Kneadle Work

Cactus Bloom & Fruit Buy From Art.com

Frieda’s, a specialty produce company based right next door to me in Los Alamitos, California, recommends this season’s dragon fruit and fingerling potatoes.

Fingerling potatoes I get.

What the heck is a dragon fruit?

A Wikipedia article (“may require cleaning up to meet Wikipedia’s standards”) says that it’s a fruit of a flowering cactus, Hylocereus undata. It looks sort of like the spiked ball at the end of the chain on a mace — sort of a heavily armored cactus apple.

With that pedigree, there is no surprise that the plant is native to the Americas, although now cultivated in Asia.

It can be eaten raw (with the bright red and green skin as a eye-popping server) or made into juice. From others’ reports, the flavor is mild and the texture is sort of a cross between a melon and a kiwi — a good ingredient to support stronger flavors rather than star on its own.

Made with premium Valrhona chocolate and sold by Selfridges department store in England: Credit Crunch Chocolate.

(Hat tip: Junksmith at AdamSmith.org.)

Just Like Mom’s Buy From Art.com

Dinner tonight was a first crack at black bean soup based on Smoky Black Bean and Tomato Soup on page 75 of 366 Delicious Ways to Cook Rice, Beans, and Grains by Andrea Chesman.

Unfortunately, two of my taste-testers were away tonight, one at BlizzCon and one at Disneyland. Another was just plain beat from a bad commute home.

Of the remaining two, one doesn’t like the “mouth-feel” of beans. The other sopped up a small helping of soup with a thick slice of sourdough bread, and went back for another small helping.

So I don’t think I can go by reactions tonight, except for my own.

I liked it.

• Dang it! Fox livestreaming just froze #
• Wall Street running wild? We’re in this mess because of govt regulatory meddling, not deregulation #
• “Fairness” to increase tax on “the rich”? “95%” stat again. A lot of those folks aren’t paying ANY tax. #
• $250k is not “super wealthy” #
• Everybody is buddy-buddy: Joe, John, Barack… #
• Palin brought up small business — yay! #
• Palin: cross-state healthcare & $5k healthcare #
• But taking $$$ from ExxonMobil & giving it to middle class families *IS* redistributing the money! Biden claims that its “Fair” #
• Biden: No tax cut b/c of bailout. He keeps refering to ExxonMobile, but a biz tax rate cut covers SMALL & MED biz too #
• Palin: bringing in her background as AK guv multiple times #
• Biden: voted for energy bill b/c of support for alt energy — WRONG method to encourage alt energy #
• Palin: jeez, don’t blame it solely on Wall Street! Ok: reminding abt Fan&Fred reform blocked #
• Biden: wants bankruptcy judges to get wizardly powers to rewrite mortgages. Erg. #
• Ann Althouse sez Palin looks tiny behind her lectern — I hadn’t noticed #
• Biden: global warming caused by man, no doubt; sigh. The science is not open and shut. #
• Biden: 10yrs before wells yield oil. CA offshore wells could produce in 2 yrs #
• Biden: same-sex couples same rights as heterosexual couple; gah — he just slipped from “committed couple” to “marriage” #
• Palin: supports marriage between one man & one woman, traditional marriage #
• Biden: O’Biden doesn’t support gay marriage #
• Overarching impression: Palin is full of fight, good stage presence, attentive, responsive. #
• Biden: looking into camera but doesn’t have the stage presence #
• Biden: all for intervention (eg, Darfur) until things get sticky #
• Biden: if I become prez, I would follow thru on Obama’s policies. I listed bunches that I just don’t agree with. #
• Prevention! Cooperation! Cuz nobody has ever tried that before. #
• Biden: hey! I’m just a regular guy! #
• Palin: Say it ain’t so, Joe! Ok: with *THAT* line she sounded genuinely amused. Boom! #
• Biden said “principal” & I thought he was back in grade school for a minute… sent to the principal’s office! #
• Biden: Cheney most dangerous Veep in history!?! Oy. #
• Ann Althouse & Hugh Hewitt live-blogging & load just fine; NRO’s The Corner & Campaign Spot won’t load #
• Biden: “I haven’t changed in 35 years.” Another oy. I would hate to think I’m the same as when I was 17 years old! #
• Ann Althouse on Palin: “She hasn’t stumbled, and he’s seemed a bit boring.” http://tinyurl.com/4voftz #
• Biden: O’Biden won’t question people’s motives… unless O’Biden accuses them of racism for disagreeing. #
• NRO down per RedState: http://tinyurl.com/3nlnro #
• Palin: nice to talk straight to American people wo filter of MSM. Heh. #
• Biden: “most important election in your life” — um, it’s important, but some folks have lived a long time… #
• Debate’s over: everybody on stage for a group hug! #
• “Regular Joe” Biden had a senior moment during the debate last night, calling up a recent meal at a long-ago diner http://tinyurl.com/49y5oe #

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• sponge for 7 grain bread now rising #
• Just tried adding DISQUS plugin to a blog — couldn’t get past authx in configuring the plugin #

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• @Scobleizer, re: John Culberson’s nay vote: when will Dems who opposed reform answer for that? Or for the mods to CRA that led to this? #
• @scobleizer, I understand the reason for bailout - not happy with the one we got - angry how we got here #
• 95 Dems voted against the now failed bailout bill - Mme Speaker couldn’t wrangle her own partymembers #
• @davewiner, why couldn’t Mme Speaker get the bill passed along party lines? She lost 1/3 of her caucus to nay votes #

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• @lileks, if I could be convinced that transporters worked & didn’t separate you from your soul, I’d use one to get from here to there #
• @lileks, but for going nowhere in particular slowly, a train pulled by a steam engine is hard to beat… #

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• Just clicked in to the debate: financial crisis, not foreign policy. #
• Hrm: both McCain & Obama talk like the president has a line item veto on spending bills. #
• #debate08, OK: I’m no fan of earmarks, but repeating how much Obamarama earmarked gets wearying #
• #debate08, Obamarama says US businesses pay effectively one of the lowest tax rates…!? #
• #debate08, gaaah! Obama wants to make college affordable for all children! No no no! Make it HARDER to get into college. #
• #debate08, everybody does NOT need to attend college. Plumbers! Electricians! Mechanics! Lots of kids are ill suited 4 college #
• #debate08, Obamarama is dropping his g’s — is that supposed to be endearing or folksy? #
• #debate08, McCain: spending freeze!?! #
• #debate08, Obamaram: increase spending on early childhood education? Gaah. Kids should be with their family preK. Teach the parents. #
• #debate08, McCain keeps saying “many many years” to highlight his experience… #
• #debate08, neither is willing to specify programs to drop because of the $700b bailout #
• #debate08, Obamarama blames Washington spending spree on Pres Bush; what, Congress didn’t vote on the budget bills? #
• #debate08, “I’m a maverick” has gone stale #
• #debate08, Obamarama goes back to “I opposed the war” instead of answering the question — still says nothing good from Iraq #
• #debate08, Obamarama keeps harping on the Iraqi govt surplus — the $$ isn’t equivalent to troop presence, not comparable #
• #debate08, hah! McCain caught Obamarama on the difference between tactic & strategy. Heh. #
• #debate08, Obamarama doesn’t present himself as understanding the situation in Waziristan & the border area btw Pakistan & Afghanistan #
• #debate08, McCain presents himself as much more knowledgeable on the area #
• #debate08, Obamarama restates that he would take out OBL on Pakistani soil w/wo Pakistani permission #
• #debate08, *coddled* Musharref?!? LOST legitimacy in Pakistan?!? He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. #
• #debate08, gaah! battle of the bracelets! decisions of war & peace should not be based on sentiment #
• #debate08, nuclear Iran an existential threat to Israel, destabilizing to region #
• #debate08, McCain: “league of democracies” to impose sanctios on Iran - outside the United Nations to get around Russia #
• #debate08, finally audience reaction to McCain’s restatement of Obama’s talking with Ahmadinejad #
• Just submitted bid letter to new client #
• @jaysolo, the strike tag has been deprecated by the W3 folks as of HTML 4.01 and is not supported in XHTML 1.0 Strict DTD #

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Chocolate Indulgence Buy From Art.com

A population study by the Research Laboratories of the Catholic University in Campobasso, in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute of Milan has proven that small amounts of dark chocolate, eaten regularly, help to lower your risk of heart disease.

How small?

A common chocolate bar is 100 grams.

The study found the optimal “dosage” to be 47 grams per week, or about a half a dark chocolate candy bar stretched over 7 days.

Proving that God is generous, God is good, and God has a wicked sense of humor.

(Hat tip: Instapundit.)

• Loaf of potato bread on its second rising - should be baked in time to run errands at 11a #

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