Nick Tahou's Garbage Plate Recipe

Just came across the amazing Nick Tahou's Garbage Plate Recipe from Rochester, NY. Besides brewing up some Amber style beer this weekend I may try to get a Whole Foods version of this going.

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Nick Tahou's Garbage Plate

Special Sauce Ingredients:
1 - medium onion, chopped
1 - clove garlic, minced
1 - tbsp. oil
1 - lb. triple-ground beef
1 - cup H2O
1 - can tomato paste
1/2 - tbsp. brown sugar (optional)
1 - tsp. ground black pepper
3/4 - tsp. cayenne pepper
1 - tsp. chili powder
1 1/2 - tsp. paprika
1/2 - tsp. ground cumin
1/2 - tsp. allspice
1/4 - tsp. cinnamon
1/2 - tsp. powdered cloves
1 - tsp. salt (to taste)

Plate Ingredients: (Cheeseburger Version)
8 - frozen beef patties
8 - slices of white american cheese
4 - cups cold beans
4 - cups macaroni salad
1 - medium onion, diced
4 - cups hash browns, cubed
2 - loaves of fresh Italian bread
40 - generic butter pats
1 - case Genesee beer
Step 1 - Preparing the Special Sauce:

In large skillet, fry chopped onion and garlic in oil until soft. Add meat, stirring constantly with fork to keep its texture fine. Once the meat browns, add water and tomato paste. Simmer 10 minutes. Add sugar and spices. Simmer 30 minutes, adding water ,if necessary, to keep it moist but not soupy. Alternatively, you may use the griddle scrapings from Step 2 for the Secret Sauce (the authentic method).
Step 2 - Preparing the Plate:

First of all, you can substitute any of Nick's other main items in place of the cheeseburger. These items are hamburger, beef hot dogs (red hots, not white hots - that's Don 'n Bob's), steak, egg, veggies, and fish (plain old whitefish, I believe). And now onto the Plate.

Take beef patties straight out of freezer and lightly sear on super hot griddle. Do the same with hash brown cubes. Melt one slice of cheese on each beef pattie. Place 1 cup of beans, 1 cup of macaroni salad, and 1 cup of hash browns on a restaurant style paper plate. Place 2 beef patties on top of the heap, in the center. Spread mustard and diced onions over the beef patties. With a ladle, cover the center of the heap with Special Sauce. Garnish with bread an butter. Drink as much Genny beer as you can. Serves 4.

NYGeog Open Cycle Map

Check out the new slippery map in NY Geog to Open Cycle Map - part of Open Street Map network.

Join the group and edit and digitize your favorite bike paths.

Google Transit

Just used Google's Transit directions (maps.google.com/nyc) search. Have no idea how long its been around and have been busying using hopstop. Check it out:

added: Looks like the NY Times has a piece on Google Transit.

Google's Transit coverage

• Bay Area, CA AC Transit, BART, Caltrain, Muni, VTA
• Burbank, CA Burbank Bus
• Davis, CA Unitrans
• Humboldt County, CA Arcata, Eureka, and Redwood Transit
• Irvine, CA Irvine Shuttle
• Southern California, CA Metrolink Trains
• Modoc County, CA Sage Stage
• Orange County, CA OCTA
• Rio Vista, CA Rio Vista Delta Breeze
• Sacramento, CA Regional Transit, Roseville Transit
• San Bernardino County, CA OMNITRANS
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• Białystok Białostocka Komunikacja Miejska
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Switzerland

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United Kingdom

• Southeast UK Traveline Southeast

Great Lakes water saved, should cyclists be on the road, & Open Layers Architect generates maps for you!

Argh, sick of being Jets and Yankees fan.
Good news, legislators are close to preserving the Great Lakes' water being shipped away. The NY Times reports.

Treehugger presents this article based on an Op-Ed on why cyclists should stay out of the road. Not sure I agree but to each his own.

And caught this off the Planet Geospatial RSS, from viswaug: about Open Layers Architect. Tried it out for a minute and looks like we are one step closer to slackers like me building better online maps. Will definetely look into it some more.

No Impact Man: nearly gets hit by NY state senator & pic's from my Governor's Island trip this weekend

Colin Beavan (aka No Impact Man) has been having his share of challenges biking on the road, here and here. He recently had a verbal altercation when he was nearly hit by a mercedes driven by NY State Senator Jeff Klein. As a member of the group Transportation Alternatives, he has asked State Senator Klein to have a meeting "to discuss transportation policy as it relates to bicycle safety, carbon emissions, the cultivation of New York City quality of life, breathable air, and traffic congestion.. " (noimpactman.com)

All summer I've been going to Governor's Island to bike or go to concerts. I went again this past Saturday and did some free miniature golf (get what you pay for), free kayaking, and of course biking.

Here's a shot from near the art show gallery near the North end of the Island

There's a few great art peices outside that all deal with rats. I liked this one a lot.

And at the concert stage there was a 1920's festival going on. Here people are learning the Lindy-hop on the temporary dance floor.

Things are crazy here in downtown NYC so here's a ppt on the straw that broke the camel's back: the Subprime Primer Slideshow -

CDO Powerpoint SubPrime Primer - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: CDO Powerpoint SubPrime Primer

Introduction to Neogeography, Car-Free Prospect Park, top 25 GIS blogs

9/11 Museum Design 

Recently finished reading Andrew Turner's online .pdf "Introduction to Neogeography" from O'Reilly.   He presents a great overview of what defines as neogeography or what some call map hacking.  There are a lot of great tools and tips and tricks.  I haven't tried any of the exercises yet but would love to once I get some free time.  

Check out this article on a Car-Free Prospect Park

Here's a look at the top 25 GIS blogs.

TA Century Bike Tour, stairCASE, and revitalizing Buffalo

On Sunday I rode the 55 mile route for Transportation Alternatives (TA) Century Bike Tour. After torrential downpours on Saturday, the weather was spectacular on Sunday.  The ride consists of riding with traffic and on some dedicated bike paths.  TA handed out some crib sheets that consisted of the turn by turn directions of the trip.  I'm going to suggest that next year they use maps! 

Treehugger posts a new design that I think is really cool: the stairCASE.  This bookshelf can utilize often wasted higher up space by incorporating stairs into the design.  

And the city of my grad school alma mater is becoming a haven of artists and creative types (and the Buffalo Bills - my second fav. team in the AFC East).  New York Magazine did a long peice on the revitalization of Buffalo based on low rents and a chance to redevelop some great architecture.  

Firefox: Ubiquity & NY Times 'Resentment Strategy'

With all the non-sense and Resentment Strategy (NYTimes OP-ED) of politics and conventions going on as of late - its nice to see improvements in the web and the tools that folks painstakingly work on only to release freely into the webosphere. The web is the ultimate democracy in ways like this.

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

LESEC, Iberdrola to invest in NY wind farms, FREE lumber scraps in Brooklyn, Hurricane Gustav's Energy Impact Map, and a new Mitch Hedburg comedy cd

The Lower East Side Ecology Center (LESEC) is hosting its 10th annual fundraising event. No Impact Man will be speaking.

The NY Times reports that Iberdrola got the go-ahead to purchase Energy East and spend $2 billion in developing future wind farms in upstate New York.

From Green Brooklyn, M. Fine Lumber is looking to get rid of some free lumber scraps.
GBK reader Joe P. writes:
My name is Joe and I work at M. Fine Lumber Co. in Brooklyn. I just wanted to inform you that we have free lumber scraps if anyone is interested its all from torn down NYC buildings. We are in the process of downsizing and really don’t want to trash it or chip it up. That wouldn’t be the green thing to do. The company has been around for 75 years and has salvaged more then 1,000,000 board feet off lumber. Maybe you can help us out. Call me M-F 7-5 at 718-381-5200.

See a web-mapping application of Hurricane Gustav's Energy Impact.

And there's a new Mitch Hedburg CD coming out (NY Times).

Google Chrome - Google's new internet browser & Records and record players

Google released a cartoon strip explaining the release of Chrome, its new internet browser application. Read the official Google blog post here. I just downloaded my latest version of Firefox 3.0.1. and am quite happy with it on my windows machine. Recently, I've had trouble with my mac version and am only running safari on it right now. Undoubtedly, I will be testing Google Chrome when it is released later today.

Will there be any improved service for Google Gears and Google Maps???

Hope everyone had a good Labor Day weekend. The NY times printed an article in the styles section (why not Arts & Leisure?) about the upsurging trend of vinyl sales. It was a great article to read since I did some dumpster diving last week and found a Califone record player (not to be confused with Califone the band). It appears to work fine and only needs a new needle and maybe a record pad. It has a self-contained speaker and has variable speeds. Online these appear to be priced at $120. So this may have been quite a good find.