lollardfish

First - Take really cheap cut of bone-in pork shoulder from Italian grocery. Remove meat. Dice. Season.

Second - burn prosciutto attempting to baconify it in microwave. Discard.

Third - Take out pancetta. Dice. Do not mention prosciutto incident.

Fourth - Remove casing from equal measures hot and mild sausage.

Fifth - Prepare finely diced celery, carrots, and onions. If finely dicing seems too Frenchy for you, roughly chop it. If roughly chopping seems like it might take too long to cook, put in food processor. Smile fiendishly.

Sixth - Make really big calpholon (tm) pan hot.

Seventh - Add, in sequence, pancetta, pork shoulder, then sausage. In each case let brown before adding next meat. Remember wisdom of Ann Burrell, "Brown food tastes good!" Add salt whenever the mood strikes.

Eighth - Add mirapois. Add garlic. Remember fennel but do not mention it lest more chopping be required. Add anchovy paste.

Ninth - Add rosemary, preferably from plant growing on front porch. Add red pepper flakes, disputing with wife all the time about amount of flakes. Know for a fact that either there will either be no trace of heat or it will be too hot for some of the family. Curse Minnesota palates.

Tenth - Mix. Wait. When wife suggests fennel, remark on her brilliance and watch her chop. Smile fiendishly.

Eleventh - Wait. Brown. Wait. Add salt. Or not. Wait. Brown. Wait.

Twelfth - Add cheap red wine and diced tomatoes until there's enough. Also stock. Get tired of writing down steps and note that it's all just waiting for awhile until the meat breaks down, then you get to taste and re-season, and we're not eating it until tomorrow, so hey, it's just twelve easy steps!

(Disclaimer - Reality has been adjusted for comic effect)

Medieval prof (and family friend) writing on medieval meat carving etiquette. Short and good fun.

This is a French cell-phone ad starting an actor with Down syndrome. He is, as a French advocacy group has commented, just a "citizen like any other." Apparently it's the 50th anniversary of the French discovery of the cause of Down Syndrome (by a Father LeJeune, hence not using Down syndrome as the phase). Also, I love the adjective "trisomique" (trisomic). I intend to start using it.

Article here.

h/t to neogrammarian.

Because I taught the Vinland Sagas last week, I thought I'd watch "Pathfinder" tonight. I gave up after 25 minutes. It's theoretically an action movie, but so slow, and so badly done, and so cliched, and so wrong in so many ways. However, it's apparently inspired by This movie, which people seem to think is good.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account - to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day - because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control - and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart - not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

Change the question. The old binaries were the questions of the Reagan era (pro and con). These are better questions.

The ground has shifted.

Most of the rest of the speech consisted of appeals to our history and touches of cliche, with a few interesting notes on foreign policy.

Nico slept in today until 7:00. I woke up and brought him into the bed, we snuggled. He snored. I was awake though, so eventually decided to get up and transferred him onto Shannon. As I walked by the foot of the bed, Nico sat up and smiled at me and clapped a little, then progressed into wide awake.

He did this yesterday too.

And he actually hasn't been sleeping on Shannon at all lately, but either falling asleep on me or (more usually) in his crib. This is a good thing. Except that it makes it harder on Shannon to settle him into naps.

On the very bright side, he's been playing with various alphabet toys this morning and trying to make every sound - this is a big advance.

This is post is worth at least 5000 words, according to the common calculus. I think a lot of those words are "yippee," and "whee" and "silly" and "stop that!" and the like.

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It's like having both kinds, country and western.

At about 3:00 in the morning on January 11th, 2007, my wife woke me up in the little house we had rented on the edge of Edina, Minnesota. She was calm and told me to stay calm as well, but her water had just broken. She had, in fact, made something of a mess and cleaned most of it up and gone to the bathroom before waking me. We called the doctor, assembled some things, threw the bed-clothes into the washer, and got ready to go. I woke up my mom around 4:00 with a phone call and then we headed to the hospital.

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Today is Nico's second birthday. I feel that he is both brand new in my life, yet has always been present with me. It's a happy day and I shall see if he wants to eat one of my cupcakes after nap-time.

He did this for about 15 minutes.