Don’t Say I Never Gave Ya Anything

Tags

appetizers, Chinese, crab Rangoon, General Tso's chicken, Recipes

Once upon a time. . .Oh that’s been done to death!

Well, at the inception of this blog, the plan was to present a diverse blend of politics, religion (you know that always makes friends!), crafting ideas, cooking, and then anything else my extraordinary brain came up with.

In other words, it was to be eclectic, which I am. My interests are unlimited, my decorating ideas run from country artisan to art deco, and that’s a pretty wide chasm. My food delights range from Italian, Mexican, to down home Americana and Chinese. I like cuisine from Egypt and India. About the only thing I don’t care much for is German food.

Anyway, lately, for about the last couple of years, we’ve been fairly limited to politics, with a bit of religious thrown in to keep it honest. Here and there I’ve dropped a recipe, but today, well I just pulled out all the stops. So those of you who could care less, fair warning, this is food oriented.

First up, I told you that we were having General Tso’s Chicken and crab Rangoon. I made them a couple of weeks ago. And they turned out very good indeed, so I thought I’d let you in on the recipe. A word about the Tso’s chicken. There are myriad recipes for this. Basically it’s to be a kind of coated breast meat and on the hot side. So here is how I did that:

General Tso’s Chicken

• 1/2 chicken breast, cut up into bitesize pieces
• 1/3 c flour
• 1 tbsp cornstarch
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 4-5 serrano chilis (I added a minced one to the veggies)

Mix together in a bowl and add enough liquid (water or chicken stock) to make it all gooey.

In the wok, heat 1/2 c vegetable oil (give or take–none of this is rocket science).Add 4-5 chilis (the red serrano and let them sizzle until they pop and turn dark.  Add chicken pieces trying to keep them separate and brown on both sides until done. Probably about 2 minutes a side.Remove chicken pieces and continue adding and frying until all are done. Set aside.

Add whatever vegetables you want to the wok. These should have been cut up and bagged earlier.

I added:

• carrots, celery, an onion sliced, broccoli stems sliced,

Stir fry until tender but crisp. Add any sauce you like or cornstarch and chicken stock, with some soy. I  used a Teryaki sauce. Throw the chicken back in, and add three or four sliced green onions. Toss until warmed through and all is coated.

Serve over rice.

Crab Rangoon

• 8 oz fake crab or real as you prefer (I found the fake just fine for this appetizer)
• 4 oz cream cheese at room temperature
• 1 scallion chopped
• 1 medium clove garlic sliced
• pepper
• salt only if using fresh crab
• minced celery if you like
• 1 egg (or egg white) whisked
• 1 package wonton wraps ( you will use about 1/4 of them. I divide the rest into 1/4 packets and wrap in plastic and put in a freezer bag and throw in the freezer. They defrost fine)

Place everything but the egg and wrappers into a food processor and whir up until it is a paste but with visible “pieces. Scrape out into a bowl and sit down with your wrappers and egg wash. Take a wrapper, place a mounded tsp of the crab paste in the middle, with your finger dip in the egg wash and trace along two edges meeting at a tip. Draw the unwashed side over the crab and form a triangle, press out the air gently and press all the edges.

Do this until you have used up all the paste (I had about 30 or so). Place on a jelly roll pan lined with parchment, not touching each other. Place in freezer for a couple of hours until frozen hard. Place them in a freezer bag and you are done.

When you want to use them, remove as many as you wish. Heat some oil in a very small sauce pan (saves a lot of oil that way) and fry for about 1 minute or less one at a time. Golden brown is what you are looking for. Place on paper towel to drain and place in a warm place to hold until your stir fry is done. (You can bake them too, I’m guessing at about 400-425°. I’d check at 10 minutes. Remove when golden brown.

The point is these are as good as most of what you get in a Chinese restaurant and way better than any frozen kind from the grocery story. You only have to make them a couple of times a year, and frankly, its less than an hour’s worth of work anyway.

Okay, so now we move on to a few new tips I’ve managed after 61 years to finally figure out.

Given that in the winter, we shop infrequently, I alway have trouble keeping fresh vegetables fresh. Well I have some ways that finally give them a refrigerator life of a good two weeks. And that’s a lot better than usual. So here is what I learned:

Green onions: clean them within a day, cutting off the root and outer layer and cutting off the green end where you normally would. Take a paper towel and wet it, wringing it out. Wrap this around the root end of the onions and place in a tumbler glass. Cover with one of those light plastic bags you placed them in at the store. Just wrap around. Sit in refrig. Trust me…your onions neither dry out, not become all rotten.

Cucumbers and peppers: I used to wrap them in plastic wrap and they always rotted within days. Then you cut off a chunk of the rotten stuff. You end up losing about 1/2 of each. This works. Buy those cherry tomatoes or raspberries  or whatever in the plastic hard containers with slotted holes in the sides. Save them and place your unwrapped cukes and peppers in them. The cut edges dry out and are perfectly dry and unrotted for up to two weeks. As to the peppers, best to clean out the seeds at the first use.

Mushrooms: Either they became shriveled and hard or yucky slimy. Open the package and use what you need. As to the rest: throw away the plastic wrapper over the little container. Place this in a brown paper bag, close and place in fridge. They were fine two weeks later.

Happy cooking. Today we are having: Beef Stroganoff over noodles, salad and bread.

Related Articles

• imabonehead: Chinese Burmese Chili Chicken | Appetite for China (appetiteforchina.com)

Hell of a Way to Start a Month

Tags

Asian food, Black History Month, Bushes, Egypt, Fox News, gay rights, Glenn Beck, GOP, Media, Recipes, salad, Sarah Palin, Sojourner Truth, teabaggers

It’s tomorrow. That stupid hauling out of an innocent but essentially stupid animal. Go ahead, subject him to lights, camera, and gawking humans.

Ask him if he saw his shadow. Hell, he doesn’t know what a shadow is. And I’ve yet to see the correlation between his shadow and atmospheric conditions across the vastness of North America.

We have enough trouble dealing with the massive slap in the face we are getting this afternoon in the form of a blizzard. (Actually we might get by with no more than six little inches, so I’m feeling frisky.)

Anyway, this is the last month of winter by my reckoning, and I’m intelligent enough not to go around asking woodland critters their opinion.

So, welcome to February. It’s gotta be all uphill from here!

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Picked this up from the Salon. It was just too good not to include.

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Fox Crap is reporting very little about what’s happening in Egypt. They are playing it as a bunch of Islamists bent on setting up an Al Qaeda-friendly government. Not truthful of course, but as the next article makes it quite clear, this is exactly what Fox does so very deliberately.

Andrew Sullivan points out that what Fox Crap does is not just misinforming their viewers, but is deliberately done that way. No other way to explain Beckian insanity, and the deliberate attempt to encourage their followers that they cannot trust anyone else to give them truth. This is some sick stuff.

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In case you missed it, Jon Stewart did a hysterical Sarah Palin gotcha. You remember her and her WTF little drivel? Well, Stewart, ala Fox Crap, or more specifically ala Beckian conspiracy theory, makes out a very convincing case that our Sarah is in reality a Russian spy. The Salon has it.

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Like Daddy, like daughter? Nope. Dubya’s daughter, one of them at least (the brunette?) I think named after grandmother Babs, has come out publicly in favor of same-sex marriage. In this case, the apple falls far from the tree, or acorn, or corn cob. Whatever, you get the idea.

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I haven’t posted a recipe in a long time. I saw this and it looked like it might be good. An Asian Coleslaw made with that broccoli slaw in the bags at the supermarket. Simple ingredients.

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Almost forgot. February is Black History Month. Here isa very nice speech given by Sojourner Truth. And check out the site, it’s one I’ve never seen and it looks like a good one! History buffs!

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See, it’s smart to not walk on frozen ponds if you are unsure. CRACK! Massachusetts Scott Brown’s dalliance with the TeaBuggers is apparently over. The NRT (National Republican Trust) PAC, who backed his election with money galore, has given word it will do its level best to unseat him in the next election. His crime? Not voting NO to every Democratic legislative bill. That was his duty according to NRT mouthpiece Scott Wheeler. Oh how quickly it all unravels. *SNICKER*

In other states, teabugger organizations are poised to get rid of Olympia Snowe, Orin Hatch, and Richard Lugar. These are all Senators, like Brown. What the dim lights fail to get is that they lost almost all of these Senatorial campaigns. Their following is too small to win anything but small congressional districts where like-minded narrow minds have gathered to live in covens of irrationality. Duh.

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Snoring Dog Studio, great friend of AFeatherAdrift, has a serious confession to make. I’m not saying, but I was utterly shocked. From a purist like me, well, I’m not sure we can remain friends. Perhaps we can, but I can’t let her in the house. They neighbors would be aghast. Bring Sno Balls as an offering. I could be persuaded.

***

I gotta get busy with cooking.

What’s on the stove: fajitas!

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Related Articles

• The Snowe conundrum (dailykos.com)
• “Tea Party plans challenge for Lugar” and related posts (prairiepundit.blogspot.com)
• Scott Brown Will Get Republican Primary Challenge, Ex-Backer Vows (huffingtonpost.com)

Pandora’s Proximity

Tags

American History, Asian, barbecue, beef, Cajun Spices, cake, chocolate, church/state, Civil War, Crafts, crochet, evolution, faith, fundamentalism, Gardening, gay rights, health, human physiology, John McCain, knitting, leafminers, marriage, racism, religion, salad, science, tex-mex, Watergate, Women's history, Zoology

Entitled “Pategonia, Chile #5, this was done by Rene Bass Forman in 2004.

Another day with sun! Will wonders never cease? I had another of my bad dreams this morning, actually two of them together. One is the infamous pee dream. I gotta go in reality, and keep dreaming that I am having trouble finding a bathroom. It always ends up being a fairly public affair, and when I go, alas, two minutes later, I’m desperately searching for another one. That was conflated with a recurrent dream of being back in Detroit, practicing law, and I’m horridly late for a trial in progress that I have completely forgotten to return to. I woke up grumpy!

On the home front, we continue to slowly dry out. The river is down to a trickle and the Contrarian is doing some weed eating around about and burning trash. I’ve done the day’s housework–bedroom and my craft room. I’ve developed a fairly strict cleaning regime that is about the only thing that works for me. It gives me three days off a week–bedroom/craft room Tuesday, office/living room Wednesday, kitchen Thursday, bathrooms Friday. I also made a batch of Pastitsio for dinner, a Greek dish that I’ve had a lot of in the past in Detroit’s Greektown. It’s basically a meat ragu with pasta and a bechamel sauce with flavorings of Parmesan and cinnamon, and tomato paste. A nice little casserole is ready to hit the oven later on.

Let’s see what is around the internet today that sounds tasty, fun to make or just thoroughly interesting to learn about.

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For those who are as old as me, this story is well known. For younger folks, you may not know so much. Today is the anniversary of the break-in at the Watergate hotel, by five men in the employ of the White House. The coverup that followed and it’s uncovering led of course to the downfall of the Nixon presidency. Read about it at Martin’s American History Blog.

Sandi’s Crochet Blog has a lovely lacy daisy to crochet withthread. Of course you could do it with heavier weights as well. But as such it makes a nice applique to a T-Shirt or pair of jeans. It’s cute, and of course, the pattern is there for you as well.

Is McCain’s run for the presidency doomed? So say many historians, who always look at the big picture. The big picture of course means examining history and looking for parallels. They suggest that the Republican cycle is about done, and this is normal. American Presidents Blog has the story for you to ponder and agree with or not as your intellectual prowess dictates.

David Barton, mentioned here before as a fool with a penchant for spreading untruth about our founding traditions, is, according to American Revolution Blog up to his old tricks. That is, he, a exceedingly poor excuse for a historian, attempts to rewrite history to suit his motives of introducing Christianity into the public arena as THE religion of the country. Read this fine expose’ of his junk history regarding the Mayflower Compact.

I confess, I’ve never tried to cook an entire beef brisket. I’ve seen recipes that called for elaborate self-made smoking systems that require constant attention and hours of labor. Baking Delights claims that this one, done in the oven for 12 hours works perfectly well. She lays out all the particulars for you. She claims it is a true Texan perfection. Look it over, take a chance and dive in. She says it freezes just fine, because she says you must make a whole one to make it right, and they are huge. Given prices of everything these days, cheap meat is going to become increasingly welcome in our household, and I intend to make this soon.

Chocolate andhas the sublime, the incomparable, the tasting delight of  Molten Chocolate Cake for you today. Oh, I can sink into a pile of gooey ecstasy just at the mere thought of this. I’m thinking of the 4th of July for this gem.

Now for something completely different. Salad and a nice Asian one to boot. This might be a perfect foil for all manner of summer light dinners. It’s called Pickled Carrot-Cucumber Salad and comes to us from Coconut & Lime.Take a look and add to your repertoire if you so desire.

Fannie Lawrence Rickett‘s was a Civil War nurse. Civil War Womenfeatures her this week in a nice little biography. Daughter to wealthy Jamaican land owners, she later married a distant relative of her mothers who was a captain in the US army. He was badly injured during the war, and she made her way to where he was imprisoned. There she cared for him and other captured and wounded union soldiers.  Read about her life of dedication and hardship as the war progressed.

Commonweal, has an editorial entitled “Marriage, California Style” that examines the new same-sex marriage situation in that state that took effect yesterday I believe. They feel the decision is ill-advised. I do not of course. See what you think.

Steak Fajitas are a staple around the Meadow. We have them at least once a month, and sometimes two. In fact they are on the menu for later in the week, if I can get to the store and pick me up a green pepper. I thought you might like an authentic one from Epicurious today taken from Gourmet magazine. The only thing weird about this recipe is the basil, which I don’t find correct. I would change it to cilantro myself.

Free Sample Forager has a slew of new items for you. I saw cereal and acid reducer and rice, all free samples. There are a good dozen to look at and link to and acquire.

There are those in this country, and I am one of them, that fear that our respective bigotries are doing such damage to our country and our world that something must soon be done. It seem epidemic and endemic in our world. I’ll have more to say on this subject at a later date, but I urge you to take a look at this offering from History News Network, “A Passion for Overcoming Injustice has Seized America Once Again.”

Mary Towne Easty was another of those women who ended up on the wrong side of Salem religious fanatics and paid the price with her life. History of American Women, focuses on her story today and her death in 1692 at the gallows.

Serious knitters know about spinning and dying their yarn. I think it’s a fascinating idea, but know I’ll never get to that level of interest. I would love to weave as well, but know I never shall. Same for learning to play the piano. If you have this kind of serious interest, Knitting Dragonflies has some information for you. I am still puzzling over socks directions and scratching my head, thinking it doesn’t make a lot of sense with all these needles (five of them?).

Ever wondered about optical illusions? How exactly they “trick” the eye?I have, pondering how the neurons in our fabulous brains fire in exquisite synchronicity to do what they do so that we can do what we do. Well, Live Science has the answer for us. It has to do with the future, and how far we can see into it.

And if you think that only humans have the capacity to think and plan ahead, well, think again as they say. It turns out that apes and orangutans can as well, and do. But another indice of defining humanity that falls by the way side. It seems that there is less and less that separates us from our close cousins than ever we thought.

Wow, a totally awesome question this week on On Faith. Do you believe that faith affects health? Does it do so positively or negatively? Is this New Age? Lots of interesting ideas here. I think it can be both a help and a detriment. I think it depends on how you use it, and what exactly faith means to you. I’ve seen a whole plethora of people who have turned faith into mental illness, and others who have grown in vigor through quiet contemplative spiritual exercises. Read the varied approaches by the panel and delve into the comments.

Once Upon a Feast has more mouth-watering recipes to tempt you to get in that kitchen and really explore your culinary heart. I think  that Cajun Spices are a must, and it’s always better to do your own that buy that expensive packaged stuff. Also, you can wander over to the Pasta Roundup and find a ton of great dishes here. The true joy of this roundup are the pictures which are so glorious, I swear you could eat the paper and be satisfied.

Religion in American Historyhas a good one today. They feature on wingnutty Cal Thomas, popular from his idiotic featured editorials and his rightwing drivel on FoxyEntertainmentNews. Cal, using that damned if you aren’t a Christiannonsense, claims that Obama isn’t one. Why you say? Because Obama actually thinks a compassionate God doesn’t condemn 4/5 of all humanity to eternal hellfires because they haven’t had the benefit of Christianity as their source of religious training. Read the funny, but sick take by Mr. Thomas.

This recipe caught my eye at Simply Recipes. I’ve forgiven her for the Chipotle Chocolate Cake. Frankly I rather detested it, and finally threw out the last piece. i just couldn’t manage another slice. Her Tex-Mex recipe for Mexican Green Bean Salad sounded just right. We have yet to plant our beans given the lousy weather, but hope to before the end of the week. I can see making this fine offering to accompany some grilled fare.

A goodie, today we get another great post from Scandalous Women. Today she focuses on Grace Metalious, the author of that scandalous book Peyton Place!Remember the TV show? How we watched in titillation at the goings on of the families, sure that we were on the verge of naughtiness. Remember the waif thin Mia Farrow and Ryan O’Neal?  Read about Ms. Metalious’s life in all its detail. My deepest thanks to Elizabeth for her extraordinarily fine posts.

Tip Junkie is featuring a whole slew of crafters with lots of talent, and lots of stuff for sale. You might want to take a look, buy something, or get some ideas for crafting of your own. I thought there were a number of delightful products, and it certainly gave me ideas.

Veggie Gardening Tipshas an excellent post on that miserable ewww pest the leafminer. Those are those great big green sluggy things that eat the tomato plant you have been so lovingly tending in less than a day. I’ve not had much trouble with them here in Iowa, but in Michigan it seems I was always fighting them. Some great help on eradicating this beast.

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More of those wacky bumper stickers–read em here instead of rear-ending somebody trying to read them on the road!

huked on foniks werkd fer me

I am overjoyed with whelm!

I didn’t fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.

I Don’t Suffer From Insanity, I Enjoy Every Minute Of It

I Feel Like I’m Diagonally Parked In A Parallel Universe

I Got A Gun For My Wife; Best Trade I Ever Made.

I Have The Body Of A God … Buddha

I Just Got Lost In Thought. It Was Unfamiliar Territory

I left the womb for this?

I put in contacts for this?

I took a pain pill. Why are you still here?

Wandering in Circles

Tags

Catholicism, Chinese, John McCain

This photo was done by the famous Richard Avedon and is called “Dovima with Elephants, Evening Dress by Dior, Cirque d’ Hiver, Paris, 1955. It is located at MoMA. The look to me had that art deco appeal that I so love.

On the home front, work on the living room is going along fine. The ceiling, walls and one cabinet are cleaned and done. All paintings and photo’s are cleaned as well. So a few more days to go. I’m really hoping we can turn the corner on possible frost (and indeed I think we probably have) so I can take the house plants out. We’re going to move some furniture around and that will make things a bit easier.

We are also on the trail of a new vehicle. The Contrarian found a likely one on Craigslist today, and I’ve fired off an e-mail to see if it’s available and when we can take a look. It looks great (a Bronco 4×4) and the price seems reasonable. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

In today’s news:

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Continuing with my current lemon fascination, I’ve found this nice little recipe from Abby Sweets, Vanilla-Lemon Pudding Cakes. Now that seems to satisfy just about all my passions, vanilla, lemon and gooey cake. Nothing could be finer than a day in Carolina….oops…wrong venue.

Sandi’s Crochet Blog has a smart little headband you might want to take a look at. Little girls seem always to love these tiny embellishments and adults can use them too.

One of the things this crazy administration suffers from is a complete and utter arrogant disregard for the past. Woodrow Wilson may have a thing or two to teach us about foreign policy. Ted Widmer from MIT Center for International Studies has some ideas. Read his interesting thoughts.

Cookies are one of those things that you can usually make quickly and they offer a nice snack, or for me, breakfast! Try out these Maple Shortbread Cookies and see if they fill the bill. We thank Baking Delights for this one.

Begging for Bargains sends us to CraftFreebies where we are promised, yep, you guessed it, lots of craft free things. It seems most are sewing projects, so get out that machine and dig in. It is a site filled with tons of patterns! But if you back off the URL to the main address, it broadens to a gargantuan number of free craft ideas. So enjoy to your hearts content. Free Sample Forager has a number of new offers, including some baseball “club packs” for kids, Dunkin Donuts free coffee samples, A Coldplay download, and others. Take a look.

Remember the investigation into the Bush eavesdropping programs? Remember the “lost” e-mails? Blue Girl, Red Statehas much more on the story. Will this stonewalling by the Bushites continue to work? Who is looking at prison these days? The Pale Rider brings you the latest.

Civil War Women has another profile, this time of Margaret Elizabeth Breckinridge. This is the story of a woman determined to serve as a hospital nurse. Imagine the courage this took back then. She worked the Mississippi hospital boats that brought wounded  from the posts. Read all about her dedication to helping the war effort no matter the physical cost to herself.

I love Japanese gardens. I would not want my entire garden that way, but I’d love a little corner that was this place of beauty, serenity and order. Sally’s Gardening Tips has some ideas if you would like to try creating a little magic yourself.

Cupcakes! Oh yeah. And to not belabor the point, a little lemon can be found in these Lemon-Raspberry Cupcakes. I think they sound soooo very delicious. Thanks to Epicurious for this one.

If you sew, or know one, (a sewer I mean) or do anything that requires a pin cushion, you might want to take a look at the toadstool that Feeling Stitchy has for you. The pattern is there, and it makes a cute little pin cushion. Of course you can use the pattern for other things as well. Take a look.

Garrison Keillor has a new little essay for us all. This one is on flying. Personally, the Contrarian and I have given up on this method of travel. My last trip was to Iowa in 1999, wherein I had to bus from Chicago in the end. His last trip was a flight to Connecticut, wherein he stopped at Detroit, and was late as heck due to snow. We decided we had spent all our free lives and it was time to stop! Read “Remember when it was fun to fly.”

Undoubtedly there is debate about President Jimmy Carter’s recent trip to the Middle East and his meeting with Hamas. I am one of those who favored the trip, regardless of whether anything worthwhile appears to have been accomplished. I don’t favor isolating enemies, and find talking to anyone much more rational and in the end much more productive. Read Scott Kaufman’s assessment at the History News Network and see what you think.

It seems we have always had a sweet tooth. See? Now I have no reason to feel the least bit guilty. It’s genetic! It seems that early hominids all were fruit eaters, and they liked the soft squishy types the best. Read more at Live Science.

Another of those famous limericks from Mad Kane. I never cease to chuckle at her wit, and I am envious of her talent. Take a look at her latest jab!

It seems that the Catholic Church is not the only one faced with a minority of right wing wingnuts. The Methodists are getting ready to hold their every four year meeting in Texas and it seems there are two camps and a threat by one to separate from the other. Always good to add another denomination to the mix I’m sure. That makes probably somewhere in the vicinity of 34,103 now, give or take a dozen or so. Since the article by Mark Hemingway uses such rhetoric as “Bible-oriented traditionalists find themselves opposing a leadership that is dragging the church in a direction defined by liberal political activism,” I guess you can assume what side he is on. It’s sad nonetheless.

I have some thoughts on Jeremiah Wright, but I think I’ll save them for the Editorial on Sunday. Still, the darn story is not going away, and at this point, one has to look to Rev. Wright as the reason why. I’m not quite sure I understand why he is doing what he is doing, but I do know that it is harming Obama’s campaign in ways that may prove fatal. Read Maureen Dowd’s take on the whole mess. A more thorough discussion about Wright and what this means can be had at On Faith, over at the Washington Post. The panel includes essays by Deepak Chopra, Anthony M Stevens-Arroyo, Cal Thomas and others.

Kevin Drum (Political Animal) brings us news on the GI Bill, currently before the Senate. Seems Senator Webb did not like Senator McCain’s remarks and has replied with some shall we say vituperative remarks himself. I’ve taken you directly to the source, Politico.com

Politics Plus has another fine article on the just down right sickening tactics being used by the military to lessen the load of health care to returning vets. This stuff is so outrageous that it begs more attention. Democrats over and over attempt to do something and are met by a stonewalling, vetoing idiot named George. Read all the disgusting details and follow the links to read more from several publications.

Having seen a layout of Rome, one is always amazed at the sheer size of the city created over hundreds of years. That the Romans were masters of existing technology is not disputed. Students attempting to replicate a number of the more spectacular buildings are learning a lot. You might, as well if you take a look.

You see, John McCain seems to continue to get a pass from the media regarding his little problem with religious zealots. Rev. Hagee’s has said, and I quote: “As a nation, America is under the curse of God, even now.” Yet McCain not only doesn’t repudiate him, he still claims he welcomes his endorsement. Read the sordid little story at Talk 2 Action, and ask yourself, what is going on with this? Is it only because McCain doesn’t attend Hagee’s church that he can get away with it? Doesn’t seem a good enough reason to me.

Speaking of both Hagee and Wright, Susan Posner’s Fundamentalist addresses both in her weekly article at The American Prospect. Don’t miss her fine analysis of what’s happening this week in the crazy world of fundamentalism.

Boy, this sounded really good to me and I realized it was sure time to make something Chinese for dinner. I’ll plan that for next week some time. Anyhow, a nice recipe for fried rice comes from the Baking Beauties. Hope you like it!

I’m never sure quite how I feel about athletes in college quitting before graduation to join the professional world of sport.I used to not be sure, that is until the salaries became so humongous that you pretty much need to be brain dead to turn down the money for a diploma and maybe that money later on. But it did not persuade one young lad from South Carolina, who is foregoing the NBA draft to stay in school for his senior year. It only takes one class and one professor it seems to change the tide of greed. Tongue in cheek?

Veggie Gardening Tips has a nice little gardening log that you might want to examine. It can give you a hint as to whether you are ahead or behind, and kind of helps organize things a bit. The Contrarian walked the garden today and thought it still too wet to till. I tend to agree. On our trip to Cedar Rapids yesterday, we saw very few fields that had been spring plowed. It’s taking a long time to seep this water away, and we still have some standing puddles.

You know it’s bad enough to go to a forum and find wingnut Catholics who ponder if poor people deserve health care, housing, food, and education. (Mostly they do not, because poor people are for the most part lazy, and everyone knows we can handle the small number of  really deserving with charity alone.) But of course, it’s actually much worse than that. These whack heads also spend lots of time worrying about whether people receiving communion should be allowed to, based on their politics. If you want to see real crazy fundamentalist rhetoric on a par with anything you are likely to read about radical Islam, take a gander at Vox Nova today. The comments as always is where the fun begins. The post is rational for the most part.

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“Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.”  Christopher Morley

“The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.”  Arthur C. Clarke

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” George Orwell

“The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward.” John Maynard Keyes

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Bumper stickers:

“Watch out for the idiot behind me!”

Keep honking! I’m reloading!

To all you virgins: Thanks for nothing!

Tennis players have fuzzy balls.

The fastest way to a fisherman’s heart is through his fly.

Stupidity is not a crime so you are free to go.

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And on ABC News tonight, they said gas prices are now flirting with $4 a gallon. Flirting? Huh? Aren’t we a little beyond flirting? Aren’t we getting screwed at this point? Jay Leno

David Blaine today broke the world record for holding his breath, on “Oprah” — 17 minutes, four seconds. Blaine has now frozen himself, he’s starved himself, he’s gone without sleep for weeks, and deprived himself of oxygen. Today, Dick Cheney said, “See, it’s not torture. It’s magic.” Jimmy Kimmel

The Kentucky Derby is Saturday. It’s an annual ritual that is truly symbolic of American culture. The rich owner watching earns a million dollars. The participant doing all the work gets fed hay.

The Weather Channel is for sale. Ratings for the network have slipped as viewers who are interested in world around them are turning to its chief rival: looking out a window.

Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, the father of LSD, has died at 102. He had no idea his creation would spawn a host of negative after-effects. Bad trips, freak-outs, and incredibly tacky clothing. – Alan Ray, Stockton, Calif.