I must protest!

Well, not really. I just received the "Yearling" badge on StackOverflow, which means that I've been on StackOverflow for more than a year and have earned over 200 reputation.

Except that's not entirely true. I registered for StackOverflow over a year ago, but I only started actually paying attention to it in late September. I figure I've been on there 37 days, and earned all of my reputation points in that time.

Well, that was fun.

There, I Fixed It For You

"Democracy will come to an end when the peopleour monied coporations learn they can vote themselves money from the public treasury." - Alexander Tyler, 1763 (with an injection by Thomas Jefferson)

Pitches!

Practicing my Start-Up Pitch Mad-Lib:

My company, [redacted], is developing a media-query-ready web platform to help the sexually adventurous find exactly the advice they're looking for with a tested reputation-management system that rewards the knoweldgeable, hides the willfully ignorant, and even verifies bragging rights for those that want them.

My company, [redacted], is developing a media-query-ready web solution that gives authors a drop-in e-commerce solution for managing, deploying, displaying, and publishing their works, for pay, on a variety of web-enabled platforms, using a dynamic 'chinese menu' design system to give authors total freedom for their default presentation, and giving readers total control over their reading experience. We provide readers with aggregation services that exploit third-party printing platforms to produce press-ready one-off short-story collections suitable for bookshelves and libraries, while exploiting modern mobile platform capabilties to avoid classic problems of viewport clutter and distraction during the reading experience.

My company, [redacted], is publishing a consumer-facing website designed to lead people through the process of improving their raw willpower and attention span by bringing of graded, experientially suitable interval training to the user's mobile platform.

Hachis Parmentier (recipe)

A couple of days ago, NPR's All Things Considered discussed a French variant of Shepherd's Pie, Hachis Parmentier, and it sounded so delicious that I had to make it.

The recipe consists of a pound of stew beef, stewed in water to cover along with an onion, a carrot (we used two small carrots and a parsnip, and the parsnip was an awesome addition), celery, and some salt and peppercorns, all stewed at a simmer for about two hours.

Drain (and reserve) the bullion you've just made, seperate the meat and vegetables. In the same stewpot, you brown 1/2 pound of sweet Italian sausage, while dicing the meat and carrots (you can ditch the celery and onions). Whon the sausage is browned, toss the beef and vegetables back into the stewpot with just enough bullion to cover, add about a teaspoon of tomato paste, and bring to a simmer.

Somewhere in all this, make rich mashed potatoes. I used 1½ pounds of blue fingerlings, which turned into an unfortunate grey once I whipped it with heavy cream and butter. I did not peel the potatoes.

Put the stew mix into a casserole dish, top with the potatoes, and then sprinkle a layer of cheddar, and then a very light layer of parmesean, and bake at 400°F for 25-30 minutes, until brown and bubbly.

I was thinking, it's just Shepherd's Pie. No, it's much much more than that. It's amazing. The flavor from the meat mix penetrates the potatoes and it becomes this amazing savory, umami flavor. The cheese crust makes for a gorgeous contrast with the smoothly whipped potatoes, and the meat is actually mostly a grace note to the filling starch topping.

I made six servings. There are five of us in the house. It was gone. I was hoping for leftovers for lunch tomorrow.