Starry Wisdom

Finally, it is time for my second installment of Hanukkah side dishes – and this time I bring you the recipe for noodle kugel. Kugels are a very common Ashkenazic side dish, and they can range from sweet to savory, but in my family the sweet has always reigned supreme. This recipe is actually courtesy of my mom’s good friend, and our next door neighbor growing up, Joan Futterman. Joan is a fantastic cook, and her Kugel recipe is, well, also fantastic.

Sweet Noodle Kugel
Servers at least 10

• 16 ounce wide egg noodles
• 16 ounce container cottage small curd cottage cheese
• 16 container sour cream
• 8 ounce cream cheese, softened
• 1 stick butter, melted
• 6 eggs, beaten
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp orange juice
• 1 tsp lemon juice (optional)
• ¾ cup sugar
• 1 cup golden raisins
• 3 chopped or thinly sliced peeled large apples
• ⅓ cup cinnamon sugar mixture
• ⅓ cup graham cracker crumbs
• 1 stick melted butter

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F
2. Cook the noodles until al dente, and drain
3. Mix the rest of the ingredients together, except for the graham cracker crumbs and cinnamon sugar
4. Fold mixed ingredients into noodles
5. Put mixture into a greased 9×13 inch baking dish
6. Sprinkle graham cracker crumbs and cinnamon suger on top
7. Bake uncovered for 60 minutes. Check after 50 minutes to make sure it is not burning
8. Let rest for 20 minutes before slicing. The kugel may be served hot,at room temperature, or even cold

And yes, this is not a dessert, this is eaten with the main course!

Well, I owe you all another post about side dishes – I hope to be able to do that this week. But right now, I want to do a quick (I just wrote SQUID there, btw) rundown of the books I read in 2011.

I read a total of 23 books in 2011, which is far short of the 30 books I resolved to read, according to the resolutions I put in the champagne bottle last year, which we cracked open on NYE. Anyway, some more info:

Only 7 of the books were nonfiction, and two of those were memoirs. Maybe this is balanced out that one of the books was about deeds in California? I don’t know. That one was not one of my favorite books of the year.

I read two books by David Foster Wallace in 2011, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and The Pale King. The latter is his posthumously published ‘last’ novel, although it’s to complete, so I’m really not sure what to call it. Despite that fact, it ranks as one of my favorite thing read in 2011, without a doubt. It’s also one of the two books published in 2011 I read this year, the other being Tina Fey’s Bosspants which I did not like nearly as much!

I read almost half (eleven) of the books electronically, via the Kindle reader on my iPad. Actually, wait, I read 12, so really just over half, of the books electronically; I read Bossypants on Mackenzie’s actually Kindle. It’s very convenient, and very comfortable to read this way in bed, but I do have some misgivings about the whole thing. The last physical book I read this year was a reread of At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft, back in September, which I own at least two copies of in various collections.

Last night I had some friends over for Hanukkah dinner. I made a bunch of things, but the two things I want to talk about the most are the some of the side dishes. Tonight I’m going to talk about the relatively healthy one, Kasha Varnishkes – which are buckwheat groats and bowtie pasta. The buckwheat is a very nutty/earthy grain, which is a great complement to a hearty meat dish, such as the brisket I served.

Kasha Varniskes
From The Frugal Gourmet on Our Immigrant Ancestors by Jeff Smith.
Serves at least 4, and up to 8.

1 Cup kasha (buckwheat groats)
1 egg, well beaten
2 tablespoons rendered chicken fat or vegetable oil (I had a plethora of fat from the chicken soup I made)
1 yellow onion, chopped
2 Cups chicken stock
1 Cup bowtie pasta
Salt and Pepper to taste

1. Start water boiling for pasta, but do not cook yet
2. In a small bowl mix the kasha and the egg, make sure all the grains are coated with the egg. Put a medium nonstick fry-pan over medium high heat, and cook the kasha egg mixture, stirring and pushing down with a wooden spoon, until the egg dries and the grains are mostly seperated. Set aside.
3. In a heavy 4 quart pan pan, heat the fat or oil and saute the onion until translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the chicken stock and bring to a boil. Add the kasha and salt and pepper to taste. Stir and cover. Reduce heat to low, and continue cooking, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes, until the kasha is tender, and the liquid is absorbed. Cook the bowties at the same time.
4. Add drained, al dente cooked bowties to the buckwheat. Mix well and serve hot.

Stay tuned for a MUCH less healthy side dish in the coming days!

Today was my last day at the Job that I’ve had for the past 8 years. Well sort of, in that the company name was different (as we were acquired by Cisco 4 and a half years ago), and my position was slightly different – but things were probably more similar than not, even to this day. But sometimes, one needs a change, and I guess it was that time for me.

I’m starting a new job, at a small place – the smallest place I’ve ever worked at – on Monday. There will only be three of us here in the Bay Area, but there are more in Portland and elsewhere. IronPort was fairly small at around 100 people when I joined in 2003, and grew many times over before we were bought by Cisco, which was two orders of magnitude bigger. I miss working for a small company.

Still, leaving today – handing in my badge and laptop was weird. Saying farewell (not goodbye, I hope) to my coworkers of eight years was, well, awkward and sad. But, like I said, I guess it was time for me, so I’ll get over it. And I’m really excited to get started at the new place on Monday (which, for the near future, will be located in my dining room, as they are still negotiating a lease for a SF office).

But not not writing:

Yesterday, Mackenzie, I and about eight other friends drove up to Marshall, CA to eat oysters and clams at Hog Island Oyster Farm. This was a celebration for our friend Ali’s birthday this Monday. Unfortunately, Friday night was a night where I needed a drink or five (not the best end of the week at work – nothing terrible, just lots of last minute work of the sort I abhor), so we woke up in the morning a bit later than intended. We actually only left about 15 minutes late, but I was lax in looking at the direction on the map, so I blindly followed the GPS to go up 1 through Mill Valley, instead of going all the north and cutting across on Francis Drake. This is more or less meaningless to 99% of humanity, but the important thing of note here is that yesterday was the first part of a two-day National Multiple Sclerosis Society Waves to Wine bike ‘tour’. The first day started in SF and went through Stinson Beach going up 1. So basically, I had to navigate around hundred and hundreds of bicyclists, on a twisty, hilly road – which was harrowing. I was very glad when we finally made it to Tomales Bay, and only had to deal with the normal weekend cyclists, which are much easier to navigate around.

Once we got to the Oyster Farm, we began to quickly consume/over consume shellfish. We (much of the we being myself) shucked dozens of oysters for eating raw, as well as grilling some up. We also grilled up 2lbs of manila clams. All of this was delicious, but even more delicious (maybe) were the oysters that we got up that were grilled by the Hog Island people with a delicious maple chipotle sauce. Actually, why bother comparing, it was all delicious, as were the accompaniments we brought up from home – cheese, charcuterie, bread and a lovely melon and feta salad that Mackenzie made.

If any of you are anything like me, you will probably be saying “This Post is Useless WIthout PIctures”. Yep, I forgot to snag my camera as I left in the morning, and my 3+ year old iPhone is just too slow/cruddy for me to bother with much. I really need to consider getting a new phone one of these days…

We all know what happened ten years ago today. For me it started with waking up to NPR, as normal, and hearing that the *second* World Trade Center tower had just crashed down. I felt like I was dreaming at first, but then I got out of bed and turned on the TV. And of course, yes, it was real. And that’s about all I am going to say on that subject.

Now, for today:

A little over a year ago I purchased the top flat in a approximately 100 year old two-storey Edwardian in San Francisco. One of the things you’re likely to get in a home that old is some old, painted-shut, double-hung windows. My flat as full of them, but over the past year I managed to get all but one of them open by cutting the paint on the inside of the sash. But one window in my living room would not relent to my assault, so I knew it was going to be the first window in my window repair plan – besides windows that were/are painted shut, there are some windows with cut sash cords, and other assorted problems. But the one in the living room was both painted shut and it was missing a sash cord, so it seemed to be a good place to start.

I actually began the project yesterday afternoon by removing the stops (the vertical pieces of molding the hold the bottom sash into the frame). Actually, the project began a few months ago when I bought some books on the subject, and started to assemble a series of tools and supplies for the job, such as: sash cord, finishing nails, a respirator, and a small pry bar. Anyway, removing the stop involves cutting the paint between the molding and the frame, then prying it out with a combination of a hammer, a pry bar, and a stiff-blated putty knife. Once the stops are off, it’s fairly simple to wiggle the sash to free it from the dried paint, and then it can be removed. I ran out of time yesterday, so I replaced the stops (they are held in place by a combination of tension and nails – I just pressed them in place).

This morning I took the stops back off, and then sanded off the excess paint on the edges, primed, and painted them. While waiting for the paint to dry, I replaced both sash cords on the window – even though one of them was already functional, the rope was in a sad state, so it was actually easier for me to remove and replace it. Here is a picture of the sash out of the window and one of the weights:

Also, this is what it looks like in between the windows, where the weights normally are:

Then it was a relatively process of replacing the stops, and repainting the trim – and that left me with a finished, operable window (sorry for how dark it is, but you probably get the idea):

All said and done, it probably took about five hours to get the window fixed, which included a couple of hours of waiting for paint to dry. I could probably do more than one in that time, and three in an hour or two more. I’ll probably fix the next two at the end of the month!

I finished the last post with me heading back to San Francisco, on July 11th. I had a four day workweek ahead of me before going on to my next weekend trip, but in the meanwhile, I went and saw the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.

The movie was pretty good, and I think I would give it about 7 out of 8 rabbit turds, on the rabbit turd scale. I think that as a whole, the two parter was quite well done and reflected the novel quite well. What was not great was coming home at a quarter to four and having to get into work by 9am the next day. Luckily for me, my next trip didn’t start until Saturday, because the next trip was vegas.

Las Vegas July 16-18

This was a trip to Las Vegas for my friend Steve’s bachelor party. I won’t say much about this, but I will show a picture of my dinner that saturday.

And then back to SF for another 4 day work week. It took me until Thursday to really recover from the weekend but the week did feature a trip to AT&T park to see the Giants beat the Dodgers, and to see Brandon Belt come back up to the big leagues with a Home Run.

And then Friday it was on to the final trip of July.

July 22-24 Lake Tahoe Camping

We went up to DL Bliss State Park on the shores of Lake Tahoe for our yearly camping trip and river float. The latter, well – it wasn’t much of a float. It was more of a river fiasco, truth be told. There was still snow on the tops of the mountain, and as that might lead you to believe, there was lots of water in the river systems. However, the river float is at the start of the Truckee river, where it flows out of Lake Tahoe, and this flow is controlled by a large dam. The dam was completely closed, because there was lots of water downstream, about two and a half times more water than one would expect. Unfortunately this meant that there was about 1/3 as much water as expected in the float area. The float was slow, shallow, and tedious. We didn’t even make it half of the route before calling it a day in a little over two hours. Our less was learned – if the commercial river rafting company is closed, don’t bother with the float.

We got back to camp a bit earlier than typical, and used the time to visit the beach at the camp site. This was fun, and we decided we wanted to come back again the next day before we left the area, which we did for a nice afternoon swim and lake float. This helped us avoid a lot of the traffic leaving the area, and as we were planning on stopping in Davis for dinner with Mackenzie’s sister’s family, it helped out our timing. We had a nice visit in Davis, but poor Orrin got stung in his foot by a bee. He took it well, was more annoyed than anything else at the problem. After dinner and some visiting, it was back home.

I am now in the middle of 12 nights at home, before heading to Redding this weekend to hang out at Mackenzie’s parents’ house with some friends (her parents are out of town). Unfortunately Mackenzie was out of town herself last weekend, to go to LA for her friend Melissa’s birthday. I skipped the trip due to all the traveling you read about above and the previous post. However, on the bright side, my friend Joan was in town from Toronto for a tech confernce. I got to hang out with her Friday night and Saturday, and wander around my home, San Francisco.

This July has been jam-packed with adventure. I was away from home every weekend this month, until this, the last weekend. As such, I didn’t have time to keep up with my bills (I managed to pay my cell bill on the last possible day), let alone my blog. But as I am home this weekend, I have had time to go through the photos I took, a pre-requisite to the blog post. So here we go on a recap of the month:

July 4th Weekend – Donner Lake

Our friends Tori and Steve invited us to their cabin on Donner Lake for the July 4th weekend. It was a great weekend, jam packed with fun and food (all the couples invited took charge of a meal to prepare for everyone. Mackenzie and I took Sunday dinner, for which we did a tacopalooza – carne asada, carnitas, and chicken tinga, served with all the trimmings -I should make a separate post on this.

We spent most of the time during the days on or by the lake. Tori and Steve rented a speed boat on Sunday, which the group took turns using, and on Monday, July 4th, they rented a pontoon boat, which we could all fit on. We spent a great afternoon out on the lake (which was freezing cold, no wonder, there was stills now on the mountains).

As Tuesday was a work day, and in particular I had to be in by 9am, we had to leave before the firework show at the Lake. However, on our way back to San Francisco, we stopped at Mackenzie’s sister’s house in Davis, to visit her family and go see the fireworks. Her nephew, Orrin, who was about 16 months months old, had fun with Angry Birds on my phone, and watching the fireworks.

This is the full gallery of photos posted from the trip.

July 9th Weekend – Chicago

I was home for only a few nights before heading to Chicago that Thursday afternoon for my nephew Milo’s second birthday weekend. Thanks to spending several days in Burbank for work earlier this year, I had a free flight on Southwest airlines, which I took advantage of for this trip. This meant, of course, that I flew into Midway, which is quite a bit farther from my parent’s house than O’Hare, but my parents graciously agreed to ferry me to and from the airport.

The fast paced nature of the month makes the early part of the trip hazy, but I know that on Saturday my parents had Milo at their house, as they do almost every Saturday. We had a fun playing in his sandbox, drawing with chalk, and playing with toys.

I thought Milo was his normal, light-hearted self, but my mom was a bit concerned as he had a bit of a bowel issue that day. We took him home to his parent’s, and then I went out to dinner with my parents.

This brings us to Sunday, the day of Milo’s birthday party. The party was to be held at his house, and his dad, my brother, was going to cater it, as he did last year, and the main course was to be smoke brisket. The plan was that my parents and I would watch Milo again during the day, as Keith and Sarah prepared for the party, and then he would take him back for his party around 3pm. However, I woke up to the news that my brother was violently ill, had slept in the bathroom, and was not able to make the food. Sarah, while not a cook, is a great super-connector, and she enlisted one of their chef friends to help her with the brisket, and other friends to help set up for the party.

Our morning with Milo was fun, although he did seem a bit off. He took a longer than usual nap, and we set out for him to be late to his own party. Things started to turn concerning right before we pulled up to the house, as Milo puked a bit in the car. Thankfully we were almost there, so we rushed him home, and his mom changed him, and as he seemed that he was OK, he was able to attend and enjoy his party.

In hingsight, maybe he shouldn’t have been eating deviled eggs, as he threw up again an hour or so into the party. I helped Sarah get him cleaned up and changed, and all the poor kid wanted to do at that point was watch his favorite TV show, “Martha Speaks”. Keith, who was still pretty out of it, took him into his bedroom and they watched tv together. So not only was Milo’s dad unable to attend the party, but Milo got knocked out of it too. I carefully washed my hands after getting him cleaned up.

At this point, I was roped into assembling my parents’ gift to Milo – a pretty awesome kitchen set. Despite the small size of this project, it was incredibly complex, and took over two hours to assemble. Milo came out, part way through, to supervise.

Then Monday, the day I was to go back, I woke up at 7am to my mom telling me that both her and my father had gotten violently sick. Bleh, I thought, and went back to sleep, to be awoken by some thunder a bit later. It turned out that the thunderstorm knocked out power for my parents’ house along with a few hundred thousand other houses. This was the second time his summer my parents had no power for more than a few hours, and after the last storm my dad had gone out to buy a generator. I helped him (well did most of the work) to get it set up and running so that they could have power for the duration of the outage (which turned out to be about 24 hours more). However, I also got picked up by my brother to spend the day with him and in theory get a ride to the airport. But since Milo wouldn’t nap, and ended up running errands with the two of us, and Sarah was also Ill, I took a cab to the airport from their house, instead of subjecting Milo to another long car ride. Oh, while I was there that afternoon, we put together my present for him, a push bike, and I played ball with him in the house.

This post has turned out to be quite long, and since I promised I would post something tonight, and need to watch true blood, I will leave this as TO BE CONTINUED.

I am lame and haven’t had a chance to post as I’ve been traveling every weekend in July. I’ll post a recap after I get back from this weekend, and also hopefully some other ‘interesting tidbits’. But let’s be honest, most people who come to this blog are reading the pine mouth post!