DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Network Solutions has long been the domain registrar that everyone loves to hate. But they apparently have some competition in buydomains.com. This story demonstrates that the folks at buydomains.com have perhaps as little concern for truth or privacy as Network Solutions.

It is necessary to understand that .com domain names can be registered at any of a number of ICANN-approved registrars, including Network Solutions (aka NSI), Joker.com, and my favorite, Dotster.com. If you own a .com domain name, you can transfer it freely among these registrars to take advantage of pricing or services — because each registrar offers vastly different levels of service for vastly different amounts of money, from ~$10 per name per year to $35 per name per year.

NSI is roundly loathed because they charge the most and take the most liberties with your personal data. buydomains.com’s privacy policy indicates that they won’t commit that sin, but they have stooped to spamming non-customers… See this excerpt of the uncolicited commercial email they just sent me:

Our research indicates that your domain [...]
will expire on 2001-05-11.  

We are sending this email as a friendly reminder that 
it's time to renew your domain registration.  While some 
sources charge $35 or more per year to renew domains, you 
can transfer and renew your registration through 
BuyDomains.com for LESS THAN HALF (ONLY $16). 
...
To transfer and automatically renew your registration 
for a year past your current expiration date for only $16 
(and receive the above FREE services) simply click
http://transfer.buydomains.com/cgi-bin/transfer.cgi ...

We did some celebrating and visiting over the holiday weekend (Easter), and I fell off my vegan diet as an avocado falling from great height, to smack hard into the ground and nearly split open from the pressure of my insides bursting forth.

Friday I ate about 3 lbs of chilean sea bass at GTO’s Seafood in a town we call San Bastopol. It was served in a large shallow bowl over about 3 lbs of pasta in a spicy tomato-garlic sauce… which was great, even though I had to pick out nearly a head’s worth of garlic chunks from the sauce.

I like garlic but wanted to avoid the 48-hour cloud of garlic vapor that would follow such a meal. Years ago, I ate at a place I now know to be an overhyped tourist trap: The Stinking Rose, a garlic theme restaurant in San Francisco. For two days after eating their “40-clove chicken,” I felt ill from garlic saturation, and I could still taste the garlic two mornings later… bleahh. If you ever find yourself at The Stinking Rose, do yourself and all those close to you a large favor and cross the street to eat at Viva instead.

Saturday afternoon we snacked on great vegetarian pizza at a friend’s open-house, and for the first time I tasted faux meat products. The concept of faux meat is somewhat disturbing. If I were recovering from alcohol addiction I wouldn’t feel right about drinking alcohol-free beer or wine; the explanation “I just like the taste” somehow doesn’t work for me. Even so, I tasted “fakin’ bacon” as well as some sort of textured-protein chicken substitute.

I’ve only eaten real bacon once or twice in the past year, but I can say with conviction that the faux version leaves a lot to be desired. An engineer friend, upon tasting this stuff, remarked that it tasted like real bacon that had been cooked and then left out on the counter for three days. How he knew this is a mystery, but not one I need to solve. The flavor was certainly bacon-like, but this only makes me wonder what chemical concoction is responsible for bacon flavor. (See this recent article by Eric Schlosser on chemical flavoring agents: Why McDonald’s Fries Taste So Good; it’s fascinating).

The chicken was somewhat more true to actual chicken texture than was the bacon, which was clearly pressed and formed to simulate bacon, even though the result looked like a dog treat. I couldn’t taste the chicken, though, given that it was buried in a mound of other stuff, most of which I believe was genuine food.

Saturday night (with other friends) we feasted on Ceasar salad, pasta with gorgonzola and pine nuts, and my own flax sourdough bread. Oh, and a 97 Ironhorse Zinfandel that was quite nice.

Sunday morning brought pancakes, a secret recipe known only to a friend and her 4-yr-old daughter. I suspect they (the pancakes, not the friends) contain tofu as there was some secrecy surrounding the preparation.

Lunch was a filet of sole with shallots, rolled up and baked vertically inside a tomato (!)… fancy food for my pedestrian habits, but somewhat typical for my chef friend and his family. I wasn’t complaining, that’s for sure. At least there wasn’t any butter in it… not.

Sunday evening we attended a party at Indigo in San Francisco. We grazed at a buffet that was refreshed three times with an array of amazing foods: salmon on a bed of risotto, grilled vegetables with red chilis, pasta salad that I admit doesn’t sound very enticing but only because I can’t remember any of the other ingredients. And the closer was a monstrous chocolate-on-chocolate birthday cake, which was about half cake and half cream filling. Even the icing had icing. It was one of the richest cakes I’ve eaten, and I’m not ashamed to say I ate a huge piece and lusted for a second. And then I suffered a sugar crash of epic, thousand-calorie, Maida Heatter, Flo Braker proportions, as I nodded off at a dance performance following the party.

Today I’ve received two copies of a spam message claiming I’ve won a free cruise. The spam sends me to a website hosted by Rackspace.com, whose “fanatical support” staff has so far failed to take any action at all, despite two phone calls and two emailed reports from me.

The second spam I received demonstrates the wizardry involved. The spammer’s mail-merge script is broken… note the variable names in the body of the spam:

Dear $First_Name,
Sometime over the past 6 months you signed 
up for one of our free cruises or vacation 
package. We regret to inform you that the 
information we received was incomplete. We 
received the following information  
$First_Name $Last_Name , 415-555-1212 .

Chocolate- and cookie-lovers need to own this book. Or, if you are a chocolate- or cookie-lover and you do not bake, you need to buy this for your spouse, roommate, parents, etc. This is Nestle’s compendium of “most-requested” cookie and cookie-bar recipes, and most of them are stunning: Toll House Chocolate Chip (of course), Oatmeal Scotchies, Chunky Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookies, Milk Chocolate Florentines, Macadamia Nut White Chip Pumpkin Cookies, and my personal favorite, White Chip Orange Cookies!

If you’re looking for low-fat dessert alternatives, look somewhere else… these recipes are loaded with white sugar and butter, and will have you on a list for bypass surgery if you eat them too often. But for those special occasions when awesome cookies are called for, this book will take you where you want to go. (Ironically, the book offers a half-dozen “reduced fat” cookie recipes, although I haven’t tried any of them. Due to my white-chip-orange blindness, I can’t seem to get past page 46.)

The book is hardback, and is nicely laid out with clear text, easily followed recipes, handy baking tips, and large photographs.

Patronize these links, man:

• Amazon (hardback)

(Subtitle: Simple Breads from the Italian Oven)

If you like flatbreads, this book will sing to your soul. Carol Field offers 4 basic dough recipes and over 50 ideas for savory toppings, sweet toppings, rolled, layered and filled focaccias and schiacciatas, and the possible combinations are endless.

Many of the recipes are written with a straight-style dough in mind, so they can be prepared and eaten on the same day. However, as most professional bakers would, Field recommends halving the yeast and relying on an overnight retard in the cooler to bring out the full flavor of the wheat in the dough. A short section on dough technique at the beginning of the book explains the process clearly; even beginning bakers can take immediate advantage of these recipes.

The book is intelligently designed, with flaps on front and back covers for marking pages, and printed on heavy coated stock to withstand repeated dustings with flour or an occasional spill. And it is filled with colorful photographs from Joyce Oudkerk Pool, depicting about one-third of the focaccias.

The recipes I’ve tried so far have all been amazing. I recommend this book to all breadbakers and pizza makers. You won’t be disppointed.

My favorite recipe, thus far: Schiacciata with potatoes and rosemary (p. 68) — surprisingly appealing, given its starch-on-starch nature.

Patronize these links, man:

• Amazon (paperback)