Posted by Tim
Sun, 06 May 2007 01:35:01 GMT
No, I'm not personally going to jail. A good friend of mine posed the question, "what would you go to jail for?" When I originally asked myself this question, I had a hard time answering. There are things in this world that really bother me, and one of the things that bothers me the most is my complacency in dealing with things that bother me. Rationalizations abound. In short, I couldn't answer, at least not right away.
I hang out in the #typo channel on Freenode because I run Typo. Today there was a discussion among two people about homelessness and a new law that is in place in Orlando, FL. It is now against the law to feed more than 25 people in downtown Orlando parks. Charitable organizations can get permits to feed people, but only two per year per organization will be issued. Why the fuss? Business owners were complaining. For a country where so many citizens call themselves Christians, it seems horribly cold hearted to outlaw feeding people in need. Isn't that one of the things we are told to do? Matthew 25:35-40 seems about right.
The programmer hanging out in #typo apparently had the same idea. He started a little website called "Jesus Was Homeless" to help spread awareness of the new law and hopefully start a backlash.
There has been at least one arrest resulting in a misdemeanor charge. Would you accept a misdemeanor on your record if it were for feeding people? That seems like a worthy cause to me.
More information:
Do you live in Kansas City? Get out in the streets with the Uplift organization, or make a donation to Harvesters. They accept monthly giving via check or credit card.
Posted in Food, Life | 1 comment | no trackbacks
Posted by Tim
Mon, 29 Jan 2007 08:58:06 GMT
It is way too late to still be awake. Not so much because my alarm will go off in a few hours, but because I have the furnace set to allow the temperature to drop all the way down to 66 degrees after midnight. It is one of the tiny ways in which I conserve energy, and I'd like to think that it makes up for running computers all day every day.
I didn't write quite as much code this weekend as I hoped, but I did deal with some rather tricky issues in the code that I was able to write. Unicode isn't fun. I still have one unicode input/output bug that is appearing in one instance of CogPlanet, but absent in another. What the heck?
I also had a chance to spend Saturday afternoon with Kate, eating sushi and running errands. It is nice when she has a day off on the weekend. We asked the sushi chef to choose our last roll for us, and we got a pizza roll. It was beautifully prepared, and octopus is about as chewy as I expected. The only maki roll that we had eaten before was the crunchy salmon, and it was as delicious as always. The other rolls we tried were the barbecued eel and the spicy scallop rolls. Both were tasty. A sushi newbie could be convinced to try the eel, but I wouldn't suggest the spicy scallop to someone who is squeamish about the idea of sushi in the first place.
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Posted by Tim
Sun, 03 Dec 2006 05:15:21 GMT
Kate and I spent $22 on Chinese food today. That was for two entrees, two sodas, and an order of crab rangoon at our favorite Chinese restaurant. Awesome. I tried the Mongolian Chicken. It was good, but not great. I'll probably get one of my "regular" dishes next time.
Then tonight I read about this guy named Evan, from Lansing Michigan, and he spent $27.28 on food, but here's the catch: that was for the entire month of November. It sounds like an interesting experiment, and a tough 30 day dare. If you have a little while, I'd suggest reading his blog, Hungry for a Month.
Posted in Dares, Food | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Tim
Tue, 21 Nov 2006 03:12:25 GMT
That was the title for my 10th and final speech in my quest for the Toastmasters Competent Communicator award. After we send in some paperwork, I will be on my way to starting an advanced program!
The stated purpose of the 10th speech is to inspire the audience. Suggested topics include spiritual, physical, or financial growth. Given that it was exactly one week before Thanksgiving, I had more important things on my mind. Food.
I couldn't stop thinking about bread, and I took the opportunity to share my enthusiasm while showing, first hand, just how easy it is to whip up a batch of dough. It is tricky kneading dough while speaking, but I managed to pull off both tasks well enough to earn a decent review. Mashing together wheat proteins to form gluten while mashing together friends and family is a recipe for a warm and joyful household.
Every year for Thanksgiving I visit Grandma to get a refresher course on her great bread recipe. I am one of a handful who have taken on the recipe. Many people are either intimidated by her lack of exact measurement, or by the thought of cooking with living bits of yeast. Making a batch of her dough takes about 15 minutes with experience. We always make two batches, but I get much more than 30 minutes of cooking out of my visit. It is great to spend time with the matriarch of the family on the eve of a giant feast, sharing her recipe, her stories, and her time. Grandma's house is too packed for a slow conversation on Thanksgiving day, but on Wednesday evening there will only be a few of us gathered around two batches of dough and a giant bowl of in progress potato salad.
Posted in Food, Toastmasters | no comments
Posted by Tim
Sat, 08 Jul 2006 19:40:00 GMT
Kate and I just returned last night from Santa Barbara, CA. We were out there to celebrate Leah and Steve's wedding. What relaxing time, wonderful surroundings, and indulgent food! The picture here was taken with the self-timer in one of the lounging areas at the Bacara resort. We have pictures of the two of us with more striking backgrounds, but this is a cute one of us before Kate was roasted by the sun. The entire set is available on Flickr.
So much tasty food, and especially tasty seafood. Ahi tuna sandwiches, grilled swordfish, soy glazed sea bass, and crab cakes. Most dishes involved bacon, and not just any bacon, but thick slices of apple wood smoked bacon. Mmm, bacon.
With it being summertime, I planned on packing for what is typical summer weather here in KC, but that would have been a mistake. It was a perfect 72 degrees most of the days we were there, and hardly a cloud in the sky. Humidity? Hah!
I've never experienced a Jewish wedding ceremony before, but it was very lovely. Kate was a little disappointed to know that our ceremony will be about twice as long as Leah's.
This has been a very relaxing adventure, and I am happy that I could take part. I have a bit more to say about the week, but now I have some unpacking to do. Here's to a life overflowing with happiness and fulfillment for Leah and Steve!
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Posted by Tim
Sun, 18 Jun 2006 02:56:00 GMT
I picked up a package of smoked trout at the grocery store about a week ago, thinking that I’d find a nice pasta recipe and cook it up for Kate. No luck on finding a recipe, but I had all week to plan an extemporaneous evening of cooking. Last night I picked up the remaining ingredients and waited for Kate to get done with work. And waited. And waited. When she finally arrived I sprang into action and had dinner on the table 15 minutes later.
This recipe isn’t done yet—I’ll admit up front that it needs a bit of tweaking. The end result was very tasty, but a little dry. If you want to try it anyway, this is what you’ll need:
- 5oz. smoked trout, roughly chopped
- 3/4 of a red onion, diced
- 1/2 of a bunch of green onions, sliced thin
- 1 large handful of grape tomatoes, roughly chopped
- 1/2 glass of white wine
- Parmesan cheese
- 1 lemon
- Two servings worth of pasta—I used penne
- Salt and pepper, of course
- Olive oil, of course
And now, assemble your ingredients in the following manner
- Bring salted water to a boil.
- Put the pasta in the water.
- Splash some olive oil in a pan, put it on medium heat.
- Drop the red onion in your pan, let them turn almost translucent.
- Drop the tomatoes in your pan, warm them through
- A pinch of salt, or two, goes into the pan
- Drop the trout in your pan, warm it through
- Drop the green onions in your pan—these don’t need much time
- Pour the wine into the pan, let it reduce to strengthen it’s flavor
- Your pasta is done now, drain it and put it into your pan
- Mix, mix, mix
- Plate your meal
- Give it a splash of good olive oil for freshness
- Pepper your pasta to taste
- Grate the Parmesan cheese and lemon zest over each plate to taste.
- If you have more wine, now is the time to pour some for yourself.
I was dumb and didn’t take a picture, but I will next time. And there will be a next time—Kate said it was some of the best pasta she has ever eaten. She’ll come to regret that statement if it wasn’t really true. :-)
Posted in Food | 1 comment | no trackbacks
Posted by Tim
Fri, 16 Jun 2006 05:44:00 GMT
Kate admitted last weekend that although she thinks that she has probably eaten ribs in the past, she couldn’t remember any specific time when she ate ribs. So obviously even if there were ribs in her past, they were terrible. That was a travesty, and if she was going to continue living that way I’d have to break things off.
Lucky for us she had this Thursday off. Thursday at BB’s is a wonderful time. A full slab of ribs plus two orders of their massive and massively delicious batter fries runs only $12.95, and your meal comes with entertainment by John Paul’s Flying Circus featuring Bill Dye. I think I’ve been to BB’s on every night of the week, and Thursday is consistently the best. Lindsay mentioned tonight that John Paul has been playing Thursdays at BB’s for 10 years now, and I think I first saw him there 9 years ago.
If you’re in the area you should make a point to stop by some time. BB’s Lawnside BarB-Q is just East of 85th and Troost. As they say, "to find it, turn right at 85th, then go South about 60 years."
And for the record, I wouldn’t really break things off with Kate if she didn’t like ribs. It’s easy to say that now that she enjoyed our evening eating pig like pigs.
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Posted by Tim
Wed, 24 May 2006 13:10:00 GMT
I heard about The Ten Cup today via BlogKC. I love the concept, especially with The Ten Percent Solution so fresh in my head. It is nice knowing that 10% of your ticket will go to charity. It makes paying so much for foo foo coffee seem more acceptable.
I’ve mentioned The Ten Percent Solution before, right? I just read it two weeks ago, and it is a nice and easy book to get through. I took three hours from one cover to the other, and it made me want to take my saving and giving to the next level. So much so that I had a strong urge to make more just so I could save and give more. One of the central quotations of the book:
Did universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven, and hell a fable.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Posted in Food, Money | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Tim
Fri, 28 Apr 2006 05:31:00 GMT
For the first time ever I took the day of my birthday off from work, and I couldn’t have asked for a nicer day. Growing up, it always seemed to rain on my birthday, but today was nothing like birthdays past. 70 degrees and partly cloudy in Kansas City and Lawrence. Kate surprised me this morning with a cake that she managed to bake in my own house the day before without leaving any trace behind, and from there we headed off to Lawrence for a day of roaming.
We started walking down Mass Street and we quickly found Love Garden. It’s a great music store selling second hand compact discs and records. Great enough, in fact, that we left with three discs. Further down the road in another shop whose name escapes me we found what will probably end up being my wedding ring. Titanium looks great and is incredibly strong, just like the love of a marriage should be. Lunch today was at the Free State Brewery, and it was fast, delicious, and reasonably priced. Anything beer battered is necessarily good there. Roaming the streets by foot and by automobile as well as a short walk through KU’s campus reminded us both that we’d really like to live in a college town one day.
As if that wasn’t a great enough day already, I was the lucky recipient of two phone calls and one email, all from amazing friends that I’m quite lucky to have. I wasn’t around my phone to answer one call, so I’ll need to make that up, and during the other call I learned that one of those friends is going to have a boy in September. Oh, and yet another cake was cut into upon arriving at mom and dad’s house. Oh, and Jacquie told me that I’m her favorite brother… don’t mind the fact that I’m her only brother. Thanks to everyone who has helped me to have such a wonderful time all these years. I hope I manage to hold on to my good fortune for many years to come!
Posted in Travel, Food, Life | 1 comment | no trackbacks
Posted by Tim
Thu, 27 Apr 2006 04:01:00 GMT
Someone dies from hunger about every 4 seconds. I
gave a variation of this as my Toastmasters CTM speech 3, and it was
clocked at just over 5 minutes. In that time over 70 people passed away
because of hunger.
April 7th through the 9th was a physically filling and
fattening weekend. An outside observer might have guessed
that I was in the first phases of a competitive eating training
regimine. Kate and I ate out three times. Four, if
you count a visit to Grandma's house, and since Grandma always offers
heaping portions and multiple desserts, well, let's count
that. At work we always end the week with lunch at Governor
Stumpy's because it's so tasty and the people are always
smiling. Saturday Kate and I had a (*clears throat*) "light"
lunch at the Jerusalem cafe on Saturday, and we followed that with the
trip to Grandma's house. On Sunday, we ate so much at the
Ruchi Indian Restaurant's buffet that I had a belly ache all afternoon!
Right now I have a belly ache of a different sort. I learned
a great deal about hunger and malnutrition over the last few days
because Kate and I are choosing charities to put on our wedding
registry. Harvesters quickly floated to the top of our list
because of their strong presence in the Kansas City community coupled
with their incredibly low administrative overhead, and my
normally full belly had an empty and aching feeling as I read some of
their statistics. For the price of a soda, complete with free
refills, Harvesters can feed 10 people. My tuna melt and tip
at the Stump could have satisfied 60 people. Ugh... belly
ache.
I'm going to go over some of the facts and figures, but first lets get
some definitions out of the way.
hunger:
(a) a craving or urgent need for food or a specific nutrient, (b) an
uneasy sensation occasioned by the lack of food, (c) a weakened
condition brought about by prolonged lack of food
malnutrition:
faulty and especially inadequate nutrition
In my own words I'd say that hunger is a belly ache from not eating
enough, while malnutrition is a condition induced from a long term lack
of nutrients. If someone ate macaroni and cheese everyday all
day, that person would not be hungry. He'd probably even be
fat, but unless he was eating super fortified and enriched mac and
cheese, he'd be quite malnourished by a lack of important vitamins and
minerals.
Globally, 1 in 12 people are malnourished. Some parts of the
world are worse than others, with an extreme example being
Afghanistan. 70% of the population of that country are
currently undernourished according to the World Food Programme.
Remember your mother forcing you to eat your carrots because
they were good for your eyes? The special ingredient that
keeps your eyes in top notch condition is vitamin A, and approximately 250,000 to 500,000 children
go blind each year because they have a vitamin A deficiency [WIKIPEDIA].
Beyond blindness, as many as one million child deaths could have been prevented by vitamin A supplementation between 1998 and 2000 [UNICEF].
Iron is another everyday nutrient that isn't in the everyday
diet in sufficient quantities for a sizable portion of the world
population, and enriching people's diets with iron would be the single
most cost effective action that we could take to improve the health of
the world.
Those of us living in the United States may find hunger and
malnutrition to be remote problems that deserve the attention of
international organizations and think tanks. We don't have to
deal with hunger and malnourishment here, right? Although
hunger
isn't as pronounced in the United States as in many parts of the world,
over one tenth of our population experienced insecurity in their food
supply in 2004. Many of those affected by food insecurity
lead normal lives otherwise; people with jobs, homes, and
hobbies for whom something went wrong. A missed paycheck or
an unforeseen medical emergency is all that it takes for many people to
have to make tough decisions between food, rent, or medication.
Let's zoom in just a little more. When asked why
they like Kansas City, many people mention the small city feeling and
the friendliness of most residents. Hunger may exist in rural
areas or in overbearingly large cities, but surely in such a personal
and friendly city as KC we manage to feed those who hunger.
Not quite. Harvesters is our only area food bank,
and through a distribution network that includes 550 not-for-profit
organizations they help approximately 60 thousand people each week.
About 3% of our metropolitan population seeks assistance each
week, and 43% of those in need are children. All of this
support adds up to some pretty incredible numbers. For
instance, 23 million pounds of food were distributed in 2005.
My dad always, always, always made sure that we were not only
fed, but fed incredibly well. He picked up this habit from
his own father, and it seems to have induced a condition in our family
that causes us to get incredibly grumpy or just plain mean if it has
been more than about six waking hours since we last ate. My
pampered palate caused these facts about hunger and malnutrition to
really resonate with me. It was an eyeopener to see how many
people go without food at all for a day or more, especially when I get
edgy after six snack less hours.
There is a bright side to this situation. Since the
1960s the world has produced enough food to sufficiently feed everyone,
we just have to figure out how to distribute all of the food
appropriately.
Many people are still digging into Easter baskets and indulging in
treats that they may have voluntarily gone without for 40 days and 40
nights prior to Easter. I hope we will all take a moment to
remember those people who involuntarily go without by contributing to
an organization dedicated to feeding people at an international,
national, or local level. Food is
not only necessary, food is wonderful. Enjoy indulging in
life's nourishing pleasures, but be careful to avoid overindulgence or
you may end up with a belly ache.
Posted in Food, Life, Toastmasters
