News You Can Bruise for 2006 July 26

Argh. Remind me not to start promotional tutorials until I've written all the code. I had to totally redo yesterday's entry to get a good architecture for doing big graphs and sparklines. Plus because of it, I found an erattum in the Cookbook code (in the MIDI music recipe). So I have the weird feeling where you've been busy all day but haven't accomplished anything new: you've just cleaned up your old mistakes.

On the plus side, the code is much nicer now, and it turns out errata get fixed in the next printing of the book, not the next edition as I'd always thought for some reason.

Also, you know those allergen disclaimers on food that say "may contain traces of nuts"? Today I believe I succeeded in isolating the nuts! First, a recipe:

Natur-Swiit Oatmeal

• 1 cup soy milk
• 1/2 cup non-soy milk (I've been bumping up the soy milk percentage but 100% soy milk still tastes gross in this)
• 1 handful dried fruit
• pinch salt
• 3/4 cup oats

Instructions: Boil the fruit in the milks and the salt. Add oats and cook for 5 minutes on low heat.

Okay, it's just the instructions from the back of the oatmeal canister, except for the fruit. But the fruit is magic. When you boil the fruit in the milk, it swells up and sweetens the oatmeal, so you don't have to add brown sugar to the oatmeal. Adding fresh fruit afterwards never makes it sweet enough for me.

I eat this for breakfast about half the time. Usually I make it with cut up dried apricots, but today I went with all different types of fruit. I dumped them in the saucepan, turned on the heat, and then went away to work on the promotional tutorial and forgot about the boiling milk. Then I remembered and ran back into the kitchen, where the milk proteins had formed huge bubbles in the pan. And suspended in the bubbles were... tiny pieces of walnut skin!

I'm pretty sure that's what they were; they could have been pieces of fruit skin but they sure looked and felt like walnut. I'm pretty sure I've seen the fabled "traces of nuts" and my life is now complete.