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Catch-up...
Dec. 21st, 2012 06:24 amThe second batch of sauerkraut was better than the first, and I'm getting used to the crispy texture of kraut less than a week old. In any event, heating it for just a short time "wilts" it, if crunchiness is not desired.
I also made more yogurt in the sous-vide cooker, the principal advantage of which is not having to worry about temperature control. (As it happens, maintaining a container of nascent yogurt in the oven with the lamp on will work, too, provided the ambient temperature outside the oven is what it's been lately.)
My next sous-vide adventure was a shoulder roast (bought at a shade below $2 per pound), with the meat kept at 136°F for 12 hours. The result was not spectacular—there's only so much one can do with a cut like that, which starts out with a bunch of fat and gristle, but then again, I may have missed some essential—but what edible parts were there were pretty good. I also collected another data point for liquid lost from the meat while cooking: just about 200 g of the 1047 g in the bag was liquid, and if anything had been injected into the roast, the final product was well-contained in ordinary store tray-and-plastic-wrap packaging.
* * * I've installed Opera on the new Windows 8 machine and made it my default browser. For some reason, when running the application full-screen, some individual panes only open to a width of about 2/3 of the screen. I don't know if it's a bug or not. It sure feels funny, though, to work with such a layout.
* * * T'ai chi last night went well. I am working at overcoming my innate tendency to want to generally rush things along—after all, I am "closer to the end than to the beginning" (quoting the character of Col. Nicholson from Bridge on the River Kwai)—and focus on just concentrate on carrying on a process of assimilation, which is going to take time.
I am also trying to overcome what I can only call my fear of developing bad habits when I practice what I've learned on my own. Sifu says I should not worry about this at this stage in the game, so I shall work at quelling this concern as well.
* * * The effort to incorporate BambooInvoice into my work flow is coming along well. I spent just a little time yesterday reformatting the way data was positioned when it was output to PDF, and since I've developed a certain familiarity with this particular section of the code, making such changes is starting to feel natural.
I've even begun to wonder how hard it might be to modify the code to implement some nice features from the Invoice Manager software I've been using for the past few years, mostly having to do with maintaining a table of rates charged for different kinds of work (translation, interpretation, rework, etc.) done for different clients. However, even without this feature, the software appears to be robust enough for what I need it to do.
* * * I woke up this morning and did the toss-and-turn tango for a while before turning on the light and looking at the clock, which read about 3:15 am. I finally decided to get up about an hour ago. Maybe I should get horizontal again and try to catch a few z's before the day gets thoroughly under way.
Cheers...
I also made more yogurt in the sous-vide cooker, the principal advantage of which is not having to worry about temperature control. (As it happens, maintaining a container of nascent yogurt in the oven with the lamp on will work, too, provided the ambient temperature outside the oven is what it's been lately.)
My next sous-vide adventure was a shoulder roast (bought at a shade below $2 per pound), with the meat kept at 136°F for 12 hours. The result was not spectacular—there's only so much one can do with a cut like that, which starts out with a bunch of fat and gristle, but then again, I may have missed some essential—but what edible parts were there were pretty good. I also collected another data point for liquid lost from the meat while cooking: just about 200 g of the 1047 g in the bag was liquid, and if anything had been injected into the roast, the final product was well-contained in ordinary store tray-and-plastic-wrap packaging.
I am also trying to overcome what I can only call my fear of developing bad habits when I practice what I've learned on my own. Sifu says I should not worry about this at this stage in the game, so I shall work at quelling this concern as well.
I've even begun to wonder how hard it might be to modify the code to implement some nice features from the Invoice Manager software I've been using for the past few years, mostly having to do with maintaining a table of rates charged for different kinds of work (translation, interpretation, rework, etc.) done for different clients. However, even without this feature, the software appears to be robust enough for what I need it to do.
Cheers...
