New Fiery Furnaces track!

Free download, lyrics, and video:

http://blogs.wnyc.org/soundcheck/2009/06/11/mp3-the-fiery-furnaces-the-end-is-near/

Album soon to follow... And I REALLY hope those titles are not suggesting something about the longevity of the band.

Shelf life of frozen shrimp

Yahoo Answers... OK idea.

You can only answer the questions for four days, then they are closed, but what if you come up with a better answer a year later? Too bad! That's stupid!

I have had this bag of shrimp in my freezer for about 12 months. Google "frozen shrimp expire". Find Yahoo Answers question "Frozen shrimp... is it still good to eat?" All of the answers are uneducated guesses.

Here is a real answer, presented by a group of scientists who investigated that very question:

Storage quality and shelf life of frozen shrimp

"The shelf life of frozen shrimp determined by sensory evaluation was 2.1 months at 0°C, 5.3 months at -5°C and 6.8 months at -10°C, respectively."

Demonstrandum.

Too bad I can't post the answer to Yahoo Answers, but at least I have my little blog, where I can ventilate such important information. Now I just have to figure out how long a month is in metric...

How to Identify a Hipster

What is a hipster? In the parlance of our times, the word hipster is used to label a set of people who A) generally dress fashionably (perhaps a little TOO fashionably), B) live in an urban setting (perhaps a little TOO urban), and C) hold liberal political views (perhaps... nevermind). There are a few myths about hipsters that I would like to dispel...

Hipsters will not eat your dog. This is an old wives' tale used to create a solid distinction between "us" and "them". Hipsters will not steal your chapstick. I can't really imagine how this one even came into existence, because I know a lot of hipsters, and I leave chapstick laying around all the time, but I have never found it missing (that's an odd phrase - found it missing... a non sequitur).

How do hipsters dress? Imagine a pirate - not a captain, but like a first mate. Now imagine that pirate walking down the sidewalk outside your house. That's it! Hipsters look a lot like pirates. They like to wear deck shoes, long, cutoff jean-shorts that hang just below the knee, exposing the ankle and calf, perhaps a bandanna on the head or around the arm, and a beard, or at least some third-fourth day scruff, and definitely some piercings and tattoos. It's important to remember, however, that hipsters are NOT pirates.

Hipsters are not pirates. A real buccaneer would never be seen driving a Volvo, or wearing a scarf. Likewise, you would never see a swashbuckler riding a scooter. You can't swashbuckle on a scooter, it's too tame. Actually, maybe the connection between pirates and hipsters is why those terrible myths about them stealing your chapstick and eating your dog exist. Ha! I guess a hipster is a scarfy dog. Or maybe they like to scarf some dog. Hm.

Goat Milk

Today I tried goat milk. Why? Because it was there, in the supermarket, and I've never had it before. I love it! I tastes like a milk version of goat cheese - what a shocker! I've formed a mild taste obsession with goat cheese over the past year. Now I can get that awesome flavor in my granola as well! Goat milk is delicious, and some say it's actually healthier for humans than cow milk. Huh!

Savory French Toast

Today the light bulb went on for me with french toast. I had only about a quarter-loaf of this Companion Sourdough Olive bread, and it was about 90% dry, hard as a rock. I wanted to eat an egg and some chorizo, but I needed some toast. You know already where I'm going w/this

I think I remember from an episode of Good Eats that while french toast in America is served dessert-like, some parts of the world (like France, maybe?) eat a more savory french toast. Also, french toast is supposed to be made with stale bread, and one can easily imagine how it was first conceived: You have this stale bread, so you need to moisten it somehow, but then you also need to toast it: bring on the milk-soak and a frying pan. So here I go with this sourdough olive bread, the only bread I have, so I'm forced into it, but you know, it's one of the most brilliant moves I've ever made in a kitchen! I mean this french toast turns out to be the star of the meal!

I just beat one egg (I only had two) in some milk, saw the bread brick into two slices, and soak them in the mixture for about a minute, then fry them in about three pats of butter. It is utterly and completely mind-blowing delicious! I served them with the other egg, over medium, and a nice big patty of chorizo, and my favorite China Keemun tea with honey. The faint smokiness and full body of the keemun mixes with the hearty sweetness of the honey in perfect concinnity, and pairs so well with the sourdough olive french toast and egg, I can hardly believe I threw the meal together with only the last dregs I could muster for breakfast.

Truly a good day when such an unexpected treat is discovered. I will definitely be trying more savory french toast variations.

Dropbox Rocks

You know how it's a pain in the arse to share files with someone several states away? You have to burn a CD or DVD and actually mail it. Ugh!

Now comes Dropbox.

Problem Solved.

Two sauces

Two sauces I've been working on that I should document... Neither are especially original, but they're both very easy to make, and pack a lot of great flavor.

First: Morel Cream Sauce

As you may know, we are in the waning days of morel hunting season. I happen to know that this part of Missouri produced a bumper crop of morels this year because I met two guys in the supermarket who bagged about 7 lbs. Yes, seven. I was standing in the mushroom section a few weeks ago when these two guys walked up to check the price on the dried morels, which was $10/oz. They were like dude! I suggested that they were so expensive because morels are rare and delicious. They were like yeah, we just collected about 7 lbs of them. I was like what? Then he pulled out his phone and started showing me pictures, like the one with the mushroom cap bigger than a PBR can. Sadly, they wouldn't sell me any, but they did graciously invite me to a pot luck where they planned on unveiling them.

Anyway, I went ahead and bought that box of dried morels, as well as a few fresh chicken breasts, a bottle of Louis Jadot Chardonnay, some shallots, and some cream...

You need:
- 1/2 pint of cream
- 1 bottle of white wine
- 1 oz dried morels (or 4 ounces (?) fresh)
- 2 shallots
- olive oil
- 1/4 tsp of minced garlic
- some kosher salt
- Guldens Brown Mustard

1. Dice 2 shallots fine, sauté in olive oil with 1/4 tsp of minced garlic.
   
2. Wash dried morels thoroughly, and then soak them in lukewarm water for 3-4 mins.
   
3. Loosely dice the morels, then squeeze them lightly to get rid of the excess water, and put them in them pan, along with about half the bottle of wine.
   
4. Add kosher salt and Guldens Brown Mustard. The amount of mustard is important. It is definitely an important flavor in this sauce, but you don't want it to be at the forefront. It is third in line to the mushrooms and the wine, I would say... maybe even less. Put in no more than two good sized squirts... probably should be about 1/12th of a cup.
   
5. After reducing by 1/3, add about 1/2 pt cream, and reduce by about 1/3 (or to taste).
   

Serve with rice or grilled chicken breast, or steak, or whatever. It's awesome.

Second: Honey Chile Sauce

For some reason today while I was walking through the supermarket, I suddenly decided I am going to start eating a lot of fish. I bought a fresh cod filet and a flounder filet. Earlier I had bought some honey simply because mine was pretty much crystalized. So when I got home, I noticed that I have like 4-5 different kinds of chile powder, so I decided to do a honey chile sauce. It is perfect for fish, because it gives it a nice sweet-hot zing without adding any fat.

You need:
- Honey
- Ancho chile powder
- New Mexico chile powder
- 1 shallot (or 1/2 yellow onion)
- 1/4 tsp minced garlic
- ground coriander (or maybe fresh cilantro, but I haven't tried that yet)
- olive oil

1. Dice the shallot fine, sauté in olive oil with 1/4 tsp of minced garlic.
   
2. Squeeze in as much honey as you want sauce (say 1/4 cup). Add equal parts ancho chile powder and New Mexico chile powder (about 3/4 to 1 tsp each), and perhaps the same amount of ground coriander, or probably a bit less.
   
3. Let this stuff bubble for a couple minutes, then it's ready.
   

There are dozens of ways to develop this simple sauce even further, or even just alter the basic ingredients. Serve with grilled or pan seared whitefish (like cod). Also good with rice, and probably grilled chicken or pork ribs.

Installing Linux on Eee PC S101

Since the S101 is not sold with Linux in the US, you have to install it yourself. This is actually not very difficult at all, and can actually be completed in a few hours. Here are a list of things that took some time for me to discover that may save you some time:

1) To get to the BIOS screen, press F2 repeatedly during POST.

2) To get the boot device selection screen, first press F2 to see the POST screen, then press ESC to enable the boot selection screen. You will see a message on the POST screen like "Boot selections screen enabled", or something like that.

3) To flash the BIOS, first plug your netbook powercord in. Then partition a USB key with a single partition of type 'b', which, in fdisk, is called "WIN95 FAT32". Turn on the bootable flag on that partition. Next format the partition with mkfs.vfat, and mount it. Now download the latest BIOS from here, unzip the file, and then move the extracted ROM file to your new VFAT file system, renaming it S101.ROM. Finally, reboot the box with the jump drive plugged in, and while it's POSTing, hit ALT+F2. That will put you into the EZ Flash utility, and immediately start loading the new ROM.

4) Install Easy Peasy. This is seriously the easiest, most functional out-of-the-box distro for an Eee PC you could hope for. I installed Arch Linux first, and fumbled around trying to get the touchpad to work for a couple days, had to get wireless working, X, etc. It was definitely an old school DIY experience. Nothing wrong w/that, because you learn so much about the box, like how to prolong the life of your SSD, and how to configure ACPI events, etc. But on the other hand, Easy Peasy has all of that stuff already configured, so you can just have your beautiful new netbook ready to go immediately - wireless, working battery monitor, working ACPI events - everything.

5) To install Easy Peasy using Unetbootin is not as obvious as they make it sound. There are a couple key things you must do with your USB key when using Unetbootin to install the Easy Peasy ISO: Clear it of any pre-existing boot blocks, and format it with a WIN95 FAT32 bootable partition. The reason for that is, in my experience, Unetbootin will not overwrite any existing boot blocks, so if you have GRUB installed on your USB key (like I did), you have to either clear out the GRUB boot block, or (and I haven't actually tried this) modify the GRUB configuration to boot what would be the Windows boot block (i.e. chain-load the Unetbootin boot loader). If you don't fix this, the box will boot from that GRUB boot block every time, and you will never get to the Easy Peasy installer (which is actually a live CD).

Portage Overlay Ebuild Trick

Whenever you put down a new ebuild in your Portage overlay dir, you have to build a manifest for it to use... I can never remember the command for it, so I am putting it here for posterity:

    ebuild filename digest

For instance, for a new ebuild called cedega-000133.ebuild, put it in the appropriate overlay dir, then type

    ebuild cedega-000133.ebuild digest

Done.