Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

No Justins, No Peace

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Let there be snark.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

Bark louder, little dog.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Thanks for reminding me that Van Jones needs to be slapped.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Kamala Harris Is Cooking Again

Kamala Harris Is Cooking Again

by | 88 Comments

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I can’t tell you how much I love all of this.

 

ETA: Somehow the tweets disappeared:

 

 

I’m scheduling this because I could be under a foot of snow by the time it posts. Send hot chocolate.

Open thread

Reader Interactions

88Comments

  1. 1.

    Leto

    Is there something specific with the Taster’s Choice jars? Or it’s just their family drank a lot of Taster’s Choice and they kept the jars to store spices, and that habit was passed to the kids? Either way, I want more cooking shows like this.

    Next week we could be seeing a few days of snow here, as well as plunging temps. I’m glad I’m starting to fit into some of my older, warmer clothes again.

  4. 4.

    gene108

    @Leto:

     

    Family drank a lot of Taster’s Choice.

     

    Spices are kept in any available container, from the old glass Jiff peanut butter jars, to glass Smuckers jam jars, to glass marinara sauce jars, and so on.

     

    If you only need a small amount of something on hand, salsa jars are good to re-use.

  5. 5.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Leto: I save all kinds of glass bottles, peanut butter, jam, you name it. I use them to store the spices that I buy in bulk. Plastic containers stain and if you leave it in the original packaging spices lose their flavor.

  9. 9.

    TaMara (HFG)

    @schrodingers_cat: Also, I buy my spices in bulk, so containers are a must.

     

    As a housewarming gift YEARS ago, my mom gave me the tupperware spice rack. I’ve used it ever since. But I still need more, so I keep old spice jars (thank you Penzy sample boxes) and other glass containers.

  12. 12.

    schrodingers_cat

    Mindy Kaling will probably get hauled over coals for saying the beef is not eaten India by anti-caste activists. In fact in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu more than 90% Hindus eat beef. Not eating beef or being vegetarian is a Brahmin thing. And according estimates they are less than five percent may be only 2 to 3%. But they probably over represented in the Indian American community.

  13. 13.

    TaMara (HFG)

    I’ve now subscribed to her channel and I’m going to post more of her cooking shows. There’s a Monster Cookie that looks delish.

     

    If she runs a donation contest to cook with her, I’m probably going to max out. LOL

     

    Off to shovel again. Poor ducks. I mean seriously, poor babies. They’re not leaving their coop today.

  24. 24.

    Betty Cracker

    Looks like Rudy is in a heap o’ trouble (WaPo):

    When Rudolph W. Giuliani went to Madrid in August to confer with a top aide to the Ukrainian president and press for political investigations sought by President Trump, he also met with a previously unidentified client with very different interests.

    While in Spain, Giuliani stayed at a historic estate belonging to Venezuelan energy executive Alejandro Betancourt López, who had hired Trump’s personal attorney to help him contend with an investigation by the Justice Department into alleged money laundering and bribery, according to people familiar with the situation.

    A month later, Giuliani was one of several lawyers representing Betancourt in Washington. The lawyers met with the chief of the Justice Department’s criminal division and other government attorneys to argue that the wealthy Venezuelan should not face criminal charges as part of a $1.2 billion money-laundering case filed in Florida last year, said the people, who, like others in this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.

    So this is how he financed his “pro bono” work for Trump — by leaning on the DoJ to help rich crooks get off the hook. Jesus Christ, what a bunch of dumb crooks.

  30. 30.

    Roger Moore

    @gene108:

    The key thing is that Indian cooking uses spices in much greater quantities than typical European cooking, so the tiny American spice jars just won’t do.  And when you buy spices at the Indian market, they come either in bulk or in plastic bags, so you need to find your own jars to put them in.

  31. 31.

    schrodingers_cat

    BTW there is no such thing as “Indian food”. They say that food/cuisine changes every 100 miles. What people think of as “Indian food” is mostly the restaurant food from Punjab and Delhi.

  33. 33.

    Betty Cracker

    @OzarkHillbilly: Yep. The US mail, FedEx and UPS deliver to our swamp, and that is it. No pizza, no Uber, no Instacart, no anything else. On the plus side of the ledger, no Jehovah’s Witnesses or sales people of any type either.

  36. 36.

    gene108

    @schrodingers_cat:

     

     In fact in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu more than 90% Hindus eat beef.

     

    Where did you get the 90% figure from?

    Seems high, from my anecdotal experience.

  37. 37.

    Patricia Kayden

    @schrodingers_cat: Yes.  Apparently it’s not his thing. Perhaps he’s eating the wrong kind or doesn’t like spicy food.  I love it. As someone of Jamaican descent, it’s right up my alley. Can’t stand bland food.

  38. 38.

    scav

    So, <looking hopefully> a few jackel-recommended recipes for masala dosa? Because I’ve moved way outside the delivery zone of Devon and my known sources.

  39. 39.

    Emma

    My family’s (mostly) Chinese, but I still have spices like cumin and white pepper in their original packaging from like 2007 that my mom then encased in baggies. And yes, they do still have their flavor :)

     

    Also, Kamala’s and Mindy’s grandfather and dad look like they could have come from the same ancestral village as my (half-)Indian grandfather, so cute!

  41. 41.

    Roger Moore

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Perhaps he’s eating the wrong kind or doesn’t like spicy food.

    Or he’s one of these people who is afraid of new and different things.  Some people simply refuse to move outside their comfort zone and justify it by saying anything but what they’re used to is terrible.  Criticizing something you’ve never tried and using that criticism as an excuse not to try it is the essence of conservatism.

  43. 43.

    Emma

    @schrodingers_cat: is this a relatively recent and/or localized phenomenon? I’m Singaporean, and the Hindu Indian community in Singapore (many of whose ancestors immigrated as laborers during British rule, so not exactly brahmins, I’m assuming) are pretty strictly vegetarian. Eating meat is a pretty strict distinction between the Hindu Indians vs. Muslim Indians and Malays.

     

    Ok, have to go to work now, sorry if I miss the whole discussion!

  45. 45.

    Mainmata

    @gene108: It seems to me that, unless you are a small restaurant or have a huge family keeping spices in an instant coffee container practically guarantees that they will go bad long before they get all used up. We reuse regular spice containers or, at most small jam/jelly jars.

  46. 46.

    Betty Cracker

    @schrodingers_cat: I did see that comment from Nichols (whom I do NOT follow). He’s entitled to his food preferences, of course, but where he went off the rails was stating it as a universal truth, e.g., something like “everybody knows this and pretends otherwise” or something like that. He seemed to imply some sort of “PC” motive behind the popularity of Indian food in the US, which is dumb and wrong in at least a thousand ways.

  48. 48.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Emma: Do you know for sure that they are not Brahmins?  Naipaul whose family were indentured servants in Trinidad was famously proud of his Brahmin roots.Most Indians eat meat, even beef is not a universal taboo. Many Brahmin communities eat meat or fish or both. That all Indians are vegetarian is not true if you look at the actual numbers but that definitely is the conventional wisdom.

  49. 49.

    Roger Moore

    @Emma:

    You need to be careful about using immigrant communities as a guide to the culture they came from.  The people there are not necessarily a random selection from the parent society. Also, and this is a key, immigration can change culture.  That can include adopting exaggerated versions of cultural traditions as a way of avoiding assimilation.

  50. 50.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Betty Cracker:   We have some Jehovah’s Witnesses but they never venture down the drive. Every now and again I’ll find some of their literature stuffed into my gate next to the “No Trespassing” sign.

  51. 51.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Mainmata: I am not a small restaurant and I only cook for two. And buy spices in pounds not oz and store them in glass jars. The key is to buy seeds and grind only what you need. The only powdered spices I buy are cayenne and turmeric.  A pound of cayenne probably lasts me for a couple of months

  52. 52.

    Baud

    @schrodingers_cat:

     

     

    Old survey and all of India, but…

     

    According to the 2006 Hindu-CNN-IBN State of the Nation Survey, 31% of Indians are vegetarian, while another 9% also consume eggs (ovo-vegetarian).[62]Among the various communities, vegetarianism was most common among the SwaminarayanCommunity, Brahmins, Lingayat, Vaishnav Community, Jain community, and, less frequent among Muslims (3%) and residents of coastal states. Other surveys cited by FAO[63] and USDA[64][65]estimate 40% of the Indian population as being vegetarian.

    ETA: I assume the percentage of non beef eaters is higher.

  53. 53.

    Roger Moore

    @schrodingers_cat:

    I assume all Hindus being vegetarians is kind of like all Muslims being teetotalers, all Mormons abstaining from coffee, etc.  That’s the way the religion says it’s supposed to be, and they may even maintain that it’s true in public, but what they actually do in private can be very different.

  55. 55.

    schrodingers_cat

    That seems exaggerated. Plus all India surveys have little meaning. You need to see regional variations states like Gujarat and Rajasthan have more vegetarians while states like Maharashtra and the southern states and Kashmir don’t have as many.

    Plus vegetarianism is considered godly so people also lie on these polls.

  58. 58.

    scav

    @Betty Cracker: Poor dears are so desparate for attention and to think they are center to everyone’s — anyone’s! — lives.  I can entirely guarentee I’ve never considered the republican base’s tender sensabilities when pondering which exact meal I most needed next: masala dosa, pupusa, bulgogi, swimming rama.  Well, ok, I did deliberately choose the dim sum chicken feet to freak out a midwesterner but he was my father, I was 12ish and he had chosen the restaurant  — he just couldn’t take food that looked like the original animal.

     

    ETA, We all ate the sushi / shashimi in his presence because we simply adored it.  There was usually extra tempura for him.

  60. 60.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Leto: I lived with Indians for a while and really fell in love with Indian cooking during that time. That was the first time I’d ever seen spices kept in jars and poured out rather than shaking dainty little bits from teeny overpriced shaker jars.

     

    But they weren’t Taster’s Choice jars. As I recall, they were just random glass jars.

     

    I also learned during that time that you can turn ANYTHING (e.g. cream of wheat in the morning) into Indian food with those spice jars.

  62. 62.

    gene108

    @schrodingers_cat:

     

    I’ve worked with over 100, during the last 20+ years.

     

    I can’t think of many, if any, who ate beef.

     

    Non-Brahmins from Kerala, though, had a fairly high percentage of beef eaters.

  66. 66.

    Emma

    @Roger Moore: yes, I understand, I was thinking whether that may have been the case when I was writing my earlier comment. Maybe one day I’ll bother checking JSTOR for historical dietary data among the diaspora vs. the remaining communities.

     

    edit: I probably should also have clarified that a lot of the Indian immigration to Singapore was from Tamil Nadu, to the point where Tamil is one of our official languages. Before Lee Kuan Yew died, he went on a glad-handing tour of the state to hear all about how his policies enriched the villages, etc etc

  67. 67.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Roger Moore:   You mean like how much beer do you need for a fishing trip with a Baptist?
    A case.
    How much beer do you need for a fishing trip with 2 Baptists?
    A six pack.

  68. 68.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @schrodingers_cat: One of the women in the house was a real believer in cooking from scratch. I watched her once create ras malai, starting from curdling the milk to make the paneer. I’ve done that myself a few times just to see if I could. I also loved watching her make puri, loved watching the amazing way they puff up as they fry.

    I think she may have been an outlier. I’ve noticed puri is not available in a lot of Indian restaurants around here, they seem to lean toward naan. And I suspect that not many people do the home made paneer either.

  69. 69.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Omnes Omnibus: In the United States Indian food is usually short hand for the food you get in Indian restaurants which is mostly cuisine from Punjab for the most part with some Mughal (Delhi) influences. There is far more to food from the subcontinent than that was the point I was trying to make.

  70. 70.

    gene108

    @scav:

     

     

     

    So, a few jackel-recommended recipes for masala dosa?

    Do you want a recipe for the masala? Or how to make the dough / batter for the dosa?

    It’s a two part process, unless you know of an Indian grocery store in your area that has ready made Dosa batter.

  71. 71.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: Naan is baked, pooris have to be fried one at time so pooris are far more labor and time intensive. Pooris are typical festival food because they are rich. I love piping hot pooris. Have you had bhatooras? which are gigantic pooris usually served with spicy chickpeas? That is one Punjabi dish to die for.

  73. 73.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @schrodingers_cat: Have you had bhatooras? which are gigantic pooris usually served with spicy chickpeas? That is one Punjabi dish to die for.

    No, that’s new to me. I’ll have to keep a lookout for it. There is in fact one restaurant around here with “Punjab” in the name, so I wonder if they are Punjabi and might serve it.

  76. 76.

    scav

    @gene108: &

    @schrodingers_cat: (multiple)

    <Back from coffee.> Aha Thanks! I’ll probably need both (being that far out of the zone) but in a severe pinch could wallow in the filling alone if I scrounge up some sauces in jars.  The batter will maybe remain a goal — my general flatbread attemps are still dicey although crepes are ok, so there is hope. The recommendation of a cookbook will no doubt help with all the lurking desires I forget I have.  a dal and some aloo thing. a cauliflower gizmo . . .

     

     

    eTA Palak Paneer!!!!,!!

  79. 79.

    Roger Moore

    @schrodingers_cat:

    I’m just pointing out that every religion has a difference between what the rules say people are supposed to do and what they actually do.  And, as you say above, people lie and say they’re better about following the rules than they actually are.  Kaling actually talks about this in the video when she mentions various ways people break the rules- her grandfather eating eggs when grandma wasn’t watching, her and her friends sneaking out and eating fast food, etc.

  81. 81.

    Michael Cain

    @OzarkHillbilly: Visited my BIL in rural Kansas last month.  He and his wife moved into their new house several weeks ago.  The USPS told them that because it was a new address that had not been previously serviced, they couldn’t get home delivery.  Even though the USPS delivery truck runs right by their driveway.  So they have a box at the Post Office in town that they check any time one of them is running some other errands.

     

    UPS delivers to them.  We have apparently reached the point where there are addresses serviced by UPS but not by the USPS.

  82. 82.

    germy

    @Michael Cain:  Republicans hack away at the Post Office budget.  Then when people complain about bad service, republicans can point and say “See?  Government doesn’t work.”

  83. 83.

    RobertDSC-Work

    She’s my Senator and I’ve voted for her several times. Happy to have her in the race and she is my choice between her, Warren, and Klobuchar.

     

    (None of the men interest me and Tulsi can take a flying leap.)

  84. 84.

    gene108

    @schrodingers_cat:

     

    I made some sambar the other day and I think I put too much tamarind in it. Do you have any suggestions as to how I might be able to fix it.

    How to fix in already made sambar?

    Add a bit more daal is the first thought that pops to mind.

  85. 85.

    Shana

    @schrodingers_cat: A couple of years ago our synagogue had a guest speaker who brought along copies of her cookbook called Spice & Kosher: Exotic Cuisine of the Cochin Jews. Evidently there’s a small community of jews who have lived in this area of Kerala India for about 2,000 years.  There are some very yummy dishes and they’re almost nothing like any Indian food I’ve had in a restaurant.

  86. 86.

    bluefoot

    I love that Sen Harris called Mindy’s father “Uncle” – that right there is totally Indian.  That and spices in random jars, though I’ve never seen an Indian kitchen with spices all in the same type of jar; it’s always an assortment.

    and now I’m hungry.

  87. 87.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Shana: There is a small community of Marathi speaking Jews in Mumbai too. They call themselves Bene Israel Jews. Yes the food I grew up eating is nothing like the Indian restaurant food  here. It is heavy on seafood and coconut.

  88. 88.

    MomSense

    I just watched this three times in a row and it made me so happy AND it also makes me miss my friend terribly.  One of my closest friends died this year.  Much of our friendship involved going to see movies and cooking Indian food together.

     

    ????

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