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Ann Althouse has issued the Sandwich Manifesto:

But the original intent of the sandwich is clear: To take messy food and make it neat and convenient. You want a substantial meal, but you want to have it on a plate over to the side, so you can continue doing something else. You want to be able to reach over without paying attention, pick it up in one hand, and easily take a bite and put it down again. You shouldn’t have to use your fingers to poke stray pieces in before you pick it up. No sauce should drip out.

Generally I agree, particularly when the sandwich is needlessly stuffed so thick it can’t possibly be eaten. I like Jason’s Deli Reuben the Great, for instance, but they put enough corned beef and kraut in it for three sandwiches, which upsets the balance of flavor with the bread, cheese, and russian dressing.

Sometimes, though, as with the Hamdog below, the most you can ask the bread to do is to hold everything together long enough to get it into your mouth, while reveling in the savage pleasure of gobbling your food with your bare hands.

“Sure, most hot dogs will kill you slowly with their high levels of fat, salt, cholesterol, sodium, and cancer-inducing nitrites. But if you want to expedite the process, take a bite of these deadly dogs.”

The Ham Dog looks pretty tasty:

Yes, that’s a hot dog wrapped in hamburger and covered with chili and cheese. I think I’d use a bun-sized kielbasa instead of a plain dog, but the idea is good.

On a related note, for breakfast yesterday, I had bacon and eggs with onions&red peppers and bread fried in the grease. I think for lunch, I’m just going to have fried onions and peppers.

These were leftovers from the bacon & onions & peppers I charcoal-grilled with an Angus burger the night before. Next time I’ll take a picture.

P.Z. Myers is exasperated over at Pharyngula.

There are days when it is agony to read the news, because people are so goddamned stupid. Petty and stupid. Hateful and stupid. Just plain stupid. And nothing makes them stupider than religion.

Here’s a story that will destroy your hopes for a reasonable humanity.

It seems that a Mr. Webster Cook attended mass and accepted Communion, but instead of chewing up the Host the bread crumb, swallowing it, digesting it, and pooping it back out again, he walked out of the church with Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ the cracker.

An obvious “hate crime”, effectively a “kidnapping”.

As far as I can tell, Cook wasn’t being disruptive at first; unfortunately, another worshiper there noticed him take the wafer out of his mouth, and church officials struggled with him to get it back.

Cook has apparently received death threats over the incident. He faces disciplinary action at the college where he is a student if his attempts to, I can’t believe I’m saying this, return the cracker and apologize are not deemed adequate by the diocese or the church.

Read the whole thing; PZM has done a good job of summarizing and linking, and I see no need to duplicate his effort.

I’ll point out that I believe that when you enter someone else’s house, or house of worship, following their rules is simple courtesy, and you may expect them to be offended if you break those rules. He apparently partook of the ceremony under false pretenses. I gather, though, that he did not intend to disrupt proceedings or insult worshippers; he was simply trying to satisfy the curiosity of a fellow student.

I’ve also got to say, if he had insulted Muslims this severely, there would be riots in the streets, and he would have received a death fatwa, not just anonymous death threats. By the standards of religious intolerance, the reaction here is restrained, if not exactly sane.

Still, PZM is essentially right.

“It’s just a goddamned cracker.”

Oooh, just as a matter of scientific inquiry:

For fun, obtain thousands of the exact same cracker from the manufacturer, and then add said stolen cracker to a pile - then invite the clergy and the concerned parishioners to pick out which it is.

If it’s special, surely there’s some way of discerning that?

Yeah, if only we could round up a vampire, say, or some kind of demon, the Sanctified Hosts would burn it, but the crackers would do nothing. Of course, it would have to be a double blind study….

I’ll also point out that I’ve never, in years of searching, found a skeptics’ curse as satisfying as “goddamned”. We need to fix that.

The Signature Kroger’s next to Sister Sue’s house has a nice antipasto bar. Best product: miniature onions pickled in balsamic vinegar. I’ve got a pint of ‘em in my fridge, which I nosh on at random. They’ll last about three days before I need to get more. There’s also a lovely little red pepper, looks like a large pitted cherry, which is sweet but has noticeable heat. They’re delicious. The grilled tomatoes are also good, but I need to find something to do with them; they don’t stand on their own. Hm, maybe garlic toast with melted cheese and grilled tomatoes on top….

Kroger’s is also selling dolmas, seasoned rice wrapped in grape leaves. Nowhere near as good as, say, Niko Niko’s, but tasty enough and cheap, sold by the pound like everything else in the bar. However, they need tzatziki, which is not provided.

Law Dog comes through.

Mom’s growing tomatoes, so of course we’ve been playing around with frying them. Here’s Alton Brown’s recipe:

3 Green tomatoes, baseball sized
1/2 C Flour
1/2 C Cornstarch
Salt, Kosher
Pepper, black, freshly ground
pinch Pepper, cayenne
3 Eggs
2 C Crumbs, Ritz, fine
Vegetable oil

“Okay, so I’m Southern.”

Slice tomatoes into 1/4″ rounds. Spread on paper towels and cover with more paper towels, and allow to drain. (The key to successful fried tomatoes is that they must be as dry as possible prior to breading; otherwise the coating will peel off in sheets after cooking.)

Meanwhile, mix the flour and cornstarch and season with salt, pepper, and cayenne. [I'd also add some garlic powder.--djm] In a separate container, beat the eggs until slightly fluffy. Put the cracker crumbs in a third container.

In a skillet, heat 1/2 inch of oil to 350 degrees F. [I'd include as much bacon grease as I had on hand. --djm]

Season the slices with salt and pepper, dredge in the flour mixture, then dip in the egg, and then press into the cracker crumbs to coat.

With tongs, working in batches, gently lay them in the pan and cook until crisp and brown on one side, then flip and brown the other side. Transfer to a rack as they are done. [Elsewhere, Brown recommends laying the rack upside down on paper towels, so the towels immediately wick the grease away, while the rack keeps the food from sitting directly in the oil and the towels. For flat things like tomato slices, I'd also put a couple of towels on top. --djm]

I eat my ‘maters with hot-pepper vinegar and sweet iced tea.

– Brown, Alton: I’m Just Here For the Food, V 2.0; Stewart, Tabori & Chang, New York, p116

Mom and I will try this for dinner tonight; I’ll let you know how it goes.

[update]

Our findings:

• Tomatoes ripen from the inside out–if there is even the slightest blush visible, usually at the bottom, the insides will be red and squishy to some degree.
• Carefully slice the tomatoes to an even 1/4″. That’s pretty darn thin. (Literal rule of thumb: most men’s thumbs are almost exactly an inch wide at the knuckle.)
• Wedged slices will not cook evenly.
• Discard the the one-sided top and bottom slices.
• The flour and cornstarch pre-dredging is not the breading–it simply thickens the egg and helps it stick. A light, even dusting will suffice.
• Season the flour very heavily. Consider seasoning the crumbs instead of (or in addition to) the flour. I think you will get more flavor.
• Crush the crackers very finely, possibly with a rolling pin.
• We may have overheated the oil. Mom and I had to work as a team–I’d dredge a slice and put it in the pan, and Mom would have to take it out before I had the next one ready. Next time, I think we’ll use the electric skillet, which has a calibrated thermostat.
• We want to try dredging the entire batch before frying, to decrease the time between slices.
• Have everything set up and ready to roll before dropping the first slice in the oil. You must work fast.
• Do not let Dad take the tongs out to the grill for the brats. Use them for both dredging and retrieving the slices from the oil, just like the recipe says.
• We did not have to turn the slices. If the oil is deep enough to completely cover them (1/2″ > 1/4″), they will cook on both sides.

All that said, this is the best fried green tomatoes recipe I’ve tried. However, note that this is not under the “bachelor chow” category; it requires too much work, skill, and cleanup to qualify.

Another piccie from Michelle.

The picture links to one of the many, many articles sneering at the report of the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology on “The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants”, which declares that plants have rights, too, honest they do, really, and we cruel brutal humans should be nicer to them, pretty please with a cher–um, pretty please.

I love Malkin’s filename for this pic: “massey-fergucide”.

[I should note that Malkin's satirical pictures are just eye-catches on her main-page sidebar link and do not appear in the articles themselves; since the sidebar changes frequently, you may not see the pictures at the links.]

I’ve been working in my Dad’s garage over the last couple of weeks, and eating at my Mom’s table. Accordingly, I’ve stopped losing weight.

Now, dammit, somebody I can’t find Grim links to the perfect steak sandwich. I could eat three of these things.

“Half a cup of Worcestershire sauce.” Butter, butter, and more butter. What more do you need to know?

Dammit, I’m supposed to be Learning Linux here, but I keep finding stuff I want to link to.

Like Lawdog’s tale of blatant jailhouse abuse of the helpless and undeserving:

In today’s news, we discover the poignant case of young Broderick Lloyd Laswell, currently in durance vile in the Benton County Bed and Breakfast over in Arkansas.

Young Broddy’s pitiful tale of woe and despair begins when he — allegedly — helped to beat and stab a a man to death before — again, allegedly — burning the victim’s trailer house to the ground in an effort to conceal the crime.

As the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men are aft wont to do, things went all agley….

…But let Lawdog explain how Young Broddy is “a shining example to useless parasitic bottom-feeding scumbag critters everywhere”.

Mom (”Hi Mom!”) is growing tomatoes in her backyard garden, right next to the patio. Apparently she’s got a few little green fruit beginning to bud out. We are all awaiting BLT day.

She’s not the only one, although these folks are probably not going to contaminate theirs with bacon:

Three months after US forces dropped tonnes of bombs on Arab Jubur and put Al-Qaeda to flight, farmers are everywhere out in their fields tending their tomatoes.

Homes in the Sunni Arab rural patch about 25 kilometres (15 miles) south of Baghdad, meanwhile, are being rebuilt, schools reopened, roads repaired and irrigation pumps renewed, even as shopkeepers happily dust off their shelves.

“It’s the first time in three years I am able to work in my lands,” said Ammar Wadi, a 30-year-old vegetable farmer who also runs a small dairy herd.

His lands, on the banks of the Tigris, are thriving. Besides tomatoes, he also grows ochre and wheat, while some of his 30 acres is devoted to pastures.

“When Al-Qaeda was here it was impossible to farm,” said the jolly-faced farmer from under an orange cap while taking time out from his labours to visit his cousin’s newly-reopened grocery store on a dusty rural road.

“They cut the power so we couldn’t pump water,” said Wadi. “We couldn’t buy fuel. They would shoot at anyone they saw in the fields. They kidnapped and murdered many people. They destroyed life here.”

If you want some lovely, juicy hope, actually ripening on the vine, read the whole thing.

Via Insty.

By the way, I have to point out that AFP, Agence France-Presse, has been consistently anti-American, and anti-War up till now. If they’re reporting good news like this, it means two things:

First, that the news from Iraq is so very good, and so bountiful, that not even they can ignore it anymore.

Second, that the streets of Iraq are safe enough for AFP reporters to come out of the their hotels and do some actual reporting, rather than depending on stringers of very questionable allegiance.

Finally, is anybody at all surprised that the French identify good news in Iraq as being about…food?

So, I’m struggling to lose about 75 lbs.

Then today, I read this:

The food at Lamsdorf was terrible. They gave us a loaf of bread for seven men, and it was usually green with mold. Sometimes we’d get about a quart of watery soup made from the water [they] boiled their own potatoes in, with a few cabbage leaves thrown in to make it look like soup. I lost about fifty pounds in two years and five months.

[Bold mine. American soldier discussing his German POW camp diet, quoted by Ed Cunningham, quoted in turn by Miller and Commager, The Story of World War II, p. 522, Touchstone 2001.]

Yeah, I know: I’m grossly out of shape and losing excess fat. Undoubtedly, this poor guy started out very fit, at near his ideal weight, and was losing muscle, an altogether different proposition.

Still.

===

Incidentally,  I’m finding Story a fascinating read. It includes many eyewitness accounts from soldiers and correspondents. Commager wrote the first edition immediately after the close of the War; in 2001 Miller substantially revised and expanded the work based on materials that were not available to Commager at the time. It’s very evenhanded, making the absolute necessity of the war clear, while not flinching from the terrible mistakes and outrages of the Allies, or how the war brutalized even the best of men. For instance, while unsparing in its description of the effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombs versus the conventional firebombing of Tokyo, it has no patience with those who claim that those attacks were unnecessary, that somehow the Japanese were undeserving victims.  If the book has a shortcoming, it’s the emphasis on American participation–the events leading up to the war get short shrift, as do battles in which America was not involved. I particularly wanted to see more on Stalin’s management (or mismanagement) of the Eastern front. However, this is probably the best that can be done in a single volume.

Very highly recommended, even for those, like me, who are not familiar with the strictly military ebb and flow of the fight.