Month: August 2005

Made ya think, didn’t I? What is “odd” about this recipe? (Or, rather, what’s more odd than usual about this recipe? heh)

Ever wonder what to do with odd chicken parts? The way I learned to cut up a chicken from my mom and both grandmothers (who all did it in pretty much the same way), I’m usually left holding some pieces with notalotta meat and a whole heckuva lotta bones: the neck, a coupla different pieces of the back; you know, a lotta trouble for a little meat.

Mother’s solution was to save all these “extras” in the freezer, then, every now and then, pull out a bagful and boil up some chicken stock, then assign one of us kids to bone the necks and backs—really dig out all the tiny lil pieces of meat, which could then be used in making chicken soups, chicken and dumplings, casseroles, chicken salad/sandwich spread, etc.

Well, that still works, but I prefer using my pressure cooker.

Bottom of prssure cooker: odd ends of onions, carrots, celery, etc. (odd ends and pieces frozen and saved for making stock, etc.—you do do that, don’t you? :-).Maybe some garlic and other herbs or spices to your taste. Dump in “odd” chicken parts. A lil salt and lotsa freshly ground pepper. Maybe a half cuppa water. Cook under high pressure for about 10 minutes, then remove from heat and run cold water over the pressure cooker to depressurize it. Remove the chicken and store in the fridge to cool. Strain and store the stock in the fridge. (You can easily skim the fat off later if that’s a concern.)

When the chicken’s cooled in the fridge, take it out and debone it. (Why do “debone” and “bone” mean the same thing? Is it like “flammable” and “inflammable”? I am soooo confused!)

Now, you can make one of my fav sandwich spreads. And it’s sooooo easy you’ll not begrudge all the drudgery of getting enough freshly-cooked, juicy chicken by cooking and deboning necks and backs and unmentionables, oh my!

Ingredients only: no amounts. (This is what makes it sooo good—no matter what I say here, you’ll feel completely free to take this as a skeletal framework and fill in as you wish. 🙂

• Chicken, boned, in small pieces
• Mayo
• Sweet pickle relish
• Celery, diced finely
• Celery seed (soak ahead of time if you’re not going to let the chicken spread come together for a few hours before using it)
• Minced onion
• Freshly-ground pepper
• Shredded carrots
• MAYBE some fresh dill weed, if ya have it (but probably best added as sprigs to sadnwiches when made).

Combine all the stuff above in proportions that suit your taste and then cover the resultant (oh so good) mess and store it in the fridge for a few hours.

Variations/additional ingredient suggestions:

halved grapes
cooked, crumbled bacon
shredded cheese (If you do this, consider NOT using the mayo and adding enough cheese to make a grilled chicken salad sandwich work! Great in one of those lil hot sandwich presses.)

Bread, leaf lettuce and spread. A good sammich, eh?

Get creative with this and let me know how it goes, eh?

“If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”—JSM, On Freedom

Stop the ACLU Blogburst Blogroll

See my clock over in the sidebar? I’ve been meaning to thank Woody at Woody’s News and Views for being where I found it. Lotsa other good stuff there, too. Thanks, Woody!

“For God’s Sake, Please Stop the Aid!“

That’s Kenyan economist James Shikwati speaking.

“… it has to be the Kenyans themselves who help these people. When there’s a drought in a region of Kenya, our corrupt politicians reflexively cry out for more help. This call then reaches the United Nations World Food Program — which is a massive agency of apparatchiks who are in the absurd situation of, on the one hand, being dedicated to the fight against hunger while, on the other hand, being faced with unemployment were hunger actually eliminated.”

(“apparatchiks”—now that’s telling it straight!)

Just read it all.

Then read, Let Africa Sink by Kim du Toit. One piece of macabre humor from Let Africa Sink:

My favorite African story actually happened after I left the country. An American executive took a job over there, and on his very first day, the newspaper headlines read: “Three Headless Bodies Found”.

The next day: “Three Heads Found”.

The third day: “Heads Don’t Match Bodies”.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Just read it. Now, what was that I was saying about “Killing with ‘kindness'”? (Yeh, Daniel Patrick Moynihan tried to warn us about our social welfare programs doing just that… to blacks in this country… more than 40 years ago.)

Curmudgeon mode: ON

Ever notice that sometimes it’s the little things that are most irritating?

“Big things” are sometimes—sometimes—less of an irritant than little things. Threre’s a BIG difference between the death of a loved one and someone pulling out into traffic and driving slowly in front of folks who have sonmewhere to go. The death of a loved on isn’t irritating, though. And, really, we all know that we and our loved ones will die one day, but there’s no excuse for pulling out into traffic and driving slowly… (I just irritated myself by misspelling “traffic”. Twice. Ick. Misspelled “driving” too. *sigh*)

🙂

One of the “little things” I find to be irritating is when I ask someone why they did such and so and they essentially tell me, “The King of Spain told me to do [something completely irrelevant to your question].”

Huh? I didn’t ask you about [something completely irrelevant], I asked you about such and so. And what does your stated reason have to do with anything under the sun?

It’s as though with their answer they were saying,

1.) “Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah [fingers in ears], nahhhht listening to you.”
2.) “You’re so stupid, you’ll never notice my answer is complete nonsense.”
3.) “Huh? If this is Tuesday [or Wednesday, Thursday, Friday… etc.], I must have my head up my… ”
4.) “Hey! Ever seen my impression of Edgar Allan Poe on Prozac? ‘Pretty bird… ‘.”

…or any combo of the above.

*sigh*

If someone doesn’t want to answer a question, the honest way to deal with it is, “I don’t want to answer that.” If they don’t understand the question, “Could you rephrase that?” If they didn’t hear it, “Could you repeat the question?”

Babbling nonsense is insulting.

But slowly, very slowly, I am learning that pointing out to such people what they have done is useless, a complete waste of my time. (Not a waste of their, cos they’re already doing that.)

Well, since it’s August and I’ve already seen Christmas products out in one store (yep: there’s another rant), perhaps I can let Bill Engvall talk about some “little” irritants and a program to address them:

‘But if you want me to know you again, ma’am, for certain sure,’ said Curdie, ‘could you not give me some sign, or tell me something about you that never changes – or some other way to know you, or thing to know you by?’

‘No, Curdie; that would be to keep you from knowing me. You must know me in quite another way from that. It would not be the least use to you or me either if I were to make you know me in that way. It would be but to know the sign of Me – not to know me myself. it would be no better than if I were to take this emerald out of my crown and give it to you to take home with you, and you were to call it me, and talk to it as if it heard and saw and loved you. Much good that would do you, Curdie! No; you must do what you can to know me, and if you do, you will. You shall see me again in very different circumstances from these, and, I will tell you so much, it may be in a very different shape. But come now, I will lead you out of this cavern; my good Joan will be getting too anxious about you. One word more: you will allow that the men knew little what they were talking about this morning, when they told all those tales of Old Mother Wotherwop; but did it occur to you to think how it was they fell to talking about me at all? It was because I came to them; I was beside them all the time they were talking about me, though they were far enough from knowing it, and had very little besides foolishness to say.’

It was precisely this kind of allegory that led Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and others to draw inspiration from George MacDonald’s works.

[yeh, fixed the typo in the title]

Air America Enron Radio
Originally uploaded by mnmus.

Check Michelle Malkin for the latest on this mess. Whoo-hoo! “Air America” losers, liars and lame-os, oh my!

Worm strikes down Windows 2000 systems

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A fast-moving computer worm Tuesday attacked computer systems using Microsoft operating systems, shutting down computers in the United States, Germany and Asia.

Among those hit were offices on Capitol Hill, which is in the midst of August recess, and media organizations, including CNN, ABC and The New York Times. The Caterpillar Co. in Peoria, Illinois, reportedly also had problems…

A small number of computers in an administrative office at San Francisco International Airport also crashed, but they were not essential to the airport’s operation, spokesman Mike McCarron said._*_

Expand your brain. Check out this info on meteor imacts over at Chaos Manor

But do be a tad more polite about it…

Rich, over at The English Guy, cites a Nikolaos S. Karastathis (NSK Blog) post about the plan the Copyright Office has to implement a copyright pre-registration site that will ONLY work with Internet Exploder.

Nikolaos links to the specific notification by the Copyright Office and suggests writing a letter (the Copyright Office won’t accept emails on this). Below is the letter I’m sending. They require five copies to be sent. May I humbly suggest sending eight? Five to the Copyright office and CCs to your congresscritters (representative and senators)? Oh, and do note the CCs on the copies sent to the Copyright Office…

🙂

Oh, and spread the word, eh? Locking a fedgov website down for ONE company’s product smacks of something a tad fishy. Maybe the Justice Department should look into the monopoly aspects. *LOL*

Office of the General Counsel

U.S. Copyright Office

Copyright GC/ I&R

P.O. Box 70400

Southwest Station

Washington, DC 20024-0400

Dear Reader:

At this Web address: http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2005/70fr44878.html I just read that the Copyright Office is planning to implement copyright preregistration via the web ONLY for those using Internet Explorer web browser.

Are you sure that’s wise? Internet Explorer is the least standards-compliant major web browser. It is also historically the least secure—in fact, Homeland Security has recommended people switch!— most “attacked” by malicious users and is available for use ONLY by Windows users. In fact,

“… market dominance is not the only reason for the Microsoft browser’s disproportionate share of attacks. Art Manion, Internet security analyst for US-CERT, the operational arm of the National Cyber Security Division at the Department of Homeland Security, says IE’s unique features increase its online vulnerability.” [PC World Magazine online, “Is It Time to Ditch IE?” October 2004)

Anyone who is competent can build a secure website that does not require the use of proprietary, non-standards-compliant software such as Internet Explorer. Standards-compliant (W3C-compliant) browsers abound, and standards-compliant websites can be read and interacted with by users of all popular web browsers, including Internet Explorer.

I urge you to maintain openess at the Copyright Office and eschew the use of unsafe, proprietary, non-standards-compliant software such as Internet Explorer as your benchmark.

Sincerely