Gerard Vanderleun of American Digest has posted one of the strongest blog essays I’ve read in a long time, Yearning for the Mud. It’s well-written, beautifully constructed, and insightful. Even if you disagree with the sentiments he’s expressing you’ve got to admire his skill.

I don’t have much to offer in exchange for the gift that this essay is. The best I can do is to add American Digest to my blogroll. Browse around. He’s really on a roll right now.

Carnival of the Recipes #10 is now up! This week it’s being hosted by Allan of Inside Allan’s Mind. While you’re there browse around to get an idea of what’s inside Allan’s mind.

This week’s submissions seem to focus on comfort food with recipes for Tuna Noodle Casserole, Frozen Waldorf Salad, Sugar Pie, and Pound Cake. I’ve bucked the trend and submitted my Spinach Campagnola. Check it out!

Texas toast or French toast? Steven Taylor is back with the Toast-O-Meter.

Hat tip: Fark:

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) – A 61-year-old woman has admitted that she submitted a request to the Lancaster County Election Office for an absentee ballot in her late mother’s name. But Carolea Adams said she just wanted the ballot for a scrapbook of her mother, Marguerite Adams.

Adams was putting the scrapbook together when a notice to request an absentee ballot arrived for her mother.

Adams told the Lincoln Journal Star that she thought, “Since voting for Mummy was such an important thing, I’ll send it back through and get her ballot back with her name on it, and I’ll keep it for her scrapbook of materials I’m putting together.

“I had no intent of voting on her ballot,” she said. “I simply wanted the ballot and was going to put it in her scrapbook.”

Well, that explains all those deceased voters we keep getting absentee ballot requests for here in Chicago. Their relatives are just making scrapbooks. Lots and lots of scrapbooks.

They’re stars! I just finished watching a streaming video from Illinois Board of Education Starnet Animal Assisted Therapy for Young Children (Quicktime required). My wife and two of our dogs, Jenny and Tally, are featured. Clink on the link to view it.

Some years ago my wife and I dined at the fine restaurant Campagnola in Evanston with a dear friend of ours. We were served a spinach dish which impressed me tremendously both with its taste and its straightforwardness. Here’s my recreation of the dish we were served that memorable evening.

Spinach Campagnola

9 oz. baby spinach, washed and drained
½ medium onion, peeled and diced
1 clove garlic, crushed and minced (optional)
2 Tbsp. olive oil
3 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
3 medium plum tomatoes, cored, seeded, and chopped
Pinch oregano
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Steam the spinach (covered) in ¼ cup boiling water in a medium saucepan for 8 minutes. Remove to a strainer and allow the water to strain out. Press with a serving spoon to get more water out.
2. Saute the onion in the olive oil over medium heat until it just begins to brown.
3. Add the garlic and saute for 30 seconds.
4. Add the tomatoes and oregano and saute for about 5 minutes.
5. Add the balsamic vinegar and spinach, cover, reduce heat, and allow to simmer for about 5 minutes.
6. It’s ready to serve!

I made this with the last of my summer tomatoes last weekend and it was incredible.

I’ve just finished reading Glenn Reynolds’s interesting column in The Guardian in which he speculates on the prospective foreign policy of a future Kerry Administration. He outlines three alternatives:

• Kerry as GWB (continuing the policies of the current administration)
• Kerry as Carter (pursuing a pacifist or isolationist course)
• Kerry as Lyndon Johnson (out to prove how macho he is)

I’ve suggested that third alternative myself.

I wonder if the real concern isn’t that Mr. Kerry will try each policy out in turn to see which one fits best. Isn’t that what his history suggests?

The prodigy du jour is Teresa Heinz-Kerry’s misstatement that Laura Bush had never held a real job, painting a picture of the First Lady as a pampered dilettante. Various Bush surrogates have indignantly criticized a Kerry campaign that will say anything for political advantage. This tempest in a teapot has a lot more legs than I would have given it credit for—it lead off GMA’s news coverage this morning.

The story doesn’t particularly interest me and I don’t have much to contribute to it.

However, your definition for the day is Freudian projection:

“Attributing one’s own undesirable traits to other people or agencies, e.g., an aggressive man accuses other people of being hostile.”

When I inaugurated The Glittering Eye (all of six months ago), I had a very selfish notion of my blogroll. I felt that it was there to show your readers (if any) who you were reading. I’ve changed my view since then.

Of course there are still some self-serving reasons to add blogs to your blogroll. There’s reciprocal blogrolling—you blogroll me and I’ll blogroll you. Some bloggers have an explicit reciprocity policy. I’ll only blogroll a blog if it’s a blog I like, respect, and, most of all, read.

And blogrolling is a form of networking. Blogs with similar focuses and interests tend to blogroll each other.

But the very nicest thing about blogrolling is that it’s a painfree method of giving something. Giving to your readers, giving to other bloggers—whether they have more traffic, about the same traffic, or, best of all, less traffic than you do. It’s a way of saying to your readers “If you like what you see here, here are some more sites that I think you’ll like as much or more”.

When you view it that way it makes you think much harder before adding to the blogroll. Who are my readers? What do they think? What do they like?

Kate of Electric Venom is refurbishing her blogroll in a typically Kate-ish fashion. She’s asking her readers to vote blogs on or off the island. I originally considered suggesting that Kate consider blogrolling The Glittering Eye. But on reflection I decided that, although I’d love any additional traffic, that might not be a service to Kate’s readers. I have, shall we say, a distinctly different style than Kate’s.

So I’m suggesting three blogs that I like and read and that might appeal to Kate’s clientele: Mind of Mog, The Key Monk, and Go Fug Yourself.