A little reminder as we gear up for the New Year

Six Cancer-Fighting Super Foods

full article at http://shine.yahoo.com/event/vitality/6-cancer-fighting-superfoods-2428408/

broccoli

berries

tomatoes

walnuts

garlic

beans

Not that my children will have to worry about this, but . . .

"A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing."

—Warren Buffett

"My liberation as a man is tied to your liberation as a woman."

"My liberation as a man is tied to your liberation as a woman." —Anthony Porter

from http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/12/26/porter.men.violence/index.html

Editor's note: TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to "Ideas worth spreading," which it distributes through talks posted on its website. Anthony Porter is co-founder of A Call to Men, a national organization addressing domestic and sexual violence prevention and the promotion of healthy manhood.

(CNN) -- It's time for those of us who are good men to start acknowledging the role that male socialization plays in domestic and sexual violence. As good men, we must begin to acknowledge and own our responsibility to be part of the solution to ending violence against women and girls.

What is a good man?

A good man is a man who believes women should be respected. A good man would not assault a woman. A good man believes in equality for women. A good man honors the women in his life. A good man, for all practical purposes, is a nice guy. We believe this to be the majority of men.

There is a minority of men who perpetuate a tremendous amount of violence against women. These men are counting on good men to stay true to rules—the rules that actually allow them to be who they are in the presence of good men. These rules are what we call the ingredients in the "man box." These rules are also the foundation of how we as men collectively define manhood.

The man box teaches us as men that we must be tough, strong, aggressive and dominating. We are taught not to show feelings and emotions. We are taught that we should be in charge, leaders and protectors. And if we fall short we lose our status and are placed outside the box.

Outside the box is reserved for women, and for men defined as being less than fully male, or "woman-like". The man box at times can be hypermasculine and extremely homophobic. With that being said, "outside the man box" is a place most men don't want to be. So we find ourselves staying true to the rules of the man box, many times operating from a subconscious place, just on remote control, doing what's natural to us.

We as good men don't realize that every time we tell a boy that he is acting like a girl, we are actually saying that girls are "less than." We all know that a college freshman woman is known on campus as "fresh meat." And while we know that domestic violence is wrong and a crime, it continues to be tolerated in many of our communities.

It is with this understanding that our work, our vision, is not to beat up on good men, but instead to help us understand, through a process of re-education and accountability, that with all of our goodness, we still have been socialized to maintain a system of domination, dehumanization and oppression over women. While we as good men would never hurt women, our collective socialization is the foundation that violence against women is built upon.

There are three key aspects of male socialization that are the foundation of men's violence against women:

• Men viewing women as "less than";
• Men treating women as property;
• Men viewing women as objects.

We as good men have to find our voice and began to challenge this collective socialization of men. We as good men have to teach our sons and other young men how to truly respect and promote equality for women.

We as good men have to envision the world we want to see for our daughters and other girls—and in that world how would we want to see our sons and other men acting and behaving. We must as good men understand that the world we want for our daughters and other girls won't happen through osmosis. We as good men have to break out of the man box, stand up and speak out to end violence against women and girls.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Anthony Porter.

I could shoot things

that is what this song does to me. i am full of a righteous rage whenever this song comes on the radio. it is single-handedly the reason i will not listen to christmas radio. i'm serious, people. bile. in my throat. when i hear it. there are few things on this earth that enrage me more than "Christmas Shoes."

from gawker:

This song is spectacularly awful. It's every bit of Christmas sentimentality packed into three awful country-twinged verses. See, there's a dirty boy with a sick mother and he has no money to buy her a pair of shoes for Christmas so he has to beg a man in the store to buy them for her before she dies and goes to heaven to "meet Jesus." Who brings up Jesus in a Christmas song? And then they made this piece of shit into a TV movie starring Rob Lowe! The worst part about this is while we roll our eyes at its cheesiness, everyone who owns a Thomas Kincaid painting thinks it's beautiful and cries every time they hear it.

Retaliation

suck it, kibble. you can never cut me as deeply as david slade has cut you. ha ha ha ha ha. *beat* *muffled weeping*

Cagey

kibble is all-powerful. she infiltrates EVEN HISTORY.

be afraid. be *very* afraid.

—Croat

Consider

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.

—Leonard Cohen

I *swear* one day she will be our overlord.

"All shall love me and despair . . ." —Anna

Mmmm, nope.

*stunned silence*

In Her Defense, I'm Sure the Moose Had It Coming

by Aaron Sorkin

from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-sorkin/sarah-palin-killing-animals_b_793600.html

"Unless you've never worn leather shoes, sat upon a leather chair or eaten meat, save your condemnation."

You're right, Sarah, we'll all just go fuck ourselves now.

The snotty quote was posted by Sarah Palin on (like all the great frontier women who've come before her) her Facebook page to respond to the criticism she knew and hoped would be coming after she hunted, killed and carved up a Caribou during a segment of her truly awful reality show, Sarah Palin's Alaska, broadcast on The-Now-Hilariously-Titled Learning Channel.

I eat meat, chicken and fish, have shoes and furniture made of leather, and PETA is not ever going to put me on the cover of their brochure and for these reasons Palin thinks it's hypocritical of me to find what she did heart-stoppingly disgusting. I don't think it is, and here's why.

Like 95% of the people I know, I don't have a visceral (look it up) problem eating meat or wearing a belt. But like absolutely everybody I know, I don't relish the idea of torturing animals. I don't enjoy the fact that they're dead and I certainly don't want to volunteer to be the one to kill them and if I were picked to be the one to kill them in some kind of Lottery-from-Hell, I wouldn't do a little dance of joy while I was slicing the animal apart.

I'm able to make a distinction between you and me without feeling the least bit hypocritical. I don't watch snuff films and you make them. You weren't killing that animal for food or shelter or even fashion, you were killing it for fun. You enjoy killing animals. I can make the distinction between the two of us but I've tried and tried and for the life of me, I can't make a distinction between what you get paid to do and what Michael Vick went to prison for doing. I'm able to make the distinction with no pangs of hypocrisy even though I get happy every time one of you faux-macho shitheads accidentally shoots another one of you in the face.

So I don't think I will save my condemnation, you phony pioneer girl. (I'm in film and television, Cruella, and there was an insert close-up of your manicure while you were roughing it in God's country. I know exactly how many feet off camera your hair and make-up trailer was.)

And you didn't just do it for fun and you didn't just do it for money. That was the first moose ever murdered for political gain. You knew there'd be a protest from PETA and you knew that would be an opportunity to hate on some people, you witless bully. What a uniter you'd be -- bringing the right together with the far right.

(Let me be the first to say that I abused cocaine and was arrested for it in April 2001. I want to be the first to say it so that when Palin's Army of Arrogant Assholes, bereft of any reasonable rebuttal, write it all over the internet tomorrow they will at best be the second.)

I eat meat, there are leather chairs in my office, Sarah Palin is deranged and The Learning Channel should be ashamed of itself.

Screaming a tiny little bit on the inside

a tiny gingerbread house that perches on the edge of your mug

from http://www.notmartha.org/archives/2009/12/18/a-gingerbread-house-that-perches-on-the-rim-of-your-mug/

I made tiny gingerbread houses that are meant to be perched on the edge of a mug of hot chocolate.

I had been thinking about those sugar cubes that hook on the rim of a teacupearlier this month, and I was also thinking about 3-D cookies and how they fit together and figured it would be pretty neat to make cookies that hang on the edge of a mug. I thought I was being so brilliant but it only took a few seconds to discover that a flat cookie on the edge of a mug has already been done. So I started wondering what else I could do. At the time I was making a bunch of gingerbread recipes trying to find one that would hold up for my partridge in a pear tree cookie, so a gingerbread house was on my mind.

I made a few versions to figure out how to make one that wasn't so top heavy that it would flip off the mug, and how small I could get away with and still fit on both large and small cups. I generally followed the size of my The Mini Gingerbread House Kit (though, those pieces don't fit together as nicely as I'd have liked).

I've made a PDF pattern of gingerbread house pieces which you can open or download right here. My only instruction is that you should make sure that the wall pieces are to be sandwiched on the inside of the door pieces, that way the roof fits on properly. I included two door pieces you can choose from, one at 3/8ths inch wide and one at 1/2 inch wide. I found that a 3/8ths inch door, or slot, fits most mugs but the 1/2 can be used for your really big and heavy mugs. I traced the pieces onto this template page at 9:54 in the evening, please forgive the sloppiness but I'm getting tired, let's just call the untidy lines charming.

I used the Gingerbread Snowflake and the Royal Icing recipes from marthastewart.com.

I rolled it out onto a sheet of tin foil at 1/8th inch thick. I skipped a silicone mat because I use a paring knife for the corner details and didn't want to accidentally cut down to the layers of glass fibers, and after some trial I found that parchment paper will warp after being chilled and then stuck in an oven which can distort some shapes.

I used a dull sewing pattern roller (like a small pizza cutter) to go around most sides. You can do all of one side than turn the entire sheet of tin foil 90 degrees to do all of the next side, this makes the process go a bit faster. Try to fit all the pieces for each individual house in the same batch, I found my batches browned differently from each other. Lift the excess dough up from the tin foil, not moving your cut out shapes at all, this will help them keep their shape. Then slide the tin foil sheet onto a cookie sheet and put both in the freezer for about 15 minutes, you want the dough really well chilled before baking.

I used a (well cleaned) flat head screwdriver to get in the detail around the doors, then a paring knife to make sure the corners are cut cleanly.

Here are some tips, most of these are in the recipe but I don't want you to overlook them:

• After making it divide the dough into thirds (I made half a recipe) wrap in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for at least an hour, preferably overnight. Make the royal icing while it's chilling, you'll need it before you make all the gingerbread you are planning on.
• Roll the dough out to 1/8th of an inch. It seems impossibly thin but you be cutting the shapes and pulling the excess dough from around them so your pieces won't be too disturbed. Feel free to nudge your shapes back into squares before chilling them again.
• Preheat the oven, roll the dough out on tin foil, cut your shapes and lift off the excess dough, slide the tin foil onto your cookie sheet, now put the cookie sheet into the freezer for at least 15 minutes before baking. This will keep the gingerbread from spreading too much.
• Make a single test house with your chosen door width. This sounds like a pita, and it will be, but it will be far less trouble than the frustration of finding none of your finished houses fit on mugs. Knowing now that you need to cut a wider door is worth it.
• I found that dough chilled for only an hour puffed up quite a bit, but didn't necessarily spread if the cut out shapes were chilled in the freezer. Dough that had been in the fridge overnight, or even the second day (it'll keep for a few days) puffed up quite a bit less, perhaps because the baking powder had lost it's mojo by this time?
• If you suspect your intended mugs are thicker and sturdier than usual grab some cardstock or a magazine insert and cut a few different slots -- 1/4, 3/8 and 1/2 inch wide, about two inches deep (or tall). The one that slides easily onto the edge of you mug and even has a little wiggle room is the width you want for your door.
• If your gingerbread should spread and the doors look too narrow to you, you can trim them when the gingerbread is just out of the oven before it sets and cools too much. I suggest a paring knife and trimming just a bit from either side of the door.

I decided to only decorate the roofs for now. I might make these again next year and get more detailed with the decorations. I used a variety of sugars and sprinkles. One note, I discovered that candy cane dust will stick together so well that it will not show any piping detail beneath it. I liked the way regular sanding sugar made the roof sparkle a bit, though I couldn't capture the cuteness in my pictures.

Don't fill your mug of hot chocolate too full, you don't want the bottom of your gingerbread house to get soggy.

Can you tell the crushed candy cane one was my favorite?

I would be these would be fantastic made out of sugar cookie or shortbread dough. You could certainly leave them undecorated, or perhaps press sanding sugar into the roof pieces before baking. On the other hand I'm curious to see what one would look like covered in pieces of tiny candies. I'm also planning on making house-shaped marshmallows that will fit on the edge of the mug.

update: I made a few variations including a chimney and a version made out of sugar cookie dough which you might be interested in.

Creamy alcoholic goodness

Martha's Classic Eggnog

from http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/marthas-classic-eggnog

Serves 12

Ingredients:
6 large eggs, separated
3/4 cup superfine sugar
2 cups whole milk
3 cups heavy cream, plus more for garnish
1/2 cup bourbon, preferably Maker's Mark
1/4 cup dark rum, preferably Mount Gay
1/4 cup Cognac, preferably Remy Martin Grand Cru
Freshly grated nutmeg, for sprinkling

Preparation:

1. Beat yolks in a very large bowl until thick and pale. Slowly beat in sugar. Whisk in milk and 2 cups cream. Mix in bourbon, rum, and Cognac. Cover, and refrigerate for up to 1 day.
2. Just before serving, beat whites until stiff peaks form. Fold whites into eggnog. Whisk remaining 1 cup cream until stiff peaks form, and fold into eggnog. (Alternatively, you can fold half the whipped cream into eggnog, and top with remaining half.) Sprinkle with nutmeg.

Get ready to place your orders

it's the convertible for me.

You're a special little snowflake

from http://dancell.cwahi.net/star-wars-paper-snowflakes.html

Who takes it?

cake or pie?

Gravy versus sauce

The Joy of Growing Up Italian American

I was well into adulthood before I realized that I was an American. Of course, I had been born in America and had lived there all of my life, but somehow it never occurred to me that just being a citizen of the United States meant I was an American. Americans were people who ate peanut butter and jelly on mushy white bread that came out of plastic packages. Me?? I was Italian.

For me . . . as I am sure for most second-generation Italian-American children who grew up in the ’40s or ’50s, there was a definite distinction drawn between us and them. We were Italians. Everybody else—the Irish, German, Polish, Jewish—they were the “med-e-gones.”* There were no hard feelings, just—well—we were sure ours was the better way. For instance, we had a bread man, a coal man, an ice man, a fruit and vegetable man, a watermelon man, and a fish man; we even had a man who sharpened knives and scissors who came right to our homes, or at least right outside our homes. They were the many peddlers who plied the Italian neighborhoods. We would wait for their call, their yell, their individual distinctive sound. We knew them all, they knew us. Americans went to the stores for most of their foods—what a waste.

Truly, I pitied their loss. They never knew the pleasure of waking up every morning to find a hot, crisp loaf of Italian bread waiting behind the screen door. And instead of being able to climb on back of the peddler’s truck a couple of times a week just to hitch a ride, most of my “Med-e-gone” friends had to be satisfied going to the A&P. When it came to food, it always amazed me that my American friends or classmates only ate turkey on Thanksgiving or Christmas. Or rather, that they only ate turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce. Now we Italians—we also had turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce, but—only after we had finished the antipasto, soup, lasagna, meatballs, salad and whatever else Grandma thought might be appropriate for that particular holiday. This turkey was usually accompanied by a roast of some kind (just in case somebody walked in who didn’t like turkey) and was followed by an assortment of fruits, nuts, pastries, cakes and, of course, homemade cookies. No holiday was complete without some home baking, none of that store-bought stuff for us. This is where you learned to eat a seven-course meal between Noon and 4:00 p.m., how to handle hot chestnuts and put peach wedges in red wine. I truly believe Italians live a romance with food.

Speaking of food—Sunday was truly the big day of the week. That was the day you’d wake up to the smell of garlic and onions frying in olive oil. As you laid in bed, you could hear the hiss as tomatoes were dropped into the pan. Sunday we always had gravy (the “Med-e-gones” called it sauce) and macaroni (they called it pasta). Sunday would not be Sunday without going to Mass. Of course, you couldn’t eat before Mass because you had to fast before receiving Communion. But, the good part was we knew that when we got home, we’d find hot meatballs frying and nothing tastes better than newly fried meatballs and crisp bread dipped in a pot of gravy.

There was another difference between us and them.We had gardens, not just flower gardens, but huge gardens where we grew tomatoes, tomatoes, and more tomatoes. We ate them, cooked them, jarred them. Of course, we also grew peppers, basil, lettuce and squash. Everybody had a grapevine and a fig tree, and in the fall everyone made homemade wine, lots of it. Of course, those gardens thrived so because we also had something else it seemed our American friends didn’t seem to have. We had a Grandfather. It’s not they didn’t have grandfathers, it’s just that they didn’t live in the same house, or nearby. They visited their grandfathers. We ate with ours, and God forbid we didn’t see him at least once a week. I can still remember my Grandfather telling me how he came to America as a young man “on the boat.” How the family lived in a rented tenement on Thompson Street in New York’s “Little Italy” and struggled to make ends meet; how he decided he didn’t want his children, four sons and five daughters, to grow up in that environment. All of this, of course, in his own version of Napolitano/English which I soon learned to understand quite well.

So, when he saved enough, and I could never figure out how, he bought two houses in New Jersey. The house in Hoboken and the house at Long Branch at the Jersey shore served as the family headquarters for the next forty years. I remember how he hated to leave, would rather sit by the window and watch his garden grow and when he did leave for some special occasion, had to return as quickly as possible. After all, “Nobody’s watching the house.” I also remember the holiday when all the relatives would gather at my Grandfather’s house and there’d be tables full of food and homemade wine and music. Women in the kitchen, men in the living room, and kids, kids everywhere. I have a lot of cousins, first and second. And my Grandfather, his fine moustache trimmed, would sit in the middle of it all surveying his domain, proud of his family and how well his children had done.

He had achieved his goal in coming to America and to New Jersey and knew his children and their children were achieving the same goals that were available to them in this country because they were Italian Americans with that strong Italian work ethic. When my Grandfather died years ago at the age of eighty-nine, things began to change . . . Slowly at first. Family gatherings were fewer and something seemed to be missing, although when we did get together, I always had the feeling he was there somehow. It was understandable, of course, everyone now had families of their own and grandchildren of their own. Today they visit once or twice a year. Today we meet at weddings and wakes.

Lots of other things have change too. The old house my grandfather had bought is now covered in aluminum siding, although my uncle still lives there, and of course, my grandfather’s garden is gone. The last of the homemade wine has long since been drunk and nobody covers the fig tree in the fall anymore. For a while we would make the rounds on the holidays, visiting family. Now, we occasionally visit the cemetery. A lot of the them are there, grandparents, uncles, aunts and even my own father.

The holidays have changed too. The great quantity of food we once consumed without any ill effects is no good for us anymore. Too much starch, too much cholesterol, too many calories. And, nobody bothers to bake anymore—too busy. And it’s easier to buy it now and too much is no good for you. We meet at my house now—at least my family does—but it's not the same.

The difference between us and them isn’t so easily defined anymore, and I guess that’s good. My grandparents were Italian Italians, my parents were Italian Americans, I’m an American Italian, and my children are American Americans. Oh, I’m an American alright and proud of it, just as my grandfather would want me to be. We are all Americans now – the Irish, Germans, Poles and Jews—U.S. Citizens all—but somehow I still feel a little bit Italian. Call it culture, call it tradition, call it roots, I’m really not sure what it is. All I do know is that my children have been cheated out of a wonderful piece of their heritage. They never knew my grandfather.

—Elvira Sperduto Oliver

* Med-e-gone is the phonetic approximation of the word American spoken with a thick Italian accent. —ed.

mille grazie al mio amore per aver spedito la storia.

Steve Martin-1; bluegrass-0

"leaked" from steve martin's tour rider:

Sunrise, sunset

Rockin' around the Christmas tree

A Click-and-Play Holiday Playlist

from http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ny/entertaining/a-clickandplay-holiday-playlist-133474

Nothing seems to catapult a grinch into the spirit of the season quite like the sound of a beloved holiday tune. We’ve pulled together twenty-five of our most treasured classic and modern merry-making melodies in a click-and-play playlist, ready for you to stream at your next holiday get-together. What other songs put you in a festive mood?

click here to play

1. Judy Garland: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
2. The Temptations: Silent Night
3. The Drifters: White Christmas
4. Johnny Cash: O Little Town of Bethlehem
5. Maria Carey: All I Want for Christmas is You
6. Louis Armstrong: Cool Yule
7. The Chipmunks: The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late)
8. Jackson 5: Santa Clause Is Coming to Town
7. Alan Cumming & Liza Minelli: Baby It’s Cold Outside
8. The Muppets: We Need A Little Christmas
9. Elvis Presley: Blue Christmas
10. Sufjan Stevens: O Holy Night
11. Wham!: Last Christmas
12. Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band: Merry Christmas Baby
13. Madonna: Santa Baby
14. Stephen Colbert & Jon Stewart: Can I Interest You In Hannukah?
15. New Kids On The Block: Merry, Merry Christmas
16. Barbara Streisand: Jingle Bells
17. Alan Jackson: Please Daddy Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas
18. Joy Electric: Winter Wonderland
19. Your’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch: Thurl Ravenscroft
20. Robert Downey Jr: River
21. Feist: Lo, How A Rose ‘Er Blooming
23. Weezer: O Come All Ye Faithful
24. A Charlie Brown Christmas (Vince Guaraldi Trio): Christmas Time Is Here
25. The Kinks: Father Christmas
Bonus Track!
Troy Hess: Christmas on the Moon

That's a wrap

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