Day: October 23, 2012

By: Steve “Mo” Fye, Copy Chief | Photos By: Steve “Mo” Fye, Copy Chief

Late summer and early fall bring a stunning variety of squashes for the creative cook.

Many grocery stores will only have the ubiqui­tous pumpkins, but farm­ers markets and specialty produce stores will have dozens of different hard-skinned squashes.

Pattypans — or Starburst squash — can be picked while young and tender and pickled for the cold winter days, or stuffed and baked. Delicata and Turban squashes are wonderful mashed and sea­soned. Butternut squash is great grated, steamed and cooked like potatoes for vitamin-rich and brilliantly colored hash browns.

Squash is equally good for sweet or savory dishes. Honey and brown sugar added to roasted squash makes a delicate dessert, while butter and bread crumbs mixed with nearly any kind of peeled and diced squash can make a great replacement for potatoes, pasta or rice.

Butternut Squash Soup with Herbed Whipped Cream

For the Soup:

• 1 large Butternut Squash, peeled, seeded and cut into ½ inch dice (about 2 pounds)
• ½ pound Carrots, washed, peeled and cut into about ½ dice.
• 2 Tbsp. Olive or Vegetable Oil
• 2 Tbsp. Kosher Salt
• 1 Tbsp. Ground White Pepper
• 2 quarts Chicken, Vegetable or Beef Stock
• 2 Tbsp. Cider Vinegar
• 3 cups Heavy Whipping Cream, cool
• Continue reading “Cooking in Season: Winter Sqash” →

By: Stefany Olivas, Managing Editor

The window-lined study cubes in the upstairs south­west corner of the library are too hot and too bright, making it difficult to work on the computers in that area, said Computer Lab Assistant and Environmental Safety and Health major Kathy Johargrove.

The sun makes it hard for the students to see the material on the screens of the computer stations in the area, and the Instructional Technicians also struggle to see the screen when helping students, she said.

“If you’re facing away from the sun, it shines right on your screen. If you’re looking into the sun, it’s so bright you can’t see the screen,” she said.

The Computer Help Station had been located in the study-cube area and moved because of the lighting problem, but the student stations are still there. Johargrove said she and the other work-study students attempted to block the sun with large pieces of paper on the win­dows, but had to remove them at the end of each day. Now they are not allowed to put anything on the windows, she said.

Continue reading “Blinded By the Light” →

By: Jyllian Roach, Editor-In-Chief

Aside from the controversy of trying to capitalize on an anti-capitalism movement, there are a lot of problems with local author Robert P. Francis’ almost-novella “Occupying Dissent”.

At some point in every writer’s career, usually when the writer is around 14 years old, she gets so excited about a story idea that she writes it down, but focus only on the cool parts and ignores character develop­ment, plot, grammar, story detail and basically every­thing else needed to make a story readable and enjoyable. “Occupying Dissent” reads like that sort of story.

The 86-page book blends events of the Occupy Albuquerque movements and the fictional tale of Andrew and Leela Torrez, twenty-something cardboard cutouts who move to Albuquerque after Andrew loses his job with a non-descript company whose unnamed higher-ups are paring down the number of employees to fatten profits.

The book suffers from the same problem that nearly all self-published pieces do — a complete lack of editing. The editing process is supposed to help refine a story; to fix gram­matical errors, and find the spots that need more or less writing. “Dissent” would have benefitted from all of those functions. The grammar errors are so rampant that they bog down the reader, while the story itself is unfo­cused and reads like a rush job.

Continue reading “Book Review: ‘Occupying Dissent:’ There are Worse Books, Maybe” →