I started my latest incarnation of a recipe site today by finding free css to create recipe cards. My first version of a test recipe is here. I've still got some work to do, but I'm happy with the format of my page. I've got some further ideas about how to take the existing idea and make it something that's more personal; that's more my own invention.
I've given my recipe site a fair amount of thought for some time. In one form or another I've been thinking about creating a website for as long as I've been trying to compile a list of canonical recipes for myself. I could've simply added recipes to an existing blogging site like Blogger or Wordpress, but my intention was also to keep my programming skills sharp.
As it stands now, there's not really a lot of programming involved. I'm just expecting to use html and css with a little bit of javascript (probably something like vue), but, as someone who's always been a backend programmer, it's a refreshing change. The recipe card css I copied today helped me understand the subtle art of positioning items on a web page for maximum effect as well as help me with figuring out how to create background shadows that add some richness to the page.
As for the actual content of the site, it's a given that I'll post my 52 recipes here. I've always assumed that I'd just take pictures of the dishes I make and post them alongside the recipes, but recently I've hit on a different idea. Since I'm trying to bootstrap my drawing abilities again, I realized it'd be fun to draw the dishes I make, even if they're simplistic representations, rather than follow the common path of trying to capture the perfect food photo.
This also led me to another way to expand the content on the site. In addition to creating a site where I have easy reference to my recipes, it's my intention to provide instruction to people who are interested in learning to cook with shortcuts that have worked for me over the years. When I first started cooking in earnest, I encountered a lot of well meaning authors who provided a lot of complexity to the recipes I made without adding flavor, or in some cases, because I tried to follow the expert route before I understood the technique, ruined the dish or became too frustrated to follow through. My hope is, in addition to creating illustrations for the food I'm cooking, I'll be able to do a passable job of creating some instructional material that may assist someone else in learning to cook.
Sunday, February 25, 2018
Sunday, February 18, 2018
Cooking to Suit My Tastes
I've been in the process for, well, years, of compiling a list of staple recipes that I'm happy with making over and over again. There have certainly been some go to recipes that I've revisited with high frequency, but I've never been able to compose a reusable set list that I can use with the consistency I desire.
There are a few reasons for that - first, I want to make sure I have a pretty wide list to choose from. When I think about compiling a list, I think about it in terms of recipes I can make over the course of the year without getting bored. When I first got out of school, I had a pretty set schedule. Monday was fettucine with parmesan, dried basil, and canned tomatoes along with a baguette. Tuesdays and Thursdays were some rotation of pastaroni. I don't remember what the other nights were. While I liked the predictability of the meal planning, the routine did get a bit tedious and the ingredients weren't the best I could obtain. Luckily, at 21, my taste was pretty simple, so I wasn't lost in some sort of culinary Sisyphean experiment. Now, assuming that I cook 4 times a week, which isn't unreasonable, 52 recipes seems like a nice round number. That means I'd rotate through meals on a 13 week basis. I also know that I'd likely eat certain staples - like cheeseburgers, pizza, and fried chicken sandwiches - more often than 4 times a year, so that leaves room for special dishes that may require more care or pair with special occasions.
Second, I like preparing food in 30 minutes - 1 hour. I don't mind if I'm active the entire time, but I don't really like doing a lot of prep work with a million ingredients simply to have a dish (especially if it's one I'm trying for the first time) turn out flat. There are certain things I don't mind letting sit a bit - bread, for one, or chicken in brine - as the effort is minimal, and I simply need to remember to prep one small thing ahead of time. In addition, though my taste buds have matured since 21, I don't think they have anywhere near the complexity that the taste buds of the writers for something like epicurious.com do. I'm certainly not as simple in my philosophy as "I eat to live," but I'm not going to be able to tell if you swap out parmeggiano-reggiano with domestic parmesan. I'm fine with this.
Finally, it has to be a recipe I like. As mentioned above, I hate long, complex recipes that don't yield a good payout. But I also don't want to slap mayonnaise on a bagel and call it eggs benedict. Canned tomatoes are still a big staple of my diet, but I now make my own cheese sauce for macaroni instead of relying on powdered sauce from a box. This, more than two previous points, has delayed me from compiling my desired set list. It's literally taken me 15 years to find a blue cheese pasta that reminds me of one I had at a restaurant in Wisconsin when I was in my mid-twenties. I'm sure that pasta wasn't what I remembered it, but I've finally found something that comes close to matching that memory, which makes me extremely happy.
I'm excited to say, as of this writing, I'm close to having my cherished 52. I think I have about 42 recipes that I'm willing to make consistently and have quite a few leads on rounding out the list. The benefit of cooking for the past 20 some odd years is I can pick out bad recipes or know how to modify them to suit my tastes without having to go through the hassle of having to make mediocre food several times over. I'm not sure what I'll do once I settle on 52 recipes. I'm pretty sure I'll try and expand the list to 104 for more variety, but I'll be able to feel a sense of accomplishment that I've met a goal I've been dreaming about since I added my first basil flakes to my first can of tomatoes.
There are a few reasons for that - first, I want to make sure I have a pretty wide list to choose from. When I think about compiling a list, I think about it in terms of recipes I can make over the course of the year without getting bored. When I first got out of school, I had a pretty set schedule. Monday was fettucine with parmesan, dried basil, and canned tomatoes along with a baguette. Tuesdays and Thursdays were some rotation of pastaroni. I don't remember what the other nights were. While I liked the predictability of the meal planning, the routine did get a bit tedious and the ingredients weren't the best I could obtain. Luckily, at 21, my taste was pretty simple, so I wasn't lost in some sort of culinary Sisyphean experiment. Now, assuming that I cook 4 times a week, which isn't unreasonable, 52 recipes seems like a nice round number. That means I'd rotate through meals on a 13 week basis. I also know that I'd likely eat certain staples - like cheeseburgers, pizza, and fried chicken sandwiches - more often than 4 times a year, so that leaves room for special dishes that may require more care or pair with special occasions.
Second, I like preparing food in 30 minutes - 1 hour. I don't mind if I'm active the entire time, but I don't really like doing a lot of prep work with a million ingredients simply to have a dish (especially if it's one I'm trying for the first time) turn out flat. There are certain things I don't mind letting sit a bit - bread, for one, or chicken in brine - as the effort is minimal, and I simply need to remember to prep one small thing ahead of time. In addition, though my taste buds have matured since 21, I don't think they have anywhere near the complexity that the taste buds of the writers for something like epicurious.com do. I'm certainly not as simple in my philosophy as "I eat to live," but I'm not going to be able to tell if you swap out parmeggiano-reggiano with domestic parmesan. I'm fine with this.
Finally, it has to be a recipe I like. As mentioned above, I hate long, complex recipes that don't yield a good payout. But I also don't want to slap mayonnaise on a bagel and call it eggs benedict. Canned tomatoes are still a big staple of my diet, but I now make my own cheese sauce for macaroni instead of relying on powdered sauce from a box. This, more than two previous points, has delayed me from compiling my desired set list. It's literally taken me 15 years to find a blue cheese pasta that reminds me of one I had at a restaurant in Wisconsin when I was in my mid-twenties. I'm sure that pasta wasn't what I remembered it, but I've finally found something that comes close to matching that memory, which makes me extremely happy.
I'm excited to say, as of this writing, I'm close to having my cherished 52. I think I have about 42 recipes that I'm willing to make consistently and have quite a few leads on rounding out the list. The benefit of cooking for the past 20 some odd years is I can pick out bad recipes or know how to modify them to suit my tastes without having to go through the hassle of having to make mediocre food several times over. I'm not sure what I'll do once I settle on 52 recipes. I'm pretty sure I'll try and expand the list to 104 for more variety, but I'll be able to feel a sense of accomplishment that I've met a goal I've been dreaming about since I added my first basil flakes to my first can of tomatoes.
Tuesday, February 6, 2018
A Defense of Philosophy in Under 500 Words
I was going to comment a bit on my experience with The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained in my last post, but got a bit carried away with my rant on expertise and the worship of it in our society instead. So, this post I actually will talk about the book.
I'm not really going to talk about the book - which is a great, concise summary of several philosophers' major works, and as a result allows me to write this post - but rather my newfound exposure to philosophy in general.
As I'd suspect is also the case with most people, I've had some formal exposure to philosophy in my education and a lot of informal exposure to it throughout life. We're still inundated with names like Socrates, Kant, Nietzsche, Sartre, and so on, often without knowing what specific contributions they made to the field. I'd also suspect that most people have made (and continue to make) jokes about the employment prospects of philosophy majors. While I'm not here to defend those prospects, I am willing to summarize my new appreciation and nascent understanding of the field of philosophy.
As someone who's historically believed heavily in the scientific method, I've been at least mildly dismissive of some of the work of philosophers when it relates to topics to why we exist and what our role is in the universe. It seemed about as useful as polling people on whether or not they believe in gravity. Even if the overwhelming number of respondents state that they're not in favor of gravity, it doesn't have any effect on the fact that gravity exists.
But, it turns out that the contributions of philosophers is much stronger than I originally allowed myself to believe. Sure, there's still some navel gazing on the nature of our existence (or existentialism), but that scientific method I believe in - Francis Bacon created a first draft of it as part of his own philosophical theories. The method of continuing to ask questions related to the outcome of an experiment? The Socratic method. In fact philosophy, rather than disconnecting itself from the questions usually associated with science, has often been a precursor for strengthening the tools we use for making scientific discoveries today.
Even if you're not into science, philosophy still has a major impact on our world. Love them or hate them, Adam Smith and Karl Marx are political/economic philosophers. It's hard to argue that capitalism and communism have had no impact on everyone in the world.
And, still, if you're so inclined to believe that all philosophy is some sort of psycho-babble, enough other people are captured by philosophers' ideas - good, bad, or misappropriated - and incorporate them in their own lives (and sometimes as global policy) to argue that philosophy as a study is either irrelevant or losing its relevance.
I'm not really going to talk about the book - which is a great, concise summary of several philosophers' major works, and as a result allows me to write this post - but rather my newfound exposure to philosophy in general.
As I'd suspect is also the case with most people, I've had some formal exposure to philosophy in my education and a lot of informal exposure to it throughout life. We're still inundated with names like Socrates, Kant, Nietzsche, Sartre, and so on, often without knowing what specific contributions they made to the field. I'd also suspect that most people have made (and continue to make) jokes about the employment prospects of philosophy majors. While I'm not here to defend those prospects, I am willing to summarize my new appreciation and nascent understanding of the field of philosophy.
As someone who's historically believed heavily in the scientific method, I've been at least mildly dismissive of some of the work of philosophers when it relates to topics to why we exist and what our role is in the universe. It seemed about as useful as polling people on whether or not they believe in gravity. Even if the overwhelming number of respondents state that they're not in favor of gravity, it doesn't have any effect on the fact that gravity exists.
But, it turns out that the contributions of philosophers is much stronger than I originally allowed myself to believe. Sure, there's still some navel gazing on the nature of our existence (or existentialism), but that scientific method I believe in - Francis Bacon created a first draft of it as part of his own philosophical theories. The method of continuing to ask questions related to the outcome of an experiment? The Socratic method. In fact philosophy, rather than disconnecting itself from the questions usually associated with science, has often been a precursor for strengthening the tools we use for making scientific discoveries today.
Even if you're not into science, philosophy still has a major impact on our world. Love them or hate them, Adam Smith and Karl Marx are political/economic philosophers. It's hard to argue that capitalism and communism have had no impact on everyone in the world.
And, still, if you're so inclined to believe that all philosophy is some sort of psycho-babble, enough other people are captured by philosophers' ideas - good, bad, or misappropriated - and incorporate them in their own lives (and sometimes as global policy) to argue that philosophy as a study is either irrelevant or losing its relevance.
Saturday, February 3, 2018
Expertise for Dummies
I'm about halfway through The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained. When I started, I didn't realize it was a series of books, which includes topics on Science, Criminology, Sociology, and others. I'm glad I didn't realize this, because I typically shy away from those types of titles for fear that content may not be sufficiently broad nor deep. This is all the more curious, because I also tend to like titles that sum up obscure topics in more bite sized packages - The Annotated Mona Lisa being another summary title I purchased years ago and really enjoyed.
These types of summary pieces introduce me to concepts I don't otherwise take the time to create to delve into, but usually do so in a way that doesn't leave me underwhelmed. I know by some measures, this plays into the Dunning-Kruger effect, but I guess after a month's worth of posts, that seems to be the main point of more than a few posts - is there a point to being good enough?
For a while, a lot of people in my circles seemed to be fixated on the 10,000 hours needed for expertise as referenced in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. I always felt a bit skeptical of the claim (or jealous, simply for the fact that I don't think I can spend 10,000 hours on anything). It also pissed me off a bit because it taps into an American ethos that comes up short under close examination - if you work hard enough, you can achieve anything. This aphoristic ideal ignores other factors like luck and talent. In doing so, it hides the pernicious corollary - if you didn't achieve your goal it's simply because you were too lazy.
This has further social ramifications that have been encoded into American society that I don't want to delve into here, but as a simple rebuttal, given my genetic composition and my (at most) 5'10" height, there was absolutely no way that I ever was going to be a pro basketball all-star. I'm sure someone will respond with the bitingly sharp "How do you know? Did you try?" But yes, I'm sure.
The real beauty to rebutting this simple, but flawed, rule lies in the fact that, if you can't devote 10,000 hours to being an expert in something, you can enjoy things that you can actually spend time on. And rather than feeling guilty for the hard work you didn't put in, you can appreciate your accomplishments and the hard work you did put in for the task at hand.
These types of summary pieces introduce me to concepts I don't otherwise take the time to create to delve into, but usually do so in a way that doesn't leave me underwhelmed. I know by some measures, this plays into the Dunning-Kruger effect, but I guess after a month's worth of posts, that seems to be the main point of more than a few posts - is there a point to being good enough?
For a while, a lot of people in my circles seemed to be fixated on the 10,000 hours needed for expertise as referenced in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. I always felt a bit skeptical of the claim (or jealous, simply for the fact that I don't think I can spend 10,000 hours on anything). It also pissed me off a bit because it taps into an American ethos that comes up short under close examination - if you work hard enough, you can achieve anything. This aphoristic ideal ignores other factors like luck and talent. In doing so, it hides the pernicious corollary - if you didn't achieve your goal it's simply because you were too lazy.
This has further social ramifications that have been encoded into American society that I don't want to delve into here, but as a simple rebuttal, given my genetic composition and my (at most) 5'10" height, there was absolutely no way that I ever was going to be a pro basketball all-star. I'm sure someone will respond with the bitingly sharp "How do you know? Did you try?" But yes, I'm sure.
The real beauty to rebutting this simple, but flawed, rule lies in the fact that, if you can't devote 10,000 hours to being an expert in something, you can enjoy things that you can actually spend time on. And rather than feeling guilty for the hard work you didn't put in, you can appreciate your accomplishments and the hard work you did put in for the task at hand.
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