Carnage du Jour - 12 January 2011

from grandteuton.blogspot.com

As we have noted here in prior posts, there is no more versatile cut of meat than a pork tenderloin, and that was proved once again in this dish.

Having noted a delicious looking salad (here) of roasted root vegetables, I found myself buying a nice bunch of radishes with roasting in mind.  They took very little cleaning: I just trimmed the ends and cut most of them in half.  Into a skillet with a bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper, then into the oven at 425F for 10 minutes or so.
In the meantime, I got some frozen brussels sprouts mostly cooked in the microwave (what a great way to cook frozen vegetables) and the mostly roasted radishes were dumped into the bowl with them to wait for the right time to join the pork.

Into the now-vacated skillet went a tenderloin cut into medallions, seasoned with salt and beau monde (mmm!) to be seared on each of the flat sides.
Back into the skillet came the radishes, accompanied by the brussels sprouts, and all went back into the 425 oven.
 
They all roasted happily away as the now boiling water received its dose of egg noodles.  They took their fairly typical seven minutes or so, and then were drained and a bit of oil dropped in to keep them separated.

A little bit of leftover roasted garlic alfredo sauce was added to the pork and vegetables, and then that mixture topped the noodles on our plates.
 
Very tasty indeed.

Privacy? What Privacy? - Updated

from grandteuton.blogspot.com

(update: Here's another treatment of the same topic from boing boing.)

I was asked about a site called spokeo.com the other day: apparently it poses as an online white pages on steroids.
What it really seems to be is a spam engine.
 
The basic idea is that they go out and scrape websites for any public information with a name attached, and then let everyone on the web search all that stuff to find their friends or acquaintances.  There's nothing there that wasn't already made public by someone - whether it's the person in question or not.  Any notes or tagged pictures that are there for everyone on facebook (or myspace or linkedin or whatever) can be scraped by these guys - regardless of who tagged you in them.

Not to worry, though. There's a privacy link at the bottom of the page where you can request that they not make those things about you public.  Of course, in order to do so, you have to give them your email address.  Oh, and they'd really prefer it if you'd give them your email and password as well, just because it makes it more secure (?!) that way.  No one will have access to it - not even spokeo employees! (So, what's it for again?)
 
Hmm.  So, I go into their system and find my data.
Then I tell them the email address that goes with that data.
Then I'm sure that no extraneous, unsolicited emails will appear in my inbox, right?
Oh, and they want me to pay them a monthly membership fee in order to see all this great data.
Good grief.

The regular journalists I noticed said they had no real luck in getting stuff get turned non-public, and that the data on them tended to be both incomplete and inaccurate.

Sounds like a moderately elaborate way of gathering probably real email addresses along with a bunch of data to flesh out the recipients.

I recommend that you stay away.

Vegage du Jour - 19 December 2010

from grandteuton.blogspot.com

As you likely know, I'm not a vegetarian - of course, my sister displayed vegan tendencies by driving a Vega in high school.  Still, I enjoy a good veg as much as the next guy, and make it a protein-bearing grain and/or legume, and I'm all over it - as long as it tastes good.

So, for a Christmas party, I made up a big batch of my quinoa and chick-pea stuff (I guess I need to come up with a decent name for this dish), and it was quite a hit - especially with me.

Four cups of red quinoa was brought to a boil in eight cups of home-made vegetable stock (asparagus, onions, and mushrooms were the base) and then simmered about fifteen minutes.
As that time ended, I drained, rinsed, and dried two cans of chickpeas and tossed them with some ground cumin, some white pepper, and some summer savory.  Into a large skillet of fairly hot olive oil they went, where they got just a bit of crispness.
Next, in went a bunch of sliced scallions (not enough of them, as it eventuated), and once they were nice and a bit browned, in went the quinoa.

All of it then went into a crock pot for transport and serving (and keeping warm, of course).  There you have it - gluten-free, dairy-free, meat-free and yet delicious.  Give it a shot - it's quite tasty.

Carnage du Jour - 17 December 2010

from grandteuton.blogspot.com

Pork chops are a staple around our Cleveland, and it's no wonder, considering how versatile these little guys can be.
 
This time it was a simple sear and pan-roast operation.  The butterfly chops were liberally salted, peppered and beau monded, then seared quickly in some olive oil.
 
While they rested on a plate, waiting for the rest of their cooking, into the pan went a large handful of grape tomatoes which popped nicely (although not nearly as dramatically as slow-motion popcorn!) in the pan.  Then some jalapeno stuffed olives, some kalamata olives, and some nice pickled cocktail onions went in, along with just a touch of tomato sauce - which was simply tomatoes from our garden which Heidi had run through the Mouli to keep that lovely garden-fresh flavour.
 
Back in the pan on top of all that goodness went the chops, along with a drained and rinsed can of cannellini beans.  It was only a few minutes for everything to meld and finish up, then the chops were again removed and some cooked spaghetti was added to the pan and all was finished.

Oh, I forgot to mention the roasted asparagus that accompanied - just simply roasted with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper - delicious indeed!

So there you have it, or rather, then we had it, and it was a lovely dinner.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

(from grandteuton.blogspot.com)

Well, we made it to the show on the opening weekend, and I wouldn't have missed it.

First, let me list my disappointments, then I'll balance it out with what I really think:
The first disappointment was that there were very few people in the theatre when we arrived - very few indeed.  More folks arrived in dribs and drabs before the feature began, but it was still a largely empty house.  Heidi says they did a bad job of advertising, and too few people knew about it - that may be true, but I had seen the trailer online a long time ago and was receiving regular updates leading up to the release, so I can't really say.

The next disappointment was the alteration of the storyline.  As in the previous installments, I understand that there are cuts and changes that will need to be made in order to present the novel in movie form, but this time it seemed excessive to me.  When cutting scenes, there is likely to be information that needs to be restored somehow, and that necessitates adding something.  I get it.
Still, adding characters and changing the nature of one of the threats seemed jarring to me.

OK, that's it for disappointments.
As always, these films have actors, settings, and effects which simply look the way they did in my head when I read the books.  It's uncanny, but they seem to match Heidi's internal scenery as well.  Perhaps Lewis was just that good, or perhaps these films are good enough to make us realise that, "That's just what that looked like!" at each turn.  I don't know, and I don't really care - it's just wonderful that it works.

The music is great - I don't remember who wrote it, but it worked throughout by supporting the action and not really quite drawing attention to itself.
The effects are actually quite seamless - I think I only once saw anything that took me out of my willing suspension of disbelief, and that was a very quick scene of a faun jumping and landing with his knees going the same way mine do, but it was only a very quick flash.
So, my disappointments really come down to a preference for the original storyline, and the lack of folks in the seats at our showing.  Perhaps we chose exactly the wrong time to see a big audience, as it was at "normal" people's dinner time.
At the same time, the movie really was a joy, and I very much hope to see the rest of the Chronicles hit the silver screen.  (I think it's going to take a bunch of us buying tickets and DVDs to ensure that.)  It will be interesting to see if the original children of the film will be old enough to play themselves as adults when we get to the Last Battle.

To sum up - do yourself a favour and go see this movie.  It's an excellent adaptation of the novel (despite my quibbles), and it's an excellent movie on its own.

Enjoy!

I can hardly wait!

(from grandteuton.blogspot.com)

The reason I had pulled out the CDs of the radio dramas based on the C.S. Lewis Narnia books has arrived.
I saw a trailer online for the third installment of the movie series - The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - and it made me want to prepare by reading the books again.  Then I realised that we had the CDs on the shelf, but I'd never listened to them.  Needless to say (if you read my earlier post on the topic) I was exceedingly glad that I did listen when I finally got around to it.

At any rate, the movie opens tonight, and we're planning to go see it, so stay tuned for reactions.  If it's half as good as the trailers and commercials make it seem, it will still be spectacular.

  

Ah - All Those Potlucks and Other Collaborative Meals!

(from grandteuton.blogspot.com)

'Tis the season and all, and that means there are more and more occasions where we're all carting our particular contribution to a collective meal to a (possibly) distant location.
 
Don't you hate it when your crock pot dumps part of the food in the back of the car?  I know I do, and how!

Still, what's a cook to do?  How about one of these babies?  A slow cooker with a lid that actually clips on and stays sealed!  How much spiffier could one of these get without just being too out there?

Very cool.