|
|
|
July 6th, 2009
June 29th, 2009
04:38 pm - What is
A good word for the alchemical equivalent of a grimoire?
|
12:05 pm - know a good one?
Looking for a netbook to run some low-powered PC apps. Anyone have recommendations based on recent experience? Criteria are mainly ergonomic, cheap, pretty. The apps are sufficiently low powered that nearly anything out there should run them with ease.
|
June 23rd, 2009
10:20 pm
Would anyone reading this like to form a band called the Spice Mushrooms?
Bonus points if it's an 80s cover band with big hair.
|
June 11th, 2009
June 1st, 2009
09:42 pm - Notes from a New Jerusalem, part 3 - more eating
The outstanding meal of a very good week of eating was at The Sportsman in Seasalter. Seasalter is a name on a map, representing, perhaps, the barest increase in the concentration of farmhouses above the expected random distribution. You get there by taking a train to Whitstable* then winding along a country road for seven miles. Roadside hedges give way to sea wall on your right and fields of sheep on your left for the last couple miles, the duet of grass and broken by beach shacks, which appear in clumps, like mushrooms. The Sportsman itself is a raw white house, cut out against the grey shore, up close, it exudes a genteel rusticity - rickety looking wicker on the patio, a smoker and a grill standing impishly by the front door, and huge windows from the kitchen facing the sea. Inside, old wood and perfect place settings, fat white candles and chalkboard menus, and an hospitable air worthy of the last homely house upon the road.
If I could fly across the Atlantic to eat there on a weekly basis, I would, and the reason I would do so, instead of simply hiring the staff, is that Stephen Harris and his siblings have created a restaurant with real terroir, using barely anything that doesn't come from within a few miles of the pub. I mean this literally - itsits on a beach, and so the seafood comes from the waters around it, and they make their own salt from the seawater, which they sprinkle on butter which they make from cream from cows which graze just down the road (very good, but not quite as good as the butter at the Fat Duck). The food is simple and direct, occasionally original (a raw oyster with a thick slice of chorizo, fried until crisp), but so perfect you could burst into song. Rhubarb sorbet with pop rocks and burnt cream that's rich and thick and eggy and textured. Turbot consomme and shellfish from a hundred yards away. Smoked pork and turbot and asparagus in vin jaune sauce. As we ate and admired the photographs on the walls (all shot within a few hundered yards of the pub), running our fingers across the scars in the old oak table, we felt a deep and serene sense of place, a oneness with the salt marsh, rough wind and monochrome horizon.
Please visit, if you can.
*A fishing village distinguished by pebbly beaches and a large number of shellfish, a main street with an old style sweet shop, a perfectly lovely used bookstore or two, a chippy that still fries with lard, and an increasing number of sometimes quite phenomenally bobo stores, which give away the fact that this is rapidly turning into the London version of the Hamptons.
|
May 26th, 2009
02:31 pm - Mini Fridge?
Our fridge is malfunctioning. Earliest available repair appointment is Friday. We desperately need a mini-fridge to use to tide us over. Does anyone have one we can rent/borrow/buy at CraigsList like prices?
|
May 21st, 2009
09:53 pm - Notes from a New Jerusalem, part 1 - eating
Cross post with the other blog. Those of you with both of these on your friends page, please excuse the duplication.
( In some detail, as you might imagine )
|
May 20th, 2009
May 7th, 2009
March 29th, 2009
04:30 pm - Free to a good home
3 great textbooks on stagecraft and lighting design.
The Stagecraft Handbook (Ionazzi) - don't let your TD built without it!
Lighting the Stage: Art and Practice (Bellman) - a little dated, still inspirational, and the concepts don't change.
A Practical Guide to Stage Lighting (Shelley) - very technical, but industry standard lighting stagecraft. Does not really teach design, teaches implementation. I say again: technical.
Need to be out of here by Tuesday morning. Willing to mail if you tell me by lunchtime on Monday.
|
March 25th, 2009
10:41 pm - Dear whoever
Introduced my wife to cakewrecks,
If she fails to get her dissertation done on time, it will be your fault.
|
March 22nd, 2009
08:35 pm - PSA in three parts
Highland Kitchen, which we still recommend very highly, does very good sandwiches which are nonetheless not as good as the starters and entrees, which says more about the quality of the starters and entrees than about the sammies.
The Roadhouse in Brookline, which is the Publick House's attempt at a barbecue joint, is really not worth your time or money. The Publick House has just as good a beer list, and, we're told, better food - which is easy to believe.
Cafe Fixe, on the other hand, really, really rocks. We just had one of the best cups of coffee in recent memory there. Their selection of baked goods is paltry, but between the vibe and the truly excellent coffee, you have every reason to go to Brookline for a quiet Sunday afternoon of coffee, tasty but not earthshaking baked goods from Athans, and beer/dinner at the Publick House.
|
March 12th, 2009
11:19 am - Still not dead
That I've been planning to write this since January tells you everything you need to know about how the year is going.
Four Aubrey-Maturin novels in a row stretches my ability to digest and enjoy the series. Nonetheless, the promised change in tenor did take place during The Reverse of the Medal and The Letter of Marque. Perhaps I read them too quickly, but I felt they might have benefited from a slower and more introspective pace.
Relatively large quantities of non-fiction, for work - a brief monograph and The New Argonauts by Annalee Saxenian, studies of migrant communities and their ties to their homelands. Her work is interesting partly for its attempt at painting a quantitative picture of just how much skilled migrants to the US interact within their migrant communities and their lands of origin, and also for the texture provided by the qualitative interviews she does. She raises an interesting theoretical point about professional networks - they're only as valuable as the resources they allow members to tap. Sometimes, these are fairly large resource pools, such as "access to Taiwanese manufacturing capabilities." Scannable.
Albert-Lazlo Barabasi's Linked was a great introductory text, only slightly spoiled by poorly executed attempts to be anecdotally interesting.
The Last Colony by John Scalzi was a fun read. A little too set-piece, lacking some of the seat-of-the-pants that made the first book, especially, so easy to swallow.
February was, appropriately enough, necromancy month - The Devil You Know by Michael Carey (yes, that Michael Carey) actually has nothing to do with Lucifer. It's best described as supernatural noir, with a potentially rich setting (London, a few years after the dead begin to rise) that's not explored enough. Felix Castor (as in, "A Felix Castor Novel" - lovely that they signal their intent) is about as cardboard a character as I can remember having met, and I think he felt the lack of a visual component quite keenly. Mediocre, but in a strange way that makes me want to read the next one.
I also just re-read Sabriel, by Garth Nix - the first time I've re-read a piece of fiction in at least 3 or 4 years. Still lovely, still should be made into a movie, still, I think, relatively unknown in the US. I really want to see a graphic novel version - can one of my lovely friends in the publishing industry arrange something?
I blame L for the whole necromancy thing - she made me read Plagues and Peoples by William H. McNeill. I should mention as a disclaimer that I haven't read any Jared Diamond, so if you have, you might find all this old hat - which it is, having been published in 1976. It's well worth a skim, as there are some useful concepts in there (man as a parasite, macro-vs. micro-parasitism, parasitic equilibria, etc.), and pretty well written, but if you get into the details, you might, as I did, find it frustratingly senior-faculty - lots of handwavy and expoundaciousness. But, as L said, the details are interesting as hypotheticals, and I can certainly see that.
A couple of other notes: I read Alisa Torres' American Widow last year, and found it a waste of time. I feel guilty saying so, since it's the autobiographical story of a 9/11 widow who was 7 months pregnant on the date, and her subsequent struggles with the bureaucratic tangle - but really, with a setup like that, if your graphic novel fails to elicit real sympathy in the reader, I think it's fair to say that it was poorly executed.
Also, we've been using 100 Questions Every First-Time Home Buyer Should Ask as a reference text. A very valuable resource, and, having browsed books of this sort extensively, I'm persuaded this is one of the best.
|
March 1st, 2009
11:59 pm - Also
If at all possible, haul over to the ICA before the Shepard Fairey exhibit goes down in August. You've seen his stuff a million times and it's all over, but really, seeing it on this scale, and with the mille-feuille detail of the original prints, is totally worth it.
|
11:45 pm - 02144
Surprisingly tasty. I tend to think of Somerville having a shortage of good actual restaurants as compared to say, Cambridge (apparently it's harder to get a liquor license here), so I was very pleasantly surprised twice in the last 3 days.
Al Fresco does a very solid, cheap brunch - hat tip to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) coraline. Better home fries than most places around here, less grease than any of the outright diners, much cheaper than Christopher's, and they can even poach eggs and do an egg white omelette properly! What more do you need?
The real show stealer, though, is Highland Kitchen. If you live in this zip code and haven't been, you really need to go. Hell, if you live 3 zip codes away, still go. The website is less than informative, but don't let that put you off. It's a genuine gastropub - large, lively bar, and a kitchen that can really, really cook.
Caveats - reviews say they have a "great" beer list - it's more like a step down from Christopher's, though they have Dogfish 90 on tap. You will need to book - they had a 40 minute wait at 8pm on Thursday night - and they don't take bookings Friday and Saturday. They will tell you that the curried goat is super spicy. Believe them. Damn bloody tasty, but we were sweating after three bites.
|
February 16th, 2009
03:13 pm - Brisket
We have 2 whole, grass-fed briskets in the freezer.
We need the freezer space.
The meat is great, and brisket is a lovely for smoking, braising or curing, but a. we just don't eat that much meat and b. it's hard for us to serve brisket.
Would anyone like to buy or barter them from us?
|
February 11th, 2009
11:52 pm - ISO recipe
I'm looking for a dry rub for barbecuing pork - the slow way, not the aussie way. Any southern cooks reading this have suggestions?
It's somewhat important that it be tasty, but it's more important that it's something you taste and go "mmm... barbecue," because I can make things tasty, but I don't think I'm sufficiently familiar with the idiom to really be able to hit the right buttons without a base to work off.
Suggestions much appreciated.
|
|
|
