Archive for the ‘Food and Drink’ Category

Serendipitous Discovery

Saturday, August 3rd, 2013

My daughter and I went to check out a restaurant supply store this afternoon. Unfortunately, it doesn’t sell to the public; you have to have a business license to shop there.

So, we went to the IKEA store that’s not far from it. Neither of us had been to it before, and it was interesting wandering through it. Well, I say wandering, but they’ve arranged things so that there’s a preferred path through the store that everyone more or less follows. Still, it was interesting, an I saw a few things I may go back for.

Afterward, we decided to have an early dinner, and we made a spur-of-the-moment decision to try out a place we were passing by, the Street Kitchen Asian Bistro. I decided to try the okonomiyaki appetizer, because I’ve read about it for years, but never run across any place that offered it before. It wasn’t quite what I was expecting, based on what I’d read about it, but it was very good.

For the main course, I had the roasted pork belly stuffed with chinese chives, with steamed baby bok choi and brown rice side dishes, which was fabulous. Cheryl had the Char Kuey Teow – pan-fried flat rice noodles with pork, lap cheong sausage, bean sprouts, eggs, and garlic chives. It was pretty good, but I didn’t think it could match mine.

The only place I felt they fell short was the iced tea, which was instant instead of brewed. Still, I’d go back there anytime.

Valentine’s Day

Thursday, February 14th, 2013

Marion and I will be going out for a nice dinner tomorrow night, so tonight I cooked. We had seared spice-rubbed ahi tuna with wild mushroom couscous.

Other people celebrate differently. I have cats, but this would never occur to me (although I did give them some catnip this evening).

As an engineer, I find this dating advice for engineers to be both apt and amusing.

The path of love does not always run smoothly.

And, sometimes, it’s not about love.

Dining delights

Friday, March 30th, 2012

I mentioned before that I was going to try this recipe for Mediterranean Langostino Pasta, but I didn’t post a followup saying how it came out.

It was very nice. I’m definitely making that again. I bought a large bag of frozen langostino from Costco, though, so I had plenty more available to use. I ended up using them in to make paella and bouillabaisse, both of which were also well-received.

Earlier this week, I had my daughter over and made this. She arrived before I was done cooking, so I put her to work on it as well. We both agreed that the recipe was a keeper.

Brits know (on average) ten recipes by heart, and I can’t imagine that it would be too different here. I wonder what’s going to drop off my list if I add any of these?

Year-end link dump

Saturday, December 31st, 2011

In Japan, tradition for New Year’s Day is that it’s a fresh start – houses are cleaned, debts are paid, and so on. I’m not going to be anywhere near a fresh start this New Year’s, but I can at least try to clear out some of the links I’ve been accumulating.

This is not any sort of year-in-review, so don’t expect comprehensive links or dots being connected. This is just some of what I’ve accumulated in the last couple of months.

We’ll start with the Christmas/winter-related links while they’re fresh.

The Portal Christmas Tree is pretty cool. It’s appeared on a number of websites recently. The Portal 2 present wasn’t quite so widely noted. This last Portal-related link shows how Santa gets around quickly.

Instead of the Portal tree, which is one tree in two places, the Obama’s have 37 separate Christmas trees.

I’ve never cared for Star Trek ornaments, but I like this.

If you’re concerned that your stocking won’t hold your stuff, you can build one of these.

Do you tell spooky stories at Christmas? Some people do.

Some people like music to go with (inspired by) those spooky stories.

Some people have entirely too much time to play in the snow. Looks like fun. Back around 1977, I made this kind of fancy snow sculpture with my housemates, but I’ve not done it since then. Most winters, there’s seldom enough snow where I am to make an attempt worthwhile.

Art links:

Street Art Utopia has a wonderful retrospective of street art from the past year.

Variations on a theme. Some drawing are likely to be NSFW.

I like the fourth picture, but they’re all good.

Did Vincent Van Gogh have a vision deficiency?

Music links:

The Whitney Music Box. It’s fun to watch, too. Via.

Play Ukulele Hero.

So you’ve heard a song in a movie, and you want to know what it is.

Math and Science links:

A new technique lets you count the animals living in a body of water by monitoring the DNA in a sample of it.

This is amazing! MIT has a new high-speed camera system that can show the advance of light.

The archives of the Royal Society have been put onto the net for free access.

Nature wants to eat you.

This is cool! Watch the video showing how a new spray can keep your clothes and other things clean. I could use this on my windows and shower doors.

Another success for adult stem cells. To the best of my knowledge, all stem cell successes to date have involved adult stem cells, not fetal stem cells.

Do you believe in anthropogenic global warming enough to kill people? I don’t.

On science, pseudo-science, and heresy as it relates to AGW.

Nine equations true geeks should know (or pretend to know).

Technology and Toys links:

One of the Christmas presents I gave this year was a nice watch. Personally, I wear a cheap Casio watch currently, but I’ve been thinking of getting myself a nicer one. Here is one website I’ve checked out. You can find some nicer watches (definitely out of my price range) here, including this one that is wayout of my price range. It is beautiful, though. There is some attraction in an Android watch, though.

I had a Digi-Comp1 when I was younger. All that I have left is the manual. I may have to play with this emulator some time, but it was a pretty rudimentary computer, so perhaps not. Via Boing Boing.

I came so close to building one of these for a senior project in EE. I wish I had.

I have fond memories of Rogue, but they’re not too specific, because it’s been a long time since I’ve played. I wonder how close this is.

I haven’t tried this game-development system yet, but it looks interesting.

There’s not only an app for that, there’s now a brick-and-mortar app store.

It can’t tell you what changes were made, but there’s a new computer program that can tell you what parts of an image have been changed.

I remember reading this article (the Popular Science one) when it came out. I thought it would be a neat thing, and wanted to try making an aquarium pump. Unfortunately, I was a poor pre-teen at the time, and had no way to obtain the supplies.

This looks cool (and I almost put it in the art category), but I have to wonder about traction.

How cool is the idea of black boxes for archery arrows?

Politics, culture, and the economy:

An infographic about the Federal budget.

If the media were actually conservative, or even impartial or honest, this would be one of a number of major administration scandals.

The claim has been made that Occupy Wall Street is a grassroots uprising just like the Tea Party, but on the opposite side of the political spectrum. Is it? Is it really?

I had to ask some friends not to invite me for dinner if they were also inviting a specific neighbor of theirs to the same dinner; at each get-together where we were both present, he seemed to be challenging me to respond to his provocatively-stated political opinions, and I refused to submit myself to him being obnoxious all evening, and I didn’t want to make a scene. It’s not an unknown problem.

There are a lot of scary charts and graphs around. Here are two of them.

Are white men gods? Fred makes a good case for it.

At the very least, it appears that old Republican white men know what’s going on in the world.

Muslims have killed more than 1000 Christians this year. They don’t limit themselves to Christian targets though, and the numbers add up.

It used to be that medicine had little relation to or dependence upon evolutionary concepts. As that is no longer the case, I weep for the future of medical treatment.

When should you use violence? Don’t skip the comments.

Sometimes, they don’t even make an effort to hide their attitudes.

Food and Drink links:

A cheeseburger requires the capabilities of modern society.

Recipes for Liquers.

Highway closed by 20-ton Marmite spill. Kind of reminds me of the Great Molasses Flood.

I’ve made orange peel candy before, but it’s nice to keep a recipe handy.

I’m planning to try this recipe tomorrow night.

Sometime, I’ll have to try to make Italian Beef.

Most honey isn’t honey (according to the FDA).

Whisky and lasers sounds like a dangerous pairing, but it’s actually useful.

I’ve had a couple of these brews. I used to have some bottles saved from various brews with fun names (I had a bottle of Beer Goggles IPA, and two of the Denver Zoo’s custom labels), but I got rid of them some time ago.

I never really cared for Dippin’ Dots, although it was an interesting thing to try when I was young. It seems that other people feel the same way.

Miscellaneous links:

I propose that world building is the primary distinguishing characteristic of SF and fantasy.” Years ago, I attended a presentation on world building given by John Barnes. It was fascinating – among other things, he talked about Mac applications he’d developed to do forecasting of everything from expected rates of technology introduction to likely political alliances to popular names that could be extrapolated for particular future time periods.

Trade your old gold for a new cat.

Lost/missing culture

An enlightening discourse on Fantasy Armor and Lady Bits.

I’ve seen this guy before, but he wasn’t modeling bras then.

Speaking of modeling, a Swedish fashion chain is under fire for showing their clothing using computer-generated models.

Also, as a model, you should know what terms are in your model release.

Here is one link to a resource for learning languages.

Speaking of languages, they’re being mapped by Twitter.

Like a southern accent is good for a drop in perceived IQ, the same is true of dressing in a certain manner.

I think I’ve posted this before, but I ran across it again recently. An amusing anecdote about an attack cat.

Wisdom from Calvin’s father.

Ernie Pyle remembers Clark Kent.

And Bruce Wayne has a medical examination.

This is interesting – Mayan ruins found in Georgia.

It’s not GlaDos, but it used to be potato powered.

The Royal Navy is retrofitting submarines in preparation to allowing women to serve on them. I’ve written about this before; I think it’s a bad idea.

Be careful what you text. Also, review it to make sure it’s what you intend to send.

It’s a sad thing to note that this is necessary these days.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show actors – where are they now?

I haven’t gotten around to reading this webcomic yet.

Some nice newspaper headlines here.

Watch out for online dating scams.

UPDATE: Fixed a couple of links that weren’t properly closed.

My unsophisticated palate

Monday, October 24th, 2011

Last night, for the first time, I did a side-by-side taste test of batches 68 and 70 of Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey. Each batch is supposed to be pretty similar, but not necessarily identical. I couldn’t tell any difference between them, so I guess that’s a test I’ll have to repeat. Probably several times. At least.

You can’t spell ‘diet’ without ‘die’

Wednesday, October 12th, 2011

… or something like that. I enjoy watching Man vs. Food and Bizarre Foods. I wouldn’t participate in any of the food challenges in the first show (although, thirty or so years ago, I might have), nor would I eat some of the things Andrew Zimmern does.

Thus, my discomfort with the following news stories:

Two people were taken to a hospital after competing in a restaurant’s spicy chilli (sic) challenge – one of them twice.

An Australian man ate two garden slugs on a dare. I imagine he thought they were probably similar to escargot. He’s been in the hospital for a month so far as a result, but they do expect him to live.

Related articles, without the potential for immediate death, include:

A British TV chef has stated that eating pork is the moral equivalent of eating puppies. I’m not sure that I disagree with him, but I will state that I find most puppies to be cuter than most piglets, which is probably why I have qualms about eating dog meat that I don’t have with eating pork. Then again, I’ll eat rabbit, even after having had rabbits as household pets.

And, some scientists are claiming that many plants, including such things as potatoes, ought to be classified as carnivorous plants.

Tunesday 2

Tuesday, October 4th, 2011

I haven’t done this in about a month, so … let’s go with a drinking theme today. First, a song that’s more generically about drinking, rather than a specific drink:

Here’s a nice song about something I don’t drink (I do drink Scotch, but not with soda):

I have the “Nighthawks at the Diner” LP, and figured this would be a good one to include:

I’m used to hearing this from Dean Martin, so I thought this would be a little different:

Somewhat interesting, but a little too self-indulgent for my tastes:

And, we’ll finish with something a little lighter:

Good food

Monday, September 5th, 2011

Friday, I had lunch at Which Wich, a sandwich store I hadn’t seen before. Very good food, and they have a really ingenious way to keep people from holding up the line at the register while they decide what they want to eat – they have a rack of bags labeled with the sandwich types, and printed with all of the options for the sandwiches. You select the bag labeled with the type of sandwich you want, mark all of the options for bread and fixings, then hand it to the person behind the register, who rings you up.

I was there with a friend, and we were in and out within a few minutes. I’ll definitely be going back there again.

Bash!

Friday, April 22nd, 2011

Blogger Bash Banner

I doubt I’ll be able to attend, given my broken ankle, but I’ll certainly try to show up for a while if I can arrange transportation

Miscellany 14

Sunday, April 17th, 2011

Just a collection of assorted things.

First, I’ve heard beautiful women described as “hot,” and I’ve heard of “hot sex,” but even given that, I’m surprised to find out that someone caught fire while watching porn.

Staying with the subject of sex for a moment, this is a wonderful practical joke.

Now for a couple of recipes. Before he joined Pajamas Media, Stephen Green used to do something he called the Friday Recipe. He’s just posted the first one in a while, and it’s a good one.

He doesn’t include a dessert, though. If you’ve a sweet tooth, this may fit the bill.

Looking for somewhere to live, and not enamored with anything on the market in your area? Try looking in Italy.

How do you know when someone’s trying to guide your thoughts? Here’s some good information.

Government surplus items available here.

And, finally, regular expressions are often incredibly useful. Unfortunately, they are also sometimes incredibly hard to generate correctly. This site can help.