February | 2011 | Woznation

Archive for February, 2011

Little Kicks

Posted in baby on February 9, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Little kicks, anyone?

Yeah – thats way too long of a clip. But Elaine’s dance is what I picture the baby doing now when I feel anything.

And Phil felt the baby kick for the first time last night, too!! We have been trying for a few days but it had never panned out. Phil will try putting his hand on my stomach in the evening when the baby is active, but the kicks havent been strong enough or will stop as soon as phil tries to feel anything. But last night the baby gave us a big ol’ jab right at the right time. It was really exciting!

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Pork Dumplings

Posted in food on February 2, 2011| 3 Comments »

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! Chinese (or lunar) new years that is. We have not cleaned the house, painted anything red, resolved any debts or had a fancy dinner, but we did make dumplings!!!! This is the year of the rabbit; according to http://www.c-c-c.org – the chinese cultural center of san fransisco:

“People born in the Year of the Rabbit are articulate, talented, and ambitious. They are virtuous, reserved, and have excellent taste. Rabbit people are admired, trusted, and are often financially lucky. They are fond of gossip but are tactful and generally kind. Rabbit people seldom lose their temper. They are clever at business and being conscientious, never back out of a contract. They would make good gamblers for they have the uncanny gift of choosing the right thing. However, they seldom gamble, as they are conservative and wise.”

So our child will be good at gambling but wont gamble?!?! I dont think phil and I will stand for that.

Anyway. Lets make some dumplings. Here is our cast of characters:

We got pork, eggs, scallions, ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic and wonton wrappers. In contrast to many recipes out there, I am using cooked pork. Many other pork dumpling recipes call for uncooked, ground pork but this past weekend I cooked up a 7.5 lb pork shoulder and have needed to use up the leftovers. So cooked pork it is. I had about 2 cups of packed pull pork. So go ahead and throw that into a food processor. Next, chop up 2 scallions (about 2 tablespoons). I usually only use the bottom 2/3 of a scallion and discard the very ends.

Dont worry too much about how small you chop them – you’re going to blend this filling to smithereens anyway. So throw in those scallions along with 2 cloves of garlic (about 2 teaspoons). Next add about 1 teaspoon of freshly grated ginger. I have one large piece of ginger that I keep in the freezer. Whenever I need ginger – I peel off the skin with a potato peeler and use a microplane to shave off the amount I need.

If you do not have fresh ginger and want to use dried ginger, DO NOT USE 1 teaspoon. Fresh ginger and dried ginger are totally different beasts. I would only use like 1/8 of a teaspoon of dried ginger, tops. Lastly, add your wet ingredients: 2 egg whites, 2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon of soy sauce, and 1 teaspoon of sesame oil. Now everyone is in the pool:

Now let ‘er rip! Action shot!!

So now that the filling is ready, you are ready to assemble the dumplings. Im using won-ton wrappers found in the refrigerated section of the grocery store near the produce. If you’re feeling particularly hardcore – you could make your own dough for wrappers. I was not feeling hardcore tonight. I was feeling cheap and easy. So first I set up my steamer. I do not have a bamboo steamer, but my normal veggie steamer seems to work just fine.

[Yikes. I need to clean my stove top.] Next, I set up a little assembling area and got to work. Put about a teaspoon of filling in the middle of the won-ton wrapper. Using your finger, brush all sides of the won-ton with water. Fold up opposite edges on both sides to form a 4 cornered pouch, making sure you seal all sides tightly together.

Woo! Nice job. Now do that like 40 more times. Yeah, its kind of a pain in the ass, but its relatively easy and goes fast – especially if you have a hungry helper. In fact, I usually cook in batches, so as soon as I have a few ready to go, I start steaming. So make sure you have your steamer going and there is a low boil going on underneath your steaming basket – and then put a few dumplings down and cover.

See the steam starting to fill in? (No?) Steam for 4-5 minutes. This is slightly less time than other recipes call for, because, again, you are using cooked pork. So really, all that needs cooking are the egg whites. After a few minutes of steamin you are done!

I serve these with some sort of asian inspired dipping sauce. Usually soy, with a splash of rice wine vinegar, few drops of sesame oil and some chopped scallions. Or whatever asian bottle we have in the fridge. But they are perfectly delicious as is. So there you go. Kung Hei Fat Choi!

Here is any easy copy/paste version of the recipe:

Ingredients:

2 cups cooked pulled pork

2 tablespoons scallion

2 teaspoons garlic

1 teaspoon fresh ground ginger (or 1/8 teaspoon dried ginger)

2 egg whites

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon sesame oil

40-50 won-ton wrappers

Pulse first 7 ingredients in a food processor until well combined. Place 1 teaspoon of filling into center of won-ton wrapper. Brush all sides of won-ton wrapper with water. Fold all corners together to form a pouch, making sure to stick all the corners together tightly together. Place dumplings, in batches, into steamer. Do not crowd – you do not want them touching each other or they will stick together! Cover and steam 4-5 minutes. Done!

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Virgin New Car Buying by phil

Posted in New Car on February 2, 2011| 6 Comments »

After months of research Amy and I finally pulled the trigger on a new car. We decided to go with a brand spanking new VW Jetta TDI. The TDI specification indicates that this particular model has a turbo charged diesel engine. In the past, diesel engines typically conjour up visions of big, loud, and dirty. I can assure you this is not the case with the newest class of diesel engine from VW. In future posts I will outline the specific techniques VW employes to make this such an efficient and clean engine. Right now I just want to concentrate on the pure ecstasy that is driving a new car.

As you can see we went with ‘Platinum Gray Metallic’ (or just gray as I call it) and ‘Titan Black’ leatherette interior. The 2011 model has a slightly more mature look than the 2010 model. To steal a line from Jimi “It looks less like a toy and more like a car”. Overall I like the look a lot, I didnt really care much about the colors but I think Amy and I jointly picked a good combination. I took a panoramic video of the car embedded at the bottom of this post.

As I said, we chose a brand new 2011 which was delivered directly to the dealership. Because of this it only had 11miles when we drove it off the lot. I’m not sure the miles really matter but it was kind of cool driving away with something that had not even been driven across town. If you were wondering, yes, it was 15 degrees out when we picked up the car.

As we were researching different models the main thing we were looking for was something with good gas mileage. We went into the car buying process expecting we would buy a (possibly used) hybrid. Gas mileage is important to us because this is the car which I will be driving 30 highway miles between Baltimore and the Aberdeen Proving Grounds when we move there late this summer. After test driving quite a few hybrids we came away with the impression that most had relatively small interiors (which we are expecting to fill the back seat in the near future) and all had very small trunks. The small trunk is on account of the massive batteries which must be concealed somewhere.

Upon doing more research we discovered that the fuel efficiency of these diesel engines rivaled hybrids especially on the highway. Since my commute would primarily be on the highway this seemed like a good match. Additionally these engines employ some very sophisticated technologies to keep the fuel consumption to a minimum. Our Jetta TDI gets an EPA estimated 43mpg on the highway but I have found people on the internet reporting closer to 45-46mpg in real world driving. As a comparison, a 2011 Prius gets an EPA estimated 48mpg on the highway. Additonally, as the Prius 4 cylinder engine is pushed faster than 55-60mph the gas mileage decreases. Needless to say the turbo diesel does not suffer from this problem at high speeds. Looking at the previous and the following pictures you can calculate the fuel consumption if you know our gas tank holds 14.5 gallons. Based on those pictures the calculation comes out to 50mpg, this is probably not a good estimate because it is only the first 1/8 of a tank and I have found a pretty heavy foot driving to work lately.

There is a manual transmission available which would provide even better fuel consumption but Amy and I opted for the automatic. Our transmission is not a standard planetary gearset automatic transmission, I will have a post dedicated to how cool the transmission is in the future. For now just know it’s an automatic and its awesome.

The worst part of buying the car was probably dealing with all the asshole sales people. What pisses me off is that they would always give us their ‘absolute lowest price’ where I am ‘robbing them blind’, then when I found a cheaper price somewhere else they would have no problem matching it. The first price was obviously not their lowest, why lie to me? Either way, let me tell you how Amy’s dad and consumer reports saved us about $2000.

Tom Watkins has a subscription to the consumer reports magazine and website. This is what we used to do the majority of our research. After a few days of haggling with sales people we found a feature of the consumer reports website where we could get quotes from dealerships in our area. Once we requested quotes through consumer reports we had 4 salespeople call us within 30mins. Now that they knew we were serious and that they were competing with other dealerships they actually tried to win our business by significantly lowering the price and accommodating any other needs we had with the car buying experience. As an example, we were initially told they could only hold a car for us for 2-3 days. Once we went through consumer reports they had no problem holding it for the rest of the month. That is the kind of stuff I hate, tell me the truth from beginning and we will have no problem. Overall, we saved $2250 and got much better customer service by going though consumer reports. Moral of the story, if you are in the market for a new car spring for a consumer reports membership, it could save you thousands of dollars.

I have a whole lot more to say about this new car but for now I will leave you with my current fuel efficiency and a reverse panoramic video of the car taken with my droid X which Akers personally programmed for me. Notice my gas mileage has decreased from approximately 50mpg over the first 90 miles to about 35mpg over the first 250 miles. The reason for this is that I got much much more comfortable with the available torque off the line and using the torque to make ~~scary dangerous~~ necessary passes on the highway on the way to work.