Where the "mainstream media" (MSM) and the bloggers manage to meet. Believe it or not, it's not just in the magnificent worldview of Peggy "if-I-couldn't-be-myself-I'd-wanna-be-her" Noonan!

It's Sunshine Week. And, no, that's not a reference to the weather -- although it's temperate and on the sunny side where I am right now.

The media, citizens' advocacy groups and others join together once a year to highlight our country's right-to-know legislation and promote open and accountable public government. As pointed out on the Web site of the Asbury Park Press, a fine New Jersey newspaper aquired by Gannett back in the 90s, a devotion to open government can prove costly. Governmental agencies can charge fees for releasing records, the legal costs of court challenges to denials of information can add up quickly, and current legal precedent makes it unlikely that successful claimants will recover court costs. And this is pure speculation on my part, but I'm sure some citizens have been branded as cranks by their community, if not the authorities, for using the freedom of information mechanisms and for asking questions.

At the very minimum, citizens can show their elected representatives they care -- and that they're watching -- by showing up to meetings even when they don't have an issue on the agenda. They can also keeping track of agendas and official Internet postings on community topics. And, of course, they can ask questions, politely and in a clear voice.

Enjoy the sunshine, literal and figurative, and enjoy the freedom that our society offers.

I'm going to step on my new team member's toes, and express my opinion that there is nothing finer to eat on St. Patrick's Day than corned beef and cabbage. And that the best, simplest recipe I've ever seen for perfection in that department is in the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. Look for its "New England boiled dinner."

Some restuarants on the East coast, most notably Kildare's in my Pennsylvania 'hood, are offering green eggs and ham. Skip the gimmicks, the green beer, even skip the Guinness (just for one day). It's a good meal and a happy home most Irishmen are looking for!

I’ve been invited to contribute to this blog, with food and recipes my suggested topic. I do enjoy eating and don’t at all mind cooking, but I don’t have any recipes of my own, really. I get mine from Epicurious, or from one of the very few cookbooks I own, or my wife clips them from magazines. I may alter them to suit the ingredients available to me, or, more likely, shrink them by a factor of two, three or four. Most of my meals are made for two, although we occasionally entertain guests.

With all that in mind, let me present for your consideration a meal I made to celebrate St. Valentine’s Day. We opted for a home-cooked Valentine’s supper to spare us the expense of going out – and, since I had the day off, the deal was that I would select the menu, shop, and prepare the meal to be ready when my wife came home from work.

An interesting recipe on Epicurious caught my eye: Rosemary Lamb Chops with Swiss Chard and Balsamic Syrup. I went to the Pennington Market for most of the ingredients. It has an excellent butcher shop, but the lamb I bought came vacuum-wrapped from a NJ source: Catelli Brothers French Rack Lamb Chops, 1.02 lb @ $19.99/lb = $20.40. This was an entire frenched rack, suitable for the fanciest of recipes. The store didn’t have any individual chops, but it was no problem for me to cut the chops apart myself. I also bought the red onion and chard there. The garlic came from my garden — some is starting to sprout, but it’s still ok. (It probably won’t last till the new crop is ready.) The rosemary came from two potted plants I keep under a shop light in my cellar. The rest of the ingredients we had in the pantry.

I made the balsamic syrup first, reducing the vinegar with rosemary and peppercorns to one-third its original volume and putting it through a sieve. We don’t have a microwave oven at the moment, so I warmed up the syrup at serving time with a mini bain-marie: I put boiling water in a tea cup and put the small ceramic bowl full of syrup on top, and brought it to the table.

I cut up all the vegetables in advance and sweated the onion and garlic with some olive oil. When my wife came home from work, I broiled the lamb chops with garlic, salt, and pepper in the oven, turning them once; it took about eight minutes. While the meat broiled, I wilted the chard in the onion and garlic. I probably used more water than the one tablespoon called for in the recipe, and I used a lid on the skillet. For once, everything was done cooking at the same time. I supplemented the recipe with some butternut squash (a family favorite), and my wife, without a hint of what would be on our table, brought home a perfect accompaniment: a 187 mL bottle of Casalnova prosecco, $5 at our neighborhood liquor store. And 187 mL was plenty of bubbly considering the dessert I’d prepared.

My wife loves things like chard and butternut; she thinks they promote health and longevity, and I hope she’s right. This was the first time I made chard that tasted good. We used the same recipe the next night with the other half of the bunch. The balsamic syrup recipe really brought to life the cheap vinegar we buy by the quart at BJ’s.

Now for dessert: The other day I saw on television NYC restaurateur Bobby Flay pour an entire bottle of Moet into a tray and put it in a freezer for his Champagne Granita. Great idea, but I can’t afford to do that with the good stuff. I went to the liquor store looking for something a little cheaper, maybe a half bottle. Instead, I found 750 mL bottles of Andre California champagne on sale for $3.34. At that price, how could I go wrong? I followed Mr. Flay’s recipe, adding lemon juice to the wine and scraping every half hour. After three hours in the freezer, it was ready to eat. The result was superb — certainly better than drinking that stuff. I served it plain, without the berries. My wife wants to try using rose water in place of lemon juice next time.

The meal was a major success. It was easy to prepare, fairly inexpensive, and it tasted great. Everything met with my wife’s enthusiastic approval, which made me feel good. I would encourage anyone with a bare minimum of cooking skill to use these recipes for a special dinner to impress a loved one.

The story of wonder-anchor Bob Woodruff got deeper for me after he woke up from his IED-induced coma, although I'll admit to being reduced to sobs by the sheer mechanics of the attack. I have long admired those who maintained their dignity through humbling situations -- and losing the ability to think, to speak and to perceive is an identity-stripping situation for someone who surely must identify himself, in a fundamental way, as a journalist.

It was sweet and painful to see Woodruff play learning games with his children ... diffusing tension by singing about his rehabilitation work while dancing with his wife ... talking with a young serviceman who also has severe restriction of his field of vision about having one good set of eyes between them.

As my friends no doubt know, I bumped my head some years back hard enough to crush my C-7 and, despite testing that assures me I'm still oh-so-brilliant, I can feel the loss of function. And I feel my own frustration. I admire Woodruff's ability to maintain his equanimity while being filmed at less than peak performance, and I admire his ability to admit that he is still not fully firing on all 12 cylinders. Part of me feels inadequate, like a slacker or a whiner, for not just standing up and doing what he is now doing. The fact of the matter is that it didn't go so well for me when I took the same robust approach, and my traditionally overexuberant confidence level diminished substantially as a result.

I worry, too, that Woodruff is pushing himself too hard for the sake of his recovery, the sake of a crucially important story and for the sake of other noble goals which I can only project onto him. I try not to play the celebrity game. I try to realize that those in the spotlight are every bit as human as the people I meet on the street every day, and that fame gives no one a right to guide my life. But we can't help but pick out both the cautionary tales and the role models in the media.

I cannot help but adopt Bob Woodruff as -- at the very least -- a mascot as I continue to insist that I will not only survive the challenges of life, but that I'll also succeed at thriving.

[This may lower my street cred, but, believe it or not, it was Latin pop superstar Gloria Estafan who was a role model for me when I first broke my neck. A tour bus accident had broken her back around the same time, and she came out of the experience with such strength and grace, releasing a musical work (Mi Tierra) of depth and beauty as she did. She helped me motivate to keep my mind and body active and to get back as quickly as I could to good, hard, productive work.]

I've already sweated for one journalist, a colleague and penpal, when he was embedded some years back in the Iraqi engagement. I've had the privilege of fullfilling a promise to buy a New Jersey Reservist a beer when he finished his tour. I also offered to buy -- and ship -- a dress to the guy who was getting the nickname "Klinger" for his devotion to getting back home to his kids at the end of his civilian commitment there. I was a footnote at one of many media gatherings that celebrated the spirit of writer and editor Michael Kelly after he was killed in theater. Let's just say sometimes I delude myself into thinking that it might have been less exhausting to have gone ahead and enlisted.

And I do drag around this sad little bag of guilt for identifying with the "signature injury" of this miltary action without ever having served. Whatever closed head trauma I suffered is nothing compared to the violent percussions and concussions these men and women have.

Yet despite a staggering catalog of objects that were imbedded in and travelling through his body, our favorite embed talks about each near miss as a miracle. And he has been deflecting death and disability at every turn. I want to cultivate his ability to touch base with the positive, to recognize the luck that lets him see his loved ones and lets him return to his life's work. We are lucky to be able to listen to his stories again, and we are luckier that his story right now entwines with the lives of our veterans.

----

On other, lighter note: As soon as my buddy can set up his account, we'll see a posting from him -- a romantic meal field tested on St. Valentine's Day but suitable for wooing your sweetie whenever the mood strikes. And don't let the fact that he splurged on some cheap bubbly fool you. This guy knows how to eat and drink. I wouldn't call him a role model in that respect, but more of the kind of guy you'd love to have hosting (or attending) your dinner party, at home or out on the town.

Enjoy.

----

I have plans to enrich the above post with a few links. Until then, gentlemen, start your search engines ...