• I tend to stay away from politics on this site, but this post concerning electronic voting machines on Scott Adams’ blog made me laugh out loud. It also made me sort of sad…
  

  I think about the history of ATMs when I hear all the nervous Nellies wetting their pants over electronic voting machines. I believe those worries are totally misplaced. Now don’t get me wrong - there’s a 100% chance that the voting machines will get hacked and all future elections will be rigged. But that doesn’t mean we’ll get a worse government. It probably means that the choice of the next American president will be taken out of the hands of deep-pocket, autofellating, corporate shitbags and put it into the hands of some teenager in Finland. How is that not an improvement?

  Statistically speaking, any hacker who is skilled enough to rig the elections will also be smart enough to select politicians that believe in . . . oh, let’s say for example, science. Compare that to the current method where big money interests buy political ads that confuse snake-dancing simpletons until they vote for the guy who scares them the least. Then during the period between the election and the impending Rapture, that traditionally elected President will get busy protecting the lives of stem cells while finding creative ways to blow the living crap out of anything that has the audacity to grow up and turn brownish.

• Also, it’s Halloween today. No, George will not be wearing a costume today, although if he was, he would be wearing this one. I will celebrate the holiday by eating stupid amounts of candy and making pumpkin risotto with chestnuts and sage and offering it to trick or treaters. Won’t they be excited!?
• Ed Levine, one of the country’s foremost authorities on all things pizza has published a list of the best pizza in the country, including my personal all time favorite, Pizzeria Bianco. The interesting part is that included with the Bianco’s and Pepe’s of the world is Boston’s own Picco, a place I have yet to visit. How is this possible? A place that specializes in Neapolitan-style pizza and ice cream in my own city, and I haven’t checked it out? I should be ashamed of myself. Susie, gas up the car. We’re going downtown!
• You know what drives me absolutely crazy insane bonkers? The self-checkout lines at the grocery store. I now notice two groups of people clogging up these “time-saving” devices: older people who have never even used an ATM machine before and are completely confused by the technology and spend at least 15 minutes trying to scan in a single potato, and people with completely FULL carts, always full of produce that has to be looked up by hand, are often talking on their cell phones, and hold up the line for oh, about 20 minutes while they jam the coupon slot and need more assistance. The self-checkout was meant to speed things up for those of us with a few things to buy, so we could get in and get out. Now, they take longer than the normal checkout line. Here’s my solution: limit the number of items you can purchase to say, 10. This will keep the full cart people away. Next, make it necessary to pass a test before using them. You’d have to be able to go through a trial run while timed and be able to complete your checkout in under a certain time, say two minutes. If you pass, you get a card allows you to use the real self-checkout line in the future. If you fail, you’re relegated to the normal lines, but are welcome to retake the test. Come on, who’s with me?

• I hate daylight savings time. I enjoyed the extra hour of sleep yesterday, but it’s not any lighter out when I get up at 5 AM.
• After we take George out in the morning on the weekends, he comes back to bed with us and miraculously sleeps for another three or four hours. Yesterday morning I woke up to his sitting up on my stomach and staring at me, just waiting for me to wake up.
• Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, has a blog, and it happens to be one of the funniest and best written one I’ve read in a while. Most amazing is his entry about suffering from a rare neurological disorder that caused him to lose the ability to speak, and his subsequent retraining of his brain to regain his speech. Just unbelievable.
• Malted vanilla chip ice cream with crushed up Whoppers isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it’s a fantastic thing. God, I’m excited for Halloween leftovers. Last year, we didn’t get too many trick or treaters, so I had plenty of leftovers. Last year at this time, we were also spending every single night painting. Yes, it’s been a year in the house. I’m glad we’re not painting any more.
• I will knock on wood, but after three weeks, I think I’m finally getting over my cold. I haven’t coughed in two days. Yet.
• Rest in Peace, Red.
• A very well attended and very successful TommyRuns.com fundraiser. Here’s a nice article about what they’re doing.
• I made my own roasted chicken stock yesterday. After spending about four hours roasting the chicken and vegetables and simmering the stock, it made exactly enough for a batch of soup. So much for having tons leftover to freeze and use when I need it. I guess next time I’ll have to triple the recipe.
• This is what I spent many a late night and weekend debugging a few months back. If you have a spare $300k, I suggest you buy one for your home.
• Clif Bar has fall seasonal flavors that I dig, Caramel Apple Cobbler and Spiced Pumpkin Pie. Why don’t they have any seasonal flavors for seasons other than fall?

It may take slightly longer than two minutes to make this dish, but its ease of cooking and reliance on pantry ingredients makes this one a favorite around here. Taken from my man Mario’s Babbo Cookbook, we’ve tweaked it a bit over the years, and it’s versatile enough to do pretty much whatever you want with it. Originally entitled Two Minute Calamari Sicilian Lifeguard Style, Mario conjures a quick and spicy seafood dish based upon the ingredients of Sicily, and apparently, what a lifeguard would enjoy. Well, we’ve eliminated some ingredients, added others, and eventually, made it our own. I’m sure a Sicilian lifeguard would still enjoy it just fine.

The beauty of this dish lies in its speed, and that fact that the only ingredient he have to buy special for it is the squid. Everything else we always have on hand, mostly in the cupboards: Israeli couscous, pine nuts, garlic, olives, capers, canned tomatoes, tomato sauce, red pepper flakes, white wine, fresh parsley, scallions, and lemon. Start by cooking a cup and a half of the couscous in salted boiling water for about 3-4 minutes, until just a little undercooked. Drain it, run it under cold water to stop the cooking, and save it for later. In a large saucepan, heat up a few tablespoons of olive oil, and slowly cook a couple of thinly sliced cloves of garlic along with a couple of tablespoons of pine nuts. Be careful not to cook these too hot or too long or they’ll burn. As soon as they’re nice and golden, add a can of whole peeled tomatoes, chopped or crushed by hand, and a nice big glug of wine. I also add about a cup of our jarred tomato sauce (it’s almost time for our yearly sauce making! put in your order now!). Season with salt and pepper, cover, and simmer. To the pot, add a handful of pitted olives and a few tablespoons of capers. This murky looking sauce will cook down for about 5 or 10 minutes or shorter if you don’t have the time. I like to let it cook a little on the longer side to let it thicken a bit and for the flavors to meld.

After simmering, it’s time for the squid (or if you don’t like squid, any other seafood will do such as clams, mussels, shrimp, etc. Just keep in mind that some of these take longer to cook and can add a good amount of liquid to the pot.). The squid, cut into thin rings, will only take two minutes to cook. They say that for properly cooked squid, you either cook it for a minute or an hour. I find that a minute is a little too little for me, but the two minute mark should find them opaque and tender. Too little or too much and they have the texture of rubber bands. After the two minutes, add back in the drained couscous. The couscous will further thicken things, and the dish will become more of a stew than a seafood soup. Finish things off with a pinch of red pepper flakes, some chopped fresh parsley and scallions, and squeeze of lemon to brighten things up.

After much experimentation, we’ve found that a fork, rather than a spoon, is the way to eat this. Although if you’re really a Sicilian lifeguard, I would suggest wiping off the suntan lotion and putting down that red floaty thing that you throw to drowning people down first.

• I think we’ve turned the corner on the sickness front. I haven’t taken any drugs for 36 hours, and I’m feeling pretty good. I like Robitussin. Sleeping in until 9:30 helps too.
• Dickie had his first Indian food experience ever, and despite his claims for not liking “curry”, he sure ate a lot of it. Punjab was definitely a hit.
• For the first time in months, I washed and vacuumed and cleaned my car. Back when I was in love with my car, I washed it pretty much every other week. Since falling out of favor with it, I’ve been a bit neglectful, but since the repairs of last week, I’m feeling a little better about it. After all, I need to be nice to it so it will last through its last winter. I’m currently at 99,000 miles, so hopefully it won’t go bonkers once it hits 100k.
• The Great Conditioner Conspiracy. Why do we use conditioner? Because the hair product companies say we should. It keeps your hair soft and managable and such, right? But you just rinse it out after a couple of minutes. After some advice from her hair stylist, the Lovely Suse and I began an experiment where we used simple shampoo and no conditioner. Guess what? Our hair is softer and shinier than ever. I guess the 47 bottles of various fancy shampoos and conditioners in our tub will be making their way to the trashcan. Thank god. Now I save valuable minutes in the morning by not conditioning.
• I watched I Am Trying to Break Your Heart this weekend, the documentary about the recording of Wilco’s 2002 album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Really interesting to see the state of the music business, as the album was famously rejected by their record label for not being commercial enough, Wilco refusing to change it, being released from their contract with the album that the company paid for, and then eventually signing with another label, owned by the same parent company, and selling the record back to them for three times the price. Brilliant.
• Another Gordon Ramsay show, Gordon Ramsay’s F Word. I’m not completely sure what this show is all about yet, but as always, it involves a lot of cooking and swearing, which is always good.
• Go support Tommy Runs! My boy Tommy has become quite the running nut, and this time, he’s running to support Team Reeve. Nice work Tommy.
• It’s sort of sad when my parents have cooler mobile phones than we do. Time for an upgrade.
• George attended his first concert this weekend. We checked out Nada Surf at Row-a-Palooza. I don’t think he liked it very much. It hurt his ears. Ah, we’ll make him a rock fan yet.

For years, one of the best bargains in town and one of the great sandwiches of all time has been the Cuban sandwich, available only at the tiny, cramped bar, at Cambridge’s swanky French/Cuban bistro Chez Henri. You know I’m a sucker for a great sandwich, and this one is most certainly in my top 5 of all time. For those of you unfamiliar with the Cuban sandwich, it was invented in Miami and consists of layers of roast pork, ham, Swiss cheese, pickles, and mustard all pressed together on buttered Cuban bread. Chez Henri makes two version of the sandwich, one being the traditional roast pork/ham version, but also a roasted vegetable version, both served with fried plantain chips, mango salsa, and greens. For $10, plus the price of a couple of tasty mojitos that you’ll want to drink, this is a steal, and as word got out, the price started going up, the crowds got bigger, and it became harder and harder to snag a spot at the bar or at the few tables wedged into the space. The cravings for the Cuban started to get too much for our wallets and our patience, so we figured we must be able to make this at home, right? Right.

The veggie Cuban has been a staple in our house for years, and it’s completely simple to make. A couple of the criticisms I have of the Chez Henri version are taken care of here, and we end up with a pretty damn fine sammie. Rather than roast the veggies, we slice them thinly on a mandoline or with a vegetable peeler and quickly grill them on a grill pan. Eggplant and zucchini get this treatment, while the thinly sliced onions grill slowly on the other side of the pan, getting nice and caramelized. In the Chez Henri version, the vegetables are much larger slices that tend to squish out of the side of the sandwich when you bite it, or pull completely out on the first bite. The thin slices keep things in place and let you easily bite through it. Problem solved. The other issue is with the greasiness of the original version since they spread the outside of the bread with butter before pressing. No doubt it tastes great, but you also have to wipe your hands and face after every bite. We substitute the butter with a brush of olive oil which nicely browns the bread but keeps the greasiness to a minimum. The peppers get roasted over the gas burners of our stove until completely charred black, and then popped into a brown paper bag to allow them to steam the skins off. After a few minutes, the black can be peeled off and the peppers sliced into strips.

Now, it’s time for the assembly. We use a softer French bread for our base as a true baguette is a a bit too hard to get a nicely pressed and flattened sandwich. Plus, it crisps up nicely since it gets good contact with the sandwich press. Brush the outside of each side with olive oil. Cut the bread in half lengthwise, and spread yellow mustard and a healthy scattering of thinly sliced pickles or cornichon (fancy French pickles) on both sides. Next goes the cheese, which will seal the filling inside the bread. Traditionally, Swiss is used. Next, start stacking. your veggies. Don’t be afraid to stack it generously, because as it gets pressed, they’ll get smooshed down in size. When complete, get it onto your sandwich press and press away. What? You don’t have a sandwich press? No worries. Using a fry pan with another heavy skillet as your press will work just fine. It will take about 4 or 5 minutes for the cheese to melt, the bread to crisp up, and the insides to completely form a cohesive mass. Slice it in half, and you’ll see your lovely layers of veggies, cheese, and pickles. Now you probably won’t have the same funky ambiance or minty mojitos of the Chez Henri bar, but you won’t have to fight anyone for a spot at your table.

Everyone knows that Sunday night is chicken night in the Carpenter household. I think we’ve made chicken every Sunday for the past 3 years, and we never get sick of it. Constantly changing up the menu definitely helps things, but sometimes, we just don’t have the time for a long involved recipe. Want an easy recipe? This is as easy as it gets, and it comes from the man whose cookbooks have some of the most ridiculously long and laborious recipes I’ve ever seen, Thomas Keller. This cookbooks are incredibly beautiful and fascinating coffee-table-sized monsters, but some of his recipes are laughably complicated. In his Bouchon cookbook, his French onion soup takes twelve hours to prepare: seven to make the beef stock, four to caramelize the onions, and another hour to reduce the soup to the proper consistency. I would imagine that not a ton of people have a spare twelve hours to make soup. However, the very first recipe in the book is one that we’ve made time and time again: a simple roast chicken.

In the simplest version of this chicken, there are exactly 3 ingredients: a chicken, salt, and pepper. Simply pat the chicken dry with paper towels, shower it with salt and pepper (enough salt that you’ll be able to see the salt crystals on the finished bird), put it in a pan, and stick it in a 450 degree oven for about an hour, or until done. No shoving lemons up its butt, no smearing compound butter under its skin, no nothing. The salt helps draw the moisture out of the skin and gets it super-crispy, and it makes the chicken taste, well, like really good chicken. It has tons of flavor, it’s moist, and without doing anything else to it, it’s delicious.

Of course, you can gussie it up a bit with some fresh herbs at the end, and a simple pan sauce. You’ll notice a good amount of fat that has rendered out of the chicken and settled in the pan. Yes, there are some juices there too, but it’s mainly chicken fat. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not spoon this fat back over the fully cooked bird. If you choose to baste it as it goes, go for it, but I don’t bother. The bird retains enough moisture, so I’d rather not mess with it. But what’s left on the bottom of the pan is where the flavor for your pan sauce will come from. Dump out the fat from the pan, get it back on the heat, and add a finely minced onion or shallot. After sauteing for a few minutes, add a good splash of white wine or chicken broth, and scrape up the nice brown bits from the bottom of the pan, and let it reduce down. Check it for seasoning, but because of the amount of salt you used in the beginning, it probably won’t need any more. Toss in a handful of chopped fresh herbs (parsley, chives, thyme, etc.) to finish, and you’re good to go. That’s it. Easy as pie. Or in this case, easy as chicken.

• You may notice a few changes around here, hopefully for the better. After a couple of years of trying to get Movable Type to work the way I want it to, I’ve finally given up and moved the site over to Wordpress, and I couldn’t be happier about it. It’s fast, easy to set up, intuitive, simple to use, have tons of plug-ins and support, and just plain works. The only glitch is that it uses a different RSS feed address, which I think it screwing with everyone who reads it through news readers such as Bloglines, such as myself. I”m trying to get it worked out, but in the meantime, please point your feed to http://www.petecarpenter.com/feed/ or http://feeds.feedburner.com/pdc. I’ve been supporting about 5 different feed addresses over the years, so hopefully this will consolidate things. For those of you who have no fricking idea what I’m talking about, I’ll just shut up now.
• I’ve been playing about with Orb 2.0, and it’s pretty damn cool. I have tons of music on my home PC, but I don’t always think to move it over to my Ipod. Orb lets me stream any media content to any web browser from anywhere. Other home media streaming have had issues with having to have certain ports open on both sides of the connection, but this just works without having to do anything. Definitely worth checking out if you want to listen to tunes at work.
• I’m still sick. This sucks. On the bright side, we bought a humidifier that doesn’t make noise. That’s a good thing.
• I’d like the fine folks over at E46 fanatics for saving me about $1000. I managed to fix two of my windows with these detailed instructions and $0.50 worth of zip ties. The third window actually is broken, so I’ll have to order the part for it. Still, at the $300-$400 that my mechanic would charge me, I think I come out ahead. The first door took me about two hours to disassemble and reassemble, but by the third, it was down to half an hour. Thankfully, the airbags didn’t blow up in face, and I didn’t break anything else in the process. I’m suddenly feeling less animosity towards my car today.
• The Hold Steady have been getting tons of press lately, and after listening to their latest album, I sort of have to agree with the hype. Ok, “Chips Ahoy” is currently my favorite song on the radio. I try to ignore the fact that the lead singer sounds like the singer for the Screamin’ Cheetah Wheelies.
• So far, I’m digging Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, although I think Matthew Perry is incapable of playing any character other than Chandler Bing.
• I hope the Lovely Suse isn’t jealous, but I think I’m in love with my new Leaf Blower. After being underwhelmed by the one my dad had about 15 years ago, I sort of forgot about them. I picked this one up last week and got my first chance to try it out this weekend. I’m pretty sure this thing is capable of stripping paint off the side of my house if I tried, and the vacuum/mulcher is stronger than my Electrolux. I like tools.
• Miss your old Nintendo? Play any game imaginable here.

Update: Make sure the feed address is http://www.petecarpenter.com/feed/ (note the trailing “/”)

testing….testing….word.

I’m sick. I tend to stay pretty healthy throughout the year, but without fail, I get one or two colds per year, usually during the change of seasons. I generally just ignore it and pretend that I’m fine, but this has been a tough one. We had a wedding to attend over the weekend, and despite my best attempts to cure my illness through gin and tonics, baby lamb chops, and pigs in a blanket, I was unsuccessful. Maybe a little chicken soup would be my cure?

Despite the fact that it was 75 degrees and sunny out, the clouds in my head told me that it was soup time. I mean, what’s better for a cold than your mom’s chicken soup? Well, I know better than to say anything about my mom’s chicken soup because that’s just asking for trouble, so I’ll just talk about how I make chicken soup. Chicken soup from scratch tends to be an all day process, but when it’s 6:00 and you need some soup love, that just isn’t going to work. Time to streamline the process.

There are four main elements to the soup, many of which can be prepared simultaneously: the broth, the chicken, the matzah balls, and the vegetables. Of course, first comes the chicken broth. You can use the packages stuff if you want, but since you need to simmer the chicken anyways, you might as well just make a simple broth too. I took six bone-on, skinless chicken thighs (you know I love the skin, but in this case, it just adds unneeded grease and fat to your broth), added them to a pot with a large carrot cut into chunks, a stalk of celery, and two onions, peeled and halved, a couple of peppercorns, and a bay leaf, and covered the whole thing in cold water. Cover, Bring it to a boil, and then turn down to a simmer. You can let this go as long as you want, but since time is of the essence here, about 30 minutes should do the trick. The chicken and the broth are on their way.

Next come the matzah balls and the vegetables. I’ve made matzah balls exactly twice in my life, and I’ve figured out how not to make them rock hard lumps, as tends to happen from time to time. Don’t use too much matzah meal, and separate the egg yolks from the whites, beating the egg whites into soft peaks, and then carefully folding them together along with the beaten yolks, salt, chicken fat, and matzah meal. It’s the egg that makes them all light and airy, and the beaten egg whites will certainly help that puffiness. These need to simmer for about 30 minutes in either water or chicken broth, so since you already have the broth simmering away, might as well just use it, right? The matzah balls will expand, so don’t make them too big.

When the broth and matzah balls are done, you’ll need to strain out the broth, remove the chicken thighs, shread the meat and hold on to it for later, and try to skim off as much fat as possible from the surface of the liquid. Letting it cool completely will help this, but we know you don’t have time for that.

Last comes the vegetables. Wait, I thought we already had the carrots, celery, and onions going in the broth? Sure, but those are for the broth, and they will give up all of their flavor to it. I’m not really a fan of mushy, long simmered vegetables, so those in the broth will just be tossed when done. A small dice of carrots, celery, onions, and the only zucchini that we got from our garden this year sauteing in another pot will be for our soup. After about 5 minutes of browning, add the broth and chicken meat, bring to a boil, cover, and let simmer for about 15 minutes. Add the matzah balls, making sure that they’re warmed through and completely cooked. You’ll notice in the photo that my matzah balls are actually half-balls. I got impatient and cut them in half to speed up the cooking time. This may be some sort of sin or bad luck or something, but I was willing to take the chance. You’ll need to add salt since we haven’t really added too much to the cooking process yet, plenty of pepper, and a sprinkle of fresh parsley to finish.

Now this soup may not have the depth and love that your mom’s chicken soup has, but you can get it on the table in an hour, it has the freshness of perfectly cooked vegetables, a light broth, tender chicken, and big pillowy matzah balls. I’m feeling a little better today, so maybe it’s working. In the meantime, pass the drugs and hot tea.

• Sorry for the lack of updates last week. I was on vacation the second half of the week, hosting the Saxe’s, and visiting NYC for Mike and Maggie’s wedding. I need another week off to recover.
• Contrary to popular belief, alcohol does not kill the germs from a cold. Believe me, I tried all weekend.
• Lots of congrats all around this week. Congrats to Mike and Maggie and Robert and Margaret on their respective weddings, to Matthew D. Saxe, Esq., the newest member of the Arizona bar, and Mark and Maureen on the birth of their son, Andrew Patrick Osler. Congrats to all.
• Apple picking at Shelburne Farm, the quintessential fall New England outing. Does it get much more wholesome than this?
• Three of my four car windows are broken. Not the windows themselves, but the stupid poorly designed window regulators. What are the odds that they all break within a month of each other? Stupid car. Luckily, instead of spending the $400 apiece for my mechanic to fix them, I’ve discovered a way to fix them with 2 nylon zip-ties. God, I love the internet. This will be this week’s project. Expect results next week, hopefully.
• The latest addition to the tool arsenal is a leaf blower donated by the Charbonneau’s. I think I’ll have fun with this one.
• Dinner at Jake and Julie’s, our across-the-street neighbors, featuring a perfectly cooked turkey and some excellent pan gravy. George behaved himself with the exception of peeing on Gigi’s excersaucer. Whoops.
• I love me some Saigon Grill and some H&H. I also picked up some fish tweezers and saw Mark Bittman at Zabar’s. After spending so much time there, the Upper West Side just feels like home.
• After a year of waiting, FiOS TV has finally reached our town. Better quality picture and sound, better content, thousands of on-demand programs, multiroom DVR’s, and cheaper than Comcast. Sort of a no-brainer, huh? Yes, I’ve already scheduled installation.
• My first Frankie’s hot dog. I must say, it was pretty excellent.

• George and I held down the fort last week on our own without burning down the house, and George spent his first night away from home. I think he likes hanging out with his grandparents and terrorizing their 47 cats.
• Mike’s bachelor party at Mohegan Sun. Good times, lots of booze, minimal gambling losses, and a minimal hangover. I think the last time I saw 3AM was a couple of weeks ago when i took the dog out in the middle of the night. Mike should wear his red satin “Lady Luck Casino” and Patriots hat to the wedding.
• I unintentionally got to see lots of farmland and random towns in western MA while getting completely lost trying to get to Sturbridge. There’s nothing quite like being lost in the middle of nowhere with nothing but farms, no map, and no cell phone service. I should just stay away from travelling to Sturbridge.
• I used this guy’s dough technique to make my best crust ever. I’ll admit that I did attempt to rig my oven to cook on the cleaning cycle, but i’m not quite ready to damage it in order to do it. Yet. I did manage to get it into some sort of error mode where I couldn’t use it at all and had to turn off the breaker to reset it. This was all because the Lovely Suse got to visit Pizzeria Bianco on Saturday night. You could say that I’m a little jealous.
• A guy visiting my office from our Singapore office only eats Indian food, and since being here for a week and a half, has eaten both lunch and dinner every day at the same Indian restaurant. Luckily, he likes having company for lunch, so he took me twice in three days. I like expense accounts. Especially if they’re somebody else’s.
• apparently, it’s become a tradition in the town where my company is located to steal the “O” and the “G” from the big sign in front of the building. Do the math. Just pure genius.