Motley Moose – Archive

Nothing makes for a better lunch than soup and a sandwich. However, you don’t have to limit this menu to lunchtime. We had this for dinner tonight. Flavorful, warm, and filling. The perfect food for a cold winter evening.

You will need about 1 1/2 hours to prepare the meal, but the actual hands-on cooking time is less than 30 minutes. The soup could be made ahead of time to save even more time when you are ready to dish it up.

The soup recipe is an amalgam of several different recipes I’ve read and advice from our own resident chef – hubiestubert. I love having a chef on this blog. The panini recipe is from Wolfgang Puck. This was the first time I’ve made a grilled sandwich with mayo. It worked great.

You don’t have to run out and buy fancy cheeses and $15 per pound Prosciutto to make these sandwiches. Nor do you have to buy special bread. You can use regular sliced bread or Italian bread and whatever cheese and meat you have in your fridge. After all, the panini recipe listed here is nothing more than a fancy grilled ham-and-cheese sandwich. That being said, I purchased a couple of loaves of rustic, artisan sourdough bread and bought Prosciutto, Gouda cheese, and fresh Mozzarella. I think it was worth the extra cost and effort.

Hope you enjoy the recipes and pictures.

The subject of food has come up on this blog a few times. A couple of regular Moosers have suggested writing diaries about cooking. It didn’t take much persuading to get me to write one, since, like most people with a passion, I love to talk about it.

Many people think of cooking as a chore. They are only too happy to outsource it. I’m not in that group. I fell in love with cooking as a child. I still love it. What’s not to love? Cooking is a creative process. It can be viewed as both a craft and an art. It also serves an essential purpose. There can be a great deal of satisfaction in putting a good meal in front of hungry people. We have to eat every day. Why not make it as enjoyable as possible?

The recipes below came from tonight’s dinner menu. We had a ham for Christmas dinner and I needed a way to use up some of the leftovers and the ham bone. Making bean soup seemed like a good way to do that. The meal is simple, fairly healthy, and filling. It makes a great cold weather meal.  

One thought that kept running through my head during last year’s financial meltdown was that it was a good thing they didn’t manage to privatize Social Security. Thoughts like those should be reserved for nightmares.

Despite what the last administration says about the “longest sustained period of growth in history”, the economy was pretty much stagnant for a lot of people over the last eight years. Then we fell off the cliff. The whole world took the plunge with us. Those were scary times. I’m not ashamed to say I was afraid of what might happen.

A little over a year later and things look a bit better. We aren’t out of the woods yet. Paul Krugman has a piece out today saying we shouldn’t be surprised if the economy contracts next year. Despite cautions of problems yet to come, I don’t feel quite as afraid as I did when it all started.

The Sea is a Harsh Mistress

Harbortown is a small village located on a remote island. The people are like people anywhere else. Maybe, a little more self-reliant, since the ferry only comes once a week, but, other than that, they’re pretty much like you and me.

Times had been hard lately. The cannery, the biggest employer on the island, had cut back wages and then cut jobs. Quite a few people needed help to get by. The unmet needs of their neighbors bothered many islanders. One day, some of them got together to find a way to help.

At the meeting, it was soon clear that the most pressing problem was hunger. Harbortowners are known for their independent spirits so it was no surprise that they had a harder time agreeing on what to do about it. In the end, they settled on the most obvious solution. They were surrounded by the sea so they agreed to pool their money and buy a fishing boat. It would be staffed by volunteers with an elected captain. The catch would be given to the hungry. Everyone felt better about the situation as they left the meeting.

The band teacher, because of his organizing skills, was given the task of recruiting the volunteers. He soon had enough to gather the crew to hold a vote for the captain.

Victoria Reggie Kennedy, the wife of the late Ted Kennedy, has an op-ed in the Washington Post. It is well worth a read. I really don’t have a lot to add to it.

My late husband, Ted Kennedy, was passionate about health-care reform. It was the cause of his life. He believed that health care for all our citizens was a fundamental right, not a privilege, and that this year the stars — and competing interests — were finally aligned to allow our nation to move forward with fundamental reform. He believed that health-care reform was essential to the financial stability of our nation’s working families and of our economy as a whole.

…

As President Obama noted to Congress this fall, for Ted, health-care reform was not a matter of ideology or politics. It was not about left or right, Democrat or Republican. It was a passion born from the experience of his own life, the experience of our family and the experiences of the millions of Americans across this country who considered him their senator, too.

The bill before Congress will finally deliver on the urgent needs of all Americans. It would make their lives better and do so much good for this country. That, in the end, must be the test of reform. That was always the test for Ted Kennedy. He’s not here to urge us not to let this chance slip through our fingers. So I humbly ask his colleagues to finish the work of his life, the work of generations, to allow the vote to go forward and to pass health-care reform now. As Ted always said, when it’s finally done, the people will wonder what took so long.

Disclaimer: When I wrote this I was envisioning it as a Saturday Night Live skit.

[Flashback to three weeks ago]

The President is seated at his desk in the Oval Office. He shuffles through some papers. A hard knock on the private door used by the Chief of Staff causes the President to lift his eyes and call out, “Enter.”

The door opens and the Chief of Staff hurries in with the President’s science adviser in tow.

“I’m sorry to interrupt you, Mr. President, but this couldn’t wait.”

“What is it, Bob?”

“Dr. Singh has brought urgent news. A large asteroid is headed for Earth. We have three weeks before it strikes.”

“Good God,”

The harried looking physicist who had entered with the Chief of Staff glances at his watch and says, “22 days, 2 hours, and 14 minutes, Mr. President.”

2008 was a fascinating and invigorating year for political enthusiasts on the left. There were huge gains in both houses of Congress and a Democrat won the presidency. Politicos on the left were on top of the world.

Then, reality set in.

2009 has brought that fact home only too vividly. Initiatives have been stopped. Others have yet to see the light of day. Some grind on endlessly, like Universal Health Care. The glow of electoral victory has faded. The honeymoon is over. This governing shit is hard.

Each new rumor is trumpeted across the media and the blogosphere. Daily stories of seeming betrayals or secret deals cause either pandemonium or elation amongst the political set. This could be a story from the glory days of Greece and Rome.

The GOP has been very open about their plans to obstruct health care reform. They’ve actually laid out plans on how they intend to accomplish that feat. The only problem for them is that their obstructive efforts are as poorly thought out as most of their policy proposals.

The latest effort was an amendment cosponsored by Senator David Vitter (R-LA) and Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK).that would force legislators onto the public option if it becomes law. They thought they could make the Democrats in the Senate look hypocritical. The only problem for them is that Sen. Vitter is a proven hypocrite and Sen. Coburn is dumb as a fence post.

The whole thing began to go awry when Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) asked to become a cosponsor on the bill. He apparently put in his request to their offices four times without getting a response. This is no surprise, since Sen. Coburn and Sen. Vitter had no intention for their amendment to be anything more than a political stunt.

Thought it was time for an open thread.

Thanksgiving is over. If you are a political junky then the next month will give you plenty to cheer or moan and groan about.

First up is Afghanistan. I wish I could wave a magic flag and bring the troops home tomorrow. I wish we could find an honorable way out of the region. But, wishes are what you resort to when reality isn’t cooperating. All I can really say about this mess is that I’m glad we have a President who thinks through his decisions even when pressured to do otherwise. Don’t doubt this man’s backbone. Brains and courage. Great combination.

Health care is about to heat up, also. You betcha. The opposition is going to throw everything they’ve got into the gears to try to bring it screeching to a halt. The advantage held by the pro-reform side is razor-thin. It will take supreme effort to see it through to success.

Anything else on your mind?

We are not afraid. That’s the message residents of the small town of Standish, Michigan would like to send to Liz Cheney and the rest of the fraidy-cats on the Right according to a report on Greg Sargent’s blog.

The Plum Line report includes a five-minute mini-documentary commercial released by Cheney’s group, Keep America Safe, showing a few residents of Standish who oppose housing Gitmo prisoners in the local prison.

What the video doesn’t show you is the overwhelming majority of people in Standish who support the move. The video claims that the local politicians are acting against the wishes of the townspeople. A claim like that is ridiculous. If the opposition is as strong as opponents claim then any politician who acted against their wishes would be facing a recall.

The intrusion by outside groups and politicians is reminiscent of the recent NY 23 election fiasco. Cheney’s group isn’t the only outside fear monger. The town was “blessed” by the presence of one of Michigan’s leading GOP embarrassments in the person of Pete Hoekstra R-MI shortly after the first reports that the prison was under consideration. There were other outsiders and they all had a common theme – be afraid, be very afraid.

Apparently, these outsiders don’t know the people in this area any better than they knew the people of up-state NY when they ran Scozzafava out of the race.