Absquatulate

This American Life and Chris Ware

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Seafood Chowder

The problem with sending me into Whole Foods with an empty stomach and a culinary itch is that things like this happen at the end of it all.

I went in for coffee and half-and-half, and I came out with all the ingredients for chowdah.

I suspect I'd do well in a different country where people go to the stores each day or ever two or three days to buy groceries. I only have a boyfriend and a cat to feed (no children) so I can afford to wing it most nights. I wandered around, found things that looked good, wandered a little more while I thought of what to make, and ended up with seafood chowder.

Mind you, I've never *made* seafood chowder before. So I imagined the dish, bought ingredients to suit it, and went home and *then* looked up a recipe. This is not a course of action I'd recommend for most recipes. I don't think I could make something exotic on this hit-or-miss plan, but for seafood chowder, it worked.

Seafood Chowdah, ornithvore/pescevore style.

Get yourself two turkey andouille sausages. Cut them into bite-sized peices. Saute in a heavy soup pot with some butter until lightly browned. Add one onion, diced, and saute until the onion is soft. In the meantime, cut up two tilapia filets into cubes. Defrost and rinse 16 oz of frozen clams or one can of clams, reserving the juice. Prep half a pound of shrimp cuting them in half. Rinse half a pound of small scallops. Cut about a pound or a little more of red creamer potatoes into quarters. You want everything to be about the same size. Measure out about 2.5 cups of milk and/or half and half. I used half and half and it was delicious (I like a thinner chowder). Get one bottle of clam juice ready. Measure out about 2 cups of chicken stock or fish stock (or, if you don't mind the salt, use more clam juice.) All in all, you want about 2.5 cups of clear liquid, and about 2 cups of milk or cream combo. I think some white wine with the clear liquid would also be a good choice.

Once the onion is soft, add the potatoes and the clear liquids. Add some dried thyme, about 0.5 teaspoon or more, depending on how much you like, and one bay leaf. Bring to a simmer for 10 minutes until the potatoes are just tender. Reduce the heat, add the seafood and the dairy, and just keep warm stirring occasionally. There is enough heat in the soup to cook the fish to perfection without making them rubbery. Add salt and pepper to taste and garnish with fresh parsley.

If you live with someone who eats mammals, go for chourico, pork andouille, or good bacon or smoked pork. Let me know how yours turns out.

Hi. Whatcha reading? | MetaFilter

I also want to show why women might end up coming across "cold" to men, EVEN IF they don't think of a guy as a potential rapist.

Hi. Whatcha reading? | MetaFilter

An unusually good, long post on a MeFi thread about why women come off as cold sometimes. Read it and wonder why we are the way we are, men and women alike.

UPDATE: Here's the short article/blog post that started it all: Shrodinger's Rapist. Read that first for the 'theory', then the MeFi post for the 'reality'.

BANANAS!*

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Bamboo USB thumbdrive prototype | Tomita Designs

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I can haz?

Personal Health - Parents Need to Tune In and Engage a Young Child With Talk - NYTimes.com

I recently stopped to congratulate a young mother pushing her toddler in a stroller. The woman had been talking to her barely verbal daughter all the way up the block, pointing out things they had passed, asking questions like “What color are those flowers?” and talking about what they would do when they got to the park.

via www.nytimes.com

This is so, so important for all new mothers and fathers to know. I'm seeing so many little ones who have so few pragmatic skills who are NOT on the spectrum that it is alarming. I'm glad this article was published in the New York Times: the more people know this, the better!

Boston Tweed Ride

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GAH. Why can't there be a Tweed Ride West?

Tumbulate - (via explodingdog)

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I want this framed and hung in my office.