Tag Archives: cooking

February 2024 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story: The war on terror continues, and the propaganda umbrella has expanded to cover attacks on any group labeled as “Iran-backed”. Fentanyl gets an honorable mention, but affects mostly the poor and miserable whereas the war on terror threatens to immolate us all.

Most hopeful story: The people who are in charge of the USA’s nuclear weapons still believe in the ideals behind the founding of the country, at least more than the rest of us. Okay, this is lean times for hope, but seriously this at least buys us time to figure some stuff out.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I am not a great chef by any means, but all hail recipe websites, however pesky they may be, for helping me make edible food.

those darn recipe sites

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This is some seriously dark humor. But ha ha, also so true. You have to scroll forever to get to your recipe, and at least for me the mobile version of any recipe site is infuriating because it constantly crashes. And yet…what is also true is recipe websites have made our world better. Instead of winging a recipe, or relying on one book you happen to have lying around, you can find out the ingredients, measurements, and even watch a video of how to make it well. You can even look at several versions of a dish, then wing it, and it will usually come out pretty well. And if you wing it in the future, it will come out better than if the recipe sites did not exist. So thank you, recipe sites.

October 2019 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story:

  • A third of all of North America’s birds may have disappeared since the 1970s. (Truth be told, it was hard to pick a single most depressing story line in a month when I covered propaganda, pandemic, new class divisions created by genetic engineering, and nuclear war. But while those are scary risks for the near future, it appears the world is right in the middle of an ongoing and obvious ecological collapse, and not talking much about it.)

Most hopeful story:

  • I’ll go with hard shell tacos. They are one of the good things in this life, whether they are authentic Mexican food or “trailer park cuisine” as I tagged the story!  

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

  • A list of “jobs of the future” includes algorithms, automation, and AI; customer experience; environmental; fitness and wellness; health care; legal and financial services; transportation; and work culture. I’ll oversimplify this list as computer scientist, engineer, doctor, lawyer, banker, which don’t sound all that different than the jobs of the past. But it occurs to me that these are jobs where the actual tools people are using and day-to-day work tasks evolve with the times, even if the intended outcomes are basically the same. What might be new is that even in these jobs, you need to make an effort to keep learning every day throughout your career and life if you want to keep up.

There will still be openings for evil HR cats.

hard shell tacos

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Hard shell tacos are not entirely an invention of the United States. As I learned in this exhaustive article on the subject, people in Mexico do deep-fry soft shell corn tortillas to make something similar to the hard shell tacos enjoyed in fast food joints, dive bars, and trailer parks in the United States. Mass production of the shells, though, goes back to a guy named Glen Bell, who started a fast food chain where the word Taco replaces his first name.

So U.S. tacos are roughly to Mexican food what spaghetti and meatballs are to Italian food or General Tso is to Chinese food. I say, try to enjoy some of the finer things in life while also not becoming too much of a snob. A couple low-brow cooking tips: Try the mass-produced hard taco shells with the square bottoms. Heat them up a little bit in the toaster oven. Beef and pork are both awesome, but if you feel bad for the mammals, ground turkey is also pretty good. Get the kind with lots of fat and thigh meat, not the ground turkey breast. It’s cheaper anyway. Fish tacos are also pretty awesome but a topic for another day. If it’s Meatless Monday, pinto beans with lots of toppings and seasoning are also very good, but let’s be honest, just not quite the same as a little flesh donated by our animal friends. Fry your onions a little bit and both your tongue and stomach will thank you.

Long live Taco Tuesdays!