From our Food Goddess, TaMara:
As the weather warms up I find myself wandering the grocery aisles looking for fresh foods to cook with, not wanting any more root vegetables or winter squash. It can be challenging because I want fresh – not shipped from a thousand miles fresh. But I settle for what I can find, which are peppers and asparagus. The linguine calls for red and green peppers, but red, green, yellow and orange were all on sale, so I’m going with that in mine. It will make for a nice spring presentation. Add to that a bunch of tulips for the table and I’m in full Spring mode at my house. What are you doing to chase away the remnants of winter this weekend?
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On the board tonight:
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1. Linguine w/Garlic & Peppers
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2. Italian Asparagus
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3. Mixed berries & whipped cream
Recipes and shopping list at the link.
Sue
This is easy!
Pasta with fresh, local fruit (peaches, apples, whatever you have.)
Toasted pine nuts, pepitos, walnuts, pecans.
Dress with a bit of honey, and whatever fresh herbs you have!!
Dang… I’m hongry now.
CA Doc
Love sauteed peppers, olive oil, garlic and pasta. Adding chicken or italian saugage is nice too.
My favorite grocery started carrying a line of crushed frozen herbs called Dorot. You just pop a cube or two into your dish, no mincing or chopping. Really great stuff!
burnspbesq
I’m back from the game. All you Duke-haters, step right up and take your best shot.
The better team won tonight. Zona was unconscious in the second half.
mikej
@burnspbesq: on the one hand you had a university representing a fascist state, on the other tricky dick’s law school. I read a book instead of watching.
MattR
@burnspbesq: Derrick Williams made himself a few million dollars tonight. There is nothing you can do when you run into a buzzaw like that.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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I don’t understand why those pro-union, unreasonable-by-definition firebagger libruls want to hold President Obama’s comfortable shoes to the fire.
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burnspbesq
@mikej:
Hope you watched Florida – BYU. Apparently that was a hell of a game.
burnspbesq
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
Comfortable shoes?
Wow, you’re even more of an ass than I previously thought.
MikeJ
@burnspbesq: I’d always heard it with loose shoes, and that was enough to get Early Butz fired.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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Wow, you’re even more of an international tax attorney than I previously thought.
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Uncle Clarence Thomas
@MikeJ:
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Then you must hang out with racists. My comment concerns President Obama’s quote wherein he vowed to wear his comfortable shoes while walking in support of union members who were being treated unfairly.
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asiangrrlMN
@burnspbesq: Arizona was just unconscious in the second half. NO ONE was stopping them. I hoped you enjoyed yourself regardless.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
Because the lovely Valvida asked, I have been trying to dislodge a little anecdote about Donald Trump from my brain. Much of the 80s were a drug induced haze, so it’s taken a while, but this one came back to me during my nap this afternoon.
Mary Anne Trump (or Bitsy, as we used to call her) was a friend of mine from way back. We first met in-between the wars at some nightclub or another, where we were both on the prowl for eligible husbands. She caught a richer fish than me, I have to say, although I can’t complain.
Bitsy and I used to write to each other every week once we got married, and we’d always visit when there was a new baby or a christening or a funeral. I saw little Donnie get baptised – baldest, screamiest baby I’ve ever seen. He’d rip the dummy out of another baby’s mouth as soon as look at you, and then try to sell you his soiled nappy.
Bitsy and I didn’t see each other much during the sixties and seventies, what with all the moving around from tin-pot little African and South American nations that Keith and I did. International espionage is so hard on friendships.
Anyway, we got back in touch in the eighties, mainly by post again, but in about 1989 Bitsy wrote to me to tell me that she’d moved into Trump Tower to stay in Donnie’s place for a couple of months, and invited me to come visit.
Well, can I tell you that you have never seen anything like that apartment? It was like someone had paid Louis XIV to throw up all over a football field. Pink walls edged in gold leaf, gold tap fittings and smug pictures everywhere on the walls of Donald dressed up like Dionysus at a particularly drunken revel. It was a bit like living inside Liberace’s head.
Donnie and Ivana were feuding by that stage, of course. Bitsy told me that the fights had started almost from the beginning. I quite liked Ivana – she was a climber, of course, but quite lovely nonetheless.
It all came to a head one night at dinner. It was just the four of us seated at a dining table made for twenty. Donnie and Ivana were at either end, Bitsy and I in the middle, opposite each other, which was nice because we could chat and ignore the other two, who weren’t speaking anyway.
We’d just started on the Ossetra caviar when there was a yelp from Donnie like he’d been shot. We looked at him and saw that his eye was leaking black goo and he was clawing at it with his rubber-gloved fingers.
Ivana was sitting there grinning like a monkey with a spare handful of poo. She was holding her little bone caviar spoon in one hand and bending it back with the other. She flicked it and another spoonful arced along the table over our heads and hit Donnie right in the other eye, which kicked his head back and knocked his wig off, so it flapped behind his head like a dislodged fruit bat trying to get back into its tree.
He lurched out of his seat and headed for her with his arms outstretched, his hands clutching and his hairpiece flying, at which point she cackled like an extra on Charmed and let fly with a positive flurry of fish eggs. He kept trying to advance on her, but her aim was quite remarkable, and every time he got a few feet forward, she’d whop him in his face with another hit. When she ran out of caviar, she flung the spoon (getting him a good glancing blow on the ear that must have hurt like badly done buggery), then she just grabbed lemons out of a bowl on the table and pegged them at him.
The first one got him right in the middle of the forehead. The second and third ones got him right in the nuts, and he dropped onto the ground just behind me, wailing like three quarters of a cat, while Ivana followed up with the caviar bowl, a salt cellar and her mobile phone (which, if you remember what they were like in 1989, must have made quite a dent).
At that point, she stalked from the room and slammed the door.
When Bitsy and I finished our creme caramel, Donnie was slumped against the door burbling and crying that he just wanted his little Vanky-pops to love him and squeeze him and make him pay for doing the naughty things.
Bitsy and I had to step over him to get out.
Bitsy just sighed, and we went to see the premiere of Beethoven Romance by that nice Peter Martins at the Lincoln Centre, which was just lovely.
piratedan
@burnspbesq: very generous of you burns…. I can honestly say that many of us Zona fans have seen glimmers of what happened to your team in the second half, but not a sustained focused effort like that. I give credit to the coaching staff for instilling the belief in the players that they could play like that. I can’t remember the last time I ever saw a Duke team so dumbfounded on the floor. I’d like to give credit to the Wildcat players for doing that rather than blaming the Duke players for that change in momentum. Naturally, ymmv.
asiangrrlMN
@Sarah, Proud and Tall: Might I say that I just adore your stories? You are one Hades of a writer.
burnspbesq
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
Riiiiiiiight.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@asiangrrlMN: One Hades? Oh – still giving up swearing for Lent? I don’t think I’d last a day.
burnspbesq
@piratedan:
When a team shoots 63.9 percent from the floor against you in the second half, you just have to philosophical about it. We know we’re going to get every team’s 99th-percentile effort. Sometimes we get their 99th-percentile performance.
I don’t like seeing opposing teams’ fans storm the court when they beat us, but on the other hand it shows how much they value a win over us.
Better to be hated than irrelevant.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
@burnspbesq:
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I see. You are accusing not only me, but President Obama himself of black-on-black racism. I hereby award you the coveted Balloonbagger of the Week Award.
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asiangrrlMN
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people): Yes. It’s been really dingdang hard. And, I’ve slipped up many a times. Hail Marys and rosaries a’plenty for me.
Hades and Damascus figs.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@asiangrrlMN:
Thankyou, my dear. This blog summons up such memories, it all comes flowing out of me, like pills out of a Canadian-day-trip-pensioner’s purse.
You write very well too, and you seem lovely. Of course, as a Good Christian Woman I can’t support this candidacy of yours for the presidency.
I might have to hold my nose and vote for that Pawlenty man, as the least insane of the bunch.
JenJen
That recipe sounds delectable. And easy. Bookmarked for Sunday dinner!
Ija
@Sarah, Proud and Tall:
Seriously, even if all the front pagers in this blog start going all isolationist, I will still read the blog just for you. You should write a book. You’ve made my day :)
ETA: Wait, I just noticed you have your own blog.
JenJen
@Sarah, Proud and Tall: You’re freaking hilarious. And so is your blog. #winning #winning #winning
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
Anyone else see the Rachel Maddow report on blowout preventers? So the US govt commissioned a Norwegian group to do a forensic analysis of the BP oil disaster and blowout preventer. They found that the very design of the blowout preventer makes it likely to fail in its intended purpose when there’s a disaster that should trigger its use. In other words, the blowout preventer worked as designed but the design didn’t take into account some of the effects of the blowout that rendered the preventer useless (bent pipe). The preventer failed by inches. One of their conclusions is that there should be a redesign of blowout preventer systems. So, if the BP situation recurred with a different oil company using the same preventer, we would likely get the same result. This hasn’t prevented the govt from issuing new drilling permits (some in 7000 feet of water) to oil companies basically using the same plan that BP had (one oil company granted a permit submitted a spill prevention plan dated March 2009 – it doesn’t take into account any of the lessons learned from the 2010 BP disaster and spill). It’s like they didn’t even read the report they commissioned. Unfuckingbelievable.
Yutsano
@mikej: Edward R. Murrow is a graduate of my alma mater. I shudder to think of what he thinks of the journalistic sins done in his name. At least they had the good sense to name the communications school after him.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
You’re all too kind.
I realize that what I am doing now counts as “blog whoring” but, in the true spirit of Balloon Juice, I would invite any of you who object to kiss my skinny old white ass.
piratedan
@burnspbesq: as a Carolina Alumni and living in the desert and following Arizona for the last 30 years, I can assure you that its fun to be relevant. I have to admit, with maturity comes perspective and while I am not a Duke fan, you have an admirable program, a once in a generation coach who recruits good kids and generally produces a sum that is greater than its parts. He uses the advantages that are provided and tends to be respectful when events go against him. I may not like Duke, but I sure as hell respect Duke.
Yutsano
@Sarah, Proud and Tall: I shall forgive all your past transgressions if you have a juicy Murrow story.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@Yutsano:
Heavens, that takes me back. Let me have a think, dear.
Yutsano
@Sarah, Proud and Tall: He was a wee bit of a cad, so I’m optimistic you have something good.
Platonicspoof
@Ija:
Sometimes they get us, coming or going.
Xenos
@Yutsano: Hey – do you handle FBAR cases? I think I have inadvertently gone out of compliance. What a PIA! Not you, the damn sinking $ is what did it to me.
Bruce S
So General Electric, which has become a huge financial giant, made $14 billion in profits last year and at tax time, Uncle Sam OWES GE $3.2 Billion…
http://titanicsailsatdawn.blogspot.com/2011/03/its-tax-time-and-government-owes.html
Corporate taxes as % of Fed Revenue have declined radically, income inequality has dramatically increased…so let’s impose austerity as the path to prosperity! I would ironically refer to those who have taken us down this path “Geniuses”, but – un-ironically – they just might be. They sure as hell know how to get what they want and keep the useful idiots fronting for them…
Valdivia
@Sarah, Proud and Tall:
The description of his place in nyc is exactly what I saw on a tv segment years ago right before he married the current one.
As always your story was perfect. Wailing like three quarters of cat, loves it!
jeffreyw
Is this thing on?
burnspbesq
@piratedan:
That’s all we can ask for. Good luck against Marquette tonight.
asiangrrlMN
@Sarah, Proud and Tall: Wait, why can’t you vote for me? I converted. I’m doing the Lent thing. I’ve repented my entire past. I have my first endorsement, and he’s fumigating cute! And, I’m now a member of Pawlenty’s church, so it’s like we’re one and the same. Ugh.
P.S. Can’t wait to hear your Murrow story.