Carnage du Jour - 14 May 10

Scallops. Sea scallops to be precise.
Although Heidi prefers bay scallops to sea, she did admit these were delicious - and that the spinach served along-side was the best she'd ever had. So ...

A nice hot pan with some oil.
Dry off the scallops a bit, then dust them with some ginger, white pepper, and curry powder.
Get a nice sear on both sides (don't overcook them unless you like eating rubber), and out of the pan.
Add a can of green chilies to the pan and sauté a bit, then add in some orange juice and cook down - just to thicken it a bit.
Then add some buttermilk to thicken and make the sauce nice and creamy.

This was all served with some rice cooked in chicken stock and chopped spinach.

What made the spinach so good? I'm glad you asked. It was just plain-old frozen spinach cooked in the microwave with a nice pat of (real) butter melted in, but then that orange and green chili sauce got drizzled over each of the items on the plate.
I have to think that the orange juice component was the key here. Growing up, we always would have some vinegar to drizzle on our spinach (yes, I ate spinach as a kid, and actually liked it), so it seems perfectly reasonable to me that other acids might work there as well.

At any rate, it was a very successful meal, and I'll see about replicating it with bay scallops next time (they're a bit tricky, as they're small enough to overcook very quickly).

Praying for Sydney

and no, not the city in Australia.

We got news from England the other day - our friend Sydney has been diagnosed with cancer of the spine. He's doing well right now, all things considered. He's in hospital quite some distance from home, and from his non-driving wife, Dorothy, so that's hard on all concerned, but he's largely back to being himself, now the pain is under control. He's schmoozing the nurses, trading chocolate mints for favours and so forth.

Clearly, he and Dorothy and all their family are in our prayers (and we'd be more than happy were you to add them to your prayer list as well), but this got us to thinking about how quickly people can become the closest of friends.

We first met Sydney and Dorothy in 1994, and in the intervening years, we've spent a grand total of nearly two weeks together. It's frankly remarkable to think that even after the first visit of a couple days, we were fast friends - corresponding (fairly) regularly between our pentannual visits, and one longer (a full week!) visit off-schedule a couple years back.

Sometimes it simply doesn't take much time for a real connexion to be made. [Right, Heidi?]

Whenever and wherever you find friendships:
Treasure them.
Honour them.
Celebrate them.

Music - Learning Guitar

My Dad is taking guitar lessons, and it's extremely cool.

I think he's always wanted to play, or at least ever since I started taking lessons in 7th grade or so - and on the same guitar he's using for his lessons now.

The thing that got me thinking about this, was a phone conversation the other day about chords and chord changes from his latest lesson. He was telling me that a particular finger doesn't move during the change from one chord to another, and I couldn't figure out how that was possible, because all of my fingers move when making that particular change.
I grabbed a guitar and tried to find another form of the initial chord that would let me leave a finger stationary ... I found one, but it's certainly not any way I've ever played that chord before.

As I said to him once I found that currently-uncomfortable chord position, his lessons may be good for my playing.

That got me thinking about learning and teaching in general. I've often heard it said (I've said it myself, for that matter) that teaching something to someone is a great way to learn it better, and this brought it home once again.

Think about something that you learned a long time ago, and that you do well and fairly often now.
If you had to explain to someone who didn't know how just what you're doing to to do that, could you? It's like the question he asked his teacher about chord changes. "How do you know which one to go to next?" The easy answer is that after you do it for a long time, you just kind of know, but that's not very helpful. You've just told your student that he's in for a long time of frustration, or you've told him that you can't really explain the stuff he wants to know.

Either way, you haven't enhanced that teacher/student relationship - and you haven't helped your student to grow. That's the hard part of teaching - you have to constantly examine how you do things, not just do them.

Oh, and that can be the fun part too.

Here's your challenge: teach someone something today that really makes you think about how you do it.
I know, your head may hurt for a moment, but you'll suddenly find a new aspect of something you thought you knew thoroughly, and you'll be as much richer for it as your student.

RIP Ernie Harwell

We all knew it was coming, and we've likely never known anyone who was actually so ready for it, but death is always a shock no matter what.

The one time I met Ernie, I could tell that he was just as cool as we thought he was from listening to him on the radio (I miss the Tigers on WJR, and I'm not even a baseball fan); he was a genuinely nice, kind gentleman.

I do have one (continuing) regret related to Ernie. He had some kind of connection with our church, and every year as I started the planning for the Lenten Devotion book, I thought that I should send Ernie a letter and ask for a bit of devotional writing from him - but I never did. Now I never will.

Still, I know that Ernie is in Heaven (and I'm pretty sure that doesn't mean he's in an Iowa cornfield with a bunch of dead baseball players), and he's happy. No, happy wouldn't be the half of it - Joy is the serious business of Heaven, and Ernie was always good at Joy.

He'll be missed.

Oh, and it's time to add to the name at Comerica Park: Harwell Field at Comerica Park has a wonderful ring, don't you think?

Value Added Tax?

This is an interesting possibility. I have my doubts that we'll ever really get an actual debate that airs the important points of the issue, but here are a few cautions I would throw out there.

• Unless this tax replaces the income tax we ought never even consider it.
• Given the hidden nature of a VAT, it becomes far too easy for the kleptocrats of all stripes to hike taxes without being as obvious as would be a change in the withholding on our paychecks, or the sales tax added on the end of a cash register receipt.
• One general rule is that if you tax something, you get less of it (cigarettes are a good example, and gasoline is being targeted in the same way). Think of the name of this tax: Value Added tax. This means that the (unintended?) consequence of such a tax is to yield less value added in the economy. That doesn't sound like a good idea, does it?

If we're going to move from an income tax to a consumption tax, let's be fair and honest about it, and go with a national sales tax on everything but food, medicine, and shelter.

Frankly, I think the main attractions of the VAT for our politicians are that it's hidden, it taxes every part of every chain of production, and it's European.
After all, they know more about having a dynamic economy than we do, right?

grr.

Carnage du Jour - 17 Apr 10 - Guess Who Came to Dinner

Well, that was a great evening.

At our church (Grosse Pointe United Methodist), the Witness committee came up with a very fun event. Batches of folks signed up to eat together, but without knowing with whom they'd be eating, nor where, for that matter. Some of us offered to host (the others offered to guest, one supposes), the hosting responsibilities being (in general) providing the entrée and beverages and sometimes a starch.

Heidi and I hosted, and I know you're all dying to know what entrée we served. Well, after much thought, debate, and surveying of the grocery adverts, we determined that many of our hosting compatriots would be serving beef tenderloin. We briefly considered the porcine alternative (after all, there are endless possibilities there, no?), but finally rejected it for a simple recipe from our family camping history - coq au vin.

Yes, there was even bacon grease in the freezer for browning the chicken and the pearl onions and carrots and mushrooms and all that.
Once the skillet had finished its duty, all went straight into the old roaster we inherited with our house and simmered away happily for a few hours before serving time.
Oh, not being certain of the status of our meal's starch element, we also roasted some nice red and white new potatoes with a bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then dressed them with freshly minced parsley at service. They were quite tasty as well.

The cleanup of the baconage was less onerous than I had expected, after seeing how splattery everything tried to be, thanks in large part to the double spatter-guard technology I employed, using both the screen type cover on the skillet and the metal shoji to create a walled garden around it as well.

All in all, the food was excellent (not just mine, but all the contributions were top rate), and the company and conversation even better.

Again, a great evening, and an event that deserves to be repeated.

I'm Famous!

I know you all check here regularly for my accounts of tasty meals, but now I've been mentioned on an actual high-traffic food blog.

You need to check it out, and not just because I'm there, but because it's a great site in its own right.

http://delectablyfree.com/ is the place, and I'm in the Quinoa Part 1 post
http://delectablyfree.com/2010/04/quinoa-part-i/

Pretty cool, and I didn't even have to beg or pay or anything - click on over, what are you waiting for?