Another site change. Sorry, folks

OK, last move ever, I hope. Please update your bookmarks and RSS feeders and whatnots: This entire show has moved to just plain old Kepkanation.com. Same WordPress taste, fewer WordPress restrictions. Not that I really found WordPress that restrictive, but — it was time to own this place. The American Dream: Web site ownership.

I’ll be updating the links and all of that very shortly, so eventually, it’s going to look absolutely identical to here. Everything posted there still transfers to OpenSalon, too, so — there are just so many ways to read me.

There will be no new content here after this message. And eventually, I’ll erase it all together. All old posts have been imported to the new blog.

Huzzah.

The newest entry in the eBook Martket: Kobo, from Borders

Borders is now taking pre-orders for the Kobo e-Reader, the newest entry into the eReader market. It’s just like every eReader you’ve admired so far — except this one costs only $149.

To reach that point, Kobo has cut (or changed) a few features. Unlike the Kindle, it doesn’t have 3G Wireless. Instead, you have to transfer books via good old-fashioned (ahem) USB cable or via bluetooth. It also has less storage (1GB) than the lowest priced Kindle (2GB).

That, however, is the end of the cons. The Kobo is 7″ tall and 4″ wide, slightly larger than a standard paperback, and weighs 8 ounces.

Comparison chart:

Name	Size/Weight	Storage	Transfer Method	Price	Store
Kindle	10.3 oz./8″ x 5.3″ x 0.36″	1,500 books/2GB	3G Wireless	$259	Amazon
Nook	12.1 oz./7.7″ x 4.9″ x 0.5″	1,500 books/2GB	3G Wireless	$259	Barnes & Noble
Kobo	8 oz./7.2″ x 4.7″ x 0.4″	750 books/1GB	USB/Bluetooth	$149	Borders
Sony	7.76 oz./6.25″ x 4.25″ x 0.4″	350 books/.5 GB	USB	$149	Various

Like its closest competitors (the Kindle, the Nook) the Kobo uses e-Ink technology to display books in black-and-white. It’s white (like the Kindle and the Nook — catch on, folks, even Apple isn’t making little white gadgets anymore) and it holds hundreds of books without blinking. It has days and days of battery life.

Unlike the Kindle and the Nook, the Kobo is an eReader and an eReader only. It doesn’t promise wifi access, games, or quick updates of blogs and newspapers. It is a portable electronic book reader. No more, no less.

I’m in favor. The additional features of the Kindle and Nook have never called to me — in part because I already have a laptop and a Smartphone, neither of which I’m looking to replace, particularly with an interface as clunky as those. What I am tempted by is the possibility of having an easy-to-read, easy-to-tote electronic reader, for less than an arm and a leg (just an arm, I guess, is my price point on this one). I know it’s strange to crave single-purpose devices, but in this case, I see the logic. Sometimes, you just want to read.

Tuesday Night Food: Tuna Pasta for A Vegetarian

I’m a vegetarian. I’ve been a vegetarian for something like 6 years now. Every once-in-a-while, though, I fall off the vegetarian wagon and onto a fish sandwich. It turns out, fried halibut isn’t such a bad place to land. Sure, you get a little greasy, but you also get an excuse to eat tartar sauce. Sometimes, as I gaze down from the veggie wagon at the Land of Meat, I think that perhaps these tiny adventures into Fried Fishyville mean I’m perhaps ready to take bigger strides back into the meat world: Strides like canned tuna.

Last week, when I was bemoaning my lack of The Silver Spoon Pasta (TSSP) cookbook, I asked the Internet for help — and I found what seems to be a now-dunct blog about someone who (like me) had a romance with The Silver Spoon, but who (unlike me) also owned the book at the time the romance began. She had made Spaghetti con il Tonno (Spaghetti with Tuna), and it looked delicious. Go ahead. Look at her blog. Look at those luscious photos, that creamy, dreamy sauce, that beautiful green LeCreuset tea pot, and tell me you aren’t filled with dinner envy.

I knew I had to have it: the recipe (with tuna!), not the tea pot, since one of these things requires about $5 and the other would require me to give more blood than is physically possible. Besides, who wants my wimpy vegetarian blood, anyway?

So I went to the store and found the most earth-friendly tuna imaginable, because there’s been an ongoing discussion at my house about the poor, endangered tuna recently. It goes like this:

Me: I heard on NPR that bluefin tuna are going extinct!
Boyfriend: What! Oh no!
Me: It’s true!
Boyfriend: But they’re so tasty!

The tuna I selected was packed in water that was probably actually the tears of angels, cradling it in un-salted comfort, after its death of old age at the happiness ranch in the middle of the least polluted part of the sea. It still cost only $2. Everything in oil was more expensive (can I blame the Gulf for this?). Anyway, tuna in hand, it was time to cook.

Spaghetti con il Tunno
(from The Silver Spoon Pasta):

3 T Olive Oil
1 clove garlic, minced
3 T Tomato Paste (yep, the stuff in the teeny little can)
2.5 oz. tuna packed in oil, flaked
12 oz. spaghetti
salt, pepper, parsley.

Heat the oil in a pan. Add the garlic and cook for 2-3 minutes, until lightly browned. Add tomato paste and about 1-2T of water and stir. Add tuna.

While all that’s happening, cook the pasta to al dente. Drain. Add pasta to skillet with tomato sauce; toss; eat.

Well, so that’s what they said to do. While I generally believe TSSP can do no wrong, I had this whole can of tuna — 8 full tuna-y ounces. Using only a fourth of it seemed wrong. It seemed wasteful. And it seemed very likely to make my entire fridge smell like tuna.

I dumped it all in. To make up for this, I added a full pound of pasta — what the hell, in for a penny — and the entire can of tomato paste. I didn’t have parsley, so I chopped up some fresh, spicy oregano that I’ve got growing by the window, shaded by a stack of unopened mail. The whole sauce took, maybe, 20 minutes to put together from start to end, including pasta cooking time.

The end result was a definitely tuna pasta. It was, in fact, too much tuna for me. A childhood of Tuna Casserole suddenly paraded through my mind; I kept expecting to find a cubed boiled egg in the plate, or a dash of non-fat mayonaisse. The tomato sauce was surprisingly good (god bless that oregano), but I couldn’t get over the tuna. It was — predictably — everywhere.

Boyfriend, however, loved it. He ate it with relish (not literally — no tartar sauce here), as though that tuna might be his last. He added some parmsan and some salt and had it for dinner last night and tonight; there’s still enough for a substantial meal tomorrow, too.

For me, it will be the last tuna, for a while. I’ve at least answered this question successfully: tuna is not at all a soft place to land, even when it’s endorsed by The Silver Spoon.

Weird fact of the day: Ferret Legging

I had no idea:

An ancient English “sport” called “ferret legging” has contributed to the myths about ferret behaviour. The contestant had to tie his trouser legs around the ankles, then place two ferrets down his trousers before tying the waist closed. The object was to be the person that keeps the ferrets in his trousers the longest. Many people only lasted a few minutes before the ferrets nipped them, causing them to release them in a panic. The poor creatures must have been terrified, and it is no wonder that contestants were often bitten. Fortunately, ferret-legging has waned in popularity as awareness of animal welfare has increased.

Someone, please send decent hobbies to England stat. I say this with all the authority of one who has, yes, attended the Ferret Agility Trials (formerly the Ferret Olympics, before the Olympic Committee objected). No ferrets were harmed, or legged, in that experience.

That’s from an article about how ferrets might be the new celebrity purse pet. Here’s my question: Do celebrities not have enough crap in their purses already?

As The World Turns Star Dies at 91

Aw, the woman who’s played Nancy Huges on the soap opera “As the World Turns” forever has died:

Actress Helen Wagner, who played mild-mannered Nancy Hughes on the CBS soap opera ”As the World Turns” for more than a half-century and spoke its first words, has died at age 91.

She died Saturday, said the show’s New York-based production company, TeleNext Media Inc., which didn’t say where she died or what was the cause of her death.

Wagner opened ”As the World Turns” when it premiered on April 2, 1956, with the words: ”Good morning, dear.” She held the Guinness World Record for playing the same role on television for the longest amount of time, TeleNext Media said.

I grew up watching “As the World Turns” and its CBS sister, “Guiding Light,” at my grandmother’s knee — literally.  She’d sit in her recliner, and either I’d sit on the floor in front of her or my sister would (or we both would, once Grandpa came home and claimed his recliner). My grandparents were the first people I knew who owned a VCR and actually used the programming feature on it, so that every day, while my grandmother was at work, it would whir to life and record her stories.

By the time I was watching ATWT, Nancy Hughes was mostly a character who only showed up when her son and daughter-in-law, Bob and Kim, were throwing one of their legendary neighborhood cookouts or birthday bashes. I don’t remember her being involved in any scandals. She was just Dr. Bob’s mother, a solid, thoughtful presence in a town (like all soap opera towns) prone to chaos and drama.

I guess what I’m really mourning is the death of “As the World Turns,” which will air its last episode this September. Of course I didn’t know Helen Wagner, the woman or the actress, but I knew, for a time, Nancy Hughes, thanks to that dynamic, crazy, engaging show. It’s a bit like hearing that an old friend’s grandmother has died.

Library victory: Four new mysteries, one low price

I have been reading my way, out of order, through Henning Mankell’s Wallander series, as I’ve noted elsewhere. The mysteries are a striking combination of the usual detective tome — crimes are committed and investigated — and social commentary literature, as Wallander again and again struggles to understand what, exactly, is happening to himself and his country. Mankell’s said that the series should be subtitled as “novels of Swedish anxiety,” and they live up to their names. I enjoy every single one, in part because they feel a little weightier than the usual mystery. A cop who hardly ever carries a gun dashes around the countryside, worrying all the time about things other than the mystery at hand; the books make police work look hard, terrifying, troubling, and often very unrewarding — and not in the romantic “tough guy” way that James Patterson’s protagonists “suffer.”

Anyway, my Wallander love has been stymied by a tax-inspired stinginess of late; it took me four weeks to finally (with a 40 percent off coupon in hand) buy Faceless Killers, the first book in the Wallander series, and then I polished it off in only two days.

I loved it, and I was reminded of how much happier I am when there’s a good book waiting for me at the end of a long day (or over a short lunch). It was worth the money, but clearly it’s not something I could do every two days. So I went back to hovering over The Dogs of Riga, the next book in the series, adding it to my virtual cart a few times before bailing at the pay screen, then picking it up at the bookstore and reading the first few pages — “just in case it’s not that good.” It was that good, but my wallet was still that empty, so I put it back. I renewed my hold on it at the public library and settled down to wait.

Today, on a whim, I checked the university library. Each time I’ve looked for a Mankell book before, I’ve found nothing — but, lo and behold, The Dogs of Riga is an exception. Hooray! A flood of new tasty books — that one, plus Mankell’s One Step Behind, and two Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo Martin Beck mysteries — are now in my hands.

Thanks, library!

Seeing is Believing: Ginormous Pancake Saturday

Today we went for breakfast at a diner we’d never tried before. The review for said diner promised “manhole cover-sized pancakes.” The group’s consensus (OK, mostly between R and I) was that this could not possibly be true, but that it did signal some larger-than-usual pancakes that should be checked out. (We value our pancakes).

So we trundled over the river to a tiny little diner decorated with old license plates and Elvis memorabilia to try out the pancakes of legend. The menu itself also promised that one wouldn’t need more than a single pancake to end hunger; there are no short stacks at Addi’s Diner. There’s just the one hotcake, for $3.25.

I ordered just this, figuring (correctly) I could also swipe some food from C’s plate if needed. R ordered a pancake, egg, bacon, and side of “pitiful lookin’ biscuit” with gravy (the restaurant’s words, not ours). C went with a Reuben burger and potato skins.

And, oh yeah, an appetizer: deep-fried battered bacon.

That, my friends, is an appetizer America should be talking about. Move over, please, KFC Double Down. This is a real gamble: crispy-battered, salty bacon, in strips so long they must have found extra stretchy pigs to make it. The guys both admitted there was probably some permanent heart damage being done — but they said this while dipping the strips in the included ranch dressing, to cut the salt. Despite groaning and prediction of apocalypse, the bacon appetizer was one of only two plates that were completely cleaned by the end of the meal.

The bacon was followed by delivery of the pancakes. On platters. That they over-filled. “I’ll just move over so there’s room for your pancake,” C said, with — I believe — a bit of awe.

The hotcake — I’m told there is a difference between “pancakes” and “hotcakes” and “flapjacks,” but haven’t yet researched this — was gigantic and dense. No amount of syrup (which came, warmed, in a glass bottle) seemed like enough — maybe because the pancakes came with what must have been a quarter-cup of whipped butter melting on top.

I made it through maybe a third before I could do no more. R’s pitiful biscuit (it actually looked quite good) with gravy was only half-eaten, too, despite good flavored cream-sausage gravy. C managed to finish his Reuben burger, but I was left to devour his potato skins (which were really just that: skins, fried to crispy with only a faint juicy film of potato flesh still clinging to the curves).

This was a delightful, if punishing meal, and we all ate for about $8 each with refillable sodas. If we’d gone for coffee — $.75 — it would’ve been even less.

As we watched our leftovers get carried away, R asked, “Why don’t we believe what we read?” We had, after all, been warned about the size of the pancakes.

We decided it was a combination of factors: the unlikelihood of the pancakes being that large; the opposite likelihood of people exaggerating in positive reviews; and our general consideration of our own appetites as extraordinary.

Sometimes, you just have to see things for yourself. We’re all believers, now — at least, I believe we’ll go back pretty soon.

Charlie Crist Should Run as a Democrat

Alert Alaska: Charlie Crist is goin’ rogue! The Florida governor is set to announce tomorrow at 5 p.m. that he’ll continue running for the U.S. Senate, but as a non-affiliated candidate, not a member of the Republican party (hat-tip: Kathy Riordan). That’s extremely convenient news, as the Republican party was looking quite likely to not to vote for Charlie Crist in its upcoming primary.

This is exciting in the same way that a tie in the electoral college would be exciting: in a purely political science nerd kind of way. Think of the ramifications! All of Crist’s campaign workers, many of whom have had their salaries paid in part by the national party or GOP PACs, now must choose: candidate loyalty or party uber alles? Those bold Republicans who’ve endorsed Crist in the past must also choose: Did they mean what they said? Mitch McConnell said not that long ago:

“Charlie Crist has been a tireless advocate for the citizens of Florida by fighting to lower taxes, reduce government spending and enhance the quality of life for all Floridians. Decisions are being made every day in Washington that have a direct impact upon the lives of all Americans and we need Charlie Crist in the U.S. Senate to ensure that those decisions will benefit the citizens of Florida.”

Does the minority leader now want to vote against a man whose very presence in the Senate would, in his words, benefit the citizens of a state with an enormous number of electoral votes? Has he discovered something that would change his mind about Charlie Crist?

No one, of course, is going to be honest about this. McConnell will pull his endorsement, as will the Republican National Committee’s Senate PAC, and they will both say that they’re just following “the will of the Florida people.” Charlie Crist, in leaving the GOP, will say the same thing. Who’s right?

Neither.

The truth is Crist hasn’t changed, and neither has McConnell. What’s changed is Crist’s position in the race: he’s a loser.So Mitch McConnell’s issue with Charlie Crist isn’t that he’s moderate — it’s that he’s not going to win the primary. And Charlie Crist’s problem with the GOP isn’t that they’ve left him behind — it’s that they disagree on the pressing matter of whether he’d make a better senator than Marco Rubio.

The weirdest thing about any independent run is the way that everyone — the candidate, the media, the staff, the voters — overlook the most ironic element of the whole thing. We’re all going to take up the Independent label for Crist as soon as he declares it for himself. Yet hardly any independent candidate is really wholly independent of a party. Crist got all of his name recognition and most of his political funding thus far through the Republican Party. Unless he radically changes his positions in the next few days — doubtful — he’s not truly a non-affiliated candidate, just out there, being independent, thinking his own thoughts. He’s a guy who wants to go to Washington, D.C. and caucus with the Republican minority. There are still dues to be paid in order to do that, dues that will include voting for Republican programs and against Democratic initiatives. Senator Crist, in D.C., will be a Republican Except in Name.

To say that Charlie Crist is independent, just like saying Joe Lieberman is independent, is an insult to the word “independent.” It doesn’t mean anything except that he briefly saw an advantage to changing a letter beside his name on a ballot.

Charlie Crist is a pro-stimulus, pro-health care, pro-education environmentalist who’s unpopular with people who want more teachers fired and fewer taxes on the wealthy. There’s a word for people who vote like that and believe like that, Governor, and the word isn’t “independent.” It’s “Democrat.” (And sure, he’s pro-gun and pro-life, but have you met Ben Nelson?). True political courage would be to admit not that you’re opportunistically trying to find a way to have your cake and eat it, too; it would be to admit that you’ve never fit in the party you claimed, your views have changed the further into office you’ve gone, and you’d like a chance to make things right.

The “independent” label should mean something. So, probably, should the outright scorn of your current party.

This Week in Cooking: My Silver Spoon Crush

I have a total cookbook crush on The Silver Spoon: Pasta. It’s a $40 cookbook, translated from the original Italian, in which every recipe involves pasta. Because it is $40, I love it from afar, often stopping to pet it or memorize recipes from it when I’m at the bookstore, and to whisper, “Someday, mi amor! Someday!” into its slick, picture-laden pages.

Il ragazzo and I have been trying a few of the shortest, easiest to remember recipes recently. They haven’t disappointed, though they have reminded me of the stark difference between how Americans see pasta and how Italians see pasta. Americans see it as a meal in and of itself, and therefore stack ingredients into our dishes accordingly. In Italy, pasta was always il primo piatto, the thing that came first. Sure, it packed a good, filling punch, but it wasn’t the centerpiece of the meal — that was reserved for the fish or meat that came in the second course. Beyond that, the American concept of Italian food is wildly over spiced — please, U.S.A., put down the oregano. Tomatoes are fine on their own.

The recipes in this book are mostly composed of simple pasta recipes — pasta, a vegetable, a dash of cream. Italian first course pasta. Not the Garlic Apricot Chicken with Pesto that the Americanized palate is used to. (I include myself here).

Anyway, Monday night after work I made Bucatini Con Salsa Ai Peperoni — Bucatini with Bell Pepper Sauce. I haven’t actually seen bucatini since I was in Italy — it’s a long pasta, like spaghetti except twice as thick, because it’s also hollow. I substituted thin spaghetti, because that was what I had on hand.

Bucatini Con Salsa Ai Peperoni

From The Silver Spoon Pasta Cookbook

Ingredients:
12 oz. bucatini
3 red or yellow bell peppers, sliced
1/2 cup cream
1/2 clove garlic, chopped
1 pearl onion, chopped
2 tsp. fresh marjoram

Saute the garlic and onion in oil for 10 minutes over low heat, until they brown. Add the peppers and cook for another ten minutes, until they’re soft. Puree the peppers and onions in a food processor, then return to the pan, add the cream and heat through.
Cook the pasta; drain and add to the cream mixture. Toss, add the marjoram and salt/pepper to taste.

Easy, right? Only I hit some snags. First: the store had only the lamest looking bell peppers imaginable, and one I brought home had mold inside. So we were down 1/3 of our peppers. Second, my tiny food processor made what I’d call pepper confetti, not really a pepper puree. I’d imagine the actual sauce is supposed to be a bit creamier, and to have a little more liquid to it that the bucatini can drink up. Instead, there were clumps of pepper-mix hanging to one side and pasta leering at them from across the bowl, like 80s movie stars at a fake high school dance.

It was still good. I mean, it had heavy cream. Which brings me to an important quiz:

Do you consider cream:

1. A luxury — only to be used on special occasions
2. A death sentence — to be avoided at all costs!
3. A condiment

Let me know in the comments. There’s no wrong answer, but some folks just won’t be invited to dinner.

Unconstitutional Laws as a Way of Life

I find it disingenuous that Karl Rove is opposed to the recent passage of Arizona’s immigration law because there will be “some constitutional problems with the bill.” Did he not get the memo that the new GOP way of pushing forward extremely conservative agendas is to pass unconstitutional bills?

For instance, yesterday’s passage in Oklahoma of the nation’s strictest abortion laws. These laws require doctors “to give women a detailed description of the fetus, and to undergo an ultrasound before getting an abortion,” which could force some women (including victims of rape and incest) to endure a vaginal probe sonogram before they can get a legal medical procedure. Yeah, that state-mandated probe is exactly as invasive as it sounds.

The bill was vetoed by Governor Bill Henry, who says it’s a waste of time:

“Both laws will be challenged and, in all likelihood, overturned by the courts as unconstitutional,” Henry said after the override votes. “I fear this entire exercise will ultimately be a waste of taxpayers’ time and money.”

A waste from my side of the aisle, yeah. From the other side, though, where the ultimate goal is the mainstreaming of extraordinarily conservative ideals, even if the law lasts only a month or two, that’s plenty of time. They’ve achieved their biggest political goal already.

Likewise with Arizona’s immigration bill. Even if parts of it are struck down — and that seems inevitable — the legislature has already proven its “toughness” on the matter.

This is as much legislating for the sake of making a point as it is legislating for the common good. Taken to the extreme, it’s where things like the birther bill (another Arizona classic) come from. It doesn’t matter if it passes and it doesn’t matter if it can remain law — it doesn’t matter what the Constitution says at all! It just matters, to those who would promote these laws, what they believe should happen.

It’s almost like not living in a real country at all.