Yummy Lentils

The Clarion was recently quite delighted with a new lentil recipe that a dear friend made. The party in question has a big family and typically prepares meals in quantity so as to be able to store freeze and reheat. This batch of lentils was probably made to triple the proportions that are shown in the recipe that follows below.


amateur lentil photography

#1----2 tsp good olive oil
#2----2 cups of yellow onions (large dice) approx 2
#3----2 cups carrots (large dice) approx 3 to 4
#4----1 tbs minced garlic approx 3 cloves
#5----1 26 oz can whole plum tomatoes
#6----1 cup french green lentils (approx 7oz)
#7----2 cups chicken stock
#8----2 tsp mild curry powder
#9----2 tsp chopped fresh time leaves
#10----2 tsp kosher salt
#11----3/4 tsp ground pepper
#12----1 tbs good red wine vinegar

heat #1, add #2 & #3 cook on medium low for 6-10 minutes until the onions start to brown, add #4 cook for 1 more minute, meanwhile food press #5 until coarsely chopped, add #5 thru #12 to the pan, raise heat to bring to a boil, then simmer for 40 minutes, let set for 10 minutes.

Our friend's version is light and sweet, but still hearty. There are layers of background flavors, first you taste the salt and the sweet, then there is a musky richness and finally the hint of curry. Complex, satisfying without being overwhelming, or ultimately too forceful; it was a very good meal. The first night it was served with a cast iron skillet of cornbread and orange-apricot marmalade.

In the Clarion's less than humble opinion it tasted even better day two and three, like so many gravies and soups. The second time it was served with a crumbled sour Pecorino Romano cheese.

Paris Hilton is running for President

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Impending doom?

Is it a sign of impending doom? Five cloned puppies made by a South Korean company for (go figure) a Californian are about to be the first commercial canine clones sold in the United States.

The Californian, a screenwriter named Bernann McKinney, brought her dog's frozen cells to RNL Bio in Seoul, South Korea. The company cloned McKinney's beloved pit bull terrier, Booger, in conjunction with a team of Seoul National University scientists. McKinney will keep three of the five cloned dogs and donate the other two to work as service dogs. McKinney already has five other dogs and three horses. She paid an estimated $50,000 for the procedure. However, it has been reported that this was a cut rate price for the work, available to her only as the first customer and because she has agreed to do promotion work for RNL Bio.

Should you be worried? The Clarion isn't sure, but certainly it seems like there are a nearly unlimited range of unknown possibilities related to cloning.

Ru-Roh

Canada lost an ice sheet seven square miles in area last week. The ice sheet broke off from the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf off of the north coast of Ellesmere Island in Canada's Qikiqtaaluk Region. It was the biggest piece of ice shelf to crack loose since 2005. However, before you panic and start moving back from the coasts in anticipation of rising sea levels, note: Ellesmere Island was once encircled by a single huge ice shelf that broke up in the early 20th century. And according to Derek Mueller, a research at Trent University, the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf has been steadily declining in size since the 1930's. The time scale in question here (as with much of the Earth's warming issues) is geologic.

Can drink you under the table!

The pen-tailed tree shrew of Malaysia can drink you under the table.

Doubt it?

These little guys can knock back the equivalent of up to nine Guinnesses a night. Their beverage of choice? Bertram palm nectar naturally fermented to have an alcohol content up to 3.8%.

Big Boozer

You go little shubba.

Tax Holiday

A quick reminder, for our dear local readers, there is a sales tax holiday this weekend in North Carolina. That's right! You can spend your hard earned dollars without the governor taking the state's usual cut. Items on the tax exempt list include clothing, footwear, and school supplies of $100 or less (per,) sports equipment of $50 or less (per,) computers of $3,500 or less, and computer supplies of $250 or less (per item.)

The relative price of computers (of the non Mac variety) is very low right now. Top of the line PC desktops and laptops can be had for under $650. Take advantage? It is certainly worth thinking about, especially if you know you are going to be in the market for a computer any time soon. The tax holiday runs from midnight Friday until midnight Sunday.

Say what?

Lamar County and Lauderdale County, Mississippi banned text messaging and online social network communication (MySpace, Facebook, etc.) between teachers and students.

An appropriate precaution? Or an over the top violation of free speech?

What say you, dear readers?

Read more here and here.

Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis

Or the Northern and Southern lights, respectively.



Scientists have long puzzled about the phenomena of the auroras over the Earth's poles. The tremendous displays of light have been a source of mystery, wonder, speculation and myth since they were first observed.

Scientists using five satellites from NASA's THEMIS program (Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms) were recently able to say more about the source of these brilliant lights than was ever known previously. It has been known for some time that the auroras were caused by storms of charged particles. However, science had debated the source of these storms, local electrical disruptions in Earth's magnetic field or distant disturbances in the "magnetotail," the region of the Earth's magnetic field that points away from the sun.

A new study to be published next month in Science says: the storms of charged particles form when Earth's magnetic field lines collapse on each other, showering the upper atmosphere with captured radiation from the sun where it sparks the auroras.

Beautiful.

These storms get their energy from the outflow of gases from the sun known as the solar wind. As it reaches Earth, the planet's magnetic field deflects the gases, although some is trapped and shunted toward the poles. When the charged molecules hit the oxygen and nitrogen in Earth's upper atmosphere, energy is released as captivating blue, green and red wavy displays of brilliance.

A Delicious Bargain

Why isn't she smiling? Maybe she hasn't had breakfast yet?

The editorial desk of Clarion has long held that if there were any one meal that we recommended being a "regular" for it was breakfast. Now that is not a regular in the sense of eating breakfast daily, though surely we recommend that as an element of good health. No rather, we mean in the restaurant/bar sense of the word "regular." It is a milieu where being a "regular" implies being a familiar, weekly, if not almost daily customer of a given establishment. There is a relationship, they know you and you know them. Jack Nicholson was wonderfully portrayed an extremely difficult restaurant regular in "As Good as Gets." Many other regulars are more along the lines of Norm in the TV sitcom "Cheers."

The Clarion hasn't had a place where we have both had the desire and the budget to be a regular in a long time. And while we are not a regular yet at this place, we do have a delicious breakfast bargain to recommend that once again has the Clarion thinking about the joys of being a breakfast regular.

The place that brought this to mind is Durham's Parker & Otis. The Clarion will confess that there are numerous personal proclivities that draw us to Pando, as the employees call it. Firstly, it is walking distance from our offices. Second there are free coffee refills. Thirdly is the basic but delicious breakfast that has us thinking about breakfast regulars. The Clarion has always strongly favored the simple and hearty at breakfast. We don't want to think or work too hard, but we do want something to fire up the boiler room and get the body moving. We have long believed in breakfast as an essential metabolism regulator and energy provider.

At Parker and Otis they have found our number, and we theirs with a simple but delicious bargain, the #3. What is the #3 you ask? Two eggs any style, three crispy strips of bacon and a cheddar biscuit. Doesn't sound like much? Ahhh, but it simply kicks ass for $4.99. The eggs are from Latta Family Farm in Hillsborough, NC. The chef clarifies the butter before nailing them just right to order; some at the Clarion favor sunny-side up. The bacon is thickly sliced and applewood smoked. The biscuit is just the right texture and density to match the rich bacon and fresh eggs. The coffee is good, but the clincher is the fresh fruit garnish. Most diners kick you down a piece of stale kale, fast food never heard of a garnish, in faux classy places its a single orange slice. At Parker and Otis, where they care about what you eat, in recent weeks it has been a succulent fresh strawberry and a wedge of juicy pineapple. The coup de grace and the perfect palate cleanser.

A photo essay by train

These photos were taken from the Amtrak train, The Carolinian, December 2007.