I laughed because the blog which the idea was delivered in admonishes you to “book mark this,” as if somehow bookmarking everything I liked would make it easier to find.  At some point your “favorites” start looking like a search engine results page, which is why Pintrest is enjoying so much exposure.  My alternative is to put the interesting thing into a blog of my own somewhere. Et voila!

Key Lime Curd

• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup melted unsalted butter
• 1 cup key lime juice, either fresh or bottled

In a large microwaveable bowl, whisk the sugar and eggs together.  Add and whisk in the melted butter, then finally the lime juice.

Placing a plate under the bowl, in case it overflows, heat your curd in 1 minute intervals on high, stirring well after each minute.  When it thickens, remove from the microwave, cool and stir into your yogurt, or enjoy with scones or bake into a cake … so many choices with such an easy recipe!

While I’m at it, here is a similar technique for another traditionally fussy sauce -

Microwave Hollandaise

• 1 stick unsalted butter
• 6 egg yolks
• 6 T lemon juice

Whip the egg yolks in a small bowl.  In a medium sized microwaveable container, melt the butter.  Remove the butter from the microwave and add the lemon juice and egg yolks, whisking well together.

In the microwave on high, cook the mixture for 30 seconds.  Remove and whisk.  Return to the microwave and cook in 15 second intervals, whisking in between, just until the mixture begins to thicken.  Do not cook too much or the finished product will separate.

Serve immediately with eggs, vegetables, cheese or simply a straw, it’s that good.

Subtitle: The devil’s in the details

Having made the mixed peel, cooked the cake, bathed the cake in alcohol weekly and now anticipating Christmas, it’s time to decorate your cake. 

I have previously made valiant attempts, but so far have failed to wow.  That’s all got to change!  Regardless of my lamentable efforts, the Christmas cake in England is not only enjoyed for its taste, but also its visual presentation.  The cakes are whimsical, elegant, simple, traditional, non-traditional, white or colored.  What matters is the ooh and ahh factor when brought to the table.  Click on the picture to link to the blog where they show how that one was made.  The recipes given to me for completing the decoration are below, but creativity is an intangible.  If you’re stymied, start with something simple and see where you go next year!

A Christmas Cake, unlike an American fruitcake, has a double hit of wow frosting.  The first is a layer of marzipan, rolled smooth and laid over the entire cake.  I made the almond paste from scratch the first year and was told it “wasn’t right.”  Subsequently, I have bought a roll of marzipan from the store and had good reviews, but for the purist, here is step 1 of decorating:

Almond Paste (Almond Icing) – 2 days to a week before serving

• 4 cups ground almonds (should be a fine powder)
• 1 1/2 heaped cups sugar
• 3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• yolks of 4 eggs (separate them and save the whites for the royal icing tomorrow)

Mix almonds and sugars to a stiff dough with the egg yolks.  It will be very stiff and need a lot of energy to work it together.  Add in an extra egg yolk if needed, or a tablespoon of brandy improves both the flavor and workability. [Hubby said this was a step not to be ignored].

When the paste is thoroughly worked together and softened, roll it out about 1/4″ thick.  Brush egg yolk around the sides of the cake, cut strips of paste the right width and attach around the cake, pressing on and smoothing with a knife.  Where the ends of two pieces come together, brush a little egg yolk into the joint and work them together.

If the top of the cake is rounded, cut a thin slice off to level it.  Toll out the rest of the almond past (remaining 2/3) to the size of the top; it should be about 3/4″ thick.  Brush egg yolk over the top and put the paste on.  Brush yolk into the joints and work them together, smoothing over with a knife.  Make a good flat top and smooth sides, with a sharp edge around the top.

Let the cake sit overnight for the surface of the almond paste to harden up a little before putting on the white icing.

Royal Icing (the day after the marzipan)

• 4 large egg whites (or substitute powdered egg whites)
• 6 cups confectioners’ sugar
• 2 teaspoons lemon juice

Directions

This recipe is from the father of my friend Karla.  Karla, although having lived here virtually all her life, is a green card, being proud of her British birth.  Her father likewise, and with a very lovely Yorkshire accent.  Several years ago he compiled a cookbook of his region’s dishes and she let me copy this one.

Lest you berate me, oh citizens of the Motherland, I am fully aware there are regional standards and that something 5 miles away from you is abhorrent, vile and should be shunned.  Some of the English sensibilities crack me up.  I am 7,000 miles away and this recipe works for my husband, so if it’s not exactly as you say it should be, I am not offended.

Grandma’s Rich Christmas Cake Recipe (Sept-Oct)

• 2 cups flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 9-10 glace cherries
• 1 heaped cup brown sugar
• 2 cups raisins
• 2 cups currants
• 1 T brandy
• 1 tsp mixed spice*
• 1/3 cup almonds
• 1 cup butter
• 4 eggs
• 2 cups sultanas (golden raisins)
• 1/2 cup mixed peel 

Blanch the almonds, remove brown skins and slice.  Wash the cherries & cut in halves or quarters.

Sieve the flour, spices and salt together.

Cream the butter and sugar in a warm bowl.  Beat the eggs and add them gradually along with a little flour.  Fold in the rest of the flour and spices.

Add the fruit and brandy and stir well.

Line a 9″ or (2) 6″ cake tins with parchment and add the mixture.  Bake at 300ºF for 2 hours, reducing heat if the cake browns too much.  Cool in the pan 10 minutes, then turn onto wire rack to cool completely.

Once cool, brush the entire cake with brandy and wrap in plastic wrap.  Set in a cool place which is out of your way — it’s going to sit there for a long time!

Each week, unwrap the cake and brush (I tend to pour) brandy on the cake, then re-wrap and allow it to absorb the alcohol.  You need to begin your cake in September to allow enough time for the brandy to moisten and meld the fruit into the cake.  If you’ve gone all the way into October, it may be too late to start.  Just sayin’!

*Mixed Spice

• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon nutmeg
• 1 tablespoon allspice
• 2 teaspoons mace
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• Optional – coriander, ginger

It will require special equipment.  I got mine from ThinkGeek, one of my favorite places to shop, but you could find a a wine or beer making supply store and purchase similar items.  You need a champagne yeast and an airlock for the top of the bottle. It is also useful to brew in a container with extra head room so as not to have particulate contamination of your airlock. I used a heating pad on the lowest setting for an ideal yeast procreation environment.

For this batch I used a can of orange juice concentrate, mixed as directed.  As orange juice has a low sugar percentage, I added the citrus simple syrup from the candied fruit.  Voila.  Keep it warm and wait 48 hours or longer, depending on the desired alcohol content.  Champagne yeast will tolerate up to 17% alcohol, although you may wish to dive in sooner for more active bubbling.

Fizzy bubbly orange happiness.  I’m planning on trying it with a splash of cream; a creamsicle with a kick!

Christmas Cake is the polar opposite of quick and dirty.  It is a laborious process, occupying many months and lots of loving care.  Why do it?  Because my sweetie is English and unlike his countryman still on the isle, cannot scamper to Tesco’s to purchase one.  To keep his holidays festive, I learned how to make a Christmas Cake and aside from the decorating (more on that later), I’ve been given high marks for my confection.

Before you hit the “bleh” button, discard from your mind American fruitcake.  That stuff is nasty and rightly maligned.  Christmas or British Fruit Cake was the choice of William and Kate for their wedding; you know it’s got to be better than your mental image.

How and when to begin?  After your holiday decor has been put away, it’s time to visit your local market and purchase some in-season oranges, lemons and limes.  If you put this step off till August or September (which you can), the fruit will be much more expensive and thin skinned.  Candied fruit or mixed peel is the citrus hit in the cake.  Do not, repeat, do not use the nasty candied fruit which is available in the produce sections for bakers of American fruit cake.  Make it fresh and you will be rewarded.

Part 1 – Mixed Peel  (Dec-Feb)

Adapted from Foodnetwork.com

• 6 thick skinned Valencia or navel oranges
• 6 medium lemons
• 6 large limes
• 6 cups sugar, plus extra for rolling
• 2 cups water

Cut the tops and bottoms off the fruit, cut them into quarters and cut off the peel.  I like to leave a little of the fruit on, but that is a personal preference.  Cut the peel into 1/4″ wide strips and reserve the fruit flesh for other recipes.

BOIL  Put the peels into a large saucepan and cover with cold water.  Bring to a boil over high heat, then pour off the water.  Repeat 1 or 2 more times, depending on how assertive you want the flavors to be (I use 3 times).  Remove the peels from the pan.

SYRUP  Whisk the sugar with the water.  Bring to a simmer and cook for 8-9 minutes or until a candy thermometer registers 230-234ºF.  Add the peels and simmer gently, reducting heat to retain a simmer.  Cook until the peels get translucent, about 45 minutes.  Resist the urge to stir the peels or you may introduce sugar crystals into the syrup.  If necessary, swirl the pan to move the peels around.  Drain the peels, saving the syrup for other uses.  Roll the peels in sugar and dry on a rack for 4-5 hours.  Return to the sugar to store.

I apologize to friends and family who will think this is aimed at them.  It is not.  This is a culmination of almost 30 years of observation and reflection about the forces that bend and shape our society.

The arenas

• Food
• Exercise
• Health
• Sun
• Money
• Child rearing
• Fashion
• Education
• Sex
• pick your topic

I have previously written on the changes in cooking and health sensibilities, all of which can be documented via cookbooks and diet tomes from the corresponding time periods.  I wrote that as sort of a guffaw on what my sister and I used to refer to as, “We used to know, but now we know for sure.”  The “for sure” is a benchmark which is forever changing, and most frequently in response to an attempt to redirect [your]money.  The methodology to alter your behavior comes in the form of

Alarm Bells

• It will make you fat
• Your cholesterol will explode
• Your children will become gun-toting homicidal maniacs
• It will cause cancer
• You’ll never pick up women if you’re not wearing a polyester leisure suit
• The world will melt
• We’re going to overpopulate
• The spotted owls are becoming extinct

Alarm bells are other people’s ways of getting you to alter your behavior. As with any good motivator, they are rooted in truth.  OBVIOUS ALARM: If you put 1/3 cup of sugar in each of your 10 daily cups of coffee, you WILL gain weight.  The ostensibly sensible alarms are modified to be evasive, yet allowing everyone to “see” their truths.  The key words to the alarm are small, inserted as a CYA (Cover your Assets) for the writer.  Instead of “1/3 of a cup of sugar,” you can say “regular intake of sugar may cause obesity and has been shown in some studies to break down cellular integrity.”  Now that says, “BE WORRIED,” without really saying anything.  Did the author pour some sugar on a steak and beat the sugared meat with a baseball bat?  Alarms are vague, usually difficult to substantiate, but for “quick thinkers,” sufficient to give us the ammunition to need to change.

A ball and bat together cost $1.10.  The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball.  What does the ball cost?*

Strident warnings are stroked and given validity by the very obvious

“Good” Intentions

• We’re helping the planet
• You’ll live longer
• You’ll be happier
• You’ll be healthier
• We want to help you make the right decisions

Now, instead of that massive amount of sugar, you can enjoy those 10 cups of coffee with aspartame and feel smug about the weight you’re not gaining, right?  You may also give yourself props for being eco-minded by reducing your dependence on a soil depleting crop.  Brilliant.  Problem solved.

The ingenious part of this redirection of your money is that it is endless.  Once you’ve switched to sugar substitute, you can sound the cancer alarm bell and move to Agave syrup, which is natural.  Oops, it’s going to hit your system and cause insulin shock.  On to Stevia.  And so on.  If you think there won’t be anything wrong with Stevia because it’s a natural plant product, wait 10 years.  Go ahead, put a reminder in your calendar to check back with this particular post in 10 years and see if I wasn’t right.

Giving the well intentioned social engineer ample room to roll out a new direction for your determination to have everything great is the fact that ANYTHING can be floated as a trial for a time.  In this article, take note of how much money was being made by the cookie diet.  That’s a hunk of change for a few chocolate chips.  Because we’re sensible people, we’d never be sucked in to anything so ludicrous as cookies being good for weight loss, right?

Remember when soy was good for you, a great protein replacement, responsible planet maintenance and useful to women for regulating hormones naturally?  Well we used to know, but now we know for sure that we may in fact be promoting breast cancer with the alternate estrogen.  Oops.

And now the best part – how we facilitate:

Our Arrogance/sinful nature

I can’t speak for the rest of the planet, but Americans sterotypically have a creed, “If some is good, more is better.”

• A 10 year old Chevy Malibu which runs and gets you from point A to point B is good.  A brand new Lexus crossover with leather seats and voice commands is better.
• A baby stroller is good.  A padded baby taxi/bed/car seat/floating jet ski (for the toddler stage) is even better.
• Walking 20 minutes a day is good, working out for 2 hours with a personal trainer and having a massage is better.
• Weighing 130 is good (women), weighing 108 is massively better.

We need to be the best, have the best, know the most and be loved the best.  If it doesn’t come naturally, we will, by gosh and golly, make it happen.

OK, first of all I have to admit I love the make it happen attitude.  It’s what conservatives love about Ronald Reagan.  We are a great nation, damnit, and we can do what we set our minds to do.

The flip side is it makes us gullible.  Arrogance is a sin.  Sin makes us weak and vulnerable.  We are at the whims of the money movers when we are arrogant.  If a 10 year old Chevy Malibu with a fender missing is good enough for me, all the Lexus ads in the world will not persuade me to part with my money.  If I believe I am worth the effort and money to weigh 108 pounds, I will more easily part with my hard earned cash to buy in to the latest, “you can be great” trend.

Leave room for God

When my then-husband and I moved to our house in N. Seattle many years ago, we rented it from the neighbor who was studying to be a naturopathic physician.  25 years before the current organic/natural/local/traditional wisdom folks, this family was living the philosophy.  He raised bees in back yard hives, used nothing artificial on his garden, ate organic from the local co-op, grew his own herbs for traditional Chinese medicines and ate lots of garlic.  OK, that may have been a taste preference, but gees, they ate garlic scrambled eggs.  I should try them sometime, now that I write that.  They also celebrated Inter-Dependence Day on July 4th with a party usually featuring a lot of nudity which we could see from our back porch.

A couple years after we moved in, they had a son, Ryan.  I used to babysit him as the mother was employed at the Center for Human Services (see what good people they are?).  When the son was 2, the father obtained his ND and the family moved to Bellingham to set up his practice.  I heard of them sporadically from our other neighbors, who were the source of the information that Ryan was in Children’s Hospital at the age of 12.  He had very agressive, very deadly cancer.  He was not expected to live.  He spent a year at Children’s, undergoing massive chemo therapy, radiation therapy and surgery to rid his body of the disease.  I am happy to report that he reached adulthood and is in full remission as far as I can see.

The intent of the family and the approach to their health would be laudable, but it wasn’t enough to safeguard the son.  Things happen.

Atheists can check out here. I don’t mind. It’s a choice you’ve made. Christians and Jews, pay attention.

Scripture tells us that God is 1) the Creator and 2) the Sustainer.  Do a search on the word “sustain” and you will find God reassuring us he takes care; we can rely on him.  He doesn’t promise that bad things (like agressive cancer) won’t happen, but he says he will sustain us.

One of my favorite verses is from Hebrews, chapter 1, verse 3:  And He [Jesus, part of the Triune God] is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. [emphasis mine]

In our sinful arrogance, we believe that we can buy into whatever is going to make us bigger, better, stronger, able to leap tall buildings at a single bound and never have homicidal maniac children.  What we do is forget that God is in charge.  We leave the “your will, not mine” out of the equation, and because the wisdom of God far outshines the wisdom of man, we fall short, usually to our detriment.

Here are some of my God baselines for evaluating (noting that God has no financial stake in any of this)

Food:  If God said it was OK, eat it as close to how He created it as possible, in moderation and only when you’re hungry.  Stop when you’re politely full.

Exercise:  God said, “By the sweat of your face you will eat bread.”  Work at your tasks diligently.  It does say sweat, so if you’re an armchair worker, get up and do something which makes you sweat.  Do your exercise in moderation, remembering that we are to glorify God and that more just self-ingratiates.  Please also note that I fail miserably at the exercise portion currently.

Child rearing:  Just freaking turn to the book of Proverbs.  Read it for yourself as well as your children.

Benchmark on all things – check it against Scripture, do it in moderation and give God the glory.  Do not fall prey to the wisdom of man.

*If you answered “10 cents,” go back and slow down.

I had an address book in Arabic from his time in Libya.  It was not very useful as the Arabic alphabet doesn’t have 26 characters, so you couldn’t even assign values straight across.  It was leather bound and had a pen though. I have a camel, also from Libya. It was actually part of a set of three he sent to my mother to make a part of the Christmas story – the camels of the kings of the east. When the daughters left home, she split up the set and we each have one. I suppose a singular carved camel looks odd, but to me it has meaning.

When he was in Saigon, he sent an Ao Dai (which I always thought was pronounced “out-si”), a beautiful hand embroidered silk dress, split up the side with white silk trousers underneath.  Mine was light green and I still have it.

And those stories he used to tell.  I wish I had listened.  Late in his life people transcribed conversations with him.  Some of them were published in “family only” books.  One of the relatives published a huge tome of geneaology, giving a couple of pages to my grandfather and his secret life.

Secret life?  It was just my grampa, who sent us silly birthday cards and convinced us he could take better naps if we would just hold his shoulder down with our heads.  Oh yes, we did always fall asleep too.  How sneaky was that?

When he passed away I went to visit my grandmother.  She asked me to look at something and tell me if it was “real” or just a mass produced item.  It was an envelope with “licked” stamps, not a governmental franking, containing a certificate signed by then-president Ronald Reagan.  It said that although people were still not allowed to know about his life’s work, the entire nation was grateful for what he had done.

So what had he done?  The short answer is we still don’t know.  He had contracted polio as a child, which left him slightly disfigured and unfit for armed service.  Wanting to serve his country, he took on some other military obligation.  On the outside he worked with power companies in various countries.  Whilst there, it is hinted he did clandestine work.  We are told the exact nature of his work cannot be revealed as it would yet compromise people and organizations still in place.  It sounds like a great spy novel which took place under our noses.

Having heard of Grampa’s great love of the Vietnamese people (he was there before the war), I nonetheless had an image of war; it was the televised version of the country.  Because of that, I shunned the cuisine.  Silly, but to me Vietnam was a land of swamps where machine guns left people dying or festering of strange tropical diseases.  It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I broke down and tried Pho (pronounced fuh), the Vietnamese rice noodle soup.  Although not as frequent as Starbucks, there are nonetheless hordes of purveyors in the Seattle area.  Being Pacific Rim, we have a large population of Vietnamese, and they bring with them, as all American immigrants did, their culture and their food.

The first time I had Pho, I knew it was something I could eat frequently.  Finish a bowl and you’ll be using the toilet soon as the broth, oh that lovely spicey shiny broth, forms the basis and is amply represented in the huge bowls.  Couple it with the amazing aromas eminating from the spices in the soup and the herbs which augment it, and it rockets to the top of the comfort foods list.  It’s so good I almost want to get sick in order to ask for it to make me feel better!

And the perfect recipe?  I’m going to recommend this one from Jaden of Jaden’s Steamy Kitchen, with the admonition that you follow her advice to make the broth the day before and skim off the congealed fat.

Next on the list?  I think I’ll need to figure out how to make rice noodles so I don’t have to run to the store every time I want to make this.

Vietnamese Pho

THE BROTH

• 2 onions, halved
• 4″ nub of ginger, halved lengthwise
• 5-6 lbs of good beef bones, preferably leg and knuckle 1 lb of beef meat – chuck, brisket, rump, cut into large slices [optional]
• 6 quarts of water
• 1 package of Pho Spices [1 cinnamon stick, 1 tbl coriander seeds, 1 tbl fennel seeds, 5 whole star anise, 1 cardamom pod, 6 whole cloves - in mesh bag]
• 1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt (halve if using regular table salt)
• 1/4 cup fish sauce
• 1 inch chunk of yellow rock sugar (about 1 oz) – or 1oz of regular sugar

THE BOWLS

• 2 lbs rice noodles (dried or fresh)
• cooked beef from the broth
• 1/2 lb flank, london broil, sirloin or eye of round, sliced as thin as possible.
• big handful of each: mint, cilantro, basil
• 2 limes, cut into wedges
• 2-3 chili peppers, sliced
• 2 big handfuls of bean sprouts
• sliced green or spring onions
• Hoisin sauce
• Sriracha hot sauce

DIRECTIONS:

Char: Turn your broiler on high and move rack to the highest spot. Place ginger and onions on baking sheet. Brush just a bit of cooking oil on the cut side of each. Broil on high until ginger and onions begin to char. Turn over and continue to char. This should take a total of 10-15 minutes.

Parboil the bones: Fill large pot (12-qt capacity) with cool water. Boil water, and then add the bones, keeping the heat on high. Boil vigorously for 10 minutes. Drain, rinse the bones and rinse out the pot. Refill pot with bones and 6 qts of cool water. Bring to boil over high heat and lower to simmer. Using a ladle or a fine mesh strainer, remove any scum that rises to the top.

Boil broth: Add ginger, onion, spice packet, beef, sugar, fish sauce, salt and simmer uncovered for 1 1/2 hours. Remove the beef meat and set aside (you’ll be eating this meat later in the bowls) Continue simmering for another 1 1/2 hours. Strain broth and return the broth to the pot. Taste broth and adjust seasoning – this is a crucial step. If the broth’s flavor doesn’t quite shine yet, add 2 teaspoons more of fish sauce, large pinch of salt and a small nugget of rock sugar (or 1 teaspoon of regular sugar). Keep doing this until the broth tastes perfect.

Prepare noodles & meat: Slice your flank/london broil/sirloin as thin as possible – try freezing for 15 minutes prior to slicing to make it easier. Remember the cooked beef meat that was part of your broth? Cut or shred the meat and set aside. Arrange all other ingredients on a platter for the table. Your guests will “assemble” their own bowls. Follow the directions on your package of noodles – there are many different sizes and widths of rice noodles, so make sure you read the directions. For some fresh rice noodles, just a quick 5 second blanch in hot water is all that’s needed. Dried noodles, depending on thickness, about 45 seconds in boiling water.

Ladling: Bring your broth back to a boil. Line up your soup bowls next to the stove. Fill each bowl with rice noodles, shredded cooked beef and raw meat slices. As soon as the broth comes back to a boil, ladle into each bowl. the hot broth will cook your raw beef slices. Serve immediately. Guests can garnish their own bowls as they wish.

• The SEIU backed “occupiers” are wanting union Longshoremen to honor a picket line, and they won’t.
• The Seattle school district has lost a lot of money because of their ban of junk food in vending machines, so they’re considering overturning the ban.

Bottom line: Money is more important than principles apparently. Follow the money, always follow the money.  You derive much more truth in your evaluation when you understand how the money flows and affects the decision makers.

OK, we’ll get it out of the way first off, so we’re on the same page.  The system is rigged in favor of the permanent political class and the wealth mechanism they are in bed with, the banks.  Disgust and displeasure with those spawned not only OWS, but earlier the Tea Party.  That much the protest groups share in common.

Moving on, I think OWS is in fact the culmination of much more, and in such, vastly different from the Tea Party.  It is the desperate cry of a generation who have been consistently cushioned and lied to; a prima donna who discovers she is no more beautiful or talented than the rest of the chorus line.

In his book The Trophy Kids Grow Up: How the Millennial Generation is Shaking Up the Workplace, Ron Alsop looks at those born between 1980 and 2001 and their effect on the workplace.  His illustrations are humorous, but his conclusions are somewhat depressing.  He believes that the rest of us will have to figure out how to make life work while pandering to the belief systems of the Millennials; they are the future and this is how it’s going to work, baby.

According to Alsop, we should expect that for a Milennial Employee (which for ease of writing I will now abbreviate to ME) to remain with a company, they need a promotion at least every 6 months, ideally every 3.  There need not necessarily be an associated pay raise; the title means everything.  His illustration is a woman of 28 who is a VP at at well known stock brokerage.  Wow, you think!  A VP at such a young age, one of the goals she set for herself, which she then achieved.  Reading on, you discover she’s an Asst. VP of Corporate Giving.  A what?  That’s a big ol’ whoop arsed title for someone who probably processes paper, granting bequests to low income school budgets.  How many other Asst. VP’s for Corporate Giving are there?  What job did she promote from?  Perhaps the Undersecretary to the Exalted Distributor of All Written Communication?  I hearken back to the days when we laughed at the politically sensitive “Domestic Engineer” (wife/mother) or the “Sanitation Expert” (garbage man).  There is power in words, and the ME’s need to have all the good words they can, otherwise they move on in search of greener pastures.

Parents, school counselors and the popular media did these folks wrong; they knew better and lied. How? By eliminating what had been an almost Darwinian part of human experience, competition. Give someone a new title and you have avoided having to rank anyone.  A promotion is only as expensive as the new door sign and everyone feels validated.

Probably the most obvious example of how we took competition out of the school of life would be the banning of Dodge Ball as cruel, where people are targeted and hurt. The thinking ran that superior players could pick on the weak, deliberately injuring them under the guise of Physical Education. Attempts to protect the lesser players meant that the sport needed to be eliminated. What was overlooked was the notion that the game gives each player not only the opportunity to fail, but the stimulus to want to succeed. Working out strategies for avoiding a hurling ball translates into great life lessons, as well as preparing the individual for dealing with failure; sometimes life hurts. Am I saying Dodge Ball is a fabulous game, which should be immediately played on every street corner? No, but it is iconic insofar as the public outcry against it went. Other sports can be equally as hurtful with a matchup between a skilled and unskilled player, but even in games of tennis, baseball, flag football, etc., the tendancy is to try and even the playing field and minimize the likelihood someone will suffer either physically or mentally at the closing buzzer.

This generation, more than any other has been told they can do anything, and has been shielded from the consequences of failing.  I have recruiter friends who tell me it is a common occurrence for ME’s to show up for job interviews with their parents. Kids did as they were told and went to school, took on the debt to go to college and now find the promised land isn’t there for them.  A bitter betrayal, so now mom or dad is trying yet again to make it happen for them.

As with sport, so has failure in general been stifled in the upbringing of the ME’s.  They were never spanked (parents lived in fear of being jailed for child abuse if they spanked in public), but “timed out” to reflect on their bad behavior.  A reprimand meant you were potentially scarring your child, so rational discussions (with a self-indulgent toddler) became the new standard for child rearing.

As society moved further away from a black and white morality standard, aided by the teaching of relativism in the public schools, one of the inadvertent victims became the American work ethic, which had previously been the gold standard world wide.  I recall Stephen Fry talking about, “those Americans being so darned hard working and enterprising.”  As “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” went out of vogue, and we taught our ME’s they deserved a golden future, we hobbled them with unrealistic expectations.  Part of that hobbling was the parent’s very real desire to make that happen for their child, regardless of the ultimate cost, but as we helicoptered (hovered), we took away their learning curve on making it happen for themselves.

So back to Zucotti Park (or Oakland, or Westlake).  We have ME’s camped out, making a statement.  It is a loose statement of discontent with no action items, only complaints.  Fueling the complaints are yes, the entrenched power structures, but also the load of student debt coupled with the lack of jobs to which they feel they are entitled.  The reality of the ball being lobbed by banks, parents, schools, and media has smacked them on the thigh and the welts hurt.  They’re angry and don’t know how to deal with it otherwise.  I suspect more than one would like their parents to fix it.

We lunched at the Seattle Art Museum, a beautiful place for locally sourced food and I felt very out of my league food-wise, having with us also the award winning Peabody.  Between those ladies and my niece who is a rabid healthy eating-a-holic, I ate my food and enjoyed talking with Melinda about how a nice gal from Oregon ended up living in England.

Melinda brought us gift bags, which was a delightful surprise (I can’t imagine what her luggage weighed) and among other things, Steve was the lucky recipient of a Marmite sandwich holder.  Don’t know Marmite? You are missing an experience!

End of story.  What, no recipes?  Nope, I just wanted to drop some names and count myself fortunate to know these lovely ladies.