http://nation.foxnews.com/president-obama/2012/01/23/boston-bruins-goalie-snubs-obama

Follow up on why Thomas skipped the White House celebration:

I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People.

This is being done at the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial level. This is in direct opposition to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers vision for the Federal government.

Because I believe this, today I exercised my right as a Free Citizen, and did not visit the White House. This was not about politics or party, as in my opinion both parties are responsible for the situation we are in as a country. This was about a choice I had to make as an INDIVIDUAL

Well said, Tim! Well said indeed.

Hat-Tip to my mother for posting the second link before I did…

When I was in grad-school (seems like years ago, just finished last month…) reading 50 books in 16 weeks was not a-typical.  (Well 50 might be hyperbolic, but probably 35 or 40 plus journal articles).  One thing I did not want to happen after graduation was for me to stop reading as frequently.  So this challenge, then, represents an opportunity to keep myself honest when it comes to reading.  And since we are encouraged to share our reading material with our students and colleagues–many of us are posting what we are reading and what we recently watched on our doors — it will also hopefully inspire me to read educational, mind enhancing rather than numbing material (and the same with movies).

I have not watched a single movie yet since January 1, 2012, so my movie list is short.  I figure I’ll use this year to watch movies that I’ve never seen, but should.  You know, movies like The Godfather or The Last of the Mohicans. 

I have several books that I have started, but I’ve only finished one so far since Christmas.  So here is my brief review:

FiftyFifty Book 1/50: Peter J. Kreeft, Catholic Christianity: A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefes based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Ignatius Press, 2001. pp. 425.

I bought this book a few years ago.  I have been interested in Catholicism since I was college.  Having been raised a Protestant in a non-denominational church, I’ve always been a bit perplexed by Catholicism, mostly out of ignorance I think.  This book, I hoped, would clear up much of my ignorance, and for the most part the book did just that.

Kreeft organizes his book into three parts.  Part I: Theology explores “What Catholics Believe,” going in depth into basic Catholic ideas about Faith, creation, mankind, Christ, the Holy Trinity, forgiveness, and heaven.  Part II: Morality offers insight into “how Catholics live.” It discusses the basis for morality, the central role of religion in understanding and defending/defining morality, and walks the reader through the Catholic Church’s official position on many of the most important social issues including abortion, contraception, capital punishment, and others.  Finally, it examines how the Church interprets and seeks to follow the Ten Commandments.  The final portion looks at Sacraments and Prayer, or “how Catholics Worship.” It offers a step-by-step look at what I believe is often most intimidating and difficult for Protestants to understand, things like Catholic liturgy, the Eucharist/ the idea of Transubstantiation, and penance/confession.

When looking at a book like this, I think it is also important to point out what the book “doesn’t do.” This book does not provide a history of the Catholic Church.  This is not a relentless list of popes and church councils.  It is also not a defense of Catholicism against Protestantism, nor is it an attack on Protestantism.  It is wholly and completely a simple, topic-by-topic of explanation of what Catholics believe and why the believe it.  In many, but not all, passages Kreeft offers in-text references to applicable passages in the Bible.  From a Protestant viewpoint, this is important given Sola Scriptura as what is usually given as an explanation for the major difference between Protestantism and Catholicism. (Kreeft does get a bit preachy in discussing sola scriptura, noting that it is, after all, the Catholic Church that provided leadership in terms of writing the Bible.  He basically contends–and I think from the way he wrote it that this is the Catholic position–that if one questions the Church one must therefore also question the Bible, since–in his view–without the Church there would be no Bible.)

This book is incredibly readable and useful for people who are curious about the tenants of the Catholic faith or, I suspect, folks who are considering converting or have recently converted.  It was easy to understand and logically organized.  It does a great job of explaining some of the tougher issues for Protestants like me to understand. What I found as I was reading this is that many of these tougher issues to understand–issues of Faith like transubstantiation or Papal Supremacy, and social issues like Catholic views on contraception–are often misunderstood.  It is this misunderstanding that,  I think, scares people more than anything else.  (I won’t divulge my own views on this, mostly because I still struggle to understand and to come to terms with these kinds of issues.) Kreeft’s book goes a long way to clearing up these misunderstandings and taking away the sense of Catholicism as some sort of “foreign other” from Protestant viewpoints.

Next up on my 50-50 reading list (I’m already half way through): Mark Levin’s Ameritopia.  

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/instapundit/main/~3/H99o_uGQd_M/

So when can we just start calling beer HEALTH FOOD?! That’s a healthy eating movement I can stick to.

That said, I have always made time to post about important stuff like food! (No seriously – scroll through my most recent posts which, sadly, quickly catch you up to 2009 or 2010). Now that I’m finished with grad school, maybe I will blog more. We’ll see.

But in the meantime, here are two more yummy recipes:

Roasted Sausages with Grapes and Creamy Polenta

Prior to this, I had never eaten a roasted grape.  Delicious! As with anything, roasting really brings out the sweetness in the grapes.  The sweet grapes with the creamy polenta and the spicy sausages are a prefect match.  This is a fairly easy recipe, too.  From Bon Appetit

Ingredients

1/2 cup medium-grind polenta (not instant)
3 large sprigs thyme, divided
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) unsalted butter
1 pound fresh hot or sweet Italian turkey or chicken sausages
1/3 cup low-salt chicken broth
1 pound seedless red grapes, cut into bunches with stems attached
1/4 cup chopped shallots
1/3 cup dry white wine
Flat-leaf parsley leaves

Preparation

Preheat oven to 450°. Stir polenta and 2 1/2 cups water in a medium microwave-safe bowl; add 1 thyme sprig and season with salt and pepper. Cover with a plate. Microwave for 4 minutes. Carefully remove plate and whisk polenta. Cover and microwave for 4 minutes longer. Repeat until polenta is soft, adding more water by 1/4-cupfuls if too thick, 10–12 minutes total, depending on strength of microwave. Stir in butter. Season to taste with salt and pepper; keep warm.

Meanwhile, heat a large cast-iron or ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat. Add sausages and fry until browned, turning occasionally, about 5 minutes. Add broth, remaining 2 thyme sprigs, grapes, and shallots to skillet; transfer to oven. Roast, turning grapes and sausages halfway through cooking time, until grapes begin to caramelize and sausages are cooked through and begin to burst, 12–15 minutes.

Spoon polenta into wide, shallow bowls. Arrange sausages and grapes over. Add wine to skillet; stir over high heat, scraping up browned bits. Drizzle pan sauce over sausages. Sprinkle with parsley.

We did the sausages last weekend.  This weekend, the new dish on the menu was Chicken with Kale and Freekeh-Lentil Pilaf.  I was not able to find Freekeh at our local grocers nor at the new International Food Market (that was a big let down…).  Instead I substituted Bulgur Wheat.  Again, a yummy recipe. The magazine makes it sound as if this is a quick recipe – don’t be fooled.  Read ahead, you will find that they assume you have already cooked the Bulgur and the lentils which, depending I guess on the type of lentil, can add as much as 45 minutes to an hour. Also from Bon Appetit:

At any rate, I thought I’d share one of my favorite classical Christmas pieces as a way of saying “Merry Christmas,” “Happy Holidays,” or “Best Wishes” to any readers.

Lyrics first in English, then in German:

Lo, how a rose e’er blooming
From tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lineage coming,
As men of old have sung.
It came, a flow’ret bright,
Amid the cold of winter,
When half-spent was the night.

Isaiah ’twas foretold it,
The rose I have in mind,
With Mary we behold it.
The Virgin mother kind.
To show God’s love aright
She bore to them a Savior,
When half-spent was the night.

__________

When I first moved out on my own, I got a roll top desk from my grandparents that they weren’t using any more.  While it is a nice desk, it’s not practical to use with a computer.  Later, I added another piece of hand-me-down furniture, this time from my wife’s (yes, wife’s!) late grandfather.  It was a solid wood desk, nice enough, but still not what I wanted.  I used it for two years and was still searching for the “perfect desk” as recently as last month.  The purchase of a new computer for my wife meant that she had to have a desk of her own (naturally, she wanted her grandfather’s) which meant that I was desk-less.  As I started to search again, I stumbled over a bookmark that I must have saved some time ago of a photographer her made her own desk out of a door a two sawhorses.  I decided this would be the easiest way to go.

Luckily, I had the an old door that I found in the attic (along with a tire rim–God knows that’s the natural place to store those).  I ordered a pair of trestle legs from Ikea, bought two cans of spray paint and a piece of plexiglass from Home Depot.  About  35 minutes of time went into it.  The final product is below:

While I confess that I am still sorting out where to put all the “junk” that accumulates in desk drawers, overall I love it.  It still hasn’t solved my problem of where to put my Levenger-style editor’s desk that my dad built for me a few years ago, but that’s a separate problem. Maybe a second, small door to create an “L” shape? I’m not sure… I’m afraid a second table might make my small home office look too cluttered.  I guess I could quit being lazy and just set the editor’s desk in place of my laptop when I need it.I also still need some cable-management for under the desk, as you can see in the pictures.  Finally, I want a reading chair to complete my office, but that’s a purchase for later.

Thoughts?

Hard to believe it has been nearly a year since I posted anything here.  August 2010 — clearly that was the last time I had ten minutes to post anything before Grad school started up for the year.  But that is done for now — no classes until this August.  I am 16 weeks of study away from finishing my MA in history.  What a relief. Also, I am now I fully tenured teacher.  No, that didn’t involve any rigorous reviews or exams.  Yes, I am relieved to know that I have relative job security.

At any rate, I’ve been in my new house for nearly a year.  (How long do I get to keep saying “new house?”)  This spring I was determined to put in a small kitchen garden.  My parents always had a garden when I was growing up, and the though of having vine-ripened, still-warm-from-the-sun tomatoes is just too much for me to resist.  I had done quite a bit of reading on lasagna gardening, but soon found that I was a bit behind the curve to truly commit to the process.  Patricia Lanza’s book (see link above) suggests that you can speed the process up by sprinkling some compost accelerator and covering in black plastic.  I did this, but did not find it overly successful.

Instead, my new kitchen garden is a hybrid lasagna garden.  First I marked out the size of the proposed beds.  Then I removed all the sod–it was mostly weeds–and began the layering process.  Lanza recommends laying a layer of newspaper or untreated cardboard first, however I skipped that step for this bed due to my lack of time.  Next I alternated layers of old leaves and layers of (mostly finished) compost from my compost bin. Finally, I sprinkled some compost starter pellets over the pile, watered the pile down, and covered with plastic. Three weeks later, some of the less-than-finished compost had broken down, but the leaves remained mostly intact.  They are primarily acting as a sort of mulch around the plants until the layers break down completely.  Hopefully by next year they will be good and composted.

One thing that was promising, though, was that even after just a few short weeks, the ground under the layers was A) filled with earthworms and B) very loose and easy to plant into.  Before I planted, I sprinkled a bit of dehydrated manure and three bags of purchased garden soil, just to add a covering over the leaves.

Over the weekend, my dad helped me cut the lumber and frame the beds. Both beds are 5×5 constructed out of pressure treated lumber.  There is some talk about the dangers of using the old pressure treated lumber; new stuff, though, is supposed to be safe.  I plan to add a few marigold’s around the inside perimeter to soak up any potential leaching from the lumber into the soil.

I left an approximately 4′x4′ path between each beds, and plan to keep the paths as grass, but we’ll see how they hold up.  Yesterday I finally planted–a bit later than I had wanted.  Right now, there are approximately 7 tomato plants, 5 pepper plants (multiple varieties of both peppers and tomatoes), one squash and one cucumber.  I will add a zucchini, a watermelon, and some marigolds over the next few days.  In each corner, I constructed a bamboo teepee for pole-beans.  A small kitchen garden indeed, but sufficient for me and my soon-to-be wife.

More photos and updates as they become available.

You will need:

• Approximately 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1 – 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup plain (or Italian seasoned) bread crumbs
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 tablespoon melted butter
• about 2 cups of diced tomatoes (any kind will do)
• 1 handful basil – chopped
• 1 clove garlic – pressed
• Olive oil

Put flour and egg in two seperate, shallow bowls.  Dredge 2 chicken breasts in flour, then in egg.  Place in shallow baking dish coated with non-stick spray.  In a small bowl combine bread crumbs, cheese, butter, salt, and pepper along with some fresh herbs or your favorite Italian herb mix.  Heap the bread crumb mixture on the chicken.  Loosely cover pan with foil  Bake for 10-15 minutes (depending on thickness of chicken).  Uncover and bake 5 more minutes to crisp up.

Meanwhile, combine tomatoes, basil, garlic and a drizzle of olive oil in a bowl.  Serve on top of chicken.

I also grilled some thin-cut baguette and heaped some of the tomato mixture on the toasts.  Delicious!

As a quick side dish, I roasted some fresh green beans I got from Beth at Mayfair Farms.  Toss the beans in olive oil, spread in a single layer on a baking sheet, then sprinkle with salt, pepper and parm.  The beans roasted in the time it took the chicken to cook.  They may not look beautiful in the picture, but they were scrumptious.

Now that’s what summer is all about!

Add a glass of Cotes du Rhone wine and you’re set!

That’s all for tonight.  Somewhere on one of these channel’s is some mindless show for me to watch.  Have a good evening.