Tina Fey name checked some real Internet commenters in her Golden Globe acceptance speech last night. The three people she mentioned are regulars on the LA Times entertainment forums, although another commenter claims that two of the three are actually the same person.
This weekend we got a rolled rib roast on sale at Whole Foods. Since I wanted it to be good, I decided to do some research before we cooked it. I looked up the cooking method in the Doubleday Cookbook (a great reference cookbook), the Joy of Cooking, and On Food and Cooking. I also found a pointer to the article on standing rib roast at Cooking for Engineers.
When it comes to roasting meat, you set the oven to the proper temperature and take the roast out when it reaches the desired internal temperature. Some people make it fancy and start the oven out at a high temperature to sear the outside of the roast initially and then let the temperature fall to the roasting temperature. The one trick is that the larger the roast is, the lower your roasting temperature should be. For a large rib roast, the guy at Cooking for Engineers recommends 200 degrees. For our roast, we went with 325 degrees, the temperature recommended by Doubleday if you want a nice crusty exterior.
In the end, we rubbed the roast with salt and pepper, preheated the oven to 325 degrees, and then cooked the roast for about two hours and fifteen minutes until it reached an internal temperature of 125 degrees. We made sure to let it come to room temperature before putting it in the oven, and let it rest for 30 minutes before slicing it. The roast came out perfect using this approach.
The reason I did so much homework this time is that the last time we made an oven roast, we used a recipe from a show on Food TV. This recipe included potatoes in the pan, a sauce on the roast, cooking for fifteen minutes at 500 degrees before lowering the temperature, and plenty of other steps as well. Anyway, the roast didn’t come out good. Part of the problem was the recipe and part of the problem was that we bought a round roast at Costco rather than a nice grass feed rib roast from Whole Foods.
My issue with Food TV is that they are biased in favor of novelty. Demonstrating the proper basic technique for making a roast is apparently too boring for them to feature it on any of their shows. The roast we made tasted as good as any roast I’ve ever had, and there was nothing fancy about it.
Back in the day, Food TV had any number of shows that taught basic recipes and techniques. Cooking Live, How to Boil Water, and others centered on teaching people the basics. Now we live in the era of the dreck that is 30 Minute Meals. The idea behind that show is that it provides approachable recipes for home cooks, but the 30 minute concept precludes any number of delicious, simple recipes. Beyond that, the show is is about featuring “original” (often terrible looking) recipes rather demonstrating useful techniques that everybody should know.
I don’t think I ever realized until this weekend just how little the executives at Food TV care about teaching people to cook these days.
Apparently movies are disappearing from iTunes and Netflix because of a licensing arrangement between movie studios and broadcasters called release windows. Basically, once a network (premium or otherwise) pays for exclusive rights to air a movie, they can demand that customers no longer be allowed to view it over the Internet.
David Simon explains The Wire and American cities to overseas viewers:
That is the context of The Wire and that is the only context in which Baltimore – and by reasonable extension, urban America – can be fairly regarded. There are two Americas – separate, unequal, and no longer even acknowledging each other except on the barest cultural terms. In the one nation, new millionaires are minted every day. In the other, human beings no longer necessary to our economy, to our society, are being devalued and destroyed. Both things are true, and one gets a sense, reading the distant reaction to The Wire, that Europeans are far more ready to be convinced by one vision than the other.
And wow, I’m just quoting these two paragraphs because they should be quoted:
In places like West Baltimore, the drug war destroyed every last thing that the drugs themselves left standing – including the credibility of the police deterrent. To elect one man to higher office, an entire city alienated its citizenry and destroyed its juror pool.
Mayor O’Malley is now Governor O’Malley. The police commanders have all been promoted. A daily newspaper that had no stomach for addressing the why a decade ago when it had 400 editors and reporters, a newspaper more consumed with prize submissions and gotcha stories than with complex analysis of its city’s problems, now has 220 bodies in its newsroom and is even less capable of the task. And nothing, of course, changes.
TV producer Chuck Lorre uses the two second “vanity cards” displayed at the end of shows he produces to publish short essays on whatever he feels like. You can only read the essays if you pause the shows on your DVR. One recent card discussed the then upcoming WSJ article about Lorre’s essay. If that doesn’t make his essays a blog in an unusual format, what would?
How does The Daily Show find all of those amazing clips of politicians saying stupid and contradictory thing? By tapping into the mind of one guy who has been with the show since the beginning. The Washington Post profiles Adam Chodikoff, the video producer for the show. It’s amazing what he does, when you think about it.
Today I read Dr. Z’s annual ratings of football broadcasters and realized that I don’t really have a strong opinion of any of them in particular and that I have a mild distaste for all of them.
Fortunately, I’ve come up with a method of watching football that eliminates the announcers almost entirely. The key is not starting to watch the game at game time. Instead I let about 20 or 30 minutes of the games buffer up on the Tivo, and then I start from the beginning, watching the plays at regular speed and fast forwarding on the slowest speed between plays. It’s quick, and even better, silent. I try to stop in time to see the formation before each play. If I missed something, I just watch the play over and over until I figure it out.
By taking regular breaks during the game to let the Tivo keep its buffer full, I can skip all of the commercials, most of the stuff between plays, and most importantly, the halftime report. Using this method you can watch football games in half the normal airtime and eliminate nearly all of the aggravation.
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How music gets sold (in 2009)
Today’s number one selling track in Amazon’s MP3 store is “Right Round” by Flo Rida.
Why is this obscure track today’s best seller? It was played over the opening credits of CSI: Miami last night. I know because I used Shazam for the iPhone to figure it out. There are a number of web sites that identify the songs played on TV shows as well. I think there’s a lesson in this for the music business.
Update: Rogers Cadenhead’s post on Life on Mars has some interesting music-related notes as well.