Brussels Sprouts

Is there a more maligned food item than the lowly Brussels sprout? Okay, well, I guess there's liver--it takes more abuse--but come on! Have you looked at liver lately? Judged strictly on appearance, liver's I'm-not-that -hungry" factor is far higher than that possessed by a sprout, which is basically a little round ball of green leaves. So why the animus toward something so inoffensive?

I'm guessing it's because they're usually prepared badly, and bad preparation can cause them to taste bitter. Well, that coupled with the general trend to look down on vegetables that seems to permeate much of the public. But anyway, here's an attempt to rehabilitate the Brussels sprout. Try braising it in cream! This is a traditional dish prepared for the Christmas holiday in Britain, and it's really good. It's also really easy, which makes it perfect for a holiday meal.

Brussels Sprouts Braised in Cream

1 lb Brussels Sprouts, stems trimmed and any discolored leaves removed
1 cup heavy cream (aka heavy whipping cream)
1/2 tsp salt
ground black pepper
pinch of nutmeg

Place Brussels sprouts in a large saucepan and add cream. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to medium low. Cover and let simmer for about 10 minutes, until sprouts are tender when you poke a fork into them. Remove from heat, add pepper to taste, nutmeg and additional salt if necessary, and toss. Place in a serving dish along with the cream you braised them in--it makes a wonderful sauce.

Recipe Request

I had a request to post the recipe for the German-Style Pork Ribs listed on the dinner menu last night. They're a family favorite here in my house, and the best thing is that they're great for week night cooking, because you pretty much dump everything in a slow cooker and let it simmer all day. Here's the recipe:

German-Style Pork Ribs

Country Style Pork Ribs (however many will fit in your slow cooker)
16oz sauerkraut
1 cup brown sugar
2 tsp caraway seeds
1 tbsp salt
freshly ground pepper to taste

Add ribs to crock pot and put the sauerkraut (with any liquid it is packed with) on top of them. Pour the brown sugar over all, then add the caraway, salt and pepper. Cook covered on low all day. Good served with rice or noodles.

Update to "Actions Speak Louder than Words"

The preceding post was updated at 7am, 11/8, to incorporate feedback received. Next up on the docket will be a review of "Cooks Illustrated".

One other FYI. Gourmet magazine just sent me a renewal offer in the mail, and my new discounted price is $24 a year, twice what I paid initially. It's still pretty inexpensive, but I'd say that definitely reduces the chance I'll renew my subscription.

Actions Speak Louder than Words

I'm going to take a brief break from posting reviews of cooking magazines, and instead ponder something more related to the political side of this blog. Let's talk about the news media.

Now, I know the idea of bias in the media has been done to death, so though I believe it exists, and it's one root cause of the generally poor media coverage we live with today, I'm not going to comment on it. Likewise with the public's desire for sensationalism and the news industry's need to cater to it to garner ratings--it's been said before, and I have no reason to restate the case. However, I think there's another root cause, one that I haven't heard identified before, and it's that one I'd like to discuss.

I think one of the main problems with our media today is the tendency to report what someone says as news. Take a look at your local newspaper or watch a TV news report and count how many times the main point of a story is about some person or some group saying something. The number's pretty high, isn't it? It's especially high in the areas of politics and foreign policy.

There are two large problems with reporting someone's words as news. The first is that words can be untrue. It's very easy (and frankly, very common) for someone to say something that they believe is true, but is not, or worse still, something that they know is not true, but that they want to lend the illusion of truth to. Politicians and diplomats use the media in this latter way to try to create impressions among the public, among the world community, and in the minds of their adversaries. Want an example? How about President Ahmadinejad, who rules a country that sits atop one of the world's largest oil deposits, saying that Iran is developing nuclear technology so that it can use it to create energy?

The second problem is that reporting someone's words gives them weight. If I were to say that the moon is made of green cheese, you'd tell me that I was an idiot. However, if my words were reported in the New York Times, for instance, under a headline like "Blogger Claims Moon is Cheese", and then that story was picked up by various other newspapers, and a few other crackpots decided they'd chime in for the publicity, pretty soon there would at least be an element of doubt as to the moon's makeup in the mind of some segment of the general public. And if I had some sort of credentials that could allow me to claim "expert" status (like, say, founding an organization consisting of three other crackpots and myself called the Lunar Geology Group), then the effect is even greater. Then the story's headline might say, "Lunar Study Finds Moon is Cheese".

Politicians use this tactic all the time. It's a valuable defensive maneuver! Here's how it works. Suppose the House of Representatives is considering a bill that appropriates $77 million for development of a museum honoring pizza. The Pizza Museum will be located in Chicago, and will benefit the city by creating jobs, enhancing the area in which it is built, and supporting Chicago's claim that Chicago-style pizza is the most "authentic" (nyah, nyah New York!). Some politicians might oppose this bill, arguing that there's no real need to spend taxpayer money for construction of a museum honoring pizza.

To employ the strategy described above, proponents of the bill should immediately call a press conference and denounce their opponents for "pandering to lingering racism against the noble Italian immigrants that helped our city prosper in days gone by". It won’t matter that the real reason for the opposition to the bill was based on fiscal responsibility. If the accusation is reported (and re-reported) in the media, the opponents are left with the uncomfortable position of having to defend themselves against being called racist Italian-o-phobes. Their real point--the idea that the money could be better spent elsewhere--may also be reported, but the accusation has been given (at least) equal weight. Frankly, the winner of a conflict like this, at least in the sphere of public opinion, often seems come down to the side that succeeds in getting the most coverage.

None of this is hard to see and understand, and I suspect that most members of the media are well aware of this phenomena. One might think that they wouldn't want to let themselves be used this way, and yet they often seem to be willing participants. Why might this be?

There are obviously conspiracy theories related to media bias that could fill the bill here, but I'm a fan of Occam's razor, and I think there are two simpler reasons that provide an explanation. The first and most powerful is that reporting words is easy. Most politicians actively seek out the press and publicity, and when they have something they want to get out to the public, the first thing they do is issue a press release or try to arrange a press conference. Many celebrities and corporations do the same. If your story is going to be about what a public figure says about an issue, it's only really necessary to record their words, and you can pretty much get right to the writing.

The alternative approach is much more difficult. It involves doing research on the issue, checking to see whether the public figure's statement is accurate with respect to the facts, whether it presents a reasonably complete picture of the situation, searching out plausible alternative viewpoints to present as well, and determining whether the public figure's actions support the views made in his statement. Taking this approach will obviously result in a far more accurate and realistic story, but it's a lot more work and takes more time. In theory, much of this research is already supposed to take place, but far too often in reality, only lip service is paid.

The second reason it's so tempting for the media to report words as news is objectivity. You see, whether realistic or not, members of the news media want and need the public to believe that they are objective (and to be fair, I believe that in most cases, they themselves want and need to believe that they are objective)--that they report facts, rather than subjective opinion. When a public figure makes a statement, it's completely objective to report the words that came out of their mouth. There's usually little doubt what words were uttered, especially if they're also printed in a press release or recorded. Objectivity is never in doubt.

On the other hand, to challenge someone's words in a story, a certain amount of analysis is required, and therefore the door opens to subjectivity. Consider the example I gave above. Here's how an analytic story might begin.

Representative Mortonsen today accused his opponents of lingering racism towards Italian Americans in their attempt to stop funding for the Museum of Pizza. "They're caught in the 19th century," Mortonsen said, "when Italians were 'wops' and people didn't want their daughter to marry one." However, no evidence could be found to support this claim, and House Minority Whip Roger Daugherty, speaking for the opposition, provided an alternative reason to reject the bill. Daugherty cited the cost of the project and the need for money for higher priority projects, such as repair of highway bridges and infrastructure, as the cause for opposing funds for the museum.

The story might then go on to explore the claim of racism and the evidence that leads the reporter to conclude that it is baseless, and then to look at Daugherty’s argument in favor of doling out funding based on the public’s needs. But it's that statement, "no evidence could be found" that causes problems. According to who? How hard did the reporter look for evidence? Is it possible they missed something? If the story is titled appropriately--something like "Priorities, Not Racism, Root Cause", then the fear that elements of subjectivity have crept into the news becomes even greater. Is the media outlet that publishes a story like this printing opinion rather than news?

I submit, however, that the objectivity ship has already sailed. The perception that the various media outlets are biased is already so firmly entrenched, that there seems to be little notion of objectivity left to protect. Continuing the current approach leads only into deeper perception of subjectivity, as public figures lose any remaining fear of being called on falsehoods they utter, the words reported get further and further from truth, and the media outlets fear to question their veracity due to concerns about violating objectivity.

Okay, so to capture my argument to this point, the media reports words as news because it's quick and easy, and it can be done with objectivity. And it's not working. What to do?

One open avenue would be to follow the outline of my example above, perform the necessary analysis, provide alternate viewpoints and confront inaccuracies. However, the skepticism of the media towards this approach is on the mark--it falls afoul of the objectivity principal just discussed, or at least it has grave potential to do so. Theoretically I suppose it's possible to walk the narrow line of no opinion, but it would be very difficult. In addition, it's too labor-intensive. I believe that media outlets simply wouldn't spend the necessary labor dollars per story to do this idea justice.

But here’s an alternative approach, one that I think might actually work if it were tried.

What if a media outlet took the attitude that words are not news, but actions are? Let’s consider a TV news program that takes this stance. This theoretical program would report out on political votes and activities, actions taken by celebrities, countries, states and municipalities. The program would not ask questions about why someone did something (though opinion shows might), but instead would focus on what they did. And imagine that for stories on actions with lasting effects, such as passage of a law or a decision to sell arms to another country, the program habitually did a follow up one year later along the lines of "One year ago today, the Smoot-Hawley tariff was passed. Let's take a look at the impact it's had to date." Would the public like this concept? In the end, that’s the real litmus test. However, this concept does have the advantage that it addressed the two issues we identified earlier.

Unlike the option to analyze statements and attempt to separate fact from fiction, this concept conforms to the objectivity standard. Reporting on actions carries just as much objectivity as reporting on words, if not more so. And reporting on actions is almost as easy as treating words as news. While press conferences might not be as frequent, stories are still easy to write if the action is known. And if it's unknown...well, we have that problem under today's system, too, don't we? That's what investigative journalism does--bring hidden actions to light.

This idea also addresses the two ways in which treating words as news lead to poor news coverage. Words can be untrue. Actions are what they are, and while it’s certainly possible for them to be misleading (even, perhaps, purposely misleading), it’s much more difficult and expensive to create false impressions with actions. I suspect that it's hard and expensive enough that the net reduction in falsehoods reported as news would be drastic. Moreover, the whole issue of giving equal weight to opposing viewpoints, even if they don’t have equal merit, fades away.

If this concept were to catch on, I submit that it would initiate behavior change in our politicians as well, as they’d be forced to act in a way that is consistent with the principals their constituents elected them for. The phrase “paying lip service” would no longer apply. It might carry over to other professions as well, such as lawyers (who would not be able to take advantage of the “court of public opinion” nearly as easily), or diplomats (who would be less able to sway policy via the pressure of public opinion).

I have no illusion that all reporting would be conducted this way. There will always be a place for the tabloids. However, if reporting actions became the standard for the higher-quality media outlets, and reporting of words were relegated to the equivalent of the magazines at the supermarket checkout lines, I think we’d have a much better-informed public. And isn’t informing the public what news coverage is all about?

Review of "Gourmet" Magazine

This is the second of four reviews of cooking magazines. Review number one is already up and available. Reviews three and four are coming soon.

Next up under the microscope is "Gourmet" magazine, to which I purchased a subscription early this year for the bargain price of $12 annually. Now, to be fair, "Gourmet" isn't really a cooking magazine. Instead, it bills itself as "the magazine of good living". Fair enough, but the word "gourmet" carries undeniable connotations of eating fine food, and my experience has been that when there is fine food around, there's someone somewhere (likely in the kitchen) cooking it.

Even if we grant them their redefinition of the term "gourmet", however, and include other aspects of "good living" as being part of their purview, the editors of "Gourmet" seem to have lost their way. Rather than being the magazine of fine living, I'd characterize "Gourmet" as the magazine of socially-concious fine living for people who really wish they were living in New York, San Francisco or Hollywood. "Gourmet" does make references to cities and locations in middle America, but somehow they all feel as though they're written from the viewpoint of a tourist, who is visiting but would never want to actually live there. Articles about Manhattan, however? Now, that's home!

The editors apparently take their social responsibilities very seriously. My guess is that they've fallen prey to social guilt--after all, they work for a magazine called "Gourmet", and that's got to eat away at them inside. The word "gourmet" is usually associated with the Rich, and every right-thinking person knows the Rich are the root of all evil. Whole countries and governments do their (uniformly nefarious) bidding! The only acceptable sort of Rich person is one who uses their wealth and influence to better the lot of the downtrodden, the less fortunate, and lately, the environment. The editors of "Gourmet" wish to make it very clear that this last is the type of Rich person they cater to.

To accomplish this, they make certain to always include at least one or two articles that burnish their socially-concious credentials. In this year's October issue, there's a photo feature about artisan farmers who were brought to the "Citymeals on Wheels" benefit by famous chefs (the event, naturally, took place in New York). In the July issue there's a story on soil erosion and how eco-friendly researchers are trying to stop it, plus multiple stories that espouse the benefits of establishments growing their own food. In August's issue we see a story about farms in France that are all-organic or biodynamic. And the September issue is a special Latin-American issue focused on the pleasures of south-of-the-border cuisine and the industry of the immigrants who offer it. Everything from Dominican cuisine in New York City to taco trucks that serve up food right alongside the road across the south and west are covered. I'm afraid I find the timing highly suspect considering the ongoing controversy on illegal immigration and the uniformly complimentary tone of the pieces in the magazine. Am I being hyper-sensitive here? Maybe...and maybe not.

Considered solely as a cooking resource, "Gourmet" actually offers a fair number of recipes in each issue. The quibble I have with them is that most (not all) are complex, requiring more time to cook than a man with a family and a day job can realistically allocate. In addition, many of the ingredients fall into the difficult-to-find-at-the-local-Food-Lion category. For instance, the "Grilled Pork Loin with Quince Sauce" calls for quinces, naturally, plus juniper berries and veal stock. Now, I know I could trek on over to Whole Foods and find some of these (though I've looked unsuccessfully for juniper berries before), or make the longer haul to Balducci's and probably find all of these items, but it's just not convenient. There is a "Quick Kitchen" section that presents recipes that can be quickly prepared (generally in 30 minutes or less), but even there you're likely to run into ingredients like annato oil (never heard of it) or Sriracha sauce (okay, I have some of this in my cupboard, but I bet that's not true of most folks).

The best bet for using "Gourmet" as a realistic cooking resource is probably to save it for special occasions when you don't mind searching out hard-to-find ingredients and spending lots of time in the kitchen. Occasionally you'll find a recipe that is simple enough to cook on a week night, and when I've prepared some of these, they've turned out to be edible, though nothing special. If you happen across a recipe you like, though, it's a really good idea to copy it down somewhere, because that brings us to the other issue with "Gourmet"--the amount of advertising versus actual copy.

Most magazines suffer from this problem these days, I know. However, with "Gourmet", it's bad enough that I was actually surprised when I did the research for this review to find how many recipes each issue contains. They seem to get lost in all the ads. If you don't mark the recipe or copy it, it's liable to disappear among the pictures of beautiful (though no doubt eco-friendly) people smiling at each other, surrounded by advertising copy.

Despite what I said above, I confess--I do actually read "Gourmet" cover to cover. I keep issues in the bathroom off the kitchen, and find that it works well to occupy my mind when spending time in there. Idly flipping through pages, scanning ads and glancing over the odd recipe is just the thing for those quiet moments. Not exactly what the editors hand in mind, I'm sure, but even so, the publication obviously isn't totally without merit.

Okay, I think it's time to summarize. Gourmet is just the magazine for you if all your friends are tenured professors at NYU, you have a housekeeper who cooks most of your meals, and you host occasional dinner parties where guests drink Stags Leap Cabernet and discuss the merits of organic food and the horrors of chemical fertilization. If that doesn't describe you, you'll likely be less enthused. I think I'll stick with the same rating system I used last review...

Gourmet: The Magazine of Good Living

Recipes: 4
Cooking Instruction: 2
Product Evaluation: N/A
Advertising: 8
Socially and Enviromentally Conscious Viewpoint: 8

Comments from probably-not-repeat-subscriber Jake: This definitely isn't the best cooking magazine around. I'm on the fence as to whether to recommend it, though. The price is right, and it makes good bathroom reading material. Plus, it will impress guests if you display it prominently in the restroom. "Imagine what they must read when they're not in here," they'll think!

Review of "Cooking Pleasures"

I'm new to this blogging thing, and I'm still trying to figure out exactly how to fit the time committment and effort associated with it into my daily life. It's also a little difficult to judge in advance how much I want to say about a topic. I say all this as a preface to letting you know that after two days of working on tackling the reviews of cooking publications topic, I've succeeded in completing a single review. This has led me to conclude that it would be far wiser to post my reviews as a series of four installments, rather than one gi-normous post.

Therefore, without further ado, here is the first of four reviews of cooking publications I subscribe (or have been given gift subscriptions) to. Read on, and in the meantime, I'll be working on review number two. Reviews three and four will follow shortly thereafter.

There's a clear heirarchy, in my opinion, to the food-related magazines I receive. Let's start at the bottom and work our way up, shall we? That means I'm going to begin with "Cooking Pleasures", a bi-monthly publication put out by Cooking Club of America.

The Cooking Club of America is, in my opinion, the culinary equivalent of an infomercial. "Cooking Pleasures" is the primary benefit you get if you join the Cooking Club of America (hereafter referred to as CCA), with secondary benefits including things like "opportunities" to try (and then buy, unless you return them) products, the "opportunity" to obtain a CCA-sponsored credit card, discount "opportunities" (there's that word again), and a couple other things that amount to more ways for the CCA to sell things to you. There are a fair number of recipes included in each issue, and I have to confess that the few recipes I've actually made have turned out okay. There are also some articles on how to cook, and though they are definitely the "lite" version of cooking techniques I've seen better described elsewhere, nonetheless, they're better than nothing. My issue with the publication is that the entire enterprise seems geared towards selling products and advertising, and recipes (along with contests in which merchandise is given away) are simply the lure they use to attract potential customers. It's probably a pretty smart business model--my guess is that they sell memberships to CCA (from year-long to "life" memberships, which basically amount to subscribing to Cooking Pleasures for life), influence members to purchase products advertised in their magazines, and then charge advertisers for ads and product endorsements.

Now, you could argue that almost every magazine is geared towards selling products--that's how they attract advertising revenue. But again, consider the metaphor I used above. An infomercial is essentially a filmed sales pitch--it's targeted directly at getting you to buy the product it depicts. A "regular" television show is about something else--not a product that it's trying to sell. And the commercials that are interspersed throughout the show are basically along for the ride, getting seen incidentally by viewers who are waiting for the program to begin again. "Cooking Pleasures" certainly has the standard magazine ads--a boatload of them. But in addition, there's a subtle feeling that some of the "articles" are a sales pitch as well.

To get a good sense for what "Cooking Pleasures" is like, consider their version of the product evaluation. Suppose there's a manufacturer out there that makes a coffee maker. "Cooking Pleasures" will ship these coffee makers off to an undisclosed number of their members that volunteer to test them (remember that try before you buy "benefit" I mentioned above?), who then send in ratings that will be tabulated and printed in the magazine. When I first received my gift membership a year or two ago, the results would be published like this:

Mr. Drippy Coffee Maker

Member Ratings
- Convenience: 8.4
- Ease of Use: 7.6
- Ability to Avoid Getting Grounds in the Finished Coffee: 8.1

Member Edna Snortly says: "That Mr. Drippy Coffee Maker heated up in a jiffy, made me a Grande Caramel Latte, and spurted whip cream out the top until I whacked the stop button!"

Okay, let's think about this evaluation. Note that "Cooking Pleasures" gives no sample sizes, so you can't tell if the results are based on one or one hundred responses. They give no context to the scale--is a 7.6 good for ease of use? Or do other coffee makers rate an 8.5? And there's no objective criteria on how to rate a product. What does the product need to to do score a convenience of 10? How about a convenience of 1? And naturally there's no consideration on whether their sample of members contained any sort of bias, such as lack of experience using coffee makers, or a general feeling that positive quotes would be more likely to be published in the magazine. If you'd like a comparison as to the right way to do product evaluations, see my comments on Cook's Illustrated (coming soon in a future post).

Apparently, however, this standard was too exacting for some of the manufacturers that sponsor this activity, as lately "Cooking Pleasures" has changed the format for the product evaluations. Now they appear like this:

Handy John's Indoor Charcoal Grill and Smoker

Top ratings:
- Appearance
- Ease of Use
- Sets Off Smoke Alarms

Comments from Life Member Ralph "One Banana" Beauchamp: "It wasn't as big of a fire hazard as I thought. Didn't even have to dial 911."

Note that now we don't even have an idea of where the ratings fall on a scale of 1-10. For all we know, the Handy John's appearance was a 3, but all the other ratings were worse!

So, based on approximately a two-year sample, and evaluated subjectively by a single reviewer (me), here are the overall ratings for "Cooking Pleasures", employing their own rating display methodology:


Cooking Pleasures

Recipes: 6
Cooking Instruction: 5
Product Evaluations: 1
Sales Pitch: 10

Comments from Soon-to-be-ex member Jake: "Unless you tune into the Informercial channel on a regular basis, or somehow find yourself stranded on a desert island with nothing else to help you prepare meals over the campfire, I'd recommend choosing another magazine for your culinary reading."

Cooking Publication Quiz

I'm working on a comparison of the four cooking magazines I subscribe to, and it's taking some time to get enough detail to be meaningful. It'll be up in the next day or so, however. As a teaser, though, here's a quick characterization of each:

1) Pretentious and focused on political correctness and advertisements, rather than food
2) Scientific evaluation of recipes (including cooking techniques for each dish) and products
3) A compilation of recipes apparently submitted by readers used as a vehicle to support advertising (complete with "product evaluations" that really amount to ads)
4) Scientific evaluation of recipes and products, but with an emphasis on simpler, more approachable recipes (read "easier to cook on a week night after work")

Can you guess which publications these are? Read the next post for confirmation...

Do More, Watch Less

Yesterday's post focused very much on my outlook for the world. However, this blog purports to view the world through the lense of food, so with that in mind, today we're going to include more cooking. So I promise, if you read far enough down, you'll actually find some food talk!

About ten years ago I had a revelation. I realized that I was spending most of my life watching things, and not nearly enough time doing things. Think about it. How much time do you spend watching a movie, or a sporting event, or likely worst of all, a TV show? Do any of these things contribute to your life? My take is that they're all really "filler", a way to pass time in between periods of activity. Don't get me wrong--this has it's place. A good movie or a football game can let you escape from reality for a little while and relax, and that's a definite benefit. The problem comes in when you spend most of your free time on filler.

Historically, people haven't had much free time. There were fields to till and crops to bring in, food to hunt, and predators and enemies to fight off. Moreover, until artificial lights enabled more activity after sunset, active times were heavily constrained by the day-night cycle. After sunset, pretty much people just went to sleep. Today, though, at least in the US, Europe and other first world countries, the proportion of time taken up by work is less, the work itself is less backbreaking, leaving more energy for other activities, and the time available for non-work activity has been extended through lighting technology. Sounds like a good thing, right?

Sadly, many people don't seem to capitalize on this gift of free time. Escaping through watching the activities of others, real or fictional, doesn't actually get you anywhere in life. Sad as it is to say, it's a way of marking time, and as we all know, eventually we all have no time left. Doing something, however, no matter how small, is another story--it brings tangible rewards. So here's my advice (for however much that's worth): take advantage of your free time rather than looking for a way to make it pass.

There are lots of ways to take advantage of free time. Obvious ones include further education, starting a business on the side, playing (not watching) a sport, or even starting a blog! However, more routine things count, too. How about cooking, for instance?

When you cook, there is an obvious, direct benefit--you get a meal to eat! However, you also learn things along the way--cooking techniques, characteristics of the ingredients you use, and how different ingredients combined together taste. Cooking is a life skill--it can help you attract friends and romantic partners (a cliche, I know, but it's true--it certainly helped me attract girlfriends back in my single days), so it has value beyond the immediate meal. It's also something of a craft, or at its highest level, even an art form. When you cook a great meal, you get the same feelings any craftsman or artist gets when they create a great product.

It's also a good team activity. If you have children, cook with them! They'll be much more likely to eat what you make if they have a hand in its creation. And it gives you something that you can do together, teaches them a skill as described above, and demonstrates for them something to do with their free time besides watching life go by. I think that's an important lesson for children to learn--one of the problems I think we face today is that many people are unwilling to invest the work required to receive the rewards they desire.

Anyway, if you'd like a suggestion for a recipe to make with your kids, here's a good one. Macaroni and Cheese is a sure-fire winner. A word of warning, however--once you make this recipe from scratch, nobody in your family is going to be satisfied with Macaroni and Cheese out of a box ever again!

Macaroni and Cheese

1/2 stick (4 tbsp) of butter
3 - 4 tbsp all purpose flour
1/2 tsp dry mustard
1 3/4 cups milk
1 lb sharp cheddar cheese (the better the cheese, the better the dish will be)
10 oz macaroni (approx 2/3 of a 1 lb package)
4 hot dogs, sliced horizontally 1/4' thick (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large pot, cook macaroni according to directions on package.

In another pan, melt butter over medium heat. When it stops foaming, turn off the heat. Add enough flour to make a thin paste (about like thick gravy). Stir in mustard, then gradually add milk, stirring to keep the sauce smooth. Cut up all but the last inch of the cheese into small pieces, and add them to the milk mixture. Cook over medium heat, stirring slowly, until cheese is melted and sauce is smooth.

Drain cooked macaroni and place in large, ovenproof dish. Add sauce and hot dog slices., and stir well. Grate remaining cheese over the top, and bake uncovered for about 40 minutes.

A Day in Autumn

It's a rainy autumn day here in Maryland, and that seems almost appropriate for my inaugural post. I've always liked autumn. For one, the cooler temperatures are refreshing after the heat of the summer. And in addition, there's something poignant about the end of summer's abundance and the approach of leaner times, when trees must drop their leaves and animals gather foodstocks to survive the cold and barren period of winter's dominance.

And it's that last point that makes autumn appropriate for the first post of this blog. I believe that we are approaching the point where summer turns to autumn, where the seaon of plenty we've had here in the USA, and likely in the western world as a whole, comes to an end. Our civilization is in the late days of September right now, in a sort of "Indian summer", and if we were smart, we'd be preparing for the long, coming winter.

However, we're not smart. That's the kicker. We are definitely the proverbial grasshoppers, playing away our last few warm days, ignoring the changing season. I had a conversation with a friend of mine who shares some of the same views a few years ago, and we tried to guess how long the US has before it comes to an end. All civilizations come to an end, right? Rome fell. So did the Greeks. And yes, I get that the countries still exist--but they are fundamentally different from what they once were, and they lost their positions of prominence in the world (to the detriment of their citizens, by the way). It's only reasonable to assume the US will fall one day as well.

Anyway, my friend estimated 50 years before the US "falls", putting the end our of civilization in about 2050. I was more optimistic, giving us 100 years, but lately I'm beginning to believe that my friend had it right. And you know what the worst thing is? Unlike the seasons, which run in an unchanging cycle, for us, winter doesn't have to come. It could be avoided, or at least postponed. As a matter of fact, it still could be postponed--there's a chance. In my view, science and technology just might rescue us from our current problems, but it will need to be transformational to do so, and today, even science is under assault. Failing some sort of transformational breakthrough, to maintain (and spread) our season of plenty we're forced to count on groups of humans making rational, even wise, decisions. And my faith in the human race (and governments especially) to accomplish this feat is asymptotically approaching zero.

Nonetheless, we can but try. And that's one reason for this blog--it's yet one more small voice, crying out into the ether, "Be smart! Make the right decisions for a change! Consider long-term implications and unintended consequences!" Maybe enough people will listen...

So, here we are in autumn, with winter coming. What can we do to stave off the cold? As far as civilization goes, that's far too big a topic for a single post, but some ideas will be explored in future postings. In the meantime, here's a quick suggestion for you, individually, to warm up on a cold day. Make soup! Take a look at today's menu and you'll find a suggestion for one soup that's easy to make and will relieve the chill in your bones. It may not save the world, but at least it will keep your family warm and fed...