The Achiko Philosophy Company

One Step Closer to Meat Without Feet

2009-11-30T20:18:32Z

A team of Dutch scientists, funded, much to my amusement, by "the Dutch government and a sausage maker," have grown pork muscle in a lab. It's completely unstressed and thus squishy and awful (the scientists call it "soggy pork"), but this sounds like a pretty big step. The muscle was formed by mixing muscle cells from a live pig mixed with "a broth of other animal products" (this article is just full of gems), but no word on just exactly what that broth is or how it's made. But at this point it seems like figuring out a way to work the muscle into an edible form is the easy part.

More difficult, I imagine, and essential for lab-meat to take off, is synthesizing bone, skin, fat, and connective tissue, all of which provide necessary flavor (though given the proliferation of boneless, skinless, saline-solution-added chicken breasts and pork chops, many may be happy with this as-is, which works fine for me as this could have huge environmental benefits).

I've gone back and forth on whether I'd eat lab-meat for a while now, under the assumption that it won't taste as good as the real thing but be better than most of the alternatives, and I'm more-than-tentatively in favor of it, for now. It's much easier to gussy-up mediocre meat with spices and sauces than it is for vegetables. The final form of it, not just in terms of taste and texture but industrial preparation (and all the environmental and economic logistics therein) will make the final decision for me. I'm more than a little afraid of how they'll be able to synthesize fats and collagen without just setting International Flavors & Fragrances to work on some Crisco, but I don't want to damn them before giving them a chance, especially when this project, if made tasty and affordable, could be a revolution.

I have the vague concern that cheap, accessible lab-meat will keep the American diet locked into its wildly unbalanced current state, but it probably won't be that cheap for quite a while, and I'm skeptical about how much people will be willing to change their diets anyway. It's hard to give up abundance, especially when it tastes so good.* And it would probably make McDonald's burgers a lot more hygenic.

Lab-meat will probably require specific types of cooking. I doubt you'll get a very good steak with it, but if that means we shift our meat-eating from roasted or grilled hunks to braised bits in stews and tacos, that sounds just peachy. And I can see hip, technophillic restaurants getting in on the act: chicken sous-vide fresh from Greystone Labs, confit of Umbrella Corporation duck.

* I do think our diets, or at least some portion of the population, will change in the long-term as the moral and sustainable arguments against un-checked meat-eating gain additional traction, but that's a discussion for another time.

Source

Why I've been more willing to see more children's movies than "adult's" movies of late

2009-11-12T17:09:46Z

[T]his kind of honest, realistic assessment of human relationships has gone missing from far too many supposedly grown-up movies, which are almost hysterical in their eagerness to dispense comfort, sentimentality and neat, tidy endings. However violent or foulmouthed they may be, most of these commercial entertainments offer soothing scenarios of wish fulfillment. Justice is served. The bad guys pay. Love conquers all. The naughty boys come home from their crazy adventures and find that their mommies still love them. (That’s a plot summary of “The Hangover,” by the way, not of “Where the Wild Things Are.”)

But things are much more complicated in some children’s movies, it seems, where the regressive infantilism of grown-up comedies and action pictures is answered by a grave precocity. A movie like “Where the Wild Things Are” or Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox” play a kind of reverse dress-up, disguising adult anxieties in the costumes of innocent make-believe and fanciful spectacle."

Unleashing Life's Wild Things on Screen (NYT)

In response to "Print is Dead"

2009-10-28T19:51:02Z

As most of you know, I'm the fiction editor for Euphony, a UChicago lit journal that for the past year or so has been developing an online content platform. We've done quite well in page views for a journal so small, and it's definitely increased our submissions and readership. We've had fun putting up more content on the blog than would fit in the print issue. (I get over 200 submissions a year. I publish at most six.) But we still put a lot of effort into our print issues. The trio of editors who put them together are grammar and design obsessives. So when a friendly author (who we've published several times) sent us a helpful email about how we can start using search engine optimization to increase our traffic, but then also suggested we abandon our print issue because print is dead, I replied:

We won't be giving up the print side of our publication any time soon Call me old school, but the design efforts we put into our print issues (bright coloring, crisp lettering, raised type on body pages) create a product I consider much more beautiful than a digital copy, even on the drool-worthy 27" iMacs on which we do production. We're happy to offer as much digital content as we can, but I see no reason to ditch our core activity for ten years now. The "future of publishing" is whatever we make it to be, and if people only claim that print is totally dead and atavistic in a digital content world, then yes, that's a self-fulfilling prophecy that will undoubtedly come to pass. But the best advantages of print and digital are completely orthogonal, and if the internet's shown us anything, it's that genres, content, and media will diversify much more than they'll contract. And abandoning readers who want nothing to do with e-lit (in long- or short-form) will do just as much to kill America's literary tradition as anything else. Besides, you'd be surprised at just how many college students won't touch ebooks at all. They can't stand them. These are the same ones who only read blogs and the online paper, who don't own CDs anymore, who pirate more films than they see in theaters.

I include this here because I wrote that paragraph in one continuous flow. It felt as if I was finally able to say (at least somewhat eloquently) what I've been feeling about "new media" for a while now. Should we be doing more digital marketing? Absolutely. But we also have our own reading preferences, and I don't like being made to feel like a luddite for preferring one of the most robust technologies ever made over glitzy plastic and glass.

Why I've decided to stop buying much organic

2009-10-14T19:54:10Z

First, an introduction, to see where I'm coming from:

Yesterday I had to do some grocery shopping. I'm making pasta bolognese, for which I use equal parts turkey and ground beef (healthier with no loss in flavor). The boutique-y grocery from which I buy my produce had organic ground beef in a fancy thick plastic box with "ORGANIC" in rustic, green lettering. It was expensive and looked like it was lacking fat and connective tissue, both of which I wanted. Also, ground beef isn't obligated to be truthful about what part of the cow it comes from, and I was specifically after chuck. Upon closer look, I read the meat came from cows across three countries, one of which was Australia. I then saw frozen whole cuts of meat from an Indiana farm, but when I asked if they could grind me a pound of chuck, they said they only had frozen. I would have ground it myself, but didn't want to buy more meat than I needed, and the smallest steaks were 8 oz. more than I wanted. So I had to buy my meat from the conventional supermarket down the street, and while yes, I know, conventional red meat is verboten, at least I was able to get a pound of chuck and dictate the texture of the grind.

I'm tired of being lied to. Besides price, conventional agriculture has a great advantage over organic supermarket produce: it doesn't insult my intelligence. It makes relatively few trumped-up statements about what it is or where it comes from. It's the lowest common denominator and it's okay with that. Given all The Jungle 2.0 books, films, and articles which have been sprucing up over the past few years, even mildly educated consumers need to put their hands over their ears to ignore the state of the meat industry. The Big Lie is slowly ending; we want to know how sausage is made now, and we're less willing to be duped. The conventional meat industry, as demonstrated by its lackluster attempts to fight this change in attitude, seems to have on some level accepted it. The organic food industry, on the other hand, appears to believe it can still treat us like the Mad Men of the '50s treated housewives.

Mainstream (I mean that commonly found in major supermarkets) organic vegetables and meat come with a menagerie of buzz-words and catch-phrases designed to lure my dollar. (I'd also like to limit the scope of this post to pure produce and and meat. As for organic packaged products or food-like microwave meals, they're often so far removed from organic's original meaning as to not warrant discussion here.) In many cases, I'd be fine with the oh-so-obvious marketing speak and pretentious package design. If I could believe a word of it. If your organic produce is fresher, healthier, and better for the environment, why does it look soft, mushy, and ruddy so often? And why is it sometimes shipped in wasteful plastic boxes (while the conventional spinach is loose in a basket)? And why is part of your ground beef from Australia?! I'm sorry, what's better for the environment about that?

"Organic" is a term subject to what psychologists call the halo effect, a principle which makes marketers squeal with joy. When people recognize an item as "organic," they start attributing other values to it--values food marketers want us to attribute but those they can't do themselves because the associations are baseless. So we start thinking organic is humane, or environmentally friendly, or healthier, or better-tasting. Meanwhile, it's unclear organic food is even organic; the word is so wrapped up in legislative mumbo-jumbo and a hot-potato game of oversight as to be almost meaningless with regards to its original intentions, let alone secondary ones.

I'm sick of it. Supermarket produce and meat tastes, for the most part (so I've found), the same. I don't mean everything is the same quality all the time. But the statistical variation in quality across items and across organic/conventional categories all seems about the same, depending on season, shelf-time, and distributor. And if purveryors of organic food want to make the claim that organic tends to taste better, has more nutrients, or has fewer non-trivial amounts of pesticides, than I'd like them to show me a p value that says so. On a label. Until then, I refuse to believe them. I won't pay for buzzwords. I'm sorry to the producers who are actually well-intentioned. Big Organic feels corrupt to me and the brand is, big on self-promotion and low on proof. And consumers today are smarter and less willing to part with their money without a good reason to. Sorry, deal with it. Lord knows the rest of retail is.

Would producers be able to get away with this for other buzz-words? If you were looking at two brands, and one of them said "Tasty" or "Healthy," on the package with no elaboration, would you believe it? Would you accept it without question? Would you pay significantly more for it? What if the "Tasty" or "Healthy" item looked grubby by comparison? Of course not. So why do we accept it for organic? So if large-scale organic food producers aiming for a slice of the supermarket pie are going to gain my respect, they better do so with evidence of their superiority, not suggestive package design and a cloud of marketing lingo.

It's one thing to eat responsibly. It's another thing to pay a premium for near-meaningless labels. If I'm going to pay more for my meat and vegetables, I want to meet the farmer who can tell me they're worth it. And if he or she's willing to lie to me, well, we've got bigger problems. But that's a risk I'm more willing to take. For the rest of the time (recognizing that most of us have not the time nor the money to buy only from farmer's markets), unless it actually looks fresher, Big Organic just won't get me.

In the final analysis, is this all mainstream organic producers' fault? No. Since it's become hip to be green, everyone's trying to figure out how, which leads to poorly-formed and -informed ideas based on trend-following rather than understanding. But to suggest--with all the subtlety Madison Avenue can muster--that those baseless buzzwords are part of the "organic lifestyle" embodied in Australian ground flesh reeks of sinister business practices consumers are less and less willing to accept.

achiko @ 2009-10-12T12:13:00

2009-10-12T17:18:22Z

As usual, others are far more articulate at expressing my Hate The Future sentiments. Take this week's Shouts and Murmurs column from the New Yorker.

My favorite line: "The vi-spi is cross-platform, but don’t worry if you think you’re not on Facebook, because you actually are."

More upsetting is the prominently placed "Follow New Yorker on Twitter" banner. The irony fairy's been spending extra time at Conde Nast recently.

What is wrong with this picture?

2009-10-02T01:54:39Z

Soon

2009-09-08T23:52:34Z

It's 7:30 and dark outside. We're almost, almost done with the awful heat of summer. I've spent my token time outside, but am more than ready to move on.

Soon it'll be dark by 4:30. Soon I'll have to put on armor to go outside.

Soon Norval will be throwing snowballs at people. Soon I'll be able to slip on the ice. Soon I'll be able to laugh at motorists as they struggle through Hyde Park's terribly maintained icy streets.

Soon I'll be eating brussel sprouts and cabbage and every other brassica weekly because it'll be the only green thing at the market. Soon will be the season of dried legumes and stews and roasted things.

Soon we'll have fires and arguments about who will put them out. Soon we'll be making death-defying trips to the North Side because of an insatiable craving for Ethiopian food, no matter how much snow and wind there is.

Soon my room will be an icebox again and I'll wear my bathrobe and cover myself with blankets and not have to worry about overheating while I sleep, because of course my windows will be open. Soon I'll want to start drinking several pots of tea a day (I save summer solely for iced tea).

Soon will be Halloween and Halloween candy and everyone's geeky-accurate costumes. Soon we'll all overeat at Thanksgiving. Soon will be the Kristkindlmarket and Christmastime (TM) will be upon us and while I'll grumble part of me will probably enjoy it the same way I did this year.

Soon the sky and the ground and the buildings will all be the same serene, beautiful grey, and the sky will turn orange before it turns black, and the trees and buildings will glow and look nothing short of breathtaking.

It's almost that time again. I can't wait.

Things I Like (by way of things I don't)

2009-08-10T05:38:49Z

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/fashion/09blogfree.html?ref=style

We've gotten along quite fine without broadcasting our continuous thoughts to everyone for quite a while, and I don't see why we need to start now, for a few reasons.

1. Twittering and related social networking may strengthen networks, but I think it crushes interpersonal intimacy. It used to be that if we wanted a friend to know about something that happened in our lives, we took the time to tell them about it. Now it seems we can't be bothered--perhaps because we have too many people to tell. In the past the rationalization of not having a platform to do such a thing was that everyone didn't need to know everything--which is a pretty reasonable rationalization. Now, because it's so easy to broadcast, we do so automatically a lot of the time ("of course I'll put those photos up on Facebook!"). It means a lot to get a personalized, thoughtful email message from someone, off the grid of social networks. Think about that for a moment: email is now off the grid. The time taken to craft detailed, individualized communication meant we built stronger friendships with select people. Network-writing like long expository blogs about, say, traveling, a hobby, or personal thoughts are one thing--they're almost creative acts which are able to stand alone, a project as much for the writer as for the readers. They're privatized, independent forms of media. But microblogging and the general hum of often fatuous information exchange is another. So yes, we may have more social ties now than people did in the past. But do we have closer friendships with people because of networking?

2. We lose a sense of individuality through constant networking. If we're all virtually living out some communal life and feel the anxiety to check what's happening in the lives of others every second, I think we lose a sense of ourselves and the importance of isolation. When we're isolated, it makes meeting old friends more meaningful. It means we have more things to say that hasn't already been actualized online. It means we have time to devote to nothing but our own lives and think about ourselves outside the context of others. I guess this would be the cue for all those cliched paranoid Singularity-esque concepts of virtual life drawing us into one screen-addicted, constantly thrumming[/thumbing] organism--and I don't think such speculation is entirely irrelevant. The concept of internet anxiety--the need to check what's going on--has changed recently. It used to be (and still is for me and some others I know) the need to check email relatively often (I like to have my inbox open at all times--which I know is bad and unproductive enough--and I feel myself getting worse). If people or organizations are writing to me, then I want to know about it. But broadcasting to networks--and the crave to check for updates--isn't about personal communication. Internet anxiety now seems to be about the fear of losing touch with the network. It may be wise to pause and remember that the network is only as real as we as a society allow it to be. Singularity's Ring by Paul Melko--a cool book in its own right worth checking out--has some interesting musings on the subject that I can elaborate upon if any of you like at another time. But you should also read the book. By yourself alone in a room or a park now that it's nice out (at the very least it'll contrast the book's intense futurism).

3. Our every thoughts aren't very important. This last one may be beating a dead horse, but I have yet to say it in a public forum like this, so there. We really do need to get over ourselves. If we're merging into some cacophonous, twittering super-organism, the least we can do is be a little less self-absorbed.

PS: Can we please not play the "who's hypocritical for taking X networking actions" game? I know I--like lots of people--do a lot of these things even if we complain about it. I don't like that I do it but obviously am not thrusting myself completely off the grid. So call me guilty as charged. The point of this larger conversation isn't who does what--trends make us all do different aspects of the same process which may only emerge in retrospect, albeit at different paces--but to think critically about what that trend might be and how it effects our lives.

achiko @ 2009-07-29T23:38:00

2009-07-30T03:46:52Z

Today I bought a book on a whim that I didn't research prior for the full price on the cover (it was new) at a physical bookstore. I haven't done that since December, and that was at City Lights mostly so I could say I did. Before that, I don't even remember. For so long I've gotten all my books for free (to review or from various internships), off tables in New York, in stuffy used book shops, or on the internet. I guess that makes me one of those bad people responsible for bringing down brick and mortar bookstores.

For those of you who like books with pictures

2009-07-26T21:09:33Z

David Smalls's Stitches comes out in September. Get a copy and read it as soon as you can (the author website has previews). I got a copy for review and raced through this wonderful, terrible, astonishingly drawn tale in one night. It's dark and beautiful and hits you where it hurts with some of the best art in a book I've ever seen. It may still only be July but this has to be one of my favorite reads of 2009.

It tells the story of a boy growing up in the 1950s to less-than-kind parents, who indulges in drawing to escape the cruelty of his domestic life and the malaise of a grim Detroit. During surgery to remove a growth from his neck, his vocal cords are severed, making him mute. It's later revealed (not really a spoiler) that his radiologist father is responsible for what turned out to be a cancerous tumor, thanks to* the heavy doses of radiation he received as a child. This memoir chronicles a young boy's loss of innocence in an ugly world lacking all kindness, combining terse prose with surreal and nightmarish illustrations. It's not the most original of stories, but it's perfectly told.

* Aside: In French, you say "grâce à" when you mean "thanks to" but when you don't mean thanks. I think the "grace" part of it can be used to employ subtle sarcasm. I've had trouble thinking of what to use in English as a substitute--any ideas?

I'm really waiting to see a paper like this

2009-07-19T15:43:44Z

(Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)

Some thoughts of late

2009-06-27T03:24:39Z

The bad news: there's a real dearth of jobs in publishing. I won't say it's worse than I thought, but let's just say I'm starting to take the idea of Plan B a little more seriously. No, I won't do grad school instead; I'm just starting to accept that my early 20s may be spotted with some unfortunate jobs. And that's okay; it's how it happens.

The good news: apparently I'm in decent shape relative to the competition. I'm not very good at networking or anything, but I've gotten around the industry enough (and have a sense of direction in it--well, kind of) to look good to employers. Yay.

I've started to think about other cities I could live in besides New York in case things don't work out. I'm keeping speculation confined to the U.S. as of now; if I moved abroad I'd start receiving weekly emails from Nisim about my mother sticking her head in the oven. Unfortunately the only other city that comes to mind is San Francisco, which isn't exactly much more affordable, thus defeating the point.

The material reality of graduation is starting to get a little less daunting. The social implications: still terrifying.

For a while I've been going through a literary dry spell. I've barely read anything, in part because I've been busy but also out of lack of motivation. I'm wondering if all this reviewing has sucked some of the joy out of it. Writing has also been much more difficult. I hate blogging. Reviews come slowly, ideas slower. I feel less articulate when speaking and my writing feels less interesting (where's the style?). I think my affair with writing fiction is over. I need to jump start the machinery, get ideas churned up into words again. This all then leads me to wonder if I've become less interesting.

On the plus side, I've been more fascinated by ideas recently: American and Russian Futurism (and their accompanying anxieties), dys/utopianism, the future of publishing, urban planning and aesthetics, artificial intelligence, collective internet activity (does this mean I have to stop hating Twitter?), virtual reality--and it's all coming together. Sort of. So beneath all the usual pessimism and fears of inadequacy there's excitement, which makes a decent proxy for optimism.

Cast iron is awesome. I've used it a bit in the past, but after employing it in several diverse applications on decades-old skillets I restored myself, I feel like I never want to use anything else. How many things do we own for which we can say they actually improve with age?

Mad Men is my new television additiction. It's about Madison Avenue Advertising in the 1950s. I expected the satire and send-up of the industry; I didn't expect a nuanced and powerful exploration of the nature of happiness coupled with careful, precise storytelling. The acting, cinematography, and writing are also superb.

I just saw the pilot for Virtuality, Battlestar creator Ron Moore's attempt at non-epic character drama. Fox, being Fox, tried to can it before ever giving it a chance--it's not on the Fall schedule--so the only thing that can save it is really high ratings (which is why I watched it live). It was good--dark, funny, and engaging--not cheap, not plain old sci fi.* Its quality is what Caprica should have been (which I will consider a failed homage to the greatest sci-fi show of all time). Here's hoping Moore can get it off the ground. Or do the sensible thing and start talking with Sci Fi Channel--I mean SyFy--about moving it to cable. But if their rebranding is any indication of the health of decision making at the network, Moore's fucked. Also, after watching Fox (and its commercials and promotions) for the first time in a while I've concluded it's like an apocalyptic ouroboros: Fox will destroy America. Fox is America.

*Three things have happened of late: 1) more sci fi concepts are becoming realities; 2) sci fi TV and movies have gotten much better; 3) sci fi has integrated itself into mainstream literature more than it used to be. Besides raising the bar for what makes good sci fi (and good literature/television/film), I wonder if we're heading into some new age of science fiction. But that's another topic for another time.

achiko @ 2009-06-25T22:53:00

2009-06-26T02:55:28Z

Dear Women of New York City and Long Island:

Wearing Uggs or Ugg-knockoff snowboots with your miniskirts or summer dresses doesn't look cute, sexy, or original. At best, those looks we give you are confusion.

Regards,
M. Falkowitz

Verbatim

2009-06-21T20:20:42Z

95 Percent Of Opinions Withheld On Visit To Family

KALAMAZOO, MI–A full 95 percent of the opinions held by Justin Wilmot, 26, were kept to himself Sunday during a Father's Day visit with his family.

"No one in my family really gets my worldview, so I find it easier just to smile and nod and agree with everything," Wilmot said Monday. "When I'm with them, I tend to be a lot quieter than when I'm hanging out with friends."

Wilmot, who grew up in Kalamazoo and now lives in Chicago, described the visit as "seven hours of self-censorship."

"We're totally not on the same wavelength at all," Wilmot said. "I'm not just talking about dangerous subjects like politics or religion, but pretty much everything they bring up–the shows they watch, the things they buy, the people they know. So if someone says Daddy Day Care was hilarious, I may be thinking, 'I can't believe Eddie Murphy was once respected as a subversive comic genius,' but I sure as hell don't say it."

Among the subjects Wilmot declined to weigh in on during the weekend get-together: new Tropical Sprite, Survivor, the selfishness of childless couples, Iraq, golf, AM talk radio, and his brother-in-law's fantastic idea for a calling-card side business.

Wilmot said he used to voice his opinions, but has long since given up.

"There was a time when my sister would mention how much she wants an SUV, and I'd be unable to resist launching into a whole thing about how irresponsible and wasteful they are. But after receiving my thousandth blank, confused stare from everybody at the table, I realized it was futile," Wilmot said. "Now, I don't even flinch when my dad mentions he's reading 'this amazing book called The Celestine Prophecy.' That's how bad it is."

In the course of Sunday's meal, Wilmot estimated that he heard 100 statements he could have strenuously contested. Instead, he responded with such neutral phrases as, "Cool," "Uh-huh," "Wow," "I know," "Definitely," and "Oh, good."

"My brother-in-law belongs to the NRA, which used to appall me," Wilmot said. "Well, it still appalls me, but now I'm appalled silently. Same goes for my mom's assertion that El Taco Loco is 'the best Mexican restaurant in town.' I don't even bother mentioning Arturo's, this little place over on Third Street that's the only authentic Mexican place in all of Kalamazoo. I'm sure she's never heard of it."

When he was young, Wilmot actually enjoyed engaging his family in debate, but now he would rather smile pleasantly as his brother's wife talks about the latest exciting arrival on the local shopping scene.

"Meredith said they're putting up a huge new Target Greatland right by their house," Wilmot said. "She says she's psyched because Target is way better than Wal-Mart. I just nodded and said, 'Yeah, totally.'"

"Once you let go of the need to express your thoughts to your family, you suddenly feel much lighter," Wilmot said. "You just float along blissfully, finally liberated from the burden of having any presence at all. It's sort of like getting to return to the womb. Which is way more enjoyable than trying to explain to a tableful of Celine Dion fans why you can't stand her."

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28852?utm_source=onion_rss_daily
I try; I really do. I've made progress on it. Just sometimes, I can't.

Happenstance gone right

2009-05-29T04:33:31Z

I realized I haven't posted anything substantive here in quite a while. I have a final due tomorrow at 3, so now seems like a good time.

I'm not sure how or why, but for some reason both groceries in Hyde Park have really good beets around--fresh, with greens attached. Beets are a fall/winter vegetable, so I don't get how they're here in spring-becoming-summer, but I'm not complaining. A while ago I bought some beets, and this past weekend I purchased some asparagus and basil-infused jack cheese from the local farmer's market (still pretty pathetic, but getting a little better; the asparagus is good and reasonably priced, and the cheese is really good and dirt cheap). Sorting through vegetables for dinner tonight, I came upon my three small beets, pound of asparagus starting to go south, and measly couple ounces of cheese (I had snacked through most of it by this point), and had no idea what to do with it. I was growing tired of simply roasting asparagus with garlic and lemon, my typical go-to recipe, and wanted something new for the beets. Then for some reason a corner of my unconscious sqeaked gratin, and all became clear.

I roasted the beets in foil (okay, so this is technically steaming--it's the only non-messy way I know to cook beets, so sue me) until nearly tender, and then sliced them thin. I cut the asparagus into 1-2 inch-long pieces, and because I had it and figured why not, thinly sliced the remaining half of a vidalia onion from days ago. At this point, I got a little worried that three sugary vegetables would make the dish too sweet. But then who should pop down to the kitchen but Kathleen with some extra swiss cheese she didn't need--problem solved! So a tablespoon of butter went into a 12 inch cast iron skillet to melt, at which point I then added the asparagus and onion to coat in fat and salt for a few minutes. I arranged the beet slices on top and popped it in the oven (about 400 degrees) till the asparagus were nearly done, and then sprinkled the two cheeses over the top. The result was the first dish I've ever made which I'd call gorgeous: the beets were, well, beet red, which contrasted nicely with the bright green asparagus. The onions were a blend of pearly white and blood-stained from where they had contact with the beets. And let's not forget that gorgeous cheesy crust.

It tasted even better. The vegetables were bright and tasted exactly like they should--because of the short cooking time they didn't blend together/get washed out. It was really sweet, but also quite buttery, salty, funky (in that swiss cheese sort of way), and for the few bites that got the basil jack, basil-y. Okay, in a perfect world, I would have had more basil jack there (or just actual basil), and real Gruyere instead of Boars Head Swiss. I would have added the cheese slightly sooner so it could get some tasty burned spots, which would have meant a slightly firmer asparagus, but I'm hardly complaining. It was delicious. I want to make it again very badly. And with only a tablespoon of butter and about 4-6 ounces of cheese, an entirely different beast than the cream- and cheese-based potato gratins I've had before (which, don't get me wrong, are also out-of-this-world delicious).

But what pleased me most was how all of this came about through complete chance. I just happened to have this random assortment of ingredients around. I just happened to have some cool cheese supplemented by someone else's cool free cheese. Hyde Park Produce just happened to have really good organic out-of-season beets. And I just happened to think oh, I'll cook them au gratin. But I should stop asking questions and just have more gratin. Except that we just finished it. Oh well.

Why I love my job

2009-05-01T17:13:13Z

The professor I do research for sent me an article to read (and do a write-up for) after I told him I couldn't find a lot of articles on the theory he was looking into. After 40 minutes of reading it, I realized it was the article I sent him (and wrote a memo about) several weeks ago.

Say it with me: All this has happened before, and it will all happen again.

achiko @ 2009-04-17T00:56:00

2009-04-17T06:02:30Z

I just finished my first round of edits and formatting for Euphony's Spring 2009 issue, and damn this fiction is good! I'm so excited to see it get published--I really really love this writing. Speaking of which, if any of you have 5 x 8 inch compatible art with enough blank space for some text, we're looking for a cover for our Spring issue. Send me things!

I've decided today--this time with utter finality--that there are two tedious and laborious things I want to do for the rest of my life:

1) Edit and format text

2) Make latkes

They really should know better

2009-04-15T14:49:24Z

Of all the courses in the Psych department here, there are only two you're forced to take: a quarter of Statistics and a quarter of "Research Methods." However elementary and impractical-in-all-the-wrong-ways statistics was, it still taught me valuable stats basics I didn't know before. Granted, we only got to new material at around 6th week or so, but still.

Research Methods, in which I'm currently enrolled, may dethrone my political science seminar on evolutionary psychology was Worst Class Ever. The theory behind the course is that if you sit in lecture twice a week and section once a week, all while reading a textbook that insults your intelligence, learning abstract, testable material about how to be a good scientist, you'll be a good scientist. From last class's lecture: "A good theory should inspire future research." That was a PowerPoint slide. Really. To expect this material to make a difference when students become researchers is laughable. Another serious point from class: "Just because a paper is obtuse doesn't mean it isn't contributing something meaningful." Thank you, professor, for enlightening me.

If you're interested in becoming a Psych major, chances are you'll sample one of the five introductory classes: Social, Cognitive, Developmental, etc. Or a class in a topic where you have specific interest: Attitudes, Decision Making, etc. Chances are you won't be taking the awful intro courses designed to lull committed majors to sleep, not seduce undeclared students to the program. If you know from the start you want to be a Psych major, you probably already know these basics and this is all redundant. You may have done research on your own already. But most importantly, every Psych class I've had here has made (and graded me on my ability to) think critically on the research process and closely read journal articles. Yes, I already know to pay little attention to non-peer reviewed journals are. And yes, I know how to identify a fucking hypothesis in an abstract. And teaching someone how to review the literature takes a five-minute instructional YouTube video with a link to Web of Science, not a whole class.

In fairness to Research Methods, it does force you to work in groups and run your own experiment. I'm looking forward to this project: I can meet fellow Psych majors, design a study interesting to me, and have my one chance at playing Dr. Falkowitz before I go off into the workplace. And getting students to do research is important--either through a class, an honors thesis, or work with a professor. So important that the department has a research requirement forcing you to do one of those three things. It's probably the most vital single requirement the department offers for those who wish to become future psychologists, and is incredibly valuable even if, like me, you have no intention of going into the field. Oh wait, they got rid of the requirement this year.

Distict 9

2009-04-02T14:44:09Z

This summer, a South African director is releasing a film called District 9. The premise is that aliens have [crash?] landed in South Africa, and now there's all sorts of racial intolerance/uneasy political issues to deal with. It looks to have all the poignant social commentary and gritty visuals of Children of Men, making me incredibly excited to see it--especially after watching this short film upon which it is based.

If nothing else, the film's website is the most elaborate film website I've ever seen. It's part of a large viral marketing campaign which includes marking bathrooms as "for humans only" at recent conventions and such. Hopefully the film will check any preaching at the door and let the action speak for itself; if so, this may be my new movie fix, which I haven't had since Children of Men.

Two comments on break thus far

2009-03-26T02:54:47Z

1. Dear publishing house interviewers: stop making me feel like I have to defend my choice in major. It's not like an English major would be more or less useful to my work. I explicitly said in my resume I've done extensive literature work. I'm getting a liberal arts degree from a good college. And it's not like I'm choosing academic psychology over publishing--that's why I'm trying to intern with you. There's only so many times I can answer why I'm studying psychology before I shout "because an English major would have been a waste of my time!"

2. If you're ever in the New Haven, CT area, be sure to check the location of the Cupcake Truck at followthatcupcake.com. Like California taco trucks, the Cupcake Truck picks a different spot to park each day (detailed on their twitter, linked on their website; this is the only valid use for twitter I've encountered) and sells a rotating selection of freshly-baked cupcakes. You pick a cupcake, a frosting, and an optional topping. The toppings range from crumbled oreos to candied violets to edible gold leaf (a pretension I really can't stand), but I don't know if it's possible to spend more than $3, a steal given the exorbitant prices at specialty cupcakeries. I got a chocolate cupcake with caramel frosting and coarse sea salt, and it was hands-down the best cupcake I've ever eaten. This was a cupcake that redefined what a cupcake could be. A life-transforming cupcake. I'll remember it the way people in happy-go-lucky romantic comedies seem to remember their first kiss.

The cake was incredibly moist and actually tasted like chocolate, an achievement for a cupcake I've only seen before at my beloved NYC Crumbs. The frosting had a deep caramel flavor, but it was decidedly more icing than dulce de leche. Rich and intensely buttery, it could only have been improved by the slightly crunchy sea salt, which lingered on the tongue and shooed away any too-sweet aftertaste. The cupcake was so good because I could taste the freshness of it. It couldn't have been more than a few hours old. The shorter a cupcake's life, the better. This also makes it somewhat irreplaceable; I couldn't just have bought more--they wouldn't be the same.

The Cupcake Truck has a somewhat mythical status in New Haven. Many have gotten one from the happenstance of passing by, to never see it again. (I only got to it because it was unusually close to the Yale campus.) Thus it's something like an ancient, magical beast that proudly roams the land, dispensing a few hours of happiness wherever it goes. So if you're in the area and see what looks like people lining up at an armored truck, join them. You'll be glad you did.

On grouping information

2009-03-19T20:08:42Z

For the past few weeks I've been using Google Reader as an RSS feed. I've never used one before, but I've caught on quickly. I've even created a site-specific browser (using this handy app for Leopard) so I can have it open all the time, even when firefox isn't. I get notifications on my dock when I have new stories. It's all very snazzy.

I was worried I'd do nothing but read blogs since they'd be streaming into one source constantly, and chances are, by the time I finish reading through a set of posts, a new one would be available upon refreshing the page. This has happened a bit. Mostly late at night or when I'm in class. But for the most part, it's decreased the amount of blog reading I've done. Not only does it save time by avoiding repeated visits to multiple websites without knowing whether there are updates or not, but it also means that when I do get a flood of posts, I only read the ones that actually look interesting against the background of noise and hit "Mark all as read" for the rest. Since I'm no longer visiting websites, I don't feel obligated to read what's there. It also forces me to think about what's actually worth my reading time and keeps my constant media slurping under control. An unexpected finding, but a positive one.

Recipe instruction I never thought I'd see

2009-03-13T01:44:13Z

Coat with lard to cover by 1/2 inch.

Annals of Productivity

2009-03-10T14:33:48Z

As our brains were rather fried last night, Eric, Lee, and I wound up spending almost an hour staring at my iTunes visualizer (the new one with floating spheres, dancing lights, and cosmic dust). I suppose visualizers and German techno are this generation's version of getting high, putting on some Dylan, and staring at a lava lamp.

achiko @ 2009-03-09T16:16:00

2009-03-09T21:21:55Z

The more I talk to people, read, and learn about food sustainability the less I feel certain about making any kinds of purchases. I found this article particularly fascinating. In brief, it argues that 1) organic farming isn't a mass solution to our industrial food dilemma (as it undercuts the solutions that have kept Malthusian economics from destroying us) and 2) local and farmers' market foods can use even more petroleum than mass-shipping cross-country, seriously complicating their eco-friendly status. While I don't know if the numbers add up or how right the science is, it certainly has me thinking.

I don't idealize farmers' markets. I don't get warm, fuzzy feelings from buying from farmers or their employees. The produce isn't strictly better (though usually is), and I don't drool over a bunch of particularly lively kale leaves. And the prices (at least at the New York Greenmarket, the only one I really use; I find the one here in Hyde Park pathetic) can be prohibitive. But even moving past the easy toppling idols off the pedestal, I increasingly feel like there's no "safe" option for buying food, no matter where I am. Plus there's the question of ecological priorities: do carbon emissions take priority over soil treatment practices? How important is it to support small farms? Is paying the "organic" premium worth it when 1) it's unclear if organic means anything relevant and 2) more "sustainable" farmers who use some chemicals can't be called "organic" over technicalities? How important is eating seasonally if I don't know where the food is coming from (does drudging through California-grown cabbage during the winter really count as "seasonality")? And how does my farmers' market stack up to this--is the Greenmarket system actually "green?" (It'd help if I knew anything about what New York state farms.

This is all complicated by the fact that there are certain things I won't give up. I want to eat fresh chiles all through winter. I need ginger year-round. How guilty should I feel for this? (On this note, a recent finding. Fresh (i.e., not canned) offseason tomatoes have a 90% chance of being grown in a part of Florida that has enormous workers' rights abuses edging on slave labor).

To cut down on what seems to be an undue amount of anxiety when buying onions, I wrote the following personal shopping guidelines to help sort things out for myself. (Please don't take this as bragging of any sort or preaching to anyone. I don't like to talk about this stuff often because I figure it makes people uncomfortable. And it'd be ridiculous for me to expect anyone to follow this plan since it's largely based on my personal eating habits.) I also cheat sometimes.

If I'm going to a restaurant, buy no meat that week. (Any meat-free restrictions are off for me when I eat out as vegetarian options are often very unsatisfying for me--plus it's a special thing to eat out. And as I eat with a vegetarian almost nightly, I typically only eat meat when going out, barring some special occasions and a few times when I just have a craving).
Almost never buy beef at grocery stores (rarely at restaurants)
Make the meat count--go for full-flavored and fatty cuts. (Since these cuts are less popular, they're cheaper and also mean using less animals.)
Purchase (for the most part) vegetables during their growing season, +/- a month or two
Have vegetables make up the bulk of what's in my shopping cart
Buy organic vegetables if 1) the vegetable doesn't look ratty and 2) it doesn't cost a fortune
Try to only buy vegetables grown in this country
Buy only one item of secondary animal products a week (either cheese or butter, each of which lasts about two weeks. As I don't eat eggs or have [edit: much in the way of] other dairy [not counting desserts], this is easy). Use the high price of cheese as a check against buying too much.

I don't know if these are actually good guidelines and/or how much good they're actually doing. Which is why I'm posting this here--so I can get any of your thoughts to ease my grocery confusion. Comments of any kind are much appreciated.

New Cookbook Test Drive

2009-02-21T08:38:53Z

Tonight was the inaugural dinner from Real Stew: 300 recipes for authentic home-cooked cassoulet, gumbo, chili, curry, minestrone, bouillabaisse, stroganoff, goulash, chowder, and much more by Clifford Wright, a culinary historian and general food nerd. I decided to make his Romanian Chicken Stew: I've had chicken thighs in my freezer for months longing for a purpose; the recipe called for lots of paprika, a favorite of mine; it also called for a curious step of roasting flour before adding it to the pot as a thickener. It would be cheap, intensely flavorful, and with an interesting twist.

The recipe is fairly straightforward: brown three pounds of chicken in a 1/4 pound of clarified butter, cook onions till soft and gooey, then add some tomato, white wine, and spices to stew. Even the final step of roasting flour in an oven to add before serving (which Wright claims provides a distinctly nutty, coffee-like flavor) was easy enough. However, some modifcations were required.

For starters, I'm not really okay serving anything to people with a stick of butter in it. Second, three pounds of chicken and a lack of vegetables was a problem. So I more than halved the fat, used olive oil instead of butter, and cut the chicken down to one pound. To compensate, I decided an abundance of potatoes and carrots would keep in the spirit of the dish. But it wasn't as cut-and-dry as that. Cutting the fat made me worry how much flour I could add before it would start clumping together (as flour does in water in the absence of fat, unless one is a very vigourous whisker, which is rather hard to do in a stew pot full of meat and vegetables). Would this be enough fat to brown the chicken and onions? If I was adding less flour, would the "distinct nutty flavor" come through? Was I commiting a sin against authenticity to use a Mediterranean lipid in lieu of good 'ol central European dairy fat? These questions plagued me for days. At the end I decided to let authenticity be damned: I'd use less fat, add a bit of flour at a time, not freak our if lumps formed, and use rosemary instead of parsley (bowing to the demands of what I had on hand). My rationale was the presence of allspice in the spice listing: a berry of West Indies origin, while delicious in the final product, is not a native part of any Romanian palette, so far as I'm aware.

All went well during prep. Eric and Stacy helped chop vegetables: four large carrots, about 5 onions, and who-knows-how-many potatoes. The amount of olive oil we had to use was more than enough, and although we had to double the amount of white wine and add an equal amount of vegetable stock to yield the appropriate amount of liquid for this much stew, it took off easily. The instructions for Wright's book are for the most part easy as pie--as is the art and pleasure of stew (minus the three-page recipe with ultra-detailed instructions for authentic Provencale bouillabaisse). Wright also helpfully admonished that the stew must never boil as that would toughen the chicken. Fine, I thought, this'll take about an hour once all the ingredients are assembled. Totally doable. But in all my obsessing over cutting the meat and amping up the vegetables, I never paused to consider the differential in cooking times; root vegetables take far longer to cook than chicken, especially on ultra-low heat. More than an hour in and most of the vegetables were still raw.

After a lot of poking at the stew (and adding a lot more paprika--more than a 1/4 cup in total) and feeling awfully guilty about how long I was delaying my dining companions, I decided to let tenderness be damned and increase the heat with the hopes of having tender vegetables by, say, midnight. This is a constant problem of mine--underestimating cooking times--for which I always feel bad, and am eternally grateful that my friends are so accomodating. Even on a substantial boil, the vegetables still took quite a long time, but more than an hour after I said dinner would be ready, I decided to pull the plug. They were mostly cooked, though there were some still-raw specimens and they overall could have benefitted from more time. However the chicken was still marvelously tender, which I can attribute to the exclusive use of dark meat and the fact that it cooked for so long on low heat. I had to roast the flour on the stove because there weren't any baking sheets around, but that meant I got to add a bit of oil to brown it, which trimmed the cooking time from 15 minutes to just a few. Besides contributing a distinct flavor to the broth (though overshadowed by our heavy hands with the paprika), it turned a thin, greasy liquid into a beautiful, luscious stew base.

The end result was excellent, and everything a stew should be. Though there were some interesting flavors that played very well together, which made this much more sophisticated than stew I'm used to making. It was sharp, sweet, spicy, and earthy; only while tasting did I come to appreciate the incredible balancing act Wright performed when assembling his ingredients. When I do this again I think I'd want to increase the amount of onions even more and exchange cabbage for carrots, which in truth I don't like all that much. And I'd do it in a slow cooker to ensure equal meat and vegetable tenderness. But all in all, Wright scored very high. I look forward to using him again the next time I need to cheaply feed an arbitrarily large number of people, or just a few with leftovers to spare. As for tomorrow, these leftovers will be so good they hardly deserve the name.