Random, Cool

Yeah?

Potato Pancakes

I haven't yet tried this particular recipe, but I have used other recipes from this series and I really enjoy it. It always seems easier when you can see it happen.



I will be trying this soon.

Open-Source Futures

This gives me hope for the future of humanity. There is reasoned sanity. There is people caring for people.



Enjoy.

The Side Effects of Sitting

Can sitting kill you? Yes, in a way. From the New York Times, Is Sitting a Lethal Activity?

Some highlights:

"This is your body on chairs: Electrical activity in the muscles drops — “the muscles go as silent as those of a dead horse,” Hamilton says — leading to a cascade of harmful metabolic effects. Your calorie-burning rate immediately plunges to about one per minute, a third of what it would be if you got up and walked."

"The men in the study who spent six hours or more per day of their leisure time sitting had an overall death rate that was about 20 percent higher than the men who sat for three hours or less. The death rate for women who sat for more than six hours a day was about 40 percent higher."

"Another study, published last year in the journal Circulation, looked at nearly 9,000 Australians and found that for each additional hour of television a person sat and watched per day, the risk of dying rose by 11 percent."

Yeast

These eukaryotic micro-organisms make our beer, our wine; they leaven our bread and make our pitas pocketed. Yeast, a significant member of the Fungi kingdom, has been in use for thousands of years, much of that time without our understanding of the why or the what. You let juiced grapes sit out for awhile, and ta-da! we're incredibly ebullient and talkative (or possibly asleep). Live yeast, bought in paper packets from the grocery, bubbles and foams when reinvigorated in warm water, and inflates balls of dough triplefold. Don't forget vinegar either, which itself is only possible through the tireless efforts of these singular creatures. These little unicellular beings sustain themselves on sugars, and depending on the venue (i.e. drowning in a sweet grain or grape soup or enveloped in wetted flour) defecate alcohol or carbon dioxide or both. It lives in our guts, on our skin and in the barely visible particulates of the air.

Imagine France without yeast. Or say, any other place wherein good things are had. The wines, the breads, the dipping vinegars. The flavor imparted upon baked goods is palpable, it is the identity of the thing. To take it away from that bread or roll or bun is to be left with not only an uninspired and airless slag of grain, but also one without that thick and succulent je ne sais quoi flavor. To leave it out of wine or beer is to leave them out entirely, to be left with grape juice and soda. Vinegar, pivotal in most common condiments, is the most unavoidable though, seconded only by soy sauce. Try to go to a restaurant and order around these obvious obstacles. Forget Chinese. No more casual sushi (not only the problem of soy sauce here but also the vinegared rice). You'll have difficulty eating Italian too and most salads are out of the question. You might even go home and attempt to hobble together a ketchup or mayo analogue, in hopes that you could carry it along in a to-go bottle and again enjoy slathering fries in dip. It won't be the same though. You'll notice the unfettered joy on the faces of your devil-may-care companions as they swallow down goblets of wine or pints of beer, getting it on their upper lips or spilling it down their faces, and smiling as they lick it or wipe it away and go after another handful of sweet potato fries in curry ketchup or pesto mayo. You'll know. And you'll cordone yourself off at the bakery, investigating only the scones and the cookies, the muffins and cupcakes (all the while you wanted something savory). You'll take to the internet on fruitless searches for those yeasty borderlands (does rindy cheese have yeast? which restaurants use liquid aminos?) and come out less informed, more confused and in want of all those things you can't have and all the stuff you aren't sure of. Then you'll pull the vodka from the freezer (as it is distilled and filtered) and make a drink. These are the facts and my impressions upon denying it past my lips the last weeks.

Just over a month ago, after completing three fruitless months of a gluten-free life, I got my food-panel blood test back. Yeast (brewer's and baker's) among other less dramatic items showed up as an allergy for me, which I hadn't ever considered previously. A daily fact of my life, from nutritional yeast to wine and beer to vinegars and kombucha, had to be eliminated for an indeterminate period of time. It is still indeterminate, but there has been marked improvement in the state of my digestive system, in the state of that overraw length of piping from throat to gut. And that is where I stand, or sit, or lay. I've friended distilled alcohol and lemon juice. I sigh less when my friends eat things I can't. I am attempting creativity in the kitchen in the face of this adversity, and when all is said and done, it is a hell of a lot easier than divorcing gluten. We've become great friends again. Absence makes the heart grow fond, and the stomach grow wanton.

Facts, Not Sensationalism

Just a pie chart:

Panarama-mania

Look at this:


Midnight on the top of mt. Sinai, in Egypt

And this:


Glodok Jakarta Indonesia in Indonesia

This too:


Spice Shop in the Souq, Aswan in Aswan - Nile River

And there are much more, here (under the amazing 40 Gigapixel picture of the Strahov Philosophical Library).