greek yoghurt adventures.

**updated**

so i have always been a fan of yoghurt, and the new greek styles pack that loverly protein punch along with the "live and active cultures."  i have been eating quite a lot of it recently, but my local supermarket tends to be inconsistent with its selection, so i am exploring the various brands.  i'm up to 3 so far.

my favourite flavour is honey, so that's the one i've been trying.  i like it for a couple reasons.  1) i have always found that the jams you stir into yoghurt change the texture to something weird and kind of grainy.  2) mixing in or pouring honey is a traditional way to eat yoghurt, strained/greek or not. 3) in a pinch, i can make it myself by buying plain yoghurt and just spooning in honey :)

so.  here are my experiences in my greek yoghurt adventure:

first:  all of these were 0% fat with the same 5 standard live and active cultures in yoghurt, so none of that is going to show up in my discussion.  they are also all true strained yoghurts with the high protein content.  always read the nutrition labels, kids; some "greek" yoghurts have only half the protein of others because they are not strained, just thickened with additives.

stonyfield
stonyfield is my favourite.  it is creamy and tangy and organic.  although "organic honey" is really impossible because you have no idea where the bees have actually gone. 

pros:  organic!  organic!!  no hormones, no antibiotics in the cows.  i'm really trying to get away from animal products with antibiotics.  fairly low calorie count.  creamy texture.  tangy yoghurt.  good honey flavour.
cons:  the honey is mixed with pectin and carob bean gum as thickeners.  my supermarket carries this flavour about every other week.  wtf?  expensive except when on sale.

chobani
i must be the only person in the world who doesn't like chobani.  i find their flavours with fruit mix-ins to be excessively grainy.  their pre-blended honey yoghurt was chalky instead of creamy and had little flavour.
pros:  actually a 6oz cup, so better value.  no thickeners with the honey.
cons:  chalky.  weird texture.  little honey flavour.  no tang.  bleh.

fage
this one is very interesting.  like stonyfield, you mix the honey in yourself, but unlike stonyfield, the honey is just plain honey and comes in its own compartment.  this is nice because then you don't have to eat all that sugar, although honey is very good for you.  i found about half the honey in the compartment got the yoghurt to a sweetness i like.
pros:  no thickeners with the honey.  separate compartment makes it easy to customize.
cons: no tang.  messy and hard to mix in the cup.  if you don't eat it, you end up throwing out the honey, which makes it impossible to recycle the container. also food waste is sad :(  if you do eat all the honey, fage has the highest calorie count.  this will probably be my backup.

voskos
this one is... weird.  it has the most liquid whey of all of them, but it also has one more gram of protein.  usually these two things are mutually exclusive; it is the straining of the whey that makes greek yoghurt more thick, creamy, and concentrated.  voskos honey also has a tangy flavour that crosses the line into "weird and funky" with an equally funky aftertaste.  like chobani, this is pre-blended, and while the sugar content is comparable to the others, it has the least sweet taste.  i liked this one the least.  (note: i do see an organic option on the website, but i only found the conventional in my supermarket)
pros: no thickeners with the honey.  an extra gram of protein.
cons: chalky.  really weird, funky taste and aftertaste.  no real honey flavour.  soupy whey on top.

take that, rene girard!

this made me laugh.

It's hard to imagine Mattrick was a scapegoat given that he implicated himself by defending so rabidly the DRM policies in interviews to the extent of insulting customers. I very much doubt his orders were "Don, go make a dick of yourself in public".

I think we can all agree we've coined the new term: "scapedick" :)

scapegoat - In modern usage a scapegoat is an individual, group, or country singled out for unmerited negative treatment or blame.
scapedick - An individual, group or country singled out for unmerited negative treatment or blame; then accepting the blame, and overly going along with the plan against them to the point of looking like a dick

(quoted for posterity)
also, it's not every day a tech website and rene girard can be worked into one post.

what's for... lunch?

this has become one of my favourite meals recently.  it's so simple and summery.

spicy chicken salad sandwich

potato hotdog roll
spicy grilled chicken (boneless skinless breast or thigh - try a cajun spice rub)
carrot
celery
mayonnaise to taste
romaine lettuce

1.  peel the carrot, and slice the carrot and celery into small pieces. chop chicken into small chunks.  you really want these small, about a quarter of an inch cubed or smaller, but still chunky.  do not shred any of them.  the proportions of the three ingredients should be almost equal, with only a little more chicken by volume.

2.  mix the small chunks into mayonnaise.  i like my mayonnaise salads creamy, so i use a couple tablespoons.  it may be tempting to use a low-fat dressing, but don't.  it will get watery and not be creamy enough with the high proportion of vegetables.

3.  line the potato roll with romaine leaves and then spoon the chicken salad on top.

i'd love to try packing this for a picnic, but i haven't yet.  maybe next week for the 4th.

experiments.

so, we are moving. and we are moving to a much, much smaller space. which means we have to figure out what to get rid of/leave behind.

in the process of going through my cabinets, i found yeast packets that were way, way, way past their expiration date. i don't bake with yeast much. in fact, i don't bake with yeast at all. i tried once, and the resulting breadsticks, while edible, were all dried out and not really much good. and since i don't bake with yeast, i don't bother to buy bread flour.

but i thought, the breadsticks weren't actually that bad, i mean, they were edible after all, and i do know that bread baking is much a trial-and-error situation. i don't bake a whole lot because baking tends to be fiddly and rely a lot on details, and i'm not big on details. but even though i screwed up my first effort, yeast bread seemed like it might be able to handle less exactness than something like a cake (don't ever ask me to make a cake for you. i don't bake cakes). so i paged through my copies of Fannie Farmer's Cookbook and The Joy of Cooking looking for a yeast bread recipe that didn't require bread flour. and in The Joy of Cooking i found a recipe for pizza dough that said it would also make focaccia. i don't have a pizza stone, but the focaccia seemed like less work anyway. so i made it. and it was actually a success.

but what do you eat with focaccia? here's what dinner was last night:

chicken-pesto panini on focaccia

ingredients:
1 packet instant yeast
2 T olive oil + more for the pans
2 3/4 c all-purpose flour
1 c whole wheat flour (optional - i used white whole wheat)
1 2/3 c warm water
1 T salt
1 t sugar
extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, and rosemary

1/2 lb boneless, skinless chicken breast
1 T extra virgin olive oil
as much pesto as you want (maybe i'll post my recipe for pesto some day too)
mozzerella and provolone cheese

1. combine the yeast packet with the warm water and let sit 5 minutes.

2. pour yeasty water into a large mixing bowl and mix in flour(s), salt, sugar, and oil.

3. stir and then knead until the dough is "smooth and elastic," adding more water and/or flour as necessary.

4. divide the dough in half and push until flattish into well-oiled cake or pie pans. The Joy of Cooking recommends 2 10" cake pans. since i don't have those (see above comment on cakes), i used 2 9" glass pie pans.

5. cover the dough with plastic wrap and set in a warm area to rise ~1 1/2 hours "or until doubled in volume." this didn't happen for me. they barely rose at all. it's possible my apartment isn't warm enough to make the yeast happy.

6. push down with fingertips until the surface is dimpled. drizzle with extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, and rosemary.

7. bake at 400F for 25 minutes or until crusty. this is the stage where mine rose and got fluffy.

8. while the focaccia is (focaccii are?) baking, cut the chicken breast crosswise into slices about 1/8" thick.

9. oil a baking sheet or shallow pan, add the chicken slices to the oil in the pan, and toss them to cover them with oil. spread them out so they will cook evenly.

10. in another oven (i used my toaster oven), cook the chicken breast at 350F until done but still moist.

11. scoop several spoonfuls of pesto into a shallow bowl. toss the chicken breast with their cooking oil in the pesto until well coated.

12. cut a focaccia into quarters and slice two of the quarters lengthwise to make sandwiches. pile the chicken and pesto onto one slice of each quarter focaccia. top with cheeses.

13. put the topped focaccia slices under the broiler and broil on high until cheese is melted and bubbly. wrap the untopped focaccia slices in aluminum foil and put them in the broiler as well to keep them hot.

14. complete the sandwiches with the hot focaccia slices. eat!

this was actually quite delicious. i'm not sure how you can go wrong with anything that involves pesto, but that might just be me.

you're doing it wrong.

i'm sort of, in a rather desultory manner, watching the coverage of the inauguration on television, and i can't help wondering why only the tea party is doing it right.

i voted back in november.  there were at least 5 candidates for president on the ballot in my state (that i remember), representing 5 different parties for president.  but there were only 2 parties represented in all the other races, 3 if you count the tea party separate from the moderate northeast republicans.  i was just watching discussion of the president's stated immigration goal, and it sounds like the republican party is headed for a split between the very far right nutcases and the rest of the conservatives.

what is going on?

for some reason, the tea party is working the system right.  i wish the left in this country would stop chasing their damned egos and start paying real attention to how a multi-party system is working in this country.  it is working because whoever is financing the tea party is smart.  instead of waiting for 2012 and blowing all their money on the ridiculously expensive presidential campaign, they started in 2010 with the congressional races and especially with the house of representatives.

we have this famous check-and-balances situation in this country which forces the president to have to work with the legislative branch.  what would be the point of getting a hard-right president in power, or a green party president in power, and having no support for them in congress?  better to spend your money on those small, unglamourous legislative campaigns that will get voters in your corner and get legislative support in congress so that there is ready-made support for your presidential campaign.  not only that, but it will force true multi-party functioning in this country. 

if the greens and the communists are smart and more than that, serious, about affecting politics in this country, they should start finding house of representative candidates now and fund their runs for the 2014 congressional elections.  stop blowing your money on your presidential run ego, stop being fixated on "the presidency" and "the president of the united states" and get going with really getting the worker bees into the government.

holiday food.

so this blog is suffering from school and everything else.

but it is winter holidays!  time to eat everything made with fat and sugar so we can get through the dark months ahead.

to counter that, i have invented:

ridiculously healthy pumpkin muffins

* this is what i made this morning.  bonus points: use all organic ingredients

1 c organic sugar 
1 c organic canned pumpkin (bonus points: get an organic pumpkin from a local farmer and cook and puree it yourself)
2    organic eggs  (bonus points: local)
1/4  c oil
1/4 c water


1    c whole wheat flour
1/2 c white flour
1    t  baking soda
3/4 t  salt
1    t  ground cinnamon
1/4 t  ground nutmeg
1/4 t  ground cloves
1/4 t  ground ginger

minced candied ginger

1.  using an electric mixer, beat eggs with the sugar, pumpkin, oil, and water.

2.  add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir with a spoon until blended.  lumps are ok.  do not use an electric mixer for this step, the whole wheat flour will not be happy with you.  unless i guess you have a stand mixer with some kind of gentle attachment, but i don't.

3.  fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups, portioning out the batter evenly.  if making regular-sized muffins, cups will be about 3/4 full.

4.  top each muffin with some of the candied ginger.

5.  bake at 350F for 15-20 minutes or until a tester inserted into a muffin comes out clean.

yay.  they are yummy.  i would like to look up an ingredient substitute formula and see how they work with molasses, which i think might be even better.  they're like pumpkin pie, except muffins.  spicy, not too sweet.  for moister muffins, either use 100% white flour or more oil.  but then they're not as healthy.

happy (early) birthday to me.

so because he's as much a gadget fan as i am, i got my birthday present a few days after it arrived in the mail, and a few days before my birthday:  a nexus7. 

i have to say, i am loving the thing.  i am on the record (probably, somewhere) as saying tablets are useless, and i'm still divided about his ipad, but the 7" tablet is a great place between a laptop and a phone.  i can get email and actually read the attached documents on it, as well as web.  and google maps are just gorgeous.  it's thin and light and i can hold it in one hand, even with my small hands.

on the other hand, i am now carrying around 3 devices on a regular basis:  my phone, for text messages and email when there is no wifi, the tablet, and my sony reader, which i still see a use case for in the e-ink screen which is nicer on the eyes and the ability to make handwritten notes on articles for class.  if i add my laptop, it goes up to 4.  i don't usually carry my ipod, but this is all getting a little silly.

i never really thought there was a good use for a tablet until i went to japan this summer.  and then i saw how useful it would be to have a device to handle map and be able to show off all your pictures.  and now actually having one, it is being useful in class for looking things up and grabbing the scanned pdfs which are giant images that the reader doesn't like so much.

i am also a fan of these guys.  i finally got one of their wine bottle bags after wanting one forever, and i just got their sleeve for the nexus, which is really nice.

so whee.  stuff.  i guess i'll have to decide what to do on my actual birthday now.

accomplishments.

so about 20 years after i started playing it at a friend's house, i have finally finished loom.

i'm also in my last year (finally!) of my master's program.  whee,

japan trip 2012

japan trip 2012, a set on Flickr.

just got back from a trip to japan for my brother's wedding. here are 33/514 photos *grin*

what's for dinner?

i only get to eat my expensive italian tuna when he's not home.

tuna & pasta

1  5oz  can italian tuna (tonno) packed in olive oil
1 c       uncooked short pasta (elbows, rotini, farfalle, etc)
2 T      pesto (or to taste)
1 c      cut green beans
pine nuts to taste (i like lots of them)
grated parmesan cheese to taste
1-3 T extra virgin olive oil

1.  cook the pasta in water with a little olive oil.  drain the pot thoroughly and return the empty pot to the burner.  turn the burner down to medium.

2.  while the pasta is cooking, toast the pine nuts:  sprinkle them in a single layer on a baking sheet and place in the oven at 350F, shaking until brown.

3.  pout 1-2 T olive oil in the pan with a little oil from the can of tuna.

4.  add the cooked pasta to the oil and stir to coat.  this will probably spit, so be careful.

5.  add the tuna and break up into small chunks and flakes.  stir.

6.  add the green beans and pesto.  stir again to evenly distribute the pesto.

7.  add the toasted pine nuts, only to warm them up.  since they are already toasted, they will burn quickly (about 30 seconds).

8.  spoon onto plates and sprinkle grated cheese on top.