Slither Link

I've been kind of a one-puzzle man these days.

http://kwontomloop.com

It's called slither link and some other names at other sites, but I like the community at kwontomloop. Plus there are plenty of archival puzzles for years of play. I find slither link has a vary satisfying geometric bent and great depth as there are always new patterns to learn.

It takes a while to get up to speed with the patterns, so the first month or so is mostly about deriving proofs. E.G. two 3's next to each other must have a line between them, or else that would form a loop. After a while these sink into your brain and everything speeds up. When you're learning put x's everywhere you can, but eventually try to limit them to where they are really helpful. I don't use x's on monthly beasts at all anymore.

I haven't been working on learning patterns recently, so I've never been able to complete a week's puzzles in under a half hour, though I almost always do it under 50 minutes. It probably took me a month or so to join "club 59".

I'd suggest learning by solving Monday problems in the archive until you can do them in under 10 minutes or so. Feel free to ping me if you have any questions.

Hmm... I just checked and apparently I've solved 806 daily puzzles and 1180 puzzles from the archive. I believe the only time I missed doing a puzzle since I started was my honey moon. After all that, I still like them, which is not something I can say for Sudoku, Killer sudoko, or other puzzles (though the Killer Sudoku laster a few months for me).

Wow that makes me sound like a huge dork. My handle on kwontomloop is Bear.

Cute Nephew Blogging

Here are some cute pictures from my nephew's first b-day party.  His father (my brother) made an awesome pirate ship for the kids to play on.  We managed to snag some video of him playing on one of his new toys (below).

Our new car

Here's our new car (pictures of the actual car are below).  We'll pick it up tomorrow. More details at Subaru's site.

My breakfast part 2, spinach smoothie

I've been making these nearly every day recently. It sounds weird, but you can only barely taste the spinach. It's a good way to sneak some leafy greens into your morning.

I usually make a double batch (~32 oz) and share it with my wife.

Spinach-banana-berry smoothie
(serves 2)

Loose frozen spinach is the most convenient option, but the type in a square is much cheaper. You can peel and freeze the bananas. If your bananas and berries are not frozen, use cold water and add an ice cube or two. The hot water makes the frozen berries or bananas much easier to blend.

Ingredients:

• a handful of fresh or frozen spinach (wash fresh spinach)
• Two bananas
• About a cup of berries (fresh or frozen)
• A spoonful of frozen orange juice concentrate (optional)
  
• about a cup of hot tap water (use cold if the berries aren't frozen)
• 1 pinch salt (optional)
• sugar, lemon juice to taste

Technique:

1. Throw spinach, bananas, berries, orange juice concentrate and salt in a blender. Add water and blend.
2. Taste and adjust flavor with sugar or lemon juice, depending on ripeness of bananas and berries

Mushroom Soup

Easy Mushroom Soup

Here's my version of a fantastic soup recipe from Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook. It's preposterously easy, but fantastic.

Easy Mushroom Soup
Ingredients:

• 1 onion
• 10 oz Mushrooms
• 6 tbs butter
• 4 cups chicken stock (home-made is much better, but don't let that stop you)

Technique:

1. Saute onions in 2 tbs butter for 5 minutes or so. The soup will be prettier if you don't let the onions brown, but I like caramelized onions too much to let that stop me.
2. Add the rest of the butter and the cleaned mushrooms and saute for another 5 minutes or so.
3. Add stock and simmer for 1 hour
4. Blend soup. I love an immersion blender for this.

That's it. Try it. I suspect that you could cut a half hour of the simmering time by covering the mushrooms after step 2 and simmering on low until the mushrooms have released most of their juice (10 min?). Then add the stock. I haven't tried it, but that's my favorite trick for making stock and it'd probably work here.

Oh yeah, and get Bourdain's book. His technique is more restaurant focussed, but he's such a bad-ass that it is totally worth reading even if you aren't going to cook anything from it.

My breakfast part 1: Rice Cooker Oats

One of my two breakfast staples is rice cooker oats.
It's not the best way to make oats, but it's the best first thing in the morning.

I've always found oatmeal unappealing since there's no texture left and nothing to chew. I just don't like eating breakfast with a spoon. I totally wrote off oats until a letter in Cooks Illustrated caught my interest.

The letter suggested a technique for steaming oats that they said tasted oatier than oats. Here's my rendition of the instructions.

Steamed Oats
Ingredients: 1part old fashioned oats to 1 1/3 parts water
Technique: Put steamer basket in pot and fill with water several inches above basket. Bring water to rolling boil then add oats and boil for 90 seconds. Carefully remove steamer basket with tongs and pour out all but 1/2" of water. Return steamer basket to pot and cover and let stand off-heat for 10-15 minutes. Serve with maple syrup.

This yields the best tasting oats that I know of and is well worth trying. The grains are nicely separated and chewy like rice. Unfortunately, it takes some concentration and coordination that is a bit much to expect first thing in the morning.

Intrigued by this technique, I noticed that they were treating oats like rice. So why not use a rice cooker? The results are not quite as nice, but they are a lot easier.

Rice Cooker Oats
Ingredients: 1part old fashioned oats to 1 1/3 parts water
Technique: Add everything to rice cooker and start. When it is done serve with maple syrup.

This is obviously much easier. You can increase the water to make it closer to oatmeal if you like. Because of the way the rice cooker works, using more water will yield mushier oats but they won't be wetter since the extra water will cook off.

One note: if you leave the oats in the cooker too long they'll take on a jello like texture like in the picture. It's a bit weird, but it doesn't hurt the flavor. I'm experimenting to see if I can use oats to make a vegan jello dish.

Cat fight

I finally got a good video of our cats wrestling.