February 24, 2022

Turning my kitchen red, Hal Brown

 



I don't post political stories on the blog, these (over 1600 of them) are here on Daily Kos.


This blog is about my life and includes photo essays of my trips around the Portland, Oregon area venturing as far as Vancouver, Washington, to eat at one of their riverside restaurants and then driving along the winding State Rt 14 which also runs alongside the Columbia River all the way to 
The Bridge of the Gods - see photo and then crossing back into Oregon where I drive back home on the I-84 expressway which also runs along the scenic and mighty river. Another favorite drive is into our beautiful rural Yamhill County in Oregon's wine and farming country where there seems to be a lovely vista around every hairpin turn. I also document my quest to find unique restaurants in photo essays. 


Click images to enlarge to full screen.


Feb, 24, 2020


Feb. 22, 2020


 Getting Red With My Kitchen


Enlarge above illustration

Here’s another view (click to enlarge)

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Unlike Putin, who may or may not carry an actual Communist Party card even though he’s often labeled a communist and he probably had some kind of KGB ID card... 

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 I am not now nor was I ever a card carrying member of the Communist Party.

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Above: Click to see unmodified ID image here.

In the McCarthy era communists were not only called Commies but often called Reds, their army was called the Red Army, and there was also the Red Scare.

Here’s why Is the color red was associated with Communism.

Now of course even the Russian flag isn’t mostly red, it is white, blue, and red. Gone is the yellow star and the hammer and sickle which those old enough know from our youth.

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While on the subject of the color red and how it is used I have to add that this is the color of ties favored and worn at a cartoonishly long length by a certain ex-president (see article about this from the website The Magnificent Bastard). 

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I have a great fondness for the color red whether it is in items I choose to have around me or in sunsets, flowers, or fall colors. I find that the often striking blue sky with lovely cloud formations, greens and other colors prevalent in nature provides a less common color accent. What garden is complete without bright red flowers (and two adorable Westies)?

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By coincidence my late wife, who also liked red accents in our kitchen, and I used to be cranberry growers so during harvest season we were often were knee deep in cranberry red:

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This was the view from our back windows:

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I know it is all psychological, but food from filet mignon to a hot dog on a baked potato seems to tastes better surrounded by the color red.

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Most of the items in my kitchen have always been red. It was my deciding to buy an air fryer that got me embarking on a quest to try to make every item on two of my three kitchen counters red. I was considering buying an air fryer having heard about all the ways they can be used. I looked at CNET, my go-to website for reviews of just about anything that runs on electricity, and found that they rated one particular air fryer in their list of the top five that appealed to me. It wasn’t the CNET review (below) that prompted me to order the one I did:

This oversized air fryer is easy on the eyes. The Dash Deluxe has the largest cooking capacity of any of the ovens we tested with a 6-quart cooking basket. It also has some undeniable retro appeal and is available in a few fun colors. The appliance we tested was aqua, though it also comes in red, black and white. This model also has all manual controls with no presets and was exceedingly simple to operate and also comes with an air fryer recipe guide.

Aesthetics aside, the Dash fried up batches of wings, Brussels sprouts, tater tots and French fries that were all cooked evenly and well. In our first round of testing, we found it easy to overshoot when air frying a mozzarella stick if you're not careful. For us, that's a good thing and only means the air fryer has considerable power that you simply need to learn to manage.

I rarely rely solely on food manufacturer recommendations or oven presets but rather use them as a loose guide and do lots of peeking and checking along the way. The Dash has exactly zero presets and no cooking modes such as roast or dehydrate but still got the most important jobs done.

It was the photo that came on when I click on the link to Amazon. This was like a trigger to my latent color red addiction.

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Call me crazy if you like but just don’t call me late for a meal cooked to perfection in my air fryer, but once the air fryer took it’s place next to my maroon toaster I realized that the colors clashed slightly (photos below) so I managed to find and buy a new retro-design red toaster which was the right shade of red.

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Old toaster — It was filthy inside and impossible to fully clean.

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The new toaster is spanking clean and I like the retro design which complements the design of the Dash air fryer.

Serve me like a cup of nuts but just don’t serve me a bad cup of coffee, but on my other counter all the other items were already red except my Keurig coffee maker which was black. It stood out like a frost bitten thumb on an otherwise normal hand. Thus, next came the quest to find a red Keurig. I ordered one from a company on Amazon and got a message it had been delivered to my place but it never arrived. I contacted the company and discovered that it was never sent because they were out of all the red versions but could send me a black one. After a few back and forth messages I got a refund. After some web searching I found that WalMart had a red Keurig so I ordered one from their website and a few days later it arrived.

Call me vain if you want to, just don’t call as vainglorious as Trump, but I generally try to coordinate the colors I wear and sometimes just add red “Happy Socks” (I happen to have the pair Wikipedia used in their entry on this) or a red belt and/or a bright red t-shirt as an accent even though I only have a couple of red shirts, for example I put on the outfit in three of the photos below just for this diary.

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Thanks in advance to the small number of Kossacks who I expect will be reading this. The six or so persistent critics of what I post here (unlike Putin, I don't have you on an an enemies list) who may be thinking that they suspected I was mentally unbalanced, or worse, may be now patting themselves on the back saying that this diary proves it.

I doubt many people will read or comment on this story but I posted it here on Daily Kos anyway. Perhaps there will be some comments which you can click here to read.


This goes with today's Daily Kos story about the color red in my life:





Feb. 21, 2022

Very few people were reading my media critique on Daily Kos so I removed it. I'm posting here instead. 

I am often puzzled as to how the editors in charge of major media websites decide to place stories where the are. The online version of The New York Times (subscription) has an article about pickelball sharing the top of the page with articles about the looming Russian invasion of Ukraine.



Of course once a paper “goes to press” with their print version all breaking news is then covered on their websites. In the old days huge unexpected news stories some papers were able to get second editions onto the street and they were called EXTRAS or Extra Editions, for example:

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The pickle ball article is nowhere to be found on the print front page of today’s New York and national editions of The NY Times:

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Caption of top of page photo: Marching in the Olympics’ closing ceremony on Sunday as Beijing handed off to Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, the 2026 hosts.

Whoever put together the front page decided that a photo of the closing ceremony of the Olympics was so newsworthy that it deserved 2/3rds, or four of the six columns, above the fold.

The print edition of the International edition  doesn’t have anything about pickleball on the front page. They  have a bottom of the page article unrelated to breaking international news.

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For comparison, the top of the website of The Washington Post (below) has their articles about Russia and Ukraine in the left column and the story towards the center of the page with a prominent photo is “The hate-crimes trial of Arbery’s killers highlights everyday racism — and casual gun culture.” 

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Click here to enlarge this image.

I admit to being something of a traditionalist when it comes to news reporting and would prefer that our two newspapers of record keep the most significant national and international news most prominently in their print and online editions. Call me of having been stogy but I didn't think it was a good idea when The New York Times which was often dubbed The Gray Lady decided to use color photos after all other major and most minor papers were using them.

Excerpt:

When The New York Times first considered printing in color in the early 1990s, it did not go over well with some.

Steven Heller, the former art director of The New York Times Book Review, remembered his skepticism.

“It’s so silly now, but at the time I said never,” he said. “I mean, we were the old Gray Lady. I didn’t see us putting on new clothes.”

As fate would have it, it was the Book Review under his helm that was the first section of the paper to print something in color. The year was 1993, and the cover greeted readers with a striking illustration of a bright green and orange serpent.

More: 

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Between the 1960s and the 1980s, Louis Silverstein, a bold art director for The Times, introduced new graphic design elements that continue to shape the appearance of the paper today.

If you were to pick up a copy of The New York Times in 1960, you would have mostly seen dense pillars of words. Sentences would have been packed tightly, like commuters on a busy subway car.

The Times was, as its nickname suggests, the Gray Lady.

But over the next two decades, that began to change. A bold art director, Louis Silverstein, emphasized graphic design elements that have since become standard industry practice. More white space appeared and the photos got bigger.

Working during a period of cultural, technological and economic shifts, he transformed The Times into a paper that took design as seriously as it did text in its journalism, and he helped to establish the role of the art director as a key player in the newsroom. By 1984, the paper was respected for its design by industry experts.

I didn't mind it when the Times was The Gray Lady. For example I don’t need to see a color photo of Richard Nixon here 

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Of course these days both The New York Times and The Washington Post online use color photographs very effectively and publish compelling photo essays.

Those who read my diaries may accuse me of having a double standard since I am on of the very few community members who frequently creates unique images for my primary illustrations and uses many images in the context of what I post. 

Monday, Feb 21, 2022 · 6:07:33 AM PST · HalBrown

Currently the article “Yale’s Happiness Professor Says Anxiety Is Destroying Her Students” is in the spot that the pickleball article was in earlier this morning:

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Feb. 20, 2022

Nothing to report.... except that we are going to have overnight temperatures in the low 20's in the coming week.

Feb. 19, 2022 Just staying home snacking on air popped Bob's Red Mill popcorn:



Feb. 14, 2022
For use in Daily Kos:


February 20, 2022

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Hal Brown blog Feb. 1, 2022



I don't post political stories on the blog, these (over 1600 of them) are here on Daily Kos.


This blog is about my life and includes photo essays of my trips around the Portland, Oregon area venturing as far as Vancouver, Washington, to eat at one of their riverside restaurants and then driving along the winding State Rt 14 which also runs alongside the Columbia River all the way to 
The Bridge of the Gods - see photo and then crossing back into Oregon where I drive back home on the I-84 expressway which also runs along the scenic and mighty river. Another favorite drive is into our beautiful rural Yamhill County in Oregon's wine and farming country where there seems to be a lovely vista around every hairpin turn. I also document my quest to find unique restaurants in photo essays.


Click images to enlarge to full screen.


Feb. 20, 2022

Nothing to report.... except that we are going to have overnight temperatures in the low 20's in the coming week.

Feb. 19, 2022 Just staying home snacking on air popped Bob's Red Mill popcorn:



Feb. 14, 2022



Feb. 11, 2022


With the forecast 60 and sunny it was off for the scenic drive along the Willamette River to Aurora  (where a favorite place to eat is The Colony Pub) to have lunch for the first time at Filbert's Farmhouse Kitchen. (click image for website):
Some photos below are inside of Filbert's and the others are from walking around Aurora. It turned out not to be 60 but was 70 degrees and sunny.

It turned out this was the warmest Portland area Feb. 11th ever. It was really comfortable walking around Aurora and taking more photos.

























































Feb. 9, 2020

A trip to Gaston for lunch at The One Horse Tavern again (ate there a few times before). Highly recommend it.

It is next to the Screamn' Chicken which is now closed Monday - Wednesday because they don't have enough staff. On the way back went through farm country on a new route.












































Once you leave the lovely winding rural roads with hairpin turns which take you from farmland into wooded hills (elevation 1000 feet) you hit areas of new housing construction and then large housing developments before you see downtown Portland. As usual you pass many homeless encampments. Then you head to one of the most dangerous merges in the area to get onto the Ross Island Bridge (lower left) to cross the river and head home on McLoughlin Street.

Click above to enlarge.


Feb. 8, 2020

A bolt, not from the blue, rather from somewhere in Oregon City. 
Not hard to guess where this ended up if you read what's in the photo above:
I find it hard to figure out how this blunt ended bolt went through the tire. It seems like a one in a thousand chance that driving over it would have positioned it in a way to puncture the tire. 

Because the car is all-wheel drive and they didn't have a replacement for the totally ruined tire (and the spare was original with the car and a different brand) I had to buy four new tires. Kudos to Les Schwab. I made an online appointment for 8AM and was out of there in an hour.








 





Open door on a porta potty

Lunch at Dick's Primal Burger in Woodstock,
Still making one of the best burgers in the Portland area, ketchup isn't needed if it is organic and made in Portland.

If you followed my story about how pleased I was finding a new top for my vintage cookie jar after I broke the one I had you know I was left with two bottom parts. I figured out a way to use the extra bottom for an illustration for this Daily Kos story by putting a jester inside of it. It is about whether it makes sense to us the sarcasm or snark mark (/s) when you don't mean a story or comment to be taken seriously.



Feb. 6, 2020

The corner of 6th and Main in Oregon City

Ate at The New Hing's Restaurant in Oregon City (website):

Here are a few pictures taken mostly on 6th Street.




















Feb. 5, 2022 

Preview: I plan on going out for lunch tomorrow and if I see anything worth photographing and sharing I will post it. \


Feb. 3, 2022


Here's one I won't do again. I tried cooking a frozen pizza. I had to break the edges off to get it to fit. I added some ground beef. It was too soggy. The same pizza cooked in my regular over comes out better with a crispy crust.

More on using my air fryer

Last night it was burgers and sliced sweet potatoes. Two things I've learned so far. 

One, that you have to be careful not to get burned when you open the basket, say to remove your food (a burger) or mixed something mid-cook cycle (sweet potatoes). Be safe, use oven mitts or tongs.


Number two is summarized in this NY Times "Lifehacker" cooking article:

"To some enthusiastic food bloggers, the air fryer is an intuitive appliance that can cook anything and everything. To certain members of my family, it is an inscrutable black box that exist to take up counter space. (“What should I use it for?” they ask, prompting me to spam them with my own content.) The truth lies somewhere in the middle: The air fryer does a lot of things very well, but it is not without limitations."


What I find the most relevant in the excerpt above is the first sentence where the fryer is called an intuitive appliance. When there are recipes which you can fall back on to determine cooking time, like a regular over you have to learn about how long to cook various food by trial and error and checking their progress as they cook.

MORE

Avoid drippy batters

In spite of its name, the air fryer is not a true fryer. It can crisp up a previously battered and fried item—be it yesterday’s Popeyes or a frozen dinosaur chicken nugget—but placing drippy, battered piece of raw chicken (or anything) into it will not yield the results you want.

Skip foods lacking in heft

Small, light foods will be buffeted about by the air fryer’s mighty winds. I’ve even seen toast move a couple of inches. Sometimes this isn’t a big deal (my toast was not damaged by a little buffeting), but it can be frustrating if, for instance, your delicate coating of crumbs or herbs gets blown off your chicken tender. 

Don’t choose foods that are too large

The air fryer is only effective if the hot air can circulate around the food, and items that cover all (or nearly all) of the tray prevent this from happening. 

Avoid deep dishes

Thick, layered dishes like casseroles or pies present a myriad of issues. Even if you find a pie or casserole dish that’s small enough to allow the hot air to properly circulate around the vessel, the lack of heating element at the base of the fryer means your top cooks a lot more quickly than the lower layer, resulting in cold, damp bottoms and soggy crusts.

Pass on unflippable foods

There’s a reason most air fryers scream and beep at you to flip your food or shake the basket about halfway into your cook. Doing so exposes both sides of your food to the heating element, ensuring uniformly crisp exteriors and evenly warmed interiors.

Avoid excess moisture

Air frying soup is a bad idea. The whipping winds splash liquid all over the place, which can cause issues with your heating element—and an unhappy heating element is a liability. A spoonful of water to keep vegetables moist while they roast is fine, but avoid adding more than that (for health and safety reasons).


Feb. 1, 2022

My next meal using the air fryer: halibut and Bussell sprouts.

There are numerous recipes but a certain trial and error is need not to over cook each. 

Add olive oil and season the sprouts with salt and pepper.

 I did the sprouts first checking their progress every five minutes.  I learned the hard way to be very careful when mixing the sprouts because the basket is hot enough to burn yourself. Ouch. Once done with the sprouts I put them in a covered bowl to keep them warm. Then I air fried the thawed out halibut seasoned with rosemary, salt, pepper, and lemon. I looked up the time but adjusted it down to seven minutes because the slices were thin. The fish was cooked perfectly.

Again, be careful because when you pull out the cooking draw it is very hot. I advise using oven mitts.


 My first experience cooking with an air fryer, burgers (of course, if you're a regular reader you might say "what else?")


Best design: Dash Deluxe Electric Air Fryer

Brian Bennett/CNET

This oversized air fryer is easy on the eyes. The Dash Deluxe has the largest cooking capacity of any of the ovens we tested with a 6-quart cooking basket. It also has some undeniable retro appeal and is available in a few fun colors. The appliance we tested was aqua, though it also comes in red, black and white. This model also has all manual controls with no presets and was exceedingly simple to operate and also comes with an air fryer recipe guide. 

Aesthetics aside, the Dash fried up batches of wings, Brussels sprouts, tater tots and French fries that were all cooked evenly and well. In our first round of testing, we found it easy to overshoot when air frying a mozzarella stick if you're not careful. For us, that's a good thing and only means the air fryer has considerable power that you simply need to learn to manage. 

I rarely rely solely on food manufacturer recommendations or oven presets but rather use them as a loose guide and do lots of peeking and checking along the way. The Dash has exactly zero presets and no cooking modes such as roast or dehydrate but still got the most important jobs done.

The Dash is also solidly built, although not quite as sound as the Ninja. It's also on the heavy side, so this is one you might need to find a permanent home for. If you like this model but prefer a smaller size, the compact model for just $50 right now.

The reason I bought it wasn't just the good review, it was that I wanted another red kitchen appliance since this is the color scheme I have in my kitchen.

I ordered it from Amazon and it came in one day. The burgers were frozen 80% Costco Kirkland brand. They only took 10 minutes to cook and turned out flavorful and juicy.


I had two of these without realizing that they were each ⅓ of a pound.


Kitchen esthetics are important to me, although I certainly realize that even thinking about this when people are starving is the epitome of privilege.

How to Choose the Best Feng Shui Colors for Your Kitchen


Molalla is a  town I visited and ate lunch in at The Hitchin Post Cafe. It just made the news, and in a bad way. Click below to read article.
I decided to write a story about this Molalla incident and put it on Daily Kos here even though I want to generally avoid posting anything political here.



Click to enlarge:





They did have a very good burger:

The town made national news when Oregon had its wildfires.



Current international readership:

This is here for another Daily Kos story:



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