The Best of the West (Wing): Part Two

The West Wing.  Oh, the West Wing.  Unapologetically liberal, it was such a soothing presence in the dark days of the early 2000’s.  (Let's be honest, it's a soothing presence, no matter what.  Almost nothing makes me happier than popping in one of my DVDs.)  And no one embodied that liberal mindset like Communications Director Toby Zeigler.  Played to gruff, surly perfection by Richard Schiff, Toby was the one you could count on to say what everyone else was thinking.  Whether he was being blisteringly sarcastic ("I don't know, Josh, but while we're looking, can you tell me a little more about the President's secret plan to fight inflation?") or just gruffly dismissive, he was always spot on.  He knew he was the smartest guy in a room full of smart guys  and he wasn’t going to put up with any bullshit. 

Underneath that brusque exterior there are so many layers. The first generation son of immigrant Jews, he struggled with his father’s past as a member of Murder, Inc.  He doesn’t appear to be very emotional, but he bought his ex-wife a house in a last ditch attempt to woo her (also, let's please remember when Toby was talking to his children for the first time at the hospital right after they're born).  He was often the last person holding their ground in an argument, and the first person willing to disagree with the President.   And yet, he held himself and others to a higher standard because of what they did and where they worked.  His disdain for President Bartlett's choice to replace John Hoynes as V.P., a man named Bob Russell, but more commonly and condescendingly known as Bingo Bob, was evident when he wrote a scathing speech praising the main's soaring ineptitude and unmatched mediocrity (and really, what's better than Toby and Will's reaction when Bingo Bob confronts them about their speech?). 

He was sad and moody, but he loved language and used it beautifully, he could be sentimental, arranging a military funeral at Arlington National Cemetery for a homeless veteran found dead while wearing an old coat of Toby’s that had been donated to charity (this makes me cry every time I see it, especially when he's walking with Mrs. Landingham at Arlington).  He developed a crush on the United States poet laureate, a blonde sylph of a woman who disagreed with him on many levels, but whose poetry touched him.  And he loved his children, who, by the way, come with hats(!), and asked the first woman Chief Justice to sign a copy of the Constitution to his infant daughter (one of my favorite scenes!).

Toby did not show emotion easily, but you could always tell he loved those that he loved with his whole heart.  The emotion in his voice and on his face when he find Josh Lyman shot in the abdomen in the season finale of season one is heart wrenching (do we know why Richard Schiff didn't win an Emmy JUST for this scene alone?!).  He is annoyed with his father, a convicted felon after all, for coming to the White House, but displays a touching tenderness beneath the annoyance and anger.  He was protective of his best friends, Josh, CJ, Sam, and loyal to a fault.  When Will Bailey left his job as speechwriter to the President to go work for Bingo Bob Russell, Toby's feeling of betrayal was almost palpable.  He also had a quirky, and often sarcastic sense of humor that made him relatable, even when he was at his most prickly (and who better to point out sarcasm in others than one as sarcastic as Toby: "Sarcasm's a disturbing thing coming from a woman of your age, Mrs. Landingham.").  He clearly took great joy in ribbing the President about his obsessive interest in Thanksgiving turkeys, asking the President for advice on the right blend of herbs and seasonings for his holiday bird, even thought the President knows Toby has no intention of cooking a Thanksgiving turkey (one of the Best Toby Scenes EVER).

Like a lot of us, Toby isn't easily defined as one thing or another, he doesn't fit in a tidy little box.  But I think I can say that while Toby Ziegler is my favorite West Wing character for a lot of reasons, but it primarily boils down to one storyline in the last season of the series.   Basically, there is an accident aboard the International Space Station, there are no shuttles available to rescue the astronauts aboard, except for a secret military shuttle whose existence has been closely guarded.  The military does not want it to be public knowledge, and the decision is made not to use it in a rescue attempt.  Toby is aware of it through his brother, who was a mission specialist prior to his death, and leaks it to a reporter.  Once it is widely known, the military’s hand is forced and the astronauts are brought home safely. 

Toby revealed classified information.  I either don’t remember or never knew the precise charges against him (at the very least, wasn't one of the charges treason?), but they would have resulted in five years in prison had the President not pardoned him.  What I do know is that I admire someone willing to spend half a decade in prison for their principles.  And  I would like to think that the men and women who actually do our government’s work at the highest levels have the same sense of integrity and principle that Toby does. 

Toby Ziegler wasn’t an easy man to like, but I’d like to think I could have been his friend.  Or at least his intern (watch out for those White House interns...).

To wrap up, here's a clip (sorry, it's a little long, but worth it!), that demonstrates quite a few of Toby's better traits, and features his ex-wife, Andy.  He manages to be decisive, brusque, and slightly frightened of her all at the same time.   This is one of my favorite speeches of Toby's, enjoy.

A.H.

The Best of the West (Wing): Part One

I didn’t start watching “The West Wing” until a couple of years after the show actually ended its run on TV.  A friend let my dad borrow all seven seasons on DVD, and after some protesting (due to a misguided attempt at extra credit points in a college government class for watching one episode, not occurring to me then that it would’ve been a lot better if I’d seen the show from the beginning), I gave in and started watching it.  I was drawn in by the witty banter of the characters (thank you, Aaron Sorkin), and by the end of the pilot episode, I was hooked.

My favorite “The West Wing” character is Josh Lyman, played by Bradley Whitford.  (Sidebar: while this post isn’t actually about Bradley Whitford, let’s just take a moment to reflect on what an amazing actor he is… ready, set, GO… I have two letters for you: E and R.  If you’ve never seen the episode of “ER” called “Love’s Labor Lost” from season 1, go watch it immediately.)

(Don’t screw around with her about this either, believe me when I tell you that she is VERY serious about both Bradley Whitford and E.R., put them together and she just. Won’t. shut. Up. About it.)

I think my favorite thing about Josh Lyman is that he’s such a “real” character (yes, yes, that does seem like an oxymoron).  I mean, the man is the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, but he still manages to act like a dork most of the time.  In fact, even though he DOES act like a dork most of the time, the dorky things he does are real enough to be plausible that someone could actually do them.  Here are just a few of my favorite dorky Josh moments:

1.    “Take This Sabbath Day” (season 1, episode 14): Josh goes to a bachelor party, gets wasted, goes back to his office at the White House and passes out.  Donna finds him and wakes him up, reminding him sharply that he has a meeting with Joey Lucas.  She also notes that this clothes look like he’s been sleeping in a dumpster, so she takes them to a 1-hour dry cleaner.  Unfortunately, Josh has nothing to wear in the meantime, so he’s forced to wear bright yellow rain gear throughout this meeting.

(Also, you can almost SEE how bad he must smell, one of those hangovers where the unmetabolized alcohol is just oozing from his pores.  It’s not Josh’s finest moment.  But it might be one of Donna’s.)

2.    “The U.S. Poet Laureate” (season 3, episode 16): Josh finds a website dedicated to himself, called lemon-lyman.com.  Despite Donna’s protests and valid reasons why he shouldn’t, Josh finds himself compelled to comment on the message boards on the website, prompting the Evil Dictator of a moderator to comment further on what an idiot he is.  CJ ends up finding out about this (because she is, after all, the White House Press Secretary), and proceeds to verbally thrash Josh for being a moron.  

(Hee-hee.  The is an excellent lesson for all of us on why it’s useless to respond to internet trolls, whether you are a well known public figure, or just a regular reader of the comments on CNN.com news stories.  You just can’t win with these freaks.)
 
3.    “Inauguration: Part  2 – Over There” (season 4, episode 14): After realizing that Donna was, in fact, not the one who gave a nasty quote to a reporter about loyalty in the White House, Josh gets Toby, Charlie, Danny, and Will (all dressed in tuxedos for one of many Inaugural Balls) to go to Donna’s apartment to get her out.  Donna, being all dressed up for the balls herself, is hiding because she’s embarrassed about the quote (which was actually given by her boyfriend).  Josh and his band of merry men start throwing snowballs at Donna’s windows to get her attention since she’s not answering her phone or their yells from down below.   Finally, Donna comes down, everything is worked out, and in a touching display of chivalry, Josh takes off his coat to put around Donna’s shoulders (she is wearing an evening gown in DC in January, after all).

Let’s also take into account that I think Josh is pretty sexy (again, though, in a nerdy kind of way).  Yes, Sam Seaborn (played by Rob Lowe) is sexy in a chiseled jaw, seeeexy kind of way, but there’s just something about Josh (maybe it’s the name, since I married a Josh…).

(Oh, Rob Lowe’s chiseled jaw, mmmmmm, it’s so. . . . . . . . . chiseled.  Also, I’d like to go on the record, that though we share a brain, we do NOT share an attraction to Bradley Whitford’s dorkiness.)

Josh is also a character with serious issues, too.  In “What Kind of Day Has It Been,” the season finale of season 1, gunmen open fire into the rope line as President Bartlet and his staff are walking back to their limos.  Josh, among others, is shot and seriously wounded, only to be found by Toby (which, despite the fact that it’s a very short scene when he finds Josh, it’s one of my all-time favorite “The West Wing” moments…Toby’s voice cracks as he starts calling for help after finding Josh and realizing he’s wounded, and it’s such a sad and scary moment all in one) at the beginning of the season two premiere (“In the Shadow of Two Gunmen (Part 1)”).  He undergoes MAJOR surgery while the rest of the cast worries and waits to hear news of his recovery.

(Keep tissues nearby if you are watching this episode for the first time, it’s a tearjerker.)

Later on in season 2 (“Noel”), Josh starts seeing a shrink for treatment of PTSD.  The acting in this episode reminds me a LOT of the episode of “ER” that I mentioned earlier, and again, the acting abilities of Bradley Whitford are amazing – shown off by the fact that he won an Emmy for season two of “The West Wing.”
I really could go on and on about how much I love the character of Josh Lyman, but I’ll stop now because you’re probably all thinking I’m nuts anyway (which I’m very much okay with).  To close, here’s a clip of a great (non-dorky) Josh Lyman scene.  I could listen to him talk about government and politics (and yes, even Islamic extremism {because this episode, “Isaac and Ishmael,” which was the season premiere of season 3, which aired just a few weeks after September 11, 2001}) all day long, but for now, here’s a 3 ½ minute clip.

A.V.

Recipe Review: Homemade Goldfish Crackers

I am a regular reader of the Pioneer Woman, and read all the recipes posted on on the website for ideas and inspiration.  I haven't made anything straight off the website lately, but when I saw the recent post about homemade goldfish crackers, I thought, I HAVE to try this.  Max LOVES goldfish, and I typically buy the whole wheat ones, but good golly miss Molly, those babies are spendy for being nothing more than fish shaped cheese crackers.  Once I read the recipe, I realized that I had all the ingredients on hand already, and the hardest part was going to be finding my food processor.

I chose to fashion myself a teeny tiny goldfish cookie cutter out of a soda can, following the directions posted in the original post, here, which took a little time, but was (sort of) worth it in the end.  I'll elaborate on that point later on. 

The crackers are nothing more than flour, butter, salt, cheese and water, as you can see here:

I doubled the recipe because the recipe calls for 8 oz of shredded cheese, but I had an unopened 16 oz block of colby jack in the fridge, so I decided to just use the whole thing.  The 16 oz of shredded cheese are joined in the food processor by 2 cups of flour, and 8 tablespoons of cold butter, cubed, and 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt and pulsed till the mixture resembles coarse sand.  Then 4 tablespoons of water are added one at a time.  The recipe doesn't indicate whether to stop adding when the dough reaches a certain consistency, so I just added all four, and things turned out fine.  The dough gets wrapped in plastic and rests for 20 minutes in the refrigerator before being rolled and cut out.  With experience, I would say that a longer rest in the fridge would be better, the dough is definitely easier to handle when it's very cold, like most doughs with a high proportion of butter it gets more fragile as it gets warmer.

After a nice long rest, the dough gets rolled, cut and baked at 350 degrees for fifteen minutes.  I cut my dough into eight smaller pieces, stashing the pieces I wasn't immediately working with in the fridge, and returning my leftover scraps of dough there between rollings to firm up.  This is the cookie (well, cracker) cutter I used,

It's about an inch and a half long, and on the fragile side, but it got the job done.  Also, I set up sort of a jig to make sure that all my batches of dough got rolled out to exactly the same thickness.

So, what you are looking at is four stacks of three dvd's each that my rolling pin could rest on.  That way once the dough was as thick as those three dvd's, I couldn't roll it any thinner.  It worked really well, and made every batch consistent.  And yes, I was rolling it out between layers of plastic to reduce sticking.

These are the unbaked crackers on parchment lined baking sheets waiting to go in the oven.  Cutting out all those fishies was VERY tedious, and in future, I'd probably just make squares, because while the dough came together in about five minutes, I spent better than 90 minutes cutting allllllll the tiny fish out.  But for a first try, it was a fun project and made for a cute finished project.  Also, that narrow spot between the body of the fish and the tail? That, kiddos, is what we call a weak spot, and I can not tell you how many fish got rolled back into the ball of dough after they separated at that point. 

And the finished crackers!  As you can see, they are paler than normal goldfish, but I used colby jack not cheddar, so I didn't expect them to be as orange.  Also, you know, no dyes or artificial colors.

A nice closeup for my partner in crime, who never met a food closeup she didn't like, and a picture for scale.

My final take?  The recipe was easy, cheap, and the boy can't get enough.  He's figured out what cabinet they're in, and he keeps pointing and grunting, which in our house at least, is high praise.   I will FOR SURE be making these again.  I will also for sure be making them square not fish shaped, as I am certain they will be just as tasty when they aren't shaped like sea creatures.

Any hard cheese would work in these, a friend of mine mentioned that she made them once with a local Michigan cheddar that was delicious, and I'd even bet that if you fiddled with the amount of water, you could use a blue cheese if you really wanted to knock somebody's socks off.

One caveat, though, if you are going to make these for your family, do not do what I did and leave them in plain view on the counter for a day and a half.  They may be better for you than commercially produced crackers, but they still contain a laughable amount of butter, so you may want to store them somewhere that discourages you eating a handful every. single. time. you go into the kitchen.

A.H.

Cook Along: Volume Four - Balsamic Chicken

It’s been awhile since our last Cook Along, so if you’re still here, thanks for sticking around!  Tonight’s Cook Along was Balsamic Chicken from Allrecipes.com.

Take One:

Before I start my review of the Balsamic Chicken, I have to make a note that my brother, Patrick, joined Josh and I for dinner tonight, and he ended up helping me make dinner (which marks the first time that we’ve ever cooked together before – weird!).  I also got him to stop at the store to pick up chicken breasts and a vegetable for dinner (I SO didn’t want to do it myself on the way home from work).  He showed up not only with chicken breasts, but several vegetables (don’t worry, I’ll tell you in a minute what they were), AND a Cyrus O’Leary’s turtle cheesecake pie.  Let me just say now that he can come over for dinner ANY time.

I’m actually typing this before dinner is completely made.  The chicken is simmering away in the sauce, and if the smell is any indication, it’s going to taste fantastic.  For our sides tonight, we’ve having steamed white rice, Caesar salad, tomato-cucumber-onion-in-Italian-salad-dressing-salad (we really need to come up with a better name than that), and garlic bread.  Let’s be honest here – if it had just been me stopping at the store, the vegetable would’ve been like, roasted asparagus or something else super easy, but that’s okay.

I already really like this recipe for several reasons.  First, it smells good.  Second, other than having to get chicken breasts, everything that this recipe called for was in my pantry and in my spice cabinet.  Third, I love, love, love balsamic vinegar, and I don’t think there are enough recipes that call for it.

For right now, dinner is just about ready, so I’m going to go finish getting the last of dinner ready and then eat.  It smells amazing in here, and I can’t wait to go eat.

Okay…an hour later, I’m back to finish this up.  The results are: yum!  Patrick said that the chicken was “kickin’,” although we all agreed that it was a little bit dry (but I think it was just cooked a little too long while we were waiting for the garlic bread to finish up).  I definitely think this recipe will be made again.  It was easy and didn’t take too long to make, which is perfect for weeknight cooking.

I couldn’t get a good enough picture of the chicken by itself, so here’s a picture of the whole dinner (minus the Caesar salad because it wouldn’t fit into the frame).   And yes, it was as delicious as it looks.

A.V.

Take Two:

           I liked the sound of this recipe from the start, since the ingredient list was short, and I like anything that offers something new for chicken breasts.  This came together really quickly, although I did cook my chicken based on something I heard in a really interesting segment on The Splendid table recently about not cooking meat in liquid (stock, water, wine, etc) that is more than a bare simmer.  Apparently, the boiling action of the liquid literally squeezes the cells like a sponge, wringing out all the moisture.  So you think that you are fine because your chicken breast is cooking in stock, but it still comes out dry, because the stock was boiling.  So I cooked the chicken breasts by searing them to get some color on them, then in the sauce on a low temp, so it was barely simmering until cooked through.  It took slightly longer, but the chicken was really juicy. I took the meat out of the skillet once they were done, and put them on the cutting board under a metal bowl to stay warm while the sauce reduced.   Once it was the consistency of running barbecue sauce, I sliced the chicken and spooned the sauce over the chicken.  We had our Balsamic chicken with a side of corn on the cob and my new favorite thing to make, potato galette.   Potato galette cooks primarily in the oven, and corn on the cob is all prep work, so the chicken recipe was a great fit.  Also, we have one chicken breast left, which I am dreaming about using on a salad for lunch tomorrow.  Some nice lettuce, a juicy tomato, maybe some red onion and the remaining chicken with the leftover sauce slightly warm over top.    Or maybe as dinner during Leftover Lotto. 
 
This is a definite keeper, and I would go so far as to say, my favorite of the recipes so far, great for summer, especially now during the height of grilling season.  This would be amazing on the grill, just put the sauce in a small pan on the back of the grill, use it to baste the chicken, or let it reduce to serve alongside.  You could do kebabs, with zucchini, tomatoes, onion.  Or how about with some tomato and mozarella on a grilled sandwich.   

On a side note, let me also recommend the potato galette.   There is a recipe if you want one, but it is just thinly sliced potatoes laid in an oven proof skillet, you melt a little butter in a hot skillet, and then layer the potatoes with salt and pepper and tiny bit of rosemary (I only put this on the first layer, salt and pepper on all layers).  After the initial layer, you can brush a bit of olive oil over each layer, but use it sparingly to avoid the finished galette getting greasy.  Now, traditionally, this is an all butter dish, so feel free to go that way, too.  At any rate, you just keep layering.  The more people you need to feed, the more layers you add, and adjust your cook time accordingly.  This does great at about 350 degrees, half an hour for only a couple layers, maybe 45 minutes if you do half a dozen layers.  But if you've got something else in the oven, just put it in and keep an eye on it, it's potatoes, you can't mess this up.  Try it, you'll like it.


Let us know if you try this one, I'd love to hear what you did with the leftovers. 


A.H.

Brilliant Revelation re: Zucchini Orzo from this week's Cook Along

Tonight we had Leftover Lotto for dinner, which is basically my attempt at jazzing up boring old leftovers.  I opted for the leftover orzo from the other night's cookalong with. . . . . . . . . wait for it. . . . . . . . . . it's worth the wait. . . . . a poached egg on top!

I heated up the orzo in a non stick skillet with a pat of butter, added an extra splash of lemon juice, and a handful of parmesan cheese, and then I poached an egg and plopped it on top of my bowl of pasta.  After mixing up the egg with all the pasta and cheese, I was left with a bowl of pasta and zucchini in a light but luscious sauce.  Enough protein from the egg to call it dinner, and a mighty satisfying one at that!

AH

PS - A little cooked pancetta, ham or bacon with this would propel it into the realm of the truly stellar.