Day: July 27, 2005

Well, in honor of the cool wave that just swept through, tonight’s menu is

“White” Chicken Chili

This is another sorta, kinda, not quite a recipe recipe. (Cos I refuse to measure amounts of spices.)

• 1Lb boneless chicken breasts, cut in either 1/2′ strips or in chunks
• 1 can (or a coupla cups freshly cooked) navy beans
• 1 can hominy
• about a cup (more or less to your taste) of green chiles: the canned diced ones are just fine.
• 1 cup chicken stock (your own or canned)
• up to one tablespoon cornstarch
• 1 tablespoon oil
• a couple of fresh, ripe (none of those sorta red cueballs sold at the grocery) tomatoes, diced. Or a (15oz?) can of diced tomatoes.
• one medium onion, chopped
• a coupla cloves of garlic, minced
• ground red pepper (I’d use at least a teaspoonful—actually, I would use more 🙂
• ground cumin—minimum one tablespoonful. Best if ground fresh.

Heat a cast iron skillet to medium heat. When hot, add about a TBS of oil to coat the pan and then add the chicken strips/cubes. Cook until white, then add the onion, garlic, cumin and red pepper powder and continue cooking until the chicken is golden. Meanwhile, combine the chicken broth and corn starch, dice tomatoes, etc.

When the chicken’s a golden brown, add the tomatoes, hominy, beans, green chiles and mixture of chicken stock and cornstarch. Bring to a boil for about 5 minutes, stirring every now and then, then simmer for at least 30 minutes. I prefer an hour or more, adding more chicken stock or water as needed.

Serve in bowls or on corn chips and topped with salsa or whatever works for you.

UPDATE: Lovely Daughter suggested mushrooms and bell peppers as an addition to this, and I don’t see any reason why they would not work… it’d just taste different than I’d expect any kinda chili to taste. Maybe better than this “white” chili does. Gonna try that next time. If you try it that way before I do, drop me a line and let me know how ya liked it.

While you’re at it, may I recommend this post from Blog and Mablog? For an upcoming Christ Church cookbook, Doug Wilson makes “…the culinary argument for God’s existence, which Thomas Acquinas somehow overlooked.”

“Think for a moment what God could have done with food. He could have designed a universe in which some sort of fuel was necessary, but where the (entirely superfluous) function of taste was missing. He could have provided us with abundant sources of nutrition, but which had the ethos of cold, shapeless oatmeal. No taste anywhere. Bleh.

“He could have given us food that had slight variations or degrees of refinement, like gasoline. We could have had super premium oatmeal, which was more gruel-like, and then premium, like cream of wheat, and then regular, which would be like oatmeal, with the texture and everything. But still, nothing that had taste. No brown sugar.

“What kind of God created taste? Not just the function of taste—because He could have done that and only provided one or two tastes—but the riot of tastes, the pandemonium of tastes, the bedlam of tastes that we actually have.”

Interesting stuff. But then, folks who are familiar with Doug’s work in Credenda Agenda won’t be surprised… (Check out the latest Credenda issue: The Art of Pettiness for a taste..)

I guess nothing’s too ridiculous to propose, is it?

So, how will the left attack Supreme Court nominee John Roberts?

1.) Put an emetic in his water at the confirmation hearings

2.) Put a “shocker” in his chair and whenever he starts to answer a questioner, give him a “buzz”. (No, I’m not going to link to a site where you can buy one. Just in case a reader happens along who’s an LLM.)

3.) Go all snarky over his (and his family’s) wardrobe. Now that’s completely ridiculous! No One would do that!!! (Oops. Too late for this to be a prediction. Robin Givhan beat me to this one. I guess No One would do that… )

4.) A corollary to #3: every time he answers a question, remind him, “Yeh, and yo momma wears army boots.”

5.) Secretly, under cover of darkness, the Loony Left Moonbat brigade and Mass Media Podpeople’s Army will send their best Ninjas of Personal Destruction to poop in Robert’s children’s fishbowl, then send in PETA (no, not People Eating Tasty Animals, the other PETA: the one with whacko nutjobs who “rescue” animals and then kill them for fun) to claim he abuses fish and would threaten the Constitutional rights of fish across America.

6.) The ACLU will join with PETA to bring suit against Roberts because of the clear and present danger he poses to the civil rights of American fish.

7.) Douglas Adams‘ body will be exhumed and used as a sock puppet by Teddy Kennedy to claim that the Earth will be destroyed by aliens because Roberts threatens the civil rights of American fish (right after Teddy “Swimmer” Kennedy asserts that Mary Jo Kopeckne’s death was all Roberts’ fault—for making the fish angry, thus forcing Teddy “Swimmer” Kennedy to swim for his life, fleeing angry rights-threatened-by-Roberts fish… Hey, it’s Teddy Kennedy, here: anything could come from his mouth.)

8.) Rabid Loony Left Moonbats will seek to suck Roberts’ blood.

9.) Meanwhile, back in the Senate, the Evil Triumvirate du Jour (who knows? Maybe Pelosi, Durbin and Schumer) will fall on the floor of the Senate, kicking and screaming in a typical LLM misapprehension that this comprises an actual attack on anything.

10.) Jean Fraud sKerry will wet his pants when he realizes that he misspoke and demanded his own records be released instead of John Roberts’. Oops, Jean Fraud… sKerry will then claim that he wet himself because Roberts stole the “lucky pants” he got off Valerie Plame when he dropped her off one Christmas in Cambodia. (Yeh, I’ll bet that one’s “seared, seared” into his memory… )

*sigh* Forgot some earlier:

+1: Place whoopee cushions on Judiciary Committee seats. Blame Roberts.

+2: Claim Roberts created Ebola. Ditto smallpox, AIDS and acne. Dare him to prove he did not.

+3: Ask Roberts when he stoped beating his wife. (I know, a hoary chestnut, but since the Dems in the Judiciary committee are all fond of hoary chests and are nuts to boot, it only stands to reason.)

+4: Insert unimaginably idiotic action here. See? I just knew you could imagine things that are unimaginable to the ordinary person!

+5: Claim Roberts will submit his decisions to the Pope, and when he denies it, claim that’s evidence of mendacity and something for which he should be impeached from his present judgeship (then, of course, keelhauled and burned at the stake).

Now, once the “moderates” have finished with the above attacks, Roberts will be turned over to the gentle ministrations of moveon.org NARAL and the “beyond the orbit of Pluto” whacko wing of the (UN)Democratic party…

Finally, some legislators grow some stones…

(A post on point and a rabbit trail… )

“The vote came one day after four adult Scout leaders from an Alaska troop were killed on the opening day of the National Scout Jamboree at the Army’s Fort A.P. Hill in Bowling Green, Va., when a tent pole apparently struck a power line.”

What?!?!?

For the cultural illiterati (none of the regular readers of thos blog fit that description) I’d have to cite (and explain) the old Mother Goose rhyme…

Monday’s child is fair of face,
Tuesday’s child is full of grace,
Wednesday’s child is full of woe,
Thursday’s child has far to go.
Friday’s child is loving and giving,
Saturday’s child works hard for a living,
But the child born on the Sabbath Day,
Is fair and wise and good and gay.

But I’ll just cite it, instead, as a memory exercise (something I can use more and more as brain cells die off wholesale with age. :-). Oh, and for those born after 1960 or so, “gay” is used there in its non-pejorated, pre-homosexual “pride” meaning of ” having or showing a merry, lively mood” (which is still the preferred meaning in most dictionaries).

But enough of the completely irrelevant-to-this-post rabbit trail. “Wednesday’s child is full of woe… “—eh? What?

Well, I’ve decided to dedicate the next few (maybe just a couple) of Wednesdays to the bane of honest citizens of the U.S., the IRS and income tax.

Tell you what, just go get this book and we’ll have more to talk about:

The FairTax Book by Neal Boortz.

And how about this book, as well?

The Americans for Fair Taxation Bill involves three specific actions:

1) Passage of legislation that repeals the income tax, the payroll tax in its entirety, the estate tax, the gift tax, the capital gains tax, the self-employment tax, and the corporate tax.

2) Passage of legislation that installs a single-rate, national sales tax on all new goods and services at the point of final purchase for consumption; and that provides a universal rebate in an amount equal to the sales tax on essential goods and services.

3) Adoption of a constitutional amendment to repeal the 16th Amendment.

If any of these items are altered the bill will lose all grassroots support!

Americans for Fair Taxation has over 500,000 members.

What does the FairTax do for you?
1. You take home your gross pay minus state income taxes.
2. You receive a check on the first of every month (amounts shown below).
3. You will have no tax forms and no IRS to report to.

U. S. House Bill H. R. 25 Sponsors

(The FairTax Bill)

We’ll talk more later, OK?