A day long remembered.
by jharder on Jan.22, 2012, under Ruminations
Since January 2 2010, A-TEAM SOCCER has taken the field 50 times. 3 sessions of indoor soccer, 3 sessions of outdoor soccer. We lost every game we played. Some games were ugly. Some games were close. We’d have a strong first half and then collapse from fatigue in the second half. But not today.
A-TEAM WINS!
I had expected that this would happen soon. I was not expecting it to happen today, to be honest. But finally, after a year of taking the field week after week and facing defeat, we can put one in the W column.
I want to thank the team, including the three surviving members who were originally cut a year ago and formed the core of the team. I want to thank the people who played with us for a time but weren’t able to take the field with us tonight. Your contribution was not unnoticed.
I don’t expect that we’ll win every game from here on out. I don’t even expect that we’ll win half of our games. But I feel like we can finally field a solid team. We’ve reached the end of the beginning, and when we take the field next Sunday we’ll be all the more pumped up for it. After 50 games we finally demonstrated that we can win, and it’s made the entire trip worth it. And the three times I got hit in the head tonight (including two in a row).
Here’s to A-TEAM!
40 Recipe Challenge, Part 2: Ricotta and Pancetta-stuffed Pork Chops
by jharder on Jan.22, 2012, under Food
Last weekend I took a crack at a recipe from Two Dudes, One Pan, a cookbook that I got a few years ago and never really took a close look at. I was flipping through it a few weeks ago and figured that this would be a good one to try. The recipe also calls for some of their classic marinara, which I’ll cover in a separate post, but as a standalone dish this one was surprisingly quick and easy; I came home and did this on a Monday night and was eating by 7pm.
The first, and messiest, part is searing the pork chops. The recipe called for four chops, but I could only either find them in 3 packs or 6 packs, so I went with three and stuffed them about as much as I could. I had already resigned myself to the notion that this was going to make a ridiculous mess out of my pan ahead of time.
After searing the pork chops on the stove for a few minutes, I covered them with some of the marinara and threw the whole pan into the hot oven and baked them at 500 degrees for about 15 minutes. I finally had a good justification for getting an All-Clad pan; the nice thick frying pan did wonderfully in the oven.
Prior to putting the pork chops in the oven, I made up some quick garlic bread by taking a loaf of soft French bread, slicing it lengthwise, adding butter, garlic powder, and Italian seasoning, then throwing the whole thing open-faced under the broiler for a couple of minutes. I wrapped it up in some foil to keep it warm and used the garlic bread to soak up the marinara that was left over at the end.
It’s not the prettiest dish, but it turned out well. Definitely worth making again.
Fauxberon, adventure style
by jharder on Jan.22, 2012, under Brewing
One of my favorite summer beers is Oberon. Oberon Day is a day that I eagerly anticipate from about January 4 forward, since it marks more or less the end of winter and the promise of summer’s arrival. A week or so ago, I was thinking about this year’s Oberon day and how awesome it would be to make my own imitation Oberon and have that on Oberon day, just for kicks. I even managed to do what about 99% of homebrewers who seek to imitate Oberon do and decided to call it Fauxberon.
A couple of friends decided to join me, and we got together yesterday to make the Oberon. It was quite the adventure.
I’m used to doing full-grain brews with the mash tun and the cracked grain and the thermometers. This was a lean operation, though, so we did away with the mash tun. And the thermometer. And the wort chiller. I borrowed my friend’s burner and swiped the propane tank from my parent’s grill and headed over with some Gingerbread Joe to sit in the snow in 25-degree weather while we made a smaller 2.5 gallon batch of beer. Instead of mashing in a traditional mash tun, we poured the grain into a special sock and steeped it at what we assume was 150 degrees for about a half an hour, then boiled for about 60 minutes with various hop additions.
The resulting wort (at double density) tasted pretty good.
As we didn’t have a wort chiller to get it down to temperature quickly, we racked the beer into the primary fermenter and let it cool overnight. Not sure what the original gravity is; last night when the wort was still pretty warm (and at double-strength) it was around 1.110. It will probably be ready for bottling by the end of February, and should have enough time to condition in growlers and bottles before Oberon Day on March 26.
Ultimately, I’m not too concerned about the beer turning out. As one of my much more experienced brewer friends likes to say: “Relax. It’s just beer.”
40 Recipe Challenge, Part 1: Lasagna
by jharder on Jan.15, 2012, under Food
I had mentioned previously that one of the things I want to do this year is try about 40 new recipes, either completely untested before, or revisits of family recipes that I haven’t ever done before. Last night I took a crack at lasagna, based on my grandmother’s recipe. Here goes:
Grandma’s Lasagna
1 lb ground beef or Italian sausage
1 small onion, chopped
1 12oz can tomato paste
1 28oz can tomatoes
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon oregano
2 tablespoons parsley
12 lasagna noodles (most of a box)
1 lb pizza cheese
2 C Ricotta cheese
2 eggs
1/2 C Parmesan cheese
Begin by browning the ground beef or Italian sausage. Add the chopped onion, tomato paste, an additional 12oz can’s worth of water, the tomatoes, garlic powder, oregano, and parsley. Reduce heat to medium and simmer for about a half an hour.
While the sauce is cooking, cook the lasagna noodles (unless you got the no-boil kind). Much like hot dog buns and hot dogs, the amount of noodles they put in a box never seems to line up with however many you’ll need. I used about a dozen to do 3 layers. You’ll also want to preheat the oven for 350 degrees.
In a separate bowl, mix together the Ricotta cheese, eggs, and shredded cheese.
Grease a 9×13 baking dish and put a layer of sauce along the bottom to keep the noodles from sticking, burning, and making a complete mess. Layer the cooked noodles, cheese, and sauce. Be sure to save enough sauce for a top layer (this keeps the top layer of noodles from getting dried out and crunchy). I finished off the last bit of Parmesan I had in the grater on top of that.
Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes. I put a large baking sheet under my dish to make it easier to get in and out of the oven and to prevent any spillover from making a mess.
Let it cool for about 5 minutes, and then serve. Makes approximately 8 decent servings.
Suggested alterations
My grandparents weren’t big on garlic, but I am. I’d recommend increasing the garlic powder to 1 teaspoon, minimum. Even at that point I wasn’t getting a huge garlic flavor. I’d also recommend adding some salt to the sauce.
If you have fresh basil, try throwing a layer of that in somewhere (thanks to my friend for suggesting it).
Finally, if you like your lasagna to have a little more heat, use spicy hot sausage or throw some crushed red pepper in the sauce.
Runfos, freaky January weather-style
by jharder on Jan.15, 2012, under Running
This week’s weather has been a little nuts.
Tuesday, I did some interval training downtown. It was 50 degrees outside. I decided to head west, away from the main loop and all of its stoplights and traffic, and headed down to Kollen Park to run along the boardwalk. I’d watch people do it all the time when I’d be playing Ultimate Frisbee or doing a soccer practice, but I never actually ran the boardwalk up until that point. It was a wonderful evening for a run.
The warm weather, combined with the fact that it was 5:30 and the sun was just then beginning to set, made for a great run. I miss those kinds of evenings, and I can’t wait for the evenings to start getting brighter. I’ll take 50 degree runs over runs that end in me trying to bail my friend’s car out of a foot of snow any day.
Unfortunately, the denial had to come to an end. This is what I’ve got to run in now.
My attempts yesterday to do 3 miles on the treadmill at the fitness center at the apartment complex ended in complete failure. I just cannot suspend reality and run on a treadmill in that place. The two miles I did at MVP earlier this week went really well though, so I guess I’ll be doing it there from now on. The equipment is nicer, there’s usually something happening on the basketball courts to watch, and, most importantly, there are usually a dozen or so other people working out. Having others around pushes me to finish the workout in the same way that running a 10K in a race is more enjoyable for me than waking up in the morning and running 6 miles around the boonies.
Recipe: Rice Pilaf (Updated)
by jharder on Jan.09, 2012, under Food
Previously, I had posted a recipe for a basic rice pilaf I cooked up out of my head. It had been a while since I had made this, and after my last few batches of wild rice turned out rather disappointing, I decided to head back to the pilaf.
This time I decided to not be quite as precise in measuring out my ingredients (I’m usually not when I cook out of my head), partly because I was experimenting and mostly because it was 7 at night and I was hungry. Here’s (roughly) what went into the pilaf tonight:
6 cloves of garlic, minced
1 small yellow onion, minced
1-3 tablespoons olive oil (regular vegetable or canola oil would probably work just fine, too)
1 cup of brown rice
2 cups of water
1 tablespoon cracked wild rice
Chicken soup base, to taste
1 small can of mushrooms, drained
1/8-1/4 cup of pine nuts, toasted lightly
Begin by mincing the garlic and onion. I attempted to hurry things along a bit by heating the oil with the garlic while mincing the onion (use medium heat to avoid getting the oil too hot too fast). Add the onion and give it a good stir for a few minutes, until the onion is wilted, soft, and golden colored. Add the rice and stir briskly for about 15 seconds to get it properly mixed with the onion, oil, and garlic. Add the water and increase the heat to high. Add the cracked wild rice, chicken soup base, and drained mushrooms. When the rice reaches a boiling point, reduce the heat to low and let simmer for 45-50 minutes (it takes longer to cook with the oil and the mushrooms).
While the rice is cooking, toast the pine nuts. Toasting pine nuts is an exercise in patience; they’re best toasted over medium heat, and it’s important to stir them constantly, especially after a few minutes in the pan. Once they’re lightly toasted, set them aside.
When the amount of liquid in your pilaf is just below the top of the rice, remove it from the heat and allow it to sit for about a minute. Add the pine nuts and mix well. Serve immediately. Yields approximately 3-4 servings, depending on how hungry you are. I find this goes pretty well with most chicken and fish.
A quick comment on pine nuts: don’t get these at the grocery store if you can at all help it. A tiny little thing of pine nuts, maybe about double what you could use in this recipe, could easily go for $5-$10 at most supermarkets. Check out your neighborhood Sam’s Club (ours has them somewhat intermittently) or Costco, or your local natural foods market. Any of those would probably suit you better than the $5 glass jars of pine nuts in the grocery store.
2012 Goals
by jharder on Jan.01, 2012, under Listacular, Ruminations
2011 was a decent year. I ran my first 5K and 10K, biked 100km for the first time in a couple of years, and got quite a bit better at soccer. I made my first batch of mead and capped the year yesterday with a bottling party at my friend’s place.
We bottled 4 growlers and 11 liter bottles of Gingerbread Joe. Final gravity was 1.018, for a rough ABV of 6%. It won’t be carbonated for a few more weeks, but I’ve got a 12oz bottle that I’ll crack open in February to test.
Anyways, the goals.
Run a 25K
I had originally planned to run a half marathon last fall, but I didn’t do a very good job training for it and injured myself in August. I’m signing up to do the 25K for the River Bank Run this year, which is 15.5 miles, or slightly more than a half marathon. I’m also hoping to beat my pace times for the races that I ran last year (St. Patty’s Pacer, Panther Prowl, and Lakeshore Miracle Run).
Pwn that dune from Hell
Last year I ran the Lakeshore Miracle Run 10K, which took you down the road, through the woods, along the beach, and then up this beast:
This year, I’m going to run up the entire thing. All thousand feet of it. It’s probably going to mean that I spend a fair amount of time after the River Bank Run running along the beach, but if it means I can work on my tan, then I’m all for it.
Bike 100 miles in a day
My cycling buddy got a new road bike for Christmas, so this year we’re gonna tear up the roads. Last year with a little more training we probably could have done the full 100 miles in the Holland Hundred, but this year it’s definitely being done. At the tail end of the season in September, there is a 100 mile ride in Three Oaks that I’m also signing up to ride in. I figure it’s a good follow-up to a half marathon the day before in Holland.
Get certified
The problem with studying for certification exams is that it reminds me of the worst parts about college (the studying). I haven’t been doing a lot of it lately, but that’s going to change. Professionally, my goal for 2012 is to get my MCITP Enterprise Admin certification, and my VMware certification. It’s going to mean a lot of reading, but it will pay out eventually.
Try 40 new recipes
Living on your own is pretty nice. There’s no roommate taking a shower at inconvenient times, no arguments about the utility bills or who’s doing the dishes, and nobody has to suffer my taste in music. Another upside is that you can cook whatever you want, but the downside to that is that there’s only one person around to eat it. This means that when I make bean and bacon soup, or almost anything else, I’m eating it for a week. This meant that I was content to cycle through a somewhat limited set of recipes and didn’t have much incentive to try something new (aside from a few spectacular experiments involving a grill).
My goal, from a culinary perspective, is to try 40 new recipes this year. It doesn’t have to be a complete meal; it can just be a side dish or a dessert or a bread recipe, but I figure if I’ve got a kitchen as stocked as mine, I should put it to use.
Anyways, those are a few of my goals for the year. Since many of them also encourage fitness and intelligence, when the apocalypse comes next December I’ll last more than five minutes, which I think is a pretty handy bonus.
’twas the week before Christmas
by jharder on Dec.18, 2011, under Ruminations
Coming back from a vacation can always be a bit of a rough adjustment. Previously, I’d wrap four days off around a weekend to create six days off between two three-day weeks, which seemed to help, but last week I went for the full week off, which made coming back this week a little rough. Throw in a couple of company events on Thursday and it really left the week feeling longer than usual.
This weekend we closed out Session I for the 2011 indoor soccer season with an 8-5 loss to Zoly. Zoly is one of the best teams in the division, and our losing to them, while perhaps not unexpected, by only three points was a demonstration of how far we’ve come as a team. We had a couple of good subs, and I’d love to see them join the team full-time. We’re one or two really good players away from being able to start winning games. Despite barely running at all these days, my soccer game has gotten better; I’m getting a bit faster and I can play a bit smarter. I just need to work on my speed, my endurance, and my ability to actually possess the ball. Being able to successfully take a shot on goal would be nice too.
I’ve surrendered in the war with Sam to keep my Christmas tree looking even mildly presentable. See below, when the tree was first finished:
Now, the tree is largely bare from the bottom up to about 2 feet off the ground, and a growing collection of reclaimed ornaments adorns a nearby shelf. Sam has yet to figure out how to pull down the garland or knock my Crayola ornaments around, though, so at least there’s that.
Almost all of my Christmas presents have arrived at this point; I’m waiting on two final things to show up later this week, and then I’ll be ready to wrap them on Saturday. Because of my cat’s taste for chewing on boxes, presents don’t get wrapped until the night of the 24th, but I’m looking forward to it.
Finally, a few days ago, a little something showed up in the mail.
I didn’t open it up until this morning, but this is a suggested training plan for the 2012 Fifth Third Riverbank Run. I had done the 10K last year and concluded shortly after that I wanted to do the 25K (and get my medal) this year, but I have to admit I hadn’t really given training for this much thought until I got this in the mail. I knew I was going to need to start running again soon, and I’d need to try and avoid pushing myself too fast, too soon and getting injured again, but I really had no idea how I was going to go about it. This, I’m hoping, should help. I’m just going to start on the square for December 19 tomorrow and see where things go from there. I’m getting excited to run the River Bank Run, and I already can’t wait for next summer and the opportunity to go for early-morning runs outdoors before work.
Anybody have any Christmas shopping left to do? What’s the one thing you want most for Christmas this year?
Movie Review: Immortals
by jharder on Dec.09, 2011, under Movies
Today was the last day (in Holland, at least) that Immortals was playing, and since the movie looked kinda good (the whole “from the team that brought you ’300′” thing got me) I decided to go check it out. I was planning on cashing in on the daily matinee deal, but was not really expecting to have to fork over nearly $20 for popcorn and 2 pops. Seriously, guys. You’re starting to push your limits there.
Anyways.
I walked into Immortals with pretty low expectations, largely because I know it had been panned by critics and the trailer made it look like a slightly less impressive copy of 300. Even the title for the movie seemed like an attempt to draw the 300 crowd (the Immortals being the best thing the Persians had to field against the Spartans). I am happy to say that the movie, by far, exceeded my expectations.
Immortals is, put basically, the love child of Disney’s Hercules and 300. Now, before you start cursing such a grotesque mating, just hear me out. Immortals tells the tale of Theseus, which for those of us who did some cursory Greek Mythology in high school or college, may have either merited a lecture or barely any mention at all (I only know of him through a mention in Disney’s Hercules, which I don’t really consider to be factual), but many of the concepts present in the movie, both directly and thematically, ring familiar: you’ve got the Gods (strangely absent from 2004′s travesty called Troy), the Titans, and the Hero’s Journey motif. Although the trailer bills itself as an almost incessant action movie, there’s a lot more to it than that.
Immortals borrows on some of the more common plot devices in Greek Mythology, including the Oracles and their prophecies, the Gods taking human form to walk among us, and their relative restraint in meddling with human affairs. While the movie takes liberties with the nature of the relationship between the Gods and the Titans, there is, in many ways, much more to this movie than there ever was with 300. 300 is a movie I scrub through to watch the battle scenes. Immortals is a movie I’ll buy on iTunes the day it comes out and watch to watch the entire tale.
Yes, there are some parts of the movie that I could see coming a mile away (what’s that? The hero meets a virgin Oracle? I wonder what could possibly happen between those two), and there are parts of that movie that I found somewhat unnecessary (we get the evil king is evil. We don’t need the Temple of Dooom approach to torture to establish that), but these are minor details. For the most part, this movie is less about the extended action scenes a la 300 (although the “their numbers count for nothing!” rallying speech sounds awful familiar) or the massive, epic battles a la Lord of the Rings or Troy, and more about the journey of Theseus. The final scene in the movie, which is equal parts epilogue and trailer for what can only be a sequel, really ties things together; you see the great moments of the movie wrapped up in the stone carvings that we would recognize today, and see the stories like the battle with the minotaur in the labyrinth for what they really are: slightly dressed-up interpretations of what really happened.
I look forward to seeing Immortals release on iTunes, and I’m sad I didn’t see this one sooner. That said, there is nothing quite like seeing a movie essentially on your own (it was just me and my mom in the theater). Using my mildly informal rating system, I’ll give this one four stars (see below for a rough translation of what that means).
Stars in real terms:
One star = screw this. Don’t watch it, don’t rent it, and certainly don’t buy it.
Two stars = wait for the rental.
Three stars = wait for it to come out on DVD. This isn’t worth the $18 popcorn or the $8.25 ticket.
Four stars = go watch it in theaters, and then go get it on DVD when it comes out. Take a date to it and hope she likes it.
3-day baking adventure and poker night
by jharder on Dec.09, 2011, under Ruminations
One of the things I wanted to accomplish on my week-long vacation this winter, other than grilling some tasty meat, was to get my baking in order for my Christmas party this weekend. What I had originally planned as a two-day baking adventure has turned into a three-day expedition, in part due to a decision to watch Immortals today rather than tomorrow when it wasn’t going to be in theaters anymore (I’ll review it in a separate post).
Wednesday I put my baking list together and went over to my parents’ to start baking with my mom. While I am a decent cook and can work out some pretty tasty pasta and grilled meat, baking hasn’t been one of my strong suits, especially when it comes to cookies. I was usually at work when the time came to make Christmas cookies, so this was a new experience for me.
We began with a round of spritz, which are small butter cookies that you make with a cookie press. We use a Christmas-tree shaped press and color the dough green. Any time you start with 3 sticks of butter, you know you’re moving in the right direction (as of Thursday night, we’ve used about 2 pounds of butter so far).
After the spritz I put together a batch of dough for peppermint pinwheels, and then I started in on a batch of peanut brittle. The peppermint pinwheels are two separate sheets of dough rolled together and can be a bit tricky to put together, but they’re worth it. I also mixed up some dough for the peanut butter temptations, but didn’t have the peanut butter cups to put in them, so that went into the fridge as well. We closed out the day with a batch of chocolate fudge with cashews. My mom questioned why the recipe instructed her to butter the wax paper, since I could pat down the melted chocolate and evaporated milk mixture without it sticking to my hand, but my response was, simply, “It’s Christmas, Mom! Butter you wax paper!”
We’re not kidding about the butter thing.
Thursday We started out by baking up the peanut butter temptations. These are essentially a peanut butter cookie wrapped around a Reese’s Miniature Peanut Butter Cup. Despite their size, they really are more like two-bite cookies than one-bite cookies.
After the peanut butter temptations, we baked up the peppermint pinwheels from Wednesday. Peppermint pinwheels, as alluded to above, are a pinwheel cookie with two sheets of dough; one is dyed red and peppermint-flavored, the other tastes pretty much like a sugar cookie. Leaving them rolled up together in the fridge overnight tends to make the whole thing taste like peppermint, but after some careful shaping on my mom’s part we got that batch done as well. We took a break and went to see Immortals (later post), then came back and made sugar cookies, using an old family recipe.
Tomorrow (Friday), my plans are to make up revel bars (a layer of melted chocolate and walnuts between two layers of an oatmeal-cookie-like dough), some chocolate-dipped pretzel rods, and I’m going to try my hand at bread and make some garlic and herb bread for dipping Saturday night. I’ve never made bread before, and it’s been a while since I’ve had fresh-baked bread. I thought it would be a good way to take Saturday’s party from “good” to “great”, so we’ll see how it goes. I’m going to adapt a recipe that is supposed to make 1 medium rectangular loaf to at least one French bread-shaped loafs, and I’m pretty excited for it. Pictures to follow.
Tonight I went to a Holland Young Professionals event at perhaps one of my favorite local restaurants, Wild Chef. I’ve talked about Wild Chef previously, and I was pretty excited to go there again with a new group of friends. It was a good time, and afterwards we went over to a friend’s house for a night of Texas Hold ‘Em and beer.
Granted, it wasn’t super cold, so I was probably missing out on the full flavor experience.
Anyways. I’m going to begin by saying this: I do not play poker. In the last year, I think I’ve played poker maybe one other time. If you go back another year you’ve got maybe another two times, and at least one of those was against a guy who played a ton of online poker. I know, roughly, which hands beat which, but I don’t have too much of a sense for when to check, when to fold, and when to raise. Buy-in was $5, which I figured wasn’t too big of a deal for the learning curve, and I’m proud to say I ended the night $10 richer. I’ll attribute it more to dumb luck than anything else, although there were some exquisite hands; the one the stands out particularly well in my mind was a hand that started with pocket aces (instant win, no?) that I was ultimately figuring I’d pair with the pair of Jacks that were laid down on the table. I figured I had this one in the bag, but I didn’t want to push it, so I just matched and stayed in the game. What I was not expecting: the other guy holding pocket Jacks for a four of a kind. Bugger.
Still, not a bad start.
