YAR (Yet Another Recipe, by request): Mom’s no-name chicken

My mom makes this dish, although she might not admit to it.  And so I am posting this recipe while she is on vacation.  I’ve ruthlessly stolen it.  It has no cutsy name, but suggestions are welcome.  This dish takes a little bit of forethought, but doesn’t take that much effort.

Ingredients

  • Eight chicken thighes on the bone
  • Juice of one lemon
  • 1/2 tsp fresh crushed black pepper
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 2 tbsp olive oil

Directions

Mix lemon juice, pepper, salt, and olive oil in a bowl that is samll enough to submerge chicken.  Add chicken and press down until the marinade covers it. Cover and place in refrigerator.  Marinade for at least 4 hours but no longer than a day.  Consider flipping chicken once, but keep it submerged.

Preheat oven to 180°C with fan, or 195°C without.  Place chicken in a pan, covering with any remaining marinade and cook uncovered for 45 minutes.

Serves four people.

Is that fat blathering idiot right about something?

rush_limbaughOf course we’re talking about Rush Limbaugh.  In an Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal he argues that a stimulus package should satisfy both “supply-siders” and “Keynesians”.  He also makes the argument that Obama didn’t win the election by that much.

I find both arguments unpersuasive.  Let’s start with the last one first.  No matter how you break down the percentages of the presidential election, Obama won.  I don’t recall Mr. Limbaugh making an argument that President Bush should reach out to the Democrats when Al Gore won the election in 2000.  In addition, Republicans had their clocks cleaned in both the House and the Senate.  A sufficient mandate exists that the Republicans will not stop President Obama.  As I’ve previously written, congressional Democrats will be opposition enough.  Limbaugh knows this, which is why he then tries to base his argument on a poll, which says that 59% of Americans think Congress and the president will spend too much.  Whatever.  Nobody ever got thrown out of office for growing the deficit.

But is Mr. Limbaugh correct when he suggests that both supply side and direct government investment in various efforts is the right way to go forward?  Normally, I would view taking both roads as failing the Yogi Berra test: when you come to a fork in a road, take it.  And yet this is often something that politicians can’t do.  They often can’t make a stand.  This is, for instance, why no declaration of war has been made by the Congress since World War II.

The theory behind supply-side economics is that when businesses have lower costs (say through lower taxes), either they will receive more revenue, in which case they will invest it and end up hiring more people, and thus help GDP and jobs, or they will cut their prices, in which case the consumer will spend the money somewhere else and also increase GDP and drive businesses to create more jobs.  This assumes that the obstruction to investment today is somehow related to a lack of cash.  This is not the case, today.

Many companies are sitting on fortunes that they are not spending, and those that would like to spend – generally start-ups, are unable to get credit from banks.  No amount of tax cuts will help a start-up right now.  No amount of tax cuts will cause companies to expand in the current environment.  Everyone is scared that the consumer lacks cash.

And so while under some circumstances it might make sense to play the supply-side game, the more direct approach is to address consumer confidence by seeing that they have have jobs.  The problem with government spending models is that they tend to produce jobs that we as Americans don’t think much of.  When was the last time you worked on a crew that built a road, for instance?

Some of the president’s initiatives go into health care and education.  It is a sure bet that such money will find its way back into the economy.  In fact, nearly all of the programs will bring money to the economy.  But a restructuring seems inevitable.

Sadly Mr. Limbaugh couldn’t get past his own partisan blinders to offer a candidate assessment of the situation.

Another Recipe By Request: Presidential Pasta

This is a very simple pasta that is so named because we ate it while watching Barack Obama take the oath of office (the first time) from Chief Justice John Roberts.  For the record, my daughter preferred the pasta to the inauguration.  By the way, all of these dishes are meant to be relatively quick to make, tasty for adults and children alike.

Ingredients:

  • 250 grams cubed and floured chicken breasts
  • 1 clove chopped garlic
  • 1 1/2 cups fresh grated parmesan cheese
  • 250 grams baby spinach (washed – by you)
  • 1 large onion, cut into lengthwise slices.
  • 12 pieces (about one bottle) of sun dried tomatoes
  • 3 tbsp olive oil (if possible use oil the sun dried tomatoes were packed in)
  • 1 tsp chopped oregano (dried is fine)
  • 250 grams of your favorite pasta – linguini works well, but so do shells

Directions

Boil a large pot of water.  The remainder of the directions below take 15 minutes after prep time.  Cook your pasta to be finished by then, but you want your pasta pot kept hot.

Heat 1 tbsp oil in a large pan to medium high.  Stir fry chicken for five minutes or until done.  Set aside.  Re-oil pan and cook onions until they begin to clear or carmelize, about five minutes.  Turn flame down to medium-low.  Add garlic and stir for 20 seconds.  Add spinach and sundried tomatoes, and cook for about 1 minute.  Add chicken back into the pan, for about one minute.  Turn off burner.

After cooking and emptying pasta into a collandar, replace it in the pasta pot on onto the other pan’s burner, and mix in the contents of the other pan.  Add cheese and remaining olive oil and mix.  Serve immediately.

Serves four to five.

SCHIPP: More dumb Republican politics

Over the last year, healthcare for poor people took a beating as State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIPP) lapsed, and Congress was unable to override a Bush Administration veto – twice.  A smaller version of the bill was signed, but now President Obama has promised to sign the original bill, expanding coverage for poor children from 7 million to 11 million people.  Here is a lesson in politics: recognize the reality of a situation.  Had Republicans understood the implications of the oncoming beating that Senator McCain was about to receive, perhaps they would have comrpomised with Democrats.

Now Republicans are attempting to stand in the way on new ground: they want children of illegal immigrants not to be covered, even if they are American citizens.  Putting aside the constitutionality of it, the point of SCHIPP and programs like it is to provide for preventative care so that those children can do what they’re supposed to do – learn and grow – instead of becoming a burden on society by ending up in an emergency rooom, where astronomically higher expenses must be absorbed by society.  At the same time those children end up out of school, and their parents (illegal or legal) either become a burden, or at the very least, can contribute less to our economy.

More dumb opposition.  I say, mow ’em over, President Obama.