Rachael and I wandered through London Drugs waiting for our movie to start the other night. Took a brief look at Micro Four Thirds (aka m43) cameras again.

London Drugs had the Olympus PEN E-PM1 on sale for only $399. It's definitely a "lower end" camera. Rachael and I had talked about maybe buying a kit together. This one was cheap enough to just get going with an m43 system: we can still buy a different body and share lenses, or add more lenses.

It was time to just pick something. I've done some experimenting yesterday and today, and I'm happy with the purchase.

The image / link at the top goes to the dpreview entry for the E-PM1. If you go to the Conclusion page, you can compare to other cameras in the same class. Everything gets very close to the same rating, and the price I paid for the E-PM1 makes it the best price / performance.

Here's to more mindful photography in 2012.

I had been trying to put together an "open house" on the 29th. Multiple friends & acquaintances had told me they had never been to the Vancouver Alpen Club before, so I thought I'd try putting together a "German Dinner Experience" there.

It's all a bit short notice now, so I'm investigating putting on an event on February 21st (yes, that's the day before my birthday). The cost is a bit high ($50 / person), so I'm asking people to fill out a short survey to see what the interest is.

Please order a "save me a seat" ticket at Eventbrite if you're interested in having a German dinner experience.

I've never made from-scratch eggnog. Might try it this year.

So, for me, the giving and receiving of presents has never since been a part of the Christmas season. Nor do I exchange gifts for birthdays or other events. It's no longer part of my culture. That's not to say I no longer give gifts; I have on occasion surprised people with my largesse. But I don't give gifts on a schedule; I don't give gifts because it's expected.

I like to give gifts. Like Downes, I like to give them at odd times, not at "expected" times. I would like to completely exit the gifts on the right occasion cycle.

I also have a complicated relationship with gifts because there have been many years where money has been very tight. So there is often a high degree of guilt related to buying gifts, whether for myself or others. That it's a splurge (whether it is or not), that it is a bad thing that I am spending this money.

I am also annoyed with the Coca Cola Christmas that we have in North America. I really enjoy some of the community Winter Solstice celebrations that happen, and I always look forward to Christmas as down time. It's a time to tinker with projects -- which for me is usually a mix of web / tech projects, plus experiments in the kitchen.

In any case -- have a happy holiday. Enjoy your down time.

This is the camera that Roland has shortlisted to buy.

The last time I wrote about this was back in March, where I was really determined to get one with an electronic viewfinder (EVF). Now, I'm thinking I should suck it up and go for the most compact model I can find.

Back when I was using Quora, I also spent some time gardening the Micro Four Thirds topic, which has lots of useful information.

Lord Snuggleston is his name. I'm not connected in any way, but I approve.

Do you remember sun-drenched Wotje, with the little girl who presses a pretty shell into your hand and laughs? Do you remember Typhoon Kyle, and furling sails in 50 knots of wind and 40 foot waves? Do you remember a week out of Honolulu, already part of the family, when friendly Roger sailes out from Palmyra, sharing his island paradise? Do you remember sailing under the Golden Gate bridge, seeing parents waiting, and having the family scatter across the country, around the world?

Turn these pages, and remember the ports. Remember also the people. Your roommates, your watchmates, your teachers, the crew, your friends. Remember the ship, her tall masts towering above you. The sails filling with a snap and proud maple leaves billowing out as she leaps forward, dolphins and blue, blue waves her only companions.

You scurry about on deck, acid-washing your fingers to the bone. Scuppers, deck scrubbing, rust-picking, priming, painting. Scrubbing pots and flipping stir-fry, serving tables and being the juice-person.

Remember those endless nights on watch? Struggling to keep awake, keeping your eyes glued to the red glowing compass. Staring off at the horizon, watching the first faint rays of the sun creep up.

It's all in here, so you'll never forget. The voyages of the S/V Concordia, 1993 - 1994.

I'm revamping bmannconsulting.com. Right now I'm experimenting with putting flat files up on Github pages.

This is an example of me putting up my Class Afloat Yearbook, which I scanned in many years ago.

This is a transcription from the scanned image of the first page. I was the yearbook editor, but through a series of mishaps, never ended up with my own copy of the yearbook, so I only have these scans.

I obviously didn't have much room, so there are no line breaks. I've put some in for readability. And I'm pretty sure "rustpicking" isn't one word, so I added a hyphen.

Casting a critical eye on this writing, which is now 17 years old, written by my 19 year old self, it's…OK. I'm not emotionally removed enough (still!) from the memory strings it's tugging. As with most of my writing, it's very conversational; and by that I mean, I use the same cadence when writing as when I'm speaking.

I still haven't applied to speak at Raincity Chronicles, but if I do, it will be about some part of this Class Afloat voyage.

Cue the switch to tech talk…

Github pages? Well, it's a funny throw-back to be writing HTML directly in a lot of little index.html pages (never mind having a bunch of files all called the same thing open in your text editor). I need to learn Jekyll to actually build a site.

It DOES feel great to be "crafting" a site, with the links and organization of naming, file structure, and links all selected, rather than auto-generated. And it feels like work, in a good way.

This recipe looks simple enough to make at home, without the hopefully-it-won't-go-mouldy dangers of hanging charcuterie in a closet somewhere.

The one missing piece for me at home is the lack of a smoker. I have a small charcoal BBQ now, that I'm thinking could double as a smoker.

Delicious experimentation awaits.

Next is a fascinating Chicago restaurant that serves a single, fixed menu that changes every three months. You don’t make reservations; you buy tickets. The current menu is titled “Tour of Thailand.” It’s full of fascinating ideas.

…

By selling tickets instead of taking reservations, for example, Next builds service into the charge and gets rid of tipping. Everyone is on salary, and servers and cooks both receive the service charge dividends.

If you click through to Mark Bernstein's full post, you can read his description and reaction to the current Tour of Thailand menu at Next Restaurant (I'm linking to the FAQ, since the "home page" is literally just an invitation to create an account and buy tickets; and they're currently sold out).

The food is fascinating, but I'm even more fascinated by the model of selling tickets.

In Vancouver, you might check out the Irish Heather Long Table Series. I really should talk to Sean about switching to using Eventbrite directly, so people can self serve, and he can spend less time wrangling tickets.

What happens when you start having more ticket buyers than space? That is, people who go to every event you put on? Do you get to be wilder, even more creative? Or do you just cater to the audience that you have? Sounds kind of like the concerns of a music artist.

I've only done mass food delivery once. I got Mark Busse, Ben Garfinkel and the Industrial Brand gang (pre-Foodists) plus Robert Scales and myself to prepare / cook / serve 150 people for the Northern Voice 2007 pre-dinner / party. With live slide presentation of Lee & Sachi's world travel. Anyway, that was a crazy / fun experience, from which I learned many things, including that delivering food to 150 people without professional prep facilities is HARD.

I've thought a lot about getting involved with a restaurant/cafe/food enterprise. But I've done it before (dishpig / prep cook a long time ago), and it's a LOT OF WORK. Which is mainly filled with uncertainty, since you have to lose a lot of money waiting for people to show up, then hope they like what you make, and rinse and repeat.

A ticket / event based food experience is a different ball game. KickStarter for restaurants?

[I] remind everyone not to be too hung up upon the Myth of the Marvelous Ingredient. Sure, the fresher the better, and yes, starting out with marvelous ingredients helps, but...you still have to cook. It´s annoying and patronizing and plain stupid to convince people that unless the produce was harvested within a mile of them by vestal virgins they needen´t even bother to start.

The hardest part of cooking good food (after you've done all you can to buy good ingredients) is … cooking.

And there are two parts to that cooking. There is the "I've got extra time on the weekend, let's make something special cooking", and there is "I need to cook tasty meals every day of the week".

I'm home sick for the second day. I made myself soup yesterday, and it didn't taste very good. A cooking screw up hurts even more when you don't have the energy for a do over.

By Sam.

Went to the night market in downtown Vancouver, rather than way out in Richmond. I'm a sucker for BBQd squid tentacles…

We've heard talk about Google Wallet and other platforms wanting to make your phone your wallet.

Well, this isn't that, but it does mean you can use your iPhone as a physical wallet.

I already carry around "Wallet 2.0" as I call it - just a thin folding wallet that has room for ID and a couple of cards, and a money clip on the outside for bills. Coins jingle around in my pocket until they get dumped into a bucket of change back at home.

I'm putting this on my wishlist.

Played this course on Sunday with Travis and some other fun folks. It's a highly technical course - you're playing in a forest, and there are trees everywhere. Reminds me of the old Juan de Fuaca course, except that that one was truly the extreme of technical courses (e.g. the cliff hole).

I played the "C" tees and came away at 6 under par. Playing more often definitely helps - I played a couple of weeks ago, so didn't feel rusty when starting.

More adventures to be detailed later. Including the 2 grilled cheeses + hamburger patty sandwich.

With all these threads on religion, I felt rather left out :( So anyone out there who follows the great Elder gods? How do you deal with the prohibition on eating cephalopods? I miss calamari :(

What about the commandment to eat as many cute and cuddly animals as you possibly can? I have so much trouble with this one. Yesterday I ate 12 hamsters I stole from a crying preschooler and then devoured a small puppy, but then I remembered I also had a baby bunny wearing a polka dot bow to eat in the fridge. I just couldn't eat any more though.

I used to have a Cthulhu obsession in University. Through a strange twist of fate, it has ended up as a codename / meme at work. Cthulhu diets came up, and of course Google found this.

Ballymaloe brown yeast bread

This bread has been made by hand every day at Ballymaloe House for more than 60 years – originally for the family, and then for the guests. The recipe is based on one for a nutritious loaf that Doris Grant developed at the request of the British government in the 1940s. I can't really stress enough what a favour you'll be doing your family by baking this bread. The main ingredients – wholemeal flour, treacle and yeast – are all highly nutritious. The ingredients and equipment should be at room temperature.

Makes 1 loaf

450g (1lb) strong (stone-ground) wholemeal flour OR 400g (14oz) strong (stoneground) wholemeal flour plus 50g (2oz) strong white flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black treacle
425ml (3⁄4 pint) water, at blood heat
20g (3⁄4) or more fresh non-GM
Yeast
Sesame seeds (optional)
Sunflower oil
1 loaf tin 12.5 x 20cm (5 x 8in)

Preheat the oven to 230°C/450°F/ gas mark 8.

Mix the flour with the salt in a mixing bowl. In a small bowl or Pyrex jug, mix the treacle with some of the water, 150ml (¼ pint) and crumble in the yeast. Leave to sit for a few minutes in a warm place to allow the yeast to start to work. Meanwhile, grease the bread tins with sunflower oil. Check to see if the yeast is rising. After about 4–5 minutes, it will have a creamy and slightly frothy appearance on top.

When ready, stir and pour it, with all the remaining water (300ml/½ pint), into the flour to make a loose, wet dough. (Don't mix it until all the water is in; otherwise it tends to go lumpy.) The mixture should be too wet to knead. Put the mixture directly into the greased tin. Sprinkle the top of the loaves with sesame seeds, if you like. Cover the tin with a tea towel to prevent a skin from forming and leave the bread to rise. This will take anything from 10–20 minutes, depending on the temperature of your kitchen.

Preheat the oven to 230°C/ 450°F/gas mark 8.

When the dough has almost come to the top of the tin, remove the tea towel and pop the loaves into the oven. The bread will rise a little further in the oven; this is called 'oven spring'. If the bread rises to the top of the tin before you put it into the oven, it will continue to rise and will flow over the edges. Cook for 20 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 200°C/400°F/gas mark 6 and cook for a further 40–50 minutes, until your bread looks nicely browned and sounds hollow when tapped.

We usually remove the loaves from the tin/tins about 10 minutes before the end of cooking and put them back into the oven to crisp all round, but if you like a softer crust there is no need for this

Even easier than no-knead bread.

With this, plus the dolphins in Howe Sound, it feels like we're getting a second chance.

That's Siwash Rock on the Stanley Park seawall in the background.

Tuesday Encounter: Your party has dared to venture to the Ruins of Zhentil Keep in search of lost artifacts, where you find a Temple to Bane, left strangely untouched. You cautiously enter the temple, hoping to plunder it's treasures, and instead find a group of undead Zhentarim in defensive positions, holding off the advances of a group of Shadar-Kai, led by Naramus himself. What do you do?

There is a new Neverwinter video game coming out this year. The Facebook page for the brand is doing an awesome job running role playing "sessions" just by posting to their wall.

The only peace of mind that exists in our current food system seems a kind of Orwellian trick- it is weird to know where your food comes from. By making it normal to not know, you don’t have to worry about it too much. We are beginning to see cracks in the sarcophagus with the occasional beef or peanut butter recall, the fear of food from China and the rise of local food on the fringes. But it is still mainly out of sight out of mind. Foodtree envisions a solution to the ills of our runaway food system by eliminating information asymmetry. It only takes a couple of times for you to be able to choose something you know the provenance of to remind you that it is actually bizarre to NOT know the source of your food.

It's great to be working with Tony and the rest of the Foodtree team on this mission.

While we joke about meeting the chicken that we're going to eat or joke about being "those people" that ask where stuff is from - it's important.

If you want to hear more from Tony, he's going to be speaking at the Raincity Chronicles this Wednesday - tickets at Firehall Arts Centre.

Yes, this is how expensive cellphone plans are in Canada.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juh7ZHNK7Fo]

A Latvian magazine has enabled real birds to tweet on Twitter thanks to a system involving a pork fat keyboard rigged up to the microblogging platform.

This story must have been so much fun to write. Birds, bacon, Twitter - a match made in heaven.

I could probably republish at least half of every Laughing Squid post - often funny, always interesting.

Mother's Day is coming!

Scientists are trying to figure out why the Pacific white-sided dolphins are back. But there’s speculation it can be partly contributed to a small group of marine enthusiasts and a fish.

Dolphins are incredible creatures. It just *feels* great that they are back in and around the waters off Bowen Island.

I know Stewart Marshall has been seeing them a lot on his ferry commutes.

Social games and free to play games are, if not the future, a future. We can’t dismiss or ignore them. In fact, we should celebrate those of them, and those elements of them, that do approach things smartly, and in doing so bring worthy gaming to a gigantic audience. But we can make it quite clear that we expect to be treated better than this slovenly, cheating, cynical wolf in in RPG’s clothing. Especially when it’s clothing hundreds of thousands of us were very fond of.

Dragon Age II and Dragon Age Legends are a gigantic money grab. I haven't played DA:Legends on Facebook yet, but I have played a chunk of DAII.

They removed a LOT of the RPG mechanics / depth from DAII. As in, only your main character is fully customizable. It really should have been a different game in the DA universe -- kind of like a DA Light.

Yes, I like some of the enhanced fluidity of the visuals of the fights. But just make Diablo if that's what you're aiming to make.

Oh, right, I'm supposed to be ranting on Facebook games :P On both smartphones and Facebook, I think you can make great games. Please focus on great games and content first, let me choose whether to invest time or money. And the invest time only experience should be *great*.

Paying for virtual items should enhance or shortcut the core game, not BECOME the core game mechanic.

The Panasonic LVF-1 Electronic View Finder (EVF)  is awkward - The Panasonic GF1 is a beautiful compact camera and the add-on EVF makes it bulkier.  The EVF is useful, especially in bright light, but I did not care for it because of the additional bulk and its low resolution.  If I do use an EVF, it will be on another m43 body such as the Panasonic G2 or Panasonic GH2 which both have high resolution, built-in EVF's.

The Olympus looks cooler and is more compact, but only has an add on viewfinder.

The Panasonic G2 / GF2 have a built-in viewfinder, which may just be the thing that tips the balance for me.

So, I'm just about to start playing some Dragon Age II, and people are already telling me that I'll probably be better off waiting for Neverwinter.

I was a little worried playing the DAII demo, and yup, it looks like they turned it into a mainly action oriented game.

I'm not happy with how Dawn of War II: Retribution got changed. I *loved* the previous two versions, now they've dialed the RPG down and dialed the RTS up, making it more suitable for online multiplayer, but less fun for me.

Feels like the "app-ification" of everything...

The mistake is the appearance of greed, of swindling your initial customer. When additional content came out a few months after the release it at least gave the impression that the developers had just kept on making the game after it was finished out of sheer momentum. Revealing that entire chunks of plot, quests, characters and abilities are being deliberately designed in order to not include them in the game just seems like a “fuck you” to the customer. Before DLC was an option, such content would either be artificially held back until it was really too late for people to have it for their first play of the game, or more likely just be contained in the game. Now it’s dangled in front of us, with no other message than, “Sure, you can spend only the £35/$50 on this game, but look what you won’t have.”

I have to agree with this. I am a HUGE fan of DLC, especially in the way it has been done recently in the DA series.

But, I want to see the core game come out with DLC over time that can extend the lifespan of the core game, rather than this nickel-and-diming.

UPDATE: I had a comment from someone within Bioware get to me that says, in essence "the linked article is mistaken about how downloadable content gets made". It would be great to hear from Bioware directly, via, you know, a comment or something :P The message from me is, regardless of how the DLC is made (or the planning & resourcing for it), from a marketing / user experience perspective, I feel like I'm being nickel and dimed.

Last night I attended Derek Miller's living wake.

Coming home and thinking about it last night and today, this is the picture I've had in mind.

Or rather, this is the moment in time that I had in mind. I thought for sure that Kris had taken the picture that I was seeing in my minds eye. (No, he took this one).

What I had in my minds eye was the much cooler version of Derek that walked up moments before this photo was taken. Long hair, head phones. Some kind of musician? Pretty cool, pretty "hip" to be coming to this blogging conference.

We make small talk, and I get him to pose, and he pulls this face. But it doesn't matter, because browsing all those old ("this photo was taken 73 months ago") photos, friends, those experiences at Northern Voice, I see the long haired cool guy in my minds eye.

And that's the first time I met Derek. It's been a pleasure.

The most useful conversations to me have been the ones where we kick around ideas, blue sky, dream a little, roll our sleeves up and try and figure out numbers or options.  Not because we need to make a park work but because we need to make the FUTURE work, and the best way to do that is to be engaged in the present.

I am so glad that Chris is part of my hometown (Bowen Island) social fabric.

I love me some Cthulhu.

When your car looks like a car but the doors are gullwing, we notice them. When your suit looks like a suit but the lining is orange, we notice it. When you apply for a job and you don't have a resume, we notice it.

I need to remind myself that fitting in all the way is not the goal. And to keep bringing the crazy.

Balance

My man @dshan is someone that I haven't spent nearly enough time with. He's an excellent writer, so I'm really looking forward to a month of posts from him. I really need to get back on the blogging horse. More specifically, the *personal* blogging horse.

I snipped nothing but the word BALANCE from his post. I think I've said I'm going to do balance THIS YEAR....every year. And I suck at it. I really, really, really suck at balance.

So maybe I need to reboot the word, the concept. Redefine what balance means, for me. And hold myself accountable to MY definition of it. I keep struggling with, maybe, other people's definition of balance.

First, define it. Then, live it in the way that is meaningful for me.

The most widely known version appears in Stephen Hawking's 1988 book A Brief History of Time, which starts:

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever", said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"^[1]

The origins of the turtle story are uncertain.

Darren brought this up today - I've used this phrase a lot in the past, although I don't recall where I got it from. I did read and enjoy the Discworld series.

Yak shaving is another personal favourite.

Hooked Gamers review of Super Meat Boy. I had stumbled on this a while back, and Lauren reminded me that it, uh, was "made for me".

Apparently I have a reputation regarding meat :P

It looks fun, but I pretty much suck at platform games.

I should probably remove the Feedburner rotating image bling from my Gmail. I tested it with the new rich text and then just left it turned on.

Also, I have a disclaimer box being appended by my new office email. It *might* be part of some arcane certification process that it is required, but I haven't figured that out yet.

I was *just* talking to people about email training being required these days…

I have been sink for 48 hours+. I wandered out of my sickie cave this afternoon to visit Rachael's show at the Granville Island Hotel, and to make a trip to Oyama for fortifying victuals. I am rounding the evening off with some mindless gaming. Fun, so far.

Amazingly, America - the birthplace of the Internet - is the only developed nation that does not teach programming in its public schools. Sure, some of our schools have elected to offer "computer" classes, but instead of teaching programming, these classes almost invariably teach programs: how to use Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, or any of the other commercial software packages used in the average workplace. We teach our kids how to get jobs in today's marketplace rather than how to innovate for tomorrow's.

…snip…

As we continue to look at programming as a menial skill to be outsourced to developing nations, we will lose our innovative superiority as well. While this may not hurt American corporations capable of sourcing its code from anywhere, it would certainly hurt Americans looking for a skill set to replace our manufacturing jobs.

Great piece on digital literacy by @rushkoff. I'm sure a lot of people will be turned off by some of the economic and military references, but look beyond that and think of digital tools as… …well, as tools, rather than as consumption vectors.

It's just part of the great math & science handwringing in North America: we need to have people actually care about these things, and know how they work. Digital literacy is *important*.

It's the difference between sitting around a fire and knowing how to make one from scratch when it goes out…

Kevin Czinger, Coda’s C.E.O., who drove me around Manhattan in his company’s soon-to-be-in-production electric car last week, laid out what is going on. The backbone of the modern U.S. economy was locally made cars powered by locally produced oil. It started us on a huge growth spurt. In recent decades, though, that industry was supplanted by foreign-made cars run on foreign oil, so “now every time we buy a car we’re exporting $15,000 of capital, paying for it with borrowed money and running it on foreign energy sources,” says Czinger. “We’ve gone from autos being a middle-class-making-machine to a middle-class-destroying-machine.” A U.S. electric car/battery industry would reverse that.

I recently read about a supercomputer that is being built in China as well, so call that moon shot number 5.

This is targeted at a US audience, and says to bet on electric cars. What should Canada bet on?

Another thing about stock generally: don't think that stock making must be a huge undertaking.  I got an email the other day from a home cook saying she didn’t have the right pots to make stock.  Please, listen to me: YOU DO NOT HAVE TO MAKE ENORMOUS QUANTITIES AND MONOPOLIZE YOUR KITCHEN FOR AN ENTIRE WEEKEND IN ORDER TO HAVE STOCK.

Put two or three pounds of bones in a 2-quart pot, cover with water, bring it to a simmer, skim anything that looks unpleasant off the surface, and put it in the oven set to 190 degrees for as long as you wish, a few hours at least or for beef and veal 10 hours is good.  Add an onion, two carrots and a bay leaf for the last hour of cooking.  Strain (the finer the strainer, the better the stock—I strain through a cloth).  This will give you about a quart of stock.

For veal stock, see if you can find a veal breast, which has a great mix of bone, cartilage and meat (I know some people have trouble finding bones—if you’re not worried about cost, osso bucco works).  Ask your butcher to cut it into 3 inch pieces for stock (I use a cleaver which does the same work).  Roast them in a 425 degree oven until they are beautifully golden brown and delicious looking.  Then follow the above instructions.  Also add a couple tablespoons of tomato paste and some garlic.  Other aromats that are great to use here and in other stocks are leeks, peppercorns (crack them first), parsley and thyme.

I started looking at veal stock recipes (like this French Laundry at Home one by Carol) and my heart sunk. For one, I only bought 3 lbs of bones + meat from Cioffi's (Yelp entry), and for two ... it's Sunday afternoon and I want to use it in risotto this evening.

Luckily, the quoted way of doing it is pretty much what I had planned anyway - roasted then cooked in the oven for a couple of hours with onions, celery, and carrots.

We'll see if I'm up for doing the remouillage aferwards.

The Stormlight Archive PortalBook List

The Way of Kings

Book One of the Stormlight Archive

Purchase

From Amazon
From B&N
From BookSense
From Booksamillion
From Powell's

Content

• The Way of Kings Sample Chapters
• The Way of Kings Blog Posts
• The Way of Kings Articles
• Fake Twitter Reviews of the Way of Kings
• The Way of Kings Release Events

This book will be released August 31, 2010. Description coming soon.

Brandon wrote an introduction for Tor.com here

I got an email today that an image of a crab shell that I sold back in April is now in published form, in an EPIC FANTASY NOVEL:

The book containing the map which uses your image as a partial rough base has now been released. The Way of Kings is an epic fantasy novel by Brandon Sanderson, and if you look on page 94, your crab picture was the basis for the map looking as if it was first scratched into a shell and then made into a charcoal rubbing.

Very cool. Good excuse to go pick this book up.

Ingredients

• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 4 tablespoons white sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup margarine, softened
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup butter, melted
• 1/4 cup buttermilk

 

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Lightly grease a large baking sheet.
2. In a large bowl, mix together flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt and margarine. Stir in 1 cup of buttermilk and egg. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead slightly. Form dough into a round and place on prepared baking sheet. In a small bowl, combine melted butter with 1/4 cup buttermilk; brush loaf with this mixture. Use a sharp knife to cut an 'X' into the top of the loaf.
3. Bake in preheated oven for 45 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean, about 30 to 50 minutes. You may continue to brush the loaf with the butter mixture while it bakes.

 

Had this as a link on FoodLikeThat, which I will be ditching one of these days. Key things with this seems to be use of both baking soda and powder, and lots of buttermilk.

Made originally for Christmas morning, 2008.

I think it is. My view on the matter is that the era of economic growth is over, kaput, finished. If you stop for a minute to think about it, you must admit that we live on a finite planet, that we are rapidly using up the available resources, that we are adding ever more pollution to our air, water and land, and that the distance (in time) between the end of the production line and regional dump is growing ever shorter. This cannot continue. Nature shows us that nothing grows forever. What would it be like if children never stopped growing? What happens as insect or animal populations grow? They either level off or experience a catastrophic collapse.

So, if we cannot expect the economy to return to what has been “normal” in our past, what can we expect? I believe that we must, and in fact are right now transitioning toward a steady-state economy, one in which overall quantitative growth is supplanted by qualitative development, i.e., an improvement in the conditions of life that really matter,

There are many good quotes, like "the Butterfly economy" or "Use value is becoming more important than market value".

I learned from reading greaterfool.ca, which is mainly about real estate but also about investing in general, that buying shares in banks that pay dividends earns you more (like 5% more) than sticking that same money into that bank's savings accounts.

Investing in "real" dividends -- CSAs (community supported agriculture) and other co-op models -- is one way to get value directly.

One area that I would like to see some focus on, learned from many discussions with Anthony of Farmstead Wines and Foodtree, is that while production is always local, I believe it is important for us to reward / seek out "good" forms of production wherever they are. Carbon footprint aside, we need to link these global local producers.

A long time ago, before psychiatry and rum, I seriously considered a job in intelligence.  Among other things I had some Russian, and I knew another guy who was fluent in Russian and was actively being recruited by the CIA.    He decided not to do it because... his Dad wouldn't let him.  At that time it struck me as curious that you'd be more worried about your dad than the Russians, but I have since understood: we were living in a time where there was no right and wrong, no objective truths, all things were relative except the inviolable Law of Growing Up American:  go to college, then get a job.  Your dad's sole purpose was to make sure you followed that rule.   If you raped a murder victim then your Dad would get you a good lawyer, but if you showed any proclivity towards anything other than a future 9 to 5 in a field he understood, it was your ass.

I'll grant you up front that Scott probably suffers from a mixture of ennui and myopia and absolutely no chance of STDs, who apparently feels neither shame in nor fear about sabotaging his job prospects by appearing in these photographs, to the fury of every American other American who sees them:

This is commentary on an article in the NYT about a college grad that hasn't been able to find a job in 2 years since he graduated. Except, he hasn't started anything himself and he turned down the one he was offered.

Read the whole thing.

Yeah, I don't think that anyone that uses the Internet as part of job screening is going to be hiring Scott.

We've overinvested in yesterday's industries to the point that they're now the walking dead - but the cost, of course, has been failing to seed tomorrow's.

We don't have awesome jobs because we've propped up zombie companies that create, largely, McJobs - when they create any at all. Conversely, the incentives for entrepreneurship are drying up, thanks to a broken ventureconomy.

Feeling like there are connected threads between stuff like this and Dave Pollard's thinking on coop economies. Except, I agree with some of the comments over there. The step 1 of company creation by committee is damn hard.

Seen via @nickmolnar and others. Clicking through to the web page, there is only a phone number. No email / contact form makes me sad :(

I'm hoping that I'll have time during my trip to play some disc golf. I brought a couple of my golf discs just in case.

Let me explain - and allow to me to over-generalize for a moment. Let's say you want a loaf of bread. How many of us will pay an extra 15-30% for a loaf from the local baker, versus a loaf from the local hypermarket? Yet, because we won't, the bakery - and its jobs - vanish.

After all, why would you pay a slight premium, for goods that are substitutes? Except, of course, they're not - really. Your bakery has radically different incentives than your local hypermarket, and might just offer you a significantly higher level of artisanship, skill, service - and trust. Yet, it's exactly those we don't seem to value.

Tuesday I attended an event at Joel Solomon's place hosting Woody Tasch, talking about the Slow Money Alliance.

Thanks to Joel for opening his house so everyone could hear Woody share his views, and get some thought and discussion flowing as well.

A question / comment I expressed to Woody is that I am uncomfortable with the label of investor applied to myself (and yes, with those that know my Bootup context, that is some what ironic). And for many, I think "investor" is not a good rallying cry.

As per the quoted text above from Umair Haque, making that sort of local, personal _movement_ happen is something I feel more comfortable with.

Supporter seems too weak a word. Yes, I would like to invest. I would like to invest my support, vs. the local hypermarket.

Later on I will stand in one of these stores in front of a pyramid of Coke Zero bottles and consider the fact that a whole infrastructure exists for bringing this substance of no nutritional value from wherever it's bottled in Europe up to a place like this. I happen to love Coke Zero and whatever cyclopyrimidines or butylated phenols give it its weird fake sweetness, but seeing it stacked in quantity after coming off an island where everything has to be carried in by hand gives me pause. I feel like the Burfjord grocery store will someday form part of a sanctimonious diorama about the folly of late-period humanity in someone's well-meaning, sustainably-built museum or alien terrarium, and the thought fills me with irritation in advance. I buy a large bottle of the stuff as my way of shaking a fist at the future.

Found via @mezzoblue, and wonderful reading.

Reminds me of when I was on a small atoll that is part of the Marshall Islands. There was one cinderblock construction supply store for both visitors and locals. We all lined up to pay $1USD for… …a cold can of coke. It also seems that $1 is the universal price for a can of pop.

The video is creepy. It's nice and haunting as a credit roll for True Blood.

In the meantime, learn to do real things and how to create value for other people. Make friends with your neighbors or, if necessary, neighbors out of your friends.

This is not a nightmare scenario, no matter what “they” say it is. No need for apocalypse, regression, or guns. That’s all silliness.

Good times ahead.

Good advice. Seen via @jonhusband.

Today's post has another great quote about the connection between "stuff" and how much we actually need to work to survive - "I believe we could take care of pretty much everyone’s needs – at least in America – with all of us being employed perhaps 10% of the time."

Good times ahead indeed.

Here's the natural object 9 hole disc golf course I came up with this morning.

1 package active dry yeast

1/4 cup warm water

3/4 cup hot milk

3 tablespoons shortening

3 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 1/4 teaspoons salt

1 egg, beaten

4 cups all-purpose flour, or enough to make stiff dough

melted butter

I made these for our Canada Day apartment picnic. What's that? It's when you put out pillows and blankets on the floor of your apartment because it's too cloudy / rainy to have a picnic outside!

On the second rise in the pan, they all just sort of rose into one large mass. Next time, put them farther apart in the pan.

I also think I might have over-kneaded a bit and/or worked in a bit too much flour as part of kneading, but it turned out some really nice crumb, almost like a biscuit or something with corn meal in it. This is theoretically a Southern food recipe, so maybe that makes sense.

I'm done with Rock Paper Scissors as of now.

A cooking co-op, or dinner swap, is simply an agreement by two or more individuals or households to provide prepared meals for each other, according to a schedule. The goal is to reduce the time spent in the kitchen while increasing the quality and variety of the food eaten.

It’s not a new idea — dinner co-ops have been around for years — but it was new to me. Mine is based in my apartment building in Jackson Heights, Queens, which adds to the convenience. Members of our co-op, made up of four households, including two editors at the James Beard Foundation and Tony Liu, the executive chef of the Manhattan restaurant Morandi, exchange meals weekly.

It works like this: Once a week, you cook a dish (chicken enchiladas, for instance), making enough to provide at least one serving for each adult member of the co-op. (Children can be assigned half or full portions, depending on ages and appetites.) Around the same time, your fellow co-op members are cooking large batches of their chosen dishes.

Saw Trevor post this earlier in the day. This well describes what I'd like to try – I find it easier to cook large portions in any case. Leave a comment if you're interested in participating.

But what if there's a little-known dark side to the farmers' market boom? What if the ruddy man in overalls actually came from hours away, where local residents don't have access to the vegetables grown near their own backyards because farmers prefer selling their produce to city dwellers at nearly triple the price?

Linda Aleci, a historian and co-founder of the Local Economy Center at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, undertook a three-year study of the farmers' market in her city. Her findings suggested that the local farmers' market -- serving a poor, food-insecure community -- was suffering from the growth of markets in the Philadelphia metro region and in Lancaster County.

So, the problem here is treating food / food growing as a purely economic endeavour. I can see "local" markets (in quotes, because the very phrase "local" is problematic -- it's not the only value that is important) needing to work with farmers AND buyers to encourage a great local ecosystem.

Do we drive out and buy from the farmer's gate? Can local stores stock produce from local farmers? (I'm thinking, here, of a suburban / rural area that has farmers / farmland as part of the community).

Or should farmers go full steam ahead, and sell in urban farmers markets if it means higher prices for them?

For some days now I have physically left the room with the computer in it, and settled down somewhere to read. All the old joy came back, and I realized the internet was stealing the reading of books away from me. Reading is calming, absorbing, and refreshing for the mind after hectic surfing. Chaz and I have quiet chats where we sit close and she talks and waits for my reply and this is soothing after the online tumult. I like the internet, but I don't want to become its love slave.

You should definitely be reading Ebert's blog.

And yes, I read less. Less BOOKS. In all likelihood, I read many more words. I try and fit in reading as well, as that calmness is necessary, and lets your unconscious do its work figuring stuff out in the background.

Currently, I'm reading some Janet Morris / Thieves World fantasy stuff.

Even though rent-versus-purchase math has long worked strongly in favour of renters, even moreso in the last few years, renters are not looked upon as fiscally wise and prudent, but rather as disadvantaged and unfortunate. This is not to say that this is fair, or right, it simply is the truth of what has happened here through the bubble. A renter confessing to renting in company not uncommonly gets responses ranging from pained grimaces, to condolences, to pity, to thinly veiled scorn. And renters can only imagine the opinions expressed when they are out of earshot.

Yes, there are places in the world where renting is the norm. And, yes, many of the superficially wealthy Vancouver owners have abused their RE-ATMs and have large invisible debt loads. But the fact of the matter remains that renters are seen as relatively disadvantaged compared to their owner peers.

As I once again move to a rental apartment, this discussion has been coming up again and again. Do we need a "renting is great" information campaign? Or maybe just a "f*ck owning!" campaign…

This women in South America is trying to save amphibians - frogs and other creatures are dying because of a deadly fungus that's sweeping the planet.

So, she went to a sloth orphanage and took cute sloth videos, hoping it would go viral so you would come to her site, and help save frogs. Pretty awesome (and the sloths are cute).

I shared this on Twitter already, but it is very very very funny, and you should watch it for sure. We've been watching Community, which has Donald Glover from DERRICK COMEDY in it.

It won’t surprise anyone who’s ever read this blog that I lay most of the blame for this state of affairs on the overheated real-state market. When the average couple – one without trust funds, inheritances, or seven-figure jobs – can’t afford to buy the average home, there’s a price to be paid. In the short-term, that price will be paid (in a cruel irony) by those very same average couples, who will leverage themselves into knots to get into the market. From there, only two things can happen, both of which will prove catastrophic for our average couple: the real estate market can either correct, in which case they’ll be sitting on negative equity and lifetime of crippling mortgage payments, or it won’t, and they’ll just be sitting on those equally debilitating mortgage payments.

Eventually, though, those average couples will start to look elsewhere, to the Edmontons, the Saskatoons, and the Halifaxes of the country, places where middle class people – teachers, journalists, nurses, and tradespeople, for example – can afford to live middle class lives. They’ll move to places where they can afford to save money, to have children, and to plan for the future, rather than remaining on the economic hamster wheel of places like Vancouver and Toronto, where wages remain stagnant while prices shoot ever higher.

They might even discover that they like these new cities, too. Certainly, from where I sit, Edmonton looks like a perfectly civilized place to spend some time, and I don’t know when, if ever, I’ll leave. But I do know this: until its economy returns to some semblance of normalcy, and until middle class people can afford to live middle class lives, I won’t go back to Vancouver.

I think a lot of people are thinking about adjusting their cost structures – driven in Vancouver almost entirely by rent or mortgages – so that they can experiment and do things differently. "A chance to finally get ahead in life" as Max says earlier in his post.

This article on Youngstown that I read in Inc. Magazine makes me think along the same lines. People moving back to places that are in rough shape, but where there is the opportunity to build new structures and new ways of doing things (because the old ways certainly haven't worked).

I'm in transition, so as part of that, Rachael and I headed over to Galiano Island for a short break away.

The picture above is from the top of Mount Galiano, which we hiked right after getting to the island and having lunch. It's a steep climb, but only about an hour up, and views like this make it totally worth it. The link above leads to Rachael's write up of the trip, with more detail and lots more pictures. Here is my Galiano Flickr set.

Christian was kind enough to be tour guide as well as lending his car so we could do a bit more exploring -- the island is really long and skinny and a car is basically required to go anywhere interesting (at least to non-long-distance bikers).

It was a great unplug, although it did once again get me to thinking about knowledge workers and rural Internet usage - it's the only way we are going to make smaller, remoter areas economically self sustainable beyond "just" tourist services (and it can help with those, too).

Sharing recent meatballs for the #smprimer class.

I first picked up Bujold on recommendation from Kellan and devoured all the Vorkosigan series. I think I mostly dragged Lloyd into it as well.

I saw Volumes 1 - 3 of the Sharing Knife series in the library, and here I am almost done Volume 2, and not wanting the series to end.

The book is linked to GoodReads, a book sharing / recommendation thingie. I've still been using Allconsuming, but thought I'd give GR a try. Can't say as how I like it much better yet.

I’d also like to point out that Google is now useless for information about cooking, because almost all Google search results now point to vacuous sites that offer mundane, simplified recipes – often the same recipe endlessly repackaged. Bing is no better. It’s cooks.com and the Food Network ’til the cows come home.

My recent strategy has been to fool Google by combining the information I want with the name of a serious cook – Ruhlman or Keller or Bourdain – and then to look for results that are not written by that cook. This often gets you results from food blogs and other serious writers, not retreads from 1990’s supermarket magazines.

I'd really really like to take this on. I've been dreaming about "the perfect recipe website" for many years. Hint: it involves APIs.

Played this last night for the first time, with 7 people that were over for dinner. It was …interesting. Definitely complex, didn't move very fast, and there are way too many different piles of cards and discard piles. Also needs a fairly large table so everyone can organize cards in front of themselves.

Definitely need to play it with a smaller group to see if it moves more quickly, and thus makes it more fun.

Here's my write up on Foodists of how I cooked the octopus.

I'm about to braise & broil an octopus - bought about a pound of tentacle down at Granville Island. Wish me luck, will have photos of the finished product.

(Especially ironic because of the "cute" octopus video? Perhaps - they're still damn tasty)

Update: OK, worked out pretty well. A little chewy, but delicious. Bought it at The Salmon Shoppe on Granville Island - had them hack off one big tentacle for Rachael and I (Rachael had fun taking some close up shots before I cooked it).

Here's the picture of the finished product:

And the rest of the "making of" is on Flickr.

I really need to re certify in SCUBA and start building my gear again.

That’s why the push to repeal the HST is more dangerous than it might appear. It’s a Trojan Horse for more general forms of anti-tax sentiment, and if it is somehow successful it would establish a very dangerous precedent, a template that anti-tax groups would use to challenge any and all future tax increases. In such an environment future governments, regardless of their partisan orientation, would be hopelessly constrained, trapped by an ever-shrinking stream of revenue and forced to outsource, downsize, and otherwise remove itself from areas of enterprise and activity in which government currently acts. The danger in rallying against the HST is that it represents another rejection of taxation itself and of the idea that we as citizens have to pay for the services that we receive. From where I sit, in the long run that’s a far more significant threat to our prosperity as individuals, as British Columbians, and as Canadians than a few extra cents here and there in new taxes.

No, really, I *do* love taxes. I'm not a huge fan of what various elected political parties do with them, but that's on us as the governed to fix and make better.

But I'm a fan of the greater good, and a society that supports it. If I wasn't, I'd go live in the US.

And really, if the 'Zalm is against it…

My long ago Ultimate team in Ottawa was called Dr. Teeth, and two of my favourite t-shirts feature Dr. Teeth front and center. Gotta love the gold tooth.

Comes out this Thursday. I really enjoyed the first part of this, and replayed it a couple of times. The "Last Stand" multiplayer is super addictive - you ALWAYS get that "just one more game" feeling.

The waters of Howe Sound and the ferry across it are not only a physical barrier, but also a psychological one. Of course, many people say this about islands. With Bowen, and the commuter culture - which starts with high school - there is on island, and off island mindsets. The gearing up and gearing down happens every day.

You leave your home, make your way to the ferry to go to work or school. You step out the door, you watch the sun rise over the mountains crossing the Causeway. You are still on island. You make it to the ferry, wait with the "usual suspects" (those commuters on the same schedule as you), take your assigned seat with your regulars. The conversation shifts towards the morning radio tidbits, the wider news of the day. You are leaving the island, your home life, behind. On the commute, you become immersed in city and work.

You look at your watch, gather your things, and calculate which combination of trains, planes, and automobiles will get you on "the next ferry". The gathering of things may include a few files or artifacts that you need to bring home, but you are mentally as well as physically packing them away. Your thoughts turn towards this "next ferry", and you think about the weather, and what's for dinner. Arriving at the ferry terminal, you mentally pack work and stress away. Whatever happens, you will be on the next ferry. Crossing the water, you are facing home. Are you being picked up? Are you looking for a ride? Are you walking home in the dark and rain? There is a warm home at the end of the journey, time for a few last chats about politics, or development, or whether it's time to plant a few radishes.

I left a comment on a new online forum for Bowen Island, being setup and run by many people I respect, including the newly-moved-to-Bowen Dave Pollard.

I guess I didn't really answer the part of what do I appreciate about Bowen, rather a feeling I have about it. I appreciate that it is "home", and it is a home I can go to.

Ingredients

12	eggs
12	ounces jar of salsa
1 ½	cups grated cheese

Preparation

Step 1	Pre-heat oven to 400°F
Step 2	Grease a 12 cup muffin pan with a little oil
Step 3	Crack an egg into each muffin tin
Step 4	Spoon about a tablespoon or so of salsa over each egg (don't worry if it slides to one side or the other of the yolk)
Step 5	Top each egg / salsa mixture with grated cheese - cheddar, monterey jack, or other flavourful melty-cheese works (mozzarella is too bland)
Step 6	Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes - cheese should be melted and bubbly, and egg should be cooked through

Huevos Rancheros a la Muffin Pan

We had brunch today. I was browsing through my New York Times cookbook earlier in the week thinking of something fancy, and then went in the completely opposite direction and made this super simple version of huevos rancheros.

Baked another no knead to go with this, which was 2 parts white, 1 part rye, 1 part rolled oats. The oats kind of just disappear after the kneading, second rise, and baking, but they definitely improve the crumb. Also put in a can of Rickards Red beer.

Potatoes were boiled briefly last night, then sat in the fridge with fresh ground coriander, fennel, paprika, and olive oil, and then hung out in the oven on low heat for a couple of hours this morning.

Lastly in this post, but firstly served, was a “fruit salad” made of grated pear, Granny Smith apple, Pink Lady apple, and zest + juice of one lime.

Brunch as a meal to have people over for is neglected. I will do it more often.

Thanks for everyone that came out for my birthday dim sum today. It was fun to sit and eat amidst the hustle and bustle of Sun Sui Wah, and then to gambole along Main Street in the sunny weather.

I've actually read this book before. I immediately devour any book that Kay releases.

It was great to go back and read this one again. There is a lot of depth to Kay's books - glimpses of the fact that any minor character has a full history behind them.

Many people feel that this is not as strong as some of Kay's other books. The pace / plot is a bit more sedate - like the sun going down, there is an inevitability on display as it rolls to conclusion.

There is a bit of fantasy / magic thrown in, but the theme is in part about the end of paganism and superstition, so the whole thing can be read as historical fiction.

The Canadian tall ship SV Concordia, a sailing school vessel, heads past downtown Halifax in this July 24, 2000 file photo. (Andrew Vaughan/Canadian Press)

A Nova Scotia-based ship carrying dozens of students has sunk off Brazil, but everyone is safe and there were no serious injuries, officials say.

The Brazilian navy said the tall ship SV Concordia went down about 550 kilometres southeast of Rio de Janeiro in rough seas.

West Island College International of Lunenburg, which runs the Class Afloat program, said all 64 people aboard were rescued from four life-rafts by merchant vessels early Friday.

The 48 students, eight teachers and eight crew had to abandon ship and spent the night in the life-rafts equipped with blankets and some food. A Brazilian navy helicopter spotted the rafts and dropped medical supplies.

I went on the Class Afloat program right after I graduated from high school, in 1993 / 94. I spent 11 months on board, starting from Vancouver and then sailing around the north and south Pacific Ocean.

It was an incredible experience, and one I've always encouraged other people to take part in.

The ship was custom built in Gdansk, Poland, specifically for this program. They're going to have to raise millions of dollars to try and replace it, if they intend to continue.

Looks like it may not support embeds, so you'll have to follow the link. Long live muk muk!

Storing this recipe link so I can find it again. Someone else on Twitter pointed out that it was my recommendation for the best recipe for refrigerator pickles :P

The Who were at the Superbowl today, so lots of their old songs got looked up again. Thanks, Darren.

I think it's about time to order a whole pig and schedule a butchery / charcuterie class again.

No wonder this book is full of unexplained backstory. I accidentally bought the fourth in a series.

I'm sure Sarah will love this post, too.

Also, the Charcuterie Sundays blog is amazing. It has kicked back into high gear. This alone is a good excuse to head east.

Best Pho in Vancouver

4 Au Petit Cafe
3 Hanoi Pho (Hastings and Dunleavy)
2 Pho Tang
2 Thai Son (Chain)
2 Pho Huang
1 Le Do
1 Sung Huong (Surrey so it doesn’t really count)
1 Hai Phong
1 Pho Thai Hoa

I used to go for pho a lot more in Ottawa, where I lived a couple of blocks down from a "Little Vietnam" area of town. There are lots of pho shops in Vancouver, maybe I should pick a new place to live based on pho proximity?

No Knead Bread (inside) No Knead Bread

This is my first attempt at No Knead Bread (wrote about it previously with links to recipes).

This was a bit of a mashup with something from Cooks Illustrated that recommends a *little* bit of kneading, and the addition of beer and vinegar.

I didn't have any beer, but I did add the vinegar, and I did knead for about 10 minutes. I let it sit yesterday at 5pm, and started working with it at around 9am this morning, so it sat for 16 hours. The modified Cooks Illustrated plans on anywhere between 8 and 18 hours.

1/3 whole wheat and 2/3 white (both unbleached organic all purpose from Spud). The crust is nice and substantial, the crumb is bit too light for me: will have to experiment with heavier grains, maybe some rye flour. Will have to see how it tastes when it's cold: fresh out of the oven all bread is fantastic.

Cider Vinegar Barbecue Sauce:

• 1 1/2 cups cider vinegar
• 1 cup yellow or brown mustard
• 1/2 cup ketchup
• 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 garlic cloves, smashed
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cayenne

This is a good basic recipe for pulled pork made in the oven. I pretty much wing the dry rub these days, but the cider vinegar BBQ sauce ingredients above are good proportions that I always forget.

This smiling lady has been my hair stylist (aka cut it short when it gets unruly) for many years, and she has ended up cutting the hair of many friends, family, and even business colleagues. Her shop is Pome Studio.

Apparently today is Trogday, celebrating the creation of the Strong Bad character Trogdor, way back in 2003. Click through to get a free Trogdor game.

Fur hats are fun!

Making Cheese is as easy as…pie…?

    <span class="date">September 2nd, 2009</span>
     <span class="edit"></span>  

<p />

<div class="entry">
    <p>A few months ago I read the wonderful book <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Animal-Vegetable-Miracle-Barbara-Kingsolver/dp/155468188X">Animal Vegetable Miracle</a> written by Barbara Kingsolver. It’s an entertaining and inspiring recounting of the year she and her family spent growing their own food. The book includes meal plans and recipes at the end of each chapter that are based on what is available by season. Some of these, like the asparagus and morel bread pudding, sound mouth-wateringly good.<br />

About three quarters of the way through the book there is a chapter where Barbara describes making her own cheese. And not only does she make her own mozzarella but she does it in just thirty minutes! Boris and I were really excited about this (Cheese in half an hour!! WE CAN MAKE OUR OWN CHEESE!!!!!) and I started to track down the ingredients. This ended up being the most complicated part because though the cheese is made with only three ingredients – milk, citric acid and rennet – I had no idea where to look for two of those three. In the end it was Anne who found everything for us and we owe her a cheese of her own in thanks.

For future cheese makers based in Vancouver here’s where to get ‘em: citric acid can be found at most pharmacies and rennet is sold at Bosa Foods. After that it was easy-peasy and we ended up with delicious cheese, fresh and hot. The mozzarella was tasty and went beautifully with the heirloom tomatoes we’ve been picking up at the Farmers Market throughout the summer.

The 30-minute mozzarella recipe is available as a PDF download from the Animal Vegetable Miracle companion site. Boris and I have made the mozzarella twice now, the first time with friends and the second as a tag team effort. Two key things we discovered: resist the impulse to keep stirring the milk because it’ll separate into curds and whey faster when still, and add a bit more citric acid when the milk reaches the highest temperature mentioned in the recipe.

We’re still both AMAZED that cheese making can be this easy and this fast. And thanks to the recipes included within the box of rennet tablets there are more cheese experiments we’re hoping to try in the near future.

the epic quests set in Tolkien-inspired fantasy universes have gotten really boring to me.  Give me sci fi, superheroes, or asian animism, anything but elves and trolls.

A long post on looking for more new NEW in games. I think gaming is still catching up to the wild creativity of the web, and yes, some sort of Second Life-level piece of player interaction is going to be the more interesting space.

All the comments about City of Heroes makes me want to kick the tires on it.

Incidentally, gaming isn't going to go on my tech asides, it's going to go here.

Live Fermented Food & Organic Raw Dairy Making Workshops at The Urban Ashram - 2290 Saint George Street, Vancouver, BC V5T 3R2  604 708 9058 farmertomas@gmail.com

Food is the new black. Everybody wants to connect to food again, whether in festivals like Fork in the Road, Taste of Health, Vancouver Health Show...or shopping at local farmers markets, growing their own food at home or in community gardens. Food is once again taking its primacy as what truly nourishes us and our Earth. Food also roots us and gives us a truly spiritual connection to our place here and now on Earth.

Fermenting one’s own food at home is truly a wondrous and if alchemical experience produced by lactic acid bacteria, that exist all around us and within us. The process gives us a greater appreciation for all those beings we never see yet are reliant on: a lesson illustrated so beautifully by Dr. Seuss in Horton Hears a Who and Well(es) versions of War of the Worlds. Simply put, our sense of self is broadened and we appreciate and experience the interconnection that David Suzuki so frequently speaks of.

Learn to make your own Sauerkraut, Kimchi, Beets and Fermented Fruits and go home with them! $40. Wednesday January 13 at 7 pm, at The Urban Ashram, 2290 Saint George Street.

In this workshop you will learn how to work in harmony with some of these invisible friends while making Sauerkraut, Kimchi and fermented Fruits, along with the delicious fermented tea Kombucha. You will go home with your own vegetable and fruit ferments to continue at home, along with your own SCOBIE to make Kombucha.

Lactic Acid Fermentation requires no energy other than ones own, for the production, fermentation and storage of the food: no heating, cooling in fridge, canning etc. LAF also adds many nutrients to our food, pre-digests it thus making the nutrients more absorbable and keeps the food alive, raw as it has not been cooked at all. In our era of rising consciousness of our energy usuage, LAF fits beautifully into the Kyoto Accord Ethic, sorely lacking at many governmental levels, so we can set the example in our own homes, bellies and lives!

Wednesday January 20, 7 pm - Learn to make your own Yogurt, Butter, Buttermilk, Buttermilk Scones, Ghee, and Hard Cheese Curds using Vegetable Rennet, Whey Based Soup and enjoy chocolate ghee! This is a very hands on workshop and you will both have a meal around the foods and go home with many samples and yogurt starter. $40. At The Urban Ashram  2290 Saint George Street Organic RAW Whole Certified Organic Milk Used

Get five people together for either a fruit/veg fermentation workshop or a dairy workshop and we can arrange a time and date that suites you. Please watch the YouTube video from a Dairy Making Workshop ~ [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTqdb8HlDmA?wmode=transparent]

This looks like something we could organize a group around. Anyone interested?

Halting State

by <a href="http://www.allconsuming.net/item/view/3189644/search/query?product=book&amp;q=Charles+Stross">Charles Stross</a><br />

→ See this at Amazon.com

“They’re tunnelling TCP/IP over AD&D!” is one of the most amazing quotes I’ve ever read in a book. And the book is very good, covering ARGs and a future networked world very believably.

1	cup chopped onions
½	cup finely chopped celery
1	tablespoon olive oil
28	ounces cans of canned tomatoes
14	ounces can of coconut milk
1	cube chicken bouillon
1	cup water
1	stalk of fresh rosemary
1	tablespoon brown sugar
	salt
	pepper

edit Preparation

Step 1	Pour olive oil in a large soup pot and saute onions and celery until onions become translucent.
Step 2	Pour in tomatoes and coconut milk, dissolve the chicken bouillon cube in the cup of water and add it as well. Bring to a boil, then turn down heat.
Step 3	Add the stalk of rosemary and let simmer for 30 - 45 minutes.
Step 4	Remove the rosemary stalk and use a hand blender to puree the soup.
Step 5	Add the brown sugar and salt and pepper to taste.

edit Tools

• Hand blender

edit About Rosemary Tomato Soup

This was a very on-the-spot made up recipe. I was thinking that the stalk of rosemary would add some rosemary flavour, but I ended up simmering it quite a long time, so the resulting soup was

If you substituted vegetable stock for the chicken stock, this would actually be a vegan recipe.

I was configuring servers and it simmered a LOT longer than 30 minutes.

Karen thinks this is me.

Parsnip and apple coleslaw
Serves 2 as a main meal, 4 as a small side dish

2 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp good olive oil
1 tsp clear honey
1 tsp wholegrain mustard
175g parsnips
100g carrots
100g red cabbage
1 Cox’s apple, or your preferred eating apple, weighing approximately 150g
Handful of fresh parsley leaves, roughly chopped
25g walnuts, roughly chopped

1 Place the vinegar, oil, honey and mustard in a small jar and season with a small pinch of salt and a good grinding of black pepper. Screw on the lid and give it a shake until it’s pale and combined. Taste, adjust the seasoning if necessary, and set aside.

2 Peel the parsnip(s) and slice out the woody core – you’ll end up with about 100g parsnip. Coarsely grate and place in a large bowl. Peel and coarsely grate the carrot(s) and add to the parsnip. Very finely slice the red cabbage and add to the bowl.

3 Quarter the apple and slice out the core. Coarsely grate the apple, discarding any large pieces of skin. Add to the vegetables with the parsley leaves and half the walnuts.

4 If the dressing has started to separate, give it a shake again, then pour over the coleslaw. Toss the salad to coat in the dressing and then divide between two plates. Scatter over the remaining walnuts and serve. For a more filling meal, serve it with a chunk of blue cheese and warm crusty bread (it’s also good with a greasy pork chop and apple sauce if you’re not vegetarian).

Used 2 parsnips and 4 small carrots. 1/4 of a small / medium head of green cabbage. 1 Tbsp honey, 1 Tbsp dijon, only a splash of cider vinegar. Zest from one lemon, plus used the fresh lemon juice from the whole lemon. No parsley, no walnuts (so it's very plain and orange / green looking).

My version is definitely more of a side dish version.

½	package of spaghetti
½	cup of bacon, chopped
1	tablespoon olive oil
⅓	cup of minced shallots
1	clove minced garlic
1	cup diced cooked turkey
½	cup sour cream
½	cup water
½	cup of grated cheese
	black pepper
2	egg yolks
2	tablespoons cream
½	cup minced fresh parsley

Preparation

Step 1	Cook about half a package of spaghetti until al dente, drain the water and set aside. If you have the pasta water boiling and add the spaghetti as you do the next steps, it should be ready at about the right time.
Step 2	Cook the bacon in a large saucepan (will need to fit all of the cooked spaghetti). Cook it over medium heat until it just starts to brown.
Step 3	Add the olive oil, shallots, garlic and turkey and continue to cook on medium until the shallots are translucent.
Step 4	Reduce heat to low and stir in the sour cream and water until evenly mixed. Add the grated cheese and stir until evenly melted. Add fresh cracked black pepper to taste (at least 1 tsp).
Step 5	Add the cooked spaghetti to sauce mixture and toss thoroughly.
Step 6	Beat the egg yolks with the cream and pour on top of the spaghetti, again mixing thoroughly. Now mix in the fresh parsley and serve immediately.

As I saw in the comments on the recipe, I didn't like any of the carbonara recipes I saw, so I made my own. R doesn't like peas, but they would have gone well with this.

We had this with the slaw on the side, which cut the heavyness of this dish.

In spite of our efforts to save the Bloedel Conservatory, and despite the possible illegality of the decision to close or repurpose the Conservatory, it appears that the Vancouver Park Board is moving ahead with a decision to CLOSE the conservatory as of March 1, 2010. They will accept expressions of interest including business cases that allow for use of the Bloedel Conservatory in a new or similar capacity until April 30, 2010. If the Park Board accepts our proposal, Friends of the Bloedel Association will operate as a non-profit society with the following purposes:

It's been in operation for 40 years. It's been break even for all but the last 5 years of operation. You know, the last 5 years which have included sewer construction and Canada Line construction along Cambie, making the entire area around Queen E park / the Conservatory a giant pain to be around.

The trees and the entire ecosystem have grown inside the dome, and would need to be cut down and dragged out in pieces. The birds and other animals have spent their entire life in captivity, and they have no idea what they're going to do with them. I've gone there several times -- it's a fantastic escape in our fall/winter/spring, to go inside and bask in the tropical warmth, take pictures, and enjoy the bird life and surroundings.

They need to raise $250K to keep the conservatory open (that's their budget for an entire year), and they clearly need some help with their web presence & fund raising. This sounds like a job for Fundrazr…

Here are photos I've taken at the conservatory in the past:

http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649

Also features James in the background.

Restaurateur Mike Zalman, who lost Slickity Jim's Chat 'N Chew in November, is painfully aware that the cost of opening and operating a business in South Main will increase dramatically as the neighbourhood gentrifies.

"I enquired about the building at the southwest corner of Main and Broadway and found out it's going to be a Tim Hortons and a Wendy's," he said. "It hurts. The gods of progress have started to smite Main Street."

Well, that sucks. Cambie at Broadway is already feeling pretty soul-less. Having the same thing happen to Main would be very sad.

Ingredients

2	cups shredded coconut
1 ½	cups rolled oats
1 ½	cups raisins
2	cups sunflower seeds
½	cup sesame seeds
¾	cup chopped peanuts
½	cup chopped cried fruit, like apricots
¼	cup mini chocolate or carob chips
½	teaspoon salt
1	cup honey
1	teaspoon vanilla
1	cup peanut butter

Preparation

Step 1	Mix all the dry ingredients well in a large bowl. Blend honey, peanut butter and vanilla until smooth. Add to dry ingredients. Mix with your hands (grease hands first).
Step 2	Press firmly into a greased 9 x 13" pan. Bake at 275 F until golden brown. Time varies but anywhere from 8-16 minutes. Cool on a rack. Cut when cool.

Ending up making these tonight. I've had oats and shredded coconut haunting the cupboards for a while, and have been thinking about an on-the-go eat in the morning sort of thing. The Orange Ginger Granola bars look good, too.

When I went to look for recipes, they're all very similar, and in fact don't seem to matter *what* you put in them.

I left out sunflower and sesame seeds, and did crystallized ginger and some candied lemon peel for the fruit. The chocolate chips were white chocolate chunks. No honey, but half a cup of turbinado sugar and dark molasses. I like the dark, slightly bitter flavour of molasses, so we'll so how that turns out.

The peanut butter was aged and sticky, so I added a bit of water to dissolve the sugar / molasses / peanut butter. No salt because I forgot about it.

Needed to bake much longer (~30 minutes) and a little hotter than listed. Didn't stick together as well as I had hoped, but did end up being tasty.

First Splendid Truth
To be happier, you have to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.

Second Splendid Truth
One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy;
One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.

Third Splendid Truth
The days are long, but the years are short. (click the link to see my one-minute movie)

Fourth Splendid Truth
You’re not happy unless you think you’re happy.
corollary: You’re happy if you think you’re happy.

Actually seen on Fred Wilson's blog. I'm usually pretty good about these things. I need to focus on not getting trapped in a downward spiral - often times a sign of a) not enough 'me' time and/or b) not enough friend time. But some times I confuse (b) with (a) and spend too much time locked in my own head.