Sunday Review #7: Homemade Pizza

In a slight departure this week, I'm reviewing food, not books or movies or TV shows, primarily because I haven't read anything new that I can reasonably review (mid-series books), I don't feel like reviewing Burn Notice or In Plain Sight, and any movies we've watched haven't really been worth my time. So Saturday's supper it is (along with other random pizza recipes).

I've used the same pizza dough recipe since I've started making homemade pizza. I got it from Mom, who got it from a book she was given at her retirement party (several years ago). It's not the best recipe out there, I'm sure, but it's good, and easy enough to make. Easier, if you have a stand mixer (I miss Mommy's Kitchen-Aid!), and I've had to modify the amount of yeast and raising time, since I think the yeast I get here in the UK is more powerful than the stuff Mom and I use in the States. But it's straightforward and flexible, and pretty forgiving. If anyone wants the recipe, I can send it on, or post it here, provided I can find all the citations. I can also add my minor changes.

Topping-wise, I've made some weird-ass pizzas in my time. One that looked freaky and sounded really strange, but was great, was a "breakfast" pizza. The sauce was a mix of sour cream, salsa, and ketchup, topped with seasoned tater-tots (already baked), pieces of bacon (already fried), and a couple of sunny-side up eggs. And cheese (mozzarella and cheddar, but jack/pepperjack would work too). The egg(s) should be fried while the rest of the pizza is in the oven, and laid over the top when it comes out. This pizza looks really odd, but it tasted really great. Or at least Mom, Dad, and I thought so. Adam is afraid of the concept, and I haven't bothered to look and see if I can buy tater-tots here. I suppose homemade potato wedges would work as well.

The pizzas we had on Saturday we had made variants of before. Actually, pretty much every time we make pizza (almost every week, but sometimes we skip a week) I make a BBQ pizza. It's dead easy: I don't have to make a pizza sauce, and instead just mix some of the ultra-cheap Morrison's brand BBQ sauce (which is surprisingly tasty) with a bit of cream...or sour cream, or milk, or ricotta--you know, something dairy to cut it--and spread that on the crust. Top it with some thin sliced onions (red, if I have one), some bell peppers if I have them (yellow, given a choice), some sliced mushrooms, and some nice fried bacon. Mozzarella, a bit of bleu cheese (mmm....), and if I bother, a bit of real parmesan (not that crap in a can, which has other uses) or a tasty aged hard gouda. I even had pineapple chunks on it Saturday--they were left over from something I made earlier in the week. I suppose you could leave them off, but people who don't like fruit on their pizza can bite me. You know who you are...

Adam made the other pizza, as is usual in our house. The recipe makes two 9 inch crusts (or the square equivalent...I can't seem to stretch them in a decent circle, so squarish it is), so I top one, and Adam gets the other. Last week he went a little...uh, ape shit, on the pizza, but he perfected the recipe this week. A quasi-curry pizza, he mixed some mango chutney with some crunch peanut butter (he hates peanut butter, by the way) and some of Morrison's pre-mixed Thai Curry powder (they mix curry, coconut milk powder, garlic, coriander, and so forth so you don't have to) for the sauce, and somehow made it so creamy and light and delicious. On top of that delicious sauce, he put onions, mushrooms, yellow bell pepper (needed some red for colour as well), pineapple, and mozzarella cheese. It was delicious.

Oh, and we topped both pizzas with a bit of fresh cilantro when they came out of the onion.

So this wasn't really a review, I suppose. Oh well. Perhaps next week I'll review the "Real Men of Genius" series of commercials. I'm slowly working on restoring them to my iTunes library (I lost probably 70 of them).

Iconic Loss

So I was initially going to post with the silly Andrew Lloyd Weber lyrics from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (on a good day I can still do all the colours!), but Farrah Fawcett was not the only death today. Michael Jackson has also died.

I can't really say much about either of these two. But I thought they both merited some sort of comment. I can't say as though I was a huge fan of MJ. He had good music--many would say great--but it really was never my thing. On a personal level, I found the guy creepy. Even if there were not other reasons to find him so, he had a recording studio, and possibly lived in, Pahrumph, Nevada. Pahrumph was the closest town/city/populated area to DEVA, so for the 5 weeks I was working in Death Valley, that's where I had to go for cell phone service, shopping, and interaction with people who were lacking teeth (and brains, and culture).

But I digress. While I can't speak for Farrah Fawcett's career particularly--I never watched the original Charlie's Angels, or any of her TV movies and such, to battle cancer so publically and painfully is something to admire, particularly as it was a form of cancer that could make one giggle (anal), and one that is not well known. To publicize it can create awareness, and I hope she did just that.

Two icons, lost in one day.

The one damn time...

When I started writing, I rigorously made a point of backing up--on three different stick drives, mind you--my work. Because I knew, just knew, that if I lost everything, I would lose my mind (as you can tell by my continual bitching of lost photos, music, etc.).

So guess what...I've lost about 500-800 words of my second chapter. I left my protagonist stranded in a foreign city, because I couldn't figure out what to do with him there (history tells me nothing, so I'm on my own). I finally had inspiration on that two nights ago (a cop-out, really, but it would get the story moving again, and his location in the foreign city really isn't that important, just a historical necessity), as well as on my other story--which is handwritten, so that's safe (unless there's a fire, etc....knock on wood). As such, I finally sat down and started writing again tonight, determined to bring my protagonist home.

Except that where I left off is not what I have on paper (so to speak). Granted, my second chapter was sucking, but it wasn't my plan to edit it and start a chunk of it over again just now. Yurgh.

Well, I suppose on the bright side, I know what I'm working on tonight and tomorrow. Dammit. Hopefully I'll get enough done in the next 24 hours to get to where I wanted to by the end of tonight's writing session, not tomorrow's.

Tis the Season...of College Football and Nike

While I rather imagine that most of my readers won't give a quack about this, the University of Oregon (no, not my alma mater, but my much beloved hometown uni) has unveiled its new round of uniforms.

For those who don't know, Phil Knight is the (co-)founder of Nike, Inc. Nike is headquartered in...Beaverton, Oregon, I think. One of the Portland suburbs, anyway. It was effectively founded at the University of Oregon, where Phil Knight was running track for a man by the name of Bill Bowerman, arguably one of the greatest track and field coaches ever. He also "invented" jogging.

Anyway, Phil Knight feels that he owes a lot to his alma maters, the UO and Stanford University. So he gives them money. A lot of money. The UO has received something in the realm of $360 million (at least). The library is named for his mother, the law school for his father, and he has an athletic building named for him. Additionally, his company has created uniforms for the UO. Not just any uniforms...generally the most talked about uniforms in college football (seriously). Which is really what this article is about. The new uniforms have been unveiled, and you can read about them, past uniforms, and see a picture of just some of the many, many permuations (the last rollout of uniforms had 384 different combinations possible).

The article is here, and while you probably don't care, I always get a kick out of it.

Sunday Review #6.5: Doomsday

I blame Adam. Entirely. It was awful. He says it wasn't. It was bad, though. Very, very bad.

The special features for Doomsday indicate that it was trying to make a more modern post-apocalyptic film than Mad Max and the like. Except that rather a lot of those have been made lately, and rather better than this one. Off the top of my head, I'd point to 28 Days Later, which may or may not be one of the better ones. I like it though. But I digress.

The worst part about this movie is the two major names in it: Bob Hoskins and Malcolm McDowell. I love Bob Hoskins, and he was great in this, but wow...I hope they got paid well. Less so Malcolm McDowell...he's weird and does weird films so he may have liked the concept.

Actually, I take that all back. The true worst bit about Doomsday isn't the great actors with a horrid, mishmashed plot, it's the horrid mishmashed settings. You go from post-apocalyptic urban to suddenly looking as though the cast and crew stumbled onto the set from "Robin Hood" and decided to film there--complete with the "Robin Hood" costuming--for a bit. Oy.

Sunday Review #6: Jericho

Right, this week's review is of the now cancelled TV show Jericho. I hadn't seen it before, but I'd heard bits and pieces about it; primarily, that it was so popular, that when it got cancelled (because we all know that popularity means nothing to network execs) there was such an outcry from fans that it was brought back to wrap up the basic storyline.

I'm not yet done with the show yet: it's 29 episodes (about 1.5 US TV seasons), and we've seen 16 episodes. I like it, overall. I find it predictable, which isn't totally a bad things. It's predictable because the characters are stock characters and they do what their respective stock characters do. I like some variance to my character arcs, but that said, at least they wrote and used the stock characters well.

If you don't know what Jericho is about, think Alas, Babylon. If you haven't read Alas, Babylon, go pick up the book from you local library. Or a bookstore. If it's still in print. Both are about the "end of the world." Nuclear holocaust. Death, destruction, rebuilding, etc. I think Alas, Babylon is better, but then it's also much more original at this point. Jericho is good, and perhaps topical, though not as much so as Alas, Babylon was when it came out in 1959.

Reading a quick synopsis of the novel (hey, it's been a few years, though I'll read it when I get back to Eugene in a few weeks) makes me believe that the show's creators were HEAVILY influenced by Alas, Babylon. Without getting into details, they solve problems in a similar manner, face some of the same deus ex machina situations (Jericho has a salt mine, Alas, Babylon has an island down the river that's covered in salt), and have the same vaguely angsty protagonists who find purpose when it's thrust upon them/there's no one else to lead.

It's a good show, and one I would recommend, but it's not exceptional. Part of what keeps it interesting for me is the obligatory "mystery" about some of the characters. If you watch Lost, you know what I mean. Trying to figure out the motives of some characters is interesting, but even so, I think this show could have been successful without that element. Simply focusing on survival and rebuilding after the nuclear holocaust could, if it were done well, be enough for the plot.

But then, my guess is that's part of why the show got cancelled.*

*Remember, I haven't finished it yet, but I get the feeling that a lot of the mysteries will be solved by the end of the first season. If not, well...I was wrong. I've been told that that can happen, from time to time.

Like losing a part of my mind

I got Geoff back yesterday.

Even though I knew I would be getting my computer back sans all personal data--so fresh and clean, in fact, that I had to reinstall the OS--I'm not sure anything can really prepare you for the loss of EVERYTHING. I knew that my personal files wouldn't be there, and I knew that all the software I have acquired over the years (legal, thank you very much) would have to be reinstalled, but I forgot all the little things that would be different. My Dashboard has to be reconfigured. I managed to get old versions of my address book and my Safari (web browser) bookmarks, but it's not the same. Geoff's a stranger now, not an extension of myself.

I've lost so much. All my music, all my photos are gone (I do have much of both backed up, and much not). In some ways, what hit the hardest was the complete and total destruction of my email. I keep nearly every email I get, and I had folders for everyone. That's all gone. I'll start again, but it's painful to open up my email and not see the long list of folders of friends past and present.

I also had to reset up my Dead Gentlemen email. That was a right pain (but thanks to Evan for a prompt response), mostly because DG now uses Google to host, and I also have a Gmail address. Wires were getting crossed, but--hopefully--it seems to work now. The good news is that I had all my communications with Matt in the webmail, so I still have his script and my notes on it, as well as our communications. And oddly enough, there some photos of my dear Faith in there as well. Though not the one I had been using as my desktop photo (Mom and Dad should have that one).

I still haven't decided if I want to try and salvage the data off the old harddrive. Part of me desperately wants it back, and part of me just says "fuck it, I'll start again." I've been keeping my novels backed up on 3 different stick drives, and I had--at some point--backed up my resumé/CV/cover letter folder, so I have some of those (thankfully, as I paid for a service to redo them. Didn't really help).

In some ways this is good. It forces me to take stock of what I really need/want, and what I don't. It forces me to do a proper clean-up of my computer, something I've needed and (kinda) wanted to do for years. But it's a pain, so I haven't. Now, with a fresh new system, I can fix some of that. But I didn't want to fix it at the expense of everything.

My old laptop, Jeffrey, was fully copied onto Geoff (hence the naming) when I got Geoff last September. So I'm backed up until about then. In Eugene. My external HD is backed up from 2006...yeah....When I get back to Eugene, I'll make a decision about data recovery. It should be a bit cheaper there (rates for repair are about $100/hr in the States, and £100/hr in the UK).

In the meantime, this forces me to properly set up my address book, something I haven't done since...possibly ever. So, if you read my blog, please email me the following information (if you don't have an email address for me, post on the blog), and feel free to pass my request onto others. I will also send out an email in the next few days, so you may get asked for this twice.

Full Name (include maiden if appropriate)

Partner's full name (ditto above)

preferred email address(es) (partner too, if you're/he/she is willing)

Full mailing address

cell phone number

home phone number

Birthday (day and month, year would be nice, but as we get older, I understand the desire to hide that)

Anniversary (if appropriate)

any online blogs, photo albums, etc

anything else you want to send me: employer info, etc.

I know that's a lot of info, and some of it strange, but I want to have the ability to contact people in a variety of fashions. I also want to be able to wish people happy birthday--please don't assume I know/remember your birthday. I really suck at that. Or your anniversary.

Right, I need to go exercise. I shall try to blog again tomorrow, and tell you all about the joyous day I had in Manchester picking up Geoff. Highlights include bra shopping, a broken-down train, and 10-year-old wannabe hooligans. Amongst other joys.

Additionally, I'll try to get back onto my Sunday reviews this weekend.

Crapstick

Thank you Matt, for that brilliant word. It sums it all up perfectly for me.

Geoff is still dead. I got the install/software discs from Mom and Dad today, but they can't repair the problem. So...the next step is me off to Manchester, where there is not one, but two Apple Stores. The actual Apple Store, authorized and such by Cupertino (ie where Apple is based). They have a "Genius Desk" where staff can try and solve problems for free, and if they can't, will recommend service as needed. I should still be under warranty, but Cheesus only knows if I'll actually be covered (seems like they don't cover some things that they should). If they can recover my files, yay! If not, I'll be posting here and sending out a lot of email asking for addresses and phone numbers and the like.

And possibly photos--I believe that I will have lost all photos of Kristan's wedding, let alone anything else since mid-March 2007. Though that said, Jeffrey (Geoff's predecessor) will have everything (I hope) through August of 2008. Assuming I uploaded the photos prior to getting Geoff.

I hate this. I have a plan, for when I have lots of money. It involves a laptop and a desktop being synced nightly, and weekly backups to what I would like to be a 500 terrabyte drive. Never let it be said that I don't look to the future of hard-drive glutting programs and operating systems. The only reason I haven't fully backed up Geoff is because it takes SO much time. And because I don't have an external drive that's big enough, or enough space on my iDisk to back up EVERYTHING. Though I should have enough space to get the important bits regularly. I just hate how long it takes. Guess I'll be sucking it up more regularly though.

Dead Computer

Geoff just suffered an unexplained death. I don't know why or how but he can't find the boot disk. I'm sincerely hoping the loss hasn't wiped the drive or corrupted anything other than the boot disk, but until I find out what and how much I've lost I won't be blogging or emailing. It does not help matters much that Adam's wireless currently isn't working. Typing on an iPod touch isn't much fun.

I'm going to contemplate suicide now.