In celebration of the beginning of winter, we made a sweet Clafoutis with cranberries and walnuts:

This is so easy and tastes amazing. It’s like a soufflé, but it doesn’t taste eggy. It is just delicious. It is from Suzanne Goin’s book Sunday Suppers at Lucques.

• 1 cup whole milk
• 2 Tbsp unsalted butter, plus some for the pan
• 3 extra large eggs
• 1/2 cup sugar, plus some for the pan
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 3/4 cups walnuts, toasted and chopped
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries

Heat the milk and butter in the microwave until warm, not hot, and the butter has melted. Whisk eggs, sugar, flour, and salt in a bowl. Whisk in the milk and butter mixture until incorporated. Rest batter for one hour.

Preheat oven to 375°F. Butter bottom and sides of a 10” cast iron skillet, then sprinkle with sugar and shake to coat sides, discarding any extra.

Pour the rested batter into the skillet. Add chopped nuts and cranberries on top—most will float near the surface. Bake 45 minutes until it looks like the above photograph.

Top with hand-whipped cream.

I think our low-resolution computer screens and the global time crunch have biased Internet content toward the short form. I wanted to take a second to point you toward some outstanding long-form work that’s freely available online. So when you get the Sony Reader for Christmas, you’ll know what to do…

I’m not including technical books here because there’s probably too many to list.

The Classics

• Everything at Project Gutenberg
• Readable scans of The Complete Works of Shakespeare, at Google Print
• The Cathedral and the Bazaar (2000) by Eric Raymond
• The Cluetrain Manifesto (1999) by Chris Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger
• Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (2000) by Laurence Lessig, et al.

Recent Books

• Laurence Lessig’s books on free culture:
  • The Future of Ideas (2002)
  • Free Culture (2004)
  • Codev2 (2007)
• The Underground History of American Education (2001) by John Taylor Gatto
• The sci-fi novels of Cory Doctorow
• Getting Real (2006) by 37signals

Please send me your favorites that I missed. I want to keep this post available as a record of the “best of the best.” The fact is, there are over 25,000 free online books. The Online Books Page holds the full catalog. Their New Listings page reveals an uncommon mix of subject matter—this is not the Border’s New Releases shelf. E-books tend to be either out of copyright books preserved for historical purposes, like Betty’s scrapbook of little recipes for little cooks (1930s), or they’re very specific non-fiction releases, like The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower Theory (1997). But there is certainly something for everyone here, if you have the patience to dig for it.

We made some sugar cookies last night. It is very easy and a lot of fun.

Here’s the basic dough, adapted from HTCE:

• 3 cups (14 oz) AP flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter, softened slightly in microwave
• 1 cup sugar (white & brown in any combination)
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 1 tsp vanilla

1. Find some nice cookie cutters.
2. Mix flour, baking powder, and any dry add-ins in one bowl
3. Cream butter and sugar in standing mixer on low speed until fully incorporated. Add egg, then add dry ingredients slowly, adding a little milk if the mixture gets too dry.
4. Add vanilla and incorporate.
5. Refrigerate a couple hours, to harden the dough.
6. Remove 20 minutes before rolling out. Preheat to 400°F. Roll out to 1/8 inch between two sheets of floured parchment paper. Then cut your shapes! You can also roll the dough into a log and slice it into rounds.
7. Bake 7-10 minutes on parchment papered cookie sheets, then cookies to a cooling rack for a few minutes.

Of course, we couldn’t settle with just the basic recipe. We also made a chocolate-orange variant and a ginger variant.

Chocolate-Orange cookies: Add 1 TBsp orange zest and a tablespoon of cocoa powder to the dry ingredients, omit the vanilla, and add 3 oz melted baking chocolate with the egg (you can melt the chocolate in the microwave on high—stirring every 15 seconds or so).

Ginger cookies: Add 1 TBsp, or more, of ginger powder to the dry ingredients, along with some cinnamon and nutmeg (just a pinch) as desired. Cardamom would be great, too, if you want to go Middle Eastern with it.

This was written on November 9, 2000

It was fascinating. I sat in a tea shop the other day and watched, for about 15 minutes, while customers tried to pull open the front door, a door which can only be pushed. The big brass door handle that stuck out into the street, begging to be pulled on, was a ruse.

After a while, I noticed another effect of the design. Customers leaving the tea shop, carrying a piping hot beverage in one hand and the rest of their stuff in the other, had to pull the door open to exit the cafe. They would set their tea down on the counter, open the door and awkwardly make their way through, grabbing the cup before the door closed on their hand.

As I watched this scene, drinking some tea that I’d fortunately purchased “for here”, I thought of Donald Norman’s book, The Design of Everyday Things, in which Dr. Norman discusses the design failures of so many door handles and light switches. After reading his book, when I find myself pulling on a door that only pushes, I think, “This isn’t my fault—it’s poor design!”

If we have significant problems designing usable doors and switches, do we have any chance of designing a usable voting ballot?

“The ballot is very straightforward,” said Palm Beach County Commissioner Carol Roberts about the “butterfly” ballot that came under much scrutiny in the 2000 presidential election. “You follow the arrow, you punch the location. Then you have voted for who you intend to elect.”

In the eyes of the ballot’s designers, the Palm Beach County ballot was as usable as it could be. It had large print, to accomodate people who are blinds as bats. It also had big arrows pointing to the holes for each candidate. The process couldn’t be any simpler, right? Like the woman said, you follow the arrow and punch the hole. Unfortunately, it’s now clear that this design was never tested. The design process failed, and after the election we were left with an alleged 19,000 double-stamped ballots in that county.

I asked Dr. Norman about the ballot’s design. “There are those who say that the fact that people made a mistake is due to their stupidity,” he said. “This is really bad thinking. If one person makes a mistake, it might be that person’s fault. When thousand do, it is bad design.”

The ballot’s original design seems to have had a number of restrictions. For example, the voting booths and ballot cards already existed, so the ballot itself had to be designed around the booth before the voter could be considered. One column of holes was necessary, and those holes had to be a certain distance apart. Another restriction lies in the ballot cards: The ballot cards needed to be as small as possible, to save space and make it easier for the vote counting machines. This meant less space between the buttons and a single column punch card.

That may have been fine if the choices could be presented in one column on the ballot. But the ballot’s large print was deemed an important factor, and it required a two column design. It was a sacrifice of one form of usability for another—making the ballot easier to use for visually impared voters, but harder to use for every voter. Wanting to avoid confusion, they compensated with the big arrows pointing to the buttons, but the arrows simply didn’t work. Maybe some other visual design would be usable and accomodate for all the design restrictions I’ve mentioned, but that’s beside the point: the chosen design failed.

Ahh, The Politics of Usability come into play heavily. Or, should I say, the Usability of Politics? The user interface is often the bane of a technology, even one as old and familiar as the mechanical voting booth, with its circa 1960s hole-punched paper ballot. Lets hope they get it right in 2002.

Here are a few pasta dough recipes from around the house…

A New Way to Cook
To make 12 ounces, to serve 4:

• 2 large eggs
• a little more than 1 cup AP flour
• 1/2 tsp olive oil
• 1/8 tsp kosher salt

Jamie Oliver — to serve 4:

• 1 2/3 cups bread flour
• 1 2/3 cups semolina flour
• 3 large eggs
• 8 egg yolks

The New Basics—makes 1 pound, to serve 4-6

• 2 cups AP flour
• 3 eggs

Mark Bittman — for 1 lb:

• 2 cups (10oz) AP flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 eggs
• a few drops of water

Cook’s Illustrated

• 2 cups AP flour (10oz)
• 3 eggs

Questions:

• Does one salt the dough or salt the cooking water?
• Jamie’s version seems heavy on the eggs; is it too wet, or does semolina absorb more?
• Cook’s tried bread, cake, and AP flour, and determined that AP made the “best” pasta. But they didn’t try semolina, as in Jamie’s version. Isn’t most dry pasta made with semolina? Maybe bread flour works well with it?
• What is the thinnest setting on the pasta machine used for? How can you make dough that won’t fall apart at that setting?
• Could pasta dough possibly benefit from some kind of fermentation? I mean, what doesn’t benefit from fermentation?

I had a dream last night about a big LCD panel with a rectangle cut out from the middle, and in the hole was sewn a piece of cloth that led to another, smaller LCD panel which hung down in front. The small panel was the “zoom in” feature for the bigger one; it magnified things by bringing them forward in space, not by making them larger.

I also dreamed of a web site that shows signs of physical wear over time. Visitors can see that others have tread this path a lot, maybe it’s worn down to the dirt. Or maybe the grass is tall and unkempt. Maybe the background of more popular pages gets a little less bright—faded by all the sunlight. Or maybe the edges start to decay a bit like old bills. Some clear evidence of use. I remember when I visited the Capitol Building in 5th grade and felt the slight depressions made by millions of footsteps on the great marble staircase.

How else could can we bring a sense of death to web sites?

Too much screen time. Need to get out to the woods.

Up at 6:20 — trying to move my schedule back so that I can work earlier & get home while it’s still light out during the winter.

Fell asleep on the couch with tea at 6:30 over the Mediterranian cookbook. My body is rejecting my attempts to shift sleep schedule.

To yard sales early, bought birdfeeder ($1). Lots of interesting stuff—mangled tuba (found in an attic), Saul Steinburg print—but nothing worth having. Karl tried to buy a chinese accordian, but the woman had a fantasy about how and by whom it would be purchased, and would not lower the price until that person came along. Another yard sale had dozens of signs for miles, and only a handful of items, even though we showed up right at the beginning.

Then, after lunch, a trip up to Marblehead (just to see it). It qualifies for me as the quintessential rich New England waterfront town. The streets running into the old downtown section are windy and crammed with houses, every one a gem, every one beautifully restored to its original 18th century condition. The citizens of Marblehead love their homes. Many had pristine gardens and facades that Martha Stewart would adore. There were little passageways everywhere, cobblestone alleys and private outdoor staircases, and so on.

Visited a great art/rare book store downtown with some amazing things, all priced too well.

Sat in the grass for a while and listened to the ocean.

Occasional patches of color, and dry leaves, only 3 days into the fall.

Yoga instructor this morning, during shavasana: “Sink into the deep blue behind your brow.”