Mike's culinary adventures...

I like to cook and I like to eat. I'm not a gourmand, by any stretch of the imagination, but I enjoy good food, nice preparation and am always willing to try new cuisines or dishes. I wouldn't call myself a chef, but I do know how to throw together a nice dinner party or prepare a table for two.

It seems lately, however, that my culinary endeavors have been limited. Some of it, no doubt, is just because I haven't taken the time of late to cook. Food prices, too, have made buying fresh produce and meats a more costly experience and with every bill I pay, I have to say goodbye to that thick, juicy steak and hello to some chicken nuggets.

But the biggest factor is probably my kitchen itself. Or should I say "kitchen," because it's only masquerading as a place to prepare food. My bachelor pad has a sink and a full set of cabinets, but that's it - there's no oven and no stove. So, for the last four months, I've been cooking with an electric burner, plug-in wok and a small toaster oven.

At first, it was a huge pain. I had to plan all my meals, when shopping, on their annoyance level to prepare. Things had to fit inside the oven (about 12"x6"x4"), for one - that eliminated any roasting or broiling, pretty much. Also, they had to be pretty quick-cooking... the electric burners are about as powerful as my car's cigarette lighter.

After a few weeks of trial and error, I've come up with a miniature cookbook for bachelors stuck in a similar situation (or anyone who lives in a dorm room). It's kind of amazing, but 7 years after I moved out of the dorms, I've come back to the EasyMac days.

-Pasta ain't easy-
If you're like me, you think breaking spaghetti to fit into a pot is akin to spitting on your mom. The point of spaghetti is to have long strands of pasta to twirl with a fork and spoon or be able to slurp up 12 inch strands of fresh, wheaty goodness. In keeping with that life philosophy, I have a stainless, two-gallon pot to make spaghetti in (it's also great for washing your feet, but that's another story...).

But with the awesome power of my 10-watt hotplate, it takes a full hour to bring a gallon of water to a boil. This means that, if I want to have spaghetti for dinner, I need to start cooking it at lunchtime, in the hopes that I'll actually be in the mood for pasta when the times comes.

Spaghetti is out. In, though, are some nice, handmade egg noodles that I can drop clusters of into a smaller pot of boiling water. I also am a big fan of Annie's pasta, too. That still takes longer to cook than normal, but at least I get more instant gratification.

--Pizza better not be frozen--
Some nights, I'm lazy. All I want to do is heat up a pizza and enjoy it with a beer and sit and watch the Sox or the C's. It's pretty simple.

But, being the thrifty bachelor that I am, I don't want to order an entire pizza - it's way too much food for just me and it's about twice as expensive as a nice, frozen pie. I'd much rather turn to DiGiorno or Red Baron.

Here's the rub - neither one of those fits into my teeny toaster oven. They come frozen, so you can't cut them in half without defrosting. This defeats any sort of non-planned pizza popping, which is the whole purpose of it, as far as I'm concerned.

I tried buying smaller frozen pies (the store-brand kind... it was the only ones I could find). However, they were A) too small and B) tasted like poo.

Luckily, I stumbled onto a solution. You can buy Boboli (or Boboli-like alternatives) pre-made doughs, cut them into half-moon shapes, slop on some sauce, add a medley of cheeses and whatever fresh ingredients I want. Bingo - now I have slices that are better than any frozen 'za out there.

--Grilled Cheese--
I used to grill sandwiches in my cast-iron skillet, back when I had a real gas stove. Those days are over and my skillet sits mostly unused in my cupboard, since it takes almost as long to heat as water does to boil. I could still make grilled cheese with a standard, Target-issued pan that's as thin as a couple sheets of tinfoil, but even that takes longer than I want... Grilled cheese just shouldn't take more time to make than it does to visit a fast-food drive-thru.

So, I happened on this alternative - make the sandwich and pop it into the toaster oven. In less than two minutes, you have ooey-gooey cheese and toasted sides, with no flipping. I was impressed when I tried it the first time and haven't gone back since... I suppose it's common-sense to know that you can put something into the oven and it'll get heated and toasted, but, uh... that thought never did dawn on me.

Okay, I'm done rambling... totally bored with this post. But I figured I should get something up here, since it's been a while...

Peace out. I'm hungry.

Street Viewer for Google Maps...

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Have you checked out Google Maps Street Viewer yet? If you haven't, it's a 3-D map function from select cities that shows you what it looks like if you were driving or walking on the streets themselves. It was launched to much fanfare almost exactly a year ago.

Personally, I pretty much ignored it after the first day, since I don't live in San Fran, Denver or any of the six original cities. However, since the debut, Google has quietly been adding cities to its uber-cool map feature. While they still haven't made it to my current living place for even the regular maps (which I've mentioned before), they did recently add Manchester, NH to their lineup. Manchester is New Hampshire's biggest city, but only has about 150,000 citizens. So, apparently to not waste their time in the Granite State, Google added surrounding communities - including my hometown of Auburn. That's my parents' house in the picture. One of the car's is mine (I used to park it on the lawn when I kept it in storage), the ones actually in the driveway belong to my family that still lives there. I have no idea who the other cars on the lawn belong to and that yellow school bus up on blocks in the back belonged to a roving, homeless, evangelical preacher that set up camp for a couple weeks.

I've found myself spending (no, wasting) time slowly clicking through the streets, trying to see if I can spot a neighbor out in their yard or driving by in their car. So far, I haven't come up with anything good (I was kinda hoping to spot my mom walking our dogs or something), but I keep checking back when I have some down time from watching lint collect on my floor or detecting patterns in TV static - you know, the usual things I do around my home/office.

Every time I finish clicking down a road or find myself trying to peer around the corners of houses, I feel a little bit like a Peeping Tom. I'm staring at people and their homes without their knowledge, taking my time to peruse their windows and yards and checking out the make and model of their cars. Wow - that sounds even more creepy written out like that.

Real-to-life-everything is the wave of the future. And there's definitely an advantage to show someone what turn-by-turn directions look like. However, it's going to take me a bit of time before I feel totally cool about Street Viewer.

But since the function isn't going to go away (more towns are being added practically daily), I guess I just gotta keep being a Peeping Tom until that weird feeling in the pit of my stomach goes away. Maybe it's guilt, maybe it's because the milk in my fridge is dated June 1st. Only time will tell...

In the meantime, check out some fun Street Viewer images at streetviewr.com.

Pardon me while I toot my own horn...

Okay, so apologies for bragging, but it's nice to get validation from time to time. Plus, I can share this news with you as an excuse to have you read something that I actually got paid for, as opposed to reading my ramblings that have made me zero bucks over the past year.

Good Catch Publishing, one of my freelance employers, selected a piece I wrote for them as their "Catch of the Month" for June, which means they picked me as the author of their favorite article for that 30-day span. Pretty cool, huh? The piece is a chapter of a book and details the true story of an Oregon man and his struggle to overcome an addiction to pornography. You can read "I Can't Do This Alone" by following the link.

It is a long one, so apologies. But I hope you like it!

Spelling Bee, Bill Simmons and Numbnuts - LOTD for you...

You probably couldn't miss it this year, as the Scripps National Spelling Bee had its quarter-finals, semis and finals broadcast by ESPN360, ESPN2 and ABC.

First observation - didn't it used to be the Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee? (Answer: Yes, as recently as 2003). What happened to Howard? Did the dude pass away? Did Scripps stage a coup or hostile takeover? Has the "Howard" been scratched off the trophy? We need the answers.

I actually missed it this year. I don't normally watch it start to finish, but I'll usually turn in for a few spellings, try them on my own and go a big, fat 0-15 or so. ABC had the finals on during the Celtics/Pistons Game 6 (which, incidentally, got bumped from the mother station for the Bee), so I watched that instead.

For me, best part of the Bee isn't watching our next generation of scholars in action, seeing the cooperation and good sportsmanship they always demonstrate or learn some new words to add to my everyday lexicon. Nope. I watch for the astoundingly high levels of unintentional comedy. Just check out the "Numbnuts Clip" from eventual champion, Sameer Mishra:



The second highlight, after seeing a new batch of homeschoolers, band kids, chess-club members and social pariahs gesticulate and hyperventilate on national television, is re-reading Bill Simmons' classic ESPN.com running diary of the 2002 Bee. Absolutely hilarious and still funny six years later.

If any of you haven't read Simmons, I have him linked on the right for a reason. Sure, he's "just" an Internet sports columnist, but he's also one of my favorite writers. He's hysterically biting, relatively incisive and he's a Sox fan, so what more could you ask for? Definitely check him out.

Those are your links of the day... Bee well. Ha.

I've given an arm; or, what price will you pay for gas?

I think the Daily Show said it best, when it quoted a M.O.S. soundbite, "I just close my eyes and pump."

(Their punchline, "That's what he said about his wedding night, too" was good. But I would've gone with "Rejected Vegas slogans."

Don't worry, I'm not going to bore you with yet another "OMG gas prices are high! WTF? I am seriously not ROTFL" story - there's enough hot wind out there to power all the turbines on the eastern seaboard (eco-joke, hey-ohh!). I'm sick of those.

However, I am considering doing what I can to save myself some cash - especially since I'm really not making a whole lot at the moment. I read an article on hypermiling a couple weeks ago and I'm happy to report I'm now getting about 40 extra miles a tank by shifting to neutral, coasting down hills and generally pissing off tailgaters.

I am of the opinion, though, that gas prices still haven't reached the point where they'll actually affect everyday American life on a widespread level. Yet. Oh, they'll get there, sure enough. But we've only started to see small lifestyle shifts - the big ones have not yet come.

On a small level, if you're interested in rollin' down the block in a tricked-out S.U.V., they've never been cheaper. That's because people are eating up the small, 4-cylinder Civics, Corollas and the like. They're not going hybrid or electric or bio-diesel - just going smaller. (For proof, just visit your local used-car lot... all those types of cars will be listed at retail price, which never happens, while S.U.V.'s are basically buy one, get one free). While some might think this is a big step, that opinion falters when you look across the pond and see what everyone over there is driving - you could basically fit two Peugeots inside of one American Toyota.

The big changes in oil consumption, when it comes to autos, are still a couple years away in the U.S. But they're coming - just check out the recently announced Volkswagen (pictured above) that will get 235 mpg or the start up competitor Aptera that'll get over 300 mpg AND be priced in the mid-$20,000 range. Both space-age looking cars should hit the streets in 2010.

I've come to the point in the life of my 1998 Toyota Camry (200,000+ miles and a bushel of dings and dents) that I need to start thinking about my next car. I've like the Camry and, although it's pretty banged up after a half-dozen years of parallel parking, it's still running well. But who knows how much longer that'll last as I near the 1/4 million mile mark? I've started the preliminary research into buying a new car - a decision that I'll have to pull the trigger on next year, more than likely.

However, I'm debating waiting until 2010 until that VW enters the market. Think about it - a car that gets that many miles to the gallon could potentially pay for itself. I did the math and even though I currently get 30 mpg, I could save roughly 8 bazillion dollars a month (I might have carried a 5 one too many times). In reality, I probably could save close to $200 a month in gas (at current market value). But that amount might pay for a car loan.

The thing with any of those high-mileage concept cars is that they require you to give up some of the luxuries we Americans have grown accustomed to. For one, none of them are fast (most top out at 75 mph), nor zippy. Others, like the VW, have the unfortunate requirement that the passenger sit BEHIND the driver - like Woodstock and Snoopy chasing the Red Baron. They also concede a ton of space in the name of economy (forget Big Gulp-sized cup holders). Some have to be plugged in. And all of them look quite ridiculous, guaranteeing the driver will the be talk of the party, but might be asked to park in the back next time.

But, hey, if gas hits 6 bucks a gallon, I can get real good at holding conversations via a rearview mirror and toting around extension cords real fast.

Coming to a YouTube link near you...

Today, I went out and bought The Flip Ultra. It's a handheld video camera that's about as basic as basic gets. It's roughly the size of a cell phone, has a 1x1 inch screen, three buttons and a U,D,L,R control pad.

And that's it.

To record a fairly decent quality video, all you have to do is press the record button and point the camera and whatever you're shooting. It's so easy, my mom could do it.

The best thing about The Flip, though, is that it has a built-in USB connector. So, you can shoot a video, plug it into your laptop and load it onto your computer almost instantly. You can then edit the video in pretty much any program - iMovie, Final Cut Pro, whatever crappy program Windows uses or on the camera's included software. After that, you're just a couple clicks away from YouTube fame.

I'm planning on using it to do short and simple travel videos while I'm in Japan and China. I do have a YouTube account, but I've never uploaded anything - that'll change in a bit. I'm going to try to do a test video or two in the next few days.

If anyone has any travel video suggestions - just let me know!

Mike and his blogging alter-ego...

Many thanks to my friend and blogging compatriot Justin (of Letters from Suburbia) for posting a link to Emily Gould's NY Times Magazine article about her motivations to blog and how, why and when to share personal details on a completely open and unfiltered platform.

In the lengthy piece (which, if you have some time, is well worth the read), she details her history with blogging, her time at Gawker and, after a series of personal revelations, her experience being stripped and exposed on a very public level.

It got me thinking about how I pick and choose what I write about here. I've been working on this blog for almost a year now and I'm nearing the 100-post mark. While I don't actively promote the site, I do link to it on Twitter and Facebook and include it in the signature of all my emails. My readership isn't anything to brag about, but it holds steady at around 100 visits a week or so - mostly from people I know, but I do get reasonable traffic from complete strangers who stumble across the blog looking for Anchorman quotes or Googling "Puerto Rican bosoms." (Seriously).

Knowing how accessible anything on the web can be, I'm generally very careful about what I write here. You'll notice I've never written anything negative about the jobs I've worked, refrained from sharing political views and haven't even mentioned the name of the town where I live. Where I'm ever more careful, though, is stuff that I consider private. Very little of what's on this site is uber-personal. Sure, everything I write is about me. It's got my name on it and I'm not making any of it up. But you will rarely catch me talking about anything that I wouldn't tell a complete stranger, either.

After reading the article and weighing the amount of sharing that I've done here, I realized that I had, subtlety and unconscious, developed a blogging persona. I'll call him Blogger Mike.

Blogger Mike is not too different from Real Mike in many ways - they both like the same foods, the same sports, the same music and the same coffee. But the Blogger Mike doppleganger (should I call him B.M. for short? ha.) is both way more self-deprecatory and pretentious than his R.M. counterpart. I think B.M. is also funnier, more cynical, thinks he's more tech-savvy, asserts himself with too much self-important mannerisms and has better breath than R.M.

Sonja, who is the fiancee of both B.M. and R.M. whether she likes it or not, hates that B.M. never talks about her. Whereas, as R.M.'s friends know, he never shuts up about her. That online silence was a very intentional choice. It's just that my relationships (family, friends and the many, many, many love interests) have always been a very personal experience for me. One I didn't feel was necessary to share online with God-knows-who's-reading-this.

In the last two posts (and a little in this one), R.M. broke through. I'm not at all sad that he did, it's just funny that it almost took a year for it to happen. And who knows if it'll happen again? If it does, it'll probably take another year.

Emily Gould's piece just got me thinking about why I blog and how much of myself I'm really sharing with the world. In one sense, I'm sharing a lot - people would never know half the stuff about R.M. if it wasn't posted here. But 95% of everything that's here comes from the B.M. version - and he doesn't even know half of what makes up the R.M. At least, I like to think there's a separation. When doing any kind of writing, it's always good to keep a little mystery in there; you have to leave 'em wanting more.

(You get more hits that way.)

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Question of the day: Do you, too, have an online persona in order to maintain a semblance of privacy? If so, how do you balance the two?