Lasagna

One of my favorite meals of all time - Lasagna.

I believe it started with Garfield and my desire to be a fat orange cat when I got older. In my late teens when I realized I would never be a fat orange cat, my love for lasagna persisted. Having toured the worlds greatest lasagna places (the olive garden, that Italian place down the street, and my Mom's house) I can definitely say that my lasagna rocks. I learned how to make lasagna from my Mom at an early age (I learned most of what I know from her), and once I was on my own I modified the recipe to fit my tastes better.

To start with, this blog post is a little different than the normal. For the most part what I post is stuff I invented, then posted, from stuff I had at home. This time I went and bought the stuff, because I really wanted lasagna. I don't measure or have a recipe anywhere besides my head though, so in that sense it is always an experiment.

First off we need to reserve a hefty amount of counter space to hold all the ingredients.



Like normal, I would suggest having access to some sort of food processor, otherwise this will be a lot of stirring and chopping...

Now that we have deprived a small country of a weeks worth of food, lets begin the delicious cooking journey. I start out by throwing all the meat into a pan (ground beef (2 lbs), Italian sausage (1 lb), and spicy Italian sausage (1 lb)).



While that is beginning to brown whack up an entire large yellow onion, or food processor it. I like to use my food processor at a later stage so I chopped the onion by hand.



Next take a truly obscene amount of garlic, peel, and smash. I realized I have never given out one of my secrets before, so here it is. To peel garlic real easy just cut off the base, give it a light smash with the side of a knife, and squeeze the tip. The garlic will just shoot out. Alternatively, you could make roasted garlic cloves--I will have to put that up here some day--for now you can find out how through Google.



Next up dump all that garlic and onion in with the meat mix. I also threw in a pound or so of chopped mushrooms. I was lazy with this and got some pre-chopped mushrooms. Nothing fancy here, I can't afford better than generic portobello mushrooms. Along with the veggies I put in the oh so yummy spices. This consisted of two tablespoons of ground black pepper, oregano, basil, thyme, parsley, and rosemary. One tablespoon of crushed red pepper flakes, half a tablespoon of salt, and half a teaspoon of fennel seeds.



While attempting to stir this all I realized that in typical Scott fashion I had failed to appropriately select the pan size... Using my world renowned dumping skills I managed to transfer roughly 90% of the mix into an appropriate pan. Then I let it get all nice and brown.



To finish the sauce off I dumped in a big ol can of crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, and tomato paste. Followed by three dried bay leaves. Next we add the secret family ingredient, powdered milk. About half of one of those packages of powdered milk will do nicely. The powdered milk contains a decent amount of sweetness to really blend the flavors together, and has calcium to take the acidic edge off the tomatoes. Just add it to any red sauce you are making in the future and you will thank me when your friends beg to know how you make such a smooth sauce.



Now that we have the sauce done, it will need to simmer for at least an hour. My favorite thing to do is to simmer for an hour then put in the refrigerator overnight. Letting it sit overnight really gives the spices time to blend together.

While the sauce is simmering we move on to the cheese (there is no rest for the hungry in this dance). Like I stated before I use my food processor for this step, but if you do not own one a whisk, big bowl, and Arnold Schwarzenegger style forearms should do the trick. Combine 3/4 of a container of ricotta cheese and cottage cheese in a food processor. I really think ricotta cheese is too dry so I like to substitute half of the cheese mix with cottage to keep it moist and delicious. Then crack two eggs in there. Now put in around half a tablespoon of all the spices you used in the sauce (except for the bay leaves). next a tablespoon of garlic powder and two tablespoons of onion powder. Blend that stuff up for about ten seconds.



After that I like to add a few cups of spinach to the top. Spinach is great for you and when blended into the cheese sauce no-one will ever be able to tell, and its cheap.



Once you have all that blended together--I usually run it for 45-60 seconds--set it aside for later. I usually just pop the bowl off my food processor and stick the mix into the fridge.

Now we get to make the final cheese layer. This one is pretty easy to make so you can look forward to rubbing that Bengay on your arms if you did this without a food processor. Essentially, take a medium sized bowl and combine cheddar cheese, Colby-Jack cheese, Parmesan cheese, and mozzarella cheese. I typically do around a pound of each. For the mozzarella cheese I like to cut up string cheese so I have little marshmallow style chunks in my finished product, but this is entirely up to you.



Throw that bowl in the fridge as well and wait for the sauce to be done.



Oh goodness that looks good...

Remember to fish around inside your sauce at this point and retrieve the bay leaves, throw them away. If you forget to retrieve the leaves someone is going to get a very bitter surprise :)

I like to turn off the heat to my sauce at this point and let it settle while I make the noodles, that way it isn't too hot while you are combining everything, and it will minimize burns.

If you are like me you will instantly select the worst possible pan for the job of boiling water and cooking the noodles.



I like to cook my noodles in salt water with a splash of vinegar. Vinegar will prevent the starch from breaking down in your noodles and prevent them from sticking together. Olive oil will NOT do this, that is a myth. Look it up if you don't believe me. Once the noodles are done and strained start the stacking process.



I start with a sauce layer on the bottom, then noodles, sauce, cheese sauce, cheese mix, noodles, sauce, cheese sauce, cheese mix, etc. The top layer should be noodles, sauce, and the last of the cheese mix (no sauce).



You could very well have enough left over to make a second lasagna in a smaller pan. I usually do and I like to freeze the uncooked lasagna for cooking later (it will take a really long time to thaw and cook though). Cover the lasagna with tin foil and pop in a pre-heated 375 degree oven. After half an hour remove the foil and bake for an additional half an hour.

Pull it all out of the oven and let cool for 15 minutes before becoming the best cook your friends have ever seen. During this 15 minutes I would suggest getting some garlic bread in the oven and starting your guests on a salad.



Recipie
Prep time ~ 30 minutes
Cook time ~ 2 hours 30 minutes
Ready in ~ 3 hours

2 lbs Ground Beef
1 lb Italian Sausage
1 lb Spicy Italian Sausage
1 large yellow onion, chopped
8 cloves garlic, smashed
1 lb portobello mushrooms, sliced
2 1/2 tablespoons black pepper, ground
2 1/2 tablespoons oregano
2 1/2 tablespoons basil
2 1/2 tablespoons thyme
2 1/2 tablespoons parsley
2 1/2 tablespoons rosemary
1 tablespoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 tablespoon salt
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
3 dried bay leaves
1 big can crushed tomatoes
1 can tomato sauce
1 can tomato paste
1 package powdered milk
8oz ricotta cheese (that's about how much I used)
8oz cottage cheese
3 eggs
1 tablespoon garlic powder
2 - 3 cups spinach
1 lb cheddar cheese
1 lb Colby-Jack cheese
1 lb Parmesan cheese
1 lb mozzarella cheese
1 to 2 boxes of lasagna noodles

Bad Bad Boy

Whelp I have not just dropped this blog, I have just been swamped with school stuff! Now that the semester is over I can go back to a semblance of normal life--after my three days of nothing but sleep--and write up a few cookingventions. Without keeping you waiting with bated breath I will post THREE stunning new things that I made, while hungry, from stuff I had in my cupboards.

Part I - Chili

I really only have the vaguest sense of what Chili is; alas my upbringing had only chili served directly from a can. Anyone who has had chili from a can, will attest to it's startling similarity to a can of dog or cat food. I can take this one step further and say that there is in fact quite a taste difference between the two...
What!? I was hungry and it was right there, don't try and tell me you haven't ever wondered just what it was like...

ANYWAY, I decided that chili really can't be that hard to make. You have some meat substance, chili's, beans, onion, garlic, and well that's it right? Well let us go down this path.

Step 1 - Gather your ingredients


That would be a bit of ground beef, two halves of onion (one sweet, one Spanish), a can of diced tomatoes, a can of tomato paste, a can of tomato sauce, a can of kidney beans, and a few cloves of garlic. I was feeling like I had neglected my food processor at this point, so I put the garlic and onion in there and let it work its magic for a few seconds.

Step 2 - Select a pan which is entirely too small.


One thing I repeatedly tell myself when I cook is "make sure this pan will be big enough for what you intend," I then repeatedly ignore this advice and select a pan that is just too small...

Step 3 - Oblivious to the fact that your pan is too small, begin to cook things!


I started out by throwing the onion and garlic in some nice hot oil. After the onion just started to turn translucent I threw in the ground beef.



I stirred it all up into a yummy meat-onion mess and then decided that I should probably put spices in this food at some point.

There is a nice dark photo of some spices on my counter. I figure if all my pictures are dark you will just have to take my word about what is happening. The spices here are ground black pepper, parsley, oregano, salt, ground cumin, red pepper flakes, chili powder, Cheyenne powder, and chipotle powder. I went and dumped varying amounts of these into the pan of meat-onion mess and stirred it up. (mostly around a tablespoon each, less for salt, more for chili powder and oregano).

Once it was all nice and mixed I let it finish cooking down a bit. If you don't use the cheapest ground beef money can buy (beaf-product) it probably won't be as soupy. I however think the top of the food pyramid is the most essential, so this is life giving grease.



Step 4 - Decide that my chili is boring and it needs other stuff.. So I dumped in some noodles (no I don't know why, I just did)


In retrospect, the noodles are a great way to spread out your chili meal and add something to absorb that life giving grease. I would add it much later than this step though to prevent the noodles from becoming little more than starch mush.

Step 5 - realize your pan is too small while holding the rest of the ingredients.
I switched over to a bigger dutch oven style pan at this point, with a simple dumping maneuver. This will get approximately 80% of the food into the new pan, the rest will go on the floor and stove.

Having solved two problems at once (too much food and too small of a pan) I figure its time to add the rest of the ingredients.


In went the tomato paste, sauce, and diced tomatoes. And hey, what is this, beer? Why shouldn't my chili have some beer too, since I am enjoying a cold one? So I cracked open another bottle and poured that in too. Oh and I don't normally drink beer of that quality, it was a gift from a friend.

Step 6 - Wonder how long this is supposed to cook.
I settled on half an hour (i.e. when I ran out of beer). It looked like this


Since it looks exactly the same in a bowl as it does in a pan I neglected to take pictures of the final product. The rest of the batch got frozen to provide me with a good week of eatings. The week taught me that many things can make chili better, like grated cheese, sour cream, take-out, and alcohol...

As I stated at the beginning I really know nothing about chili so you should check other places for recipes before starting. Whatever I made--chili or not--was fairly tasty, and certainly not the worst thing I have ever made (there have been some truly horrifying dishes).

Recipe

prep time ~ 5 minutes
cook time ~ 45 minutes

1 can tomato paste
1 can tomato sauce
1 can red kidney beans (drained)
2 Tablespoons ground cumin
2 Tablespoons parsley
2 Teaspoons oregano
1/2 Teaspoon salt
1 Teaspoon ground black pepper
1 Tablespoon chipotle powder
1/2 sweet onion, chopped
1/2 Spanish onion, chopped
a bunch of twisty egg noodles
1 to 1 1/2 pound(s) ground beef
1 six pack of beer (one bottle for the chili)

Cheezy Noodles and Chickn

Yes I know I spelled chicken wrong, that's the rebel in me getting sweet, sweet release.

So I am about to have some dinner, a salad with some dressing when I decide to make everything a bit more exciting and try and add something fried to the mix. A quick survey of the cupboards and fridge/freezer yielded this huge bag of frozen chicken parts.

I am pretty sure I can fry the crap out of this chicken turning it into something amazing but since it lacks any sort of marinade it might be kinda tasteless. Best thing to do now is take the chicken, smash flour, salt, and some seasoning into it and THEN fry it up.


The best way to make a simple breading for chicken is to put some flour in a big Ziplock baggie. I generally use around 3 tbsp of flour, a tablespoon or so of seasoning salt, and about 5-6 shakes of Italian Seasoning.

I generally blow up the bag like a balloon and shake it around for a few to mix everything together. Then dump the chicken in and shake it up a bit. If your chicken is fresh you are likely not a graduate student; and can stop right here. The rest of us that buy bulk frozen chicken will have to wait a few for the buggers to soften up enough to really get flour and stuff to stick to em.

Once your chicken has lots of stuff stuck to it you may proceed to the next step.

At this point I decided that salad is dumb and I wanted to have noodles. This was quite the change of pace so now I needed some way of combining the chicken with the noodles besides just putting them on a plate together...

Well we know water is needed so put a pan of water on to boil. Drop some salt and a little bit of olive oil in the pan. What this does is make your noodles more delicious. In other words the salt raises the boiling point of the water and the oil keeps your noodles from sticking together. The salt also gets into the noodles, and everyone knows sodium chloride is the best tasting thing ever.

After putting the water on to boil its time to invent some sort of saucy concoction. I really wanted something that would talk back to me but all I could find was the rest of the onion left over from the potato burrito experiment and some garlic. Since I was feeling particularly lazy this evening the food processor gets to come out and play. I threw the onion in the processor and the garlic (post-peeling), hit the pulse button a few times, and joy of joys I had some chopped onion and garlic.


I grabbed a frying pan, threw a bit of olive oil and a bit of vegetable oil in the pan. You could use just olive oil but because this is going to be an extended frying operation I would recommend raising the burn point of the oil by using mostly vegetable oil with a little olive oil for taste.

I threw the onion and garlic into the hot oil. While that was stewing I looked through the fridge one last time, saw some mushrooms, figured why the heck not... After everything was in the pan I pushed it around to make a hollow in the center of the pan.

This hollow is the new home for those pieces of chicken you so painstakingly shook around.


Just let everything fry for a good long time without stirring. Essentially you should be able to let it fry up on medium heat (maybe, I have a gas stove so the heat setting things are guesses). The chicken should be golden brown on a side when you flip it.

Then stir up the surrounding areas and let it continue cooking.


Once the chicken is done cooking you should have caramelized onions, garlic, and mushrooms floating around the edges of your pans. Pull out the chicken and place it to the side; I would suggest cutting them in half to make sure they got completely cooked.

In the pan throw some water in there and stir it up to get all the delicious bits off the bottom of your pan. At this point I killed the heat to let them sit for a second and share flavors for a bit.

While this last step is going on your water should have started to boil, so put some noodles in the pan. I used some thin twisty style egg noodles because the cook fast and its what was in my cupboard at the time.

Off on the side I knew that I would need a sauce base so I took a bit of flour and some milk and whipped them together. I would just use a fork but make sure its all combined adequately, clumps of flour taste gross.


Back in panland turn the heat back on. At this point I decided that cheese would be awesome so I dumped some grated Parmesan cheese in the pan and a layer of oh-so good Colby-Jack cheese.

As it heated back up I stirred constantly to make sure the cheese melted well and didn't burn.

Keep scraping the bottom of the pan as you do so to get the bits of awesome mixed with the cheese. When everything is all melty and thick pour in your milk and flour mix and stir it all together.


Back while your doing this at some point your noodles should have finished cooking. Ideally they would be al dente style, but cook them however you want. Strain them when done.


Now that you have all the components of food done grab a plate, put some noodles on it, arrange some chicken on the side, and put some cheese sauce over the top. Eat, and enjoy.



I thought this was a decent dish, not the best that I ever made. In the future I might add a little more garlic than I did originally to the sauce, but I could just eat garlic like an apple so this is something you will have to adjust for yourself.

Additions:
I would recommend adding some sort of veggie dish to this. I meant to make some french cut green beans for the side but I forgot until the food was all made and cold cheese sauce is gross so I just skipped the veggies tonight. Other styles of cheese will yield different tastes, you could easily make this an Alfredo style dish by using Parmesan cheese and some sort of heavy cream or condensed milk (no flour with the heavy milks though). Just use whatever cheese you enjoy, the rest of the flavors will blend with nearly anything.

Prep time: ~15 minutes
Cook time: ~30 minutes
Ease: 3 out of 5
Things in the recipe:
Flour - 4 tbsp
Lowery's Seasoning Salt - 2 tbsp
Salt - 4 tbsp
Pepper - 1 tbsp
Italian Seasoning (basil, oregano, rosemary, thyme, and parsley) - 2 tbsp
Parmesan Cheese - 1/4 cup
Colby-Jack Cheese - 1/2 cup
Chicken - 3 pieces of frozen "tenders"
Noodles - 2-3 cups
Olive Oil - 2 tbsp
Vegetable Oil - 2 tbsp
Onion - 3/4 Spanish onion
Garlic - 2 cloves
Mushrooms - 1/2 cup
Milk - 1 cup

Internet Security, My Soapbox

Here I am saying that most of my posts are going to be about food or the psychological sciences and my second post is about the internet.

As people that personally know me can attest I am a huge fan of the internet in all its incarnations. Sure some people use it to steal things, and others use it to find dirty pictures, but many of us just use the internet like we would use our car; to get around, and get things with less hassle.

Unfortunately, there are those in the world that think that any time we download something we are stealing valuable intellectual property and robbing other customers of precious bandwidth. As someone who pays an extra 10 bucks a month just to access 50% of the potential that my cable internet provides that is ridiculous. If I am not downloading 24/7 then I am just wasting my money. I wouldn't go to a theme park and refuse to go on any rides, I wouldn't buy a video game and play the first half, and I wouldn't buy a movie and only watch the opening credits. In this world we pay for so much but get so little in return. Corporations constantly out to get the most from us while giving the least in return. I won't turn this into a soapbox rant about the state of capitalism in the world, for I am not a political scientist, but I am tired of getting treated like a criminal because I want to use what I pay for. When I work on something like a manuscript and submit it for review I have to sell that piece of my hard work. I have to work hard, I have to put my time, effort, commitment, and education to the test and hope for the best. Meanwhile I am treated like a degenerate for expecting the same in return.

This little rant of mine does have a point so I will wrap it up by saying if you are not using your internet to its maximum potential for every second of the day then you are getting ripped off. Let the telecoms companies feel it where it hurts, use every bit of bandwidth they will give you, use it at the peak times, refuse to pay for their capped plans. Eventually they will learn the answer doesn't lie in punishing their customers but in making them happy. Expand your services and more customers will come, then expand some more. That is what I do when I work, and I grow as a person while doing what needs to be done. Maybe all these CEO's should listen to my Mom when she says "you catch more flies with honey than vinegar," which is technically true unless you use a nice balsamic vinaigrette, flies love that stuff.

"Well," you say to me "what about getting sued by the RIAA or MPAA?" Sure they sue thousands of people (something like 30,000 in total now) but with 2007 seeing 9.35 million simultaneous users of p2p networking 30,000 people is a drop in the bucket. You are more likely to die than get sued by the RIAA. Next look at the people that get sued, most of them are college freshmen, high-school students, grandparents, or children. The one thing they lack that we will have is an understanding of the dangers and difficulties of file sharing in today's world. After a lengthy introduction we get to the topic at hand, how to keep your ISP from taking your rights of privacy away from you.

I am going to assume for the sake of this article that you are a common file sharing person, like me, using programs like Limewire and BitTorrent to obtain creative commons works, open-source software, and the free exchange of ideas. So how do we keep the ISP and the RIAA away from us?

Step 1 - Don't use Limewire or any other unsecured p2p client if you can help it. I prefer to use torrents over all other options.

Step 2 - Use private torrent trackers. Places like Mininova, The Pirate Bay, IsoHunt, etc. are great places to go but there are dummy files that get uploaded and it is much easier for a company to find your IP by pretending to be another file sharing person on that network. Private trackers like Demonoid should always be your first stop.

Step 3 - use Peerguardian to help keep those pesky snooping IP addresses away.

Step 4 - Get a good firewall / antivirus program. I would recommend ZoneAlarm. This is actually just good advice all around.

Step 5 - Download the torrent file anonymously. I use the Tor network to retrieve my torrent files. This doesn't mean you use the anonomizer to download the entire file, just get the original .torrent file. This leaves no ip-logs on the tracker server.

Step 6 - Set your torrent client to use encryption. This will keep your ISP from analyzing your data stream to see what you are downloading. It's not perfect by any means but it won't slow down your torrents at all and its just one more hurdle people have to cross.

If you do all 6 of these steps you won't be completely safe, but the odds of you getting caught were already slim to begin with; and no-one is going to bother trying to hack through all those layers of BS to maybe, possibly, sue you.

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A year or so ago I wrote up a tutorial for torrents, I figure I will just append it here to make this a more complete guide.

Torrents, Who Has ‘Em, Who Wants ‘Em: A guide

Introduction

I have been getting more than just one or two requests from friends, family, strangers on the street, and various other people of less repute to share my wisdom in the world of file sharing. First, I would like to say that file sharing and piracy are two separate issues. My diatribe on the file sharing vs. piracy debate can be heard at the bar whenever I have been drinking. Since this is a public post we will assume that you will be utilizing Torrents and other Peer to Peer (p2p) file sharing programs for downloading updates, Ubuntu releases, and sharing your vacation photos with friends and family.

The BitTorrent protocol was created by a genius by the name Bram Cohen back in 2001 to provide a speedy and bandwidth friendly way of sharing files. The actual method that BitTorrent uses to communicate these files isn’t really important but if you’re interested in a technical demonstration they have a well constructed tutorial over on Wikipedia. BitTorrent takes very small files with the extension .torrent from the internet and loads them into a client. That client then uses that small amount of information to connect you to people that actually have the full array of files you seek. Your computer will then talk to all those people that have the files, and people like yourselves that desire the files. You will get small chunks of information from them, and in return, you will give small chunks of information to others. Eventually, through time and persistence, your computer will gather all those tiny chunks of information and turn it into the wondrous group of files you requested.

Terminology

Peer – A fellow person downloading a torrent (or yourself).

Leecher – A person that downloads a file without uploading.

Seed – A person who has the torrent in its complete form.

Tracker – A website that keeps track of who has the files, and who wants the files, essentially you can think of a tracker as a roadmap which lets people know where they are and where they need to go. Trackers are usually where you get the initial .torrent file.

Swarm – all the peers and seeds taken as a whole.

Client – a program that interprets the .torrent information and communicates with peers and seeds to download the files and assemble them in the correct fashion.

Ratio – This refers to the amount of data you have downloaded in proportion to data uploaded.

Downloading

Now that we have covered the grunt work and you are sufficiently informed of the words I will be using let us get down to brass tax, put our nose to the grindstone, and hammer out the specifics. The first thing you will need is a client. Clients can range from tiny command line operators to gigantic resource hogs. What you use as a client is going to be entirely dictated by what you want. If all you want to do is download some torrents you can’t go wrong with uTorrent. I personally use uTorrent because its small, doesn’t hog resources, and lets you extensively customize your experience. I am going to show you how to download torrents using this program but the ideas and methods will be similar if not exactly the same across the clients. Other clients I have used are Azureus, BitComet, and BitTornado, They all have their strengths but I would stick with uTorrent or Azureus as they are the two most used clients right now.

Now that you have a client you need some trackers. Trackers can range from public free for all downloads to private trackers that require a login and for you to have a certain ratio to participate in downloads. I personally find private trackers to be better than public trackers. Private trackers usually have a sense of community, ratio restrictions require people to upload (which reduces leechers), and you don’t have as many duplicate files, spam files, and viruses. The downside to a private tracker is that you will need to be invited to join, or get lucky and score an account during signups (signups usually last about a week and only happen every 4-6 months). Private trackers can also have limitations in the variety of files available but in my experience only 1 in 20 downloads that I seek are not on a private tracker. The last type of site is a pay tracker. I have never used one of these sites but I have donated to trackers that I use extensively.

So, you say why won’t he stop talking and give me a list of awesome sites. Well I want you to understand why some of these sites are better than others. If you are a close friend of mine you can ask for an invite to the private trackers but it will give me a bad reputation if one of my invitees is terrible at file sharing, so I might not give it to you (and some of them require me to share my precious ratio with you). The last difference between a public and a private tracker is that you are less likely to be bothered by the RIAA or MPAA when using a private tracker.

AnimeSuki – Public tracker for unlicensed fanlations of Anime. This site is great because it has a ton of shows and is usually the first stop for any release group, so you get stuff fast.

BoxTorrents – Private tracker for unlicensed fanlations of Anime and related content. Basically this is like AnimeSuki except you can usually get the Anime in one torrent rather than by episode and it has things like fan art, sounds, etc.
Btjunkie – Public tracker. This site indexes dozens of other trackers. In reality searching here is like searching 20-30 other sites and is usually my first stop if I can’t find it on a private tracker.
Demonoid – Private tracker. This is my first stop for torrents, and usually my last stop.
isoHunt – Decent public tracker, pretty general stuff.
Mininova - Decent public tracker, pretty general stuff.
The Pirate Bay - Decent public tracker, pretty general stuff. This site is great mainly because they openly piss off the RIAA whenever possible then gleefully do a “not touching you, can’t get mad” hand waving in front of the RIAA.
TvTorrents – Private tracker. This place is really hard to get into but it is worth it. I usually can get a TV show from here minutes after it airs, in great quality, with no fuss.

Now you have a client and a list of places to visit to get that initial torrent file. What do we do now? Well you can utilize the search feature of the site or just browse around until you find something interesting and click the ol download button. Windows will ask you “what to do with this file” and you click open. The file will download in seconds and if this is the first time you have downloaded a torrent ask you what program to use to open the file. You should tell your computer that .torrent files will always be utilized by uTorrent. Once you have opened the torrent uTorrent will ask you where to download the file at. Just pick a location that makes sense to you, I personally use a folder called “Downloads.”

The torrent will pop into the window and you will be able to see how much is done, how fast it’s going, how long it will take, the ratio on that file, etc. Browse around the client and see where things are, what you can customize, and what you don’t know about. Default settings are probably your best bet and an explanation of what the settings do can be found on your client’s webpage.

Once you download the file you can enjoy as you see fit. Be sure to share that file to at least a ratio of 1:1 and give back what you took. I personally share my downloads until I have a ratio of 2.2:1.

The First Blog Post

So I am considering starting a blog.

I know that almost all my friends have told me that they love the weird things that I cook up for them. Most of the time they are based on some sort of recipe that I modified to suit my particular tastes but when I am home alone or with people that I live with the gloves come off and the true innovation begins. I am not going to lie, sometimes the food tastes terrible but a lot of the time the foodventions come out edible at the least, sometimes delicious.

This leads me to the blog point. I have a camera, I have new things that most people have not tried, I have the makings of a blog that two or three of my friends may want to read!

The blog would be called Adventures with Foodventions and would be a photodocumentary and guide to making things that I find to be delicious.

As a little taste (ahha a pun! This gets better by the moment) I present to you:

Mexican Potato Burrito Doohicky

It all started late one evening just after baking up a couple of small potatoes for a rather bland meal. They sat on a plate like little brown pieces of mockery and I imagined faces on them and helpless screams as my fork made quick work of smashing them into a starchy mess. The white and brown paste and finally silenced screams didn't really drive me to hunger.

I cracked open the fridge and said, what can I put on this mess to make it not taste like potatoes. Sour cream, nah, had that last night. Cheese, yeah, but more is needed. Green Olives, only on Mexican potatoes, heh, that would taste terrible. Or would it? I have Mexican seasonings in my cupboard, I have green olives, I have potatoes, I have some burrito shells, I think it's time to make some Mexican Potato Burrito's. I mixed a bunch of spices into the potatoes but it still looked like crap.

What is missing, what is missing?... I know frying, everything is better with frying. As I dump some olive oil into a pan

I realize that if I am going to be frying something I should at least be frying up a bit of a Spanish onion.

I turn off the burner and wack up a bit of Spanish onion.

As I put the onion back in the fridge I notice the mushrooms. Yeah, why not. They all go into the pan, flames lick the bottom of the pan and the onion mushroom mess begins to sizzle.

A perfect opportunity to screw with the settings on my camera present themselves and I get quickly absorbed in that task for a while. I pull myself back into the task at hand in time to stir the nearly done onion mushroom mess around. Perfect! Just this side of burned.

There is some onion and mushroom brown gooie goodness on the bottom of the pan which means liquid is needed (this my friends is why you should never, ever, ever, use a non-stick pan). I pour in about half a cup of water, get all the goo off the bottom of the pan. Then I dump the potatoes on top and stir.

Presto, a mix of stuff that looks exactly the same now as it will when I pass it from my system.

Screwing my eyes closed, I take a tentative bite of the gloop before me. Wow, it actually tastes pretty good. I dump the mess onto a warm tortilla shell, add some of that sour cream I was talking about earlier and some shredded cheddar and colby-jack cheese.

I finalize the burrito by wraping it up tight and taking a big delicious bite.

I managed to forget the impetus for the entire project, green olives, but all in all Mexican Potato Burrito turns out to be a success. Since it was insanely cheap to construct I have plans for future burritos.

A word of warning! As you can see by the mess made on my stove this is going to need a bigger frying pan that I used! Second, sorry about the darkness of the pictures; my kitchen is quite poorly lit and the flash on my camera blows. I will have to get some more lighting for my kitchen if I actually keep this up.

Possible additions:
Salsa - added just before the potatoes to give it a chance to warm up.
Green Olives - crush some up and sprinkle them on top of the burrito before you wrap it up.
Lettuce - give a little health to the carb bomb you are about to consume.
Peppers - everything is better with peppers, my preference would be for some green and orange peppers sauteed with the onions.
Garlic (?) - not really sure how this would go, my gut says good thing, but I have been wrong about adding garlic to things before (garlic jam, not so good with peanut butter).
Veggies - some assorted veggies would make great filler, corn always goes well with Mexican food, spinach for a filler you can't taste, the possibilities are endless.


Recipe:
Serving Size - 2 people? I managed to eat two burritos and get crazy full with about half the mush left.
Prep Time - 15min
Cooking Time - 1hr 15min (1hr for the potatoes)
1/4 Spanish Onion, large diced
1 Flour tortilla shell, came in a package
1/4 cup Sharp Cheddar, shredded
1/4 cup Colby-Jack, shredded
2 tbsp Extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup Mushrooms, sliced
2 small potatoes, baked one hour 350 degrees, then smashed with a fork while imagining them as small potato people
2 tbsp Sour cream
2 tbsp Mexican seasoning (cumin, paprika, chili powder, oregano, dash of cayenne pepper, dash of crushed red pepper, dash of ground cilantro) I usually just kind of throw it all together in a spice jar and shake it up and use it until it runs out. I haven't done that yet since I moved, so this is a generic packet of Taco Seasoning.