The Frying Pan

Seasoned Advice Blog: Cherry, berry, nut (2/4)

12:10 PM

It's live!

rumtscho on August 15, 2012

Summer reigns in full glory, and there is juicy, sweet fruit everywhere. Right now, I enjoy it in countless preparations—fruit salads, smoothies, hot pies and cool sorbets—but I know that in the winter, I will still long for this great variety of taste and flavor. Thus, I am making some preserves to last me through the cold season. But I don’t limit myself to old staples such as strawberry jam and apple butter. There is a rainbow of recipes available for fresh, unusual, quirky jams.

In this series, I present some of those unusual recipes. Some of them will probably surprise you, but dare …

Yeey!

3:30 PM

@rumtscho I'm thinking maybe we should name the parts of Cherry, Berry, Nut. E.g., this part could be called "Alternative sweeteners"

@derobert I don't see how we can find a title which represents the whole post

alternative sweeteners are only one third of this post

and the others are just as heterogenous.

Hmmm, true. Guess the tags will have to be enough.

I find it misleading to name a post after only one of its three recipes.

I was thinking of creating pages for each series when it is finished

Not a whole new post, just a page with links to all parts at once.

cooking.blogoverflow.com/tag/cherry-berry-nut

it already exists

You created a tag for the series?

I find that weird, but maybe you use tags in a different way than I do

3:34 PM

It has both tags and categories, so I'm not quite sure what to use tags for.

I've done it for the other series, too (e.g., cooking.blogoverflow.com/tag/three-books-for-every-kitchen)

Yes, let it stay as it is. We can change it if we find a better use for the tags, but for now, it doesn't hurt anything. I will have to think whether a separate "page" (as opposed to a list of all posts tagged with something) will add any value.

Well, if you wrote an overview, that could have value. E.g., it could help someone find where you talk about spiced jams (part 2)... Of course, could just tag it spiced-jams. In fact, I'll go do that, as it probably should be tagged that anyway

Tags don't seem to get very prominent billing, though

Wow, spam link: officedownload.org/office-2010-c-43.html

seriously, that header, we need better spammers.

Where did you find it?

'twas in the spam comment queue (not any more, I deleted it)

Shog9

I love the style of your photographs, @rumtscho. Combined with the site theme, the result brings to mind an old cookbook.

3:45 PM

@Shog9 Old? What's old about my photographs?

Shog9

Hmm... Wrong connotations there. Maybe, "classic"

Thank you for the compliment of course, I just wonder what caused the association with "old". Especially seeing that the photography style I used is not old.

@Shog9 like the Betty Crocker/Better Homes type ones?

Shog9

right

Better Homes sounds like exactly what I'm thinking of

I haven't seen much high-key hdr photography before the digital age.

@Shog9 I must try to find examples for that.

3:47 PM

@Shog9 I always get the 2 confused TBH. Almost always use the Better Homes one, but....

@Shog9 OK, I found the book you mean. (Yay for Amazon look-inside). I am even more flattered now.

@rumtscho growing up that was the cookbook. Mom had others, but when she needed to make something she didn't know how to make that was the first stop. We have a copy at home and that's my first stop if I don't know how to make something, before the internet even.

@waxeagle Totally agree. The Better Homes and Gardens was my only cookbook for 10 years- until just a few years ago actually.

@waxeagle I know, my mother (and grandmothers) had such books too. Hers was called "book for the housewife". It is country-specific. In Germany, it is the "Dr. Oetker Schulkochbuch". My co-workers got me the current edition as a birthday present last year and since then, I think that it might explain a large percentage of Germany's fame as a culinary wasteland.

@rumtscho lol :(

3:54 PM

The photography in the current Dr Oetker is great (just as in the current Better homes, as I noticed a few minutes ago). But the recipes are not only for boring food, they are also mostly bad recipes.

my culinary picture of germany is Sausages, Sourkrout, beer, and pretzels

@rumtscho Odd. Germany doesn't have that reputation here.

greasy and fattening, but incredibly delicious.

I could eat jagerschnitzel with spatzle all day.

@Sobachatina Maybe not as bad as England, but certainly in the lower half of the distribution of world's cuisines. And since moving here, I agree with them.

OK, jägerschnitzel is decent. Spätzle is also good for a noodle (I am not a noodles fan).

3:56 PM

Well, I don't think anyone can outdo England in the culinary wasteland department.

@derobert srsly

@rumtscho Fair enough. I lump their cuisine in the category of "Countries who were too far from the equator to rely on fresh vegetables and grilled meat"

Well, thanks to global warming, that'll soon change!

@derobert That is a compelling argument for pollution- tomatoes in Wyoming.

Yes! Buy a Hummer to celebrate!

(and help cause it)

3:59 PM

@derobert I feel very alone in my crusade to make people understand: It is not temperature which makes good fruit, it is UV amount. So, the factors which make Germany warmer (like pollution) also reduce the light strength.

@rumtscho Well, if you want UV, I hear we have CFCs for that...

@derobert They got banned, unlike Hummers.

Well, I'm not sure Hummers are around anymore either, really. And the H2 and later didn't have the same tomatoes in Wyoming properties as the H1 anyway.

No, they are not around - they got too old for you Merkins, so they got exported to Eastern Europe, for the nouveau riches to show off.

I edited the heck out of the clarified butter question. I was afraid he might have taken offense.

4:04 PM

Well, I understand that you need to take out a mortgage every time you fill up the tank, so soon enough the new wealth in Eastern Europe shall be depleted.

I certainly wouldn't be pleased if someone hacked up one of my posts like that.

But he hasn't said anything- so he may just be more mature than I am.

this one? cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/25662/…

Yep.

cooking.stackexchange.com/revisions/25662/3

... that's hardly a huge revision

@Sobachatina I looked at it yesterday and was confuzzled, you're rev is much clearer.

4:07 PM

@Sobachatina as an ESL speaker, if somebody edited my question this way, I would assume that you have more authority than I am and be glad for the edit.

Of course, I don't know if the OP is ESL, but he could be.

I would be happy about it were it my question. Well, I wouldn't be happy that I wrote the original, but...

Maybe it is just a matter of "does my sense of self-worth hang on my writing style, and do I feel attacked when somebody offers a change, implying that my original was bad." I certainly don't feel attacked, but then I have participated in a writing+editing workflow in many roles and may have a better overview of it than others.

@rumtscho I appreciate feedback on my writing but I still have to make a conscious effort to not take criticism personally. I expect it takes some practice.

@Sobachatina I can't say that I am a perfect human (or buddha?) who never takes criticism personally. The mechanism which decides whether I take it personally or not (it is an unconscious one) is highly situational. I kust know that in this situation, it is no problem for me at all. I'm not sure what all the relevant factors are. Probably ESL isn't all that strong, because I don't think I would have much trouble had it been my native tongue.

I'm sure I would be crushed if you criticized my Bulgarian.

Especially since all I know is your name with and without the article- and I probably pronounce it with a Americanized-Russian accent.

4:18 PM

@Sobachatina I have already done that. Maybe I am lucky that you don't know where I live.

@Sobachatina Now I want to hear that...

I forgot that I said I was going to try reading some of the poetry that you posted- purely for your amusement.

I forgot that too. But I am still interested to hear it. If you come around doing it, please speak my name too, I want to hear it.

Ok, I'll have to remember at home when I have a mic.

You could say something like "ще прочета стихотворението ... за Румянчето" at the beginning.

It's funny. I find myself trying to read your Bulgarian like Russian with an Italian accent.- over accentuating the vowels.

4:36 PM

Maybe it isn't a bad idea. Bulgarian pronunciation is not that far from Italian in some cases.

4:50 PM

@rumtscho I'd try to pronounce this, but first I'd have to learn cyrillic(?) phonetics

google translate will read it for you, but I've no idea how good it is.

@KitFox no headphones :(

Oh I see.

I have a little cheat sheet taped to my monitor, but I don't think I will ever learn Cyrillic well.

@KitFox I feel like language really requires willful immersion

@rumtscho It could be worse! I could try saying that.

"we n p zero four eta ..."

I had to stop there, as I'm sure the next words would raise flags :-P

5:05 PM

@derobert lol see what you mean there...

5:29 PM

If somebody says "I'll call you after lunch."....thats just terrible...don't do that to somebody, half the freaking day is after lunch. Give them a TIME.

@rfusca srsly

@waxeagle :/

these people are screwing with my life and I don't think they even realize it lol

@rfusca lol

i don't even need a call. They can just text a number at this point and i'd be happy

@rfusca :(

5:39 PM

i mean, over a month is really too long to tease somebody about a job/promotion

@rfusca srsly. Also "after lunch" is even more ambiguous could be tomorrow? or next month?

@waxeagle ya, the last time I got an email and it was like "the vp is going to call you later today about the position"....never called. Then this morning its like "The vp wants me to handle it, i'll call you after lunch"....arrrg

@rfusca sigh

and the last time was like a month ago

@rfusca yikes. Is the promotion that might kick you to ATL?

5:45 PM

@waxeagle yup

@rfusca cool. What do you do?

@waxeagle i'm currently a database developer, split between postgres and oracle

@rfusca i c

they're looking at moving me to become our Oracle DBA for our flagship product

@waxeagle what do you do?

@rfusca sweet.

@rfusca I'm a web dev for an engineering company. I work on their corporate intranet

5:47 PM

@waxeagle what languages?

@rfusca vb.net

mssqlserver for a backend

oh geez, i'm sorry

;)

@rfusca lol, works well for what we do. I don't have any complaints. i did my DB course in oracle and it was pretty nice.

@waxeagle ya, i kinda tolerate oracle

i enjoy postgres

@rfusca haven't messed with that at all

5:51 PM

shrug just another RDBMS

but it works the way I think it should work. with oracle, I often find myself going WTF

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday?

I like postgres too.

Nice spatial extensions.

@KitFox thats for sure

@KitFox what db's do you mainly work with?

SQL Server 2008 r2

@KitFox ic

But I've done work in Postgres and MySQL as well.

6:01 PM

@KitFox ic

And some older versions of SQL Server.

i only touch MySQL when I must

Never Oracle though.

then I shower

Yeah, I don't much like MySQL.

We had some boys do a capstone project. They wrote it in PHP and MySQL.

ick ick ick

6:02 PM

lol

I had to modify it later.

ick ick ick

Then our funding for that project got cut.

Oh. I've got a discussion to get to.

Sorry, forgot. Talk later!

ciao

@waxeagle "cyrillic" is only the alphabet. Each language which uses it for writing has its own phonetics (not only different matchings between letters and phonemes, but actually different phonemes), just like English and Italian have different phonetics despite using the same alphabet.

@rumtscho good point yikes. are at least some of the basics common? (english/spanish/french at least share some similar letter pronunciations).

@KitFox Google Translate can't read it, I just tried. It recognizes it as Russian and tries to read it like Russian (which sounds neither like Russian nor like Bulgarian). If you switch to Bulgarian, it doesn't even offer to read it.

6:09 PM

@rumtscho Oh, I should have figured that.

@waxeagle Yes, many letters are similar. But not more similar than they are to their phonetic counterpart in English.

@rumtscho gotcha. languages are hard. I'm pretty happy to be relatively bilingual. I'll learn another if I have to, but I'm not going out of my way at this point

So, the difference between an English R, a French R, a Russian P and a Bulgarian P is about the same "distance" (if there is a hypothetic unit for phonetic distance)

@rumtscho i c.

6:49 PM

apropos of nothing, I made a map of the places I will be visiting on vacation

maps.google.com/maps/…

I am so happy with anticipation

It is a beautiful place. I already know the first half.

8:28 PM

@rfusca MySQL is OK. As long as you remember that its just a glorified hole in the ground that you can dump your data in, and often even dig it back out.

E.g., do holes in the ground care if "hello world" is really an int like you said it would be? No. Neither does MySQL.

3

@rfusca as long as you keep the "hole in the ground" in mind, MySQL is perfectly understandable.

A similar thing works with Oracle. Oracle database's purpose is to sell support contracts. So, if you want to know how Oracle does something, ask yourself "which way would be the most confusing?". That's how Oracle will do it.

select count ( * ) from dual
 where 'string' = 'string'
union all select count ( * ) from dual
 where '' = '';

you'd expect to get back the same value twice. That'd make sense.

But instead Oracle gives you (1), (0).

Because that's confusing as #&*@#(*!, and will sell more support.

8:46 PM

So, citytrip in Europe, where would you go?

@Mien I loved Northern Italy, I visited Verona and Trento. It is not just the architecture, it is the spirit. At midnight on a weekday in the summer, the streets are full of happy young people having fun and making party. There are even parents with baby carriages out. Exactly the opposite of German towns, which are dead after 6 pm.

I'll keep it in mind, thanks.

But if it is Italy, I would go to smaller cities. The big ones are such tourist traps that they feel fake. Like Venezia. Yes, the architecture is beautiful. But a new gypsy trying to sell you plastic roses every five steps... no thanks,

It might be a tad too far.

I liked Trieste more than Venezia.

How long is the trip?

8:53 PM

We'll have 4 days off, it's stupid to use two days of that to drive there and back.

Have you even been to zurich?

I see. I'm afraid I haven't been to places much closer to you.

It's been a while since I've been to London.

And France.

Ah, we'll see, it's only for the beginning of November.

No, never to Zürich. A co-worker was there, said that it is great (she travels a lot, I trust her in such matters), but also extremely expensive. I visited Basel once, and liked a lot. Freiburg is also worth seeing, a charming university town, and only half an hour from Basel.

I'll ask mr. bf first what he wants and doesn't want.

That might narrow it down :)

Switzerland is always nice, I loved Geneva too. But maybe boring for whole 4 days, it isn't that big.

The TGV has really short travel times and isn't that expensive. If you can catch it from somewhere, you might have a 3-4 hours travel time to Paris.

8:58 PM

Car is for free :)

Really? Maybe if you know something with which you can blackmail an Arabian sheikh.

Company car.

Buying gas in Belgium is for free.

With one tank, we can do about 1000 km

So Prague is out of question :( I have heard that it is a lovely city, wanted to mention it next. But OK, it would have been too far as travel time, not only as gas cost.

I've been there once. It's indeed lovely.

If we have an option, I'll tell you :) You might have been there.

A: Why does bread with filling separate and how do I prevent it?

10:28 PM

@sobachatina this splitting bread question I wanted to close as a dupe - I found the dupe.

It is a question you asked yourself during bread week...

3

Used to happen to me all the time, its very annoying. There's a few tips to get rid of it: If you're rolling something up, the bottom of the dough rolls into the inside. You often add flour or such on the bottom to keep it from sticking. If the surface dries out too much then you've got a 's...

So please tell me what you consider to be the difference - I can imagine that there is one and I didn't notice it.