tango_chef's Journal

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Skirts

I had a wonderful, warm, sunny breakfast at the Ferry Building this morning. As I sat there, I saw this blond girl walk by with a cute, alternative kind of skirt on. Something that Michelle would really like. So I look at it, trying to figure out where it's from, trying to remember how it looked to tell M later. As I'm looking, I realize that it looks like I'm checking out her butt. But I'm not! I'm looking because my wife would like it. I keep battling these thoughts a few times, then I realize: I'm still looking at her butt.

Tilie in the water

IMG_8749,
originally uploaded by pico_and_michelle.

A picture I took a few days ago that I like of Tillie.

quote for these times
"There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full."
--Henry A. Kissinger

IMG_3443

IMG_3443,
originally uploaded by pico_and_michelle.

Aw. Sweet Tillie

NY Times cookies
Made the NY Times Chocolate Chip Cookies. Holey moley those were good. A little too good. We had to get rid of them if I we wanted to eat at least somewhat healthy. :)

Thanks

shanabanana!

Texting
I just went to text message a friend on Verizon and found that it allows you to 'translate' your texts into "TXT". Example of what I wrote:

----
Are we on for climbing? Please call my work cell.

-Ben
----

"Spk n'TXT" translates it into:

R we on 4 climbing? PLZ call my work cell. -Ben

LOL

Tonight is brought to you by the Immersion blender
We got an immersion blender a few months ago, after my father bought one and we really liked it for soups.

Sunday night we put it to work. And it did wonderfully. We made the Moderately Easy Tomato Sauce which was wonderful (though we ended up cooking it down for an hour or so, since it was pretty watery with fresh tomatoes).

Then we made a plum sauce. Basically plums pitted, sliced and pureed with sugar to taste and cherry wine (

). It's wonderful in yogurt or ice cream, and, if you have the tools, very easy to make.

Tandori oven
I keep having this fantasy that I'll be able to get something like this some day:

The site has some other beautiful stuff as well:

http://www.tandoors.com/tandoor_residential.php

Beauty contest
There's something very oxymoronic about this: a nun beauty contest. No joke, read more:

CNN: An online beauty pageant. . .for nuns

I can't wait to see the knuckle smacking contest. :)

Sunday car-free
I'm excited about the first car-free Sunday. More from an SFBC (San Francisco Bike Coalition) message:

The SFBC is excited to be a part of San Francisco's first car-free Sunday Streets this Sunday, August 31st when nearly five miles of streets will be opened for cyclists, pedestrians, children, dog walkers, dancers, skaters and anyone else who wants to use the streets to play! Enjoy open space from Chinatown along Washington Street, the Embarcadero, Terry Francois Blvd., Illinois and 3rd Streets to the Bayview. The route will be lined with activities for people of all ages to enjoy. Learn more at http://www.SundayStreetsSF.com. If you're not around this weekend, mark your calendars for the second Sunday Streets event on Sunday, September 14.

I'm going to try and support this. This just seems to be too much fun. :)

great shirt
I saw a great shirt last night:

Take the sh
out of IT

(sh is a command-line shell)

I so often use Google for searching and GMail for personal mail, I'm truly surprised when it doesn't work. My account, and it seems many others, were down for several hours on Monday. No big deal for me, I just had the GMail notifier running so I could see if something new came in. But I was really happy to hear them say "I'm sorry".

We feel your pain, and we're sorry

What Do Teachers Really Make? Taylor Mali Explains...

This is an impressive piece of slam poetry.

Disagreeing with friends
I like Jon Carrol for many reasons, not the last of which is his wit:

Do I sound bitter? I am not bitter. I love all my friends. If we disagree about the issues, that's only natural. Eventually, my friends see that they are wrong, and then we sing in the sunshine and laugh every day. If that doesn't happen, well, maybe I'm wrong. Theoretically. I mention all possibilities for the sake of complete transparency.
-- "Merging urges"

Sunday Streets
August 31 through September 14 SF will try out "Car-Free Sunday Streets". Small sections of roadways will be blocked off for assorted physical activities (read more below).

I'm curious to see how people react to this, like the Golden Gate Park closures. I think this will be a bit different, as there isn't a swath of people coming in to park in those surrounding neighborhoods that will be upset. Living in a neighborhood that loses all of it's parking on Sundays would really suck. That's when I want to go do chores, too.

( Read More... )

Truth in advertising
I just got a really good advertisement when browsing for meals this week:

"A pill that increases libido and decreases Cellulite?"

Then below the trim woman's waist, there is a note "Actual Atypical Results". Nice word play...

Dictionary.com Word of the Day - spoony: foolishly or sentimentally in love.

Current Mood: flirty

Plastic bags
Have you heard about where plastic bags go? I only recently found out that they usually don't go into landfill, but into the sea. There's a huge amount of trash (twice the size of Texas by some measurements). It's gotten so bad that you can regularly find fish with plastic in them.

There is a two man crew out on a raft built from plastic bottles and a Cessna 310. They havea blog on it called JUNK.

I first heard about the problem via a Salon article that captured the point well. I went on too read more about the history of plastics in a Chemical & Engineering article. There are the flimsy ones you get at a take out lunch, then grocery bags, then the heavy duty ones you get at the mall.

One other piece of info that is interesting: it costs $4,000 to process and recycle 1 ton of plastic bags, which can then be sold on the commodities market for $32.

Now I keep a few plastic bags from around the house in my bag so that when I pick up lunch or go shopping, I use my bag instead of reusing theirs. Tadaa! Instant karma.

great word
vituperate: to overwhelm with wordy abuse.

Photos
Our good friend Alli took some photos of us today. Wonderful stuff!

Ben and Michelle brunch