Just South

We walked up the hill together, not sure-footedly but dignified nonetheless (I guess). It was our time, the world had been paused and we were about to shock it to speed. As the hill in front of us receded, the gigantic Carolina colonial crested on the horizon as the back of a young man's head emerges from the bottom of a young lady's dress. Simple brown birds chirped and from the gang's view, all was symmetrical, which is a vital detail. Two of us were like me, and the other two were girls. There is odd symmetricality around odd numbers of things, you get a whole median. We stood in front of the large white house and chewed on some dehydrated fungi.

I thought about my new gadgets. She thought about her long-lost love. He dreamt of the day it would be ok. Four eyes followed a purple bug. Great lengths of rope will burn more quickly if they're all bundled together. So we entered the house and marched to the living room. Joanna saw all these little ants on the ground so she ran to the kitchen. Bill put his fingers between his belt and his trousers and wiggled them around. I walked to the window and tried to lie down on the sill but I was too long or something. Anyway the view of the Caribbean was magnificent. I saw all these exotic fruits and a man wearing a bumblebee costume trying to pollenate the flowers (but they had already been pollenated! that's like using a magnifying glass on a tray of grilled cheese sandwiches, Jessie thought.) And speaking of reproduction, Robert forgot about his taxes and started thinking about taking deep breaths of magic vapor. As Jessie was pinning her socks to the hardwood floor, Joanna came back from the kitchen and poured out several gallons of frozen peas. One of the peas rolled into Jessie's sock so I said, "Hey guys, do you think I could get my face on Mount Rushmore?"

And no one seemed to answer me. The day grew warm, the planets moved and the Earth spun. Robert rubbed the back of his arm against Jessie's side, trying to get rich quick, and I jumped awkwardly from the armchair to the coffee table. They decorated this house really nicely, Joanna observed as she chewed on some peas and some frost collected on the sides of her mouth. Bill's wrists red, he said "sing song about the freedom and how nice things are." So we all gathered in the center of the room, socks greened with pea shells, and put our arms around each other, but Robert accidentally punched me in the mouth but I laughed really hard and told him that when the fridge door closes, the light goes off, but I'll always love you, Joanna. Joanna looked at me intensely and thought, "wait, bald eagles aren't actually bald." For a brief minute we all pondered what had just happened, and shrugged it all off, chalking it up to the beautiful day and all the books on the shelves in the living room.

Jessie started taking those books off the shelves to read all of them. I wished Robert hadn't started throwing those mints as hard as he could against the wall. I made Bill and Joanna some Hawaiian punch but Bill looked down and showed me that he had already fixed himself a glass. Joanna walked to the record player, picked it up, and carried it over to Jessie. She reciprocated by placing a book entitled "On Another Chance" on top of the record player. Robert apologized for accidentally punching me in the mouth, I said, "Listen man, we're all from different backgrounds. We are all unique, every footprint and fingerprint is unique. We are so unique. The differences between us and other usses are so big. I am unique from Bill, and Bill is unique from everyone. Do you guys see what I mean?"

I think Joanna fell asleep. I took some curtain and rendered a red inkblot drawing of her sleeping, sometimes I caressed her forehead and hair. Bill looked at me and said, "all the Blackhawks! all the Blackhawks!" and Robert agreed. Jessie put one pea in the bookshelves for each book she had removed, it was beautiful. When Joanna came to we were all sleeping, so she stepped out onto that beautiful front porch. The grass on the hill sat still and these simple brown birds flew back and forth slowly. I had a dream with so much cheese in it and I remember that, in the dream, I was so grateful it wasn't Swiss because of the holes! Joanna had found a basket and now it was covered with leaves. She woke me and Bill up and asked for help. We obliged.

Things really took a turn for the worst when Robert started fighting with Jessie. He called her a "cunt" at one point and we stopped scalping the hummingbirds and offered to help. Jessie said it was too late and that something might be burning in the kitchen. We all walked into the kitchen and stared at Robert on the way. She was right, Bill had turned the oven on when he was tying rope around all the knobs in the house, we didn't want to see what had burnt so we just turned the dial and exhaled deeply. Robert hadn't followed us into the kitchen, in fact, we didn't see him when we returned to the living room. I cleared my throat.

"I've never been a pretzel, and I've never gone para-sailing, does that make me a criminal?" Jessie and Bill shook their heads. Joanna looked down. "Which is why, since you only live once, and since Robert is gone now, we should maybe get to know each other a little better." I don't know where I found the courage to suggest such a thing, but I did, and thankfully (I guess), it mostly blew over.

No Flowers

I would like the cross-section of a piece of Sicilian Easter pie, taganu d'aragona, as a tattoo on my arm, and I'd like to have a stained old piece of parchment paper with the recipe. When I make mini-quartered ones to test it out next spring, I'm going to substitute a (slightly) more common sheep's milk cheese, like caciocavallo. I'm sure I'll make the meatballs too tough, so I'll try not to. I'm probably going to use ditali instead of rigatoni because I'd rather fall from a green awning on a quaint little cobblestone sidestreet trying to fix a gutter. The ice from the winter made it that way, screamed an old aunt. Everyone rushed around holding towels. Rosa knocked over a wooden chair as she lunged for a box of bandages. A few jars of lentils spilled out onto the floor. One of them fell off the table and shattered. All the men tried to straighten me out on the ground, it made sense I guess.

I had broken my neck though, so in some ways bandages and a makeshift gurney really didn't help. All the blood from my heart gushed into places blood doesn't belong in the human neck because a couple vertebrae had punctured a major artery and tore half a dozen muscles and fat tissue. I coughed and squirmed unconsciously, and my blood started to trickle onto the street. At first it filed dutifully around each stone in the recessed paths that outline each stone. After a few seconds the blood poured over onto the (mostly) smooth surface of the cobblestones. I have B negative blood, and I don't recall but I don't think blood type affects the color of blood, it's probably all the oxyhemoglobularization and whatnot.

My brain let me think of a few things as I lay there about to die. For one, it let me think about the situation, which I quickly accessed as quite bad. Under less severe circumstances, I think the pain and the realization would've knocked me out or caused me to lose control of my bladder. But this was a difficult time. I had about twenty seconds of thoughts before I passed. As I mentioned, I spent the first twelve seconds panicking about all the blood and the frantic people and the feeling of complete detachment from everything below my chin. In retrospect it was foolish to spend 60% of the rest of my life worrying about dying. I mean I think 10-15% would've been a more reasonable portion.

That way, I could've used nine whole seconds thinking about [my most basic pleasures: soup, egg sandwiches, listening to loud music, gingerbread lattes, relaxing with [the golden girl of my dreams], etc.]. Then! I could've used about three seconds to think about things I've never done, like climb Mt. Everest, watch Star Wars, figure out why people believe that soccer is fun, or take a picture with Bruce/Rafa/Jamie/Dave.

I don't really know how the last five seconds would play out. I don't think you can plan that. My guess would be that I'd think something idiotic like, "hey I never gave so and so a chance." Or, "Rosa is so stupid what is that stupid towel going to do my backbone is sticking out of my shoulder." Or, "Dear God, please send me to heaven even though I [the big sins]."

I'm a big fan of "what went on while" another event happened. I guess it's a little ironic. That presupposes that I would've described something like, ahem, then the blood trickled down the small street in the direction of the coast, where [XX] and [XY] embraced serenely.

I should take this out now. It's almost ready.

The Stories Are All True!

I love this sentiment:
Ma nooooo !!! L'uovo lo devi far cuocere almeno un pochetto... :(
Peccato perchè sarebbe stata veramente ottima...
Manca poco dai :)

And this one:


These pages are brilliant:

http://www.thepauperedchef.com/2007/03/pasta_carbonara.html
http://www.gennarino.org/carbonaraen.html


My take on carbonara:
There's not much to debate about carbonara having something to do with coal in Italy around the world wars in the 20th century. It was either a dish that became popular within coal-miner communities and/or a dish that reminded the Italians of coal miners. The word's root is definitely "coal," and "alla carbonara" means "in the style of the coal miners."

Some say that the black specks of pepper look like coal, thus the name. Others say coal miners got bacon from the Allied troops as they rolled up the Italian peninsula in WWII. Others conflate the two theories, and I'm down with that too.

I appreciate the spirit of the dish on many levels. First of all, it's one of those great peasant concoctions that carries with it all kinds of dignity and innocence and simplicity, and I eat that stuff right up. It's also quite challenging to get just right. For a pasta recipe with only four ingredients, this is a really tough one to pull off. Plus, my formative years in carbonara-making include late-night weekends in college and that's always a pleasant nostalgia.

I've made it for as many as ten people and I've made it a ton on my own. I've made it with bacon and pancetta and guanciale. I've made it with all different types of onions. I've made it with sweet sausage, with deep-fried zucchini, with peas, with scallions, with chives, with arugula, with asparagus, etc.

Anyone who serves you pasta, pork, and egg with cream is not serving you carbonara (this sentiment is repeated all over the Internet, as it should be). Carbonara is pink, yellow, and black.

Steve's Spaghetti Carbonara
Properly serves 4
Serves 3 if you're a close friend of mine

1 lb. bacon, diced a thumb's width at a time
2/3 lb. spaghetti
1 egg per serving

salt
black pepper
grated pecorino romano
extra-virgin olive oil

1. Fill pot with water, salt aggressively, transfer to stove on high heat.
2. Bring water to a boil, drop in the pasta, stir immediately.

3. Over medium heat, place bacon in a large pan with a little olive oil, stir occasionally.
4. Once the bacon looks a little crispy on the edges, turn the heat to its lowest.

5. Meanwhile, separate the eggs, keeping the yolks whole in one small mixing bowl, and letting the whites fall to the bottom of each serving bowl. Season the whites with coarse salt, black pepper, and pecorino.

6. Once the pasta has cooked about 2 minutes less than the package instructions, crank the heat in the bacon pan to high. Begin transferring the spaghetti to the bacon pan using tongs. Stir briskly, flip it around, stir some more. Distribute the spaghetti and bacon to the serving bowls, create a small nest in the center of the spaghetti in each bowl, and drop a yolk in it.

7. Quickly top with a shower of black pepper, a little grated cheese, and a splash of olive oil.
8. Instruct your guests to stir the yolk into their bowls, and enjoy!

Some words on my recipe (from original post):
I use bacon because it's the easiest to get and because it's delicious. It's much better with thick chunks of pancetta, and it's absolutely majestic, and truest to the original dish, with guanciale (pig's jowl/cheek meat).

The egg will cook, I promise. The water is boiling at 200+ degrees, and the pasta is well above 160 degrees (the federally recommended temperature for cooking "egg dishes"). You're taking a single yolk, breaking it up, and mixing it with boiling water and strands of piping hot noodles, it's going to cook! Also, this is why you use tongs to take the spaghetti out of the water - so you reserve some of that delicious boiling water.

You need a big saute pan/skillet for this operation. If the pan with the bacon is heaped up in more than one layer, it will just steam cooked and you'll lose the layer of flavor that comes from slightly browned meat. Consider cooking the bacon in batches if necessary.

I got the egg yolk nest idea from Mario Batali, and it really works the best. I always used to whip up some eggs and then pour it on top of everyone's dish at the end, but this often left egg yolk soup at the bottom of the dish and it's really easy to overcook the eggs this way. The egg yolk nest is really impressive and captures the spirit of the dish wonderfully.

This ratio of pasta-to-pork involves the absolute smallest acceptable quantity of pork. Any less pork (or any more pasta) will yield a dry-heaving mass of carbs and cheese - not ideal.

More words about the recipe (updated 4/8/09):
I had the great fortune of preparing this recipe in Italy, with ingredients from an Italian market. I bought great eggs, spaghetti, olive oil, fresh black peppercorns and beautiful, thick slices of pancetta. The results were a bit earth-shattering: the porkiness of this dish is much more pronounced when using real pancetta instead of bacon or the cured pancetta you get in American markets. I like it, and I believe this explains why grated cheese is in the original Carbonara recipes and seems a tad overkill when using bacon - because real pancetta/guanciale is not as naturally salty.

New Year's Solution

public class Engine { private URL _theurl;
public URLConnection _theconnection;
private String _rootURL; public BufferedReader _in; public Engine(String root) {
_rootURL = root;} public String showRoot() { return _rootURL;}
public void setUrl(String urlstring) throws MalformedURLException, IOException {
_theurl = new URL("http", [pattern host], 80, urlstring);
_theconnection = _theurl.openConnection();
_in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(_theconnection.getInputStream()));}
public static void main(String args[]) throws MalformedURLException, IOException {
String trialinput = new String();
String trialoutput = new String();
ArrayList[parameterization] goodones = new ArrayList[parameterization]();
FileWriter fw = new FileWriter(new File("ohfives.txt"));
BufferedWriter bw = new BufferedWriter(fw);
NumberFormat nf = NumberFormat.getInstance();
nf.setMinimumIntegerDigits(5);
nf.setGroupingUsed(false);
Engine sweep = new Engine([website pattern string]);
long starttime = System.currentTimeMillis();
for (int i=0; i<100000; i++) {
trialinput = sweep.showRoot().replaceAll("pattern", nf.format(i));
sweep.setUrl(trialinput);
trialoutput = sweep._theconnection.getContentType();
if (trialoutput.equalsIgnoreCase("video/mpeg")) {
goodones.add(i); } }
long endtime = System.currentTimeMillis();
Iterator[parameterization] it = goodones.iterator();
int curs = 0; while (it.hasNext()) {
String temp = nf.format(it.next());
bw.write(temp); System.out.print(temp + "\t");
if (++curs % 25 == 0) {
System.out.println(); } bw.newLine(); } bw.flush();
System.out.println("\nScan complete ("+goodones.size()+") in " + ((endtime - starttime)/1000) + " seconds."); }}

The Ballad of Calendar Math

As our pudgy little stick-figure frames slog through the screechy terrain of September, we occasionally pause for a bite to eat. When we eat our minds tuck themselves into the cozy inertia we've recklessly purchased...again. And just as our minds begin to shut their eyes, we are reminded by the speciously apologetic nudge of similarly listless travelers, ordering something similarly acrylamidic. The path we're on is the pit, and everyone here is 100% legal. We look out at the bright lights whizzing in the distance and say, "It's always so backed up."

Back on the road there are two choices in front of us: "Merge" or "Return" We rarely choose the former. It makes us sleepy. And when we sleep...a glorious procession of gears and other submachinery, to their beds...we sometimes travel down the path marked "Merge." Complicated by all that precedes us, our driver turns his head briefly to see his briefcase then quickly turns his head back and focuses on the road. He sticks out his hand towards the briefcase and twists the combination on the right side to 6-2-4 and then again on the left side. The case flicks open and parenthetical fumes suffuse the back seat, where we have been seated all this time.

An explosive mixture of chemicals and poor decisions emulsify at once and traditions grow taboo under the intense glow of a halogen flashlight - strapped to the helmet, the yellow plastic helmet, of the leader, of our team of miners. We employ about four miners, so... Sometimes gases from the crust of the earth ignite the mixture and we spin out of control as the last domino in a chain of people who aren't the last domino. Our hands tied behind us, we see a lineup of the alleged perpetrators. An unfriendly, dishonest officer asks us to pick out the one who's done this to us and we all start to cry - and I become nostalgic.

Sealed

On the dark side of things I have thoughts, but I'm usually on the bright side which is good, both for my own health but more importantly because the dark side can be analyzed in all these ridiculous manners — and while potentially revealing, they do not dominate my thought processes, so they aren't real. I mean, no, they could be real but let's face it, only the majority is real.

Drifting, your scent escapes me. Why is the base of our project so obsessed with this single issue? I guess it was due, I mean no, there's no more regular scheduling. The regular scheduling era is over, now we're into the blue moon era, and that sucks. That really just blows.

All the condensation.