I hope you are enjoying this blog's devolution into a chronicle of food.

In any case, I have to keep my recipes someplace, and that place turns out to be the internets. When I can't remember how I made something, I search Google for "drmomentum salt potatoes" et voilà!

Here's my recipe for lobster pie. Go heavy on the lobster meat, this recipe makes a lot of sauce. Or, add some chopped scallop pieces in there. It's your pie! And you should really try to make this at least once. It's almost as good as any lobster pie I've had, and that's on my first try. So, treat your lobster right!

Lobster Pie Filling

• 10 Tablespoons butter (1-1/4 sticks), divided
• 1/2 cup good-quality sherry
• juice of 1 lemon
• 2 cups lobster meat (or more), in bite-sized pieces
• 2 Tablespoons flour
• 1-1/2 cups half-and-half
• 4 egg yolks, beaten
• 1 Tablespoon shallot chopped fine
• 1/2 teaspoon dried dill

Lobster Pie Crust

• 1/2 cup Ritz cracker crumbs (about 1/3 sleeve)
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 2 Tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
• 4 Tbsp melted butter

I start with my lobster meat already mostly cooked. Steam them for 8-9 minutes and remove the meat. Two 2 lb lobsters probably would have been perfect for this recipe. On my first try I used lobster and scallop.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Heat sherry and lemon together. Toss in shallots and reduce by about half.

Add 4 tablespoons of the butter, cut into 4 parts. Whisk together as butter melts over medium heat.

Add lobster meat and remove from heat.

In a medium saucepan, melt remaining (8 Tbsp) butter.

Add flour and cook, stirring, until mixture bubbles. Remove from heat.

Remove the lobster meat from the sherry/butter/lemon.

Slowly stir the sherry/butter/lemon into your main saucepan of melted butter/flour. Slowly stir in the cream as well. Thoroughly blend.

Return to heat and cook, stirring constantly, until sauce is smooth and thick.

Spoon 4 tablespoons of the sauce into a small bowl. Add beaten egg yolks, 1 tablespoon at a time, stirring well after each addition.

Once all the egg is mixed with the 4 Tbsp of sauce, whisk egg mixture back into sauce.

Add dill and whisk over low heat about 3 minutes; do not allow to boil.

Remove from heat and add lobster.

Combine ingredients for crust.

Dump the filling into a 1-1/2 to 2 quart casserole. Something with tall sides is nice to prevent spillage.

Bake about 15 minutes to heat through.

EAT!

Serve with lightly steamed asparagus. The asparagus is yummy in the pie filling.

The background here is that Dick Durbin, Democratic Majority Whip is responding to the Republican idea that malpractice reform is a high priority health care reform idea. (Please excuse the silly title that firedoglake chose for the video; it's the usual over-the top political Internet-speak.)

In case you're not interested in watching the video (although I recommend it), I will grossly summarize. The CBO estimates that medical malpractice reform suggested by House Republicans will save one fifth of one percent (0.02%) of the country's annual health care spending. The CBO also said that this Republican reform would result in more deaths from medical malpractice (4,800 people / year). While medical costs are skyrocketing, the money paid out in malpractice lawsuits per year has been cut in half since 2003. Durbin goes on to point out that

I stepped into a Facebook conversation in which someone was claiming that Durbin must be in the pocket of lawyers. This essentially ignores anything in the argument for health care reform of malpractice reform. When pressed, he insisted that malpractice reform, small is it would be in impact, is a "step in the right direction." Here is part of my response:

Malpractice is a distraction and that's pretty much all, within the larger discussion. That's why numbers get answered with aspersions.

If we don't accept the CBO numbers on tort reform, then we can't claim it is a problem. If we accept the CBO numbers, then we can't ignore the dire numbers that are driving this push for health reform. (which are orders of magnitude greater and growing, unlike the costs due to malpractice cases)

I'm not against tort reform (as long as there are safeguards that prevent limiting the awards of deserving people). But Durbin is right to smack them down on this; tort reform would absolutely be on the table if Republicans wanted to add it to the bill. But they don't. All they'll suggest is scrapping the bill, not improving it. That's not compromise, it's conciliation. And the bill is already full of Republican ideas.

In that context, a focus on tort reform isn't a step in the right direction, it's a distraction designed to waste our time.

If a fireman is standing in front of a fire with a hose attached to a hydrant, putting down the hose to unzip his fly and urinate on the porch is not a step in the right direction.

I did click through, then I rated the video one star, solely on the basis that the uploader had disabled embedding. I decided that this was how I was going to deal with the annoyance of YouTube video authors who figured it was more important for them to force me to visit the site than it was for me to see their video in a way that was convenient to me. They can essentially have a downvote. Not that my rating will make much of a difference, but I at least get to register my displeasure and possibly affect their "view count."

Then I read this. It's the story of how the band OK Go saw it's YouTube video views drop after EMI decided to disable embedding their popular song "Here It Goes Again."

When EMI disabled the embedding feature, views of our treadmill video dropped 90 percent, from about 10,000 per day to just over 1,000. Our last royalty statement from the label, which covered six months of streams, shows a whopping $27.77 credit to our account.

This doesn't surprise me. And it shows that other people would rather watch videos embedded rather than visiting YouTube. EMI (and other people who disable embedding) are shooting themselves in the foot.

I'll continue down-voting videos with embedding disabled. Maybe EMI and others will wake up. Maybe not.

I recently stumbled upon this Crock Pot Blog which appears to be a source of easy-to-prepare slow cooker recipes. Some of them look really, really wonderful.

I decided to use the Italian Zucchini and Bell Pepper Soup as the basis for a weekend soup with a little more oomph. By "oomph" I mean meat.

The great thing about crock pot recipes is that they allow you to do very little cooking with a big payoff at the end. And since time is lately my most valuable commodity (by a long shot) I am going to rely more and more on very easy recipes.

The zucchini soup is simple enough. To quote their ingredient list:

1 onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 (4.5 oz) jar sliced mushrooms, drained
1 (14.5 oz) can chicken broth
1/4 t salt
1 large zucchini, sliced
1 small red bell pepper cut into strips
1 small yellow bell pepper cut into strips
1 t Italian seasoning
1 (14.5 oz) can diced tomatoes with Italian herbs

Mmm! Good stuff. You combine everything up to the salt, let it cook for 10 hours and then turn the cooker up to "high" and add the zucchini, pepper, tomatoes and seasoning for the remaining half hour.

My variation:

• Fry up a mirepoix (onion, carrot and celery) in butter and add that to the crock pot instead of just raw onion.
• Brown half a pound of Italian sausage and a pound of hamburger (with a bit of Italian seasoning and pepper), squeeze off the fat as best as possible and add the meat to the crock pot.
• Double the amount of chicken broth to accommodate the meat.
• Add half a cup of dry sherry.

It's now simmering away and smells amazing. At the very end, I'll add the zucchini, pepper and tomatoes. I'll let you know how it comes out. But check out that Crock Pot blog. I found them via their Facebook page. Facebook is starting to become an actual resource.

However, sometimes they come out better than other times, so it makes sense to write down the recipe so that it is repeatable. I worked from a recipe for 4 servings as a side dish, and it called for 2 lbs. of potatoes. I had 3 lbs. in the pantry, and we really like our potatoes, so this recipe will feed 6 people a side-dish portion or 4 people a little more with a bit left over. Leftovers = good.

While I didn't have fresh rosemary, I had some frozen, left over from when we had a rosemary bush in the yard. This reminds me that we'll have to plant one again this year.

Rosemary Garlic Roasted Potatoes

Ingredients

• 3 pounds of Red Bliss potatoes, scrubbed.
• 4.5 Tablespoons olive oil
• salt
• pepper
• 3 Tablespoons of fresh rosemary, chopped
• 3-4 cloves of garlic

Equipment

• large bowl
• aluminum foil
• large roasting pan

Turn the oven to 425 F. While it heats, halve the potatoes and cut them into 3/4" wedges. The wedge shape is key and gives you two sides to roast against the pan.

In a large bowl, toss the potatoes in the oil, and add salt and pepper generously.

Spread the potatoes in the roasting pan. If they cannot all be arranged flat in the pan, you'll need to arrange them in 2 pans.

Cover the pan securely with aluminum foil. This will allow the potatoes to steam and cook through before we roast them.

Place them in the oven for 20 minutes.

During that time, chop the rosemary and put aside. Chop the garlic, then crush into a paste with the side of a knife and a little salt (just over 1/8 tsp). Spread the garlic paste in the bowl.

After the 20 minutes are up, remove the foil from the roasting pan and roast for another 15 minutes.

Remove the pan and flip all the wedges to their other side. Replace pan in oven for another 7 minutes.

Sprinkle the chopped rosemary over the potatoes. Replace in the oven until the skins look wrinkly and roasted about 3-5 minutes.

Remove the pan and transfer the potatoes to the bowl. Toss the potatoes to coat with the garlic. Serve immediately.

Enjoy.

If there was any doubt, you could see in the State of the Union audience that, until the president called them out on it, Republicans were sitting on their hands when applause accompanied fiscally conservative policies.

This is not an argument over fiscal conservatism or fiscal liberalism. This is an extended temper tantrum while the country is experiencing an economic Katrina. And if this continues when the super-majority is gone, it will absolutely represent an abdication of leadership responsibility during a time of crisis. It will represent the elevation of politics over your interests.

The evidence is no longer just "who was clapping at the State of the Union and who was not." Republicans are voting "no" on proposals very similar to fiscal discipline proposals they supported before Obama was in office. A perfect example is this law just passed that would require that any new spending measure must be accompanied by funds that cover it, known popularly as "pay-go."

Senate Democrats voted to adopt statutory pay-go rules for legislative business on Thursday, in what party leaders described as an affirmation of their commitment to budgetary discipline.

They received no Republican votes.

[...]Four Republican senators who opposed the measure on Thursday voted for nearly an identical measure in 2006.

Earlier this week, five Senate Republicans withdrew their co-sponsorships and support for a committee on debt-reduction, after loudly complaining about the debt.

Does this make sense to you? Do you think they should keep voting "no" hoping things get worse before the 2010 elections? Perhaps they can keep on doing it until 2012. If you're a Republican, ask Republicans to engage in governing again. It's the only way things will improve. And clearly they wouldn't listen to me.

New York Times is reporting: "After Arrest, Provocateur's Tactics Questioned." He was arrested trying to tamper with the phone system at Senator Mary L. Landrieu's district office. It's not yet been revealed what the nature of this tampering was, or whether they can prove there was wiretapping involved, but the fellow has definitely stepped into a mess that calls not only his tactics, but the trustworthiness of his journalism into question. Perhaps acting like a shock radio jock and putting it all in print is not the path to journalistic integrity after all.

This latest transgression is bad enough that prominent conservative movement media folk are distancing themselves from his recent work after cashing large paychecks last summer riding the wake of his Acorn story and generalizing wildly on it, weaving scary liberal boogieman campfire stories.

Campus Republicans can be an angry bunch, but they That NYT story reveals O'Keefe's narrow view of journalism:

"James always said, 'Journalism is putting a camera in someone's face until they do something stupid,' " said Cain Barry, who worked with Mr. O'Keefe at The Centurion, a conservative publication at Rutgers, until Mr. O'Keefe graduated in 2006. "A lot of people wanted to follow what he did."

In this case, nobody even had to put a camera in the guy's face before he did something really stupid. We just had to wait a few months.

One problem, though: the doctor told me my blood pressure was high. I suspect it's because of the illness and the cold medications. This has happened to me before. Only weeks ago I had my yearly, and my blood pressure was fine then. But when I get sick and take Sudafed, up the blood pressure goes.

I was advised to get mine re-checked after a few days. I was on campus today to drop off some student paperwork. It's the sort of paperwork that you have to drop off, then return the next day to pick up so you can walk about 10 yards down the hall to hand someone else. No, they cannot inter-office mail it there for you.

Since I was on campus, I called the Health Office to see if they would take my blood pressure. I told them I was an employee.

"No," I was informed. "We're not licensed for that."

Not licensed to take my blood pressure?

"Not licensed to treat employees. Only students."

Oh! I'm a full-time student as well.

"Well that's different! I didn't know you were a student."

That's why I told you.

"We can treat students, but we don't begin treating people until Monday." (When classes start)

Ah. So not actually different in a practical sense.

So I didn't get my blood pressure taken. Why didn't she tell me they were closed right at first? I guess she wanted me to know they don't treat employees. After talking to Ryan later, I recalled that they certainly do treat employees. They give flu shots. Why they can give a flu shot but not take my blood pressure I can't imagine.

They probably make you sign a waiver for the flu shot. I would willingly sign a waiver for the blood pressure measurement. It's the usual only-barely-makes-sense-if-at-all policy of the university.

So, I'll probably just go to the town nurse next week, or stick my arm in one of those machines at the Stop & Shop like I did last time they told me my blood pressure was too high.

That's OK, the blog is partly for my own catharsis and the posts get cross-posted to Facebook, so they'll get some exposure. I think I get more discussion on blog posts there than I do here anyhow.

At the very least, I'm sure I can muster some occasional griping...

• 2 oz coconut milk
• 6 ice cubes
• 1 frozen banana, chunked
• 6 oz of pineapple juice (a 6 oz can, for example)
• 10 chunks of frozen pineapple
• 2/3 cup of nonfat vanilla yogurt
• 2 Tbsp powdered sugar
• 1/2 tsp coconut extract (or imitation)
• 2 tsp dried egg whites (or approx 3 Tbsp pasteurized egg whites or egg substitute)
  

Place all the above ingredients in a good blender. Blend continuously on a medium speed for 10 seconds and then pulse 5 times for a half second each. Repeat 4 times. Or use whatever method your blender recommends for smoothies.

Makes enough for 2 smoothies.

The last 2 ingredients are optional. The egg whites fluff up the smoothie for a better texture. Egg substitute is egg whites, essentially.

If you buy a can of coconut milk, put the remaining liquid in an ice cube tray. Once frozen, transfer the cubes into a freezer bag and use them any time you want a smoothie. Ice cubes are usually around 1 ounce.

Make sure you peel your bananas before freezing them. Buy extra bananas and as they start to get too ripe, throw them in a freezer bag for your next smoothie.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tytFhIuDnNbqQ5cAlYIffUA&output=html

Analysis to come at some point.

No, I'm not doing formal research on highlighters. This is just for fun and because it's easy to do in Google Forms. But I am also curious.

If this group Reaches 500,000 members I will name my son Batman

Think of the children!

For Every 1,000 that join this group I will donate $1 for Darfur.

It's a worthy cause (er, what was the specific charity again) but I think my clicks are worth more than a tenth of a penny!

I love JESUS! If you love JESUS join this group.

Wait - you wouldn't be exploiting people's religious beliefs just to see how many people will join your group, would you? No.

If a billion people join this group Mark is allowed to get a Labrador

I dunno, Leah. If you don't want Mark to get that Labrador, you might want to set the goal a little higher than a sixth of the world population.

Facebook: SWITCH BACK TO THE OLD NEWS FEED!!!

As far as Internet emphasis goes, three exclamation points is not all that many; however I'm pretty sure this cause doesn't even warrant that many.

Here are some groups that have yet to be created, but they are clearly inevitable:

• If 5 people join this group, my wife will get off the couch and get me a beer
• For every pi people who join this group, I will donate the square root of negative one dollars to mathematics education
• If 666 people join this group, the Lord of Darkness will trade your souls for my 15 minutes of fame on a reality TV show
• If billions of people join this group, McDonald's will bring back the McDLT!!!!!!!!!!!!
• JOIN THIS GROUP IF YOU DON'T WANT ME TO PUNCH YOU IN THE FACE
• If this group reaches 3,000,000 people, unicorns will be real

But... oh no! One of these songs is growing on me!

1) "It's Me, Bitches"

This might actually be a decent song if it weren't for the singing/rapping. And the weird whooooooop! noise. Which means I guess I think the drums are OK. Not safe for work language in this one. Don't people get bored with this stuff. "It's me, bitches" is essentially a rap version of "Pop goes the weasel." It even has a kid dancing. To profanity. Charming!

2) Take U to Da Movies

What the...? If you listen to just one Sudanese rapper today, listen to this one. BANGS is his name, though he inexplicably does not wear them in his hairstyle. There is something compelling about the innocent title and refrain, and the electronic tune played on a $20 Casio keyboard from 1983.

Maybe I've been working too hard, but now I feel like a trip to the movies. "YEEEAH." Lord help me, but this song is starting to grow on me. But it is not for me to say which song must die -- that's your job. Tell me: WHICH SONG MUST DIE? And why?

Unrelated Bonus: While searching for "bangs" I found this picture, and I'm pretty sure this girl is made of a space age polymer.

But bad headlines are not new, and you don't need robots to create them. I thought I'd post this example from the recent "balloonboy" silliness.

Sheriff: No indication balloon ordeal was hoax

That's the headline.

Here's what it says in the story:

The sheriff's office said it does not believe at this point that the balloon episode was a stunt, but investigators planned to question the family again Saturday.

"The sheriff's office doesn't believe" is different from "no evidence." The sheriff has a responsibility to be very conservative in his accusations. He may find some scant evidence but find it is not enough to move forward with, in which case he would make a statement such as you see here. And perhaps follow up with some more questions. (The additional questions certainly indicate he still believes there is a possibility it was a hoax)

Heck -- people have already seen plenty of evidence that satisfies a much lower criteria than law enforcement must meet. The father is an attention-seeking jerk. The parents are willing to put the whole family on TV hours after this ordeal, waking the kids up at some ungodly hour in the morning mountain time to get on a nationwide morning show. They let their kid vomit on national TV and don't ask to stop the interview; the interviewer had to suggest it. The kid keeps referring to everything as being "for a show" -- indicating that this instruction came from his parents. And then there's the possibility that the family called the media as well at 911.

There is definitely some evidence that it was a hoax. Enough evidence to prosecute? I don't think so. But indications? Certainly. The man has an absurd lack of judgment and is an attention-seeker. That's not evidence, but it's enough for people to judge him harshly. And I don't think that judgment is unfair.

The headline is in conflict with the facts (and even the story itself). Considering the headline as part of the story, the story is self-contradictory. And the least accurate part is in giant, red type.

It may well be that "Sheriff doesn't believe balloon ordeal was hoax" is less compelling than "Sheriff: No indication balloon ordeal was hoax." But, so what? Well, it is a big deal if it means the difference between your story getting clicked and you getting paid.

Is this the tip of an iceberg? I've always taught the kids that commercials were essentially institutionalized (and adult-approved) lying for the sake of making money. But what happens as these principles are applied to our information sources? I guess we know what happens: trading accuracy for dollars becomes a science and sensationalism wins.

Accuracy and your brain lose.

Argue, if you like, that the truth can still be discerned from this story. Fine. Then we can talk about percentages of people who are able to come away with an accurate message, or about the the trade-off being increased cognitive load required to make the news useful vs. dollars. In the latter case, this would be the informational version of shrinking the contents of a box of cereal as a sneaky way to raise the price of the cereal.

I think it's no good.