This, my last post of the year, is not a political post. No, it's about my cooking -- how I wish it were fiction --and what I've learned so far.
1. Cooking is like sex. If you're mad at someone, you simply cannot cook for them.
Wednesday night was to be pork tenderloin, but my husband got beans and rice instead. When Mr. M asked what was for dinner and I said, "Frijole negros and rice pilaf." This stumped him.
2. If you need to curse, duck fat works.
Tuesday night I tried a new chicken recipe from the back of a can of Old Bay. I took a quick bite at the counter and it was fine. Delicious, actually.
Until my husband looked up from his plate and gasped, "you put two cups of water in the rice, right?" "No," I said, waving him off, lost in the reverie of my cooking triumph, "just one."
The rice, desperately required by the chicken, was a glob of hard grain.
So I got back on the horse last night with a pork tenderloin recipe. My tenderloin inspiration comes from the Publix cooking lady who fed me samples she'd cooked in brown sugar. She made it look so easy, and I was so hungry.)
As I was carefully measuring out the black pepper -- 3 tablespoons were called for in this rub -- the mammoth container dumped a vast amount into my too-late-to-start-over mix. It was like the clumps of ice in your tea that hit you in the face.
I scooped out as much pepper as I could, visually estimated that 3 tablespoons remained, added more brown sugar, and hoped.
But I sneezed four times rubbing the rub on the meat. When it came out of the oven, one bite left my lips burning. My husband was the only one who could tolerate it. Poor Mr. M had a hard-boiled egg sandwich -- and, over loud protests, some wretched canned yams, which my husband forcibly fed him.
"Some people just don't have a taste for sweet potatoes," I said, provoking an evil glare from my husband.
After the pair trudged upstairs for baths, I tried once more for redemption, glutton that I am. "My Own Perfect Roast Chicken" recipe by "Tom P" beckoned from my ipad. I've had decent luck with roasted chickens, and this one hooked me.
Tom P's recipe sounds fantastic, and based on the enthusiastic comments, utterly fool proof. The only problem is it calls for "preserved lemons," which I'd never heard of, and they take some time to make.
But then again, Tom P said the lemons were easy. And mission critical for his perfect roasted chicken. Just throw sixteen lengthwise lemon wedges into a bowl with sea salt, lemon juice and olive oil. Let ferment for seven days.
By some miracle, I had all the ingredients and forged ahead. But something was wrong: Tom P also said this concoction would go into a two-cup pyrex bowl (which I had already measured) and it looked like a lot of stuff to fit in that little bowl.
Quickly I re-read the lemon part again. Yep. I'd totally botched it. The olive oil goes in after seven days of fermentation. Kill me now. So I wiped the oil off the lemon wedges, rinsed them, dried them, and made them one more time, sans olive oil.
Here's what "preserved lemons" are supposed to look like:
Here are mine, two hours into fermentation:
Oh well. At least I've still got my neighbor fan, Mindy, even if she is thin and tan. She bakes a pre-seasoned turkey in a plastic bag with no shame, and she'll tell anyone, even her mother-in-law.
Ever since she saw me popping popcorn in a pot the caveman way, she thinks I'm some kind of kind of gourmet chef. But I think it was a bite of my ribeye that pushed her over. Because of Gordon Ramsay I can actually pull off a good pan-seared steak.
When I make "my perfect roast chicken" in eight days, with its precious preserved lemons, I'll file a complete report. If not? Well then duck fat chicken anyway.
So, cheers. Here's to better days in the kitchen next year.
A onesy for grown women, complete with "wrist cuffs."
More IRS agents.
The health care penalty is really a tax, as are those premiums you'll soon be forced to pay. The mandate is just a harmless "financing mechanism," so argued the Administration in federal court.
Blue Cross & Blue Shield will just be another IRS branch.
A heavily taxed inheritance.
Because you didn't earn it and you don't deserve it.
. Just look at these greedy devisees. Besides, their parents won't be around to feel the pain, anyway.
As for leaving taxes on Wall Street's billion-dollar bailout bonuses alone, what of it? Don't go changing the subject.
A blanket for Bradley Manning, the beneficent Wikileaks booster.
This misunderstood, court-martialed man is being abused. Meanwhile, his beneficiary Julian Assange lolly gags in an English manor. It's shameful.
More abacuses for the CBO.
Obamacare passed for the reason Hillarycare did not: the cost to the private sector -- at least another trillion -- was excluded from the CBO's cost calculations. Well played, Nance!
My mother called me one day and said, "have you seen 'What the Bleep!'" "What's the matter?" I said. "Are you there, mom? Are you okay?"
The Bleep reminds me of Christmas, because we're not supposed to say it any more.
Last night we gathered around with our popcorn to watch the Charlie Brown Christmas special on ABC. And I was shocked. Just look at the title! And Linus had the gall to quote scripture. It's astounding that the network aired it. ABC, you'd better watch out for the FCC!
After all, the Federal Reserve today ordered the small-town Payne County Bank in Perkins, Oklahoma -- population roughly 2700 -- to take down all religious symbols. No crosses, no bible verses, and certainly no "Merry Christmas" buttons allowed.
The Feds said these things violated the "discouragement" clause of Regulation B of the banking regulations:
“…the use of words, symbols, models and other forms of communication … express, imply or suggest a discriminatory preference or policy of exclusion.”
Yet I can't help but wonder whether Muslim employees of the bank would be allowed to keep their head scarves.
The U.S. Justice Department is suing a school district because it would not allow a Muslim teacher three weeks of unpaid leave to go to Mecca.
A prisoner in California persuaded a judge to recognize his "Festivus" religion so the inmate could get special food.
The tolerate-only-certain-religions, Xmas movement is making inroads everywhere. It's even made its way to my neighborhood.
At Mr. M's school party today, the children lined up on the red carpet for a class photo while the mommarazzi snapped away.
"Happy holidays," we said to each other, carefully.
UPDATE: looks like the Fed changed its mind and the tiny Payne County Bank is back in Christmas.
Hooray for Henry Hudson, the federal judge who today ruled that Obamacare's individual mandate is unconstitutional.
Specifically, he said Congress's power under the Commerce Clause, while broad, is not unlimited. Congress cannot force people to buy a product in interstate commerce.
Congress can certainly regulate participants in interstate commerce. But it can't force people who do absolutely nothing into the stream of interstate commerce.
The Administration had a frightful argument to support the mandate. Here's the essence of it:
a) Every individual in the country will need health insurance at some time point in their life.
b) If every individual doesn't pay for health insurance, the health insurance market will fail. It will be unsustainable because the people who do pay for insurance will be forced to float those who don't, in the form of higher premiums.
c) Therefore, Congress can make everyone buy health insurance. The end.
Huh? That a market might fail means government intervention to force people to buy its products is, ergo, constitutional?
However much you might like the idea of health care for all and a chicken in every pot, the issue here is federal government's power over you.
Put the Administration's argument into other contexts.
Everyone in our country will need housing at some point. Some people will skip out on their rent, or mortgage, and the folks who stay and pay will ultimately pay more, to cover the landlord's or bank's losses. Therefore, Congress can make everyone rent an apartment. Or buy a house.
What about food? Transportation?
Congress's power is not plenary. Its power is limited and Obamacare goes beyond the outer limits of Congress's power under the commerce clause, said our hero Hudson.
But hold on, said Secretary Sebelius. This mandate is constitutional under the "Necessary and Proper" clause. Nope, said the Court. The "Necessary and Proper" clause isn't an independent grant of power. It just lets Congress pass laws to effectuate and implement Constitutional laws.
But wait, try this one on, Sebelius countered. The individual mandate is really a tax. And Congress can tax anything!
The judge was not buying. For one thing, about 500 million people in Congress and within the Administration said it was a penalty, not a tax. For another, it is indeed a penalty. And you can't penalize citizens for failing to comply with an unconstitutional law.
Judge Hudson did, however, decline to issue an injunction. He noted that his order granting declaratory relief to the Commonwealth of Virginia was the equivalent of an injunction because it dealt with the constitutionality of federal law. It was, he said, "sufficient to stay the hand of the Executive branch pending appeal."
To that, Robert Gibbs said, essentially, "In your eye!" Specifically, at today's press conference, he said,
I think it is safe to say that because there are several other cases in the pipeline and because of -- again, you’ve got disparate court rulings 115 miles away -- that the bill will continue to have its day in court.
I do think it is important that even this judge ruled that the bill continues to move forward in terms of its implementation.
Did not!
So it will be up the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether Congress stayed within its outer limits, or instead reconstituted another form of government: the one in England that we fled.
There are an awful lot of obtuse legal expressions, like "go hence without day." But the old adage, "bad facts make bad law," is fairly self-evident.
So let's look at some bad facts: the rabidly anti-gay protesters at Elizabeth Edwards's funeral.
They were the Westboro whackos, the ones who picket certain military funerals -- those honoring our troops who are alleged to be gay.
At it again at Mrs. Edwards's funeral, three adults and two children waved inane epithets while Christmas carolers circled the service and kept the protesters at bay.
The group picked out the deceased Mrs. Edwards because of her inter vivos statement that she was "completely comfortable" with gay marriage. This intolerable, intolerant group is not.
But perhaps we would feel differently, were they instead condemning John Edwards's infidelity, waving placards like, "You're in a better place, Elizabeth. John will rot in hell!"
It would still be offensive. But should speech be curtailed because it's in poor taste? Or just plain stupid?
Related is whether the government can forbid these Westboro folks from protesting at military funerals. Because it raises First Amendment issues of free speech, as well as a father's right to peaceably assemble at his son's funeral, the case will be heard by United States Supreme Court. It will be a fascinating decision.
We know we can't scream "Fire!" falsely in a crowded theater because it would likely cause injury to others. It is illegal to incite a crowd to commit "imminent acts of lawlessness." But beyond that, it is hard to draw a bright line.
It is hard because we find ourselves looking at how these intrusive protesters devastate the grieving parents and other mourners. And we can't help but notice how futile is their speech since the object of their hatred is already dead.
In other words, it's impossibly difficult to exclude the merits of the message from the analysis. And regulating the content of what would otherwise be legal speech -- that it's occurring at a funeral is the main source of outrage -- is problematic, to say the least.
What if the Westboro people were protesting misogyny? Or the war? Or the draft, supposing there were one? What if they were protesting outside the house of the dead serviceman instead of the funeral service?
And what of counter-protesters, the well-intentioned people who show up to support the grieving and tell these Westboro congregants where to put it? Can they be banished?
It's a sticky wicket, this slippery slope. Before we regulate content, we must be excruciatingly circumspect.
Liberals might presently cheer the notion that Fox News be subject to an FCC "public value" test. But one day it may be MSNBC's speech that is regulated under the same rationale.
Whether speech is "good" or "bad" is in the eye of the beholder. I prefer to let free market principles work their magic on unpopular people and unpopular ideas: let the people decide.
If "God damn America" isn't a message you'd like to hear in church, worship somewhere else. The calm carolers at Mrs. Edwards's funeral did an excellent job quelling the protesters.
As Charlotte Bronte wrote in Jane Eyre, "An eager listener quickens tongue of the narrator."
The brain power on display at the global warming climate-change summit in Cancun was simply stunning. Watch alleged eggheads eagerly sign up to ban . . . umm, water. Oh, and to stick it to the U.S. of A.
For another moment of mirth, beholdliberalsocialist Lawrence O'Donnell skewer fellow liberal Alan Grayson, the same "die-now" Grayson who launched that boomeranging "Taliban Dan" ad.
This was the tastiest bit of the day, I must say.
Finally, Olby came in at a respectable third place with his "Obama is G*d d#mned wrong" rant.
This weekend I splurged on a few things at Kiehls after my Oil of Olay stopped regenerating me. As I climbed into bed with my naked face, I was reminded of a friend my mother had when I was growing up.
This woman sported quite the bouffant and more makeup than Joan Rivers: false eyelashes, the works.
Mother and I stopped by her house one day (her name has been changed to protect my mom) to drop off a casserole dish. A strange woman in a bathrobe answered the door and my mother said, "Is Joan here?" And Lord have mercy, but it was Joan! Without her face on.
My mom managed to recover -- she's stunningly clever -- and Joan said she wore her makeup all the time, even to bed. "Don has never seen me without makeup," she said with a confusing pride.
Then there is the opposite extreme. This story, from an Arab newspaper, gives an account of a man who had to identify his wife's body after she died in a car accident. But he'd never, ever seen her face. She'd always worn a burqa.
The authorities had to put a burqa back on her before her husband would even attempt to identify her. Said he,
My wife still keeps her face covered all the time even in front of her family and relatives because she has been accustomed to this since she was a child…I have to respect her wishes and not insist on seeing her face.
* * *
. . . although I have been married to my wife for nearly 10 years and have five children from her, I have not seen her face even once in my life.
I'm sorry she died, but truthfully, my thoughts are more drawn to this custom. Imagine if your face were covered 24/7.
No more makeup.
No more losing at poker.
No more botox.
No more teeth whitening.
No more feigning a look of joy when he gives you an FTD floral mug.
Until my husband looked up from his plate and gasped, "you put two cups of water in the rice, right?" "No," I said, waving him off, lost in the reverie of my cooking triumph, "just one."
The rice, desperately required by the chicken, was a glob of hard grain.
As I was carefully measuring out the black pepper -- 3 tablespoons were called for in this rub -- the mammoth container dumped a vast amount into my too-late-to-start-over mix. It was like the clumps of ice in your tea that hit you in the face.
After the pair trudged upstairs for baths, I tried once more for redemption, glutton that I am. "My Own Perfect Roast Chicken" recipe by "Tom P" beckoned from my ipad. I've had decent luck with roasted chickens, and this one hooked me.
Tom P's recipe sounds fantastic, and based on the enthusiastic comments, utterly fool proof. The only problem is it calls for "preserved lemons," which I'd never heard of, and they take some time to make. 
Oh well. At least I've still got my neighbor fan, Mindy, even if she is thin and tan. She bakes a pre-seasoned turkey in a plastic bag with no shame, and she'll tell anyone, even her mother-in-law.
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