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Sunday, July 11, 2004

Them Derned “Officials” Are At It Again! WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. officials have discussed the idea of postponing Election Day in the event of a terrorist attack on or about that day, a Homeland Security Department spokesman said Sunday. Plan B: If it looks like nobody’s gonna vote for Weasel Boy, and even Diebold can’t fake another bullshit win for him, just blow up some shit, blame the terrorists, and call off the elections. For the record, normal elections were held during the Civil War, WW-I, and WW-II. 10:14:41 PM    comment []

It's been a while, but there is a brand new Virtual Occoquan. Mark has been living, if you can call it that, in two locations and VO has been a little slow, but he still got this one out. Go catch it while it's fresh! 9:27:02 PM    comment []

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of bad salsa, but this stuff is pretty good for cooked salsa. I start with three cans of diced tomatoes, too old for the patient task of peeling and seeding. The juice makes a nice base. This batch had 14 store bought jalapenos and 4 peppers from my window box garden. Those got chopped up, inconsistently – it adds granularity. Two red onions, also chopped sloppily. The fun part is the heating of the seeds. Cumin and coriander in a cast iron pan. This time I heated the pan red hot, removed it from the burner and threw the seeds in, shaking furiously. Liz was impressed as the aromas of toasted spice filled the air and she ain’t easy to impress. A few seconds and they were ready to be ground in the molcajete. I threw some marjoram into the simmering brew. At least a dozen smashed cloves of garlic – Satan possess me when garlic’s about and I forget to count.   It has been simmering a couple of hours – did I mention the tablespoon of sea salt? – and when it chills I’ll add the juice of two limes and a handful of molcajete-ground cilantro. Oh, just before I turn off the heat, I stir in a tablespoon of cornstarch dissolved in water to thicken the pot liquor a bit. If it’s too dry, I juice it up with a little V-8. It’s hard to fuck up salsa, even if you don’t think linearly. 3:16:26 PM    comment []

Tom Ridge Dons Fright Mask For A Very Special Press Conference!   Boooo-ooooo!   Boooo-ooooo!   Boooo-ooooo!   Al-Qaeda operatives close to Saddam Hussein want to shove nuke-you-LAR firecrackers up yer butt, just like Junior did back in his “frog-tossin’” days. At some unspecified location, on a date we haven’t determined, somebody we haven’t tracked down will do something so incredibly evil that we can’t even imagine what it might be.   Now, go about your lives as usual, go to Disney World™, get some burgers, and we’re not changing the color on the Traffic Light of Death to orange or anything rash - but don’t forget to pee yourself every time I go “Boooo-ooooo!”   And don’t vote for Kerry! It’s not allowed! That’s a vote for Osama bin-Laden, for Saddam Hussein, for Adolf Fucking Hitler, for Pol Pot, for Genghis Khan, for Satan himself! It would be an evil vote. We frown on unpatriotic behavior like that. See us frowning?   We now return control of your mind to Rupert Murdoch.   Boooo-ooooo!   Boooo-ooooo!   Boooo-ooooo!     (For more on this terror update, see the gospel according to Mark) 8:05:27 AM    comment []

They’re Red Hot   The place where I have my Honda serviced has a shuttle to take people home after dropping off their cars. Last time I took along a cook book, David Rosengarten’s It’s All American Food (plug-plug for penance – Mr. Rosengarten, in case you read this, I am still very sorry for slandering you last year on my blog), to read. In the tradition of the original Joy Of Cooking, it has anecdotal preludes for each recipe, a nice touch that sets the table with the essential culinary background, verbal drippy candles.   Recipes are like blueprints. Now Liz can look at a list of ingredients and taste the food just from that, like a skilled musician can look at a score and “hear” it. I need the stories and the little tricks – like putting hard cheese rinds, from asiago or parmesano, into your minestrone stock. I used to throw those away.   As our shuttle bus pulled out of the parking lot at Crown Honda, the woman seated beside me suddenly went into a petulant frenzy. No! No! No! Last time she rode the damned shuttle she was the last one to be left off and that time spent in the company of derelicts such as myself apparently damaged her psyche. This time, she insisted, she deserves to be dropped off first. I ignored her and read a recipe for Texas chile, but her attention suddenly became focused on me.   “You’re reading a cook book!” she sneered. Tiny little beads of sweat formed on the twisted hairs of her fully-erect nostrils, glistening like dew in the early morning sun. “NOBODY ever reads cook books! – except when they’re going to fix something.” I studied the Egg McMuffin residue on her lower lip, hoping to find a clue to the inner workings of her soul – much as ancient mystics once studied goat entrails to foresee the future – but before I could respond to her, the shuttle pulled into her driveway and she was gone. The remaining occupants of the bus cheered her departure as she walked to her door.     The ambiance for reading Tamales 101 is considerably better. The timing was right. A couple of people at work have brought in tamales recently and I was ready to take my first baby steps. I’ve always been intimidated by this apparently simple combination of husk, masa, and filling – and I think rightfully so. This is not something you will find at brand name Tex-Mex franchises, this is an edible work of art, steeped in tradition, family and ancient lore. So, about the same time, when I followed a comments link to LyndaB’s weblog Table Scraps and saw a review of Tamales 101, I was psyched.   It’s a good read. I haven’t made my first tamale, but I have learned they were the original MRE – carried by Aztec warriors so they didn’t have to leave the battlefield when hunger pangs struck. I read about the Nixtamalization of corn – cooking, soaking in a like solution (kinda like grits!), and hand-rubbing to remove the pericarps. There are diagrams for 11 different ways to fold the corn husk wraps!   Like I said, I haven’t made any tamales – but when I do at least I’ll have some background. Reading this, I have made some mental tamales, kinda like Einstein or Hawking doing “thought experiments.” They are recipes for 5 different masas, 11 different sauces (including a “Chocolate Heaven Sauce”), and a multitude of fillings, from traditional to radical – and even Vegan tamales. This cook book is already one of my favorites. 6:11:07 AM    comment []