Roger's View of the World, Love and Seafood Gumbo!
Seize the Day! Put no trust in the morrow! — Horace
When you say that you make the best meatball in the world, be prepared to take on the world! Virtually every country can lay claim to the humble meatball! Whether it be Laplanders with their reindeer meatballs, meatballs from China or America, talking about making ‘meatballs’ always gets someone’s attention!
So, with that said, here is our humble recipe tribute to those who love meatballs!
Roger
I like to send folks what they really want. However, it becomes a bit of a challenge sending food a long way. It has to be made to travel and not spoil. Packaging can help… but the key is in the ingredients.
My Gingerbread Cookie Recipe for Kristin in Iraq:
1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cup molasses
5 teaspoons spice blend*
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
2/3 – 1 cup water
1 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
7 cups flour
sugar sprinkles for topping
* (BLEND: 8 parts Ginger, 4 parts Cinnamon,1 part Cardamom,1 part Allspice,1 part Cloves,1 part Nutmeg,1 part Mace,4 parts Orange zest)
Bake: 350 degrees for 12-14 minutes
Here’s to you, Kristin!
Dad
Once you have taken the time to make your own pastrami and tweak it to your particular taste, it’s hard to buy anything else! Some folks cure their brisket for hours, others — like me — for weeks. Some like a standard sort of brine mixture… others ( again, like me) enjoy a mixture with beer, juniper and allspice berries. The beauty of making anything for yourself is that you can find the style that suits you best. So it wouldn’t surprise you if I said that I like my recipe best.
I can see why most folks don’t realize that Pastrami and Corned Beef are very similar although the final product seems very different. Pastrami starts off with a finished corned beef then goes through a small seasoning process and finally smoked. Most corned beef is served boiled and this allows the fat to disappear and leave a leaner product with the characteristic meaty ‘strings.’ Pastrami however is almost never boiled — at least I don’t — and the final product appears with thin ribbons of fat… which is why — I think — it is almost always served hot.
My great Uncle Karl was an interesting man, a shorter and chubbier version of myself that made his living as a butcher and also had a preference for Pastrami. I was fond of him (Karla is named after him) and talking with him about food was always a treat.
Roger
PS. By the way, Pastrami is one of Laura’s favorite dishes … hmmm … it continually amazes me how she gets me to make these things while allowing me to think it is my idea.
I didn’t want to talk about the sad (boo-hoo) state of California newspapers without starting with an upbeat picture. I chose one of my wife Laura and her lovely sisters.
Oh, I could go on and on about how folks are tired of the stuff that we call ‘newspapers’ …and everyone has their own nicknames… like the ‘ daily disappointment.’ However, it’s not the price of a newspaper that gets to people… it’s what they put into it …and this ‘truth’ is what ‘journalists’ have refused to recognize. Newspapers have refused to look at the changing world honestly.
Here’s what the Wall Street Journal Wrote about the issue:
“a precipitous drop in ad spending has cut profits at U.S. Newspapers sharply. Some dailies are in bankruptcy, some are printing fewer papers and some have closed altogether. Thousands of reporters, editors and others have left the industry.”
Here what’s happening at the top 50 National newspapers that also happen to be in California:
The Los Angeles Daily News
CHANGES: Twenty-two editorial employees were laid off in February 2008.
CIRC: 137,344
The Fresno Bee
The Fresno Bee said in March it will lay off 63 people. The layoffs are the third round of job cuts at the Bee since June 2008.
CIRC: 150,334
Continue reading “Californians don’t love their newspapers, anymore”
A lot of things happen in ones life that give cause for pause.
The three pictures above are versions of me with the ‘true’ me on the far right. The middle me is a photo shopped version of my two right sides of my face and the far left is of my two left sides. These three interesting pictures appear in my wife Laura’s new second edition of Discovering Biological Psychology.
The point Laura is making is to show that all of us are a bit more expressive on one side of our face than the other and this demonstration makes that point clearly.
So who knew I’d end up as a text book model?
Roger Freberg