I’m heading off for a brief trip to Oahu and will be back on January 2nd, 2008.
I may or may not be posting about my trip here, but probably will be posting about it for Epicurious. You can always check out my daily posts by clicking on the Epicurious button on your left.
If you have any hot tips or favorite restaurants on Oahu, please feel free to post them in the comments section.
Aloha! (and Mele Kalikimaka to my readers celebrating Christmas)
Amy
Only 6 tickets have been purchased for the “Cozy Comforts” prize (code UW30), so I’m upping the ante. I’m adding several more must-have items for your Winter getaway–a mini Tiger Balm sports rub for sore muscles, a Natural Ice SPF 15 lip balm, and three snack packages of delicious and healthy Sensible Foods crunch dried snacks in Cherry Berry, Organic Sweet Corn and Orchard Blend. I should also add that the “handful of chocolates” in the prize package is over a half pound! The contest ends tomorrow, so please, won’t you buy a ticket today?
+ The Ski House Cookbook: Warm Winter Dishes for Cold Weather Fun
+ Fondue for the most classic Alpine indulgence
+ Hot Drinks: Cider, Coffee, Tea Hot Chocolate, Spiced Punch, and Spirits
+ A tin of Chocolate flavored tea from Lupicia
+ A handful of mini chocolate squares and bars from Scharffen Berger, Charles Chocolates and Vosges to sneak into your parka pocket (over 1/2 pound!)
+ A snuggly eco-friendly Nature Co. grey fleece scarf-it’s unisex and just the thing for chilly days and nights
Just added
+ Three snack packages of delicious and healthy Sensible Foods crunch dried snacks in Cherry Berry, Organic Sweet Corn and Orchard Blend
+ mini Tiger Balm sports rub for sore muscles
+ Natural Ice SPF 15 lip balm
The funds raised by Menu for Hope 4 will be earmarked for the school lunch program in Lesotho, Africa. Providing food for the children helps keeps them in school so that they learn the skills to feed themselves and their families in the future. The program in Lesotho is a model program in local procurement – buying food locally to support local farmers and the local economy. Instead of shipping surplus corn across the ocean, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is buying directly from local subsistent farmers who practice conservation farming methods in Lesotho to feed the children there.
HOW TO ENTER:
1. Choose a prize or prizes of your choice from our Menu for Hope at Chez Pim or on the West Coast page, at Rasa Malaysia.
2. Go to the donation site at First Giving Menu for Hope and make a donation.
3. Please specify which prize you’d like in the ‘Personal Message’ section in the donation form when confirming your donation. The Cozy Comforts prize is UW30. You must write-in how many tickets per prize, and please use the prize code. Example:
Each $10 you donate will give you one raffle ticket toward a prize of your choice. For example, a donation of $50 can be 2 tickets for EU01 and 3 tickets for EU02. Please write 2xEU01, 3xEU02. Example:
4. If your company has a matching gift program, be sure to enter the name so your contribution will be increased.
5. Please check the box to allow us to see your email address that’s the only way we can contact you should you win. Your email address will not be shared with anyone.
Check back on Chez Pim on Wednesday, January 9 for the results of the raffle.
Thanks for your participation, and good luck!
After more than 11 years of development, Flightgear 1.0 has arrived.
Flightgear can be played on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, as well as other *nix platforms including FreeBSD, Solaris, and IRIX. Distributed under the GPL, Flightgear is one of the first major Free Software games and has become a flight simulator that rivals it’s commercial counterparts. It is a stellar example of enthusiasts coming together to create something for the community.
The scope of the Flightgear project is, as you might expect for a game 11 years in the making, nothing short of impressive. Whilst it does fall short in a few departments when compared to commercial flight sims, in others it is unequalled. Having no full time developers and being of such high quality is a testament to the dedication and organisation of it’s development team.
Flightgear has a pluggable flight dynamics model with 3 primary options, giving the enthusiast an opportunity to find a flight model that they feel is most accurate and/or fun. The integrated flight dynamics model is optimized for implementing plausibly behaving aircraft without requiring heaps of hard-to-acquire aerodynamic test data. Another is based on an FDM originally written by people at NASA. Quite impressive detail that most players probably won’t appreciate.
Flightgear comes with an extensive and accurate database of world scenery. Over 20,000 real world airports are included in the full scenery set. Runways come with markings, lighting, taxiways, some sloped with variable elevation, the latter a feature missing from most commercial titles. The world scenery fits on 3 DVD’s – pretty detailed coverage of the entire world with accurate terrain based on the most recently released SRTM terrain data. Scenery includes lakes, rivers, roads, railroads, cities, towns, land cover, and nice scenery night lighting with ground lighting concentrated in urban areas (based on real maps) and even headlights visible on major highways.
You can fly seamlessly around the world, as scenery tiles are paged (loaded/unloaded) in a separate thread – minimize the frame rate hit when you need to load new areas and keeping memory requirements realistic.
FlightGear implements extremely accurate time of day modeling with correctly placed sun, moon, stars, and planets for the specified time and date. Taking the ‘term’ simulator to another level, the sun, moon, stars, and planets all follow their correct courses through the sky and the [correctly placed] moon is illuminated by the [correctly placed] sun to get the correct phase of the moon for the current time/date, just like in real life.
Getting onto the aircraft, and you can fly a variety of aircraft, from the 1903 Wright Flyer, strange flapping wing “ornithopters”, a 747 and A320, various military jets including the A10 tank buster, and several light singles.
Flightgear even can do fully animated, fully operational, fully interactive 3d cockpits which even update and display correctly from external chase plane views – although only a few aircraft have had this implemented thus far. Impressive nonetheless.
Despite the unbelievable attention to detail, Flightgear can be played on a rather modest PC. However the better the PC, the better it looks and runs so those with the latest, greatest 3D cards can still enjoy the extra beauty and a smoother experience.
I grabbed a few of the nicer screenshots from the Flightgear 1.0.0 gallery.
Well, what are you waiting for? Go and download Flightgear 1.0.0 (extras / source available here) and get flying – and enjoy knowing that this is Free Software gaming at it’s glorious best.
Spread the word and digg this story on FSDaily and Digg.
The Flightgear feature list contains more in-depth analysis of the Flightgear features and is where I grabbed most of the above info – I’m in the business of Free Softare game information rather than Free Software game reviews. 
Last year I posted a 2006/12/holiday-gift-guide.html” target=”_blank”>holiday gift guide with many of my favorite products. I am still enjoying those goodies and continue to give them as gifts to friends and family. But this guide is all-new. No matter what your price range, there should be something here to satisfy. Don’t forget! Today is, generally speaking, the last day to order online for Christmas delivery…
Sometimes you need a gift in a hurry. Not only does it cook up in 3 minutes, Al Dente pasta is something you may even be able to find in your local grocery store, and it is really delicious. It’s the closest thing to freshly made pasta and it would fit wonderfully well in a gift basket. Most packages are only $3!
You can’t find a much better bargain than a one year subscription to Saveur magazine (9 issues) for less than $5! Be sure to use the code DCMPS15D to get the discounted price.
If you are looking for a bargain, look for wines from Portugal. They are often fairly inexpensive, food friendly and feature unique varietals. If you love Portuguese wines or barely know them at all, the WinePassport: Portugal I wrote for SmartsCo is a great little gift at a great little price, only $8.50 Use the code HOLIDAY to get an additional 25% off your purchase.
Olive oil is a staple item, but it can also be a luxury product. I’d like to recommend three brands of olive oil I like very much. Each is a little more expensive than your typical store brand, but use them sparingly as a finishing to dishes where the flavor will really make the dish. From Stonehouse I like the olio nuovo because it reminds me of the unfiltered olive oil I enjoyed when I lived in Tuscany. I also particularly like their blood orange olive oil. It’s really great on salads and with seafood. Prices are reasonable for these oils.
Next up is Yellingbo extra virgin olive oils. The mild, buttery/creamy and fruity flavor of these Australian olive oils really appeal to me. I use them almost everyday. Find them at Whole Foods Markets or online.
A bit more expensive but really lovely for gifts are both the O olive oils and vinegars. Available in skinny bottles, having a stash of these on hand makes experimenting in the kitchen a breeze. Particular favorites of mine include the Champagne vinegar, the pomegranate vinegar, the Meyer lemon olive oil, and the Ruby grapefruit olive oil. The O olive oil site has lots of great suggestions for how to use them check out the recipes link.
I don’t know whether they are a splurge or a deal. It’s true, Rancho Gordo heirloom beans are sometimes up to 5 times more expensive than regular beans you buy at the supermarket, but the truth is, they are at least 5 times tastier and beans aren’t all that expensive begin with. If you are making something special, treat yourself to these beans, they will make your dish something very special indeed. Though I haven’t tried them all, my favorites are the Anasazi, Good Mother and the Flageolet.
CMB Sweets jam is freshly made and tastes homemade and bright. My favorite is the tangy Apricot Aficionado, but I also like the Strawberry a lot. The jars are also a hoot with little smiling fruits on them. Sweet!
I wrote about my weakness for honey earlier this year and then I got an email from the folks at Tropical Traders. They sent me samples of their organic Christmas Berry and Lehua honey. The delicate butterscotch flavor of the Lehua really won me over. If you are fond of honey you’ll enjoy it on buttered toast or vanilla ice cream.
When it comes to tea, I have been buying it from Freed, Teller and Freed forever. Sadly they no longer have a retail shop, but their knowledgeable staff can tell you about current crops and make recommendations. I love many of their blends and regularly order my own blend from them. Their prices are good, even with shipping, especially for the quality they offer. They will even send you little samples with your order if you’d like to try something new or make up your own blend. Some of my favorites are the Blood Orange black, Bourbon Vanilla tea, Teaberry with little blue cornflowers and the herbal tea from Africa, Honeybush.
Another tea company I only learned about recently that has a huge selection of “fresh teas” is Lupicia. In fact they carry over 400 varieties of tea. Their teas are high quality and are sold in bulk or in tins that are particularly well-suited for gift giving. The Christmas collection is very “sweet” with fruity flavored teas with the essence of apricot, white chocolate, vanilla, strawberry and more. Lee is crazy about their second flush darjeeling. Many of their teas are shipped at no additional charge.
The last tea company is one that used to be in New Orleans but relocated after Katrina. Like Freed, Teller and Freed they are building a non-retail, internet business. Indonique makes a variety of different chai products and the one I tried was really good. I’ve made my own chai from scratch, and it’s a bit of a bother so I really love the convenience of their product. It’s got tea and the spices in it and you brew it up with water and milk then strain out the bits and sweeten to taste. It tastes much more like the chai I love in Indian restaurants than anything available in a tea bag or a powdered mix. Also their packaging is lovely.
When it comes to online shopping I have two in my luxury category and two in the bargain category. Even when I don’t have the money to spend, I still love perusing the goods at Zingermans and Le Sanctuaire. Zingermans is all about old world flavors and Le Sanctuaire is about the cutting edge ingredients chefs are using today. I could spend hours just checking out what they have online! They are great places to find really unusual, special ingredients and treats.
If you are looking for a nice selection of less “chefy” stuff I liked all the gourmet goodies I got a chance to try from Armsteads Porch, a homey online store for gourmet products that often has good sales. Also in the less chefy category is Penzeys, the spice purveyor. When buying in bulk their prices are reasonable.
I’ve reviewed so many terrific books this year, it’s hard to choose just a few for my gift guide. There are plenty of books out there that fall into the “gift” category, they are big, bulky, written by important authors, but I’m only recommending the ones I have used again and again and really love. It’s up to you to decide if they are gift-worthy.
Personally I don’t need any more coffee table books, no matter how excellent they are. I also don’t necessarily need any “how to cook” books, I have plenty already. But if you want recommendations for those, both Cooking by James Peterson and Jamie Oliver’s latest book, Cook with Jamie: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook are excellent for the novice or the expert. Here are my favorite books of the year, and why I chose them:
5 Spices 50 Dishes: Simple Indian Recipes using Five Common Spices
For reminding me that Indian food can be made quickly and without a ton of ingredients I’m not likely to have on hand.
The Breakaway Cook
For introducing me to new techniques, like cooking eggs with yogurt, and ingredients I hadn’t used before, such as matcha.
Elizabeth Falkner’s Demolition Desserts
For reminding me that pastry is truly an art form and not just a craft. Unlike the other books, I am more likely to attempt just one element like a cookie or a sauce or a cake, but regardless of how I end up using it, I am tremendously inspired by it.
Fish Forever: The Definitive Guide to Understanding, Selecting, and Preparing Healthy, Delicious, and Environmentally Sustainable Seafood
For being my bible for sustainable seafood, I learn and I cook from this book.
How to Cook Everything Vegetarian
For being the one-stop vegetarian and vegetable bible. I can’t tell you how many times I have already used this book.
Let’s Cook Japanese Food!:Everyday Recipes for Home Cooking
For allowing me to recreate some of the delicious food I had in Japan especially a rice filled omelet.
Pure Dessert
For reintroducing me to great ingredients and how to highlight them in Alice Medrich recipes that always turn out wonderfully.
Santa Monica Farmers’ Market Cookbook: Seasonal Foods, Simple Recipes and Stories from the Market and Farm
For new and cool combinations for using fresh produce such as Chanterelle and Camembert Sandwiches or Pummelo, Fennel and Radish Salad.
Yummy Potatoes: 65 Downright Delicious Recipes
For the love of potatoes. Lots of good ideas here you haven’t thought of, really. Gingered Tomato-Curry Potatoes, Greek Lemon Garlic Potatoes, Mashed Potatoes Whipped into a Garlic Frenzy with lots of Melty Cheese. See what I mean? It’s like a book of potato porn.
Which were your favorite cookbooks and which ones do you plan on giving this year?
OpenCity 0.0.5 has been unleashed upon the wider public. The game is, well, not yet much of a game but it is progressing steadily. I would like to see the author approach maybe the Open Transport Tycoon project to see if there’s any room for utilizing some of their many wonderous building models. I’m a big believer in project synergy, of which there isn’t nearly enough occurence in the Free Software game world. People seem to fear a lack of identity to a game, but a game identity is foremost created by experience – of which graphics are only a part of the bigger picture. Also, just becasue two projects share graphical resources, doesn’t mean they have to completely overlap.
Getting back to OpenTTD, version 0.6 is around the corner and 0.6-beta2 was released a few days ago. 0.6 final, “will give you loads of new features, like newhouses, newindustries, signals and diagonal tracks under bridges, trams, autoslope, oneway roads, half tile slopes and much more. It furthermore contains quite a few performance improvements under certain conditions as well as a very long list of bugreports.”
OpenTTD is pretty addictive and this sounds like another good upgrade. I’d better stay away, if this blog is to regain momentum.
There’s a lot of people hacking away on OpenTTD for one reason or another. I thought this 3D hack-up (as opposed to a mock-up, a hack-up is a barely functioning codebase to showcase an idea) was pretty interesting, as was the suggestion that 3D could work in different ways – I quite like the idea of an abstract 3D transport simulation.
Keeping with the city/transport simulation theme, Simutrans 0.99.16 got released a few days ago. Simutrans and OpenTTD are both incredibly portable. Both have been ported to BeOS [a classic-but-defunct operating system]. I’m not sure how current the OpenTTD build is, but Simutrans could probably run on Haiku [an open source successor to BeOS].
I do think that a good niche for Free Software games is alternative operating systems. Not only does it allow OS enthusiasts to port games to their favourite platform (e.g. the SkyOS author has ported a number of open source games) but it allows the games to be played on a platform that commercial games are not available on, even if it is a tiny minority.
Returning to college from Christmas break I was always loaded down with broken chocolate Santa’s. The benefit of restocking the Christmas candy in a specialty food store was that I could take the damaged goods for myself. Eating all that broken chocolate helped me develop a taste for fine quality. At a certain point, if it wasn’t really good, I just skipped eating it entirely. Ruined for life, you might say.
Now I get to try lots of chocolate, most of it very good. But not all the chocolate I tried made the cut this year. All of the chocolate on this list was personally consumed by me, very recently. See you at the gym in January!
CONFECTIONS
Charles Chocolates makes beautiful and delicious confections. For the holidays, the boxed chocolates make very impressive gifts. The brown and turquoise packaging is as modern and gorgeous as can be, and the chocolates in edible chocolate boxes are like nothing I’ve ever seen before. The chocolate covered caramels were a big hit at my folk’s house the other night. Though not as glamorous, my favorite items continue to be his decadent chocolate almonds and pate de fruit, little colorful gems of intense fresh fruit flavor. As a special bonus, Charles Chocolates is offering my readers a 15% discount on online purchases through December 17th Just use the promo code, COOKINGWITHAMY
Richart is one of my favorite chocolate innovators. Yes, innovators. They bring new things to market which are eventually copied by everyone else. Like mad geniuses they have an incredible ability to make anything and everything pair with chocolate. You really do have to taste to believe. This season they introduced a “festive garden” collection with chocolates including black truffle and potato coulis, grilled corn and chestnut, kalamanzi with carrot, and my top pick, tomato with basil. In each you feel as if you are rediscovering the flavors of the garden. The flavors come in waves and the chocolate becomes a backdrop for the experience. It’s as if you are tasting the very essence of the flavor and experiencing something you know very well, for the first time. They sound weird, but actually they are divine revelations. And I’m not even religious!
I discovered the English brand Hotel Chocolat in London last Summer. At first, when I saw one of their shops I thought it was a real hotel, now that I’ve had some of their particularly wonderful little “canapes” of chocolate tiles topped with fruit, nuts and sometimes a kick of chili, I’m ready to check in. The quality of their products is particulary high and they avoid many ingredients like lecithin that are standard in the industry.
BARS
I recently discovered the chocolate of Amano artisan chocolate, a very small boutique producer in Salt Lake City. Amano has one of the best explanations for why their chocolate is not fair trade. Like the label organic, fair trade is complicated and choices are not always black and white. I strongly urge you to read it, and to try Amano’s chocolate. In the past year they have won a number of awards for their chocolate bars. I am particularly fond of their Ocumare bar, a 70% bar from Venezuela; it’s rich and dark and transports me to a jungle far away….For the bar connoisseur, this is rare chocolate to seek out.
If you’re just warming up to the idea of flavored bars, the mini bar gift set of exotic chocolate bars from Vosges is a fun way to try lots of trendy flavors including smoked almonds, ginger, wasabi, macha green tea, curry, chili, espresso, cacao nibs and more. It doesn’t include the bars with really wacky flavors like goji berries, kalamata olives or bacon, which are available separately. This gift is good fun for the chocolate enthusiast, though not necessarily for the chocolate snob. Chocolatier Katrina Markoff says her mission is to bring peace to the world though chocolate. Kinda fits with the holidays, don’t you think?
When it comes to bars, here are the other brands I love and recommend–El Rey, Michel Cluizel, Chocovic’s Ocumare bar, E. Guittard bittersweet and extra dark bars, Valrhona’s Araguani and Alpaco bars, and always worth trying are any of the limited edition bars from Scharffen Berger.
My favorite local Bay Area retailers of chocolate are Cocoa Bella for confections and Fog City News for bars.