Japanese Hamantashen

As I said before, I make my own shalach manot. This year, some people are getting what you see on the left.

This is an onigiri, which, incidentally looks like hamantashen, especially with the Season black caviar in the middle. Onigiri comes from the word nigiri which means grip. Most of you should be familiar with sushi-nigiri or as it's incorrectly called in America, sushi. What Americans call rolls, is sushi-maki, sushi is sushi-nigiri and sashimi is sashimi.

I'm not going to explain how to make sushi rice. I bought a Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy rice cooker, expensive but worth it. To make onigiri, you need sushi rice, nori and stuffing. I use either black or red caviar or rolled anchovies with capers. I like to use cling wrap when shaping the rice.

Take a sheet of nori. Nori sheets are not square but rectangular. Fold and tear or cut it in half so that the halves are wide. Separate each of those into three more pieces. Spread out a piece of cling wrap on a plate. Sprinkle some salt. Place rice in the middle. The amount of rice will depend on how big you want the onigiri to come out. Form the rice into a triangular shape. Make a deep indentation in the middle with your index finger and fill it with a stuffing of your choice. Fold the piece of nori around the onigiri with the shiny side out. Wrap the onigiri in cling wrap, add a drink and your shalach manot is done.

Onigiri can also be made into a ball or any shape you like. An interesting idea is to shred some chicken breast or turkey, mix it with rice and make an onigiri out of that. This way you don't even need to add stuffing.

What's food got to do with it?

Purim is coming up and it's time to make Shalach Manot. Shalach Manot are supposed to be ready to eat food though a lot of people seem to be confused about the meaning of the word "food". When making Shalach Manos, ask yourself, is the "food" you're planning on giving, food? Is this something that you regularly eat during the week or on Shabbat? Nuts, chocolate, grape juice, wine, hamantaschen I can live with, but all the candy, most of which is chemical garbage is where I draw the line. Most of the Shalach Manot contain tons of this bad for you, inedible garbage that will get thrown out before Pesach anyway. Stop wasting your money on this garbage because that's exactly where it's gonna end up. Another pet peeve are the baskets. You spend a lot of money on them every year and every year, in a month they end up in the garbage. I, for one, don't care if I get a sandwich in a plastic sandwich bag or in a $5 wicker or metal basket. You're not giving people birthday presents, you're giving people food. Do you like getting fifteen baskets that take up half your house or would you prefer something that can fit on your table?

A couple of years ago, I decided that I will not follow the herd and even if I stand alone, I will give food, not garbage. Over the years, together with grape juice, beer and vodka I have given out baked potatoes, onigiri, salted fish and sandwiches. Last year, one of my friends gave out, in my opinion, one of the best shalach manot, an apple and a banana. It's cheap, everyone likes them and I was very happy to have something to eat while waiting for the food to be brought out at the shul's party. Another friend gave out very nicely made sushi platters, though I wouldn't recommend this for someone who's short on time and has a big list of friends.

Here are some suggestions for a nice, healthy shalach manot: sandwiches, fruits, vegetables, home baked pastries, chicken legs, hot dogs, salads, etc. Want to be really cool? Get three or more pizza pies, a couple of cases of coke and bring them to shul for shacharit. What am I giving out this year? Probably sandwiches again, together with some hard to find Japanese beer, imported Chinese White tea and maybe hamantaschen.

Video on Katana DLX

So you want watch your own videos on your Katana DLX? Here's what you need to do. First convert the file into 3GPP2 format and MPEG-4 encoding using SUPER. I found a more or less acceptable balance at 176x144 resolution, 25 frames/second and 420KBps. Create a separate video folder on your memory card and copy the files there. Go to favorites and add menu item -> tools -> file manager -> microSD. Now your videos are only a few clicks away, are in a separate folder and you don't need to wait for the thumbnails to load. Don't forget to change the video display settings to play the video in full screen. Enjoy!

Labelless

HTML forms have two major components, input and label. In most cases, using the label tag is not essential. There are, however, two cases where the user will be very grateful to you for not forgetting this seemingly unimportant tag, checkboxes and radio buttons. When used with a for="input_id" parameter, where input_id is the id you assigned to your input field, the user will be able to interact with the input by click on the label. The input tag can be placed inside or outside the label tag as long as the id and for parameters are the same. I find it very annoying when a developer failed to enclose the field label for a checkbox or a radio button inside a label tag, leaving me with the only option of clicking on the relatively small checkbox/radio button.

I hope those of you who burden us with this inconvenience will happen to see this blog entry and correct this bad habit of yours. Good practice for everyone is to always always use label whether you "need" to or not.

Welcome to my meat factory

Everyone knows that hot dogs are only partially cooked and that you have to finish cooking them yourself. What most people don't know is the same is true for salami. I would go so far as to say that sticks of salami sold in stores are disgusting if you didn't properly "cook" them.

When you buy a salami, it has a string attached at one end, it's there for a reason. After you buy a salami, you first need to take off the outer plastic casing and wash and dry the salami. Next, find a place to hang it. The temperature doesn't really matter, the only important thing to remember is that no part of the salami should be touching anything.

The minimum aging time is three weeks. There is no maximum, I had salami hanging as long as two and a half months. I prefer to age the salami for five weeks. I have a meat slicer for cutting the salami, if you don't have one, don't hang it longer than three weeks. Even after only three weeks, taking the inner casing off can be a problem. It comes off perfectly on Aaron's pepperoni, but with Aaron's regular salami, it's a nightmare. The best way to get the inner casing off is with boiling water. Boiling water has to be poured over the whole length and circumference of the salami. Immediately after, cut off one end and start peeling. I like to use a napkin to get a better hold and instead of peeling the casing off in one winding strip, try to slide the whole thing off like a sheath.

What you see in the picture is five Aaron's beef salami, one Glatt Mart garlic salami, one Glatt Mart hot Italian salami and one Glatt Mart Polish style salami hanging enticingly on two light fixtures. Glatt mart has a sale now, everything except buffalo, $4.99/lb.

Pururin

After watching Welcome to the NHK (NHK ni Youkoso!) I was looking all over for a Pururin ringtone. I was able to find a very low volume midi version. After using that for a few months and hearing caramelldansen, I decided it was time to switch ringtones. I found the ringtone on Myxer, downloaded it, installed, then decided to checkout Myxer itself. While I was downloading caramelldansen, I noticed an option to create your own ringtones. I created an "Artist" account. Uploaded the song and created the ringtone that I couldn't find. If you're reading this because you were looking for that ringtone too, enjoy.

Nostalgia

I never had much interest in going back to Russia. One of my friends went there for a visit and was incredulous that even though I was born there, I wasn't interested in returning to my "roots." I don't think it's so strange. Two thirds of my life has been spent in America. The only relatives I have is my uncle who lost his green card because of his stupidity, he was going back and forth all the time and missed an appointment, and my sister who's coming here soon anyway. There's my best friend, but it's one person and I pretty much lost contact with him at that time.

Recently, things have changed. One of my classmates from Sinai Academy invited me to odnoklassniki. Within two days I had forty friends. I found people from shul, classmates from Sinai that weren't on Facebook, my sister's family and, most importantly, my best friend. I also found half of my kindergarten and a few of my classmates. It was a blast getting in touch, after nineteen years, and finding out who's doing what, who got married, who has kids. Unfortunately, neither my parents nor my classmates have a photo of our class. After going through four schools I barely remember anything and would love to have a visual aid. Most people remember me and so do some of their parents. One girl remembers standing next to me during the initiation into Young Pioneers. I wish I had such memory.

Where am I going with all of this? Now, I'm actually interested in going for a visit. At the moment, this interest is purely theoretical because of the difficulty of actually making the trip. Where do we stay? Where do we get kosher food? Would I want to bring my son? Though the likelihood of me actually going for a visit is pretty low, now I'm genuinely interested in going. For now, there's always email and my webcam.