Late Night Thinking

by Thomas L. Kula

Waldorfish Salad

-ish, because the classic version of this includes celery, which I do not, and uses mayonaise, which I also do not. But it's pretty close, very simple to make, and incredibly tasty on hot summer days. 6 apples, of the firm-fleshed varieties 1 lb. seedless grapes 12 oz walnuts Large container of plain, unadulterated yogurt Core and cube the apples. Pull the grapes off the stems, add to the bowl.

Avocado Spread

One avocado, seeded and scooped out Juice of one lime Sprinkle of salt Dash of liquid smoke Heavy dash of hot sauce Smush together. Spread on toast or crackers. Enjoy.

Avocado Choclate Pie

As a riff on the Avocado Pudding recipe I discussed back in March, here's a pie that combines it and chocolate. Because, really, how can you go wrong with "pie" and "chocolate" in the same dish? The Chocolate Phase 4 oz. semi-sweet chocolate 1 T. butter 2 T. milk Chili powder Combine all of these in a double-boiler or in a heat-proof glass bowl placed over a saucepan of boiling water.

Peanut Brassicas

Building on the last recipe I posted, for peanut sauce, here's a perfect way to use it. Broccoli Cauliflower Pea pods Kale Peanut Sauce Put a bit of water and a steamer basket in a big pot, get that going. Cut florets from the broccoli (this works best if you turn the stalk upside down and trim florets off). I trim the unappealing bits off the remaining stalk and cut it into half-centimeter slices.

Peanut Sauce, Pt 1

I absolutely love Vietnamese summer rolls, and about fifty per-cent of that love comes from the fact that they are a socially acceptable reason to eat a shitton of peanut sauce. After throwing some together for dinner tonight, here's an ad-hoc peanut sauce recipe. 1/3 C chunky peanut butter 1/3 C sweet chili sauce 1/3 C hoisen sauce 1 T rice wine vinegar 2 dashes seasame oil 1 C (or so) water Mix the peanut butter, chili sauce and hoisen, then stick it in the microwave for a minute or two to warm it up and make it much easier to mix.

VMWare Fusion Memory

For a side-job I've got, there's a bunch of VMs running via VMWare Fusion. In trying to start another VM, Fusion kept reporting that it didn't have enough memory to start the new VM. The inner workings of Fusion are a bit of a mystery, but it appears that all of the VMs run as vmware-vmx processes running as root, with the GUI frontend running as whichever user lauched the VM, the two halves communicating via a pipe.

Homemade Cottage Cheese

I've been wanting to do this for some time, ever since I came across the recipe on Good Eats. 1 gal skim milk 3/4 c white vinegar salt heavy cream In a large pot, bring the milk up to 120 deg. F. Slowly add the vinegar while gently stirring. Shortly you'll feel the milk start to thicken and then see the curds separate from the whey. Stir for a couple of minutes.

Avocado Pudding

A friend passed along this recipe for avocado pie last week, and I've been wanting to make it since then. At the store after work today I couldn't find a graham crust and didn't really feel like making one, so I made it as a pudding. 2 large, ripe avocados 1/2 cup lemon juice 1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk Juice enough lemons to make 1/2 cup of lemon juice.

A Bitter Pill to Swallow

Inspired by a conversation this evening: 2 oz whiskey 1 oz lemon juice 1 pinch salt 1 dash rhubarb bitters Tonic water Combine the first four, stir well (using pickling salt will help it dissolve easily). Pour into a rocks glass, top up with tonic water. No ice, no garnish, you baby.

Graphite - Scalable Realtime Graphing

Recently at work we've been trying to get into the measuring and monitoring business. In looking around the measuring side I came across graphite, which describes itself as "scalable realtime graphing". I won't go into many details, you can read them on the graphite site. Basically, it's a fairly simple and robust-looking system for gathering tuples. What kind of tuples, you say? some.label value timestamp Which doesn't sound like much, until you think in terms of: system.