GARDEN PORN!

See, I promised y'all some solid gardening porn, didn't I? I and DELIVERED, didn't I?

And oh, what the hell. How about some food porn?

Cameras. and tomatoes!

Okay, so in this post anyway, the tomatoes are really mostly a prop for the cameras. More gardening to follow!

This is comparing my existing digital camera, a Panasonic DMC ZS-19, 14.1mp, a nice camera that is about as feature-filled as you can get in a compact with the new, ultracompact Nikon S01 (10mp) I just bought because I really want something smaller and lighter I can carry around consistently in my pocket.

Both shots were taken with the camera on Auto mode, auto flash (neither fired), at the same distance. This is a screenshot, which of course has its own limitations, but shows the color represented the same way.

Really, the ultracompact S01 takes a pretty solid shot, at least in full daylight, with no zoom. (Haven't had the chance to compare them yet with moving subjects, in lower light, indoors, etc.) The green of the tomato plant is better represented in the more expensive and larger Panasonic, and the Nikon gets a little washed out at the outer edges (upper right) of the soil. But really, a pretty damn impressive showing for a camera that measures almost exactly 2" by 3" (smaller than a credit card!) and weighs only 3.4 ounces all in, with almost 8gb of internal memory. I prefer cameras I can take a memory card out of for easier downloading, but I'll deal.

What I really ought to do is another comparison that includes the DSLR Canon Rebel, and Canon Rebel XT.

I know: you're all waiting with baited breath, right?

Photoz

I think I might have some photos for you soon!

A few you've already seen, but I just set up the desktop computer yesterday after months in storage / boxes. This is copying the contents of the SD card (~720 items, ~3.5gb) from my main digital camera to the desktop so I can empty it.

Soak it up!

De-labeling bottles for future homebrew.

Revolution Doughnuts!

Decatur. Easter. Thunderstorms on the near horizon. Bikes!

Fancypants new raised beds!

All ready to get planted. Next week.

Raising raised beds!

One done on right, left is salvaged wood, about to get prettified with some oops paint.

Critical Mass!

Got to ride Critical Mass last night in Atlanta for the first time in a minute. It was a solid ride, but like any organism, after being kinda sleepy through the winter, the ride needed to find its pace again. It was way too damn fast at various points, massing up for entirely too long, and a couple people thinking they were the boss of it.

(Confidential to Whistle Man: this isn't a Saturday morning lycra & spandex training ride on the Silk Sheets, and you're not the ride leader. Leave the fucking whistle at home if you're going to use it to tell us what to do.)

Several times I actually called back, "no gods, no masters!" but Whistle Man was busily riding around to yell at other parts of the pack and didn't hear me.

A random guy on a motorcycle trike (3 wheel) playing loud music self-appointed himself an intersection corker about 2/3 of the way through the ride.

What would a bike ride be without stats? I counted 117 people at the start, and we gained a few more. My ride total was about 17.8 miles, though I peeled off a little early when there was still a good sized pack.

Good stuff.

Raised bed #2

Well, #1, in the sense that i completed it yesterday. This is the main one in the front yard, 8'x2', for peppers, tomatoes, and greens.

Raised bed!

More to come. This is the kitchen garden for the front porch.

More boats!

Some more boating!

This is the first boat I drove. 

 This is the second (of four) and my favorite of the bunch.

This is a creepy-ass dry erase board at the entrance to the boat dock. Not quite suicide food, more like homicide food. 

FOOOOOOOOOD PORN! (and... onions.)

It's been a while, I know. So here's a hefty helping o' food porn!

Friends were coming over for dinner last night, so I started up a big ol' batch of tofu red curry. From left to right: garlic, tofu, onions.

Getting closer, with some broccoli and zucchini prepped. 

Here's the hugeass pot of red curry on the far right, with bowls of brown rice prepped, arugula salad, and green onions for garnish.

Dinner time!

And an obligatory, if utterly gratuitous, shot of ONIONS! (From today. Not last night. But I know y'all love onions.)
.

Things as certain as death and taxes, can be more firmly believed.

I spent the last six hours doing taxes. Nothing much interesting to report, except the musical playlist:

Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon
Tom Waits: Small Change
Nirvana: MTV Unplugged
Land of Talk: Cloak and Cipher
Guns & Roses: Appetite for Destruction
Decemberists: The King is Dead
National Public Radio: All Things Considered

Boating

Where i spent most of today learning and practicing low and high speed maneuvers in powerboats. Big fun times!

We'll see how this goes

From left (top?) Gaelic, habanero, serrano, eggplant, and tofu. Eeeeeek!

Okay, okay:

It's not all onions, all the time. We love mushrooms too!

ONIONS!

Now... cooking.

ONIONS!

ONIONS!

878 IBU

In advance of teaching a homebrewing class next month, I need to do an extract with speciality grain brew to remember how to do i. (Really, to make sure I've re-assembled all of the needed equipment from around the Atlanta metro area.)

It's gonna be a classic "garbage pail" IPA, based on the hops I have in the freezer. Some of which date to 2007. And a five pound bag of extra light DME I've been carting around since 2008.

Hope this is good enough for you hopheads.

Pickling. Yo.

Hey faithful readers!!! I know, it's been a while since I did a substantive (read: food porn) post. (And hey, unfaithful readers. I guess you're not likely to read this anyway. So why am I even talking to you? Weird.)

I've been... busy?

Since what I would consider my last substantive post, January 19, I've been in St. Louis, Vermont, DC, and Arizona. SO CUT ME SOME SLACK. (Or, don't: since most of you never leave comments, it kinda doesn't matter. Prod. Prod.)

I'm not sure if this will qualify as a substantive post, but you know, you gotta take what you can get.

And, three moves in three months, but we're now in a great space where there is actually room to cook, pickle, and homebrew!

Anyway, I had some time on my hands today while I waited for a chapter to show up for some copyediting that I'm doing (yes, it's a paid gig.) So i did some pickling!

The start of kimchi. Carrots on the left, about to join the radish and napa cabbage in the brine bath. 

Then I pickled approximately a metric shitton of jalapenos. That's the pickling liquid (apple cider vinegar, water, peppercorns, bay leaves, garlic, salt, sugar) in the saucepan on the right.

Here are the now pickling jalapenos in the jar, and some leftovers which will probably go in to the kimchi tonight.

Phoenix hotels:

Are strange.

Opening day

Of the Cactus League, Peoria, Arizona.

Ham Sandwich Nation

-->

While I disagree with the implication that even a reformed grand jury system is the way to deal with it, I otherwise agree with almost everything Glenn Harlan Reynolds writes in Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything Is a Crime.

As former chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals, Sol Wachtler, was famously quoted in Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, "a grand jury would 'indict a ham sandwich,' if that's what you wanted.” (Notably, Wachtler said this before he was charged with extortion, racketeering, and blackmail.)

I especially agree with Reynolds on this:
"Our criminal justice system, as presently practiced, is basically a plea-bargain system with actual trials of guilt or innocence a bit of showy froth floating on top."
Check out the six page paper here at SSRN. 

Vegan and beer STL

And it's about 12 degrees outside. Eek!

Vegan hotel room dinner

It's 22 outside here in STL, and the walk to the store was bracing. So it's nice to sit inside, watch bad television, eat surprisingly tasty supermarket food, and go to sleep early.

Blast from the past: inauguration

On the eve of another inauguration, I thought I'd re-post this exciting blast from the past.

http://dangr.blogspot.com/2009/01/terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad.html

I'm SO damn glad to not be there tomorrow.

Whaddya want? WE KNOW WHAT YOU WANT!

To be as responsive as possible to our readers, it's food porn all day here in the dangr.blogspot.com world headquarters!

Clockwise from bottom right: twice stuffed baked potato with Daiya, veganaise with chili-garlic sauce, fried marinated tofu on top. This was leftovers dinner. yay!

TOFU TOFU TOFU! Overnight marinated tofu on the left, same partially baked in our adorable but slow toaster oven. (Confidential to E&K: DON'T JUDGE. The lines were stronger before I turned the pieces over to put them back in the toaster oven. I swear.)

Overnight salt-soaked russet potatoes with garlic and rosemary. Not yet done: finished images MAY follow.

CRITICALLY IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS:
The food porn will continue until morale improves. That is all.

Facebook

I'm struggling. Most of you know I hate detest despise loathe Facebook. Many a time I've called it the downfall of modern society.

I'm now struggling with the fact that to best do some volunteer work for my beloved college, I might need it.

This is a partial transcript of my conversation with J last night (who, incidentally, does has the FB Word.)

Tofupalooza!

This is grilled tofu. Also have tofu roasting, and frying. Potluck tonight!

Good ol' fashioned FOOD PORN!

Alright, friends: I spent much of today working on stuff for my college (which as many of you know, I love) and don't have a ton of original stuff to post. So how about we do FOOD PORN?!?

Frying tofu and mushrooms on the left, tempeh bourguignon (from the delightful cookbook/graphic novel Dirt Candy Cookbook) on the right.  The bourguignon was amazing: deep, rich, flavorful. I couldn't resist messing with the recipe, of course, and substituted additional (cheap) wine whenever water was called for.

Grilled zucchini, "hot dogs" and "sausage", beer, a great book, bear-sized pepper spray. What more do you possibly need? 

Baking potatoes to make an extremely complicated, and very delicious, "Roasted Potato Soup", also from Dirt Candy.)

Two different iterations of vegetable stock from Dirt Candy, for the Roasted Potato Soup above. Oh, and approximately a metric shitton of garlic.

 LEFTOVERS! Yeah, that's right: this is at least half leftovers. Vegan hot dog, and an arugula salad with roasted portobello mushrooms with a kimchi dressing, and apples (pictured right).

Enough leftovers to make J's lunch! That's the bourguignon on brown rice on the left, and the above-mentioned arugula salad on the right with grilled broccolini.

I don't have any decent images of the appetizer I made for the party we went to last night, but here are the tags. It was... delicious.

A neat kickstarter

Many of you know my of interest in alternative and modular housing. This is a really cool Kickstarter page for a project called AbleNook which I recently backed.

More information and additional images available on the AbleNook website.

Brooklyn toilet repair

Yes, you're seeing that correctly: that's a shower curtain hook.

Sometimes you have to get creative.

It actually works perfectly, and has me thinking about all the cheap, crappy, failure-prone chains and plastic connections in the guts of toilets.

Blossom Cafe vegan BBQ cheeseburger

It was slightly spendy ($14) but fucking delicious. It was, in fairness, the West Village, so $14 with side greens isn't out of line with local prices.

About to go do an hour or so of meeting, then hopefully get the rest of the weekend off. We'll see.

Vegan Manhattan Mediterranean!

Close, easy, delicious.

Ohhhh, New York.

Oh Brooklyn. Oh Williamsburg. Oh Irony.