Yahoo! posted a short list of the Seven Things Every Kitchen Should Have, and the list is good, but not comprehensive, and tends to focus on rather high-end gadgets. Many of the story responses asked for information about foodstuffs that are essential for a kitchen. I thought that this was a good opportunity to take the task of the well-stocked kitchen.

Before I share my list, I think it's important to make some distinctions between a standard American/European kitchen and kitchens from other parts of the world. An American kitchen would have some 'staples' that would not be found in kitchens from the Middle East or Asia. However, now that people are cooking outside the box, these ingredients have become far more easily available. To be inclusive of other cultures' foodstuffs, I'll provide a secondary list of essentials that come from other countries.

Essential American/European kitchen:
The Pantry:

• All purpose white flour
• Cake flour
• White granulated sugar
• Confectioners sugar
• Brown sugar
• Baking powder
• Baking soda
• Free-flowing salt
• Rock salt (large grain, usually sea salt)
• Cocoa powder
• Good quality chocolate for baking
• Vanilla extract
• Almond extract
• Lemon extract
• Molasses
• Maple syrup
• Light corn syrup
• Tapioca flour
• Corn starch
• Jasmine rice
• Potatoes
• Variety of pasta

The Spice Shelf:

• Bay leaves
• Whole black pepper (to be ground fresh)
• Cinnamon
• Oregano
• Chipolte peppers (whole)
• Peppermint
• Crushed red pepper
• Cloves
• Coriander seeds
• Dill seeds
• Viet Sin powder (MSG-related flavor powder)
• Powdered dried ginger
• Nutmeg
• Dried red chilies
• Red pepper flakes
• Celery seed
• Basic sweet curry powder
• Sage
• Rosemary
• Thyme

Cans, bottles, boxes and tins:

• Quality tomato paste
• Crushed tomatoes
• Ketchup
• Balsamic vinegar
• White vinegar
• Apple cider vinegar
• Sweet cucumber pickles
• Apricot preserve or jelly
• Raspberry preserve
• Unflavored gelatin
• Soy sauce
• Oyster sauce
• Olive oil
• Peanut oil
• Sesame oil
• Green peppercorns (in brine)
• Peanut butter
• Pineapple (in juice)
• Green olives
• Black olives
• Bread crumbs
• Honey

In the Icebox:

• Eggs
• Milk
• Yogurt
• Cream (when needed)
• Butter
• Lemons
• Limes
• Shallots
• Onions
• Garlic
• Hard cheese (provolone, romano)

For those who want to have non-American/European staples on hand, here are some essentials:

• Hot chilie paste
• Fish sauce
• Hoisin sauce
• Rice wine vinegar
• Chinese or Japanese noodles
• Fermented black beans
• Salted (preserved) lemon
• Chickpea flour
• Fresh herbs (mint, cilantro, basil)
• Chili oil
• Tahini (sesame paste)
• Garam masala (Indian mixed spices)
• Pistachio nuts
• Walnuts
• Coconut milk
• Roasted peanuts
• Roasted sesame seeds

I hope that this list is in some way helpful, although I'm sure there are some items that others would find to be even more essential. However, this is a good way to start anyone off in the great world of cooking.

like many new bloggers...

... I have to face the difficulty of finding time to write, and then worry more about the (indeed) legitimate concern of 'who is possibly reading this...?' etc. But I know that successful blogs are about content, and I only want the best possible. Not long ago I was reading a blog posting by someone in which he described how his latte tasted that morning. That was it. It was difficult for me to become very enthused about this missive - agreed, there are good and bad lattes. Apparently his latte of that morning wasn't as 'creamy' as he would have liked. I confess that I didn't finish reading the post.
In a similar case, I don't want to talk about lattes. There are, perhaps, so many different concerns on my mind, most of which revolve around searching for a new job, that are not only more instructive but worthwhile. Yes, I love coffee, too. But in my reading and painting and job searching, I've found that there are lessons learned and hurdles that continue to creep up, etc. These are the things I'd like to write about. I hope to find the time to do this, and add more to the overall community out there.

Pickwick Goes to Jail

Ah, further reading in Dickens' Pickwick Papers has found our amazing little man behind bars. As he has steadfastly refused to pay the monies owed stemming from the lawsuit and the judgement against him, he would rather stay in the airless dungeon (or gaol) rather than give in to the unjust situation in which fate has placed him.

On his entry into jail at Fleet, he undergoes a rather hysterical intake process known as 'Sitting for a portrait.' In this case, Pickwick is surrounded by all the jailors, turn-keys and watchmen and observed as closely as possible, so that they know him from memory, lest he should slip away. Clearly, the debtors prisons of the mid-nineteenth century in London weren't the highest in security.

Just before his long and draining first night in the place, faithful servant Sam Weller relates a fascinating tale to Pickwick about a previous tenant at the jail. A certain character who'd been stuck there for owing as little as 9 British pounds sterling remained at the jail for seventeen years. When he convinces the turn-key to let me look around outside for just a bit (7 years after the beginning of his imprisonment) he comes running back to the jail within two minutes, so flabberghasted by the crazy carriages and horses, and his general fear of being outside the safety of the prison walls.

Eventually the turn-key lets the prisoner become more familiar with the outside world via a new public house that has opened across the road. Soon he's alowed out a few nights a week (clandestinely), but falls in with a bad crowd. He always returns at night, but many times drunk. The turn-key decides that it's high time he had a chat with the prisoner.

'"Now I don't wish to do nothing harsh," he says, "but if you can't confine yourself to steady circles, and find your vay back at reglar hours, as sure as you're a standin' there, I'll shut you out altogether!" The little man was seized with a wiolent fit o' tremblin', and never vent outside the prison walls arterwards!'

Oh the poor fellows who've grown so used to prison walls that they can't conceive of life outside it. What melancholy humor!

It will be a wonder to see how long Pickwick can stand the strange characters of the place, and when his will may be broken. Some resolution is bound to occur, and Snodgrass, Tupman and his other chums will undoubtedly find some way to fetch him out.

The Floyd Landis Chronicles at Trust But Verify - A Blog Worth Watching

What's one of the first topics you think of when you consider starting a blog? Would that answer be 'a professional cyclist in trouble'? It might not be - dare I say it's likey that this subject would only cater to a very, very specific niche audience? You can say that and more, but it's meaningless to the writers, thinkers, sportsmen and women, lawyers, judges and enthusiasts at Trust But Verify. What began as a storehouse for all information relevant to the Floyd Landis doping controversy has blossomed into a highly active hub for discussion that varies as much as the doping in sport issues have themselves.

For those who have not followed the cycling news, Floyd Landis is the winner of the 2006 Tour de France, but due to an adverse finding during a doping test, his win was questioned by USADA (US Anti-Doping Agency). Landis defended himself in an arbitration process in 2007, and is appealing the decision of the majority of arbiters in a proceeding scheduled for March of 2008.

At any given time when you stop by TBV, you will find yourself in the midst of discussions about lab testing procedures, schedules for Landis' legal process (including motions and appeals), ethics of anti-doping testing, and athletes' rights. What may surprise some is the sheer volume of reporting that TBV manages to do on a daily basis. Arguably one of the most up-to-date private blogs on the Web, TBV gives readers a unique tri-fold architecture of reporting: 1) daily news updates, 2) daily blog postings, and 3) in-depth articles from pretty much anyone who'd like to contribute thought-provoking copy. It's a brilliant organization of information - a taste of the highlights for those who want a quick-hit of stats, a summary of other blogs, and the studied (many times academic and scholarly) longer reports from either field experts, or writers who've become ad hoc experts due to studying volumes upon volumes of Landis-related legal proceedings. It's produced by 5 primary contributors, and Landis himself has offered an op-ed piece to the site.

TBV is generally a Landis-leaning blog, which attracts many people who feel that WADA (the World Anti-Doping Agency) has overstepped its bounds when pursuing athletes in doping cases. They contend that there are too many questions as to the accuracy of the science behind sample testing, and therefore there must be stricter measures to ensure that athletes have protection. When you read through the many, many posts (well over a thousand since the blog's inception,) it's difficult not to be convinced that the science of understanding athlete doping is tricky business. As with many other sciences, it's an area still full of interpretation, non-conclusive results, and an aggressive environment in which labs are policed by the same organization that gives them accreditation, (yes, WADA.)

In terms of content, it's a big challenge for a blog to offer what it hopes to be balanced information, and raise issues of fairness, but to do so without falling deeply into one or the other camps. Many people in the public who follow the Landis legal battle are often required (by its very nature) to make a decision about his case. As Landis awaits an appeal process with CAS (Tribunal Arrbitral du Sport) that begins in March in New York City, TBV has often reported on many other doping violation cases that help to bring context and comparison to what Landis is currently experiencing. These topics are discussed at length in its user comments section, which is active. The result of this 'community' is that Landis' case has been analyzed alongside other alleged sport dopers, and the reader is left to decide for him or herself what the real answer seems to be. TBV goes out of its way to remain fair, despite some personal conviction that Landis did not dope.

To someone like I, who does not cycle, it’s amazing to see how interesting a topic like this can be. It only goes to show that a well-designed blog that considers usability, content and timeliness is going to succeed because of its accessibility. Add to that a story that nearly anyone would find fascinating: An athlete pursuing a dream, a questionable test result, a cloak-and-dagger arbitration hearing, an appeal, big international forces, and many colorful characters along the way... (Yes, the case of Landis reads like a Dickens novel.) TBV's writers, who were so dedicated to their blog that they attended Landis' arbitration proceeding in California, know that they've got something very good on their hands. Even though they assumed that the blog would have expired long before 2008, it has proved to be a staying power on the Web. And to what can we attribute this? Using one topic as a springboard for a multitude of related discussions and collaborations. To me, this is a superb recipe for communication in the coming decades, and it can only add to the wealth of information that will become part of the historic case of Floyd Landis.

The Curiosity of Rudy Giuliani's Website

If you happen to visit Rudi Giuliani's website today, or if you have in the past few days, you might find something surprising: He's still running for president! Now you may think: What? Is it true?

The answer would seem to be that yahoo has it correct when it reported a few days ago: Giuliani has dropped out of the race and has since endorsed John McCain as the republican nominee for the 2008 presidential election. Yet, someone in Rudy's campaign has not even updated the website with this information. My reaction, in short is: Wow. Is that possible in this day and age? Well yes and no. One would think that in an electronic world, the website would be one of the first communication chanels that would be changed to update the most current information. But sometimes it is the webmaster (or his or her suite of fellow associates) that are last to be given the go-ahead to change copy on a webpage.

This can occur for a few reason: First, web copy is a fickle thing. It either relates the immediate, or shows the thread-bare elbows due to a lack of care or over-care. In our collective efforts to see that what we say online is truly representative of what we mean, copy can be written and re-written multiple times before it can be considered 'representative'. For instance, how many times have we visited on-the-scene blogs only to find that these blogs haven't been updated in 2 or more years? The best-laid plans are often ditched because there are only so many hours in a day to achieve accomplishments. Blogs can wait if there's dinner to make.

Second: You can't print the truth until you know it's the truth -online. This isn't the case in print media. In that field, you encounter corrections, clarifications, explanations for text on a previous day or week that were found later to be misleading or untrue. In the web world, those misstatements are expected to be fixed immediately. That's a high standard for truth, and a difficult one to achieve each and every day. The amount of time needed to make sure that copy is accurate could often leave writers in tandem for days, afraid to print and afraid to stay quiet. Haste and accuracy are fighting for better position. Rudy's site is probably stuck in a similar position: Publish the obvious news, or write the 'dropping out of the presidential race' in the best way possible, THEN publish it.

Third: Why publish a lack of news? In this case, Rudy may not know his political future. There have been some internet rumblings that Giuliani may be a favorite as running mate for McCain. If so, why not wait and post THAT information on the Giuliani website? This is a strategic scenario which would be of great benefit to Rudy if his campaign were to shift to that of Vice President. The writers, media buyers and editors on the Giuliani campaign staff could very likely be in this position: wait and see.

In the meantime, however, anyone who wants to see the latest and greatest of Rudy's campaign highlights will have to be happy with the assumption that SOMEONE has 'told the webmaster', and that he or she is waiting by the computer for a signal - a good time to do some surfing on the web to see what's going on in politics.

A Halfway Point in Dickens' 'Pickwick Papers', and How I got There in the First Place

As someone who's just begun to rediscover Dickens and his work, reading Pickwick Papers has been an unbelievable joy. Making such a comment isn't something I can do lightly or without taking a pause: Can this book bring about so much joy? Indeed it can, and even a cynical boring bastard would say the same if left in a room with the book for more than ten minutes.

In my discovery of Dickens, I wonder why my collective years of his work has been mainly through British-made mini-series and adaptations? Well, it's far easier to watch film than to read. I'm awfully lucky that my mom read as much as she did, because it was passed on to my brother and I. I may have thought of Dickens in terms of A Christmas Carol, or the musical adaptation of Oliver Twist, but wasn't quite willing to go through the books. This in itself is surprising because I devoured far more difficult writers such as Dostoevsky and Tolstoy without a pause for breath.

I became reacquainted with Dickens under odd circumstances. After my strange 2-year interlude of living in London, and my subsequent and abrupt departure from that country, I was more or less stranded back in the US, despite having spent nearly all my adult life here. One way to keep in touch was Dickens. One of Boston's most beautiful assets is the Public Library on Boylston Street. In my first return job as a security guard on 3rd shift, I took some library loanings with me to pass the long nights away. One of those books was Dicken's Little Dorrit. Because so many things changed so rapidly in my new surroundings, Little Dorrit was left unfinished within a few readings, and my literary needs moved into different places.

Jump along with me through time to today, and now you will find me where this entry began, in the middle of Pickwick Papers. In the interim period, I have read The Old Curiosity Shop and finally finished Little Dorrit. Both of these books are extraordinary, vivid, hysterically funny and deeply tragic. I shall be considering these novels in subsequent posts, but for now, they serve as my springboard into the delights of Pickwick Papers.

Pickwick is a remarkably delightful creature, a 50-something determined bachelor with an eager scholar's view of the world, who is the president and founder of a London society of adventurers in early/mid nineteenth century England. What we soon find out is that Pickwick and his small band of friends tend to have adventures which are rather tame and comically insignifigant compared to actual adventurers. While other Britons of the period were chasing the source of the Nile, and traversing Antarctica, the Pickwickians attempt to ride horses (unsuccessfully), attempt to shoot game (unsuccessfully), attempt romantic affairs (unsuccessfully), and find themselves constantly at odds with the law.

Our co-hero (since there can be no other name for the wonders of this character) is Sam Weller, manservant to Pickwick who is the perfect compliment and contrast to Pickwick. Young, uneducated (but brilliant) Sam is a bright and thoughtful man who becomes Pickwick's right hand as they travel from one London suburb to the other, and it is Sam who most often knows when something is amiss. Sam speaks with an amazing accent, one which I cannot trace to a particular 'current' accent from London, but seems to be an old cockney, characterized by interesting features. He pronounces his W's as V's, and vice versa. This makes for some remarkable miscommunications, since his own surname, Weller, is pronounced as Veller by both himself and his father. Also aparent are the dropped initial consonants, as in the word woman, (rendered as ooman), and the contractions of words, such as wot'll (what will). True to form in so much of Dickens' work, the actual speech of characters reflects so much of their true meaning, intentions and thoughts. Sam never questions the questionable efforts by Pickwick to make good in the world, but simply takes Pickwick aside now and again to offer a different point of view; and Sam's view is always shrewder and more true-to-life than Pickwick's idealised fancies.

So far, Mr. Pickwick and friends have gotten themselves out of many scrapes, usually in situations that had begun as innocently as possible. Pickwick's primary concern at the moment is the outcome of his trial, as brought forth by his previous landlady. She had been led to believe (by a hysterical miscommunication) that Pickwick was in the manner of asking her to marry him. All the while, he'd actually just been mentioning to her that he'd hired a new servant (Sam), which would bring some relief to her. After realising later that Pickwick had never intended to marry her, she sues him for a false proposal of marriage. Pickwick has lost the case (no thanks to his bumbling friends Tumpan, Winkle and Snodgrass) and escapes the full 1,400 pound fine thanks to quick thinking by Sam during the witness examinations. During the trial, Dickens speaks of the problem with witnesses in a legal dispute:

Lawyers hold that there are two kinds of particularly bad witnesses: a reluctant witness, and a too-willing witness; it was Mr. Winkle's fate to figure in both characters.

Characteristic with all the Pickwickians, they are very human men, full of virtue, complexes, and an over-eagerness to be what they can't.

I smile broadly when thinking about Pickwick and the Pickwickians, and the further adventures they'll encounter over the next 400 pages of reading. I'm sure to be back at the blog to relish in the fun.