Crab-Salmon Croquettes, or: The Idiot's Guide to Heaven on Earth

For your consideration, in guy-recipe form:


TVD's Crab-Salmon Croquettes

1 big can salmon (drained, reserve liquid)
1 little can crabmeat (ditto)
4 diced celery stalks
1/4 cup minced green onions, onions, or a little dried onion, onion powder, whatever
1 golfball-sized hunk of mayo
3/4 cup smashed crackers or matzo meal, or a combo of both
5 splashes Worcestershire sauce
1 or 2 eggs, whipped up with a fork
Juice of a 1/2 a lemon, or a blast of that ReaLemon® that's been sitting in your fridge for like 12 years


any dried seafood seasoning
lotsa paprika
cayenne pepper
go easy on the salt, if you use any at all


Paradise. 

(If you don't have crabmeat, just use the salmon and only 1/2 a cup of the cracker crumbs. Tuna fish will do in a pinch, too.)


Mix it all up gently in a bowl, easy does it. We don't want a paste. Add the reserved liquid a little at a time, just enough to keep it medium-wet.

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**CRITICAL MYSTERY SOLVED** Before cooking, put the mixture in the fridge for an hour first or the freezer for 30 minutes, and your croquettes won't fall apart, leaving you with fried fish dust. This is the secret for all successful croquettes.
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Make little hockey pucks out of the cooled mixture. Preheat a frying pan with a thin layer of oil (butter's even better), and put your hockey pucks in. DO NOT TOUCH them for at least 12 minutes---they have to set up. You can smush them down a little with the spatula (that's an egg turner thingee). When the bottoms are safely brown, you can turn 'em over and finish them off with another 10 minutes of cooking. Put them on a plate covered by a couple of paper towels.


You can lo-cal them using only a little oil or butter in the pan---just cook 'em under a lower heat for a little longer. The mayo makes 'em creamy, but if they're still a little dry for you, Campbell's Cream of Celery soup (no water) heated up is a great topping sauce. Don't be afraid---even the cookbooks say it's OK.

Put some parsley on top. Civilized people do that.


Makes about 10 hockey pucks. Try 'em with fries, a splash of vinegar, maybe some cole slaw. Now you're stylin'.

Global Warming: What You Can Do

(A version of the following was published by The American Spectator Online in February 2007.)


I've been on the fence about this thing until America's most highly-paid newsman Katie Couric wrote this on her blog:

"And all the experts agree. Well, almost every expert. (There are a handful of scientists -- many of them on the payroll of big oil companies -- who wonder if global warming is a reality.)"

Oil companies. I should have known. They want us all dead so they can have all the oil to themselves. Still, as a Republican, the question I really have to ask is, what's in it for me??

It's another perfect day here in Southern California, a nippy 69 degrees, and the value of my house has doubled in the last 5 years. What if everybody had nice weather, the chilling thought went down my chilled spine. My obscene profit, up in smoke like from the tailpipe of a Hummer. And if it gets as warm as Mexico here, why, they sell land as cheap as dirt!

We have to do something about this, like now. As Al Gore said while snarfing up his well-deserved Oscar, this is a moral issue. Quicker than Gore flunked out of divinity school, I came up with this helpful list. Clip and save:

---Plug in your clocks only when you absolutely have to know what time it is. If you need the alarm, get up five minutes early to set it.

---Al Gore says cigarettes are a significant cause of global warming, so quit smoking and sell him the carbon credits.

---Your kids are useless for pushing your car up to highway speeds, but they can increase your mileage considerably around town. Use your headlights only when there's no moon, and remember, your horn uses less energy than your turn signal.

---Stairs make you huff and puff and expel carbon dioxide. Use the elevator. And sports are carbon-intensive too, so do 'em on your X-box.

---Take as long as you want browsing in the fridge. Leaving the door open cools the world off.

---Down more Slurpees, or better yet, nice frosty margaritas. See, this isn't so bad.

---Lower the thermostat in your Gulfstream jet, and make the help wear sweaters.

---We need our corn for ethanol. Switch from Fritos to pork rinds.

---Do not use a television or radio unless it's bicycle powered, like Gilligan's.

---Turn your computer off right now. Turn it off, get up out of your chair, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

Then sit down quietly. Moving, talking and breathing should be kept to the absolute minimum. Human life is eco-unfriendly, and should be lived as little as possible. It's the moral thing to do.

Nine

9. Mini-sudoku solution, as promised.

The Left Is Right

Live 8, besides calling for debt relief for Africa, asks for free markets for African products, which cannot compete with European products because of EU subsidies.

The playing field isn't level---African producers get no help from their governments, because their governments are focused on corruption and Swiss bank accounts. How can Africa compete in the poker game of life when France keeps slipping chips into her stack?



Screw you, world poverty, we're all free traders now. 


Trade makes everyone richer. I can make 20 bottles of wine a week or 2 loaves of bread, my choice. Grapes grow easily where I live, but wheat doesn't do so well. You can make 20 loaves of bread or a bottle of wine for similar reasons. If we trade, we both got bread and wine every night.

But if my government pays me to grow wheat, that's what I'll do. Too bad for you.

That's the trade situation right now for Africa. European nations "protect," no, reward their crappy "wheat-growers," their "farmers," so Africa can go to hell. Live 8 says later for that. Cool.