iSteakhouse–Flatiron edition

For those who enjoy meat, a steakhouse dinner creates a feeling of contentment and well being of unique character … at a price!  It’s no trick to spend $100 per diner at a top flight steakhouse makes that such an occasional pleasure for most of us.  Fortunately, if you can cook, or even just follow directions, and if you’re willing to take risk an occasional, less-than-perfect outcome (as you’ll see later in this article), you can create a comparable experience at home.  You’ll have the satisfaction of having done it yourself, and of enjoying a meal that “money can’t buy”.  And as long as your dining companion(s?) are okay with it, you can wear your sweats and be comfortable as you savor the meal!

Now, one of the several challenges to serving a steakhouse dinner at home is that you won’t have a kitchen staff and you won’t have a wait staff.  Rather, you’ll be both.  So if you want to socialize with your dining companion(s?), there will be some staging involved.  Typically, a steakhouse dinner will begin with an appetizer, move on the steak/entrée, and conclude with a dessert.  In presenting this dinner, I’m leaving the appetizer and dessert to you, but recommend that you focus on courses that can be staged in the ‘fridge and simply served at the appropriate time.  For example, you could pre-stage a shrimp salad appetizer and cheesecake dessert in the ‘fridge … both covered in plastic wrap, please! … ready to appear at the appropriate moment.

This “Flatiron edition” steakhouse dinner will run less than $20 per diner, with wine.  Here’s the menu:

Appetizer of your choice

Flatiron steak with an onion, mushroom & pepper relish
Crispy Tater Pops
Field greens dressed with a Dijon caper vinaigrette

Dessert of your choice

Total prep time will be an hour and 15 minutes of so.  Only the last 30 minutes will be active cooking time.  Here are the ingredients (to serve two):

A Flatiron steak, just over a pound

plus 2 Tsps Kosher salt and 2 Tbsp worcestershire

Two handfuls of greens

For the dressing, a Tsp of Dijon, a Tsp of capers (chopped), a Tbsp chopped parsley, big pinch ground black pepper and big pinch (or two) of sea salt.  2 Tbsp red wine vinegar and 3 Tbsp EVOO extra virgin olive oil.

Some onions, mushrooms, and red bell peppers

And some Tater Pops

(Bake them on a brown paper bag for extra good results.  That’s a nice serving for two, BTW)

And a nice wine!  There are so many really good California red blends now, it’s a Golden Age for table wines….

So we dissolve the Kosher salt in the Worcestershire, and put the steak on a plate, on the counter, to marinade for one hour before jumping on the grill.

That steak is actually a good inch thick.  I flip and baste with marinade every 10 minutes or so.  I find that steaks cook better on the grill if it’s near room temperature.

Preheat the oven to 450, and start your grill and get it as hot as you can, or 550-600.  If you’ve read these pages, you know that I swear by Grill Grates, and you’re about to see why.  Here’s where timing comes in.  If you’re going to serve an appetizer, and be the kitchen staff, and the wait staff, you’ll need a campaign plan.  The grill will need your attention, so you can join your guests at the appetizer either a) before grilling the steak, or b) the second the steak comes off the grill.  Option B is probably a better choice.  So here’s one possible timing sequence:

30 minutes before appetizers, add the onions, mushrooms, and peppers to a skillet on medium heat, with a turn of oil, salt and pepper, and some herbs as you desire.  Continue to shake/stir throughout.
25 minutes before appetizers, put the Taters in the oven.
10 minutes before appetizers, shake the Taters, pop the Flatiron onto the grill
(see note at the very bottom of this article)
- 7 minutes before appetizers, turn the Flatirons about 60 degrees
- 4 minutes before appetizers, flip the Flatiron:

Give the steak a push test to verify doneness, then remove it to a warm plate to rest while you start your appetizer.  Turn off the oven and crack the door.  Give the onions. mushrooms, and peppers a final shake.

When your appetizer is finished, slice the steak (add any juices to the onion relish).  Whisk the vinaigrette and dress the greens.  Remove the Taters and plate your meal

Now, you can probably do a more artistic job of plating, the steak and relish probably should have gone in the middle.  I wasn’t completely happy with this steak.  It’s the first Flatiron I’ve gotten from Safeway that had major gristle running through the meat.  And the thick end came out a little rare, although the thin end was nicely medium-rare:

 

Costs were: steak and marinade ingredients $9, wine $7, Taters $2, Greens $2, dressing ingredients $1, onion mushroom pepper relish ingredients $4, propane and hickory chips $1.  So $26 for the entrée and wine for two.  Add an appetizer and dessert and you can come in under $20 per diner for a three course steakhouse dinner with wine!

“note at the very bottom of this article”:  If you serve the steak intact (not sliced), one side will be “up” and the other side will be on the plate.  In this case, it pays to pick with side you want to “present”.  As a general rule, cooking on my Weber with GrillGrates, I divide the cooking time into thirds.  The first third, presentation side down.  Then I give the steak a “twist” and another third of the cooking time.  Then I flip the steak over to cook the “plate” side for the final third of cooking time.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

“guns and religion” (Pt 3 of 3)

I’m not finished with this series, but I’m going to end it with this post so I can move on to other things.  This began with my raising the issue of President Obama’s “guns and religion” comment from the 2008 campaign.  That issue has been resurfaced by the Progressive drumbeat of Atheism and resurgent calls for gun control in the wake of the Aurora tragedy.

I addressed the problems with Progressive positions on gun control in my previous post.  Now I’ll address the problems with Progressive adherence to Atheism (yes, yes, yes, I now that’s a hyperbolic statement, but if you subtract ‘atheist’ from ‘Progressive’, you’re not left with much).

The central question is, “Does there exist an authority that exceeds the authority of Man”?  There are dozens of venerable philosophical arguments addressing the existence of God.  It’s unnecessary to go there.  It’s only necessary to answer whether Man has the final say on human rights, or not.

The Americans, famously religious, thought not and had a revolution against a foreign King.  And they lived peacefully and happily ever after.  The French, famously atheist, thought not and had a revolution against their own King.  And they descended into the bloodbath known as “The Terror”, and have gone through conquest and upheaval and actual colonialism ever since.  Although, as Progressives are so inclined to point out, everyone in France has healthcare.

The Founders, being ever aware of the tyranny of Kings and Mobs, perceived that by their very nature, our fundamental human logically rights could not derive or depend on the efforts of Man.  Their senses and their logic told them that Man is born with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  And that, being born with these rights, they could not derive from fickle laws and rulers.  Therefor, these fundamental human rights must derive from an authority greater than the authority of Man.  So they stated that Men are “endowed by their Creator”.

As to religion, it is a path to understanding aspects of this Creator, but it is not equivalent to this Creator.  Religion is one way that people organize themselves, voluntarily, and interact with each other, independent of civil authority.  People thereby form communities which can bestow position, recognition, comfort, and support on its members.  Because religion is voluntary, it is possessed of moral authority that is unavailable to government (which relies entirely on coercive force).  And this poses a threat to the hegemony of the “Rule of Man” over his (often unwilling, but coerced) fellow men.

For the atheist Progressive, the quickest, most direct, and lowest effort way of ending the moral authority of religion is to kill the Creator.  To kill the Creator, the atheist Progressive will insist on physical proof of a physical Creator.  Clearly, this is not just nonsense, but a logical contradiction.  It is a demand that everything about human beings should be described in the equations of physics (or, for the slightly clever atheist, the chemistry of the brain).  Only a materialist, who sees in technology the answer to every challenge, would pursue that line of reason.

The Creator, in terms of our legal system, is not a physical being any more than “zero” is physically provable.  You can write ‘0’, but that isn’t ‘zero’, it’s a symbol that stands for zero.  Zero is not ‘nothing’, it is an abstract concept that encircles the concept of ‘nothing’ within a finite space, that finite space not actually existing anywhere, but rather existing everywhere.  The Creator is equally and exactly this type of completely abstract, yet utterly concrete, entity: the source of the basic human rights with which we are each born.  The Creator is the concept that adds to our goodness when We The People do good, and which deducts from our goodness when we do bad.

Everyone doesn’t think carefully about every topic of daily life.  Not everyone is inclined, not everyone has the time, not everyone, frankly, has the capability.  Religion serves as a guide toward the most important aspects of the Creator.  Organized religion does serve as a limiting force on the power of spiritual persuasion.  The Branch Davidian/Waco tragedy, and the horror of People’s Temple/Jonestown were example of spiritual sermonizing being harnessed and used by deviant individuals outside the confines of organized religion.

Finally, being voluntary, religion is another vector of personal liberty.

Random thought: the claim to aspire to perfection not only does not claim to have achieved perfection, it affirmatively states the opposite.

I’m sorry that President Obama was baffled by the tendency of people to cling to their “guns and religion”.  I’m sadder yet that he ascribed it to fear and uncertainty.  In this article, and the previous, I believe that I’ve shown how both are fundamental vectors of individual liberty.  Perhaps President Obama, now with almost four years experience being President of all of We The People, and not just his native group of liberal academic and media elites, might be coming to understand this.  And that is likely why the (incendiary hyperbole to follow) atheistic, anti-gun liberal academic and media elites are building such a fury against him.

If we understood ourselves better, we would be a happier, more prosperous, kinder and safer nation.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

“guns and religion” (Pt 2 of ‘X’)

I’m still not sure how many installments this will take, therefor the ‘X’ in the title.  I hope to resolve that by my next post.

The United States has a model for government that was highly unusual, and probably unique, at the time of its creation.  Our Founders established that the government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.  In the United States, unlike the monarchies and principalities of the day, we the people granted limited authority to the government.  And the government was charged with protecting and defending our fundamental human rights, which (in the Founders’ plan and documents) derive from the Creator.  This completes the Elegant Triangle of the society of the United States: we the people, the Creator, and our government.

Government, granted a monopoly on coercive force by legislation, has no need to be defended from anything.  As I’ve stated elsewhere, “Religion isn’t God”. Likewise, “The government isn’t the Constitution”.  Besides safeguarding our basic human and civil rights, the government is also charged with protecting and defending the Constitution.  With that monopoly on coercive force, the only real danger related to the government is an overreach of power: an unwarranted extension of government power that impinges on the rights and freedoms deriving from the Creator.

So finally, after all that, we’re positioned to move on to the ‘guns’ thing.  Of the three elements of the Elegant Triangle, “we the people” are the most vulnerable.  The government has overwhelming force.  The church, standing in as representative of the Creator, has not only significant resources, but a worldwide presence to which it can retreat, on which it can call for support, and from which it can reconstitute.  But we the people, the true source of legitimacy for the government, lack the resources of either government or church.

The Founders, having personal experience in the reality, were keenly aware how vulnerable we the people would be in the face of government oppression.  Among the first acts of Great Britain in attempting to end the rebellion was to seize the communal arms of the Colonists, in Virginia and in Massachusetts.  To a significant extent, the Founders were left with nothing but their personal arms with which to defend themselves and prosecute their rebellion.

And the United States was born in violent rebellion against the mightiest Empire of the day.  Canada wasn’t, Australia wasn’t, New Zealand wasn’t, none of the nations of Europe were.  Some of Latin America shares our heritage as a revolutionary nation, but they were Spanish and lacked the blessings of the English system of common law.  And where the United States inherited the vile burden of chattel slavery of Africans, our Latin American neighbors inherited the Spanish legacy of Church/State collusion.  So enough wandering about, the United States was born in violent revolution, largely enabled by private ownership of firearms.

This yields two points of difference between the United States and much of the rest of the world, when it comes to private ownership of firearms.  We grant authority to the government, we expect that government to overstep, so we place safeguards, checks, and defenses against government oppression in place.  And we were created as a nation, from the first, in a tremendous paroxysm of violent revolution.  So we recognize and defend the privately owned firearm as one vector of individual citizenship in America.  It is crude, and in practice ineffective, but it serves as a powerful, tangible reminder that in the United States, the citizen is sovereign over the government.

It’s no longer 1783.  The privately owned firearms current today aren’t single-shot, muzzle loading flintlocks.  I’ve stated support for appropriate, effective firearms control on many occasions.  But look at the problem: 9,000 firearms homicides per year.  Who commits firearms homicide?  According to the FBI, firearms homicide primarily results from a) the commission of other felonies, and b) gang activity.  Anyone who proposes a solution is obliged to explain how their solution will address those origins of firearms homicides.

Without that connection, gun controls take on an entirely different character.  Without an explanation of how the proposal will address the sources, such a proposal would assume the character of obstruction, if not confiscation, of private ownership of firearms among law abiding citizens.  Through this sequence, those with an agenda (in this case, unnecessary and inappropriate limitations on private ownership of firearms) generally become the worst enemy of their own cause.

And precisely because of those with an agenda, meaningful reform becomes impossible.  I don’t know all the details of “stop and frisk”.  All media reports indicated that it was a policing policy that was making a difference in getting illegal firearms off the streets, and reducing violent crime.  That is many times more effective than “banning assault weapons”.  Progress in reducing firearms violence has already been significant, the rate has dropped by half over the past 20 years.  To continue that progress will require good faith cooperation from both sides.  On the gun control side, offering support for “stop and frisk” would be a strong first step.

So now the origins of private firearms ownership in the United States, and the challenges to reducing firearms-related violence, are laid out.  Imagining these factors away … as if we weren’t born in violent Revolution against a despotic ruler, as if most homicide isn’t committed by garden variety criminals … simply won’t work.  Propagandizing these issues away is another alternative, but ultimately that would be more damaging to the entire constellation of causes that fill the night sky of the “gun controllers”: social safety net, right to healthcare, right to education, corporate non-personhood, and so forth.  Anyone who tries to propagandize an easily verifiable truth ends up losing credibility on all future, even unrelated, claims.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

It starts to come together, “guns or religion” (Pt 1 of ‘X’)

During his first Presidential campaign, then candidate Obama gave the world his famous quote, “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion…”  It certainly generated plenty of smoke and heat at the time, and it resurfaced during the current election cycle Republican primary campaign.  As I’ve continued to follow, on the Internet and in the media, the development of the great communal voice of Progressivism, the real meaning behind the message has become more clear to me.  I’ve come to see that the quote from President Obama enunciates a far greater divide than even the most paranoid Ultra-Orthodox-Conservative would likely imagine.

Over the next few days, I’ll explain what I see as the background for that quote, the real and enormous divide that it represents for our Nation, and the challenge we face in moving forward as a house divided against itself (to borrow from another President).  I’m not at my own computer, where I have a really nice blog editor (MS LiveWriter), I’m at my volunteer job and having to use the editor provided by WordPress.  So I’m not going to write any more today, but I’ll be back tomorrow to begin sharing with you what I’ve come to realize about the issues of government, guns, and religion.

By this time tomorrow, I may have a better idea how many installments this will take….

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

USNS Rappahannock fires on speed boat, one dead.

Sometime Monday morning (Pacific Time, July 16th 2012),  USNS Rappahannock, while approach the port of Jebel Ali, UAE, and after following prescribed protocols, opened fire with a .50 caliber machine gun on a high speed motorboat, wounding three and killing one.  USNS Rappahannock is a “fleet oiler”, a resupply ship chiefly engaged in replenishing naval ships with ship and aircraft fuel.  The captain and crew are civilians, there is a three person Military Detachment, and an additional military security force was embarked.

I was the captain of USNS Rappahannock from prior to delivery to the Navy in June 1995, pretty much continuously through mid-2006, when I left the ship to retire (an event that was later delayed until Nov 2009).  During that time I made several deployments to the Persian/Arabian Gulf aboard Rappahannock, and each time had a security force assigned.  I have steamed the passage from the Straits of Hormuz, along the coast of Oman and the UAE, to the port of Jebel Ali more times than I can to recall.

Regarding what recently occurred aboard Rappahannock, those who were there know their part of the story.  Everyone else, at this point, is speculating.  There’s a natural human tendency to speculate about the unknown.  As with all such cases, I would encourage everyone to step back and wait for the information to come out, and try to gain some background information and perspective in the meantime.

What I can say is that even a small boat can carry enough explosives to mortally wound a large ship.  A speed boat is a craft that a large ship cannot out maneuver, cannot outrun, and cannot deflect except by deadly force.  I’ve been there, I’ve tried, and if a speed boat operator is bound and determined to close your side, there’s nothing you can do on the bridge of the large ship to avoid that.  You’re a “sitting duck”, no matter what you do.

The “So what?” question becomes, why would the large ship care?  The large ship seems so, well, large … and mighty.  And the boat so small.  How can those on such a massive vessel feel imperiled by such a mosquito-sized threat?  The USNS Rappahannock would likely have been entering Jebel Ali to refuel, but would still have had a couple million gallons of diesel and jet fuel still onboard.  And she would have had numerous cavernous fuel tanks mostly empty and full of explosive vapors.  She’s an oil tanker, not a warship: she is unarmored and has no other ‘protective’ features.  In the times that I was deployed and in that spot, and was on that bridge while we were being approached at high speed to close quarters (“buzzed”), I was professionally angry and personally furious.  You have to know all of the facts and possibilities to get that angry.

There’s an innocent Indian fisherman dead and several others wounded, and that’s a tragedy.  It is absolutely the wrong outcome.  I don’t need to speculate to state that nobody aboard USNS Rappahannock wanted that, or in any way feels good about that.

Is the answer to withdraw our Navy?  No.  Freedom of navigation was a founding principle of this nation, it’s where the Old Powers first attacked us, and where we fought our first wars.  I don’t believe it played any role in this incident, but ceding our rights to freedom of navigation is not the answer.  And in any case, USNS Rappahannock is not a warship, has no guns or missiles or any other weapons, and threatened no one (she’s actually rescued far more mariners adrift at sea than she’s ever harmed).

I offer my condolences to those who were injured and the families of the killed and wounded.  My thoughts and personal concern go to those aboard USNS Rappahannock, for the stress and trauma they are experiencing and will go through.  As for those who would use this incident to bang a drum for their chosen “cause”, just give it a rest … okay?

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America.

I’ve been tired

I haven’t updated my blog as regularly as I committed to myself that I would, I’ve simply been mentally drained.  Writing generally means thinking, and there’s no point to taking that up when I’m brain-exhausted.  So I’m taking a break from writing on my blog.

What I’m thinking about, as I take this break, is where to start.  It seems easy to know where one wants to go, less easy to know the beginning.  I refer to the national debate about the character and substance of America in the future.  I believe that we can go wherever we choose, but there’s nothing clear about the question of where to start.

Partisans seem to believe there is a lot that’s clear about where to start.  I don’t think they’ve really thought these proposed “starting points” through very clearly.  “Smaller government” isn’t a start, neither is “European-style social safety net”.  Both of those are many steps down the path.  So I’m thinking about where to start.

On an entirely different topic….

I recently saw a re-run of an interview that O’Reilly did with Richard Dawkins.  I don’t care for Dawkins, for three reasons: 1) He just isn’t that accomplished, his he even seems to have trouble differentiating ‘religion’ from ‘deity’, 2) his stock in trade appears to be little more than a privileged upbringing and supercilious British accent, and 3) he’s provocative for no apparent reason other than seeking celebrity … he just doesn’t have much to say.  But he did briefly bamboozle O’Reilly, which demonstrates the advantages of entering an argument with a prepared and rehearsed tactic.

O’Reilly made the mistake of arguing that our system of government is based on the Ten Commandments.  Seeing his opening, Dawkins sprung, as best his squatty little body would allow.  In other words, his eyebrows shot upward and he unleashed, in his sibilant and hissing accent,  his prepared attack.  He challenged O’Reilly to show how two of the ten commandants, breaking the Sabbath and graven images, had anything to do with government.  O’Reilly was flummoxed, so I’ll answer Dawkins, instead.

The prohibition on graven images (and worshipping other Gods) places a limit on superstitions.  Every society, even one’s as rigidly secular as the Soviet Union, are based on certain beliefs and values (ie; superstitions).  In order for society to function properly, these superstitions must be limited to the acceptable set of superstitions.  When a society fails to limit its superstitions you get the Branch Davidians, Nazi Germany, the People’s Temple, or the Khmer Rouge.  The Second Commandment a very early corollary to federal supremacy.

The Fourth Commandment dictum to observe the Sabbath is simply a very early labor law, perhaps one of the earliest recorded with such clarity.  Observing the Sabbath assured working people of one day per week freed of their labors.  It was a very early element of religion creating social policy.  What kind of society would it be that allowed employers to work their employees seven days a week?

I’m not sure at all that I want to argue religion, God, and government, but it’s clear to me that Dawkins is swimming in water well beyond his depth.  Like many overeducated Brits, he substitutes an unearned cynicism and vocabulary for anything resembling an actual thought process.  Whew, boy, now I’m all tuckered out agin’.  Better put muh feet up and rest a spell.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America.

My one piece of wisdom, in two pieces.

The one piece of wisdom, purchased at great personal expense, that represented the inflection point of my life, was my realization around age 26 that not only was I not cool.  That it went further than that, to the extent that I was never going to be cool.  Further, that by trying to be something I couldn’t be, the best I could achieve was to look foolish.

Closely following this gradual enlightenment was the follow up: my personal friends weren’t … ever … going to give me a paycheck, much less any other kind of career opportunity or professional fulfillment.  My friends had no interest in my “freedom and independence”.  So while I kept some of them as friends, I finally came to understand the proper role of friends in my life.

Once I realized that I needed to focus on something besides being cool, and look for career opportunities among those who weren’t my friends, things actually straightened out and I was able to move forward.  Not too long ago, a very good high school friend of my sent me an e-mail outta’ the blue.  I was excited to hear from him, but when I read his e-mail I had to respond forthrightly that when I’d come home from Vietnam, I’d made myself a different person.  And that I wasn’t going back, for any reason.

God knows, I’ve made more than my share of mistakes in life.  But for the most part, I’m pretty Okay with being a dork who went his own way, and who didn’t need friends so badly that I would have been willing to let them keep my stuck in the box they’d fashioned for me.  I’m sure that my way isn’t for everyone.  If you’re naturally cool, hey, enjoy!  If you can’t survive without friends to lean on and be leaned upon by, do whatcha’ gotta’ do!

But if life’s a struggle and things never seem to work out the way it seems they should, there are worse things that taking a long, honest look in the mirror.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!