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Tinkering with Hotel Cheesecakes

2008-05-09T07:13:00.003-06:00

I decided to play with my hotel cheesecakes again this week. This time I had some new equipment in my arsenal, and a couple of new ideas for proper cooking.

I've started carrying various cooking utensils with me. Most are either plastic or rubber, with the exception of my Oxo mini-whisk. I also have a small rubber spatula, some plastic measuring spoons, and a small stack of silicone muffin cups. Most of these were purchased with the intent of not getting into trouble with the TSA. The muffin cups were supposed to save me from having to buy new paper cups all the time. When I opened the package, I discovered they had the added bonus of being more stable, so that they don't collapse from the weight of their own filling when unsupported.

My last experiment involved using just the yolk, rather than a whole egg. This succeeded in lowering the water content which was making the batter too loose, but it unfortunately lowered it too much. The resulting cheesecakes bore more resemblance to over-cooked scrambled eggs. Obviously, I needed to loosen up the batter again. I had considered using heavy cream, but the idea of sour cream appealed to me. It's a common cheesecake ingredient which I had scarcely considered before. I was also short on sugar packets this trip, but had managed to pick up a tiny bottle of Kentucky honey at the Cincinnatti airport. Perhaps an invert sugar would help, as well as providing an interesting flavor profile.

I started with about a tablespoon of honey and 4 oz of softened cream cheese in a paper bowl. I mixed them together with the spatula, adding in about a tablespoon of sour cream. When it seemed liquid enough, I switched to the mini whisk and added the egg yolk. When it was nice and smooth, I poured it into two silicone muffin cups, foolishly ignoring the fill lines that the manufacturer had so graciously provided for me.

This microwave had a manual knob with no power control or turn carosel, so I knew I had to be careful. I cooked them in bursts of 15 to 20 seconds, manually switching their places with each burst. After 3 or 4 bursts I got brave and did a 30 second burst. The cheesecakes, which were undoubtedly slightly aerated from the whisking, had started to rise over the tops of the muffin cups. I put them in the hotel mini-fridge to cool and waited till morning.

The next morning's taste test revealed what I expected: an overcooked, grainy center. Interestingly, the outside was slightly undercooked, mostly silky smooth with the occassional graininess. This, I surmised, was because I hadn't given them time to cool properly by themselves. The shock of the icebox had stopped the carry-over cooking, and possibly forced some of the proteins to prematurly coagulate. The flavor was decent, but a little bitter from the honey. Also important, I noticed that even though I was nuking these at 100% power, the over-coagulation was not nearly as bad as with earlier attempts with lower power. I decided that the added mass (cooking two at once instead of just one) had a part to play here.

I had one more night to experiment with the other 4 oz. I added a tablespoon and a half to it, along with two packets of sugar to counter the slight bitterness of the honey. After mixing with the spatula, I added in two tablespoons of sour cream, mixed a little more, and then switched to the whisk. I added in my egg yolk, and just for kicks, a packet of True Lemon powder. Honey lemon is a pretty classic flavor profile, right?

Because of the extra sour cream, I had enough batter to fill three muffin cups right to their fill lines. I hoped the extra mass would help even more, but I had another trick up my sleeve. I added a cup of ice water to the center of the microwave, and placed the filled muffin cups in a triangle around it. Water has a very high specific heat, meaning it has to absorb a lot of energy just to raise it even one degree farenheight. My hope was that ice water would absorb even more of the microwaves in the oven, effectively limiting the power attacking the water molecules inside the cheesecake. I was careful not to overfill the water cup, just in case it absorbed enough energy to actually boil.

I went with 20 to 25 second bursts this time, each time rotating the cups with each other manually counter-clockwise one position. It took 6 or 7 bursts before I noticed that the centers of the cheesecakes had sunken in slightly, and the sides were starting to climb the muffin cups. They were overdone, I just didn't know by how much. I let them cool for about 45 minutes by themselves and then moved them to the mini-fridge.

In the morning, I tried all three. They all ended up pretty much the same, just slightly overcooked and grainy in the center, but almost perfectly cooked on the outside. I'm thinking that had I ditched the last burst of cooking time, they might have been perfect. The flavor was better, not too sweet, but not bitter either. I wish I had added a second packet of True Lemon. There was a slight hint, and I think just a little more and the flavor would be perfect. I noticed something else interesting though. The edges of the cheesecakes seemed to have pulled slightly away from the cups, and from the looks of it, I'm wondering if it's not because of steam from the cup. Would hot water have been a better way to go about it? How about a cup of hot water in the center to provide steam, and a couple of cups of ice water elsewhere to soak up excess energy?

I'm a few steps closer to hotel cheesecake perfection. Extracting the first two cheesecakes from their cups was a pain because of how rigid the cups were. I had already decided to try putting paper cups inside the silicone ones next trip, but now I'm reconsidering. Perhaps if I swiped some pats of butter from the breakfast bar, and brought a small brush with me to paint it to the sides of the cups. Since I'll be using butter for the crust after I get the filling figured out anyway, maybe it's not too far of a stretch.

From what I hear, my next class is tentatively scheduled in Toronto. Will Canadian cream cheese behave differently? They do have cream cheese, don't they? Will I even have a microwave in my hotel room? Or will I be so totally entranced with Toronto that I don't even bother with hotel cookery? Only time will tell.

Sous Vide

2008-04-21T17:50:00.002-06:00

Does anybody else remember "boil in a bag"? No? Am I the only one that recalls with fondness picking up a plastic bag of frozen turkey and gravy from the bachelor aisle at the grocery store, taking it home, and dumping it in a pot of boiling water? Seriously, those were the instructions on the side of the package. But actually, now that I put it that way, it seems kind of dumb, especially with the popularization of microwaves. And I'm sure the salt content contributed to my current blood pressure level. But I still loved that stuff.

Well, boil in a bag is back. Well, kind of. In truth, it never went away. And the stuff I'm talking about doesn't actually involve boiling water. In fact, it seems that the popular means of cooking something sous vide is barely above 140F, and often lower. Temperature control is critical, and some of the recipes that you see don't just border on geek levels, I think the creators beat out a lot of geeks in their experiments and fanaticism. No wonder I've been obsessed with it for so long.

So why haven't I blogged about it? It all comes down to one thing: price. But before I get into that, I'd better tell you a little more information about what sous vide is. I'm told that the translation from French is "under vacuum". A standard example might involve a chef placing a piece of protein (beef, fish, etc) inside a plastic bag, along with some sort of flavorful liquid, removing all of the air from the bag (via a vacuum), and placing that bag in water of a very carefully controlled temperature for anywhere from half an hour to a day or two.

That's right. Some sous vide recipes take over a day to cook. Think about the last time you had a piece of barbecue that was slow cooked over the course of a few hours. Those of you in Utah who have never had this, there is still time to repent. The slow cooking tends to make the colagen break apart, leaving the diner with a flavorful protein that literally falls off the bone. What if one were to lower the cooking temperature so that the food would have more of a chance to soak up flavor, while reducing the chance of overcooking and ruining the meat? That's what sous vide buys you.

There is a lot of controversy surrounding sous vide. Hotels worldwide have been using it for years (since the 60s, I've been told) for a completely different reason that I described above: convenience. They can prepare plenty of food in advance, allow it to cook for long enough to get that slow-cooked flavor, and then keep it in the chill chest for hours or even days at a time until you, the unsuspecting hotel guest, calls up room service and orders a plate of ribs. It arrives 20 minutes later, tasting as if it had been cooked for hours. Because it had.

This technique has met with sneers from high-end chefs, who would claim that such a method cheapens a hotel or restaurant's offerings, and that such a trick is only a trick which they, the snooty high-end chef, would never stoop to (or at least admit to stooping to).

I don't know who officially started the recent popularity, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were one of modern sous vide's pioneers, The Great Thomas Keller. It was discovered that starting the cooking process at an extremely low temperature and then keeping it that low revealed what was probably unexpected results at the time. A piece of meat could have the texture of its raw counterpart while still being fully cooked, and having even more flavor than traditional cooking methods. I remember hearing a story of somebody dining at The French Laundry being served a piece of watermelon that had been cooked sous vide. The texture, he said, was amazing.

These low temperatures have led to bans by some cities. Food safety principles tell us that hot food should be cooked to a certain temperature, and then remain at above 140F until it is served. If it spends too much time below 140F, it cannot be served and needs to be thrown out. One can imagine that as the pros (Keller and his kind) find new and exciting (and safe) ways of using sous vide, imitators will rise and ruin everything for everyone else. How many chefs with poorly calibrated thermometers does it take to cause a foodborne illness outbreak? Apparently just the threat was enough for New York City, who recently banned the technique outright.

Unfortunately, proper sous vide equipment isn't cheap, either. Some of you are probably already thinking, "hey, if all you need is vacuum bag sealing thingy, my Food Saver will work!" And yes, your Food Saver will work. I'm certain that they've seen an increase in sales just from the popularity of sous vide alone. But that's only part of the equation. If it was all of it, I would have been using mine for sous vide long ago. But the piece of equipment that I don't have, that all of the big guns seem to, is an immersion circulator.

This device will suck up water, heat it to the proper temperature, and spit it back to whence it came. It's like turning your sink into a low-temp, underwater convection oven. And the good models start somewhere in the neighborhood of $600-900. Try as I might, I have not yet been able to convince my wife that it needs to be moved from the "want to buy" list to the "need to buy" list, especially after buying a house.

I've looked at some cheap options. The maker geek inside of me wants to combine an aqaurium pump (for the circulation) with a crock pot (for the heat), but modern crock pots are now set to cook much higher than 140F, for food safety reasons. The solution is to plug the crock pot into a potentiometer to lower the voltage, which would require lengthy periods of calibration using more accurate thermometers than I currently own (and I own a couple of pretty nice thermometers). Even worse, calibration will be different for each bag of food that I cook, since it depends on the volume and shape of the food, as well as the internal temperature. Constant temperature monitoring would still be required, and I have not yet found a decent digital thermometer (within my price range) that I can plug into my USB port to kill the power to the crock pot or turn it back on as needed.

Things are looking up. Following the rise of sous vide in the professional kitchen, there has been a surge of home cooks with more time and resources on their hands than me. One that I saw today was Chadzilla, a professional cook who has now managed to get sous vide going at home. Rather than a crock pot, he uses a rice cooker. His model is known to produce good results, and even better, is pretty cheap. He uses a Food Saver such as mine, which is not cheap, but isn't terribly expensive either (until you have to buy refills, at which point it suddenly seems incredibly expensive). He also uses something called Sous-Vide Magic, a device that runs just over a C-note. I'm still not entirely sure what this device actually does. As near as I can tell this is not, in fact, an immersion circulator. It seems that many a blogger and message board poster has gone into a good deal of enthusiasm about this device, noting at the end that it's not an immersion circulator, but it does the job. Thanks guys.

My best guess is that it's a thermometer with a built-in voltage regulator. You plug your crock pot or rice cooker into it, presumably plug one end of a prober thermometer into it and the other end into the water inside the cooking vessel, and set the time and temperature. The text on their website seems to support this. I suppose if I really want to set up convection, I could probably still employ an aquarium pump, which comes at a price that is negligible, especially compared to the other components.

So it seems that sous vide is finally available to the home cook who hasn't just sold his soul to the mortgage company for the next 30 years like me. Next tax return, maybe. In the meantime, maybe it's time to pull out the old crockpot and my custom voltage dial (it's a power outlet + a power cord + a light dimmer in the middle) and see what I can do with it.

Sleep Dep

2008-04-09T14:03:00.003-06:00

I didn't sleep well last night, as is evidenced by a conversation over IM this afternoon with my brother. Fortunately, the lectures to this point did go well. I suspect any further lectures would have yielded unfortunate results.

Me: do you think peppermint patty got married, or did she give birth illegitimately to the junior mints?
Me: i don't suppose it matters. they're orphans now anyway, packed in their own little retail-sized orphanage.
Brother: okay
Me: apparently you're none too interested in this line of thought.
Brother: i think it's a very odd line of thought
Me: a sure sign that it's good i decided to call it a day at the end of this lab. who know what my next lecture would have been like?
Me: the shadow knows
Me: for he has been there
Brother: you uh... haven't gotten much sleep recently, have you?
Me: FREEDOM!
Brother: no, space ghost

Maybe tonight will go better.

Fake Cooking?

2008-04-04T13:00:00.000-06:00

I've been thinking a lot about my hotel cookery. It reminds me of when I watched the Sandra Lee "Chefography" a few months ago. She caught a lot of flack for what the critics called "fake cooking". Now, it's not secret that I'm not a big Sandra Lee fan. But seriously, fake cooking? There are some people out there, primarily parents, who have enough to deal with every day before they even think about what to cook that night. And then Sandra Lee shows them a quick and easy way to do their job. Fake cooking? Who cares? She puts food on the table, and it's probably not half bad. Her cooking isn't the problem here. I just don't care for her personality or the way she does her show.

It makes me wonder what people think about my hotel cooking. It started out innocently enough. I knew I should be eating breakfast in the morning, and I knew that one day bacon and sausage and homestyle biscuits were going to do me in. Then it occurred to me that I could eat oatmeal, which I do actually like, and it would be good for me. Perhaps it would keep me alive for long enough to see my daughter graduate from high school. Then I realized that I didn't need to eat the crappy sugar-laden storebought mixes, I could make my own. And it would be good. And I did that. And it was good.

Then it got out of hand. This was evidenced by my next project: cheesecake. I didn't skimp. No jello-based no-bake cheesecake for me. I was going to use sugar and cream cheese stolen from the complimentary breakfast bar, and an egg purchased at the most convenient shopping location. The microwave was to become my friend and foe, all at once. I did several tests. The tests started to span into other hotels. And then it got worse. Bread pudding and panna cotta, both created from the comfort of my hotel room. It was better than room service. It was better than any restaurant I could afford. I felt like I was cheating.

And then I thought about Sandra Lee. I don't know if she ever made cheesecake, bread pudding or panna cotta. I'm sure she has. Probably took a few shortcuts too. But she would be proud of some of the avenues that I started to consider. I started to look for organic markets when I would travel, because I knew that they would be the easiest place to find freeze-dried food. I would never eat it straight, that was just disgusting. But my oatmeal experiences had taught me the power of freeze-dried produce.

I picked up some mixed veggies, all freeze-dried. I had ideas for soup. I remembered Alton Brown making a stew with beef jerky. Why not in a hotel room? I investigated minute-rice. Combined with freeze-dried veggies and a little salt and butter from the complimentary breakfast bar, I could make a killer pilaf. I started looking at boxed scallopped potatoes in a new light. What was to keep me from making potato cheese soup? What were my limits? Not ingredients, certainly. I was bound only by the mechanics of an average hotel room, and learning how few limits there truly were.

Yes, my thought process has gone out of hand. Hotel cookery has never meant to be like this. I'm sure the Hilton that I'm staying in as I type this expected the microwave to be used for little more than heating up the frozen dinners that they sell in the alcove next to the front desk. I doubt they ever expected them to be used for cheesecake.

But that's not really the point. I found myself headed down a path that, as I was beginning to realize, was already well-travelled. When canning and salting and corn syrupping and other forms of food preservation became the cries of the mid-20th century, there were armies of food scientiests who were already anxiously exploring the possibilities of a world that they once thought they knew, and had suddenly realized was different from what they thought. And I was following them down that road, but in a different vehicle. I wasn't trying to extend shelf life. I wasn't trying to feed starving children in 3rd-world countries. I wasn't trying to make a buck off the unknowning masses as I spewed my culinary travesties across the land. I was trying to learn.

There is a science to food, and there is an art. Both must be in balance, every bit as much as the seasonings in a dish must properly showcase the flavors which they help present. Too much salt and the dish will be insipid. Not enough and it will be bland. Too much science and food will seem manufactured and unnatural. Too much art and it becomes hippie chow or worse, unfit for human, or possibly even animal consumption. As in all things, moderation is key.

Sometimes art doesn't work. Sometimes science doesn't work. Sometimes our feeble wanderings in either world cause travesties that surprise and horrify even ourselves. And yet we learn. In a world so impossibly large that we won't ever discover it all, we find a handrail, a path. As we continue to feel around, the path becomes more known to us. It may not be the correct path. It may be one disdained by others, perhaps everyone else. But it's the path that we've found. And until we find another, we content ourselves with what we can and we continue to explore.

It fascinates me. I love learning what food can do, what it's about. I'm not a brilliant chef, and I may never be one. Am I fake cooking? I don't think anybody has accused me of that yet. I wonder if they ever will. And those that do, I challenge you: can you make a cheesecake in your hotel room?

Hotel Bread Pudding and Panna Cotta

2008-04-04T12:09:00.001-06:00

As I worked on my hotel cheesecakes, I started to think to myself, there has got to be an easier high-end dessert to cook in a hotel room than cheesecake. Then it hit me: panna cotta! Would could be easier? What could be simpler? And bonus: it didn't technically require a microwave, though it did still require a chilling mechanism such as a mini-fridge.

Panna cotta is, so I've read, Italian for "cooked cream". You may see complex recipes everywhere, but when it really comes down to it, panna cotta really only has three main ingredients: cream, sugar and gelatin. This of course excludes vanilla or other flavoring agents. Looking at a handful of recipes, I found that the majority of the reliable ones called for equal parts cream and whole milk. If you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're thinking it's tons easier to just use half and half. Unflavored gelatin isn't too difficult to find at the grocery store, and most hotels seem to have one of those within reasonable distance. As for sugar? That's what the coffee bar is really for, right? I would have to figure out the flavoring later.

I picked up the ingredients at the store one morning before class, fully intending to whip up a serving that night. As I sat at my desk waiting for students to arrive, I eyeballed the pastries that catering had brought to us, most of which I knew my students would promptly ignore. As I considered them, a random thought occurred to me: I bet those would make a great bread pudding! Bread pudding consists of little more than bread that's been sitting out all day or night, some dairy, eggs, and maybe some seasonings or flavorings. Since these were pastries, they were already plenty flavorful, they just needed a custard to pull them together. Bonus: I would already have both eggs and dairy left over from the cheesecake and panna cotta experiments.

That night, I started on the bread pudding first. My bread ended up consisting of two muffins, which were cubed with a plastic knife. Using a fork, I mixed together an egg with what looked like about 1/3 to 1/2 a cup of half and half, in the paper bowl that I planned to use for cooking. I tossed the cubed muffins in the bowl, tossed until it looked like the wet stuff was evenly soaked through, and tossed into the microwave on the lowest power setting. I only went with 2 to 3 minute spurts, but all in all it took me about 17 to 18 minutes of cooking time before it looked like it was done. I removed it from the microwave and set aside to cool.

While it was cooling, I sprinkled about half a packet of unflavored gelatin into a couple of tablespoons worth of cold water. I filled a mug from the coffee station with most of the remaining half and half and tossed it in the microwave on high. A couple of minutes later it was hot, definitely at a scald, but not boiling. I added the gelatin to a bowl, poured in the hot cream and added about six packets worth of sugar from the coffee station. For flavoring, I added a little container of "Mixed Fruit Jelly" swiped from the bagel station at breakfast. It wasn't vanilla, but it was something. I stirred until it looked like everything was more or less dissolved (except for little pieces of jelly) and set aside to cool. When it was down to room temperature, I moved it into the mini fridge to set up.

The bread pudding cooled down pretty quickly. It may not have been the best bread pudding in the world, but it was still pretty good. Of course, the biggest factor in this case was the quality of the pastries that I used to make it, and they were pretty good pastries. But the cooking method also seemed solid, and I ended up wolfing down the whole thing.

The next day I tried out the panna cotta. It set up perfectly. It was easy to remove from its bowl and onto a plate. Apparently not all of the jelly dissolved into it, and it ended up having what looked like a pocked surface. Nothing a few fresh-sliced strawberries also swiped from the breakfast bar wouldn't fix. If they had had strawberry jelly or jam instead of just grape left, I could have used that to make a sauce too.

As far as the flavor and texture were concerned, it was by far not the best I've ever had. Rather than being a light, creamy dessert, it tasted like milk-flavored jello with perhaps a little too much gelatin. More gummy than jello. Obviously, the finer qualities of panna cotta have managed to elude me. At the very least, I was a little heavy handed with the powdered gelatin. I probably need to invest in some real vanilla extra next time around too. Fortunately, they do sell it in sizes that the TSA will permit in my carry-on luggage.

At the very least, the bread pudding can be called a success. The panna cotta is not too far behind. Both definitely have room for improvement. I couldn't help but notice that a lot of bread pudding recipes call for things like nuts and dried fruits. Not a bad idea. I also noticed that a lot of panna cotta recipes call for sour cream. That would certainly help with flavor and texture. It makes me wonder if I can get away with using cream cheese. I suppose there are more experiments to be had.

Hotel Room Cheesecake

2008-04-04T10:31:00.001-06:00

My brother at one point had a goal. It started with ways to eat cheaply while travelling to anime cons, and developed into methods that involved making things like grilled cheese sandwiches using the hotel iron (note: it is recommended that you put the sandwich between pieces of foil, to protect both the food and the equipment). The idea was that you should be able to show up at a hotel, walk across the street to the local grocery store, and pick up supplies that could be converted into actual meals from within the confines of your hotel room. If fact, this very idea was kept in the back of my mind as I tested my travel oatmeal recipes over the course of a month.

Rewind to my cheesecake days. I've long maintained that there are a variety of different crusts that you can use for a cheesecake other than boring, old graham cracker crumbs. For instance, Delta Airlines has a partnership with Biscoff to provide the only edible snack available on the majority of their flights outside of first class: their cinnamon cookie. I've often thought about saving up a few of these to crush up for an airline-inspired cheesecake.

Suddenly, one week, tragedy struck: my brain put the two of these ideas together. Why not use crumbled Biscoff cookies to bake mini cheesecakes in my hotel room? It would still require a trip to the local grocery store, or perhaps to the local drug store or gas station to buy an egg (well, half a dozen eggs, hope you're hungry), but the other ingredients would be easily obtainable from the hotel itself. If the hotel has complimentary breakfast, cream cheese would likely be available in single-ounce portions. And what hotel doesn't have a coffee station with plenty of free sugar? If that wasn't enough sugar (and it likely wouldn't be), then the lobby would often have enough sugar packets to make up for it. Or the coffee area at the local gas station. The only element that would not be easily obtainable would be the vanilla that is usually found in New York-style cheesecake. But if the cook didn't have access to a grocery store, they still had a variety of options available. A liquor store alone would have plenty of flavored liqeurs that would work, or the cook could just go at it without additional flavoring.

There were two other variables to solve: what to bake the cheesecakes in, and what to bake them with. The second was easy: about half the hotel rooms I've stayed in have a microwave and a mini-fridge. Without at least a microwave, you're going to be out of luck. But I also needed a baking dish. As I was contemplating various methods of cutting up paper cups, it dawned on me: if there's a grocery store nearby, they'll almost certainly have baking cups for muffins! It was perfect! I just needed to make sure to use multiple cups per cheesecake, to keep them from sagging and spilling all over. I now had all of the variables figured out. It was time to run some tests.

For authenticity, decided to do my tests from within my room at the Radisson hotel in Chelmsford, MA. This room came equipped with a microwave and a mini-fridge, perfect for my experiments. I decided not to use crust in the initial testing, because it was not something that I could just head down to the store to replace once I ran out; I would have to wait for another flight to get more from the flight attendant. There was a Walgreens within walking distance, but I actually picked up my supplies at the Market Basket grocery store in nearby Westford. The Radisson did not serve complimentary breakfast, so I had to buy my cream cheese along with a half-dozen eggs. Sugar was still free.

The minimum number of eggs was one. I decided to use 4 oz of cream cheese with it, also a bare minimum. The batter would be a bit loose, but it would still set up. If I didn't get it right, I would still have another 4 oz left to try again. Using muffin baking cups, I knew I would still have multiple chances with the first batch. In this case, I discovered I would have three tries per batch. I creamed together the sugar and the cream cream (which I had left soften during the day) in a bowl normally reserved for oatmeal, and then mixed in the egg. I decided to dispense with flavors for now. As far as sugar goes, I stopped at eight packets. It wasn't enough, the flavor was still pretty rich, but it would have to do for now. A fork was not the easiest mixing implement to use, but it worked.

I knew the microwave was going to be my biggest problem. I decided to start with pulses. 30 seconds of cooking, 60 seconds of rest. Repeat as necessary. 10 seconds into the second cooking phase, the batter started boiling. First cheesecake: ruined. I went down to 15 second pulses for the second try, and while it lessened the intensity, it still boiled. Second cheesecake: ruined, but not as badly. The microwave was just too strong.

I decided to reevaluate the situation. Looking carefully at the microwave controls, I noticed that this particular oven supported various power levels. This could be my saving grace. I decided to lower the power to 10% and dispense with pulses. I checked on the wobbiliness every few minutes, and almost made it to 15 cumulative minutes of cooking time before the center got to that point of being just under-wobbly. It was time to pull the cheesecake and let it rest while carry-over cooking took it the rest of the way. By this point it was bedtime, so I moved everything to the fridge and went to sleep, content that I would have a perfectly cooked cheesecake waiting for me in the morning.

In the morning I realized something very important: little cheesecakes have less mass to produce carry-over cooking than big cheesecakes. When I moved my under-cooked cheesecake to the fridge, it essentially stopped the carry-over cooking from happening. Of the other two cheesecakes, the first attempt was actually the only one that set up enough to be removed from its paper wrapper. By all indications, my first supposed failure was actually my only success so far. I moved everything back into the fridge and headed off to work. I would have to try again that night.

That night I started by tasting the cheesecakes from the first round of tests. As expected, the first was overcooked and had the texture of scrambled eggs that had been cooked too long. The flavor had also changed significantly from what the batter had tasted like. The second was still a little curdled, but the flavor and the texture had both improved drastically. The third was creamy and the flavor was spot-on. Unfortunately, it had almost no structure. Still, it gave me hope.

I bumped the sugar up to 12 packets, which I think was just about right. I still used 4 oz of cream cheese and a single large chicken egg. Again, I had three test runs. The first was nuked for 30 minutes at 10% power, and the second and third for 40 minutes at 10% power. I had less batter left over for the third, so it was slightly smaller, which I expected to change the cooking time. I made sure that there was no wobbliness. Obviously, carry-over cooking was going to be significantly less with a cupcake-sized cheesecake than with a 9-inch round cheesecake.

When they were done cooking, I let the first two rest for at least half an hour. I didn't expect much carryover cooking to happen, but I still needed to give it a chance. The last one came out just as I was about to go to bed, so it went straight into the fridge with the two rested ones. By all indications, they had all set up properly. A quick test in the morning would say for sure.

In the morning, I checked. They all looked fabulous. But as I tried to pull the paper away from the sides, the cheesecakes stuck. But the smaller one still mostly pulled away. I decided the small one could officially be called a success. The other two still looked good, if not quite as much as the last. It looked like 45 to 50 minutes was likely to be the magic range.

Unfortunately, as it was getting towards the end of the work week, I was getting pretty burned out in general. I ended up not trying any other cheesecakes at the Radisson. I would have to wait until my next trip, a week later.

I found myself in Baltimore about a week and a half after my last Radisson experiment. I was in the Hilton Garden Inn in BWI's hotel district. I made sure this time to get a room with another mini fridge and microwave. The microwave was older, and the power dial was analog this time rather than digital. I didn't know if 10% was going to be the same, so rather than shooting for 45 to 50 minutes, I decided to go for 10 and see how things looked.

My first batter was comprised of half an 8oz tub of cream cheese leftover from the first morning's bagel breakfast at the training center, 6 packets of sugar from the coffee station (these seemed to have about twice as much sugar per packet as the ones in Massachussetts) and the yolk of an egg from a local organic market. Let me tell you, you haven't lived until you've separated eggs in your hotel room. I had a styrofoam container left over from that evening's takeout dinner, so I cleaned the crumbs out and used it to mix up the batter.

Because I wasn't using a whole egg, the batter wasn't nearly as loose, and there was only enough for (almost) two servings. I poured one serving into some paper muffin cups and tossed it in the microwave at what looked like 10% power. 10 minutes later, I had a truly overcooked cheesecake. A taste test revealed a tasty cheesecake with the texture of overcooked scrambled eggs. Apparently, microwave times will vary.

I tried again a couple of nights later. I dropped the power all the way, which still seemed to be more than the 10% at the Radisson. By 10 minutes, the cheesecake was almost done. A couple of minutes later, it was perfect. I let it sit, and then tasted it. The taste was perfect, but the texture was still a little rougher than I had hoped. It seemed that leaving it at a single egg yolk did provide a little extra richness, but the texture itself left something to be desired. It was clear that I either needed to include some of the white, or add some liquid from elsewhere. Fortunately, many coffee stations include little cups of half and half. This would make up for lost moisture, while not adding too much like an egg white would.

I didn't try again on this trip to Baltimore. I was nearing the end of a 6-day class, and I was even more burned out than I was in Boston. By this point, I'd been writing the article off and on for around a month. I'm in Mountain View, CA this week and the Comfort Inn here has a microwave (I'm told all the rooms at the El Camino location have microwaves), but I'm still burned out from moving last week. I decided to post my progress so far, and post again after a few more experiments. Besides, it was holding up another couple of posts that I wanted to get out. Perhaps a reader or two will have something to offer in the meantime.

PHP Worst Practices

2008-04-04T08:30:00.005-06:00

Doran left a particularly interesting comment on my post about Windows security. It's interesting that he should do so right about now, because his comment echoed some of my own thoughts about php.

Those who know me know that I don't like php. That's not the point of this post. It just seems that so many php programmers seem to have grown up with a lot of bad habits, and lately it's been causing me some grief, even though I don't program in php. I'm not saying that Perl doesn't have issues of its own. But Perl has at least one style guide, maybe more. Having been through Damian Conways class and book on Perl Best Practices, I'm thoroughly convinced that the majority of complaints that people have about Perl would disappear if Perl programmers as a whole took his teachings to heart.

Unfortunately, php programmers don't seem to have such a guide. And sadly, many (but not all, thankfully) php programmers seem to be little more than script kiddies. They choose php because it's a buzzword, it's easy to use, and they can see results more quickly. Unfortunately, it seems to me that their environments teach them a lot of bad habits. I'm going to pinpoint two things in particular that I've come across lately with php code.

short_open_tag

A friend of mine called me a couple of weeks ago. He hosts a number of websites on an IIS box (don't worry, he's already working on switching to Linux) and some of them use php. He upgraded to the latest version, tested a couple of apps, and decided he was good to go. Then a customer called him complaining that his site had stopped working. He did what he could, and then called upon me in desperation.

I tested a few things. It seemed that php was in fact working on all but that one site. I checked permissions, file associations, even monkeyed with a little of the site's internal code. While I was in there, I noticed something. All of the php code was encapsulated between <? and ?> markers. I opened his php.ini file, found the short_open_tag open and changed it from Off to On. Suddenly, the site worked.

As with many embedded languages, php places its code between markers so that the web server knows which part of the file is in HTML and which part is server-side code. When php code is used, the opening tag should say <?php, so that the web server knows for sure that it needs to use the php interpreter on that block of code. If a programmer leaves it at <? without the php part, it's known as a short open tag, and the web server needs to guess which language to use. If a file ends with .php, it's probably a pretty safe bet that it will need to use php.

Many sysadmins consider this to be a security hole, and for this reason, the php.ini allows the admin to turn off short open tags. In fact, this is now the default. The php.ini file itself says the following:

; NOTE: Using short tags should be avoided when developing applications or

; libraries that are meant for redistribution, or deployment on PHP

; servers which are not under your control, because short tags may not

; be supported on the target server. For portable, redistributable code,

; be sure not to use short tags.

There are other reasons not to use short open tags. If you google for "short_open_tag security" you'll notice in the midst of pages that talk about security issues, myriad complaints pertaining to mixing XML and php code. As it turns out, XML can also be embedded between <?xml and ?> markers. If you turn on short_open_tag, then php will ignore all non-php code between <? and ?> markers.

Short open tags are sloppy, and the mark of a lazy programmer. If php programmers want to dispell the stereotypes about being bad coders, they need to take this to heart.

.htaccess

This isn't just a problem with php, but it does seem to be common in php programs, so I'm going to address it here. As all good admins know, Apache is a powerful web server platform. It's so complete on its own that a standard base install will often do everything that an admin needs. It's so extensible that programmers can hook into parts of the request life cycle and modify or even replace entire components. It even has the ability to delegate certain pieces of configuration to unprivileged users, allowing them their own flexibility. Unfortunately, this can be a serious problem both in terms of performance and security.

An Apache admin can use the AllowOverride directive to let users create their own per-directory configuration files, usually given the .htaccess name. A good deal of global configuration from the httpd.conf (or apache2.conf on some systems) can be replaced on the directory level by an .htaccess file. Traditionally, this is used to set up authentication for a single directory, and this had led to the thinking that this is the only place where directory-level authentication can be configured. This is not true. Any .htaccess configuration can, and should be set in a directive in the httpd.conf file.

There are several problems with using the .htaccess file instead. First of all, using these files places server configuration in a publicly accessable directory. This should never be done. It also allows users to potentially implement configuration that could compromise server security. And the more of these files exist, the harder it is for the admin to keep control over his server configuration.

Security not a big enough reason for you? How about performance? Apache looks for its configuration files in a particular order. It allows admins to move configuration from the main httpd.conf into separate files which can be organized into directories and then included as if they were all in the same centralized location. Most admins follow this practice, at least to some degree. It's true that for every file that is included, Apache needs to use an additional disk access to load that file. This is fine, because under standard operation these configuration files are loaded once, when Apache starts. They do not need to be read again unless the admin restarts Apache or sends it a SIGHUP signal.

The .htaccess files work differently. Once the global configuration files are loaded, they can be overridden with the AllowOverride directive. If this directive is used, then Apache will look for an .htaccess file every time a file is requested from a directory. If a file is requested from the /web/myserver/docs directory, Apache will attempt to read each of these files in order:

/.htaccess
/web/.htaccess
/web/myserver/.htaccess
/web/myserver/docs/.htaccess

...whether or not those files actually exist. If AllowOverride is used, then every time a page is requested from /web/myserver/docs, Apache will have to perform four file accesses, even if there are not .htaccess files on the system at all. If each of those directories have their own .htaccess file, then Apache will load them in turn, using each to override any previous configuration, until it finishes with the last one and finally loads the page.

Do you really want that kind of server load happening for every single web request? Keep in mind that a single page request can actually cause multiple Apache processes to go through this sequence. A web page with a css file and 10 images means 12 separate hits, each one of which will result in a minimum of 5 file accesses (instead of just one). It may not be so bad for some little blog that a couple of family members read, but if you ever get Slashdotted, you'll be in trouble.

Let's face it, we have enough problems optimizing our servers to handle server load. We don't need to have .htaccess files making it that much worse. We also have enough security issues to worry about without letting users make things worse for us. Unless you have no choice but to delegate configuration to individual unprivileged users, you should set AllowOverride to None and move all .htaccess configuration to the httpd.conf file.

I'm sure there are plenty of other bad habits that php programmers have, as with programmers in any language. These are just a couple that I've come across recently. Unfortunately for them, php programmers have earned themselves a bad reputation with programmers in "real" languages. To their credit, I do know some php programmers that have few, if any of these habits. If other php programmers want to be taken seriously by these and other people, they need to get their act together and start unlearning their bad habits. Maybe a style guide wouldn't be a bad place to start.

Why Windows is Not Secure

2008-04-02T16:51:00.002-06:00

I'm going to let you in on a little secret: why Windows is not secure. I might dumb down a couple of things, but if you're not technically inclined (by which I mean a Linux user) than you might want to just skip to the last paragraph or two.

A friend of mine does tech support for a company that produces routers and the like. He doesn't work for the company directly, he works for a call center that has been contracted. His company, as with many these days, is a Windows shop. And his company, as with many companies, has decided to block websites that are not productive. The method they decided to use is called a black list, meaning that they have specified which sites are to be blocked. Any that aren't specified are, by default allowed.

My friend tells me that he can't get to, for instance, www.deviantart.com, but he can get to any other subdomain on deviantart.com. If this company had really wanted to block all non-productive traffic, they would have set up what's called a white list. In a white list, you specify which sites are allowed, and anything else is blocked by default. However, the issue of white lists versus black lists is not why Windows is less secure.

I asked my friend if they had blocked these sites at the DNS level or the firewall level. We both assumed that they were firewalled, since that would seem to be the nature of a company that produces routers and the like. Just for the heck of it, I had him check out his hosts file (in Windows XP, C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\etc\hosts) and see if he could add an entry in there for www.deviantart.com. He noted that there were several sites in there already (gmail.com, hotmail.com, yahoo.com, etc) that were pointing to 127.0.0.1. He made sure the entry for www.deviantart.com was correct, and tried it again. Success!

I can't see any Linux admins in their right minds doing this, unless they had no other choice. It's far easier to block sites using a firewall or even a centralized DNS server than to try and manage local, user-editable configuration files on who knows how many hundreds of workstations. After talking to my friend, I had to get back to work and lecture to my class. As it turns out, the next lecture in line included a discussion of the Squid proxy server, and we even discussed methods of using NetFilter (the default Linux firewall) to force traffic through Squid and have it handle sites that needed to be blocked. We'd already talked earlier in the day about using NetFilter by itself to block sites. But no, the hosts file in Windows is not what makes it less secure. Linux has a hosts file too.

I had a student once tell me that he had a college professor that taught both Linux and Windows in the same class. He was sure to teach Linux first because once you can handle Linux, Windows is a snap. Is that because Windows is significantly easier to use than Linux? Hardly. Distributions such as Ubuntu make Linux just as easy for the average user as Windows. But the type of user that tends to spend time on a Linux box has so much more freedom that by the time they get comfortable with their operating system, they have more knowledge in general than the average Windows user in the same situation. So is that why Windows is less secure? Not quite.

The user that knows more about his computer is in a better situation to understand how to properly use their computer. People that use computers a lot tend to pick up habits, and those habits often come from their mentors. And from what I've seen (which admittedly amounts to only a few dozen Linux power users from my programming days, a few hundred students from my teaching days and a few thousand Windows users from my tech support days), Linux mentors seem to have a better set of "best practices" than Windows mentors. I suspect this is largely because Linux users tend to learn their habits from other experienced Linux users on the front lines, and Windows users tend to learn their habits from pretty "Getting Started" guides and poorly-conceived "Learn Computers!" DVDs purchased from fly-by-night mini-infomercials on local TV stations.

The way I see it, the main reason why Windows is less secure than Linux is education. Poor software is a secondary reason. So many Windows admins seem to have so many bad practices, that it's nearly impossible for them to do their jobs correctly. If any of my coworkers (and a large number of my students) were in charge of the network at my friend's company, they would likely be using a white list, they would be filtering at least at the firewall level, and probably at other levels as well. My friend might still have been able to circumvent their security, but it would have been much harder, even on a Windows-based network. Why? Because the security would have been set up by people with a Linux mindset.

Not all Windows admins are idiots, and not all Linux admins are geniuses. But it does seem to be a tendency.

Like a Bat Outta...

2008-03-31T21:00:00.002-06:00

This past week has been interesting. Two weeks ago I found myself in Baltimore, teaching a Linux fundamentals class. On the way back I got to connect in Atlanta, and my flight back into Salt Lake got in right around midnight. It took a little under an hour to get back home, but it would be my last hour-long trip to and from the airport. Around 6am, my wife and I arose and got to work. We still had a few boxes to pack, and help wasn't expected until around 8:30am. It was moving day.

We bought a house in Magna, which is only about 10 minutes away from the Salt Lake City airport, and perhaps 15 to 20 minutes from work. Considering how much I fly, the location was perfect. Well, almost perfect. I still would have liked downtown Salt Lake, but Magna will have to do for now.

Moving day was rough. We had family show up in the morning to help load the truck, and we expected to be on our way well before 11am. For that reason, I asked a handful of coworkers to meet us at the new house around noon. I finally left the old house just before noon, knowing that I was to meet with several impatient coworkers. Fortunately, they were all even later than I was.

Unpacking the truck wasn't much more fun than packing it. We finally got rid of it around 3:30. I think I almost killed at least one coworker, possibly two. Quite frankly, I don't know how I held up myself. It was a long day for everyone, especially those of us that started around 6am and other than much needed breaks, didn't stop until almost 10pm.

I took the entire week off of work. There were things to do. When I first scheduled the vacation time, I intended to use it to unpack. A week after moving day, and unpacking has barely started. My wife and I managed to get the master bedroom painted and get some furniture moved in. We managed to get almost all of the primer on the walls of the baby's bedroom before I had to fly out to San Jose again for work. At least we managed to finish the ceiling in there. My wife tells me that about half of the walls have now been painted yellow, and I'm sure she'll be done with the rest of it tomorrow. A couple of days to air out the paint fumes, and we can move the kid in. Then we can take the bedroom that her crib has been set up in temporarily and turn it into my study. I've always wanted a study.

Getting Internet access has been a pain. We decided that Qwest was less evil than Comcast (if only by a hair) and decided to get a data-only line from them with Xmission as our ISP. I made the first phone call to do this while I was in Baltimore. In subsequent verification calls that Qwest made back to me, I discovered that nothing was actually set up right. Most of the calls involved either switching from MSN to Xmission, and then Qwest.net to Xmission. Now I'm afraid to call and make any further changes, for fear that they might screw something else up.

We got DirecTV out on moving day, and they gave me a new dish and then aligned it for me. Unfortunately, all of the receivers were still packed. I asked them to leave me a few feet of cable, and I would do the internal wiring myself. So they left me a box of cable, and let me have at it. I didn't get a chance to do any of that until Thursday, and at the moment I still only have one set up. And it's in the wrong room. But at least my wife has something to watch while I'm out of town.

The kitchen is about half the size of the old one. But at least the stove and fridge were made this century, so it's already a little ahead in that respect. My brother in law wants to help me expand the kitchen, but I honestly don't think it's worth it. If I need to do any large-scale cooking, it's probably best for me to just quit the computer world and get my own professional kitchen. But since I love where I'm at, I don't think I'll be doing that anytime soon.

I've noticed a few differences between Magna and Orem, where we used to live. There's certainly less traffic in Magna. And people seem, for the most part, to watch where they're going. I'm not in constant fear of getting into an accident just because I drove down the street to get gas. Also, while Orem city officials seem to care for little other than themselves, Salt Lake County officials (Magna is an unincorporated township, not a city) seem to care for the environment, and we have recycling pickup every other week.

There are drawbacks. We no longer live across the street from a mall. Actually, I consider this largely a boon. I also like the fact that we no longer live dangerously close to a major university. University Parkway in Orem is a deathtrap. I won't miss it. Wait, wasn't I talking about drawbacks? Okay, Costco is no longer a 5 minute drive away. It's closer to 15 minutes. In fact, there really are no major stores in the area, unless you count the grocery store a mile away. This is both a pro and a con. On one hand I'll miss being able to drive 5 minutes to pick up music, but on the other hand, I won't miss excessive traffic one street over from our house.

All in all, we think it's a good move. We don't know how long we'll be in Magna, but it'll do for now. Maybe one day we'll have enough equity that we can actually afford to move downtown. But 15 minutes away isn't bad either.

Airline Food is Getting Better

2008-03-16T18:28:00.002-06:00

I did something yesterday that I've never done before: I flew out of SLC on a Saturday. I usually fly out on Sunday mornings, but I had a 6-day class this week and had to head out a day early. I'd never seen the Salt Lake airport so full. It was worse than the last Saturday I spent at the Atlanta airport (which was only a week before, coincidentally). The plane was also packed full, and I found myself sitting in the exit row halfway though coach class.

The first thing I noticed was a menu. I knew that Delta had started passing out menus in coach class recently, but I hadn't seen one yet. This was likely because Delta seems to prefer that I fly on Skywest jets, and because the meals are only served on some Delta flights going east from the west coast (not from east to west). The food offered in the menu was not complimentary, of course. But it was nice to have something to choose from other than cheese and crackers, cookies, peanuts and granola bars.

The menu looked impressive. In addition to a fruit and cheese plate, Kashi cereal with fresh fruit, and a cinnamon raisin bagel, they also had "Todd English Selections" including a cheddar, turkey bacon and apple butter croissant, a chicken parmesan sandwich, a chicken bistro salad and hummus with veggies. I decided to try out the fruit and cheese plate, knowing in my mind that it would never be as fabulous and fresh and the beautiful photo in the menu.

Much to my surprise, when the flight attendant handed it to me, it was exactly the same as in the photo, except for being in a plastic container instead of on a pretty, white ceramic plate. It came with fresh grapes, dried apricots, pecan halves, crackers, and wedges of brie (still in the obligatory white mold rind), smoked gouda and what tasted like a medium cheddar. Each wedge of cheese was huge, at least in comparison to what I expected, and when I ran out of fruits, nuts and crackers, I still had cheese left. Fortunately, I still had half a bag of dried apricots left over from my previous trip, and it went nicely with the remainder of the cheese. All in all, it was well worth the $6 and more. I almost asked the flight attendant if I could buy another one.

Is this what we can come to expect in the future? It was a good little snack plate. In fact, I've had worse meals in first class. Perhaps Delta is finally stepping up the quality of their food to match the price of their airline tickets. It's a direction that I certainly hope Delta and other airlines continue in.

Licenses

2008-03-05T05:59:00.002-07:00

I would like to make something very clear to certain people. Unless otherwise specified, the photos and content on this site are my work. I started this blog to share recipes with friends, and that is still my goal. But I can't tell you how disparaging it is to have my friends send me links from other pages that have posted copies of my work without giving me credit. While nobody seems to have personally taken credit for these images (at least not yet), none of them seem to be interested in telling the truth when others mistakenly give them credit. And because more people are interested in taking things at face value than properly researching the origins, the abusers get away with it.

United States copyright law currently states that as soon as somebody produces a work, they own the copyright, whether or not they register it. That means that I own the copyright on all of the articles and photos on my site, unless otherwise specified. But if I want to maintain that copyright, I need to enforce it. There's not a whole lot I can do here. It's not possible to track down every single misuse of my work. But I need to do something.

I don't mind if you make my recipes; that's why I post them. I think it's great when somebody looks at my instructions and decides to try and do what I did. I especially love it when they post what they did and link back to my original instructions. I don't even mind if they put a copy of my photos on their site, along with the link back to me. But I do want them to link back. All I want is a little credit where credit's due.

I am applying a license to the work on my site. This license applies retroactively to everything I have posted so far, and it applies to everything that I post in the future, unless otherwise specified. Because I want to encourage other people to use my content, I have decided to use the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States license. Posting copies of my work without giving me credit is a violation of this license.

I have spent countless hours producing the content on this site. Some of the projects that I have posted about and included pictures of have been the result of many hours and often days worth of work. At this time I do not make a living off of my site. There are adverts sprinkled throughout the site, but the revenue so far has been tiny. What I get out of it is a sense that I'm doing something that some people enjoy, and for the moment that's good enough for me. Again, all I really want beyond that is a little credit. Is that too much to ask?

Restaurant Review: Skyline Chili

2008-02-29T09:39:00.000-07:00

I have heard life described in many ways, by many people. Some see it as vibrant, exciting, every moment a cause for celebration. I now realize that none of these descriptions applied to my own life until today, when I had my very first taste of Skyline Chili. I'm reasonably certain it couldn't even be called living.

I kid, of course. But it wasn't bad. You know. If you like that sort of thing. I'm reasonably certain I first heard about them on a show called Unwrapped, on the Food Network. And I later heard about it from Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations on the Travel Channel. I laughed when Bourdain's friend Michael Rhulman noted, with a certain amount of disgust, "this has cinnamon in it!" When I saw that my hotel in Columbus, Ohio was within walking distance of a Skyline Chili, I decided I needed to go.

I ordered the 3-Way Chili, their signature dish. Three ways because it has three ingredients, their top-secret-recipe chili, which is spiked with cinnamon, smothering a manly pile of spaghetti and obscured by a cloud of suspiciously, frighteningly orange cheddar. Adding diced onion or red beans would make this a 4-Way, and adding both onions and red beans would make it a 5-Way. Does life get any better? I submit that it does not!

Perhaps I exaggerate about the manliness of the spaghetti. I ordered a regular size, which was somewhat smaller than I expected, but not actually more than what I should be eating, considering the diet I occassionally pretend to myself to be on. I'm certainly not kidding about the cheese, however. It did not disappoint. The chili itself was slightly spicy, with that bit of cinnamon that didn't surprise me, considering Skyline Chili's Greek roots.

I ordered my meal to go, so that I might enjoy it from the comfort of my hotel room. The cheese came in a separate baggie, so as not to become prematurely melted. Two baggies, actually. Gotta be sure there's enough. I also got a baggie of oyster crackers, an item which I don't think I've liked since before my tastebuds became active in my youth. These are far superior to what I'm used to, and I still find myself snacking on them. I may buy a box before the week is out.

Author's note: The text above and the text below were written on different days, and about different experiences. Hopefully this explains the change in tone.

I went back the following day, to see if their other offerings were just as good. This time around I ordered a coney dog with cheese and a buffalo chicken salad. I eyed the boxes of oyster crackers and then decided against them. Despite the fact that the restaurant was empty save for one customer that was already seated and eating, and several uniformed employees hanging out on the other side, it took several minutes for anyone to come take my order. Once my order was taken (after another customer than walked in after me, I might note), it took several more minutes for them to complete it. At one point I saw an employee behind the counter carelessly throw a container onto the counter, which ended up being my salad. Several minutes later, my order was brought to me.

The coney was, well, small. I took a picture next to my watch for size comparison. It tasted pretty good, but I suppose there's a reason why people normally order two of them. The salad was... well... not quite disgusting. But it was disappointing to say the least. I barely made it halfway through. The menu described it as having fajita chicken tossed in buffalo sauce. I suspect that whoever put it on the menu has never actually been to Buffalo, New York. Then again, I also suspect they've never been to anyplace that serves real fajitas. I love a good hot sauce, and the stuff they served wasn't it. Its sole purpose seemed to be to add heat, which it did poorly. The flavor was even worse. The bleu cheese dressing was decently pungent, neither too strong nor too weak, but it could not mask the rest of the salad. I barely finished half of it before giving up on it.

Bourdain probably took Rhulman to Skyline for no other reason but to torture him, in the name of televised entertainment. From the looks of it, Rhulman hated it. For your amusement (actually, mostly for mine) in further mocking Rhulman (a guy which I actually have worlds of respect for), and because I actually did like Skyline Chili (well, the more famous part of it), they will receive Ruhlmans for their effort. The 3-Way earned them 2 1/2, but lousy service, small portions and a bad salad lost them one. I award Skyline Chili 1 1/2 Rhulmans.

Homemade Instant Oatmeal: Recipes

2008-02-20T09:10:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I promised to post some oatmeal recipes, just as soon as they were tested. Well, I just finished off a bowl of Cranberry Orange oatmeal, and I'm ready to post.

A word of warning: I don't really like my oatmeal too sweet. If you're used to the teeth-rotting flavored instant oats that we normally see in the store, you may want to add a little sugar. In fact, some days I could really use the extra sweet, so I keep sugar packets swiped from Denny's and hotel coffee stations in my bag with my oatmeal. You know, just in case.

That said, taste is subjective, and you'll likely make your own changes. I certainly hope you do. I would love to see people posting their own variations in the comments area of this post. In particular, I fully expect Scothoser to post some blueberry-nut concoction.

The instructions for each of these are the same, so I've listed the individual ingredients for each one first, and then the instructions at the end. Enjoy!

Peach Ginger Instant Oatmeal

1/4 cup roughly chopped freeze-dried peaches
1 tsp finely chopped candied ginger
1 tsp white granulated sugar
1/2 cup plain instant oats

Strawberries 'n' Cream Instant Oatmeal

1/3 cup sliced freeze-dried strawberries
1 Tbsp non-fat instant dry milk
1 tsp white granulated sugar
1/2 cup plain instant oats

Apple Cinnamon Instant Oatmeal

3 Tbsp chopped dried apples
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 - 3 tsp dark brown sugar
1/2 cup plain instant oats

Cranberry Orange Instant Oatmeal

1/3 cup sliced dried cranberries
2 tsp orange drink mix
1/2 cup plain instant oats

Add dry ingredients to a pint- or quart-size resealable bag. Seal and shake to distribute evenly. Unseal, press out the air, and reseal. When ready to serve, pour into a bowl and cover with hot water. Allow to sit for at least a minute before stirring. Add more water, milk, cream, etc as you like. Add sugar or salt to taste.

Homemade Instant Oatmeal: Learning

2008-02-16T09:33:00.007-07:00

It's not often I spend so much time and energy on just one dish, but this one is important to me. I don't really have all that many health problems, but I do have higher-than-average blood pressure. I can't say my cholesterol is really where it should be either. There are all sorts of solutions for these problems, ranging from low sodium diets to specialized medications. One solution that fits the bill for both problems is oatmeal. Fortunately for me, I like oatmeal. I think I always have, so long as it's done right.

For me, done right usually means Scottish oats, also known as Irish oats, pinhead oats, steel-cut oats. Sadly, this kind of oat requires extended cooking time, and isn't generally available when I travel. And I travel a lot. If I were to eat for breakfast what was generally available to me on the road, I would die of deliciously, fattily saturated bacon and sausage, assuming that the insulin poisoning from an assorted variety of tasty danishes didn't get to me first.

One day in Atlanta, I discovered that the training center I was at had instant oats. They weren't Scottish, but they weren't totally crap either. Two packets later, I was in apple-cinnamon heaven, but still in danger of the sugary goodness rotting away my body. Maybe instant oats weren't so bad after all, but they could still use some improvement. It was time to do research.

First, I had to look up recipes. I was planning to ignore most of the instructions anyway, but I still needed a starting point. I found a recipe that involved half a cup of oats, some dried fruit, sugar substitute and salt. Oats and dried fruit were good. I have yet to find a sugar substitute that didn't taste horrible, so that was out. Real sugar was essential. Prematurely-added salt would destroy the creamniness that could be weaned from the pentosans in the oats. If salt was to be added, it could not be added to the mix.

I like fruit. Fresh fruit is better, but dried will do in a pinch. That's good because fresh fruit is not known for travel or long-term storage. The problem with store-bought flavored instant oatmeal is the decided lack of fruit. The apple cinnamon has just enough apples in it to put it on the label, and nothing more. Sometimes it's even worse than that. Don't be surprised if you look at the ingredient list of your "Peaches and Cream" oatmeal and discover that it realy just has peach-flavored apples. I don't know about you, but I feel cheated.

Dried apples were easy to find. I'm also a big fan of dried cranberries, and it was almost as easy to find dried sweetened cranberries. After some considerable searching, I was unable to find dried peaches, except when combined with other dried fruit. Then one day in North Carolina, I struck gold: the Whole Foods market had a brand of freeze-dried peaches called Just Peaches. Right next to the peaches was a container of Just Strawberries, as well as several other varieties of freeze-dried fruits and veggies. I was set.

A word about freeze-dried food. I don't consider it unnatural. It's just a different method, one which I might note is centuries old. What I don't like about freeze-dried food is eating it as is. The company that makes Just Peaches seems to intend them to be eaten like that. Personally, I think it needs to be reconstituted in water before it's any good. Luckily for me, that's how oats are cooked anyway, so I can deal with it.

The nice thing about putting together your own instant oat mix is that you can choose how much fruit you add. For a half cup of oats, I will add anywhere from a couple of tablespoons to 1/3 of a cup of fruit, depending on which fruit. Dried apples are a little less, freeze-dried strawberries get a little more. The other thing you can decide is now only how much sugar, but what kind of sugar.

The apples get dark brown sugar, plus some cinnamon and any other spice that I feel like adding. The peaches were better with white sugar, along with some finely-chopped candied ginger. Strawberries also got white sugar, along with was essentially powdered milk, labelled as "dairy coffee creamer". Don't use the crappy non-dairy creamers. If you want to know why, just take a look at the ingredient list. If you can get past the solid/powdered high-fructose corn syrup, I'll be impressed. Last of all, the cranberries got orange drink mix.

Okay, I lost you again, I know. Look, I like cranberry and orange together. It's like they were made for each other. The way I saw it, I had a couple of choices: add sugar + dried orange zest or add powdered orange drink mix, which was orange-flavored and already had sugar. I'm still wanting to try the orange zest and sugar, but since most people don't have the time to bother, I decided to go with orange drink mix for now.

Honestly, I would have been okay with Tang. Like most children of the 80's, I like Tang. But I couldn't find any at the markets I looked in that didn't have sucralose, aka Splenda. "It's made from real sugar, so it tastes like real sugar!" Blah. In my ever so humble opinion, it tastes like fake styrofoam, and it makes anything that it's added to taste even worse.

In Utah, we have a company called Stephen's Gourmet that makes powdered hot chocolate mixes. They're actually pretty good too; I've been addicted to their mint truffle flavor for years. They also have a flavor called Citrus & Spice, which they refer to as a gourmet wassail. It's not hot chocolate at all, but it's pretty good. I almost picked it up, but then I saw "Orange Creme" next to it and unwittingly bought that instead, not realizing that it was actually a cocoa flavor. The resulting oatmeal was still pretty good, but since chocolate oatmeal is still kind of weird for me, I went back and bought the Citrus & Spice. It's not Tang, but it's way better.

So, how much sugar to add? I don't like my oatmeal to be nearly as candy-sweet as commercial manufacturers do, so it took some experimentation. Depending on the other flavors and the type of sugar, I discovered that anywhere from two to three teaspoons was generally plenty for me. If you're adding something that is already sweetened, such as candied ginger or sweetened dried cranberries, you might be able to get away with less sugar. The powdered drink mix that I used was almost equal in terms of sweetness to regular sugar. I might also note that if you like honey and you frequent KFC, you might want to think about picking up some extra honey packets to use instead of sugar.

I still haven't really talked about the obvious ingredient: oats. You can buy plain instant oats in the store from the guy with the funny hat. For a single serving, I find that half a cup of instant oats is about right for me. Your mileage may vary. It's important that you use oats that are actually labelled as instant, or quick cooking. These are designed to be cooked in about a minute or less. Unless you want to tend to a pot of regular rolled oats for up to several minutes, this is what you need. Plus, when you travel, speed is of the essence.

Speaking of travel, how do I expect oats to be cooked in a hotel room? About half of the rooms that I stay in have microwaves, and that's just perfect. If your room doesn't, it probably has either a coffee maker, a hot water faucet next to the sink, or perhaps even both. In fact, I have stayed in very, very few hotels that did not have some sort of in-room coffee services. When I wake up in the morning, I fill the carafe about halfway with water, put it on the hotplate, and then hop in the shower. By the time I'm dressed and ready for breakfast, the water is hot enough. Since I don't drink coffee, and in fact don't really even know how to use a coffee maker, I can assume this is safe. Perhaps somebody will correct me on this.

Empty the oat mix into a bowl (I carry a cheap plastic bowl in my luggage now, along with a cheap plastic spoon), and cover with hot (boiling if possible) water. Give it a quick stir to make sure everything is evenly incorporated, then let it sit for a couple of minutes. Once it's soaked up some water, go ahead and stir to your heart's content. It will thicken as you stir. If you want to add salt, wait until it has started to thicken. The hotter the water and the less of it you use, the thicker it will get.

Back to making the actual oat mix. You'll want some quart-size (or pint-size if you can find them) zip-top baggies. If for some reason you have trouble locating some, the TSA always seems to be handing them out for free. But since they'll probably get unhappy with you when you start stuffing handfuls into your bag, you'll probably just want to head to the store and pick up a box. Besides, you'll probably be mixing things together before you leave for the airport anyway. Toss all of the ingredients in a bag, seal it up, give it a good shake (especially important if you used brown sugar, which may clump if it's not broken up), unseal it to press out any air, and seal it again. I usually pack five or six of those in a gallon-size zip-top baggie, along with a few packets of sugar horked from diners or hotel coffee stations, just in case. Don't worry about the baggies of oatmeal, the TSA hasn't seemed to mind just yet. But if I were you, I wouldn't use powdered sugar. That's the sort of confusion you want to avoid altogether. And if you're bringing honey, keep in mind that it does fall into the "liquid or gel" category.

A final note on salt. I have found that I like my oatmeal without any at all, and that's even better for my blood pressure. If you decide that you need salt, don't add it all to the mix itself. It will likely retard the thickening process, and that's probably not what you want. Carry salt packets with you, and add just a little after the oatmeal starts to thicken.

Now you have the theory on how homemade instant oat mixes can come together. I'm almost finished testing some basic recipes. Since testing involves making up a serving for breakfast, it can be a little slow. For those who don't want to wait, feel free to start experimenting. For the rest of you, expect an upcoming post to include instant oatmeal recipes for apple cinnamon, peach ginger, cranberry orange and strawberries and cream.

Adventures in Customer Service

2008-02-10T07:11:00.000-07:00

I just got back from Mountain View, CA, which is increasingly becoming one of my favorite places to teach. The training center has brand-spakin' new computers that run like a dream. They're easy to PXE-boot, they have wide-screen monitors, and I will never come close to maxing out their resources during lecture or lab. The office manager there is great to work with, and I always have an interesting variety of silicon valley students.

This trip seemed to be going especially well. No problems with the flight out, and I'd been there enough that I knew my way around the area. I still used a GPS to get to and from the airport, but I never had to turn it on the rest of the week. I was getting worried about my car rental, however. My car this time was reserved at Enterprise, whom I had never before dealt with. I usually rent from Alamo or National, which are essentially the same place. Past experiences with places like Advantage Rent-a-Car had left me nervous of other rental places. Alamo wasn't bad, so I usually stayed with them.

When I got to Enterprise, there was no line at the counter. I walked up and started the ritual of pulling out my drivers license and credit card. The man behind the counter was friendly as he asked me a few questions. He even offered me a bottle of water for the road, which I gladly accepted. When he was finished, he told me how to get to the Enterprise booth outside, making sure to mention that he had just sent a message to them on the computer to let them know that I was on my way. This is where things started to get different from the usual car rental.

Before I even got to the booth, a man was walking towards me from it. As I got close, he extended his hand to greet me with, "Mr. Hall?" I shook his hand and he started asking me about what car I was going to rent, after offering me another bottle of water for the road. I confirmed that I was indeed expecting an "economy" car, and was already hoping for a Corolla or an Aveo. They had been my favorite economy cars in the past, and I now start to look forward to them. He pointed to a few cars, noting which ones were economy and which ones I could upgrade to for another $5 a day more. Since none of them were the Corolla or Aveo, I selected the Kia Rio. I'd never driven a Kia before, and I thought I might as well check it out.

By this point, I was already amazed. The closest I've ever come to actually picking out my model was along the lines of the man at the counter telling me where the economy cars are, and that the keys were in the door or the ignition, have fun. This guy was already giving me personal service. He went to grab the keys and returned a few minutes later to inform me that he could not locate them. He offered me a free upgrade to either a PT Cruiser or a Dodge Caliber. Since I think that PT Cruisers are uglier than sin, I went with the Caliber.

When he returned with the keys, he went around the car with me to inspect any current damage, making notes on the clipboard. This is always an event left to me to perform myself, and I was surprised when he noted little things that I might not have even bothered with myself. He then offered to pull the car out of the stall for me while I initialled everything on the paperwork. When he came back, he made sure to write his name on my copy and point out his phone number, emphasizing that if I needed anything, that I shouldn't hesitate to call him. Even without the free upgrade, I was already more impressed with Enterprise than with any other rental company.

At this point, I had thought to spend that evening writing up a review of the experience. But then I thought better of it, and decide to wait and see how they handled the return on Friday. I'm glad that I did. When I pulled into the return area, there was no line. It also seemed remarkably small compared to the usual return line, which tends to seem more like a parking lot where rental companies store returns until they can service them. The man that came to help me out this time did the usual walk-around, and printed my receipt. He then offered to drive me to the terminal in my rental car, so that I didn't have to take the shuttle bus.

We had a friendly conversation as we drove, and talked about how Enterprise had bought out Alamo and National last year, and how Avis and Hertz were both owned by Budget now. He dropped me off precisely where I needed to be, and helped me get my bags out of the car. By this point I had already changed my travel preferences at work from Alamo to Enterprise, and I had grown increasingly happy to have done so. My upcoming trip to Ohio already has a reservation with them, in fact. Never before have I been so impressed with any car rental experience as I have been so far with Enterprise. I look forward to renting from them in the future.

My trip wasn't all daisies and rainbows, however. I mean, my room at the Comfort Inn was decent, and the people I met were generally very friendly. But I couldn't help but notice that almost none of the really good restaurants on Castro Street (which is where the training center is) take American Express. Remember the snide Visa commercials they used to have that proclaimed that "so-and-so does this, but they don't take American Express"? Back then it seemed like an anti-advertisement for those places, a warning to keep me from getting disappointed when I got there and tried to pay. Now those commercials reverberated in my mind, as I made mental notes to avoid certain restaurants in the future. By now it feels like if I want to pay for food in Mountain View with my AMEX card, I'm stuck with Boston Market.

One experience in particular that struck me was on Wednesday night when I discovered a Subway restaurant right next to the Caltrain station. There were two oriental girls working the counter. I don't mention their ethnicity here because I'm racist. I think that in any other circumstance, I would have just referred to them as "two girls". But the way they handled things kept reminding me of myriad travel shows, were a tiny crew of workers behind a food counter somewhere in Asia somehow managed to handle dozens of customers at the same time. In this case, they had four customers, and they seemed to have no intention in serving them in the order in which they arrived. In fact, I was the last person to place my order, and the first person to pay for and leave with it. And despite the fact that I frequently pay for meals at Subway with an AMEX card, do you think I was surprised when this one only took Visa, Mastercard or cash?

The customer service didn't stop there, of course. Normally when I leave San Jose, there's a direct flight back to SLC around 6 o'clock or so. The last one this time left just before I would have gotten to the airport, so I was stuck with a 2-hour connection in LAX between two different, unaffiliated airlines. Because they were unaffiliated, I was told that I couldn't check in for the second flight until I got to LAX. The first flight was American Airlines, which I had never flown on before, but I'd heard bad things about. They didn't disappoint, because when I got to the gate, they had already posted that there was a half hour delay. Before long it had turned into a 50-minute delay, which I was actually okay with; that meant an hour in LAX instead of two.

We boarded, and the flight attendant seemed friendly enough. After beverage service, she even went down the aisle to see if anybody had any connections that they needed information about. When I told her that I was headed to Salt Lake, she started referring to things from memory instead of from her paper. She told me that since it was a United flight, I would need to get onto Bus 5 which would take me to Building 6, from which I would need to walk to Building 7, where I would need to go through security again. Sometimes, she told me, if they weren't too busy, the bus drivers would take me to Building 7 if I asked, so that I wouldn't have to do security again.

When the plane got to the terminal, it took almost 20 minutes for a gate agent to drive the walkway to the plane and let us out. When I got to the bus area, I was told that I needed to wait off to the side for my bus. After about 10 minutes, my bus showed up. The driver was unwilling to take me to Building 7, and the tone of his voice allowed no argument. Those of you who have ever had to scramble to make a connection can see where this is going. Leave it to American Airlines to turn a 2-hour layover into a mad dash for the gate. That's when I started trying to call United Airlines to let them know that I was coming. I never found their phone number or anything else helpful on their site, and eventually called Expedia instead.

Expedia told me that my flight was actually in Building 8, and that it was the last one out of LAX to SLC that night. When I got to Building 6, I checked the terminals and saw that I needed to get to gate 88 post-haste. The Expedia agent assured me that I had almost half an hour, and should be able to make it in time. As I got to the security checkpoint I asked the guard how to get there, and he told me to follow this hallway to my right, and no, I wouldn't have to go through security again. When I was out of his sight, I started running.

I got through Building 7, and then continued onto Building 8. Gate 88 was at the very end of the concourse, and I ran to it, becoming increasingly worried as I noted that the boarding area was suspiciously empty. The display at the gate didn't even have SLC listed on it and the boarding door was closed, so I asked the agent if it was too late to board for SLC. She gave me a confused look and told me that the SLC flight wasn't leaving from that gate. I must have looked suddenly anguished, because she looked suddenly helpful. She told me that I needed gate 84, which I had just run past. She also assured me that it had not yet left. I asked if she could print me a ticket anyway, which she did. Now that I was checked in, at the airport no less, I knew I had much less of a chance of the plane leaving without me.

I ran back to Gate 84, and discovered that my flight had not even started boarding. Happy day! I sat down to finally rest, and wait. A few minutes later, the passengers started boarding, and I happily boarded with them. After the plane door had closed, the captain got on the horn and apologized for the late departure, as they had been waiting for the plane to arrive. Who knew I could be so happy for United Airlines to be late?

At least Enterprise managed to do things right, even if nobody else could be bothered. I'm glad that my next trip includes no connections, even if I get stuck on a Canadair jet both on the outbound and return flights. You know what I always say, nothing says fun like 3 1/2 hours on a cramped regional jet.

French Firefox Cookies

2008-02-10T06:49:00.000-07:00

Every so often, somebody new runs across either the Firefox cookies or the Ubuntu cookies that I made so long ago, and I see another spike in my stats. Usually it's no big deal, just somebody posting a link on their blog or perhaps a message forum, occassionally accompanied by a note on how crazy I must be. Frequently the blog or forum will be in a non-English language, such as Spanish or Polish. Sometimes I can translate, sometimes not.

Somebody who speaks French apparently decided that my instructions needed to be translated into their language. At first I was a little surprised to see lolcat captions printed on my photos, but then I became flattered when I realized that they had seemingly lovingly translated all of my instructions. I skimmed over it and suddenly saw the phrase, "MUHAHAHAHAH PWND NOOB!"

Now, my French is pretty rusty (read: I don't know French), but that didn't look like it translated from something that I wrote. It was time to send the article through the Google translator. There were comments about "the author", some of which I chalk up to them calling me crazy, etc., and the occassional quip about something or other. The "noob" comment translated in Google to, " Well, that was simple yet your little cousin of 5 years may well be (but she knows disassemble a computer-back in less than an hour with your eyes closed with one hand behind their backs?? MUHAHAHAHAH PWND NOOB! )". I'm not entirely sure what that means still. I think it means the previous step was so easy your 5 year old cousin could do it, but then again she could take apart a computer with one hand tied behind her back in less than an hour. Ha ha! You just got pwned, noob!

Right. Anyway, now I'm just plain amused at their translation. I'm not sure, but I think I like their sense of humor. Almost makes me want to learn French just so that I can get a real translation of it. Still, if you want the instructions in French, there they are. Enjoy.

Context Menu Extensions for Firefox

2008-02-08T16:51:00.000-07:00

This morning I stumbled upon something interesting in Firefox. I clicked on Tools >> Add-ons >> Get Ubuntu Add-ons. One of the items available for installation was called "Context Menu Extensions for Firefox/Iceweasel". It promised, among other things, the ability to add custom items to context menus (aka the "right-click menu") in Firefox, including external programs. I've long wanted something like this, so I decided to take a look.

I checked the box and clicked Apply. It looked like it was doing something, but when it finished the menu option was gone, and I couldn't find any trace of it having installed anything. I bit of searching and hassling Christer led me to discover that the package name in both Debian and Ubuntu was actually called mozilla-ctxextensions. I also discovered that I should have new menu options under my Tools menu, but I couldn't find any.

I tried running "aptitude install mozilla-ctxextensions", but it said it was already installed. I ran "updatedb; locate ctx-extensions" and only found one file: /usr/share/app-install/desktop/mozilla-ctxextensions.desktop. That file didn't give me any hints to anything. I ran "aptitude remove mozilla-ctxextensions" and then installed it again. This time locate found lots of files, so I figured I must be good to go. Unfortunately, restarting my browser still revealed no extra options.

I finally found what looked to be the problem. When it installed, it created a symlink called /usr/lib/iceweasel/extensions/{4C4D8A1D-1E3C-439e-9298-16073A5C4851} that pointed to /usr/share/mozilla-extensions/ctxextensions. No such link existed in /usr/lib/firefox/. So much for having it work in both Iceweasel and Firefox. I made another symlink with the same name, pointing to the same location, in the /usr/lib/firefox/extensions/ directory and restarted Firefox. Bingo!

Not only do I have extra options in my Tools menu, I also have an additional Extensions menu. Looking through the preferences, this looks like an extremely customizable tool. And in the spirit of open source, I have been able to find absolutely no documentation as of yet, except for a few random bug reports from Debian developers saying that they won't fix something or other with it. I was able to find the author's homepage, http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/, which is of course mostly in Japanese.

Has anyone else played with this tool? I'm interested in using it, but it would be nice to have some documentation to save me some time in learning it.