I’m reminded of H.L. Mencken’s famous dictum, “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”*
Who is ‘Dr. Oz’ anyway?
*admittedly that’s a paraphrasing of the original quotation. For some reason I had always attributed the shortening to P.T. Barnum, though cursory research tells me it seems that Barnum’s version spoke about taste, not intelligence.
if you don’t have the time-life series of cookbooks, this episode of Baking with Julia is a good primer for puff pastry, (the kind without yeast… we’re not talking about croissants here.)
the basics are this, 4 parts flour, to slightly more than one part water. pastry flour for preference, though cutting your all-purpose with cake flour works out the same. (3 parts all-purpose to 1 part cake is a good ratio) gluten is not really your friend here, so I suspect this would work well with gluten free flours. I did an experiment recently attempting gluten-free croissants, it wasn’t entirely successful, but it was better than might have been expected…
blend the flour and water (and a teaspoon of salt) very thoroughly. (this is a good time to use a cuisinart or equivalent.) make it into a ball, wrap it under a damp towel in the fridge and let it rest for a while. say 1/2 hour…
take roughly the same amount (by weight) of cold butter as the flour. pound it flat. this is a key point, softening the butter by pounding ‘fractures’ the butter and makes it workable without letting it melt. if the butter warms, you’re screwed.
roll out the dough big enough to lay the butter on top of and wrap the butter in the dough. roll it out, trying to keep it in a pretty neat rectangle. then fold it in thirds. wrap it in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for 1/2 an hour.
this process of rolling out and folding in thirds needs to be done 6 times in total. and it needs to be kept cold so the butter doesn’t melt. usually you can get a couple of turns in before rechilling, but when in doubt, chill it for a while.
lastly, when the last turn has been done and the dough is chilled, roll it out and make the pastry you want to make. if you’re making palmiere or similar, you’ll want to chill the pastries one last time before baking. you can even stick them in the freezer for 10 minutes.
bake at 400F for 6 minutes or so for cookie sized pastry. turnovers and the like need 450F for 17+ minutes
one of the things that has been frustrating me about garageband for weeks now is the inability to change the duration of the ‘drawn’ notes in the piano roll.
this is now solved! oy…
all of the documentation I found will tell you that the track editor grid menu in the upper right of the track view (see below) is the place to change the duration of drawn (i.e. command clicked) new notes.
this is false. in order to change note duration of newly drawn notes, you have to select the score view.
and change it with the insert menu there. this change will carry over to the piano roll when you switch back. for some reason, the piano roll does not show the insert menu… go figure.
happy composing!
whoof… first full day back at work on the boat and very sore…
short for the “secret life of machines“, one of the greatest bits of educational television ever. from there you can find a direct link to the SLOM videos themselves
http://www.secretlifeofmachines.com/index.shtml
http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/SLOM/
adding to the list of ephemera that have a greater effect on the world than most people would credit is the nature of modern tailoring to enforce a sedate and restrained presence. most modern clothing is engineered to prevent you from raising your arms. the ‘line’ or ‘drape’ of the clothing is ‘ruined’ by over exerting. Continue reading
It’s a weird thing to note that people think that if you do not react obviously and loudly, you must not have any emotional reaction at all. At what point did it become necessary that you should have to poll observers for their expectations of your reaction so that you can react in the approved manner.
I’ll react in my own way thank you. I can’t think of anything that would annoy my parents more than the knowledge that I spent too much time crying over them rather than living my life the best way I know how.
New year starts and I’m definitely an orphan now. Nothing like a couple of weeks of depression right around the holidays to really perk you up.
for your edification
enjoy.
(direct link http://youtu.be/VrjD0jbDxD8 )
actually, I’m not sure I can really refer to this as a hiatus, given the rarity of my posts up to this point. but I started this as a way to sort of keep track of the interesting things that I’m doing, but at the moment I’m not really doing anything as I await a foreseen family tragedy to occur.
actually this is just the sort of thing that tends to lead to people writing more as a means of therapy. maybe I’ll post more because of it…
I don’t think I’m breaking any new ground in my observation that link/comment spam is a waste of time. some of it is fairly clever in it’s disguising, but for the most part… I mean how many sets of headphones does the world need?