Nobrainer’s Think Tank

I happened to catch a McCain/Palin commercial last night. Until the end I was sure if it was an Obama ad making fun of the competition or just a confusing McCain ad.

Anyway, at the end the commercial refers to McCain and Palin as “real mavericks” who will bring “real change.”

For some reason, it brought to mind Spinal Tap.

Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest): “And then, we looked at each other and said…”
David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean): “Said, look, why not?”
Nigel: “…we might as well join up. You know?”
David: “So, we became the Originals.”
Nigel: “Right.”
David: “And, uh, we had to change our name, actually.”
Nigel: “Well, there was another group, in the east end, called the Originals and we had to rename ourselves.”
David: “the New Originals.”
Nigel: “the New Originals.”
David: “Yeah.”
Nigel: “And they became…”
David: “…the Regulars. They changed their name back to the Regulars. And we thought we could go back to the Originals, but what’s the point?”

This morning, on the radio on the way to work, a helpful tip for seasonal allergy sufferers was provided by some national association of Chiropractors.

The tip? Stay inside.

Gee thanks Chiros. I now take you guys seriously.

For Labor Day weekend, Rachel and I flew to BFE Missouri (pronounced mizz-err-uh) to spend time with her family. Let me emphasize that I don’t intend BFE in a derogatory way: I rather enjoyed the country. Hopefully stories, words, and/or pictures about that trip will be posted here eventually.

This weekend, we took to the road to see the Clemson-Citadel game. The game went well. We avoided the heavy Hannah-related rains by effectively driving around it. A trip to MH Frank was made and I invested in my first Southern Tide polo. All that was swell. But it really felt great to enjoy a cheap pitcher of cold beer at Tiger Town Tavern.

The Coalition of the Swilling has introduced me to this nice little game, Escapa!, and I have been killing some time with it ever since. My personal best, so far, is in the 20 second range.

I also suggest giving them a visit to see the wonderful pictures from Mr. Bingley’s Alaskan cruise. So far, parts 1, 2, and 3 have been posted.

Leave it to me to wait until after I both polled you all and cooked all my tomatoes to refer to the cookbook that sits on my shelf. [The phrase “sits on my shelf” is highly sensitive to the location of that “h”.] From my America’s Test Kitchen Test Kitchen Favorites - The 2007 Companion Cookbook to the Hit TV Show:

When it comes to cooking, we prefer to go with good canned tomatoes. Juice-drenched seasonal tomatoes, available only a few weeks a year, are reserved for eating raw on mayonnaise-slathered bread or straight off the cutting board.

They tested 10 brands of whole tomatoes and found the the 4 Italian brands were quite horrible.

For decades, Italy has been synonymous with superior tomato quality, so these results were puzzling. First, we checked the tomato variety used for each brand, in case the difference was as simple as plum versus round. All of the Italian samples were plums, while the American samples (our top five brands) were split down the middle between plum and round. but tomato variety proved to have little to do with our preference.

The stale taste of the Italian brands in our lineup, it turns out, has more to do with trade laws than crop differences. In 1989, the United States imposed debilitating punitive tariffs on imported European fruits and vegetable–from 13.6 percent to an exorbitant 100 percent. Unsurprisingly, Italian tomato prices went through the roof, and sales of imported tomatoes dropped off dramatically. To avoid paying the steep duty, Italian tomato canners eventually began packing their tomatoes in tomato puree rather than juice. The loophole? When packed in juice, tomatoes are considered a “vegetable”; when packed in puree, they’re a “sauce,” which carries a much lower customs duty. Sure enough, the Italian brands were all packed in a thick puree (even though two brands inaccurately call it “juice” on the label).