Templates, they are a changin'

Yeah, I changed the template again: I wanted something cleaner for use with images, since that's a large part of what I post.

I'm toying with a new blog dedicated to food, and would be interested in hearing from folks with experience with the different major (free) blogging sites.

Just to be clear:

Food porn is still the main role for this blog, panoramas be damned. (And besides, it's gray and misty outside, so not good panorama picture taking weather.)

Here are a couple vegan pizzas we made the other night, before and after being cut:



We didn't take a picture of the one that dropped all over the inside of the oven because J put too much flour on the bottom to slide it off of the cutting board we made it on, thinking it was just like when she makes ciabatta. Oopsie poopsie! (S'okay: it only took about a ten minutes to clean, and the oven only smoked for about the next hour of use.)

This is a salad with sauteed mushrooms, grapefruit, avocado, and fresh tomatoes from my little container garden,
which remains the little container garden that could:

And here are a couple plates of the delicious vegan sushi that J made the other night as I sat on the couch convalescing. She's really good me to me:

Are the panoramas getting to be like the food porn?

Here is an inside panorama, from the bedroom/office:

And while this also isn't the worst preview I've seen, it demonstrates reasonably well how bad the previews can look:

Panorama redux, uhhhh, x4!

Okay, yep: I just had to ignore hugin's bad preview function. This is an example of how it shows up in the preview, and for whatever reason, this is far from the worst example of the preview:

The weird shadow-like rectangular shapes are an example of how the preview doesn't work well. In other previews, there were half a dozen variously diagonally tilted shadowboxes, making the image look far worse, and basically unusable. Here is the actual output for this image:

And here are a few more panoramas over a few days. Close to sunset:

Same time of day, taken in horizontal format:

And here's a weird, super narrow vertical view, since I was using the telephoto lens fully zoomed in (55mm):

Several comments I read online indicated that using the lens zoomed out would, for various obscure reasons, result in a better quality panorama. Unfortunately, for the images from my balcony, a telephone zoom at even 55mm is too much to make the image interesting, since it loses the sky and perspective of the buildings.

Panorama redux!

Since I generated and put together the last panorama, I've been getting increasingly frustrated with hugin, the panorama software for linux. Every time I generated a preview, it looked like hell, with weird box-like transparencies showing up throughout the image.

Turns out I just needed to ignore the preview, and generate the panorama, and it looks great:


That was taken about 8 this morning, as that storm begins to blow in from the west. Now I'm going to work through the other four or five folders of raw images and see if I can generate a few more.

Other worthwhile stuff I'm getting done today: writing down bicycle serial numbers and putting business cards in seatposts to aid in recovery if any of our bikes are ever stolen, advice from this great post from an ABC member, lessons from a recovered bike theft .

No mass. Boo.

So I'm laid up in bed from a little outpatient surgery yesterday (nothing huge, and I'm fine.) The bummer is that I'll miss Critical Mass tonight, for the third time in three months. The first two times I was out of town. Gotta work on this!

Bird poop

Last week, the building management had the professional window cleaning guys out slamming around on rappelling gear for the twice-annual window cleaning:

A couple days ago, I realized that the interior and exterior balcony windows were filthy, especially in contrast to the professionally cleaned ones, so I spent about a half hour cleaning them. They looked MUCH better.

Then this morning, I saw an immense amount of bird poop on the outside of one of the pro-cleaned windows. It seriously looked like the bird had a grudge against us, and had flown at a perfect angle to run a long smear down the glass as extensively as possible: there were smears and solids spanning a full five feet, and probably would've been more if not for a small ledge that sticks out.

Fortunately, the bird chose a window I can just lean and get by standing on the balcony, so I wrapped a junky handtowel around the broom and duct taped it, watered it, and leaned over to scrub. I then wrapped a clean towel and taped it, and dried/polished. You can still tell in a couple small areas that some bird is a hater, but it looks MUCH better.

Packing and cooking for an international trip

Just downloaded some old photos from the larger, clunkier, fancier, more annoying Canon digital Rebel (300D), and found this visual tip for how to pack for a week long international trip (in this case, to Barcelona):


Incidentally, I've had that Mountainsmith Tour since 1994, and still love it as much or more than any other piece of equipment or baggage I've ever had.

And here is the paella I made for J just before I left, to make her feel slightly better about not getting to come to Spain with me:

Scrambling eggs with a flashlight

Spend enough time on hiking websites and forums, and maybe it's inevitable that someone will suggest a flashlight as a substitution for a stove. Yes, this one is so bright you really can scramble an egg on it. At $299, why not buy one for the house, one for the car, and one for backcountry culinary exploits?

Panorama!

Per A's suggestion, I tried shooting a panoramic view from our balcony. The first attempt, a week or so ago, didn't have nearly enough points for the software (autopanog) to map between the images, so I took another set.

Here is the version shot using a standard horizontal orientation, which shows a 180 degree panorama from the balcony:

Unfortunately, as you see, the horizontal approach forces me to crop off the tops of the nearby buildings.

But for some reason, the vertical approach didn't do the exposure blending correctly, so I need to keep working on it.

Where's the tofu?

To stave off the complaints of my most loyal readers, here is... yep... FOOD PORN!

INFORMAL READER POLL: Should I rename this blog something like foodporn.blogspot.com? Rats: it's taken. And while I don't mean to be a hater, by someone who, as far as I can tell, only writes about food, doesn't post any images, and hasn't posted since the first Shrub administration. What's with that?

Okay, enough of this blah blah blah talky talky talky stuff, and ON TO THE FOOD PORN!

MISSION: make this unassuming staple of my childhood more interesting. With all due respect to my mom (who recently asked how much rearranging I do of the food I'm cooking for food porn picture taking, to which, dear reader, the answer is almost zero) I've outgrown Cincinnati Five Way Chili.

So start with the basics: throw some firm tofu and some onions in a pan, and get them frying.


Then get that bizarrely fresh and tender and thin and out of season asparagus that always seems to be available, and better looking, from Publix even though the same country of origin asparagus is also available from Whole Paycheck for twice the price. The carbon footprint for importing asparagus from Peru all year really sucks, but trust me: there's not much local asparagus in the deep south these days.


Flashes do strange things to clearcut asparagus forests.


Get the whole thing working, with nicely fried tofu, a little more than blanched asparagus, and pesky onions who seem to think they'll escape their inevitable fate if they cling to the edges of the skillet.


And here's the whole thing assembled, with some defrosted sun-dried tomato pesto that J made in the fall. Amazing stuff, incidentally, which I should really try to get the recipe for from her.

Wind, and a pile of random updates

About fifteen minutes ago, I went out to the balcony to take a series of pictures to try to make a panorama (yes, yes, it's coming!) The wind is sustained at around 22mph, with gusts above 30, and presumably they don't measure these things on the 11th floor of a mostly unprotected highrise condo building.

Actually, the more interesting thing about the wind is how it's making the condo creak and crackle like a 100 year old house, rather than the 8 year old building it is.

Ran a little 5k this morning, and walked another several miles. It was mostly for entertainment value, and to see if it would help work out the sore right hamstring I've been irritated by for almost a week. Oddly enough, so far, it did. (But it might also have been the extensive stretching I did before and after the running. Ummmm, yeah. Probably more that.)

We threw a party for around 20 of J's work team on Saturday, and it was a rousing success, ending in good time for me to get to ABC's annual member night, which was also fun.

The Sherwood Forest is drinking beautifully, and the Mittelschmerz is coming along. It really needs another month of cold conditioning, I think. Both received numerous compliments from party attendees (not bad a party throw in mid-afternoon.)

About to knock out some work stuff, and then start setting out hiking equipment, to test weight and bulk, and see if my trusty Arc-Teryx Bora 30 will actually work for several months of long-distance hiking. More on this later!

Kayak across the Pacific

So, I underestimated the distance to bike to my derm appointment this afternoon (note to all those who haven't yet spent entirely too much time in the sun without sunscreen: don't!)

I'll now have to drive (boo!) and so I turned to the always trustworthy and reliable google maps for directions. I typed in my starting address, and entered 3193 Howell Mill Rd, Atlanta Dermatalogic, as the destination.

Except google maps thought I just meant 3193 in Australia. So it told me to kayak across the pacific to get there. I couldn't get a screenshot of all of the directions, but at the top and bottom of the turn-by-turn directions are the best part, including 6,635 miles of kayaking:


The grand total of the kayaking, with the stretch between Japan and Australia, is 9,993 miles. I guess I could paddle around in circles upon reaching the Northern Territory to make up that additional seven miles.

Should I strap the car to the front or back of the kayak?

Window washing

This is just a random picture of the guy who yesterday was dangling a few feet away from me, albeit on the other side of the glass:

Not a job I envy. Especially since his rappelling and safety ropes didn't look to be in the best of shape.

Food and rain

It's raining. So here's some food!

This is the R&D for the beer-braised tofu that K and I are going to be cooking up soon.

The veggies: turnip, acorn squash, yukon gold potato, carrot, broccoli, golden beets, lemon, and a regular beet, raging with betacyanin.

Much cutting later, here are the veggies do a sauteango in the pan. Get it? Get it?

The fried tofu, about to get down with the veggies.

About to drop by for a drink:

No, it's not the best beer, but it was handy, inexpensive, and not bitter or super strong, so it wouldn't compete with the veggies.

Ready, set,

BRAISE!

The final product: beer braised tofu!

It was delicious, and definitely something I'll make again. Next time I'll skip the beet, as it colored the whole thing deep red. That pesky betacyanin, remember?

And here's last night's pre-dinner snack:

Before,

and after, with broccoli and garlic.

1000!

While it's not the first time I've ridden 1000 miles on a given bike or computer, today my mountain bike odometer went past 1000. I was riding down a moderately steep hill, so I wasn't paying consistent attention and didn't see it actually turn 1000, but I did see it read 1000.0.

About three miles earlier, I might have hit the fastest speed ever on that bike: 41.0 mph. (It's a really steep hill.)

Whee!

Earthquakes, militarism, and memory

The earthquake in Haiti is more tragedy for an already tragic country, and international aid (with and without automatic weapons at the ready) is beginning to pour in. Estimates of deaths are anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000+. While the outpouring of aid and support is clearly a good thing, I have to wonder how quickly Americans will forget about this, the way we forget about most disasters outside our borders.

Quick: what the last natural disaster that caused over 50,000 deaths? If you guessed the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China, you'd probably be right. 69,197 are confirmed dead, and more than 18,000 remain missing.

But did you remember the 2005 2005 Kashmir earthquake that caused an estimated 79,000 deaths, and left more than 3 million people homeless?

I really don't mean to minimize the deaths and suffering in Haiti. Though if I were Haitian, I'd be a little concerned about the relief personnel from the United States being so heavily military, including the 82nd Airborne, a Marine expeditionary force, and the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson. Let's not forget that the US occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934, or that this isn't the first time in recent memory that the 82nd Airborne has been knocking on Haiti's door, or even the first time this decade US Marines have dropped by.

Rather, the point which I'm making (probably somewhat poorly) is how quick we are to forget mass deaths when they are outside of our borders. We certainly haven't forgotten Hurricane Katrina, where 1,836 died and 700+ remain missing; we haven't forgotten September 11, where 2,992 died. Again, not to diminish the suffering in those events, but consider the relative scale.

It's a little like the American public getting all freaked out about 3 deaths from E. coli tainted spinach, or West Nile Virus (for which annual US deaths peaked at 284 in 2002, and were 28 last year), while somehow forgetting that somewhere around 5,700 people die every day of HIV/AIDS (who happen to be largely located in sub-Saharan Africa.) Or that around 2,400 people die every day from malaria (who happen to be largely located in sub-Saharan Africa.)

How long will it take before we forget Haiti again?

And aren't there better ways of assisting countries in need than combat troops?

Mittelschmerz was lonely

Mittelschmerz was lonely, so yesterday I brewed a companion, Sherwood Forest. "Woody" for short is an export/strong stout, and has French oak cubes soaking in bourbon for the upcoming secondary.

The fermentation, on the Mittselschmerz yeast cake (with Fermentis Safale S-04), has bordered on explosive.

Not a lot of pictures taken, but here are a couple of the lautering:

Basic lautering, pre-batch sparge.

Kinda looks like motor oil, eh?

Food.

Good looking, and pretty decent tasting, too! These are red peppers stuffed with tofu, garlic, crookneck squash, and roasted sunflower seeds:

Pretty enough, right?

Cut to make it prettier.

Fresh cilantro is pretty, too.

And the roasted green pepper-avocado "mayo" makes it prettier still!

Prison

Many of you know that I'm a prison abolitionist. I have to admit, though, that sometimes this position is tested when people who really, really deserve to be locked up in a cage do, indeed, get locked up.

Being conflicted about another human being locked up in a cage in a way that we don't even treat animals, however, doesn't translate to my being delighted that this former ER doc had his medical license automatically suspended due to the felony convictions. (It's a little unclear from his record whether his 2001 malpractice judgment for $138,943.25 also resulted in a license suspension.)

Gotta hand the homicidal maniac this, though: he does seem to like to go to trial. He went to trial and lost in the 2001 malpractice case, and still decided to try to even his record to 50/50 in the criminal case.

My incredibly kind and understanding and accommodating partner

If any of you ever wonder just how great J is, and how tolerant of my, errr, eccentricities, here is a picture of what our kitchen floor looked like in SLC, in early 2007:

mittelschmerz

I don't J really believed me when I told her about six months ago that I was going to name the first beer I brewed in our new home "mittelschmerz". (Look it up if you don't know what it means.) This is halfway between an English strong stock ale and and American strong ale. Get it? Get it?

Alright, it's not that useful or accurate of a name, but that has never stopped me before when naming my beers, so why start now?

The beer was a bit of an experiment: using a lot of dated ingredients, and dialing in my brewing system for the condo, which is close to the smallest space I've ever brewed in. The first condo we lived in in SLC was actually smaller and even more difficult, as the galley kitchen was about 4' by 8', and there was no useful outside space to mash or boil in. I dealt with that by doing countertop partial mashes, and we moved fairly quickly to a better brewing space.

Recipe, with visual aids:

Safale S-04, in a a yeast starter with 1/2 teaspoon yeast energizer, and 1/2 teaspoon DAP yeast nutrient:
I know, I know: you normally wouldn't do a starter using dry yeast. But this yeast is five months old, and came from a suspect source that unfortunately treats their product really badly, and even more unfortunately, is the only brewing supply shop in Atlanta proper. So I wanted to be sure it was in good shape before brewing. For example: they keep the hops at room temperature in clear plastic bags which don't look to have been nitrogen flushed or even sealed well. The $3.80 (!) Safale dry yeast sits warm on the shelf. Boo.

Moving on with the recipe:

15 # British pale malt (Crisp Maris Otter), which dates to 2008 in Anchorage from a source that treats their product much better.

I used the lazy, low-efficiency no-sparge method, so here is 10 gallons of water going into the mashtun to be heated to 161, with a target mash temp of 148:



Here in ATL, we have a nice but smallish balcony, and a newer flat-top stove, so I was hoping to mash on the balcony and then boil on the stove.

Unfortunately, the mash temperature calculator lied to me, and after dough-in, the mash was at 154: As it happens, this is really a better temperature for an English ale: I just like to mash lower for a more fermentable wort.

Here is the lautering:
Which is the lazy step, since all I did was transfer it from the mashtun to the boil kettle. The yield was basically perfect: just over 7 gallons, with a starting specific gravity of 1.053. Everything is amazingly on track!

But then, my hopes for our stove being able to manage a full-volume boil were dashed:
The stove has a front burner with a dual ring that gets hotter than shit (hot enough to flash fry on) so I hoped it would work. But after 40 minutes, the temperature of the wort had only risen from 150*F to 180*F, so the likelihood of being able to maintain a vigorous boil was looking pretty limited. And the building heat was causing weird, scary popping noises where the kettle was contacting the stove, so back to the balcony.

Moving along to the 60 minute boil, which for some reason I didn't bother to take any pictures of.

Hop bill:
1.5 ounces of Warrior, 17.1% AA, at 60 minutes.
1 ounce UK Challenger, 7% AA, at 15 minutes.
(to be dry hopped in secondary with 1 ounce East kent Golding, 4.5%)

And on to cooling the wort to 65*F:
The bizarre sci-fi looking wort chiller is my own cobbled together double chiller: it's two wort chillers tied together to increase surface area. The real application of the double chiller is to drop the first ring in a sink of ice water to make the cooling even more rapid, but I didn't get my shit together in time for this, so it was just a double chiller dropped in the drink.

I rapidly stirred the wort using a wine whip on a portable driver while chilling, which resulted in the wort going from near-boiling to 65*F in about four minutes. Yes, really.

And here it is in the fermenting bucket, with a near perfect final yield of almost exactly five gallons. Significant airlock activity was obvious within a couple hours, and this morning I had to take out the airlock and put sanitized foil over the hole due to super-vigorous fermentation clogging the airlock with hop gunk and trub.

And for those of you who are really, really, really bored, here is a short video of the current airlock activity, which I just replaced:


For a random experiment to dial in a new setup with old and somewhat questionable ingredients, it went amazingly well. Now we'll just have to see how it tastes.