Daddy, Papa and Me

Meat loaf.. with very little meat and lots of whole grains and vegetables. Good way to sneak in the good stuff . We had “the boys” over the other night and I made a modified version of the “Cheap. Fast. Good!“meat loaf recipe. They ate it up heartedly and every bite they took was filled with carrots, onions, bell peppers, oats whole wheat. We adults liked it too. Recipe after we have our little talk.

Bees colonies. They are collapsing worldwide.

It started last fall with anecdotal reports of honey bee colonies collapsing. Just plain disappearing. The bees would leave the hive and never return. The hives would end up devoid of bees except the queen and a few larvae. The hive dies. It now has a name: Colony Collapse Disorder. Now _billions_ of bees have gone and collapses are over 50% of hives in some areas and range from North America, Europe and beyond. They are having a 2 day conference in D.C. to determine what is going on. Theories range from pesticides (not likely) to higher CO2 levels (no evidence at all) to cell phone towers (but why now?) to genetically modified food (but it’s happening in organic farms/bee hives and again, why now?), etc. No answers so far. Let’s hope this stops soon or is fixed. Otherwise you’ll see a lot less fruit and vegetables in the markets.

Australia could be the first major national victim of climate change. Though the severe drought on that continent is due to a variety of factors, climate change is considered a major factor. The drought has gotten so bad in that country that the government has issued a warning:

unless there is significant rainfall in the next six to eight weeks, irrigation will be banned in the principal agricultural area.

That ban would be in affect for a year. It will devastate agriculture in that country. Here is to praying (or dancing or whatever it takes) for rain in that country in the next 6 to 8 weeks. Not that this would have made a difference one way or the other, but Australia was the only industralized country other than the US that refused to sign the Kyoto treaty. Ironic if it’s the first country to have it’s agriculture collapse because of climate change. (caveat: again, if they signed it wouldn’t have made a difference for them concerning this drought, that was already fated. And neither do they ‘deserve’ it for not signing. Just ironic that’s all).

I like to watch Heroes on NBC. They started out making one character gay. I liked the character. But then suddenly he wasn’t gay and suddenly not there. Here is why.

BYU students are protesting Cheney’s visit to speak at commencement there. Their protest was severely limited, but… they are also holding a alternative commencement and need help.

Unfortunately they invited Nader to speak (I decidedly not a Nader fan), but they have other great speakers and will, after a lot of ‘blacklisting,’ they found a site on another campus.

I haven’t decided who I’ll vote for in the Democratic primary early next year here in California. It probably won’t be Hillary Clinton for various reasons, but I’m not sure about the others enough yet: Obama, Edwards, Richardson. We’ll see. But if I followed the polls and the money, I guess it’d be Obama who now outpolls _every_ candidate D and R in the latest poll. I won’t be voting in the Republican primary, but there’s no one I like there. The only one close is Gulliani, but not close enough.

It’s a mark of our modern internet culture: Wikipedia has an entry up about the Virginia Tech Massacre and had it up within hours. FaceBook and MySpace also become places to connect and memorialize. There is a memorial web site at the Virginia Tech web site if you wish to leave a condolence or prayer.

Well, that was a depressing supper talk. I think I’ll have to find some less-depressing stuff to talk about later this week.

Here is the modified not-so-meat loaf:

Mix this together in a bowl:

2 eggs
1/2 cup tomato paste
1/8 cup vegetable broth or water
1/8 cup basalmic (or red wine) vinegar
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teasp salt
1/2 teasp pepper

Stir the following into the above mixture and set aside:

1 cup whole wheat bread crumbs
1/2 cup oatmeal (not instant)
2 tbsp minced garlic
2 tbsp Italian seasoning (could use a mixture of oregano, marajom, parsley and rosemary).

Then, in a food processor or by hand, chop finely:

2 medium carrots
1 bell pepper
1 large onion
1 cup greens (spinach, chard, kale, collards, whatever)

Add the vegetables to the mixture.

Then add either:

1lb ground lean meat (beef, turkey, etc, or mixture)
OR
3/4 lb ground beef and a cup of mashed potatoes (if you do this, omit the 1/8 cup broth above).

Top with a mixture of 1/2 cup ketchup and 1/4 cup balsalmic vinegar.

place in a greased (with cooking spray) loaf pan and cook for about 70 minutes at 375. I actually put mine in the crockpot for 4 hours on the high setting.

Tags: kitchen, recipe

This entry was posted by Trey on Monday, April 23rd, 2007 at 2:56 pm and is filed under Supper Talk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.