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.

Weekend Food

I have been in a food funk for quite awhile.  This is somewhat depressing since I enjoy cooking.  I cooked for a potluck a couple of weekends ago, but haven't done much since then.  As summer produce makes its way into the store, I hope my food funk goes away.

To try and break out of the the food funk I made a green bean salad with tomatoes and toasted bread to go with some pasta.

Here are onions and canned tomatoes browning in olive oil and fat rendered from some pancetta.

And the finished dish.

For the past couple of weeks the local Schnepf Farms has been picking their peaches.  I was able to pick up a few this morning.  It still weirds me out that I can get fresh peaches in May.  Growing up in Western New York meant having to wait until late summer (August/September) before that happened.  I have fond memories of being at the Lewiston Peach Festival with my mother when I was a kid.  I didn't go crazy and try to make peach shortcake today, but I did enjoy the peaches after they had a good soaking in white wine.

This week in vacation

I jumped the gun a little on announcing summer vacation.  There was a committee report that I needed to submit on May 15.  After that I was truly free.  Even though I did not have classes to teach it still didn't feel like I was done with the school year.  I doubt that my last work task had anything to do with it.  Guess it doesn't really matter other than to say I was starting to get bored.  That was bad given that I have the next three months off.

This week I did manage to sneak in a lot of reading time at my local Starbucks and catch a showing of The Avengers.  Having seen the recent Marvel Comics movies (Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man I and II) I was expecting The Avengers to be good.  It was definitely enjoyable.  I still don't get Hulk.  His movies looked awful so I stayed away and I wasn't impressed here either.  Don't know, maybe I would feel different if I had exposure to the character beyond the Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno TV show when I was a kid.

Friends from out of town were here at the end of the week.  On Thursday we road tripped to Wickenburg, AZ.  What's in Wickenburg?  For one, a telescope store.  It's closed on Thursday so we could only peer in the windows.  There is also the Desert Caballeros Western Museum.  Most of the museum was "eh" in my opinion.  However they had scenes from Old Arizona set up in the basement.  The scenes were replicas (as best as they could make) of life in Wickenburg around a hundred years ago. Some display areas were marked as "no photos", but it turns out that there are some photos of the town display on the museum's website. Anyway, the scenes were from a store, a home, post office, saloon, and some other areas of town life.  It was fun looking at what was for sale in the store.  I saw many familiar products like Grape Nuts and Lea and Perrins sauce, among others.  There was woman seated at an old Singer sewing machine.  We had one of these at home when I was little, though my mother did not use it.  There was also a little boy standing with his scooter that looked remarkably like the Razor scooters that kids ride around on today.  The only real difference was the size of the wheels (and probably no plastic). What is old is new?

The home scenes were interesting, too.  It struck me how little home furnishings have changed in nearly 100 years.  Sure the materials and processes used to make things are different, but the shape and style of couches, chairs, tables, and beds haven't really changed.  One big change is home entertainment.  There was a record player (hand cranked) and paper books scattered about.  No computers or iphones here.  Other differences were the stove was wood or maybe coal fired and there was a pump for well water.  Very different from today.  I can't imagine having to maintain a stove for cooking or having to pump my own water.  These are very foreign ideas to me.  Dare I mention the lack of a water heater and shower?

The post office display had a stamp dispenser in it.  Not very interesting except to note that the sales pitch was the stamps were sanitary.  Yes, sanitary!  What were other people doing with the stamps they sold that made them not sanitary?  Okay, I don't want to know!  Looking at the watch parts "across the street" was fun.  I bet the watches in the display would work great if they were wound up.  No batteries required!

When our walk through the museum was complete we had lunch at a place across the street (Jail Tree Sandwich Company) which is also right next to the Jail Tree.  Yup, that was the town jail.  No building was there, just the tree.  Prisoners were just chained to the tree.  I bet people were better behaved in the summer.  Hot!

When we returned Thursday evening we had dinner at San Tan Brewery.  I've had their beer before, but this was the first time I've stepped foot in the brewery.  Fried chicken and mashed potatoes doesn't sound all that excited until they are topped with a green chile gravy.  Very yummy and very deadly I am sure.  I tend to buy their Devil's Ale and finding Hop Shock a little too hoppy, I opted for the Gordo Stout which they do not bottle and sell in stores.  That's disappointing because it was very, very tasty.  I guess I can get a growler to go next time.  We closed Thursday evening by bowling.  Wow.  I hadn't picked up a bowling ball in probably 15-20 years.  I still stink so some things never change.  At one point my score was 284.  I'll leave it to you to figure out how many games that took. 

Overall it was a fun day and evening.

Summer vacation starts...now

I just submitted the last set of grades for this semester.  During the spring I decided to take advantage of my current situation and not teach class this summer.  I now have about three months with a lot of free time on my hands.  It's summer vacation, now what? Hm....

Pumpkins and Beans

Last night I decided to pick up a pumpkin from the store. Here he is, Old Pumpkin Guts.

I refuse to show a picture of the carving I made because it was lame. I am not an artist and really just get pumpkins so that I can make pumpkin seeds. Sure they would be cheaper to buy, but where is the fun in that? Besides homemade pumpkin seeds are way better. While cleaning out the pumpkin I had the story The Great Old Pumpkin playing in the background. Imagine if H.P. Lovecraft wrote a script for the Peanuts characters. Yeah. This story has become a Halloween staple around here.

I have been in a food funk for a couple of weeks. I really only have time to cook on the weekeds so I get mad at myself when I can't come up with any appealing dinner ideas. This week I was lucky enough to get a visit from friends who shared some dried herbs from their garden. I felt a little dirty taking ziploc bags of green leafy substances from them while in a darkened parking lot. Honest officer, it really is oregano! They gave me bags of oregano, dill, and sage. Dill is a tough one, but oregano and sage are easy. To make use of the sage I cooked a pot of cannellini beans and turned them in bean broth for soup and beans "in the style of songbirds". I love the names Italians give to their food.

Here is a picture of the leftover beans. Yikes! I bet they end up in my freezer for use another day.