This morning I made myself an omelet using a recipe I found on the Epicurious.com web site. It’s a tarragon and goat cheese omelet. Yum, right? I’ll put the recipe down at the bottom of this post, if you’re interested.

Anyway, I had been thinking about it since last night and was really psyched about this omelet. I love goat cheese and I’ve got tarragon, chives, and parsely out in my herb garden so I figured it was going to be fabulous. I used organic brown eggs from uncaged chickens. I cut the herbs just moments before creating the omelet.

Everything seemed to be going so well. It looked good!

Alas, I knew as soon as my fork cut off the first bite.

Rubbery.

I had created a rubbery omelet. Shit! Why this one — of all the omelets I’ve made over the years? Why this one that I so especially was looking forward to? Why? Why??

Since the internet is the font of all knowledge, I decided to do a little investigating online. Although there are a lot of people who have experienced the rubbery omelet, there’s no one reason — apparently — for why an omelet might turn out that way. Among the possible causes:

• I over-beat the eggs.
• The eggs were old.
• I over-cooked the omelet.

I didn’t think I over-beat them and I’m pretty sure I didn’t over-cook. So… maybe it was just the eggs.

I don’t know. It was pretty disappointing, though.

In the course of my investigations, I discovered a fascinating video that shows a completely different omelet technique from the one I’ve been using. (Maybe the problem is my technique? Hm. But I’ve turned out tender omelets in the past using it!) What I do with an omelet is heat the butter, pour in the eggs, and as the eggs begin to set on the edges of the omelet, I lift up the edges and tilt the pan to let uncooked egg flow underneath. I read about this technique somewhere and I was under the impression that’s how everyone did it.

Wrong.

The guy in the video (from Gourmet.com) does a sort of fast scrambling kind of thing until the eggs are not quite set — and then he briefly lets off the scrambling so they can form a solid mass. Wow. I had no idea. Cool. Here, see for yourselves:

The Technique: The Classic Omelet: Magazine Video : gourmet.com

(You might also enjoy the written article that goes with the video. Click here.)

And, here’s the recipe for the omelet I was making:

Tarragon, Chive and Goat Cheese Omelet

Source: Epicurious (Servings: 2)
5 large eggs
2 tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon
1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter
1 ¼ cups crumbled soft fresh goat cheese (such as Montrachet, about
4 ounces)

Whisk eggs, herbs, salt and pepper in medium bowl to blend. Melt 1 tablespoon butter in 9- to 10-inch-diameter nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add half of egg mixture to skillet and cook until very softly set, tilting skillet, running rubber spatula around edges and allowing uncooked egg portion to flow underneath, about 2 minutes. Sprinkle half of goat cheese over. Cover and cook until omelet is set, about 2 minutes. Tilt skillet and slide out omelet onto plate, folding omelet in half. Cover to keep warm. Repeat for second omelet with remaining butter, egg mixture and goat cheese. Serve immediately.

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Climate Security Act | Salon News
Progressives should stop playing the conservatives’ game and promote a radical redesign to climate policy focused on aggressive deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Exactly so. Punishing emitters with higher taxes or fines isn’t the answer. We’ve got to focus our efforts on rapidly developing and deploying clean, renewable energy sources — solar and wind. Anything else is like arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Of course, if the Titanic were sailing the north Atlantic these days, her passengers wouldn’t have much to worry about — seeing as how anthropogenic climate change has melted most of the icebergs that used to be found that far south.

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In Mediterranean, the Predator Is the Hunted - washingtonpost.com
…all but two of 21 species of open-ocean sharks and their cousins, the rays, are facing the risk of extinction.

Of course they are. As, in varying degrees of urgency, pretty much all species of everything on earth are facing risk of extinction.

It’s because our planet is fucked up.

And it’s our fault.

Just thought I’d mention that.

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Top of The Heap - washingtonpost.com: When you walked in, all you could think was dog pee. (Where? In the rugs?) Clutter was stacked high as the ceiling in every small room, including the plastic-shelf clutter one accumulates in hopes of organizing clutter.

This isn’t clutter. It’s garbage. And people who let their house get as filled with garbage as these people did aren’t messy — they’re mentally ill.

I suppose it’s a nice thing that they were able to find people willing to help them clean the garbage out of their house, but I have to wonder how well these people are going to be able to maintain it without some really serious professional psychological help.

The condition of their house approaches an area that “Clean House” usually tries to avoid — a level of filth that suggests psychological disorder.

Uh… it doesn’t just approach that level. It’s all the way there. This kind of hoarding isn’t in any way normal.

You’ll have to read the entire Washington Post article to get the full picture of just how far gone these people are. It’s more than just the mess, the couple is also into a “magical thinking” sort of deal a’la The Secret. It’s very sad and, unfortunately, their having been selected for the reality TV “Clean House” thing is probably just going to reinforce their belief in such nonsense.

The kinder thing would have been to spend less on remodeling their house and put some of that money towards counseling.

How long do you think it will be before they’ve re-trashed their house? I’d give them a year. Probably less.

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Eugene Robinson - Deadly Consequences — But the Right Call - washingtonpost.com
I’ve never been able to understand why the Founders would stick a collective right into the middle of the greatest charter of individual rights and freedoms ever written — and give it such pride of place — the No. 2 position, right behind such bedrock freedoms as speech and religion. Even Barack Obama, a longtime advocate of gun control — but also a one-time professor of constitutional law — has said he believes the amendment confers an individual right to gun ownership.

Okay. Let’s say it does.

Then that right was conferred during a time in our history when individual gun ownership was a realist need. Huge parts of the country were wild and completely without federal protection. We were just finishing up chasing the British out. There were dangerous animals around. And let’s not forget those pesky natives who seemed to think the land they’d been living on for a thousand years was, somehow, theirs.

There weren’t any nearby cops you could call if your crazy neighbor decided to force his way into your house to steal your children.

It was a different world. A far more dangerous world. Having your own gun made sense.

Some might argue that it’s still a dangerous world — but, by comparison, that’s simply not true. Despite its flaws, our law enforcement agencies do a pretty good job of preventing serious crime and catching the bad guys. These days, though, what makes the bad guys REALLY dangerous is the ease with which they can get their hands on guns. Maybe DC’s ban on hand guns wasn’t the best way of solving that problem, but we’ve got to do something.

I’m thinking a constitutional amendment banning them. It turns out my good buddy Eugene Robinson is thinking the same thing. (”Great minds” and all that…)

Heh. Yeah. Like that’s going to happen.

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Robert D. Novak - The Obamacons Who Worry McCain - washingtonpost.com
Powell probably will enter Obama’s camp at a time of his own choosing.

Now there’s a ticket I could really get behind. Mark and I have always said that Powell was too good a man for the Bush administration. He’d be the perfect addition to an Obama presidency, though. He’s got experience, military credibility up the wazoo, and he’s clearly got a lot of integrity. If anybody could help get us out of Iraq, it’d be Powell — and I have to believe it’s a project he might be willing to undertake, seeing as how the Bush administration so badly used him to get us into Iraq to begin with.

Is he willing to get back into politics, though? Once burned, twice shy.

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Annals of Medicine: The Itch: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
Only in the Emergency Department at Massachusetts General Hospital, after the doctors started swarming, and one told her she needed surgery now, did M. learn what had happened. She had scratched through her skull during the night—and all the way into her brain.

Whoa.

This is a fascinating article about a neurological problem. Well worth reading. There’s another bit that especially caught my attention:

This may help explain, for example, the success of the advice that back specialists now commonly give. Work through the pain, they tell many of their patients, and, surprisingly often, the pain goes away. It had been a mystifying phenomenon. But the picture now seems clearer. Most chronic back pain starts as an acute back pain—say, after a fall. Usually, the pain subsides as the injury heals. But in some cases the pain sensors continue to light up long after the tissue damage is gone. In such instances, working through the pain may offer the brain contradictory feedback—a signal that ordinary activity does not, in fact, cause physical harm. And so the sensor resets.

You may have seen television commercials for the anti-depressant drug, Cymbalta. One of the benefits of the drug is that it treats the persistent pain some people have along with their depression and, indeed, it is now being used to treat people with fibromyalgia. Okay, here’s where it gets interesting. Some psychiatric researchers theorize that people with chronic depression or bipolar disorder may have a sort of “kindling” effect happening in their brains — like what happens with epileptics — where some neurons get stuck in a sort of a feedback loop.

From what I’ve just read on the Cymbalta web site, it’s a serotonin and norepinephrine re-uptake inhibitor. Those are neurotransmitters — the chemicals in your brain that enable your neurons to “communicate” with one another. The theory is that when there’s more serotonin and norepinephrine around, your brains tells the rest of you that you’re feeling happier, more content, and in less pain. All good, right? But it seems to me that if, in fact, there’s a “kindling” thing happening in a specific part of the brain that’s causing the depression or pain, then a re-uptake drug is just a temporary fix. It’s like a band aid over a tumor. It hides it for a bit, but it’s not going to fix the problem permanently. Like the suggestion to work through the back pain in order to “re-set” the sensors, there ought to be some way of permanently “re-setting” your brain — a way of re-training it.

Hm.

Anyway. Read this article — link above. It’s fascinating.

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Here’s George Carlin 40 years ago as he appeared on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. If you want to watch his act, click on the link below. Carlin comes on at about the 10:40 time marker.

Classic Television Showbiz: The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour with guests George Carlin, The Committee and The Doors (1968)

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Edgy comic George Carlin dies in L.A., aged 71 | U.S. | Reuters

Known for his edgy, provocative material developed over 50 years, the bald, bearded Carlin achieved status as an anti-Establishment icon in the 1970s with stand-up bits full of drug references and a routine called “Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television.”

Ah, jeez… I’m sorry to see this. George Carlin was much more than just an “anti-Establishment icon”. He was a genuinely funny and very smart guy who had a lot of interesting and important things to say about contemporary culture.

My earliest memories of George Carlin are of him as the “hippy dippy weatherman” on the Smothers Brothers show.

It had only recently been announced that Carlin was going to be awarded the Mark Twain prize. At least he got that well-deserved recognition before he left.

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