Hong Kong Trip Part V

We switched things up a bit on Wednesday morning. Rather than venturing out of my own while Finn napped, we talked with my parents on Skype.

Talking to Grandma and Grandpa

Skype is just one of the biggest differences between my sister's 2 year stint in Hong Kong and the 2 years my parents lived in Hong Kong before I was born. My parents talked to my grandmother once on the phone during those 2 years, and she had to save up for that phone call. Monte, Matt, and Finn videoconference with us and with Matt's family almost weekly for free. I was not surprised to see that Finn's teeth were coming in because I saw them on Skype a week before my visit.

Most of Wednesday was spent on Victoria Peak. We grabbed some sandwiches before catching the tram and picnicked up at the top. I'm told that the pollution was low and the visibility was pretty good for the winter.

This is a relatively clear day in Hong Kong during February

During the winter, winds from out of the north bring China's pollution to Hong Kong, but a combination of the Chinese New Year and the global economic downturn have shuttered enough factories recently to make a visible difference in air quality.

For the first time on my visit, I actually got a bit chilly. The wind was strong on the north side of the peak, so it felt good to step into a Pacific Coffee after our walk. This place had the best view of any coffeehouse I've ever visited. Many a Sunday afternoon are spent with Monte and Finn walking around the peak while Matt is grading papers at this Pacific Coffee.

Finn is scheming how to get his hands on his Momma's mocha.

On the way home from Victoria Peak, we stopped at the Chestnut man's cart near their apartment for some roasted chestnuts and a sweet potato. The chestnuts smell great, nice and smokey, but the taste leaves something to be desired. The sweet potato, on the other hand, was magnificent.

Monte has plans to start a food blog about cooking in a cramped kitchen. Their apartment has forced her to be creative. This former professional baker now is reduced to two burners, one toaster oven, a microwave, and a rice cooker. Oh, and the washing machine/clothes dryer (an all-in-one machine) is also in the kitchen.

Yes, this is the entire kitchen. I was standing with my back against the door to take this picture.

A good cook is never at the mercy of their equipment, and sure enough she has been able to create wonderful meals here. Dinner on this night was something one might expect from a Hong Kong kitchen; pork dumplings, slaw, tea.

Ummmmm, pork dumplings!

Dessert was brownies steamed using the rice cooker. They were almost like a dense chocolate pudding, only better. We ate our steamed brownies while watching the first episode of season 3 of the Greatest-Show-In-The-History-Of-Television. This is Matt and Monte's first time through The Wire, so I had a hard time avoiding giving them spoilers as we discussed the episode. It was a great way to end the day.

The rest of the pictures from my trip can be found on my flickr site.

Hong Kong Trip Part IV

Tuesday started out with some more exploring on my own. I went back to Marble Street, which is lined with stall selling all kinds of things. Of course, I was most interested in the food.

Produce, fish, meat, and all kinds of dried things (mushrooms, seafood, beans, teas, etc.) were everywhere. No American health inspector would eat any of this food. Some of the concerns I would share (meat being butchered right next to produce guarantees cross contamination) and others I would not (the lack of refrigeration of the raw meat is not an issue when the meat is butchered in the morning, sold in the afternoon, and cooked in the evening - bacteria need more time than that to grow to the levels that cause illness) The butchers who were smoking while cutting the meat did gross me out a bit.

After my wanderings, I met up with Monte and Finn for a trip to the midlevels. We rode a doubledecker bus (why don't we use doubledeckers in the US? It would double the capacity of each bus. Are there too many low overpasses in our urban areas?). Finn had a music class after lunch, so I set off to see the antique shops on Hollywood Road. I have a few things to buy for gifts and for my house, but I decided to wait until our visit to the Stanley market tomorrow. I can easily return to Hollywood Road on Friday.

One of the interesting things about this part of Hong Kong is the outdoor escalators. I must say that if I lived in Hong Kong, I would lose weight despite all of the dumplings I would eat. You walk everywhere, and even with outdoor escalators, there are countless stairs to climb. It has been rare to see anyone here who is overweight, even among the wealthy.

After dinner, Matt had an ultimate frisbee practice near Causeway Bay. I headed over there with him, stopping for some fries, and then checked out the nightlife (no, Janet, not that kind of nightlife). The streets were full on this Tuesday evening with students and young office workers and a few tourists.

The main activity was shopping, not drinking. The Times Square Shopping Mall has 8 stories of shopping and a crazy number of stores. For as huge as the mall is (close to a million square feet of shopping plus another million of office space) each individual store was quite small in comparison to US malls.

I did a ton of walking on Tuesday, so I was rather exhausted by 10:30. Jet lag has not been much of a problem. I have been going to bed and waking up earlier than I ever do back the states, but that just puts me more on the schedule of a normal person. I'm afraid that the return home will be more difficult in terms of my sleep schedule.

The rest of the pictures from my trip can be found on my flickr site.

Hong Kong Trip Part III

Today was a bit busier. First, of course, was the Super Bowl. I followed the first half of the game online while eating breakfast with Monte and Finn, and then headed out on my own to watch the second half in a Steelers bar (which meant I did not see this play live). The Steelers bar, however, did not turn out to have any actual Steelers' fans. The other people in this bar were rooting for the Cardinals, but none of them had any long standing allegiance to the team. It was a low key atmosphere until the last 3 or 4 minutes.

I came prepared to help Finn cheer for the right team.

After the good guys won their 6th Super Bowl, I explored the Central District. It turns out I'm not even close to being fashionable enough to shop in the Central District. Shopping is something of the national pastime in Hong Kong, so it is taken very seriously. I was walking around wearing my Steelers t-shirt and shorts (the weather has been fantastic - highs in the low 70's and sunny!) surrounded by folks dressed like models buying extraordinarily expensive clothes and jewelry. I quickly headed to more comfortable ground.

Hong Kong Park was wonderful. I took a lot of pictures in the Aviary and around the man-made pond, and then joined Monte for lunch at the Lock Cha Tea House inside the park. We had two amazing teas (one was a silver needle white tea, and the other was a red tea that was smokey) and a table full of vegetarian dim sum.

Turnip cakes, wasabi pea cakes, mushroom dumpling, and fried noodles. Yum!

The waiter explained the process and ceremony of preparing the two teas. It was fascinating to watch. Rather than my usual approach to food or drink of trying to savor every last drop, his approach was more extravagant. The tea pots were often filled to overflowing, tea was poured over the outside of the pot, and cups were filled and then dumped out. If I routinely drank tea that good, I could get used to the extravagant approach! Even the 10th or 11th cup was just as good as the first.

Monte and I returned to the apartment around the same time that Matt got home from school. The rest of the day was spent playing with Finn, eating curry, editing pictures, and watching The Hustle.

The rest of the pictures from my trip can be found on my flickr site.

Hong Kong Trip Part II

So much for my hope to blog daily. I was just too tired on Sunday night, so I'll double up tonight.

Sunday was a rather lazy day. We woke up early but stuck around the apartment in the morning. Finn's mornings tend to be a series of eating, playing for about half an hour, and napping. That's a nice life, huh? Around lunchtime we ventured out for some local exploring.

When the stroller is completely covered so that he cannot see anything interesting, Finn sleeps while he's out on a walk. After stopping for one of Matt's favorite waffles, we headed down Marble Street, which is lined on both sides with all sorts of vendors.

Monte buying some fruit.

Next we walked over to Victoria Park. This large urban park is the one of the places where Hong Kong's many helpers (live-in nannies and housemaids) spend their one day off per week. These women are often from the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Nepal, Thailand and Sri Lanka. One of the biggest adjustments for Monte has been figuring out what to think about the role of these helpers.

After dim sum, we returned home. Monte napped while the boys went to the apartment building's playroom. The rest of the day was spent eating and conversing.

The rest of the pictures from my trip can be found on my flickr site.

Sunday Dinners

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, since last October I have been making Sunday dinner each week at my church. We have a Taize-style service in the evening at 5:00, dinner at 6:00, and usually some kind of class at 7:00. Between now and Lent, the class is a book discussion.

I usually plan and shop for the meals, but I have a great team of other volunteers who help me cook each week. Janet calls herself my sous chef, even though she has more experience in a professional kitchen than I do. She makes the desserts each week, always has great suggestions, and when things do not go as expected she is the one with whom I brainstorm. As you will read below, I was very glad she was helping last night! Rick and Sally are one of those couples who kind of stay in the background at a church, but they make things happen. It's great to have them helping weekly. One of the things that Sally does is coordinate a rotating group of other volunteers so that we usually have about 6 people in the kitchen each week.

We make sure that these dinners are not standard church potluck meals. No tuna hotdish or jello with unidentified pieces of fruit when I'm cooking! Last night, our Spanish menu was suppose to be tapas, a mixed green and citrus salad, paella, a flourless orange/almond cake, and sangria.

On weeks when there is a class following the dinner, we have average a crowd of about 25. That's a great size to cook for. It is enough to get some savings from buying ingredients wholesale, it is not hard to adapt either catering or home recipes for that size, it is not too big to serve everything buffet style in one shot, and 2-3 hours is enough time for the prep work and cooking.

So last night we were expecting between 25-30 and 45 showed up. Some people come to the service and stay for dinner. Some come for dinner and stay for the class. A few just come for the dinner. We never know just how many we need to feed until about 5 minutes before it is time to serve. One of the ways that I know I am suppose to be feeding people at this point in my life is that I enjoy the adrenalin rush that comes when we realized the crowd was at least 50% larger than expected and we don't have enough food. Time to improvise!

The first thing we did was to serve the food in courses. When people slow down, they don't eat as much. That also gave us some extra time.

Course #1 was the tapas (Janet made almond-stuffed dates wrapped in bacon and she marinated some olives), the salad, and the sangria. There was not anything we could about the tapas. I buy mesclun greens by the case, so we had enough greens to double up on the salad. We had also prepared a non-alcoholic version of sangria (a.k.a. fruit punch) but being an Episcopal church, nobody wanted that! The priests had several bottles of wine stashed somewhere in the building (I don't think we raided the communion wine) so we were able to turn the non-alcoholic sangria into the real thing. That's kind of like turning water into wine, right?

Course #2 was the paella. I made a large paella with shellfish and a second one with just chicken and chorizo for anyone with shellfish allergies. (OK, here's a confession. Part of the reason we served the meal in courses is that the shellfish paella was took too long to cook and was not quite ready at 6:00. It had to do with the size of the pan and the layout of the stove)

Everyone was able to get at least a small serving of paella (and they left much of the soccarat - the crusty brown rice that sticks to the bottom of the pan - so Janet and I was able to eat the best part of the paella while cleaning up!)

Course #3 was pasta. Janet had made a bolognese sauce last week to keep in reserve, so we defrosted it and served it with pasta. We don't always keep a backup in the freezer, but I think we will from now on!

The dessert course involved a series of improvisations from Janet. She took her two orange/almond cakes and stretched them by serving it in ice cream sundae glasses. She topped it with an orange sauce and some cream she whipped with cinnamon. As soon as we realized how large the crowd was, she hurried over to the grocery store to buy some ice cream. It was also served in sundae glasses topped with a chocolate espresso sauce she threw together like it was nothing. Between those two desserts, everyone who wanted to break their New Year's diet resolution was able to do so.

Porterhouse Steaks

Partly because of my high cholesterol and partly for environmental reasons, I don't eat a lot of beef these days. Since it is a rare part of my diet, I only want to eat excellent beef. A porterhouse steak from Peter Luger's Steak House in Brooklyn, for example. The NY Times has a short article today about Peter Luger's, accompanied by this multimedia feature. Be sure to click on the full screen link.

Lime-cello

2 friends.
3 microplane graters.
20 pounds of limes.

The day after Thanksgiving, I followed up my limoncello experiment (the limoncello was good, a bit too sweet, but still good) by starting a batch of lime-cello.

The only recipe I could find online was at LimoncelloQuest, a blog describing itself as "a personal pilgrimage to create the perfect Limoncello." Ben made a half batch with only 10 limes and vodka, and although he reported that he was pleased with the distinctly lime flavor, the color of the finished liquor was almost indistinguishable from the limoncello.

I took Ben's basic technique for limoncello of filtering the Everclear multiple times but greatly increased the amount of lime zest. In fact, the zest produced by 20 pounds of limes could not be covered by 750 ml of Everclear, so I had to add a bottle of vodka to the initial infusion. With that much zest (and using grain alcohol) I don't think there will be any issue with the color of the limecello being pale. As you can see, right now it is an extremely dark green, almost black.

Big thanks to Suzanne and Kristy for helping with the major task of zesting all of those limes! Oh yeah, if anyone needs some frozen lime juice, I'm your man.

How I Met Your Mother

The fall TV season began a few weeks ago. I've been enjoying a bunch of returning shows like "Dexter," "Pushing Daisies," "Chuck," and "The Office." A show that I just started watching last year is "How I Met Your Mother."

HIMYM is one of those shows ("Lost" is another one) that would have been completely different had it been written prior to TIVO, TV shows on DVD, and the ability to stream shows online. The writers of HIMYM are focused on continuity to an extent that would be superfluous if the audience did not have an easy way to watch multiple episodes back to back or to easily rewatch an episode from earlier in the season or from a prior season. Jokes are set up in one episode, with the payoff not coming for months.

I like the way this demonstrates writers' respect for the audience. I also simply like the characters. I just don't watch TV shows unless I enjoy spending time with the characters. Jason Segal (previously seen in several of Judd Apatow TV shows, such as the brilliant "Freaks and Geeks, and movies) plays Marshall, who is the focus of last week's episode. The clip below is Marshall's ode to the perfect hamburger (which, as I've previously written, can be found at Tessaro's in Pittsburgh.)

Restaurants

I wish I had the time (and money!) to do restaurant reviews. What a great job, although if a newspaper or magazine is paying you to review places, you have to make multiples trips to restaurants you don't like. I think I could live with that, though. Since I don't write restaurant reviews, I'll just write a note about a couple of places I went in the past week.

Over Labor Day weekend I was at Blue Grotto, a new pizza place in Brookside. It was the best pizza I've had since moving back to KC, although that's not saying much. These are artisan, wood fired pizzas with a light, slightly crackly crust. My favorite was a prosciutto with red onions and asiago cheese. The salsiccia was great, too. The only problem was slow service, but I was with a group that gave off we're-going-to-hang-out-here-all-night vibes.

On Tuesday, I met a friend at a little Italian restaurant also in Brookside, La Cucina Di Mamma. This place is a part of Bella Napoli, the Italian market and deli. I had a special, pasta alla puttanesca. It was not as spicy as puttansecas that I've made or had elsewhere. The anchovy was the dominate flavor, but it was not too much. I'd order it again. I don't know very much about Italian wines, so I can't really judge the wine list. We got one of the least expensive bottles, and it was a good weeknight-type red that worked just fine with our meals. The price was great, too. Our two entrees, the wine, and the tip came to about $50.

Both places are worth checking out. I'm sure I'll be back at both of them in the future.

Tattoo

As I mentioned a few days ago, I was recently looking for pictures of food related tattoos. I have thought about getting a tattoo for years, but last summer decided that it was time. I was in the midst of some major life changes and thought that a tattoo might be one way to mark, literally, both what was new in my life and what was consistent.

I wanted an image that would tie my previous church-based career with the new food-based direction I was taking. The connection is closer than it might appear at first glance. Food images are all over the Bible. Focusing just on the New Testament, there is Jesus' first miracle of turning water into wine at a wedding feast, feeding the crowds with the fish and the loaves, the Last Supper, and Jesus' post-resurrection appearance on the road to Emmaus when the disciples don't recognize him until he breaks bread. One of the most consistent images of heaven throughout the Bible is that of a great feast.

These images pop up so often for a reason. Eating with another person is incredibly important. It is hard to imagine the most important occasions in life, like weddings and funerals, without food being present. Kids whose families eat dinner together on a regular basis are socially and emotionally healthier than kids whose families do not eat together. In my time doing youth ministry, I experienced how important eating together is for teenagers to form a sense of community. Eating together, somehow, opens us up to what God wants to happen in our relationships.

For me, the move to feeding people physically is not far removed from putting them into a position to be fed spiritually. But coming up with the right image to capture all that was tough. I was going to have this tattoo for the rest of my life, so I wanted to be sure about it.

I played around with images of bread and wine, but was never really happy with what I came up with. Something about that just did not seem right. At the Easter Vigil this spring, the stating of the cultural mandate (for more about what this "cultural mandate" is all about, check this out) from the Genesis reading jumped out to me. "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it..." The idea that part of the reason for our existence on earth is to be fruitful (obviously this is not limited to having lots of children) has long been an important part of what it means to me to be a Christian.

There are all kinds of things that we encounter in our lives that are full of potential (artistic talent, tomato seeds, ideas about how to build a house) but need to be cultivated by our active involvement. One of the things I love about cooking is finding an incredible ingredient, like a Copper River Salmon, and figuring out how to bring forth every bit of its potential to be an amazing meal. That's one way to put the cultural mandate into action.

So back to the tattoo. The command to "be fruitful" got me thinking about images again. I couldn't exactly figure how a tattoo of a seed would look any different from a freckle, and when I searched for images of a tattoo of an apple, most of what I found was people who had tattooed themselves with the Apple Computer logo. I'm writing this on my MacBook and I own 2 iPods, but there was no way I was going to put something that looks like the logo of a company, even one that I like as much as Apple, on my body.

Then I returned to the idea of bread and wine, the most significant food images in Christendom. The processes of turning wheat into bread and grapes into wine are both incredibly simple, yet in the hands of great artists they end up with incredibly complex flavors and textures. Master bakers and winemakers reflect God's creativity when they are fruitful with their talent and with the fruit of the fields.

I knew I had my image after discussing this with my sister and brother-in-law. Monte pointed out that the grain of wheat must be cracked and the grape must be crushed for them to reach their potential. Cracked and crushed are not bad descriptions of the past two years of my life. One image that refers to my old life, my new life, and hints at the journey from the old to the new. Perfect.

I found some pictures online, took them to several tattoo parlors until I found an artist that felt "right," had him combine the pictures into one unified image, and walked away with this on my left calf.

Food Blog

I've been reading Chef Matt's blog, Deglazed, since the end of last year. I stumbled across it when I was looking for pictures of food related tattoos (this is what I found at his blog). Matt had always been an amateur cook with a career as a web designer when he decided to take the plunge of attending cooking school and working towards becoming a professional chef. He also happens to be a good writer.

The reason for this post is that Chef Matt commented on my Dr. Horrible post (if you didn't watch Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, you can still download it on iTunes) I wanted to thank him publicly for my new favorite Margarita Recipe. His margarita is definitely hardcore - I don't think I've ever had a drink that was as tart as this one. I sometimes make some modification; instead of TripleSec, I've substituted a few drops of orange oil and a shot of my limoncello. Next time you are in the mood for a margarita, give Chef Matt's recipe a try. If you don't think you will like an extremely tart margarita, just add a bit of a simple syrup.

Your Food Footprint

There are lots of reasons to eat locally produced food but in my mind the most important one is the taste. Another important factor is the potential for locally produced food to have less of an environmental impact than food that has been shipped across the country or over the ocean. Unfortunately, it's not always easy to tell how much carbon has been released by the production of the food we eat. From the fertilizers (which are often petroleum based) to tractors and combines, to the trucks and trains and ships that transport the food, a lot of carbon based fuel is burned to get that loaf of bread or fresh salad on your table.

One of the worst offenders is beef, especially grain-fed beef. Two researchers from CMU's Engineering school's Public Policy department published research this spring that suggested that changing only one day per week's meat and dairy-based calories to chicken, fish, or vegetables would have about the same impact on greenhouse gases as shifting to an entirely locally produced diet. That's how bad beef is for the environment. Here is an excerpt from an article about their research:

Weber and colleague Scott Matthews, also of Carnegie Mellon, conducted a life-cycle assessment of greenhouse gases emitted during all stages of growing and transporting food consumed in the U.S. They found that transportation creates only 11% of the 8.1 metric tons (t) of greenhouse gases (in CO₂ equivalents) that an average U.S. household generates annually as a result of food consumption. The agricultural and industrial practices that go into growing and harvesting food are responsible for most (83%) of its greenhouse gas emissions.

For perspective, food accounts for 13% of every U.S. household's 60 t share of total U.S. emissions; this includes industrial and other emissions outside the home. By comparison, driving a car that gets 25 miles per gallon of gasoline for 12,000 miles per year (the U.S. average) produces about 4.4 t of CO₂. Switching to a totally local diet is equivalent to driving about 1000 miles less per year, Weber says.

Driving less and using more fuel efficient vehicles are obviously important parts of dealing with climate change, but eating less beef is more important by several orders of magnitude. A nice side benefit is the healthier heart you end up with if you replace beef with more vegetables and whole grains in your diet.

From a public policy perspective, I think that a carbon tax is probably the best way to encourage more intelligent choices by the public. Eating beef has a large cost to the environment associated with it that is largely hidden to the public. A carbon tax would capture the cost to the environment from growing the grain (fertilizers, transportation, etc.) that feeds the cattle as well as the environment costs of transporting the beef. Grass-fed beef would become less expensive relative to grain-fed beef.

When choosing what to eat, the items that do more damage to the environment ought to cost more. Often the relative price difference of our food reflects the power of different lobbies (the corn lobby is why high fructose corn syrup is so cheap, and therefore why it is in so much of our food) as much as anything else. If the price of food included the cost to the environment, then consumers could make more informed choices.

On the road

Yesterday afternoon, after stopping for a Local Burger (this time I went with Elk), I drove about 2/3's of the way to Colorado. The bugs sounded like rain against my windshield in Western Kansas near dusk. I think I need a paint scraper to clean the front of my truck.

After a quick stop at the REI in Denver this morning (they are having a sale this week) it will be on the mountains. My goal is to bring back pictures of wildflowers.

Cocktails

I'm not much a mixed drinks kind of guy. I like wine, I like Scotch, I like cider. My opinion usually is that if I am going to drink alcohol, I want it to be good enough alcohol that it doesn't need added sugar or juice or soda, etc.

The Dining & Wine section of the New York Times has a "Special Drinks Issue" today that looks at cocktails and includes quite a few recipes. Given my lack of interest in cocktails, I have not read any of them. I did, however, read Mark Bittman's column about the cocktail.

Bittman write The Minimalist column for the Times, and the name of his column describes his approach to mixed drinks.

Look at the pattern — you might call it the basic recipe — of these drinks, many of which might be grouped as “sours”: they combine liquor with water (usually in the form of ice), a sour flavoring (usually citrus juice) and a sweetener (simple syrup, or something more expensive and flavorful, like Cointreau). You might add a splash of soda or, if you like, fruit juice, which gets you into beachcomber or cosmo territory.

Master this pattern and you can mix hundreds of cocktails at home without a book or recipe. For me, most cocktails look like this: A stiff pour of alcohol, say a quarter cup, over ice; very little sweetener, a teaspoon or at the most two; a tablespoon or more of lime juice (which I find more refreshing than lemon juice); and, if suitable, a garnish like mint (which I chop), or an orange slice. Not only can the proportions change to your taste, they should.

The parallels with cooking are clear. You can start with good ingredients, or not. You can start with someone else’s recipe (on which there are usually a score or more variations) or make the cocktail your own. The point — and this clearly comes from the perspective of cook, not bartender — is this: Why not make cocktails from scratch, ignoring the names and acknowledging your preferences? Why not treat the margarita like a dish of pasta with tomatoes, assuming a few given ingredients but varying them according to your taste?

That's the kind of approach to a cocktail that I could get behind. Sometimes ingredients that are great on their own, also taste wonderful or even better in combination with other great ingredients. Certainly the same could be true with different alcohols. The mixed-drinks = pasta-with-a-sauce analogy makes a lot sense to me.

BBQ, Beer, and the Blues

During the last weekend in May, some friends from Washington came to town for a visit. Peggie and Greg moved to Kansas City just after I did last fall, while Chuck and Sheila live in Olympia. We all played volleyball together for a couple of years.

Me, Chuck, Sheila, Peggie, Greg

Chuck was wise enough to know that a trip to Kansas City just wouldn't be complete with having some BBQ and listening to some blues. Sunday night we decided to do both at BB's Lawnside BBQ. The BBQ was just okay (ever since I started doing my own burnt ends about 6 or 7 years ago, I haven't been happy with any that I've had in a restaurant) but they served Boulevard Beer and the music was fun. I think that Peggie, Greg and I will probably make more trips to BB's Lawnside.

I don't have many pictures of the weekend because I either forgot to bring my camera along, or when I did remember the batteries were dead. The few that I do have can be see here.

Update

Ever since I visit Finn, Matt & Monte, I have not been writing here much. I doubt that will change this week, even though I have a backlog of things I want to blog about.

The owner of the kitchen where I work had a horrible weekend. Last Friday he had to put the family dog to sleep. Then on Saturday night, his 53 year old brother had a heart attack and died. When I talked to him on the phone Sunday afternoon, he sounded like he was in a bit of shock. I'm sure I would have sounded the same. He's spending this week in California with his family, which leaves me in charge of the kitchen this week.

So far, things have gone really well. I'm not too worried about the rest of the week, either, but it does take more energy being the "decider" for everything. All in all, its one more good experience to have in preparation for my future food related endeavors. I just wish it did not come about under such sad circumstances.

97% Safe

I received the results from my ServSafe certification class I took a couple of weeks ago. It's not a terribly impressive result. Anyone who graduated from High School ought to be able to pass this. There were important things on the test, things that anyone working with food needs to have memorized - such as the optimal conditions for bacterial growth and minimum recommended cooking temperature for various foods. There were also things on the test that I really don't think I need to have memorized.

I don't need to know off the top of my head whether a shellfish poisoning likely came from saxitoxin, brevetoxin, or domoic acid, particularly if I know that I can find out within a minute or two. Our short term memory has a limited capacity, and it takes work to move info from short term to long term memory.

One of the ways that the world has changed recently is that the value of being able to find information has increased. With so much information available on the web, knowing how to find the exact piece of information you need is critical. And while the "information superhighway" has put a vast amount of information at our fingertips, but it has also placed an equally (if not greater) amount of junk at our disposal as well. Knowing how to use a google search (or when google is not the right tool to use to find the info you need) is a skill that has real value.

I think I sometimes take this for granted, but then someone will ask me how to find a particular website. I don't usually bother to memorize an exact url, so I can't give them the answer that they think they need. I would just search for it, but usually the person with the question has already tried that. Various tips about how to use google help somewhat, but they assume you know which words to use. All the Boolean operators in the world won't help if the words you use are vague or you don't use enough words.

I imagine web search optimization (for the people doing the searches, not for people trying to drive traffic to their website) will become a standard part of school curriculum. I remember being in elementary school and learning how to use the card catalog and to understand the Dewey decimal system in a library. Learning how to use to a search engine, and then how to evaluate the results of your search, are just as important now.

I Got Mad Skillz, Yo!

Thursday is going to be a busy day at work. We are catering a lunch for 90 people at a financial company where we plan to start a business delivery program. It's a bit intimidating as we have never catered anything this big before. In addition to the lunch, tomorrow night we will host an open house for the 5th grade class at local elementary school (the school that I attended as a whippersnapper) This will kickoff a fundraiser we are doing with the school.

It felt like we racing all day to prep for tomorrow while also doing all of the regular work that comes along on a Wednesday. I spent the first hour and a half of the day mincing herbs and chopping green onions. Last November, when I started this job, it would have taken me twice as long (and my arm and wrist would have been quite sore) to do all of that chopping. I had not noticed along the way that my knife skills had improved as much as they have. Now, I'm certainly not as fast as I would need to be if I worked in a busy kitchen for a nice restaurant, but it's nice to see progress!

Great Fast Food

Tonight, I had a great fast good burger. Californian swear by In-N-Out Burger, Oregonians like Burgerville (I'm sure that other regions have their favorite high quality fast food joints). Those places are good, and a huge step up from the national chains, but they just aren't at the level of the burger I ate tonight. (It was not the best hambuger I've ever had, that would be from Tessaro's in Pittsburgh. But Tessaro's is not fast food) I was in Lawrence all day for a class, which was a great excuse to finally try out Local Burger.

Local Burger is leading the evolution of fast food with fresh, organic, local, and sustainable fare that is free of unnatural additives and preservatives. At Local Burger, we consider the special diet, the environment, the economy, animal welfare, and the health of everyone who eats our food. At Local Burger, you'll always know where your food came from and exactly what's in it. Try it, you'll like it!

I've read about this place ever since I moved back to Kansas City last fall. They got a lot of buzz when Bon Appetit named them one of the top ten eco-friendly restaurants in the country. Their meat is all grain-fed, which I prefer. Some people think grass-fed beef is less tender (it is leaner) and has a stronger flavor than corn-fed beef. I don't think there is any dispute about it being healthier.

I had their Buffalo burger and progressive potatoes. The buffalo tasted lean and had that great, meaty flavor that I love so much from any kind of buffalo meat. I actually put too much mustard on the it (The Editor - too much mustard? I never thought I would hear those words from you!) but the burger was substantial enough to stand up to it. The next time any of you are in Lawrence, you gotta check out Local Burger!

Cookbooks

In the past couple of months, I've gone on something of a book buying spree. I am definitely of the camp that believes it is impossible to own too many books. Not only did I get the stack of books picture to the right, but I also needed to get more shelving for them! If you look at the picture carefully, you might notice a theme. Not only are they all cookbooks, but most of them deal specifically with feeding crowds.

My church in Kansas City, St. Andrews, has a Taize-style Candlelight Communion service on Sunday evenings. The service consists of meditative music, readings, silence, and communion. The worshipers generally leave the service in silence.

One of the goals (but certainly not the only goal) behind this service, as I understand it, was to provide a worship opportunity that might be meaningful to the community at the nearby UMKC campus. There have been people from UMKC who attend regularly, but it has been difficult for them and the other members of the congregation to get to know one another.

Adding a meal following the service to facilitate community building was discussed in the initial planning for the Candlelight Communion, but there was nobody willing or able to provide leadership towards making that happen. I have volunteered to be a part of a team to provide that leadership in the fall. We will spend this summer planning and hope to begin the dinners in September. I think that my role will be to plan menus and provide guidance to the volunteers who will help me prepare the meals each week. I would be happy if we had around 15 people stay for dinner in the beginning.

I was a member of a church in Pittsburgh that had a Saturday evening worship service that was followed by a meal. That meal was an essential part of the life of the community who worshiped at the Saturday Celebration. That should not be a surprise to anyone who has ever read the Bible; many significant Biblical events occur over a meal (Jesus' first miracle, the Last Supper, many of the Jesus' post-resurrection appearances, and of course one of the primary images of heaven is that of a feast)

I am excited to explore how this might help me bridge the gap between the two sides of my professional life. Until now, I always worked for either a church or a faith-based non-profit. You could say I was all about being a conduit so that people could be fed spiritually. Now I am focused on feeding people physically. This fall I hope to do both at the same time.