Fun Meme

I've seen on a couple friends' page, but I'm stealing the one from meran555


Instructions: Take one list of authors, remove those whose efforts do not grace your shelves and bring the list up to ten by adding some more that do. Bold indicates newly-added authors.

Neil Gaiman
Clive Barker
William Shakespeare
Carl Hiaasen
Cherie Priest
JK Rowling
Homer
Herodotus
Aeschylus
Euripides
James Ellroy
Raymond Chandler
Larry Niven
Philip K. Dick
Dashiell Hammett

Tales from the Mundane...

My owner's manual says my car has a 17.3 gallon tank. I just put 16.997 gallons of gas in it.

Guess I should pay more attention to that "Gas is Low" light on my dashboard.

(no subject)

Tonight, I write of tuna.



There may be no perfect fish, other than tuna. Fish researchers, using robotic fish to learn how fish swim long distances, pattern their robotic fish in the shape and swimming style of tuna. Tuna are one of the few species that roam the planet at will -- they travel over more surface area of the planet than any human ever does. Nutritionally, tuna are high-protein, low cholesterol, and lean; any fat is mostly Omega-3, the only fatty acid in the animal kingdom proven to lower the risk of heart disease and (of all things) actually help reduce pains from such various syndromes as arthritis and asthma.

Sport fishermen love tuna for the fight -- nothing like battling the perfect fish for up to several hours. There is a rule of thumb for measuring fish weight in pounds without a scale: Take the length of the fish in inches, multiply by the girth squared, and divide by 800. Or w = (L * g^2)/800. This isn't completely accurate for some fish like barracuda or mackerel, but it fits tuna, as they are near the norm for "fish shape". I have never caught a tuna, but I haven't really tried yet. Tuna fishing involves long trips from land -- up to 100 miles sometimes -- and I haven't chartered such a long trip...yet. Perhaps 2004 will be the year of tuna for me.

Members of the tuna family can run from 5-10 pounds to over 1000 pounds. Bluefin tuna, considered the most tender of tuna meat, are getting endangered. Most fish caught by sport fishermen are in the 300-600 pound range, which is actually ominous. It points to a lack of big, mature fish, as well as a lack of young, replenishing fish. The only bluefin being caught are the equivalent of the 30-40 year olds in humans, which doesn't bode well for the species. Personally, I don't eat bluefin for this reason.

The demand for canned tuna has been controversial. Dolphin tend to swim with tuna for unknown reasons; theories range from similar foods, to similar migration habits, to aquatic forms of dolphin safe-sex. The commercial fishing industry tended to find tuna specifically by looking for dolphin. They would circle the entire school by a mile or two of netting and pull the whole mess onboard. Protest and boycotts have lead to dolphin-safe tuna -- the dolphin are still sought out, but the newer nets allow surface-swimming dolphin to swim over the net edge while the deeper-swimming tuna are trapped. Some tuna is still caught by long-liners, however. The mile-long lines of hooks avoid dolphin (dolphin can sonar the hooks), but kill turtles, sharks, rays, juvenile fish of many species, and even a variety of sea-birds such as albatross.

What inspired this ode to tuna? My dinner tonight, of course.

Several times a week, I drive by the Atlantic Seafood Factory north of Atlanta. I've always been meaning to try the place, but my curiosity finally got the better of me a couple weeks ago after Bobby Brown got arrested in front of his wife Whitney Houston at this restaurant. Outstanding warrants due to a failed drug test, so I hear. What the hell, I said to myself, said I. I went tonight.

I had Ahi Tuna (a form of yellowfin that is generally considered not too endangered). My Lord it was good. Imagine a good 8-10 oz cut of tuna steak, seared over a wood-coal fire so that the outer portion is char-cooked, but the inside is still red and raw. Bathe this in soy sauce, ginger, and saki. Add shiitake mushrooms, blanched spinach, and snow-peas. Toss in a bit of white rice.

On the outside, it tasted like charcoal grilled steak. On the inside, it tasted like some of the best sashimi you've ever had. It was tender enough that I almost didn't need a knife. And -- beyond the mind-blowing taste, and the melt-on-the-tongue tenderness, and the beautiful color of char over blood-red surrounded by dark green and mushroom brown, white rice, and soya liquid -- on top of everything else friends and neighbors...it was good for me.