A Kitschy Gem From Back When

The other night we were fortunate enough to be introduced to the super-sleek-sixties-spy thriller that is Mario Bava's DANGER: DIABOLIK! (Or simply Diabolk). (Many thanks, Alex!) Holy crow, was it fun... It's full of interesting camera work involving reflections and odd angles, bizzare secret lairs, fabulous costumes, and the cherry on this psychadelic sundae is a luscious soundtrack done by the illustrious Ennio Morricone. (the song above is "Driving Decoys")

Apparently the original masters of the soundtrack were lost in a fire in the 70s, but someone over at YouTube has their hands on some of the songs. Don't forget to take in the trailer.

The Boy was pointing out just how much Austin Powers owes to this movie in particular. Only this stuff is serious. Dead serious. Dun-dun-dunnn!

You little whippersnapper, you!

Fair warning: those who are squeamish about bugs should turn back now.

I was warned by neighbors and friends a couple weeks ago that this season would be the year the cicada emerge. Sure enough, not a week later, abandoned cicada shells began appearing stuck to everything, along with their sluggish former inhabitants, crowding onto trees and bushes.

Anyone who's seen Neon Genesis Evangelion knows the sounds of summer in Tokyo 3: the never-ending drone of cicadas. It makes the air feel heavy and muggy, even if it's a fairly nice day out. I'm not sure if the cicadas depicted in the anime are of the seventeen year variety, but the ones we have here in Cincinnati apparently are.

Cicada deposit their eggs into the bark of trees and such places, and when they hatch, the larvae burrow into the ground, where they percolate for seventeen years (some varieties for 3-5 years) before emerging, molting, mating, and singing frantically before dying. What a life: Laze around for most of it, then have a huge party before you croak.

Since they're relatively cute (as bugs go), and don't bite or sting, the neighborhood kids have been having a heyday collecting them. I see little herds of kids wandering the neighborhood with jars.



The most interesting thing about this whole event is the constant sound of them. It's been cool this season, so they didn't begin chirping until one particularly warm day. From inside the house, I thought someone must be running a whippersnapper outside, but when the apparent yard work went on for hours, I stepped out on the patio to realize it was actually the cicadas. Most of them are higher up in the trees, so it's not as if there are massive drifts of bugs everywhere, but man--judging by the noise they make, there are millions of them out there.

The sound of it just rolls and swells, coming from everywhere at once. It's really something.

But in a couple weeks, they will all have done their procreative duties, and will die, leaving the task of deafening the neighborhood in the very capable hands (or wings) of the next generation.

It's been ridiculously gorgeous out lately--sunny and around 60 degrees. Now I realize that a lot of people don't count 60 as being gorgeous (Fools, I tell you!), but I'd be content is this lasted all summer long.

We had a bit of an outing today with Tif's dogs in attendance--through the railroad tunnel, down to the community garden and along the river a bit. Things we saw:

I think this field is planted with winter wheat. It's very green and very pretty. Back by the river is a whole field of wild shallots with mulberry trees bordering it. Hmm... for some reason, I think I'll be going back with a basket later in the summer.

Add one to the pile...

Having folk from out of town visiting got me in the frame of mind to explore Cincinnati once again. It was a busy winter, and we'd stopped going on adventures as often as we were. It was downright lovely to explore with some of my sisters and their tiny ones this week. (Thanks so much for the visit, you guys!)

Here's a nifty blog someone did that not only gives some fun ideas of interesting things and places in Cincinnati, it has beautiful photography as well. It just recently stopped updating, but the archives are well worth sifting through.

Proof of Keenness

And as a follow-up to the below post, here's one of my favorite songs from the hardworking Mr. Bird at the moment.

Making Noggin cooler, one cameo at a time.

Hurrah for someone at Noggin liking good music! :)

I have a crush on Andrew Bird. He whistles like...uh, an angel. If angels whistled.

Der Hollow Book

Well, I've painted the outside of the hollow book/box, and it looks a bit more "booky" than it did. I do need to find a thin belt of some kind to hold it closed, since the little magnet inside doesn't do the job all that well, particularly if I'll be carrying art supplies around in it and such. I'm picturing a book strap like the kids used to carry books home from school back in the "olden days." I'll probably have to make one if I can't find one to repurpose. Ah well. It's a little sloppy, but I think if I have another go at it, I'll know more what I'm doing, and will be able to make a better one. At $1.99 a pop for the plain box, it's not so bad. I'm also considering trying covering it with leather on the outside--if I can find a leather thin enough, and an epoxy strong enough. That's for another day, though.

Charlie bit my finger - again !

Just thought I'd add to the plethora of adorable kid videos that seem to be going around...

That Charlie. He thinks the whole thing is just hilarious!

Clicking the Classics

I recently discovered Digital Classics, which is a library of "over a hundred literary masterpieces, digitized, and bound in the finest electronic leather." They have a "reader" that pops up, and you're able to view the pages as you would with a normal book, and click on the corners to turn backward and forward.

Though I do prefer a paper copy of a book in my hands, this was a pleasant way to ingest a little classic that was perfect for this time of year--Frances Hodgeson Burnett's The Secret Garden. What a perfect thing to read this time of year, when everything is becoming green and growing. Despite some of the melodrama (people making exultant exclamations!! All the time!!) of the time, the book was sweet and as charming as I'd remembered it, and I do recommend it.

If I were reading it to a child, I might consider skipping some of the bits about India, as the view of "primitive natives" at the time it was written doesn't fit in with the world these days. That, or take a couple minutes to discuss with the child about the time it was written.

These little things don't stop the book from being wonderful and magical, and one I loved dearly as a child. Speaking of books, I'm making over a cheapie little book-shaped wooden box from a craft store, and hopefully it will turn out to look at least somewhat like an actual book.

I've used an exacto to cut fine lines on the edges of the box, and have used a dry brush to paint on some gold for the edges of the "pages." Hopefully they'll eventually look like actual, weathered pages by the time I'm done with the outside.

I'm also "imprinting" the top of the book with a design I've blatantly stolen from a gorgeous 1910 copy of Oliver Wendell Holmes' Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. It's a beautiful book--even the inside cover pages are gorgeous. In any case, I'm trying to engrave that same sort of design into this book, though I'm not sure what the title will be, yet.

Internets unite! (alternate title: DON'T BUY THIS BOOK)

There are a lot of talented illustrators with an online presence, and I've enjoyed poking at their stuff for years. A lot of these folks don't see much money from their work; they do it because they love it. However... recently, a book came out that has blatantly stolen art from dozens of illustrators (one in particular got practically EVERYTHING lifted from his site) who posted their work online. It has a fake ISBN, and bad contact information for the publisher and authors. The rightful artist is trying to contact these folks, but what we, as random folk who enjoy illustration, can do to help is make sure we spread the word not to buy this book.

The post below is by Luc Latulippe. The link goes to his site.

_____________________________________________

So, here’s a super crappy way to start your day.

Yesterday, my pal Darren Di Lieto, from The Little Chimp Society website, emailed with some upsetting news. Turns out someone scraped the contents of his website and published it into a 350-page book being sold online for $100. You can read more on this post in Darren’s blog.

This book — which reprints without permission several dozen artist interviews which Darren had posted on the LCS blog — transcribes these interviews word-for-word, including the artwork, and was “published” under the title “Colorful Illustrations 93°C”. The book even includes a CD with all the illustrations from the book, all lifted off the site as well. Here’s a link to a gallery of scans that Darren made of each page of the book, with a close-up below of one of the two spreads which feature the interview Darren did of me:

The publisher — one very fake sounding “Great Creativity organization” [sic] — is allegedly in Hong Kong, so pursuing legal action seems pretty pointless, seeing as China has such a sparkling reputation for respecting copyright law. The ISBN they provide — ISBN 978-988-98142-0-5 — is also a fake. You can easily search ISBN databases online, and this number comes up empty.

“OMG! You should totally sue them!”

Yes, this is everyone’s first reaction, right after red-faced anger. Well, let me just grab my wallet and… oh, right, I draw pictures for a living! This means I’m lucky if I have enough money to pay some bills for the next few months, but not quite enough to launch a class-action lawsuit across international borders against a bogus copyright infringing publisher in China.

And here’s a troubling thought: How many more such projects is this “Great Creativity organization” publisher working on right now? Maybe another illustration book, this time filled with YOUR WORK? Maybe filled with content scraped from similar sites, such as Illustration Mundo, or Drawn!, or even Boing Boing? Or how about a lovely coffee table book full of high rez photos scraped off of Flickr?

So what are we going to do?

Several things. First, Darren has tried calling the current re-sellers, both in Spain and Japan, who so far both refuse to pull the book. This makes sense, as there’s not enough evidence for them to make up their minds right now (although I fail to see how or why a bookstore would so carelessly stock a book with a fake ISBN number, and not be interested to find out if they’re selling a plagiarized book).

He then tried locating the publisher, but of course they printed a bunch of fake contact info in the book so that’s useless. The distributor seems to be a company called Azur Corporation. They too have been impossible to reach. As we understand it, re-sellers and distributors who don’t pull plagiarized books from the circulation can be held accountable as co-plagiarists.

The main thing we want to do right now, is flood the web with the truth about this plagiarized book and its publisher, both to avoid any more poor suckers from shelling out $100 to these thieves, and to warn other bookstores against getting involved with these scam artists. You say: “So what if the internet is full of negative press regarding this company and their plagiarized book?” Well, YOU try recovering from the backlash of negative press after search engines yield nothing but red flags and warnings against your company or product.

Yes, the damage is done. The book has been printed, distributed, and is being sold. This doesn’t mean we’re powerless and unable to stop any future distribution of the book, and hopefully of any future projects they have planned.

We need your help

First, please re-distribute this blog post. Repost the whole thing, or part of it, in your blog, with links and tags included.

Next, use whatever social networks and news sharing sites you use every day — Twitter, Flickr, Delicious, Magnolia, Digg, StumbleUpon, Facebook — to spread the word about this overpriced book full of plagiarized and stolen content. Feel free to quote us, and remember to also include the same keywords and tags in your posts. (Darren’s and my site makes this very easy already, with the little green “Share This” button at the bottom of every post in my blog.)

The result is that we may be able at least to shame these bogus publishers into removing this book from circulation and scare them back into their caves. A public apology, as well as forking over all the monies from sales, would be nice too but I’m not gonna hold my breath.

What else?

The longer term plan will involve approaching the current and possible future re-sellers and distributors with legal documents and press releases proving that this book is 100% full of plagiarized and stolen content, and calling for them to stop carrying the book.

We have a few more ideas too. We’re nothing if not creative individuals. Speaking of which, if you have any ideas and thoughts on this, we’d love to hear them!

Boing Boing: One of the biggest internets.

Here is an answer to all your internets related questions. Worry no more!

Magic Pen

Here's a very clever little flash game... In it, you use a crayon to draw shapes that can affect the environment--bumping into each other, rolling etc... The idea is to move a little ball to the flag. Sounds easy enough, right? What I like, though is that there are literally hundreds of ways to accomplish it. It can be as simple as dropping a circle out of the sky to bump the ball along, or as complicated as drawing a little car with two wheels and an axle, and then a crane, with a heavy piece that swings down to hit the car to bump the ball. It's ridiculously fun, and doesn't punish you for just trying things out. You can always restart the level, until you can get used to the physics of the game.

The key is thinking creatively and trying everything.

The other thing I like is that the soundtrack to the game is a pleasant little indie guitar ditty, rather than the frenetic and annoying soundtracks that tend to sometimes happen with flash games.

Enjoy!

There is also a video walkthrough if you get stumped.

Spring Has Sprung!

Apparently someone had a lot of time and bulbs on their hands one year, because the entire village of Mariemont is covered in literally thousands of daffodils. All over the hillsides, in the woods, along the roads. They're everywhere. We just walked over to the closest hill and snapped a photo--this is sparse compared to what's around downtown.

It must be spring.

*contented sigh*

Charles Heston: 1924-2008

Goodnight, Gunny Man...

But now who will save us from Soylent Green in our near-distopian future?

RIP

Mystery Solved!

A few months ago, I was mystified by the fact that occasionally, the sweet delicious smell of waffle cones drifts through our neighborhood.

The enigma was ended by Tiffany, who informed me that it's actually elves. Elves making cookies. Keebler elves. In a Keebler factory nearby. Not exactly as magical as I'd hoped, but it's still kind of awesome that the neighborhood sometimes smells like cookies baking. It's also nice that it's actual cookies, not some random toxic run-off chemical that we're delightedly inhaling deeply as it does a number on our lungs.

Besides setting me straight about neighborhood odors, Tiffany is helping me cast a version of a trilobite brooch as seen in a comic I read. We sculpted it on Saturday, and when I can manage to get over this ridiculous head cold, she'll show me how to make the mold and cold cast it. Hurrah!

Observe: I may have had a slight obsession with running Sculpy through the pasta maker. It needed a lot of softening. Seriously.








Here's the partially-done scultpt of the brooch. It's not as massive as it seems. But it's still kind of massive, now that I think about it.

Brr...

Though she's on the opposite end of the globe, this video of Condition 1 weather at McMurdo Station in Antarctica reminded me of Woman North. Stay warm up there, WN!

Intermezzo

(Top) Surprisingly, both the nasturtium and the clover on my windowsill have burst into flower.

(Bottom) Boo adores his clunky stuffed "Hamster Baby."

I need a tripod. Stat!

I've been poking at some of the multiple exposure photos I took in the Autumn with the intention of making HDR pictures from them. I did a few then, but I finally got around to compiling more the other day, so here are a couple. There are a few schools of thought re: HDR photos. Some people see them as a way to create hyper-realistic images, and scorn those that are a bit over the top, some people figure if they're doing a type of digital photo manipulation anyway, they may was well go crazy with the curves and levels, and some people (like me) especially like images that are just on the edge of realistic and fantastical. Some of the uber-crazy images, though fun to look at, are just a bit over the top, though I do really like things that look like they just might be from another world that's reeeeally similar to ours.



Another thing this reminded me of is the fact that I need to find a tripod of some sort--it was a challenge, balancing the camera on various things to try to get the identical picture multiple times. I've tried using the same photo, and changing the exposures in Photoshop, but it never gives quite the effect I wanted.

Sentimental Lentil

So many of the soups I muck about with don't have precise measurements, and are based only on the stuff I know ought to be in there.

I'm making a lentil soup today--that's the raw stuff in the picture. I just thought it was colorful and interesting to look at, so I snapped a photo.

I first became interested in trying a lentil soup after the Boy and I had an amazing batch of soup at a little Middle Eastern place near where we lived up north. It was incredibly fragrant--you could smell the nutmeg and cumin before you even took a bite. Sadly, I think that batch of soup was a mistake of some kind--maybe the lid had come off the nutmeg, and they'd dumped in more than they'd intended. We went back several times, but the soup was never as good.

The weekend we had the lentil soup at The Bronte Bistro (a novel idea!) attached to Joseph Beth Booksellers, and that reminded me I'd been wanting to try making it.

Into my trusty slow cooker, I threw the following:

Lots and lots of chicken stock, and a scoop of MSG-free chicken soup base for more flavor
about a pound (?) of red lentils, cumin, finely chopped ginger, about half a grated nutmeg (which would be maybe a little less than a teaspoon of powdered?) spring onions, chopped onion, chopped red potatoes, celery, sea salt... and that's it, I think. I may decide it needs something else later. Soups are fantastically easy in that they lend themselves so nicely to improvisation.

Auto-Butler!

It was a lovely, lazy Saturday morning this weekend. So lazy, in fact, that neither of us went downstairs to get breakfast. And yet... we both had a hot bowl of delicious, nutty oatmeal while lazing around. Mmm.

Those of you with a slow cooker may want to try this, for those mornings when it's cold outside and you just can't bear the thought of trudging to the kitchen and getting your feet cold while making brekkies. Or, for that matter, any morning you won't have time to make breakfast.

We ended up bringing the slow cooker, two bowls and spoons, and some brown sugar and raisins upstairs last night, and this morning it was perfectly done, and piping hot.

Make sure you use steel cut oats for this, or you'll have baked a little oatmeal puck overnight with the regular kind.

The Best Oatmeal Ever

• 1 cup of steel cut oats (seems like they're pretty easy to find at regular groceries these days)
• 4 cups water or milk (I always go at least halvsies in milk's favor. It's yummier)
• a dollop of vanilla extract
• few shakes cinnamon
• a shake of ground nutmeg, or grate about a half one fresh
  

Put all the above in your slow cooker, and turn on "low" before you go to bed. This recipe is pretty flexible--you can leave it 8 hours, or if you sleep in, it'll still be fine at 11 hours.

In the morning, drop in some raisins and/or other dried fruits, and stir to coat, and let soften while you're fiddling with bowls and such. I've tried putting raisins and dried cranberries in the night before, but the raisins tried to turn back into grapes--completely round and with a tanginess I wasn't sure I liked as well as the sweetness of the dried ones. You're welcome to try either way, of course!

Sprinkle with brown sugar, add a bit of totally optional milk (which I don't really think it needs), and lounge around enjoying the best oatmeal ever.

For a toothier, nuttier version, you can also make this recipe (with the same ingredients and measurements) on the stove. That also is amazingly yummy.

Oh, and PS...

Regarding the previous goi cuon post... if the flexible and sort of sticky texture of the uncooked fresh rolls doesn't suit your fancy, you can also use the same spring roll wrappers in cooked rolls--they crisp up beautifully to make those lovely crackly thin rolls restaurants serve.

You can stuff with items like bean sprouts, chicken or shrimp, and thinly sliced cabbage, or really, whatever you'd like. Then they can be deep fried, pan fried, or baked: pop into a 425 F degree oven for about 20 minutes, turning the rolls about halfway through.

I think that yummy sauce applies no matter what you're doing.

Goi Cuon!

"Bless you!" is one appropriate response when someone says, "Goi cuon!" Another appropriate response is, "Yum!"

Goi coun (pronounced "goy coon," I believe) is a Vietnamese summer roll, and while The Boy and I have enjoyed ordering them at restaurants for a while, we'd never imagined they could be so easy to make at home.

It's hardly surprising, really, since they're not cooked in any way. Recently I stumbled over a recipe for the transcendently delicious sauce that goes with the rolls, and we thought we'd give the whole shebang a try. Here's how you too, can enjoy these lovely little hand-salads.

You will need (and we found everything odd at our local Kroger, by the way):






1. Wraps, and a variety of stuffings--any or all of the following:

• Rice spring roll wrappers - we found ours in the flat round package linked
  
• rice noodles (rice vermicelli--they mostly come dried in like long very thin white tangles in bags)
• cucumber - long skinny pieces
  
• carrot - long minced skinny pieces again
• shrimp
• avocado (which I happened to have--that's the mushy green mass in there)
• fresh cilantro
  
• fresh mint
• lettuce (chopped thin)
• other meats like fish or chicken--I imagine any red meat would be just too heavy here, though you can try, if you want.

2. Articles for the luscious sauce

• Hoisin sauce, which you should be able to get in your local grocery in the Asian section. We found ours in Kroger.
• Chunky peanut butter
• garlic, crushed
• lime juice
• sriracha hot sauce if you so desire
• a bit of soy, to balance the sweetness of the hoisin and the heat of the hot sauce
• a bit of water, if it seems too thick
  
• a few drops of fish sauce, if you so desire
  

Really, the only cooking involved here is melding the ingredients for the sauce together. Put a large lump of peanut butter into a pot, and begin warming it while adding the rest of the ingredients, and allowing it to warm together and become smooth, aside from the peanut lumps. You can then pop the sauce into a bowl to cool to a reasonable temperature while you assemble your goi cuon.

This would be a perfectly lovely thing to do at a dinner party--set out the ingredients, and let everyone roll their own and eat as they go. In fact, these are best eaten fresh--the wrappers tend to get sticky if left for a while. Not that that detracts from the taste at all, but it can make handling them a little awkward.

The spring roll wrappers are like crackly paper, so set out a large flat bowl of hot/warm water along with your plate of stuffings and bowl of sauce. Place a wrapper into the water for a moment (or at least get the whole thing wet if the bowl's not big enough), and give it a few seconds until you feel the texture begin to change. Don't wait until it's floppy--it should still be a bit firm when you set it on your plate and add fillings to it. The wrappers will get floppier as the minutes go by, even out of the water, so you want to have something semi-firm to work with.

I wrapped ours like little burritos - place the fillings in a lump at the edge of closest side to you, roll them toward the middle once, then fold the two edges in, and continue rolling for a neat little package.

I admit, they look a little odd - the wrappers are flexible and practically see-though. And the texture is a bit out of the ordinary as well. They can be a bit floppy and sticky. But combined with the sauce, they're just fresh and delicious as anything.

The good stuff

RCRD LBL is an online record label (Surpise! Vowels!) that offers free MP3 downloads of its artists in true hipster fashion. In fact, here is one of my current favorite songs from Caribou. Here. He looks like a high school science teacher, but in fact, he makes lush and lovely music.

While you are listening, why not read a book? I'm currently reading The Terror, by Dan Simmons. It tells the story of the 1845 Franklin Expedition to the Arctic to search for the Northwest passage using the two steamships, The HMS Erubus, and The HMS Terror. There is a lot of ice involved. So far, I have needed to curl up in very warm blankets in order to read it. It's vaguely a historical novel, however, I'm not sure whatever it is that is plaguing the two ships in their ill-fated voyage is entirely natural. The story so far is intelligent, interesting, and creepy.

The fortitude of the men traveling to the far reaches of the globe so long ago must have been incredible. Imagine voluntarily sailing off, knowing it would be years before you'd see home again, and knowing there was a strong possibility you'd be burying some of your friends and crewmates at sea, or chipping into the arctic ice in an effort to put their bodies to rest.

Now, (unless you're WomanNorth, and you didn't need to imagine the Arctic) stop imagining, and make yourself a nice cup of steaming hot cocoa.

My kitchen goes East.. or at least, it tries.

So I made those samosas, and then I found an interesting recipe for Indian chappati bread on a website called Show Me the Curry. The site was made by two Indian women who are busy moms, but wanted to show people how to cook authentic Indian food in simple ways. I particularly like the fact that they add videos for most of the recipes. The videos aren't super-professional, which I like. You can tell you're in someone's real kitchen, and that Anuja and Hetal are friends in real life. More power to them for making a website that's such a resource!

The two recipes I've tried and that have been great are the chappatis (plain flatbreads good with yogurt, or for dipping) and the aloo paratha (uses the chappati dough), which is a potato stuffed flatbread. Be sure not to miss the video down at the bottom of the page.

I'm glad there were videos for them both, as the parathas were a bit difficult for a first-timer to get right. The recipe involves patting out flat circles of dough, placing stuffing in the middle, sealing it like a dumpling, but then flouring it, and actually rolling it flat again with the filling inside. Don't let this daunt you, though! I recommend trying them--we ate our parathas with a lentil dish from Tasty Bite, and they were great. I think with a little practice, this would be a pretty quick meal. I fiddled with the seasonings a bit, and since I don't care for cilantro, I used celery leaves instead, and that worked really nicely.

The only thing I would add for those of us who haven't rolled stuffed dough before is to make sure the stuffing is pretty dry--just moist enough to squeeze into balls. Mine was a bit moister when I first started, and my first paratha exploded when I tried to roll it flat. :( I still got a few leaks on a couple other ones, but all in all, they turned out really delicious and hearty.

They were much less delicate than samosas (though those are delicious in their own right), and I bet the completed parathas freeze well, an would be perfect for lunches and such.

Such a very important update

Yeah...no. I lied. It's not important. I've just been thinking about things like Twitter, to which people voluntarily submit up-to-the-minute news reports about the mundane details of their days. These reports are sped over the interwebs directly to their friends, who can keep tabs on them at all times. It seems like knowing that so-n-so just ate a cookie or found their lost keys would be not only tedious, but an overload of information. Also, do we really want to voluntarily let people that far into our lives?

It makes me a bit worried about people in general. How can we continue to care about protecting our privacy when we're voluntarily allowing the whole world to spy on our every move?

Technology has made the world so much smaller. We're connected virtually to a vast crowd of people. It's made contacting someone a continent away as easy as popping next door. Things like MySpace and Facebook make it smaller still, where we can even know day to day what a friend has been doing. Twitter brings it an even more microscopic level--an up to the minute level. It's this last part I'm so very unsure about. Sometimes, especially in this day and age, I want the world to stop at the walls of my house, and not come inside.

I like being in contact with the people I care about. I enjoy knowing what folk are up to. I want my friends to know what I'm up to. However, I doubt I'll ever feel okay about serious twittering. I'm sure none of you are sad about that.

If I were to twitter, what sorts of things would I write?

I lost a red sweater. Then I found it.
I did work on the computer.
I thought about making goi cuon for dinner tomorrow.
I walked upstairs. I walked back downstairs.
Laundry. Cleaning.
Talked to my neighbor.
Soy candles smelled nice.
I worked on building a webcomic wiki.
I took off the red sweater that I found.
I lost the red sweater again.

Is anyone thrilled? Neh. I didn't think so.

Mesmerizing

Solar from flight404 on Vimeo.

People have been making lovely music visualizations using Processing 1.0. Here's one from a user called flight404 on Vimeo.

Samosa Time

Tonight's kitchen adventure: Samosas, which are Indian pastries stuffed with curried potato and vegetables.

I admit I nicked the photo to the left from the nethers of the interwebs. By the time I thought about taking pictures of ours, they were pretty much gone. Next time I'll take pictures of the actual thing.

Over the past while, we've stocked up on some of the basics needed in Eastern cooking: Garam Masala, Hot Madras curry powder, regular yellow curry powder, fresh ginger, cardemom leaves--stuff like that. These are things that we don't use all that often, and will probably last us forever and a day. They're good to have around in case of a sudden hankering for Thai or Indian food.
I apologize for not having exact measurements on some of these things. I improvised a bit, and didn't measure some items in the filling.



For the shells:

• Mix 1 & 1/2 cups flour with 1 tsp salt
• Add 4 Tbs shortening, and cut together till crumbly.
• Add 5 or 6 Tbs cold water, just enough to make a kneadable mass.

Get your hands into it, and knead it together for a few minutes until it becomes smooth. Set it aside in a covered bowl to "rest." God knows what tuckers pastry dough out so much, but it needs a lot of rest, apparently.

After tucking the pastry in for a nap, (quietly) start in on the filling.

You can do one of two things here. You can go whole hog, and boil a bunch of potatos and make real live lumpy mashed potatos, or you can do as I did, and mix up a pack of dehydrated mashed potatoes, mince another potato finely, and cook that up with the rest of the filling.

In a frying pan, put a little of your favorite oil down and add the following:

• minced onion
• minced potato (if you cheated like I did)
• some grated or very finely chopped fresh ginger, or a few shakes of powdered stuff, I guess
  

Once the onions start to brown just a bit...

Add the mashed potatoes
some green peas
few shakes of Hot Madras Curry Powder
some Garam Masala
a bunch of plain yellow curry powder
salt

At this point, you can add some optional stuff, like chopped cashews, corn, or meat of some kind, if you'd like. I found these to be pretty substantial with just the vegetables, but do what you think would be yummy.

Mix it all together while heating it up. You should be able to taste test and see what you like here in terms of spices. I wasn't sure about the plain curry powder, but it turned out it needed more than I thought it would.

Take the filling off the heat, and set it aside.

Now, wake up the pastry, take a chunk of it, and begin rolling it out. You'll want a bowl or a large circular object (about 5-6 inches across) to cut out circles of pastry. Roll it out thinly, cut large circles and set them aside, making sure you flour so they don't stick together. Once you've used up all the dough, take a sharp knife and cut the circles in half, one at a time as you use them.

Take each half circle, dab some water around the lower edges, plop a decent blob of filling down in the middle, then fold the edges together and press well, so you have a little triangle with a rounded bottom. Wash, rinse, repeat until all the samosas are stuffed.

At this point, you can do one of two things. You can either deep fry the samosas, or you can bake them. Since deep frying is the traditional method, I tried it, but frankly, it was kind of terrifying in our little kitchen, and I don't think I'll do it that way again, even though they were delicious. I did find a recipe with baking directions, so that's what I'm posting.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F, place the samosas on parchment paper on a pan, and pop them in the oven.

Once they're in, turn the oven down to 300, and let them bake for 45 minutes, or until they're golden brown.

You can dip them in chutney, or eat them plain, like we did.

YUM.

Makings

I have been making.

We got couple lovely couch cushions several months ago. Their covers were made of a soft woven brown fiber with a bit of a sheen to it--nice and nubbly. Unfortunately, they were sewn really shoddily, and since they were woven, they were just falling apart after only a few months. It was a shame to let the fabric go to waste, and since I lost my last pair of wrist warmers (Wrist dickies, as we refer to them. Remember turtleneck dickies from the eighties? It was just a neck and a bit of cloth, so you looked like you were wearing a turtleneck without bothering to actually put one on under your sweater. ) err... sorry about the detour. Since I lost my last pair, I thought I'd repurpose the fabric to make new ones.

I reused the zippers, and made use of the silk edging already on the inside of the cushion cover. I added some reinforcing ribbon, and a loop and button to close it at the top. I also had to add a long loop of thin ribbon on the inside at the elbow end, so I can hold that with my teeth as I zip them up. Otherwise I'd have to have the Boy zip them up, and that would just be lame. This one needs a little more stitching added to the ribbon, but it's basically done. Both of them took me about an evening.


Not a difficult project, and my sewing machine was lovely and behaved perfectly. I seem to have the tension issue well in hand.... Quite accidentally, of course, but I'm not touching it, since it seems to be a-ok. This is a machine the Boy got me a couple Christmases ago. I remember using my mother's machine, which required hours of squinting and threading needles and trying to readjust bobbins... All of which, doubtless, was my fault. But this new machine is fancy. The little design on the black ribbon is made by the machine sewing little patterns. Fancy. It is too fancy to be Amish. (link to a sweet children's book--check out the illustrations about halfway down the page.)

In other, more edible news, we made a butternut squash soup that turned out quite yummy.


I'd never made one, but we'd liked a few we'd tried various places, and it seemed easy enough. I wasn't quite into any of the recipes I found, so combined the parts I liked into a slow cooker recipe that turned out really nice. It's very simple, and very comfort-foody.

• 1 raw butternut squash
• a pat of butter
• nutmeg (I grated about a third of a "nut" of nutmeg--I think that would be about a half teaspoon of the ground stuff? I kind of wished I'd used more though.)
• hot madras curry powder - a decent amount. it's not that spicy, and the finished product is not at all spicy.
• cumin - a nice shake, but not too much, because it can overpower the taste of the squash
• chicken stock - I used enough to just come to the level of the cubed squash in the slowcooker.
• sour cream - a heaping tablespoon
• one dollop of cream or milk

Cut the squash in half, and then slice it so that you can cut off the rind. Once that's done, cube it, and throw it in the slow cooker with the stock, butter, nutmeg, curry powder, and cumin. Let it cook away on medium high for 2 hours, or you could put it on low for 8 hours while you're at work.

At this point, the squash may not be totally mushy, but will be soft enough to blend. Scoop the chunks out into a different bowl, then blend them several at a time, pouring them back into the slowcooker as you go. Add stock while you blend to keep things moist. Some people might like theirs silky smooth, but I found it was really pleasant with a little texture to it, so I didn't blend forever.

Once everything's blended, turn the heat to medium or a bit lower, and wisk in the sour cream and a blop of cream or milk. If you boil at this point, it'll curdle, so keep the heat down a bit.

You can serve right away, or let it simmer another while. We served it with a couple sage leaves, and a bit of sour cream. I have a feeling this soup is one of those ones that will be even better the second time around. The recipe makes quite a bit, so you can pack it up into the freezer or fridge to use another day like we did.

Power Struggle

I admit it--I have one of those big monolith computer monitors. You know, the kind that extend forever behind? Actually, I'm not complaining. It serves me perfectly well, and has a pretty big screen, which is nice. However, I think one of the main reasons I haven't thought about replacing it involves the cats.

When the weather started to turn cold a few months ago, Nihao discovered she could satisfy both her urge to constantly be practically on top of me, and her obsession with warm things--by perching on top of the back of the monitor. I also discovered I could keep her from lolling all over the keyboard by encouraging her to go up there, without being punished by the (very loud) self-righteous howls that happen when I put her on the floor. So when she hops up looking for attention and I'm in the middle of something, I pat her and then aim the front of her toward the screen. She reaches her front paws up to the top and waits, looking back at me disapprovingly if I take too long. So I grab her chicken legs and hoist her butt the rest of the way up. She's trained me well.

Her sleeping up there has led to a few awkward moments when our clumsy queen has managed to slide off the side into the gap between the monitor and wall (while sleeping!?), flailing her claws about in a vain effort to catch herself. Other than that, though, it's been quite nice for both of us. She gets a warm and close place to lie, and I get to see her resting her face like a puppet over the top of my screen. Which is adorable. Especially when she flops her face right over the edge so her bottom lip gets pulled back. She looks like a complete nerd-dork. I love it.

(incidentally, for those of you wondering, the monitor seems to be fine. I vacuum any hair off it, and it has plenty of venting on the sides and back for the heat to escape. )

Moving on... Just recently, Boo has discovered the joy of the warm monitor as well. He's a particularly cautious cat, and spent about 10 minutes hanging off the shelf directly above the monitor, with just his front paws resting on it, sniffing and testing the waters. Eventually he decided it was safe, and veeerrry slowly lowered himself onto it and lay down.

The problem now is that I have one monitor, and two cats who want to be on it. Actually, it's mostly just a problem for poor Boo. When Nihao made her way to the shelf above, she seemed ambivalent to the fact Boo was already on the monitor. So ambivalent, in fact, that she climbed down onto it and proceeded to lie on top of him, shoving him off the edge. So graceful.

So now Boo waits until Nihao climbs down, and then immediately occupies her spot. Hopefully there won't be any more forcing him off the back again. Poor thing.

Lovely things...

Steampunk Aesthetics

I was fascinated with steampunk and gaslight ages before I even really knew what they were. I've turned over in my mind a couple times what it is I like about those things, but had never come to any conclusions, or even a good way to describe what those things--or styles of things-- actually are.

I was reading an article over at BoingBoing (link goes to an incredible steampunk project) which lent itself to people commenting about the steampunk aesthetic, and was impressed by one commenter to sum the whole thing up pretty nicely.
___________________

Cheqyr says:

First, I love steampunk for the same reason I love antique wood furniture as compared to the particle-board, veneer, and plastic crap we produce nowadays. The antiques are more beautiful, more durable (chip oak, it still looks good; chip laminate and it's like an open wound), and they have a sense of history about them.

I'm writing this at an oak desk which was made around 1900 and will probably be around in 2100. That provides an enormous sense of comfort and "place" in a world of disposable things.

Steampunk has that same aesthetic. In the early-to-mid 20th century, technology became increasingly less simple and less "organic". Simple base materials of wood, copper, oil and glass -- and big chunky mechanical parts like wheels and gears -- were increasingly being replaced by aluminum, plastics, industrial lubricants, circuit boards and computer chips.

When I look at a train from the 1890s, I can see how all the parts go together, and I can even imagine myself capable of building one given the basic raw materials (and the machine shop of my dreams). Nothing requires a clean room or microscopic engineering tools. It's technology I can relate to -- "open source" in the physical world.

Now, that's just the Victorian aesthetic. But there's an added fantasy element of steampunk too: the idea that you could build a robot or a time machine with wheels and brass gears and maybe a handful of exotic material like Cavorite.

This type of Steampunk embodies the romantic idea that all our technological marvels (and more) might exist, but in a way that makes them more comprehensible, durable, and accessible to the common folk.

And that's what I like about it.
________________________

*Points at the above quote* This.

Regarding the post below

It's also worth mentioning that you should take the time to go to the site and see the trailer for Cougar Interactive's flagship title, uh... Zoo Race.

It's... eh, forget it. There's just nothing I can say, except that you probably thought nothing could be more random or weird than that last clip. Well, you were wrong. So very wrong...

PS. It's noteworthy that all the "awards" won by Zoo Race are either a stamp indicating it doesn't contain any viruses, or are the "five star award" that's given to every item on a various download sites regardless of quality. Kind of damning with faint praise. :(

PPS. *sigh* "Oh great... I'm a horse now."

There are no words...

...for how bizarre this is. All you need to know is that it's a trailer for a real, actual game from a company called Cougar Interactive. It's a real game. A real, serious game.

I never knew Noah was so whiney.

Now Put on Your Shoes

And hie yourself hence over to the "Hark! A Vangrant!" blog or Kate Beaton's actual site to check out the latest series of one-off comics she's making, based on a list of historical figures the general public submitted. The consensus was as follows:

1- Soren Kierkegaard
2- Benedict Arnold
3- Agnes McPhail
4- Mary Shelley
5- Queen Elizabeth I
6- Emperor Norton
7- Benjamin Disraeli
8- Nikola Tesla
9- Genghis Khan
10- David Hume
11- Henry VIII
12- Thomas Beckett
13- Jerry Thomas
14- Pope John Paul II
15- Geoffrey Chaucer
16- Marcel Duchamp
17-Sylvanus Griswold Morley
18-The CBC
19- Jean Baptiste Lamarck
20-Heritage Moments

Here is one of her little autobiographical comics.

(click to enbiggen)

So far, so amusing. I have to admit I love Kate and her quirkitudes. She writes and draws charming comics about life in the Maritime provinces, and other such goodness. She hasn't been an internet presence for all that long, but I can see her going far. *waves* Hi Kate! Do well!

Kitchens around the world

Here's an excellent resource for international recipes. I do a lot of Thai food, so this will be very handy for extra recipes there, as well as letting me branch out.

We finally got a mortar and pestle the other day, so that'll let me use things like the whole cardamom leaves we have other than to just drop whole ones in soup.

The Darkest Night of the Year

So, it being Christmas-time, and this being Cincinnati, this Saturday we made the first step in what we hope will be a long-standing tradition of yearly attendance at the homecoming (from tour) show put on by Over the Rhine at the Taft Theater. The show was breathtakingly lovely, as is the norm for OTR, though I hadn't seen them in several years.

It's been so long since we've been to a proper show. There are several potential opportunities coming up, though, so we'll have to get off our duffs and go to one or more. Yo La Tengo, the Bravery, Band of Horses, etc. We're lousy hipsters. Not that that's anything new.

Speaking of musics and such-lot, I've added a last.fm player to the blog here. I'm having a bit of fun with that, since it logs everything you listen to, making it possible to create playlists and "radio stations" of your songs online from whatever ones they also have in the Last.fm library. I have high hopes, though undoubtedly the player will pick out some random embarrassing song and just play that over and over. I'll regret forever looking up the theme song for "Hong Kong Phooey" or whatever. Actually though, I'm sure what you'll find is a big chunk of Christmas music, since I just loaded the player this week, and have been listening to a lot of Sufjan Stevens holiday songs. Hopefully you'll find it gets more diverse eventually.

New Music Alert!

The ways of the internet are mysterious and convoluted. Sometimes in a conversation, one will try to figure out the string of conversation that led to the current topic--In the same way, I've been trying to figure out exactly what brought me to the Myspace site of Rich Aucoin and his lovely music.

I think there may have been a conversation involving babies on Fark, and someone mentioned the Halifax comedy troupe Picnicface, and their "Harness the power of 400 babies!" sketch, which somehow led me to Youtube and one of their other sketches, which had Rich Aucoin's music during the credits, and that led me to his videos on Youtube, which led me to his Myspace page. Whew. I think.

Anyway, I suggest you check out his stuff. It's lovely melodious indie pop and you will enjoy it. You will. I friended Rich on Myspace and he wanted to know how in the world someone in Ohio had heard of him. It's the world wide webs!

And since 'tis the season, I'd also like to offer this sync'd version of the How the Grinch Stole Christmas, with music by Rich Aucoin. He did a pretty amazing job of writing and working the music to go with the film.

Plus, the man rode his bike across Canada to raise money for cancer research. How about that?? He's a bike-riding, music making machine.

Hmm. Could've sworn I was at least 90%.

88% Geek

Neat Video Pick of the Day

I've had fun playing with cornstarch + water mixtures before, but in this video, someone is applying vibrations to that mixture with really interesting results. See the end of the clip, especially.

Something to look forward to

I think I posted about the Music Now Festival previously, specifically about the most excellent Take Away Show with Sufjan Stevens filmed at it. Well, planning is underway for the third incarnation of the festival in 2008, and I'm twitchy and excited about it already.

I haven't yet been to Memorial Hall, where the last festival was held, but it looks like a pretty stunning place. It's about 15 minutes from where we live, which makes it all the more excellent.

We found out recently that The National are from Cincinnati, which would explain their involvement in the project.

November Already?

I can't believe it. Where'd my Autumn go?

Well, we got to see Steve and Anna this weekend, which was so darn nice. Steve hauled a bunch of gear down and set up a veritable full-on studio in the living room in order to record vocals for the songs Au Revoir Borealis has been working on. So glad to get that done. I had a scratchy throat, and am hoping it didn't show. Ah well.

It was just darn nice to get to see good friends. Time blurs, and I don't realize how long it's been since I've seen people until I actually get to spend some time with them.

Lovely.

PS. Pumpkin muffins!! Yay Anna! I just ate the last one. :)

Recent Adventures #3

More exploration this weekend: It was a day of various mounts - Mount Lookout, Mount Washington, and Mount Adams.

Sunday was gorgeous, so we finally went to Ault Park, which is supposed to have one of the best views in Cincinnati. I can't really argue with that assertion. I think Mount Lookout is the hill the park is on, and you can see across the valley to Kentucky pretty much. The trees have finally burst into color, so seeing them from above was really neat.

After that, we checked out a comic shop in Mount Washington. It had that classic dusty smell, and was full of old school issues in long-boxes and plastic. The clerk/owner looked kind of defeated, and it made me a bit sad. It can't be a very profitable business to be in these days. The store had mostly the big name Marvel/DC/Dark Horse fare that's easy to find anywhere, though there was a hardcover Firefly/Serenity book I would have liked. I wish there were a store in the area to find smaller independent comics, and printings of webcomics. I suppose if you're going to be cutting edge in the comic business these days, you have to first of all be doing business online, and also with print-on-demand places like Lulu and such for special orders and small online comics. Even then, I imagine there's not an awful lot of money to be made in the business these days.

After Mount Washington, we made our way back up to Mount Adams, which we finally discovered on Friday. I'm still kind of giddily excited about that neighborhood. It reminds me so much of a small east coast town--maybe old-school Vermont or Maine, with narrow hilly streets, and pretty, ivy-covered old buildings all nestled together. We ate at the place that used to be the Rookwood Pottery Factory. It still has the giant brick kilns and chimneys in place. In fact, there are tables within each of the three huge kilns--they're pretty much private rooms now.

It's blurry, but it was a nice view!

I was glad to get the chance to take some pictures, since I've been wanting to try my hand at putting together some HDR photos. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and I guess the simplest description is that it's a compilation of several identical photos of different exposures, which uses the best exposed bits of the image to create one more like what the human eye sees. At the same time as being more like what we actually see, they're also a bit bizarre because they can be ultra vivid, and crisp in ways we don't often see photos. HDR photos can also be tweaked into utterly surreal, gorgeous images. Er... I'm still getting the hang of the whole "gorgeous" part here. Here are a a couple attempts at HDR images. I'm not using RAW files like I should be for these, so they're pretty grainy and "noisy" at times. Ah well. Fun all the same. This one is from out front of the uber art deco Union Terminal Museum Center. It's a bit on the surreal side, but I think it's interesting to look at, and it's not so boring a photo as it was.


Here's the pavilion at the top of Ault Park. A little more realistic. The sky was actually that blue.


These are a couple from a bridge up on Mount Adams. The city view was pretty fantastic. We could see all the way to Union Terminal on the other side of town.


Anyway, after a bunch of rain last week, we're being rewarded with some days of gorgeousness. It's Halloween today, and although we don't bother celebrating it, it's fun to see how excited the kids walking home from school are. It was chilly yesterday, but today I stepped out onto the patio to find it was sunny, in the high sixties, and our entire neighborhood smelled of freshly made waffle cones. Huh? I have no idea. I did hear the school marching band in the distance not too long ago, so perhaps there's a festival-type function happening? Anyway, I've opened all the windows (mmmm....wafflecones....) and I'm expecting small people in costumes to come seeking sugar any minute now, so I'd better go.

Eureka!

The author of XKCD has just solved a persistent problem for the boy and I.

Behold!

Rawk n' Bawk

So we just had an exceedingly delectable dinner of chicken, and I thought I'd share the recipe in case anyone wants to give it a shot. It was actually pretty low-key in the time you actually spend making it, which is always a massive plus in the kitchen. I kind of compiled several recipes and this is what happened. Please excuse my not having precise measurements. The kitchen might as well be a lab with all the experimenting that happens in there.

So, without further adieu... Preheat your oven to 500 F. Yes, I know. HOT. But you turn it down later. It just gets things crispified.

Stuff you'll need:

• Chicken, duh. We used a whole one, though I could see this working well with chicken breastses.
• Roasted cashews. Lots of them. The ones I used were salted, which was fine.
• fresh basil - a good handful of it. If you don't have basil, parsley might work, as well as (shudder) cilantro, which I hate. Don't worry about stems and such.
  
• two cloves of garlic, or two decent dollops of pre-minced garlic
• soy sauce
• lime juice. I actually used lemon because I didn't have any lime, but I think it would be even better with lime.
  
• Olive oil. You could also use one of the lighter oils like grapeseed oil or walnut oil.
• fresh jalopeños, diced - I only used one, and was a little sad I didn't use two. I like things fairly spicy, but I would recommend one for people who aren't sure how spicy they'd like it. Careful when you're cutting these suckers up. That oil is pretty hard to get off your hands, and it stings like a mother when you rub your eyes.
  

So. Get out an instrument that will make something into a mash. I had to use our lame blender, but if you have a food processor, that would be ideal. Into the blender or whatever, dump:

a cup and a half of cashews - Make sure there are some left for later
the garlic
some soy - I probably used a couple tablespoons?
all the basil or whatever herb
a blop of olive oil
lime juice - couple tablespoons here too, maybe?
sea salt
fresh ground pepper
the jalopeños

The idea is to blend all this stuff into a paste. You can use the soy and lime juice to control the wetness of it, etc. I kind of went by smell as well. you don't want one thing to be overpowering.

If you're using a whole chicken, put it into a baking pan that has some room around it, and stuff it with whole cashews and a bunch of the paste you just made. You can also rub a bunch of the paste all over the outside of it.

Stick the chicken in the oven and turn it down at once to 350 F. Then, walk away and do other things for about an hour and a half, depending on how big your chicken is. Time varies according to weight, so you'd have to figure out the appropriate amount.

All that's left is pulling it out when it's done, and digging in!

It turned out to be nutty and savory with a tad of spiciness as well. Just lovely. We're thinking we'll probably try this on our thanksgiving turkey, since we can't have bread stuffing. I bet that some baby portabellas would be good chopped into the stuffing, too.

Let me know if you try it, and what you think!

How do I love thee?

I can only think of a a couple ways, but that's a-ok. I'm talking about Arnica Gel, people. It's my product of the month. According to wikipedia, Arnica is in the same family as the common sunflower, and has been used for ages as a salve for bruises and aches.

Warning: Frou frou girly-type topics ahead!

Aside from the advertised uses, which I haven't tried, here are my discoveries:

Puffy eyes - It actually works really well when you don't get enough sleep and have puffy eyes, which I manage to get on occasion. The fact that the gel base is witch hazel can't hurt, I'm sure, though witch hazel on its own is just too strong for me. I'd been told hemmorhoid cream would do the trick so when E. and I were at the drugstore once I took a detour to grab some. She seems a little nonplussed, so I explained I was going to try it for reducing eye puff. At that point, another lady walked into the aisle and caught only the last part of the conversation, which was me standing there with Prep-H in hand, and E. exclaiming, "Cool! You've got to tell me how it works, and I might try it!" Anyway, the point is that Arnica works as well as Prep H, and doesn't sting at all.

Post waxing - my poor legs are never happy after having the hairs ripped forcefully out. The gel does a pretty nice job of soothing and making the red go away.

Burns - This is what inspired me to post on Arnica Gel. Last night I was making a caulifower dish and it was boiling away merrily, and I was cooking merrily, until I stupidly popped the top off the pot with my thumb exposed to the crack, and got a wicked steam burn. Those of you who haven't had a steam burn, imagine, if you will, some of your flesh being boiled. Yum. In any case, I cannot over emphasize enough the importance of putting ice immediately and for a long time on burns. I realize this may seem obvious, but I think in the past I've only kept the ice on for a bit, and ended up with a burn that stung for days. I wrapped my hand in a bag of frozen peas, and oh-so-bravely finished the dish, which, by the way was pretty yummy. After a couple hours and a couple change-outs of ice, I tested not having anything cold on it, and it felt basically like someone was sawing my hand off. Awesome! that was when I thought of the Arnica Gel, which I slathered on generously. It cooled it nicely, and within a few minutes, the pain was pretty much gone unless I bumped my thumb on something. Today, it doesn't feel like anything, though there's a vivid red mark there. So next time you get a burn, give it the old one-two: fast and long ice application, and then blob something along the lines of Arnica onto it.

I'm not saying there's nothing that could replace Arnica or do what it does, but I do think it's a handy multipurpose thingy to have around.

_____________________


I know cauliflower doesn't top everyone's list of delicious vegetables, but it's actually quite good this way:

1. steam until it falls apart when you poke it with a fork. if you have leeks, add a bunch and steam them along with it.
2. stick cauliflower and leeks into blender or food processor with the following:
- salt & pepper
- nutmeg
- garlic
- dab of cream

3. blend until the consistency of mashed potatoes, and add cream if it's too dry. Basically treat it like mashed potatoes from here on out. Serve with a pat of butter, etc.

It makes a good replacement if you're eating low carb and really miss having a pile of mushy white stuff on the side of your plate. I hate when people say things like "It's juuust like mashed potatoes!" because it's not. It's quite good though, and I really like the subtleness of the nutmeg. Don't compare the two and you'll find it stands pretty well on its own.

Hah!

So... another format change because: When I was messing with the settings on my template a few days ago, I thought, "hmm.. I like this look, but it somehow seems familiar... ." It was bugging me, until I went over to Sojourn North and realized I had copped that look exactly, right down to the photo replacement for the header. Heh... Apologies, Woman North! Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, or the sincerest form of me being an oblivious dork.

Did you hear that?

"Back in the Day," I think the internet was easier to simply bumble around, discovering things. People built ugly pages just jam packed with information about obscure things, just for the sake of bestowing their knowledge upon the world wide web. One found these pages via search engine, or links from said interesting page, to another interesting page. While the awful flashing gifs and such were hard on the eyes, (and the aesthetic sensibilities), it seems as though it was easier then to stumble onto new things. Nowadays, (insert old lady voice), one searches, but gets redirected to commercial sites, linked to ads, and barraged with cookie requests more often than one finds something truly new and interesting. And git off muh virtual lawn!

In order to reacquaint myself with the internet of old, I stuck the StumbleUpon toolbar into my browser. It's not one of those awful and intrusive "Find a deal!" toolbars that I so detest. You specify what types of pages you're interested in "stumbling upon," and a click of the button sends you to a random site fitting those specifications. You're able to give a thumbs up or down to the page you reach, making it more likely that StumbleUpon will send you someplace you're interested in being. You're also able to submit a new page, if you so desire, by simply giving it a thumbs up or down and filling out the subsequent little form describing what it is.

The only thing that annoys me about it is that it asks to set cookies for the next page in line before you actually see the page you're stumbling to.

Anyway, the point of this post is that I recently found a neat site that could be an interesting resource: A page full of sounds. Ever wonder what a pheasant sounds like? Or curious about what a sounds Geiger counter makes? This is your page. Neat stuff.

Prettier than your average documentary

The Boy with the Incredible Brain is a documentary that follows the mental magic of Daniel Tammet, who is able to do insane mathematical calculations in his head with seemingly no effort.

The subject matter is intriguing all on its own--a young man who can recite twenty thousand numbers of pi by memory, who can learn languages ridiculously quickly, and will never need a calculator for anything--ever, unless it's for someone to check the fact that he's right.

However, I'm impressed at the prettiness of the documentary as well. It's beautifully put together, the music is lovely and the overall look if the thing is much more interesting than the usual fare.