Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

We won’t go back.

Pelosi: “He either is stupid, or he thinks the rest of us are.” Why not both?

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

I am pretty sure Katy Tur wasn’t always such a bootlicking sycophant.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

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Drunken Aunties Cookie Night Report: TNG

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I had intended to sorta live-blog DACN, but it got away from me.

This bumble happened:

Cookie decorated with coconut and blue icing to resemble the abomnable snowman.

Jesus.

But the real action was a profound change in the event’s dynamics: The kids stepped up this year.

We aunties basically told them what we had already baked, where the decorating supplies and equipment were, where the recipes lived, etc. Then we retired to the patio fire pit with snacks and cocktails in hand and let the kids get to it. They made us proud!

An array of festive cookies arranged on a truck-shaped Christmas cookie plate.

Above is a small sample that does not capture the wide array of confections. They got creative!

For example, the kids innovated with a plate of my failed camel cookies. Let me explain.

My spritz cookie gun has a mold that supposedly makes camel-shaped cookies:

Round metal cookie mold.

I had not tried it before this year. The resulting cookies look like “obese tauntauns,” as my sister put it:

Blob-shaped golden brown cookies.

The kids elevated these pitiable blobs by adding chocolate and toasted mini marshmallows to create a s’mores-like sandwich cookie. Clever!

We’ll have to change the name of the annual baking event when we pass the torch to the next generation for real. Genders in the teen/young adult set participate in equal numbers. That makes me happy. Progress!

Open thread.

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Cooking and Baking – What Not To Do

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So I just put a pumpkin pie in the oven.  As I was making it I re-read the ingredients list multiple times because I have fucked up pumpkin pie twice.

First time, I forgot to add the eggs.  That was not good.

The second time, I set the timer so I could turn the oven down from 425 to 350 after 15 minutes, and I got up and turned off the timer without turning down the temperature.

Let’s just say that the results each time were suboptimal!

My third specialty is putting something on the stove to reheat it, or putting water on to boil so I can make my cocoa-wheats.  (Fuck you cocoa-wheats haters.  Fight me.)   I find that nothing good happens when you forget to turn the knob on the stove to, you know, add the heat.

Anyone else have anything to contribute on this front?

*No politics, no hot takes, no blaming, no predicting, no whining about emojis, no random music links.  Just cooking and baking.

Can we do it?   Will this post win the award for the fewest comments ever?  I guess we’ll find out!

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Thursday Afternoon Open Thread

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Crow perched on a curbside pickup sign with the caption: “Where’s my goddamn Happy Meal?”
I almost never eat at Chick-fil-A because it’s owned by a family of homophobic cock-waffles. But today I found myself marooned at a fast food-desert expressway exit with few options and a hankering to try the chain’s much advertised hot pepper, honey and pimento cheese chicken sandwich.

It wasn’t half bad, but as usual after consuming fast food of any type, I feel vaguely gross. Usually I go out of my way to avoid chains, but I’m trying to reduce my exposure to people while my immune system recovers, and non-chains tend not to have drive-thru or curbside service.

I snapped the photo of the jaunty crow pictured above at the local McDonald’s a while back. Teens tend to hang out in the parking lot, probably making it rich pickings for crows.

At first I thought it was sad that local teens had no better place to hang out, but of course there are lots of other places they could go, including the many nearby parks with scenic water views. They like hanging out at McDonald’s and cruising its parking lot to see and be seen. Maybe I would too if I wasn’t an old fart.

My parents went to high school in this same town in the 1960s. (This was long before it was large enough to warrant a fast food franchise.)

Years ago, I opened an old cookbook that belonged to my grandmother, and a handwritten note in my mom’s distinctive script fell out that read, “Mama, I’m meeting [dad’s name] at the Creamette.”

I showed it to my mom, who looked like the space-time continuum was disrupted as she read it. She explained that the Creamette was a burgers and shakes place where teens used to hang out in her high school days. I bet it was better than McDonald’s.

Open thread!

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Bad Food (Open Thread)

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My mother-in-law stays sharp and active in retirement by scouring estate and yard sales, shining/fixing items up and selling them for a hefty mark-up at an antique consignment shop. Casino money!

She knows I find quirky old cookbooks amusing, especially the kind produced by amateurs for book clubs and such. So she brings oddball vintage cookbooks to me, even though our house is always on the verge of being overtaken by books.

I was reading one yesterday that was published by a women’s club in a small North Dakota town in the late 1970s. Y’all. Here’s a sample:

Gross recipes, including tapioca goulash
Holy shit, that’s repellent. All of it.

My mother loved tapioca pudding, and my grandmother loved eating at buffet restaurants. (She liked to see what she was getting.)

One time at a giant buffet with the family, Mom was overjoyed to find tapioca pudding, and she came back to the table with a big bowl of it. She took one bite and froze, spoon in mid-air. It was tartar sauce.

Anyhoo, on to dessert:

Recipe for Kool-Aid pie.

I just cannot.

It’s not snobbery that makes my gorge rise. I spent my early life in Florida trailer parks eating deviled ham on Wonder bread, Kraft singles with bologna and delicacies like canned Vienna (pronounced VYE-inna) sausages.

But good lord, Kool-Aid pie? Tapioca goulash? What was WRONG with those people?

Open thread!

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Naps, TV Notes & Pink Birds (Open Thread)

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I’m not much of a napper but have been advised to give it a try. I’m bad at it so far. If I sleep during the day, I end up spending most of the the overnight hours either on the sofa watching TV between two snoring dogs or on the porch, listening to the swamp symphony. Here’s what that sounds like.

This weekend, I watched the latest episode of “Hacks,” (HBO Max) featuring the wonderful Jean Smart as aging Boomer comedian Deborah Vance and Hannah Einbinder as Ava Daniels, Deborah’s writer-collaborator and Gen Z foil.

This week’s episode centered on “cancel culture,” and damned if “Hacks” didn’t pull off a show on that thorny topic that managed to examine the issue thoughtfully while mostly avoiding self-righteousness or dismissiveness.

“Hacks” made the too-often overlooked point that celebrities with giant megaphones who get “canceled” might lose a gig in a worst-case scenario, but they’re never really silenced and go right on being rich, famous and influential.

“Hacks” portrayed at least some of the folks who took offense in the context of the show as sincere people who want a culture that does better by all its constituent parts rather than as a ravening mob gleefully out to ruin someone.

The lesson was that a hack is someone who refuses to learn and grow. Impressively nuanced, and Bill Maher, Jerry Seinfeld and the other cancel culture whiners should take note.

A new season of “The Great American Baking Show” has dropped on the free Roku channel. Haven’t watched it yet, but the British version got me through some tough times, particularly after the 2016 election.

I’ve also learned a few things about baking from watching that show. Baking has never been a strength for me. I’m a home cook who likes to improvise; I tend to struggle with discipline and precise instructions. (Probably a life metaphor in there somewhere).

Bill is watching “Outer Range” on Prime, which features Barbra Streisand’s stepson Josh Brolin as a rancher with a supernatural pasture. The concept is intriguing (big hole in a pasture that facilitates time travel when people, animals, etc., jump or fall in), but there doesn’t seem to a cohesive plot, just a series of loosely connected vignettes.

So when I try to watch that, I usually end up wandering off to listen to the frogs sing and the owls hoot and the insects trill. It makes more sense.

Open thread!

PS: Here’s a gift link to a WaPo story about flamingos’ triumphant return to Florida. Last year after Hurricane Idalia, we talked a bit here about flamingo sightings in the state. I couldn’t be happier about the prospect that flamingos are repopulating the area — God knows we need their vivid goofiness now more than ever!

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Butter Lamb!

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Here’s this year’s edition of my locally famous butter lamb:

Lamb made of butter for Easter table

As usual, I see only the flaws. For one thing, this one looks a bit haughty, perhaps owing to the camera angle. (Our kid has a saying: The higher the camera angle, the lower the self-esteem…)

Here’s a Wikipedia explainer for anyone who’s wondering what a butter lamb is. And here’s an illustrated tutorial I did in a blog post several years back.

I’ve been making butter lambs ever since one long-ago year my snowbird in-laws found themselves without southbound relatives visiting for Easter who could bring a store-bought version from a Buffalo supermarket and were unable to locate one for sale in Florida. So, probably for 15 or 20 years now. The lambs are simple to make if you’re determined and patient, and I look forward to doing it every year.

Since Easter 2020, we’ve dropped off the lamb for a feast we did not attend, but tomorrow we are dining with family again. We’ll get to enjoy the buttery sculpture on Easter rolls firsthand!

That’s all I got. Open thread!

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