Frisking The Dalai Lama

According to BadTux the TSA actually had the temerity to pat down the Dalai Lama when he was recently entering the country. He is actually here in Atlanta at Emory U.

I know I feel safer now that one of the most peaceful men on the planet has been shaken down for concealed weapons by the brown suits. They probably scored them a few 75 year old grandmothers the same day.

Still Punk

Still fighting this damn cold. It's a struggle to work up enough spit to do anything and there is mountains of stuff to do. That not withstanding I just went out and bought two flats of pansies for the beds at the end of the driveway. I was feeling poor last year so I didn't plant anything in the fall out there not anything in the spring and they have looked miserable for a year as a result. So I have the two beds to prepare, pansies to plant, lettuce and spinach to transplant in the greenhouse, chard to move to the garden, garden to finish cleaning up, the meager crop of sweet potatoes to dig and much, much more. That and sniffling, blowing my nose and coughing from post nasal drip. However, the weather is brilliant even though they have now declared that we are in minor drought conditions and no rain is forecast anywhere in the near term. The nights are cool and lots of sunshine during the day. It could be a lot worse.

Madam's Birthday

Today is Madam's birthday. A friend took her out to lunch and shopping and I am cooking one of her favorite meals tonight. Grilled lamb chops, grilled asparagus, potatoes Anna and for dessert an apple tart from just picked Georgia apples. She has had a thing for lamb chops since she was a kid and living with her parents for a few years in Greece so it is always her choice when asked what she wants as a special meal. She had a choice of creme caramel for dessert or the apple tart and she opted for the apples since a friend brought us a bag from their mountain trip this weekend.

I also cooked her a German dinner last night of bratwurst, sauerkraut(homemade) and steamed potatoes and the michbrot I made yesterday which turned out very nice. She might be from Texas but her German family from the hill country never lost their love of German food though they did add BBQ and TexMex into the mix and her good German dad could cook up some mean enchiladas and was no slouch around the BBQ either.

Seasonal Cold

I woke up this morning with a cold. Not serious yet but a bit of scratchy throat and stuffy head. Let's hope it gets no worse. I had plans for garden work but I am going to chill instead and do a little baking. I gave away one my daily loaves this week...well actually I traded it for a dozen eggs from my friends Kelly and Carmen down the road who have some chickens in the backyard. Good trade. So anyway, I need to bake the daily bread twice this week. I am also going to try to make 'michbrot' again. That's 'mixed bread' in German. Traditionally, Germans have used rye for their breads as rye grows better in the central European climate than wheat so the traditional German bread tends to be mostly rye...sometimes the heavy dark 100% rye or the lighter 'michbrot' which has wheat flour as well. I'm going for a 60% rye/40% wheat sourdough version and in order to make it traditionally, I am starting with a levain. Typically, a levain is a small piece of dough made from another small piece of dough left from the previous bake(a chef). The chef is mixed with a small amount of water and flour and left to ferment for 12 hours or so producing the levain which is then used to leaven the full bread recipe instead of or in addition to baker's yeast. Using a levain increases the flavor of bread immensely as the lactobacillus and various yeasts in it have a chance to produce many more flavor compounds than just baker's yeast alone. The secret to good bread is a long slow ferment. I've got my levain started using my sourdough starter instead of a piece of left over bread dough but the principle is the same.

So I am sniffing and baking today and not gardening which is a shame as it is a brilliant day.

World Food Day

Today marks World Food Day.  World Food Day, October 16th, is a worldwide event designed to increase awareness, understanding and informed,  year-around action to alleviate hunger.  Think about what you can do today or in the future to support the increase of local food economies and food sustainability. Just planting a small garden is a positive action as is support local farmers and farmer's markets.

Calling Tyranny By Its Name

There is an excellent piece over at Truthdig by Chris Hedges "How Democracy Dies: Lessons From a Master" where he uses the examples of the Greek playwright Aristophanes from plays such as The Wasps and Lysistrata to illustrate what is happening in today's America. It's a disturbing but worthwhile read. Here is a sample:

“The truth is, they want you, you see, to be poor,” Aristophanes wrote in his play “The Wasps.” “If you don’t know the reason, I’ll tell you. It’s to train you to know who your tamer is. Then, whenever he gives you a whistle and sets you against an opponent of his, you jump out and tear them to pieces.”
Our democracy, through years of war, theft and corruption, is also being diminished. But the example Aristophanes offers is not a hopeful one. He held up the same corruption to his fellow Greeks. He repeatedly chided them for not rising up and fighting back. He warned, ominously, that by the time most citizens awoke it would be too late. And he was right. The appearance of normality lulls us into a false hope and submission. Those who shout most loudly in defense of the ideals of the founding fathers, the sacredness of Constitution and the values of the Christian religion are those who most actively seek to subvert the principles they claim to champion. They hold up the icons and language of traditional patriotism, the rule of law and Christian charity to demolish the belief systems that give them cultural and political legitimacy. And those who should defend these beliefs are cowed and silent.

h/t Susie

The Lowdown On Organic Cage Free Eggs

The Cornucopia Institute has just come out with the results of a research project on organic free range eggs that, if you eat eggs and buy organic cage free eggs, you should study carefully. Included in the report is a scorecard by producer on how well they meet the standards. Of  course, the right answer is to get your eggs from a local producer that treats its chickens properly. You may be able to find one using one of these two links:

• www.eatwild.com
• www.localharvest.org

Eggs are a really good food and can be a part of everyone's healthy diet but it is important know the quality of the eggs you buy and eat. An egg-testing project performed by Mother Earth News in 2007 found there were significant differences in nutrition between factory-farmed and organically raised eggs.
Compared to official U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) nutrient data for commercial eggs, eggs from hens raised on pasture may contain:

• 1/3 less cholesterol
• 1/4 less saturated fat
• 2/3 more vitamin A
• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
• 3 times more vitamin E
• 7 times more beta carotene 

If you have ever been to Europe and eaten the eggs there, which are typically from small local producers you have seen the brilliant orange of the yolks compared to the pale yellow we see here in the states from the factory produced ones. Enough said.

P.S. As a bonus there is a report and scorecard on organic dairies at the Cornucopia website. You can also subscribe to their email newsletter if you are so inclined.

Lotsa Peppers

As I have mentioned it's garden cleanup time. The first possible frost date for this area is set at October 20th by the NWS and I like to have all the tender stuff out by no later than the end of October. Today I started on cleaning up some of the peppers. I hate to waste anything so the first step is to pick any late fruit. I started picking just the Carmen, Poblano and Jalapenos. I kept picking and I kept picking. I limited myself to only the red Carmens but I picked all but the smallest Poblano and Jalapeno. I filled up  both my garden baskets and had to stop. You can see the result in the picture as I have a kitchen table full of the little monkeys. There is nothing to do but spend the afternoon doing something with them and I have decided to make a pepper sauce. The combination of sweet red Carmen, mildly hot Poblano and the quite hot Jalapeno should make a sauce that won't blow your head off but have plenty of pepper flavor. I'm thinking it will need some garlic and for sweetness I'll use raisins. I've had a very nice pepper sauce that used raisins and it was delicious. I'll process it pretty fine and leave the pulp so it won't be a Tabasco like liquid but more of a thin paste. I refuse to let it all go to waste and I have plenty of canned roasted red peppers and pickled Jalapenos so there is really nothing left to do with them all. Since I didn't pick nearly all the peppers out there it looks like I'm going to have peppers at least until the first frost.  Truth be told I could just haul them all down to the food bank and be done with them but I feel the need to preserve them myself. There is my afternoon all planned out. Madam is going to freak when she sees the pile of peppers on the table but maybe I will have put a dent in them before she gets home. It is always hard to estimate but I would guess I'm going to wind up with about a gallon and a half, maybe two of pepper sauce and I've still got some of last year's on the shelf.

Update: Five and a half hours and it is done. I'll jar it up tomorrow. What am I going to do with 2 gallons of pepper sauce? Turned out nice and hot but not overly so.

Update 2: Turns out I have 22 pints of pepper sauce after all is said and done.

Lots of Lying Goin' On

The crazy right learned something important during the Kerry campaign for president. There is no downside for lying in television and radio ads and regardless of how full of lies and misinformation they will make an impact in an election. The swift boaters took an American war hero and turned him into a lying traitor and all with lies and they did so with impunity.

Well it is happening once again. So far right wing groups have run some 60,052 ads  since the beginning of August. While many have been objectively proven to be just a bunch of distortion and lies they are making an impact. Greg Sargent has a partial list, just of the Chamber of Commerce and American Crossroads ads, and just on the Senate side.

Here's something important that's getting lost in the firefight over the money funding the ads by the U.S. Chamber and Karl Rove's groups: Many of the ads themselves have been debunked by independent fact checkers as false, grossly misleading, or marred with distortions....
Not only are the ads themselves getting widely debunked, but the justifications the groups are offering for the ad onslaught attacking Democrats (that liberals and labor do this too) are also demonstrably false or misleading. We're witnessing a massive disinformation campaign flooding airwaves across the country that could change the outcome of major races and shift the balance of power in Congress, funded by money from undisclosed sources, justified with still more falsehoods and disinformation.
Here's a partial list of debunked ads hitting Dems from the Chamber, and Rove's groups, Crossroads GPS and American Crossroads:
* A Chamber ad was yanked from two Pennsylvania TV stations after they determined its claim about Pennsylvania Senate Dem candidate Joe Sestak and Nancy Pelosi was false.
* A Crossroads GPS ad slamming Sestak over health care reform and Medicare was skewered by FactCheck.org for its "wild exaggeration" and dismissed as "badly misleading."
* A Crossroads GPS ad attacking California Senator Barbara Boxer for voting to cut Medicare spending by $500 billion was rated by Politifact as "barely true" and "seriously misleading."
* Two Chamber ads attacking Boxer for favoring freshwater fish over jobs were dismissed by Factcheck.org, though with some caveats, as follows: "Strictly speaking, both ads are untrue."
* Also in the above link, FactCheck.org slammed Crossroads GPS for making similiarly misleading claims about health reform in an ad targeting Kentucky Dem Senate candidate Jack Conway. FactCheck.org's conclusion: "Don't let Crossroads GPS steer you down the wrong road."
* An American Crossroads ad blasting Harry Reid with various claims about unemployment and the stimulus was dismissed by the Las Vegas Sun for "egregious" stretching of the facts and "gross distortions."
* That same ad was also ripped by FactCheck.org for distorting the truth and by Politifact as "false."
* An American Crossroads ad hammering Ohio Dem Senate candidate Lee Fisher over job creation and tax hikes was skewered by the Cleveland Plain Dealer as "incomplete" and "mucked up with distortions."
* An ABC affiliate in Colorado found that a Crossroads GPS ad attacking Senator Michael Bennet made a misleading claim about Bennet on government spending and conflated opinion for fact on the stimulus.
And so on. Those are just Senate races; I may follow up with House races.

Once the poison, factual or not, is out there some damage has been done. People hear the ad but not the discrediting part. Once the lie is out there the damage is done. As I said above the right learned that lesson with the swift boat attacks on John Kerry. The sorry bit is that there is no downside for this kind of stuff. The right knows these ads do damage and they can run them with impunity. These folks are being funded by some very deep corporate and foreign pockets that are keenly interested in seeing any semblance of progressive politics stifled completely. It's a tragedy for America but they are going to win the day.

Owl Chatter

For the last couple of nights the owls have been especially talkative. There must be quite a gaggle of them out there judging by the conversation. Whowhohawho- who-who. Is it a question? Is it a comment? All of them are asking or saying pretty much the same thing but the tone is comforting and supportive and not threatening. If you go outside and stand in the trees you can sometimes feel them soar by on their silent wings and on rare occasions you can catch a glimpse of one sitting quietly and waiting for some small creature to make the mistake of becoming visible. Somehow it is very comforting to lay down to sleep with the owls chatting outside your window.