Swimming with Sharks

Omnivore's Hundred FAQ

2008-09-01T01:33:37Z

Andrew Wheeler answers some questions about his reasonings behind the various items on the Omnivore's Hundred list.

tina_inara @ 2008-08-16T12:24:00

2008-08-16T16:39:53Z

The Omnivore's Hundred is a list of foods the gastronomic Andrew Wheeler thinks everyone should try at least once in their lives.

The rules of the meme: bold those you have tried, strikethrough those you wouldn't eat on a bet:

1. Venison (MMmmmmm... LOVE venison, haven't had it in forever!)
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
~~4. Steak tartare~~
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding (sausage made from pigs blood, suet and seasonings, NFW)
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses (raw milk cheese washed in brandy or wine)
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
~~23. Foie gras~~
24. Rice and beans
~~25. Brawn, or head cheese~~
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda (Italian dip made of olive oil, butter, garlic & anchovies)
31. Wasabi peas (Unfortunately, I *hate* horseradish, and forgot that wasabi is a type of horseradish. Haven't made that mistake since!)
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly (I'm assuming they mean jello shots?)
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects (Do the ones accidentally swallowed while running/cycling count?)
43. Phaal (extremely spicy curry)
44. Goat’s milk (When I was a kid, can't remember what it tastes like.)
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
~~46. Fugu (blowfish)~~ (Isn't that the one that will kill you if not prepared correctly? No thanks.)
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel (Mmmmm... river eel sushi!)
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi (pickled plum)
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs (They really do taste like chicken!)
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake (a summer must have)
~~68. Haggis~~
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe Worst hangover EVER!
74. Gjetost, or brunost (Norwegian brown cheese)
~~75. Roadkill~~
76. Baijiu (Chinese liquor made from sorghum or wheat)
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
~~91. Spam~~
92. Soft shell crab (YUM!)
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee (Best coffee ever, too bad I had to drink it out of a styrofoam cup.)
100. Snake

Book Meme

2008-05-01T02:33:10Z

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, italicize the ones you own but have not read.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Wow, looks like I've got some reading to do!

Grrrr...

2008-01-09T21:54:29Z

I've been scheduled to work until 6 pm tomorrow; normally I work until 5 pm on Thursdays because I have my running group at 6. So, no running group for me tomorrow. It might not make a difference, as I have a sore knee and have been thinking that if it's not feeling much better by tomorrow, I'll skip running and swim instead. But still, just knowing that I can't run with my group tomorrow even if it is better is discouraging. Stupid job.

Quote for the Day

2008-01-05T22:05:55Z

From Dead Like Me, Season 2:

Daisy: "Do you know what the Holy Trinity is, George?"
Rube: "We're in a fucking restaurant. It's peppers, onions, and celery."

Gah!

2008-01-05T22:00:57Z

Among my Christmas gifts this year I got two DVD sets: Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me, Season 2. (I've been on a Bryan Fuller kick lately; if you haven't been watching Pushing Daisies, you should. Seriously. But I digress.) I watched Disc One of Wonderfalls on New Year's Day, and decided to watch Disc 2 this afternoon, as I'm too wiped out after my 9.5 mile run (which was supposed to be 8 miles, but we missed a turn and had to backtrack) to do much else. I popped in the DVD, and was encountered with the same episode titles I had watched on Tuesday. Huh, weird. Popped it out, took a look at the label--yep, Disc One. Looked back in the DVD case for Disc 2, and saw that one was also labeled Disc One. How. Annoying.

Here's hoping my mom saved the receipt.

tina_inara @ 2008-01-01T20:17:00

2008-01-02T01:08:26Z

Motion-Based Life Form has been updated.

D&D Meme

2007-12-23T02:44:43Z

Via several in my f-list...

I Am A: Neutral Good Elf Druid (4th Level)

Ability Scores:

Strength-14

Dexterity-13

Constitution-13

Intelligence-14

Wisdom-14

Charisma-12

Alignment:
Neutral Good A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment because because it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.

Race:
Elves are known for their poetry, song, and magical arts, but when danger threatens they show great skill with weapons and strategy. Elves can live to be over 700 years old and, by human standards, are slow to make friends and enemies, and even slower to forget them. Elves are slim and stand 4.5 to 5.5 feet tall. They have no facial or body hair, prefer comfortable clothes, and possess unearthly grace. Many others races find them hauntingly beautiful.

Class:
Druids gain power not by ruling nature but by being at one with it. They hate the unnatural, including aberrations or undead, and destroy them where possible. Druids receive divine spells from nature, not the gods, and can gain an array of powers as they gain experience, including the ability to take the shapes of animals. The weapons and armor of a druid are restricted by their traditional oaths, not simply training. A druid's Wisdom score should be high, as this determines the maximum spell level that they can cast.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

Almost makes me feel like an OOTS character!:-)

Tolkien News

2007-12-20T19:55:12Z

Via Second-Order Approximation... PETER JACKSON SIGNS A DEAL TO PRODUCE THE HOBBIT MOVIE!!! And a sequel. Not sure if that means they're breaking up the movie into two parts, or if they'll make events from the appendices into a sequel, but who cares? It's FINALLY more than just speculation. W00T!:-)

Hardcore

2007-12-16T18:59:48Z

Winter storm warning? What winter storm warning? I LAUGH at your winter storm warning. Then, I brush 6 inches of snow off my car, drive 40 minutes to the metropark to meet the equally insane (and aptly named) mightymezzo73, and go running in your winter storm warning. 5.36 miles. Because as a comic strip the mighty one recently posted on her blog states: "there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes."

Indeed.

Shatner on the History Channel

2007-12-16T18:27:26Z

For charles_midair.

Currently airing on the History Channel... How William Shatner Changed the World. Yes, I'm serious.

Schweet!

2007-12-01T20:39:44Z

Got some great news today; one of my photos was selected to be featured in the fourth edition of the Schmap Detroit online travel guide. Specifically, this one, taken at last year's Detroit Free Press Marathon. I don't get any money for it or anything, but it's nice to know they liked my photo enough to include it. I am officially published. How cool is that?

Yearly holiday meme

2007-11-29T02:05:03Z

Dear Santa...

Dear Santa,

This year I've been busy!

Last Monday I gave jessacord a kidney (1000 points). Last week I pulled fritz_et_al's hair (-5 points). Last Sunday slave_leilia and I donated clothes to the needy (11 points). Last Saturday I gave shwankie a wet willie, then I took it back (-5 points). In May I broke namaimo's X-Box (-12 points).

Overall, I've been nice (989 points). For Christmas I deserve a Pony Slaystation 3!

Sincerely,
tina_inara

Saved by a kidney! (Sorry fritz_et_al, shwankie, and namaimo, I owe you extra holiday cookies!)

Well, Sh*t.

2007-11-18T17:07:20Z

My coffeemaker crapped out this morning. I set it up as I normally do, hit the "on" button, and noticed it started making the gurgling sound that it normally makes at the very end of the brew cycle, at the beginning. Uh oh. When it was done brewing, I poured my cup, and it was about half full. The reservoir was empty. Apparently most of the water turned to steam instead of dripping through to the pot. I tried brewing another pot, and it was even worse. I just cleaned the thing a couple of weeks ago, and it's been working fine in the meantime, so I don't think that's the issue. Looks like a trip to Bed, Bath, and Beyond is in order. Luckily I save all those 20% off coupons they send me. I think I'm going to invest in a nice Cuisinart coffeemaker with a thermal carafe instead of a class coffeepot. Better for keeping the coffee from burning in the pot, which sometimes happens when I hit "snooze" one too many times in the morning.

tina_inara @ 2007-11-12T16:49:00

2007-11-12T21:41:06Z

Motion Based Life Form has been updated.

tina_inara @ 2007-11-03T10:14:00

2007-11-03T14:06:07Z

Motion-Based Life Form has been updated.

Update: Bad link has been corrected. Thanks, jessacord!

First Half Marathon!:-)

2007-10-22T14:25:27Z

Race report here.

X-posted to runners.

Fun with Google Maps

2007-10-20T01:42:00Z

Google Maps is BRILLIANT! If you want to take a different route than the one they give you, they now allow you to customize it by dragging and dropping the blue line wherever you want. I was looking up directions to tomorrow's Detroit Marathon Expo at Cobo, and wanted to avoid taking I-94 because of all the construction. I'd been told that taking US-23 to M-14 to I-96 would likely be faster, because it's fairly free of construction. At least, that's what AAA told my training group coach. Since I'm not really familiar with Detroit, I wanted more detailed directions. Mapquest could only give me directions via 94, or by avoiding highways. Not what I wanted. I checked out Google Maps and discovered the new drag-and-drop option. Perfect! I now have my directions. Yay, Google!

Incidentally, according to Google the 96 route is exactly 4 miles farther than the 94 route, and only 2 minutes slower--not accounting for all of the construction on 94.

tina_inara @ 2007-10-13T21:51:00

2007-10-14T01:42:52Z

Motion-Based Life Form has been updated.

Sexy Name Meme

2007-10-11T02:05:08Z

With thanks to scrummycat.

Get Your Sexy Name

Oowwee!

2007-10-07T18:41:26Z

Pulled hip flexor. Not fun.

tina_inara @ 2007-09-29T13:24:00

2007-09-29T17:15:31Z

Motion-Based Life Form has been updated.

Coffee bliss

2007-09-27T13:33:52Z

One of my coworkers is from Jamaica. Today she brought in some real Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee. This is expensive stuff which sells for about $50/pound here in the States; way out of my price range. This is the first time I've ever tried it, and wow. Incredibly good stuff. Possibly the best coffee I've ever had, though I'd have to do a side-by-side tasting with some good Turkish to be sure. It seems kind of wrong to be drinking it out of a styrofoam cup.

Update

2007-09-22T19:56:35Z

Motion-Based Life Form has been updated.

tina_inara @ 2007-09-16T13:02:00

2007-09-16T16:53:29Z

Motion-Based Life Form has been updated.