malvasia bianca

This is one of Miranda’s favorites, and a couple of her classmates have started coveting her leftovers; at the request of one of those classmates’ mothers, here it is. (It’s really easy, too!) From the excellent Elephant Walk Cookbook.
The original recipe says that boneless sirloin is also acceptable, but I prefer flank. [...]

This year’s Thanksgiving dessert was the Bittersweet Deception cake from Bittersweet. Its texture is actually almost more of a mousse than anything else; very good. It looks a bit long, but it’s actually quite easy to make. (You will want to prepare it the previous day, however.)
We used 70% chocolate for it, [...]

I can hardly turn down a direct request for a recipe, so: Liesl’s grandmother’s brownies. If you like this, I have several other dessert recipes that are worth trying. (Or ask me for Betsy cookies, or for our standard chocolate cake recipe.)
Make sure not to stint on the beating time, it’s important. [...]

A while back, I mentioned that the book Good Calories, Bad Calories had gotten me curious about low-carb diets; here’s an update.
On the reading front, I figured I’d take a look at the Atkins book, since he has the most experience with diets of this sort. And, frankly, I wasn’t too impressed: if I’d [...]

It’s been a while since I posted a recipe, hasn’t it? Anyways, if you’re looking for a chocolate frosting, you could do a lot worse than this one: one of Liesl’s coworkers used it on a delightful cake last year, we just got the recipe from her (thanks, Amanda!), and tried it out tonight, [...]

I spent the day at this month’s Bay Area Go Players Association tournament. It was my first tournament in recent memory playing as a 1 dan; I had a record of 1 win and 3 losses and got the impression that 1 dan is a more accurate rating for me than 1 kyu, but [...]

I read Good Calories, Bad Calories about a month ago, and it’s thrown me for a bit of a loop. I’ve had reasonably high cholesterol for a while, and one of my grandfathers died from a heart attack at a younger age than I’d prefer to die, so I’ve been vaguely curious about the [...]

As I have, perhaps, alluded to previously, we spent the second half of April in Paris. Notes:

It’s the most wonderful place in the world, but I’m actually not feeling particularly compelled to visit it again any time soon. Some of this has to do with the fact that I’ve been there eight times; [...]

Xanh (warning: web site has completely gratuitous Flash usage), our local excellent upscale Vietnamese restaurant, just moved into larger digs; glad they’re doing well. The new digs are a bit hip for me, and in particular the room that pairs interesting artwork with green ceiling lights (washing out all the colors in the artwork; [...]

As my coworkers can attest, I am a big fan of Trader Joe’s cocoa-covered almonds. So, on a recent trip to the store, I decided to branch out into their other chocolate/almond combinations, and bought a package of chocolate-almond clusters and a package of almonds covered with chocolate, sugar, and salt.
The former were quite [...]

For future reference: gummi bears are not an acceptable substitute for gum drops when baking. They have a significantly lower melting point.

Some random notes from our recent trip to Boston and its environs:

T tokens are no more. Which made me a little sad, but I was very happy that, when arriving Tuesday evening for a trip where we’d be leaving the next Tuesday morning and would spend three days outside of Boston, there was a [...]

It’s been more than a year since I posted a recipe: it’s not clear that anybody is interested in them, and while that doesn’t stop me most of the time, it seems particularly pointless in the case of recipes. Still, every once in a while, somebody comes over for dinner and wants the recipe [...]

I didn’t realize it was possible to beatbox while playing the flute.
Gyoza stadium sounds awesome.
Star Wars in ASCII.
I spent a pleasant hour last weekend watching Ben and Fitz’s poisonous people talk. (And then caught myself exhibiting one of those symptoms on a mailing list last week. Sigh…)
I suppose you’ve already seen Peter Gutmann’s [...]

We had dinner at the excellent Sushi Tomi tonight. Two of the tatami tables were taken over by a birthday party, hosted by a young caucasian girl, with a Bob the Builder theme. Multiculturalism at its best.

I hope that those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving had a nice one. We did; a congenial bunch of guests, a meal headed by cambodian chicken curry. Though there were other nice bits on the menu – in particular, Liesl made a very pleasant beef soup, also from The Elephant Walk Cookbook, and [...]

I should really catch up on my blogging; in the mean time, some random links:

Will it blend? I know where I’m buying my next blender from.
John Baez on the state of fundamental physics.
Just the link for the panda fan in your family.
A followup to a traffic experiments article that I mentioned before.
An interesting discussion [...]

I had not realized until recently that carpaccio only dates back to around 1950.

I’m pretty sure this is from The Top One Hundred Pasta Sauces, by Diane Reed, but that book was Jordan’s, so I can’t say for sure. The original recipe recommends spaghetti (or even vermicelli, which really doesn’t sound like a fit to me), but I prefer the fusilli that another recipe recommends: that way, [...]

Cleaning out my list of saved links:

A visit to the Ghibli museum.
Lean manufacturing books are next up on my reading list.
I’m glad some Congresspeople are seeing the DRM light…
Because the bad guys aren’t about to let up.
I repeat: the bad guys aren’t about to let up.
Google’s hardly a saint, either.
Some random 37signals posts.
I’m curious, though [...]