Seasonings

As far as I'm concerned winter is here. Christmas has been expressed at my company and our corporate halls are decked with boughs of plastic holly. As an atheist I used to get distressed by such displays, but this looks really festive. It cheers our entrance up. I am a pagan sympathizer though, so perhaps I'd be outraged if I was involved with a monotheistic religion. Along with any emotional responses to red ornaments and enormous ever greens these items also send signals to my seasonal sensors. A wreath signals winter. I'm expecting snow any day.

I don't see Fall and Spring as full blown seasons. They are the atmosphere through which we travel before we land at our destination season. Perhaps I'm too goal oriented or centered on the future, but to me Fall and Spring mostly hold the characteristics of their respective target seasons Winter and Summer. Fall fell once the leaves left the trees.

Since it's getting colder I don't want to putter around in my garage so the Honda project is getting put on hold until I get a wild hair again. I wonder how this is going to effect my exposed carburetor. I'll cover it in oiled rags today. To fill that need to putter around and assemble things I've started cooking. I love working in my kitchen when it's cold out. Something about cold weather and runny noses gets me cooking. It's all warm and cozy in my kitchen, although the food I cook isn't necessarily comfortable. The timing is perfect: I've decided to pay off my credit card and get my general finances whipped into shape which means I'm going to start dumping my money in the bank rather than on a restaurant table where I normally leave it.

My favorite foods right now are Indian and Thai - really anything creamy and spicy - so I decided I'd learn how to cook dishes I'd normally eat at a restaurant. I never thought I'd be cooking Palak Paneer, but there I was last night pureeing spinach and sauteeing cheese that doesn't melt in ghee. Ghee is clarified butter in a solid form, looks like yellow shortening, and smells a little gross. I'm not sold on using it as a cooking fat just yet, but I'm sticking with it at least until I get to know it better. The moral of the story is that it's actually pretty easy to cook this stuff. The recipe I used for Palak Paneer is old skool having the cook use fresh spinach rather than frozen, roast fresh cashews to make a powder, and boil a tomato rather than use canned. I never realized how much I like tomatoes. Since it took so long to get all these things accomplished I think next time I'll be taking the short cuts; at least on a weeknight. I was cooking for 90 minutes. The result was really good especially considering it was the first time I'd made it. I believe the hardest thing about Indian cooking is getting all the ingredients. The greatest obstacle is finding a good recipe that translates what the spices are. I had no clue what dhania-jeera is, but coriander and cumin is no mystery. Thankfully, I live and work near two Indian groceries so picking up that wild no-melt cheese wasn't too difficult.

This weekend I'm returning to my cooking roots and tackling my favorite Indian bread product, na'an.

Tag team back again

I've been out of the blogging picture for some time now. I had some nasty sinus infection that had me out of work for nearly a week, and I didn't really want to give updates as to what I was up to. -Today, I slept fo fourteen hours and my snot is green! - That sort of thing. Then I just fell out of the habit. My convalescence didn't afford any interesting tales.

I had a fabulous Thanksgiving. Aych and I drove out to Iowa in his darling new car to spend the holiday with Persephone, Paul Bunyon, Saraswati, and I really can't think of a name for Saraswati's husband. As soon as I do I'll update this blog. In any case, we all either went to school together or married someone who did. And a college prof showed up as well. It was a wonderful weekend. Persephone and Paul are warm hosts, and everyone in attendance helped out with things here and there. It felt really good to see old friends and for all of us to be gathered in one location without any family stress. Everyone brought something or cooked a dish. I brought Sweet Satan's Seed. I got the recipe out of an ultra lounge how to guide on party throwing, hence the risque name of the dish. Sweet and spicy mixed nuts. Here's the recipe:

1/4 cup honey
2 dried Ancho chili peppers sliced into fine flakes (I used a ~1.5 tbsp of crushed red pepper)
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon kosher sea salt
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (don't be afraid to shake in more)
3 cups mixed raw nuts

I've tried this recipe with roasted nuts, and it's no good. Go raw. Preheat the oven to 275 degrees. Through all the ingredients sans the nuts into a microwave safe bowl and heat in the microwave until it gets to the consistency of pancake syrup. Stir it all well and add the nuts into the mix stirring again coating all the nuts. Spread the mix in an even layer on an oiled baking sheet and shove in the oven for ~25 minutes, stirring about every 7-8 minutes. Keep an eye on it for the last eight minutes or they'll burn and it will suck.

I've been doing some cooking recently. I decided to learn how to cook Indian and Thai food as part of my money saving plans, and I started last night with a coconut cashew chicken dish which required around a hundred ingredients. It really wasn't that bad. Prep time was minimal, and I was totally done - with time to clean during cooking - in about an hour. I found the end result a little disappointing as it's not very coconutty or cashewey, but I'm chalking that up to vague directions on what is no doubt a complicated concoction. It's not to say that the meal was bad. It just didn't come out as expected. That's one Thai Indian fusion recipe that I'll just let go. Too bad. My next selections are palak paneer most likely subbing tofu for the paneer and chicken tikka masala.

Pumpkin products

I'm currently in front of my keyboard at my desk in my cube cubby at work scarfing down the dessert portion of the pitch-in lunch we throw every year for Thanksgiving. I can't recall why we're having it so early this year, but there you have it. What I find so strange about it is we have approximately 200 people line up, grab a ton of food and then retreat to our individual, walled up cubicles where we eat alone. Yeah. It's a little bit of a dirge. I was hoping my single opportunity for social time which manifests itself by waiting in line would be fruitful. This pitch-in reminds me of when I was in elementary school and we all had to sit next to the people we were in line with waiting for food in the cafeteria. Only no cafeteria. I've a cup of coffee to compliment my slices of pumpkin pie and oh-so-rich pumpkin cheesecake. I'm glad I hit the gym beforehand.

This season, I've been introduced to the pumpkin cookie - exquisite - and a little number called a pumpkin roll which was sitting unopened on the pitch-in table. I'd like to try it, but I fear it will create a human structural integrity fault. I'm not yet at full-on holiday gorge shape yet, and I don't want to blow a gasket early in the season. There are many future opportunities for pumpkin roll.

I personally don't have much of a knack for nicknaming people, but fitnessnerd, aka Alain, (secretly aka Bea [Arthur] aka Dorothy) just nailed it when he called Harley Momma, of Shut Up, Phil! fame, Banshee. That's gonna stick. Dorothy, you have mad nicknaming skillz.

It's been pretty quiet for me recently. Monday, my company installed a new firewall on my laptop along with Anti-virus software. It certainly does the job. I can't resolve DNS from my home network anymore. What this means in normal speak is that I can't browse the web, or get my mail or even connect to the company network which is the reason why I was issued a laptop in the first place. So if you don't hear from me in a timely fashion that's why.

Also, on the boring news front I just installed the invisible shield on my iPhone. The phone is definitely protected right now, but I see to have something trapped under the film on the front screen. Agony!!! I can't stand this little imperfection in my otherwise crystal clear screen, and the worst part is I'm not certain I can even remove the screen. It's practically hermetically sealed on there now. Bummer. I'll just have to learn to live with it... or scrape the hell out of the thing trying to remove the screen protector. At what point is a pyrrhic victory simply a loss?

Time to go before I start outlining my chores for the day.

Relief. I love it on Monday when I'm finally free from my home detention device commonly known as my oncall pager. My mood improves ten times over. After a weekend wondering how to switch careers and idly wondering about a management track at Starbucks I found myself this morning sitting in my weekly staff meeting thinking that this job really isn't so bad. I don't know what kind of crazy I've got to allow myself to forget so quickly how much I do not enjoy a thing. I guess this is how I managed to marry Jaba the Hut. "Oh, really the slave outfit isn't so bad once you learn how to sling the chains just so."

Seriously, I enjoy Mondays. It's my favorite day of the work week. I walk in rested and refreshed from the weekend ready to tackle projects, and seek out solutions. Monday is by far my most productive day. I am able to focus for pretty much the entire day without needing much in the way of a break. Tuesday isn't bad, but I can start to feel myself wain. Wednesday is rough although generally things are hopping on Wednesday. Thursday is probably my worst work day. It's not yet Friday, but I'm going on day four in the work week, and the end just isn't nigh enough. By Friday I'm lucky to stick with it long enough so I can coast through my afternoon occasionally coming up to attend to this or that problem that has been brought to my attention. The thing is the more work I can focus on the faster the day goes by, however, after a while of working full bore I get tired and want to take some time away. I think I would do best with a four day work week. Although I'm sure ten hour days would get old fast.

My favorite day of the week is Sunday. Blanche recently sent out a personality poll with an Eastern flair today and one of the questions involved favorite days of the week.

Yesterday was not my favorite although I got to spend it with one of my longest running (I didn't want to say oldest) friends. H came by to pick me up in his brand new chariot and we headed out for brunch. We ate well at the Original House of (goodness in the form of) Pancakes where we had the eggs benedict and this enormous apple pancake. Biting into the apple pancake sent me to a place where state fairs make delicious apple dumplings with eggs. It was intensely good. The eggs benedict were good too; eggs perfectly poached and complimented with potato pancakes. Absolutely fabulous.

After gorging on brunch items we hit the Half Price books where I picked up "Heroic and Outrageous Women", a chubby little coffee table book full of wild stories of mold-breaking women throughout history from the Warrior Queen Boadicea who took up arms against the Romans when they invaded her lands now in England to Madonna the material girl. The title is appropriate as they are heroic and outrageous. Each entry is only a few pages long so it's suitable for quick light reading times. There's a whole chapter dedicated to women in the military, and I'm excited to find out more about these ancient and modern ass kickers.

After some more shopping and coffee we went to stake a claim at Ollie's in the face of the onslaught of people certain to arrive to watch the game of the season. Our efforts proved to be overkill as, strangely enough, the bar did not actually fill up. I've seen it busier on Friday nights. And I'm surprised. Perhaps people don't come out until the play-offs. We met up with Blanche, Alain, Romeo, Mom, and my buddy Harley-momma (who rides a Honda, but that's really not the point for 95% of the people who read this.) Harley-momma was a hoot bellowing at Phil Simms. At first she screamed when he had something negative to say about the Colts, but it just turned into a yell fest whenever he opened his mouth. It was so regular a drinking game was created. The regularity with which the yells could be heard forced participants to slurp beer. Well, that and some cocktails prior to the game.

I had my first O'Doul's while eating some hot wings. Not bad. Not beer though. It tasted like beer as long as I was eating something spicy but once my mouth got back to normal temperature I could taste the water.

There was quite a spectrum of personalities who appeared. One couple showed up after having drank a few somewhere else and managed to squeeze into our table. Friendly folk. One had an incredible, as in not to be believed, laugh. Think Uncle Albert from Mary Poppins. At one point I half expected him to rise up from the table and bounce along the ceiling at Ollie's having to avoid the Smokeeter.

As you know, the Colts lost. boo. It was a close game, and really they could have had it. If they had a fully healthy team there's no doubt in my mind that game would have had a different ending. But all that amounts to coulda woulda shoulda, and afterall it is only a game. It was fun getting worked up over it, though.

Technophilia

This week marks the final leg of my Fall marathon for work. As of Sunday at 6 am I return to my regular oncall rotation of one week on and four off. Also, things should generally slow down. Of course, the timing was awful since I missed Skareeoke, and apparently it was quite a spectacle. I actually got to College and Mass before my pager blew up and I had to head back home. Bummer.

All this work had me feeling a little blue, and after my weekend of hockey and overnight data center upgrades I decided to treat myself. Well, honestly, gravity scored an assist. I've had a standard clamshell cell phone with, shall I say, minimal functionality. It performed all the necessary functions of a cell phone: dial in, accept calls, text, voice mail, caller id. It even had a camera, but there was no way to get the pictures off the camera without paying for a picture text and my inner miser couldn't handle that. This phone has also withstood some heavy beatings, lots of drops, and general misuse. I actually had it long enough to necessitate replacing the battery as it could no longer hold enough charge to facilitate a fifteen minute phone call. I'm used to it. It's familiar.

Witness exhibit A to the right here. Saturday, in between hockey games some teammates and I went to lunch at the Ram. When I got up to leave I hastily put on my jacket. Out popped my cell phone and as it tumbled out of my pocket it flipped open. In this open position it slammed into a wooden chair and that was all she wrote for this little number. Or was it? I was in quite a bit of denial after it broke cleanly snapped in two, the flexible data board sheared off at both ends. I took it to a mall kiosk and asked if they could repair it. No such luck. I asked if they could retrieve the numbers off of it. My kind but useless sales associate decked out in blue face paint didn't even try to hook it up. He did try to sell me a new phone though, but if I wanted a new phone I'd have to sign up for 2 years of service. Otherwise the cheapest phone was 200 dollars. Yikes!

I found that I could use the phone with it attached to a headset with mic boom. I spent the next couple days walking around with a wire in my phone holding "stumpy" and dialing out to people who had numbers I remembered. And then I got the hook up.

Romeo helped me out with some discount action on a brand new iPhone. Quite a leap from stumpy clamshell. The interface is excellent although it's taken a little work to get familiar with the touch screen. I've experienced one glitch in operating it so far, but I'll spare you the details. The moral of that side story is that I couldn't be bothered to get upset with the error. In fact this product is so cool I found myself being quite patient in wanting to figure out what the matter was. Anyone who has ever seen me in front of a fussy electronic device has been treated to a colorful spew of expletives. I've spent the last couple days consoling my over worked self with the colorful glow illuminating the crystal clear images on this incredible toy.

Major toy purchases always make me a little elated and edgy followed by some sort of techno-purchase afterglow crash. When I first heard of technology addiction I dismissed the notion as absurd alarmism from a group of sanctimonious busy bodies. What's wrong with being connected at all times? What's wrong with having a device that makes that experience better? What's wrong with pursuing better? Of course, it's that pursuit of better and a search for the external that rests at the core of addiction. I've read that a person is considered to have a technology problem if one spends more time with the technology than with people. I find that to be a facile explanation. People drive technology. We haven't figured out a way to create self-replicating data boards yet. So at the end of every interaction with a piece of technology there is a person who created it.

To me a problem exists when an individual has trouble connecting with oneself, and that is hard for an external observer to quantify. I'd like to sit with a corporate psychologist and ask her how that makes her feel.

I'm going to let that be the end of my rambling. I think working all these hours is making me a tidge punchy.