January 31, 2006 at 7:50 am
- just got back from our annual trip to the desert to visit the saxe’s. otherwise known as the pizza pilgrimage. this makes 4 years in a row, and it’s just a weekend of pure gluttony mixed in with some long, kneee-pounding, angry-guarddog chasing runs.
- sometimes, when you need to kill an hour on a sunday morning, nothing’s better than a visit to four peaks for an oatmeal stout. it’s like breakfast in a glass.
- the weekend, as always, started with a visit to pane bianco. i can’t really say much more than i’ve already said about this place. completely perfect sandwiches. i could eat these every day of my life and never tire of them.
- los dos molinos, some of the best mexican/new mexican food i’ve had. fiery is the word of the day here. everything is hot, but not oeverpoweringly so. just really flavorful and spicy. their pitchers of tasty margaritas help cool things down as well. my green chili and chicken enchilada and red chili tamale were fantastic, but susanne’s adovada ribs took the cake. it was a big meat weekend for us, and for me, this was a hilight. oh, and i learned that i apparently look like eric bana.
- matt’s big breakfast is a new addition to out phoenix itinerary. diner classics in a tiny, light-filled space downtown next to the farmer’s market, they do things right here. skipping the breakfast food and heading right to lunch (an hour-long wait pushed our “breakfast” to 12:00), a top-notch BLT and cobb salad did the trick.
- the hilight of every trip is the visit to pizzeria bianco. despite showing up at 6:30, a two and a half hour wait awaited us at bar bianco. a couple of bottles of prosecco and beers later, it was time for pizza, and as the legend goes, it was the best pizza in the world. hands down. just like last year, 4 different pizzas were sampled, with a new winner this year. the Margherita (Tomato Sauce, Fresh Mozzarella, Basil), Wiseguy (Wood Roasted Onion, House Smoked Mozzarella, Fennel Sausage), and Rosa (Red Onion, Parmigiano Reggiano, Rosemary, AZ Pistachios) were as great as i remember, but the Sonny Boy (Tomato Sauce, Fresh Mozzarella, Salami, Gaeta Olives) was the big winner. What i sort of forgot from my last visit was how light and airy and chewy the crust is, which is just unlike any pizza i’ve ever had. and i can’t forget to mention one of our apps, the matt-dubbed “salt on a stick” spiedini of fontina wrapped in proscuitto, served warm. i’m pretty sure if we lived in phoenix, we would have to go there every, and i mean, every week. it’s just too good not to.
- as if we hadn’t already eaten enough meat, sunday was “all-meat sunday”. it started off with in-n-out, and ended with a big fat rosemary, lemon, garlic, and olive marinated grilled leg of lamb. let’s ust say that we’ll be eating a lot of vegetarian and seafood this week to recover. oh, and something i didn’t notice on last year’s trip to in-n-out: there are bible citations written on the bottom of wrappers and cups. sort of freaky. here’s the explanation.
- there will be yet another new addition to the carpenter family this summer. this makes three new ones on the way. and no, this one is not ours either.
- i bet macie misses us already.
- i got a webcam last week. no, there will not be any nude videos of me online now.
- sex, drugs, and cocoa puffs, the first of a stack of chuck klosterman books that i’m working through. if you dig pop culture references, hilarious writing, and the work of bill simmons, you’ll love chuck. and he’s writing a super bowl blog over on espn page 2 this week.
Tags: 2006, topten
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January 29, 2006 at 1:49 pm
Tags: 2005, cat, phoenix, photos
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January 23, 2006 at 8:32 am
- remember that game you used to play when you were little kids? the one where if you see a car with one of its headlights out or see a VW bug, you could punch your brother? we now play that game now. except instead of a car, i get to punch susanne any time i see a girl wearing those ridiculous furry boots with their jeans tucked into them. especially if it’s 50 degrees out and there’s no snow on the ground. stupid fashion slaves.
- theo’s back!
- after about a 8 year hiatus, the pull-up bar has returned. i used to have one in my room back home, and then i had one in my college apartment. dan used to bash his head into it every time he left my room, knocking him straight to the ground. that was funny. i will now get HUGE!
- NPR’s live concert series. as if i don’t already have enough entertainment options, this series of concerts on thh NPR website is pretty sweet.
- i’m not really complaining that it was in the 60’s last week. i love global warming if it keeps me from having to shovel snow and let’s me go out without a coat in the middle of january.
- best new show i’ve seen in a while: love monkey. great show, stupid name. but it has a whole bunch of stuff that i love in a show or a movie. great music, cool pop references, smart dialogue, a good guy unlucky in love, and tom cavanaugh. for some reason, there’s just something about him that makes me want to root for him, just like the early days of ed.
- it was a white trash, or i guess, an all-american eating weekend for us. a visit to blue ribbon for some pulled pork, a grilled chicken BLT at the b-side, some oven roasted BBQ chicken, and the mother of them all, a big fat turkey meatloaf, smothered in a ketchup glaze. it doesn’t get much more white trash then squeezing a bottle of ketchup over a big meatloaf.
- greasemonkey scripts for gmail make using gmail a whole lot easier or nicer. check them out.
- i got a comment from a woman whose family owns sweet scoops, the best frogurt around (other than the stuff that we make at home. i have a slight favoritism towards it.) Brigid, if youre still reading this, please email me! i have loads of questions for you!
- i bought 3 pairs of jeans for less than $40. considering i wear jeans probably 300+ days out of the year, i think this is a good investment. especially considering that i’ve worn holes in two of my favorite pairs.
- Busting Vegas: The MIT Whiz Kid Who Brought the Casinos to Their Knees. From the same author as Bringing Down the House, another story of really smart MIT kids who figured out a system to beat blackjack. Except this time, they weren’t counting cards. They took advantage or some weaknesses in the dealers, and used some incredible deck-cutting, card manipulation, and brain power to strategically steer certain cards to certain hands and then bet big. Impossible for the casinos to follow or detect, but once they kept on winning big time after time, it didn’t take long for them to get thrown out of the majority of casinos in Vegas, the entire island of aruba, and the entire country of Monaco. A really fast and entertaining read. Plus, there are strippers and hookers involved!
Tags: 2006, topten
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January 16, 2006 at 8:31 am
- major project for last week: hardwiring my sirius radio in my car. rather than having it plugged into my cigarette lighter adapter and having cords running everywhere (not to mention having to turn the radio off by hand every time i turn the car off), i figured out how to hardwire the power directly to the fusebox. i also moved the antenna inside the car, so the outside of my car looks all pretty, and all of the wires are hidden inside. yes, i’m crazy. i also managed to make myself sore from contortioning myself into the footwell trying to get it hooked up right.
- i’m determined to get my pizza dough right. a new oven and new kitchen has given me fits with my pizza making, and i’ve never felt like i get the same soft and pillowy consistency as the dough i buy from a pizza joint. I thought that maybe my yeast wasn’t good enough, so i went to whole foods in search of cake yeast (the fresh yeast used by real bakeries), but nobody seems to carry it. i got into a long discussion with my new best friend, “P”, in the bakery, and he started asking me questions about hydration levels, fermentation times, etc. his feeling was that i wasn’t using enough water, and that my dough was too tight. of course experiments ensued, and i made 2 batches of dough using much more water than i usually use, and resulted in a dough that was extremely wet and sticky, and was a bit tough to work with. i let it rise, and it had the right feeling. it was a bit too fragile to stretch liek i normally do, so i think some more initial kneading was needed to strengthen it. but it felt great, it puffed up and got all charred in the oven, and had a nice consistency. i again completely burned the bottom of the first pizza with the pizza stone sitting on the oven floor. apparently, i just can’t do that with this oven, and it has to go on the first rack. of course, more experiments will be in order. but not until after our yearly pizza pilgrimage to pizzeria bianco next week. next week!
- a surprise visit from the oslers! they are also the newest member of the tivo family. congrats!
- after a 3 year battle, i finally managed to shut outr waffle maker up. it makes the most annoying beeping sound when it’s done, and i keep meaning to somehow disconnect the noise. after 2 unsuccessful attempts to find the source, i finally pulled my head out of my ass and realized where it was coming from. a few minutes later, and the waffle maker was slienced! i can now enjoy my waffles in peace. really, people, it doesn’t take much to excite me.
- streamerp2p is a very useful tool.
- it feels nice to have howard back. i missed him. although it’s still a little startling to hear people swear on the air. it’s like hearing your parents swear. you know they do it, but you never really hear them do it. and when they do, it’s a little surprising.
- it was about 60 degrees on saturday. it was about 12 degrees and snowing yesterday. what the eff?
- hudson turned 2 yesterday!
- i love this article about feeding kids.
Tags: 2006, topten
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January 9, 2006 at 8:12 am
- after 7 years, i quit the gym last week. i’m going to build up our home gym and quit paying the monthly dues. and for the last 5 years, i’ve been using a broken lock. it doesn’t actually lock. it just opens and closes without having to turn the dial at all.
- more changes after 7 years. for the past 7 years, i’ve been using a loophole in my company’s firewall to connect to petecarpenter.com (and before that, netspace.org) to get my mail. last week, that hole was closed up. i’ve been using gmail since then, and i gotta say, it’s pretty good. so don’t be surprised if my emails now come from gmail.
- i found some new kicks. i dig em. i like that they’re called the Coolah.
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- i’ve pretty much stopped listening to terrestrial radio all together. my sirius radio has taken over, and it provides endless entertainment. i sometimes feel guilty that i’m not listening to NPR though.
- i got my hair cut.it’s actually pretty short this time, and i really needed it. pictures to follow.
- i blew up my computer on friday. well, not completely. i had ordered a new heat sink and fan so my computer would stop sounding like a jet engine. i stalled the new fan, and my computer refused to start. just a blank screen. i checked to make sure that everything was installed correctly, and everything looked good. could it be a bad motherboard? a bad video card? a bad processor? a quick trip to microcenter and a new processor later, i knew the answer. well, at least i have a faster computer now.
- say hello to my new tivo
- lunch at the farm grill & rotisserie in needham. some terrific greek food in a take-out/cafeteria style space that’s chock full of great stuff. it’s also packed with greeks, so that’s a good sign. try the octopus.
Tags: 2006, topten
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January 2, 2006 at 8:43 am
- happy 2006! welcome to the 9th year of the top ten. that’s a lot of good stuff.
- i like vacation. i wish i was still on it. luckily, thanks to susanne, we have a trip to phoenix to look forward to at the end of the month.
- the panino tonno (Imported yellowfin tuna in olive oil, black olive Tappennade. House marinated artichokes, baby greens) at domenic’s in waltham. already the sandwich of the year. so good we went back 2 days in a row to get it.
- we watched a lot of movies over vacation, including syriana, brokeback mountain, broken flowers, shopgirl, andmy personal favorite, into the blue. and yes, it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that jennifer alba spends the entire movie in a bikini.
- we painted our rumpus room! and susanne made the bathroom look all pretty. other home improvement projects accomplished: cleaned out the basement and utilized all of the fun hooks in our garage, installed a new light in my closet, installed a drawer for our computer desk, painted the bathroom shelves, and installed a new kitchen faucet and soap dispenser. yes, you can add plumber to my list of titles.
- the simple chicken recipe in the bouchon cookbook is the simplest and tastiest roast chicken recipes i’ve made in a while. truss the bird, shower with salt and pepper, roast it at 450 until it’s done, eat. all crispy and salty and good.
- our new year’s eve menu: olive and garlic crusted rack of lamb, fennel gratin, lemon braised artichokes, chocolate mousse, and lots of booze.
- we used our china for the first time ever. and i didn’t break it.
- the vegetarian tasting menu at oleana. 5 courses plus dessert for $40 is a great deal, and some of the most interesting flavors around. since we each got the tasting menu and they brought us different courses, it actually turned into 10 mini-courses. the fried cheese was the biggest hit along with the pecan labne. it was worth the bad-full feeling that lasted for about a day and a half.
Tags: 2006, topten
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