I have been trying to take care of my health through unbalanced diet. I have cut out the bread and the sauces and the pasta of winter, and tired to add more veggies to the diet.
 
I am leery of what the Congress did over the weekend, and this course of action is just a prudent means of self-defense. No one could quite explain what was actually in the massive overhaul bill until this morning, when all the deals were done.
 
According to the Times, there are some upsides. I have a couple friends who are staying married to qualify for health care on the spousal plan; they  may now be able to get insurance on their own, with no regard to a pre-existing conditions. My younger boy, who is taking a career change, may qualify under my coverage for a year, until he turns 26. We will all be paying higher Medicare taxes, deducted from the paycheck.
 
I don’t know what that is, but the Senate Bill says this: “Increase the Medicare Part A (hospital insurance) tax rate on wages by 0.9% (from 1.45% to 2.35%) on earnings over $200,000 for individual taxpayers and $250,000 for married couples filing jointly; funds deposited into the Medicare Part A Trust Fund. (Effective January 1, 2013).”
 
That could mean a few thousand dollars more, depending on how the cookie crumbles. It doesn’t look like anything to freak about this morning, and I don’t even know if I will be alive, much less have a paycheck, in 2013. So until we understand how this all fits together and when it phases in, I will hold fire.
 
Whatever it is they have done, for good or ill, there is no going back and we have crossed a sort of Rubicon. It could be good, in the long run, or it could accelerate our path along the trajectory to a California-style bankruptcy. Virginia has already announced that the Law of Land will be challenged on constitutional grounds, and the Old Dominion is not alone.
 
The Supreme Court will decide that in due course, and they, as you know, are a quirky bunch.
 
I sighed and decided to keep on with the diet resolution. I had unloaded he dish-washer form the week and saw my colors-not-found-in-nature chopsticks laid flat underneath the silverware basket where I put them since they slip through the plastic web in had two large handfuls of string beans from the Martin’s store in Culpeper, and the idea of Sesame Green Beans struck me as a decent compromise between taste and health.
 
Of course I didn’t have the sesame seeds to dress up the beans, but I did have the sesame oil for the taste. I decided to substitute crushed cashews for that, and had plenty of flaked red pepper and some of that crazy hot Korean fine red pepper. There was the end of a grilled sirloin, too, so I trimmed and rinsed the beans as I listened to the commentators on the radio who could not help allowing a sense of triumph edge into their voices about the legislation.
 
I shrugged and turned up the heat under the frying pan and the pot to blanche the beans.
 
Ingredients

    * Kosher salt
    * 2 handfulls of green beans, trimmed
    * one palm full of cashews, crushed
    * 2 tablespoons soy sauce
    * 2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
    * 1 decent slug of red pepper flakes to taste
    * 3 daring passes of Korean Kwang-ju hot fine red pepper
    * 2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
    * 2 cloves garlic, chopped
    * 1 tablespoon sesame seeds if you had them
    * 2 teaspoons rice wine vinegar
    * Anything else lurking in the fridge that needs to get used- in this case, the heel of a sirloin, sliced.
 
Directions

Bring a large pot of cold water to a boil over high heat and salt it generously. Add the beans, and cook, uncovered, until just tender and not wilted. Six-to-ten minutes depending on the altitude where you are cooking. Drain into a colander and run cold water over it to stop the cooking. You do not want mushy beans.
 
Heat the olive oil with the Sesame until it is almost ready to smoke. Throw in the non-combatant ingredients and the crumbled cashews. Toss in the green beans and soy sauce, and cook until the green beans glaze, about 1 minute or two. Sprinkle with the vinegar and serve immediately while watching basketball and pointedly not thinking about health care. It is all going to work out one way or another.
 
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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