This couple got on the bus when I did and seemed lost. They were very young and hippie looking, but were sort of dressed-up, or dressed-up the way hippies would be. Their hair was long and unkempt, and the guy had an old trench coat on. The girl had hairy legs and very blue eyes.
They spent most of the bus ride very anxiously looking for their stop, and I wondered where they were going, and why they were dressed that way.
I also missed my old trench coat.
I like to look at the people who drive by the bus stop and watch their faces. Sometimes they seem focused, or bored, or on the phone, or have really dumb looks.
Today, I saw a guy who looked like he was sleeping/having a stroke. It was very strange.
Banh Mi sandwiches are one of my favorite things ever, and four of us head to a Vietnamese place for lunch. I really don't "go out" for lunch all that much, although I've been buying sandwiches and such more than I should recently. I need to get back in the grocery habit and bring stuff in the morning.
On our way, we decide to get Pho (soup) instead and grab a table at the place. I haven't had this since I lived in Boston, and I wasn't crazy about it. It's been a long time so I figure I'll give it a shot again.
The place (Pho Cyclo) has a signature Pho, with rare beef, fatty beef, tendon, and tripe. I've never had tendon or tripe (the nubbly stuff), so this seems as good a time as any.
While I'm glad I tried it, I probably won't be ordering it with that again. The soup is delicious, but the tripe is kind of flavorless and chewy (and nubbly, did I mention this), while the tendon is very gelatinous.
Still, I'm a pho fan now, even with all that cilantro. I'm really getting into a love-hate relationship with it, we'll have to see how that goes.
There's a bug in this app we're working on and some of the devs are sticking in the office to sort it out. Well, they're doing this because I need them to.
I realize that there's no real reason that *I* need to be there, but I feel like I can't ask the devs to push hard on something that I'm not willing to push on as well. As a result, I spend a chunk of the evening just tidying up on some paperwork while they sort out the code. Maybe they think it's ridiculous that I'm sticking around, but I hope they appreciate the moral support.
Around 7:30 or 8 it gets sorted out and I head home. It's easily the latest I've had to stay at work so far.
It could be a lot worse. At least there's a beer fridge.
Sometimes, a day of being good at your job is a pretty decent way to go.
I've found it's pretty typical that someone asking someone else to do work will say "we" or "let's", when what they really mean is "you go do some work while I don't". I'm making a concerted effort to not be the schmuck who does this.
PeterE comes back over in the morning (after M and I make an early run to the park to miraculously find my hoodie where I left it) and I make pancakes and he brings his "Bacon Of The Month" and there's a hearty tuck-in. We check on the cheese, and it is not in the proper state. We agree to leave it alone for the rest of the day and try it later.
Meanwhile, in the office are some sleepy cats. Fergatory is on my lap, and Mush is asleep in his cat bed. I need to move, so I pick him up and put him on the desk, at which point he gets right up and climbs into the bed with Mush.
For a few minutes, Mush doesn't really know what to do. He seems too shocked to yell at Ferg, and eventually gets up and leaves.
I read an article in OnionAV about 30 Days of Night, the graphic-novel vampire movie. The author seems to feel the same super-serious-yet-fun way that I do about these kinds of things and mentions that although the movie is not good, that there are some great performances (and awful ones), and I agree that the concept is fantastic. Basically the premise is that vampires attack the town of Barrow in Alaska just as the sun sets for the last time into a month of darkness. It's a great idea, and the article is right. i really enjoyed some parts of it, including a fantastic performance by the lead vampire and one great, long overhead shot, but the movie wasn't very good, and the plot did not deliver on the concept. One of the vampires was kind of hot too, in a disturbing, not-hot kind of way.
Later that evening, the cheese is still not where it needs to be and I pretty much give up on it. I drain the whey and what's left is a rather rich, cottage-cheese like substance that tastes good but is far from Fresh Mozz.
We've got an extra gallon of milk, so I'll have to try this again. I'm discouraged, but not beat. Next time I'll keep a very close watch on temperature and probably up the rennet.
Having warmed up with the quick stuff, we proceed to the "difficult" stuff as shown here.
In hindsight, maybe we should have started with the basics, but what fun would that be? Well, a lot, possibly.
So, this is about a 14-hr process, spread out over two days. We use active buttermilk instead of citric acid, and the setting, curdling, and acidifying take hours instead of minutes. It's a temperature-controlled, tempermental process and we spend the better part of the afternoon and evening watching milk curdle. We also head out to a local park and toss a baseball around while we wait. PeterE and I are trying to join a softball league and figure we could use the practice. It's so much fun to toss around that we overdo it just a bit. I also forget my awesome fleece hoodie in the park.
We have to leave the cut curd alone to acidify overnight, so we'll see what it looks like in the morning.
This citric acid is really sour and kind of tasty, so I decide to try making fake lemon juice. I boil a cup of water, add a quarter cup of sugar and start mixing in citric acid until it tastes right. The ultimate test is when I make M's "water with lemon" using it and she likes it. That was fun.
We've made a bit of a mess.
Hells, yeah, it's CHEESE DAY!!!
PeterE and I are getting our cheese on and it's going to be awesome. He brings over a large pot and some other gear and we get to shopping. I've got the rennet (enzyme) we need to make the milk gel, but we need active culture buttermilk to acidify it as well.
The mozzarella process we're looking to do takes about 12-14 hours, and while researching we find a 60-minute version that looks easy enough as long as we can find some citric acid.
This proves to be more difficult than you might think. We go to a few stores and can't find anything. There's plenty of ascorbic acid, but not citric. In the end, I remember seeing some in the Safeway and we track it down. It's called "Sour Salt" and made by a Kosher company. Anyone have any idea what it's used for in Jewish cooking?
Well, it's a really simple process from there. We figure this "quick" cheese will be a good warmup for us. Basically, we warm the milk, add the acid, mix in the rennet and wait for it to gel. The curd forms, and we run it through a cloth to get the whey out. We've read that you can use the whey to make ricotta, but decide that we've taken on enough for the day.
Once we have that big lump of curd, you microwave it and knead until it gets shiny and has that mozzarella-y feel to it. Then you round it into balls, and brine it in salt water for a while.
We do this, and leave out salt because the recipe doesn't explicitly call for it, and that's a mistake. We wind up with something reminiscent of mozz, but more like the hard packaged stuff, and definitely without that creamy texture we're looking for.
It's not especially delicious. Some salt would help a lot, and I would might try it again, if only to have a slightly cheaper way of getting mozz for pizza. At about $4/gallon, yielding about a pound of cheese vs. about $6/lb of store-bought, I'll have to see how I feel next time pizza calls to me.
M and I go for a walk today to drop off and pick up some books at the library. It's an old building, and I like the Carnegie shout-out.
I remember reading a book on him when I was probably 10, but I don't remember anything discussing the complex labor issues going on at the time. I watched a special recently on the Homestead Strike, and I'm not really surprised that it didn't make it into a children's bio of the guy. All the same, it makes me think of all the bios I had to read as a kid and how whitewashed they all were. I remember one about Kit Carson and how awesome he was as well.
Anyway, it is a beautiful day. We see some obscene graffiti on a sign next to a park where little league is playing, and a German Firefighting truck parked in an alley.
The DragonFires are in town, and after missing the bus, I walk home and we all hang out. It's great to see them and I hope they move up here soon. (note to DragonFires: move here soon)
In celebration, I decide to bust out the Bud Light "Chelada" - the beer and clamato taste EXPLOSION!!! I'm expecting a weird beer-bloody mary thing. Will it be any good? Let's find out.
The first thing you'll notice is the label, explaining in both English and Spanish how the great tastes of Bud Light and Clamato have been combined.
Opening the can and pouring reveals a light-red colored beverage with minimal head and lots of carbonation.
The aroma is reminiscent of beer, tomato, and clam. Mostly, the clam, but also the beer, and definitely the tomato.
As a note to the allergic, this beer contains a warning that it contains shellfish. Again, this beer contains shellfish.
As for the taste, let's look at it this way. It's beer (Bud Light - not even beer...), tomato, and clam.
There's 24 oz of this stuff. I barely finish 3 before deciding that this just isn't worth it. I am not surprised.
We head off to Via Tribunali, a gourmet-ish pizza place where I get a "calzone" that is an really just a stuffed pizza. It's quite large, and I bring it home for lunch tomorrow.
So now I have a bunch of hardtack. I took it to work, along with some ANZAC biscuits for sharing. That wiki article I mentioned a while ago said that Alaskans really like the stuff warm with jam and butter. Well, I tried it warm and wasn't crazy about it, but jam and butter sounded good.
After a few bites, I was really getting into it. Before the day ended I had eaten two tiles of the stuff. Now I am definitely going to try making this again. Yum.
It was a beautiful day out, so I walked home from the bottom of the hill, thinking about hardtack, and how I could get it thinner and crispier. Suddenly, it hit me: matzah is hardtack. Bear with me...
As discussed previously, the story goes that it was baked on the backs of Egypt-fleeing Jews, and that hasn't been sitting well with me. Well, when you think about it as hardtack or cram (for the hobbits out there), it makes complete sense. It's not that the Jews had no time to bake their bread, it's that they baked bread KNOWING that they would be traveling for a long time. That explains why there's no salt and no leavening. The more I thought about it, the more it clicked.
Rabbinic Judaism, pretty much the only kind there is, is based on Jews relying on God to save them from everything. Most fables and stories have been re-engineered to remove human accomplishments and place the credit square on God. For example, Chanukah, an inspiring story of military triumph, has been reduced to God making a lamp stay lit for 8 days.
This helplessness without God really bugs me, but that's not just Judaism's problem. Still, it's nice to find yet another story I can lay to rest while enjoying deliciously difficult to eat baked things. I feel like I discovered the moon for getting this sorted out, when it probably should have occurred to me earlier. Ah, well.
Finally, I'm home, and it's time to go on a baking bender. Tomorrow is ANZAC Day, which commemorates the Australia and New Zealand Army Corp's invasion of Turkey (Gallipoli, there's a movie, go see it) in WWI. It's traditional to eat "ANZAC Biscuits", which are basically cookies made with oatmeal, butter, sugar, sugar syrup of some type, and a little baking soda. I like to use the opportunity to remember that I really would rather be studying history. That would not make a good bumper sticker.
So, I want to be authentic, and use the recipe (some short history there as well) on the Aussie War Memorial site. I leave out the coconut, partially because the coconut wasn't introduced until later, and partially because I don't particularly care for coconut in cookies.
I also learn that these cookies aren't really anything that the ANZACs would have eaten, but were developed later. What the soldiers ate were called ANZAC tiles, and are really just hardtack. This made a lot of sense, and I decided I had to try making hardtack.
This meant I would be baking four things tonight:
All told, it took about 6 hours and I finished around midnight. If you like cookies, ANZAC Biscuits are incredibly easy to make, take all of 10 minutes, and last a long time (appropriately). I use "full-flavor" (not blackstrap) molasses instead of "golden syrup", which is a British thing (partially inverted cane syrup I think) and usually costs a lot. Molasses adds a really cool flavor as well, and works nicely in the recipe. I also use McCanns oatmeal (quick-cooking), rather than Quaker's awful excuse for oats.
If it's any incentive, M, who dislikes oatmeal cookies, loved them.
As for the hardtack/tile, it was easily the most difficult thing I've ever baked. There's so little water that it took me forever to get the dough to come together. I would knead and then wait, and repeat for a long time. Hardtack has been around for a very long time, and soldiers wives used to make it at home. So I felt quite a bit weaker than a colonial housewife, but that might be fair.
Anyway, over the span of about 2 hours, I managed to get this stuff rolled out and it was still too thick. I baked it anyway. Now, *real* hardtack is just flour and water. Salt will hold on to moisture in the dough and make it go bad, as will sugar. The milk powder is probably out as well. Now keep in mind that we're talking a 3-month to 1 year shelf life, so it might not be an issue if you're planning on going through the supply in a month or two. I wasn't going to argue with the war memorial, and the blend of whole wheat with the touch of sugar and milk powder seemed like it might be quite tasty. Well, when it came out of the oven it wasn't very good. I'd read that proper hardtack should break cleanly, and should not give when pressed with a fingernail. Mind was crispy enough around the edges, but clearly was not rolled thin enough, or baked long enough. It was done, but I think it would have even benefitted from twice-baking, once to dry and once to crisp, which I think is a traditional way to do it.
For all that work, I was a bit disappointed, but that's how it goes sometimes. Fortunately, I had some delicious cookies to console me.
My bag now stuffed with things I'll need for later, I got another juxtaposition bus, where a poem by a grownup was next to a kid's poem.
For a poem, I'm alright with the adult one. I like the sentiment ok, I suppose.
The kid one stands out for me in how much of a kid poem it is. Some of the others I've seen and posted about have really been profoundly good. This is exactly what I would expect a small child to write. It's got bad grammar, and way too many references to "dream". This kid is headed towards a life of awful high-school poetry.
Some of you may bring up my own penchant for self-indulgently artsy references to eyes and portals and doorways in my songwriting youth, but it's not on a damn bus, is it...
I needed to get a bunch of ingredients at the supermarket on the way home and stopped off at the deli counter to get cold cuts for lunch sandwiches when I misread this label as "Midrange" Buffet. I thought it was appropriate and honest considering the quality of the ham.
I'll explain more about my reasons for this shortly (in another post), but I'm researching hardtack today and saw this. It's just a funny sentence.
Ah, I love and am terrified of Wikipedia all at the same time.
Over the last few years, I've now completely shifted to the local pronunciation of "Ore-eh-gun", compared to my native accent of "Are-ah-gahn". I also realize I've adjusted my "Ah-ringe" to "Or'nge" as well. I always wanted to be able to blend in my travels, and a key to that is not having a recognizable accent.
I'm amazed when I hear recordings of myself at a young age and the NY is so strongly audible. I hardly think it's noticeable anymore.
As I've mentioned, I read the news at work occasionally, and saw this article. A year ago, on the day this happened, we were in Missoula on our way out here. M's a Hokie, so this one was pretty cose to home.
I'll chill on the news stuff soon, but this article just represents a lot of my frustration over the gun issues in this country. I don't have anything against guns or the right to bear them (arming bears is another story) but the polarization into two camps of radical stupid just makes me sadly angry.
I really didn't want to give this any publicity, because this is everything I can't stand about the whole idea of "art", but I just had to give props to my boy Doc Eddie here. Critique that shit, yo.
Ed's note for "Anonymous": Google "Yale Abortion Art" if you're wondering what the heck I'm talking about. Also, "Doc Eddie" refers to Dr. Funai, who's analysis of the exhibit is quoted in the article seen here.
I love this disconnected non-worry that I have at work. I've mentioned this a bunch of times, but I just can't get over how great it is to leave work and just not worry about it. I come home and cook, or hang out with M, or whatever. Ahhhh...
Anyway, getting back to the horrible problems of the world, I'm really interested in the apparent food crisis. I wish I knew how to really separate the news fear-mongering from the actual content on this topic, but given the riots in a bunch of countries it seems pretty serious. I know how lucky I am to be in a country where this problem isn't quite so obvious, but I know that will only last so long. Just like the fossil fuel problems, I have a feeling this will catch up with us sooner rather than later.
So on that note, I decided to see what my high-gluten flour was going for. It was 50 bucks when I bought it back in January and you can see where it is now. I'm sure there are a lot of factors that have contributed to this, but all the same, I'm definitely going to keep an eye on this.
My usual transfer stop on the bus is along a busy street. It's loud and there are a lot of homeless people. Sometimes, I'll walk two more stops up the hill, where it's a lot quieter and nicer.
I'm waiting for the bus here today, and it starts raining out of nowhere and keeps it up for about 3 minutes before stopping. The sun shined the whole time.
I've been reading about these sun halos and sundogs that people sometimes see, and I'm going to make an effort to look up at the sky a bit more often. Also, I just like "sundog".
Of course, I got back to Seattle at 11 and had to go to work the next morning. That first day back is always a tough one, but this wasn't too bad. I had called some of the account people while I boarded my flight yesterday and made sure there were no real emergencies for me to dive right into.
I played catch-up, but otherwise it was just another day at work, and another poem on the bus.
This is pretty symptomatic of most of the bus poems - and very much the reason I don't generally like poetry.
Ok, that's not fair. I look at it like this; most people are bad at things. When I know and care enough to seek out the few exceptions to that, I can enjoy something. I don't particularly care about poetry, so I just wind up seeing what I'm exposed to, and that, pretty much, sucks.
It's been really good to spend time with my family. It'll be a while before I can get back to see them again, and I'm glad that both my brother and I were able to be here.
A very old friend (3rd grade) moved back to Queens after several years in Glasgow, and I finally went to his place in Bay Terrace to see him, his wife, and their relatively new kid.
We caught up for a while, and it was a good end to the trip. I hope they come out to visit, but I know it's a long way. It would be great if our friends from east came out to see us, but that's just not so practical.
Anyway, I wound up moving pretty quickly through JFK, craving some fast food, and found myself at this awful place. It took them 15 minutes to get my order together, while the grumpy guy waiting next to me kept loudly complaining about how long his order was taking. Ah, NY.
I made it to the gate as my flight was boarding and had to eat in my seat. It was an uneventful ride back, but wow, staying awake on that flight was not fun. I almost always sleep, but this time I didn't, and it took forever. Remind me not to do that again.
Getting off the plane, I saw this guy wearing a Thundercats shirt, made to look like one of those gas station attendant nametag shirts. It was wild.
Every summer, in the park across the street from the house, ice cream trucks would drive around the loop, endlessly playing their pied-pipered tunes. After many years, the city finally passed an ordinance that they could only play the song when they were in motion.
This has made the park a much quieter and less annoying place for adults - although I'm sure it has decimated the mobile ice cream business.
I really did think of this park as my front yard when I was a kid, and spent a lot of great time there. I always enjoy wandering around, looking at places where I played baseball, soccer, and frisbee. There's a giant wood pile where helpful guys with chainsaws would cut us cabers for tossing, and lots of trees we used to sit in with walkie talkies and spy on teenagers making out on the picnic tables. I launched model rockets, went to the circus, grilled with friends, watched concerts and fireworks, and napped in the sun with speakers blasting Metallica by my ears.
I love that there are so many memories in this one place, and they're pretty much all good.
We all went for a walk around the path a few times, and afterwards my brother grabbed a cone, while I decided to make a Guinness float at home, which I didn't particularly care for.
Getting ready for dinner, I'm struck at how strange consonantal languages are. I mean really, reading without vowels?
I've heard it argued that language is a code, a deliberate tool to share knowledge within your social group and keep it from being understood by outsiders. I don't know if I go this far, but stuff like this doesn't help.
I guess I'm ok with it - after all, I've been known to txt occasionally, but would I want everything I read to work that way?
It just seems weird.
Here's that lemon curd I mentioned. The only other citrus curd I've tried to make was with tangerines many months ago and it was awful.
This was delicious, although it took about 20 minutes, which is probably twice as long as it should have. In the end though, it was thick, tart, and sweet.
I wound up eating way more of it than I needed to, but it was worth it.
My mom, brother, and I were originally going to go into Central Park for a walk this morning, but after the long meal last night we were tired and decided to sleep in. We had never been to Long Beach, so we decided to go there and walk our 4 miles on the boardwalk instead.
It was very pleasant. We walked and talked and my hoodie kept me warm in the wind.
Why buy awful-tasting matzah when you can make some on your own?
I felt like contributing to the cooking today, so my brother and I first helped my grandmother make matzah-balls. They are one of my favorite things ever. She used to send me back to school with them and I would hoard them in the fridge, carefully eating them until just before they would have gone bad from the ptomaine.
I had never really thought about what was in them, but it's really not complicated.
When that was done, I decided to try making matzah of my own. Now, I really hate the stuff. It's tasteless, crumbly, and reminds me of itself, which is recursively unpleasant. I figured I could cheat a little by adding just a touch of salt and some apple juice to the usual flour and water. It came out like a very hard cracker, but wasn't bad at all. I wish I had done them at a higher temperature for crispness and rolled them a bit thinner, but it was tolerable, and for me an improvement over the traditional stuff, even if it did break the rules a little.
This brings me to the rules. The story says that when the Jews left Egypt, they were in such a hurry that they didn't have time to bake their bread. They carried the dough on their backs and as they wandered in the heat, the sub baked it into flat, unleavened bread - matzah.
I'm calling bullshit. This story bugs the hell out of me and I'm going to figure out the truth of it. I can let the lack of salt and other flavoring slide, since it might have been hard to come by for all I know. I'm pretty sure thought, that the ancient jews didn't have jars of fleischman's yeast sitting around that they just didn't get around to adding to their dough. They would likely have been using a starter to make their bread, and the starter would have had live yeast in it, and a good bit of leavening before they even mixed the dough.
It would take a long time, even in the desert for a loaf of bread to actually bake on your back, and I'm not convinced yet that it's even possible. If it is possible, then in that time, *some* leavening would have taken place.
This is really irritating me, and I'm pretty sure that rabbinic/talmudic Judaism is to blame. I'll get back to you when I sort it out.
Oh, I also made lemon curd, which was delicious.
I was up on time, and left for my parents as S&B went to the airport. It's about a 1.5hr trip, which was more than enough for me to grab a nice subway nap.
I got to my parents by 6AM and promptly crashed until about noon. My brother headed over shortly afterwards and the family was together.
I noticed this sticker on their TV, the one that explains that analog tuners will be out in Feb '09. I've got a slightly irrational fear about switching completly over to digital, and I realize that we're practically there already. Everything important is stored digitally already, but there's something about analog broadcast capability that is comforting. In the event of large-scale catastrope, analog signal is relatively easy to send and receive. I am completly aware that I am no more capable of building a radio or television receiver than I am of fixing a car, but I *feel* like I might be able to.
When our technology is destroyed and we need to come up with a quick way to communicate, digital just won't be practical. Analog is the post-apocalytic thing to have, and if we get rid of the analog equipment, I feel like we're really screwed.
That's screwed above and beyond the apocalypse, btw.
