Super nachos for Super Bowl Sunday. February 6, 2011
Posted by ourfriendben in recipes, wit and wisdom.Tags: appetizers, easy nachos, food for Super Bowl Sunday, nachos, Super Bowl Sunday
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Silence Dogood here. Who doesn’t love hot, cheesy, crunchy nachos? Who hasn’t been disappointed to be promised nachos and then served cold, gummy, sodden tortilla chips drowned in bright orange processed cheese product?
Never again. I found a super-easy, super-delicious recipe for nachos from Cook’s Illustrated that will give Super Bowl fans of every persuasion (and the rest of us, too) something to cheer about. Not only were they delicious, they took less than 10 minutes to put together. Cook’s Illustrated recommended serving them with fresh homemade salsa, fresh homemade guacamole, sour cream, and lime wedges, and I’m sure those would be delicious choices. But iced in as we are, I felt lucky to have the basic ingredients for the nachos and fresh salsa from the store, a luscious artisanal cilantro-based salsa, and sour cream, so that’s what I served up as dips when I made the nachos for lunch today. Let’s just say I heard no complaints from our friend Ben, and there wasn’t one bite left to share with our black German shepherd Shiloh or parrot Plutarch!
Here’s all it takes to make the nachos: a bag of white-corn tortilla chips (I used Tostitos bite-sized, one of our favorites), two bags (4 cups) shredded extra-sharp white Cheddar cheese, two very large fresh jalapenos, sliced thin, and four large scallions (green onions), chopped. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. In a 13-by-9-inch Pyrex or other ovenproof pan, layer chips, half the cheese, and half the jalapenos; repeat. Watch the pan and don’t add too many chips, just two even layers.
We halved the recipe, since there were just two of us (even though one was our friend Ben), and used an 8-by-8-inch pan, which required 2 cups cheese, about half a bag of tortilla chips, and one and a half huge jalapenos; we used three scallions, since we love oniony flavor. Put the pan in the oven, uncovered, for 7 to 10 minutes, until the cheese melts, then remove from the oven, allow to cool 2 minutes, and sprinkle on the chopped scallions. Serve with dollops of sour cream, salsa, and guacomole (and, in OFB’s case, margaritas).
Yum, what could be easier? I was a bit surprised that Cheddar rather than a shredded Mexican cheese blend was called for, but we love shredded white Cheddar, so I was certainly game, and it was luscious, browning just enough on top. “That smells SO good!!!” OFB exclaimed again and again. And he was right. The chips stayed perfectly crispy, the cheese was suitably melted and creamy, the jalapeno slices were just seared, and the scallions added the perfect tangy counterpoint. OFB, not a sour cream fan, loaded up on the salsas while I added a good dollop of sour cream to my plate to cool down the jalapenos.
Both of us thought the result was delicious. We had not one soggy tortilla chip, there was plenty of yummy, gooey cheese, and just enough heat and flavor to create a perfect game-time (or anytime) treat. OFB’s already begging for more. Next time, when I can get out of the driveway and into the grocery, I’ll add a few more toppings: fresh minced cilantro, sliced black olives, chopped tomatoes and red, orange, or yellow bell pepper. Maybe even a bowl of my famous refried beans as an additional dip. But even without any of that, these nachos were a super-simple, super-scrumptious dish. Serve some up on Super Bowl Sunday!
‘Til next time,
Silence
Batting 250,000. February 5, 2011
Posted by ourfriendben in Ben Franklin, Uncategorized, wit and wisdom.Tags: blog humor, blog milestones, our friend Ben, Poor Richard's Almanac
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Today, February 5th, our blog, Poor Richard’s Almanac, has reached its third birthday. We have also reached another milestone this week, crossing that coveted (by us, anyway) 250,000-view mark (current stats are 251,108 views, 1,295 posts, and 5,141 comments, not counting spam or our responses).*
We realize that in the cosmic scheme of, say, The Daily Kos or The Huffington Post, 250,000 views is not much to crow about. But your humble bloggers here at Poor Richard’s—our friend Ben, Silence Dogood, and Richard Saunders—are absolutely bursting with pride. And we owe it all to you, our readers, who have endured our quirks, read our posts, and even—when we’re lucky—told us what you thought of them. Thank you, every one!
Blog posts tend to take on a life of their own, and often the ones with the greatest longevity aren’t ones we’d have predicted. To this day, our most popular post remains “Why don’t cats have brown eyes?,” now heading towards 7,000 views. And who’d have thought an obscure post like “Can you grow olive trees from seed?” would have racked up well over a thousand views (so far), or that Silence’s stinkbug posts would (collectively) have accumulated almost 10,000 views?
We, of course, would love it if our witty, thoughtful, and/or profound posts generated the most hits. (Well, our friend Ben would love it if his many posts hinting at how much he’d like to be nominated for a MacArthur Fellowship generated the most hits, but that’s another matter.) But we write, and readers vote with their views. Not that it will stop us from continuing to attempt to be witty, thoughtful, and profound (or, in OFB’s case, from continuing to shamelessly put himself forward for that MacArthur award), but we’ll also continue to provide actually useful and informative posts as well. And we welcome feedback on any topics you’d like for us to tackle or touch on more often as we continue on this journey together!
How do we plan to celebrate these latest milestones? With a quiz, of course! See how well you really know your bloggers. Alas, we can offer no prizes to the winners—we’d mail you a jar of marbles, but with endless ice- and snowstorms predicted, we doubt we’ll be able to leave our respective residences anytime soon—but at least we’ll give you the answers at the end of the quiz. No cheating, now!
1. Silence Dogood most often compares our friend Ben to:
a. Benjamin Franklin
b. Mister Magoo
c. Inspector Clouseau
d. The Napoleon of Crime
2. Richard Saunders is known for his love of:
a. pirates
b. coin collecting
c. hot peppers
d. history
3. If a docudrama was made of Silence’s life, our friend Ben would cast which of the following to play Silence:
a. Kim Kardashian
b. Beyonce
c. Liv Tyler
d. Jessica Biel
4. All of us here at PRA are Sherlock Holmes fanatics. Our ideal Holmes would be played by:
a. Johnny Depp
b. James Frain
c. Anthony Bourdain
d. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers
5. Silence’s favorite TV chef is:
a. Guy Fieri
b. Anthony Bourdain
c. Ruth Bourdain
d. Julia Child
6. When on vacation, we’d like to go to:
a. Williamsburg
b. Australia
c. Assisi
d. Crete
7. Our hero and blog mentor is:
a. Benjamin Franklin
b. Sir Richard Francis Burton
c. Leonardo da Vinci
d. Mother Teresa
8. Our all-time favorite musician is:
a. Bach
b. Mozart
c. Mark Knopfler
d. Ella Fitzgerald
9. Our friend Ben’s favorite dessert is:
a. chess pie
b. fudge pie
c. soft-serve vanilla ice cream with hot fudge, caramel, marshmallow cream, and whipped cream
d. pecan pie
10. If Silence and OFB won the lottery, we’d:
a. Buy a fine Colonial home with ample grounds and lots of outbuildings, with a stream and pond and a fabulous view, plus plenty of space and housing for all our animals.
b. Buy a big enough place to hold all of our collections, then ramp up our collections.
c. Buy our first-ever new car.
d. Fix up our little place and put the money in the bank.
Well, there you have it! Check out the answers, below, and see how you did. And again, thank you all so very, very much for bringing us to this place. We love you!!!
Answers:
1-c, though OFB has some of all the others in him, too.
2-all of the above. Richard also collects stamps, Civil War memorabilia, and anything about Ancient Greece.
3-c. Blue eyes, dark hair, fair skin, that’s Silence for you. But OFB would love switching all of them off in different scenes, since I’m convinced they all could bring something of Silence to life onscreen!
4-b. Johnny Depp was our top contender for years, but James Frain’s performance as Cromwell in “The Tudors” convinced us he has the chops for the role like no one else. Silence maintains that Tony Bourdain could be a dark horse for the role, and we all think Jonathan Rhys-Meyers would make a marvelous Moriarty.
5-d. Much as Silence loves Tony, if there could only be one, it’s Julia hands-down.
6-all of the above. And Greece, Morocco, Normandy, Scotland, that train trip across Canada, Provence, Nova Scotia, Tuscany, Siena, Yorkshire, Mexico… gack. We’re all travel-mad and budget-restricted. Watch out, world, if any of us wins the lottery!
7-a. We revere everyone on this list, but Dr. Franklin is the inspiration for our blog and our lives.
8-b. Oh, really? Again, much as we love Wolfie, we also love more musicians of pretty much all eras and genres than could fit in a file, much less a 4-choice quiz. Please don’t get us started or we’ll never shut up.
9-a. This one was tough, since OFB loves all these selections, as you might have guessed, and with Silence shrieking “But what about Fresh Blueberry Tart and Chocolate Yummy-Rummies and Simms Family Eggnog and Coffee Poundcake and Cheesecake and…” in the background, it was agonizing to try to choose just one. But okay, just one: chess pie. This Southern treasure is to the South what flan is to Central and South America. So simple, but so incredibly delicious. However, OFB would be happy to see an expanded dessert selection, including banana cream pie and chocolate icebox pie and a plate of chocolate turtles as well as all the abovementioned…
10-depends. If we won a ton of money, we’d go for a through c, then fix up our little cottage and give it to our niece. If we won a huge amount, but not quite a ton, we’d go for a through c and give our poor niece the cottage as-is. If we didn’t win so much as all that, maybe we’d go for c and d, and if we won still less, d would definitely be the top option. But hey, whatever the case, free money, free upgrades! We’re definitely game.
* Confusing as this is, we check our rankings by our blog host WordPress’s calculations rather than the SiteMeter stats you can see on this page. That’s because WordPress has been tracking our views from day one, while we’re such Luddites that it took us a couple of months to get the SiteMeter up and running.
Questions for Anthony Bourdain. February 3, 2011
Posted by ourfriendben in Uncategorized, wit and wisdom.Tags: Anthony Bourdain, No Reservations, Tony Bourdain
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Silence Dogood here. For a fan of Anthony Bourdain, host of the Travel Channel’s “No Reservations,” author and chef, surely a dream come true would be the news that Mr. Bourdain was turning up in your vicinity, or at least reasonably close. Such was my good luck when I heard that Tony would be appearing at the State Theatre in Easton, a mere hour from here, on February 11.
Better still, our local paper, the Allentown, PA Morning Call, was sponsoring a contest for free tickets to see Tony at the State Theatre. The contest winner would get two front-row tickets plus dinner at an Easton restaurant of note, and the runner-up would receive two tickets to the show. Not being one to sign up for contests in general, I went online and signed up for this one. And, I have to assume, now that February has arrived, my usual luck attended me and I didn’t win.
Well, heartaches, nothin’ but heartaches, in the immortal words of my friend Edith. (Though I suspect our friend Ben is probably still wiping his brow in relief.) But then, yesterday, Morning Call food editor Diane Stoneback interviewed the famous chef prior to his visit in an article called “Chef’s tongue can be sharp as a knife” (head to www.themorningcall.com to read it). OFB, perhaps to make amends for his ill-disguised delight that we wouldn’t be going to the actual talk, brought me the section of the paper specially.
The part of the article that really caught my attention (besides, of course, the giant photo of the very easy-on-the-eyes chef himself) was that Tony will apparently be taking questions from the audience at the end of his talk. He’s asked that people please not ask him “What’s the grossest thing you’ve ever eaten?” or how he stays so thin. (I’m convinced it’s because he eats one appreciative bite of each dish for the camera, then lets the crew finish the dish. But maybe he just has a fast metabolism.)
Instead, Tony told Diane, “I’d much rather be surprised by difficult, awkward or embarrassing questions than keep answering those questions again and again.” What an irresistible challenge! For those lucky folks who have $39.50 to $49.50 to pony up per ticket, live close enough to get to the State Theatre in Easton (www.statetheatre.com, 610-252-3132), and are free at 8 p.m. on Friday, February 11, it’s time to start making your list.
But not going isn’t about to stop me from making up my own list of questions! I don’t know if they’d be awkward or embarrassing—hopefully not!—but they’d certainly be difficult if Tony took them seriously. Here goes:
* What’s the deal with you and vegetarians?! I get that you feel a great chef must be prepared to sample every food the world offers, without prejudgement, in order to prepare the finest food. I don’t have a problem with that outlook, I just wish you’d extend it to vegetarian food. Come eat a meal at my house before you issue another blanket condemnation!
* If you had reached the final episode of “No Reservations,” where would you go to shoot it? I myself would like to see you at home in your own kitchen, shopping for and preparing a meal for family and friends, including some of the folks you’d gone adventuring with on earlier episodes.
* What chefs do you respect most? I know you think highly of Mario Batali and his family, but who else? If you had to go back to school, who would you want as the ideal set of chef-teachers?
* Who do you consider the greatest chef of all time, and why?
* If you had it to do all over again, would you still become a chef? And if not, what?
* What’s your idea of the perfect meal?
* Is there a dish you absolutely love that you’ve never been able to make or make well?
* If you had to eat one regional cuisine for the rest of your life, drawn from anywhere in the world, what would it be?
* If you could go back to one place in the world and live there, where would it be?
* What do you see yourself doing with the rest of your life?
Gee, I guess that’s about enough to ask anyone! Maybe I’ll go back over them and consider my own answers to at least a few of the questions. The answers might give me some ideas! And on February 11, I hope the audience asks Tony some great, provocative questions when they get the chance. And I hope Diane Stoneback is in the audience to share his answers with us!
‘Til next time,
Silence
Thomas More, saint and statesman. February 2, 2011
Posted by ourfriendben in Uncategorized, wit and wisdom.Tags: A Man for All Seasons, Henry VIII, Jeremy Northam, Paul Scofield, Sir Thomas More, St. Thomas More, The Tudors, Thomas More
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Our friend Ben and Silence Dogood very much enjoyed watching the HBO series on Henry VIII, “The Tudors,” through Netflix. There were so many superb performances throughout the series: James Frain as Thomas Cromwell, Natalie Dormer as Anne Boleyn, Maria Doyle Kennedy as Catherine of Aragon, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as Henry VIII, Sam Neill as Cardinal Wolsey.
Not least among them was Jeremy Northam as Sir/St. Thomas More. Northam had to play the difficult and complex role of a man who burned six Protestant heretics under his own supervision, yet acted for the good of their souls, as he truly believed, and went fearlessly to his death defending those same beliefs, along with other Catholic stalwarts and martyrs like St. John Fisher, Bishop and Cardinal, who refused to bend to Henry VIII’s increasing madness coupled with essential weakness.
Can a man who burned innocent men at the stake truly be a saint? Can a man who abandoned his own family to persecution and destitution for his beliefs be considered a good man? This is the paradox of St. Thomas More, a paradox Jeremy Northam handled with sensitivity and grace. You could see More’s faith and his torment, his gentleness, intellect, ambition, and bravery. It’s always hardest to portray a difficult, potentially unlikeable character, and make us love him despite his flaws; we think Mr. Northam deserves great acclaim for his understated but gorgeous interpretation.
Silence and I were discussing this at length last night, because we’d been watching one of our all-time favorite films, “A Man for All Seasons,” for the first time in several years. Like “The Tudors,” “A Man for All Seasons” is about King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, Thomas Cromwell, and, above all, St. Thomas More. But unlike “The Tudors,” “A Man for All Seasons” presents only the noble side of Thomas More, a man who was ambitious, yes, but ultimately had no issues reconciling his ambition and his conscience.
Here was the saint, with no dark shadows in the form of burning those whose beliefs differed from his. Here was a man who sacrificed his friendships and family on the altar of the Most High, with well considered, compassionate, exalted statements for all occasions. Here was a part that was easier to play.
The cast of “A Man for All Seasons” was simply staggering in terms of sheer talent. Besides Paul Scofield as St. Thomas More, there were Dame Wendy Hiller as his wife Alice, Susannah York as his daughter Meg, Sir Corin Redgrave as his son-in-law, Will Roper, Robert Shaw as a spot-on Henry VIII, Vanessa Redgrave as Anne Boleyn, Nigel Davenport as a marvelous Duke of Norfolk, a very young John Hurt in a fine performance as the slimy Richard Rich, Orson Welles as Cardinal Wolsey, and Leo McKern, eventually to make his mark as Rumpole of the Bailey, as the corrupt and ruthless Cromwell.
How did they do? In our view, their performances were so magnificent that the film is timeless. Having seen Hans Holbein the Younger’s portraits from life of St. Thomas More, majestic, intelligent, and sensitive, and of Thomas Cromwell, fat, piggy-eyed, clearly the butcher’s son, we feel that the actors fulfilled their roles to perfection. Everything we have read about Henry VIII at that point in his life was captured by Robert Shaw’s performance—attractive and talented, exuberant, uncertain, longing for love and approval and determined by God to get it and brook no opposition. Shaw’s was the most nuanced and difficult performance in “A Man for All Seasons,” since he had to show a modern audience why people put up with Henry, why they loved him still despite his horrendous behavior and crimes. He pulled it off without a hitch. The golden prince beloved by all was still apparent in his Henry, and the monster who ultimately took his place was still only a shadow.
As for St. Thomas, Paul Scofield’s performance was enticing, compelling, drawing us in and making us weep as he was inexorably drawn to his death for refusing to sanction Henry’s role as Head of the Church in England. We still think “A Man for All Seasons” is one of our top ten movies of all time. But we also think Jeremy Northam had by far the harder task, portraying the torturer as well as the loving family man, the man who burned innocents at the stake, forcing himself to watch and still begging them to recant, as well as the man who was willing to die by the same principles by which he had lived. We have no doubt that Jeremy Northam’s Thomas More would have died on the rack or the stake for his ideals, in the same way his victims did.
How do we feel about that? As Catholics, we of course applaud those who, like our own families, held to their faith in the face of threat of torture, death, and disinheritance by a king greedy to take the wealth of the monasteries and the property of private citizens into his own coffers. As human beings, we deplore anyone who tortures another for failing to agree with his own interpretation of faith. And we can relate to the terrified Protestants and Jews who faced the same threats and fears.
Who and what is St. Thomas More? We urge you to watch “A Man for All Seasons” and “The Tudors” and decide for yourself.
Meanwhile, a bit of trivia: It may seem obvious why Thomas More was called “A Man for All Seasons,” since he was a great humanist and scholar, one of the precursors to the Renaissance Men of the next generation. But our friend Ben wondered if there was more (pardon the pun) to it than that, if perhaps the title was taken from a line by Henry VIII himself, penned or spoken in happier times. It took me an unconscionable length of time to find out, but eventually I found the origin of the phrase, written by More’s contemporary Robert Whittington in 1520, while Thomas More was still alive and in everyone’s good graces: “More is a man of an angel’s wit and singular learning. I know not his fellow [equal]. For where is the man of that gentleness, lowliness [humility] and affability? And, as time requireth, a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes, and sometimes of as sad gravity. A man for all seasons.” This was, indeed, the man both Paul Scofield and Jeremy Northam captured for us on film.
Do Catholicism and Buddhists have anything in common? February 1, 2011
Posted by ourfriendben in wit and wisdom.Tags: blog humor, search engine terms, wacky blog searches
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Our friend Ben apologizes in advance to anyone who thought they were about to read a profound commentary on world religions. (Hint: We would have said “Catholicism and Buddhism” had that been the case.) Instead, it’s once again wacky blog search time here at Poor Richard’s Almanac!
It’s been a while since we last presented a compendium of the wild and wacky search engine terms that bring people here to our blog, because winter apparently brings out the practical in people, and most of the searches over the past few months have been pretty straightforward. But we’ve finally accumulated enough gems to give you another glimpse into the minds lurking out there in the blogosphere. They are out there, people! As always, blog search in bold, our comments following. Enjoy!
kudzu boiling fog food: Rats, we’ve just run out.
do catholicism and buddhists have anything in common: They share the letters “i” and “s.”
oh dear, what a dreary day: This combination of profundity and alliteration puts us to shame.
homely dog names: Buster, Meatball, Hulk, Sweetums, Sluggo, Blackie…
frozen current [sic] nan and cacti graph: Is this a dish, or a trends report?
plants with the name richard: We don’t actually give our plants names, but now that you mention it, we might be partial to “Richard III” for an especially awkward, troublesome plant that’s always overstepping its boundaries. We’ll keep it in mind.
how to strike olive seeds: Well, you take a hammer…
weird poor richards almandack [sic]: Was that the one that they turned up in King Tut’s tomb? Those hieroglyphics made it so hard to decipher, no wonder people thought it was weird.
most protective talisman in the world: For our money, a Glock or Smith & Wesson.
can you bring poinsettas [sic] back to life: Not personally, no. Sounds like a job for a Higher Power.
could einstein do maps: We suppose so, but on the whole, think it was probably better that he did physics instead.
That’s it for this batch! Stay tuned, we’re sure more wacky blog searches are coming this way!
