Month: February 2017

Chocolate Souffle Again

I may have mentioned, I have a new recipe for something savory/sweet. It’s called a Chocolate Souffle.

Now last time I made these on Valentine’s Day I used the hand whisk to get the egg whites to the point just between soft peaks and stiff peaks. This time around I used the stick blender with its whisk  attachment. Much easier. And the quality of the Chocolate Souffle was better too. More cake like, less mousse like  and utterly perfect. This stuff really is spectacular and not hard to make. All it takes is butter, flour, milk, eggs, chocolate, sugar, salt and cayenne. Those eight ingredients, all mixed up and the whites folded and then baked – it’s just perfection. And adult sweet.

 

 

Sunday Breakfast

So this morning I did home fries (Used salt, pepper, cayenne, tarragon and garlic on them.) and ham and cheese omelets.

Now the omelets, I have a 5 quart non-stick pot. I did the omelets in there and it works fine. Same technique as always, bit less than a tablespoon of unsalted butter in the pan over med-low heat until it browns. While this is going on drop 2 or 3 eggs in a bowl and whisk until whites and yolks are completely combined. Now dump in that hot pan.

Now the key is to use a thin spatula to separate the egg from the edge of the pan, in essence being sure the eggs don’t stick and the egg mass is on the butter. Takes maybe 1-3 minutes then stuff with whatever you’d like – a little shallot and garlic, a little ham and cheese. It’s all up to you. Run about 1-2 tbsp down the middle of omelet. Then ease over once side to cover. Slide onto a plate and done.

The key is you need a non-stick pan. Or a brand spanking new pan without non-stick if you’re good with that.

Benefits at companies I’ve worked

So I realized as I’m in the job market again that a job I went for an interviewed at, and now a second is in the offing.

Anyhow the usual is 2 weeks of paid vacation and 11 holiday, and maybe 10 days of sick time. With holidays it works out to 248 hours. Fucking paltry.

The company I’m going for – 6 weeks of paid vacation, the 11 holidays and 4 weeks of sick time. If you add that all up and convert into workdays it’s 508 hours of paid time off. That’s pretty respectable. Plus at year 5 you get 4 weeks of paid sabbatical leave plus they pay for your travel anywhere in the world. That’s a cool one to strive for.

 

20170214_2258242What you see above is Chocolate Souffle. It’s just a couple ounces of dark chocolate, a tablespoon each of butter and flour, a bit over a quarter cup of milk, and one egg yolk and two egg whites whipped to semi stiff peaks.

Now this normally calls for ramekins but alas, I don’t have any. But I do have oven proof tea cups. And so they got buttered and sugared and into a 375F oven for 12 to 15 minutes.

I got the recipe from Food Wishes on YouTube.

 

Missing blogs

So ever since I ditched Firefox for Google Chrome I’ve not been able to find a suitable RSS reader for Chrome that was similar to the Sage add on for Firefox.

But I just realized, I have an Ubuntu 16.04 Linux virtual machine running on this here PC. So I can just fire it up, load firefox, install sage and import my bookmarks from the Windows side and I’ll get all my sage feeds back. Yippee!

 

Yet another Hallmark Holiday – Valentines Day 2017

So it’s pretty low key. The usual Godiva heart for someone will be purchased soon, and I’m planning on making some chocolate souffle for dessert. It’s really simple, just needs chocolate, butter, flour, milk, one egg yolk and two whipped egg whites. Yummy!

Other than that got  a line on a new job. This one I kind of like, it’s a travel company with about 200 people employed but start-up culture which I absolutely love. Plus they do six weeks of paid vacation. That is VERY European but then the founder of the company was a former school teacher and summers off must have influenced the policy. And it’s in the seaport district of Boston so super easy getting there. In fact it’s a few buildings down from a former office I used to work in. In addition they offer deep discounts on their tour packages which I think would be REALLY nice.

All in all not a bad Valentines day.

 

Thunder Snow Today

So yesterday it was near 60F, today and right now it’s 18F. Winter. I hate it.

However today was interesting – we got what’s called Thunder Snow which should be renamed Thunder and Lightning snow. It was interesting.

 

 

Another reason I can’t stand UPS

So I’m awaiting some documents I need for a legal matter – to wit a death certificate. It was sent next day. And UPS as we are all familiar with by now, is Shit Wrapped in Chiffon.

Why?

They say this on the track page:
“Wednesday, 02/01/2017, by 3:00 P.M.(by end of day for residential deliveries)”

Now I’ve been round the block with UPS on what the term “end of day” means. I’ve gotten a moving target of answers from calling UPS, some say 7PM, some 8PM, some 9PM. This makes me highly suspicious that there’s no intention of delivering those documents today.

In addition the documents were sent as signature required. Now I have a long standing agreement with UPS that I don’t care if it’s marked signature required, they are to waive all of that. This was my previous conversation with UPS President office where I called them inept and idiotic. Of course now I know which cage I must rattle when dealing with UPS.

So I’m almost guaranteeing that I will NOT receive those documents today. Around 6PM I’ll have one of their irritating InfoNotice’s on my door and the exception will show up on the tracking page. They’ve done it before, they’ll do it again. And I’ve caught them on video doing it.

 

So RI DMV is still using a COBOL based system

Apparently there’s a big kerfuffle between the RI DMV and HP Enterprise solutions.

Part of it is that the current system is written in COBOL.

Let’s see how much I remember:

 

There’s the IDENTIFICATION division – essentially a place for program name, author, etc.

Next the DATA division. It’s where variables and constants get defined.

And finally the PROCEDURE division – this is where the logical constructs live.