First harvest of 2010
First harvest of 2010. Some French Breakfast radishes and an Early Scarlet Globe. I think I picked them a bit early, but I couldn’t wait!
Book Review: The Big Short
I remember sitting in my office at Lehman Brothers sometime around September 15, 2007 and telling one of my coworkers that I couldn’t wait to read the book that someone wrote about the entire financial mess. Lehman had just declared bankruptcy and the entire financial system looked like it was about to collapse. I was working in the Investment Management Division of Lehman in their IT department at the time, but had a perspective of an outsider. I had started looking for a new job a few months before and as the firm melted down, I was able to slip out of the office for interviews without anyone noticing. I resigned later that week. I didn’t feel too much guilt since I felt like my company’s management had really let us all down. A storied Wall Street bank had collapsed due to greed and a lot of poor decisions.
I finished reading (or rather listening to) Michael Lewis’ book, The Big Short, about a week ago, and I think it is the book I was waiting for. My timing couldn’t have been better. Since finishing the book, Dick Fuld testified before congress, Goldman Sachs was charged with fraud by the SEC, Greg Lippmann (featured in the book) is out at Deutsche Bank, and the media is all over the subprime mess with some great reporting. I have heard several senators mention the book as they grill the witnesses from these failed institutions.
Michael Lewis does a great job in selecting a group of interesting characters to tell the story of the financial collapse. He develops the characters and then describes in detail how they came to recognize the pending collapse. In hindsight, it’s hard to believe that more people didn’t see it coming, but that’s how it usually works. The two main characters in the book would probably be Steve Eisman and Michael Burry, two hedge fund managers with unique personalities who saw the subprime troubles a long way off. Lewis uses their history to tell the story of how mortgages were packaged into bonds, then those bonds packaged into CDOs, and then the real killer, the synthetic CDO was developed by our dear friends at Goldman Sachs. The subject matter is approachable by someone with no experience in the industry, but those inside the industry really like the book as well.
The two annoying things about the audiobook edition were the mispronunciation of Lehman (Lee-man not Lay-man) and tranche (like raunch, not ranch). There is a nice intro and wrap-up interview featuring Michael Lewis as well.
I think this book should be required reading for anyone who wants to have a real conversation about the financial industry and its problems. I am glad to see that congressmen are reading it and taking it seriously. Maybe this book will be the impetus for congress and the general public to find a way to clean up the mess for good (or at least for a while).
Review: ATC Best Recipes and Reviews 2010
I got the magazine version of The Best of America’s Test Kitchen Kitchen: Best Recipes and Reviews 2010 (that’s a mouthful) a few months ago. I have been working my way through the recipes and have tried about ten of the 64 recipes so far. If you aren’t familiar with America’s Test Kitchen, I would describe them as a Consumer Reports for cooks, but with a few extra side businesses. First, they have an excellent cooking show on PBS that performs food product taste tests, product reviews, as well as recipes and cooking techniques. They are also known for Cook’s Illustrated magazine.
The greatest thing about America’s Test Kitchen is that they take every recipe and experiment with different techniques and ingredients, testing each one until they find the best recipe possible. They say they will try a recipe 30, 40, or even 70 times before they publish it. As a result, a number of the recipes have some very unique ingredients or techniques that can provide surprisingly good results. For example, their Creamless Creamy Tomato Soup uses white bread blended into the soup instead of cream to provide a creamy and thick consistency. I never would have thought to try bread in the soup, but it was quite good.
The Ultimate Cinnamon Buns are outstanding, although they were almost too rich. They are made with a cream cheese glaze that is very good, and the filling uses brown sugar instead of regular sugar with lots of butter. Since they freeze very well, we would eat them two at a time with a week or so in between.
The Baked Ziti uses cottage cheese instead of ricotta, fresh basil instead of dried, and fresh mozzarella cut into cubes instead of shredded. All of these ingredient choices make a big difference over the usual recipe. It is definitely the best Baked Ziti I have ever had, and they also solve the usual problem of soggy pasta by having you undercook the pasta before the baking portion of the recipe.
There are a few things I would like to see changed in the recipes. First, they don’t give you a very good idea what the total prep and cook time is for the recipe. I usually like to know how much time I’m going to have to set aside without having to read through the recipe and add up all the time periods. This is especially annoying for bread recipes that have multiple rise times. The second thing that is missing is nutritional information. This can be added up pretty easily, but for the more complicated recipes with many ingredients, this is a hassle.
This magazine has been a great source of recipes. I will have to think about whether the entire book is worth getting. It appears that the full book is 352 pages with about 133 recipes and a number of pages of tips, techniques, and reviews, but the magazine is 64 pages with 64 recipes. I think maybe an online membership might be the way to go, since it provides access to all their content, including historical recipes.
Book Review: Respectable Sins
I received a copy of the venerable Jerry Bridges’ latest book Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate as a gift from my parents recently and slowly but steadily made my way through it. This is a very practical book that attempts to point out to Christians the sins that we have allowed to take root in our lives and accept. He starts the book with a discussion of sin and how it has disappeared not only from the vernacular of the country, but from most churches as well. When sin does come up in many Evangelical churches today, it is used to describe the actions of others instead of the actions of Christians. The first five chapters deal with a discussion of sin, how it separates us from God, and how the gospel is the only remedy for sin.
Chapter six is where the book begins to be very practical, providing some directions for dealing with sin. For example, Bridges recommends that once we identify that we struggle with a certain sin we should internalize scripture that deals with this sin, recognize the place of the Holy Spirit and pray regularly and specifically about the area of sin, and finally bring along others to help us in accountability and prayer.
The rest of the book deals with individual areas of sin: ungodliness, anxiety and frustration, discontentment, unthankfulness, pride, selfishness, lack of self-control, impatience and irritability, anger, judgmentalism, envy, jealousy, sins of the tongue, and finally worldliness. Seeing a long list like that would make just about anyone want to put the book down, but Bridges does a good job making the discussion encouraging and practical, often including examples from his own life.
I found that as I worked through the chapters I was really convicted in areas that I have ignored or not spent time thinking about. For example, the chapter on unthankfulness helped me to realize how little time I spend being thankful for the things that I have received in life. The chapter also dealt with the topic of being thankful in difficult circumstances, not just being thankful when everything is going well. The chapter on self-control helped me realize how a lack of it can wreak havoc in so many areas of life, and that overindulgence in any area can bring unhappiness.
In the chapter on impatience and irritability, Bridges describes impatience as a strong sense of annoyance at the (usually) unintentional faults and failures of others. I found this to be a very good definition that helped me to put some perspective on my irritability. I take the train to work, and I have turned into a typical experienced commuter who gets irritated with people who talk on the train. In almost all situations, the person doing this is not doing it intentionally, so if it is bothering me it is my problem.
The chapter on anger was also interesting. Bridges addresses the issue of righteous anger, something that many Christians use as an excuse for their anger over the actions of others. It seems to me like many Christians are very angry about political issues in the United States, and many may feel it is justified as righteous anger. He says:
“The fact that we may be reacting to another person’s real sin does not necessarily make our anger righteous. We are more likely more concerned with the negative impact of the sinful actions on us than we are that it is a violation of God’s law. Or we may even use the fact that it is a violation of God’s law to justify our own sinful angry response.
I would recommend this book for individuals, but it might work even better if read in small groups where there can be some discussion and accountability.
Bridges finishes off with some recommendations of putting some of the lessons of the book into practice, and ends with a very appropriate verse, 1 Peter 5:5: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble”.
Easy way to combine pdf files into one
This is a bit of a techie post, but I wanted to document how I do this since it seems to come up once or twice a year and I always forget the steps.
I had to submit a form via email to get reimbursed for my flex spending account and had to include scanned copies of my receipts. I wanted to send this as one file, but couldn’t remember how to combine the tiff files that my scanner software generated into one file. If you do a google search, you end up finding little utilities for windows or a tutorial of how to use Adobe Acrobat to accomplish this. Using a mac or linux machine, this is pretty straightforward with some free software.
You need ImageMagick and ghostscript installed. For the mac, the easiest thing is to use the wonderful Darwin ports to do this. To do this with ports is easy:
$ sudo port install ImageMagick ghostscript
Then, if you have tiff files (or other formats) from your scanner you want to convert them to pdf. This is easy using the ImageMagick convert tool. For example:
$ convert filename.tiff filename.pdf
The convert command determines the format based on the file suffix, so this will convert the tiff file to a pdf. It really is a swiss army knife of tools and this is just one of the most basic things you can do with it.
Then, take the multiple pdfs and combine them into one using ghostscript:
$ gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=combined.pdf file1.pdf file2.pdf
Tada!
Community Supported Agriculture with Cedar Valley Sustainable Farms
After watching Food, Inc. recently we started to investigate alternatives to the local grocery store for obtaining our meat products. We recently signed up for a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) meat share with Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm. The farm is a family run farm in Ottawa, IL. Their meat share program allows you to purchase a wide selection of beef, chicken, and pork products from their farm which are available for local pickup once a month. The program currently costs $255/3 months, $500/6 months, $975/year.
The usual meat share has several cuts of beef or pork, hamburger, 1 1/2 to 2 chickens, some pork products, and a dozen eggs. All the meat is delivered frozen, and is in a freezer bag that is returned in the next month. The local pickup is in downtown Evanston and is a quick and easy errand for us on a Saturday around noon.
We have received two shares so far, and the quality has been excellent. In February, we received 1/2 dozen eggs (the chickens were cold!), 1 1/2 chickens, two filet mignons, one large sirloin steak, 4 bratwursts, and a pound of ground beef. This seemed to be a light share, but the two cuts of grass fed beef were excellent and were a good size. We especially enjoyed the sirloin steak.
The January Meat Share
In February, we received a 1 1/2 dozen eggs this time, 2 1/2 chickens that were smaller than the previous month, 1 pound of italian sausage, 1 pound of ground beef, a package of beef patties, and a pork loin.
The February Meat Share
The eggs from Cedar Valley are quite different from what I’m used to. Their yolks are a bright orange, and the yolks are very round and firm. You can’t see this in the picture below, but the yolk in the Cedar Valley egg is probably twice as high as the Phil’s Fresh egg. I’ve had them scrambled and fried and they are very good.
A Cedar Valley egg (top) vs. a Phil's Fresh egg (bottom)
I especially enjoy getting a variety of cuts of meat and trying new recipes. We have been stuck in a ‘boneless skinless chicken breast’ rut for some time, and making meals with chicken parts or whole chickens is kind of fun. So far we have only had to supplement a pound or two of ground beef, eggs, and chicken breasts for a few larger meals we have made for larger groups.
I highly recommend Cedar Valley, and hope that Community Supported Agriculture continues to catch on and become available for more people. It feels good to support a local family farm and be more connected to our food and where it comes from.
Pretending to be a Christian
I saw several links to this story on the New York Times Freakonomics blog this past week about a family in Texas that pretends to be Christians so that their children can socialize with other members of the community.
We are agnostics living deep in the heart of Texas and our family fakes Christianity for social reasons. It’s not so much for the sake of my husband or myself but for our young children. We found by experience that if we were truthful about not being regular church attenders, the play dates suddenly ended.
This type of behavior coming from people claiming to be followers of Jesus is just so contrary to how he lived his own life. Reading comments on various blogs seems to show that this is probably more common than most Christians would like to think. People are pressured into ‘acting religious’ in order to fit into their community or families or to keep a job or other position where someone in power is forcing religion on them. What is so sad about this is that the people who are pressuring this family to behave this way are missing out on some great conversations and friendships.
If we really cared about them and wanted them to see true Christianity in action, then we’d seek them out for play dates and social interactions before those who were regular church attenders. Compare the behavior this family encountered with the way Jesus interacted with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4, or his interaction with Zacchaeus, an outcast of Jewish society in Luke 19:1-10.
iPhone App Review: YouVersion
I have been using the YouVersion iPhone app for about a year and I have been pretty happy with it. It provides a large number of translations and has good navigation. You can download a number of translations for offline reading, such as The Message and the New Living Translation, so it’s not just the King James Version or American Standard Version that most of the other free Bible apps provide. The mainstream versions like the English Standard Version and New International Version are only available while on the network.
The app has had two main problems problems for me: (a) performance and (b) losing my offline translations after every upgrade. The performance can really suffer on Sunday morning when I’m sure there are thousands of people using the app during church services. It does appear that YouVersion is building out their infrastructure to handle the load. It’s great to see so many people taking advantage of a tremendous resource. The app also has had trouble after upgrades of losing my offline translations or even failing to start without deleting the app and reinstalling. The quality has been better recently, and with the release of 2.2 near the end of 2009 I was happy to see them come out with a version that included a number of reading plans. Every year I try to complete a different Bible reading plan, and I have done a number of different plans over the years. By mixing it up, I find that getting through those long stretches of Deuteronomy is not so difficult. With any reading plan it’s important to be able to track your progress against the plan and to be able to eliminate any excuses for not keeping up. Once you are behind by more than a few days it can be tough to catch up.
I have found the iPhone to be an excellent tool for regular Bible reading. It is always with me and thus allows me to get some reading done when I normally might not. For the last three years, I have used the ESV web site to complete the Through the Bible and Book of Common Prayer Daily Office reading plans, both year A and B. Their mobile site works well on the iPhone, but the only drawback is that it doesn’t provide you with tracking against your goal.
With the YouVersion app, you create an account and they will track your progress on a reading plan. You can then catch up if you get a few days behind. The interaction with the daily reading plan is pretty straightforward when you use it for the first time. I quickly found and started the Project 345+ plan and started reading it on January 1. Now that I have been using it for a solid 6 weeks my only real problem with the application is the complicated flow it takes every single day to get to my daily reading. I think they got the flow right for the first time user, but once a user has setup a reading plan there should be at most two taps to the daily reading. Also, the application does not restore your reading plan if you exit and return, so you have to traverse the six steps every time you open the app. I really hope they have plans to fix this soon.
Here’s what the process looks like. First, you are told about the new feature.
Then, you are presented with the list of reading plans that you are currently reading, plus a sepate list of available plans.
Once you select your plan, you see the plan overview.
Tapping on “VIEW TODAY’S READING” finally takes you to the list of passages for the day.
Then you tap on a specific passage to read it and mark it completed. You can tap the arrows at the bottom of the page to go to the next passage in your daily reading.
Making a perfect latte on a Rancilio Silvia
I bought a Rancilio Silvia espresso machine about 5 years ago and have been slowly modifying my technique to make a latte. This is a great machine that can produce a very high quality shot and has enough power to make good quality micro-foam as well. It has only one drawbacks as far as I can tell; it only has one heat exchanger so you can’t pull shots and steam milk at the same time. However, for this price you won’t find a good machine with two heat exchangers. Unlike the full automatics, the Silvia lets you have lots of control over the quality of the coffee.
So here’s my technique – derived from many others I’ve read about out on the net and lots of experimentation and discussion with others. I think I’ve probably made at least 1500 drinks with my machine, and have constantly fine tuned my technique over the years.
Along with a Silvia, you need a coffee grinder. I have a Rancilio Rocky doserless model. The doserless model allows you to just grind the coffee you need for the shots you are making so you have very fresh grounds. You will also need a steam pitcher, a latte sized coffee cup (probably about 6-8 ounces), and a tamp. And of course, get some really good coffee. I’ve been drinking Coffee Ambassador’s Guatemalan Huehuetenango for the last few years. This year’s crop is quite good.
A Silvia has a power switch and three action switches – one for activating the pump for brewing, one for activating the pump for water out the steam wand, and one for steam. It has one light that indicates when the heat element is turned on.
A Latte Art Rosetta
- Turn on the machine. Warmup is essential, and I usually try to give it at least a 1/2 hour before making coffee.
- When the machine is warmed up and the heater light is off, place the empty portafilter in the machine and place your cup under the portafilter and turn on the brew switch. Your cup will fill with hot water. When the heater light turns on, immediately turn off the brew switch and leave the water in the cup.
- Remove the portafilter from the machine, pour out any excess water in the cup and immediately grind your coffee into the portafilter.
- When your portafilter is full of grounds, run your finger along the portafilter even with the top. Do this in two swipes, perpendicular to one another, ensuring the coffee is as level as possible in the portafilter. It should come up to the top.
- Now, you need to tamp it. I usually tamp once with about 30 pounds of pressure, turn the tamp over and use the handle to gently knock the side of the portafilter to knock any grounds off the side. Then, I tamp once more and do a quick spin or two lightly to knock any grounds off the tamp.
- While grinding and tamping the coffee, the Silvia is heating up. If you time it just right, you will be ready to put the portafilter in just as the heat light goes off. Now, turn on the steam switch, insert the portfilter into the brew head, place the cup under the portafilter and then turn on the brew switch. It is important to turn on the steam switch first – this causes your machine to immediately turn on the heater and keeps the water temperature high while the shot is being pulled. It also ensures you have the quickest turnaround possible when you steam milk. The longer your shot sits there waiting for you to steam milk, the more flavor it loses. From the time the pump is turned on to the time your shot is complete should be about 25 seconds. Getting this right is really a fine art, and there is a lot of information available, such as the CoffeeKid mini FAQ.
- Once the shot is complete, you should turn off the pump, remove the portafilter, eject your espresso puck (great for your compost pile!), and run the water switch for a few seconds to clean the brewhead. Then open the steam valve for a few seconds to clear the water from the boiler and allow some steam to build up for about 20-30 seconds. I let the hot water go into my steam pitcher, then rinse it in cold water so it doesn’t warm the milk in the next step.
- While the machine is building steam, pour your milk in the cold frothing pitcher and let a tiny bit of steam escape from the steam wand before inserting it into the milk. Frothing is also a fine art, and takes much practice. You want the foam to be as fine as possible, with no big bubbles. I used to use a thermometer, but now just use my hand to measure temperature. When I can no longer tolerate holding a finger to the bottom of the pitcher, then I know it’s done. I alternate two fingers touching the bottom and when I can’t hold one for a full second it’s hot enough. I start with the wand all the way in the pitcher, then move it to the top until it just slurps, then move it just a bit below the surface. The key is to get very good rotation of the milk in the pitcher, so it is best to aim the wand so the steam pushes the milk along the side of the pitcher. If the Silvia has enough steam built up, this will take about 20-30 seconds.
- Last comes the pour. Swirl the milk in the pitcher to help release any larger bubbles. It also is good to tap the pitcher on the counter a few times between swirls. Now pour the milk out into the mug. This is where you can do some latte art, which is another entire subject. Sit down and enjoy!
This entire process might seem a bit crazy. But once you have some practice and a good rhythm, you can do this (minus warmup time) in less than five minutes. In fact, I have used this method to make a nice latte every morning for years. When you consider that a Starbucks latte would cost me about 4 clams each plus time standing in line downtown, I’m sure doing this myself is thousands of dollars cheaper and I think the quality is far better. Finally, I think the ritual of making the drink adds to the experience, and it’s even better when you can share drinks with others.
You gotta love the Choo Choo
I had the girls just to myself for the weekend with Laura gone for a few nights. We hit the choo choo in Des Plaines for lunch on Saturday. Nothing’s better than getting your lunch delivered on an electric train.
They just don’t make restaurants like this anymore.
The girls at the Choo Choo