I love panini. I even have a fancy press on my Amazon wishlist so that I can make more of them. D and I make all sorts of panini but the one we always come back to is the turkey and roasted red pepper panini with cilantro pesto.
We slice and flatten the red peppers and then roast them on a skillet. The pesto is made with cilantro, chipotle en adobo, oil, and nuts (pine or walnuts though one time we used Macadamia nuts, which were to die for.) The rest of the sandwich is just sliced turkey, (get it sliced fresh from your deli) Monterey jack cheese, and wheat bread. Since we’re members of a food co-op that focuses on local produce, sustainability, and organic food these particular panini also happen to be USDA organic.
Oh, man these are a slice of heaven folks.
No press so I just use my griddle and a burger weight.This cheap camera and my amateurish abilities do no do this sandwich justice.
If you find yourself fascinated by the food I eat you should check out my wife’s blog, Origins of the Cook
last night marked two weeks since I bottled my ale; which meant that they were fair game for consumption. I opened the chilled bottle with some trepidation, my wife was convinced that my sanitization regimen was lacking and that the beer would be tainted. The beer passed the sniff test and so I moved on to the next step pouring the beer. With the exception of some sediment the beer appeared fine, it had good carbonation and a nice foamy head.
Well, there it was nothing left today but taste the fruits of my labor. The beer turned out pretty good! Darker than an amber ale but lighter than a stout. The beer had a subtle floral smell, much like the hint of green apples, and nice roasted malty taste to it.
I was sure when I started this process the beer was going to be terrible but I have to say, I’ve paid money for worse tasting beer. I have a few bottles and if local friends want to give it a try and let me know what they think they’re welcome to come by and give it a taste.
Things I learned from this whole experience:
Beer is not that difficult to make
Gravity and physics are crappy things to count on when bottling. Next time I use an auto-siphon.
Make sure your bottles are not screw-top!
Have a place you can go to ask questions of more experience users. I was lucky enough to have the fine folks at Talking Time to answer my questions.
Get something to filter out sediment. It doesn’t seem to hurt anything but is kinda gross
Get a second big metal pot for the sparge.
I’m happy enough with my results to try this again. I’m not ready enough to start making my own recipes yet, so I’ll still be buying mixes, maybe a nice gingerbread ale or tripel?
Yeah, I don't have a name for my beer...Apple Crisp ale in my Odd-tober Fest 2009 pint glass*glug* *glug*
Talking Time (TT), the only on-line community worth being part of, has a winter gift exchange every year. Members of the forum sign-up and then we do a secret santa style exchange, though Festivus, as we call it, is full of in-jokes and TT only memes. I’ve been doing Festivus for two years now and both times it’s been a blast. This year my secret Santa (ninja Santa on TT) had some difficulties in getting everything together and missed the deadline for mailing things out. Then there were some communication problems and by the end of it I was sure I wouldn’t be having any Festivus cheer.
At the beginning of this month I went to a friend of mine’s birthday in the Bay area, a friend who also happens to be a member of TT and whose birthdays are giant events with people coming from as far away as Indiana! It turns out that my ninja Santa was also attending his birthday party and brought the first part of my gift. She tells me there is more coming, something to do with eBay and assembly…
Who cares though? Here is all the cool stuff Luana (Loo-aun-a) got me for Festivus:
for me?Such nice handwritingThat's Percy... He's a thing we have over at Talking Time... It's convoluted.I've only flipped through it so far but it looks interestingYum genre fiction
Of course it wouldn’t be Festivus (or Talking Time) without something horrifying:
a hideous amalgamation of Mario and Mickey Mouse?
Happy Festivus everyone! I can’t wait to see what the rest of my gift is.
This was more of that “needs more metal miniatures” I was talking about last weekend… So here are some pictures of the various HQ units for my Ultramarines Army in Warhammer 40k. I think I painted these seven or eight years ago before I came up to college. I bought into 40k during third edition. Instead of saving the money I made at my job for college I spent large amounts of it on little toy soldiers and their accessories.
Since moving up to Davis I haven’t done a lot of painting or playing WH40k which is a shame because I really do enjoy the game and the hobby. (Worse I have friends up here who want to play it with me!) Maybe if you see these and tell me how great they look, how you want to see more, and wonderful things like that I might find the energy/time to finish assembling, painting, and playing with all the models I have lying around.
I don’t know how Games Workshop or Privateer Press takes pictures of their models… However they do it, I wish they’d share. I swear while these might not be professional grade models they don’t look as bad as these pictures make them appear. If the pointer hovers over the image you’ll get some inside commentary on painting these little guys!
Tiny space marines fight across enemy held deskThe Old Marneus CalgarCaptain with power sword and storm bolterChief Librarian TigeriusChaplainTechmarineVeteran Sargeant
There is an apothecary in that group photo but every picture I tried to take of him was a blurry, white mess. That’s it for the HQ. If I continue doing this I’ll put up pictures of my Elites next.
