sisu

Thanks a million!

 

Tiny strikes a thoughtful pose in the postprandial afternoon kitchen, bookending with a Xmas card profile of a tabby that's the spit and image of her brother's portrait featured on this year's Xmas card.

Thanks to all our wonderful, insightful and discriminating readers and commenters for putting sisu over the top. In the afterglow of a lovely end-of-year Instalanche, we're about to welcome our millionth visitor, with over 1 1/2 million page views served.

Happy New Year!

Update: Friday Ark at Modulator and Carnival of the Cats #198 at TBIFOC keep on keeping on.

Old truths never die

We caught a glimpse of the secret life of inanimate objects down Goomp's over the Christmas holiday, where cardboard boxes used to transport the movable feast we'd whipped up in Chelsea were transformed by the early-morning light fantastic.

"Thank you very much for the lovely link . . . It has stirred up an interesting bit of commentary from readers old and new, not to mention pushing my visitor stats closer and closer to the one-million mark -- Just over 2,000 visits to go, and the sun isn't even over the yardarm yet," we emailed the Professor, who emails back:

Yes, I was just browsing your comments.

Indeed. A shopping list of all that's wrong with the world -- and who's to blame [Bush's Fault™] -- presented in free verse by BDS-wracked opinionator Jim Christ, inspired a virtual shoppingcart full of food for thought. Be sure to read them all. A sampling to whet your appetite:

Teresa of Technicalities:

You guys actually read that whole comment??? I bow to your fortitude. I got tired after the first 3 or 4 lines and skipped to the end. Same old - same old simply bores me to tears.

Gregory Koster, who offers an irony-filled history lesson positing that if Leander Starr Jameson -- a possible ancestor of yours truly -- had succeeded in his South African adventures, he "would have nipped apartheid in the bud." Kostner backs up his claim with two titles, and Tuck, who reports he read over 17,000 pages -- mostly history books and mostly gifts from us -- in the last year, perked up at the thought. Koster finishes up with an inspired take-off of Jim Christ's free verse:

I hope Jim Christ doesn't take this advice. All that reading would tire out his lips, get them all numb and swollen, so that when he attempted to kiss his girlfriend, he'd slobber, she'd say ewww, hit him, getting him all excited and pressing forward, followed by more hitting, flying objects, a call to 911, prosecution of the only crime the police seem to be able to enforce these days, and nine months later, a small contribution to the answer to Mark Steyn's worries in AMERICA ALONE.

This fellow should be blogging himself! Meanwhile, blogger Joan of Argghh! of Primordial Slack has good advice for the hands that rock the cradle:

Growing boys into good Men has to be the one of the best things one can do for their own self, their community, and their country.

"Rudyard Kipling had to deal with the Jim Christs of his time, and how they dishonored and lied about those who served," notes reader SDN. Some things never change. Lots more good prose and poetry in the comments, but we'll give the final word here to our own Energizer Bunny, the Goomp:

To think that the author of all those books I read and loved as a boy can still arouse such passion.

With apologies to General Douglas MacArthur: Old truths never die; they only come back into focus as each new generation gets mugged by reality.

Update: Speaking of which, "Surprising news from Britain" via Instapundit. Maybe there'll always be an England after all.

"Boys need an arena"

"I used to think Rudyard Kipling was an American," reveals Tuck, whose most memorable encounter with the Indian-born Brit was his house Naulakha (above) in Brattleboro, Vermont. Who knew? According to Wikipedia, Kipling "built the house and lived in it from 1892-1897 and wrote the Jungle Books and Captains Courageous while there." You're a better home builder than I am, Gunga Din. "I used to drive out there when I was in Brattleboro doing errands, and I just used to think that was the most beautiful house I'd ever seen," says Tuck.

"Several Northern Ireland veterans who worked with him in Baghdad this year came away with the opinion that it is now America, not Britain, that is the world leader in counter-insurgency," reports The [London] Sunday Telegram [via Instapundit], whose editors -- unlike Time Mag's BDS-wracked opinionators -- named General David "Hard is not hopeless" Petraeus, commander of US forces in Iraq, "Person of the Year, a new annual accolade to recognise outstanding individual achievement." Their citation reiterates how Petraeus's success on the ground fits into the larger picture of the War on Terror. We suppose that Hillary & Company's suspension of disbelief is still hanging in the wind, so don't try confusing them with the facts. For the rest of us, a concise reminder of why we're "over there" [Be sure to savor the whole thing]:

He has been the man behind the US troop surge over the past 10 months, the last-ditch effort to end Iraq's escalating civil war by putting an extra 28,000 American troops on the ground.

So far, it has achieved what many feared was impossible . . . Iraq, whatever the current crises in Afghanistan and Pakistan, remains the West's biggest foreign policy challenge of this decade, and if he can halt its slide into all-out anarchy, Gen Petraeus may save more than Iraqi lives.

A failed Iraq would not just be a second Vietnam, nor would it just be America's problem.

It would be a symbolic victory for al-Qaeda, a safe haven for jihadists to plot future September 11s and July 7s.

"King David: What a guy!!!!" comments our imail correspondent as we free associate connections among "the Army's own Lawrence of Arabia," the victorious New England Patriots, birthday boy Rudyard Kipling's "If . . ." and The Dangerous Book for Boys:

She: Did you watch the game live?

We: I'm just catching highlights now.

She: I'll bet there are a lot of proud mothers out there. At least 11. Dangerous Boys happen, thank God. Boys need an arena. Without the gladiator thing, they end up shooting their classmates and teachers. I think the problem started in the 70's, when boys and girls had to have gender-neutral toys.

We: It started when Marxism infiltrated feminism. They turned it into yet one more futile and destructive attempt to deny human nature.

She: I always let my sons have guns because if you don't, they'll just pick up a stick, and go "Bang, Bang, you're dead".

We: And shoot their eye out, the way I almost did yours.

She: I'll bet [Petraeus's] mother is mighty proud. Re Rudyard [who would have been 142 today], one of his quotes from "If . . ." is frequently used on cards for the birth of baby boys. I think Matt has always followed it.

"Kipling said that he had the traits of Leander Starr Jameson in mind when he wrote of what it takes to be a man" in "If . . ." says Answers.com. "I wonder if Leander Jameson was a relative," ponders Goomp -- AKA A.C. Jameson (our maiden name, Jameson). "I understand the Jamesons came from Edinburgh before they moved to Liverpool." Gotta get our genealogist-in-residence, sis-in-law Ellen, on the case. Leander Starr Jameson -- above center, we assume, (Photo from Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Dr. Helen introduced us to TDBFB with her post "Boys Just Want to Have Fun" last February. It's been the talk of the sphere ever since and showed up under many a Christmas tree -- including our own -- last week. 'Course in Tuck's case, he probably could have written 99 percent of the book himself. So could "King David" General Petraeus, who pinned down the problem a year or so ago in response to a well-meaning but clueless journalist's earnest if condescending concern that for some losers "the Army may be the only option":

"That's the problem," [Petraeus] says. "It may not be an option for [a loser cited by the journalist]. We have a profile we're looking for; we need high school graduates who are physically fit and driven by the desire for self-improvement. We need men who are prepared to be better soldiers.

"They need direction to stay on the straight and narrow, a push to participate in athletics and extracurricular activities, help to pursue a healthy lifestyle, recognition that they must be accountable for their actions, and reinforcement of good performance."

Kipling would understand. A few stanzas from "If . . ," voted Britain's most popular poem in a 1995 BBC poll according to Answers.com ['Wonder what they'd choose nowadays with the creeping Dhimmitude that seems to be turning the Old Sod into a Nouveau Saudi Arabia?] 

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise . . .

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And -- which is more -- you'll be a Man my son!

Despite the Marx-lite community's best efforts, we've still got a few good men out there making the world safe for democracy.

Update: Instalanche! Talk about a few good men.

Update II: Meanwhile, Dr. Sanity is making the world safe for lunacy in her latest Carnival of the Insanities.

"She was a splendid con"

Lively, witty presentation and totally awesome photos at Catalogue of Organisms' Circus of the Spineless #28. Above, Jennifer Forman Orth's clearwing butterfly. Our fave was the assassin bug's trick of donning the empty exoskeletons of its ant victims to fool predators. There was something so political about it. Say what, Hillary?

"I don't mean to speak ill of the dead, but let's do it anyway," PJM alpha male Richard Miniter is telling a Fox News babe late afternoon [rough drive-by transcript]:

This is a woman who's tied to money scandals, political scandals. Many are asking why is the Bush administration pushing this woman as someone [who could be helpful to Pakistan's future as a democracy]? She was not very popular. That we were trying to impose her [into the electoral landscape] was deeply resented.

That jibes nicely with the post incubating in the febrile blogging mind this very moment. Our gut response when we learned yesterday morning of former Pakistani PM Benazir Bhutto's assassination was -- as we wrote in the comments at Gates of Vienna, who seemed to be on the same page -- WW IV?:

The assassination of the Archduke [considered by historians to have triggered WW I] was the first thing that came to mind. The second was the Taliban's assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud just before 9/11.

We know as little about Pakistani history and politics as the average bear, but somewhere in our alleged mind there lingered a faded memory of Bhutto's having been a corrupt -- if brilliant -- all-about-me astroturf-roots socialist "savior" of her downtrodden people. Ralph Peters's "Not what she seemed to be" in today's NYPost brought it all into focus. A few excerpts (Be sure to read the whole thing):

For the next several days, you're going to read and hear a great deal of pious nonsense in the wake of the assassination of Pakistan's former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto [See below for a delicious example of the genre, Ariana Huffington's frothy if fascinating homage to her longtime friend].

Her country's better off without her. She may serve Pakistan better after her death than she did in life . . . She was a splendid con, persuading otherwise cynical Western politicians and "hardheaded" journalists that she was not only a brave woman crusading in the Islamic wilderness, but also a thoroughbred democrat.

In fact, Bhutto was a frivolously wealthy feudal landlord amid bleak poverty. The scion of a thieving political dynasty, she was always more concerned with power than with the wellbeing of the average Pakistani. Her program remained one of old-school patronage, not increased productivity or social decency . . .

But she always knew how to work Westerners -- unlike the hapless Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who sought the best for his tormented country but never knew how to package himself.

The undigestible Ariana Huffington, a westerner in thrall to the oft-cited charisma of Benazir Bhutto, nevertheless came by her admiration honestly:

She was at Oxford. I was at Cambridge. And by a strange coincidence I became president of the Cambridge Union and she became president of the Oxford Union. The anomaly of two foreign women heading the two unions meant that we ended up debating each other around England on topics ranging from British politics to broad generalities about the impact of technological advance on mankind.

"I asked her to blog before she returned to Pakistan and blog she did," writes Huffington. Quite a "get," albeit a self-justifying bit of spin on Bhutto's part:

I long ago realized that my personal life was to be subjugated to my political responsibilities. When my democratically elected father, Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was arrested in 1977 and subsequently murdered, the mantle of leadership of the Pakistan Peoples Party, our nation's largest, nationwide grassroots political structure, was suddenly thrust upon me. It was not the life I planned, but it is the life I have. My husband and children accept and understand that my political responsibilities to the people of Pakistan come first [God help the children], as painful as that personally is to all of us. I would like to be planning my son's move to his first year at college later this month, but instead I am planning my return to Pakistan and my party's parliamentary election campaign.

I didn't choose this life. It chose me.

Cloying enough for you? Try this for an antidote. Tuck is half way through The Reagan Diaries, a gift from us to Goomp last Father's Day that our hubby dips into whenever we visit Down East:

Boy, the Reagan Diaries are great. I had read Reagan In His Own Hand, and what he had that I'm not convinced the current crop of candidates have is that lifelong commitment -- and commitment to the right things. I mean Hillary's got a lifelong commitment, but."

Commitment to the right things. We suppose it depends upon what your definition of right is.

Update: Maggie's Farm links, and blog bookmarker tags us "brave."

Apple-pie order

Pie Dough Derangement Syndrome (PDDS). That's what was bothering us yesterday. We arose with the puddies this morning at the crack of dawn, rolled up our sleeves and rolled out the dough.

The minute the pie was in the oven, our PDDS cloud lifted.

We had prepared a double batch and turned the extra dough into nature's perfect food, pinwheels with sugar, cinnamon and butter.

Blind-sided by my own exhaustion

"A fair-weather version of "Baby is my co-pilot" took us Down East to Goomp's yesterday with thick but steadily moving traffic," we posted one year ago today. The  traffic yesterday heading down Goomp's was unprecedented, a piece of cake except for a 45-minute delay along a 5-mile stretch of Route 1 in Saugus, where everyone was trying to get on or off the highway for some heavy last-minute Christmas shopping.

It  took us all day to buy a few last-minute things and whip up a batch of whipped potatoes. We'd cooked up almost all the side dishes ahead of time during the last few days, but somehow the stress factor, unbidden, expanded to fill the amount of time available:

We: Everything is in the house! The largest grocery tab in history. That's a lot of beef, not to mention lobster tails, champagne, cabernet sauvignon et al. Did you read the piece about Bubba Fatigue? "Something was bugging me, but I couldn't figure out what it was. Then it hit me. While I was reading about the campaign, the realization came like a thunderbolt: I'm tired of Bill Clinton."

She: I was tired of them from that first interview. Second batch of tarts did not leap out as gladly as the first. I have one that I might have to eat myself.  GAK.

We: You could put it out for the birds.

She: I don't want to have them get used to regular feeding. I am a bad mother, and a bad wildlife feeder. Sporadic.

We: They won't get used to regular feeding. They are always looking for handouts wherever they may find them. If you put out food, they will come. If you don't, they'll look elsewhere.

She: I LOVE  it. Like the WSJ article. The nation has become a nation of dependents, not independents. I shall, perhaps, give local wildlife a one-time Christmas treat.  :-)

We: You feed, girl!

She: Well, I didn't tell the exact whole story. BEFORE I colored my hair, there was a knock at the door. I was totally peeved and shouted, "Who is it?" "POLICE" came the answer. I opened the door and was issued a scofflaw warning for not shoveling my sidewalk.

We: Merry Christmas to you, too, occifer. "Why doesn't the town shovel the sidewalks?" asks Dad rhetorically. Tuck snorts in disgust. As if the sidewalks of Carter Street amount to a hill of beans. Dad says you should get hold of Ben and the Mayor!!!

She: I assume the town has no money for sidewalks, because all the money goes to the schools for "the children." LOL re Ben. Get this. The citation occifer is the BROTHER of my next door neighor!

We:  Dad says you should sue the town. The folks up here are INCENSED at the idiocy of the priorities of the Port Town "fathers." If I were in a blogging mode, I would be blogging about it this very minute.

She: I'm kind of flattered that they are incensed.

We: Did you look the occifer in the eye? Was there anybody in there?

She: No, but, I will say this. At least I was issued a "warning" and not the usual $50 fine.

We: You accept that as acceptable treatment of a hard-working American?

She: I agree about the sidewalks of Carter Street, though. It's not exactly a main thoroughfare. GET A LIFE! How about chasing down the drug dealers on Inn Street? Our tax dollars at work.  :-(

We: Tuck thinks the residents of Carter Street should secede. And once they've seceded, they should post immigration officials at High Street and Merrimack Street.

She: Well, I'm off to wash out my hair coloring, about 10 minutes all told. Mother WORKS at being beautiful, and mother is exhausted.  :-)

We: I was blind sided by my own exhaustion.

She: Oh, poor toe koot pee girl. Have you already set the table, or will you wait until tomorrow?

We: Have not. WIll wait until Tuck brings down the leaves tomorrow.

She: I remember back in the day I used to LOVE to set the table the night before to put me "in the mood," only to come down in the morning to find that the cats had done some creative arrangements of their own.  :-)

Feline creative arrangements rule.

"Mr. Bush has also bought into some of the Beltway's most useless energy superstitions"

The old ways make heaven and nature sing. Only the steel part remains of a totally awesome wood-and-steel chopper (above center) from Great Aunt Helen's [Goomp's father's sister] turn-of-the-century pantry on Mill Creek in Riverdale, Cape Ann, Gloucester, MA, the summer heartland of our childhood. A new wooden handle is on Tuck's list of things to fabricate. A Xmas-Eve side dish combining spinach a la Rachel Ray with our classic Potato Meltdown is in the works. It's one of those dishes that is wicked pretty to watch as it takes shape.

"The Administration's environmental views are supposedly paleolithic, but it's long been obvious that Mr. Bush has also bought into some of the Beltway's most useless energy superstitions," says the WSJ in an editorial on the energy bill the President signed Wednesday, brilliantly [pun intended] titled "Dim Bulb":

Neither a major increase in the production of "renewable" fuels nor a ramping-up of fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles will have any real effect on climate change, or "addiction" to foreign oil, or whatever. But while imposing real economic costs, they offer the appearance of "doing something."

The Renewable Fuel Standard requires fuel producers to use at least 36 billion gallons of "biofuels" by 2022, a fivefold increase over the existing mandate, created just two years ago. The current supply comes almost exclusively from corn ethanol, and the new laws will continue that trend with specific, year-by-year usage requirements. Ethanol production will double, with plenty of pork, subsidies and tax preferences to grease the way.

The problem is that these technologies remain speculative.All this while even many hard-core environmentalists are backing away from ethanol. Cultivating row crops like corn is highly energy intensive, often requiring a gallon of fossil fuels to produce a gallon of ethanol. The mania clears more land for agriculture while draining aquifers and increasing fertilizer runoff. Then there are the market distortions, not least higher food and commodity prices . . .

Washington decided to throw a similar subsidyfest for other "alternatives." The balance of the 36 billion gallon quota is made up by biodiesel and fuels derived from cellulosic sources like switchgrass or wood chips . . . The problem is that these technologies remain speculative.

Here's how the Potato/Spinach Meltdown looks once it's all blended and just before you top it with shredded parmesan and put it under the broiler. For two diners, we shape it as a free-standing crisply square-cornered loaf (above) on an alumiinum-foil-lined baking dish. For Xmas Eve Monday night we've prepared a bigger batch and packed it into an 8 x 8 baking dish.

We cringed when we heard chapter and verse of the Church-of-Gore litany "confronting global climate change" spewing forth from the mouth of the man we had voted for in the last two elections. We're still with GW because he knows the difference between good and evil and isn't in thrall to polls of popular "opinion." But you know what's wrong with the President's use of Gorespeak? It's the pandering to ignorance, stupid. More thoughtful opinion from that WSJ editorial:

Oh, and Washington officially joined the world-wide lightbulb prohibition movement. The regular incandescent bulb has worked fine since the 1880s, but Congress is dictating that it be phased out starting in 2012 in favor of compact fluorescents. CFLs may be more efficient, but here's a textbook case where the market is more illuminating than the dim bulbs on Capitol Hill. Come to think of it, that sums up this whole exercise.

First it was roasted garlic. Now it's roasted shallots. Tomorrow the moon?

On a brighter note, Senator Inhofe, Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, shines a little incandescence of his own on the gathering darkness: Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007." We've long been on to what Woody West -- in an Insight commentary back in July of 1990 -- called "The Tribal Filter on Green News," of course, but it's encouraging to see someone in power providing a forum for dissidents.

Update: Maggie's Farm links.

He actually believes the bald-faced tales he spins

Nothing focuses the feline mind like an object of the correct size and shape for batting about. Above, Tiny, atop the gift-wrapping table, goes for the jugular of a ballpoint pen.

"He has the more creative mind, but he cannot outshine her," writes Ann Althouse, pondering the proper role of the former President in his wife's campaign: "He can help his wife, but he can also hurt her." We ourselves have never been able to stomach the man from Hope since the moment he came prevaricating -- unbidden -- into our lives just under 13 years ago in that toe-curling 60 Minutes interview where he said with a straight face "I have absolutely leveled with the American people." As we wrote in Ann's comments:

He has the more "creative" mind? I guess it depends upon what your definition of creative is.

Some pundit -- can't remember which, but one of the usual suspects -- said the difference between Bubba and the Mrs. is that he actually believes the bald-faced tales he spins.

This wind-up ladybug -- a stocking stuffer for Tuck --- caught the pussycat's eye even before we wound it up and set it shuffling across the table. Above, studiedly ignoring her new favorite toy: What ladybug?

"WJC hates being out of power and out of the limelight," notes astute Althouse reader AJ Lynch, adding:

I suspect he is deeply depressed since he left office. His personal hell is to be irrelevant after being POTUS for 8 years.

Combine the depression/irrelevance with an absence of core values -- that mix makes him careless with the truth, which is dangerous for Hillary's campaign.

The absence of core values can be a problem at any time.

Attracted by the grinding sound of the wind-up's gears and the batting about of his sister's paw, the Babe dropped by to see what was up and liked what he saw.

"You know, things like this -- 'Elder Bush nixes Clinton trip idea' -- make me think Bill secretly wants Hillary to lose," comments Ann, referring to Bush Pere's putdown of Slick Willie's narcissistic magical mystery tour presented to and lapped up by the MSM:

Former President Bill Clinton said Monday that the first thing his wife Hillary will do when she reaches the White House is dispatch him and his predecessor, President George H.W. Bush, on an around-the-world mission to repair the damage done to America's reputation by the current president -- Bush's son, George W. Bush.

We gagged when we first heard about it on "the" news. GHWB HAS partnered with WJC in several more-or-less partisan-free goodwill jaunts -- another toe-curling experience for us -- but this was family. As Gateway Pundit so memorably put it, "Bush Senior chooses blood over buddy Bubba":

In a statement sent to CNN Tuesday afternoon, former President Bush’s chief of staff Jean Becker said that he “wholeheartedly supports the President of the United States, including his foreign policy. He has never discussed an "around-the-world-mission" with either former President Bill Clinton or Sen. Clinton, nor does he think such a mission is warranted since he is proud of the role America continues to play around the world as the beacon of hope for freedom and democracy.

When Tiny took a break, the Babe moved in for the kill.

Not that Bubba was really off message when he fantasized repairing "the damage done to America's reputation by the current president." As we blogged in "Chatty Hillary" last winter, quoting from Hillary's "Presidential Exploratory Committee" launch video": 

"As a senator, I will spend two years doing everything in my power to limit the damage George W. Bush can do. But only a new president will be able to undo Bush's mistakes and restore our hope and optimism," says Miss Hillary, inviting her fellow Americans to "join me not just for the campaign but for a conversation about the future of our country -- about the bold but practical changes we need to overcome six years of Bush administration failures.

Official Hillary ice scraper is perfect for scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Meanwhile, the "politics of personal destruction" that so "shocked, shocked" First Lady Hillary during the Vast-Right-Wing-Conspiracy years achieves new heights depths:

ABC News has learned that the campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., has registered the names of two Web sites with the express goal of attacking her chief rival, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

It's the first time this election cycle a presidential campaign has launched a Web site with the express purpose of criticizing a rival.

Votingpresent.com and Votingpresent.org [both of which render the message "Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)" at the moment] are domains hosted by the same IP address as official Clinton Web sites, such TheHillaryIKnow.com, which was launched with much fanfare this week.

Then there's the Hillary WE know.

Update: Animals with and without backbones now boarding the Friday Ark #170 at Modulator.

Update II:  Dr. Sanity links with her New Year's Carnival of the Insanities.

And the rough places plain

"Why do the nations so furiously rage together, and why do the people imagine a vain thing?" Just ask Tiny and Baby. Totally warm and fuzzy with us, they can't stand the sight of each other. Above, the lion lies down with the lion in a rare moment when the warmth of the kitchen counter on a cold winter's day trumps their mutual disdain.

"Oh, what a masterpiece. God!" shouts Mr. Tuck as we immerse ourselves in Handel's Messiah this night. Lots of crappy versions out there in cyberspace. We opted for a Handel and Haydn Society performance we have down home on a good old-fashioned CD. But so much huger than that. It was a recording of the very night that Ben and Ellen and Tuck and Sissy attended a Symphony Hall performance of the Mozart version these many years ago. Tuck and ourselves and Barry and Ginny attended 'em for years, starting with the first, magical one with Thomas Dunn and lots of amateur singers that made our heart sing. Then came Christopher Hogwood and the professional singers we have today. Which is better? Okay. Call us old fashioned, but we are partial to the old days.

"That was really exceptional"

"This really is extremely good," says Cold Turkey Cookbook Experimental Kitchen reviewer Tuck re our latest iteration of Chicken and Sausage Strogie. "That was really exceptional. We have plenty of really good dinners around here, but wowza!"

You simmer flavor stars like leeks and garlic and mushrooms in a mixture of white vermouth, chicken stock and water . . . add a plump chicken breast, cover and simmer about 20 minutes more. Set chicken aside, together with some baked sausage, and slice into bite-sized pieces. Toss in some snow peas for about a minute, return chicken and sausage to the pan, mix in some sour cream, turn it around, and there's your main dish. Details here.

Here's the latest iteration bit: We finely chopped a few bits of carrots and onions left over from this and that and put that in too. Mirapois without the celery. It seemed to bump it up a notch.