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Can you tell me a bit about yourself?
I was born in Dublin, studied in Sweden and moved to the UK where I spent 13 years in London. Then I went back to university and took a PhD at UEA and published The Semantics of Murder in 2008. I live in Sussex with my husband and son and teach occasionally at the University of Sussex.
I understand that you were writing a different novel before the Loss Adjustor, what was it like to end one project and begin another?
Unnerving! It was early 2007 and I was half way through a novel set in the financial markets of the 1980s when Caro's voice appeared. At first I thought that I had stumbled on a new character, but I couldn't see how she was connected to the story. It was the voice of a woman haunted by memories of childhood tragedy and to be quite honest I started writing her story so that I could get it out of my head and get on with my "real" book. After a couple of months it became apparent that Caro's story was in fact a new novel, The Loss Adjustor, and more importantly that it was the one I wanted to write. I was very reluctant to abandon the other one at such an advanced stage, but her voice was so compelling and so insistent that I felt I had no choice.
Caro, like all of us, contemplates her past; can you tell me how her character developed?
One of the strange effects of writing a novel is that I never really understand where the book came from until long after I've finished writing. I have always been intrigued by the notion that childhood experiences are formative, that events in a person's past might define the future. Caro, the narrator of The Loss Adjustor is in her mid 30s and she is trapped in the past, unable to come to terms with the loss of her first and only love and her best friend. She has failed to adjust to tragedy and loss when others in the same position might have moved on. There is a sense, however, that Caro clings onto the past because she is afraid to let go, perhaps afraid to grow up. The book is very much inspired by the place where I live. We moved from London to Sussex in 2002 and the graveyard that Caro visits and where her best friend is buried is a small and very beautiful site. It is also where Caro meets Tom, whose own story of loss takes the novel back to the Second World War. The countryside all around here is scarred by reminders of the war and the house where we live was home to Canadian soldiers who were sent off to the fateful invasion of Dieppe in 1942 – the ghostly presence of the soldiers is also part of the story of the novel.
How do you feel the novel explores the notion of personal narratives?
Caro's past is a carefully guarded secret. The only other person in the world who knows the full story is Cormac, her first love, who she has not seen for 20 years. This secret and private past life is like an isolation cell. There are people who reach out to her, men who fall in love with her but Caro is afraid of being hurt again, so she keeps her distance. As long as she remains stuck in the past, Caro will never engage with the present and her future will never change.
The Loss Adjustor deals with some very personal issues: grief, forgiveness, redemption, can you tell me how you balanced these heavy topics?
I think that life is about successful adjustment to a series of losses rather than becoming derailed by them. In this "therapeutic" age we have a tendency to pathologise reactions to what are natural events that can be expected to occur in the course of a life – bereavement, ageing, loss of love etc. I think these themes of grief, forgiveness, and redemption are the great universals that we struggle with so Caro's story is one that I hope in some way all readers can relate to.
You spent 13 years as an investment banker, becoming a novelist is a real change in career, can you tell me more about that decision?
Ever since I was a child, I've always been a big reader and I've always written, all through my student days and then when I was working as a banker. So my great dream was always to be a full-time writer. Although my job in the City was very absorbing in the back of my mind I was always planning on a career shift. In the end, however, it was illness following the birth of my child that pushed me into it. I had a pretty severe postnatal depression and in the course of recovery I decided it was time to get serious about writing.
Who are your greatest influences and why?
The first that spring to mind are Chekhov, John Updike, Richard Ford, John Banville, Cormac McCarthy, Colm McCann, Don de Lillo, Per Petterson…. all of them writers of beautifully crafted stories that move you to tears.
Finally, what do you have planned for the future?
Remember the novel I set aside to write The Loss Adjustor? Well I have just this week finally finished the first draft!


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I'm ready for spring. We have had a shockingly mild winter in Chicago, by Chicago standards. Mild, in our case, means there have been multiple winter days during one has been able to step outside without bursting into tears which immediately freeze to the side of your face.
Listen, you want to know how crummy winter is in Chicago? Winter in Chicago is so crummy that when I told a bunch of Icelanders what our January is like, they gaped at me.
"No," said one of them. "I think we are not calculating this correctly."
I repeated our average January low, and he whipped out an iPhone to confirm the converstion from Farenheit to Celsius. There was a collective gasp.
"This is inhuman. This is like Greenland. How do you stand this?"
Yup. A typical Chicago winter is shockingly cold to people from Iceland.
And please don't start in with the "Oh, but you can wear all your wonderful sweaters and hats and mittens and...". One of the reasons I love being a knitter is that making my own winter gear gives me a false but comforting sense of being in control of the season, but I hate, hate, hate being buried under 16 layers of clothing. Do you know 16 layers of clothing do to a short, broad man? Do you? They make him look like a laundry pile with boots, that's what.
When it's time to retire, kids, I'm moving to the desert and I'm never going to wear anything with a #@$*! sleeve on it, ever again.
So, as I was saying, this is a blog post about the Spring 2012 issue of Knitty.
My contribution is an antique pattern, as usual. Voilà.
It's a bag in the shape of a pineapple. Of course it is.
Pineapple purses were a bit of a fad for part of the 19th century, probably because the fruit–being tropical and therefore exotic–fit perfectly into a more general mania for All Things Oriental, with the "Orient," in this case, encompassing pretty much everything from Japan to North Africa.
One of the most pleasing things about knitting a pineapple is that it's like knitting cables. The whole world thinks you've pulled off the most amazing feat of virtuoso yarn-based legerdemain, when actually all you've done is have a whacking great time with a very bewitching pattern.
Believe it or not, there's more going on in a plain vanilla sock than there is in this pineapple. The whole thing is based on one stitch motif, 16 stitches wide. Once I got going, I absolutely flew through the leaves and the fruit.
Then came the bottom, which is written out thus in the original:
P6, A all around.Plain, all around.Repeat these two rounds till the bag is almost closed, then draw it together with a needle.
Translated, this means:
Round 1: (Knit 6, sl1-k2tog-psso) around.
Round 2: Knit.
Repeat rounds 1 and 2 until you have a bag instead of a tube.
But there's a wee hitch. You're starting out with 320 stitches, and the first round is asking you work a repeat of 9 stitches evenly around it.
320 divided by 9 = 35.555555555555556. For those of you non-knitters reading this,* that's a big negatory.
So what to do?
In this case, we have to find a way to close the bag that a) works and b) will be as close as possible to what Jane Gaugain intended.
However, we cannot call, text, e-mail, Tweet or otherwise harass Jane Gaugain to find out what she intended, because even the worms that devoured the worms that devoured her mortal body have long since gone to dust.
We cannot reverse-engineer from the picture, because there is no picture.
We can have a look at a few photographs of extant examples of pineapple bags, though frustratingly few show the bottom and all are obviously knit from patterns that, while similar to hers, are by no means identical.
And we can guess.
We can consider the practical requirements of a bag, such as that a flattish bottom will be more practical than a long, conical bottom.
We can consider the aesthetics of the bag, which is heavily sculpted for three-quarters of its surface and would probably look best with a bottom that matches.
So, we begin by listing theoretical solutions.
- What if, instead of beginning with 320 stitches, we began with a near-ish number of stitches into which 9 would divide evenly?
- What if the use of "A" (for the double decrease) in Round 1 is a typo? Did Jane mean to put in a T, her symbol for for k2tog? The repeat would take up 8 stitches, and 8 stitches does fit evenly into 320! Ooh!
- What if the "6" in Round 1 is a typo? If we substitute a 5, the motif uses 8 stitches, and 8 stitches does fit evenly into 320! Ooh! Ooh!
As it turns out, no there isn't. Or if there is, somebody who is not trying to meet a Knitty deadline will have to find it. Some of the test-knits did begin to close up the bag, yes; but the closure looked like ass. (In this case, "ass" and "bottom" are not synonymous.) The math never worked, either. There always came a point at which the number of stitches in the repeat no longer fit evenly into the number of stitches remaining. Further adjustments could be made at that point, but it would have meant a set of decrease instructions so convoluted that they seemed way out of step with the succinct nature of the rest of the pattern.
Plus, did I mention it looked like ass?
The next option is drift further from Mrs G's two-round instructions. They look so elegant on the page–but if they don't work, they don't work. Hey, it happens. Then, as now, sometimes the instructions aren't just a little off, they're completely broken.
I decided to see what would happen if I had another shot at both Theory 2 and Theory 3–but instead of maintaining the same number of stitches between decreases, I'd have 1 (or 2, in the case of double decreases) fewer stitches between them in every decrease round. This is, of course, the common method for decreasing the tops of hats.
I started with Theory 2, and yup, the bag began to close. Slowly. Slooooowwwwwwwwllllyyy. I looked at the theoretical numbers again, counted the number of rounds they required, and realized I'd end up with a plain green cone, three inches deep, at the end of my pineapple. Not pretty, not practical, and way out of line with the look of the rest of the piece.
Finally, Theory 3, plus consistently reducing the number of stitches between decreases, yielded this:
If that ain't what she meant, she's welcome to come back from the dead and tell me so. I love it.
I don't love her final finish, though, with the bunch of green silk satin ribbon.** That's coming off and I'm replacing it with a tassel–Lisa Souza's yardage in a hank of Sylvie is so generous that I have plenty left.
I may even knit a mini-pineapple with the leftovers. (It's easy. Pick a multiple of 16 as your cast-on and go for it.)
*I'm not fooling myself. There are no non-knitters reading about how to troubleshoot the decreases at the bottom of a pineapple. I know.
**I dyed that flippin' ribbon myself because it was hard enough just to find silk ribbon, let alone silk in a green that matched. I want extra credit for that, dammit.

subset: commoncrawl


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Since I keep referring to the book as my third child I must tell you this was kind of similar to the sentiments that swept over me when I was second time pregnant. My first pregnancy was a difficult one and most people in their sane minds who knew me did not think that I would go in for a second haul."Are you crazy?" they suggested in unsaid words. But I dearly, dearly wanted another child. And then the moment I knew it was going to happen--I was dead scared. But eventually everything fell into place and I am very very grateful for my daughters. If I had to do it again I would do it the exact same.
So anyway instead of doing anything worthwhile after 9:30 at night like cooking,tidying up the kids' clothes dresser, making healthy lunches etc. etc. I watch television.I watched reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond and then I watched The Big Bang Theory every day last week and in the process I also managed to watch two Bangla movies back to back.
The movies were courtesy a friend and probably we would have never watched if she hadn't insisted, logged into her movie account and started us off on the whole thing. The movies were brilliant. There was a time when Bangla movies were gorgeous in Black&White, Uttam Kumar, Suchitra, Bhanu Bandopadhyay, Madhabi Mukherjee and the works.Then came a brief period where the general situation was pretty bad and it was sheer blasphemy if you watched anything other than Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen or Ritwik Ghatak. Then for the last decade or so I watched only movies made by Rituparno Ghose or Aparna Sen.
In the last two years however things seemed to have improved immensely in the Tollygunje studios or wherever they shoot Bangla movies. I have watched a number of pretty decent movies lately and "Bhooter Bhobishyot" that I watched recently took the cake. Thanks R for finally making us watch it. The dialogues were hilarious, the acting impeccable and the movie was really perfectly funny. The movie comes with subtitles and though the essence of the dialogs may be lost in that try to see if you like it.
The other movie that I watched was Royal Bengal Rahoshyo based on Ray's very popular Feluda series and directed by his son. I had not watched a Feluda movie since the originals(Joi Baba Felunath and Shonar Kella) and was a bit apprehensive but the movie at times reminded me of the master with similar music scores and certain touches. Of course no one can replace the original Lalmohan Ganguly but we make do.
And now to the food which this blog is apparently about. If you have been reading me for a while you know how much I love the egg muffins that I learned from Kalyn's blog. I also love a frittata and many days it makes a nice dinner for us. Now combining the two I have started making a baked Frittata kind of thing or say a crustless quiche kinda dish. Since it is super easy and cooks itself in the oven, leaving me time to do what I please I am hooked onto it and try to make it at least once a week. It is really one of those wholesome, healthy and easy dish which you desperately need to bail you out mid-week. The dish is also very flexible and you can add/subtract your own spices/vegetables/what-have-you to make it your own special dish.
Here is how I do it.
Read more...
Grease a oven proof baking dish with olive oil. Add some sliced onions and halved grape tomatoes. Sprinkle some salt. Toss the onion-tomatoes around so the they have a fine sheen of olive oil.
Put this dish in the oven turned on to 400F. This is my toaster oven setting and will vary for your larger oven. In 10 mins or so the onions will start softening and browning a little as will the tomatoes.
At this point add the vegetables. Here I have added some baby spinach. At other times I have added finely chopped bell peppers or steamed broccoli florets. For the pepper and broccoli you can saute them in a fry pan and then add them to the dish too. Oh, and if you get the bag of onion-peppers from the frozen veggies section it works very well in this dish.
Next tear up a single slice of bread and add it randomly. You can totally skip this step though.
Add some grated Parmesan. And then pour in the eggs. I used a 16oz carton of egg white and it made a thick frittata. You can use whole eggs beaten too.
To spice it up I added garlic powder, red pepper flakes and salt. You use your imagination.
Bake at 400F for 25-30 mins. Again this is my toaster oven setting and will vary for your larger oven. Once done check with a toothpick to see that it is cooked through. Now put your oven on broil and broil for about 10 mins to get a crisp surface,


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Am I being totally honest here ? Am I portraying only a slice of my life here ? Am I writing only about the funny and smart things my kids say ? Am I hiding from the world that my PMS lasts for exactly 21 days and 5 hours, give and take two ?
The thing is when you read a blog, anyone's blog you see only a slice of the blogger's life there. The slice the author/blogger has chosen to put forward for world viewing in HTML. So it would be wrong to assume a character, a life just based on the posts he/she may be doing.
Just because someone eats organic almond flour pancake for breakfast and posts the recipe does not mean they don't eat phuchka for lunch. Just because someone is proudly posting pictures of masterpieces drawn by her 2 year old does not mean that the said 2 year old did not get a timeout for scribbling on the walls that very morning.If you give it some thought, you are only seeing a small window, like looking through the camera lens.What lies outside of that is nobody's business.
You should neither judge nor form lofty opinions based on that.
In my case, I mostly write about the funny things that my girls do because that is what I want to remember about their childhood. The fun part. I don't want to remember the tantrums, the meltdown, the shrieking screams, the tears, lots of them. They are a part of life for sure but ten years later they won't matter. This will.
But today I want to write something different. Amidst the fun I also want to write about the learning and the growing. Both my daughters' and mine.
So I usually write about LS's smart retorts which are really really funny and she is indeed a sharp kid, sharp as a knife and cute as a button. At four and half she reads menus at restaurants. Have I told you she is also funny?
But also she is someone who takes a little time to warm up to people. Every kid comes with their individual traits and LS, I have realized is not very comfortable amongst a group of people she does not know much. I mean not strangers, just people she is not that familiar with. In that scenario she is a completely different person. She gets quiet, even timid and until few months back she would also be very intimidated by friendly gestures from such people. There were birthday parties where she would resort to howling and gatherings where she refused to talk to anyone. This in sharp contrast to the playful, naughty girl doing somersaults amongst people she is very comfortable with. And by "people she is comfortable with", I mean both friends and families she sees more frequently.
No doubt her transition to pre-school was tearful and difficult. In the firs few months she refused to play with the kids in class and took to sticking to the teacher.There was a point I was also getting a tad worried because BS had been a moderately social child with an easy smile and an eagerness to participate in everything and I had no clue how to make LS more comfortable in a crowd.
"You were exactly like that at her age." my Mother said. "You would chatter and talk non-stop at home and outside you were a bhije beral." I chose to ignore her statement.
When I talked to her teachers early last year though, they seemed the least bit concerned and stuck to my mother's theory of "every flower blooms in its own time". I need not worry, she is a smart kid and plays with few kids if not all, they said. The only thing they however suggested I could do is to enroll her in some group activity classes to make her comfortable in large groups.
Since BS was already learning taekwondo, I thought to enroll LS in the same class. I knew the teachers very well and if both kids could spend an hour there three afternoons a week, I could spend a good amount of time at Kohl's across the street.Yeah, that was my incentive. Also that my otherwise polite girls could beat up people in future if necessary.
Last summer when I enrolled LS in the taekwondo class, after the first couple of classes she refused to go. Forget Kohl's, I would be sitting there in class with her and yet she cried. Her teacher however was an excellent gentleman with far more patience than mine. He never forced her to do any forms and tried to play games with her. Even on the day LS locked herself in the office and refused to come out, he managed it all pretty well. Didi, too helped by always being on her side. Slowly, and I mean really slowly, over a period of 3 months or so LS warmed up to her taekwondo class. She played tag with her teacher, jumped on the trampoline, punched the dummies and also learned some karate moves. I think the class had a positive effect because even in her pre-school she gladly did the weekly sports classes and made more friends.
"I just want her to be in the class. It is fine if she doesn't test for any belts," I would tell her teacher. At that point I was just relieved that she was at least going to the class and enjoying herself there.
Finally, first testing came up around end of Feb this year. BS was testing for her brown-black belt. If LS at all wanted, she would get a yellow belt, the second level. I asked her if she wanted an yellow belt.
"Yes, Mr.K has said I am ready, " LS said, very confident, uncharacteristically excited about testing day. I gathered she had no idea that there will be loads of parents that day and she would have to demo her moves in front of them. I tried to prepare her by telling that there might be more people in class on the day but she need not worry and such but she didn't really pay me enough attention.
On the day of testing, when we reached the school and she saw all those people there, her face darkened as excepted. Soon tears started rolling down her cheeks. She being the youngest student in the class, the other parents were actually happy to see her and more friendly than usual. That made things only worse and she refused to leave our side. Finally after much pep talk by me, the Dad, the sis, the teacher and an incentive of frozen yogurt with loads of topping, she went on to do her form exercises. Her face was still tense and my heart probably beat faster than hers. But I knew she needed this push for her own good. She however did everything that was expected of her albeit with less power and vigor than on her regular days.
Test over we came back and the day was forgotten.
Next week was result and LS got her yellow belt. She had done her form in full and so she passed on to the next level. We tried to make a song and dance of it and she too seemed a little proud of her yellow belt. There is still miles to go for her to be more open of people but we do see a lot of changes. She has quite a few friends in school and her class teacher really loves her.
Thirteen yeras later when she packs her bag and steps into the outside world, I want to remember her first yellow belt. It must have taken a lot of courage for her 39" petite frame, to do those exercises in front of people she did not know but she had survived and survived good.
And I am sure she always will. To conquer her fears and step out, to face the world and say "Hai-Yah"
Now to the chicken stew, which this time is Kerala style. LS loves chicken and every Sunday a chicken curry is made with her in mind. BS is not too fond of meat these days and I try to make a chicken dish that caters to all four of us as a Sunday lunch. We are quiet fond of this Kerala Chicken stew with creamy coconut milk from Mishmash's blog.
I have adapted it and add vegetables like carrots and beans to it sometimes. My method is also a bit different to suit my taste. I also make it less spicy for the kids. To make it spicier for us, I use Preeoccupied's idea of finishing off with fried red chilli and garlic slices.
Spooned over a bowl of rice, this creamy and fragrant Kerala Chicken Stew makes a lovely Sunday meal for us. It really really is very good. Cannot thank Mishmash and her beautiful blog enough for it.
Marinate about 2lb of chicken pieces with salt, turmeric powder, little lime juice and 2 tsp of ginger-garlic paste
Chop about 4-5 small red potatoes in halves.
Chop a small sized carrot in sticks
Microwave the vegetables
Start Cooking
Heat vegetable oil in a saucier or kadhai
To the hot oil add
6-8 whole dry red chilies and
6 cloves of garlic sliced thin
When you get the flavor of the garlic remove the garlic and red chillies and keep aside. We will use this for garnish at the last stage.
Now to the garlic flavored oil add the chicken pieces. Saute the chicken pieces till they loose their raw coloring. If water is released from the chicken, cook till water dries up. Remove the chicken pieces and keep aside.
Add some more oil if needed to the kadhai.
Temper the oil with
2 green cardamom
2 clove/laung
1 thin stick of cinnamom
10-12 whole black peppercorn
2 star anise
and a sprig of curry patta
Soon the fragrance in your kitchen will be so beautiful that you will forget Dior.
At this point to the oil add
1 medium sized red onion thinly sliced
5-6 pearl onion (optional)
1" knob of ginger peeled and chopped
Fry till the onion is soft.
Next add the potatoes and carrots cooked in the microwave.
Sprinkle 1/2 tsp of home-made Garam masala powder and saute the vegetables.
Add the fried chicken pieces and mix with the other stuff in that kadhai
Now add
1 cup coconut milk + 2 cup of warm water
salt to taste
and let the gravy come to a boil.
Add 1 more cup of coconut milk, lower the heat, cover and let the chicken cook.
Once it is done finish off by
adding a few more curry leaves
the fried garlic + red chilli from the first step
You can also heat a tbsp of ghee in separate pan, roast some cashews and add it to the stew as suggested in the original recipe. I often skip this step though it boosts the flavor.
Enjoy with some rice.


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FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) -- Oh, brother!
John Harbaugh and his Baltimore Ravens set up a family reunion at the Super Bowl, shutting down the New England Patriots 28-13 Sunday in the AFC championship game.
The Ravens reached their first Super Bowl in 12 years, thanks to three touchdown passes from Joe Flacco and a defense led by Ray Lewis that made Tom Brady look downright ordinary.
Next up for Harbaugh and the Ravens is baby brother Jim and the San Francisco 49ers, who beat Atlanta 28-24 earlier in the day for the NFC title.
They'll meet in two weeks in New Orleans - what a place for a party to celebrate the first brother-vs.-brother coaching matchup in Super Bowl history.
It also will be quite a last game for Lewis, the emotional linebacker who will retire after the matchup with the 49ers, who opened as a 5-point favorite.
Driven by Lewis' pending departure from the NFL, Baltimore's defense stepped up in the playoffs. Brady was 67-0 at home when leading at halftime, but this was no contest in the second half.
It also was a first for the Patriots, who hadn't lost an AFC championship at home.
After they had avenged last year's AFC title game loss at Gillette Stadium, many of the Ravens gathered on the field jumping, chest-bumping and whooping before several thousand fans wearing Ravens jerseys - mostly Lewis' No. 52 - who remained in the stands.
As in the previous two playoff wins against Indianapolis and Denver, the Ravens (13-6) were brilliant offensively in spots. This might be 17-year-veteran Lewis' team, but it's also Flacco's, and the quarterback's six road wins are the most in playoff history.
"It was pretty awesome," Flacco said. "We were here last year and thought we had it, but came up a little short. Guys came out in the second half and made plays. ... We put pressure on them like that, and it worked pretty well."
Flacco, the only quarterback to win a playoff game in each of his first five seasons, was dynamic with his arm and precise with his decision making. Looking much more the championship passer than Brady did, his throws of 11 and 3 yards to Anquan Boldin and 5 to Dennis Pitta all were perfect.
New England (13-5) lost a home AFC title matchup for the first time in five home games. The loss denied Brady and coach Bill Belichick a shot at their sixth Super Bowl. They've gone 3-2, losing their last two times in the big game.
Instead, it's the AFC North champion Ravens heading to the Big Easy, seeking their second NFL championship. San Francisco has won five.
"This is our time. This is our time," Lewis said as he and a few teammates were receiving the AFC championship trophy. "All these men out there, there might just be only five of us up here, but every man out there sacrificed this year for each other, and man, we did it and we're on our way to the Super Bowl. That's awesome."
The Ravens have gotten there the hard way, with no postseason bye. Then again, five of the last seven Super Bowl champions took that route.
The Ravens also were pushed into a second overtime in frigid Denver last weekend before eliminating Peyton Manning and the top-seeded Broncos.
And now they've cast aside the league's most successful franchise of the last dozen years.
New England (13-5), which hasn't won a Super Bowl since the 2004 season, had four injuries, the scariest when running back Stevan Ridley was knocked flat by Bernard Pollard in the fourth quarter, forcing a fumble. Baltimore turned that into the final touchdown, on the only short scoring drive it had, 47 yards.
The Ravens gained just 130 yards in the first half.
Brady guided a 13-play drive to Stephen Gostkowski's 31-yard field goal for a 3-0 lead. Neither defense yielded a big play, and punters Zoltan Mesko and Sam Koch were the busiest guys on the field.
That changed when the teams switched sides for the second quarter. Baltimore again was pinned deep, at its 10, but Flacco led a 13-play drive. Ray Rice, whose 83-yard run on the Ravens' first play from scrimmage in their wild-card round victory here three years ago, ran left untouched for the TD.
Awakened by Baltimore's march, the Patriots staged a long one of their own, 79 yards, aided by a 15-yard personal foul by Ravens linebacker Dannell Ellerbe. Wes Welker picked up 24 yards on a short pass, then got free in the right corner of the end zone after a mix-up in the Ravens' secondary, making it 10-7.
It was 13-7 by halftime as Gostkowski connected from 25 yards, with New England outsmarting Baltimore several times. Danny Woodhead ran for 7 yards on a direct snap on fourth-and-1 in the drive. Defensive end Paul Kruger, who's good at sacks, not much in coverage - found himself downfield on Aaron Hernandez on what became a 17-yard reception.
But Brady made a mental error himself, not calling timeout quickly enough after a short scramble. So the Patriots didn't get a shot at the end zone and Gostkowski made his second kick.
Shockingly for an offense that scored 557 points this season, that was it for New England.
The touchdown by Pitta capped the Ravens' best drive of the game, covering 87 yards in 10 plays and made it 14-13. It started with a 15-yard defensive pass interference penalty.
NOTES: Brady now has 5,949 yards passing, the most in NFL history for the postseason. ... Patriots CB Aqib Talib hurt his thigh and DT Kyle Love injured his knee. Backup safety Patrick Chung was helped off the field after one play.


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In my recent post of October 14, though the main thrust was on the attitude of the instrumentalities of Ministry of Defence in stonewalling benefits for serving and retired members of the Armed Forces, I had also touched the issue as to how our own negative outlook, at times, was also resulting in denial of well deserved and logical service and pensionary welfare linked schemes. To this, many have responded that denial of benefits was never at the behest of, or the result of non-responsiveness of the services and that the perpetrator was always the civilian establishment.
But has this always been the case ? I think not !
The first stage of the problem is lack of understanding the intricacies of personnel related policies by people in uniform and the absence of a standardised and unified response to issues confronting us. Secondly, a subservient mind-set has encompassed us leading us to think that our position is inferior than that of the view taken by the Ministry of Defence, which, in fact, in the ultimate analysis may be the view of only a Section Officer sitting in an obscure office rather than the view of the (ill informed) competent authority in a particular arena. This subservience is also out in open public view in Courts and other fora, where the Services, rather than taking an independent stand or maintaining their own valid or fair viewpoint, tow a line thrust upon them by lower echelons of the Ministry of Defence. This is in stark difference to the approach of other Central Govt departments and even agencies of State Govts wherein different stakeholders or respondents, even if functioning under the same Ministry, do not feel shy of informing Courts, Tribunals, Commissions and other authorities, their own sovereign viewpoint on particular matters without being unduly servile. Thirdly, the legal advisors of the Services have slowly assumed the function of being 'protectors of govt policy' rather than playing a fair, non-adversarial, advisory role. In fact, they seem to forget that their duty is to advise the govt in assisting the Courts or other authorities in rendering justice and ensuring fair-play rather than to protect arbitrary or illogical policies to the hilt. The reaction always is 'this is not as per policy' rather than 'this policy is not as per law and requires a change'. An example of the difference in such attitude as compared to the civil set-up has already been amplified by me in the above referred earlier post. The only welcome and positive perceptible change that has been seen in the recent past is in the AG's Branch which has proactively tried to help out disabled veterans from the burden of unnecessary litigation, at times by disagreeing with the MoD. But to carry the good work forward would not only require people with a positive attitude in the AG's Branch with the blessings of the Chief, but also a change in attitude in officers manning the JAG Branch and the DGAFMS. They should realise that they are not serving the govt, but they and the govt are together to serve the public and uphold what is actually judicious and right and not what a Section Officer or an Under Secretary thinks is right.
I have digressed. Now back to the question whether it is always the civilian establishment which denies us our dues. The following examples come to mind :-
(a) Grant of higher scale to Lt Gens after the 5th CPC :- The 5th CPC saw degradation of Lt Gens by way of placing them below DGPs from the IPS. A case was taken up for the rectification of the anomaly and the Services were offered on a platter that 1/3rd Lt Gens (other than Army Commanders who were already in a higher bracket) could be upgraded. It was refused by us and our stand was- give us 100% or give us none. Now this had far reaching consequences which are there for all to see even today. Rather than taking the offer and then fighting for rest of Lt Gens, we refused it altogether as a result of which all Lt Gens remained lower in pay than DGPs and were again placed in a lower grade (HAG) than DGPs (HAG+) in the 6th CPC. And then post 6th CPC, after much hankering we accepted the proposal of upgradation of 1/3rd Lt Gens to HAG+. The position would have been much better had we accepted 1/3rd after the 5th CPC and a higher figure after the 6th CPC. Who was to blame ?, Not the MoD !
(b) Grant of Pay Band-4 to Lt Cols after the 6th CPC :- I haven't stated this openly before, but the greatest resistance for grant of Pay Band-4 to Lt Cols came from within the Army, but the same was thankfully off-set by a stellar performance by the Air Force and Navy. The objection of the Army was that there would remain no incentive for higher ranks if this were to be accepted. A banal argument in light of the fact that we were ready to face a steep degradation in status and pay vis-à-vis civilian counterparts to ensure an imaginary incentive for higher ranks !.
(c) Higher Grade Pay for Colonel vis-à-vis the rank of DIG :- The pay scale of DIG was traditionally placed between the scales of Lt Col and full Col. After the 6th CPC, DIG was placed in a Grade Pay equivalent to a Brig. Despite forceful attempts by the Pay Commission Cells of the three services, the ultimate proposal forwarded to the Govt by the Services contained a demand of a Grade Pay of 8800 for a full Col and acceptance of 8900 for a Brig, thereby tacitly agreeing an inferior role for a Col and equation of a Brig (28 years' service) with a DIG with 14 years' of service. We did not seek for Colonel a GP higher than DIG and on the contrary sought a lower GP. If we do not even demand, why would they give ??
(d) Non-functional financial upgradation :- In the organised Group A Services, after the 6th CPC, all officers are now entitled to non-functional financial upgradation till the scale of HAG (equal to Lt Gen) in case they are not promoted in the ordinary course. Hence, innocuously, unknown to our top brass, almost all civil officers irrespective of actual rank or grade, including those of the MES, are retiring with the pay and pension of Lt Gen while we continue fighting on mundane issues and wasting our energies and intelligence debating on the colour of the curtain in the VIP room (Ganga ???) in the Alpha Mess. There has been a silent takeover by the HAG on the civil side without much fanfare. When this matter was raised by the Air Force and Navy at a time when the Govt was willing to listen, it was shot down by the Army component. Realising the joke that we had played upon ourselves by not processing the proposal when it could see the light of the day, we took it up again, but this time it was rejected by the MoD. So whom do we blame ?
(e) Grant of DACP to military medicos :- When the Govt had approved the Dynamic Assured Career Progression scheme for all doctors under the central govt, there was resistance from our very own PPOC (emanating again from the Army) that this would lead to higher pay to doctors than other officers. It was also foolishly pointed out that military doctors were in receipt of the Military Service Pay also and hence did not deserve DACP. Rather than helping our very own doctors in reaping benefits announced by the govt, we resisted such benefits. On the contrary, we should have smoothly allowed the scheme to be implemented and then could have asked for rectification of other anomalies affecting other personnel. A similar inane bogey was raised in the earlier part of the last century when the Central Govt had introduced Non-Practicing Allowance (NPA) for all doctors. This had led to a protest by the Army HQ that if implemented, the doctors would start getting more emoluments than other Arms and Services. A pity, isn't it ?
(f) Non-grant of AV Report benefits to SSCOs commissioned prior to 2006 :- When the AV Singh Committee report was implemented, it was implemented for all officers serving in the Army as on 16 December 2004. Later however, our very own MS Branch discovered a 'ghundi' and observed that the said benefits could not be granted to SSCOs and WSES officers. When later the SSC scheme was tweaked in 2006 and the terms of engagement were changed from 5+5+4 to 10+4 years, the AV benefits were granted to all those who were commissioned under the said scheme or to those who had opted for the new terms. As a result of this, Male SSCOs commissioned prior to 2006 who are in old terms, including those who were in service in December 2004, are being promoted as quasi-substantive Captains on completing 9 years of service and are retiring in the substantive rank of Lieut even after serving for 14 years while their SSCO counterparts commissioned after 2006 are being promoted as Capt in 2 years, Maj in 6 years and Lt Col in 13 years. Similarly, WSES officers under the old terms are being promoted as Capt after 5 years and are not eligible for any substantive promotion after Capt. When there was hue and cry on the subject, our PS Directorate did take up the issue for rectification but recommended that SSCOs commissioned under the old terms should be made Capt in 5 years rather than the current 9 years !. So there you have it, we are not even magnanimous in demanding our rights. Rather than simply seeking that all officers who were in service in December 2004 or who joined thereafter should be promoted to Capt, Maj and Lt Col in 2, 6 and 13 years as per the universally applicable promotion scheme, we ourselves have been misers in demanding what should have logically flown to us without impediment. So who shall give if we do not even demand ?
(g) Placing senior officers on appointments tenable by junior civilians :- Sample this – while we continue placing Lt Cols and Time Scale Colonels as GEs, the civilian establishment sends only officers with GP 6600 or max 7600 on these appointments. On one hand we theoretically claim that a Superintending Engineer is equal to a Lt Col, while on the other we continue sending Lt Cols and Cols on appointments tenable by even Executive Engineers. We send senior Majors from the SL cadre as AGEs which is an appointment held by Subedar equivalent GP 4600 (Group B) and Lieut equivalent GP 5400 officers from the civil side. We have been posting Majors as BSOs which is an appointment tenable by Group B Officers in GP 4600 who are 4 steps junior. And this is our own doing and cadre management, and then we blame the civilians for degradation of status !. Brace yourself for the 7th CPC.
(h) Grant of medical facilities to non-pensioner ESM including SSCOs and ECOs :- The Govt had allowed limited medical facilities to non-pensioners holding the status of ESM, including released SSCOs and ECOs. While pensioners were entitled to ECHS, such non-pensioners are entitled to outpatient medical facilities in MHs and then if required medical reimbursement by the Kendriya Sainik Board (KSB). In the early 2000s, the DGAFMS had time and again taken up with the govt that such facilities should be withdrawn but the request of the DGAFMS was not accepted. The AG's Branch had also floated detailed guidelines on the subject authorising such affected non-pensioners to avail facilities from MHs based on medical entitlement cards issued by the Man Power (MP) Directorate. In 2009-2010 however, the DGAMFS on its own issued directions to MHs that they should not provide medical attendance to non-pensioner ESM and should not accept patients based on medical entitlement cards. This also led to failure of the Sainik Board re-imbursement scheme since there was a requirement of a certificate from an MH for availing re-imbursement under the scheme. The KSB scheme interestingly has been promulgated under the directions of the Raksha Mantri. This was ultimately resolved through litigation when the AFT directed continuance of such facilities to such affected ESM. But rather than gracefully accepting the verdict and the already existing guidelines on the subject, the DGAFMS forced the govt into appeal to the Supreme Court since this became a prestige issue for the M-Block. The SC refused a stay on the AFT judgement. This is yet another classic case as to how we are our own enemies. On one hand we are finding it extremely to attract talent to join the services as SSCOs, and on the other we ourselves are filing appeals in the Supreme Court against beneficial policies that we had ourselves initiated, and asking MHs to refuse medical treatment to extremely old ECOs who had been issued medical entitlement cards by the AG's Branch.
Was the subject line of this blog-post hyperbolic ?


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(CNN) — If Kerry Drake missed his connecting flight, he wouldn't get to the hospital in time to say goodbye to his mother.
Drake got the news on the morning of January 24 that his mother, who had been ill for years from rheumatoid arthritis and had been especially sick the last four months, was dying.
To get to his mother in Lubbock, Texas, the San Francisco resident booked a United Airlines flight, with only 40 minutes between connecting flights in Houston. When his first flight was delayed, Drake thought he would miss his connecting flight to Lubbock, the last one of the day.
He started crying, obviously distraught. The flight attendants brought napkins for his tears, said they would do what they could to help, and most importantly, got his connecting flight information to the captain, he told CNN.
When he got off the airport train and was running toward the gate, "I was still like maybe 20 yards away when I heard the gate agent say, 'Mr. Drake, we've been expecting you,'" he said.
The captain had radioed ahead
With the information from the flight attendants, the captain had radioed ahead about Drake's situation, and the Lubbock crew had delayed departure to get him on board.
Until that point, Drake had been rushing on adrenaline to make the flight. Finally sitting on that second airplane, he realized how much had gone into helping him get on that plane. "I was overcome with emotion," he said.
Even his luggage arrived on time. The Houston ground crew made sure of it.
He made it to the hospital in time to see his mother. "At one point she opened her eyes, and I think she recognized me," said Drake, who spent the night at the hospital. "Around 4 a.m. she had a real moment of coherence, a last rally, although we didn't know it at the time. It was the last time."
She died that morning.
Employees working together
Drake wrote to United Airlines upon his return to ensure that the flight attendants, pilots, gate agents and baggage handlers who helped him that day were thanked for their service. His story made it into an employee newsletter as an example of what employees could do. "Our employees really worked together that day to help this customer," said United spokeswoman Megan McCarthy.
"This almost never happens," wrote Christopher Elliott, who first told Drake's story on his airline consumer advocate website, via e-mail. "Airline employees are evaluated based on their ability to keep a schedule. Airlines compete with each other on who has the best on-time departure record."
"When the crew on this flight heard about this distraught passenger trying to make his connection, they must have said, 'To hell with it,'" wrote Elliott, who's also the reader advocate for National Geographic Traveler. "And they made the right call."


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Are there any parents who haven't felt complete and utter love for their toddler and, at the same time, frustration and anger?
Our beloved little ones test our nerves because they're testing boundaries all around them. Every day, little by little, they're mastering new abilities and accomplishing new feats, and are anxious and excited to use these skills.
Sometimes it's tough to reel in a toddler, but it can be done. And setting rules and limits now — when your child is learning what behaviors are acceptable — will help prevent bigger problems down the road.
Here are some ways to help you keep your youngster on the right track.
Be Consistent
When it comes to discipline, it's important to be consistent. Parents who don't stick to the rules and consequences they set up don't have kids who do either. For example, if you tell your toddler that a timeout is the repercussion for bad behavior, be sure to enforce it. Only issue warnings for things that you can follow through on. Empty threats undermine your authority.
And don't forget that kids learn by watching adults, particularly their parents. So make sure your own behavior is role-model material. When asking your child to pick up toys, you'll make a much stronger impression if you've put away your own belongings rather than leaving your stuff strewn around the room.
Eliminate Temptation
By now, you've figured out that your toddler wants to explore and investigate the world. Toddlers are naturally curious, so it's wise to eliminate temptations whenever possible. That means items like TVs, phones, and video equipment should be kept out of reach, as well as choking hazards like jewelry, buttons, and small items that kids can put in their mouths.
And always keep cleaning supplies and medications stored safely away where kids can't get to them.
Use Distraction
If your roving toddler does head toward an unacceptable or dangerous play object, calmly say "No" and either remove your child from the area or distract him or her with another activity.
It's important to not spank, hit, or slap your child. At this age, kids are unlikely to be able to make a connection between the behavior and physical punishment. The message you send when you spank is that it's OK to hit someone when you're angry. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) discourages spanking, which is no more effective than other forms of discipline, such as timeouts.
Practice Timeout
If you need to take a harder line with your child, timeouts can be an effective form of discipline. A 2- or 3-year-old who has been hitting, biting, or throwing food, for example, should be told why the behavior is unacceptable and taken to a designated timeout area — a kitchen chair or bottom stair — for a minute or two to calm down.
As a general rule, about 1 minute per year of age is a good guide for timeouts. Shorter timeouts can be effective, but longer ones have no added benefit and can sometimes undermine your efforts if your child gets up (and refuses to return) before you signal that the timeout has ended.
How to Avoid Temper Tantrums
Even the most well-behaved toddler can have a tantrum from time to time. Tantrums are common during toddlerhood because kids can understand more than they can express and this often leads to frustration when they can't communicate their needs.
Toddlers get frustrated in other ways, too, like when they can't dress a doll or keep up with an older sibling. Power struggles can ensue when your toddler wants more independence and autonomy too soon.
The best way to deal with tantrums is to avoid them in the first place, whenever possible. Here are some strategies that may help:
- Make sure your child isn't acting up simply to get attention. Try to establish a habit of catching your child being good ("time-in"), which means rewarding your little one with attention for positive behavior.
- Give your toddler control over little things. This may fulfill the need for independence and ward off tantrums. Offer minor choices that you can live with, such as "Would you like an apple or banana with lunch?"
- When kids are playing or trying to master a new task, offer age-appropriate toys and games. Also, start with something simple before moving on to more challenging tasks.
- Consider the request carefully when your child wants something. Is it outrageous? Maybe it isn't. Choose your battles; accommodate when you can.
- Know your child's limits. If you know your toddler is tired, it's not the best time to go grocery shopping or try to squeeze in one more errand.
When Tempers Flare
If your child does throw a tantrum, keep your cool. Don't complicate the problem with your own frustration. Kids can sense when parents are becoming frazzled and this can just make their frustration worse. Try to understand where your child is coming from. For example, if your youngster has just had a great disappointment, you may need to provide comfort.
Ignoring the outburst is another way to handle it — if the tantrum poses no threat to your child or others. Continue your activities, paying no attention to your child but remaining within sight. Kids who are in danger of hurting themselves or others during a tantrum should be taken to a quiet, safe place to calm down.
Some kids will have a hard time stopping a tantrum. In these cases, it might help to say to say, "I'll help you settle down now." But whatever you do, do not reward your toddler by giving into desires. This will only prove that tantrums are an effective tactic for getting what he or she wants. Instead, verbally praise your child for regaining self-control.
As their language skills improve and they mature, kids become better at handling frustration and tantrums are less likely. If you're having difficulty handling you child's temper tantrums or have any questions about discipline, ask your pediatrician for advice.
source: http://kidshealth.org/parent/growth/communication/toddler_tantrums.html#


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Huffington Post – by Shannon Dininny and Mike Baker
OLYMPIA, Wash. — The long-delayed cleanup of the nation's most contaminated nuclear site became the subject of more bad news Friday, when Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced that a radioactive waste tank there is leaking.
The news raises concerns about the integrity of similar tanks at south-central Washington's Hanford nuclear reservation and puts added pressure on the federal government to resolve construction problems with the plant being built to alleviate environmental and safety risks from the waste.
The tanks, which are already long past their intended 20-year life span, hold millions of gallons of a highly radioactive stew left from decades of plutonium production for nuclear weapons.
On Friday, the U.S. Department of Energy said liquid levels are decreasing in one of 177 underground tanks at the site. Monitoring wells near the tank have not detected higher radiation levels, but Inslee said the leak could be in the range of 150 gallons to 300 gallons over the course of a year and poses a potential long-term threat to groundwater and rivers.
"I am alarmed about this on many levels," Inslee said at a news conference. "This raises concerns, not only about the existing leak … but also concerning the integrity of the other single shell tanks of this age."
Inslee said the state was assured years ago that such problems had been dealt with and he warned that spending cuts – particularly due to a budget fight in Congress – would create further risks at Hanford. Inslee said the cleanup must be a priority for the federal government.
"We are willing to exercise our rights using the legal system at the appropriate time. That should be clear," Inslee said.
Inslee said the state has a good partner in Energy Secretary Steven Chu but that he's concerned about whether Congress is committed to clean up the highly contaminated site.
The tank in question contains about 447,000 gallons of sludge, a mixture of solids and liquids with a mud-like consistency. The tank, built in the 1940s, is known to have leaked in the past, but was stabilized in 1995 when all liquids that could be pumped out of it were removed.
Inslee said the tank is the first to have been documented to be losing liquids since all Hanford tanks were stabilized in 2005. His staff said the federal government is working to assess other tanks.
At the height of World War II, the federal government created Hanford in the remote sagebrush of eastern Washington as part of a hush-hush project to build the atomic bomb. The site ultimately produced plutonium for the world's first atomic blast and for one of two atomic bombs dropped on Japan, effectively ending the war.
Plutonium production continued there through the Cold War. Today, Hanford is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site. Cleanup will cost billions of dollars and last decades.
Central to that cleanup is the removal of millions of gallons of a highly toxic, radioactive stew – enough to fill dozens of Olympic-size swimming pools – from 177 aging, underground tanks. Many of those tanks have leaked over time – an estimated 1 million gallons of waste – threatening the groundwater and the neighboring Columbia River, the largest waterway in the Pacific Northwest.
Twenty- eight of those tanks have double walls, allowing the Energy Department to pump waste from leaking single-shell tanks into them. However, there is very little space left in those double-shell tanks today.
In addition, construction of a $12.3 billion plant to convert the waste to a safe, stable form is years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. Technical problems have slowed the project, and several workers have filed lawsuits in recent months, claiming they were retaliated against for raising concerns about the plant's design and safety.
"We're out of time, obviously. These tanks are starting to fail now," said Tom Carpenter of the Hanford watchdog group Hanford Challenge. "We've got a problem. This is big."
Inslee said he would be traveling to Washington D.C. next week to discuss the problem further.
Dininny reported from Yakima, Wash.


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Video Source: Youtube


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Monday, March 3, 2008
Sausage and Egg Pizza - Fundamentally Delicious
I first saw pizza topped with eggs in the Chez Panisse Café cookbook. Alice Waters, the chef of Chez Panisse, and one of my personal heroes, used eggs to top a similar pizza using proscuitto instead of sausage. I decided to try it, and it was a transcendent experience. The golden yolks oozing slowly over the spicy sausage and melted cheese is TDF (to die for). I hope you give this a try. Which reminds me to warn you that it may take a few tries to achieve the perfectly cooked eggs. But, when you do, there is bliss. Enjoy.
pizza dough (enough for 1 large pizza), brought to room temperature
2 tbsp cornmeal
3/4 cup pizza sauce
red pepper flakes (optional)
6-oz shredded fontina cheese (may substitute mozzarella, or Monterey Jack)
6-oz hot or mild Italian sausage, sliced, cooked, drained
4 whole eggs
black pepper, to taste
1/3 cup grated Parmesan
baby arugula, washed and dried
olive oil
32 comments:
- hkfreak said...
You got Pizza Sauce on your site...in fact, I remember it as the same post as your dough's!
- March 3, 2008 at 4:42 PM
- Chef John said...
Yes, the dough link takes you to all 3 parts of the pizza post. I guess I should link that ingredient also. Thanks.
- March 3, 2008 at 5:00 PM
hahaha, you like your eggs like you like your women huh?
And eggs on pizza...you did it again Chef John - March 3, 2008 at 5:17 PM
- Jairus said...
whoa thats aweome chef! eggs on a pizza sounds like the tastiest things ever. i've actually seen this before on a flyer for dominos when i was in japan. ps that was a joke right? bring it up a notch?...rachel ray?...right??
- March 3, 2008 at 5:43 PM
Wow, That's next on my list of things to try from your site. I had eggs on pizza once while in Paris and didn't like it - but the whites were very runny. This version looks way better!
BTW, my kids are still raving about dinner last night - the Chicken Parm Bake. That's going tbe used a lot around our house, I bet. - March 3, 2008 at 5:47 PM
- Chef John said...
Jairus, yes, it was a joke. Japanese Dominos?? I'll have the extra large blowfish stuffed crust
- March 3, 2008 at 5:54 PM
Wow, this brings back memories.
I last saw an egg on a pizza when I was on my honeymoon in France 18 years ago. We were at the beach in a little resort town called Mimizan-Plage in the southwest corner of France. The pizza we ordered had red and green peppers, mushrooms, artichoke and a single egg in the middle and get this - the pizza was called a "California Sunshine".
Cheers, April - March 3, 2008 at 6:02 PM
- Chef John said...
a great memory, and a perfect name
- March 3, 2008 at 6:18 PM
- PrimeBrit said...
I'm always looking for the healthy option. Thin crust, lycopene from the tomatoes, dairy from the cheese and excellent protein via the eggs... I can't think of a healthier option...
Thanks... Pizza everyday! - March 3, 2008 at 9:23 PM
- childsdish said...
Request - while you are on the subject of nonconventional pizzas - would you please demo the wonderful pizza with thin sliced potatoes on top? I had it once in SF, and have never seen it served anywhere since. No Corned Beef and Cabbage for me - this is what I want for my St Pats dinner.
- March 4, 2008 at 3:37 AM
That does look rather good - I love Alice Waters! I met her, and she is just as much a genius in person!
- March 4, 2008 at 5:36 PM
- Unknown said...
what's cornmeal? - March 5, 2008 at 7:39 AM
- Chef John said...
its ground corn
- March 5, 2008 at 12:06 PM
- Maggie said...
So eggs are kinda like boobs, ey? :D
- March 5, 2008 at 1:29 PM
- Chef John said...
I can't sneak anything bye you folks! ;)
- March 5, 2008 at 1:38 PM
The television shoe "The Odd Couple" once had an episode where the character Oscar ("the slob") ordered pizza with fried eggs on it...maybe he was really a misunderstood gourmand?
- March 9, 2008 at 5:39 PM
- Chef John said...
I loved that show!!
- March 9, 2008 at 5:50 PM
glad to see someone else spreading the word of egg on pizza. i'm a huge fan. even have an alternative method as well to be used with deep dish chicago style pizza.
take left over slice of chicago stye deep dish pizza and warm one broiler to heat adn get cheese a little crustier and to toast the crust a little more(pay close attention not to burn the crust). while doing that, poach two eggs. take out the pizza, place poached eggs on top, add some fresh black pepper, grate some fresh parmesian cheese on top, and add a couple dashes of freshly chopped basil. that's my favorite breakfast!
cheers! - March 10, 2008 at 1:49 PM
OH MAN its emeril lagasse not rachael ray!!!!
- March 14, 2008 at 4:00 PM
- Chef John said...
Thanks I had no idea... emeril is the EVOO guy, right?
- March 14, 2008 at 5:00 PM
- Harry Tuttle said...
14 minutes at 475???? Are you sure about that. I've made many pizza's at home and in my experience it would be one crispy critter after that.
I love the idea of the eggs on it! That sounds absolutely delish! I'll have to give it a try soon. - March 19, 2008 at 5:54 PM
- Chef John said...
That what it takes for me to get a nice crust 12-15 minutes depending on toppings.
- March 19, 2008 at 5:56 PM
I just made this pizza for dinner tonight - outstanding! Thanks, Chef John!!!
Rachel - March 24, 2008 at 9:30 PM
Very wonderful Chef John! My Mom was very surprised by this dish, she doesn't like sunny side up eggs, or fried, but she turned out to love this dish!
Thanks again for a wonderful dinner ;)
Michael Telesca - March 22, 2009 at 9:07 PM
I was wondering if you could substitute proscuitto instead of sausage like the previous recipe you talked about had. DId you just like sausage more so thats why you substituted? Thanks!
- January 19, 2010 at 8:13 PM
- Chef John said...
sure, it's great with any meat, whatever you like.
- January 19, 2010 at 8:56 PM
- Unknown said...
Fantastic video! I've been googling to figure out when to add the egg. Thanks for all the pointers.
- August 8, 2010 at 2:15 PM
- Damaris @Kitchen Corners said...
I grew up in Brazil where we have our variation of sausage and eggs, it's cooked with a lot of sauce. I think it would be perfect on top of a pizza., You've inspired me!
- January 14, 2011 at 3:46 PM
- Alice SQ said...
Thanks Chef John! I made this pizza for a Sunday night's dinner and both my mom and dad (and me!) loved it. Neither my parents are big on pizza but this egg 'n pizza combination certainly won them over!
- October 8, 2011 at 1:11 PM
OH WOW!!! I gotta' try this on the grill. WOW!
- October 22, 2012 at 6:36 PM
- kamel said...
pizza with eggs is a common here in vienna austria. they sell it with spinach or ham... delicious !!
- May 5, 2013 at 10:50 AM
- kate said...
Long time since any comments on this one, but I just ran across this.
Two comments:
So has Emeril sued you yet for misappropriating his signature phrase?
Oh, behave! with your jiggly eggs! You sounded a bit disjointed immediately after that snippet! lol
- September 18, 2016 at 10:27 PM


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Utilizing an angled base design perfect for tire swings and multiple entry climbing ladders, the playcenter design is the ultimate activity center. Kids are endlessly challenged to develop gross motor skills and coordination. Endless design configurations and unlimited expandability ensure the challenges never end. As always parents can rest assured knowing they have purchased a play set engineered for safety and long term durability.
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There are many reasons why Superior Play Systems® stands out when it's time to purchase play equipment:
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Are you ready to add a playcenter to your space? Visit a local showroom where you can try out different playground equipment for yourself before you buy. If you have questions or need help, the professional and friendly staff can help. You can also shop online, and we can deliver your playset and even offer installation services so you can focus on creative play!


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text: Born and raised in New Jersey, Kelly Waldron graduated from Rutgers University and got her start in radio at WSUS in Sussex County. She then moved on to WCTC/WMGQ in Middlesex County where she spent five years as Morning Drive News Anchor and Reporter before moving on to become a national correspondent for Metro Networks where she started the New Jersey Bureau. From Metro Networks, Kelly moved on to WCBS 880 in New York where she spent ten years as a reporter. Kelly decided to come back to her New Jersey roots and joined the NJ 101.5 news team as our Afternoon Drive News Anchor and Reporter. She resides in Monroe with her husband and two children.


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DVD players are so 1999. In this day and age, a custom media center running XBMC is the only thing you really need hooked up to your TV—whether you're watching movies you've ripped, streaming your favorite TV shows from Netflix and Hulu, listening to podcasts, or even playing video games. This guide will tell you everything you need to know to create an awesome, customized, do-anything media center with XBMC. And, if you've already hopped on the XBMC bandwagon, it's sure to show you a thing or two you didn't already know.
XBMC, for those of you that don't' know, is a media center application that organizes your movies, TV shows, and other media in a beautiful, remote control-friendly library. You can run it on nearly any computer or Apple TV and hook it up in your living room, so all the media you used to watch on your computer—ripped movies, Netflix, Hulu Plus, and more—are all available from the comfort of your couch. Obviously, XBMC isn't the only media center software out there—but it's our favorite by a pretty good margin, and yours too.
You can play all your existing DVDs and Blu-Ray discs, stream videos to it from your iOS device via AirPlay, set it up as an old school video game console, and—if you're really adventurous—even sync it up with other XBMC boxes in the house, so you can pause a movie in one room and continue it in another. On top of all that, you can customize every corner of the interface to make it look super awesome. Not convinced? Check out the video at the top of the post to see what you'll get when the whole process is over.
Because XBMC is so powerful, you have a ton of options for setting up your media center to fit your needs. This guide covers the entire process, from choosing your hardware to importing your videos to extending XBMC to its furthest (and coolest) reaches. If you're new to XBMC, you should start from the top. If not, jump to the section that interests you most:
Choose Your Hardware
Before you start, you'll need to think about where you're going to run XBMC. If you have an old computer, you can just hook that up to your TV and use it as a media center for a total of $0. Of course, if your old machine is big, loud, and draws lots of unnecessary power, you may prefer a dedicated media center. (It won't hurt to test on your old machine, though!)
You don't have to spend a ton of money on XBMC-capable hardware. In fact, the cheapest option is one of our favorites: a jailbroken Apple TV. The newest generation can play 1080p videos, has Netflix built-in to the Apple TV software, and can do all the basic playback of any XBMC machine. And, at $99, it's a steal. The newest generation hasn't been jailbroken yet, but hopefully it will be soon. In the meantime, you can grab a second generation Apple TV if you don't mind 720p, check out what installing XBMC is like on an Apple TV with our Apple TV 2 guide. (You'll see a post on Lifehacker as soon as the newest Apple TV is jailbroken.)
Of course, if you want to do some of the more advanced things in this guide, like play video games or sync XBMC with multiple XBMC boxes in the house, you'll need a real computer to do the job. You have a few options here: you could either grab a cheap nettop, like the $219 Asus Eee Box or $300 Acer Aspire Revo for a tiny, silent, standalone box, or you can build your own for a bit more money. The standalone box is great and gives you a few more options, but if you really want to go all-out with your box—by adding video games and Blu-Ray playback to the mix, for example—you'll probably want to build your own. It's a tad more expensive, but it gives you complete control over every aspect of your media center, which we really like. If you've never built a computer before, it's pretty easy—just check out our start-to-finish guide to building a computer from scratch.
Chances are you already have an idea of what you want to use for your media center, but if you're caught between two or more of the above options, be sure to check out our Ask Lifehacker on the subject. Don't forget to think about remote controls when making your hardware decisions, too. Apple TV users will be shocked at how well the Apple TV remote works, but other users will need to buy a remote separately. The easiest route would be to grab a Windows Media Center remote like this one, which comes with an infrared sensor and should work out of the box with XBMC. If you have a universal remote you really like, though, you can make nearly any IR remote work with XBMC using the complicated but awesome LIRC, too.
Install XBMC
XBMC comes in a number of different flavors, so the next step is choosing which one you want to install from their download page. You can install it as a regular program atop your Windows, Mac, or Linux system, which makes it easy to use other programs on your media center whenever you want—like playing video games (which we'll discuss in more detail later) or even just browsing the web from your couch. However, if all you want is XBMC with no other hassle, you could just install XBMCbuntu, which is a minimal Linux installation with XBMC on top of it. You can boot straight into XBMC by turning on the computer, and boot into a Linux desktop on the rare occasion you need to tweak some system-level settings. This is what most of us here at Lifehacker do, since it works great right out of the box—but if you have special needs, you can always install it over the operating system of your choice.
Alternatively, you can install a variation of XBMC like the fast-booting, self-updating OpenELEC. It's a great choice if you don't want to fiddle with any operating systems, and just want a box that starts up quickly and houses your movies. You could also use a program like Plex for Windows and Mac, which is based off of XBMC. It isn't nearly as customizable as XBMC, and most of this guide won't really apply to it, but we think it's worth mentioning for its awesome streaming powers. If you aren't looking for an insanely customizable media center and want to stream media to your iOS or Android device when you're away, Plex is a great choice.
Installing XBMC is a piece of cake once you've picked your version. If it's just a regular version of XBMC, download and install it like you would any other program. If you're installing OpenELEC or XBMCbuntu, just burn the installer to a live CD or USB drive, insert it into your media center, and boot from that device to start the installation. Once you have it installed, you're ready to start adding your media.
Import Media Into XBMC
You can stream a lot of media to XBMC, but where it really shines is with your local library of movies and TV shows. Here's what importing that media entails.
Where to Get Movies and TV Shows for XBMC
If you don't have movies and TV shows on your computer already, I highly recommend checking out our guides on how to:
Automatically download TV shows and movies as soon as they've aired
Where to Store Them (and How to Organize Them)
Before you go adding these files to your library though, you'll need to get them in order on your machine. You can either store them on your media center itself or on another computer on the network. Our preferred method is to store them on a network—whether you've stowed them away on your main machine (which you'll need to keep running 24/7 if you want those videos available) or you've got something like a NAS running as a home file server (which is what I do).
XBMC has a cool feature where it can grab all sorts of information about your videos—like the cover art, plot summary, year produced, and more—and display it in the menus for you. It does this by scraping information from sources like TheMovieDB.org and TheTVDB.com when you add those files to your library. However, in order to scrape that information, it needs your files organized in a certain way. There are a ton of ways to do this, but we'll feature a few options here.
The Easy, Automated Way: Create two new folders: one for movies and one for TV shows. Drop all your movies into the movies folder, and your TV shows into the TV folder. XBMC needs these separated to correctly process information. Then, just rename your movie files using a supported naming convention, such as Tron.Legacy.2010.1080p.mkv
(the name, the year, and the resolution—though I usually add the resolution just so I can see at a glance which movies I've ripped in which format). For TV shows, put each show in its own folder with all the episodes inside, and use a supported naming convention like Firefly.s01e02.mkv
for each one. You can add more information to your files if you want, but these are simple conventions with enough information for XBMC to scrape information.
When you add these files to XBMC, it'll grab all the information for you, including the movie's poster art and a high-resolution fanart image, which is usually a screenshot of the movie or other promotional image (see the image to the right for an example of what your menus will look like with fanart and poster art). It'll grab all this automatically so you don't have to do anything, and you can just start watching your media. If you'd rather pick which poster and fanart it uses, you'll have to use...
The Complicated, Customizable Method: Like the easy method, start by creating two folders: one for movies and one for TV shows. Drop all your movies into the movies folder, and your TV shows into the TV folder. XBMC needs these separated to correctly process information. Then, create a new folder for each movie, using the movie's title as the folder's name. Inside that folder, place the movie file with any file name you want, along with the poster art labeled folder.jpg
and the fanart you want as fanart.jpg
. You fan find images for the poster and fanart at TheMovieDB.org. TV shows are similar: just put a folder.jpg
and fanart.jpg
into the TV show's folder, then put each season of the show into its own subfolder. Each subfolder can also have its own folder.jpg
for that season (see what this looks like in the image to the right). You can grab these images from TheTVDB.com.
It sounds complicated, but you get the hang of it pretty quickly—XBMC does a good job of understanding most intuitive organization schemes. For more information on naming files and adding custom art, check out the XBMC wiki and our guide to turbo charging your media center.
Add the Files to Your XBMC Library
Finally, it's time to actually add the files to XBMC. If you've done your job correctly so far, this should be a dead simple process. First, open up XBMC on your media center. Go to the Videos section, and scroll down to "Add Videos". This is where you'll add a video source to your library—like a folder full of movies or TV shows (hey, we just created those!). Click Browse and navigate to the folder where you've stored your media (obviously, if they're on another computer, choose something like "Windows Network" or "Add Network Location" at this step). Once you've picked it, enter a name for the source—like "Movies" or "Movies on my office computer" and click OK.
Next, it's going to ask you what kind of media is in that folder. Under "This Directory Contains", choose the type of media you want to add from that folder—e.g., Movies. It'll also ask you to choose a scraper; the default should be fine. Scroll down and enable the "Run Automated Scan" option, and any other options that may apply (like "Movies are in separate folders" if you picked the complicated method above). Click OK and wait for XBMC to import all your files. This could take awhile depending on how many you have, so kick back with a cup of tea if your movie collection is on the impressive side. Repeat this process for your other folders and meia types, and you should have an awesome looking, playable media library ready to go!
Customize Every Inch Your Media Center
One of the coolest features of XBMC is the ability to add new features to your media center through add-ons, just like you would with Firefox or Chrome on your computer. Add-ons can do anything from stream TV shows and movies to play video games and overhaul the entire look of your media center. There are a few different places you can get add-ons, called repositories. You can download repositories as ZIP files and import them into XBMC. Each time you import a repository, it'll add a bunch of new add-ons to XBMC's catalog.
Installing add-ons from XBMC's official repository is super easy, since it's already built into XBMC. Just open up XBMC and head into System > Add-Ons > Get Add-Ons. Choose "XBMC.org Add-Ons" and start browsing the catalog from there. When you see one you like, select it, and click the "Install" button in the menu that comes up. XBMC will install it, and you'll be good to go. To use the add-on just head to its category (e.g., if it's a "Video Add-On", go to Videos > Video Add-Ons). You may have to edit the add-on's settings before you can use it (usually by highlighting it and going to the context menu with the "c" key on your keyboard, or whatever the corresponding button is on your remote).
Installing add-ons from other repositories takes one extra step. To add a new repository, download its ZIP file (which you'll find on this wiki page, or elsewhere around the net) and save it to your media center. Then, open up XBMC and go back to Settings > Add-Ons. From there, choose "Install from ZIP File", and navigate to the ZIP file on your drive. Once you've added it, you should be able to select it from the "Get Add-Ons" menu, and browse its catalog just like you did with XBMC's official repository.
Overhaul XBMC's Look with a New Skin
XBMC's default look is pretty beautiful, but you have a ton of other skins to choose from that give it a different look and feel. To add a new skin, just head to Settings > Appearance > Skin, and click on the skin you're currently using (the default skin is called "Confluence"). It should bring up a menu where you can choose a new skin. By default, you'll only have one skin in this menu, but after clicking "Get More" and installing other skins from XBMC's repository, you can choose other skins from that menu to try out. If you see a skin online that isn't built into XBMC, you can download its repository, add it as described above, and the skin should show up in the "Get More Skins" menu.
Once you've chosen a skin, you can customize it under Settings > Skin. From there, you can change which menus show up on the home screen, choose the background artwork for the different screens, and lots more. I also recommend going into your media library and seeing what different views your skin offers. To do this, head into a section of your library (like "Movies") and bring up the left menu by pressing the left arrow key (or, if your movies scroll from side to side, by pressing the up arrow key). Press Enter on the "View" selection to see the different views. Some will emphasize the posters and fanart for a cool-looking library, while others may focus on media details like plot, cast, and more. Play around with them to see what you like, and remember that each skin has different layouts, so check them out before you write a skin off.
You have a lot of skins to choose from, but to see a gallery of some of our favorites, click on the gallery link above.
Stream Nearly Any TV Show or Movie
There's no reason to rip a bunch of movies and TV shows if you can stream them right to your media center whenever you want. A number of add-ons let you do just that. Check out these add-ons to get all your favorite movies and TV shows streamed right to you:
Free Cable: This add-on, located in the third-party Bluecop repository, grabs videos from all sorts of network and cable channels that put their shows up on line, like ABC, CBS, The CW, Food Network, the History Channel, SyFy, USA, and lots more. Generally, you'll only get the last five or so episodes of any series (just like you would if you're watching them online), but it's awesome to be able to watch them on your TV instead of on your computer, mouse-and-keyboard-free.
Hulu: Also in the Bluecop repository, This add-on lets you watch any video on Hulu. You have to watch them with commercials, unfortunately, but you have a slightly different selection to choose from (and a pretty good one at that—especially if you have Hulu Plus, which you can log into from the add-on's settings). There is a setting to turn off commercials as well, but it doesn't always work, so don't rely on that if you're really against watching ads.
XBMC Flicks: Lastly, if you subscribe to Netflix, you can get your Instant Queue in XBMC with the XBMC Flicks add-on, available in the default XBMC repository. This only works on Windows and Mac-based media centers, so if you're running XBMC on Linux or an XBMCbuntu box, you're currently out of luck. This add-on also isn't yet available in the repositories for the newest version of XBMC, so you'll have to download it manually from here and put it into your add-ons folder as described in this forum post.
Play Videos via AirPlay
To play videos from your iOS device or other AirPlay-capable program right in XBMC, head to Settings > Network > Services and enable AirPlay. From then on, XMBC should show up as an AirPlay destination any time you want to stream something. Some platforms might need a bit of extra setup to get this working, so check out the XBMC wiki page on the subject to find out more.
Add Blu-Ray Playback
If you've borrowed a Blu-Ray from a friend or just want to watch one without waiting for it to rip, you can actually enable Blu-Ray playback in XBMC with the Blu-Ray add-on and an external program called MakeMKV. It takes a bit of initial setup, and it doesn't work perfectly, but I've used it on many an occasion to watch a Blu-Ray disc just by popping it in my media center. Of course, you'll need a Blu-Ray drive for it to work, but this method should work on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Check out our full guide on how to get it up and running for more info.
Play Video Games Right From XBMC
One of my favorite XBMC tricks is to turn it into a video game console using the Advanced Launcher plugin. It lets you add emulators and ROMs to the Games section of your XBMC library, so you can play games from nearly any system—no matter how old school. If your media center is on a powerful enough computer, you can even use the Advanced Launcher plug-in to launch more modern video games. Add a USB gamepad to the mix (like an Xbox 360 controller) and you've got yourself a play-anything video game console in addition to all your movies and TV shows. Check out our full guide to playing video games in XBMC for more info.
Sync Your Media Across Your House
Lastly, if you have multiple XBMC boxes in your house, you can use XBMC's built-in MySQL support to sync them all together—so that you can stop a movie in one room, and resume watching it from that same place in another room. It takes a bit of setup, but it sounds scarier than it is. In fact, the newest version of XBMC makes this easier than ever. Check out this full guide from our friends at the How-To Geek to see how to put it together.
These are by far the best add-ons and customizations for XBMC, but there are a lot of others out there. Browse the repositories to see what else you might like; you're sure to find a lot of popular podcasts and web series' in there like This Week in Tech, TED Talks, or The Guild, as well as ways to monitor your favorite torrent programs, play music from your favorite streaming services, and more. For a list of other cool add-ons, check out our rundown of the best add-ons for XBMC.
This guide should get you pretty far, but XBMC is so customizable that it would be impossible to list everything you could do in one guide. Do you have a favorite skin, add-on, or customization that we didn't mention? Be sure to tell us about it in the comments, and we might even add it to the guide. We'll be keeping it up to date as add-ons change and XBMC updates, so if you're ever looking for the latest and greatest info on building an XBMC media center, this guide will always be up-to-date.