Month: December 2003

So far I have looked at <a href="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/2003_12_01_journal.html#id107073158735942131" title="The First Seed Catalog">Tomatoes</a> and <a href="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/2003_12_01_journal.html#id107084130980970874" title="More Seed Catalog Reading">Bell Peppers</a>. Since it is snowing like crazy out today, I thought it would be a good day to continue, and I am going on to the rest of the peppers:

Frying Peppers

• Biscayne — 63 days to harvest (60 days pale green, 80 days red ripe). 7- by 2-inch, extra long, slim two- to three-lobed, pale lime green to red fruit, tapering to blunt tips. Famous for frying. Biscayne is the favorite Cubanelle.
• Super Sweet Banana — 70 days to harvest. Extra large 7¾-inch, tapered yellow fruit mature dark red. Top yielding jumbo banana for processing or fresh market.
• Giant Marconi — 72 days to harvest. Mosaic resistant. Potato virus Y resistant. Large, tapered 8- by 2½-inch, green to glossy scarlet fruits with medium thick walls. The fruits mature earlier to red than other varieties. Incredibly versatile. Terrific in salads, salsa, roasted, grilled, or fried. Best grilled, but excellent raw.
• Navarone — 74 days to harvest. Very smooth, uniform 9-inch by 3½-inch, deep, two-lobed, bull nosed Macedonia x Bulgarian sweet frying type with bright red fruit, thick flesh, and a great taste.

(More) Bell Peppers

While I was researching the frying peppers, I realized I missed some of the recommended Bell Peppers at the top of the next page. So without further adieu…

• Lady Bell — 74 days to harvest. Mosaic resistant. High yielding, attractive green to red fruit. Starts early and produces heavily, even in short seasons. These peppers are better for stuffing and freezing than smaller extra-early varieties and have a delicious sweet flavor.

Hot Peppers

• False Alarm — 62 days to harvest. Jalapeno flavor with little heat. Brings savory jalapeno flavor to non-heat lovers everywhere. False Alarm makes compact plants that are barely 18 inches tall, yet smother themselves with thick-fleshed, 3-inch peppers. Excellent for roasting, nachos, poppers, and salsa. It is the perfect little hardly-hot pepper for small gardens and containers.
• Super Cayenne II — 68 days to harvest. Earlier and more productive than the standard Cayenne, this new hybrid produces 6- by ½-inch fruit that ripen from light green to a deep red. Commonly used for drying, culinary and decorative purposes.
• Mesilla — 68 days to harvest. Mosaic resistant. Potato virus Y resistant. Tobacco etch virus resistant. Big cayenne 10- by 1½-inch wrinkled, slim, light green fruit that mature red. Medium Hot (4000 sc).
• Hungarian Wax¹ — 70 days to harvest. Medium hot variety. Fruit average 6 to 6½ inches in length, uniform and slightly tapered. Ripens green to yellow to red.
• Thai Dragon — 70 days to harvest. Pungent, and five times hotter than Jalapeno. Fruits are 3½ inches long and ½ inch wide at the shoulder with thin walls. 26-inch tall plants, well-branched to support a heavy load. Easy to dry.
• Jalepeno M¹ — 75 days to harvest. The Standard for Nachos and Mexican Cuisine, they are pretty hot. Pungent 3½- by 1½-inch rounded, thick-walled fruit are borne in great numbers on very vigorous 26-inch plants. This is the pungent little dark green pepper found in rings atop nachos and chopped in Mexican sauces — both sweet and hot, with an addictive flavor that has made it one of the most popular seasonings in American dishes. They are ready to pick when dark green, delivering 4,750 Scovilles of heat.
• Large Hot Red Cherry¹ — 80 days to harvest. Small 1½-inch round fruit. Green ones are not hot. Red ones are really hot.
• Habanero¹ — 100 days to harvest. The famous 10-alarm pepper from the Caribbean. The legendary hottest of all peppers, its name means “from Havana.” Habanero and its kin long ago migrated from the Caribbean Islands to Central America where they remain extremely popular today. A close relative of the Jamaican Scotch Bonnet, the short (1½ inches long by 1 inch wide) wrinkled green fruits turn orange. To complement its searing heat, Habanero has a delicious, pungent, smoky quality unlike any other pepper; many people find its flavor and aroma irreistible in sauces and salsas.

&sup1; These are <em>not</em> hybrids.

Breakfast this morning was a bowl of oatmeal. Lunch was a piece of turkey pie.



<ins datetime="2003-12-14T19:38:00-05:00">Dinner was the last of the turkey pie, a small salad, and two glasses of <a href="http://www.bolla.com/view_wine.asp?nWID=4" title="Bolla Wines of Italy - Open Up">Bolla Pinot Grigio</a>.</ins>

It seems that as of a few days ago (12/8) Jamie Oliver started a blog. This should be interesting!

Jamie Oliver: “Hey guys, I really hope that you like my new site. This is a temporary site because we are busy working on a much larger version that will have heaps of cool stuff on it. This will be ready early next year. In the meantime we still have some of the goodies available like my Diary, Cooking Q & A and a few recipes for you.”

Well, breakfast was two scratch biscuits, that Gretchen made, with strawberry jam. Lunch was a Double D from the growler we had filled at Otto's last night. I have to say, this is another area where I am disappointed. This is the third time we have gotten a growler of Double D. The first time it was great. As good as straight from the tap. The second time it went flat before we got to it. I gave it the benefit of the doubt because we did not get to it the next day. It was a day later and maybe we did not have the top on tight. This time we got back to it within twelve hours, top on tight, and it was already flat. Disappointing. <img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/frown.png" height="18" width="18" alt=":-(" /> That is all I have to say about it. For dinner Gretchen and I made a wonderful turkey pie. A real, two-crust pie. It was great. <img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/smile.png" height="18" width="18" alt=":-)" />

In HTML 4, you can open a link in a new window using the <code>target="_blank"</code> attribute in your anchor element, in XHTML 1.0 strict and XHTML 1.1, this attribute is not valid. So how do you get this effect using valid XHTML syntax? Javascript!



<code><a href="http://www.burpee.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;">Burpee</a></code>



This method has the benefit of working on browsers that do not have Javascript enabled or do not have the capability to open a new window.



Try it: <a href="http://www.burpee.com/">Burpee</a>



<strong>Note:</strong> You should use this technique sparingly. In general, you should design your site so that the user is in control. If they want to open a link in a new window, they already have the ability to do that.

Breakfast was a bowl of cereal. I forgot to weigh myself. <img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/embarrassed.png" height="18" width="18" alt=":-[" />



<ins datetime="2003-12-12T13:38:00-05:00">Lunch was Panda Buffet&rsquo;s orange chicken with vegetables on chow mien with hot and sour soup and a small sierra mist. I took the shuttle over, but I walked the mile back.</ins>

We went to Otto’s for dinner. We both had a Chicken Caesar Salad and a Double D Pale Ale. Normally the romaine lettuce leaves are meticulously chosen and lightly coated with dressing. These were a mish-mash of wilted, oxidized leaves soaked and swimming in dressing. I tried to rationalize it as being busy on a Friday night due to the popularity of the place. We will give them another chance — maybe on a slower day — but I cannot see paying somebody else to serve me greens that would have ended up on my compost pile.

Breakfast was a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice. I weighed in at 160 pounds.

<ins datetime="2003-12-11T13:44:00-05:00">I walked the four miles around the university over lunch today. On the way I stopped at the <a href="http://www.hfs.psu.edu/bigonion/" title="Big Onion Web Page">Big Onion</a> and had a slice of cheese pizza and a <a href="http://www.sobebev.com/product_info/lizardline_tsunami.shtml" title="SoBe Beverages - Product Info &gt; Lizard Line &gt; SoBe Tsunami">SoBe Tsunami</a>.</ins>

<ins datetime="2003-12-11T16:22:00-05:00">Dinner was the last of the gratin and three glasses of <a href="http://www.bolla.com/view_wine.asp?nWID=4" title="Bolla Wines of Italy - Open Up">Bolla Pinot Grigio</a> and a slice of Gretchen&rsquo;s toasted raisin bread.</ins>

Fillet of Beef in Puff Pastry with Sauce Madeira

Recipe courtesy Wolfgang Puck

Recipe Summary

Cook Time: 1 hour 20 minutes Prep Time: 15 minutes

Yield: 6 servings

• 6 tournedos, 6 ounces each (fillet steaks, 1½ inches thick)
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 2 shallots, minced
• 1 pound mushrooms, finely chopped
• 4 tablespoons heavy cream
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 pounds puff pastry
• 1 egg with 1 tablespoon of water, lightly beaten, for egg wash
• Sauce Madeira, recipe follows
• Watercress, for garnish

In a large skillet, over high heat, saute tournedos in 3 tablespoons butter for 30 seconds on each side. Set aside to cool completely.

In the same skillet, with the remaining 3 tablespoons of butter, cook shallots and mushrooms until all liquid evaporates. Add cream, salt and pepper. Reduce over moderate heat to a thick puree. Cool.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

Divide pastry into 6 equal portions. On a lightly floured board, roll out each portion to a rectangle approximately 6 by 12 inches and ¼ inch thick. Place each tournedo on one side of a pastry rectangle, leaving enough room to fold over.

Top each tournedos with mushroom puree. Brush edges of the pastry with egg wash and then fold it over and shape it to the contours of the meat. Cut away excess pastry and decorate as desired.

Glaze the tops of the pastry with egg wash.

Bake the tournedos 15 to 20 minutes, or until the pastry is golden brown.

Arrange each tournedo on a heated plate and garnish with watercress. Nap the sauce Madeira around the tournedos.

Sauce Madeira:

• 1 cup Madeira
• 2 tablespoons minced shallots
• 1 teaspoon minced thyme leaves
• 1 cup veal stock
• 2 tablespoons butter
• Salt and pepper

In a saucepan, bring Madeira, shallots, and thyme to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook until only ⅓ cup remains. Add the stock; continue to reduce, over medium heat, until slightly thickened. Whisk in the butter. Season, to taste, with salt and pepper.

Yield: Makes about 1 cup

Episode#: WP1B26

Copyright 2003 Television Food Network, G.P., All Rights Reserved

Plastic: Two Paradigms Enter, One Paradigm Leaves — The Philosophy Of Mad Max: ”In preindustrial society, most people spend most of their time simply generating power with human muscles. Energy was expensive, labor was cheap. The five pound sack of rice or potatoes that sells for about $2 at the grocery store (minimum wage for about 20 minutes of work in a modern industrial society) is an excellent day’s pay in preindustrial society. It makes no economic sense to keep a compost heap and grow potatoes in your back yard in an industrial society, but all kinds of sense in a preindustrial one.

The reason we do not recycle most garbage is simply that it’s not worth our time. The time required to create any given item out of scraps (or even repair the item) is far longer than it would take to earn enough to buy the item, even working at minimum wage. Where this equation doesn’t hold true, people are already repairing and recycling.

I do not want to agree, but a friend of mine just discovered that it is cheaper to buy a new inkjet printer when the ink runs out on your existing one than to replace the cartridges in the existing one. He did just that, took it home, and threw the old one away. A perfectly functional, nearly new, inkjet printer now sitting in a landfill because it is cheaper to buy a printer <strong>with ink cartridges</strong> than to buy ink cartridges alone. <em>Go figure.</em>



Then there is this from the same thread:

I watched a blacksmith demonstrate how they used to make nails by hand. [If I recall correctly] he said that a skilled blacksmith could make about 100 an hour. If he worked ten hours doing nothing but make nails, he would have 1000 nails at the end of the day. Go down to Home Depot and look at all the nails they have in stock and think about how many days it would take to hand make those nails. The blacksmith said when they needed to demolish a building, they would burn it down so that they could retrieve the nails.

Definitely a different mindset.



Lest we get to thinking to much of ourselves, there is this (to be read with tongue firmly planted in cheek):

Oh, for those glorious days when someone — someone else, that is — would live from the scraps and castoffs of higher society! How wonderful for them — not me — to wear constantly-mended clothing, to eat thin soup made from scavenged bones, to heat their roadside shacks with dried horse dung! Oh, woe that those halcyon days are lost to this age of machines and degeneracy!

Happy Valley Ranch: Homesteader: “The ‘Homesteader’ is a single-tub cider or wine press with the same basic frame and press screw assemble as our double-tub model. It has been specifically designed as an all-purpose fruit press which is capable of grinding and efficiently squeezing apples and grapes.

“The ‘Apple Eater’ grinding attachment is conveniently mounted on the back of the press – allowing the ‘pulped’ fruit to fall directly into the tub for squeezing”