Plaidophile

In the UK, Smarties (what we call M&Ms over here) used to come in a number of colors, including red, yellow, purple, green, blue, tan, orange, mauve, and fuchsia. it turns out that a few years ago, because artificial pigments are evil and toxic, the Smarties company changed the pigments to be "all-natural," but in the blue one they switched to a pigment made from a CHEMICAL derived from a BACTERIA called "cyanobacteria." So they are feeding our children CYANIDE (cyanobacteria are called that because they are natural producers of cyanide) and expecting you to just accept this! This is an outrage, and another example of BIG BUSINESS trying to pull the wool over our eyes.

We must stop supporting M&M Mars until the day that they remove the blue M&Ms from ALL versions of them around the world.

Once upon a time, cocktails were very simple, elegant things with only a couple of key flavors combined in a balanced manner. For example, the classic martini (gin, vermouth, and an olive) and the classic daíquiri (rum, lime, simple syrup) are favorites that will last forever.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, mixed drinks started to become these ridiculously cumbersome things which involved blending and puréeing and so on, and from the 60s to the 80s we started to even see classic cocktails be ruined by this trend (now "martini" seems to mean "any horrible concoction in a martini glass," and a daíquiri might as well be a strawberry smoothie).

With that in mind, I looked at the mixed drink which probably started it all — the piña colada — and sought to reinvent it as if it were a classic cocktail. I served several of these at a small party last night, and they were a success.

I used to eat a lot of active-culture yogurt, but I fell out of the habit a few months ago. But it turns out that it may have been doing more for me than I thought.

So I bought a whole bunch of active-culture yogurt on Tuesday and have been eating two servings a day (one for breakfast, one after dinner) and my ulcer symptoms have already all but disappeared.

So three cheers for this critter and its partner (who, sadly, does not come in a plushie, but looks similarly nondescript).

I think I might start culturing my own yogurt, too. It's fairly easy to do and somewhat cheaper than buying the active-culture stuff at the store.

• Took 101 on the way down. Kept regretting taking that instead of 1. Then I hit LA and traffic got terrible but I repeat myself. I think the extra time for 1 would have made the final part that much more annoying.
• Thursday night went to Tokyo Wako, which is a terrible, terrible restaurant. I was hoping for some simple sushi but everything there was best characterized as "too much of everything." Both rolls I got (one spider roll, one unagi roll — helpfully called "eel roll" instead for us poor Americans) were loaded up with avocado and disgustingly-sweet teriyaki sauce, and the pieces were too large to fit in my mouth and fell apart and so on. It's basically a local chain version of Benihana. NOT RECOMMENDED.
• Friday I went to the aquarium, which was nice, except that it happened to be the same day that a lot of LA elementary schools were taking a field trip, so I had a hard time taking any pictures or reading the signs or enjoying a nice quiet day at the aquarium. So, not very nice.
• Went to Zephyr, had half a grilled tofu sandwich (which was good but I didn't have much of an appetite before my set and after my set it was too late for me to eat anything per GERD treatment protocol), and had a great performance after a couple of false starts. Unfortunately, the stream crapped out just as I was getting good (or at least, I like to think so, but I haven't listened to the recordings yet). Got most of the musicians in the crowd to join me for a rousing chorus of Night Terrors, which was a wonderful trainwreck (in a good way).
• Saturday, wandered around the area near the hotel before going to a barbecue at Ross Durand's house. I showed up early (because traffic was way better than expected), and met his family, and slowly other Song Fight people trickled in, although the two who I really wanted to see again (MintyHandy and Johnny Cashpoint) couldn't make it due to bad circumstances. But that's okay. Got the next fight's title from Spud over the phone, and Alex (of the Seamus Collective) wrote an absolutely brilliant song, which we recorded in bluegrass style. I played cello. We're probably going to collaborate on improving parts of it over the next several days pre-submission (Ross wasn't feeling comfortable enough with his dulcimer playing to record it along with us, for example, and I'd like to record a separate cello part for the bridge and maybe some vocal harmonies) but even as recorded live it was wonderful. I got video, which I will post after the fight goes live.
• This morning, woke up at 5 AM and couldn't fall back to sleep. At 7 AM a badly-organized gay pride parade circled around the lagoon by the Hyatt. There were maybe 20 people in it, and their chant was: "What do we want? JUSTICE! When do we want it? NOW!" and of course it was not in a place that it would be seen or heard by anyone except tired out-of-towners.
• Now I'm just trying to figure out if I want to take 101 back (semi-pretty drive, but I've already seen it), or 1 (very pretty but also a grueling endurance test), or I-5 (a little faster than 101, boring). Will definitely be stopping at Chris's on the way in any case.

Cheap Italian food at 8 PM, followed by some caffeinated peppermints during a long midnight drive home.

Also it turns out that being woken up by a sharp pain at 5:30 AM feels a lot like dying. Enough so that I called 911 and they thought it was necessary for me to go to the hospital, and I had my first ambulance ride ever. My vital signs were fine, and my BP was actually elevated at first (but eventually returned to normal). The doctor on-call (Dr. Chandra, who is not an ostrich) asked me about my history with GERD and established that it was probably just last night's dinner, which was a party for a friend. At dinner I had a feeling it would cause something like this, but I wasn't really thinking straight, and I was afraid of major complications so that helped to fuel my panic that kept me from just going back to sleep.

Well, that and I was feeling drained and numb and hazy and I was shivering like crazy despite my apartment being a rather warm 71°F.

Anyway, I'm sure the real pain will be when I get the bill from my insurance.

So, now that I have a nicely-rebuilt balcony, I decided to get an electric grill. (California fire codes ban the use of charcoal, propane, or other combustible-source grills within 10 feet of a combustible wall of a multi-unit building.) There are a few models that I was looking at, but based on what I read online, the Weber Q 140 seemed like the best bet. Of course, all the online purchase options would have cost just as much as just buying it locally, so I decided to go to Bed Bath and Beyond to buy it.

BB&B didn't have the Weber in stock, but they did have the Sanyo HPS-SG3 on sale for only $40 (same as Amazon's price, although obviously I had to pay sales tax this way), and the helpful sales associate who pointed me to it spoke very highly of it (and apparently America's Test Kitchen reviewed it very favorably), so I decided to buy that instead.

It is basically just a heating element integrated into a cooking surface (in an extremely well-designed manner), a plastic (but also well-designed) stand, and a metal drip tray. I don't expect the plastic stand to really hold up very well, though. I'm already thinking of making some sort of metal stand for it (maybe by adapting a cheap charcoal grill ) that would allow me to also put a lid on it (some of the Amazon reviews recommend using an aluminum baking pan as a makeshift lid, but I'd be worried about that melting the plastic base immediately) which would then also make it suitable for smokier cooking.

At the very least, this electric grill and a Stovetop Smoker together cost less than even the cheapest electric grill+smoker I could find (and most of them cost at least twice that).

I will be sure to keep people apprised as soon as I have a chance to actually cook with this thing (which will not happen until I get a sufficiently-large patio table and an extension cord).

I also realize how silly it is to take an item that is supposed to bring an outdoor cooking technique indoors and then immediately try to make it an outdoor thing.

Per my not-very-scientific test of MSG sensitivity.

So, ever since college I've been living with the belief that I'm MSG-sensitive, due to a not-very-controlled-but-good-enough-at-the-time series of observations about migraines and tactile hallucinations, which seemed to coincide with eating MSG-rich foods and which stopped when I stopped eating them. A recent forum thread (which I alluded to in a previous blog entry) led me to finally question this assumption; several peer-reviewed controlled studies have been done on MSG sensitivity and nothing found any rhyme or reason or consistency to an MSG response.

There are a few possibilities which came up; I came to the conclusion when I was going through a pretty stressful time in my life and had terrible dietary habits, and it could have been the combination of MSG and salt, along with being in a perpetual state of dehydration, for example, and perhaps this led to a taste aversion to the flavor of MSG itself.

Since I figured out the sensitivity, I always responded to the flavor of MSG with a prophylactic migraine protocol — aspirin, caffeine, and water. I would also often still develop a migraine (but not the hallucinations) anyway, and that could very easily be a psychogenic response. (Pain is one of the hardest things to measure objectively or repeatably — even the mere suggestion that a change in pain response is being measured is enough to completely change the way the pain is responded to.)

So, I decided to try eating some MSG-flavored food. Not a controlled double-blind study or anything, just a simple test to see if I can eat MSG without ill effects. Of course, I won't be able to draw any useful conclusions from it, aside from whether I actually need to keep on avoiding MSG (regardless of what the real underlying cause is).

It took me a while to figure out which food to use as a test, though. I didn't want to buy something I wouldn't normally eat anyway (such as Doritos), and I didn't want to buy MSG as a raw ingredient since even if I'm not sensitive to it, I wouldn't be using it anyway. My basic criteria were: decent-quality food that came as a single serving which I would normally eat (regardless of MSG content) but which happened to contain MSG. I finally settled on clam chowder as such a thing, since every time I've wanted clam chowder, every store-bought brand has been rich in MSG.

So, of course, imagine my surprise that pretty much every brand of clam chowder is now MSG-free, which I would have never known if I was operating under the assumption I couldn't have MSG. (Which is a bit ironic since a big reason for this is so that I can relax about what I eat and actually enjoy things again, without needlessly constraining the people I'm eating with.) I still ended up buying a brand with MSG — but it actually took me a while to find one!

Anyway, I haven't eaten it yet - I'll probably try it tomorrow night.

There seem to be three camps in the ongoing debates about MSG as a cause of migraines:

1. Zealoty MSG-conspiracy folks who think that any form of glutamate (bound or unbound) is WRONG WRONG WRONG and all MSG in all its forms should be stamped out FOREVER
2. People who are out to disprove the MSG-conspiracy folks, who use any use of "I am MSG-sensitive" or "MSG is one of my migraine triggers" as evidence that someone is in camp 1 who are all experiencing psychosomatic/psychogenic symptoms and are WRONG WRONG WRONG
3. People who have MSG as a trigger for migraines, usually among many other triggers

I just realized I neglected to post this here: lately I've been experimenting with homemade soda. I had a few really bad results the last time I tried this (a year ago) but I decided to try Alton Brown's ginger ale out. After I assembled it all, I felt like experimenting with my own base as well. I'd been thinking of making root beer, but then had a flash of inspiration and decided to make chocolate mocha soda.

1. Should chili have beans?
2. How strongly do you feel about this?

So, lately I've been using my soda siphon again, especially at parties. A soda siphon is a little pressure vessel that takes a liter or so of water and a small CO₂ cartridge, and combines them to make fresh seltzer at home. They are best known as a classic prop comedy device. They are also much more convenient than bottled seltzer since you can keep about a hundred liters' worth of CO₂ cartridges in the space of about one 1-liter bottle, and they're also much more environmentally-friendly because you're just using municipal water, and the shipping of the cartridges takes very little fuel (I'd estimate at about a 300:1 ratio compared to the premade equivalent), and the discarded cartridges are 100% recyclable aluminum (unlike plastic drink bottles which degrade very quickly in the recycling process). Also, if you can get a good deal on cartridges, it ends up cheaper (or at least no more expensive) than the bottled stuff. The main downside is that the resulting seltzer isn't as bubbly as commercially-prrepared seltzer, but it still has most of the mouthfeel (especially when it's fresh and made with ice-cold water in an ice-cold siphon).

Since people have been interested in getting their own, there's not a whole lot you need. There are several soda siphons available (I have the iSi Soda Siphon Brushed Aluminum 2248), and then as far as cartridges go, you can often find them at restaurant suppliers or wholesalers (e.g. Cash and Carry). My most recent shipment came from Creamright, which specializes in these things (they also have N₂O cartridges for making whipped cream and/or getting high); I just use their generic CO₂ cartridges. They also have slightly better deals on siphons, too.

Anyway, the other part of the equation is that after you have a source of seltzer (and this works with bottled seltzer too), you can make your own soda with Torani syrup, which comes in a bunch of flavors, and is sweetened with sugar instead of HFCS (and they also have diet versions). I just buy that stuff at BevMo.

If you want soda that's brewed in a more traditional way, there are plenty of recipes out there for home-brewed ginger ale and root beer using a fermentation process, or you can cheat and get (or make) an appropriate syrup and mix it with seltzer (typically by making simple syrup and combining it with a flavor extract). That does generate a slightly different flavor, though, and a fermentation approach also produces a bit of alcohol (not enough to get drunk, but enough to cause problems if you have an alcohol-sensitive medical condition).

So, I finally got myself one of the portable hand-crank burr grinders. It does in fact make a much nicer grind than the mill grinder, although there's still enough powder that there's a bit of sludge at the bottom of the cup (when using my current filter setup). It's not nearly as bad as it was with the mill grinder though.

I do still want a better filter than the Finum Teeli filter I've been using. The mesh holes are fine for tea but they're a little too big for coffee. Still, it makes an excellent brew. Maybe I'll try bringing my French press in.

We did start getting pre-ground coffee at work, but I'm still using my burr grinder and beans from home, because the pre-ground coffee is terrible (not to mention WAY too finely-ground for anything other than paper filters).

Martinis: It was fun to make these for people, having practiced quite a lot lately. Not only did we finish off my bottle of Tanqueray, but we put a decent dent into the 1750mL bottle of Sapphire. Highly recommended. A+

Lately I've been drinking coffee a lot more, and experimenting with different brewing techniques. The ones I like the best are a French press, and (my current at-work favorite) a Teeli brew basket, as they do a much better job of extraction than paper filters (not to mention are easier to deal with and a bit more environmentally-friendly). The problem, of course, is that with a mill grinder, either my grind is too coarse (and so it doesn't extract properly), or there's enough powder that I end up with a thick layer of sludge at the bottom, and so drinking my cup of coffee becomes like a game of chicken.

Supposedly a burr grinder eliminates this problem because it crushes the beans down to an exact size (in a manner not dissimilar from rock-crushing equipment) rather than pulverizing it randomly, but burr grinders start at $80 for extremely basic (and not very trustworthy) models.

There are apparently some hand-cranked burr grinders out there, and I wouldn't be opposed to trying one of those, but finding specific ones seems to be a bit of a challenge. The two I found on Amazon seem decent but they come from third-party merchants and so I'd like to be sure I'm getting something worth the inevitable hassle. REI sells one of them that's intended to be portable (always a plus) and supposedly pretty good, so I could probably just swing by REI on my way home someday. Has anyone used that one?

I just went to Yo's Sushi Club for dinner, because I felt like treating myself. It is quite excellent.

I had the voodoo salmon nigiri, Yo's Special maki (the most amazingly elaborate maki I've ever seen), and an umeshiso maki (umeshi + shiso leaves). Also a large Sapporo. I am amazingly stuffed and satisfied and the total bill was only $32 (after tip). Obviously not something I'm going to do every night or anything, but as an occasional treat, I highly recommend it.

Most nights it's very crowded, but tonight I was the only one there. So, I guess Thursday night is a good time to go, if that's your sort of thing.

Tonight was of course פֶּסַח and so I went over to Berkeley for my cousin's סֵדֶר, which is a large enough affair that he does it as a pot luck. Since I didn't have any ideas for what to bring, he assigned me to do the חֲרֽוֹסֶת, which is one of the vital staple symbolic foods (it represents the mortar the slaves used to assemble the pyramids, never mind that the pyramids probably didn't use mortar).

Growing up, eating חֲרֽוֹסֶת always seemed like something of a chore, so I decided to kick it up a bit and make it something people would actually want to eat. Since I didn't know how many people were coming to dinner I made a whole bunch (which turned out to be about twice as much as needed). On the plus side, it was the hit of the dinner and people were commenting about it non-stop.

I ended up leaving all the leftovers with my cousin, since I don't have any מַצָּה‎ to put it on and no inclination to eat it on its own.

So, since I take BART home every day now, I end up walking past quite a few Mexican grocers, who all have a bunch of fine, low-cost produce bins on the sidewalk. I never really paid them any mind because the Mexican grocer across the street from me (Azteca produce) is generally pretty crap, but lately I've been looking at them rather a lot and noticing how good most of their produce looks, and of course the prices are pretty phenomenal.

For the past few days I've just been picking up a few items at different ones on the way home, and it's actually really good stuff, and incredibly cheap compared to what I'm used to. Today I got a whole bunch of onions and jalapeños and dried black beans for $2.50, and yesterday at a different stand I got some very nice tomatoes and tomatillos and corn and a big bag of garlic bulbs and a jar of capers and a few other things for about $6. And it's good quality stuff!

So because of the whole mouse thing I decided to try out other local grocery stores. The top contender was Precita Food Mart which is actually slightly closer to my home than Safeway. So today I went there, and found out that Yelp has a very strange idea of what a grocery store is. This was more of a convenience store, with just two lonely aisles of overpriced canned food, beer, and wine. There was also a freezer case with some old ice cream and a basket of overripe bananas. (As it turns out, there are two Yelp listings for it for some reason; the other one, which I wouldn't have found with my search for "groceries," is much more accurate.)

The other local contender is 26th and Guerrero Market, which is a little bit of a schlep, but the reviews are much more promising, although they still say it's not suitable for "major grocery shopping." So, it's still not a Safeway replacement.

I don't know what's the worse possibility:

1. That my kitchen has mice
2. That the Safeway has mice running around in the bread department, and I've eaten 4 out of 6 bagels without realizing that the bottom-most one had been chewed on

Considering I see no other evidence of mice in my home, I'm pretty sure it's the second one. Euughghghh.