Melyssa-with-a-Y

Did you know that I have lovely things hidden away in my fridge/freezer? No, it's not (always) science-project-style growth -- but I sometimes forget that the stuff is there. Yesterday, I found a small bag of spinach that had to be cooked post-haste. Voila! Spinach with garlic and olive oil! (mom's quick recipe) This afternoon, I took the pork loin out of the freezer, to see if I could maybe come up with something to make for dinner. Voila again! Cooking Light's Smothered Pork Chops with Thyme . (I had pork loin, not chops, but same basic idea.) Add some brown rice, and you get a well-rounded, home-cooked meal. And to drink, Timbuktu Small Block White (Chardonnay), which I got at World Markets and stuck in the fridge for just such an occassion. (I think I bought it because I liked the car on the label.) :) In the meantime, when I haven't been on the phone with a newly-discovered Nice Jewish Boy*, I've been knitting Widdershins socks. (can't knit and hold the ph...

First comes the news that, according to some Rabbis in Europe, pot should not be smoked at Passover . D'oh! I know the rules about not eating bread, or anything with leavening (or anything that puffs up when you cook it, like corn or rice), but the rabbis saw fit to add hemp seeds to the list, so marijuana is definitely out. [Besides, would you really want to have the munchies during a week when tortilla chips are prohibited? I didn't think so.] Then, it seems that an enterprising Rabbi in New York decided to turn a school bus into a matzah oven . Seems he's been using it for a few years -- and as long as he can recruit an engineer to help him set it up, and move it 10 ft. away from the house, he can go back to using it! Oy vey. Most matzah tastes bad enough without the added aroma of old school bus. Finally, if you have little kids coming to your Seder, and you need a cute way to explain the 10 plagues on Egypt (heh. I used "cute" and "plagues" in the ...

I went home for the weekend, for the annual political memorabilia show that I organize. (Odd, but the co-chairs of the National Capital Chapter of APIC live in Austin, TX and Harrisburg, PA. The age of the Internet!) To save some dough, I flew home via JFK on JetBlue. I forgot how much I love JetBlue. I watched some Food Network, a little Bravo, and the NCAA basketball tourney on my flights. [Hours 1-3] The flight from JFK to DC was delayed a little, but Bryan picked me up and we still made it to dinner at Colvin Run by 8:15. Norman made me drink red wine. (He really twisted my arm.) It was a lovely Pinot Noir. Bryan and I both had the tuna 3-ways appetizer. (Teri, you would LOVE this.) And then he always has the duck for his entree. Always. I had a decidedly southwestern-style chili-rubbed pork loin and stuffed pepper. Norman had a blue cheese salad and then lobster consomme. Then we had dessert. The boys had chocolate mousse with banana ice cream. I had a chocolate-peanut-b...

... at least if you're a Republican in Congress. It seems House Republican Leader John Boehner would have appointed Rep. Wayne Gilchrest to the bipartisan Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming -- but only if the Maryland Republican would say humans are not causing climate change , Gilchrest said. (Gilchrist, having more than half a brain, couldn't say that. Good for him.) Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, a research scientist from Maryland, and Michigan's Rep. Vern Ehlers, the first research physicist to serve in Congress, also made cases for a seat, but weren't appointed. [ Ehlers is my one GOP player on Fantasy Congress ! :) ] "Roy Blunt said he didn't think there was enough evidence to suggest that humans are causing global warming," Gilchrest said. "Right there, holy cow, there's like 9,000 scientists to three on that one." It's called a Bipartisan committee for a reason. Really, I know it's always a little crazy in...

As I was driving back home to pickup my laptop this morning (need... more.... coffee...) I heard a news blip on NPR that was a little bit shocking. It seems that Hooters will shortly be opening in Tel Aviv. "I strongly believe that the Hooters concept is something that Israelis are looking for," Ofer Ahiraz, who bought the Hooters franchise for Israel, told Reuters Monday. "Hooters can suit the Israeli entertainment culture." (Reuters) From the article, it sounds like they will be avoiding Jerusalem and very religious neighborhoods. I can just imagine the Orthodox Jews flipping out about the skimpy little waitress outfits. Oy vey. * and the answer is yes, wings can be kosher, as long as you don't eat them with creamy dressing. But the Hooters wings won't be kosher anyway.

Friday night Alex took me out for a belated birthday night. We went to a Cuban restaurant on 6th Street. We had mojitos (he'd never had one), I had ropa vieja with platanos fritos, and he had a traditional Cuban pork sandwich. I haven't had good Cuban food since my business trips to Miami in 2002-2003. This was excellent. We had to take our desserts "to-go" ... which is fine with a coconut empanada, but not so good with the flan. (So he gave his flan to another diner in the restaurant.) We'll definitely have to go back there. Then we went to Esther's Follies , but it wasn't the regular comedy show, it was the Latino Comedy Project . It was hilarious. We laughed SO hard -- fortunately A is not bothered by the fact that I laugh really loudly -- he was louder than I was! There were some anti-Dubya jokes and songs (there's one white guy in the group, so he got to be Shrub), and some fake "commercials," which you can see on their website. They did...

Saturday night was our monthly Supper Club dinner. We hemmed and hawed about a topic for weeks, from Irish foods (corned beef and cabbage, potatoes, beer....) to "Hamburger and Pickle Month," before we settled on Easter and Passover foods. I made a wonderful Moroccan Lamb dish that I originally discovered in mom's New York Times Passover cookbook. It's like Passover lasagna - layer of matzah, then ground lamb with tomatoes and spices, then roasted eggplant slices, and repeat. It's pretty labor-intensive, since the ingredients have to be cooked before you layer them. (I have noticed that I manage to pick the most labor-intensive dishes for supper club!) I held on to the recipe because the lamb with tomatoes filling is really tasty, and I thought I would make it even when it wasn't Passover. Hm. I forgot that ground lamb is not inexpensive. The rest of the menu: devilled eggs and kulich (Russian Easter bread), smoked fish spreads (with matzoh), mini macaro...

Yes, I am a geek. I know this, and I freely admit it. But sometimes it is more blindingly obvious than other times. And my geekiness spans a wide array of topics. Today, for example. I learned how to log in to our supercomputer at work, so I can have an idea of how many jobs we run at any given time, and how many processors each job is using. It's an interesting data point, which may be useful when I go out and talk to people. But mostly I just thought it was really cool! I sometimes wish I had taken more computer science courses in college, but then I probably wouldn't have been able to spend a semester in Spain. Then, I went and logged in to Fantasy Congress . ( MZ pointed me to this site, knowing full well that I'd get hooked !) My team ("Austin Rocks") is the #1 team in the Texas league. You will notice that I have picked a lot of Dems. All but one, actually. Vern Ehlers is my one Republican team member, and he's a big champion of Science, so he gets a ...

Wouldn't you know it? As soon as 'Inconvenient Truth' won an Oscar, a right wing hack organization issued a statement saying that Al Gore's family home in Tennessee uses "more than 20 times the national average" kWh of electricity per year. ( I refuse to add the link to this drivel to give them more traffic!) And who picked it up and ran with it? The Drudge Report, of course, Rush Limbaugh, and many other "anything-liberal-is-bad" news organizations. On the HuffingtonPost, David Roberts gives some pertinent talking points to refute this ridiculous allegation. Here are my favorites: The Tennessee Tax Dept. does not consider the "Tennessee Center for Policy Research," which roughly no one had heard of before this, a legitimate group. It's run by a long-time right-wing attack hack, and its only registered address is a P.O. box. Why is everyone in the media taking what it says about Gore's electricity use at face value? Gore's e...