British Gastronomy

(Fall 2012) As they say, back to our regularly scheduled programming.  One of the things that I miss the most about Oxford is the food.  I'm not claiming that British food is extraordinary, but the whole concept that is somewhat novel in America of farm to table and local eating is pervasive in the lifestyle that I lived in Oxford.  Out my apartment's backdoor and across the street were the covered markets, in which were, amongst other shops, four butchers, a fresh produce stand, two botanists, and a cheesemonger (in addition to confectioners, coffee shops, and other food vendors).  Invariably, I stopped in every chance that I could get - on my way home from work if it was a decent hour, after running on Saturday or Sunday morning, or any other time that I could get away.  What made these food vendors so special?  Well, a picture is worth a thousand words...

The butchers carried everything from local farms...pheasants, chickens, rabbits, even deer and boar, not to mention a dozen different types of sausages.

The fresh produce stand: much more variety, cheaper, and higher quality than any of the grocery stores within walking distance.

And of course, the cheesemonger.  About a hundred different types of British and French cheese.  So good...

One story that I was constantly reminded of came from my father's sabbatical back in the 90s.  While in England, he decided to track down our family cousins.  It turns out that our cousins, maybe 7 times removed, ended up doing the same thing that his parents and family had been doing for generations: farming.  Now, the Brake farms in England cater to large kitchens and cafeterias.  Almost every other morning I'd see their trucks unloading fresh dairy, eggs, poultry, etc. at the colleges.

Now, onto the home cooked meals.  I think one of the favorite ingredients that I had was lamb's lettuce (shown above with beet slices).  Slightly like spinach, but a bit juicier.  This quickly became my favorite type of salad once sprinkled with a pinch of salt and balsamic vinegar...

Many times I'd be pretty lazy after working 12 hours, so my cooking methods were designed to minimize time spent cleaning up afterwards.  A typical meal is shown above: pork belly with my home made smokey bbq sauce, twice baked potatoes, and roasted beets.

Every so often, though, I'd do a big, fancy meal for my flatmates.  One such meal used the ingredients above: 2 pheasants, brussel sprouts,yellow onions, carrots, beets, farro, home made bread, and five different types of mushrooms.  All from the covered markets except for the farro and bread materials.  The end result was a pheasant casserole with a cream mushroom sauce, roasted beets and brussel sprouts, farro with caramelized onions and creme fraiche, and the pork belly was used to add some fat to the pheasants.

Flatmates Fred and Manu with the farro, brussel sprouts, and pheasant casserole...

Flatmate Alex, with the tiny kitchen in the background.  Good times.

Posting to Resume Shortly

(April 17th, 2013)  It's been a long semester.  I know a number of you have been waiting anxiously to see all of the adventures that I've been up to, but teaching has put a severe constraint on my ability to find free time to post.  Well, teaching and moving.  At the start of the year, I was asked to teach a class that I wasn't expecting to teach (I was planning to teach vibration theory, but instead asked to teach computational mechanics, a class that I've never even taken before let alone taught).  So, a certain amount of formalism has been needed to augment everything that I've taught myself about computational mechanics over the last decade.  And, for this reason, I've been extremely busy.  Plus I moved.  Did I mention that already?  That eats up a lot of free time too apparently, who knew?!?

I wasn't planning on rambling about where my time has gone with this post, though.  Instead I wanted to say thank you to everyone for their support and concern over the last few days, and to let the rest of you know that I did, indeed, make it safely out of Boston.  Fortunately, I had left the finish area about half an hour or so before the explosions occurred, and I am now safely back in Albuquerque.  I'll give more details once I get a chance to catch up with my posts.  In the mean time, hang in there, and keep the rest of those in Boston in your prayers as we all struggle to understand what happened and why something so senseless occurred.

Tanks, tanks, and ... more tanks!

(December 6th) Shrivenham.  Little did I know, but this extension of the University of Cramfield was actually the site of the Joint Services Command and Staff College.  I was visiting Shrivenham to catch up with my dear colleague Hugh.  As a mechanical engineering professor at a military institution, Hugh was fortunate enough to teach such classes as Ballistics.  His office full of toys made me quite jealous as I could only imagine the fun that he has in using them for in class demonstrations.

Amongst other things that I saw during my visit to Shrivenham was the tank museum.  Words can't quite do it justice, so I'll let the pictures tell the story:

Each tank was setup for you to climb into and actually see how to operate it.  Unfortunately, they were all out of petrol.

More of the dozens of tanks, armored personnel carriers, anti-tank platforms, etc.  Out of view on the left was an airforce flight simulator.  I learned the fun way that I've very little aptitude for flying a jet.

Sometimes life really is like Looney Tunes...when this barrel exploded, it peeled back just like we've all seen Daffy's guns do.

A brief layover in New Mexico, Thanksgiving edition

(November 16th-24th) I always manage to forget just how busy I am during my time at home.  This trip (both the one that this post is about and the one that I'm currently on) home has been no different.  Some of you have noticed the...delinquency that I've exhibited as of late...just far too many things to attend to while at home., but that's still a few posts away.

After my visit to Houston, I returned home to New Mexico, where I immediately set out to go skydiving down in Alamogordo.  Alas, the weather had other ideas...so our four hour drive to Cloudcroft was for little more than a nice night away from home...  The saving grace was that we stayed in a quaint (though potentially haunted) hotel called The Lodge.

Our room at The Lodge.  Despite it's 70s appearance, it really was quite quaint and potentially haunted.

As we woke up, we quickly learned that Cloudcroft had fully earned it's name that day.

The rain became snow, and soon our dreams of skydiving were scuttled.

The rest of my visit passed all too quickly...three birthday dinners for Kim, Thanksgiving potluck at her parents' house, and more work than I care to remember.

Up next (soon I promise), more from England.

No Rest for the Weary (Houston Edition)

(November 11th-16th) As you may have surmised from the title of this post, shortly after returning from my marathon I was off again, this time back across the pond to Houston.  Somehow the middle of my trip to Oxford had already passed me by, a theme that has been fairly constant throughout my time in England.

Every year I attend the IMECE conference, so it's become an event that I look forward to as I catch up with colleagues, make new acquaintances, get to hear myself talk about my research in front of semi-captive audiences, and of course all of the other fluff associated with visiting a different city (such as new running trails, restaurants, cultural events to take in, etc.).

I must admit, Houston was a bit odd this year as most of my colleagues showed up towards the middle of the conference if they showed up at all.  That left a few days of taking in Houston during my spare time alone...though little did I know that that was really going to be the only time that I would have to take Houston in.

My first day in Houston was pretty much the only chance that I had to eat out.  Starved for authentic South-Western food, I found myself wandering into Irma's Southwest Grill.  It managed to do the trick.  One thing that impressed me about the meal, though, was the lentil and black bean soup.  A little spicy and flavored sublimely.  At least compared to what I had been eating in England and Germany. 

Salsas (two types!), guacamole, and tortilla chips!  Oh how I missed thee.

  

 

Tamales and real iced tea?  Oh, it was good to be back in the states.  Oddly enough, the one thing that I didn't photograph was the lentil and black bean soup...

That night, having a bit of time to kill, I decided to head off to the Houston Rockets game since I could see the arena from my hotel room.

How could I resist?  After all, basketball games were something I always enjoyed seeing as a kid growing up in DC.  And, amazingly, the game wasn't sold out even though the defending champions, the Miami Heat, were coming to town. 

I really did like that view from my hotel room, oddly enough.

As you can see, lots of empty seats...so strange.  But I didn't complain about getting to see the likes of LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh, Ray Allen, and the Rocket's own James Harden.  I'm still shocked that OKC traded him away.  Two nights later I found myself heading the same way again.  My good friend from grad school, Annie Tangpong, had arrived mid-week and wanted to take in a game too.  So, being an old pro at getting tickets quickly and easily, we headed off to see the Rockets play the New Orleans Hornets.

And yep, that's James "The Beard" Harden taking free throws with Anthony Davis in the low post.

As you can see above, Annie is nowhere near as big as Yao Ming.  The Rocket's arena had a lot of interactive areas for fans...very neat to see as I can't remember the Cap Center (later US Airways Arena) ever having anything of the like.

Anyways, that's pretty much it for Houston...well, that and 30 miles of running through Buffalo Bayou park and other, less pleasant neighborhoods.  Lot's of work really which I shall not go into detail about here.

Next up: Another Layover in New Mexico!  In the mean time, somehow I'm only one month behind...how did that happen?!

Heartbroken

(December 14th) As news continues to trickle in about the tragedy that transpired in Newtown, my heart is broken piece by piece.  Even as an adult, I wrestle with the question of why?  Why was this allowed to happen?  How could these tragedies...Columbine, Aurora, and Virginia Tech (where several of my colleagues died) to name just a few of the many that we've seen in recent years...happen?

I don't pretend to struggle with the question of 'How could God allow this?' as that is clearly, to me, not the issue (no matter what you believe in, the premise that we have free will lays blame squarely upon us, unless you're expecting divine intervention...).  No.  Rather, i struggle with the concept of how do we, as a society, allow this to happen?

It's tempting to fill this space with a monologue against our lax gun control laws (after all, who out there is surprised to hear that I'm for more stringent gun control laws), but I shall endeavor to not go too far into this.  I understand that people desire a method to hunt, to protect themselves (though the question of 'from whom are you trying to protect yourself with an automatic rifle' does flash through my mind), and to collect.

I don't, however, understand why we need such powerful weapons to fill each of these gaps?  I don't understand why we have a system that makes it easy for psychologically disturbed individuals (not always easy to tell, but rather apparent in the case of Virginia Tech and Aurora) to easily acquire high powered weapons (and that is what they are, weapons in the very purest sense of the word...semi-automatic assault rifles, smoke grenades, etc.).  I don't understand why we make guns easily accessible to minors.

The concepts of responsibility seem to be lacking at several stages in this process.  Do I think that we must drastically scale back what's available to be sold and owned?  No.  I fear that that might be an over reaction of sorts.  Do I think that we should revisit our gun control laws, place some controls, require more responsibility and registration, and limit what and how much is sold?  To some extent, yes.  As I mentioned above, why do we need to own automatic or semi-automatic guns and rifles?

I understand our constitutional right to bear arms in order to protect ourselves and our state.  That constitutional right also spells out that a well prepared militia is instrumental in protecting our nation.  Times have changed though.  Back when the constitution was written, we were actively warring against Native Americans, French, Spanish, and the British.  We were in the midst of a revolutionary war, in which all citizens of the state were needed to rise up and throw off what we perceived to be a yoke of oppression, whether in an organized or guerrilla style campaign. 

Times have changed.  Are we presently worried, though, of our families being scalped while on the homestead or taking goods to town?  Of course not, that very notion now seems silly and offensive on many levels.  Are we worried about the red coats coming again?  No!  (Though some may argue that it's rational to fear another type of red, but in this day and age, an all out war such as that would be ridiculous and detrimental to all parties involved).  So then why do we need a well armed plebeian militia above and beyond our national guard and our military?

Do we still have a right to protect ourselves and our family?  Of course...but in order to do so, how much do you really need to protect yourself from a home invasion?  An automatic pistol?  Two?  Ten?  A semi-automatic rifle?  There are reasonable limits to be placed here that rational thought could help us arrive at.  Sadly, this seems to not be employed.  I hear some of the arguments for lax gun control equivocating the ownership of a bushmaster to that of a Ferrari.  Why own one?  Because it's completely different and more fun/exotic than your run of the mill car.  Well, by that logic, why not allow legalization of drugs?  Ecstasy is more exotic than your run of the mill Advil.  Or how about nuclear hand grenades (sadly, such a thing did exist at one point)?  They're much more exotic than a rat trap...

For people that feel that their rights are infringed upon by not being able to use these types of weapons, why not allow for them to be available under strict control at gun ranges.  Heck, you could even imagine installing a safety device that disarmed the gun if taken off premises and sprayed you with paint (much like anti-theft devices in stores or grocery cart locking mechanisms).

Speaking of rights, what about my right to feel safe and secure?  Do I feel safe when I see a non-police officer walking around with a gun visible?  No.  Do I feel safe when I think of a student carrying a gun on to campus, a right that the NRA is fighting for?  No!  I should be allowed to feel safe where I live, where I work, and where I eat and shop.  For that right to be infringed upon because one or two individuals feel that their constitutional right to bear arms supersedes our right to feel safe and secure is sad.

Events such as the Trayvon Martin killing could be avoided.  If we're sincere about enforcing safety, then why take a lethal weapon to a non-life threatening situation when a Taser or rubber bullets would suffice instead?  Seriously, why?  I'm not saying that this is the solution...there're too many things to consider by far for it to be that simple, but baby steps.

I can only dream that one day, the horrors that we've collectively experienced, with our children being shot in a presumably safe environment of education, are but a distant nightmare.



Edit: In closing, an exert from Slate: Could this shooting be the one that shakes us out of our deadly paralysis about the twin problems of limitless access to guns and untreated mental illness?

In the United States, we’re divided, and we have no universal basic knowledge of weapons. We make it incredibly easy to buy the kind of weapons that shoot and shoot again instantly, but we don’t search people at the doors of schools or malls or movie theaters, and we don’t post armed guards in these places. We have the guns without the safety checks. We call that freedom. We invoke the current Supreme Court’s understanding of the Second Amendment right to bear arms. Lower courts strike down bans on carrying concealed weapons, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit did last Tuesday, eliminating an Illinois law.

The cost of this definition of freedom is too high: That’s the point advocates for gun control make, over and over again. If this lesson sunk in, maybe we’d take seriously the results in Australia, where a massacre of 35 people led to a 1996 ban on semi-automatic and automatic rifles and shotguns. (Adam Lanza had the first, according to reports.) Australia also started a mandatory buy-back program for the weapons it banned. A drop in the firearm homicide rate and the firearm suicide rate followed, according to some research. There are other, smaller fixes, a by now familiar list: Bring back the ban on assault weapons, which Congress allowed to expire in 2004. Ban the sale of rapid-fire ammunition. Quit letting people buy weapons at gun shows without background checks. That alone could help keep guns out of the hands of some people who are mentally ill and not getting treated.

Edit 2: More documented evidence relating increased gun control to declines in gun homicide rates for those of you out there that think it won't make any difference for some reason...

The Haunted Halls of Oxford

(October 31st) All Hallows Eve, and all is not quiet.  As our ghost tour guide dons his best macabre persona, none of us are convinced.  The school girls are giggling, the adults are discussing what might be more frightening: the tour guide's acting, or that we're all playing along, and my housemate Alex and I are rolling our eyes at yet another unbelievable tale.  But, somewhere in the midst of the yarns pulled forth comes a thread or two of reality.

Queen's Lane, once site of a boarding house that was payed by the crown for each child they tended.  This boarding house, it seems, had a nasty habit of letting the children die, then disposing of the evidence by burying the bodies in the walls.  Years later, when this old church building was renovated, the skeletons, dozens of them, were discovered.  Our tour guide tried to convince us that the alley we were walking down was now haunted by the spirits of those children, but we didn't buy it, until we took a picture of a strange, flickering light...

In a series of photographs, that blue light moved from one end of the alley to the other.  I'm not sure what to make of it, but at the time I just thought of it as strange.  Several weeks later, when I was seeing Fred off in the wee hours of the morning, I decided to start my daily run by heading up Queen's Lane.  Immediately after turning down the alley, the air grew cold and still, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and sounds of children (at six in the morning, well before sun rise), echoed off the high walls.  My mind quickly flashed back to this tale from Halloween, and I've yet to revisit that alley while alone in the dark.

But, that's not the only haunting that I shall endeavor to not explain.  Oxford has a rich history dating back over a thousand years.  The celebration of Halloween and All Souls Day, whether from the Christian or Druid perspective, is pervasive in the life of the city.

Halloween at St. Edmund's Hall.

And just as the celebration of these days is integral to the city, so to are the stories of ghosts permeating these walls.  On my first visit to Christ Church, in particular to the hall where the Harry Potter dining scenes were filmed, I snapped this photograph:

Here, students are enjoying dinner on the left, but what I'd like to bring your attention to is the man walking in the aisle on the right.  Look at the second and third lamps on that table, and you might see him.  When I took this photo, I was in the process of taking several shots in a row as I found the right light levels for my camera.  In each of the photos, the man is visible as you see him above, that is hardly visible at all.  I'm confident that what you see isn't an artifact of someone quickly walking through my photo and just barely showing up as no one else has this quality to them, but make of it what you will. I've not sought out any information about hauntings of this hall.

My last encounter with ghosts is much closer to home.  Fred, Alex, and Mannu, if you're reading this you should stop now.  Seriously.

Unbeknownst to my housemates, there is a haunting in Bear Lane.  As I'm frequently known to be in the kitchen cooking every night, I've come to notice something odd during my time here.  At first I dismissed it as some strange sound that I wasn't paying attention to while cooking, but after a few weeks I realized that the sound I kept hearing was of a horse walking through the streets.  Clip-clop clip-clop.  Only that our kitchen opens onto a courtyard, on the other side of which is a street too narrow for a horse-drawn carriage to go along.  After a few more weeks of being cognizant of this sound, I began to notice another trend: it came at the same time every night.  Repeatably, while cleaning up from cooking around 10:30, the sound of this horse walking by outside would be heard.  As I know that there were no horses in the courtyard, nor on the street on the far side of the buildings behind us, I'll leave it to you to draw what conclusions you might.

What we can all agree upon, though, is that Oxford is full of a rich, and at times bloody, history.  And while some things may have perfectly reasonable explanations by skeptical science, there are those things that still challenge my own skeptical view of such matters.