Caleb enjoying a piece of the gigantic gingerbread man he made at a birthday party.
Originally uploaded by flakingnapstich
Monday, January 23, 2012
Caleb enjoying a piece of the gigantic gingerbread man he made at a birthday party.
Caleb enjoying a piece of the gigantic gingerbread man he made at a birthday party.
Originally uploaded by flakingnapstich
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Iranian Naan
Persian / Iranian Naan
During this past holiday season a friend asked me to bake Iranian style Naan. This is something she enjoys but has difficulty finding. Iranian Naan, as described by her, is thinner and crispier than the naan Americans are likely to find in Indian restaurants or the supermarket. Being inclined towards experimentation I took this as a worthy challenge. She made it easy though by providing me with a recipe that even included pictures of how the naan should look at each step. The recipe she found was Persian Naan: Easy Flatbreads at plant-powered.com.
There was just one problem with the recipe, it required a bread maker. Fortunately it was pretty easy for me to gauge what needed to change, and given my friend's review of the results I apparently got it right. Below is my modified recipe for those who don't have a bread maker. I made a few other adjustments, chiefly in the size of the dough pieces you're working with. I found dividing the dough into the 4 pieces recommended by plant-powered.com resulted in a piece of naan that, thinned to the right thickness, draped over the edges of my pizza stone.
Shaping Notes
The key to getting the naan nice and crispy is to pound it thin and punch it even thinner with your finger tips. Experienced bread makers will have the instinct to flour their hands while working the bread. This is not what you want to do with this dough. You want to keep your fingertips damp. I dipped them in a bowl of water while pounding the naan with my fingertips. You want to see knuckle marks and finger holes in the finished product. Try stretching it over your knuckles. If you don't make it thin enough you get fluffy Indian Naan. If you make it too thin you get crackers. Both are still tasty. Check out the article Persian Naan: Easy Flatbreads for pictures of each step of the kneading process.
I baked the naan on a pizza stone that had been in the oven while it came up to temperature. A cast iron skillet or even a non-stick cookie sheet will work as well. If desperate you can even use the cardboard from a frozen pizza. This bread is too thin to put directly on the metal rack of the oven.
Ingredients:
Serving ideas:
Variations:
During this past holiday season a friend asked me to bake Iranian style Naan. This is something she enjoys but has difficulty finding. Iranian Naan, as described by her, is thinner and crispier than the naan Americans are likely to find in Indian restaurants or the supermarket. Being inclined towards experimentation I took this as a worthy challenge. She made it easy though by providing me with a recipe that even included pictures of how the naan should look at each step. The recipe she found was Persian Naan: Easy Flatbreads at plant-powered.com.
There was just one problem with the recipe, it required a bread maker. Fortunately it was pretty easy for me to gauge what needed to change, and given my friend's review of the results I apparently got it right. Below is my modified recipe for those who don't have a bread maker. I made a few other adjustments, chiefly in the size of the dough pieces you're working with. I found dividing the dough into the 4 pieces recommended by plant-powered.com resulted in a piece of naan that, thinned to the right thickness, draped over the edges of my pizza stone.
Shaping Notes
The key to getting the naan nice and crispy is to pound it thin and punch it even thinner with your finger tips. Experienced bread makers will have the instinct to flour their hands while working the bread. This is not what you want to do with this dough. You want to keep your fingertips damp. I dipped them in a bowl of water while pounding the naan with my fingertips. You want to see knuckle marks and finger holes in the finished product. Try stretching it over your knuckles. If you don't make it thin enough you get fluffy Indian Naan. If you make it too thin you get crackers. Both are still tasty. Check out the article Persian Naan: Easy Flatbreads for pictures of each step of the kneading process.
I baked the naan on a pizza stone that had been in the oven while it came up to temperature. A cast iron skillet or even a non-stick cookie sheet will work as well. If desperate you can even use the cardboard from a frozen pizza. This bread is too thin to put directly on the metal rack of the oven.
Ingredients:
- 2 cups warm water. A bit cooler than you. 80 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit or 26 to 32 degrees Celsius
- 3 cups whole wheat flour
- 2 to 3 cups bread flour
- 1 TBS kosher salt
- 2 1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast or 3 teaspoons of instant yeast
- Combine the yeast in a large bowl with the warm water. Let it sit for 5 to 15 minutes to hydrate.
- Add 1 cup whole wheat flour and the salt. Mix with a spoon or spatula.
- Add the rest of the whole wheat flour and stir until well blended.
- Add bread flour until it's difficult to stir by hand.
- Turn out onto a floured surface and knead in bread flour until the dough is no longer tacky and is fairly smooth.
- Put the bowl in a warm place under a damp towel until doubled. About 2 to 3 hours.
- Put the pizza stone or cast iron skillet in the oven and preheat to 500 degrees Fahrenheit (260 degrees Celsius)
- Punch the dough to deflate it. Turn it out onto a floured surface and divide it into baseball or cricket ball sized pieces. You should get 6 to 8 pieces out of the recipe.
- Take each piece and flatten it. Stretch it over your knuckles. Drape it onto a floured surface and, with damp fingers, pat it with your fingertips to make it even flatter. You want a few holes here and there. You want to leave your finger prints. Check out the article Persian Naan: Easy Flatbreads for pictures of each step of the kneading process. The end result will be irregularly shaped, roughly 6 inches by 18 inches or 15 by 40 centimeters. Getting it nice and thin is mre important than the surface area.
- Place the dough on the pizza stone (or whatever you're using) in the oven.
- Bake for 9 minutes. Prepare the next piece of dough while you're waiting.
- Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack. You can wrap the naan in a towel before serving.
Serving ideas:
- Use to scoop up lentil puree.
- Cover with jam or jelly and eat as breakfast.
- Dip in stew to soak up broth.
- Toast and serve with a bit of butter.
Variations:
- Omit the whole wheat flour and replace it with all purpose or bread flour.
- Use 5 to 6 cups of all purpose flour instead of the other flours.
- Replace the whole wheat flour with rye flour.
- Dust the naan with toasted sesame seeds just before baking.
- Dust the naan with a cinnamon and sugar blend for a sweet breakfast treat.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Friday, November 18, 2011
Keith Ward covered up a murder
Theologian Keith Ward has confessed to helping cover up a murder.
Theologian Keith Ward saw his father kill a man.
He doesn't say how much time elapsed between witnessing the murder and the alleged death bed confession. How long did he conceal the murder before getting this "explanation?" Why in God's name should we trust a man who gleefully helps his father conceal a murder with no apparent explanation, keeping the secret until his father has passed away and offered an evidence free, hand waving excuse of "Oh, I was in the MI6, so it's OK."
Ward offers no evidence that his father actually worked for the MI6, The complete lack of evidence beyond his father's word is the POINT of the haphazard philosophical point he's trying to make in the linked content.
Under the law, helping a murderer cover up a murder makes you culpable.
Whose murder is Keith Ward keeping secret? Was an innocent man accused, imprisoned or executed for the crime? Keith Ward must put a very low value on human life if he considers his father committing murder to be nothing more than fodder for a philosophical debate.
Of course, we have only Ward's word that the murder and the deathbed confession happened in the first place. Is Ward basing his argument son a chain of lies, or did he really confess to helping his father literally get away with murder?
Theologian Keith Ward saw his father kill a man.
my father worked as a double-agent for MI6 and the KGB during the “Cold War”. He told me this on his death-bed, in view of the fact that I had once seen him kill a man. The Section of which he was a member was disbanded and all record of it expunged, and all those who knew that he was a member of it had long since died. This is certainly a factual claim. If true, he certainly knew that it was true. I reasonably believe that it is true. But there is absolutely no way of empirically verifying or falsifying it. QED.
He doesn't say how much time elapsed between witnessing the murder and the alleged death bed confession. How long did he conceal the murder before getting this "explanation?" Why in God's name should we trust a man who gleefully helps his father conceal a murder with no apparent explanation, keeping the secret until his father has passed away and offered an evidence free, hand waving excuse of "Oh, I was in the MI6, so it's OK."
Ward offers no evidence that his father actually worked for the MI6, The complete lack of evidence beyond his father's word is the POINT of the haphazard philosophical point he's trying to make in the linked content.
Under the law, helping a murderer cover up a murder makes you culpable.
Whose murder is Keith Ward keeping secret? Was an innocent man accused, imprisoned or executed for the crime? Keith Ward must put a very low value on human life if he considers his father committing murder to be nothing more than fodder for a philosophical debate.
Of course, we have only Ward's word that the murder and the deathbed confession happened in the first place. Is Ward basing his argument son a chain of lies, or did he really confess to helping his father literally get away with murder?
Monday, November 14, 2011
Penn State is messed up
Penn State is where the students riot to DEFEND pedophilia
It seems Penn State students think it's OK to rape kids as long as you win football games.
So much for the idealism of youth.
I wonder how many of the pedophiles behind bars went to Penn State. That would be an interesting study.
It seems Penn State students think it's OK to rape kids as long as you win football games.
So much for the idealism of youth.
I wonder how many of the pedophiles behind bars went to Penn State. That would be an interesting study.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Is Yahoo spamming your facebook wall with links to the articles you've read?
Yahoo recently rolled out a bit of malware that spams your Facebook wall with every damn story you read on yahoo news. If it were a Russian hacker pulling this stunt law enforcement would get involved, but because it's Yahoo you just get to be annoyed. You can't even disable this spam for within the Facebook interface. Like all malware vendors, Yahoo has tried to obfuscate how to remove their garbage.
Here's how to turn it the hell off.
Finally, the next time you click a link to a news story on Facebook, and you get told that you need to allow the web site hosting the story some kind of access to your Facebook profile to continue, close the page and move on with life.
Here's how to turn it the hell off.
- Log into Facebook.
- Go to news.yahoo.com.
- Look at the right hand edge of the page. You'll see a section titled "You on Yahoo News". If you don't see it go back to Facebook and follow one of the spam links the bastard posted to your wall.
- Click the arrow next to "Social" and set your status to "Off."
- Click the arrow next to "Your Activity" and delete all of the articles that show up in the listing.
- Click on "Options" and select "Remove this Experience."
- The whiny little b**ch will ask you to confirm that you want to remove it. Click "Remove" again.
- Next, use a text editor to open C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\ETC\hosts
- Add the following line to the bottom of the file and save the changes:
- 127.0.0.1 news.yahoo.com
Finally, the next time you click a link to a news story on Facebook, and you get told that you need to allow the web site hosting the story some kind of access to your Facebook profile to continue, close the page and move on with life.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Observation
If the Christian Right put as much effort into helping the poor as they do into oppressing homosexuals and controlling women, the welfare state would dissolve as there would be no one left to help.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Mississippi about to pown the populace
The Mississippi "life begins at fertilization" amendment is a very clever ploy. If it passes, it will mean most forms of birth control, such as the pill and IUD will be illegal, as they prevent the implantation of fertilized eggs. It means any woman who is on the "wrong" side of a political or religious debate can be dragged into jail on suspicion of murder if anyone suspects she might have had a miscarriage.
Teetotalers will be able to jail anyone who drinks or is suspected of drinking while pregnant, especially if they go on to have a miscarriage.
Pregnancies resulting from incest or rape will have to be carried to term, as aborting them would, under the state constitution, be murder.
This isn't just an effective tool for controlling and manipulating women. If a man is giving you grief, all you have to do is use the threat of jailing his wife, sister, daughter or other friend or relative as leverage to shut him up. Even proving her innocence will result in a humiliating set of medical exams and detailed examination of her medical history.
It's pretty much an all-in-one political trump card for the people in power.
This is one of the cleanest and most intelligent back door police state moves I've ever seen. If this passes and stands up in court for any length of time, The Good Old Boys in Mississippi will have bought the entire state as effectively as if they were slave owners buying up a fresh shipment from Africa.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Word World MIA on Netflix Streaming
My son loves "Word World." Not long after being introduced to it he started sounding out words, eventually learning how to spell "BAT" at the age of three and a half. Sadly, Word World is no longer available on Netflix streaming. There was supposed to be a notice for two weeks before the show was removed. There wasn't, even through Netflix is apparently insisting there was. My son was not pleased.
The kicker is that Word World is not available as an entire season on the DVD service. Only a handful of episodes are available.
To whomever was responsible for removing Word World from instant streaming: YOU are one of the reasons people end up pirating videos. I'll bet there are a few parents who will learn how to use bittorrent and rip DVDs as a result of no longer having access to Word World when their child wants it. I'm not interested in adding ANOTHER streaming service just to get content whose copyright holder can't be bothered to do business with Netflix. I'm not interested in adding more hardware so I can stream Hulu or whatever the hell else comes down the pipe to my TV. I don't have the time or the money for such nonsense.
Right now there's only one Word World episode being seeded on PirateBay. I wonder how long it will take for more to crop up. There's only four distinct "Thomas the Tank Engine" torrents out there. It looks like more because of some duplication. There used to be more, a lot more, but they all faded away not long after Netflix started streaming Thomas. Funny that, making it easy for people to get programs when and how they want, keeps them from pirating it.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
My son is Kryptonite to Bitches
My three and a half year old son and I went to the grocery store today. While in line at the cash register the woman in front of us was being a cast iron bitch to the cashier. I don't mean she was being rude. She was being systematically and manipulatively cruel. The cashier was a chubby teenage girl who was having an acne outbreak. The customer was a 20 to 30 something woman who kept raving about how SHE had such clear skin people all thought she HAD to be using SOME kind of product. Every time she raved about her own clear skin she glared at the cashier with open disdain.
"People with really BAD skin," *glare at cashier*, "need to wash their faces properly. Some people who take really bad care of their bodies," *Glare at cashier's belly*, "Were never taught how to take care of themselves."
The bitch finished buying her groceries and left. The cashier was on the verge of tears when my son and I came up.
"HI!" my son said to her.
"Hello," she replied.
"I got a cookie in the car!" he announced. "It has a skull on it for, er, Daddy what hol-i-day is the cookie for?" He sounded out "Holiday", something he's been doing with words he wants to try and spell.
"Halloween" I said. I turned to the cashier, handed her my store discount card and said "Hello."
He continued "And I get to eat the cookie when I get home!" He held his fingers up to his mouth and said "Nom, nom, nom."
The cashier laughed and handed me back my store discount card.
My son laughed back.
It was around this point the bagger, who was clearly a friend of the cashier's, found her voice and started talking about a boy who kept walking past trying to impress them with his swagger.
My son started dancing in the shopping cart. Both women laughed. My son pointed at the cashier and said, "You look like my friend Mary, she has a pretty laugh too."
It was at this point both women were far too interested in the boy's antics to properly ring up and bag up my groceries. The apple cider ended up being rung up and deleted three times. The rebate for bringing my own bags was handed to me in cash instead of being part of the receipt. The ground beef ended up bagged with all the unused cloth bags I'd brought.
I really didn't mind.
As we left my son waved and said "Bye! bye! Have a nice day! Go to the beach!"
The woman who was on the verge of tears when we walked up, was nearly doubled over with laughter by the time we left.
Well done my boy, well done.
"People with really BAD skin," *glare at cashier*, "need to wash their faces properly. Some people who take really bad care of their bodies," *Glare at cashier's belly*, "Were never taught how to take care of themselves."
The bitch finished buying her groceries and left. The cashier was on the verge of tears when my son and I came up.
"HI!" my son said to her.
"Hello," she replied.
"I got a cookie in the car!" he announced. "It has a skull on it for, er, Daddy what hol-i-day is the cookie for?" He sounded out "Holiday", something he's been doing with words he wants to try and spell.
"Halloween" I said. I turned to the cashier, handed her my store discount card and said "Hello."
He continued "And I get to eat the cookie when I get home!" He held his fingers up to his mouth and said "Nom, nom, nom."
The cashier laughed and handed me back my store discount card.
My son laughed back.
It was around this point the bagger, who was clearly a friend of the cashier's, found her voice and started talking about a boy who kept walking past trying to impress them with his swagger.
My son started dancing in the shopping cart. Both women laughed. My son pointed at the cashier and said, "You look like my friend Mary, she has a pretty laugh too."
It was at this point both women were far too interested in the boy's antics to properly ring up and bag up my groceries. The apple cider ended up being rung up and deleted three times. The rebate for bringing my own bags was handed to me in cash instead of being part of the receipt. The ground beef ended up bagged with all the unused cloth bags I'd brought.
I really didn't mind.
As we left my son waved and said "Bye! bye! Have a nice day! Go to the beach!"
The woman who was on the verge of tears when we walked up, was nearly doubled over with laughter by the time we left.
Well done my boy, well done.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Another scam site, cashadvances.co.uk
In a recent post, Payday Loan Scam Site cornerstonepayday.com, I discussed a web site claiming to offer payday loans, but full of enough red flags to make it clear that the site was either a con job, or designed by someone so incompetent at protecting customer data as to make doing business with them a incredibly bad idea. The same vandalized Wiki has introduced me to cashadvances.co.uk. While not QUITE a incompetently assembled as cornerstonepayday.com, it's still pathetic.
The first major red flag is the complete lack of encryption of any kind. Cornerstonepayday.com had a purloined SSL certificate, but the site was designed in such a way as to make it impossible to actually submit your data over SSL even if you tried. Cashadvances.co.uk handles this problem by having NO encryption on it's submission form at all. If you try manually changing the HTTP in the address bar to HTTPS and hit "Enter" you get the following browser error:
In short, don't apply for a loan of any kind through Cashadvances.co.uk. They're probably a con operation, and if they aren't, they're too incompetent to be trusted with your data.
The first major red flag is the complete lack of encryption of any kind. Cornerstonepayday.com had a purloined SSL certificate, but the site was designed in such a way as to make it impossible to actually submit your data over SSL even if you tried. Cashadvances.co.uk handles this problem by having NO encryption on it's submission form at all. If you try manually changing the HTTP in the address bar to HTTPS and hit "Enter" you get the following browser error:
Secure Connection FailedCashadvances.co.uk is asking for your employment history, birth date, contact information and other personal details but doesn't bother to encrypt it. I don't know if the law is different in the UK, but in the USA, an operation prompting for that kind of data over the Internet without using encryption would be violating of a number of laws and regulations.
An error occurred during a connection to www.cashadvances.co.uk.
SSL received a record that exceeded the maximum permissible length.
(Error code: ssl_error_rx_record_too_long)
The page you are trying to view can not be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
Please contact the web site owners to inform them of this problem. Alternatively, use the command found in the help menu to report this broken site.
In short, don't apply for a loan of any kind through Cashadvances.co.uk. They're probably a con operation, and if they aren't, they're too incompetent to be trusted with your data.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
iphone-unlock.com won't unlock your iPhone
Wiki vandalism recently brought my attention to the apparent scam site iphone-unlock.com
Beware of iPhone Unlock and Jailbreak Scams. It's a clear cut case of buyer beware. These sites advertise chiefly through spam posts and Wiki vandalism. A search for "iphone-unlock.com" scam reveals people complaining that they paid for the "unlock" software, only to learn that the unlock software didn't work with their specific phone. If the site had offered refunds as a result of failing to provide the service they advertised, this wouldn't be a problem in and of itself, but it appears people do not get a refund after the software sold by iphone-unlock.com fails to unlock their phone.
The article Another Company Purports to Unlock iPhone 3.1.2 IPSW, Charges Money has a nice summary of problems with iphone-unlock.com. These include but are not limited to:
Here is a sample complaint:
the-iphone-unlock.com SCAM
iphone-unlock.com is just another in a long list of fly-by-night iPhone unlock scams. They claim to unlock phones they can't unlock and do not appear to offer refunds when they fail to unlock your phone.
Check out this article about the forms of iPhone unlock scams for more information.
Beware of iPhone Unlock and Jailbreak Scams. It's a clear cut case of buyer beware. These sites advertise chiefly through spam posts and Wiki vandalism. A search for "iphone-unlock.com" scam reveals people complaining that they paid for the "unlock" software, only to learn that the unlock software didn't work with their specific phone. If the site had offered refunds as a result of failing to provide the service they advertised, this wouldn't be a problem in and of itself, but it appears people do not get a refund after the software sold by iphone-unlock.com fails to unlock their phone.
The article Another Company Purports to Unlock iPhone 3.1.2 IPSW, Charges Money has a nice summary of problems with iphone-unlock.com. These include but are not limited to:
- The service itself is probably illegal
- They claim 24/7 support but don't actually offer it.
- They're selling services that are available free of charge and most likely only providing the exact same tools that are available for free.
Here is a sample complaint:
the-iphone-unlock.com SCAM
People beware of the-iphone-unlock.com is a Scam. I paid close to 50 dollars for lifetime access membership, trying to find an easy way to unlock my Iphone. The thing is that they say that they could unlock the 3g iphone whith the 2.2.1 firmware, once I paid went in and bOOm, "Unlock will NOT work with the baseband version (02.30.03)". Tried getting a refund or getting support and after 3 weeks I am still waiting for an answer. I know it is my fault for trying to get things the easy way, but I just want to let people know that IT IS A SCAM! The worst part is that they advertise in MacRumors Forums!
iphone-unlock.com is just another in a long list of fly-by-night iPhone unlock scams. They claim to unlock phones they can't unlock and do not appear to offer refunds when they fail to unlock your phone.
Check out this article about the forms of iPhone unlock scams for more information.
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