I ended up watching this movie twice. It was cute, funny, and somewhat unpredictable. Tyler Perry is a blast as he plays Madea, Uncle Joe, and Brian. The director did a great job balancing the crazy antics of Madea with the more serious side of the movie, a rich portrayal of forgivenesss overcoming the desire for revenge and the fear of being hurt again. This is a good story and one worth telling. As good as Tyler Perry was it was the skill of the rest of the cast that made the movie work for me. I like a good story and they told me a good story. Tyler’s antics with Madea and Uncle Joe made a good story sparkle just a little bit more. The combination of good acting, directing, and a Christian theme encourages me to recommend the movie. I give the movie an A. The professional reviews listed at Yahoo! gave it a C while the movie goers gave it a B+.
Author: bill
RE: Stop and Go salsas – Part 2 of 2
In the previous installment, we made a roasted tomato salsa. Today – a sweet green tomatilla salsa.
The sour of the tomatilla here requires just a bit of sugar. You can add sugar to any salsa if you feel the sour/tart balance is off or if your tomatoes just weren’t quite ripe enough.
The recipe looks a lot like the Red Tomato Salsa recipe. To be honest, I copied and edited the previosu recipe to make sure you had all the recipes at your fingertips.
Once you master the technique you can make any roast salsa. You could try mixing tomatoes and tomatillas and see what you can come up with. Maybe bell peppers in red or green or yellow. Maybe some poblanos? You make it up.
Roasted Tomatilla Salsa
1 pound tomatillas
2 jalapenos
3 cloves of garlic
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1 tablespoon of sugar
big pinch of salt.
First, remove the outer papery husk from all the tomatillas, and rinse the fruit. There’s a sticky substance on the flesh of th efruit that you want to get off before cooking or eating these tomatillas. Pat dry with a towel.
Place the washed tomatatillas on a baking sheet with sides or in a big oven-safe casserole pan along with the jalapenos. Wrap the garlic in a bit of aluminum foil and place in the pan.
Set the oven to broil and slide the pan under the broiler. after five minutes or so (the tomatilla skins should be a bit blackened), turn the peppers and tomatillas and broil the other side for five minutes.
Remove the tomatillas and the juices from the pan. Check on the garlic and the peppers. If the garlic is soft remove it. If not, put it back in the pan and continue roasting, checking it and turning the peppers every few minutes. Remove the peppers from the pan and set aside in a paper bag for a few minutes.
Peel the peppers, peel the tomatillas, and dice the flesh of each, placing the results in a blender or food processor. Squeeze the garlic out of its skin into the blender.
Pulse the blender if you can or blend very briefly multiple times to get a chunky blended consistency. You may have to work in batches.
Rinse the finely chopped onion and drain. This removes much of the acrid flavor from the onion, leaving only a fresh taste. Add the onion and cilantro and sugar to the blended tomatillas, mix well and salt to taste.
Refrigerate for an hour or more before serving.
comments
[Via Too Many Chefs]
RE: Stop and Go salsas – Part 1 of 2
Here we have not one but two delicious salsa recipes adapted from Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen cookbook.
Both of these recipes require broiling tomatoes or tomatillos until the skins slip off and the flavors in the fruit are concentrated and infused with a wonderful smoky taste. The fresh onions in each recipe add a nice light flavor to contrast with the richness of the main ingredients.
If you’re like me, you probably were a little reluctant to work with tomatillos the first time you ever saw them. Their pale green color and stange papery outer cover and sticky skins make them alien to most American cooks.
Well, get over it. Really, tomatillos are fun and add bright flavor to any dish. OK, maybe not every dish. I haven’t tried tomatillo ice cream, but I bet it’s coming up on Iron Chef this week.
Get some chips and some friends, make some guacamole and set out these two salsas to set off a feeding frenzy.
Roasted Red Tomato Salsa
1 pound tomatoes (I prefer plum tomatoes)
2 jalapenos
3 cloves of garlic
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
Place the tomatoes on a baking sheet with sides or in a big oven-safe casserole pan along with the jalapenos. Wrap the garlic in a bit of aluminum foil and place in the pan.
Set the oven to broil and slide the pan under the broiler. after five minutes or so (the tomato skins should be a bit blackened), turn the peppers and tomatoes and broil the other side for five minutes.
Remove the tomatoes and the juices from the pan. Check on the garlic and the peppers. If the garlic is soft remove it. If not, put it back in the pan and continue roasting, checking it and turning the peppers every few minutes. Remove the peppers from the pan and set aside in a paper bag for a few minutes.
Peel the peppers, peel the tomatoes, and dice the flesh of each, placing the results in a blender or food processor. Squeeze the garlic out of its skin into the blender.
Pulse the blender if you can or blend very briefly multiple times to get a chunky blended consistency. You may have to work in batches.
Rinse the finely chopped onion and drain. This removes much of the acrid flavor from the onion, leaving only a fresh taste. Add the onion and cilantro to the blended tomatoes, mix well and salt to taste.
Refrigerate for an hour or more before serving. I’ll post the green salsa recipe tomorrow.
[Via Too Many Chefs]
RE: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
“First there is a time when we believe everything, then for a little while we believe with discrimination, then we believe nothing whatever, and then we believe everything again – and, moreover, give reasons why we believe.”
[Via Quotes of the Day]
Debunking 8 Anti-War Myths About The Conflict In Iraq – Right Wing News (Conservative News and Views)
I just wanted to keep track of this nice summary of the main points concerning our involvement in Iraq.
OpinionJournal – Extra
Once the justices depart, as most of them have, from the original understanding of the principles of the Constitution, they lack any guidance other than their own attempts at moral philosophy, a task for which they have not even minimal skills. Yet when it rules in the name of the Constitution, whether it rules truly or not, the court is the most powerful branch of government in domestic policy. The combination of absolute power, disdain for the historic Constitution, and philosophical incompetence is lethal.
Wow, Mr. Bork really lashes out at the Supreme Court for inventing new standards for moral behavior! This is not toning down the rhetoric but ratcheting it up. He makes several good points but I am afraid these points will be lost in the fervor of the impeding spectacle. He has just drawn a line in the sand.
5th and 6th Grade Ministry bites the dust
Last night we were told the 5th and 6th ministry was going to be split up. The 5th graders were going to remain in Children’s ministry and probably be combined with the 4th graders for their own service. The 6th graders were going to be added to the Junior High ministry. For those of us who have seen the impact of a ministry targeted at “tweeners” can accomplish this was quite a letdown. Although I could volunteer for the student or children’s ministry, my heart is not in it. I would just be another warm body.
Presidential Quote
Portrait of Thomas Jefferson courtesy of the White House
This week’s presidential quote comes directly from the pen of President Thomas Jefferson when he wrote to a group of Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut. Concerned about possible establishment of a church that they would be required to attend, their fears for their religious freedom were calmed when President Jefferson wrote to ensure them that their free practice of religion would never be interfered with by the government, for that would go against the will of the people and the Constitution. Jefferson closed his letter by thanking them for their prayers on his behalf.
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State…
–Thomas Jefferson
Up and Running Again
I just got finished migrating my Userland blog over to WordPress. Userland was a resource hog so I wasn’t running it very often. After I rebuilt my PC I never re-installed Userland. I thought the conversion process was going to be difficult but I found some good instructions on the WordPress wiki. It took me a couple of hours to migrate my old postings.
Worried about the ACLU? Display only the commandments Jesus taught us
BY GREGG EASTERBROOK
Friday, February 4, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
Soon the Supreme Court will take up the question of whether the Ten Commandments can be displayed on government property. At the heart of this culture-war blockbuster will be two familiar and rivalrous claims: first, that any government sanction of religious material violates the separation of church and state; second, that the Ten Commandments promote morality and so their display must not be prohibited. We will undoubtedly hear one side decrying Christian activism run amok and the other godless secularism run amok.
Yet there is an alternative to the Ten Commandments–namely, the Six Commandments, enunciated by Jesus himself. And the Six Commandments could hang in any public facility without jeopardizing the separation of church and state.
In the Gospel of Matthew, a man asks Jesus what a person must do to enter heaven. He answers: "Keep the commandments." The man inquires: "Which ones?" Here is how the biblical account continues: "And Jesus said, 'You shall not murder; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness. Honor your father and mother. Also, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.'"
Debating what laws are more important than others was a long-standing exercise of the rabbinical tradition in which Jesus was educated. But in these verses, which have a parallel retelling in the Gospel of Mark, Christ is not merely offering an opinion about law. Something wholly remarkable happens–Jesus edits the commandments.
Quickly now, which commandments did he leave out? "You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourselves an idol. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God. Remember the Sabbath Day, and keep it holy." These are the commandments having to do with formal religious observance–from today's perspective, the ones that clash with the Establishment Clause. Jesus' Six Commandments make no mention of God or faith. They could be posted on public property without constitutional entanglements.
If Jesus taught Six Commandments, why do Christians talk so much about 10? As a churchgoer, I am amazed at how many of my fellow Christians do not seem to know Christ's teachings. Consider, for instance, that Jesus instructed: "Give to everyone who begs from you." Watch throngs of Christians pass panhandlers without giving and you'll have an example of how unfamiliar many are with the content of their Redeemer's ministry.
Because the Six Commandments de-emphasize formal observation of religion, some Christian traditionalists pretend that the verses do not exist. In a lifetime of sitting through the sermons of various denominations, I have never heard a minister make more than passing reference to Christ's deletion of commandments. Such was his gift that, in the Gospel of John, he simplified all moral and spiritual instruction into a single dictum: "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." That modification of the original commandments also de-emphasizes formal religion and as such is also given short shrift by institutional Christianity. Many Christians seem to prefer the Ten Commandments because they embody a sense of might, mountaintops and divine wrath.
But if displaying Scripture in public is meant to encourage morality, surely the Six Commandments serve the purpose. Read them again:
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness.
Honor your father and mother.
Also, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.