Bites & Pieces (Saturday Vegetarian Edition)

Posted on January 28, 2012 by Michigoose

About 15 years ago I started trying to incorporate vegetarian meals into my week on a somewhat regular basis, partly for health reasons, partly for ecological reasons, and partly just to learn a new way to eat–when you’re a Midwestern farm girl any meal which isn’t built around a proteinaceous entree just isn’t a meal!  One of the best things I did at that time was to buy a cookbook titled “The Occasional Vegetarian” by Karen Lee (it has since gone out of print, but copies are still available); in this particular cookbook not only does she have great recipes, but she lays out entire menus so that those of us without a clue can figure out how to put together a balanced meal without meat.  Another thing that I like about this cookbook is that many of her recipes can be multi-purposed, in these instances, hors d’oeuvres turn into entrees a couple of days later.

So, for lms and her vegetarian dinner party I offer up these ideas from Karen Lee, with modifications by Michigoose:

Basic Toast Rounds

1 French baguette, cut into 1/4-inch slices

Olive oil

  1. Preheat the oven to 250 degrees
  2. Brush the bread slices lightly with the oil and lay them on a cookie sheet; bake until light brown and crisp through, 20 – 30 minutes.

These can be used immediately or stored for up to about five days. . . although mine never last that long.

Chino Caponata

Chinese eggplant ratatouille with Italian overtones. . . use as an appetizer on the toast rounds, or make even more (double the recipe), save it for a couple of days for the flavors to meld, and use it to top pasta.  Yummy!

2 lb eggplant (2 or 3 medium eggplants)

1 cup tomato sauce

4 tablespoons soy sauce

2 tablespoons sherry vinegar + 5 tablespoons dry sherry

4 teaspoons sugar

2 teaspoons Chinese hot chili oil

3 tablespoons peanut oil

2 cups chopped Spanish (or other mild) onion

4 tablespoons minced garlic

2 red bell peppers, roasted and chopped

3 tablespoons chopped fresh oregano (or 1 1/2 dried)

3 tablespoons small capers, drained

  1. Cut the eggplant into 1/2-inch cubes, toss with some salt and place in a colander.  Set aside for an hour, then rinse and allow to drain for about 10 minutes.  Dry thoroughly between paper towels.
  2. Combine the tomato sauce, soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, sherry, and chili oil; set aside.
  3. Heat a wok or iron skillet over high heat until it is (literally) smoking hot.  Pour in some of the peanut oil and toss in some eggplant cubes (don’t over-crowd the pan).  Press down on the eggplant to aid in scorching, and cook, stirring and pressing down occasionally, for about 5 minutes until the eggplant is soft and well-charred.  Remove the eggplant from the pan and repeat until all of the eggplant is cooked.
  4. Add more oil to the pan and add the onion and fry, stirring frequently, until it begins to brown (about 2 minutes).  Add the garlic and stir-fry for 1 minute more.  Add the eggplant back into the pan along with the tomato sauce mixture and stir until the sauce is absorbed, about 1 minute.  Add the pepper, oregano and capers and stir for a few seconds.  Season to taste, and serve warm or at room temperature.

Curried Roasted Garlic Spread

Not only is this spread fantastic on those toast rounds, but it can be used as a dip, or a great low-fat topping on potatoes.

1 head garlic

1/2 teaspoon olive oil

2 tablespoons sour cream

1 cup plain nonfat yogurt

1 tablespoon cumin powder (roasted, if possible)

1 tablespoon curry powder

  1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
  2. Cut through the garlic head near the top, drizzle the oil over the top, place the garlic in some aluminum foil, seal, and roast for 40 minutes.  Unwrap and let cool.
  3. Combine the sour cream, yogurt, cumin, curry powder, and salt and pepper to taste.
  4. Pinch the cloves out of the garlic head and mash them into the yogurt mixture.
  5. Let the spread sit at room temperature for at least an hour before serving so that the flavors can meld.

Pasta Caponata

What to do with that leftover Chino Caponata. . .

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 garlic clove, minced

2 cups tomato sauce

1 cup Chino Caponata

1 tablespoon mascarpone or heavy cream

2 teaspoons salt

1/2 pound short pasta (I like to use bowties for this)

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

  1. Heat the olive oil in a medium skillet.  Add the garlic and saute until golden.
  2. Add the tomato sauce and bring to a simmer.  Stir in the Chino Caponata and bring to a simmer again.  Add the mascarpone or cream and stir.  Remove from the heat and toss with pasta.  Top with the cheese and serve immediately.

Happy weekend, all!

Filed under: Bites and Pieces, cooking, food, recipes | 5 Comments »

I Just Trashed a Post

Posted on January 22, 2012 by Michigoose

I just came back from a night out with friends and I cannot believe how low the commentary got on the Saturday morning post  that I put up; those of you who were commenting on it today (Sunday) and who got into a pissing match just proved that we’re only as good as our ideals–and yours were pretty damned shabby.

I  trashed the post for one reason–bullying on this blog.  We’re only going to succeed if we adhere to Rule #5, and you guys didn’t.  Quit bullying.

Yeah, I’m pissed.

 

Update:  Let me be clear about something.  I trashed the post because I was the original author and I don’t want my name associated with the commentary that happened on there.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 177 Comments »

Pieces & Bits (Saturday Morning Ramblings)

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Michigoose

Funniest headline of the day. So far.

Housekeeping note:  I’ll be working on the FAQ this weekend, so if you’ve got something you’d particularly like to be included, please go to the comments for that page (tab at the top) and stick your question/answer in.  Any chance anybody ever captured a copy of the old one over at the Blogger site?  I didn’t keep my working copy after I posted it over there. . .  😦

Why is this pork when it’s at a Federal level and stimulus when it’s at the state level?

As for the broader issue of fixing state transportation, Snyder said spending the money now would be preferable to spending five times more several years from now as conditions deteriorate.

Lawmakers are expected to start introducing legislation as early as next week to raise more money for roads and bridges through higher vehicle registration fees and changes in the way gas and diesel fuels are taxed. The Michigan Chamber of Commerce has for several years backed increasing money for improving the transportation system.

I’m not saying I disagree with this priority at all (having driven from Ann Arbor to Gaylord and back during the holidays while visiting family), but it was bad when a Democratic President wanted to do it, so why is it good when a Republican Governor wants to do it?

I saw this on the news last night (evidently, so did AllButCertain). Who knew the Prez could sing, too?

While this isn’t his best version of it, anybody who loves cats–Left, Right or Center–would enjoy Kevin Drum’s Friday Cat Blogging.  I try to click on it last thing every Friday before leaving work; it’s a great little stress reliever.

Steve Benen (the Political Animal at Washington Monthly) has started doing a Friday afternoon roundup of Mitt Romney’s most egregious lies of the week.  I hadn’t heard several of this week’s quotes, but number six (“I went off on my own. I didn’t inherit money from my parents.”) has to take the cake for lamest lie I’ve heard in a long time.  I mean, c’mon, Mitt!  If the check was big enough for BYU to name the school after your Dad, you gave it away only because you needed to for tax purposes.  This is another example of Mitt wanting to have it both ways–yes, he inherited a bunch of money from his Dad that he didn’t need for himself because he was a successful, wealthy businessman–so he donated it to his alma mater.  But the implication that he came from middle class roots is just laughable.

In preparation for tomorrow’s games:

Etta James remembered

-Mark

Filed under: 2012, Infrastructure | 252 Comments »

Birthday Bits & Pieces (Friday Night Party)

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Michigoose

It’s okie’s birthday and we’re throwing a party!

Ever wonder what was going on the year you were born?

6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… it’s 1952. There’s TV noise coming from the second floor. Someone turned up the volume way too high. The sun is burning from above. These were different times. The show playing on TV is Kukla, Fran and Ollie. The sun goes down. Someone switches channels. There’s The Ed Sullivan Show on now. That’s the world you were born in.

It’s The Bark Side. I wonder how much Volkswagen is paying to air this during the Super Bowl. —KW

Current Events  from 1952, even though Okie won’t remember them, having just been born and all.

The first commercial jet plane, the BOAC’s Comet, is put into service.

The United States Senate ratifies a peace treaty with Japan.

Alan Freed presents the Moondog Coronation Ball, the first rock and roll concert, in Cleveland, Ohio

In a radio address to the nation from the White House, President Harry S. Truman calls for the seizure of all steel mills in the United States in order to prevent a nationwide strike.

U.S. lieutenant colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict land a plane at the geographic North Pole.

The concept for the integrated circuit, the basis for all modern computers, is first published by Geoffrey W.A. Dummer.

The United States successfully detonates the first hydrogen bomb, codenamed “Mike” , at Eniwetok island in the Bikini atoll located in the Pacific Ocean.

U.S. presidential election, 1952: Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower defeats Democrat Adlai Stevenson.

Agatha Christie’s murder-mystery play The Mousetrap opens at the Ambassadors Theatre in London, still the longest continuously running play in history).

Great Smog of 1952: A “killer fog” descends on London (“Smog” for “smoke” and “fog” becomes a word).

And because we can…..Here’s to you Okie

lms

Filed under: Birthdays, Bits and Pieces | Tagged: | 74 Comments »

Sunday Morning Political Post

Posted on January 15, 2012 by Michigoose

Because, after all, we are a political blog!

“The State”, South Carolina’s biggest newspaper, has endorsed Jon Huntsman this morning. As they say,

Mr. Huntsman is a true conservative, with a record and platform of bold economic reform straight out of the free-market bible, but he’s a realist, whose goal is likewise to get things done. Under his leadership, Utah led the nation in job creation, and the Pew Center on the States ranked it the best-managed state in the nation.

He also is head and shoulders above the field on foreign policy. He served as President George H.W. Bush’s U.S. ambassador to Singapore and President George W. Bush’s deputy U.S. trade representative and U.S. trade ambassador, and the next entry on that resume is even more impressive: He was a popular and successful governor in an extremely conservative state, well positioned to become a leading 2012 presidential contender, when Mr. Obama asked him to serve in arguably our nation’s most important diplomatic post, U.S. ambassador to China. It could be political suicide, but he didn’t hesitate. As he told our editorial board: “When the president asks you to serve, you serve.”

I would like to test embedded blockquotes, said Kevin Willis, editing this post. This should be removed later.

We don’t agree with all of Mr. Huntsman’s positions; for but one example, he championed one of the nation’s biggest private-school voucher programs. And with George Will calling him the most conservative candidate and The Wall Street Journal editorial page endorsing his tax plan, independent voters might find less to like about his positions than, say, Mr. Romney’s or Newt Gingrich’s.
What makes him attractive are the essential values that drive his candidacy: honor and old-fashioned decency and pragmatism. As he made clear Wednesday to a room packed full of USC students on the first stop of his “Country First” tour, his goal is to rebuild trust in government, and that means abandoning the invective and reestablishing the political center.

As a Utahn, and a liberal who wishes the Republicans would put up a realistic candidate, I’d love to see Jon Huntsman get the nomination. I still don’t think he’ll make it past South Carolina because I don’t the the Republican primary voters are in any mood for anything realistic, but there’s always hope for 2016.

Now the Dems just need to start thinking about 2016!

Filed under: 2012, politics | 91 Comments »

Bits & Pieces (Friday Night Comics)(aka Figuring Out How to Create a Post and Schedule It)

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Michigoose

NOTE for scheduling posts it appears that the default is Greenwich Mean Time, so you’ll have to do a little math to figure out when you want it to post; at least, we’ll know if I’m right if this pops up at 1800 EST/1700 CST/1600 MST/1500 PST this afternoon!

Update as of 1/13/2012 2219 MST: the blog is now set to MST (as the “old” ATiM was) so as long as we don’t muck around with the time zone–as I was doing today–everything should be fine.

For Scott, Mr McWingnut, and any other AGW deniers out there. . . you know who you are!  🙂

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Never forget the science. . . science is our friend!

Overboard

It’s all the Muppets’ faults.  Maybe we should stop linking their videos–it might have a bad influence on us and whether or not we believe in Universal Healthcare and the ACA. . . oh, wait, too late!

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At least one of my cats has never figured out that this is how my beagle gets away with things:

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Never thought about it that way!

Frazz

All of the above were in Wednesday’s paper here in SLC–I haven’t laughed out loud at so many comics in one day in ages.  And, finally, in honor of Tuesday’s story in The Advocate:

image

Pat Bagley, our local editorial cartoonist.  Yee-haw!

Well, that seemed to be pretty painless–and, too cool! The buttons along the top (like bold and italic) automatically show you the html code if you’re editing in that window, so you don’t have to remember the code.  Now we’ll see if it’s scheduled correctly. . .

Forgot to change the scheduled time to MST, so we’ll see what happens in four minutes.

Let the countdown begin!

Update again as of 1/13/2012 2225: you can edit the size of the images (in this case, the comics) by clicking on them and then selecting the little icon that looks like a jpg icon in the upper left hand corner of the image (“Edit image”). I just reduced the size of each of them.

There’s a bit of a learning curve that we’re having to go through again, but I’m thinking that this site is going to be even better than Blogger was at its best. . . thanks, Kevin, lms and Scott!

Michigoose

Filed under: Bits and Pieces, comics, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | 66 Comments »

Which is Crazier? South Carolina Polling or Blogger’s New Commenting Format?

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Michigoose

Stephen Colbert, favorite son, polls higher in South Carolina than Jon Huntsman.

Discuss amongst yourselves for a bit–I’m on my way out to a birthday dinner for a friend and will join the discussion in progress. . .

Filed under: Uncategorized | 13 Comments »

Bits & Pieces (Wednesday Night Health Edition)

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Michigoose

Well, there goes my reason for drinking red wine!  Guess I’ll just have to stick with white. . . and the occasional martini when I’m out of state (due to Utah’s often odd liquor laws a real martini can’t be made here:

Metered Dispensing
Utah law requires restaurants, clubs, on-premise banquet licensees, reception centers, and airport lounges to use a metered dispensing system that is calibrated to dispense no more than 1.5 ounces of primary liquor in a mixed drink. Secondary alcoholic flavorings may then be added to a mixed drink as the recipe requires, not to exceed a total of 2.5 ounces of spirituous liquor.


Internal medicine vs surgery. . . also female vs male.  “Eating is for wimps and dermatologists!”  LMAO!


And just to show how versatile these characters are, here’s the explanation we’ve all been waiting for:




While Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines doesn’t allow YouTube (or iTunes, for that matter) to distribute his videos, Don Henley is a worthy substitute:


And another oldie but goodie:

Bob graduated from the high school that I would have attended had I stayed in Ann Arbor (darn my parents for moving!!), and one year he came back to be the Senior Prom “band”.  One of my very best friends of all time knew how much I loved Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band and invited me to the prom. . . Best. Concert. Ever!

Filed under: Uncategorized | 85 Comments »

Bits & Pieces (Tuesday Night Open Mic)

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Michigoose

Well, well, well. . . many of our hometowns turn up on this list, but look who’s the gayest of them all.  Who’d a thunk it??

Few things are better than women in science (right??!!??), and this TED talk is great!

Another edition of clinician silliness cartoons: 

Try as they might. . .

The Granite State © Nate Beeler, The Washington Examiner,mitt romney, new hampshire, granite, state, primary, campaign, 2012, republican, gop, candidates, nomination, election, politics, newt gingrich, ron paul, rick santorum, jon huntsman, stone

So what else is up out there?  Got any more code for us tonight, Kevin?  🙂

Filed under: Uncategorized | 24 Comments »

Bits & Pieces (Friday Night Funnies [?])

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Michigoose

OK, Kev, I don’t know how good I’ll be at this, but here’s an attempt to take some of the pressure off of you!

I find this to be wonderful, especially since Jon Huntsman is the only Republican in the field that I’d ever vote for.  Unfortunately, I doubt he’ll make it past South Carolina.

I don’t know if any of you are watching Once Upon a Time on Sunday nights, but if you aren’t I think many of you would really enjoy it.  Hulu has all of the current episodes up until Monday night so you can watch them back-to-back and get caught up in the story if you’re so inclined.

Now for the things that tickled my funny bone today. . .

First up, a nurse vs an Orthopedic surgeon.  Worth it for hearing her call him a slack bloody wanker at the end. . .

Not being a clinician myself, but working with many, I find this whole series of cartoons hilarious.  If you didn’t find the original one (Anesthesiologist vs an Orthopedic surgeon) funny you probably won’t laugh at this one, either, but still thought I’d post it.

Muppet Labs–where the future is being made today.  Wouldn’t this be handy?

And to combine two of Kevin’s favorites, Star Wars meets the Muppet Show!

And finally, not necessarily funny, but the video popped up on the sidebar of YouTube while I was surfing around on it, so here’s one of my all-time favorite songs. . .

What do you guys got??

***

The 5 Reasons Marriage Scares Men. I think many of these could apply to women, although they might be repurposed into the 5 Reasons Why Being Married Disappoints Women. My experience has been that women are usually enthusiastic about the idea of marriage, but not as typically satisfied with the results.

My observation, having been married 19 years now and living with my wife for over 20, is that marriage is a relationship where both partners tend to feel they are compromising, on everything, 90% of the time, and it gets old. For both of them. It’s a recipe for mutual dissatisfaction, especially over the long haul, but having been a parent for 14 years now, I’d definitely agree that I would not want to be a single parent. When your partner is in a mood for the thirteenth-thousand time, and you have to deal with it, you wonder what either of you were thinking when you said “I do”. 😉

Still, the fact is, the house looks a whole lot better—and a whole lot more adult, and clean—than it would if I lived alone in my Layer of Masculinity that I do, on many occasions, pine for. And meals are healthier than having breakfast cereal for dinner every day, which would probably be what I’d do, if left on my own.

— KW

Filed under: Uncategorized | 21 Comments »

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