Thursday Recipe Exchange: Awesome Chocolate Chip Cookies

JeffreyW’s Awesome Cookies w/Coconut

From our Food Goddess, TaMara:

Time for cookies. Chocolate chip cookies to be specific. JeffreyW cleaned out his pantry one day and came up with the ingredients for his Awesome Cookies w/Coconut.

When I’m in the mood for a double dose of chocolate I make Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Cookies. You just can’t go wrong with chocolate chips.

There are a few recipes I get requests for often. My dark chocolate chip cookie recipe is hands-down the recipe that I get requests for the most. And instead of wanting a copy of the recipe, most people want me to make them, convinced they couldn’t get them to turn out as good. I disagree. There are a couple of simple tricks that make these foolproof. One is to melt the butter before mixing with the sugars. This gives you a crispy on the outside, gooey on the inside cookie. Another is to let the mixture rest in the refrigerator for 15 minutes or more, this brings out the toffee flavors in the dough. And finally, pull them from the oven just before they’re done and let them finish on the baking sheet for the last minute or so, this gives you a perfectly browned cookie and lets them set up just enough to transfer to a…PLATE. I’ve tried a baking rack and they are too gooey and get stuck on the rack. You can put parchment paper on it first, which I’ve done, but a plate works just fine.

Now, what’s your favorite type of cookie? Chocolate, fruit, sugar, peanut butter? I’m always on the look out for the perfect peanut butter cookie. I’m still looking…

Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies
2 sticks butter, melted and slightly cooled
2 eggs
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp dash of salt
2 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
12 oz 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chips
1-1/2 cups walnut halves, roughly chopped
mixing bowl and cookie sheet

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

Cream together butter and sugars. Add eggs and vanilla, mixing well. Sift together salt, soda, and 2 1/4 cups flour, then add to butter mixture, blending well. Add more flour as needed. Add nuts and chocolate chips. Refrigerate for 15 minutes or longer. Keep remainder refrigerated while baking each batch. Spoon onto cookie sheet and bake at 375 degrees for 10-12 minutes. Remove just before done and let finish cooking on the baking sheet. Cool on plate or baking rack covered with parchment.

Melting the butter gives you a chewier, crispier cookie. Letting it rest in the refrigerator enhances the toffee flavor from the brown sugar. Big cookie bakeries let theirs rest overnight before baking. I don’t have that kind of patience, I want cookie! Though I’ve been known to double or quadruple this recipe and refrigerate in an airtight container for a week and make a fresh dozen each day.

You can also freeze the dough balls on parchment paper placed on a baking sheet and then store the balls in an airtight container for quick baking later.

Dog Rescue Bleg – Southern California

From commentor Ruckus:

Some of you may remember that I had to close my business. This caused a loss of living arrangements so I have moved in with friends in southern calif for now but there really is no way I can keep my rescue cocker spaniel, Bud. There just is no good way for him to be here, from the standpoint of both facilities and friends. Also he does not like being without human contact for more than 2-3 hours so even if I find a job, I can’t be gone that long. And that won’t help my needs, like eating and such.

So anyone know of a rescue service or someone in so cal who might want a 12-14 yr old almost deaf cocker with issues? He takes medication 3 times a day, for thyroid(twice) and liver(once). He can be a good companion for the right person, he has been for me. When I had the business he would follow me from room to room and lay down close to me. Even if he was sleeping, when I moved, he moved. He has a most interesting personality to say the least. Sort of stubborn, much more so than his owner. I believe he must have been the alpha in whatever relationship he was in before I got him. I have sort of worked that out of him. He is the most difficult dog I’ve ever known but by far the most interesting to live with. He probably would do best in a home with one or two adults and I probably would not put him in a home with kids under 15-16.

I really don’t want to give him up but in my life I very seldom get what I want. And only occasionally what I need.

Anybody have experience with rescue groups, particularly cocker breed rescue or older-dog groups, in the area? If you have any suggestions or leads, and you don’t want to comment here, contact me at AnneLaurie @ verizon.net (click on my name, to the right) and I will put you in touch with Ruckus directly.

Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Attention MUST Be Paid!

(Scott Meyer’s website)

Paul Constant live-blogging Newt Gingrich’s “campaign suspension” is too good not to share:

12:22 PM: This is basically a blowhardy version of Gingrich wagging his fist at the press and bellowing “YOU’LL ALL BE SORRY! I AM A GENIUS!” He quotes a favorable column published today that posits Gingrich’s best days are ahead of him. I think he might start literally masturbating in a minute or two, because all this figurative masturbation is obviously getting him hot. Gingrich says he’s going to work on energy independence. “If we do it right, we actually will not only create energy independence…we will create trillions of dollars in royalties” to help reduce the national debt. Gingrich also promises to go to college campuses to encourage Social Security privitization, as they do in Chile, and he wants to “re-emphasize the work ethic.” There’s no reason, Gingrich says, to give people pay for 99 weeks “for doing nothing.” That’s his legacy, right there.

12:27 PM: Gingrich will also focus on “what a post-Obamacare” health care system would be like. He points out that he’s the “longest-serving teacher of one-and-two star generals.” I have no idea what that means. “I think it’s time to realize we do not have a grand strategy” in dealing with the Middle East, he says. Now he’s talking about nanotechnology. “I am cheerfully going to take back up” the issue of outer space. He says Callista has pointed out “approximately 219 times,” give or take 3 times, that talking about the moon base was a mistake. “This is not a trivial area,” he says. Space is about the future. “I happen to think it’s a better future than methamphetamine and cocaine” for our nation’s children. He’s turning into a cartoon mad scientist, which is adorable…

Apart from schadenfreude, what’s on the agenda for this evening?

Stephen King Knows Monsters

... even when those monsters are wearing nice suits and blathering about fiscal responsibility. Thanks to commentor RalfW for the link (which is well worth clicking, however you might feel about the Daily Beast):

Tax Me, for F@%&’s Sake!

... I’ve known rich people, and why not, since I’m one of them? The majority would rather douse their dicks with lighter fluid, strike a match, and dance around singing “Disco Inferno” than pay one more cent in taxes to Uncle Sugar. It’s true that some rich folks put at least some of their tax savings into charitable contributions. My wife and I give away roughly $4 million a year to libraries, local fire departments that need updated lifesaving equipment (Jaws of Life tools are always a popular request), schools, and a scattering of organizations that underwrite the arts. Warren Buffett does the same; so does Bill Gates; so does Steven Spielberg; so do the Koch brothers; so did the late Steve Jobs. All fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough.

What charitable 1 percenters can’t do is assume responsibility—America’s national responsibilities: the care of its sick and its poor, the education of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its staggering war debts. Charity from the rich can’t fix global warming or lower the price of gasoline by one single red penny. That kind of salvation does not come from Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Ballmer saying, “OK, I’ll write a $2 million bonus check to the IRS.” That annoying responsibility stuff comes from three words that are anathema to the Tea Partiers: United American citizenry....

The U.S. senators and representatives who refuse even to consider raising taxes on the rich—they squall like scalded babies (usually on Fox News) every time the subject comes up—are not, by and large, superrich themselves, although many are millionaires and all have had the equivalent of Obamacare for years. They simply idolize the rich. Don’t ask me why; I don’t get it either, since most rich people are as boring as old, dead dog shit. The Mitch McConnells and John Boehners and Eric Cantors just can’t seem to help themselves. These guys and their right-wing supporters regard deep pockets like Christy Walton and Sheldon Adelson the way little girls regard Justin Bieber … which is to say, with wide eyes, slack jaws, and the drool of adoration dripping from their chins. I’ve gotten the same reaction myself, even though I’m only “baby rich” compared with some of these guys, who float serenely over the lives of the struggling middle class like blimps made of thousand-dollar bills….

I guess some of this mad right-wing love comes from the idea that in America, anyone can become a Rich Guy if he just works hard and saves his pennies. Mitt Romney has said, in effect, “I’m rich and I don’t apologize for it.” Nobody wants you to, Mitt. What some of us want—those who aren’t blinded by a lot of bullshit persiflage thrown up to mask the idea that rich folks want to keep their damn money—is for you to acknowledge that you couldn’t have made it in America without America. That you were fortunate enough to be born in a country where upward mobility is possible (a subject upon which Barack Obama can speak with the authority of experience), but where the channels making such upward mobility possible are being increasingly clogged. That it’s not fair to ask the middle class to assume a disproportionate amount of the tax burden. Not fair? It’s un-fucking-American is what it is. I don’t want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share. That our civics classes never taught us that being American means that—sorry, kiddies—you’re on your own. That those who have received much must be obligated to pay—not to give, not to “cut a check and shut up,” in Governor Christie’s words, but to pay—in the same proportion. That’s called stepping up and not whining about it. That’s called patriotism, a word the Tea Partiers love to throw around as long as it doesn’t cost their beloved rich folks any money.

Tuesday Evening Open Thread

Gotta admit I admire Mr. Charles P. Pierce’s May Day commemoration:

There is a strong feeling, and not merely on the right or from our gloriously apathetic Center, that the Occupy people have had their time on the stage, that it is time for another show to begin. Nobody’s ready for a remix. Nobody’s ready for a reboot. (Me? I’m still trying to figure out why in hell they’re bringing back Dallas.) And nobody, certainly, is prepared to admit that what started in Zuccotti Park and a hundred other places might have permanently affected the way Americans looked at the connections between how the country does its business and how the country runs its government.

Just this morning, the Wall Street Journal ran a feature about how the Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into the activities of the lawyers who worked for the assorted shark tanks that ran the world economy into the ditch… [W]hat it does is illustrate, again, what an utterly corrupt nation the United States of America was in the first decade of the 21st century. The governing elites, all of them, were complicit in massive fraud against the rest of us. Either they participated in it, which would be the bankers and (it appears) their lawyers, or they condoned and celebrated it, which would be the financial press and the elite media, or they shirked their duty to protect the political commonwealth from being hijacked, which would be the members of both parties in the government, and us, for letting so much of the country run on automatic pilot for so long.

This was a banana republic. It was a failed state in everything except the fact that no tanks rolled in the streets. The terrorists were not hiding in Waziristan. They were having lunch at Cipriani’s and sitting in luxury boxes at the Meadowlands. The government existed only to increase their profits and to provide a quasi-legal context for organized piracy. There was an extraordinary contempt for the law, for the institutions of government, and for the people the law and those institutions were supposed to serve. The country was cored out. It was a shell of a country and a shell corporation, and it has not recovered yet…

If the Occupy people want to march, I say let them march. If they resist conventional politics, that may be because conventional politics are worth resisting. What I do know is that, if i weren’t for the people in the streets last autumn, the Obama people would be running a very different campaign and Willard Romney wouldn’t look half as ridiculous as he does. Somebody has to care enough not to care.

I like his taste in music, too. As always, YMMV.

Apart from that… anybody want to share the story of their day?

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Happy May Day!

... aka Beltane, or Walpurgisnacht, the festival to mark the start of the bright half of the year. To our agricultural ancestors, it meant the beginning of six months of hard work to ensure that the year-end festival at the beginning of November would celebrate prosperity, or at least the chance of making it through the dark winter. And if that sounds somehow political, well, we humans are a political species…

Conservatives Aren’t Necessarily Empathy-Impaired…

... but the politically engaged conservatives mostly are. Thomas Edsall, at the NYTimes, on “Finding the Limits of Empathy“:

... Ravi Iyer, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Southern California who analyzes the differences in the moral outlook of conservatives and liberals, has posted an exceptionally interesting collection of data on his “Politics and Moral Psychology Blog.” (Iyer’s research is reinforced by the work of Philip E. Tetlock at Wharton and Linda J. Skitka of the University of Illinois.)...

Politically engaged liberals and conservatives exhibit strikingly different levels of empathy. The following chart, constructed by Iyer, illustrates this beautifully:

The more interested in politics a conservative is, the lower his (or her) level of empathy. Liberals move in the opposite direction: the more interested in politics they are, the more empathetic. Empathy, in case you’re wondering, is measured by responses to 28 statements in the “Davis Interpersonal Reactivity Index,” including “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me,” “I sometimes find it difficult to see things from the ‘other guy’s’ point of view,” and “Sometimes I don’t feel very sorry for other people when they are having problems.”

In the 2010 election, 42 percent of voters identified themselves as conservative; 38 percent said they were moderate; and 20 percent said they were liberal. If that division obtains in 2012 and beyond, the proportion of conservative to liberal voters in the electorate should give liberals pause, especially insofar as they expect elected officials to propose and pass legislation the underlying purpose of which is to help those most in need…

I’m a little suspicious of the sudden rush to “prove” that if our political process is irretrievably borked, it’s all down to what’s broken in our individual brains. But there is a certain logic, if you accept the theory that people mostly get interested in politics—in spending precious time and energy on elections that could otherwise go towards work, family life, getting more use out of that expensive gym membership, or keeping up with the local sports franchise—when they perceive that something is “wrong” with the existing order. For conservatives, that “wrongness” is hardly likely to be an overwhelming sense that Tha Gubmint just isn’t doing enough for those people who are… unlike the aggreived conservative.

Monday Morning Open Thread

For those who didn’t have a chance to watch over the weekend, via Paul Constant at the Stranger. I particularly like the ‘Man Show’ joke at the six-minute mark…


What’s on the agenda for the start of another week?

Open Thread: Sunday Morning Garden Chat

From commentor Scout211, in Calaveras County, CA:

Here is a pic of the beginnings of my garden for this year. (You did send out the call for pics. I thought a before and after might be good. Here is the before pic).

You can see that my rhubarb is up and thriving already but most of the plants are still seedlings and many boxes aren’t planted yet (the nights are still a bit too cold for the plants I will start from seeds).

This is a good pic of the boxes I use—made by Frame-it-all and sold by many outlets, including www.frameitall.com. Raised bed gardening was discussed in another thread a few weeks ago and I mentioned the kits that I used.

I thought I would include a pic of our daily visitors. We have many wild turkeys that visit our bird feeding area. They eat up the cracked corn that is designated for the doves. Hubby loves the turkeys. Me, not so much. They dig all over and mess up our porch and breezeway. Oh well, country living is still the best.

My garden-related accomplishment for this past week was unearthing the electric mower and giving the front yard its first haircut of the season. Unless you count failing to plant out the pansies and allysum from this year’s first (of many) trips to our favorite local garden center….

How are things in your gardens, this week?

Late Night Open Thread: I (Once Again) Agree with Doghouse Riley

Because ‘piling on’ is an established Balloon Juice tradition, I feel compelled to quote Doghouse Riley’s response to Mann & Ornstein’s brave, bold, however-did-the-Repubs-come-to-this thumbsucking:

Pfui. Both of you have punditological careers dating to the Carter administration. Did you sleep through the Reagan presidency? Miss the rhetoric of the Nixon years? Tricky Dick didn’t deliver the famous “Silent Centrist Majority” speech, y’know. Though he might’ve, since it’s you guys who remained silent while the Republican party went from cabal of 19th century capital pirates to cabal of 19th century capital pirates cosseting Nixonian lunatics, to cabal of Nixonian lunatics who revere 19th century capital piracy in thirty years….

The GOP hasn’t “moved from the mainstream”. It’s gained more power. The “center of power” hasn’t gone much of anywhere. It may have followed Goldwater West and South, thanks to the evil genius of Nixon, but it’s not exactly a seismic shift from Joe McCarthy to Jesse Helms, from John Wayne to Glenn Beck. When th’ hell was it Chuck Hagel’s party? When was it Nelson Rockefeller’s, for that matter? They called Truman a commie, for chrissakes….

Okay, sure: the Republican party has become increasingly dilatory and obtuse in the halls of power, but that’s not a change of the last four years. Had Republicans had the power in 1981 they would have dispensed with all the Reagan sainthood bullshit and just rammed through their radical agenda, instead of getting Democrats to agree to do it for them. And there’s no question this has been facilitated, both by a venal and cowardly Democratic party, and a venal and cowardly Press. But, really, enough of this stuff. I’m not gonna make common cause with Democrats, or rueful Republican centrists, who suddenly notice what the GOP has become, and expect a medal for saying so. The time to speak up was thirty years ago, when this stuff was just as plain, and was being covered by a transparent rewrite of unpleasant history, and a clear retrenchment on individual rights. Y’know, when Reaganism was the Wave of the Future the Republican platform had no more chance of actually governing than it does today. David Stockman was just as big a liar as Paul Ryan. I’m going to settle for having been right about this shit all along, and hope we don’t kill too many innocents when it all blows up. Don’t offer to help me shovel now. You’ve already done enough.

More to savor at the link. Mann and Ornstein went rummaging through their closets looking for a safe place to hide from this year’s crop of Republican monsters, and discovered the tiny, shrivelled, long-forgotten remnants of their journalistic ethics. Kudos to both of those fine professionals. But the fact that airing vulgar truth in front of the other Media Villagers qualifies as news just demonstrates how far “our” standards have fallen.

TV Open Thread: Just for You, John!

Turns out that “Kat McPhee in spandex” may not be sufficient entertainment for an entire dramedy, according to the New Yorker’s television critic, Emily Nussbaum, on “Hate-Watching Smash“:

... The show’s most intractable problem, however, is the former “American Idol” winner Katherine McPhee, who plays Karen, that shiny-haired Iowan ingénue and human humblebrag. Even when I squint, and grade on a curve, it’s impossible to ignore how bad McPhee’s performance is: the woman was given a one-note character, then took it down a half-note. McPhee has a pretty pop voice, but she plays every scene with a Splenda-flavored neutrality, which might not rankle so much if the show didn’t keep insisting that Karen is a star whom everyone adores. During the last episode, I spent most of my time mentally replacing the awed facial expressions of cast members gazing at Karen as she sings with the horrified expressions of “Game of Thrones” characters staring at King Joffrey as he tortures minions. It helped.

Speaking of intractable problems, seems like staring at print on a monitor screen has reduced my already limited capacity to stare at television shows (even when they’re on the same monitor screen). I’m still watching NYC-22 on Sunday nights, while I can, but I’m way behind on Once Upon A Time on Hulu (even though I like Jennifer Morrison, too). And I haven’t found the time to watch Scandal, which I was mildly interested in as a concept, since IMO Shonda Rimes can usually manage about one-and-a-half seasons of good storytelling before her fangrrl obsessions knot themselves into an unwatchable mess. Leaving aside the usual litany of cable-based shows—I’ll watch them as they reach Netflix—what am I missing right now?

Early Morning Open Thread: Klout (to the Side of the Head)

(Non Sequitur/Wiley Miller via GoComics.com)

Oh good, another reason to be glad I’m too old for social media. From Nicholas Thompson at the New Yorker:

... Social media also has a fraught relationship with competition. If you’re designing a social network, you want people to feel as though effort boosts status. That will lead to more effort. But competition can also be inimical to friendship. It’s hard to make everyone feel like a winner. And no one wants to use something that makes him or her feel like a loser…

The newest social media tool to grapple with this is Klout, a service for measuring your influence on all of these social networks. The company was launched two and a half years ago, and it has recently passed several important milestones. Wired just published a long feature on it; yesterday it released an iPhone app; and recently, for the first time, I read a letter from a job candidate that mentioned his Klout score.

Klout grades users on a scale of one to a hundred based on some proprietary algorithm that counts how often your comments are retweeted, liked, or shared. If you want your score to go up, tweet more and get influential people to retweet you. Don’t ever go on vacation. If you’re on a social network, Klout gets your score, whether you’ve ever logged into the service or not. Think of a mercenary socialite, holding a calculator and trying to figure out who to invite to a party based on import. Then put whatever number she arrives at on every guest’s lapel. That’s Klout. Rick Ross has a score of eighty-five; Rick Santorum has a score of eighty-two; Rick Perry has a score of sixty-six. Rick Astley has a score of forty-seven….

But clever ideas are not necessarily good ones, and Klout is designed in a way that makes it likely to fuel both unhealthy obsession and unhappy competition. When you log into Klout, it makes it easy to see, in order of score, exactly how all your friends rank. The number is more personal than those used by other social networks, and Klout displays it prominently. The iPhone app shows your Klout score in a blaring red circle —just like the number of unread e-mails and unheard voicemails. “Look at me!” it’s yelling. And sometimes, when you do look, it tells you that you’ve become less important, less interesting, less retweeted, or less whatever. Do you really want something in your pocket that will tell you what you’re worth?

The structure of social networks subtly changes the way we act. And Klout seems to encourage nothing good. To make your score go up, you have to tweet out of obligation, and you have to try to influence the other influencers. This fall, when Klout changed its algorithm, causing some people’s scores to drop suddenly, the C.E.O. of the company was subjected to harassment. “I got everything short of death threats,” he told Fox News. When you set your profile in Klout, you can pick “I am an individual influencer” or “I am a brand influencer.” I don’t really know what either means, but they both sound creepy. After I check Klout, I want to shower.

Do people actually want to get graded by algorithm, or is this one of those perverse ideas that geeks should have known better than to share with irony-impaired MBAs?

And apart from clueless questions, what’s on the agenda for the start of the weekend?

The Bees Are Still Dying

Small changes, cascading into big tragedies. Thought about using this information on a “Garden Chat” thread, but it’s too godsdamned depressing. Looks like scientists may have a pretty good idea of the problems behind Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD):

In [the March 29] issue of the journal Science, two teams of researchers published studies suggesting that low levels of a common pesticide can have significant effects on bee colonies. One experiment, conducted by French researchers, indicates that the chemicals fog honeybee brains, making it harder for them to find their way home. The other study, by scientists in Britain, suggests that they keep bumblebees from supplying their hives with enough food to produce new queens.

The authors of both studies contend that their results raise serious questions about the use of the pesticides, known as neonicotinoids…

But pesticides are only one of several likely factors that scientists have linked to declining bee populations. There are simply fewer flowers, for example, thanks to land development. Bees are increasingly succumbing to mites, viruses, fungi and other pathogens…

Yet the research is coming out at a time when opposition to neonicotinoids is gaining momentum. The insecticides, introduced in the early 1990s, have exploded in popularity; virtually all corn grown in the United States is treated with them. Neonicotinoids are taken up by plants and moved to all their tissues — including the nectar on which bees feed. The concentration of neonicotinoids in nectar is not lethal, but some scientists have wondered if it might still affect bees…

Wired looks behind the curtain to see which strings are being pulled:

... Neonicotinoids emerged in the mid-1990s as a relatively less-toxic alternative to human-damaging pesticides. They soon became wildly popular, and were the fastest-growing class of pesticides in modern history. Their effects on non-pest insects, however, were unknown….

Leaked internal reports by the Environmental Protection Agency showed that industry-run studies used to demonstrate some neonicotinoids’ environmental safety were shoddy and unreliable. Other researchers found signs that neonicotinoids, while they didn’t kill bees outright, affected their ability to learn and navigate…

Both Goulson and Mace Vaughan, pollinator program director at the Xerces Society, an invertebrate conservation group, said neonicotinoids won’t be the only cause of colony collapse disorder.

“If it was as simple as that, the answer would have been discovered a long time ago,” said Goulson. “I’m sure it’s a combination of things. I’m sure that disease is a part of it, and maybe the two interact.” He noted a study in which honeybees exposed to neonicotinoids were especially vulnerable to a common bee parasite. Another study found that neonicotinoids dramatically increase the toxicity of fungicides.

Vaughan raised the issue of industrial-scale beekeeping practices, which have also been linked to bee declines. “We’ve potentially created a situation where behavioral impacts, compounded with a lack of genetic diversity and the food they eat, results in something like colony collapse disorder,” he said.

On the New Yorker website, Elizabeth Kolbert talks about the HFCS link to “Silent Hives“:

... The Pennsylvania beekeeper Dave Hackenberg was one of the first to draw attention to the problem of Colony Collapse Disorder, or C.C.D., and, as a result, he became a celebrity, at least in apian circles. I interviewed Hackenberg in the spring of 2007, and he told me he didn’t believe that the culprit was a virus or a fungus or stress. Instead, he blamed a new class of pesticides called neonicotinoids. Now it looks like Hackenberg was onto something.

Over the last few weeks, several new studies have come out linking neonicotinoids to bee decline. As it happens, the studies are appearing just as “Silent Spring,” Rachel Carson’s seminal study of the effect of pesticides on wildlife, is about to turn fifty: the work was first published as a three-part series in The New Yorker, in June, 1962. It’s hard to avoid the sense that we have all been here before, and that lessons were incompletely learned the first time around…

More »

Occupy The 99% Spring, and Beyond

Chris Faraone at the Boston Phoenix reports “As the weather heats up, so does the class struggle“:

With spring protests planned from Boston to the Bay Area, Occupy remains an unwieldy and unpredictable animal. Though there’s more and more connectivity between organizers nationwide, activists in different cities are pursuing local actions that are only tied to the larger effort in spirit, while hoping that small wins add up to a big kick in the one-percent’s pants.

And they’re joined by a newly invigorated core of allies. A conglomerate of established labor groups and non-profits — banded together as the “99% Spring” — has converged in many places with Occupy.

The various factions don’t always play well together. Some Occupy hands have been hostile to older-school progressive outfits, and suspicious of their ties to the Democratic party. Taken together, though, they have a whole lot of commotion on deck for the spring and summer:

• While Occupiers have been working regionally on everything from health care, to immigration, to public transportation, the movement and its allies still have their sights set on large banks and financial institutions. Specifically, they’ll be targeting upcoming shareholder meetings, including one this week for Wells-Fargo in San Francisco.

• On the week leading up to and on July 4, a swarm of Occupy sympathizers will flood Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence was drafted. However, as of now the horde will be comprised of two rival groups — one organized by an Occupy spinoff outfit called the “99 Percent Declaration,” and one made up of original-flavor Occupiers.

• In addition to pro-labor May Day marches organized by Occupy and labor activists on the first of next month — which are expected to take place in more than 130 locations across the nation — both groups are also planning major actions at the late-May NATO summit in Chicago, as well as the September conventions for both major political parties, and many events in between…

The general strike and bridge offensive in the Bay will be coordinated between the Golden Gate Bridge Labor Coalition, Occupy, and other participating groups. Likewise, May Day festivities in New York — expected to be the biggest in the country — are very much a unified front between Occupiers and their more mainstream affiliates. Due to concerns about arrests by some participating groups, OWS organizers even broke their pattern of sidestepping city ordinances, and pulled a permit for their march from Union Square to Battery Park (just one of more than a dozen events scheduled for May Day). Some Occupy purists resent the decision, and will be carrying out autonomous actions. To the public, though, the aerial shot may look like one big benevolent mob stretched like an octopus across Manhattan…

Josh Harkinson at Mother Jones reports from the Left Coast:

On the first of May, the Occupy Wall Street movement hopes to leverage the labor holiday known as May Day and muster enough people power to blockade the Golden Gate Bridge—assuming, that is, that striking bridge workers take the lead. “We can’t do an action for them; we have to do the action with them,” says Lauren Smith, a spokeswoman for Occupy Oakland. An union organizer for the bridge workers had no comment on their plans, but alluded to something big: “Our actions are going to speak louder than words.”

While the presumptive bridge protest is just one among dozens of demonstrations being planned for 40 cities on May 1, it illustrates how the movement is simultaneously getting bolder and more strategic in its bid to remain a relevant part of the national conversation. Occupy organizers promise that Tuesday will be bigger than anything we saw from the movement last fall. “May Day will be the big kickoff of Phase 2 of Occupy,” says Marissa Holmes, an early OWS organizer. “I think we will see a lot of people in the streets taking more militant actions than they had in the past.” But bringing out the numbers—and rebooting a movement that has largely faded from the headlines—will require a greater level of partnership with organized labor and kindred protest movements….

More »

Thursday Recipe Exchange: Roasting

(JeffreyW’s Roasted Brussels Sprouts, Carrots and Parsnips)

From our Food Goddess, TaMara:

Tried to fit some actual cooking into what has been a very busy week. The weather is very warm here right now, so I want to rush out and buy plants and get summer underway. But even 90 degree (!) temps can be deceptive – at this altitude they still recommend planting after Mother’s day to be safe. We’ve had 90 degrees to freezing whiplash before.

Roasting seemed wrong for our summer like weather, but most roasting recipes can be adapted for the gas-grill as needed, so I went with it. Roasting adds great flavor to foods, vegetables in particular. The slow cooking method adds a touch of sweetness and depth to almost any vegetable (current cooking crush Ming Tsai even has a recipe for roasting radicchio). For a quick dinner you can add vegetables tossed with olive oil to the bottom of a roasting pan, top with chicken breasts rubbed with oil and seasoned with salt & pepper and roast until the chicken is required temperature. One pan dinner in about 35 minutes.

This week I roasted Asparagus topped with mozzarella and tonight’s sweet potato recipe. And here is the link to JeffreyW’s Brussel Sprouts, Carrots and Parsnips.

For dessert I made a batch of Orange Brownies. I think for the weekend, though, I’m going to stick to stove top cooking and grilling. What’s on your menu this week? Does weather affect what you want to cook?

Roasted Sweet Potatoes
4 medium sweet potatoes, cut into 1 or 2 inch pieces
2 medium red onions, cut in to 1-inch pieces
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp lemon juice
sprig of fresh thyme, cut into 4 pieces
salt & pepper (about 1/2 tsp of pepper or more, finely ground)

Preheat oven to 425. Combine all ingredients in baking dish. Toss to coat the veggies and bake for 35 minutes, until the sweet potatoes are tender and onions are soft.

Next Week: Awesome Cookies