The Class

Last night I saw The Class at Coolidge Corner. The film follows a year in the life of a Paris high school French class. The students are a mix of native Parisiens and immigrants, some of whom are bright while others struggle. It becomes clear early on that the students in this school are not from the privileged part of Paris.

Watching the film was exhausting, but in a good way. I felt immersed in the class's daily lessons during which the students bombarded their teacher, Mr. Marin, with questions, wisecracks, and the usual adolescent insolence, apathy, and high spirits. The challenges were non-stop. The students were at times moody, angry, and generous. While most of the film was focused on the students in the classroom, there were scenes depicting the teachers discussing each student's progress or lack of and how much or how little discipline to impose.

Overall, it was a very good film, and showed the challenges an urban high school faces educating students who are not from wealthy or comfortably middle class families, and who may be immigrants struggling to fit in a country whose culture doesn't reflect their lives.

Sweet vermouth

For the past month or so I've been trying to make myself the perfect Manhattan. This means that I've been working with sweet vermouth. The first one I bought, Noilly Prat, was far to heavy for me, and had a strange taste to it. Plus, the smell reminds me of a mushroom sauce. I like mushrooms, but I don't want to drink them.

The second is the old standby, Martini & Rossi. It's lighter than the Noilly, and I like it better, but it still had a slightly overpowering taste that I didn't like. But I would definitely use it over the Noilly Prat.

Today I treated myself and bought a bottle of Vya sweet vermouth from Brix. I'd heard it was very good, if expensive. I bought a 750 ml bottle for $25. When I got home I sampled it. Oh. My. Goodness. It is heavenly. It's light, but flavorful, and not too sweet. I tried it in a Manhattan, and it turned out well. Unlike the Manhattans with the othe two vermouths, I thought this one had a touch too much rye. Because the Vya is so good, you can use more of it in a Manhattan than the others.

I think the Noilly Prat will be relegated to a cooking vermouth, the Martini & Rossi to an every day vermouth, and the Vya will be the sweet vermouth of choice.

If I start experimenting with dry martnis I will just go straight for the Vya dry vermouth. I doubt I'll even bother with Noilly Prat or Martini & Rossi.

Crackberry withdrawal - day 7

My replacement battery arrived today. Excited, I opened the package and placed the battery in my phone, hoping some magic would occur and the Pearl would spring to life. It did not. I plugged the phone in to the charger and.... nothing.

My Blackberry Pearl is dead Dead DEAD!

I find this extremely annoying. The phone is less than one year old! And now it is a paper weight. I know the warranty will cover it, but I am annoyed that it should have died this quickly. I'm also annoyed at the fact I will probably have to wait for a replacement phone. I'm assuming the warranty will require my servicer to ship the phone off for repair. Ideally it'd be nice if I could walk in tomorrow, give them the dead phone, and they just hand me a new one as a replacement. But, somehow I doubt that will happen. Instead, I will probably spend another week living life as I did before I had a smartphone, which means no one's e-mail or snail mail addresses at my finger tips, no ability to look things up on the web when I'm out, and no ability to snap a quick picture of something. At least I have my sim card, so I can still call people on their cell phones. Still, not quite the same. Oh, and not only does the loaner phone lack a calendar function, there's no calculator. So I'm back to figuring out tax and tip in my head, which means I am likely to over tip since I'm not good at math in my head.

*sigh*

I hate to admit it, but maybe I should have gotten an iPhone and eaten the more expensive AT&T plan, as well as put up with a larger, heavier phone.

A French 28 Derivation

Last night I made a new cocktail derived from the French 28, a champagne cocktail from the restaurant 28 Degrees. Lacking champagne, I cut that out of the mix. I also wasn't in the mood for Chambord, so I used grenadine instead. And, since I didn't have any lemons I used lime juice.

2 oz Bombay Sapphire gin
1 oz Cointreau
0.5 oz grenadine
0.5 oz lime juice

The cocktail had a mellow flavor, maybe because I used Bombay Sapphire instead of Plymouth. Using the grenadine instead of the Chambord cuts down the alcohol content but maintains the sweetness. While the cocktail had a sweet and sour tartness, it was slightly more sweet, but that might be because I used a touch more grenadine than 0.5 oz.

I did a quick search for cocktails made with these ingredients and I didn't find any, so maybe I have another cocktail to name. How about a Pink Sapphire? (But I guess that only works if it's always made with Bombay Sapphire.)

Brandy Plum Pie

A few months ago, when you could still find plums, I made a brandy plum pie using the recipe from Better Homes & Gardens New Cook Book (11th edition). It turned out very well, and you could taste the brandy, but it didn't overpower the pie.

Ingredients:

Crumb topping:
1/2 Cup flour
1/2 Cup packed brown sugar
3 Tbl butter

Using a fork or knife mix the ingredients by cutting the butter into the flour and sugar. Mix until the butter is blended and the the texture is, well, crumbly.

Filling:
3/4 Cup packed brown sugar
1/4 Cup flour
1/4 Cup brandy
1/8 tsp nutmeg
4 Cups sliced and pitted plums (1.75 pounds)

Extra topping:
1/3 Cup chopped almonds or pecans

Mix the filling ingredients together in a bowl, cover, and let sit while you make the pie dough. This will give the ingredients time to blend together, especially the brandy!

Make enough pie dough for a single crust pie. (I used the recipe from the Fanny Farmer Cook Book.) Line the pie pan with the rolled out dough.

Pour the filling into the pie shell. Sprinkle the crumb topping on top. Sprinkle the chopped nuts on the pie.

Cover the edge of the crust with aluminum foil to prevent the crust from burning. Do NOT cover the entire pie - just the edge. Place the pie in an oven pre-heated to 375 and bake for 25 minutes. After 25 minutes, remove the foil and bake the pie for another 20-25 minutes until the top is golden.


My guess is the extra baking time to is to allow the alcohol to cook out. When I made the pie I did two things differently than in the recipe. I mixed the filling first (as indicated here) to allow the brandy to soak in, and I made an error and use 1/3 cup of brandy instead of 1/4 cup. I don't think it caused any harm.

Crackberry withdrawal - day 4

On Tuesday my Blackberry died. It was on with a fully charge battery was fully when the device shut off and refused to turn back on. I'm currently waiting for a new battery from RIM, and hoping that a new battery is all I will need. In the meantime I have a loaner phone from my carrier.

I would have thought that lack of e-mail would be the biggest issue. For the first day or two, it was odd not to be able to check e-mail throughout the day. However, the biggest inconvenience so far has been the lack of a calendar. I would make plans to do something and think, "Oh, I'll put that in my calendar," before realizing that I couldn't. The loaner phone has no calendar.

I didn't realize just how dependent I'd become on having a smartphone until the Blackberry died. Now that I've become more forgetful, having a PDA that reminds when to do stuff and where to go has been extremely helpful. And now that I don't have one I feel a little lost. Sad, but true.

Drinks at the Ritz-Carlton, Boston Common

Twice in two weeks I've stopped in at the Ritz-Carlton on the Boston Common for drinks. As you might expect at a posh hotel, everyone was extremely nice, and the atmosphere was upscale but laid back.

On the first visit, which was last week, my friend and I went into the restaurant, JER-NE. We started with dessert wines. Sadly, I don't remember the names of them, but his was the better of the two and was from South Africa. I think it was second or third on the list. It was sweet, and had a nice body to it, but wasn't overpowering. For our second drink we each tried a port. Mine was the Dow 5 Year Reserve*. He had the Sandeman. We agreed that mine was better. Once again, it was sweeter, and fuller tasting than the Sandeman.

The second visit was tonight, with a different friend. We sat in the lobby where it was quieter. She got the blackberry mojito, which was sweet with a hint of the rum. I ordered the Rockwell Classic, made with Hendrick's gin, simple syrup, and lime (possibly lemon if my memory is faulty), and served in a salt rimmed glass. I liked the drink, but others may find it too sweet and lacking enough gin taste. The salt helped counteract the sweetness. The drink also had a light touch. The only problem I found with it is that some salt had sunk to the bottom of the glass, making the last sip salty. I liked the saltiness, but I'm not sure I wanted to finish the drink that way.

*I'm fairly certain it was a 5 year reserve, but it was a week ago so my memory might be off. There were two Dows, and I got the younger of them.

I guess it's better than raising the postage rate, maybe

Not only is print media getting hit by the rise of the internet, but so is the US Mail:

"WASHINGTON - Worsening economic conditions and the changing habits of Americans are threatening to do to the US Postal Service what neither snow, nor rain, nor gloom of night could: stop delivery of the mail, at least by one day each week."  (Full article here)

Personally, I hate "no mail" days. I like checking the mail box M-Sat, but with e-mail, online magazines, and online bill pay, I have decreased the amount of mail I send, so it seems reasonable to consider cutting back on delivery. It just seems a little sad that 6 day mail delivery might go away.

Out of Town News to stay... for now

The Boston Globe reported that Out of Town News in Harvard Square will NOT be going out of business. Some good news for those of us who wanted the landmark to stay. But, the bigger question is, for how long will Out of Town News remain in business given the declining sales in newspapers, etc.? Will this reprieve last? As much as I would like Out of Town to remain, I know they have an uphill battle. With the internet providing instant news from wherever how much demand is there for buying magazines and newspapers both local and from around the world?

Cambridge 1

I had dinner at Cambridge 1 on Church St in Harvard Square, a short walk from First Parish UU and the Church St exit of the T. It's one of my favorite places to get pizza. They serve flat bread pizza with toppings that range from regular (tomatoes, basil, cheese) to more interesting (lobster, corn, scallions). They also have microbrews if you want beer with your pizza.

Feeling budget conscious, I skipped the lobster pizza, a very delicious treat, and got the potato pizza - potatoes, fontina, parmesan, romano, rosemary, and garlic. No tomatoes or tomato sauce. A half pizza should feed one person, and the half portion of the potato pizza costs $8. The potatoes on the pizza are both thinly sliced and mashed. The cheese give it a nice salty taste, and there's a touch of butter in the pizza's flavor. I don't know if they actually use butter or another oil that mixes with everything else to give a buttery taste.

With my food I had a Bellini - Prosecco with peach puree. It was dry with a hint of peaches. Overall, it was pleasant, but I think I would have liked it a little sweeter and with a stronger peach taste.

Grenadine

Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker

- Ogden Nash

With grenadine, you can have BOTH your candy and your liquor. Last night I made grenadine using 2 cups of pomegranate juice and 2 cups sugar. I mixed them over high heat until the sugar was completely dissolved. I then let it cool before putting in the refrigerator.

Homemade grenadine makes a really nice, light syrup. I imagine it would go well on ice cream and waffles. I already know it goes well on French toast since I tried that at friend's a few months ago.

Keeping lettuce fresh

A few posts ago I wrote about Boston lettuce being packaged with its roots as a way to keep it fresh longer. It's working. But, you can't always get a head of lettuce attached to its roots. And Boston lettuce can be pricey. What if I just want some romaine or red leaf? Luckily, Jeremy at Generation X Finance posted his method for keeping lettuce fresh for a week. I was very excited to see this since I don't eat salad precisely because the lettuce usually goes bad before I've finished it. The secret is keeping moisture away from the leaves.

Working storage outside COBOL

As I was reviewing a Unix Korn shell script I wrote a few years ago I noticed I'd commented the variable declarations as "Working Storage." This is what that section would be called in COBOL, a language I suspect fewer and fewer people use nowadays. Odds are a younger programmer who's never worked on a mainframe would see that comment and think, "Huh?"

In the future I should probably use a more universal term, like "Variables," otherwise I'm just making myself look old and uncool. Then again, maybe not. There might be some cool points to be gained in knowing a legacy technology. After all, it's still impressive and increasingly rare to come across someone who can read a hex dump with his or her own eyes.

Free soup at Falafel King

Falafel King now gives free soup with meals. I ordered a hummus sandwich and was initially miffed I didn't get my free falafel. But, my displeasure at missing out on a tasty falafel disappeared when I was asked which soup I wanted. Not only was I getting free soup, but I had a choice of four kinds! I went with the lentil soup, which has some spiciness to it.

Not bad for $5.

Grape Nehi

1 part gin (original calls for vodka, but I used gin instead)
1 part Chambord
1 part lemon juice

Shake with crushed ice. Strain into glass.

This is not Radar O'Reilly's Grape Nehi. This is more like Hawkeye Pierce's Nehi. Although Hawkeye would have used more gin, or vodka, or whatever lighter fluid they distilled in The Swamp.

Overall, it's a pleasant drink, but a touch too sweet. And it felt like it was missing something, maybe some fizz. Or maybe it would be better if I swapped out the Chambord for real grape juice.

As an aside, I have had Grape Nehi soda. When I was a young teen one summer I worked at a place that solde grape nehi in the vending machine, alongside Coca Cola in the old style bottles. I really enjoyed it. That summer was the only time I ever saw Grape Nehi.