Continuing my coutntdown of Dad's favorite recipes, I present to you...
The HoneyBaked Ham®It was one year ago today that my father passed on. He was 78 years old, amazing the doctors with his relatively healthy lungs for someone who had smoked for 60 years, and I had thought he was on his way to at least 85. But these things do happen and they did.
I dedicate my first post in four months to him. Let's kick it off with Ol' Dad's top five favorite dishes.
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#5: Pineapple Coleslaw
My dad had a weird fascination with KFC's coleslaw. Where some might go for their greasy but delicious fried chicken or excellent mashed potatoes and gravy, it was this cold dish of chopped cabbage and mayo that kept him coming back. When I found a recipe for pineapple slaw on a Family Circle recipe card, I thought it was perfect substitute. Low-fat with just enough sweetness (Dad had a notorious sweet tooth) and crunchy cabbage, what could go wrong? I soon found out.
Though this was requested weekly, and though Dad extolled the virtues of its flavor, it lacked only one thing to him: the perfect size. Try as I might, week after week, no matter how precise with the knife or zealous with the food processor, I could never get my cabbage into the same size as those little KFC squares of goodness to please him. Some days it would be like little pieces of confetti, other times it was pebbles and sand. It was just no go. Defeated, I came to terms with the fact that my pineapple coleslaw would just taste better than it looked.
Or so I thought.
One day, I innocently stopped by KFC for a pint of coleslaw to accompany some pork chops I was making for dinner. I was feeling a little lazy and I didn't want to spend time chopping imperfect cabbage when I need to focus on pork. On the drive home, without any provocation, the late Col. Sander's started mocking me.
"Trah tuh replicate mah cabbage, girl? Nevuh, t'ain't nevuh gonnuh happen, y'heah? You should know bettah than tuh mess with the Colonel!"
It was a shocking, if not inspiring experience. With all respect for the troops, nothing grinds my gears like a military man telling me what I can or cannot do. I knew what needed to be done.
Once I got home, I pried the plastic lid off its styrofoam prison and tossed the slaw into a colander. I washed that cabbage so hard, I could hear it squeak in surrender. With a kind of almost malice, I added my dressing and pineapple. I paired it with those pork chops and yes, I served it.
Readers, it was delicious.
Never in the the history of man had the world seen such a slaw, and perhaps never will they again. The sounds of crunching drowned out the voices of any indignant Southern ghosts, crying that I'd pay for my thievery. We paid no heed.
For now, it was dinner time.
CubeSat Team SJSU has made it to Digg! Thanks, Brian! Has everyone here met my friend Brian Cheung? Well, you should if you haven't, and if you have, say "Hi" again. Check out some of his work.
I'd do the fancy "Share link" thing but apparently my browser causes fatal exceptions. Hopefully Glenn Close won't come over to my dorm and boil my hamster.
Ah, getting a new layout is like getting a new summer outfit: it's totally cute and you can't wait to wear it, but at the same time you're already planning your next shopping trip.
Wash your hands, my dearies!
Channeling Gwendolyn Brooks
We dress nice. We
paint lips. We
cook rice. We
shake hips. We
can't drive well?
We bring the fall? Hell!
We just survive.
We want it all, yes!
We bear fruit. You
shine a light,
We file suit, We will
say goodnight.
- Faith Chihil, 2009
CubeSat Team SJSU hits the SJ Mercury News.
I guess I should sort of explain how I got involved with this whole "rogue band of students" and started building a satellite.
Well, believe it or not, it started off on a boat.
Let's set the scene, shall we?
Fall 2007, San Jose State University. I was a sophomore who had found herself in the interesting position of vice-commodore of the Spartan Sailing Team, after only having stepped onto a sailboat for the first time two semesters before. Needless to say, being from Modesto, CA, where most people's boat have motors, there, ah, was a steep learning curve for me. (They used to call me Captain Capsize, but anyway...)
The former commodore and our alumni advisor, Kevin Booker, had recommended that some of our team take the school's sailing class to get some extra practice in. Who happened to be in the class but the actual former vice-commodore of the team from a few years back: Eric Stackpole.
After some quick introduction, my teammates and I developed a fast friendship with the goofy, mechanical engineering major, who was taking the class for P.E. credit. He imparted some wisdom to us new kids and offered to help out team out in any way he could. Soon enough, we were tossing around footballs, boat to boat, during classtime.
One particularly calm Thursday afternoon, Eric and I were sitting on a Sunfish, lazing around Lake Cunningham, when he mentioned to me that he had put together a satellite-building club with some of his friends. He described to me how he and his friend Kevin Dudley had gotten the papers signed and some people recruited and overall, he was very excited. Somehow, his confidence made it all seem so plausible and I couldn't even feel shocked.
"Oh, that's neat," I said and adjusted the rudder. We chatted about what it would look like and what it might do and that was about it. We headed back to shore and went home.
A few weeks later, I'd been reading the Spartan Daily, SJSU's campus newspaper, in my room when I spotted an article about Eric's "satellite-building club." I told him about it on the car ride home after sailing class.
"You saw it?" he said. "That's awesome. We were so excited to have them come out and talk to us."
"Yeah. Are you guys really going to go on the vomit comet?"
"Uh..." he said.
Apparently, in the excitement of being interviewed, some people had gotten a little confused or carried away.
"You know, you oughta write a press release for the future, or get someone to help you talk with media, if you have trouble " I mentioned, off-hand.
"Hm, yeah." A beat. "Think you could do that for us?"
And that's how I got roped into this crazy space mess.
Unfortunately, my reign in the Sailing Team had to end, but I was manuevering from sailboats to satellites too soon to really mind. Three years later, we're still at it, fabbing electrical boards and proposing paint-shaker vibration tests.
Eric presents our concept and design today at Cal Poly and although we're excited, I can't help but recall that lazy day on Lake Cunningham, when anything seemed so plausible, it bored me.
