Thursday, January 26, 2006
Cool things, I’m official! It actually didn’t get posted until just a few days ago, but I have been officially granted by the University of Southern California, a Masters Degree. Even got the official thingy in the mail. Not as out-and-out *manly* a document as I had been hoping, but they do have some neat little frames you can order. I may pick one up. I don’t have what you might call a lot of *love* for USC, but it’s a nice degree, and I might as well make it obvious that I DID A LOT OF WORK AND I’M TOTALLY SMRT!
Car: Serviced. Took some doing, but it got done. I’ve been going to a Mazda dealership to get my car totally and officially checked at big, checkpoint mileage points, and I’m coming up on 30K miles, so I decided to get that particular benchmark done and out of the way. Well, I drove up to my favorite spot, only to note that they are…no longer there. Yeah, gone! No more. Whoops.
So J(5) and I found another place to get my car serviced, then she was kind enough to follow me there and drive me around while I was without car. We actually spent most of the time, though, on the pretty darn famous Santa Monica Pier, and surrounding areas. (3rd Street Promenade, for those who care). I’ve been here for a while, but I’ve never checked that place out before. Few street performers, few…gentlemen in transitional periods…stuff like that. It was quite pretty, and the kind of important LA landmark that one just *has* to see, eventually, at least.
We stopped by a bookstore while on the promenade and I picked up the latest edition of Electronic Musician, which is important because it has the Editors Choice awards for 2006, which is a great way to start looking at the equipment to make my dream studio become reality. I found one really great piece of equipment, and a few others that look intriguing, as well as a few other questions that need to be asked and answered by me. I’m on the way.
Saturday, J(5) and I were going to go swimming (for exercise and fun!) but it turned out the pool was busy, with Water Polo! I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that J(5) played a LOT of water polo back in high school and college, but she did. She’s a pretty great swimmer, and seeing people going at it was getting her blood boiling for water polo again. Well, we sat there, watched the game for a while, and J(5) explained the basics of the rules to me. After a while, I was getting into it too. I was cheering for the team that had a left hander on it, and they were doing some mopping UP with the other team. Eventually we took off, though, because it was a whole, long tournament, and we weren’t going to be able to get our water time in.
We hit the library after that, and I picked up some more Pratchett, as well as a couple of other books. Saw a whole bunch of other books on various *awesome* subjects, but I’m trying to keep my checkout list a bit shorter, if only to keep myself out of trouble with checkout times. Course, I’ve already chewed up all the books I checked out, so I can already go back for more. Whee!
Next day, met at my place, soaked in the Jacuzzi for a while, did some more reading; it was a pretty lazy day. I got some running in, and I did a lot better. Same incline, and my three mile time was right around 33 minutes, and that’s with a pretty tough incline. I kept running for a while after that, working on that stamina, but my foot started hurting, so I kept it short. Not sure what’s wrong with it, feels just like a tweak or a strain somewhere along the top, oddly enough, of my foot. I’ve been walking a little gingerly, cause it tends to come and go, but it’s definitely a lot better, so I should be able to go to TKD tonight, though I’m going to be a little light on the toes for a while, just in case.
J(5), on the other hand, is not doing so well. She’s thinking bronchitis. Lots of coughing, and lots of not feeling good, which is unfortunate, because there’s really nothing I can do to help, and I do like helping. What is fortunate, though, is that what I can do to help mostly involves hugging and brushing hair and reading books and making comfortable. I can do that.
At work: turned in a ‘letter of verification’ (which pretty much just says: ‘yes, he has his degree’) to the HR people, so with some luck I’ll be getting a raise soon. Quite nice, but the best reward by far has definitely been not having to do school anymore. I’m looking into some community college classes, and I’m torn between Intro to Japanese and Stand Up Comedy. So much totally fun stuff to do, and so significantly much more time in which to do it! It’s a good time to be me.
-N
Car: Serviced. Took some doing, but it got done. I’ve been going to a Mazda dealership to get my car totally and officially checked at big, checkpoint mileage points, and I’m coming up on 30K miles, so I decided to get that particular benchmark done and out of the way. Well, I drove up to my favorite spot, only to note that they are…no longer there. Yeah, gone! No more. Whoops.
So J(5) and I found another place to get my car serviced, then she was kind enough to follow me there and drive me around while I was without car. We actually spent most of the time, though, on the pretty darn famous Santa Monica Pier, and surrounding areas. (3rd Street Promenade, for those who care). I’ve been here for a while, but I’ve never checked that place out before. Few street performers, few…gentlemen in transitional periods…stuff like that. It was quite pretty, and the kind of important LA landmark that one just *has* to see, eventually, at least.
We stopped by a bookstore while on the promenade and I picked up the latest edition of Electronic Musician, which is important because it has the Editors Choice awards for 2006, which is a great way to start looking at the equipment to make my dream studio become reality. I found one really great piece of equipment, and a few others that look intriguing, as well as a few other questions that need to be asked and answered by me. I’m on the way.
Saturday, J(5) and I were going to go swimming (for exercise and fun!) but it turned out the pool was busy, with Water Polo! I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that J(5) played a LOT of water polo back in high school and college, but she did. She’s a pretty great swimmer, and seeing people going at it was getting her blood boiling for water polo again. Well, we sat there, watched the game for a while, and J(5) explained the basics of the rules to me. After a while, I was getting into it too. I was cheering for the team that had a left hander on it, and they were doing some mopping UP with the other team. Eventually we took off, though, because it was a whole, long tournament, and we weren’t going to be able to get our water time in.
We hit the library after that, and I picked up some more Pratchett, as well as a couple of other books. Saw a whole bunch of other books on various *awesome* subjects, but I’m trying to keep my checkout list a bit shorter, if only to keep myself out of trouble with checkout times. Course, I’ve already chewed up all the books I checked out, so I can already go back for more. Whee!
Next day, met at my place, soaked in the Jacuzzi for a while, did some more reading; it was a pretty lazy day. I got some running in, and I did a lot better. Same incline, and my three mile time was right around 33 minutes, and that’s with a pretty tough incline. I kept running for a while after that, working on that stamina, but my foot started hurting, so I kept it short. Not sure what’s wrong with it, feels just like a tweak or a strain somewhere along the top, oddly enough, of my foot. I’ve been walking a little gingerly, cause it tends to come and go, but it’s definitely a lot better, so I should be able to go to TKD tonight, though I’m going to be a little light on the toes for a while, just in case.
J(5), on the other hand, is not doing so well. She’s thinking bronchitis. Lots of coughing, and lots of not feeling good, which is unfortunate, because there’s really nothing I can do to help, and I do like helping. What is fortunate, though, is that what I can do to help mostly involves hugging and brushing hair and reading books and making comfortable. I can do that.
At work: turned in a ‘letter of verification’ (which pretty much just says: ‘yes, he has his degree’) to the HR people, so with some luck I’ll be getting a raise soon. Quite nice, but the best reward by far has definitely been not having to do school anymore. I’m looking into some community college classes, and I’m torn between Intro to Japanese and Stand Up Comedy. So much totally fun stuff to do, and so significantly much more time in which to do it! It’s a good time to be me.
-N
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Not terribly much more to report, actually. It’s been a nice, slow couple of weeks. I’ve gotten some more writing done, played some games, and done a lot of reading of Terry Pratchett books. I finally figured out that an easier way of reading them, rather than buying them myself, is simply borrowing them from my friendly local library. So last weekend when J(5) and I went swimming, we strolled over next door to the library and I picked up a library card and a couple of the earlier Terry Pratchett books, one that contained the first four books about Rincewind (incompetent wizard extraordinaire) and the first of the books about the witches, Wyrd Sisters. Good to get some of that early Diskworld history under my belt, and good readings all around.
So, yes, there’s been a lot of reading, some writing, some playing of games, and some cooking. I was planning to experiment with some fish dishes, but I found myself light on ingredients and so, per the tradition of the dish, I decided to make a roast. Not a crockpot roast, though the method ends up being very similar, I bought a cut of meat off the shoulder, seared it, and then used the drippings and a collection of *completely random* items out of my kitchen to make the ‘sauce’. That’s the idea, really, just use whatever you happen to have around. My roast braising sauce contained:
Onions
Carrots
Garlic
Red wine
Tomato Soup
Rasins
Artichoke Hearts
and Cumin
I cooked it in a tin foil pouch and, and this is my most favorite clever part, drained the juice and added some of the bits and pieces from the roast, smacked the thing with my food processor and BAM! Instant gravy. It’s another Good Eats recipe. Turned out all right, but next time I’m preparing it in the morning and letting it cook all day. It was good, but not totally fall-apart-y, like I really like my roasts to be. You still need a knife to eat it. But all the randomness totally came together. Okay, it wasn’t totally random. Wine and tomatoes go great together, and the artichoke hearts all went into the gravy. There’s a system at work, here.
Next up, promise, is fish. I was going to do it next, but I felt the spirit of the roast calling me, being the sort of thing that you generally just make with whatever is lying around an ill-stocked kitchen. But next time, fish, promise. I’m thinking pan fry of a filet or broiling of a steak. Simple to start out with. There’s some Good Eats recipes for both of those methods, though I may diverge a bit for my first run with ‘em. There’s a lot of butter in the pan fry.
What else, hmm…
Writing is coming along, not doing quite as much drumming as I might otherwise like. I always feel bad doing it later in the night. They’re electronic, but it still makes a noise when you hit a pad with a stick. I’m also starting to look into building the audio studio especially as Electronic Musician (magazine) just came out with their ‘editors choice’ awards for 2005. Good place to get a list of some of the best the industry has to offer. Probably a good time to get my subscription to them going again, too. I’m starting to get excited about music again. This is good stuff!
J(5) and I continue along. She really likes that I’m learning to cook. Repeated for emphasis: she *really* likes that I’m learning to cook. She also sends out a grand THANK YOU to sister S for the redicu-awesome egg nog French toast idea. They came out great, and much more solid, being as the bread was a little stale. Good idea, stale bread for that.
Starting to toss around ideas for my first Valentines day EVER with a girl to celebrate with. Exciting, no? I have some ideas, clever ideas, I might even go so far as to say. Don’t want to go too overboard, though; simplicity and perfection over quantity and gaudiness.
Well, an excellent life continues along. I’ll keep you all informed.
-N
So, yes, there’s been a lot of reading, some writing, some playing of games, and some cooking. I was planning to experiment with some fish dishes, but I found myself light on ingredients and so, per the tradition of the dish, I decided to make a roast. Not a crockpot roast, though the method ends up being very similar, I bought a cut of meat off the shoulder, seared it, and then used the drippings and a collection of *completely random* items out of my kitchen to make the ‘sauce’. That’s the idea, really, just use whatever you happen to have around. My roast braising sauce contained:
Onions
Carrots
Garlic
Red wine
Tomato Soup
Rasins
Artichoke Hearts
and Cumin
I cooked it in a tin foil pouch and, and this is my most favorite clever part, drained the juice and added some of the bits and pieces from the roast, smacked the thing with my food processor and BAM! Instant gravy. It’s another Good Eats recipe. Turned out all right, but next time I’m preparing it in the morning and letting it cook all day. It was good, but not totally fall-apart-y, like I really like my roasts to be. You still need a knife to eat it. But all the randomness totally came together. Okay, it wasn’t totally random. Wine and tomatoes go great together, and the artichoke hearts all went into the gravy. There’s a system at work, here.
Next up, promise, is fish. I was going to do it next, but I felt the spirit of the roast calling me, being the sort of thing that you generally just make with whatever is lying around an ill-stocked kitchen. But next time, fish, promise. I’m thinking pan fry of a filet or broiling of a steak. Simple to start out with. There’s some Good Eats recipes for both of those methods, though I may diverge a bit for my first run with ‘em. There’s a lot of butter in the pan fry.
What else, hmm…
Writing is coming along, not doing quite as much drumming as I might otherwise like. I always feel bad doing it later in the night. They’re electronic, but it still makes a noise when you hit a pad with a stick. I’m also starting to look into building the audio studio especially as Electronic Musician (magazine) just came out with their ‘editors choice’ awards for 2005. Good place to get a list of some of the best the industry has to offer. Probably a good time to get my subscription to them going again, too. I’m starting to get excited about music again. This is good stuff!
J(5) and I continue along. She really likes that I’m learning to cook. Repeated for emphasis: she *really* likes that I’m learning to cook. She also sends out a grand THANK YOU to sister S for the redicu-awesome egg nog French toast idea. They came out great, and much more solid, being as the bread was a little stale. Good idea, stale bread for that.
Starting to toss around ideas for my first Valentines day EVER with a girl to celebrate with. Exciting, no? I have some ideas, clever ideas, I might even go so far as to say. Don’t want to go too overboard, though; simplicity and perfection over quantity and gaudiness.
Well, an excellent life continues along. I’ll keep you all informed.
-N
Sunday, January 08, 2006
I've been cooking. No, really, I have proof!
This is from last weekend. Several years ago I saw a 'Good Eats Meatloaf' that looked just totally delicious and I asked for it for my birthday dinner. Well, it didn't quite come out as uber-delicious as we would have liked, it ended up pretty overcooked. Well I decided, as one of my first little cooking experiments, to try re-making that same meatloaf to see if I couldn't get it *right*. I bought the chuck whole, but the sirloin I could only get ground. My new food processor made quick work of the chuck, though, as well as all the veggies and pretty much everything else.
This time, it came out quite good, very flavorfull and nice. It turned into a whole long line of incredibly manly meatloaf sandwiches. You'll also note the use of both the probe themometer, a christmas present, and the food processor for the above recipie. Merry christmas to me!
Next Good Eats experiment (I'm obsessed with that show!) was 'The Chewey', a variation on your classic cookie designed to be chewey and delicious and soft, which, as both J(5) and I agree, is the best possible cookie outcome. We followed the recipie, made it up, and created a line of cookies so chewey they were barely solid. They met with rave reviews from both myself, J(5), and pretty much everyone we work with, which is what we ended up doing with most of the other cookies. Sorry, no pictures, they just went too fast. They looked pretty much like the cookies on the front of the bag of Toll House cookies, though. And they tasted great.
And then there were ribs.
Another Good Eats recipie. This time for Baby Back Ribs. You create a rub, mostly brown sugar, salt, and chili powder, rub it on your ribs and then wrap them in aluminum foil. Then you make a braising sauce while the ribs are getting ready, and pour it into the pouches with the ribs. Cook them long and slow and then...
...Reduce the whole thing into a sauce! Then you brush that back on the ribs, stick it under the broiler so it can 'gel' a bit, and then EAT IT! EAT IT ALL! THEY WERE SO GOOD!
And I didn't nearly eat all of them. I had been looking for pork ribs for a while, and I finally found them at Cosco, which meant I got *three* whole rib racks. Cooked them all! I'll have leftovers for days.
Also, bought 'The Movies', a game that has been peeking my interest for a while. Yay for that. Played that and some Black and White 2, the latter keeping me up until nearly 6 in the morning on friday. I don't do that often, but it's really fun in moderation.
Nothing much of note coming up, cept that I need to get, my car and my teeth and the rest of my body serviced. Foolish of me to have all this medical coverage and not use it.
-N
This is from last weekend. Several years ago I saw a 'Good Eats Meatloaf' that looked just totally delicious and I asked for it for my birthday dinner. Well, it didn't quite come out as uber-delicious as we would have liked, it ended up pretty overcooked. Well I decided, as one of my first little cooking experiments, to try re-making that same meatloaf to see if I couldn't get it *right*. I bought the chuck whole, but the sirloin I could only get ground. My new food processor made quick work of the chuck, though, as well as all the veggies and pretty much everything else. This time, it came out quite good, very flavorfull and nice. It turned into a whole long line of incredibly manly meatloaf sandwiches. You'll also note the use of both the probe themometer, a christmas present, and the food processor for the above recipie. Merry christmas to me!
Next Good Eats experiment (I'm obsessed with that show!) was 'The Chewey', a variation on your classic cookie designed to be chewey and delicious and soft, which, as both J(5) and I agree, is the best possible cookie outcome. We followed the recipie, made it up, and created a line of cookies so chewey they were barely solid. They met with rave reviews from both myself, J(5), and pretty much everyone we work with, which is what we ended up doing with most of the other cookies. Sorry, no pictures, they just went too fast. They looked pretty much like the cookies on the front of the bag of Toll House cookies, though. And they tasted great.
And then there were ribs.
Another Good Eats recipie. This time for Baby Back Ribs. You create a rub, mostly brown sugar, salt, and chili powder, rub it on your ribs and then wrap them in aluminum foil. Then you make a braising sauce while the ribs are getting ready, and pour it into the pouches with the ribs. Cook them long and slow and then...
...Reduce the whole thing into a sauce! Then you brush that back on the ribs, stick it under the broiler so it can 'gel' a bit, and then EAT IT! EAT IT ALL! THEY WERE SO GOOD!And I didn't nearly eat all of them. I had been looking for pork ribs for a while, and I finally found them at Cosco, which meant I got *three* whole rib racks. Cooked them all! I'll have leftovers for days.
Also, bought 'The Movies', a game that has been peeking my interest for a while. Yay for that. Played that and some Black and White 2, the latter keeping me up until nearly 6 in the morning on friday. I don't do that often, but it's really fun in moderation.
Nothing much of note coming up, cept that I need to get, my car and my teeth and the rest of my body serviced. Foolish of me to have all this medical coverage and not use it.
-N
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Vacation over! Back to work, slaves!
I spent the tail end of my vacation relaxing, for the most part. I played some PS2 games, obvious enough. I also went out to buy some kitchen essentials. I’ve been watching a lot of ‘good eats’, a cooking show on cable. Once I cancelled my cable bill, good eats was the first thing I went out to buy to replace my cable experience. It’s a great show, presenting cooking as a whole, rather than just specific recipes. It teaches you how to cook, going over important fundamentals and going over the food science fundamentals that eventually lead to people making up their own additions or edits to recipes. It also presents of stuff on good cooking gear, and Alton Brown (host) often extols the virtues of ‘restaurant supply stores’.
Here’s my review of restaurant supply stores:
Little more than an awesome, huge, kitchen stores, you really have to steel yourself a little bit before you go into these places. First, the prices, at least at the place I went to, are higher than other places. As near as I can tell, that’s for two reasons. For one, it is a specialty store, and for two, the items they’re selling are of pretty darn high quality. These are heirloom-caliber pieces here. I bought some half-sheet pans that I’ll probably be able to use for the next ten or twenty years. I also picked up a fairly manly cast iron skillet, working under the theory that I should get one that’s a little small and one that’s a little big, to cover my bases. (10 inch skillets are pretty small).
I picked up a few other small odds and ends here and there, a dough blade and bowl scraper, but the selection at this place is absolutely ludicrous, and all pieces are of quite high quality and construction. I’d recommend going here if you want to buy a pot or pan that you’ll never have to buy again, the kind of thing you can use over and over and over and every day that’ll never break down. What I would *not* recommend is picking up common, everyday items here. If you’re just looking for a standard edition hand-or-stand mixer that you might pick up at a wall mart, I can guarantee that the big store will have better prices. I stopped by a Bed/Bath/Beyond store a while ago to look for cast iron, and I didn’t see any. I stopped at a different one afterwards and actually found cast iron, and for a bit less than what I had paid. Unfortunate, but that’s just the price of a good lesson.
What I will heartily endorse is heading off to a restaurant supply to buy something for the last time. If you make a lot of soup, your big pot is starting to show some wear, and you’re thinking of upgrading, hit up a restaurant supply store. Not only do they have the sort of freaky-huge specialty items that (almost) only restaurants use, but everything is quality, because restaurants can’t afford to be replacing their stuff. Upgrade from Rubbermaid to Lexane containers, quite literally bulletproof! Make sauces? Buy some squeeze bottles for dispensing. Ice cream scoops in *standard measuring qualities*, for precise scooping! It’s easy to get lost in this place, just wandering around and grabbing stuff because it’s freaking awesome, for crying out loud! Not to mention that if you really do want a 55 gallon stand mixer, a supply store may be the only place to pick it up. I actually saw one, sitting right in front of the store. It had one of those spiral mixer attachments that was as thick as my arm! I could have taken a nap in the bowl!
Plus, if you’re into cooking, they can be really fun to just walk around and gawk in. Just try not to spend too much.
Hey, can someone hit me with some cooking advice? My last sheet pan would get oil cooked onto it that would eventually turn black and a bit nasty-looking. Is that normal, just standard wear-and-tear on a sheet pan? Should I perhaps be making a habit of lining the thing with aluminum foil or parchment paper (silicon coated, available at your local restaurant supply store) to keep it clean, or is aesthetic wear-and-tear just the way of the sheet pan?
Pretty much the last ‘kitchen essential’ I need is a stand mixer and then perhaps a hand mixer too. There are a few things a hand mixer can do that a stand mixer can’t, but I think I’d get more use out of one of those awesome kitchen aid mixers I’ve seen around. They’re reportedly quite good, solid tools, even at the consumer level, and they’ve got something on the order of a billion attachments. And when I go out to get one of these, I will do so at a mass-market store, because I’ll get a better deal there on common stuff. See? I learned something!
I did some writing, and I think I’ve pretty much wrapped up chapter 10 of my novel-in-progress. I may add some stuff to it though, so it’s not quite ‘release-quality’ yet. Soon, though. Also played the drums. Went through a bunch of drum fundamentals (the ‘scales’ of the drumming kingdom) and played some DrumMania and then just beat along with some songs. Good exercise.
Those of you that watched the news this weekend might have spotted something about the fact that it rained in California this week, and the state exploded. For those of you concerned, weathered the storm (ha) just fine. It certainly was pretty rainy for a while though, and I saw the Los Angeles River with actual water in it, so good that that thing still works and now, presumably, is just a little bit cleaner. I also caught a couple of public advisories on the telley whilst I was watching some college bowl game or another this weekend, first a flash flood warning, and then a thunderstorm warning. After each of them, I went out on the balcony to make sure that my apartment complex wasn’t, y’know, floating, or anything. Nope, everything fine in my particular corner of the world. All my stuff is dry, except for the outside of my car, which got a complementary car wash from the rain. Sweet.
J(5) got back yesterday, and we were all huggy and happy to see each other, so that was good. Tigger was happy to see J(5) too, though evidently I’d taken pretty good care of him while I was back, because he was excited and happy to see her, rather than angry at her for being gone. I’d spend a couple hours over at J(5)’s house every day while she was gone. She has a PS2, so I can play games over there, and it’s nice for Tigger to have some company. Plus, Tigger is a pretty sweet kitty when he’s not trying to eat me. He’s graduated to the point where he’s just nipping at me a little, and he hasn’t broken skin in a while, so he’s getting better. Plus he’s always in a very ‘petty’ mood when he’s been without company for a while. He can be a nice little kitty at times.
Other random memories:
My parent’s anniversary dinner was quite nice, all us kids got to come along and have some good food and share funny stories and enjoy each other’s company. We all ate too much desert.
I tried running the treadmill this weekend, but I only got about 10 minutes in before the power died on me. Of interest, though, I saw a little snippet in some men’s health magazine or another that running up an incline is not only great for building up wind and stamina and speed and all of that, but also greatly reduces knee strain, so I gave myself a couple degrees of incline to work along. I’ll try that for 40 minutes next week, and it’ll probably kill me. Heh.
Here’s some fun math: 3 miles = 5280 * 3 feet = 15840 feet. At a 2% grade that’s an ascension of 316 feet! Roughly a football field straight up! Not bad!
Now I have a picture of a football stadium built sidewise stuck in my head.
I’ve also decided to get my finances under control. Not that I’m hurting for money or anything, it’s just nice to know where all your money is going so that you can adjust or trim as necessary. I re-did my budget and all my account information on quicken on the break. I’m going to see if I can keep ‘entertainment’ down a bit more. That’s where all my video games come from. Buy used, play older ones, or even just sell them off. Half.com: a good way to get used games, and presumably a good way to sell them off, too. I just have to go out and get some DVD-sized packages for sending stuff.
Comcast gives me 25 MB of personal web page space. Bully for that, somewhere to put my random stuff. All my songs might not fit there, but pictures and stories? No problem.
Called up USC just to check on my masters degree, and it sounds like everything paperwork-y is going through just fine. It’s being reviewed as we speak, I think.
Um…what else…
New contact lenses. Thanks dad! I’m reading all sorts of stuff from great distances now.
That’s a pretty hefty little entry. Enjoy that. Have fun with it. Get it framed, if you want.
-N
I spent the tail end of my vacation relaxing, for the most part. I played some PS2 games, obvious enough. I also went out to buy some kitchen essentials. I’ve been watching a lot of ‘good eats’, a cooking show on cable. Once I cancelled my cable bill, good eats was the first thing I went out to buy to replace my cable experience. It’s a great show, presenting cooking as a whole, rather than just specific recipes. It teaches you how to cook, going over important fundamentals and going over the food science fundamentals that eventually lead to people making up their own additions or edits to recipes. It also presents of stuff on good cooking gear, and Alton Brown (host) often extols the virtues of ‘restaurant supply stores’.
Here’s my review of restaurant supply stores:
Little more than an awesome, huge, kitchen stores, you really have to steel yourself a little bit before you go into these places. First, the prices, at least at the place I went to, are higher than other places. As near as I can tell, that’s for two reasons. For one, it is a specialty store, and for two, the items they’re selling are of pretty darn high quality. These are heirloom-caliber pieces here. I bought some half-sheet pans that I’ll probably be able to use for the next ten or twenty years. I also picked up a fairly manly cast iron skillet, working under the theory that I should get one that’s a little small and one that’s a little big, to cover my bases. (10 inch skillets are pretty small).
I picked up a few other small odds and ends here and there, a dough blade and bowl scraper, but the selection at this place is absolutely ludicrous, and all pieces are of quite high quality and construction. I’d recommend going here if you want to buy a pot or pan that you’ll never have to buy again, the kind of thing you can use over and over and over and every day that’ll never break down. What I would *not* recommend is picking up common, everyday items here. If you’re just looking for a standard edition hand-or-stand mixer that you might pick up at a wall mart, I can guarantee that the big store will have better prices. I stopped by a Bed/Bath/Beyond store a while ago to look for cast iron, and I didn’t see any. I stopped at a different one afterwards and actually found cast iron, and for a bit less than what I had paid. Unfortunate, but that’s just the price of a good lesson.
What I will heartily endorse is heading off to a restaurant supply to buy something for the last time. If you make a lot of soup, your big pot is starting to show some wear, and you’re thinking of upgrading, hit up a restaurant supply store. Not only do they have the sort of freaky-huge specialty items that (almost) only restaurants use, but everything is quality, because restaurants can’t afford to be replacing their stuff. Upgrade from Rubbermaid to Lexane containers, quite literally bulletproof! Make sauces? Buy some squeeze bottles for dispensing. Ice cream scoops in *standard measuring qualities*, for precise scooping! It’s easy to get lost in this place, just wandering around and grabbing stuff because it’s freaking awesome, for crying out loud! Not to mention that if you really do want a 55 gallon stand mixer, a supply store may be the only place to pick it up. I actually saw one, sitting right in front of the store. It had one of those spiral mixer attachments that was as thick as my arm! I could have taken a nap in the bowl!
Plus, if you’re into cooking, they can be really fun to just walk around and gawk in. Just try not to spend too much.
Hey, can someone hit me with some cooking advice? My last sheet pan would get oil cooked onto it that would eventually turn black and a bit nasty-looking. Is that normal, just standard wear-and-tear on a sheet pan? Should I perhaps be making a habit of lining the thing with aluminum foil or parchment paper (silicon coated, available at your local restaurant supply store) to keep it clean, or is aesthetic wear-and-tear just the way of the sheet pan?
Pretty much the last ‘kitchen essential’ I need is a stand mixer and then perhaps a hand mixer too. There are a few things a hand mixer can do that a stand mixer can’t, but I think I’d get more use out of one of those awesome kitchen aid mixers I’ve seen around. They’re reportedly quite good, solid tools, even at the consumer level, and they’ve got something on the order of a billion attachments. And when I go out to get one of these, I will do so at a mass-market store, because I’ll get a better deal there on common stuff. See? I learned something!
I did some writing, and I think I’ve pretty much wrapped up chapter 10 of my novel-in-progress. I may add some stuff to it though, so it’s not quite ‘release-quality’ yet. Soon, though. Also played the drums. Went through a bunch of drum fundamentals (the ‘scales’ of the drumming kingdom) and played some DrumMania and then just beat along with some songs. Good exercise.
Those of you that watched the news this weekend might have spotted something about the fact that it rained in California this week, and the state exploded. For those of you concerned, weathered the storm (ha) just fine. It certainly was pretty rainy for a while though, and I saw the Los Angeles River with actual water in it, so good that that thing still works and now, presumably, is just a little bit cleaner. I also caught a couple of public advisories on the telley whilst I was watching some college bowl game or another this weekend, first a flash flood warning, and then a thunderstorm warning. After each of them, I went out on the balcony to make sure that my apartment complex wasn’t, y’know, floating, or anything. Nope, everything fine in my particular corner of the world. All my stuff is dry, except for the outside of my car, which got a complementary car wash from the rain. Sweet.
J(5) got back yesterday, and we were all huggy and happy to see each other, so that was good. Tigger was happy to see J(5) too, though evidently I’d taken pretty good care of him while I was back, because he was excited and happy to see her, rather than angry at her for being gone. I’d spend a couple hours over at J(5)’s house every day while she was gone. She has a PS2, so I can play games over there, and it’s nice for Tigger to have some company. Plus, Tigger is a pretty sweet kitty when he’s not trying to eat me. He’s graduated to the point where he’s just nipping at me a little, and he hasn’t broken skin in a while, so he’s getting better. Plus he’s always in a very ‘petty’ mood when he’s been without company for a while. He can be a nice little kitty at times.
Other random memories:
My parent’s anniversary dinner was quite nice, all us kids got to come along and have some good food and share funny stories and enjoy each other’s company. We all ate too much desert.
I tried running the treadmill this weekend, but I only got about 10 minutes in before the power died on me. Of interest, though, I saw a little snippet in some men’s health magazine or another that running up an incline is not only great for building up wind and stamina and speed and all of that, but also greatly reduces knee strain, so I gave myself a couple degrees of incline to work along. I’ll try that for 40 minutes next week, and it’ll probably kill me. Heh.
Here’s some fun math: 3 miles = 5280 * 3 feet = 15840 feet. At a 2% grade that’s an ascension of 316 feet! Roughly a football field straight up! Not bad!
Now I have a picture of a football stadium built sidewise stuck in my head.
I’ve also decided to get my finances under control. Not that I’m hurting for money or anything, it’s just nice to know where all your money is going so that you can adjust or trim as necessary. I re-did my budget and all my account information on quicken on the break. I’m going to see if I can keep ‘entertainment’ down a bit more. That’s where all my video games come from. Buy used, play older ones, or even just sell them off. Half.com: a good way to get used games, and presumably a good way to sell them off, too. I just have to go out and get some DVD-sized packages for sending stuff.
Comcast gives me 25 MB of personal web page space. Bully for that, somewhere to put my random stuff. All my songs might not fit there, but pictures and stories? No problem.
Called up USC just to check on my masters degree, and it sounds like everything paperwork-y is going through just fine. It’s being reviewed as we speak, I think.
Um…what else…
New contact lenses. Thanks dad! I’m reading all sorts of stuff from great distances now.
That’s a pretty hefty little entry. Enjoy that. Have fun with it. Get it framed, if you want.
-N
