I co-opted this recipe from the incomparable Mireille Guiliano, Author of ‘French Women Don’t Get Fat’. I have been intrigued by it for some time, but today was the first time I cooked it and Oh Yum…. *swoons* It only takes about 7-8 minutes preparation time if you have the ingredients on hand:
1 Brioche (a french style of bun/roll)
1 ripe Pear
2 Tbs Butter
Honey
Almond slices
In skillet or saucepan, melt 2 Tbs butter over medium heat. Peel & core half the pear, and cut into medium, somewhat cubic pieces as you would for apple pie. Add pear to melted butter and saute, grilling the pear pieces until they become lightly golden brown.
Cut brioche crosswise into 3-4 little medallions of bread. Place on a pie tin.
Scoop grilled pieces of pear onto medallions of brioche.
Sprinkle with sliced almonds.
Drizzle honey liberally over pears/almonds.
Put under broiler for 2-3 minutes, or until brioche starts to look lightly crisp on the edges.
I can’t duck it this time. On the news, a lady has been abducted with her three female children. They know who did it, they are searching for him, a man they knew. The nature of the danger they are in is too awful & too obvious to mention. Their story is probably over.
On twitter there is a widely cast, strangely lethargic debate about a book which prominently features a BDSM relationship between a sick individual & his inexperienced, female counterpart. Some women are angry because *SHE* doesn’t respect herself. I don’t know how he escapes blame for being the predator in the situation, and it frightens me that people take this view.
On Netflix, right there in a general search for a family movie, a horrific, brutal film of unprecedented degradation pops up, a film that was banned in several countries for causing psychological harm to the viewer, widely available now to the whole family on Netflix.
These instances are connected in bright red, violent lines. But I don’t need these dramatic examples, there are plenty available in the casual comments you read online- the vicious nature underlying quips we excuse as ‘comedy’ or ‘self-expression’.
It’s all a lie.
Never before has there been such open availability of communication without consequence- the anonymity, the buffer presented by the information age has made Gods & monsters out of people who never earned their audience.
All our darkness seems to have found a playground. Desires that stem right from the root of psychological damage are indulged, and indulged, & indulged. This is hidden in the open. If nobody in ‘real life’ sees, it doesn’t count, and so a river of dark duality courses underneath our communities, our country, right under the feet of our children who we somehow think we can keep separate from our actions. We actually believe, when we think of them at all during our deviant forays, that we can compartmentalize & hold them in the safe world while indulging in evil… there is no other word for it… here in our countless channels of disguise.
It is a lie. You think you circumvent making choices this way? You can’t. The darkness here directly impacts the world you live in. We are breeding monsters. We are breeding damage.
And nobody will escape the consequence of this. Nobody. That’s the lesson of the human condition, the theme that weaves through all aspects of our history and culture: Your choices are the most essential thing about you, and they have concrete ramifications forever.
Take the long view, I beg you. We are hardwired to respond physiologically to violence, sex, distress, fear, surprise & pain. That is your body’s defense against a potentially dangerous situation. We are in a dangerous situation. Acknowledge that you have sole responsibility for *EVERY* choice you make, not just the public ones.
If you hold anything dear in this world, protect that with all that you have, and stop…
It’s good to start with around a pound of thawed chili beef. You could use regular ground beef, but chili beef has ideal fat content for its purpose. Start cooking at least 3 hours before you intend to eat.
1 lb beef
1 can of red beans
1 can of kidney beans
1 can of diced, peeled tomatoes or whole peeled mini tomatoes < best
3 clove garlic
3 tablespoons of butter (real)
2 bay leaves
sugar, salt, chili powder
Melt 3 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet on medium heat. Chop up garlic cloves and add to butter. Add chili beef. Chunk it up with a spatula into small pieces & brown thoroughly.
Meanwhile, plug in the crockpot & turn it on. (medium/high)
Drain most of the liquid off beef before putting in the crockpot.
Then add can of tomatoes, can of kidney beans & red beans.
Add a teaspoon of sugar.
Add 3/4ths teaspoon of salt (all of this in crockpot)
Add 2 bay leaves.
Add between 2 teaspoons (mild) to 2 tablespoons (hot) of chili powder.
Stir all ingredients thoroughly with wooden spoon. It won’t look like chili yet, but a mish-mash of disparate parts. The blending happens with cooking.
Simmer in the crockpot on high for 3 hours or more. The longer it cooks, the thicker the chili, but it starts boiling down at some point after 4 hours.
Serve.
Good for refrigeration or freezing, great with Jiffy Corn Bread.
About 20 months ago, @bestgirlbetty, whom I like & admire made a rare recommendation on her twitter stream for a young man from Kentucky whom she said was one of her favorites. I believe he went by @tacook52 at the time.
Me and about a hundred other people checked him out.
I am admittedly a rather ambivalent follower. Like many introverts, I believe I know the exact right number of people already, and I feel a stubborn resistance to having to interact with someone new. But this is a social networking platform after all, so if somebody moves me momentarily, I’ll hit that button, usually with an attitude of immense tolerance, as if I’ve been inconvenienced unnecessarily by that person’s undeniable appeal.
This said, there’s only about 5 people I’ve ever hung around for if the relationship wasn’t reciprocal. It’s no big thing, I just like this twitter stuff to be two-sided, and I’ve been around long enough to be unimpressed by celebrity, real or simulated.
I don’t call people out for not following me back, though. There’s a reasonable window of opportunity & then I resign. No nutties are thrown, no consequence dealt-
except this one time.
@tacook52…. what was it about you? You were cute but not, like, Hasselhoff-in-Knight-Rider cute. Clever but in a wistful, lackadaisical way, like your mama nursed you on mint-juleps & then left you in front of those Baby Einstein videos till you learned to take the t.v. apart by yourself & ask for a book, please, ma’am.
You had an avalanche of attention coming in at the moment I followed, and now that I know you, I can guess just about how you reacted to it all:
You blinked. Slowly.
You sat there a moment, trying to work out what was going on with all the email updates.
You went to twitter.
You refreshed the page about fifteen times, just to confirm there wasn’t a glitch, and your numbers really were jumping at an enormous rate after the long, slow haul of the several months previous.
You tried to work out a gracious way to deal with all the attention, without blowing it or looking like a schlemiel.
That’s what you did alright, and over here in Oregon, I generously bequeathed you with my golden follow and then went to go do something else. (For a little while.)
By the next day, Mr. @tacook-julep-head hadn’t followed me back. Curious, I took a little peek-see at whom he HAD followed back, and Oh… The Indignation! Burlap bags of bland inanity were given the go-ahead. Plastic barbie girls & thongs of nastiness who never wrote a word that wasn’t preceded by ‘fuck’, THESE had gotten Mr tacook’s attention, but I… a walking dictionary of original phrases remained unloved, unappreciated; unfollowed.
I was feeling a little full of myself. I mean, my follower count dwarfed this daft dinkhead’s by AT LEAST 4x’s, and while I’ll be the first to point out such numbers don’t mean diddly squat, they are handy for bolstering the ego in just such a circumstance.
So what did I do? I unfollowed, with enormous dignity. And bravely withdrew to carry on my good work despite the setback.
And then five minutes later, I came blasting back to his page and followed again!
Take that!
& That! & That!
I started plonking his virtual button madly, following and unfollowing like a crazed leprechaun on a beer bender, laughing & launching (what I hoped) was a whole new avalanche of email notices that with any luck would set off his cell-phone to beeping & buzzing.
When the madness passed I felt a little sheepish, and crawled off to do something normal, like lick my kneecaps. I forgot about it until the notice came through that tacook52 is now following you on Twitter!
Woo-woo?
He said nothing of it. I played it cool, or pretended to play it cool until the day he wrote a tweet asking if anyone would like to receive a bonafide, hand-written letter.
I answered.
Somewhere along the line he found out what a shitty correspondent I am, and we fell in love.
It’s my belief that Southern folks go by contraries, but I couldn’t tell you- I really don’t know just *why* I went nutters in his particular case.
My frustration, though senseless was genuine, as if I *did* already know him. It’s me you big oaf! Stop jerking around & follow me back so we can fall in love, for good fucking sakes.
No, I can’t explain it except to say: When you know you know, though you might not know what you know or why, or how that knowing came to be… somehow, you still know.
