BlatherWatch

Thanksgiving tradition, dep't: BlatherWatch’s Strawberry Turkey Marshmellow Jello Pretzel Salad Pie ... Now with Popcorn!

We're liberals and we love tradition! We like to call ourselves  neo-traditionalistas.

Late Seattle pundit Emmet Watson, (1918-2001) always published his Thompson Turkey recipe this time of year; NPR's Susan Stamberg offers her mother-in-law's cranberry relish. Hillary Clinton touts the Chocolate Chip Cookies she famously doesn't make; Slade Gorton has his Warm Crab Dip; the Bush Family their Zuni Stew.

These are beloved family traditions and the Bla'm Fam has one of it's own- which we're presenting by acclamation for the 5th year. We created it with a nod to the dubious genre of "family holiday favorites." As with all such recipes- it's the sentiment, not the flavor (or good taste!) that endears it.

 

 

(photo: proto neo-traditionalista, Emmett Watson)

 

There's no "right" way to make this favorite- it's made truly from the "left" -overs found in any lefty holiday pantry. This year we've kicked it up a notch with the people's favorite: popcorn!

BlatherWatch’s Strawberry Turkey Marshmellow Jello Pretzel Salad Pie... with popcorn!!

3 tbsp. sugar
2 c. crushed pretzels
1/4 c. melted butter
1/2 c. powdered sugar
10 oz. cooked leftover turkey
8 oz. pkg. cream cheese
8 oz. carton Cool Whip
2 c. miniature marshmallows
1 c. popcorn popped

6 oz. pkg. strawberry Jello
2 1/2 c. boiling water

Mix together sugar, melted butter and crushed pretzel sticks. Press into 9 x 13 pan and bake 15 minutes at 350 degrees. Set aside to cool. Soften cream cheese; add powdered sugar and cream well. Fold in dessert topping and marshmallows. Spread over pretzel crust. Add the popcorn in a layer. Mix Jello in boiling water. Stir in turkey. When slightly thickened, pour over cream cheese layer. Place in the refrigerator until set. Serves 8 to 10.

Be very afraid: bill clinton supports "more balance"

Bill Clinton told Mario Solis Marich on LA's Talk KTLK/that he'd like to see "something like" the Fairness Doctrine return, "or we ought to have more balance on the other side."

Politico.com reports:

"... because essentially there's always been a lot of big money to support the right wing talk shows and let face it, you know, Rush Limbaugh is fairly entertaining even when he is saying things that I think are ridiculous..."

Welcome to blathermangia...

 We've finally got most of our old Sunday food and dining feature, BlatherMunch over to its own page. called BlatherMangia: http://blatherwatch.blogs.com/blathermangia/

The World's Tiniest Architect is contributing, and brings a civility to the site you won't be getting around here. We'll continue our indulgent coverage of restaurants, great dinners, food memoir, pictures and leave talk radio, politics and media snark over here.  

No food today...

Due to weather conditions and that we're moving BlatherMunch, our self-indulgent yet delicious, Sunday food feature to its own site, there's no food today. It's taking an inordinate effort to move everything... We'll post details when we get the new blog finished. BlatherWatch has been ruled officially inedible. Read what's gone before on BlatherMunch here.

No BlatherMunch today...

Due to weather conditions and that we're moving BlatherMunch our self-indulgent, weekly food feature to its own site, we're taking the day off. We'll post details when we get the new blog finished. After today, this blog will be inedible. Read what's gone before on BlatherMunch here.

BlatherMunch31: the contest

The Seventh floor of Frederick & Nelson was the first kitchenware store many of us ever saw in the Northwest and it was a wondrous place in our mid-century world of Jello molds and pigs-in-a-blanket.

It was Christmas,1968 and the Gift of the Year that year was ultimate kitchen gadget, the machine that promised to end kitchen drudgery as we knew it, the fabulous CuisinArt food processor.

But Frederick's was filled with mushroom brushes and lemon zesters and berry buzzers and nut beaters. There were dill mills and peach pippers and muffin mallets and shrimp zippers and pickle planes and piping pokes and truffle duffles and radical ideas in corkscrew technology.

BlatherMunch35: a legacy of popcorn and spreading the butter

My father was fanatical about popcorn and making it was one of the few rituals he observed and I remember every detail of it.

You may think the word fanatical is just more of my tedious and inevitable hyperbolizing, but my old man was a liberal Republican from the Pacific Northwest, where "process is our most important product," and popcorn, for him, was all about process.

Blathermunch34: 'zaw: artisan pizza in the raw

1424 E. Pine St. (at 15th)
 ~
434 Yale Ave. N. (at Republican)

(BlatherMunch is our Sunday foodish respite from political bias, media dish, snotty intenuendo, and liberal glee. For more essays on food & dining click here or 'BlatherMunch' in Categories).

In another life, I was the executive chef at the lavish and exclusive UW private club, Sigma Chi.

That's really an attempt at irony: It was a McJob I had once as a cook in a frat house. There's a distinct and carefully-tendered Greek hierarchy; Sigma Chi is a big, gnarly fraternity, but a frat house is a frat house.

BlatherMunch33: spinasse

 (BlatherMunch is our Sunday foodish respite from political bias, media dish, snotty intenuendo, and liberal glee. For more essays on food & dining click here or 'BlatherMunch' in Categories).

Spinasse
1531 14th Ave.
Seattle

Spinasse Trattoria is pasta... how 1988, you say?

This joint ain't pasta fazool. Chef/owner Justin Neidermeyer interned in Barbaresco, has sold pasta around town for years at farmers markets as Pian Pianino ("nice and slow"). He's earned his chops as a pastaiolo, and brings pastabilities heretofore unknown in these parts.

Spinasse is worth the wait and the price-point to cantilever your hindside into the tiny, elegant storefront tucked in a seedy Capitol Hill block.

And it's more than pasta.

BlatherMunch31: mushroom clouds

Under H.P.Lovecraft skies, and afoot on soggy ground, we're in the mushroom days in the Pacific Northwest.

We ransack the woods for the holy places of chanterelles; clearcuts for shaggy-manes; manure piles for inky caps; graveyards for fairy rings and puffballs; rotting stumps for chicken-of-the-woods, oyster, coral or cauliflower mushrooms.

(image: Psilocybe cubensis )

My father would allow himself to be blind-folded and led on horseback every year by old, drunken Italian men through the Ponderosas of the Teanaway Ridge to the piney hiding places of the firm-fleshed King Bolete.