Booze Pie!

Continuing in our series of photogenic foods, here we have a "Shady Lady" cordial pie, a truly delightful concoction. It's essentially a merangue / whipped cream filling, full of booze and a little bit of gelatin to set the whole thing, in a chocolate graham cracker crust. Mmmm.

Check out the link for the story of the recipe (Thanks, Dad!) and a whole chart of variations. We're going to attempt the eggnog version for the lab holiday party - it may be the only form in which I'm willing to consume eggnog.

Do all Canadian bands have a pirate song?

Check it out! It's a music video for "Last Pirate of the Saskatchewan", featuring Captain Tractor, my new favorite Canadian celtic-punk-folk-rock band!

The guy who made the video got it wrong - the Arrogant Worms did a lovely cover of this tune, but it's originally a Captain Tractor number. However, he gets full credit for cool use of video game technology.

A Memorable Anniversary

Ten Thanksgivings ago (ten years ago on Thanksgiving), near as I can figure, Hot Pants there came up to me, looking for an expert opinion on washtub bass construction. He had the washtub and the broomstick, but was operating under the delusion that the stick went in the middle, with the string on the rim. This, of course, is wrong. I set him straight, and we proceeded to Cowcliffes, where, in one of the most dangerous activities I have ever personally embarked on, we took a string out of the doughnut machine and put together the first version of Delores, the lovingly hand-crafted washtub bass.

I'm not entirely certain of the date, but I'm sure it was the fall of 1996, probably sometime near Thanksgiving or Halloween, and it was definitely on a Sunday. Certainly, while Pants and I were plunking out our first rendition of the "San Francisco Bay Blues", we were surprised by the appearance of Genny Nesslage bursting through the doors in full Rocky Horror regalia. Kommittee was meeting, you see, and it was an in-costume meeting, presided over by Rayhawk in his Viking helmet. Genny insisted we play, and after some hemming and hawing, we did. It was probably awful.

Regardless, we caught the attention of Roman and a few other passersby (including Brian Gohackie on the jug, apparently, although he didn't stick around), and made as much noise as we could manage. And that, children, is the story of how the Prudence Risley Travelling Moonshine Orchestra - a surprisingly successful exercise in meeting pretty girls and learning to play the guitar while mildly drunk - was born.

In celebration, here is a video clip from the famed Fulton Chocolate Festival concert. I don't know what's up with the funny fade-in at the beginning, but it turns out to be surprisingly time-consuming to generate these things with my creaky old computer. You can get the essence of the thing. It was a good time, and you really haven't lived until you've been paid in chocolate pizza by terrifying children dressed as Oompa-Loompas. Or at least you haven't fully grasped the oddness of reality.

Hope you're all having a good holiday weekend!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, things were pleasantly quiet in the Gray and Taylor household this Thanksgiving, and I think we have to call it a success, even though it was just the two of us. We'll certainly have leftovers to last us the rest of the week, if only because I don't know how to make seafood bisque for a party of fewer than 12. Ah, well. It did turn out well. We got some nice scallops on sale at the new Trader Joe's, and they were the highlight of the dish. The garlic bread turned out well, too.

We gave the cats some juice and meat from the can of salmon I tossed in there, but it only confused them. They were expecting tuna, and weren't at all sure about this new fish. Kaiyo ate his, but Tobu just drank the juice. Not an adventurous soul, that cat.





The turkey was a bit experimental. We got a 3 pound turkey breast, rubbed it with Penzey's Bavarian spice rub, strapped some bacon to it, and rotisserried the sucker in our little George Foreman electric rotisserrie. Mmmmm. Mashed sweet potatoes and broccoli on the side were pretty easy. We cut corners a little with the stuffing - it's StoveTop, but it was good.

I think I need to start tying bacon to more foods. We have declared bacon to be the new Official Condiment of the House.





Pumpkin pie seemed a fitting close to the day. We're both nicely filled, but not overstuffed. It's nice to have a big Thanksgiving party with firends and family, but this was a much-needed break for us. It's good to have a day off with nothing to do but cook every once in a while.

Yumminess

Fridays have become our eating out nights. We generally cook a lot on the weekends, and then again on Tuesday, but the rest of the week is kind of hectic, and by Friday we've almost always run out of leftovers. Anita also refuses to eat the same food more than 3 days in a row. (A totally unreasonable position, if you ask me.)

Tonight, we went for the second time to Osteria Papavero, the new Tuscan bistro on Wilson Street. Lovely little place. All of their food is either locally grown or shipped in from Tuscany. The food is really high quality stuff, but comes in small portions so that it's actually quite affordable.

We started out with a salsify flan with pecorino fondue as an appetizer, followed by (for me) chicken deboned, stuffed with kale and egg, and wrapped in proscuitto on a bed of rosemary roasted potatoes or (for Anita) baccalaó with polenta. Wine on the side - a nice Barbera (dense fruit with clove notes) for me and a roseto (a sort of slightly sweet Italian rosé) for Anita.

Every now and then we like to pretend we've got a high-class lifestyle. The fact that I was wearing my clunky boots and farmer jacket may have detracted from that a little bit, but they didn't kick us out for breaking the dress code, so I figure it was OK.

Yes! And Yes! But that means...

Heard back from the reviewers - we're in! With revisions due as soon as possible, plus one or two more experiments...

The new protein overexpresses fine, and I've got 160 milligrams of it digesting in the coldroom. Which means I need to set up crystal trials on Monday. Nothing's more fun than a solid 4 hours at 4°C.

Oh, and there's that prelim to schedule.

If only I had a stronger work ethic, this would all be fine. Dang it.

Adventures in Photogenic Cuisine, Part 1

Anita made a super tasty dinner tonight! It's all from Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet, this amazing Southeast Asian cookbook my parents got for us last Hannukah. What we've got here is Vietnamese grilled pork balls (with some sweet chili sauce for dipping) and silky coconut-pumpkin soup. The soup is amazing - the liquid is half chicken broth and half coconut milk, and the "pumpkin" is actually a sort of squash which is almost (but not quite) a Japanese kabocha. The pork balls are quite a concoction, actually. They have a flavor powder made from toasted jasmine rice, kaffir lime leaves, and lemon grass in them, which necessitated elaborate cleaning rituals for the coffee grinder to prepare the stuff. I hear that it was an epic project. I just ate the final product, and it was good.

Kaiyo thought he might be able to get some, but he was wrong. He completely failed to demonstrate proper chopstick etiquette.

A man, a plan, a cat, a ham, a yak, a yam, a hat, a canal — Panama!

Check this out. More palindromes than you can shake a stick at, and lots of ones I hadn't seen before.

P.S. Fear not, proper adventures will ensue shortly. Just emerging from under the summer work schedule is taking some time. Pfui. Time to take life by the horns and, uh, try not to get gored too badly! Right! Onward...

Leaning back towards sanity

Not too bad. Not too bad at all. Here's hoping we've started a trend.

Step 1...

The editorial board of PNAS has decided my paper is interesting enough for them to actually consider publishing! Woo-hoo!

Now it's off to peer review. Maybe a month until we hear whether it's accepted or rejected, but at least we're through the first step.

Also, Gary Roberts (a professor on my committee) said my prelim proposal was "not too painful to read". Academia is a wonderful, nurturing environment. He pointed out some places where I was being stupid, too, so we'll count it as an all-around win.