Tasting events

Whisky tasting is done. Now time for more healthy choices. I found that one needs to try "olive tastings" and see the difference between the oils. Check this article
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/dining/17curious.html?_r=1

by Harold McGee -  the author of "On Food and Cooking - the Science and Lore of the Kitchen".
So, now I need to find the tasting event to go to or suggest to the Harvard Stats. Dept. for the next semester. Not sure whether this California group did any statistical correlation analysis of the oils...
It would be interesting to see some clustering and grouping of different cooking oils.

Whisky

I went to the Harvard Statistics Dept lecture on classifications of whisky (this is the right spelling outside the US) by professor from St.Andrew's University in Scotland. There was a part describing the process of making the whisky, a bit on the history of whisky in England and around the world, and finally a description of statistical methods the lecturer used to classify the whisky based on assumed 10 categories of flavors. Of course there was whisky tasting after the lecture with a few types representing each of the categories. I have tasted a wide range of flavors and could finally see some differences between the famous brands. I'm not sure I would buy the most expensive one :-)  And I found my favorites

Wakeup Alarms

Tom has set up a morning alarm on his droid to sounds of seagulls.  When you hear these birds it makes you feel like you were by the sea. A  nice way to wake up. Of course you need to react fast and stop it. If not you get the nasty sounds of different ring tones.... This really gets you up.
This morning I woke up to a sound of tapping... It was like flamenco taps! First I thought that somebody was practicing  steps. But as I looked out from the bedroom window I saw a little bird, woodpecker pecking on our fence! I took a camera and have a few nice shots for our album of wildlife around the house. Now I am awake at 6.30 in the morning.

Elisek

Kaja's Pillow

Kaja has this old pillow Aga and I brought home from Ikea a while ago. Well, she has three pillows. I say *she* has these pillows and not Majka, because it is really Kaja who is carrying pillows around the house. It seems that Majka does not really notice them. Occasionally of course she finds herself on her bed with some extra pillows and she may like it or not, but basically Majka does not care.
For a few past weeks Kaja was taking the orange pillow (shaped like a cat) outside to the backyard through the doggie door. Once I tried to help her to bring the pillow back, as I thought she has trouble getting it through the doggie door into the house. Of course she did not want any help and played like she does not  really want to go back home, but a few minutes later she was carrying the pillow around the house again... crying. Somehow she manage to bring it inside!
This morning the pillow carrying went into the extreme. Kaja was walking around the house with the orange pillow crying... I think Kaja really tries to hide this pillow somewhere...  I realized that today she brought it outside and was digging  trying to bury the pillow behind a little bush. When I saw her outside for the first time her entire nose was black with dirt and the pillow of was still in her mouth... But a few moments later she was back in the house without her pillow. She buried it! Not fully, I could actually see a part of the pillow sticking from the ground while a big part was in the dirt... I brought the pillow back home and hidden it in the basement. It really needs a good wash!

Email Notifications

I just figure out how to add email notifications to the Blogger! Now you will receive an email each time the Lazy Dogs has been updated with a new posting. You will not miss any exciting postings anymore.

more on our wildlife

Watching wildlife from the kitchen window is always entertaining. I  see a variety of birds small and large, very colorful and playful. A few days ago a great heron was flying towards the river... It was beautiful.. I see squirrels running and hiding their food. They are typically grey, but we have one black squirrel and some partially red ones around too.  It it nice to see them run on top of the tall pine trees chasing each other... amazing how they can jump between branches...  Of course I also see cats and dogs walking around, but these are people animals... Very rarely I am able to see some unusual little animals.  Last summer I saw a woodchuck in the middle of our backyard. Our dogs did not even blinked! Obviously I took a picture and could identify the intruder later using wikipedia... Today I saw something very different which made me a bit more aware of the hidden nature around our house...  I was cooking dinner watching sunset and enjoying the day moving into night... At some point I looked out towards Tony's house and I saw a big raccoon on top of the roof... and then the animal started climbing the chimney! It was amazing!... It went straight up on the smooth chimney surface - 5.14 climbing!!!! Tom went to get his camera, but it was back too late to take a picture. I was just watching the raccoon disappear inside the chimney... slowly... first the head, then the body and after a moment the tail... It was gone inside the chimney. We were wondering whether it went into Tony's house or just into the chimney and what happened to it. We kept watching the chimney during our dinner until the outside become completely dark and we could not see the house across the street any longer.  The raccoon did not came out.

Of course the obvious question is if our chimney gets some visits from the raccoon. Tom made sure the flu is closed. I cannot imagine  walking into our leaving room and seeing the raccoon sleeping on our sofa. Our dogs are just too friendly to scare the intruders. They will welcome any guest!

home

I'm back home from my trip to Poland. I landed at Logan to the very hot evening. It was 82F, almost a record high temps for that day.  The Spring is really here and the entire world got transformed from the grey to green while I was gone. The trees are flowering, the bushes and little flowers too...
It is good to be home... and celebrate!
Coco Rosie is playing and Tom is just trying to relax, dogs are moving pillows around the house... and yes Kaja is crying trying to hide her pillow from Majka.

I found this old book by Neil Gaiman and I was reading it during my trip... American Gods... it is good reading, very sad in places, but also satyrical and funny, the imaginary and real world, twisted with past times, current reality and future.

Chandra Proposals Part 2

The proposals are in, but I cannot relax... The thoughts about the sources are still in my head.
Also I made a very interesting figure for the proposal... Now it looks like I may need to work on the correlations it shows for a little bit longer...
we went out to dinner, had wine and martini to celebrate the end of the deadline. Now it will be hard to
get back to normal work schedule for a few days....
and btw. I have a hick-up and Lukasz method of pushing on left eye while holding up the breath does not seem to work. I would have died by now holding my breath as the hickup is holdind strong!

Chandra proposals

o.k. i'm off to proposal world. i'm procrastinating now... i should be writing my science  instead of the blog...  but i'm still not sure which of my favorite sources to observe. I would like to have all of them observed with Chandra, bu this is impossible! If I had my own X-ray satellite this would be something.
I could just point to a random point of the sky and check it out.
Tom suggested that this should be a topic of my  proposal and that should say: "Please let me point to any part of the sky for a day or two.  I'm sure I will discover something that will definitely change the direction of my research. It happen in the past that I discover things... "
Discoveries are unexpected and come in the moment you don't even realize it is happening.
o.k. i guess I do need to write my proposal and maybe I get time for my observation and discover something again...

Hands

I was totally absorbed in the song Indecision Time by Husker Du that blared from our stereo, remembering the Minneapolis punk scene and days past of mosh pits and stage diving.  Then I looked down and saw my hands washing the evening dishes.  Things change indeed.  No regrets though, especially thinking back to 45 minutes ago and the wonderful shrimp pasta dinner that Aneta had created. 

Did we see the ivory woodpecker in the Fells?

This is the strange year for our woods.... It seems that all pine trees decided that it is the time for a renewal and dropped as many pine cones as they could. There is plenty of pine cones on the ground creating a thick carpet on our path. There have been also a lot of large trees coming down during the windy winter days. Very large old trees! The woods do not look healthy. Maybe this is just an impression I have because there is no snow and no leaves on the trees and you can see things better...

I  notices that there have been more woodpeckers working on the trees. Little ones, maybe 4-6in tall. However, on our afternoon dog walk yesterday we saw a large woodpecker! First I heard a strange bird call then when I look up the bird was just above on the tree. It was larger than the normal ones and had a crossed red crest, sort of skinner head and torso, and enough white on the sides to look quite similar to an ivory woodpecker that everybody is looking for... Was it really the ivory one? Of course I checked Wikipedia...

Ivory woodpeckers habitats are quite similar to our unhealthy woods. Apparently they do prefer dead pine trees and a pair could be leaving there. But of course there are other types of woodpeckers that could look similar. For example  Pileated Woodpeckers  are slightly smaller with black torso... I need to bring the camera on our morning walk today and start the hunt! There is an award of 50K for the successful hunt :-) And there is a  picture in the recent Nature magazine showing a group  bird watchers in the woods looking up into the woods with their binocular. Maybe I need to bring binoculars too...

Comments

I have been wondering why there are no comments on our blog posts. It looks like Tom and I are blogging to ourselves. Would it be easier to just talk?

Busy Blogging

February is short but we have already made 6 entries in our blog which was stagnant for so long....

and Tom is just spinning his arm now - one of the exercises the PT told him to do to cure his shoulder.
Yes, his shoulder is still causing him pain and it will take a few more weeks, I think,  to recover fully.
We've been climbing in the gym and he's doing o.k. The main problem is our climbing trip. It might be too early for his projects.

Celebrating!

I finally submitted the paper... I've been straggling with the paper for too long... I have written a draft
more than a year ago, then started talking to my collaborators. Of course they have good ideas and one needs to check and think about it... also there is all the other things I have to do in meantime. So the paper was on my plate for a long time... The results are exciting of course! no Nobel prize tho. I think for that you need to have a real breakthrough, a real discovery... But, as Tom has just pointed out we have detected and confirmed the highest redshift cooling core X-ray cluster. Also the cluster is associated with a very luminous bright quasar.. So it is the first of its kind... I hope it at least deserves the press release.
I submitted the paper. Now, I need to wait for the referee report, which I hope at this point should not be too horrible, as the paper went through so many iterations and spell checking....

Lentils - the perftect recipe

We had lentils for dinner last night and this evening. Tom said that this is a perfect recipe and requested a posting... This is based on Nigel Slater recipe, but modified to accommodate the content of our fridge. This is how it goes:

Cook 1 cup of Lentils for about 15-20 min in a salted water (add 1/2 spoon of salt and about 2 cups of water. I guess these amounts, as I usually measure by eye, so check that the water level is not too high - it should just be about an inch above the lentil's level). You need the French lentils, dark green, almost black - the red ones will just dissolve, while the French lentils will keep the shape.
In meantime in the other pan fry the cut onions with crushed garlic (1 to 3 little bits) in a bit of oil (I use olive oil here, but the original recipe calls for butter). At some point add a little bit of fresh ginger (size of your thumb) grated on a very small size grater tool. Add also the red pepper flakes at that time - just a little bit, as they are spicy (in original recipe you need to use one chili pepper). Cook for a bit and then add tomatoes - in the Nigel recipe you would use 2 fresh tomatoes. As we are out of the season I used a few table spoons of the canned tomatoes chunks - no salt, no spices added there. You need to have the amount of tomatoes that will cover the entire pan. Cook for about 5 min until you get a nice slushy paste which smells nice.
Now! you need to add heavy cream. Carefully. The amount of the cream also varies. The recipe calls for 100 ml. but you may need more or less of it. I look at the density of the sauce. You want something that is not too thin, or too thick. Pour heavy cream, add gahram masala spice - 1 teaspoon, mix and add more cream if necessary. You should avoid too thick sauce that will start
sticking to the pan. So add more cream if this happens. Cook the mixture for about 10 min. Add some black pepper at some point to taste.

Lentils - after 15-20 min drain the lentils. Put them into the sauce and heat together, mixing the sauce with lentils until it looks good.

Serve! I use this as a side dinner dish for scallops, or just green chard, or as tonight with the falafel and yogurt. Nan bread is good with it too...

There you go! Hope somebody there will try this and comment :-)

Sleepy Sunday after the parties

We had a very sleepy Sunday after these parties.... A walk with the dogs was also very slow. Well,
the icy path in the woods was slowing us quite a bit, but also our energy level was quite low.
We took a long almost 2 hours nap in the afternoon, tried to read, and Tom even watched some very bad TV show! Cooking was good. Spiced lentils with scallops, but no wine. We were out of wine.
Tomorrow is Monday and things will go back to normal state with no time for napping and plenty of time for getting stressed.

Party Hounds 2

The 3rd night party was good. We just got back and Tom had a good time apparently...
There was a mixture of old friends and new acquiantances to talk to, a grand piano, a lot of good wine and zubrowka. There was also some good art on the walls and an artist plus tango dancers!
they did not dance however, and nobody was playing on the baby grand piano. Only the cat was enjoying a little spot by the piano...
I think our great party hounds are over for a little bit.

Party hounds

Tonight Aneta and I are going out for dinner or party for the third night in a row.  This is madness!  At least I negotiated that she will be the driver...  - Tom

Tom and biking

I always feel stressed when I get a call from Tom in the middle of a dog walk, or when he is out with the dogs and calls back home... Usually the call is a good news, but I'm always afraid that something bad happened when he calls at that times. Last Thursday I was deep in the woods with the dogs when Tom called me and said that he had a bike accident - a dog charged at him, he hit the dog with full speed and went over the handlebar down to the ground. He was o.k but his collar bone may have been broken. I was at least 10-15 min away from the car and was running back quite worried. It was relatively cold and he did not have warm clothes as he was biking. I saw him standing and walking on the sidewalk with his bike down on the ground. The dog was gone by then.
Fortunately no broken bones, but still recovery time will contribute to no climbing for a few weeks.
And now I will answer phone calls during the dogs walks with even more emotions than before.
Tom will still be biking...

Thai Fish Dinner tonight

I planned to make tilapia filets in our standard store bought indian sauce this evening, but when I looked in the fridge the sauce was not there... I remember buying the sauce, but somehow it disappeared... Anyway, I was already cooking rice, so needed to figure out what to do with tilapia.
I checked the Nigel Slater book for the ideas. Of course he's got plenty of them. I wanted something fried in a pan and spicy to go with the rice. The Thai fish seemed perfect. I had found the old dried lime in the fruit basket that I thought will not have any use anymore, but in fact it was perfect. It is funny to see that the hard dried skin looking fruit can still have a lot of juice and looks quite different when you cut it. It is really juicy and fresh and I was able to make the base of the sauce which was critical to this recipe. Of course I did not have all the ingredients, but there was a little old ginger root left at the bottom of the fridge, a dried lemon grass and dried hot chilli flakes in place of the fresh ones. I sort of follow the recipe, but I'm not so careful with my measurements, so I really don't know how much of spices I got. I mixed the lime juice with
ginger, crashed lemon grass, chili flakes, fish sauce and sugar. I fried some olive oil mixed with walnut oil, then added the fish and mixed spices into a very hot oil, fried for minute on one side turned and fried on the other. It took a little more time to make the fish looking brownish and the liquid completely disappear. I have kept the fish in a pan until it was brownish. I don;t like the fish that is too pale... I'm not sure this was the intention of the original recipe, but I felt that the fish needs to have a bit of the color. I did not use any flour for the fish which at the end I think was the right way to go, but with the flour the fish may have had a bit more colour.... I may try the next time. Oh, the critical bit was the sauce that was made in the hot pan. After I fried the fish I placed it on the plates, then I put some Soy sauce and rice wine vinegar into the frying pan and made it hot, just for a few seconds and then pour over the fish. I served it with some plain rice and green chard. For the chard I used a bit of garlic and teryaki sauce. Tom was impressed with the dinner! I liked the fish. It was really spicy and exotic. Quite different from my normal ways of cooking and definitely not indian!