Month: August 2010

Keep it simple, stupid

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
Spice is nice.
Spice is nice.

It’s gonna be a long, fat winter if I’m already searching out new recipes in the first week of August. Step away from the skillet, lard-ass, drop the spatula, and keep your hands where I can see ’em.

Yesterday I test-drove a Kung Pao chicken recipe from NPR and it turned out pretty damn’ good for a first attempt, though stir-frying on a glass-top electric stove is far from ideal. Plus it gave me a chance to go shopping for stuff I don’t ordinarily have on hand, like Sichuan chiles, Sichuan peppercorns, rice wine, Chinkiang vinegar and what have you.

You might think a guy would have a tough time finding anything other than wafers and wine in Bibleburg. But we have a bunch of military types here, many of them wed to Asians, and thus there is no shortage of Asian grocery stores — among them the excellent Asian Pacific Market, housed in what once was the old Ampex headquarters off Highway 24. The chiles and peppercorns I got downtown at Savory Spice Shop, which is a place I’d like to run through someday with a wheelbarrow and someone else’s credit card.

Like many stir-fries, Kung Pao chicken is a simple dish, and I appreciate simplicity. It’s not always fun to spend hours in the kitchen for 15 minutes of eating. So here’s another easy one, from Martha Rose Shulman at The New York Times — a spinach omelet with Parmesan that she calls “the perfect one-dish meal.”

Leip’n lizards!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
Hey, whaddaya think you're looking at, pal?
Hey, whaddaya think you're looking at, pal?

More good news today for the Radio Shackstrong crowd.

First, in The New York Times, another former teammate has detailed “some of his own drug use, as well as the widespread cheating that he said went on as part of the Postal Service team,” all of it allegedly performed with the “knowledge and encouragement” of Texus Maximus his own bad self.

Second, at VeloNews.com, former Gerolsteiner honch’ Hans-Michael Holczer — who is pimping a book, “Guaranteed Positive” — charges that Levi Leipheimer was blood doping during the 2005 Tour de France. Holczer said he would have pulled Leipheimer from the race but feared losing his title sponsor, otherwise known as his meal ticket.

“I was caught between a moral obligation and a legal threat,” Holczer said. “After (Danilo Hondo’s positive) we were sitting on an economic landmine. I was facing total bankruptcy.”

Neither Big Tex nor Leapin’ Levi seems eager to discuss these latest allegations with the press. They know that when the phone rings, it’s not some hack calling to ask how nifty it feels to win a bike race, because they’re not doing much of that sort of thing these days. It’s either Juliet Macur, Jeff Novitzky or one of their lawyers, and who wants to chat with that lot?

Or it’s some executive veep for marketing over at The Shack calling to ask, “Say, remind me, can you, exactly why the fuck did we get into this sport again?”

• In other news: Gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes (R-Batshit) is getting plenty of attention following his dire warnings about the Hammer and Cycle transforming Mile High into Mao High. Uh, Dan — they’re laughing at you, not with you.

Yawn of the dead

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment

Shorter “Inception,” as (apparently) written by Tony Hayward and directed by George Romero: Leonardo DiCaprio agrees to make one energy company richer than another in order to get his dead old lady off his ass. Plus just like in real life, the end sucks. Two thumbs up! But I won’t tell you where.

The Trojan bicycle

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments

Dan Maes is challenging Tom Tancredo for the title of Craziest Coloradan, and he’s making a pretty good show of it.

Each B-cycle contains a dehydrated battalion of blue-helmeted slavemasters from the United Nations. Simply add fluoridated water and presto! One-world government!
Each B-cycle contains a dehydrated battalion of blue-helmeted slavemasters from the United Nations. Simply add fluoridated water and presto! One-world government!

According to The Denver Post, Maes told a campaign rally last weekend that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper — whom Maes hopes to face in the governor’s race — plans to use Trojan bicycles to deliver the unwary residents of Denver into the Marxist mitts of the United Nations.

“This is all very well-disguised, but it will be exposed,” Maes told about 50 supporters who showed up at a campaign rally last week in Centennial. “These aren’t just warm, fuzzy ideas from the mayor. These are very specific strategies that are dictated to us by this United Nations program that mayors have signed on to.”

Maes said later that he was referring to Denver’s membership in the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, an international association that promotes sustainable development. About half its 1,200 member communities are in the United States, according to The Post.

The smoking gun here apparently is Denver’s B-Cycle bike-sharing program, funded by private donors and grants, and Hickenlooper’s support for alternative modes of transportation, bicycling among them. Because nothing says socialism, atheism and one-world government like folks getting around by pushing two pedals instead of one.

• Late update: One of the systemwide sponsors of this commuting-for-commies scheme is Quiznos, a Denver-based sandwich chain — would you like fries with your Russian sub, comrade? — which also happens to be the title sponsor of the eight-day stage race Colorado is supposed to be getting next year. Arise, ye prisoners of starvation — you have nothing to lose but your chains. Just ask Andy Schleck.

The empty chamber

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

http://www.youtube.com/v/CVE72Ae82Tw&hl=en_US&fs=1

Here’s a fun story from The New Yorker about how the U.S. Senate works, or mostly doesn’t. Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, who was appointed to his seat last year and is already running in defense of it, contributes a few comments that make me wonder why in hell he wants to stay there.

“Sit and watch us for seven days — just watch the floor,” the freshman Democrat told George Packer. “You know what you’ll see happening? Nothing.”

I appreciate that it should be difficult to create and pass legislation to fix things and help people. But it should not be impossible. And lately, it is. This is not encouraging if you’re among the growing fraction of jobless Americans that Paul Krugman fears are in danger of becoming a permanent underclass as Congress defines prosperity down.