One Word

CHEEZECAKE

Gamers, be warned...

...when the World Governments AGREE to build a Doomsday Seed Vault.

From Cnn:

A vast underground vault storing millions of seeds from around the world opened Tuesday in a mountain on a remote island near the Arctic Ocean.

Dubbed the "Doomsday Vault," the seed bank is considered the ultimate safety net for the world's seed collections, protecting them from a wide range of threats including war, natural disasters, lack of funding or simply poor agricultural management.

Norwegian musicians performed Tuesday as part of an elaborate opening ceremony marking the opening of the vault, located 130 meters (427 feet) inside a frozen mountain. Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan environmental and political activist who won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, placed the first seeds inside the vault, followed by other dignitaries.

Anyone else a bit... unnerved by this announcement?

-Me

kitchen blogging

Since my roommate moved in, I have had the opportunity to cook a lot more than before. When I was the only one in the house, I didn't really care how I cooked and generally ate very poorly. It's really difficult for me to cook healthy in small portions. So tonight I had the chance to throw somethings in the wok.

As my friend Barb is off handling a family medical matter, I thought it fitting that I would try and post tonight's creation.

Fresh Veggies & Beef

Ingredients:
1 Green Pepper
1 Red Pepper
1/2 Cucumber
1 yellow onion
1/2 pound of stew beef.

I chopped all the veggies fairly large so that they don't get lost in the mix but chopped the meat smaller so it would cook up faster. The whole thing had some chopped fresh ginger added and a bit of lemon juice.

Oh, and this medley is served with brown rice.

Normally there would be a long post on the procedure involved in making such a meal but as this is only as Chinese as the Wok that it's cooked in, I'll assume that everyone reading can toss some veggies in a pan and make it work.

I'm just really enjoying the idea that I'm blogging from my kitchen.

Pumpkin Butchering

The poor thing didn't know what hit it. I snuck up on it with drunken, cat-like grace and stabbed deep into it's top. Oh, the screaming that could be heard (if you imagined that I could sneak up on a pumpkin, then you can definately imagine it screaming). I left the blade in the wound for a moment to snap this picture and then begun to scalp off its' top-knot.


The Huron were known for their ability to remove a man's scap before he fell dead to the ground. I wonder if the pumpkin knew what had hit it when I pulled off the 'lid' and gazed down into the bowls of its guts.

Once I had pulled out all of the insides and set the seeds aside to dry slowly in an oven (yes, I'm just that sadistic), I began to wedge the corpus. This is what came from a medium-sized pumpkin. I'll have plenty left over once I dice the body up into bite-sized bits.

Overall, the pumpkin yielded about two-quarts of inch-thick chunks of punkin. I've bagged 3/4ths of them and used the remains to brew up some pumpkin soup.

The soup wasn't bad (thank god for the roasted red pepper to give it something other than a bland flavor), but I would consider it a base; something to add veggies to it to make a stew.

A Walk in the Rain

Around 2:30 p.m.

I was not exactly jumping out of bed this morning but I knew that I had to get some work done on my lectures. Rather than trying to fight all the distractions in my home office or the office on campus, I decided to go for a walk over to my favorite watering hole, Hatti Beasly's.

When I crested the hill on 17th street I saw that the gray clouds of a storm were on the march. The air was cool and the weather was perfect for a mile hike. With my IPOD for accompaniment, I didn't notice the many people who were out on their front stoops enjoying the fresh breeze. It wasn't until I got to the shoppe, right around noon, did the storm make the decision to send only wind at us. I was so disappointed.

After grabbing an Iced Cappuccino, I grabbed my favorite perch out in front of the shop and dug into the new Sociology text. I have been reading the text for the past few days to get a sense of what had changed from one edition to the next. The good news is that there weren't that many changes. This left me with the task of thinking about how to run the grades for the class; how many assignments I would have, etc.

Unfortunately, Hatti's closes at 2 p.m. for the afternoon after their lunch rush and doesn't re-open until 6 at night for their coffee and gelatto rush. I did find out that the name, Hatti Beasley, came from the deed of the nearby property that the owner also owns. The owner had always wanted to develop a coffee house and the name stuck with him as great thing for marketing.

Around 2 p.m., I decided to head back since the gray clouds were on the march once more and this time they carried with them the promise of rain. Before I was even half-way home, the cloud artillery opened up and began to pour. Thankfully my bag comes equipped with a mini-brella to protect its contents from moisture.

Now that I'm home and mostly a drip from the hike, it's stopped and the sun has come out to drive back the clouds and guys like me.

Later.
-T

A bit of a detour...

Around 9:30 a.m.

Well, guess where I am? Last night, Jim and I were going to head up to Huntington to watch Harry Potter and grab some food. Well, while driving through New Boston the idea struck us to go kidnap Heath who is all by himself up in Columbus; April and the kids are down in Kentucky for the week. After a quick phone call to confirm the plan, Jim and I grabbed clothes and we drove up to invade Easton mall.

O.M.G. It's not a mall, it's a small community of capitalism. I love it. We saw the Order of the Phoenix and had dinner at Panera. Afterwards we ended up crashing at Heaths and talked until around four or five in the morning. It was definitely something different than just driving up to Huntington.

Who knows what we'll get into today.

***

Later, around 11:30 p.m.

Today was very cool. Jim and I crawled around Columbus for most of the day - I didn't get home until around ten o'clock. We ended up back at Easton and we started at one end and walked its four corners. I hate being poor. I need to go back up with about 100 dollars to blow and then I'd be quite happy. I had to walk by Barnes and Noble six times with less than 20 dollars in my wallet - oh, the agony.

Jim grabbed some cologne at Abercrombie and Fitch (awesome place) and we ducked into dozens of shops selling everything from electronic gadgets to a shop, Eddie Bauer, where I saw a possible new bag.

Leave it alone.

One of my Quests is for a perfect Field Bag.

Eventually we ended up at an awesome sea food restaurant (McCormick & Schmick's) and then meandered our way back home.

When I got into the house, I could smell the unmistakable odor of decay. The kitten's body was decomposing somewhere in one of the rooms. I ditched my bags and grabbed the flash light and began searching behind and around things once more. This time I found it in one of the few places I had never entertained as an idea - behind the entertainment center.

It was so exposed and 'open' that it didn't seem like a place she would have chosen. All of the other places were under something with a real 'roof' to it; my bed, both couches, etc. The kitten's head was at an odd angle so I can only guess that when she tried to move it from the basket to somewhere else - she either snapped its neck or perhaps it suffocated. Unfortunate but now, at least, the matter has been resolved.

I'm out on the front couch and watching the tv a little while I write this up. I think I'm going to crash soon.

Night

-T.


Photo link

Mumbo Gumbo

Mumbo Gumbo

After living with and visiting so many friends who are awesome cooks, (Bryian and Barb), I have gotten spoiled with my eating habits. Unfortunately I've not focused any real energy to learn to seriously cook since most of the time I'm either too busy to cook for myself or the meal is for a small group so I'm not just cooking for one.

When I am attempting to feed several people at a sitting or one person for several sittings, I find myself drawn to the stews and other concoctions that we invented while living in Athens.

One time this past winter, I wanted to make some stew to munch on for a while. I had a bunch of canned vegetables in my pantry so I started to brew up something which became known as "Mumbo Gumbo".

It was almost literally, one can of everything in my pantry plus some smoked sausage and a pair of left-over chicken breasts. The process was simple and the results were very yummy.

Ingredients:

1 can of whole kernel corn
1 can of kidney beans, light red
1 can of cooked potatoes
1 can of green beans
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 link of smoked sausage
2 cans of tomato sauce
1 package of chili seasonings (optional)
2 cooked chicken breasts, cubed (optional)

Process:

1. Fire up your stove and find your biggest stew pot.
2. Begin opening all of the cans
3. Fight off the cats who think you're going to give them cat food.
4. Continue opening all of the cans
5. Continue fighting off the cats
6. Empty all of the canned goods into the stew pot and bring to a bubble.
7. Add in the sausage which you can cut either thick or thin depending on how you want the stew to look. I like the appearance of a stew with nice big chunks so I leave them about half an inch thick.
8. Stir in whatever spices and additional flavors that you would like and wait for it to come to a bubble a second time and pull it off the heat and allow to cool.
9. Continue to fight off the cats.
10. Allow the stew to cool down. The stew is best if the sauce has been allowed to thicken slightly. Like every other stew, it's always better the second day.

Serve with bread, crackers or whatever you happen to have in the pantry.

Grr... now I'm hungry.
-T