So now that we have finally got George to admit to being a "foodie" and join the occasional food blog train, I figure it's due time to put some more of my cooking experiment photos. Thanks, SlashFood.

Even though I was married to a Puerto Rican beauty, she never made tostones cause they are fried. The first time I had them, it was my first trip to PR and we were visiting her first boyfriend's family (Don't ask).

Here is a bowl of these toasty yummies.

Tostones are plantains that are fried until soft. Then are drained, smashed flat, and fried again til crisp.

This is one up close. Needless to say, it didn't make back to the bowl.

Well, it might have been in the teens this morning, but I did finally coax the Honda Civic back into life. I'm mobile again!

Yesterday I pulled out my abused battery (it is the original) and let it settle into my warm(?) kitchen. Instead of a cup of hot Ovaltine, I hooked up an easy slow trickle charge to warm up it's cells.

Yes, I talked with the battery, just like it was a plant. (What could it hurt? Besides I was having cabin fever.) I apoligized for cranking and cranking and cranking and ... You get the idea, and not feeding any electrons back or warming it up.

I charmed, I pleaded, I begged. It was like I was married again. Anyway by the time it had it's fill of amperage, it was dark and frosty and I had to go to the Lit for some poetry reading.

So this morning, after pouring half a can of starting fluid into the Honda's air intake, all the while talking to it, telling how I was working a collaboration venture out with the battery and it was a key catalyst in making it all work. She sputtered, and coughed and wanted to get going, and me inside whispering encouragement til finally....SHE RUNS! I poured some dry gas into the tank as a thank you and off to the races.

Sometimes, a little cajoling... even to inanimate objects, is all it really takes to change conditions to favor success.

Again in one of my alumni magazines this one in context with the Kansas vote to teach intelligent design creationism:

On the decision by the Cobb County, Georgia school district to put stickers on biology textbooks asserting that evolution is theory, not fact:

"This is not just a shot across the bow of modern scientific thought; it's a body blow right smack in the middle of our double helix."

---in the Seattle Times by Huntington F. Williard,
director of Duke's Institute for Genome Siences & Policy and Cleveland's former President of University Hospitals Research Institute and co-founder of Athersys.

We don't find many around here anymore that come up with quotes like that and are picked up nationally. That is if you don't include the blogs.

I've been stuck at home this morning because my poor 1999 Honda Civic wouldn't start in the single digit temperature. Apparently,it misses the nice garage that it used to live in for the last six years, and I had to reschedule a doctor's appointment and miss a few coffee visits because of it.

Now I'm not complaining about the cold. I CHOSE to live in Cleveland. I knew what I was getting into here. But maybe my landlords should pay attention to the next few pictures I took this morning around 11:00am.

I live in an upstairs apartment in a 1881 house in the historic neighborhood of Tremont. The apartment is a little chilly, I set the thermostat at 65 F.

This is a thermometer leaning against one of summer hats in the downstairs entryway of my apartment. "So what?" you ask. Let's look a little closer.

You may begin to notice the little red line in the middle of the thermometer. That is the mercury and it seems a little low on the scale. Let's see how low.

Yes folks, the temperature of my entryway near midday is 38 degrees F, around 3 degrees C. Yup, I have a refrigerator for a front door.

I don't blame my aging Civic for not wanting to get up this morning.

George and Wendy have made us aware of an article about old media surviving in a new media world. Meanwhile Jeff Hess has been making his opinions known about the venerable press. I just recently finished reading this article in an old Duke alumni magazine. (Remember I'm catching up on all my magazine reading.) It's very good analysis of the consolidation of newspapers and the difficult trade off of being a democratic institution and a free market corporation.

Thought I would add to the discussion.

MaryBeth Matthews writes a quotable paragraph about true innovation:

Cleveland's establishment gives some lip service to grass roots innovation, as long as that grass is growing on a lovely manicured suburban lawn, the kind that requires a caretaker and high maintenance for sustenance. But it is the grass that can be found growing between the cracks of the sidewalk, the tough, deep rooted species that can and will survive, and eventually create a new landscape.

Like Democracy Guy's call to arms,"Grassroots, Baby!"

I had the wonderful experience of weird noises coming from the car this week and went to my "favorite" Honda dealer, Rick Case, to get things checked out. Ended up I needed new brakes, so that blew my monthly budget, but I selected RC because they actually do good service and they advertised internet access in their waiting room.

I figure I can do some work to make up for the budget shortfall while they bang and clang on my 1999 baby. Ends up the access is not via Wifi, that's okay. I set up at one of the open computers and figure I'll warm up by blogging.

No go. They have Websense Enterprise security firewall and filtering, which is probably a good idea. However, they blocked WITB because it is a "message board or club." This is Big Brother territory. So I go to my webmail site to start working on coffee inquiries, but NO! "Web-based email is prohibited." Now how is a road warrior/business weinie supposed to make good use of their time without email?

Now I'm stuck in a f-in waiting room set up to sell me more Japanese plastic crap (almost like Walmart), with shit coffee (they were proud that they got it at such a cheap price and my coffee samples are in my trunk up on a lift in the "employees only" section), and all I have is a promise of internet access. The ol' bait and switch, without the switch.

All I could mumble when I paid the bill was that they shouldn't of done something like this to a blogger.

BTW the only website I could get to was BFD, so I signed up as a guest blogger, but the password was emailed and I couldn't get the email! WTF!

Over the turkey break, I was catching up on my Mega-megazine reading pile(s) and found this little sidebar. I thought it would be appropriate with the news of one of the biggest American loss of life incidents in Iraq.

"America has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when the conflict has been for principles to which she clings as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition. The fundamental maxims of her policy would change from liberty to force"

-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams 1821

Wise and prophetic from someone who was witness to the rise of idealism to nation formation. Wonder what JQA would say in his blog today?

Thoough I wasn't as impatient as my buddy the organic mechanic (maybe the meditation is helping there), I was more disappointed in the follow up from Ohio Citizen Action's Bucket Brigade kick off. The bucket brigade is a coordinated grassroot effort to monitor, document, and force industrial polluters to do whats right for the environment.

Like Adam said, Denny Larson, the guru of bucket air sampling, announced the cost of one of these things is $125. However, after Adam left, OCE director Sandy said they have a grant for them, the special nonchemical reactive lo-VOC $15 tedlar bags, and subsequent testing.

When asked, Denny Larson said the parts list is with OCE, but their website navigation sucks and it doesn't have it on there, neither the log sheets or the QA/QS procedures.

I looked on the web including Denny's website and found pretty much nothing. The freeqin treehuggers are as bad as the capitalists as far as holding information to themselves. You want grassroots, open source baby.

I finally found this instruction at Louisiana Bucket Brigade where Denny is on the board. It was not apparently available through navigation (invest in a freeqin' webdesigner, treehuggers!) but I found it using their built-in search engine. Still, no parts list though.

But, why the hell can't we just build them ourselves. Scott of Cupertino thought that was why I went, he was right. The valves are industrial grade and the "nose" is stainless steel. It's just a damn bucket with holes and not rocket science or brain surgery!

BTW I did do brain surgery for a while (surgical navigation systems) and for cool rocket science check out this video of menthos and diet coke.

I know all you gastric fans want to know what the Bagger did for Thanksgiving cooking. Well, first, my downstairs neighbor, Diane, had pity on me and invited me to her family in Niles, Ohio. Since I met many of her sisters when she moved in and they are Italian, I was sure I'd have a nice time and eat VERY well. Many thanks to her and her family's generosity.

Of course, I still had an 11 pound turkey in the frig. So Friday I made a galantine, which is a deboned stuffed bird, meat or fish. Obviously, this time it was a bird. I pretty much mangled the damn thing, ripping the skin in two and pretty much decimated the prime cuts of meat. Jacque Pepin made it LOOK so easy.

I stuffed with italian sausage meat, herbs and pistachio nuts and attempted to tie up the thing so it looked sort of like an animal that once had feathers. Below is what it looked like out of the oven and resting on a platter.

I was so tired afterwards I couldn't hold the camera phone still, so it looks a bit surreal. The skin and upper breast was slightly overdone because the sausage meat in the middle did not get to temperature in the allocated time. Anyway, here is what a slice of turkey galantine a la the Bagger looks like.

I must say that it was (and is delicious). Of course, I had all these bones, a carcass, and giblets left, so I made turkey stock... 3 quarts worth and all frozen in my freezer. Anybody want any?