Xavier Didgeridoo

If you ever get the chance to see Xavier Rudd, do it! He's an Australian musician whose act features multiple didgeridoos! I attended his show in Santa Cruz on the 27th of June, and shy a couple problems with the audience, it was fantastic! He played for two hours before taking a break, then came back and played for another half hour. His singing reminded me very much of Paul Simon, specifically The Rhythm of the Saints. He switched between folks, native and rock, playing the didge multiple times. I have a didge myself, but have never mastered the circular breathing. Inspired by last night's show, I'm going to jump back in and see if I can finally figure it out. :)

The problems with the audience included a) the idiots who kept crowding to the front of the theater and standing, blocking our view of the stage, and b) the idiots who felt it was appropriate to light up joints inside the theater, during the show!

All hail Alton Brown!

If you haven't seen Good Eats on the Food Network, start watching! It's a fantastic cooking program, in which the Great and Powerful Alton Brown not only teaches the viewer to make some, well, good eats, but also discusses the science of cooking.

In a recent episode, he demonstrated the making of soft pretzels. I'd been wanting to give them a try, but making pretzels from recipe, versus watching them being made -- well, watching them being made makes a world of difference! A couple of comments on AB's pretzel making...

After bringing the water and soda mixture to a boil, lower the temperature to medium! If you put the pretzels in the water while it's boiling, they're going to come apart!

Also, use a large grain salt! Kosher salt isn't quite large enough. Not being able to see the salt on a pretzel is just wrong. :)

Now to discuss ice cream.

I started making ice cream last year, again compliments of Alton Brown. After making several gallons, I think I've finally figured out how to make fruit ice cream properly (vanilla, chocolate, lemon chiffon, and mint chip are easy, as they just use extract for their flavoring).

One of my issues with ice cream, in general, is that it often freezes so hard it's impossible to scoop without dipping the scoop in hot water between each, uh, scoop. Further, in many fruit ice creams, the fruit chunks freeze solid. The solution? Use three tablespoons of wodka, instead of lemon juice, when macerating the fruit chunks! (If you're not making fruit ice cream, just add the vodka to the mix before putting it in the tumbler.)

The process...

Liquify 2-3 cups of fresh fruit in a food processor, and reduce over medium heat 'til you have about a cup left. Refrigerate. Cut up another cup of fresh fruit into small chunks, adding half a cup of sugar and three tablespoons of vodka. Let this sit a couple hours in the fridge. Put a large, glass bowl into the freezer, along with a spatula and the container into which you plan on storing the ice cream (should have a six- to eight-cup capacity). Put another large, glass bowl into the fridge.

After a couple hours, add 2.5 cups of baker's cream, 1.5 cups of whole milk, 9 oz of sugar (less half a cup for the amount in the macerating fruit), 1 tsp of vanilla, the reduced fruit, and the liquid from the macerating fruit, into the chilled bowl (not the frozen bowl), and mix. Optionally, add a few drops of food coloring to more closely represent the ice cream flavor you're making. Put the macerated fruit in the freezer. Add the ice cream mixture to the tumbler, and run for 25 to 30 minutes. When finished...

Empty the ice cream into the frozen bowl, and add the macerated fruit from the freezer. Fold using the frozen spatula, and empty into the frozen storage container. Cover, and let it sit in the freezer six hours or so before serving.

The vodka will do two things: first, it'll stop the fruit from freezing solid. Second, it'll keep the ice cream soft. The reduced fruit will add a more fruity flavor to the ice cream. Previous fruit ice cream experiments have suggested only adding the liquid from the macerating fruit, but this doesn't add a strong enough flavor to the ice cream.

The result? A fruitier, softer ice cream, with no rock-solid chunks of fruit.

Credit card scare

So far, I haven't been the victim of fraud or identity theft. So I was a bit worried when I checked my bank account today, and saw an alert telling me the billing address on my credit card had been changed to some random street address in Phoenix. I called account services, and the rep said it looks as though it was human error -- perhaps a banker entered the wrong card number when processing an address change request. I changed it back, and at the same time managed to get my limit increased by $2,800 and my rate lowered to 5.9% for year. :)

Washington rears its ugly head

I thought the Washington debacle was over. But yesterday, I received a copy of a letter my lawyer sent to my seller's lawyer concerning damage to my seller's pump house.

My property received water from the well on the neighbor's property, while my neighbor's well was powered from the electrical panel on my property. This agreement expired June '05, although my sister continued using his water, and he continued using our power.

Part of the agreement stipulated that we were responsible for any repairs needed to the well.

However, I haven't been in possession of the property since March 30th. Even so, it seems he's decided to come after me for compensation for some unspecified damaged to his pump house and pipes.

I can't figure how I'd be responsible for any damage given the prior facts: I'm no longer in possession of the property, and the agreement which bound me to cover repairs expired two years ago.

My buyer purchased the property as is, and was made aware of the cross-property power and water situation. And in November my seller was informed the property was going up for sale, and was informed he'd need to provide for his own power supply. Presumably he would have contacted the local power company and had a transformer installed to his property, so he wouldn't need to continue using power off my property. At the moment, it would appear he hasn't done this.

This is interesting in that I called the power company and had them shut off power to my property back in December. So if he's continued using the power, it would appear the power company didn't actually shut the power off, but just stopped billing me. So he's been using six months of power for free. Interesting.

Also, his pump house is on the opposite side of his property relative to the property line. I can't imagine how anything done on my former property would affect his pump house. The only thing I can think of is that the new owner began demolition of the property, and entered the pump house to shut off the water -- which would suggest my seller never bothered shutting off the water supply to my property, either.

At any rate, my lawyer responded to his saying that I consider the matter closed. He was informed of the need to supply his own power, and that the property was up for sale, and further, he has since received full payment for the amount due on the property.

I really hope this doesn't go any further.

Kokopelli Reunion

May '01, I rode the Kokopelli Trail with a bunch of other insane people from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training program. Kokopelli is is 142 mile trail, running from Moab, UT to Loma, CO. The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society provide support for victims of blood-related cancers, and fund research into treatment and, eventually, a cure. Team in Training is a fundraising program run by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, whereby participants train to run or walk a marathon, ride a century, participate in a triathlon, and sometimes ski, mountain bike and adventure race, in exchange for fundraising for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

Well, it seems our mountain bike team is having a 6-year reunion the 16th of June. I can't attend, as I'll be elsewhere that day. But I decided to dig into my archives, and pull out all the web images I once hosted (I used to host a web site for the team, featuring training calendars, training articles, articles written by participants, image galleries, etc.).

I've trimmed the site to contain only the articles written by our honorees Karen and Laura, and to include the Who's Who and Trail galleries. The trimmed site can be found here. Enjoy!