"Give me all your brown bananas!" written by Tinypliny on estrip.org

12/15/11 07:30 - ID#55750

Give me all your brown bananas!

I don't like bananas. They are not really high on my fruits from heaven list (topped by papaya, btw).

But the minute bananas are looking sad, black, almost ready to mould, I develop an inordinate amount of love for them because they make the MOST amazing banana bread aroma when I bake them. Even if the bread itself turns out a mild disaster (it mostly does since I cut out everything remotely luxurious, including butter), the ripe baking banana aroma is quite enough for me to love any bread... however poorly it might have turned out.

So if you are about to toss some black bananas, you know who wants them.

ME.
Signed,
The black spotty over-ripe banana bread experimenter supreme.

---
NB: today's experiment
2 black over-ripe bananas
1 cup plain low-fat yogurt
1¾ cup Whole Wheat Bread flour
¼ cup Wheat bran
Nutmeg
Fig Butter
½ cup Applesauce
Splash of vanilla essence
One BIG thumbs-sized (your thumbs, not mine) fresh ginger chopped.
Some ground black pepper
A tsp and a ½ of salt.

Permalink: Give_me_all_your_brown_bananas_.html
Words: 169
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 12/15/11 10:34

Category: eating out

12/15/11 07:06 - ID#55749

Chocolate anxiety.

When there is no chocolate on walgreens shelves. Well... there is chocolate but not MY favourite chocolate.

I realize I eat chocolate like it were popcorn or something but still... they are out of *my favourite* chocolate today. They say it will be re-stocked soon. But I want it now, dammit.

paul writes at 10:45:28 12/16/11 - Comment #66794: Maybe we need an intervention. Sounds like you are having drug withdrawal symptoms.

tinypliny writes at 10:37:30 12/15/11 - Comment #66793: I knew it. You are the evil mastermind who wiped out the chocolat! EEEEEEEEEKKS!

uncutsaniflush writes at 09:56:34 12/15/11 - Comment #66792: I think this is karma for complaining that the U.S. does not follow the French spelling of "metre". Just in case you didn't notice, the U.S. does not follow the French spelling of "Chocolat". Since you insist on the purity of language, there is no chocolate for you. And that what is even worse, there is no chocolat for you either.

No Metre, no Chocolat!!!

I feel your pain, I like chocolat(e) no matter how you choose to spell it.

tinypliny writes at 07:40:17 12/15/11 - Comment #66790: There is nothing for you to steal. lol. The stupid shelf is empty. I just checked!

metalpeter writes at 07:34:15 12/15/11 - Comment #66789: Interventions do work... But I think that they are mostly really for the people who where enablers to stop that and in that case they help... In this case we would steal it all and eat it right in front of you ha.... Or maybe we would buy you a case and you can't go anywhere until you eat it all...HA.... You know like people who do that with smoking with there kids that they make them smoke till they get sick..HA

tinypliny writes at 07:20:54 12/15/11 - Comment #66787: I have never had those things. I like the chocolate fairly bitter. So I am guessing the sugar will be too much for me.

Interventions are useless. I think I am into the well-past-remediable-addiction stage!!!

metalpeter writes at 07:11:25 12/15/11 - Comment #66786: Seriously though I know you are a fan of dark and me of Milk... But I saw that Areo Bars have caught on American Style and they now Hershey makes a couple kinds one of them being a Kiss with Air in it.....

metalpeter writes at 07:10:08 12/15/11 - Comment #66785: One Of These days you will eat one of those Bars (ha) and your blood pressure will drop into the negatives (ha) and your blood will run backwards through your body.... HA.... Think I'm going to call I bunch of (e:peeps) you need an Intervention! HA

Permalink: Chocolate_anxiety_.html
Words: 51
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 12/15/11 07:06

Category: the odes

12/15/11 04:42 - ID#55748

December Skies

Ominous plus plus

Permalink: December_Skies.html
Words: 5
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 12/15/11 04:42

Category: eating in

12/15/11 02:12 - ID#55747

Greens techniques

There are two top-chef attested methods for cooking greens.

Common step: Wash them thoroughly

Method one: Blanch away

Don't chop the greens
Bring a HUGE pot of water to a boil with a VERY generous dusting of salt. ("Shockingly salty": that's how one of the chefs whose name I forgot, describes the level of salt in the blanching water).
Dunk the unchopped greens into the boiling water for a brief span of time till the greens reach the peak of their green colour.
Fish them out as fast as you can and wash them in cold water.

That's it. They are ready for further brief methods of cooking.

Method two: Toss 'em and forget 'em.

Chop the greens very roughly
Heat a pan on high
Drop in some oil and swirl around (add some seasoning to the oil if you want too)
Drop in the chopped greens.
toss till covered in oil. Splash in some water or soy sauce.
Cover with a sturdy lid till the greens are intensely green. They are steamed to crisp-tender at the top and slightly charred/caramelized where they come in contact with the pan.
Take the lid off the pan after around 2 minutes.
Take off heat - don't let the greens sit around in the pan and season with with spices/sauces. Serve hot.

I haven't yet tried either methods. I usually keep stir-frying because I don't want to char them, and I don't blanch them because it seems like such a waste of micronutrients that inevitably leach out in the water.

Maybe this weekend, I will try both.. I am curious about the differences in taste with both methods.

Permalink: Greens_techniques.html
Words: 276
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 12/15/11 02:14

Category: i-tech

12/15/11 12:15 - ID#55745

Longpress Longpress

All the features I keep looking for in Android are usually found by a...

longpress.

I need to remember this when I go hunting all over the web looking for a solution to some commonplace difficulty on Android.

Longpress Longpress Longpress. Guess that "intuition" that people keep talking about doesn't come that easily to me or maybe I am just not hardwired for a mobile device.

Permalink: Longpress_Longpress.html
Words: 66
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 12/15/11 12:16

Category: the odes

12/15/11 09:43 - ID#55744

Metric units, non-metric spelling

US doesn't follow SI or metric units but yet, MS Word and other US spell checkers insist that I spell metres as meters.

A meter is usually a suffix for an instrument that measures something.. like a thermometer, an odometer etc. The SI units of distance is always spelled metre.

Enforcing a blatant misspelling of units you don't even use borders on the ridiculous.

tinypliny writes at 02:17:28 12/15/11 - Comment #66771: OMG!! I want to write in Polish!! Some vowels need to be shown their rightful place... with the eraser or backspace button! :)

uncutsaniflush writes at 02:09:05 12/15/11 - Comment #66770: Thanks for sharing Pat Naughtin's thesis on meter versus metre. I love stuff like that. I've been fascinated by language and linguistics since I was a child. I find English to be a capricious and arbitrary language. Just like Mr. Spock from Star Trek, I find that I am drawn to the illogical; but, unlike him, I think I see beauty in the chaos where others only see confusion.

fwiw, English is my second language and Polish is my first. So I'm no native speaker of any sort of English rising up to defend my native tongue.

uncutsaniflush writes at 02:02:31 12/15/11 - Comment #66769: I suggest that you don't write your Thesis in Polish, the bloody wanker euro-trash Poles don't even have an "e" in the word "metr" So ha!

tinypliny writes at 01:37:16 12/15/11 - Comment #66764: Here is a 15 page thesis that touches a bit on my obvious lack of delight, given my background. :::link:::

Enjoy! :)

tinypliny writes at 01:34:14 12/15/11 - Comment #66763: If you had to make 142 replacements in a document you just slogged through, delight isn't particularly high on the agenda. lol

uncutsaniflush writes at 12:37:53 12/15/11 - Comment #66762: My 1971 compact edition of the Oxford English Dictionary lists meter as an alternate spelling for "metre" and also that "meter" is is the U.S. spelling of "meter". If meter is good enough for the fine folks at Oxford, it's good enough for me.

I suggest you direct your complaints to them using the contact information at :::link::: since many of the world's English speakers view the OED as THE reference for English.

I, for one, delight in the all the regional variations in spoken and written English. I think it is a testament to both the strength of the English language itself as well as a testament to the uniqueness of human beings.

I am saddened that the diversity in the world's Englishs doesn't delight you as it does me.

Permalink: Metric_units_non_metric_spelling.html
Words: 64
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 12/15/11 09:43

Category: eating in

12/15/11 12:50 - ID#55740

We probably can't save starving kids in Africa...

by not wasting food, but we definitely can make small positive individual contributions to bringing down the staggering proportion of food that is wasted in America, in particular.

I stumbled upon this site:

(wastedfood.com) and the statistics are shocking... till you think back to the time you wasted food. It was probably waste that was entirely avoidable by a few wise measures such as:

not buying more food than you can eat or store properly.
realizing the practical limitations of storage in your kitchen and fridge
following a simple weekly schedule and fridge/pantry accounting plan to finish the older food before you go and get a newer version of the same food.
having a good idea of what is in your fridge and on your kitchen and pantry shelves so you are not always in doubt at the grocery store. If it helps, take a weekly picture of your fridge shelves and kitchen shelves before you go grocery shopping. (Oh yeah, don't forget to replace these pictures with new ones every week.)
(if memory is still fickle, maybe use small post it notes ON the fridge with days and dates by which specific food must be consumed.)
checking all stored (even supposedly non-perishables) for infestation and mold every fortnight.
storing nuts, grains, beans and lentils in PLAIN sight or in airtight containers in the freezer
researching proper storage techniques for all kinds of food and religiously sticking to best practices of storage for various kinds of food,
giving away the food you know you are going to waste to people who will eat them!
and again, making a pledge to not buy more than you will use in a practical span of time,

More nifty tips about how not to waste food are here at this

and this

It breaks my heart every time I have to throw out something because I have forgotten to follow even just one of these guidelines.

Permalink: We_probably_can_t_save_starving_kids_in_Africa_.html
Words: 340
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 12/15/11 07:04

Category: the odes

12/14/11 09:08 - ID#55739

A bit too much...

for that one woman in the corner, don't you think?

Permalink: A_bit_too_much_.html
Words: 12
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 12/14/11 09:11

Category: the odes

12/14/11 07:40 - ID#55735

I want (fill whatever here) for a bogus gift-giving day.

Christmas should be called Consumermas.

I still can't get over the weirdness of people demanding random things from other people in their lives for the birthday of some random bloke from waaaay back that most of them don't emulate in real life and worse, don't even identify with.

When did shameless extortion get associated with a religious icon's birthday? Why not just call it what it is and not candy coat the entire extortion cycle in some pretentious gift-wrap of religion (that most are actually leery about)?

What I find even more laughable is people who place seemingly "reasonable" things on their extortion list. As if it is okay to extort "gifts" if it is some "reasonable" thing.

I am an outside observer but I find the whole culture of extortion and consumerism surrounding one's own birthday and the birthday of some centuries old hippie as extremely weird and venal.

Permalink: I_want_fill_whatever_here_for_a_bogus_gift_giving_day_.html
Words: 150
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 12/14/11 07:45

Category: eating in

12/13/11 10:06 - ID#55730

Sprouts

The toughest part is perhaps waiting for the mung beans to sprout. This is 2 days growth.

Heat a pan on high medium.
Drop in a tbsp of olive oil and swirl it around.
Add chopped ginger, red hot chillies and jalapenÃµs.
Add cumin seeds
SautÃ© for 20-30 seconds
Add sprouts.
SautÃ© for 2-3 mins or so.
Add chopped green and red bell peppers.
SautÃ© till crisp tender.
Add salt and chopped coriander leaves (cilantro) halfway through.

Garnish with finely chopped raw red onions, lemon juice and Haldiram Bhujia! Serve hot.