Posts from January 2012

Okay, another quickie but super delicious soup. This time in 20 minutes (because nothing was pre-cooked today).

0. Put in some orange lentils to cook in the rice cooker.
-- From here on it's a timed contest between you and rice cooker!
1. Heat the wok to a high temperature (this is a given. If you don't get this by now, you might as well order pizza)
2. Add a tablespoon of sesame oil
3. Add some dried red chillies, shredded coconut, garlic and ginger fine chopped.
4. Meanwhile dry toast some almonds on a nearby burner.
5. Saute garlic/ginger till garlic turns a faint light brown.
6. Toss in finely chopped Kale. Stir fry till BRIGHT green.
7. Salt it (the kale will let some water out)
8. Add some finely chopped ripe tomatoes. Toss till mixed with Kale.
9. Toss and saute till tomatoes are fairly done.
10. If you have a decent rice cooker, the lentils should be done by now. Add to the spiced kale-tomato mix with generous amount of water and bring to a low simmer.

And you are done! Garnish with fresh chopped basil and lightly crushed toasted almonds!

My grand Toshiba died just before Martin Luther's weekend. It wouldn't start. It was exactly 6 months old and well within it's 1 year warranty. So I shipped it off to the Toshiba depot, I always had a high opinion of Toshiba. My last 3 laptops have been Toshiba. I recommend Toshiba to everyone I know. But this whole fiasco shakes my faith in Toshiba rather substantially.

They sent an email back saying that they would like to charge me for these

MOTHERBOARD - $150.01
KEYBOARD - $19.34
And labor costs $60. (TOTAL OF $229.35)
..
California Customer will incur California sales tax on parts charge

What on earth does the warranty actually cover then??? I suspect, NOTHING.

Toshiba machines are, for the most part, reliable and well- performing. I hate that my machine died. However, this is the first time I have actually done heavy continuous processing on my laptop and experimented extensively with linux non-stop since I got it. Maybe the laptop wasn't up to the rigors I put it though. Maybe my high opinion of Toshiba came from my years of light everyday processing needs and not day-in-and-day-out of number crunching applications.

This is such a massive disappointment! I don't know whether to pay the $229.35 or just let it be shipped back un-repaired to take a stance against scalping.

I wanted to get back to work fast so I made a super fast soup just now in 10 minutes flat. It was so tasty, it's all gone. I want to remember this soup on horrible days when I don't feel like cooking.

1. Heat the wok to a high temperature.
2. Add a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil
3. Immediately add some cumin and dried chillies
4. Add chopped red onions. Stir around till coated with the cumin, chillies and oil.
5. Add chopped ripe tomatoes. Stir around for a minute or so. Smash the tomatoes.
6. Add pre-roasted acorn squash. Stir till incorporated into the tomatoes and onions.
7. Add pre-cooked quinoa.
8. Add a generous quantity of fresh basil.
9. Add some water (preferably water that has been used to cook beans or lentils)
10. Salt to taste.

And you are done. Best soup ever!

Behold... and then behold some more!

Puffy and gorgeous

I am exploring options and wondering whether to switch to mobile broadband completely. I looked at these plans:

I don't have a data plan for my smartphones yet because I use them as fancy alarm clocks and never really carry them around. I don't like having a "phone" on me. I guess it's because I don't like talking over phone AT ALL - which is a funny excuse considering only a handful of people actually have my phone number and I don't talk to them using the phone at all.

I exclusively voice/video conference through Google's services or very rarely through Skype. I am subscribed to pre-paid international talktime via Google which enable me to call family using any internet access anywhere. {I think it doesn't work without internet access - in which case, I have emergency international call minutes from Reliance.}

According to this tool:

• I occasionally stream videos - almost all from youtube.
• I seldom stream music. If I do, it's from pandora.
• I never use apps or play online games.
• I send and receive photos, files and documents all the time (with more documents than any other kind of files - but they obviously don't factor this in).
• I surf the web all the time. Eh? Who doesn't. Everything is online. I wonder what their definition of "surfing the web" actually is.
• I check email all the time. I am always connected.

My monthly estimated data usage is 8.27 GB/month. Does that make me an average or above-average user? I wonder...

I still don't know if I really need mobile broadband internet access. If I do get a mobile internet plan, I am not sure it makes sense to have the wired plan as well. I am thinking about this because mum wrote to me today about how she has finally ditched traditional wired access for a 3g/4G enabled USB mobile broadband access - as the primary home internet connection. She wondered if I could do this in US at reasonable costs.

Do any of you use 3G/4G networks for internet access at home through your laptops? Do you find these mobile broadbands completely replacing the need for your wired DSL/cable-modem access? What are your data estimates like? Which mobile and traditional internet providers are you with?

I am not entirely sure exactly when it is but I think this is about the right time.

First, I got some random people to pose for you.


Then, I baked some cakes.
Cake 1

Cake 2


I got kind of carried away. Two more.
Cake 3

Cake 4


Then I realized they are not really good for your teeth anymore. So I threw a party on your behalf because I don't like cakes too much either. These people came.


Thankfully all of them were very fond of cake. When it was all gone, we realized we HAD to do something special for you, our birthday boy in absentia. So we then did some communal and healthful art for you.


One of my guests decided that was not personal enough. So you got this mugshot:


Some of the younger guests thought all that was too sterile and made this instead:


Overall, all our sentiments are summed up (in a non-fire-hazard way) as:

---

NB: Stolen from around the web. You know who you are if it is yours. Quit whining.

Just a placeholder for the recipe I want to try someday (not today):

From "The Jing Theory". The photographs are amazing.

And there is Vegan Worchestershire Sauce, in two ways. Not just one.
I don't know what the second way is. But the way that is immediately visible on that page seems abysmally time-consuming and for people with premeditation in their lives. Not me. I will probably make a hash of it and love it anyway.

I heard that there is now a bonafide Indian grocery somewhere on west side near Connecticut st. and one of the other Thai stores. And that it has been open for a couple months now.

What?! Really?!!!

Where is it? Has anyone seen it? @metalpeter, you live close, do you know its exact location? I now want to trawl all over the place in the snow to find it. But some of those streets can be a tad sketchy sometimes. Someone I met at the Indian grocery at Jackson Heights, and who recognized me from Pricerite told me about it... but I didn't quite catch its name, or its location.

In 140 operatic characters. LOL