May 2009 Archives

I experimented in the kitchen last night for the first time in a long while. Inspired by this recipe, I cobbled together a strange creation that my daughter miraculously ate some of, so I must commemorate the occasion with a blog posting.

I boiled some russet potatoes for a while and then sliced them. In the meantime, I also stir-fried some small pieces of cauliflower (I could have roasted them but I was in a hurry) which I then pulsed in the Cuisinart with a little milk and some cheddar and Gorgonzola cheeses. (Could have gone lighter on the latter, but nobody seemed to mind.)

Finally, I put the slices of potato on a baking sheet, spread some of the cauliflower/cheese mixture on each one, and topped them off with pieces of fire-roasted peppers from a Trader Joe's jar and some panko bread crumbs. Baked them in the oven at 425 for... I dunno, a while, until the cheese melted and the crumbs browned slightly.

Mimi looked at them suspiciously for a while, but then started taking bites, first of ours, then of hers.

Cauliflower quite simply rocks — it works so well in cheesy dishes and kids will eat it without noticing it!

Now I need to find a palatable recipe involving a green vegetable other than cucumber or avocado...

The latest newsflash from the closest thing we have to a real national newspaper (sorry USA Today): Teenagers greet each other with hugs. Some people like to be hugged, others, not so much. And....er... that's about it.

Aside from the silliness of building an entire news story around this slender not-much-of-a-concept, there's the question of how the reporter and his/her friends greeted each other when teens. Did they have some complicated sets of hand gestures? Did they bow? Perhaps they developed a complicated ritual greeting dance involving ping-pong balls and exchanges of sock monkeys? In any case, at my school, we merely hugged each other, us brave trend-setters, and it did NOT make the New York Times*.

* Although Alice Kahn did write a wonderful piece on Berkeley High student fashions in which my friends and I make a cameo, and that got published in the East Bay Express and in book form... but I digress.

Oh, Michael Steele. You charmer you.

RNC Chairman Michael Steele is set to deliver a speech today to state GOP chairmen, seeking to re-energize the party.

"The era of apologizing for Republican mistakes of the past is now officially over. It is done," Steele will say. "We have turned the page, we have turned the corner. No more looking in the rearview mirror. From this point forward, we will focus all of our energies on winning the future."

Because, geez, the Republicans have been out of power since January! What do you people want, anyway? BLOOD?

Of course, as the article points out, I guess we missed all the apologies. Unless he means all the apologizing to Rush Limbaugh.

In other news, today was California's oh-so-special election. I don't know what to say about it except... oh hell, we are SO SCREWED. I agonized over this one and while I'm not going to say how I voted, it just seemed like there were no right decisions here. Sigh...