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<a href="http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/ck_culinary_qa/article/0,,FOOD_9796_1702259,00.html">Food Network: Culinary Q&amp;A</a>: &ldquo;<strong>Q:</strong> Can potatoes be grated into cold water and kept for several hours for potato pancakes?



&ldquo;<strong>A:</strong> I love your practical question because I, too, love potato pancakes. Potato pancakes are made all over the world. And they have names as different as the people who make them. If the potato-cookers are Yiddish, the pancakes are latkes; if Italian, the pancakes are fritattas; if Spanish, the pancakes are tortillas, and if French the pancakes are criques.



&ldquo;Other potato pancakes are made with cooked potatoes, such as American hash browns, Swiss roesti, and the French macaire. The Irish use both raw and cooked potatoes to make a potato pancake called boxty.



&ldquo;Depending on the kind of potato pancake you&rsquo;re making, leaving grated potato in water may not be a good idea. Let's assume you are making latkes. Soaking the grated potato in water will leech out some of the starch. Since starch is one of the main things that holds the pancake together, you will be losing this valuable glue.



&ldquo;Many recipes in fact call for pressing the grated potato in a sieve over a bowl to drain off as much liquid as possible. Then, when the starch has settled to the bottom of the potato water, you pour off the water and add the starch at the bottom of the bowl back to the potatoes.



&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s what you can do instead: <em>Combine the grated potato with chopped onion. This not only tastes great, but the onion keeps the potatoes from turning brown before you cook them.</em> Potatoes brown because they are exposed to oxygen. Commercial processors use certain sulfur compounds to prevent this browning. Onions contain several of these compounds. That&rsquo;s what gives onions their distinct odor, but they&rsquo;ll also keep your potatoes white.&rdquo;

<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/16/business/16drink.html?ei=5007&amp;en=b4c621ae36c94d21&amp;ex=1386997200&amp;partner=USERLAND&amp;pagewanted=all&amp;position=">Business Travel: Making a Toast Without Dropping One&rsquo;s Guard</a>: &ldquo;Ovid Battat, who owns a wine and olive oil importing company in Freehold, N.J., vividly remembers the faux pas he committed on one of his first trips to Italy, in a restaurant in Tuscany with a group from a winery. &lsquo;I was pouring wine tilting my wrist backwards over some glasses,&rsquo; Mr. Battat said. &lsquo;The table just came to a halt &mdash; people almost jumped out of their seats, and started pushing their chairs back. Two or three people made me stop, and said we had to get rid of the bottle. Nobody would drink from that wine.&rsquo;



&ldquo;In Italy, he was told, it was bad luck and a sign of disrespect to pour wine that way. &lsquo;I never did get business from that supplier,&rsquo; Mr. Battat said.



&ldquo;Were his hosts overreacting? Apparently not. &lsquo;The wine was poured in an unnatural way,&rsquo; a spokesman for the Italian Government Tourist Board in New York said. &lsquo;An Italian waiter would die if he did it, and in an Italian restaurant everyone would freeze and wonder where the person came from.&rsquo;



&ldquo;American executives abroad often find that liquor is a much bigger part of the business equation than at home. But ordering, pouring, toasting and drinking in a foreign land can be fraught with pitfalls for the unwary. What seems trivial may provoke reactions from mild irritation to acute horror.&rdquo;

• 13.523 Gallons
• $1.479/Gallon
• $20.00
• 309.0 Miles
• 22.8 Miles/Gallon
• 6¢/Mile
• 19 Days

Breakfast this morning was a bowl of cereal and I weighed in at 159 pounds.



<ins datetime="2003-12-15T12:19:00-05:00">I had a <a href="http://www.naturevalley.com/Products2.htm" title="Welcome to Nature Valley: Products">Nature Valley Oats &rsquo;N Honey Crunchy Granola Bar</a> for lunch. No walk today &mdash; too much snow.</ins>



<ins datetime="2003-12-15T13:34:00-05:00">I broke down and had a bag of Middleswarth Kitchen Fresh Bar-B-Q Flavored Potato Chips.</ins>

<ins datetime="2003-12-15T18:53:00-05:00">Dinner was linguine with my <a href="http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_20175,00.html" title="Food Network: Tomato Sauce">roasted tomato sauce</a>, a slice of Gretchen&rsquo;s maple oatmeal bread, a small salad, and a glass of <a href="http://www.bolla.com/view_wine.asp?nWID=5" title="Bolla Wines of Italy - Open Up">Bolla Merlot</a>, with a bowl of peach slices &mdash; that we froze this summer &mdash; for dessert.</ins>

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.