Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, January 28, 2024
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26 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Race against time to unlock secrets of Erebus shipwreck and doomed Arctic expedition
An update on a 180 year old mystery.
Meet Efruz, a Jack Russell terrier who loves to surf makes a splash on beaches of Peru
Sorry, no video.
We’ll probably get actual sunshine and blue skies today. I don’t mind them, but ten days in a row of perpetually cloudy, dusk level light, very low lumen days drag on after a bit. I crave a change in the repeated pattern.
Sunshine would be nice and welcome.
—–
The last six days the temperature range was between 31 and 37F. That type of uniformity of temp within a 24 hour span is weird enough, but a week in a row is very exceedingly odd. All my eave’s icicles very slowly melted down. It took days.
Skate boarding Frenchie
This forum is going to the dogs.
@Sleeping Dog: Too much fun.
It has now been 321 days since the last time the daily global average sea surface temperature was not a record high for that date. If we make it all the way to March 13, we will have had an entire year of new record highs. Words fail.
I was looking at recipes and I saw the dumbest headline….
“With only ten ingredients…” It was how to make a pasta sauce using Roma tomatoes. *WITH ONLY TEN INGREDIENTS*. The utter UMC privilege in that headline was jarringly shocking. Only 10?
A lot of food content is oblivious, insufferably UMC. What, you don’t have an herb garden? You don’t grow basil in your backyard? How absurd!
I’m kinda a foodie, and a decent home cook, but a lot of cooking content is class and money locked which puts me off.
I eyeball and adjust by taste. You don’t need ten ingredients to make a good tomato pasta sauce.
@Sleeping Dog:
Water skiing squirrels anyone?
In two years it will be 100 years since Roald Amundsen disappeared. The movie The Red Tent, with Sean Connery playing RA, had a theory.
Last night Trump told his Nevada rally audience that he had been treated worse than Abraham Lincoln.
@CSK: Oh, if only.
@Mikey:
I understand that the crowd laughed at–not with–him.
@CSK:
That’s been a long standing line of thinking for him. It goes back to during his Presidency (or at the very least the 2020 race). I suspect the average attendant a Trump speech agrees with him.
In part that is because the growing Southern/Confederate State influence on the Republican party has caused Lincolns overall stock in the Party to go down. And, based on many statements, Trump doesn’t seem to hold him in high regards either.
There are lots of kinds of good pasta sauces. Always make them to your own taste. For a red sauce I really like having fresh basil in it when I can find it, but years ago I started buying the basil that came as a plant in some soil. I cut off the leaves but save the rest and sit it in the sun by the sink. In a few weeks I have more basil. Usually have a couple of these going and wife also uses for her caprese salads she likes. I water them when I do the dishes. Eventually we take a trip and they die or they tip and fall or cats knock them over and I have to start again.
Steve
So, I was on the phone with my brother-in-law when the Chiefs/Ravens game started. It quickly became clear that my broadcast (CBS, via Xfinity) was being delayed a full 30 seconds — more than one play, in many cases — relative to his.
That can’t be right, and seems like a recipe for gambling fraud disaster.
@DrDaveT: Took a walk around the neighborhood (10 minute walk to Ravens stadium). Absolutely madhouse. We have all the purple.
Anyone in need of a giggle? Read the headline of this piece posted to NPR. Then, scroll down and read the correction. H/T to my husband, who has that gloriously dry British sense of humo(u)r.
@de stijl: Hmmm… Let me check. Working from memory, my go to pasta sauce (which I haven’t made in ages because it’s just me now) had tomato sauce, tomato paste (yes, you gotta use both to get the right intensity of flavor), beef, onions, garlic, salt, pepper, celery, mushrooms, and Italian seasoning that contains seven spices. I also would save the pan drippings from a roasted chicken and a pork roast to add if I’d made them (but usually didn’t have them available). By my count, that makes 16-18 ingredients*, so a 10 ingredient pasta sauce sounds pretty impressive. (But for my taste, marinara isn’t a pasta sauce at all, for example.)
On the other hand, my pizza sauce is really simple: crushed tomatoes, salt, pepper, and oregano. You don’t want the sauce competing with the flavors of the toppings (6-8 of them) and the crust.
*actually 19, I’m one of the heathen who uses MSG in my cooking upon occasion.
@steve:
I can buy “fresh” basil on the stem at my local grocery store, and my local store is pretty crap. I do buy it. I have. I’m not an ascetic.
It is the overarching vibe that if you can’t afford the money and time to buy or grow all of the best ingredients then this show isn’t intended for you. Many are anti-egalitarian. Smugly UMC.
My favorite cooking show is America’s Test Kitchen on PBS.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Yeah, my curry is about 23 things.
I made tacos for breakfast. Diced pork sirloin, tortillas, bacon fat, minced onion, garlic powder, red pepper, cumin, hot sauce, lime juice, cheese, salsa, green onions, cilantro. Let me count…. That’s 13. And I can do the whole shmear in like 8 minutes once the burners are hot and the bacon fat has melted. It all comes down to prep and practice.
Maybe I’m judging too harshly.
@steve:
Before you go on a trip for a week or two, water the potted basil plants and then put a plastic grocery bag over them. Works like a charm.
@de stijl:
It did indeed get sunny in the afternoon. It was very welcome. Sat on the porch for 45 minutes and soaked up the vitamin D.
It was lovely!
It kind of feels like nostalgia playoffs this year.
First the Bills did a Wide Right ,a nd now the former Browns executed The Fumble.
@de stijl: I’ve never cared for the flavor basil adds enough to warrant buying fresh stems. The Italian seasoning I use has basil, but very little. Seventh of 8 herbs listed.
@just nutha:
Pesto alla genovese is proof there is a god. You can only make it with fresh basil.
3 cups fresh basil leaves
1 cup fresh flat-leaf Italian parsley leaves
4 cloves of garlic
1 cup grated Reggiano parmesan cheese
Extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp soft butter
Blend the herbs and garlic in a food processor, adding oil until the consistency is a loose paste. Decant, stir in the salt, cheese, and butter. Mix thoroughly. Freeze in small containers or ice cube trays, keeping a small amount thawed in the refrigerator for use whenever you need pesto. Which for me is “constantly”.
@DrDaveT: Pesto and marinara are the 2 Italian sauces I don’t get. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.