...

So, this blog isn't being very useful. I only post here every couple months, and there's a lot of thoughts that never make it here, and when I write longer things I feel like this isn't quite the best format for them.

So I'm thinking of doing something different, but I'm not really sure what yet. But it probably won't be on Blogger... I'm not even sure it will be a blog. Maybe something that combines my tumblelog, twitter, maybe Flickr, and essay-format things (and short stories) in a static directory. Basically, more of a writing repository than a blog.

I'll post something here when that happens, in the meantime this blog is more or less on hiatus.

Not much to say, not much to blog.

I’m sitting cross-legged in my office with my keyboard on my lap and LTJ Bukem and Leftfield on my headphones, wondering what to write about, and it occurs to me: I don’t really have anything to get worked up about. Which means, basically, that I don’t really have anything to write about. All too often, what it takes to get my really spewing text on my keyboard is a really good rant about something. Which is why, for example, I found myself writing a lot more last fall during the election cycle. The was Stuff Going On, and it had to be Commented On.

But now? Nothing much. I mean, chunks of America have lost their minds over political stuff, but fuck them anyways. Can’t be bothered.

Same goes for more diary-type stuff, not so much to write about. Probably because I was there and I remember it well enough, so not so much need to put it down on paper.

So move along, nothing to see here. Go read Doktor Sleepless or something.

posting dates

ok, that's weird. I just published a saved draft of something I started writing up a while ago but just published. But it has the date of when I first started typing it. Hmm. Blogger strangeness.

tags in blogger

oops, I think I messed up they way I was using tags (labels) in blogger. Wasn't using them enough to make a difference, so no real loss, but still...

Broccoli quiche

FOODBLOGGING!

I made this for lunch several weeks ago, and just finally finished writing it up:
(and I lost the pictures I took of it, too)

Eggless Broccoli Quiche

Not really a quiche, more of a vegetable pie.

Family recipe, based on recipes from The Age of Enlightenment Cookbook by Miriam Kasin (hereafter AoE Cookbook). Long out of print, but used copies aren't that hard to find.

First, the crust. I use a quick biscuit dough (a variant of the rolled biscuit recipe in the AoE Cookbook) for this:

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup unbleached white flout
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking powder*
2 tsp. sugar or honey (actually, I used 1 1/2 tsp. agave nectar this time)
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup milk**
1/3 cup water**

Sift and mix the dry ingredients and the agave. Work butter in with hands or pastry cutter. (you let it soften first, right? I didn't and had trouble as a result.) Add liquid, mix, knead a few times to make it smooth.

Butter a 9.5" or 10" pie plate (We only use glass here, so your mileage may vary at the baking stage if you use metal). Spread biscuit dough evenly across bottom and sides in your preferred manner. Use all the dough. Bake at 435 to 450 degrees (Farenheit. I've never cooked with Metric measurements) for about 7 minutes (as appropriate to your baking apparatus. But the crust should be just barely browned.)

Next, the filling. You'll want to have some feeling for steaming broccoli, as it makes the timing easier.

The filling is two parts: the broccoli (I guess other vegetables can substitute as per taste), and the sauce. This is a cream sauce with cheese melted in it.

It's possible to do both the broccoli and the sauce at the same time, or they can be separately prepared beforehand and set them aside. If you do that, steam the broccoli less and do the sauce while the crust is baking.

In this case, one rather large head of broccoli ended up being just right. (didn't think to take pictures until it was done, so can't provide a size reference. Sorry.) Chop the broccoli to medium-small pieces and steam it.

The sauce:

1/3 cup butter (ghee or olive oil work also)
1/2 cup flour (about)#
2 cups milk (can substitute cream for up to a third of this)
1/2 teaspoon salt
pinch nutmeg, if desired (I didn't this time)
grated cheese (I use sharp white cheddar) to taste (about a half cup this time, plus a bit more for on top)

Melt the butter. Add about 2/3 of the flour and cook for a minute. Stir constantly with a wisk. Make sure there are no lumps. Either reduce heat (if on gas stove) or remove from heat (if on electric) and add milk. Slowly bring heat back up. Stir more or less constantly (higher heat=more important that stirring is constant. If at low heat, it's possible to step away for long enough to, say, take the crust out of the oven or chop and steam the broccoli.) Add remainder of flower and cheese (slowly, in both cases. I add the cheese a bit [say 1/3] at a time and allow to melt. Not sure if this makes any difference at all.)

Take it off the heat as soon as it starts to thicken (you ARE stirring constantly, right? Because this is kind of key.)

Actually, bring the heat down low once it starts to thicken and keep it warm for a little bit longer but not too long. Experience and experimentation help a bit with that. You want the sauce thicker than a normal cream sauce but not too thick. Think pudding. Also, it will thicken a LOT more once it cools, so don't overcook.

Drain the broccoli (important! excess water will screw with the thickness of the sauce) and mix the sauce and the broccoli. Pour mixture into crust. It should be even with the top of the crust but not overflowing unless you want a hard-to-clean mess. Sprinkle grated cheese on top, if you want.

Put the whole thing back in the oven at 350 degrees for about 8 minutes, or until the cheese on top is just starting to brown. Remove and let cool a bit before serving (again, so that the sauce will thicken a bit.)

The first piece served will be a messy disaster. Seriously. Always. I have not yet found a way to avoid this. But after that, if you've gotten the sauce thickness right, it should hold together reasonably.


Failure modes (all have happened to me):

The sauce isn't thick enough due to either not enough flour, too short cook time, or too much moisture from the broccoli. As a result, you get something resembling more of a thick soup.

The crust isn't baked enough in the first baking and the sauce soaks into it too much, turning it to mush.

The broccoli doesn't cook enough or too much.

The whole thing flips over while you take it out of the oven and makes close acquaintance with your floor.

It's too close to the top heating element and the oven runs too hot and lights it on fire.

The sauce is lumpy because it wasn't stirred in with the butter or oil enough.

You follow the biscuit recipe in the AoE Cookbook too literally and the crust ends up tasting like baking powder.


Other than that, it's pretty easy once you've done it once or twice. I wouldn't count on the first time turning out well enough to serve to friends, myself, but that's based on my personal cooking quirks. :)

Enjoy!

*the AoE Cookbook has a typo in the recipe in that it calls for a tablespoon instead of a teaspoon here. This results in disaster.

**the original calls for all the liquid to be milk.

# Ordinarily, you'd use 1/4 cup flour for this sauce, but in this case you want the sauce thicker.

Spring project goals

Or, rather, goals for projects. Or projects that I intend to work on this spring.

This was posted somewhere else but I'm putting it here to make it harder to forget about. :)

Do more photography, some of it actually good.

Start writing (as opposed to just outlining) some stuff about creativity. (more on this later)

Finish converting a short story to a screenplay for my brother. (Oh, and write up some comments about the process of making said story for here.)
In addition, at least two more pieces of flash-SF.

Maybe do some reporting on multimedia/new media art.

Also, write and record a song. Even if it's just an instrumental jam.

Inauguration

So, we're watching the inauguration, and I feel like I really ought to write something about it. What it means to me, what I think it means to the nation, and so forth. But I really don't have much to say at the moment. Just glad this is happening and looking forward to seeing how things will go under the new administration.

Place and the Creative Class

Well, I'm in a coffee shop, so I guess I ought to write a blog post. It's been almost a month since the last one, so it's time. Have some work-related news, but that won't really be finalized for another couple weeks, so I'm going to hold off on that for now.

I've been reading some recent work by two authors recently that contradict in some interesting ways. One is Thomas Friedman (New York Times columnist and author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree and Hot, Flat, and Crowded [I skipped The World is Flat]), who argues that globalization is opening the world economy to lots of places that didn't previously have access and generally changing the importance of location in the direction of less. The other is Richard Florida, author of Rise of the Creative Class and Who's Your City? (among others), who agrees that globalization is opening a lot of opportunities, but that it's also making location matter more.

It's an interesting dichotomy. Since I'm still in the middle of both (actually, I haven't read Hot, Flat, and Crowded yet, but I have some idea where it goes from Friedman's other work and recent writings in the NYT), and work is involved, I don't really have an opinion of which I agree on more, but it does lead me to an interesting train of thought which I haven't really developed into a coherent concept yet, but basically centers on an application of network analysis to stuff like The Tipping Point and using that to explain some of the stuff that both Friedman and Florida talk about. Problem is, when I try to distill it down to a few sentences, I keep coming up with additional layers to explore that seem essential to fully explaining my point. Like, for example, hierarchies of authority (which is, really, what The Tipping Point is mostly about) and channels of communication for those hierarchies (basically, that different modes of communication are good for different types of argument).


In the end, though, it's all about people. People talking to other people and interacting with each other in the pursuit of their continued survival.


Which, surprisingly, brings me to the other book I've been reading: Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America by Brian Francis Slattery. Go find a copy of this book and read it. Now. It's fantastic.

Imagine the flat-out worst possible outcome of last year's economic troubles, culminating in the total collapse of the government, the dollar, and pretty much everything else. That's one of the precipitating events of Liberation. Riots destroy large parts of major cities. Mexico declares war on Texas. People take to selling themselves into slavery because it's better than starving. Bands of freewheeling hippies crisscross the country in a caravan of diesel-and-solar powered busses. Trains have machine gun nests and howitzers for self defense.

And into all this come the Slick Six, a gang of unstoppable international criminal, one of whom, Marco, has been in prison the last few years, since before the collapse. Marco has returned to reunite the Six and try to do some good in this new world.

Several of the interesting places in this world are where people have settled into a New Normal, where things are not so bad, or perhaps even better than Before. They grow their own food, barter for what they can't make, and generally get by. Maybe utopian, maybe not. The point is, despite a fantastic disaster, they're still alive. 

It's something that was on my mind a lot while Lehman was failing and they were debating the bailout. A lot of people were (and still are) losing their shirts, and were certainly looking at a more difficult future, but they weren't dying. That's my new yardstick for bad news: Did/will anyone die from it? If not, no problem. We'll get through it.