A while back (*cough* a year ago *cough*) I participated in the Kickstarter for a home immersion circulator for cooking sous vide called “Nomiku”. It finally showed up this week so I’ve been playing with it. I cooked a steak, broccoli and rice on Monday night and I did Jerk chicken a roasted Brussels sprouts tonight. The meats come out perfectly done. The steak was on the medium side of medium-rare all the way through and the chicken was what I would call medium/medium-well and probably could have been done a two or three degrees cooler with an extra half hour on the clock and would have been even juicier. I’ve been pretty happy with it but I have a way to go. I have learned that it is worth seasoning your meat before you bag and cook it. The steak was lacking something which I attribute to it not being salted and peppered before sous vide where I usually season the meat and let it rest for an hour or so before I grill it. The chicken marinated all day in the fridge and tasted wonderful.
Also, I got the Tartine Bread book for my birthday and it is all about the sourdough starter so I started one of those and it’s going pretty good. The dude is super serious about his bread though and it basically takes more than an entire day to go from a piece of starter to a baked loaf you can eat so it’s the kind of thing where, at best, I’d get one loaf a week for seven days of twice daily feeding. It’s worth a try though and maybe the rhythm will stick with me.
I’ve been putting the pictures of the new cooking in here:
http://thwartedagain.com/zenphoto/cooking/
When I was on my recent diet where in I got down to 160 lbs (normal!) I actually spent a lot of time baking. I didn’t really take any pictures but I made a blueberry pie and a cherry pie from scratch, some banana bread, chocolate chip cookies, some bread and some ice cream. I plan to continue with the baking so I’ll have some pictures of that at some point.
I had a pretty good birthday as far as such things go. I had dinner with a small group of friends (including the charming young lady who I have been seeing :D ) at Hillside Farmacy. The food was good and I got an egg creme soda and an ice cream cookie. I got a bottle of interesting Northeastern Italian dessert wine and a package of books from the aforementioned lady. I’ve read the first one, “The Lake” by Banana Yoshimoto and I really enjoyed it. Her style reminds me of Murakami but it is less surreal and is more concise. I think it’s interesting that characters in the Japanese books I read always seem to have their whole mental state thought out and seem to kind of passively observe their own life in first person. It’s strange. She tells me that it’s part of the Ukiyo-e tradition where the world can only be observed imperfectly through this separate layer (which the Blanton exhibit dubbed “The floating world” in the print exhibit I liked from years back) and that it is extremely common in Japanese literature. The everyday occurrence and acceptance of the supernatural and surreal is another common theme and there is a little of that in the book but not as much of that as Murakami likes to use either. Next up is a thriller / horror book and then I got a couple of silly things when I exchanged After Dark which I’d already read. Plus I have the rest of my To Be Read stack on the coffee table.
I hurt my back while exercising on my diet and ended up re-injuring it several times through bad form, muscular imbalance, lack of flexibility and not enough healing time. As a result I ended up at the Orthopedist and he sent me to Physical Therapy which I finished last week. I have been given a laundry list of PT homework that I am to do from now on to maintain my core strength and posterior chain flexibility. I’m getting better at it but it’s slow. My goal now is to complete the entire set of homework three times per week for all of October. If I can stick to that I’ll allow myself the opportunity to resume lifting in a limited and cautious aspect. Also it’s time for the LiveStrong Challenge so I’ve been riding my bike again. Oddly enough I’ve been able to keep a decent pace even though I haven’t been riding much but the rides have been short so that’s not terribly surprising. I am quite a bit lighter than I was. I think this weekend I’m going to try to do 30 miles since it’s going to be nice out.
I suppose that’s it for now. There’s been more going on but I need to be better about just putting stuff in here as it happens instead of always waiting months and then trying to cram it all in at once. Anyway, so far, so good.