Rosemary cake.....

This makes lovely cake to serve with tea or coffee.  I eat it just plain, with nothing spread on it.    This is yet another recipe from Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace."  I get the rosemary from my wee garden on the porch.  

8 eggs; 1-1/2 cup raw sugar (i used plain sugar); 1-2/3 cup olive oil; 4 T finely chopped fresh rosemary; 3 cups flour; 2 T baking powder; 1 t kosher salt. 

Heat the oven to 325 degrees.  Coat a bundt pan first with butter, then with flour, tapping out the excess flour.
Beat the eggs for 30 seconds. Slowly add the sugar and continue beating until the mixture is very foamy and pale. Still mixing, slowly drizzle in the olive oil.  Using a spatula, fold in the rosemary.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.  Keeping the mixer on low speed, gradually add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture.  Pour the batter into the bundt pan.
Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through (I forgot to do this, didn't seem to hurt anything).  The cake is done when it looks golden brown and springs back when touched.  You can pretty much tell.  Or you can insert a straw or skewer into the center and it comes out clean.  Allow the cake to cool briefly in the pan and then tip it out onto a rack to continue cooling.
This is delicious on its own, or accompanied by freshly whipped cream or mascarpone.  

Feliz Lunes-y!

Here's a good Monday recipe: Pasta with sardines!!  I think I'm going to make this for breakfast. There's enough to last all day/week.  It's from my newest favorite cooking book (not the same as a cookbook): An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler.  It's on page 185 of the paperback.  In Amazon, Alice Waters is listed as an author after Adler.  Adler has cooked at Chez Panisse, and Waters wrote the foreword for this book.

2 tablespoons olive oil; salt; 1/2 onion, sliced; 1 bunch parsley, leaves picked & roughly chopped; 1 clove garlic, sliced; 1 can good olive-oil-packed sardines; 1 cup toasted breadcrumbs; 1 pound spaghetti; optional: dried chile flakes. 

Heat the o.o. in a deep pan big enough to hold the pasta once it's cooked. Once the oil is warm, add the onion and garlic and cook until it's soft...5 to 10 min. Add the sardines and their o.o. and let them fry in the pan, breaking them up with your spoon. Turn the heat off once the sardines have broken down. Cook the pasta in well-salted water. While the pasta is cooking, chop the parsley. Remove a glass of pasta water from the pot just before you remove the pasta. When the pasta is almost done, turn the heat on under the pan of sardines. Remove the pasta with tongs and drop it directly into the pan. Add 1/4 cup of pasta water and mix the sardines & onions through the pasta. Add more water by the splash if it all seems dry and rigid. When the noodles & sauce seem well combined, add half the breadcrumbs and parsley and mix them through. Serve the pasta in a big bowl, topped with the remaining breadcrumbs and parsley. A few shakes of dried chile are good here, too.

Bon appetit! 

Please don't think your vote won't make a difference!....

Digby has a wonderful post today by David Atkins: "In case there was any doubt which party is the party of plutocracy."  Please read it all by going to the link at the beginning of this paragraph, but I especially like the last two paragraphs:

As long as these people are willing to spend billions of dollars stealing elections and can get away with doing so under cover of total darkness, they don't really care how many people march in the streets. The little people mean nothing to them. And even if worst comes to worst, it still won't matter to them. After all, it's not as if the villains will be anywhere in the remote vicinity of the revolution even if it were to ever come, which it won't. They'll already be safely in the arms of Dubai, Nassau, or any other welcoming city whose country has low taxes and little will to extradite. Armed revolutions usually accomplish little except the slaughter of the innocent.

The alternative, of course, is to vote and fight like hell within the confines of the democratic system. Even if the choices aren't necessarily between good and evil, non-participation in the process is inexcusable when it's so abundantly clear which side is the far greater evil.

 

The Road to Recovery by Joared....

Joanne, author of Along The Way has a wonderful post, "The Road to Recovery" that she wrote at BlogHer.  It's a serious, lengthy piece of writing about how to put the country back together again, and I'm not going to reproduce all of it here.  I do like the last part, though.  To wit:

I do not want to live in a plutocracy (a nation run by the extremely wealthy), or a theocracy (a nation dictated to by any religious group), or any such combination thereof, much less a faux republic/democracy.

Let's move forward toward the gradual rejuvenation of this nation in a manner dedicated to re-building our middle class.....

... creating jobs that are not limited to just the service industry as being good enough,

... insisting our government take action to rebuild our nation's infrastructure,

... re-assessing the allocation of government funds that do not penalize the least among us,

... expecting all, including the most wealthy among us, to pay their fair percentage of taxes,

... determine government budget cuts in many unnecessary subsidized areas,

... institute budget cuts the military/Pentagon has even specified as being appropriate,

... reassess the allocation of all foreign aid within the context of today's world government alignments, 

... revolutionize drug purchasing practices with pharmaceutical companies for Medicare/Medicaid/insurers, 

... demand accountability for the financial industries giants and corporations through the regulation with which they do not self-police and our officials have been negligent in enforcing.

Let's do more than just yell out the window... "we're mad as hell and not going to take it any more!"

Darlene's Hodgepodge on the ACA

The true skinny on the ACA!!  Read it and rejoice!  Thanks, Darlene!

Darlene's Hodgepodge

Higgs Boson as explained by my friends

What would I do without my smart friends? Yesterday at lunch, Linda (PHD) and I were chatting about the God particle in the news. When I got home, she had already emailed me this cartoon:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57465895/higgs-boson-explained-by-cartoon
    Of course, this cartoon left me behind at about the half-way mark..."speaking too fast," etc.  Ha. So I in turn sent it to Stu (PHD) (in his words, "a grumpy, overeducated, facetious, multilingual ex-pat Scot, blatantly opinionated, old (1944-vintage), amateur cryptologist, computer consultant, atheist, flying instructor, bulldog-lover, Beetle-driver, textbook-writer, long-distance biker, geocacher and blogger living in the foothills south of the northern German plains), who replied: 

I just love the way he [the cartoonist] draws some Feynman diagrams (quantum transitions) but doesn't explain what they are nor how to interpret them because he is assuming that everyone in his audience knows that already, implying everyone has at least a B.Sc. in (quantum) physics ;-) 

I wonder what % of the general public can read a Feynman diagram? It has to be below 1%....
(If he's talking about the general public over here, I'd say he's probably overestimating! That's certainly true in my house.) Stu also explained the name Boson:

The name Boson is derived from the surname of the Indian physicist, Satyendra Nath Bose, a contemporary of the German physicist Albert Einstein.  Nothing to do with the bosun in Lewis Carroll's Hunting of the Snark, although I have pulled people's legs using that ;-)

The fifth state of matter (after solid, liquid, gas, plasma) is called the "Bose-Einstein Condensate" after both of them. 
    As for the "God" particle name, Cathy (PHD) told me yesterday that she read that while Higgs and others were hunting for the elusive particle, the Nobel laureate Leon Lederman wrote a book originally titled That goddamn particle because nobody could find it!  When Higgs finally did find it, the book's editor changed the book's name to the God Particle without the writer's permission, setting off many discussions not only in academe but also in religion.  

D.C. Fireworks Grand Finale, July 4, 2012

Copyright © Thomas Tyler

Last night, Tom Tyler, a friend of my daughter Sally from U of Iowa days, took this wonderful photo of the D.C. fireworks grand finale.  He was in Lady Bird Johnson Park, which is on the Virginia side of the Potomac.  I love the people sitting along the shore and the boats in the river, all watching the display.  I think this is one of my very favorite D.C. photos, fireworks or not. Thanks, Tom, for letting Xtreme English's visitors share your view.

"How would you feel?"

Just now, Cathy sent the following letter to the Louisville, KY, Courier-Journal:

To the editor:  

Yesterday, while everyone focused on health care, the citizens of Washington, DC, capital of our great nation, received again a boot in the face; this time, from your Senator Rand Paul (R-KY).

As you may know, Senator Paul attached a rider to a piece of legislation that would have given our city increased control of its own budget. This is the sort of control exercised by every other city in the country. The Senate Committee, headed by Senator Lieberman (ID-CT), fully expected it to go through without problem. Then came Senator Paul. Senator Paul's rider was totally unrelated to the budget legislation. Instead, it would have abolished the right of all DC women to terminate pregnancies under any circumstance. It would, at the same time, have loosened DC's gun control laws. Senator Paul said he attached this rider "because [he] could."

I am one of the people who live in Washington, DC. We have been disenfranchised since the early years of the Republic when representatives delineated an area that now is home to 600,000+ people but did not allow it to have representation in the national Legislature they created. In fact, we couldn't even vote for President until 1960.

Perhaps this decision made sense then--in a time when travel was by horse and buggy; TV did not exist; and airplanes, cars, and the Internet were not even gleams in people's eyes.

Today, this lack of representation is outrageous. As a retired grandmother who still teaches part-time, I love this beautiful city in which I live. I love its history. I love its monuments. I love the river that runs by it and the trees that line its banks. I love the young folks who play games of touch football on the grass by the Smithsonian. I love the tourists who come with their children to walk about, marvel, and reflect. Plus, I am too old to move.

So I am constantly angered and saddened that my neighbors and I have no voting representation in the legislature of our nation--and that Americans in other parts of the country do not seem to care. And my blood pressure goes way up when insult is added to injury, and someone, like Senator Paul, who lives in another part of the country, steps on our elected officials to interfere with our city and its  governance.

How would the citizens of Louisville feel if Eleanor Holmes Norton, our Washington DC representative (who is not allowed to vote), had been able to do this--and therefore done it--to you and your city? What if Representative Norton had pushed aside your city council, your budget head, your state and local reps, and dictated to Louisville? Would you not be outraged?  Whatever the issue, Ms.Norton, as wonderful, educated, and respected as she is, has no business dictating to the citizens of a city that lies about 600 miles away.

Neither does Senator Rand Paul.

I wish you would write and tell him this.

Sincerely,

Cathryn Carroll

The Crossword

XE has a crossword puzzle embedded on the home page, right-hand column.  It's been there for a number of months, and XE works it daily, sometimes more than once.  Her scores have improved greatly since she started.  From 500 points per completion, today she scored 5109!!  The secret is, when you make a mistake, don't sit there and scratch your head.  Promptly erase the bad letter(s) and tab on to the next word.  You can fix it when you've completed as much as you can, and the cursor goes back to the top.

Speed doesn't necessarily count for much.  Accuracy is better.  Sometimes the booboos happen in typing!  Ugh.  When my final score is less than 1200, I go back and try it again to see if I can do better when I know what has to be typed.  Ha.

Anyway, this is one of many crosswords I do per week.  The other daily is the one in the WashPost's Express freebie tabloid that's often just lying about on the bus or metro.  Nobody who just tosses these things to the floor does the crossword.  With such a ready supply, I always make sure to carry a ballpoint pen somewhere in my cargo pants.  Usually I can finish the puzzle by the time I get to my stop, which normally is about 15-20 minutes. 

I also work the Sunday crosswords in the NYTimes and WashPost, if they are available.  I'm not buying these two rags any more.  Not paying a single penny more than I have to for right-wing bull crap.  It just encourages them!  That said, I now can finish both of those in a few hours. 

The other free crossword is a weekly in the Washington City Paper, which comes out every Thursday.  That's really a hard one.  It combines lots of current events and music and art facts plus the author does it in that British ironical style: lots of puns.  That takes me a couple of days.  Last week, however, it was a total mess.  The clues did not match the squares.  E.g. they had a nice clue for #25 down, but no squares led down from #25.  Oh, my!

Genug, Already.....

I got these words in an email this afternoon (this morning and yesterday, too) (from the same people):

For the first time in modern American history, the incumbent (that's us) will get outspent in a re-election campaign -- by some estimates as much as 3-to-1.

Over the last 10 days of this month alone, GOP outside groups will spend $20 million attacking President Obama on TV.

What is it that the voice mail says?  "We're sorry....."

Thank you for thinking of me.  I've voted in every election I could since I was 21 years old.  That's a LONG TIME.  I'm not only a voter but also an active campaigner.  I regret that my annual income barely scrapes in at five figures and that my savings balance is, um, hoo.....is that a MINUS figure?  Guess so.  What that means is my ability to fork over any more $3 contributions is at an all-time low!  Live with it.  I'm wondering if there aren't any billionaire Democrats?  Can't they kick in a little more?

Sigh. The only thing I can see is for us pore lefties to STOP WATCHING TV.  Period. Don't watch those freakin ads!! Turn the toob off until the next cycle of whatever it is that cycles in an election year.  BITE THE BULLET.  Sign up for Netflix and watch the streaming movies and TV shows a day or a week later.  

And for sure, you can listen to tapes or CDs on the radio.  No need to tune in for all the idiotic ads.

Just do it.  We don't have to spend our hard-earned nickels and dimes to enrich some TV or radio station owner!!  Bleah.

New Leaves!!

My rubber plant (tree?) has new leaves on every branch!!  Thanks, dear Rain Kachina, for your wonderful visit last week--and today, too!  You scrubbed off all the dust & pollen and worked your magic on the plant, which had been languishing in the house until I put it out on the balcony.  You just never know, do you.  Life lurks in our dust-covered days until it gets what it needs to flourish.  

p.s.  I'm posting these on Snoozeville Chronicle, too, which is my daily journal, recently revived.

An Open Letter To The Supreme Court About Health Insurance, By Jen Sorensen - Kaiser Health News

Thanks to Echidne for posting this on June 6!

An Open Letter To The Supreme Court About Health Insurance, By Jen Sorensen - Kaiser Health News

On the High Line...

The plaques (on various walls) say the High Line is NYC's newest public park. The High Line Park was created on a former elevated railroad bed used for delivering goods between the meat packing district (Gansevoort St.) and 30th St. on the West Side.  (The last shipment was a load of frozen turkeys in 1980.)  As a park, it's a dandy. My wonderful friend Mary Lou and I went over there on Sunday for a walk.

I'd never been up there (it's 30' above street level) before. The last time I was close was 5 years ago when Sally, Cathy, and I met Naomi in Chelsea's gallery area to see "The Plains of Sweet Regret," a video installation of ND scenes by Mary Lucier. Then, signs talked about the work proceding on the High Line, but it wasn't open yet.

Sunday was perfect: lots of sun, cooling breezes, and appealing photo ops.

P.S. Thanks to Joared (see comments), I'm including a link to Charlie Rose's "Conversation about the High Line."

Mary Lou

Looking north

--Favorite backdrop--10th Avenue

More of the garden

Lovely day for a stroll

Looking east

Love this photo!!--looking east again

Close to the river

Napping under the trumpet vine

Another view looking east

Some of the former tracks preserved

little fly on chicory flower

We've all heard of chicory.   Here (and in Baltimore) it's just a local weed growing in vacant lots and along the roadside.  Elsewhere (see also the link), the roasted taproots produce a treasured beverage.

Anyway, there's a lovely patch of chicory along the sidewalk on my way to the local library.  I stopped to snap a photo with my cell phone and spotted a cute little fly enjoying a meal on this distinctive blue flower.  Thanks to yesterday's breeze (and my assorted nonskills with a cell-phone camera), the image is not sharp.  This isn't exactly a fly or a bee....something in between?? A fake fly or a fake bee??

I've been calling this blue flower "sassafras."  So much for memory.  My botanist-engineer friend Liz told me what they were some years ago when I noticed them growing along the road in Virginia.  Come to find out this a.m. when I looked it all up, sassafras is a TREE, and they use it to make root beer.  I knew it was some kind of beverage.

It's Raining, It's Pouring...time to hit the Pool!!

The Rain Kachina has come to bless our day.  No bike riding for me.  Maybe swimming?  It's been a long time since I've made it up to the Woodrow Wilson Aquatic Center in Tenleytown.  There's an aquatic center right here in Takoma, but I don't go there for two reasons:  They won't let me use my snorkel, and the shallow (less than 5' deep) lanes are almost always occupied by water aerobics classes.

XE has to confess that she has never been a good swimmer--if indeed she could swim at all.  For many years, despite journeys to the family lake cottage every summer weekend from the time she was 9 or 10, she couldn't swim.  She was terrified to go too deep for her to stand with her head above water.  A good friend urged the age-50 XE to get a snorkel so she could breathe and relax (XE subsequently learned the two go together in swimming).  XE then grew out of her long characteristic of being a sinker, even when she tried to float.

Wilson has changed their lane configuration, from always being long (50 meters), to half long and half short (25 yards)--to the satisfaction of what my swimming buddy calls "the nonathletes and rich housewives of Chevy Chase." Here's the DPR's report of the "survey" they conducted last year on this issue:

Of the 1,185 District residents who participated in the unscientific online survey, 66 respondents voted for the pool to be 25 yards at all times, 818 voted for 50 meters at all times and 166 thought it should be split equally with some days 25 yards and other days at 50 meters. 82 people said it should be split, but mostly 25 yards and 53 people thought it should be split, but mostly 50 meter. The ANC’s voted unanimously to have the pool configured in a 50-50 split.

This is democracy?  Here's the tally:

FOR 25 yards at all times                   N=  66                      

FOR 50 meters at all times                 N=818
FOR a SPLIT--25 yards/50 meters     N=166
   [Mostly 25 yards    N= 82]
   [Mostly 50 meters  N= 53]

Seems like some votes count way more than others:  871 swimmers (or 74% of those surveyed) wanted 50 meter lanes all (818) or most (53) of the time.

But whose happiness & satisfaction did the ANC decide, by unanimous vote, should be honored by the lane arrangement?  148 swimmers (or 12.5% of those surveyed) who wanted 25 yards all (66) or most (82) of the time.

Clouds over the Metro Parking Lot

My photographer friend Linda announced t'other day that she wanted to go out to take pictures of the clouds, which that day reminded her of the "clouds over the Everglades."

There are no Everglades by my place--no gators, no tall birds--although the big Metro parking lot seems to have an underground spring that keeps cracking the pavement on the down slope in one place.  It's always at least damp there, no matter how often the grounds crew patches it.

We did have lovely clouds last night, though.  I snapped this picture with my BlackBerry camera on the way home.  Not 10 minutes after I got in the door, the first crack of thunder sounded, and it grew very dark as more big thunderheads moved in.  There  wasn't even time for me to put away my groceries and go outside for more photos before the clouds burst, and we had a real downpour.

I love clouds, and the Metro parking lot seems to be a little "weather central," where all kinds of fronts and clouds converge.  Maybe it's just that this is the only 5-8 acre space close by without buildings or trees.  Any trees crowd around the edges.

P.S.  About the dogwood tree....I bought a tree book that arrived two days ago.  It wasn't the compendium I thought it would be, but it did enlighten me about the dogwood "flowers."  The four white "petals" are really bracts--special leaves, not flower petals at all.  The actual flower is the little round thing in the middle.  The white bracts make a convenient, well-marked landing spot for insects looking for pollen in the flower itself.  Never to old to learn something new!  Notice how well the rain soaked everything last night.  There are still drops of water on the leaves.

P.S. There's More!

As she says in the video in yesterday's post, Peggy Reichard does love hand-building ceramic boat shapes,* and she does love to work with fabric, and she does love to take photographs. Occasionally she puts it all together.    

This photo shows just one of the banners from Peggy's 2003 show, the inspiration for which came out of her visit to Hanoi.  She printed one large digital image of a Vietnamese boat on each of the long silk banners.  Then she attached smaller photos of local people and scenes, also printed on the same kind of silk, to each long banner.  She also created the small ceramic boats that sat on pedestals among the banners.

I can't find photos of the first of Peggy's ceramic pieces that I saw.  She made these while she was studying for her Masters degree in Philadelphia.  They were small ceramic cups or shallow pieces partially filled with beautiful tinted glass.  It looked like the cups still held a bit of water or that she'd left them out in the rain and the drops and puddles had became permanent.  They were at once simple and astonishing.

*She loves real boats, too.  She and her husband have been serious, dedicated sailors on the lakes in Michigan and now Chesapeake Bay.

I feel her work should show up in the National Women's Art Museum some day--hopefully soon!

Here's a Find.....

I was looking for an email from Peggy Reichard, one of my former teachers in the now defunct "adult education" art classes at Gallaudet.  (These may no longer be defunct, just called something else.)  In her last email, she gave me directions to the Torpedo Art Factory's Scope Gallery where her coop sells its creations.

That email also included a wonderful video of Peggy working with clay.  It was taken by Ken Kurlychek's wife, Amy Flannery.  Ken is another former Gallaudet coworker.

Anyway, Peggy specializes in hand-building ceramics, and this is a good example of the inventive, free-spirited work she encourages--and does herself.  It opens with some shots of Peggy's finished work, then it goes to Peggy demonstrating how she does this kind of thing.

This really is me, Xtreme English

The Official Martha Stewart Blog - The Martha Blog


Well, I intended to share the Martha Blog's remarkable post on the Japanese tree peonies at Rockefeller State Park Preserve in New York State.  I'm not sure I got just this one post.  It looks to me as if I got the whole shebang:  the Official Martha Stewart Blog.  I'm afraid to look!  And I just did....the tree peony post is maybe three down on the list of recent posts on the right hand side. Whew!

In any case, the photos of the tree peonies in that one post are fabulous!  The Japanese people keep blessing us with their flowering trees. I'm thinking of the cherry trees here in DC as well as these gorgeous tree peonies. Enjoy!   I'm not advertising here....just blown away by the photos of the tree peonies!

Change of pace....

I've never heard this before.  So wonderful.....

(Thanks to Leslie Parsley)