Eat your peas (gourmet pea recipe included in post)

Obama's press conference was about what was expected. The only real mystery going in was would we get the Obama the Dick, or Obama the Great Conciliator. He tried the conciliator route. He also made a risible attempt to portray himself as Washington's greatest budget deficit hawk. Alas, if only those nefarious Republicans -- who are under the thumb of the corporate jet-setter crowd -- would only agree to his compromise of raising taxes and promising spending cuts somewhere down the road then all would be well.  

"So we might as well do it now. Pull off the band-aid. Eat our peas. Now is the time to do it. If not now, when?" 

That was my favorite line, and likely the line he'll be saddled with from the speech while the rest of the malarkey he spouted is quickly forgotten. It is a marvelous example of his unfailing ability to be tone deaf. It infantilizes the American public, we become children who need to be told to suck it up and rip that bandage off and to quit winning and eat our veggies. I'm surprised he didn't end that we should be sure to clean our plate because there's starving children in China, or don't parents use that expression any more?

Even more ridiculous, the sentence minimizes the problems we face. Does he really think the sting of a band-aid being torn off, or a spoonful of peas, really captures the cost Americans are going to have to pay for this crisis?  Again, Obama and his indifference. There are people suffering now, and most Americans understand that there is not a Scrooge McDuck sitting on a pile of gold that can solve our deficit problem, rather there will be a serious pain to citizens in digging out of this problem no matter which way we turn. 

Well, since we've got to eat them according to our Great Father Who Lives in Washington I thought I would dig up a tasty pea recipe. That led me to Yes Peas!, a website dedicated to the little green globes. Once there I found the recipe for Pea And Cream Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms (reproduced below). You can find more recipes at the site and you can even get yourself a free pea recipe book (Obama would approve of that, although he would probably prefer it had a selling price so's he could slap a sales tax on it). I also found the above pea song at the site.


Pea And Cream Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms

Ingredients

8 large flat mushrooms
2 tbsp butter
1 large onion, peeled and finely chopped
350g frozen peas
350g garlic and herb cream cheese
1 tbsp fresh basil, chopped
100g pine nuts
2 tbsp breadcrumbs
Rapeseed oil, to drizzle
Sea salt and black pepper

Method

Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F/Gas 5.

Wipe the mushrooms with a damp clean cloth, remove the mushroom stalks and roughly chop them. Place the mushrooms on a baking tray, season with sea salt and black pepper and drizzle with oil, place in the oven and bake for 10 minutes, then remove from the oven.

Meanwhile, in a large frying pan, melt the butter and fry the onion and mushroom stalks for 5 minutes, to soften, but not browned. Then add the peas with 1 tablespoon of cold water, cook for a further minute. Transfer the mixture to a bowl; mix with 225g of garlic and herb cream cheese, basil and the pine nuts and season with sea salt and black pepper.

Spoon the mixture into the mushroom caps and sprinkle over the breadcrumbs. Spread the remaining garlic and herb cream cheese on top of the mushrooms, drizzle with a little oil and bake in the oven for 10 minutes.

Serves 4.