Things I have learned

Creating a multi-segment gradient in GIMP

What happened to the 'Melting Pot?'

Back when I was a kid.

You know, I'm not naïve, this country has never been anywhere near perfect. The United States was faced with a metric shit-ton of problems during the period of my childhood.

Protesting the Vietnam War.
Public Domain: Protesting the Vietnam War by Frank Wolfe, October 21, 1967 (NARA)

As some examples, there was the Vietnam War, the lack of civil, gay, and women's rights, the United States riding roughshod over third world countries, the destruction of the environment and the depletion of the world's resources. The list goes on and on.

There were, of course, many attempts to correct these problems.  People actually tried hard to make a difference for the future and in many cases made some progress. Unfortunately, many of those attempts also failed, and others - those that we had made progress on in the sixties, have since been rescinded by reactionary right-wingers.

The thing is though, even with all of that - when I was a kid Americans as a whole were proud of the diversity that had helped build the country.  We were taught in school, and told nightly on the news, about how this whole 'Melting Pot' (some would call it more of a stew pot) that was the makeup of United States is what made it exceptional. While we may not have valued the ethnicities themselves, we valued the different viewpoints and ways of accomplishing things that came along with them.

Melting Pot
Melting Pot with stroke, by GD, openclipart.org

I haven't heard anything about a Melting Pot in years.  These days, if you are not a fair-skinned northern European immigrant, you are automatically assumed by many to be dangerous, lazy, and in essence, crap. 

So what happened to this? As I said, I can't remember hearing anything about a Melting Pot in years.  I understand that many Americans are afraid of people that are 'different.' They always have been though.  The events such as 9/11 just amplified the fears and xenophobia that were already there.  Surely something that the majority of Americans used to crow about endlessly can't have just disappeared from their consciousness?

Calling All Astronauts - Living The Dream (Official Video)

Luther Vandross - Dance With My Father

Fake beef - it's what's for dinner!

I've already posted this on various social networks, so I apologize if you're seeing it again.  I'm simply trying to get into the habit of putting things on the blog.

Yesterday, I made 'beef' seitan for dinner.  These photographs show some of the process, along with the end result - a teriyaki stir-fry with orzo.

The first step was making and flavoring the seitan.  You can make it many ways - to simulate, beef, chicken, pepperoni, etc.  I was making a 'beef' chunk version.  All it took was some vital wheat gluten, nutritional yeast, assorted spices, and water.  You can add as much spice as you want, and whatever types.  In this case, I was giving it a moderate flavor so that it could soak up the flavor of the dish.  After mixing everything up and kneading it for a while, it looks like this:

Next, I chopped it up into usable sized chunks.  The seitan expands quite a bit during the process I use in this case (there are other ways to make it that give it a totally different feel):

After it was all chopped up, I placed all of the chunks into a boiling broth.  I made the broth with water, molasses, and Bragg's Liquid Aminos (which is similar to soy sauce):

This shows what the chunks look like after about 30 minutes of cooking in the broth (I generally cook them for about an hour).  Notice how large the chunks have gotten:

After an hour, the seitan chunks are finished cooking. This is what they look like:

I like to put them in the dehydrator for a while.  That gives them a really nice color and texture (note that this only shows one layer, there are actually two layers worth from the dough shown in the first photograph):

And this is what the chunks look like in the teriyaki stir-fry with orzo.  Everything looks and tastes great:

The recipe for the dough can be found here: Basic Seitan recipe used in this meal

Write More, Feel Better!

Apparently, having a regular writing routine provides many benefits.

I wasn't actually doing any writing here, but I used my N800 for writing all of the time.

I recently read a blog post called The Psychological Benefits of Writing. This post discusses expressive writing. That is the process of jotting down what you feel and think. This can range from notes to blog posts to working on the next chapter in your book.

If you get your thoughts put down, you don't lose them.  It sounds obvious, but I can't count the number of times that I've had what I thought to be great ideas - then life happened and I totally forgot about them. This is kind of sad really, because I have carried electronic devices on me for very many years.  Even if I couldn't take the time to jot the thoughts down when I actually had them, I could have used the voice recording function to remind myself of what I was thinking about and then gotten around to writing it down later.

The article touches on how writing can help with:

• happiness
• communicating clearly
• handling hard times
• gratitude
• your “mental tabs” (think "having too many tabs open in your browser")
• learning
• leadership

Visit Gregory Ciotti's post at Helpscout.net, it's worth it: The Psychological Benefits of Writing.