All I can say is. OH. MY. This thing is DELICIOUS! Gulped it down in two days flat. Needless to say, I won't be buying it any more because if I did I won't fit through my flat door in approximately a week or maybe less, who knows...
Tinypliny's Journal
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12/01/2009 20:28 #50430
Hook, Line and Sinker.Category: eating in
Went shopping with a friend recently (you know who you are and I know you are reading, heheh) and somehow this ended up in both of our groceries...
All I can say is. OH. MY. This thing is DELICIOUS! Gulped it down in two days flat. Needless to say, I won't be buying it any more because if I did I won't fit through my flat door in approximately a week or maybe less, who knows...
All I can say is. OH. MY. This thing is DELICIOUS! Gulped it down in two days flat. Needless to say, I won't be buying it any more because if I did I won't fit through my flat door in approximately a week or maybe less, who knows...
11/26/2009 22:01 #50389
Best Brussel Sprouts Evah!Category: eating in
This is probably the fastest easiest recipe I have ever made and it was right there on top in terms of how mouth-wateringly tasty it was!
Total cooking time is around 6-7 minutes.
1. Heat some peanut oil in a pan. Meanwhile wash and chop a good amount of garlic into fine pieces.
2. Saute chopped garlic till it is light brown. Meanwhile wash and chop Brussel Sprouts into lengthwise quarters.
3. Add chopped Brussel Sprouts, a dash of salt and pepper powder.
4. Saute on medium-high heat till Brussel Sprouts are lightly caramelized (~3 min).
5. Eat immediately and float away into gastronomical heaven!
~
Total cooking time is around 6-7 minutes.
1. Heat some peanut oil in a pan. Meanwhile wash and chop a good amount of garlic into fine pieces.
2. Saute chopped garlic till it is light brown. Meanwhile wash and chop Brussel Sprouts into lengthwise quarters.
3. Add chopped Brussel Sprouts, a dash of salt and pepper powder.
4. Saute on medium-high heat till Brussel Sprouts are lightly caramelized (~3 min).
5. Eat immediately and float away into gastronomical heaven!
~
dcoffee - 11/27/09 13:36
awesome, I just picked some Brussels Sprouts yesterday, I usually just steam them, but this sounds like fun.
awesome, I just picked some Brussels Sprouts yesterday, I usually just steam them, but this sounds like fun.
11/26/2009 16:10 #50387
Formal Button-Down Silk/Satin ShirtCategory: office
Where can I buy one of these??
Have you seen this kind of a formal satin/silk button-down no-crazy-ruffle-frill-attachments shirt anywhere? If yes, please rack your brains - and post a clue! All the satin/silk shirts I have seen seem to have some crazy tailoring quirk. I am looking for a plain button-down one in a preferably non-candy muted colour.
Have you seen this kind of a formal satin/silk button-down no-crazy-ruffle-frill-attachments shirt anywhere? If yes, please rack your brains - and post a clue! All the satin/silk shirts I have seen seem to have some crazy tailoring quirk. I am looking for a plain button-down one in a preferably non-candy muted colour.
jenks - 12/03/09 19:50
wha?! $90 on clearance? yeah that's a little steep.
wha?! $90 on clearance? yeah that's a little steep.
tinypliny - 12/02/09 21:26
Ann Taylor does sell one of those and it's for $90 in the "Clearance" section.
Out of my range. Make that, WAY out of my range. :)
Ann Taylor does sell one of those and it's for $90 in the "Clearance" section.
Out of my range. Make that, WAY out of my range. :)
jenks - 11/28/09 17:39
I have a couple like that, from Ann Taylor. And they do have a petites section- may be worth taking a look. They usuall have pretty good stuff on the sale/clearance racks, too.
I have a couple like that, from Ann Taylor. And they do have a petites section- may be worth taking a look. They usuall have pretty good stuff on the sale/clearance racks, too.
tinypliny - 11/27/09 10:26
Heheh - this comment brought a hearty laugh. :)
I now have a blazer and trousers for the defense and almost have a shirt. I just saw this woman online and it reminded me of how well my advisor in Rochester always dresses - then I wondered if I could ever wear this kind of a shirt - because whatever I do, I end up getting dark non-feminine shirts. I am just not enough of a "girly girl" and probably will never be.
Heheh - this comment brought a hearty laugh. :)
I now have a blazer and trousers for the defense and almost have a shirt. I just saw this woman online and it reminded me of how well my advisor in Rochester always dresses - then I wondered if I could ever wear this kind of a shirt - because whatever I do, I end up getting dark non-feminine shirts. I am just not enough of a "girly girl" and probably will never be.
heidi - 11/26/09 22:11
I've been pondering your sartorial concerns and have even asked several equally tiny non-plinys where they shop. Our next adventure will include several stops at stores that should have clothes that are both appropriate for dissertation defenses and properly sized. :-) Maybe they'll even have a satiny shirt like this.
I've been pondering your sartorial concerns and have even asked several equally tiny non-plinys where they shop. Our next adventure will include several stops at stores that should have clothes that are both appropriate for dissertation defenses and properly sized. :-) Maybe they'll even have a satiny shirt like this.
11/25/2009 02:30 #50375
Squash Soup in Six Steps.Category: eating in
(e:imk2)'s mum hooked me on to the pear and butternut squash soup from the Wegmans recipe collection. 
I didn't have stock and I am not really okay with throwing away any vegetables after boiling them in water for making the stock - so I improvised on the recipe.
0. Chop. Chop. Set the rice cooker to cook some orange lentils.
Cumulative time to step 1: 4-5 minutes. (3-4 minutes if you are good at that game where you jab the knife between your fingers on the table really fast and try not to stab your hand. I figure if you are good at this, you will be good at chopping vegetables really really fast.)
1. Saute garlic, onions (preferably red), the hottest jalapenos you can find and ginger on low-medium heat in peanut/olive oil till the onions soften and become translucent. I guess you could caramelize the onions and increase their flavour but I don't have the patience to do this. The recipe is supposed to be ultra-quick and dirty.
Cumulative Time to step 2: 9 minutes
2. Add butternut squash or pumpkin or one of those typical fall squash vegetables, finely chopped celery - a whole bunch, carrots and tomatoes. Make sure you clean the celery well - no need for peeling. Add salt and a tablespoon of fresh or dried thyme. Fresh is better but dry works as well. Saute for a good 4-5 minutes - at the end of this step the squash should be almost tender but not quite.
Cumulative Time to step 3: 13-16 minutes
3. Take the cooked orange lentils out of the rice cooker and smash them. Add them to the mix. Add chopped pears and water to cover it all - bring to a rolling boil. Turn the heat up higher to make this step go faster.
Cumulative Time to step 4: 19 minutes
4. Pour everything into a blender and puree the hell out of it.
Cumulative Time to step 5: 24 minutes or forever (if your blender breaks down).
5. Pour into a bowl, dilute with water, add salt and pepper (rewarm if necessary), finely chop cilantro leaves/stems/roots and and mix it in. Mix in chopped red onions and chopped jalapenos if you want an extra kick.
Cumulative Time to step 6: 27 minutes or never (if you are just reading this. GET CHOPPING!)
6. Enjoy! Reach for seconds... :)
PS: This soup freezes really well. I portioned it out in those smaller hummus boxes so that I could just pop the contents of one box into a bowl, add water, microwave it for a couple minutes on high and vary the extra seasoning and garnish. They also make fabulous lunches - because (depending on your portion size) they contain at least 2 servings of vegetables, 1 serving of fruit, plenty of fibre, complex carbohydrates from the squashes, proteins from the lentils and are very balanced.
I didn't have stock and I am not really okay with throwing away any vegetables after boiling them in water for making the stock - so I improvised on the recipe. 0. Chop. Chop. Set the rice cooker to cook some orange lentils.
Cumulative time to step 1: 4-5 minutes. (3-4 minutes if you are good at that game where you jab the knife between your fingers on the table really fast and try not to stab your hand. I figure if you are good at this, you will be good at chopping vegetables really really fast.)
1. Saute garlic, onions (preferably red), the hottest jalapenos you can find and ginger on low-medium heat in peanut/olive oil till the onions soften and become translucent. I guess you could caramelize the onions and increase their flavour but I don't have the patience to do this. The recipe is supposed to be ultra-quick and dirty.
Cumulative Time to step 2: 9 minutes
2. Add butternut squash or pumpkin or one of those typical fall squash vegetables, finely chopped celery - a whole bunch, carrots and tomatoes. Make sure you clean the celery well - no need for peeling. Add salt and a tablespoon of fresh or dried thyme. Fresh is better but dry works as well. Saute for a good 4-5 minutes - at the end of this step the squash should be almost tender but not quite.
Cumulative Time to step 3: 13-16 minutes
3. Take the cooked orange lentils out of the rice cooker and smash them. Add them to the mix. Add chopped pears and water to cover it all - bring to a rolling boil. Turn the heat up higher to make this step go faster.
Cumulative Time to step 4: 19 minutes
4. Pour everything into a blender and puree the hell out of it.
Cumulative Time to step 5: 24 minutes or forever (if your blender breaks down).
5. Pour into a bowl, dilute with water, add salt and pepper (rewarm if necessary), finely chop cilantro leaves/stems/roots and and mix it in. Mix in chopped red onions and chopped jalapenos if you want an extra kick.
Cumulative Time to step 6: 27 minutes or never (if you are just reading this. GET CHOPPING!)
6. Enjoy! Reach for seconds... :)
PS: This soup freezes really well. I portioned it out in those smaller hummus boxes so that I could just pop the contents of one box into a bowl, add water, microwave it for a couple minutes on high and vary the extra seasoning and garnish. They also make fabulous lunches - because (depending on your portion size) they contain at least 2 servings of vegetables, 1 serving of fruit, plenty of fibre, complex carbohydrates from the squashes, proteins from the lentils and are very balanced.
11/20/2009 03:22 #50350
The future of Personal Computing?Category: i-tech
Chrome OS went opensource on Wednesday. I am excited but I also wonder if comfort in the knowledge of having most important things on your harddrive (if the internet were to crash and burn one day) would ever go away. I have a 1TB harddrive that I back-up things on - and I may potentially get another one. Why, then, is this concept of netbooking exciting?
I think people like me lead dual lives - a mobile, assimilate-and-let-go "info-now" life and a more static laid-back static "make-do-with-what-you-have" life. In the ancient past, I might have had a laptop for one life and a desktop for the other but now I have 2 laptops. My bigger older bulkier laptop serves as an emergency back-up for major disasters (which means it never gets used but its there all the same). The other smaller laptop is the one that I port around - almost inevitably to journal clubs and other venues that require me to review some written document.
I gave up printing more than a year back. All my docs are now online and backed up on my 1TB harddrive. I surf the web extensively and all my information gathering happens on this smaller laptop. Since I don't take my harddrive with me, whatever little data I have while on the go is on the tiny laptop. I depend on the net for the rest. So this could well be a netbook. I could get rid of the other laptop, retain my harddrive as a vestige of the ancient desktop and move ahead.
Some day, when I have a blazingly fast broadband satellite access to the net, I could ditch the harddrive as well. I just wonder if this day will coincide with the official release of Chrome OS. :)
I would love to see the owner of the voice in the video in action. I saw the video 3 times just because the presentation was so snappy, and so Google!
And if you are instinctively thinking of Windows when it comes to long boot up times, you would be wrong. The latest Ubuntu takes a WHOLE godawful minute to boot and you can't even mod it easily as you can mod Win XP. I am sick of the holier-than-thou attitude of linuxers when you ask if you could just cut out all the crap add-on software that Ubuntu ships with* - the answer is that its free so you shouldn't expect too much. I say, to hell with you and your snobbish attitude.
If you can't give civilized useful answers to genuine questions from new users, you are no better than the micro$*** folks who just keep making their operating system even more bloated with every revision. At least WinXP can be stripped down to a lean performance beast. Requests for user-friendly ways of slipstreaming and coring Ubuntu make it to the "innovative future ideas" board instead of being listed as priorities and answered - just goes to show how completely behind the times and user-unfriendly Ubuntu (and generally the linux community) really is.
I am excited but I also wonder if comfort in the knowledge of having most important things on your harddrive (if the internet were to crash and burn one day) would ever go away. I have a 1TB harddrive that I back-up things on - and I may potentially get another one. Why, then, is this concept of netbooking exciting? I think people like me lead dual lives - a mobile, assimilate-and-let-go "info-now" life and a more static laid-back static "make-do-with-what-you-have" life. In the ancient past, I might have had a laptop for one life and a desktop for the other but now I have 2 laptops. My bigger older bulkier laptop serves as an emergency back-up for major disasters (which means it never gets used but its there all the same). The other smaller laptop is the one that I port around - almost inevitably to journal clubs and other venues that require me to review some written document.
I gave up printing more than a year back. All my docs are now online and backed up on my 1TB harddrive. I surf the web extensively and all my information gathering happens on this smaller laptop. Since I don't take my harddrive with me, whatever little data I have while on the go is on the tiny laptop. I depend on the net for the rest. So this could well be a netbook. I could get rid of the other laptop, retain my harddrive as a vestige of the ancient desktop and move ahead.
Some day, when I have a blazingly fast broadband satellite access to the net, I could ditch the harddrive as well. I just wonder if this day will coincide with the official release of Chrome OS. :)
I would love to see the owner of the voice in the video in action. I saw the video 3 times just because the presentation was so snappy, and so Google!
And if you are instinctively thinking of Windows when it comes to long boot up times, you would be wrong. The latest Ubuntu takes a WHOLE godawful minute to boot and you can't even mod it easily as you can mod Win XP. I am sick of the holier-than-thou attitude of linuxers when you ask if you could just cut out all the crap add-on software that Ubuntu ships with* - the answer is that its free so you shouldn't expect too much. I say, to hell with you and your snobbish attitude.
If you can't give civilized useful answers to genuine questions from new users, you are no better than the micro$*** folks who just keep making their operating system even more bloated with every revision. At least WinXP can be stripped down to a lean performance beast. Requests for user-friendly ways of slipstreaming and coring Ubuntu make it to the "innovative future ideas" board instead of being listed as priorities and answered - just goes to show how completely behind the times and user-unfriendly Ubuntu (and generally the linux community) really is.
- PS: YES. I have tried Puppy Linux and its no more user-friendly than an esoteric command line system with all the commands in a useless pretty GUI drawn on a puppy's back. :/
jim - 11/20/09 23:55
typo aargh
typo aargh
uncutsaniflush - 11/20/09 23:51
Wow! I'm old enough to think that booting up in a minute is fast. When I first got to work with an IBM pc at work in the early '80s, I think I could go down the street for an ice cream and get back befpre the system was booted. Anyone remember the 2 floppy drives PCs?
The box (e:leetee) uses runs a selectively updated (by me) pclinuxos 2007 :::link::: for stability. We have an asus eee 901 that's running moblin 2.1 :::link::: . I couldn't stand the Xandros gui that the eee came with. I have a couple of boxes that play with. I like e17 (more accurately Enligthenment DR17) :::link::: so I really like elive :::link::: which debian with e17. I tend to play with the latest development versions and push them until they break.
I also run Arch with e17. I'm a distro whore so I've always got a few random distros floating around on stray partitions. I think that I stopped counting how many distros I played when I reached a 100 about 4 years ago.
Wow! I'm old enough to think that booting up in a minute is fast. When I first got to work with an IBM pc at work in the early '80s, I think I could go down the street for an ice cream and get back befpre the system was booted. Anyone remember the 2 floppy drives PCs?
The box (e:leetee) uses runs a selectively updated (by me) pclinuxos 2007 :::link::: for stability. We have an asus eee 901 that's running moblin 2.1 :::link::: . I couldn't stand the Xandros gui that the eee came with. I have a couple of boxes that play with. I like e17 (more accurately Enligthenment DR17) :::link::: so I really like elive :::link::: which debian with e17. I tend to play with the latest development versions and push them until they break.
I also run Arch with e17. I'm a distro whore so I've always got a few random distros floating around on stray partitions. I think that I stopped counting how many distros I played when I reached a 100 about 4 years ago.
tinypliny - 11/20/09 22:09
Wow - thanks so much for the detailed responses (e:uncutsaniflush). Had fun reading them. :)
I did a full install of the latest Ubuntu version on the latest Toshiba laptop (my parent's)- and it took a full minute and some odd seconds to boot up. My mum asked me if it was "up yet" - and she is probably the MOST patient person around!
Keeping a laptop turned on for over a few hours is not really an option for my parents - so boot-up time is a big deal.
Thanks for the Arch recommendation - I will be sure to try it out. I am now really curious to know which distro you and (e:leetee) run. :)
Wow - thanks so much for the detailed responses (e:uncutsaniflush). Had fun reading them. :)
I did a full install of the latest Ubuntu version on the latest Toshiba laptop (my parent's)- and it took a full minute and some odd seconds to boot up. My mum asked me if it was "up yet" - and she is probably the MOST patient person around!
Keeping a laptop turned on for over a few hours is not really an option for my parents - so boot-up time is a big deal.
Thanks for the Arch recommendation - I will be sure to try it out. I am now really curious to know which distro you and (e:leetee) run. :)
uncutsaniflush - 11/20/09 11:42
Oh yeah, if you have the time and want to build a customized Linux that only has the apps that you want, I would recommend Arch :::link::: It takes a wee bit of time but eventually you would get a (e:tinypliny) Linux that boots very fast.
Oh yeah, if you have the time and want to build a customized Linux that only has the apps that you want, I would recommend Arch :::link::: It takes a wee bit of time but eventually you would get a (e:tinypliny) Linux that boots very fast.
uncutsaniflush - 11/20/09 11:33
Zealots of any Operating System sort be they Linux, osX, or, dare I say it, Windows, are often annoying.
I suspect you encountered some of the RTFM (READ THE FUCKING MANUAL) bunch. Not all Linux users are like that.
That being said, I'm one of the crazies (along with the lovely Lettuce ((e:leetee))) who uses Linux on the desktop every day and we done so since 2001. From what I hear, that makes us weird and crazy. For most people, I would recommend osX as an alternative to Windows before I would recommend Linux because of better software/hardware integration. Unless cost is an issue.
Not all Linuxes run equally well on all hardware. Because of this I would recommend buying a box or 'top with Linux pre-installed to avoid hardware/software compatiblity issues for most people if they want to use Linux as alternative to Windows.
I'm a not a big fan of Ubuntu. I've played with several releases and found it unsatisfactory. But I know lots of people who love it.
As to the Ubuntu boot time, are you talking about a live cd or an installed version? Most distros boot faster from an install than a live cd. One generic way to speed up boot time in Linux is to only start up the services you actually use at boot time. Lots of distros including Ubuntu start up all sorts of unnecessary services to make it more "convenient" for the user.
On Linux boxes, most users measure uptime in weeks and months so a long boot time isn't seen as much of a problem if you boot up a couple times a year. Of course, on a 'top, boot time matters. There are versions of Ubuntu and other distros that specifically configured for net-tops and do a much better job than vanilla Ubuntu.
Zealots of any Operating System sort be they Linux, osX, or, dare I say it, Windows, are often annoying.
I suspect you encountered some of the RTFM (READ THE FUCKING MANUAL) bunch. Not all Linux users are like that.
That being said, I'm one of the crazies (along with the lovely Lettuce ((e:leetee))) who uses Linux on the desktop every day and we done so since 2001. From what I hear, that makes us weird and crazy. For most people, I would recommend osX as an alternative to Windows before I would recommend Linux because of better software/hardware integration. Unless cost is an issue.
Not all Linuxes run equally well on all hardware. Because of this I would recommend buying a box or 'top with Linux pre-installed to avoid hardware/software compatiblity issues for most people if they want to use Linux as alternative to Windows.
I'm a not a big fan of Ubuntu. I've played with several releases and found it unsatisfactory. But I know lots of people who love it.
As to the Ubuntu boot time, are you talking about a live cd or an installed version? Most distros boot faster from an install than a live cd. One generic way to speed up boot time in Linux is to only start up the services you actually use at boot time. Lots of distros including Ubuntu start up all sorts of unnecessary services to make it more "convenient" for the user.
On Linux boxes, most users measure uptime in weeks and months so a long boot time isn't seen as much of a problem if you boot up a couple times a year. Of course, on a 'top, boot time matters. There are versions of Ubuntu and other distros that specifically configured for net-tops and do a much better job than vanilla Ubuntu.
tinypliny - 11/20/09 11:20
The GDLF - looks like the French Revolution of data. :)
(e:zobar) - I think Ubuntu out of the box is fine for people who don't care about boot-up times, slow performance, dragging programs etc. The average windows users put up with these things on a regular basis. In fact, I think less viruses are written for linux so it might have a slight advantage if pushed to this kind of user.
But the idea of not having control over the zillion processes running in the background annoys me. Having to wait a minute for the boot sequences drives me crazy. I am happy that I can hack and strip my operating system till its running just the bare minimum I need and nothing extra AND boots in less than 14 seconds.
Naturally, it feels crippling that I can't do this with Ubuntu. The minute you strip out some extra bundled email program or IM chat program in it, a ton of other functionalities are affected without warning. It is as if the garbage is built into the OS. Of course, the minute you point this out at a linux forum, they get all defensive, snobbish and sometimes insulting at your "windows" background. A typical response is "Oh, linux is perfect as it is - keep the whole dirty idea of "modding" to your windows forums. Classic example of non-receptive behaviour.
The GDLF - looks like the French Revolution of data. :)
(e:zobar) - I think Ubuntu out of the box is fine for people who don't care about boot-up times, slow performance, dragging programs etc. The average windows users put up with these things on a regular basis. In fact, I think less viruses are written for linux so it might have a slight advantage if pushed to this kind of user.
But the idea of not having control over the zillion processes running in the background annoys me. Having to wait a minute for the boot sequences drives me crazy. I am happy that I can hack and strip my operating system till its running just the bare minimum I need and nothing extra AND boots in less than 14 seconds.
Naturally, it feels crippling that I can't do this with Ubuntu. The minute you strip out some extra bundled email program or IM chat program in it, a ton of other functionalities are affected without warning. It is as if the garbage is built into the OS. Of course, the minute you point this out at a linux forum, they get all defensive, snobbish and sometimes insulting at your "windows" background. A typical response is "Oh, linux is perfect as it is - keep the whole dirty idea of "modding" to your windows forums. Classic example of non-receptive behaviour.
zobar - 11/20/09 08:36
Generally speaking I trust cloud computing because at their data centers even their redundancy has redundancy, redundantly. But the recent large-scale data loss at Danger/Microsoft/Sidekick and the occasional outages at GMail take the cloud analogy a little too far: the computing cloud, unlike real clouds, should not be ephemeral.
I used to use Linux. It was pretty ideal for what I did, but I thought the Linux Desktop people were crazy. Only geeks claimed Linux was ready for non-geeks to use. But that was ten years ago and I'd kind of hoped they'd made a little progress since then.
- Z
Generally speaking I trust cloud computing because at their data centers even their redundancy has redundancy, redundantly. But the recent large-scale data loss at Danger/Microsoft/Sidekick and the occasional outages at GMail take the cloud analogy a little too far: the computing cloud, unlike real clouds, should not be ephemeral.
I used to use Linux. It was pretty ideal for what I did, but I thought the Linux Desktop people were crazy. Only geeks claimed Linux was ready for non-geeks to use. But that was ten years ago and I'd kind of hoped they'd made a little progress since then.
- Z
Soy milk + Cinnamony oatmealish stuff* = Heaven
I drink close to 2 gallons of milk every week to get the requisite amount of calcium, protein and fat-soluble vitamins in my diet. I am not lactose-intolerant or overly convinced about the apparent ill-effects of milk - so however much I like this soymilk, getting hooked to a non-dairy product like this is a bit of a concern.
This particular brand of soymilk is equivalent to 3% milk. However, the calcium in it is supplemented calcium carbonate - not the best bioavailable form of calcium. The protein in it is a complete protein but I am not sure how it stacks up in comparison to the animal-sourced protein from milk - I am guessing not very well.
I've been making soy chais. F Spot and their $5 pricetag! I really don't think I'd ever pour this stuff over cereal, however. I'm not so much of a non-dairy nut that I can't enjoy a little lowfat milk.
But it already has sugar - organic cane sugar and vanilla... Maybe you haven't tried this brand? I can almost swear they put some addictive drug in it because it made me walk all the way to the grocery store directly from work in the horrible muddly slush - before I could shake its influence off and double back home.
If you saw someone bundled up in a snowcoat swearing at all the puddles running about in circles around Delaware and Elmwood today evening, it was me. And trying to avoid buying another box of the above was the primary reason for the craziness.
I WANT to like soymilk, but the only way I've been able to enjoy it is with thoroughly unhealthy amounts of sugar added to it.