By popular demand: CollardGreen Pesto

Collard Green Pesto

4 ounces - about 4 cups -                2 tablespoons grated 

stemmed and chopped                    Parm/Reggiano cheese

collard greens 

Juice 1/2 orange or 1/4-1/2 up OJ 

                                                        1-2 tbsp of olive oil
1/2 cup chopped nuts

pecans/ walnuts/ or                          Optional: chopped garlic,
mixed nuts                                        sun dried tomatoes
                               

Kosher salt/pepper to taste

Want a creamier texture? Add 1 tbsp Blue Cheese or Caesar
dressing 

                                                                    

Note: be careful with salt additions and remember the cheese also has salt. It is easy to get it too salty or too garlicky! If this happens add more chopped greens to the mix.

Put 1/2 inch water in you largest steel fry pan with a lid and bring to a boil.

Place greens in pan and lower the heat and steam briefly (blanch) no more than 2 minutes and just until greens are bright green. Drain well.

Add greens, orange juice to the bowl of your food processor or blender and pulse until they are chopped fine. This may be done in batches until desired consistency is reached. Add pecans, cheese, oil, then the seasonings. Taste as you go to adjust your seasonings.

Refrigerate until ready for use then serve at room temperature with toast rounds or pita chips. This recipe is the creation of Atlanta Chef Steven Satterfield. Options were my additions.

The photo shows the bright green color of the blanched greens!

It's Late

I'm sorry
but I must go
to bed.

I have no time
for wit
and repartee'.

My brain is fuzzed.

My feet do ache.

My head does throb
this live long day!

Just trying
to get back to
a point
of reason
and
serenity.

There's rape and then there's the violation of trust in our justice system

There have been a rash of rape/homicides in India where the victim is found hanging by an article of clothing from a tree after having been raped. The public is becoming more sensitized and outraged and has even come to suspect the police in certain cases of being perpetrators.

I'm trying not to draw any correlations to the US where over 400,000 rape kits are estimated to sit un analyzed in jurisdictions across the land. I'm not trying, but there you have the crux of this issue. Departmental funding aside, the idea that biological material that could convict or exonerate someone wrongly accused, sits deteriorating, in many cases due to inertia, seems ludicrous and derelict.

Should there be a legal time limit to the processing of rape kits that have been collected? It would appear that this is the stage where the process breaks down. The material is being collected so why is there a disconnect at this point? Completion of the kit would prioritize the crime resolution by the accumulation of evidence, or so one would think. We read daily of parties who have gone on to commit numerous other offenses, but if the evidence was collected, and a single perpetrator indicated in a number of crimes, and this was shared information, convictions should follow.

The stigma on rape as a crime has been slow to disappear but the fact remains that rape is a commonplace, violent crime in our society, and regardless of that stigma rape must be dealt with professionally by well trained officers and technicians in tandem.

Can we not move forward?