Who knew doctors were good at cooking Chinese food! You would think they’d practice medicine instead. Free blood pressure check and egg rolls with purchase of family dinner?
Also, I’ve been trying to figure out if it’s Club Ash Pa, Lash Spa, or Cash Spa for 6 months now.
In Closing: a fun game you can play at home; DarwinAward nominee; what??; caffeine; don’t keep it simple; wages and rents; and, um, Unicorners. Stay tuned for a book review tomorrow to round out my own month of everyday blogging (sometimes over at my pro site). Nope, not gonna call it NuPaBluGagEvQ or whatever the cutesy name for “blog every day month” is.
Nothing says “I love my country” and “support our troops” like a great t-shirt. This one makes sense, mostly. What could be more American than Rock and Roll?
Then again, maybe you prefer patriotic stars-and-stripes dolphins on a lavender background. Maybe they are helping our Navy!
Surely, nothing represents remembering our fallen troops like a kitten sitting in a flag-bordered red-white-and-blue flowerbed watching fireworks! How A-MEOW-ican!
Don’t dare tell Sigfried and Roy that white tigers can’t be patriotic Americans too. Roar!
And finally, patriotism is not just for American cats. Japanese cats can love America too (offer not valid during World War 2). Heck, Hello Kitty loves America so much, you can co-ordinate patriotic Hello Kitty shorts with your patriotic Hello Kitty t-shirt.
When I got out of college, I wasn’t much of a cook. Most of what I made wasn’t awful, but much of it wasn’t good either. Still, I never bought those Hamburger Helper type products, and I have gradually stopped using most processed foods. Over the years, I’ve learned a lot. Here are some things that trust me, you really can do at home.
Whip Butter: Put some softened — not melted! — butter and some milk (or half-and-half) in the mixer. If it’s unsalted butter, add a teaspoon of salt. Start your mixer fairly while everything mixes up or you’ll spray milk everywhere. Keep turning it up gradually until it’s set to the highest setting. Keep going until that stuff is light and fluffy! Put it in a container in the fridge and enjoy for a week or two. Oh, whatever shall you enjoy that butter on? How about some homemade sourdough bread?
Sourdough Starter: Until recently, I kept a starter in the fridge. Let’s start with a film:
The short version is mix whole wheat flour with bottled or filtered water (chlorine in tap water kills microorganisms that would make you sick, but it will also kill yeasts). Put it out someplace covered with cheesecloth to keep bugs out. Once it’s going, you can use a folded paper towel and rubber band instead. Add some more water/flour mix every day until it gets foamy. Feed daily if you leave it out, weekly if you put it in the fridge.
Caesar Dressing: Ok, there are two intimidating parts to making this at home. First is called “coddling the egg.” Put a small pot of water on the stove. Use a pin to poke a small hole in the big end of the egg. Put it in boiling water for a minute. The other “hard” part is the emulsion. More on that in a minute. Toss a clove of garlic, a couple tablespoons of lemon juice, your choice of a total of 2 teaspoons of anchovy paste/Worchestershire/both (I use both), fresh ground pepper, and everything you can scrape out of 2 coddled eggs into a blender. Turn it on, and keep blending even after it looks blended. Now comes the “tricky” part: very slowly add a half cup of olive oil. Seriously, very slowly. That’s the key to the emulsion. Once you’re done, toss that stuff with some romaine hearts and parmesan and call it done.
Devein Shrimp: Ok, I admit this one is a little gross. Recently, my partner got “a great deal” on a box of frozen shrimp, and we discovered that they were whole. Get some water running because you’re going to need it. If they still have heads, you’ll need to twist their little heads off. Then follow these easy tips. By the time dinner is ready, you will have forgotten the shrimp heads.
Seasonings: I am mystified by those little packets of things like “taco seasoning” or “Italian seasoning” sold in every grocery store. Come on folks! I know it seems more expensive to buy things like garlic powder, chili powder, cumin, oregano, and basil, but a bottle of each will last quite a while through many meals. And you’ll probably get a lot less salt and preservatives too.
And don’t even get me started on canned soup as an “ingredient.” Expensive, loaded with crap you don’t need, and not nearly as good as making your own sauces.
In Closing: more Facebook; income inequality and job creation; honestly in the so-called pro-life movement; just change how we grade the test so more people pass; and crash.
Yes, Of course I know they mean “Teacup“. It’s still funny, particularly in Pink.
Follow up on Yesterday:Ron Paul ended up with 22 of Nevada’s 28 delegates, even though he was only “supposed to” get 8; no word on whether the RNC will have a hissy fit “challenge” the results.
In closing: Sears; Fat costs us all; Japan has cute technology so powerful that even the Emperor and his wife are cute; Lululemon; Jobs report stinks; maybe we could fix that with some infrastructure building; silly USA Today thinking facts matter; novel; it’s privacy week; yeah, because making sure all high school graduates can read is a vast conspiracy; and Mark Twain.
Red Meat: Well sure, if you’re willing to call a double cheeseburger “unprocessed red meat,” maybe red meat is bad for you. I also liked the fact that the same questionnaires that “prove” the connection also say that 1/5 of women make do on 1200 calories daily — that would be a bare minimum for somebody trying to lose weight, not something sustainable. Think just maybe some people weren’t quite reporting the whole truth?
It turns out that 100% of rapes are committed by rapists: Don’t rape.
Bruce Wayne: Has a hard time at the psychologist’s office.
Senator Lugar: Well, is he a resident eligible to run for Senate, or is he a non-resident who can’t vote?
His name is disgusting: Mr. Santorum thinks Puerto Rico should learn some darn English already so they can become a state! Ok, he actually said they have to make English and only English the official language, and they need to have a “common language” with us whiteys normal Americans. What makes him think they want to be a state? Pretty blatant example of a conservative expressing the idea that “those brown people would be so much better off if they did things my way!” Now he can’t decide if he wants to stand by the comments or not. mmWaffles.
There’s no point arguing with crazy: Ornery Bastard colorfully and succinctly says what many think about the GOP.
Viva Las Vegas: House sales up. That’s right, I said up. And people are noticing.
Glad I’m not in Arizona:Proposed bill would allow employers to ask women if they use The Pill and fire them if they don’t like the answer. Never mind medical privacy. No word on whether they’ll ask men if they take erectile dysfunction meds. Guess they aren’t expecting a lot of women voters. Maybe the next proposed bill is to disavow the 18th Amendment.
If only just Arizona were the problem: Thankfully we have some uterus-having Legislators helping bring balance and/or silliness to some of the anti-woman bills.
Double-you tee eff: An officer but not a gentleman.
Hail Britannica: Someday kids will look at you funny when you talk about an encyclopedia being a big set of reference books that many middle class families owned.
What??: Hotel pools must close or install wheelchair lifts.
You know there must be candy and rainbows for bankers in the foreclosure fraud settlement: JP Morgan Chase announces a hike in the dividend. The investors go wild.
Crash the system: Refuse a plea bargain. Insist on your Constitutional right to a jury trial.
Nixon in Love: Turns out he was a bit of a romantic. Who knew.
I see it around here: More people using public transportation. And as a result, more people walking, at least locally. I think it’s a good thing.
Eastern Germany: Check out the before and after pictures by clicking the pic at top.
Sticklers for detail will notice this is the Strip and not actually Paradise, a few blocks East.
Things are tough all over.
I do hope nobody is surprised to learn that poverty in the United States is even higher than expected. After all, some 15% of our population is on food stamps — and that’s according to the freaking Wall Street Journal! And it is worse than average here in Vegas, where the “recovery” you lucky souls in other parts of the nation have been experiencing the last 2 years has passed us by like some angry Santa:
There’s a newer version of this chart right here. Add to that the fact that Vegas is still the reigning foreclosure capital of the nation, and it shouldn’t be any shock that we have a problem with homelessness and “food security” — a fancy term for “no food and/or no money for food.” Please remember that no matter what you may think of the work ethic of people in these situations, some of the people effected are children. There are mighty few jobs available to children that will pay the family’s bills, and most of them are worse than mere hunger.
In Closing: is police use of a GPS really different from tailing them (uh, yeah); whites use more drugs, but blacks get sent to prison more (huh, could the War on Drugs possibly be racist??); even a broken clock is right twice a day; Americans would rather have government bureaucrats than insurance company bureaucrats (who could know these things?); amen; and right on, Rick.
Yahoo!:Not so excited about Wall Street protesters.
Anybody Surprised?: OnStar selling your data. But have no fear, they won’t give it to the FBI for free. Unless they ask sweetly.
To think I’ve been paying money for this: How to make your own ricotta.
Explain it again: seriously, how does lower taxes for wealthy individuals cause these guys to create jobs?
It was still the damned scopes:Desai will stand trail.
From the Archive of Great Headlines: Anonymous US Officials push open government (HT).
Drew hits the nail on the head: How some people think it’s obviously meant to read.
More missing good old days that were only good for wealthy white Protestant folks:colleges becoming increasingly unaffordable, and scholarships becoming increasingly scarce.
Don’t travel with cash: Unless you can afford to lose it.
We’re Number One!: In a bad way. Nevada leads the nation in domestic violence killings. Remember SafeNest.
