Sufferin' Suffrage

This is why The View fascinates me. You give four women a platform to spout their opinions, and those four women are often times ill informed. Every now and then I catch clips of the show on abcnews.com and end up playing the mental game of "now how would a reasonable and informed person respond to that point." Lucky for the four regular co-hosts, sometimes Barbara Walters shows up and is able to educate them or steer them clear of exhibitions of ignorance. Then sometimes she's not there and you end up with the ladies discussing and defining suffrage as "when black people had to...die for being black." It looks like the ladies confused suffrage with suffering, for as co-host Joy Behar says "it has suffering in it." So the moral of the story is: Don't let your children go through an election cycle without knowing what suffrage is---it's bad for the world and daytime television.
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The Soup Diet: Week Four Report

Leek Love is alive and well!!

Monday: Adaptable Aztec Soup (without adaptations)
Tuesday: Adaptable Aztec Soup (with Chinese Soup noodles)
Wednesday: Spinach and Leek White Bean Soup
Thursday: Spinach and Leek White Bean Soup
Friday: Lentils 'n Squash

Well, the Aztec Soup is gone. Out of the refrigerator. In my tummy. Done. I got lazy early in the week and didn't brew up any new soups. So lazy that I didn't even create any "adaptations" for the Aztec Soup. Fortunately it's still very good "as is." And adding Chinese Soup noodles (conveniently left by some co-worker on the counter in the office's mini kitchen) worked as well as tortilla strips. My roommate is also in love with leeks, and kindly replenished the refrigerator's leek supply. Thus, this week's leek soup. And lastly, you must notice that Friday's "soup" is not a soup. It's the Soup-For-Lunch Diet's first failure and I faithfully document it for you. I ran out of time and creativity. Instead I had an almost two month old acorn squash in the refrigerator and a new lentil recipe in my recipe box....thus....NO SOUP FOR ME today.
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Veteran's - Remembrance Day

British television recently reminded me that today is not just Veteran's Day at home, but a Memorial-Veteran's Day Combo Holiday across the world. In Great Britain, they name today Remembrance Day and people wear poppy pins (I saw it on the British TV show Spooks) harking back to the poppies growing in the field of battle during World War I. November 11 marks the end of that War to End All Wars....that didn't. Today boys, and now girls, keep fighting. On Veteran's Day in the U.S. we honor the living participants. I think it's an important distinction. Honoring the dead on Memorial Day seems easier than honoring and responding to the needs of the living. Coming home cannot be easy for the Veterans and for their families. We ask much of them. Their sacrifice lies not only back on the battlefields and humanitarian intervention arenas, but also travels home with them. Today is a good reminder that we as a society and government must honor them AND care for their special needs---needs created by the service they give to us.

PBS produced a report on the increase of suicide among U.S. Veterans. So today I highlight the extra stress our current conflicts place on the minds of our servicemen and women. Keep this concern in your thoughts and prayers. Also, thank you servicemen and women for putting your physical and mental health at risk for others.
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Campaign 08: The Full Story

Newsweek has published a FASCINATING report on the entire 2008 campaign.  Embedded reporters followed Obama, Hillary and McCain around for the past year or more recording every scrap of detail on condition they would not reveal it until after the election.  Well, the election is over and the full story is a terrific soap opera of behind the scenes action.

• Insights into Obama's decision making: He never let his advisers know what he was thinking.  He made the decision himself, against his advisers' recommendations, to give his speech on race.

• Insights into McCain's honor: He drew bright lines of not to attack Obama on Jeremiah Wright or to attack Michelle Obama.

• Descriptions of debate prep: Obama studied intensely as if for a Bar exam.  McCain watched tape of Biden and Palin and thought Biden came off as a cranky old guy....and McCain didn't get the irony.

• Dirt on Palin: Oh yeah, she spent that much money and more on designer clothes and she spent it herself.  She also was peeved at her handling and therefore refused some interview prep before the Couric interview.  Palin started the Ayers attacks on her own initiative.

• Cute behind the scenes anecdotes:  Palin's daughter Piper would scramble over Lindsay Graham to reach her mother.  Obama playfully and in a nerdy way teased Michelle about her accessories.

It's a long article and it's all good stuff.  (If you'd rather watch, Charlie Rose interviewed a Newsweek reporter and editor who elaborated on the long article).  As for the website/article, it's terrific reading.  The first page gives you tempting "highlights," and the rest of the reporting divides into seven chapters.  Happy reading!  (And find an embed of the Charlie Rose interview after the jump).






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The Soup Diet: Week Three Report

This week ended up being Left-overs and Leek week. Some ingredients and unfinished soup from the last two weeks were nearing expiration in the refrigerator, affecting the direction of this week's menu.

Monday: Adaptable Aztec Soup
Tuesday: Russian Potato Mushroom Soup
Wednesday: Leek and Potato Soup (this time with thyme)
Thursday: Leek and Potato Soup
Friday: Russian Potato Mushroom Soup

No major adaptations to the Aztec Soup this week. I just used tortillas. Non-glamorous but still delicious. The Russian Potato Mushroom Soup was okay. It used leeks, carrots, potatoes and mushrooms. The combination sounded fabulous, but the end product was merely good. The lack of fabulousness may have been affected by my refusal to add the half-and-half the recipe demanded. Instead I blended/pureed half the soup. But I still think the recipe falls short of its promising ingredients.  In other words, it is somehow less than the sum of its parts.  The chief problem with the Russian Soup was proportionality: too much work (chopping and blending) for too little reward (an okay soup).

Which leads me to a small paragraph opining on the proportionality factor in my cooking and baking philosophy. The perfect recipe, to me, not only creates a fantastic dish but accomplishes that dish with as little cost and fuss as possible. I employ of ratio of Taste to Effort, where 

Taste   =   good, very good, excellent and best evah!

and 

Effort   =   cheapness + time to prepare + time to cook + time to clean up

Some math or statistics genius would put up a spread sheet right here, but that's not me. I'd say that the ratio for the Russian Soup was 1/9 (1 for taste (it tasted good) and 9 for effort (lots of chopping, peeling, dicing, blending and use of more than one pan)). The Leek & Potato Soup was 9/3 (9 for taste (excellent, almost a best soup evah) and 3 for effort (potato peeling, leek washing, and blender use drives up the effort factor but the blender factor surprisingly reduces the potato dicing factor because it only requires potato slicing)). So Leek & Potato Soup wins! Indeed, this week the subtle but sweet Leek and Potato Soup became fabulous with the added improvements of more salt and a dash of thyme. I love you leek! Stay in my refrigerator forever.

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My Map is Our Map

This is how my map looks after coloring is complete. I actually colored this map using the generic Windows "Paint" program, so I'm sort of proud of my newfound "paint" abilities. Last night I introduced a few first-timers to "coloring on election night." We sat around eating buffalo wings, licking our fingers and coloring with blue and red pencils.  Grown men and women coloring while eating buffalo wings is a special sight.  The first-timers agreed: coloring on election night is fun.  Fortunately, there were no inadvertent colorings, a la Florida 2000.  I did, however, color the entire state of Maine without first assessing whether all four of its electoral votes (Maine splits its votes by congressional district...as does Nebraska, hence the white uncolored chunk on my map) had gone blue.  Lucky for me, it seems Maine's final electoral vote is, indeed, blue.  (Remember there is no erasing in electoral coloring!!).

What a great historic and emotional election! Thank you to all who voted. To all who joyfully and peacefully celebrated in the streets. And to you, dear readers, who shared your voting stories from across the country.  Those stories paint an even more colorful electoral map.  They are truly interesting and important.  If you have more stories about voting or election night (readers in DC and NYC were you in the streets?) please share.

UPDATE: Substantial returns have come in and I've posted a new map below to reflect that McCain squeezed out a win in Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District as well as in Missouri. And Obama eked out a win in North Carolina.

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Voting Stories

I voted this morning. Contrary to reports from media outlets and co-workers in the office, I had a very short eight person line. I did, however, witness something interesting and touching. An African American family ahead of me finished voting and took pictures of each other. The oldest member of the family, an elderly husband, posed for the last photograph supported by his wife on one side and a wooden cane on the other. They were smiling and laughing. I've never seen anyone so joyful about voting. As a one time student of history I can appreciate probably only a tiny fraction of how much it means to that African American family to be able to vote for a viable African American candidate. How much that elderly couple lived through. And how much that elderly couple might have never believed that today's vote was ever possible. I'm a suburban bred white girl who is not necessarily voting the way they are, but it still moves me to see how much this morning moved them.

So tell me about your voting experience. What happened? How long was your line? See anything good? What kind of ballot did you use? Were you working the polls? Did you not vote? Share in the comments.
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Election 08: Coloring the Night Away

It's a bit of a tradition for me. On general election night I sit on the floor behind the coffee table and in front of the television. Laid before me on the coffee table top are a blue pencil, a red pencil, and a blank electoral college map. As the returns come in, I color appropriately. I believe this ritual began for me in November of 1988 with a worksheet from my 5th grade teacher. I'm not sure if I continued the coloring exercise for every subsequent general election, but since that wild, endless night in 2000, I take both a thrill and comfort in it. Indeed, in 2000 the election added an element of skill to my coloring exercise: to color Florida blue or red or not at all? (There is no erasing in electoral college coloring!....because my colored pencils for some reason never seem to have erasers).

Today I will procure some pencils and print out my map. Today I will vote. And tonight I will color. It's my American tradition. Please vote.  Coloring is optional.
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