Let me get this straight

The Bush administration has run the country so badly that we went from
being ridiculously wealthy in 2000 to the point where "The market is
not functioning properly." in 2008 and we're supposed to believe that
the Bush Administration is a reasonable group to suggest a solution.
Does anyone realize what you can do with 700 billion dollars? You
could replace half of all the coal plants in America with solar
facilities! You could repair all the damage caused by Hurricane
Ike...32 times!

Or you could give it to a bunch of guys who are so incompetent that
they are asking for a government bailout. Does this mean those of us
who said that the Bush administration would be an unmitigated disaster
are completely right? Yes. Yes it does.

Recipe Download

Ok, so I've been doing some cooking, and for the most part it has turned out fantastic, so to improve the otherwise negative tone of this blog, let's recount some awesome recipes.

Quick Spaghetti

Ok, so this is for when you don't have 3 hours to devote to Alton Brown's fantastic marinara sauce.
I don't really keep track of 'amounts' of ingredients unless I'm baking (and I'm not really that good of a baker...so...).

Smoked turkey sausage
Can of diced tomatoes (no salt or sugar added if possible)
Can of tomato sauce (ditto)
Rosemary
Oregano
Onion powder
Shot of vodka (good vodka)

Cut the turkey sausage into small pieces, sear briefly, and then add everything else except the vodka (if I were using real onions, I'd add them with the turkey and cook until translucent). Once things are bubbling, add the vodka. Simmer for about 20 minutes (or more depending on how intense and thick you want this stuff.

If you've got more time, use onions and celery and sweat it for about 20 minutes, then sear the turkey and add everything else.

This is at least a hundred times better than anything you can buy at the store. You don't need a lot of sausage for it, the flavor goes around.

The other thing we do with spaghetti is mix in zucchini or summer squash with the noodles. Just cook the noodles until about 2 minutes before you would normally, add the sliced zucchini, and turn up the heat (because you'll loose the boil when you add all that mass). Cook it that last two minutes, then drain and add some olive oil (which is essential, otherwise the zucchini sticks to the noodles strangely).

The Stew-Chili:

Did this today while thinking about making chili:

Cubed 2 pork loins.
small amount of turkey smoked sausage (is it obvious we had a bunch of this in our freezer?...got three meals out of it)
chopped celery, onions, carrots (I used frozen because they're cheap and fast, but I also added more fresh onion)
can of diced tomatoes (drained)
can of rotel (drained)
hard, winter squash (actually I used Pattypan Squash, which I'm not sure if it is a summer or winter, but had the right texture. I would have also used pumpkin with a lot of success, although it probably would have added some additional flavor, and I almost used potatoes, which might have fallen apart during the cooking)
and spices:
Red pepper
Cayenne pepper
Black pepper
Rosemary
and of course, Cumin

The weird thing was, that this was supposed to be a chili, but ended up having no peppers or chilis (except for what's in the rotel, which was 'mild'). Anyway, I seared the meat briefly, then threw it all in a slow cooker for ~7 hours. This turned out pretty damned amazing. I'd serve it to anyone. The wife insists it is a 'stew', and although we both agreed that a chili is also a stew, I think she was saying it was more like a vegetable/beef stew kind of thing. I think of it as a chili-stew. Using chunks of meat instead of ground was a tremendous improvement, and the pattypan squash took up the flavors of everything else and I think kind of thickened everything like a potato would. Maybe there's some starch in there?

Anyway...come visit us and I guarantee I can get you some damned good food.

Lord...

...I hate election years. Nothing makes me lose more faith in humanity than watching it vote.

Letters to people I hate

Dear Jack H. Ole;

No state-listed threatened or endangered species or crucial wildlife habitats should be significantly affected.  However, if you keep doing this kind of shit, we're going to have to start listing some of these species.  I mean, you realize that you're the reason our country is going down the tubes, don't you?  You're tearing down the natural environmental that provide us with air filtration, water filtration, and food so that someone can live 30 miles outside of town and in two years start bitching about the fact that another housing development is going in next door and spoiling their view.  

We recommend minimizing disturbance to wildlife habitat and reseeding and landscaping with native warm season grasses, forbs, shrubs and trees.  But you won't do that will you?  There are ten thousand species of plants that look amazing and require exactly nothing to maintain, and instead you're going to go with some Eurasian hybrid on your lawns and a bunch of Japanese ornamentals to provide shade.  Half a billion people in Africa are dying because they lack properly treated water, and you're going to be building a development where people just pour it on the ground to water their lawn.

Information on how to reestablish native vegetation can be found by contacting the local conservation district http://www.ks.nrcs.usda.gov/ or Kansas State Research and Extension office http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/main/maps.asp

Future emails regarding this project, or any new NOI's, can be sent directly to me and include in the email subject line the following information.  Email requests tend to be processed more quickly than paper copies.  And requests that don't seem to be full of idiocy will be treated with more dignity than those that don't.

T&E; Proj: Another Stupid Housing Development; CO: Somewhere; LOC: 6-6-6

Thank you

Chromawesome

Ok, that title doesn't work, but I'm not changing it.  

I'm sure I'm the last guy on the bandwagon, but holy cow, where did chrome come from?  I had no idea Google was building a web browser, and all of a sudden it is available.  Playing around with it so far is neat.  There's not a lot of crap to shrink the window, it seems to go really fast, and apparently it is open source.  Which means its source is open.  Ok, I really don't care what it means, except that presumably all those awesome FireFox extensions I've grown to love so dearly will eventually be migrating over to this browser.  

I'm kinda amazed I like it, because reading through the description, I was sorta like:  everything on here is already in my browser.  But it really does seem to go a lot faster, and gosh, that's pretty much the most important thing in the world!