11.22.06
Magical rings
Long before The Lord of the Rings (a fantasy trilogy by a British author), magical rings were popular. I recall one novel I read as a boy in which magical rings brought statues to life—I can’t for the life of me recall much more than that, though I would dearly love to reread the novel.
And I had a sort of magical ring, obtained through sending off the top of a cereal box with a quarter or a dime taped to it, followed by weeks of anticipation. The ring (adjustable to fit any size finger!) had what looked like a small bomb on top, like the bomb above. You could remove the back half of the bomb to reveal a secret compartment in the tail section (of a size that would hold, say, a dead housefly–it occurs to me now that it was designed to hold a very terse and tightly rolled secret message) and, in the head section, a tiny glowing object with bright sparkles that you could stare at in the dark when you were supposed to be going to sleep. This was around 1944 or 1945, so I might have been peering at a nugget of radium, for all I know. (Those were the days when department stores had fluoroscopes, courtesy of Buster Brown Shoe Company, that allowed you to observe the bones of your feet inside your shoes.)
And now, this magical ring, that warms your finger as you draw near to an important date—an anniversary, say, or your spouse’s birthday.
The Eldest and her Thanksgiving Traditions
In looking over my blog of a year ago, I came across this note:
I have two Thanksgiving traditions that I have developed since leaving the nest:
1. Read Robert Benchley’s turkey recipe. Decide to do it next year. But have a drink anyway, in honor of the Algonquin Round Table.
2. Listen to “Alice’s Restaurant“. (This year marks the 40th anniversary of the incidents described therein.) [The Older Grandson finds the song hilarious. - LG]
My Thanksgiving table for the past few years has ALWAYS included the NYT Cookbook’s cranberry-orange relish, Alice Kurtz’s Bourbon Yams, and Cook’s Illustrated’s cornbread and sausage dressing. I use kosher turkeys these days. Easily available in Baltimore, and very moist and flavorful. They are pre-brined, so I can skip that step, but otherwise I use the Cook’s Illustrated recipe.
Absolutely great chicken liver pâté
Good party food:
Chicken Liver Terrine
adapted from The NY Times Cook Book
1 quart boiling salted water
1 stalk celery
2 springs parsley
6 whole peppercorns
1 pound chicken livers
1 tsp salt
Pinch of cayenne pepper or 1/2 tsp Tabasco sauce
1/2 cup soft butter (or rendered chicken fat if kosher is important)
1/2 tsp freshly ground nutmeg
2 tsp dry mustard
1/4 tsp powdered cloves
5 Tbsp minced onion
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
2 Tbsp excellent cognac (it makes a big difference)
1 finely chopped truffle (optional)
To the boiling water add the celery, parsley, and peppercorns. Reduce the heat and simmer five minutes. Add the chicken livers and cook, covered, ten minutes.
Drain and grind the livers, using the finest knife of a food grinder. Or grind, a few at a time, in an electric blender.
Add the salt, cayenne (or Tabasco, which I’ve always used), butter, nutmeg, mustard, coves, onion, garlic, and cognac. Blend thoroughly. If desired, add chopped truffle and mix. Pack the pâté in a three-cup terrine and chill thoroughly.
Garnish the pâté, if desired, with sliced green olives. (I’ve never done this.) Serve with buttered toast.
To render chicken fat: Place the fresh fat in the top of a double boiler and heat over boiling water until the fat has been extracted from the tissues. Strain.
I once made two batches of this, one with Remy Martin VSOP Cognac and the other with a domestic brandy. The difference between the two was astounding. Use excellent cognac in the recipe. You’ll be glad you did.
People who say they hate chicken liver absolutely love this. It’s happened many times.
The Bean Salad
I didn’t get around to making the bean salad until yesterday, and it came out great. It did end up filling my biggest Rösle stainless bowl—the 9-quart one. So about two gallons of salad. After an overnight settling and mingling, the taste was just a little light—lacking some body. So I gave it some good-sized dashes of Worcestershire (umami) and about a teaspoon or so of You Can’t Handle This Hot Sauce. That did it. The hot sauce has a nice delayed reaction: no initial feeling of heat, but it grows on you. A slight sheen of head sweat tells me that I hit the sweet spot.
Christmas preparations completed!
I’m off to the post office to ship all our Christmas packages. We can now relax and enjoy the holiday season—and avoid the crowds and the frantic desperation that works so much against the holiday spirit.
I’m puzzled why more people don’t accumulate presents in the course of the year, as we do, and ship them off early. By shipping the day before Thanksgiving, I find the post office uncrowded and of course the packages fare better than in the Christmas rush.
The Eldest asked that I take photos of the Wild Boar Leg that will be our Thanksgiving dinner, and I’ve agreed. Today I’m making her sauerkraut recipe (in the comments earlier) and will just warm it up tomorrow.
Ah, the holidays!
Could I really have spent only $1?
I was wondering about my memory of getting $1 from Uncle Choc and with it buying a hamburger, a movie, and a sundae. But that was in 1954, and I see with this handy dandy inflation calculator that a 1954 dollar is equivalent to $7.50 today. So, let’s see: the movie was a matinee, the hamburger was a cheapie. Maybe. I think movie prices have outpaced inflation. I definitely recall paying a dime for a matinee around 1947, and that is $.90 today, which won’t get you into a movie, even a matinee. Yeah, movie prices are off the map.
Dishonesty writ large: Robert Kaplan
Robert Kaplan tries to justify himself by justifying the war in Iraq, which he heartily supported. Glenn Greenwald has the details.
Robert Kaplan, the national security correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, is one of our country’s anointed foreign policy geniuses. In November, 2001, he attended a secret meeting (along with Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria), organized by Paul Wolfowitz, for the purpose of producing a report for President Bush on Middle East policy which, among other things, outlined all the great reasons why we should invade Iraq.
Thereafter, both Kaplan and Zakaria became two of the country’s most enthusiastic pundit-advocates for invading Iraq, without ever revealing their participation in Wolfowitz’s meeting (they signed confidentiality agreements not to disclose anything that was discussed). It is obviously an extremely odd situation for a “reporter” to participate with government officials in the preparation of such a report, but Kaplan told his Atlantic Monthly editors in advance and “was given approval to attend because ‘everybody was in a patriotic fervor.’” None of that has impeded Kaplan’s career or journalistic credibility any.
Today, this wise foreign policy analyst has an Op-Ed in The Washington Post in which he argues that the failure of the war he wanted so badly in Iraq won’t fundamentally change U.S. foreign policy, but instead will lead merely to “an adjustment, not a flip-flop.” Kaplan specifically claims that preemptive war on Iraq was not at all a deviation from our prior foreign policy because it was nothing more than an extension of our post-Cold War “idealistic” military interventions — devoted towards the spreading of Good in the world — which began with the Persian Gulf War, continued with our benevolent intervention in Yugoslavia, and merely culminated with our desire to do Good by overthrowing Saddam.
Continue reading. Please.
Time was when these jerks could get away with this sort of dishonesty and denial—it was difficult to find their earlier articles (which took the opposite position), and even if you found them, you had no way to publish the facts. But now the Internet and the Web have given us the tools so that it’s not quite so easy any more to lie and get away with it. Kaplan should be ashamed.
Megs makes a nest
Megs made herself a little nest in the quilt (a “quillow”: it folds in upon itself to make a pillow). Once settled in, she decided to give it a try, so there she is asleep. Always something new and exciting around the apartment for Megs.
Another take on the GOP not doing its job
The Carpetbagger has a post on the astounding way the GOP has simply not done its work in Congress—and plans to leave the work unfinished. What is exceedingly weird, as pointed out in the post, is how the major newspapers and TV news programs are simply ignoring this story. The sad fact is that the major media cover for the GOP whenever they can—by ignoring stories, by slanting stories, and by misreporting stories. Thank heavens for blogs.
Test yourself for synesthesia
Synesthesia is the overlapping of the senses: if you can smell purple, or a number has a color, or the like—see The Man Who Tasted Shapes, by Richard Cytowic. Famous synesthetes include Duke Ellington (timbre perceived as color; Richard Feynman (equations perceived in color); Franz Liszt (tone perceived as color); Vladimir Nabokov (grapheme perceived as color).
And now you can test yourself for synesthesia. (I’m not a synesthete, but it seems as though it would be very handy, providing another category for storing and retrieving memory and making associations.)
Story from one Kiva loan
When you make a microloan through Kiva, you periodically receive reports on how the recipient of the loan is doing. Here’s one loan recipient:
Ham Sokhorn is requesting a $500 loan to build a proper house in the plot she was recently allocated by the government in Phnom Penh far suburbs. Ham Sokhorn is not employed; she stays at home and takes care of her children, while her husband is self-employed as a mason. He leaned his skill when employed by a Chinese company, which ceased its activities 4 years ago. He sustains his family with around $5 daily but his income is not steady. He has to propose competitive bids to be in charge of the works, but as he is a gifted worker, he is not worrying about unemployment.
With the $500, Ham Sokrom will purchase materials and her husband will built the house in addition to his casual workload.
Ham Sokhorn would like to start a business of catering for the neighborhood, if the village becomes more populated.
When I read this, a loan of $125 had been made, so I loaned the $375 balance. Today I got this report: Read the rest of this entry »
