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In re: Winter miracles

ed — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 22:03:11 +0000

January 7th in Ohio doesn’t usually bring with it 50 degree weather – but this year it did and that meant the bike path was full of bikers and walkers, the tennis courts even had people in shorts. We took advantage of it and headed off on a nice long walk with the dogs in the peak of the amazing weather. On the way back the urge for a coffee came upon as we neared the Caribou, but alas no wallets were to be found. Would there be two miracles today? Yes – just like the miraculous weather we were able to scrounge up $1.67, just 2 cents short of a small cup of coffee and with the kind aid of the staff I was coached into the right answer to the trivia (Caribou Coffee in pig latin, which is Ariboucay offeecay) which brought it down to $1.59 – enough to leave a tip even! So with a second cup to split up the cup and a dash of half and half we were out on their patio enjoying the amazing day with our coffees and dogs – a winter miracle I’d say.

In re: Home take on Northstar’s ham and cheese biscuit

ed — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 14:32:31 +0000

Northstar is officially a Columbus institituion, having grown from a location in the Short North to having locations in Beechwald and Easton as well as opening Third & Hollywood in Grandview. Northstar does a great job of mixing genres, combining simple with upscale, quality with casual, and mixing healthy with not so much. One of those not so much items is the ham and cheese scone. Like all Northstar’s baked goods they sport a small sign showing what time they were made – although some of us would gladly eat a day old one if one made it so long. The ham and cheese is of course a classic combination that is done to perfection, with some of the cheese getting crusty around the edges and a nice ham that adds without being too hamey.

The sadness of all this is that I rarely get one of these scones because I always get the sweet potato turkey hash for breakfast when we go, meaning only if we splurge for some take out biscuits to eat later will I have one of these – and never in its fresh from the oven state.

A month or two ago while making some biscuits, I thought, hey why not toss in the ham and cheese to these? Not having ham and cheese I had to wait awhile until I remembered the whole affair again at the grocerry store.
Problems emerged immediately though, what kind of ham? what kind of cheese? I thought I’d like to use Virginia ham (to some country ham), a salty, cured ham, which could be added in moderation to deliver texture and intense flavor, but I was foiled when the store doesn’t sell it. (They did have deli ham called Virginia ham, but from my guess it wasn’t what I was thinking of). Instead I settled on a package of pre-diced prociutto (we were at Kroger, so our options were a bit limited in this department – although I should add this was at the new Clintonville Kroger, which is really nice – just not a gourmet destination I guess). For cheese grabbed some gruyere and emmenthal, being unable to decide, so went with the classic fondue duo.

To make the biscuits I made up a batch of biscuits inspired by Sam Sifton’s recipe a while back in the NY Times, been really happy with his recipe, don’t follow it exactly as I am going from memory, but basically I made a half recipe in the food processor, adding the cheese. Into a bowl to add the milk and then in the proscuttio.

I try to minimally handle biscuits and to that end I don’t cut them out with a biscuit cutter, instead cutting them with a knife into squares (in this case 4 big biscuits). The proscuitio and cheese biscuits turned out amazing, I think next time I will leave in some bigger chunks of cheese to get some pockets of cheese (I’ve since done this and can attest it is a good idea), but the little squares of proscuttio were delicious. The recipe is quick enough to make on a work morning if your not a dash out the door person and delicious enough to make for a special sunday brunch.

In re: the strangeness of tariffs

ed — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 17:45:14 +0000

So you probably know that we in the US are part of the WTO, part of NAFTA and that we are generally liberalizing our trade (our tariffs today are really low compared to back when we were protectionist). That’s why its so crazy to learn about all the crazy distinctions in tariffs on goods imported to the US and how much various industry lobbying efforts have led to strange tariff policies. I am all for getting rid of all of these, and the more you hear how crazy they are the more I bet other folks would be. It is kinda amusing to hear about the distinctions polyester vs cotton, water resistant vs not, collared vs. non-collared, holiday/festive t-shirt vs. regular t-shirt and you wonder what impact these tariffs have on what we end up with. One of my favorites things these days is the planet money podcast — if your not listening to it, you gotta check it out, you’ll be learning all kinds of useful stuff about the economy, trade and finance and its amazingly entertaining. Anyway this topic and the strange examples above were featured in an episode of the planet money podcast where they went to a laboratory in LA that looks into what imports are made out of, going so far as to blend t-shirts, cutting apart sneakers and testing waterproofness. That and the value of putting Rudolph the red-nose reindeer (no tariffs) or for office chairs that spin and raise (no tariffs) — who knew?

In re: The pain of losing

ed — Mon, 25 May 2009 14:59:57 +0000

I grew up with plenty of losing sports teams in Cleveland, Ohio. For decades it was the norm and I was fortunate to happen in time when the Indians got hot for more then half a decade. Additionally I was alive for some good cavs team (although I was young), but then Jordan got in the way and ruined all of that. So its fair to say I haven’t had it as bad as other Cleveland sports fans in terms of the amount of suffering. Despite that I know enough, especially from having seen the Indians so good and then so bad to know that we must relish our brief moments. This year may be one such year for the Cavaliers as they steam rolled most of the NBA on their way to the best record in the league, and a mere 2 losses at home (1 of those was w/ bench players only to end the season and it did go to OT). Anyway, the point is I think I enjoyed this season a whole lot, its not often that you can expect your team to win every night and they basically do just that. I enjoyed blowouts and occasional close games and I kept reminding myself that this wouldn’t last forever and to enjoy it.

The playoffs started out as best as anyone could expect them to go, with two 4-0 sweeps of admittedly less then elite teams. However, these may have set us up for disappointment as we now stare down a 2-1 defeat, and only that because of an amazing last second (literally last second), we in bounded with 1.0 and LeBron hit what will be unless we lose the series is going to be remembered in Cleveland forever (yes ‘we’, when you watch enough games of fat Shawn Kemp and the human turnover Bobby Sura in a Gund Arena that allows your shouts from the upper deck to be heard on the bench, you get the right to say we .) Which gets me to the point of all this, what if we (there we go again) don’t win? Of course this 7 game series is still far from over. Most of the Cavaliers have player very poorly. Z doesn’t have his shot, Mo and Delonte are off the mark and all 3 games have still been close (thanks of course to James), but we have come to expect blowouts so this pain is rough. Of course in the end struggling for the championship would only make it that much sweeter, but what if we don’t make it and this turns out to be the Magic and the Lakers years to compete (or Denver). Then what will I make of this season? I hate to even think about it, this year was championship or bust, but does it have to be? Should I not enjoy the thrill of having the most dominate team in the league only because we ended like this (this is hypothetically, I haven’t lost hope yet). Yet somehow it does ruin everything, the pain of losing would overwhelm most of the joy the season was, the players of course will declare failure, but should I as a fan declare failure as well? Probably, the reason success tastes so good is the risk of failure, the failure we have known for so long feels so bad, for those of us who invest too much in this religion of sport, it is hard to trick ourselves into saying that we did well this season and we should enjoy it. Now I need to go wash my Witness shirt and get ready for game 4. Let’s go Cavs!

In re: Bottle water tax anyone?

ed — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 01:59:32 +0000

Yesterday was earth day and while many of us might have done nothing to celebrate the earth, I did some reading (well most online magazines and news sources tended to put up a few articles so maybe they were forced upon me – heck if Google hadn’t done an earth day image I might not have known it was going on at all) Anyway, an article in Slate on the horrors, that’s right the horrors of bottled water. That led me to suggest in a brief chat with someone that a great idea (and the article may have mentioned this as well) that taxing bottled water would be a good idea. Why you say? Well its not like we don’t want to encourage water drinking over soda and sugary drinks so we need to be real careful, but bottled water is quite a bad use of our resources. If you think about it we spend a lot of money trucking, bottling in plastic (most of which ends up in the land fill – even states with deposit laws don’t have them on the plastic bottled water bottles) when we could focus our money and attention instead into getting great water from our taps (I know taps don’t sound sexy, look sexy or have the panache that drinking a Voss does, but we can work to change that). Maybe the solution for now is getting people to realize that faucet mounted water filters (I use a Pur one and I really like it) can make your tap water taste great and that often times the so called bottled water is sourced from Municipal supplies as well (purified water may be better than the tap water source, so I am not saying this is bad, I am only saying lets get those filters downstream and get the whole bottle out of the transaction.

In re: Oscar boosts stock?

ed — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 20:44:00 +0000

Thats what analysts seem to have been saying and traders in the wake of yesterdays upset best picture win for Crash which was produced by independent film company Lionsgate, who in in trading today saw their shares rise, as sales of the movie are predicted to rise. (see story)

In re: South Dakota Abortion Law Signed

ed — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 16:19:00 +0000

So it looks like we can possibly get ready for the first potential challenge to Roe v. Wade to begin trickling towards the new Roberts court. South Dakota’s new law banning most abortions is vying for the attention by being first (see story). All the attention over the legalization of abortions reminds me of an article that I read about whether Roe was really that important anymore. I thought it interesting because that author determined it really wouldn’t change much as states that were really anti-abortion had basically gotten rid of all clinics (such as Alabama) and that other pro-choice states would remain legal and people would travel to get their abortions across state lines, as apparently they do now. The question then would turn more to states with Blue/Red splits such as Ohio, as democratic areas split with the state leaving it the perpetual battle ground state. Critics of such a patchwork point out the likely chaos that would ensue, including states passing laws to prevent traveling out of state for abortions (possibly legal) and all the court battles that will ensue “If Roe is reversed, the ensuing chaos will demand a federal resolution to the abortion battle — again.” (see NYTimes sub required)

Of course all of this talk reminds me once again how curious it is that we leave all of these important decisions up to the courts in the first place, it would seem more sensible for such decisions to be made by elected officials, but that would be un-American I suppose. For this topic I recommend Robert Kagan’s book on Adversarial Legalism, which I read for a class on judicial policy making in undergrad.

In re: Del Posto

ed — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 15:04:00 +0000

A while back I watched with great interest a show about Mario Batali on the Food Network, about the creation of his and his partners’ new restaurant in NY. The show was a bit over the top at stressing how busy Mario was, (flying to book signings in Chicago and all over, making a line of frozen pizzas, cookware and sausages). Mario with this kept on asking if he has bitten off more then he could chew, all the while trying to make a four star restaurant (Italian). I guess I have mixed feelings about the chef who goes everyone (the likes of Wolfgang Puck, now Emeril etc.) Whose faces adorn products all over the supermarket shelves now, including with Emeril fresh vegetables (I saw some roma tomatos (from Mexico no less)) and wondered if Emeril would ever be caught using such what I assume are low in flavor tomatos (tomatos don’t travel well and are picked early and gased to make turn red)

I digress, but getting back to Del Posto it was interesting seeing how it was started, the huge cost of building the space, but also it seemed to contrived, a 4 star Italian (Frank Bruni has since given it a very respectable 3 stars in the NYTimes) One of the chefs would ask Mario how the justified charging twice the price for a specific dish, and its a valid question, as it would seem to me at some point the whole idea of the celebrity chef plays into it, how much are you paying for the Mario name, and is he really as creative after being pampered in the world of being a celebrity, as he was as an upstart? I don’t know, as I ‘ve never eaten at one of his restaraunts.

On a side note I thought it was funny to see Frank Bruni review Hooters the chicken wing restaraunt/sports bar. Reading it shows how out of touch with most Americans he is. See here

In re: New Orelans Recovery is Doomed

ed — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 13:05:00 +0000

At least thats the opinion of economist Tim Harford in an article in Slate. As you may know I generally like his pieces, and this one does teach the problem of allowing individuals to decide if they should rebuild in places like the 9th ward, and how the decending spiral of New Orelans that already was in place won’t be beat.

In re: Hello CDs

ed — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 20:46:00 +0000

So finally got through the week, which wouldn’t have been so long if I hadn’t been sick. Being sick allowed me to taste test chicken noodle soups, and the winner so far among Cambells Chunky and Progresso was hands down progresso, maybe I’ll put the whole write up here. What spurred me to write now however was that I just started listening to a CD. I know, plenty of people do this, in fact I do it all the time as I often listen to one in the car, although on longer drives i usually fire up the iPod. Yet today, I had what felt like my first ‘old school’ CD experience, possibly the way LP afficiandos feel looking back at vinyl.

My parents came to Columbus today and we had a nice lunch (at Betty’s, great place on High Street) and grabbed some dessert to go (at Pistachios). Okay, so back to the CDs, they had brought with them a CD player my grandma was getting rid of, and I had apparently asked for at somepoint, one of the six-disc cartridge systems. I just hooked it up, and while setting it up I realized that I really don’t listen to CDs in the house, its either iPod, or computer these days. Then as I loaded up the cds the first one to come on was the blue Weezer album. For some reason the sound was clean, rich and took me right back to sitting in my room listening to CDs while I did my math homework.

The experience, the sound, hearing all the songs in order (something iTunes allows you to avoid) brought me right back. Not sure if the sound is really better, but I swear it sounds great. So who knows how i’ll feel when we are onto the next format or the format after this format (DVDs are almost obsolete and they still feel new) for all I know we will be the last generation attached to a physical format, holding a CD case the way our parents held large albums and the way our kids will willy nilly put their music into that weeks ‘cool player’ which may double as their phone, camera and shoe.