Winna Winna Chicken Dinna

I don't suppose I have the time to make this one long, but I threw some scraps together this weekend and it was pretty good! I thought I'd share.

I had some steaks leftover from a dinner thing I hosted last weekend, and I wanted to use it and my other leftovers before they went bad. So here's what I did:

• Cut steak into smaller cubes about a cubic inch


• Throw steak into a bowl along with some olive oil, worschester sauce, ginger powder, and a little curry powder. Mix all that up and let it sit a while


• Heat up my bigger cast iron skillet. Should be big enough to hold a fair amount of food. I sprayed it with Pam or whatever, but I'm not sure if I was supposed. Whatever


• Dump steak in and let it brown real quick. This took under a minute or a minute and a half


• Dump a cup of rice and the cup of water it needed (I have freaky insta-rice, so I don't know if that's the same for other kinds of rice)


• Let the steak and rice cook together in the skillet until the water is mostly gone. I stirred in more ginger and curry powder as it cooked


• Dump all that on a plate when it's done cooking


• Slice 1/2 cucumber and 1 Roma tomato


• Clean off some cilantro


• Arrange it all on the plate all fancy like


• End up with the following:

It wasn't half bad and it definitely filled me up.

Things I'd change:

• Cook the steak seperately or put it in the skillet later. I like my meat more tender and less cooked than what I had


• More tomatoes


• I would like to try other spices with it and see what happens

Give it a shot and see if you like it. If you have a suggestion for a change, let me know.

Cheers

The Science of Traffic

I found a new route to get to work this morning. I finally decided to break the comfort of habit and find a new way to get to I-5 N. See, when I first moved here, I stayed in temporary housing a few blocks south of where I live now. From there, it was pretty simple to go up University until I ran into the I-5 N ramp. Since then, I've been driving through downtown traffic to get to the same ramp. Definitely not efficient, but it was what I knew and it was habit.

So breaking habits is always interesting, but it really paid off. I found a new way to go and it goes through an interesting neighborhood. Oh yeah, and it also saves me so much time.
Note: I used Google Maps on this link because I actually prefer their route to Bing's. I feel guilty/dirty. C'est la vie. I get to work all the same.

On the drive this morning, there was a line of cars on the side of the road in the opposite lane that had apparently been in the same accident. The first thing I thought was "I hope it wasn't impressive enough that people feel the need to look."

There are way too many times when I'm driving here where traffic crawls along until we pass an accident and then people drive normally again. I wonder if police and wrecker crews would be helping traffic along by putting up tarps or something so people wouldn't have anything to stare at when they drove.

I spend a lot of time in traffic. I spend a lot of time thinking about the science of traffic. It seems like a math problem almost. The road has some measure of capacity or bandwidth, and then there is the actual throughput which is present and it's far less. So what goes into the degredation? There are things like human response times, distractions, selfishness, anger, unwillingness to merge or let people merge, bends in the road, and all kinds of reasons to slam on the breaks and ruin everybody's commute. There are just so many variables and human psychology and physics and random factors that must contribute to the reason I spend an hour driving home in the evening and only 30 minutes in the morning. I like to think about the people at the front of the traffic jam and wonder what they're doing to back things up. It's like a whiplash effect where a small action up front translates to major jam-ups miles back.

It got me thinking that traffic is really an interesting problem, and I have more respect for the people that engineer those kinds of things. That being said, I'd still encourage an improvement, but I'd be interested to find out if there is any kind of literature or publications out there about traffic. It seems fascinating to me. But maybe that's just because I sit in traffic too much.

If there is one thing I can say about my commute here is that it is still stunningly beautiful. I hope I never tire of it. From the Seattle skyline, to the grey sheet of water over Lake Washington, to the engulfing trees and mountains as I get closer to Redmond, I find myself able to tolerate the traffic because it gives me more time to take it all in.

Still, somebody needs to invent robot drivers. It would be awesome.

I have returned, and this post is about food

Hey everybody. Sorry about the long hiaitus. I have had a harder time establishing my rhythm since I've moved here, but things are starting to roll right along now. I think the feeling of being "new" is wearing off, as are my excuses to put things off.

So I've got my apartment more squared away. I'm finding things to get involved in. I'm meeting new people and trying to become a part of my community--both in my building and in Belltown at large.

There are tons of things to catch up on, but in true Nebraska spirit, I'm going to toss it all aside and concentrate on food.

I've noticed grocery shopping has become a lot harder. I've always enjoyed shopping for food--in fact it's one of the few ways I can shop that doesn't make me uncomfortable--and I love to cook. The problem is that I live by myself, and I can't often find one person sizes of everything at the grocery store. I've never had to cook for just one person, so this is new and it's kind of an issue. I can't eat fast enough to preserve the food I do buy.

I've also been considering my health a lot more lately. Suddenly, I guess I'm in charge of that kind thing so maybe I should step up. I don't know what it is, but lately I'm highly interested in preserving what potential my body has left.

So I think I need to get better at planning. I would like to have a planning system where I know what meal I'm making for every day of the week and then shop accordingly. I've done this before when I lived with 3 other guys and it worked well. This planning system would be nice if it also encompassed some nutritional analysis. It would be even better if it were smarter than I am, because I know nothing about nutrition--as in, it took me forever to realize carbohydrates and calories aren't the same thing.

Like any good nerd, I looked to see if there were any web apps that could do those things.

• Relish!
  The site looked good and it had a clean design. But it also has a subscription fee. Maybe this service would be something I'd want to pay for in the future, but the knowledge that I could really just sit down and do this with a pad and pen makes it a tough sell for me. I didn't get to learn more about this one. Perhaps a "lite" or "bachelor" version would be useful (*cough* HINT *cough*).
  


• Plan To Eat
  This one looks pretty cool, and it seems like something that would almost persuade me to pay for it. The ability to drag in and import recipes and break them down into grocery shopping lists seems awesome. It also looks like it has Amazon Fresh integration, but I'll spare you my idealogical rants regarding that. Again, it looks like it's subscription based, so I'll pass until I decide this service is worth money to me.
  


• H-E-B
  This one has me very excited. If you're from Texas, you know what H-E-B is. It is the grocery store of all grocery stores! Yes folks, I'm this excited about a grocery store. Anyway, H-E-B has a service where they just plan weekly meals for you and they provide the grocery shopping list. I suppose the more clever name for it is "weekly suggested menus." Either way, the food looks great, and it's free, and it's awesome. On the H-E-B exclusive meal days, I can find my own things to eat. I'm going with this for now.
  

Ok, well that was my triumphant return to the blog scene. And it was about food. I'll run with this for a week or two and see how it goes. Ideally, this makes my grocery shopping more efficient and saves me money while keeping myself fed and healthy.

If you have any suggestions, by all means let me know. It seems like this "living by myself and pretending to be an adult" thing has uncovered lots of places for me to learn and grow.

Cheers!