Was nearly about to forgo this post entirely because I feel like my stomach is about to turn upside down. But it's Chinese New Years and all, so Happy New Years again to you all.

In all the economic trouble that the world currently is in, here's a friendly reminder that our whole lives are basically dependent on the following:

While I like Benjamin Button as much as the other guy, I just saw Slumdog Millionaire yesterday and it is by far the better picture. Haven't seen the any of the other nominated films, so I'll reserve further judgement until later.

Anyways, this started out as a test drawing of a part of another image that I saw, but ended up with walle in it.
How unexpected.

Marissa Mayer once gave a tech talk at Stanford where she reminded everyone that "creativity loves constraint". I agree very much with this statement.

Had to make some dinner the other day and since I had forgotten to go grocery shopping last week, all I had at my disposal was a quarter of a polish sausage, a single left over drumstick, 1/2 a cup of rice left in the pantry, a bag of split peas, and miscellaneous odds and ends.

What resulted was what I now call my "Split-pea two-meat Demi-Risotto Rice-Soup".
Very creative, I know.

Anyways, from what I've been told of risotto, I knew it was a rice dish (good start) with a consistency of something between cooked rice and congee, and from there I pretty much made up the rest of the steps that follow. There are three parts.
EDIT: Rhys insists I can't really call this a risotto, since I didn't use the risotto rice. He knows what he's talking about, so I'll take his word for it.

Cooking the Rice:
Large pot
1/2 cup of rice per serving, I ended up using long-grain rice, since I had no arborio/risotto rice
1.5 cups of chicken broth
few twigs of thyme stripped
spring onion (quartered)
olive oil
- all into the pot
- cook on high until rice is soft, slightly soft
- immediately take rice out of liquid and dip in cold water for 5-10s to prevent overcooking, and put in separate dish
- keep the remaining liquid

Cooking the Split-pea soup/liquid:
Sauce pan
1 cup per serving
2 cups of water
1/4 cup chicken broth
olive oil
- takes the longest to cook
- all into the pan
- heat until the split peas break down
- season liberally with pepper and salt as the peas are breaking down
- strain the liquid and separate the leftover pea bits

Cooking the Meat:
Frying pan
1/8th a polish sausage
1 chicken drum stick already cooked (take the meat off)
5 small shallots
- chop/dice the meat and shallots into small pieces lengthwise
- all into the pan
- sear everything until there's a little color and the flavours are extracted (you can smell right?)

After each of the individual parts are complete:
- add 1/4 of the rice liquid into the 1/2 of the split-pea soup/liquid and mix (it will have a greenish tint, but still a strong split-pea flavour)
- put the rice back into this (still hot) liquid
- add most of the meat
- mix lightly (should be easy since there is more liquid than rice)
- set onto dish and put remaining meat on top (to give it a different texture)

I was pretty hungry by the time everything was completed so my opinion may be a little biased, but I think it was still pretty fricken delicious.



And speaking of not being able to make a proper risotto:

Watched the inauguration today with everyone else in the office (except for Mike, who was actually in Washington DC, soaking in the Obamania there), and while Obama was preaching to the choir for most of his inauguration speech, no one can deny that he is intelligent, articulate and persuasive -- all qualities which will serve him well on the world stage. Congratulations on finally taking office, President Obama!

So I wonder, why don't we have leaders with as much passion and resolve in Canadian politics?
(No, I don't think we're going to find one through the likes of "Canada's Next Great Prime Minister" either)

Saw this in yesterday's 24:

I really have to congratulate the American public for picking a 44th President who seems to embody the spirit and nature of that country. I'm sure much of Canada is also grateful that you went with Obama instead of McCain. To be fair though, only time will tell whether Obama is as good a leader as most believe, or just someone who is really good at playing the media game. After eight years of Bush, I sincerely hope the former is the case here.

Incidentally, why not celebrate this special occasion with a commemorative token:
(bonus points if you recognize from which product I got the infomercial inspiration)


(It took longer to re-draw that face from the poster than I will care to admit... you now owe me Obama, to do a kick ass job in office. Don't disappoint!)

Since Calgary is in the middle of nowhere (geographically), the snow that they get there sometimes tends to be quite dry, however, the sheer accumulation of snow lends itself to creating these really nice snow shelves on the sidewalk that you could ski on. Here in Toronto, the humidity is high enough for snowflakes to form a little larger allowing them to catch the light winds and fall slowly enough to give a Manhattan Stroll-Through-Central-Park kind of feel to the city. And tonight was one of those nights where you could (for just a moment) take a walk outside and watch the snowflakes drift and sway, reflecting the lights of the businesses by as it makes its way down to earth.

It's pretty awesome.

EDIT: There are of course consequences to such kinds of snow... namely the copious amounts of slush/wet snow on the road. So much so that Scarborough RT was shutdown today.
OWNE-
(Seriously though, shouldn't they be prepared for this kind of weather situation already?)

And here is today's contribution to the collective entropy of the human race:

Funniest thing I've seen on youtube in weeks:



EDIT: BSG is actually on episode 11 of season 4, so this is actually the mid-season premiere. Bah.