Food Porn

I am annoyed with LJ.

I wrote this, and I am rewriting it because they were doing maintainence and so my journal was read only. The back button didn't ge back to what I had written and it seems to be lost in the ether.

Feh!

While we were gone we had a couple of friends looking after the animals (the snakes merely needed water, but the dogs, rats and mice need to be fed more often).

One of them flaked, so the other cut her vacation short and picked up the slack. Tomorrow I am making dinner for her, as a thank you, in addition to the money we paid her.

Yesterday we went shopping, at Costco. There were, I was told, only six things on the list (and they didn't have one of them) but item number 6 was, "additional food." Needless to say it took awhile.

And we didn't stock up as much as the last trip (some three months ago, maybe four). First we need more freezer space, and second, we still have some canned, and dry, goods from the last trip.

But, as we walked about I saw some things worth getting. A crock of stilton. It's covered in paraffin, so I can let it ripen a bit more. Or I can use it with some walnuts, or pecans, and some boston lettuce and pears and make a salad; or both.

Pears; I saw some, in flats. A flat, even much as I like pears seemed a bit much (six lbs) but then I remembered... I needed something for dessert tomorrow.

Which justified the money.

I started this morning.

A took about 2/3rds cup of slivered almonds, put them in a small cast iron pan and let the bottom layer just barely toast.

Tossed them into a Braun coffee mill (the kind that beats the beans to powder) and made them into meal. This was scaled into a pint, or so, of milk.

That, with sugar, eggs and vanilla will make the custard base for a pear tart. The pears will be slicedand dresssed with cinnamon, and perhaps nutmeg.

The entree will be a roast ternderloin of pork. If I choose to make a cumberland sauce I will lightly brine it, if not I will wrap it in salt.

Salad of red leaf and romaine, with some mesclin, which Maia calls weeds and tends to eat around, leaving them for me, tossed with a vinaigrette, and some grated miyzithra.

New potaoes, either chopped and tossed with parsley butter, or mashed with same.

For vegetable I will dash to the market and see what looks good. Maybe I will just ask Maia to hit the Farmers market and get some.

Then to freeze the rest of the tenderloin (I can easily get three meals out of it, as roasts, and if I make one small, and then put the other into two pieces I can make a soup, and a chinese meal from the remainder). I also need to portion and freeze the beef round we got.

We really need a larger freezer to take advnatage of the chance to buy in bulk (which reminds me, I need to pester Maia to get me some femurs for brown stock).

After some work with the dogs, I will start the starter sponging for rolls.

Is there something wrong with food porn?

This is the third attempt I'm making to post this


I am annoyed with LJ.

I wrote this, and I am rewriting it because they were doing maintainence and so my journal was read only. The back button didn't ge back to what I had written and it seems to be lost in the ether.

Feh!

While we were gone we had a couple of friends looking after the animals (the snakes merely needed water, but the dogs, rats and mice need to be fed more often).

One of them flaked, so the other cut her vacation short and picked up the slack. Tomorrow I am making dinner for her, as a thank you, in addition to the money we paid her.

Yesterday we went shopping, at Costco. There were, I was told, only six things on the list (and they didn't have one of them) but item number 6 was, "additional food." Needless to say it took awhile.

And we didn't stock up as much as the last trip (some three months ago, maybe four). First we need more freezer space, and second, we still have some canned, and dry, goods from the last trip.

But, as we walked about I saw some things worth getting. A crock of stilton. It's covered in paraffin, so I can let it ripen a bit more. Or I can use it with some walnuts, or pecans, and some boston lettuce and pears and make a salad; or both.

Pears; I saw some, in flats. A flat, even much as I like pears seemed a bit much (six lbs) but then I remembered... I needed something for dessert tomorrow.

Which justified the money.

I started this morning.

A took about 2/3rds cup of slivered almonds, put them in a small cast iron pan and let the bottom layer just barely toast.

Tossed them into a Braun coffee mill (the kind that beats the beans to powder) and made them into meal. This was scaled into a pint, or so, of milk.

That, with sugar, eggs and vanilla will make the custard base for a pear tart. The pears will be slicedand dresssed with cinnamon, and perhaps nutmeg.

The entree will be a roast ternderloin of pork. If I choose to make a cumberland sauce I will lightly brine it, if not I will wrap it in salt.

Salad of red leaf and romaine, with some mesclin, which Maia calls weeds and tends to eat around, leaving them for me, tossed with a vinaigrette, and some grated miyzithra.

New potaoes, either chopped and tossed with parsley butter, or mashed with same.

For vegetable I will dash to the market and see what looks good. Maybe I will just ask Maia to hit the Farmers market and get some.

Then to freeze the rest of the tenderloin (I can easily get three meals out of it, as roasts, and if I make one small, and then put the other into two pieces I can make a soup, and a chinese meal from the remainder). I also need to portion and freeze the beef round we got.

We really need a larger freezer to take advnatage of the chance to buy in bulk (which reminds me, I need to pester Maia to get me some femurs for brown stock).

After some work with the dogs, I will start the starter sponging for rolls.

And politics

The web entertains me. Not all of that entertainment is trvial, mostly because I'm a political animal.

I cut my initial writing chops in high school, writing for the Monroe Doctrine. I had a column. Hard work that, grinding out a bit of political commentary every week. So I spent my time in the library, reading the paper, soaking up the news, and the op-ed (I had yet to learn the sublime joy which is baseball), the human interest (Bob Pool was a great writer, and when I went to college I managed to learn a few things from him, indirectly) the entertainment section (no small thing in L.A.). Then I'd read the weeklies, and glance at the monthlies.

These days I don't get to the library much, but for a lot of things I don't need it. The breadth I get to sample now is so much more than I got to drabble my feet in then.

I am also more radical now than I was then. Heck, back then I was pretty spinnable (I can't say I am ashamed of anything I wrote, but there are few pieces from my high school days I'd not write now), and too skeptical to be much of an ideologue.

This week, well this week has been one of the more entertaining, for certain values of entertainment. I've been reading a book on Viet-nam, on the nature of it, the working classness of it. One of the things which struck me was the numbers game which was played with the enemy. Not the body counts of the dead, but rather the estimation of the living.

200,000 is the estimate of the insurgents being given by the new Iraqi intel chief. That is, as the article points out, about 1 percent of the population. We can't beat that. 1: We have fewer troops than that in the country. 2: To have that many, they have the support of the populace, which means they can, as Mao put it, swim among the people like fish in a river. 3: To root themout, will only make more insurgents. Even if we only make one new partisan for each we kill, we are still losing.

By way of camparison, 1 percent, that trivial sounding number, would be 29 million people, were it America.


Social Security: Back when this was being bruited about the first time I heard it, the number of "four percent" was being tossed around, with a reckless abandon. Why reckless, because it's not four percent, it's four percentage points. That's 30 percent of the contribution an employee makes (which is about the same as Greenspan said we needed to raise the rate, to cover the cost of the bulge in demographics caused by the reduction in birthrate in WW2). If the employer gets to not contribute, that makes it 60 percent.

I find it interesting that Bush wants to reduce the present rate of payment, by about a third. This is, however a shell game. We are in massive debt. We have a lot of creditors, if we default on them, those credtors (China, Japan, parts of Europe) will be unhappy. But we have a lot of money in Social Security (and the 10 trillion, that number comes from projecting SS to infinity, which, according to actuaries, makes it useless). Money which was taxed away from people.

Now if SS is eliminated (which no small number of those in favor of, "privatising" it have said is their ultimate goal) what will happen to that money? It will be absorbed into the budget. It ought to be given to those who paid in... Oh, wait, we have the means to do that.

Headin' for the big roundup is Orcinus thoughts on his trip back to the conservative country he gew up in, he points to Better Angels of Our Nature who has commentary on similar things. The People running the Republican Party have been poisoning, by intent, or accident, the minds of thier followers. I am afraid we may reap the whirlwind they have sown.

Some quotations from the sources they reference:Letters to the EditorThe Patriot Act will put both of you (Neuharth and Mitchell) on trial for treason and convict and execute both of you as traitors for running these stories in a time of war and it should be done on TV for other communist traitors like you two to know we mean business. This is war and you should be put in prison NOW for talking like this. Who the hell do you people think you are? You give aid and comfort to our enemies and aid them in murdering our proud soldiers. You people are a disgrace to America. Your families should be put in prison with you, then be made to leave and move to the Middle East ...This is a great Christian nation and god wants us to lead the world out of darkness with great leaders like President George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Communists like Al and Greg will soon be in prison and on death row for your ugly papers. We won the election and now you are mad. We own America and all the rights, you people are trash, go back to Russia and Africa and take your friends with before we put you on death row after a fair trial. How nice of them, to give us a fair trial before the hangin'.

Joe M. Richardson: "The duped soldier should be put at the very front of the action, no armor. The cooperating sergeant's career should be over and maybe become MIA. Pitts and all his cronies should be executed as traitors. We are fighting a war, the debate is over, you’re either for us or against us, there is no middle ground. I say start executing the leftists in our country, soon."

I don't know how I missed that one before... lets just say that my willingness to take Andrew Sullivan on a tour of scenic Falluja is extended to him too, but he gets to walk point; no armor.


Lest we forget that winning the country back is the name of the game... Taking it to them Rudepundit is great. The simple truth is that Democrats, moderates, liberals, anyone, won't win by saying, "Lookeeme, I'm like you, Farmer Brown or Factory Worker Sally, look at me compromise on abortion rights and put on shit-stained boots to go out into the fields and talk about how much I hate queers." No, winning comes by saying, "Look here, Farmer Brown and Factory Worker Sally, you are like me." And that means on each and every coming battle - Social Security, judges, tax cuts, Iraq. The people don't want leaders who identify with them. They want leaders who they identify with. It's a fine, but important distinction.
Go read the rest of it. Take it to heart. Take it to them.

Last, The Western Democrat is a Coyote Democrat and after reading him, I think that probably describes me too.
I take two things from that, which are important to remember. One, the West is not the South. This is a different region with different issues. These are issues that can welll be addressed by the Democratic Party, such as libertarian leanings on social issues and a focus on water, development and natural resources in general.

Also, the Republican party has taken the West for granted too long. The West needs smarter and better leadership that the Republican Party can offer. The GOP assumes that they can run any far right schmoe, and they can win. Because Democrats have to be smarter, in a way to separate themselves from their national party, they can offer better and smarter leadership for the West.

This kid (no insult intended, and he is wise beyond his years, but he is either 16 or 17) bears watching.

That's -30- for now.