11.14.08
Interesting GTD Web 2.0 app
Take a look at this post, which has good links to Nozbe itself as well as to a tour of Nozbe’s capabilities.
Aha! You can eat Buddha’s Hand
Aha. The produce guy at Whole Foods, where I saw Buddha’s Hands last year, said that they were ornamentzl only. NOT SO!!! Read this article. I’m definitely getting one to cook with.
Slow-roasted pork belly with cider & lentils
Doesn’t that look like a delicious meal for a cold, wintry day? Here’s the recipe (and the origin of the photo). Now I have to see whether I can find a local butcher who has pork belly. Whole Foods took no time at all to say, “No. Never.”
Japanese tools and knives
Via Cool Tools, discovered this site: Japanwoodworker. But it’s not just woodworking: take a look at the kitchen knives…
SOS Cuisine
Through this post (written in China), I discovered this site, of particular interest to (a) Canadian readers and (b) especially those who live in Quebec—though the service now seems expanded to all of Canada (and certainly the meal ideas would be useful in the US as well). The brief description:
… A service that helps you plan one week’s shopping and cooking for weeknight dinners. When I lived in Canada I used to spend an hour or so each week going to the websites of our local grocery chains to see what was on special, scrolling through multi page pdf documents and thinking that some central website should be doing this for me. SOS Cuisine does even more, planning a menu complete with prep time and nutrition information and calculating the cost for the number of people for whom you cook. You can choose menu preferences such as budget, low calorie, and exclude certain foods. The site tracks what is on special at local supermarkets and chooses what recipes would be most economical to make each week. The weekly meal plans that I’ve seen so far are based on an hour or so advance prep time, and then when mealtime comes around it is usually twenty minutes or less to get dinner on the table.
It’s not perfect – the local specials information is based where the service originated (Quebec), and most of the users are francophones. So even though there is a complete English version of the website, it’s tough for the French challenged to benefit from the recipe reviews. However, even if you are not local the sample menu plans and recipes are valuable for their own sake. Most ‘health and budget’ meal plan recipes are stodgy and unappealing, calculated to satisfy health requirements rather than provide pleasure, but the recipes on SOS Cuisine read like something you actually want to make. The service is also FREE.
Chicken with apricots
I like dried apricots a lot—and chicken, too, for that matter. So this easy Mark Bittman recipe will be made soon:
Chicken With Apricots
Chicken with dried apricots is hardly a new idea, but its most common interpretations are almost always cloying, tasting more like dessert than dinner. This method results in a firm, still-crisp chicken in a fruity but not-too-sweet sauce.
Yield 4 servings
Time 40 minutesAny dried fruit can be used, or a combination. But be aware that fruit dried with sulfur (the common method) becomes tender much faster than fruit dried organically, which needs a couple of hours of soaking before cooking.<
- 1 cup dried apricots
- 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
- 1/2 cup red wine
- 1 chicken, cut into serving pieces
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1. Combine apricots in a bowl with vinegar, wine, and 1/4 cup water. Let soak while you brown the chicken.
2. Turn the heat to medium high under a 12-inch nonstick skillet, and add chicken pieces, skin side down. Cook, rotating but not turning pieces so they brown evenly. When they are nicely browned — take your time — turn them so they are skin side up. Make a little space to add the onion, and cook, stirring the onion occasionally until it has softened a bit, a minute or two.
3. Add apricot mixture and bring to a boil; cook for a minute, then turn heat to low and cover. Cook until chicken is done, 15 to 20 minutes. Uncover, raise heat and season chicken well with salt and pepper. Boil away any excess liquid; sauce should not be too watery. Serve with white rice or any other cooked grain, or bread.
Bug Labs
I would think the Buglabs.net gadgets would be ideal for artists working on interactive works. Take a look:
Clint Eastwood
I stopped by the library yesterday and got a couple of DVDs from the Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry collection. One was The Dead Pool, which was okay, but the other was Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows, which was very interesting indeed: a restrospective of Eastwood’s career and life. Incomplete, of course, but nevertheless quite interesting. Recommended.
The blood of the dragon
Mama Bear Dragon’s Blood shaving soap, which produced a good lather with the Rooney Style 1 Size 1 Super Silvertip. The Gillette NEW with a Treet Classic blade delivered a smooth three-pass shave, and I finished with Draggon Noir aftershave. Very nice and efficient shave.
