Sassy!

Jak wrote: I just made dinner. It should arrive in 30 minutes.

So cute

love those kids.

This shit just got rill, y'all

There's something fishy about all this

i made a variation on this for dinner tonight, and the spouse and i were all, "rrrrrrrr! whah?? gimme!" and stuff but with less words. it's definitely getting added to the cold-weather dinner rotation.

enjoy, babies.

Halibut with Warm Bean Hash
from http://www.marthastewart.com/868515/halibut-warm-bean-hash

serves 4

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 pound fingerling or other small potatoes, cut into 1/4-inch rounds
4 medium carrots, cut into 1/4-inch rounds
1/2 small red onion, diced small
coarse salt and ground pepper
1 can (15.5 ounces) cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
1 tablespoon white-wine vinegar
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1 cup all-purpose flour, for dredging
4 halibut fillets (6 ounces each)
lemon wedges, for serving

Preparation:

1. In a large skillet, heat 1 tablespoon oil over medium-high. Add potatoes, carrots, and onion and season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are tender, 12 to 15 minutes. Add beans and vinegar and cook 1 minute. Remove from heat and stir in parsley.
2. Meanwhile, spread flour on a large plate. Season fish with salt and pepper, then dredge in flour, brushing off excess. In a large nonstick skillet, heat 1 tablespoon oil over medium-high. Add fish and cook until underside is golden and crisp, about 5 minutes. Flip and cook until fish is opaque throughout, about 3 minutes. Serve with bean hash and lemon wedges.

The hoary hound

my boyfriend is now an elder statesman.

i wonder if doggies assume their humans live forever . . .

Why I vote blue

in the massive left-right political divide, we are great at talking over and around one another but not so great at understanding. this guy does a wonderful job explaining why i support government-funded social services; it's because it's the compassionate thing to do. 

hopefully his explanation will resonate with you, regardless of your present political affiliation.

 

During the height of Hurricane Sandy, a nurse from Manhattan's NYU Hospital evacuates a NICU infant requiring breathing assistance.

After Sandy
by Rob Delaney
from http://robdelaney.tumblr.com/post/34643328161/after-sandy

If you were following coverage of Sandy last night, you may have seen photos of nurses and firemen transporting babies from the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) at NYU’s hospital. If you didn’t, you might consider looking them up. They’re very moving. They show courageous emergency and medical personnel doing what they do best, and it’s beautiful. I was in a NICU recently visiting friends’ new twins who came out too early and needed some extra professional TLC before they could venture out into the wider world. As these little nuggets lay in their incubators, tiny and pink, I felt like I was looking into the womb. I essentially was, since modern medicine does a remarkable job recreating a womb-like atmosphere to keep the newest members of our race safe. My wife was standing next to me, pregnant with our second baby, who’s about two thirds of its way through development inside her growing tummy. 

As I looked at these pictures of the babies being evacuated, I had a depressing thought. What are the financial situations of these babies’ parents? Are they poor? Do they have insurance? Are they on Medicaid? Medicaid is a health program that pays for medical services for those who cannot afford them. It is jointly funded by the federal and state governments. In some ways, I’d be happy if you were learning this information for the first time right now; the reason being that you don’t have to rely on Medicaid. Regardless, I suspect that if you had some “Medicaid” in your pocket last night, you’d have gladly given it to these precious babies to ensure their health and safety. It’s a good thing. If one of those babies were poor, I don’t suspect you’d want to punish her because her dad got laid off from his manufacturing job or because leukemia killed her older brother and bankrupted her parents just in time for her birth. If you don’t like these examples, tough shit; they’re how people get poor in the United States of America in 2012. I don’t want you to like them. 

I’d also ask that you think about those babies when you vote next week. Or think about your own baby, or maybe a baby you know or perhaps work with. (Wouldn’t it be cool to work with a baby?)

Here’s why: According to the Congressional Budget Office, which provides nonpartisan analysis of the federal budget for Congress, if we adopted vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s proposed budget, “federal spending for Medicaid would be 35 percent lower in 2022 and 49 percent lower in 2030 than currently projected federal spending.” This is a reduction of $810 billion over ten years. This concerns me, as I suspect incubators aren’t cheap, even if it’s a poor baby you’ll be putting in one. 

If you’re worried about our nation’s debt, present and future, I have good news: that same Congressional Budget Office, again a nonpartisan organization, has shown—again and again—that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, will reduce the deficit. 

I am of the opinion, as a dad, a husband (of a woman with reproductive organs), a tax payer, a voter and an American living inside a human body, that improving the mechanisms for delivering health care in this nation is as high a priority as we will ever have. Why? When you unshackle good, hard-working, kind, enterprising Americans from the fear that health care costs could bankrupt them, you will unleash an intellectual and economic force that will knock your socks right off your feet, whether you bought them at Brooks Brothers or Goodwill.

Please volunteer to help out in New York.

When beachfront property begins to look like a super bad idea

Did Climate Change Cause Hurricane Sandy?

by Mark Fischetti
from http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/10/30/did-climate-change-cause-hurricane-sandy/

If you’ve followed the U.S. news and weather in the past 24 hours you have no doubt run across a journalist or blogger explaining why it’s difficult to say that climate change could be causing big storms like Sandy. Well, no doubt here: it is.

The hedge expressed by journalists is that many variables go into creating a big storm, so the size of Hurricane Sandy, or any specific storm, cannot be attributed to climate change. That’s true, and it’s based on good science. However, that statement does not mean that we cannot say that climate change is making storms bigger. It is doing just that—a statement also based on good science, and one that the insurance industry is embracing, by the way. (Huh? More on that in a moment.)

Scientists have long taken a similarly cautious stance, but more are starting to drop the caveat and link climate change directly to intense storms and other extreme weather events, such as the warm 2012 winter in the eastern U.S. and the frigid one in Europe at the same time. They are emboldened because researchers have gotten very good in the past decade at determining what affects the variables that create big storms. Hurricane Sandy got large because it wandered north along the U.S. coast, where ocean water is still warm this time of year, pumping energy into the swirling system. But it got even larger when a cold Jet Stream made a sharp dip southward from Canada down into the eastern U.S. The cold air, positioned against warm Atlantic air, added energy to the atmosphere and therefore to Sandy, just as it moved into that region, expanding the storm even further.

Here’s where climate change comes in. The atmospheric pattern that sent the Jet Stream south is colloquially known as a “blocking high”—a big pressure center stuck over the very northern Atlantic Ocean and southern Arctic Ocean. And what led to that? A climate phenomenon called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)—essentially, the state of atmospheric pressure in that region. This state can be positive or negative, and it had changed from positive to negative two weeks before Sandy arrived. The climate kicker? Recent research by Charles Greene at Cornell University and other climate scientists has shown that as more Arctic sea ice melts in the summer—because of global warming—the NAO is more likely  to be negative during the autumn and winter. A negative NAO makes the Jet Stream more likely to move in a big, wavy pattern across the U.S., Canada and the Atlantic, causing the kind of big southward dip that occurred during Sandy.

Climate change amps up other basic factors that contribute to big storms. For example, the oceans have warmed, providing more energy for storms. And the Earth’s atmosphere has warmed, so it retains more moisture, which is drawn into storms and is then dumped on us.

These changes contribute to all sorts of extreme weather. In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, James Hansen at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York blamed climate change for excessive drought, based on six decades of measurements, not computer models: “Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.”

He went on to write that the Russian heat wave of 2010 and catastrophic droughts in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 could each be attributed to climate change, concluding that “The odds that natural variability created these extremes are minuscule, vanishingly small. To count on those odds would be like quitting your job and playing the lottery every morning to pay the bills.”

Hanson also argued a year ago that Earth is entering a period of rapid climate change, so radical weather will be upon us sooner than we’d like. Scientific American just published a big feature article detailing the same point.

Indeed, if you’re a regular Scientific American reader, you might recall that another well-regarded scientist predicted behemoths such as Sandy in 2007. The article, by Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, was presciently titled, “Warmer Oceans, Stronger Hurricanes.” Trenberth’s extensive analysis concluded that although the number of Atlantic hurricanes each year might not rise, the strength of them would.

Hurricane Sandy has emboldened more scientists to directly link climate change and storms, without the hedge. On Monday, as Sandy came ashore in New Jersey, Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, tweeted: “Would this kind of storm happen without climate change? Yes. Fueled by many factors. Is [the] storm stronger because of climate change? Yes.”

Raymond Bradley, director of the Climate Systems Research Center at the University of Massachusetts, was quoted in the Vancouver Sun saying: “When storms develop, when they do hit the coast, they are going to be bigger and I think that’s a fair statement that most people could sign onto.”

A recent, peer-reviewed study published by several authors in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science concludes: “The largest cyclones are most affected by warmer conditions and we detect a statistically significant trend in the frequency of large surge events (roughly corresponding to tropical storm size) since 1923.”

Greg Laden, an anthropologist who blogs about culture and science, wrote this week in an online piece: “There is always going to be variation in temperature or some other weather related factor, but global warming raises the baseline. That’s true. But the corollary to that is NOT that you can’t link climate change to a given storm. All storms are weather, all weather is the immediate manifestation of climate, climate change is about climate.”

Now, as promised: If you still don’t believe scientists, then believe insurance giant Munich Re. In her October 29 post at the The New Yorker, writer Elizabeth Kolbert notes:

Munich Re, one of the world’s largest reinsurance firms, issued a study titled “Severe Weather in North America.” According to the press release that accompanied the report, “Nowhere in the world is the rising number of natural catastrophes more evident than in North America.” . . . While many factors have contributed to this trend, including an increase in the number of people living in flood-prone areas, the report identified global warming as one of the major culprits: “Climate change particularly affects formation of heat-waves, droughts, intense precipitation events, and in the long run most probably also tropical cyclone intensity.”

Insurers, scientists and journalist are beginning to drop the caveats and simply say that climate change is causing big storms. As scientists collect more and more data over time, more of them will be willing to make the same data-based statements.

Spam has its own key

No love lost for Sandy

Tarts love it tart

Emeril's Key Lime Pie
from http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/key-lime-pie-recipe/index.html

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/2 cup granulated sugar
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick butter) melted
2 (14-ounce) cans sweetened condensed milk
1 cup key lime or regular lime juice
2 whole large eggs
1 cup sour cream
2–4 tablespoons powdered sugar
1 tablespoon lime zest

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
2. In a bowl, mix the graham cracker crumbs, sugar, and butter with your hands. Press the mixture firmly into a 10-inch pie pan, and bake until brown, about 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool to room temperature before filling.
3. Lower the oven temperature to 325 degrees F.
4. In a separate bowl, combine the condensed milk, lime juice, and eggs. Whisk until well blended and place the filling in the cooled pie shell. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes (or an additional 10 minutes if necessary) and allow to chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.
5. Once chilled, combine the sour cream and powdered sugar (starting with 2 T, adding more if you prefer sweeter) and spread over the top of the pie using a spatula. Sprinkle the lime zest as a garnish on top of the sour cream and serve chilled.

It's B-A-N-A-N-A-S

Banana Cream Pie from McEwan's on Monroe
from http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Banana-Cream-Pie-107728

Ingredients
Crust
2 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup mashed banana
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted

Filling
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups whipping cream
1 1/2 cups whole milk
3 large egg yolks
1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) unsalted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 very ripe bananas (about 1 1/2 pounds total), peeled, cut crosswise into 1/4-inch-thick slices


Preparation

1. For the crust, preheat oven to 350°F. Stir graham cracker crumbs, sugar, and mashed banana in large bowl to blend. Add unsalted butter and stir to moisten evenly. Press onto bottom and up sides of 10-inch-diameter glass pie dish. Chill until firm, about 30 minutes.
2. Bake crust until set and pale golden, about 15 minutes. Cool completely.
3. For the filling, whisk sugar, cornstarch, and salt in heavy medium saucepan to blend. Gradually whisk in whipping cream and whole milk, then egg yolks. Scrape in seeds from vanilla bean; add vanilla bean. Whisk over medium-high heat until custard thickens and boils, about 6 minutes. Remove from heat. Whisk in unsalted butter and vanilla extract. Transfer custard to large bowl; cool completely, whisking occasionally, about 1 hour. Discard vanilla bean.
4. Stir custard to loosen, if necessary. Spread 1 cup custard over bottom of prepared crust. Top with half of sliced bananas, then 1 cup custard, covering bananas completely. Repeat layering with remaining bananas and remaining custard. Chill banana cream pie until filling is set and crust softens slightly, at least 8 hours and up to 1 day. Just before serving, top pie with whipped cream, and drizzle with chocolate and caramel syrup; cut pie into wedges and serve.

Put this on the roster for Piemageddon 0'12

Tom Douglas's Triple Coconut Cream Pie

Ingredients: 

Coconut Pastry Cream
2 cups milk
2 cups sweetened shredded coconut
1 vanilla bean, split in half lengthwise
2 large eggs
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, softened

The Pie
One 9-inch Coconut Pie Shell (recipe below)
prebaked and cooled
2 1/2 cups heavy cream, chilled
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Garnish
2 ounces unsweetened "chip" or large-shred coconut (about 11/2 cups) or sweetened shredded coconut
Chunks of white chocolate (4 to 6 ounces, to make 2 ounces of curls)

Preparation:

1. To make the pastry cream, combine the milk and coconut in a medium saucepan. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean and add both the seeds and pod to the milk mixture. Place the saucepan over medium-high heat and stir occasionally until the mixture almost comes to a boil.
2. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, and flour until well combined. Temper the eggs (to keep them from scrambling) by pouring a small amount (about 1/3 Cup) of the scalded milk into the egg mixture while whisking. Then add the warmed egg mixture to the saucepan of milk and coconut. Whisk over medium-high heat until the pastry cream thickens and begins to bubble. Keep whisking until the mixture is very thick, 4 to 5 minutes more. Remove the saucepan from the heat. Add the butter and whisk until it melts. Remove and discard the vanilla pod. Transfer the pastry cream to a bowl and place it over a bowl of ice water. Stir occasionally until it is cool. Place a piece of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the pastry cream to prevent a crust from forming and refrigerate until completely cold. The pastry cream will thicken as it cools.
3. When the pastry cream is cold, fill the prebaked pie shell with it, smoothing the surface. In an electric mixer with the whisk, whip the heavy cream with the sugar and vanilla on medium speed. Gradually increase the speed to high and whip to peaks that are firm enough to hold their shape. Fill a pastry bag fitted with a star tip with the whipped cream and pipe it all over the surface of the pie, or spoon it over.
4. For the garnish, preheat the oven to 350°F. Spread the coconut chips on a baking sheet and toast in the oven, watching carefully and stirring once or twice, since coconut burns easily, until lightly browned, 7 to 8 minutes. Use a vegetable peeler to scrape about 2 ounces of the white chocolate into curls. 
5. Cut the pie into 6 to 8 wedges and place on dessert plates. Decorate each wedge of pie with white chocolate curls and the toasted coconut. If not serving immediately, keep the pie refrigerated, covered with plastic wrap. The finished pie should be consumed within a day. Prepare the garnishes just before serving. The coconut pastry cream can be made a day ahead and stored chilled in the refrigerator, covered with plastic wrap as described above. Fill the pie shell and top it with whipped cream and garnishes when you are ready to serve the pie. 

Coconut Pie Crust 

(makes one 9-inch crust)

Ingredients:

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sweetened shredded coconut
1/2 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
2 teaspoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
3 to 5 tablespoons ice water

Preparation: 

1. Pulse first 5 ingredients in a food processor 6 to 10 times or until mixture is crumbly. Add water, 1 tablespoon at a time, pulsing once after each addition, until dough holds together when pressed between fingers. (Dough will not form a ball or even clump together in processor—it will be loose.)
2. Turn dough out onto a large sheet of plastic wrap; press into a disc. Cover with plastic wrap, and chill 1 hour.
3. Roll dough to a 12- to 13-inch circle on a lightly floured surface. Fit into a 9-inch pie plate, trimming excess to a 1- to 11/2-inch overhang. Turn dough under along rim of pie pan, and flute edges. Chill at least 1 hour before baking.
4. Preheat oven to 400°. Place a sheet of aluminum foil or parchment paper in pie crust, extending over edges, and fill with dried beans, rice, or pie weights. Bake at 400° for 20 minutes. Remove from oven; discard foil and beans, and return pie crust to oven. Bake for 14 to 17 more minutes or until edges are golden brown. Remove from oven, and cool completely on a wire rack.

Creamy delight

this recipe for homemade butter is from Amazon's preview of Home Made Winter by Yvette van Boven.

 

Maybe it's me, but I find homemade butter much tastier than butter from a store. It's just . . . creamier. It could also be that I find it tastier because I've made it myself. Oh, whatever. It's good! And fun and quick to make. 

You know what's also good? To mix it with flaky Maldon sea salt or very fine salt and little lavender flowers. Spread it thickly on warm toast and eat with a soft-boiled egg.

 

4 1/2 cups (1 l) cream for a long time, with a mixer, until it looks like scrambled eggs.

the cream into a clean dish towel that you've placed over a strainer. Collect the whey (the liquid) in a bowl; you can use it to make soda bread (p. 23). Wring the butter as much as possible.

it in a bowl of ice water, changing the water 2 or 3 times, until the water remains clear. This step is important, because if there's any whey left the butter can quickly turn rancid. 

two wooden spatulas in another bowl of cold water. Use them to shape the butter into a nice bar. Wrap your butter in parchment paper and store in the fridge. It will remain fresh for at least 2 weeks! This recipe will yield about 3/4 cup (300 g) butter.

Miss Havisham's world

She was dressed in rich materials—satins, and lace, and silks—all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white. Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and some other jewels lay sparkling on the table. Dresses, less splendid than the dress she wore, and half-packed trunks were scattered about. She had not quite finished dressing, for she had but one shoe on—the other was on the table near her hand—her veil was half arranged, her watch and chain were not put on, and some lace for her bosom lay with those trinkets and with her handkerchief, and gloves, and some flowers, and a prayer-book, all confusedly heaped about the looking-glass.

It was not in the first moments that I saw all these things, though I saw more of them in the first moments than might be supposed. But, I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and had lost its luster, and was faded and yellow. I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose, had shrunk to skin and bone. Once, I had been taken to see some ghastly wax-work at the Fair, representing I know not what impossible personage lying in state. Once, I had been taken to one of our old marsh churches to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress, that had been dug out of a vault under the church pavement. Now wax-work and skeleton seemed to have dark eyes that moved and looked at me. I should have cried out, if I could.

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, ed. Edgar Rosenberg (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 50. 

The Dress of English Women during George III's Reign
http://www.oldandsold.com/articles09/clothes-28.shtml

The High Headdress. This resembled a tower, attaining its greatest height in 1777. Horse hair, tow, hemp and wool were glued together with pomatum and the hair, with false curls and puffs added, fastened up over this pad. The dressing, which concluded with powdering and scenting, required many hours, so that, except for the re-perfuming necessary, it did not have to be repeated for several weeks. At night large caps were drawn over the entire headdress, and special head rests were used as pillows to preserve the shape. 

For full dress occasions, frilled white caps were placed on top of the headdress; feathers, baskets, ships, strings of pearls or ribbon loops were also used as decoration. A scarf was sometimes wound about a huge pompadour and floated from the shoulders, as in the portrait of Lady Hamilton. 

In 1780 a very full skirt was held out over a bustle, accompanied by a low-necked, short-waisted bodice with wide revers. A sash was tied in a bow on the bustle . . . A fichu was placed about the low neck and tied in front, terminating in frilled ends below the knees. . . .

Bouquets carried in flat glass bottles containing water were fastened to the waist, in 1770. . . .

Footgear. The low shoe became slender after 1780, and developed a French heel. . . .

The Hair. With the revival of natural hair, that of the women was worn curled across the forehead and gathered in a knot of loose ringlets on top of the head.

http://locksofelegance.blogspot.com/2011/09/curly-regency-hairstyle.html

http://locksofelegance.blogspot.com/2012/01/classic-georgian-hairstyle.html

I crossed the staircase landing, and entered the room she indicated. From that room too, the daylight was completely excluded, and it had an airless smell that was oppressive. A fire had been lately kindled in the damp old-fashioned grate, and it was more disposed to go out than to burn up, and the reluctant smoke which hung in the room seemed colder than the clearer air — like our own marsh mist. Certain wintry branches of candles on the high chimney-piece faintly lighted the chamber, or, it would be more expressive to say, faintly troubled its darkness. It was spacious, and I dare say had once been handsome, but every discernible thing in it was covered with dust and mould, and dropping to pieces. The most prominent object was a table with a long tablecloth spread on it, as if a feast had been in preparation when the house and the clocks stopped all together. An epergne or centre-piece of some kind was in the middle of this cloth; it was so heavily overhung with cobwebs that its form was quite indistinguishable; and, as I looked along the yellow expanse out of which I remember its seeming to grow, like a black fungus, I saw speckle-legged spiders with blotchy bodies run home to it, and running out from it, as if some circumstance of the greatest public importance had just transpired in the spider community. . . .

"I can't guess what it is, ma'am."

"It's a great cake. A bride cake. Mine!"

 Dickens, 103–104.