Recipes aren't for following

Saw this recipe in my latest issue of _Bon Appetit_ for curried red lentil, kohlrabi and couscous salad. Looked interesting BUT...
DH doesn't like curried lentils so much, and especialy not as a salad. He likes lentils, just not curried. Also, we need to have some extra protein due to diabetes II in the family. Finally, I felt like pulling out my crockpot today.

So....I made two dishes today: Salt Pork with lentils and kohlrabi, and eggplant caponata.

Chopped 3 onions (2 white 1 red) and sauteed them in olive oil until soft
Tossed half into a crockpot with a chunk of salt pork from the freezer and some chicken broth to cover. Turned crockpot on high. Reserved the rest of the cooked onion for caponata.

Chopped 3 bell peppers (2 orange, 1 red), 2 stalks of celery, 2 carrots, and 3 kohlrabi.

I still say Kohlrabi looks like an alien. But it tastes somewehre between a potato and a radish. Interesting. So, I took the leaves and rinsed them, and chiffonaded them and added them to the crockpot. Then I chopped the kohlrabi bulbs. Even though they were small, they had some touch parts, so I will get bigger ones next time. I had tried doing the "boil 30 seconds then shock in ice water" trick to get the skins off but that didn't help. So I just took a paring knife to them.

Dropped about half of the chopped veggies into the crockpot. Added the lentils (about a cup of red lentils) and poured in broth to cover.

What to use for spices?

I decided to go with mustard and paprika(to go with the salt pork); black peppercorns and garlic powder, of course; some cumin seed to add some highlight; and then saw the black coriander. So I added one of those, and ground the works up in the grinder. Added half (about a tsp) to start along with about a tsp of salt.

A couple hours in, I added another tsp or so of spices, and some hot water cuz it was looking a bit dry.

All in all, it cooked about 6 hours, about 2 on high, 3 on low, then another hour on high to finish it off and make sure everything was soft. When it was time to eat, I took out the pork and pulled it into chunks to add to the plates, (removing the fat and bone).

I took a cup plus of the cooking liquid in a small saucepan, brought it to a boil, and added a cup of couscous. After setting 5 minutes, I fluffed it with a fork.

For presentation, I put down a swipe of good dijon mustard on the plate, piled the pork and a half cup of couscous on one side, then filled the rest of the plate with mixed salad greens topped with a cup of the lentil, kohlrabi mix.

Yummy and filling. We had it with a white French burgundy. It didn't need anything else. It was SOOOOO good. Yum! And all because I saw a recipe for curried lentils and couscous... ;-)

Oh - and the caponata got prepped in the meantime so it's ready for tomorrow's dinner. But that's another post...

Living off the Land(line)

So, I just finally hooked up a phone to the landline. Mind you, they installed that at the same time as our internet. I just hadn't actually plugged anything in yet. OTOH - I have used my cellphone extensively. Now, I've got to update my Google Voice number to ring the landline.

It was odd, telling Alex that we needed to get a new phone. It wasn't clear that I didn't mean a cellphone. ;-) So when I walked into Best Buy tonight to grab a new phone, I was prepared to ask for a landline phone. The default is no longer landline - it's cellphone.

Even odder is realizing as I type this that it isn't really a landline! It's a VOIP service with AT&T Uverse. So, I guess we're not on the phone lines anymore, for real. Okay, I realize that many folks have switched already; it's just briefly unsettling to think about the change. (I feel so behind!) Guess now we have finally and truly joined the digital age.

The importance of being Ernest

We have a new member of the family. He's a small black lab mix, come all the way from Taiwan to be adopted. When we adopted him yesterday, they told us he had been adopted first about a year ago by people who wanted a puppy. Two days ago, instead of returning him to the no-kill, doggie rescue people, the jerks dropped him off at a kill shelter! Luckily, he's chipped and the doggie rescue folks rescued him before he was euthanized. When we adopted him yesterday, they were calling him Turnip! (Shades of Black Adder...)

So, we have determined that his name is going to be Ernest. And he's a Very Good Dog.

EDIT:
Apparently, he's also a Very Clever Dog. He knows how to open doors. The pocket doors are less than 2 seconds for him to open. And now he's figured out how to open the bedroom door. The one with the doorknob that turns. Yeah. He can somehow open a latched door with a doorknob. Oh boy.

Cooking and nostalgia

Today, I'm cooking wild boar ragu in the slow cooker, and polenta. And it reminds me of when we lived in Italia.
Wild boar is something we ate with my step-son's girlfriend - her family had local hunters give them wild boar. The flavor is rich and gamey in a good way.
But Polenta will always remind me of our honeymoon - up in the Italian Alps. The little hotel we stayed at invited all its guests to lunch at their Malga (a traditional farmhouse up slope from the village). To get there, we all walked along a path, through woods and flowers, along a creek, and then emerging to a pasture, high in the mountains, surrounded by grass, and rock, and flowers, with the sound of the creek audible below. Children played, running around with the dog that had accompanied us up, a happy little dog who was all energy and bounce. We sat and drank wine and chatted and explored while the hotel folk cooked over an open fire. The meat had been roasting since the morning, but the polenta - oh, the polenta pot was a thing to behold. A HUGE copper pot, over a wood fire built into the side of the farmhouse, at just the right height for us to take turns stirring with a wooden spoon that was at least 2 feet long. The polenta bubbled and boiled like the proverbial cauldron for hours, getting thicker, and creamier. Meanwhile, they plied us with coldcuts and bread and wine, but then came the grilled pork sausage and then the roasted venison and the polenta. All the picnic tables were set with bottles of red wine, as we sat at picnic tables under the summer sun, and ate until we couldn't eat any more. And as the evening began, we all walked together, down the long path, (very glad it was downhill), back to the hotel, before the next day's adventures.

PyCon Awesomeness

I was just looking over the talks and tutorials for PyCon 2010, which is coming up in February in Atlanta. All I can say is, wow! This year's lineup is incredible. We've got 2 days packed of tutorials, 3 days packed of an incredibly variety of talks aimed at all levels of pythonista, PLUS open space, poster sessions(new this year), lightning talks, and more. I can't wait!

Why I'm riding the bus

EDIT: I'm talking about BICYCLES here except for one mention of motorcycles. Bike == BICYCLE, not motorcycle, in this post.

About 20 years ago or so, I was waiting at a busstop, minding my own business. Some guy walks up to me and asks: "Do you know why I'm riding the bus today?" I wasn't sure what he was up to, but figured it didn't hurt to chat with him. "No, why?" "Because I'm alive."

And he reaches into his backpack and pulls out the two halves of the bike(as in BICYCLE) helmet he was wearing the week before, the helmet he was wearing the day a car ran into him on his bike.

I had always been pretty conscientious about wearing a helmet when on a motorcycle but hadn't been as much on a bicycle. I hadn't really been biking much lately, so didn't even own a bike or a helmet.

But ever since then, whenever I get on a bike, the helmet goes on. Period. Or I don't get on.

I'm really glad I met him. Especially last Wednesday, when someone in a car ran into me on my bike. I knew my bike helmet was on, and I think that allowed me to relax enough to just go with it and not tense up much. So nothing is broken. My back is sore, my shoulder where I landed is a bit bruised. But nothing is broken. Including my head - which I think connected with his windshield and I know hit the ground when I slid off his hood flat on my back on the ground.

My thanks to the man with the two helmet halves - whoever he was - and I wish him a long and happy life. And thanks to my friend Jacquie who tightened my helmet straps a few days before the accident.

There may be long-term effects to my back or things that haven't shown up yet. But my head ain't cracked open. And I'm alive to tell this story.

Time to get a new bike helmet.

Why women don't talk enough

So, the call for proposals for PyCon is out and has been out for some time. It's been circulated around. I've personally sent it to a number of women's lists I'm on. So, why don't I see any proposals from women yet? (Besides mine...)

Some reasons I've heard when I've asked women friends over the years about why they haven't proposed a talk:

a. I don't have time
None of us have enough time. I know we women have a lot of "extras" that we do every day and hobbies tend to fall by the wayside. I'm a full-time student at Stanford, with a husband, a house, 2 cats, and a teenager who doesn't want to do his homework. If I can submit a proposal, so can you.

b. I don't know enough
No one knows everything. And if you're closer to the n00b level, you'll understand what a n00b needs to hear better than an expert. Which brings us to:

c. There are experts/package creators there
Even if the creator is there, they may not be speaking, or they may be so deep into the package that they have no idea what real users of the package actually have trouble with and need to know. You do. So tell the rest of us about it. It's okay to have talks about the same package at two different levels!

d. I only use Python for this limited weird niche:
There are a lot of people interested in how to use Python for niches, and the more niches that presenters explore, the more the rest of us learn about the rich breadth of our favorite language.

e. I'm scared to speak in public:
PyCon is one of the friendliest, most tolerant conferences out there. We're all just a bunch of fellow enthusiasts: you're speaking to friends. So get out there and teach us all about something Pythonic that you love. Trust me, before I speak, not only do my knees shake, my *cheeks* shake! (It's hard to speak when your cheeks are shaking - try it sometime. ;-) But people at Pycon are ON YOUR SIDE - they *WANT* you to succeed. So, it's okay if you're a little shaky at the beginning. They'll be polite and listen anyways, because they want to hear about what you're presenting on. And once you've started, you'll be okay. Trust me on this.

So women of Python - please submit your proposals. Don't let the guys have all the fun and glory. I want to see *you* on stage at PyCon!

http://us.pycon.org/2010/conference/proposals/