Good wine under $20

I just came across this blog, which looks like a nice way to discover inexpensive wine. The articles look well-written and nicely detailed. I look forward to digging into the archive!
There's also a nice list of other wine and food blogs.

The rating system is also interesting: focusing on QPR (quality-price ratio) instead of an absolute score. From the blog:

QPR vs. Scores
Because any score is subjective, I'm experimenting on this blog with indicating QPR (quality to price ratio) rather than using a 100-point scale. Of course, this is subjective, too, but I think gives a better sense of the criteria I am using to evaluate wine. Excellent QPR designates a wine that has strong varietal characteristics and an attractive price point for that varietal. Very good QPR designates a wine with strong varietal characteristics and a less attractive price point OR moderate varietal characteristics and an attractive price point. Good QPR designates a wine that is average in varietal characteristics and price point. Poor QPR designates a wine that is not a good quality for the price paid. If you want to see a 100-point scale score generated by the tasting notes of ordinary wine drinkers (including me), check out Cellar Tracker!

On a related note, last night we went to Lola, a great mediterranean restaurant in Seattle (part of Tom Douglas' empire). The food was incredible, and the wine we chose was a nice find (at a decent price): 2005 Shooting Star Blue Franc (made from Lemberger grapes, which are called Blaufrankisch in Austria, hence the name Blue Franc). An article from 2000 about this variety's history in the Pacific NW is here.

Interview with Sasha Baron Cohen on NPR

Last week, NPR's Day to Day interviewed Sasha Baron Cohen (aka Borat).
You can read more and listen to the interview here.

Cappellano Barolo Chinato

I have been eyeing an intersting bottle of wine for a few months, and decided to treat myself last week. The Cappellano Barolo Chinato is an interesting digestive, similar to Italian amaro liqueuer like Ramazzotti, Averna and China Martini. The medicinal taste comes from an infusion of herbs and "china" bark (quinine). Some people think averna's taste like cough syrup - I think they're great. (Some of the Washington State liquor stores even have them, which is cool).

It turns out that this fortified wine is actually the pre-cursor to the amaro liqueuers listed above. (For more info see here) It's an interesting beast - created by Giuseppe Cappellano, a chemist who loved barolo wine and believed in its "therapeutic benefits" when drunk well aged. (As opposed to being a well-aged drunk?)

Other interesting ingredients are clove, wormwood and cinnamon. Yes, wormwood. As in absinthe. I thought wormwood was verboten nowadays, but it turns out it's used to make vermouth and many other drinks and medicines. It turns out absinthe's bad rap is largely a myth. Anyway, back to the chinato...

I opened the bottle and had a small glass after dinner, and really enjoyed it. It's definitely not as sweet and syrupy as the amaro liqueuers. The barolo wine definitely is evident - a sappy, juicy tang under the herbal and medicinal flavours. Very smooth and non-tannic. I hope it lasts well once open (being fortified, it should).

Some of you may be wondering how a young(ish) South African guy got introduced to amaro liqueuer in the first place. I have my uncle to thank for that - he lived in France for a few years, getting trained by the company providing the systems to run the Koeberg nuclear power station. During this time he managed to visit family in Italy who introduced him to China Martini. (The French family introduced him to the bridge-like card game, Tarot. But that's best saved for a future entry.)

When he came back to South Africa, he brought some China Martini with him, and got the rest of us hooked. At one point it was actually quite easy to find it available in bottle stores in South Africa (not sure about now, but it should be easier than then, if anything).

Fantastic blue cheese

The other night I stopped at Whole Foods to buy some goodies for dinner. I got some soups, fresh bread and headed off to get some blue cheese. I had heard something recently about a smoked blue cheese from Oregon, and after looking through the cheese case for a minute I noticed they had it: Rogue Creamery's Smokey Blue.

Wow! This stuff is seriously good - it won the coveted Best New Product in the World Award at the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade (NASFT) Food Show in New York (2005).

A belated Coco La Ti Da review

I wrote about Sue McCown's restaurant, Coco La Ti Da, a while back, and get quite a few hits every month from people looking for more info. Sue was the pastry chef at Earth & Ocean, and has gotten quite a lot of buzz around the USA. (She was even on the Today show...)
Since the last blog entry, I've been there for dessert and can happily report that the hype for once is justified.

Coco La Ti Da focuses on dessert and is a wonderful place to head after a show, but they also serve some savoury food - see the lounge menu here. I had an amazing trio of chocolate (I think it was a Thursday special). All 3 items were good but the hot cacao was mind-blowing - it was like drinking the best chocolate bar you've ever tasted.

I look forward to my next visit!

PS: The 2nd best hot cacao I've ever had was at The Salish Lodge restaurant. It was almost too rich, and they stupidly don't allow you to just come in for dessert, so you need to find room after a full meal to squeeze it in. Apparently if you stay at the lodge you can order the cacao from room service - something to think about if I ever splurge and stay here.

Thai green curry with tempeh

There's something really comforting about a nice rich Thai curry when it's cold. The spice and the coconut milk and the perfect antidote to sub-zero temperatures (Seattle is currently a snowy wonderland with snow and ice on most streets. See the photo gallery here).

So, a few nights ago A+I rustled up a quick curry, and it turned out really well. We decided to put tempeh (Wikipedia link) in instead of tofu (being vegetarians) - tempeh is originally from Java & Indonesia, so geographically it sort-of makes sense. Interestingly (for me) tempeh actually contains fungus (it's held together by the mycellium), and the fungus has antibiotic properties. Before I gross out the people who've never tasted tempeh, it's actually quite yummy. It's firm, has a nutty flavour (depends a bit on the specific tempeh you use) and is kind of crumbly/chunky. If the texture of tofu is too squishy or you find it too bland, try tempeh! :)

Just in case I want to make it again (highly likely) or you, dear reader, are in search of such a recipe, here it is:

Thai green curry with tempeh
1 pack of tempeh (such as Turtle Island's), cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1 medium onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped or minced
1 tbsp Thai green curry paste (check it's without shrimp if your a veg*n)
1 tbsp canola oil
1 carrot, finely sliced
1 large zucchini/courgette, cut in half and sliced
1/2 small can water chestnuts and/or bamboo shoots
1 jalapeno chilli, seeded and minced
1 can of light coconut milk
1 tsp salt
Optional: 1 lime, chopped peanuts and green onion (scallions) for garnish

Heat the oil and sautee the onions, garlic, chilli and curry paste over medium heat, until they are translucent. Add the coconut milk, stir well and heat the coconut milk a little. Add salt to taste and add more curry paste if you like your cury hotter. Once the coconut milk is simmering gently, add the tempeh cubes. Simmer on medium low for about 10 mins, then add the carrots, water chestnuts/bamboo shoots and zucchini. (You could add bell peppers too). Add water or veggie stock if the mixture is too thick. Simmer for another 10 mins until the veggies are just cooked but not too soft.

Serve over rice, and sprinkle with the peanuts and green onions. Squeeze some lime juice over the top.

Note: To make this more authentic, add kaffir lime leaves (lime yest works too), Thai basil and Asian eggplant to the ingredients. Some recipes add sugar too, and of course fish sauce if you're not veg*n (light soy sauce can be substituted).

Image from DeathByBokeh (Flickr)

More South African music info

Ian MacFarlane left a comment on this recent entry, and provided a link to his blog of the best South African bands (in his humble opinion). It's quite fun to see the 80's pictures of 80's bands (most of which I had never heard of). I especially like the photo of Sweatband (which featured Wendy Oldfield - someone that managed to re-invent herself and stay popular into the 90's).

Glad to see Ian's already done Brigh Blue (official website, more info). They are one of my all-time favourite SA rock/pop bands. I came to their music somewhat late (they broke up in the late 80's or early 90's I think - before I really got into music). Weeping is a phenomenal song, even more so when you realize what the lyrics are about. It was also voted song of the century by SA Rock Digest / Amuzine. As John Samson wrote in 2000:

It still amazes me that the SABC did not ban it for it's blatant musical reference to N'Kosi Sikelel' iAfrica, let alone for it's political charged lyrics, yet this powerful track reached number 1 on the Radio 5 charts. This is a big song in the same way that Bohemian Rhapsody is big, but without the obscure lyrics.

Other SA artists/bands that made an impression on me were Mango Groove (sadly dated now), Just Jinger (I'm ashamed to say), Tananas, Tony Cox, Boo!, Benguela, Van der Want and Letcher, Urban Creep, Sharkbrother. Tananas definitely warrant their own post in the future. (I wrote about the bass player, Gito Baloi, here, but writing about my positive memories would be good).

PS:
There's a comprehensive list of classic SA rock songs here (caveat: these are one person's pick). Some songs have links to samples you can listen to...

For comedy gold, turn to Pat Robertson

Yes, I know he's said and done some goofy things in the past that have already cemented his reputation as a comedy genius. Just this week he predicted mass killings in the US this year. (Less goofy, but hopefully no more accurate than his other predictions).

It should be no surprise then that his daily "news show", The 700 Club, is also good for a few laughs. I'd never seen it, so Yum Lass decided to record an episode which we watched yesterday. (You can watch it here)

Pat's segues between each segment are worth watching, for example this bit after a segment on a French-speaking woman that had been conveted to Christianity:

Pat: Je suis francais!
Co-host: Wow Pat, do you speak French?
Pat: Un perchais
Co-host awkwardly looks at the floor and grimaces. Pat looks sheepish.
Awkward silence...

Sadly this segment seems to be missing from the online version of the episode.

Things I Learnt from Stuff Magazine

Inspired by TheCultFigurine's InStyle Idiocy of the Month, I thought I'd take on the contents of my free* monthly periodical, Stuff Magazine. What did I learn from this month's issue?

Native Americans are psychic. This is according to Jami (a neighborhood knockout, and she doesn't use boxing gloves if you know what I mean...):

"I don't fall for pickup lines; I see right through them. I get vibes about people. Some would even call me psychic. I'm part Native American, and we are said to be psychic."

Magic is a great way to meet women. (This is why David Copperfield dated Claudia Schiffer). For example, if you meet a smoker at a nightclub, making their matchstick disappear and re-appear is bound to impress them. (Does anyone use matchsticks anymore? Besides, no-one in Seattle can smoke in a nightclub anymore, so this trick will mainly be of use if you hide in the bushes outside the club.)

Tired of mixing the alcohol with your Red Bull? Luckily there are now malt beverages that have the alcohol, caffeine, taurine, etc. all mixed for you. Sounds yummy! I wonder if The Guy's Guide to Wine will update their table to include a "If you like malt beverages with caffeine, you'll like _____ wine"?

Now we can come like girls. Thanks to the miracles of modern science, "the pleasure is no longer all theirs". (Those pesky women experience orgasms of greater length and higher intensity than men - and everyone knows men should be at the top of everything!) I wonder if the FDA has tested this stuff? ;)

*See this entry

Some South African music news

I came across this interview with the ex-members of the South Africa band Fetish - a favourite of mine from almost 10 years ago. The interview is a little old (from June last year) but has some good information about the challenges a fledgling rock band in SA faces. The members also comment on some of the current SA music (which I'm almost totally out of the loop from).

I was pleased to hear that Benguela [Myspace] recorded an album with another one of my heroes, Tony Cox. Benguela have sadly disbanded, but hopefully the Tony Cox album will be released in the coming year. In the meantime, I need to get some of the intervening Benguela CD's (I only have Sputnik) and relive the "old days" :)

Looking at the SA-based online music retailer OneWorld, I see that Johnny Clegg has a new album ("One Life") with all-new songs. The "Zulu Blanc" was really popular in South Africa and parts of Europe (France, ...), and even made it out to Seattle for a show a few years back. I wonder if he could be coaxed back for a show to promote his new album? Hello, folks at Dimitriou's Jazz Alley or Triple Door? (Or, perhaps more correctly, hello promoters that put on "World"/African music)

Another musician of note is Chris Chameleon, formerly of Boo! It looks like Chris has gone solo and done a few albums. The newest one is all in English, which tempts me to get some of his previous CDs with Afrikaans songs partly to torment Army Don. (He's responsible for some of my brain cells being occupied by Taiwanese pop and Swedish folk-rock music).
Chris has his CDs available on CD Baby, so US and European folks can buy them there instead of from OneWorld.

I wish more SA musicians used CD Baby to seel their music in the USA. First, because it'd work out cheaper (no expensive shipping from SA), Second because they're in Portland and Portland is just cool, Third because they pass on more money to the artists. (I hope that's true for foreign artists too).

You asked for it #1

It's interesting seeing what people search for that brings them here. Someone asked "What television shows are on in Cape Town, South Africa?" and landed up on my entry about shows I watched while growing up in SA.

Now, it's been a few years since I've lived in Cape Town, so I can't review what's on TV now, but I can provide some links and a rough guide to current TV there. The main broadcasters you'll find in South Africa are the SABC, e-TV, DSTV and M-Net. DSTV and M-Net require decoder boxes and ar emore expensive, so SABC and e-TV are the ones you can expect to find pretty much everywhere. e-TV is even headquartered in Cape Town, so it gets extra credit!

There's always bound to be a fair amount of sport on TV - cricket, rugby, soccer, etc. Often sport broadcasts will replace regular programming.

The SABC is the national broadcaster, and provides several channels. Most feature a mixture of local and foreign programming.

SABC3 features the most English-language programs, including showns from American and UK television channels. (Oprah, Law and Order and Footballers' Wives are on currently). Isidingo ("the need") is a very long-running local soapie on SABC3.

A local version of The Weakest Link is also shown. (I used to watch the host, Fiona Coyne, perform at the Nico Malan theatre way back...)

SABC2 features more local programming in Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa and other African languages.

The Afrikaans soapie 7de Laan is now on it's 1343rd episode. Yikes! 50/50 is a long-running environmental show that was always really good. Lentswe is a fairly new show that I've not seen, but that sounds interesting. It "aims to give voice to and stimulate the nation's poetic side by promoting all 'bedroom' poets to give their poetry the love it deserves."

SABC1 is a channel aimed at the youth, with many American movies and a few local documentaries and dramas. When we were black is a local drama on currently.

e-TV's websit is pretty kick-ass, so I won't summarise what's listed there. They break down their series into local versus foreign, but the local stuff seems a bit light. And why on earth are they showing Dallas?!!

DSTV is a digital subscription service that includes the SABC channels, e-TV, and M-NET, plus lots of foreign channels. (See the list here).

M-NET is the original subscription TV service, launched in South AFrica in 1985. Their channel line-up is here (seems busted, though). They have a long-running soapie too - Egoli (3949 episodes so far). It seems soapies are really popular!

The ABC

I came across this fun poem by Spike Milligan yesterday:

The ABC

'Twas midnight in the schoolroom
And every desk was shut
When suddenly from the alphabet
Was heard a loud "Tut-Tut!"

Said A to B, "I don't like C;
His manners are a lack.
For all I ever see of C
Is a semi-circular back!"

"I disagree," said D to B,
"I've never found C so.
From where I stand he seems to be
An uncompleted O."

C was vexed, "I'm much perplexed,
You criticise my shape.
I'm made like that, to help spell Cat
And Cow and Cool and Cape."

"He's right" said E; said F, "Whoopee!"
Said G, "'Ip, 'Ip, 'ooray!"
"You're dropping me," roared H to G.
"Don't do it please I pray."

"Out of my way," LL said to K.
"I'll make poor I look ILL."
To stop this stunt J stood in front,
And presto! ILL was JILL.

"U know," said V, "that W
Is twice the age of me.
For as a Roman V is five
I'm half as young as he."

X and Y yawned sleepily,
"Look at the time!" they said.
"Let's all get off to beddy byes."
They did, then "Z-z-z."

Superb New Year's Day lunch

Wow, sorry for the flood of new entries dear reader. Oh wait, I have two readers now! Readers! :)

We had a superb New Year's Day lunch yesterday at our place, re-creating some favourite dishes from Cafe Flora thanks to their cookbook. Their Hoppin' John fritters are one of my favourites and are served with cheesy grits and smoky, spicy collard greens.

Yum Lass was in charge of making most of the lunch and did an excellent job on the grits (who would have though that anything with the word grit in it would taste good?) She also made yummy corn and basil relish and a black-eyed pea salad. (Black-eyed peas are a New Year's tradition in her family).

I was in charge of the collard greens, which required smoked mushrooms. I did these the previous day on our Weber barbecue, using some hickory wood chips we had bought a while back. Smoking the mushrooms was quite easy, actually. Basic steps:

• Get some mushrooms - about 1/2 lb for this recipe. I used crimini.


• Make a charcoal fire, spread the coals out once they're covered in ash.


• Soak the wood chips in water for an hour or two, then make an open dish using aluminum foil (or use a foil pie plate), put the drained wood chips in this, and set it on top of the coals.


• Put the grill over the foil+wood dish, and place the mushrooms on the grill. I used foil under the mushrooms to prevent them from sticking to the grill or getting too much heat, but this blocked a lot of the smoke that was rising up from the wood - next time a perforated dish under the mushrooms would be good.


• Put the lid on the Weber, and make sure the holes are open. You should see a plume of smoke after 5-10 mins, depending on the heat of the coals and how wet your wood is.


• I smoked the mushrooms until the smoke stopped - about 30 mins. They had a nice smoky taste and smell, but were only slightly wilted and not very cooked.

The rest of the recipe is very simple (see the Flora book), and really delicious. If you've never been a fan of collard greens, this might just convert you!

Be it hereby resolved that

in 2007, I shall:

• Be more healthy and active. Gym or equivalent exercise 3 times a week.
• Meditate more often - I felt it made a noticeable difference when I did it once a week a few years ago. Once a week for starters would be good, although daily would be better.
• Brush up my French - 5 years of it in high school means I have the basics, and it's a pity to let it continue to rust away. I'll aim for speaking and reading/writing fluency by the end of the year.
• Travel somewhere fun - outside the US, somewhere I've not yet been.
• Get the house in good shape - While the house is fine (and feel more like hom every day) it needs some TLC. We need a new fence, outside painting, some lawn rejuvenation. Bathroom remodel(s) would be nice too. Maybe windows too? (gulp!)
• Kick arse at work (preferrably not my own). No more wabbing*, no more procrastination. Work is actually fun when you get down to it and don't have self-imposed nightmare deadlines. :)
• Really appreciate my Yum Lass - s'good, s'nice to be with her.
• Teach Army Don to read. Maybe he can teach me how to write in return?

*Wabbing - Exhibiting Work Avoidance Behaviour.

Happy Tweede Nuwejaar!

= Happy 2nd New Year!

Yes, it's the 2nd of January - a national holiday in South Africa, ostensibly since many people need a 2nd day to recover from the festivities on the 1st. There's an annual competition between the minstrel troupes in Cape Town that takes place on the 1st usually - this year the Muslim troupes will only be participating from today due to Sunday being Eid-ul Adha.

PS: The minstrels were called the Cape Coons when I was growing up, and the term seems to still be accepted in SA. (We're pretty thick-skinned and people happily term themselves "coloured" while the rest of the world has moved away from such terms).

From Wikipedia: "Although it is still called the Coon Carnival by Capetonians, local authorities have renamed the festival the Cape Town Minstrel Carnival, as foreign tourists find the term "coon" derogatory (there is some debate about this)." [1]

"Former South African president Nelson Mandela endorsed the carnival in 1986, and is a member of the Cape Town Minstrel Carnival Association, which presides over the event. " [2]

Sad news in the recent ICT bulletin

The past issue of the International Campaign for Tibet's news bulletin had several sad stories.

Somehow I didn't hear about the shooting of a Tibetan nun by Chinese police as she and others tried to cross the border between Tibet and Nepal. The incident was seen and filmed by several climbers at the Cho Oyu advance base camp near Mt Everest. (ICT story here and here, video here).

There was also an article in memory of conservationist Mingma Sherpa who died in the helicopter crash last year in which 24 people were killed.

A note from the culture desk

Here are some quick notes about books, movies and music that I've enjoyed recently:

Music: Rodrigo y Gabriela's eponymous album features some mind-blowing acoustic guitar work. If you like salsa, flamenco, or fast-paced fingerstyle guitar this is highly recommended! (YouTube videos of the lads here)

The new Decemberists CD is beautiful (and I was pleased to see the national attention they got via the Colbert Report green-screen challenge Guitarmageddon thing. Check out the video on Comedy Central if you know not of which I speak - it's worth it).

Books: A while back I finished reading The way we eat, which I'd recommend if you enjoyed The Omnivore's Dilemma and want to know more about what we eat and the impact our choices have on the world.

I really enjoyed John Moe's Conservatize Me - he has a light, fluid writing style and the book is chock-full of humour (I chuckled or laughed out aloud on almost every page).

Now I've moved on to something completely different: The Island of the Sequined Love Nun. Christopher Moore has a deliciously twisted mind (a cross between Douglas Adams and Kurt Vonnegut). So far I'm enjoying this - it's a bit pulpy and definitely an easy read, but the writing is decent and the plot is original (to say the least).

Movies: If you are an extremely patient moviegoer or have an unnatural fascination for the CIA, you'll like The Good Shepherd. It's directed by Robert de Niro (who also plays a small role in the film), and is an interesting look at the foundation of the CIA (and the Order of the Skull and Bones). A K pointed out, it would have been nice to see more of what the main character, Edward, does. Being the head of the counter-surveilance department at the CIA probably requires more than shuffling aound with a stoney expression all day, ignoring your wife, and making ships in bottles.

For some info on the real person that the movie is based on, see this Wikipedia page.

More anagrams

See if you can guess who is who without using an anagramming tool.

• Aha Mist
• A Maple, or Ale Map
• I Rap
• A Crier, or Racier
• Orb Head, or Ah Bored or Do Rehab
• A Tense Hip, Pains Thee, Apish Teen or Hate Penis

Hmm, that last one might be too crude to actually use much.

On hoboes

Did you know that a hobo once ran the US treasury? That, and more, may be learned by reading the excellent book by John Hodgman, The Areas Of My Expertise.

Even though he can't read, Army Don* seemed quite happy when Yum Lass** and I gave him a copy of this very book for Xmas. When he got to the list of 700 Hobo Names, he couldn't help reading the first few out aloud, and we all agreed that the best one (at least on the first page of the list) is All-but-dissertation Tucker Dummychuck. You can see the full list online here, along with pictures of the hoboes submitted by real people.

And as an extra treat for those that can't read or like listening to things, KUOW's The Beat featured a repeat of an interview with John Hodgman. It's fun.

---

* An anagram of his real name, to protect the innocent.
** Another anagram.

Christmas comes early for tech support

It seems our company tech support guys are on vacation already. My main computer's power supply seems to have thrown a wobbly (technical term) after the winter storm last week knocked out power in Seattle.

I managed to call tch support a few days ago and get a real live person to open a case for my issue, but since then no-ones been over to fix the machine. Calls to tech support over the two days are met with 30+ minutes of the most God-awful musak ever. Every few minutes a lady's calm voice tells me all analysts are busy, and my call is very important to them, but I know the truth: They're all drinking eggnog at home!

In the meantime I managed to use my computer kung-fu to get 50% of my drives online in a temporary machine. Stay tuned for the next exciting installment!

Update: As luck would have it, I made it through to a real person after another long wait, and this time gave my cell number to the tech. I got a call over lunch, and came back to find my machine ready to go with a new power supply. Woohoo! Thanks Mr. Tech Guy, and happy Chrismahannukwanzaa!

Retro games

I recently came across Retrospec, a group of hobbyists dedicated to recreating classic Spectrum and Commodore 64 games.

They have several completes games available on their website, including one of my all-time-favourites, Head Over Heels. I'm happy to report that Head Over Heels works well on Vista! :)

Then of course, there are emulators that let you run the original C64 and Speccy games on your PC. Some quick links: Gamebase64, Lemon64, C64.com, VICE

Somehow I'm more inclined to play remakes of the classic games that use the improved graphics and sound capabilities of modern PC's, but every now and then it's fun to fire up the originals and bask in their SID-tuney glory!

Wine Atlas

I've been enjoying one of my birthday gifts a lot recently. A bought me a copy of The Wine Atlas, and it has a lot of great general information on wine and grapes, as well as detailed maps of the great wine-producing regions of the world.

The southern hemisphere gets a bit of a short shrift (as usual), especially South Africa, which gets very few pages and only a map of the Paarl region. (What, no Stellenbosch, Franschoek, not to mention the other up-and-coming regions in the Western Cape, like Durbanville?)

Possibly one reason that the book spends less time and paper on the southern hemisphere (and even the USA) is that "new world" wines are much easier to understand simply by looking at the label. You'll usually be able to tell (unambiguously) the winery, grape type, vintage, and area the wine comes from. The back label will usually tell you even more (like climate conditions in the year of harvest, wine-making technique used, type and length of barrel conditioning, etc.)

Old-world wines are much more confusing. Most label have no grape type listed. Instead you'll get the chateau/winery name (sometimes), sometimes with a whimsical name, the vintage, and appellation/regional origin. The appellation, if you have an encyclopedic knowledge, will tell you what grape type(s) are used, and usually the style of wine.

Having the atlas means I've actually been able to begin to understand where the various French AOC/Vin de Pays and Italian DOC/DOCG regions actually are, what wineries are part of them, and what rules regulate the wine made there.

For example, take a recent French wine I drank: 2003 Domaine des Baumard Anjou Clos de la Folie. It's quite fun being able to look up the Anjou region in the atlas, read about the history and traditional wines made there, and see maps of the towns and vineyards/chateaux. I also found out that Anjou is mainly known for its rose and white wines, but that more wineries are experimenting with red wines nowadays.

For Italian wine, the atlas helps to seperate wines with similar-sounding names, like Montepulciano d'Abruzzo versus Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. It was also fun to look up Asti and see the familiar winery names (like La Serra, which belongs to Marchesi di Gresy).

It would be cool if there was an online wine atlas. (Google Maps or Virtual Earth maps overlaid with winery and vineyard info? Region names and borders, AOC/DOC/DOCG info. Maybe a nice mash-up to try to implement in the future?)

The Pinotage Club

(From Spittoon): Wine writer Peter May recently launched a blog dedicated to Pinotage (the uniquely South African grape variety).

I was pleased to see that Pinotage is being grown outside SA (in New Zealand and the US, based on the articles on the blog). Horton Vineyards, a US winery, plan to launch their first Pinotage next year.

Updated: 1/9/2007. Fixed Peter's name - thanks for the correction!

Credit-card fraud

Last night a friend was telling me about a recent surprise call she got from the Visa Fraud department. One Friday she had donated some money to four charities online, using her credit card. At 5AM the next morning, Visa were calling her to inquire about suspicious charges on her credit card.

That's a pretty quick turn-around and seems to implicate one of the charities she donated to. Either the charity was hacked, or a 3rd-party they contract with to process credit cards was hacked, or an employee somewhere along the line leaked the information.

All of this reminded me of how stupid and weak the current credit-card system is (and online shopping in general). Online merchants should not be able to store information in their systems that can later by used to charge you
A few years ago I was also the victim of credit-card fraud after vising South Africa. (The most likely point that my card information was "stolen" was when I bought some CDs in a store at JHB airport - I'm guessing my card info was copied down there or the card was cloned).

Online credit-card fraud seems to be the most rampant - and there's a large underground market in stolen card numbers and customer information. So why is it that Visa, Mastercard et al haven't come up with a more secure solution?

One-time use cards (1, 2, 3)have been around for a while now, and sound like a good stop-gap solution, since the underlying credit-card processing system can remain unchanged. Some card issuers (MBNA, Discover, CitiBank) offer this to their customers, and some banks that issue Visa cards offer it, but not all. (Not mine).

"Verified by Visa" is another solution, but doesn't seem to be being used by many people.

PS: If you're using a debit card for online purchases, be aware that the bank will not cover you for fraudulent charges (beyond a tiny amount, I believe). You're much better off using a credit card online - if fraudulent charges are made, you will not be held liable.

Blood Diamonds

Anil Dash has a post today about diamonds, following up to a post he did four years ago. I'm not sure how I feel about buying diamonds myself - I oscillate between not-so-bad-if-you-know-they-are-conflict-free to industrial-diamonds-only to none-at-all.
I definitely think it's worth knowing where they come from if you are intending buying them, though.

I was looking forward to seeing the movie, but after reading the first comment on Anil's blog, I'm less inclined. If Warner really did promise artificial limbs to amputees they hired as extras, and has reneged on that promise, they can whistle for my $9.

Snoek

Cooksister has a great entry on snoek, a fish commonly eaten in the Western Cape in South Africa. In a way, snoek is to the W.Cape what salmon is to the Pacific Northwest. Cooksister was lucky enough to find some in the UK (despite most Brits not liking the stuff - it was imported in canned form during WWII, and probably didn't taste great. Plus it's associated with deprivation and hard times - a bit like SPAM). I haven't seen any for sale in the USA (not that I've asked around too much).

I really like snoek and have fond memories of snoek braais when I was growing up. There's nothing quite like a half snoek, basted with butter and garlic, grilled on a charcoal fire. My aunt's mom used to make a mean snoek pate too... And then there was the frequent outing to Hout Bay to buy snoek in all shapes and sizes at Snoekies (a large seafood processor that had a "factory shop" open to the public).

It was also common to see people selling fresh snoek from the back of their bakkies (USA: trucks) during the summer, but my mom could never bring herself to buy fresh snoek. She had a really bad experience once with a snoek my dad brought home from the harbour, the rule being she had to clean and cook the fish and he would take care of the fishing or buying. this particular snoek turned out to be full of worm-like intestinal parasites, the sight of which was permanently engraved on my mom's brain. Luckily my uncle and his friend Michelle provided fresh braaid snoek on several occasions after the gruesome event, or I would probably never have had any!

Bjarne Stroustrup interview

Something for the geeks out there: an interview with Bjarne. As Ali G might say "He's the geezer wot gave us C-plusity-plus".
Why's this article interesting? From the subtitle: "the inventor of the C++ programming language, defends his legacy and examines what's wrong with most software code."

Every few weeks there'll be a flare up of the old C/C++-vs-Managed-Code argument on the programming lists at work. It's certainly true that C and C++ both let you shoot yourself in the foot easily (and have nice exploitable security bugs in your code, such as buffer-overflows), but C++ also has the added tendency to introduce really nasty, hard-to-track-down bugs when you don't really understand what's happening under the covers. As long as you know exactly what you and the compiler, and the standard libraries (if you use them) are doing, you'll be fine.

C#/managed code generally isolate you from the nasty details of what's happening under the covers (at least, if you just use managed code and don't need to interoperate with native code). You don't need to worry about the difference between a container of objects and a container of pointers. No smart pointers to use or not use. And generally great built-in standard libraries.

Although I am not a C# and managed code expert, my take (and most other peoples) is that they're definitely a move in the right direction in terms of preventing stupid bugs from having security impacts. No more BO's and memory-management woes. Managed code is not automatically free from security bugs though...

Just 'coz it's green, doesn't make it guacamole

This is not exactly earth-shattering, I know, but it struck me as amusing anyway. From R:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003454425_guacamole30.html Kraft guacamole is essentially a whipped paste made from partially hydrogenated soybean and coconut oils, corn syrup, whey, and food starch. Yellow and blue dyes give it the guacamole green color.

Shocked! Shocked, I am!
If you've ever tasted Kraft guacamole and real guacamole (or even just real avocado), you'd know it has barely a passing resemblance to the real thing. More like green cream-cheesey-type-stuff. The lawsuit is silly, but hopefully this will encourage more people to RTFIL (Read The Flaming Ingredients List).

For better pre-made guac, I heart Trader Joe's. As usual, they had some fun naming their's and called it Avocado's Number. From this article:

This dip pays homage to you mathe-magicians out there; the name is a play on Avogadro's number. As the label says, "Admittedly, there aren't 6.0221367 x 10^23 avocados in here, but 5 plus avo's isn't bad!" At $2.99 apiece, this godsend of modern grocery goodness costs less than if you bought the five avocados fresh.

My favourite guac from TJ's, though, is the one with fire-roasted tomatoes on top.

Darn, Steph got the easy test!

Steph became a US citizen a few months back. Now it looks like they're about to make the test a bit harder (probably to keep twits like me from becoming citizens, heh...)

See how well you do on questions from the current test here. (Uh-oh... I only got 35%)

Disposable email addresses

I noticed this on /. : 10-Minute Mail, a new service that lets you create a "throw-away" email address to use when signing up with a new online service. Most services require you to "verify" your email address by clicking on a link they send you, and usually once this is done, you don't want to ever get email from them again. (If you do, you would consider it spam).

As the name indicates, your 10-Minute-Mail account is only valid for 10 minutes (you can extend this if needed). That is normally plenty time to validate the address. There are two big disadvantages with this system, though:

1. Sometimes you may actually want to get email from the online service, for example if you forget your password and they email you a new one. I don't know if 10-Minute-Mail lets you re-activate an email address when you know it is about to receive email you want to read?


2. The email address generated is not very easy to remember (e.g. mail44901@10minutemail.com). If your email address is your sign-in/account name, you're stuck remembering a seperate, cryptic email for each service.

An alternative is http://www.dodgeit.com/, which provides free, receive-only email accounts. You can choose the address (good), and subscribe to a RSS feed to get notified when new mail arrives (nice). A slight downside is that since everyone shares the @dodgeit.com domain, you probably won't be able to get bob@dodgeit.com or amazon@dodgeit.com.

A solution that myself and a few friends use requires having your own domain (quite cheap), and having the domain set up to allow "catch-all" email forwarding. The way this works is that any email received by you domain that doesn't match a real account is forwarded to a real email address you specify (and that no-one can see publicly).

So, if you are signing up with CoolNewStuff.com, you could use an email address of CoolNewStuff@mydomain.com. Then, the few initial emails you get from CoolNewStuff.com would be sent to your real address. If at some point you start getting spam sent to this email address, you can filter it out easily.

Why not just use a single fake email address for all your online services? So that you can figure out who to blame if your account starts getting spam (usually this means the company sold your information, is spamming themselves, or has been hacked).

Winter is here!

Wow! November has been quite a month in the Pacific NW.
First we had record rainfalls and flooding, now an arctic storm has dumped several inches of snow around the Puget Sound and left the streets treacherously icy. I worked from home today and took a stroll at lunch-time to enjoy the sunshine. Despite being clear and sunny, the peak temperature today was in the low 20's F.

Here are some pics:


A patch of thick ice that had been broken up into chunks by a car


A snow-covered tree


The outside of our house

It looks like it we're in one or two more nights of below-freezing temperatures (which should make the morning commutes interesting), and maybe even more snow tomorrow night.

In the meantime, my mostly-snow-capable car (a Subaru) is stuck in the garage with a smashed rear windshield*, so I've been taking the bus to work for the past few days. With a bit of luck the windshield will be replaced on Thursday and I will be more mobile come rain, sleet or snow.

(* I parked outside a house near Cafe Flora and got a rock thrown through the window by a lawnmower... Lucky me!)

Lillet, Kina Lillet...

From this article on IOL, it looks like the new James Bond film has caused increased interest in Lillet.

On-screen Bonds have usually ordered a "vodka martini - shaken, not stirred". But in Casino Royale, which premiered earlier this month, actor Daniel Craig lists Bordeaux aperitif Lillet as an ingredient of the spy's favourite tipple."Three measures of Gordon's (gin), one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet, shake it over ice then add a thin slice of lemon peel," Bond asks a waiter as he duels with his adversary in a high-stakes game of poker.

That repeat of the recipe from Ian Fleming's first Bond novel has prompted viewers to contact the firm, which has just seven staff and has dropped the word Kina from its name.

More on Allegro

A few days ago I wrote about Scrabble and mentioned the Allegro graphics library.
It turns out that the creator of Allegro, Shawn Hargreaves, is now at Microsoft and has a blog.

He works on XNA Game Studio Express which looks quite interesting. Read his introductory blog post here, and there's lots more info on XNA on his blog.

Bits and bobs

Here are a few random bits and bobs, hand-culled from the Internets for you my faithful readers.

From the girls-you-ought-to-know-about department:

• CNet has published a list of the top 10 girl geeks throughout history. Someone must have been sitting on their brains when they compiled the list, since Paris Hilton is included. I was also surprised to see Daryl Hannah, but she actually sounds far geekier than I gave her creditfor. (Liebrary, a game she co-created, sounds like fun). Who would you like to see on this list?

From the I-can't-believe-I-missed-this department:

• The Decemberists played at the Paramount on the 17th of November. The Seattle Times has a glowing review. I need to hear/purchase their new album, The Crane Wife. Got that, Santa?
• Prime Suspect 7 was recently aired on PBS. Now I need to wait for the DVD to be released (or pray for a repeat broadcast).

From the funny-stuff-that-will-offend-someone department:

• Wolverine_nun had a link to this Harry Enfield video on YouTube: "Women, Know Your Limits". There's a lot of other good stuff from him on YouTube - all of it new to me. I'd heard of Spitting Image (which he did voices for), but otherwise not seen him before. Other triva from his Wikipedia entry: He was the first guest on BBC's Top Gear in 2002.

From the penny-stocks-and-sexy-pills department:

• EWeek has a good article describing the link between botnets and the recent surge in spam. It's sobering to see that almost 50% of the infected hosts are running XP SP2 - despite all the security improvements Microsoft made. Vista will fare much better, I'm sure, but it will take a good many years to get those SP2 machines retired/upgraded.

New RSS feed

I noticed that FeedBurner (and/or Outlook12) wasn't too happy with the new feed from the beta Blogger, so I've switched to this instead:
http://beta.blogger.com/feeds/11494708/posts/default?alt=rss

If you notice bogus dates (1/1/2006) for all new posts, then please switch to the above feed.

Best use of a "Tears for Fears" song in advertising

... has to be the advert for the XBO 360 game, "Gears of War". (YouTube version)
PS: The game's website is pretty cool - scary, though.

The song is "Mad World", Tears for Fears' debut single. The version used in the advert is a cover by Gary Jules. It originally appeared at the end of the movie Donnie Darko. (Which I still need to see).

I was a huge Tears for Fears fan growing up - the first album of theirs I bought was "The Seeds of Love" and I loved listening to the "set" of 4 songs that flow together. After their breakup, they disappeared until "Tears Roll Down" came out in '92 (Orzabal was basically a solo artist using the Tears for Fears name still).

The next two albums ("Elemental" and "Raoul and the Kings of Spain") didn't make much of an impression on me. Orzabal and Smith finally reunited and released a new album in 2004 ("Everybody Loves a Happy Ending") which I've listened to a few times but didn't really love. Perhaps I've just outgrown my earlier tastes?

Scrabble: Man vs. Machine

The Seattle Times today has a story about recent man-machine match in Seattle. Jim Kramer is the 2006 U.S. Scrabble Open champion, and played a best-of-3 match against RealNetwork's new Scrabble game. Jim managed to beat the computer 2-1, and walked away with the $10,000 prize.

Jim said:

...it was a victory that he wouldn't expect five years from now. The computer programs will be much more sophisticated, he said. "They'll just have much more brute force."

I'm not sure how much stronger Scrabble games will be in 5 years - Scrabble is a fairly simple game for computers to play (unlike, say, Go). The mechanics of the game have documented algorithms that can be used (Appel & Jacobson's "The world's fastest Scrabble program", for example). The tricky bit is the strategy - often playing the highest-scoring move will not ensure a win against a strong human opponent.

This is the algorithm I implemented for fun many years back when I was in university (as a hobby). The project was really fun and had some interesting challenges, the first of which was filling in the few gaps in the above paper so that the algorithm was clear. Other fun things (at least they seemed fun to me at the time):

• Where to get words from? The most essential part of a Scrabble game is having a good list of words - they should be legal Scrabble words of course. I found a few free word lists online and used them, but had to try to prune out invalid words (proper nouns, acronyms). Eventually I found a nice OWL/OSW word list (I think it was 2-8 letter words) and augmented that with some longer words from my other source. I think in the end I had 130,000+ words.



• Storing the dictionary in a file. The naive solution is to use a big text file. The program would then read this in and build a DAWG ("directed acyclic word graph" incase you care) for use when searching for words. However this was slow, and the file was huge. So, I started playing with ways to build the DAWG once, and save it as a binary file that was smaller and could be loaded quickly.



• Compressing the dictionary. It turns out that there is a lot of redundancy in English words, and the DAWG has lots of sub-graphs that are redundant. This means wasted space on the disk (not such a big deal) and wasted memory (more of a big deal). I was coding all this in C/C++ and DJGPP (a free 32-bit compiler and port of the GNU C libraries). This meant I could use more than 640kb in DOS/Windows, but my home machine was not that beefy. (It was a 486SX with 4MB of RAM if I remember right). So, the huge dictionary I was using actually had problems fitting into memory unless I reduced it's size somehow. The solution was to look for the redundant parts of the DAWG and "fold them" onto themselves. Finding matches for sub-graphs was fun, and I had many iterations of my "dictionary builder and packer" tool. Initially it would take an overnight run for it to produce the final output file, but in the end it did its job in an hour or so! :)



• Graphics. Since the DJGPP compiler and libraries I was using were pretty basic, I didn't have fancy Windows-style graphics I could use (no menus, windows, etc.) I used the fantastic free graphics library Allegro instead. This still meant I had to cobble together my own menus and code to handle the placement of Scrabble tiles. I also had a feature that would let you ask the computer for "hints". It would basically figure out all the possible moves you could make, and sort them in descending score. You could then drag a scrollbar and flip through all the possible words - really quickly.



• Strategy. I left this to last and never really did anything wonderful (by this stage I was ready to move on to something else...) My game simply chose the highest-scoring move it could find and played that... It was still pretty hard to beat.

Sadly, the code to my Scrabble game disappeared when I upgraded to a new machine (stupid me for not having enough backups)!

New York trip

So, some more about our trip to New York last weekend. We stayed in a nice hotel (for the price) in Manhattan on W 57th Ave - the Holiday Inn Midtown. It's within easy walking distance of Carnegie Hall and the Columbus Circle metro station, so it worked for us. Nothing too fancy in terms of the room, but everything was clean and the beds were comfortable.

We managed to fit in most of the big touristy attractions - Times Square, a ferry ride to Staten Island to see the Statue of Liberty, Grand Central Station, Central Park, Wall Street, Chinatown, Little Italy, SOHO, and even a bit of Harlem. We did a LOT of walking, which was actually great (I'm always amazed at how good I feel after a "walking vacation" - like when we visited San Francisco). This is probably more a sad testament to the lack of exercise I get normally, but my legs feel noticeably stronger and fitter after a few days walking around a new city.

We rode the metro a fair deal - the $7 day use passes are great if you know you'll be doing a few trips on the subway, and the stations are sprinkled around pretty regularly so that you can easily pop around and see the whole Island easily. The subways itself is defintely a little old and funky - bad smells, vagrants and the odd loonie are not out of place. It's also HOT - even in November. (We were were blessed with mostly good weather during our trip and only had rain for one day). I wonder what the subway will look like in 50 year's time - it will probably need a major overhaul at some point.

Sadly we didn't get to do some things I would have liked (plenty to do next time we visit). Some items still on the to-do list are: Visit Ellis Island's museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bronx Zoo, Brooklyn, go up the Empire State building, see a taping of The Daily Show (hey - it would be cool!), see a show or two, go inside the public library, do more window shopping in the insanely expensive fashion, jewellery, etc. stores, eat out in some of veg*n restaurants in the city (and maybe try Nobu or some of the other famous fancy restaurants).

Phew, that's a long list. So, what sticks out as a the best bit of our past trip?

• The Staten Island ferry ride. The view of the Statue of Liberty (SoL) is great, the ferry moves like a NY taxi cab (ZOOM out of the ferry terminal). The SoL actually looked smaller than I imagined it would - it's not terribly tall, and its fame and reputation as an icon of freedom make you think it will on the scale of Mt Rainier :)


• A great food find. After roaming around, we ended up in NOHO outside the Corner Shop (Citysearch). This is funky little bistro/cafe with a modern flair. They serve brunch, lunch and dinner, and the service was great. Their food is also very nice - nothing too fancy and pretentious, but all interesting, often organic, and nicely prepared. I had steamed mussels with crusty bread, Belgian beer, and a tuna burger with "provençal fries" (Mmm... Garlic!) They had lots of veg*n options for A and the rest of the group. They advertise the "best cookies in NYC" on their menu - something to try next time - we'll defintely be back!


• Yummy cannoli. Billed as the best on Little Italy, I'd believe it! (Sadly I don't remember the name of the place, with some sleuthing I might be able to figure it out...)

Lowlight:

• Diva (Citysearch) missed the mark with their crappy service and by trying to rip us off. (See A's review on Citysearch for details). Avoid!

Coco La Ti Da

So, Raymond Chen's blog has an entry about Sue McCown's new dessert-only restaurant which opened recently. I haven't been yet, but completely agree with his comments - her desserts are amazing, and used to be a perfect post-Symphony treat when she was at Earth & Ocean.

I heard a teaser for the local radio show The Works which aired last night, and features a segment on Sue's new restaurant. You can listen to it here, skip to around 14:45 to hear the bit about Coco La Ti Da.

Harvey Manning

I was sad to hear that Harvey Manning died on Sunday, aged 81. He was the Seattle hiking and nature conservation hero. He wrote loads of hiking books along with Ira Spring, and I quickly discovered their books after coming here seven years ago. I've relied on these books so often I can't imagine life here without them, and am deeply grateful for the forests and trails that have been preserved as a result of his hard work.

From his Wikipedia entry I see that he did a 2-year hike around the shoreline of the Puget Sound and wrote an autobiography detailing the trip. Something to get out of the library for sure...

Back from NY

A and I got back from New York just after midnight (our flight was delayed) and I am looking forward to blogging about our trip. Sadly we didn't get to do some of the things we hoped to (such as visit the Met), so we have an excellent excuse to go back. We had a lot of fun walking around Manhattan, exploring the various neighborhoods, and trying to figure out the Metro system.

In other news, I am tickled pink to see that CookSister linked to me! Woohoo! Now I feel pressured to write more often (and write more creatively, as she has done so often).

I've also moved to the new Blogger Beta, which (finally!) includes tag support - hopefuuly from now on you can search for food, wine, beer or other topics that interest you. (I used Technorati tags for a while, but got tired of manually entering them).

Is your moustache or beard stealing your beer?

From Spittoon:

Are stout drinkers more inclined to grow a moustache than non-stout drinkers? What about beards? Are long-bearded predisposed to drink stout than others? I ask as apparently 162,719 pints of Guinness are lost in stout drinker's moustaches and beards every year. Seems an awfully exact number

Sê "tata" vir die Groot Krokodil

(= The Big Crocodile, one of PW Botha's nicknames).

The Independant Online has an excellent article detailing PW Botha's life:
A leader who was ruled by his fearsome temper

People in SA are divided over his legacy and whether to give him a state funeral.

Happy Hallowe'en!

Tonight is All Hallow's Eve, which means roaming bands of kiddie-winks in cute outfits, and loads of candy*. In the run-up to today, we've been doing various Halowe'en things:

Headless Horseman

Pumpkin carving - I decided to do a "complicated" pattern that came with the carving tools. (Yes, you can buy special carving tools - luckily they are cheap!) So, we now have a headless horseman outside our door (see the picture) - it turned out really well, I think.

The House

We had a really fun Halowe'en party at our place on Saturday and have some pics up on Flickr (sorry, friends and family only - ping me if you haven't been invited and I'll do so).

At work today many people brought their young kids around for trick or treating. It must be quite surreal for the tiny 2 to 4 year-olds to walk down a hallway with large mounds of candy* outside each door. Most kids do the obligatory sing-song-screech "Twikawtweet", grab a handful of the good stuff, and move on in quick succession. The adult equivalent would probably be something like walking past a row of ATM machines that have $20 bills sticking out. Ka-ching! Move on...

* candy == sweets

And finally, a cool poem with a suitably spooky tone:

The Listeners by Walter De La Mare

'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller's head
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
'Is there anybody there?' he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller's call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
'Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:-
'Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,' he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.

New Yaaark

Wow, I'm on a roll here tonight!
Anyway, A and I are heading off to New York for a long weekend in November. (It's a big family outing - A's brothers are coming too). I had no idea how hard it is to find a hotel in NY over a holiday weekend - and they're expensive! We eventually found a place in Manhattan that isn't too expensive and should allow us to all share a room to cut costs. (Sniff! No hanky-panky...)

I was toying with the idea of trying to see a show by Mikanic while we're there - one of the band members went to university with me at UCT, and was part of the popular SA band, Sons of Trout. We'll have to see how things work out, but I think we'll be too busy and too pinned down in Manhattan to make it out to a show.

I'm really excited about visiting NY - we'll defintely do a museum ot maybe two. (The Met is top of our list). Hopefully we'll get some good food. And a peek at some of the famous landmarks (Ellis Island has been mentioned a few times, so that I can get the full immigrant experience)...

Some random links

1. http://www.comingzune.com/ - An advertising site for Microsoft's Zune. Worth looking at for the quirky design and interesting music videos / graphics. "The Second Coming of the Monkey God" is weirdly good.

2. http://www.msdewey.com/ - A web search engine with a human face.

3. IE7 was released a few days ago! If you don't have it installed yet, I recommend installing it. (You want to be one of the cool kids, right?)

4. www.hopeisemo.com/ is an amusing mockumentary/videoblog by a teenage girl. Feel the angst...

5. The Decemberists have a new CD out (The Crane Wife). We saw them perform this summer at ZooTunes, and they were awesome live. A safe purchase even though I've not heard the album.

6. DJ Shadow has a new CD out too. This requires listening-to before I decide if I like it.

Meat labels

The NYT has an article on Whole Foods' new meat labeling strategy. The initiative was started by Whole Foods’ chief executive, John P. Mackey, a vegan who has been increasingly outspoken on animal-rights issues.

I think if you're going to eat meat, you should know where it came from and how the animal was raised, so I'm in favour of this.
Now, when will we have glass-sided slaughterhouses open to the public? :)

Oregon mushrooms

While in Oregon, we went on a great walk through the woods near Susan's house. I was on the lookout for mushrooms, but as usual A saw all of them before me! :)

We found three "interesting" ones that I took back home to identify.

The first was Coprinus Comatus (Shaggy Mane) - there were dozens of the tall, white, unopened mushrooms along the path we were hiking on, and many older mushrooms that had started disintegrating. At first I thought these were two different mushrooms, but it was soon clear that the black, inky ones were the "grown-up" versions of the white ones. Identification once I got home was quite easy, and now I think I'll be able to spot these without any problems.
Apparently they're good eating too, used in soups and stews.

The next was a bolete with a viscid (slimy) cap and yellow-green pores. At home I set it up to get spore prints overnight, and found brown spores. Identifying this one was a bit more tricky, and I'm still not 100% sure, but it seems to be a Suillus caerulescens.

The last was a gilled mushroom, slightly viscid when wet, with a tan-brown cap and white stipe, and yellow-brown gills. Small dark-brown hairs on the cap, which was darker in the center and became tan on towards the edge. Spore print was creamy-white. The stip was hollow and filled with a fluffy white material. There were the remnants of a partial veil present, but not a large, frilly annulus. This seems to be a Armillariella mellea (Honey Mushroom), although the annulus and cap in pictures look a little different.

Potgooi and other language stuff

I was looking around for "Afrikaans news for dummies" as podcasts. (One of Raymond's tips for learning a new language is to listen to the daily news read for foreigners - there are e.g. Swedish and German ones available).

No luck finding Afrikaans news podcasts - I came across the SABC's Afrikaans radio station that streams their content (RSG), and have a few downloads, but not the daily news. (There's a big list of SA streaming radio here - I'll check out some of the other likely Afrikaans candidates in the future - )

I did manage to find several Afrikaans podcasts (called "potgoois" in Afrikaans), just do a web search for potgooi and you'll find them. Most are pretty lame (music, lame interviews, chit-chat).

Now to look for French news for dummies... Oh wait, Raymond found that already!

Guy's Guide to Wine

Oh frabjous day! The good folks over at Dancing Bull Wines have finally released their guide to wine for guys. (I wrote about it earlier)

Some gems from a quick look through it:

• Guys eat pizza (with meat, pepperoni, or veggies), burgers/grilled food, Asian food, BBQ, Italian subs, spaghetti, mac & cheese, wings, burritos and salad.
  Salad has the caveat "She's going to order it, so you may as well know what wine to pair with salad". Apparently pepperoni is not meat. And BBQ is not grilled. (OK, maybe it's smoked).

• The "You understand beer, wine will follow" section is an amusing guide to wine styles using beer styles as the key.
  Most Americans outside microbrew-land seem to like Coors, Miller, Bud, etc. So, I guess, using the key, that means they like Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling and Pinot Grigio. (AKA "girly wines", according to another wine-for-men marketing campaign)

Seen in Oregon

Body piercing
saved my life
Thank you Jesus!

That was the slogan on a sign outside a church in Eugene. A and I would chuckle every time we saw it, but I only really got it once we were back in Seattle.

Mushroom dinner

I cooked a fun mushroom-themed dinner last night, and was very pleased with the results!
This was all a prelude to watching the season premier of Battlestar Galactica - which totally rocked!

Here's a quick run-down of the meal and quick recipes for the bits I cooked*

Appetizers:

• Crostini with parmigiano reggiano and sauteed chanterelles in a marsala cream sauce

Main course:

• Fusilli with creamy chicken of the woods and thyme sauce

Recipes:

Crostini with parmigiano reggiano and sauteed chanterelles in a marsala cream sauce

1 tsp olive oil
1 tsp unsalted butter
1/4 lb of chanterelles, cleaned and broken into pieces
2 small shallots, minced
1 tbsp heavy cream
1-2 tbsp marsala wine (I used dry)
Salt and pepper

I bought my chanterelles at Whole Foods (PCC in Issaquah had them for less, but was too far away to make it there between work and dinner). The ones at Whole Foods were a little sad, but picking through them I got a few decent ones - probably about 1/4 lb.

Clean the chanterelles, preferably with a brush or moist cloth. Cut off the dried-out ends and any other sad bits. Pull them apart and break them into small pieces with your fingers (this is fun, they have a great stringy texture!) Heat the butter and oil in a saucepan over med-high heat and add the shallots. Sautee until they are translucent and start going brown. Add the chanterelles and toss to coat. Add a pinch of salt and cook the mushrooms for 5-10 minutes, until they have stopped giving off liquid. Add the marsala and simmer for a minute or two - the mixture should be slightly wet, but not soupy. Add the cream and remove from the heat. Stir and season to taste.

Server on toasted rounds of baguette topped with a thin slice of parmigiano.

Fusilli with creamy chicken of the woods and thyme sauce

1 bag fusilli pasta (450g or so)
2 small shallots
2 tsp olive oil
2 tsp unsalted butter
1 lb chicken of the woods mushrooms, cleaned and broken in bite-sized chunks
100 ml cream (about 6 tbsp)
1 cup vegetable stock or broth
a few sprigs of fresh thyme
salt and pepper

Chicken of the woods is an interesting-looking mushroom - large flat "shelves" that are bright yellow or orange. You want onesthat are young and not too large or woody. I washed mine well in running water and cut off the dried outer edge and base. You might also need to re-wash bits as you break it apart - I found some folds with pine needles and dirt as I was going. Again, the easiest way to get this into bite-sized chunks is using your fingers. The flesh is very much like cooked chicken.

Heat the oil and butter over med-high heat and sautee the shallots until clear and starting to turn brown. Add the mushrooms and toss, frying for a few minutes. They'll soak up the oil quickly, and some of them will get a nice brown "char" marks. Add the stock and thyme and simmer for 10 mins until the mushrooms are fully-cooked. (A splash of wine never hurts either - I had some dry marsala open so I added some) Add the cream and season to taste (Note: this dish needed quite a bit of salt).

Cook the pasta in salted water and toss in the sauce once cooked.

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* Yes, I cheated and got some mushroom phyllo thingies and dessert from Trader Joe's.

PSMS Exhibit

Just a quick shout-out for the annual Puget Sound Mycological Society exhibit, which is being held next weekend. For more info, see http://www.psms.org/exhibit.html

Sadly, I'll be away in Oregon, but if you're curious about mushrooms it looks well-worth attending. (Plus you get to taste some mushrooms prepared by "some of Seattle's finest chefs").

Mushrooms vs. Whole Foods

Mushrooms 1 : Whole Foods 0
(*See below)

So, I went to my last mushroom identification class last night. It was great fun! Instead of the regular instructor, we had a more informal class led by a young lady (err.. I'm really great with names, as usual), who went through some slides of the common mushrooms people collect around Seattle. This was interspersed with anectdotes of past foraging trips, interesting questions and suggestions from the class, and lots or ardent scribbling of notes. (Everyone wanted to know where to find mushrooms easily around suburbia, and good places for chanterelles...)

The class then moved into high gear when a German guy arrived - he was to be the cooking expert and do some cooking demos and tastings. He was obviously knowledgable and very entertaining to listen to - picture a cross between Sammy Hagar and Wolfgang Puck and that's him. He's travelled extensively and obviously knows his 'shrooms, but is far more laid-back about identification - you can tell he's more into eating them, instead of finding and identifying rare inedible varieties.

Coversation inevitably drifted towards the more gourmet, expensive and famous mushrooms that grow around here: chanterelles [2] and matsutakes.

Chanterelles are pretty tasty, and their texture is amazing - crunchy, chewy, almost rubbery. We had a delicious dish of sauteed chanterelles with shallots, garlic and cream during the class. Apparently it is very easy to find them around here, so I will have to try and forage some now that I have a decent idea of where to look, and how to spot the imposters.

I must admit I'm not familiar with matsutakes at all, beyond faint recognition of the name. You don't often see them on the menu outside high-end Japanese restaurants, but they're apparently *really* popular in Japan around fall. Since a nematode has sharply reduced the Japanese red pine population in the last 50 years, most matsutakes eaten in Japan are imported. Many come from the Pacific NW. Others come from China, Tibet, Korea, and recently they were discovered in Sweden.

Apparently the best way to learn how to identify matsutakes is to smell one. The smell is unique (Wikipedia describes it as "magnificently spicy, similar to cinnamon") and combined with their look is a good way to seperate them from non-edible and poisonouse look-alikes. Some of the more high-end food stores sell matsutakes, so keep an eye out for them and give them a sniff next time you see them.

Armed with this bit of advice, I stopped at the new Whole Foods in Sammamish on the way home (hey, it's right there!). I went in and luckily they had matsutakes! (I think they were labelled "common matsutake" - all medium-large and fully opened). I gave some a sniff, and found them milder and more perfumed than the Wikipedia description implies. More like a spicy nail varnish, maybe... I could probably do with a second sniffing opinion to be sure I got an accurate impression of the smell... (Interestingly, these matsutakes were reasonably cheap at $30/lb).

* Now on to some bitching about this new Whole Foods:

• No paper bags for the gourmet mushrooms??! I'm not paying $30/lb for matsutakes and then putting them in a plastic bag! Even QFC and Safeway generally know to have paper bags available for the loose mushrooms.
• Mis-labeled 'shrooms: There was a sign for chicken of the woods that seemed to be referring to white straw-like mushrooms. While I wasn't sure what the white ones were, I knew they weren't chicken of the woods... Next to these were the actual chicken of the woods, which were signed as lobster mushrooms. Hmm...

Is it just me, or is this the "Whole Foods that foodies forgot"?

Where'd my socks go?!

The answer: they got metaphorically blown off at the symphony last night.

Stefan Jackiw was the visiting soloist and played Mendelssohn 's Violin Concerto. All I can is "Wow!" - this ranks as my favourite performance so far. Technically dazzling, fluid and energetic, mesmerizing to watch. I felt invigorated and deeply moved at the end of the piece. He fully deserved the standing ovation (the whole audience was on its feet), and he came out for six bows.

Interestingly, his parents are both physicists. His father is the noted physicist Roman W. Jackiw.

Mushrooom ID class

I signed up for an introductory course on mushroom identification at PSMS, and went for the second class on Sunday night. The first class covered some of the basics terminology and groups of mushrooms, and walked us through the use of a key to identify a mushroom. The second class mainly focused on keying mushrooms people had brought in. Almost everyone had been out over the weekend hunting for mushrooms, and there were some really impressive specimens!

A and I went out to Tiger Mountain earlier on Sunday and managed to find quite a few along the Bus Loop trail and Tradition Lake loop. Here are some of the mushrooms I found.

• Boletus Chrysenteron. I had a fairly old specimen which made identification tricky. The stipe had started blackening and the normal reddish colour was almost impossible to see. Not good to eat - I tasted a little bit to see if it was peppery (to decide one keying question) and it had practically no flavour.
• Conocybe Filaris. This turns out to be one of the most poisonous mushrooms in the Pacific NW! (Go me!) Luckily it's small and not likely to be something you'd pick accidentally to eat. Still, good to know... It commonly grows on compost, mulch and wood chips.
• Pholiota Aurivella (Golden Pholiota). These were growing all over a dead tree right next to the path. I initially missed and luckily A spotted them. Mine were small and most still had the partial veil still intact which made them look like puffballs.

The class also keyed this one that someone brought in:

• Hygrophoropsis Aurantiaca (False Chanterelle).

MushroomExpert.com also has a decent hyper-linked mushroom key, which looks quite nifty. (Not all Pacific NW mushrooms are there though). We use Mushrooms Demystified in the class. A hyper-linked version of that would be cool!

Matcha powder

I wrote about Koots and Starbuck's green tea a while back. My regular morning drink (when I indulge myself) is now usually a green tea latte. I really like the taste, and it seems to give you a more mellow lift than coffee. (At Starbucks I cut the sugar by asking for only one pump of Midori Melon syrup, instead of the three they usually put in).

I decided I'd try ordering some matcha powder online a few weeks ago, and looked around for a good retailer. I settled on Essencha more or less at random - I've never heard of them before, but their prices were decent and their website looked good.

I can heartily recommend them! Their service is incredibly fast and very personal. I got an email from them a few hours after placing my order (they noticed that I used essencha@domain as my email address - something I do with new online accounts to catch whether people sell or leak my info to spammers). They took the time to look at my personal website and said some nice things about my pictures. (On a side topic, I should really get my India, Nepal and Tibet pics back online properly - a lot are missing).

Anyway, after the nice email, I was already quite impressed with them. The tea arrived a few days later, nicely packed and with some free goodies thrown in: an extra 1oz of tea (kukicha) and a chashaku. The Matcha Sawa and Matcha Jade Bliss are excellent - I haven't tried the kukicha yet.