Jason's Log

Cooking steaks without a grill

Due to my current lack of a backyard in which to grill, I have taken to trying to convert some of my favority grilling recipes to cooktop or oven use. One of the recipes I had more/less mastered was the proper searing and cooking of beef steaks on the grill (see: Steaks, damn near perfect).

So when Young reminded me of an Alton Brown Good Eats show on cooking steaks indoors, I decided it was worth trying:

Recipes : Pan Seared Rib Eye : Food Network

The only variation from this recipe was the use of a stainless stell pan in place of the recommended cast iron. Although I'm not sure if that was the cause of the lack-luster output, I'm guessing that it was. The ribeyes just didn't have that well-seared external seal that makes the grilled variety so tasty.

I'm going to try and find my old cast iron skillet to see if that makes the difference - it may just be that the stainless steel cooking surface loses too much of its heat when the steaks hit the pan to effectively sear, whereas the cast iron (wich a much higher specific heat) holds up better.

Once I've run that experiment, I'll post a follow-up.

Attempts at an Asian spin on turkey burger seasonings

Due primarily to the fact that I had run out of my supply of Worcestershire sauce, I decided to try and just substiture it with basic soy sauce. Normally, my turkey  burger seasonsings look something like this:

- 1.25 pounds ground turkey
- 2.0 tbsp onion powder
- 2.0 tbsp garlic powder
- 1.0 tbsp fresh ground pepper
- 1.0 tbsp fresh ground sea salt
- 4.0 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

This time around, I tried a straight substitution of soy for Worcestershire:

- 1.25 pounds ground turkey
- 2.0 tbsp onion powder
- 2.0 tbsp garlic powder
- 1.0 tbsp fresh ground pepper
- 1.0 tbsp fresh ground sea salt
- 4.0 tbsp Soy sauce

The results: Some very, very salty turkey burgers. The fact that plain soy sauce is much more slaty then the Worcestershire just hadn't occured to me. The flavor was actually good (although not as good), but the salt levels were way too high.

Next time around, if I do use soy, it will look like this instead:

- 1.25 pounds ground turkey
- 2.0 tbsp onion powder
- 2.0 tbsp garlic powder
- 1.0 tbsp fresh ground pepper
- 2.0 tbsp Soy sauce

And so the learning process continues...

Stuff that just works: Fog Creek Copilot

Kudos to Joel and his minions at Fog Creek software for the great job they did on their Copilot product!

Miran, my sister-in-law, had sent me an email in which she described how as of a few days ago, the 'Reply' button on her Yahoo! Mail account had stopped working in Firefox (but continued to function correctly using Internet Explorer). She sent email to Yahoo! asking for help, but none of their suggestions worked. You can imagine how annoying it would be to try and use an email app in which you were unable to reply to messages - so the call for help went out to brother-in-law Jason, techsupport specialist.

We arranged for an 8pm phone call, during which she walked me through the sequence to reproduce the problem. I had no idea what was going on. So I pointed my browser to copilot.com, clicked on 'Help Someon' and entered her email address. I then selected the 'day pass' option for $9.95, and paid for it using my PayPal account.

I downloaded the mini-app to our local windows laptop, and Miran did the same. A minute later I could see her desktop and control the mouse/keyboard. I had her login to her Yahoo! Mail account and show me the problem. Sure enough, clicking on 'Reply' did nothing. I clicked around a few times, and even opened up the JavaScript console which reported no errors.

On a fluke, I opened up the configuration for the Firefox AdBlock extension that I had installed earlier. Sure enough, somehow the Yahoo! Mail javascript library had found its way onto the list of blocked elements. I removed it, hit reload, and everything started working again.

Easily worth the $10. Good work, Fog Creek!

Christmas eve dinnar at Chantilly in Redwood City

As is our tradition, Young and I selected a new destination restaurant for our Christmas even dinner this year. We've been trying for some time to find a location that combines the amazing food and service of Emile's in San Jose with the incredibly romantic atmostphere of La Fondue in Saratoga. So far, we haven't found one place that is the best of both worlds.

We were happy with the food at places like The Plumed Horse and Left Bank, but the atmosphere just wasn't quite there. Our Left Bank experience has taught us that 'bistro' means: sitting elbow to elbow with strangers and listening on on all of the surrounding convsations. That can be fun with a group but makes for a miserable romantic outing.

So this time around we hunted around a bit and came across what was our first choice, Bella Vista Restaurant. Bella Vista sits right along Skyline Boulevard in San Mateo and is supposed to have some of the best views of the valley of any dining establishment. Unfortunately for us, they were closed for Christmas eve.

Instead, we ended up with reservations for 2 at 8:15pm at Chantilly, which is located in either Redwood City or Atherton, according to the website. That probably means they are actually in Redwood City, but prefer to say they are in Atherton because it sounds more exclusive. The photos on the website gave us the impression that it was a conservative French restaurant. The menu looked good, although somewhat traditional, which we don't mind at all.

We started out with the carpaccio and smoked salmon appetizers. The carpaccio was quite good, with the usual pine nuts and a bit of grated cheese. The smoked salmon was rather amazing - one of the richest salmon flavors I have come across in a smoked salmon dish - which Young and I both really enjoyed.

Our salads were also both very good. I had the baby spinach with feta cheese and found it very tasty with well mixed flavors. Young went for the spring greens with orange slices and candied almonds. If you enjoy a sweeter flavor to your salad, you would like this very much.

The wine selections we made were both a bit disappointing. I tried a Russian River Pinot Noir that was too buttery, and Young's Chianti was too methol/tobacco-ish for both of us.

For my main course, I went with the evening's special which was swordfish in a lemon butter sauce. The fish was very, very good. Light and almost flaky, which is rare for swordfish, without being the least bit dry. Young selected the roasted duck, as she had never actually had French-style duck before. It was totally amazing. The duck was rich and flavorful with perfectly browned skin. We were both impressed.

For dessert, Young selected their chocolate mousse. It was also very good, not too sweet and not too bitter at the same time.

As for the atmosphere - while not perfect it wasn't that bad either. It is too conservative to be bistro-like loud and obnoxious, but it was no La Fondue either. The seating area is open and a bit noisy at times. The service was good, but not overly impressive. Our waiter was well informed and very polite, but could not match the attentiveness that Young and I appreciated so much at Emile's in San Jose.

The toilet seat that everyone really doesn't need

The very thought of a $400 toilet seat seems silly to me, but the customer testimonials indicate that it at least somewhat delivers on its promises:

Brondell Toilet Seats

I certainly would like the pre-heated feature, although I cannot figure out why the don't call their "posterior and feminine warm-water wash" feature a bidet. Does the word 'bidet' somehow carry negative connotations that they didn't want to associate with their product?

No green tags buying program from Pacific Gas and Electric?

I was recently surpised to learn that the biggest electrical service provider in California, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) does not offer a 'green tags' or 'green power' purchase program for consumers. I was hoping to be able to select a slightly-higher per-kilowatt rate in exchange for having PG&E purchase more of it's power from renewable sources. According to this Department of Energy website, however, no such program exists:

DOE Green Power network.

If anyone knows of an existing effort to get PG&E to offer this server, please send me some pointers.

In a related activity: Young and I both purchased Terrapass vouchers for each of our vehicles. I really do like their market approach to the problem, and I am now considering using them as Christmas gifts for other family members this year.

Building and installing pgadmin3 v1.4 for Ubuntu Linux

It took me a while to struggle through this one, so I thought I would share what I went through to make this work:

First, remove any previously installed versions of pgadmin3:

> apt-get remove pgadmin3 pgadmin3-data

Next, add a few lines to your apt.sources file (/etc/apt/sources.list):

deb ftp://ftp3.us.postgresql.org/pub/postgresql/pgadmin3/release/debian stable pgadmin
deb-src ftp://ftp3.us.postgresql.org/pub/postgresql/pgadmin3/release/debian stable pgadmin

Then update your package database using the apt-get update command:

> apt-get update

You should see apt-get fetching the list of files available from postgresql.org. Before we get too far, you should also make sure you have th basic apt building tools installed already:

> apt-get install dpkg-dev

This installed about 7 new packages or so on my system. Next, you need to ensure that the build-time prerequisites (the stuff required to compile pgadmin3) is installed before you start:

> apt-get build-dep pgadmin3 pgadmin3-data

Again, this will result in several packages being installed on your system. Once that finishes, you can go ahead and tell apt-get to build pgadmin and pgadmin packages from source using the following command. Keep in mind that all temporary build files and the resulting .deb packages will end up in your current directory, so 'cd' into a convenient directory before you issue the next command. Also keep in mind that this is a large package and will take some time to complete:

> apt-get -b source pgadmin3 pgadmin3-data

The compilation and all of that will happen. Once it completes, there will be two .deb files in the current directory:

pgadmin3_1.4.0-0.3.release.sarge.2_i386.deb
pgadmin3-data_1.4.0-0.3.release.sarge.2_all.deb

To install these two packages, do the following:

> dpkg -i pgadmin3_1.4.0-0.3.release.sarge.2_i386.deb pgadmin3-data_1.4.0-0.3.release.sarge.2_all.deb

Again, this should complete without errors, and you can then launch the new version of pgadmin3:

> /usr/bin/pgadmin3

Hope this helps - let me know if there are any omissions or errors.

Is this an 'Only in Silicon Valley Moment'?

So I'm still home sick today nursing my way back from a bout with pneumonia and the doorbell rings. It's the postman, and he's got a few Amazon packages for me. Just before he departs, he mentions that he'll be retiring this coming June.

Naively, I ask him what he'll be doing with his spare time once he retires. He replied by saying "We'll, I'm a big double-you-oh-double-you player, so I'll probably be playing that alot."

The sad thing, is that I knew exactly what he meant: the MMORPG game World of Warcaft. He went on to describe how eagearly he is waiting for the recently announced expansion pack, then proceeded to give me a quick rundown of his player characters. He happens to be very exicted about his level 42 Gnome Rogue.

The Whole Foods Experiment

Note: Some of this is excerpted from my review of the Cupertino, CA review of Whole Foods that I wrote for Judy's Book. I really do like Judy's Book, and would love to see more people in my area (Sunnyvale and the greater Silicon Valley) make use of.

Here is the experiment that Young and I went through:

Young and I consider ourselves practical environmentalists in that we'll choose to do the right thing when we can, but are not willing make huge sacrifices in our lives in order to be more green. Yes, we do recycle, but are not wracked with guilt if we toss an aluminum can or plastic container in the regular garbage. If the prices of two products (one organic or sustainable produced, the other not) are close, we will always choose the more eco-friendly product. I suspect we're like many other 'practicing environmentalists', but are definitely not 'eco-zealots'.

At the time, we'd been reading quite a bit on the various private efforts that are being made to produce, identify, label and market foods that are produced in a low-impact sustainable manner. It occured to both of us that we'd be willing to pay a premium in order to shift some of our purchasing to those types of items if they were easy to identify, locate, and buy.

We knew that it was part of the Whole Foods philosophy to carry as many of those products as possible, so we decided to try the following for several weeks:

1. Purchase as much of our regular household groceries from Whole Foods.
2. Only buy from Safeway/Albertsons what we couldn't find at Whole Foods.
3. At the end of the experiement, decide if it was worth it.

For better or worse, we are back to shopping exclusively at our local Safeway store (recently remodeled, and really quite nice). Largely due to the reasons listed in the review below, we came to the conclusion that it just wasn't worth the extra time, money, or hassle in order to achieve a less environmentally impacting life.

Time: We had to make two trips instead of one because we could never find everything we wanted or needed at Whole Foods.

Money: Our average grocery expenses increased by about 20%. While not totally unreasonable, the impact was felt.

Hassle: Having to make two trips, suffer the parking shortages, and deal with the overly crowded aisles was just unbearable.

Here is a somewhat lengthy review of the Whole Foods Market store nearest our home:

I'm inclined to think that my rating of this particular Whole Foods location would be applicable to many of them. This is not to say that all Whole Foods locations are poorly run, but that the general philosphy of the Whole Foods chain seems to contribute to my disappointment.

To start, this Whole Foods has all of the organic responsibly produced products you typically expect from the retail chain. Everything from toilet paper to river salmon, beef franks to soy protein powder. Nothing wrong or at fault there.

Parking: The lot at this location is so undersized it is almost comical. During busy shopping times, my wife and I have actually given up trying to find an opening and instead stopped at Safeway on the way home.

Store Size: The store itself is also far too small to accomodate the customer traffic they experience. The aisles are much too narrow, in many cases not wide enough for two shopping carts to pass one another. The prepared foods and wine/cheese area is a particular mess, especially when poorly behaved children are in the area.

Product Selection: As I browse the goods offered for sale, I am sometimes reminded of how political the selection process must be at Whole Foods corporate. While they are willing to sell you a non-organic-certified bottle of wine, you will not be able to find a can of soda or fruit drink sweetened with aspartame or splenda. Too bad for you diabetics out there.

More on Product Selection: Although in general you could do your 'daily' shopping at a Whole Foods, there are definitely times when their lack of brand representation can make things awkward. Got a favorite brand or flavor of thoothpaste? Don't expect to find it there. How about a favorite maker of sugar-free chewing gum? Sorry, out of luck.

Prices: Yes, it is expensive. Much more so than a typical grocery store (Safeway, Albertsons). Vastly more so than a discount chain (Costco, Wal-Mart). But that is simply the price you pay for being able to consume food with a more or less clear conscience. If you are looking for competitive prices, this is not the place for you.

Service: This is defintely one place where Whole Foods does excel. The people know their store, their product, and are always available. There is never a shortage of staff at the meat/fish counter, and the checkout lanes are usually fully staffed.

So in the end, the hassles of physically shopping at this location (lack of parking, always too crowded inside) and the lack of certain products and brands was enough to send my wife and I back to the local Safeway for our daily shopping.

If we're looking for really high-end stuff for a dinner party, we'll still head to Whole Foods and suffer through the bad parts. But for regular needs, Whole Foods just doesn't quite do it for us.