What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread.
If you are celebrating Easter or Passover, I hope you’re enjoying the spring holiday with friends or family. I tried an Italian haroset recipe for last night’s Passover seder–the recipe is after the jump.
UPDATE: Senator Chuck Grassley caused a bit of an uproar in the Twitterverse Saturday with this bon mot:
Constituents askd why i am not outraged at PresO attack on supreme court independence. Bcause Am ppl r not stupid as this x prof of con law
SECOND UPDATE: CBS news legend Mike Wallace has died at age 93. Morley Safer remembers his former colleague, and CBS posted other reflections, photos, and video clips at that link.
Claudia Roden included many recipes for haroset in The Book of Jewish Food. She offers this as a “general version” of Italian style haroset, but says that Jews in different regions of Italy have their own versions. You don’t have to be too precise with quantities in most haroset recipes. My adaptations are in parentheses below.
Haroset from Italy
3 apples, sweet or tart (I used two gala apples)
2 pears (I used one large Anjou pear)
500 ml/18 fl oz sweet wine (I used about 1/2 cup white grape juice)
50g/2 oz pine nuts (I used about 1/4 cup walnuts)
250g/9 oz dates, pitted and chopped (I used 5 large dates)
100g/4oz yellow raisins (I used a handful of regular raisins)
100g/4 oz prunes, pitted and chopped (I used three or four prunes)
100g/4 oz sugar or honey (I used a few tablespoons of honey)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
Peel and core apples and pears, cut into small pieces. Grind nuts in food processor. Put all ingredients into a pan together and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, for about 1 hour. Add a little water if it becomes too dry.
Let cool and spread over matzah or other crackers.
Variations: add chopped lemon or orange candied orange peel, pistachios, dried figs, orange or lemon juice, nutmeg, or cloves.
6 Comments
OMG
albert Sat 7 Apr 5:31 PM
LOL
Nothing about Easter on the front page of the Gazette site today except for Lamb prices skyrocket as Easter approaches and Todd Dorman reminiscing about Easter egg hunts of yesteryear.
Can’t remember–did Stephen Bloom ever admit he was wrong about the Cedar Rapids Gazette headline?
desmoinesdem Sun 8 Apr 12:50 PM
Uhmmn what am missing?
Blowing that up on my iPad it appears that the date on that front page is sometime in June of 2008(?), hardly an Easter edition, and a Thursday besides.
conservative-demo Sun 8 Apr 1:16 PM
it's a joke mock-up
based on Stephen Bloom’s claim that the CR Gazette ran a huge front-page “HE HAS RISEN” headline on his first Easter Sunday in Iowa. The Atlantic had to run a correction after that claim was proven false.
desmoinesdem Sun 8 Apr 3:22 PM
Aaahh-soo
No wonder I have forehead-extends-all-the-way-to-back-of-neck pattern baldness (from slapping same).
Is Bloom the guy who was in the news from Michigan recently for “insulting” Iowa in an essay about the caucus or somesuch?
conservative-demo Sun 8 Apr 4:48 PM
yes
that guy.
desmoinesdem Sun 8 Apr 6:01 PM