Life of Levi

Apparently, covering Joy Division’s hit Love Will Tear Us Apart is one of the keys to indie rock success. I dunno about that, but a lot of bands sure do seem to believe it.

I love cheese as much as the next guy, and I think Stilton is a pretty good cheese as far as blue cheeses go, but I think the Stilton Cheese Makers Association has gone a bit too far in an effort to promote their product. Apparently they have had a perfume based on the Stilton aroma created, and have got British TV personality Cat Deeley to be the face of the brand.

A perfume based on the smell of moldy cheese. Right. Well, they say it’s “eminently wearable,” but color me skeptical.

Apparently, the common lore maligning lactic acid as a waste product of anerobic metabolism isn’t completely true. New research is showing that lactic acid is actually used as a fuel for the mitochondria in muscle cells both with and without the presence of oxygen.

Intense exercise that produces lactic acid also eventually causes the muscular mitochondrial mass to increase, which gives the muscles more strength and endurance. It is still important to not overtrain muscles, but this new metabolic information should allow trainers to tune their regimens further to match the body’s physical processes.

update: apparently this is actually a pretty controversial finding, and a friend tells me that there are published papers that basically state there is no way that mitochondria could be using lactic acid as a fuel. So, I guess we might end up going back to cursing it after all.

While pondering what to make for dinner yesterday, my eyes fell upon the burlap bag in the kitchen that contains a pile of huge Idaho Russet potatoes from Winder Farms. That reminded me of a blog entry by Joseph Hall describing his technique for baking potatoes, which struck me as very similar to the method I read about in The Joy of Cooking. Of course, I had to give it a shot.

So we weren’t just eating potatoes, I grabbed a frozen boneless skinless chicken breast, thawed it, and stuck it in salt water to brine while the potatoes were baking. Last time I grilled a chicken breast, Mel barely ate any, complaining that it was flavorless. Cooking for Engineers claims that brining is the key to avoiding flavorless chicken, so I figured I’d give that trick a shot, too.

I combined those two items with a quick Romaine lettuce, tomato, and shredded cheese salad, topped with Vidalia onion vinaigrette, and served them up. The verdict? Delicious! The potatoes, which I had rubbed with olive oil, kosher salt, seasoned salt, and chile powder, were so fluffy and flavorful they barely needed toppings. The chicken, which I seasoned with some pre-mixed roasted garlic seasoning, was anything but flavorless. And the salad, while not really anything special, went well with them, and we always love the vidalia onion dressing. I will definitely be using those tricks again!

Late last month, Justice Peter Smith wrote his judgement on a copyright case concerning Dan Brown’s novel The DaVinci Code. For his own amusement, he included his own secret code within the judgement document by italicizing certain letters in a few words scattered through the first part of the text.

Wikipedia has a pretty thorough description of what’s now known as the Smithy code, which is what the first ten italicized characters spell out. Also included in the article is the solution, which was recently discovered by a lawyer/journalist.

It was pretty clever of Justice Smith to add this little puzzle into what was certainly an otherwise dull document, and he’s definitely got his 15 minutes of fame from it. Kudos to him!