Friday, May 25, 2012
what's for dinner?
just in time for memorial day, a new turkey burger recipe. i made it up last night. makes 2 burgers.
1 egg
8-10oz 93/7 ground turkey (depending if you want quarter pound burgers or 5oz burgers. if you use 10oz, up the following spices slightly)
1/2 t kosher salt
1 t fresh ground black pepper
3 springs fresh parsley, chopped
1 t extra virgin olive oil
1. beat the egg until all the white is incorporated into the yolk.
2. mash the egg and ground turkey together until you have uniform consistency. use your hands if you're not squeamish about raw meat like me.
3. add the salt and pepper. the kosher salt will start to dissolve almost immediately, so mix well and uniformly.
4. mix in the parsley.
5. mix in the olive oil (this increases the fat content and keeps the burgers moist, but in a healthy way).
6. divide the meat mixture into two portions and form into patties. i suppose you could also divide it into 4 portions and make sliders.
7. grill/broil/fry.
eat. yay! they were yummy last night. i ended up with little fat burgers because the potato rolls i bought were smallish in diameter. these would probably be good with a white beer or a not-crazy-hoppy ipa. the burgers are lighter in flavour than either roast turkey or burgers made with beef, so probably a lightish red wine, like a pinot noir would work too. a sharp cheese would give you room to use a more robust wine, but i don't like cheeseburgers.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
finally.
so, 11 years after i graduated with my bachelor's, the framed diploma is finally up on my wall.
cream paper, all in latin, with a real red wax seal.
i know it's silly, but i do feel proud looking at it. and it motivates me to stick it out and finish up my master's next year. hopefully that diploma won't have to wait 11 years to go up. and after that... well, still hoping for a ph.d. somewhere, somehow.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
city living.
another craving appeased! we have found a local bakery. this one is jewish, not french, which means we've traded baguettes for bagels. but yay fresh bread not full of chemicals to make it last weeks in trucks and on shelves. they also supply some of the local restaurants around here. and, with points over the suburbs, it's in walking distance.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
more holidays.
welcome to the festival of crumbs. seriously. the amount of crumbs matza makes is unbelievable. maybe this year it's just crispier or something. since we moved, the supermarket is carrying a new israeli brand i have never heard of. it's good, just... crumby.
unfortunately, i don't have a passover recipe to post here. between school and basic dietary restrictions, my cooking gets pretty minimal during passover. we eat a lot of peanut butter.
is it worth it to vacuum now, or should i just wait for the end of the week and get rid of all the crumbs at once?
unfortunately, i don't have a passover recipe to post here. between school and basic dietary restrictions, my cooking gets pretty minimal during passover. we eat a lot of peanut butter.
is it worth it to vacuum now, or should i just wait for the end of the week and get rid of all the crumbs at once?
Saturday, March 31, 2012
settling in.
well. things do feel a bit settled these days. the apartment is starting to feel like home. shopping and laundry routines are still fucked up, but i'm not sure they could be anything else. communting to school is settling into a routine too... i'm there every day of the week this semester, and i've gotten the train schedules down pretty well.
i have missed living in the city. it is so awesome to be able to walk or take the subway everywhere we need to go. seriously. we've gotten rid of one of the cars too (*sniff* farewell, vw golf).
i just don't really get the suburbs. i mean, ok, kind of i do. you can have a yard and a decent garden. but other than that... why would you want to have to drive everywhere? and have houses all clumped together in one place, and shopping clumped together somewhere else, and traffic, and commuting, and school buses...? i guess i'm not a very good american.
it seems moderately pertinent among the horrific election rhetoric. the vision of what it means to be american is under the microscope these days, although only implicitly. but since 9/11 and the wars, the language of attack and defense and the accusations of "unpatriotic" have been flying. part of the traditional vision is, of course, the house with the yard and the cars and the white picket fence. i'm just not sure it should be. it's a selfish and expensive way to life, and with the economy and the environment being in the state they are, it seems like we ought to be looking forward towards what's new, not backwards. but that's scarier and harder.
i have missed living in the city. it is so awesome to be able to walk or take the subway everywhere we need to go. seriously. we've gotten rid of one of the cars too (*sniff* farewell, vw golf).
i just don't really get the suburbs. i mean, ok, kind of i do. you can have a yard and a decent garden. but other than that... why would you want to have to drive everywhere? and have houses all clumped together in one place, and shopping clumped together somewhere else, and traffic, and commuting, and school buses...? i guess i'm not a very good american.
it seems moderately pertinent among the horrific election rhetoric. the vision of what it means to be american is under the microscope these days, although only implicitly. but since 9/11 and the wars, the language of attack and defense and the accusations of "unpatriotic" have been flying. part of the traditional vision is, of course, the house with the yard and the cars and the white picket fence. i'm just not sure it should be. it's a selfish and expensive way to life, and with the economy and the environment being in the state they are, it seems like we ought to be looking forward towards what's new, not backwards. but that's scarier and harder.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
education inflation.
so, there's this big push to get more people to go to college. and concommittant with that is the cry that college degrees are becoming worthless because too many people are getting them (i've already posted elsewhere about the push to outsource entry-level job training to educational insititutions, so i won't rehash my opinions on that).
and yet... it seems as though the conversation is a bit one-sided. or at least, those mostly partaking of the conversation are coming from a specific, possibly skewed context.
less than one-third of american adults over 25 have an undergraduate degree. and this is a high, recently passing the 30% mark, as the article notes.*
i dunno. maybe if we actually started thinking about education as education, and took a wider look at where we actually are, the conversation might change. with less than one third of the population having even undergraduate degrees, i don't think that increasing that number will have a huge economic effect any time soon. approaching 50%, then i could see the panic.
although, reflecting... apparently the majority of jobs out there don't require a degree since the majority of adults don't have one. i mean, unemployment isn't that high. on the other hand, assuming we get more people in the workforce with critical thinking skills, even those jobs can theoretically be done better.
on yet another hand, if the majority of the workforce is kept from getting a higher education, and especially an education specializing in teaching them how to think instead of just how to manipulate a widget, that keeps the power in the hands of those who already have it. hmm...
well. full disclosure. i also come from a context where i would never have guessed that the attainment rate is only about 30% for the country (i thought it was higher).
*i tried to find the actual data, but the link for the 2011 report only goes to an "about" page. since the article only says "more than 30%" i'm taking that as journalist-speak for "30.01%-32.99%" on the assumption that "one third!" would have made a better headline if they could have used it. the 2009 report says that 28% have completed undergraduate degrees.
and yet... it seems as though the conversation is a bit one-sided. or at least, those mostly partaking of the conversation are coming from a specific, possibly skewed context.
less than one-third of american adults over 25 have an undergraduate degree. and this is a high, recently passing the 30% mark, as the article notes.*
i dunno. maybe if we actually started thinking about education as education, and took a wider look at where we actually are, the conversation might change. with less than one third of the population having even undergraduate degrees, i don't think that increasing that number will have a huge economic effect any time soon. approaching 50%, then i could see the panic.
although, reflecting... apparently the majority of jobs out there don't require a degree since the majority of adults don't have one. i mean, unemployment isn't that high. on the other hand, assuming we get more people in the workforce with critical thinking skills, even those jobs can theoretically be done better.
on yet another hand, if the majority of the workforce is kept from getting a higher education, and especially an education specializing in teaching them how to think instead of just how to manipulate a widget, that keeps the power in the hands of those who already have it. hmm...
well. full disclosure. i also come from a context where i would never have guessed that the attainment rate is only about 30% for the country (i thought it was higher).
*i tried to find the actual data, but the link for the 2011 report only goes to an "about" page. since the article only says "more than 30%" i'm taking that as journalist-speak for "30.01%-32.99%" on the assumption that "one third!" would have made a better headline if they could have used it. the 2009 report says that 28% have completed undergraduate degrees.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
a little creepy.
i think i'm going to have to stop shopping at target.
on the other hand, what's interesting about this is that i hate shopping so much, everything is a conscious decision. what cereal do i want this week? what orange juice? which store is the least hassle to buy socks? i compulsively read labels.
i wonder what my shopping habit reward is.
on the other hand, what's interesting about this is that i hate shopping so much, everything is a conscious decision. what cereal do i want this week? what orange juice? which store is the least hassle to buy socks? i compulsively read labels.
i wonder what my shopping habit reward is.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
the deceit of fruit.
i just ate an orange.
i shouldn't have been able to eat that orange; i bought it 2 weeks ago. but it was actually still underripe. i washed it, peeled it, and then had to wash my hands again because they were covered with wax.
as far as i can tell, most apples and citrus fruit sold in u.s. supermarkets is waxed.
i remember the first time a british friend went shopping with me. he exclaimed at the size and shininess of the apples. i said, "oh, they're covered in wax."
the fruit gets waxed for 2 reasons. 1) to keep it looking nice. wax seals the pores in the skin and smooths it out, making the fruit look shiny, uniform, and therefore attractive. and 2) to keep it from spoiling (or as in the case of my orange, from even getting ripe). because fruit is picked so far away from its selling location, it gets waxed to prevent air from carrying molds and bacteria into the fruit and spoiling it.
1) is the one that bothers me more. i can understand needing to wax fruit because it needs to be shipped from florida or california or washington to the other side of the country. but waxing the fruit changes the perception of what fruit should look like. we only see huge, over-irrigated, underripe, shiny, gleaming fruit. i have no idea what a non-industrial-farmed orange looks like. i do know what real apples are supposed to look like because we had 2 apple trees in our backyard when i was a kid.
but our food is as carefully curated for appearance as works of art in a museum. not only is this weird, but it makes us even more ignorant of what we eat, what we put in our bodies. the huge, waxed orange moves me just a little further from one reality into another one where appearance is carefully controlled and manufactured.
hm.
oh, and happy new year.
i shouldn't have been able to eat that orange; i bought it 2 weeks ago. but it was actually still underripe. i washed it, peeled it, and then had to wash my hands again because they were covered with wax.
as far as i can tell, most apples and citrus fruit sold in u.s. supermarkets is waxed.
i remember the first time a british friend went shopping with me. he exclaimed at the size and shininess of the apples. i said, "oh, they're covered in wax."
the fruit gets waxed for 2 reasons. 1) to keep it looking nice. wax seals the pores in the skin and smooths it out, making the fruit look shiny, uniform, and therefore attractive. and 2) to keep it from spoiling (or as in the case of my orange, from even getting ripe). because fruit is picked so far away from its selling location, it gets waxed to prevent air from carrying molds and bacteria into the fruit and spoiling it.
1) is the one that bothers me more. i can understand needing to wax fruit because it needs to be shipped from florida or california or washington to the other side of the country. but waxing the fruit changes the perception of what fruit should look like. we only see huge, over-irrigated, underripe, shiny, gleaming fruit. i have no idea what a non-industrial-farmed orange looks like. i do know what real apples are supposed to look like because we had 2 apple trees in our backyard when i was a kid.
but our food is as carefully curated for appearance as works of art in a museum. not only is this weird, but it makes us even more ignorant of what we eat, what we put in our bodies. the huge, waxed orange moves me just a little further from one reality into another one where appearance is carefully controlled and manufactured.
hm.
oh, and happy new year.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
more winter holidays.
last stop before slogging through the dark and cold and wet that is winter.
gifts have been given, food has been eaten. 2 more days of vacation left (class starts again on monday). oh, and *sigh* the koph is in the middle of "hannukah." it starts with a (c)het, which makes the "channukah" transliteration even less appropriate.
i feel like there should be something to say at the end of another year, but i pretty much already said it for this year.
i will say that when 2011 began, i had no idea it would end here.
this year does apparently mark the lowest number of posts on this blog. i'm not sure anyone read is anymore anyway, but i apparently used to have more to say. maybe everything i have to say these days goes into my papers.
well. happy new year.
gifts have been given, food has been eaten. 2 more days of vacation left (class starts again on monday). oh, and *sigh* the koph is in the middle of "hannukah." it starts with a (c)het, which makes the "channukah" transliteration even less appropriate.
i feel like there should be something to say at the end of another year, but i pretty much already said it for this year.
i will say that when 2011 began, i had no idea it would end here.
this year does apparently mark the lowest number of posts on this blog. i'm not sure anyone read is anymore anyway, but i apparently used to have more to say. maybe everything i have to say these days goes into my papers.
well. happy new year.
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