I need a substitute for potato/pita/corn chips for dipping. Other suggestions also welcome.

What about crudities? Thin-sliced zucchini and summer squash, carrot strips, celery if you like it, turnip strips or slices, cabbage heart, if you're making slaw or putting shredded cabbage in your salad, or steamed cabbage (slice cabbage across the whole head, about one-inch slices. Arrange in top basket of rice steamer. When rice is done, so is cabbage. Serve on plate with dusting of nutmeg and black pepper and a dollop of melted sweet butter, sea salt if desired).

Happy Birthday to Dillo and to abby!

Crudites sound good (in the world in which I like to eat crudites, which I am trying to fuse with this world), and also I believe root vegetables like turnips can be chipified.

(It's heartwarming that you think I have a rice steamer, let alone would know how to use one.)

Kale chips are dead easy to make at home, and you get to eat them warm. Put kale and lashings of olive oil and salt in a pan, put in the oven at 450 for 10 minutes, voila.

eBron: Really, that's it? I mean, I get Cleveland's pissed about it, but with all this whoop-de-do, I thought he'd killed someone. Or at least got busted with a kilo of coke.

I think the jack-ass hour special was only frosting. I think the main cake was this: rich people move companies and make decisions that affect other people for either money profit or for personal reasons all the times. And reaction varies crickets to people directly affected grumbling. But when a black man who got rich in compensation for performing acts like other rich people do, there is a feeling that he owes his private employer in a way that private employers don't owe their customers or workers. I really think there is an unacknowledged class/race thing that working class black man who makes it big in compensation for work owes a debt of gratitude that white rich guys who inherited a lot of their wealth don't. Maybe I'm reading it wrong. Boing moved their headquarters out of Washington State to get tax breaks and non-union labor. And well I remember some grumbling I don't remember anything like the level Bron is getting.

I know about the crudites, Zen. I seem to be able to manage raw much more easily than cooked. Cooked veg is...packing material, mostly. I get as much enjoyment out of styro peanuts.

The steamer is H's gadget; I'm perfectly happy steaming rice on the stove. But the top basket does come in handy for steaming things, so you get twice as much food for the energy used to cook it.

Cooked veg is...packing material, mostly. I get as much enjoyment out of styro peanuts.

Heh. Exactly. At least the styro peanuts are fun when the cats chase them.

And by coincidence, moments after posting on LeBron, I ran into this from The Nation on SubPrime Dan, the owner of the team Bron left [link]

Speaking as someone who has spent time in Cleveland, the fans there are extremely sensitive about departing sports [people/teams], after the Browns moved to Baltimore. That was EPIC. Also, Cleveland is close to Detroit in its level of economic woes; it feels a bit like kicking people who are down.

Boing moved their headquarters out of Washington State

This should totally be the company name. Who wouldn't want to fly in a Boing?