Fall Semester Ending

The last few weeks of the semester kept me very busy.  I finished everything later than I had planned, but hey everything got done.  Given the late finish to the fall semester I can't believe that Christmas is early next week! (Yeah, I am late getting this posted!) There isn't much down time before the spring semester starts so the only thing I really have planned is to go see The Hobbit a few times.

Being busy I didn't have time to cook much. We had a cold spell (I use that loosely) here in AZ and I wanted to make soup. Not enough time so I had to wait until this weekend to do it.  The piles of kale at the store were looking pretty good so I made kale and potato soup by sweating some onion, garlic, celery then adding white wine, rosemary, and thyme. After the alcohol boiled out I added canned tomatoes (fire roasted with green chiles), potatoes, and vegetable broth, cooking until the potatoes were done, then adding the kale. Tasty, but then again I love soup.

A little late maybe but I finally got around to making some cranberry sauce.  I followed this recipe for the cranberry-orange sauce.  Very easy to make.  So easy to make I wonder why people still serve the jellied stuff in the can.

Post Thanksgiving

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone. The traditional Thanksgiving meal is probably my least favorite holiday meal. Turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, it just bores me. This must be why I got the opportunity to have two Thanksgiving meals this year.

Thanksgiving Thursday I spent with some friends and their family.  A mostly traditional meal was served which included some extras from the ethnic backgrounds of those present to spice things up a bit.  In addition to the usual meal we also had spanakopita and some curried cauliflower.  Yeah!

On Sunday, my second meal was completely traditional, but was spent with family. I have an aunt and uncle that live here in town.  Their son moved from Arizona to New York about a year or so before I got here. He is the cousin that is closest in age to me, but we only lived near each other for about five years or so when growing up. In recent years our visits home never seemed to put us in the same state at the same time.  It had been about 20 years since I last saw him and this was the first time I got to meet his now teen-aged son. Wow how time flies.

Earlier this week I read an essay by Michael Chabon that was published in the October 2012 issue of Bon Appetit. Like the author I have bounced around celebrating Thanksgiving in many different homes  over the years. While I have yet to spend the holiday in an old hunting lodge I am thankful for all of the families that have invited me into their homes since I left my own over twenty years ago.

I hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving.

Sunday Dinner

It's been a rough couple of weeks around here. Saturday at lunch my mind wandered to my father. There was a little boy at Rubio's that slopped some salsa on his shirt while scooping some into the little serving cups they provide. After uh ohing he ran over to his father and said I have to change my shirt when I get home while showing off the salsa splash. For some reason this made my mind wander to something that happened several years ago.  I was a coffee shop working and there was a guy with his little boy.  Dad (for some reason) was giving him airplane rides complete with sound effects. Of course the kid was just loving every second of it. Why I asked, "can I have a turn?" I'll never know. I can see why the dad was weirded out by that.  I don't remember getting airplane rides from my father but today I was reminded of the way my father used to tickle my belly with his beard stubble.  It was tickly and scratchy at the same time.  I really liked when he did this.  To feel safe and not have a care in the world again...I'd really like that right about now.

Before my thoughts turned this way I decided I wanted to make a batch of sauce, the Sunday Gravy kind.  I can't make mine taste like my mother's used to.  I've tried on my own. I've tried with her on the phone with me.  It doesn't work so I improvise.  Mom's sauce always has sausage links and meatballs.  When I was young mom always used strained tomatoes (passata; the pictures here bring back memories!).  Every fall we would spend a Saturday passing  a bushel or so of tomatoes through our hand-cranked Victorio Strainer. It was a grind (can I get a rim shot?) but I look back on it fondly.  After passing the tomatoes and then the pulp through the strainer, the juice would get cooked and put into jars with salt and sugar before processing them.  I may remember wrong but I swear we must have made 30-40 quarts at a time, enough to last until next fall. There was a local pizza place-now closed-that used an automatic Victorio Strainer to start their pizza sauce.  I saw that and thought "Lazy!"

For my sauce I didn't make meatballs. I did use sausage though I took it out of its casing rather than leaving it as links. The sauce also had onion, garlic, dried oregano, basil, red pepper flakes, salt, tomato paste, and the strained tomatoes. I added a salad to complete my Sunday dinner. Now if only I had some Trusello's bread to go with it. Though I could go for some of their pizza...

Food Trucks at ASU

A few weeks ago I came across an article in one of the many newsletters I am sent as a member of the ASU community.  This item caught my attention because it was advertising that some food trucks would be set up within walking distance of my office on Wednesdays at mid day.

I've gone three weeks in a row and have tried two different trucks. The first two weeks I went to the truck Q Up Barbeque.  I had their pulled pork, brisket, and southwest slaw.  The meat was well-done, but I've had BBQ I've liked more. I'll give this one another shot after I've gone through the other trucks.

The truck I tried today was LunchaLibre. The sweet tea and other drinks served in canning jars and Mexican wrestling masks was the initial draw.  My lunch choice was the Pothead Quesadilla.  Wow it was good!  It was a flour tortilla filled with roasted potatoes, spinach, pico de gallo, and jack cheese.  I washed it down with a jar of cinnamon black tea.

When I stopped by the table with the ASU folks at it I let them know what a great idea it was to bring the trucks in and let them set up once a week.  From what I heard the event will go through the end of the semester and be back in the spring.  Sounds good to me!  Looks like I have my Wednesday lunch spot for the foreseeable future.

The Return of Old Pumpkin Guts

As Halloween approaches I start counting the days before I pick up a pumpkin.  Not that I can carve anything that looks good since I am so terrible at anything artlike I only do this so I can roast the seeds. Yes, they are cheaper to just buy at the store, but there is not much fun in that.  This year's pumpkin had a good amount of seeds so I will have some treats for a few days.

I only salt my seeds, nothing fancy here. Good stuff.  As tradition dictates I did this while listening to The Great Old Pumpkin as podcasted on Escapepod.

Last weekend I made a batch of giardinera. This is the second time I've made this.  I didn't take any notes when I made it last time (of course) so I don't know the exact amount of things I used then to see what was different between batches. Leading up to making this I tried to find the pickling spice I used last time, but no luck there so I ended up using the same pickling spice as when I made dill pickles earlier this year.  I wasn't sure how it would work out here since I've never had giardinera made with cloves and cinnamon and some of the other random things. The last time I made this I thought the cauliflower tasted a little weird from the pickling spice since commercial giardinera doesn't use pickling spices, and that is what I am used to eating.

To make the giardinera I dissolved about a half tablespoon of sugar, 3 tablespoons of salt, and 2 tablespoons of pickling spices in about 4 cups of hot water.  I poured this over the cut up vegetables (a smallish head of cauliflower, a few carrots, a few stalks of celery, several cloves of garlic, and some peeled pearl onions).  I steeped the vegetables for a few minutes and then added an equal volume of white vinegar.  After it all cooled I packed it up into jars and stored them in my refrigerator.  This weekend I tried some after the jars had set for a week. Turns out the spices give the vegetables flavor beyond just salt and vinegar. Imagine that. Success! What I made follows a recipe I got from a guy named Skip who ran a website called northend dot com many many years ago.

Fall Break

I didn't need to do any cooking this weekend.  On Saturday I was invited to a kid's birthday party, complete with a bounce house.  The Greek food was excellent and so was the company. My favorite is the pastitsio.  I could eat this weekly, too bad it looks like a pain to make.  Since the family cooked enough for a large army I might get my chance to eat pastitsio for most of this week based on the size of the plate I was sent home with.

For a change of pace here, I took pictures of some flowers in the neighborhood where I live.  I like the colors of these flowers.  This morning I watched the bees buzzing around doing their thing and I also saw some butterflies.  It is hard for me to see the display on my phone in sunlight so these pictures aren't the greatest, and too bad the camera on my phone does not appear to have zoom.

Can you spot the butterfly?

The other big event that happened this weekend was my copy of Godzilla vs. Megalon showed up.  Oh, wow, how bad you are! This movie is so awful, it's great. I only watched the version dubbed in English.  Soon I will get around to watching it in Japanese with English subtitles.  This was definitely one of my favorites as a kid and I'm glad it is now available on DVD.  And you should watch this because everyone needs to listen to the Jet Jaguar song.

Punch, punch, punch!

Purple Cauliflower Eater

Things are still pretty busy here so I opted for some quick meals this weekend.  Saturday I made tacos, tamales, and beans.  I cheated on most of those.  My neighborhood Whole Foods carries some Arizona made frozen tamales (Tucson Tamale Company).  I'd prefer tamales with pork rather than these vegetarian offerings, but they are pretty good.  I've had a couple of varieties, one was cheese and green chiles (Green Corn Tamale) and the other was black beans, corn, and cheese (Madison).  The Madison has been my favorite so far.  Normally I would serve tacos with Amy's traditional refried beans, but while shopping I discovered the Whole Foods brand ranchero beans.  Amy's have the absolute best canned refried beans, other brands just make me say yuck.  I have to say the ranchero beans were pretty darn tasty,  Amy's now has some competition for my bean dollars.  As tasty as they were my search still continues for a replacement for Campbell's chunky chili beef. I am pretty sure the last time I ate it was in the early 90s but I still think about it.  Most likely it is one of those things that you remember as being better than it really was.  The chili beef was one of those things that got me through college, other than ramen.

It had been quite a while since I made trofie with potato, green beans, and pesto so I made that my Sunday dinner.  That would make a one-pot dinner but I decided to make a separate side.  Purple cauliflower has crept into the store recently so I bought a head.  Never having it before I didn't know what to expect.  Yeah, it tastes like white cauliflower. It just looks weird on the plate.  After cooking it for a few minutes in water I wonder if the liquid could be used to dye Easter eggs.  I tossed the cooked cauliflower into a pan with olive oil, garlic, and onions.  This side is eaten at room temperature and I topped it with some basil.  (Thanks to The Italian Country Table for this recipe).

The temperatures are finally starting to drop here.  I will declare it officially fall now because I saw a large display of pumpkins in the store. I sense pumpkin seeds in the near future.

Food Bites

Fall is here in theory so my mind begins to turn from stone fruit to hard fruit like apples and pears. My mom swears by Cortland apples to make apple pie.  At some point I will take a stab at apple pie but not this weekend. Recently I've tried a couple of Arizona grown apples recently. One was organic red delicious apple.  Since it didn't actually look like a red delicious apple I bought it to see what it would taste like. I should admit that I hate red delicious apples. I seem to remember liking them when I was kid and thinking about it now I can't figure out why.  They taste weird, not like an apple should. Anyway the red delicious apple I bought actually was sweet and had flavor. Whoa! It must have been an heirloom variety or something.

I also picked up a few small bunches of Arizona grown concord grapes.  These were also grown locally in the area of New York I grew up in.  I called them squeeze grapes when I was a kid and thinking about it I can't remember when the last time I had them.  With this recent batch I thought they were kind of a pain to eat, but had fun doing it.

In the last couple of years I've had several things grown in Arizona that I had no idea could even grow here.  Wonder what else grows around this state that I don't know about.

The Pickler

If I were a crime fighter I think The Pickler would be my superhero name. Of course I only want to be a superhero so that I could hang out with Black Canary. Okay, back to reality.... If I felt comfortable with processing canning jars I sure would make many more pickled things than I already do. While visiting the store Saturday, the pickling cucumbers called my name so I decided to make another batch of pickles. The mini sweet peppers looked good too, but I ran out of jars to use.  Bummer. Time to get a few more. For this batch of pickles I used less sugar, more vinegar, and more red pepper flakes. We'll see how these turn out.  I cooked a batch of figs with honey, too. As with the apricots I made earlier this goes well with yogurt.

My local Sprouts store has an interesting selection of frozen meats.  I think it is pretty cool they stock things like ground Kobe beef, elk, bison, and wild boar. I cracked up after reading the boar package because it says the contents are made from feral pigs.  Now, I don't know about you, but I'm thinking that most people are not going to buy a product that has the word feral on it.  I know it means not domesticated but I can't help picturing an animal frothing at the mouth. Maybe it's just me.

To make sure I had leftovers for the week I made a batch of penne all'arrabbiata with olives.

And it looked so good I had to take a picture of egg, Canadian bacon, and cheese sandwich I made for a midweek dinner.  I picked up a potato pancake from my local Whole Foods to go with it.  I'll refrain from slamming McDonald's.  It was a very good sandwich.

Living in Arizona I still can't get over how early the kids start school.  When growing up we always started the Wednesday after Labor day.  Officially summer still has a couple more weeks, but with kids going back to school we have the unofficial end of summer.  Good luck kids and be nice to your teachers, they have a lot to teach if you are willing to listen.

Soup Junkie

A little late in posting this, but I made it through my first week of the fall semester. No big disasters yet so let's knock on wood and all that and hope it lasts. Just about all of my scheduled items are in the morning hours this semester.  So far I have been okay with it but I'm finding that by about or 4:00 or 5:00 pm I'm ready to go to sleep.  I don't know how you early birds do it.

This weekend's meals were low key.  I hadn't eaten eggs for a while so I made a frittata with spinach and mushrooms.  The fried potatoes I made were particularly good.  Must have been all the butter I used.

Yes, it is still hot here. Yes, I made soup again.  For this one I used some vegetable stock I had in the freezer, adding leeks, barley, swiss chard, cherry tomatoes, and basil.

Three-day weekend coming up.  If I am not too busy napping maybe I will be able to cook some more.

Last Weekend

Fall semester classes start this week.  On one hand I am looking forward to getting back into the classroom.  On the other hand I have enjoyed all of the reading and cooking I have been doing. If I were independently wealthy...  Anyway here is what I did to enjoy my last free weekend for a while:

Had pizza and beer at Classic Italian Pizza.

Read while sipping an iced mocha at Solo Cafe.

Had jerk chicken at Taste of the Caribbean.

This lunch was awesome!  Too bad the place is run very inefficiently.  That probably won't stop me from going back though. The sides are rice, cabbage, and fried plantains.

For dinner I made a shrimp po'boy and some french fries.  Tasty!  I think I am finally getting the hang of frying things.  Usually when I try to bread and fry anything, what-ever-it-is usually sticks to the pan and the breading peels off. I forgot that I had okra pickles, but I ate them when I used the leftover shrimp to make another po'boy for lunch on Sunday.

Since I had buttermilk left over from last week's muffin making and Saturday's shrimp battering, I made another batch of soda muffins.

It is hot and icky here so what do I do on Sunday?  Make baked pasta so that I have to run my oven for a while!  Good thing the baked penne with vegetables is so tasty.

Heading in to late summer means that is also green chile season.  I picked up a couple of pounds and roasted it and packed it up in baggies.  I now have frozen green chile to turn into green chile stew
when the mood strikes.

I certainly ate well this weekend.  Overall I made about half of what I had in mind to make while on vacation this summer.  I will still plug away at the list because I have yet to do things like make salsa and a summer vegetable stew.  Guess there is always next weekend.

Summer Reads

My goal every year is to average reading two books per month.  I think this is a reasonable goal but it is one that I have not met three out of the last four years. Looking back at my reads list for this year I see a lot of short books/booklets and graphic novels.

Starting about two years ago I started reading The Sandman by Neil Gaiman.  I finished the original series along with Endless Nights this summer.  In those eleven volumes there was rarely a story I'd call a dud.  Sometimes I felt the art was sketchy, but the stories--oh the stories!  There was a lot of good stuff here.  This year I've read Batman Earth One which is another telling of Batman's origin.  I enjoyed this one too.  The take on Alfred in this volume was new to me, and interesting.  I also picked up the Birds of Prey collection Of Like Minds.  It was interesting to read a comic written by a woman (Gail Simone) about women.  In one panel they are taking about their boy problems and two pages later they are kicking the snot out of some dude.  Nice!  Recently I picked up a copy of The League of Extraordinary Gentleman (Volume 1) by Alan Moore.  I was vaguely familiar with this title from the movie that was released some years ago.  I thought it was a neat idea to bring the different characters of literature together this way.  With the exception of Alan Quatermain I have read the books and stories in which all the other characters in the Moore comic appear.

I wanted some treas so on Saturday night I made a batch of soda muffins (a copy of the recipe is here).  They were very tasty fresh from the oven and smeared with strawberry jam.  I warmed one in the microwave Sunday morning and wasn't impressed.  Warming them in the oven was a much better option.

At a loss for what else to make last weekend I settled on making green chile cheeseburgers.  When I was a wee lad in college we would make the trek from Socorro, NM to nearby San Antonio, NM to go to The Owl Bar.  I enjoyed the burgers there.  No pictures of my burgers though.  Sorry folks!

Summer Movies

So far this summer I have seen The Avengers (twice), Men in Black 3, Battleship, Prometheus, Brave, The Dark Knight Returns, Total Recall, and Snow White and the Huntsman. I paid the premium and saw MIB3 and Prometheus in IMAX 3D.  Mostly I think 3D movies are still gimmicky in the sense that the 3D effect is just to make you flinch when a sharp object flies out of the screen at you.  (This seems to be the entire premise of the next Resident Evil movie.)  For me Prometheus did not fall into this category.  I felt that this was the first 3D movie I've seen where the 3D effects were part of the story in the sense that it put me in the movie (to some extent).  I really liked that and am looking forward to The Hobbit already because I am hoping for more of the same.

Friday night before seeing Total Recall I pulled out an anthology and re-read We Can Remember it for you Wholesale by Phillip K. Dick.  After reading the story again I remembered how little the Schwarzenegger movie had in common with the story beyond the memory implant idea and the Secret Agent bit. I try as much as possible to avoid spoilers before seeing movies since I like to form my own opinion. There was a part of me that was wondering if the remake would be more like the original movie or maybe reflect more of the story. After seeing it I can say it was definitely more like original movie (thankfully).  There were several scenes lifted directly, but I felt there were enough differences to make the new Total Recall interesting. I certainly wasn't expecting The Great American Movie or anything and I did expect to walk out of the theatre saying the original was better.  Now I am not so sure.  Maybe it was just because the effects were better.

Back to the Anthology...I anticipated wanting to read the Dick story before seeing Total Recall so I went digging for it a week or so back. I may have multiple volumes with the story in it but I knew the story was printed in Reel Future edited by Forrest J Ackerman and Jean Stine.  On the anthology's cover it reads The Stories that Inspired 16 Classic Science Fiction Movies.  Paging through the anthology I thought what a great idea it was to collect a set of short stories that inspired movies (and remakes).  A few of the stories included were those that inspired The Thing, Death Race 2000, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and others.  Speaking of movies based on stories, I also pulled out The Hobbit to read latter this fall in anticipation of the movie.  Drool.

Between movie watching and a baptism this weekend I didn't have much time for cooking.  Since it is tomato season I decided to make tomato and bread soup again.  It wasn't quite as good as last year's attempt. The tomatoes I bought lost their structural integrity so the soup was more liquidy than I was hoping for. It tasted fine and it was nothing that a little extra toasted bread in the bowl couldn't fix.  I also made a kale and green bean salad to go with it.  Summer vacation is rapidly closing so I hope to make good use of the next couple of weekends.

Alert! I spotted Hatch green chiles in the store this week.  I sense chile roasting in the not too distant future.

Eggplant 2012

Sadly, summer is winding down.  Soon it will be time to get back into the classroom so I had better make good use of the vacation time I have left.

I'm still reading a lot, which makes me happy.  It might be better if I read one thing at a time, but I currently have three things open.  As of today I am reading Foxes of the Desert which is the story of the Afrika Korps battles versus Britain told from the German perspective.  There are worse things to be consumed by but I just love reading Edgar Allan Poe.  Every so often I dig out a collection and read and read and.... I tend to like his mystery/horror stories best.  The third item I have opened is the September issue of Asimov's science fiction magazine.  Anyway that is the reading list, until the next new comic day.

Last week I decided I wanted to make another batch of eggplant.  The process was held up because I wanted to get a larger contained to use for the salting and soaking.  Honestly I am glad I did this.  The container I bought last week has a locking lid (so hopefully no spills when moving it around) and it has a grate.  The grate, a piece of plastic, was the best thing ever.  Putting this in the container while the eggplant was in the water/vinegar mixture with a small bowl on top kept everything submerged. The whole time!  Success!!

I packed up three jars this time.  Next weekend I will sample and see how it is.  After salting the eggplant over night I baked some of the slices (picture above) and marinated them with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, and some herbs.  This made a pretty tasty sandwich filling.

Not wanting the weekend to be dominated by the eggplant festival I made these scones but substituting chocolate chips for the dried fruit and because I had leftover heavy cream I made this stew. Good stuff.

Pureed what?

While on vacation in Wisconsin I ate brats made from locally raised pigs, corn on the cob, various homemade jams and pickles. My Texas hosts fed me ribeye steak and steak fajitas cooked over charcoal.  No surprises there, I think.  I pitched in with cooking some breakfasts.  One morning I fed the crew bacon, fried potatoes, and scrambled eggs.  I will note here that one of the hosts is a vegetarian and was kind enough to let us make her house smell like bacon.

While it is always nice to eat food prepared by other people while on vacation I was happy to cook for myself when I got home.  While looking through my freezer I saw a bag of roasted green chiles from last fall so I decided to make green chile stew.  Since it was barely 100 degrees here last weekend the stew really helped take the chill out of my bones.  (This is the type of joke you make to make it through an Arizona summer.)  I also decided to make something new.  After paging through my copy of the Italian Country Table I decided to make fava puree.  Yeah, you read that right.  Apparently you can take dried fava beans and over cook them (with potato slices) and mash them up so they look a lot like mashed potatoes.  No really!  I wasn't sure how this would turn out given that as the beans cooked and I stirred the pot, what I saw was just a pot of beige water.  Yum?  It looked bad and I nearly tossed the pot's contents to start over.  However once the potato slices disintegrated and most of the water cooked out, the whole thing came together.  It still looks little gross in the pan, but it looks better when plated and drizzled with olive oil and pepper.  I'm not sure what I was expecting this to taste like, but damn it is was good. My version was pretty lumpy as some of the beans didn't get mashed up.  Not a problem though.  Wonder how long I will wait before I make this again using the leftover dry favas?

Pickle update:  So far so good.  They are a bit sweeter than I'd like but they survived the pickling process and taste good. 

Pickles, Dill

It is strange to say that going on vacation gave me a pickle craving.  I acknowledge I am weird so let's move on.  I had homemade pickles made by my hosts in Wisconsin and one of their friends.  My hosts pickles were fairly standard dill pickles.  The other batch I sampled were provided at a potluck we went to.  As soon as I bit into the pickle I said, "Ooo the brine has cinnamon in it."  That was a new experience for me.  So when I came home I decided to make a batch of pickles.   I've made bread and butter pickles before, but I wanted to try dill pickles this time.  The restriction was that the recipe needed to be for refrigerator pickles.  Some day I will be brave enough to try canning.  If I ever live somewhere cool I may even take a crack at making pickles in a crock.

Here is a link to the dill pickle recipe I settled on.  Easy enough to make except for finding pickling spice.  Neither store I went to had it stocked with all the other spices.  I thought I was out of luck but then it dawned on me to check the bulk spice area of the second store.  Whew!  They had it in stock and oddly their pickling spice has pieces of cinnamon stick in it.  (Yes, I will be checking the bulk spice section of the first store I went to.)

It all got put together and packed in jars last Saturday so now the wait begins until they have pickled enough to try.

I finally went somewhere!

Yes it is funny to have "vacation" in the title of a blog that never mentions going anywhere.  This year I finally got myself to go visit friends in both Wisconsin and Texas.  Over about two weeks I took planes, trains, and automobiles to travel to Chicago, Monroe, WI, Tulsa, and the San Antonio area.

I spent the week July 4th in Wisconsin. Of course I had to pick one of the hottest weeks of all time to visit so hid indoors a lot. Some activities included:

• Sampling fudge for friends who are in the process of opening a candy store in Monroe, WI.
• Eating Braunschweiger and chili at Baumgartner's.

• Attending Sunday Mass at St. Victor's church where a friend's uncle was the pastor and is now honored by a statue in front of the church for work with the disabled (Apostolate to the Handicapped/Campion's Champions).

• Went to the Sky Vu drive-in to see Brave and The Avengers.
• Saw Fireworks!

• Went to Cave of the Mounds.

When the week finished I traveled by minivan with a friend and her two children aged nine and six from Wisconsin to San Antonio, spending the night in Tulsa.  Texas activities included:

• Sunday mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

• Visiting a snake farm/petting zoo.

Toured the San Jose mission instead of the more touristy Alamo.

I even helped to bottle a batch of beer.

It was a fun couple of weeks.  I have been to both places before but I had never traveled between them.  All the trees lining the highway through Oklahoma was unexpected, but all the rest of the terrain was pretty dull. Sorry Midwesterners.

Crown me

My last visit to the dentist revealed a filled tooth that showed some cracking.  The filling was rather large so the recommendation was to get a crown instead of filling the tooth again.  Having one crown already I wasn't too happy about needing a second one.  This crown was made by a different process than my previous one.  the dentist referred to this as a CEREC crown after the technology used to make it.  Of course it has a Wikipedia page.    I found the process very interesting and document some of it below.

The tooth was shaved and prepared in basically the same way as for my other crown.  After that was done several images were taken of the area around where the crown would be placed.  The photo below is a computer rendering of my lower right jaw.  The blue outline was drawn by the dentist to define the location of the crown.

Once this was done the computer chewed on the images and produced a first pass at the crown.  The dentist then manually adjusted the shape of the tooth by grabbing and dragging.  Some areas were smoothed over and others were built up.  In the image below you can see the final image of the crown as it sits in my jaw.  The blue areas indicate contact between the crown and the adjacent teeth.

Here you can see the crown by itself without the other teeth.

Once the final design was done the image was then positioned inside the block from which it was to be milled. 

Reminds me a bit of the artists who believe that there is a statue inside a block of marble and it is their job to chip away until they find it.  Once the file was sent over to the milling machine it took about ten minutes to finish the job.  The process pretty much resumed from here in fitting the crown and seating it properly.  The only extra thing here was the 20 minutes or so wait while the crown was baked to harden the material.  Being the nerd I am I wonder if I should have asked for the function that defined the surface of my new crown. 

In total the process took about two-and-a-half hours.  Probably a little bit longer than the other method of crowning a tooth but this only took one visit.  I enjoyed the design and milling processes and seeing the equipment, but still am not too thrilled about needing a crown.  Guess I need to more careful taking care of my teeth.

Food Funk Suspended

Well I trashed my kitchen this weekend. I mean that in a good way.  While I didn't make anything new I did manage to cook dinner on Saturday and Sunday.  Good for me!  Not only did I make dinners I also made a batch of granola.  Most store-bought granola is just way too sweet for me, even the stuff that is made in the store.  Making my own means I can use whatever kinds of fruit and nuts I want to which is nice.  Not sure why I bother since my granola will never be as good as Macy's.  I wonder if they have a subscription plan and will just mail a bag to me each week.

As high as the temperatures are here they will never prevent me from wanting soups and stews.  Made this on Saturday.  The cumin and lemon juice work well together.  Shame on me but I almost forgot to add the red pepper flakes.

For the record I can't remember eating a fresh apricot I have enjoyed.  To me they are either unripe and sour or completely flavorless.  This is one of the few items I actually prefer to eat dried.  In the past several months I have experimented a little with cooking fruit and using it as a topping for yogurt.  I mixed halved apricots and mixed them with some sugar and lime juice then cooked the mixture to soften the fruit.  I may have used a bit too much lime juice, but it worked.  I'll probably try something similar with plums at some point.

On Sunday I dug out my copy of The Italian Country Table which is my absolute favorite cookbook and made a batch of Siracusa Market Pasta.  Here spaghetti is sauced with sauteed onions, garlic, raw cherry tomatoes, basil, olives, orange zest, and a few other things. The residual heat cooks the tomatoes and makes the cheese a little melty.  Good stuff.  Of course I am having issues with the pictures I took of the finished dish. I'll try to get them posted soon.

Vacation Update

Well I'm still not doing anything particularly exciting.  Boo! I won't complain though because I have been able to spend time with some visitors each of the last three weeks.

As far as summer movies go I've seen The Avengers and Men in Black III. 

I've been happy with the amount of reading time I've had too.  So far I've finished reading City of God (St. Augustine), Twenty Decisive Battles of the World (Mitchell and Creasy), as well as various comic books and science fiction magazines. The June issue of Asimov's SF had some good stories in it, including one By Megan Arkenberg written in the form of an exam.  Lucky for me there was an answer key included (and I didn't have to grade the exam).  I am currently reading The Year's Best Science Fiction #28.  Normally I find most of the stories in these volumes to be fairly dull, but so far there have been some nice stories especially the ones by Allen Steele, Peter Watts, Tad Williams, and Steven Popkes.  I still have about about 15 stories left so I hope I haven't read all the good stuff already.

I'm slowly starting to get the cooking bug back.  In the past couple of weeks I've made a seafood stew (I can't find the picture!) and another batch of beans.