Lee.org

Cool news:
I told you that I worked on the kinetic elements of Desiree Holman’s most recent art piece, Sophont. The installation, along with my bits are at the Philip J. Steele Gallery at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in Denver until November 23rd!

See the whole catalog in PDF here!

I’m going to make an admission. When I first saw her art, I it didn’t really excite me but I thought, “Sure, let’s make art, let’s make it kinetic!” After hanging around it for a while and most recently reading the catalog, it’s seeping in. I’m starting to get it and I like it! Art is funny that way.

My friend Ben is looking for a small metal fabrication space in San Francisco. Can you help? Here’s some of his work: http://twentysevengears.com/

He’d prefer a totally private workspace but affordability and access to larger equipment like a CNC plasma cutter are a factor. Looking to move in January or February

Reply or contact Ben directly at kibogoyo at gmail dat com

A few years ago New York City converted an unused above-ground rail system into a 1.5 mile long park! It’s awesome.

The next park? Underground! The Lowline Park on the East Side!

Megan and I having a great time!

We party hopped on Halloween. First to a mask making party in Piedmont, then a Time Traveler’s do in El Cerrito! (thanks Jeff for lending the suit!) It was pretty terrific!

One thing that really struck me is the time traveler’s “missed connections” writing competition at Ion and Sherri’s. As you may know, I just completed writing the most (over?) engineered document in recent memory: my personal essay for getting into grad school. It took weeks of rewrites and several friends helped edit it. At the Time Traveler’s party, they asked me to write a fictitious “missed connection” personal, ala Craigslist. With no constraints at all, I just ran with it! I started absurd sentences with no idea how I’d finish them, I bounced all over the place, and gosh darn it if it didn’t make a fun story! When it came to the vote, there were some terrific stories. But they voted mine the best! And Sherri even handed out an award, a Time Turner ala Hermione Granger!

I’m blown away at how different the two writing tasks were and how much fun the casual writing was after the torture of the essay!

I can (and do!) make excellent almond milk at home. Compared with hauling boxes home from the store, mine looks and tastes about the same, is nutritionally the same, costs 1/10 as much,  takes literally 30 seconds of effort, has far less container waste, and I get buckets of foodie cred every time I mention “my home made almond milk”.

Now pay attention because it’s really hard to make home made almond milk. Ready?

1. Put 1 teaspoon of creamy almond butter in your blender
2. Put 1 cup of water in your blender
3. Push the button for 15 seconds. Let go
4. DONE!  You now have nose ticklingly frothy, nutty, slightly gritty, home style almond milk!

Want store-like almond milk? Proceed!

1. Let it sit for 5 minutes
2. Pour it into a glass, easily leaving any foam and sediment behind
3. DONE and DONE!

Seriously. That’s all.

If you want more notes, read on

• Yes, you can double the recipe and stick it in the fridge. Cold milk tastes even more store-bought.
• Organic almond butter begets organic almond milk!
• Does super-premium roasted almond butter taste better? You decide, it’s crazy inexpensive!
• Does it need salt? Add salt!
• Like vanilla almond milk? Add a splash of vanilla!

One cup of store bought almond milk costs $0.62 ($2.50 for a box with 4 cups milk)
One cup of home made almond milk costs $0.06 ($8 for 138 1 tsp servings).

How I arrived at this recipe: I compared the nutrition facts on a carton of Almond Breeze unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk with a jar of Mara Natha Almond Butter. I noticed that a 30 calorie, 1 cup serving of almond milk had almost exactly the same nutritional content as a 1 teaspoon serving of almond butter for calories, fat, carbs, fiber & protein (I used simple algebra and a spreadsheet, you can do it too). I saw all kinds of recipes online for almond milk that involved meticulous soaking of dried almonds and long blend times and figured, “almond butter is easier and I’ve got it. Let’s try blending it!” And darn if it didn’t come out great.

I did a blind taste test with my fiancee and her comments were:

• Color was roughly the same
• Taste was similar except one was more vanilla-y (that would be the vanilla flavored almond milk)
• The purchased almond milk was a tiny bit creamier. She didn’t think it was better or worse. It’s no wonder she noticed, Almond Breeze adds calcium carbonate, tapioca starch, carrageenan, and sunflower lecithin explicitly to improve the mouth feel
• I noticed that the home-made smelled pleasantly nuttier when it was at room temperature

Almond Breeze Original Unsweetened Almond Milk has 12 ingredients: (from their site) ALMONDMILK (FILTERED WATER, ALMONDS), CALCIUM CARBONATE, TAPIOCA STARCH, SEA SALT, POTASSIUM CITRATE, CARRAGEENAN, SUNFLOWER LECITHIN, NATURAL FLAVOR, VITAMIN A PALMITATE, VITAMIN D2 AND D-ALPHA-TOCOPHEROL (NATURAL VITAMIN E).

My home made almond milk has 2 ingredients: almonds and water

I joined Megan on a diet called Vitaliti. It’s got great fundamentals. It doesn’t feel like a diet. I’ve lost weigh, gained muscle, feel great, look great, and don’t feel like I’m being starved at all. The fancy Tanita TBF-300A scale at the weigh-ins says that over the last 4 weeks I’ve lost 5 pounds of fat and gained 3 pounds of “fat free mass”, most of which is water. All this has been happening during a very stressful (and binge-worthy) time in my life, applying to grad school. What keeps it working so well? I get to eat food like this!

Almond crusted tilapia with spicy southwest roasted kabocha squash and baby peas

I’m more impressed that Megan helped me get to a place where I made this dish from scratch — on my own — for no other reason that it tastes good, gives me energy and is filling.

What, you might ask, do I get to eat for the rest of my day? Plenty! I am not hungry on this diet at all. I’ll tell you about it sometime!

But now, back to writing my Personal Statement for my application to grad school!

I felt a tiny earthquake just a minute ago at 1:08am. Maybe a 2.9. It felt like the whole room shook east-west a tiny bit like 3 times. Like a big truck on the street below had jammed on it’s brakes a couple times and wiggled the whole neighborhood.

Ha! I got the magnitude right!
USGS says it was a 3.2 with an epicenter between Berkeley and Concord!

My friend Ben is running a Kickstarter to do a run of totally awesome custom belt buckles and bottle openers. Get some!

View Ben’s Kickstarter

Whenever I talk to friends about all the terrific reasons they have to not go to Burning Man, I give the same kinds of responses. This article does a great job at capturing some of those responses. So read it and go with me next year! It’ll change your life!

55 Things I Learned At Burning Man

Funny thing, last month I went out drinking with Sean and Lara. One of their drinking buddies is Carter who built the original DNA Lounge sign! We got to commiserate over drinks about how many gyrations and how much time it actually takes to build a sign. Good times!
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