Matzo Ball Soup for Gentiles

It was recently Thanksgiving here in the U.S. of A. and perhaps you have a turkey carcass somewhere around the house. If so, you’re in luck because you can make matzo ball soup. If not, Christmas is coming—consider serving turkey.

Easy Matzo Ball Soup Recipe
Make turkey soup.
Make matzo balls.
Drop the matzo balls into the soup.

Okay, maybe that was a little too easy. Just what is a matzo ball anyway? Matzos are the, often bland tasting, crackers that Jews eat during the Passover season. Matzos commemorate the time when the ancient Jews were captives in Egypt. Upon gaining their freedom, they had to beat it out of Egypt so fast that they didn’t have time to wait for their bread to rise.

Purchase matzo meal in the kosher section of your grocery store. Look for a recipe for matzo balls on the package. Follow it. Find a recipe for turkey soup. Follow it.

Make sure you refrigerate your matzo meal mixture before you roll it into matzo balls. A one-inch diameter is about right. Toss the matzo balls in your turkey soup. They will expand as they cook and their color will lighten. When done, the outer segments will be soft, and the interiors, slightly firm. Mazel tov.

Take two aspen and call a tree surgeon.

Colorado conifers have undergone major bark beetle infestation since 1996. Forests show ugly patches where the needles are diseased and red rather than healthy and green. Biologists claim some types of bark beetles are increasing because more can survive warmer winters. Due to climate warming, their range expands into higher altitudes and more northerly latitudes.

If you spend some time in the mountains, you can’t help noticing the degree to which spruce and pine trees are dying off. But you may not know that aspen are suffering, too. An article by Michelle Nijhuis in the December 2008 issue of Smithsonian, addresses the issue.

Foresters began observing aspen die-off in western Colorado in 2004. Although aspen bark beetles, borers, fungi, and diseases have all attacked the aspen, the underlying causes of aspen decline are high temperatures and draught, which stress the trees allowing them to fall victim to secondary causes.

It’s said that you can’t control the weather, but apparently people can, and have, influenced the climate. Global warming has begun, but perhaps it’s not too late to slow its progress. If we don’t, those beautiful mountain vistas may not be.

When CEOs come a begging

Bank CEOs got sloppy in their lending and it swamped their boat. So the government provided money for a bailout. They were expected to start lending again. Instead, they hoarded the money. But that’s not all they did. Bank CEOs bought other banks. They paid dividends. And they continued to draw their own excessive salaries.

Have they no shame? Had they taken salary cuts it would have demonstrated sincerity and contrition. But they continued to behave like it was business as usual. Did Nero fiddle while Rome burned? Damn right, he did. Does history repeat itself? No, why should it? Thankfully, they didn’t get all the money at once. Before they get the rest, they should be held accountable for how it gets spent.

When CEOs from the automotive sector came begging yesterday, Congress sent them home. “Come back when you have a plan,” it told them. Rightly so. After eight years of no bid contracts to privatize a war that wasn’t necessary, it’s about time that accountability came into fashion again. Tough financial decisions will soon need to be made. Let’s hope the government decides wisely.

—extrapolated from this mornings stories on NPR.

It looked kinda like this...

Shrieking, slithering, torrential shadows of red viscous madness chasing one another through endless, ensanguined corridors of purple fulgurous sky...

H. P. Lovecraft - The Lurking Fear

Well known Boston surgeon, Herbert West, disappears.

Suspicions were aroused today when Dr. Herbert West and his long time assistant failed to arrive at their clinic. Dr. West’s servants were alerted and subsequently found his assistant unconscious in the mansion’s sub-cellar laboratory.

Police investigating the scene found blood profusely spattered around the laboratory, but no evidence of a body. The laboratory’s large incinerator contained recent ashes. However, it could not immediately be determined if they were of human or reptilian origin.

Dr. West was murdered by a group of men who entered the laboratory through an ancient tomb, claimed his assistant. However, police consider this doubtful since the plaster shows no sign of disturbance.

Both Dr. West and his assistant were graduates of Miskatonic University Medical School in Arkham. Their careers, though successful, have been accompanied by rumors of unprofessional behavior. Some of these go as far back as their student days. Though some felt Dr. West’s theories regarding restoring the dead to life to be brilliant, others such as, Mishkatonic’s Dean, the late Dr. Allan Halsey, found them unpractical and morbid.

Though Dr. West’s disappearance has not yet been labeled a murder, his assistant is being held for further questioning. Further details regarding “Herbert West—Reanimator,” are divided into six episodes and can be found at dagonbytes.com .

The Spiritual Benefits of Recession.

Are there spiritual lessons to be gleaned from the economy’s rapid ride into Hell? I believe there are.

The first lesson is moderation. Lenders and borrowers both took excessive risks. When something looks too good to be true, it probably is. But avarice makes us want to believe when we should doubt. That’s why con artists are able to cheat us. Isn’t avarice one of the seven deadly sins?

Another lesson is that we are all interconnected. Even though you paid your mortgage and kept your house, you’ll have to suffer along with those who defaulted on their mortgages. When cash is tight and the economy slows, the effect is felt everywhere. Someone sneezes on Wall Street and someone else in India loses his job. There’s no escaping the fact — we are one.

Get rich working part-time

According to today's article at Galleycat, there's big money to be made in blogging. Not. At least not for the bottom ninety-eight percent of bloggers. Apparently, if you're after the big money, your blog needs to score anywhere from 100,000 to millions of hits per month.

I'm rooting for ya. We're all in this together.

Tea and Tidbits

The stock markets on three continents plunged all week. But, on Saturday, Denverites went out for dim sum. It was high noon and the restaurant was packed—expected wait time—half an hour. Not bad business, and in a slow economy to boot. Superstar Asian Cuisine is not an overly large restaurant, and some people had to wait standing. Dim sum carts blocked the aisles between tables. All in all, the ambience was claustrophobic. But once we were seated, all that changed. After pouring the tea, the first dish arrived, and the mood changed. The restaurant may have been crowded, but our table was an island. And we had that island all to ourselves. The food did not disappoint. For the uninitiated, dim sum is small plates of toothsome morsels such as pork or shrimp dumplings, fried fish balls, steamed meatballs, stuffed buns and custard tarts. Servers offer dishes from their carts and you choose whatever looks appealing. If you always order sweet and sour pork in Chinese restaurants, dim sum is probably not for you—it requires a more adventurous palate. However, if you like to try new things, than try the chicken feet. There isn’t much meat on them, but they are good to gnaw on and the sauce is tasty. Superstar Asian Cuisine is located at 2200 West Alameda Avenue in Denver. Dim sum is served from 11:00 to 4:00 on weekdays, 10:30 to 4:00 on Saturdays and 10:00 to 4:00 on Sundays.