Obama Snubbed Again
It got very little play in the press, but President Obama was recently snubbed again on the world stage when 15 Asian nations formed a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership without the United States. Obama had traveled to Phnom Penh in an effort to “sell a US-based Trans-Pacific Partnership excluding China.” He failed.
Add this to a growing list of major failures by Barack Obama on the International Stage. He failed to bring the Olympics to Chicago. He failed to produce progress on the Israel-Palestine front (it’s actually getting worse). He’s failed to create any sort of consensus on what to do about Syria. He has failed to inhibit Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon.
There is no doubt that U.S. influence is waning under Obama. Maybe that’s exactly what he wants.
Sharon Meroni’s One-Woman Crusade Against Voter Fraud in Illinois — and how you could do some of this in your own state
Sharon Meroni is a one-woman crusade against voter fraud in the state of Illinois…and she’s amazing to watch in person (or in YouTube videos) because she’s made it her personal mission to force compliance with Illinois’ election laws here in Chicago and in greater Cook County. It’s shocking how much voter fraud and illegal activity happens in our election system just because the general public never forces Boards of Election to actually comply with existing requirements in a state’s election-governing statutes.
Sharon is a mom from the Chicago suburbs who founded Defend the Vote, the very first organization of its kind meant to target voter fraud and prevent it in what’s arguably the most corrupt state in the union. Prior to starting up this group two years ago, Sharon was never involved in politics and actually was a corporate headhunter; Defend the Vote just sort of happened because Sharon saw the need for something like it and decided to stop waiting for someone else to make it happen. So began working every day to make herself an expert in Illinois election law…and then set out to audit the process in this state to see just how much shenanigans the various election entities in Illinois were up to.
I’ve been following her work in the lead up to (and aftermath of) the 2012 election and have actually started attending Boards of election meetings on my own, too, so I can see in person the sort of things Sharon describes on Defend the Vote’s own site. It’s shocking how some of these Board Members treat citizens in Illinois and how unserious they are about voter fraud.
There are actually three different election entities that impact life in Chicago; listed in order from most professional to absolutely ridiculous, they are:
* The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners (which covers the City of Chicago itself)
* The Illinois State Board of Elections (covering the whole state)
* The Cook County Clerk’s Office (which handles “suburban Cook County”, which is the part of Cook County that’s not Chicago itself)
It’s surprising, but the City of Chicago election officials are actually very nice to deal with…and remain professional during their board meetings. Sharon Meroni caught the City of Chicago illegally using the wrong documents to verify signatures on absentee ballots…and immediately after she brought this to their attention they swooped in and corrected what was happening…and even apparently took measures to correct the mistakes they made on about two hundred thousand ballots (proof that they made the correction is still forthcoming, but at the last Board Meeting the Executive Director Lance Gough told Sharon that he’d sent her a written report showing the changes and corrections they made in the matter). It actually seems like the people on the City’s Board want the elections to be free of fraud and incompetence…but they just don’t have anyone focused on identifying problems. When someone like Sharon takes the time to observe problems and report on them, the City Board seems to listen and doesn’t waste time addressing what’s wrong.
It’s a completely different story with the State Board of Elections in Illinois, with the Board in this case behaving like clowns and buffoons at their meetings. Large amounts of time are taken up at State Board meetings talking about matters unrelated to the actual elections: sugar cookies, employees who have been with the Board for many years and who wanted their resumes read aloud for some reason, various personal gripes the Board members have about life in general, what people are doing for fun that coming weekend, etc. When Sharon’s attended State Board meetings, the Board Members treat her derisively and say ridiculous things to her like, “You’re not a member of the Board!” or “We’ll only listen to you for 10 minutes and then you have to shut up!”. Meanwhile, there’s no limit to the amount of time that can be spent talking about sugar cookies. The State Board has no interest in hearing about security flaws or illegal activity in its election system…and in fact takes the attitude that “nothing’s wrong and we don’t want to hear about anything being wrong because we don’t want to fix anything!”. They remind me a lot of an after-school club in high school that puts on rallies and things, only they don’t do all that great a job doing it but they are seniors so they “rule the school” and no one can tell them otherwise. They are absolute clowns, every last one of them.
Then there’s the weird entity that is the Cook Count Clerk’s Office, which has been run by a petty tyrant named David Orr since 1992. He just keeps getting reelected, largely because Republicans don’t bother to run anyone against him and he’s a key part of the Chicago political machine so he’s never challenged in any sort of primary. He’s, thus, one of the Illinois aristocrats of the Left who keep things going “the Chicago way” perpetually. The Clerk’s Office is not required to hold any public meetings and there is no mechanism to force David Orr or anyone who works for him to answer questions from the public. All someone like Sharon Meroni can do is submit FOIA requests, which the Clerk’s Office is required to respond to eventually. But, since there is no Board and no public meetings, the Clerk’s Office operates almost entirely in shadows…and does all sorts of things that violate state election law. David Orr gives the impression he’s quite proud of this.
Once you start looking into this stuff, it’s amazing how much everyone involved with elections hates when the public starts paying attention to them. Even professional people like those on the City of Chicago Board of Election Commissioners don’t like public scrutiny. They aren’t used to it, they have never had to deal with this before, and they largely don’t know how to behave themselves when questioned by citizens.
There’s some kind of meeting or observable event for at least one of the election bodies covering Chicago every other day or so, it seems…and the moment one election is finished they all start gearing up for the next one. In Chicago’s case, there are primaries in February for April’s local elections. There’s also going to be a big mess caused by Jesse Jackson Jr’s meltdown and resignation from Congress. And then before any of us can believe it, we’ll have the 2014 elections and their own primaries just around the corner. It never ends.
And none of it will ever get any better unless regular people start taking an interest in all of this.
I think we’re really lucky to have someone like Sharon Meroni here in Chicago, making it her personal mission to become an expert in all things election-related. I know she’s having an impact just by how unhinged she makes the Illinois State Board and by how much they clearly dislike her presence at their meetings. If they were competent people with nothing to hide who were doing their jobs effectively, then they wouldn’t care a lick that Sharon is taking an interest in them. Just imagine how their counterparts would act in YOUR home state if you made elections and ballot-integrity your own mission where you live.
It’s a lot of reading, going to meetings, and hard work…but the payoff can be pretty big. Sharon Meroni caught the City in illegal activity and forced them to correct themselves. Who knows what she’ll catch next…or what YOU could help catch happening in your own part of the country.
Orange Chicken Recipe — another $10 or under dinner idea!
[ Click above to embiggen: I took a photo of the orange chicken in the pan when it was done the last time I made this, and that's how it looks when the dish is finished. I think the yellow and orange peppers not only give the dish crunch but also add a visual element that brings home the "orange" in the chicken...and I like the whole pieces of orange segment that are scattered around the pan to give little bursts of orange flavor when eaten. You can see the seasoning on the chicken from when it was broiled, which is a peppery taste I like as an extra addition to the flavor profile. ]
Orange Chicken is my boyfriend Justin’s favorite dinner…but over time I evolved it from what’s typically found in Chinese restaurants so it’s also a little bit French “a l’orange” too. I also added a lot more color in the form of yellow and orange bell peppers and made it healthier than normal by not using anything fried (the way Chinese restaurants typically bread and then fry chicken for this dish). A lot of time I’ll have something in a restaurant and come home and try to make it for us in our apartment…and then I’ll change the things I didn’t like about the restaurant version and amp up the parts of it that Justin and I loved the most. It is a creative license that all cooks use…and it’s also a way to make things similar to what you like when you eat out but with whatever you happen to usually have in your kitchen.
When I make Orange Chicken, there’s enough for three meals for Justin and myself:
1. The first night we eat this over brown rice
2. The second day, we have an orange chicken sandwich (by just slicing open and toasting some baguette and then adding the orange chicken cold as a sandwich filling…you can heat it up too, if you want, but it’s great cold).
3. The last day I make us Orange Chicken lettuce cups by just using the leftovers as the filling of lettuce cups (literally, peeling off large leafs from a head of iceberg lettuce and then adding the warm orange chicken to it).
Ingredients:
* Chicken breasts (when I make it for Justin and myself, I buy one of the big Value Packs of chicken that have between 6-7 breasts; since this lasts us for 3 days I think if you want to make it for just one night then use only 2 breasts…but it’s more cost effective to just make a 3-day batch).
* Oranges (you can use fresh or canned Mandarin oranges…or clementines if you’d rather use tangerines…the little “cuties” oranges they have in the fall are nice too).
* Bag of colored peppers (you should have this where you live…a bag in the produce aisle that has orange, yellow, and red peppers in it; use the orange and yellow ones for this dish and leave the red ones for something else another day or for snacks later).
* Orange marmalade (for the sauce)
* Your favorite kind of Asian-style sauce (I use whatever’s cheapest at the store: Panda Express Orange Chicken Sauce…Safeway Brand’s Sesame Orange Sauce…or any other Orange Sauce in the Asian foods aisle at your store).
* Brown rice (or the rice you like)
I think what’s fun about making Orange Chicken this way is that there’s a lot of flexibility to get into your own groove; you can really put your own personal spin on this, particularly when it comes to the sauce.
How to Make It:
Step One: I start the chicken off first, because that takes the longest. This is especially true if you are making the chicken in your Crock Pot (in which case, just do that the way you normally do and when the chicken is ready just pull it apart with your fork so it’s in bite-sized chunks). I only recently acquired a Crock Pot and have always made the chicken in the oven at 350 degrees for as long as it takes to cook it. Before it goes into the oven, I sprinkle it with Lemon Pepper seasoning from Grill Mates (but you can use any seasoning you like for the chicken…I just think the lemon pepper spice is nice later on with the orange flavors). I also add a little chicken broth to the broiling pan and then cover it for the first half of cooking.
Step Two: Make the brown rice. It takes forever, depending on the kind you get. The good thing is that the Orange Chicken can wait for the rice to be done if your timing is off. The final Orange Chicken dish actually tastes even better if it has time to rest and for the flavors to develop.
Step Three: Notice that I don’t cut the chicken up into little pieces before it’s cooked. That’s largely because I think doing that is gross and it always leads to a giant mess. So, I cook the chicken breasts first and when they are done I cut them up into little pieces for the Orange Chicken. When I took Chinese in school my teacher told us that the reason food in Chinese culture is cut into small pieces is so that knives do not need to be placed on the dinner table; this is supposedly because the war lords and feuding generals wouldn’t want anyone to have a knife handy at dinner time to make trouble…so all the necessary cutting was done in the kitchen. I like making food bite-size as much as possible because it means washing less silverware later. It also makes it so much easier to portion food and also set things aside for later. The chicken’s pretty much doing its own thing for a while while it cooks so I do the other stuff I need to do while this is going on.
Step Four: This is when I make the sauce for the chicken. In a large pan on the stove I plop four large, heaping tablespoons of the orange marmalade. This will add sweetness to the sauce and will also eventually coat random pieces of chicken with orange peel that’s in the marmalade. This saves me from having to zest oranges and try to get that orange peel myself. The marmalade does all that for me, which is awesome. Once the marmalade is in the pan, I then pour in some of the Panda Express orange sauce or the Safeway brand orange ginger sauce. I buy these when they are on sale and so there’s a 50/50 chance I’ll be using one or the other every time I make this. The price point for buying the sauce is when it’s $2.99 or so…which happens at least once a month for either of them. Sometimes, Dominick’s (which sells the Safeway store brands) has the sauces 2 for $3…and then I stock up. The reason I add the marmalade to the sauce is because I don’t think the orange sauces out there have enough orange flavor to them…but I also don’t like Orange Chicken without the pungent tang of the Chinese style sauces. Without that tang, then the dish tastes too much like chicken a l’orange (which isn’t a bad thing, per se, but it’s not Chinese style then). The sauce part of this dish is where you can really tailor things to your taste. Adding more marmalade makes the sauce sweeter and more orange-flavored…but adding more of the Panda Express or Safeway prepared sauce makes it more tangy and savory. It’s up to you what you like best.
Step Five: I turn the flame on very low for the sauce while I head over to chop up the orange and yellow peppers. Cut the tops off first (where the stem is) and then slice them all in half so you can scoop out the seeds. Then I cut them so they are little square shapes. I don’t like using long slender strips of peppers for Orange Chicken and think the little square pieces look nicer in the final dish. When you’ve got them all chopped up, add them to the sauce in the pan on the stove.
Step Six: Let the peppers simmer a little but turn the fire off if they start getting too much heat. You want them to be somewhat crunchy so they add a nice texture to the finished dish…and not cooked all the way through.
Step Seven: When the chicken is done, take it out of the oven and cut it up into little pieces. This is where if you’ve used a Crock Pot instead you can just pull the chicken apart with a fork into pieces and then you add it to the pan with the sauce and the peppers. I like to add the chicken into the pan a few pieces at a time and then stir everything around…then add more chicken…stir some more…etc. until all the chicken is added and everything is evenly coated with sauce. There’s no need to have too much sauce because the flavors will be very strong. I swear it took me like 30 years to learn this, but less sauce is actually better. Let the flavors of the chicken and the oranges and the peppers come through and not have everything drowned in sauce. If food is a superhero, then sauce is the cape…the cool accent that makes everything soar, but not an oppressive burqa that hides the food underneath from the world. Once everything has been stirred together, I turn the flame on high for a few minutes which makes the sauce stick to the chicken and for the whole thing to have a cohesive flavor. I stir everything around a few more times and then I let it all rest for 5 minutes.
Step Eight: While the Orange Chicken is resting, I peel roughly 2 oranges and divide them into segments…then I cut each segment into half if it’s a big orange. Justin is a very picky eater, so I have to make sure all the white tendons from inside the orange are removed and the segments are all clean. If you are using Mandarin oranges from a can, then just drain them of their juice and add them to the Orange Chicken that’s cooling on the stove as-is. If you are using small tangerines or little “cuties” oranges, then use about 4 of them. I like putting them on top of the Orange Chicken at the end so that they absorb the warmth from the food around it but they don’t cook and don’t burst (as they would if you added them when there was a flame under the pan). I like the orange pieces to be whole like this because they add little flavor explosions here and there when you’re eating the dish later. I always make sure people get an even helping of the orange pieces when I dish up the food into the bowls and I save a few orange pieces for garnish on the plate too. Presentation really is a big part of any meal. You can make the most inexpensive food taste “expensive” by just elevating your presentation a little and always making sure you have at least three different colors in every plating (in this case, I have yellow and orange from the peppers and then the white of the chicken…and I’m tempted to serve this dish on a plate with broccoli or green beans sometimes because I love having that brilliant green color on there too). Food really is art, and when you are cooking you are an in-house Picasso.
Step Nine: Before I plate anything up, I clean all the pans and dishes I used to make the meal and all the utensils that got dirty up to this point. This way there’s no mess later for me to deal with after we eat.
Step Ten: I dish up the brown rice (which I planned to be ready right now) and then on top of it I add the Orange Chicken: one bowl for Justin and one bowl for me. I then divide the remaining Orange Chicken that’s in the pan into two separate bowls: one for tomorrow’s cold sandwich version of this dish and the other for the day after’s lettuce cups. The only thing I’ll need to stretch this meal over three days instead of one is a French baguette and a head of lettuce. I’ve found that dividing the remainder after I’ve plated up dinner that first night is the best way to stretch what I’ve made over the next two days because I’m not relying on something being “leftover” since the plan was always to do that stretching from the beginning. This is also a way to portion control if you are watching your food intake so you don’t overeat.
Neither Justin nor I use chopsticks and we just eat this with a fork. I make a hot tea to drink with it, like I’d get at a Chinese restaurant, but Justin likes his Diet Orange pop. Another fun thing you could do is add a little orange juice to a glass of club soda and you could make a bubbly orange drink to complement the chicken dish. I don’t drink anymore, but if I did I’d serve this with Blue Moon or another such beer that has an orange-y zing to it. I think a wine that would be nice with this is a Riesling because of its sharp sweetness. Another good pairing is an Italian Prosecco, which some people think is just for the summer time but is super cheap in the fall and winter as a result of that misconception. A sparkling Prosecco with some orange chicken is a very nice combination for people who enjoy alcohol in moderation.
I really don’t like ordering Orange Chicken from Chinese restaurants since I started making my own version because they fry their chicken and bread it, which are two things I avoid by roasting the chicken in the oven (or cooking it in the Crock Pot). I also like the crunchiness that the bell peppers add to my version…which Chinese restaurants don’t do. Even though I do like Panda Express’s Orange Chicken and its sauce, I miss the vegetables that I put in mine and I also like the extra orange flavor that the marmalade brings. A few times I tried making this dish with carrots in addition to the peppers, but it was overkill in my opinion. The carrots also had a weird flavor with all the orange notes around them…so while I do add carrots to the Hawaiian chicken I make, I don’t put the carrots in my Orange Chicken. You can try them if you like, or if you can’t find any orange or yellow bell peppers…but I think you’ll find that the carrots are weird in this.
What I love most about making this Orange Chicken is how CHEAP it ends up being; there’s a Chinese restaurant in our neighborhood that we love called Ping Pong, but we can’t walk out of that place without spending at least $50 for the two of us for one meal. Here, I can make a better version of Orange Chicken that feeds us for three days for less than half that price.
Cost of Ingredients:
Here’s the list of ingredients and what they cost to make Orange Chicken in Chicago the last time I made it (November 2012):
* Chicken Value Pack: 7 breasts of chicken for $12
* Oranges: “Cuties” box of little oranges for $6 (and I used about $1 worth of the oranges by taking three of them for the dish) = $1
* Pack of Colorful Peppers: $5 (and I used 2/3 of them, so about $3.50 worth of yellow and orange peppers) = $3.50
* Marmalade: $3 (and it’s enough to make this dish three times, using 1/3 of the marmalade each time…so one use is about $1) = $1
* Panda Express Orange Chicken Sauce: $4 (and I used 1/3 of it, so each bottle is good for making this dish three times)= $1.50
* Brown Rice: $1 (I used the Uncle Ben’s quick-brown rice that comes in a big pack of around 5 bags…so I think this was about $1 each) = $1
So, that was a total of $20 and the Orange Chicken will be used for 3 meals, so that’s less than $7 for the first night’s meal. The next day’s sandwich bread costs $2, so that’s about $8 for that meal…and the lettuce head is $2 or so, so that’s another $8 for the third day. That’s $23 to feed two men for three days.
We’ll actually eat the cuties oranges and the leftover red peppers as snacks for the next two days, too, so nothing will go to waste. The sauce and the marmalade leftover will be used the next time I make orange chicken. Between Justin and I, we’ll finish off the French bread and the lettuce head the day we eat those meals…so yet again we reach my goal of bringing dinners in under $10 and only throwing away plastic bags and packaging into the garbage and never, ever wasting or tossing out good food.
If you decide to make this dish, please let me know how it turns out for you in comments below. If you have your own twist on Orange Chicken I’d love to hear that too.
For more affordable recipes, check out our Recipes page in the ADVENTURE section in our top toolbar.
Hulu.com’s Thanksgiving Episodes — something fun for you to have on if you don’t like football
I really love Hulu.com. Justin and I are actually “Hulu Plus” members, which allows us to see more shows than are available for free (and it’s just $8 or so a month, which is astronomically less than paying for cable and/or a DVR setup). It’s completely rewired the concept of tee-vee to me…since there are always shows on Hulu for me to watch if I’m in the kitchen cooking or just relaxing on breaks from work.
Hulu also does fun things like collect episodes of shows with holiday themes…like recent shows that featured Thanksgiving episodes.
They even have the classic “WKRP in Cincinnati” Thanksgiving show with the infamous “turkey drop”.
If you don’t care much for football or whatever else is on today and you need some background noise or other distraction today you might want to give Hulu’s Thanksgiving lineup a look. I think everything on this channel for the holiday is free and open to nonsubscribers.
I especially recommend the Thanksgiving episodes of: ”New Girl”, “Don’t Trust the B in Apartment 23″, “The Middle”, “Raising Hope”, and “Happy Endings”.
That right there is over 3 hours’ of fun sitcoms with Thanksgiving plot lines that you probably have never watched before…and none of them are on NBC (which is great, because I’d no doubt lose my appetite for turkey if I watched anything broadcast by the Peacock).
Check out Hulu’s Thanksgiving lineup!
Our Favorite Recipes Page — a little thank-you to all of you out there for your four and a half years of friendship
[ Click on the image above to find our Recipes page. It's located in the top toolbar under ADVENTURE! and has its own dedicated section now ]
I was really touched this week by someone who wrote in on another thread and wanted to have some of the recipes for things I write about here and there; that was such a sweet and personal thing to ask and it was special to me because making food for people I care about is a big deal in my world. For instance, I would never dream of making my boyfriend Justin anything that I wasn’t sure would be great…and I would not risk cooking anything that wasn’t special if I had friends coming over for the day or if I was going to a pot-luck or something. I take a lot of pride in making things from good ingredients that taste great and are nutrition — but have a little soul and flare to them. The happiest I ever am in the world is when someone I love eats something I’ve made and they look so happy…especially when whatever that thing I made was just happens to be a favorite of mine from growing up in Cleveland or a trick I picked up here or there in the many oddball and interesting jobs I’ve had in my event planning and hospitality days.
One of the biggest blessings I’m counting today is the fact that this eclectic little political website willed itself into existence more than four and a half years ago and has given me the gift of reaching so many great people out there coast to coast — and around the world — and that things that mean something special to me can reverberate into the lives of others…even if I’ll never know it. One of the things about being a gay man that used to break my heart was that since I won’t ever have kids I felt so sad that a lot of the great things I was taught by the truly remarkable people I’ve loved would tumble into the grave with me some day…and wouldn’t get passed on to anyone else.
That was tragic to me, because I’ve been so blessed to know some of the most incredible people of our time (in my opinion)…and I just love sharing with others the gifts they gave me, even if it’s just a fun recipe for stretching out leftovers or tips to bring that grocery bill way down. It’s a humbling and awesome realization that via HB I can actually rebroadcast every wonderful thing ever said or taught to me and send that out to you and whoever else will read these essays and articles in the future…so that, through this effort, the people I love and the good in their hearts will never die…but will echo on in some form forever.
So, a gay guy from Cleveland ended up in Chicago with the ability to collect and transmit the very best of everyone he encountered in a lifetime to other good people who can carry those wonderful things on to others. I have no idea how any of this managed to happen, or why I was lucky enough to end up with that gift…but I am very thankful for it.
This will be a work in progress — and it will take a while to put a lot of these things into articles — but I started a page here on HB for the Recipes that people have asked for and will do my very best to make them as fool-proof and easy to use as possible as I write them up. I’m thinking this will be something I have more time to get to on the weekends…which is very natural, actually, since I like to cook more complicated or special things on Saturday or Sunday when there’s usually no place I need to be and I can just focus on going to the store or being in the kitchen.
I’m really heartened by the opportunity to tell you about some of the wonderful cooks I grew up knowing back in Cleveland…particularly my grandmothers, who are both gone now, but whose examples still continue to guide me today. Justin gets to hear these stories every day and I’m sure he’ll be happy to know that others will have the chance to enjoy them instead. I like knowing that this Recipes page is a chance for Erma and Emma to live on and never be forgotten and that a stranger who never met either of them might think of them now and again if that person makes one of their favorite dishes on occasion.
There’s a powerful kind of emotional magic in that for me…and in food if it’s always made with love and good intentions. I think we’re in for a very trying and exhausting four years that will be filled with austerity and privation…so maybe it’s perfect timing for the influence of Erma and Emma and the other practical and penny-pinching cooks I’ve known to reach a new audience who might be in real need of ideas to stretch household budgets in ways their families won’t even notice.
That was always a big thing growing up in Cleveland…to always make do with what we had, but to do it without complaint…though with enough flare and ingenuity that nobody noticed if you really just scraped together a bunch of leftovers and repurposed it into something new and interesting. If necessity is the mother of invention, then the ruined city of Cleveland was the maternity ward where such necessity birthed all sorts of inventiveness. I really believe that together we can all get through no matter what nightmares will come in the years ahead just by falling back on the best things we were taught growing up by people who themselves survived similar hardships.
I don’t necessarily like that this is the lot we’ve drawn at a time in history when the Left is triumphant and determined to decimate the country…but I am grateful today that I’m alive and in good enough health to do what I can to aid the continued Resistance. I’m glad we’re friends like that too, because I am counting on your own role in the Resistance to see us through. And, yes, I believe we cannot help but succeed in the end if we just continue to persevere and follow the good in our hearts…no matter if the battle ends up being a much bigger war than we ever dreamed it would be.
We will survive the Depression together.
We will endure the Obama Regime as great friends.
We will overcome the adversity all around us as allies.
We will Resist and ultimately Respond when the tide indeed turns.
I really hope you take a moment today to appreciate how remarkable it is that you are alive right now, at your particular age, when all of this is happening. I’m 35 and am so grateful that when the stuffing hit the fan — like it’s done for this country currently — I wasn’t 15 or 85 or even 45. I feel like I am the perfect age, for myself, to be in the thick of all this. I am grateful for being able to enjoy a safe and fun childhood with Reagan in the White House…and to have prosperous and relatively carefree teenaged years with the Clintons in Washington. I’m actually BEYOND grateful that in my 20s when Islam attacked us that George W. Bush was at the helm and truly rose to the occasion to hold this country together in the wake of such an evil assault. I feel blessed and lucky that things didn’t fall apart until I was in my 30s…when I’d had enough fun…and was able to get serious and make the sacrifices needed to get involved politically.
I’ve very thankful I’m gay, too, to be perfectly honest because I feel that allows me a little more freedom than a straight guy would have who has a family to worry about. Because of my political activism, I’m making 1/5 of what I did back before I started up this site and began speaking out against the Left and the Democrat Party…but nothing the Left’s ever thrown at me in terms of punishment or Alinsky assaults has ever been able to destroy me because all of the basic survival skills I learned growing up in the Thunderdome that is Cleveland have carried me through, no matter how many sacrifices those reprisals forced me to make. It’s proven to be remarkable hard to break the will of someone whose default programming was written by the privations of Cleveland in the 1980s. I am more grateful to my hometown and all it taught me than you could ever know as a result.
I think the success in anything for life rests in your personal planning…whether that is how to ultimately defeat the Left and its media propaganda machine or if it’s how to run your household in back-breaking times. The best antidote to frost-fingered fear is a warm hard and a mind of action. If you are methodical in your planning and strong in your convictions then fear of tomorrow’s unknown just can’t take hold of you. If you believe in America and what’s made this country so special for centuries then you also can’t entertain a notion that Americans will truly allow all that to fall to the wayside just because the tee-vee has told them to.
Fear has no place in this dojo.
And giving up is never an option.
So we soldier on, together. Just as we’ll survive this Obama Depression together. We will scrape together whatever we can, as best we can…and we will do that until the Left is driven from power. I don’t know why God sees fit to force Americans to endure privations like this in cycles as teachable lessons…but it looks like we’ve all been picked as students in this together here in 2012.
I’m grateful for that, because there’s no one I’d rather endure this with than you. Because we’re friends like that…and also because I know that you will also start sharing all the tricks and tips you’ve accumulated on your own to help your friends and neighbors survive the Obama Depression. I hope our little HB Recipes page can bring some joy or needed insight to anyone who’d benefit from it…and I hope it inspires others out there to investigate resources of their own to make the next four years just a little more bearable.
CLICK HERE -- to check out the Recipes page (a work in progress).
Please chime in below in comments with what you think.
Sing It, Whitney.
There’s no real “Thanksgiving music”, per se…but for me “Battle Hymn of the Republic” has always been the closest thing to a Thanksgiving “theme song” for this uniquely American holiday.
Words are my life…and I’m more particular about them than most people. I cringe when someone calls today “Turkey Day” because that’s like calling Christmas “Santa’s Day” and ignoring the reason for the season. Yes, Thanksgiving has a lot of great foods (and I know this because I worked hard making a bunch of those for today) and there’s indeed a fun element to the day, with a little silliness and more than its fair share of gluttony. Somewhere in Massachusetts today, I imagine Senator-Elect Elizabeth Warren dressing up in a conflicting mess of pilgrim and Indian gear, trying to decide who she’s going to be today based on her “family history”…while across the country far too many people are going to go on about food more than they should and forget completely the Civil War origins of what became Thanksgiving Day.
We’re currently in an economic Depression that our propaganda-based media won’t acknowledge for political reasons. We have a Regime in Washington ambivalent (at best) to the suffering of the American people. The political Left is at a horrifying zenith of power and is poised to do all sorts of harm to the country for the next two years. These are very trying times and our future is shockingly uncertain.
But, Americans back in 1865 felt much the same way, I’m sure. So, they began reserving a day to focus intently on the good in their lives and all the many blessings they could count.
There were so many.
There still are.
Wherever you are and whatever you’re doing today, please know how thankful I am that you are here in this very trying time for our country. You are reading these words right now…so you actually care enough about America to be on the net reading political sites on a day that others have turned into nothing more than a gluttonous pigfest. But, YOU are different and special and continue to seek news sources outside the Ministry of Truth and propaganda media. That’s amazing. It gives me great hope for our shared future. I am so thankful we’re friends like that.
I really ask you to keep love in your heart and politics off the table today, though. Focus on your friends and family today, and enjoy your time with them.
If your family’s get-togethers involve any yelling or screaming or conflict, how about making today the day that YOU step forward as the referee and peacemaker? I think this year’s the one where you inherit that role and become the arbiter of family fun and fellowship for the foreseeable future. The job sucks — let’s be real about that — but someone has to do it. There are a great many jobs in life that suck…but necessity demands them. And there always needs to be a grown up in the room who’ll keep the peace and allow cooler heads to prevail. It’s hard being that person…but give that mantle a try today because I know it’s going to fit you.
If that’s not needed wherever you are going — or someone else still serves that duty — then please just focus for a while today on all the things you are thankful for. Call up some friends or loved ones you’ve lost touch with and reconnect. Take a moment and send a quick text or email to people you love and just say “I appreciate you and am thankful for our friendship today”. You will never know how many lives you touch.
If you know any elderly people or those who’ve been sick in your neighborhood…perhaps you could invite them over to your family’s meal? Or maybe pop over later with a plate for them in case they spent today alone? We are all very much in this together…just as we were back in the dark days when Thanksgiving Day first began as a national holiday.
Enjoy yourself in all you do today…but please make sure that whatever you’re doing includes the spirit of Thankfulness and that the reason for the season’s not lost amidst all the food and the “Turkey Day” silliness that pop culture foists on what’s actually a very spiritual and contemplative time of year.
There will no doubt be people at your table today who will want to be silly, because they’ve been taught on the tee-vee that’s how to behave today.
You can set them right, in a classy and charming way.
Maybe just by playing them a little “Battle Hymn of the Republic” on your iPhone…and then telling them a little bit about why today became an important national holiday. There’s a lot more to the story than just dressing up as pilgrims and Indians and eating a lot. The Ministry of Truth doesn’t want people to know about any of that…because there’s a concerted effort to undermine all American holidays with sustained silliness…but the perfect antidote to that is YOU.
God Bless you and thank you for your continued friendship today and every day…and thank you for the love I know you have in your heart for this remarkable country that shall persevere and thrive no matter what’s thrown at it.
Above all, that’s the thing I’m most thankful for today and every day.
Tomorrow Is Thanksgiving. Let’s Dance!
It’s Thanksgiving tomorrow, and I want to thank all of you HillBuzzers for supporting this site with your comments, your love, and your desire to save this country. I thank God every day that I have been blessed with friends like you.
We can quibble about politics, but we all should give thanks for living in the greatest, and free-est country on earth. We are damn lucky, and if you are one of those eeyore sad sacks who don’t understand how blessed you are, then you can choose to sit in a chair and pout. Boo hoo.
I choose to give thanks, and … DANCE!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
BLACK-OUT WEDNESDAY: Why the Wednesday Before Thanksgiving is One of the Biggest Gay Drinking “High Holidays”
I’ve mentioned before that here in Boystown there are gay “High Drinking Holidays” that somewhat overlap with mainstream holidays, or come the day before. Life for young gay guys revolves primarily around drinking and the bar scene…with a favorite bar serving the role that a church or lodge serves for many straight families (a place to go…to socialize…where routines are established and ties are made). When I talk about the gay “community” and the bar scene it’s mostly gay guys I talk about because lesbians don’t participate in any of this, by and large…because lesbians just don’t support bars. They might go once in a while…but it’s a special thing when they go; gay guys, however, go to the bars almost every day. As unusual as it is for lesbians to go to a bar it’s just as unusual for a gay guy under 40 NOT to be in a bar on any given night. Lesbians are more like straight men than they are gay guys and would rather be watching sports at home than going to nightclubs every day.
The “High Drinking Holidays” almost require a socially-connected gay guy to be drinking somewhere; if you’re not out and about on one of these nights, people will wonder what’s happened to you. There are really obvious “High Drinking Holidays”, like New Year’s Eve, Pride Weekend, Mardi Gras, and (to a much lesser extent than with straight people) St. Patrick’s Day. Then there are ones you could probably figure out if you thought about it…like Oscar Telecast Sunday or local festivals like Market Days here in Chicago (the first weekend in August). But the big “High Drinking Holidays” are the nights before guys have off work and also are compelled to go to some family event…such as tonight — the night before Thanksgiving — which is called “Black-out Wednesday” or just “Black Wednesday” because the Friday after Thanksgiving is called “Black Friday”. Calling it “Black-out” is acknowledging that people intend to get smashed out of their minds before heading to their families’ for Thanksgiving.
To understand most gay guys, you need to view them as perpetual teenagers…who can legally drink. A particularly apt description is to refer to them as “lost boys”…the Peter Pan, not the Keifer Sutherland, kind. If you’ve raised or spent much time around teenagers, you’ll know that they largely think they are too cool for anything around them and know more about life than you could ever imagine; hence the eye-rolls in the general direction of family traditions or anything they think is hokey or corny. Gay guys have this attitude too…and there’s a weird insistence that being cool or showing how smart (you think) you are involves putting down others, particularly your family members. Making fun of their parents is particularly a sport in gay social circles.
So, part of “Black Wednesday” immediately before Thanksgiving is going out in Boystown to complain about having to spend the next day with their parents and other relatives. So, guys go out to drink and compete to see who can make fun of their families the most. Remember that throwing shade and “reading” are a big part of gay culture; ”shade” is (supposedly) witty insults told for the benefit of an audience that is expected to hoot and holler when someone’s put down and “reading” is when a gay guy directly confronts someone with a handful of real zingers designed to put that person in his or her place. It’s all a weird kind of performance art, with a lot of gay guys trying to ape what they’ve seen on the tee-vee. Essentially, they’re all trying to be Karen-the-drunk from old episodes of Will & Grace. To a person, they all think they’re spectacularly original and so very clever…when in fact all of this is just very, very sad.
There are some big generational shifts happening in gay life that are fascinating to watch. Guys older than 40 participate in Black Wednesday because many of them really are sad and want to drown their sorrows around the holidays, since they are not welcome to dinner with their families and they are either hurt by that or resent it. Guys younger than 40 just love the excuse to drink a lot, not have to work the next day, and enjoy competing with their little friends for who has the worst families. The guys who are in their 50s, 60s, and older who come out to bars on the night before Thanksgiving often actually cry while sitting on the bar stools…and some even look like they want to kill themselves. A few bartender friends of mine have reported that through the years they’ve been tipped ridiculously large amounts of money by guys on either Black Wednesday or Christmas Eve…and then those guys are never seen again. Urban legend is that those guys then cashed in their chips after deciding this is the last holiday they’d spend alone…though for all we know they could just have moved to Florida and that was their last Thanksgiving or Christmas in Chicago.
I feel really bad for the older gay guys in their 50s and above here in 2012 because they clearly wish they could have had the open life experience that younger guys take for granted. This is especially true if you go to any of the gay bars in Boystown with male strippers…who incidentally are dressed up as sexy pilgrims, Indians, and even turkeys tonight. Older guys who look like grandfathers go nuts (and get very grabby) with strippers on Black Wednesday…which is an aggressiveness they don’t usually show. Typically, these guys are very quiet and sit in the corners…but the night before the holidays they drink much more than usual and they seem to be making up for lost time. Some of them wish they looked like the strippers and were young again…others wish that when they were in their 20s they could have been out and proud or have been a stripper too. If you’re a straight woman, you might be shocked to learn just how much many guys would have wanted to be strippers at some point in their lives.
There are so many straight, married guys who go to gyms and work out who would love to be ogled and objectified for their bodies. It’s something that guys don’t talk about openly to women…but straight men in particular really have a strong exhibitionist streak to them. For the record, about 50% of the guys dancing in gay bars are straight…but almost 100% of strippers dancing for women are straight (for those who are curious). The reason for the latter is because strippers-for-women make much less than guys who dance for other guys, so there’s no incentive for a gay guy to strip for women when he can always go-go in a gay bar and not only make a lot more money but also find hookups with guys he likes. If a guy’s stripping for ladies it’s because he’s getting a benefit out of it more than just the money…because he will make much less dancing for ladies (who are super-cheap with the tips).
It’s pretty rare to hear stories of guys under 30 who aren’t welcome back home for holidays…so our culture is really changing and a lot of the old evil is dying out. Just about the only young guys I know who are banned from family events are black gay guys who are out and not on the down low. Their families won’t allow them to come around unless they acquire a suitable black woman to come with them…that’s called a beard. Sometimes on Craigslist you can see women advertising themselves to be a date to gay guys for their holiday celebrations (for a fee, of course). This isn’t prostitution — technically — because no sex is going to happen…so it’s couched more as hiring an actress or a spokesmodel for a role. It’s so very strange (and sad), but “pretend girlfriends” or “Thanksgiving girlfriends” or whatever must still be in demand because every year they appear on Craigslist in time for the holidays. If someone wasn’t paying these women, they wouldn’t keep putting themselves out there like that.
I think the Millennial generation has had it better than gay guys have ever had it. I have quite a few friends who are moms and dads of Millennials, which probably says something…since they are moms and dads who are friends with a gay political writer. My boyfriend Justin is a Millennial and is 10 years younger than me. Years ago, his parents Doc and CarolAnne tried “fixing” Justin when he came out to them in high school. They sent him to counselors and even to some kind of facility to “fix him” so that he was not gay anymore…but the two of them are smart enough to have figured out quickly that you can’t “fix” people who aren’t broken. Since then, CarolAnne has tried every year to set Justin up with some girl she knows back home in Arkansas. It’s always a disaster, and about 80% of the girls figure out in seconds that Justin is gay and end up laughing along with him at what a joke it is that CarolAnne keeps attempting this. In the last few years, CarolAnne must have run out of girls to set Justin up with and has been moving towards cougars and divorcees. My favorite of these set-ups happened last Christmas, when CarolAnne invited over a girl who was in the Army and worked as a carpenter; she rode a bicycle, had biceps thicker than pythons, and was clearly a lesbian. It was hilarious that not only CarolAnne but also this girl’s mother tried setting this “date” up for Christmas 2011.
The funny thing about all of this is that I have so many friends whose parents have problems with the people they date. My good friend Abbey in Ohio is married to a black man, and her mother tried breaking them up for the longest time. Here in Chicago, my friend Althea was married to a white man..and her mother tried doing the same thing! So, it works both ways in terms of parents trying to chase away someone of the “wrong race”. This stuff happens with people who are overweight, have “a weird hair color”, or are just “bad” in the eyes of someone in the family. When I was a kid my cousin Laurel dated a guy named Eddie that no one in my family liked for really no reason in particular. He was polite enough, I guess, but he was just boring and generic…whereas Laurel was vibrant and engaging and “could do so much better”.
So, it’s not really fair to fault families who don’t like that their sons date other guys…since those families would be upset as well, I’m sure, if these guys were dating black girls, white girls, heavy-set girls, boring girls, dumb girls, foreign girls, older girls, you name it.
I think gays climb up onto a stage proclaiming martyrdom too often, since a lot of the Black Wednesday griping is similar to what a lot of people go through whose families don’t like their boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse. I think that older generations of Americans just have a culture of giving people grief about who they end up with. That used to be a big thing, apparently…and if you watch old movies or black and white tee-vee shows you also see a lot of this in the plot lines. I really think my parents’ generation is the last one that behaves this way. Friends my age or a little older tend to just ignore someone they don’t like instead of making a big deal about that person. I do that all the time with the husbands of friends…if the woman is cool and a great friend, while the husband is a jerk. The funny thing is that even if these guys don’t like gays they actually love that their wives have a gay male friend…because the wife then gets someone to go to a concert with or to movie or whatever when the guy just wants to stay home and watch sports. The wife’s gay friend is totally a husband’s dream come true in some situations.
I’ve had about 15 serious boyfriends in my lifetime and it’s been an interesting mix in terms of how their parents treated them. Only a few of them had families who disowned them because they are gay…and those were guys who were older than me by quite a bit. My parents don’t speak to me because I am gay…but this doesn’t make them bad people. They’re just very much “Cleveland” and it is what it is. I’ve never gotten drunk on Black Wednesday over it. On the other end of the spectrum, I dated a guy named Alex from France once whose mother Heloise was FANTASTIC; she was this elegant, platinum blonde chatelaine who walked into a room like an old movie star or lounge singer. She was so incredibly cool and was actually thrilled to have a gay son. Not “pretend-thrilled”, but THRILLED for real because she thought it was entertaining and interesting. She was so incredibly nice to me and we actually stayed friends for many years after Alex and I broke up.
I had another ex named Harvey whose mother could have been the inspiration for the character “Skeletor”. This lady was one of those lefties who pretends to be thrilled she has a gay son, but yet she insists on calling him “my gay son” or “our homosexual son”. Harvey was never just “her son” to her…and, just like a classic lefty, she never could pass up a chance to announce to the world how open-minded and wonderful she was because she “had no problem with her son being a homosexual”. Folks, I would rather be called a fag than “a homosexual”. At least with people who use the word “fag” I can chalk up their behavior to pure ignorance…but people who insist on using jarring clinical terms in casual conversation are the kinds of pretentious fools I have a hard time suffering. Harvey’s mom enjoyed trying to put be down and belittle me…and was surprised when I gave back to her as much as she dished out. For three years of my life, I had an actual nemesis. She tried breaking Harvey and me up every day…and I probably stayed with him a year longer than I wanted to because I just didn’t want to give Skeletor the satisfaction that she’d “won” by leaving him. In old movies and tee-vee shows I’d seen so many stories about “mothers-in-law from Hell” and being gay I always assumed I’d never experience that…but Harvey’s mother put Endora from Bewitched to shame. If only she was as stylish and fun as Agnes Moorehead, though.
Justin’s mother, CarolAnne, is a very nice woman…and she loves her son so very much. She doesn’t like that he’s gay — and she still keeps trying to set him up with women — but she’s not evil to him. Justin’s family has a truce on the issue where they just don’t talk about him being gay. They also pretend that he and I don’t live together and that I am just a writer that he knows in Chicago. What’s really funny — which some of you might not even know — is that CarolAnne used to read my essays long before I ever met Justin. I don’t know how she found me or HB, but she used to tell Justin about me and things that I’d say because she read me every day…and then one day I met her son, totally out of the blue, and I didn’t realize CarolAnne was a reader until one day Justin was telling me something that was really familiar and I realized I had written that. So, it was very meet-cute for us because of that.
I doubt I will ever meet CarolAnne or the rest of Justin’s family in person because they just don’t want to have a relationship with any guy that Justin’s with. I respect this 100% and don’t demand anything from these people. The funny thing is that I know in the years ahead this will change slowly, because I am here to help all of his family if they’d ever need it. Justin’s sister Darcy doesn’t like that her brother is gay…but she has massive medical bills and creditors harassing her every day. I’ve offered to take on the project of resolving the medical bills and am willing to jump in to help her the second she’d let me…but she doesn’t want my involvement. I am here, though, in reserve the day she really needs it. It’s the same thing with Justin’s parents as they get older and start having various issues. I will do anything they need…and I expect nothing in return. Frankly, after dealing with Harvey’s mother and contending with a real-life nemesis for so long I’m just thrilled I don’t have an actual villain in my life anymore. CarolAnne is someone who approaches life from a place of great fear and is always wrapped up in some conspiracy or another…but she’s sweet and loves her son and brought a very nice guy into the world who I happen to love very much…so she’s a good lady and I’m glad Justin has a mom like that.
You’ll always hear gay groups screaming and yelling and demanding this, that or the other but I’m a gay guy who is telling you that in life you can’t make demands on anyone…especially not whether they’d like you or not. If I was straight, I’m sure I’d date girls whose parents didn’t like me because I was white…or because I’m a Republican…or because I’m a writer and not a doctor or a lawyer. I might not be tall enough or rich enough or old/young enough. I think the family of the guy you’re with is part of the package deal that comes with him…and it’s up to YOU how to handle the situation.
Just the other day in downtown Chicago I got into a screaming match with someone who really wanted to have a fight about something related to politics…and this person was mad at me about a story I’d written. A mutual friend of ours thought it would be funny to introduce us, not bothering to tell me that this woman was angry with me and you should have seen her face when she realized she had the chance to curse at me in person. She was actually mad at me for talking about seeing Congressman Aaron Schock in the gay bar MiniBar here in Boystown because she thinks it’s “none of (my) business” and that I should keep his secret. I told her that it’s not a secret he’s gay because he’s going to gay bars and making out with guys in public places in Chicago…and that he should just come out of the closet so that Democrats don’t use his lies about being straight against him later. I actually like Aaron Schock and think he could be a US Senator from Illinois if he’d only come out and remove the Democrats’ strategy against him…but this woman believes he needs to keep in the closet “so that he can win the primary in a few years” because she thinks “downstate voters” won’t support a gay Republican Senate candidate. This is a strangely controversial issue here in Illinois, but Republicans don’t seem to understand that voters have a problem with a guy lying about who he really is and will punish him for that…but they wouldn’t punish a hot, young, gay Republican for being who he is.
The woman wanted to keep yelling and screaming on State Street at 6 o’clock during rush hour and I had a decision to make: do I scream and yell back, or do I diffuse the situation and give the woman a way out? So I followed my instincts and I told her at one point, “You know what I think of you…I think you have real passion. I love that. You have a fire in you. I don’t agree with you, but I like you. I hope we become friends and can get a pizza or something one day because you are someone I want to know”. I actually tend to be friends with outspoken, high-energy people so I really would like to get a pizza with her. My saying this to her really threw her for a loop…and it took her a minute to get her bearings…and we parted on good terms with her giving me a little hug. All of this could have ended much differently…but it was my choice to take charge of the situation and steer it to something positive.
That’s really how I feel about Justin’s family. I always had a choice in how I wanted to handle this: I could have been weird about it and demanded that Justin’s parents acknowledge me and invite me to things…or I can just accept that they want a relationship with their son but not any guy their son is with. It’s nothing personal against me…it’s just the situation. The whole thing reminds me a lot of the movie The Evening Star, which was the lackluster sequel to Terms of Endearment. I doubt you’ve seen it, but it’s worth a look if you ever have an evening to kill with Netflix. In the movie, Shirley McClane plays Aurora Greenway…who hates her daughter’s friend Patsy. When her daughter dies, Patsy steps up and helps Aurora raise the daughter’s three kids…and Aurora hates Patsy for decades and is downright nasty to her. But Patsy doesn’t go anywhere because she loves the kids and is part of the family too, even if Aurora won’t admit it. And then Aurora gets old and sick and Patsy is there to help her…and Aurora finally makes peace with Patsy and they become sort-of friends.
That’s totally going to happen with me and CarolAnne over time…and the good thing is that this all starts from a place where CarolAnne doesn’t hate me…but just wants to pretend I don’t exist so she can keep trying to set Justin up with women. I am not someone who needs validation or attention by demanding CarolAnne acknowledge my relationship with her son or have regular dealings with me. If she really needs to get ahold of Justin and he’s not answering his phone or email, CarolAnne will call me and ask for him…so she clearly knows we’re together and accepts that…even if she feels better pretending otherwise.
I think life is short and CarolAnne needs to do what makes CarolAnne happy. As long as she is nice to Justin and loves him then I am happy.
So, Justin and I typically celebrate a holiday a week early and then he drives down to Arkansas to spend the actual celebration with his family…especially when there’s a chance for him to see his little niece Astor, who is going to turn one just after Christmas. I actually like this arrangement because he and I both get to have two holiday celebrations…one together…and then another one on our own with different people. I get to thus have all the old traditions I’d do when I was single during the holidays and Justin gets to go back to his family like when he was little. Everyone wins!
And, no, I’m not upset in the least that I’m not invited to Arkansas. If I really wanted to, I could fly down to Little Rock and spend Thanksgiving there staring at the Clinton Museum or I could find my own way down to Eureka Springs and explore Justin’s hometown while he’s on his parents’ farm…or I could do things I enjoy doing and spend holidays volunteering somewhere or with my friends or whatever I like doing.
I’m not someone who thinks two people need to be together every waking minute or that family time for Justin should necessarily involve me. I know that I will always come in second when it comes to his family and I am okay with that. We’re slightly imbalanced because I don’t have a family anymore since I came out…but I have HB and that takes up more time than a family does, and is a harder-to-understand demand on my life than relatives. So, Justin has to deal with the unique challenges that come with being with a political writer and editor of a website…and that’s probably as hard for him to handle as it is for some people to deal with the challenges of in-laws.
I just think I’m very blessed with what I have and I don’t wish it was different in any way. Life here at Buzzquarters is never dull and time just races by…and I can’t imagine things being any greener or better on any side of a fence. I am very grateful for how my life turned out and I am so happy to have so many wonderful friends coast to coast and even overseas. I have a great (and very hot) boyfriend who is sweet and charming…and he has a great family who loves him very much. In a perfect world I guess we could all be at events together…but everything is a tradeoff and there’s no guarantee that would be better than what we have now. I actually kind of like CarolAnne and Doc being off-screen in my life…and remaining people I hear about but never see in person…like on old tee-vee shows such as Cheers where they’d talk about someone’s mother or wife or whatever but they’d never cast that part.
I’ve experienced a real-life equivalent of a mother-in-law from Hell before…so it’s actually quite charming to have Justin’s relatives be these unseen characters that he tells me about. I’m sure they enjoy me being “just a writer that Justin knows” too. I know both his sister and his mom loved when I was in The Globe magazine October 1st and they discovered that in the supermarket checkout without Justin telling them.
So, we have our own unique relationship that works for everyone and is what it is.
On this Black Wednesday before Thanksgiving I raise a toast (of Diet Coke) to all of us and feel absolutely no compulsion to drink anything stronger or drown anything out over that.
Thanksgiving Pizza Recipe — an oddball new tradition for your house!
So, I actually made all the traditional Thanksgiving foods earlier in this week because my boyfriend Justin is driving home to Arkansas today to enjoy the holiday with his family tomorrow. Justin can be a picky eater, which means I always need to be creative with leftovers as he doesn’t like having the same thing twice in a row…but I can repurpose ingredients in different ways to make new meals he’ll like. I also try to keep things interesting for him, since he ends up having two holidays (one here in Chicago with me…and one with his family a few days later) and I like doing something different from what his mother’s going to cook.
I found a smart way to avoid even having leftovers to begin with by approaching each meal strategically and deciding what I’m going to do with all the food well in advance; this way, nothing’s ever wasted and I don’t have to scramble to think of things to do with all the stuff in the refrigerator before it goes bad. I also can save a lot of money on groceries by shopping according to a multi-day plan (my budget is $10/day for the two of us and I achieve this with no problems even during holidays by treating things like Thanksgiving foods as a 3-day cooking event instead of just one giant, expensive meal).
On Monday, I made all the traditional Thanksgiving foods the classic way: turkey and sweet potatoes (cooked in a crock pot I bought a few weeks ago and have been experimenting with), cranberry sauce (nothing fancy…just right out of a can), green beans, and stuffing (Stove Top, out of the box…just like mom used to make back in Cleveland). When all the food was ready, I divided it up for the next few days according to my plan: the first day we’d eat it normally, the second day we’d have Thanksgiving Sandwiches, and the last day (today) we’d enjoy a Thanksgiving Pizza.
This might be basic for a lot of you, but it was a revelation to me when I started doing it a few years ago: taking the time as soon as the food is ready to portion it out for the next few days is a great time and energy saver. Literally, while I am plating up our food for today’s meal I am also carving it all up and putting it into bowls for the next few days too. I don’t like Tupperware so I just use large serving bowls and aluminum foil to set things aside…and I never have any problems because I’m going to use all this stuff in the coming days. I keep any sauces or things that shouldn’t be mixed together in separate containers, covered and sealed for when I’m going to use them. But taking the time as soon as the food is all ready to reserve things for future meals feels like much less work than putting everything away after we’ve eaten. It just feels like part of the cooking process when I do it BEFORE we sit down to eat…as opposed to it being part of the laborious cleanup process after dinner.
Another tip I picked up years ago when working for a chef here in Chicago is something you might already do in your house (but if not, you should start today): clean as you go, in terms of the pots and utensils you use…so that when you’re done cooking there’s no giant mess or stack of pans in the sink. Justin still doesn’t know why I do this, as he’s used to having to wash a bunch of pots and things at his house after his mother’s done making dinner…but there’s no mess when I cook because as soon as something’s out of a pan then the pan is scrubbed, dried, and put away where it belongs. No mess means less work for me later in the day.
Thanksgiving Sandwiches have been around for about a decade or so, with chains like Cosi or Potbelly here in Chicago featuring them every holiday season. Literally, they are “Thanksgiving in a Sandwich”…with leftovers from the Thanksgiving meal assembled into a sandwich using whatever bread you happen to like. I like shopping at a store called Dominick’s that features a very good bakery…and they always have interesting breads to choose from that are baked right there in the store. For our Thanksgiving Sandwiches yesterday I used an asiago cheese bread…but in the past I’ve used French bread, cheddar bread, or any of the other kinds they have. It’s whatever you like, really. And then you just layer the Thanksgiving ingredients you have onto the bread in the way that you like. I start with the cranberry sauce, then I add the turkey, and I put some potatoes and green beans or whatever’s there on top of that. And it’s a simple and easy sandwich that has all the Thanksgiving flavors for the day after we had the big, classic meal.
The idea of a Thanksgiving Pizza is something that I first encountered here in Boystown at a little restaurant called Pie Hole, which was originally located at Roscoe and Halsted in the heart of the city’s strip of gay bars. Pie Hole has since relocated and seems more mainstream these days…but once upon a time it was a very eclectic and lively place that featured a different holiday-themed pizza every month. November’s was always “Thanksgiving Pizza”, which fascinated me and gave me all sorts of ideas to try at home. In the years since I’ve seen different Food Network shows present Thanksgiving Pizzas…and everyone does it a little differently.
Pie Hole used gravy for the pizza sauce…which is something I don’t do, mainly because I don’t like gravy and that was never part of Thanksgiving at my house growing up (as my mother didn’t like gravy either). Instead of gravy, we’d always have cranberry sauce with the turkey…so that’s the sauce I use as the base for my version of the Thanksgiving Pizza.
I invite you to alter the recipe you’ll find below to incorporate the things you make for Thanksgiving and how your own family likes to celebrate the holiday. What’s great about a pizza is that there’s very little chance of it being bad, no matter what you add or subtract. One solid rule in life is that if it’s a pizza, chances are it will be delicious…or at least edible (though you should always strive for delicious). I think your family will love having something new and fun to do with your Thanksgiving leftovers…even if like me you decide ahead of time that you’re going to make a Thanksgiving pizza and reserve the ingredients to do this…so it’s less “leftover” than it is “reserved for this purpose ahead of time”.
Thanksgiving Pizza Recipe:
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HillBuzz Open Thread, Tuesday, November 20, 2012
While Kevin is off sleuthing in Cook County and I’m working on a big project, I thought I’d start an open thread so that you HillBuzzers can share your thoughts of the day. My favorite story of the week had to do with the Ding Dong unions bringing down Hostess. Union people are so stupid they’d rather kill their own jobs rather than negotiate. DUMMYS!
What’s on your mind today?
Do I bring flowers or a fork?