Naw, don't call it SWINE flu....

Don'tcha wonder why they changed the name?

A couple of articles caught my eye today:

The first one actually appeared several years ago in Rolling Stone but was linked in one of today's Hullaballoo posts: "The Real Food Craze," by tristero.

The second article appears in today's MPR "News Cut":

MPR received a letter from a pork producer representative that laid bare the industry's objections to calling it swine flu:

[Please] reference the present flu virus by its appropriate name, the 2009 N1H1 flu.

Referring to the present flu virus as "swine flu" is not only damaging to MN pork producers, but demonstrates an uneducated, reckless approach, which is undoubtedly uncharacteristic of MN Public Radio.

The negative connotations to swine, unfairly made and scientifically unsupported, affect consumer confidence and therefore have a significant negative impact on pork production.

Waal, now, we can't have THAT!! Let nothing stand between a 'merkan and his/her bacon!!!!

Fasting on Mondays

I just read that many women in India observe Monday as a fast day. Whether they observe the fast in honor of Shiva, are looking for a sweetheart, or are just conscious of the need to stay slim, many consume only fruit, tea with lemon, and water--at least until sundown.

Today's Daily Om reading (on the first page of this blog) offers another way to fast: Stop kicking yourself over your past decisions, no matter how wrong-headed or painful or disastrous the outcome.

We are all human, and we all make mistakes--sometimes real whoppers.

TGIM...I'm going to clean out all the fruit in my refrigerator today and focus on the present.

Have a good Monday!

"Bye, Bea....

Bea, you were so funny! From the time you first appeared on "All in the Family" as Edith's cousin until the last episode of "Golden Girls," you were a reliable source of heart-easing hilarity.

Rest in peace...

Ice Cream Night!!

The best food idea I've read about in a long time is something I saw (FORGET WHERE--online? in a magazine? in the freebie daily newspaper?) t'other day: One brilliant mother has designated one night a week as "Ice Cream Night." The youngest child makes a list of all the ice creams and toppings they have on hand, then goes around taking orders from each member of the family.

The smart mother does not serve sweets or sodas or anything else corrupting during the rest of the week, but on Ice Cream Night, they can eat all the ice cream they want--within the limits of what's available.

I don't know (or didn't read or unconsciously blocked) whether they eat ONLY ice cream for supper one night a week, or whether it's just for dessert.

XE readers probably know how I'd vote on that question:

Yes, please....a pint of Haagen Dasz Vanilla Swiss Almond! and hold the meatloaf and broccoli.

I think I'd probably even start stocking up on things like hot fudge sauce, marshmallow creme, and lots of good nuts.

But I digress...I've gotta lose the avoir du pois

Her Other Blog

Xtreme English has had a second blog--Life Begins at 70--for a couple of years, but it's been private. She's decided to open it up to anyone to read. There are only two posts at the moment. All the rest have been taken offline in the interests of XE's privacy (mad, hysterical laughter--anyone with kids can tell you there is no such thing as privacy). Maybe she'll put them back on, and maybe she won't.

But LBA70 will be different from XE...it'll have fiction and poetry and other stuff...drawings.

Welcome to Life Begins at 70!

First Warm Weekend in Spring 2009

One of the great pleasures of living in Washington is the beauty of the place. This past weekend was the first really warm one. We took a long walk along the Mall toward Eastern Market and soaked in the sun and bright colors.


Dogwoods in blossom along walk past the Cannon House Office Building. You can barely see the redbush behind the red dogwood, but it intensifies the color.


Tulips on the front lawn of the Botanical Garden with the Native American Museum in the background.


The toy boat on the Capitol's Reflecting Pool doesn't scare this pigeon one bit.


From the sidewalk, you can see the fountains in the courtyard between the East and West Buildings of the National Gallery.


All I can say for this is that SOMEBODY tried to spruce things up at the Environmental Protection Agency, but it seems emblematic of the whole approach to the Environment over the past eight years: Don't spend any money on it, and as long as you throw a few tulips in the dirt, nobody will notice.

Vaya con diablo.....

I think Texas Governor Rick Perry has the right idea. I've thought for a long time that the best thing to do with Texas would be to give it back to Mexico. But...and this is nonnegotiable...ONLY if Mexico takes El Busho & family & friends & former employees (Condi, Cheney, Karl--that bunch) with it and KEEPS THEM THERE.

5 A Day!

Fruits and vegetables, that is. How do you get enough? EVERY DAY??

For an old woman, moderately active, I need 1.5 cups of fruit and 2.5 cups of vegetables every day.

Start with breakfast:

Have a glass of juice (one serving of fruit, no matter how much you drink).

Do you usually have eggs? Include chopped veggies in your omelet--peppers, onions, spinach

Cereal? Add berries, sliced fruit, or raisins

Toast and peanut butter: Add banana slices.

Between meal snacks:

Remember that a lot of fruit and veggies are PORTABLE. An apple, a pear, a peach, a banana. Put washed veggies in a plastic baggie or container--6 baby carrots, celery sticks, cucumber slices, fresh green peas or green beans.

Lunch:

Want a sandwich? get it with tomato, lettuce, and onion slices, and have a side salad instead of fries.

Supper: How about this recipe from Fat-Free Vegan Kitchen? Note to FFVK: I like that burning sensation, too!!

IF YOU DON'T LIKE TAXES....

JUST FOR TODAY,

DON'T flush your toilet
DON'T eat anything in your refrigerator
DON'T send the little darlings off to their public school
DON'T call the police if somebody steals your car/purse/whatever
DON'T call the fire department if your house fills with smoke, and

DO send your auld mum an amount equal to her monthly Social Security check
(send it via UPS or FEDEX, too....no fair using the USPS)

All of these things:

clean water,
effortless disposal of sewage,
inspection of foods at many points between farmer brown's place and your home
free public education,
creation and maintenance of public roads
a wonderful, totally cheap postal service
police and fire departments, and
many many more benefits (you can think of lots, I'm sure)

come to us thanks to the taxes we pay to government.

Ronald Reagan may have been a nice old guy, but he was WRONG when he said "government is the problem."

taxes buy our ticket on the train of life. they pay for things we need and must do (roads, clean water, sewage systems, highways) but can't afford to pay for ALL BY OURSELVES.

Li'l Red Bucket.....

Occasionally I do something truly stupid, like turn on the water when I don't have my hearing devices plugged in. It's one of the nightmares of a deaf person. Cuz guess wot? You plug the sink, turn on the water to fill the basin to wash dishes, and then FORGET the water is running cuz you CAN'T HEAR IT, and leave the room. If you're lucky, you remember and go shut off the water. If you are NOT LUCKY, you go do something else, and by the time you wander back into the kitchen, the floor is under 2 inches of water. In an apartment building, this means the rooms under your kitchen can get flooded, too. This happened to me two weeks ago. Talk abt heart-stopping! I shut off the faucet, hauled all my towels and comforters into the kitchen to blot up the water, and called the bldg manager..."Does Ron (bldg engineer) have one of those shop vacuums that suck up water?" He did, and he was at my door with it in minutes. He not only vacuumed up the little lake, but he helped wring out the towels and bedding, which were a bit hard for me to do as swiftly and well.

Well, wot to do? I haven't had a water event like that for 16 years! Not since I drowned the little sandwich shop on the first floor of my building on its opening day. (Ah, God....that was soooooo awful.) (All together now: A deafie's life is a merry, merry life....)

Anyway, no harm done elsewhere this time, thanks be. (Ron checked.) But I immediately removed all plugs from the sinks and the bathtub. No more baths...showers only. And I bought a little red bucket for the kitchen sink. It's smaller than a dishpan, which also can block the drain, and it's very handy and cute. Helps clean up after a meal, too. I fill it with very hot soapy water before I start cooking, and toss the knives and small bowls and such in there after I'm done with them.

These horble water events would be one of the things that a care dog could help with....like barking & jumping nonstop whenever water is running in the sink or tub. Or giving me a nip if I ignore that, too. My genius dog-training niece, Lu, probably has just the technique for that.

bunny loaf

It's time to make my annual bunnyloaf for Easter dinner. This solves the problem of what to serve besides the inevitable ham. My late sister-in-law, Helen, was a wonderful cook, and she had a fabulous recipe for hamloaf. Sadly, I've lost it (or sent it to Peggy in one of those old cookbooks). It had cream of tomato soup and crackers in addition to ground ham and other delights in it, but that's all I remember. And you really can't walk into Safeway or Whole Foods here in the nation's capitol these days and snag a package of ground ham. You probably can get it at a butcher counter, but I'd be prepared to pay about $15/lb--NOT.

Anyway, bunnyloaf...the recipe!

Make a meatloaf recipe of your choice and plop the whole mass on a greased baking pan (something with edges to catch the liquid that meatloaves give off while cooking). Using your best artistic skills, sculpt it into a bunny shape. I tried one year to be realistic, and it was an unrecognizable lump. So I laid it out horizontally: big round glob for the body, smaller round glob for the head, and two pointy globs for the ears, and one small glob for the tail. One year, when I made a triple recipe, there was enough for feet, too.

Next, you bake it--350F. for an hour or so, however it goes. Carefully lift the cooked bunny onto the serving platter.

THEN, you FROST IT WITH A NICE THICK LAYER OF MASHED POTATOES!! You can create bunny whiskers with slim julienne of carrot. The eyes you can make with two slices of olive stuffed with pimiento (giving the true bunny red eyes). And I always decorated the platter with steamed asparagus "grass." Raisins? I think not....

That's it...although you can exercise your own creative whimsy. It's fun.

Tuna Hotdish

It's Good Friday, and I'm having company for dinner. What to serve? I'm thinking of good old North Dakota tuna hot dish.

Tuna hot dish is about the same as tuna casserole, except it has lots fewer ingredients--five, not counting salt & pepper.

Tuna casserole does not use CANNED GOODS, so you have to make the sauce and cook the tuna yourself, and there's a whole long LIST of ingredients to wrangle. Ufda! Who needs this? Still, here's a good TUNA CASSEROLE recipe.

However, Beatrice Ojakangas herself says no good recipe has more than seven ingredients, so I'm stickin with the canned goods version, which follows.

Tuna Hot Dish recipe
Ingredients:
1 can of tuna,
1 can of cream of mushroom soup
1 can of cream of chicken soup (this is a fancy addition that came AFTER i hit the age of 30 or so)
1 cup of frozen peas
3 handfuls of uncooked egg noodles
salt, pepper, and either buttered bread crumbs or crushed potato chips

Method:
Boil the noodles in salted water, cook till tender (none of this al dente crap), drain, put in big bowl.
Open the cans of soup and tuna, dump the contents into the big bowl with the noodles. (some people add maybe half a can of milk or water).
Toss in the frozen peas right out of the bag/box. (Canned peas can be substituted)
Mix well, add salt & pepper to taste, pour into buttered baking dish, and top with either buttered crumbs or crushed potato chips.

Bake for half hour or so at 350F.--or until the hot dish is bubbly and the topping is crunchy.

Serve.

In ND, the traditional accompaniment to this was fruit salad: drain a can or two of mixed fruit, fold in whipped cream, keep chilled till ready to serve.

I can't guarantee you (or my guests) will think tuna hot dish is DELICIOUS, but from another angle, fitting the occasion, it's PENITENTIAL.

Good News

XE readers may have noticed my antipathy for certain media outlets with what I consider right-wing bias: most TV networks, many of the largest newspapers, etc.

HOWEVER...recently, I have discovered Yahoo! News. It's current, and it covers important items the other outlets totally ignore.

Lunes-y

Miscellany for Monday...odd stuff I've found online that you may enjoy, too....

1) How to clean artichokes

Been a while since you prepared an artichoke? This little video from RealAge Cooking Tips shows you how. Hmm...mebbe I'll go see if there are any artichokes around yet. It's too early, though, right? Also, it says to scoop out the choke if you want to stuff them...but don't you have to do this anyway? UPDATE: I did find some PURPLE artichokes at Balducci's, the food gallery over by American U. I bought one, and cleaned it per instructions, cooked it, and et it. All I had to dip it in was garlic-flavored olive oil. Lisa's mother used to serve them with some kind of Russian dressing right outta the bottle. Her idea was lots better than plain oil, even garlic flavored. BUT...now I can do this on my own! Next time I'll cook a bunch, stuff them with something, and invite a friend or two over.

2) Prince of Petworth's blog:

One of the coolest bloggers around DC is none other than The Prince of Petworth! (Petworth, a course, is my new neighborhood.) POP is a donut lover, so he's very excited about a new Dunkin Donuts shop scheduled to arrive on 14th St. Wot is it with these guys and donuts? Rachel Maddow's Facebook page last week or two weeks ago had a bunch of her favorite commercials by a guy named, i think, Miller? There was one of a guy enjoying a box of powdered donuts with a bottle of Miller Lite. (Sorry, i can't FIND these commercials now. Dunno where they went.)

3) Welcome back to DC's Mad Cabbie!

Mad Cabbie has been off the space since last summer, and his readers all have been worried about him. After all, he came back from his trip to Ethiopia and was sick as a dog. Alas, it wasn't him we should have considered. Last September, Mad's father felt dizzy while reading his Sunday paper. He went to the hospital, and after a brief bout with cancer, he died in early March. Mad spent every day of the last six months with his dad. What a gift! Both for his dad and for Mad, too. I spent my mother's last week with her, and though I couldn't hear, and she couldn't talk, being with her then was moving beyond words.

Dupont Circle, view from Circa toward Dupont Metro north exit, april 2, 2009

I've decided to just take snapshots of DC street scenes and post them without a lot of spin.