I find the extract to be weak and insipid. Low-temperature brewing (see below) doesn't make for a satisfying, flavorful cup. Diluting it makes it weak in the extreme. If I were to drink cold-water coffee, I would drink the extract undiluted. It's not strong at all. This makes for more expensive coffee. You only get about 29 fluid ounces, undiluted, from a pound of beans, compared to 225 fl. oz. from a pound brewed at 200 degrees.
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Brewing is the method we use to extract the good soluble solids from coffee. Not enough extraction leaves an insipid brew, as in cold-water extraction; too much extraction from brewing that is too long or too hot produces bitterness. But brewing the correct grind for the maker at the right temperature (195 to 205 Fahrenheit) and the right time (3 to 5 minutes) gives you what we have all been seeking these last 1,000 years: a good cup of coffee.
As it turns out, the same cold, nutrient-rich water that made Maine the kingpin of the lobster industry also produces perfect oysters. The Damariscotta’s water is some of the cleanest in the Northeast and gives the oysters their distinctively briny taste. Because Maine oysters take two to four years to grow to maturity, compared with a year or two in warmer waters, they also develop firmer meat, a deep cup and a thick shell that makes for easier shucking.
These days there are 12 ma-and-pa farms like Glidden Point scattered along the banks of the river. Every year, they ship more than two million oysters to restaurants like the Tabard Inn in Washington and the raw bars at Balthazar and Craftsteak in New York City.
Dip your hands, including the backs of your hands and knuckles, in flour and lift 1 piece of dough by getting under it with a pastry scraper. Very gently lay the dough across your fists and carefully stretch it by bouncing the dough in a circular motion on your hands, carefully giving it a little stretch with each bounce. If it begins to stick to your hands, lay it down on the floured counter and reflour your hands, then continue shaping it. Once the dough has expanded outward, move to a full toss as shown on page 208.Now, why I thought I could bounce dough on my fists when I handn't even been able to get a round pizza by pushing out with my fingers is a mystery... and about where the trouble started. I never got to the "full toss" luckily, so there wasn't any pizza dough on the ceiling or anything... but I made such an abysmal effort I had to beg Anna to come in and fix my lame shaping. She did so, but what I really should have done is taken a deep breath or two and let the dough relax for 5-20 minutes while I moved to the next piece and shaped with my fingers or a rolling pin. That's what I'll do next time I screw it up... not be afraid to squish it back together and let it relax. Anyway, I got it onto the peel and put the sauce on and then started to put on my cheese mixture (2 parts Gruyère, 1 part Asiago, 1 part Gorgonzola, and a couple of teaspons of dried basil and oregano)... but I had been planning on a bigger pizza then we ended up with, and consequently had too much cheese... instead of just saving the leftovers for when I make my next pizza (we have four more balls of dough in the freezer after all) I just piled it all on the pizza. This would be my second mistake. I got it on to the baking stone fine, but the excessive cheese soon melted and ran down onto the stone... giving us a bit of smoke and and nice fine heady aroma about the apartment. Having some toppings fall off onto the stone to burn is a fairly typical experience, so I shouldn't have worried too much... but I let it get in my head and mess up my game. Part of the reason was Reinhart's suggestion to put the baking stone on the floor of the oven (if it's a gas oven obvi)... this will get the stone as hot as possible (good!) but if it's not on a rack you can't pull it out to give you the easiest time getting the pizza on there (very very bad - as we shall soon see).
Using the recipe out of Bread Maker's Apprentice (recipe available here), I made a batch of Reinhart's pizza dough last night... leaving two roughly 6 ounce balls of dough in the fridge tonight's pizza making, and freezing the other four for later. Anna and I really enjoy homemade pizzas, but up until this point, we have used the simple and straightforward dough recipe out of New Best Recipe... handy since it's made in the food processor and can be used the same day you mix it (not true of Reinhart's). However, as I've gotten a bit into bread making, I've become a little disappointed with the NBR dough... I don't find it to give terribly consistent results, and I'd prefer a little bit more chew and oven spring than we generally get from it... so, since both things I've made from Bread Maker's Apprentice have been amazing, I thought I'd give Reinhart's dough a shot. Reinhart is a big fan of delayed fermentation... the same deal as Pain a l'Ancienne, which we already know is tasty... so you chill the flour and use cold water to make it and immediately put your dough balls into the fridge... putting the yeast into super slow motion, which apparently does all sorts of wonderful flavor things which I don't really understand.Republicans are acting in their individual and collective political self-interest. Individually, Republicans realize that their base is convinced that Obamacare equals socialism plus death panels, and thus any Republican who signs on would kiss away his political future and quite likely face a primary challenge. Collectively, the party has put all its chips on defeating health care reform, or, as a fallback, withholding support and rendering reform a "partisan" exercise that can be used against red state Democrats in 2010.
It's a smart political strategy. But the health care plan that Obama signs is going to be around for a very lon time. Republicans might one day come to wonder if picking up some seats in 2010 were worth forgoing a chance to help put their imprint on the U.S. health care system.
The Courier user experience presented here is almost the exact opposite of what everyone expects the Apple tablet to be, a kung fu eagle claw to Apple's tiger style. It's complex: Two screens, a mashup of a pen-dominated interface with several types of multitouch finger gestures, and multiple graphically complex themes, modes and applications. (Our favorite UI bit? The hinge doubles as a "pocket" to hold items you want move from one page to another.) Microsoft's tablet heritage is digital ink-oriented, and this interface, while unlike anything we've seen before, clearly draws from that, its work with the Surface touch computer and even the Zune HD.Supposedly it's in the "late prototype" stage, but the fact that the video is all animation seems to suggest its still a bit away... but I'm going to keep my eye on this.
A moderate intensity hike in one of the less trafficked areas of Acadia National Park. The parking area for the trail head is on Fernald Point Road off of 102, near Southwest Harbor. Despite the fact that the trail isn't in a tourist heavy area, the relatively low height of the peaks and large number of nearby houses don't make for a secluded hike. In fact, we heard what sounded like a wedding reception both as we started and as we finished the hike.
That said, the spectacular views of Somes Sound, Southwest Harbor, Northeast Harbor, and the Cranberry Isles make it worth the risk of noise pollution.
I would advise against taking the path we did towards St. Sauveur from Valley Peak. The trail has no views and the peak itself is unimpressive... in retrospect we should have stayed on Valley Peak trail headed towards Man O' War truck road. If you would like a more strenuous hike, you can skip Flying Mountain and just do an out-and-back on Valley Peak... but you'll miss some pretty nice views along the water.
It's been a somewhat popular refrain, both on this blog and in my life, for me to remark that "I don't cook enough" or "I really should be cooking more"... and it's true! I blog about most of what I cook, and a quick browse through the archives would show that I'm not cooking more than once or twice a week and I often go through fairly long phases where I'm not really cooking much of anything. Now, since my significant other is a vegetarian, if I'm cooking meat then once or twice a week is fairly decent, since it means I'm eating lots of leftovers... the Chicken and 40 cloves of Garlic, for example, lasted something like 3 or 4 days... but ideally we'd be cooking more often... either together or dishes we would both want to eat.
A post over at the IFA by Ezra Klein, criticizing the Food Network, has provoked quite a bit of commentary thereabouts (including my own)... and gotten me to thinking enough to post about it here. Criticizing the Food Network, or food related television in general, has been quite popular lately so Ezra didn't break much new ground there. Pollan did it in the New York Times a couple of months a go with Michael Ruhlman posting some similar thoughts in response, while within said comments Ruhlman pointed to three year old criticism from Bill Buford in the New Yorker (that I hadn't seen).
Paul Krugman has an article today saying that while the Baucus bill is terrible and unworkable in it's current form, it does form a better basis for reform that most of us expected.So something along the general lines of the Baucus plan might be acceptable. But details matter. And the bad news is that the plan, as it stands, is inadequate or badly conceived in three major ways.
First, it bungles the so-called “employer mandate.” Most reform plans include a provision requiring that large employers either provide their workers with health coverage or pay into a fund that would help workers who don’t get insurance through their job buy coverage on their own. Mr. Baucus, however, gets too clever, trying to tie each employer’s fees to the subsidies its own employees end up getting.
That’s a terrible idea. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, it would make companies reluctant to hire workers from lower-income families — and it would also create a bureaucratic nightmare. This provision has to go and be replaced with a simple pay-or-play rule.
Second, the plan is too stingy when it comes to financial aid. Lower-middle-class families, in particular, would end up paying much more in premiums than they do under the Massachusetts plan, suggesting that for many people insurance would not, in fact, be affordable. Fixing this means spending more than Mr. Baucus proposes.
Third, the plan doesn’t create real competition in the insurance market. The right way to create competition is to offer a public option, a government-run insurance plan individuals can buy into as an alternative to private insurance. The Baucus plan instead proposes a fake alternative, nonprofit insurance cooperatives — and it places so many restrictions on these cooperatives that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, they “seem unlikely to establish a significant market presence in many areas of the country.”
That's Portland Maine, not Oregon, making a surprise appearance in the New York Times Dining section (Slide Show here).In the last decade, Portland has undergone a controlled fermentation for culinary ideas — combining young chefs in a hard climate with few rules, no European tradition to answer to, and relatively low economic pressure — and has become one of the best places to eat in the Northeast. The most interesting chefs here cook up and down the spectrum, from Erik Desjarlais’s classically pressed roast ducks at Evangeline, to the renegade baker Stephen Lanzalotta’s gorgeously caramelized sfogliatelle (sold out of the back of Micucci Grocery, an Italian-imports shop), to Mr. Potocki’s simple but brilliant chili-garlic cream cheese and handmade bagels.
Here’s a sign the Washington Post is a liberal newspaper: today’s Adam Bernstein obituary for Patrick Swayze begins obviously by noting his big hits "Ghost" and "Dirty Dancing," but doesn’t get to "Red Dawn" until paragraph 23.
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"Red Dawn" was not a prestigious film, but it was a breakout lead role for Swayze, and a completely shocking product coming out of a Hollywood: a movie about American teens fighting a resistance against a Soviet invasion of the United States.
There are clearly no fortysomething Reaganites working in the Washington Post newsroom.
There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false – the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.
...I suspect that Ezra and others understate the extent to which even a public plan with limited bargaining power will help hold down overall costs. Private insurers do pay providers more than Medicare does — but that’s only part of the reason Medicare has lower costs. There’s also the huge overhead of the private insurers, much of which involves marketing and attempts to cherry-pick clients — and even with community rating, some of that will still go on. A public plan would probably be able to attract clients with much less of that.
...a public plan would probably provide the only real competition in many markets.
Remember, to make reform work we have to have an individual mandate. And everything I see says that there will be a major backlash against the idea of forcing people to buy insurance from the existing companies. That backlash was part of what got Obama the nomination! Having the public option offers a defense against that backlash.
What worries me is not so much that the backlash would stop reform from passing, as that it would store up trouble for the not-too-distant future. Imagine that reform passes, but that premiums shoot up (or even keep rising at the rates of the past decade.) Then you could all too easily have many people blaming Obama et al for forcing them into this increasingly unaffordable system. A trigger might fix this — but the funny thing about such triggers is that they almost never get pulled.
The range of possibilities is now between the $900-or-so billion envisioned by Baucus and the $1.1 trillion envisioned by the House plan. That cements a consensus in advance of the president's speech laying out the White House's plan: Obama, after all, can hardly emerge with a stingier proposal than Baucus has offered.
That said, $900 billion is still less money than you really want for this plan. Something around $1.2 trillion is a better bet for doing this right. The difference there is a pretty manageable $30 billion a year. The hope is that Baucus's bill looks better after it's amended by the other Democrats on the Finance Committee, merged with the more generous HELP Committee bill, and then tweaked on the Senate floor by the Democrats left out of both processes. But the fact that we're talking about $900 billion as opposed to $700 billion means we're in a much better place than we could have been.
Ben & Jerry’s, which has long backed liberal causes, plans to rebrand “Chubby Hubby” as “Hubby Hubby” for 30 days to show support for Vermont’s new law.
The move is mostly symbolic, as Burlington-based Ben & Jerry’s isn’t changing labels on “Chubby Hubby” pints sold in stores.
Finally, I opened my Larousse Gastronomique and there it was: a mix of egg yolks, saffron, garlic, cayenne and olive oil. The instructions were terse. Mash the garlic, then whisk in the yolks and, gradually, the oil. Grinding garlic to a paste in my blender was impossible, so I lugged out my mortar and pestle and smashed the garlic to a pulp. I was about to transfer it to the blender to test fate when I had another idea: finish the sauce with the mortar and pestle. Maybe unplugged was the way to go.
I tried it, pounding the yolks with the seasonings and adding the oil in driblets. Three minutes later, with no culinary skill employed, I had a thick, glossy mound. Unlike a wimpier mayonnaise, the rouille packed a pungent wallop with a musky saffron kick.
