Author: bill

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William James

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices.”

William James

This quote reminded me of a bonus feature that came with the DVD for “Children of Men” called “The Possibility of Hope”. The movie was a good sci-fi movie if you did not think too much about how humans had stopped reproducing. It had a good script and acting but some of the cinematography was amazing. The car scene with the five people made it seem like you were seated in the center of the car with them.

The bonus feature was an interview of several intellectuals on the ideas that led to the movie. They had drawn some interesting and pessimistic conclusions about where the world is going. When I first started listening to what the were saying I thought it sounded like intellectual babble. I am not sure who they were talking to but I suspected they enjoyed the sound of their voice most of all. They finally lost me when they started talking about tropical weather for Iceland and the impact of gated communities on society. Fortunately you can use this babble to make an interesting movie if you have a good director, actors, and script writer.

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One Local Summer Vegetable Salad: Recipe

grilled veggie salad
Today is National Salad Day. Would I make that up? Actually I got several emails reminding me about it. I was going to post a vegetable salad when I realized, it was also an all local dish which fits nicely with the One Local Summer event where participants make one meal a week with local ingredients. It’s an early version of a recipe I made for my recipe development client. The vegetables–zucchini, corn, peppers and eggplant all came from Capay Organic, the lemon from Los Gatos and the olive oil from Napa. Voila! One local Summer Vegetable Salad. I served it with Sonoma lamb chops.

While the idea is to eat at least one local meal a week, I actually had another meal that was primarily local this week. Ok, the rice and spices weren’t but the Spicy Eggplant and Tomatoes dish had Capay Organic eggplant and Greenbrae backyard-grown tomatoes. Delicious stuff and so fresh tasting. I got the recipe from 5 Spices, 50 Dishes, a terrific book written by local food writer and cooking instructor Ruta Kahate. Last week I posted an interview with Ruta over at Bay Area Bites. This week you can read my review of her book and see a recipe for a scrumptious beef curry.

The recipe for my One Local Summer Vegetable Salad is as easy as it is versatile. Serve it as a salad or a side dish. I could see adding some crumbled cheese to it and calling it a main dish, and any of the vegetables could be swapped out for something you prefer–tomatoes, patty pan squash, red onions, whatever you like. Change up the dressing too if you prefer something different.

Grilled Vegetable Salad
serves 4

2 Japanese eggplants
2 ears of corn
2 zucchini
2 bell peppers
2 Tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper

Dressing
2 Tablespoons olive oil
2 Tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice

Cut and core the bell peppers into 1 – 2 inch pieces. Cut the zucchini and eggplants lengthwise into three strips then cut each strip into 1 -2 inch chunks. Toss the vegetables with olive oil, salt and pepper and grill for 8 minutes over a charcoal grill or in a cast iron grill pan, turning once. Cook the corn on the grill for 20 minutes (husks will burn) then husk and slice kernels off the cob (or husk the cobs, wrap in foil and bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes) Toss all vegetables with the dressing and warm or at room temperature.

Enjoy!

READ MORE
Over at Bay Area Bites is my review of Ruta Kahate’s book 5 Spices, 50 Dishes

This post and more original content can be found at www.cookingwithamy.com

One Local Summer Vegetable Salad: Recipe

I tried this dish last night and it was a great success. This dish took a lot more time than I normally spend on a side dish but my mother-in-law was bringing a honey baked ham. I had the time since they were going to be kayaking and fishing on the lake while I cooked. Fortunately I had a large grilling basket my wife gave me a few years ago. There are a lot of vegetables to cook. I prepared a hot grill to cook this dish. I combined these dishes with the always popular crispy oven baked potato slices. The combination of flavors was interesting. The garlic I add to the potato slices complemented the flavors in the ham and vegetable dish. I followed the vegetable recipe except I used fresh lime juice and I added a little bit of sun dried tomatoes. Adding those ingredients was a little bit inspiration and a little bit of cupboard cleaning but it worked. One young person proudly proclaimed to their mom that they ate all of the vegetables and she does not eat tomatoes.

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Live Earth concert/Last King of Scotland

I watched a bit of the Live Earth concert. There were several bands I hand never seen live. When my son got bored with the music we put in the DVD, “Last King of Scotland”. Last King of Scotland is a great movie but you should not watch it with young children. Forrest Whitaker deserved the Oscar nomination.

I did not see how this concert would help or hinder global warming. A worldwide concert is a novelty. It was nice to see Al Gore looking fit and trim. Recently some pundits had advocated that Al should run for office so that he would get to a healthier weight. 😉

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Too Many Chefs: 7 Bean Soup from 10 cans

Have you ever thought to yourself, “Self, we need to make a full freaking gallon of soup that’ll be hearty, delicious, and vegetarian. And we need to do it lickety split.”? No? Really? Well it can be done, and I’m here to show you how to do it. This is a great soup to make if your intent is to have some now, and freeze a lot for later.I use canned beans for this soup because I find them more convenient that the dried beans. If you’re looking for the cheapest possible recipe, you could use dried beans, pick over them looking for dirt and rocks and shrunken children from a Rick Moranis movie, then boil the beans forever to get them tender. I find canned beans to be much much easier to deal with, though they do cost a little bit more and are heavy to carry home if you’re not driving.Yes, there are many who will decry the use of canned foods. Well, please feel free to grow ad pick the beans for this recipe yourself, but with the addition of some fresh vegetables (carrots, celery, onions), canned beans wok wonderfully here.The soup I present here has an Italianate seasoning scheme. You could easily adjust the herbs or substitute wine in for the sauce or add peppers to change the flavors. No matter what you do, adding a little epazote at the beginning or Beano at the end will help cut down on the gassiferous (is that a word?) tendencies of the beans.I use Bragg’s Liquid Aminos in this recipe, but you can substitute a low sodium soy sauce. I like the flavor of Bragg’s better, and encourage you to give it a try.

My wife the Redhead suggests adding some bulgar to this recipe, which I may do next time, but we both also enjoy the soup as is.

7 Bean Soup from 10 Cans
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 stalks celery, diced small
2 carrots, diced small
1 large white onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced

One 15.5-oz can each ( I believe I used Goya for all) of:
chickpeas
pinto beans
black beans
small white beans
blackeyed peas
pigeon peas (find in Mexican ethnic grocery stores)
dark red kidney beans

2 14-oz cans of Vegetable Broth (I used Swanson’s clear, which is a little salty, but cheap, cheap, cheap)

1 28 ounce can of fire roasted plum tomatoes (Muir Glen, in my case)

2 tablespoons dried oregano (yep, that’s a lot of oregano, but you have a GALLON of soup here, for Pete’s sake)
1/4 cup Bragg’s Liquid Aminos or light soy sauce or to taste

In a LARGE stock pot or dutch oven, heat the oil over medium heat until it shimmers. Add the onion, carrots, celery and garlic and sautée for three-five minutes until everything starts to soften.

Mash up the canned tomatoes then add them to the oil and vegetables. Add the beans, without draining and stir to combine well. Add the stock, oregano, and Bragg’s (or soy sauce) and stir well again.

Bring to a boil, then reduce to a low simmer for 30 minutes before serving, stirring occasionally. Recipe makes a little over 1.25 gallons of soup. Eat what you like, freeze the rest – it microwaves well in small containers for lunch. Good with oyster crackers or crusty bread for dipping.

Too Many Chefs: 7 Bean Soup from 10 cans

I cleaned out the refrigerator and cupboard with this soup. I had five Roma tomatoes that I was looking to use in something. This was a fast and tasty solution.

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A Simple Recommendation for SCHIP

Yesterday I decided to do a little research on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program(SCHIP). The media is not much help in this area but the testimony before the Senate Committee of Finance was pretty informative. You can read the testimony here. The program is in the news because it is up for reauthorization. Some presidential candidates want to expand the program but there are some fundamental questions about whether the program is working as intended. Eighteen states are projected to have a funding shortfall. The three most common characteristics of the shortfall states is that they include a Medicaid component, they cover a higher percentage of adults, and they have a broader eligibility range. The states that have opted to use Medicaid to provide children’s health insurance have higher costs than the states with a separate program. As of 2005 the state programs are not allowed to add non-pregnant adults to the program. It is surprising to see how many adults are in the SCHIP program. Several states have more adults than children in their program. The sad part is that the availability of this program does not appear to have made much of an impact the two states, Texas and Florida, who have the highest percentage of uninsured children. Health insurance availability is just a part of the children’s health care problem.

I did find an interesting problem with the eligibility range that could make the SCHIP program a little less political. The SCHIP program eligibility is defined as twice the federal poverty guideline(FPL) although several states use a much higher multiple. At first glance the states that use the higher multiple look like they are taking advantage of the system. That got me to thinking so I did a little more research and then I cranked some numbers. The problem is pretty obvious. The federal poverty guideline is the same for the 48 states excluding Hawaii and Alaska. Hawaii and Alaska have their own poverty guidelines. Using a single poverty guideline for the remaining 48 states is a pretty crude tool to estimate a family’s need for assistance. It is difficult to understand the rationale for using the same poverty level in New Jersey as in Mississippi. On the other hand some of the states look like they are targeting a different and larger population segment than the legislation intended. My solution is pretty simple and is modeled after the practices we use at Habitat. Create a new set of income ranges based on a percentage of the local median income. As an example a two person family could earn up 62% of the local median income. That number should be pretty close to the median of the current plans. Like the present system we could have a higher percentage for the families with more children. This proposal is much easier for the average person to understand and a little harder to mangle by the media and political candidates. This does not solve the problems the SCHIP programs has with too many adults in its program and its inability to lower the percentage of uninsured children in states like Texas and Florida. It is just a start in the right direction of better transparency, lower abuse, and better focus on children’s health care.

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Who are the Uninsured in America?

Filmmaker Stuart Browning has a response to Michael Moore’s Sicko explaining who the insured are in America–for those of you who prefer to read a transcript rather than watch the short film, go here.

Who are the Uninsured in America?

Here are some of the more interesting statistical highlights on this complex problem as quoted in the transcript. The media and our politicians talk about how it is a shame that United States has 45 million uninsured and how simple it should be to provide universal health care. On the farm we have a saying, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink.”

  1. “According to the US Census Bureau, 17 million of those without health insurance live in households having over $50,000 in annual income. That’s 38% of the uninsured in America.(2)”
  2. “In fact, 9 million – 20% of the uninsured – reside in households pulling down more than $75K a year. (3)”
  3. “Over 18 million of the uninsured are people between the ages of 18 and 34. (4) They spend more than four times as much on alcohol, tobacco, entertainment and dining out as they do for out-of-pocket spending on health care.(5) They represent 40% of the uninsured in America.”
  4. “14 million people without health insurance are eligible for government health care programs like Medicaid and S-CHIP but choose not to enroll. (7) They represent %31 – nearly one third – of the uninsured in America.”
  5. “So, how many are truly uninsured? Around eight million. Just 18% of the 45 million that we hear about so often. (11) “
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OpinionJournal – Featured Article

A Tale of Two Prosecutors
Mike Nifong is punished, but Patrick Fitzgerald isn’t.

OpinionJournal – Featured Article

Recently I have been thinking about the damage these two prosecutors have done to the legal profession. My thoughts came together after reading this article in the OpinionJournal. Ms. Rabinowitz did a fine job of explaining a lawyer’s perspective on these two cases. I will pursue the viewpoint of the simple man. The damage caused by Mike Nifong is fairly obvious and pretty simple to understand. Even for those of us without legal degrees it was obvious that the common sense portion of the judicial procedures were deliberately ignored. The civil rights cases that fine-tuned our judicial procedures and forced the creation of safeguards to protect our civil rights for all citizens were thrown out in this rush to judgment. Mike Nifong will pay the price and the rest of the lawyers are forewarned.

The damage to the legal profession caused by Patrick Fitzgerald is more insidious. The public has always been skeptical of the honesty and integrity of lawyers and this case does not help the situation. Mr. Fitzgerald was charged with investigating a possible crime about who leaked Ms. Plame’s identity to the press. It was a potential national security crime with some political overtones. Early on Mr. Fitzgerald had a problem that the alleged crime may not be a crime due to Ms. Plame’s special status at the CIA. Later when his investigation identified who leaked her identity and there was no indictment, the public assumed that the investigation was over. This was an investigation everyone wanted to end but Mr. Fitzgerald. The journalists were distraught that they were forced to reveal the unseemly side of political journalism, their cozy relationships with sources inside the government. The Democrat faithful were dismayed that they could not get either Rove or Cheney indicted for something. The Republicans were reminded that this was one of several inept CIA operations that led up to the Iraq war and highlighted the dysfunctionality in the Central Ineptitude Agency. To everyone’s surprise Mr. Fitzgerald continued his investigation. Eventually he was successful at convicting Mr. Libby of obstructing justice. For a simple man this should mean that Mr. Libby somehow hindered the efforts of Mr. Fitzgerald to determine who leaked Ms. Plame’s identity. However, we know that Mr. Fitzgerald already knew who leaked the information so Mr. Libby could not obstruct Mr. Fitzgerald in this area. The surprising piece is of information is Mr. Fitzgerald chose to not reveal this critical piece of information to Mr. Libby or close the investigation. Both Mr. Fitzgerald and Mr. Nifong chose not to reveal key information. Mr. Nifong’s actions were wrong and it is one of the reasons he is being disbarred. Somehow Mr. Fitzgerald’s actions are “right” even though it looks like Mr. Fitzgerald entrapped Mr. Libby in the obstruction of justice charge that did not have an effect on the investigation. It looks and smells like Mr. Libby is the designated fall guy for the alleged crime of leaking Ms. Plame’s identity for political purposes. This is where a simple man has problem with lawyer ethics. Mr. Fitzgerald’s actions look like he abused the trust and authority given to him when he went “fishing for a crime”. Mr. Fitzgerald can argue that he is pursuing the truth but the results are already different for the larger population. The conviction has created a more adversarial role between prosecutors and witnesses. Truth will be especially hard to pursue in this environment. Mr. Libby’s biggest mistake was not the perjury charge but in trusting Mr. Fitzgerald. Special prosecutors have absolute power and Mr. Fitzgerald showed that absolute power corrupts absolutely. I doubt other officials will forget this lesson any time soon. The Libby case has already caused at least one person to be less willing to testify before Congress. The Libby case is a good sign that a witch hunt is underway. For most officials the trade off between helping Congress or a special prosecutor find the truth and being indicted for some unknown crime if the investigation does not work out as planned for the prosecutor is pretty simple. It is not worth the risk to speak freely. Both Mr. Nifong and Mr. Fitzgerald show that prosecutorial abuse exists and is especially likely with cases that have political overtones. Hopefully we will re-establish some common sense in the Libby case and outlaw “fishing expeditions” by special prosecutors. We should try to make lawyers and the judicial process look honorable rather than petty. There is no moral high ground for Mr. Fitzgerald. He was “right” in the legalese that only a lawyer can appreciate but woefully short on the justice and fairness that a simple man can understand. He abused the system.

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The Decline of the Sabbath

The decline of the Sabbath in America: Less praying, more working and playing.

The Decline of the Sabbath

This article in the Opinion Journal struck home with me. Over the last couple of years I have deliberately tried to avoid working on Sunday. I found that I need a day to slow down and unwind. Sunday is a day I like to nap while a golf tournament is playing on TV. It is a day I like to pick a quiet spot and read the Bible or a good book. If I read one page or a thousand pages it does not matter. My goal is to slow down and savor the time. It is a day I like to reflect on the past week and the events of the upcoming week but I leave the goal setting for Monday. It is a day I like to sit back and appreciate the good and bad things that make life so interesting. Sunday is a day I like to enjoy the simple joys of life. I have a teenage son who I have to remind frequently to slow down and enjoy the simple things in life. Maybe God is still a faithful parent who is trying to remind us what is best for us.

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Rich Lowry on Cynicism & Government on National Review Online

In these conditions, it’s a political boon to have a distance from government. The best thing that might have happened to Republicans lately is their loss of Congress, which means that Democrats have gone from attacking a spectacularly unpopular Congress to running a spectacularly unpopular Congress. Congratulations!

Rich Lowry on Cynicism & Government on National Review Online

I must admit that I have become disillusioned and cynical with our government process. I was skeptical that the Democrats could manage their own affairs let alone forge bipartisan partnerships to redirect the government in new directions. It appears that my cynicism was well-founded. Congress has accomplished nothing and the polls show it. Not to be outdone the Republicans look like they will be unwilling or unable to forge any unity on major issues. Although I have had personal dealings with the immigration system, I found myself unenthusiastic with the immigration reform bill. It increasingly looks like both parties are embracing a “do-nothing” Congress again. This lack of unity and purpose does not bode well for Republicans taking back the Congress. The Democrats could lose the Congress but I don’t think the Republicans can win it.