Busy place
Posted by Jeff on Mar 16, 2010 in food
Waiting for our table at the Kona cafe. This place is a Zoo of Humanity! Nathan found a hat in the gift shop.
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Arrival in Orlando
Posted by Jeff on Mar 16, 2010 in Travel
We’ve arrived in Orlando. We’re
Waiting for the Disney bus now. At least they hbe to foresight to mount a big TV so the kids cam watch. Of course, they are showing ads for Disney movies…but at they also added in some environmental ads too…plant a tree, clean the beach, etc.
On the road again…
Posted by Jeff on Mar 16, 2010 in Travel
We’re off to Disney World! We board in a half hour if all goes well, so in the meantime it’s airport school time. I’m watching the kids work on very 19th century math worksheets…pencils in hand. I’ve got two laptops and an iPhone, an iPod nano and an iPod video with me. I’m sure there’s a better source of math education available to us, but for now, I guess I’ll just have to wait until elementary education joins the “personal digital device” bandwagon.
There are a lot of kids flying today, some wearing Disney t-shirts. I bet we’re all headed in the same direction.
Peter works on his math homework
Nathan and Deanna work on more math homework
More random thoughts…I searched the app store this morning, and I was surprised that Disney has not released an app for DisneyWorld and their other parks. There are some retail 3rd-party apps, but nothing from Disney. I picked up one of them, and we’ll see if it is helpful.
Reminds me of when I was in school and there was talk of a math/physics curriculum based on theme parks. How much fun would it be to take an iPhone with the accelerometer in it with an app that could record data while zooming around on a roller coaster? Do some geo-caching, etc. I remember my first trip to Epcot when I was a teenager, and there was a computer that had a touch screen. You got to pick different roller coaster elements like a hill, curves, loops, and string them together, then it would play an animation of you riding the roller coaster you designed. It had a gopher or beaver that talked to you on the screen if you choose elements that shouldn’t go one after the other. It was the first time I had ever used a touch screen. How things change!
Next stop, Philadelphia airport!
Thanksgiving Parade – Zuroski style
Posted by Jeff on Nov 30, 2009 in Travel
I just had to repost this because I thought it was so funny! The shot of Greg is classic 
One question…who is holding the camera?
NYC Thanksgiving 2009 from Patricia Zuroski on Vimeo.
Xiǎolóngbāo – Day 3 – version 1.1
Posted by Jeff on Nov 29, 2009 in food
OK. So, I made the wrappers too thick. This makes sense…not only did they taste not quite right, nor did they feel wuite right in the mouth, the quantity of dumplings was off. Katie’s recipe says enough for 200. I halved the recipe including the wrapper dough. Using half the dough recipe, I ended up with almost 30 dumplings as opposed to something closer to 100 as one might expect if the recipe is right.
Today, I used the last of the filling that I had left. I did not alter it to test to see if the wrapper thickness would affect the broth content of the dumplings. I made a wrapper dough batch using just 1 cup of flour or one-sixth the recipe. One might expect that this would yield 33 dumplings. I ended up with 20, so definitely more then last time given the quantity, but still not on track to make 200 with a full recipe. Nonetheless, I made much thinner wrappers, although a few were too large, so I probably could have been more careful and ended up with 25. Even at 20, that’s twice as many as before.
So, after all this math, were they better? Turns out, yes they were much better. The dumplings were not pouring out broth like the ones I had in Shanghai, but they were clearly “wet” inside, and I could see a little broth pooling in the spoon as I bit them open.
Next time, I’ll try increasing the aspic to meat ratio, and working on even thinner wrappers. Like some comments I read on a blog Katie referenced, I may need to pull out my pasta maker and use it to roll the dough even thinner…but I’d rather not have to resort to that if possible. Maybe brute force (ie just add more aspic) will do the trick.