Saviolo
Saviolo's JournalSpicy fermented cabbage and carrot slaw (vegan!)
So, this recipe comes out a little bit like kimchi, but it's vegan (which kimchi is usually not!). It's dead easy, and hubby used it at his restaurant as a garnish for a plate of taquitos. At home we use it in salads, or by itself as a side. It's a great replacement for sauerkraut, and you can make it as spicy or mild as you like. We really wanted to take the opportunity to show how to innoculate a new fermented product with something that was currently fermenting.
The vegetable/salt ratio in this is important. Hubby has put some math in the recipe so that you can see exactly what the proportions are supposed to be. You have a little bit of wiggle room, but if you use too much salt, it will inhibit the lactobacilli. Too little salt and it may not inhibit the growth of undesirable microbes in your fermenting product! Also, remember not to clamp the lid on too tight while it's in the initial fermenting stage on your counter, because it can build up enough gas to break a jar!
Found on Facebook: Secret recipes?
From a cooking community I was invited to join on Facebook:
Secret recipes? Or share away?? I’m not referring to restaurants or any recipes that are profitable.
My response was:
Share share share. That's why my hubby and I started putting cooking videos up on YouTube. Recipes from his past and my past, and recipes from his recently closed restaurant, as well. Increase the amount of good food in the world, don't hoard it!
That old expression "A great chef never reveals their secrets" is patently false, given how many great chefs release amazing and instructive cook books to spread the knowledge around. How do you all feel about this?
Esquire: Where Do Republicans Go From Here?
Full article here: http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a16636401/republican-party-gone-mad/
Far too many people are far too delicate about this. The Republican Party is completely mad, and it has been going in that direction for a very long time. It has been raving through all the halls of all the governments, large and small, like a lost soul with a big knife. The symptoms of the enveloping disease have been obvious for decades, ever since Ronald Reagan served up the first helping of monkey brains in 1976, when he nearly wrested the party’s nomination from Gerald Ford. It is full-blown now, and it is general throughout the Republic. The Republican Party has infected every institution with its own private insanity.
It did not begin with Donald Trump, god knows. It was there when Bob Dole, who is looked upon now with nostalgic fondness, declared that he represented all those people who didn’t vote for Bill Clinton, an unprecedented public statement by the leader of an opposition party. It was there when various influential Republicans met on the night of Barack Obama’s inauguration and declared open warfare against his agenda before they even knew what it was, and this in the middle of the worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression. It was there when they meddled in the care of Terri Schiavo and it is there in their pathological insistence that supply-side economics works. It cost Merrick Garland a seat on the Supreme Court. And it was the direct cause of the election of the current president*.
Well, no punches pulled here! About time some major reporting outlets have noticed that Republicans have entirely lost their minds. Progressives have been saying it since Reagan. Even Bill Maher has been saying since Bush Jr.
Chocolate Cupcake Recipe
So, this week, our video is a pretty basic chocolate cupcake recipe (to go with the buttercream icing from last week!). Now, the recipe we adapted calls for vegetable oil, but hubby has lately been using peanut oil for a few things, so we decided to try it here, and it gave the dark chocolately cupcakes a very pleasant peanut aroma! There are other nut oils pretty easily available that you might also use, like walnut, hazelnut, or even coconut. If you want to keep the flavour more neutral and just chocolatey, then stick with vegetable oil or canola oil.
Of course the secret here is to not over-mix, and to make sure you're getting that batter into the oven as soon as it's mixed. You a) don't want the eggs to sit on the sugar too long and b) don't want everything to sit around after being mixed, because the baking soda and baking powder are doing their thing, so you've got to get it in the oven before you've lost your leavening!
GQ: Donald Trump Spent His First State of the Union Taking Credit for Barack Obamas Accomplishments
Full article here: https://www.gq.com/story/donald-trump-sotu-2018
Donald Trump delivered his first State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday night, convincingly demonstrating to the entire world that he is, contrary to popular belief, a functional adult who is capable of reading patriotic bromides from a teleprompter for 80 minutes without going on a white-supremacist tangent. But during the parts of his speech in which the president glowingly touted some of the more noteworthy accomplishments of his first year in office, I couldn't help but notice that many of them shared a certain common thread. Let's go through the transcript together and see if you, too, can spot it.
Since the election, we have created 2.4 million new jobs...
The United States has yet to experience a single month of net job loss since October 2010. Barack Obama was president then.
...including 200,000 new jobs in manufacturing alone.
Manufacturing jobs in this country have been slowly but gradually increasing since 2010. Barack Obama was president then.
After years of wage stagnation, we are finally seeing rising wages.
Inflation-adjusted wages have been steadily on the rise since 2014. Barack Obama was president then.
Donald Trump made 12 false claims in his State of the Union address
Once again, Daniel Dale's thorough reporting on Trump's lies in the Toronto Star. Full article here.
Here are the false claims Trump made in his State of the Union:
1) “After years and years of wage stagnation, we are finally seeing rising wages.”
Wages have been rising since 2014. As PolitiFact reported: “For much of the time between 2012 and 2014, median weekly earnings were lower than they were in 1979 — a frustrating disappearance of any wage growth for 35 years. But that began changing in 2014. After hitting a low of $330 a week in early 2014, wages have risen to $354 a week by early 2017. That’s an increase of 7.3 per cent over a roughly three-year period.” FactCheck.org reported: “For all private workers, average weekly earnings (adjusted for inflation) rose 4% during Obama’s last four years in office.” The Washington Post noted that wages “actually declined in the fourth quarter of 2017, from $353 a week to $345 in inflation-adjusted dollars.”
4) “We have ended the war on American energy — and we have ended the war on beautiful clean coal.”
We’ll leave aside the debate about the existence of a “war on American energy,” and Trump has indeed taken steps to encourage the coal industry — but the phrase “clean coal” is dishonest in itself, a creation of industry spin. As the Washington Post reports: “There’s no such thing as ‘clean coal.’ Power plants can mitigate some of the effects of burning coal by capturing and burying carbon-dioxide emissions, but that doesn’t cleanse the coal itself.” The phrase “clean coal,” the New York Times reported last year, “is often understood to mean coal plants that capture the carbon dioxide emitted from smokestacks and bury it underground as a way of limiting global warming.” This technology, though, is not widely — — and Trump appears to extra-misleadingly use the phrase “clean coal” to describe coal extraction and use of any kind.
11) “The fourth and final pillar protects the nuclear family by ending chain migration.”
This is simple nonsense. There is no reasonable argument that the “nuclear family” would be protected if Trump no longer allowed people to sponsor family members, such as children and parents, to immigrate to the U.S.
If Trump is a serial liar, why call this a list of “false claims,” not lies? The answer is that we can’t be sure that each and every one was intentional. In some cases, he may have been confused or ignorant. What we know, objectively, is that he was not telling the truth.
You can read the entire list at the link at the top of this post.
Russia's State TV: "Seemingly, Trump is ours again."
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/958376695324729344#Russia's state TV:
Female host: "Seemingly, Trump is ours again. So far, he's being quiet and not supporting the sanctions."
Male host: "Well, it seems that way."
Source:
We all know Trump's been a pawn for the Russians. What I don't think he realizes is that the Russians have about as much loyalty to him as he has to anyone other than his own immediate family. As soon as he's done being useful, they'll toss him aside, doing indelible and deep damage to the office of POTUS in the same stroke. It's win-win for them.
**** UPDATE ****
Looks like RawStory has picked this up, as well:
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/01/trump-russian-tv-host-celebrates-white-house-refuses-enforce-new-sanctions/
Basic Buttercream Icing recipe
So, for this week's video, we got pretty basic, and we're just showing a basic buttercream recipe. There are a couple of different ways to approach buttercream, and this is definitely the simplest and most versatile. We'll be doing a video on the other method in the future, it's a little more like the process for an Italian Meringue.
Anyway, this is the easy basic buttercream recipe, and we're flavouring it with a locally produced French Cream liquer similar to Bailey's called Chantilly. I'd link you to the Maverick Distillery, but it seems their website is currently in limbo. They do have a Facebook page. You can of course flavour this however you like, it's very versatile. Grand Marinier is great for orange flavour, or Amaretto for almond, or Kirsch for cherry. You don't need to use liquer, either, you can flavour it however you like.
Next week's video will be the cupcakes we're decorating!
This is what really happened when Chelsea Manning partied with the far right
The full mic.com article here!
The reaction from many on the anti-Trump left has included feelings of confusion and betrayal. Advocates and enemies reached for myriad explanations for how it is that Manning — military whistleblower and hero to the anti-fascist left — ended up at a right-wing rager.
Is Manning a secret fascist? No, it turns out — she’s just allowed a trusted confidante to lead her into catastrophe, yet again.
To anyone familiar with key players in right-wing political drama, the attendance list would have set off major red flags. One attendee was Wintrich, a coworker of Fairbanks’ at the Gateway Pundit and a fake news purveyor. Another was Posobiec, famous for, among other things, advancing the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory that led a gunman to a Washington, D.C., pizzeria in search of a fake pedophile ring.
Fairbanks asked the group whether it was alright to bring Manning. They were happy to have her. Mic was told by those in attendance, as well as Manning’s campaign staff, that she was never fully briefed on exactly who she would be hanging out with.
To call the attendees of the gala part of the “alt-right” is a delicate category error. The event was held by the leaders of the “alt-lite” or “new right,” a loose coalition of pro-Trump internet celebrities and new media stuntmen who, while avowedly anti-white nationalist, nevertheless advance anti-black, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant talking points. Mike Cernovich, the party’s headlining host, built his reputation as a rape apologist blogger, was once charged with sexual assault and also famously advanced the “pizzagate” conspiracy theory.
For many on the left watching from home, however, the damage was done. By attending the event at all, Manning set herself up for accusations of co-signing a gala of pseudo-fascists and white supremacists.
Those on the right, on the other hand, were quick to brag about how civil they’d been to Manning, even as her Twitter mentions filled to the brim with transphobic abuse. For those who always considered Manning a traitor, the photos were evidence that she was a pox on progressive politics all along. And for purportedly left-leaning conspiracy theorists, the event became a part of a broader plot.
Fairbanks told Mic she’s now wracked with guilt, blaming herself for the damage and for pulling a vulnerable friend past the cameras and straight into a public relations catastrophe.
But perhaps no one was hurt more than Manning. Muslim activist Linda Sarsour, who endorsed Manning’s senate campaign, told BuzzFeed’s Joe Bernstein that Manning “expressed extreme regret” to Sarsour for attending the party, and was on “the verge of tears.” Two individuals close to Manning confirmed to Mic that she’s deeply upset that there’d be any doubt as to her anti-fascist credibility.
But Manning’s new constituency — the anarchists, the transgender rights activists, the radically anti-fascist left — are unlikely to tolerate any further fraternizing with right-wing provocateurs. No more parties. No more game nights. Wintrich told Mic he wouldn’t fault Manning for distancing herself further from them.
Fairbanks told Mic she wanted to make clear was it was never her intention to try to convert Manning to the far right. Indeed, she said she never believed anything of the sort would be possible.
“She has more guts and backbone than anyone else I have ever known,” Fairbanks said. “The left should be proud to have her.”
It's a really interesting story about how Chelsea Manning got to where she is, what really led to her time in military prison, and how she's trusted people that she probably shouldn't be. I don't believe for a second that Manning is actually a hidden fascist right-winger. She's not some Peter Thiel Milo Yiannopoulos pet LGBTQ+ for the right to trot out and show just how "tolerant" they really are (hint: they're not). I will say it's possible she's too easily led by people she trusts.
Creamy Chicken Soup recipe
So, this week we're doing another warm and hearty recipe on our channel, because it's been freakin' cold. We had some leftover roast chicken, so hubby decided it was a good time to make some nice warm soup again! This time a rich and creamy soup with mushrooms. As always, this is sort of a template of a recipe, and there is a lot of room for customization and personalization. You can change the herbs and veggies, you can leave out the mushrooms if you're not a fan, you can strain it if you want a silky smooth soup instead of one with a bit of texture left, whatever you like! It's a very simple recipe.
The soup is thickened with a roux, but we sort of cheat it a little. Normally, we'd cook the roux in a separate pan and add it to the soup, but in this recipe, we heat up the veggies in butter, and then add the flour on top of that. The flour and butter cook together, and then when the stock is added, the cheater roux starts to cook in earnest and thicken the soup. You can see in the video when we lift the lid and the soup has become frothy after adding the stock, that's the flour of the roux cooking.
Also, maybe some of you have heard that YouTube is changing how their partnership works. It used to be that we could monetize our videos once we had 10,000 views on our channel (across all of our videos), but they're now changing it so that they require 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of views in the past 12 months. So, obviously we're only about 1/3 of the way to that first one, and the second one will take some time as well. This is affecting a lot of smaller and medium-sized content creators on the platform, and you'll probably see a lot of appeals like this: Please share our videos with people you know who may be interested in our content. Folks who'd like some simple recipes to expand their recipe box, or even just to see another way of cooking a few things! Thanks, everyone!
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Gender: MaleHometown: Ottawa, Ontario
Home country: Canada
Current location: Toronto, Ontario
Member since: Wed Oct 29, 2008, 04:34 PM
Number of posts: 3,282
