Random Rambling Blog Thingy

The other night I made meatloaf. It got good reviews and second helpings, so I figured I should write it down.

This recipe is entirely gluten free. That may sound strange, given it's meatloaf, but GF soy sauce is hard to find. Depending on your level of intolerance, oats prepared in the presence of wheat could also be an issue. I would have done the same recipe without a GF audience... Well, I probably would have used the cheaper soy sauce.

A quick note about measurements here; I'm just guessing. I never really measure anything, so quantities of liquid and oats are pretty subjective. They'll also vary with the type of meat and type of oats you're using.


Meat Loaf
---------
2 lbs beef
1 lb pork
2 onions
2 eggs
3 tbs soy sauce
1/2 cup rolled oats
3/4 cup water ( aprox )
1 tsp salt ( optional )
2 tsp olive oil ( optional )

You can't do a whole lot about how meat loaf looks, so taste is all you've got. It should taste like meat (dammit!), not be dry, not be a brick. Meat flavor comes, of course, from meat. But just meat can get lost in the oven. The addition of browned onions and soy sauce will help to enhance meatiness. Oatmeal solves both bricking and drying dangers. It has texture and a hydroscopic quality that makes it an ideal filling.

Begin by rough chopping the onions and sweating them in a pan. Add a pinch of salt here. You don't need to fully caramelized them, but you do want some browning. When brown forms on the bottom, add a some water. You may have heard never add water when caramelizing onions; this only partially true. Onions in a pan of water aren't going to brown. However, if you let them stick a little and add water, the brown will come off the pan into the onions and you'll avoid burning. The trick is adding a little water and letting it steam off as you go. When your onions are cooked, you want about a cup of liquid in the pan.

Crush the rolled oats up a little. We want them to disappear into a batter that will carry all the other elements through the loaf. Turn off the heat and add the oats. Stir, add the soy sauce, stir a some more, then let this mixture sit.

In another container, break the eggs and whisk them together. We want to add the eggs to the oat mixture. If the mixture still too hot, we need to temper the eggs. That is, add some mixture to eggs, mix together, add more, mix, then add everything together. This avoids scrambled eggs. Our current product should be wet but batter like. We can adjust after we bring in the meat.

Meat! Unless your butcher ground it for you just so, it's hard achieve and maintain the ideal texture. Have no fear, that's what our oat batter is for. Combine meat and oat mixture together thoroughly. You should now have a rather disturbing looking meat batter. We want it a little wet, kind of oozing. If it's running, you can add some more oatmeal. Too dry, more water. Don't worry too much; it's meat loaf. Now, put it in the fridge for a half an hour, or as long as you like. ( Until is starts to smell funny, then you have to start over. )

When ready, remove cooled meat batter from fridge. You want to form it onto a pan, much like beefy sand castle, but more regular. You want are smooth lump of uniform size in the middle of your pan. Some shapes will cook faster than others; use common sense. I usually go with the pushing up daisies kind of shape.

You can optionally rub some olive oil on the outside and sprinkle a little salt. This will theoretically give it some yummy crust, depending on moisture and how your oven works. It may not. It doesn't hurt.

Now just cook until the juices run clear. As much as I like my steak bloody, there is no such thing medium rare meat loaf. We want it entirely cooked through. You can take all the juice and make a gravy, but the meat loaf shouldn't need it.

Let it rest a little before you cut into it. ( Given the structure, you probably don't have to rest it, but it doesn't hurt. ) Slice and serve.

Went to a toy store yesterday. It's in Princeton, but unlike most of the oppressively yuppie town, it's a bastion of happy. Manic, over priced, kid happy; but happy. In addition to the kid purchases ( I'll reveal one later ), I, of course, needed a toy. For some reason, what immediately popped into my mind was a Rubik's Snake. It's not really a puzzle so much as a fiddle device. I find such things soothing.

Well, the one I had as a kid was called a "snake". I think they only came in black and white initially. They were big beefy things that could take a considerable amount of punishment without complaint. They felt solid. Each future iteration seems less solid. The current thing is called the twist. It is a smaller, flimsier, cheaply made particolored thing. One of the elements on the one I got doesn't sit entirely true. Still, I'm amused enough by it and wishing they made things like they used to. Damn, I sound old.

New techie, non retro toy: roku! It's in the mail. I decided to purchase Amazon's Prime service. No, not for the shipping perks, though that's nice. Rather, for the TV! Amazon offers a ton of TV free to prime accounts, most of which is from BBC America. Doctor Who (classic, modern, Torchwood), Red Dwarf, Black Adder! Also, specials and things like Farscape that I never caught all the episodes of.

I've tested the browser service out on stuff the other house viewer doesn't want to see. It's not perfect, since free means streaming. One internet burp and you can fall into pause purgatory. But, when the bits are flowing it looks fine. I'm hoping the roku is more intelligent with caching.

The Amazon buggers don't offer support for Boxee, but you can browse to the content and it will work. People have been bitching about this for a while and I may have to write an app. I was surprised that the streaming content doesn't seem to use a tunnel. I could conceivably sniff and store it. Something that would doubtless give media execs fits.

So, if I post even less ( hardly possible at this point, I know ), I'm probably watching a streaming boob tube.

Working my way through the "stuff to watch" list.

I thought I had a theme running about halfway through. Either post apocalypse or simply dystopia. While that's indeed there, an unexpected theme emerged; emotional awakening. This is, of course, a required element in most stories. But in the bleakest stuff, it seems to be the only theme. Sometimes it's the only thing saving a piece from just being violent, narcissistic, porno.

The Walking Dead - Ooo, Zombies. Not generally my favorite genre, but some friends were taken by it. The world ends in a plague of moaning, necrotic, infectious, mostly dead, cannibals, as we follow the last of struggling humanity. You know the drill. It's well done, tense, and at times honestly scary. Our heroes are those who hold on to hope, even though it's not clear why.

The Road - Apocalypse grey. A bleak, miserable, dead world thing. A man and his son navigate the waste land, mostly just looking for food. Suicide is a strong, constant, disturbing element here. Human monsters are far more scary than anything undead. There is a desperate need to hold on to not just hope, but compassion. Slight spoiler: In the end, the movie isn't a total downer. I felt a little robbed by this, actually.

Metropia - a grey, animated, puppet like jerky motion ride. An Orwellian exercise that's convoluted and has as much depth as it has color. To be this artsy, I expected more for having to put up with it. Any clever ideas offered just didn't seem to come together.

Repo Men - A stock cyberpunk theme; artificial body parts are reposed if you can't pay the bills. An inconsistent black comedy with lots of senseless violence and blood splatter. While mostly predictable, it does have spots of genius. I enjoyed this more than I expected to.

Equilibrium - Tying together our dystopian extravaganza, a world on Prozac where it's illegal to stop taking it. A nice totalitarian extreme, where all emotion and things that evoke it are cauterized. Reminiscent of Fahrenheit 451, our hero is the enforcer who wakes up to his world. While overwhelmingly absurd, Christian Bale owns the screen and carries us along. Some good bloody violence. There's one bit where a wing chun sticky hands dance is done with pistols.

And now, for something completely different...

The Man from Earth - I was surprised this wasn't a play. A labor of love from SF writer Jerome Bixby, this no frills independent film made completely of dialog manages to engage. It runs almost like an SF writer's workshop; accept one absurd notion and then follow all the logical implications it introduces. Pure scifi and easily the most intelligent film of the lot. Worth a watch.

There are a couple of movies coming out that highlight a curiosity of technology; virtual actors. One is Rango, where the critters weren't just voiced over, but actually acted with motion capture. Another is ( I can't believe this title ), Mars Needs Moms, with another attempt at hyper real humans in CGI.

In the wake of things like The Polar Express, virtual actors appeared DOA. But it's because of things like zombie Tom that the industry is figuring out how to skate the dead zone and avoid the uncanny valley. More recent offerings have avoided the valley by being cutesy enough, but we're slowly moving toward the more realistic. Avatar proved people wouldn't just watch a virtual world, but do so repeatedly. More importantly, embrace the knowledge of a virtual world.

Virtual movies with virtual actors are gaining momentum. For the studio, it's a cheaper alternative to all that messy real life stuff. As the cost comes down on other elements, and people either get used to it or can't tell, technology will continue to replace people. They already do an amazing amount of CGI reality insertion that you're unaware of. It's conceivable, as technology progresses, that viewers won't even know they've taken the VR plunge with their celebrity dejour (e.g. S1m0ne).

You'd still need actors; because motion capture and human dialog will be easier with real humans for a long time. Also, celebrities drive the entertainment industry. However, the physical appearance of the warm bodies needn't matter. You can imagine a future where celebrities are known only through their publicitist approved virtual construct, not their normal fleshy reality.

On the VR meets IRL strangeness front, the Japanese have always been ahead of the curve. Witness, Hatsune Miku.

Edit: In other news, looks like IMDB borked their links. Bastards. The refresh thing works; I guess.

One of the boards I haunt has an ongoing "Mosque at Ground Zero" discussion. The usual issues have been covered, with various degrees of prejudice and bigotry. It's a pretty international forum, with folks from all over the place; the Muslims generally keeping there heads down.

I commented more than a few times, generally abusing extremists on all sides with equal vigor. The unexpected conversation came in the form of a private message from a friend in the Middle East. The gist of the question was this: "if you [Americans] feel that Islam is such a threat, why don't you just outlaw it? Why are the same people saying Muslims are all terrorist saying Muslims still have the right to build the mosque? I really am confused."

It is a curiously American mind set. Most of us understand that silencing one group threatens all others with silence. It core belief in individual freedom is so fundamental to US jurisprudence and social philosophy that we rarely even give it a second thought. I've run into people from a number of places to which this thinking is completely foreign.

Surely, there are some that would perceive the US as "weak" for "tolerating" groups that are overly anti-government, anti-liberty, anti-whatever. Some who round up the insurrectionists to protect their society must think us mad. Who can't understand why citizens are allowed to be as judgmental of the government as we generally are. That some should think this makes me sad for them and honestly proud of us. No matter what else you think the powers that be are screwing up, at least we got that right.

For the last week and a half, Freelance Whales has been haunting my playlist.

Featuring instruments like the banjo, harmonium, glockenspiel, xylophone, there is a rhythmic quality to the whole album. The track Hannah leads off with a patter song. Most of the lyrics have iambic sensibilities and are often more chanted or spoken, than sung. The female voice has that odd, strained, also caught in the back of the throat quality that actually works here. Then the male lead does the next track and it's the same damn voice, an octave lower. The harmonies are synced in such a way that sometimes you don't catch it at first.

Every track is kind of happy, even if the lyrics don't match. There's even a nice death song, very cheery. I really love warm fuzzy songs with dark subject matter. I can't say why.

And ear worms! Great Hamlet's ghost, the poison in the ear drips from every bloody track. Unlike most ear worms, these aren't banished by listening to the source material again; they only dig in deeper. You have been warned.

Thanks to alagbon for prompting me to post this. Hopefully this will allow some respite from his English folk tune ear worms.

Movies when alone for the weekend:

Hot Fuzz: Been hanging on to this one. Blood splatted and laughs, Simon Pegg is my hero. If Shaun of the Dead worked for you, don't miss this.

Gamer: Stupid, mindless, future tech, violence. More blood splatter, much more graphic that the almost apologetic British variety. Honestly, for something so juvenile, the violence level was almost pornographic, which was probably the point. Not awful.

Miracle Mile: I blame alagbon for this one. Nice little end of the world movie. Kind of dated, strangely sweet. Parsimonious on the special effects and actually better for it. A psychological thing more than anything else, keeping the question as to whether it's really happening floating until the very end.

Percy Jackson: Not as amused as I hopped to be. More a Perseus retelling and stock story lines than anything particularly original. Still, fun enough.

Being Human: Just finished the last episode; BBC show, with more BBC blood splatter. I thought the first season was better, but it still felt bad I have to wait for the next season.

Kungfu Panda: loosecanon recently saw this several times. I felt jealous.

Sometimes, when I awake, I have a tune playing in my head instead of the last recollection of dream. Rather than being up in the fully conscious strata, it's usually a little lower. Like an earworm, but both less and more intrusive, riding along on some still temporal alpha wave.

The last few days the station has alternated between Alanis Morissette and Marillion. There's usually a theme to these things. Therapy? Then again, messages from the great REM aren't really for the conscious, are they? I've had worse things, sitcom theme songs can be particularly nasty.

Some monks believe letting in tunes that doesn't reinforce positive aspects is harmful. Sounds nice, but I bet their music collections suck. Still, when the station is distracting, an Om is a pretty good exorcism. Sometimes I think the monks are onto something.

This morning, in the wee hours as I tossed to find comfort, I was struck by the tune of the moment; three blind mice. Actually, it was probably the theme from the Three Stooges. Which made it extra annoying because some other memory had to supply words and kept getting them mashed up. However, as the words played to my half awake self, my mind's eye watched the mice.

"Three blind mice. Three blind mice. See how they run. See how they run." And there they are, all scurrying about. I was filled with a Schadenfreude amusement. "They all ran after the farmer's wife, Who cut off their tails with a carving knife, Did you ever see such a sight in your life, As three blind mice?" Wait, there they are without tails, bumping into themselves and each other like furry deranged billiard balls. What fun!

And for a child's imagination, such a little ditty should evoke such visuals. I think on old stories, sagas, stories of myth from every culture, and the detail is lacking. Or, rather, the scene is often left uncolored in. I think people used to like to imagine more of their story. It seems now that we want it all spelled out in HD.

I often think our imagination has atrophied in our world of media bombardment. I wonder if people thought the same of the novel, with it's lavish attention to detail and well drawn scenes. Where once a story teller had but an evening to paint a picture, with the audience filling in the detail, now all the detail work could be done and reworked in prose.

I think, as a child, I saw the scampering mice. Later, I usually just heard the words. How many people still see the mice, I wonder.

I decided to change the ole work computer wallpaper today. I grabbed a bunch of the abstract stuff I tend settle on. In process, I spotted some Japanese kawaii mascot stuff. I wanted an image of an odd character called Tarepanda. What can I say, it's strange, cute, funny, and slightly off. However, I couldn't remember the name, so Googled japanese panda boneless. There are pages of strange. Number two on my hit list was this little gem.



However, all the variants of panda meatloaf are also good. Which got me hungry.

I knew the Poles were going to feed me dinner. The grouchy old woman who used to glare at me now smiles; I'm accepted. I always forget the name of those damn doughnuts so I looked it up: Pączki. I love wiki browsing. The Prince Polo candy bar is a national brand. It has competition from Nestle with the, get this, Princessa. I got them both; pretty much the same, Nestle is sweeter.

Turns out my favorite meat snack isn't kabanoski, but kabanos, plural kabanosy. Honest mistake; as linguistically xenophobic as it sounds, damn near everything is a -ski or -ska, seriously. Bonus bit of fun trivia, "kaban" is a Turkish term for hog.

I'm sure we'll get a picture that does her justice. Strike that: I've never had a cat that didn't blow every attempt to capture them at their best. But this one might assent to it.



We're calling her Trjegul ( pronounced Tree-gull ). Both because she has beautiful amber eyes and it's Viking geeky.

I was worried, perhaps a little offended, that I hadn't seen her since we got her home yesterday. Tonight she'd settled down enough to come out of hiding. Now she takes turns staking out parts of the room and visiting humans for adoration.

While I like most kitties, misanthropic felines aren't that much fun. Trjegul has dispelled those fears; she's a gregarious darling. I had to give her some meds. While neither of us enjoyed it, and she fought a bit, she didn't use claws, bite, hiss, and do anything aggressive. I'm hopeful that the bimonthly nail trimming won't be too bad, either.

She's not just beautiful, but also has a great personality. And, for extra cuteness, she's a munchkin. It's probably bad karma to laugh at her failed leaping attempts, but she takes it in stride.

So far, big boy cat and the girl are avoiding one another. Initial contact has been cool but not violent.