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Week 8: Elotes FTW

As predicted, the Week 8 box was….large. We had green cabbage, summer apples, corn, a truly massive quantity of broccoli, cauliflower, more carrots, more green beans, fennel, and more red currants. And a head of lettuce.

I had been waiting for the green cabbage for months. We’d been craving homemade sauerkraut since I had tried to make it last November and it got all moldy and we had to throw it out, and we had a brand new fermentation crock as a wedding present, along with fancy pickle weights that would theoretically prevent that from happening again.

Homemade Fermented Sauerkraut

Moldiness aside, Sauerkraut is a actually easy to make. You cut up the cabbage and put it into a large bowl (or a fermentation crock, if you happen to have one!). You add about 3 TB of salt and knead it every 15 minutes for the next few hours, until you’ve produced enough liquid to cover the cabbage. In years past, the cabbage has sat in the refrigerator for a week or two before I get around to using it, making it pretty dry. This time I made it immediately, but I still didn’t get enough liquid out of it to cover the cabbage completely, so I made a brine of 1 cup water to 1 tsp salt and covered it with that.

The trick is to get the cabbage to stay underneath the level of the water, and it wants to flat to the top. This recipe from Serious Eats recommended using some of the outer layers of the cabbage that you wouldn’t want to eat and putting those on top, and then putting the weights on top. It works like a dream!

The only downside is that this isn’t ready for 3 – 6 weeks.

CSA ingredients used: Green cabbage

Other ingredients used: water, salt

Pork Lettuce “Wraps”

The lettuce seemed like the next priority. We had some left over country-style pork chops   from the week before, and Andrew suggested that we make little lettuce rolls using some of the corn, sliced pork, leftover rice, and a dipping sauce.

The dipping sauce is 1 cup water, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup lime juice, 1/3 cup fish sauce, and 2 minced garlic cloves (It made way, way, more than I needed.)

I broke off the biggest leaves of lettuce and assembled them with sliced pork, corn, and rice.

It immediately became clear that these were going to be impossible to eat, much less dip, because the lettuce leaves were not particularly inclined towards being rolled up. I gave up and threw everything together to make a salad instead, albeit one that had rice in it and a dipping sauce as dressing. It was a bit weird, but it got the job done.

CSA ingredients used: lettuce, corn

Other ingredients used: pork chops, rice, water, garlic, fish sauce, lime juice, sugar

Grilled Elotes & Summer Squash Tacos

While musing about what to do with the first corn of the season that was properly celebratory, I came across this recipe for Elotes, or Grilled Mexican Street Corn. The picture at the top of the recipe was, shall we say, persuasive. It seemed a little indulgent to light the grill just to cook some corn, so we decided to grill the summer squash (from Week 6) and make tacos with a recipe I found at the blog Cookie and Kate.

While Andrew was lighting the chimney, I made the cheese mixture for the corn. It’s 1/4 cup mayonnaise, 1/4 cup sour cream, 1/2 cup feta cheese, 1/2 tsp ancho chile powder, 1 clove of minced garlic, and 1/4 cup of minced cilantro. Once the corn comes off the grill, you coat the corn with the topping, squeeze lime and chile powder over the top, and go to town.

These were unreal. They were among the best thing I’ve ever tasted, which I suppose based on the contents of the cheese mixture shouldn’t be shocking. After fretting while making them about how they would taste as leftovers, we devoured all five ears between the two of us in about two minutes.

CSA ingredients used: corn

Other ingredients used: mayonnaise, sour cream, feta cheese, cilantro, garlic, chile powder.

The squash turned out okay too, but had nothing on the corn.  We put the grilled squash on flour tortillas and ate it with black beans, tomatoes, and an avocado chimichurri (2 tsp lime juice, 1 cup parsley, 2 cloves of garlic, 3 TB olive oil, 1 TB water, red pepper flakes, and a little bit of cilantro.) We didn’t have quite enough parsley, and I decided to compensate by adding a bunch more garlic. This was less than brilliant; avocado chimichurri sounds like a great idea but it was so garlicky as to be almost inedible.

CSA ingredient used: summer squash

Other ingredients use: tortillas, tomatoes, black beans, avocado, lime, parsley, garlic, olive oil, water, red pepper flakes, cilantro

Buddha Bowl

Having used up most of the fun ingredients, it was time to turn my attention to the cauliflower, carrots, and broccoli. I decided to get some tofu and make Buddha Bowls for Andrew and I to take with us to our various weekend engagements.

I baked the tofu, which was sort of fun. You have to press it for a bit to get the moisture out before you chop it up and throw it on a baking sheet to bake for 25 minutes in a 400 degree oven.

After that, I steamed carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli and added them to the bowl along with rice. The sauce was a peanut sauce from Brand New Vegan: 1/2 cup soy sauce, 1/2 cup water, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 TB rice vinegar, 1 TB hoisin sauce, 1 tsp sriracha, 1/2 tsp chile garlic paste, 1/4 tsp ground ginger, and 1/3 cup peanut butter. It all went together in a saucepan and cooked for a few minutes until it was thickened.

I did not succeed in taking a picture of the buddha bowl itself, which is a shame, but this recipe is highly recommended.

CSA ingredients used: carrots, cauliflower, broccoli

Other ingredients used: rice, tofu, soy sauce, garlic, rice vinegar, hoisin sauce, sriracha, chile garlic paste, ginger, peanut butter.

Red Currant and Apple Chutney

By the end of the week, we’d used up almost everything except the fruit. We briefly entertained the idea of making a pork chops with an apple currant chutney, but upon remembering it take an hour and a half to make chutney, we decided to cook our pork chops and just eat them, and make chutney to have on something later in the week.

You slice up an onion and cook it for a bit in olive oil, and then let it caramelize (for 45 minutes or so). In a separate saucepan, you add three or four apples that have been cored and chopped and some red currants, and and 1/4 cup water. You simmer them over low heat for 30 minutes, and then add the onions, 1/4 cup of brown sugar, and some salt.

It tasted pretty good! I even had it a few times on its own as a snack.

CSA ingredients used: red currants, apples, and onions

Other ingredients used: olive oil, water, brown sugar

Next: Let the pickling begin

The Week of 17 Vegetables, Part 2

As the week progressed and we gradually started to see the back of the refrigerator, the weather was still a blistering 90 degrees and humid. This presented a challenge for using up certain vegetables. For instance, we had a dire need to find a purpose for three enormous heads of cauliflower, but the dishes we were interested in cooking all involved turning on an oven, frying them in hot oil, or slathering them in cheese—all of which sounded terrible given the temperature outside. We decided to save the cauliflower for when it cooled off, and hoped they wouldn’t be sitting in the refrigerator until October.

There were still any number of other vegetables to be used up, including a cucumber, some broccoli, green beans, and potatoes, and various types of onions. We also still had sour cherries. It was so hot that no food sounded particularly appealing, but I decided that if I was going to eat at all it was probably going to be a cold soup. We found an avocado and cucumber soup on Serious Eats which was perfect for our purposes.

Avocado and Cucumber Soup

  1. Take 1 avocado, 1 diced cucumber, 2 chopped tomatillos, 1/4 cup of onion, 1 small seeded (or not…) serrano, 1 teaspoon of salt, and 1 cup of water and blitz them in a food processor. Put 2 teaspoons of cilantro on top.

CSA vegetables used: cucumber, white onion

Other ingredients used: avocado, tomatillos, 1 serrano chile, salt, water, cilantro

Grilled Chicken and Green Bean Salad

Next up were the green beans. Andrew found a recipe for grilled green beans from Serious Eats, and we decided to make it along with a grilled chicken. Andrew made a miso chicken and we grilled the green beans, tossed them with thin sliced red bell pepper, and slathered them in a miso dressing. The miso dressing was made from 3 TB dark brown sugar, 2 TB soy sauce, 2 TB white miso, 1 TB rice vinegar, 1 tsp minced garlic, 1/2 tsp sesame oil, 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes, and 1/4 tsp ground white pepper.

CSA vegetables used: green beans

Other ingredients used: chicken, red peppers, rice, miso, brown sugar, white miso, sesame oil, soy sauce, rice vinegar, crushed red pepper flakes, white pepper

Having broken the rules and tentatively waded back into Ottolenghi with last week’s kohlrabi recipe without any dire consequences, we were primed to do it again. Andrew tentatively suggested Ottolenghi’s Surprise Tatin for the potatoes, and I took one look at the artful and lovely picture of the finished product and latched on to the idea. We had all sorts of other rationalizations, including: once we make this, it’ll be great to have leftovers. Also: it only has nine ingredients, so how long could it take? The answer turned out to be all of Andrew’s afternoon, not to mention trips to multiple grocery stories attempting to locate the correct type of puff pastry.

Surprise Tatin

  1. Halve the tomatoes, drizzle them with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and put them in a 275 degree oven for 45 minutes until they are nice and dry.
  2. Cook the potatoes in boiling salted water for 25 minutes and cut them into 1-inch thick disks.
  3. Saute the onions with oil and some salt for 10 minutes.
  4. Now it gets fun. Brush a 9-inch cake pan with oil and line the bottom with parchment paper.
  5. Cook the 3 TB sugar and 2 TB butter on high heat until it’s caramelized. Pour the caramel into the cake pan and tilt it around so that it covers the bottom. Scatter 3 sprigs worth of oregano leaves on the bottom.
  6. Lay the potato slices close together at the bottom of the pan, cut side down. At this point, Andrew discovered that 1 LB of potatoes was not enough to cover the bottom of the pan, and had to return to step 2 and repeat.
  7. In the little gaps between the tomatoes, tuck in the onions and tomatoes and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Add 5 oz of goat cheese, cut into slices and scattered over the top.
  8. Puff pastry time. Cut a disc of puff pastry 1 inch larger than the dimeter of the pan. Lay it over the tart and tuck in the edges down around the potatoes.
  9. At this point, if you’re exhausted and angry at the author, you can put it in the refrigerator for 24 hours and eat it later.
  10. Once it’s time to eat, bake the tatin in a 400 degree oven for 25 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 350 degrees and cook another 15 minutes. Then you remove it and let it sit for 2 minutes EXACTLY.
  11. This is the best part! Pull it out of the oven and stick an upside down plate on top. Now you “carefully but briskly” flip it over onto the plate and remove the pan.

CSA vegetables used: onions, potatoes

Other ingredients used: cherry tomatoes, sugar, butter, oregano, puff pastry sheets, goat cheese, salt, pepper.

As the most festive meal of the week, it seemed only fitting to cook a sour cherry pie to go along with the Surpise Tatin. Andrew has recently become enamored the baking column in Serious Eats written by Stella Parks, who goes by the pen name Bravetart. She had an old-fashioned dough recipe that he decided to try in place of his usual pie dough.

  1. Whisk together 8 ounces of flour, 1/2 ounce of sugar, and 4 grams of salt together in a bowl. Cut 2 sticks of butter into little 1/4 inch chunks and mix it all around. Then smoosh the butter with your fingers. Add 4 ounces of cold water.
  2. Roll the dough out into a 10 by 15 inch rectangle. Now you fold it up in a super complicated way that’s hard to get into without diagrams.
  3. Now you can roll it out and make a pie!
  4. To make the filling, take 2 lbs of pitted sour cherries, 1 ounce of lemon juice, 7 ounces of sugar, 3/4 teaspoons of kosher salt, and 1 1/2 ounces of tapioca starch and mix it together with a spatula. Pour it into the pie shell.
  5. Whisk 1 egg, 1 egg yolk, 1/2 ounce of heavy cream, and a pinch of salt together and brush on top of the pie.
  6. Bake the pie in the oven for an hour at 400 degrees. Cover it loosely with silver foil and then bake another 15 minutes.
  7. The pie will have to cool pretty considerably before it solidifies enough to eat.

CSA vegetables used: sour cherries

Other ingredients: flour, sugar, salt, butter, lemon juices, tapioca starch, egg, heavy cream.

After a weekend that involved baking both a tatin and a pie, the next night we were looking for something that required little to no effort to cook. We found it in the form of this Serious Eats recipe, and once again pulled out the wok to stir-fry on the grill.

Stir-Fried Beef with Broccoli and Oyster Sauce

  1. Take 1 LB of hanger steak, cut into 1/4 inch strips, 1 TB soy sauce, and 1 TB xiaoshing wine and combine in a bowl. Let marinade for a couple of hours in the refrigerator
  2. Combine another 1/4 cup of soy sauce, with 2 tsp corn starch and mix it all around. Add another 1/4 cup of xiaoshing wine, 1/3 cup of chicken stock, 1/4 cup of oyster sauce, 1 TB sugar, 1 tsp sesame oil.
  3. Mix 2 minced cloves of garlic, 2 tsp minced ginger, and 3 scallions in a bowl and set aside.
  4. Cut the broccoli into florets.
  5. Once the coals are good, start stir-frying. Beef goes in first, and is cooked for about 1 minute and then gets dumped in a bowl. Next in goes the broccoli, followed by the the garlic/ginger/scallion mixture and the sauce. At the end, the beef goes back in and everything gets stir-fried together.

CSA vegetables used: broccoli, spring onions

Other ingredients used: 1 lb hanger steak, soy sauce, xiaoshing wine, corn starch, chicken stock, oyster sauce, sugar, sesame oil, garlic, ginger.

Next: Field Report, Weeks 5 & 6

Week 5: Road Vegetables

When the new box arrived on Tuesday, it was filled with peas, carrots, kohlrabi, and an assortment of other vegetables with mercifully long shelf lives. This, combined with the fact that I was gone most evenings at a gig that was so miserable that I temporarily lost my capacity for happiness (and cooking and eating), we subsisted on leftover chicken from our Indian-style dinner, which Andrew turned into chicken tikka masala and which we proceeded to eat for four days straight.

We had a short trip planned to Wisconsin on Sunday, and as of Saturday afternoon we hadn’t cooked a single vegetable yet from the box, so we decided to make as many things as we could all in one day and bring them with us. The only stipulation was that everything needed to taste decent room temperature and be easily transportable.

I threw myself into the process with immense enthusiasm, having not really had a chance to cook for the last two weeks. I was so excited to be in the kitchen again that I immediately violated CSA guiding principal No. 4, which is to under no circumstances use a recipe by Yotam Ottolenghi.

Kohlrabi Salad

In my defense, this Ottolenghi recipe doesn’t involve cooking in the literal sense,  just stirring enough yogurt, sour cream, and mascarpone into a handful of cubed kohlrabi to render this fairly innoccuous vegetable completely addictive.

The recipe also calls for sumac, which initially seems like one of those irritating, hopefully optional Ottolenghi ingredients that you have to look all over town for only to use 1/4 teaspoon of it in the recipe. Once you taste it, however, it immediately becomes clear that finding it would be worth a trip to Jerusalem and back. It has bright color and citrusy, tart flavor. Even better, we actually had some as a result of making our own za’atar from scratch a few months ago.

  1. Peel the kohlrabis and cut them up into little 2/3 inch dice. Put them into a large mixing bowl.
  2. Mix 1/3 cup of yogurt, 5 TB sour cream, 3 TB mascarpone, 1 clove of pressed garlic, 1 1/2 tsp lemon juice, and 1 TB olive oil, along with a little salt and pepper. Whisk it together and pour it on top of the kohlrabi.
  3. Sprinkle 2 TB shredded fresh mint on top, a few sprigs of watercress, and 1/4 tsp of sumac.

CSA vegetables used: kohlrabi

Other ingredients used: sour cream, mascarpone, yogurt, lemon, garlic, mint, olive oil, watercress, sumac

Marinated Broccoli with Cumin, Garlic, and Sesame Oil

This recipe comes from Melissa Clark.

  1. Take a large bowl and stir together 1 1/2 teaspoons red wine vinegar and 1 teaspoon of kosher salt. Add about 2 heads of broccoli (cut into little florets) and mix everything around.
  2. In a skillet, heat 3/4 cup of olive oil and add 4 cloves of minced garlic and 2 teaspoons of cumin. Cook for about 30 seconds, and then stir in 2 teaspoons of toasted sesame oil and a large pinch of red pepper flakes. Pour on the broccoli and toss to combine. Let the broccoli steep in the oil mixture for at least an hour before eating.

Our friend Ammie brought this dish to a New Year’s party a few years back. I came away with the impression that it was the best thing I had ever tasted. Later, I assumed this was a result of the champagne, because it’s broccoli we’re talking about. However, having recreated it I stand by my initial assessment.

CSA vegetables used: broccoli

Other ingredients used: toasted sesame oil, red pepper flakes, garlic, olive oil, salt, red wine vinegar

Lemon Ricotta with Peas

The first time I made ricotta from scratch was on a frigid February day when it was too cold for any sane person to leave the apartment. We happened to have some milk and lemons on hand and I discovered that making ricotta is the easiest thing imaginable, though it may one day represent the first step in my eventual devolution into complete hipster-dom. I’m willing to risk it, though, because homemade ricotta is SO MUCH better than anything you can buy in a store, and pretty cost effective, especially if you use paper towels instead of cheesecloth to drain it.

  1. Heat a quart of milk on the stove until it’s 200 degrees. Turn off the heat and pour in a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice and a teaspoon of salt. It will separate instantly, but you are supposed to let it sit for about 10 minutes anyway just to make sure.
  2. Set up some sort of rig with a big bowl and a colander balanced on top of the bowl. Then lay a piece of paper towel in the colander (or cheesecloth if you’re fancy). Pour the separated milk into the paper towel. The whey will all go into the bowl and the ricotta will be left in the paper towel. Then you let it sit for a while to drain further.
  3. You have ricotta! And also whey, which you can throw in the fridge with the intention of doing something interesting with it, and then throw it out once it goes bad instead.
  4. We mixed our ricotta together with some CSA peas, a splash of olive oil, lemon zest, and basil.

CSA vegetables used: peas

Other ingredients used: milk, lemon, more lemon, basil

Andrew and I and my cello ended up eating our picnic in a park overlooking Lake Michigan, about a ten minute drive north of downtown Milwaukee. We also brought along some pizza bianca which Andrew whipped together before we left the house (I’ll include his pizza dough recipe with my next post).

Next: The week of 19 vegetables.

Week 4: The Cruciferous Curse

When Andrew and I received the news that we were going to get Napa cabbage in this week’s CSA box, we quickly moved through the five stages of grief. Denial: It can’t possibly be as big a cabbage as last time. Anger: Why does the cabbage have to be this big? Who would ever make a cabbage this big? Bargaining: Maybe if we go cook all of the other ingredients in the CSA first, the cabbage will magically take care of itself. Depression: What am I doing? Why am I thinking about this cabbage at all? Is cooking vegetables the only worthwhile thing I’m doing with my life?  Acceptance: This is our fate. The only thing to do is move forward with determination and resolve. One leaf at a time.

Other people probably have a different reaction to the knowledge they are able to receive a Napa cabbage, something more along the lines of ambivalence. But, we had prior experiences that had left us deeply apprehensive. Last year the cabbage we got from the farm was the largest cabbage in the entire world. It lived in the refrigerator in a garbage bag since there was no other bag large enough to contain it, and took up an entire refrigerator shelf by itself. It was monstrous, and we had it for weeks, if not months before it became so desiccated that we threw it in the compost bin in despair. It became a symbol of our failure.

When we unearthed this year’s Napa cabbage from the larger-than-usual box, it was, if anything, bigger than last year’s.

We weighed it and were alarmed, but not surprised to discover that it was 4 lbs, 2 oz.

Odin’s feelings about the cabbage are also pretty mixed.

As with all our problems, we felt it best to start bthrowing it in a Walgreen’s bag, putting in the fridge, and ignoring it for as much of the week as possible.

We decide to tackle the CSA broccoli instead. This recipe for a red pepper and broccoli stir-fry with Thai peanut sauce is from Cooks Illustrated. It’s easy and awesome and we’ve made it dozens of times, though this was the first time we’ve stir-fried in on the grill (our new favorite form of cooking). We usually add tofu to it in order to make it a little more substantial.

Stir-fried Broccoli and Red Peppers with Peanut Sauce

We love the peanut sauce, so we usually “halve again” the sauce portion, which makes for some interesting math problems. To make the sauce, you mix together 4.5 tablespoons of fish sauce, 1.5 tablespoons of light brown sugar, 1.5 tablespoons lime juice and some zest, and 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes. Add 3/4 cups + whatever half of that is of coconut milk, whatever 1/4 + 1/8 cups of water is, and 4.5 tablespoons of peanut butter. Whisk it all together and set it aside. Then you can prep the vegetables: slice up 1 large red pepper into strips and cut the broccoli into 1 inch chunks.

Add the 1 tablespoon of oil to the wok. Once it’s shimmering, add the tofu and cook it until it’s slightly browned. Then cook the red pepper and the broccoli one batch at a time and brown for a minute or two. Push the vegetables to the side and add another teaspoon of oil. Cook about a tablespoon of minced ginger and a tablespoon of minced garlic until it’s fragrant and then mix back in the rest of the vegetables.

Pour in the sauce and then simmer everything through until crisp tender. We usually serve it on brown rice.

CSA vegetables used: Broccoli

Other ingredients used: Red peppers, tofu, peanut butter, fish sauce, lime

Side note: If you have a new jar of peanut butter, you can use this method to mix it together.

Other side note: Don’t lose hold of the jar, or you will get peanut butter all over your kitchen.

After the joy of the broccoli, we decided it was time to bite the bullet and deal with the Napa cabbage. One might think that the smartest thing to do with the Napa cabbage was something simple, like coleslaw or kimchi. But I had been pushing cabbage rolls for a while, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me now. Maybe because I felt an urge to get in touch with my Eastern European roots? Or because they froze well and also had protein in them?

Andrew was not particularly convinced, but in a moment of meat craving decided to give it a go. In an act that ultimately proved a great test to our relationship, I ran off to a wedding gig, leaving Andrew to cook them by himself. My gig was all the way out in Geneva, IL—and an hour and a half each way—and I think he was cooking cabbage rolls the entire time I was gone. I texted periodically to see how he was doing and his responses caused me to become increasingly concerned about his emotional state.

Cabbage Rolls

Our recipe came from All About Braising, an excellent cookbook by Molly Stevens that has been the source of any number of totally delicious, easy recipes. We are not totally sure if this is one of them.

The Cabbage:

  1. You are supposed to boil a pot of water and submerge the entire head of cabbage upside down in the water. This was clearly not going to be an option for us, since there isn’t a pot large enough to hold this cabbage, so Andrew tore off about 2/3rds of the leaves and blanched 4 at a time for about 30 seconds in the water, then plunged them in ice water to stop the cooking. He admitted later that the Napa cabbage leaves were really beautiful after blanching.
  2. 12 of the leaves will get used to wrap the filling. This will be called Cabbage 1. The rest get chopped it to be included in with the sauce, and will be referred to as Cabbage 2.

The Filling:

  1. Chop an onion into 1/4 inch dice. This will be called Onions 1.
  2. Now you partially cook some rice. You melt a tablespoon of butter in a medium saucepan and add Onion 1 and mix it around. Once Onions 1 is cooked, add 1/2 cup of white jasmine rice and cook it for 1-2 minutes. Then you raise the heat to high, add 3/4 cup of chicken stock, bring to a boil, and then reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Then you transfer it to a bowl and spread it out so that it will cool.
  3. Once the rice is cooled, add 1 lb ground pork and 1/2 lb ground beef (we ground the meat ourselves). You also add 1 beaten egg, 1 tablespoon of chopped thyme, salt, 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper, and a 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg. Mix it all together well.

The sauce:

  1. Now you “rinse the sauerkraut,” which is kind of a weird step. You pour out a pound of sauerkraut into a colander and rise it in cold water. Then you squeeze out the excess water into the sink.
  2. Fry about 5 or 6 oz of bacon until crisp.
  3. Chop another two onions into 1/4 inch SLICES and set those aside. These we will call Onions 2.
  4. Now you take Onions 2, along with 3 celery stalks and 2 carrots that have been diced and cook them in the bacon fat. Saute the vegetables until they’re softened, about 15 minutes. Add the Cabbage 2 and cook another 5 minutes. Add the sauerkraut transfer everything to a large bowl. Add 1 can of chopped tomatoes and all of their juices, along with some more black pepper.

Put it all together:

  1. Preheat over to 325 degrees.
  2. To make the rolls: divide the rice filling into 12 portions. Take a leaf of Cabbage 1 and place it on a work surface. Put one of the filling portions in the center of the cabbage and then roll it up. There are some super complication instructions in the recipe for how to do this, but if you’ve ever rolled up a burrito or a spring roll, just do that.
  3. Now you basically spread 1/2 of the sauerkraut/vegetable mix on the bottom of the lasagna pan, put the cabbage rolls on top, and add the other half of the sauerkraut/vegetable mix. Put bacon crumbles on top.
  4. Bake covered with silver foil for 1 1/2 hours.

When I got home from my gig, Andrew had been cooking for nearly 4 and a half hours, and was laying on the couch in the front room with a glazed expression on his face. He pulled himself together and we hopefully sat down to dinner.

The cabbage rolls were edible in a technical sense of the word. They were fine. But definitely not worth cooking for four and a half hours. We ate them with a loaf of bread and some cheese and then froze the rest. We think we might eat them again if it was -15 degrees out and we had run out of food and the car wouldn’t start, something which isn’t out of the realm of possibility come February.

No matter how many pictures we took, these still ended up looking about as appetizing as cabbage stuffed with ground meat.

CSA vegetables used: 1/2 of the cabbage

Other ingredients used: sauerkraut, onions, butter, rice, chicken stock, pork, beef, an egg, thyme, bacon, celery, carrots, a can of tomatoes

The next day, the temperature was back up to 90 degrees and I had two outdoor gigs. I didn’t get home until 8:00 or so, drenched in sweat from playing nestled in the corner at someone’s garden wedding. I tentatively texted Andrew from the gig to see if he was still willing to cook us dinner after the cabbage roll experience, or whether I should consider swinging by Chipotle instead, or maybe sneaking into the wedding reception. I was pleasantly surprised when he cheerfully declared that dinner would be ready when I got home.

The only CSA vegetable still unaccounted for was the bok choy, and Andrew had selected a simple vegetable stir-fry from Hot Sour Salty Sweet.

Pad Pak

To make this dish, you fry up 2 crushed garlic cloves in 2 TB oil in a wok, then add 1/4 pound of mushrooms, and 1/2 lb bok choy. Then you add 1 TB fish sauce, and cook for a few minutes before adding 1 TB fermented soybean paste. Serve with rice.

CSA vegetables used: bok choy

Other ingredients used: Mushrooms, fish sauce, fermented bean paste

Andrew prepped the ingredients in the time it took the coals to heat through in the chimney starter. It took about 10 minutes max to cook in a wok resting on the coals. It was the perfect dish for a hot night—the vegetables were still crisp, flavorful and browned from the intense heat of the coals.

Next: Indian-style dinner


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Early in September I was travelling again. This trip was to Kazakhstan, which had not originally been intended, since the place in Central Asia I was determined to visit was Uzbekistan, with the splendours of Samarkand and Bukhara. But that visa proved difficult to get, and I decided to try Kazakhstan initially instead, having read up on it in the guidebook to the region that I had borrowed from a friend. I then managed to buy an updated version, and found that the area had developed considerably, with much better access to places of tourist interest.

Kazakhstan certainly lived up to expectations, and more. We went through Delhi, where I realized how wise Mahinda Rajapaksa had been to appoint as our High Commissioner the archaeologist Sudharshan Seneviratne. He was a product of Jawaharlal Nehru University, and had excellent contacts, which he knew how to use. But the damage that had been done during the previous years when, not our High Commissioner, but the Ministry in Colombo had ignored Indian concerns, ran deep and I fear that the Indians were by now as keen as the West that Mahinda Rajapaksa should go.

After a night in Delhi we flew to Almaty, and found a hotel opposite a thriving market through which we could walk to the city centre. That first evening we were lucky to see, and hear, a service in Zenkov Cathedral, an imposing building dating from, albeit early 20th century, Tsarist times. Next morning, after a quick look at the much more recent Central Mosque, we went to the grand Independence Monument where a host of army cadets obviously found us more exotic than the sights they had been brought to see, and wanted lots of photographs. The same happened in the Ethnography section of the National Museum, where a party of small children, and their teachers, focused on us rather than the exhibits. Read the rest of this entry »

Rajiva Wijesinha

December 2017
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Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

The NICU.  My second home for 46 days.  It has taken me a while to write about this topic.  I will try not to be redundant of previous posts.  I want to start with the positive.

We were, by far, incredibly blessed that Nathan weighed as much as he did (go mama for eating for 3 when there was only 2), that he didn’t have any serious problems and that he grew and got better each day.

Some of my absolute favorite comments from the nurses that made me chuckle, helped comfort me, and helped me get through the day:

  • “Nathan, there are ladies present,” when Nathan let out a loud fart.
  • “It’s okay to touch him.  He’s yours” when I was so afraid of doing anything, even touching him early on.
  • “We’re gonna call you ‘chubs'” when he hit 4 lbs.
  • “He’s getting a reputation,” on his explosive poops that most of the nurses had to clean up.
  • “Everyone wants him.  We’re fighting over him.”
  • “He has so much hair!!!”
  • “He’s been pretty crabby today,” when he was wearing his little crab outfit.
  • “I will take care of him like he was my own,” when I was hesitant to leave him early on.
  • “He will be okay.  I will check on him again right now,” when stopping at the exit door, hesitating to leave and crying.
  • “God bless ya.  You are a fantastic mother.  I would have given up a long time ago,” on my struggle with producing enough breast milk.
  • “What is wrong?  Are you sleeping?  Are you eating?” when I didn’t look so hot and a nurse was checking in on me, making sure I was taking care of myself, in that scolding but well-meaning European manner.
  • “I am happy, I am good,” in a sing-song voice from Nathan’s point of view upon my arrival
  • “He yanked out his feeding tube.  I guess he wants out,” on walking in one morning to see his feeding tube on the counter (and not in him).

I know there are so many I’m forgetting, but these stood out.  I’m sure it’s not easy trying to do your job while also keeping parents at ease and these ladies definitely try their best.

I think the roughest part is the first couple weeks.  You’re still reeling from the shock of everything that just happened labor-wise and coming to terms with not bringing your baby home.  You’re still recovering from delivery.  You know everyone means well, but you don’t have the energy to constantly send updates.  The last thing you want right now is visitors.  You’re exhausted, your breasts are hurting and raw, you’re obsessed with germs, you’re so depressed and anxious from what life has just thrown you.  The NICU is DRAINING.  Mentally, emotionally, physically draining.  You have no choice but to trust the people caring for your son.  You feel helpless.  While still in the hospital yourself, you have to get “delivered” to the NICU every time you want to visit.  This involves paging a nurse and then waiting to be wheeled down and around.  It’s a long walk for someone who just had a baby.  The second thought constantly on my mind was about money.  How the hell are we going to pay for this?  What will insurance cover?  Will we have bills for the next 5 years?

You want all the information.  Asking what all these machines and tubes do. You want to know what each alarm, chime and beep means.  You’re coming up with a schedule of sorts to coordinate visits with your baby so he is left alone the minimum amount of time.  You have to adjust to them doing a ton of tests on a regular basis to check everything.  You look at the very long checklist of things your baby needs to achieve before you can take him home and wonder if that day will ever come.  You have to LEAVE your baby.  Every single day.

I had more than one meltdown having to leave.  Those first few days my husband and I just hugged and cried and reassured each other that he was in good hands and that we’d be back in the morning.  It also helped so much that we could call to check-in 24/7. Sometimes you just needed that nightly report before you went to sleep.

I will say it is difficult when you get a new nurse.  You get used to the first set that are the primary nurses and they all have a system in place.  You know the routine.  You know how they are with your son and it comforts you.  It makes it so much easier to be away.  When a new nurse comes in you begin questioning if they are attentive, if they care, if they will get his care right.  There was one time when I was not comfortable leaving because I felt my son wasn’t being attended to.  I cried at the exit, and then hysterically sobbed in the car for 15 minutes deciding if I should go back in.  I think that was my first big release of pent-up worry.

Day in and day out, I would race to the hospital filled with anxiety, like I couldn’t get there fast enough.  You enter Fort Knox by identifying yourself to the camera and waiting for the doors to be unlocked.  Never a worry about security there which was awesome.  The lovely gal at the front desk would always greet me with a warm smile.  I walked down the same hall, smelled the same smells, heard the same chimes and beeps.  Said hello to all the familiar faces.  Knew 80% of the nursing staff’s names.

Once I got the morning report telling me everything was still okay and saw my little angel, I immediately calmed.  Your days are filled with staring at your baby from the couch or chair, pacing, touching your baby and holding his head, lots and lots of pumping of breast milk, labeling breast milk, cleaning pump supplies, endless breastfeeding crap.  Making lists of things that need to be done, watching and learning from your nurses, coloring, 200 bathroom breaks, texting updates to family and friends.  You also scarf down some food somewhere in there too.  You quickly realize you will need all kinds of lotion to combat your cracking, red, dry hands from so much washing and anti-bac.  You become willing to pay anyone your life savings if they can just stop your nipples from hurting.  You know you’ll need to bring in a box of Kleenex because it’s either tissue paper kleenex with 5 sheets in a box or sandpaper paper towels to choose from.  You want to pop-in to other rooms and say hi just to have someone to chat with but you’re not sure if it’s allowed or welcomed.  You feel so bad for other babies that have it so much worse.  You try napping on the couch or in the chair but your nerves are too fried to sleep, plus it’s cold and there are so many interruptions.  You sleep with your phone on high volume and your heart stops every time it rings.

Nathan’s teeny tiny diapers. Thanks Huggies!

Once I got encouragement from the nurses to touch and handle my baby more, all I could hope was that he was comforted by my touch.  I talked to him all the time.  He’d often struggle with eating via tube, spitting up or squirming with gas.  I’d always say “mama’s here, it’s okay” and I swear he’d calm down even long after we brought him home when I said this.  I did worry quite a bit about if he would have any attachment to me with me not being there all the time, and all these other people caring for him.

I must point out the large majority of staff were phenomenal.  The amount of time spent and detail given when nurses switched shifts is mind boggling.  It shows you just how on top of it all they are.  These little lives are literally in their hands and it takes a special person to hold that job.  All the doctors gather each morning at each room to review the progress and any problems and the plan for the day for every patient.  Someone was always there if you needed anything at all.

There was nothing like getting to hold him for the first time which we had to wait I think 5 and 6 days after he was born.  You look at all the tubes taped to him and you’re thinking “how on earth am I supposed to hold him?”  They just bundle them all up!  I was instructed to wear a tank top and as I pulled it out at the chest area they placed him right in there and covered him with warm blankets and a knitted hat.  We were obsessed with that cute little handmade hat.  He was snug as a bug.  It’s crazy how his whole tiny little body fit perfectly in there.  He would always be so calm when we held him.  Like he was so at ease.  You study his every feature.  His ears that keep folding and staying folded over.  The little hairs on his face, his perfect and peeling lips.  How his nipples are SO tiny.  How his fingers are perfect.  It was always the highlight of our day.  We would want to hold him for hours but at some point, nature calls, your arms are numb, you are dizzy from not eating, you have to pump, and so on.

We, and anyone visiting would always be so amazed by how much this little boy moved and stretched.  He was constantly shifting.  They’d put him in the middle of his incubator and he’d end up in a corner.  Every time they checked on him or adjusted something he’d stretch on and off for a good 5 minutes.  He held his head up on day 2 while lying on his stomach.  Day 2!  And his faces.  This boy was dubbed “the man with 100 faces”.  Every few minutes he’d be making a new face.  It was SO entertaining.

When you have a baby in the NICU every single thing is a milestone.  An accomplishment. One more thing getting us closer to home.  Every time he opens his eyes you gaze into them and whisper how strong and handsome he is, into his incubator.  Removal of the throat tube thingy.  Then removal of the nostril oxygen.  Every tube that gets taken out deserves a cheer.  His IV line taken out was huge.  Going off caffeine.  Increases in feedings.  Licking breast milk off a Q-tip.  Taking formula for the first time.  Poop!  Poop is a big deal.  Poop is a celebration.  Holding our finger.  Hiccups.  A gassy smile.  Self-regulating his temperature in the incubator.  Being able to wear clothes.  Latching on successfully.  Every time a sticker on his progress train moved from red to yellow. And our first green sticker!  Most important of all: weight gain!  Every ounce up is significant and every pound hit is huge. There were so many celebrations.  Even still, I’m so proud of him for every new thing he does.  I’m just in awe of him.

I felt I had become an honorary nurse after the first few weeks.  The things I learned about the development of the brain, nervous system, heart, skin, bones, lungs; things the baby books don’t go into detail about.  I knew acronyms and fancy terms.  I knew how to do everything the nurses did from watching them so many times.  I knew how to work his feeding machine.  I knew what the numbers on the monitor meant and what alarms were urgent and which were not.  I could take his temp, change his diaper, rearrange his cords/tubes, take him out of his crib on my own, and fix his incubator “pillows” and sheets.  It was a pretty neat feeling as a new mom to have so much knowledge about your baby.  Not that I wasn’t still scared shitless when he came home.

Celebrating his 1 month birthday in the hospital was hard.  But we brought the stickers and made it work, doing our hospital photo shoot.

1 month old!

Shortly after he removed his feeding tube we started trying bottles.  Then he was graduated to an open incubator, then an open “crib”, each huge progress.  The morning of our delayed baby shower we went to visit Nathan beforehand.  We had walked in to see him in the open incubator and we were overjoyed at the unexpected surprise.  As he gained more and more ounces, the nurses were starting to prepare us for bringing him home.  There’s a certain criteria babies have to hit in order to go home.  It involves 5 days without spells.  Spells involve their own criteria with alarms going off for very specific things for a certain duration of time.  You have to wait until day 5, or the very last-minute, to find out if you are officially bringing your baby home that day.  Even with several baby books, years of working in a daycare and babysitting, I still had a zillion questions.  I guess I didn’t trust that he was a normal baby like any other.  There were some things that were going to be different of course, but overall, same rules applied.  I kidnapped a couple of nurses asking pages of questions.  They reassured me that I knew what I was doing.  And they were so gracious with answering all my questions.  They did have other patients after all.

That last week was very stressful.  I felt like everything was crammed into 5 short days. All kinds of preparations.  A heart ultrasound, blood tests, car seat check, other final tests.  It was a LOT.  When we came in on that 5th day hoping he would be going home, we found his train had all green stickers and a note saying he was ready to go!

We had his official hospital photo shoot which was a lot of fun.  We packed up so much stuff!  We watched a baby CPR video.  We asked our final questions.  We held Nathan.  We cried.  We thanked the nurses personally, 2 of which will always hold a special place in our hearts, although they were all great.  How do you properly thank people who kept your son alive, safe and healthy?  Words cannot do it justice.

I suddenly forgot how a car seat worked, I was so nervous.  I don’t know what the hell I did, but the one nurse was laughing at me.  I was like, oh boy, I can’t even get this right.  But in my defense, neither could my husband.  We made this cute sign and Nathan provided the perfect pose.  He’s like “Hear ye, hear ye…”

As we were being wheeled out I could not believe we were taking him home.  Finally.  It was bittersweet.  We had gotten to know the staff and they were our second family for the past month and half.  I was going to miss them like crazy.  I was actually going to miss those rooms, the halls, having experts care for my son, those beeps and chimes.  I so wanted to kidnap a nurse, for real this time.  It was a bit terrifying that it was actually happening.  It was over.

On his way home

We made it through day 1 at home with only one panicked phone call to the NICU asking what to do.  There were days I couldn’t believe this was happening to us, days when it didn’t feel real at all, days that were bleak and grim and days that held hope.  But we made it. Nathan is a happy and healthy 8-month-old and we are all stronger for the experience.

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text:
Rao's ENTRao's ENT

Radiology Department

What it does: Offers complete ENT-related radiology services

We offers complete ENT-related radiology services. As our objective is to provide complete ENT care under one roof, we have established an in-house and fully-equipped Radiology Centre right inside the Dr. Rao’s ENT Super Speciality International Hospital that’s one of the best in the country. High resolution CT scans or digital X-rays, now the patient does not have to run back and forth between the hospital and an external diagnostic centre.

Having any ENT issue? Don’t ignore. Get expert care…get in touch with us


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Screen Shot 2015-04-30 at 11.05.52

Whenever I have a moment to spare, I love to ponder about life and let my imagination run a little wild.

This morning after having a conversation with my colleague about babies and children, we were reminiscing about our 20’s and where it had gone.

My memories of my 20’s?

  • 20 – Second Year of University and realisation / coming to terms with not being a teenager
  • 21 – Placement Year at Boots HQ, learning the ropes at a fantastic corporate company
  • 22 – Grinding it out on the Final Year of my course, sleep deprivation
  • 23 – Joined Tesco HQ, relearning the ropes with minimal guidance
  • 24 – More 9-5 and gaining valuable experience, proposed to my girlfriend
  • 25 – Moved roles to Creative and Technical and planned to buy a house / get married
  • 26 – Bought our first house, marriage
  • 27 – Settling down

Even though I have hurtled through my 20s and thrown myself head first into getting good all round life and work experience, I still feel like I am around 21. The routine of work, sleep, work, sleep, work, quickly becomes apparent that after what appears to be a matter of days turned into a few years.

“All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.” – Peter Pan

Growing up was never a problem for me. I had to be mature from an early age due to my allergies and I embraced it with open arms.

Recently, going on a few bike rides on my own. I have time to think and reflect on my achievements and what to have for dinner. The quote below speaks for itself whenever I have these moments, a beautifully crafted and powerful meaningful message.

“Just always be waiting for me.” – Peter Pan

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Neverland would be a fantastic dream for me. From the outset I am travelling through time with my loved ones, but truthfully, I am still a kid inside.

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People you just click with

Having met with a former colleague last night who I hadn’t seen for just under 3 years was a thought provoking experience.

I had always wondered what life was like since I left the supermarket giants Tesco. With their recent market loss and profit reporting amidst the press spotlight, it was insightful to hear about their thoughts and feelings regarding the current climate.

I felt that 3 years was a long time to not see someone, but being a fellow Designer and former friend, some people you simply get along with. Time may shape their lives and change their ways, but core values stay the same. I suppose you can say the same.

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Buying a drink at the bar (both non alcoholic) we sat outside and chatted about life since we had last seen each other. Conversation never stopped or felt remotely awkward and I kept on thinking how much he reminded me on a few of my newer best friends that I had met in life since Tesco and that I had kept in contact with.

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The effortless talk and banter that we give each other is also a sign of mutual respect that we understand what each are going through. Acknowledging that we both have our own problems and that we are working towards a better self, whilst checking up on each other to make sure we are both ok is a fine balance.

“I know I’ve been selfish and not seen anyone that matter to me in the last few years.”

When my colleague said that, coupled with his facial expression, it really hit home to me that even though we had spoken a handful of times. His empathy and attitude towards me and most possibly others made him a friend certainly worth keeping in contact with.

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So here’s to great mates we meet in the many paths of life! …and to Golf next week!

The Awkward Office

Ever left your phone on loud, got into the office, placed said phone on the table and the wife texts you.

Well the above is fine if you have a standard message tone and not a snippet of R.Kelly “Bump n Grind” which sounds exactly like, “My minds telling me NOOOooooOooooo!”

We all live and learn…

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There have been numerous occasions where I can recall in the office something has happened to trigger the awkwardness, most of the time it’s our Managing Director shouting at a Salesman or at our other Director. Classic hole in ground moment. However, I have learned to embrace this awkwardness recently, coming to terms with the fact that if it’s not me getting shouted at and reassuring myself that unfortunately for the victim it’s really nothing I can do at that given moment to help them.

Here’s to the awkward office moments

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I’m a Designer, you’re a Designer – what is a Designer?

A job title that encompasses many skills that someone in the Creative Industry may have.

Wikipedia describes the term Designer as the following

A designer is a person who designs. More formally, a designer is an agent that “specifies the structural properties of a design object“.[1] In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, such as consumer products, processes, laws, games and graphics, is referred to as a designer.

I can recollect the first time I realised there were several career pathways that a Designer could take. It was at School in A-Level Design when we were all tasked to design a product to manufacture. Your own idea, anything you wanted, designed your way as long as it was justified. The idea pool and concept generation for products was a broad spectrum. Our class came up with a whole host of products: Cameras, POS systems, pens, hats, garages and handhelds to list a few.

It took me a few years to realise that my idea was not the only design solution to a brief.

With three of us attending Loughborough University. It quickly dawned on me that I was in a mix of Designers from multiple backgrounds who would interpret a brief in ways that I could never had imagined.

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Working as a Professional Designer, my work is constantly under scrutiny from Directors, Buyers, Marketing Managers and Technologists alike. Each with their own subjective views of what the design should be. Ultimately a design should fulfil the brief set, not the stakeholders opinion. There is a fine line between what I know is right VS what you think is right, with the power struggle of the Designer in the creative process being all too familiar for us all.

I use the words “us all” as a collaborative plural, because after years of working in the industry. I know that design doesn’t just come from a single person. The front end and back design process of Conceptual Visualisation to Implementation Coding shows how digital design works.

Another fond memory of mine is when I first starting working Professionally as a User Experience Designer (UX) at IAT. I met two other Designers (Graphic & Digital) amongst Information Architects (IA) who I thought had the same skill set as I did. Manufacturing, Production, Packaging, Product, Supply Chain and Supplier Management are skills that I cherish as one of my core strengths. To be able to look at the bigger picture when I’m not immersed in the nitty gritty of moving a border or stroke 1px across to perfectly align with an edge.

When I have conversations with other Designers, I can see how my history and background of designing commercially for mass manufacture and launch benefits a project. Being able to see what problems would arise before the problem becomes the problem. However, my design skillset is specific for my client and company projects. Should you ask another Designer what they design you would get a different answer almost every time.

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Fabric, Graphic, Illustration, User Interaction, User Experience, Product, Packaging, Online, Digital, Web – I could go on for hours. The split between physical and digital. The hierarchy or an Intern, Junior, Middleweight, Senior/Lead and Head. The term Designer is broader than most if not possibly all job titles.

The mentality of a Designer is very focused and borderline OCD. We like to share our ideas and voice our opinions with others, whether we listen and take advice from others is mainly down to the maturity of the designer and project situation. We all share the same outlook that the solution and design is almost like our baby. It was created by a series of clicks, layer masks, strokes, colour selections etc which gave it a personality and bought it to life.

A few weekends ago, my great friend Rohan and I met up for a few drinks post football match. Along with two of my other friends who were at the pub, we were asked, “What do you design?” As per above. We both gave very different answers. With Rohan being a Digital Designer, I have designed Web Banners, Logos and Websites before, but he offers the backend coding for Email e-Shots and newsletters which are coded via HTML. Which makes him much more suited for his role. No doubt that either of us could learn about each of our specialisms in our role and become successful at it, but that is the beauty of design. It’s a free-formed discipline that is a never ending journey of learning and discovery.

In conclusion.

We all take for granted a great design. Design is all around us. Simply reading this blog on your phone, tablet, laptop or desktop, it’s on a product that has been designed by a Designer for you the consumer. Each designer has their own specialisms and skills! So for now, let’s roll along with the Wikipedia definition and remember…

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The personality smokescreen of Facebook

Ask yourself, how many times have you seen someone on your Facebook Timeline, with their holiday photos, check in at a fancy restaurant, status about going out partying or drinking and thought.

“Wow, what an amazing life they live!” followed by… “I wish my life was that exciting…”

We have all been duped into thinking the above before. I can instantly think of several occasions in the last week where a person has popped up on my newsfeed and I thought that they were living the dream life. Constantly going on holiday, buying expensive items and visiting niche restaurants – posting images and status’ showcasing how they are having a fantastic time.

A great example is below

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The image where I had caught a carp at Clavering. Did you know I had the worst back pain I’ve ever had in that summer and sitting in a chair was difficult.

The image in the middle taken in Bruges, seemingly enjoying one of the fantastic sights and features of a picturesque town. Did you know that I had almost blacked out and fainted barely 30 minutes before that and that my head was in a daze from exhaustion.

The image on the right taken in Brussels, with one of my great friends on my back. Did you know that he could not walk because he had plantar fasciitis and staggered around for the entire weekend to keep up with the group doing himself more damage than good.

Images and status’ show a split second of what they person is currently experiencing. Many people have asked me questions or know about my life through my ‘highlights’ on Facebook. Where they learn I have done X, Y or Z on the weekend. However, what Facebook doesn’t show are the events leading to a post. They have integrated the options of feelings, places and tagging other friends at that point. What I have posted on provides an instant snapshot of (in my case) a positive experience with friends or family.

I have been guilty of thinking and comparing my life between those that post all too often. Looking at their seemingly champagne filled week with my 9-5.30 office job, dinner and sleep. I began thinking that I was not fulfilled and was questioning why I was doing so little with my life compared to those who are my age, this affected my mood and overall happiness for a while when I came across a very interesting article regarding the link between Facebook and depression.

The article made a comparable between Facebook and how it reflected your personality. We all know ‘The Moaner and Whinger’ on our timelines, I have unfollowed a few of them when it got to the point where s/he would post several times daily on how bad their life is. Whilst I found this frustrating to read about all their problems, it’s an accurate reflection of all the pain and troubles we encounter in our daily lives. As the “Moaner/Whinger” you are usually frowned upon by your family and friends, however in reality, your posts about your difficulties in life are a true reflection of all our lives.

Yes my Timeline and Page may seem sublime because I only choose to post my high’s not my low’s. But never forget that we are all human and experience these high’s and low’s. Whether we choose to share those high’s and low’s is the beauty of social media and how it shapes our online/digital persona.

So when I next see my next set of Facebook feed updates, whether positive or negative, I will remember that there will be a sequence of events before and after which led to that particular person posting. Don’t feel alienated by their online persona and never forget, you are what makes you… well YOU (Unique!)

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The apple iWatch

no introductions needed here. I finally had enough time on a weekend to pop into the local apple store to have a look at the future of wearable technology.

First impressions, intruiging.

The delightfully display unit with the full line up of apples’ finest tech was neatly laid out in a parallel row. I’m assuming cheapest “sport” option on the left, to the gold edition which automatically comes with a mortgage.

I find myself strangely frustrated by the display unit. Macbooks, iphones and ipods are all on the table readily accessible. Whilst the iWatch is under a glass case which most likely is bullet, bomb and fanatic proof.

Being a self described “touchy feely” buyer, drawn in my the rounded edges and gloss HD screen. I am minorly disappointed that I can’t touch and feel this piece of wonderful tech.

I eventually find myself playing Pro and Con tennis with my head, as the apple genius explaining all the features slowly becomes one monotone slur as I imagine integrating this watch into my life.

“Will it break easily?”

“Teething problems with new tech?”

is met by

“Look at the colours, oooo!”

“I want it…”
One of the most intimate features is tapping on the screen, which sends a vibration to your contact or in my case. Your significant other half. To simply say “I am thinking of you” the intimate and touching feature appeals to me, drawing me into the thought of “would my wife wear this?” Lets find out…
In conclusion, the iWatch is a beautifully designed product. I find myself captivated by the marketing and not being able to try the watch on has heighted my anticipation even more.

The Male seating corner

following the wife around on a Saturday morning from Debanhams to Dorothy Perkins to John Lewis in Welwyn Garden City is standard practice for many men.

What really makes me chuckle is at every store, without a doubt there is a seating area where the other half will reside during the ‘fitting’ and ‘trying on’ stages are commenced.

In Debanhams I was having a fantastic conversation with an elderly chap who I was entertaining with my ‘below par’ comments and enthusiasm. We eventually came to the conclusion that there should be a TV mounted football cafe in each area of each store where the waiting rooms were.

Currently residing in John Lewis outside the changing rooms on the seating area. The clientelle are just the same.

Wifes comes out, husband says “any good”, wife replies “hmmm maybe, I don’t know”

Fortunately I consider my profession as a designer gives me an edge in weeding out the “hmmm maybe, I don’t know” outfits before we ever reach the changing rooms. Resulting in a condensed and precise clothing selection.

So… Men of WGC and Nationwide currently sitting in the “Male Corner” of each store, battling through bags of shopping and following your wife through the retail maze. I sympathise with you all, pulling the same face as I am currently.

The autopilot face


text:
This essay revisits the “Prospectus” written by the author, Stanley Aronowitz, and Fredric Jameson for Social Text's first issue and evaluates it with thirty years' hindsight. It focuses on the journal's position regarding Marxism and the then Soviet Union, and its—for the author—problematic veering away from liberalism. It praises the plurality of thinkers and theories that the journal engaged with.

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Poem A Day #6- For my students…

The Treasure of Books…

For my students. Because I want you to find the treasure.

A picture, an image, a splash of color
Subtlely alluding to what lies inside.
No special key or password needed.
Simply open it up and there they await you:
Words, words, words.
Princesses and flying carpets.
Princes and dueling swords.
History. The future. An alternate reality.
A triumphant hero. A grieving mother.
Faraway lands and ever present realities.
Words, words, words.
Innocuous and meaningless.
Poignant and thought-provoking.
A thousand words, a thousand thoughts,
A thousand possibilities.

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Thursday, February 3, 2011

WashPost Adds Fred Karger ? [UPDATE#3]To GOP "Candidate" List Of [NOW 19].Don't Miss Your Chance for 15 Minutes Meaningless Speculation Fame

Eventualy this post will get so long I will need extra pages. Now The Washington Post has found a new candidate Fred Karger-a "Gay Republican" who is so obscure even his campaign posters state "Fred Who". As I keep suggesting they will resort to the telephone book in due course
Previous Update

As I suggested the eventual step for the media will be to simply list the telephone directory-today Politico (which is turning into a junk blog for Jon Stewart viewers age/lib types) trotted out an article suggesting George Pataki from New York is "mulling a run". The media still has a huge list of Republican office holders to work their way through but you have a chance to get your 15 minutes still.
Original Posting

Just these last two weeks the media has run articles on Daniels/Pence/Barbour/Bachman as 2012 likely Republican candidates for the presidential nomination with all ensuing breathless analysis. Then this week they had a field day with the news that Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman may be making his moves and produced screeds of analysis on how that may hurt Romney's chances.

During this period the running attacks on Palin's possible candidacy, Huckabee's sojourns to Israel and Alaska, Romney finally lifting his profile, Pence out of the running carried on relentlessly.

But why should these 19 have all the fun-since the media seem determined that anyone is a possible candidate,given some of these putative "candidates' are pretty far-fetched? Why shouldn't the man/woman in the street get their 15 minutes of media speculation? Go on,send an email to your local newspaper announcing you too are a candidate.

That would be taking things just as seriously as they are now.

Here's the latest list of the 19 people the media have designated as running
Fred Karger

George Pataki
Donald Trump
Herman Cain
Mike Huckabee
Sarah Palin
Mitt Romney
Newt Gingrich
Chris Christie
Rick Perry
Mitch Daniels
Tim Pawlenty
Mike Pence
Haley Barbour
Jim DeMint
Jon Huntsman
Rick Santorum
hn Thune
Michele Bachman

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Korean Stuff · Movies · Seasons; Drama; Marathon

Monthly Wrap Up | August 2015

Hey y’guys! This is what I was up to all August in the entertainment department… 😛

The first movie for August was Jurassic World… It was quite good. Saw it with my mom and sis. [ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ]

Re-watched Divergent and Insurgent with my mom.. Love these filmsss… And in the animated category re-watched Home… Had fun.. 😉

Watched a classic, Mansfield Park and I don’t think I like this Jane Austen story.. I like it but it’s not a favorite. Liked the film, though. [ ❤ ❤ ❤ ]

Freaking loved The Age of Adeline, Blake Lively is soooo pretty and I loved her acting here.. Loved how it was narrated and oh it was really great and intriguing.. [ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ]                                             The Age of Adaline (2015) PosterMansfield Park (1999) PosterJurassic World (2015) Poster

Cloud of Sils Maria was a-okay. I was kinda expecting something else. But well, it showed how the industry works.. I watched the first half more attentively then the second half.. :/  And that’s it. Don’t have anything else to say.. [ ❤ ❤ ]

It’s Kind of a Funny Story was good and sad and kinda thought-provoking.. [ ❤ ❤ ❤ .5 ]

Thomas Hardy’s adaptation Far From The Madding Crowd was a-okay but still watch-able.. [ ❤ ❤ ❤ ]

The last film I watched was A Clockwork Orange and it was enlightening… 😀               A Clockwork Orange (1971) PosterFar from the Madding Crowd (2015) PosterIt's Kind of a Funny Story (2010) PosterClouds of Sils Maria (2014) Poster

In the drama department, I finished watching Sense8 [ ❤ ❤ ❤ .5] and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt [ ❤ ❤ ❤ ]… Loved the former and enjoyed the latter…                       Sense8 - viewed 3 weeks agoUnbreakable Kimmy Schmidt - viewed 3 weeks ago

Started watching Yong Pal and Death NoteYong-Pal-p2.jpgDeath Note (Japanese Drama)-p1.jpg but haven’t really continued watching ’em.. Will do soon. 😛

Loved Suits, and Fear the Walking Dead is freaking awesome.. Enjoyed the album by Wonder Girls…

That’s it then. Can’t think of anything else..

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Archive for the ‘Owls’ Category

I hear the owls in the distance,

friends who have moved on.

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This morning, amid the rose-red rays of the rising sun

and the sounds of the birds singing it to rise

and the sounds of traffic from a highway not seen but heard

the four owls surround my house and encourage me.

“Go to Red Lake.”

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The owls visit at sunrise.

I don’t know if they are up early or out late.

“Dude, wake up!”

“It’s been a while,” they hoot.

“Get out of bed!”

“Come with us!”

They all cackle.

I call  back to them in Owlish without opening the window or getting out of  bed. I know they can hear me. “It’s good you came by, but I’m sleeping in!”

Startled by my reply, dog jumps on the bed and gives me a sloppy kiss. That’s her way of reassuring herself that I’m okay.

As I sputter and fend her off, I hear a last soft mournful “Aw, man!” fade into the distance outside.

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Open hearts, homes — Local families offer more than just shelter to summer visa workers

Editor’s note: This is part four in a series of stories examining J-1 student visa workers on the Kenai Peninsula.

By Jenny Neyman

Photos courtesy of Tom and Adelle Bearup. Linn, at left, and Isabell, at right, staying with Tom and Adelle Bearup, of Soldotna, have a glamor dress-up slumber party with friends Christine, Micki and Victoria this summer. Linn and Isabell worked at Taco Bell in Soldotna this summer, while their friends worked at Subway in Kenai. The girls, from China, had never had a dress-up party before.

Redoubt Reporter

Once parental protectiveness tendencies kick in, it’s hard to hold them back. That’s what several central Kenai Peninsula families have found as they stepped in to help international exchange youth in the U.S. for the summer on J-1 cultural exchange visas.

The college students pay thousands of dollars to exchange sponsor programs to spend three months working, traveling and experiencing American culture in the U.S. Instead of the life-enriching, educational and enjoyable experience they seek, they often find themselves adrift in the areas to which they are sent, challenged by language and cultural barriers, unused to the climate and way of life in communities much different than their homes, unprepared for the difficulties of living on minimum wages, and without much assistance from the exchange sponsor agencies that are paid to arrange the trips.

On the central Kenai Peninsula, students come from Turkey, Kazakhstan, China and elsewhere. They work at fish-processing plants and fast-food restaurants. And they have been taken in by local families who worry about the students’ well-being and the impression of the U.S. that the students may form.

“We’re Alaskans. We love people. We care about people. We want to reach out to them and want to help where we can. We want them to know American people are giving, loving people, and they open their homes and their hearts to people they don’t even know. We want them to see that,” said Tom Bearup, of Soldotna.

Bearup and his wife, Adelle, took in five Chinese women placed in Soldotna last summer by Spirit Cultural Exchange to work at Taco Bell, and took in two this year. In offering to house the international students, the Bearups, like several other families in the area, have found themselves fulfilling many roles for their summer guests — putting a roof over their heads, food in their mouths and more Alaska-appropriate shoes and clothing on their feet and backs; providing transportation to and from their jobs; being tour guides and translators to heighten their cultural experience; and being a resource in smoothing out the inevitable hiccups they encounter — helping cash checks, book travel arrangements, straighten out paperwork, etc.

In some situations they find themselves going beyond being hosts, chauffeurs or travel guides to acting more like protective parents, and wondering just where that line should be. These are adults, after all — legally old enough to make their own decisions and be accountable for the outcomes. And the hosts didn’t apply for the position, nor are they paid by the exchange program sponsor organizations to look after the students. But once they’ve opened their homes, the families often open their hearts, as well.

“Basically, it’s costing us money to do it, but our hearts are bigger than the money, so what do you do? You’ve got to follow through with it and if we can help, we want to help,” Bearup said. “They’re the future leaders of China. If we can have a cross-cultural experience that is a positive one, then that’s good.”

The Bearups are used to being protective. They’ve got nine kids and 31 grandkids themselves. Bearup is a pastor, a former mayor of Soldotna and has worked in law enforcement. They’ve run a daycare out of their home, and have even considered starting a Christian-based international exchange program for disadvantaged Korean youth wanting to better their lives by attending school in the U.S.

As Bearup puts it, Adelle never knows who he is going to bring home to dinner. So when he heard about the Chinese women working at Taco Bell and living at Kenai Landing last summer, inviting them over for a meal, and then to stay the rest of the summer, wasn’t that out of character for the family.

“We thought it would be good to have a homestyle place for them, rather than a

Linn and Isabell celebrate their 19th birthdays with the Bearups this summer.

hotel like Kenai Landing or something like that. They provide the (housing) service, but there’s not really any growth, there’s not a lot of educational or cultural stuff going on out there,” he said.

The students were paying $20 a night to stay at Kenai Landing, plus paying for food and other living expenses, and cab rides or some other transportation to get back and forth to work, Bearup said.

“The company (Spirit) is not preparing them for Alaska. They have no concept of what is Kenai or what is Soldotna. … They (the students) come here with an expectation of making money and it’s not happening. They come here on a minimum-wage job and have this vision of America being wealthy and no matter where you go everybody’s got gold. They think that working at Taco Bell for minimum wage they’re going to be able to work for three months then be able to go travel around the United States with that little bit of money,” Bearup said.

“They’re not prepared for Soldotna. They have a cultural shock, not only the language and the country, but the physical attributes of Alaska, the ruggedness. Where they come from, there’s millions of people, and there’s public transportation. Spirit needs to understand what our societal issues are here, our living standard, the atmosphere of the summer, the attributes and the negatives of being in the Soldotna-Kenai area. And it’s going to take them coming here to see it. You can’t do it from a desk in New York, or wherever they’re at.”

Spirit is headquartered in Illinois. There are about 60 sponsor organizations accredited with the U.S. State Department to arrange J-1 student cultural exchange visits. According to the State Department, there are 4,415 summer work travel participants in Alaska this year, most often working in fish-processing and fast-food jobs.

Of the programs that send students to the Kenai-Soldotna area, none have local representatives. Students, their employers and the families that volunteer to house the students can call or send emails to the sponsor companies, but don’t deal with anyone in Alaska, much less anyone who knows about life on the Kenai Peninsula — the cost of living, the lack of public transportation and affordable, temporary housing, the distance from Anchorage and the cost of traveling there.

Students are unprepared for those functional realities, and adapt to them with varying degrees of efficiency and maturity. People are different, cultures are different and some students are more self-sufficient than others. The five women the Bearups housed last year were juniors in college and were more mature than the just-graduated-high-school students the Bearups took in this year, he said.

“They knew how to save their money, clean their rooms, take care of things,” Adelle said.

The freshmen, on the other hand, are closer to being kids than adults. In China, where families only have one child, that can mean a somewhat startling lack of experience, by U.S. standards, in caring for themselves.

“They haven’t worked, they don’t do dishes, they don’t cook. Their parents provide everything for them. They come here and they have to all of a sudden cook their own food, find their own transportation,” Adelle said. “I’ve gotten them personal hygiene items, have given them clothes to wear and helped them find shoes because they were always freezing here. The company needs to let them know they need warmer clothing coming here, and they need a list of what it costs to travel somewhere. They don’t realize that Anchorage is so far away, and what it costs to go back and forth.”

The Bearups have tried to create an enriching educational experience for their guests. They hold daily exercise sessions, conduct English classes, take them to see cultural and historic sights, organize fishing and other outdoors excursions, introduce them to local residents, host sleepovers for other international students, discuss U.S. and Alaska culture, history and government, and Adelle has taught them to cook and helped them create their own cookbooks to take back home.

“They come here and they fall in love with Alaska and the Alaska people, but

Isabell, left, and Linn, center, open presents at a party thrown by Tom and Adelle Bearup, of Soldotna, celebrating the girls’ birthday, while the Bearups’ granddaughter, Aubree Schneider, at right, watches.

the problem is, culturally, there isn’t a whole lot going on here, as far as museums and symphonies and that type of thing. We would like to do more with them, but I’m on retirement now so we don’t have the income that I used to have. Just driving my truck can be expensive,” Bearup said. “We would like to take them to Homer and take them to Seward and things like this because our hearts want to let them experience all of Alaska, and unfortunately we’re kind of restricted in that area.”

The students pay $10 a day to help with expenses, and the Bearups give them a place to stay, two to three meals a day, transportation to and from work, and help with whatever else is needed. The Bearups get the sense that the Chinese students they’ve taken in aren’t necessarily from poor families — they are able to afford the $3,000 fee Spirit charges to participate in the J-1 program, as well as pay the travel costs to and from the U.S. The students talk with their parents regularly over Skype, and their families send money if a need arises — like to buy a cell phone. But Bearup said that it doesn’t seem like the students or their parents have a good idea of the cost of living in Soldotna.

“I don’t think they’re so financially strapped, but I think they’re sold an idea that they’re coming here and I don’t think they realize the extent it will cost. Someone has to tell them, to find out what it costs to go to a certain state, like Alaska — this is what it costs for housing here in the summer, this is the cost for food —versus staying in Arizona,” Adelle said.

Is that the responsibility of the sponsor organization, such as Spirit Cultural Exchange? Or the students? Or their parents? If it was one of his kids, Bearup said he would make sure he knew such things.

“I think the parents need to be more proactive and involved, but I say that self-consciously because I don’t know how much they are involved. If it was my child going halfway around the world, I would know where they’re going to be, who they’re going to be with, I would know how much it’s going to cost and set a budget for them to make sure that they have food, make sure they’re not in danger in any fashion,” he said.

He and Adelle put themselves in the parents’ shoes. They stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning to talk to the parents on Skype to reassure them the students are safe and cared for. They’ve arranged places for the students to stay, and tour groups and emergency contacts for when they travel outside of Soldotna before heading home to China.

“If my child went halfway around the world to a foreign country, if I could place them with somebody who is going to be responsible and could help them, it would make me feel a whole lot better. So that’s why we opened our home and our hearts to these girls. We just love them like our own kids,” Bearup said.

Occasionally, the Bearups have to remind themselves they aren’t these students’ parents.

“Our issue is, where is the line for us? These are adult women. They’re over 18. Can we or should we, from a parental point of view, be trying to protect them? It’s a fine line,” he said.

The Chinese students don’t seem as experienced about some things as U.S. women their age would be, Bearup said, like partying and social interactions, for instance. With as many kids and grandkids as the Bearups have, they hold regular birthday parties and include the international students. But then the students get invited to entirely different sorts of parties through co-workers or other people their own age they meet.

“They seem kind of naive to the smoking and drinking and partying. And they’re not used to dating. The girls don’t always seem as mature as some of our girls would be here in the States. It really is not our business, they’re adult kids. But they tell us about some of the parties and some of the things going on that we would not want our own kids to be involved in. Those are temptations that they don’t have over there (in China), necessarily,” Bearup said.

They’ve set some house rules — no smoking or drinking at the house, no boys coming over, no coming in at 4 a.m.

“We had to set them down and say, ‘You’ve got to be careful who you get in a car with, where you’re going to go and if there’s drinking,’ stuff like that. If they’re drinking, that’s their business, but don’t drink and drive home. I’ll come get you. I couldn’t imagine having to tell a parent in China that their kid was killed,” he said.

It’s extra work, it’s extra cost, it’s extra stress caring for these students, none of which the Bearups purposefully signed up for. But at the same time, the students have also met extra love in their lives. Overall, they think the J-1 program could be a good one for all involved, if there was some extra effort made to make sure the participants were adequately prepared and supported for the experience.

“You’re coming out of high school and going to college, naturally their vision is, ‘Oh boy, I’ve got an opportunity to go to the States,” Bearup said. “On the other hand, Adelle and I are torn with two points. We certainly love the cross-cultural experience, but the other side of that is they come here and they’re not as prepared for the world as I would like to see them.”

Filed under community, culture

2 responses to “Open hearts, homes — Local families offer more than just shelter to summer visa workers

  1. Aiviq

    I’ve heard of J-1 workers being sent to Dillingham. I was kind of shocked. If Soldotna seems to far to be sending these kids, what must the experience in Dillingham be like for them?

  2. yes us too

    Blessed are the girls and the Bearup’s..Want to send them to Arizona? We have room :) God Bless you Adele and Tom Love and miss youy

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Red Right 88

In Cleveland, hope dies last

USA’s World Cup run ends too soon, but future is promising

usa loses belgiumWhen a team enters into a tournament format like the World Cup knockout stage, you always know that the next game can be the last one.

But that doesn’t mean it is any easier when the end finally comes.

Such is the case for the U.S. team, which saw its World Cup run end on Tuesday in a 2-1 loss to Belgium.

We try to come to terms with the end, and take a look at what the future may hold, in our latest post at World Soccer Talk.

(Photo courtesy of The Associated Press)

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Hello 2016 CSA Memebers

Hi! I am Mo McKenna. I have worked at Red Wagon Farm for years. In those 6 or more years I have done just about every job there is to do on the Farm; planting, weeding, wash station, greenhouse work, working Market and now I’m blogging for Red Wagon. I’ll also be working at the Google CSA pickup on Monday’s.

Our first pickup went very smoothly. We are off to a great start.

Cute little CSA memeber: Check!

Fantastic CSA Manager, Lauren: Check!

I have blogged previously for the Farm, mostly featuring recipes and ideas for use of the weekly CSA share vegetables. We have built a pretty strong archive of recipes you can see them here .

This year I will add to that archive using our weekly share of vegetables. I will also expand with posts using seasonal vegetables we don’t necessarily grow at our Farm. Vegetables grown at other local farms and easily found at the Market or other Farm Stands, like corn, asparagus, orkra, and much more.

I know lots of you like to preserve the summers harvest, I get lots of questions on food preservation, so I will do some posts on canning, pickling and drying some of our local food.

If you have any questions, comments or want to share any of your own recipes let me know. I want to do anything I can to help with a successful CSA experience for all of you.

Remember, we will have our regular pickup this coming Monday (Memorial Day) at Google.

See you there!

About mo

Leave a comment, ask a question, or make requests for future blogs. We love hearing from you! Thanks for looking at the blog.
This entry was posted in 2016. Bookmark the permalink.


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• No #1 resource for the global ska community
Band Q&A

The Reggae Steady Ska Band Questionnaire No 4 – Prince Perry

Artist’s name: Prince Perry

Active since: 1998

Line-Up: Prince Perry, Mitch King Kong Girio, Brendan Bauer,
Andrew McMullen, James Atten-Godden

Three words that describe your music/performance:
Your favourite socks.

Your van stops in front of a venue. Someone accidentally comes by, sees your equipment and asks about your band. How do you convince her or him to come to your show later?
I offer to buy them a beer.

What’s the most-likely compliment from fans after a show?
“That was so much fun!”. Then I say, “Yes! thank you! Do you have a sister?”

What was the weirdest description of your music that you ever heard or read?
An older fan once told me I look and sound like Jack Teagarden.

What are sure signs that your show has been a success?
Everyone wants to stay and drink…

Have you got any mentors/idols that helped you get your act together, or inspired you?
My mentor is Producer and Singer-songwriter, King Kong Girio. As for inspiration, in ’93 I met original Skatalites, Rolando Alphonso, Tommy McCook, Lloyd Brevett, Lord Tanamo and Lloyd Knibb in California. Rolando gave me two LP records they brought from Jamaica and told me to stay true to my roots. 20 years later Buster Bloodvessel and I went shopping for shorts and he told the shopkeeper I was the new Prince of Ska hahaha.

What do you like more: Performing live or recording in the studio?
I love both but nothing compares to playing live and connecting with the audience.

What does your rehearsal spot look like?
Carpets, lamps, dead keyboards and lots of cords (and chords).

If there was an inscription above your rehearsal room, what should it be?
Turn down the keys!

Which other band is closest to you personally?
The King Kong 4 (King Kong Giro)

What is the most under-rated band in the Reggae Steady Ska scene? (Other than yours)
The King Kong 4.

What’s the best thing about the global Ska community?
Shared values and a commitment to enjoying life.

Were there any moments you wanted to quit? What made you go on?
In 2002 I lost everything, house, wife, car, dog, totally bankrupt. I had to dig basements and eat plain noodles every day. The trustee let me keep two things so I could continue to earn a living; my 1968 Telecaster and a ’78 Lambretta Jet 200. (I told him they were old and worthless…. ). I gave up construction to move to Costa Rica and just surf for a while. That’s when and when I started loving life again.

Your releases so far were …?
Songs About Girls, Winterbeard Records 2009
Whatever You Can Get Away With (EP), Winterboard Records 2010
Love At The End Of The Century, Zebra Libre Records 2011
Here Tomorrow Gone Today, Zebra Libre Records 2013

Three facts that mustn’t be missing in any text about you?
I love the ocean like I love to breathe
My mission in life is to help people see their dream as reality
I like to put things away

What are your next steps?
I want to collaborate and perform with other amazing ska bands and artists.

What’s the best way for fans, friends to stay in contact with you?

or @princeperry on twitter

questionnaire by Reggae Steady Ska and The Ska Music Yearbook

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With his Ska band The Braces (1984-1991, 2000-2006) Joachim Uerschels released three albums for Unicorn, Pork Pie and Mad Butcher Records. He lives in Cologne, Germany as a writer and musician. In 2016, he published his solo debut album “Songbook Vol. II” as Joe ScholesJoe Scholes

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Course Offerings

Course Evaluation Results

Course Details

Fall 2014-2015
ELE 441 / ENE 441   Graded A-F, P/D/F, Audit

Solid-State Physics I

Mansour Shayegan

An introduction to the properties of solids. Theory of free electrons--classical and quantum. Crystal structure and methods of determination. Electron energy levels in a crystal: weak potential and tight-binding limits. Classification of solids--metals, semiconductors and insulators. Types of bonding and cohesion in crystals. Lattice dynamics, phonon spectra and thermal properties of harmonic crystals.

Sample reading list:
Ashcroft & Mermin, Solid State Physics
Kittel, Introduction to Solid State Physics
Ziman, The Theory of Solids

Reading/Writing assignments:
Weekly reading and homework assignments.

Mid Term Exam - 30%
Final Exam - 50%
Problem set(s) - 20%

Other Requirements:
Course is required for concentrators
Not Open to Freshmen.

Prerequisites and Restrictions:
ELE 342 or PHY 208 and PHY 305 or Permission Of Instructor..

Schedule/Classroom assignment:

Class numberSectionTimeDaysRoomEnrollmentStatus
22158 L01 11:00 am - 12:20 pm M W F   Engineering Quad B-Wing   B205   Enrolled:21 Limit:40


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    Kabul police chief quits amid rising militant violence

    General Zahir Zahir gave no reason for his resignation

    Baku. 30 November. REPORT.AZ/ Kabul's police chief has resigned, following a surge in attacks by Afghan militants on foreigners in the city over the past two weeks, informs Report citing BBC.

    General Zahir Zahir gave no reason for his resignation, his spokesman said.

    Three South Africans were killed in a Taliban attack on a compound used by a US-based charity on Saturday, the third such attack in the past 10 days.

    President Ashraf Ghani, who took power in September, has vowed to bring peace after decades of conflict.

    There's been a clear pattern to the Taliban attacks of the past two weeks in the capital. Most have targeted foreigners, military or civilian, whenever and wherever possible.

    At first it was the big, heavily fortified compounds on the Jalalabad road where many foreigners live and work, which came under attack. But the militants failed to get inside.

    More recently the suicide bombers and gunmen have gone after softer targets, such as the aid agency building which was stormed on Saturday evening leaving three South Africans dead. It had very little protection.

    With many Afghans also killed and injured in this spate of attacks, there is an uneasy atmosphere in the capital with people wondering who or what will be targeted next.

    It is a set-back for President Ghani who has promised to restore peace to the country. It is also embarrassing for the police, military and intelligence agencies which seem incapable of disrupting the plans of the Taliban suicide bombers.

    For now, it's the capital's police chief who seems to have paid the price for this security failure, but there must be other senior officials who bear responsibility.

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    6 Turkish soldiers wounded in Syria

    They were placed in a state hospital in the Turkish town of Kilis

    Baku. 8 December. REPORT.AZ/ 6 soldiers of Turkish Armed Forces attending  'Fırat Kalkanı'(Euphrates Shield) operation were wounded in al-Bab district of Syria.

    Report informs citing Hürriyet daily, wounded soldiers were placed in state hospital in Turkish town of Kilis.

    According to information, on 107th day of 'Fırat Kalkanı' operation, Turkish soldiers were attacked during antiterrorist operation in al-Bab.

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