Month: July 2006

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.

Open trackbacks all weekend long to this post. Link to this post and track back.

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North Korea has nukes and missles.

Iran’s working on some.

Mexico’s making a “project” outs the U.S. (by exporting its poor, illiterate masses al norte).

College grads can’t read their way outa newspaper editorials.

While the economy’s better than the Democraps say it is, it’s not as good as the Republican’ts say it is, either.

The tax structures in this company are killing production… and poisoning YOUR children’s and grandchildren’s future.

The Ponzi scheme known as Social Security is a scam that encourages the old to steal from their children and their children’s children…

Mass Media Podpeople, Academia Nut Fruitcakes and all other manner of Loony Left Moonbats are doing everything in their power to flush the American Experiment down the toilet of history… and fake “conservatives” are aiding and abetting in this criminal behavior.

Public education? If it weren’t such a serious issue, I’d laugh. Our prisons for kids are turning out product that’s dumber than a bag of hammers. Thank heavens for the far right end of the bell curve and the few in the middle who have had at least a smattering of real education. They’re the only thing keeping the U.S. from sinking under a mass of stupidity. (Re-read “Harrison Bergeron”, folks. No, really. Re-read it. It’s the future of America… if we’re lucky. *sigh*)

Oh, there are some voices in the blogosphere (and a very, very few in mass media and academia and the corporate world) who are playing lil Dutch boy with fingers in the dike.

But is it enough?

Despair is a deadly sin. Keep fighting the fight, folks. Do what you can to turn one dumbass at a time away from destroying YOUR children’s and your grandchildren’s future.

It’s closer thanh you may think.

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Open Trackbacks Alliance Wednesday here at third world county. Link to this post and track back. Nothing more for now; short shrift day. Gotta run, so please hit me with some good reading to check out when I get back in a while.

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And…

Thomas Jefferson, writing in 1774 in “A Summary View of the Rights of British America” penned this famous line:

“The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time. The hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them.”

Here’s a small excerpt of Randall Thompson’s powerful Testament of Freedom using those words:

What our forefathers have won and our troops who today know the meaning of duty and honor seek to preserve, we must seek also to preserve, remembering always that, no matter what the Barking Moonbat, the Mass Media Podperson, the Academia Nut Fruitcake or the Political Poltroon may attempt,

“The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time. The hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them.”

Today marks two significant events: Independence Day (for those who stumble onto this blog and don’t understand what that means, think Cinco de Mayo except with profound, intelligent thought and clear ties to natural law and historical precedent instead of frijoles flatus), that’s one. The second is the debut of WAR!—Wide Awakes Radio.

Check out the schedule of upcoming shows here.

We launch on July 4th at 6 A.M. Pacific and you can call us at 1-888-407-1776 (even our phone number drips Patriotism 4th of July, 1776!)

Take some time during your Fourth to drop in on WAR and declare “war” on the enemies of “Truth, Justice and The American Way” 🙂

Ahh, save some time. Just CLICK here

to access the stream. Rick Moran (Right Wing Nuthouse) has been on fror the last coupla hours. Pretty good stuff. Still working some technical kinks out, so keep CLICKing the link til you get in on the stream.

By now, most folks have heard of the “mosquito” ringtone, so prized by teenagers as a way to keep adults (teachers, etc.) from knowing when they are using their cell phones (like, what? for texting during class, eh?)

Well, I decided to finally check it out, although I had a suspiscion it wouldn’t be all that stunning, so I found the 17Khz tone for download (this is a higher-quality wav file) and played it back with some better than fair speakers and an old 9but good) Roland sound card that it just edged toward the top of the envelope on.

Supposedly, the 17kHz tone is too high for “old ears”—presbycusis—to hear. After all, the theoretical limit for human hearing most often bruited about is 20kHz.

As I figured. The 17kHz tone is just a tad lower-pitched (less than 2%) than my typical tinitus. So I can understand how most adults—especially Boomers and Busters who grew up listening to music that was too loud for their hearing to take w/o damage—wouldn’t be able to hear it. But I’m in my 50s, so why can I? I dunno. My wonder Woman’s just a year younger than I, but she couldn’t hear the tone until I lowered the pitch to ~16.4kHz.

Maybe it’s the last few years I’ve spent hearing a buzz that’s higher-pitched than the “mosquito ringtone” that has kept my ears atuned to high pitches.

But kids, don’t ya be playing that ringtone around me and expect me not to hear it, eh?

In the Mt Soledad Cross case, a lil message for the ACLU from Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy today:

h.t. STACLU

Blowing the, urm, horn at Conservative Cat, Committees of Correspondence, Woman Honor Thyself, Bloggin’ Outloud and Basil’s Blog

Rick, The Real Ugly American, tipped me to this post by Sgt. Tim Boggs of an interview Boggs had with an Iraqi general. Go, read. A great lead-in to celebrating the Fourth tomorrow, IMO.

A chiiling set of Fourth of July images from Heidi at Euphoric Reality

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Last year, I experienced a Fourth of July that I never want to repeat. I wrote about it, but at the time, I don’t think my experience registered on anyone’s radar. Here’s part of the description as I posted it last year:

…all day, I was looking forward to the famous Freedom Over Texas Celebration in Houston – one of the top 10 patriotic shows and fireworks displays in the country. I was determined to brave the crowds (which my husband and I typically loathe) with kiddos in tow, in order to enjoy the culminating holiday of our nation’s heritage. We drove an hour to downtown Houston, spent 20 minutes looking for parking, and finally stepped into the crowds to move toward the center of the Celebration.

Here is what I saw as I crossed Allen Parkway near Buffalo Bayou:

There were NO 4th of July decorations – NONE. No red, white, and blue – anywhere.
There were no American flags.
No one was dressed in red, white, and blue except me and my kids.
There were no patriotic songs.
There was no indication of patriotic pride or nationalism in any way…

No one – not one person around us – spoke English.
The music that was blasting through the loudspeakers was Mexican mariachi or some such.
Home made pig skins were sold in baggies – and screeching kids in dirty clothes were hawking water bottles out of grubby coolers.
I saw more green Mexican flags and paraphernalia than anything American-themed.

What is this – Houston, Mexico?! Had I mistakenly ended up in some grungy street carnival in Little Mexico, instead of one of the “Top 10 Patriotic Celebrations in the Country”?! I knew that there was supposed to be military equipment displays somewhere in the center (which I was making a bee-line for), along with stages for Clint Black and LeAnn Rimes. I’m not a country-western aficionado, but I knew that I could most likely expect a moving patriotic song or two. As the crowds surged toward the Freedom Celebration, my family and I lagged more and more behind. Hot, sweaty, and rudely jostled in the rowdy crowd – I grew more and more angry. Looking around, I realized that no one seemed to be there to celebrate the 4th of July. It seemed like any generic public fiesta – just one more reason to party. I stopped walking and finally acknowledged the fact that whatever ‘celebracion’ was going on around us had nothing to do with America. I was far beyond disappointed…I was furious.

We left.

I took a lot of heat in the comments from people who objected to the fact that I objected to a Mexican-themed Fourth of July. But others wrote in comments and via email that they had seen and experienced a similar hi-jacking of our national holiday; they seemed more bewildered than furious. “How did this happen? When did this happen?!” There was no real public indignation.

Fast forward to 2006. This year, the in-your-face waving of the Mexican flag will have much more significance considering the politically-charged events of the past year. In a year that has seen illegal aliens gleefully desecrate Old Glory, and raise the Mexican flag over our own, such an offensive display is guaranteed to raise the ire of red-blooded Americans. After a year’s worth of heavy-handed demands for the rights and privileges of full citizenship, illegal aliens and AINOs (Americans In Name Only) may feel emboldened to wave the Mexican flag during our Independence Day celebrations – just as they did last year with no public outcry.

I, for one, won’t leave a 4th of July celebration like I did last year – furious but silent. I will say something to anyone who flaunts a foreign flag during our Independence Day. I want them to know it’s inappropriate, deliberately incendiary, and offensive to people who deeply love this country and our valiant flag. This year, I have a feeling I won’t be standing alone.

DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN IN YOUR TOWN!

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This has been a production of the Guard the Borders Blogburst. It was started by Euphoric Reality, and serves to keep immigration issues in the forefront of our minds as we’re going about our daily lives and continuing to fight the War on Terror. If you are concerned with the trend of illegal immigration facing our country, join our Blogburst! Just send an email with your blog name and url to euphoricrealitynet at gmail dot com.