Roasted Eggplant Soup

1. Start with The Stock.

2. Cut 1 or 2 eggplants (~1.5 lbs) in half, brush with oil, 450 deg. oven 20 minutes w/cut side up. 1 large red pepper (halved & seeded), 1 spanish or vidalia onion (halved, not peeled), brush with oil, add to oven at that 20 minute mark. Continue to roast all for another 20 minutes. Peel the onion, chop all veggies coarsely & throw into the stock. (Leave the skin on the eggplant.)

3. Cook it all for an hour, partially covered, low simmer, with a fresh sprig of thyme. Process in batches in blender or processor, until you see fine speckles (not completely smooth)

4. serve with fresh croutons & a dollop of homemade garlic mayo (standard or vegan).

YUM. Eat it and be transported.

Adapted from The Greens veggie cookbook.

Soup Stock

onion, black beans, garlic, chard stems & leaves, carrots, 8 c water, sauteed & then simmered to reduce to 6 c water, then smooshed in a sieve, stock retained & veggies headed for Staten Island Landfill (if no composting garden nearby).

Bush v. Cheney

Sherlyn Gay Stolberg has drawn an interesting juxtaposition of the differences between Bush's brand-new reflective, candid mood and Cheney's unflagging bombast.

The difference in tone, friends and advisers say, reflects a split over Mr. Bush’s second-term foreign policy, which Mr. Cheney resisted as too dovish. It also reveals their divergent approaches to post-White House life. Mr. Bush, who is planning a public policy center in Dallas, is trying to shape his legacy by offering historians a glimpse of his thinking, while Mr. Cheney, primarily concerned about the terrorist threat, is setting the stage for a role as a standard-bearer for conservatives on national security.

I wonder whether Cheney will find many adherents in the post-Bush/Cheney era. From what I've gleaned in my readings of Conservative analysis, well, "I don't really think many Conservatives are hitching their wagon to your star, Dick."

Let's see: Spend a trillion dollars fighting a war for the past six years (a war whose very premise collapsed within the first few months), engender a heretofore unknown depth of hatred towards our country making it difficult to negotiate any issue to our advantage, give no-bid contracts in the most astounding act of cronyism and insider illegality ever to companies to which you have strong ties only to have it uncovered that they are defrauding our country and wasting our money and doing a really bad job in many cases, and spread our troops so thin and abuse their willingness to serve to such a degree that our military power is teetering. And, a full seven years after 9/11, only a miniscule percentage of incoming shipping containers are inspected, the Federal budget is so shot they're gonna have to take police back off the streets and defund Homeland Security programs, and that immensely sad gaping hole in my beloved downtown Manhattan, a site that was an engine of American competitiveness, profitability, and power -- well, today, seven years later, it is .... a sad gaping hole!

Pardon me for shouting, but WHAT DID ANY ACTION CHENEY TRUMPETED AND INFLUENCED HAVE TO DO WITH (1) CONSERVATIVISM, OR (2) NATIONAL SECURITY?

Most Chilling Quote of 2008 Award: Dick Cheney

In an exit interview, when asked to reflect back on the decisions of the Bush/Cheney administration (starting the war in Iraq, using waterboarding on detainees, holding persons not charged with any crime in Guantánamo, and I'd use up all the space on the World Wide Web if I attempted to complete my list), our soon to be Ex Veep said:

“I feel very good about what we did,” the vice president told The Washington Times, adding, “If I was faced with those circumstances again, I’d do exactly the same thing.”

Man on Wire!!

If you don't know who Philippe Petit is, you should. If you know who he is and why he became quite well known 24 years ago, but you have never seen the story of how the hell he accomplished his brilliant "art crime", and/or have never seen the footage of that remarkable morning, see Man On Wire.

Preferably see it on the big screen while you can if you live within feasible distance of the two (yes, only two) theaters in the country where it is now playing. In downtown Manhattan, it's playing thru Thurs 12/25 several times a day at the Sunshine Cinema, and then through the 1st there will be two showings per day around lunchtime. It's also playing at the Opera Plaza Cinema in San Francisco.

Philippe Petit is my hero and that is not a facile declaration. When it comes to naming heros, I heed the Grail Knight telling me, "Choose wisely." Petit is a special soul on earth at this time. I speak not only of the dazzling beauty of his artform and his sheer guts and willingness to live life instead of simply attempting to avoid death for a bunch of decades. I am in awe of the sheer poetry of his beauty, his speech, his bearing, his being.

Quote of the day: What's Hard

From an interview in May 2008, "Tom Waits True Confessions":

Q: What’s hard for you?

A: Mostly I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane. Math is hard. Reading a map. Following orders. Carpentry. Electronics. Plumbing. Remembering things correctly. Straight lines. Sheet rock. Finding a safety pin. Patience with others. Ordering in Chinese. Stereo instructions in German.