two words: dan quayle.

McCain is doomed. So much for his favorite "lack of experience" line of attack against Obama.

I'm kind of sad that Mitt's officially out of the running for veep, if only for the quashed opportunity to post this picture several times between now and November 4:

kucinich power

So we've been tracking the Democratic National Convention for the past few days, and maybe with the exception of Ted Kennedy on the convention's opening night, most of the speakers = major snoozefest.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: "Barack Obama's change is the change America needs."

Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius: "With Barack Obama as our president—together, we'll turn the page on the politics and policies of the past."

Former Virginia governor Mark Warner: "We need a president who understands the world today, the future we seek and the change we need. We need Barack Obama as the next President of the United States."

Zzz.

But of course, the mainstream media fails to pick up on the most rousing speech of the convention so far:



Go Dennis! Lots of Democrats like to talk about the need for change and shaking up the status quo and how Bush & co. broke the law by authorizing domestic wiretapping and sanctioning torture, but you're the only one with the huevos rancheros to introduce legislation to impeach them.

mayo's and mayo

This past Saturday, we continued our weekend streak of consuming really good Mexican food by going to Mayo's Taqueria y Carniceria, a taco shop (and market, naturally) located on De la Vina Street in Santa Barbara.

The way it works is that you order at the market's checkout counter and then give your receipt to the cooks in the eatery area. TJ ordered the birria (a goat meat dish), but after being informed by one of the cooks that they didn't have any birria at the moment, he went with the carnitas instead—kind of disappointing, but not a huge loss at all because the carnitas was delicious. I seem to be on a torta kick lately, so I ordered a torta with pork adobado filling. The pork had really good flavor, but I think my favorite part of the torta was the bread—soft, thick, and lightly buttered and toasted. Mmm. I'm convinced that good bread is the secret of a really good torta.

After lunch, we went back to Mayo's market side to buy some queso fresco at the cheese and meat counter. Then all of a sudden, while browsing the dried spices, I spotted this:


The elusive Harina P.A.N.!! right in our own backyard. So much excitement over a sack of corn flour. We bought both the yellow corn and the white corn versions to test out with the homemade arepas we plan to (maybe) cook up for Labor Day weekend.

—

For dinner the following night, we decided to try out a recipe from Rochelle's friend Rachelle for Cafe Rio-ish salads. For those of you out of the Utah loop (you're so sad about this, I know), Cafe Rio is a Utah-based chain that serves Mexican-style food. Pretty good stuff. I would recommend it to anybody visiting Utah, except that I'd actually suggest hitting up the Red Iguana instead.

So we tried out this new dish, but with a couple alterations: for the meat, we used our own favorite recipe for shredded pork; and for the dressing, we used three tomatillos instead of one for a stronger salsa flavor. Loved the dressing—you can't really expect anything less from something that's made mostly out of fat.

And as if the meal couldn't get any better, Vivian brought over chocolate cupcakes for dessert.

new adventures in tofu

We've had a couple blocks of tofu sitting in our fridge for a while, so we figured that tonight would be a good time to try out a recipe from This Can't Be Tofu! (an awesome birthday present from Jane and Mike—thanks, guys :)

We decided that we'd try out the cover recipe: Sautéed Asparagus with Curried Tofu and Tomatoes. I'm actually not 100% sure if it's really the cover recipe, but it seems like it could be. If you do a side-by-side comparison of the cover photo with the recipe, you can see that both have tofu, asparagus, onion, and cilantro (which I just realized that we forgot to use). What's more, the platter used for the cover photo is blue, and the recipe recommends serving the food on a bright blue platter. You'd think that would settle it, but then there are these red things in the picture that look like bell pepper slices, and the recipe calls for chopped tomatoes! wtf? I think I've spent too much time stressing out over this.

Initially, we prepared one 14 oz. block of tofu according to the instructions in the recipe (cut in cubes and simmer in salted water, then toss in spices—which we doubled, because you can't have too many spices—and fry). It turned out really nice and crispy. But after the tofu came out of the frying pan, we decided the tofu-to-veggie ratio would be better if we used the second block of tofu, too. So we went about the tofu-preparation process a second time, except that we took the lazy route and cut out the "simmer in salted water" step—no problemo, right? Not exactly. I have no idea if that's the secret to crispier tofu, but I'd say that the second batch was less crispy (though no less flavorful) than the first.

We took another detour from the original recipe by adding eggplant, which I think ended up being a good decision.

Even though the recipe gets an eight-tenths deduction for calling for turmeric but not indicating where to use the turmeric, the dish itself definitely wins the gold medal for being the best tofu we've made at home so far.

viva la gloria

We want to perfect our recipe for arepas, so today we drove down to Oxnard to pick up some Harina P.A.N. (a popular brand of corn flour used to make arepas in Venezuela and Colombia) at a supermercado called La Gloria.

I guess my online source is outdated because there was no Harina P.A.N. to be found at La Gloria, but I loved the market anyway—it carried all kinds of dried chiles, dried beans, meats, seafood, cheese, and produce.

Another thing about La Gloria is that it's like the Swiss army knife of Latino markets—besides the grocery part, you can go there to get your hair done, your shoes shined, your jewelry cleaned, and perhaps most importantly, EAT. Next door to the grocery, there's another area with a panaderia (bakery), a nieves stand (ice cream/sorbet), a tortilleria (tortillas made fresh), a licuado and jugo bar (smoothies and juice), a salsa bar, and a taqueria, where we got the most delicious torta de milanesa, carnitas taco, and chiles rellenos.

That place made me happy. TJ said that it reminded him of being back in Houston.

jambalaya time

Our summer's been fairly busy, so we haven't cooked many exciting things lately. To get back in the swing of things, we decided to spend our Sunday evening making jambalaya from a Destination Dinners kit (a birthday present from my friend Katie).

I have to say that I love the idea of Destination Dinners. Included in the kit was a booklet with New Orleans trivia (if you want to sound like a native, it's called the Crescent City, not the Big Easy) and detailed instructions for the jambalaya. The kit came with all the necessary spices, the rice, and the chicken broth, so all we had to buy were the veggies and the meats.

This was our first time making authentic jambalaya and I think it turned out really well—definitely something to add to the dinner rotation. Thanks, Katie!

beet it

Today I read about beets in the New York Times, which described the root vegetable as a superfood packed with folate, manganese, and potassium. I really like beets, but I'm pretty sure that I've only had beets from a can. I couldn't get this out of my mind, probably partly because it was past 2:00 and I hadn't eaten lunch—but still, I knew that I had to remedy this travesty.

So I picked up a bunch of three fresh beets on the way home from work. The Times article said that it'd show us how to sauté the greens later, but I couldn't wait for later so I improvised and sautéed them with a bit of olive oil, onion, and garlic. They were very tasty.

The actual beet bulbs were roasted according to the directions in the article, which suggested eating them with vinaigrette dressing when cooked. I tried some with vinaigrette and some without, and both ways were great—you get more of a distinctly sweet, earthy taste than you do with canned. I know what I'm adding to my salad for lunch tomorrow...

Team USA vs. The World

I've never claimed that The United States is the greatest best country God has ever given man on the face of the earth, but what about Team USA being the greatest best basketball team God has ever given man on the face of the earth? Well, it's arguable at best that Team USA is the best international team in the world right now. So what does that mean for the Olympics coming up in about a week? Will "Team Redemption" bring back the gold after settling for bronze in the last two world tournaments?

If Team USA plays anything that resembles last night's exhibition game against Russia they will not win gold. If they play as good as they have in the other exhibition games I would probably give them a 40% chance of winning gold (which is better than I would give any other single team). Team USA is the most talented, but not respecting opponents and not implementing any offense or defense that takes advantage of the FIBA rules allows other less talented teams to take advantage. If you watch Nike's documentary on Team USA you might believe that as long as everyone on the team is gets along, has fun, and works hard, then the gold medal is theirs (for a good analysis of the documentary see truehoop). I remember reading an interview with Coach K after they lost to Greece in 2006 and he mentioned that he was surprised at how tall the Greek players were. If you don't know the height and weight of your opponents you probably don't know how effectively they run their pick n' roll. Did no one give Coach K a program? Was the metric system too difficult for him to figure out?

The things Team USA needs to change to actually be unquestionably the best team in the world are first, learn how to scout effectively (not just learning their own game but adapting to different teams). Second, change the arrogant attitude and don't say things like "let's show them how to play our game" because it's not our game, it was invented by a Canadian, and everyone has a right to play it and there's always the possibility that they will play it better than us. Third, give credit to Puerto Rico, Italy, Argentina, Lithuania and Greece for beating us and stop claiming that we had organizational problems etc. that imply that we would've beat them if we didn't have those problems. Fourth, get rid of Coach K and hire someone who has some FIBA experience, maybe even a European. Just make sure he's sponsored by Nike.

Oh yeah, and don't forget about this. (I just wanted an excuse to show Kobe getting crossed over by some unknown on the Mexican team.)

movie of the year?