Googer's Random Blog

Pre-Superbowl Snow Storm

2010-02-07T13:25:00.007-05:00

So as I'm sure a lot of people in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions of the US know, we had a very strong classic Nor'easter come through Friday afternoon through Saturday night (exact timing depending on where you live). We in the Pittsburgh region were originally supposed to be spared from the worst of it, and I suppose we didn't get quite as much snow as some areas, but we still finished with around 18" of nice heavy, wet snow.

I wouldn't really mind, since I love the snow normally and I couldn't care less about not being able to go anywhere for a little while, except for two little problems:

I lost power at 4 AM on Saturday morning.
I lost water at around 6:30 PM Saturday evening (and yes power was still out at the time).

The loss of power wasn't a huge deal really, though it of course meant that I had no heat and had only my cell phone and Nintendo DS to keep me company, though I fortunately have an external rechargeable battery pack that has enough capacity to keep both of them well-juiced for long durations (which in retrospect now is some of the best ~$100 I've spent on an impulse purchase in a long time - thanks Woot! :P). Yes it was getting cold in my place but between multiple layers of clothes and my down comforter, staying warm wasn't an issue (even when it got down to its low of 51 degrees inside ;) ), and I had plenty of food and water on-hand.

The real problem was losing water, since now it suddenly meant I lost basic necessities, like being able to wash (myself or any fresh food), flush the toilet, etc. At first I'd feared it was because my pipes were freezing over despite me keeping water running on multiple faucets constantly, but calling the emergency maintenance line informed me it was a deliberate decision by maintenance specifically to avoid bursting pipes. I don't agree with this decision since they've already previously informed all residents to keep water flowing at a trickle when it's extremely cold out even with working heat but I digress. The point is that now I was looking at a situation that instead of being inconvenient was now potentially actually dangerous. As the hours dragged on with no end in sight in regards to getting power or water back (even though the snow had ended locally by around 11 AM Saturday), I was looking at potentially having to leave my place despite the warnings to avoid travel if at all possible, etc.

I probably would have left my place if I could have gotten out easily in fact since I had offers from my brother, who lives about 6-7 minutes away, and a coworker, who actually lives even closer, to stay at their places, where they'd either never lost power or had got it back in much shorter order than I did, but I couldn't easily do so. My car was in the garage - the garage that I can't open without electricity because it's in a separate building and all I have is an remote for the opener. To open it without electricity means calling up maintenance, who can open all garages with a master key that also disengages the opener. I called them at around 9:30 PM to let them know I'd like them to open it, but I got sick of waiting for them to show up and ultimately just decided to turn in by around 10:30, figuring I'll see how things look in the morning.

Ultimately, power finally came back on at 1 AM Sunday, so I was without power a grand total of 21 hours. Great, I'm in business right? Not so fast! The heat in my place uses a heat pump that draws water from the hot water heater through a large radiator, which heats the air in the venting. I may have had power, but water was still out so I remained without heat. Still, I could at least work on heating my place in....original and completely unsafe (i.e., fire hazard) methods. I fired up the oven, cracked the door open and set up a box fan to circulate the hot air coming out. Hey, it may dangerous and I'd obviously need to turn it off if I did go out, but so long as I was around to supervise it, I felt comfortable enough with it given I live alone and didn't need to worry about anyone else accidentally disrupting the setup. And - bonus - it's extremely effective! It actually heats my place quicker and more effectively than the aforementioned heat pump can. ;) It brought my place's temperature from 51 degrees at 1 AM to 66 degrees by around 8:30 AM, when I got up.

As of 8:30, even though I'd now had power for 7 1/2 hours, I still didn't have water though. At this point I was just waiting a little bit for it to warm up outside (as of then it was in the upper single-digits) to open my garage and shovel in front of it so I could get my car out and take a shower at my brother's place. I finally headed out shortly before 9:30 and did so in around 20 minutes, popping back into my place shortly before 10 o'clock to call him up and gather my stuff (clean clothes, etc.) before heading out. But wait! Just as I was about to call, glurgle-blurb-blurb-bloop-bloop-bloop. Hey, water's back, a mere 15 1/2 hours after it had been turned off. :P

So in the end, I managed just fine, but it was getting to the point of me having no choice but to venture out before long when all service was back to normal... Except that it's still not quite back to normal, because I don't trust my water for purposes of cooking, cleaning, etc. It's running clear now (after letting it run for a long time on all faucets), but initially it was visibly yellowish-brownish. So after a quick shower once the water at least looked clear, I ventured on out to Costco and picked up a nice big-ass pack of spring water in 1/2L bottles to use for the next couple days. I could boil water instead but I can't be bothered and besides, that would only take care of bacteria and the like that may be in the water; any minerals, etc., that shouldn't be there would still remain.

Despite the snow having ended fully a day earlier, the roads are still in pretty awful shape to be honest but I managed to get there and back in one piece, though I wouldn't want to have done so in a rear-wheel drive vehicle...lots of slipping on Montour Run Road, and it would have been really hard to keep control if I didn't have front-wheel drive.

I don't know if we'll be getting hit here or not by it (or to the extent to which we will if we are getting it), but I hear talk of another storm moving through the Ohio Valley and into the Northeast in a couple days. With any luck even if we do, it won't approach this one, but this was certainly one to remember!

Finally, a few pictures of the aftermath of the snowstorm. I'm not sure what our official total was but it's definitely in the 18-20" ballpark at least. ;)

First is an overview looking out from my place. You can see everything covered in lots of snow, and in the distance you can see what I mean about Montour Run being in pretty poor shape:
Next is a shot of the air conditioners for my side of the building. You get a pretty idea of the amount of snow we got from the large mounts on top of each one and theirs sides being mostly hidden by it as well ;) :
And finally, here's a shot of my leg after trudging through the snow to get these shots, knee bent so you can easily see just how far up my leg it came:

Lunch at Bahama Breeze

2009-10-08T13:37:00.005-04:00

Today lunch was Bahama Breeze. We hadn't been there for awhile so when a coworker had suggested it, I wasn't about to complain since I rather enjoy quite a bit of the items on their menu. :) I opted for the tropical fruit and grilled chicken on mixed greens salad. They added this to the menu sometime a few months ago to replace an old favorite of mine, the bahamian grilled chicken on greens (which was basically a chicken and veggie kabob on a relatively basic salad and is something I could presumably still ask for even if not officially on the menu at this point) but I hadn't gotten around to trying this one yet. It also worked out to be a cheap lunch for me since BB had mailed me a $10 gift card for an adult dinner entree, and since this salad is available at dinnertime as well, it qualifies. :D $5 after tax & tip for the salad + soft drink.

Anyway, the salad itself: mixed greens, a nice amount of well-seasoned and perfectly cooked chicken breast, grapes, diced pineapple, mandarin oranges, strawberries, honey-roasted slivered almonds, and some crumbled goat cheese, served with a couple large homemade crackers / toasted flatbread, and their vinaigrette dressing (which I got on the side). This was better than I was expecting - the combination of the tangy yet smooth and creamy goat cheese with the crunchy almonds and the sweet fruit and crisp greens went very well together. The chicken on the salad, while very tasty, I'd actually consider a take-it-or-leave it component of the dish, since it didn't really add anything to it. It certainly didn't detract from it either but other than to add protein to it to make it more substantial as a viable entree, it didn't seem to serve much purpose to me. :p

Carino's

2009-10-03T15:18:00.004-04:00

The family lunch this weekend was the local Carino's. I kept my order simple - I did a create-your-own pasta and got penne with tomato sauce. It would be nice if they offered a whole-wheat pasta option but as far as I know this still isn't an option there. Regardless, I also told them to toss in black olives and capers (most of which aren't visible in the photo below as they were mostly towards the bottom of the plate, under the sauace and pasta), and then table-side a touch of fresh-grated parmesan. As you can see there's also a sprinkling of fresh parsley on top as well. Simple but very tasty!

Farmers' Market

2009-10-01T19:21:00.011-04:00

So as has been usual of late for my Thursdays after work I once again hit the closest farmers' market. I don't think it hurts that I'm there towards the end of it and I get especially good bargains as the farms want to unload whatever remaining stock they have instead of having to pack it up and bring it back with them, but I find buying produce there especially cheap in addition to being top-notch stuff. :D Take today's haul for instance:It's a huge head of green-leaf lettuce, a big butternut squash, and a truly massive spaghetti squash. The 20 oz. soda (courtesy of Costco ;) ) in the picture is there simply for a frame of reference on the size of these so it's clear that these aren't rinky-dinky little specimens but indeed are a good size. Anyway, the cost for all that? $1 each, so $3 total. Clearly the people saying that it costs too much to eat fresh, healthy food instead of processed garbage aren't paying enough attention. :p

Aloo Upkari

2009-09-23T02:28:00.005-04:00

I just noticed it had been awhile since I made any posts so I figure I'll break that streak with a quick post. Part of dinner was this simple south Indian-style preparation. It works well with almost any veggie but I especially like it with potatoes; it makes for some of the best home fries I've ever had. :D

I started with red potatoes, roughly chopped and steamed (in my microwave) with the skin left on. While that was nuking, I toasted the following with a tiny bit of oil in a pan:

Broken whole red chilies
Mustard seeds
Asafoetida

Then I added the potatoes to the pan along with:

Turmeric
Salt
Curry leaves
Dried shredded coconut (unsweetened of course)

and let it cook for a couple minutes to let the flavors all combine and get a bit of color on the potatoes and coconut. I may have slightly overdone the red chilies a bit this time as it was really hot (even for my tastes) but I enjoyed it nonetheless. :p

Curried Carrot-Beet Soup

2009-09-11T13:50:00.005-04:00

For dinner last night I had a soup-and-salad. The salad was relatively standard - mixed greens, tomatoes, onions, red pepper, and a basic red-wine vinaigrette dressing. The soup, however, was a tasty concoction I came up with to use some of this week's CSA haul. :)

I dry-toasted the following spices in my pressure-cooker (open of course), ground them in my spice grinder and then returned them to the pot:

Cumin seeds
Coriander seeds
Fennel seeds
Mustard seeds
Black pepper
Red chili flakes

I then added in roughly half an onion, a beefsteak tomato, a couple carrots, and a large (yellow) beet, all roughly chopped (and all CSA ingredients :) ), along with some salt, turmeric, and ginger and garlic pastes and allowed it all to begin cooking down a bit. Once the onion started to get a little color, I added enough water to cover it all and slapped on the pressure cooker's lid. I then let it cook for about 10 minutes once pressure was reached, at which time I used my hand-blender to turn it all into a nice rich, thick, and smooth full-bodied soup. The final result:Delicious! I think I'll have to remember to add a little of any or all of cardamom, cloves, and cinnamon to this next time I make it though; I think a little of the gentle warmth from these spices would have put this over the top and made it even better than it was.

Quinoa salad

2009-09-06T00:22:00.006-04:00

Our local family is having a get-together tomorrow (errr...later today now I guess ;) ) and I was asked to bring something. Based on the currently-planned menu of "rotisserie chicken, ribs, succotash, and fresh tomatoes," I saw an opportunity to make something different from the norm for both me (because what I decided on is just the sort of thing I don't bother to make when cooking just for myself) and for most everyone else that will be there (mainly because they don't cook with nearly the breadth of ingredients that I do). I decided I'd make a quinoa salad with a semi-Moroccan flavor profile. The basic ingredient breakdown:

Quinoa - 50/50 mix of red and golden
Dried apricots, diced
Sun-dried tomatoes, diced
Raw banana peppers, diced
Shallot, finely chopped
Cilantro, finely chopped
Red wine vinegar
Lemon zest and juice
Salt
Pepper
Cumin
Coriander
Ginger
Smoked sweet paprika

Hopefully other people will like it. It tasted pretty good to me, especially after adjusting the seasoning (initially I added way too little salt and somewhat too little of the various spices) and it should get better as it sits overnight. I was debating adding some honey to it when initially throwing the dressing together but decided I'd best taste it first and see if the sweetness of the apricots and tomatoes was enough, and I'm glad I did since I think it would have been too sweet if I added any additional sweeteners.

Now, if I was making it just for myself, I would have also included garlic and cayenne pepper to give it a touch of heat but I was trying to honor requests from others that are attending in regards to foods they avoid (garlic specifically and being heat wusses in general :p). As it is I'll have to warn Emma about the vinegar in there since she claims it bothers her, though I'm personally somewhat skeptical given how prevalent it is in so many prepared foods, many of which I'm sure she eats with no problem. Oh well, her loss if she decides not to eat this. ;)

Tomato salad

2009-09-02T16:37:00.007-04:00

This week's CSA featured an abundance of tomatoes, so what better way to enjoy (some) of them than with a nice simple, fresh tomato salad that lets the tomatoes mostly stand on their own. Plus it worked as a use-up for last week's basil that I still had some of (and had clearly seen better days, but it was still plenty good for this if not as pretty as it initially had been ;) ).

I used a red field tomato (a beefsteak?), a medium-sized yellow heirloom tomato, and all of the orange grape tomatoes from the CSA haul for this. The red and yellow tomatoes I sliced into ~1/4" thick slices, whereas I simply halved the grape tomatoes. I arranged them on my plate, tore up a bunch of the aforementioned basil leaves over it, sprinkled some coarse sea salt on top, and drizzled some of my good balsamic vinegar over it all:

I especially loved the differences in texture and flavor among the different types of tomato. The field tomato was quite meaty and really stood up to the additional flavors from the basil, salt, and vinegar. The yellow heirloom reminded me a lot of the campari (smallish stem) tomatoes that I use a lot of but was a bit tarter than they are. The orange grape tomatoes just exploded in my mouth with a burst of intense sweetness, especially when compared with the other two varieties. Also as can be seen in the picture, I actually got a bit of a crunch here and there from the large salt crystals that didn't fully dissolve. Overall a wonderfully simple and refreshing salad.

Bocktown

2009-09-01T15:04:00.005-04:00

Lunch today was a short hop over to Bocktown. I love this place, even though I'm not a beer drinker (not that I could take advantage of that on lunch break anyway). :p They're one of the best 'real' restaurants in the area that makes most of their food fresh on-site, complete with an emphasis on fresh and local ingredients. They recently expanded their regular menu pretty substantially to include many items that had previously only been on their specials board at times, though I didn't order any of the new items today but rather opted for one of my old favorites there - the Bocktown Bella salad.

It's a relatively standard salad base - mixed greens, some grape tomatoes, kalamata olives, and cucumber slices. What goes on top of that is what makes it special. First is fairly standard sauteed (I hesitate to say grilled because these taste like flat-top 'grilled' veggies to me ;) ) onions and green bell pepper slices, which are already quite tasty.

The namesake of the salad is what really makes it though - a pair of large portabella mushroom caps that have clearly first gotten a decent amount of time in a balsamic vinaigrette-type of marinade. The combination of the sweet balsamic with the meaty grilled portabellas is outstanding. The onions and mushrooms are quite tender but the grilled peppers and of course all the raw salad items retain their crunch and make for an excellent contrast of temperatures and textures as well. The dressing I get with this is their tomato-pepper vinaigrette, which is a fairly standard balsamic vinaigrette dressing (quite possibly the same as what they marinate the portabellas in) with a bunch of chunks of tomato, onions, and peppers in it. Typically I just fish the chunks out and put them on top my salad, ignoring the rest of the vinaigrette - there's already plenty of liquid / marinade / dressing leaching back out from the cooked portabellas for the salad and really no dressing is needed at all - I just like the balsamic-marinated bits from the side of dressing for even more of a balsamic kick as I eat this. :p Yum!

Solid-state drive

2009-08-25T08:52:00.007-04:00

I'd mentioned this at the tail end of my Windows 7 post but now this is worthy of an entry all its own. I took advantage of some ridiculously aggressive pricing on a solid-state drive about a week-and-a-half ago. To be exact, it's a SuperTalent 64GB UltraDrive GX (MLC) drive, bought for $135 shipped, with 20% ($27) coming back via Bing Cashback around 1 1/2 months from now, so $108 final price - quite insane considering that as of today the going street price on this exact drive (and its peers) is right around $200. This will of course be laughable to go back and read in the coming months (and years) since SSD's are still very much in the early adopter phase and you pay a hefty premium for them, though at this point we're already well into the downward spiral of price. When this special popped up, I decided it was time to get one for playing around with. :)

Anyway, the drive itself took its sweet old time getting here, having been shipped UPS Ground from CA. I did eventually get it this past Friday though and of course didn't waste much time in switching my home-theater PC over to using it for its system drive. I was somewhat surprised to find it was indeed already on the latest firmware, which was released publicly only 3 days before I ordered the drive (!). The significance of that is that the newest firmware implements the ATA-8 ACS2 command, a.k.a., the TRIM command. This is of importance since the current affordable SSD's suffer from performance degradation over time due to how they manage their writing / rewriting strategies without further maintenance to 'wipe' free / unused space, which the aforementioned command is essentially an implementation of (it marks space on the drive as unused for automated wiping that is implemented at the system level by Windows 7's SATA drivers). This means that performance degradation as I use this drive over time should be minimized, so beyond a certain level of initial loss it should remain relatively close to as fast as the day I got it.

OK, enough of some of the real gritty details. How's it work in practice? Drool-worthy. :D Replacing the system drive (which was of course a traditional spinning drive) with this is the only change I made to the my home-theater PC and in day-to-day use, it feels like I went ahead by about 4 or 5 years-worth of computer generations overnight! Granted the old HD wasn't the fastest out there but it wasn't a complete dog either (it being a 500 GB 7200 RPM SATA-2 drive from about a year ago), but I highly doubt that even top-end 15K-RPM SAS enterprise-class drives could compete with this in a single-user desktop environment or probably even most multi-user server-type environments. :p I wouldn't, however, trust a consumer-class SSD in such an environment though - the huge number of writes involved would probably wear the drive out in only a few weeks of usage. ;)

Windows 7 Ultimate cold-boots in about 10 seconds (compared to a significantly customized stripped-down version of Windows XP64 I had been running, which booted in about 25 seconds on the HD), almost every program pops up essentially instantly, builds of MAME take about 1/3rd as long as they had, shutdown takes 2 or 3 seconds, .... Bottom-line, this is the biggest improvement I've seen in computing performance from a single computer component since the day I'd first seen a 3Dfx Voodoo card in action way back when. 3D graphics are now ubiquitous (even if it is somewhat half-assed in many computers when compared to current high-end hardware); I suspect this will be the case as well with SSD's instead of HDD's sometime in the next few years as the cost of entry declines.

I'll finish up with a comparison shot - it's not really meaningful since the size of the SSD is in truth really determined by its form-factor - that being it's a 2.5" SATA laptop-class drive, but it's fun nonetheless. :) In the picture below, the new 64GB SSD drive is sitting on top of an old half-dead 3.5" IDE 40 GB HD I have just sitting around. So in a bit under 9 years (based on the manufacturing date on that HD), the drive is several orders of magnitude faster in real-world use, is somewhat larger in terms of storage space (though certainly what you'd say is the same rough size), something like 20% as big physically, consumes far less power, operates completely silently, and cost probably about the same amount (admittedly largely thanks to the special price I got). It's definitely nice to see real progress being made and not just some incremental difficult-to-notice improvements as I'm used to seeing most of the time with computers. :p

Mexican-ish salad

2009-08-25T08:51:00.002-04:00

Mixed salad greens
Campari tomatoes
Sliced yellow bell pepper
Diced sweet onions
Feta cheese
Pumpkin seeds
Dressing - salsa verde
- Fresh tomatillos, pan dry-roasted
- Diced sweet onions
- Diced green chili pepper
- Chopped fresh cilantro
- Lime juice
- Salt

Ideally the feta would be cotija or the like instead but close enough. :p

Dibella's

2009-08-24T13:55:00.007-04:00

Lunch on Mondays is almost always Dibella's. It's quite affordable for what you get, it's fast, and it's really tasty. They really load their subs with meat - the fresh deli meat isn't pre-portioned but is instead measured by weight for consistency's sake and I've actually seen their little cheat-sheet on how much meat is supposed to be on each sub. For reference, the amounts are as follows:

Small (~8") - .3 lb
Medium (~12") - .45 lb
Large (~16") - .6 lb

Trust me, that's a lot of meat for subs of that size. I'd guess it's somewhere between double and triple the amount of meat that Subway uses for a given-size sub. The quality is far superior as well, both the meat and their breads. Both Dibella's and Subway continually bake bread throughout the day, but whereas Subway bread is probably premade frozen dough logs that are thawed, proofed and baked, Dibella's is made completely on-site. So even though a Dibella's sub costs a bit more, when you factor in the much higher quality and more generous portion of meat, it turns out to be well worth it. :)

As for what I had today, it was what I almost always get - a medium cold turkey on multi-grain bread, with lettuce, tomato, onions, banana peppers, oregano, some crushed red chili flakes, and red wine vinegar. I pass on the cheese - it's healthier and anyone that knows me also knows I tend to only like meltable cheese when it's melted anyway. :pOutstanding! This (along with a pickle as my side of choice) hits the spot every time. :)

Chicken fajita salad

2009-08-21T16:41:00.008-04:00

A salad I get at Don Pablo's fairly regularly. It's actually a highly-customized version of their fajita taco salad. Salad contents (post-customization) are:

Romaine lettuce
Fajita veggies (onions, green poblano and red bell peppers)
Pico de gallo
Grilled chicken (though I'll sometimes get shrimp instead)
Guacamole

As my 'dressing', I use a bunch of salsa. Also on the side (not pictured), I get black beans, which I'll sometimes add some of to the salad as I eat it. Very tasty!

Quick Chipotle run

2009-08-18T14:33:00.007-04:00

Today's lunch was a quick Chipotle run with a coworker since I had to be back for an early post-lunch meeting. I got a salad with black beans, lots of fajita veggies, and all four types of salsa - mild tomato, green tomatillo chili, red tomatillo chili, and roasted chili-corn.My coworker got a chicken burrito bowl. He got rice, black beans, fajita veggies, chicken (of course), and tomato salsa. Not pictured is a side of guacamole that we split as well - it actually comes free with vegetarian items there but since you get so much I prefer it on the side and just put some of it on myself, and that works well for anyone else that wants some guac as well.Yum!

Summer squash curry

2009-08-16T20:45:00.012-04:00

I had a haircut yesterday and on the way back, I decided to stop at the Simmons Farm Market (the storefront for Simmons Farm of all places ;) ), given that it's literally on the way back home. After a quick browse around to see what looked good, I settled on a large box of peaches for $6.50 and a selection of their summer squash - one each of a green zucchini, yellow zucchini, and some other non-descript yellow straight-neck squash. All three of them were absolutely massive (the smallest of them weighing in at around 1 1/2 pounds when I got home) and cost all of $2.35 for the three. The peaches of course I'm just eating out-of-hand, but now I've got an abundance of summer squash to eat in the next few days. :D

Today I used up half each of the green zucchini and the non-descript yellow squash in making a summer squash curry. I didn't follow any recipes for this so I can't really give it a more descriptive name than that, but the ingredients tend towards it being more of a south Indian-style curry.

After chopping the squash, deseeding the yellow one (since it actually had a real seed pocket), and setting it aside, I dry-toasted cumin seeds, coriander seeds, mustard seeds, fennel seeds, fenugreek seeds, cardamom seeds, a chunk of whole turmeric, some dry curry leaves, and some red chili flakes. It sounds like a lot of ingredients but once you have all these spices (and a lot more - trust me ;) ) on-hand, you don't really think anything of whipping them all out when cooking.

As the spices were dry-roasting, I finely chopped up roughly half of my last remaining Vidalia onion and a couple large cloves of the ultra-fresh garlic from this past week's CSA load. By the time I finished prepping that, the spices were ready, so they went into my spice grinder and I tossed the onions and garlic in the pan to start sweating out along with some ginger paste and a healthy pinch of salt.

After grinding the spices quickly, they went back into the pan, which meant I was now free to prepare the next layers of flavor. I took several campari tomatoes and blended them to a nice puree with my stick blender. I also mixed in a bit of tamarind paste while doing this and set that aside, just waiting for the onions to be sufficiently cooked-down before adding the tomatoes.

Meanwhile, any good curry means you have a lot of sauce to use up, which normally means some form of bread (naan, chapatis, etc.), or some form of rice. I figured it's not traditional but it functions largely the same as rice, so I decided today I'd make quinoa to go with this. In this instance it's specifically red quinoa but besides having a nifty color, I haven't really found it to be any different from 'plain old' golden quinoa. I like quinoa because it has a nice slightly nutty flavor to it, a bit similar to brown rice, but it cooks up just like white rice in terms of time. Now, rice (or quinoa) is simple enough to make but a coworker gave me a really nice rice cooker as a Christmas present last year, so I may as well use it - and I will admit it really does cook up perfectly every time even if your water - grain ratio is a bit off, and cleanup is a cinch with its nonstick inner pan. :)

Anyway, back to the curry. After the onions were done sweating down, I added in the pureed tomatoes and let it begin to all simmer together. By this point in time, it already was beginning to look like a proper curry, though of course the squash itself hadn't been introduced yet. :p I knew the quinoa would be ready in about 20 minutes and I wasn't real sure the squash would be fully tender if I just threw it in the gently-simmering sauce in that time, so I put it in a glass microwave-safe bowl, covered it with plastic wrap, poked a couple holes in it, and used my microwave's smart 'fresh vegetables' setting. When that finished about 5 minutes later, I moved the perfectly-cooked squash (yes my microwave's automatic setting for this actually works well most of the time ;) ) into the sauce for the remainder of the simmering time.

About 15 minutes later, my rice cooker played its cute little tune to tell me the quinoa was ready, so I put the quinoa on my plate and put the finishing touches on the curry. I killed the heat and mixed in a healthy spoonful of yogurt and some very finely chopped cilantro. The final result once plated:And a token close-up:Oh man was this good. :) This sauce would have gone well with just about anything - chicken, fish, lamb, eggplant, peppers, pumpkin, you-name-it, and the quinoa paired just fine with it as well. The blend of spices hits almost every note you could want - from the smokiness of the cumin to the citrus from the coriander, a touch of hotness from the chili flakes, bitterness (in a good way) from the fenugreek, brightness from the fennel and sourness from the tamarind, a gentle warmth from the cardamom, ...and sweetness (as well as their own flavors) came from the well-cooked base vegetables - the onions, garlic, ginger, and tomatoes.

I think about the only thing that could have come out better would have been the very minor issue of my yogurt curdling slightly even though I added it after turning off the heat. I guess the sauce was a touch too acidic for it. ;) Not a huge deal as this didn't affect the flavor in the least; it just made the sauce a touch less pretty than it otherwise would have been. :p

Windows 7

2009-08-15T21:30:00.004-04:00

Thanks to my MS TechNet account, I have access to installation media and license keys for most of Microsoft's operating systems and various non-development applications. This includes (since August 6th) early access to the RTM versions of Windows 7. I figured I was overdue for rebuilding my home systems, especially given I tinker around with them so much, so I may as well give it a shot instead of just reinstalling XP once again.

For now I've only installed 32-bit Win 7 Ultimate on my old laptop - a Pentium-M 1.7 GHz, 1 GB of memory, and an AMD Radeon Mobility 9700 on the graphics side. Installation went very smoothly overall; there weren't really any driver quirks to speak of and to this point nothing I care about running has any issues with it. Despite the fact that this computer is far from what you'd call cutting-edge, it performs remarkably well as well, even with Aero enabled - this despite the performance index for Aero being a lowly 2.0 (out of a maximum possible score of 7.9). :p

As for the OS itself, well, it's basically Windows evolved and refined. :) Yes there's some nice behind-the-scenes improvements beyond XP and Vista, but to be honest, the biggest difference I notice in day-to-day usage is the reworked taskbar. At a glance it seems like not much is different from previous versions of Windows, but in actuality what changes MS did make are welcomed and help to streamline the experience by quite a bit, especially when running a lot of applications at the same time.

For instance, instead of using shortcuts in the QuickLaunch toolbar (my previous favorite way of having quick access to my most-used applications), you can now choose to pin any program to the taskbar. This does effectively the same thing, but one of the neat things is that when you launch said program, instead of more space in the valuable taskbar real-estate being taken up by the running instance of the program, the icon for the pinned program in the taskbar gets a highlight indicating it is running. Other niceties related to this are that if you right-click on pinned program, you also see a list of associated recent documents for it that you can run directly or even pin themselves, so that they always show up when you right-click on the program's taskbar icon. When multiple windows for an application are open (or multiple instances of the same application are running), they are all grouped together under a single icon on the taskbar - even if there are only 2. When you hover the mouse over the icon, you can see a moderate-sized thumbnail for all of the open windows and can select which one you want to work with. This all leads to being able to leave the desktop and start menu very clean, since you always have very quick access to all your running and frequently-used applications and documents directly from the taskbar with only a tiny amount of input needed to reach them. There's a bunch of other refinements as well, such as the way the notification area by default hides applications' tray icons (which are easily customizable so the ones you want always showing can be, etc.) - again, to conserve valuable taskbar real estate.

So overall? It seems like a worthy upgrade to me, regardless of what version you're running now. Upgrading probably wouldn't be worth the time and expense for someone using a computer from back when XP was new, but for any PC's from within the past 4 years or so, I would say it should definitely be a consideration.

Next up, I'll be throwing it on my much higher-end PC - my quad-core HTPC, on which I'll be using 64-bit Ultimate. I originally intended on doing that last weekend (the same time I put it on my laptop), but laziness prevailed and I didn't get around to it then. I was then going to do it this weekend, but yesterday I bought a 64 GB Super Talent UltraDrive GX (MLC) SSD for $135 shipped, plus 20% ($27) cashback through Bing. :) As a result of that acquisition, I figured I may as well wait until the drive shows up, which should be next Friday. That will also be my experience with a solid-state drive, since until very recent price drops and specials (such as the one I got in on), I had a hard time justifying the very significant price premium over a traditional hard drive. Most indications point towards this being a game-changer in regards to being the single most important component one can upgrade / replace to significantly improve computer performance, something I should be able to personally either confirm or refute by the time next week. :)

Mango lassi

2009-08-15T19:05:00.005-04:00

It's been an unusually cool summer, but recently we've have a few days here and there that remind you what time of year it is. Today was such a day, so what better than to have one of the ultimate in refreshing versions of the milkshake. :)

I noticed I had a slightly past-its-prime ataulfo mango sitting in the back of my fridge, but it was just perfect for this purpose.

It made quick work of prepping the mango; no need for an even dice here since it's just going to be blended anyway. The bit that looks a bit pureed already is what I scraped off the pit with a spoon - no sense letting that go to waste. ;)
Whenever I make myself a sweet lassi, I always add a couple drops of rose water as well. It adds a nice floral touch to it, though you do have to be careful not to overdo it since it is surprisingly assertive and you can end up with something that tastes like, well, roses.
Here's the lassi sitting in my glass before I took my boat motor to it. Ice is at the bottom, the chopped mango is in the middle, and yogurt is on top. You obviously can't see the rose water (or touch of sweetener), but of course it's in there as well at this point.
...and here it is once blended.
Words (and pictures) just don't do this justice. This is incredibly delicious and most certainly hit the spot!

Beet-cabbage fry

2009-08-12T14:38:00.009-04:00

Beets, thinly sliced
Beet greens and stems, coarsely chopped
Cabbage, shredded
Cumin seeds
Mustard seeds
Asafoetida
Turmeric
Red chili flakes
Green thai bird chiles, split
Curry leaves

Tahitian vanilla-cacao yogurt

2009-08-10T21:22:00.008-04:00

In pictorial format, here's an example of the sort of thing I do with my homemade yogurt. :)

I started with plain yogurt.
I took a piece of Tahitian vanilla bean - I'd say about 1 1/2" long or so and split it in half.Here's what the scrapings from said bean look like.I added that to the yogurt, along with remainder of the piece of bean finely chopped.Here it is stirred in along with a touch of sweetener. This would already be a really nice basic vanilla yogurt.
But I wasn't done of course; I added a bunch of raw cacao nibs on top. :D
Tantalizing, no? :p

Homemade yogurt

2009-08-09T22:26:00.017-04:00

I have a bowl of yogurt almost every day - around a cups-worth in each one, so I go through it rather quickly. Rather than use any pre-made flavored yogurt or even store-bought plain yogurt, I make it myself. The taste and texture is far superior, not to mention it's ridiculously cheap compared to store-bought. The fact that it's quite simple doesn't hurt matters either. ;)

After today's bowl, I was almost out, so that meant it was time to make more this evening.

The process is quite simple with total active prep-work time of around a half hour. It would take close to this long no matter the quantity I make at a time, so given that I use it very quickly, there's no sense in making anything less than the most I can at once, which is roughly a half gallon.

I make it exclusively with dry milk powder as the base (no fresh milk is used at all). Others that have tasted this yogurt were surprised to learn this, most likely thinking it would be negatively affected by doing so. I have found this is not the case though, though I will admit it's likely the case that not all dry milks are equal and it's quite possible I'm using high-end stuff. For one, my milk powder isn't instant milk powder; it's just dry milk powder, meaning it's difficult to dissolve quickly in water. Given how I'm using it, I'm OK with that. :) In any case, using dry milk as the base has several advantages:

It's cheaper than fresh milk
It's always on-hand, so I don't need to run to the store to buy milk to make yogurt
Results are perfectly consistent, which I've found isn't the case with fresh milk - sometimes the yogurt sets well, other times not, etc.

All that said, here's the basic process.

Measure out dry milk by weight. I use 400g for each batch, which is far stronger than if I was just reconstituting the milk for drinking. It's actually slightly over double-strength. :)
Add water to bring volume up to around a half gallon. That means something on the order of 1750g when you account for the loss due to evaporation in later steps. It will just be a clumpy mess at this point in time. No sense worrying about it; it'll come together in time.
Put it on the stove on medium heat and start heating it. We're aiming for a final temperature of 180 degrees. I actually bring it to 180-185 and keep it there for a few minutes. It's important to keep stirring the whole time so the milk all dissolves and the bottom doesn't scorch. This heating process accomplishes several things:
- Helps dissolve the milk powder in the water
- Makes sure any germs that we don't want to incubate are killed off
- Denatures the proteins in the milk and gives a smoother texture than you'd get with unheated milk
After the heating process is done, then the milk needs to be cooled down before it can be seeded with the yogurt culture. The yogurt culture can't survive these high temperatures and in fact can't handle anything above around 120. If one is patient, I suppose just letting it sit on the stove to let it cool down to 110 (which is what I bring it down to) would work, but I'm not patient. ;) So, to the sink I go to have cold water running on the outside of the pot as I stir away. In this shot you also get to see the thermometer I use for temperature-testing purposes.
After it's cooled down, add some of the new milk to the old yogurt and mix well. This is a lot easier than just adding the old yogurt directly into the milk, as getting it to stir into such a large amount of liquid is basically impossible. :p
Pour the yogurt-milk mixture back into the bulk of the milk and again, stir well.
Finally, transfer the yogurt-to-be to a clean yogurt container.
Throw on the lid, clean up any mess and incubate it. I personally use a yogurt maker for ease and consistency (and the containers I use of course are the exact one that this yogurt maker actually comes with), but there are a number of other methods for doing this, from using a slow-cooker to a very low oven. If everything goes well, this should be yogurt in as little as around 4 hours, but I personally let it go a decent amount longer to let it get thicker and obtain a tangier flavor. :) In this shot, I hadn't yet put the yogurt-maker's outer lid on.
Chill the yogurt down in the fridge for a minimum of 12 hours or so. It will continue to get thicker in this time as well.

And one last shot of the incubating yogurt with the outer lid.
Mmmm.... fresh yogurt in-the-making. I'll show actually using this in another post. :)

Basic salad

2009-08-09T20:06:00.008-04:00

Mixed salad greens
Campari tomatoes
Roasted red peppers
Red onion
Feta cheese
Cantaloupe seeds
Dressing
- Red wine vinegar
- Lemon juice
- Honey
- Garlic chives
- Fresh oregano
- Salt
- Pepper
- Xanthan gum (used as thickener)

And if the thought of "xanthan gum" as an ingredient in a homemade dressing bothers you, just read the label from almost any commercially-made item (including baked foods) you can think of where the manufacturer wants to add thickness or body to it, reduced-fat version or not. ;)

Grilled squash

2009-08-06T23:08:00.008-04:00

I'll probably post some more entries in this style since it's quick and still gets the idea across. ;)

Grilled crookneck squash (on a grill pan inside - I don't have an actual grill)
Balsamic vinegar
Feta cheese
Fresh oregano

Yummy!

Fun with sambal

2009-08-04T21:40:00.001-04:00

I hadn't had anything that I considered hot (meaning spicy hot) in quite awhile, so I decided tonight to make something that'd take care of this (inexplicable to most people) craving. Anyone that knows me also knows that my level of heat tolerance is extremely high, so it takes more than just adding, say, a bit of cayenne to a sauce or the like for me to truly consider it hot. Also know that hot for hotness's sake seems pretty stupid to me; there'd better also be good flavor behind it to really enjoy it!

Taking advantage of the cheap local produce available this week at Giant Eagle ($.99/lb for a decent number of items), I bought a bunch of green beans and thought I'd use some of them (about a half pound) in a nice spicy stir-fry / sauté. After ridding the beans of any woody stems and tips and washing them, I whipped out my trusty non-stick pan and a microwave-safe glass bowl and got cooking.

I started by putting the pan on a medium burner to let it start heating up (which is as high as you should ever go with a nonstick pan, at least while it's empty). I threw the green beans in the bowl and covered it with plastic wrap. After poking a couple holes in the wrap, I nuked it on high for 1 1/2 minutes just to give the beans a quick blanching / steaming kind of effect.

While that was doing its thing, I added about half a teaspoon of toasted sesame oil to the pan along with a spoonful of a great convenience item, garlic paste from the local Indian market. I also bought ginger paste there that I use relatively frequently but not today - it wouldn't have really added anything to this dish.

I let the garlic start to get a bit fragrant and then added a healthy amount of what gave this its kick - sambal. It's basically a vinegary and very hot chili sauce that I suppose should normally be used sparingly given that I think of it as sriracha's evil brother, but I wanted hot. I think I used about a quarter cup of it. ;) Since sambal already has some salt in it, there was no need to add more with the amount I used.

Anyway, after adding the sambal, I gave the pan a stir so the oil, garlic, and sambal would start to come together. By this time the string beans were done, so I pulled them out of the microwave and added them to the pan.

As you can see, there's quite a bit of liquid in the pan from all the sambal I added. I let this reduce down to a thick sauce that started to caramelize and really stick to the beans.

The final result once moved over to a serving bowl:

And a closeup where you can really see the texture of the sauce, both in how it coats the beans and the larger chunky bits:

It most definitely appears to be appropriately spicy with all the lovely seeds from the chilis used in the sambal and trust me, the pictures don't do this justice. ;) Almost everyone I know would have found this to be completely inedible. I personally loved it and was rewarded with a slight fruitiness and somewhat unexpected touch of sweetness hidden among all that heat. The beans themselves complemented it nicely as well with the perfect amount of slight remaining crunch and flavor that amazingly wasn't completely overwhelmed. I did, however, need something to put out the fire in my mouth afterwards. A nice bowl of yogurt (something I'll go into in another entry at some point) fulfilled that role perfectly...

Cabbage, kale, and braising greens subzi

2009-08-02T23:08:00.001-04:00

Today's lunch consisted of an augmented use-up on some veggies I had sitting in my fridge. I still hadn't used my kale and braising greens from this past week's load from the CSA. I decided to make an Indian-style dry fry or "subzi" with them but I also knew that they alone wouldn't have been sufficient enough for that to be my lunch, which is where the augmentation part comes in. :) On Thursday I bought a ridiculously huge head of cabbage at a farmer's market (I weighed it at about 6.5 lbs when I got home) for all of a buck and still had most of it around as well, and in fact still do as of this writing.

For actually making this, I cleaned the kale and braising greens (which appeared to mostly be couple varieties of chard), cut out the stems (which would take too long to cook compared to the leaves for them to be tender by the time everything else was cooked), and broke the leaves up into smaller pieces that'd be easy to fit in my mouth. I shredded the cabbage I was supplementing the greens with on my mandoline and got to work with the actual cooking.

In a large nonstick pan, I added just a touch of grapeseed oil and let it get hot. Once it did, I threw in a healthy amount of whole cumin and black mustard seeds and allowed them to start smelling fragrant. At that point, I added in some red chili flakes, turmeric, and asafoetida, an interesting ingredient that adds a very pleasing flavor somewhere in the garlic-leek-onion family once it cooks. After those also got a chance to cook out a bit, I tossed in the cabbage, kale, and braising greens. I added a healthy pinch of salt to this and all there was left to do was let it cook down for several minutes, stirring away as I did to get everything well-mixed. I believe it took around 7-8 minutes after adding the vegetation before I declared it ready.

The result:

That bowlful actually is only around half of it but dumping the entire serving of it in the bowl wouldn't have made for a pretty photo since the bowl would have been completely overflowing. ;) I did eat it all though; no left-overs to worry about. :p

As for the taste? Yummy as usual for when I make this sort of thing. No one ingredient overwhelms it; you get a nice earthiness from the cumin and turmeric, the mustard seeds complement the flavor of the vegetables, the red pepper flakes add some heat, and the asofoetida (as I already said) serves the purpose of garlic or onions. I also cooked it what I felt was perfect as well - the cabbage and greens were all lightly-to-moderately wilted but kept some texture as well; the cabbage in particular still had a nice bit of slight crunch to it that kept this from being a texture-less bowl of slop. :)

Church Brew Works

2009-07-27T15:59:00.000-04:00

So Saturday for dinner our family had the birthday dinner for my brother Slarb's significant other. She decided to choose the Church Brew Works, a somewhat curious choice considering she doesn't drink beer, at least not since becoming a mother. Of course they do have pretty good food besides, which I'm grateful for since I don't drink either. :P

I believe I'm the only person that actually ordered an item considered a proper entree though - the Asian Vegan Stir Fry - I'm not vegan but hey, it sounded good. ;) It's marinated and stir-fried tofu and mixed veggies - red bell pepper, carrots, onions, some broccoli, baby bok-choy, a few water chestnuts, etc., in a soy-garlic-ginger sauce, served over a bed of soft rice noodles. You can't see the noodles under the vegetables in the photo, but trust me, they were there. :)

As for everyone else, my dad got a Pittsburgh salad with some type of sesame dressing, my sister Lizzie and her boyfriend split a pepperoni pizza (with her also first having a bowl of their french onion soup), my brother Slarb had an order of their traditional pierogies, followed up with an artichoke, spinach, and feta pizza. His significant other started with an order of sweet potato fries and followed up with a no-dressing Pittsburgh salad.

As for dessert, we all passed except for Slarb and SO. He had a slice of orange creamsicle cheesecake and she had their double chocolate mousse cake.

Everything looked very good and my stir-fry was rather tasty, though as I recall, the sweet potato fries weren't the biggest hit. Slarb's SO thought they were excessively seasoned. I believe the same seasoning is on the sweet potato fries that is used on their regular fries and fresh-made potato chips, which was perhaps a bit strong when what you're used to / expecting on sweet potato fries is just a little ordinary salt. Other than that though, everything was certainly enjoyed by all.

Yum

2009-07-23T23:46:00.000-04:00

That is all.

Hey, a blog!

2009-07-14T18:41:00.000-04:00

Yep, I created a blog. What will I do with it? Got me... :)