Ann might have to visit Austin in October. Sy Liebergot (EECOM) will be at the Maker Faire. She knows what EECOM is.

If you ever start feeling that you’re being a “bad parent”, take a look at this fine couple:

A Glendale couple said they couldn’t afford a baby sitter, so they strapped their 14-month-old son in his stroller at home while the couple went out. [The couple] were ordered to stand trial Thursday on charges they neglected baby Gabriel so badly that his body was covered with diaper rash, his body temperature was 12 degrees below normal and he stopped breathing, requiring 21 minutes of CPR to revive him. Police said the couple admitted to leaving the boy home alone because they wanted to party.

Think it can’t get any worse? Read on!

The couple recently got jobs at Pizza Hut and the couple used the money for drinking parties. Police said Anderson told them that she often left Gabriel strapped in his stroller when the couple went out or to work, and that she changed Gabriel’s diaper once per day. Police said Laputka told them that he didn’t do diapers, that was Anderson’s job.

And now, for the photo, click here: The Lovely Couple

A couple of updates on unrelated items:

No Knead Bread

I made my second loaf of this, and it came out pretty well. Better than the first–the dough was much less watery. I also baked it longer (closer to 60 minutes total). However, I’m still not quite happy with it. Even with less water and more baking, it still seems to be too moist inside. The crust is wonderful, and the bread is nice and airy, but it’s too much like eating cake (in the moisture–not the crumb). I’ll try again with a little less water, and less “steaming”. Maybe 20 minutes with lid on and 35 with lid off. Sorry, we missed the photo op again. So no pictures of bread.

Scratch Board

I mentioned the Scratch Board when discussing programming languages for kids. Well, at long last the board has arrived. Here’s what you get for your $30 ($25 for a board, $5 for shipping):

 

Click Here For Large View Of Scratch Board

You get the following:

• The board.
• Four on/off sensor leads (alligator clips)
• Serial to USB Converter (very handy if you have a newer PC without a RS-232 port–nice touch!)

On the board you get:

• Small jacks for the alligator clips, or your own sensors. Looks smaller than 3.5mm (1/8th inch). Four of them.
• Microphone (the black thing toward the bottom left).
• Momentary pushbutton (yellow square thing).
• Light sensor (tiny–near the 9 pin jack)
• Sliding potentiometer (long thing along one side of board)

I’ve yet to hook it up, but it seems pretty cool, and very well designed. Perfect for the budding scientists out there.

Update: I’ve hooked up the board and it works fine. You do need to use the included USB converter, as they use that driver (available on their site). The four alligator cable connections can be used in two ways: Either on/off or as resistence sensors. I’m glad they did that, as it allows you to do more elaborate sensing. Pretty cool.

Anyone who has heard me ranting about kitchen tools knows that I’m adamant about sharp knives. There is nothing more dangerous than a dull knife. Let me say that again: There is nothing more dangerous than a dull knife. A dull knife makes you work harder, meaning two things: (a) you are going to “push” harder on the knife than you should, resulting in slipped blades that are sharp enough to hurt you and (b) you are going to hate cutting things because your knife sucks so bad. There is nothing so bad as a dull knife.

How do you keep them sharpened? Well, that’s a problem I’ve dealt with for a while. I’ve used stones. They suck because they are too difficult to master. I’ve had knives professionally sharpened, but that’s a hassle (since you need to sharpen them often). I’ve heard good things about the zip-zap, but never got one. As for electric, well a lot of them don’t work very well. Though, not too long ago Cook’s Illustrated did an updated review on the electrics, giving the Chef’s Choice Model 130 the highest rating.

So that was the object of my desire. However, the $150 hit to my wallet was something I wasn’t willing to do. Their low-end model, the old 110 is around $85, which is better, but still pretty pricy.

Well, the other weekend Evelyn and I were checking out the local resale shops and lo-and-behold, there was a 110 Model in pretty good shape. I plugged it in and it seemed to run fine. Brought it home, tried a cheap-o knife, and *DRAT* one of the diamond plates fell off–in the 3rd (and most important) stage, no less. But never fear, I grabbed my handy screwdriver, took the sharpener apart, dabbed some superglue, wedged a Q-Tip in the works (to hold the plate in place), and let it cure.

Next day, I put everything back together again. (An aside: I love it when stuff is made by hand in the factory. It’s so much easier to disassemble and repair thing that were originally assembled by human beings. The Chef’s Choice sharpeners are made in the USA.) I fired it up again and slipped a knive though. Success! The plate held.

So, how well does it sharpen? Well, it took my sadly neglected Henckels chef knife and brought it up to razer sharp–without removing excessive material–in about 30 seconds. And when I say “sadly neglected” I mean dull enough that I haven’t touched it in a long time. Horray!

Two things to be careful of: (a) Unless the knife is very dull, you only need to do stage 2 and 3. Sometimes just stage 3. Stage 1 should be reserved only for very dull blades. (b) Do NOT put a Japanese-type blade in here. It will be destroyed! Why? Because Japanese blades–the good ones, made by the swordmakers, are only honed on one edge. That is the key to their super-sharp-super-accurate knives. That’s why they are used for things like sashimi–a “European” blade is not fine enough.

If you are in the market for an excellent electric knife sharpener, take a look at the Chef’s Choice line. And keep an eye out for them in second hand stores. As long as it runs, and has the diamond plates there (even if loose–you can fix them), pick it up. How much did this $85 shapener run me? Six bucks. Not too shabby.

Just got an interesting link from the Everyday Health site that gives a couple of good alternatives to drinking soda/pop. A couple of the more interesting ones included adding Seltzer to Juice (to get a nice carbonated effect) and adding Stevia (a sweet herb) to water. Nothing overly exciting here, but a couple of good ideas: Soda Alternatives.

These days I’m a big water drinker, mainly because all the phosphoric acid in most fountain drinks wreak havoc on my stomach. (I originally switched to water a couple of years ago, when I was on a very strict diet.)

A lot of people (Evelyn included) can’t stand drinking water, but these days I don’t mind at all. The key is to not have any soda/pop in the house, and to keep a large supply of filtered tap water in the fridge. Plus, just keep drinking it. After a while you’ll notice how much more refreshing it is and you’ll have a hard time drinking that sticky-sweet stuff from cans. Plus, your food will taste better, too.

The summer of 2007 seemed to have been in a slump. Everyone hoping to have a profitable summer with more homes for sale on the market, loans approved left and right, and the U.S. economy looking so much better than the year before.

What happened?

Fall is upon us and the scare of subprimes surfaced. More and more people are losing their homes, lenders are closing most of their branches and in some cases declaring bankruptcy, while the U.S. ecomony is seeing more and more layoffs causing a multitude of chain reactions and Wall Steet desparately clinging on to projected numbers while investors demand immediate results and the Feds lowering interest rates yet again.

Where is this heading? A possible and potential, dare I say, recession.

Here are a two links that list the activities of mortgage lenders such as
closures, layoffs, bankruptcy and more:

The Truth About Mortgage
The Mortage Lender IMPLODE-O-METER

I wonder how 2008 will look. Will there be more jobs created? Will there be affordable home? Will the cost of living slowdown? Will the U.S. Dollar lose it’s buying power? What will happen?

Today, I decided to spend some time learning to play my celtic harp. After a while of playing some chords over and over again. I was not so sure about my hand technique so off to the internet I went.

I did a google search on harp hand techniques and found a site that sort of kind of had some examples. As I explored from one site to another, I stumbled on something new. Something I never seen or knew about.

What was it? It was a Harp Guitar. Wow, who would have thought it to combine those two. Someone sure did. This site called HarpGuitars.net has some very cool photos of Vintage Harp Guitars under their Iconography section.

See how interesting this HarpGuitar is:

This one was made by Mozzani Aquila around 1947. The Harpguitars.net has a lot of cool information on this oddly beautiful instrument.

Yeap, it’s about 1:30 am. and I just finish soldering a set of LEDs to create a matrix 3 cube. While I’m stretching I wonder whether our niece has taken her first breath in this world. I wonder how Erika and Mikey are doing. I guess quite exhuasted and very tired.

I can picture the bundle of joy being cuddle by Erika as she screams for the first time while Mikey gently touches he’s beautiful daughter. Throughtout this journery of their’s I wished them a very safe and healthy birthing. Just in case…

Happy Birthday Arianna Marie Nelson. Welcome to our family, beautiful.

Congratulations Mikey and Erika.

UPDATE: While I was thinking of them and writing this post unbenounced to me Mikey had made the announcement of Arianna’s birth.

While poking around the foodie blogs the other day I ran into a recipe for “No-Knead Bread”. The idea is to produce a loaf of bread without all the hassle of kneading, resting, rising, kneading again, etc. Here is the original recipe:

Recipe: No-Knead Bread

Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

Yield: One 1½-pound loaf.

What did I find? Well, it does make a very nice little loaf of bread. Very tasty, bordering of sourdough. However, I also found that this “amazing” and “changed my life” recipe (yea, some people said that) really isn’t all that foolproof or all that streamlined.

If you are going to try it, I’d recommend the following:

• Use less water. First off, they give a really stupid measurement (one and five eighths cups) for the water. Who owns a measuring cup that divides in 8ths? I don’t. Plus, I found that 1 and 5/8ths water is too much for three cups of regular old flour. Try it with 1 and 1/2 cups of water. It should be a watery dough, but not the rivers of water that I dealt with.
• Make sure you use instant yeast–not quick rise. This only works if the yeast is given a long long time to do its magic.
• I love the “seam side down” part in step 3. My dough was too moist to create any seam. Less water will likely help. More like “less blobby side down–unless it’s all blobby–and than it doesn’t matter”.
• For the love of god, do not put this wet dough onto a towel (on the bottom) like they suggest. Maybe there’s a good reason for this, maybe it sucks up some water, but this seems to be a quick route to disaster.
• The dough is messy, messy, messy. You will get annoyed by the stickiness. I tossed in more flour (maybe too much) to clean things up a bit.

Here is my updated version. Keep in mind that baking drives me up a fucking wall, and I’ve thrown more than one chocolate cake in the garbage / down the hallway (ask my mom). So, I tried to add things that will take away the heartache. My changes are in italics.

Recipe: Ron’s Revised No-Knead Bread

Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal

1. In an enameled dutch oven (see my recommended one) combine flour, yeast and salt. (I use the dutch oven because I don’t want to dirty another bowl.) Wisk dry ingredients. Add 1 1/2 cups lukewarm water, and stir until blended with a stout wooden spoon; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover pot with its lid. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees. (I did it for 20 and it was fine.)

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. (It can’t help but be ready after sitting for 20 hours.) Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes. Clean out any big globs of dough from the dutch oven, but don’t bother washing–you’re going to re-use it to bake in.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Take a small bowl, stainless steel or plastic, about 8 inches across. Spray it down with pan spray. Sprinkle cornmeal all around it. Like you would grease & flour a cake pan. Make sure you have a good coating! Put dough into the bowl. Sprinkle with more cornmeal. Cover with another a cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic–I used the enameled dutch oven) in oven as it heats–this includes the lid. When dough is ready (after its two hour rise in the bowl), carefully remove pot from oven. Carefully remove the lid–it will be super-hot–and dump your dough from the bowl into the bottom of the piping hot pot. You will now thank Ron for telling you to use a greased bowl, as the dough will plop into the hot pot without sticking at all. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 25 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Carefully remove bread from pot, using a thin spatula (or just turn it over and let it fall out). Cool bread on a rack for at least 20 minutes before slicing.

Yield: One 1½-pound loaf.

So, my #1 recommendation? Don’t put that sticky dough on a towel! Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m too wimpy. But the last thing I need is to try to pull stuck dough into a 450 degree cast iron pot. Way too dangerous. Use the bowl and it will plop right in. Also, be careful on the water. It is a wet dough, no questions asked, but the amount of water they suggest is just too much for regular white flour.

Where’s the photo of my bread? Well, it was so good that we ate it before we could photograph it! It is really good. Not a giant loaf (about 2 inches high, mounded), but very tasty. It’s excellent with good olive oil and pepper or some nice pasta.

Is it easier than other recipes? Well, in some ways, yes. I still found it messy, just like every other one. Plus, I don’t quite get the horror of kneading. I like kneading. Plus, any baker worth their salt will already have a Kitchen Aid stand mixer or a food processor. Heck, these days I do most of my dough kneading in a heavy-duty food processor fitted with a steel blade. That’s how I do my pizza crusts. (Be careful–dough if VERY tough on equipment. You have to have a heavy duty machine and don’t overload it.) Why cry about kneading when my Kitchen Aid will do the work? Do you think that all those bakeries hand-knead everything? Maybe the final loaf, but there’s no way a person can knead 100 pounds of bread dough by hand.

Update: Typing this made me hungry, so I mixed up another batch. I think the first time I made this I did 1 7/8ths cups of water instead of 1 5/8ths, since the dough was a lot less wet this time. Could be that I was less sloppy with my flour measuring, too. That’s why I’ll never be a baker. Anyhow, start with 1 1/2 cups of water. If it looks too try–too much like “regular” bread dough, add a little more water. It needs to be pretty sticky, often like pizza dough is in consistency.

Thought: This is a great one for stay-at-home people. Do step #1 the night before, at around 8 PM–it only takes about 10 minutes, so do it! That means the dough will be ready at 2 PM the next day. Then it does the second rise, 2 more hours. Meaning it’s ready for the oven at 4 PM. An hour in the oven, and you have fresh bread by 5 PM for dinner. Evelyn is spoiled.

Today seemed like another day. Ron working away doing his thing on his computer. On the other hand I was cleaning up and things that needed to be done. Somewhere in the early afternoon, we got a package. Ron surprised me with a webcam
Pretty cool. He got some other stuff that he was sorting through. After installing and playing with the webcam for awhile, I left to run an errand. Got back. Finished up doing some cleaning.

Somewhere between dinner and now… All I can say,
HOUSTON, WE’VE GOT A PROBLEM!!!!

Ron workhorse computer seems to have died. He rebooted it several times. Quite frustrating.

I feel for him. No matter how advanced the technology there’s always something that goes wrong. Agggghhh. I just hope that he doesn’t lose all his work. It’s so painful.

Well, just in case he doesn’t appear on the blog for awhile I thought you should know.