Ichiro saluting Coltrane on his nearly accurate 2012 BA prediction.
Back before the season started at a get together we had, there was a discussion on Ichiro. Without much thought, a number of us placed a prediction on what we thought his batting average would be at the end of the season. We put nothing on the bet and I hadn’t really thought about posting this until I found the paper the other day that we put our predictions on. So here is what we originally guessed:
Coltrane – .282
Annie S. – .292
Blaidd Drwg – .293
Mrs. Iron Chef Leftovers – .275
PW – .352
Thanks to a great last couple of months at the end of the season when he got traded to the Yankees, Ichiro managed to post a .283 average for the season, making Coltrane the winner of absolutely nothing other than recognition in this blog (like that is worth anything).
Borderlands 2 is a first person shooter set in a futuristic Mad Max/ Western/ The World Is Running Down setting. It’s a high tech wasteland where the toilets don’t usually work. It’s sort of Halo mixed with equal parts Diablo II.
Why I like it:
The Diablo series is famous for its variable loot drops. When defeated, almost every enemy drops loot which may or may not be useful. Every opponent is a potential loot pinata! “What’s going to drop this time?! How will it work with what I already own?!”
Borderlands appoximates this by dropping shields, other goodies, and lots and lots of guns. Bazillions of guns. The guns themselves are collections of a scope, stock, magazine, etc — about seven pieces in all. Each piece of the gun is randomly generated, then all are combined to create the final weapon stats. There are guns that do corrosive damage and fire damage guns and explosive damage guns. There are wildly different fire rates and magazine sizes and damage outputs. The guns often handle *very* differently from one another, so you’ll want to use a different gun for each situation, which is fine. You can equip *four* of them and toggle through them as needed. (Plus another 18ish backpack slots for the other good situational candidates that you just can’t *bear* to sell.)
There are Diablo-style RPG elements to Borderlands 2 as well. As your character levels it gets more powerful and gains helpful special abilities, such as: “Your fire rate is increased by 20% for a few seconds after killing an enemy.” or “Your turret emits a small nuclear blast when deployed.” The leveling means that you outgrow your beloved guns over time, necessitating the constant search for more. You’ll say to yourself — “I need a corrosive sniper rifle for when we’re shooting at robots that are a long way away!” or “I need an explosive damage bullet hose with a huge magazine for crowd control!” Of course, those are just dreams. What actually drops may or may not be exactly what you had in mind, but will it “do”?
Borderlands features split-screen co-op too, so there can be much discussion of who has what, and how do we share to optimize our survivability? “Is your second-best fire damage submachine gun better than mine? Does that shotgun better suit your abilities and playstyle, or mine?” Splitscreen is totally the way to go, the game almost begs for it.
Borderlands 1 is a great game, but the enemy AI is better in Borderlands 2. The enemies are “smarter” in 2 because they don’t just sit still when they’re getting shot at; they’ll duck, roll, or run to another cover, making them a lot more challenging to hit. They also “patrol” when they spawn, rather than just standing there — no more “If I stand here I can head-shot that sentry over there before he can act.”
To sum up: Borderlands has a fun foul-mouthed sense of humor, and the Bazillions of guns makes for some addictive gameplay and lots of replayability. And it’s fun!
I like simple desserts. I am not a baker and I don’t like spending a ton of time putting things together if I don’t have to, but I do like chocolate and specifically chocolate pudding. Yes, you can buy it premade (which tastes like crap) or the instant pudding mix in the store but really, do you want all of the chemicals and stabilizers in it? Here is the ingredients list for Jell-O Chocolate Pudding:
SUGAR, MODIFIED CORNSTARCH, COCOA PROCESSED WITH ALKALI, DISODIUM PHOSPHATE (FOR THICKENING), CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, SALT, TETRASODIUM PYROPHOSPHATE (FOR THICKENING), MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES (PREVENT FOAMING), RED 40, YELLOW 5, BLUE 1, ARTIFICIAL COLOR, BHA (PRESERVATIVE).
They actually add food dye to chocolate pudding? Sheesh. What if I told you that you could make your own instant pudding mix at home with a handful of ingredients and have it taste about 100 times better than any box mix that you can get? Well, thanks to the culinary genius that is Alton Brown, you can.
The Software
4 oz. Dutch Processed Cocoa Powder
2 oz. Cornstarch
6 oz. Powdered Sugar
1 ½ oz. Non-Fat Dry Milk Powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
The Recipe
Take all the ingredients and combine them in a large bowl or container with a lid. Cover and shake until completely combined. That is it. You are done. That took about 2 minutes. Store covered in the fridge for 3 months.
Notes
I actually increased the amount of cocoa in this recipe by 1 oz. (it originally called for 3 oz.) because I wanted to. A teaspoon of espresso powder added to this mix would throw this totally over the top. Use a really good cocoa powder, it is your dominant flavor and you want the best you can get. I suppose you want the recipe for making pudding, huh? Well, you will just have to wait a few days for my next post to get that one.
More Brown Than Black IPA is a collaboration beer between The Alchemist, Ninkasi and Stone Brewing and was brewed in November of 2011. It comes in at a hefty 7.4% ABV and 80 IBU and was brewed with a veritable kitchen sink of hops (Super Galena hop extract for bittering, Nelson Sauvin and Delta for flavor, dry-hopped with a blend of Citra and Galaxy) and malts (Maris Otter Pale, Light Munich, Carafa III Special Dark, and CaraHelles) The notes on the beer from the Stone website:
Tasting notes, provided by Brewmaster Mitch Steele
Appearance: Deep brown, a bit hazy, with tan foam.
Aroma: Whoa! This beer is all about, resiny, piney, dank and citrusy hops! The first shot is intense blend of pine and orange rind, and then as your sense of smell just starts to recover, the dankness and resiny herbaceousness come through with hints of grapefruit. This is a powerful hop blend!
Taste: The hops also dominate the flavor of this beer. Orange and grapefruit rind take center stage in the flavor, followed by, you guessed it: piney / resiny notes. The beer has a modest body…not sweet at all…and has a lingering bitter, drying end. Beyond the bitter end there are light hints of roasted malt and chocolate in the finish.
Overall: The hop character in this beer is unique and very pronounced. Galaxy is a newer hop variety from Australia that we think has strong tropical fruit and stone fruit characteristics. Citra and Delta are newer American hop varieties — Citra possesses strong citrus and dank flavors, while Delta has a milder profile with melon and berry notes. And of course Nelson Sauvin from New Zealand has its intense namesake’s white wine notes along with—surprise!—more dank notes. They all blended together well in this beer, a tribute to one of our favorite styles.
The beer was available in 12 oz. bottles for around $4 at the end of 2011. The beer that I consumed had been sitting in the cellar since then and I figured it would be a good idea to break it out to see how it held up.
The beer pours dark brown with a brown head. Hops and citrus permeate the nose on this beer – there is no doubt that this is an IPA. Slight hints of malt play hide and seek with your nose, but they are definitely there. Citrus and resin dominate the palate but they are balanced with the malt and grain. A slight malty sweetness quickly yields to green hops, resin and earthy citrus in a very long and not at all bitter finish. At no point in this beer does the alcohol dominate the flavor. As the beer warms, a slight smokiness shows on the nose and briefly on the palate. I had this beer fresh and it was a complete hop bomb and I think it is still enjoyable despite the recommendation to drink it fresh. The beer is slightly more restrained in its aged form and I think more approachable to the average beer drinker who is just beginning to cut their teeth on very hoppy IPA’s.
This beer was great when I originally had it and great when I had it a year later, which is unusual for an IPA. The character on this beer is amazing and I really wish they would brew it again.
Minor league teams have a habit of coming up with some interesting names. Currently, you have the Winston-Salem Dash, the Kannapolis Intimidators, Mahonig Valley Scrappers, Rancho Cucamonga Quakes (I love that name) and Lansing Lug Nuts, just to name a few.
For the 2013 season, minor league baseball is coming back to the Portland area in the form of the Hillsboro Hops. The logo?
Nothing like combining two of my favorite things; baseball and beer. I might be buying myself one of their hats when they are finally available. On an interesting side note, the Hops replace the Bears in the NW league. The humor of this – Yakima is actually the largest hops producing region in the country. Oregon, specifically the Willamette Valley (close to Hillsboro), is second.
Back in my younger days when I still had my Iron Chef Training Wheels, there was no Food Network, no internet and cooking shows were primarily limited to PBS and starred such greats as Jeff Smith (The Frugal Gourmet), Julia Child, Justin Wilson (or as he called himself, Justiiin Wil-son, my first exposure to Cajun cooking) and Martin Yan (one of the funniest and smartest people I have had the pleasure of meeting). There was one exception – a 90 second segment that appeared on the local news every day called Mr. Food hosted by a man named Art Ginsburg. Mr. Food was a big geek and ended every one of his segments with the line “Ooh! It’s so good!”
As much as I loved the PBS shows, as a kid, Mr. Food was much more approachable – everything was relatively simple and easy to produce and you could send an SASE to the station to get the recipe (I did that a number of times) that came with really well thought out instructions on how to make the dish. I remember making several of them, some turning out well, some not so much.
I hadn’t thought about Mr. Food for years until a few days ago when I saw this posted. It appears that Art Ginsburg passed away on November 19th at the age of 81 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. That made me realize he probably had more of an impact on my early cooking interest than anyone outside of my family. In reading the story, one thing stuck out that I had no idea about:
he published 52 Mr. Food-related cookbooks, selling more than 8 million copies
These days, I don’t imagine that I would get anything out of those cook books, but I wouldn’t mind leafing through them just for nostalgic value.
Rest in peace, Chef, and thank you from both my 39 year old Iron Chef self and my 10 year old just learning to cook self – Iron Chef Leftovers might not have existed if it weren’t for you.
If you have never seen his segments, here is a more recent one to give you an idea of what they were like (and the guy looks the same as he did in the early 1980’s)
GNOIF #6 Recap — GNOIF And Punishment (Crime/Corruption Theme.)
Games That Got Played: Cards Against Humanity, Guillotine, Rocketville
Games That Didn’t Get Played: Family Business, Gloom, Mr. Jack (travel and full-size) Mystery of the Abbey, Pirate’s Cove, The Worst Card Game Ever, Revolution
The hit of the evening was Cards Against Humanity. Visualize Apples to Apples, only make it R-rated, and make the object to be funny rather than to have similar/evocative meanings. In our case it evolved into “how foul can you be?” As one player said “There are some of these words and phrases that I’m not sure that I want to admit that I know what they mean.”
Full disclosure: I HATE Apples to Apples. Quoting a guy from the boardgamegeek forums:
Apples to Apples isn’t really a game. Even by the standards of party games, it’s not really a game. The problem is that WHAT you do has no bearing on HOW you do, and HOW you do doesn’t matter.
I contend that if neither your actions nor the outcome matters, then you don’t have a game.
I think the reason that Cards Against Humanity worked better is because the object was only to be funny. That, and because we’d all had some beverages, and the game itself is so over the top sometimes. Looking at the boardgamegeek page, we also happened to hit the sweet spot on the recommended number of players (6-8).
Perfect crowd, fresh/new material = lol funny… some people were about falling out of their chairs.
Sam Adams in the last few years has been getting back to its roots with producing some interesting beers on a limited release basis. One of those beers is Veloren – which is an almost dead style called Gose. What is Gose you ask? From the Sam Adams website:
A link to the ales of Saxony that have all but vanished, Verloren (translating to “lost”) is a peculiar yet captivating brew. This gose style (pronounced “goes-uh”), with its base of an unfiltered wheat ale, is light and refreshing yet also has a softness to it. Verloren’s flavor is brought to life by an unexpected touch of salt for a mineral quality, and coriander for a peppery spice. The result is an unusual and delicate brew that’s full of flavors to discover.
Our rendition of an old German style, Verloren is brewed with 50 to 60 percent malted wheat creating a fine haze, cloudy straw color, and crisp twang. The singularity of this brew however, comes from its soft creaminess, dry finish, and spices. The addition of salt creates a slight sharpness against the soft cereal character and enhances the other flavors around it, while ground coriander creates a peppery bite to enliven the brew.
I picked up this beer because, for the life of me, I can’t remember ever having tried a Gose. The beer ran $7 for a 750ml bottle, wasn’t particularly difficult to find (megamarts with a better beer selection should carry it) and comes in at 6.0% ABV and a very light 15 IBU. Gose is brewed with a bunch of malts, Saaz hops and salt and coriander are added in the brewing process.
This beer pour amber and slightly coudy, you would almost think you are drinking a strange colored wit just by looking at it. The nose consists predominantly of malt and sugar with some citrus and hints of spice and herbs in the background. Malt also dominates the palate, giving way to some spice with hints of sweetness followed by citrus and citrus peel in a very long finish. As it warms, sugar starts to compliment the malt without being over the top and hints of hop bitterness come out on the finish. I never really got any distinct salt in the beer, but that is probably the point, salt should enhance all of the other flavors without being a player itself.
Veloren isn’t the best beer you will ever try, but you should try it just because you probably have never tried the style. I don’t know that I would run out myself and buy it again, but if I was in the mood for something different, I probably would pick one up.
Overall, Sam Adams Veloren gets 3 Bubo virginianus out of 5.
…Chone Figgins. One of the worst free agenst signings in Mariners history. He basically became completely useless (although you can argue he was already there) on Tuesday when this came across the wire:
Robert Andino is basically Chone Figgins with slightly more power and slightly less ability to get on base, oh, and Andino makes about 1/3 of what Figgins does. That move prompted this one on Wednesday:
Designated OF Scott Cousins and INF Chone Figgins for assignment.
Before you get too excited about effectively swapping Andino for Figgins, keep this in mind – Andino somehow managed to play in 127 games last season for Baltimore and managed an incredible .588 OPS, which is only slightly better than what Figgins posted last year.
It actually makes me wonder how the Orioles were that successful with putting Andino out there as much as they did. Hopefully Wedge does not fall in love with him and feels the need to use him even semi-regularly.
FlatbreadGarden 