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Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Tuesday Ramblings

Right, so  it's been some time since I wrote anything just for me.  So today I decided it was the day.  I have exactly 40 min to myself whilst the ciabatta bread cooks so I am going to just ramble and see what comes of it. 

As I'm sitting here my cell phone goes off, which I ignore and at the very same time I am grateful I chose the sci-fi scary theatre ring so it doesn't bother me.  Funny that, how right when you sit down to get something done just for you someone will call, and it's never ever a fun call, it's usually somebody wanting something, most times these days it's your money, of which I have none. 

Explaining this to people has been interesting lately.  Some people, most in fact are quite understanding.  So long as you're not nasty about it.  They most likely owe people money too, people who are calling them right as they are on the phone with you...see how we are all interconnected like that? 

Some people however have gotten terribly bitchy about collecting money.  Trying to shame you like a school marm.  This never worked in school, I don't see why they think it will work now.  Mostly I just hang up on them and don't answer the phone for the rest of the day.   What I think I have deduced is that some of the collection agencies give percentages on money collected.  So I tell myself the bitchy ones are probably just like me as well, they just really really want that bonus. 

That is not to say that I have a ton of money I owe, I really don't mostly it's student loans and frankly I am pissed at the whole student loan scam/industry et all.  Jane Stillwater did a nice write up on it at subversify, you can read it HERE .  I have been saying for years that in order to help stimulate economy we need to work out something better for our student loan holders.  I have no idea why our government will bail out industries, banks, other countries but not their own people, the people who will someday be working for and leading it.  Lately student loans have been moving into the territory of the housing loans scams.  That isn't covered in the article.  But it should be looked at.  All of us with student loans are bound to be indentured servants if something isn't done.

With so much trouble being brewed up in the world I have been eversobusy at Subversify, and thankfully we have a new crop of writers who are excellent.  If you haven't been through recently, please do go back and read some of the summer's articles.  This week we touched a big nerve with an article on Ron Paul but shockingly a recent article on children being burned as witches on a regular basis didn't get as much shock and awe as I thought it deserved.  Are we not shocked by torturing children?  Can a child even be a Witch?  Well Pentecostal Churches sponsored by Pentecostals right here in the U.S.A think they can and should be burned....alive.  Read it.

But enough doom and gloom,, there is way too much of it our there.  Really it has kept me from writing my fiction and I am very sorry to my fiction characters for allowing them to languish.  I feel a pull towards writing just for them and have decided with the summer ending that I am am going to devote myself to that at least one day a week.  Geez, I have 4 stories that are just sitting there...something simply must be done with them. 

What I have been occupying myself with to keep my sanity is experimenting in the garden and the kitchen, which is where I came up with THE best way to use all of your cherry tomatoes. 

Okay, anyone who has ever planted cherry tomatoes knows one plant will dominate your garden and if you have more than one, your friends and neighbors will stop answering their door because they are turning red from eating all your gifts.  One day I had some jalepeno peppers that were about to go that I didn't want to waste and nothing else except cherry tomatoes so what I did was make the BEST KETCHUP EVER!!!

6 Jalepenos-really ripe
about 4 lbs of cherry tomatos
olive oil
4 cloves of garlic
kosher salt-(I feel like I have to say Kosher because some people just don't get it that regular salt only tastes salty, while larger crystal salt-kosher, sea salt, ect brings out flavor.  It makes a difference, really.)

On a well oiled cookie sheet lay all of the ingredients out flat and salt with a good 4 finger pinch.  Broil everything under high for about 5 min, when vegis are browning flip them over and broil the other side.  - If you happen to have the BBQ going you could do this on the BBQ as well. 

When everything is nice and browned and the tomatoes are smooshy and juicy and dead, put everything (juice included) into a food processor and blend until smooth. Add about a TBSP of olive oil for unguency.

After it is smooth strain it through a sieve or cheese cloth.  You can use the meaty bits left over for tapas or in your meatloaf or with chips, whatever, don't waste it, it tastes good!

The rest is your ketchup and it is better than anything you will buy in a store because it is not sweetened with sugar, it has just the right amount of umami.   I one of the things that made it so sucessful was the extra ripe jalepenos.  If they had been just ripe they would have been too spicy and I would have had a hotter sauce on my hands, which is fine but not ketchup.  These peppers had been on the counter for about a week. 

I'm goint to try to make more and send it out as gifts this year.  We'll see if it makes it because the Brownies decimated it the first day, they didn't care what they put it on, chips, toast, fingers, I had to beg them to save it for some home fries.  This is all that's left of the huge batch I made.



Anyway, my 40 minutes are nearly up.  I smell ciabatta and I am wondering how my blog became a cooking blog.  I didn't mean for it to, but really that's what I've been doing a lot of lately, when I'm not editing.  Maybe I can somehow combine the two and be a subversive cook....ideas?  Seriously I'd welcome them because I am up for a cooking challenge.  When I left home I could cook exactly nothing and now I'm at the garden to table stage.  How can I make this food more subversive people?

Before I go though I wanted to talk a little bit about my feelings about the upcoming 2012 elections...If we get to have them...you know with the whole 2012 thing (dun...dun...dunnnnn!!!)  I have always been a person who believed that exercising our right to cast our vote was important.  After the last 12 years I'm beginning to change my mind.  All jokes aside.  I cannot see how the individual is able to make a difference.  I have watched so many disenfranchised people try to start up new parties ( Ralph Nader-and truth be told he's no dummy) and others and they are always swept under the rug and  laughed away.  Or; Money, money changes everything.   It really does.  And the space between the haves and the have nots is getting wider.  I would postulate that it may actually be worse at this point than it was in the great depression.  The difference is that the 'powers that be'  have figured that pacifying the masses makes everything less noticeable.  I'm open to argument on that point. 

What I'm getting to is I'm beginning to feel that if "the rest of us" just DON'T VOTE AT ALL, it will at least begin to become clear that we haven't for a long time had a say.  Maybe just maybe that may wake some people up. 

Let's call it PROJECT SPARTACUS. 

If you must vote write in something like Spartacus....make the workers go through all the ballots, let them see there is something going on.  And, like someone did in Iowa for Stephen Colbert, take a picture with your handy  dandy cell phone.  It's still (as of now) legal to do so, SHOW America and her "Parties" that you want something different. 







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