5921

What ever happened to Balloon Boy?

5922

So, for the last six weeks, I’ve put in about 250 hours in getting a manuscript ready for submission for publication. For most of that time, I thought is was never going to be completed. I went over its 90,000 words at least four times. Now I’m finally done . . . and I really want to touch it. To hold it, as confirmation of my work. But I can’t, because it’s all digital. It’s an oddly discomforting feeling, to have worked so long and hard to create something that you can’t actually touch.

It really reminds me of William Gibson’s novel, Idoru.

5923

ctrl-p

5924

Made home made ketchup the other day. Came out pretty good. I used 2 tbs of tomato paste. Some changes I’ll make next batch. More tomato paste, probably a whole can. It needs more flavor depth. Some dried spices, onion powder, garlic powder and dried basil. Needs a bit more complexity. Maybe a bit of Worcestershire as well. Otherwise it’s a lot more tomato and a lot less sweet than say Heinz.

You folks that clutch your pearls at the thought of ketchup on a hotdog would probably not choke on this.

BTW add more oil and vinegar to this, paprika and more Worcestershire and you have a less sweet French dressing.

5925

I don’t mean to piss on your project, but why make your own ketchup? I mean beer or bread I can see, you can kind of make it your own. But ketchup’s ketchup, man. Except when it’s catsup, I guess.

5926

When your ketchup won’t boot, it’s a lot easier to troubleshoot if you built the condiment yourself vs. buying off the shelf.

5927

Mass produced ketchup has too much sugar. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Heinz. But making it this way is a whole different animal. It’s easy to make with ingredients you probably have on hand. Why not?

5928

Yeah, all right, “why not” is good enough. Just seems like an odd enough choice to make to inspire curiosity as to the cause.

5929

More to the point I was out of ketchup and remembered that I had this recipe bookmarked. It’s fun to experiment.

5930

Does it taste really different? I can imagine a tangier, more vinegary ketchup. Hmmmm

5931

Is this the first case of two ghost pages or am I not spending enough time on Qt3 these days?

5932

After simmering it for an hour most of the acetic acid in the vinegar cooks out. So it’s not as tangy as you might think. But if you like a bit more tang, add more vinegar to taste after cooling it down a bit. The recipe is a bare bones thing. Make it your own with whatever you fancy. I imagine it would make a great sriracha sauce with some tweaking.

5933

I feel inspired Rich, I’m off to make some home made ice.

5934

As someone who had to cut out basically all processed foods and sugar, this is great. Catsup is indeed full of sugars, as are many things that are good :) Gonna give it a try. Pfft, anything to cover the taste of a soy burger.

5935

How’s that going, anyway? I seem to remember you posting significant weight losses really quickly.

5936

Thanks for remembering! In a word, fantastic. I was going to post an update and resurrect the thread after my next doctor visit- first one since D-Day. Should be up after August 6th.

5937

You could no doubt sweeten this with honey or even a stevia based sweetener like Truvia. Good luck, man.

5938

So the wife and I were packing for the move to Sunny Florida in a few months. We’re going through a bunch of stuff and find my college textbooks. We’re talking Visual Basic 6, a huge Windows 2000 Server text. HTML books. Essentially $500 worth of old school books. My thought was, just leave them out in front of the house for someone to bring home and maybe the learn something, right?

I understand that the books are old. You wouldn’t use them now for any new course. But the basics are always there. Computer repair. My A+ study guides.

Anyway i go to take the garbage out and someone has torn the pages out of the books and scattered them around. So there I am, gathering up the pages and stuffing them back into the books like an idiot. Eventually I just got a garbage bag and threw them all in there.

Why the fuck would someone tear up a book? Is it some message from a Luddite? It’s possible. I live in a predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhood. Is this some kind of comment about computers? Or was it just an idiot out to fuck shit up?

The books had no value to me. But i hoped that they would have value for someone else. I guess I’m taking this too personally. But fuck anyone that tears a book up.

5939

You live in Brooklyn and you’re surprised there might be random assholes wandering around? :P

5940

Fuckin’ ay.