A Salsa Recipe: Insta-Salsa

Nowadays I seldom use many processed ingredients in salsa, but I used to use Prego as a base, which made the whole recipe a snap. In the future I'll have other salsa recipes. It's an iterative process, which I haven't yet perfected (though perfection might be the wrong word, since two recipes might be very different but both taste good).

Insta-Salsa with Prego

Ingredients
1 jar of Prego (or your favorite spaghetti sauce; I recommend plain ol' Prego)
1/2 bunch of cilantro
4-8 jalapeño peppers
2 cloves garlic
1/2 small onion
2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar

Instructions
Blend all the ingredients. That's it.
There are a couple things you should note:
1) I use regular Prego because it has no cheese, no mushrooms, no meat, no peppers, etc. Green bell peppers might not ruin salsa, but the other ingredients will definitely make it taste very funny. But it might still be good for nachos . . .
2) Remove the seeds from the jalapeños unless you really like hot salsa.

I have a friend back in Texas who loves the Prego trick, and says no one will believe him that salsa made in such a manner actually tastes good. But Prego is just seasoned tomato sauce with some oregano, sugar, oil, and other things I would add to salsa anyway.

Coming soon: some gourmet salsa that takes a lot more time to make.

The Food Network is having a contest for people who want their own cooking show. I think that would be a blast. I'm not a professional chef, but cooking is one thing that everyone across the world has to do, unless they are waited on hand and foot. I'm an experimenter in the kitchen. I try to develop better food theory and then throwing the ingredients together is easy. Alton Brown is another cooking guy who emphasizes food theory. I remember one show where he was discussing soups, and how you can make a chart with different types of ingredients in each column, then pick a couple from each column to go into the soup. That keeps the soup simple, but without sacrificing flavor. I remember one of the categories was "aromatics," like celery.

I will leave you with a tip for cooking rice, which some people just can't get right. I don't own a rice cooker, because it's so simple to do in a regular pot. Add 1 cup white rice and 2 1/2 cups water to the pot. Cook on medium heat WITHOUT THE LID until the water level is just below the surface of the rice (it looks like the hot springs in Yellowstone, with small bubbling holes in the surface). Remove the pan from heat, put the lid on it, and let it sit for 10-15 minutes. If there is still liquid, let it sit another 10 minutes. If there is still liquid after that, you used too much water or didn't cook it long enough. There should not have been a layer of liquid on top of the rice when you remove it from heat. Incidentally, this method works for brown rice also, but you need to add more water (at least 3 cups per cup of rice).

More Propaganda Bullshit

Yesterday I heard a linguistic commentator on NPR's Fresh Air talking about the whole "red state" "blue state" distinctions. The speaker was Geoff Nunberg, who wrote Going Nucular: Language, Politics, and Culture in Controversial Times. I'm not going to go into much detail about what he said, but there was one line that I really enjoyed, where he said that the "red vs. blue" distinction is a facile simplification, with pretty graphics, which is why the media picked up on it. He also mentioned how red has leftist/communist connotations, while blue has traditionally been the color of conservatives (as in bluebloods).

So with that introduction, allow me to rant a bit. I am disgusted -- nay, revolted -- of people saying things like "I live in a red state, so what can I do?" Or using phrases like "red state politics." This sort of talk revolts me because it is a facile simplification, exactly as Geoff Nunberg mentioned. I lived in both North Carolina and Texas, which are considered "red states" because they each have a considerable amount of rednecks (and, let's face it, only rednecks voted for Bush, even though some are only rednecks at heart). But even in Utah there are a few people who voted against Bush. In Europe, the United States is considered Bush country, even though about half of us never wanted the jackass to be president in the first place. Does that make this country a "red country"? There are no red or blue states. Unless you consider Massachusetts a red state, though I would generally consider it to be pinko (which, according to Geoff Nunberg, has both the connotations of wishy-washy beliefs as well as effeminacy). One thing that doesn't quite fit with the traditional blue=conservative view: Blue movies are pornography. Is that because they are in violation of blue laws? I don't consider pornography to be very conservative (unless the actors are having sex through a hole in a sheet, but does Orthodox Jewish pornography even exist?).

Almost worse than talking about red and blue states is the term "flyover states," to describe all the states that aren't east or west coast. The presumption there is that there's no point in even visiting somewhere that isn't New York or California. People who talk about "flyover states" probably include North Carolina in that category, even though it is on the east coast. I've experienced this sort of discrimination from people who ought to know better. One person only considered New England to be "east coast," as in when people talk about going to an "east coast school" meaning one of the Ivy League, not including places like the University of Georgia or NC State.

Words are such powerful things. It's sad that so few people pay attention to the words they choose. Usually, the only people with enough foresight to think before they speak are the same ones who are using their words for manipulation and subterfuge. And, dare I say it, mendacity. I picked up that word when I saw "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." Paul Newman kept ranting about mendacity, and Wikipedia had a choice quote from Maggie: What's that smell in this room? Didn't you notice it, Brick? Didn't you notice the powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room? (Brick is Paul Newman's character, and he's a bit fruity, which is not unexpected given that it's a Tennessee Williams play.) Whenever I read about rednecks trying to shove "Intelligent Design" down our throats, I catch a whiff of that powerful and obnoxious odor. Whenever I see a politician open his mouth, there it is again. Mendacity.

Another disgusting word which seems to have made it into American vocabulary is blog. Yuck. And I know I'm not the only one to think so. I've probably mentioned this before, so I don't want to stray too far into redundancy, but please don't refer to this website as a "blog" because it isn't one. Personal websites have been around since the beginning of the World Wide Web, and they weren't called "blogs" until this jerkoff named Dave Winer decided to coin the term and force it upon the world. Here's his short definition:

Based on that description, I'd say he considers most websites to be blogs. I protest. I don't want people to sully this website with that awful name. "Blog" sounds like the name of a caveman, like "Urg" or "Slub." I write in complete sentences, for the most part. I don't use chat shorthand like "r u going 2 the movies 2nite?" because it's stupid. If people have to spend their time deciphering gibberish, there's not much point to writing anything in the first place.

Can you tell I'm not having the best day? There's an evil woman here at work, and I've been forced to deal with her shenanigans. Power plays. Mendacity. And I am but a pawn / cog in the chessboard / machine. (Take your pick, whichever analogy works best for you.) Revenge fantasies are my only comfort, but I can't say them out loud because then I might get in trouble. Maybe I can do Mad-lib revenge fantasies. I wish this woman would fall in a pile of ___________(noun) and lose the use of her ____________ (noun). If only a pack of wild _________(plural noun) would chew off her ____________(noun), I would have a chance to be __________(adjective) again. (end of Mad-lib.) I was talking about this _________(nasty adjective) woman recently, and I noted that for me, you don't need to earn my respect, because you have respect by default. You have to earn my disrespect, and this woman has my well-earned disrespect. In general, I am a very forgiving person; but if I knew voodoo, there would be a hex on her.

Anyway, I realize this entry is pretty negative. Not every entry can be puppies and roses. There are many things in this world that make me happy, but Newton's law of Yin and Yang state that for every word of praise there is an equal and opposite word of criticism. Or something to that effect. Maybe next time I'll share a recipe for salsa from scratch (rather than the Insta-Salsa recipe with Prego).

Fidget Away

Awhile ago, I heard a piece on NPR about obesity and non-exercise body movement, such as pacing, fidgeting, crossing legs, etc. The original story, in January 1999, was titled Fidget More, Stay Slim (but unfortunately, the link is broken on NPR's website). Then today, in the NY Times, is an article about another similar study performed by the Mayo Clinic. The report was published in Science magazine back in January of this year, but for whatever reason, the NY Times decided to ignore it until May. NPR did cover the same story back in January, and fortunately that link is not broken.

For those too lazy to read any of the links (or if you're reading this in an email with no links), the conclusions were that 1) People who fidget can burn an extra 350 calories a day, and 2) Obesity does not cause people to fidget less; fidgeting prevents obesity. From the NY Times article:

I thought this was quite a revelation, back in 1999. I don't know why this story is back on the radar after a five year hiatus . . . Anyway, I've been trying to track down a cache of the synopsis from 1999, and Yahoo! has it (though Google was no help, this time):

Well, it sounds like the Mayo Clinic just did a more thorough study after the initial one. There are some significant differences, since the more recent study involves fat and thin people who all describe themselves as couch-potatoes, whereas for the first study all the participants were non-obese. I am lucky enough to have a copy of the Science magazine with the original (January 2005) study publication. It had some interesting data that I did not find in the other articles. One tidbit was that their term for fidgeting is NEAT, an acronym for Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. Another interesting fact was that both lean and obese people slept for the same amount of time (over 8 hours a day) though the lean people spent more time standing (about 2 hours more a day) while obese people spent that time sitting.

Dr. James Levine, head of the Mayo Clinic study, decided to install a treadmill at his desk, so he is constantly walking at 0.7 miles per hour while working. He has another treadmill beside the first, so his visitors can walk next to him while they're talking. Pretty nifty. I can't afford to have two treadmills (or even one) in my office, but of course it's all part of trying to have a more active lifestyle, just like people should take the stairs instead of the elevator whenever possible. I cringe whenever I see people using the elevator to go up or down a single floor.

Salsa recipe coming soon. I promise.