Tear-inducing meatballs.

A few years ago, the spousal unit informed me she wanted meatballs for dinner and supplied me with this recipe from For the Love of Cooking blog.

I don't exactly remember why, but I glanced at it and somehow randomly decided that I would add panko and Italian sausage to the recipe and substituted Parmesan cheese with the more economical Pecorino.

The spousal unit declared that the meatballs were tear-inducing good, and then proceeded to ration them. So I think they must be pretty good. Over the years I sort of simplified the recipe, and the recipe can be thrown together in about 30 minutes + about 60 minutes of unsupervised cooking time.

Meatball Ingredients:

1 & 1/2 pounds of ground beef.

1 & 1/2 pounds of Spicy Italian Sausage.

1 large sweet onion (finely diced).

1/2 cup of panko.

1/4 cup of grated Pecorino.

2 cloves of garlic.

2 eggs.

1 tablespoons of dried basil.

2 tsp of fennel seeds.

salt and pepper to your personal preference.

Sauce Ingredients:

1 large sweet onion (chopped).

2 jars of your generic budget Mariana sauce (if you don't do budget Mariana sauce - why are you even reading this? Sod off. I only cook food for the proletariat).

salt and pepper to your personal preference.

Meatball Making Protocol:
1. Remove the Spicy Italian Sausage from their casings, and mix the sausage meat with the ground beef. Throw in all the ingredients and literally hand mix the mixture until all the ingredients are well integrated. If you have sensitive hands or suffer from mysophobia, I suppose you could put on a pair of gloves (although if you suffer from mysophobia, you probably shouldn't eat or breathe, so I recommend sticking your head in a plastic bag).

Punch it as if it were your worst enemy! 

2. Shape the balls. I don't put too much effort into this, because no one should care about the shape of your balls (with the exception of maybe your PCP).

3. Place meatballs in baking tray. I use a roasting pan with a rack so that the underside of the balls get an opportunity to experience convection and the meatballs don't sit in a puddle of fat. I sort of help them brown a little by spraying the meatballs with a butter based baking spray. Put them in an oven preheated to 350°F for 30 minutes.

This time I rough chopped my onions because I was lazy.
No adverse impact  to the texture or flavor of the meatballs.

4. While the meatballs are in the oven, chop the other onion, toss it in a large pot and saute in olive oil with some salt & pepper. When the onions begin to soften and yellow, pour in your two jars of Mariana sauce.

5. After the meatballs have been in the oven for 30 minutes, dump them into the sauce for another 30 minutes. Thereafter, serve on your carbohydrate of choice. I ate them on linguini. Leftovers were consumed on yummy sour-dough rolls.

Misshapen but yummy. 

If you hate hamsters, you probably hate black people.

If you have a television, I'm sure you have seen this commercial for the Kia Soul. If you haven't seen it, or just want to refresh your memory, I have embedded it below.



While watching the television, I had an epiphany about Kia's marketing department, hamsters, and people who hate this Kia commercial.

Unfortunately, racism will always be a part of any society. In America, overt racism is generally rare (unless you're pumping gas in West Virginia). However, covert/latent racial attitudes remain alive and well.

In America, urban culture has become primarily associated with African-Americans. In producing/writing this commercial, Kia's marketing/commercial developer must have recognized that a large part of Kia's customer base are either urban or people who appreciate urban music and culture. The marketing writers probably selected Black Sheep's single The Choice Is Yours (Revisited), hired dancers, and choreographed an urban-themed commercial.

Then someone realized that too many Americans are disproportionately afraid of African-Americans. So they replaced African-Americans with hamsters. Because really? Who hates hamsters?

The idea is to keep the marketing appeal of urban culture, but not activate the latent prejudice many people maintain. Unfortunately, this means if you hate this commercial, the "sanitizing" didn't work for you.

Ergo, if you hate this commercial because of the hamsters, you hate black people!

Disclaimer: This was obviously tongue-in-cheek.

Japanese Style Curry over Fried Mahi-Mahi.

Cooking can sometimes be a haphazard experiment. The other day I decided that I had to use up some potatoes, celery, carrots before they began to go bad... so I opened the freezer to look for protein.

I found a few frozen Mahi-Mahi filets, and about a pound of ground beef. I also found 3/4 of a pack of Japanese curry blocks, and a three cups of chicken stock.

Hm.... so I diced up two yellow onions, sauteed the onions with salt & pepper until they're yellow, then added the ground beef and sauteed until they're brown.

Then I added the chicken stock, dissolved the curry blocks, and added my potatoes, carrots, and celery. Brought the pot to a simmer. Cooked for one hour.

I decided I wanted to pan fry the Mahi-Mahi with a nice panko crust... so I tossed the filet in cornstarch, dipped it in eggwash, then liberally coated it with salt & pepper seasoned panko. Fry until brown.

It was delicious. The End.

Abolish the TSA and install Personal Anti-hijack Devices.

The Transportation Security Authority spends about 82% of its total budget, approximately $5.5 billion dollars on Aviation Security and Federal Air Marshal Program.

This is my alternative to the enhanced screenings and armed air marshals.

With a push of a button from the cockpit, the cabin will be depressurized, the masks will drop, as well as these Personal Anti-hijack Devices. I don't think anyone can successfully hijack a depressurized plane with a bunch of angry and scared passengers armed with box cutters.

And in a regular airline emergency, the box cutters can be used to cut stuck seat-belts, and if one is unfortunate enough to end up in Lost, fight polar bears and unseen monsters with the box cutters.

I thank Julius Caesar for Belgium. Carbonade Flamande!

Every July 13 should be celebrated as Julius Caesar appreciation day. Born in 100BC, Julius Caesar, in his quest to elevate himself as dictator of Rome, marched his Legions through what is modern France, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium before his failed attempt to conquer the Britons. Because Roman Legions marched wherever they went, Julius Caesar's engineers built roads and bridges. Because marching armies needed to be fed and a place to rest, Julius Caesar's armies built a chain of forts, many of which became settlements, that litter the modern borders between France, Germany, and divides Belgium into Flanders and Wallonia.

While Belgium has had to deal with ethnic instability and a complicated government, its unique geography as the ethnic boundary between the French and Germanic peoples has provided its people and the world with Belgian beer and culinary wonders like French frites!

Anyway, all this anthropological crap is just a strange interlude to what I was really interested in sharing, the carbonade flamande!

Ingredients:
        • 2 bottles (~12oz.) of a drinkable wheat beer (I used Hoegaarden)
        • 3 pounds of beef (chuck)
        • 2 medium yellow onions
        • 2 tsp of minced garlic
        • 4 tablespoons of flour
        • 2 cups of beef broth
        • 1 tsp of dried thyme
        • 2 bay leaves
        • 1 tablespoon of cider vinegar or red wine vinegar
        • 1/2 pound of mushrooms
        • 1/2 pound of carrots
        • 1 medium stalk of celery
        • 6 small/medium potatoes

Instructions:
1. Chop the onions into 1/4 inch strings. Cut the carrots, celery and mushrooms into bite size. Wash/peel the potatoes and cut them into over-sized bites.

2. Clean and trim the beef. Cut the beef into 1 inch cubes. Liberally apply/rub salt and pepper all over the cubes.

3. Open a bottle of beer. To verify its freshness and suitability for cooking, take a swig. Taste good? Great! Unfortunately, now you don't have enough beer for the stew, so go ahead and finish that bottle and open another one (for cooking). Let it sit on the counter while you begin cooking.

4. Apply high heat to a large oven safe cooking vessel with significant thermal mass. I used my stainless steel pot (~6 quart). Add some oil, then sear the cubes of beef until they've developed a nice flavorful brown crust. We do this for flavor. Contrary to conventional wisdom, searing does not seal in juices.

5. Take your time while searing, good things come to those who wait. Once you're done, set the beef aside in another bowl, and pour the juices on top of the beef. Don't wash the pot. You'll see why later.

6. Preheat your oven to 300°F.

7. Apply medium heat to your beefy pot. Apply some oil. Then throw in your onions with a pinch of salt. Saute until they're brown and the bottom of the pot is de-glazed.

8. Toss in your minced garlic and stir. Then toss in the flour and stir.

9. Keep cooking and stirring until the mixture is sticky, and somewhat brown. Then pour in your beef broth and that bottle of beer sitting on the countertop.

10. Toss in your thyme, bay leaves, and vinegar. Bring the mixture up to a slow simmer.

11. Toss in all the beef with all the juices. Toss in all the carrots, celery, mushrooms and potatoes.

12. Bring the mixture to a slow simmer again.

13. Loosely cover the pot, and stick it in the oven. Set a timer for 2 hours.

14. Drink some more beer and wait. Thank Julius Caesar for landscaping the cultural national borders of Western Europe.

15. Many beers later (2 hours), serve the carbonade flamande with something like bread, rice, egg noodles, boiled potatoes, or frites!

Yum!

Cornish Pasties.

The English are notorious for their bad food. This reputation is not entirely untrue, but the English do make good savory pies and pasties.

Cornwall is in South West England, and interestingly actually has a strong culinary tradition, particularly involving seafood. But since I'm in Pittsburgh, I will not be making any seafood.

Instead I'll make some pasties. I found a template for a generic Cornish Pasty, then modified it and resized it for my purposes.

Here is what I came up with.

Filling Ingredients:
        • 1.5 lb of ground beef
        • 3 small/medium potatoes (chopped into small cubes)
        • 2 cups (3 medium sized carrots) of carrots (chopped into small cubes)
        • 1 medium onions (chopped into small cubes)
        • 1/4 cup of melted butter
        • 2 tsp of salt
        • 1 tsp of pepper

Pastry Ingredients:
        • 6 cups of flour
        • 2 cups of shortening
        • 1/3 cup of cold water
        • 2 tsp of salt
        • Eggwash

Steps:
1. This is a very English recipe. So mix all the filling ingredients together. Congratulations you're done with the filling!

2. Add the salt to the flour. Cut the shortening into manageable spoonful lumps and mix it with the flour. After the flour and shortening has fully combined, it should appear lumpy. At this point, just slowly add the cold water while you continue to mix. The pastry dough should stick together, but break apart quite easily.

3. Divide the dough into 12 pieces. Roll the dough out into thin sheets.

4. Put the filling onto the sheet of dough, close, and make three incisions on the pastie. And brush the pastie with eggwash.

5. Preheat the oven to 375°, and bake the pasties for 60 minutes.

Hot out of the oven.

Yum!

Additional Variation:
If you're lazy like me, and like pies, you can also put some filling in an oven-safe pot, then throw the pastie dough on top. Then bake it in the same manner described above.

Pie!

Workweek Summary.

I drove into a wild and "wonderful" place.


The awesome mobile crossed 10,000 miles.

I redacted so many files, I invented a rolling tickler tape to keep track of the files. The highlighter cap, which is taped to the table surface, acts as a pivot point for the highlighter body, which rolls and keeps my paper neat.




And in my absence...
The cats posed for a Presidential campaign poster.

Fringe Benefits.

Twenty-eight varieties of caffeinated and decaffeinated teas, coffees, and chocolate. Essential ingredients to keep the monkey operating in front of the computer for ten hours a day.

My creative amusement for the day? Convincing the machine to dispense "espresso shot" amounts of water to a packet of hot chocolate, then inserting another hot chocolate packet, and getting another "espresso shot" to get uber strong/thick hot chocolate.

p.s.
As the temperatures plummeted, I discovered that the awesome mobile drives like a quiet Lexus when I'm wearing a winter hat and listening to NPR and Feist on the radio (I've been keeping the air conditioning/heater off and getting 35-40mpg averages per tank).

p.p.s.
Why aren't rear windshields polarized? There are too many modded cars, pickups, and suvs with overly bright HID lights aimed too high above the ground.

Save the Tiger.

I'm still bored. So between job searching, doing chores, and playing games on the PlayStation, I made another video.


Save the Tiger.

Vladimir Putin drinks Dos Equis.

I was bored today, and after browsing for jobs, I decided to put together this little Dos Equis commercial spoof. After all, who can resist the Russian nationalist uber-masculine Prime Minister Vladimir Putin?


Stay thirsty my friends :p

I am a Fire Starter!

Not literally, OK? So on Tuesday I was dying from boredom (figuratively), and at the urging of a friend, I decided to write a Facebook application titled "Which Pitt Law Professor Are You?".

I published it later in the afternoon, sent it to maybe four friends for beta testing, and by the time I got home later that evening approximately 100 people had already accessed it.

In approximately 46 hours, approximately 414 independent users have used the quiz. I think that it could mean that our law students/graduates really really love their professors, maybe a large proportion number of our law students want to procrastinate from their impending finals, and a lot of law graduates have idle time in this economy... :|

The Obelisk of Washington and the Reflecting Pool of Death.

During the past summer, I had the opportunity to visit Washington, D.C.

I have always seen pretty pictures of this nation's great capital. Films like The American President [1995] further reinforced images of grandeur about Washington in my head.

So I've always wanted to see the George Washington Memorial, which always reminded me of the Obelisk of Light (the best defensive weapon in the Command & Conquer Brotherhood of NOD arsenal). I also semi-seriously think its phallic symbolism, paired with the fact that the George Washington Memorial is the world's tallest true obelisk, explains a lot about the stereotypical US attitude vis-à-vis the world.

I've also always wanted to check out the reflecting pool - because I've always wondered whether one can really run across the pool like Forrest and Jenny did at that anti-war rally.

So I arrived at the National Mall... and here are my observations...

Why are there no paved paths around the reflecting pool? How expensive could it possibly be for the federal government to allocate some money for the National Park Service to pour some concrete?

Is there some symbolism about threading one's own path? An attempt at fiscal responsibility by the federal government? What is going on?

Moving On!

The Obelisk of Washington is really quite tall. I really think the Department of Defense should consider retrofitting the tip of the obelisk with a megawatt-class chemical oxygen iodine laser (COIL). We can mount the majority of the components below ground, and focus/direct the beam through optical fiber and aim with with high quality lenses.

I've even created a rendition of how such a system could protect the National Mall! (Note: The Arab-descent victim was purely coincidental - he happened to be in the picture).

The Department of Defense would be able to use it against soft surface and airborne threats, scare foreign visitors with wanton and capricious demonstrations of American technological power, and maybe also use it against birds that poop or die in the reflecting pool.

I don't hate all birds. I just think birds should have a little more respect and decency for this great country's political heritage. After all, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which sits in the Constitutional Gardens, was intended to honor Lincoln and the Washington Memorial. Don't these birds know they are trampling and defecating on the spirit of this country's great Constitution? Why are they pooping on Lincoln's reflection? Or the phallus of Washington?

I thought it was my civic duty (as a non-citizen) to bear witness and document this avian travesty and disrespect.

Look at this mess. Feathers and poop protein were foaming at the surface of the water, and the reflecting pool smelled of death (even worse than when I did taxidermy because at least formalin covered up the smell). It was just not right.

To the right is another picture of the dirty pool next to the National World War II Memorial.



If the reflecting pool was this bad when Forrest and Jenny wandered in... Jenny must have been high as a kite (Forrest gets a pass because he had just returned from Vietnam so the dirty water probably didn't bother him too much).


Unless it was the deseigners' intention for the Lincoln Memorial & National World War II Memorial to smell like death and bird poo, I would say the reflecting pool somewhat detracts from the atmosphere of the place.

Is there no way to keep the pool clean?

Maybe pay a few custodians to skim the top with a net? Install some water pumps and sand filters?


<law student hat>
In most jurisdictions, under the tort doctrine of attractive nuisance, fountain/pool owner and operators have a duty to either properly enclose their fountains or ensure the water is clean.

Children are not assumed to understand the dangers of dirty water from the reflecting pool. Because the pool is not enclosed and children may stumble in, play in the water, get the water on their hands, introduce the contaminated water to their mouths, and get sick - the owners/operators of the pool may be subject to civil liability.

Uncle Sam has sovereign immunity, and has only narrowly waived sovereign immunity under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) and the Tucker Act. For my non-legal readers, sovereign immunity basically means the "king can do no wrong," and represents a bar for courts to have jurisdiction in the case.

Luckily, negligence (with the exception of product liability & strict liability claims) is generally allowed to proceed under the FTCA.

So watch out National Park Service - clean up the reflecting pool or prepared to be served.

In the mean time, I am looking for a professional plaintiff who have minor children (preferably more than a dozen) that is comfortable with letting them play in bird poop and foamy water.
</law student hat>

Oh btw - Happy April Fools' Day!