BY MAVIS LINNEMANN Tomatillo salsa, or salsa verde, is a workhorse in the Mexican kitchen and a fiesta for your taste buds, so why not try making it from scratch? A tomatillo looks like a little green tomato, but it’s actually a member of the gooseberry family. It has a papery thin husk that’s easily removed before eating.Tomatillos can be found in most American supermarkets, or in your local Latino or Mexican market. I usually pick mine up at the small Latin grocery store around the corner. Look for fruits that are bright green with a nice firm skin. They have […]

REUTERS: Senate Republicans blocked debate over new financial rules on the eve of a congressional hearing involving Goldman Sachs Group Inc., a move that may open the party to attacks that it’s soft on Wall Street. Democrats failed on a 57-41 vote yesterday, with 60 votes needed, to overcome unanimous Republican opposition and begin consideration of the bill calling for the biggest restructuring of financial market oversight since the 1930s. The defeat comes as Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs’s chairman and chief executive officer, is scheduled to testify today before a Senate panel investigating Wall Street’s role in the financial crisis. […]

THIS AMERICAN LIFE Act One. Eat My Shorts. A hedge fund named Magnetar comes up with an elaborate plan to make money. It sponsors the creation of complicated and ultimately toxic financial securities… while at the same time betting against the very securities it helped create. Planet Money‘s Alex Blumberg teams up with two investigative reporters from ProPublica, Jake Bernstein and Jesse Eisinger, to tell the story. Jake and Jesse pored through thousands of pages of documents and interviewed dozens of Wall Street Insiders. We bring you the result: a tale of intrigue and questionable behavior, which parallels quite closely […]

TIME: Barack Obama’s right-wing opponents cast him as a socialist failure. His left-wing hecklers see him as an overcautious hedger. But, critics notwithstanding, the President is on a path to be a huge success by the time of November’s midterm elections. Before the jabberers on the right (What about the huge debt, the broken tax pledge, the paucity of overseas accomplishments?), the yammerers on the left (Guantánamo hasn’t been closed, gays aren’t serving openly in the military, and too many policies cater to business interests) and the chides in the media (POTUS and party poll numbers are down, and Washington […]

The Philadelphia Ukulele Orchestra will perform at the Balcony Bar, upstairs at the Trocadero, Wednesday at 10 PM.

Shep Fairey at Frankford & Berks by chrissembrot RELATED: Please Don’t Eat The Banksy

BY ST. JOHN BARNED-SMITH The tarantulas here are generally pretty hard to find – I haven’t seen a single one since I’ve been here, but in the last week, they’ve been emerging from their burrows because of the torrential rainstorms we’ve been having. It’s amazing how hairy these critters are. But spiders aren’t the only thing keeping me on my toes. Paraguay is a fairly peaceful country – in fact, super tranquilo – but has been having some problems lately with a group called the EPP, the Ejercito Pueblo de Paraguay, or the People´s Army of Paraguay. It´s a group […]

KAREN HELLER: In a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans 6-1, and two-thirds of all GOP committee seats are currently vacant, the city and state Republican organizations are hell-bent on total annihilation. And they’re rocking it Philly old-style, using the dead and – perhaps a first in recent memory for the Republicans – the homeless. City GOPers challenged state-backed committee candidates using the names of one dead woman and a guy who doesn’t live in the district (picky, picky). Two homeless men were put up as candidates, though so far no one can find them, which works against success in politics. […]