A Hacker’s Cookbook

A Bit of Background Info

I am currently staying with Doug Humphrey and Lisa Losito, in suburban Maryland. (Long story; see the beginning of my journal if you want more info on that. It’s extraneous to this, so I won’t detail it here.)

It snowed about a foot today (25 January, 2000). I was marinating a Muscovy duck breast in Constant Comment ™ tea and thinking about collard greens. Doug got home as the snow began to thin a bit, and while he was on the phone with some people doing business I started adding Sandeman “Founders Reserve” port to the marinade. Eventually this all came together and we had dinner, at the end of which I looked at Doug and said, “I want some ice cream.”

Doug glanced up from his laptop and said, “Well, there’s some light cream in the refrigerator, and there’s ice all over the place.” We both laughed, and I went into the kitchen to find the blender so I could make a smoothie. Perhaps fortunately, I failed to find the blender. Instead, I took the cream and added some sugar to it, took the mango pulp out of the freezer and partly thawed it, and went outside for a panful of snow. Then we made mango ice cream by putting snow in a bowl, spooning cream over it, and dropping mango pulp over top of the result. When Doug tasted it he said, “You know, this is about the best ice cream I ever had. When we do the Hacker’s Cookbook, this should go into it.” I must admit that I was staggered. What a perfect idea, a hacker cookbook! Why didn’t I think of that?

So here is the first page of A Hacker’s Cookbook, and it starts with what is probably the original version of ice cream, re-created for you by nerds. Remember, if you live in a polluted area you should wait until it has snowed at least a foot before you mess with the stuff; and if I may quote the immortal Frank Zappa,

Ahem.

Notes Added in Proof:

The particular brand of mango pulp I used is Ratna; that’s what the proprietor of the local Indian food store suggested when I inquired, and he’s from Mango Central, so we went with it. He clearly knows his mangos: it has a rich flavor and brilliant color, and is free of stringy fibers.

I spoke with my mom a bit ago, and she reminded me that we used to make ice cream like this when I was a kid. I had forgotten. I’m sure that many people have done it this way; it works very well. But I don’t remember doing it back then, and I don’t really recall seeing the method written out explicitly, and we did Just Do It Because It Was The Right Thing To Do, so I think it’s a perfectly acceptable item for this page.

Where Are We Going with This?

I would very much like for this to become a real compendium of interesting things that food-friendly hackers have come up with. I want it to be cosmopolitan, reasonably erudite, thoughtful; in short, I want it to be an avatar of the values I value in my food and my friends. It will, I hope, eventually even look nice, because it’s about food, and food is partly about aesthetic values. Food is also magic, as is HTML.

There will, I think, and Doug agrees, have to be a “coder food” section, with the simple and peculiar things that are created and eaten by people who do not have a whole lot of cycles to spare. That section will probably amuse some folks, and probably won’t enlighten many, nor will it expand horizons or push envelopes the way I hope the main part of this document will. (If I have my druthers, it will all be in 10-point Courier on a plain white ground. That’s not perjorative, it’s par for the course.)

For right now, I think we’ll leave it at that. I gotta go and find the right HTML for the little trademark symbol... Aha! Here are some relevant HTML reference pages:

• The Research Triangle Thinktank Reference
• The page I actually got the trademark sign from
• The page from which I found my way to the previous reference

Just by the bye, if you are interested in Jane Austen, you should check the (“janeinfo”) parent page of that “latin1.html” page.

Oh, Yes, One Other Thing: What’s a Hacker?

I believe I discuss this elsewhere, but it seems pointful to include it here. As far as I am concerned, a hacker is a person who adopts a particular stance in the world. That stance can be expressed in several different ways, and I am going to make a wee stab at it here. Please accept the customary “first draft” caution with this, as I am perhaps not as articulate with it as I’d like to be. Here’s a sort of credo:

• If I want something, and I can’t afford it or it’s not available, I either find a library or museum that has it (if it’s not the sort of thing that a human being can just make, as for instance a piece of art by a particular artist), or I make one. If appropriate, I get together with friends and we make one together. (Note 1)
• If an interesting combination suggests itself, I tend to try it. (Note 2)
• I strive not to be too subject to NIH [“Not Invented Here”] syndrome. That is, if someone else presents a good idea, I’m happy to accept it. (Note 3)

Notes:

1. If something has never been done before, this can become both challenging and interesting.
2. In fact, I have to confess that I go out of my way to think up interesting combinations to try. That, it seems to me, is a good part of the fun.
3. For example, I wrote this page because Doug made a casual remark at the dinner table. Sure, I wish I had thought it up; but I’m not going to let the fact that I didn’t do so stop me from implementing it, when it’s such a great idea!
4. While it is true that some hackers are more interested in learning how things tick than in developing new things, I think that the analytic and synthetic realms are fairly even-handedly represented among the people I hang out with. (This statement is issued as a gentle caution to anyone who thinks that the word "hacker" means "a person who breaks things for fun" -- that's a cracker, not a hacker. Go read Steven Levy.)

There. That’s not too hard, is it?

Back to Top

Pseudo-mailto: jon [at] bazilians [put it here] org

Last modified: Wed Jan 26 08:03:39 PST 2000