I think the only thing worth mentioning is that my new Kitchen Aid mixer arrived yesterday. The color is "lemon". It's very impressive looking and incredibly heavy. I'm looking forward to trying it out. I need to make some rolls. Of course, this also means that my mom took her Cuisinart 7 speed handmixer back. I'll miss it.
I had takeout Kurama sushi tonight and I ate way too much again.
I forgot to mention that a week ago I went over to GM's apartment to have dinner and watch a movie. I brought a salad and made the Honey-Citrus Asian Salad Dressing from the Cook Something cookbook that RP gave me. It's very good and low in fat, since it only has 2 tablespoons of peanut oil for 3/4 of a cup of dressing. After dinner, we saw the Triplets of Belleville, which was a strange, but entertaining, but animated French film.
Saturday, a cable guy brought my new HD DVR/cable box, so I can look at the high definition channels (and record them, like any other DVR). The high definition channels are just gorgeous, especially the Discovery Channel. They are broadcasting the Olympics in HD, but there seems to be a delay before they broadcast the coverage.
I made cornbread today, using a recipe in the Joy of Cooking. I liked it. I only put one teaspoon of sugar in it, when the recipe called for 1 to 2 tablespoons. That sounds almost sweet enough to be yankee cornbread to me. I might try 2 teaspoons next time.
I also tried my pitcher of iced Red Zinger that I made yesterday. It's not quite as good as what Pyewacket (RIP) used to make, but I'm happy with it. They key is to chill the tea before you serve it, so the ice doesn't dilute it and you have to sweeten it with Sugar in the Raw after you pour it in the glass over ice. The Red Zinger is acidic enough to dissolve the sugar, unlike most iced teas. If you sweeten it when it's hot, it doesn't taste very good at all.
I have a new first for today. I just looked in the mirror, at approximately 9:30 pm and discovered that I'm unintentionally wearing different earring in each ear. One is a 5mm silver ball and the other is a iridescent button pearl. I'm surprised that no one noticed or commented, but maybe it isn't that obvious.
The Olympics and my new television have definitely been cutting into my blogging. Right now I'm writing this with my laptop disconnected from the network, so I can watch diving at the same time. That's right, I got a new television. I finally got the Sony K42WE610 that I've been coveting since before it came out. So far, so good. In fact, it looks fantastic already and I'm looking forward to getting my HD cable box/DVR from Time Warner tomorrow. I had such a hard time deciding whether I wanted to order it from Crutchfield or get it locally, but I ended up getting it from BestBuy.
In hindsight, last week wasn't the best time to take vacation, but it's not something I could have predicted in advance. In addition to rain from Hurricane Bonnie and a cold front, we had quite a bit from Hurricane Charley. With the exception of Monday, it was rainy and gloomy every single day of my vacation. I didn't let it stop me from having a good time, though. I went shopping quite a bit, mostly buying random kitchen stuff. I also went to Cedar Creek Gallery on Sunday to get rainbow tapers for my candelabra. One of the highlights while shopping was when I was at Sam's Club with my Dad. They sell a scrolling sign made out of LEDs and I programmed it to say "Vote for Kerry" My mom has been there since then and they don't even let customers turn it on anymore. Obviously, this means I should have made it say "Please Vote for Kerry" instead.
Yesterday I took four people from work to Champa for lunch. I had the pad thai again and it was probably even better than the first time I went there. PS had been there before, but it was a new experience for some of them, particularly those who had never tried Thai food before. It's really not far from work, so it was great.
Tonight, my parents and I went to Sage Cafe, at Timberlyne shopping center, in Chapel Hill. It's a Persian restaurant. It's completely vegetarian, including many vegan dishes. With Margaret's Cantina a short walk away, Timberlyne is turning out to be the perfect destination for vegetarians. I had a pomengranate stew, which had pomengranate juice, ground walnuts and tempeh, served with basmati rice. It was excellent and very different from anything I'd tried before. It also came with a salad, which had a delicious creamy dill dressing.
Two things I forgot to mention yesterday: KB is living in California, so it's a big deal for her to visit, even though her parents still live here. It's not like she still lives one street over from me anymore. Also, she gave me a Kerry bumpersticker. Very cool!
Today my mom and I went to check out Brier Creek shopping center. That place is gigantic! I knew it was big, but you really have to see it to get a real impression of it. It looks like a little town, similar to Southpoint, but it's built more like a strip mall on steroids. We went to TJ Maxx and I got a few interesting kitchen items, like a 5 qt stainless steel mixing bowl and some cooling racks. We thought there was a Bed, Bath & Beyond there, too, but there wasn't. We tried out Champa Thai and Sushi. We ordered Pad Thai, a Sweet Dragon Roll and a Rainbow Roll equivalent, called a Skittles Roll. The Pad Thai was very good and I liked the sushi. I still the sushi at karma better than anywhere else I've tried it. The entree came with a coconut soup, which was also enjoyable.
Not too long after we got back, my dad and I ventured off to go Linens and Things. Mom mom thought we should take a look at some cheap bookshelves. The bookshelves looked good to me, so I got three of them. I also picked out odds and ends like small brooms with dustbins. I had just gotten to the aisle with non-stick baking sheets when my mom called on my cell phone and said we should leave as soon as possible, because we were about to have 2 hours of thunderstorms, according to the announcement on the HEMS frequency. So I grabbed a brownie pan, a mini-muffin pan and we headed for the cash register. By then, it had started pouring. I'm convinced that we would have been better off to stay and then I would have gotten to look at more of the kitchen section. As we were driving home, the rain was incredible and then as we got closer to home it lightened up a bit. It turns out that I'll be getting to look at the kitchen section after all. I turned out that the hardware in the bookshelves was made out of potently. One of the screw-like things holding up a shelf was broken when we took it out of the box and another one broke with just a little bit of pressure. They definitely won't hold up to heavy books and magazines, so we'll have to take them back tomorrow.
Finally, I discovered another use for blogging. When you write about practically every meal you consume, as I do, and it is announced on the local news that someone working at one of the restaurants that you like to frequent has come down with Hepatitis A, then you know very quickly whether you went there on the days when there was a possibility of being infected. You don't even have to find your credit bills or ask anyone you might have gone with. Fortunately, I last went to Big Bowl before the was any danger.
Today was a fun day. My friend K(C)B came to visit me. I hadn't seen her in 8-10 years, but we've been friends for almost 20 years. I remember my 9th birthday, when she came over to visit for the first time, bringing a big card from the kids at school. I'm pretty sure I was 9. Anyway, we played together quite a bit after that.
It's pretty awesome that, after all these years, she found this blog!
I showed KB around the house and then we went to Margaret's Cantina. I had the special burrito with spinach. I have to say that I am also becoming a Grandma Lundy's chocolate cake addict. We continued to catch up on things and exchange info about what our old friends are up to.
Afterwards, we went to my parents' house and I introduced her to FIFO. FIFO, of course, was quite happy to meet her. He's more than a little exuberant during such greetings and he just wears himself and sacks out on the floor.
Later in the afternoon I unpacked another box or so. For dinner, I finally made rice! I don't know why I've been so hesitant about making it, because it's really pretty easy, even on the stove. I had it with a kofta curry frozen dinner. It was excellent, but I was very full afterwards. I still am.
I recommend being very careful when using spell checkers. If you accidently have your cursor on "replace" instead of "ignore" it can be bad. Although if I'd left those "corrections" in place, it would have been more entertaining to have said "special buried with spinach" and "Grandma lunatic chocolate cake".
Sunday, my parents continued planting trees in my yard. They planted 26 trees and shrubs! That's amazing.
I abandoned them that afternoon and met JJ and JA at Ooh-La-Latte. I had an egg salad sandwich and a latte. I have this tendency to go through the day on a weekend and not eat anything. I then realize suddenly that I'm starving to death. The sandwich really hit the spot. It could have been made of cardboard and I would have enjoyed it.
Later, my parents and I went to the Durham FM Association picnic. I had a good time seeing hams that I hadn't seen a while, since I almost never go to the meetings anymore. The banana bread was still a little under-cooked. I need to take my mom's advice and turn the oven without taking it out for ten minutes and then opening the door until the oven cools down. Then I can take it out of the pan. We'll see if that works next time. The best part of the picnic was that I got to take home some potato bean salad and a couple homemade Chinese dumplings. That's what I ate for lunch today and it was great.
My, what gorgeous weather we've been having. I've had the windows open all day and it's August!
This week has gone by so fast. I only have scattered bits of things I actually remember.
One day JJ and I went across the street from work to get coffee in the other building. While we were there, we noticed that a tree was flopping about quite a bit and decided to head back rather precipitously. We did not drown.
Right now I'm baking banana bread for the Durham FM Association annual picnic tomorrow.
Today my parents planted several large plants in my yard. That was very exciting. My dad also almost finished the workbench that he's been building in my garage.
Last night I went over to GM's apartment. He cooked a great meal, including chicken curry, raspberry spinach salad and apricot bars for dessert. It was pretty impressive. Afterwards he and FT picked out some DVDs from a friend's place, across the street. We ended up watching the Bridges of Madison County. I've never read the book, so the movie seemed pretty good, although it was fairly sad.
I just took the banana bread out of the oven and it smells fantastic. This time I added orange peel, cinnamon and nutmeg. It's actually two tablespoons of orange peel! This is the orange spice variation in Baking Illustrated. I have the hardest time getting it done in the upper middle. I already baked it for 5 extra minutes and my toothpick didn't come clean. Unfortunately, I waited until after I took it out of the pan to test it, but it was easy enough to plop it back in. I hopefully another five minutes as it heats back up to 350F will do the trick.
Today I baked more chocolate chip cookies. I experimented with the size of the cookie in relation to the baking time. The recipe recommends 1/4 cup of dough per cookie, baking them for 15 minutes. I only have a small baking sheet and I want them for a large number of people, so I tried smaller cookies. Well, smaller cookies are cripser if you bake them for 15 minutes. I tried 13 minutes and that seemed to be an improvement. I think I like the big cookies, though, so I'll just have to acquire some larger sheets.
Reflecting on last night's comedic routines, I think I've realized why I prefer political humor (and that was almost non-existant last night). A lot of the jokes last night were making fun of stereotypes, which can bother me. No one chooses their race, culture or sexual orientation. An individual does, however, choose to be a Republican. I, therefore, feel perfectly justified in making fun of such an individual. There are still dangers in this, though. Just as one foments ignorance in making fun of a racial stereotype, it is easy to focus on the more amusing political stereotypes, while ignoring their more sinister activites.
Did I do anything Wednesday through Friday? Well, I think the most exciting thing I did was go to lunch at Fowler's with JJ. I had samosas and gazpacho again. I also bought two sixpacks of Blenheim ginger ale. I got the hot and the "not so hot" versions. I couldn't remember which I had a last time I tried it, but I had the hot one with my lunch. I took it back to work with me and it seemed much hotter when it wasn't combined with food. I only choked on it once.
I also cooked the Indian equivalent of Ramen noodles for my dad, either Wednesday night or Thursday. I added some frozen shrimp to it and it was quite good. I still think making pasta is a somewhat stressful activity, because I'm always worried about overcooking it and making it mushy. Violently boiling water is a little disturbing when you have to put stuff in it, too.
Other than that, I spent my free time watching the Democratic National Convention. I enjoyed watching it and continued to enjoy having cable again. I was impressed with Kerry's daughters and how poised they were, compared to...say... The Bush daughters. I also loved the hamster story. Of course, the Daily Show's commentary on the whole convention has been rather entertaining.
Today I slept late, ate breakfast and did some laundry. My dad came over to work on building a workbench in the garage. My contribution was to help support the boards in such a way that it made it more difficult to cut them, causing the circular saw to bind.
This evening, I went with JJ, JA, EB, MP, JA's brother and his brother's wife to Charlie Goodnight's, the comedy club in Raleigh. First we were going to go to 42 Street Oyster Bar, but that had a 45 minute wait. We investigated going to the Irrregardless, but they could't take us soon enough either. We then walked to Ri Ra, an Irish pub. My meal was quite good. I had a Salmon Boxty, which was a potato pancake filled with salmon and a cream sauce. Then, we went to the comedy club and saw Dat Phan. The show was entertaining. I'd never been to a comedy club before, so that was interesting. I still think you can probably get about as much out of seeing a comedy routine on tv as you can in person. The jokes are either funny or they aren't. I still wouldn't mind seeing Jon Stewart in person, though.
After a long and valiant two month struggle, I now have cable. I have digital cable and a DVR with my grandmother's twelve inch television. That might seem like overkill, because it is. I'm still planning on getting something larger as soon as I can. For now, it's still pretty wild having television after not having one for almost two months. Now I'm really going to have to get wireless working so I can use the computer while viewing the television instead of from the guest room. I do, however, think that the guest room is a fantastic place to work. I worked from home today, since I knew that the cable guys would be here between 1pm and 5pm. They arrived about 4pm, after they experienced great difficulties finding my house. Not long after their arrival, we had a strong thunderstorm with lots of lightning. Apparently, they only abort a mission during a thundertstorm if they have to climb a pole. One of the poor guys had only been working for Time Warner for two weeks. It took them about an hour and it rained almost the entire time.
One interesting thing about the DVR is that they didn't have a manual for it. I'm going to have to look for one on the web, although I'm sure I can figure most of it out just by playing with it. It's made by Scientific Atlanta and the model is Explorer 8000, so I can find more about it there. So, this DVR, which also operates as my cable box, won't work with HD. Once I get an HD television, I have to call them and get them to switch it. I wonder how long that will take. At least it doesn't cost anything extra.
Yesterday, EB and MP came over to see the house. It was fun finally getting to show it to them. Afterwards, my parents and I went to Casa Ibara. Once I got back, I did some work while listening to the Democratic National Convention. Last night, my dad brought over the twelve inch television with rabbit ears and I've had the convention on quite a bit since, with the exception of the work day, today. I thought Bill Clinton's speach was quite good last night. My mom has Carter's and Gore's speaches TiVoed for me. Now I can record my own! It's time for Dean. It's time to go watch.
Today, I made two loaves of yellow squash bread, using a recipe that I found with google. I looked for yellow squash recipes after EB gave me all the squash a couple weeks ago. It tastes pretty good and it was pretty easy to make. It certainly turned out better than when I tried to fry it, at least. My parents came over this afternoon, sampled the bread and had some tea.
I went out to dinner at Pao Lim's with JJ, JA, EB and MP. We had some vegetable dumplings and some pork dumplings, too. The veggie dumplings were actually green and while they were good, I think I actually like Big Bowl's better. Pao Lim's pork dumplings are excellent, though. For my entree, I had honey walnut shrimp, which was great, as as always. I'll be looking forward to my leftovers. For dessert, I had coconut ice cream again. It was served with pineapple and that tasted extremely sour in contrast to the ice cream. Fortunately, going into the dessert, JA agreed to come to my rescue and eat half of my dessert, in addition to his own. That made it a lot more pleasant. The best thing was that EB's fortune cookie told her that she believes in the goodness of mankind. We're going to have to remind her of this at regular intervals. Afterwards, I was able to give squash bread to everyone!
I've been listening to an on-line compilation of war protest songs, that's supposed to be released as an album later this year. Some are pretty good. So far, I've particularly liked "Consquences", by Amy Martin.
I've been having so much fun adding pictures to early posts in my blog that I've barely left any time for actually writing about something new. So far I've added pictures to the first month or so of my blog. It takes a bit of time to pick out what I want to add and then change the date, etc.
Let's see... Wednesday night, I went to a Durham Bulls game, with approximately my entire organization at work. We were all allowed to bring one guest, so it was fun meeting people's spouses after hearing so much about them. I took my dad along, who seemed to enjoy watching the game. It was entertaining in that there were a bunch of home runs, but not exciting in the sense that the final score was 11 to 1. It was very hot, but fortunately the sun went down behind the stadium fairly quickly. Generally, I got the impression that most people had a good time. The only glitch in the whole thing was that the reserved picnic areas was down about 13 steps. Oops. Fortunately MS and JL were respectively available for the hand truck maneuver.
Thursday night, I went over to LK's house. We ate pizza, talked and watched the Tour de France on tv. It was fun seeing all the changes he'd made to his house and catching up, in general. It was absolutely pouring when I got there and we had to wait a while before I went inside.
Today I went out to lunch with JJ. We went to Dale's Indian Cuisine on 9th street. The food is consistently good. I decided to eat chicken and lamb. It was good. Actually, I still probably liked the spinach and eggplant dishes the best. Afterwards, we went to a coffee shop near the corner of Broad Street and Club, Ooh-La-Latte. I'd never been there before. It's actually quite strange. They have a very unusual decor with lots of old furniture, barbie dolls, velvet Elvises and other stuff. Somehow it reminded me of a Bizarro cartoon in pink and black. They are right next to their store, the Untidy Museum. While I only peeked in the door as I was leaving, it looks as if they sell things that would fit right into their decorations. All in all, I'd say that it's a pretty wild place that's worth seeing for yourself.
I'm finally playing with Hello. 
Last night I decided to download Hello and after playing with it a few seconds, I decided I should install Picasa, too. They are definitely very cool programs. Hello makes it easy to add pictures to blogger and Picasa makes it easier to organize one's photos. That's what I really need. I apologize for the boring photo, but I realized that I don't seem to have any recent photos of my house on my laptop. I need to find my compact flash drive. I wonder what I did with it? All I can say is that Google has a very good sense of which companies to acquire. I'll have to consider adding some photos in between earlier posts.
Half-way on my way to work this morning, I noticed that I was almost out of gas. I decided this was an excellent opportunity to go eat at Kemp's Seafood House , which is quite close to my office. My mom and I had huge plates of fried oysters and my dad had a big plate of fried shrimp. Actually, all the plates were the same size, but somehow my plate seemed larger than all the others. They do a great job on their oysters, but their servings are way too big. Kemp's is immensely popular, so I would be wary of trying to go there on a weekend. It looks as if they are putting on an addition that will almost double their already giant size.
Tonight I made spaghetti with Yves soy ground round. We were going to pick up takeout from Eastern Lights, but we discovered that they are now closed on Mondays. I'm not sure when that happened. When you've been going to various incarnations of the same restaurant for over twenty years, it's disconcerting when they change their hours.
At any rate, the spaghetti turned out pretty well. It's fun cooking for my parents (and other people).I have two nice portions to take to work for lunch, too.
I was just looking at the Yves website and they have a lot of good looking recipes.
One of the things that startles me about blogging more frequently is that I try to think about what I did a few days ago and realize that I don't remember whole days of my life. On the other hand, perhaps it is better to reflect upon the more memorable highlights of each week than relate the banalities of laundry lint.
Friday night, I went to Southpoint to meet GM and several of his friends. We ate at Rockfish, ate at the Marble Slab Creamery and saw Shrek 2. Rockfish was good. We started out with fried calamari, which was into extremely thin ringlets and served with three dipping sauces. I ordered fried oysters, which were battered in cornmeal. I generally prefer that they not use cornmeal batter, but I gobbled them up very quickly. At the Marble Slab, they have a new flavor, cinnamon, which I combined with shredded coconut and sliced almonds.
Shrek 2 was very funny and the graphics were cool.
If you want a good laugh, take a look at this well done political music video.
CL and JL came over for lunch on Saturday. I made chocolate chip cookies and tuna salad. The tuna salad contained tuna, mayonnaise, parsley, red grapes and celery. I had a great time showing off what had changed since they saw the pre-paint version of my house. We sat around talking about lots of stuff. Afterwards, we drove over to my parents' house so they could pick up my old thirty gallon aquarium. I've been planning to give it to them for ages, because I don't think I'll ever have the time or inclination to set up that big an aquarium anytime in the near or distant future. It's just too much work and fish die. I hung out there a while, admiring all the work that my parents have done or had done to the house. Everything is painted now except for the screened-in porch, which is in the process of being rescreened. After I got back home, I made another salad. I intended to make another tuna salad, because there weren't enough leftovers to feed my parents and me, but I ended up leaving the tuna out. Instead I put in lots of grapes, LOTS of parsley, celery, walnuts and the juice of two limes. It was....sour! I actually thought it was quite good, but I like eating whole limes as a main course. My dad keeps telling me that I need to taste my salads before I serve them. I wonder why?
Today I made the cookies from the rest of the cookie dough, which I had refrigerated. I got the recipe from the wife of a amateur radio operator, who makes nice soft cookies. They are definitely yummy, but very rich. I used 24 ounces of chocolate chips and the recipe only called for 18, so they are very chocolately. They are large cookies and I can only eat two at a time. Otherwise, I washed a lot of dishes and did three loads of laundry. Tonight we went to Nantucket for dinner and I had an excellent serving of cod.
I'll have to make this quick, because I need to get my clothes out of the dryer before I go to bed.
On Sunday my parents and I had dinner at ACME. I had a crab, cheese and bacon ravioli appetizer. I neglected to pay attention that it, a special, was an appetizer. Fortunately, this allowed me to ask for a third plate of their wonderful rolls. For dessert, we shared blueberry shortcake with lemon cream. It was good.
Last night I made some black bean soup. Amy's Kitchen brand organic soups are really good. I got home from work pretty late, so there wasn't much more to the evening than that.
Tonight, my mom came over and brought sushi. Afterwards I attempted to use steel wool to clean the frying pan from frying the squash on Friday. Of course, I'd never tried anything of the sort before and it was much more difficult than I had imagined. The pan is now clean.
I don't really remember what happened on Wednesday.
Thursday night, I met GM for dinner at Big Bowl and then we met several of his friends to see Spiderman 2. I actually thought it was quite entertaining, much more so than the first one. Afterwards, we went to the Marble Slab Creamery for some ice cream. I ordered a vanilla milkshake, which was good, but expensive. At Big Bowl, I strayed from my usual crispy orange shrimp and got the Thai Herbed Calamari appetizer for my meal. They were interesting and were spiced very differently from most calamari I've had, although the pieces were not chopped as finely as is generally optimal.
After work on Friday, I drove by EB's house and she gave me a HUGE batch of cucumbers and yellow summer squash. I was seriously worried as to whether it would all fit in my refrigerator or not. It did. My dad showed me how to use the vegetable peeler to peel the cucumbers. No, I hadn't even done that either. Then I sliced them all up and sliced the squashed. I then attempted to fry the squash. I put all my squash in a ziplock bag with about a half cup of cornmeal and made sure it all had a nice coating. Once the pan was hot, I made the mistake of kind of tossing in a piece, since I was hesitant about putting my hand too close to it. Well, it splattered some in a dramatic fashion. I discovered that putting the squash on the spatula first was a little safer. The whole process seemed to take forever and I didn't eat until about 10:30 or so. Fortunately, my dad talked to me on the phone through most of the ordeal, to talk me through what I was doing. I wouldn't say that my final product tasted that great, by any means. I think I will have to have verbal guidance, in person, for my second attempt. I have enough squash for about 147 more attempts, so I better get the next one right.
Tonight's meal was much more of a success. GM came over and I showed him around the house. I made the parmesan and chive biscuits from the recipe that we tried when RR and MDLP were visiting. I baked salmon filets with honey and dijon mustard sauce. I also made a salad with salad greens, EB's cucumbers, grape tomatoes (sliced in half), blueberries, and three different kinds of mint leaves. I also made a vinaigrette dressing for it, using olive oil, balsamic vinegar, pepper and a little sugar. It all turned out perfectly!
Today was a good day.. I got a bit of a late start this morning, because I really didn't feel like getting up today. Once I finally did, everything almost went smoothly.
After work, I went over to JJ and JJ's and ate pizza. We had three different vegetarian pizzas from NY Pizza on 9th Street. All were very good. Their dogs were also in fine form, providing a high level of entertainment.
