That's really stupid. Some of us have non-menstrual activities that repeat every 28 days.
Wait, I see. This is still stupid, but you can choose: "Repeats: Weekly, Repeat every: 4 weeks"
i suppose that now would be the time to point out that iCal doesn't have that problem...
3 - Not helpful for values of 27 or 29 days.
Why do you have to schedule your period? Doesn't it just happen?
Better living through chemistry, I assume.
6 - Sometimes it's helpful to have it on your calendar so that you can take it into account when timing vacations, etc.
You know it's going to be exactly 29 or 28 or 27 days, no more no less, for months ahead of time?
timing vacations, etc.
"etc.", it's is where interesting things happen
10. better living through chemistry, I assume
you know, i was really hoping someone would be kind enough to troll baa with a post about the fact that 5 years into this war, McCain still doesn't grasp the whole Sunni-Shiia thing. CnC material right there.
Not helpful for values of 27 or 29 days
Not to mention people whose values creep into the low 30s, and people who are missing an ovary and cycle every 56 days.
You know it's going to be exactly 29 or 28 or 27 days, no more no less, for months ahead of time?
Becks is into low-tide clam-digging under the full moon? Help me out here.
kind enough to troll baa with a post about the fact that 5 years into this war
Much as I like baa, anybody still planning to vote Republican in 2008 isn't open to being swayed by the bleeding obvious.
Remind doesn't have this problem.
Becks is into low-tide clam-digging
IYKWIM
; Garbage day is every other Thursday, *but* if Monday of that week
; is a holiday (is omitted), then garbage day is moved to Friday. We use
; SCANFROM so that we can search for Mondays up to a week in the past
; (Apr 3 is a Monday).
FSET _omitthurs(d) iif(isomitted(d), "OMIT Thu AFTER", "")
REM Apr 3 2006 *14 SCANFROM [trigger(today()-7)] SATISFY 1
REM [trigger(trigdate()+3)] [_omitthurs(trigdate())] MSG garbage day
What could be simpler?
I don't think most women refer to it as garbage day.
it looks scary complicated, what is simpler than just remember in your head
No one wants another post about how Roger L Simon is an idiot, but this is pretty special: you owe me, Obama!
17. I think we should troll the entire country. Somone, quick, finance a nationwide televsion ad: "You decided to vote for Bush in '04, and look how that turned out. Don't trust your own judgment in '08. Vote for the candidate you don't suppoort."
14: I thought the missing ovary thing usually meant relatively normal periods, but only releasing an egg every other month. Huh.
23: Jesus 8. Christ, Roger L. Simon is evidently the offspring of an illicit union between Barbara Kingsolver and Dinesh D'Souza. Cloaking himself in his Kindergarten friendship with Andrew Goodman? It's a good thing I didn't eat breakfast, because the dry heaves didn't do any harm to my keyboard.
McCain still doesn't grasp the whole Sunni-Shiia thing. CnC material right there.
I mentally substitute "Walter Sobchak" whenever I see McCain's name.
Wasn't there a rule about politics on non-political threads? Shame on you FL, look what you started.
26: yeah, it's pretty fucking bad. Read the Sadly, No post for a link to this bio where his civil rights work sounds less helpful.
Wasn't there a rule about politics on non-political threads? Shame on you FL, look what you started.
In FL's defense, 23 was totally on topic (the topic being "bloody cunts", of course).
23: isn't that awesome? Like Peggy Noonan channeling Paul Wellstone.
I wanted to send Simon the old Jesse Taylor post on what Tupac thought about Paul Wellstone's funeral but it seems to have disappeared from the internets.
23: I saw that yesterday and man, what an insufferable dick that guy is. It's a crying shame that our laws prevent him and David Horowitz from getting married.
What with the loss of the use of his left hand, it's amazing the Olympic-level wanking he's able to perform with just Ol' Righty.
For the love of god, don't turn this into a political thread. Let us recover from the cage match with a nice relaxing discussion about how menstruation connects women to the moon and the tides and Gaia and is a blessing from the goddess.
34. Do you wear India print wraparounds and patchouli too, Kraab?
I once made a fake newsletter for a friend that contained a number of placenta recipes for a new mom to enjoy with friends and family. I believe it was called Womanspirit Rising.
My mother owned Indian wraparound skirts, had a whole shelf of books for her daughters about how your period is a gift from the moon goddess & becoming a woman, gave birth to her last two children at home, & buried a placenta in the backyard. Top THAT. (but no patchouli)
What's wrong with Indian wraparound skirts?
The secret is to soak it in milk overnight to draw out the blood. Then slice and fry with onions.
I own a ghanaian shirt made of cheerfully printed fabric. Blended essential oils rather than branded scent.
Also, I have several clocks (car clock among them) that drift, so I find myself staring at the clock and thinking for about 30 seconds to figure out what time it is.
Katherine wins. I was actually thinking about your mom the other day and wondering why she disappeared, at least as a commenter.
44: Now I'm going to have to dig around in my pack rat piles and see if I can find that newsletter so we can swap recipes.
46: So you know why she disappeared in real life?!?
I read an article about some British hippies throwing a dinner party where they would all beautifully and meaningfully share in eating a friend's recently passed placenta. They were gleeful that, since it was freely given, the placenta was vegan. And tasted like foie gras, apparently.
And tasted like foie gras, apparently.
I believed it up to there.
And tasted like foie gras, apparently.
How would they know? What kind of hypocritical vegans eat foie gras?
So veganism hinges on the free will of the entity being consumed? I always wondered about chewing on your own hang-nails.
46: There is something that lurks between commenting and real life.
43. Nothing's wrong with Indian wraparound skirts. Many women (wimmin?) I know deeply regret that they can't wear them any more, as cool, colourful and convenient. But, unless they want to be mistaken for DFHs, they can't. Possibly the pychological impact of punk rock was less shattering in your neck of the woods.
52: If it's a compulsion then I'm guessing they still consider it wrong. Twice the guilt: delicious!
He's left comments at my site within the past week.
Where is w-lfs-n to point out that the Romans ate placenta all the time (at least the better off Romans did)?
59. I've got a Roman recipe somewhere. If anybody cares I'll post it later.
So it wasn't the lead in the water that destroyed the Roman Empire after all. It was the rich, foie gras-like placenta clogging their arteries.
re: 49
A British TV chef made an episode of his show centred around cooking a placenta for a party held by the new parents. He made paté, I think, and something else.
Placenta with garum and flamingo tongue. Yum!
62: Maybe they were the same? Because I remember a paté and a something else, too (like a sautée) from the article I read -- which I feel was in a British cookery mag.
61 is great.
Nothing's wrong with Indian wraparound skirts. Many women (wimmin?) I know deeply regret that they can't wear them any more, as cool, colourful and convenient. But, unless they want to be mistaken for DFHs, they can't.
I think whether or not they are mistaken for DFHs would depend on their haircut, jewelry, makeup, etc. Not just one element of the wardrobe.
re: 65
Could be. It was Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, anyway [the tv show].
"Gah" was primarily for the pretension. Now I know who it was, it all makes sense.
I am a very clean fucking hippy, and I wear French perfume.
Good gravy. I Google "Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall" and "placenta" and find comments by one lizardbreath. I wonder if she's ours.
So veganism hinges on the free will of the entity being consumed?
Yes, this seems odd. Because cows want to be milked. They certainly start complaining if you don't milk them. So is it OK for a vegan to milk a cow and throw the milk away, or give it to a calf, but not to drink it herself?
Okay, I give up: what does 'dfh' mean?
re: 74
Dirty Fucking Hippy, I think.
The rate of degeneration of that comment thread makes the best efforts here look amateurish
I have access to free, grass-fed beef liver. Can anyone here convince me that I should take some of it and cook it? All I know is that my mother liked liver, but wouldn't touch beef - only calves'.
My wife was kind of bummed that she never got to see her placenta - they whisked it away too soon.
73: Vegans are basically opposed to the very existence of the modern dairy cow, which is frankly a weirdo mutant creature which could not possibly survive in the wild and is utterly dependent on human beings. It's sort of like how lots of people want to force deaf parents going through IVF to selectively destroy deaf embryos, in order to make sure that in future deaf people won't exist at all.
76: Seriously. They just straight lead with the Nazis.
JRoth, you need to casserole it. You can't treat it like calves liver. It's a very strong flavour and needs lots of herbs and spices, and ideally a bottle of red wine (to cook in). But it's all good.
I think the vegan reaction to "cows want to be milked is"
1. that's for calves!
2. I would guess that the amount they produce depends on the amount that they're milked, too.
That said, we have whole species of domesticated animals, & liberating the cows of America to graze free on the prairies doesn't seem like it would work out so great for a lot of cows.
liberating the cows of America to graze free on the prairies doesn't seem like it would work out so great for a lot of cows.
Indeed. Vegan bears are called pandas and they live in China. The ones in America are the other sort.
Dsquared is basically right about vegans. Or at least that was more or less the line my parents took when they were vegans. That, and the reason that the dairy cows have all the spare milk -- because their calves have been killed and eaten.
frankly a weirdo mutant creature which could not possibly survive in the wild and is utterly dependent on human beings
Like the modern turkey (can barely walk, incapable of reproducing on their own). Or indeed the modern human being, come to think of it.
75: Thanks. I have no idea why, but the first possible meaning that came to mind was 'dyke for hire'.
Also, can no one yet have picked up and run with the low-hanging fruit in 17?
I am a very clean fucking hippy
I do not think that is possible.
I do know one guy who definitely believes that he saved his wife's life from some very serious illness by stealing a placenta from the hospital in which he worked so he could feed it to her.
84: Aw, Gonerill. People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.
(I saw like 5 wild turkeys cruising around in the woods near a friend's mom's house. I almost fell over.)
It is true: I put honey in cylindrical jars.
88: This deserves elaboration. What was the illness? Why the placenta?
vegans don't eat honey.
But that's not to say that vegans haven't had their own part to play in the liberal fascist takeover of America.
On that wacky thread I was reading earlier, folks were claiming that eating one's placenta cured/prevented post-partum depression.
80: That's a promising start. Should I be looking for French recipes, or somewhere else?
It is true: I put honey in cylindrical jars.
Busted, I say. If only text were here, he would say it funnily.
93: You know, I was a vegan for a while, and then fell fully off the wagon when I was in France for a time. How big a liberal fascist must I have been to become less of a liberal fascist in France?
I do know one guy who definitely believes that he saved his wife's life from some very serious illness by stealing a placenta from the hospital in which he worked so he could feed it to her.
Golly. Also, I think you should immediately make an arthouse caper movie about this.
95. French would be good. Almost any tradition I should think. I just googled up a load of recipes for sauteing and quick frying it, but that would be a bit overpowering for my taste. Maybe I'm just used to the casserole approach (I don't use a recipe, throw in whatever's to hand and a looad of onions.)
98. Or you could cook the placenta with capers.
Where is w-lfs-n to point out that the Romans ate placenta all the time (at least the better off Romans did)?
On the train. I was thinking, though, that if I had gone through all the stress and trouble of bearing and birthing a child, I'd at least want some protein out of the deal.
It is true: I put honey in cylindrical jars.
Then you're doing it wrong. (That's what I do too, though.)
Elizabeth David was once commissioned to write a short promotional booklet of recipes containing capers for a grower's association. She ended up returning the fee along with a note saying that she had come up a number of recipes with capers in them, but in every case felt that they were much better if you left the capers out.
97: I think it's the reverse. Staying vegan in France would make you the biggest liberal fascist. Hitler, even. He was vegetarian, right?
Well, well. I get home and go straight to my Apicius and I'm wrong. He doesn't have a recipe for placenta, only for wombs.
So I turn to a lesser authority, a collection of translated recipes from antiquity published by the British Museum, and there is a recipe for placenta from Cato, de Agricultura. Only it isn't what you'd expect. It's a fresh cheese and honey pastry cake, clearly ancestral to baklava, but big enough to feed a banquet. Looks tasty, but nothing like foie gras.
The editors claim that the modern sense of the word only dates from the 17th century, but I've no way of checking that.
Anyway. It seems the Romans didn't pig out on placenta, only on sticky pastries (and flamingos).
I hadn't read 87 when I posted 101.
pwnage doesn't require consent, ben.
Call me a dirty fucking moon-loving hippie if you want, but not having a period was one of the things that put me off the Mirena. I thought it might be a bit weird. Turns out it's fine though. But I do miss my Mooncup. Also, one previously unthoughtof advantage (or concern!) of home educating is that my daughters are largely ignorant of disposable sanpro - successful, though inadvertent, brainwashing on my part.
a nice relaxing discussion about how menstruation connects women to the moon and the tides and Gaia and is a blessing from the goddess
Over a cup of tea.
a nice relaxing discussion about how menstruation connects women to the moon and the tides and Gaia and is a blessing from the goddess
Over a cup of tea.
I was thinking, though, that if I had gone through all the stress and trouble of bearing and birthing a child, I'd at least want some protein out of the deal.
Duh, that's what you eat the baby for.
Call me a dirty fucking moon-loving hippie if you want
You've no idea how badly I want that, you dirty fucking moon-loving hippie.
You've no idea how badly I want thatyou, you dirty fucking moon-loving hippie.
We all know that's what you're thinking.
apo, slimy fucking preppies (SFP's) aren't the clean counterpart of DFHs...
102: Capers, like anchovies, do not deserve their poor reputation. They go very well with smoked salmon and cream cheese, to name just one dish.
I'm astonished to learn that capers have a poor reputation, having greatly enjoyed them in many contexts, but especially in my frugal youth when accompanying pork piccata. Yum yum.
113: That would be Kotsko, actually.
44 to 43, since no one else has noticed
Let us recover from the cage match with a nice relaxing discussion about how menstruation connects women to the moon and the tides and Gaia and is a blessing from the goddess.
Sir Kraab has gotten the godess religion.
I'm astonished to learn that capers have a poor reputation
Only amongst heathens.
120: Hey, Becks brought up menstruating. I was just working with I had to stave off Race: The Sequel.
I once made a fake newsletter for a friend that contained a number of placenta recipes for a new mom to enjoy with friends and family. I believe it was called Womanspirit Rising.
That is very funny.
But, now I am a little concerned about letting Kraab or m/tch cook for me.
97: How far did you fall, oudemia? As I remember, you and CA were vegan for a long time.
A while back Caroline asked if we were the only vegetarians in the whole world, and I mentioned you guys (and her aunt Bonnie and a few others) to help convince her that she and her family were not freaks of nature.
123: Don't worry, M/tch isn't in touch with his womanspirit.
My 9 year old has just decided to become vegetarian.
OT: "The sequel 'Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay' premiered at the South by Southwest film festival recently to a raucous, packed house. (The movie, which also marks Hurwitz and Schlossberg's directing debut, opens in theaters April 25.) This time, Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) are suspected of being terrorists after Kumar sneaks a high-tech bong onto a flight to Amsterdam, which everyone onboard thinks is a bomb. The two get sent to Gitmo but manage to break free, ending up in Miami and Texas and -- of course -- running into Neil Patrick Harris playing a mushroom-eating, hooker-loving, unicorn-riding version of himself."
As long as your 9 year old is eating eggs & dairy, there shouldn't be any problem, health wise.
The only health objections I've ever seen are to full blown veganism for children and a few other nutritionally sensitive groups.
Also, I bet in the UK it isn't that hard to get eggs from chickens raised in minimally decent conditions.
124: Yes, for 7 years or so! But truthfully, our fallen state is limited to cheeeeeeeese, wonderful cheeeeeeeese. And butter. Otherwise, we are very much nice upstanding, soy milk drinking vegetarians.
Whence "otherwise"? Otherwise you might be very much nice updstanding soy-milk-drinking vegans, but why otherwise vegetarians? Is cheese animal flesh?
132 nails it!
Seriously, the "otherwise" was to limit our falleness only.
Asilon, I commend to you the action of my ex-wife who, when her/our son was sixteen, learnt from him that he had become a vegetarian. Right, she said. Here you are: a cheese sandwich. She kept that up, without varying either the bread or the cheese, for a fortnight. Faced with the choice between principles, cooking for himself, and another cheese sandwich, what was the boy to do?
I used to have ducks, back when I lived in the country. They had the spare bath in the winter, and laid eggs every morning. Given that they were spoiled rotten [the ducks, not the eggs], and had been rescued as ducklings from a fate à l'orange, we did not feel that we were exploiting them.
The raccoons, however, exploited us by eating half the vegetable garden and all of the pot. I still fantasise about a revenge decked in a lovely fur coat. But only every 28 days.
134 - M would just cook herself dinner. I really don't have a problem with it - we raised them to find out about the world and make decisions for themselves; we can hardly complain when they do!
128 - she's quite anti-dairy tbh. But soy milk has calcium in it, doesn't it? Eggs are ok, she says, as long as they are the free-est-range possible. She likes beans so that's ok. And fish is ok too, as long as it's from sustainable sources. She and the 11 year old have both developed quite a conscience about this recently. The 11 year old has a problem in that she's not really into vegetables, and the texture of pulses makes her gag, so she's not making any big changes, just wants to cut down the amount of meat she eats and try new things.
The 5 year old thinks this is ridiculous and that animals are for eating, and that's all there is to it.
115: yes!
Capers must have been the victim of a journalistic drive-by, like fruitcakes. Some yuppy foodie made capers a running joke, and suddenly they don't taste good.
Most cheese contains rennet, which comes from calves' stomach lining and contains bacteria that help transform milk into cheese.
135: Are duck eggs significantly different, taste-wise, from chicken eggs? I sort of want to get some egg-laying creatures, and I'd much rather have ducks than chickens.
Placentawise, we buried ours, but a couple we knew ate theirs. Their baby is now an international actor / translator / journalist / film director / language teacher.
Another domestic species that would not survive in the wild is the apple tree. They produce so many apples that the branches tear off if you don't prop them up with 2 x 2s.
136: There is no inherent problem with pure vegetarianism at that age either, it just can take a bit more adjustment from a bog-standard western diet. The main pain in the ass has got to be getting everyone sorted out in a mixed-meal family.
134: Cook for himself, clearly.
Rennetless cheese can be found.
Duck eggs have a very tough membrane inside the shell that you have to cut with a knife. They taste OK, nothing special.
138: Lots of cheeses don't have rennet, you just have to look into it a little. Granted this is easier some places than others.
Rennet and gelatin are two ingredients that show up in loads of places you might not guess until you look.
The main pain in the ass has got to be getting everyone sorted out in a mixed-meal family.
I can just imagine what my mother would have said if we had started making specific food demands of any kind whatsoever. If we wanted to suck up to her we could request specific dishes she liked to make, but that was the beginning and the end of it. And we could only request once, because maybe she just didn't feel like it.
"This isn't a restaurant. Eat what's on your plate".
the texture of pulses makes her gag
Pulses?
145: Pulses=lentils and beans.
In Canadia the old dialects linger on.
144: Right, so an option is always `cook it your damn self'. I was trying to make clear that while from a nutritional point of view there really isn't any problem at that age particularly (toddlers are little tricky, but do-able) with a pure vegetarian diet, I certainly wasn't going to suggest that this was easy if the rest of the family wants to eat other stuff. It's one thing if you're family is culturally vegetarian already and you have 600 of your mothers recipes to play with. Quite another if 1 out of 5 of you (or whatever) suddenly says `I'm not eating any more X'.
The preview I saw for 'Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay' was fucking funny.
Pulses = beans and shit.
As for mixed meals - there are 6 of us, it's already difficult to make every single meal one that everyone likes, so we often mix and match anyway. C and I eat separately from the kids 3/7 and often we have a meatless meal. Plus the kids can cook.
My brother was vegetarian from when he was about 12. My mum never seemed to get stressed by it.
140: Another domestic species that would not survive in the wild is the apple tree
Basically every species used in agriculture has a symbiotic relationship to humankind, and almost without exception the ones used in industrial agriculture are completely dependent on humans for propagational success.
140: New England has many abandoned apple orchards that still produce apples. They're not the prettiest apples, but the trees look perfectly healthy in their gnarly way.
152: These days, some of the biggest aren't even edible without processing (e.g. field corn)
139: They're larger, but the taste isn't significantly different.
I sort of want to get some egg-laying creatures
Keep in mind that egg-laying critters* tend to be both noisy and noisome. They're much easier to keep when one has 30 acres to play with and no immediate neighbours.
*Of the avian sort. I have no idea whether the platypus is either.
The trees I'm thinking oof were engineered for maximum production. Our backyard apple trees did fine. They were short-lived though, whereas other trees will outlive us.
I sort of want to get some egg-laying creatures
Komodo dragons!
Duck eggs have a very tough membrane inside the shell that you have to cut with a knife.
Oh, forget that.
155: Yes, I know. But I know people who have 'em in town. And we're a small family; it's not like we're going to need a dozen chickens. A couple should be just fine. No roosters.
My brother's urban chickens did fine and caused no trouble, except when the urban raccoon killed all 8 of them.
Chickens are great garbage eaters, and you can compost their shit, though you have to do it right.
Most cheese contains rennet, which comes from calves' stomach lining and contains bacteria that help transform milk into cheese.
I was just reading the part of The Parts of Animals where Aristotle talks about what kinds of animals have rennet.
Isn't there artificial, animal-free rennet these days?
B, did you see the eglu link a little while ago?
Isn't there artificial, animal-free rennet these days?
There are some replacements, but also you don't need rennet for a lot of cheese making.
Capers must have been the victim of a journalistic drive-by, like fruitcakes.
I love love love fruitcake. Love it. Come holiday time, everybody mail me fruitcake.
I know far too many people already who have chickens. And they're not even all home educators. God, I mix in the wrong circles ... where's that preppie gone?
There are some really interesting tidbits in The History of Animals and The Parts of Animals. Beats me how many of them are true, though.
I'll never forgive Calvin Trillin. My mom made wonderful fruitcakes, but after about 15 years of Trillin's schtick even a couple of my siblings were embarrassed to eat them. After she died I offered a slice of her last fruitcake to a mutual friend, and the friend's zombie yuppie brain turned it down without a moment's thought. NPR listeners do not eat fruitcake.
Sure, as a lot of people are saying, you can get rennet-free cheese. It can be very hard to find, though, and it's going to limit the varieties of cheese you can eat.
161: Missed that. Funny. I'll buy chickens from a mama acquaintance or the local feed store or at the mostly Mexican swap meet; I'm pretty sure I can build (or purchase, if I decide to go the lazy route) a mostly rat-proof enclosure.
Aristotle's animal book really refutes the idea that Aristotle (or "The Greeks") was a rationalist who didn't observe the real world. (That was the scholastics, and not even all of them).
What he says about the sex life of the octopus is about right.
Aligning yourself with homo sapiens has been a good short-term evolutionary strategy. Long term, probably not so much.
It can be very hard to find, though, and it's going to limit the varieties of cheese you can eat.
For the latter, not much limitation really,
e.g.
I agree some places it may be hard to find, but typically the same places it's hard to find good cheese anyway. It's not like rennet free cheeses are just vegetarian copies of other cheeses ... there are have always been some that have it, some that don't.
I used to shop at a deli that had a 300+ cheese list they ordered from (probably only stocked 150 or so on any given day) and there list of vegetarian ones was about 100, and they hadn't gone looking for them, just organized their existing database so you could see which were which.
It's not something I ever found a difficulty really, but I was living in major metro areas.
Nonetheless, vegans are crazy people.
I used to shop at a deli that had a 300+ cheese list
Yeah, well.
174: well, like I said, some areas better than others. But the point was that nearly a third were vegetarian without even trying.
I should have said De Historia Animalium and De Partibus Animalium, of course.
173 - you're such a shit-stirrer. It looks hard to be a good vegan unless you're really organised. Being a vegetarian is far more straightforward.
Nonetheless, vegans are crazy people.
What does that have to do with vegetarian cheeses?
175: I suppose back when I was vegetarian, I was insufficiently educated about the ingredients in different types of cheese.
Funding at the statewide level, and some degree of open enrollment.
Our whole system is organized in order to privilege rich districts, though, and as far as that goes our traffic patterns, settlement patterns, tax structure, and even our financial system (as we're seeing) are structured around Good Schools in Good Neighborhoods, so good luck in changing anything.
a slice of her last fruitcake
That's so poignant, Emerson.
My grandmother and great aunt were an awesome fruitcake making team. They'd make them in November and set them on the basement stairs wrapped in frequently refreshed rum-soaked tea towels for a month. Yay, fruitcake!
180: Fuck.
178: It can't be pointed out too often.
You want it moist with plenty of rum flavor. No Brazil nuts, no citrons or little candied fruits. (I advocate the Reform Fruitcake). But plenty of figs, dates, and currants.
No, say, brandy-soaked cherries? Old-sk00l Maraska style?
Brandy-soaked cherries would be fine. It's the candied dyed stuff that ruins things.
I'll buy chickens from a mama acquaintance or the local feed store or at the mostly Mexican swap meet
Rennet and gelatin are two ingredients that show up in loads of places you might not guess until you look.
Check your neighborhood kosher grocery store for vegetarian marshmallows.
PGD, LB says that Buck makes incredible fruitcake.
buttering up LB starts now.
Will a hot cross bun do, PGD?
sorry, no dried fruit involved.
A fruitcake is a complete meal. Nuts provide protein, fruit vitamins.
sorry, no dried fruit involved.
Au contraire, PGD. Hot cross buns can have dried currants or raisins or even candied lemon peel.
I habitually make hot cross buns the night before Good Friday. Tonight they utterly failed to rise. I haven't even baked them yet, but I know they are going to suck. I'm not sure what went wrong.
Tonight they utterly failed to rise.
That's an omen for you. Better put on your Armageddon outfit. I always knew that one year Jesus would just stay dead.
Do people still like fruitcake in the American South? It seems to me I always sees ads, around Christmas time, for southern fruitcakes (sometimes made with bourbon). I guess somebody must be buying them, if not eating them.
One of my aunts makes really good fruitcake, and she offered to make my wedding cake. My (future) husband's response (well, he didn't say this to my aunt, just to me): "You mean we're going to serve fruitcake to the guests?!" So we ended up having two cakes, one of them chocolate and the other a fruitcake.
Do people still like fruitcake in the American South?
Nobody I know.
Fruitcake with hard sauce is delicious, and people who buy into kneejerk fruitcake mockery are boors.
Speaking of dates: I had prosciutto-wrapped dates last night with some kind of rich, sweet reduced sauce. Candy wrapped in meat, people. Fabulous.
Prosciutto is expensive and high in sodium. It's just salt-cured pig-meat.
It's just salt-cured pig-meat.
Just? Just?!
I regret to report that kosher marshmallows are usually made with fish gelatin.
191: I report with some satisfaction that I let the hot cross buns rise overnight and--shades of the miracle of the resurrection--they rose! I baked them this morning, and they were delicious.
I think the recipe that I was using his so heavy in fat (egg yolks and butter, to be precise) that it retards the rising of the yeast much more than usual. Also, I suspect I mixed the dough a tad too wet.
On the whole, though, it was a success. Now I can mourn the crucifixion of the Savior with a glad heart, or something like that.
I hope they don't ascend on you, Knecht.
I haven't even seen a fruitcake since I was a kid.
194: Nobody I know.
Apo is the hardest of the Calvin Trillin hardcore. He belongs to and NPR motorcycle club and wears NPR underwear. Maybe he really does know people who eat fruitcake, but they wouldn't dare tell him. He'd throw NPR's deadly quizzical look at them and they'd know that their yuppy cred was gone forever.
Well, I'll take off my Armageddon gear. The buns have risen! Praise the Lord!
Apo is the hardest of the Calvin Trillin hardcore.
West Side, boyee. [cue trombone duet of NPR theme]
I'd rather never eat fruitcake again that give up my Calvin Trillin club colors. The man single-handedly convinced ten-year-old me that Kansas City would be a mind-blowingly awesome place to visit.
195: reduced balsamic is often used on those. Wicked awesome.
We eat fruitcake. The lack of fruitcake is clearly what's wrong with America.
And praise the lord for your buns, Knecht!
Trillin did, in fact, attend eighth grade.
This is when I was in eighth grade, and this is hard to believe for you educators here, particularly the younger ones, but until about three or four years before I was due to go to eighth grade, Kansas City did not have eighth grade. I don't mean that they called it something else. They did not have eighth grade. You went seven grades in primary school, "elementary school" it was called. And then you were a freshman in high school. In fact, I objected when they put in eighth grade. I said you are changing the rules right in the middle of the game here. We were told we only had to go seven grades and then become freshmen. I find often when I speak to teachers and I say, "what's the most difficult grade to teach?" Invariably, "eighth grade." The kids are at a bad age; they don't exactly know what to teach them. I said, well we had a solution to that in Kansas City, we just didn't have eighth grade.
I regret to report that kosher marshmallows are usually made with fish gelatin.
Does fish gelatin masquerade under another name, like ground-up bugs being called carmine? Because I always check the ingredient list. I thought they contained actual mallow, which is probably hopelessly naive of me.
Marshmallows haven't contained actual mallow for a long time.
Carrageenans have many excellent properties:
they are easy to pump but stiffen again afterwards
Laboratory studies suggest that carrageenans might function as topical microbicides, blocking sexually transmitted viruses
Carrageenan is seaweed.
As far as I understand, "kosher gelatin" is always fish gelatin. Things that are vegetarian will have pectins intead.
Oh golly, Sifu. The Wikipedia gelatin page is super gross.
However, more detailed recent studies regarding the safety of gelatin in respect to mad cow disease have prompted the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to re-issue a warning and stricter guidelines for the sourcing and processing of gelatin to reduce the potential risk posed by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy from 1997.
Capers taste horrible. Citrons also taste horrible, and I always call them "capers" by accident. And citrons are what makes fruitcake bad, coincidentally. as far as I can tell, without the citrons it would be just another form of good cake, like appesauce cake or whatever.
And if you think the reflexive scorn for fruitcake is an elitist affectation of NPR listeners you are clearly not familiar enough with Dave Barry.
212 is not definitive. As for the fish gelatin, I'm sticking my fingers in my ears and saying "la, la, la, I can't hear you," because I ain't giving up s'mores.
And if you think the reflexive scorn for fruitcake is an elitist affectation of NPR listeners you are clearly not familiar enough with Dave Barry.
Or Andy Rooney. Fruitcake-loathing is the most middlebrow of elitist affectations, with the possible exception of scorning professional wrestling.
Foodies rehabilitated the fruitcake (in its more rarified form) almost 20 years ago. Which leads me to believe that the NPR crowd actually doesn't really object to fruitcake, but is making a typically maladroit, insincere attempt to be down with the gente.
Dave Barry is a Trillin wannabe and is by no means non-NPR. Trillin is the guy who made it happen. Damn his hide.
Capers taste good. After my brother's lox was gone I started in on straight capers.
Gelatin making is like the wonderful thing hunter-gatherers did, "using every part of the animal" -- one with nature, spiritual, etc. Not that that made the animals feel any better about it, per The Far Side. Or making soup stock when you boil leftover turkey.
But NPR is middlebrow elitism. That's the whole point. Get with the program, Ruprecht.
doesn't really object to fruitcake
I don't object to it. I honestly thought it was an artifact of a bygone time, like these things.
I just don't like candied fruit. I don't like it when citrus oil is added to chocolate, either.
Seriously, the problem with fruitcake is the citrons. They taste horrible and are found in no other food that the average American ever eats. People make other excuses for not eating fruitcake because they see opportunities to be seen as a clever humorist by maligning its texture, density, et cetera.
They taste horrible and are found in no other food that the average American ever eats.
This sounds like a Cryptic Ned sentence. Are you sneaking back in, Ned? I haven't checked IPs.
220: Whole Foodsesque stores sell honest to goodness vegetarian marshmallows. I denounce the marshmallow and all of its forms -- just never a fan -- but friends swoon over the Sweet and Sara kind.
But NPR is middlebrow elitism.
NPR is "middlebrow elitism" in precisely the same way that families making over $150K p.a. (i.e. those in the 94th percentile and above) are "upper middle class", which is to say "only to those with a totally skewed frame of reference".
They...are found in no other food that the average American ever eats.
For the record, there were bits of candied citrus peel in my hot cross buns, and everyone loved them. So count that as one datapoint against Rascal's hypothesis.
229: I hated peel as a kid, and so harbor residual resentment against Hot Cross Buns. In terms of religious pastry, they fell far short, in my estimation, of St. Joseph Cakes, which are cream-filled. Cream filled wins.
227: Good to know. I'll have to see if I can find them somewhere else, though, because I'll compromise my vegetarianism long before my anti-John Mackeyism. [/beating dead horse]*
*Metaphorical horse. You'll have to save your "horse-beating vegetarian" jokes for another day, mister.
One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns. This has been in my head for at least an hour now. I hate you all.
I denounce the marshmallow and all of its forms
Even the tiny styroform ones in hot chocolate!?!
While we're denouncing, "hot chocolate" that comes in packets with tiny styrofoam marshmallows should be rejected along with the rest of the unholy works and empty promises.
233: Oh nonono. That's true. I take it back.
Don't you live in hippieville now, my Jersey Shore Sister? I bet you can find them wherever you buy your MoonCup.
234: Absolutely true. It's just Swiss Miss-induced nostalgia for my childhood.
You know what's really excellent? Mexican hot chocolate. (Scroll down to the Mexican Hot Chocolate I on the left for the Kraab-endorsed version.)
235: I expect that's right. I haven't looked in a while since I only use them for s'mores, which I eat around a campfire approximately every 2 years. (I've heard there are some who make them in the microwave, which is inhuman.)
I'll also endorse 236b.
Sir Kraab: I'll give marshmallows a pass, but there are veggie ones out there. An awful lot of yogurts are putting gelatin in these days too. Not to mention all the bullshit `lite' stuff.
I find marshmallows unappealing, but certainly not because of the gelatin content. Parts is parts, after all*. I'm just not a big eater of sweets, I guess.
*Except eyes; the one time I got served a stuffed fish with the head still on it, I had trouble getting past the damn thing staring up at me from the plate.
Parts is parts, after all*.
I never really understood the squeamishness. I can understand various reasons for wanting to be vegetarian, but I can't really understand being squeamish about parts. It's like people are happier pretending they don't know what they are eating.
Tiny Trapeze makes a pretty good vegan marshmallow.
I can't really understand being squeamish about parts.
I generally agree with soup, but there are limits to my open-mindedness.
I am happier pretending that I don't know what I am eating.
A vegetarian friend of mine introduced me last year to the idea of toasting marzipan on a camp fire. You get a little chunk, squidge it around a skewer, and toast away. Very nice.
We had a bizarre dinner at my parents tonight of roast chicken, crispy duck and heart casserole. (M had a nut cutlet we found in the freezer.) I have never managed to bring myself to eat heart.
This seems like as good a thread as any to say OMFG we're having twins.
Twins! *runs screaming*
(-- the former James k. Polk)
Hey, congratulations mrh and R!
mrh: Wow, Congrats! and .... wow. I can't imagine (then again I can't imagine having one of the little blighters around, but that's just me)
It's like people are happier pretending they don't know what they are eating.
Who says anything about pretending? After all, who cares what's in a hot dog?
Congratulations, Mr.H!! Holy crap, that's a lot of babies and burping and poop and, um, fun. Easy and fun. Good luck.
This seems like as good a thread as any to say OMFG we're having twins.
Good thing you have a well-paying job!
Congrats, mrh. Boy, are you in for some fun.
Well done, mrh! And the same to your wife.
Congrats.
I'm not sure when the "type" of twin becomes known, but just in case, you might want to start thinking of exactly what nature vs. nurture experiment(s) you want to perform.
I also recently found this unexpected and interesting result:
Vegan women, who exclude dairy products from their diets, have a twinning rate which is one-fifth that of vegetarians and omnivores.
Mrh, Jesus didn't say so, but he's a twin consultant.
Congratulations, Mrh! Twins, you are lucky!
what i recalled
your wife loves to knit
we have a stupid superstition that pregnant women should not knit so that to avoid the umbilical chord tangling :)
we are so superstitious that do not prepare anything for the newborn until the birth, so the first hours after birth is really super-rush hours for the dad to get everything ready
Thanks, everyone (except Ben)! We're veering back and forth between excitement and terror, but I think that's to be expected.
We have already selected the placeholder names by which they'll be known until we determine their sexes: Lorem and Ipsum.
Yeah, mrh, I'm happy to answer any questions or offer advice; just drop me a line at the link.
Friends of ours who have a son named Dashiell are having their second child soon, a girl. I'm trying to persuade them to go with Dorothy, so the kids will be Dot and Dash.
Hook 'em mrh woo!
Hook 'em mrh woo!
Yay mrh (and Mrs. Marvey, or however she prefers to be known)! Yay twins! Yay successful modern medicine! Yay little babies who are going to know from Day 1 that their parents really reeeaaaallllly wanted to bring them into this world. :)
(I know, an emoticon. I ban myself.)
So mrh really stands for "massively rampant heterosexual" after all?
emoticons are banned?! how can i indicate then
that i smiled there :(
mrh, that's great news. Be sure to label them so you can tell them apart.
mrh has his hands full of dinner (twin cornish game hens) and has asked me to answer on his behalf that our due date is early November. We are at 6.5 weeks right now. Definitely early to "announce" -- and we haven't done so in real life -- but we feel like with two, we kind of have an insurance policy that we're very likely to be come someone's parents around that time.
(Oh, and JP, since these embryos were brought about with a washed semen sample and an intra-uterine insemination, no display of heterosexuality was technically required.)
Thank you all for your well wishes!
Congratulations, Ms. Marvey!
sorry to forget the mom
Hooray for babies! Two at a time, even. Good luck with everything.
Congratulations the pair of you - lovely news.
We have already selected the placeholder names by which they'll be known until we determine their sexes: Lorem and Ipsum.
I vote for Thing1 and Thing2. Then you can buy them these.
Wow! Congratulations. I'll save a seat for you here on the sleep deprivation train.
Once the twins figure out that they can run in different directions from each other, while you must choose whom to chase, the day is lost. So good luck with that, mrh.
... no display of heterosexuality was technically required.
Do go on. If nothing else, Unfogged is a discreet and emotionally safe online community.
So mrh really stands for "massively rampant heterosexual" after all?
It came as a surprise to me that some people genuinely equate fathering of twins with virility. As a guy in the neighborhood said when I told him we were expecting twins, "Twins?! Man, I knew you had somethin' goin' on."
Once the twins figure out that they can run in different directions from each other, while you must choose whom to chase, the day is lost
Geez, don't freak the poor people out so fast. They have to figure out how to deal with the initial three months first.
dinner (twin cornish game hens)
This is like thumbing your nose at the gods, you know.
280: It's really more an indicator of female fecundity, isn't it?
Twins, hurray! Congratulations, mrh and mrs. marvey!
Mrh's heterosexuality was made manifest in his sensitivity to the fertility of the crescents in his vicinity, back when he still a-wooing went.
It can't be taught, you know. It's like chicken sexing.
w-lfs-n loves sexing the chickens.
This is like thumbing your nose at the gods, you know.
The gods clearly already have our number. (That number is two.)
As for my virility, our current theory is that, since the original ultrasound clearly only showed one mature follicle, my super sperm must have charged up the fallopian tubes, wrenched another egg from the ovary, and fertilized the hell out of it.
286: You're John Shaft, aren't you?
Just like an immature follicle to hide from an ultrasound.
286: But it could also have split, right? Because that's how you get identical twins. Egg gets fertilized, then splits. As opposed to two eggs getting fertilized.
(I should admit that 289 made me smile.)
280: It's really more an indicator of female fecundity, isn't it?
These days, I think it's mostly an indicator of access to reproductive technology. (Not to take anything away from my boys; we used an egg donor program.)
Ah -- congratulations, mrh & Ms. Marvey!
So exciting!! Giant congratulations and well wishes, mrh and Mrs Marvey!
On the food and vegetarian front, I don't suppose anyone has a revered recipe for marinating tofu? I've decided I've got to get more protein; I have a low tolerance for 'raw' tofu, and the best-loved tofu I've had prepared by others was, I've discovered, frozen, thawed, marinated and baked/grilled. Result: chewy, dense, highly flavored cubes, not crumbly, not mushy. Toothy, you might say, yet succulent.
The marinades I've experimented with so far are variants on a vinaigrette (red wine or balsamic vinegar or both, olive oil) with perhaps a bit of brown mustard or tamari, and/or minced garlic, maybe some hot pepper. Basically what I use for grilled marinated vegetables. It's not really working: too sharp, vinegary.
Well. I might should ask the local coop how they're making the tofu in their salad bar.
296: Just stick with the uteri. Lots of protein, hormones, and enzymes.
You're John Shaft, aren't you?
Shut your mouth.
But it could also have split, right?
Could've, and that would be more interesting in some ways. Identical! Fun! But, there are two distinct sacs on the ultrasound, and two craters on the ovary.
As for tofu marination, I figure the keys are pressing the hell out of it before you marinate, to get it as dry as possible, and then anything involving soy sauce.
since the original ultrasound clearly only showed one mature follicle, my super sperm must have charged up the fallopian tubes, wrenched another egg from the ovary, and fertilized the hell out of it.
Teh sexist. Obviously what happened is that the other follicle, in a fit of rivalry, grew up *real fast* and popped an egg down there right quick, so as not to be outdone by her sister.
296: I've got to run now, but remind me ... I've got a couple of good marinate recipes somewhere.
As mrh said, pressing water out is important.
Also though, have you tried baking? Very easy... for a block do this:
1) press out all the water (15+ min with a soup can for weight, cut in half first)
2) cut into 1cm cubes
3)toss with 2 Tbsp soy and 1Tbsp sesame oil, then add cracked pepper to taste
4) bake 350 15 min (you can roll half way through or not)
I don't usually marinate tofu, but toss it in a sauce of molasses, soy sauce (about 50/50), sesame seeds, cracked red pepper, ginger, and garlic after stir frying it in sesame oil (or a vegetable oil with a dash of sesame oil, if I'm feeling cheap.)
As for tofu marination twins, I figure the keys are pressing the hell out of it before you marinate, to get it as dry as possible, and then anything involving soy sauce.
Awesome, mrh. Those are going to be some cute kids.
You're John Shaft, aren't you?
Congrats, mrh and Ms. Marvey. Wow.
Mazel tov, Mr. & Ms. Marvey. One thing for sure, those babies are going to have the coolest knitted wardrobe in all the land.
M/tch also sends his felicitations.
300, 301:
pressing water out is important
Trailing in hours later ... yes, got that part down.
What I hear you saying is no vinegar at all, really. The molasses option, probably not so much (not a big sweet fan). Sesame seeds, cracked pepper, okay. More soy sauce/tamari than I'd been using. And yes, sesame oil! I'll try something like this -- I'd been baking them already. Thanks!
Woo hoo! Woo hoo! Felicitations to the marvellous ones.
