MAGAnomic Meanderings

Sundance of the Conservative Treehouse has penned another brilliant but understandable outline of some of the MAGAnomic actions & results of President Trump’s economic policy.  This is a MUST READ primer on some of the basics of what is happening in the Main Street vs Wall Street economic dynamic.  Please check out the original post!

“Some call it ‘Globalism vs Nationalism’, at other times it is best described as “Wall Street -vs- Main Street”; however, the overarching bigger picture is a battle over economics and the financial power structures that oppose President Trump….

Decades of financial policy were intentionally structured to the benefit of the BIG CLUB and the multinational Wall Street alliance represented by U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue.  This is not a Republican -vs- Democrat issue; this is a larger confrontation between those who hold financial power and a singular person, President Donald Trump, who is determined to remove that grip….

President Trump is fracturing the multinational corporate ‘controlled market’, and his trade policies are beginning to reconstitute supply and demand pricing in a nationalist market….

Yes, President Trump, the man and his policy team, is an existential threat to the elitist hierarchy of things well beyond the borders of the DC Swamp. In the era of explaining the complex it’s a planetary economic reset almost too massive and consequential to encapsulate in words.

There are massive international corporate and financial interests who are inherently at risk from President Trump’s “America-First” economic and trade platform. Believe it or not, President Trump is up against an entire world economic establishment.”

TheLastRefuge@TheLastRefuge2

Wall Street -vs- Main Street reaching a critical point. Monetary policy is an outcome of baseline ideology – Fed now contemplating changing that ideology after using the Wall Street model for 30 years…. [keep watching this stuff going on way over there]

Reuters Top News

✔@Reuters

Fed plans review of how it pursues inflation, employment goals https://reut.rs/2DGYHlM 

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4:40 PM – Nov 15, 2018

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via President Donald J Trump -vs- The Big Club…

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Forewarned Is…

This is nearly a Must Read post by Sundance…very sobering but a necessary assessment.  Please check out his original post!

“In my opinion few reading this have any idea just how bad these next two years are going to be. It’s not your fault.  We are the normal people who don’t spend every moment of our day scheming, conniving, and developing plans to dismantle the lives of your freedom loving community and rebuild it as a collective society.  For these Marxists who are about to take power that’s all they do.   Every moment of their existence they spend thinking about how to gain power and dominate, 24/7/365  that’s all they do.”

via What We Can Expect With a Democrat-Marxist Controlled House of Representatives….

Croquet Anyone?

This is an important list of sketchy players & perhaps outright “criminals” who may get lost in the shuffle of the the House control restructuring.  I don’t know what the original source for this list is, for it appears to have been copied from somewhere else without preserving the links.  I will present it As Is (except for using bolding &/or italics to help offset names, etc. & I interspersed some images too).  This list was found originally here:

November 7th – 2018 Presidential Politics – Trump Administration Day #657

1000 Words

After all the many battles we faced with Special Education this pretty much just says it all!  My autistic son came in & basically said “Yep!”

Pig (Out?) Soup

This week making soup has been a family affair around our house.  Earlier our daughter Clarissa decided to make Great (White–her name for them) Northern Bean Soup.  She soaked the dried beans overnight & then cooked them for many hours on top of the stove.  She drained them & divided the beans, reserving the liquid & used half the beans to make some type of veggie bean soup.  She added the reserved liquid to her half of the beans & various veggies, including carrots & a bag of frozen spinach, to make a beautiful looking but somewhat flavor-lacking fall soup.

This looks somewhat like what Clarissa made, only with less broth…from https://oureverydaylife.com/kind-seasoning-put-white-bean-soup-38068.html

Well I already had saved the water from making mashed potatoes a few days back so there was about 8 cups of rosemary-potato water in a convenient pot in the fridge.  We need to hit the store soon so I was making do with what could be scrounged around here for this “pig (out?) soup” attempt.

Last night my son Brandon came home late after work & tucked into some leftover grilled pork loin & I asked him to save a piece or two for the soup pot–he left Two!  Late yesterday my son Josiah & I headed to my parents’ house to watch the taped version of the Michigan vs. Penn State football game that my dad had situated.  Michael was considering coming to watch the Michigan game but our son Nathaniel & daughter-in-law Tara stopped by to show off their hunting attire bounty from a Cabela’s store run & he was so tired from the day’s work he decided to stay home.  Before departing their home (after a very fine Michigan victory!!!) I asked my mom if she might have an onion I could borrow for my soup pot & she spared me 2!  She also had served up a very fine Chicken Chili to J & I which recipe I hope to share another time…

Anyway today my husband Michael & our twins, B & J, have been finishing up a re-shingling job on the front of our roof.  This made it the perfect day to get busy on that “pig (out?) soup” I’d been planning.

Starting with the pot of rosemary-potato water I added the reserved beans from Clarissa’s previous cooking endeavor.  While that was coming to a boil I chopped the onions from Mom & smashed a couple cloves of garlic Clarissa hadn’t used when making her soup a couple of days ago.  I then peeled the remaining garlic cloves from a partially used head of garlic (is that the right term?), smashed & chopped them & added them to the frying pan.  I chopped up 7 slices of thick sliced bacon & fried the onions, garlic, & bacon in a frying pan.  I added about a quarter of this mixture to the remainder of Clarissa’s soup to facilitate its flavor enhancement.  I then added the remainder of this bacon & aromatic veggies stir fry to the finally boiling pot of beans.

This is close to what the soup today looks like…

While the frying was happening I thinly sliced & chopped the pork loin.  After removing the bacon concoction from the frying pan I added the pork loin to the remaining bacon grease to fry it up for a bit of extra flavor.  When this chopped pork loin was cooking I seasoned it with some garlic salt & pepper.  When Michael had originally grilled the pork he’d seasoned it with either Italian dressing or with Cavender’s Greek seasoning salt (a glorious spice combo that goes with so many things!)…I added this browned meat to the soup pot & then ladled some of the broth back into the frying pan to “deglaze” what had adhered during the browning process.  I also added some broth to the container the pork loin had been in to get the residue flavor & juices for the soup & used that liquid to continue to deglaze the frying pan.  Using about 1/2 cup of tap water in the pork container in the microwave let the remaining juices/flavors get captured to finalize the deglazing of the frying pan.  I used a rubber spatula on all the surfaces to get as much flavor as possible into the soup pot.

Well, this concoction has been simmering on the stove all day the guys have just about wrapped up the roof project.  Clarissa has been out of town all weekend on a Retreat (“Compelling”) with her InterVarsity Christian Fellowship peers from U of M Dearborn & Henry Ford College.  Fortunately her recently acquired vehicle, a mid ’90s Ford Ranger, was available for numerous trips to the hardware store to help facilitate the roofing project.

On breaks between the Lions football game–a dismal & embarrassing loss to the Minnesota Vikings, where our quarterback Matthew Stafford was sacked Ten Times–& checking on the roofing project & the guys, I started looking up online Northern Bean Soup recipes for some ideas on how I wanted to season the pot.  I usually make bean soup in the crock pot with a ham bone & lots of ham, onion, garlic, & celery if we have some, so today’s “pig (out?) soup” is a slightly different take on what is usually a crowd-pleaser around here.

This is close to what my typical crock pot bean soup looks like…

When Clarissa had cooked up the beans she had created a spice bouquet using an old tea bag, minus the tea, as it’s container.  Since she’s not here now & I never asked her about all the spices she used I’m not sure which flavors might work best now.  She had mentioned oregano as one spice she’d used–surprisingly to me  [whoops, C came home while I was editing this post & she did Not use oregano, but I’m pretty sure that my mom mentioned it for her chili–sigh!].  Since there was already onion, garlic, & rosemary when I found a couple of bean soup recipes that mentioned oregano I decided to add some to the soup pot.  I also added more garlic salt, freshly ground black pepper, & a liberal amount of dried onion.

So far the beans aren’t as soft as I’d prefer, & given things I’ve read about bean soup it’s possible that they might never get to the dissolve into the pot stage like they tend to do when I use the crock pot.  I’ve been trying to mash some of them in the pot just a bit to get more of that “bean soup” consistency & taste tested the broth a few times.  Overall, it looks about ready to go.  So given two types of pork (bacon & loin) christening this “Pig Soup” seemed apropos.  Adding the “Out?” is in hopes that it ends up being tasty enough to be a bean soup that the family will actually pig out on–we’ll see.

Here are a couple of sites that were helpful in the development of this experimental & thrifty (as in using what’s around, or borrowed, judiciously to make up a “decent” pot of) soup:

https://harvesttotable.com/how-to-make-dried-bean-soup-with-no-recipe/

This one probably has the best overall suggestions for someone who is new to using dried beans to make a soup & gives multiple options for how to achieve a decent soup…

https://oureverydaylife.com/kind-seasoning-put-white-bean-soup-38068.html

As the name implies, this site focuses on the seasoning side of bean soup…

https://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/north-woods-bean-soup

The North Woods aspect of the name here drew me, especially since it’s hunting season around here & the North Woods are like a second home to the hunters in the family.  This also used a sausage in it & since we had some kielbasa in the fridge I wanted to consider if that was a direction to take the current pot of creative soup…

https://oureverydaylife.com/444938-how-to-make-the-best-great-northern-bean-soup.html

This site gives very quick info on making bean soup for people who might not want to take the time to process the more thorough info in the harvesttotable site above…

https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/white-bean-soup-bacon-and-herbs

This one creates a more broth based soup than I wanted but since it used bacon & spices was intriguing for the creative side of this soup-ful(l!) endeavor…

https://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/great-northern-bean-soup

This one mentioned oregano which helped solidify that choice to add to my current pot.  Since cilantro was also used I wanted to consider it due to a decent supply of cilantro in our fridge.  I chose not to go the cilantro route, for we usually use it for home-made salsa & wasn’t sure it would be the right flavor note for the current soup…

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/235057/great-northern-bean-soup/

This final site, which featured potatoes prominently, made me feel “better” about deciding to use the rosemary-potato water for this bean soup, for I’d originally intended to use it for a more chicken based soup…

Well I hope you are enjoying Fall & the harvest bounty that abounds.  Let me know if this post may have inspired you to your own soupish creation!

Here’s my approximate ingredient list for

8-10 cups broth, in this case rosemary seasoned potato water

5-6 cups Great Northern Beans

1 cup chopped onion, fried w/bacon

dozen cloves of garlic, smashed & chopped then fried w/bacon

1/2 pound of bacon chopped & fried to nearly crispy

1/2 pound of grilled pork loin, thinly sliced & chopped then fried in bacon grease

dried onion (I used ~1/4 cup?)

garlic salt

freshly ground black pepper

oregano (I used ~1/2 teaspoon?)

Several recipes from the sites noted above use canned beans, which would make the cooking process much easier.  I used what I had on hand in a way that I thought would best flavor the soup thus created.  This pot of soup has been simmering for hours with occasional stirring to avoid sticking to the bottom of the pan.  Seasonings are to your taste…Enjoy!

Verdict:  This soup isn’t too bad!  It turns out to be a little salty for my taste, but my husband didn’t mind.  The major draw back was that the fatty parts of the bacon added got kind of slimy.  If I were to do this “same” recipe again when chopping up the bacon I’d first cut off most of the fatty part in strips.  Those fatty strips would still go in the frying pan, but they wouldn’t get transferred to the soup pot.  If I had celery that would have been a nice addition to this soup.  Finely chopped carrot would also be good.  I wish the beans got to the mushy state so cooking them differently from the outset may have been key (or using canned beans).  Both my husband & I gave it 4 out of 5 stars!  Perhaps there will be more to add after the kids have some Pig Out Soup!

Blessings to All!

 

 

The Main Street Engine is Fueled By MAGAnomic Policy…

Wade into the weeds with Sundance’s insights on Trump’s financial genius at the original Conservative Treehouse post!

“One of the reasons the professional political class hate Trump is simply because he applies common sense policy built upon the cornerstone of America-first. Decades of pontificating political economic policy are dispatched; and the American economic engine roars.”

via The Main Street Engine is Fueled By MAGAnomic Policy…

From one of the commenters to the original CTH post!

 

President Trump Talks “Many Subjects” With Chairman Xi…

Is the “panda mask” slipping as Team Trump applies nearly a dozen economic squeezes to China?  See Sundance’s post for details on how Trump wields the Art of (the Deal) War!

via President Trump Talks “Many Subjects” With Chairman Xi…