I have two new musical obsessions. One is Revolution Void, very cool electronic breakbeat jazz. This stuff is very very good, very chill. And they have links to bittorrents of one of their albums on their website. Cool. The sax is a little dry as far as effects are concerned, in my opinion, but it's still quite cool. I would have slapped some subtle phased delay on top of that, in time to the tempo of the song.

The other is a band from Australia called Three Month Sunset. If you go to their MySpace page, you can hear some of their tunes. They sound like an ambient string quartet. Very beautiful. No bittorrents of their music, that I can find. A tactical error, to be sure.

And I would recommend listening to Utility Fog, but there doesn't seem to be a stream, for those of us who don't live in Sydney. Which is a shame. Looks like a very cool playlist.

Pete's Thai Beef Salad

This is a refreshing, light but very satisfying little salad.

I usually use chunks of stew beef, because it's pretty inexpensive, and you can get several salads out of just a little bit. Pan sear the beef in a little sesame oil, and season it with a little salt and some fresh cracked pepper, and a little bit of curry powder.

Then make a sauce out of 2 tablespoons ginger paste, 2 cloves of garlic, minced, a little sambal red chili paste (about 1/4 tablespoon), the juice of 2 limes, a little peanut butter, a little soy sauce, and about 2 tablespoons of coconut milk. Mix well.

Add the sauce to the beef when it's well browned. Let it simmer, stirring occasionally.

Then chop up some red leaf lettuce, some coriander, some basil (and maybe even some mint), then dice up a little red or yellow pepper and some onion. Chop up some peanuts. Toss the greens and veggies, add the beef with some sauce on top, and top with the chopped peanuts.

It's yummy.