Foodily.com–A cook’s dream site

Hi all.  I just got back from 4 days up at the Tahoe place.  I meant to post something from up there, but I just never got around to it.

My wife Eileen and I love to cook, as do almost all of our friends.  Many a great meal has been shared at our table and we’re not overly modest about it.  Anyway, we are always interested in sites on the Internet dealing with cooking and food.  Well, I just discovered a truly amazing cooking/recipe site: Foodily.  In a nutshell this is a recipe search site that searches every recipe from every web site.  The search results are beautifully displayed with appetizing photos.  For instance, I searched on “lentil soup” and the program returned 488 recipes, with sources ranging from “Williams-Sonoma” to” Serious Eats” to “Love and Olive Oil.”  And, there is an absolutely cool feature that allows you to winnow down your search to exclude recipes containing a certain ingredient, or display only recipes with that ingredient!    Oh, the moniker of the site is distilled from “Food I Love You” or Foodily for short.   

Eat up.

~ Tom

A Wonderful Day

The weather here today was unseasonably warm (it got up to 80!) and clear as could be. I took a walk out on the San Francisco bay (a block from our house) with my camera. I thought I would share the results with you.

First I encountered a group of American Coots (no not Walter Brennen) who were enjoying the day as much as I.

Then I had to stop and take a look at the City across the bay, with the suspension portion of the Bay Bridge on prominent display.

Further along a large flock of Plovers were taking off and flying in formation, only to fly back and land at the shore and then to take off again to zip around over the water. It’s really awesome to see them all fly as one, and they really do haul ass. This photo was shot at 1/400 of a second and they are still blurring.

Our friend the Snowy Egret was splendid.

And walking back home is almost as rewarding. That draw bridge is the Bay Farm Bridge (we live on Bay Farm Island) and if you blow it up a bit you should be able to see the light standards at the Oakland coliseum where the Raiders play, and where U-2 will play in June (we already have our tickets).

Yep, life can sure be wonderful.

Beck, Palin & Osama are peas in a pod

Now that I think about it ….. uh er.

A really, really fun App

I am constantly amazed by all the new applications and programs that are being released on a daily basis.  I just discovered one from Google  that I am enjoying immensely:   Ngram Viewer

While the App is pretty intuitive and self-explanatory, a good explanation of the App can be found here.

You don’t have to use two words, which is the way the App comes up.  You can track  just one word, or more than two.  For instance, I tried “Paris,London,Madrid,Berlin,Belfast” and it worked just fine – London is far in the lead, followed by Paris and then up to about 1860 Madrid leads over Berlin, after which from then until now, Berlin took the third spot.  Belfast was last.

The App is not censored for so called “dirty words.”  In fact they can be really fun.  An one final thing:  remember that the App is case-sensitive.  Thus if you type in “paris” you won’t get squat.  Gotta use “Paris”.

Have fun…

~ Tom

Bacall–<sigh>

I’m hopelessly in love for the ten-thousandth time.

Photo taken in 1944 (year of my birth) by Philippe Halsman

“Hot”–a recommendation

One of the things that bugs me immensely is this country’s rampant denial  of the serious consequences of climate change.  Every time there is a serious winter storm, the nay-sayers smugly point out that “global warming” is a fiction cooked up by liberals to impede business development and short-term hedonism and greed.  Of course the frigid, brutal storms that are occurring more often these days are caused by global climate changes resulting from human activities here on earth.  (I never use the term “global warming” any more.  Instead I say “climate change.”)

Anyway, in Sunday’s S.F. Chronicle there was a review of a new book on the subject titled “Hot.”  From what I read in the review and then on Amazon “First Pages,” this book should be required reading for everyone. 

Go to this link and click on the “Click to LOOK INSIDE!” area.  Then using the choices on the left side of the screen choose “First Pages.”  This will give you the first 28 pages or so, with a couple of pages omitted.  If you have an Amazon account you can sign in and go up to about page 75, with some pages omitted.

Let’s all do our part, however small as it may seem.

~ Tom

All the Devils are Here

I am almost finished reading “All the Devils are Here,” written by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera.

I decided to order it and read it after I saw the authors interviewed by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show.  The book has a lot of “financial theory” in it, which I struggled with sometimes, but you really don’t need to understand all of that stuff to become stunned and outraged by how the financial crisis happened.  Page after page I was shaking my head over the sheer greed and recklessness of all the players in this sorry saga.  I did take the time to go to other sources to get a “dumbed down” explanation of how certain things work like “selling short,” “margin calls,” and the like.  I even figured out how the whole “mortgage backed securities” market worked, which is the beast that ultimately cratered the economy.  The authors explain it in great detail, but because it is so “snake oily” it remained a bit fuzzy.  I poked around the Internet and found this chart, which made the mortgage backed securities flim flam more clear to me.   It is a good model as long as the lending standards and qualification are strictly controlled abided by.  If you maintain those standards the number of mortgages that can be produced is finite.   But these greed heads (a Lord Buckley term) wanted more, and more and more mortgages to feed the machine depicted in the chart.  So the standards gradually deteriorated until“subprime” loans were eventually being given to people who everyone knew were not going to be able to pay!  It blows my mind.

Anyway, I know this book will not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s certainly worth reading, and it is a hell of a good bad story.

~ Tom