How do you know when they're lying??? Their lips are moving.

The bushco crowd has told so MANY lies, they've begun to believe them. Notice the undaunting facility with which Ms Perino re-writes history. All this brought to you courtesy of Faux Fraudcasting.

How could anyone, especially anyone who lost a family member or friend on 9/11, ever support these people? HOW??? No wonder only 1 in 5 Americans self-identifies as a Republican.

This year we decided to do Thanksgiving "old school".....we ordered a heritage turkey from the Slow Food Russian River website. Little did we know that it would come unbutchered, complete with head and feet. Lucky my honey is a macho man. Mike made short work of decapitating the noble bird on our back porch. We then brined it overnight in a solution of salt, sugar, spices, fresh herbs, water, quartered oranges and apple cider. Since a heritage turkey is rather strangely shaped compared to a grocery store bird (bigger legs and thighs, smaller breast), its gangly 20-pound body barely fit in our oven. But after roasting and carving the bird, we decided that the clean subtle flavor was really delicious and definitely worth all the extra work.

Describing Democrats passing health care reform late last Saturday night, Stephen Colbert said:

"THAT is sneaky.....passing this thing at 11:15 on a Saturday night.  The Democrats KNEW the Republican leadership would be at home watching Wanda Sykes' new show.  The Republicans can not get enough of  black comedians.  THAT'S why they hired Michael Steele."

                                 OUCH!

The next time one of your Faux News friends brags about how the U.S. has the best health care system in the world, you may want to show them this. Despite having the 2nd-highest per capita income, Americans live shorter lives than citizens of almost every other developed country, ranking 42nd in life expectancy.

We also rank 34th in terms of infant mortality, placing us right there with Cuba, Estonia, Croatia and Poland. And the fact that the US has a higher percentage of children living in poverty (15%) than any of the world's richest countries is MOST embarrassing of all.

Since 1990, the United States has fallen from 2nd to 12th in terms of human development as measured by the United Nations Development Programme. It may take years to understand how severely and completely the twin plagues of the criminal Cheney-Bush administration and unregulated globalization have annihilated this country's social fabric.

Check out this smackdown of biblical proportions. Here's a clip from MSNBC's "The Ed Show" showing former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo debating health care reform with Daily Kos publisher Markos Moulitsas. Please note the extreme intellectual dishonesty of Tancredo's argument and the ease with which he sets it aside when confronted. And the resulting typical response from a chickenhawk Republican....i.e. when the going gets tough, the 'tough' get going. I could watch this over and over. In fact, I have. You GO, Markos!

By the way, somebody needs to clue Tancredo in on the difference between 'a complaint' and 'a threat to our freedom.' They are not one and the same.

I was kinda taking a day off today from my usual non-stop consumption of news and politics. I was nervous about the House vote on health care reform. So except for watching Obama speak from the White House steps this morning, I decided to just relax and watch football and enjoy my Saturday. There were several highly anticipated games scheduled (Ohio State vs Penn State and USC vs Arizona State, to mention just two).

During college football games, there are ALWAYS promotional ads touting the schools involved in the contest. To my revulsion and disgust, the ad for Arizona State featured President Obama. Yes, the same Arizona State University that denied Obama an honorary degree when he was their commencement speaker this spring. How friggin' hypocritical. They deny the President of the United States an honorary degree because "his body of work is yet to come." But they use footage of his speech there to promote their university. Talk about BALLS!!! This reminds me of the anecdotal case of the kid who pleads for mercy from the court after murdering his parents because he's an ORPHAN. Puhhh-lease!

Then just moments later, I heard the news that the House passed the health care reform bill by the slimmest of margins, 220-215. YEA!!!! Now the really hard work begins...getting it through the Senate. But tonight I'm ecstatic. At least we're moving the ball down the field for SOME type of reform. Kudos to Speaker Nancy Pelosi...you GO, girl!

If you believe, as I do, that the Congress should pass a robust public option as part of health care reform, NOW would be a good time to rattle the cages of your Congressional representatives, both in the House and the Senate.  While the 'opt-out' provision of the proposal is not the preferred version for most progressives, it likely is the most progressive version we can get through the current Congress.  If passed, it will force Republicans on the state level to explain why they want to take away a viable public choice in the health insurance market.  The onus will be on the GOP to once again explain why they are the party of "NO!"

Check out this video that documents a protest by Billionaires for Wealth Care, a satirical group who infiltrated a health insurance industry conclave in Washington DC last week.  The results are as enlightening as they are hilarious.

Also below is a copy of the letter I sent to each of my senators and to my representative.   While signing petitions and sending emails helps, nothing replaces the impact of a good ole snail mail letter and/or a phone call to your senators/representative's offices.

I've been wanting to practice this recipe for a while as I first learned it in the beginners section of my Thai cooking class 5 years ago.  Mike had remembered me making it back then, but not since.  So I prepared for the big mess that deep frying can produce in the kitchen and plowed ahead.   Julienned strips of boneless pork are dusted with tapioca starch before the whole concoction is rolled in chopped garlic, white pepper and fish sauce.  Then it's time to break out the splatter screen.  The result is a hot, spicy, salty, garlic-encrusted version of pork jerky.  With some steamed jasmine rice and a side of soy-garlic green beans, it makes for a rustic fall dinner.

Check out my cooking teacher's website at Thai Food and Travel
GREAT classes, expert instruction, good value in a casual environment.
Kasma is a great teacher.


               


               


                                                               

Any of my really close friends can vouch for my fascination with Asian cuisine.......Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai in particular.  I just can't seem to get enough of it or buy enough Asian cookbooks.  My latest acquisition is Andrea Nguyen's "Into the Vietnamese Kitchen."  The book jacket claims that it is "the first comprehensive full-color cookbook devoted to Vietnamese food in the English language."  Tonight, I got my first crack at trying a recipe from this beautiful tome.  It combines tapioca pearls, onion, long grain rice, woodear and oyster mushrooms, poached chicken and shrimp with a garnish of scallions and cilantro.   This dish ended up being more like a stew than a soup.  Its flavor profile was deep, rich and soulful. This is definitively a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. If this recipe is any indication of what lies ahead, this book and I are going to have a long, fruitful and satisfying relationship.

         

Now that summer is over, it's time to seek out autumn's bounty.  I found some really nice Mission figs at Big John's Market in Healdsburg yesterday, so I decided to make a fresh fig tart with lemon mascarpone cream.  I love the sweet, earthy taste of ripe figs.  And a mixture of creamy mascarpone cheese and tart sour cream with a little lemon zest added is the perfect foil.

           

After allowing those Dry Creek peaches to ripen and mellow for a few days, I finally got around to baking our last pies of the season.  I froze one to pull out in the dead of winter.  The second we'll eat tonight.









Regi's Peach Pie


3/4 cup superfine sugar (sold in grocery stores as baking sugar)
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon flour
1 tablespoon instant tapioca
1 tablespoon cornstarch
4 pounds ripe peaches, sliced (about 5 cups)
1 double-recipe of your favorite pie crust
-or- 1 box Pillsbury pie crust (the refrigerated type, NOT the frozen ones)
2 tablespoons of frozen butter, diced
1 egg white mixed with 1 teaspoon of water
1 teaspoon demerara sugar or other large-crystal raw sugar

1.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Mix sugar, lemon juice, flour, instant tapioca, cornstarch and peaches in a large bowl.
2.  Roll out bottom crust just enough to fit in pie pan.  Gently mound peaches into crust.  Top with diced butter.
3.  Cover pie with top crust.  Crimp edges.  Cut air vents to allow pie to breathe while baking.  Brush top crust with egg wash.
4.  Sprinkle assembled pie with demerara sugar.
5.  Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.  Then reduce heat to 350 degrees, baking an additional 25 minutes, or until the pie is bubbly and golden brown.

Evidently, the rape lobby is alive and well in the US Senate.   DISGUSTING!  How could anybody, female or male, possibly support these 30 men???  After viewing this clip, check out Mark Morford's column from SFGate entitled "The Gang Rape and the Republicans: Behold, 30 Republican Senators Who Don't Give a Damn about Battered Women"



Update - 10/21/09:  Check out this commentary from BuzzFlash.
Heritage Foundation, Part of Right Wing Infrastructure, Defends 30 Republican Senators who Enable Rape
                                  

We're finally getting some nice fall weather here in the Sonoma wine country. The temps have fallen from the triple digits and 90s of August and September into the much more comfy and invigorating 70s. So today, Mike and I headed down to visit Gayle and Brian at  Dry Creek Peach to see if we could purchase one last flat of those sweet, juicy glorious fruit  that, for me,  ARE summer. We lucked out. They had picked the very last of their crop yesterday, so we able to score one last flat of their appropriately named Last Chance peaches.

If you're ever in Healdsburg, check them out.  While their specialty crop is peaches, they also sell tomatoes, figs, and cucumbers in summer and persimmons and Meyer lemons in the fall and winter.

Just want to alert you all to an article in Friday's New York Times that quantifies "The High Price of Being a Gay Couple". A worse case scenario estimate shows that being a gay couple can cost over $467,000 over a lifetime (based on a joint income of $140,000) compared to a comparable straight couple. In addition to the moral imperatives that marriage equality promotes, this article represents the clearest and most concrete representation of what the ECONOMIC costs of marriage discrimination can be. Check this article out and pass it on to your friends and neighbors.

Behold the willful ignorance and hypocrisy that the Republican Party foments and thrives on!
In an age when information is ubiquitous, it's astounding to me that these people are able to completely avoid it at every turn.  You've just GOTTA love the guy  (3:55) holding the "Joe Wilson for President" sign....who then turns around and states "I'm NOT supporting Joe Wilson for President."  Whaaaaaa?????

Now that I'm finished with March Madness, I thought it was time for a little orchid madness.
Mike recently clipped these cymbidium stems from a plant on our deck and displayed them on our dining room table.

Ok.....I'm back! After watching scores of basketball games over the past month (ok.....past SEVERAL months), I can finally rejoin the rest of the world. No more staying up til 4am watching the games I'd recorded on ESPN and ESPN2. Mercifully, I spared Mike MOST of the pain of having to watch by viewing the games AFTER he went to bed. Hooray for TIVO!

Congratulations to the North Carolina Tarheels on winning their 5th NCAA men's Division 1 basketball tournament! After starting the season as the consensus #1 pick, the Tarheels lived up to the hype and triumphed over Michigan State in the championship game by a 89-72 margin. Despite early season losses and a slew of injuries, the Heels peaked at just the right time....during the NCAA tourney. So hats off to the Heels for a job well done.

And since I was the only one to pick NC in my tourney pool, I won!

Regi's Rowdies NCAA tourney pool

North Carolina basketball:
  - 41 NCAA tourney bids
  - 102 NCAA tourney victories
  - 18 Final Fours
  - 5 NCAA titles
  - 17 conference titles
  - 51 20-win seasons
  - 10 30-win seasons
  - 34 first team All-America selections

And finally, a shout out to fellow Tarheel alum tycho_anomaly !  Yeaaaa, Ed....the Tarheels did it!
 

April 8, 1968 - Washington, DC

At age 13, I had just arrived in Alexandria, Virginia to interview for admission to Episcopal High School, an exclusive boarding school in suburban Washington, DC.  Episcopal sits on the 2nd highest spot in the metro area (only National Cathedral is higher).  So from campus, you could see the flames and smoke from the rioting that had erupted after Dr Martin Luther King, Jr had been assassinated the week before.  Should I pass my interview, I would become the first African-American student in the school's 129 year history.  This was my introduction to our nation's capital.

It was extremely unsettling standing there on that promontory watching the capital city burn. Everyone was still dealing with the shock of Dr King's assassination.  Cities all over the country had erupted into racial violence.  It almost seemed as if the very fabric of society were tearing apart.  And here I was.......being thrust into this situation at the most inconvenient of times.  As frightened as I was at the time, I don't think I was smart enough to be as frightened as I should have been.  Years later, a very good friend of mine who was several classes ahead of me told me that on the night that Dr King's assassination was announced in study hall, a number of students had erupted in celebratory applause and shouting before being restrained by school officials.  Had my parents known that, they would NEVER have allowed me to attend.  But despite the political turbulence and personal fear, I enrolled in the fall and attended Episcopal for four years, graduating in 1972.   By the way, John McCain is also an alumnus of Episcopal High School.





January 20, 2008 - Washington, DC

As I watch the sheer joy and ecstacy of the throngs of citizens who have descended on the National Mall to witness one of THE most extraordinary events in American history, I can't help but harken back to that day in April of 1968.  All the fear, all the violence, all the doubt, all the paranoia.......not present in any form.  Today is filled with hope, joy, promise and potential.  For my country, I pray for more days like January 20, 2008 and fewer days like April 8, 1968.  Congratulations, President Barack Obama!

This editorial cartoon makes me SO proud.

"2008 Turnout Shatters All Records"    Politico.com, 11/05/08

"Rate of Voter Turnout May Not Be a Record"    The Caucus, NY Times Political Blog, 11/08/08

"Breaking Down Voter Turnout Numbers"    The Wall Street Journal, 11/07/08

While I won't even get into the sheer hypocrisy and dishonesty of 'selling' this candidate's credentials while they knew full well she was completely unprepared, I just wanted to share this video clip from Fox News exposing the GOP infighting already underway.

You MAY want to don a body condom to protect yourself from the brief but highly toxic exposure to Bill O'Reilly.