Secrecy in the News

The Washington Post this week has been doing a series called "Top Secret America". You should read it, if you haven't already. The online format for the articles is sort of annoying but if you go into the article you want and click the print button on the screen it will bring it up in a more read-able format (which you can then print or not).

Also, on a related note, I'm sort of surprised they didn't interview (or quote, anyhow) Steven Aftergood at FAS for this study. If you're interested in the topic you should definitely be reading his blog, Secrecy News.

Adventures in the Kitchen

Trying to eat more vegetables has been an on-going adventure for us. Toyb grew up eating very few vegetables and has not really made them for himself in the intervening years. Luckily, he’s a good sport and he’ll always at least try them if they’re presented to him. However, its still hard to keep buying and cooking vegetables when you’re not sure if the second person is going to really eat them. Besides, I also want to expand my repertoire since I grew up with sort of mainstream vegetables and they are thus my comfort zone.

This summer we have a CSA farm share. It's yummy food, it's good for you, it's good for the environment, and it's good policy – what a win! Anyhow, it has not only been getting us to eat more vegetables (both quantity and variety), but has also prompted us to experiment with cooking more. Last night Toyb suggested that maybe we (which means I) should be blogging some of our more successful experiments.

Last night’s dinner, a fast and delicious couscous:

• Cut large summer squash from CSA into bite size pieces. Roast with a bit of olive oil, garlic salt, and lemon pepper.
• While that’s roasting prepare other ingredients:
  • Slice green onion (also from CSA).
  • Crumble some feta.
  • Cook plain couscous on stove top.
• Place couscous in mixing bowl. Drizzle in extra virgin olive oil and a sprinkling of salt and basil (fresh would have been better but this was improvised base on what we had). Toss in the roasted squash. Add a splash or two of lemon juice. Mix in green onions and feta.

The ingredients last night were not actually new-to-us vegetables (unlike some of adventures earlier this summer), but it was still fun experimental cooking. And yummy.