Emptying out the Fridge

I hate throwing food away so on Friday night we pretty much emptied out the fridge on to the countertop to see what we could make. DB~ had to do work on Friday night, so we were eating at home, but I didn't have anything specific in mind.

I knew I wanted to make a pork tenderloin, but wasn't sure what to do with. I had some risotto, but didn't have a good vegetable to toss into it for flavoring. But what I did have was some Kit Kat candy bars, some fresh-frozen blueberries from my neighbor's blueberry bush, and a hankering to incorporate some maple syrup somehow.

What I came up with was a blueberry maple syrup sauce to put over top of a roasted pork tenderloin. First I rolled the tenderloin around in a brown sugar-water mix and then quick seared it in a skillet. I placed it into a baking dish and baked it for 45 minutes.

While that was going, DB~ was in charge of the risotto. She pretty much stared a hole through the saucepan as she concentrated intently on the stirring and preparation of the risotto. We chopped a little red onion to put in it and some Italian seasoning like oregano and garlic salt. I then took the Kit Kat and grated them finely to get the chocolate, but stopped when I heard the wafers start to scrape. DB~ mixed that it right at the end and said, "This looks like Count Chocula cereal."

We started to look up California Pizza Kitchen's menu online. Just in case.

Right before the tenderloin was due to come out, I pureed the blueberries and mixed in some maple syrup. It ended up being a little too pancake-on-Sunday tasting for our liking, but it was still good over the tenderloin. The risotto was very good as well, even if it looked a little strange.

We didn't have to pull the ripcord and go to CPK and we (I) got to empty out the fridge ahead of a new trip to Giant Eagle. Good times all around.

Public Record - peeling back the layers of Pittsburgh's history

The Post-Gazette had an article on Wednesday about a multi-media project called Public Record. It's a book, art exhibition, poetry reading, and iPhone application. It's meant to give us a glimpse back to a time when Pittsburgh was very rough around the edges. A time when it was, if not socially acceptable, at least well overlooked to kill an Irish immigrant that stepped out of line. A time when gambling halls were on every block. It was during this time that current-Point State Park was a massive tenement area.

Some point in the near future, DB~ and I will download the Public Record app and go around town listening to all the oral histories and poetic readings. But it got me thinking about Pittsburgh specifically and cities in general.

When we walk around town on the streets, we may as well be floating above the street. What history is buried 6 inches, 2 feet, 10 feet, or 20 feet below our feet? Who walked on the same street 5 days ago, 5 years, 50 years, 200 years ago? All of the buildings downtown, whether they are an abandoned warehouse in the Strip, a row house in the Hill District, or a non-descript building in the Golden Triangle have a story about previous tenants. Perhaps a misdeed like an unsolved murder of a prostitute or a robbery of a Mob boss.

I found myself walking around the edges of the Strip District tonight. Just feeling the city under my feet as the crisp October air propelled me forward. It was one of those nights that the neon from the Greyhound bus garage cut right through the air. There were pockets of activity, a packed house at Seviche, a handful of people in the dirty old man bars along Penn between the Convention Center and the Strip, a few tables occupied at Sushi Kim, a massive high-faluting event at the Heinz History Center. After I got back in my car, I drove over the recently re-opened Stanwix Street and was looking straight into PNC Park, with that clean pale blue neon staring right back at me.

Is our history recording better or worse nowadays than it was in the 19th century? We have video, Internet, digital camera, and the written word to document our history, but our society is a disposable one. When we're done with a building after only 30 years, we just smash it down and build over top of it. Are we tracking ourselves better or worse now? History is because people have poor memories that fade or misconstrue events over time.

Will someone be walking on top of our memories, misdeeds, and miscreants 100 years from now wondering about us?

Siba - an Italian villa in the heart of white bread suburbia

Last Friday, DB~ and I didn't have any specific plans. My friends were doing their own thing, as were DB~'s. Her sister was busy going to the gym....at 6 pm on a Friday, somehow....and her aunt wasn't available.

We wanted to go out, but didn't feel like going "out out" to the big City of Pittsburgh. I suggested Siba in Seven Fields, just outside of Cranberry off of Route 228. It had been a long time since I had been there, but I remembered that the interior decor was gorgeous and the menu was Mediterranean-inspired.

We got out there around 7'ish and the wait was about 45 minutes. No problem...next stop to the bar. I was feeling Republican that night, so I went with a semi-classy 7 and 7 (Seagram's whisky and 7 up) and DB~ went with the semi-classy Stoli and Sprite cocktail. Keep in mind that the top scale of the "classy drink" scale is Embury.

We had our cocktail and people-watched for nearly an hour. Still no buzz on our beeper, so DB~ went to the hostess table. Apparently, they buzzed us 20 minutes ago, but our beeper never went off...even with it laying on the bar in front of me. No matter. All parties were very apologetic and we were no worse for the wear.

Apparently at some point, Siba switched from "Mediterranean-inspired" to Tuscan Villa and Wine Bar. When they first opened in 2004, they had as many Greek influences as they did Italian, but now it is almost all Italian. Which is fine.

Siba gives all tables a small basket of crusty Italian bread, but they do a twist on the standard olive oil and balsamic vinegar mix. This one was an oil with pureed roasted red peppers. It sort of grew on us....we weren't wild about it at first, but it wasn't bad.

For dinner, DB~ selected the Pecan Crusted Mahi Mahi. In the similar vein of her tentativeness with the soft shell crab at Springfield Grille, I knew that something was awry. There were some hesitant explorations and probings with the fork. Of course the first time I asked what was wrong, the answer was "Everything's fine." The second time revealed that she did not think it was done enough in the middle for her liking.

On my end, I went with the applewood Bacon, Spinach, and Chicken flatbread pizza. It came in 9 teasingly-sized pieces, but I was only able to finish 6. This made for a nice start to a lunch later that weekend. The spinach wasn't too creamy and the bacon and chicken had great flavors.

Overall, it felt at times like all of Treesdale came to Siba for dinner that night, but it's not an overwhelmingly stuffy crowd. The restaurant is worth checking out, especially if you are in that zone of the region.

Cartscalators - Where carts go to heaven

Recently, DB~'s brother moved to Cleveland after being transferred for his job. We decided to shoot over on Saturday to spend the day with him and help him get settled in to his sweet downtown loft apartment.

I have very few true regrets in life, but one of them may be not ever having lived in another city. I think it would be exciting to have to learn the ins and outs of a new city -- the good and bad places to eat, the good bars to check out, finding all the fun festivals in town, and getting engrossed in the problems of another city. At this point, I'm pretty set up in my life here and can't pick up and move. So I'm going to live vicariously through DB~'s brother.

When DB~ and I went down to Cleveland in April, we did a tour of some Triple D restaurants featured on the show (Momocho and Melt). Unfortunately, Momocho isn't open for lunch so we took her brother to the newly opened 2nd store of Melt, on the east side of Cleveland by John Carroll University and Case Western University. It was an orgy of tastes crammed in between 2 thick slices of bread. I had the Parmageddon -- 2 pierogies, cheddar, sour kraut; DB~ had the Northcoast -- crab cakes, spinach, cream cheese; DB~'s brother had the Parma Italy -- grilled chicken, marinana sauce, mozzarella. And all of these come with fries and slaw (the slaw isn't that great).

But the most fascinating part of the trip...not the trip to Melt, the tour of the Warehouse District, going to Crate and Barrel and the rest of Legacy Village....was our trip to Target in University Heights. Because it was there that the 3 of us stood transfixed like drooling idiots as we watched The Cartscalators. This was a 2 story Target and if you wanted to take your cart between levels, you had to set it on The Cartscalator. These little teeth-gears caught the cart and allowed it to ride up its on little ramp while you rode next to it.

Mind.

Blown.

We stood there for 10 minutes watching people, taking pictures, posing with our carts, and getting in people's ways. Apparently these are popular all around the rest of the country, but Pittsburgh is not up on this trend.

DB~ and I are crossing our fingers for the first Cartscalator to make it here.

A great draft class (2005) versus a bad one (2004)

Earlier this season, I examined the highly touted 2005 draft class using WAR (Wins Above Replacement) and determined that, yes, the hype was real. This is a very strong class with a combined 134.1 Wins Above Replacement to this point.

The top 5 contributors to this total are Hall of Fame-path-Ryan Zimmerman (26.4), team leader Troy Tulowitzki (17.8), iron gloved Ryan Braun (16.5), Matt Garza (9.9), and Mike Pelfrey (8.0). All of those guys were college players so they had a 2-3 year headstart on the high school outfielders like Jay Bruce (7.8), Justin Upton (7.7), Andrew McCutchen (6.7), and Colby Rasmus (5.8).

Cutch-22, with his 6.7 WAR, currently ranks 10th in this class -- right behind Ricky Romero from the Blue Jays with his 6.8.

By comparison, let's take a look at the draft class one year before this one, the 2004 class. The 2004 class at the time was said to not be deep, plus it was peppered with some high-salary-demand guys like Stephen Drew and Jered Weaver who dropped in the draft.

Nevertheless, the 2004 class has to date only compiled an 85.8 WAR, even with a one year jump on the 2005 class. Furthermore, two players (Justin Verlander with 25.3 and Jered Weaver with 18.8) have compiled nearly 50% of the WAR in this class. To show the weakness of the class, take a look at Neil Walker who had a great season with the stick and a not-so-great one with the glove. His 1.9 WAR this year and his -0.3 WAR in 2009 gives him 1.6 WAR for his career. That puts Walker in 11th place. Keep in mind that Cutch-22 is in 10th with his 6.7 WAR -- in this class he would be 4th!

Something to keep in mind, regarding the relative strengths of a draft class from year to year, as we move into the 2011 draft which is said to have one of the strongest 1st rounds in years.

Iovino's -- I, uh, would go back here

Sometimes when you're dressed up, you want to go out and show everyone how good you look. On Thursday, I gave a presentation at a conference so a rarity occured...I was wearing a full suit. My suit was so fine, I made Sinatra look line a hobo.

DB~ called me up and said "Let's go out for dinner tonight." We agreed to meet in Mt. Lebanon at a restaurant that DB~ had been to before, but I had not, Iovino's on Beverly Road.

When I go out to restaurants, I try to get a dish that I either can't make myself or have never had before. I was debating between two dishes, one was a fairly straight-forward lamb ragu over papardelle (a style of noodle that I'm into recently -- a stronger noodle meant for heavier sauces) and the other was a bronzini dish with fried polenta.

I like to think that I'm well-versed in the ways of food and cuisine, but this trip to Iovino's made me realize how much more I have to learn and taste. I ordered the bronzini thinking it was a type of sauce served over the fried polenta, wilted arugula, tomato vodka sauce, and kalamata olive/red pepper relish. And then my dish came out to the table.

My dish is the darkened picture shown above. I was semi-stunned to see these criss-crossed, fish-smelling pieces resting on the bed of polenta triangelse and arugula. I poked it, prodded it, and cut a small biopsy piece for a taste. It tasted very similar to swordfish. DB~ pulled out the ever-present iPhone and Googled "bronzini". It turns out that bronzini is a Mediterranean seabass. It's a long, narrow silvery fish. I have never seen this at Wholey's or any other large fish market, so Iovino's may have had to special order the bronzini.

The bronzini itself was great, but the polenta was out of this world. It had a wide variety of spices and was tastefully crispy on the outside, but soft inside. I could have had a whole meal of just the polenta.

DB~'s meal was an Indian-flavored salmon with a red curry and coconut sauce surrounding it, served on a bed of basmati rice. Here's a picture of it:

The takeaway from this post should be how great and underrated of an area Mt. Lebanon is for eating. I've done posts on Kous Kous Cafe, Bistro 19, and now Iovino's. DB~ and I also went to Il Pizziaolo on Washington Road. It's worth crossing a river or two to check out any of these great restaurants in Mt. Lebo.

The 2010 MLB season by WAR

Earlier this year, I looked at how predicitive/descriptive WAR (Wins Above Replacement) did as a metric for an entire team, as it related to their win/loss records. During that post, I found that 14 of the 30 teams were within +/- of 4 wins of their final total. That's a margin of error of around 2.5% over 162 games.

I thought I would do the same exercise for this recently completed season.

On fangraphs.com you can find WAR by a whole team for both batting and pitching. So I went through and added each team's batting WAR to its pitching WAR and then added in the baseline 48 wins to find what WAR predicted each team to finish. Listed below are the results, with each team's actual wins listed first and their WAR win total calculated (baseline + bat + pitch, in that order). The number in parentheses after the WAR total is the difference between the two.

TB 96 (48 + 27.3 bat + 16.3 pitch) = 91.6 (+4.4 wins)
NYY 95 (48 + 35.5 + 12.1) = 95.6 (-0.6 wins)
BOS 89 (48+ 29.2 + 19.3) = 96.5 (-7.5 wins)
TOR 85 (48 + 25.3 + 16.8) = 90.1 (-5.1 wins)
BAL 66 (48 + 10.8 + 8.9) = 67.7 (-1.7 wins)

MIN 94 (48+ 31.4 + 18.5) = 97.9 (-3.9 wins)
CHW 88 (48+ 18.8 + 24.5) = 91.3 (-3.3 wins)
DET 81 (48+ 25.5 + 16.4) = 89.9 (-8.9 wins)
CLE 69 (48+ 10.3+ 9.0) = 67.3 (+1.7 wins)
KC 67 (48+ 14.5+ 11.5) = 74.0 (-7 wins)

TEX 90 (48+ 25.1 + 18.0) = 91.1 (-1.1 wins)
OAK 81 (48+ 22.0 + 13.8) = 83.8 (-2.8 wins)
LAA 80 (48+ 13.0+ 16.3) = 77.3 (+2.7 wins)
SEA 61 (48+ 5.3 + 13.9) = 67.2 (-6.2 wins)

PHI 97 (48+ 23.0 + 19.4) = 90.4 (+6.6 wins)
ATL 91 (48+ 22.2 + 20.9) = 91.1 (-0.1 wins)
FLA 80 (48 + 18.2 + 17.1) = 83.3 (-3.3 wins)
NYM 79 (48+ 15.8 + 14.5) = 78.3 (+0.7 wins)
WAS 69 (48+ 17.2 + 13.6) = 78.8 (-9.8 wins)

CIN 91 (48 + 32.9 + 16.4) = 97.3 (-6.3 wins)
STL 86 (48 + 22.2 + 16.3) = 86.5 (-0.5 wins)
MIL 77 (48 + 29.6 + 10.9) = 88.5 (-11.5 wins)
HOU 76 (48 + 8.3 + 16.5) = 72.8 (+3.2 wins)
CHC 75 (48 + 14.8 + 17.4) = 80.2 (-5.2 wins)
PIT 57 (48 + 3.4 + 6.7) = 58.1 (-1.1 wins)

SF 92 (48+ 25.6 + 21.6) = 95.2 (-3.2 wins)
SD 90 (48 + 24.4 + 15.6) = 88.0 (+2.o wins)
COL 83 (48 + 20.0 + 24.1 ) = 92.1 (-9.1 wins)
LAD 80 (48 + 13.3 + 18.0) = 79.3 (+0.7 wins)
ARI 65 (48 + 24.7 + 7.8) = 80.5 (-15.5 wins)

Whew...number crunchy!
This year, WAR got 18 of 30 teams within +/-4 wins of their actual totals, which I consider to be impressive.

The 3 teams that WAR was off by the most (ARI, MIL, WAS) were all slanted more towards the batting in their components. I have always had more faith in WAR from a batting standpoint than a pitching standpoint, so I wonder if there is something lodged inside of these stats to uncover.

WAR is not perfect, by any means, but it is the best available metric that we have at this time.