Pumpkin seeds

I don't recall my mother toasting pumpkin seeds in my youth, but I do remember buying paper bags of them for a nickel at Mary's, the corner store in our neighbourhood, where the eponymous owner would sit behind a counter with a cigarette constantly burning and a tv blaring, frightening the children brave enough to venture into the Aladdin;s cave of hockey cards, nutty buddies, swedish fish and pop rocks.

I loved the salty crunch of the seeds, along with the toasty, nutty taste, and I've made it a point over the years to always make my own at Halloween, usually with a little olive oil, salt and pepper.

This year, I learned from Alton Brown (I won't post the YouTube link, because he bugs me, but I'll pass on the relevant information,.) that it's easier to separate the seeds from the stringy guts if you do it in a bowl of water, not unlike a pomegranate. I added this chestnut of Halloween wisdom to our discovery last year that Jack O'Lanterns work better if you cut the bottom rather than the top of the pumpkin off to get inside (the candle is easy to light and sits snugly on a small plate, or right on the concrete.

I made 4 batches of pumpkin seeds this year, brushing a piece of foil on the baking pan for my toaster oven with a couple of teaspoons of olive oil, arranging a layer of seeds (no stacking) and then sprinkling them with kosher salt and, for the 4 respective batches, pepper, cajun seasoning, taco seasoning and barbeque rub, and baking at 400 degrees for 10-15 minutes, until golden. All are great; the plain are the most kid-friendly.

I'm making tacos for dinner tonight, and, after scanning the Internet, I am going to try making a dip by grinding 1/2 cup of the mexican take on the seeds, along with a clove of garlic, 1/2 cup of cilantro and a chopped jalapeno (I may leave in a few seeds, since the peppers from my garden are not that hot), and then mixing the result with a cup of yogurt, the juice of a lime, and a little honey. That is really a combination of this recipe, for classic Aztec salsa, and this Food Network Mediterranean version.

I'll take some pictures of the yard and the Gs and let you know how it turns out.

Update
I made the dip. When I finished processing the pumpkin seeds, garlic, cilantro and jalapeno, I tasted the mixture. Although I have never eaten wood chips, I am quite certain that this is what they taste like. Thinking that adding the liquids might facilitate the processing, I tried again. No change. Disaster. I strained out the liquid and tried to re-process the solids in my spice grinder. A little better, but the mixture still had a decidedly twiggy texture. "Told you." said Worldwide, who had thought it an ill-advised experiment from the start.

I figured that the yogurt/lime juice mixture would have absorbed some of the flavors, so I kept that out as a condiment. I also put out the remaining detritus, in case anyone wanted to taste the errant result. When Sarah arrived, I explained my misadventure, and she decided to give it a try. "Not bad." was her pronouncement, and when I tried it again, I had to agree. The scope of my failure seemed to have clouded my judgment.

If I did it again (and I don't expect to), I would grind the pumpkin seeds first, and then proceed as the recipe directs. The BG often complains that cooking shows never show failures. This one's for you, kid.

Here Comes the NBA

Lots of excitement in our house as the Wizards get ready to kick off the NBA season in Cleveland tomorrow. Our early optimism has been tempered by the kind of injuries to John Wall (knee strain) and Nene (plantar fascitis) that always seem to hang around. I remember, I think, 1992, when Rex Chapman, who our fantasy team was counting on to make buckets, missed the entire season with a "bruised instep." He always seemed to be on the verge of coming back, and he never did. When Nene "may or may not be" ready for the opener and Wall will miss "about a month" I get nervous.

Nevertheless, even if they both were healthy, I did not expect the team to make the playoffs. Wall desperately needs to learn how to shoot; Jan Vesely shows only the slightest hints that he can be a decent NBA player; and except for Martell Webster and AJ Price(who, believe me, are nothing to get excited about), the veterans acquired in the offseason (Pargo, Ariza, Okafor) show no signs of being anything other than bored journeymen in the twilight of mediocre careers. This year's first round pick, Bradley Beal, looks like he might be OK, but that does not mean much for the coming season. At 19 years old, and on this team, there is not much he can do.

So other than the Bobcats, I think the Wizards are the worst team in the NBA. The over/under is 31.5 wins, and sadly, I think that it's a bit optimistic. Not a lot to look forward to, but it's still basketball.

Around the league, the Lakers are the most interesting story, and with the Thunder trading James Harden today, I'm not sure what that does to the team. Injuries aside. Only Miami, LA and OKC seem to have a shot at the title, with Boston and San Antonio having the potential to make a run in the playoffs. The Lakers look awfully good on paper, but it remains to be seen whether Howard will be content to just rebound and play defense, and Kobe is willing to let some of the other guys on the team take a few shots. Despite lots of activity and excitement, both of the New York teams appear to have some serious chemistry issues, and nobody else in the league looks like a legitimate threat.

But we're tired of cooking shows in our house, so we look forward to another year of following a perennial doormat. Booker looks improved (although he is also plagued by plantar fascitis) and we were looking for a modest breakout from Seraphim, although he is currently sidelined  with a strained calf. We're delighted that Jordan Crawford has been officially assigned the role of "chucker" off the bench, and we're also pleased that our favourite knuckleheads, Javale Mcgee and Nick Young, seem to have found decent landing spots in Denver and Philly. And another favourite and UNC alumnus, Antawn Jamison, who Bill Simmons says "looks about 50" has a chance to win a ring with the Lakers.

So there's still plenty of time to enjoy the Irish run at a national championship, but with the Tigers done it's time for another sport, and we are ready for the NBA season. Last year's compressed schedule meant games most nights, but with the off-season activity and our League Pass, we should be able to find something of interest most nights as the Gs transition into dreamland.

Business Books

I recently had occasion to recommend books that have influenced my management style and business philosophy. Here is my list, in no order other than the one in which they came to mind:

• Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Taleb 
• Rework, Jason Fried 
• Why Work Sucks and How to Fix it, Cali Ressler and Jodi Thompson 
• Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, Chip and Dan Heath 
• Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
• Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy , Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee

Hope I die before I get old. But I'm still searching for a heart of gold

Side by side reviews of memoirs by Pete Townshend and Neil Young in today's paper. Both look like uninteresting books about very interesting people.

Online Education

I've been thinking lately about educational technology. I've posted before about the value of college (particularly relevant as I look at our 529 plan balances and the rapidly closing window of time before the OG is 18) and I've also written about Marginal Revolution University, a free source of online education recently started by the authors of one of my favourite blogs, Marginal Revolution, which I've been reading nearly every day for almost a decade. I've also read a handful of books by the authors.

I've been through over a dozen lectures in the introductory Development Economics course over the last couple of weeks, and I feel ready to share my impressions. This feeling was prompted by a recent Econtalk, interview with Arnold Kling, who is/was a professor of economics at George Mason university, and who recently stopped blogging. His Learning Economics book was the first book I read on the subject, and I've also enjoyed his thoughts on international development and economic growth, some of which are captured in his book From Poverty to Prosperity. The interview focused on his recent article laying out some predictions on the future of educational technology.

He doesn't see much of a future in massive open online courses (like Marginal Revolution University) and at this point, I have to agree. Perhaps it's because neither professor is a strong lecturer, or because the visuals don't add much to the lecture, but listening to one doesn't seem nearly as educational (or fun) as reading a blog post or listening to a conversation. It's a nice resource to have, and clearly of value to people in the developing world, but it doesn't feel new or valuable; it doesn't seem much different than a textbook.

It's obviously wrong to draw conclusions from a sampling of material from one source, but Kling thinks that the issue should be assessed not from the perspective of how to make existing things more available, but how to make them better:

The attempt to achieve large scale in college courses is misguided. Instead of trying to come up with a way to extend the same course to tens of thousands of students, educators should be asking the opposite question: How would I teach if I only had one student? Educators with just one student in their class would not teach by lecturing.

The OG and I were talking about the concept of the flipped classroom (where students watch lectures at home and then do their homework in school under the teacher' supervision) and Kling sees that model, along with smarter "adaptive" textbooks on tablets, as potential winners. The OG was not getting something about a particular unit of algebra this morning, and the prospect of doing her homework under the teacher's supervision was a very appealing one to her.

The other thing Kling sees as a winner, and which is discussed at the end of the interview is the idea of independent certification, a competitor to college, with some way of signaling to employers that a person has the skills for a particular profession. Clearly there's a lot of money to be made by succeeding in this space, and a lot of smart people are thinking about it. It will be interesting to see if there are any major developments over the next decade.

Welcome Home Worldwide!

It's not like you can't get Diet Coke and Hostess products in Southeast Asia, but you're always grateful to be living in the land of plenty, and to be home.

Sushi Fried Rice

One of the culinary challenges with the Gs, where nothing is simple, is rice. The OG likes plain white rice with butter. She eschews brown rice or ANY adornment of ANY kind. On the other side of the dinner table, the BG likes brown rice, risotto and pretty much anything rice-related as long as it's vegetarian and, poetically, NOT plain white rice with butter, which she dismissed as "too bland." Nevertheless, I still frequently make steamed rice as a side, though not as often as I used to, given the fact that I am Condoleeza Rice, when it comes to my favourite grain. But, since I'm trying to eat more whole grains of late, I try not to eat rice for breakfast now, which I have done all my life, and that means we sometimes have leftover rice, which is perfect for fried rice.

I introduced the BG to fried rice last night, drawing on the flavors of her beloved vegetable maki to improve my chances of success. I fried some chopped red onion and carrots in vegetable oil, added the leftover rice, and then dressed it with liberal amounts of soy sauce and pickled ginger and a judicious amount of wasabi. It was ready in 15 minutes, and the BG asked for seconds, a clear gesture of approval.

We then moved on to dessert, and I will share a family tradition that will undoubtedly meet with disapproval from the elders. A couple of years ago, I decided that each child could have a pint of ice cream per week of their choosing. It's been fun, and we've enjoyed trying new flavors and coming up with rules about ice cream moving into the public domain after two weeks. And I must say that the Gs have been remarkably measured in their approach; it is rare that a pint (which is 4 servings according to Ben and Jerry) is consumed within a week's time. As someone whose Halloween candy barely lasted a week, I think that there may be something to this moderate approach to sweets, but nevertheless, I certainly enjoyed watching the BG discover the pleasure of Fudge Brownie ice cream last night, as she devoured half a serving before putting her pint back in the fridge and running out the door to play.