Well all sorts of crazy leafy greens are coming into season in my part of the world and it’s been great. Unfortunately I feel pressured to eat a salad every day- it’s been so good. So today’s food of the week is kale. Now there are all sorts of varieties of kale, but it’s not just for garnish any more. Kale is ridiculously good for you. And if you had only one vegetable to eat for the rest of your life, it should probably be kale. So what do you do with kale? A lot of people make it in potato soup, and there are all sorts of Portugese recipes for it, but here’s what I like to do with it.
- Slice the stem out of the kale leaf
- Marinate the kale in a combination of toasted sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, salt, soy sauce, and some chili oil if you prefer
- Get a pan super hot or use a grill, and flash broil it until the edges of the leaves get crispy and the kale itself wilts down
- Serve on top of cold noodles like somen or soba and sprinkle some sesame seeds on top
I posted on this blog a while back that I didn’t think W. could do anymore damage to this nation in a second term. Man was I wrong. I think the attack on public broadcasting was the last straw for me. I honestly think the next thing they’ll try to do is steal candy from babies, seriously.
I was listening to Al Franken interview Bill Moyers, the legendary PBS journalist last week. Among the things that intrigued me the most was Moyers comment on how the news media believes that being “balanced” is simply a matter of taking someone from the left and someone from the right and have them spin the story their respective ways. The journalist is just supposed to act as a ball boy making sure each side gets the ball back when they go out of bounds (my analogy not Moyer’s). The problem with this is that the public is not closer to the truth. The journalist job should be about slicing through the BS and getting to the truth regardless whether the left or the right supports it. However in todays talking heads dominated world the truth seems further irrelevant. Even the public radio show Left, Right, and Centerwhich claims not to do the bickering spinning can’t help but to devolve into, well, bickering spinning.
So here’s what I think should be a new concept for a news show. We’ll call it “MiddleGround”. We’ll take someone from one side of an issue and someone who believes in a contrary view. However both parties must be willing to change their minds on the issue. The point of the show is to get both sides to find a starting point that they both have in common, and then from there, try to see what develops. Here’s an idea for a pilot episode. Take the United Airlines defaulting on its pension promises. I’ve always supported labor and I think it’s a pretty s**tty thing to do to your employees. However the contrarians say it would be worse for the employees and the economy if UA went bankrupt and liquidated, and everyone would lose. So there’s our middle ground. I don’t want to see UA go out of business either. From there the show would develop and try to come up with more solutions.
I would like to see a show where people try to get to the root of problems and develop solutions, but then I think I’m in the minority. I think most people just want to think they’re right about something and be done with it. What do you think?
I love food and I love cooking. I thought it was about time I blogged about it as its own category. I’m making a point of trying buy something every week that I normally wouldn’t cook with or eat, and then writing a short review of it. So the food of the week is watercress. I love watercress. It’s nutritionally dense and has a nice mild but slightly bitter taste. Unfortunately it’s season in my part of the world is about over. It’s edible until it starts budding like many other early spring greens, afterwards it becomes too bitter and kinda rank. Here’s a watercress linky for more info on this wonderful green. My favorite watercress recipe is watercress sandwich. Take bread (trim the crusts if you’re so inclined) and spread either cream cheese or if you’re lucky enough to find it, wensleydale cheese, on the bread. Put a heap of watercress on it with the stems trimmed off and enjoy it for tea.
Well I fell off the GTD wagon fairly hard in the last few months, and my productivity really showed it. Ever since I’ve moved, I haven’t been able to get my daily processing cycle back in line. Things sort of die on my desk. The nice thing about GTD is that once you understand the principles, it doesn’t take much to get back on the wagon.
To complicate things further, my Treo 600 died finally. It kept on crashing while receiving incoming phone calls. Finally one day it crashed and never came powered up again. My general verdict is that smartphones just aren’t ready yet. QC at Palm has been lacking for years. The last decent palms made were the 500 series. After that they went downhill fairly rapidly. However if you look at the other reviews for the PocketPC smartphones, they don’t fair much better either. Forums, lists, and blogs around the world attest to the problems smartphones have. The biggest problem is usually that they crash or make poor phones (bad reception, low battery life). I think it will be at least two years before smartphones become cheap and reliable.
So what am I doing now? (more…)