Category: new!

How to make a perfect cake for Valentine’s Day?

Well, if you follow this Heart Cake Tutorial from the i am baker blog, you could end up with something as beautiful as this:

How DO you get the heart in there? Well, it is a very clever thing indeed, but not too difficult. (Well, not too difficult if you are used to baking cakes.) Go to the site and see.

The world is getting heavier – and that is not necessarily bad

The Washington Post has a great interactive graphic showing how the “world” is gaining weight since the 1980s. (Weight of the world: Change in the world’s BMI since 1980 | The Washington Post). As they say:

With a few exceptions, the average body mass index in most countries has risen since 1980, according to a project that tracked risk factors for heart disease and stroke in 199 countries over 28 years

Some thoughts on that:

  • Overall the average age of the world is getting older. Older people will normally be heavier than younger people. Aging may have something to do with weight gain.
  • In the wealthier parts of the world, gaining weight could be seen as a sign of a poor diet overall. However, for the poorer parts of the world, gaining weight could be a sign of a better diet. Gaining weight is not necessarily bad.
  • In Europe, the overall weight gain is less. Mind you, they also tend to be overweight. This could be a sign that in developed parts of the world, there is an effort to cut back.

I recommend you check it out. It is quite good.

What is a fair price for Internet service in Canada

The Globe and Mail‘s Hugh Thompson has an excellent run down on this. The key quote from the article:

Assuming an inflated cost of 10 cents per gigabyte, it means that Bell, Shaw and Rogers are charging consumers between 10 and 50 times what it costs them to deliver data. This on top of their regular monthly Internet pricing! While I agree that heavy users should be prepared to pay more once they have reached their bandwidth caps, a fair price would be much closer to 10 cents per GB than the inflated $1-to-$5-per-gigabyte charge sanctioned by the CRTC.

I highly recommend the article: great analysis and reporting.

The value of people over 50

Dan Palotta at hbr.org has a good blog post on The Value of People Over 50 within organizations. It is a good read, as are the comments. Highly recommended.

My general take is that at every age, there are benefits and drawbacks to employees. Furthermore, the assumptions people make about employees and age are based often on assumptions or worse, prejudice. People should find out what it is that motivates employees, regardless of their age, and work with that to get the best out of them, regardless of how old – or young – they are.

You are wonderful

I love this image: the phrase is simple and lovely and it was created from newsprint and pasted on rusted metal. Be we ever so rusted and tarnished, we are also wonderful in our own way.

I stole this from the always inspiring, oliveloaf design blog. It is wonderful too, and I recommend you go there and see.

The cost and benefit of the World Economic Forum in Davos

Andrew Ross Sorkin has a rundown of the various costs that come along with attending the annual meet and great at the W.E.F. (A Hefty Price for Entry to Davos – NYTimes.com). While the list of costs are long, the article implies the benefits are few. The impression I get is that Davos is like any other conference, just with more rich and powerful people. You still have the challenges anyone has with networking at such an event. Sometimes it goes really well and it is completely worthwhile. More often you think: that was fun, but what did I accomplish?

I also would not be surprised if China or Brazil or India decides to eventually have their own annual conference outside of Europe. Times are changing. We’ll see.

 

Speaking of Top Hats

Here’s Fred Astaire peforming Top Hat, White Tie and Tails. He makes wearing a top hat seem as casual as you or I wearing  a T shirt.

And as good as that is, I think his Top Hat performance below is stunning and arguably beats the above. In the following, it’s not enough for him to tap dance with two legs: the cane becomes a third leg, adding additional complexity. Plus the magic of the rising cane and the mirrored images all add up to an astounding performance.

 Fred Astaire – Puttin’ On the Ritz

P.S. Watch how he moves the camera to his left in order for the crew to presumably switch canes with one attached to a string that can be elevated….magic!

P.S.S. Wikipedia has a good compare and contrast of these two numbers here.

The Top Hat

I believed that the top hat died off at the beginning of the 20th century. It turns out that, at least for very formal occasions like Inauguration Attire, the top hat still was worn by no less than President Kennedy in the early 1960s. (Then it died off. But still, that is quite remarkable.)

Here is Kennedy and Eisenhower and the former’s inauguration. You can also see men in the background wearing less formal hats. By the 1960s, however, the only hats you would see on men would be informal caps. The notion of formal headwear for most men ended here.

Why did Goldman Sachs recently restrict Americans from participating in its Facebook offering?

John Cassidy over at The New Yorker has a great summary of the story, as well as a castigation of the GS senior management. Highly recommended. The best quote and summary of the situation is this:

The fact remains that Goldman, in attempting to set up a quasi-public market for Facebook’s stock prior to an I.P.O., is, to put it kindly, stretching the securities laws to their limit.

The end of the old money and the creation of the new money


You might think, reading this: Now at Starbucks: Buy a Latte By Waving Your Phone – NYTimes.com, how is this all that different? Isn’t it just another form of gift card? As for now it is. But what is happening to money is twofold. One, the means to produce money is being widely distributed. Once you needed institutions to manage and create money: governments and banks. Then corporations came up with the means of creating money using their own credit companies. Now smaller and smaller companies will be able to create money using apps like this. Two,the money is now digital. It is not dependent on paper currency or credit cards with smart technology: it is digital. And once it is digital, you will eventually see developers coming up with exchanges and other ways to digitally transform that money into other things, including more money.

The money supply is already alot more complicated than it was decades ago. It is going to get even more so. Welcome to the new money.

(Image from the nytimes.com)

The maturing of blogging – or what it takes to blog in the year 2011

Blogging is easy. Being successful at blogging is not, as this article highlights: Bloggers quitting what they call a demanding task with few rewards | Business Of Life | Crain’s Chicago Business. Let me rephrase that: if success with blogging is reaching a large audience, then blogging will be very difficult for you. However, if you are like me, and are happy to share things you know and discover and is happy when anyone reads it, then blogging is easy and you will be very successful indeed.

To be successful, you need the right goals.

Pesto Vinaigrette from Canadian Living: a great partner for whatever you are grilling

I highly recommend this Pesto Vinaigrette recipe from Canadian Living. I used it with beef brochettes tonight, but really you can use it with lots and lots of things. For this recipe, from my Canadian Living’s Best Barbecue book,  you will need:

  • 1 lb / 500 g of sirloin steak (although any cut that does not requiring simmering will do)
  • 1 red onion (or regular or spanish, though red grills up nicely)
  • 2 peppers (e.g. 1 red and 1 green)
  • 1 small eggplant
  • 12 mushroom caps
  • olive oil
  • and of course the pesto vinaigrette
  1. Now with the steak and the vegetables you are going to make your brochettes. Cut the beef into cubes and then cut the vegetables so they are roughly the same size.
  2. Thread the meat and veggies on skewers, alternating them any way you like.
  3. Brush the brochettes with some oil and let sit for 30 minutes outside your fridge. You don’t have to, but the result will be better if you do.
  4. In the meantime, fire up your grill to a high heat.
  5. After the 30 minutes is up, brush the vinaigrette over the brochettes and grill them for 12 to 14 minutes until the beef is medium rare and the veggies are tender crisp.
  6. All the while you are grilling them, brush more vinaigrette over them to intensify the  flavour and prevent them from drying out.
  7. Take them off the grill, let them stand for 5 minutes until a foil covered plate, then salt and pepper them and serve.

So that’s the recipe. You don’t have to use steak: all kinds of meat will work with this. Perhaps even salmon or a full flavoured, steak-like fish. Or veggie only would be great too. Likewise, if you don’t like eggplant, replace it with zucchini or more mushrooms, etc. Try to pick something that grills well with those other vegetables. Or if you live for steak, add more steak.

If you can get fresh basil, then you are in business. However, it is not always easy to get in winter. In a pinch, you can fall back on dried basil and you will still get that basil flavour. (If after you make it with the dried basil, you find it isn’t strong enough, slowly add more dried basil to taste.)

I boiled some fingerling potatoes while this was going and drained them when they had softened but weren’t mushy, roughly 10 minutes or so. (Test them with a fork to see they are done). I had some left over vinaigrette which I mixed into some mayo, then I tossed the pesto-mayo combo with the potatoes and some bite sized pieces of romaine lettuce  bef0re serving them on them side. Other waxy potatoes, chunks of tomato (not too wet), cooked green beans, cooked peas, are also vegetables that would work. You could also have rice or couscous or a side salad, too and stir some of the pesto in to your taste. Or remove the pieces from the skewers and serve in a warm pita. Likewise you could chop up some lettuce and wrap everything in a warmed tortilla.

This dish has alot of flavour. The recipe is called provencal beef brochettes, so a good sturdy and rustic red like a Côtes du Rhône or Côtes du Rhône Villages would work well, as would a Côtes de Provence. I’m a big fan of wines from the Minervois appellation and I think that would also work. Canadian winemakers use alot of baco noir, and I think that would be great. Chianti or sangiovese or any hearty Italian red would hit the spot, as would rich reds from warm climates like Spain, Southern California or Australia. Beer and steak also are a great match, and “red” beers I think would go well with this, as would any beer with some bite. Finally, a great sparkling water or an acidic cola would be a refreshing drink for those who prefer not to have alcohol.

If you are lucky and you have some vinaigrette left, you could also toss them with recently cooked pasta to make a tasty pasta salad. Even better, if you have some leftover veggies and steak, add that to it.

There are lots of great BBQ sauces and salsas to add to grilled food. This pesto vinaigrette is a nice break from all that, and the short amount of time it takes to make — it took me around 5 minutes — is very much worth it.

P.S. Make sure you add 3 (or 4 or 5!) cloves of garlic to this. It makes a big difference. Same for the tsp of salt.
P.S.S. You don’t need a food processor: I used an old blender and it worked great. And if you are good with chopping and don’t mind it chunky, you could get by with just a knife and a bowl to blend it in.
P.S.S.S. If you are going with steak, sirloin is a good choice. It is relatively not too expensive, and the pesto will overwhelm better cuts. Save the better cuts for a simple preparation (e.g. a light dusting of pepper and salt at the end, or perhaps a flavoured butter).