Chops, green beans and pasta attempt #2!

Last week I tried my hand at fettuccine after watching Jamie Oliver teach a class how it's done. It all looked so easy!

I failed. My dough was too dry, and therefore too tough to knead properly. I also didn't own a pasta machine, so my handcrafted results were thick, rubbery noodles.

Enter the Marcato Atlas 150 and another attempt at the dough and...

Ah ha! Fettuccine is perfected!
100g AP flour
1 lg egg + olive oil = 60 ml
+ 1 T water to 74 ml

Mixing this almost killed my $20, 10-year-old food processor, I managed it and it made the kneading fast & easy! Still, I'm putting the Cuisinart on my Christmas list.

Now the one-minute sauce: diced tomatoes (Fareway hydroponics, even), olive oil, butter, Italian seasoning, garlic, salt & pepper, cayenne.

I tossed a handful of fettuccine in boiling salted water. Then I added the oil & garlic to a hot pan. Next the diced tomatoes and seasoning by the seat of my pants. After cooking for what couldn't have been 2 minutes I dumped the noodles into the sauce. Some fancy chef type pan flipping and 30 seconds later I was sliding the colorful appetizer onto a plate. Tasty!

Next I cut open the seasoned butterfly chop & green beans that had been in the sous vide bath at 155° F for the past 3 hours, just hanging out & waiting patiently for me to finish my pasta. I seared the chop for a minute in olive oil and garlic, then plated along with my buttered green beans. The pork was tender and juicy, and with a pull of horseradish mustard I was back in my hometown.  lovin' life!

Is police work dangerous?

We've discussed the relative safety of being a cop as a backdrop to the constitutionality of cops in general, using the narrative of Roger Roots' piece Are Cops Constitutional? from the nineties.

Here's a more recent piece by Huffington Post: 9 Things You Need to Know About the Dangers of Being a Cop.

Must. Say. "Radical Islam"

Does "radical Islam" refer only to an extremist faction of Islam, or are we talking about all who identify with the Islamic faith? If there's any debate whether it means the latter, then I think it lacks diplomacy and tact and maturity, and a person occupying the Oval Office is justified in avoiding such inflammatory labels.

Context does matter. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) says the president should use the words, but Manchin himself isn't generalizing; he's speaking of acts of ISIS and some who evoke the extremist group, not the whole of the Muslim community.

Regardless of whether Islamic doctrine calls for violence, there are those within the community who strongly believe Islam is inherently a peaceful belief system. It'll be a fruitless endeavor to school people on their own beliefs, and in attempting to do so will undoubtedly ensure nothing useful is achieved in the campaign to end violence.