking suggests brushing the top with half of a beaten egg to create a shiny top; we could care less about the shine - we just want the tasty crust and filling. Joy also doesn't mention cutting vent holes; we added some halfway through baking once we saw that the crust was poofing up a lot, but they're probably not required.

We used a mix of milk and heavy cream in the sauce to make it richer; we thought the finished product was just right, but feel free to substitute whatever you prefer for the milk and cream (it'd probably be fine with all milk, all cream, a mixture of milk and light cream, etc.).

Modified from a recipe in Joy of Cooking.

Reference:

Rombauer, I. S., M. R. Becker, and E. Becker. 1997. Joy of Cooking. Scribner, NY.

Relatively easy-to-make crusty peasant loaf

2010-05-20T10:52:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite features of writing here on Rhosgobel has always been my "recipe blogging of the week" posts. Through that little feature my SO and I have posted more than 110 different recipes. While I make no promises about continuing to post one recipe a week, I am happy to return to recipe blogging with the following bread recipe.

While I've always enjoyed baking bread, the amount of work entailed in making a good loaf relegated bread baking to days when I had lots of free time. My favorite artisan bread baking book is Hamelman's "Bread"; it has incredibly detailed recipes and descriptions of techniques that allowed me to make a few loaves of delicious ciabatta. However, said ciabatta also took me much work across two days, and thus my SO and I found ourselves frequenting our local bakery whenever we wanted bread.

That all changed when a friend introduced me to a new book, "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day". I was extremely skeptical at first, as I'm always suspicious of recipes, books, and cooks that promise that home-cooked, old-world taste in two minutes flat ("and $20 off if you order in the next 5 minutes!"¹). However, after a few failed attempts, I was able to modify the technique introduced in the book to make a surprisingly good peasant loaf with a minimal amount of work. Here's the basic outline of the technique:

Mix the ingredients in a large container and allow to rise for three hours at room temperature.
Put the risen dough in the fridge, and refrigerate at least overnight, though it can hold for up to two or three weeks.
Take the dough out of the fridge, pull out as much dough as you want to use that day, roughly shape it, and let it rise for about two hours (folding it after the first 20 minutes).
Bake for ~40 minutes, and let cool until ready to eat.

While I'd hardly call it "bread in five minutes", the ability to have risen bread dough ready to go in the fridge has enabled me to bake bread virtually any day I want it. Whenever I finish up one batch of dough, I immediately start another; my SO and I almost never buy artisan bread anymore. So, if you're looking for a crusty loaf of bread that has a chewy, wheaty interior and yet doesn't take a tremendous amount of work to make, you might want to give this a try.

Bread ingredients:
3 cups water, ~100F
1 1/2 tablespoons active dry yeast
1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
32.5 ounces (~6 1/4 cups) unbleached white flour
1/3 cup wheat germ

Supplies needed for baking:
unbleached white flour, for dusting hands and countertop
cornmeal, for dusting baking peel
approximately 1 cup boiling water, for steaming the oven
baking peel
baking stone (see notes)
steaming pan (see notes)

This recipe has three main parts: mixing the dough and letting it rise; forming the loaf and letting it rise; and baking the loaf.

Making the dough:
1. Mix the water, yeast, and salt in a container large enough to hold the risen dough (I use a 6 quart plastic container). Let sit for a few minutes (to help the yeast clumps dissolve) and then mix again. (Note: I've found that my hot tap water, which comes out of the tap at a maximum of ~125F, cools to ~100F after measuring it in my room-temperature glass measuring container and pouring it into the room temperature dough container).
2. Mix the flour and wheat germ together, and then mix into the yeast solution. Mix until the flour is completely incorporated into the dough, and the dough has formed into a cohesive mass that resists your stirring and stretches when you pull the spoon out. I do this by hand with a large wooden spoon (wimpy spoons will break); it will take a good amount of force by the end of the mixing, but shouldn't take more than a few minutes. The dough will be moister than your average bread dough.
3. Taste the dough to ensure that you salted it (if you forgot to salt it, you'll know: wet, unsalted flour tastes terrible). It should taste a little salty.
4. Cover loosely (I put a plastic lid loosely on top) and let rise at room temperature (my house is usually around 70 to 80°F) for at least three hours. It should have at least doubled in volume by the time you're done (and will likely double in volume within the first hour or so).
5. Cover so that there is only the barest entrance of air (I leave the aforementioned plastic lid just a bit unsnapped) and put in the fridge at least overnight.

Forming the loaf:
0. Prepare your workspace: you'll need a container of flour (for dusting hands and countertops) and at least a 2 square foot area of countertop to work with. I also get out a flat baking sheet to let the formed loaf rise on (allowing me to easily move it if needed).
1. Remove the dough from the fridge, dust your hands with flour, and pull off as much dough as you would like to use, returning the unused dough to the fridge. I find that the recipe makes either three small to medium loaves or two large loaves.
2. Form the dough into a rough ball in your hands, choose a point on the dough to be the top of the new loaf, and then shape the dough into a smooth mass by continually stretching the dough from the top to the sides and bottom. To do this, hold the dough in both hands, carefully grab onto a part of it near the top with your thumbs, and then gently pull your thumbs to the side of the dough (stretching out the top part in the process, and using the palms or fingers of your hands both to support the dough and stretch the sides of the dough down onto the bottom). Rotate the dough a bit, reflour your hands if needed (I hold the dough in one hand while I flour the other), and then stretch it again. Continue until you've got a nicely formed ball with a continuous skin running around most of the top and sides.
3. Place the dough onto a flat floured surface, and let rise for 20 minutes.
4. After the 20 minutes, flour a portion of your countertop and "fold" the dough. To do this, pick the dough up and gently turn it upside down onto the floured workspace. With the dough upside down, grab one edge of the dough, stretch it out until it almost breaks (yes yes, how do you stretch it until it almost breaks without first breaking it ...), and then fold that stretched-out piece back onto the center of the dough. Repeat this stretching and folding for each of the other three sides (so, if you superimposed a clock onto the dough, you'd stretch it at noon, 3 o'clock, 6 o'clock, and 9 o'clock). Then gently pick up the dough and invert it onto a newly floured piece of workspace (so that the original top of the dough is once again the top).
5. Let the dough rise for another hour to hour and 40 minutes (the lower amount of time if your kitchen is warm, say 80F, the greater amount of time if it's cool, say 70F). By the end of the rising the dough should be noticeably larger, and somewhat jiggly when shaken. NOTE: Start preheating your oven with the baking stone and steaming pan inside 40 minutes before the end of this rising time (as stated in step 0a in "baking the bread").

Baking the bread:
0a. 40 minutes before the bread is ready to go in the oven, put your baking stone and steaming pan in the oven (see notes) and preheat it to 460F.
0b. Shortly before the bread has finished rising, put some water on the stove to bring to a boil (if it's not boiling by the time the bread is ready to go in the oven, don't worry - just use it as is).
1. When the bread has finished rising, pour approximately 1/2 cup of the boiling water into the steaming pan in the oven. Caution: this may create splattering, boiling-hot water and large amounts of steam, so wear protection (see notes). Close the oven door.
2. Sprinkle cornmeal onto your baking peel to prevent the bread from sticking when you slide it into the oven. I use a thin, rimless aluminum cookie sheet as my baking peel.
3. Flour your hands, gently pick up the risen bread, and transfer it to the baking peel as close to the edge you will slide it off as possible, maintaining the shape of the loaf as much as possible (it will smush somewhat; that's fine).
4. With a very sharp knife (I use a serrated bread knife), cut gashes into the bread approximately one to one and a half inches apart from each other. The gashes should run the length (or width) of the loaf, be relatively deep near the center of the loaf (~1/2" deep), and shallower near the edges.
5. Blow or scrape off any cornmeal that is neither under the bread nor between the bread and the edge of the pan you will slide it off (if not cleaned off, this extra cornmeal may fall onto the bottom of your oven, burning and creating a smoky mess).
6. Get out a spatula and put it near the oven. When a portion of the bread sticks to the peel as you're sliding it off into a steaming-hot 460F oven, you'll thank yourself for remembering to get the spatula out.
7. Open the oven and slide the bread off the peel and onto your baking stone, being as careful as possible to maintain the original bread shape. If the bread elongates or gets pushed a bit, this is fine. If the bread sticks to the peel, use the spatula to gently help it off. NEVER attempt to reach into the oven and adjust the bread on the stone; once it's on the stone, leave it (the stone is extremely hot, and could burn you very badly).
8. Immediately pour the rest of the boiling water (~1/2 cup) into the steaming pan, and close the oven door. As before, this may create splattering, boiling-hot water and large amounts of steam, so wear protection.
9. Bake the bread for a total of 35-40 minutes (35 minutes for smaller loaves, ~1/4 to 1/3 of the recipe; 40 minutes for larger loaves, ~1/2 of the recipe).
10. About 20 minutes into the baking, briefly open the oven door to let any remaining steam out. If there is still a bit of water in the steaming pan, that's fine. If there's a lot of water left in the steaming pan, add a bit less next time (but don't open the oven door again to let any more out; just leave the extra water there for the rest of the baking).
11. Resist the temptation to open the oven door to check on the bread (it lowers the temperature of the oven drastically, and the crust benefits from a constant high heat, especially near the end of baking); leave the bread in for the total amount of time, opening it only once to release the steam. The exception to this, of course, is if the oven catches on fire, starts smoking, or does something else to indicate impending disaster.
12. When the bread is done the crust should be hard, and a rich, dark brown at its darkest points. Remove it from the oven using your peel, and transfer it to a cooling rack.
13. Bread is supposedly best if you let it cool to room temperature before cutting into it; I can rarely wait that long. But try to let it cool for at least an hour or so before digging in.

Notes:

If you're wondering what the bread looks like throughout this process, I've posted a photo guide to making this bread.

If you're trying to plan ahead, once you've got refrigerated, risen dough in the fridge it'll take you about 3 hours to complete a loaf of bread (~2 hours for rising and preparation, ~45 minutes for baking), with an extra hour needed for cooling after baking. Note, though, that the bread needs very little tending during this time, so much of that time can be spent doing other things.

Bread doesn't finish rising until it has gone into the oven. Once the bread starts warming up in the oven, the yeast in the dough start working overtime and carbon dioxide that was in solution in the dough is released to the air pockets inside the bread, causing the bread to rise dramatically (it can easily double in height). If the oven has not been steamed, the outside layer of the loaf will quickly dry out and harden due to the hot, dry conditions, and thus the bread will be locked into its pre-oven shape (and won't rise much in the oven).

However, by steaming the oven we allow the outer layer of the loaf to stay moist (and cooler), thus allowing it to be flexible and expand as carbon dioxide is released into the air spaces in the quickly-warming loaf. Thus, steaming the oven allows the bread to rise dramatically in the oven, a phenomenon bakers call "oven spring". Steaming also helps the crust brown, as it allows the enzymes in the outer layers of the loaf to break down starches into sugars for a longer period of time (since the crust stays within the optimum temperature range of the enzymes longer), thus allowing more maillard and caramelization reactions to occur at the end of baking (thus making the crust much tastier).

To steam the oven I put an old broiling pan in the oven on the shelf below the baking stone. I line this pan with foil, and preheat it along with the baking stone. Then, when it's time to steam the oven I pour water from my tea kettle directly onto the foil in the pan. Until you learn how your steaming setup reacts, I'd advise wearing a long-sleeved shirt and hot-pads that entirely cover your hands when steaming (and if you're really worried, goggles are rarely a bad idea - you only have one set of eyes). It's not as scary as it sounds; if you're at all worried about it, try doing it once when you're not baking bread to see what happens. My steaming pan only splutters a little when I pour in the water, and I've never gotten burned even though I no longer even bother with a hot pad when holding the tea kettle.

Bread baking is greatly aided by having a baking stone, as they have a large amount of thermal inertia that help bake the bread from the bottom. If you don't have one, just use a thick baking sheet; it'll probably turn out just fine (though I haven't tried it, as I've had a baking stone for years).

The risen dough does keep for two or even possibly three weeks in the fridge, and keeps pumping out excellent bread throughout that time. You know it's time to give up on it once the top has started to dry out and gotten very dark, and the dough is permeated with a smell of alcohol (the top portion of the dough always starts turning dark after a week or so; as long as it's just a little dark the bread should turn out fine).

I always purchase my wheat germ from King Arthur Flour; their wheat germ has a different look to it than wheat germ I've seen being sold in bulk food stores (King Arthur's is in smaller pieces and darker brown); I don't know how much of a difference variation in suppliers makes.

Treat this recipe as a starting point, not a finished product. The instructions I've included above are what work for me in my kitchen using my supplies; you may find that ingredient amounts, rising times, baking times, amount of folding, or other things may need to be slightly altered for you. Play, and enjoy some good bread!

¹ As far as I know the book has never actually been sold through infomercials, but anything making claims like it does makes me instantly think of an infomercial sales pitch.

References:

Hamelman, J. 2004. Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes. John Wiley & Sons.

Hertzberg, J. and Z. Francois. 2007. Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. St. Martin's Press.

We read old cookbooks

2010-05-20T08:54:00.000-07:00

"No, it isn't particularly good, but it may be eaten by the bulging with a clear conscience."

Description of the "Dressing without oil" recipe from Joy of Cooking, 1964.

Rombauer, I. S. and M. R. Becker. 1964. Joy of Cooking. The Bobbs-Merrill Company Inc, Indianapolis, Indiana.

What's it like to create a new Facebook account?

2010-05-18T16:49:00.000-07:00

I've deleted my personal Facebook account, but since most of my friends still post on Facebook regularly, I wanted a way to keep up with what they're doing. So I created an empty shell account with a disposable e-mail address that I can use to view what they post (at least until they ditch it as well).

What struck me during this process was just how privacy-invading Facebook's default settings have become. I found myself thinking "What if my mother-in-law or some other non-net-savvy person was doing this? Would they understand what was actually being shared?" So, in this post I'll summarize what Facebook's sign-up process looks like to a new user, focusing on how privacy is presented.

To sign up, users are asked for their name, e-mail, sex, and birthday. Pretty easy.

After clicking "Sign Up", users are immediately asked to enter their e-mail address's password so that Facebook can import contacts¹. If they skip that, they're asked to upload a profile picture, and after that they're asked to find people by typing in their name. Moving past these steps brings a user to their homepage for the first time, which displays a "Welcome to Facebook" page².

Homepage of a new Facebook user.

This homepage has a list of steps on it; one presumes that Facebook is suggesting that users complete the steps in numerical order. In the first step, Facebook again asks the user to enter their e-mail address's password. The second step asks the user to fill out their profile information; clicking on the link brings up the user's basic profile information.

Facebook's "Basic information" profile page; users are taken to this page when clicking on "Edit Profile"

On the first profile editing page the user is asked to enter their location, sexual orientation, what they're "looking for", political views, religious views, bio, and favorite quotes. Nowhere on the page does it say that these items can all be left blank (except sex and birthday, which are not stated as being required). Nowhere on the page does it clearly say that many of these items will be shared with everyone on the internet if they're entered.

Colorful icons and links on the left side of the page take the user to the rest of their profile, where users are asked to enter a tremendous amount of other information (profile picture, relationships, likes and interests, educational history, and contact information).

The other profile information pages (click for larger versions).

Users are directed to their privacy settings only as a plain text link underneath all these other colorful links; my guess is that most new users would ignore that little link and happily enter all of the information requested (and the link only takes users to the start of the privacy settings area; it doesn't take them to the privacy guide described below).

Once the user is done filling out their profile, they presumably move on to steps three and four of the starter homepage: linking their account to a mobile phone, and finding even more friends. Only if a user is dedicated enough to reach step five of the starter homepage does Facebook give prominent attention to their privacy pages. The link in that step takes users to a privacy guide.

An excerpt from Facebook's "A guide to privacy on Facebook".

Here Facebook explains what their privacy terms mean³. This is the first time it's been clearly stated that information entered into a Facebook profile could be seen by everyone on the web, and this has only been explained after the user has been prompted to enter all of their profile information. And the user still hasn't even seen what the actual privacy settings are (though they see a summary of them in the "recommended settings" portion of the guide).

Heading over to the privacy settings, the user finds that not only do they have to navigate a maze of pages and setting terminology, but also that the default settings are extremely open.

Default privacy settings: Personal information and posts

Default privacy settings: Friends, tags, and connections

Default privacy settings: What friends can share about you through applications and websites

Other default privacy settings pages (contact information, instant personalization, applications and websites, search settings)

Here we see that a tremendous amount of information (all a user's posts and pictures, friends, family, relationships, likes, interests, activities, location, education, sexual orientation, favorite quotes, and bio) is, by default, set to be available to everyone on the web. And, of course, this information is also available to Facebook, its partner websites, and any Facebook applications for use as they wish (e.g., to target advertising to the user).

A lot of other information (political views, birthday, pictures of you taken by other people, etc.) is available to "friends of friends" by default. While the "friends of friends" setting may seem private, it's not really. Given that the average Facebook user has 130 friends, this means that once a user's account matures, anything that is visible to "friends of friends" will, on average, be visible to around 16,900 people. And among these 16,900 people are probably the ones the user cares the most about hiding information (like, say, sexual orientation, political views, or religion) from: coworkers, bosses, estranged friends, exes, family, nosy neighbors, etc.

The default settings are even set so that search engines like Google can crawl the user's page, making anything the user sets to "everyone" functionally accessible to all people for a very long time, regardless of how the user changes their settings in the future. Doing something as simple as unchecking the "Public Search Results" box to prevent this gets the user a nasty warning message, making it sound like they're going to make it impossible for people to find them:

Warning message gotten when unchecking the "Public Search Results" box.

Oh, and don't forget that hidden in the user's "Account Settings" tab is a little setting that makes much of the user's information fodder for Facebook to use in ads they serve to the user's friends:

The "Facebook Ads" tab of the "Account settings" page.

While it is impressive that Facebook has such configurable privacy settings, it's clear that many of their users are confused. For example, a recent Consumer Reports survey found that while 73% of Facebook users report that they only share information with their friends, only 42% of Facebook users report customizing their privacy settings (meaning that 31% of users think they're sharing only with friends, but are actually sharing more broadly; via Jill/txt).

Given the volume of personal information Facebook acquires, this is worlds apart from how it should be. Users should be presented with succinctly summarized privacy information (including that their information may be visible to anyone on the web) before being asked to enter any information, and all users' information should be private by default, unless the user explicitly chooses otherwise⁴.

[Edited to add: And don't forget that it's not good enough for Facebook to ask for private information once. If a user doesn't enter their information the first time, the user sees this big yellow message (including a mostly empty "progress" bar) asking them to enter more information when they visit their own profile.]

Facebook nags new users to enter profile information, even if they've intentionally left it blank.

¹ Asking for a user's e-mail password seems incredibly invasive, as it gives Facebook the ability to read all of that user's e-mail.

² This welcome homepage stays as the user's default page until they add some friends, at which point it reverts to the standard "news feed" homepage regular Facebook users are familiar with.

³ When items are visible to "Friends", then only those people you directly add as friends can see the information. When items are visible to "Friends of friends", anyone who's a friend of a person you've added as a friend can see your information. When items are visible to "Everyone", then everyone on the web can see your information.

⁴ And these settings shouldn't change every few months; in just the last year Facebook changed my privacy settings at least three times, each time exposing information that was previously not visible to others.

Ahhhh, that looks better ...

2010-05-17T21:45:00.000-07:00

The housekeeping is largely finished, at least for now. I've got a shiny new template, a non-swindling comment service, a reorganized sidebar, and a new home for my "recurring features" pages (they're now hosted here on Blogger using the "pages" tool, which will save me a lot of time).

A few things are missing: I've pared down my sidebar links to what I actually read somewhat regularly (sorry!), I've removed my no-longer-updated delicious page (which I used as a hack to categorize my posts before Blogger came out with its post "labels"), and the old Haloscan comments are gone (sniffle).

Oh, and I can now use "jump breaks", too. :)

Very old posts may have some problems: I've switched image and file hosting places a few times over the years (so there are likely a few broken links), and there won't be any post labels on them.

I even took a picture of the old template, so longtime readers could remember the good old days ...

Rhosgobel's template from 2004-2010

If you see anything that appears to be broken (especially in old posts), or have any suggestions, please let me know.

Housekeeping

2010-05-16T14:06:00.000-07:00

A bit of dust has collected here at Rhosgobel over the past few years, and it's going to take me a bit of time to clear it all out.

I'll be updating the template ¹ and whatnot, but the biggest change will be in the comments. Haloscan, the commenting service I've used since starting the blog, has died. Haloscan transferred the comments to Echo, but in a most user-unfriendly way: while the comments are still visible on the blog, the old comments are neither visible nor editable in Echo's user interface, I have no way to export the comments, and they want me to pay $12 a year for this great arrangement. So, I'm going to switch to Blogger's commenting system and close the Echo account. I've saved a selection of the old comments², but won't be able to go through all the old posts to save every last comment. It sucks. Sorry :(

¹ I'm still using the template I picked back in 2004!

² This is why there are currently two "Comment" links below each post; I need to have both Blogger's and Echo's commenting links visible to copy over the old comments. I apologize for the confusion.

A return to Rhosgobel

2010-05-15T16:20:00.000-07:00

Regular readers will note that ... well, let's be honest: there are no regular readers of this blog anymore. I haven't written anything here for more than two years, and haven't posted regularly for longer than that.

What happened? Many things. I was diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome, and had to drastically cut back my computer use: computer game playing has vanished, online teaching is no more, online reading has been slashed, I'm a slave to typing timers, and writing for fun got largely eliminated. The pseudonymous nature of the blog also started getting in the way: I found myself wanting to write about items that could lead to someone easily identifying me, and I also wanted to share what I wrote with my circle of local friends, many of whom worked at my campus.

So the blog fizzled. I was sad to see it go, but I soon replaced it with Facebook, which I enjoyed for the ability to privately share what I thought with close friends without anyone else (students or coworkers) being able to find me. But in the time I've been using Facebook the privacy settings have gotten steadily worse¹ and the company has gotten more and more focused on invading privacy to make money; I've finally gotten tired of it. I'm leaving Facebook, and replacing it with a mix of other information sharing websites. I've missed being able to share things I enjoy with people other than my few dozen contacts on Facebook.

So, I'm back. I'll still write under Radagast, but will be more open about the site with colleagues and I won't try as hard to hide my identity. However, along with this change will come a separation of public and personal. Don't expect vacation reports, family news, personal pictures, or the like: those will be shared elsewhere.

Oh, and my wrists are still not great, so I don't promise to post with any regularity.

¹ I had the strongest privacy settings possible, yet Facebook still forced me to be visible to "friends of friends", forced my profile pictures to be publicly visible, defaulted all of my (previously private) interests to be public, and started sharing my information with third-party websites without my permission. Many of these changes were "opt-out", meaning that I had to be aware enough to go in and undo their changes to stay at least somewhat private. Facebook's focus on "monetizing" the information they've collected on their users' interests and browsing histories irritates me, especially since many users thought their information would be held privately (and few websites are bold enough to ask people to list their religion, sexual orientation, hobbies, educational history, everything they "like", and all of their acquaintances in one place ...).

Melinda Bossenmeyer: Plagiarist?

2008-04-06T19:52:00.000-07:00

Here's a fun evening task: read this post of mine from July 5, 2007, and then read this one "posted by Melinda Bossenmeyer, Ed.D." on July 9, 2007 at Peaceful Playgrounds, Inc.'s "recess blog".

Anything look familiar? If not, I'll point it out for you: Dr. Bossenmeyer's post of July 9 is copied nearly word-for-word from my July 5th post. There have been a number of small changes made throughout the post, but not nearly enough for Dr. Bossenmeyer to call the post her own. Take, for instance, the introduction. Here's mine:

One of the exercise mantras commonly floated about is that adults should get 30 minutes of moderate activity exercise at least five days a week. While this is a good goal, the majority of Americans don't get this amount of exercise¹. And, for a lot of beginning exercisers, exercising for 30 minutes a day probably seems like a huge commitment, if not an insurmountable challenge.

My SO and I have long viewed exercise in the "some is better than none" category, and thus try to do even little amounts whenever we can (e.g., walking to the store instead of driving, always taking the stairs at work, doing our own gardening). A recent paper (Church et al., 2007) has shown, via a randomized, controlled trial, that even small amounts of exercise are better than no exercise at all (at least for the subset of people they tested).

And here's the one posted by Dr. Bossenmeyer:

Most all research indicates that adults should get 30 minutes of moderate activity exercise at least five days a week. While this is a research based recommendation, studies indicate that the majority of Americans don't get this amount of exercise¹.

A recent paper (Church et al., 2007) has shown, via a randomized, controlled trial, that even small amounts of exercise are better than no exercise at all (at least for the subset of people they tested which were post menopausal women).

And some of the post was simply copied verbatim. Once again, here's my post:

Church et al. divided overweight, post-menopausal women into four groups:
Control: Did no exercise a week (other than normal walking)
4kcal/kg: Exercised about 70 minutes a week
8kcal/kg: Exercised about 135 minutes a week
12 kcal/kg: Exercised about 190 minutes a week
Participants were randomly assigned to a condition, and all exercise was performed in a lab². The participants exercised at their given level for six months, at which point physiological data were compared to data taken at the start of the study.

Fitness improvement correlated linearly with the amount of exercise:

And here's Dr. Bossenmeyer's text:

Church et al. divided overweight, post-menopausal women into four groups:
Control: Did no exercise a week (other than normal walking)
4kcal/kg: Exercised about 70 minutes a week
8kcal/kg: Exercised about 135 minutes a week
12 kcal/kg: Exercised about 190 minutes a week
Participants were randomly assigned to a condition, and all exercise was performed in a lab². The participants exercised at their given level for six months, at which point physiological data were compared to data taken at the start of the study.

Fitness improvement correlated linearly with the amount of exercise:

She even included the three footnotes verbatim, the last of which includes links back to my exercise-tracking blog (and which makes no sense in the context of her blog):

In fact, it was the realization that our fitness was slowly declining (and would continue declining until we would no longer be able to walk when we were 70) that finally motivated my SO and me to start regularly exercising (and tracking our exercise goals and progress here) a few years ago.

There are no links back to my blog (other than the accidental ones to my exercise blog in the footnote), no acknowledgments that I wrote the original post, and she's even added her own copyright notice ("Copyright 2008 Peaceful Playgrounds, Inc." is in the footer of the page). I've never had any communication with Dr. Bossenmeyer that I know of, and certainly never authorized the use of my work on her blog.

I would expect more of a person who's "spent 27 years as an educator and is the author of six published books on playgrounds and numerous articles on recess, playgrounds and play."

[Many thanks to monado, whose recent comment on this post led to me finding this plagiarism. And, just in case something should happen to Dr. Bossenmeyer's "original" post, here are some screenshots of it: 1, 2, 3, 4]

A most useless doctor visit

2008-02-14T22:40:00.000-08:00

For the past few years I've noticed that my wrists have been getting sore after extended periods of computer use. Knowing what this could mean, I attempted to cut down my computer use, and started using programs that encouraged me to take regular breaks¹. The soreness became more frequent and came on with shorter periods of use (which is, I might point out, one of many reasons why my posting frequency has dropped precipitously), and then recently I started noticing tingling in my fingers and my mouse hand feeling itchy. So, I decided that enough was enough: it was time to head to the doctor.

The nurse who first saw me had carpal tunnel syndrome herself, and she shared her experiences. Unfortunately, they boiled down to “don't do what I did - I had to have surgery, and still can't use my left hand all that well.” Practical advice on how not to do what she did was rather lacking from her monologue.

So, in came the doctor. He did the usual asking what was wrong, and after my explanation he said, “Well, you've got carpal tunnel syndrome.” He made the diagnosis without ever touching me, or without asking any clarifying questions. Given that after reading online I'd found that there are a few possible conditions that have similar symptoms, I was surprised that he didn't. He then proceeded to explain what causes carpal tunnel syndrome (pressure on a specific nerve; it's always interesting to listen to how doctors dumb down explanations) and that if it got bad enough I might have to have surgery.

Did he bother to say what I needed to do to avoid said surgery? No.

He then asked me whether I used a computer at work, and after I replied with a yes (and that I had a suboptimal work arrangement), he said that that was almost certainly the cause.

Did he bother to ask me if I did other activities (like, say, playing the guitar, or blogging) that might be related? No.

He did, however, go on to talk about how employers are very worried about carpal tunnel syndrome due to the fact that it's the #1 worker's comp injury, and that I should talk to my HR department about getting something ergonomic for my setup (his primary suggestion was, I kid you not, “a gel wrist-pad”). Did he give me any real suggestions on what to do to make my workspace (at home or work) more ergonomic? No. Did he bother talking about any of the range of possible treatments, and discuss with me which would be most appropriate? Other than suggesting that I take off my watch and get a gel wrist-pad, no.

He did ask if my hands tingled when I woke up (which is a symptom of sleeping with bent wrists, an indication that wrist braces may help if worn while sleeping), but then quickly went back to talking about worker's comp.

After a nearly useless conversation, he briskly asked me if I had any other questions, and then shooed me out the door. I learned more in a half hour of web-browsing the night before the appointment than I learned from him, and I'm now left to search the web for more information.

¹ Initially I used Ubuntu's built-in typing break program (found in the “Keyboard” menu, at least for Ubuntu 7.04). While this was an excellent start, it was suboptimal (it didn't have an option for micro-breaks, and it would lock the keyboard without much warning, which was frustrating if I was in the middle of a sentence). I also tried a Google Desktop add-in, but that was even less useful (as it just brought up a popup window, which was easy to ignore if I was busy). Most recently I've started using Workrave, a free Linux and Windows program that appears to be excellent: it has both micro- and macro-breaks, gives plenty of warning when breaks are about to appear (I can finish my sentences now!), and is very customizable.

Buying a classical guitar

2008-01-13T01:20:00.000-08:00

Last year I started playing the guitar, and since I thought I'd prefer playing rock music, I bought a steel-string acoustic to learn on. While I've loved playing the guitar, I've realized that I prefer playing classical music.

Classical guitar music is typically played on guitars specially built for the purpose. Classical guitars have smaller bodies than steel-string acoustic (and steel-string electric) guitars; they have shorter¹ and wider² necks; and they use nylon strings instead of steel strings (see Wikipedia for a description of guitar construction). The changes in the neck make fingering somewhat easier (the strings are farther apart, meaning that while the fingers must stretch farther, it's less likely that a finger will accidentally hit multiple strings), and the nylon strings change both the sound (it's mellower) and the pain coefficient (the strings are much easier to hold down without causing pain)³.

So, buying a classical guitar has been on my to-do list since last summer. Regular readers may recall my joyful experience buying my first guitar online. To summarize, I ended up having to return two different guitars, and even the guitar I eventually kept had been slightly damaged. It wasn't a pleasant experience, and it drove home the point that online music stores don't seem to quality-check their merchandise before selling it (or, at least, the two stores I purchased from didn't). Additionally, finding comparable sound samples of guitars online is nearly impossible, making comparison shopping difficult. Given that when I started shopping I was considering spending at least $500 on a classical guitar, I didn't want to take the risk of buying it online.

Shopping advice I found for buying a classical guitar can be summed up as: "Check the guitar for mechanical flaws (buzzing strings, odd noises when playing, cracks, etc.), play a few guitars, and then buy whichever guitar sounds the best to you." Oh, and "bring an experienced player with you if you're a novice." Unfortunately, I didn't have any experienced players who were willing to go shopping with me, and the advice to "buy whichever guitar sounds best" meant very little to me at first, as I had no clue what to listen for. So, that advice wasn't terribly helpful.

To make a long story short, my SO and I made about a dozen trips to different guitar stores over the past six months, and at each store I played as many classical guitars as I could (often about 5-10 different models at each store, until I started narrowing the field). Playing (and more importantly, listening to) all of these different guitars was excellent experience: by the end of the six months my SO and I had both developed better ears, and we felt confident distinguishing different guitars in my price range.

Over this time we figured out a few things that might help someone else shopping for a new guitar:

If you're not great at tuning by ear, bring an electronic tuner and use it to tune every guitar you play. Even at specialty stores, we found that most of the guitars were out of tune⁴, and even the best guitars sounded awful out of tune. I felt a bit embarrassed about bringing a tuner at first, but it was well worth it.
If possible, find specialty guitar stores in your area. We went to one of the chain retailers, and were disappointed by the quality of their classical guitars (the guitars tended to be horribly out of tune, some had very old/damaged strings on them, and a surprisingly high fraction had mechanical problems, something we didn't find nearly as often at specialty stores). The specialty stores also tended to have a better ambiance (they were quieter and calmer, which is important when the entire point of the excursion is to listen to the guitar you're playing).
Play as wide a range of guitars as you can. Even though I knew I couldn't afford the $4,000 guitars, I still played them, and it was by comparing the sound of $4,000 guitars to $200 guitars that my SO and I started learning what to listen for.
Bring someone with you who can listen to the guitars as you play, even if that person isn't an experienced guitar player. Even though both my SO and I were novice listeners (and my SO doesn't play the guitar), we found it educational to be able to discuss the sound of the guitars (as together we heard more than either one of us individually).

While the shopping was a slow and often frustrating process (models that were in stock one visit were often out of stock the next visit, and the different stores all stocked different models, making comparing our favorites difficult), it was fun to play so many guitars, and this past week I finally settled on one. At the start of the process I'd hoped to spend around $500 for a new guitar, but I ended up spending nearly three times that, as I realized that guitars in that price range just sounded better to me. It's the most expensive chunk of wood I've ever bought, but I love it.

¹ The neck of my new classical guitar is 32.5cm long (from the nut to the joint with the body), while my steel-string's neck is 35.5cm long. On a classical guitar the neck joins the body at the twelfth fret, while on my steel-string acoustic the neck joins the body at the fourteenth fret.
² The width of the neck at the first fret on my new classical guitar is 53mm, while my steel-string acoustic is 44mm wide at the same point.
³ Acoustic steel strings are like little razor blades: they require a lot of force to push down at the frets, and they're so thin that they jab into your fingertips as you do that. When I first started playing on my steel-string acoustic, I couldn't play for more than 15 minutes a day before my fingers started killing me; after a few weeks I built up calluses, but even so it's still mildly painful to play for more than a few hours a day. Nylon strings make fretting much easier - they're thicker and they're plastic, so they don't cut into the fingers nearly as much.
⁴ While many guitars were just awfully out of tune (and even a simple relative-tuning check would discover the problem), some guitars were relatively in tune (i.e. the strings were in tune relative to each other) but were way off from standard tuning (e.g., the B string was actually playing B-flat). Thus, just checking the guitar by ear to determine if it's relatively in tune wouldn't be sufficient to compare all the guitars on an even footing.

Gai Tom Ka (Thai coconut and galangal soup)

2008-01-05T21:56:00.000-08:00

Both my SO and I have gotten great New Year's presents: little viral bundles of joy. We don't know who gave them to us, but they've certainly been having great fun in our respiratory systems.

So, we've been in the mood for soups, and today my SO cooked up our favorite Thai soup. If you've eaten at Thai restaurants, you'll likely recognize this soup (or something similar). This soup is loaded with strong flavors (galangal, lemongrass, chili peppers, and the traditional Thai fish sauce), and thus should always be served with copious quantities of plain rice (we mix the rice right into the soup as we eat). This soup is the perfect dish for a cold winter day, and since it made for a delicious sick-day breakfast¹, it's this week's end-of-the-week recipe blogging post.

8 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup fish sauce
4-inch piece fresh galangal (or ginger), roughly chopped (unpeeled)
2 4-inch pieces of lemongrass stalk, washed and chopped into 1/4-1/2-inch long pieces
10 kaffir lime leaves, torn into several pieces (optional)
4 red jalapeños or other chili peppers, seeded, deveined, and cut into strips
2/3 cup lime juice (or lemon juice)
1 can (~13.5 fl. oz.) coconut milk
1/2 - 1 pound chicken (sliced into ~1/4-inch-thick slices) and/or tofu (cut into 1/4 - 1/2-inch cubes)
chopped cilantro (optional; as a garnish)
cooked white or brown rice (we'd suggest cooking about 2/3 - 1 cup of dry white or brown rice per large bowlful of soup)

0. Prepare plain white or brown rice to serve with the soup. We cook up about 2 cups dry white rice for the two of us when we make this soup for a full meal, and have relatively little rice left over but have about half the soup left over.
1. Add the chicken stock and fish sauce to a pot and bring to a simmer.
2. If you have cheesecloth available, wrap the galangal (or ginger), lemongrass, and lime leaves in a large piece of it and tie into a bundle (to make removing them from the broth easier).
3. Add the galangal (or ginger), lemongrass, and lime leaves to the simmering stock, and cook for 10 minutes.
4. If you haven't wrapped the galangal (or ginger), lemongrass, and lime leaves in cheesecloth, strain them out of the broth now.
5. Add the lime (or lemon) juice and jalapeños, and continue simmering for another 10 minutes.
6. If you used cheesecloth (in step 2), remove the cheesecloth bundle now. Add the coconut milk and chicken and/or tofu, and simmer until the chicken is cooked and/or the tofu is heated through (~3 minutes).
7. Serve along with plain white or brown steamed rice, garnished with chopped cilantro (if desired).

Notes:

Obtaining the ingredients for this dish requires finding a market that stocks Asian ingredients. In our area, fish sauce and coconut milk can be found in the Asian section of most supermarkets, but items like fresh lemongrass, galangal, and lime leaves are found only in specialty Asian markets that stock Thai ingredients (look in the produce section).

Don't despair if you can't find fresh galangal or lime leaves; we've made the soup many times using just fresh ginger in place of the galangal and omitting the lime leaves, and it's been fine. While galangal and ginger don't taste identical, they're fairly similar. Galangal, ginger, and lime leaves store fine for months in the freezer (ginger and galangal don't even have to be wrapped to freeze). However, we would advise against using dried ginger or galangal, as the drying process dramatically changes their flavors. We don't know how using dried lemongrass would affect the soup, as we always use fresh (see below). We've never served the soup with the cilantro garnish, but it is traditional.

If you live in the Southern California area and know that you like Thai food, you might consider growing your own lemongrass, as it does well here. We planted a tiny plant a few years ago, and besides rare waterings it's just about taken care of itself (while growing into a nice-smelling, rather attractive 5-foot wide plant). Note that lemongrass leaves are very sharp along the edges, so wear gloves while harvesting.

We based this recipe on one in Bhumichitr (1988).

Bhumichitr, Vatcharin, 1988. The Taste of Thailand. MacMillan, NY.

¹ And, since the soup was so strongly flavored, we could actually taste it with our cold-impaired senses!

A nearly vegetarian Christmas dinner

2007-12-27T23:11:00.000-08:00

Follow the link to see a labeled version of this image.
My SO and I regularly cook big holiday meals. As is traditional, these have typically featured a central meat course surrounded by a number of vegetable-based sides. Upon pondering what we wanted to cook for this year's Christmas dinner we realized, however, that when it came right down to it the central meat course wasn't really all that central. So, this year my SO and I decided to try a Christmas dinner without the central meat course. Here was our menu:

Cream of roasted cauliflower soup
Butternut squash soup
Cran-raspberry-pineapple gelatin conglomeration
Creamy Brussels sprout gratin
Buttermilk mashed potatoes
Collard greens with bacon and onions
Baked sweet potatoes with marshmallows and brown sugar

While the relatives we've described this to have been surprised by the lack of meat ("Not even a tofurkey?"), we hardly even noticed it. Our plates and bowls were full of diverse flavors and textures, and we were so stuffed by the time the sweet potatoes finally came out of the oven that neither of us even had any that night.

Homemade grainy mustard

2007-12-22T14:45:00.000-08:00

Every year my SO and I send out homemade holiday presents to our families. Our two most requested presents are our fruitcake and our mustard, and since we've made these recipes for nearly 10 years now, we figure it's time to share. I'll be posting the mustard today, followed followed by the fruitcake recipe in a few weeks (once we've had time to experiment some with the recipe).

Our mustard is made from whole yellow and brown mustard seeds that have been only partially crushed, and thus you get treated to little bursts of mustard flavor as you eat. The flavor is different from store-bought mustards: our mustard is sharper than most, doesn't taste as much of vinegar or turmeric, and has a hint of onions thanks to shallots. We have reports from family members that even though they've tried, they can't find anything like this in stores. Since we just got finished making our annual batch of mustard a few days ago¹, it's this week's end-of-the-week recipe blogging post.

Note that this recipe requires a few days to soak the mustard seeds before making, and tastes best if left to mellow for a week or two before eating, so plan accordingly.

1/2 cup dry yellow mustard seeds
1/2 cup dry brown mustard seeds
1 cup rice vinegar
1 shallot, finely chopped
1 tablespoon kosher salt

1. Put the brown and yellow mustard seeds into separate containers and add approximately 3/8 cup (1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons) of rice vinegar to each container. Cover each container tightly and let sit at room temperature for at least 2 days, stirring occasionally. If the mustard seeds end up looking dry during the soaking period, add a bit more vinegar to moisten.
2. Grind each type of mustard seed until many of the seeds have broken open (the seeds should start clumping together, and you'll start to see little bits of seeds in addition to whole seeds). For an artisanal feel, you can do this by hand with a mortar and pestle; it's a lot of hard work, and is guaranteed to make your grinding arm sore. For the lazy cook's mustard, put the seeds into a food processor and process with long pulses. It's best to grind the two types of seeds separately, as the yellow and brown mustard seeds grind at different rates.
3. Mix the mustard seeds, salt, shallot, and remaining vinegar (~1/4 cup) in a bowl. Add extra vinegar to bring the mustard to a nice paste-like consistency (it may take an extra tablespoon or so).
4. Transfer to jars and store in the fridge.

Notes:

Don't use aluminum cookware with this recipe, as it may react with the vinegar.

There's no need to use exactly 1/2 cup of each type of mustard seed; as long as you have a total of one cup of seeds you should be fine. The yellow seeds are milder than the brown seeds, so variations in proportions will change the sharpness of the final product.

We store the mustard in sealed jars in the fridge, though it may not require refrigeration (and we regularly ship it cross country without issue). The mustard keeps for a long time; we've kept jars in the fridge for more than a year and it still tastes great.

The recipe above makes a bit less than 2 cups of finished mustard. We typically make at least five times that amount (2 1/2 cups of each type of seed, ~2 cups of vinegar to soak each type of seed initially, 5 tablespoons kosher salt, 5 shallots, and 1 to 1 1/2 cups vinegar for mixing at the end), and as long as you're using a food processor for grinding you won't go crazy. In the past we've always hand-ground small batches of mustard; we only recently started using a food processor due to making large batches, and thus we're not sure how well a food processor will work with a small batch of mustard.

This recipe is based on one in Walden (1995), a book which wins the Radagast and SO award for best food photography.

Reference:

Walden, H. 1995. Sensational Preserves: 250 recipes for jams, jellies, chutneys, and sauces. Reader's Digest, NY.

¹ And yes, this means that if you're a family member waiting for your holiday mustard shipment, your mustard is indeed in the mail.

It is done.

2007-12-18T22:50:00.000-08:00

I'm pleased to report that the semester is finally over. I finished my grades last night, and this afternoon I finished off all the fiddly end-of-semester work that I'd been putting off. My e-mail has an away message, my voice mail won't be checked for weeks, and I have nothing I need to do for work until January. Ahhhhhh.

How did I celebrate? By coming home and taking a nap.

Stay on target ...

2007-12-14T22:23:00.000-08:00

The end of the semester has proven to be insanely busy. Even though many instructors at my college have already turned in their grades, I still have dozens of papers to grade and haven't even given my last final exam yet. This is even though my SO has been querying me for my name when I arrive home, thanks to me working solid 10 or 12 hour days for at least the last two weeks (including weekends).

Making things even more "fun" is that I've had the "pleasure" of turning in more than a dozen different students for plagiarizing this semester, most of them in the past week and a half. I've even set a new personal record for the greatest fraction of plagiarizers in a course: 50% of the completing class.

More to come once grades are in.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2007-11-22T13:31:00.000-08:00

Yes, I am indeed still alive. My prior post on the topic of why I haven't been posting still applies: my new online course is keeping me insanely busy, and whatever spare time I have is being spent either sleeping, playing the guitar, or shopping for a new classical guitar. The only change I'd make to my prior post is to eliminate the "not stressed" part: I've fallen weeks behind on grading large assignments, and have barely been getting my online course's units created on time.

The online course is still going well; I'm learning a lot, and I think the students are learning at least a little something. Right now my completion rate looks like it's going to be around 2/3 of the initially enrolled students, which I consider to be pretty good for my first try (we've reportedly had online courses with completion rates of <25% at my campus). I'm already looking forward to teaching the course again in the spring. I'm also looking forward to winter break, when I'll have time to start writing more here.

I hope you have a relaxing, food-filled Thanksgiving!

Butternut squash soup

2007-10-28T19:44:00.000-07:00

A few months ago my SO and I bought some butternut squash soup at Trader Joe's. We were impressed by the soup's smoothness and squashy flavor, and thus decided to try making a squash soup on our own. We just did that today, and the results were fantastic: the soup was thick and smooth, and filled with the flavors of sweet squash, spicy ginger, and savory onions. We roasted the squash's seeds along with the squash itself, and they made a great topping for the soup (they added concentrated bits of roasty flavor). This soup also has the benefit of being insanely healthy. Since we enjoyed this so much, it's this week's end-of-the-week recipe blogging post.

3 to 3 1/2 lb. butternut squash, whole
Enough vegetable oil to lightly coat the squash seeds and a roasting pan
3 tablespoons butter, unsalted
1 medium onion, chopped
2 scallions, chopped
4 teaspoons minced fresh ginger
6 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt (plus extra for salting the squash seeds, if desired)

To make this recipe you need to first roast the squash, and then let it cool before making the soup.

Roasting the squash:
0. Preheat your oven to 400F.
1. Wash the squash and cut it in half lengthwise. Be careful while doing this, as winter squash skin can be extremely tough.
2. Using a spoon, scoop out the squash seeds (and the tissue holding them into the squash) and put them into a bowl.
3. Coat a baking pan with a thin layer of vegetable oil, place the squash cut-side down on this pan, and then bake at 400F until the squash is done (one hour or so; the skin should be browned and the flesh should be soft and easily pierced).

Roasting the squash seeds (optional):
1. Separate the squash seeds from the squash flesh; this is probably most easily done with your hands. After you've separated the seeds, put them into a bowl or strainer and wash until most of the squash goo is gone.
2. Mix the squash seeds with enough vegetable oil to coat, and put into a pan that's large enough to hold the seeds in a single layer.
3. Bake in a preheated 400F oven until lightly browned, approximately 5-10 minutes. We baked these along with the squash, though if your oven is too small for that, it would be fine to roast them after the squash is roasted.
4. Remove from the oven, sprinkle with salt, and stir.

Making the soup:
1. Once the squash has cooled, scoop the flesh of the squash out of the skin; set the flesh aside until needed.
2. Heat the butter in a large non-stick pot over medium-high heat.
3. Once the butter has melted, add the onions, scallions, and ginger, and cook until the onions are softened and just starting to brown (about 5-10 minutes).
4. Add the roasted squash flesh and four cups of the chicken stock. Bring to a boil and simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes.
5. Add the salt and the remaining two cups of chicken stock and puree the soup until smooth. We did this using an immersion blender, but a standard blender should work fine. If your blender is volume limited, you might want to blend the soup before adding the final two cups of chicken stock.
6. Serve the soup (heating it on the stove if necessary to bring it to your preferred temperature). Garnish with the roasted squash seeds, if desired.

Notes:

Radagast's SO enjoyed the soup with a sploosh of cream stirred into a bowlful, but Radagast preferred the soup without the cream. The cream made the soup creamier (who'd have guessed?), and seemed to mellow the flavor some.

The squash seeds make a tasty snack all on their own, so even if you don't think you'll like them in the soup, you may want to try roasting them anyway.

This recipe is modified from one Joy of Cooking (Rombauer et al. 1997). The original recipe used two leeks instead of the onions and scallions; we didn't have leeks on hand.

Rombauer, I. S., M. R. Becker, and E. Becker. 1997. Joy of Cooking. Scribner, NY.

Busy, yet not stressed

2007-10-14T14:30:00.000-07:00

As regular readers can probably guess by my posting frequency, I've been busy lately. As I predicted at the start of the semester, my new online course has been consuming any time it can get its hands on: I'm easily spending at least 15-20 hours each week developing the content for it, and at least as much time in the course interacting with the students and grading their work. Add that to my regular in-person lecture and lab classes, and I'm one busy grasshopper.

I'm enjoying the new course tremendously, and even though I've been extremely busy, I haven't been overly stressed. The course is thankfully small, which means that I have enough time to get to know the students, and I can assign regular written assignments and give the students copious feedback on those. Creating material for the new course is a ton of fun; writing the material is much like blogging (all I'm doing is writing general summaries of basic biological content for a non-scientist audience), and finding artwork has been an enjoyable challenge (I'm attempting to build the course entirely from open-licensed artwork). I'm already looking forward to having time in future semesters to revise what I've created.

The biggest complaint I've gotten from students so far is that the course is too much work and that the exams are too hard. Since this is likely one of the first college-level science courses these students have taken, and these students have surely been exposed to the "online courses are easy" myth, this isn't surprising. It's hard to explain nicely that yes, this course is in fact challenging, and that no, I'm not going to make the tests easier.

Outside of work I'm not doing a whole lot other than taking another guitar class¹. This class requires far less time than my summer course (thankfully), but it's been an enjoyable distraction, and has helped motivate me to keep playing. It's hard to believe that six months ago I didn't even have a guitar, but now I can (slowly) play a growing number of tunes (the most complex of which are probably Dust in the Wind and Vals by Calatuyud).

¹ And attending a super-cool Genesis concert at the Hollywood Bowl. It was such a good concert that I didn't mind getting rained on for half of the concert, that they ended the concert a few songs early due to the rain (though I sorely missed hearing Carpet Crawlers), or that we got stuck in (non-concert) traffic on the freeway at 1:30am.

Los Angeles Guitar Quartet's Brazil concert

2007-09-30T15:15:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago my SO and I attended the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet's CD release party concert for their newest album: LAGQ Brazil. LAGQ is a four-man classical guitar quartet that's been around for more than 20 years, but which I just learned about this summer thanks to one of my guitar instructors.

The majority of the concert consisted of the quartet sitting in chairs playing their classical guitars. There was very little showmanship, but they didn't need any; we managed to get front-row seats, and I spent the entire two hours mesmerized by their playing. The group played a range of pieces including Bach's Bandenburg Concerto #6, the Overture to the Barber of Seville, Manuel de Falla's El Amor Brujo, and a number of tracks from their Brazil album (including Jorge Ben's Mas Que Nada). I'm no expert in classical guitar, but I was amazed by the guitarists' skill: their hands flew over the strings, and the fluidity, speed, and apparent effortlessness of their movements were awe-inspiring. I've started listening to a lot of solo classical guitar music in the past few months, and the complexity of the quartet's music was a refreshing contrast.

The quartet ended the concert by playing four songs with Katisse Buckingham and Kevin Ricard, the woodwindist and percussionist they recorded with on their CD. These two musicians made for a great end to the concert, though sadly the group implied that they wouldn't be touring with them.

LAGQ isn't going to be traveling to many cities on their tour (see their schedule here), but if you're lucky enough to be in one of the cities they're going to, and are at all interested in classical guitar, I'd highly recommend attending.

Radagast and SO's Summer Bounty Super-Hot Hot Sauce

2007-09-30T14:44:00.000-07:00

My SO and I decided to diversify our pepper planting this summer by growing some Jamaican Hot Chocolate peppers, in addition to the jalapeños that we usually grow. Jamaican Hot Chocolates are very pretty (they ripen to a nice chocolate brown), but as they're a close relative of habaneros, they're extremely hot: they score about 100,000 to 200,000 scoville units, whereas jalapeños score around 2,000 to 10,000 scoville units. A friend of ours grew the same peppers, and reported that touching his eye after cutting one pepper in half resulted in hours of searing pain.

We, quite honestly, didn't know what to do with the peppers. So, they piled up on our counter; eventually we decided that we had to do something with them, and thus we created "Radagast and SO's Summer Bounty Super-Hot Hot Sauce." We took inspiration from a few hot sauce recipes we found online.

We've never used hot sauces regularly before, but we both love this hot sauce. While it's packed with heat (a tiny dab on a spoonful of rice is enough to make our mouths burn), it has a rich smoky flavor that goes well with many dishes, and it doesn't have the strong vinegar flavor that some hot sauces do. So far we've added it to tuna melts, mac and cheese, roasted asparagus, tomato soup, tomato pasta sauce, and had it on chips, and it's been great in everything (note: we're adding tiny amounts to each of these; often less than 1/8 of a teaspoon to a full serving). We can't wait to add it to a pot of chili.

Since we never thought we'd be adding hot sauce to our recipes, this is this week's end-of-the-week recipe blogging post.

CAUTION: See safety instructions before working with the peppers.

20 Jamaican Hot Chocolate peppers, seeded, deveined, and quartered (habaneros would probably be a fine substitution)
18 red jalapeños, seeded, deveined, and quartered
1 pound whole tomatoes, peeled and seeded
1 20-oz can crushed pineapple, in juice
~20 garlic cloves, minced or pressed with a garlic press
2 1/4 cups white vinegar
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup dry mustard powder
4 tablespoons paprika (we used a mix of smoked Spanish and regular)
3 tablespoons kosher salt
2 tablespoons ground black pepper
2 tablespoons cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground allspice

0. Get out all kitchen implements that you may require during cooking before handling any of the peppers. Prepare a vegetable oil rinse station (see below), have plates or other washable spoon rests ready near all work areas, put on your gloves and goggles, and have paper towels at the ready so you can hold non-washable items without getting capsaicin all over them.
1. Add all ingredients to a blender and blend until smooth. This may require multiple batches of blending. Ensure that the top of the blender is firmly attached (and any holes are sealed) to prevent sauce from being flung around the room.
2. Carefully transfer the blended ingredients to a pot that is large enough to have absolutely no risk of the sauce boiling over.
3. Bring the sauce to a simmer over medium-high heat, and simmer for 20 minutes on the lowest possible heat that will maintain the simmer. Be extremely careful not to bring the sauce to a full boil, as that will drastically increase the risk that sauce gets splattered all over you and your kitchen.
4. Carefully decant the sauce into prepared jars (see notes).
5. Thoroughly wash anything that you touched after handling the peppers before removing your gloves; we recommend running items through a dishwasher multiple times.
6. Remove your gloves and throughly wash your hands with vegetable oil, followed by soap and water.

Safety instructions:

The compound in peppers that causes the "heat" is capsaicin. Capsaicin is lipophilic, which means that it can diffuse straight through your skin and cause pain wherever you come into contact with it (hands, face, eyes, genitals, etc.). Capsaicin does not wash off completely with regular soap and water, and thus I would never recommend handing cut Jamaican Hot Chocolates or habaneros with anything but gloved hands (we used latex gloves). In addition, I'd strongly recommend wearing goggles, a long-sleeved shirt, long pants, and socks when making this hot sauce. It wouldn't be going overboard to consider a face-shield and a respirator; at the very least make sure your work area is extremely well ventilated, as even the fumes are strong.

Probably the best method to get capsaicin off of your skin is to scrub with pure vegetable oil. If you do accidentally get capsaicin on your skin (you'll know if you do), immediately wash the affected area with vegetable oil, followed by soap and water (note, however, that this will not remove all the capsaicin, and there will likely be nothing you can do to stop the pain).

Make absolutely sure that all utensils, pots, and other items you touch with capsaicin-tainted hands are washed thoroughly before handling them bare-handed. Even after wearing gloves to cook the entire dish, we wash our hands with vegetable oil first, followed by soap, and try to refrain from touching sensitive parts of our bodies for the rest of the day.

Notes:

Peppers can vary widely in the amount of capsaicin they contain. We would thus suggest that you assume that you're using the hottest peppers ever grown, and taste only the tiniest dab of your final hot sauce before trying it in larger quantities. We find that, with our peppers, a dab the size of half a rice grain is plenty to flavor an entire chip (though note that we're relative wimps when it comes to spice).

This recipe makes more than six cups of hot sauce. To store the sauce, we suggest canning it. While we'll leave it up to other sources to provide full canning protocols, what we do is boil clean jars, their lids, and any implements we'll need to handle the jars and put sauce into them (including tongs and a funnel) for 10 minutes in a covered pot, then turn off the heat and leave the pot covered until we're ready to use the jars. When we're ready to decant the sauce we remove the jars from the pot with tongs, ladle the piping-hot hot sauce into the jars and immediately seal them with lids. We let the jars cool at room temperature before labeling them and moving them to the fridge.

And, as a final note, we have no idea how important the various spices are to the final flavor. Given the small quantities of sauce required to flavor items, we're probably approaching homeopathic dilutions for some of the spices; thus, it's likely that at least some of the spices could probably be left out without affecting the flavor.

Armadillo eggs (jalapeños stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon)

2007-09-16T17:39:00.000-07:00

Growing jalapeños at home is fun, but we often find that we run out of uses for them. A local friend, however, has kindly solved that problem by introducing us to armadillo eggs. Armadillo eggs are halved jalapeño peppers filled with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon; they can be cooked on the grill or baked, and in either case are absolutely delicious. The fire of the jalapeños is cooled by the cream cheese, and the bacon wrapper is just a dazzling treat. Since we've made a few batches of these in the past few weeks, they're this week's second end-of-the-week recipe blogging post.

Jalapeño peppers (we use red jalapeños, but green are fine as well)
Cream cheese (~1 tablespoon per whole pepper)
Bacon (1 strip per whole pepper)

0. Preheat your oven to 425F.
1. Remove the stem from the jalapeños and cut in half. Scrape or cut out the seeds and ribs.
2. Fill the cavities of the halved jalapeños with strips of cream cheese.
3. Wrap each halved jalapeño in a half strip of bacon, and arrange on a foil-lined baking sheet.
4. Bake in a 425F oven until the bacon is crispy, approximately 25-30 minutes. The exposed parts of the cream cheese and jalapeños will likely be starting to brown; the bottoms of our jalapeños often are blackened, but taste fine.
5. Let cool for a few minutes, and then serve immediately.

Note:

Jalapeños contain capsaicin (the chemical that makes peppers hot), a lipophilic compound that easily diffuses through skin and can cause extreme pain, so handle with care. Do not touch your eyes (or other sensitive body parts) while handling peppers. Once you're done handling the peppers, wash your hands with vegetable oil prior to washing thoroughly with soap and water.

Homemade fettuccine with butter and garlic sauce

2007-09-16T16:09:00.000-07:00

Fresh pasta is a treat; it has an eggy flavor, and a different texture than dried pasta (though describing exactly how it's different is difficult). My SO made some fresh pasta for a special dinner recently, and today we cooked up another batch for breakfast. Fresh pasta is tasty enough that it barely needs any sauce at all; today we had it with butter, garlic, and grated cheese. Since making this reminded us of how relatively easy fresh pasta is to make (just look at the ingredients list!), it's this week's end-of-the-week recipe blogging post.

Note: A pasta roller, such as the one below, makes rolling out and cutting the pasta much easier.

A hand-cranked pasta roller similar to the one we have; Creative Commons image by Allerina & Glen MacLarty
Update January 2011: The fresh pasta made with this recipe can be used with many different sauces; our most frequent pairing over the past few years has been to serve it with our alfredo sauce. A half recipe of each makes enough for a filling meal for the two of us.

Fettuccine alfredo made with fresh pasta; sauce recipe is here.

Fresh pasta (makes ~1 pound of pasta):
2 1/4 - 3 cups flour (all-purpose flour is fine)
4 large eggs
salt for the cooking water (about 1 tablespoon of salt per gallon of water)

Garlic butter sauce (enough for ~1 pound of pasta):
12 tablespoons butter
2 medium cloves garlic, peeled and finely minced or pressed with a garlic press
Grated pecorino romano cheese, for serving (at least 1/2 cup, though vary to your tastes)

Making the pasta:

0. You'll need plenty of flat, towel-covered table or counter space to hold the pasta after it's been rolled out.
1. Put 2 1/4 cups of flour and the eggs into a food processor and process until the dough begins to come together (about a minute; it's probably best to do this in a number of long pulses).
2. Open the food processor and check how sticky the dough is; it should be slightly tacky to the touch. If the dough is too sticky, add 1/4 cup more flour and continue processing, checking for stickiness again after the new flour has been incorporated. If the dough has formed into a single large ball, you may need to manually break up the ball before continuing to process after adding additional flour.
3. Remove the dough from the processor and press together. Knead by hand on the counter for a few times until the dough is a cohesive mass (maybe 5-10 times). If the dough is sticking to the counter, sprinkle the counter and your hands with flour.
4. Cut the dough into six even pieces, and cover them with plastic wrap (excluding the piece you'll work with first). Carry out the following steps with each piece of dough.
5. Roll the dough about 5-10 times through the largest-sized opening on your pasta roller, folding the dough in half between each rolling. By the end of this the dough should be smooth and satiny. If the dough sticks to the rollers or looks rumply after going through the rollers a few times, dust it with flour and continue rolling until it looks smooth and satiny.
6. Once the dough is the proper texture, you'll want to get it to the desired thickness. To do this, roll the dough repeatedly through the rollers, reducing the width of the opening between the rollers by one notch each time, until you reach your desired thickness. We stop at the penultimate thinness on our Imperia pasta machine for fettuccine, though the thinnest setting can be good for filled pastas. If the dough sticks or tears, simply go back to a larger size, fold the dough in half, and start again.
7. Place the rolled-out dough onto a towel, and let it dry for at least 15 minutes. This drying step helps prevent the pasta from clumping together when cut; if you're in a hurry you can skip this drying step.
8. Once the dough has dried a bit (so it's a bit less tacky, but nowhere near actually dry), roll it through the desired cutting attachment (or cut the dough by hand). Catch the pasta as it comes out of the cutting attachment, and carefully lay it flat on a towel-covered table. Ideally all the strands of pasta should be separated (so they won't stick), but we don't bother trying to separate all of it (as the pasta tastes just as good if a few strands are stuck together).

Making the sauce:

1. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat.
2. Add the garlic and cook for 2-3 minutes, or until the pasta is ready.

Cooking and serving the pasta:

1. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil.
2. Add the fresh pasta and cook until it's done; we find that two minutes is sufficient. Unlike dry pasta, we cook fresh pasta by time, as the pasta cooks so quickly that there isn't sufficient time to test it.
3. Drain the pasta thoroughly, and then put into a bowl.
4. Pour the butter and garlic sauce over the pasta and toss to mix.
5. Serve immediately, with plenty of grated cheese.

Notes:

You can mix the pasta by hand instead of using a food processor; in this case put the flour into a bowl, add the eggs, and mix with a fork until the dough comes together. Continue with the pasta-making steps as indicated above.

Many pasta recipes include instructions to knead the dough for 5-10 minutes after it's come together; we've found that just rolling the dough a few extra times in the pasta roller seems to suffice. Joy of Cooking reports that fresh pasta should be allowed to dry for about an hour before cooking; when we first posted this recipe we didn't do this, but now (January 2011) we are letting it dry for at least 15 minutes after rolling.

While we've seen a number of electric pasta rollers for sale, we've used a hand-cranked pasta roller for years, and are perfectly happy with it. However, if you're making pasta by yourself, a powered roller might come in handy as we find that having three hands helps when rolling out the pasta (one of us turns the crank while the other feeds the pasta into the machine and catches it as it comes out).

We've altered the flour amount from our original recipe (which called for 2 1/4 cups), as we've found that the dough consistently comes out far too moist and sticky in our kitchen. Recently we've been adding 2 1/2 cups of flour to the original mix, and then dusting each portion of kneaded dough a few times during rolling (probably using approximately 2 3/4 cups of flour total). The size of your eggs, moisture content of your flour, and other factors may cause you to need a different amount of flour than we use.

References:

Medici, L. 1992. Pasta (Williams-Sonoma Kitchen Library). C. Williams, ed. Time Life Books.

Rombauer, I. S., M. R. Becker, and E. Becker. 1997. Joy of Cooking. Scribner, NY.

[Revised January 16, 2011 to change flour amounts, clarify instructions, and add drying time]

Another semester begins!

2007-09-02T01:56:00.000-07:00

Another semester has started at Rhosgobel U. This summer was filled with fun visitors, an amazingly productive garden (we've been harvesting pounds of fresh tomatoes, peppers, and beans every week for the past month), and lots of rest and relaxation. This was a contrast to the past few summers (when I've done field work out of the country during the summers), and thus I'm feeling much more rested and relaxed than in recent years.

Regular readers will note that I've been silent for a while; I apologize for this, and should explain it. The primary culprit, as one would expect, is that other avenues have started taking up my time. First on the list is that this semester I'm creating a new online course from scratch. While I'm enjoying this (I've been planning something like this for years), it also means that all of my writing time is now dedicated to the course.

Additionally, I've found that I really enjoy playing the guitar. My summer course was a blast, and thanks to it I've improved a lot (though I'm still a complete novice). The course took a tremendous amount of time (at least 15 hours a week combined in class and practicing), and I'm still practicing for an average of half an hour a day. I'm finding that when I've got some spare time, I don't sit down at the computer (or, rather, I don't continue sitting at the computer), but instead wander over and pick up the guitar. Right now I'm focusing on classical guitar, and might even be buying a new classical guitar soon ( since I “need” a classical guitar to play classical music).

But never fear, kind reader, I'm not going to tell you I'm quitting writing. I've enjoyed this for too long to do that. Instead, I'll be reducing my frequency of posting; so, I'd expect something about weekly, though I give no guarantees.

That said, here's looking forward to an exciting semester filled with new things.

Radagast and SO's creamy chicken pasta

2007-08-19T03:00:00.000-07:00

My SO and I love making creamy pasta sauces (e.g., sun-dried tomato and sausage cream sauce pasta, garlic and clam cream sauce pasta, and fettucine alfredo), but a few weeks ago we were in the mood for a chicken-based cream sauce, which we didn't have a recipe for. Thus, we decided to experiment a bit, and came up with a sauce that was filled with garlic, sauteed chicken, sun-dried tomatoes, and creamy goodness. We made the sauce again today, adding some spinach and basil, and came up with this dish. While eating we realized that this reminds us of pasta dishes we've had at places like the Olive Garden or Macaroni Grill; the similarity is unintentional. Since we enjoyed this so much, it's this week's end-of-the-week recipe blogging post.

1/2 to 3/4 pounds chicken (we use boneless, skinless chicken thighs)
Salt and ground black pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil
8 garlic cloves, peeled and minced or pressed with a garlic press
8 sun-dried tomato halves, chopped (we use oil-packed tomatoes)
1/4-1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/4 cup white wine
4 cups loosely packed fresh spinach
2/3 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup loosely packed chopped fresh basil
1/3 cup grated Pecorino Romano cheese, plus extra for serving
1/2 pound dry pasta (we've used fettuccine and penne)

0a. Cook the pasta in salted water until it is al dente. When cooked, drain the pasta, but do not rinse with water. Work on the sauce (steps 1-9) while the pasta is cooking, though schedule your cooking so the pasta is done just a little before it needs to be added to the sauce (in step 10). We usually start the pasta cooking at around the same time we start sauteing the chicken.
0b. Have the garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, red pepper, chicken stock, wine, and spinach ready to add before you start sauteing the chicken, as they need to be added in quick succession once the chicken is finished. Chopping the basil wouldn't be a bad idea either.
1. Trim the excess fat from the chicken and slice it about 1/2"-thick. Sprinkle with a couple pinches of salt and ground black pepper.
2. Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium-high or high heat. Once the oil is hot, add the chicken. Flip the chicken pieces once the bottoms are well browned, and continue sauteing until they're well browned on their other side. Remove the chicken pieces, leaving the oil in the pan. See the notes section for more information on this step.
3. Immediately add the garlic to the pan and cook, stirring constantly, until the garlic starts to brown (usually about a minute or less).
4. Add the sun-dried tomatoes to the pan and stir for another 30 seconds (or until the garlic is starting to get well browned).
5. Add the crushed red pepper and cook, stirring, for a few seconds.
6. Add the chicken stock and wine, and bring the contents of the pan to a simmer. Reduce the heat, adjusting it during the following steps to maintain a simmer.
7. Add the spinach, stirring to mix. Once the spinach has wilted, add the reserved chicken and continue simmering, stirring occasionally, until the liquid is reduced in volume by approximately half (a few minutes).
8. Add the cream and basil, and simmer until the sauce is a good consistency to coat the pasta, stirring frequently; this usually takes 2-4 minutes.
9. Once the sauce is thickened, mix in the cheese.
10. Add the drained pasta, mix well, and serve with additional grated cheese (if desired).

Notes:

Adding whole spinach leaves results in lots of long pieces of wilted spinach in the dish; we enjoy the texture this adds, but if you think you won't, feel free to chop the spinach before cooking it. You could probably substitute dried basil and frozen spinach for their fresh counterparts without issue (making sure to reduce the volumes added to compensate for their dried and/or frozen states). And, as I alluded to in the introduction, we've also made a version of this without spinach and basil; in that version we substituted 1/2 teaspoon ground sage for the basil (adding the sage along with the crushed red pepper), and left the spinach out entirely. We like the spinach and basil version better, but the sage version is good too.

If you have oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, and want even more sun-dried tomato flavor, try using 3 tablespoons of the oil from the sun-dried tomatoes in place of the olive oil.

Sauteing the chicken properly is key to adding a lot of browned chicken flavor to this dish. To do this, try to stir the chicken as little as possible once it's been added to the pan, and only flip the chicken once it's golden brown on the first side. Once the sauteing is complete there will probably be lots of little fried bits of chicken left in the pan; by using this pan and the oil still in it for the rest of the dish, you're adding all this flavorful goodness to the rest of the dish.

If, while cooking, you suspect that the pasta won't be ready in time, lower the heat during the simmering (steps 7 and 8) to slow the thickening of the sauce.

This recipe is based on the style of cream sauce in our sun-dried tomato and sausage cream sauce pasta and garlic and clam cream sauce pasta recipes, which we obtained from Weinstein and Scarbrough (2002).

Weinstein, B., and M. Scarbrough. 2002. "How to Make a Light Creamy Pasta Sauce." Fine Cooking 50: 45-49.

Kidney beans with smoked turkey

2007-08-12T21:10:00.000-07:00

Whenever my SO and I go to fairs we love getting smoked turkey legs. The only problem is that we rarely finish them at the fair; since my SO and I ended up with half of a smoked turkey leg left over from a recent trip to a fair, we decided to add it to some kidney beans cooked with onion and spices. We were improvising the entire time, but the dish smelled delicious as it was cooking (Radagast thought a neighbor was barbequeing, until he realized he was smelling this dish), and was thick, creamy, and savory once it was done. It's difficult to describe exactly what this dish is like; it falls somewhere in within the triangle of refried beans, an Indian dal, and bean soup. It's this week's second end-of-the-week recipe blogging post.

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 medium onion, chopped
3 medium carrots, peeled and cut into rounds
1 red jalapeno (or other fresh chili) pepper, deveined, seeded, and sliced into thin strips about 1-2cm long
4 cloves garlic, finely minced or pressed with a garlic press
1/2 teaspoon cumin
12 peppercorns
6 cloves
2 bay leaves
6 1/2 cups water
3/4 pound dry kidney beans
1/2 of a large smoked turkey leg, bone-in (a chunk of ham should be a fine substitute)
1 teaspoon kosher salt

1. Heat the oil in a pot over medium-high heat. Once the oil is hot, add the onions and carrots and cook, stirring nearly constantly, until the onions turn translucent.
2. Add the jalapeno pepper and continue cooking, stirring nearly constantly, until the onions have turned light brown.
3. Add the garlic and cook a minute or two more.
4. Add the spices and cook for another 30 seconds or so.
5. Add the water, beans, smoked turkey, and salt; stir to mix.
6. Simmer for 2-3 hours, or until the beans are tender and the dish is thickened (it should be the consistency of thin refried beans or a dal; it should not be soupy). Check (and stir) the dish occasionally; add extra water if the dish is drying out. We simmered the dish partially covered for the first hour, and then covered for the remainder of the time. You can mash the cooked beans with a spoon to give the dish a creamier texture, if desired.
7. Once the beans are mostly cooked (during step 6), take out the turkey leg and let it cool. When the turkey leg is cool enough to handle, remove all the meat from the bone (chopping any particularly large pieces) and return the meat to the pot. This can be done anytime after the beans have been cooking for a while.
8. Taste to check the salt level (it may be low for your tastes), adjust to your preference, and then serve.

Notes:

This was another improvised dish, so the proportions are approximate and feel free to play with the ingredients. This tasted great served with Spanish rice, a recipe we'll post once we have the chance to test it out again.

Keep an eye out for the whole spices as you're eating the dish; while they're not harmful to eat, you might want to pick them out if you can find them.

Fresh green bean and tomato salad

2007-08-12T20:14:00.000-07:00

Our garden has been doing well this year, and thus we've had an abundance of tomatoes, green beans, and basil on our hands. Faced with pounds of green beans and tomatoes just asking to be eaten, my SO created this salad. The lime juice and feta cheese contrasted well with the fresh vegetables, and overall this made for a great (and healthy) summer meal. Since we just made this today, it's this week's end-of-the-week recipe blogging post.

Salad:
2 pounds fresh green beans, washed, trimmed, and halved
1 pound tomatoes, chopped into bite-sized pieces
1/2 small onion, ~1/4 to 1/2 cup, quartered and thinly sliced
~1/2 to 3/4 cup crumbled feta cheese

Dressing:
1 shallot, finely minced
1 tablespoon whole-grain mustard
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 cup coarsely chopped fresh basil, loosely packed
juice of 2 large limes
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

To make the dressing:
1) Add all the dressing ingredients to a salad shaker (or a bowl) and mix until combined. Let stand a few minutes before using.

To make the salad:
1) Cook the green beans. To do this, bring a large pot of salted water (~1 1/2 tablespoons salt per 12 cups water) to a boil, add the beans, and cook until they're tender (~4-10 minutes; the time will vary depending on the maturity of your beans, so check them periodically).
2) Remove the cooked beans from the boiling water and immerse them in a bowl of cold water. Once they've cooled, transfer them to a strainer to drain off most of the water.
3) Put the cooled green beans, tomatoes, onion, and feta into a large bowl. Add as much of the dressing as you want (we added approximately a cup) and mix gently but thoroughly.
4) Serve immediately.

Notes:

Since this was made without a recipe, all amounts are approximate and flexible; feel free to improvise. And, as with our tomato yogurt salad, this probably requires good fresh vegetables (especially good tomatoes) to be tasty.

As we reported with our honey mustard salad dressing, we make our own whole-grain mustard from scratch (see the recipe here); if you don't have whole-grain mustard available, we'd suggest substituting a grainy mustard.

We ended up with about a half cup of dressing left over; if you don't want extra you may want to scale down the dressing ingredients a bit.

The green bean cooking instructions are from Joy of Cooking.

Reference:

Rombauer, I. S., M. R. Becker, and E. Becker. 1997. Joy of Cooking. Scribner, NY.

[Updated December 2007 to add a link to our homemade mustard recipe.]

Ordering glasses online part 2: getting the glasses

2007-08-07T00:28:00.000-07:00

About a month ago I reported that my SO and I had ordered some glasses from Optical4Less, an online retailer. As the glasses have now arrived, I wanted to post an update.

Our glasses arrived in the mail about a week and a half after we placed the order. The glasses were wrapped in a cloth and bubble wrap, placed in a hard case, and then shipped in a cardboard box. My glasses (a metal and plastic semi-rimless pair) arrived in perfect condition; all I had to do was adjust the nosepieces (which bent easily with my fingers) and they fit perfectly. I've been wearing them every day since, and haven't had any problems. While I can't verify that the prescription is completely correct, I'm seeing more clearly than I have in years ¹.

My SO's glasses arrived in apparently perfect condition, but upon close inspection we discovered that the lenses had several patches of minute scratches that caused blurred vision in a few spots. Our best guess is that the anti-reflective coating had been damaged during the lens shaping/installation, though we don't know exactly what happened.

Optical4Less responded to our e-mail about the problem within a day, and requested pictures of the lenses. Getting a good picture of the scratches proved challenging (as they were small and nearly transparent), but we eventually got a few good pictures and submitted them. Optical4Less got back to us the next business day and told us to mail the glasses back so they could be remade; this cost us about $4. Upon receipt of the glasses, Optical4Less gave us an $8 gift certificate good towards our next purchase.

A few days ago (about two weeks after returning the glasses), we got the replacement pair in the mail, and my SO reports that they're perfect.

Thanks to our success with Optical4Less we've already ordered more pairs (my favorite is a $35 pair of prescription sunglasses from Zenni Optical). So far we've ordered seven pairs of glasses from various retailers, and we've still spent less than it would have cost to buy one pair of glasses at our local optician. We'll never buy from our local store again.

¹ It had been more than five years since my last pair of glasses was made (in part due to the price of new ones), so the change was fairly major.

Ubuntu once again beats Windows

2007-08-06T23:56:00.000-07:00

Regular readers will likely remember my post comparing the time it took me to install Ubuntu and Windows XP (it was, after all, my most-commented post of all time). I'm happy to report that I now have a new (albeit much shorter) installment for that series.

I recently got a new Toshiba tablet laptop¹ which came with Windows XP pre-installed (albeit fiddled with by a few technicians before I got my hands on it). While the tablet works fine in Windows, upon booting it at home I discovered that Windows refused to connect to my wireless network (Intel's wireless program reported that the wireless card was disabled, while Windows hardware manager begged to disagree). After fiddling with it for a bit, I gave up and booted into Ubuntu 7.04 using a LiveCD. Within less than a minute of booting I had a working wireless connection, and I had a completely functioning permanent install in less time than it took me to make a peach pie². I was even able to use the stylus for navigation as soon as Ubuntu booted.

¹ While I initially scoffed at the idea of using a stylus to write on the screen when I was considering what my new computer would be, I'm now in love with my little stylus. Using the stylus to navigate is intuitive, and I already find myself defaulting to the stylus over the built-in mouse.
² Yes, I actually installed Ubuntu during the spare time I had while making a peach pie. The installation is that easy.

Cheese blintzes

2007-07-29T23:12:00.000-07:00

Cheese blintzes are thin pancakes that are folded around a sweet cheese filling and then baked or fried so they have a crispy crust. They're are one of my SO's favorite breakfast foods, and thus they appear regularly at birthday breakfasts. Since I made these for my SO's most recent birthday, they're this week's end-of-the-week recipe blogging post.

Blintz batter:
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups milk
4 large eggs
3 tablespoons butter, melted
1 tablespoon sugar
Pinch salt
Butter or oil for cooking the blintzes

Cheese filling:
2 1/2 cups drained small-curd cottage cheese (~20-ounces)
4 ounces cream cheese
2 large eggs
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt

To make this recipe you need to make the blintz batter and cook it, make the filling, and then fill the blintzes and cook them.

To make the blintz batter:
1. Add all the ingredients for the blintz batter to a blender or food processor and blend or process until smooth, scraping down the sides as necessary.
2. Refrigerate the mixture for at least 30 minutes before cooking.

To make the filling:
0. Drain extra liquid from the cottage cheese: put it into a strainer and let it sit for about half an hour. This step could probably be skipped if you're in a hurry.
1. Add the drained cottage cheese, cream cheese, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and salt to a blender or food processor and process until well mixed. There should be no large lumps left after mixing; chill until needed.

To cook the blintzes:
0. Get out your supplies and arrange them around the stove. You'll need a small to medium non-stick pan, the blintz batter, a measuring device for the batter (a 1/8 or 1/4 cup measurer works well), a spatula to remove the blintzes from the pan, a cooling rack or plate to put the blintzes on once they're cooked, and a paper towel or two to clean up the inevitable drips of batter.
1. Heat the pan over medium or medium-high heat, adding a little butter or oil to the pan before cooking the first blintz.
2. When the pan is warm, add about 2 tablespoons (1/8 cup; half of a 1/4 cup measurer) of blintz batter to the pan, then rotate the pan immediately to distribute the batter into a circle.
3. Once the top of the blintz is no longer liquid and shiny, and the underside is golden brown, slide the blintz out of the pan onto a waiting plate. Look the blintz over to see how it turned out, and adjust the cooking time and the stove's heat level based on this inspection (e.g., if the bottom is browning before the top is cooked, turn the heat down). I have an electric stove with only a few heat settings, so I often find myself switching between two heat levels on the stove to maintain the optimum cooking temperature.
4. Continue cooking (steps 2-3) until you've used all the batter (or made as many blintzes as you want to fill).

To fill the blintzes and cook them:
0. Preheat the oven to 350F.
1. Put an individual blintz on a plate, uncooked side up, and place approximately 1-2 tablespoons of filling onto the center of the blintz.
2. Fold one edge (the bottom) of the blintz up onto the filling, fold the two sides in, and then roll the filled portion of the blintz onto the last unfolded edge (the top). This should leave you with a compact packet of blintz neatly surrounding the cheese filling. Repeat for all the blintzes; see figure 1 for more detail.
3. Arrange all the filled blintzes on a baking sheet (we line ours with a non-stick liner, but this is probably not necessary) so that they're not touching, and bake at 350F for 17-20 minutes (or until the filling is heated through and the outside is crispy).
4. Let cool briefly, and serve.

Figure 1: How to fill a blintz.

Notes:

When I cook the blintzes I use two pans simultaneously and fill the cooked blintzes almost immediately after I've slid them out of the pan (as another pair cook in the pans). If you're a beginner at making blintzes, I'd recommend using just one pan and waiting to fill the blintzes until after you've cooked all the batter.

This recipe is based on one in Joy of Cooking (though we've changed the proportions to make the filling sweeter and have more filling for the blintzes). Joy of Cooking specifies that the filled blintzes should be fried in a few tablespoons of oil in a pan on the stove; while this does result in a slightly crispier outside, it's far more tedious than baking, and thus we usually bake ours.

As making crepes and blintzes is so similar, many of these instructions are copied directly from our crepes with a savory chicken and cheese sauce filling recipe. Note, however, that unlike crepes, blintzes are cooked on only one side before filling.

Reference:

Rombauer, I. S., M. R. Becker, and E. Becker. 1997. Joy of Cooking. Scribner, NY.

A few good links

2007-07-25T16:06:00.000-07:00

Twisty, of I Blame the Patriarchy, talks about aggregating harvestmen.

Science Daily summarizes a psychology experiment wherein women who are told that there is a genetic explanation for women's lack of ability to do math perform worse on math tests than women who are told there is no difference between how men and women perform on math tests.

Between 2003 and 2006, Dar-Nimrod and Heine conducted their research with more than 220 female participants. Their study provided participants with bogus scientific explanations for alleged sex differences in math.

Some women received a genetic account of inborn traits to explain the difference while others received an experiential account -- such as math teachers treating boys preferentially during the first years of math education. Other participants were reminded of the stereotype about female math underachievement, or were told that there are no sex differences in math.

Heine and Dar-Nimrod found the worse math performances belonged to women who received a genetic explanation for female underachievement in math or those who were reminded of the stereotype about female math underachievement. Women who received the experiential explanation performed better -- on par with those who were led to believe there are no sex differences in math.

The Times Union posts a news story about airport screeners failing to detect bomb-making materials in carry on luggage (published July 4, 2007):

The unannounced inspection by TSA officials took place [at Albany International Airport] early last week. The airport's security measures failed in five of seven tests, most of the problems occurring at the passenger checkpoint, the sources said.
In one test, TSA inspectors hid the components of a fake bomb in carry-on luggage that also contained a bottle of water. Passengers are prohibited from carrying containers holding more than three ounces of liquids, gels or aerosols through airport checkpoints.
The screeners at Albany International confiscated the water bottle but missed the bomb. In all, the inspectors slipped four banned items through the main checkpoint during the test, sources said.

The New York Times has an article on how the ability of the Surgeon General to be an independent office is being compromised:

Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona told a Congressional panel Tuesday that top Bush administration officials repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations.

The administration, Dr. Carmona said, would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues. Top officials delayed for years and tried to “water down” a landmark report on secondhand smoke, he said. Released last year, the report concluded that even brief exposure to cigarette smoke could cause immediate harm.

Dr. Carmona said he was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of his speeches. He also said he was asked to make speeches to support Republican political candidates and to attend political briefings.

And administration officials even discouraged him from attending the Special Olympics because, he said, of that charitable organization’s longtime ties to a “prominent family” that he refused to name.

The Independent has an article by a reporter who traveled on a cruise ship packed with readers of the National Review. Read it for a view into the mindset of a few American conservatives.

I can use the net again!

2007-07-24T21:26:00.000-07:00

Shortly after my last post I did indeed go 'net silent' to avoid accidentally reading spoilers for Harry Potter. I'm happy to report that I have now finished the book without encountering a single spoiler.

It's so nice to be able to surf the web again. My apologies to anyone whose comments or e-mails I've ignored in the past few days.

Uh oh

2007-07-18T02:22:00.000-07:00

We've pre-ordered the last Harry Potter book (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows), and like good geeks are re-reading the last few books to prepare ourselves for the big day on Saturday. In fact, to avoid spoilers we've both decided to stay off the net from the time the book is released until we've both read it. Unfortunately, it looks like we may have to avoid the net earlier than we had hoped, as BoingBoing reports¹ that the book is now available on the web.

¹ Note that BoingBoing's post may have spoilers in it; I stopped reading it as soon as I figured out what it was about.

[Update: Cory has commented that there are no actual spoilers in the BoingBoing post, so it's safe to read.]

A few updates

2007-07-18T01:28:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I posted, and thus I wanted to reassure folks that the slow posting is due to nothing more than being distracted with other items. On the list of (enjoyable) distractions are house-guests (which we'll have three sets of this month), guitar playing, birthday celebrating, and starting work on my new online course.

The guitar course has been going for a few weeks now, and I'm having a blast. The course is focused around playing classical guitar, which I'd never really listened to before this course, but am now finding that I quite enjoy (both playing and listening to). I've still got a long way to go before I can do much of anything with the instrument, but it's fun to plink away at it every night.

And, as is traditional, I cooked my SO a birthday feast on the big day. This year the feast consisted of cheese blintzes (which will likely be this week's end-of-the-week recipe blogging post), crab dip, chicken ravioli, and a white chocolate cake filled with lemon curd. Everything was homemade, including the ravioli:

While the ravioli took hours to make (I remember now why we haven't made them for about three years), they were excellent with a sauce of nothing but butter and Romano cheese. My SO should have birthdays more often!

Teaching link: Wellcome Images

2007-07-09T03:00:00.000-07:00

One of the problems of developing an online course (or an in-person course, for that matter) is finding good artwork. Sure, there are lots of images available on the web, but relatively few of these are completely legal to use (i.e., most are copyrighted works with no clear license to allow educators to use them). However, works licensed under Creative Commons licenses are freely usable by educators¹, and thus I now attempt to use only Creative Commons licensed works when I develop teaching materials.

There are many places where you can find Creative Commons licensed materials (e.g., Flickr's advanced search lets you filter by license, and all PLOS journal articles are Creative Commons licensed), but BoingBoing just linked to an amazing resource: Wellcome Images. This website, run by the Wellcome Trust, contains images depicting "two thousand years of human culture," and everything on it has been released under a Creative Commons license².

Wellcome Images is one of the world's richest and most unique collections, with themes ranging from medical and social history to contemporary healthcare and biomedical science.

All our images are available on demand in digital form. Search online or use the expertise of our professional scientific and historical researchers.

Whether it's medicine or magic, the sacred or the profane, science or satire - you'll find more than you expect.

This unrivalled collection contains historical images from the Wellcome Library collections, Tibetan Buddhist paintings, ancient Sanskrit manuscripts written on palm leaves, beautifully illuminated Persian books and much more.

The Biomedical Collection holds over 40 000 high-quality images from the clinical and biomedical sciences. Selected from the UK's leading teaching hospitals and research institutions, it covers disease, surgery, general healthcare, sciences from genetics to neuroscience including the full range of imaging techniques. (quote from here)

I've only been browsing for a short while, but have already found a ton of images I think I'll use in my course. Who wouldn't want pictures of a malaria parasite in a mosquito's gut, an opium poppy, a human embryo implanting at 6 days, a picture of male bodybuilders pre-testosterone-injections, or drawings of morels? Go find some for yourself!

¹ As long as the educators are creating non-commercial works, and even then some Creative Commons licenses allow commercial works.
² All images are either under a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-commercial Licence 2.0 or a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives 2.0 license.

My new favorite band

2007-07-08T01:00:00.000-07:00

Nunatak.

They were in Live Earth yesterday. Of course, they were playing from the British Antarctic Survey's Rothera Research Station, so there weren't too many people in the audience (17), but who wouldn't love a band made up of members like this:

Matt Balmer – electronics engineer with the physics and meteorology team.
Tris Thorne – communications engineer
Ali (Alison) Massey – marine biologist
Rob Webster – meteorologist
Roger Stilwell – Field General Assistant (polar guide)

Go watch the videos of their songs here, and then go read about the band here.

Update: They've got their songs posted on YouTube, so here's one to whet your appetite:

Even limited exercise helps

2007-07-05T01:40:00.000-07:00

One of the exercise mantras commonly floated about is that adults should get 30 minutes of moderate activity exercise at least five days a week. While this is a good goal, the majority of Americans don't get this amount of exercise¹. And, for a lot of beginning exercisers, exercising for 30 minutes a day probably seems like a huge commitment, if not an insurmountable challenge.

My SO and I have long viewed exercise in the "some is better than none" category, and thus try to do even little amounts whenever we can (e.g., walking to the store instead of driving, always taking the stairs at work, doing our own gardening). A recent paper (Church et al., 2007) has shown, via a randomized, controlled trial, that even small amounts of exercise are better than no exercise at all (at least for the subset of people they tested).

Church et al. divided overweight, post-menopausal women into four groups:

Control: Did no exercise a week (other than normal walking)
4kcal/kg: Exercised about 70 minutes a week
8kcal/kg: Exercised about 135 minutes a week
12 kcal/kg: Exercised about 190 minutes a week

Participants were randomly assigned to a condition, and all exercise was performed in a lab². The participants exercised at their given level for six months, at which point physiological data were compared to data taken at the start of the study.

Fitness improvement correlated linearly with the amount of exercise:

Figure 3 from Church et al. (2007)."Percent Change in Fitness Data for Each Study Group. The data represent the least-squares means adjusted for age, ethnicity/race, weight, and peak heart rate. The P values for pairwise comparisons of control with 4-kcal/kg, 8-kcal/kg, and 12-kcal/kg per week groups are P .001 for each variable. P for linear trend across groups .001 for each outcome. Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals."
So, what this means is that even if you work out for only 20 minutes a day three days a week, you'll almost certainly see fitness benefits. And, once you start working out and getting used to doing it regularly, if you increase your workout durations (say, to 40 minutes a day three days a week), you'll see even more improvements. And, to help scare you into exercising, note that the people who didn't do any exercise actually had a small decrease in fitness³.

So, if you're one of the many sedentary Americans out there, take a look at those graphs and start exercising, even if it's only for a few minutes a day. It'll do ya good!

¹ As in "More than 60 percent of U.S. adults do not engage in the recommended amount of activity (30 minutes a day, 5 days a week)" and "Approximately 25 percent of U.S. adults are not active at all." (data from the 1996 Surgeon General's Report on Physical Activity and Health, specifically from here)
² "Women in the exercise groups alternated training sessions on semi-recumbent cycle ergometers and treadmills." The control (non-exercising) women tracked their daily steps with a pedometer and were "asked to maintain their level of activity during the 6-month study period."
³ In fact, it was the realization that our fitness was slowly declining (and would continue declining until we would no longer be able to walk when we were 70) that finally motivated my SO and me to start regularly exercising (and tracking our exercise goals and progress here) a few years ago.

Church, TS., DP Earnest, JS Skinner, and SN Blair. 2007. Effects of Different Doses of Physical Activity on Cardiorespiratory Fitness Among Sedentary, Overweight or Obese Postmenopausal Women With Elevated Blood Pressure. JAMA. 297:2081-2091. Abstract.

Justice for all

2007-07-05T00:30:00.000-07:00

In case you hadn't heard, Scooter Libby's 30-month prison sentence was commuted on Monday by President Bush. The reason, according to the president, is that "the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive." The LA Times begs to disagree:

But records show that the Justice Department under the Bush administration frequently has sought sentences that are as long, or longer, in cases similar to Libby's. Three-fourths of the 198 defendants sentenced in federal court last year for obstruction of justice — one of four crimes Libby was found guilty of in March — got some prison time. According to federal data, the average sentence defendants received for that charge alone was 70 months.

And the New York Times cites a similar case where clemency hasn't been granted:

Similarly, in a case decided two weeks ago by the United States Supreme Court and widely discussed by legal specialists in light of the Libby case, the Justice Department persuaded the court to affirm the 33-month sentence of a defendant whose case closely resembled that against Mr. Libby. The defendant, Victor A. Rita, was, like Mr. Libby, convicted of perjury, making false statements to federal agents and obstruction of justice. Mr. Rita has performed extensive government service, just as Mr. Libby has. Mr. Rita served in the armed forces for more than 25 years, receiving 35 commendations, awards and medals. Like Mr. Libby, Mr. Rita had no criminal history for purposes of the federal sentencing guidelines.

The judges who sentenced the two men increased their sentences by taking account of the crimes about which they lied. Mr. Rita’s perjury concerned what the court called “a possible violation of a machine-gun registration law”; Mr. Libby’s of a possible violation of a federal law making it a crime to disclose the identities of undercover intelligence agents in some circumstances.

When Mr. Rita argued that his 33-month sentence had failed to consider his history and circumstances adequately, the Justice Department strenuously disagreed.

Ugh.

Caesar salad

2007-06-29T21:48:00.000-07:00

My SO and I have loved Caesar salads for a long time, and thus many years ago we made our own home-made Caesar salad following Joy of Cooking's recipe. While the dressing is quite simple, we ran into a problem: it had too much raw garlic. As you may know (if you've read many of our other recipes), we're not ones to shy away from garlic, but raw garlic can be extremely sharp, and thus a few of our early batches of dressing were too sharp to thoroughly enjoy. However, by reducing the amount of raw garlic added, and replacing it with garlic that's been simmered in oil, we've been able to keep a strong garlic flavor without risking sharpness. If you've never had a homemade (or fancy restaurant) Caesar salad, the flavor (and lack of creamy white goo) may surprise you.

This recipe includes homemade croutons, which provide extra garlic for the dressing and are tastier than typical store-bought ones, but feel free to use pre-made ones if you're in a hurry (as the rest of the salad is quick and easy to make). Since we just had this for dinner a few days ago, it's this week's end-of-the-week recipe blogging post.

For the croutons:
6 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
3 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons olive oil
5 cups of ~1/2" cubes of bread (we often use whole-wheat sandwich bread, just because we have it around, but a good hearty bread like ciabatta is best)
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

For the dressing:
Reserved garlic from the croutons
1 medium clove garlic, finely minced or pressed with a garlic press
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons fish sauce (the Thai ingredient) or 2-4 mashed anchovies with a pinch of salt
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 whole eggs, raw or simmered for a minute or two (see notes)

For the salad:
Romaine lettuce (or whatever greens you'd like)
Grated, shredded, or shaved Parmesan or Pecorino Romano cheese

To make the croutons:
0. Preheat your oven to 350F.
1. Heat the olive oil and butter in a frying pan over medium heat.
2. Once the oil is hot, add the garlic and heat long enough for the garlic to start bubbling (the garlic should not brown). Remove from the heat and let sit for 10 minutes.
3. Strain the garlic from the oil, saving both the garlic and the oil. The oil will be used to season the croutons, and the garlic will be added to the dressing.
4. Put the bread cubes into a large bowl, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and pour the garlic oil over them. Toss to distribute the oil, salt, and pepper, and then put into a rimmed baking sheet large enough to hold all the bread in a single layer.
5. Bake for ~12-20 minutes at 350F, or until the bread is golden brown, stirring every 4 minutes.
6. Set aside until ready to serve.

To make the dressing:
1. Add the reserved garlic from the crouton making (mash it into a paste, if desired), raw garlic, pepper, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, and fish sauce or anchovies to a salad dressing shaker (or bowl) and mix well.
2. Add the olive oil and mix until emulsified. If you're using a salad dressing shaker you can add all the oil at once and then shake vigorously until well mixed; if you're using a bowl, add the olive oil in a slow, steady stream while you whisk constantly.
3. Add the eggs, and mix well.
4. Refrigerate until ready to use.

To assemble the salad:
1. Wash the lettuce or other greens, spin (or shake) them dry, and tear or cut into bite-sized pieces.
2. Put the greens into a bowl and top with dressing, cheese, and croutons.

Notes:

Aficionados of Caesar salads will note that fish sauce isn't a typical ingredient. We use it because we rarely have anchovies on hand, but we always have fish sauce. Since fish sauce is, well, fish flavored, adding a bit of it imparts the same fishy undertone that anchovies do. So, if you have anchovies on hand, by all means use them, but if you're out of anchovies feel free to use fish sauce.

Raw eggs are a standard addition to Caesar salad dressings, but they do have the potential to carry pathogens. One way to mitigate the danger of the raw eggs is to simmer them in water for a minute or two, but this does not remove all the risk. While we're willing to accept the risk of eating raw eggs, you may not be, in which case we'd advise using another recipe, as we know of no good substitution.

In a classic Caesar salad, the eggs are added to the salad separately from the dressing. This makes dressing the salad more tedious, however, and thus we prefer mixing the eggs directly into the dressing.

This makes about 1 cup of dressing. We find this is usually enough for four large (entree-sized) bowls of salad; ditto for the amount of croutons (unless you, like us, can't resist eating them, in which case this will make enough croutons for two large bowls of salad and a bit of snacking).

Reference:

Rombauer, I. S., M. R. Becker, and E. Becker. 1997. Joy of Cooking. Scribner, NY.

[Updated November 2007 to clarify the garlic cooking instructions and change where the salt and pepper were added to the croutons.]

Ordering glasses online

2007-06-29T02:32:00.001-07:00

My SO and I just went in for our annual eye checkups, and it's finally time for both of us to replace our several-year-old glasses. As usual, after the checkup we were directed to the eyeglass sales area of the store, and a sales rep came out to help us pick out frames. We both tried on a number of frames, and selected a few to price out. The cheapest frame I had chosen was $200 after insurance, and the most expensive was more than $500 after insurance. Lenses would have cost about $100 extra. My SO's potential frames were in the same price range, but would have had even more expensive lenses. All told, we probably would have spent more than $1,000 buying new glasses at the optometrist.

Thankfully, we knew that we could find a better deal, as a while ago I found Glassy Eyes, a blog about ordering glasses online. While ordering glasses online is a bit harder than ordering them in person (you must enter your prescription manually, know your interpupillary distance¹, and analyze the frame sizes to see how they'll fit on your face), the price difference was astounding: there are multiple websites where you can find quite decent looking glasses for less than $40 a pair, including lenses.

So, rather than spending $1,000 at our local optometrist, my SO and I just ordered a new pair of glasses for each of us from Optical4Less, spending less than $100 total. While I'm willing to pay for the extra service an optometrist provides, and the convenience of a local store, said conveniences are not worth a ten-fold increase in price.

If these glasses turn out to be good, I think we're going to go on a glasses-buying binge.

¹ While you can measure interpupillary distance with a ruler, we did it using a binocular compound microscope with adjustable-width eyepieces.

A few remodeling links

2007-06-21T11:40:00.000-07:00

How to caulk around a shower - my SO and I used this as a guide for caulking our bathroom floor.

Suggested order for painting a house - A discussion board thread with a recommendation for the order of painting a house (and any room in it; we used this to guide our painting in the bathroom)

Installing interior moldings - While we have a detailed book on this topic (Finish Carpentry by Gary Katz), it was nice to have another illustrated source.

How To Install Baseboard Molding, Even On Crooked Walls - Tips to resolve a few common molding installation problems.

The Finish Carpenter's Manual by Jim Tolpin - A book with sample pages available via Google Books, one of which (page 104) just happened to succinctly summarize how to scribe baseboard molding. Based on the preview, this looks like a great book on finish carpentry.

Casing Problems - Drywall Not Flush With Jamb - Not that we're saying that this happened in our house (after all, our remodeling has gone so smoothly!¹), but this is an illustrated example of how we would have dealt with drywall that ended up being proud of the door jamb if it had occurred.

This Old House video on installing crown molding - The text on the page is a bit more useful than the video, though it was nice to see someone actually installing it (rather than just reading about it)

¹ And if you believe that, just go read some of the posts linked to here; then you can come and tell me if I'm being sarcastic or not.

A big day for Radagast and SO

2007-06-20T14:00:00.000-07:00

You may recall that my SO and I have been remodeling our house; the primary motivation for this was finding water damage (and resultant mold growth) in both bathrooms when we bought the place.

While our bathroom remodeling predates this blog, we've written about a lot of it here. To summarize, we ripped everything out to the studs, replaced all the plumbing (both supply and waste), installed new windows, redid the drywall, painted, and spent forever working on the floor. While both bathrooms were ripped out to the studs way back when, we've focused most of our energy on trying to finish the master bathroom, which (embarrassingly) we've hoped to do since 2004.

It is thus with great excitement that I'm able to report a major accomplishment: we now have a functioning toilet, sink, and shower in our master bathroom. While the room is not entirely finished yet (we need to finish the moldings, paint the door, and do a few other small tasks), everything that counts is in.

Yippee!

Now I just need to come up with more excuses to go in there and admire it.

Basic cheese sauce

2007-06-18T03:31:00.000-07:00

Some of my fondest childhood memories are eating my mom's steamed cauliflower slathered with cheese sauce after returning from trips¹. What follows is the Radagast and SO household standard cheese sauce recipe; while this isn't the fanciest cheese sauce, it's easy to make, reminds me of my mom's, and tastes, well, cheesy. Since we had cauliflower with cheese sauce last week, this is this week's end-of-the-week recipe blogging post.

1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter
1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) flour
2 cups milk
2 cups grated cheddar cheese (we use medium cheddar)
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

0. Heat the milk in the microwave (or in a small saucepan over medium heat), but do not bring it to a boil.
1. Melt the butter in a non-stick saucepan over medium-high heat.
2. Add the flour, and, stirring constantly, cook until the flour browns slightly (probably around 3 minutes).
3. Remove the pan from the heat and let cool, stirring frequently, until the flour mixture stops bubbling.
4. Add the warmed milk to the flour mixture, return to the heat, and whisk constantly until smooth.
5. Cook, whisking frequently, until the sauce is somewhat thickened (probably about 5 minutes).
6. Add the cheese (adding it in two batches helps keep it from forming a giant, slow-to-dissolve blob) and stir until all the cheese is melted.
7. Add the black pepper and salt; taste, and adjust the seasonings to your liking.

Notes:

If you like nutmeg (which Radagast doesn't), a pinch or two might compliment the sauce's flavor.

This sauce should be served warm, as it thickens when it cools. A skin may form on the surface of the sauce if it sits for a while at room temperature; just stir this skin back into the sauce and it will be fine. If the mixture begins to thicken too much before you're ready to eat it, simply re-heat it on the stove (or in the microwave) briefly, stirring frequently.

¹ I still love cheese sauce on cauliflower, though these days I typically use roasted cauliflower as the base, not steamed.

Roger Waters live

2007-06-16T18:15:00.000-07:00

Originally uploaded by DaigoOliva
[Spoiler warning: This post includes details about Roger Waters' 2007 tour]

My SO and I don't go to many concerts, but this week we went to see Roger Waters (of Pink Floyd fame). The tour advertised that he would be playing the entirety of Dark Side of the Moon, but he also played a great assortment of his other work¹ (list from here):

In The Flesh
Mother
Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun
Shine On You Crazy Diamond
Have A Cigar
Wish You Were Here
Southampton Dock,
Fletcher Memorial Home
Perfect Sense Parts 1 & 2
Leaving Beirut
Sheep
The Happiest Days of Our Lives
Another Brick In The Wall Pt. 2
Vera
Bring The Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb

While our seats weren't terribly close to the stage, the venue had continuous video footage broadcast on large screens. Much of this video footage focused on the guitarists' hands, which I was appreciative of thanks to my newfound hobby of playing the guitar².

As one might guess, Roger has little love for George W. Bush, and thus included many jabs at him. His new song Leaving Beirut had a graphic-novel-style background including the lyrics, which included this bit:

Roger Waters_Leaving Beirut - Oh George! Oh George!
Originally uploaded by Garry'

Oh George! Oh George!
Originally uploaded by Garry'

He also had a floating pig covered in graffiti:

A Pig never lies
Originally uploaded by Ronaniversario
While our pig didn't look exactly like the one pictured above (after browsing Flickr it appears that a new pig is made for each show), the writing on our pig included such statements as "Torture shames us all," "All religions divide," "Impeach Bush," "What an asshole [with an arrow pointing to "Bush"]," "Fear builds walls," and "Habeas corpus matters."

My favorite was the addition of a quote from Bush in the background visuals for The Fletcher Memorial Home:

Fletcher Memorial Home
Originally uploaded by EddieBerman
Ignoring all the traffic getting to and from the concert, it was a great evening of prog rock. Up next: Genesis.

¹ I was probably one of the few fans in the audience who was sad that most of his solo work was left out.
² Methinks it will be a very, very long time before I'm able to come anywhere close to playing songs like them.

[Note: All images in this post are Creative Commons licensed.]

Big news for SC

2007-06-13T14:55:00.000-07:00

Semantic Compositions has just posted some big news: he's starting his own company! This sounds like a great decision for him; I wish him all the best.

And, if he ever needs a biologist to consult for him, I'll be happy to give him my special friends-only discount rate (based on, of course, the rates his prior employer charges).

A little fluff

2007-06-13T04:35:00.000-07:00

My SO and I are busy working on the house this week¹, so here are a few resources to entertain you:

High-speed pictures of milk dropping into coffee (via BoingBoing)

Video of flight traffic patterns over the US (higher-quality here) (via PZ)²

Demonstration of the power of CSS (via Semantic Compositions)

¹ It's amazing how long seemingly simple tasks can take when one is remodeling. For instance, I just spent most of today painting (and priming, and patching) a door frame. On HGTV things like that take about 5 seconds (if they even show it).
² Moral of the story: If you don't want to have planes flying over you all day, go live in the Pacific northwest.

Roasted cauliflower

2007-06-10T14:00:00.000-07:00

A few years ago my SO came across this recipe for roasting cauliflower. We posted a link to it way back when, and since then it's been one of our most-cooked recipes. However, the original recipe is written rather vaguely, and thus we're re-posting it here with more detailed instructions. This is also one of this week's end-of-the-week recipe blogging posts, as we just made this again last week.

And, to reiterate what we've said before, this is quite possibly the world's best method of cooking cauliflower; if you haven't tried it yet, you're missing out.

1 head cauliflower, rinsed (approximately 2 pounds untrimmed; ~1 3/4 pounds trimmed)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

0. Preheat your oven to 475F.
1. Remove the leaves and any bad spots from the cauliflower.
2. Cut the head of cauliflower into florets. We prefer large-ish florets (maybe 1 1/2 inches in diameter), though the size doesn't matter much. You can also chop the stem and include that as well (we cut the stem into ~1/4" thick slices).
3. Put the florets and stem slices in a roasting pan large enough to hold them in a single layer, and then sprinkle with the olive oil, salt, and pepper. Stir to mix.
4. Roast for 35 minutes, or until there are numerous small browned/blackened bits in the pan, and all the florets are well browned in spots (they'll appear to be almost burned). Stir every 10 minutes while baking, using a wooden spoon/spatula to scrape the stuck pieces off the bottom.
5. Serve immediately.

Notes:

This is best immediately after it comes out of the oven; it tends to get a bit mushy and lose some of its excellent flavor once it has cooled. The little nearly-burned bits in the bottom of the pan are full of flavor; we enjoy scraping them out of the pan and adding them to our plates.

This makes enough to serve as the primary component of a meal for two; it'd probably make enough for a side dish for four, though we rarely serve it as a side dish. This is perfectly delicious plain, but can be served with a cheese sauce if desired.

This recipe scales well, so feel free to vary the amount of cauliflower (as long as the cauliflower fits in a single layer in your roasting pan).

Reference:

Weide, Stephanie Vander. 2004. "Blue Plate Special: Cauliflower and Crabs". Grub Report, December 12, 2004. http://www.grubreport.com/blueplatespecial/caulicrabs.html. Accessed 2005.

Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies

2007-06-10T13:30:00.000-07:00

My SO and I love moist, chewy cookies. We were thus ecstatic when we found this recipe, which makes huge cookies (they're about 3 1/2" in diameter and about 3/4" thick) that stay moist and chewy for days after cooking. Since we've gotten rave reviews of these from friends recently, they're this week's first end-of-the-week recipe blogging post.

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar, packed
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
2 tablespoons milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

0. Soften the butter (by letting it sit out at room temperature for a while), and preheat your oven to 375F.
1. Cream the butter, peanut butter, sugar, and brown sugar together in a large bowl (we use our stand mixer) until it is as smooth as it will get with the peanut chunks in it.
2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition.
3. Mix in the corn syrup, milk, and vanilla.
4. Mix the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl.
5. Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients, mixing until well combined.
6. Add the chocolate chips, mixing until just combined.
7. Measure out 1/4 cup chunks of dough and place onto a cookie sheet. We use a silicone cookie sheet liner to make removing the cookies easier after baking; you may want to grease your cookie sheets if you don't have a liner.
8. Bake for 13 minutes at 375F, or until the cookies are turning brown at the edges. They may appear slightly underbaked; this is OK, as they'll continue cooking a bit outside the oven (though test various cooking times to see what best suits your oven and tastes).
9. Let rest on the cookie sheet (out of the oven) for a minute or so, then remove the cookies to a rack to cool completely.

Notes:

If you want smoother cookies, use non-chunky peanut butter. We use the standard variety peanut butter that's been salted and sugared, but this is almost certainly flexible.

Based on a recipe by Kathy Bliesner from Allrecipes.com.

Bliesner, Kathy. "Chewy Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies" http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Chewy-Peanut-Butter-Chocolate-Chip-Cookies/Detail.aspx. Accessed April 2003.

Installing Ubuntu 7.04 - Feisty Fawn

2007-06-07T23:28:00.000-07:00

Today I finally got around to installing the latest version of Ubuntu (7.04 - Feisty Fawn). The installation was very easy, especially since my original partition plan included a blank 12 GB partition to hold a new version of Ubuntu. All I had to do was download the 7.04 live CD, boot from it, and then install Ubuntu 7.04 to the blank partition I'd created way back when¹.

The look and feel of this version (7.04 - Feisty Fawn) is much the same as the prior version (6.06 - Dapper Drake), so everything I'd learned about 6.06 transferred right over to the newest version. However, there are two major improvements I've already noticed:

Restricted drivers manger - This little menu item (System -> Administration -> Restricted Drivers Manager) allowed me to install my nVidia video card's driver in less than a minute. In the old version (6.06) I'd had to go and find the package manually, and then fiddle with a few settings. In Feisty Fawn all I had to do was click one button and it was installed.
Multimedia codec finder - Whenever I click on a media type to play it, Ubuntu now automatically checks to make sure that it has the proper codec installed. If it doesn't have the right codec installed, it searches the repositories, finds the proper package, and asks if I want to download it. I've now been able to play mp3s, quicktime videos, and flash videos all within 30 seconds of clicking on them.

The new version also includes updated versions of all the major software, so I'm currently enjoying Firefox 2, Gaim 2, and all the other little package improvements. Since I've just gotten done customizing my new install, I thought I'd share a few of the changes I made:

I installed gaim-guifications, a package that lets Gaim pop up notification windows whenever I have an incoming message (much like Google Talk, Outlook, and other programs do in Windows). After installing the package ("gaim-guifications"), I had to enable it in the "plugins" menu of Gaim.
I installed my usual assortment of FireFox extensions, including Adblock Plus (which blocks ads), Adblock Filterset.G updater (which automatically updates Adblock's list of ads to block), Flashblock (which automatically blocks all flash applications from starting, preventing many websites from being annoying), Tab Mix Plus (which, among other things, allows you to force all new windows to open in new tabs), and Video Downloader (whose purpose should be fairly intuitive).

I also configured FireFox so that it would allow smaller tabs, meaning that I won't have to scroll left and right to see all my tabs if I open too many. To do this I went to "about:config" in the browser window and then edited the "browser.tabs.tabMinWidth" value to be 20 (the default was 100; installing the Tab Mix Plus extension meant I had to change the "extensions.tabmix.minWidth" value as well).

Installed cups-pdf, a package that creates a PDF printer (so I can convert anything I want into a PDF simply by printing it). I followed the instructions here, but essentially all you have to do is install the package "cups-pdf" and then add a new printer (selecting the PDF printer, and then choosing "generic color postscript" as the options). All created PDFs go into the "PDF" directory of your home directory; sym-link this to wherever you want them to go.
Installed my image resizing script; this required me to install ImageMagick (via the "imagemagick" package), but otherwise was simple.

If you want to learn more about Ubuntu, head over to Ubuntu.com, or go look at my illustrated tour of Ubuntu (which was based on 6.06, but everything looks virtually identical in the newest version). I've enjoyed using Ubuntu for the past year; it's been my default home operating system for the past year, and I plan on using it for much of my work starting this fall².

¹ The only problem I've run into so far was that Ubuntu set my maximum resolution to be 1024x768. To fix this I had to manually edit my X configuration file ("gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf") and add the option to use a 1280x1024 resolution (by adding that resolution in the "screen" section of the file, next to all the other resolutions listed).
² In fact, I just reduced the size of my Windows partition so that I'd have more space for files in Ubuntu.

In the news

2007-06-07T03:50:00.000-07:00

Looks like I was right; CNN has finally decided that 100% fruit juice won't make your kids fat after all.

Carbon dating of chicken remains in South America has provided evidence that Polynesians sailed to the Americas at least a hundred years before the Spanish did. Chickens are not native to the Americas, yet the chicken remains date to AD 1321 to 1407.

And, don't expect widespread Mad Cow testing to occur anytime soon in the US; the Bush administration is fighting to prevent a company from testing all their cows for the disease:

The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease .

The Agriculture Department tests less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. But Kansas-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows.

Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive test, too.

The Agriculture Department regulates the test and argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry.

A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. U.S. District Judge James Robertson noted that Creekstone sought to use the same test the government relies on and said the government didn't have the authority to restrict it.

The ruling was to take effect June 1, but the Agriculture Department said Tuesday it would appeal -- effectively delaying the testing until the court challenge plays out.

Fungi that live off radiation

2007-06-06T17:30:00.000-07:00

Some of you may have already read this on BoingBoing or /., but if you haven't, here's the big news: there is now evidence that fungi may be able to obtain metabolic energy from ionizing radiation. By ionizing radiation I don't mean that stuff that we see as light, and that plants use to obtian energy through photosynthesis; I mean nuclear radiation. As in, the stuff that kills you (e.g., what Caesium 137 emits). This is cool.

The study (Dadachova et al. 2007) was published in PLoS One, meaning that it's completely open access. So, while I'll summarize a few of the biological details here, if you want all the nitty gritty, head over there and read away.

The researchers started their search by noticing that fungi growing in radiation-intense environments (e.g., around the Chernobyl reactor) tended to have extremely high levels of melanin in their cells (yes, the same type of pigment that humans have in their skin). While this melanin has been hypothesized to function in a protective role (by absorbing radiation and dealing with the free radicals that are produced), the researchers wondered if the fungi might be able to use melanin, and the high-energy electrons it produces, for more than just protection.

To start, Dadachova et al. did a number of biochemical experiments: they showed that the fungal species they were working with (Cryptococcocus neoformans, Cladosporium sphaerospermum, and Wangiella dermatitidis) expressed melanin, analyzed the fungal melanin via HPLC and ESR, and determined that melanin exposed to radiation could speed up other oxidation reduction reactions (i.e, that radiation could affect the metabolic reactions of the cell). To show that melanin could affect oxidation reduction reactions, Dadachova et al. isolated melanin from fungal cells, mixed it with NADH and ferricyanide, and then showed that the rate of the NADH\ferricyanide oxidation reduction reaction increased when the solution was exposed to radiation. While Dadachova et al. state that the mechanism by which radiation energy is absorbed by melanin and transfered to biochemical reactions is unknown, based on their work it sounds like what might be going on is that melanin is eventually reducing NAD to NADH. This would be elegantly simple metabolically, as one of the primary products of the Krebs cycle (i.e., the cycle in fungi that metabolizes sugar) is NADH; NADH from the Krebs cycle is then used to power the electron transport chain, which ends up producing ATP. So, if melanin was reducing NAD to NADH using energy from radiation, it would be extremely simple to turn that NADH into usable ATP¹.

Dadachova et al. were able to obtain a mutant strain of C. neoformans [Lac(-)] that was unable to produce melanin. Thus, to test the hypothesis that melanin is the pigment that absorbs radiation, and that this radiation absorption provides useful energy, Dadachova et al. grew both melanin-producing and non-melanin-producing C. neoformans in either irradiated or non-irradiated conditions². The results are below:

Growth of normal C. neoformans (left) or non-melanin-producing C. neoformans (right) in either irradiated or non-irradiated conditions. Modified from figure 6 of Dadachova et al. (2007).
This is exactly what we'd expect to see if melanin was providing energy for growth: the melanin-producing fungi grew faster when exposed to radiation (the red bar in the left graph), but when the fungi were unable to produce melanin, there was not much of a difference between the irradiated and non-irradiated fungal growth (right graph).

Dadachova et al. were able to do essentially the same experiment with another species of fungus, W. dermatitidis, which they were also able to obtain a non-melanin-producing mutant of. Again, the results show that the fungi grew better when exposed to radiation:

Growth of normal W. dermatitidis (left) or non-melanin-producing W. dermatitidis (right) in either irradiated or non-irradiated conditions. Modified from figure 8 of Dadachova et al. (2007).
One thing to note here is that radiation does not appear to be required for these fungi to live; the mutant strains that don't produce melanin (and thus presumably cannot use this energy-gathering pathway) still grew, and the fungi that did produce melanin were able to grow even in the absence of extra radiation. Thus, this mechanism is not directly analogous to plant photosynthesis (as photosynthesis is typically the sole mechanism by which plants obtain energy, while radiation is not the sole energy source for these fungi).

When we think of organisms growing based on electromagnetic radiation, we think of plants, which get energy from light and carbon from carbon dioxide. Plants use the energy they get from light to take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and assemble it into sugars (which nicely store the energy they've captured from light in a chemical form). Plants are therefore known as photoautotrophs (photo: getting energy from light; autotroph: obtaining carbon from an inorganic source, such as carbon dioxide). Animals, along with fungi and many other non-photosynthesizers, typically get their energy from organic molecules (i.e, sugar, fat, protein), and their carbon from those same organic molecules. Thus, animals and fungi are known as chemoheterotrophs.

A question with these radiation-using fungi follows: are these fungi fixing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, like plants, or are they getting carbon from organic molecules, like most other fungi do? In other words, are these fungi heterotrophs (like most other fungi) or autotrophs (like plants)? To partially test this, the researchers added acetate (an organic form of carbon) to the fungal growth medium, and labeled that acetate with carbon-14. They then exposed both the normal fungi and the non-melanin-producing fungi to radiation, and observed that the normal fungi incorporated significantly more carbon-14-labeled acetate into their cells when they were exposed to radiation. Since the fungi were absorbing the acetate at higher rates when exposed to radiation, it seems as though the fungi are still using heterotrophic mechanisms of carbon uptake (i.e., they're not autotrophs, though note that they didn't directly test for absorption of carbon dioxide).

So, as Dadachova et al. say in their discussion,

[W]e cautiously suggest that the ability of melanin to capture electromagnetic radiation combined with its remarkable oxidation-reduction properties may confer upon melanotic organisms the ability to harness radiation for metabolic energy. The enhanced growth of melanotic fungi in conditions of radiation fluxes suggests the need for additional investigation to ascertain the mechanism for this effect.

Looks like it's time to go add another line to that "sources of energy for growth" slide in my lecture.

¹ Note that this is pure speculation on my part, and I'm most certainly not a biochemist.
² For the irradiated growth conditions, Dadachova et al. exposed the fungi "to a radiation field of 0.05 mGy/hr created by ¹⁸⁸Re/¹⁸⁸W isotope generator".

Dadachova E., RA Bryan, X Huang, T Moadel, AD Schweitzer, P Aisen, JD Nosanchuk, and A Casadevall. 2007. Ionizing Radiation Changes the Electronic Properties of Melanin and Enhances the Growth of Melanized Fungi. PLoS ONE 2(5): e457. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000457. Full-text.

Country-style pork ribs with a spice rub

2007-06-04T01:45:00.000-07:00

Regular readers will note that, as a general rule, my SO and I rarely cook large hunks of meat for meals. Our primary exceptions to this are pieces of good fish, roasted whole poultry, and country-style pork ribs. Country-style pork ribs are thick cuts of meat (2"x2"x8" or so) that are marbled with extensive amounts of fat (see pictures on Google). Their high fat content makes them an excellent choice for long, slow cooking; after a few hours in the oven they're exceptionally moist and falling-off-the-bone tender.

For a long time we made Joy of Cooking's country-style pork rib recipe, which calls for cooking the ribs in a mixture of barbecue sauce and orange juice for three hours. While they're excellent, they end up very sweet, and so a few months ago my SO and I started hunting for a less sweet (and more spicy) recipe for pork ribs. We found this recipe for a dry spice rub, which is a mix of hot (cayenne, mustard, and black pepper) and flavorful (paprika, cumin, and garlic) spices. We quickly fell in love with these ribs, and since then we've made them for multiple folks (including my mom), and everyone who has tasted them has raved about them (translation: they're mom-approved!). Since this is our new standard method of cooking country-style pork ribs, they're this week's end-of-the-week recipe blogging post.

Note: this recipe must be started the night before you want to eat it, and then takes three hours to cook on the day it's made, so plan ahead. That said, this is an extremely easy recipe to make: it probably takes less than 20 minutes total preparation time across both days, and needs absolutely no tending once it's been put in the oven.

5 pounds country-style pork ribs, rinsed and patted dry
5 garlic cloves, peeled and finely minced or pressed with a garlic press
1/4 cup paprika
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons black pepper
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

The day before you eat the ribs:
1. Mix the spices together in a bowl.
2. Rub the spices and minced garlic over the meat, attempting to cover all the sides. We do this after we've lined up the ribs in a 9x13" glass baking dish, but you could do it before. Your hands will get covered in spices; they wash off easily.
3. Arrange the ribs in a baking dish, tightly cover with foil, and refrigerate overnight.

The day you eat the ribs:
0. Preheat your oven to 325F.
1. Remove the pan from the fridge and pour in 1/2 cup water.
2. Re-cover the pan with foil, and bake for 2 1/2 hours at 325F.
3. Remove the ribs from the oven and let cool for ~10 minutes before serving.

Notes:

Normally we eat these right out of the oven, but you can also briefly cook the ribs on a barbecue after removing them from the oven. We tried this last week, and it crisps the fat still left on the meat, making the fat extremely tasty (normally we simply remove the fat from the meat as we eat it).

There will probably be a lot of fat in the pan after the ribs are baked; this is perfectly normal. What you may not notice, however, is that hidden underneath all that fat is a layer of meat drippings and spices. This juicy goodness can be turned into a sauce by pouring all the liquid contents of the pan into a fat separator (a glass or clear measuring cup would also work), letting it sit for a minute so that the fat separates out, removing the fat¹, and then putting the remaining liquid into a small pot or saucepan. Simmer the drippings for a few minutes to slightly thicken them, and then serve alongside the meat as a dipping sauce. Creating this sauce is entirely optional; the ribs are delicious without it.

Country-style pork ribs can come either boneless or bone-in; it really doesn't matter which you get, as the meat falls off the bone after cooking anyway.

¹ If you're using a glass or clear measuring cup, you should be able to simply spoon off most of the fat.

This is based on a recipe from desurfer at ratebeer.com.

Desurfer. "Hot & Spicy Country-Style Ribs" http://www.ratebeer.com/Recipe.asp?RecipeID=102. Accessed sometime in 2007.

[Update: Commenter Mikey-Mike reports that Desurfer likely got this recipe from Steven Raichlen's book "The Barbeque Bible."]

It is done!

2007-05-30T11:07:00.000-07:00

My grades are all officially turned in, and thus the semester is finally over. This was easily one of the busiest (and worst) semesters that I've had to date (see here, here, and here for a glimpse why), and thus I'm ecstatic that it's over. It seems appropriate that I "celebrated" by falling asleep on the couch immediately after dinner last night. I'm so exciting.

While we don't have any major travel plans set yet (though a possible trip is in the works), my SO and I are both looking forward to spending time on our house. Our long-stalled bathroom and kitchen remodeling is first up on our list, though we have a number of other household projects we want to get through as well¹. I'll also be taking a guitar course, and will finally have time to start blogging more regularly (heck, just posting all the drafts I wrote up during the semester will be a big project).

Ahhhh, summer.

¹ So, any visitors to the Rhosgobel estate this summer are thus forewarned that they will be staying at a house under construction (and that construction work may be occuring during their visit).

End-of-the-semester quizzes

2007-05-26T10:15:00.000-07:00

Artist or ape?

Pollock or birds?

(via Semantic Compositions, who linked to the "Faulkner or machine translation" quiz)

Not quite there yet

2007-05-26T09:50:00.000-07:00

Those familiar with my schedule know that my semester ended last week. However, even though I got to dress up in snazzy robes and look all official in the graduation ceremony, I'm still not done yet. I've got a huge stack of papers to grade, some letters of recommendation to write, and a few plagiarism reports to file¹.

I won't let all that stop me from enjoying the weekend though; I can finally taste the sweet elixir of summer.

¹ Will my students ever learn that I don't want to catch them plagiarizing? It means I have to spend at least 2-3 hours per case documenting the plagiarism, confronting them, and then writing a formal report to our dean. It'd save everyone a lot of time if they just cited sources properly; heck, I might even be done with grading if it wasn't for the plagiarism cases I'm currently dealing with.

Good thing I'm revising my lab manual this summer

2007-05-23T08:15:00.000-07:00

PZ Myers has just posted a detailed writeup of some new evo-devo work looking at the evolutionary relationship between ascidians (sea squirts), cephalochordates (Amphioxus), and vertebrates. Sea squirts and cephalochordates always confuse my students, as they're in the same phylum as us (Chordata), yet they're not vertebrates (i.e., they don't have a skull or backbone). Sea squirts are particularly cool, as they're sessile filter feeders, and thus look nothing like vertebrates.

PZ reports that the evolutionary relationship of these three groups is being revised: those wacky sea squirts are now thought to be evolutionarily closer to us than cephalochordates are. PZ does more than just say that, though: he also goes into lots detail about the developmental biology of ascidians¹. It's all good, so go read the post already.

¹ Be sure to look for the figure showing that some ascidians develop adult characteristics well before they metamorphose!

It's not being cheap, it's being frugal

2007-05-23T08:05:00.000-07:00

The 75th Festival of Frugality has been posted over at Get Rich Slowly. I'd say more, but do you realize how much this is costing me?

Video game sheet music

2007-05-23T00:28:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit chagrined to admit it, but one of the types of music I'm looking forward to learning to play on the guitar are the themes from various video games. In fact, over spring break I partially learned to read sheet music by listening to the music from various video games (e.g., Metroid) while reading along with the sheet music for those songs. Hey, you gotta start somewhere.

I've ended up finding a lot of sites that have video game sheet music or guitar tabs on them, and thought I'd list them here¹:

NobuoUematsu.com - Sheet music (in gif format) of music by (you guessed it), Nobuo Uematsu
Nintendo on Piano - Sheet music (in PDF format) for Castlevania, Metroid, Super Mario Brothers, and others
RabiteMan's Game Music - Sheet music (in .gif format) for Final Fantasy IV and VI, Chrono Trigger, and others.
Video Game Sheet Music - Sheet music (in pdf or NWC format) for Megaman, Super Mario Brothers, and others.
Game music themes.com - Sheet music (in pdf format) for many games, sorted by console type.
Shivasar’s RPG Sheet Music - Sheet music (typically in .gif format) for a number of RPGs, including lots for Chrono Trigger and many of the Final Fantasy series.
Riulyn's RPG Sheet Music Shrine - Sheet music (typically in .pdf format) for lots of RPGs, including Chrono Cross, lots of Final Fantasy's, and others.
NinSheetMusic - Sheet music (in .MUS format) from various Nintendo games, including the Mario Brothers games, Metroid, Pokemon, Castlevania, and others.
Ichigo's Sheet Music - Sheet music (in a variety of formats, including PDF, gif, and MUS) for a whole bunch of games (titles list here)
Piano Themes - Sheet music (in PDF format) for a huge list of games
Video Game Jam - Guitar tabs (as .txt files) for a lot of games, sorted by console type.
Nintendo Tabs - Guitar tabs (as .txt files) for a number of Nintendo games, again sorted by console.

In addition to working through my guitar books, I'm currently working on the first-piano left-hand portion of Compression of Time from Final Fantasy VIII (music on this page, though I've shifted it up an octave to be able to play it with notes I currently know). It has a range of four notes, but that's about as much as I can handle for now.

It's nice to have something to distract me from the mountains of papers that are awaiting grading.

¹ (VGmusic.com's list of links helped quite a lot)

Saving money by cooking at home and shopping smartly

2007-05-20T19:10:00.000-07:00

A while ago on a field trip, a co-worker and I were talking about cooking, and how expensive most frozen veggie burgers were. After I mentioned that my SO and I cook virtually all of our meals at home, including making homemade veggie burgers, this colleague asked (genuinely), "But do you actually save money by cooking at home?"

I was flabbergasted. Not saving money by cooking at home? One of the primary reasons we cook at home is because we save lots of money (though another nice benefit is that we also get to eat tasty food cooked to our own preferences). So, after we were finished being flabbergasted, we came up with a list of suggestions for those who would like to save money on food. We've broken the suggestions into two broad categories: things you can do while shopping and things you can do at home to save money.

Saving money by shopping smartly

Shop the loss leaders. Most grocery stores try to entice customers into their stores by selling a few items at a loss, while hoping to make the money up on other items the customers buy. Preferentially shop for loss leaders, and ignore everything else unless you really need it; this is probably the single most important thing you can do to save money on food. Looking at grocery store fliers before going shopping can help you figure out what the various stores' current loss leaders are, helping you plan your upcoming meals.
Stock up on things you know you'll use. This combines well with shopping the loss leaders, as stocking up on items when they're cheap allows you to spend a lot less money overall. My SO and I drink 100% fruit juice daily; when not on sale it's typically fairly expensive ($1.50 per 1.5 quarts, at least), but we almost never buy it at that price. Instead, we wait for juice to go on sale, and then buy dozens of containers of it. The same goes for almost everything else we regularly use (canned tomatoes, flour, sugar, bacon, frozen vegetables, etc.). In addition to just saving money, stocking up like this allows you to be more flexible with your cooking, since you always have good amounts of your basics on hand (e.g., we always have lots of onions, garlic, and cans of whole tomatoes on hand, so we can whip up a basic pasta sauce whenever we want).
Learn (or notice) when things are in season. This often goes hand in hand with shopping for loss leaders as well (since in-season produce is often sold as a loss leader), but besides being cheaper, produce is often also better-tasting when bought in-season. Holiday seasons often bring cheap prices on traditional holiday foods; for instance, if you're in the US and want to roast a whole turkey, be sure it's around Thanksgiving (or buy an extra one at Thanksgiving and pop it in the freezer to plan ahead).
Consider frozen vegetables and fruit. Frozen vegetables can be stored for months (allowing you to stock up on loss leaders), and are often better-tasting than out-of-season "fresh" produce. We usually have frozen corn, green beans, peas, and raspberries on hand, which we can then use in a variety of recipes without planning. Note, however, that frozen vegetables and fruit aren't ideal for everything, so don't just blindly use them; things like frozen broccoli or cauliflower will never be as crisp as their fresh equivalents.
Shop by price per unit mass or volume. This almost goes without saying, but when you buy something, look at how much it costs per unit mass or volume, and compare it to other, similar products. Bulk purchases are often well worth it when considered in this light. When looking at price, be sure to give store brands (generics) a try: they're often much cheaper than the brand name product, and many times taste just as good. Generics are especially good when it comes to raw ingredients (e.g., flour, sugar, baking powder, tomatoes, dry beans), but they're at least worth trying for everything you buy. Also, we find that coupons are rarely worth it, as most coupons are for brand-name items, and typically only bring the price of the brand-name down to something close to the generic equivalent. Additionally, since coupons are often for pre-prepared foods, you can almost always make the same food for less by cooking it from scratch.
Consider making some of the things you buy pre-made by hand. My SO and I make almost everything from scratch; part of this is because we enjoy cooking from scratch, but it's also because raw ingredients are almost always cheaper than pre-made components. For example, pasta sauces, cookies, biscuits, pancakes, and salad dressings are all cheap and easy to make at home, yet expensive to buy pre-made. About the only foods we buy pre-made are sausages, baked beans, jams and jellies, dry pasta, and breakfast cereals. If you don't know how to make something by hand, just look it up in your cookbook; you'll likely be surprised at how relatively easy it is (unless it's ravioli).
Get a rewards credit card and use the supermarkets' information-gathering ("rewards") cards. My SO has a credit card that gives 2% cash back on purchases made at grocery stores; it's like always shopping with a 2% off coupon. The supermarkets' information-gathering cards are always worth it; if you forget yours for a day, sign up for a new one. However, don't be fooled by how much you "saved" with the card, since you probably wouldn't have bought the items if they weren't on sale.
Comparison shop between different grocery stores, and learn which stores have the items you want cheap. For instance, in our area Trader Joe's has cheap heavy cream, whole milk yogurt, free-range chicken eggs, artisan bread, and frozen berries; our local health food store has cheap nuts, grains, and produce; our local supermarket has cheap flour, sugar, and paper goods; and our local Japanese market has cheap rice, soy sauce, and other Asian ingredients. For goodness's sake, don't spend hours and hours comparing the prices at different stores, but every now and then go to a different store and see what their prices are like.

Saving money on food at home

Invest in a set of good leftover containers, and use them. Cooking in bulk allows you to get multiple meals from a single cooking event, making cooking more efficient (saving both time and money). Many foods freeze very well, allowing you to keep them for months and then pop them in the microwave when you don't feel like cooking. High-moisture foods (e.g., soups, stews, curries, pasta sauces) tend to keep the best, and can even taste better after the first day in the fridge. Despite the claims of many of my relatives who say that "leftovers never taste the same," I've never met a food that I wouldn't eat as leftovers. Note that old food containers (e.g., sour cream containers, yogurt containers, glass jars) often make good leftover containers (though they can melt in the microwave).
Learn how long ingredients last. Many fresh vegetables go bad relatively quickly (though some, like potatoes, carrots, and turnips, can be stored for weeks), but many other foods can be stored for months or years, so if you know you're going to use them, stock up on them when they're loss leaders. Sugar lasts nearly forever, canned vegetables last for years, and most frozen items will last at least 6 months. But since most things do eventually go bad, don't buy so much that you'll be throwing away lots in a few weeks or months. Some waste is fine (and is a common byproduct of shopping loss leaders and stocking up), but don't go overboard.
Don't plan all your meals in advance. Most shopping gurus state that to save money you need to shop with a list; this is nonsense, primarily because it prevents you from shopping loss leaders. It is, however, a good idea to save grocery store fliers, hunt through them for good loss leaders, and then put those on your list. Once you've become familiar with the ingredients called for in your favorite recipes, when you get to the store (and/or when you look over the store's sales flier) you can determine what ingredients are cheap, and thus determine what would make the most sense to cook. When we go shopping we'll often have very vague lists, such as "veggies, fruit (apples?), baking soda, juice, ...", which allows us to survey the items available at the store and select the optimal combination of freshness, variety, and price.
Learn (and be willing to research) new recipes for a variety of ingredients. When shopping for loss leaders you'll probably find that foods you're not used to cooking with are on sale, and thus worth buying (maybe turnips, Brussels sprouts, or some odd cut of pork will be insanely cheap). So, by knowing a lot of recipes, you'll be able to figure out something tasty to make with the cheap food you buy. Or, if you don't know a lot of recipes, be willing to learn them - go ahead and buy four pounds of turnips, and then when you get home look online (or in a good cookbook, see below) to figure out what to do with them. As a side benefit, this will increase the variety of foods you eat, thus reducing your culinary boredom and improving your nutritional balance. Even if my SO and I buy a 12-pound holiday ham, that might be the only time we buy ham that year, and even then we cook it up in five different ways, so we never get bored of it.
Examine your meat expenses. Meat (beef, pork, chicken, fish, shellfish, etc.) is often expensive. To cut your meat expenses, we'd suggest learning how to cook cheaper cuts of meat (e.g., chicken legs work just as well as chicken breasts in most recipes), avoiding recipes that call for expensive meat (e.g., scallops, prime cuts of beef) except as a special treat, stocking up on meat when it's a loss leader, and/or reducing your overall meat consumption. One of the easiest ways to reduce your meat consumption is to learn to cook non-Western cuisines: many of these dishes have no meat in them at all (e.g., Indian dals, pilafs, and yogurt salads), and others (e.g., curries and stir-fries) use meat as just one ingredient among many. As a side note, it's easy to get enough protein without eating much (or any) meat, as long as you eat a varied diet¹. Many non-meat foods have a decent amount of protein in them; for example, a cup of milk has 11 grams of protein, a cup of Cheerios has 3, a slice of whole-wheat bread has 4, two tablespoons of peanut butter have 8, one ounce of cheese has 7, a large egg has 6, and a cup of broccoli has 3 (for comparison, an ounce of raw chicken or salmon has 6 grams of protein; data for everything but the milk from here; milk data from a gallon of 1% milk in the fridge).
Invest in a good, basic cookbook. I don't know why I'm bothering to write that header in the generic - there's really only one good, basic cookbook you need: Joy of Cooking. It's a stellar cookbook that includes recipes for just about everything (except drinks), and also includes an amazing amount of background information on how to do virtually everything in the kitchen from scratch. If you don't have Joy in your life, go get it.
Realize that many recipes are flexible. Don't treat recipes as though they are cast in stone. If your recipe calls for red bell peppers, and when you get to the store you find that they're $5 each, consider alternatives (would green bell peppers work? What about broccoli or some other vegetable?). While the end recipe will not be exactly the same as the one in the cookbook, it can often taste just as good. Note, however, that this does require some cooking finesse, as ingredients that serve a direct functional purpose in a recipe cannot be substituted out (e.g., you can't substitute broccoli for peppers in a stuffed pepper recipe, and can't substitute corn starch for flour in a bread recipe). So, if you're a beginner, don't worry too much about this, and instead just focus on finding recipes that use the ingredients you have.
Consider growing your own produce. While this is certainly not something everyone can do, consider growing your own fruits and vegetables at home. Things like herbs, tomatoes, berries, squash, and tree fruits (e.g., lemons, avocados, peaches) can be much cheaper and tastier when grown at home. Note, however, that you'll need to research what grows well in your area without much tending.

Back in the late 90's when I was in graduate school, my SO and I applied all the tips above to the extreme, and ate out rarely. At that time we spent an average of $178 a month on groceries for the two of us ($89 per person per month; data collected between October 1998 and January 2000). In the past few years, we have relaxed our constraints on buying everything as cheaply as possible (for example, we buy more gourmet cheeses, artisan breads, and high-quality juices), and over the past six months we've spent an average of $250 a month on groceries for the two of us (including purchases from specialty food stores such as Penzeys Spices and Upton Tea, but not including meals out). If you want to see what kind of food we cook on this budget, see our recipe archive.

[Update November 2007: One common meme we've seen on the "I can't shop cheaply" topic is the claim that if you shop cheaply, then you can't buy fresh produce; this is patently false. To provide just one example of how produce can be bought cheaply, on a recent shopping trip to our local produce market we bought 62.25 pounds of produce (including red bell peppers, yellow onions, sweet onions, zucchini, butternut squash, apples, garlic, carrots, potatoes, yams, brussels sprouts, bananas, lemons, limes, and pears) for $35.67, for a total cost of $0.57/lb. Of course this relies on having a local cheap produce store that discounts in-season produce, and being willing to buy only the items on sale, but it's an example of what's possible.]

¹ The Harvard School of Public Health suggests eating 9g of protein per 20 pounds of body mass. Thus, the average weight US female (165lbs) should eat 74 grams of protein a day, while the average weight US male (190lbs) should eat 85 grams a day (weight data from here).

Clear!

2007-05-18T12:30:00.000-07:00

My mom just got the news a little while ago: where there was a lot of atypical ductal (and lobal) hyperplasia in the excised tissue, there was no cancer. This is about as good as we could have hoped for; there's still a high risk of cancer in the future, but it's a relief to know that there is none present now.

This afternoon we're going to get her an herb and flower garden going, and tonight we'll celebrate with slow-roasted pork ribs and collard greens, followed by an introduction to German-style board games.

Neuros OSD: An open source digital video recorder

2007-05-17T21:57:00.000-07:00

BoingBoing just reviewed the Neuros OSD, a digital video recorder that's built entirely from open-source software.

The OSD can record from any analog video source, from a TiVo to a satellite box to a DVD player to a games console. It records to any removable media you plug into it, such as a USB thumb-drive or a hard-drive -- so you can record your favorite DVDs, your best video-games, or your TV shows straight to drive. Needless to say, it'll play back from all this media as well.
The OSD is networkable, and can schedule programming in advance like a TiVo. It can play back all the standard download formats, including Xvid and Divx.
Best of all, the OSD is open: anyone can hack its firmware and add features to it.

You can learn even more at Neruos's website.

Now this is a DVR that I just might buy.

So far so good

2007-05-16T23:55:00.000-07:00

I'm pleased to report that all has gone well so far here in Colorado. My mom's surgery went about as smoothly as it could, and she was walking around and eating (and relatively pain free) within a few hours of the operation¹. We won't know the tissue test results until Friday at the earliest, but at least so far everything's gone about as well as we could have hoped for.

Unfortunately, however, things are not going quite so well back in California. My SO came home tonight (after a very long day of work) to find that our house was full of hundreds of buzzing, potentially stinging, uninvited arthropod guests. After some investigation (and careful shooing), my SO determined that we have a swarm (or other congregation) of bees in our chimney. As a friend in Oregon said when I told him about this: "So THAT'S where they've all gone!"

Anyone need some bees?

¹ In fact, my mom was feeling good enough today to head around town with me to help buy supplies for all the projects she wants me to do while I'm here. I should emphasize that I'm not complaining: many of those projects entail cooking, which I'm more than happy to do (and which I benefit from as much as she).

An unexpected trip

2007-05-13T12:15:00.000-07:00

About two and a half weeks ago my mom had a breast needle biopsy to check an area that had changed suspiciously in two subsequent mammograms. The biopsy came back with a diagnosis of an "atypical ductal hyperplasia."

After talking with our resident pathophysiologist (it's convenient working at a college with a good human anatomy and physiology group), I've learned that atypical ductal hyperplasias fall into a category known as fibrocystic changes, meaning changes in the breast that produce lumps, yet are not full-blown cancerous growths. Some fibrocystic changes are associated with an increased risk of cancer (they're pre-cancerous, if you will), while others aren't. Unfortunately, it looks like atypical hyperplasias are associated with an increased risk of breast cancer in the future, and, based on what my mom has been told, sometimes atypical hyperplasias are even found around cancerous tissue.

My mom had a consultation with a surgeon this past Thursday, and he scheduled her for a full biopsy (essentially a lumpectomy) Tuesday. The quick timeline took us both by surprise, though it seems like a good idea.

My mom lives alone near Denver, and thus I'm going to be flying there on Monday to be with her during and after the procedure. While the operation sounds like it should be routine, I'm planning on staying the entire week just in case (and so I can be there when the tissue test results come in). Being that we've only got two weeks left in the semester, this is not an ideal time to be away from my classes (in fact, it's a crazy time to take a week off). However, I suspect my students can somehow manage without me¹.

From stats that my mom was given, no evidence of cancer is found about 85% of the time atypical hyperplasias are excised. Funny how statistics are not nearly as comforting as one wants them to be.

¹ Though I will be pre-recording my lecture and distributing it online, so my students can still get their daily dose of Prof. Radagast, if they so desire.

A sign of the moral decay of America's youth

2007-05-10T08:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I gave an exam to my majors biology course, on which I had a (I thought) relatively simple question asking students to design an experiment to test whether a certain species of animals was monogamous or not.

More than ten students called me over during the exam to ask what the word monogamous meant.

Wouldn't the conservative pundits have a field day?

Flower pictures!

2007-05-06T12:15:00.000-07:00

While this time of year is filled with stress, it's nice to be able to spend some time working in the yard seeing things like this:

A canna and an English rose.
Of course, if one was to look at my past garden pictures, one might think that I only take pictures of roses. To help counter that, here's what our calla lillies look like right now:

These die back to their rhizomes every fall, and I love seeing them pop out of the soil in the spring.

A tale of two music stores

2007-05-06T00:21:00.000-07:00

Or: how to get your customer to buy from the competition in five easy steps.

[Warning: A long, boring post about troubles purchasing a guitar follows. If you're interested in problems with new Washburn D10SBs, or a comparison of Musician's Friend's and SameDayMusic.com's customer service, read on. If not, don't.]

Regular readers will remember that back in March I decided to start learning to play the guitar. The first step was to obtain a guitar, which I attempted to do by placing an order for a Washburn D10SB from Musician's Friend back in late March. It took me until yesterday to actually finally have a working guitar; in this post I'll recount this tale of woe, and review the customer service of both companies I dealt with.

Musician's Friend shipped my package the day after I placed the order, and it arrived via UPS ground in the usual time. The order consisted of my guitar (which came in a hard case), another hard case I ordered for a friend, and some other miscellaneous items (a guitar stand, extra strings, and some picks). Unfortunately, Musician's Friend had packed everything into one (giant) box, and had put exactly two sheets of paper into the box as padding (my guitar's hardcase wasn't even in a plastic bag). As one might expect, the UPS elephants had had a blast with the package, and thus virtually everything in the order was damaged. Even the box of picks had been broken open during shipment, and thanks to a minimal taping job of the box's seams, most of the picks had fallen out during transport. Most distressing was that the two cases had rubbed against each other, leaving large gouges on both.

Musician's Friend was quick to respond to all of my e-mails, but unfortunately their responses were often uninformative. For instance, the first e-mail they sent said that I should ship everything that was damaged back to them, and that they could either exchange everything for new items or give me a full refund. I still wanted a guitar, so I said that I wanted to do an exchange. Only later did I find out that by "exchange" they meant "send us back your guitar and four days after we receive it we'll place a new order for you," while by "refund" they meant "we can place an order for a replacement guitar immediately for you."

I packed the guitar up and sent it back the next day; it took the usual time to get back, and then a few days later I got a notice that they'd placed a new order (X') for me for the replacement items. The next day I got this:

Dear Radagast:

Thanks again for your recent order #X'. The items which were in stock have been shipped, and we've sent your package tracking information via a previous email.

As you may recall from the Item Status on our website or from speaking with us when you placed your order, the item(s) listed below are not in stock. Our orders for this gear have been expedited through the manufacturer, and we are still expecting to ship your products within the timeframe originally quoted. If we anticipate an extended delay, we will contact you again to verify any changes you may wish to make.

As you might guess, at no point before this did Musician's Friend ever mention that they were out of stock. In fact, I'm fairly certain that they had a D10SB in stock when I initially shipped back my damaged guitar to them. At the end of the e-mail they informed me that the soonest they'd ship the guitar was now May 11.

I was furious. It didn't help matters that Musician's Friend had never once apologized for anything; the words "apologize" and "sorry" are completely lacking from any of the numerous e-mails they sent me. While the other replacement items did ship the next day, they arrived with the same mediocre packaging (no bubble wrap, and all the small items were put loose into the same box as a guitar case, which led to the new pick package breaking open and spewing its contents all through the box).

After doing some shopping around, I found SameDayMusic.com, another online music store that seemed to be fairly large, had a good return policy posted, and had the D10SB in stock, albeit for a higher price. SameDayMusic had a price match policy on their website, and within a day of finding their site I had a URL available to purchase an in-stock D10SB for $5 less than I had paid at Musician's Friend. I placed an order with SameDayMusic, and took great pleasure in cancelling my Musician's Friend order (though I only later found out that the customer service representative "incorrectly" cancelled my order the first time, and thus it took me multiple e-mails and more than a week before the money was refunded to my credit card).

SameDayMusic lived up to their name and shipped the guitar out the same day I ordered it. It arrived the usual time later, and I was ecstatic to find that they actually knew what bubble wrap was¹. Unfortunately, the guitar case arrived missing one of its feet, and the guitar had a few small scratches on the side. The case was packaged in what appeared to be the manufacturer's bag, and there wasn't a foot in sight, so it seems likely that the foot was broken before shipping.

SameDayMusic's response to my e-mail was refreshingly thorough and kind. The very first sentence of their e-mail was apologetic (including "apologize" prominently), and they clearly explained all of the options for either exchanging or returning the guitar. Unlike Musician's Friend, they made it clear that they would ship out a replacement item the very same day, even saying that they'd only charge my card if they didn't get the return item within a few weeks.

SameDayMusic did indeed ship out a replacement guitar the very same day, and they did one better: they shipped it out second-day air (Musician's Friend shipped out their replacement items standard ground). This replacement (the third guitar and case I was to receive) arrived two business days later, and again was packaged with bubble wrap.

The case was in great shape this time, but the guitar had a dent on the front. The guitar and case both appeared to be packaged in the manufacturer's bag, and there was nothing in the case that could have caused the damage, so this damage again appeared to have happened before shipping. I informed SameDayMusic of the damage, but unfortunately by this time they were out of stock of the D10SB as well, and wouldn't have it in stock until June. To their credit, SameDayMusic apologized profusely, and reported this problem to me in the very first e-mail they sent after I told them of my damaged shipment.

At this point I had two guitars and two cases (as SameDayMusic's return shipping label hadn't arrived yet), but fortunately one of each was in fairly good shape. One case was perfect, and I could live with the scratched guitar (as the scratch wasn't too noticeable, and was only in the finish). I proposed that I'd be OK with keeping the better set of items if I got a small discount; SameDayMusic wrote back the next day saying that they'd be happy to give me a 20% discount for the trouble. That was more than I expected, and thus I'm pleased to say that as of yesterday I finally have a guitar I can keep.

Thanks to their excellent customer service, SameDayMusic has now won a customer for life. Musician's Friend, on the other hand, won't see my money again. It's amazing what an apology, a speedy replacement shipment, and some flexible thinking will do for you.

¹ To clarify, while SameDayMusic's packing was better than Musician's Friend's, it was still sub-optimal. The guitar was packed in its hardcase, which was put in a plastic bag, but then the case was put into a box just barely bigger than it was, with bubble wrap was stuffed into one end of the box to attempt to lock the case into place. I would have preferred it if the entire case had been wrapped in bubble wrap, or if it had been double-boxed.

Yes, I'm still here.

2007-05-05T22:37:00.000-07:00

Sadly, unlike PZ, I've still got three more weeks of classes to go, and they're going to be crazy. I'm miles behind on grading, am leading a committee that will be actively working through the end of the semester, and am being asked to give multiple presentations to campus groups in the next few weeks. Not helping anything is the fact that the past three weekends have all had at least one day (and one weekend had two) taken up with on-campus work or field trips.

I'm exhausted; the next three weeks can't go by fast enough.

Quotes to remember

2007-04-26T09:59:00.000-07:00

Tom Tomorrow has posted a bonus comic over at Huffington Post. Here's a snippet:

Go here to see all 12 panels, and to get a free bonus quote!

Sometimes being a biologist is just cool

2007-04-25T23:15:00.000-07:00

Every semester ~~I rear~~ my lab tech rears dozens of Manduca sexta caterpillars to use in an experiment for one of my classes. The caterpillars aren't harmed during the experiment, and thus they're also a great demonstration of insect life cycles: I buy them as eggs, and then show the students what they look like throughout their life cycle (much like this series of posts I made a while back).

Well, today was pupa display day, and as I was transferring the pupae to a larger cage I noticed that one of them felt different. A few seconds later I noticed that it had a little crack in it. Less than five minutes later I had an adult moth running around on my hands¹.

Even though I've reared these guys for years, this is the first time I've actually watched a moth emerge from its pupal case. The cute little fella did end up excreting all over my hands², but the whole thing was just far too cool to let a little uric acid get in the way of the fun.

I didn't have a camera handy, sadly, so there won't be any pictures.

¹ Note that I'm using the verb "run"; as soon as the moth was out of the pupal case it was able to walk extremely quickly. In fact, the moth wasn't just walking randomly, it was trying to walk as high up as it could; it was probably trying to find a nice high branch to cling to while its wings expanded.
² And shirt. The moths save up all the nitrogenous waste they produce while they're pupae, and then excrete it all shortly after eclosing.

Friday food fun

2007-04-20T00:30:00.000-07:00

Here are two links to keep you amused: Suicide Food and Fast Food: ads vs. reality. The first is a blog that highlights food ads that portray animals cheerfully waiting to be killed, and the second compares advertising photos of fast food with the real food (both via Boing Boing).

New Ubuntu release!

2007-04-19T10:33:00.000-07:00

The newest version of Ubuntu, Fiesty Fawn (Ubuntu 7.04), was released today. The new version promises to be even easier to use, coming comlete with utilities to facilitiate downloads of media codecs, conversion utilties for Windows users, a restricted drivers manager (making installing proprietary drivers easier), and much more. See these two posts if you want more on the new features.

I've been using Ubuntu daily for the past year, and I love it (see my illustrated tour of Ubuntu for more on what Ubuntu looks like). Since I'm now using a version that's almost a year out of date (Dapper Drake, 6.06), I plan on upgrading to Fiesty as soon as I have some spare time¹.

You can order free CDs here, or download the latest version here (and probably eventually get it from here). The CD you order (or download) is a live CD, so you can just pop it in your CD drive, reboot your computer, and give Ubuntu a try without installing anything on your machine.

And, unlike certain other operating systems, this one is completely, 100% free.

¹ Yeah, I know, I'm funny. I haven't even had time to post, much less consider upgrading my operating system. Have I mentioned that I can't wait for summer?

Corals on dry land

2007-04-12T09:08:00.000-07:00

National Geographic has pictures from an island in the South Pacific whose elevation was increased 10 feet by a recent earthquake. This probably won't harm the terrestrial organisms too much, but has wreaked havoc with the sub-tidal organisms, as many of the large sessile ones (e.g., corals) are now poking up out of the water. Poor corals. (Via BoingBoing)

Measure distances in Google Maps

2007-04-11T22:10:00.000-07:00

My SO recently found Gmaps Pedometer, an applet that allows you to precisely measure the distance you walk (or bike, or drive) using Google Maps. It's easy to use (just find your starting position, click "start recording", and then double-click to add waypoints), and allows you to collect some pretty neat data. Especially cool is the ability to plot your own path; for example, if you cut through a park on your way to the store, you can map that out and calculate the distance.

I now know how far I have to walk to check my mail on campus (too far), and exactly how far it is to the grocery store (nice and close!).

(Oddly enough, Jill just linked to this as well, though I only read her post after writing this one.)

Testing for mad cow

2007-04-09T08:30:00.000-07:00

I've written about bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE; mad cow disease) testing in cattle before. As the disease is extremely hard to detect in cattle (see here), and we don't know how easily it is transmitted to humans, it was thus somewhat surprising to learn that a few months ago the USDA decided to drastically reduce the number of cattle being tested for the disease.

Given that people are worried about the disease, one might expect that private beef companies would step in and start voluntarily testing their cattle before selling it (labeling the resulting beef as "mad-cow free" or some such). You've probably noticed that no such products are on the market.

Why? The USDA has threatened to sue any company that tests for mad cow separately from the government program (most notably Creekstone Farms). Just a few days ago this ridiculous prohibition was stopped by a federal judge, and, assuming that the government doesn't appeal the decision, private companies will now be free to test their own cattle for the disease.

Here's an excerpt from the New York Times article that has a bit more background on the specific case:

Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, a meatpacker based in Arkansas City, Kan., wants to test all of its cows for [mad cow] disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. Larger meat companies feared that move because if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they could be forced to do the expensive test, too.
The Agriculture Department currently regulates the test and administers it to less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows. The department threatened Creekstone with prosecution if it tested all its animals.
U.S. District Judge James Robertson ruled that the government does not have the authority to regulate the test. Robertson put his order on hold until the government can appeal. If the government does not appeal by June 1, he said the ruling would take effect.
...

The Agriculture Department argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry. Robertson said he was concerned by that possibility but noted that Creekstone sought to use the same test the government relies on.

Where have I been?

2007-04-09T08:15:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately this semester's heavy workload (I'm in the classroom 7 hours a week more than I was last semester, and am chair of a committee that has a large project to complete by June) is keeping me extremely busy. Many work days recently have been in excess of 12 hours, and it doesn't look like that's going to get better anytime soon. So, while I'm going to try to keep posting regularly, I'd expect quiet periods to occur sporadically from now until the end of the semester (which is about seven weeks away). Sorry.

On a separate note, I've been asked how things are going with my new guitar. Sadly, things aren't going. I ordered a guitar and two hard cases¹ from Musician's Friend two weeks ago, and everything did indeed arrive last week. However, the two cases (one of which had the guitar in it) were shipped in the same box, with no padding to protect them from either the other items in the box or the elephants in the UPS facilities. So, long story short, virtually everything in the shipment was damaged, and thus my guitar is now on its way back to the Musician's Friend warehouse. A new one will hopefully be arriving (with better packaging) in a few weeks.

¹ No, I don't need two cases; one was for a friend.

Curry yogurt mayonnaise

2007-04-09T08:00:00.000-07:00

My SO greatly enjoys artichokes, and has been trying to find a complement to them that will make me greatly enjoy them as well. Homemade garlic mayonnaise was a good start, but this past week we made curry yogurt mayonnaise, and now that I've had some I may well start thinking of artichokes more often.

You'd hardly know this was mayonnaise from the look or taste of it; it's colored like mustard, has a bit of a yogurty tang to it, and is filled with a strong flavor of curry spices. We've enjoyed this on both baked potatoes and artichokes, and Joy of Cooking reports that it goes well with virtually anything (vegetables, meats, etc.). Since we plan to make more of this in the future, it's this week's end-of-the-week recipe blogging post.

3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons curry powder
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons beaten egg
1/4 teaspoon mustard powder
3 teaspoons fresh lime juice (lemon juice would also work)
1/4 teaspoon salt (plus extra, to taste)
Pinch ground black pepper
3/4 cup plain yogurt (we used whole-milk)

We make this mayonnaise in a food processor with the metal cutting blade; it can also be made in a blender or by hand, but the processing times will be different.

1. Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a pan over low heat until hot, add the curry powder, stir continuously until the curry powder is fragrant (about 30 seconds), and then remove from the heat and let cool.
2. Process the egg yolk, beaten egg, and mustard powder together in a food processor for about 30 seconds.
3. Add 1 teaspoon of the lime juice and 1/4 teaspoon of salt, and then process for 7-8 seconds.
4. With the food processor running continuously, slowly pour in the oil. You're trying to make an emulsion here, so the slower you pour the better (within reason, of course).
5. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the remainder of the lime juice, pepper, and enough salt to make the mayonnaise tasty. Process to mix.
6. Add the yogurt and process to mix.
7. Add the cooled curry powder and oil mixture, and process to mix.
8. Check the salt and lime levels, and serve.

Notes:

The amount of salt, pepper, and lime juice are very flexible; add however much (or little) you desire. Joy of Cooking reports that you can add more oil (during the emulsion step) if you want a thicker mayonnaise.

If all you want is standard homemade mayonnaise, just follow steps 2-5 (omitting, of course, the curry powder and yogurt). We enjoy making basic mayonnaise with straight extra virgin olive oil, but wouldn't suggest using extra virgin olive oil for this mayonnaise because the spices would mask the oil's flavor.

We used Penzey's Spices Sweet Curry Powder for this; any good curry powder should work.

This recipe is based on one from Rombauer et al. (1997); we switched from lemon juice to lime juice.

Rombauer, I. S., M. R. Becker, and E. Becker. 1997. Joy of Cooking. Scribner, NY.

iNag

2007-04-01T12:30:00.000-07:00

Regular readers will know that I've been a long-time user of But She's A Girl's Tracks program to manage my to-do lists. While I love Tracks, I must now admit to having found a better program, written by none other than Semantic Compositions: iNag. SC is only releasing news of the product today, but I've been lucky enough to have seen a trial version.

While iNag is ostensibly a contact and calendar-management program, its intuitive interface, elegant use of language (it's written by a linguist, after all), and customizable reminders make it the perfect to-do list manager. For instance, my committee meetings now use the nagging-department-chair theme ("Radagast, you're the best one for the job; we need you on this one," followed by "But Radagast, we need someone to go," and finishing with, "But English will steal all of our funding if you don't go, and it's coming out of your lab budget!") and my letters-of-recommendation automatically use the "nagging student" theme for reminders (hourly popups saying "Mr. Radagast, I know I only just gave you the form, and you told me it'd take two weeks, but do you have my letter done yet?"). It's a pleasure to use, and since it's written all in Java, it's entirely cross-platform.

So, head over to SC's page and read all about it!

[Update: Take a look at the date of the post. But She's a Girl should never have worried; Tracks is still near and dear to my heart.]

Buttermilk pancakes

2007-04-01T11:55:00.000-07:00

While my SO and I often don't have "breakfast foods" for breakfast, there are indeed some days when we crave pancakes for the first meal of the day. We've made Joy of Cooking's standard pancake recipe for years, and have been quite happy with the results. However, just a few days ago we made Joy's buttermilk pancake recipe, and immediately fell in love with the thick, fluffy pancakes that resulted. We liked them so much that we made another batch yesterday morning. Since these will now be our standard pancakes, they're this week's second end-of-the-week recipe blogging post.

1 1/2 cups flour
3 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups buttermilk
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

0. Start heating a nonstick pan (or griddle) over medium heat (see notes) a few minutes before you'll be ready to cook the pancakes.
1. Whisk the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt) together in a large bowl.
2. Mix the wet ingredients (melted butter, buttermilk, eggs, and vanilla) together in another bowl.
3. Pour the wet ingredients onto the dry ingredients, and whisk until just mixed (the mixture should still be somewhat lumpy).
4. Pour about 1/3 cup of the batter into the preheated pan; shake the pan gently to spread the pancake batter out a little, if it's not spreading much. Flip the pancake once a number of bubbles rise to the surface and pop (and/or the bottom of the pancake is getting nicely browned), and continue cooking until the bottom surface is nicely browned.

Notes:

This recipe makes approximately eight five-inch round pancakes (that are about 1/2" thick); plan on two to three pancakes per person.

These pancakes are very thick, and thus take a while to cook. We've found that, at least in our pans on our stove, if we use medium-high (or higher) heat the pancakes brown excessively before cooking inside. Thus, we use medium heat, on which the pancakes take maybe 2-3 minutes a side to cook. The patience you exhibit while cooking over this lower heat will pay off a hundredfold once you taste the fluffy goodness that you'll create.

Cooking with multiple pans simultaneously (or a large griddle) will help speed cooking drastically; we typically use two pans at once.

Depending on your pan, you may or may not need to use butter or oil when you cook the pancakes. I use nonstick pans, but out of tradition I always start the first pancake frying with a little bit of butter in the pan (but then don't add any more butter for the remaining pancakes). I suspect I could get away without adding any extra butter.

We've modified this recipe slightly from Rombauer et al. (1997) by adding a bit more buttermilk.

Rombauer, I. S., M. R. Becker, and E. Becker. 1997. Joy of Cooking. Scribner, NY.

Spinach and pea yogurt salad (raita)

2007-03-31T14:15:00.000-07:00

Raita is a type of savory Indian yogurt salad filled with vegetables and spices. It's often served as a cool, creamy counterpoint to warm, spicy dishes (e.g., hard-boiled eggs in spicy tomato sauce). We just made this spinach and pea raita to go along with some chickpeas in ginger sauce, so this is the first end-of-the-week recipe blogging post.

1 1/2 cups frozen (or fresh) peas
1 cup frozen chopped spinach
1 1/2 cups plain yogurt
1/2 cup sour cream
1 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt (plus a few pinches for the vegetables)
scant 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
scant 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1. Defrost and cook the spinach: put it in a bowl, add a splash of water and a pinch of salt, cover, and heat in the microwave for a few minutes (until the spinach is cooked), stirring occasionally. Drain in a strainer, pressing it with a spoon to squeeze out as much liquid as possible.
2. Defrost and lightly cook the peas: put them in a bowl, add a splash of water and a pinch of salt, cover, and heat in the microwave for about a minute (or until no longer frosty). We do not fully cook the peas, as we like the texture they add to the dish; feel free to cook them longer if you'd like. Drain the peas in a strainer.
3. Mix the yogurt, sour cream, cumin, coriander, salt, black pepper, and cayenne pepper together in a bowl.
4. Stir the spinach and peas into the yogurt mixture; serve.

Note:

The spinach and peas should be added only shortly before the dish is served; if you're working in advance, do everything up through step 3 and then hold everything in the fridge until just before you're ready to eat.

You can use whatever vegetables you desire. Sahni's (1980) original recipe used exclusively cooked spinach, but you could use cooked potatoes, cooked eggplant, raw tomatoes, raw onions, and/or anything else you think would be good. We typically add about 2 cups total of cooked vegetables.

This recipe is modified from one in Sahni (1980); we added more vegetables and spices in proportion to the yogurt.

Sahni, Julie. 1980. Classic Indian Cooking. William Morrow & Co, NY. pp. 344-345

A true break

2007-03-30T21:30:00.000-07:00

This spring break has turned out better than I anticipated; even though it has been work-filled, I've managed to take some real time off. In fact, I've even become absorbed into a new hobby: the guitar.

Yes, that's right, your host is going to start learning to play the guitar. Now I should make it clear that as of right now I don't even have a guitar in my possession, but thanks to the miracles of the internet and UPS I should have that minor problem fixed by early next week.

While I've toyed with the idea of playing the guitar for a while, the catalyst for this sudden hobby acquisition was a local friend who's just started playing the guitar herself; I got to play with her acoustic guitar over the weekend, and fell in love with the sound after my first few plucks.

Considering that I haven't played an instrument since my age was something close to a single digit, this is going to be a big change. However, I think that's at least part of the appeal; it's been great fun to spend hours and hours of this spring break reading up on guitars, shopping for instruments, and starting to learn the basics of reading music¹.

I'm looking forward to making time to learn to play the guitar in the coming years; lets just hope that someday I'll actually be able to make musical sounds with the thing.

¹ Indeed, before the start of this week I did not even know how to read music. I'm about as much of a beginner as one can be.

A move behind the scenes

2007-03-30T20:50:00.000-07:00

Thanks to losing access to some of my web space (on Comcast), I'm moving some of my files over to a brand new domain¹. This move will only affect my static files (e.g., my recipe archive pages and my community college jobs archive), not the blog itself (which will be staying at the same URL). So, if you've bookmarked any of my static files, you should check to see if their location has changed, but otherwise you have nothing to worry about.

However, because I've been using the Comcast space since my blog started, I've got links to that domain embedded in my posts dating back more than three years; it's going to take a while to go through and re-code them all. So, if you're browsing through the archive and come across a link that no longer works, just drop me a line to let me know.

My hope is that this new domain will be a permanent home for all of my blog-related files in the future. I have no plans to move the blog over there right now, but who knows what the future will hold²; at the very least this new domain should give me more freedom with file hosting.

¹ If you care, the new domain is ossiriand.net, but don't bother going there because all my primary content is still hosted on (or linked to from) blogger. I may snazzify the domain in the future (I've got some vague ideas for projects I could use the space for), but right now all it does is point back here.
² Especially if those Wordpress fans can convince me that it's worth the effort to install that ...

Exhaustion

2007-03-23T21:40:00.000-07:00

The first eight weeks of the semester are over, meaning that spring break is finally here, but right now I'm so tired that I'm not even excited. Most of the past few weeks have been filled with 12-hour days and to-do lists that keep getting longer in spite of those hours. And, sadly, even spring break is going to be filled with work (e.g., two committees I'm on are actively working over break on projects that will each take up at least a full day, if not more).

But nobody wants to listen to whining, so I'm off to get some sleep (and hopefully to awaken with a much more cheerful world view).

A few good links

2007-03-20T21:57:00.000-07:00

Weights Build Muscles, But Not the Manly Kind - A New York Times article debunking many of the myths surrounding weightlifting women. Refer female friends to this whenever they say ridiculous things like, "Oh, I only use 5-pound weights at the gym because I don't want to get big muscles."

Florida Girls Lift Weights, and Gold Medals - While we're on the topic of weightlifting women, this is a neat article about weightlifting teams of high school girls.

The confessions of a leading psychic - And, for those who enjoyed yesterday's James Randi's videos, here's a post about one of the featured psychics (James Hydrick) confessing that he was just a fraud.

Teaching link: James Randi videos

2007-03-20T00:18:00.000-07:00

James Randi is a debunker extraordinaire and host to the million-dollar challenge, a challenge where any psychic who can convincingly demonstrate that they have supernatural powers will win a million dollars. BoingBoing just linked to an 18-minute video wherein James Randi embarasses James Hydrick, a psychic who claimed to be able to move objects with his mind.

Of course I couldn't stop at just one James Randi video, so I ended up pestering my SO with an hour or two of James Randi videos from YouTube. The videos had excellent footage of psychics in action, and while most of the psychics simply gave up or refused to be tested when confronted, I got to thinking that these would still be a good vehicle for starting discussions of skepticism and pseudoscience in the classroom. Thus, I thought I'd post a few of the videos here as the most recent installment of my teaching link series.

James Randi's classic experiment in horoscopes:

James Randi discussing Uri Geller and Peter Popoff:

James Randi performing psychic surgery (caution: filled with fake blood):

James Randi demonstrating spoon bending and discussing the preliminary test a psychic healer will undergo to earn the million-dollar prize:

James Randi discussing Doris Collins, a cold reader:

James Randi explaining homeopathy (contains no footage of psychics, but is a great lecture on the ridiculosity of homeopathy):

Cream of wheat with egg

2007-03-18T23:20:00.000-07:00

We've made cream of wheat for years, but only recently were inspired to try my SO's grandmother's method of making it with an egg added. The added egg makes the cream of wheat smoother, creamier, and golden in tone. Since we just made some for breakfast yesterday morning, it's this week's end-of-the-week recipe blogging post.

3/4 cup dry cream of wheat cereal (or "creamy wheat cereal" or "farina", if you buy generics)
3 cups milk (we use 1%)
Pinch salt
2 large eggs
Cinnamon sugar, brown sugar, and/or jelly for topping

1) Add the dry cream of wheat cereal, milk, and salt to a heavy-bottomed (preferably nonstick) pot and heat over medium-high heat, stirring often.
2) Once the mixture has started to thicken slightly, whisk in the the eggs.
3) Continue cooking, stirring constantly, until the mixture is the consistency you desire; we like ours rather thick.
4) Serve in bowls, giving the cream of wheat a few minutes to cool before eating (it will thicken slightly on standing); add whatever toppings you desire.

Notes:

We use non-instant dry cream of wheat cereal; we've never tried using instant cereal, so don't know how that would alter the recipe.

This recipe makes enough to feed two hungry people or three mildly hungry people, but also scales extremely well. The basic proportions are 1/2 cup milk to each 1/8 cup (2 tablespoons) of dry cream of wheat, with a minimum of 1 egg and an additional egg for each 3/4 cup of cream of wheat added. In general, we plan on making 3/8 of a cup of cream of wheat per hungry person.

This table should help those who don't like calculating proportions:

Servings	Cream of wheat (cups)	Milk (cups)	Eggs
1 small	1/4	1	1
1 large	3/8	1 1/2	1
2 small	1/2	2	1
3 small or 2 large	3/4	3	2
4 small or 3 moderate	1	4	2
6 small or 4 large	1 1/2	6	3
8 small or 6 moderate	2	8	3
9 small or 6 large	2 1/4	9	4

Note that we haven't made any batches larger than a cup of dry cream of wheat; the larger amounts listed above are extrapolations from our smaller batches.

Goodbye student loans!

2007-03-16T10:27:00.000-07:00

It was most enjoyable this morning to log in to my student loan provider's website, click the "show 10 day payoff amount" button, and then proceed to tell them to deduct said amount from my checking account¹.

So, as of sometime early next week (when the payment clears), I'll be officially free of student loans. Yippee!

¹ For those who are curious, I was actually scheduled to continue paying the loans through 2011, but have been paying accelerated payments for the past year so I could pay them off early (due to the recent increase in student loan interest rates).

New Orleans highlight: food

2007-03-16T00:10:00.000-07:00

You all know me well enough to know that food is something I love, and thus I had to seek out good food in New Orleans (thankfully it was not hard to find). And, of course, I had to get pictures of the food to share here.

The first great food I had was at the Commander's Palace, which I've already posted about.

Turtle soup, gulf fish, souffle bread pudding, and the kitchen where it was all made.

The next good dinner I ate was at Cochon; I had andouille & sweet potatoes with a black-eyed pea vinaigrette, crab gumbo with a deviled egg, and louisiana cochon with turnips, cabbage and cracklins. Everything was delicious (especially the gumbo; it rivaled the Commander's Palace's turtle soup), but sadly only the crab gumbo picture is worth posting:

Crab gumbo with a deviled egg, and Cochon.
On my final day in town, thanks to a recommendation by doctorj, I headed off to Central Grocery and got myself a muffuletta; it was most excellent. It was big enough that I even brought some back for my SO (some people bring back flowers, t-shirts, or artwork; I bring back half-eaten sandwiches).

A muffuletta
And, since Cafe du Monde was just down the block from Central Grocery, I took ArtK's advice and headed over there to have some beignets for dessert after my muffuletta:

Just looking at these pictures again makes me hungry.

I now feel a great need to return to New Orleans to try out all the food I missed (and get more of everything I had).

Busy busy

2007-03-15T23:59:00.000-07:00

While going to Innovations was fun, my pile of grading (and other tasks to do) did nothing but grow while I was away. So, this week has been spent playing catch up, and next week will likely be the same, meaning that I won't have much time for posting. Sorry.

That said, I will post some pictures of New Orleans soon. In fact, coming up next will be some pictures of food I had there. Enjoy!

New Orleans highlight: books

2007-03-10T14:30:00.000-08:00

While wandering around New Orleans last week, I came across a sign that I could not resist:

Crescent City Books is a used bookstore in the French Quarter (204 Chartres St., New Orleans). Every nook and cranny (and much of the floor) is stuffed full of books:

The store has the perfect ambiance for browsing used books (including couches to read on!), and is extremely well organized. If I hadn't been attending a conference and short on time, I could have spent hours upon hours in there. As it was, I spent more than half an hour reading through some old cookbooks they had in a case up front:

Most of those cookbooks date to the late 1800's (the one by Warne is the newest of the bunch, and it dated to the 1930's if I recall correctly). Many of them had notes scribbled next to the recipes, and still had little splatters of grease on certain pages. If they hadn't cost more than $100 each (one was priced at $400!), I would have left with at least one.

Thanks for the help

2007-03-08T23:14:00.000-08:00

I walk home most nights, and it's typically an uneventful walk. However, tonight I noticed a strange organic-chemical smell about halfway home; since I was nowhere near a chemistry lab, this was odd. A few hundred feet later I discovered the source: a couch by a dumpster was on fire. The couch wasn't bursting into flames, but smoke was clearly pouring out of it.

I don't have a cellphone, so couldn't call the fire department myself, but I had noticed two men closing up a shop just a short distance away. I walked over, introduced myself, and asked if either of them had a cellphone, explaining that there was a couch on fire. They looked at me like I was babbling nonsense; one of them mumbled something like "No phone," and the other just stared in the direction of the couch. After a few awkward moments of silence I asked again, repeating the word "fire," and they said "Um, no, sorry; try the store over there."

I'd seen one of them turn off the lights and lock the door; he could easily have opened the door and called the fire department. Instead, he just stood there letting the couch burn. Jerk.

Isn't the bystander effect great?

Back in town

2007-03-08T08:24:00.000-08:00

I'm back!

For those wondering if there was a repeat of this lovely experience, I'm pleased to say that there was not. In fact, I was so tired that I slept through the second landing of the day.

Sadly, today's going to be filled with catching up on all the work that I didn't do while I was in New Orleans (my pile of papers to grade is now very well traveled); I'll try to get some pictures and posts up later today or tomorrow.

In fact, if all goes well, I'll have a post up for Blog Against Sexism Day based around one of the worst talks I've heard in the past few years.

[Update: The post on the worst talk will have to wait for a bit, but I'm working on it.]

Commander's Palace

2007-03-06T14:55:00.000-08:00

I've been having a blast at Innovations, and thanks to being in talks all day and heading out with colleagues every evening, I've had almost no time to myself (or to tour the city, or to write). Two days ago we headed out to the French Quarter, and even walked down the famed Bourbon Street. It seemed like it was the type of place one must be inebriated to enjoy; I wasn't inebriated, so, well, yeah. In fact, I was about to report that New Orleans was only rather so-so in my book (though admitting that I really should tour the city more before forming a final conclusion).

However, that was before I ate dinner at the Commander's Palace last night. The restaurant is in the Garden District, and has some of the best food I've tasted recently. We ate on the second floor, and I got to spend the whole dinner looking out on what was probably a 100-year old oak tree lit up from underneath. It was a gorgeous atmosphere.

I ordered the chef's three-course meal, which consisted of turtle soup, sauteed creole-spiced gulf fish, and bread-pudding souffle. Those meager titles do not do the dishes justice.

The turtle soup was like a magically enhanced bowl of liquid delight for your taste buds; it was filled with creole spices in a thick stock that contained dozens of chunks of meat. My oh my, turtles are tasty. The fish was excellent; it was sauteed perfectly (still wonderfully moist), and lightly covered in a blend of (you guessed it) creole spices. A few vegetables and a light sauce covered the plate, and complemented the fish perfectly. Neither the soup nor the fish were especially hot-spicy, they were just full of flavor. The bread pudding had a souffle on top and a whisky sauce spooned over that. While I love bread puddings, this was probably the weakest part of the dinner, but that's only because I like my bread puddings heavy and rich, and the souffle made it very light (and dulled the flavor a bit). It was still excellent though, and if you complain about bread puddings being too heavy, this one would have been perfect for you.

The dinner didn't come cheap; I dropped $50 including tax and tip, and I only had water to drink. However, the turtle soup alone might even be worth that price in my book; it was exceptional.

I must now return to New Orleans, bringing my SO with me so we can both enjoy the Commander's Palace.

Good morning New Orleans!

2007-03-04T09:27:00.000-08:00

I got this view from my room upon waking up this morning:

This is, I believe, the first time I've seen the Mississippi river.

Of course, I won't be seeing too much more of it (or the rest of New Orleans) today, as I'll be attending presentations all day long. On the schedule for the day is a talk on the Applied Math and Science Education Repository, a talk on promoting active learning in online environments, a talk on assessment techniques facutly can use in their courses, and many more. I'm looking forward to it!

Not the best of flights

2007-03-03T23:31:00.000-08:00

I’m now in New Orleans for Innovations, but didn’t arrive at quite at the time I wanted to. Let me explain why.

My first flight of the day was to Dallas, and while I have a tendency to get motion sick, I’m usually fine on flights until the landing approach. This flight got me motion sick on the takeoff. In fact, the first hour of the flight was moderately miserable thanks to the near constant turbulence. The flight finally smoothed out for the middle half, and I was able to get a bit of work done (for maybe 30 minutes), but then it got turbulent again and was rocky for the entire descent into Dallas.

Normally I just slowly count in my head, clench my abdominal muscles, breathe deeply, and stare out the window during landing; I’m often unhappy, but usually fine. This time, however, that failed. And it failed when we were something like 50 miles up and a few decades away from the airport. So, I looked for an airsickness bag. There wasn’t one in my seat pocket.

A few minutes later we were still a few dozen miles above the ground in gale force winds (or something like that), so I asked my seat neighbor if she had an air sickness bag (note: that’s probably the question you least want to hear from the person sitting next to you on an airplane). She didn’t have one. Her neighbor didn’t have one. Finally they got a flight attendant to come up, and she found one a few rows up. It’s a great feeling knowing that you're about to throw up and that everyone around you knows that you’re about to throw up.

Before this gets too unpleasant, I should make it clear that I never needed the airsickness bag.

However, that didn’t mean all ended well. By the time we had landed I was probably hyperventilating (or something like it), my mouth was bone dry, my skin was clammy, my arms and legs were all extremely tingly, and I had lost virtually all muscular control over my hands, arms, and legs. In fact, as I sat there slowly figuring out that the muscles that control my fingers weren’t responding anymore, I realized that if I did actually throw up there was no way I could actually hold the bag open: my fingers were locked in a pinching position holding the bag by a corner. That was a problem I hadn’t considered before today.

After the plane landed I just sat there curled up with my eyes closed. I hardly even noticed the people getting off the plane. Even after everyone had left I was pretty sure I couldn’t walk, as I was just getting control of my hands back and I felt light headed anytime I even sat up. And my hands were shaking like mad anytime I tried to do anything with them. It was at that point that the flight attendants noticed me just sitting there; they ended up calling the paramedics.

I then got to meet some of the nicest folks in Dallas; the police officer, paramedics, and American Airlines staff were all exceptionally patient and caring. The paramedics helped me walk off the plane, then politely suggested that I not try walking up the sloped ramp to the terminal until they had checked me out. They didn’t find anything wrong (they initially suspected blood-sugar regulation problems, but they ruled that out with a blood sugar test result of 94 (units unknown)). They ended up saying that I should have eaten something for breakfast (and should have had something other than a carbohydrate-laden snack bar and can of soda for lunch), but didn’t posit a physiological mechanism for the symptoms.

The paramedics suggested that I have a “good meal of real food, not junk food” and see how I feel (recommending, of course, that I head to a hospital if I didn’t feel better; they also offered to take me to one right then and there). I agreed that a good meal was likely all I needed, and so I set about figuring out how I could make that happen since my connecting flight was scheduled to leave soon. The paramedics walked me up the ramp, and the American Airlines supervisor who had been hovering around for some time now went to a computer and started checking flights; it turned out that there was only one later flight to New Orleans, and it was already overbooked. My flight was scheduled to leave in less than half an hour, but I really didn’t feel like flying right then, and I think the supervisor got that idea. After a number of calls she finally was able to get me a guaranteed seat on the next flight out; I have no idea how she did it, but I’ll be eternally grateful, as the last thing I wanted to do at that moment was get on another plane.

A good meal and a Dramamine pill prepared me for the next flight, which thankfully was nausea free. I don’t know if it was the meal, the smooth(er) air, the Dramamine, or the Dramamine-induced drowsiness that made the flight fine; I’m just happy to be here on solid, non-moving ground.

So, the question I’m left with is this: what physiologically happened to me during the flight to remove my conscious muscular control? It has happened once before (on a SCUBA boat trip, actually), and it’s quite an odd phenomenon. I’m thinking that lack of blood flow to the extremities seems like a possible mechanism (maybe combined with breathing too rapidly), but once I get back I’ll have to try to dig up some references.

New Orleans here I come!

2007-03-02T23:40:00.000-08:00

This weekend I take off for New Orleans to attend the League for Innovations in the Community College's annual Innovations meeting. I've had a blast at the two Innovations meetings I've been to before, and I'm looking forward to this one.

Innovations is a neat meeting for people involved with community colleges for a few reasons:

The meeting focuses exclusively on community college education; there are no K-12 talks, no 4-year universities talking about upper division courses, etc. Since many education meetings focus on K-12 education, this is very refreshing.
While the meeting has tons of talks on pedagogy, it also features talks by (and for) administrators hoping to run their colleges more effectively. Last year there was a great talk by a state senator on how colleges should interact with their legislators, and another by a researcher studying the role of department chairs at various community colleges.
Each talk is 45 minutes long, which gives the speaker enough time to use the pedagogical technique they're talking about (e.g., using groupwork), or at least enough time to delve into the details of their work.

I'm hoping to blog some of the more interesting talks from the conference (as I did last year), but I may be a bit hindered in that as I'm rooming with a colleague who doesn't know that I blog.

Filing Papers

2007-03-01T08:21:00.000-08:00

As long-term readers will know, for the past few years I’ve been involved in a faculty-driven attempt to start a field research program at my campus. At the start of this academic year we were told that the program might be shut down due to the possible sale of our field site, and we’ve spent the last few months fighting to prevent that.

We lost the fight.

Of course there’s currently lots of spin that we didn’t actually lose, and lots of talk about how excited everyone still is about field experiences, but that doesn’t change the fact that our current program is being shut down¹.

This morning I’m spending some time cleaning up my office, and I keep coming across papers related to the program. Even though they’re just generic paperwork (budgets, plans for future courses, lists of past courses, summaries of research findings, etc.), they’re filled with hope and excitement. They represent hundreds (and probably thousands) of hours of work by many people in just the past few months, most of which was spent trying to document our successes and justify the program. Now they represent dead weight that needs to be moved out of my current-documents pile and into an archived folder. Who knew that sorting papers could be so depressing?

¹ This decision also makes most of the research that I (and my students) have been doing for the past few years meaningless.