Freedom From Fear - Chapters 13 - 22

I've finished Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War 1929 - 1945
The last half of the book concentrates on World War II

• Chapter 13: The Gathering Storm
• Chapter 14: The Agony of Neutrality
• Chapter 15: To the Brink
• Chapter 16: War in the Pacific
• Chapter 17: Unread Ally, Uneasy Alliance
• Chapter 18: The War of Machines
• Chapter 19: The Struggle for a Western Front
• Chapter 20: The Battle for Northwest Europe
• Chapter 21: The Cauldron of the Home Front
• Chapter 22: Endgame

America had the luxury of being isolationist even though it wasn't in our best long term interest. Roosevelt's big struggle in the later half of the 1930's was to use the United States as a counter-balance to the aggressive designs of Hitler, Mussolini, and Japan. One of the biggest problems was what FDR called  "large misinformed public opinion" (p 393). Even after Pearl Harbor had been attacked there was an open question as to whether we would declare war on Germany; Hitler took us off the hook and declared war on us.

One of my "rose-colored" views of WWII was how everyone jumped in together and worked like one big happy family after Pearl Harbor. Not so much. Politics is always a consideration. After Japan had occupied the South Pacific and the export of rubber to the United States stopped, we invented a substitute. The Farm Bloc was instrumental in legislating that  a certain amount of the ingredients would come from grain alcohol rather than the more efficient petroleum based  compounds. In general the war purchases went to the biggest companies; the big got bigger (p 622). Another area where politics took precedence over what was right was the Japanese-American release from relocation camps in 1944. Their release was delayed for months until after the 1944 election.

The war strategy was also contentious and divided. England was strongly in favor of the North African and Italian campaigns; we took part of these over the vociferous objections of the US military. George Martshall went so far as to suggest that if the British insisted on the North African campaign, "the Americans should rewrite the fundamentals of their own highest strategy, abandon the Germany-first principle, and 'turn to the Pacific for decisive action against Japan'" (p578)  Roosevelt overrode those objections because he felt is was urgent that America take part of the fight against Germany and this was the only way to take part in 1942.  As it turns out the British were never in favor of the French invasion and slowed things as much as they could.

America's industrial strategy was to build a lot of everything. The focus was on quantity, not quality. Germany's approach was the opposite; build fewer things but each one would be almost perfect. "The Wehrmacht counted for tits margin of victory on 'qualitative superiority', on precision-made flawlessly performing, high-standard weapons.... [The result was] "lots of special ordering, and custom design that frustrated long production runs" (p648). One of the reasons for this was the virtue of necessity. The industrial force of the United States was "composed of ill-educated immigrants with scant industrial skills" (p 633). Since the dawn of the industrial age  "America's working class had placed a premium on organizing production around simple repetitive tasks that did not demand technical adeptness or extensive training" (p 623). This method allowed us to overwhelm the enemies with numbers of weapons.  "In the Pacific the disparities were especially dramatic. Every American combatant in the last year and a half of war...could draw on four tons of supplies; his Japanese opponent , just two pounds" (p 668 emphasis added) 

For years Russia clamored for England and American to launch a second front. By the time we were able to mount the D-day invasion in June 1944 Russia was making huge inroads on the eastern front and wasn't as demanding. One of the factors encouraging our invasion was the fact that had we not, Russia would have had a much stronger hand in Europe than they ended up with anyway. We had to protect or own interests against the Soviets.

As for the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was clear to me that there was no real discussion about it; it was just assumed that it would take place as soon as possible. Given the American experiences battling in the Pacific, I can totally understand it. 

Conclusion

After this tumultuous 16 year period from 1929 to 1945 American had changed mightily. The federal government had grown enormously and our place in the world had grown enormously. Throughout the early 1940's conservatives had successfully rolled back many parts of the New Deal. Many of the agencies had been shut down. But come the end of the day, "conservatives raised no hand against the child labor and minimum wage legislation, and banking and securities regulation. Those reforms were already firmly in place as untouchable pillars of the new social and economic order that Roosevelt had wrought out of the Depression crisis" (p783)

Looking forward

This is a fantastic book; it gave me a much better appreciation of the life of my parents' generation. It also has inspired me to go back and read about American history before 1920's. I've picked up a book on the Gilded Age: Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of America, 1877 - 1920 by Jackson Lears and will follow up with David Halberstam's book "The Fifites"

But before that, I'm doing my annual read of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. This little book is just marvelous. I highly recommend reading this. Years ago, when the kids were young, we would read it aloud. Heck; if no one is around I often read passages aloud to myself. One thing that always strikes me when I read this is how true to the original the 1980's TV movie of the story starring George C. Scott is.

Dumpling Soup - November 28 ,2010

I recently subscribed to Food Network magazine. Perusing my first copy I realized how spoiled I've become with Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country. I think the Food Network magazine is more than half advertising. But I persevered and found a few recipes to try. This  week we tried the dumpling soup (my version of the recipe is here); later in the week we'll have the Cantonese chicken.

The dumpling recipe promised to be a 30 minute dinner. We'll see.

Carla went to see the new Harry Potter movie and it was a quick prep so I thought I'd take some extra time to do a complete prep. Here are the ingredients. We'll take 4 3-inch strips of the orange skin for some citrus zest.

I'm a slow prepper; 20-30 minutes later everything is ready

 Everything is staged. Waiting for Carla to get back from the movie

It definitely cooks up quick; about 20 minutes.

We liked the broth; very nice for such a quick simmer. Next time I'll use Trader Joe's pot stickers or dumplings. The ones I picked up at New Season's market were too big and too doughy.

Thanksgiving 2010

We had a great Thanksgiving; with quite and adventure with one of the turkeys.

We figured we'd have about 16 people this year; which is pretty typical. But the good news is I'd have some of the extended Thompson clan to give a little balance to the Austin crowd. My nephew Carr came down and stayed with us and made a terrific pumpkin roll. His brother Christopher took plenty of pictures, but hasn't sent them to me yet.

I don't like Thanksgiving food much and maybe as a result I haven't found a perfect Turkey recipe yet. Last year I tried to make a "rub" of butter and herbs but the turkey was too wet and I had more globs of butter on my hands than on the turkey. This year, just a little oil and salt and pepper. My focus was going to be on the gravy so I didn't want to brine the turkey which ends up with drippings way too salty for gravy. Another option was a dry-brined turkey which I read about in The Oregonian FoodDay where they compared two methods of brining.

 Also, I didn't want to spend a fortune on a turkey; so, I took a look at the Cook's Illustrated site to see what their taste test results said about turkeys. They agreed with me that you don't need to spend a fortune on a turkey; they felt (like me) that heritage birds end up tough without enough of the breast meat that people crave. They did recommend a kosher turkey so I thought I'd start there. A kosher turkey is packed in salt so I could save myself the effort of dry brining (maybe next year).

A couple of weeks before Thanksgiving I dropped by Haggens to inquire about kosher turkeys. I threw them for a loop; the guy I talked to wasn't the butcher and told me to call back on Monday or Tuesday. When I called back, the guy was in a meeting; I told the receptionist what I wanted and she knew all about it: "we've called Corporate to try to find kosher turkeys". Wow, I thought they are going out of their way. Finally I got ahold of the butcher and told him what I wanted. He said he'd get in a couple of cases and he'd hold one back for me. He warned me that they'd be frozen and to be prepared.

So, on Friday before Thanksgiving he called to tell me they were in. "Did they give you a price?" he asked. Uh oh. "No; what's the damage". Turns out they go for $3.99 a pound (compared to free ones if you spend enough on groceries). A 20 pound turkey checked in at just under $80. Yikes; so much for the idea of not spending a fortune. But I had specifically asked for a kosher bird and they really went all out for me, so broke out the debit card.

They were right; it was frozen absolutely solid. I put it in the garage refrigerator to let the defrosting begin. It was still pretty firm on Wednesday night so I took it out for an hour and put it under some running cold water.

Thanksgiving day everything went according to plan with just a couple of hiccups. It took about 45 minutes longer to cook than I expected. I should have started earlier in any case so it was a bit of  a last minute sweat to get it all done.

My brother-in-law Jim bought a new deep fryer this year to replace his old one and he deep fried another turkey as usual. It was delicious.

The pan dripping gravy came out well; I used a recipe from Alton Brown. His recipe was for drippings from a 14 pound turkey; I had too much drippings from my 20 pounder to fit in my large fat separator. No big deal, I improvised. I started things and Carla's brother Glenn took it from there while I carved the turkeys. I used the new method I had seen on Cook's Country where you take the whole breast off in one piece and cut it across the grain. I described the technique in my posting on the French Chicken in a Pot post. 

Everybody loves gravy and I wanted to make sure I had plenty; so I also tried to make another gravy based on a roux I used for Gumbo.  I figured I'd add some herbs, chicken stock, and wine to the roux. I had made the roux ahead of time and had it waiting. In short, it was an unmitigated failure. I had used oil for the roux when I should have used some sort of fat like butter or other saved drippings. Oh well, at least I experimented, which I don't do nearly enough of.

Dinner itself was fantastic. We had quite a few new dishes. I've read about Susan Stamberg's cranberry relish for the last 30 years. I thought I'd make it myself for the first time. Raw cranberries, onion, horseradish, sour cream and sugar. It was, um, interesting. Some people professed to like it but we sure had a lot of it left over at the end of the day. I was impressed with the power of my new KitchenAid food processor which ground it up to a nice chunk in about 5 seconds. I found out why later as I was cleaning up; the blades is heckuv sharp. I put a nice little divot in my thumb.

A great green bean with vinaigrette replaced the venerable green bean casserole. Carla's mashed potatoes were wonderful. We had two great dressings and a bunch of killer desserts courtesy of Glenn, his wife Carolyn and her daughter Stella.

For dessert, I busted out the new KitchenAid food processor to make the whipped cream. I'm used to spending a few minutes whipping up the cream with a hand mixer, so I put in the cream, powdered sugar, and vanilla; turned it on and took my eyes off it. It would have been ready in about 20 seconds I think; I didn't bother turning around to look until over a minute passed. Soft peaks, it was not. Very dense; about the look of mashed potatoes. Well, it still tasted okay.

I'll get some pictures from Thanksgiving posted as soon as I get them from Christopher.

French Chicken in a Pot - November 14, 2010

I ran across this Cook's Illustrated recipe a couple of times and thought it held a lot of promise. I first was intrigued when I saw the recipe in the January 2008 copy of the magazine. Then a month or so ago I watched them make it on America's Test Kitchen.

 It looked to be very simple to prepare giving me plenty of time to do other things while the chicken cooks. The basic plan is to take a whole chicken, give it a rub, sear it for a few minutes with some vegetables and then pop in the oven for an hour or so. It would result in a tender, tasty chicken with some delicious jous. Can you hear a big "but" coming?

My copy of the recipe can be found here.

The ingredients are simplicity itself: a chicken with nice fresh vegetables and aromatics

Prepped and ready for the pot

Break out Old Blue for a quick sear with the onion and celery

Cover the pot with aluminum foil and then the lid to make sure none of the steam escapes

All done! The sauce is strained and fat removed; then the resulting jous goes into a pan for a quick simmer

 The finished product. Just carve and serve

Looks wonderful. I learned a new way to carve which is a plus. Remove the leg and wing. Then take the breast off in one piece and slice against the grain. I used the same technique on the turkey at Thanksgiving with success. Carla made cornbread and a broccoli slaw.

It looked good. But the flavor was very bland. The rub on the skin all ended up in the jous making it too salty. Next time (if there is a next time), I'll put the rub under the skin; and go with a smaller chicken. This specimen was about 5 pounds.. All in all it really was kind of dry and bland. It made good chicken salad for lunch the following week!

Posole

My best friend in junior high school was Bob Newlon (Bobby where are you?).  We also were good friends all through high school. We lived maybe 4 miles apart; in junior high and would trek through the desert to one another's houses. The trip was much easier in high school on our motorcycles. I had a Honda 305 scrambler; he had a Honda 350 road bike. After high school, I went off to college and Bob and some other of our friends moved in together down in Los Angeles. I'm sure all my Palmdale High School friends out on the interweb know or remember Bob; if any of you know how to contact him, let me know.

Anyway, one of my favorite meals growing up was burritos at his house. His mother made a terrific red pork stew in one big pot and pinto beans in another. Spreading them on a flour tortilla and enjoying them with his folks and two sisters was always a pleasure. Now every time I see a recipe for red pork I try it out to see if it can touch Mrs. Newlon's. Nothing has come close.

This month's Cook's Country has a recipe for Posole, a New Mexico red pork "stew" with hominy. It ended up being much more soup like than stew. It also features hominy which I've never cooked with. I was a little trepidacious (sp) but thought I'd push ahead. This recipe is not close to Mrs. Newlon's, but is good in its own right.

My transcription of the recipe can be found here

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/636560/Recipes/New%20Mexican%20Pork%20Stew%20-%20Cooks%20Country.pdf).

We start with the traditional meet-and-greet for the ingredients:

One of the things I like about Cook's Country recipes is the building of flavor upon flavor; this recipe is an example of that. Our first step is to take a couple of dried ancho chiles and roast them for about 5 minutes at 350*; then they are cored and seeded, mixed with some chicken stock and boiled in the microwave for a couple of minutes. This results in a great rich sauce. Next time I have a recipe calling for enchilada sauce I may just use this instead.

While the chiles steep, we fry the pork.

The pork is removed and we give the hominy a quick saute'.  The hominy then comes out and put in a bowl for later use. I munched some of it during the cooking process. It was delicious

Next step was to saute' chopped onions in the pan with 5 cloves of garlic added for the last 30 seconds. The onion and the chile/chicken stock go in the blender for a nice sauce. Then back into the pot with more chicken stock and the pork to simmer for 90 minutes.  Then the pork comes out to be shredded and the hominy goes in for 30 minutes. Finally after 2 hours all the ingredients are together as the pork is added.

As I mentioned earlier; it was thinner than I expected; a problem with my expectation, not the recipe. Denise and Mary say that radishes and cabbage make great toppings for the servings. I planned that, but we got carried away making the cole slaw and all the cabbage ended up there. We did chop up an avocado. 

Look at that; I even wiped up a couple of splashes from the side of the bowl before getting the last picture.

We'll be eating this for lunch and dinner a few more days. I rate it as 3 stars; worthy of making for guests but not in the regular rotation.

Next week I'll be making roast chicken in a pot. I saw it on America's Test Kitchen and it looks simple and delicious.

After lunch, I'll be mixing up some home-made vanilla ice cream for our church group's Dinners-For-Eight. We have dessert duty; Carla whipped up the pumpkin squares and it's all I can do not to go sample them.

In the meantime, Bobby if you are out there, let me hear from you!

Gumbo!

Halloween 2010


I made gumbo a few years ago but was not at all happy with it. The roux never "took" and the okra made it pretty slimy. So, late summer when I saw a recipe for it in Cook's Country (My version of the recipe is here) I was doubtful I could pull it off. But it had a method for coming up with a dark fragrant roux that was worth a shot. Was I ever glad I took a chance; this is one of my top meals ever IMHO.

To cook the roux, you start by putting raw flour in the Dutch oven and toast it over medium high heat for about 5 minutes. When it starts to turn brown, whisk in the oil then transfer the pot to the oven for 45 minutes.

 Timing is everything. While the roux is in the oven Jeff and I chop and measure.

After 45 minutes the roux came out of the oven; it was every bit as dark and fragrant as I had hoped. I figured we were on to something.

The Creole holy trinity of onion, green bell pepper and celery go into the roux, followed by the aromatics of garlic, thyme, and cayenne pepper. That is followed up by a combination of low sodium chicken broth and Thai fish sauce (really). Once that simmers; in goes the chicken for 30 minutes. 

While the pot is simmering, I start the rice. Toast it in butter for a few minutes, then add water and salt, and cover for 20 minutes.

Do a few dishes while things are simmering. Then the chicken comes out to be taken off the bone and chopped into bite sized pieces and put back in.  andouille and the shrimp join the party. Notice the lack of mention of okra. It is an optional ingredient so I left it out.

Linda made a delicious salad; Carla made corn bread:

Here we are at the end of the meal. Check out our new artwork just behind Carla: pastel and acrylic on sand paper. It was her birthday present this year.

For dessert we had coconut cream pie that Dianne McDonnell made yesterday. We were over to their place last night to have some delicious taco soup and watch the world series and see the Ducks trounce USC.

I'm thinking I need to change to a 6 star rating system so I can give it 6 starts. Jeff said "you could just make 5 stars louder". I responded "this is 6". If you've got a few hours and and want to cook one heluva meal, go for this.

Freedom From Fear - Chapters 11 & 12

These two chapters bring a close on the New Deal and prepares us for the second half of the book covering World War II. The two chapters are:

• Chapter 11 - The Ordeal of Franklin Roosevelt
• Chapter 12 - What the New Deal Did

Although FDR won a big victory in 1937, it wasn't complete. Although he demonstrated the change of the Democratic party by showing he didn't need the "solid south" to be re-elected, he was unable to move his agenda forward. During the campaign he tried to remake the South by supporting reformers, but his candidates did not win.  A reporter once rhetorically asked one of the southern senators (forget his name) if Roosevelt wasn't his own worse enemy; "not as long as I'm alive" the Senator replied. 

As a result of his miscalculations in the election he had implacable folds in both houses of Congress. These southern Democrats successfully filibustered a bill which would make lynching a federal offense. Of course the excuse was "state's rights". The south was worried that the anti-lynching bill would be followed by a civil rights bill. 

By 1938 the era of The New Deal was essentially over; there was no major legislation to extend reforms. In fact, the roots of modern conservatism started at this time. Southern Democrats "issued a ten-point 'Conservative Manifesto' that denounced the sit-down strikes, demanded lower federal taxes, and a balanced budget, defended encroachment and warn of the dangers of creating a permanently dependent welfare class" (p 340)

In 1937 a modest recovery had started, but was soon washed aside by another wave of recession in 1938. 

The lasting  legacy of the New Deal was structural reform rather than economic recovery.  In his summary of The New Deal, Kennedy says the pattern of reforms can be summed up in a single word: "security". (p 365). In addition to Social Security, which gave security to older Americans, The New Deal brought security "for capitalists and consumers, for workers and employers, for corporations and farms and homeowners and banks and builders as well" (p 365). With the exception of social security and agricultural subsidies, these goals were reached without massive taxpayer costs. The New Deal used the twin strategies of information and reliability to bring about this security. 

Security in the financial sector

In the financial sector security was brought about by two changes. The first was to separate investment banks from commercial banks which secured average American savings deposits from speculation. The second change was the introduction of the FDIC which guaranteed bank deposits up to $5,000. These two actions did not levy much cost on taxpayers or member banks; neither did it introduce impose heavy regulations. Together they injected "unprecedented stability into the American banking system" (p 366)

Security in the securities industry

Security was injected into the securities industry through the introduction of the Security Exchange Commission (SEC). Prior to this, there was no reliable information for investors to use to make informed investments. The power of the SEC lay in two provisions. The first mandated standard disclosures of corporate health: balance sheets, profit and loss statements, and compensation of corporate officers. The second was the requirement of verification of this information by audits using standardized accounting procedures. This action elevated the status of accountants.

Security in the Housing sector

The Federal Housing Administration was created in 1934 to insure long-term mortgages much like the FDIC secured depositors' accounts. This was also when Fannie Mae, the Federal National Mortgage Association was created.  These changes made it possible for people to buy houses with relatively low (10%) down and long term (30 year) mortgages. At the same time, construction and appraisal standards were put in place so that lenders could lend money with some level of safety in the property they were lending on. The housing sector was an especially important vehicle for reform because of its wide-reaching impact. There were no geographical boundaries; people all across the country needed housing.

The long view

In the past, I've viewed the Great Depression as an event in American history that "just happened" in a smooth flow of history. Now I think it can be seen as the visible fault line between frontier America filling out the country and modern America with diminishing free land building within the borders. In this decade America was remade; lasting social change had taken place. If nothing else, government was seen to have a "major responsibility in ensuring the health of the economy and the welfare of citiznes" (p377)

Come the end of the day, FDR steered America between the Scylla and Charybdis of "orthodoxy and revolution". (p 380) Germany, Austria, and Italy didn't go the same path. We'll see the ramifications of that in the second half of the book.