of the Mind

Move locations, eat locally

2008-07-22T23:26:00.003-04:00

On June 26 my boyfriend broke up with me, and from June 27-30 I packed all my worldly belongings into a PODS container and became lease-free. On June 28 I decided to move to California, and on June 29 I called my boss on her vacation and told her so. On July 12 I moved to California, job entact, and The Omnivore's Dilemma in hand. I feel a little guilty about jumping on a food trend, but people:

Everything is made of corn!!!1

I'm living in Oakland, CA which happens to be an awesome place to have this foodie existential crisis. I got rushed through my trip to Berkeley Bowl so I'm not sure where my tomatoes came from, but they were organic and heirloom, so that's a step in the right direction. I'm trying to address a lot of things in my life, and among these are health/food and also finding a direction for blogging about my interests (food, technology, politics, young-people-things). I love how Use Real Butter has food (tons of it) but also nature and personal stuff mixed in without ever getting boring. I need to refine my blogging, but to do so, I need to WRITE.

And buy a better camera.

I'm using my BB Curve right now, which is a decent shot, but not going to make your mouth water. I will leave you with a shot of my lunch today. Peacock melon...rather bland, not unlike cantaloupe. It should be in season, but I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt that it just wasn't ripened enough.

(Healthy) Delicious Pizza

2008-03-18T22:42:00.007-04:00

Hungry and wanting to be good and make my own dinner, I planned out the master pizza of healthiness.

Ingredients:
Two pre-made pizza crusts
Eggplant
Yellow bell pepper
Tomato, yellow
Toamto, red plum
Asparagus
Mushrooms, portobello
Onion, yellow
garlic
chicken breast
marinated artichokes
Mozerella, part-skim
Ricotta, part-skim
Parmesean
Olive Oil
Balsamic Vinegar
Cracked black pepper
Fresh basil
Fresh parsley

A sane person may have realized this was overkill, but I was trying to get all the colors of veggies and cover my protein bases as well.

Started by chopping everything up that wanted to be chopped. I bought chicken breast already in tenders and cut them length-wise and then in about 1/2 inch segments. The eggplant is pretty thin, kind of like a thick tomato slice. Everything else is diced or cut in a pretty standard way.

Mis en place

In a large sautee pan I poured quite a bit of olive oil and heated on medium. Tossed in a liberal amount of garlic and let it flavor the oil for a minute. Tossed in the onions and cooked until they started to get soft. Added the asparagus tips and cooked for a few minutes until they started to brighten in color. I then moved all of those elements to the edges of the pan and tossed in the mushrooms. Cooked on each side until the mushroom was pliable and brown. Removed everything from the pan. Turned the heat up to a medium-high and tossed in the eggplant. D likes scorched eggplant, so that's how I prepped it. Remove everything from heat.

Simultaneously in another pan, toss the chicken and chopped up marinated artichoke hearts (including all the juice/oil) in at medium-high temp. Cook until the chicken is done and all the sauce has simmered away. You don't have to marinate ahead of time, but I did while I was chopping veggies. This is a delicious way to flavor chicken for any recipe.

Turn the over to 425F. Place pre-cooked pizza crust on cookie sheet and drizzle olive oil on top. There's no particular order to how to add the veggies...do what feels right.

Eggplant layered on bottom, followed by asparagus and onions with basil-parsley mix tossed on top.

Everything I've made lately has parsley in it because I bought a head of it the other day and MAN does it last forever. I have two baby plants in the front yard that I'm trying not to kill, and once they're successful I will be able to use parsley at will.

Mushrooms and bell pepper. Nothing says neurotic like symmetrical pizza.

That's looking pretty good, right? This is the point where I realize I've filled the pizza and it's probably delicious and I have a bazillion ingredients left to add. So, for once I act sanely and decide this pizza is done (or is about to be) and I should make another one.

Added a mix of mozzarella and parmesan to the healthy delicious pizza (went light on the cheese so I could try and call it healthy). Put it in the oven.

Second pizza, same deal with the olive oil and the cookie sheet. Spread the chicken artichoke mix evenly over the surface. Added the two colors of tomatoes, making pretty patterns as is my wont. Now is the part where I really go crazy. I take my jar or pre-diced garlic (you know, the stuff in the veggie section) and I just chunk a glob of garlic bits on every. single. tomato. !!! But I love garlic and it's good for you, so to hell with it. I also tossed bits of part-skim ricotta around the tomatoes. Sprinkle with lots of fresh basil and some parsley, a crack or two of black pepper and a sprinkle of good quality balsamic vinegar.

Voila!

By the time I was done assembling, the pizza in the oven was done (first pic). Probably less than 15 minutes. The chicken pizza wasn't as photogenic, but it sure is delicious...

Chicken with Toasted Feta over Bulgur Wheat

2008-02-11T00:05:00.000-05:00

Made this for dinner the other night. I used a recipe from the Betty Crocker Cookbook for Women, which is a much more awesome book than the name would originally imply. It's very simple, quick, healthy and easy to remember. I cooked my bulgar wheat in chicken broth to give it some more oomph.

The salad I just came up with. It was (in no particular proportion) avacado, pear, red pepper - tossed in pear vinaigrette, topped with sugared pecans and bacon bits. It was random and pretty tasty, but my pear and avocado weren't ripe enough.

Feta-Topped Chicken with Bulgur (from Cookbook for Women)

Ingredients:

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts (about 1.25 lbs)
2 T balsamic vinaigrette dressing
1 t Italian seasoning
1/2 t seasoned pepper
2/3 c uncooked bulgur wheat
2 c water (or chicken/vegetable broth)
1 large plum (Roma) tomato, cut into 8 slices
1/4 c crumbled feta cheese (1oz)

I love feta, so I cheated and tossed some into the bulgur as well.

1. Set oven control to broil. Brush both sides of chicken breasts with dressing. Sprinkle both sides with Italian seasoning and seasoned pepper. Place on rack in broiler pan.

2. Broil with tops 4 inches from heat about 10 minutes, turning once, until juice of chicken is clear when center of thickest part is cut (170 degrees F).

3. Meanwhile, cook bulgur in water as directed on package, omitting salt. (My bulgur came out of a bin at Whole Foods, so I had to look this up. Basically, cook it like rice and put in double the amount of liquid as dry ingredient, cook on medium-low until water is gone.)

4. Top chicken with tomato and cheese. Broil 2-3 minutes longer or until cheese is slightly browned. Serve with bulgur.

Disney virgin

2008-02-07T23:55:00.000-05:00

I embarked on my first trip to Walt Disney World recently, and let me tell you, I love Epcot. If Celebration is anything like the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, then it might not be as bad as I've always been told. While there, I visited The Land (sponsored by Nestlé) and took the Living With The Land boat tour. It was very cool, but I left with a slight sense of unease about the propagandistic experience I'd just had. Perhaps it's just liberal paranoia, but I don't quite trust Nestlé to be pushing the frontier on eco-friendly, sustainable hydroponics. While the facts in the ride seems to be fairly accurate, it all had the feel of sub-propaganda, i.e., good will efforts done ahead of time by an entity upon a population that it may one day later need to brainwash. And while the Mickey Mouse headed pumpkins were cute, I'd rather not indoctrinate children to accept food that no longer comes in a natural shape.

A little bit of Google-ing turned up this excellent article that totally reinforced my thoughts and expressed my opinion more eloquently than I can. The truly interesting part comes in at the comments section. I'm trying to be truly open-minded these days and look past my prejudices, and the commenters bring up some relevant facts and counter-opinions to the article. I've modified my feelings on Living With The Land somewhat, and I think Disney World is actually incredible for getting fat-ass middle Americans to walk miles and miles and miles each day, but I stand firm on the negative impact they've had on Florida's environment.

More to come on The Land...

p.s. Watched the space shuttle launch today. Check out the animated Building the ISS, it's way cool!

It's alive!

2008-01-03T07:43:00.000-05:00

From the NYTimes:

Craig Ferguson, whose show is owned by Mr. Letterman’s company, also won a reprieve from the guild. (He likened it to having “diplomatic immunity.”) He bragged that the Internet predicted that, because celebrities might be reluctant to cross picket lines in front of NBC, his show would likely draw A-list stars, then boldly did an hour of comedy routines about the strike without any big name celebrities. (Unless you count Tim Meadows, formerly of “Saturday Night Live.”)

Overlooking the truly terribly run-on nature of that sentence, since when is THE INTERNET a personal subject (in the grammatical sense)? As in, "I was on the couch making out with the Internet the other day, and she was like 'baby, get your hands off my tits.'"

The entire article is highly opinionated, but not labeled as such. Unless the whole Television section is, but that's not very clear to the unacquainted. I'm disappointed that the NYT missed the chance to reference strike!beard...oh, and that they are employing crappy writers.

Night of 10,000 cupcakes

2007-10-15T06:34:00.000-04:00

It's become a bit of a tradition at my office for me to bring in cupcakes on anyone's birthday. Brandon's is today, so when he approached me about cupcakes I was more than happy to oblige. We brain stormed and came up with this compass:

Things That Are Good:
chocolate
mint
caramel
vanilla

Things That Are Bad:
nuts
seafood
fruit

This led me to the really interesting idea of a seafood cupcake. I've actually got quite a few brilliant ideas for this, but it'll have to wait until later. It appears that Brandon and I have very similar tastes in baked goods, so I decided to make two batches of mini-cakes.

1) Mint mocha cupcakes

Rich Chocolate Cupcakes Filled with Chocolate-Mint Ganache with Topped with Mint Buttercream by Chockylit

I went by the book with this one for the most part. The only major changes were the use of Godiva's espresso dark chocolate and the addition of instant coffee into the cupcake batter to make chocolate-espresso cupcakes, and the use of cream cheese instead of butter in the frosting. Try as I might, I just hate homemade buttercream and working with it makes me want to gag.

These were very good. The only thing that was really wrong was that I used 1 bar of 100% cacoa chocolate and 1 bar of semi-sweet. The ganache was pretty bitter because of this. It was still delicious for people who like the taste of real chocolate, but a bit intense for some others (notably kids). It was all part of my secret plan not to have to share, anyway.

2) Chococarmel

Chocolate-espresso cupcakes with Heath Bar/dulce de leche filling and salted buttercream frosting

The cupcake is Chockylit's classic chocolate recipe, again with the addition of about 2 T instant coffee.

To add a filling to the cupcake after baking, use a serrated knife to cut all around the top of the cupcake with the intent to pull out a conical piece. Cut the tip off the top and then replace after you're done filling. The filling is a variant on the "Better Than Sex" cake concept. First, I roughly chopped Heath Bars and filled the centers.

I then heated condensed milk with some left over salted caramel (see below) and then poured the hot mixture over the Heath crumbles. You can also mix caramel ice cream topping with the condensed milk. I usually use a 1:1 ratio for this, but I didn't have very much leftover caramel.

The frosting is an adaptation of this Salted Caramel Frosting and Tartlette's too-die-for salted caramel recipe. I am obsessed with this caramel and had planned to use it as a filling when I hit Cupcake Bakeshop to get the cupcake recipe and 'lo and behold the latest recipe had caramel frosting! I wouldn't have been brave enough to try this on my own, but I was brave enough to make some alterations. I cut out one stick of butter and only used a box (16oz) of powdered sugar. It sets up hard in the fridge, and the lower sugar content allowed the caramel flavor to come through strongly.

The cupcakes were a hit at work. I'm usually very critical of my work and rarely eat more than a bite, but I can't get enough of the Chococarmel! I'm not sure what I'm going to have to try in order to beat these.

beta beta beta

2007-10-15T03:08:00.000-04:00

There, I finally made a change. There's very little I like about this layout, aside from the fact that it's not what I usually (used to) do. It's a change, and a usable change. I need to review some relative sizing information, as internet explorer can't seem to handle my tables, and the box object model is so off I'm surprised it works at all. I think I have it mostly cross-browser, but not appropriately resolution flexible. Hey people with small screens or poor eye sight: suck it!

The idea for this layout is very simple. 1) The blog. 2) Flickr photos. These are mainly baking photos, but may also include some trip photos now and then. 3) Cat photos. Of course, pictures of one's pets are annoying but my friend Cathy uses images of Penelope and Lion-o! to destress, so I decide a playful take on Dooce's Chuck photos would be apropos for now. 4) Extra tidbits. This part is still in alpha, obviously.

This makes riding a bicycle look like cake

2007-09-04T04:50:00.001-04:00

This is hard.

I am so desperate that I'm using <table> to format the design.

It's the middle of the night, and I'm trying to create a new design for my blog. I've been experimenting with the different free publishing sites and I think I'm happiest with Blogger. Vox is a cool site with a lot of connectivity, but there's something DIY about Blogger that I like. Or maybe just the freedom to build onto it as I see fit, with the skills that I have earned.

Skills that I have forgotten.

I spoke with my sister Leah tonight and she continued to prod me to move out to the SF area. I'm happy where I am (for now) but the idea grows in its appeal. She suggested I look at job posting in order to better understand what I should work on in order to realize this goal. I must admit, a brief perusal of Craigslist had me salivating. What really struck me was the number of job postings that requested "hand coding ability." RLY?! I've always felt that my insistence on hand coding was anachronistic and undesirable.

So I'm trying to drag up those old ghosts, my loves, the codes.

This is the web touching itself

2007-05-14T20:29:00.000-04:00

Right now I'm attending class in Sarasota, Fl. while my physical self is sitting in Oakland, Ca. The professor is holding class there with about 10 people present and 15 more tuned in via a web conference. The class is being taped and anyone who couldn't make it today can check the episode of this class out from the library and watch it at their leisure.

Very interesting.

The concept, I mean. The class is a bit dry and I find it hard to focus solely on an audio feed. There is the occasional activity in the chat room and sometimes someone will add to the smiley-face-stick-person that is drawn on our e-whiteboard. We're using the Elluminate system, as well as our school's BlackBoard system for discussion board purposes. I like the idea, especially as the class is IT Ethics, but it's four hours long and I am falling asleep...

Ahoy 'hoy!

2007-05-06T20:45:00.000-04:00

For my champagne birthday (22) what else was I to do but make a champagne cake?

Filling:
chopped strawberries
sugar
mint
champagne
cointreau
Frosting:
very slightly sweetened whipped cream (homemade)
cream cheese
powdered sugar
champagne

The frosting was very runny because it was hot hot hot and HUMID while I made it. I just dumped it over as a glaze, but it was still delicious. Also, for the recipe, I recommend adding slightly more champagne than is suggested. I also used Martini & Rossi Asti instead of champagne; I very much like the flavor.

CUPCAKESCUPCAKECUPCAKECUPCAKECUPCAKESCUPCAKESCUPCAKECUPCAKES

I also made a cupcake version more recently.

Same recipe, though I added almond flavoring to it. Same filling, done with the cone method. I topped it with a straight cream cheese + powdered sugar + almond extract frosting, because I had to transport them.

The real innovation here was the topper. I bought pre-colored fondant and rolled it out and used various strange household objects to make the shapes that I wanted. Joe made a sailboat pattern for me out of primary shapes and after many painstaking hours of putting them together they turned out pretty darn cute.

The final product was very well received, with someone naming them "Champagne Supernova Cupcakes."

Vert-vert

2007-05-02T23:46:00.001-04:00

033,
originally uploaded by serender.

This cake was made 10/2006 for Joe's birthday. It uses the Vert-vert cake recipe favored by Claude Monet, with a few modifications. I eschewed fondant and stuck with a buttercream. The cake came out incredibly dense, which madame manga from the LJ Community bakery tells me comes from faulty directions. European spongecake is a tricky beast (no leaveners besides lots of fussy, frothy eggs). However, I was told it was quite delicious (I hate pistachio, so I didn't even try it). An ambitious project, I would rate this cake a 4/10 and highly caution anyone trying to use the recipe as its written.

Long days, short bytes

2007-05-02T15:24:00.000-04:00

It's hard for me to see the Internet as very much fun anymore. Some days it's hard to think of it as anything beyond a series of tubes. The occasional widget comes along, however, that is actually quite delightful.

Enter: Twitter

The idea is simple enough. It's like a blog, only instead of paragraphs you get a few lines. An RSS feed of captions. You can update from the web, from IM or from your phone. It might seem like just another dumb way to keep in touch but its strangely addictive.

What really put it over the edge for me is twittervision. Independent of Twitter itself, twittervision is an interactive mapping service that displays tweets from the public timeline. Go visit, it's really cool to watch.

A lot of super stuff

2005-10-21T01:12:00.000-04:00

I dropped out of school for the semester, which means that my life should be totally together. This is not always the case, but I would like to blog more. I will start on this resolution tomorrow. If you were to check my Sunbird, you would see that all of my good intentions are scheduled for tomorrow at 11am.

So, my harddrive died f'reals sometime in July. I am reloading my life onto it, and in the process trying to use technology to improve my life. This list is pretty basic, but it includes some tools I would recommend.

1. Start with the web brower Mozilla Firefox.

Load it up with some sweet features:

Auxilliary search engines (including the crucial Wikipedia&Google search and the M-W search which hasn't been as cool since they added popups)
IE View, for compatability geek webdesigners.
StumbleUpon - you rank sites as you surf, and delineate preferences, and then the Interweb takes it upon itself to tell you other sites that you will like.
I am running the iFox skin, even though it makes me feel like a poser. I think Noia 2.0 (eXtreme) is really cute, but I cannot deal with hitting the drop down list when I want to go Back.

2. I don't use Thunderbird because I like checking my email in a million different places, but I have been eagerly awaiting the Mozilla calendar program. I belatedly noticed its release, and downloaded. Sunbird is very simple, which is both good and bad. I hate Outlook because it's such a fat program, but the lack of customization in Sunbird is a tiny bit limiting. However, it will remind me to pay my electric bill, and that's all I really need.

3. I am really trying to get used to the Google Desktop. My problem is that I like it as a sidebar so that its functionality is right at my fingertips, but that means less screen space. And as it is Always On Top, it has to be docked to the left, because my buddy list on the left creeps me out.

Todo - is a plugin for the Desktop that lets you make a checkable todo list. Can you tell I'm seeking organization?
gdTunes - another plugin. It lets you control iTunes from the Desktop. I just changed my iTunes to hide in the system tray when minimized, so this gives me quick access without taking up space in the toolbar.
These come pre-installed, but I use the News, Web Clips, Scratch Pad and Photos tabs. News is for boredom, Scratchpad for organization, Web Clips is to remind me to read things that I like, and the Photos are actually really nice to look at. You choose your folders and they scroll randomly. I have a lot of pictures I like.

I'm feeling a little defeated by the chat client situation. I downloaded Google Talk because I would love to throw over the empire. But as you must be updated to Tiger for it to work with iChat, very few of my close friends can switch over yet. Making it useless to me, though I keep it running. I downloaded Trillian again, but I'm really dissapointed with the skins available, and too lazy to make my own. Also, it's a chubby program and takes forever to load. In other messaging fields, I tried Chikka but found it difficult to sign up for and pretty annoying alround. I also signed up for Skype and had a really positive experience with it. It's almost enough to make me use Trillian, because then I could voicechat with my iChat friends, but if I cared enough, I would just make them migrate to Skype.

Curious what else rounds out the typical Caitlin computing experience? iTunes and AIM vie for first program opened. Adobe Photoshop stays open because it's chunky, but also because it gets used about 5 times a day. I download music with Soulseek, and the last two things loaded onto my computer were the Microsoft Office Suite (yay! for Excel, boo! for PowerPoint) and WS_FTP le (old school, no longer available. I'm sure there are better things, but I'm a weird kind of loyal). I would put Sid Meier's Civilization III back on if I could find my disk. And then I'd waste away the rest of my life.

Next time will be pictures.

boys slappin'

2005-05-13T19:00:00.000-04:00

Here's a clip of the hottest gay porn you can get with the participants still wearing their pants - thejump.avi. Additionally, I posted an alternative version on Medicine Films, which is a web community for amateur video artists and manipulators. It's based locally in Sarasota, Fl., but it's gaining popularity across the country. Heather is writing her thesis about them.

Outside WholeFoods, SRQ, FL, USA

2005-04-20T02:37:00.000-04:00

I now own a Casio Exilim EX-Z50. It's pretty sweet. Maybe a new tradition of photoTuesdays? TBD.

because I screw robots, after all

2005-03-26T11:02:00.000-05:00

I have to give some recognition to Music For Robots which is a pretty awesome music blog that I am semi-addicted to. If I'm not careful, I'm going to start (*gasp*) learning something about music. My taste is validated by the pretentious indie music culture surrounding me, but "I like it because it sounds good" always fails to impress at parties.

My most recent download favorite is 13 + God's Soft Atlas. 13 + God is what happens when you mix themselves, The Notwist, and 2T of butter together and whip it for 30 seconds. Tasty. You can read about it, or visit Anticon to download the first single, Men of Station.

without a universal law there is no gravity, without no gravity there is no atmosphere, without an atmosphere there is no chance at life, with no chance at life I don't exist

You'll see what I mean. Also, visit Music (for Robots) because it's awesomex1000000.

Linear Light

2005-02-27T03:37:00.000-05:00

I was playing around with Dooce Effect #2 and came up with some things. It started out as sort of a guilty indulgence but then I really got into the experimentation. Also, I refound the bridge picture which gets rather mangled in this example and needs to incorporated into something new soon.

I'm going to see Interpol. St. Petersburg or Miami?

Wisconsin is just as cold as you'd expect

2005-02-25T16:05:00.000-05:00

This is a really cool thing

I mean, but don't ask me what it is.

My niece turned one year old. This is from the super exclusive "family" birthday party that I wasn't cool enough to attend.

Not the most photogenic family, but they're trying.

Not only is this child cute, but a good dresser and her mother is Cate Blanchette's doppelganger. (That's the educational part of this post. You're welcome.)

Excuse the dust

2005-02-21T04:06:00.000-05:00

It's pathetic that I'm a 'webdesigner' and I was using a Blogger template. However, this is really just procrastination from something I really need to write for Int'l Law & Politics. This looks effed up in MSIE and only slightly effed up in Firefox, but it's not anywhere near done...

F'real, this is more put together than Concourse C of the Milwaukee airport.

DL: Such Great Heights - John Tejada Remix

2005-01-29T16:43:00.000-05:00

Usually I wouldn't update for something like this. I'm not even really a music person. But it is impossible to explain to you how much the song Such Great Heights by the Postal Service means to me. I've listened to this song so many times that finally even I had to get tired of it. It had so many meanings to me that it really didn't mean anything at all.

But now there's a remix.

I want you to hear this song so badly I'm hosting it for download.

It's not just that the song is good, which it is. It's that I get to listen to it for a couple months now before getting tired of it. Of course this song has already aquired its own baggage, and now as I listen to it at work I keep having to walk out to the bathroom to cry.

5) Obscure but cool, 6) feature in an insta-cool movie, 7) commerical sucess, 8) obscurity again. What, were you hoping for a happy ending?

2005-01-23T17:36:00.000-05:00

Vonage is running commercials with Woo Hoo by the 5,6,7,8's (Bomb the Twist, 1996).

Immortal life

2005-01-22T09:56:00.000-05:00

We never say Adieu to computers in my family. Immortality is achieved under the beds.

First

2005-01-15T16:47:00.000-05:00

A blog is a vehicle for personal communication published and distributed to an unlimited worldwide audience via the Internet. But the attractive and addictive nature of the blog comes from something else, perhaps the tingly feel of communication, or community. LiveJournal is based on community, and is thriving (except, of course, for its recent massive power failure!) But the appeal of LJ breaks down for me. It is a space for shallow personal reflections and day-to-day commentary largely intelligible only to my friends. Entries are often dissapointingly context bound to their time of posting. The greater potential for wider-appealing commentary loses out to the self-serving desire to talk about oneself. I refuse to feel guilty about this though. It is what it is, it's just that I do actually have things besides myself about which to talk. And LJ is not the appropriate environment for those things.

I'm a third-year at a small, left-leaning liberal arts college. I don't think that my ideas are revolutionary or brilliant, but I do think they're mostly interesting. I enjoy well-crafted statements on politics, culture, technology and society as well as other people's comments on my ideas. In the hypothetical Venn diagram of People Interested in My Life and People Interested in My Ideas, the overlap is fairly small. The logical solution is two blogs with two seperate concepts, styles and content, just by the same author. The topics will vary, but I'll try to keep it interesting.

Philip Greenspun says that the blog is the ideal format for the two paragraph idea. I've already exceeded that today, so I'll close by recommending my current reading: the CIA's "Mapping the Global Future" report, which is an analysis of what the world will be like in 2020. (Global Trends in 2010 and 2015 are also available. I've yet to investigate the humorous archive possibilities of "Global Trends 2000." Because, you know, the CIA never gets anything wrong.)