My Revelation

I think that I understand why some people turn to faith in God and Jesus with such complete, and blind conviction, its because God is intangible and , being omnipotent, never has to be accountable for the anything that God does.

Basically, if your house burns down during the tornado that came right after the locust plague, while you are welcome (and probably right) to blame it all on God, God has the out of being all-knowing, so that you also have to admit that  "God works in mysterious ways and never does anything without a reason."

Living, corporeal people can't get away with that sort of blanket excuse.

If I walked up and burned down your house, and told you that it was "my will" and that "I have a reason for what I do, that you just can't understand because you cannot comprehend my mind" you would
A: Kick the hell out of me and
B: Have me locked up as a derange loony.

But for some reason, some people are capable of leaping beyond these basic perceptive realities and allow God to get away with (literally) murder with no accountability or even an explanation.

OK, why am I talking about this? Well, probably because the whole repeal of Prop 8 and all the arguments surrounding it is so prominent in the news right now. The Anti Prop 8 arguments (that won the reversal) are all fact-based, rational and grounded in sound legal precedent and documentation, while the Anti Prop 8 arguments seem to consist of purely irrational (from a legal standpoint) faith-based (or at least a slim interpretation of faith) screeds consisting of phrases like "It's evil" or "Its against God" or the wonderfully vague "Its destroying the institution of marriage"

...um How?

The Pro-Prop 8ers never seem to be able to answer that part of the question. If two men or two women marry each other, how does that physically, rationally and fundamentally threaten the institution of marriage, or your marriage for that matter? When the argument devolves to a purely faith-based, moral objection then the argument ceases to be an argument, and just becomes a yelling-match soundbite on the evening news.

The problem though, is that this just further reveals the underlying (and growing) neo-conservative/religious right sentiment among a lot of Americans. The tea-baggers and fundamental Christians that we on the coasts mock and laugh at, are gaining strength and power, and we smug coasters may wake up one day (maybe in 2012 after the next election), and discover that we have suddenly become a reviled minority.

I know, I never seem to be happy unless I am forecasting doom, and now that the Gulf oil leak has been plugged and all my dire predictions have come to naught (for the time-being), I need to find a new target for my pessimism, but this neo-conservative-religion based movement has been steadily growing and fomenting for quite a while, and seems to be gaining momentum as more people struggle to survive in the tanking economy.

I am haunted by this nightmarish vision of President Sarah Palin pointing her finger at me and saying "You're going to prison for un-American thoughts...you betcha!" and then some clean-cut young storm-troopers will come and haul me off to a gulag in Idaho where I will be brainwashed by relentless hours of watching Fox news and the 700 Club.

But, if that's God's will, he must have a reason...right?

What To Do With the Opo

This is an opo

So, as a challenge, I bought an opo at the farmer's market on Sunday. I also got a lot of other neat veggie-goodies, but the opo was definitely the most unusual. The busy Asian man behind the counter was little help when I asked him "How do you cook this?" and he just said "Its like zucchini."

Right, well it was a start. So I did the modern thing and posted a message on Facebook with a picture of the thing and a question..."Anyone know what to do with an opo?"

Well, I have a wide variety of interesting and multicultural Facebook friends and sure enough, two came through for me. Thanks to Tricia and Marvin for directing me to their Philippine roots and getting me started on some basic opo recipes.

If you know me at all, then you know that a recipe is just a nice reference point for me to jump off of. But I didn't stray that far. So here's the recipe that I built off of their great suggestions:

3/4 opo, cubed
1 medium tomato diced
1/2 onion diced (I used a sweet Maui onion...yumm!)
3 cloves of garlic chopped
1/4 cup diced pepper (I used a 'chocolate' pepper, but a bell pepper would be fine, or spice it up with an Anaheim or hotter variety)
1 cup chicken broth
1 chicken breast (boneless-skinless) cubed
2 tbls lite oil (I use a canola-olive blend by Smart Balance)
Salt
Chipotle pepper (or regular ground black pepper)

Step one:
Saute onions and 1/2 peppers in oil until onions turn brown at edges

Step two:
Add tomatoes, rest of pepper, garlic and opo along with 1/4 cup of broth
stir and blend all components

Step three:
Add chicken and rest of broth, salt and chipotle to taste
Bring to boil

Step four:
Reduce heat to high simmer, cover
Cook for 10-15 minutes until liquid is reduced by 1/3

The opo is mild tasting and picks up the flavors surrounding it well, while imparting a light vegetable/grassy scent that is not unpleasant. The opo has dense white flesh that turns soft and translucent when cooked like this.

Overall, I'd give this recipe about a 6. It was hearty and filling, and the flavor had a definite 'homey' appeal, comforting and non-threatening, especially when paired with brown rice.

I could see making more of a light-quick stew like meal as well, or even a hearty soup from this recipe.

So, that's my opo story and I'm sticking to it!

Billie Joe McAllister

Bonnie Hayes plays “Ode to Billie Joe” for me on her jazz nights at Cucina. I appreciate it, and I have always dug the song, but she doesn’t know why it means so much to me. I didn’t really get the connection myself until tonight …when it hit me in that full moon, wine haze of realizations.

You see, , if you’ll recall, “Ode to Billie Joe” is an enigmatic song about why “Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie bridge”…now there’s a back story in the song about the preacher seeing Billie Joe and the young girl in the song “throwing something off the Tallahatchie Bridge” up on Choctaw Ridge. Nobody knows what it was that they were throwing off the bridge, but later in the song, the girl confesses that she spends a lot of time “throwing flowers in the muddy waters off the Tallahatchie Bridge”.

Well, is she throwing those flowers in memory of Billie Joe, or is she throwing them in memory for the other thing that they both threw off the bridge before Billie Joe threw himself off the bridge?

It’s the mystery of the song that appeals to me, because it leaves open the question as to why someone would take their life in that way, or any way. Suicide should be a personal and mysterious thing, though too often it isn’t. Too often, the people who die make sure that those left behind know exactly why they jumped off their own particular Tallahatchie Bridge.

I wish that I didn’t know the reason that my own personal “Billie Joe” jumped off his bridge, but I do. And I understand his reasons, though I wish I didn’t have to. Sure, the mystery could haunt someone for a long time, maybe forever and that would be another kind of hell, but knowing doesn’t make it any easier.

So, thank you Bonnie for playing the song for me. I do appreciate it, even if, while digging the groove, I am crying a little inside.

Bonnie Hayes and The Right Hand Of God

We went to another Bonnie Hayes gig tonight, and as usual, we danced our asses right off. Bonnie Hayes has been playing great danceable music for a long time, but she has the heart and fiery soul of a rocker who knows how to paint a phrase so that it sticks in your brain like sweet candy lingers on the back of your tongue.

Part of the sheer joy of hearing Bonnie Hayes in concert is the that she pulls together a monster band that you almost don't notice, because they are that freaking good. Bonnie comes from a gifted musical family, she has brothers who play or have played for some of the top acts in rock and blues, and tonight, we were treated to hearing her brother, Kevin, playing on drums.

Kevin Hayes regularly plays with Robert Cray, but when he is home, he sits in with Bonnie's Super Bon Bons, and let me tell you, his right hand is blessed by God.

I have been a good enough musician to recognize two things: One, I am competent on a couple instruments, but never had the touch that true musician's have, and two: I am good enough to recognize when I hear a truly great player. I was also fortunate to have a good friend who happens to be a brilliant drummer. As the drums were never one of my instruments, I learned from my friend to really listen to what differentiates a great drummer from a good one.

And tonight, I heard the solid, unwavering right hand of God banging out every back beat and kick in exactly the right place and time. He never missed and his right hand drove the band and every dancer's feet across that hall tonight without most of the dancers knowing what it was that kicked their feet and tossed their souls. His right hand popped through Bonnie's lyrics, Eric Schram's hot guitar licks and Vicki Randall's sweet vocals and sharp percussion, and maybe most important, Kevin's drums complimented and built a steel foundation for the sheer badass brilliance of Daryle Anders' bass.

So while Bonnie lit the room with her exuberance and sublimely infectious songs, it was the men and women that she gathered around her that set the room ablaze, with the heart of the inferno blasting out of the D'Amico furnace that were Kevin Hayes's drum kit and that brilliant, blessed right hand.

Land of Hypochondria...a Follow-up

OK...so that lump in my back? Yeah well I can tell you what it wasn't:

It wasn't the head of some ghost Indian sent back to wreck havoc on humanity as was suggested by a friend of mine who watches far too many horror movies.

Nor is it the demented head of a deranged advertising executive...um also compliments of the same friend who sited an obscur English musical called "Getting Ahead in Business".

Its not an alien life form, some obscur cancer, or something even House couldn't figure out...nope, its just a plain old boring Lipoma...a fatty benign tumory kind of thing (I didn't actually see it)

Anyway, I am fine now, and have a cool new scar on my back (to match the several on my front side) and no real horrendous story to tell...this time.

In The Land of Hypochondria

I have a lump on my back. Its not a big lump, somewhere between a quarter and a half-dollar in size. Its under the skin and doesn't really hurt, or itch...or really do much of anything besides be...there.

Of course, I am convinced that this lump is just the very tip of the proverbial iceberg of all manner of horrible and incurable maladies.

Why?

Because that's just how my brain works about these things, especially when I am pushed to acknowledge that they exist. You see, I have someone who cares about me and noticed this lump in the first place as I am neither inclined to, nor flexible enough, to regularly examine the terrain of my own back. So, this person who cares about me also recommended that I see a doctor about my mystery lump...which I have agreed to do.

And that is all that it takes to ignite the fuse of my rampant hypochondria. Somehow, there is something wired into the male brain that allows us to actively deny physical ailment so long as that ailment does not interfere with our far more important pursuits of say...watching a rerun of our favorite show or passionately discussing the latest technological gadget that we covet. But, once that ailment pierces our shield of inconsequence then the ailment becomes all consuming.

Its presence gnaws at our psyche like a bulimic termite in a woodpile. And, in some sort of x-chromosome-fueled calculus, the more insubstantial the ailment, the greater the degree of imagined peril the ailment possesses.

And, I am helpless to stop this calculus until I am assured by a doctor that the lump is just a lump and I am still in astoundingly good health.

Sigh...until then, please bear with me...for I fear the candle is growing dim...cough cough...save yourself....

Making TBTAM's Butternut Squash Soup

So, there is is this neat blog called "The Blog That Ate Manhattan" http://theblogthatatemanhattan.blogspot.com/ that is written by a doctor in, of all places, Manhattan. Along with lots of good medical advice and articles, the author, Margaret Polaneczky,MD (aka TBTAM), also writes about a wide range of other topics including cooking and food.

Recently, I came into possession of TBTAM's infamous Butternut Squash Soup recipe, so tonight I am making the stuff. I have never personally dealt with a Butternut Squash, I have had pleasurable dealings with pumpkins, which are a cousin of the Butternut Squash who just happen to have had a much better publicists when the English tradition of carving turnips for Halloween made its way across the pond to America, where we, jumbo sizers that we are, decided that a turnip was just too puny for our needs and transferred the tradition to the more suitable pumpkin.

And, of course, none of that has anything to do with making butternut squash soup, other than that pumpkins smell and taste similar to butternut squashes, and also do quite well as soup.

I am excited about this recipe as it pushes me out of my comfy cooking comfort zone, not only by making me work with an unfamiliar squash, but also by forcing me to use 5-spice and Ginger, two spice choices I don't normally utilize.

So, here's the basics.
Get a butternut squash (you'll find them lurking in the shadowy back corners of the produce section, loitering near the potatoes and yams)


Peel the squash and then slice it in two, which will reveal a neat little cavity filled with much the same schmutz that you find inside of a pumpkin...scoop that stuff out so that all the seeds and stringy bits are gone.


Then, slice the squash into neat 2-inch chunks and place them in a bowl where you then toss them with olive oil, salt and pepper. (My apologies to TBTAM, but I replaced the pepper with Chipotle for a somewhat zestier twist).


Next place the oiled up chunks of squash onto a baking pan and shove them into a pre-heated to 350 degree oven. Leave them there for 30 minutes or so (turning occasionally) until they are nicely browned all the way around.


While the squash is cooking, mince two tablespoons of ginger and mix it with 1/2 teaspoon of 5-spice.

When the squash is baked properly, place the chunks into a food processor along with the ginger-5 spice blend and processorize it. Add a cup of vegetable broth and continue to processorize until it is smooth.

Pour the smooth squash into a medium sized stock pot and mix in one to two more cups of vegetable broth along with one cup of white wine (yeah!). And...simmer.

Before serving, mix one cup of creme fresh (I used fat-free half and half) and a tablespoon of orange juice and before serving, swizzle this mixture on top of the soup.

That's it. A great soup for a chilly winter's night.