Martha Stewart is domestic queen.

Does this not look like a cake covered in Miyazaki cuties?

If you are feeling really Cuban...

Credits to NPR

Black beans and white rice cook together in this mainstay of the Cuban table. Dried beans give you more control over texture, but canned black beans work well, too. You can prepare the black bean mixture in advance — excluding the rice — and freeze until needed. This recipe is adapted from Goya, the food manufacturer.

Makes 8 servings

3 to 4 tablespoons olive oil

1 large onion, finely chopped

1/2 medium green bell pepper, stemmed, seeded and finely chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 cups vegetable or chicken broth

1 to 1 1/2 cups water

2 cans (15.5 ounces each) black beans, undrained, or 4 cups prepared dried black beans with 1/2 to 3/4 cups water reserved from soaking them

2 cups uncooked converted white rice

1 bay leaf

1 tablespoon oregano

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 to 2 tablespoons wine or cider vinegar

Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1 to 2 tablespoons butter (optional)

Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and bell pepper; cook, partially covered, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes or until they begin to soften. Stir in garlic and continue cooking 2 minutes more. Add broth and 1 cup of the water, then stir in beans, rice, bay leaf oregano and cumin.

Reduce heat to medium low and cook, covered except when stirring occasionally, for about 15 minutes or until all liquid has been absorbed and rice is tender. Add remaining 1/2 cup of water, if needed during cooking.

Before serving, discard bay leaf. Stir in wine or cider vinegar, and salt and pepper, plus butter, if desired. Serve immediately.

and...

Maricel Presilla serves fufu, a traditional Afro-Cuban dish of cooked mashed plantains, yams or the nutty root vegetable malanga, at Zafra, her restaurant in Hoboken, N.J. (Her second restaurant there, Cucharamama, features South American fare.) "In both Cuba and the Cuban exile community, fufu is made with plantains and served as an earthy dry puree enriched with pork cracklings and garlic," she told me. Shaped into balls, following an old Cuban recipe, she presents it in a broth-like tomato sofrito flavored with sesame. Both the fufu balls and sofrito can be cooked a day in advance. Pair this side dish with pan-fried Cuban-style pork chops, steak or grilled chicken.

Bronck..it...up!

http://www.mindweb.us/Caroline_Bronckers.html

I FEEL LIKE CHICKEN TONIGHT!

This budget-friendly recipe could not be simpler - just throw the chicken in the oven, season with lemon, garlic and parsley and you're pretty much done!

• 12 chicken drumsticks (see note)
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 60g butter, melted
• 1/2 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves, finely chopped
• 1 lemon, rind finely grated, juiced
• 3 garlic cloves, crushed

1. Preheat oven to 200°C. Place drumsticks into a lightly greased shallow roasting dish.
2. Combine oil and 1 tablespoon of butter. Drizzle over drumsticks. Season with salt and pepper. Toss until well coated.
3. Roast drumsticks for 35 to 40 minutes or until golden and cooked through. Remove from oven.
4. Combine remaining butter, parsley, lemon rind, 1/4 cup lemon juice and garlic in a bowl. Spoon over chicken. Cover. Stand for 10 minutes. Serve.

It's always the Meth

Agassi admits to snorting drugs in 1997!

"Then I come to the central lie of the letter," Agassi writes. "I say that recently I drank accidentally from one of Slim's spiked sodas, unwittingly ingesting his drugs. I ask for understanding and leniency and hastily sign it: Sincerely.

"I feel ashamed, of course. I promise myself that this lie is the end of it."

oy.

All we need is a little Sherry...

Chuletas de Puerco Criollas!

Thanks to NPR

Pork chops marinate in citrus and garlic, then bask over heat in a shallow pool of olive oil and sherry in this classic preparation from Memories of a Cuban Kitchen by Mary Urrutia Randelman and Joan Schwartz (John Wiley & Sons). The original recipe calls for eight thin pork chops and more than 20 minutes' cooking time, but thicker cuts and a shorter cooking time result in juicier chops. Serve with rice, moros y cristianos and/or fufu (recipe below).

Makes 4 servings

4 thick center-cut pork chops, each about 3/4- to 1-inch thick

Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

4 cloves garlic

1/4 teaspoon dried oregano

1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 cup sour (Seville) orange juice or 1/4 cup sweet orange juice mixed with 1/8 cup each fresh lime and lemon juice

2 large onions, thinly sliced

1/4 cup olive oil

1/2 cup dry sherry

Season the chops with salt and pepper. With a mortar and pestle, crush the garlic, oregano and cumin together into a paste. Rub the chops with the garlic paste, place in a nonreactive bowl, pour the orange juice over, and cover with the sliced onions. Cover and refrigerate 2 to 3 hours.

Remove the chops from the marinade, pat dry with paper towels, and reserve the marinade. In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium heat until fragrant, then brown the chops on both sides. Reduce heat and add the sherry and reserved marinade, including the onions. Cover and cook until the chops are tender, 12 to 15 minutes. The chops should reach an internal temperature of 155 degrees on an instant-read thermometer.

Autumn :*

ooohh...this has got my attention

The Cove

Thanks to boingboing for this one. That's what you get, dolphin killers!!

The Cove, the provocative film that documented the hidden dolphin slaughters in Taiji, Japan, made its Japan debut at the Tokyo International Film Festival this week, and director Louie Psihoyos was there to bear witness to its unveiling. I talked to him just two hours after he got off the airplane from Narita on Thursday morning. Here's what he had to say about his experience in watching the film with the actual dolphin killers in the audience:

All the bad guys there, front row center. The mayor, the International Whaling Committee delegate, fishermen dressed up in suits...I couldn't have dreamed of a better screening. They had all come to Tokyo with their lawyers to see if there would be any kind of litigation against the film. The screening sold out within a few hours, so I offered to give them tickets. At one point, the mayor stormed out, and the IWC delegate held his head in his hands.

I thought I might get arrested when I got off the airplane in Tokyo — there are arrest warrants out for me in Taiji for things like trespassing, conspiracy to disrupt commerce, and photographing undercover police. I was invited by the TIFF, though, so that's probably what kept me safe.

Stories about dolphin hunting have been taboo in Japan for the past 30 years. The only reason this film was able to show there this week was because the Liberal Democratic Party was voted out. The government is a major sponsor of the film festival, and about two weeks after the regime change, the festival's director contacted me and said, "Given the 'environment' theme of this year's film festival, it would be hypocritical not to show The Cove." Still, the festival did seem to bury it — we had a 10:30AM screening and not a single promotional poster in sight.

All the Japanese who approached me about the film had very positive things to say about it. It was mostly young people, 18-35 year olds. They said, how can I help you get this film out in Japan? I think many were in shock. I told them that this was just the Disney version of what really happens at the cove.

During the Q&A session, I pointed out that this is not just an animal rights film, but that these dolphins have about 5000 times more mercury than allowed by Japanese law. Unfortunately, it's not enough to argue that these are the only animals in human history that have saved humans. The only way we can save them is by reminding people that human beings have made their environment so toxic that we can't eat them anymore. The question of intelligence of other animals as judged by our own intelligence is such a specie-centric thing. We're about to go through our sixth major extinction now, so how smart does that make us really?

I think the most important thing that could happen is that the film would show in Taiji. I've sent them a formal letter to see if they'd like to do an ocean-themed film festival at a national park that would include The Cove. I also told the Taiji mayor and councilmen that all profits generated from the film in Japan would go directly to the dolphin hunters if they stopped their dolphin hunting. I would gladly support them if they switch to crab hunting or whale watching.

I was only in Japan for two days — the whole thing was so surreal. At Sundance earlier this year, people thought that this movie would never screen in Japan. Now there are two major distributors in Japan negotiating for the rights. And flying back over the Pacific today, I knew there are now several thousand dolphins swimming free because of this movie.

One Big Thumbs Up to San Fran!

Thank you to NPR again!

Tossing food scraps in your garbage can is a crime — at least in San Francisco.

A brand-new city law requires residents to discard food waste in a separate bin.

It's the first program of its kind in the nation, and so far, it's a mandate San Franciscans seem to relish. In fact, many residents and landlords began implementing the law before it took effect, using their city-provided food recycling bins to separate waste.

Cutting Down On (Stinky) Refuse

After enforcing a food waste rule, the garbage room in the basement of the Cathedral Hill Plaza apartments in San Francisco is no longer a malodorous sty.

"It doesn't smell so bad," says Linda Corso, the apartment manager. "Our trash room doesn't stink like it used to."

That's because none of the wet garbage, the food waste, goes down there anymore, Corso says. Instead, food scraps go into sealed compost bins that get picked up by the city. Corso says the program has significantly trimmed the building's garbage costs.

"We used to have two bins picked up every day," she says. "Now we're down to one bin every day. So we've cut that in half."

Garbage officials in the city have been stunned and heartened by the tons and tons of food waste that is already streaming in.

After picking up curbside food scraps, garbage trucks head to the south of the city to the Organics Annex, the heart of the citywide food waste operation.

Jared Blumenfeld, the city's environmental officer, says the Organic Annex is already processing about half of the city's food waste, which is more than 500 tons per day.

"You can see a lot of lettuce, tomatoes, old apples, rotten cabbages," Blumenfeld says. "You get a kind of vivid picture here of what's being thrown away."

Composting your food scraps is probably the single most effective thing you can do as a citizen in the United States today.

- Jared Blumenfeld, city environmental officer for San Francisco

San Francisco turns all of that food refuse into compost, which is then sold to Bay Area farms and vineyards. The program is the latest effort in one of the most aggressive recycling campaigns in the nation. San Francisco currently keeps 72 percent of its garbage stream out of the landfill by recycling cans, bottles, construction material and cooking oil. Blumenfeld says that even though the program officially launches Wednesday, he's not surprised by how many people are already fully participating.

'Not Rocket Science'

"We hear a lot about climate change, and what we can do and should do, and what's happening in Congress," Blumenfeld says. "But people want to know what they can, practically, do every single day, and composting your food scraps is probably the single most effective thing you can do as a citizen in the United States today."

Blumenfeld says composting is simpler than it may seem.

"This is not rocket science," he says. "This is putting some food scraps into a different pile and then turning it into compost. If we can't do that, then I really worry about our ability to do some of those more complex things."

The city can fine people for noncompliance, but officials say they are unlikely to use that power except in extreme cases. San Francisco's ultimate and fairly lofty goal — according to Blumenfeld — is to get to zero waste, meaning no garbage at all going into landfills, by the year 2020.

"If you are working on a problem you can solve in your own liftetime, you aren't thinking big enough."

Thank you to NPR for this article.

We tend to think Earth can provide us with an endless bounty of food. But farming practices in most parts of the world can't work forever. Soil is constantly washing away, and what's left is gradually losing the nutrients it needs to sustain our crops.

In the prairies of Kansas lives Wes Jackson, a man who has spent his long and rich career trying to invent a new kind of agriculture — one that will last indefinitely.

Jackson seems like a good-ol'-boy farmer from the Plains. His hands are broad and strong, a plaid shirt covers his beefy belly, and he sounds every bit like the native son of Kansas that he is.

'An Intellectual Hootenanny'

On this autumn day, the 73-year-old is surrounded by several hundred neighbors, students and fellow travelers, all here for his annual Prairie Festival. Some came from thousands of miles to gather in Jackson's barn to share ideas about the future of the planet in general, and agriculture in particular.

"We have music, the barn dance. It's sort of an intellectual hootenanny!" he says.

Jackson is part scientist, part philosopher, part farmer. More than 30 years ago, he gave up his brief career as a professor to set up this 600-acre farm on the gently rolling uplands of Kansas. He calls it the Land Institute; it includes not only the barn and other out-buildings, but an office in a suburban-style ranch house, a lab building made partly of old telephone poles, and a comfortable, rustic home.

The 10,000-Year-Old Problem

In 1976, when the institute was founded, Jackson says a lot of time was "devoted to a search for sustainable alternatives in agriculture, energy, shelter, waste management."

This grand plan turned out to be too much to bite off all at once. So Jackson quickly tore down his bulky windmills and the old solar panels, and focused on the topic closest to his heart: trying to solve "the 10,000-year-old problem of agriculture."

The problem, Jackson explains, is that agriculture in most places is based on practices that use up limited resources. The major grains, like wheat and corn, are planted afresh each year. When the fields are later plowed, they lose soil. The soil that remains in these fields loses nitrogen and carbon.

This worries Jackson because vast quantities of soil are washed out of the fields and down the rivers, and the soil that's left is gradually losing its nutrients.

Trying to figure out how to solve this problem, Jackson realized the answer was right in front of him. It was the patch of native prairie on his own farm — full of grasses from ankle to shoulder height, peppered with white and purple flowers, and surrounded by shrubs and cottonwood trees.

"Here is a steep, sloping bank with a lot of species diversity, featuring perennials," Jackson says. "This is what I call nature's wisdom."

Perennials are plants that put down strong roots 10 feet or more into the ground and hold the soil in place. Perennials live year-round, unlike annual crops that get planted every year. In Kansas, perennials survive the harsh winters and the blazing hot summers.

Native Vegetation Improving Soil

In contrast to fields that get plowed every year, native prairie vegetation actually improves the soil year after year. The amazing variety of plant life in this prairie also makes it resilient against disease.

"So I thought, why can't we solve this 10,000-year-old problem?" Jackson says. "The solution is to build an agriculture based on the way nature's ecosystems work."

This turned out to be both a major plant breeding challenge, and a social one. It's not easy to get farmers and the public at large to rethink what farms should ideally be — not just areas sacrificed to food production, but actually part of nature.

Jackson's been spreading this word through his annual prairie festival for the past 31 years.

Reinventing Crops

To make progress on the biological problem, Jackson recruited a handful of young and ambitious Ph.D. plant breeders. Their mission: nothing less than to reinvent the world's most important crops.

At the annual Prairie Festival, Land Institute scientist Lee DeHaan shows off a new strain of wheat that was created from crossing wheat with a perennial grass.

At the annual Prairie Festival, Land Institute scientist Lee DeHaan shows off a new strain of wheat that was created from crossing wheat with a perennial grass.

Jackson decided to figure out a way to breed grain crops so they can be planted once, actually replenish the soil, and be harvested year after year. One of the scientists Jackson brought to the Land Institute to work on this is a Minnesota farm boy turned plant breeder, Lee DeHaan.

"At the time I started here, they said, 'Let's put the youngest guy on wheat, because maybe he can see it through,' " DeHaan says. "We're not expecting it to be something that's real easy to do or something that we'll see the results of really soon."

The Perennial Wheat Project

DeHaan joined the institute in 2001, and his job is to crossbreed regular wheat with other grasses that survive year-round.

"We decided to really go at this aggressively and make a huge population of plants that are very diverse. So that first year, we made about 1,500 new plants."

It's taken DeHaan years and years, but as we look around the greenhouse today, we see the result of his work: hundreds of plants, sitting on waist-high benches, that are a cross between wheat and grasses that grow year-round.

DeHaan will soon plant them in the fields. He hopes that maybe — just maybe — up will sprout a wheat plant that produces lots of grain and actually tastes something like wheat, and has the hardiness of a native prairie grass.

Waiting For The Big Breakthrough

"It's like scratching off lottery tickets," DeHaan says. "Maybe there's something amazing in there. We'll see. That's why we love to be plant breeders. Maybe this is the year when you make the big breakthrough. That's kind of the fun of it."

DeHaan has taken a native wheat relative that's already a perennial, and hybridized it to produce grains that are more like the wheat we actually grind into flour. They call this new kind of wheat Kernza.

Other scientists at the Land Institute are working on perennial sunflowers and perennial sorghum. Sorghum is another important staple crop around the world, though it's grown mostly for cattle food here in the United States.

It all takes lots of time, but Wes Jackson is a patient man.

The Land Institute is hybridizing sunflowers with closely related prairie species, hoping to come up with sunflower crops that don't have to be replanted every year.

The Land Institute is hybridizing sunflowers with closely related prairie species, hoping to come up with sunflower crops that don't have to be replanted every year.

"We don't feel so bad about talking about 50 years any more. Because we're not going to solve the climate problem in 50 years," says Jackson. "We're not going to solve the problem of too many people in 50 years."

The World Living Beyond Its Means

Climate change and increased populations around the world are problems that are all tied together, Jackson says. They all point to a world that's living beyond its means. Jackson's goal is to create a whole new system that will let us live sustainably.

"You start with a resilient food system," he says. "And we don't have one."

Maybe someday we will. As the silver-haired Kansan is fond of saying: If you're working on a problem you can solve in your own lifetime, you're not thinking big enough.

What would you do for the Elgin Marbles?

Would you do this?

She-Wolf...is that you?

1/2 wolf, 1/2 scholar!...

How did Shakira manage to take a summer history class at UCLA in 2007 and not make headlines until after the course was over?

The Colombian-bred international pop star revealed her successful game plan in a recent interview with the UK's The Guardian.

"I used to wear a cap and a big backpack," Shakira explained. "I looked like a boy. I didn't get recognized."

When onlookers got suspicious and inquired whether or not she was the "Hips Don't Lie" singer, she told them that her name was Isabel, which is actually one of her middle names.

Her simple plan worked. Professor Robert Cleve, who taught the Introduction to Western Civilization: Ancient Civilizations from Prehistory to Circa A.D. 843 class, had no idea "Isabel" was actually a pop star.

"She told me she was visiting from Colombia and that she was just doing this for her own enlightenment and enjoyment," Cleve told the Associated Press in 2007. "She looked like just an ordinary student. She wasn't flamboyant...she didn't act like a big celebrity or anything."

The singer, whose song "She Wolf" is No. 31 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, sat near the front of the class and regularly stayed afterwards to ask questions, Cleve added. "I was really impressed with how intelligent she was," he said.

Shakira decided to take the class after wrapping the tour for her album, "Oral Fixation."

When most celebs need a break from the business, they typically take a real vacation. They travel to a remote destination, relax, and clear their minds.

But Shakira said challenging her mind instead was the ideal getaway after the tour.

"It was such a long tour, I needed a break from me," Shakira told The Guardian. "The universe is so broad, I cannot be at the center of it. So I decided to go to the university and study history for a summer course, just to kind of switch gears, taste the student life."

Shakira has been known to spend her spare time studying, and learning about the countries she visits, her manager Fifi Kurzman told The Associated Press.

While Shakira did not attend the last few classes, she told The Guardian that she enjoyed the experience. "I would go to the university over and over again if I could," Shakira said.

Days up and down they come
Like rain on a conga drum
Forget most, remember some
But don't turn none away
Everything is not enough
Nothin' is too much to bear
Where you been is good and gone
All you keep is the gettin' there
To live is to fly
Low and high
So shake the dust off of your wings
And the sleep out of your eyes

A Littler Wayne

I guess Lil'Wayne's been productive this year.....REproductive! ohhhh.


Another lil one -- a boy -- is on the way for Lil Wayne!

Eonline reports that the "Lollipop" rapper confirmed that will be a dad for the fourth time. This time, the mother is singer Nivea, 27 (ex-wife to The Dream, Christina Milian's new husband).

It's the third son in about a year for Lil Wayne -- a.k.a. Dwayne Carter Jr., 27.

Last October, his first son, Dwayne Carter III, was born to a woman (her identity was never disclosed); last month, actress Lauren London gave birth to a second son, Lennox Samuel Ari.

The multi-platinum hip-hop artist also has a 9-year old daughter, Reginae, from ex-wife Antonia Carter (they divorced in 2006).

I like my Potato Brave

Spanish cuisine is known for loads of garlic and almonds, lemons and garlic, sherry and wine. But Spaniards do drink beer and occasionally cook with it. I mentioned to a Spanish friend that I'd made patatas bravas (literally "brave potatoes"), and he told me his wife added beer along with the vinegar. He said she used a dark Spanish beer I'd never heard of. In the past I've used a dark ale, but a recent recommendation on America's Test Kitchen led me to try O'Doul's amber. It was perfect.

Makes 6 servings

1 1/2 pounds waxy potatoes such as red bliss, cut into 3/4-inch cubes

1 teaspoon crushed red pepper

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon hot smoked Spanish paprika

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 red or green bell pepper, seeded and sliced

2 garlic cloves, chopped

1/4 cup dark beer

2 teaspoons red or white wine vinegar

Salt to taste

Boil potatoes until tender, about 10 minutes. Drain and quarter.Thoroughly mix together red pepper, cumin and Spanish paprika, and sprinkle over potatoes.

Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium high heat. Add potatoes and bell pepper, and brown the potatoes. Add garlic and cook 1 minute longer. Add beer and cook until almost dry. Stir in vinegar, taking care to coat all potatoes. Add salt to taste and serve

The Floating Dutchmen?

check out some new Dutch homes.

I saw this guy on Top Chef Masters, and I approved!

and now..i'm hungry :0

BAM! That’s the sound of a great regional American cuisine being reduced to a cliché. But don’t blame Emeril; the same thing happened in the 80’s, when Paul Prudhomme unleashed a national epidemic of blackened catfish, from which chain restaurants across the country are still recovering. For some reason, the food of Louisiana seems destined to be eternally misunderstood.

This fall, two cookbooks, My New Orleans by John Besh and Real Cajun by Donald Link and Paula Disbrowe, should go a long way toward restoring the rich culinary traditions of Creole and Cajun cooking to their proper place in the American pantheon. Both books were written Post-Katrina, and are imbued with a reverence for local foodways that the authors fear might fade away. There are similarities between the cooking styles of Besh and Link, but one important difference: Besh covers both Creole (fancier, more restaurant-style food) and Cajun (more rustic) cooking, while Link focuses exclusively on Cajun food.

John Besh started out cooking in New Orleans, and then went to Europe to train in kitchens there. When he returned, he opened the elegant restaurant August in New Orleans, followed by Luke, Besh Steak and La Provence. He grows some of his own food, raises his own pigs and chickens, and primarily buys from local suppliers whom he knows. His book is a mostly successful attempt to capture what he calls “the food of here.”

My New Orleans is a gorgeous book. Color photographs of the food are interspersed with black and white historical pictures, and Besh describes in loving detail many of the local dining rituals. His prose is heartfelt, and throughout the book he scatters many gems, like the story about Tabasco, the famous Louisiana pepper sauce. His red beans and rice recipe is perfect, simple, a dish I could eat every week. The fried artichoke recipe calls to mind the famous preparation of the Jewish quarter in Rome, the classic version of trout amandine he includes is exemplary and the grilled corn on the cob with crab butter is genius.

A New Fish in Town!

Did you know that some of the best hardwood can be found underwater? When people built hydrodams and created lakes in valleys to get quick, cheap power, they flooded the trees and essentially forgot about them. A small underwater logging industry has ensued, but no company has taken it as far as Triton Logging of Vancouver, BC. Instead of sending human divers underwater, Triton built a giant yellow submarine called the Sawfish — a 5,500-pound unmanned logging device capable of finding, chopping, and floating trees weighing up to 200 pounds to the surface from deep underwater. When pictures of the Sawfish circulated the blogosphere in 2006, three years after its initial deployment, the sub was harvesting softwood on the west coast of Canada. It has since increased its fleet to four, doubled each machine's lifting power, and expanded its mission to underwater hardwood forests in tropical reservoirs in Southeast Asia, South America, and Africa.Guided by sonar, video cameras, and GPS, the Sawfish dives down under the surface and finds forests to harvest.

thinking of you, Duff's...

Just in time for football season, the Lion’s Head Tavern in New York City stopped selling 25-cent chicken wings on Monday nights. In Tucson, a sports bar called O’Malleys on Fourth scrapped its fall special of a dozen wings on Monday nights for $4.

And in restaurants from Sarasota to Seattle, an improbable poultry part is showing up on menus: a little chunk of chicken breast that is fried and sauced and sold, with marketer’s brio, as a “boneless wing.”

All this is happening because wholesale chicken prices have turned upside down. The once-lowly wing is selling at a premium over what has long been the gold standard of poultry parts, the skinless boneless chicken breast.

Like the tail that wags the dog, the wings are now flapping the chicken.

Mike Bell knows chicken prices. The logistics and purchasing manager for Buffalo Wild Wings, a national chain with about 600 restaurants, Mr. Bell will buy 57 million pounds of chicken wings this year. Describing recent conversations with poultry processors, he said: “Basically a whole bunch of them are throwing their hands in the air and saying, ‘I don’t know what’s going on. We’ve never seen it this way.’ ”

In seven of the last 11 months, wholesale wing prices have been higher than breast prices, a reversal in a market where breasts usually reign supreme. In September, the average wholesale price for whole chicken wings in the Northeast was $1.48 a pound, according to the Agriculture Department. Yet skinless boneless breasts were $1.21 a pound.

Red

Been down, been out
did it all on my own
seems growing up
didn't take long

feel strange, feel good
feel better with you
you've changed, you should
cause I think I did too...

made my mistakes
I did a few things right
but it will take what it will take
and baby that's life
you cannot change what you do not own
everybody knows
but if you live deep and you love strong
you get pretty damn close...

I shake, I smile
as you said, it takes a while
but take the good from the bad
I might win, I might lose
but my sin is as I choose

Poor Pittsburgh

Destroying 1 of the 3 rivers ain't so bad right?

MASONTOWN, Pa. — For years, residents here complained about the yellow smoke pouring from the tall chimneys of the nearby coal-fired power plant, which left a film on their cars and pebbles of coal waste in their yards. Five states — including New York and New Jersey — sued the plant’s owner, Allegheny Energy, claiming the air pollution was causing respiratory disease and acid rain.

So three years ago, when Allegheny Energy decided to install scrubbers to clean the plant’s air emissions, environmentalists were overjoyed. The technology would spray water and chemicals through the plant’s chimneys, trapping more than 150,000 tons of pollutants each year before they escaped into the sky.

But the cleaner air has come at a cost. Each day since the equipment was switched on in June, the company has dumped tens of thousands of gallons of wastewater containing chemicals from the scrubbing process into the Monongahela River, which provides drinking water to 350,000 people and flows into Pittsburgh, 40 miles to the north.

“It’s like they decided to spare us having to breathe in these poisons, but now we have to drink them instead,” said Philip Coleman, who lives about 15 miles from the plant and has asked a state judge to toughen the facility’s pollution regulations. “We can’t escape.”

Ears

Ever wonder about the middle ear?

lunch is on me

To Hainan or not to Hainan

pretty.

If I was choosing a China destination tho...it would have to be far far away in Guilan.

This is a tiny village called Yanshuo in Guilan...mmmmmm

feeling like a lonesome bear..

Uck..

The American stamp on the Louvre

What is the best way to degrade a world-renowned space of art and history? Gee I don't know, let's say we plunk a McDonald's right in the heart of it.

Do i like food too much?

Ok, I will try to make this my last blog about food today...but I really wanna makes these for halloween!! They're so ghoulishly adorable.

Stay Hungry.
Stay Foolish.

Enchanting fall

I really like fall's textures and lack-of-color -palate. Martin&Osa, you are a foul temptress.

omigosh

Jeez...I have just entered the wonderful realm of food blogs. Here's one from Coconut and Lime that I definitely wanna make next week...om om


...and here's another with brussel sprouts. I'm curious about what those little guys taste like...


And of course, always intrigued by any recipe that breads a jalapeno. Mmmm spicy.

The Hollow Men

I really enjoyed this, in a haunting way..

III


This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
-T.S. Elliot