Later On

Generally speaking, Americans consume way too much salt. One of the things that helped me a lot in losing weight was first to lose salt shakers and other salt sources—and to cook my own foods, since processed foods are often saturated with salt.

Food companies, by the way, know perfectly well that excess salt can destroy your health, but the thing is, excess salt also makes the crap foods they create taste better, and salt (with fat and sugar) triggers an addictive response. Food companies are in business to maximize profits, not to ensure your health. Your health? That’s your problem.

I’m not condemning companies here, just pointing out what is obvious: that with the hypercompetitive capitalism now rampant in the US, your health is the least of a big company’s concerns. If you don’t see that, check out cigarette companies, who are eager to push their products onto people—and who vigorously fight any laws or regulations that hamper their selling to as many people as they can, especially their prime target: the young. The young, once addicted (and it happens fast with cigarettes) willl in all likelihood continue to be loyal customers throughout their (shortened) lives.

So it’s up to individuals to protect themselves from companies. We all get tricked from time to time, but we also can make take action against at least some threats, and avoiding salt is fairly easy once you set your mind to it.

You can also protect your children. Shari Roan reports in the LA Time how giving salty food to babies can create a lifelong addiction to salt with all the health effects that entails:

Feeding young babies solid foods such as crackers, cereals and bread, which tend to be high in salt, may set them up for a lifelong preference for salt, researchers reported Tuesday.

The study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggests that efforts to reduce salt intake among Americans should begin early in life.

It is even possible, the authors said, that infancy contains a “sensitivity window” in which exposure to certain foods and tastes programs the brain to desire them in the future.

Americans’ fondness for salt, a source of dismay for health experts, is well known. A 2010 report from the Institute of Medicine concluded that the average intake of 3,436 milligrams a day for Americans over age 2 is more than double what is recommended, and that new government standards are needed to reduce the salt content in processed and restaurant food.

But little is known about the biology behind our love affair with salt. Researchers don’t even know what receptors are involved in tasting it. And though babies are born with a clear preference for sweet foods and an absolute distaste for bitter foods, they appear indifferent to salt in the first few months of life, said Leslie Stein, the lead author of the study and a senior research associate at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.

“When you give 2-month-old babies salt water, they have no facial expression,” Stein said. “This could mean that the baby doesn’t detect the salt or just doesn’t give a hoot about it.”

To get at the issue, Stein and her colleagues first gave 61 healthy 2-month-old infants a mild solution of salt water . . .

Continue reading. The experimental results are quite interesting. From later in the article:

“It’s absolutely possible that exposure early on in life could change the way the salt taste signal is transmitted to the brain,” said Dr. James F. Battey Jr., director of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, which funded the study. “The brain is very plastic at that time of life.”

Kiseido Go Server is a free site that allows playing Go over the internet in real time, unlike DragonGoServer.net, which accepts your move and then emails your opponent, who will reply at some point—perhaps now, perhaps later today, perhaps in a day or two. The KGS games are timed, and they offer both “free” games (no ranking computations) and “ranked” games. You download a little Java applet to your computer, and you play the games through that. (It’s an excellent app and works quite well for editing games.)

I normally play only ranked games, and I just saw my rating go to 9 kyu—my first experience of single-digit kyu status.

The kyu ranks count backwards: 30 kyu is weakest, 1 kyu is strongest. The dan ranks, which are much stronger, count forward: 1 dan is weakest, 9 dan is strongest. The difference in rank varies, but generally speaking a difference of 1 (e.g., 12-kyu v. 11-kyu, or 1-dan v. 2-dan) means the weaker player gets the first move.

When you play the same opponent repeatedly, as in a club or family setting, the handicap is adjusted by one stone whenever one player wins three games in a row: the winning player gives up a handicap stone—or, if s/he has no handicap stones, the losing player gains a handicap stone.)

My recipes (the ones I make up myself, from what’s on hand) will occasionally include some exotic ingredient—goat butter springs to mind, but I’m sure there are others.

Keep in mind that I am making dishes from what I have on hand. The exotic ingredients are in my kitchen generally not because I got them for a recipe but because I thought they sounded interesting, so I got them and then simply use them in whatever I’m cooking. Then, when I blog the recipe, it looks as though I sought out an elusive, rare ingredient, when in fact I just stumbled across it in the store and brought it home to try—and trying it means using it in cooking, where it then appears in the recipe like a pearl among pebbles.

But the rarest of ingredients generally falls into a common category: a fat (goat butter), an herb (dried lavender), a starch (purple fingerling potatoes), a vegetable (bitter melon), a meat (squab), and so on. And you make a dish using the rare ingredient in its logical role (as oil, herb, starch, vegetable, meat, whatever).

That is, the ingredient comes first and then, once it’s on hand, I think up how to use it.

Of course, it sometimes works the other way around: I see a recipe that calls for a rare (or simply new to me) ingredient, decide I want to make it, and seek out the ingredient. But I like the other way—stumbling across some new food, then bringing it home and using it—better: much easier.

I encourage you to keep your eye out for unusual foods—that is, foods you’ve not had (a food unusual to you or me is likely to be the daily diet of some)—and when you find one, buy it, bring it home, and make a dish that uses it. Google is a tremendous help here, or you can just cook by analogy: purple fingerling potatoes are going to be cooked and consumed like any other potato, right? You know how to cook and how to eat them, so let’s have some. And then when you blog “Purple fingerling potatoes with goat butter” people will assume you’ve spent hours tracking those down instead of simply using what’s on hand.

My shave today is based on the Van Der Hagen Premium Shave Set: a bowl, brush, and shaving soap for $10.59 on Amazon. Quite a few beginning shavers go for this bargain approach, and I thought it was fitting to include a razor of the same stripe—the Lord L6.

Let me remove all suspense: I got an absolutely wonderful shave—total facial smoothness with no irritation at all. So expensive kit is not required.

Here’s how it went. First, I soaked the boar brush while I showered—along with four other (Omega) boar brushes I’m breaking in. Back at the sink, I first went through the four Omega brushes, working up a good lather with each, lathering my beard vigorously, then rinsing brush and beard and proceeding to the next brush. This break-in exercise of course prepped my beard to a fare-thee-well.

Once done with that, I washed my beard with MR GLO, rinsed partially with a splash, and worked up a lather with the Van Der Hagen brush using the soap and bowl shown.

I in fact got a pretty good lather. The brush is not very good—it lacks a center—but it worked, and the soap was okay. In fact, I liked the soap and bowl combo: the bowl fits well in the palm of my non-dominant hand and worked up the lather was a cinch and a pleasure.

The Lord L6 with a Zorrik blade did a good job on the stubble: the razor’s head is fine, and maintaining a good angle quickly erased stubble.

I have to admit that for the second and third pass, I shifted to one of the Omega brushes. They are simply better, but keep in mind this entire set-up—brush, bowl, and soap—was $10.59. And as a starting point, it works. (The first step up would be to get an Omega boar—you can secure an excellent boar brush for around $10, so that would indeed double your cost, but the brush would be MUCH better. And instead of spending the $10.59 on the Van Der Hagen set-up, get a good $10 puck of soap—from one of the artisanal vendors, say—and use a coffee mug or cereal bowl you have on hand, and you’ll be better off.)

After the third pass, a splash of Woods aftershave from Saint Charles Shave, and I’m ready for the Boxing Day sales—except I’m not going to them, or even near them.

Really, a terrific shaving result.

My ever-evolving standard breakfast. Full account:

At some point in the evening, I set up the morning’s breakfast:

For tea: 1-pint mug with a teabag in it

For cereal: 1-pint saucepan into which I put 1.5 Tbsp of each of the following (and I have a 1.5 Tbsp measuring spoon, so this is easy):

• Flax seed
• Chia seed
• Pumpkin seed
• Sliced almonds
• Coconut flakes
• Hulled hemp seed
• Wheat germ
• Rolled oats (I sort of round the spoonful on this—closer to 2 Tbsp)
• Oat bran (I sort of round the spoonful on this one as well—closer to 2 Tbsp)

The above totals about 14 Tbsp, or 7/8 cup. To that I add (again, this is in the evening preceding breakfast):

• 1/2 tsp turmeric (strong anti-inflammatory)
• 1.5 tsp high-fat cocoa powder (Penzeys)
• a few grindings black pepper (helps utilize tumeric)
• 1 Tbsp blackstrap molasses (flavor + 20% of the MDR of both calcium and iron; good source of potassium as well)

After the cereal has been cooked the next morning, I will stir in:

2-3 Tbsp homemade pepper sauce
1 tsp true extra-virgin organic olive oil (grower-bottled)

I also fill my electric kettle with water.

When morning comes, I cut a small slab of Plugrá butter (an European-style butter, unsalted and 82% butter-fat content instead of the 80% common to American-style butters), and cut it in half: half goes into my 8″ nonstick egg skillet, half is saved for the next day. I get out an egg and put it where it’s handy.

I turn on the kettle, and leave the kitchen to shower, shave, and dress.

Back in the kitchen, I turn on the kettle again, which now boils almost immediately. I turn the burner on under the cereal, and when the kettle boils, I fill the tea mug with the boiling water and then add 1 cup of the hot water to the cereal, pouring slowly so I don’t splash it out.

I stir the cereal, and it thickens quickly. When the cereal’s cooked—about 3-4 minutes—I remove it from the heat, stir in the pepper sauce and extra-virgin organic olive oil. (I formerly used butter here, but after reading Extra Virginity, which I highly recommend, I switched to true EVOO.)

The egg pan goes onto the hot burner, and when the butter in the pan has melted, I break the egg into the pan, salt and pepper it, and cook it over easy: once the first side is set, flip the egg and cook the other side. Then slide the egg onto the cereal, top with Bac’Uns, and remove the teabag from the tea. (You can practice egg-flipping using dried beans or lentils over the sink.)

Breakfast is ready!

The cereal turns out to be really tasty. The combination of cocoa powder, pepper sauce, and blackstrap molasses gives it considerable depth of flavor, and the nutritional value of the whole breakfast is quite high.

Hulled hemp seed (which I get at Whole Foods and which is somewhat pricey) is probably optional, but I like it and think it’s a good addition for the omega-3 and other goodies.

One possible addition: 1.5 Tbsp chopped walnuts, pecans, or pistachios—black walnuts would add an interesting flavor.

You’ll note that the only salt used is a small pinch on the egg. That salt is optional.

I think this is a solid breakfast and it comes together in about the same amount of time it takes to make buttered toast.

———————–

Updates listed below are already reflected in text above.

UPDATE 7 Jan 2012: Improving on perfection: substituted 1 tsp EVOO in finished cereal instead of butter.

UPDATE 10 Jan 2012: Changed quantities—instead of using my 2 Tbsp measuring spoon, I’m switching to the 1.5 measuring spoon because I have added enough components that 2 Tbsp each is a bit too much. (These spoons are from the highly useful supplementary set I bought: 2 tsp, 1.5 Tbsp, 2 Tbsp—the 2 Tbsp being the same as a standard coffee measure.)

UPDATE 12 Jan 2012: Decided to use sliced almonds (not blanched: the brown almond skin is visible at the perimeter of each slice) rather than chopped pecans/walnuts/whatever, and also got some pumpkin seed to add, which is a good source of zinc.

UPDATE 18 Jan 2012: Still tinkering. Added the flaked coconut.

If you got a Neti pot for Xmas, do not use it with tap water. Distilled should be okay. Story from Nancy Shute at NPR:

Washing noses with neti pots or squeeze bottles has become increasingly popular as a home remedy for colds, allergies and sinus trouble. But it’s not such a great remedy if it kills you.

Now that two people have died from infection with brain-eating amoebas after using neti pots, doctors are warning: do not put tap water up your nose.

“Drinking water is good to drink, very safe to drink, but not to push up your nose,” says Raoult Ratard, state epidemiologist for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals. Two residents of his state have died after using neti pots this year, the first known deaths associated with neti pots. “The first one could have been a fluke,” Ratard told Shots. But now that we have a second one, the only explanation is the use of the neti pot.” . . .

Continue reading.

Interesting post by David McRaney:

The Misconception: There is nothing better in the world than getting paid to do what you love.

The Truth: Getting paid for doing what you already enjoy will sometimes cause your love for the task to wane because you attribute your motivation as coming from the reward, not your internal feelings.

Money isn’t everything. Money can’t buy happiness. Don’t live someone else’s dream. Figure out what you love and then figure out how to get paid doing it.

Maxims like these often find their way into your social media; they arrive in your electronic mailbox at the ends of dense chains of forwards. They bubble up from the collective sighs of well-paid boredom around the world and get routinely polished for presentation in graduation speeches and church sermons.

Money, fame, and prestige – they dangle just outside your reach it seems, encouraging you to lean farther and farther over the edge, to study longer and longer, to work harder and harder. When someone reminds you that acquiring currency while ignoring all else shouldn’t be your primary goal in life, it feels good. You retweet it. You post it on your wall. You forward it, and then you go back to work.

If only science had something concrete to say about the whole thing, you know? All these living greeting cards dispensing wisdom are great and all, but what about really putting money to the test? Does money buy happiness? In 2010, scientists published the results of a study looking into that very question.

 

The research by Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analyzed the lives and incomes of nearly half-a-million randomly selected U.S. citizens. They dug through the subjects’ lives searching for indicators of something psychologists call “emotional well being,” a clinical term for how often you feel peaks and valleys like “joy, stress, sadness, anger and affection” and to what degree you feel those things daily. In other words, they measured how happy or sad people were over time compared to how much cash they brought home. They did this by checking if the subjects were consistently able to experience the richness of existence, by whether they were tasting the poetic marrow of life.

The researchers discovered . . .

Continue reading. It’s long—there’s lots more.

Details:

Steak: Boneless rib-eye, seasoned with Penzey’s Chicago Steak Seasoning, then cooked sous-vide at 145ºF for 2 hours. Ate half; rest will be cut into strips for tonight’s sald.

Mushrooms: Shiitake mushroom caps cut into strips, cooked in goat butter with a little EVOO and one garlic clove, mined. A little salt and pepper.

Rice: Minnesota (i.e., real) wild rice, cooked and then topped with pat of goat butter.

Spinach: 2 tsp EVOO heated and 1/4 large onion minced cooked for a few minutes, then add minced 4 large cloves garlic and 1-2 Tbsp pine nuts. Sauté briefly, then add 1 bunch fresh spinach, roots cut off and spinach washed and chopped, along with a dash of salt, 10 halved Kalamata olives (20 pieces), 1 Meyer lemon, diced (peel and all). Cover and cook 15 minutes or so, then remove cover and boil off excess liquid.

Wine: 2009 Montevino (Amador County, CA) Barbera

Not bad at all. Also: not my usual lunch. But we must celebrate the Winter Solstice and the return of the sun. How I love it when the days grow longer!

A lot of guys start shaving with Van Der Hagen kit, so I thought I should give it a go simply to better inform myself. And I continue my pre-shave soap exploration, using this morning Pears Transparent Facial Soap.

Pears does a good job as a pre-shave soap. All the candidates are high-glycerin and provide a slick finish. I think MR GLO remains at the top of the heap because of the lime oil and its beard-softening properties, but really any of the things tested could work well.

The Van Der Hagen Men’s Luxury Shaving Set is shown. I was pleasantly surprised: this set is not bad at all. I am no fan of shaving stands, but the transparent Lucite stand included is definitely a cut above the throwaway brush stands that you get with, e.g., Frank Shaving brushes. This one is more substantial, more stable, has a place for the razor as well as the brush, and holds the brush by the base of the handle instead of the top of the handle, staying away from the knot. Good stand, though I probably won’t use it: no room on countertop.

The apothecary bowl is fine, and the soap and brush seemed quite good to me. I got an excellent lather quickly, the brush is smooth and soft, a bit prickly but not bad, and the lather’s fragrance was pleasant. I feel that the soap may be a little drying, but that could be winter air. Altogether an excellent little starter set and (I think) good value.

I paired it with the Pils, holding a Swedish Gillette blade. If you look closely (click photo twice to fully enlarge), you’ll note that the blade in the Pils is crooked. I remove the top after shaving to check the make of the blade for these posts, and apparently last time, I did not seat the blade correctly. I did about half the first pass with the blade like this, and I indeed noticed that one corner seemed sharp. I flipped the razor head, and damned if the other side didn’t have a sharp corner as well! Then I rinsed the head and looked and was quite surprised.

No damage done: good blade angle saved me, though the discomfort was evident. I adjusted the blade and finished the shave without incident. I don’t recommend this, though.

Three passes, a rinse, and a good application of Castle Forbes Lavender Balm. A terrific shave once more.

Take a look at the straight razor photos you find at the links in this post. Totally luscious.

I’m enjoying a dram of Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve 20-year-old Kentucky Bourbon Whisky, a gift from The Wife from some years back, and I have to say that it is by far the smoothest bourbon I’ve enjoyed: rich, smooth, and wonderful, the effect no doubt enhanced by my using a special glass designed for single-malt Scotch whiskey, a gift from my brother-in-law and his wife.

We had a good Pilates session together today—still a long ways to go, but have definitely come a long way—and I’m happily contemplating tomorrow’s steak, which I believe I’ll season with Penzey’s Chicago Steak Seasoning:

Robust and smoky, loaded with flavorful chunks of Tellicherry black pepper. Chicago Steak Seasoning gives great grilled flavor to steaks, burgers, ribs, chicken and turkey. Great for broiling, and also nice to give extra flavor to grilled food. Shake on heavily, 1-2 tsp. per pound. For great BBQ sauce, mix 1 TB. in 1 Cup tomato sauce. Hand mixed from: salt, hickory smoke, Tellicherry black pepper, sugar, onion, garlic, lemon zest and citric acid.

Unfortunately, I think this is the direction we’re headed. I read more and more frequently of this kind of abuse of power occurring in police departments across the country, the TSA, the FBI—it’s everywhere. Ashley Powers and Stephen Ceasar report in the LA Times:

Armando Nido spotted the flashing lights of a Maricopa County sheriff’s patrol car. He stiffened in fear.

It was February 2009, and Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s deputies were the talk of the Phoenix area. Nido’s relatives avoided parts of town when they swept through, wary of being stopped for something as minor as jaywalking and asked for immigration papers.

The deputy followed Nido, a U.S. citizen, to his home in Tempe. When Nido got out of his car, he said, the deputy ran him over.

Without naming Nido, the Justice Department detailed the incident in a scathing report last week accusing Arpaio’s agency of bullying Latinos under the guise of immigration enforcement. Justice Department officials are expected to ask a federal judge to order changes in Arpaio’s department, and the Homeland Security Department has stripped county jail officers of their authority to detain people on immigration charges.

Arpaio has derided the federal actions as part of a political witch hunt, and staged a media event this week when his detention officers turned in their Immigration and Customs Enforcement credentials. “We are proud of the work we have done to fight illegal immigration,” he said at a recent news conference.

The Justice Department report omitted the names of victims of harassment by deputies. But by matching incidents in the report to lawsuits and other complaints, The Times was able to identify some victims.

Many people said Arpaio inspired paranoia, even among Phoenix’s elite. Among those hassled and indicted were critics — a group that included judges, lawyers and Maricopa County supervisors.

One critic, Republican Supervisor Don Stapley, was arrested — twice. None of the charges, which involved Stapley’s fundraising and financial disclosure forms, stuck. Democratic Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox was indicted on a host of similar white-collar charges. All were dismissed.

Wilcox claimed the sheriff also had deputies camp outside her downtown Mexican restaurant, El Portal, to convince patrons it was bugged — a factor that contributed to the restaurant’s closure, she said in court papers. . .

Continue reading.

I really like a good Barbera, and they are sometimes hard to find. I located a good one at $6.99/bottle (on sale, I believe) at Nob Hill: screw top, which I like, and very tasty to me: dark, rich, deep, concentrated taste that I associate with a Barbera. It’s a 2009 from Montevina Winery (“established 1970″) in Amador County. Damn good, to my palate (such as it is).

And to go with it, I got a rib-eye for sous-vide cooking tomorrow. Why? Because today I got the special little sous-vide kit. And, of course, the wine.

I’m celebrating: the sun has returned!—well, is returning. But we’ve rounded the corner.

Sounds like a cable series, doesn’t it? But a drone is coming to the sky near you. Jillian Rayfield reports in TPMMuckraker:

A secret air show in Houston. An unmanned blimp in Utah. A sovereign citizen arrested in North Dakota.

Each of these is just one small part of the bigger story of the proliferation of unmanned aircraft use within the U.S., and each is likely to become smaller still if the FAA goes through with plans to loosen regulations governing domestic use of drones.

News reports about Predator attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan are common if not always complete, but what’s gotten much less attention is the increase in unarmed drones that are buzzing around within the U.S. itself. Primarily, unarmed Predator B drones are only used by government agents to patrol the borders for illegal immigrants, but there are a (very large) handful of other agencies and companies that use smaller, unarmed drones for a slew of other purposes. And that number is only expected to grow.

The FAA says that as of September 13, 2011, there were 285 active Certificates of Authorization (COA) for 85 different users, covering 82 different unmanned unarmed aircraft types.

Though the exact breakdown of the organizations who have authorization is unclear — and the FAA would not elaborate for “privacy” and “security” reasons — in January theWashington Post reported that as of December 1, 2010, 35% of the permissions were held by the Department of Defense, 11% by NASA, and 5% by the Department of Homeland Security. The FBI and law enforcement agencies also hold some, as do manufacturers and even academic institutions.

Between pressure from trade groups (like the drone manufacturers group the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International), proposed legislation from Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) to expand the number of drone testing sites in the U.S., andpetitioning from states like Oklahoma for an approved 80-mile air corridor reserved exclusively for drone development and testing, there is great potential for drone use to expand within the U.S. in the next few years. . .

Continue reading.

Sorry for lack of posts. I’m struggling with Amazon, and I also had some shopping (food) and we had a Pilates class together, The Wife and I. Pilates really is going better: I’m still not very good, but I can do a few things.

I have a special set-up for tomorrow’s shave. I’m excited. I already took the photo.

I did another sort of pasta dish using the white anchovies. Man, those little guys are rich. A single bowl is an ample meal.

I note that when I like to build a meal that I’m making by putting in the right amount of protein (approx 3-4 oz per meal: 7 ounces of anchovies, for example, counts for two meals), about 2/3 of a starch serving per meal (so for the 7 oz white achovies, I used 3 oz of pasta (2 oz being one serving) for two servings), 2 tsp EVOO, and then I start adding vegetables and add lots and lots:

onion
garlic
leek
celery
Swiss chard
parsley
bell pepper
mushrooms
canned tomatoes
dried tomatoes

If I want more meals from it, I add more vegetables, but I leave protein, starch, and fat alone. So, for example, this big skillet I cooked is at least four meals and maybe five—but it’s two meals worth of protein, starch, and fat, with all the rest vegetables.

That’s part of how I lose weight.

UPDATE: “Add more vegetables” — Examples: diced zucchini and/or yellow crookneck squash, fennel, diced Meyer lemon, bell peppers of different colors, eggplant, Jerusalem artichoke, celery root, and so on: anything that adds bulk but not calories.

Very nice shave today. The horsehair brush did its usual excellent job of lather creation, and the Coconut Lime Verbena is a very pleasant fragrance. Three passes with the open-comb Mühle R41 (the earlier version) with an Astra Keramik Platinumb blade, a splash of aftershave balm, and I’m ready for the weekend. Already.

We were told repeatedly by the GOP that allowing gays to marry would threaten the marriages of heterosexuals (exact mechanism not clear), and now it has come to pass. Kevin Hoffman writes in CityPages:

The gay and lesbian community of Minnesota has issued a letter of apology to recently resigned Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch for ruining the institution of marriage and causing her to stray from her husband and engage in an “inappropriate relationship.”

“On behalf of all gays and lesbians living in Minnesota, I would like to wholeheartedly apologize for our community’s successful efforts to threaten your traditional marriage,” reads the letter from John Medeiros. “We apologize that our selfish requests to marry those we love has cheapened and degraded traditional marriage so much that we caused you to stray from your own holy union for something more cheap and tawdry.”

The letter comes on the heels of Koch’s own apology, released yesterday, in which she expressed her deep regret for “engaging in a relationship with a Senate staffer.” Although the letter did not specify the identity of the other participant in the “inappropriate relationship,” it is widely rumored to be former communications chief Michael Brodkorb, who lost several positions with the GOP in the wake of the scandal.

Koch, Brodkorb, and their fellow Republicans campaigned this year to put a constitutional amendment on next year’s ballot to define marriage as the union between a man and a woman, thus forbidding gay marriage. Sadly, the amendment comes too late to prevent Koch from straying from her own marriage. . .

Continue reading.

First, I used a Hefty One-Zip Click 1-gallon plastic bag, the kind with a little zipper mechanism. This was perfect, as described below.

I used a good estate-bottled EVOO to coat both sides of the swordfish steak, then salted (kosher sea salt) and peppered both sides.

Side A: I sliced a whole Meyer lemon—a little guy, with very thin skin—into thin slices, and I used these to shingle one side of the swordfish steak, completely covering it. Good adherence due to oil. I carefully put the steak on my wide spatula, lemon side down.

Side B: On the up side, I first put crushed garlic on the swordfish, coating the side. Then I laid some fresh thyme atop that, and minced Kalamata olives over all.

I opened the gallon bag, laid it on its side, and used the spatula to place the fish at the bottom of the bag. I gently pressed the bag flat, then picked it up by the top, two-handed, and dipped it into the waiting beer cooler, filled with water at 132ºF. The fish was at the very bottom of a fairly deep bag, and its weight dragged the bottom down. The water pressure then completely collapsed the bag, driving the air upward. With almost all the air out of the bag, I zipped the top shut with a click. You can never do these things perfectly, and of course a tiny bit of air remained in the bag, but that turned out to be an advantage: it kept the top of the bag at the surface of the water, so that the swordfish could rest on the floor of the unit, well submerged and with the bag pressed closely to it.

In fact, when I removed the swordfish after about 2.5 hours (it was done long before, but it doesn’t hurt to sit there) and removed it from the bag, I found a little liquid in the bag, but conceivably from the lemon and/or the fish: not very much, at any rate. I dumped that, and scraped off the thyme to avoid twig-mouth. In the process I scraped off the olives, but I really just wanted those for flavor, and they did contribute.

The lemons were the most interesting: being cooked under pressure—even the mild water pressure at the bottom of a 24-qt beer cooler—had welded the lemon-slice shingles to the swordfish, which I though was great: I served that side up so that every bite had its own little lemon topping.

Extremely tasty, but somehow not so astonishingly good as the lamb. I think the lamb profits by a trick of association: when we remember the rich taste and unmistakeable mouth-feel of a perfectly done cut of meat, somewhere close by in associations are glowing coals, a grate, perhaps a few flames, smoke with a hint of hickory: all those constitute a kind of atmosphere of the taste—and then to get that same identical sense experience from a cut of meat you’ve pulled out of not especially hot water in a plastic bag… it’s astounding, is what it is.

But with the swordfish, one thinks, “Fish. Cooked. Water. Yeah.” It somehow all goes together, and while the swordfish tastes extremely good, it’s a taste in a familiar associational context, not the fish out of water (as it were) of the sous-vide lamb chop.

Anyway, I’m definitely sold. I wondered what my next obsession would be, and I think it’s arrived, like a train pulling into Paddington Station, clanging and hissing steam.

Certainly the GOP has no monopoly on bad behavior in politics and governing. Nick has pointed out in comments how the Democrats in the House and Senate all too often are eager to do the bidding of their corporate sponsors (I wish they would wear those little labels like race-car drivers), corrupted by association with moneyed power—much as union leaders over time became corrupted and stopped representing the interests of their members.

The GOP effort to prevent people from voting is despicable, but what the Democrats did in California is just as bad. Olga Pierce and Jeff Larson report for ProPublica:

This spring, a group of California Democrats gathered at a modern, airy office building just a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol. The meeting was House members only — no aides allowed — and the mission was seemingly impossible.

In previous years, the party had used its perennial control of California’s state Legislature to draw district maps that protected Democratic incumbents. But in 2010, California voters put redistricting in the hands of a citizens’ commission where decisions would be guided by public testimony and open debate.

The question facing House Democrats as they met to contemplate the state’s new realities was delicate: How could they influence an avowedly nonpartisan process? Alexis Marks, a House aide who invited members to the meeting, warned the representatives that secrecy was paramount. “Never say anything AT ALL about redistricting — no speculation, no predictions, NOTHING,” Marks wrote in an email. “Anything can come back to haunt you.”

In the weeks that followed, party leaders came up with a plan. Working with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — a national arm of the party that provides money and support to Democratic candidates — members were told to begin “strategizing about potential future district lines,” according to another email.

The citizens’ commission had pledged to create districts based on testimony from the communities themselves, not from parties or statewide political players. To get around that, Democrats surreptitiously enlisted local voters, elected officials, labor unions and community groups to testify in support of configurations that coincided with the party’s interests.

When they appeared before the commission, those groups identified themselves as ordinary Californians and did not disclose their ties to the party. One woman who purported to represent the Asian community of the San Gabriel Valley was actually a lobbyist who grew up in rural Idaho, and lives in Sacramento.

In one instance, party operatives invented a local group to advocate for the Democrats’ map.

California’s Democratic representatives got much of what they wanted from the 2010 redistricting cycle, especially in the northern part of the state. “Every member of the Northern California Democratic Caucus has a ticket back to DC,” said one enthusiastic memo written as the process was winding down. “This is a huge accomplishment that should be celebrated by advocates throughout the region.” . . .

Continue reading—there’s a lot more.

I certainly agree that “this is a huge accomplishment that should be celebrated by advocates throughout the region” if by that he means that this is a despicable effort to undermine the foundations of democracy and deceive the public and the government. I hope the authors of this plan go to prison, which they richly deserve. They won’t. The US as a democracy is crumbling fast.

Here’s the reaction from the GOP, which is (naturally enough) displeased, though with apparently no recognition that the GOP is pursuing much the same course through their voter-disenfranchisement plant.

First, the pre-shave soap this morning was one suggested by NoHelmet and another shaver on Wicked_Edge: Desert Essence Thoroughly Clean Face Wash with tea-tree oil. Not bad at all, but I find I prefer a solid bar to a liquid soap.

I decided to use my Rod Neep Dreadnaught today, a brush with a massive mane. And someone asked whether Vitos Red Label was like Cella, so I thought I’d do a face-off (as it were). First pass-and-a-half with Vitos, rest with Cella.

Cella is pretty clearly superior to Vitos—and given the price differential, this is as it should be. Cella’s lather was thicker, more protective, and more fragrant. In fact, by the end of the shave I had moved Cella back onto the bathroom counter for more frequent use: it’s really quite a good soap that I have unaccountably overlooked.

The Feather premium with a much-used Feather blade did its usual superb job: three passes to perfect smoothness.

The blue Floîd was to t4et the fragrance, which one shaver’s wife recently characterized as “feminine.” Gender specificity in fragrances is tricky: the English have classically considered rose a manly fragrance—and I have to say that I like it a lot—but others might consider it feminine. I saw vanilla referred to as a feminine fragrance, but Paul Sebastian aftershave, a favorite, has a strong vanilla note.

In any event blue Floîd seemed plenty masculine enough for me, but I had forgotten the menthol content so hit an unexpected cold zone. That passed, I’m fine, and the shave is terrific.