I went to see Bryan’s band (Bulletproof Lincoln) play last night. I got there after they had already started playing, but I still wanted to get a drink at the bar. I walked up to the bar and I glanced around for a line-up of bottled beers but I didn’t see one right away. And since I wanted to get back to the listening area, I figured that I should consider my draught options instead. They had, of course, all the usual Bad American Beers: Coors, Budweiser and so on. But, they also had Killian’s Irish Red.

And, contrary to its name, it’s not from Ireland at all — rather, it’s completely American and made by Coors. I was aware of the Coors connection but I recalled that Killian’s had at least somewhat-dark in color and I thought to myself, “Well, how bad could it be?”. So, ordered one and walked back to listen to the band. I took a few sips and soon discovered that it was not what I was hoping for. [Note to amateur copy editors: “not for what I was hoping”?]

The dark color (well, reddish, anyway) belied its true flavor — or lack thereof. If I was blindfolded, someone could have told me that I was drinking Just Another American Beer and I would have believed him. There wasn’t much flavor at all, other than the distinct wateriness. And there was an odd degree of carbonation — not a creamy effervescence like a good porter but a sharp sparkle more closely resembling a club soda.

A visit to RateBeer.com later that evening confirmed my suspicions. I looked up Killian’s and discovered that it has a score of 2.82/5.0 which puts it in the 28th percentile. To put that in perspective, I checked on RateBeer’s list of Top Accessible Beers. They define an “accessible beer” as those with over 500 ratings — in other words, beers that you'd have a pretty good chance of finding in a store.

And just because a beer is “accessible” doesn’t mean that it’s a bad beer, either. I mean, the top rated Accessible Beer is Ayinger’s Celebrator Doppelbock which is in the 100th percentile (obviously rounded to 100, but still). And even the 17th best Accessible Beer, Guinness Stout, is in the 77th percentile.

But I suppose that there are relatively few beers with that many ratings since the scores tend to trail off towards the bottom of the list. For instance, Sam’s Adams Boston Lager — an otherwise decent beer — clocks in at the 53rd percentile for the #22 spot. In fairness to Sam Adams, I don’t think it a bad beer at all, but in the spectrum of all beers produced worldwide, I can understand that it might be only slightly above average.

There’re 25 entries in RateBeer’s Top Accessible Beers list and Killian’s Irish Red squeaks in at the end. A few of the posted comments mirror my own feelings of this brew:

• “Damn you rate beer, i used to honestly enjoy this, then you came into my life. I can no longer be content in my beer darkness now that you�ve shined your glorious light down upon my palate and shown me what beer can be. Pours a light ruby red with a thin clingy head. dead nose, smells blank. has a bitter tree bark flavor. overly bitter and got bad quick. […] ”

• “This is what I would consider a middle of the road beer in everyway. The color a very nice red, but it cant hide its mass produced roots. […] ”

• “Clear amber colour, the head quickly disappears, butter and grapefruit aroma, some malts, tart and sweet with a bubblegum-like finish — artificial and very forgettable.”

• “Finish is lightly sweet, moderately bitter, slightly metallic. Light to medium body, watery texture, fizzy carbonation. I am amused by the fact that the label says "Manufactured", rather than brewed. […] ”

That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy the band, but the Killian’s was a bit lacking. After a few subsequent sips I realized that the mildly non-badness of the beer wasn't outweighing the calories that came with it. So, after making it halfway through the glass, I just set it aside.

I’ve been busy with work and I haven’t been able to write as frequently as I’d like. So, I came up with this haiku which I hope conveys my situation:

Work is So Busy
This Project Is Due Monday
I Will Blog More Soon

The other day at work, we got to talking about foods which promote fitness and Larry mentioned that he had read a new study about caffeine. He didn’t go into it much at the time, but I was curious since I gingerly sip caffeine every morning (tea — Earl Grey — hot). So, later that day, I went to see what I could find at the Health section of Google News.

Sure enough, researchers at Duke University did a study of caffeine’s effect on blood sugar levels. They tested 14 people with type 2 diabetes and discovered that large doses of caffeine can cause blood sugar levels to climb:

The study showed that caffeine had little effect on glucose and insulin levels during the fasting period, but it caused significant surges after eating a meal. People who received the 375-milligram dose of caffeine experienced a 21% larger increase in glucose levels and a 48% larger increase in insulin levels compared with those who took the placebo during the two hours following their meals.

“It seems that caffeine, by further impairing the metabolism of meals, is something diabetics ought to consider avoiding. Some people already watch their diet and exercise regularly,” says Lane. “Avoiding caffeine might be another way to better manage their disease. In fact, it’s possible that staying away from caffeine could provide bigger benefits altogether.” […]

It’s not that caffeine creates blood sugar, but it seems to aggravate blood sugar levels when consumed with a high-carbohydrate meal. So, I may be out of the woods on this one — I generally have a mid-carb breakfast of diced apples with cottage cheese (+ cinnamon + Splenda) but I drink my tea about an hour after I eat breakfast. With any luck, most of my breakfast-based blood sugars would have been metabolized by then.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest — a Washington-based think tank which focuses on food and nutrition — is urging the FDA to require restaurants to disclose the use of trans fats. I don’t always agree with the CSPI, but I’ll concede that they may be on point this time.

In case you’re not up to speed on trans fats, they’re a type of fat (like saturated fat or monounsaturated fat) but far worse than other types of fat since they not only raise your “bad” cholesterol but they also lower your “good ” cholesterol. They’re created by the hydrogenation of liquid oils (turning them solid) and commonly used by restaurants for frying.

The FDA is requiring food labels to include trans fat by 2006, but that still doesn’t help much with restaurants. And, as much as I respect a restaurant’s artistic license to design their menu as they like, I’m not sure that artistic license outweighs the health concerns in this case.

So, I think the CSPI may be on to something here. Then again, I don’t agree with everything they have to say. One of their side-projects is TransFreeAmeria, an effort to ban trans fat entirely. And, while trans fat is undeniably unhealthy, I still believe that people should have the choice to consume whatever they like, whether bad for them or otherwise.

I’ve been reading off and on about interval training which, in short, is cardio training with short intervals of intense effort. I was browsing through some magazines at Barnes & Noble and a recent mention in Men’s [Health | Fitness] reinterested me in the technique. I checked online for some more information and found some useful articles at iVillage.

From what I've read, interval training can burn more calories in less time than traditional cardio. And the article “Invigorate with Interval Training” at iVillage has a good overview. As a starting point, they define exertion on a 1-10 scale with 1 being “very easy” and 10 being “very difficult”; and, they offer various interval training suggestions depending on your current fitness level:

• For beginners, they recommend a 1:3 ratio of interval (at exertion 4-5) to recovery (at exertion 2-3). So, after a warm at low-middle effort for 5 minutes, you could go to a half-full effort for 2 minutes, return to low-middle effort for 6 minutes, and then repeat with the interval.

• And, for intermediate fitness, they recommend a 1:1 radio of interval (at 4-6 exertion) to recovery (at 2-3 exertion). This one does have the advantage of being the easiest to keep track of times ;).

• Then, for conditioned folks, their recommendation goes back to a 1:3 interval-to-recovery ratio, but with an interval intensity around 7-10. They point out that these intervals are called “anaerobic, because they are more like sprints and can't be sustained for a great amount of time on the aerobic energy system”.

Much of their examples focus on treadmills, but they add that easily adaptable to other machines such as exercise bikes and elliptical machines. I’ve been aware of interval training intuitively for some time, but I haven’t known the particulars on ratios and exertion. And, as I’ve only heard good things about this technique, I look forward to giving it a try next time I go to the gym.

The Dallas Camera Club had its annual photography scavenger hunt about a month ago and I’ve uploaded my images. I took 76 images and I’ve posted 8 of those in the Gallery. Like any scavenger hunt, there are items that need to be found; but, in this case, participants are awarded based on the categories found along with the quality of their images.

The categories this year were: “An Old Building”, “A Modern Structure”, “The Color Red”, “A Statue”, “A Reflection”, and “Lines of Perspective”. We started at 9am and met back up for lunch, so we had around three hours to get all the shots. The extent of my knowledge on Dallas is largely limited to how to get to work downtown; so, I mostly just wandered around.

This isn’t my first scavenger hunt with the Dallas Camera Club — I also went last year — but I really enjoyed myself. I found that walking through Dallas has a much different perspective than driving through it and Dallas can be a surprisingly photogenic city at times. The hardest category for me was probably “Lines of Perspective”. I ended up going with a long shot down a street and I’m curious whether heavier traffic may have improved the shot.

Standard photo-entry text: All my photos are released under a Creative Commons license which roughly states that you’re free to “copy, distribute, display, and perform the work”. Also, I’ve resized all the images to 1024-width before uploading them as it can be a bit hard to get your head around a full 5 MP image. However, if you want the full-resolution version of any images, just ask.

I’ve been working for RD2 as a contractor since the beginning of the year. They’re a small design shop on North Hall St, just off Blackburn & 75. The contractor arrangement with them was working out fine, but I got a call in late June from another company that was interested in interviewing me for a full-time position.

These guys were looking for a client-side specialist and that’s exactly the kind of position I was looking for. After two rounds of interviews (including a two-hour session of technical questions), they offered me the job. I was particularly impressed with the technical component of the interview process — though they were designed to test me, the questions themselves allowed me to learn more about the company as well.

I initially accepted their offer and went to go talk with RD2 about it. As it turns out, RD2 returned with a more compelling offer. Above all, I was drawn to RD2’s design-focused approach to web development. Working for them, I’d have the chance to work with many different designs over the course of a year (and not just a single company’s branding). In any case, I started with RD2 last Tuesday (after the Independence Day weekend) and I can see myself staying there for a while.

I brought along some chocolate chocolate-chip cookies to the Independence Day party on Sunday and I thought I’d share the recipe here. Back when I first received the Evite to the party, I noticed the request for desserts and side dishes and I immediately began to ponder what I could bake.

Being the chocolate nut that I am, I decided fairly early on to go with something chocolate-based, but it was only after watching some TiVod episodes of America’s Test Kitchen that I happened upon the idea of chocolate chocolate-chip cookies. (For those not aware, America’s Test Kitchen is a cooking show on PBS which goes through dozens of iterations for each dish before publishing the recipe that works best).

Fortunately, their recipes are also online (for the recent couple seasons, anyway). And, while the as-televised recipe is for Double-Choclate Cookies, their site also lists a varation which I could not ignore: Triple-Chocolate Cookies. For those keeping score, the double chocolate cookies include Dutch-processed cocoa along with a pound of melted bittersweet chocolate. The triple chocolate cookies include those ingredients plus chocolate chips. Well, on to the recipe:

Double-Chocolate Cookies, Thick and Chewy Cookies

Makes about 3 ½ dozen cookies

To melt the chocolate in a microwave, heat at 50 percent power for 2 minutes, stir, then continue heating at 50 percent power for 1 more minute. If not completely melted, heat an additional 30 to 45 seconds at 50 percent power. We recommend using a spring-loaded ice cream scoop to scoop the dough. Resist the urge to bake the cookies longer than indicated; they may appear underbaked at first but will firm up as they cool.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups (10 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour
• ½ cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder

  Some—but not all—supermarkets carry Dutch-processed cocoa. If your local supermarket doesn’t have it, one place where you can definitely find it is at Penzys Spices, including their store just off Preston & 635.

• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 16 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
• 4 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons instant coffee or espresso powder
• 10 tablespoons (1 ¼ sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 ½ cups packed (10 ½ ounces) light brown sugar
• ½ cup (3 ½ ounces) granulated sugar

Directions:

1. Sift together flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt in medium bowl; set aside.

2. Melt chocolate in medium heatproof bowl set over pan of almost-simmering water, stirring once or twice, until smooth; remove from heat. Beat eggs and vanilla lightly with fork, sprinkle coffee powder over to dissolve, and set aside.

3. In bowl of standing mixer fitted with paddle attachment, beat butter at medium speed until smooth and creamy, about 5 seconds. Beat in sugars until combined, about 45 seconds; mixture will look granular. Reduce speed to low and gradually beat in egg mixture until incorporated, about 45 seconds. Add chocolate in steady stream and beat until combined, about 40 seconds. Scrape bottom and sides of bowl with rubber spatula. With mixer at low speed, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Do not overbeat. Cover with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature until consistency is scoopable and fudgelike, about 30 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, adjust oven racks to upper-middle and lower-middle positions and heat oven to 350°. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Leaving about 1 ½ inches between each ball, scoop dough onto parchment-lined cookie sheets with 1 ¾-inch ice cream scoop.

5. Bake, reversing position of baking sheets halfway through baking (from top to bottom and front to back), until edges of cookies have just begun to set but centers are still very soft, about 10 minutes. Cool cookies on sheets about 10 minutes, slide parchment with cookies onto wire racks, and cool to room temperature. Cover one baking sheet with new piece of parchment paper. Scoop remaining dough onto parchment-lined sheet, bake, and cool as directed. Remove cooled cookies from parchment with wide metal spatula and serve.

Variation — Thick and Chewy Triple-Chocolate Cookies:

If you like bursts of warm melted chocolate in your cookies [and who doesn’t? —A], include chocolate chips in the batter. The addition of chips will slightly increase the yield of the cookies.

Follow recipe for Thick and Chewy Double-Chocolate Cookies, adding 12 ounces (about 2 cups) semisweet chocolate chips to batter after dry ingredients are incorporated in step 3.

The only downside to the recipe is that it can take longer than other cookie recipes (especially including the 30-minute wait-time after mixing the dough). All the same, I was really pleased with the results and I think these Triple-Chocolate Cookies may be my new favorite cookie :).

I seem to be the only one here in Dallas who hasn’t seen Super Size Me yet, but I think I may go see it tomorrow at The Inwood. In case you’ve been living in a cave, Super Size Me is a documentary where one guy ate every meal over the course of 30 days at McDonald’s (all while having doctors monitor his health). You can probably guess what happens to this guy.

Its aggregate score at Metacritic is positive (68) and, in particular, all the critics that I trust liked it. Pete Vonder Haar at Film Threat calls it a “Hilarious and often terrifying look at the effects of fast food on the human body.” And, Stephanie Zacharek over at Salon says that “Super Size Me is exploratory, as opposed to being just numbingly didactic, and that’s what makes it so engaging.”

Perhaps ironically, I'm giving some serious thought to grabbing dinner at Fuddruckers beforehand. It’s been a couple months since I’ve been there and I can’t pass up a good hamburger. If you'd like to join me (for Super Size Me or Fuddruckers), just let me know.