Monthly Archives: April 2008

Tichu and Texmex 04/06/2008

Drunken score

For tonight’s Tex-Mex, we went to Rio Grande. This is my favorite Tex-Mex restaurant for its Margaritas. All you need is one of their grande and the rest of the night is happy. And boy were people drinking tonight! That’s the only way that I can explain what happened. As you can tell from the picture, the score taking is atrocious. But I think that I was able to recover the score.

We had one other interesting phenomena tonight. I dealt out the cards only to discover that I was one short. So I asked everyone to count their cards to verify the deal. Wayne gave me one of his cards. On the next deal, the same misdeal and the same Wayne giving me a card. Well, when this happened for the third time, we started investigating. It turned out that a card (a red three) fell down to the floor. And Wayne was not counting his cards to see if he was dealt fourteen. So amusing!


04/06/2008 The scorecard for a game of Tichu

GT or T bet made or lost

This team scored more points than the other or one twoed
GT/T Team #1 GT/T GT/T Team #2 GT/T
JohnG & Traci MarkH & Wayne
T+
170
    30  
T+ 295    
105
 
T+ 595     105  
  595    
105
T-
  595     305  
  605    
495
T+
  655   T+ 645  
T- 600    
700
 
  640   T+
860
 
T- 550    
950
 

links

Brand new Ford Mustang still slower than a horse link via

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Six-Word Reviews of 763 SXSW Mp3s link via

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Bush making fun of himself, again link via

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All religions are fairy tales link via

TechShop coming to Austin link via

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Bush administration’s view of the legal limits of the president’s power link via

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Steak Sous Vide

vacuum sealed steak

So here is my recipe for cooking steaks sous vide:

  • Take a one inch thick cut of steak. T-bone, Porterhouse, strip, tenderloin, rib eye — it does not matter.
  • Preheat a grill as hot as you can get it. While the grill is heating up, place the steaks in a freezer to cool down. But make sure that they do no actually freeze. We don’t want any ice crystals forming that will rupture any cell walls.
  • Sear one side of the steak for 30 seconds. Flip it over, sear, flip and rotate, sear, and flip. You are not actually cooking the inside of the steak at this point. You are only forming a savory crust.
  • Liberally salt the outside of the steaks and vacuum pack the steaks with a Foodsaver (in my case, a V2830). My hope here is that the salt will create a brine when the liquid comes out during cooking.
  • Cook the steaks at 130 degrees Fahrenheit for at least an hour. What is great about this stage is that you can forget about the steaks. You cannot overcook the meat!
  • Remove the meat from the bag and plate it. Enjoy!
Cooked sous vide steak

Mmmm, juicy! The only problem is that I have yet to find non-gristly steaks in Texas. As you can see in the picture with the prominent connective tissue running along the steak.

Disc Golf 04/05/2008

Flip Happy Crepes

I went down to take pictures of the southern 9 holes of Zilker park and put them up here. While I was there, a video and camera crew was also there. I saw some strobe lighting and there was one guy with a Canon 70-200mm lens. They were filming a guy talking and holding a couple of discs. I wonder what it was about?

Afterwards, I stopped to eat lunch at Flip Happy Crepes. I missed getting to eat here the fist time we went to Zilker. So I had to go by myself. It was very good. And it was packed. The line was long and slow. I don’t think that there were many burners in that tiny camper.

first shot #1
first shot #2

I stopped by the water park at Old Settler’s Park and practiced for a bit. There are six holes around the hill right next to the water park.

Hope springs eternal

hope springs eternal

This tree inspires me. It is the last of its kind at this field (and on the entire campus, I believe). The bark is looking threadbare. The summers here are harsh with no sprinkler system in sight. However, spring is in the air. And the tree has just sprouted new leaves.

— This time it will thrive.

Game Day 04/04/2008

Game #1

Wabash Cannonball

Yeah! I was able to successfully get a game of Wabash Cannonball played at the meetup. Susan was kind enough to agree to play with me. Unfortunately, I had to sit through a horrible new game by Mayfair or daVanci. It was bad enough for me to not even call out its name now in the fear of giving it publicity.

Wabash was cool though. It did well enough at the start. But I didn’t get another share or two when I should have… Oh, well.

Game Day 04/03/2008

Game #1

1861: The Railroads of the Russian Empire

Mike brought over an 18XX game for us to finally try out. Unfortunately, Chapel had not really read the rules. So we spent a lot of time going over the rules and trying to figure them out. These rules were bad in that they did not have any examples when we needed some. Jon was falling asleep during this and was not very motivated to play it right now. So we quit after one turn.

Game #2

Big Three

He was motivated, however, to play Big Three.