How do I cook these?!

Well, I do know I am supposed to stir fry these rice cake slices, probably with some julienned pork and some napa, but I don't know if any preparation work goes into them before they hit the wok.

We bought them from a Korean supermarket from their fresh section - they are rubbery and not soft, so I'm wondering if they are meant to be cooked as is, or if we have to do something else, like soak them, or boil them.

Going to have to experiment a bit.

Allen.

edit - okay, Kathy said they boiled nicely in soup and softened right up. That's a relief!

Baking with the starter

I did another batch of those French rolls - this time I tried used the starter that I'd made instead of dry packaged yeast. The starter displaces some of the flour and some of the water, and I had to figure out just how much I was replacing, involving some guess work.

So I added 2 cups of the starter, and took out 1 cup of flour and 1 cup of water. It kneaded pretty wet, and I ended adding the excluded cup of flour back in. If I were to do this again, I would take out all 1.5 cups of the water and just use the liquid from the starter.

The kneaded dough took twice as long to rise at both stages - I don't know if I should attribute that to the excess water or the quality of the starter. I didn't take any pictures during the process but I did take a shot of the end result.

not as pretty this time, oh well

The bread had a hint of sourness, but I guess that's to be expected since I used sourdough starter instructions. Kathy says she doesn't notice any sour flavour at all.

It's probably because I've been re-mixing in the clear alcohol-smelling liquid that comes out on top of the starter as instructed. (The liquid is called hooch.) I wonder if I can minimize that sour taste if I get rid of the hooch instead of mixing it back in.

I was a little worried at first about if it was just plain "gone bad" but I ate half a bun last night, and I didn't end up in the hospital. I ate another one in the morning after toasting and it was not too bad either... Toasted and buttered it was actually pretty good.


Allen.

Baking misadventure on the weekend.

We have this old 5lb sack of cake & pastry flour in the pantry that has been there forever. I think we bought it by mistake one day. Anyways, we tried making some bread rolls out of it this weekend and the results were pretty bad - the flour wouldn't knead nicely and wouldn't rise properly, and then after baking they were dense, crumbling little bricks. Actually it reminded me a little bit of biscuits, so maybe I'll try a biscuit recipe on them instead tonight when I get home. Biscuits are supposed to be crumbly right?

Where are the bubbles?

I also tried making a yeast starter out of the cake flour and an old mostly-used jar of dry yeast - old as in years past it's stamped date, but it is just yeast after all. The only thing that would mean is that there is less live yeast and you won't get the expected amount of rising activity from it. But drop it in a starter and maintain it for a few days, it should become a viable yeast culture again right? There were a lot of recipes on the net about yeast starters, they basically all said the same thing - once started, they are virtually unkillable. Every so often, get rid of some of it somehow (bake with it or toss it out), and feed the remainder with some water and flour to make it it's original size again. Once a day if you leave it out, once a week if you refrigerate it. I will find out how it goes soon enough, if it works I wont need to buy yeast any more, haha.

We did pick up some unbleached all purpose flour so we could do some actual, successful baking as well: I made a batch of nice looking rolls, using the same recipe that the cake flour failed miserably with. What a difference the right flour makes. I used the recipe from here. The best part of this recipe is that there is no milk or eggs in it, cause we are always missing either eggs or milk.


Allen.

French Bread Rolls to Die For

Here it is in the oven
Here they're starting to brown
Here they are shortly before devouring

edit - the biscuit idea was edible but did not look too pretty - white as a sheet of paper even though fully cooked. I tried browning the top with the broil mode but it browned skipping the 'golden' part entirely.

This photo somehow looks better than the actual biscuits on the counter

Lets try those tires again...

We lucked out and the Canadian Tire near my workplace had a new shipment of Goodyear Nordic winter tires about 2 weeks ago, and I got them installed, balanced and aligned. However, they have been giving us a rougher and rougher ride as time passed by - there was a decided rolling motion at low speeds, and a vibration at high speeds.

So we kept planning to go to Canadian Tire to get it checked, but things kept coming up and I didn't have either time or the car at my disposal. Anyways, on Thursday this week I finally had both, so I dropped by the Canadian Tire and told them I was having trouble with the new tires and wheels. It took a while before they could look at it, but when they did, they said that both rear tires have some sort of manufacturing defect, and their manager could authorize a replacement.

The tricky part was that the manager was not on duty in the evening, and would be in the morning, so I had to bring the car in again if I wanted the warranty work done. They gave me a card with a number to call. Of course, it was going to be a bit difficult since work was extra busy and Friday is one of Kathy's downtown work days.

So on Friday morning, I called the manager up and asked him about my case. He was already aware of it when I called, which was a pleasant surprise, and said I just had to drop the car off. So I got Kathy to drop me off at work, then take the car over to the Canadian Tire cause it is right next to the Leslie Subway stop on the Sheppard line. They called in the early afternoon to say that they have checked and replaced the 2 tires and all 4 of the steel rims too. That's a lot of replacement parts - how come it was done so badly the first time around?

Anyways, I told Kathy and she picked up the car after work. The cashier gave her a bit of a hassle and tried to charge us $340 for the rims, but thank goodness I had given Kathy all the receipts, and it listed the rim purchase. Its funny how they reassure us we don't need the old receipts cause all the data is on file, and then stuff like this still happens. So we got all of this fixed via the warranty, and the car is riding smoothly again, as it should be.

Allen.

Winter Tires

Well its starting to get a bit slushy and slippery on the roads these days, so I decided I wanted to get a set of winter tires this year.

The problem is that all the tires in my size are sold out everywhere. Its funny cause usually it's the other way around for my old Corolla - parts are cheap and plentiful and you can shop around for a good deal.

The stores say that in Quebec they've enacted a safety law which requires all drivers to use winter tires from Dec 15th to March 15th this winter, and that the demand for tires is so great that they are buying tires here. I've even seen a few articles on CBC saying there is a thriving black market coming up around snow tire theft.

Anyways, whatever the reason, I'm having some real trouble finding snow tires, unless I'm willing to spend about $150 a tire on some premium stuff... and that doesn't include the price of a set of metal rims, which is another item that is in low supply at all the stores near home and work. Sigh.

Allen.

Joseki and Go problems.

This is what I currently think - Joseki are sets of ideal moves. It's basically a combo sequence of play, encompassing best choices for your moves and your opponent's moves. Ideally you want to play a joseki that puts you ahead and gives you initiative, without your opponent realizing that they are playing into the losing side of the joseki pattern. (or maybe they do realize it but they can only play as recommended because it would minimize their losses.)

There was a quote somewhere I saw that said something about "learn your joseki and then forget it." Another one said "learning joseki reduces your playing level by 2 ranks". Both of them refer to the fact that rote learning is bad - you will not learn overall strategy as well, I suppose, and it can make you predictable, for sure. I think that we are just supposed to be able to recognize when joseki is possible instead, and regard it in terms of a strategic advantage instead of playing out the whole thing on a tactical level.

--
Do as much as you can with as few actual moves as possible seems to be the order of the day in go.

I've been doing go problems on a website called Go Problems. (what a straightforward name) It looks like they have a lot of material - I'm just looking at the lower level problems at the moment. I like how I can choose what difficulty of problem I want to look at. I also like that there are commentaries on the problems. Also, I can continue playing out the problem past it's ending point in order to see for myself just WHY something is good or not good (because I am a noob). Very helpful, and doesn't cost anything :D

Allen.

Go is not easy

I used the Interactive Way to Go as my introduction to the rules. It looked pretty informative with clickable java programs showing each rule, and I was done with it soon enough. I thought to myself - Okay, now I'm ready to give this a shot! What do I have to lose?

Apparently my dignity, pride, cockiness, and any form of hubris you can think of. It was very humbling.

The past week or so, I have been playing some computer go at home. I have been losing nonstop. This has been really frustrating, especially when I'm given a huge 9 stone lead on a small beginner board that's 13x13 in size. No matter what I put down the computer had a counter for it instantly.

Totally massacred each time.

So I set out to read more about Go. Maybe find something about overall strategy on the internet. I dug into a few go related sites I'd found:

The Sensei's Library
Tel's Go Notes
Wikipedia's entries on Go, and Go Strategy/Tactics
and oddly enough,
Hitachi's Life and Death Problems of Go which is too advanced for me but they give good descriptions of what is going on.
(what's an electronics company have to do with Go theory?)

Even the online game store I bought my Go set at has a pdf that describes how to play.

Anyways, spending this time in front of a computer seems to be more productive than spending in from of a go game at this point, though I wouldn't actually stop playing - I have to try out what I'm reading about after all.

So my splatter movie grade deaths are getting a little less spectacular now, and I get to throw a few punches as I'm sinking.

Sometimes a punch actually connects and I win, though it's more luck than anything else.

Allen.

* The version I've been trying is the open source GnuGo, compiled to run on my Windows PC. (Using a Drago interface)