Afternoon coffee (at 7 pm)

hese things always begin with the best of intentions, not to mention quite innocently. I had two objectives this afternoon (oh dear, and I see it's now 7pm. oops):
• Have a cup of coffee and plow through some documentation. And, I prefer having a small snack with my coffee, a croissant, a cookie, a slice of cake...
• Use up the heavy cream I accidentally bought to go in said coffee because I hadn't had coffee yet (the lack of a dilutionary dairy substance being the issue) and so instead of the milk I usually get I got a half litre of very thick, organic cream.

So what did I do? well I tweeted of course, asking for recipes. @HarlanH (data scientist extraordinaire) thoughtfully replied and reminded me of the existence of recipes that aren't for baked goods. Crazy, right? In retrospect, I ought to have just gone with his first thought and done a cream sauce for pasta. Instead, I followed his other recommendation to check out something called Eat Your Books.

As it turns out, Eat Your Books is a handy dandy, plug your cookbooks/magazines/blogs into it-search engine for physical collections. I faintly heard choirs of angels as I poked through the homepage: finally, I can search my cookbooks without pulling each one off the (rather precarious) shelf and flicking through the index, then a handful of recipes trying to find a use for my one stray ingredient! That method works ok for main ingredients, like zucchini, or pork chops, or even chocolate, but not for say, whole vanilla beans, cracked wheat, or, in this case, heavy cream.

I added my top cookbooks with haste. A free subscription only allows 5 resources on your e-shelf: Mastering the Art of French Cooking, The Art of French Baking, The Essentials of Baking, The Joy of Cooking and The Pie and Pastry Bible. That covers everything I usually look through, anyway. And lo, five hundred and forty four recipes appeared!

It being me, I didn't really have many other ingredients on hand apart from the standard baking arsenal, so I used the filters to narrow things down to "cakes." The filters are actually quite useful. Frankly, a paid subscription would be worth it, only $25 a year, I think. I would prefer some integration with other services, maybe add things I bought on Amazon, or pull in my "cookbooks" tag from LibraryThing. More so, I would like to be able to search all my physical books digitally. I can always use Google Books, but I don't think I've seen a service that will let me save my books and then search them. I'd love to be wrong about this, so please correct me if that's the case.

Right, so anyway, I wound up with a recipe from the 75th Anniversary Joy for Black Forest Cake. I made it a little easier, just two layers instead of three, and amusingly enough, I had half as much heavy cream as it called for (still plenty). I also had some sweet cherries I preserved in brandy back in cherry season, so that covered cherries and kirsch, and I had the cream, chocolate, just enough eggs (market tomorrow!). So here it is, the result of two hours, a lot of flipping back and forth in the Joy for base recipes, and some impatient refrigeration time.

The grand irony here, of course, is that I just used up all the cream in the cake, and now have nothing to put in my coffee.

This makes me sad::

I wonder sometimes if writers read other stories in their own papers. The New York Times earlier this week published articles about veganism and the healthfullness of organic, local farming, promptly followed by an article on Saudi Arabia buying up Ethiopia for arable land. Half the time one writer elucidates a problem and suggests a solution and then another writer publishes something on a similar topic that ignores the first writer's exposé completely.

*sigh* It's just really been getting on my nerves. I may have mentioned before, but it was listening to NPR for an extended period of time that made me really acknowledge how much I want to disseminate information amongst the masses. Also known as being a librarian/information tech etc. It was the hour or two of listening to people reporting on misinformation and rumor and not covering all the points that could have been very relevant that put me over the edge. Point being, I make it my personal goal to educate as many other people about as many things as I can. Hey, a blog's not a bad place to start trying.

The entire point of this post, however, is to present the ironic juxtaposition of two articles on tonight's Washington Post (online) lead page. On the right we see a picture of some icebergs near New Zealand which have broken off of Antarctica and are threatening ships in the South Pacific. Right next to it is an article entitled "Skepticism on Global Warming: Percentage of U.S. that believes in global warming dips from 80 to 72."

...

Icebergs? anyone?* Part of me wants to be fair and say that perhaps science *is* a belief, maybe I worship the all-mighty laboratory gods instead of Allah, Zeus, Vishnu, whoever. But then my degree in biology comes over and kicks me and makes me repent my blasphemous words against the doctrine of Fact. Am I any better than a TV evangelist if I go around saying "Yes! Convert to my way! Science is truth!"? While pressuring others to take up your own beliefs is a questionable practice, the facts (cough) remain: science is tested, true and tangible, and I'll be damned if those ice caps aren't melting.

*To be fair, these things do happen as the result of local shifts in weather and temperature, and may not be linked to global warming. The irony stands.

Wishful listing

Dear Santa,

This year for Christmas I would like to receive the following...

My computer has been acting up lately, fighting back against my overuse by occasionally turning itself off and complaining constantly, or just refusing to comply with my commands. Don't get me wrong, I love my little iBookG4, especially because it still runs OS9 applications (read: games, aka Power Pete, which technically came with OS7), but if I could relieve it of some of its burden we'd both be happier. I'm torn though. Since I also need my computer to be able to handle advanced graphics work, a desktop with a tower and wide-screen might be best, but I'd also like a more competent laptop... For now, the 15 inch solid state MacBook Pro (previous link) would fill in fine; I can always add the larger display later. And the Mac Pro Nehalem can just wait until I pick up the Epson 9900(with orange and green inks. whoa).

Meanwhile, my communications capabilities are suffering from another case of outdated technology. Three years of being in my left pocket have been hard on my Nokia. At the same time, my ipod classic did the thing ipods do and broke its headphone jack, and quite likely has a hard drive failure as well. My immediate thought was to get another ipod, but as it turns out I might as well get an iphone 3GS 32 GB and solve both problems at once. And again, the solid state drive will help a lot when it's bouncing around in pockets and bags. Next issue: bluetooth earbuds/headset and laser keyboard (although I'd prefer if it were a smaller device. If only someone would develop it further!).

If I'm going to be getting that Epson 9900, I should really also have a digital camera. I'm conceding the point of digitization in photography only because buying a few medium-large format film cameras (with lenses and different backs), learning colour processing and setting up a colour darkroom (or at least getting a film scanner and settling with the printer) all poses slightly more difficulty than spending a few grand on two pieces of equipment. A quick browse through some old Photocritic posts pointed me at the Nikon D90, but further research and recommendations are welcome.

On a less selfish note, a good way to connect with other artists/photographers in the area is to hunt down your local darkroom. The Washington School of Photography, for instance, has a camera club and workshops for community members.

...Anyway, Santa, I don't know how to prioritize my phone, computer and camera needs, but there you have it. My best to Mrs. Claus and all the elves. See you in two months!

Yours,
Elli