It’s back to work this morning. We had decided, before Christmas, to close the office Monday December 27, Friday December 31, Monday January 3. The first stage of the blizzard arrived on December 30 and the city was largely shut down. The city kept major streets and bus routes plowed but there wasn’t much happening on December 31. Stores opened and retail employees seemed to show up for work. The liquor stores did a brisk trade and people were stocking up on groceries, shovels and snowblowers.
Snow Reports
This started as a post about shovelling snow and skiing, and turned into a rant about the quality of data available on the Web. I wanted to check the amount of snow that fell during the two storms of December 30 – December 31, and January 1 – January 2. The correct answer according to news stories published in the Winnipeg Free Press was 26 cm and 15 cm respectively. They seemed to have a reliable source – perhaps a meteorologist. The Free Press also prints a daily weather feature, and the snowfall information wasn’t there. Not for the last day, or the last week, or the last calendar month. I couldn’t get the information on the Internet either.
Tsunami Preachers – Atheist
Richard Dawkins, the grand ayatollah of English atheism, has written a couple of letters to the Guardian which interpret the Indian ocean tsunami disaster around his personal value system. While he is a more presentable salesman of values than the homophobic pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, he is emotionally vested in his own beliefs, illogical about the lessons of the disaster, and ruthlessly determined to build his story on the bodies of the dead.
Swedish Preacher
My previous post, devoted to the Westboro Baptist Church’s bizarre interpretation of the Indian ocean disaster, refers to a case in Sweden in which a Pentecostal Minister was charged with the criminal offence of hate speech against gays and lesbians for a sermon preached in his own church. I had trouble getting a clear factual story on the Web, because most of the Web sites that mention it are either devoted to the interests of religious groups, or devoted to gay pride issues. Each side has its own stories and both contain mistakes and legal inaccuracies. The coverage in the online edition of Christianity Today was clear and informative. It also played a minor part in a story about the cultural war between religion and liberalism in Europe in Time Magazine.
Tsunami Preachers – Right Wing
Some misguided people are finding bizarre messages from God in the Aceh earthquake and the Indian Ocean tsunamis. Their perspective is offensive, morally and religiously.
Behzti and Mr. Bean
The Behzti story has been in the news from England for the last few weeks. It evokes one of the themes of the movie Bend it Like Beckham, as second generation Sikhs come into conflict with their families as they make their own way in British society, but there are no happy endings here. Behzti is a play by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, a younger Sikh woman, which was being staged at the Birmingham Repertory Theater. The play is set in a gurdwara (temple) and has a scene of sexual abuse by a Sikh priest – a rape scene. Conservative religious Sikhs protested. At first the protests were small but they escalated to protests by hundreds, with protesters storming the theater on December 18. By December 21, the play had closed and the playwright had gone into hiding after receiving death threats. Some Sikh leaders condemned the death threats.
Cold Shoulder
When I went to my parents and shovelled them out today, after the blizzard, my father wanted me to come in for coffee but he said my mother was mad at me. While her memory is failing, and while she is becoming delusional (she has advancing vascular dementia) she recalls that I told her, 3 weeks ago, that her memory was failing. This has been translated into a false attack on her, and she does not want to see me. My father agrees that she is demented and paranoid, and he tells me he has to humour her.
Blizzard
Steve and I had planned to ski on Thursday December 30 but there were weather warnings. There was sleet by 1:00 PM and a strong winter storm was blowing by 3:00 PM. If we had gone, the road back would have been treacherous.
Flow
Basically this is a book review published at Blogcritics which I have modified a little since publishing it there.
Sambal Beans
This is another dish I made for my family’s pot-luck Christmas dinner. I had also made it for company in October. It’s basically green beans, but with a nice spicy bite. The spice may not please some guests. This recipe made enough to serve a good helping to most of about 25 guests.
I used frozen French cut beans, about two-thirds of a one kilogram bag. If you are cooking for a smaller party, or for family, there will left overs. If you make a half recipe, you may want to find another use for part of a can of diced tomatoes and half an onion.
Erik Dalmijn, my cousin from Holland and his wife Rite had given us a couple recipes which called for some herb and spice packets that I couldn’t find at the Dutch specialty store in East Kildonan. I searched the Web for options. There is a recipe on the Web – actually three or four versions of the same basic recipe under the name of Sambal Boontjes or Sambal Goreng Boontjes or Sambal Goreng Buncis. (Boontjes would a correct Dutch usage – a diminutive of beans). They all call for a one liter can of French cut beans. That’s not a common item in a Canadian grocery store; frozen beans worked fine. There are other some other versions, but this one is simple and fast, and it does not call for more than a couple of specialty ingredients.
A few ingredients may be obscure, but I think they are available in larger supermarkets. Some of the Westfair Superstores in Winnipeg are pretty good with ingredients for Oriental, Indonesian and Philippine cooking. You can use Laos powder, also called Galangal powder. That’s basically an aromatic ginger; regular powdered ginger will do. You need Sambal Oelek which is a wet paste made of crushed chili peppers. It’s essentially an Indonesian version, and there there are equivalents in Chinese and Indochinese cuisine. It’s wet and it’s crushed rather than pureed or ground. The recipe also calls for Kecap Manis (also sold as Kecap Sambal Manis) which is a sweet soy sauce. Regular soy will do.
Start with onion and garlic. One medium onion for the full recipe, diced. Two or three cloves of garlic, crushed. Fry the onion and garlic in cooking oil of choice in a skillet or wok. Use about 2 tablespoons of oil. I would turn the heat down after the oil is hot and sauté slowly. Turn the heat down before the next step.
Add 1 teaspoon of Laos or ginger, 1 teaspoon of sugar, and one tablespoon of Sambal Oelek to the onions and garlic in the skillet. The sugar will carmelize and things will burn if you aren’t careful. This only needs to be fried for about a minute. Then add a can (14 oz) of diced tomatoes, stir to blend and bring mixture to a boil. If you are not keen on hot spice, cut down on the Sambal.
After the sauce is boiling, add 3 tablespoons of Kecap Manis, and add beans. The sauce will flavour anywhere from half a kilogram to three quarters of kilogram of beans. Heat the beans thoroughly, and it’s ready to serve.