Saturday, May 21, 2022

Broken Lasagna in the Kitchen

 

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amber responds

 

 

 

Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Amber Under Cross"  and "Equal Time For Classy Amber." went up Wednesday.  Now for food.

Rita notes a broken lasagna recipe from Food 52::

Ingredients
  • 1 pound lasagna noodles
  • 15 ounces whole milk ricotta cheese
  • 2 lemons, zested and juiced
  • 1 tablespoon finely chopped mint
  • 3 tablespoons minced chives
  • 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, divided
  • 1 bunch asparagus, ends trimmed and stalks sliced in half lengthwise
  • 1 cup peas
  • 1 handful basil leaves, roughly torn
  • 1 bunch watercress or baby arugula, roughly chopped
  • 1/3 cup pine nuts, toasted in a dry pan
  • Directions
    1. First, boil a large pot of salted water. Cook the lasagna noodles until al dente, about 9 minutes. Drain and arrange in a single layer on a baking sheet or clean counter so they don’t stick together.
    2. While the pasta cooks, scoop the ricotta cheese into a large bowl and mix in the zest of 1 lemon, juice of 2 lemons, mint, chives, 1 teaspoon of salt, and 1/4 cup olive oil. Set aside.
    3. Heat the remaining tablespoon of olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Sauté the asparagus and peas with a pinch of salt until bright green and just tender, about 3 minutes.
    4. Toss the lasagna noodles with the ricotta cheese mixture. Taste and add salt if needed. Arrange the coated noodles on a large platter or in a serving bowl. Top with asparagus, peas, basil, watercress, and pine nuts. To finish, sprinkle over the remaining lemon zest and serve warm or at room temperature.


    That reads very well.  I usually try to fix a new recipe (new to me) before posting it but it's been a week.  On e-mails?

    Brevity?  I appreciate the effort but a single sentence e-mail can be confusing.  Caleb emailed, "Do you ever cook out of season?"


    I'm confused.  There are multiple ways that could go.  I love Barbara Kingsolver's essays and she's got one about the damage we can do to our planet by what we purchase at the grocery store.  Canned goods?  They travel easily.  But let's use strawberries -- I don't have them in the house ever, two of my kids are allergic.  They are not year round fruits in my area (Boston).  And people use fresh strawberries.  That's very damaging to the environment.  (If you're a strawberry lover and need an out or excuse, here it is: Even more damaging right now is allowing them to go bad in a grocery store because then all the energy that went into transporting them was wasted.)  


    So Caleb might be asking me if I cook without of season ingredients.  I do.  I use fresh and frozen and canned items and some of those are out of season or not native to my region.  


    He could also mean what we think of as seasonal foods.  Where I live, chowder's a basic.  But I know from offering a summer chowder recipe a few years back that some people feel like chowder or other foods are for the winter while others are for the summer.


    Good example, we'll be eating roast and potatoes today.  That's not a 'summer fooed.'  But I pulled a long double last night and when I got home early this morning, I got a roast and put it in the slow cooker -- with sliced red potatoes, sliced carrots, quartered yellow onions (I love white and red onions but when it comes to a roast, it has to have yellow onions to fit my tastes -- that's the only time I insist on yellow onions -- my quirk), chopped celery and sliced mushrooms.  I'm just not in the mood.  I put all of that in the slow cooker with water, flour and spices, turned the slow cooker on for eight hours and went to bed for about three and a half hours.  I would love to sleep longer but I was doing a favor for a friend and went and got her two small kids (who are coloring right now) because she was picking up an extra shift at the last minute (I'm a nurse, so is she).


    But I was just not in the mood to cook when I got home this morning.  So I just grabbed the needed ingredients, put them in the slow cooker, set the timer and went to bed.


    I love turkey.  I might cook a turkey overnight in the summer.  I wouldn't do that in the oven during the day, that would heat up the whole house and I don't want that in the summer.  I'm not confining turkey to November and December.  And I am tired.  I just caught that in the previous sentence I typed Turkey, like the country.  If I've done that or anything similar, know that I'm yawning and making my way through the coffee.  I'm also starting and stopping to look at pictures because we're in the midst of a coloring competition. :D


    Anyway, I hope that answers the question, Caleb.


    This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for Friday:

     Friday, May 20, 2022.  Joe /Biden has billions for Ukraine but nothing for American infants, Bully Boy Bush gets some attention, Julian Assange remains persecuted and much more.



    US President Joe  Biden continues to persecute Julian Assange for the 'crime' of journaism and the most 'offensive' thing anyone can do: Tell the truth.  Julian exposed War Crimes the US government carried out in Iraq and Afghanistan.



    Amnesty International Tweets:


    Amnesty International: 'If the Home Secretary certifies the US request to extradite Julian Assange it will violate the prohibition against torture and set an alarming precedent for publishers and journalists around the world' #FreeAssangeNOW


    Julian's wife Stella Tweets:


    With Gunther Wallraff, legendary german investigative journalist, holding the Gunther Wallraff prize certificate awarded to Julian #Assange. #FreeAssangeNOW
    Image


    Julian and WIKILEAKS are known throughout the world and the whole world watches as Joe Biden persecutes him.  The world watches Joe's war on journalism and free speech.  The world watches Joe act like one of the despots the US State Dept is forever decrying.


    At THE GRAYZONE, Kit Klarenberg explains:

     British Home Secretary Priti Patel is due to imminently decide on whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is extradited to the US, where he faces life imprisonment for journalistic activities.

    The Grayzone can exclusively reveal that Patel appears to be embroiled in a covert “research and influence operation,” directly inspired by MI6 “principles and methods” and guided in part by Richard Dearlove, the foreign spying agency’s former chief. 

    While the Home Secretary may not be fully apprised of the dark forces swirling around her, and the purposes for which she is being exploited, there is incontrovertible evidence that her ministerial agenda and Home Office policies are being directly influenced as a result of her links to the shady group.

    “Dark Ullen” to be “conducted on the same broad principles and methods as an [MI6] research and influence operation”

    This May 15, the Grayzone exposed a shadowy intelligence cabal’s plot to sabotage Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal, remove her from office, and replace her with Boris Johnson in order to secure a ‘hard’ withdrawal from the EU. The cabal pursued a variety of undemocratic, if not outright criminal methods to achieve its aims.

    A vast tranche containing leaked email messages between members of the cabal provided the sourcing for that exposé. Further communications reviewed and verified by The Grayzone point to more recent, shockingly diabolical schemes. 

    These include plots to smear environmental activists as communist agents of Chinese influence, paint Ukrainian refugees as potential Russian double agents seeking to carry out terror attacks on British soil, and “displace” Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Minister Kwasi Kwarteng. 

    The spectral group’s apparent leader and puppet master is Gwythian Prins, a member of the Chief of Defence Staff’s Strategy Advisory Panel, and former NATO and Ministry of Defence advisor. On January 21st, Prins wrote to former MI6 director Richard Dearlove – a key member of the cabal – outlining the terms of ‘Dark Ullen’, the codeword title of “our China project.”


    Joe Biden is persecuting Julian Assange.


    But Joe does everything but hump Bully Bou Bush.  Oh, he's not Joey's friend and roll dog, no, not at all.  Not when Joe needs their votes.  When it's an election year, Joe puts a barrier -- a vaignal condom? -- between himself and Bully Boy Bush.  When it's an election year, Joe lies that he only supporte dthe Iraq War because he was misled by that mean and crafty Bully Boy Bush.


    Why, if it weren't for that Bully Boy Bush and his empty words and promises, Joe never, ever would have supported the Iraq War.  Pinkie promise.


    But after making those statements and then before making them again when he was runnng for office in 2020, what does Joe do?  Apparently, everything but swallow.

     





    Joe's a liar and always has been.  He claims he made a 'mistake' on Iraq and it was all because of that evil Bully Boy Bush but in 2019, he did everything but dry hump BB onstage in front of everyone.  That's not how I respond to people who lie to me.  That's not how normal people respond.  But Joe's not normal.  Normal people don't assault Tara Reade and then pretend as though the world is crazy to ask -- after the assaults noted in her divorce papers from years ago, after her mother is on tape -- video -- calling into Larry King's CNN show in the 90s, after . . .


    Joe's a damn liar.  And he's senile to boot.


    Alex Findjs (WSWS) notes:

    The Biden administration has ordered the redeployment of 450 US soldiers to Somalia at the request of the Pentagon. Government officials state the decision is aimed at countering the advances of the Islamist group al-Shabab, which controls much of the countryside in southern and central Somalia.

    Biden’s decision is a reversal of a Trump administration order to remove 700 US soldiers from the country and deploy them to neighboring countries in January 2021. Trump portrayed the action as part of his campaign promise to roll back US involvement in “forever wars,” though US troops continued to conduct military activities inside of Somalia from their new bases in neighboring Kenya and Djibouti.

    The stated goal of the redeployment is to target a dozen leaders of al-Shabab, which is considered a terrorist organization by the US government, and to “maximize the safety and effectiveness of our forces and enable them to provide more efficient support to our partners,” according to Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the National Security Council in an interview with the New York Times.

    Al-Shabab has been engaged in military confrontations with the central Somali government for over 15 years and has been the target of repeated US military operations and airstrikes. Having consolidated control over large parts of the country, the organization is believed to have 5,000 to 10,000 armed fighters and close ties to Al Qaeda.

    Several deadly bombings have been linked to the group, including a truck bombing in the capital Mogadishu in 2017 that killed at least 587 people.

    Capitalizing on the violent tactics and Islamist ideology of al-Shabab and other groups, the United States has used the threat of terrorism to justify military involvement in the impoverished East African country for 30 years. 


    Joe is not on a mission of peace.  He has no mission, he can't remember what he's doing from one day to the next, he's a got a bittersweet presidency.



    Joe is sending billions of US dollars to prop up the racist and Nazi regime in Ukraine (the same one he and Barack installed in 2014) but he can't help Americans suffering from inflation or from the formula shortage.


    One day after President Biden invoked the 1950 Defense Production Act (DPA) in response to the US baby formula shortage, the Senate approved a bill by unanimous consent Thursday that falls far short of addressing the devastating crisis facing families with infant children across the country.  Kevin Reed (WSWS) reports:


    The Access to Baby Formula Act, which was first approved by the House on Wednesday, purports to ensure that families receiving government assistance benefits can continue to purchase baby formula during the shortage. The bill allows the Agriculture Department to waive the requirement that those using the federal program Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) must purchase only one brand of baby formula.

    The $28 million bill also provides emergency funding to increase the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspection staff, increase resources for personnel working on formula issues, stop fraudulent baby formula from entering the US marketplace and improve data collection on the formula market. 

    However, the bill does nothing to fundamentally address the nightmare facing parents looking to buy formula for their infants when none can be found on store shelves. Stocks of formula have been down by 43 percent since the beginning of May. The crisis, which has been developing for months, was allowed by the Biden administration and Congress to reach catastrophic proportions before the latest measures were taken.

    In commenting on the vote, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (Democrat from New York) was focused on the fact that the Democrats and Republicans agreed on a face-saving bill that will not address the immediate crisis that is facing millions of families. Schumer said, “It's rare that we have unanimity in the Senate on important measures, and I wish we had more. But this is one of these important issues and I'm glad we're acting with one voice.”


    Hey, Chuck, are you going to breast feed all of the American children that need formula but don't have it?  Then sit your tired ass down already.  As WSWS previously noted, ""The severe shortage of baby formula across the United States continues to affect millions of families. Nationwide, there is a 43 percent deficit of infant formula, with some states and metropolitan areas seeing more than 50 percent of normal supply missing from grocery store shelves. 



    When the money's gone?  We are arrving at that point, apparently  No money for the American people under Joe Biden.


    No money for the American people and their children in need.  But Joe's sending more money to Ukraine -- forty billion more.  


    WSWS has a two-part series on the roots of modern day Ukraine.


    [PART ONE] [PART TWO]


    From part wo:


    The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), whose actions and legacy are celebrated by the state-sponsored Ukrainian Canadian Congress, is the political-ideological fount of the fascist forces that are playing such a prominent and reactionary role in contemporary Ukraine. 

    In 1940, the OUN split into two groups over how best to collaborate with Nazi Germany to secure a Ukrainian national state. In pursuit of that collaboration and their rival visions of a fascist state, both factions would commit horrific crimes. Both supported the Nazis’ war of annihilation against the Soviet Union that claimed the lives of over 27 million Soviet citizens and participated in the Holocaust of European Jewry.

    The OUN (Melnyk) sought to work within Nazi Germany’s occupation regime and promoted the formation of the Galicia Division of the Waffen SS. It was to this organization that the grandfather of Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland belonged.  

     

    The OUN (Bandera), many of whose members were likewise provided refuge in post-World War II Canada, also systematically embedded its forces in the Nazi military machine and its repressive apparatus in German-occupied Poland and later in the Soviet Union. But the OUN (B) took a more “radical stance,” going beyond the remit its Nazi patrons and allies had given it. After entering Lvov in June 1941, as part of the Nazi force that invaded the USSR, they declared the creation of an “independent” Ukrainian state—one they stressed would be an integral part of the Nazi-led “New Europe.” Frictions ensued. But both sides strove to maintain their alliance, and up until the war’s end the Bandera-led OUN (B) and its Ukrainian Insurgent Army or UPA collaborated with the Nazis and the Wehrmacht in fighting the Red Army and Soviet partisans, terrorizing the population and exterminating Ukraine’s Jews. It also killed tens of thousands of Poles in pursuit of an ethnically “pure” Ukraine. 

    Contemporary apologists for the OUN insist that they were forced into an impossible situation during World War II and can at most be accused of opportunistically embracing Nazi support and its anti-Semitism. These claims are without any historical foundation. The OUN was a fascist organization from its inception, that long sought Nazi support and whose role in the mass extermination of Ukraine’s Jews was politically prepared and prefigured by its actions in the decade prior to the war’s outbreak in 1939.

    The OUN was founded in 1929 through the merger of several far-right organizations, among them the League for the Liberation of Ukraine, which had arisen out of the Union of the Ukrainian Fascists, and the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO). Comprised of veterans of the Ukrainian nationalist forces that had fought the Bolsheviks during the Civil War that followed the 1917 October Revolution, the UVO supplied much of the OUN’s initial leadership.

    Socially, the OUN was comprised of frustrated and embittered petty bourgeois, as well as dispossessed landlords and other notables. Politically, it was animated by pathological hatred for the October Revolution and the Soviet Union. Ideologically, it was part of the broader fascist, militarist and anti-egalitarian current that developed in the aftermath of the unprecedented violence and dislocation of World War I and in direct reaction against the Russian Revolution and the socialist strivings of the European working class.

    But the OUN and its supporters were especially angered and aggrieved. From their perspective, the socialist revolution in Russia and the Ukraine had cheated them out of their birthright—a Ukrainian state where they would rule the roost—as well, in many cases, of their property and other privileges. Moreover, those they perceived as their ethnic rivals had been strengthened. There now was a Polish Republic, including on territory the Ukrainian nationalists coveted and which was repressing its Ukrainian minority. And as a result of the Russian Revolution, Ukraine’s Jews, long the target of pogroms and the Czarist government’s Black Hundred agitation, enjoyed unprecedented freedom.  

    Like the White Russian emigres, the Ukrainian far right helped fashion and promote the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism, which held the Jews responsible for the revolution, for them the incarnation of the anti-Christ. An explicitly fascist form of anti-Semitism, the Judeo-Bolshevism canard would be invoked by the Nazis and their Ukrainian allies in the OUN in inciting genocide.




    Dropping back to yesterday's snapshot:


    AFP reports, "Donald Trump is not  in the White House.  You do not know if he will run again (he seems to want to but Donald loves to f*k with people's heads), you do not know if he could get the GOP nomination if he tried to run, you do not know who the Democrats will run in 2024, "


    Freud said the criminal had a compulsion to confess.  I'd like to think the incident was more than a mere slip of the tongue.  I'd love to believe the millions of Iraqis he killed haunt Bully Boy /bush's sleep, that they wreck every waking moment.


    That's what should happen.  Hes responsible for an illegal war, he's responsible for suffering, he's responsib le for a genocide.  


    Shame on those who are too weak and too stupid to hold him accountable.  I'm referring to the ones who in 2015 would have called him out but now, because they share his hatred for Donald Trump, they're BB's best buddy.


    They''re shameful.



    The following sites updaed: