Starry Wisdom

I’ve been neglecting the blog this month. I don’t have any good reason besides a lack of much to say. However, now I do have a few things.

1. Rock Band: After naysaying for a year and a half, I bought an Xbox 360 last fall. This turns out to be one of the best electronic purchases I’ve ever made, considering the use I’ve gotten out of it (mostly from watching video on it – either via playon , netflix or hosted on my windows machine (which died and had to be replaced recently, which caused me much angst, but…). However I’ve played a few arcade games, and two games I’ve purchased – Bioshock and Fallout 3. The latter I played the crap out of, but its time had come to get a new game. After spending a weekend playing Rock Band in Lake Tahoe (the first time I’ve played it in a year) I decided it was time to take the plunge. So I’ve been rocking out on Rock Band 2, and will likely get the Beatles version later this year.
2. Where the Wild Things Are: I saw the second public showing of this evar last night – a benefit show for 826 Valencia, where I’ve been volunteering for the past few weeks. I won’t lie – the tickets were not cheap, but it was for a good cause, and for a movie I’d been wanting to see since I first saw a trailer. Spike Jonze, who directed and co-wrote the move with Dave Eggers (founder of 826), decided long ago that he wanted to do benefit shows at all the chapters before the movie was released (in fact the Chicago chapter had the first public showing the night before). The movie is out on 10/16 and I do recommend you see it, especially if you have children or enjoyed the book as a child. Also, I got a cool crown:
   
3. Halloween: It’s coming in a few weeks. I don’t really have any plans yet, but I do have a costume in the making. It’s a costume not quite as obscure as my Zenmai Samurai costume from 2007, but not main stream either. Most of the implementation of it is complete, but I need to buy one more piece of clothing for it to be complete. Here is a hint – if you can figure it out from it, you will get a lot of credit:
   

I wrote a piece about washing bananas. Please note, it is in jest, although there is some truth hidden in my rant..

How to clean a banana

Two weeks ago, on August 22, I had people over for dinner. I made this recipe for the Zuni Cafe roasted chicken with bread salad. The recipe/dinner itself would almost be worthy for a post in and of itself, but as you can see, Deb has already well explained the recipe, and I have something more important to talk about – Pine Mouth. I know, you are probably thinking “what the heck is pine mouth?” I would be saying the exact same thing in your shoes, if I didn’t have the unfortunate experience myself.

I suppose it makes the most sense for me to explain this by way of a timeline, and fill in the information as I learned of it.

Tuesday August 25, 2009 – I woke up for work (I work from home Tuesday mornings), and while I was brewing the coffee, I grabbed a gum drop from a plastic bin as a snack. It tasted a bit strange to me, extra bitter, but I thought maybe it was just a bad gum drop, and didn’t think much of it. The coffee, prepared in a Moka pot, also tasted a bit bitter, but I thought I had burned it some, and just kind of powered through. Neither of these tastes really made me think anything was wrong, but after I got to the office around 11, I noticed that there was a persistent foul taste in my mouth – a acrid, sour taste. I thought maybe I was having some reflux, not completely unheard of for me, so I had a Tums, which also tasted completely awful. When 30 minutes later the taste didn’t go away – in fact it was hanging there like a bitter blanket on the back of my tongue, I started to get concerned. So I did what any sane person would do, and I googled “bitter taste on back of tongue”, and found a bunch of very concerning articles – was my liver failing? Did I actually have a brain tumor? However, thankfully, I noticed, far down on the page, a reference to pine nuts causing a bitter taste. “I had pine nuts Sunday in the bread salad, in fact I had a bunch while cooking dinner too…” was in my mind.

I did some more googling around, and found that wikipedia contains a reference to this outcome, as well as a link to a paper in the European Journal of Emergency Medicine describing this affliction. Interestingly enough, the paper is from 2001, but most of the 13,000 hits for “Pine Mouth” seem to be from the past 9 months or so. So what’s going on here? Well, no one knows, but I will talk about what’s known:

1. Around two days after eating certain pine nuts, certain people develop a lingering, unpleasant taste sensation
2. The pine nuts that have caused the issue appear to be mostly sourced from China, or other places in the East. European and American pine nuts appear to be precluded from causing this, for now
3. The exact methodology of this affliction is not known (but I will discuss a hypothesis of mine shortly
4. The affliction lasts for about one to two weeks for more people

Seeing this all relieved me greatly, and also caused me to realize that the bitter taste was reminiscent of the bitter component to pine nuts’ flavor. I made it through the rest of the day eating food that tasted poorly, and just suffered.

Wednesday August 26, 2009 – This mostly probably the worst day of the experience taste wise, because everything I put in my mouth, save for water, tasted like it was coated in dish soap. I was also a bit concerned by getting affected now (and note that none of the other 3 people at dinner got hit by this, so perhaps my extra snacking before dinner helped this along), since I had plans to go wine tasting in Napa the coming weekend with Mackenzie, and what’s the point in wine tasting if all the wine tastes like soap!?

Thursday August 27, 2009 – The soap taste had receded a bit. It was now more of an aftertaste (and a most foul one at that), and I found that some foods had strong after tastes than others. In particular high carb/high sugar foods were the soapiest, and spicy and savory items were markedly less so. I had some hope that by the coming Saturday I would be “better”.

Saturday August 29, 2009 – Sadly, I wasn’t all the way better by Saturday. The soapy aftertaste was certainly less strong, and it lingered far less, but my taste was still not up to par. I couldn’t trust any aftertaste in any of the wines I tasted (and, alas, port in particular was fouled by the soapy aftertaste, which made my otherwise fun visit to Prager Port imperfect.

Wednesday September 2, 2009 – After brushing my teeth in the morning I thought to myself “hey, was this baking soda tooth paste”, because it had that sort of aftertaste. It was not, just normal minty stuff, but this also the last little whisper of the Pine Mouth distastefulness. I was, after this, free at last!

So it lasted a bit more than 8 days for me, which seems to be right around the average, but the big questions remain – what the heck is this, how does it work? Of course, I can’t answer everything, but I can say that scraping your tongue, eating things like parsley, etc have no impact on this. It’s something inside (or chemically bonded) to your taste buds which causes this. And, I think this is the key to the one to two week duration – the life span to a taste bud is about two weeks. So, I, hypothesize that some chemical in these pine nuts from China or Korea or etc, binds with the taste receptors in some taste buds, and then over the course of 36 or 48 hours, metabolizes into some other chemical that blocks all taste except bitter, and perhaps even generates this taste. Now, as these afflicted taste buds die off over the next two weeks, your taste gradually returns to normal.

That’s my story with Pine Mouth. I’m going to be hesitant to eat pine nuts sourced from Asia again, but I’m not going to completely avoid them. It’s entirely possible I will never face this again (and I hope so), but at least I’ll know what it is next time. Have you ever had pine mouth? What was your experience like? Let me know!

I’ve taken two trips by air in the past few weeks. Because they were so close together, I didn’t have time to post about the first one before going on the second. So, I’ll be posting in reverse order.

I went to Kansas City, MO for my friend Katie’s wedding. This was a short trip – my flight out of Kansas City was scheduled to take off 49 hours after my flight from San Francisco. I say schedule, because the latter was late – which made my trip out pretty annoying. We left about an hour late, which was bad because I had a connection to make in Denver, and only about 45 minutes to make it. The reason for the delay was mechanical – evidently a bird strike earlier required them to need to do extra maintenance. Anyway, once I got to Denver I had to go to the Frontier customer service desk to get a new flight. The guy who was working there must be the most patient man alive, because there were a lot of irate people in the line. Me included, but I kept my ire to myself. It wasn’t his fault. I got standy on a flight out 2 hours later, and confirmed on the flight 4 hours later. Either way, I was going to get in to Missouri a while after my friends, who I was supposed to meet up with and drive back to our hotel, and then on to the BBQ the night before at Katie’s Mom’s house. The BBQ was the reason that I woke up at 4:30Am, so I could drive down to Park ‘N Fly and make my 6:15 flight. SFO to MCI is not a very well serviced route – the only direct flight I could find was in the middle of the afternoon on Midwest, which would have gotten me in at 8:30 or so – too late for the BBQ!

Well, I made it on the earlier of the two flights, but it was delayed so we didn’t actually end up taking off until about 15 minutes before the second flight was scheduled to. I have no idea if that flight was delayed or not, but based on my track record with Frontier, I have to assume so. So far they are 100% (2 for 2) for me. Anyway, I got in to MCI around 5:30, and after walking around pretty much the whole circular terminal, I walked outside to find out every door had a rental shuttle stop. Soon enough I was on the bus and over to Hertz, and and from there, it was a quick drive to Katie’s Mom’s house, and a beer! Luckily for my friends, Katie herself was able to pick them up from the hotel and take them to the BBQ, so it worked out well for everyone.

The BBQ was fun, but man it was hot outside! At around 10:00 or so, we drove back to the hotel (The Q hotel and Spa in the Westport district). I checked in, and got one last drink in the hotel bar with Scott and Andrea before crashing hard at about midnight, and sleeping soundly until 8:30AM.

Saturday, I just bummed about in the morning, getting an english muffin at the hotel breakfast, and then around 11:30 or so, I got in touch with Scott. I had decided to go to Okalahoma Joe’s BBQ in Kansas Ciy, Kansas, as an excuse to check that state off of my list of states. It’s also supposed to be about the best BBQ place around the area, as well as one of Anthony Bourdain’s 13 places to eat before you die (a fact which I didn’t learn until Sunday morning). The Hotel was only about half a mile from the state line, as is the Gas Station restaurant where scott and I ate lunch. We got there at a good time, because the line to order was only slightly long when we got there, but it was snaking outside into the parking lot by time we left [insert picture here]. It was pretty good but also mighty filling. We stopped off by the state line on the way back so I could take some goofy pictures XXX, before heading back to the hotel.

Around 2:30 we met down in the lobby, dressed in our fancy wedding attire, and also ran into Phil and Michelle, who were also staying at the hotel. We all drove over to Screenland, the movie theater where the wedding was taking place. I was sort of surprised that Phil was still at the hotel, as he was the officiant for the wedding! It was a good thing I rented the car (I mean, I’m sure people would have figured an alternate out – the hotel had a car service, plus there are cabs somewhere in Kansas City, I’d reckon), and even though 5 people in a Yaris is not super comfortable, none of the drives were particularly long. It was also nice that I brought my GPS on the trip – sure, it confused me a couple of times, and I had to alter routes a bit, but it did a pretty good job of getting us where we needed to be, and in particular we got to the theater in plenty of time.

The wedding itself was pretty neat – movie trailers, then a simple ceremony, featuring an infamous story about Lynard Skynnard as the “sermon”. Soon enough the bride and groom were kissing, and we retired to a decent sized room elsewhere in the building for the reception. The food was all vegan, and decent to delicious. For dessert there were cupcakes that Katie herself baked, which is pretty hardcore!

Because I was transportation for Phil, and he was needed for some official pictures, we ended up staying to almost the bitter end (I have to admit I was pretty bored for a while at the end, because I only had a few drinks – I was driving after all). We made plans to go to this ludicrous bar right across from the hotel – America’s Pub, but well, we never actually made it there. After going to the hotel, we headed over to McCoy’s pub for dinner, and a couple more drinks, and met up with a couple more friends who were staying at a nearby hotel. Dinner was pretty good (they have excellent Macaroni and Cheese), and after that and some weird conversation (sorry), we headed back to our hotels and ended the night 11PM or so.

Today, I was up at 6:30, and slowly got packed and checked out of the hotel. I was driving Phil and Michelle to the airport, as their flight was (so we thought) 9:30, and mine was 9:45. It was about a 30 minute drive to the airport, where we learned that their flight was 9:10 – they still should have had enough time to make it to the terminal from the rental car return, and the airport wasn’t very busy – and since it has security checkpoints for every 5 gates or so, I am pretty confident they made it on time.

Anyway, I got a snack at starbuck’s before entering the secure area and boarding my flight on Midwest Airlines. The plane is a Boeing 717 – a model I’ve not been on before. I seem to have lucked out with a seat near the front of the plane, which is only 2 x 2 instead of 2 x 3, and as such has a wider seats. So far this airline seems to be pretty nice. Not very useful to me for most of the flights I take, but something nice to know.

I bought a 6 pack of Budweiser American Ale this evening. I’ve been interested in trying it since they advertised on the This American Life podcast earlier this year, but I noticed it in a store before. So anyway, the six pack was $7.50 at Mollie Stone’s.

Here is my assessment – this beer is OK. It’s completely unlike anything else from the Buddweiser line, but then again, it’s not an American lager, the most boring sort of beer around. It’s not really exiting, mind you – the claimed “hoppy finish” is hoppy only when compared to normal Bud, but still, it’s fairly tasty. Would be a good beer on a hot day, for instance. It’s just overpriced, as it’s not a real craft brew.

I think I should explain the origin of the name Regibarto, which you may or may not have seen me reference before. Probably not, but it’s worth explaining anyway. My sister-in-law (my brother’s wife), is pregnant, and due any day a few days ago. However, my future nephew is not here yet, so I still can and do refer to him as Regibarto.

“Why Regibarto?” you may ask.

The answer is that I am a cad.

Earlier this year (March or April), my parents were visiting me from Chicago. One afternoon, when we were killing some time at my apartment before dinner, my mom asked me if I had talked to my brother recently about possible names for her upcoming grandson. Now, I had spoken to my brother, but he just said the same thing he had told me before, that they didn’t have a name yet, and I took that as a good answer. But my mom, she would have nothing of this, because I think at the time she wasn’t very happy with the names being bantered about. They were mostly gaelic names, such as Finbar and Brom. Names which my mother was not too pleased.

Anyway, knowing this fact, I decided, on the spur of the moment, to create a name of such immense humor and power that any other name would seem normal. This name, I decided, somehow, was Regibarto. And so I told my mother that I knew of a non Gaelic name they were considering, and that it was on my brother and sister-in-law’s short list. Of course, being me, I could not do this with a straight face, so I was giggling sitting next to my mother on the couch. But somehow, she believed me enough to call my brother up on the spot and try to confirm this insanity! Unfortunately, my brother wasn’t in the proper game playing mood, so he denied that he had ever heard the name Regibarto.

This might have been the end of the name, if it weren’t as awesome as it is. But to this day, my mother has been using it to refer to the still unborn nephew. And, I have to say, even once he is named by his parents, the poor kid is going to have to deal with a crazy uncle who refers to him as Regibarto from time to time!

Talking to Paul at work today, he surmised that it might be that the encoding was off, and instead of the receiver thinking that the dialog should go to the central channel (in phase on L and R inputs) it should go to the rear channel (out of phase on L and R inputs). I guess that’s a bit simplified for how Prologic works, but the upshot of this talk is that I hooked up my surround speakers to see if the audio was going backwards. Well, no, now it is properly going to the CENTER CHANNEL. Which is great, it works now, but that means that netflix had a bug the other night.

I’m pretty annoyed right now. For reasons that I really don’t understand, This American Life Season 2, as seen by Netflix Watch Instantly on Xbox 360 Live was not working properly. The music was working fine, and some sound effects, but not the dialog.

Now, I think I should explain a bit how things are wired up. The component output goes into the TV, and the stereo audio outputs WERE going into the satellite inputs on my receiver. This has worked perfectly fine since I bought the 360 last fall – but not tonight. I tried two separate episodes of the series, and both “failed”. I tried some other instant watchable Netflix and it worked. I futzed around with the surround settings on the receiver, and occasionally was able to hear Ira Glass, sounding like he was at the bottom of a well. I turned off the 360 in disgust.

On a whim, I tried moving the audio outputs to the VCR inputs on the receiver, and lo-and-behold it just works. I really am not sure why the receiver input matters in this case, but there’s bound to be an explanation. Maybe one of me 5 readers knows. If not it will just be a mystery to me.

Much like my plum liqueur from last year, I’ve prepared a modified Umeshu.

This consists of 1kg of apricots (organically grown in Brentwood!), 750g of rock sugar and 1.5L of shochu (basically 50 proof grain alochol from Japan). It’ll be ready in 6 months to a year.

This recipe is for a savory variety of biscuits. You can easily make it a less savory biscuit simply by not adding the parmesan and rosemary. It’s a very simple recipe and pretty much makes serving biscuits out of a tube ridiculous!

Parmesan-Rosemary Biscuits
Courtesy Cook’s Illustrated, Issue 89

makes 12 biscuits

• 2 cups (10 oz) unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• ¾ teaspoon table salt
• ¾ cup (1½ oz) grated Parmesan cheese
• ½ teaspoon finely minced fresh rosemary leaves
• 1 cup cold buttermilk
• 8 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled 5 minutes, plus 2 tablespoons melted butter for brushing biscuits

1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and preheat to 475. Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, salt, cheese and rosemary in large bowl. Combine buttermilk and 8 tablespoons butter in medium bow, stirring until butter forms small clumps.
2. Add buttermilk mixture to dry ingredients and stir with rubber spatula until just incorporated and batter pulls away from the side of the bowl. Using greased ¼ cup dry measure (or #16 disher) scoop level amounts of batter onto parchment-lined baking sheet. Repeat with remaining batter, spacing biscuits 1½ inches apart. Bake until tops are golden brown and crisp, 12 to 14 minutes.
3. Brush biscuit tops with reamining 2 tablespoons melted butter. Transfer to wire rack and let cool 5 minutes before serving.
4. To refresh day old biscuits, heat them in a 300-degree oven for 10 minutes.