Confit Nutter

Well, what am I supposed to do with all that goose fat lying around? In addition to a jar of confit of 4 goose legs, I have another jar of a pair of duck legs, a small jar of shredded breast of lamb, and today's project was a stab at beef. I used topside and shin. The shin is a perfect choice for this (topside less so, but it's what I had in the freezer). Because I'm greedy and selfish, I did scoop out the marrow from the shinbone as soon as that bit was cooked so I could eat it warm with a bit of salt. I love the marrow. I cooked it with lots of garlic in the goosefat, and it seemed to work ok. We'll see how it is in a few weeks or months.

Goose Fat

Many people wrongly think animal fat is 100% saturated fat. Regardless of whether you think saturated fats are "bad" or mononsaturated fats are "good", the breakdown of various fats is pretty interesting. Lard, for example is nearly half monounsaturated. Goose fat, which is a culinary gift from nature, has more than twice as much mononsaturated fat as saturated (by weight, less than 28% saturated, more than 56% monounsaturated; and it's less than 10% omega-6 to boot). Almost all of that monounsaturated fat is oleic acid, the same magical stuff in olive oil that makes everyone near the mediterranean live to the age of 300 without heart disease. Having some extra goose fat from the confit session of the christmas geese, I let some cool to room temperature in a spare jar, and the solids settled out at the bottom, leaving most of it a golden liquid at room temperature. I used a little for eggs this morning, and it had picked up a bit of the garlic, bay, and thyme from the confit process. Aromatic and satisfying.

Can Travelling Get Any Worse?

A few months ago, my youngest and I were stuck on an unmoving Eurostar train for a couple hours. They turned the air and power off. Fortunately, the delay was only a few hours and not nearly day-long imprisonment hundreds of passengers had to suffer recently due to the wrong kind of snow. And now flying is going to get even worse.

A few years ago, one idiot tried to light his shoe on fire and now we all have to kick ours off as part of our pre-flight routine. Now a new idiot smuggled something a bit like semtex in his underpants and tried to ignite it. So can we look forward to being aggressively groped and fondled by security automatons? You betcha!

"They patted you down really well," said Allen, 41, an automotive engineer from Shelby Township, Mich. "It wasn't just a quick rub, it was a slow pat."

Fabulous! I'm looking forward to the slow pat already. But it gets even better. What's the best way to prevent someone from blowing up a plane with a c4 jockstrap? If you said, "don't let anyone put a pillow in their laps", you're qualified to work in airline security. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure that waiting until the end of the flight was not an essential feature of this particular explosion plot. But once you remove the power of critical thought, you get idiotic practices [already adopted!] such as these:

Passengers getting off flights from overseas reported being told that they couldn't get out of their seat for the last hour of their flight. Air Canada also said that during the last hour passengers won't be allowed access to carry-on baggage or to have any items on their laps.
...
Passengers on a United Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Washington were not allowed to have anything on their laps during the descent into Dulles, or to open the overhead bins an hour before landing

Since I haven't yet had my lobotomy, I'm not seeing how these measures will help. If he tried to ignite his pants in the middle of the flight, would there be a ban on getting up or putting a pillow in your lap for the middle hour of the flight? What color were his underpants? Can we ban that color, too? He spent 20 minutes in the loo, can we look forward to flight attendants having to time our toilet breaks?

What preventive measures would be better to put the kibosh on copycats? Given dogs' natural love of crotch-sniffing and some breeds' remarkable ability to be trained to detect explosives, I think the solution is obvious.

Eurostar Should Consider Steam

"If any of the train operators want to modernise their services by using steam trains, I would be happy to give them a quote."

Boxing Day Dinner

The confited goose legs are happily sitting in a jar of gorgeous golden goose fat. Yesterday no one was keen for a big dinner so we saved the festivities for tonight instead. Roasted a goose, sans legs, stuffing the neck with a sausage stuffing and the body with apples, onions, and prunes. Made the inauthentic green bean casserole, and brussel sprouts with roasted chestnuts, plus almond cake for dessert. I do occasionally have big gaffes in the kitchen. When I was prepping the legs and rending the fat from the geese, I fried and ate one of the livers (which was wonderful), and made a stock from the rest of the giblets/offal. I added some onions, carrots, bay leaves, and some unused mushrooms that were nearing end of shelf life. The stock ended up with a nice earthy flavor and a very dark brown color, or so I thought. Today I pulled it out and thickened it a bit with a bechamel, at which point I noticed the color was actually grey. It was the most unappealing thing I've concocted in a long time. It looked so bad, I tried to brighted in up with a bit of turmeric, which just turned into green (in a greenish grey kind of way). It still tasted ok, but I couldn't get over the horrifying pall it was casting over the rest of the cooktop and had to toss it. Oh well.

This Year's Geese

Picked up the geese from the butcher today, and started the prep. The year-old confit the other day was delicious, but I don't think this batch will survive that long before I eat it.

Gooseful fridge

Year Old Leftovers, Never Frozen

Just tried some goose leg confit I'd made almost exactly a year ago. Normally it would've been eaten much sooner, but I forgot about it in the winter and then the summer didn't seem the right time to break it out. It's very tasty. Hopefully I won't die from botulism but if this is my last post ever, assume my followup would've been: "Oops!"

Bad Science 2009

A nice wrapup of the year in bad science from Ben Goldacre.

Great Urban Run

Went for a last long run of the year (about 22km) yesterday through (of course) East London. Went up through Homerton and Lower Clapton, east to the canals by the football pitches of Hackney Marshes, down the Lea (aka Lee) River, south past the Olympic Stadium (in progress), down through Three Mills and past the House Mill into the Bow Locks, with Canary Wharf shimmering in the low winter sun beyond, like the emerald city. Then to Limehouse Cut, around the Limehouse Basin, and back up the canal through Mile End park and into Victoria park. The run has a bit of everything bad and good about the East End: neighborhood shops, council estates, new schools, row houses in various states of gentrification, crack houses, Georgian canals, 300+ years of buildings, from those old mills to repurposed Victorian industrial warehouses to 21st-centry work/live buildings on the waterfront. It has industrial decay as a backdrop for moor hens, geese, heron, swans, mallards, and the old boys fishing for carp. It has hand-cranked locks, tidy canal boats, derelict barges, kayakers, rowers, and yachts. A bit of sunshine, often rain, always mud, yesterday ice. Keep the pristine wooded nature trails, there's nothing like a great city run.

How To Play Chess With Kids

Simple: handicap yourself by removing some of your pieces at the start of the game. Then you get to play all-out. Adjust based on results. Fun for both of you. Now it works both ways: since my 11-yr-old crushes me regularly at full strength, I'm going to make him start handicapping.

Perpetual Performance Art

So a company in Dublin that appears to be headed up by Deco Cuffe from The Commitments is demonstrating a perpetual motion machine. I will be disappointed if this isn't a brilliant viral marketing scheme for a new Roddy Doyle book.

Police Crackdown on London Photographers

Kind of like the dreaded "africanized" bees that have been threatening to swarm homicidally over the US any decade now, I'm concerned that UK cops have been getting "americanized". The image of the mild-mannered police who actually walk around and talk to people, neighborly-like, is largely being replaced by that of militarized guys covered with gear and weapons and carrying a chip on the shoulder. Everybody wants to be a hard-ass I guess. The power-grab masquerading as protection from terror has made things a lot worse. There have been disturbing reports of photographers getting hassled. Yes, section 44 of the Terrorism Act sucks, but a few police are acting like it invests them with powers far beyond the letter of that law. Watch this video if you want to be depressed by an example.

To the credit of the police, the Met actually publishes a useful sheet on advice to photographers. It would be great if the police in the streets actually read this as well. A few key quotes that not all of them seem to be up on:

Members of the public and the media do not need a permit to film or photograph in public places and police have no power to stop them filming or photographing incidents or police personnel.

The Terrorism Act 2000 does not prohibit people from taking photographs or digital images in an area where an authority under section 44 is in place.

Officers have the power to view digital images contained in mobile telephones or cameras carried by a person searched under S44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, provided that the viewing is to determine whether the images contained in the camera or mobile telephone are of a kind, which could be used in connection with terrorism.

Officers do not have the power to delete digital images or destroy film at any point during a search.

Iain Banks

Iain Banks might be too good for his own good. Sometimes in his writing he seems like he's just jerking the reader around, taking the piss, or being lazy. But I love him and am mostly just jealous. His non-SF books are ok, I can kind of take them or leave them. For his SF, the ones I can't fully recommend, but have redeeming qualities iff you're already a fan: Consider Phlebas, Look To Windward, Against a Dark Background, Inversions, Feersum Endjinn. (The latter, tediously, has one character whose narrated chapters are done phonetically. Unfortunately it's by far the best character in the book, so the sections shouldn't be skipped.) The latest doesn't look good at all and I'm giving it a miss. But the "good" ones are so good that all is forgiven:

• Player of Games -- straightforward and tightly constructed story, excellent starter book
• Use of Weapons -- the kind of book you wish you could unread so you could read it again for the first time
• Excession -- brilliant, and it's this kind of effort that makes me wonder if he's phoned in some of the others
• The Algebraist -- unlike the three above, not a "culture" novel, but engaging, funny, well-crafted

Those four very highly recommended. They make good presents for anyone who likes SF but hasn't yet read Iain Banks.

Mountain Food

There are a few foods that should be mandatory menu items in every ski resort globally (and north america has a lot of catching up to do vs. the alps when it comes to on-mountain dining).

Rosti: just a big plate of hash browns. Cook it skillfully (in a skillet, not a deep fryer), and serve it plain or with any number of toppings: eggs, cheese, mushrooms, whatever. Just put it on the menu.

Gulaschsuppe (yes, goulash): Lively and hearty beef stew, often with a nice but not overpowering zing to it. Kind of like the alpine version of chili.

Chili: fair's fair. With appropriate fixin's.

The pancake/waffle thing: goes by different names (e.g. kaiserschmarren), but essentially a giant mound of shredded pancakes, covered with powdered sugar and custard and/or applesauce. Pure sugar, yes, but if your skinny kids are burning 1200 kcals/hr just staying warm, or if you are getting grumpy, this hits home.

Toasted cheese: some manner of toasted cheese must be available. Maybe it's the swiss mountain cheese toast (dry bread, rub with garlic, splash with white wine, mound with cheese and pop under the broiler), or pizza, but cheese must be getting toasted on the mountain.

Croissants: I don't know why these aren't a universal food anyway. The only reason these contain flour at all is to hold the butter together. Go well with coffee breaks.

hot stuff: hot drinks, hot soup (in addition to goulash)

Ritter Sport Chocolate Bars: Quadratisch. Praktisch. Gut.

Skiing

I love skiing. I'm very late to winter sports. (Winter itself is nothing new, having grown up with the long, cold, snowy midwestern variety.) I first started learning to snowboard at age 37, 6 years ago. I was terrible at it. I loved being up in the mountains and greatly enjoyed the holidays, but after years of still being crap at the sport I decided to try skiing. Starting in January of 2008, 41 now, I launched myself at the skiing attempt. To my surprise I was much less incompetent at it than boarding. By the end of my second season I was pretty comfortable, if graceless, on a lot of the mountain, and really enjoying the pistes. Now I'm starting my third season looking forward to more improvement.

Like a lot of sports, skiing is one in which having the skill lets you take it as easy or push yourself as hard as you want. It can be hard work in any condition before the skills are there, but once they are, you can cruise pretty much forever. In the alps, I've seen and met quite a few senior citizens still out there gliding down the slopes. Their rugby days are over, certainly, but they're still out there skiing.

A more geeky pleasure of skiing is the technology to get you up the mountain. The engineers really get to flaunt. Not only are mechanisms of lifts and gondolas and cable cars usually exposed, but they almost always clearly post facts and figures -- weight, capacity, throughput, speed, thickness/strength of cabling, etc. I'd love to see this more commonly practiced around machinery of other types. I suspect these lift designers have a competitive streak. There's no real explanation for, say, the gondola in St. Anton that gets lifted at the base station from ground level up to a higher exit level on a giant wheel, other than that they did it because they could. Clearly showing off. And it's brilliant.



On a more personal scale, the equipment is a lot of fun. I'm still figuring out what things need to have money spent on them and what don't. For me, the jacket is in the latter category. I made do for years with a big blue raincoat, and have just replaced it with a weatherproof shell from eddie bauer I got on sale over the summer in the US ridiculously cheap. It's not a ski jacket, but it has pockets in all the right places, and keeps the water and wind out. It cost, literally, 1/10th the price of a decent "ski" jacket. Ideally it would be just slightly longer and the sleeve openings would be a bit wider, but other than that it's quite the steal. It's not insulated, which I prefer anyway, as I layer depending on the weather.


Ski pants seem worth the price, up to a point. I had a decent pair of boarding pants that took me through boarding and then skiing but finally had to be retired. Now I've moved on to a nice pair of salomon ski pants that are very comfortable and so far fitting the bill perfectly. There may be bargains at the cheap end of the market, but most of what I looked at in the lower price range seemed flimsy and/or shoddy. In the middle of the market there are a lot of choices that look quite good, quality-wise. Of course, there are ludicrously expensive options as well. Yes, the £400 ski pants seem very nice, but until I'm spending 15+ weeks per year skiing, they are not worth it.

Socks: definitely worth it. I love falke socks. For the torso, I usually go with a cotton t-shirt to start. An entire generation of recreational athletes, at least in the US, has been convinced by successful marketing campaigns that wearing cotton during anything strenuous will result in certain hypothermia or death by heat stroke, or possibly both, and that only "technical" fabrics are acceptable. I wear cotton year-round for all sorts of things and despite this shocking display of risk-taking have yet to suffer calamity. On top of that, I do upgrade to merino wool, in particular I've found the icebreaker stuff to be excellent, and worth the money. One or two layers of wool in between the cotton and the outer jacket handles a broad range of winter coldness as long as my extremities are warm. The helmet works well until it gets really cold, at with point a skullcap or a facemask with hood works great under the helmet. I also wear wool leggings if it's really cold.

Gloves I'm undecided on. Cheap gloves seem to work great for day 1, then are miserable to try to put on the next morning. But gloves can lead a hard life. I suspect the middle of the market is the place to go here. With goggles I think fit is the important thing. I'm a little skeptical of the various anti-fog claims of some types of goggles. Some people have the ability to fog up any goggles, regardless, while others' remain clear no matter what. I've broken a lot of goggles though, mostly when snowboarding and falling on my face, hard, so I still have a vestigial reluctance to spend a lot of money on them. They don't seem to last long in any case.

Helmets: I wear one all the time. It won't save me from catastrophic decceleration into a tree or a boulder, but it will keep my skull from getting sliced open under the edge of the idiot boarder or skiier who's out of control. And it keeps my head warm, and vents well when it gets warmer. Definitely worth the money on a comfortable one that fits well.

Boots: the first best upgrade from rental gear, even before skis. Makes a huge difference in comfort. Fit is far more important than brand. Skis are the next best upgrade. It's been great skiing on my own skis and not having to get used to a new kind every trip. I look forward to outgrowing them and needing new ones.

Little Drummer Boy

Not only is this an excruciating song to have to listen to, but the idiocy of the premise never fully struck me until now. What kind of psychopath thinks it's a good idea to start tapping out paradiddles for a newborn? Try this: borrow someone from the drumline of your nearest marching band and send them to the mother of a newborn, with snare and sticks. See how well that works out. It's hard to imagine anything worse. Maybe "Little Smoker Boy", who gives the baby the gift of secondhand smoke (instead of tears of shock and deafness)? I smoked my best for him pa-puff-puff-puff-puff....

Ischgl Ski Mission

Spent a few days in Ischgl on an early-season ski mission. Ischgl opens early in the alps, usually the end of november. Most of the skiing area is above 2300m and it has a good snow record. Compact but dense, Ischgl has a reputation as a raunchy party town. It certainly has more lapdancing clubs than a typical Tyrolean village. The downside is drunks stumbling around in the evening with skis on the their shoulders, or getting woken up by fellow hotel guests trying to figure out how to use the keycard to regain entry at 3am. The upside, and it's big, is that if you wake up and head up top when it opens -- leave the village on one of the 3 gondola lines [the one I used daily had heated seats, genius!] at 8:30, midmountain lifts start at 9:00 -- you get the mountains pretty much all to yourself for an hour or two. The hungover masses don't seem to pour into the midstation in earnest until 10:30 or so. The lift network is comprehensive, fast, and mostly high-capacity. Even when the throngs do decide to try out a bit of piste-bashing, lift queues are pretty much avoidable. The skiing is good, there are some nice long runs. Lots of pistes to choose from. The area is slightly more extensive than it appears at first. It is well worth fanning out from the crowded mistation to either side, as well as dropping over the back to the runs on the Swiss side of the resort. It's not as mogully or as extensive as St. Anton (which is effectively linked all the way through zurs, lech, and back), certainly more efficient for piste-bashing and less frustrating with the lack of lift queues. Lots of mileage to cover for intermediates, certainly.

I stayed at the Trisanna, which was a cheerful and comfortable family-run hotel (as all small hotels should be). The room was very clean, nicely furnished, reasonably priced, very good value for money. Even had a tidy little sauna area in the basement -- jacuzzi, sauna, steam room, shower, quiet room. Breakfast was good -- typical selection of meats, cheeses, breads, jams, yogurt, cereal, juices, coffee -- but high quality and nicely presented. There was always one hot item of eggs as well, which was a nice addition. I normally had eggs, ham[s], liverwurst (talk about nutritious, one slice of that will keep you going all day), cucumber, tomato, a few different cheeses, and a pot of coffee.

Dinner in the village ranged from mediocre to excellent. The best dish I had was a single pan with small but perfectly cooked, shockingly, pieces of beef, chicken, and pork, with mushrooms and some veg and a mound of homemade butter spaetzle covered wth melted cheese.

The skiing was great fun. Had one day terrible weather -- gets quite exposed on some of the peaks -- but the payoff was the next day of perfect, glorious conditions: bright sun on brand new snow.

P.S. Obligatory nutritional zealotry comment: the last day I skied 6 1/2 hours without stopping except for one water break. No need for "fueling". Much later, I was hungry, and I ate.

City Warning P.S.

Saw a frontpage subhead on a UK daily yesterday that described the debt as "terrifying". Fabulous editorializing from the journos. Maybe that's ok, if bankers' peace of mind is more important than providing for your own family. Anyway, here's a handy quiz to help you decide what to be more worried about:

Are you wealthy enough to stop working right now and still live comfortably the rest of your days?

• YES: You should worry about government debt.
• NO: You should worry about high unemployement.

City Warning: Financiers Unhappy

Have not been following the news lately, but did see a brief item on the tv about city financial firms "warning" the UK government about the perils of too much debt. Yes, a stern talking to from the same geniuses who brought us catastrophe. Why is there no outrage about this? Who are they to lecture anyone? How many billions of dollars do they need to lose, how many bubblicious bailouts will these banks require, before they finally lose credibility? And they pretend to be speaking from some vantage point of wisdom, on behalf of the public, but it should be abundantly clear by now that financial firms don't give a toss about the public, they speak only from their own wallets. As a general rule, anything investment banks think is a really good idea (e.g. carbon trading) should be treated with the utmost skepticism. And many issues banks don't really care about (e.g. unemployment!) do in fact deeply affect the general public.

Fishmonger in Victoria Park Village!

The Fishmonger has opened! It's Jonathan Norris. Even though I was already carrying a bag full of duck legs and such from the butcher, I got excited and bought a few trout and some smoked mackerel.

Stella, Miracle Beer

I preferred the "reassuringly expensive" Stella Artois campaign to the current billboard campaign, which proudly boasts "only four ingredients!" Is that the quantity of ingredients a virtue all by itself? Well, the ingredients the trumpet are "hops, maize, malted barley, and water". If you're putting corn in your beer, you really shouldn't brag about it. But I'm enormously impressed they've managed to make beer without yeast.

Holiday Cooking: Turkey[s]

After many years, this is my current favorite method of preparing a holiday turkey. I find smaller turkeys better than larger ones. Two small ones for a large group are better than one large one. The plan of attack is to confit the legs and separately roast the breasts on the bone. So:

Get the turkey[s] a couple days early. Cut the legs off and section into thigh and drumstick. Cut the wings off. Cut the back off, leaving a nice breast roast. Put that in the fridge. Brown the leg pieces in a heavy pan on the stovetop in good fat with some salt and pepper. Pack them into a roasting dish with some crushed cloves of garlic and a bay leaf or two and cover with fat -- goose fat is best, or duck fat or even lard. Top up with butter if you have to. Almost-covered is ok, too. Put into a medium oven (I use 150C but anything between 120-160C will work fine) for a few hours, until very tender and almost falling off the bone. Pull out and let cool completely, in the fat, before covering and fridging the entire thing.

The backs and wings you can bake the same time as the legs, and use them to make turkey stock for gravy. Or just pick the meat off and eat it as a cook's treat. Or separate the wings into pieces and save them for the kids' table. Or confit them with the legs if you've got the room in the pan.

For the breast roast, cover with butter, adding a layer under the skin, too, if you're feeling ambitious, salt and pepper, and place in a pan on a rack in a hot oven -- 220C -- breast-side down for 45 minutes. Turn heat down to 200C, turn breast side up, drop some more butter on top, and cook until done. I pull it out when the coolest part of the breast is at 65C. Actually I don't wait even that long. If you're feeble and worried about eating pathogens from a dodgy bird you picked up in an alley somewhere, cook it to 70C. In any case, pull it out of the oven, loosely cover with foil, and rest it at least 30 minutes. This time is perfect to heat up stuffing or finish other dishes and such.

To serve, cut/pull the breasts off and vertically (or bias) slice them, thickly, so each slab has some skin and some middle bit in it.

For the legs, heat them in a very hot oven -- 220C or higher, on a rack. Should not take long, let them get warm and let the skin crisp up.

Holiday Cooking: Chestnut Stuffing Recipe

Ingredients
chicken stock (see note, below)
dried bread cubes (see note, below)
1400g whole chestnuts, in shell
1 lb sausage meat
125g+ butter
2 med onions
1 sm. bunch celery
6 cloves garlic
1 large or 2 sm/med bramley apples
fresh sage


Method
This is better prepared the day before.

(1) roast the chestnuts, peel, and chop
score them first with a little 'x'
I roast at 200C for about 30 minutes, or until they are opening up and getting easy to peel
peel while still warm, as hot as you can tolerate, and reject any that don't shed their skins easily (that's why you start with so many, if you get 75% yield, that's great)
chop them as finely or as roughly as you wish

(2) cook the loose sausage meat

(3) dice and saute the onions and celery together in the butter, finely chopping and adding the garlic after they are well started

(4) shred and finely chop the apples

(5) mix together the chestnuts, apples, sauteed veg, sausage, fresh chopped sage, and dried bread cubes
what I do is layer each ingredient in the ultimate cooking pan to make sure the amount is right, adding the bread cubes last, and then move to a very large mixing bowl to fold them all together and to finish with the chicken stock before spooning back into the baking pan

(6) stir very hot chicken stock into the mix until it's the desired moistness
if there's a bit too much liquid, you can bake it out later

(7) bake, covered, at around 200C for 30 minutes or so

(8) to reheat for serving, bake again uncovered until piping hot
I prefer 180C+convection fan for about 30 minutes, but it's very forgiving so if you've got something else in the oven almost any temp will do as long as you let it get hot


Notes
For bread cubes, I made loaves of sandwich bread in our bread machine, with 100% wholewheat flour, cut the crusts off, cut them into cubes, and dried them in the oven (not overly so). Each loaf used 400g wholewheat flour, dry, fwiw.

For chicken stock, my standard method is to use roast chicken carcasses, onions, celery, carrots, and bay leaves (bay leaves are key).

Mushrooms work fine as an addition, too. Sautee them in butter, separately from the onions+celery+garlic. Undercook them a bit as they'll be baking a while.

For a vegetarian version, definitely use mushrooms instead of the sausage. And of course veg stock instead of chicken (marigold powder is better than any veg stock I've tried to make, but my heart's never been in it).

Overall, this is a very forgiving dish. It's not a cake. Proportions, cooking times, ingredients are all flexible. As long as there are enough chestnuts and some butter in there, it will be good.

Christmas Movies

I have an enduring fondness for It's A Wonderful Life, as I remember warmly hanging out at home for the holidays as a college student in the 80s and being able to see that movie pretty much 'round the clock on dozens of cable and local channels. Any scene, any time of day. In the early 90s they clamped down a bit on the copyright and showings were trimmed way back, which is a shame. Nonstop Zuzu was a nice holiday tradition. Oh well.

In that spirit, here are my choices of a few underviewed Christmas movies [I'm not including A Christmas Story since hopefully that's well-viewed... or does that count as including it?]

Scrooged
Not a great movie, but one I rewatched with the kids last year for the first time in many years, and it held up well. I don't have much tolerance for "Christmas Carol" retellings, as I usually find them tedious, but this one I liked.

Love, Actually
Very much a Christmas movie though you'd never know it from the title. Kind of like a romcom greatest hits album done as a Christmas fantasy.

Hogfather
Wonderfully adapted-for-TV Pratchett, crafted with such obvious affection and care by all involved that it is absolutely charming. Becoming something of a family holiday tradition now. Very strongly recommended.

5K

Using a handy list of certified running courses, I just ran my own personal 5k time trial in 21:27(!!), exceeding my expectations. That's faster than I've ever been. My Nike+ iPod thing underestimated the distance, but was close, at 4.8k. I plodded on to hit the nike 5k mark in 22:30 so it will give me a bit of credit when I sync. Previous nike sensor+shoe combinations routinely slightly underestimated distances on me as well, which I prefer so that I don't overestimate my workouts. Now I get to be a smug old git the rest of the weekend.

"Sorry, This Will Sting A Bit"

Ah, the joys of getting older. Touch of solar keratosis diagnosed and treated at the dermatologist today. Getting liquid nitrogen sprayed into the side of my face by an overly cheerful doc was a new experience for me. It felt cold for the first half a second, then felt more like I was getting something spot-welded onto my temple.

Mixed Milk Message

I used to be able to get raw fresh milk from a guy with a herd of Guernseys who sold at the old Islington farmer's market. Not sure if he's still around, but it was a real treat. I loved it.

I just picked up some (pasteurized) whole milk from Jerseys & Guernseys. The product copy on the website rightly describes the higher-fat virtues of the milk from these cows, using terms such as "rich taste and creamy texture", "better levels of fat, protein, and calcium", "Higher levels of Fat". It has just over 5% fat compared with 4% for normal whole milk.

So what does the copy on the carton itself brag about? "95% fat-free!"

Why Nutrition Researchers Are Rightly Considered Bad Scientists

And as I've harped on before, awful journalism doesn't help either.

A recent headline screams, "High Salt Intake Directly Linked to Stroke and Cardiovascular Disease". Well, that's pretty attention-grabbing. Seems like it should have "!!!" at the end. I'm intrigued by the "directly" statement. As far as I knew, observed dietary salt intake links with various maladies were observational and ambiguous.

So what does the article say? Here are some excerpts.

The link between high salt intake and high blood pressure is well established,

um... it is?

and it has been suggested that a population-wide reduction in dietary salt intake has the potential to substantially reduce the levels of cardiovascular disease.

that's true -- it certainly has been suggested.

[....]
Collaborative research conducted by Professor Pasquale Strazzullo at the University of Naples, Italy and Professor Francesco Cappuccio at the University of Warwick, UK analysed the results of 13 published studies involving over 170,000 people that directly assessed the relationship between levels of habitual salt intake and rates of stroke and cardiovascular disease.

Again with the "directly". These are just observational studies. "Directly" is meaningless editorializing here.

Differences in study design and quality were taken into account to minimise bias.

But of course.

Their analysis shows unequivocally

"unequivocally"!! what, a 100% CI?

that a difference of 5 g a day in habitual salt intake is associated with a 23% difference in the rate of stroke and a 17% difference in the rate of total cardiovascular disease.

Is that supposed to sound scary? Those hazard ratios are pretty low. But I'm sure there are no confounding factors.

Based on these results, the authors estimate that reducing daily salt intake by 5 g at the population level could avert one and a quarter million deaths from stroke and almost three million deaths from cardiovascular disease each year.

Aha! In other words: the authors of the study unequivocally stated, "we are not credible scientists, please do not take us seriously". The authors then went on to assess a direct link between shoe size and math ability in over 170,000 children and their analysis showed unequivocally that a 5-size larger shoe is associated with 100% improved math ability. Based on these results, the authors estimate that providing all children with shoes 5 sizes larger than their current ones will double the math aptitude of the school-age population.

Furthermore, because of imprecision in measurement of salt intake, these effect sizes are likely to be underestimated, say the authors.

Heh. It's funny that imprecision gives them even more confidence in their conclusion.

The Mutton

I love mutton. Much more than lamb. Shame it's such a rarity these days. Having lived throug some winter before slaughter, then dry-aged like beef, it's got a wonderful depth of flavor that lambs can't match. I did an oven-braised leg of mutton with curry the other day (onions, coconut oil, coconut milk, curry powder, chili paste; served with fresh cilantro and a squeeze of lime) that turned out really well. The butcher thoughtfully hacked through the bottom third of the leg so that it would fit into the pan. As a bonus, I selfishly ate all the marrow while pulling the cooked meat off the bone to mix back into the cauldron of curry. Cook's treat.

Autumn At The Butcher

Had some fantastic venison last night. Also tried some nice game sausage. I love the butcher's stock in fall. Currently on offer in addition to the usual fare: duck, wild duck, wild rabbit, venison, pheasant, mutton, and some seasonal sausages.

No Carb "Cardio"

I do like to put my (potential) misery where my mouth is. Went on a 10 1/2 mile run yesterday, with nary a carb in sight. I did it as a large loop, too, so if I got in trouble I'd have a long hike home. Felt good.

Thanks, Royal Mail

I haven't looked into the UK postal strike issues in depth, but from what I've seen the posties seem to have legitimate gripes and I would normally have some sympathy for their cause, but it's hard to muster when I receive an open, mangled, and empty envelope from my son's school. A couple years ago when I was still participating in a dvd rental-by-mail scheme, I had to stop using local post boxes because too many DVDs were never making it to the return address. Maybe it's just a Hackney thing.

No Love For BlackBerry

Anyone else find it bizarre that the theme for the ad campaign for BlackBerry is "love"? Of the hundreds of people I've known and worked with who've had to use the things, none of them loved it. At best they thought whatever new version they had was pretty good for what it's supposed to do, which is extending office automation apps off the desktop and onto your person, especially so you can keep up with work email. Interestingly, a few years ago a survey at my workplace at the time found that making remoting in to work (via a home PC) easier was broadly seen to be an improvement to "work-life balance", whereas blackberries were broadly seen as a detriment to that balance. A more realistic ad campaign would be the guy who comes in to work in the morning to face the usual 314 unread emails in his inbox, vs. the smug blackberry owner who has no unread email because he's compulsively tended to them round the clock.

The Men Who Stare At Goats

Immensely likable. Clooney excellent as always. And Ewan McGregor is great. He does some awful movies (e.g. The Island, e.g. Star Wars 1-3, not always his fault), but every now and then just delivers a role beautifully. Almost a cross between The Big Lebowski and Three Kings, but really it's its own movie. [I admit I only wrote that sentence so I could write "it's its".]

The only disappointment was that I subconsciously expected both JK Simmons and Bill Macy to make appearances.

Mixed-Use Paths

Mixed-use paths -- e.g. bike + pedestrian -- generally don't work very well. London canal paths are a good example. They used to be for pedestrians only. Then there was an initiative to create more bike paths for some millenium project or other, so some typically genius government folks decided that the canal paths would do, and took credit for "creating" all that additional mileage. The paths are treacherous when busy. You get pedestrians who think that having the notional right of way means they can ignore all others, and you get cyclists pedalling away in some sort of velodrome hallucination zone. I run, walk, and cycle on the paths at various times, but with caution, and I find it very helpful to take a very calm and unhurried attitude onto the path with me. The lakefront path in Chicago is another good example. At busy times you get all manner of bikes, walkers, runners, pushchairs, dogs (mind the lead!), and rollerbladers sine-waving side to side. These are the kinds of things that are brilliant when no one else is on them, but most of the time they are recreational (and potentially dangerous) rather than transportational.

To be useful, mixed-use paths have to be pretty wide. Victoria Park works because the mixed-use path is as wide as a 2-car road. Ideally you have a path wide enough to segregate bike from pedestrian traffic (in which case it's no longer a single mixed-use path). Switzerland has a few dedicated bike-only paths, separate from both roads and pedestrian paths, and these are a tremendous luxury. But Switzerland in general is incredibly bike-friendly. This doesn't seem likely or practical most places. And bigger dreams for cyclists seem entirely out of the question. Imagine if the Crossrail project (a new east-west rail line underneath London) included an additional tunnel for bike-use only.

Which Lane? Mix & Match Rules for Traffic Assignment

John Forester espouses the theory of "vehicular cycling", namely, "Cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles." My own riding in different cities and countries has convinced me he is absolutely right about this, and the sections of his Effective Cycling book that relate to this topic are excellent. Unfortunately, his evidence-based approach has lost out to the bike-lanes/segregation crowd. A big part of the argument against bike lanes is that lanes are supposed to segregate urban traffic by intended direction, not by vehicle type. Overlaying some separation by vehicle type on top of the directional segregation is confusing for everyone. Drivers don't know what to do, and you see things such as drivers cutting across bike lines to make a turn, as if another lane wasn't there. As a cyclist and a driver, I think this is more dangerous for both of me.

In London the problem has degenerated several orders of magnitude. It's really taken on a brand new level of confusion. The big problem is bus lanes. As a more frequent rider of buses than a driver of my own car, I do appreciate getting places quicker on buses. However, the same problem of traffic segregation models being at cross-purposes is creating large amounts of vehicular chaos. The bus lanes can now take taxis (sometimes), cyclists, motorcycles (although they go anywhere and everywhere, regardless of where there might or might not be painted suggestions on the tarmac), and of course buses, while the large number of cars must use the non-bus lane. Cars are graciously given a few short car lengths of "free" lane at intersections to merge to turn (i.e. the lane briefly stops being for exclusive use of certain types of vehicle and allows itself to be used for directional purposes). If the lane is already filled with buses, taxis, and cyclists, a driver wanting to turn can either merge into the lane prematurely (and hope there's no traffic camera waiting to generate a fine for driving in a bus lane), or end up stuck in the wrong lane at the intersection, causing a backup and waiting for someone to leave a gap to bolt through. Even on a relatively clear road, because you are required to merge so late when making a turn, things can get inadvertently exciting if someone else has decided to pop into that bus lane prematurely and try to pass you. Buses also have the same problem in that their lanes don't perfectly correspond to the direction they want to head, either. So they have to bluster their way across traffic the other direction. When traffic gets bad around a big roundabout, with bus lanes feeding in from all directions, some buses/taxis/cyclists coming in from the left but needing to get right, cars coming in from the right but needing to get left, the whole system breaks down. And I thought it was bad enough to have to add traffic lights to many of the big roundabouts (which probably means not enough people were properly respecting the precedence rules).

And now more bike lanes are coming. I'm not sure how these will work with bus lanes & the ever-increasing list of things (aside from privately owned cars) that are allowed in them. I'd rather do away with them all.

Holy Crap! (talk about misquided treatment options)

Bariatric surgery works so "well" for accidentally treating type 2 diabetes, "some doctors say surgery should be considered as a treatment for diabetes, regardless of a person's weight or desire to lose weight."

Wow! I'm speechless. If your doctor suggests you get bariatric surgery to treat your type 2 diabetes, should you:
(a) demand a refund, and seek another doctor
(b) flee from the doctor's office
(c) bludgeon the doctor with the heaviest thing in the office that you can lift wield as a weapon
(d) c, then b
(e) b, then go back for a, then go back for c

Swimming Slowly is Harder than Swimming Quickly

Speaking of Covert Bailey, he had a phrase for beginning exercisers that I particularly liked: "Start so slowly that people make fun of you." I've had to relearn that after foot surgery, trying to run again but injuring and re-injuring myself until I got a little wisdom about being patient. Running, though, is fundamentally different than swimming in that you can revert to a walk. For me, there's no such thing as walking in swimming unless you are already fit and have good (enough) mechanics. In other words, you can't walk until you can run. So getting into swimming shape has a bit of a catch-22 to it. If your form is bad, it's difficult to get fit. If you're not fit, you can't put in enough yardage to get the form better.

I recently took up swimming again and had the issue of not being able to hold form very long. Do I thrash about and try to get the fitness or do I stop to not develop terrible form? I ended up taking short breaks at the limit of my form, which is an embarrassingly short interval. But I kept stacking them up and both the interval and the total yardage is creeping up. When I was swimming as a youngster, in high school especially, we'd start the season just by swimming endlessly, to get the "feel" for the water back. We never lost much base fitness in breaks between summer and winter season, so my 15-yr old self could easily drop into the pool for the first time in a couple months and swim, say, 5000 yds without stopping. It was the equivalent of walking -- steady pace that can be held virtually indefinitely. Now I fully appreciate how much actual fitness is required to be able to do what seemed like an easy cruise at the time.

The Death of Districts

Spent much of yesterday in London's de facto medical district, around Harley Street. I like that I can visit several doctors, even hospitals and test labs, all in the same area. Seems to foster collegiality and more efficiency for the practices, too. In my trips to Manhattan, it seems like the old districts are going away. I do cling to the idea of a specific place to get shoes, or a suit, or photo equipment. Hopefully some things will survive progress and not all face annihilative displacement.

Whatever Happened to Covert Bailey?

Covert Bailey, an MIT-trained biochemist, appeared on PBS in the late 80s talking about exercise and metabolism. Initially his lectures were more science-oriented as he talked about biochemical changes in muscles as a result of exercise. Eventually he developed the "Fit or Fat" idea into a brand. His research background was left behind, the science started dropping away from his lectures, he wandered into nutrition topics, and ultimately ended up selling goofy-ass gizmos like the "health rider". It's a shame he hadn't stuck with the the research-based approach and focused on fitness, because he seemed to have some interesting avenues to pursue about insulin and exercise and the difference in body chemistry between fit people and unfit people.

Selective Hearing

The upside of having bad hearing is that I often now just hear what I want to. At tonight's big fireworks display in Victoria Park (flamethrowers, loud music, explodey fireworks, I loved it!), the announcer might have given credit to the Tower Hamlets Arts & Events Team, but I swear she said "Arson Events Team".

Ice Cream w/o Sugar

A few weeks ago I made another variation on hyperlipid's optimal ice cream. Over the summer I'd tried maple walnut. This time I tried chocolate sour cream: 1 cup heavy cream, 1 cup sour cream, 1 tsp vanilla, 6 egg yolks, pinch of salt, and a bit over 4 oz. 70% chocolate. No sugar other than what was in the chocolate, which wasn't much. It was good. "Normal" people liked it a lot, but with sweet chocolate sauce or on chocolate cake. I liked it as is. It was not sweet at all. I have a great weakness for ice cream -- I can eat huge amounts when it's available, and if it's in the house, I pretty much have to eat it until it's gone. But takeaway the sugar and suddenly I can't eat as much. Very interesting. I could never eat the whole batch of the chocolate sour cream ice cream as it was. If I'd added a cup of sugar (yes, a cup! that's what an average chocolate ice cream recipe for my maker calls for), I bet I could've eaten a lot more.

Inadvertant Salami Taste Test For Mice

Accidentally left the stash of salami from the market where mice could get them. Evidence suggests mice love garlic salami and wild boar salami, but do not care for either duck salami or venison salami.

Running

Please check out the PaNu blog I've added to the left. Dr. Harris has a fantastic recent post about "cardio" and heart disease. It's long, but filled with good info and well worth a read. The upshot is that serious recreational marathon runners (minimum 5 marathons in past 3 years) don't fare well compared to sedentary age-matched peers in terms of heart disease. The implication is that obsessive mileage is bad for your heart. I find this entirely believable. (Marathoners never look all that healthy or robust to me -- Paula Radcliffe looks like she could be done in by a bad sneeze.) That said, I'm not going to stop running, because I enjoy it. I run 2-3 times a week, between 25 and 90 minutes per session, less than half the weekly mileage of the runners in the study, and no plans or amibitions to do a marathon. The people who especially should take not are the ones running because they think it's healthy, even though they don't enjoy it. I've known people who've told me flat out, "I hate running", but do it anyway. For me, running helps with stress, anxiety, mood -- I enjoy it in and of itself, even though I'm a bit of a plodder. If I hated it, I would never do it. A modicum of weight-bearing exercise -- walk, stress your arms out sometimes, add the occasional sprint -- is helpful for just about everyone, even people who can't stand to get off the sofa. Beyond that, don't obsess over "cardio" unless you enjoy it.

Ceremony

This is the kind of thing the natives may take for granted but as an expat I love about the UK: they do ceremony right. I've turned into a closet monarchist and I do find something worthwhile in the old traditions, rituals, and pomp. Americans are often at a loss when a ceremony or ritual is called for. In the aftermath of the sep-11, congress singing "God Bless America" on the steps seemed bizarre and feeble. Across the pond, the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace was altered, once, with the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner. It was dignified, poignant, deeply grounded in historical context... I found it indescribably moving.

A few days ago I enjoyed a much more mundane but personally relevant ceremony, the Lord Mayor of London's prize giving ceremony for the City of London School for Boys, presided over by The Right Honourable Lord Mayor of London himself. There were sherriffs and aldermen and cloaks and capes and staffs and a couple guys with swords and some big freakin' medallions and music and processionals and this is like nothing a midwesterner would ever see growing up. The esteemed participants had that perfect balance you find in here: it was a ritual to be approached in good humor without being camp, taken seriously -- enough-- to give it meaning without being overly pompous or ludicrous. It was really well done.

The other astonishing thing? The ceremony included a speech by one of the students, praising an early benefactor of the school. I was astonished enough to find that such a speech has been given every year for more than 150 years, but even more delighted to find the benefactor -- John Carpenter -- who has been yearly praised since Victoria was a young queen died 567 years ago! Yes, a guy who died in 1442 that most people never heard of has been annually praised by a teenager in front of the Lord Mayor of London for generations now. How cool is that?

Apple Airport Acting Up

Have had really bad behavior from our airport network here at home lately. The newest laptop is constantly losing the network, using 10.5.8 and 10.6.*. The asus pc works fine and the 10.5.7 laptop worked fine on another network using a netgear router exclusively. Pretty frustrating, though, for the affected machines.

Asus

Got my oldest a cute little Asus netbook. We're pretty much all Macs at home, but his school uses windows software, so we got the Asus eee with a "starter" Windows 7 loaded. So far, so good. It's a nice little piece of kit.

Low & Slow: Low Tech + High Tech Hybrid Prediction

It's only a matter of time before we see a brisket spend a few hours in a smoker then get a long completion sous vide. Anyone with a spare smoker and sous vide cooker they want to lend me, I'd be more than happy to break new ground here and report back in detail.

Good Tools

While in the US recently, I busted out my old cuisinart food processor to make some mayo. Of the three machines I've used to make mayo in the past few months, this was hands-down the best. I don't know how old my cuisinart is, probably at least 17 or 18 years. Maybe 20. It's heavy-use days are long over, but it did do a lot of work in the 90s. Really good piece of engineering. Makes the much newer Moulinex we use in the UK look pretty crappy.

Pastrami Attempt

Tried to pastramify a brisket last week. Took a full packer-cut brisket and brined it for 5 days in salt, demera sugar, and pickling spices. The spices had things I wanted -- bay leaves, peppercorns, cloves -- along with some things I didn't really want in there -- allspice, cinammon -- but I couldn't find juniper so gave up on doing my own spice mix. Rubbed with cracked black pepper. Smoked it over hickory for 6 hours then wrapped in foil and finished in 240F oven for 4-5 hours. Let cool overnight, then fridged all morning, sliced then reheated on an on-demand basis. Was really tasty. Perfectly tender but still sliceable. The fattier part had that wonderfully buttery texture, and the leaner part was also excellent. The flavor was still closer to salt beef/corned beef than pastrami, although it was definitely on the road to pastramihood [Yes, I know that pastrami is generally cold-smoked and not hot-smoked.] It needed more smoke and less salt. Next time need to soak in in fresh water after the brining, and be more aggressive with the smoking. Also need to find juniper, and add juniper both the brine and the rub. Coriander seed would do nicely as well.

American Pale Ale

I think the American Pale Ale is its own style, the canonical example of which is Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Brewers get confused about what to call this, and often end up just calling it a "Pale Ale" or an "IPA". It's certainly not an IPA. Keep in mind these are ment to be drunk cold. Pour an SNPA at cellar temperature and rack it up next to a geniune IPA and the difference will be clear. Terminal Brewhouse referred to this style as a "West Coast IPA" or "double IPA", either of which is a better description, but they miss the boat by brewing their own "American Pale Ale" which is maltier and less hoppy than what I'd call an APA.

I recently tried Budweiser's "American Ale", which I was looking forward to (seriously), and it was, perhaps predictably, a big disappointment. It has an encouraging start -- a slight hop bite, but then completely disappears in a weak and appallingly watery finish. The head brewer's proud of this? Surely not. I was hoping they were going after SNPA. The more people's standards get raised, the better it is for everyone. No dice. It's lame. I compared directly vs. Michelob Pale Ale (weak but slightly more honest than the Bud), SNPA (of course), and Sweetwater 420 Extra Pale Ale (a very nice APA out of Atlanta). The big brewers should be perfectly capable of turning out great beers (Guinness is huge and makes a fantastic beer). Wonder when they'll start.

Terminal Brewhouse, Chattanooga

Went to a relatively new brewpub in Chattanooga, this one not near the river (but a reasonable walk down Market Street south, or a free electric shuttle ride away). It was good! Service was good, menu was nice, and the beers were excellent. I was expecting the food to be a bit better, given some of the reviews I'd read. Not that the food was bad -- it was perfectly fine, just nothing special. Compared to Big River, the food was no better (but I like the food at Big River), but the Terminal's beers were much better. Definitely worth a stop if you're in town.

Jon Krakauer

I few years ago I'd read Into The Wild, and really liked it. It's a moving and sympathetic portrait of a young man whose story would have been easy to dismiss or scoff at in a less understanding treatment. Now I've just (finally) read Into Thin Air, which is moving, harrowing, and heartbreaking well beyond my expectations. Strongly recommended.

Chevy Aveo

I had the misfortune to rent one. Based on the relatively decent rankings on edmunds, I'd say American expectations of small cars are completely out of whack. It was crap. Handled poorly, slow, worryingly mushy brakes. How could anyone think it's fun to drive? Cheap inside and out, fairly expansive dashboard for no apparent reason. The only pluses: it's cute, and the mileage, for an american petrol car, was not bad. But why anyone would buy this is a mystery to me. Small Fords or VWs are miles better. A Fiat 500 puts it to shame. I'd take my beaten-up, 8-yr-old A2 over a new Aveo any day.

Pageants == Creepy

A couple of weeks ago I spent a night in the Sheraton Gateway Hotel near the Atlanta airport. After 10pm one night, and the next morning as well, I encountered young girls, approx age 5-9, running around with full and heavy makeup on. Mums were tromping in tow with plastic containers filled with sparkly outfits. I assume it was some sort of pageanty thing. It was deeply unsettling. Is this a weird southern thing, or a weird american thing, or just a weird subculture?

cooking notes: mayo, nut bars

Homemade mayo still going well. I did, against better judgment, try a batch with very good mayo (but not the great stuff), and it was way too bitter. The last batch was much better: I dropped a couple of garlic cloves into the whirring blades to start, and went heavy on the lemon juice, to end up with a really excellent garlic mayo (not aioli).

I also had a first attempt at homemade low-carb nut bars. I'd like a portable snack, something like these from Jordan's, which are the best I've found -- about half the carbs of comparable crunchy granola bar -- but still way too much sugar. Took 150g pecans, 100g walnuts, 100g brazil nuts, 100g hazelnuts, 100g almonds, 50g sesame seeds, toasted them, chopped them pretty finely, added 2 T maple syrup and a hearty amount of salt, beat 3 egg whites then folded the egg whites and the nut mixture togethers, pressed into a greased pan and baked at 165C for about 25 minutes. Verdict: not bad, not exactly right. Crispy at the edges but not in the middle. Next time bake longer.

Low & Slow

Low and slow seems all the culinary rage these days. BBQ has gained a lot of traction in non-traditional places in the US and elsewhere. I even saw a magazine piece about Jamie Oliver planning barbecue restaurants in the UK. This is the American definition of barbecue (meat cooked slowly with smoke involved) rather than the UK definition of barbecue (which, as far as I can tell, means anything involving a hamburger or a grill). And now I've seen sous vide popping up everywhere. [I'd love to have Nexis just to do useless things such as a hit count by month of "sous vide" over the past year or so.] Drs. Eades are even bringing to market a home appliance, which looks interesting. There's a definite geeky appeal to the precision of sous vide cookery. I've considered getting a clifton setup if for no other reason than to precisely cook eggs (which would not actually be sous vide). I would endlessly do 64C, 65C, 66C, 63C, 67C eggs until my wife made me stop. It would be worth a good dozen or so blog posts. At this point, though, if I ponied up for a new piece of slow-cooking kit, I'd still have to go with a smoker.

Hunger, "Fueling", and Exercise

Since generally going low-carb, I've noticed a huge difference in quantity and quality of hunger; namely, greatly reduced, and a more gradual ramp-up when it does strike. I'm often not hungry in the morning and thus don't eat. The advice to constantly snack to keep your blood sugar "level" is the perfectly logical, if absurd, result of the flawed premises of the high-carb, low-fat diet. The alternative -- eat high-fat, low-carb, and you don't need to snack because you're not hungry all the time -- seems better to me.

As I've added more exercise, I've also questioned the conventional wisdom of needing to "fuel" for workouts, and usually run mornings on an empty stomach. A couple weeks ago I went for a 9 1/2 mile run after not having eaten for 18 hours prior (excepting coffee, no sugar). I didn't drink anything during the run. It wasn't hot at all, which made it easier. Last week I did a 10+ mile run later in the day than usual, but after having almost nothing to eat (coffee w/ double cream, maybe half a cup of full-fat unsweetened yogurt a couple hours earlier). No drinks during the run. Water and (real) food afterwards. Seems to work ok.

Cholesterol & Heart Disease: Real Info Disseminating

Another nice article on cholesterol and heart disease, from Dr. Mark Hyman: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/why-cholesterol-may-not-b_b_290687.html

None of this is new to readers of Dr. Davis's blog, but still good to see more coverage.

Step 1: goto destination. There is no Step 2.

I did actually lol at this. The official london transport journey planner has an advanced option that you can check if you want to cycle, instead of the usual bus/tube/rail/boat planner options. Although I use the tfl planner all the time, I had never used the cycling option before but thought I'd give it a shot since I want to get to tower hill by bike. Here's the result:
No, there are no maps, diagrams, detailed routes, or, well, anything. This is genius in its unhelpfulness. I love it.

yes, NFL season

I love this clip. Makes Steve Smith seem like the most awesome teammate ever. Of course, he's been known to occasionally punch out his own co-workers, but who amongst us hasn't?

Old Leftovers

I love confit. I'm going to write a book called The Confit Cure. I don't know what it cures, but it must be lots. I slow-cooked some duck legs last month, then shredded the meat. What I didn't eat right away I put in a small ceramic container, poured fat on the top, and put it in the fridge with the thought to eat it soon enough, but forgot about it. Finally ate it nearly four weeks later, and it was wonderful.

Bad Apple

Apple seems to have screwed up their wireless networking from laptops (especially on battery power) on recent software releases, starting with 10.5.8 but continuing with snow leopard. Frequent "no internet" faults. Really frustrating. Lots of complaints out there but no action. And I notice apple support page has the classic dumbass bad units problem:

**** £0.05p per minute when dialled from a landline within the UK. Call charges may vary when calling from a mobile phone.

(p = pence = 1/100th of 1 £)

mayonnaise trials

I've been making my own mayo lately. I was annoyed that even varieties advertising "olive oil" were still mostly soybean oil. Homemade is really excellent. I've found that a food processor works best. An actual blender can work, but often doesn't. I use really light olive oil for now, leaving the really good stuff because (a) it imparts and incredibly strong flavor to mayo and (2) if the emulsion doesn't hold it breaks my heart to have used stuff that costs me upwards of £13 or £14/litre. But now that I'm reliably turning out the goods I will start adding the quality olive oil back in.

At the moment, I prefer not using mustard. I like the lemon juice, though, and white wine vinegar. My basic may is 3 egg yolks, pinch of salt, about a tablespoon of vinegar, and juice of at least one lemon. Then the oil. I haven't yet experimented with putting everything at once. Supposedly if you don't pour the oil in a very light-handed stream, a singularity will form, imploding the earth into your kitchen and extinguishing all life on the planet. But I'm curious to test this now.

I recently made Fergus Henderson's Aioli recipe (which, he rightly points out, is not garlic mayo), and it nearly killed me. 2 egg yolks, 20 cloves of garlic, salt, vinegar, lemon, olive oil. Yes, twenty. I ended up with a ramekin full that was enough to serve approximately 50 garlic-loving guests. It was really good, but next time I think I will just try a more modest garlicking of my mayo.

In any case, I recommend giving it a go. It's tastier and healthier than the industrial seed oil versions on the shelves. And in the future, it will be illegal to eat raw eggs, so enjoy it while it lasts.

Apple Season

New season Bramleys are back at the market. I love fall.

Goodnight Moon

Snapped four shots of a lovely moon out the back window last night just for kicks, shutter at 1/125th, 1/250th, 1/500th, and 1/800th. Impressively clear for a London night. The moon is never not cool.

The Problem With House

House is a mystery show, Sherlock Holmes in a hospital with a bit of CSI thrown in. The problem is that I'm not a doctor, so I have to take their word for it on the medical mystery aspect. It always ends up feeling like the solution is a character whose first appearance is at the very end, dramatically stepping in from behind the curtains to take the blame. Aha! It was malignant fibromajestic transnecrotic spleenitis! Aha! The plumber did it! [There was a plumber in this story??] To make up for this, and to allow us to play along, they have to make just about everyone getting treated be liars, so we at least can try to figure out the lies, if not the medical condition.

The other problem with watching House is that now every time my foot itches I diagnose myself with liver failure.

Workout Differentiation

Finally getting some running fitness back, after peaking two years ago and having most of 2008 off. I'm just now getting to the point of differentiation in my workouts. At first, everything is slow and short. Then, as I get better, everything turns into a tempo workout. The trick is to be able to get enough speed that I can actually do a longer, slower workout. I've gotten a few intervals workouts in and that makes all the difference. Now I changeup between intervals, long & slow, and tempo runs, and I just barely have enough fitness and pace to make these meaningful. The problem on the long & slow days is not just turning it into a tempo run if I'm feeling good 15 minutes in.

Next goal: get back under my personal best for 10k by the end of the year.

Bottle Apostle

The new wine shop in the village opened a few weeks ago. Yes, I'm still sad that Frock's is gone, but the new business is really nice. Friendly and enthusiastic without being intimidating, welcoming of all levels of interest, from novice to experts, and with a really thoughtful and excellent inventory. And the automatic wine sampling machines are very cool. Good addition. It should do well.

Now Victoria Park really, really needs a fishmonger.

Shame About The Diesel, USA

Nice 4-dr you can cruise in at 130mph yet get over 40 mp[US]g? Excellent-looking new BMW. Better mileage stats than my Audi A2 (never available in the US), but goes 0-60 in 8s and tops out at 140mph.

Another Thing Missing From Cricket

Trouble on Green Street. I wonder if anyone's checked on the whereabouts of Elijah Wood. [That movie exceeds expectations, btw. Recommended.]

Cricketing Baseball

I'd love to see baseball try a slight cricket approach to the structure rather than alternating three outs. A 27-27 game would be interesting (should be higher scoring for sure) but a game of 9s could be perfect -- i.e. three 9-out innings.

Kendrick Essay on Heart Disease

Very good essay. A few years old, but new to me: http://www.thincs.org/Malcolm.htm#heart1

Reform Gone Missing

How's that healthcare thing going over in the US? A few short days ago, Howard Dean (accurately, imo), said of the public option:

There's only one piece of real reform in this bill for healthcare -- there's a couple of pieces of insurance reform which are worth doing -- but the only piece of healthcare reform that's worth doing, left, is the public option. The public option. And people say, "well, can't there be a compromise?" We have already compromised. The public option is the compromise between single payer and the private sector... We can't go any further. There's nothing else to do here. [watch from 06:15 of this video]

Now there are rumblings that the public option is being compromised away. No healthcare reform, then. Not surprising, really, given it was very poorly explained and sold by the administration, was too long, legalistic, and ambiguous, and, of course, the press coverage was often useless. Even the Guardian, which should know better, gets it wrong today, incorrectly labelling the public option as "NHS-style". Oh well.

Dollhouse

Although I am a big fan of the Whedon, I had not watched Dollhouse. Honestly, did not look too good at first. But the other night I watched what in the UK was described as the series 1 finale, but apparently was never aired in the US. It was fantastic! Had a great Joss/scifi/zombiegeddon riff, and I thought I detected a slight BSG vibe in there, too (Joss admittedly a fanatic). So I don't think I'm going to watch any more. Based on what I've read, it was the best episode. And I may have enjoyed it all the more because I didn't know what was going on. Anyway, if you've never seen it, just watch "Epitaph One".

harry potter and the half-assed wtf

Just saw the 6th movie and gosh did it suck. Wow. Lifeless, empty, hollow. What happened? Where did everyone go? The acting was a redeeming feature, good all around but Tom Felton had a nice (and important) turn, Broadbent was predictably perfect as slughorn, and Gambon finally grew on me in his best Dumbledore. The only other redeeming feature was that the "important memory" made a lot more sense in the movie than in the book (in the movie, unlike the book, they actually learn something from the memory). But overall it was appalling.

SAQ

It's high time I started my official Seldomly Asked Questions list.

Q: Pork blood: is it good to dip my paperback books into?
A: No.

Must Resist Kittens

I haven't had cats in about 10 years, but someone at work just sent round pics of free kittens, and a handwritten note just got tacked up down the street about another set of available kittens ("white with tabby or black spots"). It's likely my brain was long ago taken over by those cat-friendly parasites that make mice fearless (which helps expedite the repatriation of those parasites back to their preferred home, the digestive tract of cats), and maybe it's only a matter of time before I answer the call of my feline overlords and again provide a home for some.

Nation of Ninnies: why hide car performance specs?

Are Americans afraid of everything? I'm looking at cars in the US and notice that it's almost impossible to get 0-60 and top speed numbers for anything. In the UK, these are almost always included in available info as a matter of course.

Bad Health Reporting Associated With Higher Risk of Blogging

Last month a published systematic review concluded that there is no evidence that treating high blood pressure down to levels lower than 140/90 has any benefit. It is also true that a blood pressure of 115/70 is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular "events" compared with a blood pressure of 140/90. These are not contradictory.

Another recent study showed that high cholesterol in midlife is associated with a higher risk of dementia later in life. Does this mean that if you are middle-aged and have high cholesterol, taking cholesterol-lowering medication will help prevent dementia? No.

If this is confusing, blame bad health reporting, combined with an American medical tendency to treat symptoms, which in itself is a symptom of a larger malaise of failing to focus on the bigger picture (overly specific focus while engaging in healthcare). More on that in a bit. First I want to share some exciting news from my lab, the Institute for the Advancement of Idiotic Analogies (I am the founder and CEO).

I have just concluded an observational study that shows visiting convenience stores is associated with higher risk of mortality from cancer. The effect is exposure-dependent, showing a positive correlation between frequency of visits and cancer mortality rates. Clearly this means that avoiding convenience stores will lower risk of cancer death, right? Well, I must sadly admit that my study shows nothing of the kind. Since it's an observational study, if something interesting has come of it, I should use that to generate hypotheses, then design studies to test them. Or I could just go to an uncritical health reporting pool and let them breathlessly warn against the dangers of convenience-store proximity. If I'm honest, which, unfortunately, I am, I also must admit that visiting convenience stores correlated positively with purchasing and, more importantly, smoking, cigarettes. So it's likely that the root cause of any increase in mortality is due to smoking and not due to the convenience stores themselves. In other words, frequency of visiting convenience stores is simply a marker that correlates with something else, and not a cause. So banning convenience stores, or following government advice to limit exposure, would actually not affect outcomes at all.

Likewise, is high cholesterol a cause of dementia? (No evidence of that so far. In fact, low HDL correlates with higher risk of dementia as you get older.) Or is whatever is causing high cholesterol also the cause of dementia? (Much more likely I think.) In that case, treating the cholesterol and not the root cause would likely have no effect, or possibly make things worse (side effects of drug treatment, ignoring causal factors because of focusing on a single measure of risk). Likewise, high (or low) blood pressure can be both a direct cause of some bad effects, but also an effect of some other cause. That's why bp-lowering drugs might be of no benefit, or even be harmful, when lowering bp to a level which in a non-treated person shows reduced risk of some poor health outcomes. Really, this should be pretty simple, it's amazing how many reporters don't get this. Suppose you are hypertensive because of stress. Stress has many effects on the body, not just blood pressure. But blood pressure is easy to measure and easy to focus on. So if you focus on one effect, and, say, take ACE-inhibitors to lower blood pressure, will that help? Maybe a bit. What if you focused on lifestyle changes to reduce stress, achieving the same lower blood pressure (without medication)? Seems like a better state, since you've addressed the root cause, and mitigated more effects than just the one you've measured, right?

Too narrow a focus on specific outcomes can be a dangerous medical myopia. If a drug decreases heart attack mortality you may find cardiologists prescribing it, even if it increases cancer mortality at an equal and offsetting rate. If sunlight exposure increases risk of skin cancer you may find dermatologists telling you to avoid it, even if it decreases risk of much more common and much more fatal internal cancers. Cardiologists don't care what you die of, as long as it's not cardiovascular disease. Dermatologists don't care what you die of, as long as it's not a skin disease. (Personally, avoiding a heart attack is not necessarily a big win if I instead die of cancer after developing dementia.)

Gosh, I've really babbled on here. Lemme sum up a bit.

• observational studies can be interesting, are great for generating testable hypotheses, but do not show cause
  
• risk association does not mean cause
• directly treating a risk measure does not necessarily mean you are doing anything preventive nor even lowering your risk
• most journalists, and even some doctors, don't understand those three points

Prehypertensive, Prediculous

Turns out I was right about the US being more aggessive about treating high blood pressure. In fact, a few years ago the US invented the word "prehypertensive" in their bp guidelines, to describe the range that in the UK is still known as "high normal". I wonder what impact this has on what I would call a patient's consent to be medicalized. Doesn't hurt with the ACE-inhibitor sales targets I'm sure. Take 2000 people in this range, tell 1000 of them their bp is "high normal" and tell the other 1000 they are "prehypertensive", then ask each of them if they'd like blood pressure medication. I wonder if the same percentage in each group would say yes.

I also wonder why stop there? Let's call systolic bp of 120-129 "pre-prehypertensive", and sub-120 "early onset possible pre-prehypertensive". Let's call low BMIs "pre-obese". No hardware in your arteries? "Pre-stented". My normal-functioning kidneys are operating in pre-failure mode, and I feel pretty good, in other words, pre-fluish. Can I get some tamiflu?

Goofy Shoes Go Urban

Although they make me look a little bit like I'm succumbing to a horrible smurf-hobbit mutation, I've taken them out and about London and I still like them a lot. The nubby surfaces before crosswalks are like little foot-massagers now. And any chance to walk on grass is a treat -- I find that I take any chance to pop off the tarmac.

It's not the salt: fun with blood pressure

My doctor is concerned, as am I, about my blood pressure, but I refuse to go on a low salt diet, because it's not the salt. It's work.

I was recently on holiday but unfortunately did not take hourly bp readings. I do, however, have readings I take at work. The "ranges", at least as far as the British are concerned, are along these lines:
systolic: <120: optimal, 120-129: normal, 130-139: high-normal, 140-159: mild hyper
diastolic: < 80: optimal, 80-84: normal, 85-89: high-normal, 90-99: mild hyper

In the US, medicalization is probably more aggressive. I wouldn't be surprised if guidelines called for drug therapy for anything at or above 121/81. Ithe rule of thumb used to be that systolic of 100 + your age should be considered perfectly normal. But the normal of Grampa's generation is now the hypertension of mine.

So, bracketing my holiday (shortly before, at work, and shortly after returning), my blood pressure eased down to a comfy 124-131/75-78. Diastolic in particular very good. By the end of a full week of working, had crept up to 141/85. Just for fun, I took a recreational dose of propanolol [How sad is it that my favorite drug is not psychoactive? I am a geezer. Or a goober. Or possibly both.], and it dropped to 123/72.

Chattanooga

I'm very fond of Chattanooga. Or, as a sticker I saw called it, "Noog". The city has clearly been making an effort, for many years now, and it shows. It's doing things right that so many cities, of any size get wrong -- targeting neighborhoods for redevelopment, encouraging a diversified economy, encouraging local arts, renovating and expanding public spaces. There are real neighborhoods in the city. Free electric shuttle buses on the tourists routes downtown. What's most impressive to me are the number of local shops. It's too easy to give over all shopping to chains. It's great to see the support of local entrepreneurs. There's even good sushi. It's one of the few cities that small that seems livable to my tastes (normally I get that feeling only in much bigger cities).

Perfect day with the kids:

• Chattanooga Aquarium. Two buildings now. I love the conceit of the original building: a vertically-aligned experience that starts at the top as a mountain trout stream, and winds its way down to the gulf.
• Lunch at Big River Brewery. Decent beers. Stout variable, IPA is excellent. Some home-made sodas for the kids with free refills, too. Roomy, good service, both family-friendly and adult-friendly. The menu does not push the envelope, but they really seem to take pride in the execution -- both the separate pizza oven and the main kitchen are open to public view -- and the food has always been impressively good for me. E.g. the kids chicken tenders are made from strips of actual chicken.
• Cross the river on the cool pedestrian bridge and wander around the North Shore. Stop at River City Cycle shop, because it's cool. Stop at the kayak shop and ogle the kit there. Drop by the excellent used book shop and local folk art shop. Pet the shop dogs. Step through all the dances helpfully diagrammed on the sidewalks.
  
• Clumpies: encourage children to eat their own bodyweight in ice cream.
• Wander around the riverfront park, back across the river, watch a movie or grab coffee (I like Perky Piranha) or amble about.
• Catch a Lookouts game at the downtown park. AA ball, Southern League. I like sitting on the 3rd base side, right behing the visitors' dugout. Man, those guys are nice. I thought so a while ago when a visiting coach tossed my oldest a ball. This trip, one of the players gave my youngest a bat that had developed a hairline crack. Talk about a cool souvenir!
• Have kids fall asleep on the way home. They'll wake up later to throw up.

Plenty of good stuff for adults, too. We used to like staying at the Bluff View Inn, but more recently much prefer the Mayor's Mansion Inn, right at the edge of the university and more our style. The Bluff View Art District is still worth a visit. It's heavy on crafts, moreso than art, in many instances, but still should have something of interest for everyone. The Hunter Museum is up there, too -- have seen excellent photo exhibits there in the past. And very nice views. The North Shore is fun. Good little sushi place, in addition to the shops. And Clumpies of course.