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)

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. 

Waving at the Top of the Hill

Tags

bisquits, Catholicism, Chinese, dessert, education, environment, immigration, pasta, religion, US Gov., world history

This beautiful stained glass is undoubtedly more beautiful than any photo can do it justice. It is “The Virgin Mary and Five Standing Saints” and was done between 1440-1446 in Germany in the Rhine Valley. It can be seen at MMA.

We had some brief showers this morning and then the sun can out. It is back and forth but more cloudy that anything. The water is just standing still, and it’s so frustrating. Both the Contarian and I are just getting so tired of waiting to get out of here and do some shopping. It’s near to time to start a few plantings at least, and we are mired in this mud. He thinks the lane itself is much better but we have a good 50 feet where the car is sitting that is now a swamp. He’s of course regretting that he didn’t leave the car farther from the house. But of course, one can’t predict these things. We expected to go the day after we got unstuck last Thursday. Then it started to rain.

The cleaning continues and is showing some real progress. The office is slowly being revealed as we sort and throw out “stuff.” Of course, there are plenty of disagreements; I am far from a pack rat and throw out stuff easily, especially if I haven’t used it since the last time I was decluttering a room. The Contrarian functions more like the typical farmer. Anything and everything will no doubt be useful in some decade in the future, so it best be saved. The tension gets a bit, well, tense, now and then. We usually arrive at some agreed compromise.

The Contrarian has also seemed to have solved the camera downloading or uploading issues. He found the manual, during his sorting foray and sat down and had it basically working in minutes. He needs to run through it a bit more before he can successfully explain it to me and then I can take off with the picture doing thing.

Well, let’s get on with the days news before it becomes yesterdays:

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You can get a nice tutorial on making dumplings, the Chinese kind at 101 Cookbooks. She has a nice recipe for pea dumplings. Any filling you want is of course fine, but her good instructions for the actual construction and steaming are very helpful in getting them to turn out well. They freeze beautifully, and so you can always have them in the freezer ready to go.

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I’ve featured scones before, but this recipe caught my eye. Lemon Buttermilk Scones from A Mingling of Tastes is a wonderful brunchy type scone that would serve up well for a small brunch party. Take a look and copy it for your files.

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My first reaction to this report was simple shock and disbelief. I could not think of why Senate Republicans would do this. A bit more reflection and I guess the answer is clear. The far right, of which they are so enamored of retaining, is up in arms about immigration. Witness how quickly Bush and McCain dropped discussion of immigration revisions that didn’t involve arrest and deportation of millions. So we learn that Senate Republicans blocked a simple resolution that was to honor the service and work of Cesar Chavez, noted labor union organizer, and arguably the most revered Latino in this country. Shame on the GOP. I intend to find out which way Grassley went on this issue, and react with a e-mail accordingly.

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Of course we all were witness to the meeting between Bush and Pope Benedict XVI who was visiting the US last week. American Presidents Blog has a nice post about another such meeting, this time between President Woodrow Wilson and Pope Boniface XV. See how that meeting went as Boniface attempted to end WWI.

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Baking Delights has a long list of blogging giveaways that you can sign up for a chance at. I will check through the list later, but you really should take a look. Many are crafting gifts and kits of one sort or another, so take a look.

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Britannica Blog offers a nice exposition on the many different hats a president can and does wear. Which type are you looking for?

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I ran across this new book that is about to be released and thought you might be interested. It’s called “Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement.” It looks at the problem from a socio-economic, ecological, and psycho-spiritual angle. I’m definitely intrigued and plan to see about getting a copy. Get additional details at Catholic Anarchy.

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The Contrarian sweetly always does the TIVO on Masterpiece Theatre, even though most of the stuff he considers “chick flicky.” He does dutifully watch however. We watched with deep attention the offering last Sunday, “My Boy Jack,” about Rudyard Kipling and his son Jack, lost in WWI. It is a poignant story, one that takes your emotions up and down and around. Read a fine post on it at C’est La Vie, as well as the beautiful poem Kipling wrote about his son.

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No doubt you are aware that today is Earth Day. And for that reason alone this post is important. But every day should be earth day shouldn’t it? Life Science gives you “Ten ways you can improve Earth’s health.” Take a look, make a change, feel good. Please don’t think that your little changes don’t make a difference. A lot of little changes make big differences, and we can all participate.

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Mamiedale has come across some tutorials for a variety of crafts. Visit her site and find them on her sidebar. The coiled basket interested me, and I’m going back later to look more carefully.

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I guess one of the reasons I go ballistic when the far right starts up with the intelligent design and creationism junk science they want to include in classroom curricula is because education in this country is in very big trouble. Everyone who takes a look seems to agree. Compared to kids in other developed countries, we fall further and further behind. We catch Jay Leno’s “jaywalking” here and again, and rather than funny, I find it fairly nauseating that grown people, many of them college students, have not a clue about rather basic information. And what is worse, they seem to think its amusing and funny not to know. Read Robert Herbert’s editorial in the NYTimes and see what you think. Are we “clueless in America?”

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The On Faith section of the Washington Post, poses this question: What can Pope Benedict XVI say and do to repair the growing rifts between the Vatican, the clergy and the laity in America? Follow the link and read a variety of responses from the panel and from regular folks like you and me. I’m intrigued as to how Depak Chopra thinks of the situation. Also Sally Quinn weighs in, as well as several others, like John Dominic Crossan. A must read.

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Now talk about comfort food. This is certainly it. Rice pudding, in all its smooth, sensuous seductive taste and smell, never fails to please hardly anyone. Simply Recipes has a wonderful recipe for you to partake from. Simple yet so fulfilling.

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Tip Junkie has a Mother’s Day giveaway. So stop by and leave a comment and get the chance to win! The prize is a “Mom” charm for either a bracelet or necklace.

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“To my embarrassment I was born in bed with a lady.” Wilson Mizner

“Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.” Carl Sandburg

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Be careful in Arizona or you may be arrested for these crimes:

• A man can legally beat his wife, but not more than once a month.
• Any misdemeanor committed while wearing a red mask is considered a felony (This goes back in the days of the Wild West).
• Cards may not be played in the street with a Native American
• Donkeys cannot sleep in bathtubs.
• Due to a typographical error in the Tempe, Ariz., code, a shooting range can be run by the “Amateur Crapshooting Association.”
• Glendale: Cars may not be driven in reverse.
• Hayden: If you bother the cottontails or bullfrogs, you will be fined. • Hunting camels is prohibited.
• In 1985, an Arizona legislator proposed that each candidate for the legislature take a reading and an I.Q. test three months before the election. The scores would have been posted on the ballot, had the bill passed. But a majority of legislators, for whatever reason, voted it down.
• In Arizona it is illegal to take naked photographs before noon on Sunday.
• It is illegal for men and women over the age of 18 to have less than one missing tooth visible when smiling
• It is illegal to hunt camels in the state of Arizona.
• It is unlawful to refuse a person a glass of water.
• Maricopa County: No more than six girls may live in any house.
• Mesa: It is illegal to smoke cigarettes within 15 feet of a public place unless you have a Class 12 liqueur license.
• Mohave County: A decree declares that anyone caught stealing soap must wash himself with it until it is all used up.
• Nogales: An ordinance prohibits the wearing of suspenders.
• Prescott: No one is permitted to ride their horse up the stairs of the county court house.
• There is a possible 25 years in prison for cutting down a cactus.
• Tucson: Women may not wear pants.
• When being attacked by a criminal or burglar, you may only protect yourself with the same weapon that the other person possesses.
• You may not have more than two dildos in a house.

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave us the New Deal. George Walker Bush gives us an appearance on “Deal or No Deal.” – Jon Gelberg

The Pope has finished his trip, and I thought this was a little overboard. Today, Barack Obama accused the Pope of clinging to religion. Jay Leno

And earlier this evening, President Bush made an appearance on the TV show “Deal or No Deal.” I guess he got turned down for “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?” Jay Leno

Earlier tonight, President Bush made a special taped appearance on the game show “Deal or No Deal”‘ Yeah. Afterwards, Bush said, “I like this show because randomly pointing at boxes is how I make decisions too.”

Yesterday was April 20, which has become the unofficial holiday honoring marijuana. Yeah. It was supposed to be April 16, but they totally spaced. Conan O’Brien

Thoughts from Above: The Fold

Tags

casserole, Catholicism, chicken, Chinese, election, evolution, Gardening, George Bush, Iowa, Iraq, meat, quilting, religion, SCOTUS, skillet meal, Tibet, world history

This is a camera print from a 35mm 15 minute silent movie by David Wark Griffith in 1909. It is entitled “The Mended Lute.” It is at MOMA.

Hope you all had a pleasant weekend. The weather was lovely Saturday, but I cannot say the same for Sunday which was mostly gloomy with showers now and then. Today is gloomy again and fairly chilly. It’s a slow progressing spring, but the trees are budding and the Contrarian predicts we will have leaves this year!

Since nearly 3/4 of my feeds are lit up today, it looks like people have been busy, so let’s get at it shall we?

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Ever heard of Marbury v. Madison? As a lawyer, I knew it as perhaps the most important case of our early republic. It established the ultimate right of the Court to pass on the constitutionality of the actions of the other two branches of government. In that particular case, the Court determined that the Judiciary Act of 1783 was in part unconstitutional, and thus not enforceable as Mr. Marbury had requested. This established what we commonly know as “judicial review.” This case has been largely taken as a given until recently by the far right, which claims that there is no such right. This of course is all about their dislike for certain court decisions. They like that judicial just fine when it works for them.

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If you would like to travel even farther back into history, then mosey on over to Gill’s Ancient History Blog and read about Alexander’s first battle against the Persians at Granicus.

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Meanwhile, the Bushies go merrily along, ignoring the facts as they are always wont to do. If we have not uncovered enough abuses from the no-bid contracts to the Bush favorites, here we go again. You would think that given the black eye that now is apparent regarding Blackwater, that just maybe the Administration would choose to look elsewhere for help in Iraq. Nope, nada, no way Jose. Blackwater has been re-upped as they say, or as State Department mouthpieces say at least. Some claim that the sum total of American mercenaries now outnumber actual troop levels. That’s a lot of private army folks. It smells to me. What do you think?

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You may not have noticed by I no longer will be linking to E-Mail from Grandma. The reason was a post last week about immigration in which the poster (grandson) claimed illegal immigrants are responsible for just about every ill in America. His sources were lousy, as you might expect, mostly Lou Dobbs, well known ranter from the right on this issue. My contention is that even if there is some kernel of truth in such numbers, the dangers of such statements overwhelm the point. This simply reflects, in my opinion, our refascination with bigotry, and those who are naturally so inclined now feel safe to engage in this kind of racist rhetoric. But these “voices of anger” really do encourage consequences that are unhealthy and dangerous. Read about it at Alternet in the post entitled, “Sexual Abuse fueled by Abusive Immigration Language.“

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Just wanted to alert you that the blog An Iowa Garden worth looking at if you are a true plant person. I’m not, per se, caring more about pretty flowers and color schemes than the technical aspects of species and all that stuff. I urge you to add the blog to your list if you are more serious than me. The photo’s are quite lovely, and there is a very well constructed explanation of the plant in every case.

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Baking Delights has a nice surfing from Saturday around the food blogging world. She’s collected a number of recipes you might like to take a look at. Coconut Lemon Twinkies, Quintuple Chocolate Brownies, and garlicy bean enchiladas are just some of her finds. Take a look and find tomorrow’s menu!

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Begging for Bargains has a couple things, free Tide, and free calendars. Check them out, as I will later, when I’ve finished this!

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Who has dinner parties any more? Who ever did? Not me for sure. That is the province of the rich and wanna be rich. Still I found the post by Josie at C’est La Vie interesting and well, it got me to thinking that this might be a great gourmet delight if you got some friends together and each did a course or two. Kinda fun perhaps. Anyway, enjoy her tutorial on what you need to do!

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I think I linked you to something about the care and growing of roses a week or so ago. Here’s another entry from Sally’s Gardening Tips and it’s a first part of more parts to come. I hope to try another one this year, so I know I’ll be reading the series in hopes of getting some good tips that will make the latest acquisition a keeper!

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This recipe looks like comfort food to me. Potato-Bacon Hash sounds just about perfect for a Saturday light dinner. A nice salad on the side and I think you are all set don’t you. Thanks to Epicurious for this one.

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Hey folks from Iowa. Head over to Essential Estrogen please if you have a second and link to where to vote for her for Favorite female blogger. She’s been nominated. She’s Lynda Waddington and is on the next to last tier on the right! She does such a wonderful job of keeping us up on what is going on politically in the state. I never miss her posts.

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Feeling Stitchy has a group of links to other crafters she’s crazy about. I again will run through them later and see if there are any that I think would be of benefit to draw a feed on. These kind of posts definitely make my job easier! Lots of pics of the various crafts to give you a nice idea of the kind of work each does as well.

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If you love flowers and a pretty garden but don’t have a lot of money to spend, go over to Gardening Tips ‘n Ideas and get some really great ideas for how to maximize that money to its fullest. She is talking about a mere $5 dollars! P.S. I have asked if they mind if I dead head flowers at a nursery and take the seeds. No one has ever said no to me.

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Everyone is putting in their two cents about the Bush administration, and I certainly am no exception. There is an exceptionally fine article ( I read about the first 1/3 and skimmed the rest, and will return to read it in its entirety) about the rush to judgment about our boy wonder. No, the author is not a fan, but he does make an important point: history is not something that can be assessed with any immediacy. Things need time to play out and settle before one can correctly vision the impact of decisions on the total political landscape. I’d recommend this one. (I have toyed with placing a countdown calendar here too! lol. Maybe I will.)

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Knitting Dragonflies has another featured crafter for us today. This one is Stormy Designs, and you can see some nice pics of her crafts. She is also having a sale at her Etsy store, so be sure to take a look. Very cute stuff!

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Oh the creationists are at it again. A new film is out called “Expelled.” It’s a documentary supposedly about a “debate” between Intelligent Design proponents and the rest of the bleeping world. The ID folks claim that life is so intricate that it calls for a “designer,” which would be God. So far so good, I would agree, but they claim that there is evidence of this in nature (there is not) and therefore it should be included in school curriculum as science. This has all been exploded in the Dover case already. The ID people’s “evidence” simply collapsed under examination and the Court found in favor of those opposed to the religiously motivated Discovery Institute and its ID claims. (The Dover case is mentioned in the article in references to Pennsylvania in 2005.) Be informed!

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Okay, so this is an old one, but it’s been too long since I had a Dave Barry fix. So with apologies to those who have possibly already read it, this gem from 2002 helps men with laundry. I think I might be able to benefit as well, since I am no sort of expert in laundry, and everything is sooner or later discarded as too stained to wear any more. Enjoy my pretties.

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Midwest Neurotica has an absolutely great sounding recipe for chicken. This one is called Mississippi Delta Chicken and Rice. I think I’ll give this one a try soon. I just need some mushrooms and I’m set for this one. Just give me a little delta cornbread and we are set for some fine greasins’.

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Niki’s Ventures has a nice little wall hanging applique quilt for Christmas. Composed of an advent wreath, a manger and a present, it is lovely. You can never start to early you know. She got the full pattern and directions from McCalls, so follow the link.

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One of the issues prevalent in the Roman Catholic Church, but certainly of concern for all faiths, is how to make and keep supposedly “eternal” truths, well, current in the a changing radically different world. Major religions such as Catholicism are suffering loss in membership, and even in Italy, only one in four considers religion very important in their lives. This in some measure is because many feel that mainline faiths have lost relevance in this day. This drives the ultra right traditionalists quite mad. They rant, they rave, they call most of us liberals cafeteria Catholics and suggest we look elsewhere for our salvation. They like their church unchanging forever and forever. Read this interesting take on the problem and see what you think.

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The Contrarian and I never miss either The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. We find them hilariously funny, as well as sophisticated and witty. Steven Colbert often boasts that politicians get a “bump” by appearing on his show. Is it really true? The amazing answer is only a click away! By the way, Colbert has set up a donation site for the PA school system. Register your likes for the candidates by voting your money. I’d find that by going directly to his show through Comedy Central.

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The Chinese must be getting awfully darn frustrated. This Tibet thing is not going away and the Olympic torch is the latest casualty. It seems in Paris, demonstrators were able to get a hold of the torch as it passed and extinguish it. The planned relay was eventually cancelled as Chinese officials realized that they were never going to get through the protesters along the way. I’m heartened by this news that the world is responding so well to the crackdown against the beleaguered country of Tibet.

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Given the never ending primary season for the Democrats, one might wonder if the super delegate thingy was a good thing. Also whether the democratic ideal of proportional delegate assignment was such a good idea. Sean Wilentz makes an argument that if there had been winner take all, Hillary would be far ahead. He finds Obama’s minor popular vote lead inconsequential. Read his article and see what you think. Anything would be better than this morass as far as I am concerned.

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Glenn Greenwald lambastes Cokie Roberts for her appearance on George Stephanopolis’s Sunday show wherein she laid claim that Americans would prefer to win in Iraq ala the plans of McCain and Graham. Such is not of course at all true, Americans overwhelmingly want this war to end and for US forces to get out as quickly as possible. A video clip is linked to so you can see it for yourself. I did for sure, and Katerina Vanden Heuvel handled her expertly in my opinion.

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Wow, finally scientific evidence to back up what I always assumed. Perhaps you did as well. Me, I have always thought that one of the lessons we should adopt from dogs, (and there are many I contend) is their ability to stay focused on the present. Of course, this applies to other animals as well. Animals do have memory of the past, but it is largely just weak or strong, and that may dictate future action. They cannot however place a past episode into an actual time frame. Got it? What I can’t figure out is how they could concoct a test to figure that out. They explain it, so enjoy the read. The same applies to the future by the way. Animals are simply blessed with living in the moment, which is where we all should reside most of the time.