Right Wing Nation

They’re the same, except shortcake has sugar added. Sure, you can buy biscuits in a can, and I do from time to time, but they’re so easy to make, it always makes me feel guilty. Oh. And who started this “flaky biscuits” crap? Biscuits aren’t supposed to be flaky.

Buttermilk biscuits

Add 4 T. of sugar, and you have shortcake.

4 c. flour (see below)
1 t. salt
1 T. baking powder
2 t. baking soda
1 c. lard, or butter, or a combination, COLD, cut into small pieces
1 c. buttermilk

Preheat oven to 375.

About the flour. Pastry flour is ideal, but it’s hard to find. Half cake and half all-purpose will do well; just all-purpose is fine.

Mix the flour, salt, baking powder and soda in a bowl. There is no point in sifting, but you may, if you like. Add the lard or butter, then cut in. Most pastry blenders are cheap wire that only works if the fat is far too soft, so either find a good one (good luck with that), use a fork, or best, use your hand.

When mixture looks like coarse cornmeal, dump the buttermilk in all at once, and stir just until it holds together.

Dump on a floured counter, and lightly flour the top. This should be handled as little as possible. Do NOT knead. Do NOT use a rolling pin. Pat the dough out about an inch thick. Cut with a biscuit cutter, and place biscuits on a baking pan. You may quickly and gently push the remaining dough together and pat it out, then cut more biscuits, but you may only do this once (do it a second time, and the biscuits will be nasty).

Bake 20-25 minutes. Eat with butter and sorghum (if you can find it — I had no idea sorghum was “regional” until we moved here).

I recently ran across an interesting cobbler recipe, a shortcake-y cobbler, not the kind of cobbler I grew up with. It’s basically berries baked with a shortcake crust on top. The shortcake is more absorbent than the flaky cobbler crust I grew up with, and soaks up the juices. Good stuff, and easy to make.

Blackberry (or raspberry) cobbler

4 c. (2 quarts) berries
2 - 2 1/4 c. sugar
6 T. cornstarch

2 c. flour
4 T. sugar
4 t. baking powder
1 stick COLD butter, cut into small pieces
1/2 c. milk

Preheat oven to 425.

Mix the berries, sugar, and cornstarch, and pour into a deep, buttered pan.

Mix the flour, sugar, and baking powder, and cut in the butter. Mix in the milk, stir just until it holds together, then put on a floured counter. Pat into more or less the size and shape of the top of the dish, lay over, fold any excess down the sides, and bake on a foil-covered baking sheet for 35 minutes, until top is done and berries are bubbly. This is really good even without vanilla ice cream.

Eating penis overshadows leaked Olympics opening ceremony video

The first corn of the season! Today: Corn pudding, with chicken, sauteed in butter and cream.

After the movie, of course.

From Nittany Meats. Way too bland. I don’t mean “not hot,” I mean indistinguishable from ground pork. This seems to be a sausage-challenged area.

And it’s too lean. You put sausage in a cold pan with no fat or oil, turn the heat on low, and let it cook. That’s the way you’re supposed to cook sausage (or bacon). That’s what I did, and this sausage stuck to the pan.

Haven’t tried the bacon yet. But I’ll be going back to Jimmy Dean sage sausage. They’ve come out with a new flavor, “intense,” and it’s good, but I like the sage. Sausage is supposed to have lots of sage in it. That’s what makes it taste like sausage, instead of ground pork.

(Dark) chocolate-covered cherries. Scuse me, I need another one.

I’m not sure what’s going on in France. First, it was CW and line dancing. Now, this.

EVEN if you couldn’t be on the Champs-Élysées for Bastille Day on Monday to watch seven parachutists float down in front of President Nicolas Sarkozy, you can still celebrate the greatness of France with a new local tradition.

Eat a hamburger.

Beginning a few years ago but picking up momentum in the past nine months, hamburgers and cheeseburgers have invaded the city. Anywhere tourists are likely to go this summer — in St.-Germain cafes, in fashion-world hangouts, even in restaurants run by three-star chefs — they are likely to find a juicy beef patty, almost invariably on a sesame seed bun.

“It has the taste of the forbidden, the illicit — the subversive, even,” said Hélène Samuel, a restaurant consultant here. “Eating with your hands, it’s pure regression. Naturally, everyone wants it.”

It is a startling turnaround in a country where a chef once sued McDonald’s for $2.7 million in damages over a poster that suggested he was dreaming of a Big Mac. Hamburgers were everything that French dining is not: informal, messy, fast and foreign.

Of course, they are French, so some are plopping foie gras on it. But others, not.

And while steak tartare shows up on practically every brasserie menu, chefs now recognize that a hamburger is not simply six ounces of chopped lean beef grilled until crusty.

“No, that would be an error,” said Ms. Grasser-Hermé.

“A hamburger is the architecture of taste par excellence,” she explained. “The meat needs to be a mix of fatty and lean. Not raw, not rare. It must be medium rare. At the same time the bread needs to be smooth, tepid, toasted on the sesame side. I like to brush the soft side with butter. There needs to be a crispy chiffonade of iceberg lettuce. Everything plays a role.”

In developing the Salle Pleyel burger, Ms. Samuel and Ms. Ezgulian felt the weight of tradition. “We’re a little terrified of making a mistake,” said Ms. Samuel. “We cling to things like the soft buns, sweet-and-sour pickles, onions, tomatoes, cheese. We need these guideposts because we don’t have the history, the context. Otherwise, for us, it’s not a burger. It’s a hot sandwich.”

This doesn’t surprise me:

Also, he explained, Parisians don’t really understand about drinking a milkshake with the burger. They order it as dessert.

No, the fried apple pie is the dessert. Wait, nix that. MickeyD’s dropped that from the menu when Ray Croc died and his idiot wife took over.

Clicky for biggie:

Recipe here.

Cherry pie will have to wait until tomorrow. I’ll make it early, so when I get back, I can have a piece or three.

Pics below the fold.

Went to the Peoples’ Choice at Boalsburg yesterday (pics to follow). Scott’s was there, but I only got one sandwich, instead of my customary two, since I wanted pirogies and fries. And a milkshake.

I was expecting a couple of pirogies. I got four, floating in melted butter and onions. The fries were top-notch, too, but I came home swearing I’d never eat again.

Went to the farmers’ market, and picked up sour cherries and Hungarian wax peppers. Have to go back to Meyer today because we forgot half of the empty milk bottles.

The Peoples’ Choice Festival is this weekend too, in Boalsburg. We’ll be going today. Scott’s will be there, with their roasted pork sandwiches. Here are some pics (click the pic to hugefy, but you knew that), below the fold.

Scott’s is at the Boalsburg Arts Festival this weekend, so I got a cheesesteak (not bad), real fries, apfel strudel at Helmut’s (brought home), and of course, stopped at the creamery and got an ice cream cone. Pics later.

Nittany Meats had bacon (of course). I usually don’t buy ground meat (I grind my own), but there was this bin labeled, “Bacon Burger.” I asked. Yes, it was hamburger with bacon ground up in it, and you know, we had to have some of that. And I picked up some loose country sausage while we were there.

Doctor appointment at 3.

First, to Nittany Meats for bacon (and maybe other things). Back here to toss the food in the refrigerator, then into town to the Arts Festival (and food!)

The festival here is about the same size (and same kinds of things) as the 4th Street Festival in Bloomington. However, this one is spread out over a larger area, and there are booths only on one side of the street, which I find to be a great idea. It makes moving around much easier.

Oh. And they have more (and better) food.

I made potato soup last night. Today, we’ll hit the Arts Fair (I think it started yesterday), for Scott’s roasted pork sandwiches and apfelstrudel, then Nittany Meats to try their bacon. They make and smoke all their sausages. I’m hoping they sell their own bacon, too.

And I didn’t mean to single out Sam’s. Any bacon you buy in the supermarket is waterlogged.

One of the things we have been getting at Sam’s is bacon, because they sell it in 2 2-lb packages for less than you can get it in the supermarket. For the last couple of days, I’ve been snarfing down bacon for lunch trying to get to the end of the bacon.

It’s not Sam’s, specifically (they sell a national brand). It’s bacon at any store.

When did they start adding all that water?

That’s my first problem with bacon. My second (or second and third, depending on how you look at it) is the cut. These days, you can either get thick cut, which is too thick (tried to crumble any?), or “regular,” and that’s thinner than bacon used to be cut, too thin.

So this weekend, we’ll be going to Nittany Meats and trying their platter bacon.

Bitter had a bitter experience with a particularly disgusting sounding pie. Chocolate banana pie.

Ugh. The bile is rising in my throat just looking at the name.

Okay, I admit, I love bananas and hate all things banana (banana bread, banana pie, banana cake, banana candy, all disgusting items that should never be eaten). But this is one of those “pies” with whipped cream on top.

Whipped cream never, ever, under any circumstances is a pie topping. Never. Meringue goes on pies. You can serve whipped cream with pieces of pie, but no, never should it appear as a pie topping.

Never.

Key Lime Pie, you say? That’s a nasty excuse for a pie, candy sweet and vile. And it has a graham cracker crust. That’s not pie. Pie has a pie crust. Graham cracker crusts are for cheesecakes and junior high home ec recipes for kids who can’t make pie crusts. That’s filth. If you like lime and want a pie, make lime meringue pie.

Carrot cake in the oven.

Home Depot opened yesterday (didn’t realize it was open till we drove past it today). I looked closely, and saw no NO FIREARMS signs. I did see a guy in a T-shirt who was obviously printing.

Haven’t I seen discussions about Home Depot prohibiting concealed carry?

You may or may not recall that aging latte liberal who was trying to buy designer frozen Thai dinners with foodstams (of course, it was Wegman’s, where else?) I was at Wegman’s yesterday and wanted something to eat fast that I could just nuke for a few minutes, and picked up one of those Thai dinners (except now, they’re $8.99).

Let’s just say it was a mistake, and leave it at that. For less than twice the money, I could have driven down to the Thai place downtown and had a pretty good curry. Today’s the same, but just in case, I picked up a Stouffer’s lasagna.

Actually, I’d rather have a cheeseburger or three, but I am not going to drive back into town today. Am. Not. No. Way. Ain’t. Gonna. Happen.

A medical physiologist asks:

French-fries are junk-food, but roast potatoes are not; bread is a basic food-stuff, but biscuits are junk; wine comprises “empty calories”, but fruit juices are health foods; the sugar in cake is detrimental to health, but the sugar in honey and grapes is not. White bread is not “nutritious”, but cauliflower is, though it consists of 90% water, 5% starch, a minute amount of protein, and only traces of vitamins and minerals (other than potassium). What then is “junk” food?

And concludes:

“Junk-food”, we must therefore conclude, is any consumable prepared outside the home which children find delicious.

But not necessarily children. For example, serve 3 lbs of spinach in a bowl as spinach, and it’s wholesome. Use those same 3 lbs of spinach to make cream of spinach soup, or even creamed spinach (one of life’s greatest pleasures, provided one doesn’t overdo the nutmeg), and it’s no longer wholesome.

Or mashed potatoes. Make dull, uninteresting potatoes with nothing more than a bit of milk and salt, and they’re wholesome. Add butter (the more the better, of course) or gruyère, and they’re suddenly an indulgence, or “empty calories.”

I think the physiologist is correct about the palate, and just hasn’t noticed that it’s not necessarily children’s palates. If it tastes really delicious, it’s not wholesome. It’s culinary puritanism.

Back from errands. I’m hungry. I think I may run down to the Waffle Shop.

Quaker Steak and Lube is not closing. The sign refers to the lot in front, on the street (lots come with liquor licenses here?) I really need to remember that those onion rings are an inch thick, and six defeated me — along with a dozen chipotle wings.

As a rule, I’m not a big fan of chain restaurants, but I’ll try anything, and I’m willing to make exceptions when warranted. So while I’m not a fan (at all) of Outback, Texas Roadhouse has great ribs (steaks aren’t too bad, but you have to order the thick cut).

Then, there’s Quaker Steak and Lube. Every chain has a gimmick. Theirs is classic cars and motorcycles. It’s kind of a cross between a restaurant and a classic car museum (and there’s one in Indiana, in Portage). Speaking of, Texas Roadhouse is a bit strange here, with the Texas flags alternating with Penn State and Steelers banners and signs. Anyway.

I’d never heard of the chain before we moved here. And while I love wings, I think barbecued chicken is weird (pork, dammit, pork), so I never got into the buffalo wings thing. But Quaker Steak and Lube specializes in wings, and does these chipotle dry rub wings that are amazingly good, and then there are the onion rings that come stacked on a car antenna (you order by the size of antenna). Anyway, there’s a rather disturbing sign in the lot in front of them here that would seem to indicate that they’re going out of business. Thing is, I can’t find anything on the web or in the local rag about their going out of business, and there are always cars parked there. So I think here in a few minutes I’ll head over there for some of those wings and onion rings and just ask. If they closed, well, that would be really sad. Really. Those onion rings can’t be beat. “Hellacious” is the word that comes to mind.

Here’s Bike Night at the local Quaker Steak and Lube, every Wednesday night during the summer here in State College.

I’ve only used the grill once this year, and while we were at Sam’s, I saw a package of two two-pound chuck roasts, and was suddenly inspired, so I tossed it in the cart ($2.88/lb, pretty damned cheap for beef around here). I got cheese — Land o’Lakes Co-Jack, to be precise, then we went next door to Wal-Mart for a supermarket tomato (not for me — I don’t eat filth on my burgers) and buns (they only have huge packs at Sam’s).

I lit the coals, then ground one of the roasts. I don’t buy ground meat. When I first used my grinder, I had an Aha! experience when I saw that everything came out looking the same. I (generously) added kosher salt and coarsely ground black pepper, mixed it up, and made it into four half-pound burgers.

Mmmmmm, meat! Animal flesh! Dead cow! Mmmmmmm! And after trying nearly everything, I have settled on Co-Jack as the best cheeseburger cheese. I’ve done the cheddar thing, and it’s good, but it’s too designer. It’s no longer a cheeseburger.

If I’d thought about it, I would have picked up cole slaw fixins, but I didn’t.

Coals are almost ready . . .

Mmmmm, dead cow! Mooooooo!

As someone I used to know once said, “If it doesn’t shriek in terror when it’s harvested, it doesn’t belong on a plate.”

I just saw this really stupid TV ad for Garlic Pro. It’s a little chopper — you put your garlic in it and push the handle up and down, just like that chopper Ron Popeil offered years ago, but smaller. But wait! You have to peel it first, so you also get a cheap little rubber tube. See, you roll it in the rubber tube and the peel comes off! And you get both for only $14.95 (offer doubled if you order on the phone)!

For the kitchen technique impaired who are thinking, “Wow, that’s not much, and it’s really cool!” let me save you that $14.95, because you have one implement in your kitchen that peels and chops garlic.

Really?

Yes, really. It’s called a knife. Follow the instructions:

To peel garlic

1. Place garlic cloves on cutting board.
2. Smash garlic cloves with the flat of the knife blade.
3. Throw peel in trash.
4. Voilà! Peeled garlic!

To chop garlic (I could say just chop the garlic, but that wouldn’t be helpful, and I am always helpful)

1. Hold the tip of the knife blade (at the top, not the edge) between your left thumb and forefinger (reverse if left-handed)
2. Hold the knife in your right hand, and with your left, hold the tip of the blade against the cutting board (reverse if left-handed)
3. Rock the blade up and down, moving the knife in a circular motion (either clockwise or counter-clockwise) while holding the tip stationary (hint: it helps if the garlic is under the blade)
4. Voilà! Chopped garlic!

You just saved $14.95 (plus shipping and handling, of course), and the embarrassment of having spent that money on a cheap piece of plastic and a cheap rubber tube.

You’re welcome, I’m sure.

Nice end cut chops. Mashed potatoes and gravy, of course.

You know how berries are — they don’t keep at all. And when you have way more dead ripe strawberries than you can possibly eat, well, what do you do?

You make strawberry ice cream, to go with the brats.

The Creamery is good, no doubt, but I can make better.

Strawberry ice cream. Let’s see, salt, ice, more strawberries, more cream . . .

Them’s some hellacious strawberries.

It’s International Bacon Double Cheeseburger Day! (actually, it’s Ingrid Newkirk’s birthday, but who’s keeping score?)

I was going to get more strawberries at the market today, but we still have some of that carrot cake left. Thursday.

The bacon is done. The pork steaks have thawed. All that’s left is to peel the potatoes and put them on to boil. As soon as they are, I turn the heat down under them, coat the pork steaks in seasoned flour, then start them cooking in the bacon grease. When they’re done, I mash the potatoes with a stick of butter, and make the gravy — just can’t forget to crumble the bacon in it, or worse, eat it all first. That’s a problem, not eating bacon.

I’ve got the chicken, but not the energy. Pork steaks, with mashed potatoes and gravy.

I had resisted the temptation to buy strawberries at the store for two reasons. First, they looked much as supermarket strawberries usually do, not dead ripe, and chosen for size and shape. Second, I was holding out for the Amish to reappear.

They did, and they had strawberries, beautiful, deep red strawberries. So we picked up some yesterday. Today, I hulled them, then sliced them, and they were a juicy deep red all the way through, strawberry perfection.I sprinkled them with sugar and let them macerate for a few minutes to draw out juice, whipped some cream, put berries on my shortcake and slathered them with whipped cream.

Ah …

That’s better. I just had some more.

That reminds me of a conversation I’ve had several times with Bloomingtonians, usually sparked by mention of, or going to, the farmers’ market there.

You have to understand that Bloomington’s farmers’ market isn’t what you think it is. It should be named the neo-hippie, pick weeds out of a yard and sell them as organic market. Actually, it has grown over the years, and there are a fair number of farmers who sell there, but it’s still dominated by moonbats with Socialist Worker Party buttons shoving petitions in your face and tone-deaf local “musicians” singing about world peace and social justice.

The Bloomington farmers’ market is the neo-hippie-wannabe event of Monroe County, held every Saturday. Most moonbats don’t get up very early, while farmers do, so the secret is to go early, around 7, before all of the wackjobs in dreadlocks and birkenstocks arrive.

About a third of the booths are things picked out of somebody’s yard. One of Bloomington’s nuttiest wackjobs sells “organic” cut flowers, for example. She doesn’t grow flowers; she just picks them on the way there. People buy them up because they’re “organic” cut flowers.

The remaining booths are farmers, for the most part (there is always a kettle corn booth, though why anybody would want to eat popcorn at 7 am I have never understood), and several local greenhouses set up booths so you can buy sets to take home and plant. Of the farmers’ booths, about half are Amish, and the other half, not. The non-Amish farmer booths can be divided into local farmers and hippie play farmers, and are pretty easy to distinguish: The real farmers have a lot more produce to sell, and don’t have “organic” and “free range” and other such nonsense written all over their signs.

Anyway, it’s a large farmers’ market, much larger than anything here, and there are many good things to be found there (just go early so you don’t have to put up with all the moonbattery).

Back to the conversation, always sparked by the market. Somebody always comes up with, “I wouldn’t expect you to go.”

Why not? Well, because Bloomingtonians — and not just I — see the market as some sort of super hippie commune thing, and place to be seen by other hippie types. Oh, and because you can get “organic” there.

Anyway, the conversation always boils down to this: Buying local, the moonbat believes, is something lefties do, not something conservatives do.

Okay, now do you find that odd? What is leftist about buying local?

Not a damned thing.

I love Wal-Mart, and there are a couple of supermarkets here I really like, but sorry, I’m going to be buying tomatoes from the Amish during the summer, not at Wal-Mart or the supermarket. It’s not political, particularly. It’s quality. In fact, I never buy supermarket tomatoes. If tomatoes are out of season, I buy canned.

Well, I suppose it is partly political, although I don’t think of it as political, since I’m not a moonbat and don’t keep tally of feel-good political statements. Farming is essential. I want farmers to succeed. So when they’re selling, I’m buying. I don’t give a frak if they’re selling “organic” or not. “Organic” isn’t the point.

Capitalism is all about parties entering into contracts for mutual benefit. The Amish get our money, and we get great strawberries. There’s nothing leftist about that.

And buying local, even in Bloomington, doesn’t mean giving your money to moonbats. At the farmers’ market there, you can get great certified conservative Republican elk roast, from Duane Long. Great stuff. Try it.

The Amish, I mean — well, they’ve opened a furniture store, and they’ve been out in the plaza selling furniture for about a month, but the market is back, full schedule, every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday until they sell out. Great strawberries, picked up two quarts, and they were selling shortcakes. Got milk and heavy cream at the dairy.

One tiny problem: We have that carrot cake. Now, we have strawberries and shortcake.

I have a weakness for carrot cake. Keep your cheesecake; give me the carrot cake. I could eat carrot cake for the rest of my life. I’ve never made my own, because there was always someplace that made really good carrot cake. I haven’t found any here, at least not really good carrot cake. I got a small one (4 inches) at Wegman’s, and the cake was excellent, but the cream cheese icing had sour cream in it.

So I got a recipe and made my own. The icing is excellent, but the cake isn’t as moist as I like it. It was a recipe without pineapple; I wonder if the pineapple recipes are more moist. Anyway, it’s fine. I’m getting another piece right now.

But I’ll be on the lookout for a moister cake recipe.

I laid down, then realized that I had to make dinner, so I opened the freezer, grabbed a bag, tossed it into the microwave, and played a game, “What’d I just thaw?”

Looks like two thin-cut top round steaks.

Maybe stroganoff. I would make chicken-fried steak, but it’s easier to boil noodles than it is peel, cook, and mash taters. So stroganoff it is.

I’m going to lie back down now.

but I’m in sort of a flexaril fog. Sorry.

I don’t think I mentioned that last weekend, we lucked out at the North Atherton Meier. They had two rows of veal loin chops, one above the other. The price on the lower row was $9.99 a pound, and on the top row, $2.99 a pound. Being the honest sort I am, I called the meat woman we always talk to over, and asked if the $2.99 a pound labels were a mistake. She said yeah, so as soon as you pick a few out for yourselves, I’ll take them back and relabel them.

So we got 4 veal loin chops at $2.99 a pound. We’re going to have two of them tonight, like this.

I’ll dust the chops with flour, then brown them over medium heat in butter for about five minutes a side. I’ll remove the chops, then add the peppers, onion, and garlic, and cook them until very soft. I’ll puree them with the cream, then pour it all back into the pan, toss in the chops, and put gnocchi on to boil. I’ll let the chops finish cooking in the sauce, remove them when I drain the gnocchi, then toss the gnocchi with the sauce.

Maybe it’s the drugs, but I think it sounds good.

I once had a recipe for a pepper cream sauce for pasta. This is my reconstruction from memory; it’s easy, and a great choice if you’re tired of all of the common pasta options.

4 tablespoons butter
4 red bell peppers, minced
1 onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 c. heavy cream
1/2 c. grated parmesan
salt and pepper

Melt the butter in a heavy pan and over low heat, cook the peppers, onion, and garlic until the peppers are very soft. Turn the contents of the pan into a blender, add the cream, and puree. Pour back into the pan and cook over high heat, stirring constantly, for a few minutes, until slightly thickened. Add the cheese, then season to taste with salt and pepper.

More nonsense from the MSM, via the Mad Pigeon:

Americans are about to fire up their barbecues for the start of the summer cookout season, and one thing has become painfully apparent: It’s going to cost a lot more than it did last year to roast a burger, or just about any other barbecue favorite, on the grill.

Oh no! But wait:

The price of an average barbecue — with burgers, hot dogs, beer, soda, condiments, salad, paper plates and lighter fluid — could run families about 6 percent more than last year.

Psssst. Six percent is not “a lot.”

“I’m finding myself questioning every purchase, wondering if it’s gonna get eaten or if we really need it,” said Tony Caballero, an advertising and marketing consultant, as he filled his cart with paper plates at a Food Emporium in New York City. “When you do your everyday shopping, you try to cut corners. But it’s a shame to have to scale down when you’re trying to throw a party.”

I’ve been to the Food Emporium. If this idiot had any sense, and were really concerned about prices, he wouldn’t be shopping there. But if he had any sense, he wouldn’t be living in NYC.

The surge in prices is forcing people to try to cut corners and find bargains where they can, such as buying store brands, which tend to cost less than name brands.

Oh no! Not store brands! That’s horrific!

A recent study by the Food Marketing Institute found that about a third more shoppers are limiting themselves to frozen or boxed foods instead of fresh items this year, while nearly half said they bought fewer foods overall.

Gee, at every store I’ve ever frequented, boxed and frozen items are more expensive than their fresh counterparts. Ever being the optimist, I see one good thing in this story:

Scott Faber, a lobbyist for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which has been pushing Congress to increase ethanol research funding, said prices for meat will continue to rise in the next couple of years. Newly enacted federal ethanol mandates will drive the cost of corn higher, he said.

“We are just in the beginning of a period of significantly higher prices, and American families will continue to feel that impact as the cost for basic staples like milk, meat and eggs will grow dramatically,” Faber said. “This holiday weekend surely reflects that.”

Maybe when prices get high enough, there will be enough pressure to repeal these idiotic ethanol mandates.

I haven’t had this since we left Indiana, so I’ve got one in the oven. No, it ain’t custard pie. Richer. Not eggy. There is some debate whether this is an Amish or a Shaker recipe — I suspect the latter, because there is nothing like this here in Pennsylvania. You can buy these frozen in stores all over Indiana, and they’re really good. No, you can’t substitute milk. No, you can’t substitute fake soy crap.

Hoosier Sugar Cream Pie

A single 9-inch pie crust

1/3 c. flour
1 1/2 c. sugar
2 1/2 c. heavy cream
2 egg yolks
2 t. vanilla
1 T. butter, cut into tiny pieces
nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 450.

Combine sugar, flour, cream, yolks, and vanilla, and pour into pie shell. Lightly sprinkle the top with nutmeg and dot with the butter. Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 and bake for 30 more minutes, until filling is set.

Later today: Ribeyes (from the grill) and scalloped potatoes (recipe and photo here).