1.5 cups Israeli Couscous
1 box of chicken broth
½ yellow onion, finely chopped
½ cup good olive oil
¼ cup Marsala wine (or dry white)
2  carrots, chopped into small pieces
½ box of mushrooms
½ bunch flat Italian parsley, finely chopped 
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 tomato, diced
½ lemon juice 

In a deep sauce pan, simmer the onions and olive oil for 20 minutes on a low flame, until they turn translucent. Add wine, garlic and carrots, and simmer for another 15 minutes. Start boiling the chicken broth. When the carrots are soft, add the mushrooms and cook for 5 minutes.

Turn up the heat to medium-high and add the couscous. Stir until browned. Add the chicken broth, cover and simmer on low heat for 10 minutes.

Transfer to serving bowl, and add parsley, lemon juice, diced fresh tomatoes. Salt & pepper to taste.

10 days in Maui, yay!  First time in Hawaii, and I must say we were pleasantly surprised.  We had a great time, and we would definitely go back. The only downer note is that they stole my laptop the last day. We think the thief followed the maid into the room and just took it. No big deal because it’s a company laptop, but I did lose the photos of this wild drive we took. 

You head around the North part of the island to this area marked on the map as “driving on this road nullifies your rental contract”…  So I’m like, sure, whatever, how bad can it be?  I’ll just drive super slowly.  It’s a beautiful windy road right by the water, and the only scary part is that the many many “rocks falling” signs punctuated by huge boulders squat in the middle of the road that you have to drive around.  So I’m like OK, falling rocks everywhere, I’ll just be extra careful.  But then your start climbing to a vertiginous height, turn a corner, and have to do a 2-3 mile stretch on a one lane road hanging over rocks & surf.  The asphalt on the water side is crumbling away in chunks.  And when you run into someone coming the other way, one of you has to back up slowly, on a steep incline, until you find a stretch barely wide enough for both of you.  Sweaty palms.

But it’s all worth it because at the end of the road you get to Julia’s Banana Bread hut in the little fishing village of Kahakuloa, which sells what they advertise as The planet’s best banana bread.  No kidding, it’s awesome, and by that time we were so stressed (with the baby crying “all done now!” for 30 minutes) that we really enjoyed it.

Anyway the photos that survived are here: 

View Full Album

-Piero

On the SDX team in Windows Live we have a little tradition around shared team awards – every Friday we have an all-hands meeting, where people on the team can give each other small / funny awards.  For example a tester might thank his dev for making his life easier, etc.  It’s a simple way to keep the team gelled, and it’s way cooler than having management-driven awards.  The awards themselves are usually quite funny, maybe I’ll post some all-time classics someday.

But in order to remind folks to give awards on Friday, I send out a little mail.  I try to make the mail funny, and usually end it with our tag-line, Awards = Love.  My reminder mails tend to take the form of a fake ‘team magazine’, e.g. a magazine with my teammates on the cover.

Here they are for your enjoyment!

View Full Album