Food: Roast Chicken Comfort

Pardon the interruption, it's been a while since the last update.  It's been a busy month, both at work and at home.  We've been making a conscious effort to try and cook dinner most nights, which usually means that our whole night is taken up.  By the time I get home, I have to start dinner.  By the time we finish eating and cleaning up, it's almost bedtime in a vain effort to get enough sleep for another day at work, leaving little time for other things.  Rinse and repeat.  It takes a lot of effort to break out of the routine, but now that the summer is almost here, it's starting to get easier to try and get out of the house.

Since we've been cooking a lot, even if we don't have time to make something fancy, we'll still try and cook a something quick that doesn't sacrifice taste.  One of those dishes that everyone should know how to make is a roast chicken.  It's one of those meals that is deceptively complex---it looks like a gourmet meal, but is actually very easy to make.  It's also a great meal for a budget, since often buying a whole chicken is cheaper than buying the separate parts!  Not only do you get more meat, but you can use the bones and giblets for making stock.  It almost spiritually brings you closer to the food---you're not just working with processed, unrecognizable fillets of protein.  You use the whole animal without wasting any part.  It's comfort food and very Americana and it wasn't that long ago that most politicians promised a chicken in every oven.  Yet I think the roast chicken has sadly been replaced in most households with chicken nuggets.

To make a roast chicken, all you really need to do is sprinkle some salt and pepper all over and plop it into an oven for a couple of hours until the internal temperature registers 180 'F.  That's it, it's so simple that anyone can do it.  Taking a step beyond that, the variations are almost endless.  Since it's such an easy recipe, a roast chicken serves as a springboard for almost any culinary directions.  For this recipe, we decided to make a slightly stronger rub to give the chicken a slightly deeper taste.  We used:

Dry Rub
2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/8 tsp ground allspice
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
Pinch of cayenne
Freshly ground black pepper

We patted the dry rub over the chicken and then placed chunks of butter around the bird---we were lazy, since you could rub the butter all over and under the skin for an even crispier taste, but this way the butter melts and bastes the bird during the cooking process.  We threw a few garlic cloves and half of a lemon inside the cavity for good measure.  The bird was then placed over a pillowy bed of roughly chopped vegetables, including potatoes, carrots, mushrooms, garlic cloves, and onions. The breast-side is placed down so that it doesn't overcook and dry out while the thighs and legs are still cooking.

The fully assembled bird ready to go into the oven.

The whole assembly was placed into an oven pre-heated at 475 'F.  The high heat is to avoid the initial temperature drop after everything is put in.  The heat was then reduced to 375 'F and the chicken was roasted for about 2 hours, checking for done-ness using an internal meat thermometer.

And that's it!  The chicken came out great and the vegetables were nice and soft.  Even better, the vegetables had soaked up the butter and chicken drippings, giving them a nice savory flavor.  After taking out the chicken and vegetables, you can use the residual drippings to create a gravy---you just need to add a little bit of flour and water to the chicken drippings and bring to a simmer.  

The finished product

Not only is this easy, but it also makes the entire house smell wonderful.  Even better, it doesn't actually take too long---we were able to prepare this after coming home from work.  Unlike slow cook recipes, which require the whole day, the chicken meat is still firm and the skin is a nice, crisp, golden brown.  Since we're using the whole bird, there's enough leftovers to last for several meals---this makes a nice lunch and sure beats bringing a ham sandwich to work.

Science: Migration Patterns

As the threat of another layoff approaches, I've noticed that my workplace has become younger and younger.  It's becoming tough to find older workers as they've been "retired" in the past several years to make room for younger (and cheaper) kids coming out of school.  (How does this loss of experience impact the industry?  My guess is we're not doing ourselves any favors...)  The idea that you can get a single job out of college that will last you until retirement feels naive and there's a feeling of general acceptance that you're going to have to move jobs several times over your career.  In fact, it's become almost a cliche that the fastest way to rise in your company is to leave to go to another company for a few years and then come back for a promotion and higher salary.  It's not a coincidence that there are dozens of pharmaceutical companies littered across New Jersey---you can literally shuffle between all of them during your career.  Still, moving feels like a huge commitment, particularly if you're a homeowner rather than a more mobile renter.

For example, my parents have had a relatively stable career.  They've mangaged a restaurant business in the same town for over thirty years.  As a result, we never really moved around too much when I was growing up.  We stayed in the same city in the same house.  In fact, we only moved once from a duplex to a single family house when I was only a couple of years old.

That got me interested in seeing how usual that is---do people usually stay in the same home working at the same job?  It feels like more and more people are no longer considering their current jobs permanent or even long-term.  As a result, it would seem like people must be moving homes more often as well.  Particularly since it's so easy to move around now, you're no longer confined to your hometown to wait for jobs to come.

It turns out that you can do some digging in the US Census Bureau's website and find out a lot of interesting information.  For example, the average American moves 11.7 times in their lifetime.  At first that seemed remarkably high to me, but after thinking about it, I've moved 7 times so far in my life.  The first time was with my parents as a toddler, the last was buying a home for the first time, and the rest inthe middle were various apartments I had through college and grad school.  We now live in a rather petite townhouse and it seems quite likely we'll have to move at least once or twice more even if we end up staying in the same local area, let alone considering the possibility of moving to another state.

If we look at the demographics of moving, not surprisingly people in their twenties have the highest percentage moving rates before settling down in the thirties and forties.  Interestingly, there's a relatively high percentage of chilren from 1-4 years old who move, likely due to new families moving into larger homes.

So how has the average moving rate changed over time?  If there is a sense that jobs are less secure now, then I would expect average number of people moving should be increasing.  Plus, the decade experienced the housing boom and more and more people buying homes than ever before.  The Pew Research Center has an interesting report from the recent Census data and their own surveys.  Overall, surprisingly to me, the annual American migration rate has been declining the several decades.

One of the possible reasons is that the overall American population is growing older, and thus settling down.  Another reason cited is the rise of the two-body problem and couples with two careers.  This may deter moving since it it is more difficult to relocate both partners.  My wife and I certainly experienced that anxiety as we searched for post-doctoral and industry positions in the same area.  And I guess with the downturn in the economy, there simply aren't that many jobs out there to even leave home for.  Interestingly, the downturn in mobility appears to have started all the way back in the 90s (there's an interesting blip of increased moves in 1985, which I wonder what was the cause for), which spans periods of economic growth and decline.  I wonder if there is a sense of trying to make your home a more permanent place, particularly in an age of increasing consumerism and the rise of a superficial, throw away culture.  If you have to replace your belongings, your gadgets, even your job on a regular basis, maybe we're trying to make our home give us a sense of grounding.

Spring Thoughts

Although spring officially started over a month ago, it usually doesn't really feel like spring is in full swing until around Easter.  Spring awakening seems to go hand in hand with the Easter idea of rebirth---the world seems alive again after the long, cold winter.  The days are longer, the air is warmer, and you can smell life stirring in the air, often literally as pollen starts to take flight.

If there's been a year that's needed a spring, it's this one.  The Northeast is coming out of long, hard winter where it seemed like every week there was another blizzard to fend off.  Work has been going at a grueling pace.  After several years of regular layoffs that you could set your watch to, the office is now as lean as it can be.  Morale is low and people are overstretched.  And it's not just my office---this does feel like one of those jobless recoveries.  The stock market is doing better and housing prices are starting to creep up, but the jobs aren't there.  One of the unfortunate lessons that companies have from the recession learned is that in tough times, you can stretch people out and make do with less.  But in the short term memory of business, this situation soon becomes the new baseline.  Tantalizingly, we were actually interviewing for several positions in our group before the mandate came down to stop all hiring.  And worse, that there will be another series of layoffs again this summer.

Still, it could be worse, and I'm not here to complain, especially with the thousands of people with similar experience that are jobless.  However, it has been a tough couple of months for our group.  There's been a lot of hardship and heartache, particularly at a time when everyone is overwhelmed already.  The husband of one of my coworkers suffered a heart attack recently.  Luckily, he is now recovering, but it was a dangerous situation.  The doctors had to perform emergency bypass surgery and he's been trying to recover since.  Another coworker discovered that she had a relapse of ovarian cancer.  She just had surgery last week to try and prevent the cancer from spreading, and hopefully the news will be good.  And probably worst of all, another coworker tragically lost her 9-year old son last week to a sudden, unexpected infection.

At some point, signing a card and sending flowers just doesn't seem like enough.  How do you react when someone loses their child or faces death?  What can you do?  What can you say that doesn't feel trite or trivial?

Luckily, I have not been in a situation where I have lost someone very close to me.  The closest I've come is when our cat passed away last summer (which, incidentally, was one of the drivers for starting this site).  Even writing that makes me feel bad---as heartbreaking as it was to hold our cat while he passed, it sounds incomparable to losing a child or husband.  Part of me wonders whether it would have been luckier to experience death at an earlier age to help make it easier later.  Then another part of me condems that thought as possibly the ultimate selfishness---death is likely not something that you can prepare for or that ever becomes easier with experience, and I'm sure that friends who have lost loved ones would find it reprehensible to wish to experience it sooner.

In the end, these are reminders that life can be tough enough as it is without people trying to make it tougher on each other.  Hopefully spring is truly here and to make things better.

Driving on Green

So now that we have two of them, we must really like the Prius.  In fact, I think that the Prius is a pretty slick car that has a lot of things going for it beyond just being a hybrid.  Some things that we like:

1.  It's surprisingly roomy.  It's a four-door sedan with a hatchback trunk, which really helps increase the amount of useable space.  We've been able to go to Ikea and comfortably load up the Prius with boxes (yes, I know, another sign of yuppieness).  The passenger space is roomy and you can easily fit five people.  To be honest, if you're going to stick with a sedan, than the Prius is one of the better options just in terms of space---to get any larger, I think you'd have to go with an SUV or minivan, which we weren't enthusiastic about.

2.  It's a very quiet ride.  This is mostly due to the electric engine that assists the driving, but overall the Prius has a very quiet, very smooth ride.  The first time we test drove one, it almost felt like we were gliding over the road.  Maybe we aren't manly car men, but I've never really quite understood the need to have a loud engine.  I vastly prefer putting on a cd and actually being able to hear the music in good quality.

3.  Driving is fun.  Okay, so a lot of people are going to pick on the fact that the Prius has a smaller engine and you're not going to win any races with it.  But, I still find that driving it is fun, but in a different way.  As I mentioned before, for me, driving was mostly a chore to get from point A to point B and with the amount of traffic on the East Coast, all you can do is just sit back and go with the flow.  The live average mpg readout on the Prius changes that.  Every ride now is a game to maximize your mpg.  Can you get your numbers a little higher?  How many miles can you get on this tank?  You look forward to driving the next time to try and increase your score.  There are loads of information online about how to best drive a Prius (e.g., search for "Pulse and Glide" and other hypermiling techniques) to improve your mpg.  Currently, I've been addicted to the iPod game Tiny Wings---driving the Prius is almost like a real-life version.  You look for hills to glide down and then fly off.

4.  It's made me a safer driver.  One would think that glancing at the electronic display would be distracting, but I find it the complete opposite.  Focusing on the mpg  readout has made driving much more interactive for me and has arguably made me a safer driver.  I pay much closer attention to the traffic patterns and the road conditions all around me.  I'm constantly watching where the surrounding cars are, where the traffic lights are, the incline of the road, all to maximize the Prius' efficiency.

5.  And, of course, the tremendous gas savings are nice.  I have a short commute, so now I can literally last nearly a month without filling up with gas and when I do, it's only twenty bucks out of my pocket.  My wife has a longer commute, but now she can last nearly a week without stopping for gas, whereas for her older car, she was stopping for gas almost every other day.

To be honest, if you were going to get a run of the mill four-door sedan, I would think that the Prius is right up there even without considering the fact that it's a hybrid.  So while it's still slightly embarrassing that we now have two Priuses/Prii parked in our driveway, we actually enjoy them quite a bit.

A Tale of Two Hybrids

This is the story of how we became a two-Prius household and how we started to blur that light between everyday hippie/yuppie and super hippie/yuppie in less than a year.

It seems that generally whenever people get a new job, especially their first real job coming out of school, the first thing that they get with their newfound income is a shiny, brand new car.  Usually, this is to replace the rusting, beat up car that got them through college or grad school (as a side note, it was always amusing to me that when I was doing my post-doc at UC Irvine in Orange County, the professor/post-doc parking lot was filled with old Hondas and Toyotas while the undergrad parking lot was packed with Mercedes, BMWs, even Maseratis).

However, I was never a real car guy.  A car, for me, was a tool to help facilitate getting  me from point A to point B in a relatively easy manner.  Bonus points if the ride was smooth and wasn't loud enough to drown out the stereo.  But while some people really enjoy the act of driving, it was mostly just a chore for me, something that had to be done.  As a result, I didn't really drool or geek out over new cars like other people.  I had my beat up Honda Civic and it worked fine for me.  So when I started my first real job three years ago, I didn't even think about getting a new car.  It also didn't hurt that I tend to be relatively frugal, and if I could avoid dropping thousands of dollars at once, that was fine by me.  I was just going to drive that Civic until it died.

Unfortunately, that happened a lot sooner than I thought.  After only two years on the job, it was pretty clear that the car was falling apart.  As in, literally falling apart.  Various pieces of the car started falling off.  It was almost as if the car had suffered a stroke---none of the electronics on the right half of the car worked, including the windows or locks.  While it hadn't died, it was clearly dying.

So off we went to find a new car.  Although I'm not a car nut, I do like new technology.  And I've been becoming more environmentally conscious as well.  Plus, with gas prices rising inexorably, getting a car that gets good gas mileage was a must.  So if I had to get a new car, I definitely looking to get a hybrid.  By this time, the Toyota Prius had been out for nearly a decade, so it was established technology, but still relatively cutting edge.  We gave it a test drive, and we were astounded at how smooth and quiet the ride was.  Although this may be partly due to us being used to a loud, old car that was falling apart, the hybrid electric motor makes the ride significantly quieter.  The console had a futuristic, space-age feel to it that befit a car with new technology.  It was almost like being in the cockpit of a spacecraft.  Needless to say, we ended up walking out with a Prius, getting a decent deal on a very slightly used 2009 Prius in "Spectra Blue Mica".

Our First New Prius

Meanwhile, my wife was still driving her old BMW, which was approaching fifteen years of age.  It was a good car, handled very well, and got decent highway mileage.  She had been driving it for almost ten years, so it was her baby.  However, the car was starting to show its age.  Last year, it broke down on the Turnpike while we were driving to the city.  One of the engine coolant valves broke and the hood of the car started smoking.  We had to stop the car in the middle of the highway during rush hour to avoid overheating the engine.  Needless to say, it was a nightmare to get the car towed and fixed.  Maintenance for these old European cars can get ridiculous.  However, we sucked it up and got it repaired and it seemed to be okay once again.

However, my wife recently switched jobs and as a result her commute ballooned from 8 miles to nearly 50 miles one way.  We hemmed and hawed over having her drive the Prius, since it gets better mileage, but ultimately we decided to have her drive her car until it died and avoid putting a lot of miles on the new hybrid. Things were going smoothly until she recently started hearing some funny noises.  She brought the car in to our mechanic and it turns out that her car had some badly bent wheel bearings.  Even worse, the wheel bearings were rusted and stuck to the front axle, so they couldn't be easily removed.  And if we didn't try to repair it, the wheels might eventually fall off.  As a result, it would cost well over a thousand dollars to fix, approaching the total value of the car.  That alone wasn't a deal breaker, but if her car started having these big problems every year like clockwork, it was something that wasn't going to be tenable in the long term.

So just about a year after we went car shopping the first time, we ended up going car shopping again.  We already had a Prius, so we were hoping to get something different.  Although we wanted to get something that got good mileage, in the worse case my wife could drive my Prius and I could drive the newer, more practical car.  However, we were both pretty opposed to getting an SUV or a minivan.  It also didn't make sense to get a fun, sporty car with less room either.  So we ended up looking for other roomy sedans or even station wagons (sadly, there were no wood-paneled station wagons out there).  

However, despite looking around for other cars, we kept circling back to the Prius.  It really is a nice car and it really fit our lifestyle at the moment.  So, although it is a little embarrassing, we ended up getting another Toyota Prius.  Even more embarrassing, the second Prius is essentially the exact same year and model with almost the same mileage.  It's even blue, although it's the lighter "Seaside Pearl" blue.  We are now officially a two-Prius household.  Now it's a battle over who gets the better miles per gallon...

Our Second New Prius

First World Problems

There's not much to say about the events happening in Japan beyond the frenetic up-to-the-minute updates from the news outlets and the blogosphere and wishing them well..  It does go to show that even first world nations are not immune to catastrophic problems.  Nothing can really prepare a country like Japan, let alone a third world country like Haiti, for an event like this.  One wonders what will happen when, not if, a huge earthquake hits the West Coast.  If the response to Katrina can be used as a predictor, we'll be in for some tough times.

There are updates being provided constantly, but one of the more powerful applications of Internet reporting I've seen are before and after pictures of the areas affected.

One of the things that I am worried about is how this might set back nuclear as an energy strategy.  Although the crisis at the nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi is still evolving, the airwaves are filled with alarmist fears about nuclear energy.  Even if there is a core meltdown, ala Three Mile Island, the amount of radiation released may still be contained due to the heroic efforts of the plant workers.  The problem is that nuclear and radioactivity are loaded words and most people don't fully understand them.  Instead of reporting radiation numbers using mysterious units without context, I wish people would report them with respect to number of airline flights, X-ray examinations, or even number of bananas.  For example, a coal plant releases 100x more radioactivity than an equivalent nuclear power plant, but no one blinks an eye.  Even at Berkeley, there were official city signs put up declaring that it was a "nuclear free zone" (the chemist in me rolled my eyes every time I saw them, as well as at the whole "organic" food movement, but that's for another time).  It's too bad, since nuclear needs to be a part of our future as our energy consumption keeps increasing...

Up Up and Away

I saw that National Geographic set out to make a real life version of the floating house in Up for a new series called How Hard Can it Be?.  They built a 16' x 16' house and attached 300 weather balloons to lift it up to a heady altitude of over 10,000 feet.  Granted, it looks like the Nat Geo crew only built a shell of a house and used pretty large weather balloons to lift it, but it looked like an amazing feat.  What about lifting a real house using standard party balloons?  In an interesting article, Slate calculated that over 9 million standard helium balloons would be required.

Scene from Up

Real life version of Up

We are pretty big Pixar fans and Up is probably one our favorite Pixar movies.  Up, along with Wall-E and Ratatouille, was the beginning of when Pixar started making adult movies with some nods to kids rather than kids movies with some nods to adults.  Any adult should be able to relate to the basic concept of the balloon house---how can you just float away from all of the stress and troubles of your life to the infinite possibilities just over the horizon.  I just don't know how many children would really understand that.

My wife and I saw Up the year that we got married.  Even beyond the general theme, an early opening sequence, a dialogue-less montage of Carl and Ellie's life together, always makes us tear up.  In a space of only four minutes, it perfectly captures the sweetness of love and dreams full of hope to the cruelty of reality and the bitterness of time.  It's probably one of the finest four minutes of film ever shot, and the perfect motivation to get out and do something before it's too late.