Embarrassing congressman Dan Burton (R-Ind) suggests closing the "loophole", the terrifying security vulnerability, if you will, that is the lack of a protective barrier between the Visitors' Gallery and the House of Reps' floor. He imagines an apocalyptic scenario of terrorists jumping (or perhaps gliding, flying-squirrel style) into the midst of an all-hands vote and detonating all 435 representatives.
As a native-born Hoosier, I am honor-bound to suggest a solution that is a more practical and cost-effective risk-adjusted solution. I propose no barriers. If terrorists do manage to blow up the house of representatives, we simply elect replacements. Problem solved.
22 January 2011
Tiger Dad
I haven't been posting as much lately because I've been devoting myself to tiger parenting. Not apex predator husbandry or creating a cereal flake mascot, but good old let's-all-be-as-awesome-as-China child rearin'! Look, the bar is high and I have installed a performance-based culture in my household. Weekly peer reviews determine the daily minutes I allocate to rigorous beatings. I have a set of KPIs as well as some additional metrics that allow me to precisely adjust the amount of verbal abuse I hurl on them. If they miss their SLAs repeatedly I have predefined escalation procedures. This provides clear structure for expectations, accountability, and consequences.
It's quite time-consuming. For example, my oldest was not consistently top of the league tables while playing Call of Duty so I escalated his morning punishment from kneeling on rice to a caning. I also force him to practice Call of Duty in single-player mode for 4 hours per night. This will continue until he is the BEST. It is clear to both of us that I will accept no less. This may seem harsh but you should see how gratifying the moment will be when he goes on a triumphant gibbing streak and turns to me with pride of achievement glowing in his eyes.
In the meantime, I'm writing a book to help you, too, be as awesome as me.
It's quite time-consuming. For example, my oldest was not consistently top of the league tables while playing Call of Duty so I escalated his morning punishment from kneeling on rice to a caning. I also force him to practice Call of Duty in single-player mode for 4 hours per night. This will continue until he is the BEST. It is clear to both of us that I will accept no less. This may seem harsh but you should see how gratifying the moment will be when he goes on a triumphant gibbing streak and turns to me with pride of achievement glowing in his eyes.
In the meantime, I'm writing a book to help you, too, be as awesome as me.
13 January 2011
Global Warming And Your Favorite Anecdote
Got fed up with the seemingly endless bleating from climate change skeptics about snowstorms in northern europe and the USA. As if that means anything or is proof that global warming is a hoax, a government conspiracy to confiscate your handguns or something. So it would be just as stupid of me to offer a counter-anecdote that a few days ago it was warm and raining high up in the french alps. Snow in Belgium? global warming is a hoax! Rain at 2000m in the alps in January? global warming is real!
12 January 2011
Driving in Snow
I thought Londoners were bad when it comes to driving in snow, but apparently the US southerners are even worse. This is a demonstration of how not to do it from a CNN article on snow in Atlanta. Should I floor the accelerator in my bmw and let the wheel spin until the car catches on fire? No.
02 January 2011
Marking Time
Had a conversation New Year's Eve about the lack of significance, for me, of the "New Year" as a marking point. I cherish the holidays. There is lovely seasonality to the shortening of the days, the hunkering down around candles and lights and a hot oven, yielding roasts and other comforts savory or sweet that fill the house with reassurance and warmth no matter how grey and cold outside. But the New Year itself doesn't hold much sway.
I have no interest in news wrap-ups of the year that was. The end of the calendar year is a handy marker for some projects of mine, such as rounding up photos for printing, and a worthwhile book-end to the holiday season, but it lacks meaning or weight. As a time of personal reflection, I find my birthday more meaningful than a calender rollover, but really I mark my calendars more broadly, by school years and seasons. The cycle really revolves around the new school year -- the excitement of fall (the poet's season) -- the holidays, the long winter term and then spring. Another school year finished and a long/short summer for the boys to get caked in a solid plastering of sunshine, clay, and adventures filled with sticks, water, rocks, dogs, cousins....
So back to school soon, and on with the winter!
I have no interest in news wrap-ups of the year that was. The end of the calendar year is a handy marker for some projects of mine, such as rounding up photos for printing, and a worthwhile book-end to the holiday season, but it lacks meaning or weight. As a time of personal reflection, I find my birthday more meaningful than a calender rollover, but really I mark my calendars more broadly, by school years and seasons. The cycle really revolves around the new school year -- the excitement of fall (the poet's season) -- the holidays, the long winter term and then spring. Another school year finished and a long/short summer for the boys to get caked in a solid plastering of sunshine, clay, and adventures filled with sticks, water, rocks, dogs, cousins....
So back to school soon, and on with the winter!
30 December 2010
Last Quiet Workout
Oh the gym will get crowded next week, I'm sure. And stay that way a while. On the plus side, I'll be curious to see what the latest trends are for the legions of personal trainers.
28 December 2010
27 December 2010
Christmas Confit
Today is confit day. I have four goose legs well-rubbed with salt, garlic, bay leaf, and thyme for the past 48 hours. The roast goose breast on the bone turned out perfectly for our Boxing Day feast. I've rendered all the fat from the geese as well. Lovely stuff. Now to cook the legs, jar them, and resist eating them.
25 December 2010
A Word on Knives
I love my Global knives for most cooking prep tasks, but for finessing the legs off a goose or turning a boneful piece of meat into a boneless one, hard to top the value of plastic-handled eicker trade knives. The one I just used on the christmas geese cost less than £10.
20 December 2010
LOTR
Just re-read The Lord Of The Rings. Think I'd last re-read it just before the films came out. Re-reading the books has been a self-indulgence and a comfort coming up on 3 decades now. Some observations:
This time I re-read on the iPad, instead of my still-surviving 30 yr-old prints. This was more convenient but I realized partway in that some of the comfort derives from those old physical artifacts, with the age-darkened pages and that particular typeset.
Shadowfax. Good lord do they go on and on about that damn horse. Seriously, wtf?
I forgive the movies a lot of sins, but the egregious modernization of Faramir is still appalling. Tolkien's heroes were pre-modern, and I get that Jackson felt the misguided urge to make them modern [most of them, that is; Karl Urban's Eomer was still allowed to be awesome, because nobody fucks with Norse horsemen]. This business of feminizing the heroes was a shame for Aragorn, but he was still excellently played by Viggo Mortensen, and he got his moments. With Faramir, there was nowhere for the acting to go. He's all kinds of awesome in the book. It would have been more merciful to cut him from the film.
The palpable sense of loss that pervades and defines the books is still heartbreaking and wonderful.
This time I re-read on the iPad, instead of my still-surviving 30 yr-old prints. This was more convenient but I realized partway in that some of the comfort derives from those old physical artifacts, with the age-darkened pages and that particular typeset.
Shadowfax. Good lord do they go on and on about that damn horse. Seriously, wtf?
I forgive the movies a lot of sins, but the egregious modernization of Faramir is still appalling. Tolkien's heroes were pre-modern, and I get that Jackson felt the misguided urge to make them modern [most of them, that is; Karl Urban's Eomer was still allowed to be awesome, because nobody fucks with Norse horsemen]. This business of feminizing the heroes was a shame for Aragorn, but he was still excellently played by Viggo Mortensen, and he got his moments. With Faramir, there was nowhere for the acting to go. He's all kinds of awesome in the book. It would have been more merciful to cut him from the film.
The palpable sense of loss that pervades and defines the books is still heartbreaking and wonderful.
12 December 2010
Christmas Goose
The geese are ordered. Only 2 this year. Recently finished off the last of last year's (final freezer bag of roasted, diced goose breast, reheated and served over shredded sweetheart cabbage with some sour cream and lime wedges).
My plan, as usual:
(1) confit the legs
cut off the legs, rub generously with a mix of salt, finely chopped bay leaves, thyme, garlic (make lots, reserve some) and put uncovered on a plate in fridge
after 24 hours, re-rub the remaining spice mix and put on clean plate for another night
scrape spices into a roasting pan, briefly brown the legs in butter or olive oil in a heavy pan
add legs to the pan -- pick a pan in which there is as little space left as possible, really crowd them in
cover with melted goose fat and cook for a few hours at 150C until very tender
(for goose fat -- scoop out hunks of fat from the cavity of your goose and render it down, you can also buy some extra to get you started the first time you do this; save all the fat for next time and you won't need to buy it again)
remove the legs, put them into glass jars or another sealable container, cover with the goose fat (strain via muslin), close
they will last for a couple months like this if not too warm, or many more months in the fridge
or eat them immediately
crisp them up in a very hot oven on a rack in a pan before serving
strain any/all leftover fat through muslin and store in jars for reuse -- goose fat is a great fat to cook with in general, does not need to be saved just for future confit
(2) roast the rest
stab the skin all over with a fork (or don't, nothing bad seems to happen if I forget this step)
rub in some salt and black pepper (or use an alternate rub)
roast on a rack in a pan in a fairly hot oven quickly (I generally use 220C, but 200C would work if you want a bit less risk of smoke)
I would tend to pull it out when the coolest part of the breast reaches 65C, or I might not wait that long
some people cook it much higher
if you cook with the legs on you have to deal with the classic roast bird problem of the legs being better, generally, a bit overcooked, while the breasts fare better being undercooked -- in goose this problem gets even trickier because, as with duck, I like the breasts a bit more on the rare side
remove it from the oven and let it rest 20-30 minutes before carving and serving
the skin should be nice and crisp, with an almost bacony crackling saltiness to it
be sure to strain the fat from the pan through muslin and save in jars for future use!
stuffing: generally no longer stuff the geese, but when we did, a prune/apple/onion/armagnac-type thing in the cavity worked well, but the real treat was a sausage-like stuffing of the neck
Probably the best full-goose treatment I've seen is in The River Cottage Year, in which Hugh Fairly-Longname does a confit of the legs, a separate cooking of the stuffed neck, and a roast of the rest.
For fancier full-goose christmasy roast recipes, I've not tried these, but they all look credible:
this or this or this
My plan, as usual:
(1) confit the legs
cut off the legs, rub generously with a mix of salt, finely chopped bay leaves, thyme, garlic (make lots, reserve some) and put uncovered on a plate in fridge
after 24 hours, re-rub the remaining spice mix and put on clean plate for another night
scrape spices into a roasting pan, briefly brown the legs in butter or olive oil in a heavy pan
add legs to the pan -- pick a pan in which there is as little space left as possible, really crowd them in
cover with melted goose fat and cook for a few hours at 150C until very tender
(for goose fat -- scoop out hunks of fat from the cavity of your goose and render it down, you can also buy some extra to get you started the first time you do this; save all the fat for next time and you won't need to buy it again)
remove the legs, put them into glass jars or another sealable container, cover with the goose fat (strain via muslin), close
they will last for a couple months like this if not too warm, or many more months in the fridge
or eat them immediately
crisp them up in a very hot oven on a rack in a pan before serving
strain any/all leftover fat through muslin and store in jars for reuse -- goose fat is a great fat to cook with in general, does not need to be saved just for future confit
(2) roast the rest
stab the skin all over with a fork (or don't, nothing bad seems to happen if I forget this step)
rub in some salt and black pepper (or use an alternate rub)
roast on a rack in a pan in a fairly hot oven quickly (I generally use 220C, but 200C would work if you want a bit less risk of smoke)
I would tend to pull it out when the coolest part of the breast reaches 65C, or I might not wait that long
some people cook it much higher
if you cook with the legs on you have to deal with the classic roast bird problem of the legs being better, generally, a bit overcooked, while the breasts fare better being undercooked -- in goose this problem gets even trickier because, as with duck, I like the breasts a bit more on the rare side
remove it from the oven and let it rest 20-30 minutes before carving and serving
the skin should be nice and crisp, with an almost bacony crackling saltiness to it
be sure to strain the fat from the pan through muslin and save in jars for future use!
stuffing: generally no longer stuff the geese, but when we did, a prune/apple/onion/armagnac-type thing in the cavity worked well, but the real treat was a sausage-like stuffing of the neck
Probably the best full-goose treatment I've seen is in The River Cottage Year, in which Hugh Fairly-Longname does a confit of the legs, a separate cooking of the stuffed neck, and a roast of the rest.
For fancier full-goose christmasy roast recipes, I've not tried these, but they all look credible:
this or this or this
11 December 2010
My Zombie Baseball Movie
"The Balking Dead", starring James Earl Jones and the reanimated corpse of Kevin Costner. Had to cut the scene where Tom Hanks explains the infield fly rule to the zombie Cubs, but it will be an extra on the DVD, I promise.
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