I tried making risotto for the first time this weekend, after trying some tasty risotto from the ready-to-eat area of my local grocery store. I glanced quickly at a generic recipe for ideas of what to buy, and I went and bought some chicken, chicken broth, Arborio rice, and Crimini mushrooms. As it turns out, I was not prepared for how much chicken broth was required (like 6.5 cups, what the heck?!) so I had to use about 2 cups of water to round out the recipe.
The recipe looked easy enough, but I now know that risotto needs constant attention. I figured it would be like normal rice where you just dump all the liquid in and let it steam, but apparently you are supposed to put in a half cup of the stock mixture at a time, and this is pretty tedious (as you have to stir every so often to avoid having burnt rice at the bottom). I added a very small amount of smoked bacon to the recipe as well to compensate for the diluted stock mixture, and to give the risotto a slightly smokey flavor. I then topped it off with some grated mahon cheese.
Overall it was excellent, although the recipe ended up producing way more risotto than I could eat in one sitting. Risotto doesn’t seem to be great as a leftover, but it was very tasty when eaten immediately after cooking.
I introduced Toby to a harness yesterday. Harness training with Sydney went really smoothly, and I was hoping Toby might accept the harness without complaint. But boy did Toby hate that harness! Toby spent the rest of the afternoon doing rolls and trying to buck the harness of his back (obviously this was unsuccessful). I had Sydney wear his harness too in a show of support, but somehow Sydney has figured out how to bite the back clip in just the right way to release it… It’s hard for him to do, but occasionally he succeeds. This isn’t looking so good for my dream of a cat-drawn sled.
Speaking of which, we had our first flurries this morning.
I don’t remember getting this much spam as an undergrad, but every day my MBA account is full of messages sent from various clubs and officials. While I don’t like them, I do tolerate the pleas for students to sign up for uninteresting electives that are capped at like 5 students. And while the constant barrage of junk newsletters advertising various happy hours and meetings for unimportant clubs is annoying, I can see how they might be relevant.
However, the problem really sends me over the edge when regular students start abusing my mailbox. Usually what happens is that a student will use Reply to All to reply to a plea for a TA or whatever. I don’t understand why the administration doesn’t have a decent mailing program that would make this a non-issue. However, last night really took the cake when some retard lost her stats notebook and emailed the entire distribution list asking if we had seen it. Then, 30 minutes later she emailed everyone on the distribution list to report she had found it. I have several problems with this:
- This student didn’t even email the appropriate contact and ask for the note to be passed out. How are students even given permission to spam other students? I know in companies you always have to go through a proper command chain to send out a global email.
- The student found her notebook by herself in under half an hour. It was not really lost if you can find it that quickly. WTF at least look for it yourself first.
- We do really high-level stats, and basically everything is done with software. Who the heck takes notes in a binder for this?
Man, I noticed a second pair of my work pants (rather new) has a small hole on the inside leg seam near the knee. I got a tiny rip in the front leg of one of my other work pants. We have several patches that I suppose you iron onto the inside of the pants, but I wonder how that works when the wool pants have the silk sleeve inside. I’m going to have to consult a how-to or Bunky (consulting Bunky for DIY projects is always dicey, though) on how to fix this problem, so I don’t wander around the city looking like a hobo.
General | Kabitzin 11/19/2007 | 
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