An insightful–and intriguing–remark from one of Jonah’s correspondents:

I really think that Hillary really *is* the Democratic Nixon. I can’t think of another American politician she resembles more: paranoid, ambitious, steely determination combined with an oddly fragile, wounded ego, programmed, robotic, cold, calculating, almost devoid of humor or any sense of irony about the self.

Hire this guy on American Idol.

There are three major supermarket chains here (four, if you count Wal-Mart), Wegman’s, Weis, and Giant. Wegman’s does have a yuppie wow factor when you first encounter it, but that fades as you shop there. They have an odd inventory (they don’t carry things every store should carry), and more importantly, their meat department sucks and is laughably overpriced (8.99 for stew beef?) Weis is cheaper, but not kept well (interpret that however you will).

I usually go to Wegman’s or Wal-Mart, since they’re the closest. Weis has a post office, which is the main reason I go there. I had never been to Giant (I know, two years almost) until today.

Nice produce, not a bad meat department (it looked like they actually employed butchers, which Wegman’s does not–the idiots working behind the meat counter there don’t know beef from pork, much less one cut from another), spic and span, I was impressed. They didn’t have any stew veal, so I got a nice, lean center chuck steak–I can cube it myself. I’ll be going back to Giant–a lot.

Hungarian Veal Paprikas

I’ll be making beef paprikas today. Same recipe, same process.

1 1/2 lb. stew veal in 1/2-inch cubes
1 large yellow onion, chopped
3 T. bacon drippings, lard or oil (in that order of preference)
2 T. Hungarian paprika (Spanish has comparatively no flavor)*
1 14-oz. can diced tomatoes, drained
1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
10 mushrooms, sliced
2 T. each: heavy cream and sour cream**
1/2 T. flour

Saute the onions over medium heat, stirring frequently, until they begin to soften. Cover, reduce the heat to low, and cook another five minutes. Stir in paprika, veal, and tomatoes. Add about 1/4 cup water, cover, and cook over low heat for an hour, until the veal is tender. Add the bell pepper and mushrooms, stir, cover again and cook for 15 minutes, until the peppers are softened. Mix heavy cream, sour cream and flour, then stir into the paprikas. Cook a minute, just to get the “flour” taste out, and serve.

*Hungarian paprika comes in sweet (Noble Rose) and hot. If you like spicy, you can use a little hot (try a mixture of the two first), but I recommend Noble Rose for this.

**Please resist the temptation to increase this. Please. It’s so much nicer if you don’t turn this into sour cream with other stuff you can’t taste.

And you can’t have paprikas without

Spätzle

4 eggs
1 cup flour
1 t. salt

Beat the eggs until frothy, then mix in the flour and salt. The dough should be very soft and sticky — halfway between cake batter and biscuit dough. Sticky, not a ball that cleans the sides of the bowl. Spoon the dough into the spätzle maker over the SIMMERING, not boiling, water and run the bin back and forth until the dough is all gone. SIMMER about five minutes, then drain and toss with melted butter.

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Spicy Pork With Peanuts (Szechuan)

1 lb. pork (boneless ribs are good), diced

Marinade
1 T. each: dark soy sauce, cornstarch, oil

2 T. oil

4 dried chilis
3 quarter-sized ginger slices, minced
1/2 c. salted peanuts

Seasoning:

1 t. cornstarch
1 T. dry sherry
1 1/2 T. dark soy sauce
1 T. each: red or black Chinese vinegar, or red-wine vinegar, and sugar
1/4 t. salt
1 t. sesame oil

Mix the seasoning ingredients until everything is dissolved, and reserve. Put the diced pork in a large bowl, and add the marinade ingredients. Stir until the pork is coated, then let sit for at least 30 minutes (an hour is better). Bring a pot of water to a boil, stir the marinated pork well to separate, then dump it into the boiling water. Stir just to make sure all the pieces are separate, and when the water starts to come to a boil, drain the pork.

Put the wok over a high flame until smoking hot–and turn on the fan and open the kitchen window, because you are going to get chili fumes! Add the oil to the wok and swirl to coat, then turn the heat down to low and add the chili peppers. Press them and flip them in the oil until they turn black, then add the ginger and stir. Turn the heat back up high, and add the pork, flipping the pork for a minute or so to coat with the spicy oil. Add the sauce mixture, and stir until it coats everything. Add the peanuts and serve.

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Are posted here–I’m not sure what was going on with the booth that was flying the Australian flag. That was a bit odd. Classic cars, folks in civil war dress and re-enactors, the Pennsylvania Military Museum, flags, memorials, and a couple of dogs, including one with an obscenely large tongue.

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God knows I’m as annoyed as anybody about barking moonbats on university campuses. And He also knows I’m even more annoyed that the moonbattiest of the wackjobs run the administrations, set up the so-called “speech codes” and “student rights documents” and “free speech zones” and “diversity policies.” I’m excusing none of these.

With all the exposure university nutcases get, and however obnoxious (and unconstitutional) all these idiotic left-wing policies are, the problem university wackos pose is overblown. Before you get your panties in a wad, let me explain.

First, far-left wackjobs may dominate the administration, but they do not dominate the university–and there is a difference. Postmodernist nutcases predominate in the humanities, ed schools, and to a lesser extent, the social sciences. They are common everywhere on campus, but the physical sciences, math, engineering, business and ag departments do not teach courses that lend themselves to what I call LFSAS (Leftist Faculty Student Abuse Syndrome), courses where the topic is either designed to cover nothing but neo-Marxist ranting or the content is so thin that there’s plenty of room to insert neo-Marxist ranting. Certainly, a math professor can cleverly insert little political statements into problems, but sheesh, grow a thicker skin if that bothers you. But while the English department could easily offer a class called, “The Literature of Evil Thrusting White Male Oppression,” it would be difficult for the physics department to do the same.

My point is that university students have the luxury of choice. The class schedule is like a big menu, and students choose what courses to take. If you don’t want to be deafened by the barking of moonbats, don’t become an English major–unless you have pretty thick skin and are willing to hold your own against hostile peers and faculty.

It’s no secret at the university which departments, courses, and faculty to avoid, especially in our current online age. If you heard Professor Juanita Golden-Moonbeam is a nutjob, then take History 201 from another professor. Any “X Studies” course is going to be full of drooling moonbats–in fact, course titles are an excellent way for students to avoid the more insane elements on campus.

It’s unlikely a student can complete a bachelor’s degree without hearing “Bush is Hitler” at least a couple of times in a classroom, but it’s quite easy for undergrads to minimize their exposure to the logically-challenged faculty and classes. As for putting up with leftist nonsense in the form of posters, campus newspaper editorials, and administrative policies, well, welcome to the real world.

And I’m not unsympathetic, not at all. I’ve had many ex-students come to my office to unload about nutty moonbats. What I am saying is that it could be far, far worse.

Let me explain. Go read this, then come back. Yes, I’ll wait.

This sort of moonbatty nonsense is, I maintain, far worse, and far more destructive than all of the university moonbattiness combined, because these students are a captive audience. They lack the luxury of choice university students enjoy. It’s even worse when elementary kids are exposed to nonsensical neo-Stalinist propaganda, whether “green” idiocy about global warming or sex ed, because not only are they a captive audience, they’re little kids, ferchrissakes. They lack the knowledge to evaluate critically what they’re being told. And it’s worst of all when ed schools and state licensing boards adopt overt policies that they will only certify teachers who toe the “Government is God” party line.

The bad thing is that this phenomenon does not get the press university moonbats do. The good thing is that, provided constituents raise enough hell with the right people, moonbattiness in the public schools is far easier to correct than it would be at the universities.

Universities have always been full of nutjobs–it’s part of the academy. The public schools have not. So yes, support FIRE, raise hell with your legislature when your state university passes more idiotic left-wing policies, but pay closer attention to what’s going on at your public school.

And now, we’re off to celebrate Memorial Day in Boalsburg.

Big MacFatwah!

How this law got on the books.

We have two, and both on the same thread:

GeorgeH said…

Women’s Studies Department?

We need a Men’s Studies Department where I can get tenure for writing tedious papers about the history of logo placement on NASCAR vehicles.

and

Joanne Jacobs said…

When a general conversation turns to uteri, I leave the room — or, at least, back away slowly. I’ve got a uterus myself, but don’t regard it as a conversation piece.

Drew Barrymore should love these (hat tip to Devil’s Kitchen).

Get ready to cry, everybody, on the count of three.

One . . .

Two . . .

Three!

Boo-hoo! Poor baby!

Interview with Gene Simmons–it’s a must read.

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

Christian Golczynski receives his father’s flag (hat tip to Maggie’s Farm)

Robert Stokely remembers his son

Jules Crittenden’s Memorial Day Roundup

US White House Commission on Remembrance

US Memorial Day

Well, in two minutes, that green curry will be done. Will post before going to Boalsburg tomorrow, and will have plenty of pictures Tuesday, as well as a report on Duffy’s Tavern.

BSG season three is now all burned to DVDs, and deleted from the hard drive. Lost is next–23 hours in 22 episodes–though I’m not going to start that until after Memorial Day. It’s possible that I’ll find at least the first half of the season less annoying now that I know that the Survivors do, in fact, start fighting back.

For dinner, I’m thinking Thai, maybe a green chicken curry, with lots of fire and shredded fresh basil all over the top. And coconut ice cream for dessert, of course.

People missing half their brain function almost perfectly normally (emphasis on “almost”).

I had almost finished this and lost it, so I’m going to have to recreate this from memory. Here we go.

For me, ice cream is to Memorial Day as fireworks are to the Fourth of July. When we were kids, before the sun came up on Memorial Day, our parents rolled us out of bed and after eating breakfast, we headed to the American Legion, where my father was active, to get everything ready for the big Memorial Day Ice Cream Social. We were there with all the other Legion families, and we started making ice cream in hand crank freezers, hundreds of gallons of ice cream because everybody all over the county would be there. By ten o’clock in the morning, all the ice cream was ripening in the freezers, and we set up the tables, the serving line, and hung the bunting. The social started at two o’clock, after we got back from the graveside services and decorating the graves, and we took turns working the line and cleaning spots at tables as people left–snitching mouthfuls of ice cream at every opportunity, of course.

You can buy excellent ice cream at the store, but the best premium ice cream doesn’t compare to homemade. I make ice cream all summer long (just made some). I’ve learned some things from sad experience, though, so before I give you recipes, let me share them with you.

First, I’ve owned four of those designer ice cream makes the gourmet shops sell, and I’ve hated them all. I’m talking about the ones that surround the canister in a chemical bath, like this one.

You pour in the mix, stick it in the freezer, and once every fifteen minutes or so, turn the crank. These have one major advantage: You can freeze a higher butterfat content mix. But the resulting product not only has an odd texture, but a vaguely unpleasant aftertaste.

Instead, run to Wal-Mart and pick up a crank machine, either a hand crank or an electric (they make equally good ice cream) for about twenty bucks.

Second, the colder the product, the less you taste it. You have to taste the mix. If the flavoring and sweetness is just right, you need to add more. The mix should be a bit too flavored and too sweet. That way, it will come out perfect.

Third, because a traditional freezer constantly stirs the mix with a dasher, it limits the maximum butterfat of your product. If you use a higher butterfat than 1/2 heavy cream and 1/2 half-and-half, you’ll get “butter” on the roof of your mouth when you eat the ice cream. It tastes good, but the “butter” is unpleasant.

There are basically two types of American ice cream: Traditional, also called Philadelphia ice cream, and “French” ice cream, or frozen custard. The former may or may not contain eggs (if it does, it doesn’t contain much) and is uncooked. The latter contains a high egg yolk content and is cooked like a custard. I’ve included recipes for both below; most other ice cream recipes are merely adding to (or changing) one of the two base recipes.

You’ll need ice (pick up a couple of big bags at the grocery) and rock salt. Make the mix, and if it’s cooked, chill it. Pour the mix into the canister, add the dasher, and put on the lid. Put the canister in the freezer, and add the top, fastening it down. Add ice about a third of the way up, then sprinkle heavily with rock salt. Repeat twice, until you have ice all the way to the top with salt on top. If you’re using a hand crank machine, take turns turning the crank. You can feel the ice cream start to freeze as the crank becomes harder to turn. When it gets really hard to turn, the ice cream is done. If you’re using an electric machine, plug it in (you may have to jiggle the freezer to loosen the canister so it will turn), and let it go until the machine stops (make sure you’re close enough to hear it; you’ll burn out the machine if you leave it plugged in long after the ice cream is frozen).

When the ice cream is done, either top the freezer off with ice and rock salt, cover it with a towel, and let it sit and ripen and harden for at least a couple of hours, or immediately turn out into a freezer container and stick it in the freezer, again for at least a couple of hours to ripen and harden. Before you turn out the ice cream, wipe the entire canister, top and sides, with a towel to remove the salt water (so you don’t accidentally get salty ice cream).

If you’re making ice cream with added ingredients, most recipes will tell you to add the ingredients after you’ve frozen the ice cream, or worse, ten or fifteen minutes after you’ve started. If, say, you’re making butter pecan (recipe included below) and you’re using pecan halves, you’ll have to stir them in after the product is frozen. If you chop them up, add them along with the mix, and stir the product when you turn it out.

I’m going to get myself in trouble here and offer my opinion that homemade chocolate ice cream is mostly a waste of good homemade ice cream. Sure, you can make great chocolate ice cream at home, but the chocolate overpowers the homemade ice cream-ness of the homemade ice cream. But I’ll include a good chocolate ice cream recipe for those who will not listen.

Finally, if you’ve never had homemade, it’s much heavier and denser than even premium storebought, which has air whipped into it. There is very little air inside the canister to get mixed into the ice cream. So when you dip it out, start with less than you would if it were storebought ice cream.

All recipes make one quart (more or less)–and don’t forget to taste before you freeze, and add more flavoring or sugar, if necessary.

Traditional (Philadelphia-style) American Ice Cream

1 large egg
2 c. each: half-and-half and heavy cream
3/4 c. sugar
2 T. vanilla extract

Mix everything together, then freeze.

French Vanilla

1 vanilla bean, or 2 T. vanilla extract
3/4 c. sugar
5 large egg yolks
1 1/2 c. each: heavy cream and half-and-half

If using the vanilla bean, chop it, seeds and all, into tiny bits, and add to the sugar; if using extract, add it at the very end, after you have cooked the mixture. Beat the egg yolks until light yellow. Add the half-and-half and the vanilla sugar, and mix well. Cook over low heat, beating constantly, until thick and double in volume. Chill, mix in the cream (and the vanilla extract, if using), and freeze.

Coconut Ice Cream

Use either of the basic recipes above. Nix the vanilla, and instead use 3 T. coconut flavoring. Just before freezing, mix in 1 small bag of sweetened, shredded coconut.

And apologies to New Englanders, but this is the perfect accompaniment to apple pie:

Cinnamon Ice Cream

Use either of the basic recipes above. Halve the vanilla, and add 3 heaping tablespoons of good, strong cinnamon.

Butter Pecan Ice Cream

1/2 c. chopped pecans
1 T. butter
1 c. brown sugar
2 eggs
1 c. each: heavy cream and half-and-half

Saute the pecans in the butter over medium-low heat until golden brown, then reserve. Beat the eggs until light, then beat in the half-and-half, and brown sugar. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly, then simmer for four minutes over low heat, and chill. Add the cream and the chopped pecans, and freeze. You can make a hellacious butter almond by using almonds instead of pecans, and almond extract.

Bittersweet Chocolate Ice Cream

1 large egg
1 c. + 2 T. sugar
1 c. dutch-process cocoa
1 t. vanilla extract
2 c. heavy cream
1 c. each: half-and-half and whole milk

Mix the egg, cocoa, milk, half-and-half, and sugar, until everything is thoroughly dissolved. Add the cream, and mix well. Freeze.

Chestnut Ice Cream

1 c. chestnuts in syrup, drained
4 egg yolks
3/4 c. sugar
1 1/2 c. each: heavy cream and half-and-half
1 T. vanilla extract

Puree half the chestnuts. Chop the remaining chestnuts. Reserve both. Beat the yolks, sugar, vanilla, and half-and-half. Beat over low heat until thick and doubled in volume. Chill, then add the cream and chestnut puree and mix well. Stir in the chestnuts, and freeze.

And just for variation:

Lime Sherbet

The grated rind from two limes
1 c. sugar
3 c. half-and-half
1/2 c. fresh lime juice (usually four limes)
1/2 c. water

I usually buy one more lime than I need, just in case, or buy one of those small bottles of lime juice, just in case. Mix all ingredients and taste, adding more lime juice if you need to. Freeze. Oh. You know this isn’t going to be green, right? If you have to have green, you’ll have to add food coloring.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to have some of that coconut ice cream I made this morning.

to the late, great Peggy Lee! Here’s Fever:

See the Gallery of Gore Fan SUVs–you owe it to yourself to see the rich privileged white guy with the Che Guevara man purse! And while you’re there, don’t miss the Berkeley Concourse of Hypocrisy!

I’ll have to try the ribs, but I have to say that Clem’s pulled pork isn’t very smoky, is bland, and fairly boring. Fat Jack’s pulled pork is much better–and it’s closer and on this side of the mountain.

After weeks of well-justified complaining about Lost, John Podhertz stated that the show had “unjumped the shark with the season finale. I will grant that after a whole season of veering off track, Lost returned (partly) to its roots with the two-hour finale, but unjumped the shark?

Well, maybe, but I’m reserving judgment. It was easily the best episode this season (which compared to the first two seasons, isn’t saying much). I suspect, however (though I do not hope) that Podhertz is nearer the mark when he says:

The question raised by the Lost episode last night is whether it represents salvation for the show, with 48 episodes left. By which I mean, will the show’s shift into the future allow it to jettison the flashbacks that have really run their course now? Even more important, are the writers going to explain the 97 mysteries they have set up and left unresolved, or are they going simply to make up more new mysteries as they go along? I think it’s more likely than not that the answer is they’re just going to continue with their maddening habit of forgetting to unravel the twists they’ve established. But if they do, the show’s 40 percent ratings decline this year is going to continue and ABC will cut the show off before all 48 final episodes are made.

I’ve had a “Chris Carter” feeling about Lost all season, and I’m sorry to say that the finale did nothing to alleviate that feeling. Oh, what’s a “Chris Carter” feeling? Remember the antepenultimate season of the X-Files, how they advertised it before the season started as “The season that will answer everything!” and how the season didn’t answer one single question the writers had created–and all because neither Carter nor the writers ever had any idea of where the show was headed and were making things up as they went along? I’m getting the same feeling about Lost. I could be wrong, but I suspect the writers don’t have any more idea what’s going on with the island or anything else than we do, but we’ll see.

The problem is that the writers have set up three seasons of unexplained mysteries, and if you don’t watch Lost, well, it ain’t All in the Family. Lost revolves around mysteries. Mysteries are the whole point of the show. And the writers have hundreds of major and minor mysteries to explain. Yet, in the finale, they decided to introduce yet another major mystery at the very end, when it looks improbable that they’ll manage to adequately explain the major mysteries they’ve already created, namely:

Earlier this season, we saw the Others recruiting Juliette. Then we find that the Others are not, in fact, the Dharma Initiative nutjobs, but somebody else (who murdered the Dharma Initiative nutjobs on the island, and presumbaly predated them on the island). This creates a thorny problem for the writers: How did the Others first gain access to all the Dharma infrastructure so they could take it over (which they did), and second, how did they manage to pass themselves off as Dharma on the mainland–which they did? Did they also murder all of the nutjobs on the mainland? (One of the things that they did remarkably well was the filmstrips–they are so amazingly, frighteningly 70s authentic, as is the whole Dharma concept, and that’s coming from somebody who survived the 70s).

In the finale, they introduced yet another group, these people on the freighter, who for whatever reason (if we are to believe Ben or Walt or Jacob or The Island or whateverthefrak the mysterious personality that takes on different forms is–there’s another major mystery they must explain) are trying to “hurt” The Island. Uh, okay. So they’ve got to explain who these people are, what “hurting the island” means and why these people want to “hurt” the island, plus who the Others are, in addition to what both the island and The Island is (Lost addicts will understand the distinction), and what’s going on in general–and more, but I’ll get to that below. I realize it was the season finale and they needed a cliffhanger, but you don’t need to create yet another major mystery to make a cliffhanger.

Then, there are all those mysteries from the first two seasons that the writers seem to have dropped entirely. What about Walt, you know, the dead bird, the polar bears, the appearances, what was that all about? And probably even more important, what about the Numbers? The last time the writers incorporated the Numbers into an episode was the one where they blew open the hatch. It seems the writers have conveniently forgotten these things, which is another reason I’m getting that “Chris Carter” feeling about this show.

Then Jonah Goldberg says:

As several folks — most notably JPod — have noted the show seems to have regained its footing. Here’s my theory as to why. They’ve decided to end it. As discussed last week, the producers have set a date certain for the end of the show. That allows them to write with a direction and destination in mind which is a lot better and more productive than constantly stringing out unresolved mysteries and cliffhangers.

Perhaps. But being the cynical old coot I am, I’m more inclined to believe that the writers have figured out with an infinite number of episodes, they have to suddenly decide where the show is going and what’s been going on. I don’t hope that’s the case, but if we keep getting more unexplained mysteries next season, I suspect Lost will lose its viewers.

It’s been building for a while of course, but I’m not sure I like the effort to rehabilitate the Others into quasi-good guys, or at least Morally Ambiguous Guys. Of course, moral ambiguity is almost always more realistic because very few people actually decide to be The Villain. But next season promises to have Other-Others, and combined with Jack’s regret about leaving the Island, I fear that we’re going to be led to believe that Ben’s behavior has been somewhat justifiable.

I was getting this same feeling through the first half of the season, but now that the Survivors have actually started taking up for themselves, it bothers me less. And if the writers are trying to make us sympathize with the Others, they’re doing a remarkably poor job of it. It’s kind of hard to sympathize with a group who murdered forty-some people in cold blood. If they wanted us to sympathize with the Others, they wouldn’t have chosen to present them that way. I can see people sympathizing with Ben killing his father (let’s fact it, the man was a pig), but the whole Dharma Initiative? I don’t think morality has sunk that far. And that brings up another mystery that must be explained: How did Ben–as far as we know, the only Dharma nutjob left alive–take over an aggressive group and gain the iron-fisted control he has now?

I don’t necessarily swallow the “Jack’s father is alive after all” subplot, either. We didn’t see him. And one of Jonah’s correspondents had exactly the same reaction to this I did when he said:

Also Jack would not let the pharmacy lady call Christian’s office because Jack stole the prescription or the office doesn’t exist anymore. I think it was clear by the expression on the face of the new doctor (Security guy from Las Vegas) that Jack is off his rocker talking about his dead father like he was alive.

In the “flashforwards” from the finale, Jack wasn’t exactly stable–or sober. He tried to kill himself. He’s living in a drug-induced fog. I think it’s more likely that Jack has lost touch with reality, and only believes his father is alive. And there’s another mystery: Are the writers ever going to address the fact that Jack and Claire have the same father (though neither knows it), or are they just going to let that drop and hope we won’t remember?

One of the central properties of the show has been this “Six Degrees of Separation” thing they’ve been feeding us in the flashbacks. All of the Survivors are in some way connected, though few know it, and none did before the crash. There’s something else for the writers to tie up, and it seems they have enough to do without introducing new mysteries, unless the new mysteries are required to explain all of the others.

Not that I didn’t like the finale. I did. I liked the way it crystallized Ben as the “anti-Locke,” as being obsessed with the island (and The Island) itself (though maybe he and Locke are more aligned than either thinks). I liked the time shift, from flashbacks to flashforwards. I liked the way it returned focus to the island, instead of an increasingly tiresome conflict between the Survivors and the Others. None of the characters has any meaning outside the island–they set that up in the first two seasons. Until the finale, the island had become just another place. But will next season be an improvement over this last one? If the writers want a job, it had better be.

The hard drive is so close to full–and has been for about a month–that every time I tell it to record something, it tells me three or four other things will be deleted early. I have been hurriedly watching a couple of things then deleting them to make room, but now that the season is over, I’ve started cleaning up the hard drive.

I’m burning the second half of this season of BSG to DVDs now. “Rapture,” “Taking a Break from all your Worries,” and “The Woman King” have been burned to one DVD. I’m currently burning “A Day in the Life” to the second. I’ll end up with three DVDs, for a grand total of six for the entire season. (VHS? Who records VHS tapes these days?)

When I’ve finished with BSG (tomorrow sometime, probably), Lost is next. That will take twice as long, since I have the whole season on the hard drive, and didn’t burn the first half to DVDs. It will also be somewhat painful, since the first half of the season sucked so bad.

So we went over Skytop and found the luxury dog resort. Since we were so close (and on the west side of Skytop), I decided to try Clem’s. Clem’s has no walls; it’s one roof surrounded by tents, with no seating (though you can stand and eat off the barrels in the parking lot)–and even here in Pennsylvania, it’s open all year, despite no walls and no heat (other than the barbecue fires, of course). It’s just off 220, and I’d noticed it a few times but figured hey, this is Pennsylvania, the barbecue probably sucks, and drove past it. Then, NYC Educator sent me a URL to a review of Clem’s on Roadside Food. Then, I tried Fat Jack’s (PDF menu), and it was actually pretty good. Then, I found this review in the Collegian, so I decided today to run down the road and pick up some pulled pork.

It’s too late for lunch, so I put it in the refrigerator. I’ll try it for lunch tomorrow and report.

Well, not really a road trip. We’re off to find Royal Pet Resort, which will be boarding our dogs when we’re in Charleston (SC) for Spoleto next month. Note the hot oil treatments and spa. Seriously.

Offered merely for interest. No, the figures aren’t adjusted for inflation or cost of living.

Data from flashback.com (go here and click on the links).

From the CCRKBA reciprocity guide:

These states honor all carry licenses issued in the United States:

• Alaska
• Idaho
• Indiana
• Kentucky
• Michigan
• Missouri
• Oklahoma
• South Dakota
• Tennessee
• Utah
• Vermont

These states honor no carry licenses issued by any state:

• California
• Connecticut
• Hawaii
• Illinois
• Iowa
• Kansas
• Maine
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• Nebraska
• Nevada
• New York
• Oregon
• Rhode Island
• Wisconsin

Even if you’re traveling to one of the states that recognizes your license, check the state laws on packing.org to be safe.

Blogging will be light Monday. The big–and I do mean big–Memorial Day celebration in Boalsburg calls (see here and here). I’ll take the camera, so there will be lots of pictures Tuesday (last year, Memorial Day weekend was the hottest part of the year; it’s supposed to be in the low 70s this year, thank God).

We still haven’t eaten at Duffy’s Tavern. I’d like to do that this year.

Thirty years ago today–that’s three decades ago to the day–Star Wars was released in the US.

Comment or trackback, as long as you link to here.

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I may just have to boycott the Carnival of Education. Four times now, I have submitted an article and seen it disappear into the black hole. Twice when I inquired, I got no response from the carnival host. Once, I got an idiotic response from the idiot who was hosting, “I couldn’t figure out where to fit it in my cute little creative scheme, so I just didn’t add it, sorry!” This moron obviously is one of these crayon-and-poster-board mouthbreathers. And the last time, I got a comment here, saying he was sorry and he’d add it if I sent the URL. I sent the URL. I got no response, and it didn’t get added. That was today.

Once, twice, even three times–even with the “it didn’t fit my construction paper and glitter project theme!” moron hosting–and who cares. Four times, oh well, that’s pissed me off.

Then, I volunteered to host, used to every time I submitted an article. Naw. Instead, we got the idiot who had a cute little creative scheme she had to work articles around. I don’t know if Ed Wonk noticed, but I stopped volunteering. Sorry, I can’t fucking be bothered. So don’t ask, because the answer will be, “Sorry, but I have to clip my toenails.”

You wonder what’s wrong with education, when the educators are irresponsible, drooling idiots?

Fuck the Carnival of Education. Seriously. This carnival is almost as much of a joke as the Watchers Council, composed of equally irresponsible morons who can’t be bothered to answer email they have solicited. What a bunch of children.

Me, I’ll stick with the adults.

Kim du Toit penned a characteristically witty paean to cheese a couple of months ago, though he got a few things, well, not quite right:

One of the great culture shocks I encountered when I first moved to America is that most restaurants do not offer a cheese plate after the dessert course.

For most of the US, this is correct. However, cheese and dessert go together still in New England (Texas isn’t the whole United States, you know). And he’s correct about “standard American supermarket cheese,” which is fairly dreadful stuff. But I have to wonder: Don’t they have deli counters in Texas supermarkets?

Forty years ago, “American wine” and “drinkable” were mutually exclusive, but no longer. The United States makes some of the world’s best wines. But however awful those pre-packaged cheeses hanging by the dairy counter in the supermarket are, America has produced great cheeses since before the Revolutionary War.

I can forgive Kim’s unfortunate swipe at American cheddars. Texas is a beef state, not a dairy state. But great cheddars–and more–can be easily found in most larger supermarkets across the US these days.

Apologies to Ann Althouse and anyone else from Wisconsin. Wisconsin makes some excellent cheeses. But in my humble opinion, if you want amazing domestic cheddar, look to Vermont. And even a large cheese producer like Cabot makes a couple of top-notch cheddars. The Vintage Choice–cheese so complex, rich, and sharp you don’t want to chew it, just let it melt in your mouth–is only outdone by the Old School Cheddar (very hard to find). A bit harder to find, but certainly worth the effort, are the cheddars made by Grafton Village (the five star cheddar is memorable, to say the least).

If you’re pining for swiss-type cheeses, Vermont produces one of the best, Blythedale Farm’s Vermont Gruyère (though I have to disagree with your taste in swiss-type cheeses; I’d take gruyère or emmenthaler over jarlsberg, fine, but too bland for my taste). There are some excellent Amish-made swiss-type cheeses here in Pennsylvania, as well.

The United States–Iowa, specifically–makes one of the world’s best blue cheeses, the ubiquitous (and pricey) Maytag. Peppery, tangy, a unique blue, and excellent with slices of ripe pears, if fruit and cheese it your pleasure.

Or one that is close to my heart, deep in the hills of southern Indiana fifteen miles from the Ohio River is a small goat farm in tiny Greenville, population about 600. The owners began making goat cheese, and called their business Capriole. In a matter of only a few years, they swept international awards–in France–beating out all the European competitors. Capriole doesn’t market outside Indiana or northern Kentucky, I don’t think, but you can order from their website. The Mont St. Francis (named after the convent of the same name just down the road) is something you will never forget (Capriole sells at the Bloomington Farmers’ Market, for anyone in Monroe County).

Look around, and not by the dairy counter. There are first rate American cheeses to be found.

What America has never developed–and I do not understand why–is either fortified wines or spirits. We have the wineries. We have the distilleries. Why nobody has produced a high quality fortified wine or spirit in this country is a mystery. If you need marsala, port, or sherry, buy the import. Christian Brothers is the only distillery ever to attempt to produce American spirits, and their products are abominable. If you want cognac, you have to buy the import. But just about anything else you can buy domestic without sacrificing quality, provided you look around.

I gave myself my last injection of this year-long treatment today, and I went to the range to celebrate. I didn’t do too well: The one side effect (from the pills, not the injections) that refused to go away was the vision thing. I have a few things to mail, so while I’m gone, enjoy the latest Carnival of Education.

So what have I been saying all this time? How ideology rules the classroom.

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Since I have that white, raw milk, extra sharp, Vermont cheddar, and I have a craving for comfort food, I think we’ll do:

Macaroni and cheese

8 oz. uncooked macaroni (long macaroni, if you can find it)

1/2 lb. extra sharp cheddar, grated
1 c. milk
1 T. each: butter and flour
1 t. dry mustard
salt and pepper

1 slice bread, pinched into small croutons
1/2 stick butter

Preheat oven to 400.

First, make the croutons. Melt the butter in a small saucepan, toss in the bread, and saute over medium heat, flipping and turning, until they are golden and the butter is absorbed. Reserve.

Next, make the sauce. In the same pan, melt the butter. Add the flour and dry mustard and make a roux, turn heat high, and add the milk. Stir constantly until the sauce begins to boil and thickens. Add the cheese and stir in (it will melt almost immediately). Add salt and pepper to taste (salt may not be needed, depending on the cheese; pepper always is). Remove from heat.

Cook the macaroni in boiling, salted water for seven minutes, then drain. Mix with the sauce, and pour into an 8×8 baking dish. Cover with the buttery croutons, and bake for about 20 minutes, until bubbly and nice and brown on top.

And I quote:

New Islamic Fatwa: Adult Men Can Breast-Feed From Female Stranger, Which Then Permits Them To Work Together Without The Suspicion of Sexual Shenanigans

Just go read it. I’m not sure I’ve wrapped my brain around it yet.