I would eat them, Sam-I-am

Fresh coconut slices with a dusting of chili powder and some squeezings from a fresh lime– good. The coconut was mild, without much flavor, but plenty of texture. The lime added a sharp bright note, and the chili powder, a nice tang. I don’t think I’ll buy it again but, it was a pleasant diversion.

Hermanos of Adventures in Food

This week has seen a number of sites passing around a regurgitated bit of old food news. Wired and BoingBoing both popped up with a bit of food xenophobia, which strikes me as odd. They both tend to neophilia, and here they’re coming up with articles on “ooh! yucky! other people don’t just eat cow and potatoes!” Parochial as all hell.

Huh.

And both articles seem to be based on an old, old web site, which hasn’t been updated in ages. Stale memes.

Warcraft mo’ betta

I stalled out, with some of my earlier WoW characters, because I didn’t know what I know now. Here are a few bits of mo’ betta wisdom.

Shave and a haircut, two bits

So much more than two bits, actually, but I suppose we could chalk that up to inflation.

I’ve cut my own hair since partway through college. It’s certainly saved me a great deal of money, although, really, that wasn’t the point. It was annoying sitting there with, at best, nothing to do and, more likely, a yammering barber or stylist wanting to talk at me. And, the results weren’t all that reliable, either.

‘Course, the first few times I cut my own hair, I looked like I’d been victimized by children while I was sleeping. It takes a little practice. Still…

Bach Lore: a quick dip

Bach Lore is what I like to call the collected knowledge of how to get by as a bachelor or, perhaps, a college student; though, if I called it Stud Lore, people would get the entirely wrong impression, whereas Bach Lore is perfectly clear (he said, humming the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor).

Bach Lore is the art of the inexpensive, the expedient, and the inventive use of what you have on hand. A couch is certainly a bed. A milk crate, no less than a bookshelf and a table, or possibly a chair. No clean knife for spreading that peanut butter? Use a fork, or a spoon turned upside-down.

Mirabile dictu

It’s Friday again, already. So much to do… so much to have done. But, it’s not going to get done today. Oh no. Friday is for goofing off.

About time to get back to my diet and exercise, and work, and all that clever stuff. Not today, though.

Vocal harmony – lost parts of “singing”

Time was that singing involved forming a harmony with the people you were singing with. Oh, one person might sing above or below, and the whole might go in different directions at various points, but a key part of the thing was vocal music: people singing together.

That does not seem to be much of a factor in modern music. When people sing, they don’t sing together, really. I miss that, a bit. I think Queen, with the rocking version of the barbershop quartet, was about the last band to hit it big with vocal harmonies.

Daniel, my brother

you are older than me. Do you still feel the pain…

So, Daniel in the Desert is moving out of town. It’s a damned shame, really. I don’t know the man that well, and he was too far away to visit often, but I count him as a friend, and he’s going, going, gone!

An introduction to Japanese cuisine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b75cl4-qRE

Don’t take it too seriously, folks. Some of it’s just goofy– and who knew the Japanese had a sense of humor? Much of it is true but, it’s a wee bit subversive. An odd thing I ran across on my travels through the tubes.

So wots we got? Is that a giant tortilla chip?

Well, we gots tostadas, for one. Basically, these are smallish tortillas, fried up all crispy. “El Real Sabor Mexicano”, “Tostada de Maiz”, “Sin Colesterol”, they say. The real taste of mexico, corn tostadas, without (to be sure) cholesterol.

And why tostadas? Because I wanted something breadlike, and the bread at the local groceries is just terrible. Fifty varieties of gummy, oversweetened American bread, and Americanized versions of what would be bread, in other countries. It is possible to get decent tortillas, here, of course, but I didn’t feel like going out to the Ranch Market. Tostadas, for some reason, you can still trust to be honest food, aside from the bizarre dyes they use to make them look less lifelike.