Author: AJ

The New ESPN “Odds And Info” Page

by A.J. Coltrane

ESPN has what I think is a new page — “Odds and Info”. It’s on their front page tab right above “Poker”. Clicking through takes you to a page called “Chalk”, which is about as neutral a name as they could have picked so as not to upset the squares.

The funny thing is that when I stumbled onto it yesterday the tab and page were both named “Betting.” Maybe ESPN instantly got complaints?

Two thoughts:

1.  It’s going to continue to get harder to gamble on sports as information becomes more widely available. That process has been going on since the 1980’s — it’s always been a matter knowing more than the general population. Back then a copy of the Sporting News was enough. Not anymore.

2.  On September 5th, new NBA commissioner Adam Silver said that legalized sports gambling was “inevitable” [ESPN]:

NBA commissioner Adam Silver believes expanded legalized sports betting in the United States is “inevitable,” and the league is open to participating in it.

Speaking at the Bloomberg Sports Business Summit on Thursday in New York, Silver said that he understood that cash-strapped states will pursue legalized sports betting and that the NBA can benefit from it.

“It’s inevitable that, if all these states are broke, that there will be legalized sports betting in more states than Nevada,” Silver said, per Bloomberg.com. “We will ultimately participate in that.”

It’s a change in tune for the NBA, which in 2012 joined the NCAA, NFL, MLB and NHL in suing New Jersey over its efforts to bring legalized sports betting to its casinos and race tracks…

and

“If you have a gentleman’s bet or a small wager on any kind of sports contest, it makes you that much more engaged in it,” Silver said. “That’s where we’re going to see it pay dividends. If people are watching a game and clicking to bet on their smartphones, which is what people are doing in the United Kingdom right now, then it’s much more likely you’re going to stay tuned for a long time.”

More than $3.6 billion was wagered on sports at Nevada sports books in 2013. The American Gaming Association, citing the National Gambling Impact Study, estimates that as much as $380 billion is wagered illegally in the U.S. annually.

Silver seems to think that legally allowing gambling will be good for the NBA, attracting more eyeballs to the telecasts. Given what fantasy football has done for the popularity of the NFL, he may be right. It certainly won’t lead to *fewer* people watching the NBA.

My guess is that ESPN is very quietly trying to get ahead of the curve, or at least not get left behind. Between Silver’s statement, the New Jersey lawsuit, and this new ESPN page, it seems like we’re near a tipping point for legalized sports gambling in the USA.

Something else to help keep me entertained in my retirement!

Recommended “Game” — Untappd

by A.J. Coltrane

Drink beer, receive badges!

That doesn’t sound like an “enabler” app at all, does it?

From the Untappd website:

Explore Nearby Popular Bars & Beers

Not sure where to grab a pint? Untappd shows you popular bars nearby and what’s on tap.

 

Discover What Your Friends Are Drinking

The best recommendations come from your friends, so find out where & what they drink.

 

Share What & Where You’re Drinking

Share reviews, ratings and photos of the beers you drink with your friends around the world.

 

Drink New Beers, Unlock Badges

Expand your palette by trying new & different beer styles and unlock achievements along the way.

 

master-badgeUntappd has a fun “game” element to it. You get badges for drinking different types of beer. You get badges for drinking multiples of one type of beer. You get badges for drinking beer at odd hours. At one point my traveling companion got a badge for drinking on the ferry. “Ohoy Matey!” It makes casual beer drinking a potentially entertaining surprise.

Untappd has a lot of other neat features too. It’s a giant crowdsourced look at what everyone is drinking, and where. You can search by brewery — right now I can see that people are drinking Night Owl at the Elysian. It functions as a journal of what you’ve been drinking — it allows for comments and ratings, and you can save pictures too. We’ve shown this to a few people, most of the time they’ll cackle, then download it as fast as they can.

Highly recommended, and free!

Batali’s Pizza Dough, Again

by A.J. Coltrane

I thought I’d try Batali’s pizza dough recipe from “Italian Grill”. As it turns out, I’ve already blogged about his Food Network recipe here, and here. I compared it to other recipes I was familiar with here.

First off, the two recipes — “IG” is from his book “Italian Grill”.  “FN” is from the Food Network website.

Ingredient Batali (IG) Batali (FN)
AP Flour 3-1/4 cups 3-1/2 cups
Water 1 cup ¾ cup
Wine ¼ cup white ¼ cup white
Salt 1 TBP 1 tsp
Sugar 1 TBP 1 TBP honey
Instant Yeast 2 tsp 2 TBP
Olive Oil 2 TBP + 1 tsp 1 TBP + 1 tsp

There’s one striking difference. Doing the math — the “IG” formula comes out to ~18 grams of salt, somewhere in the range of 4-5% of the weight of the flour. That *has* to be a typo, as the finished product would be borderline inedible.

Next — Converting the “IG” formula to weights and comparing it to the pizza pictured below:

Ingredient Batali (IG) This One
AP Flour 390g 400g
Water 236 200g
Wine 59g white 40g rose
Salt 18g 9g
Sugar 1 TBP 1 TBP
Instant Yeast 2 tsp 2 tsp
Olive Oil 2 TBP + 1 tsp 2 TBP + 1 tsp

The table above assumes 4-1/2 ounces of flour per cup measurement. (The King Arthur Flour website was used for that conversion.)

This is one instance that I’m super glad I used a scale for measuring the salt, rather than following the recipe.

As a matter of fact, unless I’ve completely screwed up the conversions, the Batali “IG” formula is effectively a 75% hydration dough. (236+59)/390 = 75.6%. It’s possible to get a dough that wet on to a grill without mishap, but I’ve tried it. It’s really tricky. I used a 60% hydration at least in part to avoid a circus.

Tomatoes marinated in garlic, oil, and red wine vinegar, then grilled and mashed into a paste. (Roma and Glacier tomatoes.) Finished with mozz and Basil.
Tomatoes marinated in garlic, oil, and red wine vinegar, then grilled and mashed into a paste. (Roma and Glacier tomatoes.) Finished with mozz and Basil.

The Verdict:  Batali’s Food Network recipe is a winner. The “Italian Grill” recipe needs… help. Plus the editors not to screw it up.

—

I feel like I’m dissing the X-Man. (Unfortunately I couldn’t find that “Singles” scene on YouTube.)

 

 

Container Garden Mini Update — September 2, 2014 — Gravity, Dangit!

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

Alternate titles:  “Dominoes!”   or …  “Total Carnage!”

We chose not to add any supplementary support to the tomato cages this year. Last year, everything was fine, why wouldn’t it be this year?

Because today it got windy. Then it got really windy. Windy enough that I went to the back window to check on the plants…

I watched the garden as the wind howled from a strange direction. The zucchini trellis toppled over. It struck the nearest tomato cage, which collapsed into the next cage…:

140902 carnage

Then 10,000 houses lost power.

With help, we lifted everything to vertical. I tied the cages to cinder blocks, then installed the pvc supports that I had thought were important last year, but not this year…

Another view:

140902 carnage2

We lucked out — everything landed on everything else. I doubt we lost more than a couple of pounds of produce, though it’s going to be “fried green tomatoes week”. We got a full sheet tray of not-ripe fruit. It seems that none of the vines snapped, though we’ll know for sure soon.

It’s raining freakishly hard tonight. The thunder just made the cats scatter. The peppers were looking bedraggled after the wind, we’ll see what we have left tomorrow. It could have been much worse.

 

Container Garden Update — September 1, 2014

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

September 1, 2013 post here.

Last year the yield was 64 pounds in the month of August. The year it was 95 pounds of produce for the month, including 20 pounds yesterday, though looking at last year’s pics – it may be that this year’s plants are closer to “done”. Yesterday’s harvest:

140831 harvest2

A closeup of the basil. It fills the box, but it’s only 3/4 of a pound — though that’s around $50 retail:

140831 harvest2 basil

One of the two midweek harvests:

Continue reading “Container Garden Update — September 1, 2014” →

Pot Luck Focaccia

by A.J. Coltrane

Another variation on a high hydration focaccia, using this one as a jumping off point.

The goal this time was to make a focaccia that could stand on its own at a potluck. As compared to the linked (non-assertive) bread, this one features more salt, more oil, and the addition of rosemary to the top.

All I had in the house was AP flour. I would have preferred Bread Flour for this one, but I wasn’t going to make a trip to the store for it.

The recipe:

Ingredient Measure Baker’s %
AP Flour 500 g
Water 500 g 100
Salt 12 g 2.5
EV Olive Oil 30 g 6
Instant Yeast 1.5 tsp

 

1.  Combine all ingredients in a mixer and combine on low speed for 10 minutes. Lightly oil a parchment lined sheet tray.

2.  Let the dough rest for 20 minutes, then pour it into the sheet tray, gently coaxing the dough towards the edges of the pan. Cover and let rest 2 hours. Chop rosemary.

3.  Preheat oven to 425F.

4.  When the oven is hot, drizzle a small amount of oil on the dough. Sprinkle chopped rosemary on top.

5.  Bake for 15 minutes, turn the tray 180 degrees and bake for another 10 minutes.

If it’s a two-hour dough I’m always suspicious of the ability of the finished product to be interesting on it’s own. That’s not enough time for good stuff to happen, chemically speaking. On this variation I turned to the “volume knobs” of oil and salt — the oil was increased from 4% to 6%, and the salt was increased from 2% (the “standard”), up to 2.5% of the weight of the flour. The small amount of additional salt helps the bread stand up to other big flavors.

140828 focaccia

Something I ran into with both of these high-hydration doughs was that the raw doughs couldn’t support the weight of a drizzle of oil. This may be because the house was 80F+ on both attempts. Each time the top of the dough was saturated with tiny delicate bubbles. Spreading the oil around on the surfaces was out of the question. I wound up drizzling a thin stream of oil, which looks like little canals or “breaks” on the finished focaccia.

A close up:

140828 focaccia close up

(Rushed 5 a.m. photography. Not terrible, considering.)

—

What I think I learned:

1.   100% hydration doughs might not be the best idea when the house is over 80 degrees. Something like 75-80% hydration would have been “safer” way to go.

2.   The dough was basically a batter. The finished bread likely would have benefited from a pan smaller than a sheet tray. As it was, the edges were pretty thin, which could have led to uneven baking.

3.   When I initially pulled the bread out of the oven it was fairly pasty looking. At the risk of drying out the bread, I popped it back in for 4 minutes — that’s what gave it a better color.

Fortunately all of that worked out, though I had my doubts.

I think it’s time to steer back towards “sane hydration” land for a while.

Oil Instead Of Butter – Sandwich Loaf

by A.J. Coltrane

Many sandwich bread recipes call for butter, milk, and/or buttermilk. In theory this one is a little bit healthier, it uses extra virgin olive oil as the fat.

The formula:

Ingredient Measure Baker’s %
AP Flour 500g
Water 325g 65
Salt 10g 2
Olive Oil 20g 4
Instant Yeast 1.5 tsp

It’s basically the same formula as this recent focaccia. The only real difference is that it uses 65% hydration rather than 75%.

The mixture was kneaded for 8 minutes. A small amount of oil was added to coat the mixing bowl, then the dough was allowed to rest for two hours. From there it’s mostly the No Knead Bread recipe — place a 5 quart dutch oven into the real oven and preheat to 425F (No Knead bread is cooked at 450F). Turn the dough out into the dutch oven. Bake, covered for 20 minutes, uncover and cook for another 20 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

140824 sandwich bread

Crusty but not too crusty. Chewy but not too chewy. It retains the sandwich ingredients without leaking or falling to pieces. A perfectly fine sandwich bread.

Container Garden Update — August 24, 2014

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

August 25, 2013 here for comparison.

Yesterday was a big “haircut day” for the tomatoes. As it turns out, at least one “haircut day” from last year was on August 25th. This year’s decision to give them a haircut was made without looking at last year’s notes. It’s interesting to me how closely the timing worked out.

It seems to me that the great majority of the mold on the tomato plants occurs on the “side shoots” — the leaf-only branches that are at a 90 degree angle to the main stem. The “sucker” branches (that come out of the side shoot/main stem intersection, and grow additional fruit), and the main stems are almost entirely mold free. This is true regardless of the location “side shoot”. The mold is both on exterior, well ventilated side shoots and on leaves that are buried in the interior of the leaf canopy. It’s like the plant figures that if it’s not a fruit producing node then it’s now time to shut down those natural defenses and spend that energy somewhere else.

Lots of pictures this week, mostly of denuded tomato plants.. starting with Wednesdays harvest:

140820

Saturday. That’s a big tomatillo in the bottom right corner:

Continue reading “Container Garden Update — August 24, 2014” →