Chocolate Walking Tour

Home-made Marshmallows

More in Erin's "beautiful food" series.

Brussel Sprouts, Bacon, Onion

Sometimes when Erin makes up a recipe, it ends up really interesting, in this case visually.

Yeast Gravy

Delicious, believe it or not. The jar to the left is barbeque sauce, also home-made by Erin and also delicious.

Terrifying Mutant Carrot Discovered; Wife Claims It's "Normal"

Cat Grass

Jess has a taste for plants. Her favorite seems to be the spider plants, which make her throw up. Gross! But Erin discovered "Cat Grass", which Jess also loves and which does not make her throw up.

Project 100, #62.

Tropicana Packaging Fail

I find this carton of Tropicana orange juice garish and unappealing, and way too corporate. You can almost see the suits and smarmy attitudes oozing out. Shouldn't there be a picture of, oh, an orange instead of this over-Photoshopped image of a trendy glass full of orange colored liquid?

Note that the cap is shaped like -- how clever -- an orange! Gaaaah.

Here's an idea, PepsiCo: Focus on providing us wholesome and ethically produced food, and forget the marketing bullshit.

Project 100, #58.

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Side note: Turns out that the guy who designed this package is the same guy who designed Pepsi's craptastic new logo.

Pasta-Off

For my birthday, we had a "pasta-off". People brought various home-made pasta sauces (6 in all!) and we made a giant loop of home-made pasta, something like 30 feet in circumference. The above photo is cutting the wide strip into noodles.

I didn't capture a holistic image, but my friend "mannatunkle" captured several.

It was a hit. Erin threw me a wonderful birthday party. (Oh yeah, I turned 30 on the 1st.)

Project 100, #50.

Erin's 1197-Gram Grapefruit

Project 100, #32.

Project 100, #6: Orange

For the past several weeks, there have been 10-pound bags of massive oranges at the co-op. They're incredibly tasty, too, not just huge. Here's the biggest one from the latest batch. I will now eat it.

Summary

In case you missed the last half-dozen blog posts that I didn't write, here's a summary:

1. I attended the CSCW conference in San Diego, where I presented my paper, "Computational Geowikis: What, Why, and How", which was nominated for Best Paper and earned an honorable mention. My talk was very well received and cited as the "best talk of the conference" by at least one stranger.
2. I demoed Cyclopath to a standing-room-only crowd of ~50 city planners and other governmental types. They liked it.
   
3. I attended an HCI symposium in New York and gave a talk.
4. I gave my oral preliminary exam and passed, making me a Ph.D. Candidate. It will be official when all the paperwork that I was supposed to bring to the event is signed. ("Where's the paperwork?" "What paperwork?")
5. I moved reidster.net to a virtual private server, which is way faster and more reliable. E-mail service will follow soon (not that you'd notice any difference).
   
6. I bought a fancy battery charger with all kinds of buttons and modes. It's great.
   
7. My FW made incredible toffee, and I ate it.
   

Marilyn's Incredible Red Sauce

This is a recipe for incredible red enchilada sauce given to us by a family friend, Marilyn Yeamans. "Marilyn's" is technically a misnomer since she apparently got it from Rancho de Chimayo, a restaurant in Chimayo, New Mexico? But that's how I think of it.

The recipe below is how my lovely FW, Erin, makes it.

VEGETARIAN RED CHILE SAUCE
Makes approximately 5 cups

1/2-3/4 cups dried ground red chile, high quality
2 generous slices fresh onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
4 cups vegetable broth
3 Tbsp cornstarch dissolved in 3 Tbsp water

1. Saute or carmelize onions in a large, heavy sauce pan.
2. Add chile, garlic, salt, and pepper.
3. Slowly add the broth, stirring carefully. Break up any lumps of chile.
4. Cook the mixture over medium heat until warmed through, and add the cornstarch.
5. Bring the sauce to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer.
6. Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

The completed sauce should coat a spoon thickly and no longer taste of raw cornstarch. Sauce keeps well in refrigerator or freezer, though texture may be affected if frozen.