You all win. I got a blog.

My new Terry Pratchett tattoo, and why.

2010-08-16T22:09:00.000-04:00

I recently got 2 new tattoos. The first is one of my bike frame to represent the joy and happiness that cycling has brought me over the years as well as to partly commemorate the recent life transition I'm undergoing.

The second tattoo is a bit more complicated. It's from the Terry Pratchett book "Thud!" which is a favorite of mine. My copy is tattered and battered and dogeared and well-loved. There's a lot in there that is clever, well-written, and speaks to me a lot. Take, for example, this excerpt discussing the ways in which those who are different can sometimes choose to stand out in order to blend in:

Vimes stared at the man. He'd never thought about that before. But yes... Little fussy Otto, in his red-lined black opera cloak with pockets for all his gear, his shiny black shoes, his carefully cut widow's peak and, not least, his ridiculous accent that grew thicker or thinner depending on whom he was talking to, did not look like a threat. He looked funny, a joke, a music-hall vampire. It had never previously occurred to Vimes that, just possibly, the joke was on other people. Make them laugh, and they're not afraid.

Anyway, the Summoning Dark. It's one of the dwarfish "Darks," which have a variety of meanings and realities in dwarf culture. Dwarfs live communally in mines or, just lately, in human cities, in crowded quarters underground (or as close as possible in the cities). Dwarf mines, though, are a bit more complicated than human settlements. Humans would never last in that kind of situation, but dwarfs have cultural coping mechanisms.

Dwarfs didn't go mad. They stayed thoughtful and somber and keen on their job. But they scrawled mine sign.

It was like an unofficial ballot, voting by graffiti, showing your views on what was going on. In the confines of a mine, any problem was everyone's problem, stress leapt from dwarf to dwarf like lightning. The signs grounded it. They were an outlet, a release, a way of showing what you felt without challenging anyone...

There are lots of dwarfish runes for darkness. Some are simple, like the "long dark," the sign for a mine. Some are ... mystical. The Summoning Dark is the worst, scrawled by a dying dwarf, with his last breath, and it controls an

...invisible and very powerful quasidemonic thing of pure vengeance...

Which possesses Our Hero, the charmingly troubled and dark Commander Vimes, of the City Watch. The Summoning Dark affects his mind, keeps him angry and vengeful, gets him to do things he may or may not want to do, and keeps him alive (though not nicely) when he makes some Bad Decisions, and eventually gets him to a confrontation with the Bad Guys in the story.

All of which brings me to why I felt this was a great concept for a tattoo. When Vimes, no longer really in his right mind, confronts the Bad Guys, he also confronts the Summoning Dark. In the end, Vimes overcomes the Dark and refuses its pressure to commit vengeful murder. But not because he is pure, good, or otherwise above the darkness.

What makes it special is that Vimes basically overcomes the Summoning Dark because his own Darkness, the Watching Dark, that he has created in his mind, is stronger and better at being Vimes than the Summoning Dark is powerful. In the end, the Summoning Dark leaves Vimes, but leaves a mark on the inside of his arm. As, is explained by one of the dwarf grags, "an exit wound, perhaps?"

I don't guess I need to explain in too much detail why this story speaks to me, after finally getting past two years of horrible job after horrible job, second-guessing myself and my intelligence, being bullied and letting depression and anxiety take over my life, and being kind of an asshole to everyone. I don't guess I need to explain too explicitly why conquering the darkness by being more YOU than anyone else speaks to me. I don't guess I need to explain too much why, in the end, "an exit wound, perhaps" is exactly the right tattoo to mark closing the door on the past couple years and moving on, with myself intact.

This is on the inside of my right bicep, not my inner forearm. I just thought it'd look better.

Request for help!

2010-07-12T09:38:00.000-04:00

One of my very best friends is working on her master's thesis and needs people to do a simple website viewing activity and complete a survey. If anyone reading this hasn't heard about this yet, please take about 20 minutes out of your day to help an awesome woman with her research. The world needs awesome writers like her!

Instructions are here.

Funny "foreign" food and why that construction bugs me

2010-06-02T13:55:00.001-04:00

So I was thinking about my post yesterday, about how it bugs me when cookbook writers state that curry powder and garam masala are interchangeable. And it occurred to me that the problem lies deeper than "WTF your recipe will turn out WEIRD if you do that, why can't anyone see that??" The problem is that the recipe writers and developers seemed to figure it doesn't matter what an ostensibly "Indian" dish actually tastes like, as long as it's suitably "foreign." It erases an entire country's culture, history, and various food traditions, squashing it all into the category of "foreign." You see the same thing with recipes for things like "Asian noodle salad."

And that bothers me. It bothers me because I feel that USians already tend to forget about the rest of the world. It bothers me because we tend tolump people together in harmful ways. It bothers me because food, culture, history, and identity tend to be wrapped together, and erasing food traditions erases people. And I feel that mashing everything outside our borders into the category "foreign" is lazy at best and flatly xenophobic and racist at worst.

Nobody has to agree with me, of course. Nobody from outside the USA is obligated to feel offended at cookbooks, of course. But as an example of how pervasive these kinds of attitudes are, it's kind of interesting.

Spicy!

2010-06-01T14:11:00.002-04:00

So yeah, I have a recipe in the works that I'm trying to get right before posting, and it's being.... Difficult. I promise, soon, there will be a delicious recipe and discussion of Tempeh Tikka Masala (not traditional, no, but tasty nonetheless -- you cannot keep me away from dishes with tomatoes and cream!).

In the meantime, let's discuss spices and spice blends as used in Indian cuisine.

First of all, I am not, by any means, an expert in Indian cooking, as far as such a thing exists. Like many other important culinary centers (China, Italy, France, Mexico), India has many regions, each with separate cooking traditions informed by history, geography, and climate. I know that my experience in the amazing breadth and depth of Indian culture and cuisine is limited, being based mainly on the families I knew growing up and on reading as an adult; however, it's enough to be seriously bothered by some lazy recipe writing and lack of research I've noticed in many cookbooks and recipes.

Let's start with the basics. Typically, supermarkets carry two different "Indian" spice blends -- curry powder and garam masala. These are fairly "generic" versions of varied regional blends. Curry powder is associated with the cuisines of southern India, and is typically made of a variety of spices, including (but not limited to) coriander, cumin, mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds, and turmeric, which gives it its characteristic yellow color. Garam masala is associated with the northern cuisines, and is typically made from "warm" spices that are roasted before grinding, and can include cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, and nutmeg (among others).

These two spice blends have very different flavor profiles and uses in recipes. However, most recipes written for American cooks seem to treat the two blends as interchangeable. This sets my teeth right on edge, because the most cursory sniff of a bottle of each would reveal their differences. A recipe for a tofu and sweet potato curry is going to taste much, much different (and potentially have a different texture) if garam masala is used as an equal substitution for curry powder. Likewise, garam masala is typically added at the end of cooking, which preserves its delicate, roasted aromas. Trying to do the same with some curry powder will leave you with harsh, raw-tasting spices. I really cannot understand why anyone who goes to the trouble of writing, testing, revising, and publishing recipes would lead their readers astray like this.

I won't lead you astray like this, don't worry!

Now, who wants some recipes? These are my favorites, adapted slightly from Julie Sahni's fabulous and thorough book "Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking," published by William Morrow & Co., 1985.

Curry Powder Master Recipe
1/2 cup coriander seeds
10-15 dry red chili pods (I use dried chiles de arbol, add/reduce to taste, I usually use around 8)
1 1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 1/2 tsp brown mustard seeds
1 1/2 tsp fenugreek seeds
1 1/2 tsp black peppercorns
15-20 curry leaves* (fresh or dry, optional)
3 tbsp turmeric powder

1. If using fresh curry leaves, dry for about 5 mins in a dry frying pan over low heat.
2. Grind everything (except turmeric) in a coffee grinder or blender to a fine powder (depending on what you use, you might need a few batches). Transfer to a bowl and stir in the turmeric.
3. Transfer to an airtight jar and store in a cool dark place.
* curri or kari leaves are amazingly aromatic leaves, and are sold fresh and dry in Indian groceries.

Punjabi Garam Masala
1/4 cup cumin seeds
1/4 cup coriander seeds
1 1/2 tbsp cardamom seeds
2 whole cinnamon sticks, 3 inches long*
1 1/2 tsp whole cloves
3 tbsp black peppercorns
4 bay leaves
1/2 tsp ground mace or nutmeg (optional)

1. Heat a large, heavy frying pan over medium-high heat for 2 minutes. Combine all the spices except the mace, and add to the pan. Dry roast until fragrant and a few shades darker (up to 10 minutes).
2. Transfer to a bowl and cool completely before grinding. Transfer to an airtight container and store in a cool, dark place.
* I have had a lot of difficulty using cinnamon sticks for this -- they do not break up well when ground. According to Alton Brown, you're better off buying good quality ground cinnamon, for two reasons -- industrial grinding machines are capable of producing a fine powder, and because whole sticks are typically from a lower-quality portion of the bark. Last time I made garam masala, I used about a teaspoon of cinnamon, and toasted it with the rest of the spices.

Cooking with seaweed, part 2 - tofu noodle soup!

2010-04-26T18:19:00.001-04:00

Here we go, time for another installment, this time using our lovely kombu dashi that we made. I love this soup, it makes me feel good and not too weighed down and, unlike a lot of things, does not upset my tummy in any way. Highly recommended after overdoing things the night before.

Kombu dashi (~4 cups, optional)
1 tbsp wakame seaweed
1/4 cup soy sauce
3 tbsp sake, mirin, or vermouth (I seriously use vermouth every time any wine-type thing is called for. It's just easier that way.)
1 3-inch piece of ginger, cut into matchsticks
2 scallions, sliced on the diagonal
1 16-oz block Chinese-style (not silken) tofu, diced
2 packages ramen noodles, any flavor (throw those nasty packets away)
about 1 tbsp miso, or to taste

1. Before you start cutting things, take your kombu stock, fish out the piece of kombu, and discard. Soak the wakame in the kombu (or in 4 cups water) stock for 20-30 mins until you're ready to cook.

Here's what the wakame looks like BEFORE:

2. After you're done chopping everything, gently lift out the wakame and drain in a colander. Then, strain the wakame broth through a couple layers of cheesecloth or a coffee filter set in a chinoise. The wakame will now look like this:

You can see how much just a tablespoon bulked up. This is really all you need for a pot of soup, I swear, especially if you are a seaweed novice.

3. Once everything is chopped and strained, set a pot over medium heat and bring your drained dashi and enough water to measure oh, about 6-8 cups, to a boil. Add the soy sauce and wine, followed by the ginger and scallions (oh go ahead, add a minced garlic clove if you really must!). By the way, don't fret if your ginger is slightly bluish -- that's just the variety of ginger. Most supermarkets don't bother to tell you what type of ginger you're buying, but maybe they should, because I sure did spend a lot of time worrying about the blue ginger.

After that simmers for a couple of minutes, add the tofu.

4. Add the wakame and simmer for a couple of seconds -- you don't want to overcook it, or it'll be slimy!

5. Add the noodles -- remember, they need only 2 minutes or so.

6. Once everything is cooked, taste the broth -- if it needs a little more heft, take a tablespoon of miso and mix it with some broth, then add back to the soup and mix well. I'm not sure why, but you shouldn't boil miso; maybe it will kill all those friendly fermenty bacteria, I'm not sure. Maybe I'll find out and tell you all. I also like to add some sriracha at this point.

7. EAT -- I like to use tongs to grab a bunch of noodles and settle them in my bowl before ladling the broth, tofu, and veggies over it. Enjoy!

More changes!

2010-04-22T22:06:00.001-04:00

We have contributors, not because I am that busy and important, but because I have amazing friends with amazing stuff to share. Keep an eye out!

It's good to be the queen.

2010-04-22T21:54:00.003-04:00

Just a friendly happy reminder, wherever you find me from (I comment lots of places under the name "Ethyl"), if you leave a comment I don't like, I'm'a baleet your pathetic ass. I don't waste my time engaging with trolls :D

And don't waste your time on "freedom of speech." I ain't the government and you ain't the public. This is MY sandbox. This is not a space for open and honest debate.

Cooking with seaweed, part 1

2010-04-19T17:35:00.008-04:00

So I've been learning about the different ways sea vegetables are used in cooking, particularly in Asian cuisines(although that is certainly not the only area in the world where sea vegetables are eaten), and I wanted to share some of what I've learned with you.

I cook with several different types of seaweed, so let's start with taking a look at them.

First up in kombu, a type of kelp used in Japanese cuisine.

Kombu is one of the main ingredients in the Japanese soup stock called dashi. Kombu is sold in a variety of forms, including the dried stuff below:

Next up is one of my favorites, hijiki:

Hijiki grows wild in Japan, Korea, and China, and for some reason many of the recipes I've seen that use it also include carrots. These recipes are delicious, though, so I'm not going to worry too much about that for now.

The last on my list is wakame:

Wakame is, according to Wikipedia, an invasive species, who knew? It is farmed in Japan and Korea, and sometime later this week I will have a recipe using it, including fresh ginger, tofu, and ramen noodles (there is more to ramen that surviving on a grad student's budget!).

It's important to note that all of these sea vegetables I use I purchase in their dried form and re-hydrate. Some of them, especially the wakame, really bulk up when you re-hydrate, so pay attention when I give you measurements! Sea vegetables are delicious and healthy, and I'm excited to share my recipes with you.

Oh, what the hey, let's start with an easy one, for kombu dashi. This is a vegetarian version of dashi, and really, all you do is lop off a chunk of kombu, and soak it in a quart of water overnight.

We'll use this dashi tomorrow in our ramen dish, so you'd better get moving on that if you want a delicious soup tomorrow!

New stuff in the works!

2010-04-19T17:31:00.006-04:00

Well, Joelster finally talked me into getting a new camera, and so far I can't say it's been a bad idea. So look forward to some fun picture-assisted recipes, you guys!

Here's a preview of what is to come!

Am I making enchiladas verde? Or posole? You'll have to wait and see!

What's on the menu tonight? Jerk tofu and sweet potato skewers!

UPDATE -- I went back and tagged a bunch of old posts to make finding stuff a bit easier. I quit when I got back to where I wasn't posting so many recipes, because I figured it wasn't as necessary, and also, I got bored. But yay, tags!

The persistence of myth...

2010-03-27T14:59:00.004-04:00

Over at Shakesville , we're discussing the new Jamie Oliver show, and how it really missed a chance to be seriously educational instead of trafficking in lazy and inaccurate stereotypes about fat people. The comments are full of awesome, too, as posters discuss their personal experiences with eating at or below the poverty line, the school lunch system, and living in the town that Oliver is trying to “help.”

The big problem I have with this show and others like it are that they play into the myth that fat people, or poor people, (er, or both), don't know how to eat well. This is utterly stupid, and if one gives it five minutes of compassionate thought, that would be clear. I think that a lot of times, people making these kinds of assertions don't actually understand what it's like to actually be poor. A lot of privileged people approach the concept of poverty as though they were being asked to live with a bit of a pay cut, but still somehow within their current standard of living. Arguing about this on Facebook has brought this home – lots of people insisting that “eating better” isn't that much more expensive, and doesn't take that much more time.

Which may be true, if you have access to affordable fresh fruits and vegetables and it's not a 20 minute bus ride to the nearest supermarket every single time you have to go, and you have to go often because you can't carry a weeks' worth of groceries on the bus. Which may be true, if you don't work two jobs. Which may be true, if you have a cooktop or refrigerator in your home.

Sure, it sounds easy, if you utterly lack for compassion and refuse to educate yourself. But then again, it's much, much easier to tell people they're stupid and lazy than it is to actually fix our enormously broken food system. We all like feeling smug, after all.

More yummy food from last weekend - sweet potato and caramelized onion pizza!

2010-03-17T14:30:00.005-04:00

Hi again! This is a lot of posting for me I guess, but you know, I'm home sick and sitting around is really boring. Talking about food is way more fun than languishing. On to the food!

On Friday, the Joelster and I had to finagle something to eat since I forgot to plan anything. Looking around, I saw I had some cheddar cheese, and a sweet potato (not a yam, let's not go there right now), and um. That's basically it. So I had this half-formed idea of making some homemade pizza out of these ingredients but I felt like we needed some kind of sauce or moist ingredient. That was when Joelster recommended using caramelized onions -- of COURSE, what a brilliant idea! I always have onions! And caramelized onions are GREAT! And what's this? Look, here in the freezer, a half block of smoked tofu! Maybe we can get this pizza idea sorted out after all!

Sweet potato and caramelized onion pizza

1 recipe pizza dough -- I used my favorite whole wheat pizza dough from a Vegetarian Times cookbook but you can use whatever you want, even a dough ball from the supermarket

1 sweet potato, sliced thin (I used the food pro slicing disc for this)
2-3 large onions, sliced thin (I used the food pro for these, too)
1/2 package smoked tofu, sliced (guess what) thin
A bunch of sharp cheddar, grated -- I think we had about a half pound or so?
Olive oil, butter, salt, pepper

While your dough is rising, preheat your oven to about 450 (if using a pizza stone, stick it in the oven to heat), and heat some olive oil and butter in a large sloped-sided skillet (you want the sloped sides to encourage the escape of steam). Add the onions -- it'll look like a lot, but they'll cook down. Sprinkle with salt, and cook over low heat for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until well-caramelized. Deglaze the pan with a bit of white wine if you have it, and if you're feeling brave, go ahead and flame off the alcohol.

Meanwhile, toss your sliced sweet potatoes with some salt and a little bit of water, and microwave in a covered bowl on high, 2-3 minutes at a time, until tender. Be careful and go in short bursts so that you don't burn them (yes you can burn stuff in a microwave!).

Once your dough is ready (based on following the recipe or package directions, including a punch down and rest if applicable), separate into 2 balls and shape into 2 pizzas. I put mine on a baking sheet lined with foil and just smoosh them out, but you can do it however you usually do. Top with the caramelized onions, then the sweet potato slices, then the smoked tofu, then the cheese.

Slide your pizzas, one at a time, into the oven (either onto the hot baking stone, or if you're like me in the pan on top of the stone, or onto the lowest rack of the oven), and bake for about 7-10 minutes. I like to bake both and let them sit a bit so that I'm not trying to eat and having to jump up in the middle of eating, and so that the cheese isn't boiling hot. Enjoy!

Great cooking weekend!

2010-03-15T19:06:00.005-04:00

So I had a great weekend, both food-wise and other things - er - wise.

First, the food. Well, part of the food.

So did you guys know you can totally make pita breads at home?? I now know this! I was casting about for something to bring to a potluck where I wasn't sure what the food-reheating-situation would be, and I hit on some hummus and baba ghanoush, with pitas. But store-bought pitas are so grody, I said to myself. So I googled around a bit and found that making pita bread isn't so hard after all! Here's all I did:

What you need:
1 recipe of your favorite pizza dough -- I used the whole-wheat pizza dough from my Vegetarian Times cookbook, but there's lots of easy pizza doughs out there. You can whip it up in a food pro or stand mixer in literally about 10 minutes. And honestly, you can probably use the dough balls you get at the grocery store -- I know Wegmans has them, so I'm sure other "well-stocked" supermarkets do too.

1 hot cooking surface -- I used my pizza stone, which I keep in the bottom of my oven to help even the temperature out, with a baking sheet on top. I put foil on the baking sheet because I am averse to cleaning things. If you don't have a baking stone or the kind of oven where you can set things on the bottom, just sit your baking sheet on the lowest oven rack position. The point is, you want it preheated, and you want it hot. Crank your oven as high as it'll go. About 450-500 degrees.

After the dough rises (if you're using store dough ball, after you've let it sit at room temp as per package instructions), punch down and divide into a bunch of wee balls of dough, about two inches in diameter. Look how cute they are! Cover them with a tea towel and let them rest. This whole time shit should be heating up in your oven.

What you do:

Once things are hot and your dough has rested, roll out one ball into a nice thin circle. About 1/8 inch thick. You'll need some flour on your work surface for this.

Now is the key moment. Open the oven and make sure you can access your hot cooking surface. Scootch your baking sheet out a bit, or make sure the oven rack isn't in the way of your baking stone. And OMG for the love of all that is good, use potholders or tongs!!! Now take the dough round in one hand, and gently flip it onto the hot surface. Try not to crinkle it up, although if you do it's no big.

Now, replace everything and shut the oven. Set your timer for three minutes -- that's right, 3 minutes. If you are a person who needs both sides browned, open the oven with 30 seconds to go and flip over your bread. I didn't do this and frankly it was all good. When you open the oven, your bread will be puffy (through the magic of steam). Remove with tongs to a plate, and if you want, you can cover with a tea towel. The bread will deflate on its own, leaving that distinctive pita pocket for the stuffing with of all manner of good stuff.

So there you have it -- pita bread at home! So easy! Who knew!

Mmm....cheese....(recipe review)

2010-02-17T17:39:00.005-05:00

Hoo boy was this good!

So I was surfing around foodgawker.com the other day, and I came across this recipe for an ancient Roman flatbread with cheese called libum. Cheese, and food history! My favorite things! So I decided to try it out and yeah, it was totally delicious!

Recipe notes: I've made it twice now, and both times were good. I made it once with Adams Reserve sharp cheddar, and once with slightly less expensive HeluvaGood Special Reserve cheddar, and both were great. The first time I used oregano leaves, not having any fresh bay leaves to hand, and the second time I did manage to find bay leaves, but I think any strongly-flavored herb would be good (although the bay leaves were extremely fragrant!). I too found it necessary to add some olive oil and some cold water to the dough to bring it together, but my house is quite dry this time of year so YMMV. Just be patient and if you do have to add some liquid, be very stingy. You want to be careful not to develop too much gluten, which would make for a VERY tough cracker bread thing.

In the future: This recipe is very easy and the proportions are very basic, so I suspect it'll take to improvisation well too -- I'm planning on adding some cracked pepper, trying a version with Parmesan, trying Gruyere and maybe Provolone, and any and all herbs I can get my hands on. I suspect that this recipe would double well but I think I'd have trouble working a double batch of dough so if I were to need to make a lot, I think I'd just make two batches.

All in all, highly recommended and a good starting point for some adventures!!

Some advice on cooking and recipes.

2010-02-07T14:32:00.004-05:00

As I've become better-acquainted with cooking science and technique, and have a gotten more experienced as a cook overall, I've noticed that cookbooks are, well, wrong a lot of the time. This makes me annoyed -- these recipes are supposed to be researched and tested so that when people make them at home, they turn out the way they're supposed to. And it's not just me. The folks at Cooks Illustrated magazine, which I am an avid fan of, seem to have noticed the same thing. Seems like every time they do their initial research on a dish, the existing recipes from published cookbooks are all flawed (there are noticeable exceptions -- usually Julia Child and Lidia Bastianich seem to have a handle on things). I have no idea why published recipes should be so sloppy, but I suspect that probably most people's cooking can be improved by ignoring bad advice in cookbooks. Here's a couple of very common cookbook faux pas to avoid:

* "Sautee the onion and garlic together..." Don't do this! Onions, depending on the heat, take anywhere from 8 to 15 minutes to soften and color. Garlic needs about 20 seconds. If you add both together, by the time the onion is cooked, the garlic will be burnt and bitter, and nobody wants that.

* Adding salt at the end of cooking. Well, I guess, if you like bland food. Look, food needs salt. Otherwise it tastes grody. For veggies (I don't cook meat so you'll have to check elsewhere for advice on that), you should make sure you cook them in well-seasoned liquid, or make sure you salt them well before grilling/roasting/searing. For beans, forget about what you heard about salt making bean skins "tough." In fact, according to Cooks Illustrated, brining your beans in a solution of about three tablespoons salt in four quarts of cold water results in more evenly cooked beans with nice tender skins, that are well-seasoned (and my cooking supports this). I mean, think about it, how are your veggies or beans going to get seasoned if you salt at the very end?

* Adding spices directly to liquid without toasting or blooming. Almost all spices will benefit from a quick toast in a dry skillet, especially if you're using whole spices and grinding them yourself. This brings the aromatic oils to the surface of the spice, so you get more bang for your buck when you grind them. In addition, spices also tend to have a lot of fat-soluble flavor compounds, so "blooming" them in hot oil or butter will really deepen and improve their flavors. If the recipe you're using doesn't call for it, just add the spices to the sauteeing aromatics (onion, celery, carrot, garlic, etc) and stir for a couple of seconds until you really get a whiff of them, then add the liquid.

* Old wives' tales and just plain weird advice. One of my biggest pet peeves is the constant advice to not wash your mushrooms in water, that you should just wipe them with a damp cloth, because otherwise they'll soak up water. Again, back to Cooks Illustrated (they're like the Mythbusters of cooking). They've shown that mushrooms don't soak up any appreciable water even with an extended stay in water. Some really strange advice I've seen includes soaking things that don't need soaked -- split peas, pearl barley, brown rice. I've never had any problem cooking these things in a reasonable amount of time without soaking and I can only imagine that soaking them would lead to a big pile of mush.

These are just my biggest peeves, but I'm sure there's others out there. Hopefully these tips will be useful for someone, and if not, at least I got to vent about the case of the poorly-tested recipes!

Pasta water - how much?

2010-01-31T10:38:00.003-05:00

The prevailing wisdom on cooking pasta is to boil your pasta in a LOT of boiling, salted water. But crack food scientist Harold McGee says this "conventional wisdom" is nothing more than an old wives' tale. Joel told me about this when he first read it and I was extremely skeptical. Surely, I thought, someone has looked into the best way to cook pasta, right? We wouldn't all just believe what people tell us without checking the facts first, would we?

Hm, it's like I forgot how humans work :)

So it turns out, according to McGee, that you really can cook pasta in a lot less water than we thought, and that moreover, you can start the pasta in cold water.

Why can pasta cook normally in a small volume of water that starts out cold? Because the noodles absorb water only very slowly at temperatures much below the boil, so little happens to them in the few minutes it takes for the water to heat up. And no matter how starchy the cooking water is, the solid noodle surfaces themselves are starchier, and will be sticky until they're lubricated by sauce or oil.

While the celebrity Italian food authorities McGee contacted to try his method didn't think it gave the results they preferred, I have to tell you that we've been making pasta this way since we heard about it and have had great success. You use less energy, which of course in our one household isn't a huge amount, but it's nice. You get nice, salty, starchy pasta water to use in your sauces. And it takes less time -- no waiting for a giant pot of water to boil before you even cook the noodles.

So I say give it a shot. And also remember it's never a bad idea to fact-check the conventional wisdom :)

Belated TDoR post

2009-11-21T09:32:00.006-05:00

November 20 is the Transgender Day of Remembrance, to memorialize the victims of transphobic violence. Sorry I'm a day late, but I was out of town all week and did not have the energy or time to post yesterday when I finally got home. I never know quite what to say about the TDoR. So I think I will shamelessly quote from people who are better writers than I am.

But first, the list of people remembered this year is here. It's long. It's always long, way too long.

Queen Emily writes on conflicting thoughts and feelings about the TDoR:

So it seems to me that to unite all trans people under one banner ignores the specifics of death – sex (the majority are trans women), race (Latina and black), class and occupation (sex work) are as important factors as transness. Appropriating those deaths for political work seems dubious to me at best.

But that the TDoR is still important, because, as Queen Emily writes:

...to honour the memories of every single trans person murdered this year, and to acknowledge the violence that our community lives with as a whole. To acknowledge that even in death, transphobia and cissexism mean that the murdered are not properly remembered, not even by the correct names and pronouns–and those people should be remembered as the right sex. That is our task for today (surviving ourselves, as well as prevention of more of the same is our task for the rest of the year). The example of Levi suggests that the task of witnessing may well be impossible, but we should attempt it nevertheless.

Liss at Shakesville writes about the often-overlooked ways that apathy kills.

Helen G. at Bird of Paradox reminds us that:

For many of us, our focus is finding ways to overcome that state of emergency: we transition to survive. We are not here to provide entertainment for cis people, nor to be the subject of cis centred academic theories. We cannot be socialised into being cis; neither can being trans be beaten out of us. We may not choose to be trans, but we are here, and we are trying to make our way in a world where we face prejudice and discrimination, bigotry, hatred and violence from cis people on a daily basis.

So spare a thought for our transgendered sisters and brothers, and try to ask yourself what you can do to help end transphobia in your little corner of the world. Is it calling out people who make offensive jokes? Is it posting a link on facebook? Is it inspecting your own thoughts, your own prejudices? Is it writing to your representatives to encourage them to support trans-inclusive ENDA? What can you do?

[Edited to fix link to Helen's blog.]

Vegetarian Red Beans n' Rice

2009-11-08T10:49:00.005-05:00

So I know this is kind of sacrilege to some people, but I am a fan of beans, spicy/sweet/smoky flavors, and having the house smell awesome, so I came up with this vegetarian version of red beans and rice.

Red beans and rice is a traditional Creole dish of red beans simmered long and low and usually with meat -- the beans typically are simmered with a ham bone or ham hock for flavor, and pork and sausage (Andouille usually) are either cooked with the beans or served separately. My vegetarian version attempts to replicate the sweet, smoky, spicy flavors without the pig. I think it's pretty good, but of course, if you're a carnivore it probably won't match up :) This recipe calls for dried beans that you soak and cook, so it takes some planning and a while to make. But your house will smell WONDERFUL!

1 generous cup dried red kidney beans, picked over and rinsed

1 onion, diced very small
1/2 green pepper, diced very small
1/2 red pepper, diced very small
1 tsp EACH chili powder (NOT cayenne pepper powder -- the kind with garlic and other spices in it!), thyme, oregano, and allspice
1 tbsp cumin
2 small bay leaves
2 cloves garlic, minced finely or pressed
1 28-oz can whole tomatoes, mooshed up with your hands
1 tbsp brown sugar
2 cups veggie broth
2 cups water
1 package smoked tofu (I use this stuff), diced
1 package veggie sausage (I use this stuff in Mexican Chipotle flavor), sliced

1. Soak beans 8 hours or overnight. I like to soak my beans in distilled water, because our water is very hard and I think it tends to make them cook weird, but maybe that's just all in my head. Additionally, Cooks Illustrated recommends soaking beans in a brine solution. This seasons the beans thoroughly, which I like. I add enough salt to the soaking water for it to taste slightly salty (not too much!). You want enough water to cover the beans by several inches; they'll expand as they soak.

2. When you're ready to cook, assemble your ingredients and preheat the oven to about 275 degrees [ETA -- I say about, because I usually set my oven to what ~looks like~ 300 degrees but the knob is wobbly and weird and it could be 275 or it could be 325, really, I don't know]. If your spices are whole, grind everything up in a spice grinder (i.e., a coffee grinder dedicated to spices). Drain and rinse the beans and set aside.

3. In a large soup pot or dutch oven (I like my cast iron dutch oven for this!), sautee the onion and bell peppers over medium-high heat until they are soft and the onions are starting to brown. If necessary, add a little more oil, and sautee half of the smoked tofu and half of the veggie sausage until a bit browned, maybe a minute or two. Again, adding oil if needed, sautee the spices and garlic until fragrant -- maybe 30 seconds, you don't want to burn them!

4. Add the tomatoes and their juices, broth, water, bay leaves, and brown sugar and bring to a boil. If you have a bottle of beer open, you could always add a dash or two of that, too! Turn off heat, cover, and place in the oven. Bake nice and low and slow for maybe 2 hours or more -- much will depend on your oven, your pot, and the age of the beans, so this is only a rough guideline. Check the beans from time to time, stirring occasionally. When the beans are almost tender, add the rest of the smoked tofu and sausage, remove the lid, and cook until the beans are done, stirring and keeping an eye on the liquid level from time to time. You want the liquid to reduce a bit, but you don't want things to scorch, so add water if necessary! Let stand maybe 10-15 minutes out of the oven to get the flavors nice and blended. Check for seasonings -- if you need salt, consider adding soy sauce. It gives saltiness plus umami! If the seasonings don't seem quite right, you could consider adding a bit of garam masala, it's a warm spice blend and should contribute what you need.

5. Serve over white rice. I like a bit of cheese melted on top of mine, but I have no idea if that's traditional!

Fall Pizza

2009-10-24T10:55:00.003-04:00

I accidentally, somehow, managed to post this blank at first. Sorry bout that!

Last night Joelster and I made this delicious fall pizza that I thought maybe someone would like. Coming up probably tomorrow will be some vegetarian red beans and rice, too. Tis the season for savory, hearty foods :)

1 small or 1/2 of 1 large butternut squash, peeled thickly and diced small
1 onion, diced (doesn't have to be as small as the squash)
About 2 tbsp torn fresh sage leaves
2-3 cloves garlic, whole and unpeeled
About 1-2 tsp brown sugar
Salt, pepper, olive oil

1 ball of store-bought whole wheat pizza dough, or make your own

sliced or shredded extra-sharp cheddar or Gruyère
1 small crisp tart apple, diced small

1. Preaheat oven to 350 while you chop everything. Place a baking sheet in the oven to preheat -- I like to cover mine with foil to help ease cleanup. Set the pizza dough out if refrigerated to come to room temperature.

2. Toss the squash, onion, garlic, and sage together with some olive oil, salt pepper, and the brown sugar. Spread on the hot baking sheet and roast for about 20-30 minutes, until everything is lovely and browned.

3. Remove the squash mixture and set aside to cool slightly. Now we're going to shape the dough. You can handle the dough a couple of different ways. You could bake this as maybe 2 small pizzas directly on a baking stone if you like, in which case you'll want to shape the dough on an inverted cool baking sheet dusted with flour or cornmeal so that you can easily slide it off onto the baking stone. If you, like me, have a completely gross stained awful baking stone that you only keep in the oven to help even out the heat because you have crappy apartment appliances, you can bake on a greased baking sheet. I'd set the baking sheet right on the stone, or on the lowest oven rack. In either case, stretch and shape the dough to your desired shape -- I used a greased baking sheet, so I just mooshed and stretched the dough till it covered basically the whole thing.

4. Remove the roasted garlic cloves and mash up with a little salt in a mortar and pestle or a bowl. If you've got a couple of leftover sage leaves, add those in too. Spread the garlic mixture on the dough, topped with the squash mixture. Lightly pat the squash mixture down so it sticks to the dough. Sprinkle the diced apple on top, and top with the cheese. Bake at 350 or whatever the package directions say for about 20 minutes, until done.

5. Let stand for a couple minutes to give the cheese and toppings time to glom together a bit, then slice and nom!

Tofu Salad - a concept.

2009-10-01T19:36:00.004-04:00

Because sometimes you just need something with tofu and a ton of green stuff in it. This isn't so much a recipe as a group of ingredients that go great together that you can play with however you want.

Check it out:

Roast some tofu:
1 tub of tofu, drained (not pressed)
tbsp dijon mustard
tbsp olive oil

Cube the tofu and mix with the mustard and oil. Bake in a single layer in a baking dish or sheet at around 350 for maybe an hour, while you do everything else.

Everything else:
About 2 tbsp tarragon, chopped
1 tbsp parsley, chopped
About 1/4 of a sweet onion
Some miscellaneous sturdy veggies -- green beans, baby limas or favas, celery, broccoli or cauliflower florets, carrots, etc.
Toasted nuts, cooled and chopped

Dressing stuff:
Mayo
More mustard
Olive oil
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
Red wine or tarragon vinegar
Some whole grain mustard
Garlic

Romaine lettuce (or whatever you like)

Blanch or steam your veggies, if necessary. For example, today I used limas and green beans, which got blanched in salted water, and celery which just got chopped. If you're using carrots, broccoli, etc. you'll want to blanch or steam them so they're pleasant to eat. Depending on how many servings you want to get, you'll want a good one to two cups or more of chopped veggies. Make sure you chop em about the same size as the tofu.

Mix the blanched veggies with the onion, nuts, and herbs. Salt and pepper modestly, and toss and set aside.

Mix up the dressing. Depending on how many veggies you have, you'll need less or more, so work to your own taste. But what I do is mix about oh, 1/4 cup mayo with a dash of olive oil, the juice and zest of the lemon, and about a tbsp of each kind of mustard. Mince a half a clove of garlic through a press, and mix in. Taste, and add the vinegar if you think it needs more tang, and some more mayo if it is too tangy, etc. Feel free to add a bit of warm water if it's too thick.

When the tofu is nice and browned in spots (it'll have shrunk down), mix in with the veggies and the dressing, then cool in the fridge until you're ready to serve it over lettuce, or in a sammitch or wrap if your fancy takes ye that way.

Hmmm

2009-09-11T10:24:00.001-04:00

Can anyone who is good at HTML tell me how to fix my blog layout so that the stuff on the right side isn't so big? There definitely doesn't need to be that much space there and it makes embedding stuff like videos or images annoying, but I have no idea how to fix it.

You guys...

2009-09-11T10:15:00.004-04:00

Did I mention I absolutely love Troy Polamalu? Well I do.

On swallowing shit:

2009-08-25T12:55:00.003-04:00

This post by Melissa McEwan at Shakesville is all over my corner of the blogosphere right now, but I wanted to share it in the event that any of the four people who read my blog didn't read it. It's a long post, but everyone should really read it. It's about trust, and speaking up, and the particular hurt that comes from someone you love blindsiding you with bigotry.

Swallow shit, or ruin the entire afternoon?

Speaking up is risky. Risky like you can lose friends. Risky like you could be assaulted. Risky like realizing that the people who claim to love you don't give a shit about your pain and your reality and your ~personhood.~

There are the jokes about women, about wives, about mothers, about raising daughters, about female bosses. They are told in my presence by men who are meant to care about me, just to get a rise out of me, as though I am meant to find funny a reminder of my second-class status. I am meant to ignore that this is a bullying tactic, that the men telling these jokes derive their amusement specifically from knowing they upset me, piss me off, hurt me. They tell them and I can laugh, and they can thus feel superior, or I can not laugh, and they can thus feel superior. Heads they win, tails I lose. I am used as a prop in an ongoing game of patriarchal posturing, and then I am meant to believe it is true when some of the men who enjoy this sport, in which I am their pawn, tell me, "I love you." I love you, my daughter. I love you, my niece. I love you, my friend. I am meant to trust these words.

So...speak up? Speak up to your partner, your best friend, your father, your uncle, your boss? Really? The only people who think that's ~easy~ are the people who have never had to do it.

And there is the denial about engaging in misogyny, even when it's evident, even when it's pointed out gently, softly, indulgently, carefully, with goodwill and the presumption that it was not intentional. There is the firm, fixed, unyielding denial—because it is better and easier to imply that I'm stupid or crazy, that I have imagined being insulted by someone about whom I care (just for the fun of it!), than it is to just admit a bloody mistake. Rather I am implied to be a hysteric than to say, simply, I'm sorry.

So, anyway. My male friends and acquaintances. My male relatives, my friends of friends, people who found my blog googling my name. Go read the piece. Swallow your defensiveness, swallow the shock that ~I don't trust you,~ that many or most of your female relatives, coworkers, and friends ~do not trust you,~ and think about why that is, who we are, what we experience every day. Think on it long and hard.

And to state the obvious, the link isn't a blanket endorsement of everything at Shakesville, but this post passionately and searingly expresses what I and many women feel and think about the people we love.

Go Pitt!

2009-08-24T16:29:00.002-04:00

The University of Pittsburgh stated on Tuesday that:

it "has no interest" in receiving an estimated $225,000 from the estate of LA Fitness gunman George Sodini, who named the school as the sole beneficiary in his will.

...

[university spokesman Robert Hill said in a statement that] "The university community continues to grieve about the tragic loss of lives. And we believe that any available funds should benefit Mr. Sodini's victims and members of their families. Our thoughts and prayers remain with them. We at Pitt will do what we can to assist them in receiving any funds that have been bequeathed to Pitt."

As I'm sure we're all well aware by now, George Sodini was a very troubled man who murdered three women and injured others. His deep-seated hatred of women, coupled with his patriarchy-induced belief that he deserved a much younger sex object -- I mean girlfriend -- led to this tragedy. For some additional relevant reading on the Sodini rampage from a feminist perspective, check out:

Jeff Fecke at Blog of the Moderate Left
The inestimable Kate Harding, writing at Salon.
There's plenty of others, but those were the two that stuck out in my mind...

HT for original story. Via.

Geology and Time

2009-08-15T13:05:00.003-04:00

So something occurred to me the other day, not for the first time. This something is about the concept of time, specifically what can be called "deep time." The millions and millions of years that the earth has been around, evolving, changing.

The concept of deep time is something that humans do not intuitively grasp. We evolved to live in a "middle ground" kind of world. We can easily estimate things like how long an hour is, we can easily imagine things a day or a week in advance. We can plan ahead for a bit. But we really have no need to be able to intuitively grasp millions or billions of years. It feels weird to think about it. It makes us remember how fleeting and impermanent we are. Which is one of the cool things about the whole concept of deep time, in my opinion.

But what I was thinking about is how crucial an understanding of deep time is to understanding our earth. The age of the earth is one of the things that helps explain and support evolution. In fact, it was noted in the Darwin exhibit we saw at the AMNH that ol' Charles himself couldn't even have come up with the idea of slow change over time unless the geologists had gotten there first and said "hey you know, it looks like this place has been here a whole lot longer than we thought." Evolution works, in part, because the earth is quite old. The biblical literalists know this, and try to claim the earth is only 6,000 years old, give or take. That way, they can say "oh well there's not enough time for evolution."

And the thing I was thinking about is, this seems totally fucking absurd to me. Having gotten a whole college degree in geology, the age of the earth is one of those things that seems almost self-evident. It feels a bit like knowing Darth Vader is Luke's father. Obvious. Well-understood. Well-supported. Well-accepted. We don't even need to talk about it anymore. But it occurs to me that lots and lots of other people don't see it like that. They think that the idea that the world is 6,000 years old pretty ok. They even think that seems awfully old. Why is that? Where is that disconnect?

I think some of it has to do with the way we intuitively, as humans, understand time. I think, and I'm open to being proven wrong on this, but I suspect that to a lot of people, 6,000 years and 4.6 billion years are about the same, really. They're both a lot longer than we can intuitively conceive of, so they both seem about as likely. And that's pretty not-good. This isn't a simple matter of "oh publish more books, feed money into science education, it'll be fine." You need to really ~work~ at understanding deep time, you need to work at thinking in it. And I'm not sure how we can get people to do that. Obviously science education is a big part of it, sure. If we can get kids to grow up knowing that the earth is 4.6 billion years old, evolution will make sense to them in a way it might not without that grounding.

And the thing is, it's not ~just~ about evolution. Just teaching kids "hey evolution happens" isn't going to be enough. Teaching kids a bunch of facts has never been enough. But what I'm thinking about is how all this stuff fits together. The age of the earth and dinosaurs and antibiotic resistance and fossil fuels, they are all related. Maybe we can try teaching kids about that inter-relatedness. Maybe it won't work, I dunno, but maybe it's something to try?

Anyway, just wanted to throw out those thinky thoughts. Now I can go think about other things, like Star Wars...

Go read this.

2009-08-15T12:51:00.002-04:00

Note to the world.

Via.

More on why rape isn't funny.

2009-07-25T14:44:00.003-04:00

Just wanted to link to this post that I found via the F Word, via Hoyden. I'm going to quote at length but really go read the whole thing. All emphasis is mine.

But no, you know he is making a funnay, the punchline being you and every woman you know.

How to react...

Say Nothing. Hope the conversation does not continue extolling the virtues of rape, making saying nothing harder. Hate yourself for saying nothing. Notice girl sitting on the porch of the house next to you who has heard what was said. Notice her similar reactions. Hate yourself more for saying nothing, because she has probably been raped, too, because you don’t know any woman who hasn’t. Hate your friend, because he doesn’t know that every woman he knows has been raped.

Initiate a Very Serious Conversation, out of nowhere, like. Tell your friend that joke was not funny. Tell him rape is never funny. Keep talking after his face has pinched up in resentment and disgust, because you are RUINING his day and his BEER and his FUNNY. You know you are actually ruining his sense of himself as a good and decent person, but you cannot communicate that to him, because he is smug and disengaged, and you are shaking and stuttering and trying to explain the experience of women to a man who has grown up among women, known women, loved women, and somehow doesn’t know this already, which means he doesn’t want to know, doesn’t care.

On being a humorless feminazi:

And if somebody objects, well, here’s the built-in beauty of an oppressive system: that somebody is probably going to be a member of the oppressed class you are mocking. And it’s very easy to dismiss the opinions of oppressed populations. If we valued the thoughts, feelings, and desires of oppressed populations, we wouldn’t be able to rationalize and minimize the rape, torture, and murder of them.

And with that I think we will leave off the rape joke discussion, because frankly it is exhausting to realize just how many people out in the universe just don't give a shit. Who think we're asking for it, or making it up for attention, or deserve it, or should have somehow prevented it. Who think they're entitled to sex. Who think an absence of "no" is the same as a presence of "yes." Who think that women's bodies are for public consumption. Who don't, at the end of the day, think of women as real people with real thoughts and real lives and real emotions. Who, when you explain all this shit to, tell you're you're just a humorless feminazi who should learn to take a joke, already, and anyway they totally love women and why do I have to be such a downer, anyway?

So...yeah. I have a post in the works about how privilege allows you to conflate being oppressed with being butthurt, and maybe some kitten blogging. There's some food related stuff I am working on too. So stay tuned. But for right now I'm going to go hang out with some feminist people, online and off, and not have to think about or hear this shit.

Laeisha Green trial verdict

2009-07-18T08:56:00.004-04:00

"A jury in upstate New York has convicted a man of a hate crime for killing a transgender woman."

Although he wasn't convicted of murder in the second degree and was instead convicted of manslaughter, I'm glad the hate crime portion went through. It must be noted, however, that the hate crimes legislation in NY does NOT include gender identity or expression, and that this hate crime conviction had to be prosecuted as being motivated by DeLee's perception of Lateisha's sexual orientation. That is to say, DeLee supposedly murdered her because he perceived of her as a gay man, not a transgendered woman.

Also a big thanks to the jurors here in Syracuse for the hate crime inclusion. Syracuse sometimes isn't the most progressive place, but it's good to know that people can see past their biases -- it's a baby step, but I'll take it.

More:
GLAAD statement.
Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund resource kit on the case.
QT roundup.
ETA: Spectrum Cafe with some pointed analysis of the manslaughter/murder difference.

Write your dysfunctional state representatives:
Assembly
Senate

Joking about rape is Not Ok.

2009-06-27T08:54:00.004-04:00

[Some of the language and links below may be triggering.]

I can't even believe I have to say this, but making jokes about rape, even if it's about Michael Jackson, even if it's about prison rape, *even if* it's about Ann Coulter, is Not Ok. Christ.

This shit doesn't happen in a vacuum. We live in a rape-soaked society, and I'm sure we don't need to go back over the ways in which rape is minimized, apologized for, and diminished as "not really rape, anyway."

When we make jokes about how funny it is that someone sexually abused children, when we make jokes about wanting to "hate fuck" right-wingers, when we make jokes about making someone your prison bitch, or NAMBLA, we normalize the rape culture we're soaking in. We say, hey, it's funny to see someone else rape/want to rape/be raped. It's not that big a deal. And if you don't think it's funny? If you think these jokes demean the lived experiences of the men and women who suffered through these kinds of attacks? If you think they normalize rape culture and silence people who don't want to participate in the culture? You're not funny. You're a mean, humorless feminazi. Why can't you take a joke? And it gets worse. Women who call this shit out? Are routinely threatened (oh wait, those are more "jokes," right?), shamed, and silenced.

But you know, I'm ok with not thinking it's funny. Being raped isn't funny. Normalizing the culture we live in that says you can probably rape and get away with it if you're a white d00d? I'm ok with not doing that. I'm ok with not re-victimizing people every single time they hear one of these "jokes," and I'm ok with not telling them their experiences don't matter because my right to be a giant douche trumps their trauma. I'm ok with being a totally humorless feminist and I fucking expect more from people than to make rape jokes.

ETA:
Renee on prison rape.

Vigil for Dr. Tiller next Thurs!

2009-06-16T18:06:00.003-04:00

I got this action alert from Planned Parenthood of Rochester and Syracuse:

Through the Syracuse Peace Council, a number of community supporters have organized a vigil in memory of Dr. George Tiller to be held at Planned Parenthood (1120 East Genesee Street) in Syracuse on Thursday, June 25, at 5:30 pm. Please join us for this remembrance of Dr. Tiller’s important work.

Betty

Betty DeFazio, Corporate Director
Community Affairs & Public Policy
Planned Parenthood of the Rochester/Syracuse Region, Inc.

I plan to attend, and so should you.
Family Planning Advocates of Central New York
Planned Parenthood of the Rochester/Syracuse Region
Syracuse Peace Council

In honor of Dr. Tiller

2009-06-01T06:48:00.002-04:00

I can't bring myself to post much on this or on this tragedy or the horrifying hateful reactions that the out-of-control right wingers (in more ways than one, eh?) have spewed all over the interwebs. Instead I shall give you links. For a summary of OR and some of the horrible reactions, see Belle's post. I really don't have the heart to link to any of the other stuff, really. I'm just heartsick today, between this and the whole [VERY STRONG TRIGGER WARNING] unreleased photo story.

Instead of continuing to focus on the horror, let's go with some positive things we can do, eh?

Medical students for choice: http://www.ms4c.org/
Planned Parenthood: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/
NARAL Pro-choice America: http://www.naral.org/
National Network of Abortion Funds: http://www.nnaf.org/index.html

Happy Spring!

2009-05-17T20:13:00.004-04:00

Although I've been feeling a bit ambivalent lately about the veggies I can get for cheap (omg will the eggplant days ever end?), spring also brings some treats. I saw ramps at Weggies, but didn't pick any up because I wasn't sure where they were grown. But I did find at the farmers' market on Saturday "fresh, local asparagus," according to the guy at the stand, cut on Friday. I cooked it up today and... Well.

Oh.

Mah.

GAWD.

You know how usually when you get asparagus at the grocery store, the bottom is all chewey and fibrous and tough, even after you "snap" the bottoms? This? Was not like that. This, this was sweet and tender the whole way down. I roasted it with a bit of salt and pepper and olive oil, then tossed with a vinaigrette, and lemme tell you, it didn't even make it to a plate. Joelster and I ate the whole pile standing at the kitchen counter with our fingers.

So. Happy spring and if I get inspired with eggplant and summer squash I'll let you know, but for now I'm feeling a bit ... eh.

Justice, more or less.

2009-04-25T10:51:00.003-04:00

(Late to the party, busy busy week.) Obviously, real justice would be living in a world where trans people aren't murdered at much higher rates than cis people. But life in prison without the possibility of parole and the first successful prosecution of a hate crime against a transgendered person will have to do. It's great that a jury of regular folks, people who have no special knowledge or understanding, who probably have not even got the Trans 101 basics, saw straight through the hideous "trans panic" defense. I hope Angie Zapata's family can gain some comfort and peace from this outcome.

I also hope that maybe those 12 people will walk away from this a bit less transphobic, that maybe that will spread out a little bit in the community. Maybe. It's a nice thought at least.

Further reading:
http://birdofparadox.wordpress.com/
http://questioningtransphobia.wordpress.com/
http://takesupspace.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/what-is-justice-for-angie-zapata/

A New Hope

2009-04-19T17:58:00.002-04:00

Whether it is the weather finally warming up and causing something other than browns and greys to appear in my world, or the 5-HTP I've been taking, or just a random fluctuation in the brainjuices, I'm feeling a bit more like having an online life lately, and thus, I am also feeling a bit more like blogging.

OTOH, I'm definitely feeling less like blogging about stuff that makes me mad. For those of you who wish to follow what does make me mad, please find me at my Google Reader feed here.

What DO I feel like blogging? Well, mostly about food stuff. Not just recipes and shopping advice, but some of the ways that food, access to food, and the production of food affects people's lives. It's something that's been on my mind lately. Well, not really "lately" but more "in general for several years," but a couple of things that have been going on lately have prompted my interest anew. More to come on that, I reckon.

I'll still be blogging on science, atheism, feminism, and other liberal and progressive issues, and of course will be thinking about how these things intersect with what is on my mind at any given time. But just know that for now, I might be thinking about other topics. That doesn't mean that the issues I care about are somehow less important (or indeed that they don't intersect with the food issues!), but for mental health reasons, I can't really do much more than point you in the direction of those who have a handle on it. With that said, please check my links list, which I am hoping to update soon.

Hope to write again soon.

How to plan your dinners for the week.

2009-03-16T19:09:00.006-04:00

Like lots of people, I am trying to save money and eat healthier. I think I've hit on a pretty decent method to plan dinners ahead of time so you waste less food, money, and time. I am not saying this is the best or only way to do this, but I thought some people who read this could get some ideas. Here's my steps towards getting your dinners sorted out:

On Saturday morning, sit down with your cookbooks or the internet and start thinking. The first thing you want to think about is where you are getting your food. Are you going to the farmer's market? The grocery store? Are you getting fresh veggies from a CSA? No matter where you get your veggies, you need to think about what is in season and what you are likely to get/find. In-season veggies, even at a regular supermarket that doesn't make any effort to purchase locally-grown food, are much cheaper. If you get your veggies from a CSA, maybe do all this planning AFTER you get your box. The steps will still work for you, you just need to change around the order :)

Keeping in mind what is in season (or what you have in your box), go through your cookbooks and look for recipes that appeal to you. Pick out main dishes and think of what sides would go well with them (for example, find a recipe for braised seitan, and think about what veggies and grains might go well with it). Make a schedule and jot down all the main courses and side dishes (when I do it it's usually as simple as "braised seitan, freezer veggies, rice) -- Saturday through Thursday or Friday -- I like to leave an "open" day for eating out or if unforseen circumstances crop up. Decide what recipes you will cook on what day. This is a little intimidating at first, because you might feel like it locks you in to too much, but this will quickly pass the first time you get home and don't have to stress out about what to make!

Some things you want to keep in mind at this point are what days you need extra-short meals (gym nights, kids' lessons, working late, etc). Plan quicker meals those nights (I like to do a quesadilla on one gym night and a soup/salad on the other). Also make sure you plan to eat the more fragile veggies or other ingredients early in the week. If you get a box with a bunch of spinach, a couple eggplants, and a bunch of carrots, eat the spinach early in the week before it wilts, and the carrots at the end of the week, because they'll keep longer.

Once you have your meals picked and scheduled, use the recipes to develop your shopping list. Don't forget your staples -- do you have onions, garlic, cooking wine, olive oil, etc? Not to mention cat food, toilet paper, and light bulbs! When you get home from shopping, stick your schedule on the fridge so as soon as you get home you'll know what you're eating that night. Not only that, but you'll definitely have all the ingredients you need!

I hope this helps some of my friends who read this blog save money and eat better. If it doesn't work for you, that's ok too, maybe you can still get some ideas on how to plan some meals or shop for the week. Good luck!

Maybe soon I'll post the World's Easiest Thai Butternut Squash Soup Recipe.

Too funny.

2009-03-15T12:55:00.001-04:00

Found this at Shakesville, and it made me laugh until I cried so there you go.

The curse of the grammatically correct.

2009-03-14T20:12:00.003-04:00

Joelster and I were driving around today, doing errands (groceries, wine, mice, pick up suitcase full of gasoline-y clothes from office), and were talking about Quiznos. The reason we were talking about it was I noticed on a sign it said "Quiznos Sub." Wait, what? Shouldn't it be "Quizno's Subs" or even "Quiznos' Subs"? So to compare we started looking at signs for various establishments. Wendy's, McDonald's, Arby's, and Applebee's all have apostrophes. Reeds, Wegmans, and Starbucks do not.

I, personally, think they all should have apostrophes because the implied owned object for each of them is "Restaurant" or "Store" or "Coffee." (Actually, it is Starbucks Coffee on the sign and everything now that I think about it.)

Places like Cole Muffler don't bother me as much because the name is not inappropriately "s"-ed; i.e. it's not trying to go for possession and instead getting pluralized.

Anyway, I know for a fact that the founder of Wegmans is named Wegman, not Wegmans. And that means it needs an apostrophe. And it bugs me and now I can't stop looking at signs.

HAH!

2009-03-08T00:16:00.000-05:00

I am dying.

more music charts

PS

2009-03-01T21:48:00.001-05:00

Is blogger being totally weird for anyone else? I tried to post an entry yesterday and it took forever to open my dashboard, then when I tried to upload a picture it just totally crashed and I eventually had to force quit firefox. And the past couple of days I've had issues accessing other blogspot blogs. Happening for anyone else?

This is so cool!

2009-02-28T12:52:00.004-05:00

This fish blows my mind.

Shoot, I'm late!

2009-02-13T17:54:00.001-05:00

Sorry. You guys should check this out though:
http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp02122009.shtml

Randy posted a doohickey to cut and paste into your blog, but for some reason, blogger is chopping it off on the side. Sorry!

If anyone reading this knows how to fix that, let me know!

Sniff

2009-02-07T13:26:00.002-05:00

I'm SURE you've all seen it but I'm'a post it anyway. Grab a box of tissues first.

"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

Recipe: Potato, Bean, and Greens Soup

2009-02-05T19:15:00.004-05:00

I got the idea from the Moosewood cookbook "Simple Suppers," but I thought I could make it gooder and easier and simpler. Check this shit out. It makes enough for two hungry adults if you're not having anything else.

You'll need
1 Bag of arugula or arugula salad blend -- the key is assertive greenery
About a pound of small, red-skinned potatoes, that you'll dice up
A large onion, diced
2 large garlic cloves, pressed or finely minced
A can of kidney beans
About 1/2 cup of white wine, dry vermouth, or a small splash of some kind of tasty vinegar
A sprig of rosemary -- about four inches (or two or three wee ones)
About 3 cups of veggie broth (bullion is totally OK)
A small piece of Parmesan rind (if your store has them, buy them -- they are cheap and add soooo much flavor to beans, soups, and stocks)
A jar or a tub of store-bought pesto
Some cheese -- whatever you have on hand is totally fine. For example, I used pre-shredded taco cheese and it was cheesy and good.

Here's the plan:
Saute the onion in a soup pot (whatever you use for soup is fine) in some heated oil, until the onion starts to brown in spots. Make sure you sprinkle with salt. Add the garlic and saute a bit, until it starts to smell garlicky and delish. Add the potatoes, sprinkle generously with salt, and saute until they are browned in spots. Add the wine or vinegar and let sizzle and reduce a bit, so that it's not going to taste boozy when it's done. Add the broth, the beans (drained and rinsed or if you're like me and you read the recipe wrong and you only heated up 2 cups of broth and you used no-salt-added beans, just dump the can in!), the parm rind, rosemary, and maybe a spinkle of salt and pepper, depending on how salty your broth is. Bring to a boil and then simmer for maybe 15-20 mins.

When the soup is finished to your liking (check for salt, remove rosemary and rind, check for pepper, maybe you'll need a dash of vinegar or lemon juice or soy sauce or wevs), turn the heat off. Let sit while you organize your assembly line. You'll want to stick some arugula in the bottom of your soup bowl, topped by maybe a spoonful (or two!) of pesto, then topped with the soup and some shredded cheese. If you really need to have your cheese melty and the soup isn't hot enough, go ahead and pop it in the microwave.

Enjoy kiddos!

Happy Week

2009-01-19T18:07:00.002-05:00

Ok, first post in a long time, I hope you're all (all four of ya!) following my google reader shared items, because there's some good stuff out there.

Second of all, Yay, Steelers going to the Super Bowl again! Huzzah!

Third of all, NEW FREAKING PRESIDENT!!!!!!!111elevnty one!

But now for the big bummery downer I'm going to throw out there. Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. day, a day to commemorate a strong, eloquent, brave leader who stood up to injustice and oppression every day of his foreshortened life. Unfortunately, his day seems to be more about white Americans patting themselves on the back and saying "oh marvelous, marvelous, look at how far we have come, racism is such a distant memory and let's all get inspired." Nothing I heard on the radio today seemed to be remotely concerned with the current state of race relations in the United States - oh, except to say how marvelous, marvelous it is that Barack Obama is going to be our next president and isn't it marvelous, marvelous how far we've come. And it just kind of makes me mad, and a little bit sick, because it was only earlier this month we read about this, and that's just the tip of the smoldering, festering trash heap of bigotry that still infests this country. So let's take a break from patting ourselves on the back for electing our first black president, and have a quick reality check, ok? We're not post-racial in any remote sense of the term, and if privileged, white old me can figure this out, some other people should too.

And on that note? I'm not out to play oppression olympics, but to whoever that raging douchebag was on the radio today bitching that his church closed down (because the Catholics are losing money, people, and respect right and left) and claiming that a mere financial decision is "injustice" and comparing himself to Rev. King himself? NOT OK. YOU'RE AN IMBECILE AND REV KING IS ROLLING OVER IN HIS GRAVE.

And that is all.

Ok, actually it's not all. I have done a lot of reading and a lot of listening and a lot of difficult addressing of my own privilege. It isn't easy, or pleasant, but maybe you should try. If you want some further reading on race and racism, please go and check out these incredible blogs:
http://www.racialicious.com/
http://brownfemipower.com/ (she's moved but her stuff is still there, go check it out)
And BFP's new blog here http://flipfloppingjoy.com/
http://www.womanist-musings.com/

So. Now I'm done. Maybe this is the catalyst to start blogging again. I dunno. We'll see. Hope to see you all around.

Sorry for the extended absence

2008-11-17T21:17:00.003-05:00

I don't really have the heart right now for long, thoughtful posts on things. This is not a great time for me right now, and talking about even more stuff that is shitty is just too much. But if you want to keep up on what's on my mind, feel free to check out my shared items on google reader here. I post a couple of things a day, and it's way easier than constructing a blog post around some news article or blog post. Plus I just found out I can add notes without sharing an item, so that's neat too. It's like some kind of weird blogging-twitter hybrid. Anyway, keep an eye on the feed, there's good stuff there.

Next Skeptics in the Pub!

2008-09-06T08:49:00.001-04:00

Hey guys, I know I've been not blogging lately, and I'm ever so sorry, but if you have a chance, join us for the next Skeptics in the Pub!

Skeptics in the Pub
September 9 at 6 PM
Al's in Armory Square

Al's Whiskey Bar
321 S Clinton St
Syracuse, NY 13202

Just in case...

2008-07-31T17:58:00.002-04:00

Just in case any of my four total readers is planning on booking a trip to Hawai'i, please go check out my friend Philip's new company, Aina 'Ihi Ecotours. Because Philip is great, that's why. Also, he's still, bafflingly, friends with me, which I have to wonder about.

The grand finale

2008-07-31T06:16:00.002-04:00

Just in case anyone missed it, Crackergate has ended...well, from PZ's end at least. People are still sending him charming emails. Take a look at some of those -- real Christian love there. Really emulating Christ, right?

Anyway, I think that the desecration post is well written and to the point, and I think the final "desecration" was creative and pointed. I also want to point out that Webster Cook's account of what actually transpired in the original incident that sparked all of this is truly disturbing, and whatever you think of the matter, the kid doesn't deserve to be expelled from his PUBLIC, SECULAR university for anything he did. Anyway, it's all gotten a bit tiresome, but it's frustrating to read all these emails and comments from angry Catholics who completely miss the point.

Just an update, that's all it is. Well, there's also some interesting discussion of peaches if you're into that kind of thing.

2008-07-19T16:13:00.003-04:00

(Sorry Tracey, this is going to have graphic descriptions of fresh peaches.)

Hi kiddos.

I've had various posts banging around in my head lately, but work's been busy and it's too hot to think or get really really outraged about stuff, so I'm just going to post some stuff about how great peaches are.

I went to the farmer's market today, and the peaches are coming in. Mine are from Wolcott, NY, about an hour northwest of Syracuse, and according to the guy at the stand, were picked yesterday and are GREAT. I have to say, I agree with his assessment. I had the two ripest for lunch with some honey and lavender and black pepper drizzled over them, and they were FANTASTIC. Really juicy and flavorful and just great. I recommend. The lavender is making my fridge smell so good, too.

I also got some local organic apricots that nearly didn't make it home. I had two at the farmer's market and one in the car. They're really good too.

So because I'm in a good mood I'm not going to post all the terrible offensive things I've been reading. Well, except if you haven't already, you should check out Crackergate.
Start here.
Then go here.
Then take a look at this.
Then take a look at this.
This is an interesting consequence to the whole thing, complete with a typical wingnut non-apology.
And here is, like, the climax of ridiculousness.

But there are some decent things happening around and about, even here in our home state!

New York expands domestic violence law so that victims of DV who are not married can seek protection -- this includes non-married hetero couples as well as same-sex couples.

New York will recognize same-sex marraiges performed legally in other states.

Disregard the hyperbolic language in this article. Researches find major weakness in HIV. (Not New York related, sorry!)

Skeptics in the pub, Syracuse

2008-06-28T14:09:00.002-04:00

By the way, Eva and I went to the inagural Syracuse edition of Skeptics in the Pub on Tuesday, and it was really great. Very nice people, good conversation. I should really go to more of their lectures, but you know how it is at the end of the day, you kind of go....eh. I have this problem with the CNYAPG lectures, too. Anyway, I'll post here when there's another one (probably next month) and anyone around should stop by!

Further thoughts on Say Anything

2008-06-28T07:22:00.002-04:00

Ok, as some of you folks might know, Joelster and I were disagreeing about whether the boombox scene in Say Anything can stand alone as just a great scene from a movie, or whether you need to actually see the movie and be invested in the characters for it to work. Most of the folks I texted replied that the scene stands alone, and I agree. I think a lot of why the scene works is that the lyrics to the Peter Gabriel song go so well*. But also a lot of it is John Cusack. His face as he's standing there really conveys the sense that this is his last, desparate, million to one chance to win this girl back, and frankly I really don't think you need to know more than that to find this scene so remarkable. And of course, because I likes you all, here you go:

*According to the commentary on the DVD (I don't own this but saw one of those shows on some channel where they played the DVD commentary), they were originally going to use some random Fishbone song there, but at the last minute someone had heard this song and knew it would be perfect.

And to lighten the mood, I give you this.

Sweet!

2008-06-26T18:54:00.002-04:00

Your results:
You are Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman		73%
Spider-Man		65%
Hulk		65%
Green Lantern		60%
Catwoman		60%
The Flash		55%
Iron Man		55%
Supergirl		48%
Robin		45%
Batman		35%
Superman		20%

You are a beautiful princess
with great strength of character.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

No suprise here, I've been obsessed with Wonder Woman since I was a wee thing. I even dressed up as Wonder Woman for Halloween once, and my mom made a KICK ASS costume! AND I got to wear LIPSTICK! Sweet.

Gack, and a cooking suggestion

2008-05-23T17:46:00.002-04:00

So I have a new job, as some of you probably know. It's kind of sucking up a lot of my time, and their web filter is over active and turned up to 11, so I can't post from work (not that I would do any such thing anyway!). I just wanted to stop in and say HI and also let you all know that I have found that tarragon is the best herb in the universe. I made a recipe the other day that called for cooking up a mess o' pinto beans (I added some tarragon, a bay leaf, and a bunch of chives to the cooking water for added deliciousness), and then sauteeing up some snow peas and some shredded carrots, and then simmering everything (beans n' veggies) together in a sauce of veggie stock, dijon mustard, and more tarragon. It was delicious, and really a nice change of pace from beans with a south-of-the-border influence.

Anyway, it's the end of my first week at my new job and I'm tuckered out, so it's time for a stout and maybe some Super Smash Bros.

Platypus!

2008-05-12T09:31:00.001-04:00

I'm sure you've all seen the news that a team of science guys have sequenced the Platypus genome. If, like me, you're annoyed by the terrible mainstream media's response (this "part bird, part reptile, part mammal" crap), you should head over to Pharyngula for a thorough discussion of what the paper says and what it means. Enjoy!

Colossal squid!

2008-05-09T10:56:00.002-04:00

I'm sure you guys have heard about the colossal squid specimen accidentally caught in a fishing net, right? Some dudes in New Zeland are completing a necropsy of it, and Wired has pictures! VERY COOL!!!

Also, the Te Papa (that's the museum whose researchers are doing the necropsy) team has a blog, and a handy colossal squid tag, too!

Wow, that's big.

Mmm...ramps!

2008-05-06T08:53:00.003-04:00

So I got some ramps from the farmer's market on Saturday. Ramps are wild leeks, and only show up in the springtime. I wasn't 100% sure what to do with them, but I knew that the French love 'em, and a bit of looking shows that they're traditionally used in soup, pasta, and egg dishes. Hey, pasta, I can do that. So I did, and it was DEEELICIOUS. And so I decided to share wihth you what I did so that if you find ramps at your farmer's market, you too can share the yumminess!

about 3/4 lb pasta -- I used whole wheat penne. You want something that will be similar to the length you're cutting the ramps into
1 bunch of ramps
About 8 oz of REAL parmesano reggiano -- this is a simple dish, so you want the featured ingredients to really be good.
2 slices of italian bread
Butter and olive oil
Salt n' pepper

Preheat oven to 250.

1. Put a big pot of water on to boil and salt generously. While the water boils, trim your ramps -- remove the roots and then slip off any outer skin that is dirty or discolored. Cut the ramps into 1-2 inch pieces, including the leaves, which you can slice in half lengthwise and then coarsely chop.
2. Rip up the bread and set it on a baking sheet and throw it in the oven to dry out. Once it's nice and dry and crumbly (not toasted), whir it up in a blender or food processor to make nice fresh breadcrumbs. This can be done ahead of time.
3. Heat some butter with some olive oil in a big skillet. Toss in your ramps, a pinch of salt and pepper, and if you want to, a pinch of red pepper flakes. Cook over medium heat until the ramps are soft and starting to brown.
4. Heat some butter in a small skillet or pot. Add about 1/2 cup of the breadcrumbs, and stir over medium heat until brown. Remove the pot from the heat -- residual heat will toast the breadcrumbs a little more while you finish everything else.
5. Cook the pasta according to package directions, reserving 1 cup of the cooking water. Drain pasta.
6. Deglaze the ramp skillet with the pasta water and add the pasta and about half the cheese. Stir until everything is creamy, over medium heat.
7. Turn off heat and stir in breadcrumbs and maybe half the remaining cheese -- this will leave you some to sprinkle.
8. Nom it up with some cheese, fresh ground pepper, and fancy olive oil!

I hope you guys find some of these little treasures. They were delicious, sort of garlicky and oniony and the leafy bits tastes a bit like very garlicky spinach. The toasted breadcrumbs highlighted the nuttiness of the cheese, and it just was sooo good. I used some lovely butter I also got at the farmer's market, local cows, grass fed, no hormones etc. It's quite good, and also extremely yellow! Anyway, dinner was terribly yummy, and I highly recommend ramps when you can find them!

Ok, maybe we need something else to think about

2008-04-26T19:23:00.001-04:00

Maybe it's time to take a break from the blogwars, eh? So I offer you this:

see more crazy cat pics

Update to the BFP/AM/Seal Press stuff

2008-04-25T10:59:00.002-04:00

Anyone who cares about the issues coming to the surface around the feminist blogosphere (ok, some of the feminist blogosphere, I think we all know who we can expect to ignore this) can check out Dear White Feminists. It has a good sumamry of links to blogs by women of color and allies, and a fairly decent summary of the current state of mind of many folks on the "please shut up and listen" side of things. Go check it out. But do yourselves a favor before you get all defensive and go "nuh uh, not all white people are like that, I'm not," and remember that your privilege may well be invisible to you. Stop. Think. Listen. If the words still don't apply to you, think about what you can do to increase the numbers of people that they don't apply to. Just don't jump to defensiveness -- these women are and have been talking about real issues that they see from what may be a different viewpoint from yours, and they are saying stuff worth listening to.

BOO! This is not delicious.

2008-04-18T16:12:00.002-04:00

Sigh. I didn't want to talk about the whole disgusting quicksand-style latest Marcotte-inspired blogwar, but it's over now, and the aftermath....is making me sad.

I know I don't update my links or anything, and so maybe some of my friends who would have enjoyed BrownFemiPower's blog never found it. Anyway, she was this amazing, feminist, immigrant-rights blogger full of passion and eloquence who really opened my mind to a lot of stuff. You know, the kind of blog posts where you're like "nuh uh I am so NOT," and then you think about it for a minute and go "hm, well, maybe I have in the past, maybe I need to think about this..." Anyway, because of the whole ugly mess, she's now leaving blogging.

Read her farewell here.

I just wanted to say that as a longtime lurker on her blog this sucks and I wish I would have commented and engaged with her more.

Harassment of autism rights blogger by anti-vaxers

2008-04-16T10:47:00.003-04:00

Oy. Ok, I came across this at BallastExistenz's blog first, and followed the links around until I got a handle on what was going on. I think it's important to share, because it shows the fundamental dishonesty and bullshit tactics of people who have not got facts on their side. Basically, this family has an autistic son, and they've bought into the thoroughly debunked idea that the vaccines that their son received as an infant caused his autism. So far, pretty average.

They hired some sketchy lawyer dude to go to bat against the vaccine manufacturers. This guy subsequently subpoenaed this blogger, Kathleen Seidel, for pretty much everything relating to her blog on autism, including financial records, records related to her blog, and her e-mails with other bloggers. Because guess why? Because she's written extensively and critically on the case and on thimerosal in general.

Needless to say, this is not ok, it's not how subponeas are supposed to be used, and it's clearly meant to intimidate a blogger who is critical of the case. And my guess as to why? Because the anti-vax contingent doesn't have any facts, and so just like other kinds of groups that are ideologically driven and fact-deficient (see also: racists, homophobes, forced-birthers, etc.), they choose to intimidate and threaten those who do have the facts, in the hopes that they'll shut up already.

Hopefully that won't happen. Sorry I didn't see this sooner -- Ballast's blog has been down, and I did see it on Pharyngula but didn't realize the extent of the issue. Here's some additional reading:
NeuroLogica Blog
Pure Pedantry
Overlawyered

Quick update and a news story

2008-04-14T16:51:00.002-04:00

Kiddos, I gots some bad news. Your dashing and wonderful blogger has been laid off. So expect the volume of blogging to increase soon, since I'll have nothing else to do!

Ok, I'm sure you've all heard about this -- it's been all over NPR and the major blogs are picking it up. Remember Warren Jeffs? The crazy Mormon breakaway sect leader who was marrying 16 year olds to their cousins? He's got some other compounds around, and police in Texas were finally able to raid one of the compounds following a phone call from a 16-year-old girl to a shelter stating that her 50-year-old husband had beaten and raped her. Police were not able to raid the place beforehand because there were no other complaints or other "probable cause." They removed over 400 girls and more than 100 women (who went voluntarily), and a subsequent raid removed additional documents. I know I don't have to tell you how sick and horrible this is, and how the reverence for "faith" and the kneejerk respect for "people of faith" has helped this situation develop to this point.

To that end, next time someone claims to you we need to "respect everyone's beliefs," please remember this:

[Sheriff] Doran said it was not until after the raid began that he learned that the sect was, in fact, marrying off underage girls at the compound and had a bed in its soaring limestone temple where the girls were required to immediately consummate their marriages. Also, investigators said a number of teenage girls there are pregnant.

My fellow beer snobs

2008-03-28T08:46:00.000-04:00

I just wanted to share this with you:

see more crazy cat pics

Second new post -- feel the Ellen love!

2008-03-15T09:31:00.002-04:00

Ok, I completely love Ellen and I don't care who knows it. By just being who she is, out there in front of all those soccer moms in the flyover states, she's doing a lot for the acceptance of gay rights in this country, IMHO. I hope that some tolerance and acceptance is seeping into the daytime TV viewing public's minds, courtesy of Ellen.

Also, I love Ellen because lately, she's not taking shit lying down. Check it out.

Yay new posts! Governor Bareback is up first!

2008-03-15T09:07:00.004-04:00

I'm sure you've all heard by now about the unfortunate scandal the governor of New York has been caught up in.

This is showing up all over the blogosphere, and I wanted to comment and give my four readers a couple links. First of all, I personally would not have given one hoot if not for a couple issues -- I think prostitution should be decriminalized, and that people (men AND women -- that sex workers are portrayed by the media as exclusively female is a rant for another time) performing sex work should have the same protections afforded all other workers. I'm not sure of the exact answers, or how to fix the whole system, but the current system isn't working: women and men are being abused, are being killed, are being stolen from, and can't get out of the industry. They have little to no legal recourse if anything bad happens, and even in this day and age, judges refuse to believe a prostitute can be raped (don't click on that link if you value your sanity or want to keep your lunch down). The current system sucks.

Ok, so that's out of the way. The big problem for me is that part of how Spitzer got to where he was was by prosecuting prostitution rings. In addition to that, there is some evidence (it's the Post, people, so take with a grain of salt) that Spitzer's "unsafe things" he was asking the escorts to do was have sex without a condom. The "unsafe" comment is found in the original tapped conversation, which also seems to indicate that Spitzer was a generally "difficult" client.

So yeah. He prosecuted prostitution rings, got in front of cameras and vehemently decried them, and then proceeded to not only visit prostitutes but generally be an asshole to them and attempt to insist they put their own health at risk to satisfy whatever sick fantasy of degradation he wanted to have fulfilled.

The contempt he has for these women is palpable from here. It's sickening and makes me sorry I ever voted for him.

The ironies: This all happened right before Spitzer was set to speak to the Planned Parenthood convention regarding, you know, women's rights. In addition, the software used to catch him was in place in these banks because Spitzer, as Attorney General, insisted upon it.

Now for the educational part of my post. Who is out there really trying to help sex workers? Who is really trying to educate people on sex work and the issues surrounding it?
Go here:
Bound, Not Gagged is a sex worker's blog, which has many great posts regarding sex work and how it is portrayed in the media and society.
The Desiree Alliance is a diverse, volunteer-based, sex worker-led network of organizations, communities and individuals across the US working in harm reduction, direct services, political advocacy and health services for sex workers. (Ok, I snagged that blurb off their website, but how many ways are there to describe that?) Pretty much anything you want to know about current efforts in legislation, health care, etc. is there. They have many links to local groups and a donation page in case you want to get involved.

Helping our guy friends "get it"

2008-02-21T13:16:00.001-05:00

I know some of my guy friends sometimes don't "get it," with respect to sexism or feminism or the way that the patriarchy has infested even their highly evolved liberal brains. If you are confused about why feminists in your life constantly accuse you of being sexist, you might wanna head over to Feministe and check out this thread, all about how to help the men in your life get rid of the persistent misogyny that infects their brains. It's advice for women, but I think a lot of men would really benefit from the discussion. Enjoy.

V-Day :)

2008-02-14T16:44:00.001-05:00

Happy V-Day, everyone!

And in honor of our happy, healthy vaginas, I offer you this bit of great news for the vaginas of Texas:

A federal appeals court has struck down a Texas law that makes it a crime to promote or sell sex toys.

"Whatever one might think or believe about the use of these devices," said an opinion written by Justice Thomas M. Reavley of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, "government interference with their personal and private use violates the Constitution."

So have a great day, everyone.

But what's the harm?

2008-02-13T09:05:00.002-05:00

I've blogged a bit on this before, but I'm too lazy to look it up. Anyway, something skeptics, rational thinkers, and other reality-based folks occasionally hear is the "what's the harm?" defense. Essentially it boils down to, well, these people might believe silly, stupid, or outrageous things, but if it brings them comfort, what's the harm?

There is harm. People forgo real medical treatment for good-feeling fantasy, people give money they can't afford to preachers, psychics, or other scam artists, people fall victim to sleazy "therapists" who push dangerous, unproven treatments on people and their children, parents whose children have been abducted are exploited by attention-seeking "psychics" who have only their own interests at heart. Physical, emotional, and financial harm really does result from belief in woo-woo.

Now, we have a place we can send folks who ask this dumb question. Conveniently enough, it's called What's the Harm? I found this on the JREF forums this weekend, and Bad Astronomer has a post up about it today. I'm not sure how long the site has been up and running, but it's fairly extensive. You can even submit your own stories -- just make sure they're supported by evidence!

Happy Darwin Day!

2008-02-12T08:48:00.000-05:00

Hey, Friends! Today is Darwin Day, the anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth in 1809. As many of you know, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species: by Means of Natural Selection in 1859 (next year is gonna be big, people, BIG, with respect to Darwin anniversaries!). Origin laid out a theory of evolution of species over great lengths of time via the process called natural selection. This theory is the foundation of modern biology, and 150 years of research has done nothing but confirm the theory of evolution (I'm assuming we all know what a vague and catch-all term that is!). Unfortunately, a lot of people, people who vote, seem to be unaware of the status of the theory of evolution as not just a fact, but as the bedrock of the biological sciences today. Without evolution, nothing makes sense. Several of the candidates running for president don't "believe" in evolution (I'm still not sure how one "believes" in a fact -- doesn't belief require faith in something unproven?). We all need to do our part by fighting in our local school boards to ensure that science cirricula aren't decided by religious wackos, by electing representatives who understand basic facts about the world, and by educating our friends and family when we realize they've been misguided.

Evolution is a fact. Even if it hurts your widdle fee-fees, it's still a fact. We need to remember this and not let people get away with dumbfuckery under the guise of "respect for beliefs."

That's all I've got time for now, but I might blog furhter on "respect for beliefs" as I think it's going to be the end of western civilization unless we stop the madness, but that's for another time.

Food, class, and the Republicans

2008-01-18T09:31:00.001-05:00

Ok, there was an article on Pandagon today that got me to write this post. It originally started as an email, actually, but then it got long and I decided to move it over here and just email everyone the link instead :D

But anyway, the Pandagon article and the article it links to (both at the end) discuss the absolutely baffling rage at the new menu choices at the congressional cafeteria. House Minority Leader John Boehner is apalled:

“I like real food,” proclaimed Republican leader John Boehner when asked about the new menu by a producer for another cable news outfit. “Food that I can pronounce the name of.”
Boehner is now forced to wrap his lips around such phrases as “broccoli rabe and shaved persimmon,” “balsamic glazed butternut squash,” and “calico pinto beans”…

I have a slightly different take on what this all means than Pandagon does, but it's not that dissimilar. Read on....

When visiting The Joelster's family, we are frequently mocked for our choices of food -- something about eating sushi or drinking wine is somehow threatening to these people. As with other divergences of opinion, conservatives view different food preferences as a direct insult and/or threat to them, personally. Conservatives routinely make fun of "liberal" food stuff -- latte-drinking liberals, sushi-eating progressives, blah. I'm currently reading a book called Food: The History of Taste, and a really interesting point is made in the introduction (I'm only on the first chapter, and I imagine this will be explored later in the book).

Historically, food has been a way for the upper classes to prove their upper class. Peasants ate peasant food, the upper classes ate fancy food. This distinction was based on the type of food consumed rather than the manner of consuming it -- upper classes ate meat, peasants ate pease porridge. Contrast that with our modern society. Upper class folks now distinguish themselves with the manner of eating -- expensive restaraunts, exotic settings. There aren't that manny foods that are so unaffordable that they are only confined to the upper classes. Food in many ways has become more egalitarian.

EXCEPT. Except for foods stereotypically consumed by the "lower classes" (obviously using this term to indicate socioeconomic status, and am not trying to make any kind of value judgement!!!) -- think Spam, think processed cheese, think fast food. How does this concept of low-class food coincide with the conservative fear of broccoli rabe?

Here's my guess. I don't think any of us really believe that the House Minority Leader actually eats spam in his actual life. I'm sure he's perfectly comfortable with balsamic vinegar. His comments are a calculated political move to keep the peasants (his constituents) in line. They don't want fancy food, they don't even like fancy food, and of course the undertone to that -- they don't deserve fancy food. This is strikingly similar to the attitudes of the upper classes in the (ok this might be corrected later -- don't have my book with me) medieval times, who contended that peasants didn't even want to eat meat, they didn't like it, they were much happier with their diet of dried beans and cabbage. Really!

But why? What are the implications? My theory? By convincing the peasants that they don't want "fancy" food, the Republican leadership is ensuring, in a small way, that they remain ignorant, which means they'll keep voting in politicians who are actively trying to institute policies that are bad for their constituents. Just an idea.

I think there's more to the concepts of food and class, including the rise in obesity as related to the lack of affordable, fresh fruit and veggies. That'll have to wait for another time.

Pandagon

Open Left

MSNBC (original source for blog articles)

More news of the obvious, plus updates on my life!

2008-01-14T12:49:00.000-05:00

Hopefully some people still check in over here, but if not, well, that's fine too. Anyway, sorry I haven't blogged much -- the holidays were very busy for me, and work has gotten increasingly insane. I have a couple of blog posts percolating around in my head, particularly surrounding some interesting reading I've been doing on the history of food as it relates to culture and, especially, class. But that'll have to wait till I can get my thoughts in order.

In other news, the Guttmacher Institute (they're the ones doing all the research to tell us what we already know -- lots of people have premarital sex, illegal abortions kill women, etc.) has a new study out, and I just KNOW you'll all be completely shocked by what they found.

Women don't have abortions 'cause they're sluts. The people getting abortions aren't teenagers who are using it as birth control.

According to the Institute:

The majority (61%) of U.S. women who have abortions are already mothers, more than half of whom have two or more children. In many cases, women choose abortion because they are motivated to be good parents. Women who have no children want the conditions to be right when they do; women who already have children want to be responsible and take care of their existing children.

But of course, to acknowledge this would be to presume that women are really real human beings capable of actual thought about what is best for them and their families. And who wants that? If you acknowledge that, you'll have to acknowledge that trying to ban abortion isn't really about helping anyone, or about life, but is about harming women and taking away their bodily autonomy. And then people will start to see your sick, evil, misogynist agenda for what it is.

Chin up, Terry...

2007-12-12T11:21:00.001-05:00

Pharyngula tipped me off to this sad news. Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's. Remaining cautiously optimistic, of course.

Secular Charities

2007-12-07T08:49:00.001-05:00

In case anyone has mistakenly fallen for the hoary old "selfish atheists" line, I present to you a fairly comprehensive list (check the comments too) of secular charities, promoting everything from ending malnutrition in Africa to defending the constitution to reproductive choice to gay rights to science education. Let the warm fuzzy feelings of Squidmas overwhelm you and give freely.

Go girls!

2007-12-06T13:13:00.001-05:00

I'm sure you've all heard about this, but for the first time, young women have swept the prestigious Siemens Competition in Math, Science, and Technology.

It was the first time girls had ever won the grand prizes in both the team and individual divisions of the Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology.

Cool!

Oh, this is SO COOL

2007-12-05T14:23:00.001-05:00

New neat interesting hypothesis that life (we're talking abiogenesis here, people!) may have originated between sheets of mica. Mica is that flaky mineral that everyone uses to illustrate "cleavage" (hur hur) in Geology 101 classes. It's a phyllosilicate, made up of flat sheets of material weakly held together by potassium (aparently). Mica is neat for all kinds of reasons (read the wiki article!), but this latest hypothesis from Helen Hansma of the NSF (go lady scientists!) contends that the between-layer spaces might have been just perfect for life (or, rather, "biomolecules") to arise. Among other reasons, it's got loads of potassium, which is something early life would have needed and that other abiogenesis hypotheses don't account for. It would also have provided a nice, safe, isolated spot for evolution to occur. And the movement of the mica sheets as they expanded and contracted in response to changes in temperature would have provided lots of mechanical mooshing around, to produce and destroy chemical bonds, neccessary for chemistry to happen.

Check out this press release from the NSF for more info. Here's a press release from UCSB that is a little more detailed.

Geology and biology, coming together. Doesn't it make you feel warm and fuzzy?

File under Women Who Rock

2007-12-04T13:32:00.000-05:00

Gotta love Helen Thomas. Check out this clip/transcript of a recent White House press conference.

Money shot:

Dana Perino: How many… We are going after the enemy, Helen. To the extent that any innocent Iraqis have been killed, we have expressed regret for it.

Helen Thomas: Oh, regret. It doesn’t bring back a life.

Wow, something is finally going our way...

2007-11-09T13:03:00.000-05:00

Congratulations are in order for Teh Joelster, who landed a sweet office gig at Syracuse University this week! Not only will he be making more money with much better benefits, but he'll be able to take classes for free and start working towards his degree! The actual job isn't anything real special -- mainly office work and looking after all the AV equipment, but he does get to play with expensive electronics AND work inside for people who are less likely to shout all the time. Plus, he doesn't have to drive the scary death-trap-mobile! So all in all, things are looking up.

Many thanks are also due to Jason, who alerted Joel to the job in the first place, plus talked him up to the person doing the hiring. Go on over there and tell him how cool he is!

Wintertime Recipe Lovin

2007-11-05T11:58:00.001-05:00

Ok, I've got 2 recipes in my head I'd like to share with you. One of them is much more precise, since I modified it from an already-existing one. One of them is more... touchy-feely, without such a concise list of ingredients. Let's do the easy one first.

Pinto Bean Chili
Adapted from this month's Gourmet. The original recipe included zucchini, which I hate, and not enough spices.

You'll need:
2 onions, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
2 dried ancho chiles
1 dried chipotle chile
2 tsp cumin, toasted in a dry skillet and cooled
1 tsp dried oregano
generous 1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
salt
grated zest of 1 orange (~1 tsp)
1 oz semisweet or unsweetened chocolate, chopped finely
~1 lb kale, stems trimmed off, rinsed, and chopped coarsely
1/8 to 1/4 tsp brown sugar (to taste)
1 14-oz can of tomatoes in juice, chopped, juice reserved
~2 cups water
1 14-oz can of yellow hominy, drained and rinsed
3 15-oz cans of pinto beans, drained and rinsed

Special stuff: spice grinder

How to make it:
Put toasted cumin seeds into grinder. Heat a skillet over high heat. Slice open the dried chiles, de-seed, and wipe down (dried chiles can be dusty). Toast them in the dry skillet for a minute or so on each side, or until softened and toasty smelling. Cool off, tear into pieces, and grind up in the grinder with the cumin and some salt. Stir the oregano and cinnamon into the mixture.

Sautee up the onions in some oil in a big pot. When soft and starting to brown, add the garlic, and sautee a minute more. Add the chile mixture and sautee 30 seconds. Add the kale and mix everything around a bit, then put the lid on the pot for a minute or two until the kale is wilted.

Stir in the tomatoes, juice, water, orange zest, and chocolate, 1/8 tsp of sugar (reserve rest to adjust seasoning later). Bring to a boil, then simmer around 15 minutes until kale is tender and flavors have married.

Add pinto beans and hominy and simmer another 5-10 minutues. Turn the heat off and let stand 5-10 minutes. Top with whatever you want -- cheese, sour cream, toasted punkin seed oil, etc.

Denise's Special Vegetarian Posole
You'll need:
2 boxes of regular seitan
1 onion, chopped
2 cans yellow hominy
1 can crushed or diced tomatoes

Spice mixture:
1 guajillo chile
1-2 chipotles in adobo plus extra adobo to taste
3 garlic cloves
2 tbsp or so cumin seeds
1 tbsp dried oregano
1/8 tsp cinnamon
dash curry powder (trust me!)
couple dashes paprika, cayenne, and ancho powder (or a dried ancho chile)
1/4 cup toasted pepitas (hulled punkin seeds), cooled

Mole secret ingredients:
2 cups hot water, into which you dissolve 1/2 bullion cube, tbsp or two of cocoa powder, and a tsp or so of lapsang souchong tea

Toast up the chiles and spices in a dry skillet, and transfer to spice grinder. Grind up all the spices (you'll probably need to do two batches, just make sure everything is nice and combined) and set aside.

Sautee up the seitan in a mixture of butter and olive oil in a soup pot. When browned on a side or two, set aside. Sautee onions in additional oil in the same pot. Add spice mixture and fry 30 seconds until fragrant. Add super secret mole mixture, straining out the tea as you pour it in. Reduce by about half at a brisk simmer, then add the tomatoes and some water. The posole should be medium thick. Simmer on low, partially covered, for about an hour or so until the spices no longer taste raw, and the flavors have married nicely.

Add in the seitan and simmer another 15 minutes so that the seitan is nice and flavored as well. Add the hominy last and simmer another 5 minutes or so. I like to let the posole stand for a bit once it's done. Taste for seasonings -- you can adjust the balance with additional adobo sauce, sugar, or soy sauce (I don't usually use salt at the end of cooking -- soy sauce adds saltiness plus umami and rounds everything out nicely).

Enjoy and let me know how my special posole works out for you if you try it. The recipe has sort of developed over the months, but I'm not sure that I've got the proportions exactly right...

Some more totally unthinkable news sure to astound you!

2007-10-26T13:58:00.001-04:00

The rapid spread in Latin America of the virus that causes AIDS is made worse by the Roman Catholic Church's stand against using condoms, a U.N. official said on Monday.

I know, I know, you're all thinking to yourselves, but Ethyl, how could this be? Don't these poor people know that they must remain pure and virginal until marraige?

But I'm telling you, it's completely true! People! Having sex! Maybe even right this very instant!

Shout-out

2007-10-23T09:39:00.001-04:00

Hope everyone out in California is OK and that you are not getting burned down! Good vibes goin out to ya!

The Pharyngula Mutating Genre Meme!

2007-10-23T09:12:00.000-04:00

Ok, even though I don't have enough friends with blogs to make this worthwhile, I'm going to play along because it's neat.

The story thus far: Pharyngula started this meme to see how it mutates over time, and I've been tagged by my sneaky cousin Joolya.

The rules:
There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...".
Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:
* You can leave them exactly as is.
* You can delete any one question.
* You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change "The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is..." to "The best time travel novel in Westerns is...", or "The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is...", or "The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is...".
* You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...".
* You must have at least one question in your set, or you've gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you're not viable.

Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.

Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.

The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is: Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
The best scary movie in documentary is: An Inconvenient Truth
The best sexy song in pop music is: Wicked Game by Chris Isaak (hope this counts -- don't know if there is any time limit on "pop music!")
The best cult novel in American 20th century fiction is: Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (can't argue with this one!)
The best high-carb food in Italian cooking is: Fettucine Alfredo!

My great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Pharyngula.My great-great-great-great-grandparent is Metamagician and the Hellfire Club.
My great-great-great-grandparent is Flying Trilobite.
My great-great-grandparent is A Blog Around the Clock.
My great-grandparent is Primate Diaries.
My grandparent is Thus Spake Zuska.
My parent is N@ked Under My Lab Coat

Now, I guess I'll tag....
Jason
and....um....
Mike, I guess....
If anyone else wants a piece of this, please go right ahead...

Well, DUH

2007-10-16T13:41:00.001-04:00

Hey, just so you guys know, there's a bunch of new research out that will just ASTOUND you!!! You might want to sit down for some of this...

Feminists aren't ugly, lonely man-haters with lousy sex lives.

Abortion bans don't actually stop anyone from getting an abortion. Not to mention that the abortions people DO get under these bans are lethal.

Eating food that eats other food uses more food.

Hope none of this shocked your delicate sensibilities too much!

New funny for you!

2007-10-16T09:53:00.000-04:00

This freaking awesome webcomic popped up all over Scienceblogs recently, and I just had to share. Enjoy!

Hometown Hullabaloo

2007-10-15T10:03:00.000-04:00

My mum sent me this article today detailing a dust-up back home. It seems that one of the local NPR stations, WDUQ, accepted underwriting from Planned Parenthood, as did several other NPR stations in the area. WDUQ is part of Duquesne University, a Catholic university. When Duquesne found out, they ordered WDUQ to un-accept the underwriting support and pull the Planned Parenthood sponsorship messages, since Planned Parenthood is at odds with Catholic teachings on the subject of a woman's right to physical autonomy.

While I do think Duquesne University has every right to refuse funds from whatever source it deems inappropriate, I think they majorly dropped the ball on this in two ways. First, they are causing the editorial independence of WDUQ to be called into question. It seems a short, slippery slope to monitoring DUQ's broadcast content for Catholic "appropriatenes." Even if Duquesne doesn't ever plan on monitoring DUQ's content in this way, the perception is there that DUQ is not an independent news source.

Secondly, this might be very bad news indeed for WDUQ's fundraising efforts. People who donate to Public Radio are generally to the left of center anyway, and support the notion that women are actually full humans with the right to make their own choices about their own bodies. A lot of people are already pulling their donations, and many more won't make any in the future. It would be a real shame if WDUQ was forced to shut down because this brouhaha. I don't want to have to read a headline stating that religion killed NPR.

Further reading:
Planned Parenthood's Get Involved site.
WDUQ's contact page.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Run, Al! Run!

2007-10-12T08:54:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to Al Gore and the IPCC, who have jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize for their work educating the public about antrhopogenic global warming! Thank you, Al, the world needs great popularizers of science. Now, run for president and repair the damage to our international reputation!

Happy National Coming Out Day!

2007-10-11T09:25:00.000-04:00

Here's some interesting videos from Truth Wins Out discussing the damage that graduates of "ex-gay" programs do to the people they wind up marrying, in honor of National Coming Out Day.

In other news, Doris Lessing has won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Despite the fact that she is wary of being a feminist icon, she still kind of rocks.

Festival of Fear

2007-10-02T09:08:00.000-04:00

Ok, ok, ok. I've finally got pictures worth posting from the Festival of Fear in Toronto that we attended. And now, without further ado...

Me and Mel and George Romero!!!!!! I'm not preggers, that's just the way that shirt hangs :) He was really very nice and friendly...

Joel and George!!! We got a very nice poster of Night of the Living Dead signed too!

Mel and her uncannily prom-like picture with Dario Argento.

General view of the con floor. Lots and lots of geeks. This was actually part of "FanExpo," which included comics, anime, video gaming, horror, sci-fi, etc. Other highlights of our trip were a Q&A with Adrianne Barbeau, who was incredibly engaging and charming and sweet, an "intimate" session with Dario where we tried valiantly to understand his broken English and where he claimed he wasn't a misogynist because he "loves women, and animals, and insects." Joel and I also checked out an interesting presentation on scoring horror films. We also saw lots of geeks getting very excited to meet people we'd never heard of. Oh and let's not forget the screening of Demons II on the big screen!

Also, we had an excellent dinner at Kit-Kat Italian Restaraunt. Highly recommended. The pasta was completely to die for.

The truth!

2007-09-05T09:42:00.001-04:00

Check it out, everything you wanted to know about the truth, plus a chance to win an iPod.

Also, I'm still waiting on my Festival of Fear pictures. In the meantime, enjoy this recipe:

Fancy berry sauce to impress your significant other:

Go to the farmer's market or your local greengrocer, and pick up a pint or so of raspberries or blackberries.

Get some Haagen-Daz or however you spell it Myan Chocolate -- chocolate with cinnamon! Yum!

Eat some of the berries.

Mash the rest of the berries through a fine mesh strainer so you're left with a nice-looking bunch of juice. Discard all the solids and seeds and stuff left over. I used a chinois for this, but you could probably use any other kind of fine mesh strainer you have laying around.

Add a little bit of water to the juice and put in a small saucepan with a dash of cinnamon, a teensy dash of vanilla, a bunch of sugar (will depend on how sweet the berries are and how sweet you want your sauce). Bring to a simmer and cook down until it gets thick. Taste for sweetness -- you might want to throw in a dash of lemon juice at this point if you think it's not bright enough, or a bit more sugar. Cool in the fridge (I actually like it if the sauce is a little warm). Spoon up over the ice cream -- fancy!

HIV Denialism

2007-08-30T16:31:00.000-04:00

I'm sure my fine readers will have heard about this, but I wanted to provide a link so you can read the PLoS article your own self:

Smith TC, Novella SP (2007) HIV Denial in the Internet Era. PLoS Med 4(8): e256 doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0040256

HIV denial has taken root in the general population and has shown its potential to frustrate public education efforts and adversely affect public funding for AIDS research and prevention programs.

For further reading, check out Tara's awesome blog Aetiology.

I'll have a nice big post up on the Festival of Fear as soon as somebody gets me the rest of my pictures!!!

Pasta with Chipotle Cream Sauce

2007-08-20T15:41:00.002-04:00

Or, Southwestern Mac n' Cheese.

I know that chipotle is on its way out, but I'll never stop loving it! Never! So give this a whirl sometime if you wanna.

You'll need:
1 lb of pasta (I like the Bionature whole wheat gobetti for creamy sauces)
2 tbsp all-purpose flour
2 tbsp butter
~1 c cream (or so -- I didn't measure it that well)
1 c veggie broth (from cubes is ok, but don't use the whole cube! it'll be too salty!)
~1/4 onion, skinned
1 garlic clove, crushed with the flat of a knife
couple peppercorns
Bay leaf
1-2 chipotle chilies in adobo sauce, chopped finely
1-2 tsp adobo sauce (to taste)
1-2 c shredded manchego cheese
Some grated parm (not the stuff in the green can!)

1. Put the pasta water on to boil. Meanwhile, heat the broth and the cream in a pan with the onion, garlic, peppercorns and bay leaf until just simmering. Turn off heat and let stand.

2. Make a roux -- melt the butter, then briskly whisk in the flour. Cook until light brown and nutty smelling.

3. Strain the milk/cream mixture into the roux and whisk vigorously until combined. Continue whisking until the sauce thickens. Add the chopped chile.

4. Lower heat under sauce to very low, stir in most of the cheese, and continue cooking while the pasta cooks. This will ensure no uncooked flour taste remains.

5. Drain the pasta and return to the pot. Check the sauce for hotness, and adjust to your preference with another chile, or some adobo sauce. Toss with the pasta, then toss in the rest of the cheese. Top with some fresh salsa (not the stuff out of a jar!), some cilantro, or some toasted pepitas.

Enjoy!

Edited 4/18/09 because I noticed my instructions in 3 were vague. Sorry!

Crazy Theocracy Censorship!

2007-08-20T08:38:00.000-04:00

From Pharyngula, we have this story of a crazy Turkish creationist (you might know the name Harun Yahya) successfully petitioning the Turkish government to block access to all Wordpress blogs, because some of them wrote mean things about him. Check it out. The whole story is completely batshit insane.

Instructions for viewing Wordpress blogs in Turkey.

You know, when I listen to the news these days, all I hear is an endless refrain of "religion makes you insane, religion makes you do insane things..." over and over and over.

ETA: Let's not forget Turkey wants to join the European Union. Let's hope the EU will let them know in no uncertain terms that this sort of totalitarian dictator-style censorship won't fly as part of the EU.

Science journalism embarasses me (again)

2007-08-14T09:48:00.001-04:00

I'm sure you've all seen these articles shouting at us that "science's" picture of human ancestry is "muddied," "challenged," or in "doubt."

Lots of other people have blogged on this, so I'll just make a couple points and then send you to them for your edification. Because I'm lazy and it's my blog, that's why.

It seems like the only people who really think evolution is either cut and dried or some kind of straight line are journalists. My first point is simple and quick -- the articles are incorrect in their overblown assumptions of what this means for the study of human evolution, nothing is cast into doubt, and our understanding of where we came from is still substantially the same as it has been. For further reading on this topic, see Questionable Authority, Pharyngula, and/or John Hawks.

My second point is that this isn't the first time "science" journalists have blown something out of proportion. I feel I'm in a relatively good place to comment on this, as I graduated with a dual major in Magazine Journalism and Earth Sciences. When I attended Newhouse, there were no -- zero -- none -- zip, nada, zilch -- classes on science journalism. This appears to still be the case.

I asked my advisor why there were no science journalism classes, he told me that nobody wanted to take one and nobody wanted to teach one. He acknowledged that this was problematic, and that there are only about five really competent science journalists out there, but that the school wasn't going to offer a course nobody wanted, that nobody needed, and that they couldn't get anyone interested in teaching. While it's nice that you are required to take six credits of science classes (FYI, at SU that's two 1-semester, 3-hour/week courses), just knowing science and knowing newswriting really isn't enough. A good science journalist needs to be able to understand what is going on, and needs to be able to describe that well to laypersons. This doesn't seem to be something that is/can be developed by taking biology 101 one semester and newswriting 305 the next. Students wishing to go into science journalism would be better served by an integrated course that offers basic intro-level information on a variety of "hot" topics, as well as instruction on how to communicate this information to non-science folks. It's easy enough to design a course like that, certainly. But Newhouse is an extremely good journalism school, and if they don't even offer a science writing course, well, what's up with that?

I'll tell you what's up with that. In all honesty, the people interested in becoming journalists are not, generally, in my experience only, people interested in science. I don't know why, really, except that science still has an image problem with a lot of people. Our kids aren't excited about it, people who like it are "nerds," and I think, personally, if you don't develop an enthusiasm for it when you're young, you just don't "get" it.

In addition, scientists aren't interested in journalism. The stereotype of the guys in white lab coats up in their ivory tower has some basis in reality. They often can't be bothered to clear up miconceptions about their work, and may not even know what the mainstream media is doing with their findings.

For any journalists who come across this entry, please know there are plenty of scientists just ITCHING to answer your questions. Good information is out there, so stop spewing shoddy crap you're all repeating off each other!

Seriously! If you have questions about evolution, go here. Biology, natural resources, natural hazards, geology, and water, try here. Weather, climate, fisheries, oceans? Try here. Cool space stuff, try these guys.

Support Amnesty International

2007-08-13T13:17:00.000-04:00

Amnesty International is set to defy the Vatican and risk the wrath of Catholics around the world over its decision to back abortion for rape victims.

Key quotes from the article:

Amnesty's deputy general secretary, Kate Gilmore, denies the organisation has become "pro-abortion" insisting the organisation took as its guide legal not theological imperatives. "Amnesty International's position is not for abortion as a right but for women's human rights to be free of fear, threat and coercion as they manage all consequences of rape and other grave human rights violations," she said.

...

Darfur is not the first place in the world where military conquerors have used mass rape to subdue a population but the report put together by Amnesty International observers in the region in 2004 was particularly harrowing...

One survivor said: "Five to six men would rape us, one after the other, for hours during six days, every night. My husband could not forgive me after this. He disowned me."

...

In Peru, a 17-year-old girl discovered that her foetus had anencephaly - meaning that it was going to be born without a brain - but a doctor refused to allow her access to an abortion. She was compelled to give birth and breastfeed the child for four days before its died.

In the Sante Fe province of Argentina, a social worker told the organisation Human Rights Watch about a woman who went into hospital after having an unsafe abortion and was bleeding badly. "A doctor started to examine her, and when he realised, he threw down his instruments and said: 'This is an abortion. You go ahead and die'."

Yeah, folks, that's the kind of ghoulish stuff the Vatican is supporting. "You go ahead and die." Go back and read it again, and see if you can tell me where the "right to life" is happening. Find me the "Christian charity" and all that fuzzy warm feelings of love for the fetus are. Tell me where this is about anything other than punishing women for having sex. Go ahead. Explain it to me. I'm listening.

Or you could just go give money to Amnesty to make sure this sort of thing happens less frequently.

ACK

2007-08-09T10:26:00.001-04:00

Now there it is.

WTF, yo?

Blogger users -- help me!

2007-08-09T10:24:00.000-04:00

Guys, I need help.

I'm trying to add one of these:

to my sidebar, but however I choose to add it, it doesn't show up. It shows up on Preview, but after I save changes and click "view blog" it disspaears.

I also notice that ceiling cat is cut off.

WTF? How do I put my A over there, and how can I get ceiling cat back? It looks like my blog is all bunched up in general, actually. HELP ME!!!

Manmade extinction

2007-08-09T08:30:00.000-04:00

The Yangtze river dolphin is the "first cetacean to disappear as a result of human activity." Moreover, the scientists now say "there is no longer any hope of resurrecting the species using a captive breeding programme." The dolphins were driven extinct largely because fishing boats would trap the dolphins in their gear.

As you probably know, China's rapid industrial expansion and booming population, coupled with a corrupt government that doesn't enforce environmental regulations (such as they are) have created a burgeoning environmental ~~nightmare~~ catastrophe.

Further reading:
EDGE of Existence
World Conservation Union
WWF
A Short History of China's Fragile Environment

Yay!

2007-08-03T18:00:00.001-04:00

Sorry, don't know what's up with me and OK Cupid quizzes lately, but hey, it's my damn blog.

Your Score: Ceiling Cat

25% Affectionate, 34% Excitable, 42% Hungry

You are a master of stealth. They never see you coming. But you always see them coming. HEY-O!

To see all possible results, checka dis.

Link: The Which Lolcat Are You? Test written by GumOtaku on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

And anyway, I am totally watching you masturbate.

In only scored 12 on the "how autistic are you" quiz, though, so I didn't post that here :)

TDF 2007 (Le Sigh)

2007-07-25T08:41:00.000-04:00

I was heartbroken to read yesterday's press release on the TDF website:

The organisers of the Tour de France have been informed by Marc Biver, the manager of the Astana team, about the positive test of Alexandre Vinokourov on the day of the time trial stage in Albi. At the request of Patrice Clerc, President of A.S.O., the Astana team has agreed to leave the 2007 Tour de France.

Bicycling.com had a little more analysis:

So much for dreams of a clean sport. After winning two spectacular stages, Kazakhstan's Alexander Vinokourov tested positive for blood transfusion today.

...

[Tour Director] Prudhomme was even more emotional. "This is proof that the actual system doesn't work. And we don't want this system any more."

In a blanket statement that seemed to target the ability of the International Cycling Union to govern the sport he continued, "A system that doesn't defend the world's greatest cycling race, doesn't work. The future of cycling is through the Tour de France. What other event can bring together so many fans? But the system doesn't work any more. Reform of the system is impossible...only revolution will change the system. We must explode the system."

The "system." The "system" is a fucking joke. We have no final decision yet on Landis, even, and that was the 2006 Tour! Nothing's working, people are still doping, and the testers and their gestapo techniques aren't catching people. Not to mention the lab is leaking results to newpapers before actually telling the competitors! Yeah, we need to reform the "system." I love cycling. I love to do it, I love to watch it on TV, I love the strategy of the stage races, and I get goosebumps whenever I see footage of the peloton streaking along the countryside. And I'm really sad to say that the sport is going to slowly wither away and die if the whole culture doesn't change. It's no longer a matter of more inspections, or more testing, or more penalties. What we have to do now is change the culture, make it not "normal" to dope, make it not something "everyone does."

I hope Vino loves his sport enough to be honest, cop to his offense, and help root out the problem. I don't want to listen to him deny and deny and listen to the lab claim and claim and listen to his science experts say "oh the lab did it all wrong" and have another fucking YEAR of arbitration! Everyone's sick of this. Nobody's going to care soon. Cycling will steadily lose fans and supporters and advertisers. And a sport with no fans is dead.

Additional reading:
Trust but Verify -- mainly about Floyd Landis.

Boulder Report blog by Joe Lindsey:

ETA this quote: The Tour de France is breaking down as well – a great event brought to its knees by people who are so beyond selfish, so willfully arrogant that they would risk the destruction of the most beautiful sport in the world for their own vain glory. It is absolutely toxic to the sport – it’s impossible for fans to cheer on riders while simultaneously wondering which of them will test positive and get kicked out for cheating.

Emphasis mine. That sums it up perfectly.

L'Equipe (en francais).

Cycling News

Tripoli 6 Free!

2007-07-24T11:51:00.000-04:00

The Bulgarian nurses (and one doctor) insansely accused of infecting Libyan kids with AIDS have been freed! This is good news for them, but there should be some concern that no medical volunteers in their right mind will ever set foot in Libya again. The willingness of the people of Libya and their government to ignore sound science and act irrationally may have profound implications for their medical establishment (such as it is). It's clear from the evidence that the Libyan medical establishment has very little ability to control the spread of bloodborne pathogens, and they're now unlikely to recieve any help to fix it; the only outcome will be even MORE children avoidably infected with serious illnesses. I wonder who they'll blame then?

For those of you who are not familiar with the story, here's a rundown.

September 2006, from Pharyngula:

Six Bulgarian medical professionals (five nurses and one doctor) were working at the al-Fateh Children's Hospital in Banghazi, Libya in the late 1990s. A year later, about 400 children were diagnosed with HIV; the doctors and nurses were accused of conspiring with Israel and the USA to intentionally infect children with the disease, and were thrown into jail.

Five years later — five years spent in a Libyan jail, where they were tortured with electric shocks and beatings, and two of the nurses were raped! — defenders were able to show that the children were largely victims of HIV exposure prior to the arrival of the accused, and that the real culprit was a policy of poorly trained staff, unsterilized equipment, and generally shoddy hygiene. It didn't matter; they were convicted in a sham trial, and sentenced to death by firing squad.

December 2006, from Effect Measure:

...this is also a science story, or, more properly, a story where science that could have exonerated the defendants has been ignored, resulting in a trial which was neither fair nor impartial. That science has now appeared, appropriately, in Nature, the world's most prestigious scientific journal. An exhaustive analysis of the HIV and Hepatitis C sequences from virus isolated from 44 of the children finds the "strains were already circulating and prevalent in the [al-Fateh Hospital] and its environs before the arrival in March 1998" of the defendants.

May 2007, from Orac:

Now, five months after their being sentenced to death, the international dance by which Bulgaria and Palestine are trying to prevent their citizens from being executed and Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi is trying to find a face-saving way out of this despite the parents who, despite the obvious kangaroo court and scientific analyses strongly indicating that the strain of HIV that infected the children were already prevalent in the hospital before the workers ever arrived and thus supporting the innocence of the Tripoli Six, want their blood, it appears that there may be movement towards a deal...

I have no real objection to this:

2007-07-19T13:31:00.000-04:00

Your Score: Smartass

You are 85% Rational, 85% Extroverted, 85% Brutal, and 71% Arrogant.

You are the Smartass! You are rational, extroverted, brutal, and arrogant. In fact, you could very well be the anti-Christ, as you are almost the exact opposite of everything Jesus was supposed to be. While Jesus says love your enemy, you say love beating the crap out of your enemy. While Jesus raises the dead, you raise hell. While Jesus walks on water, you tend to sink. You probably consider people who are emotional and gentle to be big pussies who are obviously in lesser stature than you. You have many flaws, despite your seeming intelligence and cool-headedness. For instance, you aren't very nice. In fact, you're probably an asshole. And you are conceited and self-centered. Not only that, but you are very loud and vocal about all this, seeing as how you are extroverted. There is no better way to describe you than as a "smartass", I'm afraid. Perhaps just "ass" would do, too. But that's a little less literary and descriptive. At any rate, your main personality defect is the fact that you are self-centered, mean, uncaring, and brutally logical.

To put it less negatively:

1. You are more RATIONAL than intuitive.

2. You are more EXTROVERTED than introverted.

3. You are more BRUTAL than gentle.

4. You are more ARROGANT than humble.

Compatibility:

Your exact opposite is the Emo Kid.

Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Capitalist Pig, the Braggart, and the Sociopath.

Seems about right, eh?

Google fun

2007-07-13T14:19:00.001-04:00

Just so you all know, it's not just hookers who can have "a heart of gold." The following items turned up in a google search* for the phrase "with a heart of gold." Enjoy.

con man, gangster, city, aeronaut, slacker, poem, guide dogs, exotic dancer, jerk, doctor, thug, monk, luddite, space hooker, drag queen, brass baron (??), single mum, tapori (???), rabble rouser, jewler, tart (the food), trucking company, chinese cuisine, cafe, soldier, irish angel, bioassay, transistor, truth-telling anti-hero asshole, evil genius, mathematical lady, atm, beer man, fashion miner (?), regal ambassador, lady in blue, man of steel, hit man, animal lover, frog, border collie, glitzy film festival, wrecking ball, bibliophile, gangst_ress_, snob, steelmaker, shock jock, 6-fingered man, mayor, hoofer, stripper, tartan noir (?), car theif, pungent bulb (what?), tin can, athletic grad student, bank

Yes, pungent bulb.

*Yes, I should probably be working. What's your point? Why are you reading this instead of working, anyway?! Get back to work you slacking slackers!

This blog is rated:

2007-06-22T08:50:00.001-04:00

Mingle² - Online Dating

Aparently the word "hell" has gotten me this rating, which is odd, since I thought I swore a lot more here... Oh, well. I at least feel cooler than Pharyngula, which got a G rating!