We tried that already, didn't we?

It's really not worth watching the Sunday morning news shows. Invariably, it's the same people saying the same things to the same other people. None of them are especially interesting things to say, either.
Well, this morning Matthew Yglesias was on C-Span along with a Heritage Foundation person, and interested in the rare opportunity to see a liberal on the tv, I turned it on. Two things I noticed.

One, liberals are way too polite. The Heritage guy would say some jackassy thing and Matthew Yglesias would politely state an opposing viewpoint, but never really go after the other guy's viewpoint - which left one with the opinion that these were two equally valid points of view, when one was just jackassy. Which brings me to point number

Two, can't we start telling these people that their ideas have already been given a chance in the real world and that the results really sucked? Do they not know that? Heritage guy: not enough tax cuts in the stimulus package. John Boehner: not enough tax cuts in the stimulus package. John McCain: Not enough tax cuts in the stimulus package. OMG shutup. Tax cuts were the big magic wand you people have been wielding for the last eight years, along with deregulation and off-budget expenses. If they had been good ideas, I guess the Republican permanent majority would now be here. Somebody needs to point this out.

Happy Birthday Jackie!

This weekend has been pretty quiet. I'm on a diet program at work and Friday was my third weigh-in. After three weeks, I'm pretty much where I started. So I decided to get more serious. Unfortunately, it was Jackie's birthday this weekend, which meant another carrot cake. It's hard to get serious with that around.

Besides the carrot cake, my non-beer-drinking resolve flew out the window a little bit on Friday when Ralph and I went to Arthur's for dinner. For about a month now, I've wanted to sit on the patio at Arthur's and drink beer. The whole winter/season/frigid temperature thing kind of got in the way of this, but the slightly warm weather made sitting inside at Arthur's even sound okay. So off we went.

The crowd was enormous. It makes me wonder if that 50 degree weather on Friday had lots of people out and about. There was nothing of consequence going on this weekend and with the holiday season just over, it seemed like a small crowd would be the likely scenario. We've gone to Arthur's other Friday nights and the place was half-empty. Just makes me wonder why so many people show up all at once or stay home all at once. Is there no free will? Are we slaves to a 20 degree hike in temperature? My guess is yes. Any way, the crowd was large and the wait was long. Made me thirsty. Beer with french fries and cole slaw. Not very healthy, but still veggie.

I'm also a little out of sorts because Obama has been in office for 5 days now and we still have no high-speed train service from here to New York. So the disappointment begins.

Get back on that bandwagon!

New Year's Resolutions took a hit this week. Hamburgers one night, hot wings on another (with beer, managing to fall off both wagons in one meal). And Ralph's birthday was Thursday, which required some homemade spaghetti sauce.

Real Tomato Sauce

1 onion, chopped
8 oz. mushrooms, quartered
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsps olive oil
2 28-ounce cans of crushed tomato or tomato puree
bay leaves
oregano
basil
pepper
salt
fresh parsley, chopped
1 lb Italian (Yane) sausage

1. Saute onion, mushrooms and garlic in oil in a large pot.
2. Add the crushed tomatoes, then bay leaves, oregano, basil, pepper and salt. Use fresh herbs if available, otherwise go with the dried. Let simmer for an hour or so.
3. Brown sausage in a skillet. If sausage links, cut into bite-size pieces - or shape into meatballs. Don't have to be cooked through because they will simmer along with the tomatos in a minute.
4. Add sausage and fresh parsley (and some water if getting too thick) to tomato sauce and let cook for another 20 or 30 minutes.
5. Eat.

Also on the birthday menu was carrot cake. I can make a delicious carrot cake, given the time, but time was lacking. Most bakery carrot cakes are not very good - they taste more like Betty Crocker spice cake with some weird specks of neon orange added. So I did some internet sleuthing and found recommendations for Bluebird Bakery. Ah ha! Right around the corner from work - easy to pick up the cake at lunchtime. I called to order the cake and was shocked - $15 for a 6-inch carrot cake and $30 for an 8 inch cake. Imagining something the size of a large muffin, I went ahead and ordered the 6-inch (we're on a purported diet anyway). I am happy to report that the cake was really really good, and it wasn't as tiny as I imagined - it was very pretty, with cream cheese frosting and lots of crushed walnuts as decoration. Bluebird Bakery has a new patron.

Now I'm back on the bandwagon - and plan to make this veggie stew for dinner tomorrow. We'll see how it turns out. It's supposed to have eggplant, yuck, but one of the commentors suggested the substitution of cauliflower and carrots. Sounds like a plan. From allrecipes.com, the description recommended serving over polenta, rice or pasta. It so happens that residing in our refrigerator right now is some polenta, just waiting to be served under.

Mediterranean Vegetable Stew

2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 cup chopped red onion
2 cups coarsely chopped green pepper
2 large garlic cloves, crushed
1 cup sliced mushrooms
A cup or 2 of cauliflower & carrots, cut in 1- to 2-inch chunks
1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes
1/2 cup kalamata olives, pitted and sliced
1 (15 ounce) can chickpeas or white beans, drained and rinsed
1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
1 cup coarsely chopped parsley

In a large skillet, heat 1 Tb. oil. Saute onion and pepper until soft, about 10 minutes. Add 1 Tb. oil, garlic, mushrooms, cauliflower and carrots. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until veggies are softened but not mushy, about 15 minutes. Add tomatoes, olives, chickpeas and rosemary. Simmer until heated through, about 10 minutes. Stir in parsley. Sprinkle feta cheese over stew if desired.

Blahfu

If you really have a taste for something bland, it's hard to go wrong with tofu. The way I understand it, you should cook it with something that has a flavor, which is really just about any other food. So the possibilities are endless. But, you know, why not just cook more of the other stuff, which has the flavor to begin with.
I do kind of like it in hot and sour soup - but in that case, the other flavors are so overwhelming it's nice to get a little pillow of spongy nothingness in the midst of all the heat and vinegar.
So today we went for a long walk with the dogs, then did some shopping for food for the week. The tofu has been in the fridge for awhile so I thought it best to get it over with.

Tofu Fried Rice

1 (14-ounce) package firm tofu, drained and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
2 tablespoons sesame oil, divided
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup broccoli
3/4 cup thinly sliced green onions
1 cup shredded cabbage
1/4 pound snow peas, trimmed and cut lengthwise into thin strips
4 cups cooked long-grain brown rice, chilled
1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce

Preparation
Place tofu between paper towels until barely moist. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large
nonstick skillet or stir-fry pan over medium-high heat. Add tofu, and cook 8 minutes or
until golden. Sprinkle with salt. Remove tofu from pan.
Heat 1 tablespoon oil in pan over medium-high heat. Add bell broccoli and cabbage, and sauté 2 minutes. Add snow peas, and sauté 30 seconds. Stir in rice, and cook 2 minutes. Add tofu, cook 1 minute, stirring gently. Remove from heat. Stir in soy sauce.

Barley and cauliflower soup

Easy winter dinner - the soup is filling and can be cooked in one pot, making for less clean-up after dinner.

Ingredients
1/2 cup chopped onion
Tsp oil
4 cups water
2 vegetarian boullioun cubes
1/2 cup barley
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 head of cauliflower, chopped
1 cup carrots, sliced
1 leek, sliced
2 cups milk
1/4 cup flour
4 oz. shredded swiss cheese

Directions
1. Heat the oil and saute the onions in large sauce pan.
2. Add the water, barley, boullion, garlic, salt and pepper to pot. Bring to boil; reduce heat. Simmer 20 minutes or so.
3. Add vegetables (cauliflower, carrota, leek). Add more water if needed and simmer another 20 minutes, until vegetables and barley are tender.
4. Combine 1/2 cup milk with flour, mixing until well-blended. Gradually stir into soup with remaining milk and cheese. Continue cooking over medium heat about about 5 minutes or until thickened, stirring occasionally.

Makes 6 servings.
Note: If you use Quick Barley, steps 2 and 3 can be combined and cooking should only take about 20 minutes.

Sort of Vegetarian

Why sort of vegetarian and not completely vegetarian? Two reasons: 1) I have never been able to be completely anything and 2) I have 50 pounds of ground beef in the freezer downstairs.

Eating less meat is better for you and the environment and certainly the animal. The Omnivore's Dilemma and Fast Food Nation are pretty persuasive books. But I grew up carnivorously, so it's difficult to just go cold turkey. Plus I have that fifty pounds of meat. But I really want to avoid the over-processed, genetically-engineered, hormonized, antibiotic-laden e-coli-ridden, modern method of delivering foods to the consumer. By choosing locally-grown foods that are as close to unprocessed as possible, it should be better for the environment, and I don't have to feel so guilty about what a poor recycler I am.

The hamburger in the freezer is from my sister, who raises cows on her farm, far removed from the land of Upton Sinclair. So I figure it's okay to buy her beef. And every once in awhile, I may get to hankering for some BW3 buffalo wings. I would rather break down and go for those every so often, then not try at all. I copied this approach from my son Raymond, who is 99% vegetarian and 1% meat-eater; when he comes back to Cincinnati he has to stop at the local chili parlor for a SkyLine 3-way chili, as pictured below.

Rachel Maddow gets dissed

Everyone agreed (even Jackie and Tim) that the pasta primavera was a keeper, except to go heavier on the sauce - more balsamic vinegar, garlic and basil. Duly noted.

Now to change topics completely and switch to politics. I read this post today at TPM cafe about the top ten progressive intellectuals under age 40.:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/12/31/the_ten_young_progressive_inte/

Interesting you-tubing to be had, if you can spare a couple hours. Of interest to me, however, was the Rachel Maddow reviews in the comments section. I instantly wanted to join in and defend her, but I had to sign in to leave a comment and could not remember my user name/password combination. I believe I have about 58 accounts on most websites, since it is so much easier to create a new one than to try to recover your old one. Frustrating.

The trash-talk on Maddow is as follows - awful, smarmy, snarky, shallow, superficial and, I quote: "If there's any problem with the Maddow show its simply that these talk shows are now permeating cable channels."

Wait a minute. And here I tried fruitlessly to reply, that's actually not the problem. The problem is the proliferation of cable-channel talk shows without a left-wing view. Rachel Maddow is the solution! That's the whole point! All television talk shows are awful, smarmy, snarky, blah, blah,blah, - that is the nature of television. People watch TV for entertainment. They want goofy news anchors to sit and discuss titillating topics and manufacture controversy. And cable tv channels just want to sell toothpaste or new cars or whatever. And for the last 10 or 15 years, the talk show moderators that TV audiences have tuned into have been either one of two types, unctuous or angry: the Wolf Blitzer model of generic nonsubstantive blather gussied up with fancy special effects, or the Bill O'Reilly model of angry nonsubstantive screeds gussied up with right-wing talking points and, again, special effects.
The virtue of Rachel Maddow (and Keith Olbermann as well) is that they manage to deliver a popular cable-news show with a little bit of left-wing perspective and flashes of incisive commentary that transcend the average cable news nonsense. - and it gets delivered to a large audience. Bill Moyers and Amy Goodman are great, but appeal to the pointy-heads, not the general public. We need Rachel!

Pasta Primavera

As usual, the first day of the New Year at casa de Pettit was couch potato central. A Monk marathon was on TV, so I got to catch up on a lot of old Monk shows that I previously slept through.
For dinner, I fixed enchiladas with mushrooms, black olives and onions. Good stuff. As I fully anticipated, Jackie demanded a meat product, so I took the rest of the frozen turkey left over from Thanksgiving and prepared some with turkey, some without; everyone was happy.
Today, another recipe from the web: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/No-Cream-Pasta-Primavera/Detail.aspx


No-Cream Pasta Primavera
"Spring veggies benefit from a quick roasting in olive oil and herbs before being tossed with penne. No cream here - just the fresh flavors of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and lemon. A beautiful dish."
INGREDIENTS:
1 (12 ounce) package penne pasta
1 yellow squash, chopped
1 zucchini, chopped
1 carrot, julienned
1/2 red bell pepper, julienned
1/2 pint grape tomatoes
1 cup fresh green beans, trimmed and cut into 1 inch pieces
5 spears asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1 inch pieces
1/4 cup olive oil, divided
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
1/2 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon Italian seasoning
1 tablespoon butter
1/4 large yellow onion, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
2 teaspoons lemon zest
1/3 cup chopped fresh basil leaves
1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup grated Romano cheese
DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C). Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil.
2. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add penne pasta and cook for 10 to 12 minutes or until al dente; drain.
3. In a bowl, toss squash, zucchini, carrot, red bell pepper, tomatoes, green beans, and asparagus with 2 tablespoons olive oil, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and Italian seasoning. Arrange vegetables on the baking sheet, and roast 15 minutes in the preheated oven, until tender.
4. Heat remaining olive oil and butter in a large skillet. Stir in the onion and garlic, and cook until tender. Mix in cooked pasta, lemon zest, basil, parsley, and balsamic vinegar. Gently toss and cook until heated through. Remove from heat and transfer to a large bowl. Toss with roasted vegetables and sprinkle with Romano cheese to serve.

A lot of the commentors (commenters? sp?) added and deleted ingredients to come up with their own versions - I think I'll add the toasted pine nuts, because I love the toasted pine nuts.


Gram's Refrigerator rolls

Also, seems like Gram's bread rolls would make a natural accompaniment. My grandmother was part of our family household when I grew up - it was like having three parents, one of whom baked six loaves of bread every weekend, and made a double batch of these rolls at Christmas and Thanksgiving. I think they were called refrigerator rolls because she would make the dough and stick it in the fridge until dinner time, roll them out for crescent rolls, let them rise for awhile and bake them when the oven was available. For crescent rolls, she would roll out a 9 or 10 inch circle, cut into pie shape pieces, then roll each piece into the middle to form the crescent shapes. I would help her, and was given the dough scraps to roll into a cinnamon-sugar mix to make my own treats.

Ingredients
1 pkg active dry yeast
1/2 cup water
1 teaspoon sugar
1 cup milk, scalded
1/3 cup melted shortening, or 6 tbsp butter
1/3 cup sugar
2 tsps salt
1 beaten egg
5 cups flour

1. Soften dry yeast in warm water (110 deg). Add 1 tsp sugar to yeast mixture. Add milk, cooled to lukewarm, shortening, 3/4 cup sugar and salt.
2. Add eggs, beat well. Add flour to make soft dough; let stand ten minutes; knead on lightly floured surface til smooth and elastic. Place in greased bowl, turning once to grease surface, and cover. Store in refrigerator.
3. Shape rolls about two hours before serving, let rise til double in bulk. Bake in hot oven, 15 to 20 minutes.

My bread machine version:
1. Put the milk and the butter in a microwaveable bowl and zap it til the butter is melted.
2. Pour the milk into the bread pan along with the water, sugar and salt. Let it cool a bit and add the egg.
3. Add about 4 cups of flour, then the yeast on the top of the flour. Turn the breadmaker to dough setting. As it begins to knead, put in additional flour (may not need all five cups).
4. When the dough cycle is finished, I usually make parkerhouse rolls (no rolling out required). Roll out little dough balls in my hand, placing three into each cup of a cupcake pan, then let them rise while covered.
5. I cook at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes. She wrote down 450 degrees, but many black-bottomed rolls later, I've decided this is a typo.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

2008 concluded with a plumbing issue that delayed our party plans. Just like Obama, we'll be spending some time in '09 cleaning up a mess from '08. Ralph stayed behind to wait for Roto-Rooter while Jackie and I drove to Dayton. Ralph made it to the party at 1 am, in time for a beer and a trip back home.
Took this to the Ryan New Year's Eve Party to fulfill my buffet assignment for an Apple Salad. From www.allrecipes.com, with 299 ratings, all rating the recipe 5 out of 5. It's perfect!

Winter Fruit Salad with Lemon Poppyseed Dressing

1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup lemon juice
2 teaspoons diced onion
1 teaspoon Dijon-style prepared mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon poppy seeds
1 head romaine lettuce, torninto bite-size pieces
4 ounces shredded Swiss cheese
1 cup cashews
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1 apple - sliced
1 pear - sliced

In a blender or food processor, combine sugar, lemon juice, onion,mustard, and salt. Process until well blended. With machine still running,add oil in a slow, steady stream until mixture is thick and smooth. Add poppy seeds, and process just a few seconds more to mix.In a large serving bowl, toss together the romaine lettuce, shreddedSwiss cheese, cashews, dried cranberries, apple, and pear. Pour dressing over salad just before serving, and toss to coat.