When Engineers Cook

We’ve had foreign exchange students staying with us off and on for the last couple of years and one of the things we like to do is cook foods they like. We ask them what their favorite meal is if they go to a restaurant back home. Once we work out the translation of what it is, more than once (four times so far), we are sternly warned by the student with the phrase, “you can’t make it!” Strange, they use exactly those words. They don’t mean that I personally do not have the culinary skills to make it, but rather in a categorical sense no one, and especially not me, can make it! “Really, you can’t make that… how then is it ever made?”, I ask. “You cannot do it, it is very hard”, is usually the answer.

As you might imagine rather than taking it as a warning, I take it as a challenge and off to the Google to find the recipe. Sometimes this requires more translation, which is actually really fun. So far I am 3 for 4 on "impossible" dishes, but I haven’t given up on that one recipe. I have ideas for fixing it.

If you are cooking up a map in AutoCAD you may have noticed there is a new quick access basemap you can choose from the Esri Maps button in the ArcGIS for AutoCAD 250 you already have. This new map is designed to have a more subtle and ambient cartographic feel to it. There is nothing to download its just a new map on ArcGIS Online that showed up. You automatically get it since the ArcGIS for AutoCAD design team thought you might like it.

Bon appetit

Bonus Sushi Making Tip: If you are using cream cheese in a sushi roll, like a Philadelphia Roll, freeze the cream cheese block first and then it is easy to cut into strips and handle. It thaws nicely and quickly afterwards.