I've debated on posting something about all of the swine flu panic and have restrained myself because I don't want to try to sound like I'm putting myself out there as an expert (mostly because I'm not even remotely qualified to be one). In a turn of events that is surprising to absolutely no one, I can't keep my thoughts to myself and have to at least give you a little bit of commentary.
I went to the store yesterday after work, and as I walked down an aisle I saw this.
That's where the hand sanitizer should be, but there are only a few bottles left. Alcohol-based hand sanitizers are good and should be effective at eliminating influenza on your hands1. So, I suppose it's understandable (though perhaps a bit sad) that people have reacted to stories of the potential spread of the flu by buying so much hand sanitizer that it's almost sold out.
However, do you know what else does a good job of inactivating influenza? Soap. Yeah, just plain old hand soap. It doesn't have to be any special soap, just soap. With this in mind, it bothered me to see this right next to the almost completely empty sanitizer area.
Sanitizer is great for when you can't get to water, but the reality is that your best bet in avoiding illness is hand-washing. Seeing the Purell, Germ-X and every other brand of sanitizer sell out while hardly a dent was made in the stock of soap2 seemed a sad, but perhaps fitting, metaphor for panic winning out over common sense.
1It does work for influenza and for many bacteria, but there are still a lot of things from various bacteria to Norovirus that it doesn't do much for, so washing your hands is still more effective.
2I realize I may be oversimplifying the reasons behind the shelves being this way, but I'm trying to make a point.
There are going to be quite a few pictures in this post, so when you come to one that is awkwardly placed in the middle of a section, please imagine that as I am telling the story to you, I am turning the book toward you so that you can see the pictures.1 (and since I'm still here in the intro section. Apologies to anyone who got notified of this post twice. I had to go back and fix some HTML because I'm that obsessive.)
Recently, I purchased a new stainless steel pan and since it wasn't a non-stick surface like the rest of our pans, I figured it would be a good time to work on my pan sauces.
Now, one could make a pan sauce from all sorts of things, but to be quite honest I hankered for a hunk of, a slice, a slab or chunk of, I hankered for a hunk of beef.2 Since I watch Good Eats fairly often, regardless of whether I have seen the episode before or not, I happened to have recently watched Alton Brown make steak au poivre in Tender is the Loin, Part I. I decided that with a few minor adjustments, including using New York strip rather than tenderloin steaks, I'd give the recipe a try.
First up was a little butter an olive oil in the pan. Once that was hot, it was time to add the steaks which were coated in coarsely crack black pepper. I do mean coarsely; I used the mortar and pestle rather than a pepper grinder.
Once the steaks were done, they were taken off to rest while I made the sauce. The first step was to deglaze the pan with cognac.
Ok, I'm going to go on a tangent for a minute, so bear with me. Cooking with something that I would never keep around, like cognac, is a pain. As many of you know, I believe that pretty much anything containing alcohol tastes exactly like everything else containing alcohol, which is to say like cough syrup. Needless to say, this makes my need for cognac or any other alcohol pretty limited even for cooking. When I decided to make this, I went looking for cognac with the intent of buying something inexpensive and preferably only a small amount, after all, I needed only about 1/3 of a cup. Once I got to the grocery store, my idea went straight out the window as I saw that the smallest bottles to be had were around a liter. (I guess it's good that I hadn't gone to Sam's Club.) On my way home, I figured I'd give the local convenience store a try. As it turned out, they did have smaller bottles, as long as a half pint of Hennessy was ok. So, now I look less like I'm planning to cook and more like I'm trying to reenact any one of a million different rap songs. Ok, back to the main post.
I added the cognac to the pan, and then brought a lit match (a very long one) to the pan to light the vapor.
Note that in this picture, there is very little flame. That gave me a confidence that would come back to haunt me later.
Once the alcohol had burned4, I added heavy cream and mixed, scraping the bottom of the pan to get the fond off, then let it simmer for around 5 minutes to thicken.
After that, it was just a matter of adding the steaks back to the pan to get them nice and coated in the sauce and then serving.5
It turned out pretty well. It was a little hot because of all the black pepper, but it tasted great.
Steaks were still cheap at the grocery store, so I tried it out again. This time, I was working without a recipe, but still following the basic method from the steak au poivre. I minced one shallot clove6, then set about cooking the steaks as I had before. Once the steaks were done, I deglazed with cognac and flamed, then added the shallot and some beef stock. Once the sauce had thickened, I brought the steaks back to the pan and covered them in sauce. This one turned out pretty well, too. I wasn't sure about the amount of shallot to use, and I probably would have increased it a little if I were to do it all again.
Now, remember how I said that confidence would come back to haunt me? The second time, we captured the lighting of the cognac on video. If you have sound on you will hear the whoosh of the flames followed by the dogs barking and then, at the very end, Melissa saying that we shouldn't try that again. What you don't see is that the flames reached all the way to the ceiling and that while I was moving the pan back and forth I was also looking around to see if anything was on fire. It wasn't. After the flames had died down and the video was over, I did check in the mirror to make sure I still had both eyebrows. (I do.)
So, what did we learn? If you let me cook, I may or may not burn down your kitchen. But if I don't burn the place down, I can produce some tasty food.7
1You did know that I picture you all as a bunch of kindergartners sitting cross-legged in a circle around me as I tell stories, right? Ok, good. 2Apparently, I was so hungry I could eat a wagon wheel.3 Also, I'm sorry. 3Those of you who either are too young or too old or didn't waste your youth watching cartoons and therefore don't know what "Time for Timer" means can go here to check it out. 4Note that I'm not telling you that it had completely burned off. No matter what you have been told over the years, all of the alcohol in a recipe does not evaporate during cooking. You're never going to get drunk off of what is left, but if you do not for health or other reasons want any alcohol in what you eat, don't use it at all. Even in a case like this where you burn it, I wouldn't trust that it is all gone. 5This is my other big deviation from Alton Brown's recipe. He added more cognac at the end. I didn't add any extra due to my very limited tolerance of the flavor. 6Is that even the right term for one section of a shallot? It is now. 7More pictures can be found on Flickr by clicking on any of the ones in this post and viewing the entire set, which Laziest Girl has helpfully decided should be called "The Idiot's Guide to Setting the Kitchen on Fire."
We've had a lot of snow this winter. Seriously, a lot. Back in mid to late January I saw on the news that our snowfall total for the year was already 9 or 10 inches above average. When the city decides that there has been enough snow (usually >4 or 6 inches in a 24 hour period), they send out the snow plows. As anyone who has lived in an area with lots of snow can tell you, the plows don't care much where the snow goes as long as they push it off the road. A giant wall of snow at the end of your driveway? That's your problem. The road's clear now. As annoying as being plowed in (our out, as has happened to me at least twice this year) is, the bigger problem is that since we have no curbs, the snow also gets pushed up against where people's mailboxes are. As the snow piles higher and higher, and the plows push more and more snow in the general direction of the mailbox, ours could no longer take the strain and, as we discovered when some of the giant snow pile surrounding it melted, was only being held upright by the snow. It now lists to one side and back*, threatening to topple completely at any moment.
This of course, is also our problem and has resulted in multiple trips to Home Depot, first for the post kit, then a new "if we're doing this we might as well replace that too" mailbox, then for the mounting board, which is for some strange reason not included with either the post or mailbox. On one of these trips through the store, we came across this display.
At first, it simply added to frustration and anger on my part, but finally I realized that there isn't much that I can change about it, so I might as well laugh.
The sad part about this is that once we finally got all the pieces we need to replace it, it has started snowing again, so we are stuck having to wait.
We went to Chicago last weekend (more on the why later), and while we were there we went to eat at Topolobampo (one of the restaurants owned by Rick Bayless the host of Mexico: One Plate at a Time). We had eaten at Frontera a few years ago, but this was our first visit to the more "upscale" Topolobampo. The atmosphere, service and food were wonderful.
Here's a quick rundown of what we had. (Descriptions lifted from the online menu at the restaurant website and slightly blurry pictures taken in low light with a cameraphone.)
I started out with the Sopa Azteca (not pictured, because we didn't think to start taking pictures until our entrees arrived.): dark broth flavored with pasilla, with grilled chicken, avocado, Meadow Valley Farm hand-made Jack cheese, thick cream and crisp tortilla strips.
I can say without hyperbole that it was one of the best if not the best soup I have ever had.
I ordered the Puerco Pibil: achiote-marinated Maple Creek Farm pork two ways: grill-roasted loin and slow-cooked shoulder in banana leaves. Guero chile rajas, black barley, habanero-dressed "shoots" salad, pickled red onions.
while Melissa had the Langosta al Mojo de Ajo: pan-roasted Maine lobster with red chile mojo de ajo (olive oil-poached garlic). Giant butter beans, roasted fresh favas and "ancho crunch."
For dessert I can't simply steal the names and descriptions of what we had from the website because the dessert menu isn't online, so you're stuck with what I remember (which is certainly not the names since they were in Spanish).
My dessert was a chocolate-almond cake with caramel/cashew ice cream and Melissa's was a rhubarb tartlet with coconut ice cream.
When we left, we did see Rick Bayless in the restaurant talking with some friends, but decided not to get the cameraphone out to take an intrusive picture. We had a good time and enjoyed the food, and I personally really look forward to going to Frontera or Topolobampo again.
You may have noticed over the past few years that the grocery stores have become overrun with these.
This smaller version of the standard shopping cart seems to be have something to say on behalf of the person using it. "What do you take me for," it says, "some kind of full-cart-pushing consumerist?"
Note that this particular cart contains reusable bags, as if the shoppers are all prepared to go through the store carefully selecting their organic produce and handful of other items, which cannot possibly be placed into those wasteful plastic bags, before strolling back out to the parking lot and loading the groceries in their hybrid car. Wait a second...
Hmm...Have you ever thought it would be a good idea to poke fun at something and then realized that you're mocking your own life? Yeah, me either.*
*I guess my real point here is that looks can be deceiving...even when they are absolutely right.
Is there anyone other than me that hasn't done this yet?
The concept:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search. b. Using only the first page, pick an image. c. Copy and paste the html into your blog or Flickr stream.
The Questions:
1. What is your first name? 2. What is your favorite food? 3. What high school did you go to? 4. What is your favorite color? 5. Who is your celebrity crush? 6. Favorite drink? 7. Dream vacation? 8. Favorite dessert? 9. What you want to be when you grow up? 10. What do you love most in life? 11. What do you fear most? 12. One Word to describe you. ************************************** My Answers:
Today I am once again drawing not from my imagination, but from internet phenomena. This time, it's a website mashup. College football blog, Every Day Should Be Saturday meet lolcats and the meme of putting poorly spelled, grammatically incorrect captions on pictures.
With that, I give you Everyday Should Be Caturday, a brief recap of the 2007 college football season told through poorly captioned pictures.*
By now, pretty much everyone is familiar with PostSecret, the blog made up of anonymous postcards with awful, sometimes sad, sometimes horrific secrets written on them. What you may not know is that PostSecret doesn't use all of the secrets sent to them. In fact, there are some categories that automatically get dropped in the discard pile. In a stunning exposé, I am presenting here 3 types of secrets that never manage to make it onto the PS blog or into one of the books.
As I mentioned, we're back from St. Louis. What I didn't mention in the previous post is that St. Louis happens to be where the NCAA Frozen Four took place last week. We didn't go to the games, but we did go to the skills competition on Friday night, where I took this picture of Sparty, the Michigan State University mascot.*
Also present and photographed at the skills competition, Barry Melrose, because you can't be in the same building as him and not try to get a picture of the mullet. Not photographed (at least by us), a random dude from the stands winning a Pontiac G6 by making an unbelievable shot from center ice.
*For those of you not following college hockey (which would be just about everyone), Michigan State and Boston College were the teams in the championship game on Saturday, with Michigan State winning the title. That explains why the MSU mascot was skating around. I have some pictures of the BC Eagle, but no captions to go with them.
We're back from our brief trip to St. Louis. (See photo of Arch below as evidence.)
Just a couple of quick things about the trip. I have a feeling this guy is stalking me. He showed up when I went to Santa Fe last year, too.
If anyone has any idea about the significance of this statue (I don't know what it's actually called, but I like to think it's titled "Kung Fu Bunny.") please let me know.
It always takes seeing yourself in pictures to really drive a point home, and some of the photos from this trip made me realize that I have really let myself go.
Anyway, I'll have more on this later, but I wanted to give you a few pictures from the trip. (And as always, I cannot take credit for the pictures, as Melissa is the more talented photographer, and I am also not to be trusted with the camera for more than a few seconds.)
We're downgraded all the way to a Winter Weather Advisory now after spending all weekend under Winter Weather and Blizzard Warnings. Unfortunately, since Chewie thinks it would be a good idea to try to leave the yard and run free, I get to go outside with the dogs when they need to go out. Since we have a wireless web cam aimed into the backyard (for watching the boys if we aren't out there with them), Melissa decided to record me. At the beginning of the video, you can see me putting away my phone after she was telling me to come wave to the camera. Note that I am wearing jeans, my hooded NMSU sweatshirt with the hood up over my University of Illinois knit cap (repping both alma maters), a heavy wool coat buttoned all the way up to my face, gloves and snow boots. The only things exposed in any way are my eyes and part of my nose, but I was still freezing.
So what do you do when there's a blizzard warning, everything is closed and the news outlets are reporting that if you do venture out and slide off the road that police will take hours to get to you because they are so busy helping everyone else? I don't know what you do, but as for me, I scrounge the cabinets and see what I can make with ingredients we have in the house. That's how we ended up with a tray of super rich brownies covered in sour cherry preserves.
We went to a chocolate cooking class this week at one of our favorite local restaurants. This was actually that final part of my Christmas present from Melissa this year. We had wanted to go to this class in the past (they have classes each month, and one of those classes each year is about chocolate), but it tends to sell out quickly. Before, we had forgotten until too late, but this time Melissa remembered and made us reservations. I've been looking forward to this since I found out and was literally counting down the days as we got close to time.
This class consisted of a small group of people (a dozen or so) sitting and watching as the chef made various chocolate concoctions. It was a nice, informal setting which allowed for us to see what was going on and ask questions. In addition to being both informative and fun, it was delicious because we got to eat all of the things that were made. The dishes prepared were Chocolate Pot de Crème (which we ate there...all the others were sent home with us), Triple Chocolate Cookies, Chocolate Truffles (pictured below), and Bittersweet and White Chocolate Mousse.
The problem now is that the last thing I needed was more encouragement to make and eat more chocolate. Oh well, it's not like my doctor's going to yell at me for being fat or anything.
...a doofus with a camera. Since I realize that most of you have no idea what I look like, I figured I'd post a picture of myself that I like to call "Self-portrait in Chrome. 1, 2 It was taken just over two years ago at Millennium Park in Chicago, looking up from underneath the Cloud Gate sculpture.3
1 Because I'm a dork.
2 It's not actually chrome, it's polished stainless steel, but it sounds better if I say chrome.
3 Also known as the Bean, because it's shaped like a giant metallic bean.
Since Mikey decided to tag me with this meme (a week ago), I suppose I have to post something now. The meme is simple, list 5 things about myself that you don't know. The problem I have is what am I willing to tell you that I haven't already? I guess we'll find out.
1. When I was in grad school, there were several occasions where I spent a good bit of time in a dark room to expose and develop x-ray film for Southern blots. It turns out that if you leave all alone in a pitch black room for a while, my mind starts deciding all sorts of things. Things like that there was another person in the room and if I was still enough and listened closely I could here them, or that there was a crazy killer rampaging through the halls killing everyone else and he wouldn't find me as long as I didn't make any noise. I never believed these things, they were just thoughts that popped into my head for a moment before being pushed out by logic, but I take them as evidence that my mind is broken and shouldn't be allowed too much time on its own. (As an aside, I found out after working in the dark for a while one day that if you pull out one of the cardboard spacers that are between the pieces of x-ray film and try to expose and develop it, it doesn't work too well.)
2. When I was young, I hated school so much that I would often play sick so that I could stay home. I refused to lie about how sick I was, so I would occasionally gag myself with my finger so that I would throw up and then I could say that I had thrown up and not have to lie. You have to love that logic: I won't lie and say I threw up when I didn't, but it's perfectly ok to ignore the fact that it was self-induced.
3. If I'm not good at something, I tend to try to be funny instead. For example, observe these Christmas cookies from 2001. I can make the cookies just fine, but when it comes time to decorate them, my attempts at nice looking cookies end up looking like 3rd grade art projects (I apologize to any third graders who are offended by being compared to me.), so I decided to be humorous. That's how I end up with stocking cookies turned into gold-toe dress socks,
and gingerbread men in prison jumpsuits
or gingerbread men wearing wife-beaters (complete with tattoos).
I figure that if I'm goofy enough no one will be paying attention to the fact that I'm not very good.
4. I don't write this blog to become popular (which is good, because I'd be a complete failure), but when I see year end blog awards, I kind of wish I could have as many people interested in what I have to say as they do.
5. I have a tendency to get songs stuck in my head, like just about everyone else. The main difference is that when a song is stuck in my head I tend to sing it to the dogs, complete with new, dog-centric lyrics. Sure the lyrics are repetitive and I'm a complete dope, but how many of your pets have songs about them? That's what I thought.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to baking Christmas cookies. (What? Have I not told you that I'm always running late? I guess I should have made that #6.)
Friday after work, we decided to go to downtown Kalamazoo and check out the new movie theater that was opening. Unlike the other theaters around town that are in various strip malls, this one just pops up in the middle of downtown, right next to a parking garage. Actually, that's a point in its favor right there. Rather than a parking lot where during the winter, I would come out and have to clean the car of snow that has accumulated during the movie (this always seems to happen more when Melissa's sister visits), we can park in an enclosed garage (but not pay because the theater validates parking).
The screens and auditoriums were huge in relation to the others in town. The theater we were in held around 450 people, and since we were a bit early, I can even tell you that there were 36 stairs from the screen level to the top of last row of stadium seating. If you didn't want to walk that many stairs, no need to worry, there was also an elevator.
The seats were rockers and comfortable, though not made of memory foam. The concession stand even had Coke Zero on tap, giving it a huge mark in the "plus" column.
Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the exterior, so you'll have to settle for bad cameraphone pics from inside. (as you can see, we were a little early)
From the top row to the screen
From the screen, up.
End credits, complete with dancing penguins, as seen from our seats.
What about the movie itself? We went to see Happy Feet. The animation was impressive, and it looked good in general. The dancing penguins were cute, as one might expect, and since it was a kids' movie and had voiceover from Robin Williams, it had plenty of humor. The story dragged a bit in parts and was more than a little preachy in its moral(s), even for a childrens' movie. The voiceover cast was somewhat odd, with Nicole Kidman doing an annoying Marilyn Monroe impression, and Hugh Jackman doing a less-annoying Elvis impression as the mother and father of the hero. I'd have to give it 3 out of five stars. I liked it, but certainly didn't love it, because it felt an awful lot longer than 90 minutes.
I have one nagging question left from the movie: There were three types of penguins in the movie, Emperor Penguins, Adelie Penguins and a lone Rockhopper. Why is it that when they did voiceovers, the Adelie Penguins were Puerto Rican?
We've been in our new house for a little over a year now, and I'm very glad we moved. There are tons of advantages. We now live only minutes away from both our workplaces. We can easily go home for lunch if we want. We are no longer renting and no longer having to deal with a poorly set up septic system. Our neighbors are much less likely to be seen standing outside poking a fire in a 50 gallon drum with a stick. However there are some things I occasionally miss about the old house. Like the view in the backyard.
Credit for both photos goes entirely to Melissa, I'm just posting them.
Have you started your Christmas decorating yet? If you need more ideas, I would like to suggest some lovely acrylic-wrapped light sculpture decorations we saw for sale in the mall recently. I don't know about you, but when I think of Christmas, I think of dolphins...and cows...and seals.
At home, I could keep it at my computer and if the dogs want to play, I don't even have to look up, just launch a dart and tell them fetch.
Or I could take it to work and have it my office. It will come in handy when that annoying coworker comes into the office and never stops talking (Come on, you know what I'm talking about. You've got one in your office too. Unless, you are that person in your office.) If they won't shut up and leave, all it takes is a few clicks of the mouse and missiles are being launched at their head. You can even make a game out of it and try to see if you can get a dart to go through the flapping gums.
Unfortunately, the more realistic side of me keeps saying that the net results of these suggested uses would be a choking dog and a visit with HR, but you can't blame me for dreaming.
