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January 31, 2005

Tandoori Chicken with Dirty Rice and Green Beans

I'd like to think that I could be a good cook if I ever set my mind to it. I've had success to varying degrees throughout my life with the culinary arts, but find it difficult to consistently cook for myself. In NYC many times it's easier (if not more satisfying) to just eat out. I have a few reliable Chinese dishes (Mei Fun, Chicken & Shrimp with Mixed Vegetables, Sesame Chicken with Vegetable Fried Rice... all usually with a side of onion rings...) that I rotate with the occassional "Voila" meal (an all in one "meal in a bag" type of thing... available in your local frozen goods section. Throw it in a pan, wait 10 minutes and you have a decent enough meal with only one pot/one plate/one fork to clean.). As distasteful as this combination might seem to most, it's actually a step up from the days when I varied my rotation with McDonalds & Taco Bell. Comparatively speaking, I now eat down right healthy.

To make a long story short, I've begun to cook again of late. I wanted to document the process so that I remember which recipes I like, which recipes I don't, and hopefully find an effective way to do this consistently.

To that end, my first documented recipe:

Tandoori Chicken with Dirty Rice & Green Beans
Ingredients:
  Chicken (thin sliced)
  Tandoori Sauce
  Liptons Dirty Rice
  Chopped Onion
  Chopped Garlic
  Extra Virgin Olive Oil
  Sofrito (Goya is good...)

I have a terrible track record with fresh meats & vegetables. The process is usually as follows:


I'm learning slowly but surely that the way to avoid this is
  a.)Make sure you always have freezer bags on hand.
  b.)Freeze your meat immediately upon coming home from the store, and
  c.)Marinade your meat before you freeze it (preferable overnight...)

Making Tandoori Chicken with Dirty Rice & Green Beans:


Ok, it's not fancy and technically it's probably not even a recipe as much as it is a process. But it's a start, right? (For the record it wasn't too bad, though I'd probably substitute some other pasta/rice side for the Dirty Rice... a few too many of the same flavors mingled together. Would have been better with some contrast.)

Posted by Thomas at 06:58 PM | Comments (2)

"The Pile"

By Manhattan standards, I probably have a reasonably large apartment. Nevertheless I constantly find myself drowning in ever multiplying piles of stuff. Junk that suburban dwellers take for granted because they have the space to hide things. (Multiple closets, whole rooms, basements, garages, rental facilities... devoted entirely and filled to the brim with the daily bric-a-brac they don't want to deal with.) Maybe it's human nature. Maybe I hate to throw stuff away.

In my NYC apartment where every ounce of space has to be optimized for maximum usage potential these random piles are not just a nuisance, they frequently annoy the hell out of me. In the spirit of rebirth and to celebrate the coming February I've begun a new category in my blog and will be sharing my journey publicly in the hopes that I can at last eliminate "The Pile" and restore order to my home.

In a moment of brilliance inspired by the work of others (It's pretty interesting how many people are documenting their attempts to organize recently...), I created a Flickr account so that I could document the journey, and hopefully inspire myself to get rid of all this crap.

Here's how it's gonna work. I've taken all of the miscellaneous little piles and created one large pile. We'll call this the "Staging Area". The concept is to make the rest of my apartment more liveable by putting all of the chaos into one clearly defined area. As you'll note on my Flickr site (they have a cool mouse over feature where you add notes to photos...), I've broken "The Pile" into different sections...

Miscellaneous Papers - I have no idea what the hell is in here.

Old Clothes - Goal: Either take these to the local church clothes drop-off site, or take em to Brooklyn to the cool clothes store and trade em in for undersize vintage t-shirts and trucker hats, in noble attempt to look like Williamsburg hipster.

Books I don't want anymore - Goal: Either Sell em (The bastards at the Strand didn't seem to be interested when I read the titles I had to offer over the phone... it's like someone saying "Hah, what the hell were you thinking buying those titles?"), E-bay em (Is it worth the hassle?), or give em away.

Assorted CD's. - The thing about having a CD Burner is that one seems to acquire a ton of CDR's. What the hell to do with them?

Old Notebooks - Not sure what's in em, but afraid to throw em out, and don't know where to file them.

Assorted Cassettes & Videotapes - Analog takes up so much space.

Here's a "before" picture of the "The Pile"...

I figure if I keep tripping over the damn thing it will inspire me to take it apart piece by piece. I'm also hoping find a method of containment for all this crap to use once "The Pile" has been eliminated. Stay tuned!

Posted by Thomas at 01:05 PM | Comments (0)

January 26, 2005

Hobbits Unite!

I'd known for some time that Leonard Nimoy was quite the troubadour back in the day. I'd even heard the mp3 of his rendition of "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins". I just never knew that there was video.

nimoy.jpg

(Archived copy here.)

The internet is a beautiful place. Full of strange and wonderful things....

Posted by Thomas at 10:57 AM | Comments (0)

January 24, 2005

Snow is NOT better than rain...

Note to self: For all those times when it's the middle of January and cold and rainy and I say "Rain sucks... I'd rather it just snow"... well, snow sucks more. Or maybe I should say "10 inches of snow (at least) with bitter biting cold and wind sucks more". Damn, California is looking really nice right about now.

The view from my window this morning...

Posted by Thomas at 08:00 AM | Comments (0)

January 19, 2005

Patching Your Personal Suck

A really interesting article from 43 Folders.

Posted by Thomas at 09:20 AM | Comments (0)

January 12, 2005

Brooklyn Street Art

Every so often I break down and get my hair cut. I'm pretty picky about my hair, and the one person I've found that I trust it with lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. (His name is Mikail, he's also a painter and a very interesting guy with an amazing loft space...). I really love this neighborhood, and it's one of the only places I think I'd consider moving that is outside of Manhattan. On my way home, I came across this really cool street graffiti...

Creativity finds a way!

Posted by Thomas at 11:13 AM | Comments (0)