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!

Stephen Colbert is a terrorist.

I am sad and outraged :(

Japanese style milk bread.

I like Japanese/East Asian adaptions of "western" bread.

I found this recipe written by this Germanic-Chinese lady called Angie. Angie, being non-American, wrote her recipe in the awesome & rational & superior in every way (unless you're American) metric system.

Because all the ingredients are measured by weight, the recipe is idiot proof and simple even for a non-baker like me.

Here are the results.

Kneaded.

Divided, Risen, and Arranged.

Baked! Yum.

There should be no fish or sushi restaurants in America.

This post may seem quite pedantic, but please bear with me while I demonstrate with my irrefutably poor logic that there should be no fish or sushi restaurants in America.

The Japanese people account for approximately 2% of the world's population, but they account for approximately 12% of fish consumption. Sushi, despite having originated from the Asian continent, has been developed and introduced to the West by Japanese immigrants. Therefore, eating fish and sushi, for all intent and purposes = being Japanese.

The Japanese people were ruled by a political entity called the "Great Imperial Japanese Nation" (大日本帝國) between 1868 and 1945. This political entity was extremely militaristic and sought to expand its territories. Between the late 1800s and early 1900s, this political entity annexed Korea and the Ryukyu Kingdom, waged war against Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, as well as Imperial and Republican China. By the 1930s, Japanese forces under this political entity had committed grave atrocities, and later attacked this wonderful country of ours with a surprise raid at Pearl Harbor, as well as US ruled Philippines, and British assets in Malayan Peninsula. The Imperial Japanese government directly contributed to the death of millions of people across East and South East Asia, as well as thousands of British Commonwealth and American lives.

By operation of the wonderful guilt by association fallacy, the fish/sushi restaurants (GOOD & YUMMY) ---> all things "Japanese" ---> Japanese Imperial government (BAD!!!!).

Ergo, it is simply insensitive and wrong to eat fish or consume sushi. We should protest the building of fish and sushi restaurants, whether 2 block or 1500 miles away from a site of an atrocity or battle, it is simply WRONG!!

Oh - and I have a personal say in this, I'm an ethnic Chinese whose grandfather was forced to join the Imperial Japanese Army, I'm living in America, and even if those things didn't matter, I'm offended because of my ultra-developed (abet uninformed) sensitivities. Every time I see someone eat raw fish, or fish in general, it reminds me of painful cultural collective memories of the unpleasant Imperial Japanese atrocities. We simply cannot let the Japanese militarists and Imperialists believe that they have won.


</sarcasm>

Tea Egg.

Tea egg is one of those Chinese things that vary from region to region. It is really easy, and the taste is very subtle.

Basically boil some eggs. How do I boil eggs? Put them in a pot, fill it with water to cover, then heat over fire until water boils. Once the water boils, turn the heat off, and let it sit for 15 minutes.

To make tea egg, you'll want to cool the eggs down completely. I usually do it with running water. Then what you'll want to do is gently crack the entirety of the egg shell, without actually removing the egg shell. Why do this? You'll see later.

Then take a pot, fill it with enough water to cover the eggs. Add just enough soy sauce to make the water opaque. Then add maybe two teaspoons of five-spice powder. At this point, you can add a teabag or two (dark tea not green) in the pot. Alternatively, you can skip it, but the egg will just be soy sauced, and wouldn't be an "tea egg".

You can put the eggs w/ the cracked shells back in the pot, and turn the heat on. Let it boil for 15 minutes, then turn off the heat, and let it sit for several hours.

Let it cool, and serve!

The finished egg.

Peeled and ready to eat! It may not look very seasoned, but trust me, the taste is there. Check out the lines! The more cracks, the more lines!

Ford making special F-150 with Harley-Davidson.

Ford & Harley-Davidson is pairing up together to pimp a F-150.

My question to the men who buy this... isn't it easier and cheaper to go see your doctor and have a conversation about the little blue pill?

human factors review: Automotive Instruments

(as described by Wikipedia)

• The science of understanding the properties of human capability (Human Factors Science).
• The application of this understanding to the design, development and deployment of systems and services (Human Factors Engineering).
• The art of ensuring successful application of Human Factors Engineering to a program (sometimes referred to as Human Factors Integration). It can also be called ergonomics.

Good human factors minimizes the amount work or the taxing of a person's resources when operating the specific machinery or system.

Good design should not increase the amount of effort the user has to expend for the sake of "style." Unfortunately, not enough graduates from art schools with "industrial design" degrees take this seriously.

Automotive Instruments

These gauges are from the Chevy Camaro. Why must the digits be rotated in a radial fashion around the perimeter of the circular gauge? How does that help anyone read their current speed?



These are even worse. From another Chevy Camaro design, why does the speedometer only display increments of 25mph? Even if the increments are 25mph, why are there no markings for consistent intervals? Such as 5mph increments?

In addition, the speedometer or the tachometer's radial rotation of the numbers is inconsistent. In the speedometer's case, the 25mph and 175mph markings are incorrectly rotated 180°. In the tachometer's case, 1 and 7 are incorrectly rotated 180°. In human factors design, it is better to be poorly designed but consistent, rather than poorly designed and inconsistent.

Taken from a 2010 Buick Lacrosse. In a vehicle that starts at $26k, this is a travesty of effective design. Both the speedometer and the tachometer have dominant markings placed between the numerical indicators, which create an unnecessary chance for ambiguity. GM should have also thought about which demographic their customers are - old people. In this case, if a Buick customer confuses 50mph for 40mph, I don't blame them, the instruments are unnecessarily confusing.

 These gauges are from a 2008 Chevy Cobalt SS. GM clearly knows how to properly design an instrument cluster. Their generic parts are straightforward and well designed. But it seems like in the past couple of years, when they try to design something "new" and "fresh" they let their clown car art school types take over and end up with crap like the aforementioned works of "art."



2010 Ford Mustang. Radial arrangement of information should be avoided. But if one must do so, I suppose the half circle has got to be the way to do it.

These are simple gauges from a 1995 Honda Civic. As you can see, the instrument cluster is centered around the speedometer. The gauges have nicely arranged numbering at 20mph intervals, with clearly marked 10mph increments, with smaller markings for 5mph intervals. There's no nonsense. In addition, in the inner circle, the gauges indicate the current speed in kilometers, because GASP! people sometimes visit Canada.

Taken from a 2011 Hyundai Sonata. A simple well designed modern set of instruments. No excess stylistic design that gets in the way of conveying information. Coolant temperature and closed/open status of doors are displayed in the center of the tachometer. The center of the speedometer contains a fuel gauge, as well as a current gear selection indicator.

For instruments that are intended to convey basic information, the simpler is always better. Instrumentation is not a place for designers to emphasize their individuality or creative talents.