Boing Boing notes that
around 100 years ago a German company produced sugar-and-chocolate records. I can tell you with confidence
that if someone had given any of them to my wife none would have survived to this day.
Hokie Smokes, folks, it’s the 25th Carnival of the Recipes here at The Glittering Eye. When I signed up for this date I didn’t realize what a great date this is—very propitious. There’s an enormous number of things going on and we’re going to need recipes for all of them. The Super Bowl is on Sunday. Mardis Gras is on Tuesday. And the Lunar New Year is on Wednesday. And we’ve got some great recipes here from some of the best cooks in the blogosphere.
I am really excited by a number of these recipes especially Kevin’s venison steaks, Karen’s pork stew, and Amanda’s spiced kofta.
When you’re checking out the recipes why don’t you take some time and check out the rest of these great blogs? Most of them are about more than recipes—they’ve got a lot to say.
And, by the way, please remember to tell us in the comments section here how any of the recipes you try work out.
UPDATE: Dave Gillies of The Daily Pundit provides recipes for Alfredo sauce and marinara sauce.
bothenook of A Geezer’s Corner prepares award-winning Sweet Onion Kielbasa. This is either an entree or a snack.
I knew I could depend on Allan for a great Indian recipe and I wasn’t disappointed. Allan of Inside Allan’s Mind presents Lamb and Red Lentil Curry.
I am definitely looking forward to trying out this submission. Kevin of Techno Gypsy gives us Venison Steaks. He recommends serving this with mashed potatoes and gravy and some good biscuits. Is there anything that isn’t good with mashed potatoes and gravy and good biscuits?
Amanda of Aussie Wife shows us how to make Spiced Indian Kofta. Can I come to your house for dinner? And do you think I can make it back in time for Monk?
Oddybobo of Bobo Blogger presents a trio of Korean goodies: Halmoni’s Quick Kimchi, Bulgogi (Marinated Beef), Rice and Seaweed. I’ve eaten more kimchi and bulgogi in my time than seems possible. I remember what one of my Korean senseis once said: “If you can’t eat five pounds of bulgogi, you’ll never make black belt”.
Owlish of Owlish Mutterings is getting the Chocolate Fondue ready.
We have not one but two lemon cake recipes. Booklore bakes up Lemon Cake and Christina of Feisty Repartee prepares a Glazed Lemon Cake.
triticale (the wheat and rye guy) who I can always count on for a fanciful name presents Scutterbotch Pralines.
It may not be rocket science but it’s certainly culinary legerdemain. caltechgirl of Not Exactly Rocket Science cooks us Irish Cream Chocolate Cheesecake.
Kris of Gradual Dazzle bakes us Peach Cobbler. You’re preaching to the choir on this one, Kris. Skillet cobblers like this are among my favorites.
Beth (our fearless leader) of She Who Will Be Obeyed! tells us something else about her we want to know: she likes a Grown Up Milkshake.
Snacks and Appetizers
I wasn’t sure whether to classify this one as a drink or a snack. You choose. Be of bebere.comJello Shots. She promises they “get the job done”.
Bread
My wife is quite a scone-fancier. I wish I could figure out how she stays so slim. It must be the fidgeting they told us about last week. Anyway, I’m sure she’ll be interested in Karen of Let’s Play Restaurant’sCinnamon Scones.
In a large skillet, cook bacon over medium heat until partially cooked but not crisp; drain on paper towels. Flatten chicken to 1/4-in. thickness. Sprinkle with seasoned salt if desired.
In a small bowl, combine the chilies, cream cheese and garlic. Spread over one side of each chicken breast. Roll up and tuck ends in. Wrap each with two bacon strips; secure with toothpicks.
Place in an 8-in. square baking dish coated with nonstick cooking spray. Bake, uncovered, at 375° for 30-35 minutes or until chicken juices run clear. Discard toothpicks. Yield: 2 servings.
Nutritional Analysis: One serving (prepared with reduced-fat cream cheese; calculated without seasoned salt) equals 316 calories, 12 g fat (5 g saturated fat), 121 mg cholesterol, 486 mg sodium, 3 g carbohydrate, 1 g fiber, 45 g protein.
Mardi Gras is next Tuesday and when I think of Mardi Gras I think of Cajun food and when I think of Cajun food I think of either gumbo, etouffee, or jambalaya. This year I think I’ll give you a recipe for jambalaya. It’s a great thing to make if you’re planning on feeding a whole mess of guests.
But first I think I’ll tell you one of Justin Wilson’s stories. Justin Wilson was an engineer, and a stand-up comic, but most people know him from his TV cooking series. He’d always start off his cooking shows with one of his Cajun stories and this is one of my favorites:
A man goes into a restaurant and orders the special: chicken. When it comes out the chicken is just barely cooked—it’s bleeding and inedible. He stares down at the horrible, bloody mess for a while then leaps to his feet, flings the chicken up in the air, and yells “Fly, damn you, fly. You ain’t hurt bad!”
Jambalaya
Feeds four Cajuns or eight normal people
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup diced onion
1 cup diced red bell pepper
1 cup diced celery
1 lb. Italian sausage
1 lb. medium shrimp, shells removed and deveined
4 cups water
I really dislike State of the Union speeches. It doesn’t make any difference what president is in office; it doesn’t make any difference what the actual state of the union is at the time. The wish lists that these speeches have become are dull, unnecesssary, and, I think, largely irrelevant. I did listen. Who knows? It could have been an exception. Although it was one of Bush’s best speeches ever it was still a State of the Union speech.
There was one moment of real drama when Safia Taleb al-Suhail, leader of the Iraqi Women’s Political Council and the Alliance for International Justice, turned to embrace Janet Norwood, the mother of Byron Norwood, a young marine who died in Fallujah. Mrs. Norwood then handed Ms. al-Suhail her son’s dogtag (according to some observers; my wife says no). I believe it was spontaneous and genuine. And it was very poignant. Steve Green’s comment said it for me:
If you’re not tearing up a little right now, you’re not watching. Again, words fail. Back in 90 seconds.
While I listened to the president with one ear and watched with one eye I found what live-blogging I could from both hemispheres of the blogosphere and followed them as well. The live-blogging I followed included Vodkapundit, Instapundit, Captain’s Quarters, Power Line Blog, Questions and Answers Blog, Tigerhawk, and Kevin Drum at The Washington Monthly. I sincerely tried to find more live-blogging from the left side of the blogosphere but I came a cropper.
Glenn Reynolds sums up:
NICE JOB. The inaugural was OK, which for Bush is a success. This, on the other hand, was actually good, making it Bush’s best speech ever, I think. He seems much more comfortable and relaxed, probably because of the Iraqi elections going so well. I think we’re just figuring out just how much the Administration’s plans turned on that. He bet on the Iraqi people, and he won.
Cap’n Ed:
A terrific and inspiring finish to one of George Bush’s best policy speeches. It doesn’t have the soaring vision of his inaugural, but — it’s not an inauguration, when one expects that. This speech is part road map, part halftime pep speech. He’s much improved over last year, and I think he gets better every year he’s in office. He may never be considered a great orator (for good reason), but he delivers some of the best political speeches since Reagan.
In this case, he kept the thread of freedom going throughout the entire hour, including the domestic section. Freedom will be his great theme, just as the New Deal was FDR’s or the Great Society was LBJ’s. W’s will be the Force of Human Freedom.
Hindrocket:
On the whole, an excellent job. Bush came out swinging on the two key issues: Social Security and the benefits of the war in Iraq. As usual, the President is his own best spokesman. He made the Social Security case well, but punted, essentially, on the transition issue. For now, though, that’s probably the right approach. Sell people on the need for and desirability of change, then work with Congress on the details. And on Iraq, he was impassioned and effective. The embrace between the Iraqi activist and Mrs. Norwood was powerfully emotional and symbolic, summing up at once the sacrifice, the purpose and the progress of the Iraq war. And reminding us that the military is overwhelmingly behind this President.
Dale Franks:
The President was very much on, tonight. And, finally, he wore a red power tie, instead of that awful poweder blue monstrosity he’s so prone to wearing.
One got the dominant impression that he was less interested in laying out a laundry list of legislation that most SOTUs contain. He sped through that stuff, in order to get to Social Security and the War on Terror.
Tigerhawk:
I repeat the Official TigerHawk SOTU insight, which I have not seen on any of the liveblogging so far: We deliberately did not hammer on North Korea because we are sending the signal that they should come back to the six party talks. Contrast the bit about North Korea with the figurative bombing of Syria and Iran.
I found Kevin Drum’s summation quite gracious:
The domestic half of the speech seemed fairly pedestrian and flat. The foreign affairs half was often soaring and beautiful. Overall a decent speech, although I doubt he changed many minds about Social Security privatization.
As far as the Democratic response went, Nancy Pelosi didn’t creep me out nearly as much as last year. I must be getting used to her. Quite lifelike, actually.
Dale Amon at Samizdata has a fascinating post full of speculations on what kinds of gods could physically exist, and how they could come to be. It’s well worth reading.
I’d like to mention two things that Dale neglected to mention.
First, it’s entirely possible to conceive of god/dess as an emergent property of the universe. As life increases, intelligence (in the mathematical sense of information interchange) increases. The ability to think and plan is, in essence, nothing more than the ability to transmit information and switch states in the mind, and it’s possible that the ability to transmit information and switch states in the universe at large could result in something recognizably sentient, and far beyond human. Indeed, this is pretty close to describing my view of the Divine, on one level.
The other possibility is that god/dess could exist as a manifestation of belief. The possibility exists that reality is actually a shared hallucination, constructed of the intersection of all sentient beings’ conceptions of reality. In that sense, anything that enough people believe in is real. This is a little esoteric for me, but it at least is reasonable to posit.
I honestly don’t know what kind of world the conspiracy theorists
want us to have.
The conspiracy theorists are working overtime these days whether, as I’ve mentioned
before, it’s Nobel prize winners who believe that the U. S. created AIDS in
a deliberate attempt to kill black Africans, people who believe that the Clintons ordered
the murder of Vince Foster or ran drugs down in Arkansas, those who believe that the torture of Iraqi
prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison was ordered at the highest levels of the U. S. government,
or, as Jeff pointed out this morning, it’s a man who runs one of the most
influential news organizations in the world who claims that American soldiers are deliberately
targeting journalists.
Here’s an example of the arguments we’re seeing these days:
Black Africans are dying from a terrible disease.
Americans have chemical and bacteriological war programs.
Americans hate black people.
Therefore Americans deliberately created the disease.
Check it out. I’m trying my hardest not to employ a strawman argument. For analysts of logical
fallacies this is an embarrassment of riches. The fallacies in this short statement
include the ad hominem fallacy, hasty generalization, the genetic fallacy, and outright lies.
But the key point to note is that means and motive are enough to convict. There’s
no actual evidence presented.
The form that these conspiracy theories take that I find the most troubling is when
the theorists say that well, no, the torture wasn’t actually ordered or the targeting of
journalists wasn’t actually ordered but the higher-ups created an environment in which
terrible things were done. When creating an environment without directly ordering a crime
or being involved in a crime is itself a crime, you’re undermining freedom of speech and
freedom of the press. If that’s the standard none of us will have any basic freedoms. The
restrictions on creating environments won’t be limited to presidents and generals. It will be
extended to heads of news organizations, Nobel prize winners, judges, lawyers, journalists,
and you and me.
Now don’t get me wrong. I believe that if anybody has any actual evidence that the U. S.
government deliberately created AIDS in a laboratory and unleashed it on Africa to kill black
people, or that President Bush or Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld ordered the torture of prisoners
in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo or that they ordered the targeting of journalists in Iraq (or
anywhere else) by American soldiers they would be doing a great public service if they produced
their evidence. But if they have no evidence they should keep their suspicions and ill-feeling
to themselves.
After all, they’re creating an environment of suspicion and doubt that encourages sedition
and law-breaking. And, in the world that the conspiracy theorists seem to envision, that
would be enough to convict them of a crime.
