They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer, an excerpt

This is a timely read today, dear friends.   

They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer, an excerpt

Really, Rupert?

In regard to the ongoing News of The World scandal, "Murdoch told them: "We're talking about payments for news tips from cops: that's been going on a hundred years."

Really, Rupert?  You don't get that it is still corrupt whether it's been going on a century or just started an hour ago?  Silly old man.

Blergh

For the last few weeks, I've been doing really well keeping to my changed diet which has bumped up complex carbs (veggies and some fruit), protein and that kind of thing.  No simple carbs.  So today while doing chores, I got it in my head that I wanted some eggs, canadian bacon and toast as a late lunch.  So I made them the way I usually have since I was a kid.  Looked good and tasted fine.  But now, I just feel kinda blergh...  I guess that meal will suffice for lunch/dinner.  Maybe later tonight, I'll snack on some sliced cucumbers, hummus and a few olives. 

My newer recipes for chickpeas and pan grilled chicken

So good!

 

 

 

This was meant to be a semi-fast meal amid a needed dietary change up in our lives.  It proved tasty and delightful.

Chickpea salad

2 cans cooked, salt free chickpeas drained and rinsed.
8 cherry/grape tomatoes cut in half
1/4 fresh yellow onion, chopped fine
1/4 orange bell pepper
2 Tbsp chopped parsley

Sea salt

Dressing
1/2 Tsp Tumeric
1./2 Tsp red pepper flakes
Juice of one lime
2 Tbsp Olive Oil
pinch of Cumin
1/8th Tsp of fresh ground black pepper


Mix the first five ingredients in a medium bowl and set aside. 

Make the dressing:

Squeeze the juice of a lime into a bowl until you have about 2-3 tablespoons of liquid.  Add the olive oil, and whisk into the lime juice with a fork or whisk.  Add turmeric, cumin, the red and black peppers and whisk together til well blended.
 
Assemble:   Pour the dressing over the chickpea salad and stir to coat well.  Add a pinch* or two of sea salt to taste and stir again.  Cover with bowl with a tight lid or wrap and put in the fridge and let sit over night.  Stir or turn and shake intermittently to make sure the whole salad is nicely seasoned with the dressing.  (*I used a salt grinder and did three twists.)

Lime Grilled Chicken*

Juice of one lime
1 Tbsp Olive Oil
pinch Cumin
1/2 Tsp Durkee Roasted Garlic seasoning
1/2 Tsp red pepper flakes
two small chicken breasts.

Mix the first five ingredients in a shallow bowl or baking dish.  Add the chicken breasts and turn to coat well.   Cover and refrigerate for an hour. 

Heat up a grill pan and spray lightly with olive oil.  Grill chicken in the pan for about 4 to 5 minutes per side (remember, this recipe is using a small portion, so cooking time will be faster). 

Serve with a 50/50 salad mix of spring greens and spinach and little vinaigrette dressing.

*I deliberately made this with no extra salt and found that none was needed.  (The Durkee Roasted Garlic seasoning has some added salt and sugar, but very little (80mg) on a per serving basis.  See: http://www.spiceplace.com/durkee-roasted-garlic-seasoning.php for ingredient breakdown).

A Reply To An Anonymous Apple Executive on What They Owe America

 http://www.alternet.org/economy/4-big-ways-insatiable-corporate-hunger-profits-has-devastated-american-life-and-world-along


To the Apple exec who was recently quoted as saying,  "We don't have an obligation to solve America's problems." Yes, you do.  Your company started here.  It has been helped along through the good graces of American citizens who paid into the tax system from which you benefitted indirectly and directly - with researchers, programmers, tax funds for development and building and so, so much more.  We American consumers helped nurture you as a nascent company when we bought your products for tens of thousands of dollars to put in our work places, public and private, because we recognized their intrinsic value and usefulness.  So yes, you do owe an obligation to us to help solve our nation's problems.  You do owe us a duty to try and work with us, rather than stockpile money off shore to fuel lives of conspicuous consumption and waste.  Your founder was a clever man and smart, but you're not him.  We're not paying for you to be neo-feudal princes where he only differences between you and them are that they did their own killing and that they knew what noblesse oblige and honor were. 

What Duties?

The NRA has had their little love fest over in Texas and they're all about their rights and how they gotta protect themselves from all they fear. I've been listening to the NRA, gun clubs, gun manufacturers for years now and I still haven't heard them speak of the public and moral duties that go along with having rights.   I guess they believe they're don't have a duty to anything other than themselves.  So the carnage continues and the rivers of blood flow deeper and deeper under their indifferent, self absorbed gazes. 

Mushroom Clouds Over Texas, 500 Deaths in Bangladesh, That’s Why We Need Unions | NationofChange

Mushroom Clouds Over Texas, 500 Deaths in Bangladesh, That’s Why We Need Unions | NationofChange

An Open Letter to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

Dear Surviving Boston Bomber, Dzhokhar,

It is a week, today, that you and your brother bombed the Boston Marathon.  

You murdered three innocent people who never hurt you directly or indirectly.   A couple in China lost their only child, Lingzi Lu.  They invested everything in her, for her future and theirs since their family was limited by China’s One Child policy.  They don’t even have the comfort of a remaining child to succor them in their mourning.   Another family lost their son.  Martin Richards.  He was just a boy waiting to cheer his father crossing race’s finish line.  Do you remember ever feeling the excitement of cheering for your own father when you were so young?   What personal or impersonal thing did he do to harm you or your older brother that he deserved to die like that while his little sister lost her leg?  The last person, Krystal Campbell was there to cheer on friends and family.  She worked feeding people as a restaurant manager.  How interesting it is that someone who worked to nourish others was murdered by a couple of destroyers.  They were loved members of their families and communities.   

Then there are the people you maimed forever as well as those who, thankfully, suffered lesser injures that were easier to treat from a medical point of view.  But what infuriates me, what is truly galling to me, was the intention to maim and cripple as many people as you could – to permanently alter their futures and rob utter strangers of their abilities to get by – whether to run for pleasure or to save themselves in the event of danger, to be independent physically and financially and all the rest that matters to them and their loved ones.  

You and your brother murdered a cop who found his way in your path of destruction as you fled and sought to evade capture.  You stole him from his family and, again, from those who loved him, who he loved.  You deprived his community of his work and good will efforts.  

Whatever so-called war you and your brother thought you were fighting and striking a blow over, they didn’t even know existed.  

News writers and pundits trying to piece together the whys and wherefores of your actions blame your older brother as the radical one who pulled you into this mess.  They say your brother didn’t have any real American friends.  Probably not.  Friendship takes effort to build.  Friendship takes a certain amount of curiosity mixed with tolerance and a few other virtues.  The fact that he didn’t have American friends speaks more about your brothers own character defects than anything else.  

It doesn’t matter how your brother dragged you into this terrorist crap.   It doesn’t matter whether he and you were ideologues, hyper-religious true believers or anything else.  What you did was vicious and wrong.  Yet you chose to stay in it.  You chose to work with your brother in building those bombs and it seems you both had plans for even more.  

But I think, somehow, you’re actually more depraved than your big brother.   Last year you took our country’s oath of citizenship.  You voluntarily became an American.  Were you already planning this bombing with your brother even then?  Then, the night of the bombing, you actually went and partied as though all was right in your world.  As though you were oblivious to the harm you did.  Now the people who thought you were friends with are going to be wondering for the rest of their lives about their judgment when they cultivated their association with you.  They befriended you with a certain level of trust and good will and you shit on them.  How are they ever going to trust in their own sense of who is a good person from here on out?  You betrayed them.  You betrayed friendship.  

That, kiddo, is some serious deep corruption right there, really deviant.  

Lastly, Dzhokhar, you betrayed your adopted country.  After all, you are an American.  For the time being.

You got caught, Dzhokhar. Hooray! You got caught. Your brother is dead, shot “from head to toe” in that firefight with the police.  The ironic cap to his demise is you drove over him with a car as you escaped, trying to save your own skin.  Wounded and hiding in a boat, you were caught.  Alive!

I’m so grateful for that.  I’m sure I’m in good company on that, because we do want you to face trial for your crimes.  We do want to see a jury convict you.  We do want to see a judge sentence you to prison.  And, lastly, I want to see you stripped of your U.S. citizenship.  You don’t deserve it.  America has problems aplenty.  But you added to them.  You added to the prejudices of the Islamophobes.  You hurt people who had done you no harm.  You sold out to bigotry.  You added to the burdens of ordinary people struggling to get by in a tough economy manipulated by factors far beyond their control and influence.  You’re just another killer, another destroyer, another corrupt actor, but you’re no American.

Since late yesterday, there has been speculation as to whether you will ever speak again.  I don’t care really.  I know a lot of our Senators and Congressmen want you to face the death penalty.  Everything you and your brother did certainly earned it.  Perversely though, I’d rather you live.  Live.  Without a voice, without the rights of a citizen, and imprisoned for the rest of your natural life in one of those dread communication management units where you will be forgotten and left to infamy.

Image courtesy:   inside.mines.edu  Creative Commons

Split Pea Soup

Yesterday was a cloudy, blustery and rainy day, so I decided what I really wanted was fresh, home made Split Pea Soup.

Here is my recipe and technique:

Split pea soup Ingredients list:

1 lb split green peas
1 small onion
2 medium sized carrots
2 stalks celery
3 cloves garlic
1 tsp marjoram
1 tsp ground white pepper
2 Bay leaves
1 carton organic, low-sodium* chicken broth
1 carton organic low sodium* vegetable broth
2 C water
1 C diced ham
3 Tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Preparation of the mirepoix soup base:

Dice** the onion and celery and 1/2 of a carrot into small a small dice.  (See notes for links to instruction videos if you're a beginning cook.)

Take a carrot and cut in half and using the widest, fattest part of the carrot dice finely.  This should yield about 1/4 cup or slightly more.

Grate 1 carrot using the shred side of a grater or your food processor.  (I snack on the parts of the carrot that I've trimmed off or save & freeze for making a vegetable stock later on.)

Peel the garlic and mince finely. 

Put 3-4 Tbsp of the Extra Virgin Olive Oil in a skillet and heat.

Add the diced carrots first and sautee lightly for about two minutes then add the celery, shredded carrots, onion and garlic.  Sautee for another 3-5 minutes over a low heat, stirring well until the onion and garlic has become fully translucent.

While the veggies are sauteeing, add broth and water to a stockpot and put on a medium heat.  Stir in 1 lb of split peas.  Raise the heat and bring to a rolling boil.  Stir in the sauteed mirepoix veggies and reduce the heat to a simmer. 

Add the bay leaves, marjoram, ground white pepper and diced ham to the soup. And stir.  At this point the soup will look like the top photo.  Cover pot with lid and simmer.

Continue to cook on a low heat for 2-3 hours, stirring periodically until the split peas and shredded carrots have broken down fully.  The diced carrots add a little bit of color as you see in the bottom photo.  Remove the bay leaves before serving.

Notes:
*There is no added salt in this recipe.  The sodium in the low-sodium broth as well as the ham seem to provide more than enough salt for this soup on their own.

**Dicing techniques for carrot, celery and onion found on the web:
Carrot:  http://www.ehow.com/video_2346003_dice-carrot.html
Celery:  http://www.monkeysee.com/play/16802-how-to-dice-celery
Onion:  http://www.wikihow.com/Dice-an-Onion

To save on clean up, I use one large bowl for my diced and shredded veggies, roughly dividing them so I can still add them to my skillet one at a time for the initial sauteeing.

For a vegetarian version of this soup, switch out the chicken broth for more vegetable broth and eliminate the ham.

NM Cuisine Resources for out of state folks

I was having a twitter conversation with Notbeck today during one of the games where we talked about NM food after I'd posted about having a nice big bowl of green chile stew and fresh tortillas which is fine eating on a cold day.

Notbeck hasn't been here in the Land of Entrap...er Enchantment for some time and misses our great regional cuisine.  They also mentioned they like cooking from the ABQ Junior League's cookbook, Simply Simpatico, and that's pretty cool.  I'm far, far from Junior League material (thank you, gods!), but the recipes in it are really good and have been collected over several decades now.  The book is in its umptyumpth printing.

I mentioned I'd put up my short list of where to get ingredients for NM style cooking and since Notbeck doesn't live here, mail order will have to do.

So, for Notbeck:

The New Mexico Connection  chile, beans, spices, and more


The New Mexico Catalog for fresh green chile

Salud!