Gas Mark 11

I'm not a fan of Halloween. It's just so plastic and "Made in China." You can buy all sorts of kitschy junk that is designed to look crafty, yet it all comes from China. Costumes you buy are mostly stupid. And the candy is pretty much all crap. There are a few kinds that I'm sentimental about, but it's really all just crap even if you include those. As soon as the candy starts coming from China, I'm pulling the plug on the entire trick-or-treat thing!

I like pumpkins, and the trip to the pumpkin patch, as long as it's on a real farm and not a parking lot. We always carve pumpkins and toast the seeds, and I do enjoy that tradition. I like growing pumpkins. And I like eating stuff made out of pumpkin. And fresh cider. N sewed a great Dorothy dress for J, and I'm excited on her behalf because it is still fun for kids. Don't worry: I won't embarrass her by handing out locally-grown organic carrots or something, but believe me, I'd rather have fresh carrots from Full Circle than a Tootsie Roll or some other sticky thing with HFCS.

Almost. It certainly feels like autumn here in Western Washington. It's cold and raining. I have sauerkraut and apples cooking in the Crockpot. I fermented the sauerkraut earlier this summer, and today feels like the day to eat some of it. Here is a photo of some of the things we preserved for the long winter.

• Purple sauerkraut
• Pickled beans
• Pickled carrots
• Pickled cucumbers
• Pickled onions
• Tomato sauce
• Blueberry preserves
• Plain blueberries
• Peaches
• Tomatoes

There was more, but some of it was so tasty that it didn't make it even to the end of summer. It doesn't look like we'll get to our usual wild blackberry jam this year, though as of last week, at least some of the vines are still loaded. I have a few more tomatoes from which I'll make ketchup today.

All the produce came from our farmers market. My own garden didn't do very well. Try growing veggies in this region in a yard with partial sun (on thoese days that there is sun.)

When I got the Crockpot out today, I discovered a can of Diet Coke. Ten years ago, N and I dressed up as Coke and Diet Coke for Halloween.

We don't drink the stuff, but we bought a can to use as the model for the costumes. The can that I discovered today was that same can from 10 years ago. "1998" is stamped on the bottom. We've taken it with us the last three times we've moved. Why do we still have it? I don't know--I guess we thought it would be good to have on hand for guests. But apparently, none of the people we've had over in the past ten years drink Diet Coke. Not that we would serve a ten year old soda to somebody, even if we did remember it was there behind the Crockpot. Does Diet Coke go bad?

So, did I throw it away today? No, now it's old enough to have sentimental value to N and me. Back into its corner it went. Sigh.

I made a chocolate/vanilla birthday cake for N today, from these instructions: http://blog.kingarthurflour.com/2008/07/14/chocolate-vanilla-chocolate-vanilla-birthday-cake-for-fence-sitters/. I worked from home, and made the cake during some breaks from work. One thing I learned is that the bottom layer should be the top of the vanilla cake, turned upside down. This is because the top will be somewhat domed when it comes out of the oven. If you place the domed side down, then all the layers that fit together with icing in between will fit together squarely. If you don't do this, you will end up putting the flat side of the top chocolate layer on top of the domed side of a vanilla layer, leaving a gap around the edge that you have to try to fill in with icing.  The cake was a bit to rich for my liking, but N appreciated it, and we had a good time eating it.

Why do people use fabric softeners? It's something that has always puzzled me. I love the feel of a stiff shirt after it has been dried outside on the line. Why would someone prefer the unnatural feel of the same shirt dried in a clothes drier with fabric softener? And the smell: it's not just that clothes dried outside smell awesome, it's also that fabric softener smells horrible. And who knows what chemicals are in there.

N agrees. It's just one more way we're different. Not from each other; from you.

I made a batch of no-knead bread according to the instructions on breadtopia.com: http://www.breadtopia.com/basic-no-knead-method/. The instructions are really good, and easy to follow. I used 1 cup of wheat flour and two cups of white. I measured everything by weight. The resulting loaf was quite nice: it has a very soft crumb and crunchy crust. It's gone now. This is a good place to start for beginning bread bakers.

I recently made a batch of cheese bread from the King Arthur web site: http://blog.kingarthurflour.com/2008/03/28/hot-cheese-bread-grip-it-and-rip-it/. I kneaded it by hand, since we don't a mixer powerful enough to knead with. It wasn't hard. We ate one of the loaves while it was still warm. This is some tasty stuff, loaded with Gruyère.  Next time, I'll add some sliced jalapenos.

We don't generally drink bottled water. We have a couple cases of it in the garage for emergencies, and we drink that now and again to keep it rotating. We'll drink bottled water at a company picnic or something if that the only alternative to soda. Otherwise, we drink tap water. Or tea. A few weeks ago, we visited San Diego. The tap water tastes so bad, it is undrinkable. I tried making tea with it, and the tea was undrinkable. There was no choice than to drink bottled water, and use it for our tea.

The Zen Timepiece by Now & Zen

4/5 Stars

This is an alarm clock. The sound of the alarm is gorgeous. It's a metal bowl that is struck by a mechanical striker, and sounds like a gong. It's a nice way to wake up. Generally, I like the piece, and love the concept of a pleasant mechanical noise to wake up by. I hate the electronic noise of most alarm clocks. I don't need that stress at 0-Dark-30. The batteries have been going strong for seven months now.

These are areas for improvement:

1. The bowl can be placed anywhere on the flat surface of the clock. If it's not positioned exactly right, the striker will not hit the bowl, and you won't wake up. It's easy to bump the bowl out of position. There should be an indentation in the surface that the bowl fits into so that it cannot move out of range of the striker. Or, this problem could be mitigated in firmware: the unit could make a single strike when the alarm is turned on. You'll know when you go to bed if it was positioned correctly. Then, as long as you don't bump the unit in your sleep, you'll be OK. (I'm not suggesting that a user could make this change, but the manufacturer could add this feature in the next version.)
2. There are too many buttons on the front of the unit. I don't want "count down mode," "repeat mode," and "sec. off." These just clutter up the unit, making it harder to use.
3. There is no label for the button to turn on and off the hourly chime. You have to remember to press and hold the "set clock/timer" button. This is the only function that requires a press and hold.
4. The wood finish isn't that nice. It has a "made in China" feel to it.
5. The unit is much larger than it needs to be.

Today after work, N, J, and I took the bus to the Kirkland farmers market for the first time. I saw some of the same vendors that work at the Redmond market, like Full Circle, and Jesus, our apple/cherry guy. Kirkland has some things that the Redmond market doesn't have. Loki Fish Company used to come to the Redmond market, but we haven't seen them this year, and so there's no salmon to be had at Redmond. Kirkland has Wilson Fish. We bought a filet of wild salmon to see how it is. Kirkland also has:

• Musicians, which I haven't seen at Redmond in ages,
• Blazing Bagels, whose store is actually in Redmond,
• Cupcakes, from a shop whose name I didn't catch,
• The French Bakery, a great little, well, French bakery in downtown Kirkland,
• Windy Point Oysters, whom I know nothing about,
• Fresh pasta,
• And a BBQ caterer, whose name I didn't catch.

  New produce varieties since my visit to the Redmond market on Saturday:

• Various cabbages
• Raspberries
• Green beans
• Wax beans
• Fava beans
• Cauliflower
• Red torpedo onions
• Yellow peppers
• Yellow pattypan squash
• Some kind of softball-sized, light green squash

For a great olfactory experience, come to our house around breakfast time on a Sunday morning at sit on the top step. The other morning, you would have experienced the wonderful aromas of black forest bacon, my favorite, fried green tomatoes, and baking homemade sourdough bread. At breakfast, J said that she wanted to climb to the top of stairs, where the cooking smells are the strongest, and just fall asleep there.

N, P, G, and I recently went to Stumbling Goat Bistro for the first time. To summarize the meal in three sentences: Oh. My. Gawd. The food was fabulous! The setting is relaxed, and the service was very friendly and helpful. The only question is, blog about it or not? I'd hate it if it got too popular and we couldn't get a table! Now that's pretty selfish, isn't it? Well, nobody reads my blog anyhow, so here it is.

We opened a bottle of Pinot Grigio from Slovenia, from Vila Marija. Slovenia? But it's right on the border of Italy, Jason tells us. OK, we'll try it. I'm not a wine guy, so I won't begin to try to describe this. We all enjoyed it.

For appetizer, I ordered the Wild and Organic Herb Salad with crispy pork belly, Quillisascut Curado (cheese,) and pickled fiddlehead ferns. A salad of herbs with no lettuce? That sounds strange. But let me tell you, it was fabulous. There were about three small pieces of pork belly, which were so awesome. It added a nice saltiness to the mix. The chef, Seth Caswell, is very careful about where he gets his meat and other ingredients. I normally don't eat meat unless I know were it came from, and Seth definately knows. He cares deeply about how the animals are raised, and how the vegetables are grown. We ordered four appetizers to share, and I was reluctant to pass this to the left when the music stopped.

The next appetizer was Mini Wagyu Beef Burgers. There were two of these, so we each a half. These came with cheddar, sweet onion jam, a few fingerling fries, and black truffle aioli. These were also awesome!

Then there was the Asparagus Soup with morels and black truffle cream that N ordered. Wow, awesome again!

P ordered a salad with Salmon lox and faro. This was also very good, and I loved it, but a tiny bit less than the others.

After the appetizers, we knew we were on to something with this food, thinking that if this keeps up, we have found ourselves a new favorite restaurant. We ordered a bottle of 2003 Conti Sertoli Salis Capo di Terra, which was perfect for the meal. Again, Jason helped us choose.

We each ordered an entrée, and shared them equally. I ordered pasta Bolognese, made with beef from Thundering Hooves, a Washington farm with a great reputation. G ordered Stokesberry Sustainable Farm Roast Chicken with roasted garlic. I hadn't heard of this farm before, but wow, the chicken was fabulous. N ordered lamb from Ninety Farms in Arlington. This was the best lamb I have ever eaten: even better than the lamb we ate at that very farm earlier this spring. P ordered Fresh Spinach Pasta with braised rabbit, gana padano (cheese) and leccino olives. Also outstanding.

For dessert, we ordered a frozen white lavender mouse, strawberry rhubarb shortbread (whole wheat,) and a traditional cheesecake. I'm not a huge dessert fan--I preferred the shortbread.

The meal took three happy hours, and the bill was $300 for the four of us, not including tip. Nice job Stumbling Goat, and thank you for the great meal.

Unfortunately, after deciding that this was our new favorite restaurant, Seth, the chef, has left. Now we are patiently waiting for him to open up a place of his own.

I just finished reading Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood by Taras Grescoe. Wow, is this a frightening book. It makes me feel like I'm living some sort of science fiction future ala Soylent Green. Things must change or we're going to be in real trouble. One day, people will look back at this period in history and wonder how we could have been so short-sighted.

I feel good than my family has been making smart choices about the seafood we eat, but there are only three of us. I wish the rest of the world would get on board before it's too late. Or, given the growing world population, and the greedy, shortsighted nature of man, is it inevitable that we eat every last wild fish, and then wonder what happened?

Here are a few tips to start with:

1. For your own health, avoid eating farmed shrimp, particularly from Asia.
2. For the health of wild salmon, don't eat farmed salmon. Eat sustainably-fished wild salmon from Alaska.
3. For the health of the ocean, avoid eating monkfish. Fishing them destroys the ocean bottom.

Yes, we eat fresh sardines.

Due to traveling, I missed the last two Saturdays at the farmers market. So this morning, I saw a lot of produce that I didn't see three weeks ago.

• Cabbage
• Pickling cucumbers
• Peaches
• Nectarines
• Apricots
• Rainier cherries
• Broccoli
• Regular beets
• Chioggia beets
• Regular carrots
• Purple carrots
• Yellow carrots
• Purple radishes
• Strawberries
• Crookneck squash
• Zucchini
• Tatuma squash
• Tomatoes

The strawberries are awesome. These are not the same variety that you get in the grocery store. These are deep red all the way through, not white inside, and are soft and sweet. These wouldn't survive the trip to the grocery store. In fact, they got pretty beat up on the drive from the farmers market to our house.

I dug up my old blog from 2000-2001: http://web.archive.org/web/20050210150334/http://home.sprintmail.com/~smeredith/

Then, as now, I had little to say. I was mostly concerned with getting broadband, and commenting a little on the news. Oh, and getting married!

I think the South Korean people are right about rejecting beef imported from the United States. I live here, and I won't eat that kind of beef. Perhaps not buying the stuff would be a more appropriate protest than rioting, but what do I know? I guess that hasn't really worked to instigate change in this country.

And how do international beef recalls work? That's got to be embarrassing, no?

Maybe if we stopped trying to supply beef to the world, we could slow down, and raise fewer, healthier, tastier animals, and raise them in the way they are meant to be raised. Let them roam around eating grass instead of making them stand shoulder-to-shoulder in piles of their own excrement. We could stop forcing them to eat corn, and chicken shit, and the ground-up bones of other animals.  We could stop trying to make up for it all with pharmaceuticals. It's sad and frightening and unbelievable and maddening.

1. When I take a photo, I'd like the camera to record 15 seconds of audio before and after the photo, and save the sound file with the photo. No new user interface is required for this feature--just do it. 30 seconds of audio is a small file, and memory cards are big and cheap. Maybe the viewer app on the PC would automatically play the audio when viewing a slideshow, with a little "click" inserted at the point in the audio when the photo was taken. This would add depth and context to the viewing experience.
2. When I take a photo, a built-in GPS should record the current location in the metadata of the photo.
3. The GPS should set the local time and date, including adjustments for DST.
4. When I change time zones, the GPS should note the new location, and automatically change the camera's time zone to the current location.

   All this would happen without adding complexity to the user interface. In fact, it would simplify the UI because options to set the date and time, etc, could be removed from the menus.

      

I recently stayed on the 13th floor of a hotel. Yet it was labeled "14." There was no button for 13 on the elevator. Are we so dumb, as a people, to be afraid to stay on a floor labeled "13" because it is labeled "13," but are OK staying on that very same floor if it is labeled "14?"

Day 0: I thought I'd give sourdough bread a try, using only wild yeast. On Saturday evening, I put some whole wheat flour and water together on Saturday evening, and it's sitting out in the open right now collecting microbes from the air. It's not to warm in our house, so I suspect this will go slowly. I used a 50% - 50% mixture of flour and water.

Day 1: On Sunday evening, there is no sign that anything is happening.

Day 2: On Monday evening, it had just started to bubble slowly. It didn't really smell like anything other than flour yet.

Day 3: On Tuesday evening, it was bubbling a little more, and had developed a sour smell. I fed it a heaping tablespoon of white flour.

Day 4: On Wednesday evening, there was not much change. It smells less sour than yesterday: quite pleasant actually. There was some dark liquid on top. I stirred in another heaping tablespoon of white four, and moved it to a warmer place.

Day 5: On Thursday morning, the starter was very bubbly, and smelled very nice. A little sweet and a little sour. I removed 1 cup of the mixture, and added half a cup of whole wheat flour, and a half a cup of water. In the evening, it was nice and bubbly again, and smelled very good.

Day 6: On Friday morning, the starter was bubbly again. I removed 1 cup, and added half a cup of whole wheat flour, and half a cup of water.

Day 7: On Saturday morning, I made bread dough. I mixed 1 cup of starter, two cups of unbleached white flour, 1 cup water, and 1 tsp salt. I mixed this together, and let it rise for most of the day. Then I put it into the fridge. I fed the starter again and put it away for next time.

Day 8: On Sunday morning, I shaped the dough into a round loaf. I let it rise for about an hour and half, and heated the oven and baking stone to 450 degrees, for 45 minutes. I dusted it with flour, and cut an X into the top. I had a hard time transferring the loaf to the hot stone. It stuck to the pan it was rising on, even though I put cornmeal on it. Next time, I will use more cornmeal. Other options are to let the dough rise in a basket and tip it out onto the stone, or shape, dust, and cut the loaf after it gets on the stone. I expected the loaf to stick to the baking stone as well, but it did not. The bottom of the loaf rounded a little during baking, and it popped right off the stone.

I put a cup of boiling water in a pan below the stone for steam. I baked the bread for about 30 minutes, until the internal temperature was 206 degrees. I let it cool for half an hour.

The bread is good. It has a mild sour flavor. It's a bit spongier that I would like, and it could be a tiny bit sweeter, but the taste is good. I'm going to try this again.

Update: I made more bread with this starter a week later. This bread was even better than the first. I find that the sour flavor needs 8 or more hours after baking to develop.

I used a covered stoneware baking dish. I preheated it while the loaf was proofing and slid the proofed dough into the hot dish just before baking. I baked for 15 minutes covered, and 15 minutes uncovered. The crust is better on these, but looks pretty rustic. That's OK with us.