Steven Savage – Page 308

Recipe: Japanese Curry Sauce Plus

July 3, 2016 by Steven Savage

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

Figured it’s time I get back to posting my cooking experiments.

This sauce came about after seeing an Indian mini-cafeteria on my job. It had some lovely thick sauces that looked like a complete meal on rice, and there was a dish that was a bed of greens, then rice, then curry. These came together in my head to make me ask “can I make a curry sauce that is largely a meal?”

This is the result. This sauce’s body comes from squash and garbanzo beans and tastes very much like my Japanese Curry sauces. Each serving has a about serving of legumes and a serving of vegetables in it. Throw it onto rice with a side dish – or rice and a bed of greens, say shredded spinach, and you have a very complete meal.

Makes 6-8 servings

Ingredients:

1 small butternut squash (about 2 pounds unpeeled), peeled, seeded, cut into cubes.
2 tomatoes, diced.
3 cups cooked garbanzo beans (2 14.5 oz cans)
2 cups low-sodium vegetable stock
2/3 cup red wine (shiraz and zinfandel are good)
4 tablespoons curry powder.
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 tbsp maple syrup
4 tablespoons soy sauce (If you use store-bought not-quite sodium free vegetable broth, use 1 Tbsp)
4T bsp garlic
4 1/2 tsp cocoa powder
4 Tbsp peanut butter

To prepare:

Place squash, tomatoes, garbanzo beans, vegetable stock, wine into a pot, bring to boil, simmer.
While bringing to boil, add other ingredients one at a time, stirring.
When the squash is soft, mash with potato masher to break it and the beans and tomatoes up.
Either puree with immersion blender or let cool and puree in regular blender.

Notes: This sauce is a bit thick, may need more vegetable broth – I’d say ½ to 1 cups. it’s also hot so you might want to tone the curry powder down a bit depending on taste

– Steve

Civic Diary 7/2/2016

July 2, 2016 by Steven Savage

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

Brexit:

Still watching the fallout from the Brexit. It seems to have been a sadly obvious con, and one where opportunistic a-holes manipulated and scared people. It’s a hideous synergy of crap news and awful people who got people to vote for destroying their economy and their country’s reputation. Honestly, even if the UK doesn’t leave the EU (and I’m leaning to it won’t now) this makes people trust the country less.

It’s also a reminder that something may be imperfect, but may be a hell of a lot better than the alternative. Which, politically, is what we should consider “good” to “excellent.”

So my big civic lesson from the Brexit is to keep up more on news. I did anyway, but I sort of went back to my “news rituals” in force as I’d slipped on them. That involves:

Checking my newsfeeds at least once a day in an app.
Reading long-form articles from reliable sources (I use the AP and Quartz) from said feeds.
I added Politifact to my news scan since it’s useful.
Doing my usual Twitter news scan. Remember I have one list just for government, politics, and activism that helps me stay up to date.

You can’t know everything; you can work to stay informed.

Political Engagement:

Now that I’ve got some leads on political orgs fitting my interests, I’m slowly gearing up. That takes time as people are busy, but I’ve got an actual (almost sure not to be cancelled) political meeting coming up and am in contact with other volunteering options.

As noted my interest is voter registration right now, but as also noted I’m asking what my long-term interests are in political engagement. I’m thinking beyond that education and communication. It’s sort of exciting to think I can apply my hobbies and my career experiences to something.

Political engagement doesn’t have to be and shouldn’t be boring. Look for what fits you.

– Steve

Civic Diary 6/25/2016

June 25, 2016 by Steven Savage

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

Another crazy week. 2016 is filled with a lot of unpleasantness. This time the Brexit.

The Brexit is pretty much a great example of how people do not do well in being civicly engaged when you see how many people didn’t get what the Brexit vote was about. With the UK economy hit (and the world economy taking a blow) and people seeing surprised at the same time, it’s a grand example of BS politics, propaganda, and ill-informed voting producing real problems.

Needless to say I’m 1) keeping an eye on the economy, and 2) even more focused on staying civicly engaged. I certainly appreciate my newsfeed more.

Remember my attempts to hook up with a local political party? Well that kept getting changed due to rescheduled meetings – I think some of that was the group wanting to keep some control over attendees since in-person political meetings can at times attract some pronounced personalities. So I basically did two things:

I went to the first meeting I could find without being selective, informed people there of my goal of getting more civicly and politically involved, and got some ideas and flyers. Fortunately my pick was a group who’s interests aligned with my own, so I may have found the right organization through luck.
Dropped by the office of the local political group and got a card for the person running it. I’ll be writing them soon.

So the big lessons here is:

In-person contact seems effective.
Some – probably a lot – of political groups have issues with recruiting. In fact, one I had trouble getting in touch with asks people singing up for contact want to help with recruiting. It reminds me a lot of the issues conventions have had in recruiting.

I’m wondering if a lot of political organizations are bad at recruiter, only recruit among limited populations, etc. It might go a long-way to explaining lack of civic engagement . . . and points to something I may want to do.

So next up is checking out these groups, attending some meetings (that I don’t expect to be cancelled) and seeing how I can get involved. But I’m one step closer.

Here’s a big lesson for civic engagement – keep trying to find the right group or groups for you. At least in my case it was hard.

– Steve