A college cookbook and personal journal
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It’s supposedly (well, it actually is according to wunderground.com) 22 degrees here in Florence.
It’s sunny outside.
But why am I still freezing?
Really simple today:
Baked chicken with tomato sauce and mixed vegetables. Drop it all in a pan with extra virgin olive oil and sprinkle with salt/pepper to taste. Stick it in an oven preheated to around 380 F for 45 minutes.
It’s quick, easy, and tastes great.
Tags: baked, chicken, tomato sauce
Breakfast has quickly become my favorite meal of the day. Back home I usually have a bowl of oatmeal but since oatmeal is hard to come by here in Italy, I’ve settled for a few close substitutes:
- Weetabix cereal bars (these bars get soggy in milk so it’s just my cereal. A popular breakfast food in the UK, Weetabix can also be found at your closest Whole Foods in the USA)
- Soy Milk
- Whole banana
- 2x pieces of whole grain toast (appropriately called “American” bread here)
- 2x Over-easy eggs (Cooked in EV olive oil)
Weetabix cereal with bananas
Over-easy eggs on toast
A few internet resources that helped me along the way to getting all these together (useful for anyone that wants to try out this breakfast):
Overview of Weetabix cereal’s health factor
“Weetabix are more typically served with milk (hot or cold) in a bowl, as with any other breakfast cereal, yet sometimes with hot water, topped with fruit (bananas, etc), butter and Marmite or jam. They can also be toasted and topped with melted cheese, jams or nut butters. They are very light and absorbent and when soaked in milk can take on the texture of a light porridge. However, they retain a certain crunchiness for a while.
Weetabix is made from whole grain wheat and is high in fibre, with 3.8g of fibre in a 37.5g serving (2 biscuits).[4]”
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weetabix
Youtube video on cooking eggs over-easy
Personally, I have my own way of cooking eggs over-easy but this video gets it done just fine.
Bittorrent Logo
I’ve been file-sharing for over a decade. Back then, Kazaa and Napster ruled the internet and getting 50KB/s download speeds were considered blazing fast. How things have changed. Today, users download at speeds over 1MB/s – a speed unheard of not even ten years ago. But with Kazaa dead, where are the speeds coming from and where did the media go? The past few years movies, TV shows, e-books, and applications found a new home for the technologically-adept in a now well-known file sharing protocol known as Bittorrent. Bittorrent has become the main source of media-sharing among internet users because of its speed, file availability, and (relative) ease of use. For these reasons, most people will tell you that Bittorrent is the best way to get your files online. What if I told you now, though, that there is a protocol even better than the best? There is, and it’s called Usenet.
At this point, if you’ve been downloading media off Bittorrent for a while now, you might be thinking you would have heard of Usenet by now if something better than Bittorrent even existed. You’ll be even more surprised to find out, then, that Usenet was created in the late 70’s and is a system that predates the internet itself. Yes, it’s older than the internet itself and you probably haven’t heard of it. This is mainly due to one of Usenet’s small problems – its steep learning curve. Essentially a hybrid between emails and discussion boards, downloading your files off Usenet isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do for the average user. But once you learn the lingo of Usenet (.rar, .par, .par2, nzb – to name a few) you will be well on your way to downloading files faster and safer than you ever could on Bittorrent.
To compare, let’s go over the three main concerns when choose a file-sharing protocol – speeed, file availability, and safety.
1. Speed
As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, people love Bittorrent because of it’s (usually) ridiculously fast download rate. What some don’t realize is the download rate is determined by how many seeds/peers you are connected to in the swarm. In other words, if only a few people have the file you want, your download rate is going to suffer. In this sense, Bittorrent is only good for the most popular files. Only two seeds for that 4GB file? Sorry, but it’s going to take a while for you to pick that one up.
On Usenet, files are posted by individual users like Bittorrent, but instead of depending on your peers, these files are copied to Usenet servers around the world, over and over again. As long as the file is on the server, you will always download at your fastest possible download speeds – regardless of how popular the file is or how many people have it.
2. File Availability
Both Bittorrent and Usenet have an extensive library of media for the end-user, regardless of what your download preferences are. But where Bittorrent fails once again is in its necessity for files to be popular in order for them to be available. Once the number of seeds/peers falls to zero, downloading that torrent becomes impossible unless you can get someone to re-seed the torrent again – a process that takes time, at least 24 hours depending on the file size. Looking to download that old indie film you saw when you were a kid? You’re out of luck with Bittorrent.
Moving over to Usenet, if the file has been posted, it will stay available to you regardless of the amount of people that want it. There’s no need to concern yourself over different dead .torrent files and hoping one has seeds. Usenet’s file availability does not discriminate between the popular and the unpopular. That indie movie you’re looking for will be around for you to download whenever you like as long as the news server retains it.
3. Safety
Security is a major player in today’s file-sharing world. Users have been nabbed left and right for downloading their favorite music and movies. The blame here falls on the reliance of peers while downloading on the Bittorrent network. Since you are making a direct connection to other owners of the file you want, it’s easy for anyone to log your IP address and charge you with whatever crimes you might be committing.
As of this writing, the has not been a single lawsuit brought against a user downloading any file on Usenet. The RIAA and MPAA can’t touch Usenet users because all files are downloaded directly from the Usenet servers – no dealing with unknown seeds or peers that could potentially be the RIAA in disguise.
Usenet Diagram
The Catch
So with all these benefits, why don’t more people use Usenet? This question has two valid answers.
The first is that Usenet cost money. It’s not a lot, but $11/month at the cheapest Usenet server is a handful of money depending on what kind of user you are. Personally, I’m downloading files at all times of the day and night. Even on Bittorrent I wished I had faster speeds to keep up with the amount of files I wanted. For someone like me, Usenet is a godsend. For the guy that downloads a movie a month and the occasional TV show he misses on cable, it might not be worth it. On a side-note, however, I opted to do without a cable subscription in my NYC apartment and I have fully replaced any TV watching I would have used it for with my Usenet subscription. The best part is everything is in HD (at least 720p). I can get a TV show within hours of it airing. With the exception of breaking news (I can use Google News and live internet streaming for this), Usenet has more than fulfilled my movie/TV show fix.
The second is the steep learning curve I previous mentioned before. Since Usenet is essentially a collection of threads that users post binaries (fancy name for files) into, it can get quite messy. Users need to learn to use .nzb files to download their media (An .nzb file is Usenet’s version of the .torrent). And after downloading, they may or may not need to utilize .par and .par2 files to complete any fragments from the download that might be missing. This process is far easier than it sounds although I know it seems like a long process. There are programs out there that will automate the whole process for you though and leave you with a nice, tidy download once completed.
So, weigh out the pros and cons of Usenet and decide if it’s for you. If you’re like me and want your files in large quantities without speed limitations and you want them fast, then Usenet might be something to consider. At only $11/month, it’s fast and will save you time in the long-run waiting for files to finish and spare you from Bittorrent’s “connecting to peers in the swarm”-type messages. And for the curious, various Usenet servers are letting users sign-up for free two-week trials of their services to see what Usenet is all about (Giganews, Binverse). Just don’t forget to cancel your subscription before the two weeks is up or they’ll start billing.
Usenet has outlived Kazaa and its popularity is still growing. With features that rival all modern file sharing system, namely Bittorrent, there’s a reason this prehistoric network system still thrives today.
Tags: bittorrent, usenet
My good friend and roommate recently started his own food blog. The blog has recipes of his home-cooked meals and has high-res images in every post.
Check out Marshall’s food blog, Chop Chop Chew:
Tags: food blogs, marshall
Buy a salmon steak. Preheat the oven to 400 F.
Cut up your favorite vegetables, lightly coat them in extra virgin olive oil. Throw on some salt+pepper if you like.
Line a baking pan with aluminum foil and crunch it up in the middle to make a wall – not entirely necessary but it makes it easier. Put your vegetables in it. Drop maybe a teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil on whichever part of the foil the salmon steak will go to make sure it doesn’t stick to the foil after it’s cooked.
You can season the salmon with anything. Yesterday I seasoned it with extra virgin olive oil and pepper. Today I only used oil to coat the vegetables and the foil. I seasoned the steak with basil and dijon mustard.
Put the salmon steak on the pan and put the pan in the oven (it should be hot by now). The general rule is 10 minutes for every inch of salmon. I’ve done 15 minutes both times and it’s come out tender with soft vegetables. Check after 15 to see if the vegetables are soft. If they are, the salmon is probably ready too (as long as your salmon steak isn’t more than 1-1.5 inches thick).
The final product
Tags: fish, salmon, salmon steak
Inside: lettuce, tomatoes, poached chicken, and my own spicy sauce
I’ve been frequenting this great sandwich/panini place here in Italy. The bread is always fresh and the sauce is delicious. I thought I’d try to recreate the sandwich on my own since I won’t be in Florence forever. I have the same sandwich every time I go. It consists of bread, lettuce, tomatoes, whole wheat bread (this is the one thing I can’t emulate because I know it’s probably made daily – it is the freshest bread I’ve had in a long time), boiled (or poached) chicken, and the shop owner’s “spicy sauce”. It sounds simple but the sauce and the bread make this panini something else.
Tomato sauce, garlic, oregano, garlic, and olive oil
I’m not posting a full recipe because I need some time to perfect the recipe at which point I’ll write out a detailed walk-through for the records.
I say trial and error because my first try came out looking like this (I decided to toast the bread first. I don’t know why):
The black panini.
The real DIY part of this recipe was the homemade panini press I had to make because I don’t own one. I used two pans, aluminum foil, and a heavy bottle of sauce. One pan was to hold the sandwich on the stovetop and the other pressed down on the sandwich while the bottle of sauce kept the weight constant. The aluminum foil was used between the sandwich and the top pan.
The homemade panini press
Like I said, I won’t have a recipe out for this yet, but essentially I put a chicken breast in a pot of water, brought it to a boil and let it simmer for 10-15 minutes or just until the middle wasn’t pink anymore.
While that was happening, I heat up extra virgin olive oil in a pan, poured some tomato sauce in it and let it simmer. I dropped in garlic, crushed red peppers, salt/pepper, and oregano.
The second try turned out well. The only problem was the acidity of the tomato sauce threw the whole thing a bit off. Tomorrow I will try adding baking soda or onions to the recipe to help with the acidity. I’m not going to use sugar.
The second try turned out well.
Tags: chicken, diy, panini, tomato sauce
Avocados are healthy and delicious. I used to eat them mashed up in milk as a child.
Turkey Avocado Sandwich
I would have made it a chicken avocado sandwich but the turkey cold cuts were easier to use since I didn’t have to cook them.
Ingredients:
1/2 avocado (put the rest in saran-wrap and it will stay good for at least a day in the fridge as long as it doesn’t oxidize)
2 pieces of whole grain bread
80 grams of turkey cold cuts (cooked chicken would be better)
1-2 tbps Dijon mustard
1. Toast the both pieces of bread. While they’re getting hot, cut the avocado and scoop out one half. Here’s a great guide for cutting avocados, it’s pretty simple:
http://www.instructables.com/id/How_To_Cut_an_Avocado
2. At this point you can mash up the avocado if it’s really soft but I kept it in chunks for texture. When the bread is toasted, spread the avocado on one piece. Sprinkle it with some salt and pepper for taste.
3. Spread the Dijon mustard on the other piece of toast. Arrange the turkey on this piece of toast and flip it over onto the avocado to complete the sandwich.
Easy to make and tastes great.
Weekdays are busy so when there isn’t much time to cook, pan-fried chicken is always a safe bet.
Curry Chicken
This is pan-fried chicken cooked with curry spicing and sauteed onions. Since the week is busy, I cook the onions and the chicken in the same pan to save time. It turned out well this way since some of the curry powder made its way to the onions too. The rice is reheated basmati rice I cooked and stored in my fridge over the weekend.
Tags: basmati rice, chicken, curry, onions