Nov 30 2019
In addition to cranking up the Lumens (don’t ask, I wear SPF 50 at my desk) another thing I do to combat my SAD is plan my Summer travel (not so much a vacation as an education).
I’m thinking about adding some of these to my list of potential destinations.
Niagra isn’t so bad. I had a good time, I’d go again.
Yeah, Hartford is pretty horrible. And I live here all year! Any wonder I’m on the road every chance I get?
Nov 30 2019
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Pink Floyd releases its best-selling album “The Wall”; Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, Dick Clark are born; World Trade Organization’s meeting met by 40-thousand protesters.
Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.
Nov 29 2019
Republished and edited from November 25, 2010 for obvious timely reasons.
I know by tomorrow tonight you will be sick if looking at the remnants of dinner, especially that turkey carcass but you aren’t done with it yet. I’m going to walk you through making turkey stock.
First you will need a big pot, I mean big like the one you use to cook spaghetti big, at least big enough to hold the turkey carcass and cover it wiht water. Mmmm, say about 8 quarts big. I know you have one somewhere.
Next your going to peel an onion, slicing off the top but leaving the stem part intact. Cut it in half through the stem. Gather some whole carrots and a few celery stalks (don’t cut off the leaves that’s where the most flavor is). Peel some garlic, as much as you’d like (we like a lot) but at least two cloves, leaving it whole. Take some of the herbs that you used to season the turkey with and three or four bay leaves and set it aside in a bowl for a minute.
Now, put the turkey in the empty pot to make sure it fits. If it doesn’t you have a couple of choices the easiest of which is to cut the carcass into sections so it fits into the pot you have. Now that it fits, put it on the stove and fill it with cold water using a pitcher (this gets heavy that’s why you’re doing it this way), covering the turkey . Add all the veggies, cover and bring to a full boil. Turn down the heat and let it simmer for about 3 or 4 hours, stirring occasionally and scraping the loose meat off the bones.
With most of the meat off the bones, remove the bones with a large slotted spoon or scoop and discard the bones. If it’s cold enough out side where you are, put the pot outside to cool. If it’s cold enough the fat which will float to the top will solidify and can be easily removed with a spatula.
Now strain the stock through a sieve lined with cheese cloth. Discard all those vegetables, the flavor is now all in the stock. Add new vegetables; chopped carrots, cubed potatoes, thinly sliced celery, soup greens such as kale, collards, chopped savoy cabbage or escarole, sliced onions, fresh herbs, and last but not least, pasta.
If you have a lot of stock, it can be frozen. I save the pint and quart plastic containers from the Chinese take out. They are also useful to put chicken and meat bones so my talented cats can’t get into them. Bones are not good for kitties.
The stock is also great for making Risotto with Wild Mushrooms. You’ll need
* about 8 cups of stock. If you don’t have enough turkey from your stock, College Inn makes a very good Turkey broth but it won’t be as good as yours.
* 2 cups of Risotto or Arborio Rice
* about 3 tbsp of Olive Oil
* 3 tablespoons of butter, unsalted
* 1 pound of fresh wild mushrooms such as portobella, crimini (baby portabella) or shiitake. I like shiitake best but usually use half and half. The mushrooms should be cleaned with a soft paper towel or soft brush.
(I have a soft brush just for mushrooms. I also have a truffle slicer. 😉 )
* 2 tablespoons fresh tarragon leaves, chopped, or 1 tbsp dried
* 2 tablespoons fresh flat leaf (Italian) parsley, the other parsley, curly, is very rarely used in cooking. Its mostly a garnish.
* 2 large shallots chopped or a small onion
* 2 cloves of garlic, chopped.
* 1/2 cup dry white wine, something you would drink with the risotto.
* 2 tablespoons of fresh grated Parmesan cheese
Heat the broth in a sauce pan and keep it warm over low heat.
Heat two tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet and add the garlic. Fry until it just begins to color, then add the mushrooms and tarragon. Season to taste with salt and pepper and cook, stirring frequently, for about 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, heat two tablespoons butter in a separate skillet. Soften the shallots in the butter. Add the rice and saute for a couple of minutes, stirring, so the rice becomes coated with the butter. Add the wine and bring to a boil. When it has evaporated, add one-half cup of the hot chicken stock.
Keep adding the hot broth, one-half cup at a time, to the rice. Continue until the rice has absorbed nearly all the liquid. The rice is done when it is creamy, but al dente.
Stir in the remaining butter, the mushrooms and the Parmigiano Reggiano. Mix gently, garnish with a few leaves of tarragon and serve.
Bon Appétit!
Nov 29 2019
No, I didn’t suddenly change my mind about YouTube- Retail Flashbacks.
I was initially a seasonal employee and kind of waltzed right in after Local Life Guarding was done. I spent a long time learning the Department Directory and moving Merch from Pallets to Carts so we didn’t scare the Customers.
And we moved Merch. Lots and lots of it. I learned every cranny of that building. Want to know what we did with the hangers we stripped off the clothes? Stuffed them in the cavernous Mirror space behind the facade through a hole in the drywall that got, uhh… ignored. Had to sort and ship them back to the Warehouse after the season which was a pain. Took our excess fixtures up to the roof and parked them next to the Air Conditioner. During season? Your Pants? A 6 foot high 10 foot deep pile jammed in the corner of the Department’s Storage Room.
Corporate: What do they need storage for anyway. It should be on the Floor so you can sell it!
Well, we ain’t gonna keep it on the Loading Dock. Have to get ready for the next truck.
On Black Friday itself what we did was collect hangers (no, we didn’t cram them behind the Mirror while the Customers were watching, what about not scaring them don’t you understand?) and deliver boxes.
“Yes, we need some 11 x 13 Shirt Boxes.”
At the beginning of the season they had parked a dedicated Trailer of boxes that I’m sure initially had some sort of bureaucratic organization but it wasn’t combat load out and it hadn’t survived the heat of battle.
There was some urgency from above (Sales!) but no prospect of immediate resupply so…
Improvise!
“Uh… I have some 11 x 14 Sweater Boxes.”
After Boxing Day the Trailer was empty and scheduled to be returned so on New Year’s Eve all us sweaty (it’s really not that much work) Loading Dock guys put together a Party the Store Manager shouldn’t have been at and I’m happy this was before the days of strict enforcement because I don’t think a single person who went to work returned in quite the same frame of mind.
Nov 29 2019
Happy Merchandise Day!
I refuse to log in just to compare and contrast My Box In A Box (we are an adult site and talk about adult topics) but feel free.
If, unlike me, you choose to brave the parking lot odyssey and madding crowds I caution you in this Frozen season of The Rise of the Skywalkers not to forget your sweet, sweet Disney® and Disney+® Merch.
After all the Mouse is Public Domain. However shall they survive?
Nov 29 2019
Black Friday Economics. Money is a generally accepted medium of exchange, not a store of value. Want to store value? Invest in Enterprise.
That part is pure Samuelson/Keynes, as conventional as it gets, the Modern part of Monetary Theory is recognizing that Taxes are not necessary to raise State Revenue (the State is already entitled to 100% of your productive output Peon and don’t you forget it!) but to ensure that Official Currency is an accepted medium of exchange because you need it to pay off the Government Bagman.
That’s it. Otherwise inferior Toilet Paper.
Nov 29 2019
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
President Johnson names commission to investigate JFK’s assassination; U.N. passes resolution calling for the British Mandate of Palestine to be partitioned; First flight over the South Pole; Natalie Wood, Cary Grant and George Harrison die.
Nice guys finish first. If you don’t know that, then you don’t know where the finish line is.
Nov 28 2019
52 years ago Arlo Guthrie took to the stage at the Newport Folk Festival and for 18 and a half minutes entertained the audience with his storied song “Alice’s Restaurant.” You could close your eyes and see the old church in Great Barrington, Massachusetts where the story is centered. At the end of the song the audience was on their feet. The song has since become a Thanksgiving tradition. The along came director Arthur Penn who turn the song into a movie with Arlo playing himself along with the real Sheriff Obie, William Obanhein and James Hanlon, the real blind judge. Alice and Ray Brock were played by Pat Quinn and James Broderick. The movie was released 50 years ago on August 19. Alternet has the story surrounding the song and movie which are based on the garbage toss that took place on Thanksgiving in 1965.
Thanksgiving is not complete without the song and the movie.
Nov 28 2019
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from> around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Charles M. Blow: The Horrible History of Thanksgiving
Before you fill your plate, please remember why we mark this day.
When I was a child, Thanksgiving was simple. It was about turkey and dressing, love and laughter, a time for the family to gather around a feast and be thankful for the year that had passed and be hopeful for the year to come.
In school, the story we learned was simple, too: Pilgrims and Native Americans came together to give thanks.
We made pictures of the gathering, everyone smiling. We colored turkeys or made them out of construction paper. We sometimes had a mini-feast in class.
I thought it was such a beautiful story: People reaching across race and culture to share with one another, to commune with one another. But that is not the full story of Thanksgiving. Like so much of American history, the story has had its least attractive features winnow away — white people have been centered in the narrative and all atrocity has been politely papered over.
So, let us correct that. [..]
I was blind, willfully ignorant, I suppose, to the bloodier side of the Thanksgiving story, to the more honest side of it.
But I’ve come to believe that is how America would have it if it had its druthers: We would be blissfully blind, living in a soft world bleached of hard truth. I can no longer abide that.
Amanda Marcotte: Donald Trump’s new lie is a real turkey: Now liberals are waging war on Thanksgiving!
Not content with the mythical “war on Christmas,” Trump now claims that liberals want to cancel Thanksgiving
ncreasingly desperate as the evidence mounts showing that he definitely committed the crimes he will soon be impeached for, Donald Trump auditioned a new lie to whip up his culture-war base at a rally in Florida Tuesday night: Overly P.C. liberals or socialists or whoever are trying to cancel Thanksgiving.
“You know, some people want to change the name Thanksgiving. They don’t want to use the term Thanksgiving,” Trump declared in front of the crowd, who ate it up, booing wildly at these imaginary liberals and their imaginary war on Thanksgiving.
This war on Thanksgiving is clearly a cut-rate sequel to the wildly successful “war on Christmas,” a long-running right-wing lie that liberals want to cancel Christmas. This was built up over years of Fox News pundits flipping out because sometimes people use the term “Happy Holidays” to accurately reflect the fact that there are various other December holidays — including Hanukkah and Kwanzaa — that are celebrated in addition to Christmas. (In the right-wing imagination, holidays are like the Highlander: There can only be one.) [..]
But really, all this fits in with the larger “war on Christmas” and now “war on Thanksgiving” rhetoric flowing from the right. It’s never been about actually protecting these holidays, which are robustly celebrated and in no danger of disappearing. It’s always been about remaking these holidays in the image of right-wing grievance politics, turning them away from traditional values of love, community and generosity and towards the same nastiness and cruelty that infuses every aspect of conservative politics in the age of Trump.
Dahlia Lithwick: America’s Descent Into Legal Nihilism
The president would like to be president forever. And he’s bending the law to his will to do so.
It is a Thanksgiving tradition to spend time thinking about what one is thankful for, a healthy practice that reminds us to see the world in a positive light. Gratitude is good for us, and we should not take it for granted. This year, though, I feel compelled to spend at least a bit of time focusing not only on what I am thankful for, but on what I am freaking out about. And the thing that concerns me greatly these days is simple: The president seems to have no intention of leaving office, and we seem to have no meaningful plan to address that. [..]
Yet somehow, our greatest worry in the coming days will be how to remain civil with one another over a large bird and its cute little cranberry accessories. The president believes that he is above the law and has foreclosed any attempt to prove otherwise. The president seems unable to conceive of himself losing an election. The president is counting on all of us to merely hope that something somewhere gets done about all this stuff at some point, but to never actually do anything ourselves beyond passing the stuffing around. This year, what I am most thankful for is the people who are trying to do that something themselves.
Robert Reich: The truth about what’s really threatening our elections
Trump and his enablers have been making claims of widespread voter fraud, but let’s look at the facts
Donald Trump and his enablers have been making claims of widespread voter fraud, alleging millions of people are voting illegally in order to rig our elections.
Baloney. Let’s look at the facts and debunk their myths once and for all.
They claim millions of Americans are voting twice, using multiple registrations in different districts.
So how often does double voting really occur? An analysis of the 2012 presidential election found that out of 129 million votes cast, 0.02% — that’s two one hundredths of one percent — were double votes — which were likely the result of measurement error. This is a far cry from Donald Trump’s claims that millions of people were registered in two different states in the 2016 presidential election.
Trump and his enablers claim non-citizens are voting in droves. Trump himself said that thousands of undocumented immigrants voted in 2016.
Another lie. According to the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice, of 23.5 million votes cast in districts with high populations of non-citizens only 30 — I repeat, thirty — possible incidents of improper non-citizen voting were referred for further investigation. [..]
So if voter fraud really isn’t a problem, why do Trump, Republicans in Congress, and their allies at Fox News keep perpetuating this myth? For one simple reason: To enact restrictive voting laws intended to keep voters from the polls.
Nov 28 2019
So it’s Thanksgiving and for some that means a day of confinement with a group of people you basically can’t stand attempting to work together under a high pressure deadline.
I’m talking about your family of course.
As you known I’m not a great believer in civility and I think public shaming the very least level of activism-
Ken Cuccinelli walked into a bar. And Martin O’Malley lit into him.
By Laura Vozzella, Washington Post
11/28/19
O’Malley, a former Baltimore mayor who was Maryland governor from 2007 to 2015 and unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, said he was at the Dubliner with members of his Gonzaga class.
When he saw Cuccinelli, he unloaded his frustration at the Trump administration’s separation of migrant children from their parents and detention of immigrants in chain-link enclosures at the southern U.S. border.
“We all let him know how we felt about him putting refugee immigrant kids in cages — certainly not what we were taught by the Jesuits at Gonzaga,” O’Malley texted.
In another text, he called Cuccinelli “the son of immigrant grandparents who cages children for a fascist president.”
…
In 2015, Cuccinelli accused President Barack Obama of encouraging “an invasion” of undocumented immigrants. As a state senator, he sponsored a bill to strip U.S.-born children of those immigrants of their citizenship.He eased up on his anti-immigration positions at one point during the governor’s race, removing a statement from his website that he had “voted consistently against in-state tuition for illegal aliens.”
I say that even though I know they have no shame.
Why not just don’t invite the bigot?
Fortunately (or not) my family gatherings are more like this-
How to Survive Thanksgiving With Your Not-Quite-Leftist-Enough Family
by Tom Geiger, McSweeney’s
November 25, 2019
Remember that some family members may express beliefs that make zero sense to you, or anyone using common sense — and that’s okay! Perhaps your sister is open to nuclear as a short-term energy solution, or Cousin Derek thinks partial student loan forgiveness is “good enough for now.” Rather than having to point out that your relatives are corporatist shills, you’re better off playing it safe and broaching less contentious subjects, such as gun control, abortion, or Mayor Pete and how utterly terrible he is.
…
Although she’s revealed herself to be a shitlib, it can’t hurt to investigate how and when a family member became so morally bankrupt, if only from a sociological perspective.Sure, it was inevitable that the wealth tax would come up at some point — this is Thanksgiving, after all — but that doesn’t necessarily have to spoil dinner. Just because Aunt Jolene finds Elizabeth Warren’s tax plan palatable and thinks we can do without the extra two trillion dollars in revenue that Bernie’s model would generate doesn’t change the fact that she loves you. Forget that your aunt is an elitist who is forever tainted by that semester she worked as an adjunct at Dartmouth, and pivot to something everyone can agree on, like how excited you are to grab a slice of her famous Sweet Potato Pie!
After it becomes clear that Aunt Jolene is too goddamn stupid to understand that using the public option as a bridge to Medicare-For-All is EXACTLY what the Republicans want, it’s time to acknowledge that you shouldn’t interact with certain family members altogether. Look, it’s Thanksgiving, and you’re going to hear some opinions that are harder to swallow than Aunt Jolene’s bullshit Sweet Potato Pie. Sometimes the safest option is to ignore your family for the remainder of the day, and to the extent possible, all future gatherings.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, but when you ask Dad if he can name another candidate who endorses a national rent control and he just stands there stuttering and you respond, “I didn’t think so, motherfucker,” and everybody laughs and your dad replies, “I know you didn’t mean it this way, son, but it is awfully humorous that you just called me, your dad, a motherfucker. You gotta admit that’s pretty funny,” there’s basically no other option than to tell your family off and leave in search of a better, less ridiculous one.
Nov 28 2019
Look, I cook.
And Turkey is pretty good any time, it’s harder to cook dry than Chicken of which the only part worth considering is the thigh. Sometimes it’s hard to even find Turkey off season, in places you can buy it butchered. If you have to butcher yourself you do it pretty much the same way you carve a cooked bird (you have to be more aggressive because it hasn’t been heat treated).
Flip that Bird
Multi Tasking
Knife Skills
Anything you can do with Chicken you can do with Turkey and it will taste better. It is the CostCo problem. Can I get it in a size where I can consume it without getting bored?
Well, since I get bored in about 30 seconds it’s pre-cooked Microwave Pasta with Pesto for me.
Yum.