As I’ve said before I just love Thanksgiving and one of the reasons I love it is that the leftover turkey from the Thanksgiving meal is perfect for making this dish. I always make it the Sunday after Thanksgiving and now you can, too.

Turkey chilaquiles salsa verde
serves four

Salsa Verde (recipe follows)
10 corn tortillas, cut into ½ inch strips
1 lb. leftover turkey in bite-sized pieces
1 cup sour cream (or crema if you’ve got it)
1 cup grated Jack cheese

1. Grease an ovenproof casserole (at least 3 qt.)
2. Spread a layer of salsa verde in the bottom of the casserole
3. Place one-third of the tortilla strips in the casserole.
4. Place one-third of the turkey on top of the tortilla strips.
5. Spread one-third of the sour cream (or crema) over the turkey.
6. Sprinkle one-third of the cheese over the sour cream (or crema)
7. Repeat with remainder of the ingredients—salsa, tortilla strips, turkey, sour cream, cheese, salsa, tortilla strips, turkey, sour cream, cheese
8. Cover with aluminum foil and bake in a pre-heated 375°F oven for 40 minutes or until heated through and bubbling. You can remove the foil for the last five minutes of cooking to let the cheese brown if you like.

And if you don’t think that this dish is faaaannntastic when made with the leftover smoked turkey that I’ve got well, then, you’ll just have to try it yourself and see.

[continue reading…]

As you may or may not already be aware, members of the Watcher’s Council hold a vote every week on what they consider to be the most link-worthy pieces of writing around… per the Watcher’s instructions, I am submitting one of my own posts for consideration in the upcoming nominations process.
Here is the most recent winning council post, here is the most recent winning non-council post, here is the list of results for the latest vote, and here is the initial posting of all the nominees that were voted on.

Roger Ebert’s review of Oliver Stone’s film Alexander in three words: pan-nationalism, pan-sexualism, pan.

UPDATE: Victor Davis Hanson—a classics scholar—comments on Stone’s film. His take: history gets short shrift. Not to mention the investors:

I’ve heard so many inane things mouthed by Stone that I would like someone at last to address this question—why would supposedly smart insiders turn over $160 million to someone of such meager talent to make such an embarrassing film? Alexander the Great is third-rate Cecil B. Demille in drag.

Nadezhda at Chez Nadezhda has an excellent round-up of Russia-related articles and news items. Included are:

1. A second term for President Bush—views from Moscow
2. Black Gold—Russia has more… and then some
3. The evolving structure of Russia’s political economy, and the dilemma of low growth and investment outside the energy sector
4. The CIS and the Near-Abroad—Russia’s posture in its sphere of influence, and the West’s responses
5. NATO—areas of collaboration and friction
6. Nuclear weapons and treaties
7. Chechnya

Carnival of the Recipes is now available for your viewing pleasure. This week it’s hosted by Marybeth of Random Thoughts from Marybeth. Whether you’re looking for a recipe for something other than left-over turkey or looking for a recipe for left-over turkey, you’ll find it here.

One more note about our Thanksgiving here: smoked turkey is one of the all-time greatest leftovers.

The turmoil continues over the contested elections in Ukraine earlier this week:

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s outgoing president will meet Friday with opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko in the presence of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and European envoys in a bid to solve a political crisis over the country’s disputed election, a European Union official said.

Although he was bringing together the opposing sides, outgoing President Leonid Kuchma also called for an end to the mass demonstrations by Yushchenko’s supporters, who claim that Sunday’s presidential runoff election won by Yanukovych was marked by massive fraud.

I haven’t been following Ukrainian politics but, as it turns out, one of the bloggers who’s a daily read for me has. Check out House of Payne for some informed opinion on the subject:

My prediction? I think we will see a Georgia-style popular revolution with little violence. The real question is whether Putin’s support will embolden Kuchma (and to a lesser extent, Yanukovich), but for the moment at least Putin seems to be wary of throwing Russia’s full weight behind their boys in Ukraine. Without such support, the spark for conflict would have to come from the west, which I think is less likely.

Read the whole thing to get his take on the situation (and give him some non-imaginary readers for a change).

UPDATE: And now I’ve got a pretty good joke from a Ukrainian blogger, Veronica Khokhlova, who’s also pretty well-informed:

Which brings up a joke I’ve heard a few times recently: a Ukrainian man shows up at work, all his clothes rumpled. When his colleagues ask what happened, he replies: “I turn on the TV this morning, and there’s Putin praising Yanukovich. I switch to another channel, and there’s Putin again, praising Yanukovich. So I switch the channels again, and there’s again Putin praising Yanukovich. I turn on the radio, and Putin is there, too, praising Yanukovich. So I figured there was no use turning on the iron.”

UPDATE: More info on the situation in Ukraine on The Adventures of Chester.

So there’s the beautiful table my wonderful wife set last night. You can click on either of the thumbnails for a larger image.

Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday. It’s got everything—family, friends, food, drink, patriotism, religion. For me you can sum it up in one word: wisdom.

There’s the wisdom of family. The table is set with the tablecloth my wife’s mother gave her. A little Bavarian china bowl that my father-in-law and his brother found in their mother’s garage when they were going through her stuff after she died. When they saw it they both teared up—they both remembered that this bowl had only come out on holidays and had always been used for mashed potatoes. We serve our mashed potatoes from it on holidays now.

There’s the wisdom of patriotism. The holiday commemorates events from the lives of some of the earliest Americans of European descent but it also commemorates the kindness of the Americans who were here before them. Our table is set with glass made more than 140 years ago by not-too-terribly-distant descendants of those early European Americans. They are my ancestors now, too.

There’s the wisdom of religion. I don’t mean the individual specific practices of this religion or that religion. I would call that “sect”. For me religion is wisdom, the wisdom accumulated over hundreds and thousands of years and my inheritance from my spiritual ancestors of long, long ago. I evoke that wisdom in the prayers that I say before my meal. As Meister Eckhart said, “If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, ‘thank you’, that would suffice”.

Stop right there! I know what you’re thinking but bear me out. Everybody likes cake, right? And everybody likes fruit, right? Then why does almost everybody hate fruitcake?

I believe I have solved this age-old question. The answer, my friends, is that everybody hates that ersatz glaceed fruit and and that phony liquor taste that almost all fruitcake is afflicted with.

So here is a fruitcake recipe that I have made for years and that even the most ardent fruitcake-hater has eaten with approval (if not actually loved).

One more note—why am I giving you this recipe now? The answer is very simple: if you make this fruitcake recipe this week it will have just enough time to season by Christmas.

Makes 10 5-by-3-by-2 inch loaves

3 cups unsweetened applesauce, preferably homemade
2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into chunks
1¼ cups sugar
½ cup dark molasses
1/3 cup honey
1 box (15 ounces) golden raisins
1 box (15 ounces) dark raisins
1 cup dried currants
1 cup dried tart cherries
1 cup dried apricots, coarsely chopped
2 cups walnuts, coarsely chopped (about ½ pound)
2 cups pecans, coarsely chopped (about ½ pound)
4½ cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp. plus 1 teaspoon baking soda
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. freshly ground nutmeg
1 tsp. allspice
½ tsp. mace (optional)
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp. ground cloves
Walnut and pecan halves, for garnish
½ cup brandy, bourbon, or rum

1. Heat the applesauce over moderate heat in a medium non-reactive saucepan. Add the butter, a few pieces at a time, and stir until the butter is melted and the applesauce is bubbling (4 to 5 minutes).
2. Add the sugar, molasses, and honey and cook, stirring, until the sugar dissolves (about 1 minute). Let the applesauce cool to room temperature.
3. Preheat the oven to 275°F. Butter and flour ten 5-by-3-by-2-inch loaf pans. In a large bowl, combine the golden and dark raisins, currants, cherries, apricots, walnuts, and pecans with applesauce.
4. Sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, salt, cloves, and optional mace into a medium bowl. Fold into the applesauce-fruit mixture until just blended. Quickly divide the batter among the pans and smooth the tops with a rubber spatula dipped in water. Press walnut and pecan halves into the tops to decorate.
5. Bake the fruitcakes for 60 to 70 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Let the cakes cool in the pans for one hour. Unmold them onto a rack and let cool to room temperature. Brush the brandy, bourbon, or rum all over the fruitcakes. Wrap tightly first in plastic wrap, then in aluminum foil. Store in a cool, dry place for at least one week and up to three months.

After the first week you may unwrap the cakes and baste with additional brandy, bourbon, or rum. Re-wrap and let season after basting for at least one week.

I’ve been meaning to comment on TMLutas’s excellent post, Do Islamists Understand Westphalianism?, since he posted it and this looks like a pretty good opportunity. What TMLutas is referring to by Westphalia, are, of course, the consequences of the Peace of Westphalia which brought about the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648. In the world according to this series of treaties, the world was composed of nation-states and only nation-states waged war.

These ideas have been under assault from both of those unlikely allies, leftists in the West and Islamists. For example, in 2001 German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said:

“The core of the concept of Europe after 1945 was and still is a rejection of the European balance-of-power principle and the hegemonic ambitions of individual states that had emerged following the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, a rejection which took the form of closer meshing of vital interests and the transfer of nation-state sovereign rights to supranational European institutions.”

In the aftermath of the March 11, 2004 Madrid train bombings, al Qaeda declaimed:

“the international system built-up by the West since the Treaty of Westphalia will collapse; and a new international system will rise under the leadership of a mighty Islamic state.”

[continue reading…]