Another recipe

This is a fairly typical Thai salad. IMO just about any Thai meal should include a salad (yam)or a larp.

Yam Som Oo

Pulp from a large pomelo (could use grapefruit I guess but would be wetter/softer)
3 tbsp shredded, roasted coconut
2 cloves garlic sliced and deep fried (or use the pre cooked ones or just chop the stuff)
3 red shallots sliced and deep fried or not - see above
1 tbsp coarsely ground roasted peanuts
2-5 fresh red or green Thai chillies finely sliced
4-6 mint leaves torn (or substitute any kind of basil)
2 tbsp cilantro leaves
100g cooked shelled shrimp (optional)
50g steamed and julienned pork (optional)

Dressing:
1 tbsp fish sauce
2 tsp palm sugar
1 tsp lime juice
1 tbsp chilli jam (sold in Asian markets as 'Roasted Chilli Paste')
2 tbsp coconut cream

Mix the dressing making sure it tastes salty and sweet and not too sour.

Toss everything together and serve on a large platter with other dishes and rice.

I used store bought deep fried garlic and shallot and didn't include the shrimp or prawns and it was still very good.

X-posted to gastrogasm

Soundtrack Sheepery

From all over:
If your life was a movie, what would the soundtrack be?
So, here's how it works:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool...


( Here we go )

Quantum mechanics is really hard

I'm not kidding! I'm rusty of course but I've studied most of the mathematical prerequisites for QM. As well as the core stuff like vector spaces, Lagrangians and Fourier transforms, I took whole courses in functional analysis and probability theory. And still I find this stuff is so weird that my brain explodes every couple of paragraphs. It's less the mathematical formalism, it's the underlying weirdness (In contrast with General Relativity where the ideas make sense but I don't have enough algebraic topology or differential geometry to fully follow the formal argument). I completely understand why people who work with this stuff every day just fall back on the formalism and refuse to get involved with 'meaning'. Trouble is, I'm an inveterate ontologist. I had the same sort of problems with the 'classical' (Fisherian) approach to probability though that's a lot easier to resolve.