Gross Easter, Too

I am an equal-opportunity food slammer. Easter is also the source of many disgusting holiday recipes. I choose this for today's post.

First on my list for any holiday is the ubiquitous green bean casserole. You know the one that's made with canned green beans, cream of mushroom soup and French's fried onions. I have never had to eat this pile of yuck but I am morally opposed to anything made with cream of fill-in-the-blank soup.

The Washington Post food section had a recipe for lavender honey cheese cake? What is with the need for floral extracts in food these days? I barely want them in my soap, but I'll tolerate them there. How about a lemon cheese cake?

The Chicago Sun Times lists four reasons why you should serve Spam this Easter. Here they are:

1. It's flexible. You can use it for "any possible application." Huh? Application?
2. It's cheap. Yes, it is. Poor quality meats usually are.
3. It's comfort food. Yes it is. In Hawaii. But they eat poi, too. Do you know what poi is?
4. It's patriotic. Evidently Hormel sent tons of Spam to Europe to the troops in WWII. Not enough of a reason for me to put it on my table.

On a Kraft Foods forum board, a woman was asking for a recipe for rabbit. Yes, it's true. She told her 12 year old son that she would prepare him Peter Cotton Tail for Easter Dinner. Dear Lord.

I'm not sure I can top that piece of nastiness but here's the last try. Honey Cola Ham. Take a 12 lb ham, add 2-3 liters of coke, honey or corn syrup. Bake. So gross. So very very gross.

Stomach churning. Must sign off.

Enjoy the rest of your day.

Food Opportunities

My oldest child is in Chicago visiting his Grandma and Aunts. We miss him, his droll sense of humor, the way he plays the same song on the piano over and over. Just two more days and he'll be home.

I do notice, though, when any member of my family is absent, I have a little more freedom in what I can make for dinner. When the resident gourmand is gone, we can have things like salmon cakes or chili mac. Both are easy, inexpensive and happily eaten by children. They especially like the salmon cakes when I bake them in the star shaped cupcake pan. When the youngest is gone (when that starts to happen) we can have seafood without the requirement of a separate meal prepared for him.

Fish is not big on my oldest's list of favorite foods. It's not my favorite either, but if I can come up with something light and decidedly un-fishy tasting, I'll try it. I was on a quest for fish yesterday, so we went to Trader Joe's and picked up some Dover sole, lime, tortillas, and lettuce and came home and whipped up some fish tacos. I marinated the fish for about an hour in white wine, lime, and garlic. I then sauteed it with onion in olive oil. I served it with chopped tomato, shredded mozzarella and salad. The tacos were great. They were so fresh and light. I could eat them every day. And it didn't matter that the fish disintegrated in the pan. It was getting rolled up in a tortilla anyway. No pictures of this dish. It would not have photographed well.

That's all for now. Enjoy the rest of your day.

Why Is April so Sad?

The old saying goes something like this. "In spring, a young man's fancy turns to love." Sadly, this doesn't seem to be true anymore. News in spring is filled with stories of gun violence. Just this weekend, there were reports of 21 people who were slaughtered by three men. Of course the anti-gun groups come out and say this is why guns should not be so easily accessible, but there is one group who is strangely silent; the mental health care providers.

We want to blame guns for the deaths of all these people this week. But as days pass, stories emerge about the lives of the men behind the triggers. They have lost jobs, are estranged from wives, family, they have irrational fears of losing rights and children. They are (were) clearly all suffering from some degree of mental illness.

The same can be said of the V Tech shooter. A woman who tutored him wrote a book and in it writes of her reports to the school administration of her concerns about the young man. Help didn't come to him in any meaningful way before he shot up a college campus.

The shooter at the NC nursing home must have been suffering from some degree of depression caused by the state of his marriage.

Obviously, I could go on. In my humble, highly unprofessional opinion, guns are not the problem. The people holding the guns are the problem. If you put a highly destructive tool in the hands of a mentally ill person, there is a chance that person will use that tool for bad things.

I am of the opinion that two of the incidents this past weekend could have been prevented. Two of the subjects involved in the shootings were wearing either bulletproof vests or body armor. I wonder where they got them Shouldn't this type of protective gear only be available to law enforcement? After all, deer and ducks rarely shoot back and hunting accidents don't seem to be too terribly common. Shouldn't someone, maybe the ATF, start looking into websites selling body armor and determine who is buying it?

I called Point Blank Body Armor to ask if they authorize sales outside of law enforcement. I am waiting for a call back. I looked on Ebay. There are currently 1349 items found when you search for body armor. Some of the listings are related to motorcycling or skate boarding. Who is buying the law enforcement type body armor?

Some of you may not buy my argument and may still want to blame the gun lobby. It's a powerful group and has done quite a lot to protect our 2nd Amendment rights. Now it's time for mental health advocacy groups to work just as hard to ensure that people suffering from serious mental illness get the help they need before they get guns and harm others and themselves.