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.

Under Water....UPDATE 2--MORE SNOW

Bismarck house, back yard looking from big kitchen window, March 1969.

The Red River of the North, which flows past (now THROUGH) Fargo, ND, and the Missouri River, which flows out of Montana on its way to the Mississippi and passes between Bismarck and Mandan, ND, are both out of their banks this week.

Both my old house in Fargo and our old house in Bismarck were threatened by flooding if not actually flooded this week. I haven't been able to discover what actually happened yet, but I know that our Fargo neighborhood at least was evacuated, and Fox Island, where the girls' schoolmates Connie and Bobby lived, was evacuated and flooded. Two houses where my family and I lived, each two miles from its river, two different rivers, 200 miles apart....surrounded by flood waters. What are the percentages on that?

Fargo residents are cold and exhausted from days of creating sandbag dikes to keep the water back, and many have been forced to relocate to high ground. Mary, my old high school pal, who grew up in Moorhead and whose father farmed the famously rich valley soil, asked "Where's the high ground in the Red River Valley?"

The Red River Valley of the North (not the one in Texas immortalized in song) is the lake bed of glacial Lake Agazziz, a remnant of the last Ice Age. The place is as flat as a pancake. In Fargo winters, if we wanted to slide, we had to find a ditch or go to El Zagal golf course, where the front (back?) 9 holes form a huge cup-shaped gully next to the river. Every spring, El Zagal's gully was filled with flood water, and when the river receded, the place was covered with thick stinky mud and dead fish until the rain washed it clean.

If you are driving west from Minneapolis on Highway 10, the ground slopes down to the Red River Valley beginning somewhere around Glyndon, MN, maybe 16 miles east of Fargo. The valley continues on until the land rises 100 miles west of Fargo at Valley City, ND.

Last week, one group of 100 Fargo senior citizens were flown to Bismarck and put up in dorms at the University of Mary, which is up on the bluffs south of town and miles from the Missouri. One woman, age 94, said it's the first time she's ever flown on an airplane.

Our hearts are with these good, open-hearted people as they struggle long hours day after day to both survive and preserve their own and their neighbors' properties.

One crucial break from the flooding that has slowed the cresting of the Red River is the weather. The temperature in Fargo is about 12 degrees as I looked just now (wind chill? they don't talk about it much, but I'm guessing it's around 0 F.), and there's snow predicted for tomorrow through Wednesday. It isn't over yet by any means.

UPDATE websites with more info:

City of Fargo Flood Information

Fargo Flood Page from NDSU

Bismarck Tribune weather/news

UPDATE 2: Fargo having a blizzard!!

Here's an article from the Mpls Star & Tribune. The photo shows the Fargo Theater, where I used to spend many a Saturday afternoon watching movies. The films were mostly westerns, and tickets were 10 cents. We'd watch the movie at least twice.

And you think YOU had it tough.....

Jim Feeney sent this birthday bio of Gloria Steinem today from Writers Almanac for March 25, 2009. Jim says, "you may have seen this already, but Gloria Steinem's early life was new information for me and sure helps me appreciate her even more..."

It's the birthday of Gloria Steinem, (books by this author) born in Toledo, Ohio (1934). Her father was an antique dealer and a summer resort operator who traveled all over the country in a trailer, looking for new business ventures. Steinem said, "He was always going to make a movie, or cut a record, or start a new hotel, or come up with a new orange drink." She traveled around the country, never attending school, until her parents separated, and she moved in with her mother.

But her mother's mental health began to break down, and Steinem had to take over all the cooking and cleaning and shopping. She said that her mother was "an invalid who lay in bed with eyes closed and lips moving in occasional response to voices only she could hear; a woman to whom I brought an endless stream of toast and coffee, bologna sandwiches and dime pies." Young Gloria became obsessed with Shirley Temple movies, hoping to be rescued miraculously from poverty, just like the little girl on the screen.

She managed to get into Smith College because she scored so well on her entrance examinations. After college, she went to work as a journalist. She wrote celebrity journalism for a while, but she became more interested in feminism after she wrote an article about the prevalence of illegal abortions, and all her male colleagues tried to persuade her not to publish it. She was a founder of Ms. magazine, whose first issue came out in January 1972.

Gloria Steinem said, "Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else."

With incredible serendipity, it's also the birthday of Flannery O'Connor. Here's both, though if you click the WA link above, it'll have audio, too.

It's the birthday of Flannery O'Connor, (books by this author) born in Savannah, Georgia (1925). She wrote two novels and many short stories, including "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." She is the subject of Brad Gooch's Flannery (2009), a new biography. In it we learn about her regular correspondence with a young credit bureau clerk named Betty Hester, a semi-reclusive woman. Flannery wrote Betty 274 letters, and in one of them she wrote to her: "I am afraid that if I tell you your writing to me is a kindness, you will lay this to some more of my guile or feel obliged to write me when you don't feel like it. Don't do that, but do be assured that these letters from you are something in my life."

She wrote to Betty about her stories as she was writing them. In one letter, she wrote, "I have a sentence in mind to end some story that I am going to write. The character all through it will have been hungry and at the end, he is so hungry that 'he could have eaten all the loaves and fishes, after they were multiplied.'" And in fact, that sentence was in the closing pages of her novel The Violent Bear It Away (1960).

Five years before she died of lupus at the age of 39, she sent a letter to her friends Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, along with a manuscript of The Violent Bear It Away. In the letter, she wrote about her novel: "I am 100% pure sick of it. I cannot see it any longer and the only thing I can determine about it is that nobody else would have wanted to write it but me."

Thanks, Jim, for sending this. There are so many permutations in life that it's easy to forget it's the rule, not the exception.

Want to be inspired? Consider these inventive women....

On the one hand, the news is full of outrage over the AIG bonuses. On the other hand, Truthout reports this development happening among women who until recently have been among their country's poorest of the poor. Following, for your convenience, is the article (minus the photo, for which please click the above link):

India: Women Farmers Ready to Beat Climate Change

Tuesday 17 March 2009

by: Keya Acharya | Visit article original @ Inter Press Service

photo
Women farm in a field in Pawara, India. (Photo: Rajesh Kumar Singh / AP)

Zaheerabad, Andhra Pradesh - A collective of 5,000 women spread across 75 villages in this arid, interior part of southern India is now offering a chemical-free, non-irrigated, organic agriculture as one method of combating global warming.

Agriculture accounts for 28 percent of Indian greenhouse gas emissions, mainly methane emission from paddy fields and cattle and nitrous oxides from fertilisers. The 2007 report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says India's rainfall pattern will be changing disproportionately, with intense rain occurring over fewer days, leading directly to confusion in the agricultural scenario.

Decreased rain in December, January and February implies lesser storage and greater water stress, says the report, while more frequent and prolonged droughts are predicted.

The report cites, as example of impacts, that a 0.5 degrees Celsius rise in temperature will reduce wheat production in India by 0.45 tonnes per hectare.

Research at the School of Environmental Sciences in New Delhi projects crop losses of 10-40 percent by 2100 despite the beneficial effects of higher carbon dioxide on growth, with the dynamics of pests and diseases significantly altered.

Adaptation is both necessary and unavoidable, says the IPCC.

In Zaheerabad, dalit (the broken) women forming the lowest rung of India's stratified society, now demonstrate adaptatation to climate change by following a system of interspersing crops that do not need extra water, chemical inputs or pesticides for production.

The women grow as many as 19 types of indigenous crops to an acre, on arid, degraded lands that have been regenerated with help from an organisation called the Deccan Development Society (DDS).

DDS, working in this area of India for the last 25 years, has helped these women acquire land through government schemes for "dalits', and form "sanghas' or local self-help groups that convene regularly and decide their own courses.

The women plant mostly in October-November, calling up the family's help for 7 days for weeding and 15-20 days for harvesting. Farmyard manure is applied once in two or three years depending on soil conditions.

In Bidakanne village, 50 year-old Samamma, standing in her field, points out the various crops, all without water and chemical inputs, growing in between the rows of sunflowers: linseed, green pea, chick pea, various types of millets, wheat, safflower and legumes.

The sunflower leaves attract pests and its soil depletion is compensated by the legumes which are nitrogen-fixing.

"In my type of cropping, one absorbs and one gives to the soil, while I get all my food requirements of oils, cereals and vegetable greens,'' says Samamma.

Samamma's under-one-acre plot produces, amongst other crops, 150 kg of red "horsegram', 200 kg of millets and 50 kilos of linseed. She keeps 50 kg of grains and 30 kg of gram and sells the rest in the open market.

The 5,000 women in 75 villages are now in various stages of adopting this method of agriculture.

"In the climate change framework, this system of dryland agriculture has the resilience to withstand all the fallouts of elevated temperatures", says P.V. Satheesh, the director of DDS.

Multiple stresses from global warming in India and the Asian continent are foreseen in water scarcity, groundwater salinity, food insecurity and hunger, loss of livelihoods and problems in downstream agriculture that depend on glacial melts.

The women now run a uniquely evolved system of "crop financing' and food-distribution that they have mapped out themselves.

Subscription to the Sangha is by a fistful of grain. Those borrowing grains from this community grain bank then pay back five times the borrowed amount in grain.

The collected grains are then sifted for good seed and the rest is either sold in the open market, sold to members in crisis at low rates, or distributed to poor families in the village.

"I check the earheads of grain for good seed", says 55-year-old Akkama, seed bank manager in Hulugera village. "It's a system handed down to me from my ancestors." The women have stored over 50 different varieties of seeds from local cereals such as millets, wheat, red gram, linseed and sorghum.

The money collected from open market sales every year is deposited in regular banks and the interest earned from them is used to finance loans for members who again complete the cycle by paying back their loan in grain over five years.

DDS has now involved the women in a monitored system of organic produce that is certified by the global Participatory Guarantee Scheme's (PGS) Organic India Council.

The method is a system of third party certification by organic growers themselves, initiated in India in 2006 by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Indian ministry of agriculture in consultation with farmers and NGOs.

PGS groups are a worldwide phenomenon, operating in countries like the United States, New Zealand, Brazil and France. New initiatives are coming up in Vietnam and South and East Africa.

In Zaheerabad, the organically certified staples and grains are packed and labeled with the PGS certification, taken by a mobile van to be sold in retail to consumers in Hyderabad city 150 kms. Satheesh says the women are swamped with orders.

And yet, these women have come from the poorest rungs of society. Narsamma, 55, says she worked as a labourer 25 years ago, earning a pittance.

She heard about DDS's self-help group in a neighbouring village and approached the organisation for help.

She has now provided education for five children, two of whom work in NGOs, built a new house and bought cattle and land with DDS and government-support.

"Now, when landlords come to me for borrowing seed, now I can laugh,'' says the feisty woman who has traveled to London, Peru, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, talking to local farmers about the ecologically sound agriculture practiced by the women of Zaheerabad.

»

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No Fakes, Please!

Lots of vegan recipes call for margarine, sausage, and cheese--not the flesh & blood versions, but various combinations of tofu, nutritional yeast, seitan, and CHEMICALS.

What's with this? If I wanted to eat meat, butter, and cheese, I would. I LIKE eating vegetables and whole grains. I don't need to pretend I'm eating meat.

And I won't eat margarine, period. My earliest memory of margarine is being designated the family mixer. Having nimble, wiry fingers (and no job--kinda like being retired--everybody thinks you need something to do), I got to pop the dye capsule inside the plastic pouch of white grease and then massage the whole mess until it was yellow all the way through. I don't care to find out what's inside "vegetarian" margarine. At some point, I KNOW it's been a blob of white grease, and there's no way I want that in my system. I have to save that space for ICE CREAM. I know, I know. Not vegan. Too bad.

I'll get to that happy point when I won't be sneaking off to Safeway for a couple of those wee tublets of Haagen-Dasz Vanilla Swiss Almond or Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia. You can eat only so much brown rice and kale, and my repertoire has not yet expanded much beyond that. So sue me.

Black Bean Hummus

If you're a diet freak like I am (i.e., you love READING about diets, not doing them), you've come across the "Blood Type Diet." Since I'm blood type A, that means I should avoid garbanzo beans. (Don't ask...I have no idea why.) But....since I've been eating hummus daily since I trashcanned the animal protein, I wondered whether one could make hummus with some OTHER kinda bean.

Well! the first actual non-garbanzo hummus heading on the google page was THIS recipe. By all accounts (also on the website--more reading, no actual experience yet), it's BETTER than the traditional kind. See? "Launch out into the deep...."!)

Black Bean Hummus

* 1 clove garlic
* 1 (15 ounce) can black beans; drain and reserve liquid
* 2 tablespoons lemon juice
* 1 1/2 tablespoons tahini
* 3/4 teaspoon ground cumin
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
* 1/4 teaspoon paprika
* 10 Greek olives

1. Mince garlic in the bowl of a food processor. Add black beans, 2 tablespoons reserved liquid, 2 tablespoons lemon juice, tahini, 1/2 teaspoon cumin, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper; process until smooth, scraping down the sides as needed. Add additional seasoning and liquid to taste. Garnish with paprika and Greek olives.

(Type A's are supposed to avoid olives, too. quel dommage! pas moi, etc.)

Also, this makes a LOT of black bean hummus...if you add another can of black beans, it makes even more!! By playing your cards right, you can find black beans for about a buck a can. So....this costs LOTS less than the ready-made hummus in Whole Foods or Marvelous Market. And you can add little things as you like (parsley, more salt/lemon/garlic) and come up with your very own DEFINITIVE homemade hummus!!

snappy hacking....(oops...happy snacking)

"Set Yourself Free"

Yesterday's Daily Om, "Set Yourself Free", really spoke to me. It's quite liberating to consider that we really DO NOT HAVE TO BE PERFECT!! For your convenience, here's the article, though I encourage you to read it at its source via the above link:

Set Yourself Free: Letting Go of Perfection

It is good to remember that one of our goals in life is to not be perfect. We often lose track of this aspiration. When we make mistakes, we think that we are failing or not measuring up. But if life is about experimenting, experiencing, and learning, then to be imperfect is a prerequisite. Life becomes much more interesting once we let go of our quest for perfection and aspire for imperfection instead.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t strive to be our best. We simply accept that there is no such thing as perfection—especially in life. All living things are in a ceaseless state of movement. Even as you read this, your hair is growing, your cells are dying and being reborn, and your blood is moving through your veins. Your life changes more than it stays the same. Perfection may happen in a moment, but it will not last because it is an impermanent state. Trying to hold on to perfection or forcing it to happen causes frustration and unhappiness.

In spite of this, many of us are in the habit of trying to be perfect. One way to nudge ourselves out of this tendency is to look at our lives and notice that no one is judging us to see whether or not we are perfect. Sometimes, perfectionism is a holdover from our childhood—an ideal we inherited from a demanding parent. We are adults now, and we can choose to let go of the need to perform for someone else’s approval. Similarly, we can choose to experience the universe as a loving place where we are free to be imperfect. Once we realize this, we can begin to take ourselves less seriously and have more fun. Imperfection is inherent to being human. By embracing your imperfections, you embrace yourself.

It's very easy for me to forget that my life has been one of exploration and learning--and dealing with whatever the universe has handed to me--rather than measuring up to umpteen standards of perfection. I've never been perfect or gotten the lion's share of approval, and that's been a constant source of fear and anxiety. I can just let that go, huh? I think Byron Katie's experiences and her books say much the same thing (though she says it much better, and she's made a heap of $$ from it, too).....

More of the Same....

The NYT has replaced Bill Kristol with another conservative in the style of David Brooks--almost likeable. Here's some opinions I agree with concerning this move.

The Nation online--syfriendly's comment on "The Times' New Conservative" posted by Christopher Hayes :

Why does the political movement that brought about the decline of American prosperity and security, a decline culminating in the current economic and security crises, deserve yet another babbling pundit on the pages of the NYT? Yet another poofy pseudo-philosophical David Brooks type? Another reactionary culture warrior reaching for the golden age of the Republican party? This is one of the most discredited political parties and movements in the entire national history. Why is it given another media bully pulpit?

Posted by syfriendly at 03/11/2009 @ 7:54pm

or Whiskey Fire's post:

Death to Affirmative Action!

The New York Times needed a conservative op-ed columnist, because they decided they needed a conservative op-ed columnist. The New York Times did not go out and get the best possible columnist they could discover, someone exciting! original! groundbreaking! No, they went for that Ross Douthat guy. Egad affirmative action shudder.

It says something about the state of Conservatism that the best they could scrounge is Douthat, whose main claim to fame, or at least cognition, is that he's a "conservative" who is, uh, almost presentable.

And, on the other hand, it says something about the state of the Main Stream Media, that to get the counterpart gig as an actual liberal, you have to be on the short list for the fucking Nobel Prize.

[XE: boldface mine]

name meme

I pinched this one from Red Nose. I like it, kinda.

1. REAL NAME:
Mary Ellen Barbara (confirmation name) Dwyer Carew ("Barb Dwyer," ewww)

2. WITNESS PROTECTION NAME:(mother's and father's middle names)
Deloris Thomas

3. NASCAR NAME:(first name of your mother's dad, father's dad)
Joseph William

4. STAR WARS NAME:(the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first name)
Car Ma

5. DETECTIVE NAME:(favorite color, favorite animal)
Orange Hamster

6. SOAP OPERA NAME:(middle name, town where you were born)
Ellen Omaha

7. SUPERHERO NAME: (2nd fav color, fav car, add "THE" to the beginning)
The Yellow Beemer

8. FLY NAME:(first 2 letters of 1st name, last 2 letters of your last name)
Ma Ew

9.STREET NAME:(fav ice cream flavor, fav cookie)
Vanilla Swiss Almond Snickerdoodle (!!)

10. SKANK NAME: (1st pet's name, street you grew up on)
Pal 2

11. GANGSTA NAME:(first 3 letters of last name plus 'izzle')
Carizzle

12. YOUR GOTH NAME:(black, and the name of one of your pets)
Black Muttley

13. STRIPPER NAME: (name of your fav perfume/cologne, fav candy)
Miss Dior Jelly Bean

Cool Post from Whoopee

Whoopee is one of my favorite blogs. It's always interesting and often hilarious or outrageous or both.

Here's the fabulous post for today.

XtremeEnglish loves your arteries....

...So she is very excited to include Fat-Free Vegan Kitchen on her list of favorite blogs alongside this page. This is a great new blog that she stumbled on earlier this week when she wanted to make kale soup without the Portuguese sossidge!!

No, she has not been driven totally around the bend by what's going on in the media recently. (Boss Limbaugh? Genug, already....he doesn't need any more promotion.)

But dear, darling Safeway, which by supreme good fortune lives right in her back yard, had a free "check your cholesterol" day last week (or was it the week before? goddess...XE's memory is no longer photographic). And of course, not only was the old b.p. up even with her NO TV NEWS rule, but also XE's cholesterol was "off the charts." This is a family trait, one well described in just those words by XE's Aunt Mary, who died at age 95 with all her marbles intact.

Anyway, it was bad enough (all-time high for XE) that she decided to pull the cork and not eat ANY animal products. No meat, fish, poultry, eggs, dairy...what else? That's pretty much it. No other stuff, either, like white flour & sugar as in *cough* Girl Scout cookies....

XE's personal liberry has lots of vegetarian-type cookbooks that she consults from time to time because the FOOD RESULTING FROM THE RECIPES IS SO GOOD. So, she browsed through Pitchford and also...whoa...somebody borrowed the other one--Michio Kushi's Diet for a Strong Heart.

So she has been armed with lots of good nutritional advice, techniques, counsel, etc., but she had NO RECIPES for this kinda stuff other than the rice and beans she learned to love in one of her former lives.

This Fat-Free Vegan Kitchen blog has the goods on low fat vegetarian recipes!

XE knows that 'Murricans don't do as well as the Japanese on the macrobiotic diet. And she can live without all the seaweed, thanks. And she is more or less allergic to soy milk, but SOUP has always been one of her favorite favorites. "Soup, soup, beautiful soup...soup of the hour, soup of the day....." Who sang that? Was it the walrus? (ha...that's fitting!)

War Stories from Skool

My younger acquaintances are scattered all over the educational map these days. This ackshully happened at a VERY BIG IMPRESSIVE UNIVERSITY right here in the US of A!!

I just had the most torturous test a professor could ever devise. It was a computer applications exam. Two hours. Two problems. One problem was to be solved with Excel, the other with Mathcad (an engineering software). The only problem was there weren’t enough Mathcad licenses for every one of the students to have access to the program. In fact, there were only 7 licenses available*. Did I mention only two hours to take the test? And far more than seven students? By the time I was able to sign in to Mathcad, there was only 15 minutes left. The worst part was the actual exam content, which was practically hilarious in its difficulty. At this point, several students were having major meltdowns and letting the TAs know (as only engineers can) what moron decided on this venue and this format for the exam. The TAs grudgingly allowed the students till 6 PM the next day to complete the exam.

*Engineering students can access the software from home computers, too, and it's a fairly common program in engineering so there could possibly have been other students who were not in my class accessing the software on top of us. The whole thing was pretty much a nightmare.

I swear this one will get written up by every student when it comes time to evaluate the instructor.

Go gettem, kid! And the rest of you....any war stories from skool you'd like to share?

Here's a good one....

What would I do without email? I'd miss all the great stuff that comes from my loved ones as they goof off at work. got this one today from one of them. thanks, dear....

This is an actual letter from an Austin woman sent to American company Proctor and Gamble regarding their feminine products. She really gets rolling after the first paragraph. It's PC Magazine's 2007 editors' choice for best webmail-award-winning letter.

Dear Mr. Thatcher,

I have been a loyal user of your 'Always' maxi pads for over 20 years and I appreciate many of their features. Why, without the LeakGuard Core or Dri-Weave absorbency, I'd probably never go horseback riding or salsa dancing, and I'd certainly steer clear of running up and down the beach in tight, white shorts. But my favorite feature has to be your revolutionary Flexi-Wings. Kudos on being the only company smart enough to realize how crucial it is that maxi pads be aerodynamic. I can't tell you how safe and secure I feel each month knowing there's a little F-16 in my pants.

Have you ever had a menstrual period, Mr. Thatcher? I'm guessing you haven't. Well, my time of the month is starting right now. As I type, I can already feel hormonal forces violently surging through my body. Just a few minutes from now, my body will adjust and I'll be transformed into what my husband likes to call 'an inbred hillbilly with knife skills.' Isn't the human body amazing?

As Brand Manager in the Feminine-Hygiene Division, you've no doubt seen quite a bit of research on what exactly happens during your customer's monthly visits from 'Aunt Flo'. Therefore, you must know about the bloating, puffiness, and cramping we endure, and about our intense mood swings, crying jags, and out-of-control behavior. You surely realize it's a tough time for most women.

The point is, sir, you of all people must realize that America is just crawling with homicidal maniacs in Capri pants. Which brings me to the reason for my letter. Last month, while in the throes of cramping so painful I wanted to reach inside my body and yank out my uterus, I opened an Always maxi-pad, and there, printed on the adhesive backing, were these words: 'Have a Happy Period.'

Are you f------ kidding me? What I mean is, does any part of your tiny middle-manager brain really think happiness - actual smiling, laughing happiness, is possible during a menstrual period? Did anything mentioned above sound the least bit pleasurable? Well, did it, James? FYI, unless you're some kind of sick S&M freak, there will never be anything 'happy' about a day in which you have to jack yourself up on Motrin and Kahlua and lock yourself in your house just so you don't march down to the local Walgreen's armed with a hunting rifle and a sketchy plan to end your life in a blaze of glory.

For the love of God, pull your head out, man! If you have to slap a moronic message on a maxi pad, wouldn't it make more sense to say something that's actually pertinent, like 'Put down the Hammer' or 'Vehicular Manslaughter is Wrong',

Sir, please inform your Accounting Department that, effective immediately, there will be an $8 drop in monthly profits, for I have chosen to take my maxi-pad business elsewhere. And though I will certainly miss your Flex-Wings, I will not for one minute miss your brand of condescending bullshit. And that's a promise I will keep. Always.

Best,

Wendi Aarons
Austin, TX

Ufda!

A young woman who used to live in my former condo building recently posted this on her Facebook page. It takes a while to view, but take a look. As a side comment, I recall that, back in the 1980s when we lived in Iowa, I knew several nurses at the U of Iowa hospitals. They told me there were so many women patients being admitted with breast cancer that it was practically a "breast cancer epidemic." If there had been the equivalent of a prostate cancer epidemic among men in Iowa, I think the public would have paid more attention to what farmers dumped on their fields and that ran off into the water supply.

This is a video of a French documentary that has never been shown in the U.S. It first aired on March 11, 2008.

No Rush.....

Daily Kos has a good response to the Fathead: "Rush, A Moment of Your Time, If I May . . ." by Mother Mags

I love the way it starts out: "I don't listen to Rush, Sean, Bill-O, and the rest of the gang 'in order to know what the enemy is up to.' I can’t do it." Me, neither.
Like the author, I'm glad others with stronger stomachs and cleaner arteries take on that chore.

There are riches in this post. My favorite passage:

Let us assume for the sake of argument that Obama’s “massive spending” plan actually works. Let’s say that by the end of his first term:

• millions of people return to the employment rolls,
• necessary infrastructure work like reinforcing bridges, building roads, mass transit, and fiber optics installation gets underway,
• thousands of green jobs are created, developing alternative energy sources and taking a big step toward breaking our foreign oil addiction,
• taxes are higher on the wealthy, less so on the other 95 percent of us,
• our wildlife areas, national parks, and oceans are no longer threatened by drilling or mining,
• Gitmo and torture are distant memories, and the rule of law (that Constitution thingy) finds its way back into both domestic and international policies,
• the deficit is cut in half,
• fewer people are forced to walk away from their homes due to foreclosure,
• universal healthcare is passed which means, among other things, people are not forced into bankruptcy because of a medical emergency,
• banks and investment firms right themselves and start lending,
• children have up-to-date textbooks, classrooms that don’t endanger their health, and teachers who are well-trained and adequately compensated,
• college is affordable for anyone who wants to pursue higher education,
• oh, yeah, the U.S. exits Iraq and Afghanistan.

Let us assume, Rush, these things happen on Obama’s watch. Maybe they all won’t, but that’s not the point of this exercise. What I just sketched is what success would look like for the administration. And it is this which you gleefully and unapologetically say you don’t want to happen. Why?

Take a look, also, at the graphic on DK's lead article, "Jobs by President." Presidents who have been from the Democratic Party do MUCH better on creating jobs. I wonder if Limbaugh knows what a JOB is?

Progress Report

I've lived in this "new" apartment for three months. You'd think I'd have unpacked all my books, but there're still five BOXES left to OPEN! While dusting the joint in preparation for visitors, I keep finding all these great books I bought over the years but never had time to read. I especially love the one I found today: Roger Rosenblatt's Rules for Aging. Here are the first two rules:

Rule #1: It Doesn't Matter

Whatever you think matters--doesn't. Follow this rule, and it will add decades to your life. It does not matter if you are late, or early; if you are here, or if you are there; if you said it, or did not say it; if you were clever, or if you were stupid; if you are having a bad hair day, or a no hair day; if your boss looks at you cockeyed; if your girlfriend or boyfriend looks at you cockeyed; if you are cockeyed; if you don't get that promotion, or prize, or house, or if you do. It doesn't matter.

Rule #2: Nobody is thinking about you

Yes, I know, you are certain that your friends are becoming your enemies; that your grocer, garbageman, clergyman, sister-in-law, and your dog are all of the opnion that you have put on weight, that you have lost your touch, that you have lost your mind; furthermore, you are convinced that everyone spends two-thirds of every day commenting on your disintegration, denigrating your work, plotting your assassination. I promise you: Nobody is thinking about you. They are thinking about themselves--just like you.

And so forth....Soooo funny, sooo wise, sooo right.