23 Oct 2023

Gretchen’s table: Apples sweeten this chicken pot pie

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Gretchen McKay | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (TNS)

In my opinion, you can never go wrong with a roasted chicken, whether it’s homemade or purchased in the supermarket deli section, because it can be dressed up or down to the season with any number of side dishes.

Once the kids are out of the house and smaller appetites prevail, however, a 4- or-5-pound bird can yield a lot of leftovers. Those who don’t like to eat the same thing two (or three) days in a row might consider that a curse.

I’m on the plus side. When it’s tucked under a flaky, buttery crust in a flavorful gravy, leftover chicken can be nothing short of magical.

In addition to being an economical way to stretch your grocery store dollars, a leftover chicken pot pie is the perfect comfort food for these early days of fall, when we instinctively reach for warmer, heartier dishes to compensate for shorter days and chillier weather.

Chicken pot pie traditionally features a mix of carrots, peas and sometimes potatoes along with shredded or cubed chicken. This autumnal take is a little sweeter, with cubed apple finding its way into the casserole dish.

I didn’t peel the apples because I’m lazy, but if you’re so inclined, go for it! I used poultry seasoning, but you could also flavor the gravy with fresh or dried rosemary, sage and/or parsley. At the last minute, I also threw in half a cup of shredded cheddar cheese, but that’s completely optional.

If you don’t feel like roasting an entire chicken, pick meat from a rotisserie chicken or simply roast and shred a couple of nice-sized boneless breasts.

A buttery pot pie made with leftover chicken, apple and shredded cheddar is full of fall flavors. (Gretchen McKay/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/TNS)

For the crust

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled), plus more for work surface

1 teaspoon sugar

Pinch of fine salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 -inch pieces

3 or 4 tablespoons ice water

For filling

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 small yellow onion, diced (about 3/4 cup)

3 stalks celery, diced

2 tart baking apples, such as Granny Smith or Jonathan, cored and chopped into bite-sized pieces

1/2 cup all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)

2 cups chicken broth, preferably organic

1 teaspoon poultry seasoning, or to taste

Coarse salt and ground black pepper

3 cups cubed or shredded leftover cooked chicken

1/2 cup shredded sharp cheddar

A buttery pot pie made with leftover chicken, apple and shredded cheddar is full of fall flavors. (Gretchen McKay/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/TNS)

Prepare crust: In bowl of food processor, pulse together flour, sugar, and salt. Add butter and pulse again until the until mixture resembles coarse meal, with a few pea-size pieces of butter remaining.

Sprinkle with 3 tablespoons ice water, then pulse until dough holds together when squeezed between your fingers, but still looks a little crumbly. If necessary, add another tablespoon of water. Be careful not to overmix; it will make the dough tough.

Turn dough out onto a piece of plastic wrap and gently shape into a disk. Wrap it tightly in the plastic, then place in refrigerator to chill for at least 20-30 minutes while you prepare the filling.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Prepare filling. In a large sauce pot or Dutch oven, melt butter over medium-high heat. Add onion and celery and cook until vegetables are softened, about 5 minutes, then add apples and cook another 5 minutes, until apple also is softened.

Add flour and stir well to cover the vegetables and fruit. Slowly pour in chicken broth, a little at time, and stir occasionally until it forms a smooth sauce. Let sauce simmer until it thickens, about 5 minutes, then add poultry seasoning, salt and pepper. Mix to combine well.

Stir in cubed or shredded chicken and shredded cheddar, if using, and then transfer mixture to a casserole dish. (I used a 9-by-9 inch ceramic dish.)

Remove dough from fridge and roll out on a floured surface until it’s just a little larger than the pan. Place dough over dish and then fold the overhang inward. Pinch with your fingers to crimp the edge.

Cut a few vents in the top of the dough to allow steam to escape and then place in the oven and bake for 50-55 minutes, or until top is golden brown and filling is bubbling out around the edges.

Allow pot pie cool on the counter for about 10-15 minutes before serving so it maintains its shape when you slice it.

Serves 4-6.

©2023 PG Publishing Co. Visit at post-gazette.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

23 Oct 2023

Off-duty pilot accused of trying to shut down engines of San Francisco-bound jet midflight

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PORTLAND, Ore. — An off-duty pilot riding in the extra seat in the cockpit of a Horizon Air passenger jet tried to shut down the engines in midflight and had to be subdued by the crew, according to a pilot flying the plane.

Authorities in Oregon identified the man as Joseph David Emerson, 44. He was being held Monday on 83 counts each of attempted murder and reckless endangerment and one count of endangering an aircraft, according to the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office.

The San Francisco-bound flight on Sunday diverted to Portland, Oregon, where it was met by officers from the Port of Portland, who took Emerson into custody.

Seattle-based Alaska Airlines, which owns Horizon, a regional carrier, did not name Emerson, but said Monday that the threat was posed by one of its pilot who was off duty but authorized to occupy the cockpit jump seat.

The airline said the captain and co-pilot reacted quickly, “engine power was not lost and the crew secured the aircraft without incident.” Alaska said in a statement that no weapons were involved.
One of the pilots told air traffic controllers that the man who posed the threat had been removed from the cockpit.

“We’ve got the guy that tried to shut the engines down out of the cockpit. And he — doesn’t sound like he’s causing any issue in the back right now, and I think he’s subdued,” one of the pilots said on audio captured by LiveATC.net. “Other than that, we want law enforcement as soon as we get on the ground and parked.”

The FBI office in Portland said it was investigating “and can assure the traveling public there is no continuing threat related to this incident.”

The Federal Aviation Administration said it was helping law enforcement investigations, but declined further comment about the incident.

FAA records indicate that Emerson has a valid license to fly airline planes. It was not clear Monday whether he was represented by a lawyer.

There have been crashes that investigators believe were deliberately caused by pilots. Authorities said the co-pilot of a Germanwings jet that crashed in the French Alps in 2015 had practiced putting the plane into a dive.

In 2018, a Horizon Air ground agent stole an empty plane at Sea-Tac International Airport in Seattle and crashed into a small island in Puget Sound after being chased by military jets that scrambled to intercept the plane. The man told an air traffic controller that he “wasn’t really planning on landing” the aircraft, and described himself as “a broken guy.”

Sunday’s incident occurred on a 76-seat Horizon Air Embraer 175 that left Everett, Washington, at 5:23 p.m. local time and landed in Portland an hour later. Alaska Airlines did not immediately say how many passengers were on board.

23 Oct 2023

Former Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown on what’s changed with China

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HONG KONG — Gov. Gavin Newsom is in China this week trying to preserve relations between the world’s two largest greenhouse gas emitters.

He’s following in the footsteps of his Democratic and Republican predecessors, Govs. Jerry Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who also sought to leverage California’s economic and cultural might to bridge geopolitical gaps on climate change.

But a lot has changed in the past five years since Brown left office.

U.S.-China relations have deteriorated even as the United States has resumed its efforts to cut emissions under President Joe Biden. China has created a homegrown electric vehicle industry that now accounts for nearly 60 percent of the world’s EV sales and cornered the market on minerals needed to power it. And congressional Republicans have seized on that fact to become even more hawkish toward any association with Beijing.

What’s still the same is that California accounts for only about 1 percent of carbon emissions globally, so Golden State officials view exporting its world-leading climate policies as essential.

“China is a third of the world’s emissions,” Newsom told reporters in Hong Kong on Monday. “Between the United States and China it’s about 42 percent. If the U.S. and China do not collaborate and cooperate on the issue of climate, we’re in real trouble.”

Brown, who last went to China and met with President Xi Jinping in 2017, now leads the California-China Climate Institute at UC Berkeley. He said it’s more important than ever for California to maintain good relations with China.

“This is a very dangerous and fraught time,” he said in an interview. “And so any move that is in a positive vein is a big, big positive. I would frame the Newsom visit in that context.”

Brown said he’s hoping Xi and Biden’s meeting planned for next month in San Francisco will lead to a thawing of chilly relations. “In the meantime, we have California.”

Here are some of the changes Newsom will be grappling with, as well as some potential openings:

President Biden vs. President Trump

Jerry Brown flew across the Pacific in a whirlwind of righteousness and publicity the day after Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement in 2017. At the time, he said Trump was raising the profile of climate by being so bad on it. Brown scoffed when asked if he checked in with the White House.

Newsom has been in close coordination with the Biden administration around his climate diplomacy trip abroad, but he’s still a free agent, with the potential to step on some toes or accidentally cross the federal government’s undefined and ever-shifting policy toward China.

“He’s good. He’ll check in,” said Brown. “But he’s an independent person. He has a career ahead of him, a trajectory. So he’s going to do it the way he sees it.”

An even more China-obsessed GOP

Biden might support the idea of climate action, but the issue remains divisive in Congress. And when it comes to China, the country has become public enemy No. 1 for many Republicans, who use any association with Beijing, which dominates electric vehicle and solar supply chains, as an opportunity to assail Biden’s climate spending in the name of national security.

“I talk to people who say, ‘Why do people in Washington spend so much time issuing denouncements of various things in China? Don’t we have enough that we have our own problems?'” said Brown. “And people will say, ‘Well, that’s because of Congress. If you don’t denounce China enough, then you’ll get in trouble with Congress.”

Newsom has already had some Republican China hawks coming after him, like Rep. Michelle Steel (R-Calif.), who called his trip “delusional” and said he should focus more on the “Chinese Communist Party’s control of the critical mineral supply chains as he prepares to ban gasoline-powered cars by 2035.”

And while Brown also got flack from hawkish Republicans around China, he’d already run for president three times and wasn’t considering another campaign.

Deteriorating relations over trade, Taiwan, and more

It’s not only Republicans who speak about China as a threat. A drive to reduce dependency on Chinese exports underpins the Biden administration’s domestic content requirements for electric vehicle and solar and wind manufacturing credits under the Inflation Reduction Act. It’s also the logic behind recent export restrictions on semiconductors and bans on investment in certain tech sectors.

China has been striking back, including last week’s announcement that it will curb graphite exports, a key ingredient in electric vehicles. Then there are escalating tensions around China’s increasingly militaristic stance toward Taiwan, and new battle lines being drawn in the Israel-Hamas war.

“Overall, the U.S.-China relationship is at its worst in 50 years,” said Michael Dunne, an electric vehicle industry consultant with expertise in China.

But recent visits from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and a half-dozen senators — and the upcoming potential meeting between Xi and Biden at next month’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco — create an opening for Newsom.

“Until recently, the philosophy was to highlight parts of the Chinese system that the administration and Congress and many scholars don’t like,” said Brown. “Not that the technology restrictions or the visa openings or even the rhetoric has really changed fundamentally. But we are in a moment of openness.”

A China that has a lot more to teach

One of Brown’s landmark achievements in China was a 2013 agreement that established policy exchanges between Beijing officials and the California Air Resources Board.

Regulators from both countries have credited the partnerships with helping China develop its zero-emissions vehicle mandate and drastically reduce Beijing air pollution, said Yunshi Wang, director of the China Center for Energy and Transportation at the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies.

“On the zero-emission vehicle side, the transportation side, China has done pretty well,” he said. “There’s nothing there California could share with China anymore as a country.”

China’s leaps and bounds since then in manufacturing and transitioning to electric cars set the stage for some of the current conflicts over trade. But its advancements in the clean energy sector also mean that, under the right political conditions, California has a lot to learn from China now.

“Back then it was very much that the Westerners are kind of teaching you something,” said Alex Wang, who worked for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Beijing from 2004 to 2011. “It’s really the last decade that the shift has begun to be at least more equal.”

Two areas where California can learn from China are offshore wind — which China produces more of than the rest of the world combined — and high-speed rail, said Lauren Sanchez, Newsom’s top climate aide, who was in China last month and is on the current trip.

“There are areas where we are continuing to show China the way,” she said. “There are areas now where they’ve raced out ahead of us where we’re trying to catch up, and there’s this kind of third area where it’s shared priorities that we’re both learning on in real time.”

23 Oct 2023

Stealing a few minutes of extra sleep via the snooze button seems beneficial, study says

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Theresa Braine | (TNS) New York Daily News

Hitting the snooze button doesn’t hurt, and might even help one wake up, a new study has found.

While use of the snooze button tends to carry negative connotations, a study published Wednesday in the Journal of Sleep Research found otherwise. Lead researcher Tina Sundelin said in a statement, “Those who snooze on average sleep slightly shorter and feel more drowsy in the morning compared to those who never snooze.” However, they found “no negative effects of snoozing on cortisol release, morning tiredness, mood, or sleep quality throughout the night.”

Snoozing for an extra 30 minutes “improved or did not affect performance on cognitive tests directly upon rising compared with an abrupt awakening,” Sundelin and fellow researchers at the University of Stockholm said in the study. “A brief snooze period may thus help alleviate sleep inertia, without substantially disturbing sleep.”

They were even a little more quick-thinking when they did get up, she said.

“For those who usually snooze, it might even be helpful with waking,” Sundelin told NBC News.

In the two-pronged study, researchers looked at snoozing behavior in 1,732 respondents of different ages and walks of life. Tiredness and wanting to awaken slowly rather than be yanked into the day were snoozers’ two main motivations. In all, 69% of the respondents hit snooze or set several alarms at least occasionally, and 60% of those said they usually or always fall asleep between alarms.

Next, 31 regular snoozers spent two nights in a sleep lab, hitting snooze for 30 minutes one morning, and getting up at first alarm the next. Snoozers turned out to be calmer.