HOUSE OF CARDS

The house of cards is tumbling down. It's taken too long for this house to fall, assembled from a pack of lies. It had no foundation , only madness to hold it up.
Yesterday, Joseph Biden, Democrat Senator from Delaware, said, "I have reached the tentative conclusion that a significant portion of this administration, maybe even including the vice president, believes that Iraq is lost. They have no answer to deal with how badly they screwed up it up. I am not being facetious now. There for the best thing to do is to keep it from totally collapsing on your watch and hand it off to the next guy-literally, not figuratively"
Please, Mr. Biden, tell us something we don't know. Still it's important that he said it and it is reported. This amidst the confusion of the reshuffling of the command structure of the army. The Generals who disagree with the presidents new policy or lack of it were jettisoned. We are waiting for the president to come up with his "New Way Forward". If this is as imaginative as they get with inspirational slogans, we are in real trouble. First we hear of a surge of 20,000 troops that will supposedly be one more shot to try to turn the situation around. This language brings to mind the loser mind frame of a recalcitrant heroin addict..."Just one last shot, that's all I need!"
The 20,000 troops don't exist and never will according to the latest Pentagon report.
They are resigned to a relatively small number of troops, between one and five brigades bringing the number more to 9,000. The Pentagon says there are few other options left to signal US determination in Iraq.
Who supports the escalation, let alone the war anymore? In an ABC News Survey released today, 33 of the Senators who voted for the war, now say that it was a mistake based on faulty information. Five Senators, including tthree Republicans say that the information was so faulty that it should never have been brought to a vote!
And of course there is the American Public of whom only 39% have any support for the war now.
Most telling is the mounting opposition in the top eschelon of the Republican Party as Trent Lott, the #2 ranking Republican in the Senate, stated yesterday that he would oppose a troop increase. As the Minority whip, it is his job to bring the Republican Senators in line to the party's wishes and if they aren't going to have it, it won't fly with the Democrats.
There's a hurricane beginning to blow in Washington, and the House of Cards is beginning to shake and ratttle. It's gonna blow their shaky cardboard house right down!

A Class Act

The picture I was looking for today was of Keith Ellison shaking hands with Virgil Goode shortly after his swearing in ceremony yesterday. Yes, those books are Thomas Jeffersons copy of the Koran. Keith then sought out Mr. Goode and the handshake was recorded for posterity and televised. Then he invited him out for a cup of coffee. Has anyone heard Congressman Goodes' reaction to the possible appointment of the present American Ambassador to Iraq as the new United States Representative to the UN? He would be the top ranking Muslim in the American Government, and a Republican to boot!

Letter to Virgil Goode

Dear Representative Goode,
Tomorrow, Keith Ellison, the newly elected Democrat Muslim Representative from Wisconsin will be sworn in. As you have so wisely pointed out, he will be using a Koran instead of our Nations' Sacred Book, The Holy Bible. You have raised the warning cry about the dangers that this act could cause. The Nation has been alerted to this blasphemous, satanic act about to commited in the Sacred Halls of Congress!
Yet, he plans to go ahead claiming that America is a nation of religious tolerance and to add insult to injury, he plans to use a book that he claims was Thomas Jeffersons' personal copy of the Koran!
My mind boggles at the implications of this fact! Thomas Jefferson, the framer of the Declaration of Independance owned a Koran? He read the Satanic Verses contained within it's blood stained pages and still was allowed to write the docuument that our nation was founded on? This cannot be true and if it is, we must act accordingly.
The Declaration of Independance has to be scrutinized by the CIA or people from Dick Cheneys' staff to be sure that it contains no taint of Islamic Fundamentalistic Terror!
Could Jefferson have slipped coded references and messages that could be deciphered by Al Qaeda terrorist sleeper cells to inspire calls to action for the destruction of the Republic he "pretended" to support?
There is no time to wait, get the Pentagons Arab Translation team to work now if they are not being held already in Guantanamo because of the Satanic Knowlege they possess, or could possess.......
WAKE UP AMERICA!

Sincerely,
Mr. Microdot
A True Patriot!

SOFT ON CRIME!

In the last few days, I have read many blogs, articles and comments about Gerald Fords passing. I don't really want to write too much about the man. He was a moderate Republican, chosen by Nixon to erase the blight of the scandal plagued demagogic Spiro Agnew when he was forced to resign. He seemed to be a nice guy, but a real team player. He advanced the careers of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney...When Nixon resigned, he fell upward into the presidency. His first act was to pardon Nixon. The words, "Our national nightmare is over!" have been quoted over and over again in the pieces I have read. The consensus is that it was a good thing to spare America the trauma of Nixon being impeached.
I read in many other articles about the rising crime rate in America and the same people screaming to bring back the death penalty and how we are too soft on Crime.
Why the apparent double standard? Nixon violated our Constitution. He committed acts that were worthy of a dictator. His actions harmed America as a nation. Yet, he walked and was rehabilitated to the status of senior statesman...a honored sage figure who faded softly in the distance and had a State Funeral and his rather spiffy library in Yorba Linda, California.
I say this was a very bad example to career criminal presidents who might be following him. We have a serial constitutional rapist in the whitehouse who thinks that he can do what ever he wants and walk! Why? Because Gerald Ford was SOFT ON CRIME!

Bonne Annee 2007!

Bonne Annee tout le monde!
I'm working on my resolutions. I seem to have some of same ones every year. Take off a few kilos and most important, keep them off! Work less, earn more, but this time, I resolve to finish the Rev. Moon piece that I keep researching! I tried to keep politically involved in 2006, but 2007 means harder work for all of us.
Try to not lose my coherence when I lose my temper. I've met some very interesting people as result of the blogosphere and I value this new form of communication very much. I want to wish everyone a prosperous, healthy, productive year and hope we can all gain from each others knowlege and slowly bring the world a little more sanity
and have fun at the same time! Now it's time for our New Years Eve Party!!!!

THE GENERAL

Last night I saw my favorite film of all time, Buster Keatons' The General for the 13th time. I own a copy of it for petes sake, but when I saw that it was going to be shown on Arte, I had to watch it. It was the newly restored version with the new soundtrack performed by the Tokyo Symphony. I am like a little kid with this film, every time I see it , it is like I am seeing for the first time. Some parts are so familiar, but others are never as I remember them. When I talk about Buster Keaton and his work, I get emotional, I drive my friends nuts with my little obsession. So now it's your turn.


If you have never seent this movie, please give it a view. It is 80 years old this year and seen in the historical sense of the cinema, it is a breathtaking masterpiece. It's a story about the Civil War. Buster Keaton is the engineer of a railroad engine called The General in the South. War breaks out and a group of Northern soldiers infiltrate and steal The General so they can sabotage the rail lines for a strategic battle.

They kidnap Busters girl in the mix and Buster chases them in another engine. The results are a story that works as an adventure but as high silent comedy film art at the same time. The attention to detail is meticulous. The look of the film is as if Mathew Bradys' Civil War photographs began to move. The art of Keaton as a story teller and director is at its height. The framing of the scenes is forever inventive. The sheer bravado of the gags is mind boggling. So many of the physical gags are on the order of "get it right the first time or we die!". He stages a full blown battle scene at the finale.


Things really blow up! Keaton was in my mind, the greatest of the silent comics. He planned gags that were death defying. He was a little guy, but his stunts were almost super human! All of this without cracking a smile.
He was raised literally on stage in Vaudeville. His family's act consisted of an evolving sketch involving a drunken Irish family and he was an animated prop thrown about the stage. He learned how to take a fall when he was 4 year old. He started acting in silents with Fatty Arbuckle. He learned how films were made, how cameras worked, how to cut and edit and direct. For a few years, he was really successful. His classic period included films like Our Hospitality, The Navigator, The Three Ages of Man, Sherlock Jr., The Projectionist, One Week, The Playhouse and Cops. He was given free rein to make his films. Strangely enough, The General was badly recieved and the studio lost money on it. His marriage to the daughter of the Studio Head went sour. As his artistic freedom was curtailed, he began to drink. Talkies arrived and though he had a very distinctive gravely speaking voice, so much of his personality and skills revolved around silent films that he was a fish out of water. He ended up playing second fiddle to Jimmy Durante and doing other small roles. He ended up living in a trailer on the lot of the studio. Then years of obscurity, most of the copies of his great films were destroyed. It wasn't until the late 50's that a cache of the films were rediscovered and restored and looked at again with fresh eyes. In my opinion, his work was too sophisticated for the audiences of his time. He presented too much.
He worked again in the 60's. He appeared in Richard Lesters' A Funny Thing Happened on the Way To The Forum with Phil Silvers and Zero Mostel, but died in 1966. If you haven't seen his films, please take a look. You will not believe the physical gags in Cops, a truly hilarious film called the best short comedy ever made or the Technical tour de force of The Playhouse in which he plays every member of a stage company, the entire audience and an undisciplined chimpanzee. In one scene he is nine characters at the same time. This was an unprecedented experiment in film editing in 1921 which totally succeeds as great comedy.
As far as my 13th viewing of The General last night, I loved it, but I was a little disappointed with the new Tokyo Symphonic soundtrack. I missed the simplicity of the Robert Israel music I was familiar with.
Buster Keaton, Old Stoneface, the absolute greatest silent comic and filmaker of his time!

Frozen Fog World

Here are a few pictures of the landscape around here after a few days of freezing fog

and no wind. Every day the ice crystals got longer and longer and the land scape grew stranger and stranger.

This is a picture of the house and barn and pond after the sun finally came out.

Cows ominously emerge from the mists.

Fragil frost sculptures that disappeared minutes after the sun finally came out.
Today it was 60 farenheit
and the fog world was just a memory.
You can click on the pictures to enlarge them.

Kids, don't try this at home........

Yes, well the Christmas thing is over, we made it through Boxing Day, I have quite a few Brit friends who take it seriously! I gained a half kilo, but that's normal winter weight, nothing to get alarmed about....yet!
It's not for lack of trying, when ever I go anywhere, there are cookies, cakes, mulled wine...uhhh...chocolate. We are just as bad here. My wife bakes the cookies she has made every year since she was a little girl in Seattle. But to be in France at Christmas...to just go into the markets and see displays of everything you could ever imagine indulging yourself and lots of it,the over powering odor of truffles in a green grocer, the displays of foie gras and incredible carnivorous artistry in a charcuterie... then there is patisserie. In another life, I could have been either a charcutier or a patissier. I love to make complicated desserts. It's like a science project mixed with art. The classic dessert for a Christmas Feast here is a Buche de Noel...a Yule Log. It comes from the tradition of burning a huge log in the fireplace At Christmas through New Years to bring good luck, health and harvest.
The log now is a cake. It's traditionally a genoise which is rolled like a jelly roll and filled with a variety of fillings and decorated. Last year I did a jelly roll that was covered with swiss merinque and baked. It was decorated with marzipan leaves and mushrooms. This year I made a Mocha Mousse Buche. It is decorated with chocolate holly leaves which I made by covering real holly leaves with dark chocolate and putting them into the freezer until I was ready to peel the chocolate off and apply them to the cake.
Here's the procedure:

The cake: In a bowl, cream together 4 egg yolks and 1/3 cup sugar. Beat it for at least 4 or 5 minutes at medium speed. Then stir in 1/2 cup flour by hand. In another bowl, beat 3 egg whites until they are stiff, half way through the beating, add a tablespoon of sugar.
Melt 25 grams of butter and pour over the egg yolks and flour, then carefully fold in the beaten egg whites.
Have a baking sheet covered with a buttered sheet of parchment, at least 10"by12". Spread the batter evenly on the sheet no thicker than 1/2 inch. Then pop it into a hot oven (425 degrees) for about 15 minutes, keeping an eye on it so it doesn't color too much.
When it is done, flip the cake out with the paper on a flat surface, brush the back of the paper with a damp brush and wait 2 minutes. The paper will peel off perfectly.
Now, when it is cool, it is ready to fill.

The Mocha Mousse: Take 500 grams of butter (2 cups) out of the fridge and let it get soft for at least an hour. Put it into a mixing bowl and whip it at low speed for a few minutes to get it airy and soft and light.
Make an uncooked batch of French meringue: whip 3 egg whites stiff, halfway through the whipping add a tablespoon of sugar.
When the whites are stiff, fold in by hand 1/3 cup of granulated sugar and 1/2 cup of powdered sugar.
Too the whipped butter add a few teaspoons of coffee extract. I made my own coffee extract by taking a little of my morning coffee and and adding a lot of decaf instant to it. It should be thick! Whip it into the butter.
Then fold the meringue into the butter by hand carefully. The butter has to be really soft for this to work. After a few minutes of gently mixing, voila, the mousse is finished.



Assemble the cake:
You need some coffee syrup. This is simple, make a little simple sugar syrup by boiling say, 1/3 cup water and 1/3 cup sugar. When it cools, add more of your homebrewed coffee extract!
Brush the surface of the cake with the coffee syrup. Then spread 3/4 of the mousse over the surface. Roll the cake and refrigerate for a half hour.
Cut the ends off of the cake to make them nice and even. You can use these ends as branches on the log. Spread the remainder of the mousse over the outside of the cake.
You could use a pastry bag with a star shaped nozzle, I used a spatula then textured it with a fork to simulate bark.
Then it's time for magic. If you are crafty, you could make swiss meringue mushrooms or little decorations of marzipan. This year, I opted for simplicity, I made the dark chocolate holly leaves and put a little plastic traditional elf with an axe on top, then dusted it with powdered sugar.
Refrigerate, it's best if refrigerated overnight.
I know some of you are getting congestive heart failure just reading this recipe, but this is something you do once a year. Eat a slice, then go out and chop wood for a few hours...it works for me.

BAD ROBOT!

When the shiny pink and chrome brand new Cheneytron 2000 was unpacked by the gleeful neo cons and assembled for the first time, they waited excitedly as they flipped the power switch and the good old fashioned Soviet style tubes began to warm up and glow. After a few minutes o defillibrating itself, the massive Cheneytron 2000 turned forcefully and strode uunder its own power to fulfill its destiny.
It rumbled into the CIA offices and began to manufacture its custom made intelligence reports, carefully attending to each detail to assemble the intelligence into the alarming announcements that were scientifically designed to stir Americans in to a war frenzy. Its hypnotronic voice simulator which was designed to lull everyone within its range into dull eyed submission worked perfectly on the power crazed idiot son of the last Republican president. Together, the Cheneytron 2000 and his drone unit slave, Bush Jr. were going to go far. The neo cons were aquiver with uncontrollable merriment.
Soon the Cheneytron was seen everywhere, pronouncing that invading Iraq would be a cakewalk where our soldiers would be welcomed with flowers as liberators. Meanwhile, it was printing up and spitting out contracts and sub contracts to approved corporations that would share in the loot and divide up the oil revenues from this New American Century!
Unbeknownst to everyone who was watching the Cheneytron go about its tasks, tiny flaws had developed. There were dark smudge marks on the inside of the old style triode tubes. Some of the solderings had begun to over heat...the defillibration unit was making strange creaky sounds and emitting a tell tale noxious odor. The hypnotronic droning device began to slur and repeat itself in an endless loop of "We are about to turn the corner in Iraq!", "The terrorists are on the run...skawk...eeep!"
Only those in the closest proximity, the president, George Jr. among them were still affected by it.
In Febuary, last year, the Cheneytron had a major malfunction and shot an old man in the face. This incident was hushed up and there was even an attempt to show that it had real feelings, though we all know that the very efficient Cheneytron 2000 was designed to have no feelings.
The Cheneytron 2000 has a support staff of almost 100 aides and technicians, making it in effect it's own government department. Even now, it sits grumbling and creaking, emitting foul odors, skawking its same endless loop of doom and it pursues its program of BYOT! Build youu own threat! It is carefully sorting and assembling intelligence reports nad influenciing its rapidly shrinking circle of influence to puush for an attack against Iran. We are hearing the same drone, but scratchier and jerkier about how it can't fail, the Iranian people would welcome us....
Somebody should check the warranty on this unit, send it back to the factory and givie it a lube job. Put it up on the rack and look att the transmission....What do you do with a bad machine?

SUPER BAD!

Super Soul Brother #1! James was a teen delinquent and when he got out of prison, he got into music. Still a teenager, he joined a gospel group and played organ.
His first big break as a singer came when during the course of his erratic carreer, Little Richard disappeared after his first meteoric hit singles and went into the ministry. James was hired to fill in the dates with Richards backup band...in fact, their were two versions of the Upsetters touring the little clubs in the South doing Little Richard Covers. The other singer who got his break because of Richards bizarre behavior was Otis Redding.
James honed his style, his dancing, his moves, his theatrical whiplash manipulation of the crowds with his band the Flames! The first time I ever saw James Brown was in the TAMI Awards movie in 1965! He did Please, Please, Please! with all the moves, breaking down, being escorted off the stage by one of the Flames with a cape on, then throwing down the cape, grabbing the mike and recharged with even more energy, goes back into the song. This was riveting, electrifying and sheer calculated showmanship of the highest level!
There are so many songs, It's a Mans World, Sex Machine, Cold Sweat, Licking Stick,
I Can't Stand Myself, I'll Go Crazy, I Feel Good, Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud!
The JB's! The fabulous horn section, Fred Wesley, the Collins Brothers, Bootsy and Catfish,,,He gave us so much. The man invented Funk and gave it a name! Can we take it to the bridge? HUH, Take it to the bridge!
You can say what you want about the man and his personal life, but till the day he died he was SUPER BAD!

The Simplest Things

Sometimes, the simplest things can be made so complicated by someone who doesn't quite get it!
A good example is onion soup. One of the simplest things in the world to make right, yet there are hundreds of arcane alchemical variations involving parmesan cheese, sherry wine, darkening agents, boullion cubes...okay, so you can throw in a bouliion cube.
When I apprenticed as a chef at the Hillcrest Hotel in Toledo back in 1969, it had pretensions of being a grand restaurant. I guess in Toledo, at that time, they really went the extra yard to present a fancy menu. Fresh sea food was flown in to Toledo Express Airport so we could feature fresh oysters and lobster. There was a glorious salad bar and dessert table. Chef Bob even did ice sculpture. I got to indulge my artistic talents by being free rein to design the salmon presentation.
But onion soup? Forget it, they didn't have a clue. Ususally it was a good excuse to send me out to the bar to get some sherry. I would come back with an open bottle, some would go into the soup and the rest would go into the assistant chef, Al. The resulting mess to my taste was inedible. Salty, bitter, over flavoured mix of artificial onion soup mix and rubbery burnt parmesan...I could never understand why any one would order this gunk.
Then my wife, Janet, made me real onion soup, explaining
to me that when she was really poor, this is what they ate. It was so good and I couldn't believe it was so simple!
Just take about three or four medium sized onions and cut them into fine rounds. Melt some good butter in a soup pot and saute the onions in the butter until they start getting color. Dust them with flour and add some butter if it seems dry. The flour, onions and butter has to carmelize a bit, this is the color of the soup and the carmelization releases the sweetness of the onions.
Add water and stir good to get everything unstuck from the bottom of the pot. Salt and Pepper to taste. If you wanted a little more flavor, you could add a boulion cube here, but you will be surprised at how much natural flavor the soup has already. Simmer for a half hour. Now for the part that turns it into an event. Ladle the soup into oven proof bowls and float a piece of toasted baguette on top. Cover that with grated Ementhal or Gruyere cheese and put under the broiler for a few minutes until the cheese melts and starts to turn brown.
Yes, wj, you could use spring onions if you wish...but once they are cooked all onions have a nutty sweetness.
Bon apetit, bien sur!

WISHES

It is Christmas Eve here in La Sechere, where as it seems to be the case in all of western Europe, we are blanketed in a thick freezing fog. Actually, it's a very peaceful fog. There is no traffic anywhere. The usual silence is even more profound because of the acoustic insulation the fog provides. The trees area covered with ice crystals. Everything dissolves into a white vagueness.
I was out visiting neighbors earlier with my dog, J Edgar. I am full of cookies and tea. I spent a few hours splitting and sawing wood...a seemingly never ending task, but I am getting to the end of the log pile.
I check out what is going on in the rest of the world and I am very happy to be wrapped in this silent whiteness. No last minute shopping because there is no where to shop.
We are going to have a nice quiet dinner here tonight. Janet is doing something extraordinary with Foie gras. If you can imagine it, she is making a sort of Crumble with the fresh foie gras, pear slices and crushed hazelnuts on top for the crunch. Tomorrow we will have some friends over for dinner and we will have a traditional Perigourdine dinner of Confit de Canard, pommes de terre saute with cepes and I am making dessert. I am going to make a Mocha Buche de Noel. I make a Buche de Noel almost every year, I started doing it back in New York and though this one will be simple, it should be spectacular in its own way. I plan to take a few photos of the process and I will publish the recipe.
We have our tree up and J Edgar is finally cool with it. He was a little intimidated by it when we first plugged in the lights and acted kind of strangely for a few days.
If I had a Christmas wish for you, I would wish that your Christmas could be as peaceful as ours is here.
I hope we all are rested and centered to resume our fight to bring some kind of stability to the world. I wish all your blogging experiences help bring understanding to someone else. I hope my jokes are more coherent to the rest of world who reads them insttead of just making myself giggle.
I think that after Christmas is over this year, when the tinsel settles and we are back with reality in our faces, Post Holiday Depression is going to be the big driver in the political reality that Geoprge Bush faces. Remember, a few days ago, he told us all not to worry and go out and shop. On January 2nd, Americans will start worrying again and all those bills are going to start rolling in!
Merry Christmas to all the people who log into this page, May 2007 be a year of beginnings and luck and health for us all!

Featured Cheese! Epoisses

A new feature here at the brain police! Yes, the featured cheese...Today the spotlight is on Epoisses!
A cows milk cheese from Burgundy, soft silky texture with a remarkable scent. It has a complex technique. The milk is collected from cows which have grazed for three months on grass. It is one of the last cheeses made using the technique of coagulation. The young cheeses are washed daily with salt water and then daily with a rinse of salt water and marc de Bourgogne, (local high proof brandy).
This gives a powerful, rich flavor. The marc gives a woody sweetness to the pungent nutty flavor that intesifies as the cheese ripens. The piece pictured above is just about perfect. It is runny, yet still firm. This is a cheese to enjoy after a good meal. Many people think that a white wine goes well with it, I myself, think that a nice fruity red really unlocks the flavor of this cheese.
The cheese was first made by the Cistercian monks in the Abbaye of Citeaux in the heart of Burgundy. Supposedly it was one of Napoleons favorites. I discovered it just this year and now it is a special treat and we look for one that is perfect and will ripen at home!
A small quantity is exported to the United States, it probably is a bit pricey, but it is a real experience and an exciting addition to your plateau de fromage.

No Comment

One of my very favorite editorial cartoonists, Steve Bell from the Guardian Observer inventts the perfect word to sum up George Bush's new spin on the Iraq Debacle.

The Art of the Pizza

Tonight, I made a pizza. I make pizza at least once or twice a month. It's something we really like and I have never had a slice from a pizza joint here in France that was up to my very critical standards. When I was a kid in Detroit, we had a pizza place on Schoolcraft Road and Kentfield run by a old Italian man who had a brick oven. I was very choosy about the topping...pepperoni! The most memorable part of the pizza was the crust. Light, crispy and the edges were full of big bubbles and the bottom was dusted with semolina. I guess the place closed in the late 60's when the proprieter died. My buddy Mike who lived on the next block from the Pizza place opened his own chain of Pizza Boys in Detroit in the early 70's. I used to come up from Toledo and hang out with him once and a while and learned how to throw a pizza. He made pretty good pizza, but it was not the same....I have to admit that in Toledo, I never found a pizza that came even close to my standards and I gave everyone a chance to prove it!
I began to think that my pizza fantasy was just that...an idealized memory of a perfect pizza that never was. When I lived in New York in the East Village, a restaurant called Two Boots opened on Avenue A in tthe late 80's. Two Boots because it specialized in Cajun and Italian Cuisine. They specialized in Pizza! They made really good pizza and the secret was the crust. It was just like I had imagined I remembered it! Light, yet with a real bread taste, crispy and thin with the big bubbles in the edges. The sauce was great, the slice with coppola ham and roasted peppers became my favorite comfort food. They even opened up a Pizza joint across the street because it was so popular. They are still there, On Avenue A and East 3rd Street. Two Boots To Go, Pizza and video rentals all over under one roof! I had a few slices in March of this year and it's still as good!
So, in my quest to make the perfect pizza, I have been experimenting with the crust.
Slowly through trial and error and always imagining how I could get it better, I have finally figured out how to make the crust of my fantasies! I found that the most important ingredient is time!
Try this, it's so simple!
In a big bowl mix:
One packet of yeast
One cup of warm water
A cup and a half of flour
Use bread making flour, in America unbleached is the best...I use a variety called type 55 here and get it from a small flour mill in a near by village named Ayen.
So mix the yeast, water and flour together and cover the bowl with a towel and lut it in a moderately warm place for an hour.
The mixture after an hour will be foamy and spongy.
Into it mix...I use a wooden spoon...
1/8 cup olive oil
less than a teaspoon of salt
then I add another cup of flour...
I flour the work surface and turn the dough out on it and start to knead it, lightly flouring it until it stops being sticky to the touch. The trick is not to add any more flour than is neccessary. The dough should be very soft. Knead it for around 10 minutes. Then I form it into a ball, put it back into the bowl, cross the top with a sharp knife, recover it with the towel and put it back into the warmish place.
The forget about it until it is time to make the pizza. If you can give it 2 hours, that's pretty good! I usually start pizza dough after lunch.
When you make the pizza, I use semolina on the surface, I take the dough out of the bowl and the next secret is to handle it as little as possible! Since it has sat for so long, the dough has had time to form real gluten strands which give it amazing elasticity. If you dare, you can throw it like a pro. If you are a novice, no problem, just start letting gravity do the work, keeping the thickness of the dough even as you stretch it thinner and thinner. I always have more than I need and uuse the extra to make a little bread loaf...I braid it and put coarse salt over the top and bake it at the same time I do the pizza.
Do I have to tell you what to put on it? Tonight I had sauce that I froze last summer. A simple sauce with garlic and basil, then mozzarella cheese, thin slices of hot chorizo sausage, some emmenthal cheese, slices of ripe red pepper and then a nice sprinkling of parmesan.
Into a very hot oven for about 25 minutes, the bread takes a little longer!
The best slice in France!

A little black lump of fungus

Yes, one of those days. Too much to do, to think about and too many threads running through my brain. it was also a nice day to read other blogs and post on them. It seems everyday I check out a new link and find a new favorite. Blogging has really made a lot of people into writers. I wasn't very much of a writer until I grudgingly accepted emailing back in the late 90's. I still am not and I seem to be losing command of English as I speak and think more and more French. Sometimes I don't know the word in either language.
What did I do today? Woke at 7:30 and walked the dog, J Edgar, who rediscovered ice! This is his 2nd winter and last winter he was a little guy. Janet and I went into the Causse forest above Grange d'Ans to cut a scraggly juniper tree for Christmas. It was a nice outing a few kilometers away. It's such totally different country than here. The soil is red here and so is the sandstone. On the other side of the 704, the soil is grey and full of limestone rocks. The Causse itself is a limestone plateau with a thin layer of soil. The forest is composed mainly of scraggly oak trees that drive their roots deep into the rock. Because the soil is so poor, the oaks need help to get nutrients. They evolved a symbiotic relationship with a fungus which grows in the roots, the Black Truffle to accomplish this task. This area is one of the main zones for the black truffle and a lot of the privately owned areas are fenced and guarded.
A lot is still open and the truffle oaks are carefully watched by a few locals. The entire process, from finding them to the sale is a closely guarded history. There are a few markets in the area with a strict protocol and all sales are conducted privately in cash.
What an amazing lore of a small dirty black lump of fungus. If you haven't smelt one, you will never know what it is all about. To go into the little green grocer in Thenon at Christmas and open the door and be engulfed in the odor of truffles for sale in a little basket is a real sensory experience. If you are lucky enough to have a fresh truffle, you only need to put it in a bowl of fresh eggs over night to flavor the entire batch of eggs. A few slivers in a pate or terrine will change the entire flavor. How do they taste? How can you describe something that tastes like dirt would taste if it was delicious? Perhaps that is why only a little bit is needed and the imagination does the reat.
I have friends who trained their border collie to hunt truffles. In the old days, the peasants used pigs, but you would have to fight the pig for the truffle. There is a technique that involves going into the forest in the morning, when the suns rays are at a slant and watching carefully for the swarming of a small flying insect. The Truffle Fly. If you look carefully, you might see them swarming at the base of a tree, where they will burrow into the ground to lay their eggs in a truffle they have located by special fly powers!
My friends who have the border collie, have a business selling oaks and hazelnut trees which have been inoculated with truffle spores. This has been tried for many years but it takes exactly the right soil and climate. If you are successful, it might take 7 years to see the results. Supposedly in the USA, in Northern Texas and Oregon State, there is soil with the right chemistry and the climate is friendly enough. There is a group of researchers trying to accomplish this feat buut there are so many unknown and variables. So far, I have not heard of any one having any luck.
Here, there are many plantations of little oaks and hazelnuts, carefully fenced off as as investment in the future!

Condemned!

This afternoon in a courtroom in Tripoli, the 5 Bulgarian Nurses and one Palestinian doctor accused of deliberately infecting 500 children with AIDS were condemned to death. This verdict was reached in spite of international outrage and protest. They have been held for 7 years and torture was used to extract confessions out of them.
International medical and AIDS Research organizations have put forth definitive evidence that has proved that the defendants are innocent. In earlier posts, I listed the various studies by the Pasteur Institute in Paris which proved that the children were infected before the workers arrived in Libya as well as the variety of the virus as being a specific Northern African strain.
The general condition of the patients with accompanying hepatitis infections pointed directly to the hospitals faulty hygiene.
Protests today were lodged against the verdict by the French Foriegn Minister Douste-Blazy, The EU Justice Minister, Franco Frattini, the Government of Bulgaria, and Science groups all over the world.
The defense lawyer, Othman Bizanti was attacked outside the courtroom after announcing that he would appeal the decision.
This case is truly being used as an internal Libyan political ploy by Gadaffi who is extremely unpopular in the Bengazi region where the hospital is located. The charges are fueled by the xenophobic ignorance of the families of the victims who would rather blame outsiders than there own faulty medical system.
The only good thing that came from this decision today is that it brings world focus to an issue that has been gaining in the public eye. More people will learn the true facts of the case and demand that their government act to exert pressure on Libya.
To find out more details of the case and perhaps resources as to what you can do to make your self heard on this issue please check out the effect/measure blog link in the sidebar.

You Could Have Put My Picture On The Cover!

So after a week of wild voting on their blog site, Time Magazine ignores the results and decides that I am the person of the year! Well, that's one of the most stale jokes on the web already! It also is the lamest decision Time could make.
If you had been following their on line poll, the clear winner was Hugo Chavez! Second Place was Nancy Pelosi. Third was Mahmoud Ahmandinejad and tied for fourth were George Bush and Al Gore, I kid you not!

I like the idea of Chavez as man of the year. A brilliant player, kept his face in the spotlight, spoke his mind and never buckled to massive intimidation. He is beginning to be grudgingly albeit recognized as a force for good in Venezuela and will change the face of the South American political scene.
I have seen him in critical in depth interviews on BBC and he always came across as sincere and charismatic. I can see why the America of George Bush's Administration regards him as a threat. He represents the waning influence of American power in the Southern hemisphere and the rising of another world order to take its place.
I'm sure that Time would have gotten a lot of flack if it had listened to the voters.
Me, man of the year on Time Magazine, who would of thunk it?

War on Christmas? The real facts....

Bill O'Reilly didn't invent the war on Christmas. It wasn't started by a bunch of Godless Liberal Atheist activists trying to shove their Santanic agenda down your throat. The war on Christmas has historical basis....It started in 1607 in Holland!
The creeps who were trying to destroy Christmas weren't godless atheists either, they were the Calvinist Protestant Leaders of the Dutch Republic, who in their zealous efforts to stamp out "papist idolitry" and "Baal Worship" tried to ban the Feast of St. Nicholas. The feast of St. Nicholas was a Dutch Tradition. They claimed a special affection for him and cookies and candy and special treats were very much a part of the culture. It was a childrens festival and children occupied a very special place in Dutch Culture.
In 1607, Delft banned the sale of gingerbread men and Dordrecht succeeded in banning the festival altogether in 1657. In Amsterdam, the officials made the sale of special gifts and candies and idolotrous dolls illegal in 1657. Finally on December 4th, 1663, the magistrate finally published a proclamation banning the festival and imposing a 3 guilder fine for any violation. They even banned the traditional Speculoos cookies because they had figures stamped into them.
This was the straw that broke the camels back! No Sinter Klas? No Speculoos? No presents? Suddenly, Amsterdam had a riot of enraged 11 year olds on its hands. The children were encouraged by their parents to riot because the authorities would never dream of lifting a finger to harm the most precious possession of the Republic!
The results? Next year Sinter Klaas was back handing out presents and everybody had ginger bread and a good time.
The irony is that the Religious Right saw Christmas as a sinful holiday that had to be suppressed. 350 years later? You can't make these people happy! They were born to make us miserable and impose their stupid rules on us!
The picture is of the traditional Sinter Klaas and his helpers...the ones who punish bad children, The Black Peters......

I Hate Winter, Well....Not Really....

I hate the rapidly shrinking days...I love hot weather and hate cold hands! I love to bike and don't feel inspired to do it when the temperature starts to fall. I hate colds and runny noses, dressing in layers, I spend hours and hours splitting and cutting wood. then start worrying about the price of fuel oil and if there is enough insulation on the house. I don't even want to think about gaining weight because I can feel it creeping up on me every minute!
On the other hand, I am so gourmand and there are things that I would never think of eating in the summer that I crave in the winter. I say I hate the cold, but once I am outside, I usually am out all day long. I love taking long walks in the forest with J. Edgar, my dog. Once I start working, I forget the cold and by the end of the day, when I come in and light a fire, I have quite an appetite.
I love winter because I get to eat one of my very favorite things, Tartiflette! It's such a simple thing, potatoes and cheese and a few other things, but if my wife says that she is going to make tartiflette for dinner, she can ask me to do anything.
I like making it as well, but it is so much nicer if someone makes it for you. Tartiflette and a garlicky green salad is a complete meal.
The only thing that might make it difficult to make in the USA is finding Reblochon cheese, but I think that you could use a few other soft slightly fragrant cheeses to good advantage. I have seen tartiflette made with camembert. Try this:
You will need a baking dish, preferable glass or earthen ware. Butter it.
Boil 4 or 5 nice firm potatoes.
Mince an onion and sautee lightly in a little butter or oil
Add maybe 150 grams of diced smoked bacon (perhaps it would be good to boil the bacon first if it is American bacon to get rid of some of the fat and salt)
Let the bacon and onion sautee together for a few minutes
Thickly slice the potatoes and put a layer in the baking dish, then put half of the onion bacon mixture over them. Then repeat.
Pour a little cream over the top, then the reblochon in slices.
Then pour a small glass of dry white wine over the the mixture. Pour yourself a glass.
Bake in a hot oven...240 Centigrade or 400 Farenheit
The cheese will melt and brown on the top and begin to cook with the wine and the smell becomes indescribable!
This is one of my favorite things and one of the main things that makes winter bearable to me.....Okay, so I eat more chocolate than I normally would too....
Tatiflette! not to be confused with Mctartiflette!

Mctartiflette, available only in France...don't even ask..............