So, putting aside the Booker excitement, which I think I finally understand after a lot of mucking about, it's time for this week's installment of "What I'm Eating this Week".

What I'm Reading about Food this Week: The Book of Miso:Food for Mankind, William Shurtleff & Akiko Aoyagi

I have no real problem with the kind of glossy cookbooks so much in vogue at the moment. Nigel Slater's Appetite and Real Food are two of my favorite references. But there's a special pleasure in finding something quirky and unexpected in the bottom shelves of a bookstore, or in the forgotten backwaters of ebay. The Book of Miso is a perfect example.

Sure, there's forty pages of crackpot environmentalism at the beginning. Yes, the authors have a zealot's belief in the power of miso to cure every problem from world hunger to obesity. And no, most of the recipes aren't much good. Here's a hint to those planning books on little known ingredients - if we wanted to know how to make enchiladas with miso, we would have asked.

But none of that means that the book is without charm. It's only after the environmental screed, for example, that we learn that the American author spent six months doing a miso apprenticeship with a master in Japan, and only at the end of the book, tucked behind a brilliant history of miso, do we find instructions to do the same yourself. Lost amid the dozens of ludicrous Americanized uses of miso, furthermore, are some amazing, obviously authentic recipes - dengaku, or barbecued tofu brushed with miso; a variety of traditional porridges and gruels apparently typical of Japan; a neat mini-chapter on the art of broiling the miso itself.

I don't suppose that the The Book of Miso has had much staying power since coming out in the mid-70s. But it shouldn't be ignored. Sometimes, out of the unlikeliest of places, you can find some really interesting things to delight and educate. This book is one of those rare exceptions.

What I'm Eating this Week

Rabbit (chicken) stew with green olives - With apologies for the shortened format, the centerpiece of my eating this week was a delicious stew of chicken and green olives. Actually, as the title above indicates, it's supposed to be rabbit, which itself was a replacement for the fattier duck. But my laziness predominates, and much rabbit these days isn't any more flavorful than the better types of chicken anyway.

Put in a stew moistened only by wine, and flavored by large, unpitted green olives, a diced tomato, and some finely diced onions (along with bunches of fresh thyme), chicken really does wonders. The key thing to remember, of course, is to sear the chicken skin side down before doing anything else, making sure to get the skin brown, caramelized, and crisp. I'm sure there are worse things to do to chicken than to stew it while grey and rubbery, but I can't think of them right now, and they're probably inappropriate for this blog anyway. Actually, it's in this searing that the lack of duck is most felt - chicken hardly ever renders enough fat to lend a strong flavor to the onions you saute directly afterwards. But it's a small enough loss compared to the dish as a whole. And the duck can always be saved for roast potatoes later.

In her prompt response to the Booker/Fanfan decision at TNR, Dana Mulhauser writes:

[Fanfan's] conviction used a "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard, which, while not numerically specific, is usually taken to mean that the jury must be at least 95 percent certain of its decision.

Speaking of music, I may as well join in this little meme since the other YLS kids are doing it (Death, Angus):

1. Open up the music player on your computer.
2. Set it to play your entire music collection.
3. Hit the "shuffle" command.
4. Tell us the title of the next ten songs that show up (with their musicians), no matter how embarrassing. ...

1: John Coltrane: Giant Steps (Alternate Take)
2: John Barry: Miss Goodhead Meets Bond / Bond Lured to the Pyramids
3: Second City/The People vs. Friar Laurence: A Pity You're Not Me
4: Madonna: I'll Remember
5: Miles Davis: Someday my Prince Will Come
6: U2: Miss Sarajevo
7: Giacomo Puccini: O Stranger, Now Listen! (From Turandot, in English)
8: Ronnie Howard: Gary, Indiana (From the Music Man)
9: Sara McLachlan: Good Enough
10: Dave Matthews Band: What Would You Say?

Phoebe Maltz (of WWPD?) has a story about UofC President's visit to the teeny Broadview Library. The most interesting tidbit:

The one necessary question to determine roommate compatibility, he said, is, “What kind of music do you like?”

Do you like movies? Yes.
Do you like music? Yes.
Do you like painting? Well, I like some painting.
Do you like television? Some.

How would you answer these questions? Of course I do not mean that I like all movies, or all music . . .

This is the 4000th non-draft post on this blog (although I think a few old posts from the blogspot days may have disappeared into the blogether), making an average of roughly five posts a day for a little over two years now. Roughly 75% of that madness seems to be my fault, and I confess the question has crossed my mind: Could I have done something more productive with that time and intellectual energy?

The answer, I think, is no. Not just because writing has resulted in foreseeable and unforeseeable benefits, but because it's not clear what I would have enjoyed enough to actually persist at for all that time that I didn't do anyway.

I am confused by this New York Times piece that purports to report on the Booker and Fanfan rulings today. As of the time of this writing, the piece contains no acknowledgment that Justice Breyer wrote a majority opinion in the case on the critical question of severability/remedy. Instead, it closes:

Justice Stevens delivered the controlling opinion today and was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, David H. Souter, Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The dissenters were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony M. Kennedy and Stephen G. Breyer.

The Supreme Court struck down much of the system for sentencing criminals in federal cases today, reaffirming the principle that juries, not judges, must weigh factors that can add time to a defendant's prison term.

Inexplicably, however, the opinion concludes. ... that Congress was so attached to having judges determine “real conduct” on the basis of bureaucratically prepared, hearsay-riddled presentence reports that it would rather lose the binding nature of the Guidelines than adhere to the old-fashioned process of having juries find the facts that expose a defendant to increased prison time.

Our Girl in Chicago does a review of some Poker books-- these are mostly literary books, rather than how-to books, although all of the books do contain some advice about playing the game. How could they not?

Anyway, her recommendations and dis-recommendations are quite right-- Jim McManus's Positively Fifth Street is addictive and Katy Lederer's Poker Face is very disappointing, but you take pity on it in a sweet way.

I haven't read The Biggest Game in Town but as soon as blogging stops distracting me from reading Eugene Volokh's article and that stops distracting me from reading Booker and Fanfan and those stop distracting me from reading Jonathan Strange and those stop distracting me from reading my Contracts outline, I will see if the library has it and report.

The Supreme Court's opinions in Booker and Fanfan-- the Federal Sentencing Guidelines cases-- are now out. Substantive coverage of them will surely come from Professor Berman. My own reaction at the moment is simply: "Ginsburg? Ginsburg? Ginsburg was the swing justice?"

[It is also amusing that the opinions finally came down once Professor Berman stopped predicting they would. I am glad that Roper hasn't come down yet-- I have too much to do at the moment as Booker distracts me from Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which in turn distracts me from my contracts outline.]

Longtime Friends of Crescat Begging to Differ have unveiled a new look and design, including a spiffy ever-changing banner. (Reload the page to see).

This is all good so far as it goes, just like the day when you learned that your high school sweetheart was engaged; I still remember my unsuccessful campaign to convince the then-crumbling BTD to join us at Crescat.

Oh, and the new site also has a forum. I am confused. What is the utility of having both comments-thread for every post and the forum with dozens of threads of its own? And how on earth will anybody who is not a site administrator be able to keep track of and read them all?

UPDATE: Thanks to Anthony Rickey for answering some of the above questions. I still don't see what the point is of having post-specific comments threads rather than links at the bottom of the post to a new section in the forum.