Monthly Archives: August 2006

Beef Stroganoff with Yogurt

Posted on by
Reply

Stonyfield Yogurt – Beef Stroganoff

1 lb beef loin, sliced into 1 inch strips
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 yellow onion, thin sliced
1/2 cup mushrooms, sliced
1/2 teaspoon dried tarragon
1/2 teaspoon paprika
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup beef broth
2 tablespoons dijon mustard
1 cup plain lowfat yogurt

Directions:
Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add sliced beef loin, onion and mushrooms, saut� until meat begins to brown. Add flour to the mixture, and continue to cook for two minutes, stirring constantly. Add tarragon, paprika, wine and beef broth, reduce the heat to medium, and allow to simmer 10 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in dijon mustard and yogurt. Serve over egg noodles.

This was easy to make, tasty, and healthier for us than a conventional recipe that calls for sour cream. The sauce could have been a little thicker, a little richer; a dab of Worcester sauce would probably not be amiss, and maybe let the meat/onion/mushroom mixture get a little drier before adding the flour. The mustard added a nice bright, tart taste, and we did add salt and pepper, plus we put a little butter and some parsley flakes on the egg noodles.

All in all, a quick and easy dish that we’ll make again.

links for 2006-08-12

Posted on by
Reply

Liquids On A Plane

Posted on by
Reply

I thought this quote was a prank when I read it on Boing Boing, so I went to the main CNN site and there it was:

CNN.com – Agent infiltrated terror cell, U.S. says – Aug 10, 2006

liquidsonaplanethumb.jpg

A senior congressional source said it is believed the plotters planned to mix a British sports drink with a gel-like substance to make a potent explosive that could be ignited with an MP3 player or cell phone.

The sports drink could be combined with a peroxide-based paste to form a potent “explosive cocktail,” if properly done, said a U.S. counterterrorism official.

Are you f$cking kidding me? Are you sure someone hasn’t been spending too much time with the Eepybirds lately? What if a lot of people showed up for a flight carrying clear plastic bags of 2 liter bags of Diet Coke and pre-loaded tubes of Mentos? Now there’s some potentially explosive junk food, and you wouldn’t have to shut down the entire air traffic control system either (although it would be a mess to clean up).

And yes, we watched Mythbusters last night, and laughed along with the boys as they lit their giant tower of methane-filled soap bubbles on fire after they got done shooting off dozens of “diet sodas.” They never got as artistic at the Eepybirds, but they had a lot of fun and made a big mess shooting stuff off and blowing stuff up, which is always the hallmark of good Mythbusters-style fun.
And remember, don’t try this at home… and DON’T bring no motherf$cking liquids on a plane.
(man, I still had to fix this post in MT after starting it in ecto)

Technorati Tags: ecto

Maisie Dobbs: Quite Boring, Actually

Posted on by
2

Maisie Dobbs
by Jacqueline Winspear

Honestly, I tried to like these books. I love “cozy” British murder mysteries, and have read every single Ngaio Marsh title, every single Dorothy L. Sayers book about Lord Peter, every novel and short story by Edmund Crispin, and yet I have the good taste to shun Agatha Christie, because a) she wasn’t as good a writer as the above authors and b) she didn’t play fair with her clues. I was looking for a new author to love, and had briefly flirted with a couple of authors (P. D. James: too violent. Patricia Wentworth: dull characters). So it seemed that a modern author trying a bit of “Golden Age” ‘teckery might be worth a read, even though I’d been sadly disappointed by another author’s series, Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody books.

Sad to say, Maisie Dobbs is a dud. The first book starts out promisingly enough, but our enterprising Miss Dobbs seems to have a lot of unusual abilities and arcane interests; she apparently has some sort of psychic or empathic abilities and can intuit a person’s emotional state by imitating their body language. Also, she’s a terribly up-to-date thing as far as transcendental meditation, Pilates, and other “modern” New Age pursuits go. Yes, these things existed in the 30’s; they were studied by a few cognoscenti in London and New York, and there were yogis living in Britain who taught meditation and other aspects of Higher Knowledge and theosophical thought. Yes, yes, yes. And our Miss Dobbs happens to be the protoge’ of the one man in Britain in a position to bring her into contact with the cognoscenti and the yogi and the creator of the Pilates method, so she can be 60 or so years ahead of Madonna.

I haven’t run across any references to the Kabbalah yet, though there’s still plenty of time.

The first book sets up Maisie’s story, introduces the characters that make up her world, and pretty much tells everything that ever happened to Maisie in very lengthy flashback chapters, and eventually she gets around to solving her first case as a solo practitioner of the “psychological detective’s” art. Also, a male character who will no doubt turn out to be a love interest is casually introduced.

Birds of a Feather (Maisie Dobbs Mysteries (Paperback))
by Jacqueline Winspear

The second book is the one I’m hung up on; I slogged through the first one, but lost interest in this one at about the halfway mark (I’m normally a fast reader, but these books are very put-downable). The plot concerns a young heiress who has disappeared; she seems to be involved with some other young women with varying and highly esoteric interests who’ve turned up murdered. I lost patience with the “psychic empath” feature of Maisie’s character, because it bore such an unfortunate resemblance to a plot point in a certain kind of science-fiction “fanfic” story called a “Mary Sue.”
That is, a young woman of unusual abilities who is clearly a stand-in for the author, except that she’s better looking, gets all the men, has an unusual mixture of odd abilities, and has psychic abilities to boot. Because of my background as a Highlander fan, and because I know a few people who write fairly well-regarded fanfic (at least in the small community of fanfic aficionadas), I’ve been exposed to some awful dreck promising works needing a little polish in the past (not talking about my friend Jill’s stuff; this was written by someone from Seattle years back).

I’m sorry, Ms. Winspear, I’d like to like Maisie more, but she reminds me of a character I encountered about 10 years ago who was immortal, beautiful, psychic, deadly with any kind of blade, expert in all martial arts, and had Duncan MacLeod, Richie Ryan, Methos, Joe Dawson, and some random k’immie guy wrapped around her finger. I’ll get around to finishing “Birds of a Feather,” but I won’t buy any more books featuring Miss Maisie Dobbs: she’s just too “Mary Sue Dobbs” for my taste.
For those who dare:
Mary Sue: The Stories
Mary Sue: The Drinking Game

Please Feel Free To Move About The Country With Your Possessions In A Clear Plastic Bag

Posted on by
Reply

Today’s big bad security flap made for a very bad day for a lot of people. It wasn’t the nightmare I thought it would be at work, but there was a lot of information-overload “chaff” in the morning that had me stumped, so that I gave out bad information.

Bad information! No! No!

One of our travelers was escorted from the airport at a large city in India and told that he’d have to find someplace to stay for the night; he wasn’t even flying inbound to London, which was where so many flights were either delayed, diverted, or stranded. His next flight was to another city in India… which was kind of odd, unless you consider that there’s a lot more to the story yet than we know. One news item I saw later in the day hinted at a connection with Pakistan – that the government there had been instrumental in breaking the case, and by implication that some of the intelligence originated there.

My husband David and I had been, up until a few weeks ago, planning on a trip to Britain. I hadn’t actually had time to work on it the last couple of months because we’ve been so busy, so there wasn’t a lot of time to pull things together. So we’d come around to the idea of doing another US domestic road trip again, just because we enjoyed the one we did last time so much.

So after today’s news, and knowing that air travel will be screwed up for some time to come, the road trip is looking better and better. We were thinking we’d go East, but there’s some compelling personal reasons to go West again – mostly practical considerations, like picking up some heavy boxes that my sister Timmy is storing for me. Also, we’re both looking forward to a return trip to Mesa Verde, a place we find mysteriously compelling and deeply relaxing.

Getting back to today’s events, domestic travel will be different enough, but international travel today from London to the US was all kinds of strictly enforced rules about what could and could not be carried on. By the end of the day, various airline websites had settled on common verbiage – the conference calls this morning must have been wild. There must have been a run on clear plastic shopping bags and net/string bags in Heathrow today, because that’s what the airlines wanted people to pack their “minimum personal effects” in for maximum efficiency in screening passengers. And I spoke to a couple of people who wondered whether they should ship their laptops UPS the day before they travel, or risk packing them in their checked baggage.

Tomorrow ought to be even more interesting.

Somewhere Between Bert And Ernie

Posted on by
Reply

Woke up to this morning’s news about the foiled plot in Britain to combine benign substances smuggled aboard at least 8 aircraft flying between London and the US and cause a series of catastrophic explosions.
I heard the original live press conference with Chertoff, now I’m listening to Torturer-General Alberto Gonzalez following up on National Public Radio… I predict that very soon there will be some further erosion of civil rights, because it’s odd to me that a country’s atttorney general being prepped and primed to speak so soon after a major news break of this nature. It just feels a little too smoothly arranged somehow.
Heathrow is horribly fubared at the moment with hundreds of people waiting to be searched one by one, and all hand luggage to be banned, all liquids aside from infant formula and prescription banned (and good luck to the people that have to determine if a liquid is medicine or not without taste tests).
There will be a tremendous cascade effect owing to the huge amount of international air travel that is routed via London, so I’m going in to the office early just to help out on the phones this morning.
Tonight is going to be ugly, and I may be asked to volunteer to take calls into the late evening. By then, all the international travel arund the world will be affected due to a ripple effect – expect delays if you’re traveling via Britain, or on a flight that originates in Britain, or is routed via Britain.
So far, we seem to still be at Bert, but supposedly we’re at Ernie, and the British are currently at Ernie, the highest threat level.