Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, December 2, 2020
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106 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Actually, along with fleecing the rubes, inspiring people to commit acts of violence is another thing he has the ability to do.
‘The equals of Klee and Matisse’ – the Alabama quilt-makers who shook America
Puts me in mind of my own patchwork quilt made by my grandmother that was on my bed when I was growing up in the 60s. It was a butterfly pattern and my brother had one to match on our bunk beds. My older sisters had matching sailboats. Over the years they got more than a little threadbare until my mother was forced to replace them with some old Hudson Bay blankets. I’m sure she tossed them but I have always wished I still had mine to hang on the wall. A lot of love went into it’s making.
The end of an era: Giant Arecibo radio telescope collapses in Puerto Rico
It’s demise was foreordained months ago, but still sad. RIP Arecibo.
The Guardian is doing a survey. I answered:
Describe 2020 in a single word:
Blech.
Describe what you think 2021 will be in a single word:
deBlech.
The Justice Dept is investigating a potentially criminal scheme of bribery for a presidential pardon.
The link contains a link to the court filing. Heavily redacted, but fascinating reading for all that.
My Call With Ron Johnson: He Knows Biden Won But Won’t Admit It
The Wisconsin senator says it would be “political suicide.”
https://thebulwark.com/my-call-with-ron-johnson-he-knows-biden-won-but-wont-admit-it/
Here’s today’s portrait in courage.
@OzarkHillbilly: While I too welcome this statement, I am a little disappointed that republicans only start getting concerned about violence when it finally starts affecting them. Democrats have been on the receiving end of these threats for quite a long time now.
According to CNN, WH spokesperson Alyssa Farah said that diGenova’s comment about executing Krebs was “wildly inappropriate.” I wonder if Trump thinks so.
@Mike in Arlington:
Agreed.
But, better late than never. I feel badly for the worker in his 20s that he described–to get singled out like that when you’re that young for just doing your job–it’s unreal that people can be that unhinged.
This isn’t something normal people do. It’s crazy. Bat-guano, straight-up crazy.
@OzarkHillbilly: Parker Molloy said, in response, “I challenge Republicans to care about something before it affects them directly”
@Teve:
If they had the intellectual capacity and empathy necessary for this, they wouldn’t be Republicans in the first place.
@Mike in Arlington: It has always amazed me how myopic Republicans seem to be. Never seems to occur to them that they might be subject to 2nd Amendment solutions too.
Maybe the grifting goes back further than we think…
@Teve: It’s pretty funny that Trump booted Sidney Powell off his team because she claimed some grand conspiracy involving (dead guy) Hugo Chavez and then Trump’s defenders decide he needs to go all Hugo Chavez by arresting a bunch of his political opponents and declaring martial law.
If projection weren’t a thing, these morons wouldn’t have a word to speak.
@OzarkHillbilly: I’ve been collecting Depression-Era quilts for some time. I especially appreciate a “Spider’s Web” quilt I got off Ebay made out of leftover shirting fabric.
@OzarkHillbilly:
My grandmother quilted. Every one of her grandchildren got a quilt on their wedding day, usually themed on some private joke or moment between them. I was the last of 13 grandchildren (my oldest cousin is much closer in age to my father than to me), and she started mine when she was 92, shortly before moving to a home–her mind hadn’t gone yet, but she knew it was on the way. She never finished it, but last year I took it to an Amish family who knew my grandmother well, and who said they could finish it.
It’s not themed like my cousins’ quilts, just a design of flowers, but I love it dearly.
@Neil Hudelson: My Aunt Julia (lived to 97) did the same for all her grandchildren, great grandchildren, nieces and nephews, gave each of us an afghan. Needless to say, she never went anywhere without her knitting.
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Childish gloat at @Kathy… Biden’s lead in the popular vote is over 6.9M. New York still has a few hundred thousand votes to count, which should push Biden’s margin to over 7M.
Really, New York? Four weeks after the election and you’ve still only counted 91% of the ballots? And in an upstate Congressional race currently separated by 12 votes, 55 uncounted ballots were discovered on Monday.
I’m reading a book about allegedly about private space companies (in reality about SpaceX and Blue Origin, with a little Virgin Galactic thrown in). the author likes to sprinkle drawn out trivia. Among these, something I didn’t know: Jeff Bezos paid millions for an expedition to recover a number of Saturn V F1 engines from the bottom of the Atlantic.
This is half “it’s really very cool” and half “If he has money to blow on this, why can’t he pay his employees higher wages.”
It’s not as though the engine model itself were unavailable. At least two Saturn Vs were left over. one’s in Houston, the other in Cape Canaveral (they’re impressive as hell).
I need a more serious book next. This one spends a lot of time on Blue origin, which has yet to make any concrete, significant contribution to space travel. Say what you want about Elon musk (and there’s a lot of negative things to say), but the man’s built up SpaceX into a serious space company, handling multiple launches each year and even orbiting its own satellites (the Starlink internet satellites). And other companies like Rocket Lab rate no mention.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Did this happen to everybody from the Ozarks? City kids left home and came back to find out their mom had thrown out their baseball card collection. We lost our quilts. I’d love to have the quilt my grandma made for me, even though it was in rags the last time I saw it.
@OzarkHillbilly: Wait a second… Liberals own guns? We gotta do something about that. That could be dangerous.
My damn oven just died. Right in the middle of the busy cookie baking season – BAM! No pilot light, just a house full of gas and it’s freezing outside when you open the window. Now I get to race through sites to find a decent oven that’s (a) still got a CyberMonday discount (b) what I need and (c) in freaking stock sometime before hell freezes over. Wish me luck, y’all – gonna be a rough day.
@Kathy:
Even the Jeff Bezos’ of the world don’t have enough money to do everything. You’ve got to draw the line somewhere. Just be thankful that he draws it on pulling old rocket engines out of the ocean instead of wasting it on people who’ll just use it to buy more liquor and cell phones and drugs.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
How did I miss that? I feel so stupid 😉
I don’t think it’s wasted money, but it is frivolous. Even if he really recovered an engine from Apollo XI.
@KM: Ugh, that’s awful. Good luck to you, I’d freak out completely.
Makes me thankful we have a local appliance store that purchased all of our new appliances from during a kitchen remodel, and then less than four years later we moved into new construction and purchased all new appliances (again) from them…pretty sure there’s a post-it on our file that reads “easy sale.”
Man, remember how in the lead up to the election a day wouldn’t go by where our sweet baboo Keefie wouldn’t stop by to let us know how deeply concerned he was about Hunter Biden and how that was such an important story.
And then election day and poof he disappeared… And, huh, so did all of Fox News’s reporting on that story too: https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/how-the-hunter-biden-laptop-story-disappeared-from-fox-news-prime-time-after-the-election/
It’s almost like the might have been a little insincere about how much of a “scandal” it was…
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
True, it could be a lot worse. He could make a hobby out of trying to turn the country into a glibertarian oligarchy like Chuckles Koch and several other billionaires.
@mattbernius:
I’m just waiting for Nov. 4th, when per the Pessimus Prophecy we won’t hear “Covid, Covid, Covid!” anymore.
@mattbernius: I read this yesterday, so I don’t remember the exact figures, but it was something like in the 9 days before the election, fox did 8 hours of Hunter Biden coverage, and in the 3 weeks before the election they did over 500 segments on him.
@OzarkHillbilly: @OzarkHillbilly:
My mother-in-law made a quilt and gave it to my wife on the occasion of our first-born’s arrival.
I stand accused of having (accidentally) thrown it out during a purge. 23 years ago. No, I have not heard the last of it. I won’t live long enough to hear the last of it.
Colin Kaepernick, starbucks cups, happy holidays…
@mattbernius:
@Teve:
It is funny, Trump said that we wouldn’t hear about Covid after the election, but it turns out we stopped hearing about Hunter while we keep hearing about Covid.
Kristi Noem is posting memes where Ronald Reagan mocks the government as the problem.
Trump joke of the day:
One day someone launches AmazonBrain. It’s an online site where one can purchase brains from specific family lines, for transplant or research. The lines are listed by the founder of each (with whom the line begins), and priced per gram.
Joe browses the site out of curiosity, and sees listings like:
Bill Clinton Line, $150 per gram.
Ronald Reagan Line, $75 per gram.
Don Shula Line, $300 per gram.
And so on. he assumes the varying prices reflect the quality of the brains.
Then he comes upon:
Donald Trump line: $10,000 per gram.
Well, he had voted for the guy years before, but Joe doesn’t think the brain quality was that high. So he gets in touch with customer support and asks why Trump brains sell for so much.
The reply: “Do you know how many Trumps in that line need to be rendered to get one gram of brains?”
@Teve:..the government as the problem.
Kristi Noem is the government. Kristi Noem is the problem.
@Teve:
If Kristy is so anti government, then she should resign and allow someone to take her place that wants to govern.
As I recall, Reagan advocated, small, even minimalist government, but he didn’t shirk leadership as she has.
@mattbernius: “And then election day and poof he disappeared…”
So Trump was right! Except he misspoke a little and said Covid when he meant Hunter Biden…
@mattbernius: On the other hand… the Republicans kept saying Covid stories would disappear after the election, because Democrats were just using it to attack Trump. They were wrong about that (projection, again!), but Ted Cruz claims it’s because they underestimated how committed Democrats were to controlling the population with Covid fears.
@Michael Reynolds:
Differing slightly from quilts, my cousin’s daughter got married last New Years to a Jewish man. Although the two-faith wedding was celebrated in a Catholic church, it took place under his family’s chuppah, which was embroidered with the names of every couple who had married under it and would show up at the next family wedding including theirs. I thought that was pretty cool.
Update: found a decent stove for a fairly decent price, was pleased with built-in air-fry option. Then came the estimated delivery date….
Jan 4, 2021. Maybe (no promises)
*raged for 5 min, cursed out Orange Asshat for ruining the supply chain before and during COVID and agreed* Now off to beg the neighbors for oven space and work out the logistics of running cookie trays between houses in the snow on a sched while still maintaining safety protocols. Might be easier to just rent a hotel suite with an oven for a night……
@KM:
Would a decent-sized toaster oven help? At least you could buy it and take it home the same day. A good one works well.
Let’s Talk About Higher Wages
@KM: I’m about to embark on a major remodel of both my kitchen and bathroom in my condo (it started with a $70 toilet repair, and then it spiraled a little).
I’m looking at induction ranges (my building doesn’t have gas hookups). The model I’m looking at right now is the GE Profile PHS930SLSS or PHS930YPFS (the YPFS is the updated model and the SLSS was recently discontinued).
I’m looking at similar delivery dates for my range too, regardless of what I choose.
What did you end up getting?
@CSK:
We make cookies on an industrial scale, almost literally. Members of my family ran a professional bakery shop up until 2 years ago so the olds are used to making 25-30 dozen at a go to give out to people. My basement has shelves just for the bags of flour and sugar. A cousin from out of state sent us a new 65 TV in exchange for 5 dozen and my coworkers are asking about orders since I usually sell them on the side. My mother would beat me with her slipper for suggesting such a thing as a toaster oven – she freaked over me pointing out a convection oven she could get sooner since it “doesn’t bake right!!” 🙂
We’ve got options – they’re just not good ones, including repairing the broken oven. My neighbors will gladly lend us oven time for a cut of the goods and a cousin nearby has offered her cramped but functional kitchen. It’s just time and convenience and COVID concerns. I got her a good oven at a nice price but damn near everything is gonna take till next year to get here.
I’m trying to rationalize it this way: transport time = cooling down time if I drive with the windows down. Rack ’em up here, do some transpo runs and they’ll be cooled down for decorations by the time I get back for the next batch. If I plan it right, I live in my car for a few hours and just keep stopping for coffee to stay warm.
@KM:
Here’s my stupid suggestion: would your nearby cousin consider lending you her oven for a few weeks?
@Mike in Arlington:
Great minds think alike! GE’S JGB735SPSS is what we ended up with. No fancy wifi anything’s allowed as per the olds so it was the best compromise we could find. It’s on sale – normally like $1200, now $700 so everybody wants one. I’m still pushing to get the old one repaired as well; we are also in the middle of a vast remodel and the old professional range can be fixed up and moved to the new basement apt we’re building out. This way, we can have a whole kitchen for cookie or cakes when the fam decides to start selling sweets on the side again without losing the main area.
FYI anyone promising Dec is lying at this point or it’s a floor unit they need to get rid of. I’m hearing the same story over and over again – empty warehouses and manufacturers swearing to God early Jan’s gonna happen (psst it’s not, don’t be surprised about late Jan or Feb). Good luck and get on the list as soon as you can!
@Teve: I think SD should be cut off from vaccine distribution. Let them find it on the free markets. Even more preferable, make individual South Dakotans forage for their own vaccine on the open market.
@Kathy:
She grudgingly agreed to a day since we’re kinda disruptive and she works from home. She’s also paranoid about COVID since I have nurses and retail workers in my house so our risk levels very high. I owe her a dozen anise cookies and a decorated butter cream cake for 8 hours as it is – bargaining for more time might send me into a spiral of baking I might never escape from. The neighbors are likely cheaper and will only charge a flat rate of a dozen or so I’d already budgeted for – if they’re cool I might add some pizzelles for the inconvenience.
2020- the return of barter by cookies.
@mattbernius:
Politician. Noun. See “Gutless Lying Weasel in a Suit.”
Statesman. Noun. (1) Species of political leaders who used to roam the greater North American continent in large numbers, now generally accepted as extinct. (2) See dead politician.
Note: Nope, no edit button for me today. Bad Toad, Bad Toad!
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
@Kathy:
And remember everyone, Poor Lil’ Jeffie has to pay an exorbitant 15% additional hit on his Washington Workers’ Compensation premiums because his hi-tech state of the art warehouses/sweatshops have such high rates of worker injuries.
@KM: I just bought a new stove, as well. I’ve been suffering through my old one not being able to cook above 320 without an error code shutting it down for a couple years now, and I finally had enough on Thanksgiving. I don’t need anything fancy, though, very basic with a timer is all I ask. I did find one with edge to edge cooking surface and a griddle for a decent price! It said 3-7 days til it hit the store in Idaho for pickup, but I got an email yesterday that it was already available for pickup on day 2 after ordering!
Can we have a little pity for a homeless family for just a minute?No? Oh well, I’ll get over it. As the saying goes, “I really don’t care; do U?”
Rep. Katie Porter apparently smoked Mnuchin today. In another exchange for the ages, he mansplained the relief law to her and said that the law allows him to ban the Federal Reserve from spending any more of the money set aside for the CARES act. She asked him if he was a lawyer, and he answered and then snipped back “are YOU a lawyer?” (She is.)
I don’t know who preps these Cabinet Secretaries before they head into Congressional hearings, but honestly, Mnuchin’s staff should have prepped him for this.
@Monala: And once again, we see by how much we dodged the bullet of Ted Cruz as President. We’d be looking at four more years of GOP policy NOT run by a blithering idiot. (And he would have circled the wagons on the Affordable Care Act AND dreamers in ways that Trump was never able to.)
@Mike in Arlington: @KM:
I have been going back and forth with a company regarding a new patio cover being built for my backyard. Nothing fancy, 16×28, over pavers next to the pool. $15K. Not bad, right?
Well, they can’t get the materials until March 2021, AT THE EARLIEST. So I might have my patio installed by next June. Which is completely fine.
It’s really hard to be upset about anything like this. This a trivial first world problem. I am aware of how ridiculous it would be to complain about a 4 month wait for a patio cover being built, when some people haven’t worked since March of this year, and so many people will soon be food-insecure, evicted, or worse.
I cannot wait to give 2020 a good swift kick in the ass on Dec. 31st at 11:59.59pm
@Scott:
Good thought. Got me to thinking, that the only thing colder than a SD winter is Kristy Noem’s heart.
Katie Porter is tremendous.
I’m hoping that Feinstein resigns before her term is up (2024) and the Governor appoints Katie to the Senate. Otherwise Katie is going to have to keep winning her House seat in a purple Ornge County district.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
There’s an unoccupied underpass not far from me and off of Rt 1, across from the mall, there is a wooded area and you can usually see the outlines of 2-3 tents now that the leaves are down.
@CSK: I’ll second that. I almost never use the oven in my stove. On the other hand, it’s only me here so I don’t need to be able to bake cookies 2 batches at a time or anything like that. I’d recommend a table top sized convection oven. Oster makes a good one that I use and there are others that have 2 racks, bringing cookie baking to 18/batch rather than 9 or 10.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Mine’s something called a Maximatic, and it will roast a 5-6 pound chicken. On the grounds that the bakery makes better cookies, cakes, pies, and bread than I can, I leave those things to them.
I’ve read in several places that good cooks are bad/indifferent bakers, and vice versa. I don’t know if that’s altogether true (I know two people who are good at both), but it’s interesting.
@KM: Wa! That’s a whole lot of baking. More than I’ve ever done and I used to bake a little for Christmas gifts–banana-batter fruit cakes, cinnamon rolls, and pies and tarts made from my special recipe mincemeat mostly.
No equipment, no pans, no patience, so, no, I don’t bake much anymore.
Rebekah Mercer’s baby is getting some interesting traffic.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: My wife took over Christmas cookie baking from her mother. Just for relatives and a few friends. She told me that last year she went through ten pounds of butter.
@Sleeping Dog: ROFLOL! 🙂
Now that that part is over, whenever I drive to Portland (OR), I usually see about half a dozen tents erected in zones for greenspace near the freeway. In Kelso, where I live, the homeless are either well hidden or actually go to Longview across the river, where the City Hall greensward was the site of a large homeless camp in one of the more creative uses of public space/protest I’ve seen in a long time. It’s not going away soon. Certainly not soon enough to suit me.
@CSK:
Some things I like to bake rather than fry, like milanesas with breadcrumbs or oven fries. Some things benefit with a quick round in the oven to melt what needs melting.
I also use the oven to make cheesecake*, and corn bread. The broiler is great for blistering peppers, but that can also be done in any gas stove. And someday soon I want to make a torta Caprese; I just need to nerve myself for the arduous work of peeling a bunch of almonds.
*Cheesecake is not cake, it’s a pie. Anything with a crust and a filling is a pie.
@Sleeping Dog:
What did they expect?
@Just nutha ignint cracker: To clarify my outburst at Sleeping Dog’s comment, my first thought was his observation as a suggestion for the particular homeless family in question. For that particular homeless family, living in Davis X. Machina’s refrigerator box cooking a sparrow on a curtain rod might be more luxurious than I’d be willing to go with.
@Sleeping Dog:
🙂 Best laugh of the day.
Hail Eris! All hail Discordia!
Michael Flynn is pushing a petition to have Trump suspend the Constitution, declare martial law, and have the military oversee a re-election.
Even some of the Trumpkins think this is a really bad idea.
If Donald I, King of the Covidiots and emperor of the Maskholes, decides to run in 2024, will he demand all other candidates running for the GOP nomination withdraw and let him have it, as it is rightfully his? Will the rest of the Republican field criticize him hard on his dismal record?
I think he’ll start running on January 20th, and not just by holding his rally to try to upstage Biden’s inauguration. He really has nothing else to do, and he’ll want his adoring crowds. He’ll likely rave about “his” vaccine, too, and take credit for ending the COVID-19 pandemic, while blaming Biden for all deaths related to it as far back as February 2020.
He’ll stop when he gets tired, or becomes to senile to fool even his most stupid cultists, or he gets the nomination.
@Kathy: You know, under the right circumstances you could make more money from a losing campaign than a winning one!
@Kylopod:
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I’d agree that rational conservatism is, if not a yeti, certainly an endangered species in the USA, and looks like it’s extinct in the Republican Party.
Not looking too healthy in the British Conservative Party either.
At least it still seems viable in some other parts (Germany, France, Japan).
Why the problems?
Maybe recently, partly that rationalism is so booringgg to the edgy cool kids of the new right.
In the US and UK: irrationalism sells; conservatism sells out
In the US (and to a lesser but growing extent in the UK) the “conservative” position as understood in the Republican party seems now little more than a cluster of semi-oligarchical interest positions incapable of addressing the problems of a mature market/capitalist/welfare economy.
And to make things worse, are in a coalition with a bunch of other groups: evangelicals, some Catholic ultras, “originalists”, social reactionaries, and increasingly, outright racists.
Oh, and the nutcase libertarians, who really should read Adam Smith.
Whether the Republican’s can be reclaimed: ? Don’t ask me.
Maybe they can eventually be replaced by a Democrat division into “market liberal” and “social progressive” groups?
Seems to me though that part of the problem is the US approach to party affiliation, which is really different from most countries: sort of state recognised, non-exclusionary voluntary adherence.
Back in the UK, from a personal POV, I can’t envisage ever voting for the Conservative Party again (did so about twice in the past) unless they can be reconstructed minus the ERG/UKIP brigade, and a clearout of the corruption and incompetence evident at senior levels of the party.
That might be possible after the impact of Brexit has brought them back to their senses. But maybe the rot has gone too far.
We’ll see.
But at least with Starmer defenestrating Corbyn, I now have the luxury of being potentially able to happily vote for either Labour or the Liberal Democrats.
@Kylopod:
I wonder if it would be wise to name a political consultancy company Bialystock & Bloom.
It looks like the Quacken is now munching on the Republicans in Georgia:
David Corn:
Look, if The 2020 Show scriptwriters don’t at least try being a bit more realistic, the movie version will never get off the ground.
@grumpy realist: Meant to ask much earlier today if you could post a pic. I would love to see it.
@JohnSF:
I wonder if they use the word “algorithm” because it’s trendy (and hardly anyone knows what it means), or because it sounds like Al Gore.
I should clarify. Up until 2002 I lived in STL and environs (tho I roamed the Ozarks freely and broadly). Moved out here for my boys. Hard times and all that. Eventually made a home out here and not going back. Meanwhile, one is now living in the Benton Park neighborhood on the south side of STL, and the other is ensconced in NOLA.
@JohnSF:
If I didn’t know better I might think she was some kind of Democratic plant. After what we’ve been through shouldn’t we deserve the equivalent on the other side of Russian trolls posing as Bernie-or-bust? It seems karmic enough.
If you are guilty, you deserve it. If you aren’t, well, maybe you shouldn’t have gotten married? 😉 Lord knows, I take the blame around here for things I didn’t even know were a problem.
@Teve: Well, truth be told, her govt IS the problem.
@Joe: That is cool.
@Kathy:
The hit single was based on an Al Gore rhythm; Tipper took care of the lyrics.
🙂
@Kylopod:
John Wyndham mashup: The Kraken Wakes meets The Day of the Triffids 🙂
@Mike in Arlington: At least at the moment, I’m pissed at GE. We just moved into a new townhome. All the included appliances are fairly high-end GE. The front-loading washing machine door leaked. The stovetop was dinged. The replacement sent by GE was cracked. Service visit to get the in-door water and ice stuff in the refrigerator to work properly. Getting replacement parts is averaging about three weeks.
@al Ameda: Who do you think will be appointed for Kamala’s seat?
I don’t which I find more ludicrous. That the Giants lead their division with a losing record, or that the Steelers are 11-0.
Of course, being from Pennsylvania, they probably stole their games with an algorithm.
@CSK:
I like cooking. At least partly because I was poor for a long time and I can’t afford a $20 steak at Texas roadhouse, but I can learn how to make the same thing at home for five bucks. But I’ve got a friend who bakes, and it’s a whole different world. He will spend all day to make a batch of croissants. I’m like dude those things are down at the store they cost three bucks. I’ve made my own bread. It took 2 hours and then I had to clean the kitchen. Down at the store a cheap baguette is A Dollar Totally different cost/benefit score to me. 😀
Side Note I’m probably going to make boeuf bourguignon for the first time this weekend. Looking forward to it.
@Michael Cain: I know a guy at an appliance store who says to never buy GE. Buy Whirlpool LG and Samsung.
@Teve:
Whose recipe are you using for the boeuf? Julia Child’s recipes always work.
@Teve:
Second that. GE has gone way, way down hill.
@Jen:
I’m hoping it’s Katie Porter, Eric Swalwell, but just to see GOP heads explode, make it Nancy Pelosi.
@Kathy:
If he’s a declared candidate, he can set up a campaign committee and begin collecting donations, from which he will skim as much as possible. The cult won’t know and will defend him.
@CSK:
Approximately the Serious Eats one
I’m too lazy to replicate Child’s one, you can get 80% there with 20% of the effort. And no pearl onions cause every time I had those as a kid they were slimy and gross 😀
@JohnSF:
I felt bad (really) for UK citizens with the choice of Johnson or Corbyn.
@Teve: I’ve done the lazy way, and followed JC’s recipe to the letter and…hers is better. Truly better. Cooking the components separately, and then bringing them together at the end is very French, very tasty, and fussy AF (so, French). 😉
I guess I’m that odd combo of baker and cook. I like the processes of both–I make almost all of our bread, because I think it tastes better (by miles), and I enjoy things like making croissants (broken down into components, there’s very little hands-on time, but a lot of waiting in between). I love to cook too. Julia Child’s The Way to Cook is how I learned to cook. Working your way through that book you learn just about anything you’d want to know.
@Jen: check out The Food Lab, lotta good stuff in there too.
@Kylopod:
@Teve:
If I could buy bread as good as the bread I make down at the store, I would. But the bread at the store is either Wonder Bread designed for shelf life*, or hopelessly stale 2 days later. The bread I bake is dense and flavorful and perfect for sandwiches, and stays reasonably fresh for a week.
I also cheat and let a bread machine do the kneading, though I bake it in the oven. Touch time for making bread is about 30 minutes total, spread over 3 hours.
*Not literally Wonder brand, but every commercial brand that my local store carries — even the allegedly artisanal brands — turns into compressed dough stuck to the roof of your mouth when you bite into a sandwich. Pathetic.
@Jen:
I’m guessing Alex Padilla, current CA Secretary of State.
Could also be Xavier Becerra, the CA Attorney General.
The Hispanic/Latino population in CA is nearly 40%.
@DrDaveT: if i had a bread machine I’d probably make it once a week. I don’t really eat much bread. Occasionally I have a ciabatta and cut it up and dip in olive oil. Almost all my starches now come from potatoes, where I’m getting big bags and perfecting them baked. A well-outfitted baked potato is nearly heaven. 😀
If you put butter on the outside and cook your sandwiches on the skillet, and make them panini, even Wonder Bread is great.
@al Ameda: I was wondering if Becerra was in the running; that would make a lot of sense to me.
@Teve: I cannot stand the texture of commercially baked sliced white bread, it seems gluey to me, even toasted/panini, etc. I think a lot of it is what one becomes accustomed to…