J. Random Pseudonym's Journal

12:18am: "Masaman" Beef Curry
So, I totally failed at my cooking blogging for the last couple weeks, here's an attempt to catch up.

We picked up some amazing looking tiny purple potatoes, and I wanted to try making a Masaman curry to highlight them. However, my curry attempts in the past have ended up somewhat tasty, but not necessarily anything like the Thai or Indian dish I was aiming for. This one worked out pretty well though. Lacking tamarind paste or Thai fish sauce, I tried using some good ol' Lea & Perrin's Worchestershire sauce, and it ended up tasting about where I wanted it.

( The detailsCollapse )

I'll update later with some other stuff I did recently, like fish tacos and pastelon (plantain lasagna).

7:50pm: Cod, plantain and black bean soup
I made my second try at this dish, and I think I'm getting the recipe better each time. phoebe_k seems to like it, at least. The goal is a savory, warm heat to the dish, with a nice mix of textures. I got a fair amount of this recipe from a Cook's Illustrated white chicken chili recipe, but changed things around to go a seafood and plantains route (along with changing from white beans to black).

Our favorite Puerto Rican restaurant, La Isla in Ballard, has gotten me excited about plantains. This is a fruit that can behave like a potato, a sweet potato, a banana and golly only knows what else, depending on how ripe it is and how you cook it. In this case, I'm using it most like a potato in a seafood chowder. I'm really tempted to try making a pastelon, which is basically a lasagna with layers of ripe plantain instead of pasta.

Anyway, here goes -- In an almost followable format!

( Recipe editor, I am notCollapse )

I'll leave it to my better half to come up with pictures if she's got them...

10:59pm: Mushroom Hunting
The lovely was kind enough to photograph and post my latest cooking experimentation. Pictures are here.

For christmas, I gave her a "gift certificate" for three meals of a theme of her choice. She decided to go easy on me, and start with the mushroom. So, three courses, with three types of mushrooms follow. All three courses were inspired, to wildly varying degrees, by "Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen", by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich.

( Stuffed Crimini MushroomsCollapse )

( Spinach, Arugula and Shiitake salad in a Pancetta ViniagretteCollapse )

( Campanelle Pasta with Oyster Mushrooms and Proscuttio in a Garlic Cream SauceCollapse )

All in all, one of more enjoyable cooking experiences I've had in a while. Here's hoping that the next theme is one that allows as much breadth and fun!

10:40pm: Soy Sausage Polpette with Potato-Leek Soup
Another day, another experimentation with cooking... this one inspired by my recent first attempt at making Italian style meatballs (which were served in a red curry sauce over penne -- tasty, but a bit unorthodox).

( To see how laws, er, sausages are made...Collapse )

The left over polpette were happily munched upon as well.

9:01pm: Pan-fried tofu, in a spicy cashew-macademia sauce
This entry, and likely all the entries I will be making in the future, is me talking in detail about what I cooked today. If you don't care, then don't read, carry on, nothing to see here.

This meal made me very happy. I overcooked the sauce, to the point where it lost too much moisture and got clumpy instead of smooth, but for the first time, I got the tofu right so it was crisp without being oily on the outside, and moist and chewy on the inside.

( crisp tofu in a spicy nutty sauceCollapse )

8:04pm: Ah, Bay Area traffic, how I've missed you...
I know I've been a regular blogaholic lately, spamming this space with three or four posts a day, nay, an hour. But you will pardon my posting of yet one more tidbit.

I'm back in the South Bay for a few days, and if I haven't seen you in a while, now's a good time to catch up. My number hasn't changed, so give me a ring. Otherwise, I'll be likely found at my old haunts, like Dana Street.

Cheers, and Happy Easter to you all...

1:23am: More honored in the breach...
And yes, I know the original quote has the opposite intent than my usage here. But it's 1:30 AM, and the Bard can, most respectfully, bite me.

( ramblings about my work habits follow...Collapse )

But, on the bright side, Paul Oakenfold sure can spin a nifty remix of Led Zeppelin's "Baby I'm Gonna Leave You" done by Anne Bredon, Edward Darling and Paul Bennett.

9:21pm: This could get dangerous...
Across the street now, there are, on tap, the following beverages:

Guinness
Mack N' Jack's African Amber
Pyramid Heveweizen
Strongbow Cider
Other stuff, but who cares with the above?

My favorite greasy cheesesteak place is no more, but they are replaced by good beer and bangers and mash.

This weekend I'll see if they can make a decent Irish Coffee...

6:57pm: Scratching that itch...
No, not the itch of surgical scars, because I'm not that dumb. The itch of wanting real Mexican food. Or, at the least, Mexican food of the type I got used to living in California for over a quarter century.

And sweet hallelujiah, I found it. A few blocks from my apartment the unfortunately named "Bandito Cafe" has just opened.

We're talking about rice that's an odd shade of orange, and not a hint of "lime-coconut" or "minted" to it. It does have chopped up bell peppers in it, like it should.

We're talking about beans I would bet money were cooked in lard.

We're talking about the only garnish being lettuce and sour cream, and nary a dollop of any "salsa" including pineapples, mangoes or wasabi.

The entire plate was smothered in too much cheese.

Sure, there were low points -- no horchata, and too much cheddar cheese instead of jack and random Mexican white cheeses.

But for the first time since moving up here, I'm not craving a tacqueria. Yay! Sure, Los Charros in Mt. View is better, and I'm certain to go there every time I'm in the Bay Area. But greasy, comforting enchiladas and tacos are finally within reach again!

Plus, I left work by 5:15, so good day all around.

12:59am: Home in almost one piece
The piece that is missing is, of course, the vermiform appendix. Which I no longer have. But I was in and out of the hospital in under 24 hours, and feeling pretty good considering I was coming out of surgery around now yesterday.

Thanks for the good thoughts, and I'll be taking the rest of the week off to do very, very little...

8:52am: My inner hypochondriac runs scared...
Oy. This is the second time this month that I was completely unable to sleep because of horrific abdominal pain. Once I was willing to write off to some sort of food poisoning or something. Twice, and the second time much worse... Well, you know your imagination is running ahead of yourself when, after seven hours of tossing and turning, your "best case scenario" is ulcers.

Time to take advantage of this good health plan I've got. Naturally this comes up in the middle of a very tight schedule at work, where I was planning to use today to prep for a usability study I'm supposed to drive tomorrow. I'm going to a doctor this morning, and count it as very unlikely I'll make it to work after...

Blech. Yuck. Ouch. And now I'm done whining at y'all... for now.

1:17am: Well, that was different
I'm so unused to doing a complete rewrite of a chunk of code, involving lots of GUI elements and arbitrary pixel and icon painting, that took around two and a half hours of coding without the ability to do *any* incremental changes and testing...

And having it work 100% right the first time it compiled. No off by one errors, no annoyingly ugly colors, no failures to repaint, no turds.

That makes staying up until 1am at work coding on a Sunday worthwhile. I'd had that budgeted in my head as a full day of work... Which would put me ahead of schedule, if I weren't already behind schedule. In any case, I no grasp a bit better why hansandersen loves UI work so much -- that was just darn satisfying.

And now, as the scary little doll-robot-clone-thing says, "Home again, home again, Jiggity-jig!"

8:40am: Good start to the morning
Well, that was unexpected. Usually when I set an early alarm, I end up snoozing or resetting it... But I was out of the house before 7:30, thanks to happy coincedence of my radio alarm clock blasting me out of bed with John Williams and the Boston Pops doing the most hyperactive, frantic and platonically "prestissimo" arrangement I have ever heard of Franz Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2". Dear goodness, that was just plain ridiculous.

That was spiffy.

11:12am: Home again, home again...
Well, I'm in Mountain View. At Dana Street.

This is rather a bit odd, probably related to the severe sleep deprivation... 6 in the morning flights are no longer my preferred way to travel. Come to think of it, they never were...

Anyway, the South Bay is much as I remembered, except hotter. Why didn't anyone tell me it was hot down here? Of course, this is the guy who grew up with 120 degree days in Chico...

I'm babbling. It's good to be away from work.

11:50pm: A trivial meaningless milestone
So, another chapter in my life has closed, and another transitional life event has occurred.

I ran out of laundry detergent from the first bottle I bought after moving to Redmond. Thus, I am one bottle of detergent into life up here.

Hey, I warned you it was trivial. The words "trivial" and "meaningless" were right there in the subject.

In other news, things are going okay. I need a vacation rather severely, which is convenient, seeing as I'm taking one starting this coming weekend. I'll be in the Bay Area most of next week, although some of that is going to be claimed by parents.

And now sleeping or something like that...

2:26am: How to make a happier me, in a few easy steps
This weekend has been very much what I needed. End of the week was finishing up the project that ate six weeks of my life, of my soul and my sanity. There's still a little bit of wrap-up on that, but it's been handed off to test, and I feel as if a 50 pound monkey has been removed from my back.

Saturday I went into Seattle for brunch with two of the cooler folks I've met since moving up here, and then a good deal of board gaming, general talking and so forth at hansandersen's place. This also involved more sake than advisable in a playing a subtle strategy board game, which was deemed a draw in order to facilitate sushi. From there, hot-tubbing.

Today was spent at a huge puzzle and games party in a fantastic house overlooking Lake Sammammish. We were able to see at least six different civic fireworks displays, and countless dozens of others. The view for fireworks literally took in half of King County. Combine this with solid barbeque, lots of games ranging from subtle strategy to uphill croquet, and lots of very clever people, and it was great fun.

The capper was that two people at the party found themselves unable to make it to the Sarah McLachlan concert tomorrow night in Seattle, and now I get go instead. And I am not even thinking about going into the office at all tomorrow (well, not very much).

Fan-fucking-tastic weekend.

And, the fun realization that I only have about eight work days before my summer vacation hit me too. The forces of burnout have suffered a major setback, and my sanity stands a chance.

And, for something of interest to people not me, last time I walked around the pond four ducks followed, and ran right past the other person to get to me. Four ducks, instead of one. I fear geometrical sequences. If I die mysteriously in the next few weeks, suspect fowl play.

2:24pm: I never post, and now a lame test?
You will be shocked, yes shocked, to see that I got this score...

You are an SEDF--Sober Emotional Destructive Follower. This makes you an evil genius. You are extremely focused and difficult to distract from your tasks. With luck, you have learned to channel your energies into improving your intellect, rather than destroying the weak and unsuspecting.

Your friends may find you remote and a hard nut to crack. Few of your peers know you very well--even those you have known a long time--because you have expert control of the face you put forth to the world. You prefer to observe, calculate, discern and decide. Your decisions are final, and your desire to be right is impenetrable.

You are not to be messed with. You may explode.

4:20pm: Ducks
Well, that was odd. I was taking my afternoon walk around the pond to reassure myself that the sun does exist as something other than that which I see through my boss' window across the hall.

And I passed a mother duck, and her relatively young ducklings. The mother started clucking as I got near, so I gave her wide berth. And all was well, or so I thought...

About thirty seconds later I got that "I'm being followed" feeling. I looked back, and the duck was waddling after me in a very determined fashion. I picked up my pace, and so did the duck.

The persistant bugger followed me for around 150 meters before finally breaking off...

This totally irrelevant story is brought to you by the nouns "compile" and "time".

11:16pm: Truth is mauver than fiction
'Twas a great weekend, with not nearly enough time to see everyone I would have liked to have seen. But the good geekery and celebration-ness that occurred was fun and recharging. I can't wait to get back for a proper vacation that gives enough time to actually properly enjoy the company.

Much thanks to hansandersen for putting me up and up with me for most of the weekend, and phoebek too... See y'all up here soon enough, eh?

Oh, and the final "woo-hoo" comment for the evening before turning in for the evening -- of the six wireless networks reachable from various points in my apartment one of them is kind enough (or naive enough) to allow freeloaders like me, thus this post is brought to you by the letters U-N-S-E-C-U-R-E-D...

10:35am: Two updates in three days? What's up with that?
So, thanks to some helping hands from hansandersen and jephly, plus the metaphorical helping hands of tasty japanese food (agedashi tofu, chicken tebuyaki udon), I was able to vacate my temporary housing before the deadline, and spend the first night in my new apartment. I've probably been watching too much anime about airships, and reading too many of Bujold's stories of Miles Vorkosigan, because I kept thinking of it as "Transferring my flag" to a new ship...

Amazing how much more home-like a bedroom feels with no boxes in it, and clean sheets on the bed. Of course, I didn't fall asleep until 2ish, thanks to how long it took to get a clean (i.e., not so dusty it made me ill) blanket on the bed, plus a bit too much of manic energy trying to decide what to do with the place in terms of adding furniture, rearranging, decorating, etc. Now, I just need to pipe that manic energy to getting work done before Thursday. Which is awfully darn soon, really.

I've mentioned that I love the apartment, but there were a few features that I didn't realize until last night... Such as the really, really bright yellow light outside one of the master bedroom windows. Or the noisy-as-gosh trucks that spend approximately forever collecting trash in the morning at very non-conducive to sleep decibel levels. Those two factors may cause me to consider moving my bedroom to the smaller, but (I hope) less distracting one.

Anyway, that is the ramble from me. Ramble, ramble, ramble...

Oh, and phoebek, you'll be happy to know I (a) found your bath containers and (b) chewed out the movers over the fact that they packed them.

8:53pm: Have apartment, will travel...
Wait, that doesn't make much sense, now does it. There's no dependecy between those two sentence fragments, but I'll not pick nits if you don't. *conspiratorial wink*

Anyway, I have my new apartment. For you Eastside folks for whom this is a relevant locator, it's right at the 90th Street bridge over the Sammamish River in Redmond (yes, that puts it a stone's throw away from hansandersen's place...). It's a lovely apartment, and a few yards from the river trail, which gives happy flashbacks to my parent's place in Chico, which was two fence hops away from Bidwell Park and trails along a creek through an oak forest... Not that most of my Chico memories are things I want to relive, but that part makes me happy.

Otherwise, I think I'm settling in decently. I still need to get all my crap out of my temporary housing, and do so before Tuesday morning, but since all my crap in temp housing came up in one carload, it shouldn't be that horrific an ordeal. Work has been well, and the team I work with is a great bunch of people. My direct manager is one of, if not the best, folks I've ever worked with or for, and everyone else (with the exception of my slacker soon-to-be officemate...) is great too.

Um... lessee... I haven't posted in ages, and I'm about out of things to say. I'll be in the Bay Area this weekend, and will probably be on Castro Street in Mountain View for most of Friday. (Dana Street? Me? NEVER!) I'm not really planning on making any schedules, but I'll have my cell phone and be checking email. And this portion explains the "will travel" part of the subject. Clever, eh?

Until my next dispatch (probably in June or something), this is me saying that yes, I am in fact alive and well...

10:49am: Vienna Teng in Bellevue
Hey, I guess this is only relevant to Seattle area folks, but I'll say it anyway...

Vienna Teng, an incredibly talented pianist and singer/songwriter is doing a free show at the Bellevue Borders Saturday at noon. It will be good, she's touring for her second album, and she rocks.

She's also a college friend of mine, who quit her job as a software developer at Cisco to follow a full-time musician career. So, support the illusion that us code monkeys can move on to new things...

There's music samples at the website, and you really want to come and see her. She's also opening for Joan Baez in Seattle tonight, but I figure this is probably too short notice for that...

11:53pm: 12 cups of coffee later
12 cups of coffee is, of course, an estimation. I think it's probably closer to 14, plus a double americano in Portland.

Anyway, I'm in Redmond, using hansandersen's network to post this. Would have made it in less than 14 hours from Chico, if I hadn't stopped in Portland to have coffee with my high school best friend, whom I hadn't communicated with in over 3 years.

Staying in a nice place, with a bed. Which I will use very, very soon.

10:41pm: Update
The Bay Area was kind enough to leave me, as a parting memento, suck ass traffic on the way out.

So, I'm only as far as my parents place in Chico, where I am crashing for the night, and attempting to get out again before dawn... Whee.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled me-not-posting.

2:54pm: Leaving
I'm leaving the Bay Area now. If you get to Dana Street in the next half hour (i.e., before 2:30), I'll say good bye in person. Otherwise, see y'all when I come down next, probably in a couple months.

And if you're not a Bay Area local, kindly disregard this post.

And if you're a Redmondite, see you soon.

And, um, lots of mushy stuff about how much I'm going to miss y'all. No sarcasm, I'm nice and choked up as I write this.

Yeah. That's it, for now. Oy. Bye.