• Ally here, stepping in for Chris for a change. I ran across this on TikTok, and then went and found it on YouTube to get the full effect. I found myself tearing up while watching and listening. I’m impressed. The song itself is amazing. The video is… yeah. I’d love to see Trump walk into an event with this playing. Regardless, I really wanted to share it.

    At the end, when they show the iconic moment where Secret Service hustle him off the stage, I saw things I didn’t in the color version. The black and white gives you a look at Trump’s face that you just do not get in color. He’s obviously afraid. And then he stood up and did what he knew he had to, to reassure those who were there. Damn. Never thought I’d hear myself saying the words, but thank you, Trump. I hope you win.

     

    Header image attribution: Office of the President of the United States, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

            

  • I made this one this past week, and was thoroughly impressed by it. The flavors were good, though it needed a bit of tweaking to make it perfect. It was a VERY good “dump meal,” meaning all I had to do was stuff things in the crock pot and set it to high. I’ve been sick as a dog this week, and needed stuff that was simple to make. This fit the bill, and was healthy and tasty as well!

    Ingredients

    • 1-1/2 cups barley
    • 1 lb mushrooms, sliced
    • 2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken (thighs, breasts, or a combo)
    • 4 cups chicken broth
    • 1/4 cup lemon juice
    • 1/4 cup dry white wine
    • 6 garlic cloves, smashed and chopped
    • 1 tsp dried thyme
    • 2 tsp salt
    • 1 tsp onion powder
    • ½ tsp red pepper flakes
    • black pepper, to taste
    • 10 oz frozen sweet peas
    • 1/4 cup creme fraîche, sour cream, or plain yogurt (dairy free works well)
    • 2 tbsp Dijon mustard, plus more to taste
    • 1/2 cup fresh tarragon or dill, minced
    • Parmesan cheese

    In your crock pot, combine all the ingredients from barley to the black pepper. Stir well to combine, and then cook on high for about 3 hours. Stir again, making sure to immerse the chicken in the liquid. It’s going to seem a bit soupy, but trust in the recipe. Cook for another hour on high, or switch to low to cook for up to another 3 hours.

    Remove the chicken to a plate and let sit for a few minutes while you do other things. Stir in the frozen peas and let them heat for about 2 minutes.

    While the peas are warming, whisk together the creme fraîche and mustard. Taste, and add more mustard to suit your palate. Fold this mixture into the barley and mushrooms in the crock pot. Now, shred or pull apart your chicken. It should fall apart easily. Return the chicken to the pot, then taste to see if you need any more salt or pepper. Stir in the chopped fresh herbs, and serve immediately.

    Add the Parmesan at the table, for those who wish it.

    Notes:

    I found the tarragon to be a bit strong in flavor, even though I only used about a tablespoon of it. The slight liquorish flavor just overpowered the rest of the dish. I would omit this next time, and use either all dill, or a mix of dill and Italian Seasoning instead. Another suggestion would be Herbs de Provence.

    Even though you’re only adding about a half cup total of “creamy” stuff to this dish, it comes out incredibly creamy tasting. I used a cashew based yogurt, because I’m not able to eat dairy, and it was delicious. I used a smooth traditional Dijon, and I think I might try a more stone ground style next time. This was great as a stand-alone, and could easily be put together in a morning before running out the door. I think it would also be nice paired with a light salad.

            

  • “We can’t afford… We can’t afford… four more years of this”

    Every so often the masks slip and they tell the truth.

    Note, the ellipsis in the quote are him pausing. Not anything being cut out.

            

  • Or Cultures of Honor.

    Most people in western civilizations understand the concept of Honor. Or, at least, they think they do. Most understand, “do the honorable thing.”

    It is a question of right and wrong. It is a moral decision.

    The honorable thing to do is to return the wallet you find on the sidewalk. The honorable thing to do is to protect the lives of the innocent over your own. The honorable thing to do is to put yourself between the bad guys and the innocents.

    This is honor in western culture and civilization.

    An “Honor Culture” or a “Culture of Honor” is not about doing the honorable thing. It is about personal honor.

    Scotland was an honor culture for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. This is what led to clan wars. These people weren’t attacking other clans because they intended to take land or goods, so much as “honor demanded it”.

    At some point in the past, the offending clan had done something to “dishonor” the clan. So the entire clan is at war with the offending clan.

    There is new jargon, To “Dis’” somebody. This means to show them disrespect. To dishonor them.

    Dissing somebody often escalates into verbal or physical violence.

    You don’t disrespect somebody in an honor culture unless you are ready and willing to defend yourself. And to those members of an honor culture, you are the instigator.

    Calling somebody the “N” word when not a member of that sub-culture is to dishonor them. It is to disrespect them. As such, you have invited violence upon yourself.

    The Scots migrated from Scotland to the United States. Many of them came to live in the south. They brought their honor culture with them.

    Thomas Sowell discusses this in —Thomas Sowell, Black rednecks and white liberals (Encounter Books 1st ed ed. 2005).

    One of the signs of an honor culture is a tendency to “defend my honor”. Dueling. When the south was fully invested in being an honor culture, duels were common.

    Later, as the honor culture dissipated, the number of duels, both gun, knife and fist, decreased.

    According to Sowell, that honor culture didn’t just disappear, though. It was adopted by the slaves. When the slaves became freedmen, they didn’t forgo that honor culture. Instead, they took it with them.

    That honor culture survives today in “the hood”.

    For the most part, honor societies in the west exist as a decoration we wear. It is blustering over a football game. It is taking a joking offense at some perceived slight.

    In an honor society, you do not joke about some ones honor. “Them’s fighting words”

    Other primitive cultures still exist as honor cultures.

    It is dishonorable for a woman to have sex outside marriage. The woman’s owner is dishonored by this. Because his honor has been harmed, he is entitled to punish her. Like having her stoned to death.

    He is dishonored if _____. Fill in the blank. A Jew defends himself and stops an attack. They have dishonored the attacker.

    When I use the term “honor society” or “honor culture”, I am not talking about an “honorable society” or even a society that is governed by being honorable. I am talking of the horrific, barbarous, back world “honor culture” that hangs gays from construction cranes, and kills women who have been raped.

            

  • https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFMrGM3X/

    I love this woman. She is one of the people whose words and thoughts made a difference to me in coming around to the right.

            

  • Years ago, my lady discovered that one of my co-workers was plagiarizing content. She brought it to my attention. I reported it to the owner of the company. I cc’ed my boss to keep her in the loop.

    When I arrived at work that day, my boss was waiting for me, took me to a private location and started to berate me for going over her head. I listened and waited for her to wind down. “Is it my turn to talk?”

    “Yes”, and as soon as I started to speak, she would start up again. I’d wait for her to run down, then ask again. At some point, I asked, “You’ve been yelling at me for 10 minutes, do I have permission to yell back?” “YES!”

    She finally let me speak, “You gave me permission to yell, I am not going to…” I did my spoke to her softly, without anger, without pushing into her personal space. It broke her.

    She was not prepared to deal with somebody not responding and realized she had gone over the line.

    People of all types respond to emotional cues in different ways. One of the easiest ways to make people look bad is to be good when they are not.

    Arabs are very “honor” driven. They do not deal well with insults. This is why their screeds against Israel and the United States are filled with so many insults. They expect it to cause us pain.

    In the same way, they cannot handle being laughed at. That is a grave insult.

    Israel pulled off some super serious psychological damage to the psyche of terrorists, everywhere.

    Operation “Below the Belt”, which has been reported as the official name of the operation, is an incredible feat of logistics, intelligence, and technological sophistication.

    Israel was so embedded in the inner workings of Hezbollah that leadership decided that they needed to ditch the smartphones that were being used. Instead, they would go low technology, using pager technology.

    Pagers do not indicate where they are located. They are simple radio receivers. There is no way to know where an unmodified pager is located. This is the type of security that Hezbollah leadership wanted, and needed.

    Israel managed to intercept the shipment(s) of pagers and modify them. At what point in the supply chain this took place is unknown. They were able to modify or replace thousands of pagers. The pagers that were sent on had two known modifications. A couple of ounces of explosive with a thermal trigger, and some modifications to the code to increase the power draw to heat the battery enough to trigger the explosion.

    Pagers are carried in pockets or on belts. When leadership handed out pagers to Hezbollah assholes, those assholes put the pagers on their belts or in their pockets.

    In the afternoon of the 18th, the devices were triggered. They sounded a beep for an incoming message. Many terrorists assholes were able to take their pagers off their belts or out of their pockets to look at them before the boom.

    If they were just holding the pager, there was significant damage done to the hand. If they had brought the pager close to their face, then there was serious eye damage. If they left the pager in their pocket, well, they are looking for their balls now.

    This is one of the greatest psychological victories in modern history. These assholes were not martyred. They did not die in battle. They weren’t even in battle.

    If they lost their dicks, the 72 raisins they are supposed to get aren’t going to do them any good.

    And with no hands and no eyes and no dicks, they are never going to be a threat to people again.

    Moreover, the stress this puts on the medical infrastructure is immense.

    Well done Israel.

    This was a good win and a good place to take a victory lap.

    We were doing that lap for Israel, laughing at those dickless, less than wonders.

    Israel, was busy lapping the track, again.

    On Thursday, they initiated another round of devices exploding. This time on two-way handheld radios. This was not as successful as the original attack, but it still added to the toll.

    Again, well done Israel.

    So Israel was doing that Victory lap. Well, no. They were busy.

    You see, Hezbollah leadership really needed to discuss this new turn of events. They couldn’t use the phone system, they knew that was hacked, they were unable to use pagers to call a central number. And the radios were out too.

    So they did the sneaky-sneaky thing. They sent out the word to meet in the super secret place, known only by the trusted leadership.

    Well, it just so happened that an Israeli fighter jet was doing that victory lap when this meeting took place. And since they really, really, really, felt the need to celebrate, they decided to set off some fireworks. Mostly sound.

    So they dropped some noisemakers. These big ass noisemakers just happened to land right on top of that super secret meeting location. And they were so big, that it disrupted the party.

    20 top commanders are dead. The snake’s head has been cut off. The arms and legs (and sausage plus dingle berries) are missing as well. Everybody is scared, or should be scared of coming close to a communications device.

    I look forward to learning what new surprises Israel has in store for us. This story can get better, but I have a huge smile on my face tonight.

            

  • Following the basic rules of three, we can live without water for three days. That’s not entirely true, but it’s close enough. Water is largely what we’re made of, being between 50% and 60% of our makeup. Water keeps our brains working, flushes toxins out of our bodies and protects our muscles, helps lubricate our joints, and keeps the blood flowing through our veins. We can become dehydrated incredibly quickly, depending on our level of activity, the ambient temperature, and the humidity, so it’s important to keep drinking. A general rule of thumb is, if you’re feeling thirsty, you’re already well on the way to being badly dehydrated.

    It is possible to become dangerously dehydrated within 24 hours. Dehydration is when you take in less water than your body is using up in sweat, tears, urination, etc. and it’s very serious. While you can be on day 2 or 3 of not having water and still survive it, it will be a painful survival. After that first day, you are not going to be thinking well, because your brain will not be functioning as easily. You will be sluggish. Your mouth will be dry, and possibly your nose, and skin. You become exponentially more likely to have seizures or experience hypovolemic shock (when your blood volume drops below a certain level). This all has to be kept in mind when you’re dealing with a SHTF scenario. Drinking is going to be incredibly important.

    So how do you keep water on hand? That’s something you have to decide for yourself. I live in a water rich area of the world, and so I don’t store a lot of water. I keep enough on hand for 72 hours of drinking and washing (of myself and my dishes), which is about 2 to 3 gallons per person per day. Instead of keeping lots of water on hand, I keep water purification items on hand. I have the means and knowledge to get water, but I’ll need to purify it. To purify water, you have to either boil it, disinfect it, filter it, or treat it with UV light. For safety’s sake, I recommend doing at least two of the four methods, though depending on your emergency, that may change.

    (more…)

            

  • Another week. What is your favorite childhood food? That dish that takes you back to a happy childhood memory.

    Politics

    The New York Times, a “newspaper” and “trusted media source” was out there downplaying the second assignation attempt on Trump.

    They do such a good job of lying. Kamala should take lessons from them. They used air quotes to imply that the assignation attempt wasn’t a real thing.

    Over on X, the number of people that claim that there was no assignation attempt because no shot was fired is batshit crazy.

    I do love that Florida has decided to keep the investigation local and to hold on to their prisoner.
    (more…)

            

  • Chris wanted me to share my sauce from last night, so I said heck with it. I liked it enough that I’m going to post it up here now.

    To start off, this was my first attempt at making a Bolognese from scratch. I’ve always used jarred sauces and then “spiffed them up” in the past. I was in the mood to try something more challenging, but not too much because I’ve been so sick this week. The consistency was good, the amount of meat to sauce was good, the mouth feel was excellent, and the taste was incredible!

    Ingredients:

    • 1 lb ground pork (not flavored, just plain)
    • 1 celery stick, finely diced
    • 1 medium carrot, finely diced
    • 1 onion small, finely diced
    • 2-3 garlic cloves, minced
    • 1 tbsp olive oil
    • 2 14.5 oz cans of crushed tomatoes or stewed tomatoes 
    • 1 bay leaf
    • 1 tbsp tomato paste
    • 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
    • 1 tsp dried oregano
    • 1/2 cup whole milk (or oat milk for dairy free)
    • salt and pepper to taste
    • grated Parmesan cheese for serving

    Heat your olive oil in the bottom of a Dutch oven or saucepan, and add the ground pork. Stir regularly until it’s almost cooked through, about ten minutes. While the pork is browning, mince up your vegetables. Add these to the meat, once it’s no longer pink. Continue to cook on medium heat until the onions begin to soften and clarify.

    Add in your tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, and garlic. Cook for another 3 to 4 minutes, continually stirring. Reduce the heat to the lowest setting and add in the tomatoes, bay leaf, and dried oregano. Stir it together, and partially cover the pot. Simmer this on your lowest heat setting for 45 to 60 minutes. Stir the sauce every 15 minutes, to make sure it doesn’t stick to the bottom. Technically, this can continue to simmer for as long as you like. You want it to be fairly thick, so after an hour you may want to take the lid off, and stay there, stirring, while it thickens. If you’re in a rush, you can remove any excess liquid with a spoon or small ladle.

    Turn off the heat, then add in the milk. Stir it together, taste, and then add salt and pepper to taste. If the sauce has a metallic or acid tang, add a half teaspoon of brown sugar to it. While you can skip adding the milk entirely, it really does add a depth to the sauce that makes it velvety. It also helps mellow out the tomato acidity.

    Notes:

    The original recipe calls for crushed tomatoes, but I didn’t have those. I could have stuck my stewed tomatoes into the blender and whizzed them up, but I chose to use the tomatoes chunky. I’m glad I did. Many of them broke up during the cooking of the sauce, but the pieces of tomato really added a lovely mouth-feel, and a certain “umami” to the final sauce.

    This goes perfect over any kind of pasta, but it’s best over one that has a rough texture and lots of gripping surface. Think bowties or rotini, or even radiatori.

    Serve this one up with a slice of hearty french bread, or some garlic knots. Don’t bother with salad; it’s much too meaty for that.

            

  • There are three ways of making pasta shapes. You can extrude the dough through shaped holes, cutting the forms off as needed. You can roll the dough thin, then hand cut the dough to be shaped. The same can be done using a “pasta machine” which rules the dough to a known thickness. Or you can use cutters to cut sheets of pasta.

    I’ve been making pasta dough for a couple of years. I stepped up my game recently by deciding to roll my dough instead of squeezing it in the pasta machine.

    Since I was going to roll out the dough, I decided to get rid of my mixing bowl and do it on my board with the well method.

    This is a step forward. One of the lessons I’m still learning is how small a batch can be made this way. If the batch is not large enough, there isn’t enough floor on the board to create a well with deep enough walls.

    I was lucky, there were only two eggs in play, so the eggs didn’t go everywhere, just a slight panic.

    Which brings us back to dough. Normal pasta dough is an egg and floor mixture. My recipe is 3/4 of flour to 1 large egg. Occasionally, it is two eggs plus a yolk. It really depends on how the dough feels.

    Today, the dough was too wet. I should have added more flour, but I didn’t.

    The eggs are mixed into the flour until it comes together. At that point, I switch to kneading. I knead for 10 minutes, by the clock. The sad thing is that I always check the time remaining at 2:30. I don’t know how I get there, but I do.

    This egg pasta works well for rolling out or squeezing. This was turned into rigatoni.

    I didn’t know I could make this by hand, I thought I would need to use an extruder for rigatoni. I am happy with my results.

    It does not look like machine made pasta. The dough was a little wet. I also had some issues cutting it. Next time I will use the bicycle cutter to get nice squares.

    Ally took the other half of the egg pasta and made beautiful bow tie pasta.

    The other type of pasta dough is made with water and semolina flour. Bluntly? I just guessed at the amount of warm water to add. It came out nearly perfect.

    This pasta dough doesn’t roll out as flat as the egg pasta, but it is used for other pasta shapes. We started with Orecchiette. Those were easy to make, but I didn’t like them. Ally loved making them, so I let her do it.

    This is made by cutting a 1/2 diameter rope of dough into 1/2 long chunks. Then you roll the under your thumb.

    Malloreddus is made the same way, but the pasta is pressed on a grooved board to make a wonderful pattern. This was my favorite shape to make. They go fast, they look nice, and they have a good bite to them. Plus they hold the sauce.

    The Busiate was another fun shape. It uses a 1/4 in rope of dough cut into 3 inch long sections. These are twisted around a skewer and the rolled flat.

    I think they look delightful, I want to practice them some more.

    I’m hoping that Ally will do an article about the sauce she made for our homemade pasta. I will say it is the best I’ve had in years.