America: 1987, 2012, 2191?

(Cross posted at Other Thoughts.)

“A Future American History Reviewed” by Karen A. Olson (of Boulder Denver at the time of publication) was the Colorado state prize winning essay in American Voices: Prize-winning Essays on Freedom of Speech, Censorship and Advertising Bans published by Philip Morris USA in 1987. More about the crappy old book here.

Olson’s essay consists of an exchange of six letters between the fictional characters Ben Fintz, editor of the journal, American History Revisited, and Karen, a contributing author to the journal. The year is 2191. It is clear from the first letter than Karen and Ben are both professionally and personally acquainted, and we surmise are of the same socioeconomic bracket in late 22nd American society. Ben has offered Karen a writing assignment, “an article on the merger between the executive and judicial branches” that occurred in the late 21st century. Not being an expert in “politilegal history,” Karen shies away from that assignment, but offers an alternative regarding the history of the abolition for the First Amendment.

The letter exchange chronicles Karen’s research and their reactions to her findings.
~~

January 12, 2191

Dear Ben,
...

... I’ve recently read some publications from the 1980s and 1990s, and I’ve run across a few pieces that shed light on the events that preceded the abolition of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

In light of recent events, Olson's essay is... frightening. Read more of the exchange here.

Recipe: Turkey and Rice Bake

We brought home just enough of the leftover turkey to make this dish so it was infused with a hint of smokiness. 

Smoked turkey in a cooking bag (recipes at the links)

Recipe below

Recipe: Pepper Casserole

Did I mention that we have an abundance of fresh peppers? As I recall, Mr. Big Food cut back on the cheese.

PEPPER CASSEROLE

Serves 10

7 large bell peppers, cut into strips, cooked in water until tender, and drained

1 stick butter

2 C bread crumbs

½ lb sharp cheese

3 eggs, beaten

2 C evaporated milk

1 tsp salt

¼ tsp black pepper

Preheat oven to 325^o. Place a layer of drained green pepper strips in a buttered casserole, and dot with butter. Cover with a layer of bread crumbs and cheese, and repeat layering until all ingredients have been used up. Combine eggs, milk, salt, and pepper, pour over green pepper mixture, and cook until eggs and milk set, about 40 minutes.

Recipe: Potatoes with Peppers

Easy and quite good!

POTATOES WITH PEPEPRS

Serves 6

1 bell pepper, parboiled 5 minutes, drained, seeded and chopped

6 boiled potatoes, cubed

¼ C cream

¾ C milk

1 tsp salt

Grated cheese

Preheat oven to 350^o. Combine peppers and potato cubes in double boiler (or saucepan), add cream, milk, and salt, and cook 15 minutes. Pour mixture into a buttered baking dish, sprinkle mixture with cheese, and bake 20 minutes.

Recipe: Taco Peppers in Electric Skillet

Surprisingly good!

Assembled and ready to cook.

TACO PEPPERS IN ELECTRIC SKILLET

Serves 6

6 bell peppers, each cut in half lengthwise, stem, seeds, and membranes removed, cooked in a large amount of boiling salted water for 5 minutes, drained, insides salted lightly

14 ½ oz jar tamales, drained, wrappers removed and discarded, sliced into ½ inch pieces

15 oz can chili with beans

1 C (4 oz) sharp cheddar cheese

¼ C catsup or chili sauce (preferably homemade—see recipes in Basics section)

¼ C chopped onion

Hot water

1 ½ C tortilla chips, crumbled coarse

Combine chili, ½ C cheese, catsup or chili sauce, and onion, fold mixture into tamale pieces, and stuff pepper halves evenly with chili mixture. Place stuffed peppers in electric skillet, pour hot water around peppers to depth of ½ inch, cover, and simmer with vent open for 25 minutes, or until filling is heated through and peppers are tender. Top peppers with remaining cheese, sprinkle with crumbled tortilla chips, and heat uncovered until cheese melts, 1 to 2 minutes longer.

Voices

American Voices: Prize-winning Essays on Freedom of Speech, Censorship and Advertising Bans was published by Philip Morris USA in 1987.  From this crappy old book’s Introduction:

In September 1986, an advertisement with a reproduction of the First Amendment appeared in major magazines and newspapers throughout the country. The headline for the ad was “Is Liberty Worth Writing For? Our Founders Thought So. We Think So, Too.” With that premise. We launched the Philip Morris Magazine Essay Competition.

Who knew Philip Morris had a magazine?

There were monetary prizes for the national first through fourth place winners, and for the states and District of Columbia winners ($15,000 national first prize, ... $1000 each for state winners). The essays were evaluated by an “independent” panel of seven “distinguished judges”: a Bureau Chief at Time Magazine; President of the National Bar Association; former Press Secretary for Lady Bird Johnson; an NBC Vice President; a Time Magazine Contributing Editor; and a Harvard professor.

Lordy, Lordy, Lordy. The Introduction alone presents at least three or four ideas for commentary, but I’ll save those for another day-- I have peppers to deal with still today.

I did not appreciate the essay that was awarded $15,000 as much as the independent panel of distinguished experts did. I found the winning essay tedious.

Skimming though all of the “winners” I learned a lot. Did you know that the Supreme Court of the United States of America decided that casinos in Puerto Rico  cannot advertise in newspapers targeted to native Puerto Ricans?

I think the essay written by Karen A. Olson, of Denver, Colorado is the most timely-- having been written 25 years ago.

To be continued... .

I Had Doubts

Assembled Taco Peppers

Taco Peppers, ready to eat

I don't like super-duper prepared food. This is, apparently, widely known. When I apologized for serving last weekend's guests' children homemade egg salad on "store bought" biscuits ("Grands" which you do have to bake), my guest laughed.The thought of us eating Grands biscuits is laughable.

So when Mr. Big Food described Taco Peppers to me, I had doubts. Wolfe's chili. Tamales from a can. WTF? 

It was awesome!

If you are on the journey from eating supper out, to eating supper in, to doing some of it yourself... THIS is a great transition recipe. The peppers were home grown-- everybody can grow peppers-- but the rest of the ingredients are cheap cans of things. 

Delicious.

Thank you very much

but you are headed to the spam folder.

I like 'The Waltons' just as much as the next guy...

but.

I was freezing peppers and watching an episode of The Waltons. A mother leaves her little girl, who can't or won't speak, on the Walton's doorstep. John Boy figures out she can't hear. Using happy and sad faces, he teaches her "happy" and "sad" in American sign-- the sign where words are spelled out in individual letters.  That's all well and good. Happy, sad, cat, dog, proper names, lots of active verbs, ... I'm sure there are a host of words whose sign representations can be taught and learned in just a few days without knowing how to spell. (Turns out all of the Waltons can sign, by the way.)

Elizabeth runs away-- no one is paying her any attention-- and the little girl, Holly, follows after her. Elizabeth gets trapped in a trunk in an abandoned house. Holly naturally saves the day. Seriously? 

b-o-x | i-n | e-m-p-t-y | h-o-u-s-e 

seems like a lot of letters when you can't spell. Seems like a lot of letters when you've never heard a sentence. 

That was just too much for me.

"America's Creed"

It was my intention, some time ago, to 

... post some quotes from a crappy old book of very short essays written by a man my father admired greatly.  These quotes have nothing to do explicitly with BIG Food or BIG Gardens. But they do-- explicitly and implicitly-- have something to do with living a BIG Life. 

The first was "The Privilege of Being American." In that post I explain why the essays will be without citation for a while.

The second was "Who will Start at the Bottom." 

Here's a third-- two short paragraphs-- titled "America's Creed"

Once again, the nation in reflective mood should gather about our shrines in our sanctuaries of sacred freedom to pledge anew its devotion to those inalienable rights and liberties for which the sword of Cornwallis was demanded. Once again the nation would do well to bare its head, bend its knee and in unison repeat the American Creed:

"I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people, whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; a democracy in a republic;

"Remember that? Remember those days? As far as we can tell, they are gone forever."

Just this morning Mr. Big Food and I were reflecting on how much freedom we-- Americans-- have lost in the past eleven years.

Roger L. Simon at PJMedia has some thoughts along those lines.

September 11

A sky with no airplanes.

Coconut Cream Pie Thoughts

Recipe tomorrow

Next year I am going to grow some tobacco. I've grown it before. I can grow it again.

The little lozenges work very well during the day, but they just don't satisfy after supper in the same way a burning cigarette does. (I'm thinking of you, Uncle James.)

[Click of the lighter]

Yes.

As I recall, there are two kinds of tobacco. One kind needs to be smoked cured, the other can be air cured. ...

Out of cigs. Back to an unnatural delivery system.

Recipe: Traditional Southern Barbeque / The Smoked-Cooking Bag Pig Shoulder

After two hours of smokin'

Recipe below the fold. As with the turkey and the brisket, the pork shoulder, a.k.a. Boston Butt, was smoked for a few hours, and then finished off in a cooking bag-- the pork according to cooking bag instructions. (That's what threw me. No special cooking bag recipe.) The recipe itself includes the sauce, the remainder of which-- after smoking--Mr. Big Food  added to the cooking bag!

Big Food!

About the Pig Shoulder... UPDATED

Mr. Big Food sent me the recipe for the BBQ sauce he used to smoke & cook the pig shoulders, but I'm afraid he didn't send the recipes for the smoking and cooking. I'll remind him. If I remember.

My mistake. It was the correct recipe. Reading is hard.

Recipe: Turkey in a Cooking Bag

After having smoked for about two hours. Smoking recipe here.

Mr. Big Food says, "Getting’ tired of smoked and fried turkey? Wanna do something different and impressive for Thanksgiving? Try this."

TURKEY IN A COOKING BAG

Turkey sized cooking bag

1 Tbsp flour

Turkey, any size

Olive oil

Salt and cayenne pepper

4 big white onions, chopped coarsely

1 bunch parsley, chopped coarsely

2 cloves garlic, peeled and left whole

3 oranges, washed and quartered (leave skin on)

1 C dry white wine

1 C water

Preheat oven to 350^o. Shake flour in cooking bag to coat. Rub olive oil on turkey, inside and out. Salt and pepper turkey inside and out, and place in bag. Place bag in a roaster with plenty of room to spare. Surround turkey with onions, parsley, garlic, and oranges. (Some vegetables and fruit can go inside the turkey cavity. Add wine and water. Tie up bag and poke six slits in its top with big kitchen knife. Bake until brown and done (timer pops or breast temperature reaches 170^o).

You can also stuff the turkey with your favorite dressing. If doing so, omit the oranges and proceed as above. Bake the remainder of the dressing in a pan next to the turkey roaster.

Recipe: Nicely Spiced Smoked Turkey Breast

Nicely spiced indeed!

This smoked for about two hours. It was finished off in a cooking bag using this recipe.

NICELY SPICED SMOKED TURKEY BREAST

Serves 10-12

7-8 lb whole turkey breast, bone-in

2 lemons, each peeled and cut into 6 slices

4 cloves garlic, crushed or minced

1 tsp dried rosemary

½ tsp ground black pepper

3 bay leaves

FOR WATER PAN

4 quarts water

2 tsp dried rosemary

1 cinnamon stick

½ tsp nutmeg

Put lemons, garlic, and spices in breast crevices and under skin of turkey breast. Soak 3 wood chunks (hickory is good for this) for 1 hour in water to cover before placing on hot coals. Light coals in smoker and let burn to grey, about 30 minutes. Fill water pan with listed ingredients. Place soaked wood chunks, shaken dry, onto hot coals. Assemble smoker with turkey breast in center of smoker on sprayed grill. Smoke 4-6 hours or until breast meat reaches 185^o.

Recipe: Cooking Bag Brisket

The second part of the smoked brisket.

~~

The creator of this recipe, ‘mcrageous,’ writes: “My original recipe! The brisket takes 4 to 5 hours to cook. Meat must shred apart. Use shredded brisket for meal with mashed potatoes and gravy, tacos, nachos, taco salad, BBQ sandwiches (just add BBQ sauce to meat) and Brisket Veggies Soup … I am known for my Cooking Bag Brisket!”

COOKING BAG BRISKET

Beef brisket, 15 lbs or more (can trim up to half the fat from brisket, if desired)

Salt, pepper, to taste

Garlic salt

Steak seasoning (dry—your favorite)

2 Tbsp lime juice

1 Tbsp liquid smoke

4 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1 envelope dry onion soup mix

2 C water

Turkey-sized cooking bag with tie, inside sprinkled with 1 Tbsp flour

Preheat oven to 350^o. Slide brisket into cooking bag fat side up, sprinkle brisket with salt and pepper, garlic salt, generously with steak seasoning, lime juice, liquid smoke, Worcestershire sauce, and dry onion soup mix. Pour water inside bag, seal bag with tie, poke 6 holes with sharp knife tip in top bag surface (to allow steam to escape), and place in large metal roaster. Bake 1 hour, then reduce oven temperature to 325^o and bake up to 4 hours longer, checking every once in a while for fork tender. Strain liquid and use for gravy, or refrigerate overnight, remove fat from top, and use for gravy or soup.

Recipe: Smoked Beef Brisket II

After three hours of smoking

The recipe below calls for smoking the brisket eight hours. As we were serving the briskets cold, and not the day they were smoked, Mr. Big food smoked them for three hours and then put them in turkey sized cooking bags. He finished them off in the oven using this recipe as a guide.

Recipe below.

Recipe: New Orleans Red Beans

If you've been following along, you know that this recipe is easily multiplied to serve scores. Mr. Big Food omitted the ham/ham bone, and cooked the rice with olive oil rather than butter for the vegetarians and vegans among us.

Simmer two hours

Recipe below.