LIFE

Time Inc. has taken away the life support from LIFE. Like its other flagship magazine, Time, nobody is reading LIFE magazine anymore (unless you count Vincent, relics from the 60s).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_magazine

Source.

1966: David Eyre's Pancake

This is a recipe taken from The New York Times Magazine artcle entitled Recipe Redux by Amanda Hesser on March 25, 2007.
According to the author, this recipe is from David Eyre who supposedly got it from "St. Francis Hotel Cookbook" published in 1919.

1966: David Eyre's Pancake
This recipe appeared in a Times article by Craig Claiborne

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup milk
• 4 tablespoons button (or olive oil and less butter to cut down on cholesterol)
• 2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar

optional:
Juice of half a lemon
Pinch of ground nutmeg, salt and cinnamon
Blackberries (I added some to the batter) and Strawberries (added some when serving)
Fig or blackberry jam, pear butter of any kind of marmalade, for serving

PROCEDURE:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees
2. Beat the eggs in a mixing bowl. Add flour, milk, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg and lightly beat until blended but still slightly lumpy. Don't over mix.
3. Melt butter in a 12-inch or 10.25-inch (pictured above) cast iron pan. Heat until hot but not burnt, pour in the batter. (I added some blackberries as well.) Transfer pan into oven, bake until pancake billow on the edges and golden brown, about 15 minutes.
4. Working quickly, remove the pan from the oven and using a fine-meshed sieve, sprinkle with the confectioners' sugar. Return to the oven for one to two minutes more. Sprinkle with lemon juice and serve with jam, pear butter or marmalade.

After reading it, I did this pancake twice, the first time during lunch hour and the second time (pictured above) during breakfast time. The children loved it.

Lunch at Branzini

The food is good but expensive

Drinks:-
Corona $6
Merlot x 2 $9=$18
Menebrea x 2 $7=$14

Appetizers:-
Sardines $10
Chicken/Sausage with Broccoli Rabe $14
Arugula Pear Salad $10
Calamari $10

Main Course:-
Hanger Steak $24
Salmon $23
24 Pasta Special $24
Cavatelli $19

The service was so so, it wasn't horrible but it wasn't good or friendly either. For this kind of price, I would expect very good professional service, sadly our waiter Daniel was barely interested in us. Anyway, the food was agreeably good, just don't expect any big portion though.

A total of $172 + tax $14.40 and service $30.96, a Grand total of $217.36

Read what others said.

Branzini is located at Madison and 41st St, on the first floor of The Library Hotel, a charmingly cozy little hotel in midtown.

No Impact Man

Photo credit, Nicole Bengiveno for The New York Times.

Today, the New York Times brought you the No Impact Family in lower Manhattan.

The No Impact Family is a new breed of post-Gore Environmentalists with a healthy disdain for global warming, consumerism and toilet paper. When I read that toilet paper bit, I know they are serious as their clean ass is on the line.

The No Impact Man, like most other men, has a blog, and unlike most other men, has a book deal and documentary to chronicle his No Impact living.

The Year Without Toilet Paper by Penelope Green

No Impact Man Blog.

YouTube Wednesday

If I were to write any better, perhaps I would at least be your average blogger who whines and bitches his life and occasionally comes up with some mildly interesting stuff, but I simply couldn't. So I present you with YouTube Wednesday....



Hillary Clinton 1984 Video From YouTube

It's Spring Time Now

It's officially Spring time now. Tomorrow the temperature is going to be in the 40s. So that's not too bad.

Fortran Developer Dies

John W. Backus, 82, Fortran Developer Dies.

But Fortran will live on, like it always does since 1954.

More Fortran from wikipedia.

Passive Voice

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is an advanced practitioner of the passive voice. He said, "Mistakes were made." He didn't say he or who made the mistakes, it's just mistakes were made.
Now the democrats controlled Congress is turning up the heat for his resignation. Bush finally stepped in and stood behind him to give support... You know you got to stand behind the man first before pushing him down the subway track (I think Jay Leno said that, or David Letterman.)

A Day In The Park

FARGO, 2007

Picture of the Month, almost Henri Cartier-Bressonesque .... (just don't throw up now)

Buddies

St. Patrick's Day Celebration

$5 haircut

Harry: Just take a little bit off the top, yeah, that's it. Easy....
Ah Keung Goh: Kid, this is a $5 haircut, don't expect much. Look, at least I know how to use a pair of scissors, freaking so called "stylists" at Sean Louis David don't even know how to use them, they just use a clipper to give you a buzz cut, plus your Daddy is cheap ....
Harry: I got it already, will you just shut up now?

UNTITLED

Picture by Thomas Hoepker, JPEG from slate.com

Picture by Spencer Platt, JPEG from pdnoline.com

Time

JPEG from http://www.time.com

The beleaguered Time is going to launch its redesigned Cover this Friday. The Cover could have said "How The Time Went Wrong. Please give us a second chance ... buy me now" Now do they want to make it look more like The Economist, the weekly magazine that calls itself a newspaper? They even photoshopped the "tear," whatever happend to journalistic standard? Or because it's so obvious and acknowledged that it really doesn't matter? As a z-list blogger, I really don't have a clue.

Day in Review

Viacom, showing how serious it is, is suing Google for $1 billion on Youtube's "massive copyright infringement." Essentially using the same argument by Microsoft, i.e. Google is profiting from unlicensed contents which is clearly illegal....

Viacom alleged that there are 160,000 unauthorized Viacom video clips in Youtube.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=198000551


Dow nosedived more than 240 points to close at 12,075.96. The US housing and mortgage market is said to be the culprit.

The World is a 99-cent Store to China

Mark Chilvers for The New York Times.

Wang Hongbiao, the chairman of Nanjing Automobile in the United Kingdom, with a classic MG at a factory in Longbridge, England.

Above JPEG and caption from The New York Times.

China is swelling with liquidity and it's gobbling troubled name brands across the globe. Building its own brands would be too slow to sustain that annual double digit economic growth to keep any massive social unrest at bay.

The Classic British Sports Car From China by Craig S. Smith, March 13, 2007, New York Times.

CK IN2U

It's intended for the "technosexual." You couldn't make it up even if you want to.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/08/fashion/08CALVIN.html

Men in Shorts

Graphics copyright, The New York Times.

As if shrunken trousers is not enough, Thom Browne is going all the way to promote men shorts. With the help of global warming and mercury likely to hit 100F this summer, shorts may not be such a bad idea after all.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/style/tmagazine/11tshorts.html

Attention

Attention, attention, Hong Kong is now 12 hours ahead of New York City.

26 Seats

A cozy French Bistro located near Tompkins Square Park in the Alphabet City in lower Manhattan.

It's not Le Bernardin or Chanterelle but that's the point.

The decor is rustic garage sale chic with non matching chairs, mine's vinyl seat was torn in the middle, full of character eh? Once you got past the tiny narrow dining room and your too close for comfort fellow diners and your torn vinyl chair, you can most likely enjoy the food.

Since I can't really write in complete sentences, so here is the list of dishes we tried and enjoyed:-

• The Merlot (by the glass, I can't drink much these days), light and fruity.
• Italian sparkling water, well it's water, tastes kind of clean and refreshing.
• Lobster Bisque, I had a few spoonfuls, rich and tasty.
• Mussels in white wine and onion sauce, savory.
• Escargots in mushroom and garlic sauce served in a little copper pot with puff pastry on the side. Intense flavor, very French I suppose.
• Striped Bass 26 ($14.50), fish was fresh and cooked just right.
• Duck Confit ($18.50) with mashed potato and greens. The duck was good, very rich in flavor and soft. The mashed potato was not bad, I wish it could be a tad richer in garlic, butter and cream.
• Creme Bruelee, my wife loves creme bruelee, and it was decent. I had a cup of coffee which was really bland like tasteless.
  

All dishes are reasonably priced.

The dining experience from making the reservation to getting the check had been pleasant.

The official propaganda site right here, turn off your speaker first if audio is not work safe....
From CitySearch, MenuPages, and The New York Times.

Disclosure: my knowledge of French food is pretty limited to French fries. My specialty if any is really Chinese lunch fast food.

Aquarium Cafe

Located inside New York Aquarium, Coney Island, New York.

Nathan's Franks Hot Dog $3.50
Fruit Bowl $3.50
Chicken Caesar Salad $6.75
Personal Pizza $5.75

If you are a member you can get 10% off.

Walrus

DSC_7783

Hop Won

Hop Won the quintessential Chinese fast food lunch restaurant in midtown.

Chicken with broccoli over rice, $5, tap water, free. How can you beat the price?

Other than the usual pre-made combination rice or noodle platters, they also do make to order dishes, like Chicken with Chinese Broccoli over rice $5.35, Chow Fun $5.35, Singapore noodles $5.35, or any Pork or Roast Duck noodle soups $5.

The quality of the food is always top-notched. And the portion is generous. You can easily stuff yourself and put on ten pounds if you eat there every day. You can pay more, but you can't find a better Chinese fast food in midtown than Hop Won.

If you have some motherfucking friend from out of town, whom you don't have to impress, then this is the restaurant you should bring him to. I know I did.

Lau Ka Fai

Now, we know who to blame/credit when we see a whole generation of sucky local Hong Kong IT students.

Lau Ka, you made us, the retarded technical school grads, proud. I applaud your candid off-the-cuff honest remarks on your ex-employer.

[As to me, I still get paycheck from my employer so I refuse to bite the hand that feeds me.]

Hip to be Square ... I guess

Fred Perry Polo Shirt $95.
Credit: Photo Chris Astley at men.style.com.

Zodiac

Zodiac, a study of 70s' menswear or aesthetics in general. All pictures belong to their rightful owners.

The Zodiac failed to butcher the Wild Hogs in the box office this past weekend.

Zodiac, based on true serial killings in the 70s was directed by film maker David Fincher of Se7en and Fight Club fame. The Zodiac is hailed as the first ever American feature film shot entirely on the Thomson Viper FilmStream Camera, in uncompressed digital video format. And for the Mac aficionados, it's edited in Final Cut Pro.

David Fincher, digital video, Final Cut Pro, throw in looker Jake Gyllenhaal and add serial killer lore ... still can't beat the Wild Hogs. Comedy still rules in the box office, bar none.

Dow Closes up 150 points

In Shanghai, a butterfly fluttered its wing and the rest of the world stumbled. After a week of lethargic performance, the Dow finally soars more than 150 points and closes at 12,207.35.

Nikon New Camera?

Is Nikon going to announce a new flagship DSLR tomorrow? Just for fun, I think it's going to be New D series professional camera with 1.13 crop factor.

We'll find out soon.

UPDATE:
dpreview.com has it. it's the Nikon D40x. Frankly I am a tad disappointed. Not that I am in the market for a pro camera, but I just like to see something great something ground shaking from the Nikon camp. It seems like they will announce the D3 model sometime later this year.

And for those who want a full frame Nikon, they have to get a film based SLR.