FEBRUARY 2012
Wednesday 2012.2.29
Happy quadrennial-birthday if you were born on this date.
Why I Hate Duracell Batteries
Rechargeable batteries are my life. Like most Americans—indeed, like most people in industrialized nations—my home has many devices that run on batteries. I counted over 50 batteries currently in use in my home, not counting the specialized batteries that only fit in my cameras or other devices. Years ago I decided to purchase rechargeables when nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries appeared in stores. Those first releases were typically packaged with a charger and four batteries, two AAs and two AAAs. I rarely saw packages of NiMH batteries that didn't include a charger. I eventually ended up with five chargers. Those do not include the special chargers for my cameras.
What brought all this attention to batteries? I recently found in the warehouse store packages of NiMH AA batteries that are packaged without a charger. At last! I could buy batteries without accumulating more chargers. I bought one package of 10 because some of my oldest rechargeables no longer hold a charge. I discarded them (in the battery disposal bin where I used to work).
Not all the batteries I use are rechargeable. My digital clocks, for example, don't perform well with NiMH batteries. They need the full power of lithium or alkaline batteries. I use NiMH in my lavalier microphone when recording cooking videos. Every time I set up to do a video I put fresh batteries in the microphone components because there is nothing more frustrating than discovering the microphone went dead halfway through a scene that I can't shoot again without going shopping to buy more ingredients. Therefore, my extra batteries are kept charged because there is also nothing more frustrating than having to wait for batteries to charge while I'm in the middle of recording a video.
Thinking of batteries, I decided to check my remote controls. I have a drawer filled with them (12 in total, plus four others in use in other rooms) because I use one multi-remote (also rechargeable) to run my home theater components. Just as I feared, there was one remote that still had four alkaline batteries in it—two Duracells and two Energizers. I was not at all surprised to see that the two Duracells had leaked, badly, and the two Energizers, though completely dead, did not leak at all. I never buy Duracells because they always leak. Those two must have been packaged with something I bought—maybe a flashlight in which I use NiMH instead.
I still have the AAA NiMH batteries that were package with the chargers. I rarely use AAAs. So I bought some plastic adapters that size them up to AA. The adapters were cheap ($5 for eight), and cheaply made (made in China POS). The AAAs fit so loosely inside, they don't connect at both ends. A little piece of folded aluminum foil solved that problem. They'll work well enough for me to experiment. If it turns out they're useless, I'll toss them into the recycling bin (the adapters, not the batteries).
Sadly, I still have too many Duracells. Almost everything I buy that is packaged "batteries included" has Duracells. I suppose the "copper top" is significant. They're like the bad penny that refuses to go away.
Sunday 2012.2.26
Adjusting My Thinking
I joke with people about my being retired. When asked how long it took to adjust to retirement, I tell them, "About 12 hours." In truth, I'm still adjusting eight months later.
One of my goals for this web site has been to always post a new recipe and video each Sunday. For 17 months, so far, I never missed a deadline. Vacations were really important because I could put extra videos and recipes "in the vault" for later use when it wasn't possible to cook on a weekend. I still feel this need to store away extra videos and recipes, but I've been teaching myself that squirreling away computer files for the future is really unnecessary. Every week is vacation. I have plenty of time to cook when the vault starts to look bare.
Another adjustment involved my computer software. It took me six months to realize that I no longer needed to use the older versions of my software. I had been doing this to keep my files compatible with my computer at work. Our IT tech support people are extremely resistant to upgrading any software on our office computers. Newer isn't better; it's more work. So if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Some of the software I had been using was nearly ten years old.
I rarely updated this web site while at work. There was no time. However, sometimes I would eat my lunch at my desk and use the hour to edit photographs or recipes when I was feeling stressed to get something ready for publishing on Sunday. I always kept my web sites files backed up on a keychain drive that I carried back and forth between work and home.
So a couple months ago I stopped using the older versions of that software. One of my future projects is to update all those older files to the latest software version.
Food has been my largest adjustment, and I'm not done yet. As I mentioned above, I used every vacation and available weekend to prepare recipes for this web site. If I wasn't working I was cooking, or so it seemed. Some people have commented on the high production values of my videos compared to many of the others on YouTube. One reason is that I put a lot of work into producing those videos. I also have some high-end equipment. Sometimes I would prepare the same dish two, three, even four times to get all the video clips I needed for a finished video. Then there is the still photography that goes into the recipe PDFs. So I am accustomed to cooking elaborate dishes in front of cameras, but I rarely ate what I cooked. Weekly I've been giving food away to neighbors and friends. I decided I need to relax this routine; so for the next five weeks I am doing no fancy cooking—just eating my Minute Meals from the freezer.
I'm sure I'll be making other adjustments. I've been doing more yard work, such as thatching my lawn (it was so thick, the grass was impossible to cut because the lawn mower would sink into it and stall) and I have a good routine for cleaning my house each week. Retirement isn't as lazy and leisurely as some might think.
Wednesday 2012.2.22
Ode to Retirement
I mentioned in an earlier blog that I was reading Dr. Laura Carstensen's book, A Long Bright Future. She is a professor at Stanford University and the founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. She knows a thing or two about old people.
I finished reading her book. Much of it was not only enlightening, but it was also very helpful. She wouldn't approve of my retiring at the age of 60. I should have remained employed for at least another five years, if not ten. Circumstances (including California's budget woes) being what they were, retirement seemed not only like a good idea, but the only alternative.
One recommendation that Dr. Carstensen makes is that we take up learning something entirely new in our senior years, something to challenge the brain and stimulate it to grow new neurons and more dendritic connections. A useful suggestion is to learn a new language, and music can count as a new language if we have not been a musician in the past. More than 20 years ago I purchased an electronic keyboard, thinking I might learn to play the piano. There was simply no time. It sat in the box, batteries removed, for almost all of those 20+ years. (A little research on the Internet determined my keyboard was manufactured between 1988 and 1992).
This week I released it from its darkness and brought it out into the light. It still works perfectly. I was determined to learn to read sheet music rather than just learn to plink out a tune by ear. I made some really fancy flash cards for myself—treble clef and base clef staffs with one note somewhere on either staff printed on one side. On the other side is the piano keyboard with the letter of the note and where it is located in relation to middle C. I look at the staffs, name the note, and if I am sitting at the piano I play the note as well, then I turn over the card to see if I am correct.
So far it's working. I am now ready for my first piano recital of Mary Had A Little Lamb. I play a pretty snappy Row, Row, Row Your Boat too. I'm a little rough on London Bridge Is Falling Down (because I need to use both hands), but it's getting better. But hey! I only started on Monday. AND, I am able to pick up a page of sheet music, albeit at beginner level, and play the notes as I read them.
My keyboard does not not have the full 88 keys. It only has 61, a sort of semi-keyboard, but they're full size keys. It's no piece of junk. It is touch sensitive and has five "voices." If I remember correctly, it cost me around $300 20+ years ago. If I get good at playing I'll buy a full 88-key instrument. I did order some software that teaches piano and I can connect my keyboard to my computer, allowing the software to analyze my playing. The software should arrive later this week. My goals are realistic: I just want to play the piano for fun, and learn something new.
The important thing is that I am learning something new, stimulating my brain to new growth. None of this was possible before I retired. Needless to say, I am totally loving retirement. Not only do I have plenty of time to create recipes and videos for my website, I can take up learning to play the piano too. I'm having A LOT of fun. And a special nod of thanks to Dr. Carstensen for suggesting the idea of learning music as a new language. I would never have thought of it myself.
Sunday 2012.2.19
Bragging Rights
Am I entitled to brag a little? Yes. This is my web site. Wednesday I made one of the most phenomenal dinners I've ever eaten. I made spaghetti and meatballs. No, not your ordinary spaghetti and meatballs. The spaghetti was homemade pasta. The sauce was my marinara sauce, to which I added heavy cream. And the meatballs—oh the meatballs!—they were made with smoked salmon.
Maybe the mention of salmon will help you to discern why I put heavy cream in the sauce. It changes the red marinara to a pink sort of salmon color. It also changes the taste to a mild, delicate flavor rather than the bold savory flavor of traditional tomato sauce. Try it.
Why is this something to brag about? Because I had no recipe. I looked on the Internet for a recipe for smoked salmon meatballs and found none. They may be out there, but I didn't find any. So I sat at my computer, thought about the ingredients I might need, came up with a formula for the proportions, and moved to the kitchen. The meatballs assembled exactly as I expected them to and the flavor was incredible.
I believe this is the first time I have created a recipe completely from scratch and it came out perfect the first time. On this website there are several recipes of my own creation in the Recipe Archive : Trout With Tomatoes, Pesto Lamb, Smoked Salmon Quiche, Pasta Fagioli, Linguine With Clam Sauce—I could go on and on. Those dishes required multiple efforts before I worked out the balance of ingredients to get them right. I made, and ate, ten custard pies before I had one I really liked. One friend said, "You've got to stop doing that. You'll turn into a custard pie!" So I feel really proud that Wednesday's dinner went from concept to computer to kitchen all in one easy flow.
I invited a friend for dinner on Wednesday. It helps to have a second opinion and I know he'll be honest. "I think this is the best spaghetti sauce I've ever tasted." He liked the meatballs too. He has eaten my homemade pasta plenty of times, so he knew what to expect.
One thing that I think sets my recipes apart from those in some cookbooks is that my recipes get made, in my own kitchen, enough times to get them right—like America's Test Kitchen. I can't guarantee that everyone who downloads my recipes will get the exact same outcome. Stove temperatures, cookware, and techniques vary. I have heard from people who tried making some of my recipes and they declare them to be excellent. As for the spaghetti and smoked salmon meatballs: I'll publish that recipe and the video in coming weeks. I hope you'll try them.
Wednesday 2012.2.15
Stubborn DIYer
I am an incorrigible DIYer. I'm the kind of guy who would rather stare hopelessly at a map than ask directions. It's not all bad. If a blank piece of wall needs covering I'll buy a canvas and paint an oil painting rather than go buy a poster in a frame.
I'm actually a pretty good artist. I am currently working on a pen-and-ink drawing of a sailing ship because many years ago I bought a frame for about $150 and I'm finally getting around to doing the drawing to go into it (I have plenty of time in retirement). Many years ago I did a 16-foot oil painting of an Umbrian farm house—stone walls and tile roofs. The painting took five months to complete and then I schlepped it from framer to framer before I found someone who would frame it for under $1,000. I can't do my own framing. So, when I found a beautiful frame for an affordable $150, I bought it.
The same is true for this web site. When I had to move my web site to a different hosting service the script for my Contact page no longer worked. The new service uses a different something-or-other thingy to manage their servers and whatever that thingy was, it wasn't compatible with my script. I read through my books and the sample script they sent me. It took two weeks and a lot of frustration before I finally got the new script to work with my HTML page.
My latest DIY project has been a repair to a kitchen cabinet. This is a mobile home. Nothing is top quality. The cabinets are framed in soft pine and covered in cheap paneling. One of these days I'll replace all the cabinets, and I'll probably do that project myself too. In the meantime, I'm doing my own repairs. Last night I took out the drawers and found the offending piece of wood that was causing the problems. It had split. I glued and clamped it, let it dry overnight, and this morning I put everything back together again. Reassembly went quickly. It took longer to put away my tools.
What inspired all this DIY thinking? Someone commented on one of my videos, asking why I didn't knead the bread dough in my stand mixer. I kneaded it by hand. In my videos you can see my KitchenAid on the counter in the background. So why not use it? I do, but when I'm showing someone how to prepare something I always do as much as I can by hand. Not everyone has the luxury of a large stand mixer. Also, doing it by hand teaches them how the dough should feel when it comes together correctly. "It should feel sticky" doesn't make sense if you don't ever feel it. Later, when they understand the process, they can cut corners and save time and labor by using machines.
I don't work totally without machines. I can't imagine trying to chop meat down to a "ground" consistency with a knife or cleaver. I don't own a good meat grinder. So I do it in a food processor. People are more likely to have one of those. However, where I can, I try to do things myself. Besides helping people to see how something should be done, it is also fulfilling to know that I am not helpless. It feels good when I successfully repair a kitchen cabinet myself.
Sunday 2012.2.12
"Welcome to Production."
That was a friend's comment on Friday. He had called me from the other side of the city (actually, he had been up in one of the canyons and he called me as soon as he could get a clear signal on his cell phone). We talked, and talked, all the way through town, his visit to the warehouse store, and finally when he was out in the parking lot he asked if he could come over for a visit.
All that might not seem like an interesting subject for a blog, but at the time I was in the process of faking some savory pastries. Yes faking, not making. Previously I had made Smoked Salmon Pastries, but I was missing some important photography. I didn't want to work through the entire process again, just to get those shots. So I thickened some flour and water on the stove until I had a paste. I stirred in some diced raw potato for bulk. Then I rolled the "filling" in phyllo dough, brushed it with melted butter, and garnished it with sesame seeds. Five minutes in the oven and then three minutes under the broiler for a gorgeous pastry.
He was witness to it coming out of the oven and then all the photography to get the "royals" I needed. He asked me to remove the plate from the table, where he was sitting with his coffee, because the temptation to dig in was too strong. They looked beautifully succulent, and yet he knew they were filled with only flour paste and raw potato. I had explained to him that these were only props and when I was satisfied I had enough photographs, they would go into the garbage. (I photographed them again later with the fading light of day filtering through my white curtains for an even warmer set of shots.) I even broke one open so that we could see the disgusting filling. It was revolting, enough to make you gag. "Welcome to Production," was his response.
Things don't go perfectly every time. There are days when I get all the video clips and all the still photography all in one day. Those days aren't rare, but not every day is as successful. Sometimes I need to do pick-up shots. I still tell people about the final shot of me tasting Chinese Dumplings in front of the video camera. The "dumplings" were filled with nothing but bread, totally faked up to complete the video because something had gone wrong. (I think the first tasting clip was lacking audio and I hadn't noticed it until much later, when it was too late to shoot again because the food was gone.) And yet, I pretended to thoroughly enjoy the flavor of the dumpling I was tasting, as if its flavor was pure perfection. Stuff happens.
When I was in college I did some theatre. A sheet of plywood could be painted to look like expensive Venitian marble. On a bookshelf on stage you couldn't tell (from the audience) the real books from the fake books. The director of one play was invited to speak in an English class I was in. When he took questions from the students one asked, "Do you cast actors from the community?" "This cast was all students," he answered. "The 80-year-old man who played Antonio is a student!?" "You can ask him yourself," he said; "he's sitting right here," and he pointed to me. She was shocked. She thought the old man on stage was really old, and there I sat, a young college student, and one of her classmates.
Welcome to Production.
Wednesday 2012.2.8
Did Any of You Watch Last Night's Daily Show with John Stewart?
It think I saw a rerun from January 30th. Toward the end of the program Stephen Colbert appears and together they do a skit about SuperPAC money. Colbert says things like, "You know why I'm here, John. You know what I want." One of Stewart's lines is, "The immersion blender is for my butternut squash soup."
OMG! OMG! OMG!
Could Stewart or someone from his show be a fan of this web site or my YouTube channel? It was only a few weeks ago that I demonstrated making Butternut Squash Soup using an immersion blender. I thought the idea was original. The recipe was an adaptation of a pumpkin soup recipe I saw in a magazine. I had never seen anyone make butternut squash soup with an immersion blender. Have you? It is simply too much of a coincidence to be simply a coincidence.
Okay, now I need to come up with something to make when I am invited to appear on the Daily Show to demonstrate The Elegant Art of Trailer Park White Trash Mobile Home Cooking. Maybe Almond Biscotti would be good. It's fun and messy. Or maybe my Clam Chowder. That's a little unusual. Or maybe I should do something really original, one of the recipes I invented from scratch, such as my Linguine with Clam Sauce, or Trout with Tomatoes and Mascarpone, or Smoked Salmon Quiche. Maybe something classic would be better, like New England Clam Cakes or Mom's Italian Christmas Cookies. With nearly 80 recipes in the Recipe Archive, this is not going to be easy. Oh! Oh! How about the recipe that won me a place in a cookbook published by American's Test Kitchen—Pesto Lamb! The book is Cook's Country Best Lost Suppers. I'm on page 132. (ISBN: 1-933615-44-3)
Not too long ago I told a friend the road ahead was obvious: Fame, fortune, substance addiction, and overdose. Isn't that how it usually works? (After all, Harry Potter recently cleaned up his act.) Of course, I need to publish a cookbook, but after my first appearance on the Daily Show (there surely will be many more), I'll get dozens of cookbook offers from big publishers like Random House, Wiley, or McGraw-Hill. Then, of course, there will be my own cooking show during prime time on the Food Network. Finally someone amusing and entertaining will push those boring cooking competition shows like Chopped and Iron Chef off the air. (Someone once asked me if I would ever compete on a show like Iron Chef. I answered, "Me? Maybe Aluminum Chef." I'd open the basket and find a road-kill racoon, jar of peanut butter, and a cannister of pepper spray.)
Line up in the lobby for autographs, please.
Of course, no matter how rich and famous, I'll always remain true to my roots. Before my current mobile home—a double-wide—I lived in a really old single-wide mobile home behind a car wash. The kitchen was tiny, but even back then I was boning chickens, baking bread and Cats Tongues, rolling Pasta, and making Chinese food like Egg Rolls and Fried Rice. You can take a person out of a trailer park, but you can't take the white trash out of a person.
Sunday 2012.2.5
Pastimes Besides Cooking
One of my pet projects is converting books to ebooks. I love to read, but as I've often explained, I live in a mobile home and there isn't much space for storage. I especially do not have room to shelve the hundreds of books I've read. Storing them in digital format on my computers, with proper backups, allows me to keep a library without sacrificing any living space. Storing them on an electronic ebook reader or tablet has another advantage: I can carry my library with me anywhere I go.
The process of creating an ebook is fun, for me anyway, but a little tedious at times. The first step is sacrilege—destroying the book. I don't mind doing this when I pay next to nothing for the book. The one I converted earlier this week was purchased "used" for a paltry 9¢, plus $3.99 shipping. The retail price of the book had been $24. I could tell from the look and feel of the pages that this book was not printed on acid-free paper; so it would have deteriorated with age anyway—another reason to preserve it in digital format.
Destroying the book involves cutting off the binding to free all the pages. I have a large guillotine cutter that I purchased many years ago when I was running a small home business.
I also borrow books from the library; so cutting off the binding is not an option. The book needs to be photographed more carefully. I did this during the second half of the week, using a thick sheet of transparent plastic, like Plexiglass, to hold the book open while I operated the camera with a remote control. Avoiding reflection from the plastic is tricky, but I managed by using ambient lighting and balancing a large piece of black foamcore on top of the camera to block out the white ceiling.
Many years ago I designed and built my own copy stand. It's a device that holds a camera above a baseboard on which you arrange items to be photographed. Mine uses an old table top someone gave me, along with some pipe and fittings I bought at a local hardware store. I purchased a used tripod head to hold the camera. My copy stand is really solid and it disassembles for easy storage. By making it myself, it cost me only about $50. Cutting the pages free makes it easy to lay them on the baseboard to be photographed.
The digital photographs are uloaded from the camera onto my computer. I do some post-processing, which only involves cropping the photos to eliminate page headers, footers, and numbers. This leaves just the text of the book. The photographs are then processed with OCR (optical character recognition) software that literally reads the lines in the photographs and converts the content into editable text on the computer.
The text is stored as plain text files, each chapter in its own file. I scan the cover, cleaning and sizing it in photo software to fit the screen of my NookColor ebook tablet. Finally, I assemble the book using free ebook software. You need to know about CSS (cascading style sheets) and having familiarity with some HTML/CSS codes is very helpful. A lot of typical formatting, such as italicizing text, is done easily with the software. The finished ebook, in EPUB format, is stored on my Nook, and I begin reading.
The OCR software is not perfect. Some mistakes get through, and some are funny. The name "Perls" was seen as "Penis" by the software. So while I am reading I keep a pad and pen close at hand to write down errors that I later correct on the computer. I keep the original paper pages, in case I need to look something up to verify a correction. After the book is read and edited, the final copy is stored on my Nook and in my computer's "Ebook Library." I back up the computer and all the paper pages go into recycling.
The flip side to all of this is that formats keep changing. I have about a hundred books encoded in PML (Palm Markup Language) that I formerly read on my PDA. My NookColor doesn't recognize PML; so one of my projects is to convert those PML books to EPUB. I don't mind because projects like these keep my mind off food, which helps me to lose weight. Besides, it's a satisfying hobby. Some people pore over their stamps or coins or model trains, etc., for hours at a time. Mine is ebooks, and cooking, and making cooking videos, and maintaining a web site—I guess I have a lot of hobbies.
Wednesday 2012.2.1
Why?
An amusing, if somewhat annoying, question came up again this week. "How much money do you earn from that web site of yours?" "None," I always answer. "Then why do you do it?"
I was asked that question by someone who leaves town to enjoy the pleasure of pretending to be a cowboy for a week or two each year. He works, sometimes hard, and earns nothing in somone else's for-profit enterprise. He pays for his own transportation, meals, and accomodations. Why does he do it?
As best as I can figure it, he, like so many others, wouldn't consider doing something they dislike unless they could earn money doing it. That's called having a job. He has no interest in building and maintaining a web site, shooting and editing video and still photography, writing recipes, let alone doing any cooking. Like many men, he is only at home in the kitchen when he is outside on the patio standing at the barbeque. So he can't fathom my labor for this web site when there is nothing to be earned. It costs me money. And I can't fathom why he would spend hundreds of dollars to go play cowboy for a week or two. I don't like horses.
Hobbies cost money. So does fun. Spend a day at Disneyland and see how much it profits you. The last I saw, it costs $80USA just to get through the front gate. If I lived down in Anahiem, close to Disneyland, I'd ask the locals how to sneak inside for free (there must be ways)—not to ride the rides; I just like eating at the Blue Bayou.
I have some hopes and aspirations. I'm normal in that respect. All I would really like, at this point, is to see my name on a cookbook someday. Even that doesn't compel me to pursue publishing. On the wall of my home office, above my desk, are two framed covers of books I wrote and published more than a dozen years ago. Being an author isn't as glamorous as it might seem. It has its moments. At one presentation the first question asked in the room was: "Didn't you write a book?" I nodded and the audience spontaneously applauded. That took me by surprise. Other than two years of excellent tax refunds due to legitimate itemized deductions, there wasn't any profit in being an author. I did get to travel up and down the West Coast for a short while, which was fun.
No, I like to keep my aspirations and expectations low. I'm a home body and a simple-lifer. Give me a few toys—my computers, my tablet, my home entertainment center—some books to read and some movies to watch, and I'm a happy man. Of course, if someone from Viking knocked on my front door and said they wanted to remodel my kitchen with all new cabinets and Viking appliances to feature in my videos, I wouldn't tell them to go pound sand. But those aren't even aspirations; that's just dreaming, which can be fun too.