Fri, 19 Feb 2010

2010 Coffeeshop of Record Report

Ever since May of 2005 I've had the habit of designating a local coffeeshop as my "Coffeeshop of Record" — it's the place I always hang out at, and my favorite local caffeine establishment. Or, as I sometimes put it, "my drug dealers". Because I'm also that kind of person, I keep statistics of how much I spend there.

Shortly after moving to Ypsilanti I designated the Ugly Mug Cafe as my CsoR. This previous year's statistics (16 February 2009 - 15 February 2010) are:

It adds up, doesn't it? (This is the reason I keep track of it). But, the way I figure it hanging out at the Ugly Mug is my primary form of entertainment, and $7 a week is relatively cheap as those things go.

Notes for those who care: supplies I purchase at the CsoR do not count, e.g. beans I purchase at the Mug for use at home or at work are not counted.

Posted at: 17:37 | category: /random | Link

Sat, 23 Jan 2010

Happiness is Organized Zines

For several years my zine collection has lived in a couple of cardboard document boxes. Initially just piled in, I took some effort a while back to sort everything alphabetically by title, stacked haphazardly in a couple of the boxes set on end.

This was unwieldy, and also made it hard for me to easily sort new stuff in. I finally got aggrivated enough by this process to buy a few plastic file bins and a box of two inch expanding file jackets, and today I got enough gumption to sort things out.

Each file jacket holds some number of titles. Some zines, where I have several issues, have their own file jacket. Others are grouped together. The tab at the top of the jacket is an ideal place to pencil in what zines are in that jacket.

Those all neatly fit into the file boxes, which stack nicely on my bookshelves.

Now we'll see how long they stay this neat....

Posted at: 20:14 | category: /zines | Link

Tue, 15 Dec 2009

Lentil Escarole Soup

Continuing on the theme of Glorious Kale, I was in a cooking frenzy last night and made a variation on this Lentil Escarole Soup from The Postpunk Kitchen. It's the first time I've cooked with escarole, and I'm pretty happy with it. Like all green leafy vegetables, you'll want to wash it completely — there's a lot of dirt and grit in a head of escarole.

Sweat the onion, garlic and carrots in olive oil until tender. Add the lentils and tomatoes, a little salt and pepper and 9 cups of water. Note: remember in the Glorious Kale recipe when I said to keep the liquid at the bottom of the steamer from making that dish? This is why, I used that for about 1-1/2 cups of the water I added. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 45 minutes. Add the escarole and nutritional yeast, cook for an additional five minutes or so.

Freezes well, tasty with croutons.

Posted at: 12:03 | category: /food | Link

Glorious Kale

The past couple of weeks I haven't been eating well — a combination of being really busy, getting sick and work being a pain left me eating rather unhealthy. After I do this a while I can really tell it, and I get a strong urge to build up my vitamins, so to speak.

Tonight I felt this way, and when I need to stock up on nutrients, especially in the winter, I think of kale. I started with this recipe, for "Kale with Root Vegetables", but with a few additions it became what I call Glorious Kale.

Get yourself a large pot, put an inch or so of water in it and put in the steamer basket. While that's starting, prepare 2 lbs of kale — I just bought a bag of it that size, already chopped up. Peel and chop one parsnip and two turnips into bite sized pieces. Chop up six smallish red potatoes. Throw all of that into the steamer basket, drizzle a bit of kosher salt over it, and cover.

In another pan, sweat a diced yellow onion and 3 minced cloves of garlic in a little bit of oil with a pinch of salt. When all of that is good and soft, the root vegetables in the steamer should be soft but not mushy and the kale completely done. Kick up the heat on the onions and garlic, drop in all the kale and veggies, and saute a bit. Drizzle over just a little bit of sesame oil, balsamic vinegar and some Braggs liquid aminos. Grind on some pepper. If I had some toasted sesame seeds, I'd throw them in now.

Makes about 4 nice sized servings. And, if you have any love at all for all things good and pure, you'll save the liquid in the bottom of the steamer pot and put it in your next soup.

Posted at: 00:43 | category: /food | Link

Mon, 07 Dec 2009

Vulgar Bulgar Vegetarian Chili

Winner of the 2009 ITS Chili Cookoff "Luke Skywalker Award". This is less a recipe and more a general guideline for what to dump together to get this chili, because that's exactly what I did.

Take 3 cups of bulgar wheat and soak it in cold water --- it doesn't take long. Drain any remaining water off and put the bulgar in a 6 quart crock pot. Make or buy 1-1/2 cups of sofrito and dump that in. Take a small can of chipotle chilies in adobo sauce, dump the adobo sauce in, mince up the chilies and dump those in. Add a 28 ounce can of tomato puree and two 14.5 ounce can of diced peeled tomatoes. Dump in 2 14.5 ounce cans of navy beans and 2 of kidney beans. Add a 4 ounce can of roasted and diced green chilies. Dump in 1 cup of nutritional yeast, and toast and grind up 2 tablespoons of cumin and throw in. Mix everything together and salt to taste. Cook overnight in a crock pot on low, adding water if necessary.

It's not overly spicy --- I'm a fan of flavor over fire, but it has a nice residual heat.

Posted at: 17:39 | category: /food | Link

Thu, 29 Oct 2009

In the criminal justice system, there are two separate but equally important groups...

...my bicycle, and the dude who stole my bicycle.

As I discussed back here my bike got stolen back in August, and the guy was caught up the hill from my apartment by the Ypsilanti Police. A bit over a month ago I got a letter in the mail from the District Attorney's office, telling me that there was a final settlement conference in the case, and that I had to appear in court for it.

I'll write more about that later --- in short, court is a lot like what you see on TV, just much more boring. There really is a guy who tells you to stand when the judge comes in, and people do in fact say "your honor". But it's less drama and more like recitation of the justice incantation or something.

Anywho, the guy who stole my bike was charged with larceny. He was going to request a jury trial for that. The same guy was also there for a domestic assault case. There was a slightly harried middle-aged woman I talked to, who said the guy would plead guilty to a lesser charge, and was I okay with that. Since I have my bike and don't really care about the minor damage done to my bike rack, I really didn't care. He did that, there was the whole incantation of "you're saying you are guilty, here's what this means, do you understand each of these bits", and it was over. Then it moved into the guy asking for a jury trial in the domestic assault case, and then they moved on to the next guy.

When I left the courtroom the lady asked if I understood what had happened, and she explained a few things. She said I could appear at the sentencing part of the case, but I told her I wasn't really interested, and that the guy seemed like he had bigger issues than how long he's going to be in jail for yanking my bike. She sighed and nodded yes as I left the building.

Posted at: 17:28 | category: /bicycle/2009/10 | Link

Sat, 19 Sep 2009

Puffer Red's Facade

This evening I was meandering about Ypsilanti, and walking through downtown I noticed that the facade above Puffer Reds has been removed — looks like it's going to be repaired or something like that. I snapped a few photos of what's below, since I'd never seen it before and have no idea how long it's been since this has been exposed.

Under the facade, an old Hallmark Cards sign

My favorite photo is this one. Looks like the west half of Reds at least used to be an old Hallmark Cards store. I absolutely love the stained glass window sign. I wish more places had stuff like this. See the rest of the photos I snapped here.

Posted at: 20:45 | category: /ypsi/2009 | Link

Fri, 28 Aug 2009

On the Unknotting of Shoes, pt 1

Problem Statement: on the pair of shoes I conventionally wear for day-to-day activities, my right shoe has a tendancy to become unknotted frequently, while the left shoe has not, in my memory, ever became unknotted. Both shoes are tied with the same knot.

Hypothesis: the lace on my right shoe is responsible for this unknotting.

Experiment: swap the laces between my right and left shoes.

Posted at: 21:24 | category: /science! | Link

Thu, 13 Aug 2009

Vegetable Stew with Rice and Lentils

Earlier this week I had wanted to try making a rice and lentil dish another bike polo player had described, but summer weather had finally turned hot and I didn't feel like heating up the kitchen (or, really, do anything I couldn't do in the little air-conditioned cage I have in my apartment). I turned to the greatest invention of all times, the crockpot, and this is what came out.

I have a six quart crock pot, but none of the stuff in this recipe is really measured, so just wing it. Crank the crock pot on high. Dice up one onion and three cloves of garlic, put in the pot. Slice up six carrots and six stalks of celery (plus all the inner leaves of the celery bunch) and throw those in. Slice eight ounces of mushrooms and throw those in. Throw in a can of diced, no-salt-added tomatoes (if you have fresh lying about, one or two tomatoes diced will do). Add about 1.5 cups each of lentils and rice. Put in 1 quart of vegetable broth (again, I use the low sodium stuff), and then add enough water to well cover every thing. Stir.

When everything is good and bubbling, turn the crock pot down to its lowest setting. It only takes a few hours to cook, stir occasionally or the rice and lentils will clump and stick (then again, I left this going on "warm" overnight and it came out fine). I added water occasionally as liquid evaporated away, do so to your liking. You can tell when everything is done, the rice will expand and release a bunch of starch, which will make everything nice and thick. When it was done I threw in a few tablespoons of Bragg's liquid aminos (soy or tamari sauce would work as well) and a couple dashes of liquid smoke. Do this to taste.

This tastes even better when you leave it in the fridge for a day.

Posted at: 11:52 | category: /food/2009 | Link

Sun, 02 Aug 2009

Don't even *think* about stealing my bike

Yesterday I was over in Ann Arbor, helping out with the Pedal Poker Run. I drove to and from the event, and as I pulled into my driveway this morning, I though "I'll just leave the bike strapped to the rack...."

So, around 4:30 this morning I was woken up by someone pounding mightily upon my front door. I stumbled awake, grabbed my robe, and as I was aproaching the door I heard "Ypsi Police" On the stairs outside of my door were an Ypsi police officer and Freddie, one of my downstairs neighbors. The officer asked if I had a bike and asked me to describe it, then said someone had taken it, which my downstairs neighbor heard and called in.

I learned afterwards from Freddie that he had heard a noise coming from the drive way, which he thought was a raccoon, but when he went to their living room and looked out the window discovered was some guy taking the bike from the rack on my car. He called the cops and after telling them what happened he got put on hold and then was told "Okay, we think we've got the guy"

I get dressed and come downstairs. A cop car pulls up after a couple minutes, and Freddie is let out and the cop tells me to get in. Ypsi police cars, by the way, have hard plastic seats in the back, not an upholstered seat. We go up to Summit, two blocks west of my apartment, where there are a couple other cop cars guarding my bike, which is laying in the easement along the side of Summit. I tell the officer "Yep, that's my bike", and I'm thinking that the sucker who took it probably isn't used to a fixie with a just fixed and still touchy front break, no wonder he didn't get very far. Another officer asks me how much it's worth ("A couple hundred bucks") and if it was locked in my garage ("No, just strapped to the back of my car and tied on"). I think he was disapointed and was hoping they could charge the dude with something more than what they had, alas.

The cop takes me back to my apartment and gets a report from both Frankie and I, and another officer brings back my bike, which I decided I should store inside. Thankfully, nothing is damaged on it other than the little plastic cover over the stem adjustment bolt missing.

Moral of the story: don't leave your bike strapped to the back of your car. And don't fucking touch my bike unless you want justice, Ypsi-style.

Posted at: 05:24 | category: /bicycle/2009/08 | Link