Things at home continue to be pretty good, and
rightkindofme and I are still getting along fabulously. That whole "communicating" thing, while never without effort, is still working very well.Work is busy, but they have me doing fairly interesting things, and I'll get to use the word "architect" on my resume and mean it, which is a little odd to me. Yay! And stress! And yay!
For the geeks in the audience: if you've worked with GTK+, and its underpinnings GLib and GObject, you've probably said, "this is a lot of trouble if what you really want is a dynamic language," or perhaps, "this is great except the C syntax is really ugly." It would seem pretty obvious to have some dynamic language that uses that as a back end, rather like the various PyGTK+, etc bindings. As it turns out, better yet, there's a language called Vala that translates C#-like syntax into GObject-based C (it's also very Javalike). It's a straight-up translator that outputs C on the back end, including making GObject headers and source so that you can just link it into your existing C project. So now you can get the conceptual advantages of GObject without having to type out all that boilerplate GObject code.
Cut up your kabocha (aka green pumpkin, aka Japanese pumpkin) into slices, like sectioning an orange, and then cut each section into two across the middle. Arrange the slices onto a baking sheet, skin-side-up. Bake at about 300 degrees for about an hour, until the juice is beginning to seep out and the tips of the pumpkin slices are just a bit burnt. Remove from the oven and cut the peel off each slice before cutting into rough cubes.
You can use some of them this way (we put them on risotto), or pan-fry them, which is even better. They're quite sweet, with a flavor and texture about halfway between spaghetti squash and a regular pumpkin.
To pan fry, add 3-4 Tbsp of butter to your frying pan per quarter-pumpkin. Melt the butter, add the pumpkin cubes, and fry at medium temperature for about 8-10 minutes. The pumpkin should still be moist, and should get squooshier as you cook it. Sprinkle about 3 Tbsp brown sugar over the top, let cook for about another minute, then flip them over to cook it into the other side for another minute. Remove and serve.
We had these with melted butter and pasta, but they'd also be good with the right salad (use very little other dressing, nothing heavy) or meat (something mild like lightly-seasoned pork or chicken). They're a little like candied yams, though not quite as heavy and cloying. They've got a nice buttery flavor, while retaining just a bit of crispness.
