I made two of them when I had a day off towards the beginning of the summer, and after dinner we invited some of the women over for a spontaneous dessert. It was a good time.

Cinnamon Apple Pie with Crumb Topping

8 servings

Crust

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon sugar

½ teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon baking powder

½ cup chilled unsalted butter, cut into ½ inch cubes

¼ cup (or more) ice water

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

Filling

1 cup (packed) golden brown sugar

3 tablespoons flour

2 teaspoons finely grated lemon peel

1 ¼ teaspoons ground cinnamon

2 ¾ pounds apples (about 6 medium), prepared and thinly sliced

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Crumb Topping

1 cup flour

½ cup packed brown sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon salt

½ cup chilled unsalted butter, cut into ½ inch cubes

Whipped Cream or Ice Cream

For Crust: Blend flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder in processor. Add butter; pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal. Mix ¼ cup ice water and vinegar in small bowl; add to processor and pulse until moist clumps form, adding more ice water by teaspoonfuls if mixture is dry. Gather dough into ball; flatten into disk. Wrap in plastic and chill at least 1 hour.

Roll out dough on floured work surface to 13-inch round. Transfer to 9-inch diameter deep dish glass pie dish. Fold edges under and crimp, forming crust sides ¼ inch above rim of pie dish. Freeze crust 20 minutes.

For Filling: Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 375 degrees. Mix brown sugar, flour, lemon peel, and cinnamon in large bowl. Add apple slices and vanilla; toss until well coated. Transfer filling to unbaked crust, mounding filling slightly in center. Bake pie until apple begin to soften, about 40 minutes.

For Crumb Topping: Whisk flour, sugar, cinnamon, and salt in small bowl. Add butter and rub in with fingertips until mixture begins clump together.

Sprinkle topping evenly over hot pie. Continue to bake pie until apples are tender and topping is browned and crisp, tenting pie with sheet of foil if browning too quickly; about 50 minutes. Cool pie on rack at least 2 hours.

]]> http://www.forthekog.com/2008/08/07/recipe-the-2nd/feed/ http://www.forthekog.com/2008/08/03/kaboom-pt-2/ http://www.forthekog.com/2008/08/03/kaboom-pt-2/#comments Mon, 04 Aug 2008 03:18:24 +0000 brainpowerd2012 http://www.forthekog.com/?p=76 A couple of months ago, I wrote a post detailing the announcement of Giantbomb.com

At the time, the site was a blog where Jeff Gerstmann and Ryan Davis would post news stories, game reviews, and updates as to how the actual site was coming together. It was a great way to keep fans updated as to how everything was going, get some preliminary content going, and ramp up excitement for when the actual site launched.

Finally, at midnight (PST) on July 21, Giantbomb officially “blew up” as it were, and for the next two days, the servers were flooded with users creating accounts and adding all kinds of content to the site.

The website itself is built on a framework designed by Whiskey Media, a website developer and publisher founded by former CNET executive and founder Shelby Bonnie. For more about Whiskey Media, click here. For more about the framework that powers GiantBomb, click here.

GiantBomb, along with two other Whiskey Powered sites, PoliticalBase and ComicVine, is part encyclopedia and part community. This means that there are pages on the site for concepts, images, series, companies, people, etc., all having to do with video games. Each of these pages can be edited like a wiki, but in such a way as that it is far more accessible to the average user who hasn’t learned the (albeit basic) commands used to edit sites like Wikipedia. The site is more heavily moderated than the average wiki as well, as most users can submit an edit to a page, but they’ll need to wait until their edit has been approved by a moderator before it will show up on the site.

GiantBomb differs from other Whiskey sites however, in that it also features a major editorial component; four former Gamespot employees — Jeff Gerstmann, Ryan Davis, Brad Shoemaker and Vinney Caravella — put out a weekly podcast, shoot videos, write game reviews, and report on industry events. In fact, during E3 a few weeks ago, the four of them recorded daily podcasts and videos, posted pictures to Flickr and Twittered from their iPhones that they all bought the weekend before E3 started. Speaking as a user of the site, this sort of attention to detail goes a long way towards establishing who is running things, figuring out their personalities, and it’s something these guys got right from the very beginning.

The community side is also fully loaded, and features a forum at the bottom of every page on the site, as well as a general forum area for discussion of such important topics as Grand Theft Auto IV, the Xbox 360, and Hamburgers. You can also create a user page, which features a Facebook or Gtalk-style status message, user-uploaded images, a “news feed”, and the ability to make lists of anything you see on the site. Anything from “Games I’ll never finish” to, “The League of Extraordinary Mustaches“, which is a list of the greatest mustachioed characters featured in games over the years.

So that’s a basic rundown of what Giantbomb has to offer. Its sister sites ComicVine and PoliticalBase offer very similerly featured sites about comic books and politics, respectively.

Lastly, here is a video that does a good job of portraying the brand of insanity that runs through the editorial wing of GiantBomb.com. Watch it. Seriously.

The story revolves around WALL-E, a plucky little robot whose sole purpose is to clean up the garbage on a ruined, deserted Earth long abandoned by the people who once lived there. WALL-E’s life is one of routine; he gets up in the morning, charges his solar-powered battery, and goes to work for the day — picking up garbage and crushing it into cubes, which he stacks up until they’re high as sky scrapers. Along the way, he keeps any interesting junk he finds, zippo lighters, forks, knives, spare parts for himself, and interacts with the only living thing around, a cockroach. Life is simple for WALL-E, but it’s apparent that he’s gotten lonely. He learns about emotion and love through watching a recording of “Hello Dolly” that he found amongst all the junk. Everything changes one day though, when another robot, a lady robot, lands on the planet and starts poking around.

This new robot is named EVE, and her purpose is to search for and collect vegetation to bring back to the Axiom, the luxury space liner where Earth’s former residents now live, far from Earth. Sleek, ergonomically designed, and capable of flying fast enough to break the sound barrier, EVE is like nothing WALL-E has ever seen before, and he soon develops a hopeless infatuation with her, which, despite her devotion to her programming directive, she begins to return. Everything is going well; WALL-E shows EVE all of the stuff that he’s collected — a rubix cube, a sheet of bubble wrap, a zippo lighter — until he shows her a plant, the first sign of natural life on this dead planet, which he found while he was collecting garbage one day. As soon as EVE sees the plant, her programing kicks into action, and she snatches the plant out of WALL-E’s hands, conceals it inside her, and deactivates. Soon WALL-E and EVE find themselves aboard the Axiom, as EVE’s transport ship picks her up and brings her back there, with WALL-E doing everything he can to keep up, and make sure that she and her precious cargo are safe.

Because that’s what this movie is about: WALL-E is the protector of EVE and the life she carries inside of her. It’s one of the most beautiful — and perhaps unexpected — metaphors for life, and the role of a husband to protect his wife and family, that I’ve ever seen.

Contrast that with several others movies that have come out recently: No Country For Old Men and The Dark Knight. The main antagonists in the movies, Anton Chigurh and the Joker, respectfully, both represent unstoppable evil, an evil that feeds on itself, and whose thirst for the destruction of society is never satiated. Furthermore, as Jon pointed out, the stories told in these movies leave an ambiguous answer as to whether or not society can win out against this evil. Going in a slightly different direction, the movie There Will Be Blood also tells a dark story of an entrepreneur who is consumed by his desire for money and power in early 1900s America. By the end of the movie, Daniel Plainview owns oil drilling, but it has come at the expense of his own capability to love or care about anyone else, even his own son, whom he cruelly disowns when his son reveals his intention to go into business for himself.

All three of these movies potray people who, through their actions, seek to destroy the world, whether that’s their intention or not. They are important movies, and the statements they make are, at this point, very relevant and worth thinking about, but there needs to be a balance to these statements, there needs to be a solution offered to the problems they highlight. This is why, despite the awesome impact you are left with after The Dark Knight, you will probably come away with some feeling of hopelessness as well.

In a different, but related vein, the direction in which Nintendo has been taking its Wii console, and subsequently the market it is pursuing, differs greatly from that of the other two major video game console manufacturers, Sony and Microsoft. From the start, the Wii has been about multi-player gaming; Nintendo has made games that are easy for almost anyone to pick up and get into right away, and has also done well in making their games accessable to people of every age group and demographic. Many of their games take advantage of the Wii’s distinctive motion-sensing control scheme, which can include swinging the controller like a golf club, aiming it like a gun, or shaking it like a bottle of soda pop. These motion controls tend to make the gameplay experience fun and unique, and have reminded many people of just how enjoyable two-player gaming can be. In doing this, they’ve gone a long way to offer an alternative to the average video game experience.

Nintendo has also encouraged mental fitness with the introduction of Brain Age, a daily brain training game for the Nintendo DS handheld system. The game consists of several daily tests that seek to help you improve the age at which your brain performs, or your “brain age”, with higher ages being not so good, and 20 being optimal. In addition to that, Nintendo has also introduced Wii Fit, an exercise-oriented game which introduces a new “balance board” peripheral that the user stands on and moves this way or that while the board senses which way they are balancing. Innovations like this do much to demonstrate Nintendo’s distinctive style and approach to the video game market.

In their own ways, Pixar and Nintendo are seeking to improve the world by utilizing the formulas that they have used to build their reputations. The one of a kind approach that they take to their respective industries demonstrates that there are still innovators working to save us from ourselves, and while I realize that they are both companies doing what they can to make money, it’s good to see that in an age and in an industry where the standard is to continually leverage profit by making things BIGGER and BETTER, there are still some companies who take pride in their work, and refuse to lower the standards they have set for themselves.

There are no more heroes, and maybe there never were. There are merely people willing to step up and do the right thing, at the right time.

The phrase, “no more heroes” particularly struck me, and it wasn’t because it’s also the name of a crazy Japanese video game. I don’t know if I actually believe this thing yet, and it will probably take a while to fully unpack it, but I wanted to throw it out here to see what other people thought.

In short, I am 10 kinds of excited about this.

Oh, I’m still doing security, but not as much as before.

Also, I finally broke down and got a Twitter account today. I’ve always refused on the grounds that it’s “another social networking thing that would take up time” until my roommate Dan pointed out recently that a service like that, being web-based and not real time like the Google Talk status message, serves as a way to let people in on what you’re up to even if they’re not online at the moment, which makes a lot of sense. My plan right now is to put a Twitter app in my Google Desktop sidebar so that I can update both at the same time without the hassle of having to go to my Twitter page to do it.

So I’m gonna go ahead and echo Dan’s point that he made over at da Blog yesterday and issue a call to everyone who hasn’t done it yet to get Twitter and combine it with your Google Status message in some way. Hopefully we’ll start to see some activity much like what happened in the summer of ‘06 when everyone who hadn’t done it yet switched to Gmail, especially since Twitter has enough different ways to update your status — from a Google Desktop app to text messaging to an IM contact that you just send an instant message — to accommodate most peoples’ unique situations. So, get Twitter!

So, to start this off, here is a recipe for a bundt cake that I’ve made several times. It’s a spice cake, with a caramel glaze that could easily be made on its own without the cake and used as an ice cream topping or something. That’s an idea I had last time I made it, anyway. And in case it looks familiar to anyone, I pulled it out of the February 2007 issue of Bon Appetit.

Apple Spice Cake with Brown Sugar Glaze

12 servings

Cake:

Nonstick vegetable oil spray

3 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

¾ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

¼ teaspoon ground allspice

1 ¾ pounds apple, peeled, cored, coarsely grated

1 ½ cups unsalted butter, room temperature

1 ½ cups sugar

½ cup (packed) brown sugar

1 teaspoon grated lemon peel

3 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

Glaze:

½ cup (packed) brown sugar

¼ cup unsalted butter

¼ cup whipping cream

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

½ teaspoon fresh lemon juice

¼ teaspoon salt

For Cake: Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 325 degrees. Spray 12-cup Bundt pan with nonstick spray. Sift flour and next 6 ingredients into medium bowl. Drain grated apples in strainer. Using hands or kitchen towel, squeeze out excess liquid from apples. Measure 2 cups grated apples.

Using electric mixer, beat butter, both sugars, and lemon peel in large bowl until fluffy. Beat in eggs, 1 at a time. Mix in vanilla and lemon juice. Beat in flour mixture. Mix in grated apples. Transfer batter to prepared pan.

Bake cake until tester inserted near center comes out clean, about 1 hour. Cool in pan on rack 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare glaze: Stir all ingredients in small nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until sugar dissolves and mixture comes to a boil. Reduce heat to medium; whisk until glaze is smooth, about 1 minute. Remove from heat.

Invert cake onto rack set over baking sheet. Using small skewer, pierce holes all over top of warm cake. Pour glaze over top, allowing it to be absorbed before adding more. Cool cake 30 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.

EDIT: One tip for making bundt cakes. Whenever I make a bundt cake, no matter what the directions say, I always grease and flour the bundt pan to make sure that whatever is in there is gonna come out when it’s done baking. One thing about bundt pans is that over time, for one reason or another, the nonstick coating on the inside of the pan will come off, and even just a little patch not being there can cause the cake to stick to the inside and rip it apart as it’s coming out of the pan. It’s a bit of a hassle, but giving the pan a light coating of Crisco or something and then dusting over it with flour will create a fantastic nonstick surface and will allow the cake to pop out with little or no hassle.

1. Balsbaugh7 and Ithilien Exile, are two that I’ve found to be quite fascinating. They are both written and managed by Jon Balsbaugh, a former teacher of mine and fellow brother in community. Knowing that he writes both of them, and figuring out what each story represents makes it a delight to realize the different crossovers and make the connections that he sometimes sets up between the two. Through both of these, it really paints a brilliant picture of how Jon sees the world.

2. Good News Film Reviews is a site that I stumbled across not too long ago. It’s run by a guy named Scott Nehring, and while I don’t always agree with what he says theologically, I find it refreshing to find an outwardly Christian guy who seems to appreciate film as much as I do, and doesn’t like the soft, sometimes weak stance that a lot of mainstream Christian society has taken towards decidedly “mainstream” films. For example: “I won’t let my 10 year old see the Star Wars Episode 1 cause that guy in it has devil horns.” Lame.

3. Jeff Gerstmann, Brian Ekberg, Rich Gallup, Ryan Davis. All of these guys work, or at one time worked, at Gamespot.com, a video game news and editorial review site hosted by CNet.com. I could probably write multiple long, tedious posts on what these guys and others at Gamespot have meant to me over the last couple years, but I’m not gonna do that, cause that would be dumb. Suffice it to say that if you get those four guys in a room together, and just have them talk to each other about video games, or music, or food or whatever, it’ll be super funny, kinda weird, and perhaps even informative as well.

In fact, they used to get together every week, along with other Gamespot editors, and put out a video game news podcast called “The Hot Spot”, which I used to listen to religiously. I would explain why I don’t anymore, but I don’t want to devote all the time and space to rehashing old news, so I’ll just let the articles speak for themselves.

4. The Hater. A regular contributor of The Onion A.V. Club, Amelie Gillette’s blog serves as my only window into the weird world of pop culture. Sometimes funny, usually kind of interesting, and incredibly cynical, The Hater appears to be the only outlet covering pop culture who’s coverage doesn’t amount to, “These Hollywood movie stars sure are kooky, but we still love them, (and have to keep paying attention to their every move) don’t we?”

“No, we don’t. They’re all idiots,” says Amelie.

is the name of it.

It has been in development since 2004, and while development videos like the one below have been shown a lot over the course of the game’s development, it was not until yesterday that Electronic Arts — which aquired Maxis in 1997 — announced the release date, which is September 7th of this year. Supposedly it was originally called “SimEverything”, and with good reason. The basic premise is that you, the player, go from controlling a single-celled organism in a 2D gene pool, to moving around the evolved creature in the ocean, finding food and whatnot, to bringing him out of the ocean, establishing a tribe, building cities, defending yourself against enemies that you may encounter over time, building an empire, and eventually exploring space, and encountering other civilizations built up by other players of the game. While there’s a lot that is yet unrevealed about the different game mechanics, management of resources and universe overlap, to name a couple examples, it sounds great, not to mention quite innovative for a video game, but I suppose that’s what Will Wright has made his career on.

Here’s a video from GDC (Game Developers’ Conference) 2005 in which Will Wright narrates as he takes the audience through the different stages of the game. It’s 36 minutes long, so don’t watch it if you aren’t interested, but I thought it was really cool.