Stir-fry:
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp sesame oil
1 package cubed super firm tofu, drained, or 8 oz. extra firm tofu cut into 1/2″ cubes
8 oz. fresh mushrooms
1 red bell pepper, sliced
1 cup sugar snap peas
2 medium carrots, sliced

Sauce:
1 5.6-oz. can regular coconut milk, about 1/3 cup
1/2 cup coarse ground or “chunky” natural peanut butter^*
1/2 cup water
3 tbsp maple syrup or sugar
1 tbsp tamari or soy sauce
1 tbsp lime juice
1 inch piece fresh ginger, minced or grated
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1 tsp sesame oil

To make the sauce, combine all the ingredients and refrigerate. You may want to add more maple syrup or tamari if you prefer a sweeter or saltier flavor. The sauce will keep for at least a week in the fridge, so this can be done in advance.

Put prepared vegetables in a casserole dish with 2 tbsp water. Cover and microwave on high power for 5 minutes, then on 50% power for 5 minutes more. While the vegetables are cooking, heat vegetable oil and sesame oil in a pan and add the tofu cubes, stirring occasionally to brown them on all sides. When the vegetables are done, drain off any excess water and add them to the pan. Cook over medium-high heat for 2-3 minutes, then add the prepared sauce and heat through. You can thin the sauce out with water in the pan if it seems too thick. Serve over rice.

If you like more heat, add cayenne pepper powder, sriracha, or Thai chili flakes.

One quarter of this recipe served over 1 cup of cooked rice contains a whopping 650 Calories.

* – Natural peanut butter is actually important because it is almost always ground more coarsely than regular peanut butter. If you don’t have natural peanut butter, you can grind roasted peanuts in a mortar and pestle or coffee grinder.

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp vegan margarine (or butter)
1 large onion, diced
4 small celery stalks, chopped
3 medium carrots, chopped
8 cups water
2 tbsp Better Than Bouillon imitation chicken broth concentrate
2 tsp dried parsley
1 tsp dried thyme
2 bay leaves
1/4 tsp salt
8 or 10 good twists of black pepper
1 8-ounce package Morningstar Farms Meal Starters Chik’n Strips
6 ounces flat whole wheat noodles (or flat egg noodles)

Saute the onion, celery and carrot in the olive oil and margarine. Add the water, Better Than Bouillon, parsley, thyme, bay leaves, salt and pepper, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes or so. Microwave the Chik’n Strips to thaw, then chop into chunks. Add the Chik’n Strips and noodles to the pot and simmer until the noodles are cooked. Serves 6-8.

An appeal to our visitors

For the past ten years, I have operated an independent website at this address. For the past six, the operations of 4d2 dot org have met the current legal definition of an Internet Service Provider. I am proud of the fact that we have provided hosting to a number of individuals and groups who might not otherwise have had a voice on the Internet.

Perhaps this “mission” of ours has become less important and less interesting as Internet presence has become cheap and ubiquitous; however we are still receiving requests every few weeks from people who are interested in joining us. Even though our members have often posted contentious material, we have never placed restrictions on the free speech of anyone we have hosted, thanks in large part to the freedom of speech enshrined in the constitution of the United States of America, from which we operate.

Today there is a distinct possibility that we will lose those freedoms. At this moment, the U.S. Congress is debating the “Stop Online Piracy Act” bill. Disguised as an effort to combat online piracy, this bill will in fact grant the government broad-reaching power to censor and control the Internet in unprecedented ways. It places onerous restrictions on small Internet Service Providers like us — restrictions with which we have no reasonable means of complying. This bill will require us to adhere to a government-mandated “blacklist” of forbidden websites, preventing our users from accessing these websites by any means within our control. Because we provide Internet access to our customers via shell sessions, virtual desktop sessions, proxy systems, DNS lookups and other means, we will be required to comply with these unreasonable restrictions if this bill becomes law. For our administrative staff of one, this is an unmanageable burden.

Every major Internet advocacy organization has spoken out against SOPA. The creators of the Internet have even expressed their categorical opposition. Yet, the future of the Internet — a revolutionary open forum which we have all helped shape into what it is today — is being decided even now by a group of politicians, most of whom do not know the difference between a website and an inbox. If government truly does derive from the consent of the governed, there is no evidence of it today. The future of a medium rests squarely in the hands of people who do not understand, do not care, and answer only to their corporate benefactors.

I am writing this note because I believe our online home is under genuine attack by my government. Although 4d2 dot org has been my project, I like to think that a piece of it belongs to all of us who have used it as a meeting place over the years. If SOPA is passed in its current form, the future of this project is deeply uncertain. As a U.S. citizen, I cannot legally fail to enforce the restrictions imposed by SOPA, but as a conscionable and reasonably intelligent denizen of the Internet I categorically refuse to enforce them. If this bill becomes law, I may be left with no reasonable option but to shut down 4d2 dot org, at least in its current form.

I would like to encourage all of you who are citizens of the United States of America to read more about this bill, and if you agree with me to write or call your Congresspeople and express your displeasure with this bill and for the appalingly broken process that has brought it to the floor of the House.

Sincerely Yours
Michael Proctor
December 15, 2011
michael@4d2.org

Roger Ebert, who for some reason has one of the smartest and most consistently readable blogs on the Internet, wrote the other day about child-rearing. His basic argument is that kids today are crippled by the short leashes their fearful parents keep them on. I think he makes a lot of mistakes of the “my generation is better than yours” variety, but his core premise, that something is twisted and wrong in modern society, rings true to me.

One thing Kara and I have in common is that we were both given a lot of leeway by our parents, in comparison to our friends. I think she took advantage of that more than I did–I was always kind of an introvert–but that’s just who we were/are. Today we’re both of the general mindset that what really matters in life is going places, doing things and meeting people, and I think that has to do an awful lot with the environment we grew up in. Too much safety and stability really is debilitating.

About eight months ago, we moved from the suburban community where my immediate family lives to Frederick, MD, with the idea that a city would be a nicer environment to live in. Frederick is a small city, but we live right downtown and are–at least theoretically–constantly surrounded by opportunities for human contact.

My commute to work sucks pretty hard, but I really do like Frederick. It’s charming. What has surprised me, and I think Kara as well, is that we feel just as socially isolated as we did in the suburbs. I’ve tried to strike up conversations with some of our neighbors and it’s just been weird. People our age go to shops and bars and clubs to socialize with other members of their group and ignore the rest of the world. What I’m increasingly realizing is that there’s nothing wrong with our little city¹; this is just the world we live in. Spontaneous face-to-face socialization has taken a back seat to adding people to your friend list and lurking moar.

People of our generation and the adjacent ones seem to be, broadly speaking, the product of parents who instilled a crippling fear of the post-1960s world in their children. A lot of them just don’t talk to each other. At the same time, people in their 40s and older are still gregarious.

It’s only gotten worse since we were kids, not very long ago. Check out the Parenting section on Yahoo! Answers sometime if you really want to be depressed. Like one of the commenters on Ebert’s blog entry said, every question that begins with “should I let my child…” is answered with “of course not, are you nuts?”. Everybody wants to know if their kid has ADHD². Everybody’s kid has been diagnosed with some obscure personality or learning disorder from the DSM-IV. Lots of people want to know how to get their kids’ teachers and/or principals fired. One parent who asked how to deal with a neighbor kid bullying her son received three answers, all of them telling her she should press charges. Are these people for real? Wait, stop, I already know the answer to that question, and it’s freaking depressing.

You know what it really comes down to? Selfishness. People treat their kids like cherished possessions. There is a tiny chance, every time you let your kid out of your sight, that he or she is going to be injured or abducted or murdered or molested or something. Anybody who lets that happen to their kid is going to feel terrible. Most parents would apparently rather stifle their children than accept that risk. I’m just thankful that mine didn’t.

1. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with us, either. We’re mostly sane and we aren’t frightfully ugly or anything.
2. I have been diagnosed with ADD, or whatever the cool kids call it nowadays, so I am allowed to make fun of it with impunity.

It’s too bad that here in Missouri, Cuban food is not exactly easy to find. When I had a hankering for it earlier this week, I decided to approximate it at home as best I could. More specifically, I tried to approximate 2 of the great dishes that TCP served in its heyday: Cuban black beans and rice (moros y cristianos) and Jamaican beef patties, which are like curry-flavored empanadas stuffed with spicy curried beef. Only the beans and rice are really Cuban.

I think they both turned out pretty well, so I’m going to share the recipes here. I made a few corrections based on some things I think I screwed up the first time, so you get the benefit of my mistakes. I did veganize the Jamaican beef patty recipe to better align with the way Kara and I are trying to eat, but nothing says you have to.

I also made way too much of the beans and rice, so reduce this recipe if you are feeding fewer than 12 people (or 2 people until they become totally sick of beans and rice):

CUBAN BLACK BEANS AND RICE (MOROS Y CRISTIANOS)
“Not as good as Narcisa and Alfredo’s, but it’ll do”

1 pound dry black beans
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp canola or soybean oil
1 large onion, finely diced
5 cloves garlic, minced
4 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp oregano
1/3 cup crushed tomatoes
3 tbsp rice vinegar or white vinegar
1 tbsp sugar (or agave nectar, or whatever hippie sweetener you approve of)
2 bay leaves
6 cups vegetable or chicken stock
4 cups uncooked white rice
salt and pepper

Cook the beans however you like. My process is to add the beans to 6-8 cups of hot water, bring to a boil for 2 minutes, remove from the heat to soak an hour, drain and rinse, add 6-8 cups of fresh water, re-boil, and cook at a low simmer for 40 minutes. Drain the beans and set aside.

In a big-ass stock pot, maybe even the one you cooked the beans in, sauté the onion and garlic in the oil, adding the cumin and oregano about a minute before you’re done. Add the vinegar, sugar, tomatoes, bay leaves, and a little of the stock, and cook for a couple minutes more. Add the rest of the stock and bring to a boil. Add the rice and reduce heat to low. Let cook for 30 minutes or so, or until the rice has absorbed all the liquid and is done, stirring a couple of times during the first few minutes to prevent sticking. Add salt and pepper to taste. Eat and eat and eat.

…and the second recipe:

JAMAICAN “BEEF” PATTIES

Filling:
2 tbsp canola or soybean oil
1 pound vegan mock ground beef crumbles, or 93% lean ground beef
1 large onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 tsp prepared yellow curry powder
1 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper powder, more if you’re feeling lucky
3/4 cup vegetable or beef stock
3/4 cup plain bread crumbs

Crust:
1 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour + 1 1/2 cup all purpose flour, or just 3 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp prepared yellow curry powder
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp turmeric
4 tbsp shortening
4 tbsp margarine or butter
an indeterminate amount of very cold water

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Make the filling first. Saute the onion, garlic, and meat/”meat” in the oil. Add the curry powder, thyme, cayenne, salt and pepper, and saute for a minute or two more. Add the stock to deglaze the pan, then add the bread crumbs to absorb the rest of the stock. Remove from the heat.

For the crust, mix the dry ingredients (flour, curry powder, turmeric, baking powder and salt) in a bowl and cut in the shortening and margarine, or just rub them in with your fingers if you like to get messy. Mix in water until the mixture forms a workable dough. Roll the dough out into circles that are both larger and thinner than would be appropriate for an empanada (1/8 inch thick at most, and maybe 5 or 6 inches across). Fill with the filling mixture, fold over and seal. Place on an ungreased baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes or until just beginning to brown on top.