From the strtok/strtok_r man page:

BUGS</p>

<p>Avoid using these functions.

Kerri and I had dinner, a bit on the spur of the moment, at L’Espalier last Tuesday. It was our one year anniversary. I just got the menu from Cole over at L’Espalier and I figure I’ll post it here for the sake of saving and sharing. Sadly, I did not bring a camera. I had the Summer Degustation, Kerri the Vegetable Degustation.

Summer Degustation:

1. Butter poached Maine lobster with braised pork belly and sweet corn
2. Torchon of foie gras with candy striped beets and Muscat gelee
3. Air-dried Muscovy duck with grilled escarole, scallion johnnycake and watermelon
4. Pan roasted East Coast halibut with black quinoa, pea shoots and Pat’s baked clams

Vegetable Degustation:

1. Twice baked potato leak soup with shaved black truffle
2. Summer succotash with grilled apricots
3. Roasted cauliflower with patty pan squash, feta and green garlic risotto
4. Herb potato gnocchi with grilled nectarine

In addition to the lists above (all of which was delicious) we also had the following:

• An appetizer of smoked salmon
• Amuse Bouches
• L’Espalier’s signature sorbet.
• Dessert (panna cotta and a flourless chocolate cake)
• Petit fours

I call it 7 1/2 courses.

I did most of the mixing of the dough while it was still wet, using the paddle attachment to the stand mixer instead of the dough hook. I didn’t add as much flour as I normally would in the end, resulting in a wetter dough than usual. These changes resulted in a dough that required no work to stretch it to the desired size, which makes me very happy.

I used the tomato rinsing method for the sauce. It removed the acidity and bitterness quite well, but took a while. Sadly the sauce was under seasoned and the pie could have used a bit more of it.

Hacked to little bits;
this piece of code fits right in.
Fix it later. Right.

I kinda want to take this sign and see if a “Stealing Plants AND Signs is CRIME” sign replaces it.

I’m a big fan of pizza and I like to make it at home. Something I’ve noticed the past couple times I’ve made a sauce though is that it ends up bitter and acidic. Jeff Varasano has what is probably the most comprehensive review of making pizza at home and on his site he talks about something he calls “Tomato Rinsing”:

Tomato Rinsing: All cans have some bitterness. To lessen this I have developed a process that I call Tomato Rinsing. Strain the tomatoes in a fine mesh strainer.. If the mesh is fine, the water will be mostly clear with very little tomato escaping. If the water is very red, pour it back on top of the tomatoes and continue straining. Eventually the water will run almost completely clear. Here’s the key. The water that comes out is completely bitter. Taste it. What I do is pour fresh water on top of the strained tomatoes and strain them again. Taste this second batch of water. It’s also bitter. You are removing bitterness and acid without losing a drop of red tomato. You can repeat this several times if you like, but once or twice is usually fine. The net result is that what is left over, which is all the red tomato solids, is sooooo sweet and yummy.

I can’t wait to try the technique and see if it works.

These photos from RFK’s funeral train are absolutely stunning and heartbreaking.

Dreamhost announced today that they’re supporting Passenger (mod_rails) in their Apache installation. Passenger is an old idea (embedding an interpreter and libraries in Apache) applied to the very specific Ruby on Rails scenario. Passenger is touted as a plug-and-play, point Apache at your Rails public directory one step web application deployment solution.

I have to imagine, given Dreamhosts adoption of the technology, that Passenger works more or less as advertised. I’m also certain that this will make deploying Rails applications at Dreamhost much easier. It was never fun figuring out why Apache is randomly getting bad headers from a Rails fastcgi process.

Recently, however, I switched to Slicehost for my Rails sites (I have two). I’m running nginx with mongrel servers for each app, which works very well. There is a noticeable speed increase compared to when the sites were running on Dreamhost (Apache + fastcgi). I highly recommend Slicehost for VPS – they are very nicely priced and everything is easy to use. That said, Dreamhost has good shared hosting, for what it’s worth, and their prices are very good.

By the way, if you’re looking for shared hosting, sign up for Dreamhost and enter the promo code GOTERKYOURSELF to save $50 (and make me some money). If you’re looking for a VPS sign up for Slicehost (I get a referral from this link, too).

I recently ordered some books – The French Laundry Cookbook, Irreligion and In Defense of Food – and they shipped the other day! How very exciting.

The main bit in this order is The French Laundry Cookbook. A couple of weeks ago I stumbled on The French Laundry At Home blog, specifically the entry on Maine Lobster Pancakes with Pea Shoot Salad and Ginger-Carrot Emulsion and thought to myself, “self, you have to make that.” So I finally ordered the cookbook and now need only set aside enough time to make the damned thing.

(Via. Pharyngula)