BurgerWeek Day 3

What time is it? It's BURGER TIME!!

Tonight we headed to the controversial Rivington Grill. Nice place and a lovely warm sunny evening. I started with a crisp fresh spring salad of peas, cress, spinach, beets, carrot, radish, parsnip, goat cheese, asparagus, red cos (maybe? I lost track). Really, that was just to build anticipation for the burger.

WTF??!? That's not a burger....

Another winner. The Rivington does a mildly spiced/herbed burger with a generous layer of melted cheddar. The youngster added bacon as well. Very good toasted sesame bun. I'll admit that although I enjoy a well thought out herbed burger, my preference is for the beef to speak for itself. But this made for a really great change of pace. Definitely a cut above. Highly recommended for non-purists.

The chips were the best so far. Excellent execution. Friendly and attentive service. And a rich, luxurious, not too sweet chocolate tart with sour cream for dessert.

classy presentation at Rivington Grill

P.S. A Note On Eating
Saturday neither of us ate breakfast. We had a big lunch then a late meal while watching Eurovision. Sunday neither of us ate breakfast. I wasn't hungry. I went for a 5-mile run then, eventually, we got lunch. Sunday night we had a small late dinner. [Small for me: some celery, half a head of lettuce, some roquefort, and a handful of blueberries. Small for a teenage boy: half a head of lettuce, tortilla chips covered with melted cheddar, an entire can of refried beans, and a large package of fresh blueberries.] Today I didn't eat at all until dinner, so about 22 hours since my last meal. If you're not hungry, don't eat. You don't need to eat 3 meals a day. You don't need to eat 2 meals a day. Or even 1 sometimes.

BurgerWeek Day 2

Today we headed over to Covent Garden to try MEATmarket, tucked up on the loft on the south wall above the stalls inside Jubilee Market Hall. Another winner. Great burgers! We got the Dead Hippy and the Black Palace -- double-cheeseburgers that varied slightly on toppings, the latter having grilled onions, for example. The patties were smaller than at Lucky Chip, and conducive to doubling up as a result. Still thick enough on their own. They were cooked perfectly. We got them with sides of fastfoodish (mcdonald's-style) fries, which I would give a miss to next time but the youngster was more than happy to wolf down.

Dead Hippy @ MEATmarket

Staff was friendly and welcoming (must be something about good burgers). The space was fun and relaxed, overlooking the buzzing market. In the nice touches category: free cold water, and soft drinks served in small cups but with free refills. The rest of the menu looked good. As hot as it was today, unfortunately due to mechanical problems there were no milkshakes on offer.

Overall, kind of like what you'd dream a fast food burger joint would turn into when it grows up, but never does. Heartily recommended, would definitely go back.


P.S. We did do mini-burgers during Eurovision last night. I gently pressed some beef mince into a shallow nonstick pan greased lightly with some olive oil (hamburger meat should be worked as little as possible, unlike when you're making, say, breakfast sausage patties), then slicked up a round cookie cutter with a bit of olive oil and cut a bunch of small burgers. They were maybe 5cm diameter each. Relatively thick, they griddled up nicely. About 3 bites each. I ate mine each with a bit of cream cheese and wrapped in a leaf of iceberg lettuce. Really nice.

BurgerWeek Day 1: BurgerVision

Since the teenager and myself are on our own this week we've decided to launch BurgerWeek: seven straight days of cheeseburgers. Each day will include a different burger source. London is a great place to get terrible burgers, so this required careful research and planning. We made heavy use of BurgerApp for iphone, a fun little local guide of where to find edible burgers here.

Bacon Cheeseburger from Lucky Chip*

Today is a special day. Not only is it day 1 of BurgerWeek, it is also the day of the Eurovision final, which we love, because it is bonkers. As an excellent bonus, our favorite TV writer Stu Heritage will be liveblogging it in the Guardian as well. Really, it's almost too much excitement for one day.

Tonight for the Eurovision song contest marathon viewing we will be sticking with the theme and having home-made micro burgers. There's some scheme being floated to use philadelphia as the cheese and tortilla chips for buns. We'll work it all out brilliantly when the time comes I'm sure. Not long now.

To kickoff BurgerWeek proper, our first stop was lunch at the Lucky Chip food truck at Netil Market. (A little runner from the Broadway Market roots must have tunneled under the school and sprouted this some time ago.) The Lucky Chip is normally serving at the Sebright Arms but also does Netil Market on Saturdays. As with all of our planned BurgerWeek restaurants, we'd never been there before.

Lucky Chip at Netil Market

Well, it was great. Easily the best burger I've had in London that I didn't cook myself. We both got bacon cheeseburgers. There was nothing to fault about the burger at all. Good meat, cooked perfectly, topped with melty cheese and nice bacon, sitting on top of shredded lettuce with a tangy blended condiment, sandwiched in a soft but just-substantial-enough-to-handle-the-burger bun. Wow. Exceeded expectations.

The folks running the show were really friendly as well. It helped, I'm sure, to have a properly warm and sunny and breezy market day. Everyone in a good mood. Our food was cooked to order and brought to us at a little table in the courtyard of the market. The chips were tasty but too salty, even for me (I love salt in heroic doses), and a bit soft and greasy. They were similar to my own efforts to make chips in a pan. Not to say they were bad. They were actually quite good, head and shoulders above the tasteless pale starch sticks most places try to pass off as chips here. Clearly homemade and flavorful. Just needed possibly a higher temp finish and a bit less salt. Would definitely get them again, but they weren't at the same level of excellence as the burger.

Will we be back? Oh yes. If you haven't been, you should probably go immediately.


*click on photos for larger version/instant hunger

Cluizel Chocolate Bars

I've been looking for milk chocolate bars with less sugar and more cocoa. Just tried some Michel Cluizel bars and they are fantastic. They do single plantation dark chocolate varieties. These are really good, most in the 67% range, although I'd like to see some higher-cocoa versions (my usual dark chocolate bar is the 85% lindt or the surprisingly good 82% tesco own-brand). The Cluizel I'm most fond of though is the 50% cocoa milk-chocolate. Lindt milk chocolate is 30-31%, G&B 34%, crappier stuff much lower. Slitti does a 70% cocoa milk chocolate but I've not yet got my hands on one. At 50%, the Cluizel Mangaro Lait has a  smooth, caramel creaminess of a milk chocolate but lashings of deep cocoa richness. Highly recommended.

Cowboys & Aliens & Bears

Recently saw Cowboys & Aliens and it was quite surprising all around. I really liked it. It was not a comedy. It was not what I expected. It was pretty serious. It would have been a really [perhaps more] enjoyable straight-up western, except it then had aliens added to it. But really it's just a bonkers version of Wizard of Oz.

Harrison Ford needs a heart. Daniel Craig has lost his mind. Sam Rockwell finds courage. Olivia Wilde is the girl "not from around here". And there's even a plucky dog.

There are no bears. Sorry.

Not a movie still. Also not a man in a bear suit.

Lift With Your What?

The ancient wisdom of "lift with your legs" is poor advice. Poor because it doesn't tell really tell you anything about what you should or shouldn't be doing when you "lift" something. Lift with my legs? How? What are you not supposed to lift with? Your arms? Well, if you have proper form and posture, there's nothing wrong at all with lifting with your arms. Want to row a rock up off the ground to inspect it closely? Go ahead. Want to curl a conch to your ear? Knock yourself out.

So here's what it really means: don't bend at the waist.

Bend at the hips. Keep the natural arch in your back intact (don't round it or hunch over). When you lift something really heavy, you lift with your butt and your hips and your legs. Your arms will think they participated, it's ok to let them think that. Hinge those hips, that's your lever. Protect your back. Don't bend at the waist.

Buckwheat Pancakes

Made buckwheat pancakes this morning and it worked out well as a wheatless Sunday treat. Went heavy on the eggs but otherwise my usual recipe base, sans bramleys or oats this week.

1.5 C buckwheat flour
2 t baking powder
0.5 t salt
3 T sugar

5 eggs
1 t vanilla
3 T (or so) melted butter
1+ C milk, warmed

combine dry ingredients and wet ingredients separately, then mix together
cook on griddle or pan with lots of butter
server with more butter, and maple syrup or honey or cinnamon & sugar
did you use enough butter? you probably didn't

They seem to cook more quickly and burn more easily than the regular pancakes. Also they do better flipped earlier than normal.

Salon & The Unviewable Web

While some sites have put thought into clean, simple, readability, others are going over-the-top bonkers in the opposite direction. Floating banners and footers that obscure text and mess up scrolling. Ads that bounce text and layout around, shifting the content like a crappy online puzzle game while you wait for things to settle enough to start reading, right after the headache and vertigo clear.

Salon had been bad before but their recent redesign makes it even worse. Way to go, Salon design team! Here's a recent article. As if the riot of colors, animations, floating crap, accidental strikeout lines weren't bad enough, notice what's not on the page? That's right, content! An entire content-free page. I have to scroll a full page just to get to any content. And when I do, the floating nonsense screws even that up. Horrible stuff, Salon, truly stupendously awful.

Victoria Park Playgrounds

The new playground in the west half is almost completely open, with even the water features working, and the larger revamped playground in the east half is open as well. Took much longer than it should have, but really nice results.

the big slides are still there

several new climby things

this is... well, I don't know, but it tilts, has screens, and has lots of sand!

more sand, with added digging

cool new park for bmx and skateboard, with hemisphere

Little River Canyon

Alabama is home to the deepest canyon in the eastern half of the USA, Little River Canyon, most of which is a national preserve. It's a surprising and hidden gem of terrain, stretching much of the length of lookout mountain, with waterfalls, rapids, turkeys, trees, snakes, bluffs, boulders, swimming holes, the occasional very happy kayaker. (And no, despite Bear Grylls' comical claims of worry, you will not find any alligators up there). No shortage of challenging terrain but plenty that's accessible as well. Virtually no marked trails - careful with the cliffs. Recently went in search of Grace's High Falls (41m, seasonal waterfall). Found it from the top, but upon shuffling down to the canyon floor and hiking upstream, didn't quite find it again. Lovely hike, though.

iPad, iCloud, and The Multiple ID problem

Coming up on two years with my original iPad. I still love it. Use it daily. I am sorely tempted by the iPad 3, mainly for the fantastic display upgrade, but will have to wait a while.

I only just updated the iPad to iOS5.x. Good upgrade. Nice improvements in mail client, for one. I'd gone to iOS5 on the iPhone a while ago, a big win if for nothing else than the revamped notifications system.

The new iPhoto for iPad looks great. I probably won't get around to trying it, since I'm firmly entrenched in the Lightroom camp. Looking forward to the day Adobe doesn't an integrated iPad Lightroom for me. New iMovie also very interesting. As are the new features with GarageBand, especially collaboration.

iTunes U, though, takes the cake. This predates the new iPad by a while, but I hadn't paid much attention. Phenomenal idea, well executed. This would be incredible even if the MIT OpenCourseware was the only offering. Astonishing to see so much free content. Want to sit in on MIT physics lecture series? Lots to add to my aspirational list of activities for retirement I think.

iCloud? Well, it's great that if I take a photo on my iPhone it automagically ends up on my desktop mac (and will now also do so on my iPad). Other features seem perfectly fine and cloudy. App purchases, music, etc., all syncing across devices quietly and effectively. Great.

What Apple has completely botched, for me, is the ID-handling. I have apple store IDs that predate the iTunes music store and predate the mac.com addresses. Initially I used my yahoo emaill address for the apple store in the US. After that, two things happened, I got a mac.com address and moved abroad. So my non-US apple account is based on my mac.com (or me.com) address, while my US apple account is based on my yahoo address still. I would prefer to use my mac/me address for my iCloud account, but most of my content is from the US account. Apple ID can be changed, unless it's a mac/me account.

So I'm stuck: I can't change my UK Apple account to something other than my mac/me account, apparently using the mac/me address now makes that immutable (I can only add additional addresses). I can't change my US Apple account to use my mac/me account, because that's already being used by my UK account. So I can't merge accounts or even keep two but swap the email addresses, which is pants.

Legalize It

Despite the US Government's war on food, the madness has not yet spread to the UK, were you can still buy raw milk. Good stuff. Got some from Broadway market today (along with some Polish cured pork products, apples, olive oil, garlic stuffed olives, a few slices of cheesecake, ...)