Archive for November, 2006
Orecchiette with Sausage and Broccoli
November 16th, 2006Another recipe taken from the magazine Fine Cooking.
- 10oz. broccoli crowns, cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces
- 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
- 3/4 lb. sweet Italian sausage, skinned and crumbled into 1-inch pieces
- 3 cloves garlic, very thinly sliced
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 8 oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, drained and cut into thin strips
- 1 Tb chopped fresh thyme
- 3/4 lb. dried orecchiette
- 1 Tb fresh lemon juice
- 3 Tb grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
- 3 scallions, thinly sliced
- Boil a large pot of salted water. Fill a large bowl with cold water. Blanch the broccoli in the boiling water until it softens (1-2 minutes) and then transfer broccoli to the bowl of cold water.
- Heat 2 Tb of the oil in a large skilled over medium-high heat for 1 minute. Add sausage until it browns (about 6 minutes). Remove.
- Put the pasta in the water.
- Reduce the heat under the skillet to medium low and add remaining 2 Tb oil and garlic. Flip pieces until they start to brown (3-4 minutes).
- Raise heat to high and add the drained broccoli. Cook until everything is heated (1 minute). Stire in sun-dried tomatoes and thyme.
- Finish cooking pasta. Reserve 1 cup of pasta water. Drain pasta and add to skillet. Raise heat to high and toss well for 30 seconds. Add some pasta water if it appears dry.
- Stire in lemon juice, parmigiano, and scallions. Add more salt, pepper, or lemon juice to taste.
Comcast DVR: A Piece of Junk
November 19th, 2006
People have long recommended that I get a TiVo because it’s awesome and has revolutionized the way they watch TV. I ended up making my own TiVo and realized that they were right…but my box ended up crashing after a few months (it was an old computer).
So I ended up buying what I thought was the same thing as a TiVo, the Comcast DVR. People were quick to tell me that they weren’t the same, and that Comcast’s DVR was a poor alternative.
At first I didn’t believe them, but now I do.
This Comcast box is a piece of junk. It barely does the one job it’s supposed to do — recording programs on time — and it doesn’t have any nice features or frills.
My overall biggest complaint is that it has a lousy user interface that is very difficult to use. It’s very cryptic and not at all user-friendly. Here are some more specific complaints:
- The box is not able to handle shows that start at unusual times. For example, many networks now start or end their shows a few minutes late (to keep viewership or something). Comcast’s DVR cannot deal with that at all, so what does it default to doing? Nothing. It just does not record the shows. It kept me away from the last episode of The Office, so it’s walking on thin ice.
- There is no easy way to transfer recorded material to another computer or media. If you record a TV show or movie, there is no convenient or built-in way to send it to your computer, copy it to a portable hard drive, or burn it to a DVD. It’s funny because there are plenty of connectors on the box (e.g. Firewire, ethernet, RCA jacks), but none of them are activated; they are all dead. Nice touch.
- Worst of all (almost) is that the Comcast box doesn’t display the time, just the channel. This is very annoying. There have been many nights when I fell asleep in front of the TV and woken up in the middle of the night, only to be confused because the “time” was 67.
I think it’s about time I got a TiVo.