Sammy retires

[Sammy]
Sammy on November 17, 2013.

Since Saturday (three days now), Sammy seems to have decided it isn’t any longer his job to take me on a long walk in the morning. Not that they’ve been being so very long, but now he seems to think it’s fine to just go to the park across the street and come home, and he previously always wanted to go to at least one other park, and sometimes several. He’d sometimes be reluctant to leave the comfort of his couch and go out, but once he was out, he always seemed happy to stay out for a good length of time.

Last night he was having enough trouble walking that I wondered if there was an injury, but I don’t see any other sign of that, and this morning he just seems stiff, not injured.

I’ve been sorry I didn’t record the date Sunny (my previous dog) retired as a watchdog. So I’m here recording November 16, 2013 as the date Sammy retired as a dog who likes long walks.

Lighted a cabinet

When I had my kitchen redone in 1996, I put in a cabinet with glass
doors and interior lighting for displaying my glassware. The
problem with the incandescent light bars my contractor used was
that they burned out after a year or two, and I had to go to Home
Depot to replace them, and so it was frequently not lit at
all.

So I decided that in this day and age, one should use LED’s for
that kind of application, and they wouldn’t burn out for a long
time.

After poring over the descriptions I ordered Hitlight
warm white flexible ribbon strip lights
and a transformer,
and a portable
mini dimmer.
I also had to go to the hardware store and buy
an outlet, since the previous lights had attached with wire nuts,
and the transformer has a regular plug.

It turns out that it was a good thing I took the advice in the
Amazon review and got the dimmer — I don’t think this picture
does justice to the Las Vegas atmosphere of the lights on full
blast.


[cabinet]
Cabinet with led strip lights on full blast.

But I think I’ll like them a bit dimmer, although I wasn’t
expecting the curves of reflected dots.

[cabinet]
KItchen cabinet with LED strip lights dimmed.



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What happened on the pubcrawl

[Sloan, DT, Brandon]
Worts (Sloan, DT and Brandon) drinking beer at The Thirsty Scholar, the fifth stop on the 2013 pubcrawl.

Mostly, we drank beer. Here’s what I had:

Cambridge Brewing Company
They had just run out of the first thing I picked off of
their list (this time of year it’s really heavy on pumpkin
beers, which I don’t see any need for), so I had the cask. It
was their ESB, which is a good session beer, dry-hopped with
Chinook, and the people sitting next to me recommended it
highly, and after I recommended it highly one of the other worts
had one and also really liked it. I had joined earlier than I
said I would because it felt like lunch time, so I also had the
biscuits and gravy. They’ve changed it since the last time I
had it — it used to be two large biscuits and an enormous
amount of gravy on a plate, and I ended up taking about half of
both the biscuits and the gravy home. Now they give you a board with
three smaller biscuits and a bowl of gravy. So I ate all the
biscuits and ended up taking about half the gravy home. I also
bought two growlers. I live pretty close to between here and
the next stop, so I dropped them off at home. I joined 4 people
who had already had lunch at Meadhall.
Lord Hobo
I had the Trillium Valley buckwheat. At first I thought it
was a little sweet, but I got used to it pretty fast and really
enjoyed it. Several people ordered food, so I
took a donut someone offered me. I was also offered fritters
and corn cakes, but didn’t have anywhere to put them after the
biscuits and gravy and the donut and the beer.
Atwood’s
I had the Milk Stout Nitro. People had had it at both Lord
Hobo and the Meadhall, and enjoyed it a lot, so I ordered one
here. Again, I had to get used to how sweet it was, but once I
was, I was sorry to see the end of it.
Bukowsky’s
The Jack’s Abbey Kiwi Rising Double IPL. A nice dose (some
would say overdose) of hops to cut the sweetness of the last two
beers. We lost a several people after this stop, but were
joined by a new person.
Thirsty Scholar
The beer list here was a lot less stellar than the other
places. I had a Leffe Brown Ale. The new person from the last
stop was joined by his wife here.
R.F. O’Sullivan
I came here because they promised me good onion rings. I
had a Sierra Nevada Torpedo and a Black and Blue Burger with
onion rings. The onion rings were OK, but I like the ones at
Doyles better. The burger was outstanding, but I had to take
almost half of it home. Sammy agrees that it was good, but he
doesn’t seem to like blue cheese.

Apologies to Sloan for cutting some of his head off. The
camera on my phone is much better than the display, so I really
couldn’t see the composition of the picture at all when I took it.

Pub Crawl

I’ll be going on this Pub Crawl on Saturday. You can come too.

25th Annual Boston Wort Processors Pub Crawl

Saturday, November 16, 2013

Closest start T-stop = Kendall/MIT Station

Meadhall
4 Cambridge Center
Cambridge, MA 02142
11:30 – 12:50 (Lunch)
Cambridge Brewing Co.
1 Kendall Square #100
Cambridge, MA 02139
1:00 – 1:50
Lord Hobo
92 Hampshire St
Cambridge, MA 02139
2:00 – 2:50
Trina’s Starlite Lounge
3 Beacon St
Somerville, MA 02143
3:00 – 3:50
Thirsty Scholar Pub
70 Beacon St
Somerville, MA 02143
4:00 – 4:50
The Kirkland Tap & Trotter
425 Washington St
Somerville, MA 02143
5:00 – 5:50 (edit: the website says they don’t open until 5:30, so assume a half hour slippage will happen at some earlier site.)
R.F. O’Sullivan & Son
282 Beacon St
Somerville, MA 02143
6:00 – ? (Dinner)

Closest finish T-stop = Porter Square Station

I’ll probably join at Lord Hobo or so, and leave when I’ve had
enough beer.

News of the week of November 13, 2013

Meeting Report

We played:

Schedule

We will be meeting as usual on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

Please remember to let me know whether you’re coming or not (or
if you’ve already said, if that changes).

Radicchio with blue cheese and balsamic vinegar

[radicchio]
Radicchio

You hardly need a recipe for this.

Cut the radicchio into wedges and bake them in a 350 degree
oven.

When they’re at the right degree of tenderness, sprinkle blue
cheese crumbs and balsamic vinegar on top, and put under broiler
until the cheese melts.

When I make this for myself for a main dish, I use half of a large head of
radicchio and put a layer of rice under the wedges. I like the
radicchip pretty al dente, so I only bake for 15 or 20
minutes. The broil part is only a couple of minutes.

How to use a swap box

The farm share ended last Thursday. I realized that it was
only towards the end of the summer that I was really using the
swap box right.

The swap box is a share box that’s put out so each shareholder can swap one thing that
they don’t want in their share for something they do want. I tend
to pick up my share fairly early, so I have a choice of pretty
much anything in the share; I suspect the people who come later in
the pickup period have fewer options.

What I realized was that there’s more in
the box than I can possibly eat, and I have friends who are
willing to take almost anything off my hands. So the thing to
concentrate on is what’s in the swap box that I want more of —
not what’s in the share that I don’t want any of. If there isn’t
anything that I can imagine using twice what’s in the share, I
don’t swap anything.

But usually there is. I just finished the second radicchio I
took a couple of weeks ago — they keep quite well, so since I
like them, having two instead of one wasn’t a problem. But the
parsley is quite nice, but I doubt that I would have finished two
bunches while they were still nice.

This last week I took a second bunch of mustard greens (leaving
the kale), which
work really well both in salads and with my <a href="http://serpentpublications.org/laymusic/?p=3540"rice and greens
breakfasts. They might wilt enough that you wouldn’t use them in
a salad before I finish them, but they’ll still be fine for cooked
greens.