phi

smooth sailing

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 21:56:57 GMT

Relative to my Iron Butt superpower, a very fast drive from Boston to DC yesterday. I picked up the car in Harvard Square instead of Somerville and brought my luggage with me, so I got to the Mass Pike quickly and easily saving at least 10 minutes and maybe more like 15. The car was unremarkable but got decent enough gas mileage not to need refueling, as neither did I. I hit 10 minutes of traffic total for NYC and another 10 minutes south of Baltimore. Total elapsed time 6:51 which is not a record but it's close, and I think only the second time I've made this drive in under 7 hours. The other time, in June 2020, is not a fair comparison.

For 24-hour one-way rentals like this I get an AYCE toll pass and it finally dawned on me that this made the I-95 express lanes north of Baltimore free. They probably saved me about 45 seconds. Not worth the buck and change it would have cost me a la carte.

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Where I Slept 2025

Sat, 03 Jan 2026 00:30:33 GMT

Somerville, MA
Cambridge, MA
Melrose, MA
New York, NY
Meriden, CT
Gaithersburg, MD
~~New Lebanon, NY~~
Conway, MA
Cummington, MA
Oranjestad, Aruba

Again with the strikeouts, but at least they weren't COVID related.

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on NFTs and the art market

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 18:53:07 GMT

Remember NFTs?

To explain what NFTs really were, first it's necessary to understand the manipulation of the art market by billionaires. Simplified, it goes something like this:

Billionaire A buys, over the course of years or decades, a bunch of art by some artist whose work is worthwhile but affordable. It doesn't have to be the most worthwhile work out there. Billionaire B buys a bunch of art by some other artist. Maybe it's a hundred pieces at five to ten thousand dollars apiece, or maybe it's somewhat fewer, somewhat more expensive pieces, but for most artists it's going to cost less than a million dollars over that artist's lifetime to become the foremost collector of that artist's work.

Some time later, perhaps after the death of the artists in question, Billionaire A (or his heirs) sells one of the pieces of art to Billionaire B for millions of dollars, and Billionaire B likewise sells a piece to Billionaire A for a similar sum. Billionaires A and B then also each donate one of their pieces of art to a museum.

By selling the pieces, they establish a value for the rest of their collection, and that means they can take the full market value of the donated piece off of their income without having to recognize the capital gains on the donated piece. This offsets the capital gains on the sold piece, net tax liability zero. And the amount of cash they each had to shell out to buy the multi million dollar pieces also nets out to zero. But suddenly they each have a billion dollars worth of art with an established market value that they can use as collateral for a low interest loan so they can buy an island or a jet or a rape victim's silence or whatever else they feel like buying that day.

It's not just that the billionaires have gotten this money tax free. It's that they have mostly made up the money in question. It's not real! But they get to spend it anyway.

This massive distortion of the art market has all kinds of knock-on effects, some of them positive. At the very least, it establishes value to billionaires of supporting living artists in ways that might not be significant to them but are certainly significant to the artists. It puts some of the art in museums where people other than the billionaires get to see it. The massive loss of tax revenue outweighs these benefits, but there was still a benefit.

NFTs were a way to make this market distortion more efficient. But the invented value lost its plausibility and the market collapsed.

AI is like this: mostly a market distortion with some real benefits, outweighed as they may be by the downsides. But the current financial arrangements of the AI companies have gotten too efficient, and lost sight of the value plausibility.

Art survived the NFT implosion. I hope computers survive the AI implosion.

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Recipes

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 16:43:43 GMT

Huh, my most recent recipe is from nearly two years ago.

It's not that I haven't been developing recipes. Some of that has been small changes to existing recipes. But a little of it is also that I am finally writing my own garam masala recipe, and that is going to be a lot of iteration.

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Somerville city council election endorsements (better late than never)

Tue, 16 Sep 2025 16:59:41 GMT

Preliminary elections today in Somerville.

The PDS do a questionnaire every year but are bad about linking to it from the front page of their web site. This year is no exception and the info I used for research is here. I also looked at some other surveys and candidate web sites.

City council is 12 candidates running for 8 slots on the final ballot. Voters pick four.

Three candidates are assured of advancing: incumbents Kristen Strezo and Will Mbah; and Justin Klekota who is the strongest non-incumbent candidate. I like all three of these but will be leaving Strezo and Mbah off my ballot for the preliminary because they will advance without my vote this time.

Three others are running strong campaigns and will likely advance: Christopher Spicer, Marianne Walles, and Ben Wheeler. Of these I endorse Spicer and Wheeler, and will not be voting for Walles. The main impact of these two votes, and the one for Klekota, is so that we collectively can gauge support when voting tactically in November. That's worth doing even though it's unlikely to actually change anything on the preliminary.

Three are running middling campaigns but have a reasonable shot at advancing anyway because there are eight slots: Ari Iaccarino, Jon Link, Jack Perenick. I am not particularly impressed with any of these candidates.

Three are, in my mind, running behind, and I don't think any of them have done a good job making an impression with Somerville voters: Scott Istvan, Holly Simione, and Tuesday Thomas. I rather like Scott Istvan, who appears to be able to listen and to pick his battles. He's well informed, has thoughtful and actionable positions, and has experience getting involved in the kinds of issues that the council will face. I don't think he has a chance in November, and I'm not even sure I'll give him my vote then, but I'll be voting for him this time because I'd rather see him on the November ballot than any of the folks he has any chance of finishing ahead of.

It's rare that I endorse an all-male slate and I would not do so if I thought Strezo had even the tiniest chance of missing the cut. But she does not, and will most likely be getting my vote in the general.

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iron butt

Sat, 05 Jul 2025 03:16:54 GMT

Part of an occasional series on superpowers. My superpowers are all Mystery Men level superpowers, but they're real.

I have what I'm told is called in motorcycling an Iron Butt.

Partly that's literally being able to sit for a long time with no side effects. I bicycled 3700 miles across the United States, averaging 8 hours a day in the saddle for a month and a half, and did not get any saddle sores.

But also with only a little bit of adjustment to my hydration and caffeination routine I can go 8 hours without a bathroom. This means when I drive the limiting factor on how far I go between stops is almost always the range of the vehicle I am driving. I rented a particularly fuel efficient car one time and drove it 450 miles without taking it out of gear. It hated this and kept trying to get me to take a coffee break. In less fuel-efficient cars sometimes I will refuel at a full service gas station and go two tankfuls between getting out of the car at all.

Being able to drive anywhere in my general region that much more quickly is a big factor in how I choose to make medium-distance trips. Beyond the question of how long the travel takes compared to a train or airplane, I'm sure I'd also find driving less enjoyable if I needed more stops.

I have actually rather a lot of superpowers, some inborn and some developed (or perhaps, I am told, earned). This one I suppose is some of each.

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Patiala Indian Grill & Bar

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 22:01:27 GMT

Visiting New York to see Luna Luna at The Shed in Hudson Yards, miss_chance and I wanted a good but unpretentious dinner. This was an opportunity to have better Indian food than you can get in Boston and we picked a likely-looking place: Patiala on 34th at 9th. The menu is quite extensive and everything we had was a delight -- this was long enough ago that I don't actually recall the standouts, but I took a lot of notes on their Daal Makhani which I will be applying to my own recipe. It has been a while since I've had that kind of learning experience as a diner and cook and I imagine there are many more such learning experiences available there.

Patiala Indian Grill
371 W 34th St (just east of 9th Ave)
New York, NY 10001
+1.212.564.2974

M-F 1100-1600 and 1700-2030
Sa-Su 1100-2030

Walk-in only and that was not a problem at 7:45 on a Wednesday night, though their other location a block or so away does take reservations.

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an air transport parable

Tue, 18 Feb 2025 04:18:14 GMT

Mirrored from Bluesky.

Seventy years ago, at the very dawn of the jet age, American Airlines got so tired of taking airline reservations on index cards that they did an absolutely audacious thing: they decided to write a computer program to do it.

In those days this was the sort of thing that only militaries did, and well-funded militaries at that. It cost them fifty million dollars. Those are 1957, gold-standard dollars, enough of them to buy ten or a dozen jet airliners.

A few other airlines also thought of writing computer programs but American's was the best and pretty soon most other airlines were using it. It grew new features, most of which its customers couldn't live without once they had them.

A few decades passed and the system got larger and clunkier. It did an awful lot of things, none of them especially well. And because the underlying technology was so ancient, it was brittle and hard to update and expensive to keep running. But too much depended on it, and so it kept on going.

About twenty years ago, a few very very smart people had enough hubris to think they could replace it. "How hard could this be?", they asked. Ten or a dozen of them sat down to start writing code, expecting it to take a month or two.

A year later there were 250 people working on the project.

Two years and another fifty million dollars later, the project was canceled, having failed to produce a usable airline reservation system.

At least this time they were 2007 dollars, not 1957 dollars.

(this is not a story about airline reservation systems)

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Where I Slept 2024

Thu, 02 Jan 2025 04:45:24 GMT

Melrose, MA
Somerville, MA
Boston, MA
North Adams, MA
Pittsford, NY
Gaithersburg, MD
Lenox, MA
New York, NY
New Lebanon, NY
Bethel, VT
Old Orchard Beach, ME
Houghton, ME
Lunenburg, NS
Dartmouth, NS
Grafton, NS
Woodstock, NB
South Charlestown, NH

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approaching

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 04:14:03 GMT

Met up with Julia at 10 this morning and headed to Haverhill for an Arisia art show worksession. Julia had some inventory to do and a meeting to take, and I started on the pegboard.

Some time ago Arisia changed from attaching pairs of pegboard together with zip ties (which we then removed every year) to using heavy duty braided picture wire. A while after that we made some more pairs at a worksession where we were also doing a lot of other work, and I didn't supervise the assembly as well as I should have. A little ways in I noticed some of the assembly being done in a way that could come loose, and got everyone doing it so that it wouldn't, but a few got through and stayed that way for the years since.

So my first task was to find the bad pairs and redo them. There turned out to be three of these. I also sorted pegboard by color and restacked it so that it wouldn't be damaged in transit.

Arisia has two different shades of brown pegboard, and we try to split the show so that one part can be one color and one the other without the difference being noticeable. In the new hotel that split comes out differently from what we've been doing, so we needed to make some more pairs of the darker color (we have quite a bit of unpaired pegboard). This takes a lot longer than checking or restacking pegboard, but I got started, and then when Julia was done with her stuff she joined in. We made a lot of pairs, but only had barely enough wire for the currently planned layout, with one pair to spare.

There are ways to hang pegboards that aren't attached together, and we have zip ties to make pairs the old way, so we packed a few more pegboards into the carts just in case. After all, there may still be small changes to the layout, or damage to pegboard in transit.

So now the pegboard is all nicely packaged up and tagged to go to the convention, along with the other Art Show stuff. And I have a cooking project to play with and a new desk to put together.

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short form

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 18:33:46 GMT

I thought shifting my social media presence would result in more posts here. But in fact having a place for short form posts has meant, if anything, fewer posts here.

So if you're newly here, or back here after a long absence, and looking for content from me, it's mostly on Bluesky.

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both sides

Wed, 02 Oct 2024 22:41:15 GMT

I 100% disagree with the "good people on both sides" narrative. But probably not in the way that you're thinking. The fundamental problem with it is with the concept of "good people".

The problem is that both sides have -- no, consist mostly of -- people who *think* they are being good. Maybe because of propaganda, or complacency, or ignorance, but mostly by actively convincing themselves of it, as people have probably done since the invention of the concept of "good". Just like any cult, deprogramming people who think they're being good when they're not is a lot harder than just telling them they're not, or even why they're not.

There are a few people who know they're on the wrong side but are trapped there. Visibly confronting the issue might help a few of those escape, or help people who aren't trapped take more care not to get trapped. Maybe we're in a place where that is all we can do. But I am more hopeful than that, and less interested in the easy but partial solution.

Which means that we have our work cut out for us.

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Calle Dao

Mon, 03 Jun 2024 15:59:30 GMT

Walking the High Line in the glorious weather, miss_chance and I found ourselves looking for an early al fresco dinner and found this amazing Cuban/Asian fusion restaurant half a block from its midpoint.

We had the most delightful wontons, with mushrooms (fried) and with shrimp (steamed). Then we had the excellent chicken empanadas. Then we had oysters, and then because they were out of the duck and despite the large number of other things we wanted to try we had more of the shrimp wontons because they were just that good.

The Calle Dao Mojito with shiso leaf and lemongrass syrup was incredible.

Calle Dao
461 W 23rd St (just east of 10th Ave)
New York, NY 10011
+1.212.414.4104

Hours listed on the web site as:
M-Tu 1600-2200
W-Th 1200-2200
F 1200-2300
Sa 1100-2300
Su 1100-2100
but in practice the kitchen shuts down for most of an hour around 3:30 or 4 to switch over from the lunch menu to the dinner menu, and this does not seem like the kind of place that treats time with the kind of precision the above listings imply.

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more superpowers

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 17:11:07 GMT

This is one of my more dangerous superpowers: I am immune to poison ivy, mosquito bites, and similar skin reactions. Mosquitos definitely bite me and the big scary back woods ones that give other people enormous welts will raise a teeny welt on me. When I had the chicken pox as a kid I ran a fever but didn't have any pox (and I definitely had chicken pox, because later I *did* have shingles).

This is dangerous because I can unknowingly have urushiol on my skin and have it rub off on other people if I'm not careful.

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superpowers

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 22:10:08 GMT

Taking a moment to appreciate one of my several superpowers: sleep. I can go to sleep:

in a wide range of temperature, light, and noise conditions
at a wide range of times (sustainably, 14 to 19 hours since I last slept, but I can and do stay up for 30 hours and then sleep for 12 to manage jet lag when taking a redeye)
quickly
soundly
for a set amount of time. That is: If I go to sleep intending to sleep for a certain number of hours, that is how long I sleep, without an alarm.
or, until a subtle alarm goes off, if the amount of time I need to sleep is unknown in advance. The alarm can be well below the ambient noise level.

I also don't need as much sleep as some people: 7.5 hours a night is generally plenty. I can function on 5 hours for weeks or months at a time and 2 hours for about four cycles. That last one only works if the "up" phase of my sleep cycle doesn't exceed about 17 hours, which means it precesses like mad.

What I can't do is go to sleep within 45 minutes of either sunrise or sunset. Something about that light level kicks off my seratonin. It's my sleep kryptonite.

I've had most of these superpowers since birth, but some of them didn't develop until I started a meditation practice back in 2001 or so.

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How I used my two minutes of zoning proposal hearing time

Fri, 16 Feb 2024 02:17:48 GMT

Quoting from The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs.

Chapter 10: The need for aged buildings.

The district must mingle buildings that vary in age and condition, including a good proportion of old ones.

Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them. By old buildings I mean not museum-piece old buildings, not old buildings in an excellent and expensive state of rehabilitation… but… plain, ordinary, low-value old buildings, including some rundown old buildings.

If a city area has only new buildings, the enterprises that can exist there are automatically limited to those that can support the high costs of new construction….

Chain stores, chain restaurants and banks go into new construction…. Well-subsidized opera and art museums often go into new buildings. But the unformalized feeders of the arts--studios, galleries, stores for musical instruments and art supplies… these go into old buildings. …[H]undreds of ordinary enterprises, necessary to the… public life of streets and neighborhoods… can make out successfully in old buildings, but are inexorably slain by the high overhead of new construction.

As for really new ideas of any kind--no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be--there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error, and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.

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Where I Slept 2023

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 18:21:20 GMT

Cancellations this year were all places I managed to make it to later in the year.

Berlin, Germany
Reykjavik, Iceland
Somerville, MA
Boston, MA
Melrose, MA
Gaithersburg, MD
Mt. Laurel, NJ
Madison, WI
Milwaukee, WI
New Lebanon, NY
Hudson, NY
Reno, NV
Black Rock City, NV
American Airlines flight 2701
Provincetown, MA
Eastham, MA
New York, NY
Portland, ME

I'm counting the redeye even though more than half of my sleep that night was after getting home, because unlike the bus I took in 2019 I got real sleep on it and not just dozing.

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Watermelon Ceviche

Fri, 08 Dec 2023 17:59:52 GMT

I've had an idea for some time now to make a vegan ceviche using watermelon for the main ingredient. But I didn't want it to just be a fruit salad, and I wasn't sure how that was going to work.

Then when ordering other things from sayweee.com I saw they had Thai basil, which they often don't, and at a good price too. This seemed like a good direction, and sure enough it was.

1/2 a full size seedless watermelon, diced 1cm or a little smaller (about 12 cups) and drained well
1/4 pound Thai basil, minus the tougher bits of stem, roughly chopped
1 large jalapeño, sliced thin, with its seeds
1 avocado, diced 1cm or a little bigger
3 oz lime juice
1/2 tsp salt

The watermelon was still pretty wet and maybe next time I'll try pressing it. But not having done that was handy for solving the fact that I initially oversalted the dish.

If your diners don't all like their food spicy the jalapeño can be served on the side.

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La Colombina

Sat, 25 Nov 2023 00:12:13 GMT

Looking for a nice meal in Venice last year, miss_chance and I called several Michelin-listed restaurants and this was the one at which we could get a table (and in general, it didn't seem like getting a table here would be terribly hard). They were not good about dietary restrictions but the food was excellent and not nearly as expensive as one might expect a meal this nice to be -- we were out of there for less than €150 including wine. And, it's around the corner from the fabulous Teatro Italia supermarket.

I've had two conversations in the last week with people planning travel to Venice and in each case I had to hunt around on my phone to find the info for this place. So:

La Colombina
Cannaregio 1828 (Vaporetto: San Marcuola)
30131 Venezia VE, Italy
Reservations available by email at info@ristorantelacolombina.eu
+39 041 522 2616
Fri-Tue 1230-1430 (but check first, they have occasional other lunch closings as well)
Thu-Tue 1900-2200

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vegan mushroom gravy

Thu, 23 Nov 2023 06:07:24 GMT

in a 2 quart saucier, cook

2.5 oz finely diced yellow onion
in as little oil as you can get away with for 5 minutes. Add

6 oz chopped maitake
and cook for another 10 minutes, which is about as long as it will keep expressing liquid to deglaze the pan with.

Remove from heat and add

2-3 tsp fresh thyme

1/4 tsp ground green peppercorn

1 tsp dark soy sauce (I use Lee Kum Kee), or 2 tsp low sodium Japanese / American style (ie, Kikkoman) soy sauce if you don't have dark (but be careful, the soy has a lot of work to do and not much sodium budget to do it with)

enough, but not more than 1/3, of the broth below that it'll go through a blender. (I use a stick blender, for which this is about 3 oz, but some stick blenders splash a lot with that little material to work with.)

Once it's nice and smooth, set aside (if you used a stick blender, you don't have to worry about getting the pot super clean) and melt

1/4 c Earth Balance
Slowly add in

1/4 c flour

1 Tbsp Better than Bouillon veggie base
and cook until toasted, but don't overdo it.
Slowly add in

1/4 c white wine
and the rest of

3 cups mushroom broth, heated (or you can get away with just water but it won't be as rich)
Somewhere around 1.5 or 2 cups in it will start behaving like a Newtonian fluid again and you can stop being slow about it.
Combine with the reserved mushroom blend. Check for saltiness; you may want to add a little bit more soy sauce.

Yields 3 cups.

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remembrance

Tue, 21 Nov 2023 02:15:36 GMT

Today seems like a good day to remember Cassandra Lease, who was one of the first people to step up to save Arisia in October 2018. Her running for the board was one of the things that convinced me that saving Arisia was even the right thing to do. She was one of the best writers I have ever met, and certainly the best writer I've ever collaborated with.

Cass did not die violently, but I rather suspect that structural violence was a contributing factor to her untimely death in early 2021.

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Taco Shop

Mon, 18 Sep 2023 23:08:15 GMT

On the way in to Burning Man, my campmates and I stumbled upon this all-outdoor eatery in an unnamed alley in Midtown Reno and had ourselves some delicious tacos. On the way back out we did a search on "best outdoor dining in Reno" and the Internet thought it was the very best thing going. We did also have other quality outdoor food at places like Clary's but nothing surpassed these guys. Highly recommended and I will be going back the very next time I am in Reno.

In addition to not having a name, the alley it's in also doesn't have a numbering scheme despite multiple buildings facing it. The address Google has on Center St is a lie but there's a sandwich board with a helpful arrow located at 24 Cheney St or if you're coming from the south you can come up the alley from 35 E. Taylor St.

Taco Shop
G59R+3P2 (aka 39°31'03.5"N 119°48'29.6"W)
Reno, NV 89501
Tue-Sat 1100-2100 (some sources suggest they're open later on Friday and Saturday)
+1.775.507.7515

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Chana Masala

Sat, 19 Aug 2023 03:27:23 GMT

Preparing for a group camping trip, I decided I wanted a tasty recipe that met the following constraints:

- No ingredient refrigeration required - shelf stable ingredients only
- No measuring, peeling, chopping, etc required at the time of cooking
- Scalable
- One pot, and generally minimal equipment needed to lighten packing and speed washup
- ~~All cooking can be done over high heat, so it can be made with a poorly modulating camp stove~~ This constraint made the recipe not scale. It now needs a stove that can be turned down.
- Vegan
- Gluten free

Usually recipes this constrained are only tasty if you're on a camping trip. But I made some test runs and I think this one stands up for non-camping use as well, and there are times other than camping that it'll be nice to have such an easy recipe to make.

Pre-measure a spice mix, as follows:
1T Penzeys minced (that is, freeze-dried) garlic
1T dried fenugreek leaves (aka kasoori methi)
2T powdered ginger
1t cumin
2/3t coriander, plus another 2/3t per t of chili powder below
1t lemon pepper
2t garam masala
1t turmeric
1/2t cinnamon
chili powder to taste -- for large groups I usually leave this out, but for myself I like 1/2 t

Put in a pot and bring up to temp, one at a time:

one 13.5 oz can coconut milk (this and the other can are available as pop tops, in which case you don't even need a can opener on the trail)
one 16 oz container salsa (this recipe is intended for Tostitos brand for best availability, but it's also delicious with Ortega. Other simple, no-bell-peppers salsas should be OK too)
one 15.5 oz can chick peas (including the liquid). At large scales, put the liquid in first and bring up to temp separately.
the above spice mix
3/4 cup uncooked, dry basmati rice (this can be measured ahead and put in a container with the spices). This will need to be stirred immediately after adding so that it cooks evenly and doesn't stick to the pot.

Bring to a boil, then simmer, stirring frequently, for 25 minutes. If your stove doesn't simmer well, cover the pot when not stirring to ensure it doesn't lose too much liquid.

Rest for 5 minutes, then serve. Makes enough for dinner for 4 or a side for 10.

So far the largest I have made this is 12x (as a side dish for 120 people), and I am confident it would work at 24x. Past that, post-cooking foodsafety temperature control probably requires splitting the batches rather than trying to do it all in one enormous pot.

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Lifted from an unrelated conversation

Fri, 21 Jul 2023 03:20:39 GMT

"Neal Stephenson books don't so much end as they run out of paper."

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Broccoli and Cheddar Soup (take 2)

Mon, 17 Jul 2023 22:36:13 GMT

My previous recipe results in a Panera style soup (with carrots and onions) and also leaned harder on the quality of the dairy and stock than was suitable for the quality of those ingredients I usually keep around. Recently I had occasion to make it for someone who avoids onion, which was a chance to rethink and simplify the recipe and also move it more towards the Au Bon Pain experience that inspired me to make this soup in the first place.

Make a roux with 1/4c each butter and flour.
Add in 1T of Better than Bouillon chicken base. Cook for a bit to brown the roux a little.
Slowly add in 3c milk, stirring to keep the roux from sticking to the pot. About half way through, the soup will start behaving like a Newtonian fluid again.
Add 8oz chopped broccoli and simmer for 20-25 minutes.
At the end, add 4oz shredded cheese. This can be all cheddar if it's a mild cheddar, but if it's a sharp cheddar then like 1/3 of it should be something else (I used a Petit Basque which is a Manchego style and that worked nicely).

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