Shepherd's Pie Recipe

Long time no see blog world. I've been really busy for the past...6 months...but I thought I'd share a nice little recipe I cooked earlier today.

Easy Shepherd's Pie

3 large potatoes

2 large carrots

1 large white onion

8 ounces frozen peas

12 ounces (3 large handfuls) shredded cheddar cheese

1 pound ground beef

1 cup beef stock

1 tablespoon butter

some olive oil

a few garlic cloves

salt and pepper

1) Start boiling water in a large pot. While you wait for the water to boil, peel and cube the potatoes and set them aside. Clean and peel the carrots, then chop them up. You'll mash the carrots later, so make sure the carrots aren't cut too thick.

2) Place the potatoes in the boiling (salted) water for about 15 minutes. In the meantime, cut up your onion into small cubes. Take a small bit (about a tablespoon) of the cubed onion and chop it very finely, you will add this to the potatoes later. Mince the garlic and place aside with the finely chopped onion and butter.

3) Get a skillet, put a light amount of olive oil in, and set on high. While that's heating, fetch the potatoes. Don't pour out your hot water, because you're going to boil your carrots for 15 minutes now. While your oil is heating and carrots are boiling, place potatoes in a separate bowl, and add the butter, fine onion, and minced garlic. Mash it all up, then add 4 ounces (a handful) of cheese, mix again, and set aside. There is no reason to add milk to the potatoes.

4) Once the oil is hot, add onion and saute until clear (~7 minutes on medium high/high). Start preheating your oven to 375 degrees. Once onions are clear and soft, add the ground beef and cook until brown.

5) Around this time, your carrots should be done. Drain the carrots and lightly mash them. Add the carrots to the onion-beef mix along with your cup of beef stock. Get the stock to boil, then simmer for 5 minutes or so. This is a great time to wash a few of your pans if you don't want to do it later.

6) After simmering, add the frozen peas for about a minute. They cook very quickly.

7) Now you have a beef-carrot-pea-onion mixture. Transfer it into a large casserole dish. Add another 4 ounces of cheese (a large handful) to the top of the mix. Ladle the mashed potatoes on top of the casserole. It's a bit tough to do but you have a ton of potatoes to work with.

8) Once your potatoes are on top, take the handle of a spoon or fork and cut slits into the top of the potatoes so steam can escape. If you don't do this, your pie will explode during baking.

9) Your oven should be preheated now. Place the casserole in the oven for 20-25 minutes, checking to see that its a bit golden on top. Take it out, add the remaining cheese to the top, and return to the oven for another 5 minutes or so.

10) Take your pie out. It should be slightly golden-brown on top with melted cheese. Eat.

FSOT results, break it down

The results are in, sort of. As I commented in a brief (but exciting) post, I did in fact pass the Foreign Service last month. Hooray indeed. On the other hand, I'm glad I'm not holding my breath on getting a coveted FSO job anytime soon; you'll see why in a second. Even though I passed, it certainly wasn't with a tremendous score. The cutoffs for passing the exam are a cumulative 154 points on the multiple choice and a 6 on the essay. The following are my scores:

Job Knowledge: 51.98

Biographical: 47.85

English Grammar: 55.76

Total: 155.59

Essay: 8

I'm very happy with my score (I passed didn't I?) but I won't quit my day job anytime soon! Regardless, I will continue with the application process and if that doesn't work out, I still have other options (including a potential internship at the Department of State).

Congrats to the fellow testers who passed and all the luck to those who will take the exam next cycle. On to the QEP!

Pragmatic Chicken Curry

I love Indian food. It is one of my favorite things to eat but I don't eat it nearly enough unfortunately. The other day I stopped by a friend's house for a few minutes to see how things were going, and she has prepared an incredible curry dish for herself and her Indian boyfriend. (You know that food's good when natives are singing its praises!) After smelling and seeing this amazing food and not having eaten any (I ate right before), I decided I would try my hand at making curry. Now, I've never made Indian food before so this was all new to me.

This morning I thought I would bike down to Food City (oh yeah, you know what I'm talking about!) Food City is the best grocery store in Phoenix, nothing gets me going quite like shopping to Mariachi music with oddly-shaped fruits and vegetables all around. It's not the best food, but it is value.

Value, es mucho value,

Value, Food City es, es, es, es!

If that isn't enough for you, look at these awesome food specials. Yum! Saboroso!

Yep, this is where I sometimes go shopping. Here are some other reasons I love Food City (aside from being really inexpensive):

1) The music in those videos is pretty much what you hear inside the store. How can you not be happy listening to that music?

2) Off-brand Mexican goods. If you like chiles picantes or real tamales, shop at a Mexican market.

3) The selection is great. Where else can you get cactus or feel like you are in a carneceria mexicana?

Enough about Food City though. Let's talk about my curry. It was easy to make (I used a crockpot) and very flavorful. Here's my not-so-secret recipe:

2 lbs chicken breast

1 medium white onion

4 cloves garlic

3 carrot sticks

1 red bell pepper

8 oz frozen peas

1 can coconut milk

1 tablespoon curry powder

1 teaspoon ginger

dash of salt & pepper

1) Cube chicken and stick in crock pot.

2) Quarter onion, mince garlic, peel and cut up carrot,

cut thick strips of red pepper and add it to the pot.

3) Add spices to coconut milk and mix thoroughly and add to pot

4) Add half a can of water to the mezcla

5) Add your dash of salt and pepper

6) Cook on low heat for 5-6 hours (or high for 3-4 hours)

while stirring occasionally

7) Add peas, stir, and wait another 30 minutes

8) Check to see chicken is cooked through

9) If it is all healthy and fully-cooked, eat!

All in all, spectacular. I had a few friends join me for dinner and it was a hit.

I know you wish you were here. And to make it that much better, my house smells like an Indian restaurant!

FSOT results, Part 1

I passed!

"Dear THE PRAGMATIC ECONOMIST,

Congratulations! The scores you achieved on your Foreign Service Officer Test (FSOT) qualify you for the next step of the Foreign Service Officer selection process, which is your prompt submission of a personal narrative for review by the Qualifications Evaluation Panel (QEP). As you know, the Foreign Service selection process is a series of evaluations that can lead to an offer of employment as an entry-level Foreign Service Officer. Now that you have received a passing score on the FSOT, you must submit responses to five short-essay questions, which are known as the Personal Narrative (PN) questions. You must complete your PN essay responses and submit them before 11:59 PM CST on 11/17/2009. Failure to submit your essay responses by that time will terminate your candidacy.

[...]

Congratulations again. We look forward to receiving your personal narrative submission.

Sincerely,

The Board of Examiners"

I'll post later what my score breakdown is when I get it. Hence, "FSOT results, Part 1". On that note, it's time to celebrate! Here's a link to my blog discussing the FSOT.

(edit: here's a link to my FSOT score breakdown)

Google Voice, Part 3

I've had Google Voice for a month or so now, and it is slowly becoming a staple of my everyday telephony. I do have one big concern regarding the service however which makes adopting GV full-time, well, difficult.

Let's talk privacy. I'm willing to give up a some amount of privacy in exchange for Google products. Information is power and money, and Google makes a lot of money off our information. And they should. Google supplies practically everyone who wants it with absolutely incredible products (the search engine, Gmail, GV, Blogger, Scholar, etc.) and instead of trading them cash for services, I swap information. For example, (in case you haven't noticed,) Google scans your Gmail account to tailor its ads toward your interests (or whatever you talk about in your emails). For example: say you're always emailing people about your kid's little league accomplishments. Well, Google will surely pick up on that and changes your ads so they relates to baseball. "Baseball bats $20 @ www.(whateverstoreGooglechooses).com", etc. You are more likely to click those ads, which by collapsing the entire transaction, makes Google money.I really don't mind those ads or this process, and I am generally able to ignore the fact Google is a benevolent Big Brother.

However, what really bothers me is that my privacy on Google Voice. GV text messages are saved online. I don't like that. It's not that I say anything that bad over text, but I certainly don't want anything sitting around my Google account that was produced by telephone. People don't self-censor over text like they do email. What's more, what other people text you becomes part of the record, and that's fairly creepy.

Google also has a "voice recording" feature with which you can record telephone conversations online with the push of a button (number "4" I believe). I haven't used it, but I certainly hope when you push the record button, a little Google voice comes on the phone to enlighten unwitting parties on the status of their (otherwise private) conversations. As you might gather, the Pragmatic Economist doesn't approve of this information-without-consent free-for-all. This is supremely ironic given I have completed extensive study the effects of information asymmetry... Ha.

Here's what Google should do: your text messages and voicemails (which are also recorded, transcribed, sent to your email, and archived) should have more of an opt-in policy, rather than opt-out or no policy at all. Opt-out already exists for voicemail, but I haven't figured the same for SMS. As for the voice recording nonsense: I haven't used it, but if there is no informed consent from the affected party, I am most likely against it.

Yikes. Google, you amaze me for better or for worse. I do have to say overall I'm happy with the product, but I need to be a bit more comfortable with my privacy before "making the switch". I received some Google Voice invites, so I'm hoping to see how my friends like it (given that I talk about it a lot) and whether they agree with these points. I'll keep you posted.

Personal Statements

On the topic of personal statements for law school admissions:

Can you really have "im-personal" statements? We should rename them to something inspirational like "Documents of Miscellanea".

On a more serious note though, I'm currently writing my personal statements (which need to be finished by the 30th of October) and am stuck. I wrote the first one: well-written, but it's modest and sounds a bit disgruntled (not my intention). The second one is a "diversity" statement that I qualify for. Imagine that, me being diverse. That sounds so offensive. That's kind of like hearing the following (hypothetical) conversation:

Person A: Let's grab some Filiberto's or something Mexican.

Person B: OK, sounds good. I love ethnic food.

I don't want to discount diversity in law school, in fact, I openly encourage it. However, the diversity statement prompt makes it sound like just because you can be placed in a minority group, you have certainly faced some unbelievable adversity in life. And on top of that, you triumphed and emerged victorious. Why must people assume I can't leave my house without facing some daily trial or tribulation? Come on, I put my pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of you.

If you've read up to this point, you undoubtedly see the problem I face with my personal statements. I sometimes come off as hostile through the written-word. Oops, I need to work on that.

In other news, tomorrow I have a second exam in my favorite freshman level class: anthropology! Tarsiers and plesiodapomorphs and bilophodonts! Oh my! I did some studying, and intend to study more tonight.

Also, my french onion soup was fairly awesome (read my previous post). But here's what really made it special: I went to the grocery store to buy onions for the soup, and decided I wanted to buy a bottle or two of sparkling mineral water. So I go to the area where they have sparkling water, I grab two bottles (2 for $3) labeled as "mineral water", and leave. It turns out they weren't sparkling (despite being in the sparkling water section) at all, so now I have two bottles of very expensive water. I am slightly bitter because I paid $3 for water that would have cost me $0.03 in my Brita filter. Oh well. Ha!

Pragmatic French Onion Soup

Yesterday, I finally got a crock pot. I'm not sure why I hadn't done so before, but to be completely honest, it's awesome. Being ever pragmatic and efficient, the Pragmatic Economist is not one to cook at length. That, and frankly, I'm not a great cook. I can pull together some wicked vodka pasta or tamale pie, but under normal circumstances my culinary expertise is as extensive as the kindergärtner who makes Play-Doh donuts.

I think I may be selling myself short a bit, I can boil water and turn on the oven, so it's not that I'm totally defenseless in the kitchen. For some odd reason, I've been craving French Onion Soup lately. I finally got the ingredients, and decided to cook (or crock pot rather). I went to the Crepes of Wrath cooking blog and found a nice little recipe. My friend Sydney runs the blog and had a recipe handy (which you can find here). Being lazy, I didn't follow it to the letter, but it worked. So without further adieu:

L'ognion français à l'économiste

(that title took way too long to type)

3 yellow onions

8 cups beef broth

a handful of sliced mushrooms

.5 pound broccoli

.5 pound carrot

dash of salt

1 tablespoon of butter

baguette

mozzarella cheese

1.) Slice onions, saute them in butter until carmelized

2.) Add onions to crock pot, set on high for 30 minutes until onions are hot

3.) Add mushrooms, broccoli, and carrots to crock pot. Keep on high for 1 hour

4.) Add beef broth, set to low heat

5.) Wait a few hours

6.) Taste, add salt if needed

7.) Put French Onion concoction in bowl

8.) Slice baguette, places pieces on top of soup

9.) Top with cheese, put in microwave until melted

10.) Eat

And there you have it, French onion soup. Cheap and easy, just like your local Mill Avenue floozy.