VEGAN RICE!

This recipe was inspired by two friends who happen to be vegans!  Enjoy!

Ingredients

2 cups long-grain rice

1 large red bell pepper

1/2 onion

1 16 oz can of sweet corn

2 large vegetable bouillon cubes(1 large cube for every two cups of water used in the recipe.  In this case, I ended up using 5 cups of water)
5 cups water 
1 tsp. granulated garlic

1 tbsp. alternative/vegan "butter"
1/4 cup vegetable or olive oil, or "vegan approved" oil

Chop the onion and bell pepper into 1/2 inch sized pieces.  Put the oil into a large saucepan and heat on medium-high until it's about 350 degrees, or until it starts smoking.  Add the onions and bell peppers, and sprinkle salt over them to help sweat out the sweetness in the vegetables.  Saute until the onions are translucent.  Add the two cups of rice.  Stir rice until light brown.  Add the 5 cups of water and stir.  Heat to a boil, then add the garlic and bouillon.  Stir.  Reduce heat to a simmer.  Cover and let cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally to keep it from sticking to anything.  After 15 minutes, turn off the heat, and let it stand for 5 minutes.  Drain the corn, and mix into rice mixture with the "butter".

Serve!

(There is a picture at the bottom of the blog, if you're curious as to what it should look like.)

The Ingredient Incident

So, today... was interesting.

I asked my son to make Banana Nut Bread from a recipe that my mother gave me the other day.  I provided him with all the ingredients that he would need to make it and I set him loose.  I went into the living room to watch the television while he worked.  Things seemed to be going well.  He is a teenager, and has cooked before.  He knows where everything is, how to work the oven, and so on.  He IS a smart kid, I swear...

However, this was not the problem.

I made the mistake of pulling out powdered sugar instead of flour for him.  Normally, people can tell the difference between sugar and flour, but this was POWDERED sugar, and therefore looked almost identical to flour.  The containers also looked almost identical, just slightly different sizes.

He preheated the oven, started to work, and I answered any questions that he had along the way.  He mixed the dry ingredients together, then the wet ingredients together in separate bowls.  As he was greasing the loaf pans, I started mixing the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.  That's when I noticed that it didn't look quite right, but never having made this particular recipe before, I continued on.

He finished greasing the pans, I filled both with the mixture, and we put them in the oven to bake for one hour.  As we were cleaning up, I asked him to put the new bag of flour into the nearly empty container.  As he began to do so, he asked me, "Why are they different colors?"

As I looked in the container, I noticed that what he was about to put into the container was light brown, and what was already in there was bright white.  That's when I realized that he had used powdered sugar instead of flour, and we quickly took the loaf pans back out of the oven.  I took out a large mixing bowl and combined the ingredients from the loaf pans with the same amount of flour that SHOULD have been in the recipe, and increased the amount by a half-cup, to compensate for the extra sugar that had been put in.  Then I divided them back into the two loaf pans and put them back into the oven for one hour.

Crisis averted!

Entry #3: ASU Providing Shorter Classes

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2011/02/22/20110222arizona-state-university-shorter-classes.html?nclick_check=1

I think that the 7.5 week courses are a good idea, because it gives students more options and with more options come more students.  Making the courses shorter will also decrease the expenses required for students and continue to make classes available to more potential students.  Students can finish courses faster, graduate faster, and end up paying less tuition in the long run.  By providing these options, ASU is enabling themselves to retain students for longer periods of time overall, rather than lose them to non-traditional schools.

The comments left by... commentators... seemed like they didn't actually read the article itself.  There was someone worrying about their engineering classes, when the article said that it wouldn't affect all classes.  Other people were more concerned about a comment's grammar than the subject matter itself.  Most of the comments didn't seem like they had anything to do with the actual article, and those that did, seemed confused as to what they were commenting on.

Entry #2: Slanted Fox News Reporting

This is a perfect example of slander reporting.  The producers pulled Tom Ricks off the air as soon as he started saying things that they didn't agree with.  It's obvious that was the reason why they did that, because as far as I know, they don't schedule interviews that only last 49 seconds.  Rather a pointless interview, and didn't say much other than showing Ricks' distaste for Fox New's reporting.

Another example, slightly related to this, is that news stations will edit a particular report to make it say whatever they want it to say, rather than the original intended message.  This allows them to let the viewers see what the station wants them to see, not allowing viewers to form an educated opinion for themselves.