the frig blig

By popular request, this is the recipe for the rich chocolate confection I learned to make from my mother. It’s different from typical “linzer torte” pastries.

Linzer Torte

Ingredients:
1 cup flour
1 cup sugar
3/8 lb. butter (the real thing) [1.5 sticks]
1 cup almonds, ground (I buy slivered ones & chop ‘em in a hand chopper)
3 hard-boiled egg yolks
1 raw egg
3/4 cup softened semi-sweet chocolate chips
raspberry preserves

Mix flour, sugar and softened butter. Add egg yolks, raw egg (beat), softened chocolate (melt in double-boiler), and finally stir in the almonds and mix well. Batter will be stiff. Put batter in lightly-greased (butter) square baking pan, not more than 1.5″ high. Smooth batter, spread with raspberry preserves, and lattice with remaining batter (remember to leave a little in the bowl for this step — it doesn’t take much). Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.

Senators John McCain and Maria Cantwell, of all people, are sponsoring legislation to prohibit banks from acting like Wall Street speculators, or “bar commercial banks from undertaking brokerage activities” as reported in The Seattle Times this morning.

Needless to say this is a good idea, restoring the regulation (formerly known as the Glass-Steagall Act) enacted during the Great Depression.

What’s puzzling me is the nature of the sponsors — prominent republicans. Of course they know their party, being financed almost completely by big business, is totally opposed to this idea. These are the same interests who arranged it’s repeal under the Clinton administration.

One can be cynical and speculate that McCain and Cantwell are pushing the bill with the expectation that it will be voted down, leaving them looking like good guys. Do senators ever do stuff like this? Is there such a thing as a clean and/or honest Washington politician?

President Obama today accepted the Nobel Peace prize, a mere nine days after ordering 30,000 more U.S. troops into battle in Afghanistan.

What the heck are the Nobel committee members thinking?

In recognition of this contradiction, Obama delivered an impassioned defense of war in his acceptance speech, tempered with the need to fight war according to “rules of conduct” that reject torture.

Certainly he must be aware of the torture performed by his own administration at formerly secret locations in Poland, Romania and Lithuania. If Obama is so opposed to torture, why did he personally sign a directive to stop public disclosure of photographs of brave Americans torturing prisoners in those spots just a few weeks ago?

This recalls the day when the Nobel Peace prize was awarded to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. How many Cambodians and Vietnamese died for Kissinger’s vision of “peace”?

And how many more Americans will die pursuing Obama’s vision of Afghanistan and who knows where else?