Of Meatloaf and Men

Meatloaf holds a special place in my heart. It’s the ultimate comfort food: nourishing and hearty, and it reminds me of times when we used it to stretch a tight food budget. It contains everything one needs for nourishment. It’s the poor man’s pate’.

And there are as many meatloaves as there are people. And like people, some are better than others.

I’ve been through almost as many meatloaf recipes as I have men, and almost none of them measured up on any front. My meatloaves came out soggy and bland and only useful for making soup out of the carcass. Much like most of the men who have wandered in and out of my life.

Some meatloaves have been so bad that I just chucked them into the trash like the guy that I kicked out at two in the morning one time.

My search for the perfect meatloaf has been fruitless.

Until now.

And like the men who’ve been important, the one I stumbled onto was the perfect accident.

I’ve come up with a three step program for the perfect meatloaf. (I don’t have one for the perfect man other than "hold your breath, hold your breath and wish upon a star" —you’re on your own for that.)

Step One:
Make mashed potatoes. Use red potatoes, butter (never oleo unless there’s a dietary restriction) and milk (preferably whole milk). Toss in diced red onions, garlic and smoked bacon. Finish it off with grated Monterey Jack and smoked goat cheese.

Eat as much as you want, but save the leftovers.

Step Two:
Make potato pancakes. Take your leftover mashed potatoes, throw in a couple of eggs, some flour (a cup or two depending on how much mashed potatoes you’re working with) and enough milk to give the mixture a batter texture.

They come out best if fried in bacon grease, but if you don’t have any, olive oil is the next best thing.

Heat the oil over medium heat in a cast iron skillet. I prefer my old-fashioned cast iron one over the much more expensive aluminum skillet that I have. Cooking pancakes requires an even distribution of heat that most aluminum pans can’t achieve, regardless of how thick the bottom is or how much they cost.

Some things can’t be improved on, and cast iron skillets are among them.

Use a ladle or large spoon to make three pools of batter in the pan. Let them cook for longer than you think they should, then flip them. (If they don’t flip easily, adjust your idea of how you think they should cook. It’s probably longer than you think or want to monitor. Be patient. They’ll come out perfect. God rewards patience with good food.)

Cook the other side until they’re spongy to the touch.

Eat as much as you want, but save the leftovers.

Step Three:
Combine 1 pound of lean ground beef or sirloin, ½ pound of breakfast sausage, a cup of grated carrots, a cup of diced celery and a half cup of onion. Mix it with your hands, because that’s the only way it gets done right. (You can wear latex gloves if you don’t want to scrape the goo off.) Add an egg or two (you can’t go wrong either way) and two or three of your potato pancakes.

Squish everything up real good and put it in a glass loaf pan. Bake it in an oven preheated to 350 degrees for about 45 minutes to an hour. Take it out when a meat thermometer puts it a little under 170. Pour a small can of tomato sauce over it and top it with grated smoked goat cheese. (Yes, more smoked goat cheese. Taste one piece and you’ll know I'm right.)

Stick it back in the oven for a few minutes until it reaches 170 degrees, pull it out, baste it with any juices that have oozed out, and let it rest. It’s been through a marathon since it was mashed potatoes, so it needs a little breather.

I’ll add one additional step: slice, serve and enjoy.

The meatloaf I usually make sucks. The one I described above is like eating a Beethoven concerto. The mixture of flavors combine to elevate it above comfort food into the sublime, complete with angels singing overhead.

Higher Ground

Sonia Sotomyar’s nomination to the Supreme Court surprised me. I knew that she was on the short list, but her confirmation hearing will likely descend quickly into name-calling and accusations. Not unusual for a confirmation hearing, I realize, but of those on the “short list”, she is probably the one most likely to feed far-right paranoia.

That every ruling she’s ever issued and every opinion she’s issued and every document she ever authored and everything that she’s ever said in public will be picked through like a coroner’s inquest is a given. That’s par for the course in any confirmation hearings these days, regardless of the branch of government involved. She will have to maneuver carefully to keep the odd off-hand remark from a decade or two ago from coming back to bite her in the butt.

And there are always odd, off-hand remarks that, taken out of context, don’t make very good sound bites.

Some of them don’t even make good sound bites when taken in context. They are the product of a much younger person who might say something different today.

The confirmation process often exploits that old record. It doesn’t pay much heed to the idea of personal growth, that someone’s opinions might change over time and that a decision made 20 years ago might be made differently today. And Ms. Sotomyar’s confirmation will be no different.

The nation’s political environment has become so toxic that I sometimes avoid keeping up on the ebb and flow of it. Far too often, it has become a deadly red tide that sucks all the oxygen out of the water and kills anything living in its path.

I’m hoping for a return to civility, although nothing gives evidence that such a change will occur in my lifetime. For the foreseeable future, bitterness and acrimony will control politics. Puppets will accuse other puppets of horrible misdeeds. The accused puppets will cry foul, even as they accuse their persecutors of even more heinous acts.

It is a vicious cycle that has gone on for far, far too long. It accomplishes nothing, other than driving people apart. It indicates that our elected officials are, by and large, more concerned about consolidating and maintaining power than representing the people that both elected and pay them.

We are living in a transformational time, much like the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution. Basic expectations and facts of life are changing more quickly that many of us can absorb. The world has changed more dramatically during my lifetime than I ever would have believed.

It’s scary. I admit that.

The options are to retreat into the past and stick to the tried and true fear-mongering that’s gone on since the first influx of immigrants to the US in the 19th century or to move beyond fear. Granted, I’m not sure I’ll ever know how Twitter or Facebook or any of those things work or even why they’re relevant, but I’m not afraid of them. I don’t understand them, but I ain’t afraid of a web site.

We’re living in a brave new world that demands brave new leadership, from the President to the Supremes to the Legislature. Right now, the latter is hopelessly bogged down and tied up in ropes that should have rotted away by now but seem only to get stronger.

They will continue to be bogged down and unresponsive and self-serving for the foreseeable future. There isn’t the political will to change that sad fact.

Any person nominated for the high court will be faced with the absurd challenge of defending any and everything he or she might have said in any context as far back as a record of their words exists.

Still, I think she’ll make it through. Nobody, as yet, has anything to kill the nomination. There will be some hard-core Republicans who oppose her, but there should be little reason to deny confirmation.

I say that today, but tomorrow is another day, and in the fickle and feckless world of politics, that’s a lifetime. Things frequently turn on a dime, and a dime is pretty thin. Between the coin and reality, it will be all wait and see. Never my favorite pastime, but I guess I’ll survive.

I’m tired of the toxic waste dump that our political system has become. We all live in the same country, so why we can’t find common ground across ideologies I’ll never understand.

And given the economic state of the country today, common ground would be a very good thing.

Higher ground would be even better.

Torture Cels

An ultra-conservative talk-show host in Chicago let himself be waterboarded to debunk the idea that such practices are torture. He came out singing the "I've been Tortured" lullaby, unequivocally stating that water-boarding is torture. He drowned as a child, and had to be revived. Waterboarding doesn't simulate drowning, he said: it is drowning.

Further evidence that God has both a sense of justice and irony.

Christopher Hitchens of Slate and Vanity Fair underwent the same experiment and came to the same conclusion.

Gertrude Stein put it best: "a rose is a rose is a rose".

And torture is torture is torture.

Shakespeare wrote that "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Unfortunately, the converse is as true: torture cloaked in the semantics of "enhanced interrogation techniques" still reeks to the high heavens like a pig farm surrounded by fields of rotting cabbage.

Not only does torture diminish our stature as a country, it makes us collectively responsible for it.

I wish Ms. Stein had said "wrong is wrong is wrong." Or as I've said many times, "Enough is enough is always enough."

And I've had enough.

More than enough.

Chrysler's New Hybrid

That Chrysler is in bankruptcy isn’t news to any one who isn’t in a coma or suffering from senile dementia. Everybody’s talking about it, and they all have their own opinion about what the government’s role should be and the validity and/or of utility this unprecedented intervention. They may or may not have all the numbers and may or may not even care about the numbers. They all know one thing: it’s all a big ole mess.

Chrysler wants to sell its profitable parts to a new company that would be owned by the UAW and its pension fund, Fiat and the US government. Call it an asset transplant. Many fear that the result will be more akin to Frankenstein’s monster, though.

One fact that hasn’t been swept under the rug so much as deemed not interesting enough to warrant coverage is that Chrysler’s finance arm is going to be cut off and discarded. It apparently has withered past the point of possible rejuvenation. And Frankenstein’s monster doesn’t need a withered arm.

Instead, Chrysler dealers will direct buyers to GMAC for financing. Although GM sold the majority of its finance company in a voluntary amputation (some might even say castration), it still holds a stake in the company.

Fiat would gain a 20% stake in the “new” company with the option to increase it to 35% after meeting certain benchmarks. They’re not really offering cash for the Chrysler stake so much as access to its dealer network in Europe, where Chrysler has no visible presence today, along with technology to build small, fuel-efficient cars (like that should be a secret worth giving up equity for). They’ll get the benefit of Chrysler’s dealers in a market where they have the same stature as Chrysler has in Europe.

Meanwhile, Fiat is in negotiations with GM to acquire its Opel unit (for cash, this time), primarily to expand and solidify its European presence. And since GM is desperate to unload assets to generate cash, Fiat can probably get Opel at a good price.

Confused yet?

The twists and contortions and bluffs and bluff-callings and posturing make the whole mess hard to understand. A schematic of it all would look like a pair of incestuous cousins’ family tree.

Think about it: early next year, you’ll be able to go to your local Chrysler dealer, buy a Fiat (or possibly an Opel) and finance it through GM.

If that’s not a mess, I don’t know what is.

Chrysler has said it wants to build a hybrid car, and if all these deals go through, they’ll have one.