The direction we’re headed

Well hey, it’s been almost a year. Wow. Well, I think I owe the people who were starting to pay a little attention to me an explanation.

So here’s what happened and where we are going:

When Spring hit last year I was trying to figure out my Internship for the Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. A pretty life-altering decision and one that I didn’t have much choice about. I can’t graduate without an internship. I applied for and got my internship over at The Washington Post Politics site.

I spent the summer in D.C. working for them with Ryan Lytle, another OU Journalism student, and getting an incredible amount of experience in the field. After my brother, my housemate Josh and my girlfriend Devin (We’re dating. It is very cute.) came out to visit I developed a major infection in my back and spent the day in the hospital; don’t worry, I got better. I have been dealing with pilonidal cysts (fair warning, it is a bit graphic) for several years now, but more on that later.

At the same time I was getting ready to head off to D.C. I took over as the editor-in-chief of Speakeasy Magazine. I developed the new site their and have been working on it since then. In fact, Speakeasy has become my inspiration for my long-term project for this site.

I got back to Ohio just in time to start my senior year of college and with continuing back problems. That said, I am incredibly happy to be back in my home state. Fall quarter went by quickly with much of my time being devoted to Speakeasy and class. Over winter break I had surgery for the second time to get two cysts removed from my lower back. I ended up being put on a Wound Vacuum (also graphic). I was more-or-less homebound for the month of December. My mother and Devin ended up helping me immensely.

I’m now eight weeks deep into Winter quarter and I am trying to get everything together. This site is back on my radar, and I am beginning work on the redesign during my very limited free time. I am still cooking, but now I have Devin cooking with me, so our recipe book is expanding quickly. There are a lot of back posts that need to get finished.

I can’t promise that I am going to be updating three times a week yet or that the site will be finished by a certain date, but I can at least let people know I am alive and still working. Look for some updates and a major overhaul on the way this site works.

Tags: hiatus

Time suck

I am aware that letting this site just flutter in the wind like this is unacceptable, but the last week has been more busy than maybe any other week of my college career. Most of it good stuff, but still. This is the first I’ve been in my apartment today.

On a related note I don’t have anything to post right now because I didn’t actually have any food until today. Surviving on hot dogs and peanut butter for three days is not fun. Anyway, this quarter is going to be very busy. I am working out my schedule, so once again I have not forgotten you. I am just bogged down. More to come.

Tags: College, Personal, Time

Problems abound

Well, if it isn’t one thing it’s another. I had my update ready fro today but my card reader doesn’t seem to be working, meaning my pictures are trapped on my camera. I’ve been fiddling with it for a few hours with no luck. I’ll keep working on it. Today’s post will go up whenever I can get the pictures off, be that later today or tomorrow.

Last week was spring break. I did get some work done on the site, but I also focused mostly on visiting family and friends. I got to see my grandpa for the first time in a few months, which was nice. I still can’t quite find what I’m looking for to replace the food page, but I’m close. Ideally I will be able to update the front page and have every other page update automatically. More to come on that, so please just bear with me while I try to get this all figured out.

Today was the first day of fall quarter as well, so I need to determine when I can actually post updates during the day.

Tags: Personal, Time, Web

Finals week and onward

Well, pictures are still more or less broken. I know what’s wrong, I just haven’t had the time to fix it.

I’m going to just wait it out until after finals week is over. That means no update today or Friday. However, by the end of Spring Break I will have the site completely fixed up, including the food tab.

Updates lined up:

• Latkes (potato pancakes).
• Pudding injected, glazed banana muffins.
• Biscuits.

I promise I haven’t forgotten you Internet, it’s just that I accidentally broke the site during maybe the worst possible week.

Tags: College, Personal, Web

Web issues

Well, I had posts lined up for Friday and today, but I seem to have messed something up a bit. Posts aren’t working correctly and pictures in posts are simply not working at all. I’ll keep the site up-to-date with what’s going on.

Unfortunately it’s finals week, so my time is strained. If I can figure this thing out by the end of the week I’ll have it all wrapped up over Spring break.

Quick fix: Hard-boiled egg bagel

Hard-boiled eggs on a bagel. With cheese.

Hard-boiled eggs are delightfully simple. All you really need to hard-boil an egg is about 15 minutes, some boiling water and an egg. They are also fairly filling and can be utilized in a number of dishes such as deviled eggs and egg salad.

If you happen to be pressed for time or don’t have/like mayonnaise, just slice the egg thin and put it on some sort of bread. Maybe something like…leftover bagels. The egg bagels (Eggels?) to the right are simple; a cut and toasted bagel with a piece of cheese, one sliced, hard-boiled egg and some salt and pepper.

They make for a fairly substantial lunch and are easy. Plus you can add just about anything you want. A slice of tomato, light mayonnaise and some spinach would be good. Add a piece of goetta or bacon and you have a breakfast sandwich. Some chipotle ranch dressing and leftover chicken breast, maybe. The world is your oyster. Make a seafood bagel.

If you have never made a hard-boiled egg, fear not. I have. A hard-boiled egg will keep for a while, so you might as well make a few. Set your egg(s), shell intact, in a pot with at least enough water to cover them. Turn the stove on and get the pot up to a nice rolling boil. Depending on how fast your stove is it should take about 10 minutes (or a little less) of boiling to cook the egg through. They will be very, very hot.

The egg is less likely to crack due to sudden temperature change if you have it in the pot as it starts to boil. Adding an egg to a pot of boiling water can result in cracking and an annoying mess.

Set the eggs aside until they cool and put them back in the fridge until you need them. If you’re into instant gratification and want your egg now, put it in a bowl of cold water in the freezer for a few minutes.

There are a few ways to approach cracking a hard-boiled egg. If you don’t care whether or not it stays intact, just crack and peel. My personal favorite is to grip the egg in one hand to make a fist, then punching my open palm. The egg will crack (or squash if you use too much force) and you’ll probably feel a little cooler. Assuming you do care about the look of the egg, a little more care would be wise.  There will be a space of air at the bottom of the egg called an air cell. That is a good place to start if you’re not used to peeling an egg. Crack that and do your best to peel the entire shell away with the thin white skin that will be attached to the shell.

Slicing an egg is fairly simple. I find it’s best to take a very sharp paring knife and just press it through the egg. Be careful not to press it through your finger as well. A cutting board would be ideal. The yoke will provide some resistance, but that shouldn’t cause too much trouble.

Edit:

(The Real) Chris is right. Adding a little salt to the water as you boil it will make peeling the egg easier. Also older eggs are apparently easier to peel (as opposed to farm-fresh).

Tags: Food, Lunch, Web

Smoked Sausage and Spaghetti

Smoked sausage and spaghetti

For the last several days I have been making some modifications to the site. A few one them are obvious, like the random gallery and the little ad block on the right. A few changes have more to do with streamlining and formatting and are less obvious. Well, because I have spent more time on the site than cooking I don’t have any gallery or recipe today. Instead I have a simple meal suggestion.

Pasta is almost as easy as it gets when it comes to feeding yourself in college. It’s fairly filling and about as easy as boiling water. The problem is that it gets monotonous. Unless you happen to be Josh. It’s easy enough to add some variety to spaghetti and pasta sauce. Meat is probably the most obvious route. Whatever you happen to have in the freezer, 1lb of smoked sausage or a few chicken breasts, will go well with pasta.

Assuming that your meat of choice is not frozen, cut it into bite-size pieces and cook them however you see fit. I usually put either chicken or sausage with some spices in a skillet with some oil. In fact, this chicken will work just fine. Be sure that the meat is cooked through to your satisfaction before you go eating it though. While the meat is cooking get the water for the pasta boiling and the sauce warming in a saucepan. Once the meat is done just drain the oil and put the meat in the sauce with anything else you might want over spaghetti. Maybe some finely chopped onions or shredded cheese.

Different meats or vegetables added to pasta changes the flavor and provided some variety, which is apparently the spice of life. It’s also a good way to use up leftovers.

Tags: College, Dinner, Food, Web

(Baked) Corn dogs

Honestly, just fry them.

I improvised by just baking the corn dogs on a baking sheet. What resulted was, as anticipated, cornbread coated hot dogs. They were not really corn dogs. Honestly I would rather have chopped the hot dogs up and tossed them into the cornbread, but for an experiment they weren’t too bad. Next time  I will make sure that I have enough oil.

In other news, my plans for the site are moving slowly but surely. Hopefully by the end of my spring break I will have redone the Food page as well as the way posts show up here on the front page. Ideally there will be description of what was made (like the one you just read) followed by a continued link. Clicking the post title or the continued link will take you off to the full post, displaying the recipe and possibly gallery as well. I’m not sure yet.

Finals week is fast approaching though. School takes priority.

Tags: Dinner, Food, Gallery, Web

Internships and web design

This site has only been up and running for a couple of months now, but I am thinking about doing some pretty hefty modifications. I want to change the way posts show up on the main page, I think. I want to shave the first few paragraphs or so show up with a picture. Clicking the headline would take the reader to the full news post.

My reasoning is actually pretty simple; I want to put recipes in the news posts. Problem is…they’re pretty long. It occured to me when talking to my dad a week or so ago that the recipes are not exactly visible. He actually had never clicked on the food tab, so he missed the galleries and recipes. I feel like I need to get the galleries and recipes in the news posts, but I certainly can’t do that with the whole story being displayed on the front page. Too busy.

I also need to do something with the Food page. The placeholder page that is there right now is simply not going to cut it. I need something cleaner. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know. There will be an update tomorrow. Probably corndogs.

On a mostly unrelated note, I’m in the process of applying for internships for Online Journalism. I’m going to be sending a few applications toward the East Coast around the D.C. area. If you have any suggestions I’m all ears eyes.

Tags: College, Personal, Web

Time managment (analog style)

I like the Internet. A lot. Technology and I get along well most of the time. I built my current computer, I get all of my news through RSS feeds, and synchronization gets me excited. It seems obvious then that I would use some sort of digital planner. Not anymore.

At the beginning of Fall quarter I tried a number of different daily planning methods. I used the recently-shutdown iwantsandy.com for a while as well as Remember the Milk. They were both services that I enjoyed, but in the end they just fell short.

It took me a few weeks, but the problem finally dawned on me. I don’t consider my phone an organization device. Shocking, I know. When I had to remember something I was more likely to jot it down in the corner of a notebook than send off a text message. Once I got the revelations out of the way the next logical step was to find something pen and paper based that would work as my external short term memory.

Daily planners at the bookstores were not so much expensive as they were clunky. The benefit of using my phone was that it is small. If fits in my pocket and leaves room for whatever else I’m carrying. Don’t get me wrong; a nice moleskin notebook would be wonderful, but smaller is better.

I eventually stumbled upon PocketMod. The idea is fairly simple. A single piece of paper is cut and folded in such as way that is creates an eight page booklet, front and back included. The entire folded PocketMod is about the size of my wallet and thinner than a credit card. I can slip it into my back pocket and not notice it.

I print out a new one every two weeks and use almost no ink and only one page of paper.

The best feature of the PocketMod — the feature that led me to actually try it out — is the Web site. It presents a wonderful, flash based page that allows you to drap and drop pages to be printed. The whole thing, front page included, is customizable. I flirted with a few layouts, but settled on a two week planner face to face, a month calender, a finance and shopping list, two lined sheets and the cover.

Since I started using my PocketMod on a regular basis I have been extremely pleased. I am a big fan of technology, don’t get my wrong, but sometimes a pen and paper just does it better.

Tags: College, Personal