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Lemon Raspberry Flan (Moosewood) for Cinco de Mayo, 2007

Here's the flan I made for the Cinco de Mayo party we walked to today near Burns Park.

Lemon Raspberry Flan
from the Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts

1 cup milk
1 cup half and half
1/3 cup sugar (we used Michigan sugar beet sugar)
zest of one organic lemon
2 eggs
2 egg yolks (separate and freeze the whites)
1c raspberries (we used frozen store bought; preserve farmland, pick more raspberries)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Boil a kettle of water. Put a deep round baking dish into a lasagna pan; alternatively, put a bunch of ramekins into that lasagna pan.

Mix milk, half and half, sugar, and lemon zest in a saucepan. Scald but do not boil (heat til steaming), stirring all the while. Remove from heat and let sit 10-15 minutes for the lemon flavor to mix with the milk.

Crack the eggs into a bowl, and transfer to a blender. Using a strainer, slowly pour the lemony milk mixture into the blender while mixing on low. (Don't put the zest in, it's delicious but the wrong texture). It doesn't take much mixing, stop when frothy.

Pour the mixture into the baking dish. Add dollops of berries until it's beautiful.

Fill the lasagna pan with boiling water part way up the sides of the dish. Bake 40-50 minutes (until the custard has set). Remove from oven, remove the baking dish from the lasagna pan, and cool on a wire rack. Transfer to fridge to chill 20-30 minutes.

"Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts (Moosewood Collection)" (Moosewood Collective)

--

The party was a lot of fun. There were a bunch of soon to be ex Pfizer people there, talking about what was going to happen next - some folks leaving town, quite a few staying. Unlike the prototypical cafe-based Internet startup, a pharma startup needs wet labs and something approximating real money and resources to get going. Saul played on the swings, and Jonathan drank one too many juice boxes. We walked home and all fell asleep.

Technorati Tags: michigan, shadford, 48104, cincodemayo, annarbor, recipe, flan, dessert, pfizer, pfired, burnspark

Robert Allen, Ann Arbor Public Schools CFO, on AAPS budget crisis at Burns Park School April 17 2007 7-8:30pm

From Helen Starman:

Dear Burns Park parents –

A short note to remind you that Robert Allen, AAPS Deputy Superintendent for Operations (CFO), will be at Burns Park on Tuesday, April 17 (2007) from 7:00 – 8:30 PM, to speak about the district’s current budget crisis, its origins and what the future holds. This is a topic relevant to any parent with a child in the Ann Arbor public schools so feel free to invite your friends and neighbors. If you have any questions please reply to this email or give me a call (994-8553).

I hope to see you on Tuesday,

Helen Starman

Ann Arbor has been hit by a double whammy of Michigan-wide budget woes and the local exodus of Pfizer jobs, so no surprise that some of this will hit the schools too.

UPDATE with more details:

Worried about our schools' funding crisis? Get an insider's perspective!

For those of you in the Ann Arbor area, I wanted to alert you to a talk
tomorrow evening (Tuesday, 17 April) by Robert Allen, effectively the chief
financial officer of the Ann Arbor Public Schools. He will be talking with
parents about the financial problems facing the district, their origins, and
what can be done. We encourage everyone who has children in the AAPS to join
the discussion.

Even if you don't have children in the Ann Arbor schools, the problems faced
by the district mirror those faced by districts across the state, so this
might be a good chance to talk with an official in the front lines.

Please join us:
Tuesday, 17 April 2007
7 - 8:30pm
Burns Park Elementary School auditorium
1414 Wells St., Ann Arbor
Presented by the Burns Park PTO

Robert Allen is Deputy Superintendent for Operations for the Ann Arbor
Public Schools. Mr. Allen came to Ann Arbor from the Flint Community
Schools, where he had been Chief Financial Officer. As CFO, his
responsibilities cover most aspects of the district's financial operations
and budget matters. Before joining the Flint schools, Mr. Allen held
positions at Norfolk State University, Eastern Michigan University, and KPMG
Peat Marwick. Trained as an accountant, he holds BBA and MBA degrees from
Eastern Michigan Univ.

Steve Norton
Michigan Parents for Schools
http://www.miparentsforschools.org

Technorati Tags: a2brooklyn, aaps, annarbor, autumn, burnspark

Recently asked questions (with answers) from march 2, 2007

Jim Benson reminded me about the questions feed from 103bees. Here's some recent search query traffic and some hint at the answers that might go with them. I have edited and punctuated a little bit. My list does not include anything about peanut butter (salmonella, allergies, or Yahoo) or Ubik (but it might include Rubik at some point).

How late can you vacuum?

I usually don't vacuum when Jonathan is asleep, because I don't want to wake him up and sometimes the vacuum makes him cry. He's supposed to be in bed by 8, though that seems to be the exception, not the rule.

How to differentiate spider bite from insect bite?

Consult a physician. The Hardin Library at the U of Iowa has a thorough directory of resources on spider bites.

How to make greek lemon potatoes

I posted a greek lemon roasted potatoes recipe three years ago. We made it just the other night, and it was delicious. It's a winter dish to be sure, to take advantage of winter citrus.

What happened to mile.coop michigan?

The MiLE inter-library loan system was damaged by hackers in 2005. The Ann Arbor District Library switched its automated interlibrary loan to MeLCaT, and I couldn't be happier about it - the system is easier to use, has a wider range of libraries covered, and runs on a modern catalog.

how to fold paper for peerflix

Peerflix is a DVD swapping service; think "peer to peer netflix". Techcrunch is skeptical. If you want to mail CDs or DVDs and don't want to buy mailers, you can do origami mailers using the MESH paper cd case design based on work by Tom Hull.

how many miles from from michigan to new orleans

Michigan is a big state; the answer and the route will differ a lot if you pick Houghton vs. Ann Arbor as your starting point. The Ann Arbor route is 1055 miles via Cincinnati and Birmingham Alabama; the Houghton route is 1353 miles via Madison, Memphis and St. Louis.

What to say to incoming kindergarten parents

Welcome! We're glad to see you! The bathroom is down the hall.

what do pelicans eat?

Pelicans eat fish. Pelicans eat oystercatchers, oystercatchers eat blue crabs, blue crabs eat spartina. White pelicans eat 212.4 to 265.5 lbs of fish. each year. American White Pelicans eat mainly small 'rough' fish with little commercial value. Throughout their range pelicans eat mainly “rough” fish of low economic value that occur in shallow wetlands but they may also take deep-water fish such as the tui chub (Gila bicolor) when they are spawning in shallow water or sunning themselves near the surface.

What businesses closed in ann arbor from july to d...

The best ongoing source for business closings and openings in Ann Arbor is the Ann Arbor Observer, available free to residents but only on paper.

Customer who need clean his office in ann arbor mi...

I don't have a good answer to the question of a good reference for downtown Ann Arbor office cleaning.

How to charge block heater from portable source?

We don't have an engine block heater in our car, so I don't know the answer from experience. A first guess at the ability to do a block heater from a portable battery looks bad - too much juice needed. Most people run extension cords. Use a timer to avoid consuming too much power, you only need 3-4 hours to warm up an engine.

i was pfired

T-shirts at Elmo's on Main St. in Ann Arbor, or via Cafepress.

what is in the bag of useful things

43 Folders wiki has an in your bag list with many suggestions. Elizabeth Fry, an English Quaker, gave a bag of useful things to women being transported on convict ships to Botany Bay, Australia to give them tools to make a patchwork quilt. I carry a laptop, charger, mini earphone, A to mini B USB cable, and a couple of quadrille notebooks in my bag.

michigan power outage on thursday march 1st, 2007?

High winds took out power briefly to a part of Huntington Woods today (March 2 2007) - I know this only because the person I had a scheduled phone call with this afternoon was in the dark at 3pm. The CMS Energy Palisades reactor in South Haven, MI went down Feb 26 for maintenance to prepare it for the peak summer season.

how to unfilter things

I have no idea.

Technorati Tags: faq, questions

Pfizer psummit: PSWAT teams; Pfired T-shirts at Elmo's, Main St, Ann Arbor

Seen on the street: Pfired t-shirt's at Elmo's on Main St. in Ann Arbor.

Ann Arbor News reporting on the Pfizer psummit Tug-of-war on horizon over Pfizer employees?

More than 100 business, university and political leaders attended the event at the Michigan Information Technology Center to discuss the community's future without Pfizer's 2,100 jobs and its position as Ann Arbor's biggest taxpayer.

Attending the summit were elected officials such as state Sen. Liz Brater, nonprofit leaders such as Detroit Renaissance President Doug Rothwell, and education leaders including Washtenaw Community College President Larry Whitworth.

Numerous business executives also were in attendance, including Pfizer Senior Vice President David Canter, Rob Aldrich of office space developer MAV Development Co., Jan Garfinkle of life sciences venture capital firm Arboretum Ventures, and Richard Socha of software developer netXert Inc.

At a news conference, organizers of the summit, including Gov. Jennifer Granholm and University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman, sounded an optimistic tone about the future and said they were bullish about the community's response.

They formed eight action teams to encourage job growth and economic development at the Pfizer site, among other things. They said interest in the Pfizer employees and the site is high. They said they have been contacted by businesses seeking to employ Pfizer workers and companies interested in the Pfizer property, which includes 177 acres and research laboratories off Plymouth Road.

Heard over an afternoon tea: hairdressers with a lot of Pfizer clients are uncertain about their future incomes.

Pfizer employees will get a booth from the state for retraining and other efforts to get them to stick around Ann Arbor rather than relocate:

State works to cure Pfizer loss / Sofia Kosmetatos / The Detroit News

ANN ARBOR -- The state of Michigan on Monday pledged $1 million to help Pfizer workers who will lose their jobs as the drug company closes its research and development facility here.

The money will come from a fund established with federal money to help dislocated workers in regions experiencing plant closings and mass layoffs.

The Michigan Department of Labor & Economic Growth will allocate the money to the Washtenaw County Michigan Works! It will be used to provide outreach services including entrepreneurial training and resources to help people launch new companies.

Technorati Tags: pfizer, pfired, psummit, annarbor, pswat, michigan, jobs, pfe

Pfizer Ann Arbor summit, closed doors session

From the Ann Arbor News, Pfizer summit set up:

More than 60 local leaders are being invited to a private summit Monday to begin a coordinated effort to respond to the decision by Pfizer Inc. to close its Ann Arbor facilities.

Invitations signed by University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman, Ann Arbor Mayor John Hieftje, and Ann Arbor Spark CEO Michael Finney were sent Wednesday to leaders of local businesses, government entities and universities. Organizers expect representatives of Pfizer to also attend.

Key topics on the agenda are how to encourage the 2,160 affected Pfizer employees to stay in the area and what should become of the company's property, which includes 177 acres and significant laboratory spaces off Plymouth Road in northeast Ann Arbor.

Organizers are calling the meeting a brainstorming session, and expect to hold more in the coming weeks. It's not open to the public, though organizers will hold a news conference afterward.

U-M spokeswoman Kelly Cunningham said the closed doors are necessary "to encourage frank discussion.''

The News didn't name the local leaders, but I'll print a list if anyone comes up with one.

I saw the Mayor at Sweetwaters Kerrytown, which is the Pure Visibility coffee shop of record. He didn't recognize me, and I didn't initially recognize him - he didn't have his usual smile.

"Summit" is in context an odd word to use. "Pfizer summit" on Google returns this news from Lee's Summit, Missouri, about another shuttered Pfizer facility (from the Kansas City Business Journal)

Pfizer Inc. said Friday that it has officially ended a two-year global effort to sell its Lee's Summit manufacturing plant and that it now plans to demolish the building.

The 271,000-square-foot building is east of Missouri Highway 291 and south of U.S. Highway 50.

Production at the plant will cease in December, the New York City-based company (NYSE: PFE) said in a release. The company said it then plans to remove the building's equipment and other assets early next year and demolish it by the end of 2007.

That site required some special treatment because of production of penicillin which, while not creating a classic brownfield situation, did make the place unusable for production of some drugs; they switched to all animal medicine manufacture at the end.

One of the topics at today's a2b3 lunch (weekly noonish at Eastern Accents on Fourth Ave) was an open question at the table on how the Pfizer closing was going to affect people personally. One person was job hunting because their contracting company did a lot of Pfizer work. Another was happy that they had gotten out of the real estate business. A few folks considered whether this might be something that would create some contract or consulting work for them in the short run as people who were pfired started up their own businesses and needed services.

Technorati Tags: annarbor, pfired, pfe, pfizer, summit

a2b3 for Jan 25, 2007: Pfizer, Google's new tubes, interview season

A reminder that this morning is the a2b3 meeting for the week at Eastern Accents. I'll put notes here after the meeting. Possible topics include the Pfizer Ann Arbor closing and the installation of a series of tubes at the new Google Ann Arbor office. (As viscous platypus notes, "All that traffic requires large tubes"). It's also starting to be Google interview season as spring graduation gets closer. See you there!

Pfizer Ann Arbor closing to be felt by the Flim Flam diner and the rest of town

The Ann Arbor News reports on the indirect job losses from the closing of the Pfizer facility in Ann Arbor:

The trickle-down effect could be another 2,000 to 4,000 jobs eliminated in the state, said Don Grimes, senior research specialist with the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations at U-M. [...]

“There is a huge effect that permeates the economy when you have something like this,” Grimes said. “It’s a much greater impact than just the 2,100.” [...]

On any given day, Pfizer has as many as 1,000 temporary workers on site, according to Rick Chambers, Pfizer spokesman for Midwest operations.

The Detroit Free Press: Pfizer job losses are a blow to Ann Arbor

Local businesses around Pfizer's sprawling Plymouth Road campus expect business to slow.

At the Flim Flam Restaurant and Deli on Plymouth Road, owner Chris Klademenos said the closing of Pfizer across the street will hurt. "Sure it will," he said. "When I heard they were shutting down, I didn't want to believe it."

The restaurant gets 10 to 15 Pfizer customers a day at lunch besides a handful for breakfast and on weekends.

WJR has an interview with Rick Chambers, Pfizer PR: - download the MP3 here.

Pfizer's page about the Ann Arbor facility talks about the work that is done at the site:

R&D functions located at Ann Arbor are Discovery, Drug Metabolism, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Drug Safety Evaluation, and Development.

Therapeutic areas currently being researched at Ann Arbor are Antibacterials, Arthritis, Atherosclerosis, Cancer, Cardiovascular/Metabolic Diseases, Dermatological Conditions, and Psychotherapeutics.

In the short run, the Pfizer cuts are good for Ann Arbor drinking establishments. From the Michigan Daily:

At about 1 p.m. yesterday, nine Pfizer employees gathered at Ashley's Pub on State Street to discuss the news over lunch and a drink.

Pfizer instructed employees not to speak with reporters, and none of the group gathered at Ashley's would comment.

"We are going to have a whole stick-around-Ann-Arbor campaign for those employees, because we want them to stay," Granholm said.

The loss of Pfizer was particularly painful for Granholm because biomedical research was one of the fields that she was hoping to foster as a way to diversify the state's economy as the once-dominant automotive industry continues to struggle.

Technorati Tags: annarbor, pfizer, michigan, jobs, pfe

Pfizer cuts hit Ann Arbor; "Pfired" shirts seen at Casey's

A roundup of the local news reports on Ann Arbor Pfizer, Inc. closings. The short summary: the looming end of the Lipitor patent made it imperative to seek out new drugs to work with it; that drug was torcetrapib; it didn't work out.

Detroit Free Press: Pfizer cuts will cost Michigan 2,410 jobs

At Pfizer’s massive Ann Arbor research facility, the news came as a blow. Once the sight of a Parke-Davis facility acquired by Pfizer, the research and development complex occupies 177 acres and 2 million square feet of industrial, laboratory, and office space.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm met with the media in Ann Arbor this afternoon, saying she wants to do everything she can to keep former Pfizer employees in the state.

“We’re going to have a whole ‘Stick Around Ann Arbor’ campaign for these employees, because we want them to stay here,” Granholm said.

The research now done in Ann Arbor, and a small Esperion Group facility in Plymouth, will transfer to other Pfizer sites in Groton, Conn.; St. Louis, Mo.; LaJolla, Calif.; and Sandwich in the United Kingdom. Pfizer said it expects that “a substantial number” of the workers in Ann Arbor will transfer.

Arbor Update: Pfizer Closing. From contributor juliew:

Last year Pfizer donated $2 million to the local United Way (employees gave $1 million and Pfizer matched it for a total of $2 million donation/25% of the total). They donated $10,000 for school environmental education programs in Ypsilanti, $1500 to the Adopt-A-Class initiative for the Leslie Science Center, somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000 to the University School of Music Theatre and Dance, they sponsored a horse for the Therapeutic Riding Inc., sponsored SPARK, the Ark, Michigan Theater, Ann Arbor Summer Festival, the Miller’s Creek watershed study, K-9 police dog Czar (and his vehicle), Huron River Day, and many other programs large and small (to the tune of about $1 million corporation donation to these types of programs annually, not including the United Way). Not included in this are all the donations made by individuals, most of whom made quite a good salary. I can’t imagine there is a single nonprofit or social organization in Ann Arbor that will not be affected by this closing.

Pfizer has been in Ann Arbor in some form since 1960 (as Warner-Lambert, then Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis) so they and the employees are an entrenched part of our community. Honestly, the tax abatements given to Pfizer are a drop in the bucket compared to what we lose when they leave (for so many reasons). As it stands, they are the largest taxpayer in Ann Arbor by far. As a matter of fact, the tax abatements given in 2001 were considered a win in many ways for the city because although they were giving 50% tax relief on a large piece of land, it was land that Pfizer bought from the University (which had paid no taxes on it at all). For one synopsis of the tax abatements, see the following site. As one person noted at the time of the tax abatements, half of something is far better than half of nothing.

Associated Press via MLive:

Dr. John LaMattina, president of Pfizer Global Research and Development, said he wasn't satisfied with the company's development performance. To improve its success, he said Pfizer would end discovery efforts in dermatology and gastroenterology because the funds could be better used elsewhere.

LaMattina said the company would also centralize research efforts so work on any one disease is handled at one location. For example, in the past Pfizer conducted cancer research at six different sites, which LaMattina said only increased costs without improving productivity.

Forbes on Big Pharma's Black Hole:

Between 2010 and 2011, Big Pharma will lose 28% of their current sales, according to pharmaceutical analyst James Kelly of Goldman Sachs--who is calling this period "the patent black hole." Starting in 2008 and going through 2011, Kelly predicts annualized sales growth of only 2% for big drug makers.

Timothy Anderson of Prudential Equity Group says that this generic "cliff" is the largest in the history of pharma. Most of the companies he covers, including Pfizer (nyse: PFE - news - people ), Merck (nyse: MRK - news - people ), GlaxoSmithKline (nyse: GSK - news - people ), and Eli Lilly (nyse: LLY - news - people ), will lose top-sellers between 2010 and 2013. Already, he says, the loss of blockbuster products like Pfizer's Lipitor for high cholesterol, the world's best-selling drug, and Eli Lilly's Zyprexa for schizophrenia, is shaping decision-making at big drug makers.

Pfizer had another drug in the pipeline to go along with Lipitor, but torcetrapib turned out to be not the wonder drug they had hoped for. From Derek Lowe's In The Pipeline:

This is a complete clinical disaster: the world's largest drug company just ditched their potential biggest drug. And this comes two days after a press conference where they talked about how they were planning to submit it for approval within months. Development of torcetrapib, the cholesteryl-ester transfer protein inhibitor designed to raise HDL levels, has been halted. Last week, that sentence would have been the subject of nightmares at Pfizer, but now it's the top of the news. No alarm clock buzz will make it go away. If you're looking for an example of just how difficult drug development is, look no more.

The story broke on Saturday: the 15,000-patient trial that was underway (half on Lipitor, half on Lipitor plus torcetrapib) showed excess deaths in the combination group (82 versus 51). That figure's impossible to ignore or explain away, and now the problem will be to explain what caused it. There are other CETP inhibitors in development, such as JTT-705 (from Japan Tobacco and Roche) and one from Merck as well. Both these companies have just had a tremendous shock, since we don't know (yet) if the patient deaths were due to CETP inhibition itself, the combination of it with the HMG CoA reductase inhibition of the statin, an off-target effect of torcetrapib with the statin, or just an off-target effect of the drug on its own. I'm sure that intense reviews of all the clinical data are going on. Things just got much more complicated.

As for Pfizer, they now have a monstrous hole in their near-term pipeline. Looking back, they've had a terrible run the last couple of years, with a number of promising drugs dropping on them, but nothing compared to this. I don't think anyone's had one to compare with this, at least in terms of the expectations for a drug. I was just talking with some people from the company last week (along with many of my colleagues), looking into employment possibilities. After this, I think we may have to keep moving. I don't think that Pfizer's going to be in the mood for hiring.

The best knowledgable industry gossip spot I found in all this was In The Pipeline; here's their Pfizer's Pfinances post about the closings.

Technorati Tags: annarbor, jobs, lipitor, michigan, pfe, pfizer, torcetrapib