Brian’s Bread Machine Folded-edge Pizza:

In bread machine add the following in order:

1/2 cup warm water 1/2 cup milk 1/8 cup butter or margarine (Use BUTTER!!! Die like a man!)

1 lightly beaten (break yolk and mix a little)egg

2 tbs sugar

1 ts salt

1/2 clove finely minced garlic (save the other half. 1 ts oregano

Mix these ingredients together before adding:

3 cups BREAD flour (All-purpose flour = NO purpose flour)

2 ts fast action (Fleichmann’s RapidRise or equivalent) yeast

Set bread machine for the dough or roll (no bake) setting and start.

I’m not giving up my sauce recipe, but here’s a basic starter kit:

I can tomato paste,

1/2 small can tomato sauce

Oregano

1 clove garlic (I LOVE garlic, YMMV so experiment)

basil

sage (a VERY small pinch)

tyme (also small)

salt

1 tbs dried Parmesan cheese

Mix thoroughly and place in microwave for 1 minute. Mix again, cover and place in refrigerator until you need it.

You can, if you don’t want to experiment, buy ready-made sauce at the store, but that’s for wimps.

Take that 1/2 clove of garlic left over from the dough, mince it to death and mix with 1/3 cup softened butter and 1/2 ts salt. this mixture should be at room temperature when it’s time to serve the pizza.

When bread machine beeps, preheat your oven to 450F. Place dough on a large, FLOURED countertop. Sprinkle flour on top of dough and roll out to fit a 16 inch pizza pan. line pan with baking parchment.

Parchment: If you don’t bake with parchment, you are an IDIOT!. Go out to the store and get some right now.

If you’re still reading this, I’ll assume you are not an idiot.

Fold dough down once, then over to make a wedge shape.  Transfer to pan.    Unfold and, if necessary, stretch over edge of pizza pan.    Dough should go over the edge of your pan by about an inch.

Here’s the folded-edge part:

Spread sauce over bottom of pizza. lightly covering the edges.

sprinkle fine shredded mozzarella cheese just inside the edge, then fold the edge over until it is even with the pan.

I  find that it helps to sprinkle a light amount of cheese over the sauce (not enough to cover the sauce, just a little bit will do) before adding toppings.

Add toppings

Cover toppings with mozzarella.

Bake pizza at 450F for approx 12-18 minutes or until crust is golden brown and cheese is completely melted.

Remove from oven and immediately brush garlic butter over edges of crust.

Slide parchment and pizza on counter.   If counter is plastic or some other melt-when hot or easily damaged surface, lay out a few sheets of newspaper before sliding the parchment and pizza on it.

Slice and serve.

Pointers:

Pizza Stones:   Not good for this recipe.   Use a metal pan lined with parchment.

Cutters:    Get a real, sharp-edged pizza cutter.   If you spent less that $15 retail on it, it is probably çráp.   If you have a good cutter, you will probably be able to slice right throught the pizza without cutting through the parchment.  If you do not have a cutter, use an 8″ chef’s knife.   Press knife down through picca with the tip at the center.   Do not saw or pull, just press down through pizza and rock knife edge so that the entire edge has gone through to the parchment, then lift knife straight up and do the same thing at the opposite side. repeat until you have the number of slices you want.

The Random Daughter was taking Sandy out for a walk yesterday and came back with this beaten, bedraggled and bëdámnëd bìtçh.  

After inquiring about the neighborhood we found out that this dog had been abandoned two years ago and had had four litters of pups in that time.  All her current pups are gone so we decided to adopt the poor thing.  Her name is now Liza, and she seems to appreciate the care we have given her.  We gave her a bath, treated her sores, lotioned her skin, and got rid of her fleas and ticks.  We will be taking her to a vet next week when I hope to be able to afford a check-up for her and get the poor girl fixed.   I think she has had enough of reproduction.

Personality wise, she is one of the sweetest dogs I have ever seen.  How such a freindly, non-confrontational pooch was able to survive two years on the street is quite beyond me, but I doubt, from her condition, she would have survived three.  She gets along with and defers to Sandy,  and is obedient once she figures out what you want.  The only one with a problem here is Precious, my daughter’s cat.  Precious is all growls and claws right now, but I think she will eventually calm down like she did with Sandy.  It will just take a while.

I really can’t afford another mouth to feed, but I just can’t turn this sweet thing out now that she’s here.

The first thing I noticed is that, while the book has only six chapters, each chapter is divided into several sub-chapters.  If Sarah Palin or her publisher had wished, this book could have had bulked up the table of contents easily, if deceptively, by indexing all the sub-chapters as chapters and labeling each chapter as parts.

The first chapter deals with Palin’s growing up in Alaska and the life that shaped her personality and philosophy.  It is a pretty good read just for the insight into the world she was raised in.  Alaska is still in many ways a place where one does for oneself or does without.  The basic frontier attitude that has little use for the social climber, the parasitic mooch, or the slick get rich quick artist is very much prevalent in this chapter.

The Heaths built what they had from their own work and expected their kids to continue building, and they seem to have got what they expected.  This chapter says, “This is who I am,” to me.  You ca tell from this chapter that Palin really loves her parents, hunting, being outdoors, and pushing herself to the limit.   It is the journal of someone who is unafraid of a challenge and knows how to use her strengths to her advantage, even when she doesn’t realize she has those strengths.

So far, this book is a page turner and very much readable.  She mixes her basic political philosophies with the personal anecdotes to help me understand the why of her positions as much as what those positions are.

I have been working at my real job on 12 hour shifts so my time for reading is limited.  I’ll have my thoughts on the next chapter tomorrow morning.

UPDATE: 3:10 AM  Irish Whiskey helps…..a LOT!

I was out in my front yard when a large dog, a stray in my neighborhood, walked past my house.  I didn’t think anything of the dog at the time, having seen the big fellow loping around the neighborhood since I moved in.  A while later, I took my own dog, Sandy, out to do her business.  The big stray came up, took one sniff, and then locked Sandy’s throat in a death grip.  I ran to the house and grabbed a rake and proceeded to beat that stray soundly about the head and shoulders, it did no good.  A neighbor ( the nice Latino next door) came to help with a metal pipe, but the stray just would not let go of Sandy’s throat.  I had no choice.  I went back into my house, retrieved my AMT 9mm Backup, returned to the front yard, where this altercation was going on, found a position where the round would not over-penetrate into Sandy, and fired a single hollowpoint round into the stray’s ribcage.  I then called 911 to report the shooting.

Here is the dog I shot:

Poor pooch

I have never fired a handgun at anything not made of paper in my life, but what else could I do?

I often heard the saying that it is better to have a gun and never need one than to need a gun and not have one.  Hëll!  I’ve used that phrase a few times myself.  I never thought I would ever actually need the arsenal I am building up.  Firing pistols and rifles at the range is fun and I am giving some thought to trying my hand at deer hunting next year, but that was the extent I ever expected to use any firearm.

I am now more grateful than ever to those who have protected my right to the defense of myself and my own.  Thanks to the 2nd Amendment and the people who go to the mat to preserve it, I had the right gun (cop said my 9mm was the perfect round for the job, much superior to a rifle in this use; I chose wisely) at the right time to save the life of my dear family pet and perhaps prevent someone else from having their dog (or worse, their kid) mauled.

President Obama is now officially the President who returned us to double-digit unemployment.

He will try to blame Bush for this one as well, but it won’t wash.  He OWNS this.

The plans I have seen currently being worked on all seem to be moving the point of loyalty toward a centralized bureaucracy and further away from the individual.  This is entirely the wrong direction.   Bureaucracies are terrible at serving individuals.  They have no choice but to be terrible, since at the numbers they have to deal with, people become simply numbers on a spreadsheet.  Their whole function is to make those numbers look good, not in attaining individual results.

If we as a nation are going to do something to increase health coverage for the un-and-under insured, a better way is available.

Move the control point down.

My rough draft plan would take time to implement, and it won’t be cost-free in the beginning, but I believe that it would change the insurance and health care environment so that savings and efficiencies would occur as a natural effect, rather than trying to force savings at patient expense.

Part 1:

Issue an assignable tax credit to all persons making twice the poverty level or less for  the express purpose of purchasing health coverage.  By assignable I mean than a qualified person can purchase his plan by signing a statement of credit over to an insurance company, an HMO, a medical co-op, or any other health care service.  The IRS will pay for the plan.   All plans must provide a catastrophic plan, but that should be the only qualifier.

Kicker 1: if you purchase a plan that costs less than the full credit, half the difference is payed to the purchaser.  That means if you save the government money in your heath care purchases, you get to keep half the savings.

As incomes rise on this plan, the credit slides over to a deduction, from full credit, to ¾ credit and ¼ deduction, to half-and half, and so on, until the upper middle to moderately wealthy people only get the deduction, also with additional money deductible for paying less.

Persons rejected due to prior conditions may apply for an additional credit/deduction for a health plan at any company except the company that issued the rejection.

Expensive?  Maybe(and maybe not, see part 3), but a hëll of a lot cheaper this way than creating a “universal coverage” health care system that would result in health care being universally bad (with the exception of government workers, elected officials, and the very rich).

Part 2:

Some people, even with an assignable tax credit, will not bother to get coverage.  Others will not be able to pay the deductible for catastrophic care.  It is important that all medical charges be individualized, so a way to pay for unexpected costs for these people is called for.

If an uncovered person needs care, he will have to pay for it somehow, so I propose that uncovered bills be paid through a loan directly from the government.  The recipients will have their tax refund applied to pay the loan and even wage garnishments (like what is done for guaranteed student loans) if they do not keep up payments.  We may have to swallow some loan forgiveness, but I doubt it will break the bank and interest (kept artificially low, but not too low, say 3/4 the going rate) on the loans that get paid should cover the forgiven loans.  Criteria for such loans and forgiveness of same can be worked out politically, and will as such be bad enough to encourage people to attain coverage.

After parts 1 and 2 have been established, begin phasing out the deduction for employer-based coverage.

Part 3: Congress should use it’s enumerated interstate commerce powers to forbid states from disallowing interstate purchases of insurance or health care.  It should set up an insurance inspection agency whithin HHS that is specifically forbidden to set coverage mandates, but only empowered to prevent fraud and process loans.

That’s all I have so far.  It isn’t perfect, but would be far more responsive to the people than massive bureaucracy.  I am open to suggestions on how to improve on this idea.   Please leave comments.

H/T HotAir

Mrs M-ITT has an open thread for venting about him, here are my own thoughts:

I had no love for the man.

He left a young woman to die while he hid away and covered his sorry ášš.

He offered aid to our national enemies in return for help against his political foes in this country. As Misha says, that makes him a traitor in my book.

He was a big proponent of a nationalized health care system that would leave you or me taking the pain pill while he and the very rich and politically powerful recieved top-notch care.

I could go on, but you get the picture.

Frankly, I hated the man’s guts.

BUT…

I hope he found true repentance for his sins.  I hope he finally humbled himself before God and begged forgiveness.  I hope he truly found God’s grace at the end.  I hope he found Heaven after all.

I doubt it, but I am not the Judge of men.

Rest in Peace, Senator Kennedy.

And may God have mercy on your miserable excuse for a soul.

UPDATE:  It appears that the Dems intend to use Ted’s not yet cool corpse as a life raft for Obamacare.  Depending on Ted to keep you from drowning is not a good idea, Nancy.