Bites & Pieces (Appetizers)

We’re having a small party next Saturday and so I’ve been thinking about the menu and what kind of appetizers to serve.  I’ve asked a few family members for suggestions and all of them requested this one.  It’s not the healthiest dish on the planet but since it’s one of those things I only make on rare occasions it falls into the eat in “Moderation” category.  Below I’ll jot down another recipe for an eggplant dip that’s quite a bit more nutritious although Michi may have already given us a similar one.

When I was growing up the popular appetizer at cocktail parties was Rumaki (chicken liver, water chestnut, bacon) so I guess mine isn’t any worse than that.  My father was the Rumaki King and so my sister and I helped make and serve a lot of it…………………………….yuck.

Fried Artichoke Hearts (serves 4 to 6)

Ingredients:

1 can artichoke hearts, not the marinated variety, you can buy them whole or quartered.  Quartered are more work but go further with a crowd.

3/4 cup flour

salt and garlic powder added to flour (dash of salt, 1 tsp garlic powder)

2 eggs lightly beaten

3/4 to 1 cup panko bread crumbs

oil for frying

2 to 3 tablespoons butter

juice of 1/4 lemon

Parmesan, freshly grated or Kraft

Directions:

Drain artichoke hearts.  Measure the seasoned flour and bread crumbs into individual bowls and likewise the eggs.  First coat the hearts with flour, then dip into the eggs coating thoroughly and last, roll in bread crumbs.  I generally do three or four at a time and use a separate fork for each bowl to keep my fingers from building up with all the sticky ingredients.  Place in a single layer on a plate and cover.  Refrigerate for several hours as they are best fried when really cold.

I generally fry them in a hot pan with just a 1/4″ layer of oil on the bottom and flip them several times until they turn a golden brown, but you can deep fry them it you want.  Drain on paper towels for a few minutes and while they’re draining melt the butter and add lemon juice.  Place the hearts into a serving dish and drizzle with lemon butter and sprinkle the top with Parmesan cheese………………Voila!!!!!

Eggplant Dip (Serves 4 to 6)

Ingredients:

5 large eggplants

5 cloves garlic

Juice of 1 large lemon

1 to 2 tablespoons tahini

5 green onions, chopped

salt and black pepper

Directions:

Heat the oven or grill to 400.  Roast whole eggplants on a baking sheet in the oven or directly on the grill for 40 to 50 minutes until soft and let cool.  Scoop out the insides of the eggplants and put them into a bowl, discard the peels.  Mash the eggplant and then let stand for about 30 minutes.  Discard any accumulated juices.

Add the garlic, lemon juice, tahini and green onions to the eggplant and mix together.  Add salt and pepper.  Keep refrigerated until serving.  Serve with crackers, cut vegetable or bread cubes.

And lastly, this piece from the Nation might clarify a few things for the girls here, or at least the ones who used to be here.  I’m not trying to start another fight please, just thought the girls might find something useful from this perspective.

17 Responses

  1. Not Kraft, by golly.

    Thanx. I luv artichoke dishes.

    Why would only females see the framing as starkly about wealth and poverty for women? I can understand that framing.

    It doesn’t relieve Ms. Rosen of her gaffe. The link does try to make lemonade out of lemons, wrt to her, however.

    If instead of making her foolish attack, Ms. Rosen had pointed to WMR’s statement and said the work of motherhood is serious, and lauded Mrs. Romney for her efforts, she could have made the author’s point that motherhood is noble for the poor, as well, and too bad WMR is blind to that nobility in the not-rich.

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    • Mark:

      and too bad WMR is blind to that nobility in the not-rich.

      What indicates to you that he is blind to it? The recognition that collecting welfare has no nobility is hardly an indication of blindness to the nobility of motherhood for the not-rich.

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  2. Mark, it wasn’t so much that I thought only women could understand the framing, I just thought they would be interested in reading it.

    As far as I know I’m the only mother who posts here and as such I’ve lived the scenarios, all of them, from a single mother on welfare, to a married mother of three working nights and weekends because we couldn’t afford childcare, to a mother of five who wasn’t forced by finances to work. I just thought it would be interesting to think about the possibility of a discrepancy in attitudes toward women who have that ring on their finger, and are more stable financially, and women who are struggling either by raising children alone or in poverty.

    I thought it was somewhat thought provoking but in many ways it’s an old story now so I’m not trying to bring up old news or parse the piece for “nonsense”.

    Those artichokes are very popular by the way, but a pain in the ass for a large crowd.

    [Edited slightly for clarity]

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    • lms (from Pollit):

      The extraordinary hostility aimed at low-income and single mothers shows that what’s at issue is not children—who can thrive under many different arrangements as long as they have love, safety, respect, a reasonable standard of living. It’s women.

      Not, it’s not. What’s at issue is welfare. When Romney talks about the “dignity of work”, he’s not comparing stay at home mothers to working mothers. He’s comparing anyone who lives off the backs of taxpayers to those who don’t.

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  3. BTW, I’m curious if anyone else has four likes to any of their posts from complete strangers or am I the only lucky one…………………………haaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaa

    I must be more famous than I realized.

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  4. You are the lucky one, indeed.

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  5. Scott – Read what I wrote, please. I did not make that argument, Mother Jones did, using Rosen. I suggested that argument could have used a better messenger.

    I do not posit that welfare is “noble”. FWIW, I justify welfare, on a temporary basis, on what I think are sound economic grounds, and I favor the welfare-to-work configuration. However, I strongly favor Head Start and similar early childhood programs that permit the working poor and the educable and trainable poor to become productive, while often breaking the cycle of poverty for that generation, according to the numbers.

    As Perot said, a million for Head Start now or ten million for prison later.

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    • Mark:

      I suggested that argument could have used a better messenger.

      It seemed to me that you were suggesting that the Pollit’s point had more resonance than Rosen’s “foolish” attack. I don’t think it has any more resonance at all. Romney was making a point about welfare, not about stay-at-home motherhood, and Pollit’s attempt to place the comments in the context of the controversy initiated by Rosen’s comments is, to me at least, yet another transparent attempt to advance the mythical notion of a war on women.

      I do not posit that welfare is “noble”.

      I know, which is why I did not suggest you did. I suggested that Romney’s comment about the “dignity of work” was drawing an implicit comparison between those who support themselves and those who are supported by taxpayers, not, as Pollit’s tortured reasoning would have it, between women who work outside the home and women who work inside the home.

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  6. SATIRE

    More to the politics of this – did Ann Romney say this? If she did, it could close the discussion on WMR and Ann and the “place” they assign to women. If this is an “Onion” type quotation, it is time for them to get out front of it. Google it. I did not see any mainstream reports on it, but it is widespread on the web. True? False? A “joke”?

    “Why should women be paid equal to men? Men have been in the working world a lot longer and deserve to be paid at a higher rate. Heck, I’m a working mom and I’m not paid a dime. I depend on my husband to provide for me and my family, as should most women… and if a woman does work, she should be happy just to be out there in the working world and quit complaining that she’s not making as much as her male counterparts. I mean really, all this wanting to be equal nonsense is going to be detrimental to the future of women everywhere. Who’s going to want to hire a woman, or for that matter, even marry a woman who thinks she is the same, if not better than a man at any job. It’s almost laughable. C’mon now ladies, are you with me on this?”

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    • Mark:

      SATIRE

      The fact that this was even in doubt indicates to me how truly effective feminist/left-wing propaganda has been regarding conservative attitudes towards women, and shows precisely why they continue to push the whole war on women myth as a political strategy.

      Like

  7. Even I knew that was badly written satire. And Scott, it was just an interesting perspective to me of the Romney/working mom’s kerfuffle, which I think is mostly past tense anyway. I hadn’t considered the difference, if there is one, between attitudes toward single stay at home moms versus married stay at home moms. I didn’t reach any conclusions but expected your reaction regardless.

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  8. I saw that Nation article a few days ago and thought about linking to it but I ultimately found the downsides of the article to outweigh what I thought was sort of a unique take. Ultimately, I agree with Scott that it requires some tortured logic to get to the conclusion. There is a kernal of a good idea in pointing out Romney’s sort of paternalistic view of it being important that these single mom’s work when at the same time he notes being a stay at home mom is an important job. There does seem to be a disconnect there, but it isn’t the blantant hypocrisy that The Nation article tried to make it out to be.

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    • ashot:

      There does seem to be a disconnect there…

      I think whatever disconnect may appear to exist derives strictly from the nature of a welfare system which necessarily pits different values against each other. There is nothing inherently contradictory between valuing the dignity that comes with earning your own living and also valuing the nobility of stay-at-home parenthood. The problem is that, within the context of welfare as policy, particularly as it regards single parenthood, it is impossible to pursue them both at the same time. To encourage one through policy is, necessarily, to discourage the other.

      And I have little doubt that if Romney had embraced the exact opposite of what he said, ie that he’d rather spend more money on welfare payments then on day care in order to encourage mothers to stay at home and look after their kids, he would be attacked by the likes of Pollit for stigmatizing and devaluing mothers who work outside the home. It’s all just political theater to maintain the perception that conservatives are somehow anti-women. It’s not substantive criticism.

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      • I think whatever disconnect may appear to exist derives strictly from the nature of a welfare system which necessarily pits different values against each other.

        That’s well said, Scott. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why the article didn’t resonate with me, but that probably explains it. I don’t know if the values are pitted quite so starkly as your or Romney put it. While there certainly are many unwed mothers on welfare that don’t know the value of hard work, there are others in that position through little or no fault of their own. So the disconnect is probably mostly due to the nature of the welfare system and the inexactness of Romney’s criticism.

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  9. ” When I was growing up the popular appetizer at cocktail parties was Rumaki (chicken liver, water chestnut, bacon)”

    We’ve been making a rumaki with dates rather than chicken livers. Its delicious.

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  10. bsimon

    I’ve heard about those from my girls but haven’t tried them yet. I don’t eat bacon but I wouldn’t be adverse to making them for company. I think one of our daughters puts a little cream cheese inside the date even…………yummy.

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