Lazy Sunday

Well, with the three-day weekend last week, there's very little to do around the house this weekend.  So I got a little special cut (fat trimmed) brisket at the store on Saturday.  I then dug out the recipes from my file of special meals and spent Sunday making rub, sauces, and smoking a brisket.  And every time I've ever done this, it has more than lived up to the claim of  being "one of the finest meals on the planet."  These recipes are from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame cookbook.  I think the link is to the correct edition but it's been years since I've had this book.

Anyway, start with making the rub.  Just takes a few minutes if you have the ingredients and I can't imagine being in a kitchen without these ingredients.

Cookie’s Dry Rub

2 tbl. sweet Hungarian paprika

1 tbl. garlic salt

1 tsp. freshly ground pepper

1 tsp. dried oregano

1 tsp. ground cumin

½ tsp. onion powder

¼ tsp. ground cayenne pepper

Use about 2 tbl. of this rub on a 6 lb. boneless rib roast or a brisket that you plan to smoke.

Set this aside and make the sauces.  The Cowboy Barbecue Sauce takes a fair bit longer than the Beer Mopping Sauce.

Cowboy Barbecue Sauce

2 tbl. bacon grease or vegetable oil

1 large onion, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 cup tomato catsup

1 cup bottled chili sauce (looks like catsup)

½ cup packed light brown sugar

½ cup lemon juice

2 tbl. Worcestershire sauce

Hot red pepper sauce to taste

Saute onion and garlic in oil.  Add everything but the hot sauce and simmer, stirring often to prevent sticking, until slightly thickened, about 45 minutes.  Add hot sauce to taste.

Cool, cover, refrigerate.  Use within 5 days.

We always have all the ingredients in the pantry.  This is perhaps the best of the tomato based grill or barbecue sauces I've ever tried.  Absolutely no comparison to that bottled stuff!!!

Beer Moppin’ Sauce

¼ cup vegetable oil

1 medium onion, chopped fine

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 12 oz. bottle of beer

1/3 cup honey

1/3 cup cider vinegar

2 tbl. Worcestershire sauce

2 tbl. prepared brown mustard

Cook onion and garlic in oil until softened, about 4 minutes.  Stir in the remaining ingredients, bring to a simmer, and continue cooking on low heat for about 10 minutes.

I usually need to make a run to the store for the beer.  I use beer that I would drink but not necessarily a premium brew that I might keep around if you know what I mean.

After you've made all these, get the brisket ready and the fire built  Here's the directions for smoking the meat:

How to Smoke a Brisket

1 9 lb. brisket, cut in half crosswise.  Rub all over with a dry rub (Cookie’s, for instance). Wrap in plastic and refrigerate overnight.  Bring to room temp.

Place a heatproof pan, approximately the same length and width as the roast (disposable aluminum foil pans work well), on one side of the bottom of a charcoal grill.  Fill the pan with 1 inch of water.  Bank charcoal on the empty side for a hot fire.

Place the meat over the pan and immediately cover the grill.  Sprinkle some (soaked in water) mesquite chips over the coals.  Smoke the meat until very tender, 6 or 7 hours.  About every 40 minutes, baste with mopping sauce and add more hot coals and mesquite chips.

Let stand 10 minutes, then carve in thin slices across the grain.  Serve with barbecue sauce.

No, I don't always get a 9-pound brisket.  There's only 2 adults and the Pirate Dogs and Klingon Kats.  And the denizens of the dining room floor only get the scraps.  But they love being in the kitchen while the sauces are simmering---they do pleasure the olfactory nerves.  

So add a few long-neck beers to sip, kick back and this is truly one of the best ways I know to enjoy a lazy summer Sunday.

Liberty and Revolution

I just read Ron Paul's manifesto from the last presidential campaign, The Revolution. (See the Shelfari widget to the right----->) 

I can admit to agreeing with much of the libertarian philosophy he espouses.  We do need to shrink government.  We need to end war.  We need to get back to the basics of the Constitution. We need to project our values in our diplomacy, not the "big stick" of Teddy Roosevelt and W. Some of the other policies, especially the economic ones like reverting to the gold standard, I'd need to research and perhaps listen to thoughtful (as opposed to cable news and talk radio) debate. 

But I have to take issue with one policy--returning education exclusively to local control.  I agree that our educational system is a disgrace.  Our children don't learn what is required for our survival and leadership in the 21st Century global theater.  But returning full control of education to the states without some federal guidelines would aggravate the problem, not solve it.

My experience of 10 years on a local school board leads me to this conclusion.  Taxpayers don't want their taxes to increase.  The more local, the more taxpayer influence.  Most people look to their own pocketbook first and prefer to keep their money there, not using it to help the neighborhood kids learn.  Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of wasteful spending in education, much of it caused by states and local districts floundering without firm objectives for achieving educational success.  There is no national definition of what constitutes this success, so local districts are left to figure it out for themselves and often waste funds pursuing this or that "latest" theory of pedagogy.  That's why I feel the federal government should set and enforce a baseline competency that needs to be attained in language, math, science, and social studies.  Teachers, students,and administrators would be evaluated on the attainment of these benchmarks.  Those schools that make it, hurray.  Those that don't should be reorganized, the teachers and administrators dismissed, and resources allocated to the schools to assist them in succeeding.  Parents need to take responsibility for sending their children to school ready to learn and parents need to work WITH educators in maintaining standards of scholarship and discipline, not fighting policies and procedures that enable learning to take place.

Only with national standards can we compete in education with countries such as Denmark, Sweden, and Japan.  And local taxpayers will feel less of a pinch when the funding comes from the vastly larger money pool of the national government.   

Sonia on the Sonar

Sorry---can't help myself.  Barack Obama has nominated the first Hispanic and fourth woman Supreme Court justice, Sonia Sotomayor of the federal bench in New York City.  Her credentials seem impressive (Princeton summa and editor of the Yale Law Review).  She has said things, as have we all, that can be taken out of context and used to attack her.  Does it surprise anyone this is happening?  It shouldn't, that's what our political system has become.

My point is that MSNBC should get Keith Olbermann to shut up.  On Tuesday, the Ed Show on that network had as a commentator on this nomination Tom Tancredo, late of Congress from Colorado and the Republican nomination chase.  If you don't know about him, a capsule description would be he's extremely anti-immigration.  So during KO's raving that passes for news/commentary on Wednesday, CNN had Tancredo commenting.  Keith mentioned it and said the former congressman had the credibility of a dead flounder, or words to that effect.  So why did his own network have him on the day before?  I agree that Tancredo is extreme and I totally disagree with him, but Keith, it's your network that first GAVE him a platform for his nonsense!!!!

Then there's Rush Limbaugh.  I wonder if it occurs to KO or his writers and producers that by mentioning this idiot on every show, they put him in front of an audience he might otherwise not reach---at least if the Countdown demographic is really somewhat intelligent, fairly liberal adults......

'Nough said.  Duck the bull and hope the political games end.  This woman has more varied legal experience than anyone presently on the Court.  And dummies don't get to graduate summa from Princeton.  I'll leave Yale out because it's the alma mater of W. but he didn't get to graduate school there.  Sonia appears to be a good appointment.  It'll beat summer reruns to see how the minority party tries to derail her.  There might be some smoking gun but I bet it won't be another Anita Hill.

Leny's Complaint

All right---I've had it.  Just when life was getting peaceful, the Nargle fitted with the ultra-warp drive, the Captain getting all of us together and planning the final subjugation of the Klingon Kats to our obviously superior canine minds------Auntie Bucksnort gets into dogs.

Now she's already got Esmerelda who drives us crazy because she just doesn't "get " dogginess, being the only dog-child raised by a cat lover with 2 cats.  Next, Buck went and rescued a male dog, sorta shepherd mix, Seymour.  She calls him Spike, but hell she calls Esmerelda, Lee.  She really needs some work on dog naming.

Anyway, since Auntie is now into doggie welfare, and knowing how my dad wanted a chihuahua, she haunted the pound and found one!!!  She actually parked there overnite on a Sunday so she'd be first in line and get this little male humpty machine.

  Damn thing ain't  got his cajones dropped and he's constantly trying to hump me!!!!  I can't get a lick on a new chip stick or chip turk without the little a-hole getting on my back!!!!  And poor Monquita Socorro.  

I was taking real good care of her but since the chihuahua entered the fray she's got no tail, only one foot, most of her stuffing gone!!!!  And poor Weets isn't so small and cute anymore because Bertie is such a dwarf.  Who the hell ever dreamed up this breed anyhow.  Damn thing thinks it can keep up with me does it??

If you look close, you'll see I've got the little sucker lifted off the ground!!!!  But I guess Weets is somewhat reconciled to the new beast.

And by the way,  while I've got the blog stage, I do NOT have any pit bull in me.  I am a SHARPRADOR and damn proud of it too---that's part Labrador Retriever and part Shar-Pei.  The big head is from the Lab, the jowls from the Sharpie side.  Gotta put all that extra skin somewhere!!!!  Besides I got that Sharpie blue-colored tongue.  So get with it---Sharpradors are kind, loyal, and loving---except when there's pain-in-the-rump Weimaraners next door who need a good barking at, then I can be meaner than hell!!!!  But mostly, I'm just Leny and now I'm done being Portnoy.  And if you don't get that reference, you need my nickname of "lame."  

LOL

Ranting

So it's like every time I go to the doctor there's something else wrong---high blood pressure, high glucose, overweight, arthritis, blah, blah, blah.  $200 for this test, oops what's your out-of-pocket, oh, we'll satisfy that with this test, don't need to give blood---bleeding dollars!!!!!!!  Take diabetes, they give you a stupid test, prescribe a monitor meter, tell you to test 3 X a day for 8 weeks, come back for a consult.  Insurance covers part of the meter but the freaking test strips are like $24.00 for 20 and that's at Wal-Mart!!!!!  And by the time of the consultation, the glucose count ain't even close to out-of-range (which is 120-140 before breakfast).  So it looks like the diabetes is now under control----of course, I didn't make any changes, just got a tattoo on my fingertip from the bloody tester.............Wonder what the doctor or nurses tests would have looked like if they'd been force fed a trillion milliliters of glucose suspended in syrup and had a blood glucose reading every hour for 4 hours.

So now my tri-glycerides and cholesterol are above normal range.  So we're looking at the diet.  I'm going to try some "heart smart" cereal for breakfast.  It's loaded with fiber and anti-oxidants.  Probably will taste like something scraped out of the Klingon Kats' litter box too.

Speaking of anti-oxidants, these are vitamins/minerals to limit the body's free radicals.  Tell you what, the way the news has been lately and some of the idiocy I've sen on t v and in those chain e-mails, we could use a whole lot more radicals freed!!!!

For instance, if capitalism is about winners and losers--a company either makes it or not, right?--why are we bailing out the losers??  But if government is about providing a minimum safety net for all citizens---no one should be allowed to starve or be illiterate in the richest country on the globe,right??-- how can they allow major employers to fail, causing the employees to lose their homes and ability to feed themselves and their families?  Ah, the paradox of capitalism in a liberal democracy. (Notice I won't get involved with health care here---it's pathetic enough that this country ranks below some third world states in child deaths per thousand population.)

So some Republican southern governors are actually advocating secession??  Now there's an apple that done fell several light-years from the tree.  If I recall my history, didn't the Republicans start as the party that elected some cat named Abe to PRESERVE THE UNION when the (same!!!) Southern governors wanted to secede...........

But the latest greatest is the flap over whether the CIA lied to Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives.  Maybe they just mis-informed her??  Who cares!!!!!  CIA is a government agency, Congress is a government agency, you-name-it in Washington and it's probably a government agency.  After the last 40 years---Viet-Nam, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Clinton, Iraq war----is there really anyone left who believes anything the government tells them without checking it out for themselves first??

Please give me back my bacon and eggs and sausage and free them radicals!!!!!!

Hunting

I normally don't like to post other people's work.  But after the Pirate Dogs saw this article in this month's Atlantic, they insisted rather forcefully.  So here you go:

MODERN PLAGUES JUNE 2009 ATLANTIC

How man’s best friend can help him evict his nastiest bedmate

by Pamela Paul

Dog Bites Bug

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THE APARTMENT, a vast three-bedroom on the Upper West Side, is the kind most New Yorkers would clamor to live in, were it not for its current occupants. Enter Radar the beagle, indifferent to the incongruity between the space and his mission. “Find the B’s,” instructs his handler, Carl Massicott of Advanced K9 Detectives, a service based in Milburn, Connecticut. The apartment’s owner, a father of two who works in finance, anxiously oversees the investigation. If Radar can pinpoint the source of the problem, which has plagued the master bedroom for nine months, targeted applications of pesticide and steam—as opposed to total fumigation—may yet save the day.

Pepe Peruyero teaches Nudie,  a Chinese crested terrier mix,  to paw where she finds bedbugs.  IMAGE CREDIT: ERIC ZAMORA

Then, worst fears are realized: Radar halts in front of the 5-year-old’s bedroom closet. Tupperware boxes containing the trappings of childhood are methodically withdrawn—a bin of Legos here, blocks there. Radar sniffs right by them, then decisively paws a shoebox. Sure enough, a single bedbug, plump with blood, is hunkered down within. “This one’s fed recently,” Massicott confirms, while the apartment owner runs his fingers through his hair, stricken. Radar, wagging his tail, accepts a bit of kibble as a reward.

Radar’s professionalism is a testament to Pepe Peruyero, owner of J & K Canine Academy in High Springs, Florida, who trained the dog for four months, then sold him to Advanced K9 for $9,500. (“That includes a week of handler training,” Peruyero explains. “It’s a package deal.”) Peruyero boasts that his program trains dogs to distinguish the legitimate threats of live bugs and eggs from the dead bugs, cast skins, hatched eggs, and fecal matter whose detection can prompt unnecessary pest bombing.

Bedbugs, largely eliminated from developed countries after World War II, are back, and harder to kill than ever. The less-than-quarter-inch bugs and their miniscule eggs live in mattresses, books, crevices in the floor. The little suckers (pun, alas, intended) can go more than a year without feeding. And unlike termites, which cluster in the thousands, bedbugs can make trouble in very small numbers; if a single female survives an extermination, she and her hatching eggs will reinfest the space. Pest-control companies consider bedbugs their biggest challenge. After the banning of DDT and other harsh pesticides, exterminators have had to rely on something called Integrated Pest Management, an “environmentally sensitive,” multipronged approach. They can, for example, bake bugs to death by warming a room to 130 degrees using industrial-strength heaters; use mega vacuum cleaners to suck the bugs out; or apply Cryonite, a carbon-dioxide snow that freezes the fluids in the insects’ cells, causing instant death.

Bedbug dogs don’t actually do anything to bedbugs. But if the idea is to use less pesticide, dogs may be your best bet. A controlled experiment by entomologists at the University of Florida found that dogs were 98 percent accurate in locating live bedbugs in hotel rooms. In a hotel or apartment building, dogs can determine which rooms require attention, avoiding the telltale stench of mass fumigation and saving thousands of dollars by treating only the affected rooms. (Not that the dogs are cheap: they typically cost about $325 an hour.) According to recent field research, one trained dog-and-handler team is more effective at detection than trained humans alone, and accomplishes the job in significantly less time.

“You see this?” says John Russell of New Jersey’s Action Termite & Pest Control, pointing into an overstuffed Manhattan closet where one of his dogs, a black Lab named Sara, has indicated a problem. “Clutter! That’s why bedbugs are so hard to find.” The apartment’s tenant, who has lived in his one-bedroom for 34 years, hovers nearby. When Sara noses one of the many jackets within, the tenant grabs it. “I’ll just throw it out,” he says, ushering the garment into the hallway.

Sara isn’t one of Peruyero’s dogs, but a graduate of a competing outfit, the Florida Canine Academy, which claims to have been the first to enter the bedbug business, and also certifies teams to detect bombs, drugs, money, weapons, termites, and arson. Florida Canine’s trainees, selected for their work ethic, drive, and desire to please, are taught to gesture with their nose, because, “dogs who give the paw,” the owner, Bill Whitstine, says scornfully, “can scratch furniture or end up spreading the bugs around.”

Rival trainers commonly accuse each other of failure to teach dogs to distinguish between live and dead bugs. The National Entomology Scent Detection Canine Association sprang up in 2006, partly in response to “false alerting” problems among bug-sniffing dogs. “We were really concerned that a few dogs improperly trained could tarnish the whole industry,” the president, J. Louis Witherington, told me. Still, disagreement persists about the best way to train and accredit bedbug dogs.

“A lot of programs have been successful training narcotic dogs, bomb dogs, arson dogs,” Peruyero says. “But it’s a totally different world with bedbug dogs. The only thing tougher is training dogs to detect melanoma.”

Pamela Paul is the author, most recently, of Parenting, Inc.

This article can also be found at the magazine's web site, a source for all kinds of well-written articles.

New Pirate Dog; Old Argument

Let's do the old argument first----There was a piece on BBC World News America this evening in which a gentleman from Oklahoma said the government was going to spend us to death and should just give the money directly to the people.  We've heard this since Paulson and W. started the TARP last year.  So, let's do the math---Let's say the government allocated $1-trillion to just be handed out to each person in the US.  That should really help us all out, right????  Well, $1-trillion divided by the population of the US, which according to the US Census Bureau population clock at about 6:00PM MDT on 5/14 stood at 306,429,317, is $3263.40 per person.  That'll go a long way to ending the downturn, won't it???  And I'm sure it would more than replace the income of those who lose their jobs as companies and local governments go bankrupt or default on payments.   

Now for the news-----We have adopted a new Pirate Dog.  Bertie, aka Roberto Fernando el toro perro, is a rescue from the local oxymoronic kill shelter.  I had wanted a chihuahua since moving here and this is as close as we have gotten, without paying a breeder.  El toro may have a little rat terrier mixed with the chihuahua but he's sooooo tiny he makes Weets look big.

In this picture he's lying in the hall next to a chip stick that's about as long as he is!!

He makes the percentage of male household members 30%.  The Captain has been slow to accept him, and Weets still hasn't. 

But the Captain is pretty mellow all the same as long as this newest crew member follows orders.

 The newcomer has bonded with First Mate Leny.  They even share chip turks and chip stix.  He's still a little too small to spend a lot of time in the Nargle however.

It's only been since Monday that Bertie joined us and he's already hassling Klingon Kats and learning the routines of life as a Pirate Dog!!!

Captain's Chronicles

Far more engaging than Sarah Conner is Emma the 'Roid and I'm sure the canine chronicles will be at least as amusing.

Emma 'Roid came into the house having been purchased from a NH lady who thought she was a breeder.  

The first time a vet looked at her, his comment was that she certainly had those "cock-a-poo knees."  Seems that one of the problems with the breed is a tendency for the rear legs to be weak and the knees all akimbo.  This certainly explains why 'Roid has to get a two-room running start to get up on one of the beds!!

She has dealt with that humiliation as well as the mental agony caused by an insensitive groomer who tried to take a pirate captain and make it too cute:

Yet through all the trials and tribulations, Emma perseveres.  Her accomplishments include supporting piracy around the globe with that fierce crew of Pirate Dogs whom she commands.  Note the looks of absolute intensity she projects from the bridge.

This is a dog who has guided her crew through the transformation from denizens of the canine seas to explorers of the galaxies, directing the transformation of the CPS Nargle into the CSS Nargle.  From her perch on the captain's chair she can survey the unfolding of space before her ship.

Truly, an inspiring figure in the canine pantheon and, despite all her accomplishments, still capable of begging for bone turks and looking as adorable as she can.........

All you Portuguese Water Dogs, eat your hearts out!!!!!!!!!!!!  All you Klingon Kats, be afraid!!!!!

Boldly or Barely

"Should we feel encouraged by our new awareness? Perhaps diminished? Suffice it to say humanity hasn’t given it a thought. Most of us, instead of looking outward, have spent the past 17 years sewing ourselves into an earthbound straitjacket of cell-phoned, instant-messaged, Internetted connectedness that has made the species more solipsistic than ever. Forget jihad and global warming; we may just talk ourselves to death. One almost wonders whether all our endless communication about nothing, this clinging together, isn’t some fearful, subconscious response to our new knowledge that other civilizations have got to be out there, perhaps some that can run celestial rings around us. Are we afraid of what we newly know? Is that why we give it no serious reflection?"

This is from an article in the May issue of The Atlantic magazine.  Pretty timely considering the release this second weekend in May of the newest movie in the Star Trek franchise.  I can't remember reading so much about a movie, except perhaps the hype preceding the Harry Potter movies (HBP July 15---can't wait!!!).  The  Star Trek movie is definitely worth the price of admission--a fascinating retake on the original enterprise.  On Tuesday May 12th the first six movies will be released on Blu-ray disc.  What a wonderful way to waste weekends......

Today's New York Times has joined the blitz about the new movie.  Maureen Dowd's column about saving journalism is worth the read if for no other reason than this picture:

There are two other articles in the paper about Star Trek and its influence on our culture.  One is by David Hadju, a professor at Columbia University that discusses the original series and its production---re-using sets, recycling tried and true tv themes.  Personally, I disagree with his article---while I can appreciate his position, I always felt the original series was aired to reflect the views of its creator, Gene Roddenberry, who seemed to believe in the struggle of mankind to allow its intrinsic nobility to shine forth.  This is the premise of the article by Dave Itzkoff in the same paper.  The original series and the new movie are both born of from the turbulence of their times.  And both offer the hope that civilization will prevail over the best efforts of man to destroy himself and his environment.  

So does it all comes down to survival as the "final frontier"?  Will we fulfill the challenge of the spoken introduction of the series and the last words of the movie: "to boldly go where no man has gone before" or will we merely meet the expectations of Darwin and attempt to survive as a species?

 

A Little Extra

Swine Flu, or Influenza A type H1N1 to be politically correct and not damage the pork market, is being touted as the latest pandemic and health threat to the entire population of the globe.  While it's still very early in the game, isn't the panic maybe just a little overblown, especially by the news media??

I checked the latest statistics on world population and reported cases of the viral infection around 8:30AM MDT Sunday May 3:

World Populaltion   6,777,401,238

Infections 787

That's .00001% of the population.

The US numbers are 306,344,633 total population with 160 cases---.00005%. 

I think that these numbers hardly justify the panic on the boob tube.  Now there is the case of the farmer in Alberta who gave the flu to his pigs.............So I guess the warning should be

NO SNEEZE NEAR THE STY!!!!!!!!! 

Sources---World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the US Census Bureau.

 These sites are updated frequently so the numbers I used change.

Death

Soquita Monquita is dead. 

 Her stuffing gone after multiple piercings of a Sharprador's teeth, the Monquita ascended to Penguini heaven atop the bookcase in the master bedroom.  

She has been replaced by Monquita Socorro, who is an almost identical twin.

Monquita Socorro has already endured a couple of major surgeries to preserve her stuffing.  But she seems to be enjoying her role as companion to a perhaps over-attentive and over-loving Sharprador.

So long live Monquita Socorro----and long may the needle and thread last!!!!!!!