There's something sensual in preparing a savory fall meal--the multilayered, rich smells of the kitchen, the low murmur of bubbling broth, the decadence that comes from consuming things one normally wouldn't eat.  To sum it up: Yum!

Yesterday morning, I rummaged through my Williams-Sonoma Complete Seasonal Cookbook in search of a recipe that would incorporate the fall vegetables now showing up in the market.  At a friend's house on Sunday, there was talk of a coq au vin recipe and so when I ran across "Coq au Vin with Autum Vegetables," it was a lock.  I had plenty of time in the afternoon, so I'd be able to tackle the complex recipe without feeling crunched for time.

The recipe goes in four stages: preparation of ingredients, browning the chicken, simmering the chicken in wine and stock, straining the broth and cooking the vegetables while keeping the chicken warm, then thickening the sauce and combining all the ingredients in the pot.  It took me about two and a half hours, start to finish, with lots of dishes washed along the way. 

But it was such a creative, wonderfully aromatic dish that it didn't really feel too much like work.  Plus, while the chicken was simmering, I got to sit with Dan and enjoy the evening.

I made the mistake of telling my trainer yesterday morning that I was preparing coq au vin for dinner, so he worked me extra hard...turns out that was a good thing.  When I put the recipe in my "recipe builder" calculator on www.myfooddiary.com, it calculated 900 calories per serving.  Eeep!  I'm not sure how accurate the calorie count is because a good portion of the sauce is not actually consumed with the chicken...but there are things in the dish like bacon grease, butter (Don't read this Sally!), and chicken skin, that would support the high level of saturated fats in the count.

Of course, these are balanced out by yummy, good for you veggies like rutabaga (thanks to my Mom for helping me find one by pointing me to a particular grocery store which will remain nameless in deference to family members), parsnip, carrot and turnip.  And then that's counterbalanced by the bottle of red wine that goes into the sauce.

Dan called late in the afternoon and said he wouldn't be needing dinner since he ate a late lunch at his charity golf game...so he smelled everything but didn't taste it yet.  Tonight, we're having leftovers so if he likes it, despite all the turnips and parsnips, it will become a staple entertaining recipe, I think.  Meanwhile, I'd better hit the gym and work extra hard today!

I miss Battlestar Gallactica.  The last episode aired earlier this year and SciFi Channel announced in March that the series was being renewed for 22 episodes.  (Yaay!)

And that those episodes would be airing in 2008.  (Boo!)

Dan and I were chatting about the show this weekend and I said I thought they'd made a tactical error (a la Jericho) when they chose to have such a long hiatus between seasons.  For those of you who missed it, Jericho is a CBS one-hour drama set in a post-apocalyptic middle America town.  The show is well-done and full of intrigue.  But there was a huge mid-season hiatus last year and it bled audience during the downtime.  CBS cancelled the show but the fans brought it back for at least a 7 episode run as a "mid-season" replacement.

(The fan story is quite fun...read about it here.)

So, in my angst, I moseyed on over to the Battlestar Gallactica website this morning.  (Yes, Virginia, you can mosey on the web.  Web-moseying happens when you page through things at a leisurely pace.  Web-browsing is slightly faster.  Web-surfing is...well, what happens late at night when you're really, really bored...but I digress.)  Imagine my happiness when I discovered that in a few short weeks (just after Thanksgiving, in fact) there will be a "two-hour event" called Battlestar Gallactica: Razor that sets up season four of BG.

Yaay!

Let's just hope that people are paying attention enough to watch it and launch into a new season with high viewer numbers!  In the meantime, I'll just have to be content with my download (today) of Season Three for my I-pod.  Long live Adama!

I debated this morning whether or not to blog about a certain blonde, right-wing idiot...and decided she's taking up enough space in the blogosphere.  Instead, a little update on the Greening of Laura.

Two major items this week...the arrival of my Sigg re-usable water bottles.  Dan and I used to go through a case of bottled water each week at a minimum.  By using filtered water from our faucets, we've been able to reduce that to a case of water twice a month.  With these new reusable bottles, I'll be off bottled water at the gym and we should be down to a case of water every month.  Breaking out my calculator, that translates to 864 fewer plastic bottles (minimum) per year just from lil' ol' us. 

I got the Sigg with the blue flowers for me and the modern dots one for Dan.  Now if I can just develop the habit of using the Sigg on trips, I'll be good.

Habit is a good segue to the other green topic of the week--reusable shopping bags.  I've got a plentiful stock now (7 reusable bags--five in my car and two in Dan's).  Of the six times I went shopping this week, I remembered to use the bags five times.  Of the five times I used the bags, I remembered to take them into the store exactly once.  And that was at the Farmer's Market this morning.  <sigh> 

I'm at least glad that I remembered to park the cart and get the bags sooner in the process of shopping.  Now if I can figure out a way to remind myself to take the bags into the store with me, life will be a bit easier.  In the meantime, I'm comforting myself with the thought that the extra trip to and from the car means more exercise.  That's a good thing, right?

My calculation on one use shopping bags avoided this week is that I avoided using 20 plastic bags.  In a year, at this rate, I will have saved 1,040 bags all by my lonesome.  It may be a small contribution, but it's a contribution I can easily make.  As long as I remember those darn bags.

It can't be a good week to be Dubya.  First the New York Times leaks reports revealing the Justice Department giving the administration a green light for torture.   Then Former President Jimmy Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner to boot,  goes on CNN and calls torture, well...torture.  The very next day, Al Gore, the guy Bush thought he defeated, proves again that he won't go away by winning a (you guessed it) Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change awareness.  (An issue Bush has done his darnedest to pooh-pooh.)

And then that dang Jimmy Carter goes on BBC (isn't that treason?...no wait, they're our allies) and launches into Dick Cheney calling him a "militant who avoided any service of his own in the military."  That's got to hit uncomfortably close to home.

The response from the White House to all this?

1. "This government does not torture people."  (Governments don't torture people, people torture people.)

2.  We're "happy" for all the Nobel Peace Prize winners. (I can hear the celebration from here.)

3.  We trot out Lynne Cheney to get nasty about President Carter on MSNBC. (Lynne Cheney?  Where's Dick?  Oh...yeah...undisclosed location.)

Some background on Carter's comments regarding Cheney.  Matt Frei of the BBC asked the former President for his opinion on the reported conflict between Condi Rice and Dick Cheney over how to proceed with North Korea.  You may recall that Israel conducted a strike in Syria, demolishing a warehouse that Israel maintains had nuclear material obtained from North Korea. 

Condi Rice wants to stay the diplomatic course.  Cheney is urging Bush to "reconsider diplomacy," which we all know means a forced march into war based on our experience with Iraq.  When Frei asked Carter about the conflict, Carter said, "As usual, Dick Cheney is wrong."  Then he threw in the (entirely accurate) description of Cheney noted above and praised Condi Rice for standing up against Cheney and urging diplomacy.

When asked about her response to Carter's comments, Lynne Cheney did the usual political two-step.  Don't talk about Carter's criticisms, criticize Carter.  So what did the current Vice President's wife say about the former President?  She called him "predictable" in "creating controversy."  She was amused by him. 

Hmmm.  I wish I was amused by her!  It certainly illustrates her arrogance that she is able to dismiss a former President, Nobel Peace Prize winner (among many others), successful peace negotiator, humanitarian, prolific author and man of faith as "predictable."  And it is typical of the adminstration to sidestep the issues and attack people.  Carter wasn't attacking Cheney, he was attacking his policies and his record.  Perhaps that's too "nuanced" for the current tribe in the White House.

Meanwhile, you gotta hand it to Carter for having the moxie to add "gadfly" to his list of post-presidency credentials.  And he's not just been gadfly to the Republicans.  He took aim at Clinton a few times, including his pardon of Marc Rich.  God bless Jimmy Carter!

First, the disclaimers:  I am not a lawyer.  I am not a soldier.  I am an idealist.  I am an American.

Important to state those at the top of this blog because I know the topic is both fraught with emotion and controversial (as it should be).  In my past life as a political commentator for The (Mighty) Signal in Santa Clarita, I wrote on the topic of torture when American treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib first hit the fan.  Here's a link to the story (The Signal doesn't publish Damn Dem's online, so you'll have to read it as one of my files).

As an idealist and an American citizen, I was horrified by Abu Ghraib, gratified by the resulting (if slow) action of Congress in the "McCain Amendment" prohibiting "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" of individuals detained by the U.S. government, and ultimately lulled into a state of assurance that we would no longer condone torture.

Recent developments have, I'm afraid, returned me to a state of dismay.  Last week, the New York Times revealed that while congress was debating the morality of our use of torture, the administration (and the administration's puppet Justice Department) was busily parsing the definition of torture to allow inclusion of tactics congress specifically excluded.  In secret memos, the Justice Department opined that CIA interrogation tactics including water-boarding, sleep deprivation and head slapping, would not violate the congressional standard.  In other words known as law.

I have heard folks on the other side of this debate, those who feel such tactics do not amount to torture, justify their reasoning by saying that our soldiers, contractors and even journalists have been subjected to much worse by the (ambiguous) enemy.  I understand the emotion behind that sentiment.  Revenge is excellent at overpowering reason.  But I learned on the playground that two wrongs don't make a right.  The rule holds, even at these levels.

Indeed, perhaps it's more important at these levels.

Others ask why we would restrict ourselves to morality when the enemy doesn't recognize any moral standards?  The answer lies in the definition of who we are and what we're fighting for.  As Americans, we have struggled to be a nation of freedom, openness and the rule of law.  We protect individual and human rights.

As to what we're fighting for?  If it's merely survival, then tit for tat makes sense...so do pre-emptive strikes.  But if we are truly fighting to preserve our way of life and to bring stability to the Middle East, then we cannot resort to the depravities of our enemies.

The second cause for dismay this week happened when the Supreme Court refused to hear a lawsuit brought by a German citizen who was mistakenly detained for five months in a CIA prison.  Turns out his detention was an "oops;" they thought they'd captured Khalid al-Masri (terrorist) but they'd really captured Khaled El-Masri, German vacationer.  Condi Rice admitted as much to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

But El-Masri's case against the government for unlawful detention will not see the light of day because the Supremes bought the administration's argument that doing so would violate the government's "secrecy privilege."  The suit had to be dismissed in order to "protect classified intelligence sources." 

Does anyone else find the administration's commitment to protecting "classified intelligence sources" conveniently fluid?  Bush wasn't so worried about protecting Valerie Plame.  But when we get the wrong guy and hold him illegally for five months, suddenly state secrets are sacrosanct.

It's enough to make a cynic out of an idealist. 

And we wonder why our reputation is in tatters.





 

I had a simply wonderful birthday weekend!  It started with a lazy Saturday morning at home followed by a trip to San Diego to see Mom.  We had a delicious pot-roast sandwich lunch and decided on a movie for the afternoon's activity...thus embarking on the theme for the birthday weekend.

Dan was a bit nervous when we entered the theater for what I'd advertised as a "romantic-comedy"--The Jane Austen Book Club (or, as our ticket stubs read: Jane A Boo).  The reason for his nervousness?  A movie theater chock-full of women.  By his last head count, there were only four men attending the movie and all with their wives.  Still, in the end, he gave it a C plus in recognition of appealing characters and good lines.

I thought the movie was entertaining, engaging and well-acted by an extraordinary ensemble cast.  The plot was a bit of a contrivance, but that befits a movie about people engaged in reading "all Jane, all the time."  The film was fun for Austen insiders but accessible to folks who, like me, have a passing acquaintance with Austen's books.

After breakfast with Mom's coffee group and 2nd breakfast at The Crest Cafe with just Mom, we headed up to play golf at Arrowood Golf Course in the Oceanside area.  It was a long round, but we had an enjoyable time and were paired with a very nice couple.

Since Dan had yesterday off, the movie fest continued after our golf hiatus, with the viewing of two very different films.  First was Eastern Promises, a serious and brutal look at inner workings of the Russian mafia in London.  The website calls it a "thriller" but for me it was more meditative than thrilling and thoroughly engaging throughout.  Viggo Mortensen was spot on in his role as was Ozzie Actress Naomi Watts--but it was Armin Mueller-Stahl's portrayal of Semyon as a charming, completely amoral "King" that made the film.

Since I have fairly eclectic tastes in movie genre, our next viewing was quite different fare, the zombie/sci-fi/game-based film Resident Evil-Extinction.  Dan was very sweet to go with me to this film as he is not a zombie movie fan like I am.  As zombie flicks go, this one was pretty good up until about the last 15 minutes of the film when the plot took a sharp left turn, completely losing any semblance of creditbility (which was thin to begin with).  Still it was worth seeing if you like zombies...even zombie-philes can wait for DVD though...and then it will be a rental.

Eastern Promises, on the other hand, will likely find a home in our DVD collection and not just because Viggo Mortensen has a naked knife fight.  As for Jane-A-Boo?  Well, Mom said she's going to buy it for her collection, so I'll watch it again in a girls' movie fest at a future date.

I sure am enjoying my Starbucks freebie iTunes!  Today's download was "Moon" by Emily King.  It's a beautiful, R&B/Soul song that I otherwise never would have found.  Very cool.

I've added a lot of new songs lately (and not just from our enormous CD library).  So I thought it would be fun to list my 10 favorite recent additions to the ol' iPod.

If you click on the song links, you'll hear samples of the songs.  The links that take you to last.fm.com require you to hit the "play" symbol underneath the title of the song.  The Amazon.com links just start playing.

"Moon"                              Emily King (see above for sample)

"I Told You So"                   Keith Urban

"Bless The Broken Road"     Rascal Flatts

"Face of a Faith"                  Nellie McKay

"Are You Alright?"                Lucinda Williams

"This One's for the Girls"      Martina McBride

"Gone"                               Matt Nathanson

"Over My Head"                  The Fray

"Breakable"                        Ingrid Michaelson

"Smile"                               Lily Allen

Phew!  That was work, building all those links.  Enjoy the samples!  It's pretty awesome that I can share snippets of songs with you, though.  Technology is great (I must add Dan's caveat: "When it works.")

Have a day lifted up by music.

What a delightful afternoon and evening yesterday!  My brother and sister-in-law, Dale and Candy, came up to check out the Chez Morefield and the Great Landscape Project of 2007 and to enjoy dinner and a nice long visit.  We chatted for a few hours before Dan got home, then enjoyed some yummy barbequed chicken, veggies and a caprese salad made with heirloom tomato.  Dale and Candy brought cheesecake (thanks for the recommendation, Donna!) and we noshed on that while watching the DVD from our 25th anniversary cruise.

It's so nice to be close enough to San Diego that we can easily see family and vice versa.  In the past, we've tended to hook up mostly at family events, holidays and whenver Dan and I made the long trek down from Santa Clarita.  Now it's hop in the car, pop in a couple of CD's and you're there before you get through all the songs you want to hear.

Speaking of songs you want to hear, I'm enjoying my morning latte for an added reason this month.  Starbucks has partnered with iTunes to offer a daily free download to coffee-loving patrons of the ubiquitous bistro.  Yesterday I downloaded "Night of the Iguana" by Joni Mitchell and today it was "I Told You So" by Keith Urban.  Nice perk (along with the percolated, magical elixir).

Freebies can be fun...and iTunes is doing a great job of marketing alongside the free downloads.  I haven't bought any additional tunes yet by suggested artists, but I am sure I will before the 30 days is up.  By then I should have 20 or so freebies.  Cool!

Now, to Madame Hillary.  After reading my blog yesterday, my brother-in-law, Ken Morefield, left me another thought provoking comment.  Specifically, he questioned this passage:

"I don't feel women (or men) should be 'penalized' for taking time off for family. On the other hand, there is a practical recognition that the time spent away from the business world is time where experience is missed, changes are completed. "

Ken asked: "So if it is a practical recognition that time away from work (for any legitimate reason) robs one of experience which is a valid criteria for promotion, why insist on saying that the person is being 'penalized'?"

To clarify my comments, I was attempting to draw a distinction between the discrimination that can take place because of one's decision to stay home with the kids (or otherwise get off the career track) and the actual consequences of that decision (falling behind in the market, developing less experience, etc.). 

It has been my experience that women of a child-bearing age are "suspect" in terms of advancement because of their potential for leaving the workplace to raise a family.  I have also seen women attempting to come back into the marketplace after raising their families who are viewed as lacking in commitment because they made different choices than others.  This is the type of mindset that I view as punative and wrong.

At the same time, it's important for men or women who make "outside the box" career choices to recognize the actual consequences, outlined above, that result from their decision.  And to recognize if they do come back into the corporate world that there's some uphill fighting to do.

What does this have to do with Hillary?  Well, it's my view that Hillary lacks certain types of experience due to her role as supporter to Bill's career.  Experience that she most likely would have acquired if she were attending to her own career.  And experience that I would prefer a President to have under her belt...leadership of a large organization or state; the practical experience of turning vision into reality and all the bumps along the way; practice at being the person in the place of ultimate accountability--in understanding where the "buck" stops.

I was not clear about this either as Ken said, "I also think it's strange to hear someone infer that Hillary Clinton's career arc has been hindered by time and effort she put into supporting her husbands. Would she be Senator of New York right now (or running for president), if not for her husband's career?

If anything, I think the opposite is true. To the extent that the time was invested in her husband's career, Hillary's time off from her own career has helped not hindered her."

I agree with Ken that Hillary's "career arc" was possibly aided by her time at Bill's side.  Otherwise, she might not have been Senator from New York.  On the other hand, we don't know what she might have been if the situation had been reversed and Bill had supported her political career.  Maybe she already would have been President.

My point was not that Hillary's career arc had been limited by her choices but that her experience had been limited in areas that make me uncomfortable in supporting her bid for the presidency.

The last point of clarification has to do with my "liberal hackles."  Ken questioned why they were being raised "when people of other political stripes" want the most experienced person possible for critical jobs.  Other people were not raising my political hackles...I was.  In noting that Hillary's choices had limited her in some ways, I found my knee-jerk liberal voice rising--"That's not fair."  So I set off exploring how legitimate those feelings were.

Thank you to Ken for his fine mind, his willingness to ask the tough questions--it helped me to clarify a few things in my own mind...and, I hope, made my position on Hillary more defined for other readers of this blog.

This "off-career-track, out-of-the-boxer" is signing off now to go do laundry!  Grateful for family, freebies and clarity.

I've been putting this blog off for a while, but it's time to tackle the topic of Hillary Clinton as candidate for President.  I come to this topic with mixed emotions.  I'll try to untangle them a bit here before I get to the details on Hillary. 

First off, I want to support Hillary.  I am gratified that there's a viable woman candidate for President in my lifetime.  I was impressed by Hillary's support of Bill during the Lewinsky scandal and his subsequent impeachment process.  Having read in detail about the attempts of the right to sink the Clinton presidency through innuendo, accuastions and downright lies, I am amazed she wanted to stay in politics both as a Senator and now, as President.  (Read Blinded by the Right by David Brock for a fascinating account of those wild, wooly days.)

Which leads me to the opposing thread in my yarn-ball reaction to Hillary's candidacy: the virulent hatred she seems to inspire in right wingers.  I've believed for several years that she can't win the Presidency because Clinton and Hillary haters will whip up the right and make it another season of the "politics of personal destruction."  I wouldn't be surprised if it's part of their strategy to lay low during the nomination process, and once Hillary's nominated, gin up the attacks they're no doubt amassing right now.  (Taking bets now on this prediction.)

However, Hillary is the front runner among Democrats right now...so my gut feelings are not an excuse for avoiding a reasoned discussion of her candidacy.  So here goes.

In terms of experience, Hillary is a bit on the light side.  It's true that she's been a Senator for seven years (time flies!), winning her re-election campaign with 67% of the vote.  And she has prior experience in running a legal aid clinic, sitting on boards for national committees, and being a partner in a law firm.  She certainly has experience on the "national stage" from her time as First Lady and as Senator.

She lacks two things on the experience side that I'd prefer in a President.  First, she does not have experience in leading or managing a complex business venture.  Second, she has spent much of her life in support of Bill's political career, only recently focusing on her own political career.  Neither of these things "disqualify" her from making a significant contribution or even from the Presidency...however, they do give me pause.

It's a bit awkward to write about that because it raises my liberal hackles.  I don't feel women (or men) should be "penalized" for taking time off for family.  On the other hand, there is a practical recognition that the time spent away from the business world is time where experience is missed, changes are completed.  If I wanted to go back in the working world, I'd have a huge gap in knowledge to make up just from a technological standpoint.  For Hillary, she's making up ground lost over nearly three decades of being supporter instead of leader.

And perhaps that lack of experience is why I was unimpressed by the positions she articulated on her website and in articles I reviewed.  The Senator is great at sound bites, facts and generalities.  But when you dig into her position papers, you a pastiche of these tools and no real, substantive positions.  She has the details down, but she lacks vision.  And vision is a key component of leadership.

As former Democratic candidate Tom Bradley said in today's LA Times, "I think she could be elected. That's not as critical as what she would do if she were elected. We know what Edwards would do. We know a little bit about what Obama would do. We certainly know in foreign policy what Joe Biden would do. But we don't know what Hillary would do, because she hasn't gotten down to the three or four things that she'd do."

I'm not sure I agree with Bradley that Hillary could be elected.  But I do agree with him that we don't have a clear view of what she would do as President.  So, for now, Hillary does not have my vote.  Which leads me back to that emotional conflict.  I want to support her.  I just can't (at least in the primaries).

So, at this point, I'm for John Edwards.  Obama's next up on the review list though...so that could change.  Stay tuned.

I just couldn't face the blogosphere yesterday--not after the Padres went down to the Rockies, 9-8, in the wild card playoff.  It was too depressing, too distressing and just plain wrong.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess to being a fair-weather, late-season fan.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm faithful to the Padres and the Chargers.  15 years of living in LA County could not erase a deep dislike of the Dodgers...I went to two games in 15 years and both times rooted for team the Dodgers were playing against.  Some rivalries are bred into the bone.

The only LA team I did support was the Lakers and that's because I didn't even like basketball until after moving to LA.  And, of course, they were easy to love when they were winning championships.  It helps to actually be at the playoffs...ah, those were the days.  It's messier now, harder to love the Lakers.  But hey, I was trained to be a sports fan in San Diego.  Hope springs eternal (and nearly always dies on the vine).

Having disclosed that I'm an end-of-season fan, it's fair for folks to take my opinion on the game with a huge grain of salt (and a margarita for those so inclined).  Still, I do have an opinon on the season ender--it was all down to 3 calls.

The first call, and I'm not just saying this because I'm a Padres (e-o-s) fan, was a good one.  In the seventh inning, Rockies Garret Aktins boomed a ball to left field.  Rockies fans said it was a homer.  The umpires ruled it a double.  And slow motion shots of the ball show its trajectory--it hit the yellow boundary and bounced into the field.  Good call.

After the Padres scored their go-ahead two runs at the top of the 13th inning, Dan turned to me and said, "Why did they pull Thatcher?"  The answer?  A blown call by Coach Bud Black who made the decision to go with Trevor Hoffman as the Padres "closer" despite Hoffman's failure to save a critical game just days before.  Part of being a coach is being "in the moment."  That means understanding that the knee jerk reaction (Trever Hoffman equals sure thing) isn't necessarily the right one.  Thatcher was throwing incredible stuff.  Clearly, as evidenced by the way the Rockies lit him up, Hoffman was not.

Then the final blown call of the night--Home Plate Umpire Tim McClelland's delayed decision that Matt Holliday safe.  Replays clearly show that Holliday didn't touch the plate...Catcher Michael Barrett blocked his access and should have been allowed to tag him out.  But instead, McClelland put his hands out wide, indicating Holliday safe and the ball trickled from Barrett's hand like a whisper of what might have been.

Do I think the Padres would have won if McClelland had called things differently at home?  Probably not.  The Rockies had Hoffman's number and Black seemed married to his decision at that point.  The bottom line is the Padres left too many men on base (29 by one blogger's count) and the Rockies were better with the bat.

It's just too bad that the season ended (for us) on a controversial call.  But hey...I'm a San Diego fan.  There's always next year, right?