Day: July 8, 2006

Move ’em out! A mini-roundup of some stuff I found interesting this week.

Size isn’t everything, ya know. (But there is a certain quality to quantity… )

Bye-bye batteries; hellooooo electric cars? Maybe in another 5-10 years, if these new carbon nanotube capacitors work out.

Stunning. Almost makes me wanna visit the Socialist State of Britannia.

Sidetrip: I love this lil appliance, already.

Kill Microsoft’s Spyware (WGA). Just kill it. (&*$@^ Micro$oft… )

God, Life and Liberty. I just found this in Donald Sensing’s archives while searching for the Thomas Jefferson comments and Randall Thompson piece composed for them earlier this week. Great commentary.

BTW, found this lil piece at Opinion Journal in the same search. A trenchant observation concerning “the left’s” hypocrisy on freedom of speech. (But of courwse, “the left” now pretty much includes most congresscritters on “the right” seeking to protect their positions nowadays, as well… *sigh*)

James P. Hogan’s Kicking the Sacred Cow. A hard-nosed look at what’s behind the curtain in Oz the world of “science” today. (The linked “book” is to the first coupla chapterts of the book, available at Baen Books online as either an eBook or paperback.)

Quote for the week, from Steve White:

“…a teacher wants—no, needs—for everyone to know everything he knows, while an educational bureaucrat sees the general dissemination of knowledge as a threat to his status. Unfortunately, there are a lot more educational bureaucrats than there are teachers. (As usual, Shaw got it wrong. Those who can, do; those who can’t become educational bureaucrats.)”¹

Yeh, well, White got that right…

The usual good stuff at Diane’s place, Sam’s, Rich’s, TMH’s, Rick’s, Angel’s, Lyn’s, Alexandra’s and on and on. More than I have time to go into right now. I did say this was a short roundup, didn’t I? Hit the links. Beats golf.

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Circling the herd at Sam’s, TMH’s, STACLU and at Angel’s.

The HSN bug, I guess…

Here’s what happened. Our crockpot died. *sigh* Well, I accidentally killed it by breaking the crockery liner. Then, flipped by a Wolfgang Puck segment on HSN while on my way to the Thistory Channel one Saturday. Nothing on HC, so flipped back to see what Puckish cookery was going on.

His rice cooker. Thought, “Oh, why not. I’ll give the thing a try.”

Love the thing. Here’s what I did first thing outa the chute:

Chicken n Rice–just made from stuff I happened to have on hand.

Six of the lil measuring cupsful of white rice (using the measuring scoop that came with the thing, which equals about 4.5 measuring cups of rice at 3/4 cup per scoop), as per the instructions for basic rice.
One 14.5 oz. can of diced tomatoes and green chiles
1/4 cup enchilada sauce (I usally make m6y own, but I had just a scant cuppa sauce left over, so I used that)
water to the 6-cup mark on the cooker liner
1 clove of garlic, minced (actually, I used a garlic press cos I’m lazy)
1 Tbs freshly-ground cumin (with about a quarter teaspoon of chipotle chiles, freshly ground added–I’d have used more, but that’s all I had on hand)
3-large chicken breasts, salted, peppered and fried over medium heat in EVOO, then cubed.

Hit cook and came back 30 mins later to see the device on “warm”. The cooker worked perfectly. Family gave it—and the meal—a thumbs up.

Accompany this with refried beans, chips, salad. If you would have this be the main protein dish (instead of going for complementary proteins), just bump up the chicken content.

BTW, this’ll feed an army… well, a very small one. 🙂

Oh, “salting” the chicken… wash the chicken breasts. Cover them with coarse Kosher salt on both sides and set ’em in the fridge for a half hour. Wash ’em again. (Yeh, yeh, then pepper and from to “just done” before cubing.)

While this is designed for the specific cooker I bought, and worked just dandy, peachy keen in it, if you make this w/o such a cooker, try doing it this way:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees fahrenheit
Pour the rice in a baking dish
cover with liquid equal in amount to 2X the rice by volume. (It’ll take a pretty good-sized backing dish if you use the amount of rice I did!) Your liquid will of course be the can of diced tomatoes/chiles, enchilada sauce and water mixture (with the spices stirred in)
Add the cubed, pre-cooked chicken
cover with aluminum foil and bake for about 35-40 minutes.