Tuesday, May 18. 2010
A couple months ago, I realized that my culinary skills had a major hole in it. It dawned on me that I didn't know how to make any sort of impressive dessert from scratch. I figure in the event of a special occasion such as a date night, I would have to field a a proper multi-course meal with dessert. After much soul searching, I decided attempted to make Creme Brulee from scratch. I imported some Madagascar vanilla beans, bought a kitchen torch, borrowed some ramekins, and away I went. It wasn't too difficult to make, just time consuming.
Delicious results. I passed this out to my food tasting guinea pigs, and they seemed to respond positively to it.
Saturday, May 15. 2010
I was reading Inside The Ring on the Washington Times. It had a fascinating piece about the Polish plane crash which killed the Polish president and a ton of top officials a couple months back.
NATO code compromise
The recent crash of a Polish military transport that killed most of Warsaw's senior civilian and military leaders was not only a human catastrophe for a key U.S. ally. NATO sources said that, in addition to the loss of nearly 100 pro-U.S. Polish leaders, the crash provided Moscow with a windfall of secrets.
The crash killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski in western Russia on April 10 and decapitated Poland's military, killing two service chiefs, key military aides and several national security officials, many of whom were carrying computers and pocket memory sticks that contained sensitive NATO data.
Perhaps the most significant compromise, according to a NATO intelligence source, is that the Russians are suspected of obtaining ultrasecret codes used by NATO militaries for secure satellite communications.
The compromise of the codes is considered what electronic spies call a "break" for Moscow code-breakers. New NATO codes almost certainly were issued to allied militaries immediately after the crash.
But if the Russian electronic intelligence service, known as the Federal Agency of Government Communications and Information, was able to recover and use the communication key code from the wreckage, electronic spies will be able to decode months' or perhaps years' worth of scrambled communications that are routinely gathered electronically for just such an occasion.
The coded communications, if decrypted, would reveal some of NATO's most intimate secrets, such as plans for defenses and even the identities of agents or allied eavesdropping sources.
Other Polish and NATO secrets also were believed to be aboard the jet, and so far Russia's government is refusing to cooperate fully with Poland's government in providing details on the cause of the crash, or even to turn over the Polish jet's black boxes.
Very troubling. This makes you wonder if the Russians had anything to do with the plane crash.
Tuesday, May 4. 2010
With an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico right now, I came across this article entitled, " Nuke That Slick," which describes how the Russians dealt with oil leaks.
As BP prepares to lower a four-story, 70-ton dome over the oil gusher under the Gulf of Mexico, the Russians — the world’s biggest oil producers — have some advice for their American counterparts: nuke it.
Komsomoloskaya Pravda, the best-selling Russian daily, reports that in Soviet times such leaks were plugged with controlled nuclear blasts underground. The idea is simple, KP writes: “the underground explosion moves the rock, presses on it, and, in essence, squeezes the well’s channel.”
Yes! It’s so simple, in fact, that the Soviet Union, a major oil exporter, used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities.
It'd be interesting to see what would have worse consequences; having a nuke go off and dealing with the nuclear hazards, or having the oil continue to leak.
Wednesday, April 21. 2010
I'm a tad late, but better late than never I guess. I just finished putting together a collection of 100 photos from 2009 that highlights the year for me. I noticed an inordinate number of food photos in the collection; I think my friends are right, I've become a foodie.
Please enjoy the pictures and the accompanied music (hit play on both widgets).
Wednesday, March 24. 2010
Last November, I was tasked to cook for a dinner party for 15 guests at a friend's house. I set aside about six hours to prep and cook six different dishes. One of the fun things about cooking in someone else's kitchen is checking out their kitchen equipment. That's when I encountered something that changed everything. I grabbed one of her knives to start preparing vegetables, and the knives cut through everything like butter. My food preparation time was drastically reduced because of these awesome knives. I asked her about the knives and she told me she got them as a wedding gift; it was a $700 set of Zwilling J.A. Heckel knives. These were high-end German knives.
As someone who has been wielding a $30 IKEA chef knife for over two years, I was in awe of these Heckel knives. Those knives just seemed to glide through vegetables, and the amount of force you had to apply was extremely minimal. The knives were also perfectly balanced and the grip was very comfortable.
As a result, I picked up a Zwilling J.A. Henckels TWIN® Four Star II 8" Chef's Knife, and I'm very happy about it. When you run the knife through water, the blade makes a distinct resonating sound. Water runs off the blade as if the blade's surface had wax on it.
I didn't bother splurging on an entire knife set since I primarily use a chef's knife and pairing knife anyways.
I've been talking a lot about this wonderful knife at work, and I seem to have sparked an arms race amongst my peers. I know of at two people who have upgraded their primary knives recently. One co-worker picked up a Heckel cleaver. Another friend picked up a Heckel santoku knife.
In either case, this is the beginning of a kitchen upgrade cycle for me. More culinary delights to come.
Tuesday, March 9. 2010
I came across this clip from Discovery Channel's Time Warp. It's a table saw that will not cut your fingers if you accidentally make contact with the saw blade. Quite remarkable.
Wednesday, February 24. 2010
Tonight, we saw Team Canada crush Team Russia at ice hockey, the score was 7-3. It reminded me of this article from the New York Times entitled, " Olympic Medals Prove Elusive For Russia."
The Olympics are not even half over, but Russia seems to be suffering a collective panic attack over the lackluster performance of its athletes. “Russian Olympians Lose Historic Superiority” was the front-page headline on Thursday in Kommersant, an influential newspaper. Some politicians and commentators are calling for the firing of Russia’s sports minister and the head of the Russian Olympic Committee.
[...]
The gloom seemed to thicken on Friday as Russians woke up to the news that their superstar figure skater, Yevgeny Plushenko, took only the silver. Even worse, Russia's powerhouse men's hockey team faltered against Slovakia, falling to the former Soviet satellite, 2-1, in a shootout.
Favored Russians have floundered in the biathlon, and the women’s hockey team was trounced twice by a collective score of 18 to 1. (It is best not even to mention pairs figure skating results around here.)
Among the few areas where Russians could still earn a gold medal at the Vancouver Olympics, the mass circulation tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets said, is excuse-making. Athletes have blamed the weather, the facilities and even the humidity for their lapses.
After Australian aboriginal groups accused a Russian ice dancing pair of mocking aborigines, Valentin Piseev, president of the Russian Figure Skating Federation, suggested that they were the target of an international plot to force them to alter their performance.
“I think that this is a well-executed strategy directed against our athletes,” Mr. Piseev told Russian television from Vancouver.
In Russia, international athletic competitions — particularly the Winter Olympics, in this frozen country — are considered one of the last prominent international arenas to showcase the country’s strength. The anxiety has been heightened because Russia will host the next Winter Games at the Black Sea resort of Sochi in 2014.
The most ominous line is this:
The governing United Russia party, led by Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, released a statement on Thursday suggesting that there could be repercussions for athletic officials if Russian athletes continued to fall short in Vancouver.
When Vladimir Putin makes a threat, you better believe he's good on following through with it.
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