By But I like cocktails and lurking
Sauces and stocks are the foundation of good cooking. For any quality construction a good, solid foundation is necessary. In French cooking there are five basic sauces and from those countless other sauces are made. They are called Mother Sauces. One of those is unique in that it is a stand-alone sauce. I am talking about Hollandaise sauce. It is considered the most difficult sauce to master, by far. It requires lots of practice, a double boiler, time, careful timing, and lots of attention.
Except it doesn’t.
You can easily whip up a perfect Hollandaise in under ten minutes with almost no equipment. Five if you are practiced.
Place one half of a stick of salted butter (4 tablespoons) in a 2-cup glass measuring cup. Put in the microwave and heat on high for 15 seconds. You should be able to see some of the butter has melted, usually leaving a hole in the base of the stick. If some of the butter is still cool place back in the microwave on high for five seconds. Continue doing this at 5 second intervals until the butter is about half melted and half soft-solid. Swish it around and mash it up a bit with a small whisk. If the bottom of the glass measuring cup feels warm – around body temperature or just above – you did it right. If it feels hot, even slightly, you have heated too much, in which case you can let it cool.
Place two raw egg yolks, one tablespoon of lemon juice, a pinch of cayenne pepper, and a pinch of allspice in with the butter. Whisk vigorously. After a few minutes the mixture should start to look a bit lumpy. Don’t worry. Ordinarily this would mean you have ‘broken’ the sauce, which means your butter was too hot and has cooked the egg yolk. If you heated the butter to body temp or just above, the mixture will look this way but will not be broken. Keep whisking. After a minute or two it will suddenly go from slightly lumpy to creamy smooth. It should cling generously to your whisk when you lift it.
Congratulations – you have made a perfect Hollandaise in less time than it takes to brush your teeth. It should have a very tangy, buttery, delightful taste. This will be enough sauce for four eggs. I start my eggs in a skillet, make the hollandaise and set it aside, and then start microwaving the bacon. I put the English muffins in the toaster, and go back to flip the eggs. It should all be ready about the same time with the sauce waiting – 15 minutes start to finish.
For a Sunday morning breakfast, spoon the hollandaise generously onto a toasted half of an English muffin. Place one fried (or poached) egg on top of that. Salt and pepper the egg. Serve with bacon or sausage and orange juice. You have whipped up a fancy Eggs Benedict breakfast for your significant other. I promise they will appreciate it.
*Hollandaise is an excellent sauce for putting on cooked vegetables, particularly for asparagus. Cook your asparagus in chicken stock until tender, top with the sauce and pepper to taste.
“Hollandaise”
Psssh…look at Frenchy over here. I suppose you call your car hole a ‘garage’ too.
I’m going to be doing my own article on how to prepare American food like hot dogs.
Step 1: Go to the store and buy the hot dogs, you lazy fucks.
I came her ego bitch about this non-traditional heresy but then i got lazy…
so I do mine the REAL way but with one very important twist, i put champagne into the yolk emulsion to bring it together plus lemon juice. Instead of temp control with water, it is always with bubbles. I would eat that sauce off of sugar free’s writing it is so good.
Please insert my horror and two page diatribe about how it is SUPPOSED to be done. Also, whole butter? really? Clarified only bro.
ego bitch…supposed to be to bitch, but i think i like ego bitch. DONE, now when i respond with revulsion, derision, or scorn via a long diatribe it will henceforward be known as Ego Bitching!
1. If you want to save even more time, put all the ingredients, except the butter, in a blender. Quickly pulse for a few seconds to combine them.
2. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a pan (or your microwave).
3. Drizzle the warm butter into the blender as you run it at low-to-medium speed. I think a higher speed yields a stiffer sauce.
It will combine perfectly *every single time* with no breakage. Also works for béarnaise sauce.
I was going to post this method too, but you beat me to it. It works great.
This method is great for large batches. I usually make a single or double serving, where I’d lose too much product in the blender.
I possibly need to check my blender-privilege here, but if you get a half-decent appliance it’s easy to get a spoon in to scoop the remains out. I’ve successfully done this with a two-yolk batch without much loss in a vitamix.
It also works with a staff/wand type blender and an appropriately sized vessel.
I have a standard 4-blade blender. It would be tough to get in there and get the dregs out of the bottom. Hollandaise is one of my favorite foods on earth, and when I make it, there is literally not a single molecule left in the pan or on the plate.
Use a straw?
I never understood why Hollandaise was always considered to be so difficult to make.
o/t…..I’m putting this here because people likely are going to move on from the morning links, thus no one will read it. So my wife has a close friend who, despite her many admirable qualities, is a bit of an SJW type. Her two older kids are roughly the same ages as our two (6 and 9), so they get together and play a lot. Her kids were over at our house yesterday. They’re all in the backyard when my wife, in the house, hears a high pitched scream. She thinks it’s our daughter and it sounds like something is seriously wrong, so she runs out. Nope, not our daughter, it’s the friend’s older boy who was screaming because he wanted to play with something my son had. My wife says to him “Charlie, act like a big boy and don’t scream like a girl” I shit you not, this kid looked her in the eye and said “I’m offended that you think only girls scream.”
Nine fucking years old. I weep for that kid’s future.
… So your wife beat his ass, right?
Hah! He’s actually a great kid aside from that nonsense, one of my son’s friends that I actually want him spending time with. He’s got another friend who lives just down the street whose parents my wife and I are friends with. We try avoiding inviting them to anything, not because of this kid, but because the parents always insist on their younger son being included and that kid is pure evil, just a demon seed in every way.
He’s actually a great kid aside from that nonsense,
Something, something, but he made the trains run on time.
Do they not beat-up wussy kids anymore? That was an important part of growing-up as a boy: you act like a sissy, you get punched.
God damn, considering how emasculated young men have become, we’ll never win a war again.
Nope, boys have been pretty much entirely programmed out of fighting. I don’t think my son’s ever been in a fight, which is probably for the best because he’s the smallest of his friends and doesn’t have it in him anyway. He’s just a very gentle kid, which drives me nuts at his soccer games. He’s actually a pretty talented little player but has no aggression whatsoever and is prone to just watching the play from a medium distance for long stretches.
We’ve still got an ample stock of young men with balls. The problem really is, IMO, that we are becoming more fractured as a society. We are training up our putative Ruling Class to be one flavor of arrested development case or another, either nutless pussies and/or hyperaggressive entitled assholes. Meanwhile, the irredeemable proles are pretty much doing what they do. Large cultural gaps between those who would rule and those who they would rule over generally end pretty badly.
Somewhat related.
The progressive crusade against hyperactive, testosterone-fueled, violence-prone boys is going to neuter the sort of men they should want to have around—ambitious, capable, socially conscious types who could in theory help advance the progressive cause—while alienating lower-class men with fewer compunctions about committing violence to get their way. Would be funny if it weren’t the world we’re forced to share.
They forget that most wars are fought for or at the behest of pussy?
Honestly, when I was growing up, I didn’t hardly ever get in fights at all, but I would have known how to hit back. I think it’s something most boys know how to do intuitively, it’s just that it’s being actively squeezed out of them.
It’s difficult for me because after all these years I still haven’t mastered the task of separating egg yolks without making a huge mess. The rest of the sauce making is a breeze though.
Is his name Gene Belcher?
this kid looked her in the eye and said “I’m offended that you think only girls scream.”
That’s the time to agree with him and introduce him to the late, great Sam Kinison.
“despite her many admirable qualities”
Hot body?
Nice body, yeah. She also does a fair amount of free babysitting for us and brought plenty of alcohol to our New Year’s party.
nice
Alright, the combo of hot body, babysitting, and booze would definitely get some slack from me.
Jesus Christ, if I ever pulled that shit at that age my mom or dad would have smacked me across the chops and said “there, now you have a reason to scream”. And then my uncles would have laughed and made fun of me for being a little pussy.
Yes, my wife is a big proponent of the “I’ll give you something to cry about” school.
Yeah, that was my dad.
Was…that not everyone’s dad?
Actually, no – my dad is a really laid back guy. My mom was usually the enforcer. However, if you ever really pissed Dad off, woe be unto you. He very rarely lost his temper but, when he did, it was a force of nature.
That was my dad. He wasn’t a pushover, he just had a pretty broad range of acceptable behavior. If you started to step out of that range, though, you got The Look. I have witnessed strangers cross the street and walk quickly away to avoid The Look. It was a little like being in the water with a shark, making eye contact, and realizing that you now have its undivided attention. Think a quiet Begbie with collapsed knuckles and a penchant for grinning when he was angry.
That’s the way my dad is/was. He was laid back, but if you did manage to really fuck up, You’d better start praying to the Old Gods.
Granted, my mom did a good job of raising us kids before she met him, so we were pretty well behaved by then. Grandparents were an instrumental part of that.
Same for me.. And yet, my dad telling me to go to my room and think about how I fed up was always worse than my mom freaking out going on a tear and trying her best to beat us with whatever instrument was handy while we laughed at her weak attempts.
Nah, I had to intuit that message from my dad, purely from the slap upside the head. The ferocity of the blow helped interpretation.
Uhhh, your dad was married to Chipwooder?
See, I knew Caitlin didn’t deserve that award.
“a close friend who, despite her many admirable qualities, is a bit of an SJW type. ”
A close friend who, despite his many admirable qualities, is a bit of a serial killer.
A close friend who, despite her many admirable qualities, is a bit of a pedophile rapist.
A close friend who, despite their many admirable qualities, is a bit of a sadistic bully.
I would counsel my wife to choose other friends. No matter how much of a friend you think that person is the chances of you ending up with a knife in your back is pretty good. I am not talking about a G.I. Joe’s plastic bayonet either. Every SJW knows that all white males are members of the racisty rapey patriarchy. You say the send their kids to your house?
OR or or! Suggest a threesome, and THEN break off contact.
She’s *into* it!
/Costanza
Since she got divorced last year, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking that in the back of my mind when she brought the booze to the aforementioned NYE party. Alas, nothing happened. *sniff*
I would think the ” . . . divorced last year . . . ” part would be the proverbial cherry on top of the hot-fudge-sundae of a warning signal.
Nah, I know her ex-husband fairly well, and he’s a major league asshole who pillaged their kids’ college funds to make trips to Ohio to bang a girl (who has three kids by two different guys already and lives in a trailer park) he met through one of those stupid Android war games. He also took this woman to the Bahamas with that money. For all of these trips, he told his wife they were for business. Thus, the divorce was entirely sensible.
To give you a hint of how shitty a husband this guy was – his own parents took the wife’s side and more or less excommunicated him from the family.
Yeah, you’re probably playing with fire there.
Brockmire would point out this kid is going to end up like the neighbor he caught being butt fucked by his ex-wife wearing a strapon..
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said ‘like a girl’. Like a little bitch is what I meant”
“Place two raw egg yokes…”
Raises hand – mine are connected to the rest of the egg.
Instead of raising your hand, hold it out with the palm up and separate your fingers lightly. Pour the egg out of the shell into your hand and the whites should run out between your fingers.
Now fling that sucker at the wall!
I have always used the shell to separate the two (transferring back and forth between the halves to let the white drop into a bowl)
This is the same method I’ve been using since forever.
I prefer this method.
Yep, why do some people need a special tool when there’s one built in?
Holger has it right. It is easiest in your bare hand. let the white run through your fingers then close your fingers to pinch it off.
+1 Farmer Brown. <—Anyone besides me know what that is?
Me! ME!
Never tried it myself but it looks effective.
+1 LIFE HACK
[Checks calendar, sees its Thursday, frantically starts working on CotW post]
So I’m stuck in Newark airport because United didn’t get our plane here.
As a consolation, I get to watch CNN who are showing Doa’s attorney and daughter in a press conference. Both are trying to look sad and totally not like they just won mega-millions.
Don’t enjoy it too much. You know how United handles the…uncooperative.
With very large checks?
Dao’s attorney looks like one of those old rich guys in “Trading Places”.
Dao’s attorney is very well-known PI shark who has taken the airlines’ lunch money before.
Sounds like he hired the right guy
He didn’t get the alleged sheep fucker from Philly? Wolk?
I watched a bit of that press conference and had to immediately flip it off when the lawyer called this jackass “the Asian Rosa Parks”.
Well that should offend a few SJWs.
I think Rosa Parks would kick that dudes ass in a Thunderdome match.
“the Asian Rosa Parks”.
Were they just trying to get him to sit in the back of the plane?
Same here Chip. Kinda pissed me off actually. They just had to go there, didn’t they?
That’s hilarious! I wish I could have heard what he was saying.
Which is interesting, because he also said he doesn’t think any of this has to do with race.
“Cook your asparagus in chicken stock until tender”
I prefer roasting my veggies with a little olive oil and a garlic & onion spice blend.
These euphemisms are getting quite culinary.
You can never have too much oil
I find the garlic gives me a rash though, especially when using sea salt.
Too bad, the Italian chicks love it.
You think thats bad? Try Tabasco.
Flashbacks to Warty’s basement. Triggering.
I knew a guy who claimed that Tiger Balm is an enjoyable personal lubricant.
Thanks for the sauce making tip.
And the other mother sauces are just gravy variants and good ol’ tomato sauce. Though mayo is probably what I make most, different vinegars and oils really do have a profound effect on the result.
What is your Mayo recipe if you don’t mind? I see variations using lemon juice and dijon.
I don’t have a specific recipe, it depends what I’m using it for. Use just yolks, flavorful oil and something like a wine or malt vinegar for richer sauce. Use whole eggs, lighter oil, and lemon juice or rice vinegar for more delicate dishes.
Thanks:)
Is it Artisanal?
No, but the salt is organic ;p
My wife says to him “Charlie, act like a big boy and don’t scream like a girl” I shit you not, this kid looked her in the eye and said “I’m offended that you think only girls scream.”
She should have said, “Oh, go on, you big TOMBOY!”
* an epithet hurled by a female barfly at W C Fields in (possibly) My Little Chickadee.
Or possibly “What makes you think I care if you are offended?”
Teach them early with a hearty “fuck off slaver”?
Meanwhile, the irredeemable proles are pretty much doing what they do.
Smoking cigarettes and guzzling Victory Gin?
Hey, some of us post here, too.
I know right
“I never expected #idiocracy to become a documentary,”
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/328609-idiocracy-creator-says-it-might-have-been-too-optimistic
I’m the first to call this the dumbest of times, but it’s not, really. It’s just that our politics is coming to be held to the level of contempt it deserves. We never really expected politicians to tell the truth, but now we’re finally acting like it. It’s not that Trump’s supporters in the main believe he’s sincere, they just don’t care. Because honesty has no place in politics. Politics is just concealing the gun in your jacket pocket when you mug someone. And it’s silly to conflate our garbage politics with society at large. For a bunch of dumb chimps two solid meals away from tearing out each others’ throats with our teeth, we’ve managed some pretty impressive feats in the last couple generations.
I’ve never gotten the asparagus-with-hollandaise thing. For me, put a poached egg on the asparagus. If I’m feeling fancy, a miso sauce drizzled over the whole mess.
I don’t get the appeal of asparagus. It’s a subpar vegetable.
The way most people cook it, I can see that. But in the hands of someone who knows what xe’s doing, asparagus can be wonderful AND make your piss clear out a bathroom.
Trim your asparagus and microwave until about half way done. Drain. Add butter and Parmesan cheese. Bake at 350 until cheese melts and starts to brown. Easy, tasty and OMWC is correct about the bathroom.
There are no ‘A’ vegetables that I like.
Asparagus, artichoke, aubergine (don’t hate me, eurobros), they all disgust me.
Have you tried dipping boiled artichoke in mayo? I like that. I don’t really care for the marinated artichokes you get on everything in restaurants.
In the case of artichokes, it actually goes further than dislike. I get really bad irritation in my throat – oral hives? – it’s really disgusting.
Oral hives? I dont think that is from the artichokes.
Oh wait, is this another one of those euphemisms I have been hearing about?
Well, it’s almost like an allergic swelling, combined with quite alarming mucus production, but I’m sensitive to the fact that some of the commentariat may be dining at the moment.
It’s not really a euphemism.
Why would I did a great vegetable into PUS????
I dunno – I thought you were the subject matter specialist on pervy behavior.
Common constituent is asparagine. Some people really dont like it. Also greens, turnips, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage…
Remind me to give my A+ turnip recipe sometime.
Hollandaise over an egg/ham/biscuit combo.
Plus green chile, because New Mexico.
Substitute red chili sauce for the Hollandaise, and you’ve got a winner. 🙂
Green chile cheeseburger at Cowgirl BBQ
I used to get the green chile bacon cheeseburger at the Bobcat Grill outside of Santa Fe whenever I could. I think its closed now, which is a tragedy.
I lived just up the road for 10 years. It’s a craving you never lose.
You can take the girl out of New Mexico, but you can’t take New Mexico out of the girl. I get so homesick that I import at least 2 bushels of extra hot green to roast and freeze every autumn. Just not autumn without the aroma of roasting chile.
Yes – put a poached egg on the asparagus. Then put hollandaise on the poached egg. Then put some Canananananadian bacon under the asparagus. Then put a toasted English muffin under the bacon.
Sounds like work. Just dump some ketchup on there and call it a morning.
I’m probably more concerned about what they’re learning from their teachers than what their learning from the webz.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/12/fake-news-appearing-childrens-homework-teachers-warn1/
In total, 34% of the union members surveyed said that in the past year they have seen pupils citing clearly fake news or false information from the internet as fact in their work or classroom discussions.
What percentage of those teachers made their students watch An Inconvenient Truth for the umpteenth time?
Without reading, do they give any actual examples? I have noticed in most serious discussions of ‘fake news’ that no examples are cited.
Of course not. They just blame the internet, Facebook, and Google. How rude to expect them to substantiate that accusation with actual facts.
The difference between “fake” news and “real” news is that the fake sites make up their own facts, while “real” news these days is mostly fact-free.
its about the inconvenient facts.
Since testosterone, and how the snowflakes don’t display it, I have a PSA (and a humblebrag) for all the fatties out there.
Someone pointed at a Creatine/Whey Powder mix as an alternative to browsing and snacking a few days (maybe a week) ago, and how it’s probably better than just starving yourself.
So, out I go and get some Muscletech powder and a tub of Creatine from Walmart.
Half a scoop of powder, a heaped teaspoon of Creatine in water or 1% milk (about 1 1/2 cups) whisked up when I need a ‘snack’. Beats hunger pangs quickly, feel ‘full’ for far longer than a pile of Nilla wafers do, and that serving is about 90 calories (80-82 of them via protein). Have water available to drink afterwards is ‘dehydration’ bothers you. I’m still eating carbs (although I’m being better with portion control) at meals.
Results? Between 6-9 lbs lost (maybe more, because of hydration levels) in a week and none of the diet ‘failures’ from snacking. I’ve a doctors appointment at the end of the month, and we’ll see if my levels have changed at all.
The one caution I would give people starting doing Creatine before lifting is to be careful of overtraining. It definitely will help you pump out more reps, just maybe don’t want to go full bore with that out of the gate.
Well, I currently row 6km 3 times a week. I don’t plan to change that much, although I might increase the resistance on the flywheel.
My current aim is to get used to any difference in my hydration needs and deliver a net loss of about 20lb (hoping it’s nearer 25lb with 5lb muscle gain), and then I might start getting a bit more ambitious. I’m aware of just how much of a tub of lard I am, but my aim over the next couple years would be a net 40-50lb loss which would put me back at my mid-20’s when I stopped playing rugby.
My perspective as a fat bastard might be skewed, because my response was “I wish I was within fifty pounds of my target weight”. I’ve lost ninety, I have another sixty to seventy to go.
I’m 280, and 6ft 2in, scrum-build with a generous dadbod (at least I have all my own hair and – unusual for a limey – all my own teeth).
I’d be very satisfied at 230, ecstatic at 210 and probably unhealthy at 200. So I have a way to go yet. I’d like to push myself to see how much I plateau at with the current fitness regime, and then move on to something that will rebuild what was quite impressive core strength that 20 years of easy living and parenthood eliminated.
I honestly don’t know what my healthy weight should be. I’ve been a fat bastard since I started high school. I’m trying to put an end to that.
Go on…
Kristen’s a chubby chaser? Whodathortit, a hot ski-bunny fem-geek like that.
Well, considering Ron Swanson is my platonic ideal of manhood…
Riven saw a pic of me with Swiss Servator and commented, “It’s hard to believe that you guys are even the same species.”
Teenage Libertarian Student Daughter actually calls me Ron.
When she discovered P&L, she said “I found this really funny show with a full-bore libertarian in it”. And I said “P&L, right?”.
Is the powder loaded with sugar? When my brother was trying to cut weight he was doing protein shake meal replacements, but didn’t realize the stuff he bought had soda pop-levels of sugar per serving.
“Meal replacements” often do. You want an isolate
Yep, this isn’t strictly isolate, because they add all kinds of other shit, but it is low enough in sugar that I don’t bother. I’m not totally ‘sold’ on paleo, but the human body is basically a stove anyway. We know our bodies can metabolize carbs, and going nutty and eliminating all carbs would be onerous.
This is the stuff – I’ve been adding a bit more creatine to it
A full serving of this stuff has about 2g sugar, 30g protein. I’d prefer it didn’t also have sucralose in it, but I’m not obsessive about this. I’d drink chocolate metamucil frankly, if only it helped me lose the need for a snack. I’ve tried just drinking water and it doesn’t achieve the goal.
I’ve also been doing slightly less than half a serving, instead of a dessert, so something like 70 calories that fills me up, rather than a piece of a brownie at 160 calories, that doesn’t. I tried fresh fruit, but that stuff’s loaded with carbs.
People look at me funny when I tell them your metabolism really can’t tell the difference between an banana and a candy bar. or between a glass of Coke and a glass of apple juice.
You have radioactive candy bars?
You sure they need an excuse to look at you funny?
But more seriously, it’s the same when people whine about HFCS. I mean, there’s plenty to complain about when it comes to HFCS, but it’s not because it’s some special, poisonous carbohydrate.
God bless you.
I also don’t draw a distinction between the carbs in brown rice and the carbs in brownies.
Well, your body has to work a bit harder to digest the rice, doesn’t it?
I don’t think it really matters if your body has to work harder to digest the rice. If you’re burning more calories than you’re eating, then 500 calories of carbs is 500 calories of carbs.
Point taken.
The upside for me tends to be that the satiation lasts longer.
Almost all fitness regimens work at first. The issue is whether you can maintain it after the boredom factor kicks in. In a few months you may be ready to barf at the sight of a protein powder milkshake.
I can pretty much gulp down a protein shake with ease even if I don’t enjoy it. Now, endless pieces of chicken breast? I start gagging in short order.
More of a thigh man, myself.
Update: as my lunch arrived, I remembered the one other factor. When the menu offers cruciferous vegetables as an option, take them rather than anything else. Spinach and bok choy as close seconds. Lettuce goes to the back of the bus.
Oh, man, sauteed Brussels sprouts. Now and again I fry up a few pieces of bacon, dump all but maybe a tablespoon or so of the grease, halve Brussels sprouts and toss ’em in to fry for a few minutes. Throw in some slivered almonds to toast. Once the sprouts are nice and caramelized, plate ’em and crumble the bacon over them.
Now I want brussels sprouts for dessert
I do something similar, but I shred the Brussels
Horse versus Gator. Well, almost.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/04/13/watch-horse-battles-gator-at-florida-park.html
My money’s on the horse every time.
PEAMEAL BACON OR GTFO!
It is tasty but it’s not bacon.
I actually only get it when we visit family in Canada. Stores here don’t carry it.
The interwebz provides
Nice:)
US drops largest conventional bomb in arsenal on Eastern Afghanistan tunnel complex.
The warranty was about to run out! If we didn’t use it, we’d have to pay another year of maintenence!
That boner is HUUUGE right now. I had heard he’s been walking around the White House head up, chest out since the last bombing.
I feel sorry for the little Asian ladies who have to do his spray tan every morning.
To be fair, this kind of posturing may be yielding some benefits in our negotiations with China over NK, although he might have considered just having a nice cup of tea and a few salmon and cucumber sandwiches with Xi as a first step.
There’s a certain advantage to having the rest of the world thinking you’re a crazy, bipolar wild card. Only problem as I see it is that Kim Jung Un is the genuine article, and with the media painting Trump as some truly dangerous, unprecedented-since-Hitler type threat, well, a guy like Un may in fact feel its time to do something big and stupid.
I doubt anyone other than 40-odd percent of America’s population is stupid enough to think that Trump is literally Hitler.
The official statements released by the Norks typically read like the rantings of schizophrenics. Apparently, no one in all of North Korea an speak anything besides broken English. Their intelligence reports are probably produced by a single 23 year old Korean dude who sits around binge watching cable news. I don’t trust their perception of reality, personally.
The Norks live in a bloody fantasy world where the savage Americans tried to invade and destroy their precious country only to be saved by Il Sung. To them half their country is occupied by the U.S. already and anti-American propaganda is pumped out constantly. It’s not a stretch for them to think Trump is Hitler when they already think Americans are close to Nazis.
That’s for domestic consumption.
How else do you subjugate a starving, illiterate population who live in abject poverty under totalitarian rule when no matter how restrictive your police state is, you have to come up with domestic products that ape Western food and drink brands? You only need to do this if your borders are leaking western ideas.
That propaganda tells us very little about how the ruling class and nomenklatura see international politics. Do you seriously believe that the NK diplomats (when they aren’t attempting to defect) aren’t providing reliable political intelligence back to Pyongyang?
‘Reliable political intelligence’ means nothing if North Korean John McCain gets a hold of it. Libertarians tend to have this weird bias where they assume members of foreign governments are more competent then members of their own.
You should talk to Brits more.
I don’t think we’re “negotiating” with China over NK at all.
I think the accurate read of our current “more-aggressive” posture re: the Norks is that we’re doing it at the behest of China; or, if not specifically at their demand, that its part of an agreed-upon strategy where the US increases pressure on the Norks (we play Bad Cop) in order to drive the Norks closer into the arms of Good Cop China, who then provides a more-restraining influence.
I think every decade seems to vacillate between outside-nations pressuring the Norks, hoping that there will be some internal coup… and conciliating them, hoping that as time passes that the regime’s capabilities and motivations wither, and they become more compliant. Or some combination of pressure/conciliation.
I think it should be clear that no one anywhere really wants to get into any shooting contest with the Norks, or actually have the regime collapse unexpectedly. I think the Chinese are far more terrified of a rapid collapse of the regime than they are of any sustained fake-belligerency.
I love all the cooking/drinks posts here. I think stuff like that is actually ‘genuinely useful information’ which provides more tangible value for people than things like, oh, say, repetitive whining about trivial political kerfuffles….
I think it would be interesting if people submitted more stuff like this – ‘everyday skills’ sort of stuff. (“DONT YOU DARE CALL THEM ‘LIFE-HACKS’ YOU FAG” says inner voice)
I don’t have any particular idea about what…. I guess it would depend on what people wanted to contribute. I was just reflecting on what my valued-insights would amount to and sadly, i think about 40-60% of them were, “how to live in NYC without wanting to kill everyone around you”. Not exactly high-currency-value material.
Go on …
Step 1 = comfortable shoes
DONT YOU DARE CALL THEM ‘LIFE-HACKS’ YOU FAG
*rises to begin thunderous applause*
I have a wildly disproportionate hatred for that execrable, overused piece of lingo.
Don’t you realize that sealing your bags of chips with binder clips is a LIFE CHANGING, REALITY-BREAKING TRICK?!
DID YOU KNOW THIS ONE THING CAN BE USED AS LIKE SEVEN OTHER THINGS THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT THE THING WAS MADE FOR???/?//?//???
Fukken A. “Life Hacks” are only “mind-blowing” if you have no imagination.
Once again I love this site.
Did you stop loving it for a while?
I barely even visit Reason any more.
I love it too. It has a mutinous, lunatics-running-the-asylum vibe to it.
“I start my eggs in a skillet, make the hollandaise and set it aside, and then start microwaving the bacon.”
Microwave bacon? This, sir, is blasphemy. You start the bacon frying in a pan first, and when it is done you cook the eggs in the bacon fat.
That is all.
On the subject of eggs:
Can you guys give me some ideas for quick egg recipes? Keep in mind that I don’t really have a whole lot of time in the morning. I have time enough to fry/scramble the eggs and maybe microwave a few other ingredients, but that’s it.
So far, I’ve done:
– Frittatas
– Shakshouka
– Some kind of Indian egg dish with curry powder, ginger, and peas
– Huevos rancheros
Any ideas?
Migas.