I love it when I log on and see how many people have landed on my site around this time of the day, I'm assuming to check and see if I have blogged yet. There were four in the past two hours alone. I have a feeling those people are close relatives, but still, it's just so encouraging.
Last night I made the best whole wheat pancakes ever.
"I, Jenny Indiana, do solemnly swear to eschew all boxed pancake mixes for the entirety of my domestic engineer position, to never purchase said boxes, no matter how affordable, nor to use them for any other purpose such as biscuits or baked chicken, so help me God."
Here's this life changing recipe:
1cp all purpose flour
1cp whole wheat flour (or 2/3 cp whole wheat flour +1/3cp wheat germ)
1 1/2 ts baking powder
1/2 ts baking soda
2 1/2 tb brown sugar
1/2 ts salt (or 1 ts salt, depending on taste)
5 1/3 tb butter, room temperature (or apple butter, or some of both or some other thing like "I can't believe it's not butter.)
2 1/2 cp butter milk (or 1 cp vanilla yogurt and 1 1/2 cup 2% milk, which I did and it was fabulous. Or all yogurt. Or half butter milk and half yogurt or skim milk and lemon juice. Etc)
2 eggs, beaten
1 ts vanilla extract
2 cp blueberries, if desired
Combine all dry ingredients. Cut butter into dry, incorporate until it forms a course mixture, like sand. (I used my mixer for this.)
Add wet ingredients, incorporate by hand. Fold in blueberries.
These were so, so delicious. They smelled like vanilla cake when cooking, and they tasted so satisfying, not too sweet and they were light and fluffly, not a thing you would expect from whole wheat pancakes.
I served this with my first attempt at a frittata. Keith loved it so much that he immediately declared that eating frittata on a Sunday morning must become an enforcible Indiana family tradition heretofore. Only it was cute because he couldn't remember the name and ended up calling it "Eggs in a Pan."
It's very easy to do and I suspect its permutations are infinite. There are three basic steps.
1. Brown the meat and soften the vegetables in an oven safe skillet. I choose about 1/3 of a 1 lb. low fat Jimmy Dean sausage roll, green peppers and sweet onions, seasoned with salt, pepper and thyme. (The thyme is like a secret, killer ingredient. It was fabulous in this dish.) Drain meat and veggies before seasoning if necessary.
2. Turn off heat, add a layer of cheese and then eggs, already scrambled. I used three, next time I'll use four or five for a smallish sized skillet.
3. Put skillet directly into a preheated oven at 350 for fifteen to twenty minutes.
Voila. All the variable deliciousness of an omelet, none of the work.
It continues to be ungodly hot outside. Beautiful white, trumpet shaped flowers are blooming everywhere, in fields and strangely, on small trees that one hardly noticed before now. All early summer they are meek little things, pale green, not very tall. Now all of a sudden they are flower fashionistas, flaunting it in the middle of the yard and smelling delicious.
The blackberries have appeared, an unripe red but a few have turned black. I have definite plans to creep out one late evening when they are ripe and pick them. I feel the need to be secretive because I'm not sure if the housing association allows the picking of blackberries from the golf course.
Legal or not, I have plans for those berries. I remember many a happy summer gathering black berries and making pies or crumble with them.
From here on out, I'm going to arrange my blog the way I did yesterday, with general blogging stuff first and then whatever political thoughts my morning reading has sparked after. I think it works out well that way.
That way my readers can pick and choose which kind of blogging material they're up for and I feel free to work through lines of thought that are drifting about in my head and to wander on at will with them. And I have to warn you, I do wander.
So, there were quite a few interesting reads this morning. I read this in Reason.com:
"Although Barton was widely mocked for appearing to defend a huge corporation that is responsible for the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, he had a point. Obama's grandstanding money grab exemplifies the lawless unilateralism that he condemned as a candidate yet embraced as a president.
Since the $75 million statutory cap on damages for oil spills does not apply in cases involving regulatory violations, "gross negligence," or "willful misconduct," BP's potential tort liability is enormous. But so are its assets, and there was no danger that it would run out of money before compensating everyone with a valid claim.
Obama could have let the legal process run its course, or he could have asked Congress to create a compensation fund in the interest of hastening payments. Instead he unilaterally extracted $20 billion from BP, on top of whatever damages the company will have to pay as a result of lawsuits, and appointed a lawyer to dole it out as he sees fit...
"Some disillusioned supporters suggest that Obama changed his mind about executive power after he started wielding it. But his pre-election concessions to political expediency indicate he was faking it all along. A politician who believes he is above the law is not above lying to the public about his principles."
-Jacob Sullun, "Oil Gushes and Power Rushes," Reason.com, June 23, 2010
Under the current law, the company would have been forced to fully compensate every valid claim, regardless of the 75 million cap, because of the company's gross regulatory violations.
Huh. So there really is no justification for Obama to act unlawfully, to take money from a private company and hand that money over to the federal government. Which, by the way, already attempted to fund an extention of the jobless benefits with it. Yeah. They were going to take that cash and funnel it into other states.
Also, I read this from National Review (emphasis added):
"Rep. Joe Barton's quickly retracted apology to BP for the administration's strong-arm tactics was horribly misconceived. Fundamentally, we don't want a free market and a system of laws to protect corporations, but to protect us from both government and corporations, especially when the two are in league with each other. Corporations like BP tend to be craven, unprincipled, and willing to use government for their own ends - all qualities evident in BP's spectacular green-marketing campaign.
The bigger and more complex government is, the more incentive corporations have to politicize themselves and get in bed with Washington. If they have resources to do it (not everyone can afford Stan Greenberg), they'll protect themselves from the worst while disadvantaging their competitors. This accounts for the corporatist paradox of the Obama administration. The president is so arbitrarily anti-business that The Economist dubs him "Vladimir Obama," yet the same industries he demonizes support key elements of his "reform" agenda."
-Rich Lowry, "Limiting Government-And Big Business" National Review, June 23, 2010
Yesterday I was thinking in a vague way about the link between government regulations and crony capitalism, and this brilliantly explains it, better than I could.
There is an argument that says without regulations, business would be free to do whatever they wish, to unlease their avarice and ambitions on the general public. It's a compelling argument, but it ignores the effect of regulations upon business (among other things).
For a multimillion or billion dollar business, regulations merely drive the company to form close contacts with the government that is suppose to enforce them. They even help shape those policies.
Classic example: Big Pharma meeting in private with Obama in the Oval Office to hammer out an agreement before the Health Care push. It doesn't get any more blatant or higher up than that. Right there, Obama cut a deal with the biggest, most powerful drug company in America. Big Pharma cut a sweet deal, they would be the sole providers of drugs under the plan, and in return, they would provide millions of dollars toward the campaign to sell Health Care reform to the rest of America.
Breathtaking. Watching this happen last summer was actually one of the pivot points that drove me from apathetic to passionate about my country.
Lastly, I read "When Greatness Slips Away," by Bob Herbert in The New York Times. It was fascinating. He talks about America missing critical moments of transformation, times when we could have choosen greatness, but instead choose to be mediocre.
"The collapse of the economy in the Great Recession gave us the starkest, most painful evidence imaginable of the failure of laissez-faire economics and the destructive force of the alliance of big business and government against the interests of ordinary Americans. Radical change was called for...
But there has been no radical change, only caution and timidity and more of the same. The royalists remain triumphant and working people are absorbing blow after devastating blow."
Actually, I complete agree with him here, but I have a feeling that his vision of radical change and mine are at polar opposites of the political spectrum.
He then goes on to suggest that as Americans we are giving in to an overpowering sense of helplessness and depression. He cites the destruction of large sections of the city of Detroit as a symbol of this reversal of American greatness.
It was fascinating to me because I'm experiencing the exact opposite. I agree, we are at a low point, the lowest we have ever been, but I feel an increasing sense of boyancy and hope. I feel like I am a part of the vangard of change that will propel this country back to the greatness that is its birthright, one built on hard work, self sufficiency, small, efficient government and innovation within a free market.
We just have to hang on through this rocky part.
Anyway, what was even more fascinating was reading the comments. The people who commented, boy, they agree with Mr. Herbert. Their comments make it abundantly clear that there is a real section of the populace that were sincerely hoping for the fundamental transformation that Obama promised when he took office.
It was also fascinating to hear how they thought about people like myself. According to them, I am duped, racist, radical, potentially violent, and retrograde.
Of course, we all know that I'm also the arm of the GOP, that I receive marching order from them, that I wave nazi flags, I'm old, white, rich and occurding to Obama, don't want to pay taxes to support schools for inner city children. I'm astro turf, a hate monger and un American. It's clear that I believe that Obama was born in Mars, that the earth is flat and that I occasionally like to go into a room lit with candles and hum mantras to Sarah Palin, not to mention I believe the code for the end of the world can be found in one of Glenn Beck's rants if played backward on tape.
I'm really quite a character!
If that were really true, well, I'd be depressed too.
