Officially, today is my first day at my new job. I started work in UBS A.G. – Investment Bank in the IT Equities department. We spent most of the day, today, listening to various presentations and speeches. I am saying officially, because I started last Monday as I had to go trough a pre-week financial and accounting training. I now live in Stamford, CT and my new place is not bad, it only lacks an AC, but not for long.
Because I work in a bank now, I will have to be careful what I write here and I have to put some disclaimers here and there that all you read here is my personal opinion and does not reflect that of my employer… the general stuff. However that will happen some other day because it is late now and I have to get up at 7am tomorrow.

There is one problem when frying tomatoes. Usually they are cooked in a pan and after the are done, everything around it is covered in tomatoes. And because the idea is for the water to evaporate it is not convenient to cover the pan. That’s why I decided to make myself an enhanced version of my pan which resulted in clean kitchen. All I needed was a piece of thick aluminum foil (the thicker the better so that the tomatoes don’t dissolve it) long enough to go around the pan. Just take the foil and build a high wall around the pan. It should look something like that::


It works wonders.

This is the recipe btw:
2 big cans of petite diced tomatoes (or shredded tomatoes, or tomato juice)
5-6 eggs
3 cloves of garlic
2 tbsp oil

Add the oil in the pan and before it gets too hot just add the tomatoes so that you don’t get an eruption of burning oil and water later. If the tomatoes are in big chunks use the hand blender, but keep some chunks of tomatoes for texture. Cook the tomatoes until all the water is gone and they are well cooked. After that just add the eggs, stir well to incorporate the eggs and cook them. That’s it. Remove from the heat and add the mashed garlic. If the tomatoes are too sour, just add a little bit of sugar (1/2 tsp). At first the garlic will be strong, but the high temperature of the tomatoes will reduce the strength.

Both Dary and I love to skate, but the skates we have in Bulgaria are quite old and beaten up, at least mine are, so we decided to get ourselves new ones. Hers are Rollerblade Spiritblade III – 2008 (left on the picture), mine are K2 Moto – 2007 (right on the picture). I gave mine quite a run the other day in the park. Also I did try them here on the street. Dary only tried hers here, but not as much as I did.

Nothing fancy, just a few prompts and use of Net::SMTP::SSL and Authen::SASL

1. #!/usr/bin/perl -w
2. # Send email from Gmail
3. # Will not work on windows, because of the echo
4. # for the password. Just uncomment the two
5. # system lines and should be fine.
6. # Will wait for EOF (Ctrl+D) for the msg body.
7. # by GT
8.  
9. use Net::SMTP::SSL;
10.  
11. my $smtp;
12. my $username = 'youremail@gmail.com';
13. my $password;
14. my @lines;
15. my $msg = "";
16. my $to;
17. my $subject;
18.  
19. $smtp = Net::SMTP::SSL->new('smtp.gmail.com', Port => 465, Debug=>1) || die "Cannot connect to server" ;
20.  
21. system('stty -echo');
22. print "Enter password:";
23. $password = <STDIN>;
24. chomp $password;
25. system('stty echo');
26.  
27. $smtp->auth($username, $password) || die "Authentication failed";
28.  
29. print "\nTo:";
30. $to = <STDIN>;
31. chomp $to;
32. print "Enter subject:";
33. $subject = <STDIN>;
34. chomp $subject;
35. print "Enter message:\n";
36. @lines = <>;
37. foreach $line (@lines){
38. $msg = $msg.$line;
39. }
40.  
41. $smtp->mail($username."\n");
42. $smtp->to($to."\n");
43. $smtp->data();
44. $smtp->datasend("From: ". $username."\n");
45. $smtp->datasend("To: ".$to."\n");
46. $smtp->datasend("Subject: ".$subject."\n");
47. $smtp->datasend("\n");
48. $smtp->datasend($msg."\n");
49. $smtp->dataend();
50. $smtp->quit;
51.  
52. Свалете този код/download this code: gmailsmtp.pl

• The easiest way to cook it is in a rice cooker, because it can monitor the temperature when the water is absorbed.
• Water needed for cooling long white rice: 1cup rice in 1.5cup water; 2c. rice in 2.75c. water, 3c. rice in 3.5c. water.
• Brown rice needs a little bit more water for cooking; short rice needs less
• Short rice releases more starch and becomes more sticky
• Long rice almost does not release starch and is more fluffy
• White rice cooks faster than brown rice

P.S. Saffron is the most expensive spice on earth (about $1000 per lb.)