Jason's Log

Napster To Go Review

So I've now had my iRiver H340 (40gb portal player that supports the new Plays For Sure content protection standard) for a few days now. My primary reason for buying it was to use it with one of the new music 'subscription' services, such as Napster To Go.

The basic idea is that you can download as many tracks as you like, sync them to your portable player, and listen to them for as long as you maintain your $14/month subscription.

Napster still supports the ability to purchase individual tracks for $0.99 each, but I figured that as long as I would buy more than 15 tracks a month, the To Go service would be a better deal.

So far, I have been very pleased, with a few caveats:

1. Most, but not all, tracks available on Napster can be downloaded under the To Go program. There are still some that must be purchsed for $09.99.

2. If you do not set the time and date correctly on the iRiver H340 player, it will fail to play 'subscription'-type (Janus Protected) tracks, but won't give you any useful error messages to help you figure it out.

From what I can tell, when each subscription track is originally downloaded, it is given a license that lasts for one month. So I am assuming that I will have to reconnect to Napster with my PC and iRiver at least once every month or so in order for it to continually update the license expiration dates.

3. I love the ability to just download any song I hear without worrying about the costs adding up. In the first week of my trial subscription, I've probably downloaded 100 songs. That would be 7 months worth of $0.99 purchases.

So far, so good.

Basil Shrimp Tweaks

Starting with with this highly rated recipe from Allrecipes.com, but lacking the fresh basil that it called for, I put together the following:

2.5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
02.5 cup unsalted butter, melted
3.5 tbsp lemon juice
3.0 tbsp brown mustard
2.0 tbsp dried basil
1.0 tsp crushed garlic
0.25 tsp white pepper
0.25 tsp salt
2.0 pounds fresh frozen shrimp, peeled

I simply combined all of the non-shrimp ingredients into a bowl, mixed thoroughly, then poured the contents into a 1 gallon ziploc bag along with the shrimp. I tossed it to coat, squeezed out the excess air and put it in the fridge for a couple of hours.

To cook - Young poured the contents of the ziploc bag onto a large sheet of aluminum foil that had been placed on the grill (preheated, all burners on high). We let the shrimp cook for about 4 minutes, turned them over, and cooked for another 4 min.

The results were quite good. The next time around, I will probably make the following adjustments:

1. Increase the amount of garlic - it wasn't very noticable, and we really like garlic.

2. Increase the amount of basil - it's hard to say what the dried equivalent of 0.5 cup fresh basil is (that's waht the original recipe calls for), but 2.0 tbsp didn't seem like quite enough.

Shrinking Bacon

Have you ever wondered how much of your bacon ends up on the plate after cooking? I did. So I performed the following experiment:

1. I purchased a 1 pound (16 ounce) package of Farmer John's thick cut hickory smoked bacon.

2. I removed the packaging, and weighed the bacon. 15.5 ounces (just shy of a pound).

3. I then cooked the bacon fully in a large skillet.

4. After cooking, I used tongs to pick up the bacon and placed it onto a plate covered in paper towels.

5. I let the bacon sit for about 5 minutes, then using an additional couple of paper towels, I just pressed the bacon to soak up the remainder of the grease/oil.

6. I then transferred the remaining bacon back to the scale. All of the bacon grease was left back in the skillet or on the paper towels.

7. The weight? 3.9 ounces. Yes, that's right - 3.9 ounces. We started at 15.5, and ended up with 3.9: Almost a 4X decrease in weight by removal of the grease after cooking.

Wow. Not exactly what I was expecting. Although the bacon was perhaps cooked a bit more fully than other poeple might do, it was not _that_ excessively cooked.

Great wine lemon capers sauce

After searching around quite a bit, Young and I decided to try out a variation on a white wine, lemon and capers sauce for fish that we found at marthastewart.com of all places.

My modified ingredient list:

1.0 bundle of green onion, finely chopped
1.0 cup of white wine (a Muscat from Bridlewood)
3.0 tbsp of lemon juice
6.0 tbsp butter
0.25 cup capers, drained and roughly chopped
1.0 tsp salt
0.25 tsp pepper
2.0 tbsp dried parsley
2.0 tbsp dried thyme

In a medium saucepan, I combined the wine, green onion, and lemon juice. I brought it to a boil, then lowered it to a simmer. I let it simmer for about 10 minutes, until it had reduced down to about 0.25 cup.

After it had been reduced down, I turned off the burners. I then added 1.0 tbsp of the parsley, 1.0 tbsp thyme, all of the butter, all of the capers. I stirred until the butter was all melted, covered it and set it aside.

For actually cooking the fish (I used sole, but any mild white fish will work well with this), I heated up a skillet to medium-high. To the skillet I added 3.0 tbsp of the sauce, then a few pieces of fish. I sprinled them with another tbsp of the sauce and a big pinch of the remaining parsley/thyme/salt/pepper. I cooked for 4 minutes on a side, flipped, sprinkled on another pinch of spices and tbsp of sauce. I cooked for another 4 minutes, until they were fully cooked.

I repeated this until all of the fish was cooked (I have small skillet).

The results were great. The sauce was VERY flavorful. Young thought it was a bit too salty, and would have preferred fewer capers. Overall though, it is definitely a keeper.