Tuna noodle hotdish

My recent Multilingual column mentioned tuna noodle hotdish. For those readers who aren't familiar with this snowbelt classic, here's a recipe.

This is an old standard for Norwegian-Lutherans in the USA snowbelt—it's what we make when our neighbor's recovering from surgery, or when a friend has just had a death in the family, or when we need to bring something for the church potluck, or if it's a cold night and we're hungry.

It's not a fancy recipe—and that's the whole point. It's cheap, easy comfort food.

• one can of tuna
• one 12 oz bag of egg noodles
• one can of cream of mushroom soup
• a few slices of Velveeta
• salt
• pepper
• oregano
• potato chips

Prepare one package of egg noodles in boiling, salted water according to directions on the bag. Drain. Add tuna, cream of mushroom soup concentrate, about half a soup can of water, Velveeta, salt and pepper, and oregano. Stir, return to heat, and heat through. Correct seasonings. Top with crumbled potato chips.

Variation: instead of heating on stovetop, top with potato chips and heat in oven-proof casserole at 350˚F for about 30 minutes.

Nano-opera: Evgeny Onegin

Pride and Prejudicesky.

Nano-opera: Gounod's Faust

In Act I, a geezer wants to off himself because he's a geezer. Handsome bass devil who sings better and is several feet taller talks him into sticking around, exchanging youth for some dubious duties later on. Spotting a beautiful, young woman who is actually just a soprano and neither of those things, he agrees, drinks a potion and becomes a handsome, young man who's actually just a tenor and neither of those things. The soprano's brother sings goodbye for a long time before marching off to war. A crowd has formed so that the devil has an excuse to sing some more, the crowds get revenge by bursting into singing of their own, and finally our unhandsome tenor fails to woo our unbeautiful soprano.

Before Act II, the audience members adjourn to Pauline's for pizza and beer.

Nano-opera: Die Walküre

(If I'm any good at this, it will be obvious that my nano-operas owe a great debt to Anna Russell. There's no point trying to outdo Dame Russell's great analysis of the Ring of the Nibelungen, which you must immediately view here, here, and here if you haven't already. My own humble effort here is just a summary of the recent San Francisco Opera production of the second episode of Wagner's famous soap opera about gang warfare and a dysfunctional family.)

In Act I, twins separated at birth find each other in a forest, but the female twin's husband doesn't take kindly to sheltering the guy who'd done in a bunch of his gang before the opera and suggests they take it outside the next morning. Said guy is weaponless and figures he's a goner, but then he falls in love with his twin sister, they pull a magical sword out of a tree, and it's not looking good for hubby.

Between acts, the twins do the nasty.

In Act II, Al Gore is wearing a pirate-style eye patch and flirting with his daughter from Security in the penthouse boardroom while instructing her to help his son kills his twin sister's hubby so that junior can get busy saving Valhalla Inc. Daughter's all over it, until Tipper arrives and asks, "WTF, Al? Incest and infidelity between the kids? I don't think so. Junior's got to go." We can tell she's pissed, because she doesn't even bring up the thing about the masseuse. We can tell Al's worried about an expensive divorce, because he doesn't even bring up the thing about global warming. He makes nice with Tipper and calls off the hit-daughter, explaining he made a bad deal a couple operas ago and Valhalla might be going belly up—something about a ring, some giants he'd contracted to build a subdivision until one of them got killed and the other became a dragon, and a lot of nonsense about needing to hire a whiz kid he doesn't know to save Valhalla, without getting HR involved or anybody writing a job description. Daughter's not buying it, though, so she belays Al's belay. Al's stuck doing his own dirty work, so he whacks Junior's magical sword with a spear, then whacks the ungrateful hubby while Daughter makes off with other daughter.

In Act III, still more of Al's daughters are staffing up Security for Valhalla Inc. Daughter stops by with other daughter, now preggers from that quickie between acts, hears Al's still pissed, and sends her preggo sister off to play with her broken sword in the dragon's 'hood. Al reads her the riot act, fires her, and gives her a heavy-duty date-rape drug. She whines about the unfairness of it all, so on his way out he staffs out setting a ring of fire around her to protect her until her nephew's old enough to leave dragonville and come rape her.

In praise of neti pots

A few years ago, after seeing a character in Six Feet Under use a neti pot, I mumbled something to my wife about having always been curious to try a neti pot. A few days later, she brought one home from the store for me, and I've been a neti pot fanatic ever since.

I've spent my entire life dealing with various hay fever-like symptoms, just like my mom, brother, grandfather, and numerous other relatives. Since it was normal in my family, I thought my way of life was universal, but it turns out that normal people do not, in fact, always have at least one Kleenex in their pockets at all times. I was in college before I realized that some families don't even buy Kleenexes unless someone has a cold. Everyone in my family keeps a box of Kleenex in nearly every room of the house!

Apparently it's also not normal to wake up in the morning so congested that you can't wait to take a shower, because that's where you keep your neti pot, and after using your neti pot in the shower, your nose is cleared out enough that you can breathe through it again.

I've never been sure why I'm so full of snot, exactly. I was treated for allergies during my teen years by several allergists whose methods are scoffed at now, and allergists I've seen since then have all told me I have no allergies. The last one I saw told me I have "non-allergic" or "mechanical rhinitis," which basically means that my body reacts to just about any foreign body as if allergic to it, indiscriminately. So, I'm not actually allergic to dust, molds, mites, tobacco, smoke, smog, pollen, dander, or any of the other hundred typical allergens that they tested me for, but my system freaks out and puts on an allergy party for all of them anyway. The basic hay-fever symptom is for your immune system to detect an allergen, trap it with mucus, and evacuate it. My system does that, and how exactly this is different from actually having allergies to all those things is beyond me. One difference seems to be that if these were actual allergies, then somebody would have a clue how to help me.

It wouldn't be that big a deal if my system would evacuate mucus efficiently, like it's supposed to, but it doesn't. Apparently there are several reasons for this. One, rhinitis patients' snot is thicker than normal, so it gets stuck. Two, there's more of it, so the body gets behind in clearing.

Three, until last week I had a deviated septum. The septum is the thin bone that divides right nostril from left. It's a tongue-and-groove kind of thing, and mine had gotten derailed from its groove so that the front tip was off the rails toward the left, and the back end was off the rails toward the right. It was basically diagonal, which is why my nose has always looked a little curved if you looked closely. My ENT knocked it back into the groove and then shaved it down on one side until it was even. This is bones we're talking about, people. Mine were seriously out of whack. They've been that way since 1994—therein lies a story.

I was walking from the Dempster train station to my apartment by the lake in Evanston, IL. I was coming from a gig downtown and had my (heavy) horn backpack on, and I was hurrying home to eat and change for a gig I had to drive to, so I was pitched forward and walking fast. As I walked past a coffee shop (Café Express, which most of us nicknamed "Café Repressed"), I kept walking fast but turned to look in the window to see if anyone I knew was there. Another pedestrian, also moving fast but toward me, was doing the same thing. We slammed into each other, the right side of my nose striking her left cheekbone. We hit so hard we both fell backwards. We helped each other up, made sure we were both okay, exchanged apologies, felt stupid, and continued on our ways.

My nose hurt like hell and soon I had a pounding headache. While eating my hurried dinner, I tried to remember what the checklist for concussion was and concluded that if I was coherent enough to be working on that problem, I was probably okay, although my head pounded, my vision was blurry for a while, and my cognitive functioning was off kilter. I drove to the gig, navigating Chicago and operating my vehicle successfully but was completely unable to comprehend "All Things Considered" no matter how hard I tried to focus on it.

I got through the gig somehow, and by the time I drove home, I was better able to understand the radio.

Remembering (I thought) something about not taking pain meds or sleeping when you have a concussion, I held off as long as I could on both but finally gave up and did both. I spent most of the weekend with a headache, and my nose was sore and creaky, but I seemed to be okay, so I made a non-urgent appointment to see my regular doctor that Thursday.

By the time I got to my doctor on Thursday, something else had come up that took over the visit (boring story) and it was literally as an afterthought that I said, "Oh! The reason I came here in the first place was..." and then I told the tale of my nose injury. She checked it out, confirmed that my nose was creaky (gosh, thanks!), and said she just saw a little swelling but that it was nothing to worry about.

And now I know--it was creaky because I'd banged it off the rails and made it diagonal! Sheesh! (In my 1994 internist's defense, my ENT didn't realize it was deviated until he saw a sinus CT, and I got the impression in talking with him about it after the surgery that he didn't even know the details of how it was deviated until he was performing the surgery, but I could be mistaken about that.)

Four, until last week, I had oversized turbinates. Turbinates are bones on either side of the nose covered with fleshy material, and they function as humidifiers. Mine were too big, which meant they were narrowing the passages that are supposed to handle drainage. In March my ENT had done a less invasive procedure (zapping them with a small RF probe) to reduce them, which had helped but not enough. This time he used sharp tools to cut them down to size, and on the right side he actually had to shave down the bone, which apparently was way too large--just bad genetics there.

Once I've finished recovering from all that, my nose should work much better. I'm looking forward to it!

Anyway, back to the neti pot…

A few tangents and years ago, my wife had bought me a neti pot. She'd gotten me one of these little guys at her favorite hippie-dippy pharmacy in Berkeley: http://www.himalayaninstitute.org/store/product/d0e29a4e-507c-417e-86d0-f5c05320fbbe.aspx

I procrastinated figuring out how to use it for several weeks. Like most people, I was afraid. I've had those awful swimming pool experiences that make you dread getting water up your nose.

Then one morning, I heard a story on Morning Edition about neti pots and decided to get over my bad self. I googled up some video demonstrations like this one and then got to work. Five minutes later I was triumphant but unimpressed. It wasn't that bad, and I did get some crud out of my system, but it didn't feel revelatory.

About an hour later, though, I could feel things unplugging, and gradually everything opened up like never before. My voice even sounded different. It was great.

A few days later, I left on a business trip to Tokyo, and to save luggage space, I decided not to bring my new neti pot along. What a mistake! I'd forgotten that the Great Dust Cloud of China hasn't been very good about staying inside China's borders. I spent the entire week in China looking for neti pots or anything else that could possibly work as a temporary neti pot. Toward the end of our visit, my colleagues and friends Trish and Katja and I visited Kappabashi Market, a neighborhood famous for its restaurant supply stores. All three of us dropped far too many yen at a particularly nice ceramics store, and my browsing was considerably slowed down by my quest to find a small teapot or soy sauce pot or some other kind of pot whose spout would have the right fit for my nostrils—without actually testing the spouts on my nostrils, of course. I did not succeed. I also was unable to find a bottle of water with a sport top, something I'd seen pressed into emergency neti pot stand-in duty on somebody's blog. Nor did I successfully purchase plain old salt, mistakenly thinking it was called "aji no moto," which is actually MSG. Oops. (Fortunately I figured that out when I got back to my hotel room and tasted it before attempting to use it in my nose.) Nor, in short, did I figure out any other strategy during my visit. I made many puddles on my hotel bathroom's counter trying, though.

When I got back home to Oakland, I had one whole day to unpack, do laundry, and repack for the next business trip—to China. My wife and mom were coming along on that trip, and Mom actually flew into SFO from Montana the same day I did from Tokyo. On our day-in-between, I told Mom all about my neti pot and how much I'd missed it. She was curious (you might recall from about a page ago that I inherited my useless nose from her), so I gave her a demo, and then she tried it herself. She was impressed right away, so later that day, she insisted we visit Victoria's hippie-dippy pharmacy. She bought several extras to give to other members of our phlegm-plagued family.

I also told Mom about how the Great Dust Cloud of China and its awful pollution meant we'd definitely want our neti pots along. We did not regret allocating luggage space to them, and anyone who saw the heinous black crud that came out of my nose twice a day would need no further persuasion to buy themselves a neti pot before visiting China. We coudn't persuade Victoria to give it a try, though—early in our visit, she'd tripped on an unexpected curbstone and broken her shoulder while trying to stop her fall, and that pain had her full attention.

It wasn't long before I decided to upgrade to a larger stainless steel neti pot, which is what I strongly recommend. A number of my family and friends got these for Christmas last year. I like this kind better because:

• I'm a klutz. It was only a matter of time before I would drop and break the ceramic one.
• I travel a lot, and fragile stuff in luggage breaks sooner or later.
• It's a lot larger. I needed to measure and mix salt four times with the other kind to complete my routine, and I can get it all done with one batch in this one.
• Its shape is convenient. With a little effort, you can find a nonbreakable container that will hold several weeks' worth of salt and fit inside the neti pot for compact packing.

About a year ago, Victoria finally got on the neti pot bandwagon. She'd bought herself one but kept refusing to try it, but sooner or later she decided that if Mom could do it, so could she. Also, her internist recommended trying it, and later her internist recommended using it twice a day if once a day was helping but she was still having trouble. It's now a part of her morning shower routine. She says, "I like it! And I have to say, I like the big stainless steel pot that you got me much better than the little plastic jobber I started with. It fits well, and you can get a lot of salt water in it. It's a good tool!"

So how do you get started?

1. If you're not convinced yet, read why this is such a good idea at WebMD or the New York Times.
2. Buy, borrow, or steal a large stainless steel neti pot.
3. Buy, borrow, or steal the biggest nonbreakable container you can that will fit inside it. I use the container some chocolates I bought in Korea came in. It's perfect!
4. Fill that container with kosher salt or uniodized sea salt. I use Diamond brand kosher salt because that's what Barbara Tropp used, may she rest in peace. (Other blog posts will harangue you on why you should throw away your other salt and start using kosher salt in the kitchen.)
5. Optionally add some baking soda to your salt and shake it up. Supposedly baking soda gives your nasal passages a bacteria-hostile pH. Mom adds just a spoonful to her salt container, but a little googling reveals that other people believe in a one-to-one mixture of baking soda and salt. I've just begun trying Mom's method after years of using just kosher salt, and I haven't formed any opinions yet.
6. Find a cheap teaspoon or 5ml measuring spoon and do a Uri Geller number on it so it'll fit inside your neti pot, too. I find that a heaping tablespoon per pot is about right for me, and too much salt is far better than too little, but decide for yourself.
7. Keep all this stuff in or near your shower. Shower-temperature water is perfect, and if you do your neti routine in the shower, you don't have to worry about dribbling on your clothes or needing to rinse yourself or the sink.
8. Read and watch how to do it.
9. Give it a try. You will not die. It's not even uncomfortable.
10. After you've been successful for a few days with the basic technique, learn how to do "jala neti stage 2" and give that a try. If you suffer from postnasal drip, this is awesome. I typically do a quarter pot stage 1 for each nostril then do a quarter pot stage 2 for each nostril.

If it hurts, then you're doing it wrong

If it's the least bit uncomfortable, you're doing something wrong:

• Stinging: the salt level isn't right. Either too much or too little is bad, but if you ask me too little is worse than too much. Get in a habit of tasting your water before you use it each time, and you'll quickly develop a sense of the optimal salt level for you. It should taste pretty salty—about like your tears.
• Aching: the temperature isn't right. It's probably too cool. A lot of people recommend body temperature or room temperature, but I like it warmer than that. To me, my regular shower water temperature is perfect.
• Burning: the temperature is too hot.

Keep it simple

You can buy special salts and pre-mixed packets of salt and all kinds of other crap, but don't bother. You're just making things fussier and more expensive for yourself.

You can also buy various neti pot "solutions," where you're typically supposed to add an eyedropper full to your salt water. Don't bother. I tried one that was recommended for sinus infections—some kind of homeopathic or herbal junk, but I can't remember the details—and it actually made things worse for me.

Have you tried using a neti pot?

I'd love to hear about your experiences. Leave me a comment!

An original cocktail: Montmartre

Montmartre is a hill (the butte Montmartre) which is 130 meters high, giving its name to the surrounding district, in the north of Paris in the 18th arrondissement, a part of the Right Bank. [Wikipedia]

A few years ago I was staring at the lovely bottle creme de cassis in our liquor cabinet I'd hand-carried home from Paris and thinking what a shame it is that I don't like Kir Royales all that much.

Kir Royales (Kirs Royale?) are fine. It's just that if the Champagne or sparkling wine is good enough, I don't want to ruin it with sweet black currant flavors, and if it isn't good enough, sweet black currant flavors aren't going to help much. Another worthy option is to use it in a Rouge Gorge--add a dollop of creme de cassis to a glass of red table wine that needs some help. But here again, same problem.

I decided it was time to develop a new cocktail that would take the creme de cassis out of the back of the cabinet and put it on proud display. My starting point was a sweet Manhattan: bourbon, sweet red vermouth, Angostura bitters (or as our friend Jane calls them, "Agnostic bitters"), and a maraschino cherry. A lovely drink.

My concept was to substitute creme de cassis for the sweet red vermouth, but the combination of sticky cassis and sweet bourbon is just too much--I knew that without needing to taste it. My solution: rye! An under-appreciated cousin of bourbon, rye is basically the same stuff, but it's made with a bigger proportion of rye than corn or other grains. If you don't like members of the brown liquor family, you'll think rye tastes the same as bourbon, but if you do like them and are paying attention, rye has a much brighter taste. The perfect foil for cloying cassis, I thought.

I kept the dash of Agnostic bitters, and I added a dash of West Indian Orange Bitters, again for brightness in contrast to the cassis.

But now the dilemma: what to do about the maraschino cherry? In early versions of the Montmartre, I attempted to keep them, but they're a hideous color, and they taste as artificial as they look. They were horribly outclassed by the cassis.

I tried a few variations on the citrus theme, but they were all too bright, losing the specialness of the cassis and burying the subtle brightness of the rye.

Eventually I hit upon the ideal garnish: sour cherries. Whole Foods sells a brand called Zergütt that are, despite the name, pretty good. However, their syrup is too sweet and thick. My solution? Pour off about half the syrup (save it for Old Fashioneds--trust me on this), replace it with rye, and stick it back in the fridge for at least a few days. Use a splash of this rye/juice in the cocktail, too.

So here it is, the final draft. This has become a favorite at our house and also at our friend Jane's house. Jane's much better about writing things down, so every so often when I forget a detail on one of my cocktails, I call her to ask. With thanks to Jane for her service as cocktail archivist, here is:

Montmartre

1. Fill a cocktail shaker halfway with crushed ice.
2. Add an 8-to-1 ratio of rye whiskey and creme de cassis, i.e. 4 shots rye to 1/2 shot cassis. If you like your drinks sweeter, go 4-to-1.
3. Add a dash each of Angostura bitters and West Indian Orange Bitters.
4. Garnish martini glasses with three sour cherries soaked in half the syrup and half rye.
5. Splash a little of the rye/syrup from the cherries into the cocktail shaker.
6. Shake well and strain into the cocktail glasses.

Notes:

Blood Orange bitters or Regan's Orange Bitters are worthy substitutes for the West Indian Orange Bitters, but there is no substitute for the Angostura Bitters, which are essential.

Many people would tell you cocktails should be mixed with large, hard, super-cold cubes of ice. They are right in many cases. Harder, larger, colder ice gives you a colder cocktail with less water diluting the spirits. However, some drinks benefit from some ice-melt, and in my opinion, the Manhattan family and the martini family are two such categories. Both gin and whisky can keep their flavors buttoned-up, and adding a small amount of water unbuttons their shirts and reveals glorious cleavage and alluring scents.

"Bruising" is the term some people use, and although it sounds pejorative, bruising is in some cases exactly what the liquor needs. When you add a few drops of water to the room-temperature spirit and you see oily swirling reactions taking place, what's happening is that certain oils and esters are being disturbed, releasing their aromas (thus flavors) to your noise and tongue. Scotch whisky afficionados intentionally add a very few drops of "branch water" to their single malts for this very reason.

For the Montmartre in particular, using crushed ice accomplishes several things: it increases the surface area of ice available to the liquid, thus cooling it faster or further; it increases the melting and dilution, thinning the potentially goopy texture of the creme de cassis; and it reveals the subtle flavor dimensions of the rye whiskey.

Santé!

A Bloody Mary recipe for people who think they don't like them

Here, by popular demand, is my recipe for a Bloody Mary that even Bloody Mary-haters are likely to like. I should know, because I was one of them. I thought the Bloody Mary was a pretty disgusting drink, but I had friends and for a time a partner who liked them, so I tried to accommodate their requests but also create something I could enjoy with them. I succeeded a little too well--now I crave them myself from time to time, I'm disappointed when other people's still suck, and I end up having to recreate my recipe for a lot of people. Some people have described this is an alcoholic cold tomato soup or a pureed gazpacho with a kick, and those are pretty valid descriptions.

My usual recipe caveat: I don't use or write recipes. I have a vague method that changes a bit each time, and I'm probably forgetting a few things. I'll try to post corrections if I figure out what, and please feel free to raise your concerns in this regard in the Comments section below!

The most important thing is to recognize that a Bloody Mary is not V8 with vodka in it. It's also not Mr & Mrs T's with vodka in it. It's spicy tomato juice with a whole bunch of good stuff and gin in it. Trust me on this--if you do your research, you will learn that the traditional Bloody Mary is made with a London Dry-style gin, not vodka--that's a later variation, same as martinis.

Now, I suppose you could start with V8 if you happen to like it, but I happen to hate it--the carrot flavor is way too dominant for me. Yuck. I start with a quart jar of spicy tomato juice, and a brand that I've found to be pretty good is Knudsen's. There are others, I'm sure, and Spicy V8 is a reasonable choice if you do actually like V8. Whatever you get, taste it before you start, so that you have a sense of how salty and spicy it is already and you can adjust the rest of the process according to your taste.

Next, an essential, traditional ingredient is--believe it or not--beef stock. Yes, indeed. Sorry, but this is not a drink for vegetarians. You could experiment with vegetable stocks, or maybe a good dashi without the miso, though; the goal is an umami (savory, meaty) flavor, and for my money, beef stock is where it's at. I like Farmer Brothers "Special Soup Base Beef Flavor," which comes as a glossy brown goo in ginormous tubs and has a lot less MSG than most options. I take a heaping tablespoon of that goop and mix it in a 2Q mixing bowl with just enough almost-boiling water to dissolve it, no more--say, 3-4 tablespoons.

(The plan here is to mix up a one quart batch of Bloody Mary base that you'll store in your refrigerator. To serve, you'll shake some of it with booze in a cocktail shaker.)

To this I add several hefty squirts of every kind of Tabasco sauce and similar product that I can find in our refrigerator. Currently we have:

• red Tabasco
• green Tabasco
• chipotle Tabasco
• Frontera Grill Red Pepper Hot Sauce
• Cholula Hot Sauce

I'd be happier with a few more. Now add:

• several cloves of garlic, crushed (and "several" could be a lot, really)
• a hefty scoop of fresh grated horseradish, or a heftier scoop of the pregrated stuff that comes in a little jar
• a dash of Liquid Smoke if you have it (or an extra squirt of chipotle Tabasco, if you don't)
• a squirt of extra virgin olive oil (because most of the flavors are fat-soluble)
• kosher salt (you get what you deserve if you substitute iodized table salt--feh!)
• ground cumin (really can't overdo it here)
• ground coriander
• ground cayenne
• ground Spanish smokey hot paprika
• oregano
• celery seed (not too much)
• ancho chili powder, if you have it
• any other chili-esque variations on the theme that you can think of
• a dash of the brine in your jar of green olives (see below)
• juice of half a lime
• freshly ground black pepper (I like Telicherry)

Mix all this up and then add it to your spicy tomato juice. Now taste, adjust, and add what you think is missing. If this is way too strong for you, then you've made enough base for two quarts of your favorite tomato juice.

Fill a cocktail shaker halfway with crushed ice. Add a shot or two of a good London Dry gin (I like Beefeater for these, but there are many good choices. I think Tanqueray is too fruity for a BM). Add your tomato juice mix. You want approximately a 4:1 juice-to-booze proportion. Shake well, because these liquids have very different viscosities and they need to be persuaded to play nicely with each other.

Strain into a highball or lowball glass half-filled with more crushed ice, several stuffed green olives, a hand-squeezed lime wedge, and an optional narrow, leafy stalk of celery.

An excellent alternative to gin is a good akevit, preferably with strong caraway flavors, such as Ålborg's standard akevit in the green bottle. (The Jubilæum is good too, but I don't think it's as good a choice here.) When you make a Bloody Mary with akevit instead of gin, it becomes a Danish Mary.

Another good alternative is Hangar One Chipotle Vodka. I know, I said vodka's all wrong, but that stuff if so good, it's the exception to prove the rule. I wouldn't bother with any old brand's pepper vodka, though--the Hangar One Chipotle stuff is a multidimensional, rich, savory, picquant, difficult vodka.

Please note a few things that you do not want to add under any circumstances, at least not if you're planning to serve these to me:

• Worcestershire sauce
• celery salt
• vodka
• Clamato (Yech! That stuff is disgusting, and if you like it, the drink goes by a different name--for a reason! It's a different drink!)

That's my method, best I can remember. Please enjoy it, let me know what you think, and by all means raise an alarm in the Comments if you think I might have missed something.

Salut!

Nano-opera: Carmen

This nano-opera comes to us from my Twitter friend, SAS expert Michael Tuchman (http://bit.ly/cnY8m8):

Carmen: Soldier doesn't want to marry nice girl. He chases bad one. He gets cold feet. She dates hot celeb, so he kills her.

Opinionated computer purchasing advice

People ask me about which Mac to buy often enough that I thought I might as well post here a recent reply I wrote to a friend who is looking at a career change from corporate programming to consulting, possibly, or another corporate gig, or who knows what.

Caveat emptor: I am a software professional. A way geek. My everyday work is computing intensive. I usually have at least six applications running at once, and not because I'm not paying attention but because my work requires it. Some of my applications require fast processors and huge amounts of RAM. I need a big-ass disk or several. My extracurricular activities as a professional musician who does some recording and composing are also computer-intensive at times, and I read the New York Times online daily with a Times Reader subscription--yet another computer-based activity. My work frequently requires travel, and even during leisure travel there is the possibility that I will need to work on some code or something else where my iPhone or a netbook wouldn't cut it.

Normal people do not have such extreme needs! Normal people would get along just fine with the computer I was using five years ago.

Oh--and I'm a Mac bigot. I truly believe that Macs work better and let you get more done with less hassle. If you need to some particular software that's only available on Windows or Linux or whatever, then buy Parallels or VMWare or try one of the open source virtualization programs to run those programs--and only those programs--in a window on your Mac. That's what I do, and many of my clients are Windows-only shops, so it's not like I can afford to be without access to Windows myself.

Still, people ask me, because they know I care and have researched these things to death, so here goes.

I love laptops, and I think that in consulting and/or uncertain job futures it's best to emphasize flexibility. You never know when you'll need to give a talk, or demo something at someone else's office, or fix something while you're on vacation, or work while you're on the road. You can't do much of that on an iPad or iPhone (except correspondence and basic iWork stuff). You can do it all on a laptop, and you also have a built-in uninterruptable power supply (battery!) in cases of lightning knocking out the power just as you accomplish something important that you haven't saved yet. You also have, in a laptop, a built-in free primary display, and when you connect a big-ass LCD as your external display, you have tons of real estate when you're at your desk.

And anything the iPad can do, your laptop can do, except for being light, sexy, etc. But you'll have an iPhone for that. Get an iPad later when you can resist no longer. (I plan to usurp the one my wife bought this afternoon.)

My friends with iMacs love them, and one friend in particular who lives in a one-bedroom apartment uses his as his computer, TV, DVD, DVR, stereo, virtual aquarium, and digital picture frame as well as computer. He uses his iPhone on the go. He's delighted with both. He does NOT make his living in software, though, and he doesn't travel for same. He's a musician who does Mac stuff at his day job, sometimes works from home, does a variety of things at home, and just needs basic iPhone apps when away from home. That said, I doubt he'd say no if somebody offered him their two-year-old MacBook--and I also doubt he'd get rid of the iMac.

I like a big screen and as much power and as many kinds of ports as possible, especially when a fair amount of work-away-from-office is expected, but even just when reading Times Reader. So, for me the top of the line MacBook Pro 17" will always be the no-brainer choice. Next best for me is last year's version of same, from craigslist or a bargain Apple refurb unit. That said, 17" weighs a lot more than 15" weighs a lot more than 13", and unless you use a backpack, you want to avoid unnecessary weight. (And don't forget it's not just the laptop--it's the cables, the camera, the books, the banana, the carrying bag itself, and everything else you schlepp around in your purse^H^H^H^H^Hbriefcase or backpack.

If you're bent on an iMac and an iPad, maybe a good compromise would be an iMac for your desk and a refurb Air for travel, and a Dropbox account to be sure that the most important things are always on both. See the Apple store, lower right corner forrefurbs etc.--or craigslist.

Craigslist rocks. For retail, see if you have any friends/family with access to academic discounts, then check refurb, then check:

http://www.appleinsider.com/mac_price_guide/

http://www.techound1.com/blog/

Did I mention craigslist?

Nobody pays me anything for blogging about this stuff. Or rather, companies don't. My friends and family repay me amply in ways too numerous to count. Thank you, all of you--you probably don't realize who you are, but I do, and I'm grateful to be blessed with such an embarrassment of riches.

Expiration Date Soup

Many of my family and friends have gifts for foraging--recognizing all the funky greens, vegetables, mushrooms, and so forth in their habitats, and knowing when and how to harvest. I don't have the gift--or rather, my repertoire is rather limited. I know cress, dandelions, and other basics, and most of the Rocky Mountain region edible berries, but that's about it. I think I recognize some mushrooms, but then I remember the great care with which my biologist mother examines mushrooms (spore patterns and all), the most recent headlines about mushroom poisonings flood in, and I let braver souls have the harvest.

I do, however, have a gift for pantry and refrigerator scrounging. I remember with pride an ex remarking, "Wow. You're really good at making whole meals out of nothing." Where she saw an empty refrigerator, I saw enough odds and ends for a soup, a funky salad, a crossover stir-fry, or whatever.

Today's lunch is a good example. I'm calling it "Expiration date soup." I just threw together several quarts of a hearty, yummy miso soup using almost nothing but food that was supposedly due for the dump:

• several quarts of water (nearly the only ingredient that was not expired)
• two packets of bonito stock powder dating back to the Clinton administration (I also have ancient konbu and hana katsuo and I am not afraid to use them, but starting my dashi from scratch adds twenty minutes and some risk, which is not ideal for a quick lunch break from work)
• the bottom of an ancient bag of wakame
• the bottom of an ancient bag of black fungus
• a tub of tofu that expired three months ago (but was unopened and fine), diced
• a few sad cloves of garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
• the dried-out sludge at the bottom of an ancient tub of red miso (I had to mince it and whisk it inside a strainer to get it to dissolve into my broth)
• a slug of semi-ancient sesame oil
• three eggs from an urban farmer friend of who knows what age, lightly mixed and stirred into the soup, off the flame (egg-drop soup style)
• several shakes of sesame seed/bonito flakes/mystery ingredients "rice topping" stuff that I think I bought when I lived in Chicago, which is to say before 1994

I prepared the soup by dumping these things into a pot over a medium-high flame roughly in the order listed above, as I found them, and by the time I had everything in the pot, it was ready to eat.

Yummy. Probably not something any self-respecting Japanese chef would acknowledge as food, but I liked it, and I'm going to enjoy it for several more lunches.