FromeDome

The Antlers‘ Peter Silberman — Feb. 5, 2010 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House

I discovered these guys completely by accident last year when they opened for another group at a show in Brooklyn, and they quickly became one of my favorites.

“Hospice,” their latest album, is great from start to finish, if a bit on the sad side. (Just $7.99 right now on Amazon MP3.)

And they put on an awesome live show. Check out live audio and video of The Antlers from NPR.

Reminder: Purchases made through these Amazon links help support this site.

Inspired by my friends Ludwig and Emma in Stockholm, my latest pet project is a Crystal Red Shrimp tank.

Right now I have six of them in a 10-gallon aquarium, holding steady at about 75 degrees. So far, they mostly swim around, chew on plant pieces and shrimp food, and hide in the roots of one of their plants. In theory, someday, they may breed. (At $10 a pop, let’s hope so!)

Here’s a peek at some of my new critters using the Macro video feature on my digital camera.

I haven’t spent enough time in San Francisco to know all the winners, but this place — Tartine Bakery in the Mission — is already one of my favorites.

This ham and cheese sandwich came out of the oven bubbly and amazing. (Those round, dark things are roasted tomatoes.) That pickled carrot was really good, too.

I also highly recommend the Gruyere rolls (moist inside, crusty outside) and the croissants (extra flaky).

Just a great place for a quick breakfast before a day walking around San Francisco.

Whoever saw San Francisco’s hills and said, “screw it, let’s build a city here anyway,” is a hero.

Nice packaging design, and cute gifts for your favorite Starbucks Via instant coffee fanatic. (Assuming those exist.) But even I would feel a little silly carrying these around.

Btw, you can buy 12-packs of the Colombia or Italian Roast from Amazon for $9.95; purchases made through these links help support this site.

Great brunch and dinner place in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood. Try the tasty Cuc-cai cocktail. (That green thing in a glass.)

Today, this site celebrated its 14th birthday… sort of.

Back then, it was “FromeDome’s Page From Hell,” hosted on a crappy AOL server somewhere. And there have been many years of “under construction” banners between then and now. But it’s still older than Google and many of the sites we use constantly today!

As I spend the next couple weeks traveling around the holidays, I’m going to spend some time working on a few new features for the site, including a photo gallery (so you can see more shots like the one above).

Thanks for visiting, and happy holidays!

One of my favorite email newsletters is from the Federal government. It’s the U.S. Department of Agriculture food recalls list, and it’s both eye-opening and frightening. The companies that make the food we eat screw up all the time.

Sure, there’s a lot of recalls for scary stuff, like millions of pounds of ground beef exposed to E.coli O157:H7, the kind of bug that can kill you if your burger isn’t cooked. But the reason I subscribe is for the rare hilarious recall.

By far my favorite: On Jan. 28, 2004, Hormel Foods recalled 104,000 pounds of canned Stagg Chili, “Hearty Beef with a Kick of Green Chilies” variety. Why? Because they were “contaminated with plastic and other parts of a handheld calculator.”

“The company discovered that the contamination had occurred after receiving complaints from consumers who found a calculator button and a piece of plastic in chili they had purchased,” the email read. Awesome!

I first found out about the USDA recall newsletter from Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation. You can sign up here.

Click photo for larger image. Photo shows the North Side of Chicago and some suburbs from about Newport Avenue (near Belmont). Note Wrigley Field, bottom-center.