For the Memorial Day weekend, I drove out to Southern California to hang out with family and celebrate my dad's birthday. My cousin and I went on another cooking binge, though as far as cooking binges go it wasn't the most elaborate or complicated (which is a good thing). I didn't take notes of what we made, so I'm just working from memory, but I think there was prime rib, braised lamb shoulder, buttery green bean with almond topping, caprese salad, deep fried brussel sprouts, creamed kale, hand-cut potato chips, fried smashed new potatoes, and French silk pie. (And I feel like there's one more dish missing from that list.) It all came out pretty tasty, though the lamb ended up being a little tough.
While out there, I found out that Justin has become an homeowner, which is exciting. The house needs some work, especially the kitchen (it's laid out in an unusual way). And the back yard was literally crawling with bugs. I think the shed in the back was the culprit because it provided a space that was probably moist underneath for the bugs to hang out. There's also some work that needs to be done along one of the brick walls that's shared with a neighbor. It's clearly structurally unstable. So a lot of work.
My 6 week summer class is going well. I think the students have enjoyed the class (as much as students who don't like math can be expected to enjoy a math class). It's always incredible how quickly the summer classes go. I'll be done with this one in about a week and a half. I don't really have too many observations about this class.
I'm investing a lot of time these weeks on building our new Math 120 class for the Fall. The math faculty have been collaborating on this project, and it's coming together very nicely. We're trying to use a Coursera platform for some pre-class materials, and it's going okay-ish. There's a group at OSU that is developing a program called Ximera, which is supposed to take LaTeX and put it into a format that can be used online. We're coming onto this somewhere between alpha and beta testing, so there are still bugs that we're finding that they're needing to fix. But even if that part doesn't work for us, we will still be able to take our work and use it in another format so that it doesn't go to waste.
The flow of emails for being department chair is starting to increase. I'm receiving emails every couple days that inform me of emails that I will be responsible for sending out in the future. I also had to take a training for supervisors (since I'll have an administrative assistant under me), and that was an interesting experience. It felt like someone wrote this online course in the early 2000s using clip art from the 1990s. It was just awful. Some of the images didn't work, which fortunately didn't matter. And it only took me a couple hours to go through. But it was a clear reminder that bad online courses still exist out there.
On the topic of online courses, I've been taking a course in Sabermetrics from EdX. It's been interesting and I would recommend it to anyone who was interested (it's free). I wasn't sure I was going to have the patience for it because the instructor talks very slowly, but then I found the 2x button, which makes the videos run at faster. So I'm getting through that in about half the time. I would like to eventually do something with sports analysis and that sort of thing for fun, but it's not going to be in baseball. I just don't care enough about the game.
The Oaxaca team has undergone a significant shift in the last couple weeks. We had hoped to get 10 and only ended up with 6, but in the last week that has dropped to 3. There was a family of 3 that had expressed interest, and they were moving forward, but loss of job plus family in the hospital added together to create a barrier to going. We will be meeting up with 3 other people from California, and we're starting conversations with them to sort out exactly what needs to be done and how we're going to make sure this comes together. The lack of people drives up the amount of work that needs to be done, so it's going to be a very tiring trip. In the next couple weeks, I'll probably post a prayer/support letter to raise some funds for arts/crafts/game materials and to help raise support for the rest of the team. I've already committed to paying the personal costs out of pocket.
I got an Emson indoor smoker off of Groupon a little while ago. Today was my first real chance to pull it out and take a close look at it. Upon reading the instructions carefully, I found the following sentences back-to-back:
When cold smoking food, do not add water or any liquid infusion. Always add water or liquid infusion when; cold/hot smoking.So we'll see how things go. I'm thinking of picking up some salmon at the store today to try smoking that. The size isn't that big, which means you can't really smoke for a crowd. And that might mean I'll end up buying a regular outdoor smoker at some point in the future. But for now, this is an interesting starting point. A side benefit is that it's supposed to function as a pressure cooker as well, so that might be good to add to my cooking arsenal. (Specifically, I'm thinking beans and chili.)
I had tried to make a chocolate cream-pie-like dessert a couple weeks ago for a potluck, but it didn't set properly. I wasn't sure what to do with it until a couple days ago when I realized that I might be able to make it into an ice cream. So that happened. The taste is pretty good, and the texture is good. Just out of the ice cream machine, it was a little bit more dense than normal, but it seemed to pick up plenty of air so I don't think it will be rock-hard after I let it freeze completely. At this point, I'm guessing that the texture will come out more like a gourmet ice cream. The custard was a probably a little bit richer than usual, so when you combine that with the denser texture, that's probably how it will come out. I'll find out in a couple hours.
That's pretty much it. I think I'll go to the store to buy some salmon and then smoke it. That seems like a good idea.
