Pizza Dog

Many of those who read this blog have already heard in other places, but we had a bit of a scare Christmas night.  Our dog managed to sneak into the kitchen while we were video chatting with my wife's folks (it's the future!) and gulp down an entire pizza's worth of raw dough that was completing its final rise, such as it was (I'd been having trouble with the yeast--more on that later).

Our first reaction was, "Oh, that darned dog," and a certain degree of frustration on my part because it was Xmas night and we didn't have a lot more food on hand and nothing was open, but fortunately my wife thought to check the Internet to see if we should be concerned.  Subsequent consultation with the emergency on-call vet and vet hospitals confirmed that we should indeed.

You see, raw bread doughs in general (not just pizza) have yeast in them, which, since they've yet to go into the oven, are still doing their yeasty thing.  To wit; fermentation.  This has several effects in a dog's stomach.

First, it produces carbon dioxide.  This can cause distention and bloat in a dog, bloat meaning not simply the sort of belchy sort of condition that humans get but a severe overstretching and possibly twisting of the stomach, which Wikipedia says is fatal roughly a third of the time without surgery, depending on circumstances.

Second, the yeast also produces alcohol.  This can make the dog very drunk, since it's right there in the stomach lining.  This is much less likely to be fatal, but dogs are smaller than we are, and alcohol poisoning is still possible.

Finally, the fermentation process can also produce some toxic by-products.  Most of them evaporate or are otherwise negligible in a finished baked good, but in a dog's stomach, they're just kind of sitting there being toxic, and that's not good either.

So we had to schlep him down to the emergency 24-hour vet hospital (Which we now know the location of! Bonus learning!), and they induced vomiting.  Fortunately, it was a small batch of dough, and not a lot of active yeast (see earlier comment), so we were all fairly confident that he'd be fine.  A couple of hours of observation later, we were cleared to take him home, and at this point he's probably forgotten all about it.

Glowy

The adhesive in the protective packaging for Breathe Right nasal strips (the paper sleeve, not the adhesive on the strips themselves) is the kind that glows in the dark when you peel it apart.

Stray Foods

I have discovered that, despite Mark Bittman's proffered advice, pizza dough really does need to use bread flour instead of all-purpose.  One "slight" change, and all of a sudden the dough looks like real pizza dough.

On the other hand, I'm still not getting the final result quite right.  It's not browning and crisping the way that I'd like it to.  I think I'm going to have to throw out one more instruction, and just heat the oven as hot as it will possibly go (probably somewhere around 500, I haven't measured it), wait a fair bit longer after the temp sensor clicks off to make sure that the pizza stone is completely and thoroughly heated, and just (as Alton Brown used to say) "put the spurs to 'er."  That might do the trick.

And, as a small additional note, there's a rumor going around that the price of Nutella may be going up in the near future.  Well, it appears that some of the domestic manufacturers are trying to get in on the action, and thus Jif Brand Chocolate flavored Hazelnut spread has appeared on our grocery shelves.

You wouldn't think that you could screw up a combination of hazelnut and chocolate, would you?  And yet, somehow they did.  I strongly disagree with this Examiner article's conclusion--they do not taste at all alike, and the Jif product is clearly inferior.  My advice?  Pay more for the original-- it's worth it.

Hiatus

I've run out of steam.  No crises, just tired.  Posts may happen sporadically (or not) between now and the new year.  I'll plan to start back up more regularly again first Monday of 2013.

Dog Paws

This morning I learned that if a dog breaks a bone in their paw, even one of the minor ones, they will typically refuse to put any weight on it.  Contrariwise, if a dog is limping but using the foot, then it's almost certainly not a break, just a sprain or similar.

This is useful diagnostic medical information, and the source of at least a little relief, if not great joy.

Peter Gunn

Tonight I learned that the Peter Gunn theme was written by Henry Mancini (known for a great many award-winning works, such as "Moon River" and the Pink Panther theme).

Also, I learned that it's really hard to arrange that sort of music for an orchestra without it sounding really square.  Like, really square.

Fish Monday - Fish cakes

I've done a post before about fish cakes.  But that was a recipe.  Last night, I found myself staring at the hunk of cod I'd bought from the store and thinking, "I don't want to just broil it like usual.  That's boring.  But on the other hand, I didn't buy or prepare any of the ingredients that I would have needed for an actual planned dish."

So, time to take a chance.  Tear some sandwich bread into chunks, and run through the food processor with some cilantro.  Hack up the cod fillet into chunks.  Run that through the processor, and add bread crumbs until the consistency looks plausible.  Add some squirts of Worcestershire sauce and mustard, and a beaten egg.  Fry some chopped onion and throw that in too.  Add less salt than it needed (this is a perennial problem-- I'm always underseasoning things).  Form into patties, and coat with panko.  Fry in olive oil over medium heat.  Start talking like Gordon Ramsay.  Serve over fresh spinach so that the heat from the cakes wilts it just a bit.  Add a schmear of mayo and a squirt of lemon.

Then add more salt and pepper since I forgot it earlier.  Sigh.

Other than that, though, it was pretty good.  Still more involved than just broiling, and definitely a bit less healthy (only pan frying in olive oil, but still), but tasty.  I think I can add this one to the "doesn't need a recipe" pile.

Seriously Funny

I have to admit, the more I see of him, the less I understand what all the fuss was about Charlie Chaplin.  Ok, the Eating of the Shoe was amusing, and the Dance of the Dinner Rolls was charming.  But, somewhere, somehow, it just doesn't grab me.

On the other had, Buster Keaton is freaking hysterical.  If you have access to Hulu, go look up Buster Keaton's Short Films.  Something about his casual acceptance and nonchalance in the face of ever-increasing bizzareness is very appealing, and even some of the gags that are blatantly obvious will still startle an outright laugh out of me.  And some of those stunts are amazing.  Things that would be done with CGI these days were done by him (and the others) with props and really good timing.  Funny and impressive.  Go watch.

FDA guidelines regarding food labeling

It should come as no surprise that the Food and Drug Administration saves all of the good stuff for itself has very strict guidelines regarding the listing of ingredients on packages.  Manufacturers can't really get away with leaving things off, or even leaving things mysterious.  On the other hand, the government does have a certain amount of respect for food manufacturers that pay them lots of money want to protect the recipes that they've spent so much time and effort developing, so they do allow certain "catchall" categories, such as "flavoring" or "spice."

But, naturally, you can't just throw in any old thing and call it a spice.  You need to check the list first.  http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/ComplianceManuals/CompliancePolicyGuidanceManual/ucm074468.htm. Now, it should be noted that this list does not constitute "official" definitions.  These are instead only "advisory standards," and are only intended to "provide guidance concerning acceptable names for use in labeling spices and foods in which they are used."  So maybe you can throw in any old thing.

Some examples:  Number 1:  "SPICES - General Definition - Aromatic vegetable substances, in the whole, broken, or ground form, whose significant function in food is seasoning rather than nutrition. They are true to name and from them no portion of any volatile oil or other flavoring principle has been removed."  Anything that meets these criteria can be called "spices" on the ingredients list.  But if you want to be more specific (in order to promote yourself as being more wholesome or whatever), you could for example include "13. CUMIN SEED - The dried seed of Cuminum cyminum L. The yellowish-brown seeds have a strong, distinctive aromatic odor and a warm, aromatic taste. The quality attributes are measured by the volatile oil, total and acid insoluble ash, and moisture," or "35. TARRAGON - The dried leaves and flowering tops of Artemisia dracunculus L. It has a pleasant, anise-like odor and taste."

There are two additional notes on the page-- "1. Poppy seeds, sesame seeds, dried or dehydrated onions and garlic are not considered to be spices. When used as an ingredient in foods they should be declared on the label by common or usual names."  Like George, or Billy.  Nothing weird, like Zoltan.  And  "2. Paprika, tumeric and saffron are color as well as spices. When used as ingredients in foods they shall be designated as "spice and coloring," unless each is designated by its specific name, in accordance with 21 CFR 101.22(a)(2)."

So watch it!

This post has nothing to do with Sandy

Last weekend (9 days ago) I had a small accident, wherein I needed to stop our dog very quickly from chasing a squirrel into the street.  Sadly, all I had with which to attempt this task was my voice (only moderately effective at this point), the rope to which he was attached, and my bare hands.

So now I have minor rope burns that are finally starting to heal.  But over the course of the last week, I have learned that in 2009, Johnson & Johnson (not an S. C. Johnson company) discontinued the sale of their immensely popular First Aid Cream, which irks me no end.  When I go into a drug-type store now, all I see are antibiotic creams (unnecessary and possibly harmful in the long run due to overuse of antibiotics), "burn sprays" (overkill, and hard to apply to the webbing between my fingers anyway), and various aloe-type gels, which I'm not sure are safe to apply to broken skin.  This is annoying-- all I want is something I can rub onto a wound that will moisturize, soothe, and seal it/protect it a bit from the environment.  And there really isn't anything on the shelves that matches that.

After surfing Amazon's product reviews, I was informed of two things: to wit, 1) that a popular replacement is manufactured by Ambix Laboratories, a company that does not seem to have a web presence and about which I can find only limited information, and 2) that the old first aid cream apparently had a beeswax base, which may in part explain its disappearance since the price of beeswax has apparently skyrocketed (possibly due in turn to colony collapse disorder).

Horsepower

One horsepower is defined in the United States as equal to 746 watts, or (roughly) 550 foot-pounds of work per second, which translates as the amount of power needed to lift 550 pounds upwards one foot in one second.  A typical horse, by comparison, can lift just shy of 400 pounds the same distance in the same time.

Which is to say that an average horse has about 0.7 horsepower.  Which seems dreadfully unfair, somehow.

Danny Kaye died and went to Valhalla

No, really.

When actor, singer and comedian Danny Kaye died, may or may not have been rewarded by an afterlife of continual combat, death, glory, and resurrection in the halls of the Viking gods (probably not).  But he was interred in Kensico Cemetery, in the hamlet of Valhalla, NY (part of Mount Pleasant in Westchester County) back in 1987.

He wasn't much of a fighter, but given his history of entertaining the troops, it's not hard to imagine him stopping by to lead a rousing chorus of "Who dropped the mead barrel?" up there in the halls of Asgard anyway.

Rutabaga Monday!

Or, "Cooking with Rope Burns*†"

No fish today, I'm kind of sick of it.  But our CSA share on Saturday had some lovely rutabagas, so I dug into one of our vegetabley cookbooks and came up with the following new recipe.

1.  Peel roughly 2 pounds of rutabagas.  This may take a while-- the ones I had were remarkably hard to clean.
2.  Cube, cover with water, add copious salt, bring to boil and simmer for 15 minutes.
3.  Meanwhile (or beforehand, if you're an organized sort of person), peel, core and quarter an apple.  Slice 1 medium onion.
4.  Start caramelizing the onion in a little bit of butter and oil.
5.  When the 15 minutes are up, add the apple quarters and continue to simmer for another 10-15 minutes until tender.  Keep the onions browning over medium heat; proper caramelizing takes time and relatively low heat.
6.  Drain the (now) tender rutabaga and apple chunks.  Return to the pot, add a bit of milk and a little more butter, and mash to bits.  Mmm, catharsis.
7.  Check seasoning, top with caramelized onions and serve.

Very yummy.

*Pro tip 1:  Don't.
†Pro tip 2:  Wear gloves.

Chinese noodles

According to Wikipedia (I know, I know), the words "mein" and "fun" that appear in the names of Chinese noodle dishes are indicators of the type of starch the noodle is made from.  "Mein" noodles are made from wheat, and "fun" noodles are made from rice.  Not that lo mein can't be fun, mind you. [/obvious joke]

And, of course, in America foreign food terminology has a tendency to get really really confused, so there are no guarantees-- if you're trying to be gluten-free, buying chow fun might help, but then it might not.

Rusks and S'mores

Not together, mind you, although I suppose they could be.

Today I learned two minor food-related things-- first, that there is such a thing as a "rusk," which is a "sweet plain bread baked, sliced, and baked again until dry and crisp," when it's not a "hard crisp bread originally used as ship's stores."  I had never heard of it, but apparently it's a thing.  So there's that.

In another setting, from a podcast which usually isn't terribly foodie, I learned that it is possible to make a S'mores with a candy other than a chocolate bar.  I have no idea why this never occurred to me.  Reportedly Kit Kats don't work very well (which I can see), Snickers are pretty good, and Peanut Butter Cups are excellent, which I will verify the very instant that I can buy some marshmallows and set fire to something.

St. Kazimiers

There's a... well, a building, next town over from our place, of superficially indeterminate function, with a sign hanging outside calling it "St. Kazimiers."  This is not a saint of which I am familiar (to be frank, there are a great many saints of which I am not familiar, so this is no great surprise), but eventually I became curious enough to do a little research.

Kazimier is the Polish spelling of Saint Casimir, originally Casimir Jagiellon, prince of the Kingdom of Poland in the late 15th century.  He died a few years before Columbus sailed, if that gives you a better reference point.  I know it does for me-- I always have trouble keeping historical dates distinct unless I can cross-link them to something else I'm vaguely familiar with ("ok, when popcorn was introduced to the American settlers, it was before J. S. Bach, but after Shakespeare...).  Anyway.

Caz (may I call you Caz?  Thank you.) was an ardent Catholic, supporting Christian Poland against the Turkish encroachment.  He was offered the Hungarian crown as well as the Polish one, but was rebuffed in his attempts to travel to Hungary to accept, and had to retreat a fugitive.  He was extremely devout, a fact that unfortunately led more or less directly to his death-- his excessive devotions (fasting, mortification) left him weak, and he apparently contracted lung disease, maybe TB, and expired.

Several online articles about him mention "various miracles" but do not specify, so I have no idea what he is supposed to have done to qualify him for canonization, except possibly to be both royal and devout, which may have been enough if you're cynical like me.  He is now considered to be a patron saint of Poland, Lithuania, and the young.

Oh, and so the building is the St. Kazimierz Society, I guess somewhere between a church and a fraternal lodge.

Word for the Day - Dégagé

The word dégagé is possibly my new favorite word-- at the very least, it's my favorite word until I get distracted by something shiny, such as the new banking app that lets me deposit checks from my living room.  I love the future.

Where was I?

Oh, yes.  Dégagé is defined by the Big Book of choice as

1 : free of mental engagement and constraint of manner : carefree and indifferent to decorum : EASYGOING <I adopted a dégagé pose on the arm of a Morris chair -- S.J.Perelman> <rather dégagé after the nervousness he had shown at dinner -- Edmund Wilson>
2 : marked by a free and easy show of unconcern for strict conventions <the famous slouch hat with the nonchalant dégagé air -- A.J.Liebling> <a model of crushed pink velvet dipped low over one eye and soaring in a dégagé movement on the opposite side -- Hats>

It's like being nonchalant, or easygoing, only with less implications of slack and more class.  Because it's French.  I like to think that it describes me, actually.  But then, I suppose I would.  Also, I would like a slouch hat, even if it isn't necessarily famous.  I don't really need one made of pink velvet, though, no matter how Mad my Hatterdom.  That's a little bit too dégagé.

Weekend Roundup

This long weekend past afforded several opportunities to learn and try new things.  Here are two of them.  Tra la.

First, we broke and had to clean up our third (3rd) compact fluorescent light bulb, commonly abbreviated to "that goddam thing."  Three mercury spills is at least two too many, and we've had enough-- we're jumping ship.  One of the two table lamps received one of our precious stock of incandescents (cunningly stored in plain sight, a la The Purloined Letter, in a different lamp that doesn't get used much), and the other?  Ah, the other.  The other received a shiny new LED light bulb, rated at something like 800 lumens.  It cost 12 bucks, and I'm a little nervous, as reviews of other such bulbs suggest that their reliability... well, isn't.  But even if we end up having to replace it in 6 months (rather than the 20 years some have claimed), I think the piece of mind of not having to clean up mercury is probably worth it.

Secondly, on Sunday we took the dog and joined a (semi)local dog walking group for a roughly 4-5 mile hike.  Ok, not so much "hike" as "meander", but it was still nice-- especially for a couple of learning experiences.  We were on an isolated farm trail, away from roads and traffic, so we (somewhat nervously) let our slightly less than a year-old puppy Jet off of his leash for the first time in public.  Whereupon we learned the first thing-- he may not, in fact, have been named Jet because of his ebon hue.  He was likely named Jet because that's how goddam fast he was.  Holy CRAP fast.  30 mph?  Possibly more at full tilt?  (Greyhounds can go over 40, but I'm not sure he was quite that fast).  I'm pretty sure it'd take an Olympic sprinter to have a hope of keeping up with him in the full stretch.  This, amid our astonishment, also gave us a touch of concern, obviously, whereupon we learned the second thing-- when we called, he came right back.  Immediately.  This was astonishingly reassuring, and he spent most of the next hour or so off leash, running back and forth around the group, making friends and getting valuable experience interacting with other dogs.  Much love to Martha, the 9 year old lab who was willing to smack him around verbally and physically until he behaved.  (Side note-- we're beginning to suspect, based on some of his reactions, that his dam was a lab, and his father the shepherd).  He learned a lot about good behavior, and we learned that we could trust him off leash, at least in some circumstances.

Word for the Day -- ???

The tank in which sugar cane juice is clarified by treating it with a reagent (such as lime), heating it, and then separating out the scum and sediment, is, or at least was in the late 1800's, called a defecator.

Because deep down, I'm still 13 years old.

Ok, it's not really that deep down.

Ikea names

IKEA (all caps, that's apparently important) has a certain... reputation?  Image?  I'm not entirely certain what to call it, but whatever it is, IKEA's definitely got it.  And what it is?  Is kind of silly.

Now, I should disclaim, I don't think there's any IKEA ware in our household.  I've certainly never shopped at an IKEA store, or ordered from their catalog.  I can't completely swear that this is also true for my wife, but I'm reasonably sure.  So I don't really have any opinion one way or another-- I really just haven't had to buy any furniture in the last, oh, dozen years or so, with the exception of a couple of Sauder bookshelves, which are sort of IKEA Lite.  Or IKEA LITE.  Anyway.

So what I've learned is that all of those names that have inspired such amusement actually have a rationale-- different categories of items have different types of names.  Bathroom fixtures, for example, are named after Scandinavian rivers and lakes, etc.  Beds and wardrobes are Norwegian place names.  Garden furniture are named after Swedish islands.  Bookcases are sort of split-- a bookcase "range" will have an occupation name, but an individual bookcase will probably have the name of a Swedish man (curtains have the names of Swedish women).  Supposedly, according to this short article from The Guardian a few years back, the founder of IKEA was dyslexic, and found common proper nouns easier to remember and recognize.

I'm flaggin on Dunkin

Turns out the Dunkin Donuts Coolatta drink isn't really worth it as a caffeinated beverage.

A small Coolatta, at roughly 16 ounces and eleventy squirteen dollars, contains just about as much caffeine as... Half a can of cola.

I have to admit, I was wondering why I didn't get much of a pick-me-up this morning.

Radio Noir, or possibly Radio Jaune.

There's an episode of the old radio show version of Phillip Marlowe entitled "The King in Yellow."

I'm... kind of afraid to listen to it.

Hash Browns

A new Dunkin Donuts/convenience store has opened up near my Humble Abode (well, the donut part is open, anyway-- the convenience store was still setting up as of this morning), and they have accordingly sent out copious couponry to... well, the entire county, near as I can tell.  But I was enticed thereby, so I stopped in for breakfast.

I used one of the aforementioned coupons to acquire an order of their hash browns, and purchased a small hot chocolate to go with it.  The hot chocolate was completely uninteresting-- moderately chocolaty, very sweet, and, well, hot.  It is of the hash browns that I wish to speak.

The hash browns were shaped as thick rounds-- slightly larger than a Double Stuf(tm) Oreo.  They were served to me hot, in a waxed paper sleeve, with some extra napkins, which I appreciated since I intended to eat them in the car on my commute.  Not best practices, but I only had so much time, and the DD was actually slightly out of my way.

The flavor was good-- very potato-y, with a substantial and not unwelcome oniony undertone.  There were good salt levels, too; well seasoned without being overpowering.

My only objection is that they were not especially crisp, except for right around the edges, and that only on the topmost browns.  The rounds that had the misfortune to be on the bottom of the paper sleeve steamed a bit, and were decidedly soft, if not quite soggy.  I prefer a nicely crisp hash brown, so that was a bit disappointing.  Still, I'd be willing to try them again (and I have another coupon for a free order so I well may), and see how much of their condition was due to the particular preparation this morning.  After all, it was a new location, so perhaps the operator of the fry station (I assume they were somehow fried and not just microwaved) simply needs a bit more experience.  We shall see.

Ages 8 to 88

Apparently, the recommended age ranges on board games reflect more than just the designer's idea of how complicated the game is.  In order to qualify for an age rating of less than about 10 years, a publisher has to pay to have the game officially tested for safety, which is not a cheap process-- not only would it be tested for size of components (choking hazards), but I imagine there are chemical tests for toxicity and heavy metals and the like.  So some smaller publishers will just shrug and label the game "for ages 12 and up", even if the game is actually pretty simple and could easily be played by the average 10-year-old.

Source: a thread on boardgamegeek.com.  This does seem to be the conventional wisdom (I saw references to it in a couple of places), but I couldn't track down an authoritative statement, so take with the usual sodium chloride.

Argentinian ants

Once upon a time (as the story so often goes), there was a small colony of ants.  These ants lived in a somewhat unusual place, at least as far as ants go.  It didn't seem that unusual at first glance, perhaps-- simply a little chunk of floodplain in Argentina where a few rivers converged.  But that flooding meant that the ants were regularly washed out of their nests.

One side effect of this regular displacement is that the weaker, slower ants were weeded out fairly rapidly.  The rest relatively quickly evolved a somewhat more aggressive approach to their neighboring colonies.  You see, normally, ants aren't completely xenophobic.  They'll capture enemy ants, add them to their colony, sometimes mate with them, etc.  This means that the genetic makeup of the colony will slowly drift over time, which is generally a good thing for the species.  However, these Argentinian ants, bred by the rising waters for exceptional fierceness, simply don't do that.  When they meet an enemy ant?  They kill it.  To death.

All of which would be a minor entomological curiosity, except that sometime, back in the 1800s, a few of these ants made their way onto a ship, and were carried up from Argentina to New Orleans, where they started a new colony.  And started killing.  And spreading.  And remember, no fraternizing with the enemy!  So (and here's where it starts getting really interesting) these newly spreading colonies maintained the same basic genetic makeup as the original.  If an Argentinian ant from the motherland meets one from Louisiana?  They recognize each other, and coexist.  Genetic purity FTW.

And now, since they're so very aggressive, they've spread over pretty much the entire globe.  There are Argentinian ants everywhere, all more or less part of the same supercolony.

Primary source: http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2012/jul/30/ants/

Word for the day -- Dead stock

I've heard of livestock.  Everyone's heard of livestock.  But did you know that there's also dead stock? Dead stock is, basically, all of the farm stuff (tools, equipment, etc.) that is not livestock.  So a tractor is dead stock.  Or a harvester.  And an ax handle is dead stock woodstock, maybe.

Tuvaluvaleroy

So it turns out that the .tv domain (as seen on such sites as MTV.tv) is actually Tuvalu's country domain.  They're getting paid about 2 million per year for its use by television companies, which amounts to something like 5% of their GDP. (5% of the USA's GDP would be something like 750 billion dollars).  Apparently there was a rumor going around a few years ago that it would be canceled, since "the Island of Tuvalu is sinking!"  This was about as serious as you would expect.  Although, now that I look around, there really aren't a whole lot of .tv websites anymore-- MTV.tv is a mirror of MTV.com, Hollywood.tv redirects to a YouTube page, etc. etc.  It's still a viable domain name, but I guess it's not very popular right now for some reason.

The title of this post is a REALLY damn obscure reference.  I highly doubt that anyone who isn't living in my head will get it, but if you do, please let me know.  Then get out of my head.

Alas, earwax

Apparently, when the makers of the earwax flavored Jelly Belly jelly beans (courtesy of Ms Rowling) went to formulate the flavoring, they started by tasting some actual earwax. And supposedly, it wasn't awful enough. So the guy on charge sent the flavor tech out to get a big supply of Worcestershire sauce and bitters with instructions to amp it up a lot.

So, accordingly, there're now thousands of kids who think that earwax tastes like Worcestershire sauce, and/or vice versa.

Not worth the effort

According to an article published a couple of months ago by some British statisticians, the average bank robber in the U.S. gets away with approximately 4,000 dollars.  So to make even a vaguely reasonable living, a hood would have to plan and execute (and avoid subsequent capture) 9 or 10 heists a year.  Doesn't really seem worth it.  Now, according to the same study, an equivalent British bank robber will do a bit better-- an average of nearly 20 grand.  Still, that's a couple of jobs a year for the rest of your life, and bank robbery usually doesn't come with dental.

You might get a company car, though, if you consider the getaway vehicle you carjacked.

Outlook is grim

Today I learned that if you try to send an attachment in Outlook when you're set to Rich Text mode, it will include it inline, whereas if you send it when you're set to Plain Text, it will attach it differently, as a separate, traditional "attached" file.

WHY DOES IT DO THIS AER#&489OGSU)9359*Y!!!

And if the person you are sending the attachment to does not realize this, there will be many communications along the lines of "I'm not seeing/getting this.  Are you sure you're sending it properly?  Maybe you should just put a copy up on the server."

Magic hour

This is another one that I imagine several of you are already familiar with, and are going to laugh at me because I had never heard of it until I heard Wil Wheaton talking about it on his YouTube show.

What?

Anyway, the magic hour (also sometimes called the golden hour) is a particular time of day, generally early morning or late afternoon, when the light from the sun comes in at a low angle, bathing everything in a soft, warm, friendly light.  The lighting is less direct, so shadows are minimized.  Everything looks beautiful.  Ah.

Anyway, it's apparently a big deal in photography and cinematography, neither of which I have much experience with, so-- it's new to me!

Bingham Plastic Fluid

You may be familiar with the popular material science concept of the "non-Newtonian fluid," also known as the "walking on custard" trick.  This is a substance whose viscosity is variable, and (for the most part) will increase proportionately to the impact of another substance on it.  In other words, the harder you hit it, the stiffer it gets.  Jump up and down on it, and it's practically a solid-- stand still, and you start to sink in.

A similar class of substances is the Bingham Plastic, named after chemist Eugene Bingham, who was a rheological pioneer.  It is similar in that its physical properties vary depending on the applied stress, but it actually acts in the opposite fashion-- under no or low stress, it acts like a solid, but if you apply stress to it, it begins to flow like a liquid.  A good example is a stiff mayonnaise-- it spreads smoothly under pressure, but left alone it retains the peaks and ridges left by the knife.

Carry the torch

Apparently, when they (the IOC) is preparing for the Olympics, they do not make just one torch to be carried by the runners.  According to an interview with Sir Patrick Stewart, they actually made 8,000, one for each runner, and everyone chosen to do so for a leg had the opportunity to purchase theirs as a memento.  Sir Patrick is apparently planning to mount his on the wall, or possibly just sit on the porch and shake it and young people who've never heard of Jean-Luc (possibly anyone under the age of 18, more likely 10 if you count the movies).

Word For the Day -- Dandy funk

Although this conjures images of a well-dressed gentleman in top hat and tails getting down with his bad self to the strains of Marcus Miller*, "dandy funk" is actually a foodstuff.

It is, according to the Authority, "hardtack soaked in water and baked with grease and molasses."  The OED concurs, calling it "hard tack soaked in water and baked with fat and molasses."  That's a very important distinction in there, you betcha (although they do indicate that they think it was more commonly a closed compound, "dandyfunk").  The Encyclopaedia Britannica offers up no opinion, which is probably just as well.  It is alternatively described as "a mess made of powdered biscuits, molasses and slush," a staple(?) of sea-going fare, guaranteed to keep you alive, if not terribly happy.

Also, ew.  Definitely need your grog ration if you want to choke that down.

*I have no actual funk favorite (or even particularly any knowledge), I just Googled "greatest funk" and picked a name at random out of the lists that came up.

Duck Dance

It's a fairly safe bet that most of you are familiar with this little piece of avian boogie.  If you've been to a wedding in the last couple of decades, for example, it's practically de rigueur.  You flap your elbows, bob up and down, and generally make a damn fool out of yourself to the sprightly tones of a polka ensemble.

What's that?  Chicken, you say?  Well, no, I'm generally brave enough to participate...  Oh, you mean it's called the Chicken Dance?  Well, sure... now.

You see, back in the 1970s, in Switzerland, one Werner Thomas (accordionist) composed what was called at the time "Der Ententanz," or, "The Duck Dance."  The route by which it switched birds is somewhat obscured, but there are two major perspectives.  One is that it simply shifted from "Duck" to "Bird" to "Chicken" as it meandered its way through various languages before reaching Stateside.  Plausible, but boring.

More exciting (but a trifle dubious) is the story that it was played during the 1981 Tulsa Oktoberfest, and one of the organizers managed to procure a chicken suit from a local television station (in the absence of a duck costume), and the suited dancer subsequently created moves that will live forever.

Absences

I'll continue to be gone sporadically for the next few days; I'm moving to a new computer and there have been a few stumbling blocks.

But that's provided for several learning experiences!  For example, I learned that my previous monitor is so freaking old that the new computer won't even recognize it without 45 minutes with tech support leading to alterations to the BIOS!

OTOH, in more pleasant discoveries, I learned that the Steam online game store (to which I am relatively new) acts not only as a store, but also as a cloud server-- once I downloaded the games again to the new machine, opening them put me exactly where I had left off in the old one!  A delightful revelation, to be sure.

Cutty Sark

Ok, so the whiskey is named after 


the ship 


which was named after the "garment" worn by a fictional Scottish witch 


from a Robert Burns poem, and it translates basically to "short [cutty] (under)shirt [sark]".


For those of you seeing this on LiveJournal, there are probably a bunch of inexplicable gaps.  Those were pictures.

Someone's calling

The most interesting thing I learned today was how to retrieve a voice mail message from my work phone.

This was actually more challenging than you might think-- the instructions that I was given are in the form of a scan of a xerox of what I can only hope are the original eight year old instructions that lives on the company intranet.  Oh, and they're actually completely wrong.  Possibly they were written for a different model phone?  It's hard to tell.

Fortunately, the message in question was from myself (last night, testing the system), and it's not likely to happen often, because there's no godly reason anyone would try to contact me outside of business hours, and even during the few times I'm away from my desk during lunch or something most people would just call back a bit later.  This is not a complaint, mind you-- I didn't really want the phone, and I'm just as happy if it never rings.

Word for the Day - Curse of Scotland

There are a lot of interesting language tidbits surrounding games, and poker has some of the best.  There's the evocative language of the game itself-- terms for varieties of the game, like "stud," "High Chicago," or "Follow the Queen."   There are nicknames for parts of particular games, such as Texas Hold 'em's "turn" and "river" (the fourth and fifth community cards).  And most people have at least heard of "the Dead Man's Hand," (two pair, aces and eights), supposedly the hand that Wild Bill Hickock was holding when he was shot in 1876.  But I think the absolute best one I have ever heard is "the Curse of Scotland," otherwise known as... the nine of diamonds.


It seems like an odd card to have such an inauspicious nickname, but there are several explanations floating around.  The most lurid (and least convincing) involves a Scottish general writing the orders for an massacre on the back of a nine of diamonds (due apparently to lack of paper).  A slightly more convincing explanation, although still without much actual supporting evidence, draws from the resemblance between the nine of diamonds and the coat of arms of Sir John Dalrymple, 1st Earl of Stair, who was known for being a ruthless and brutal commander.  Either way, I can't wait until I find some way to work this into a friendly game of cards.

The Dalrymple/Stair crest.

Friendly Hockey Thugs

On a hockey team, there are several traditional roles and jobs.  Besides the usual obvious roles of goalie, wing, center, etc., I have been informed (by several usually reliable sources) that there is also the "unofficial" role of enforcer. This is the player (or players) whose job it is to look out for any egregious infractions on the part of the opposing team, and retaliate appropriately, or in some cases inappropriately.  Generally speaking, with fists.  This is technically illegal, but extremely common, and has become more or less just part of the game.

The bit that's completely new to me, however, is the fact that most of these guys (at least at the professional level) are not actually mean, violent types.  They look at this as their job, their responsibility, and they do it dispassionately, and in many cases genially.  A recent interview with one player on the How to do Everything podcast reveals that many of them will bust a guy in the head, or get busted themselves, and then go out for beers after the game, congratulating each other on a particularly good hit.  "Oh, man, I wish I'd known you were a lefty!"

Fish Monday - Salmon cakes

It's Monday once again, and that means fish!

Here's the thing-- I have a problem.  Actually, two problems. First, we have exactly one nearby source of  fish, and that's the local supermarket.  Which isn't horrible-- almost everything is frozen, and fishing freezers are much better than they used to be, so as long as you don't mind "previously frozen" on all of the tags it's reasonable.  But at the same time, they're just the local supermarket, you know? I'm only going to trust them so far-- I have gotten improperly stored fish from them before, that was out in the case either too long or too warm, and had to be thrown out.  And this leads me to the second issue, which is that for some reason I have a great deal of difficulty cooking salmon to the right degree of doneness.  It's almost always either over or under, and for fish you don't trust, even a little under isn't good.  And a little over is sawdust.  So I've decided to give up on the "better" types that they sometimes offer-- the wild caught sockeye, for example.   It's just too much money to throw away if I leave it in the pan for 40 seconds too long and ruin it.  But if I'm going to only buy the cheap farmed stuff, I need to make it tastier.

Which brings us neatly to last night's culinary efforts, a recipe from Cooks Illustrated for salmon cakes that makes even the farmiest salmon tasty AND insulates against over/under cooking!

First, mix breadcrumbs, fresh parsley, one chopped scallion, one chopped shallot, some mayo, some mustard, some lemon juice, a little salt and pepper and cayenne in a bowl.  Then cut your salmon fillets (about a pound) into large chunks, and feed the chunks (in batches) into the food processor, pulsing just a few times to make large shreds.  You just want to break it up, not turn it into salmon mousse.  Mix the salmon into the breadcrumb mix.  Portion the mix out into little cakes, coat in breadcrumbs, and fry over medium/medium-high heat for 2-3 minutes per side.  Serve with lemon or tartar sauce.

It's definitely a bit fiddlier than just coating the salmon with pesto/herbs/spices and slapping it under the broiler, but it's damn tasty, and possibly even doable on a weeknight.  With a bit of practice, I could probably slap it together in under 45 minutes, especially since I just realized while I was typing this that I could have minced the scallion and the shallot in the food processor and saved a bit of time there.

Pickles

I still don't like pickles.

What?  You have to try these things every so often, just to make sure.  They gave me a pickle at lunch with my sandwich.  I tried it.  I didn't enjoy it.

Pizza Due

I mentioned a week or so ago that I was learning to make pizza dough from scratch, and was having some difficulties.  Well, yesterday/today was another attempt, and this time, I did SCIENCE to it!

Which means basically that I did all of the same things (keeping them constant) except for two changes I thought might improve the results (the variables).  Now, strictly speaking, for a "pure" experiment I would have only changed one thing, and thus known exactly to what I should attribute any results, but I'm a little impatient, and I was willing to accept that a positive result could be due to either variable.

As it happens, the results were near identical, which does actually tell me something-- it tells me that if I want to get different results, I'll have to change a different variable.  Unfortunately, the remaining variables are all specifically recipe related rather than technique, and I'm not sure I want to mess around with different flours or anything.  I may just decide to be happy with what I'm getting now, since it's perfectly serviceable pizza crust.

For the record-- I'm using Mark Bittman's basic pizza dough recipe from How to Cook Everything (app edition), and I was messing with hydration levels (amount of water in the recipe), cooking temp, and fermentation time (overnight in the fridge instead of an hour or two on the counter).

History

Today at work we were treated to a presentation of historical materials related to the company's mysterious past.  Ok, it's not really that mysterious, but there was a lot of stuff I didn't know.

For example:  apparently, for the first 50 or so years, the G & C Merriam Brothers & Co. were much more just printers than publishers-- the vast majority of the actual dictionary writing and editing was done in offices at Yale, where the editors were mostly employed.  The Springfield offices were literally just printing houses until they moved into their penultimate location (down by the intersection of State and Main, if anyone's curious), and they finally had room for a permanent editorial staff.  The current location was actually chosen as part of what we suspect (this part is actually slightly mysterious) was a deal with the city to develop the neighborhood, which at the time had only recently acquired actual paved streets.

Also, the charity that we donate toys and etc to every Christmas was actually founded (under a different name) by the wife of one of the Merriam Brothers.  That relationship goes back much farther than I had been aware.

Glonous History

For those of you out there who are partial to a common form of Americanized Chinese cuisine, and have been for at least a little while, you may be familiar with the archetypical example of what is sometimes (unflatteringly) called "Engrish," to wit: The Chopstick Instructions.

For those who can't read past the glare, it says, "Welcome to Chinese Restaurant.  please try your Nice Chinese Food With Chopsticks the traditional and typical of Chinese glonous history.  and cultual."

While I cannot speak to the typicalness of its glonous history, I did just find out that "cultual" is an actual word.  It means "of or relating to cult or worship."

Given the excessive number of posts and images on the web about this particular chopstick exemplar, I have to admit the word may not be completely ill-chosen.

Give them the finger (no, the other one)

As a rule of thumb (ha ha), in men the index finger is shorter than the ring finger, and in women the index finger is longer than the ring finger.

This appears (at least in preliminary experiments with other mammals) to be due to hormonal balances in utero, to wit androgen, testosterone et al..  This means that many other sex-linked traits (biological ones, not cultural) can be correlated to finger length-- for example, one study* supposedly found that women with shorter index fingers (normally a "masculine" trait) were less likely to get lost.

*I don't have a reference; the Scientific American article just said "studies have found" and went on from there.  And now that I look at it, I'm REALLY damn skeptical.  I couldn't track down the actual study, but Wikipedia, funnily enough, does have an impressive list of links to other studies involving second/fourth finger ratios, such as this one (http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138(99)00026-4/abstract) investigating musical ability.

Five Guys

I finally got around to trying a Five Guys burger.

Short version:  Burger's good; fries not so much.  Although they gave us a LOT.

I got a cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato, and "grilled" mushrooms.  Two patties, with decent beef flavor and texture, with a satisfying amount of cheese, lettuce, and tomato.  The mushrooms were kind of buried, sadly, and I didn't really taste them.  I think they might be better with less accompaniment, or possibly with a double order (will they do that?  I should try asking next time)*.  The patties were interestingly unevenly shaped, which led to a burger with a lot more character than I was expecting, although it was a little awkward to eat at times, with unexpected promontories and fissures in the beefular topology.

My wife got a bacon cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato, and mayo, and declared it decent.  The bacon wasn't outstanding, but it added the requisite salty/crunchy/smokiness.

The voluminous French Fries did appear to be hand-cut, as advertised, uncoated, and nicely potato-y.  A little light on the salt, which I actually appreciated (it's much easier to add a bit more than otherwise), but they seemed to be single-fried, which isn't bad per se, but results in a less crispy fry.  I like my fries very crispy.  Next time, I might skip the fries entirely, or share an order with someone else.

And, of course, the free roasted peanuts were free.  Hard to screw that up.

*They were probably griddled instead of grilled, but everyone uses that sense so I can't really hold it against them.  On the other hand, they might have been steamed for all the character that they had.  Limp, not very browned.  Should have stayed on the griddle for a bit longer.

Abortive Food Post

I started to write a post about my latest attempt at making pizza dough completely from scratch, but I realized that I still don't know what went wrong with the first attempt, or what went right with the second, or what's still going wrong now.  Which means that I can't really claim to have learned anything, can I?

So I'll just let you all know that homemade pesto on fresh corn on the cob doesn't quite work as well as I would have hoped.  I think it's the nuts, personally-- everything else in there ought to go with the corn, right? Somehow it just wasn't as good as straight up butter and salt.

Word(s) for the Day-- #%(#

This post is for all of you out there who are still 13 years old, no matter how many years you've lived.

These are (I believe) all of the words from Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged that refer to the "droppings/dung/excrement" of specific animals.  Not just generic euphemisms for poop; I have no doubt that would be another 80 or so*.  No, these are the entries that name specific creatures, or at least specific classes or types of creature, and their respective leavings.

album graecum (dogs/hyenas, especially when used in tanning)
argol (camels, especially as used for fuel)
buffalo chips  (buffalo, natch)
buttons (sheep)
casson (cattle)
cast (earthworms)
cow pat (cows)
cowshard (cows)
cowsharn (cows)
crottels (hares)
fiants ("fox, wolf, boar, or badger," which is delightfully specific and various at the same time)
frass (insects)
fumet/fewmet (deer, or dragons if you're a fan of Madeline L'Engle)
guano (bats)
horse apples  (horses, of courses)
horseshit (horses)
lesses ("beast of prey"; the OED has "the dung of a ‘ravenous’ animal, as a wild boar, wolf, or bear")
mute (bird)
ornithocopros (birds)
pellet (mouse or rabbit)
shard (cow)
spraints (the winner! Defined in its entirety as "otter's dung".)
whitewash  (birds)

*Remind me to share my list of English words that can be used to mean "snow" at some point.  I'm up to 78 of those so far-- far more than the Inuit (three or four base words plus modifiers).

Dem (bird) bones

Bird bones are hollow.  This is a previously known thing, and something that many people know about birds.  They have to fly, after all, so weight reduction blah blah blah.

But nature, being what it is, abhors a vacuum, or at least an unused empty space.

Many of these hollow spaces in the bones are actually filled with a number of small air sacs that are directly connected to the bird's respiratory system.  When I first heard this, my first thought was that this must mean that when a bird inhales, it could use its bones as auxiliary lungs!  As it turns out, it's a bit more complicated than that.  

When the bones are being formed, the connection to the respiratory system allows the sacs to inflate, moving bone material out of the way and forming the hollow cavities.  Once the bones are fully formed, the sacs retain their connection, but do not have the parabronchi (analagous to the mammalian alveoli) found in the lungs, so they cannot exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide.  Instead, they serve strictly to hold and move air around, ultimately giving the bird a greater "lung" capacity and higher efficiency.

Hot hot hot

A couple of heat-related tidbits today.

According to the FAQ on the Ferrarra Pan website, the heat in Atomic Fireballs comes not from the cinnamon, but more prosaically from good old-fashioned capsicum-- the spice in chili peppers.  Apparently a typical Fireball is about 3500 on the Scoville heat scale, putting it at about the level of a mild jalapeño.

In other news, the Lan Chi brand of Black Bean Sauce turns out to actually be Lan Chi Chili Sauce with Black Beans and Chili.  And Chili.  Yow.  I got a jar as a replacement for the Lee Kum Kee Black Bean and Garlic Sauce, which was for many years a staple of my stir-fry flavorings and has recent departed from the shelves of my local grocery store.  It's, um.  Not quite the same.  My mouth is still a little tingly an hour and change later.