Full Disclosure

 Hiding this sort of thing can only lead to trouble, so I must 'fess up. This is a friend of mine's operation, & she asked me to "like" this.

Unlike pink salt fan McArdle, my friend does this for a living (Produces both a product & a service, that is.) So it's perfectly OK to call for fine food at your next SoCal event.

Annals Of Himalayan Salt

As NoT noted. Credit where due, even if we rec'd. none.

Now It's Xmas!

As promised, the "kitchen edition" of Ms. McArdle's annual gift guide is available. Our commentariat, in breathless anticipation, indicates she does an electronic gadgets edition as well. I can't remember (selective amnesia) but the commentariat — Season's Greetings to All! while I'm on about the holidays — can usually be trusted.

I cannot recall another general interest/socio-econ-poli/Media Village web log that comes up w/ a gift guide every yr. (though I'm sure examples will be found) so I'll just question the whole enterprise, w/o passing any judgement on the recommended kitchen equipment, that sort of thing being far out of my area of expertise. If any one in the truly vast wasteland of cyberspace has anything to type on her choices, please pitch in. We welcome your comments!

And if I can trouble myself to read more, I may have more later. The idea of what not to buy ("Bad Ideas") is intriguing. Nobody knows the trouble Megan's seen, but they're about to find out.

Brain Damage

What explains Megan? We may have an answer.

Diet Coke™. Yes, Miss "I'm a vegan but I was doing it wrong so I have to stop it, pass the bacon, please" drinks Diet Coke™. So much for any pretended concern for her health. 

Diet Coke = aspartame = BRAIN LESIONS. Now we've a much better idea of why she's the way she is. 

And why she got some of those Sarah Palin-style cheaters. 

Brain.

Dead.

Where's My Nesting Egg?

Time to drag out the perfect pancake recipe and the electric griddle, and nest like the wind.

You know it. Both the first commenter & I wondered about "nesting like the wind." Unless Megan's incubating more eggs for the flapjack recipe, nesting makes no sense. She's cocooning (Doubtless in her slankie or what ever the eff. Was it a sleeket?) not nesting. Like a big praying mantis-y insectoid queen. (Oooh, snap! And totally uncalled for. Praise Jah Rastafari for the anonymity of the Internet.)

"Like the wind " is ... is ... what can you say? Maybe McArdle's in her Mini motoring about, eating pancakes.


Note to self (& other hate-bloggers): Stop it w/ the guilt. Everything you're responding to has been placed before the public eye by your "victim." It's not as if you're prying into their private lives/trash-cans, pricing their counter-tops through the kitchen window or the like. (W/ those one or two stalking exceptions)

Moments later: Clicked to the Betty Crocker recipe. It's a fetishistic deal where the sacrifice must be prepared the evening before:

Several hours/night before: Soften 3 tablespoons (a little less than half a stick) of unsalted butter

What's Zero Divided by Two?

Apparently Megan's been sick(er than usual) lately, and hence her productivity has decreased. Somehow we didn't notice, which I guess shows that, to the human eye, 0.01 looks just like 0.001.

I've been told by my endocrinologist that it's time to give up being a vegan. One of the major reasons that I have, as you have possibly noticed, been sick for months, is that my thyroid has been in parlous condition. This wasn't exactly unexpected, because I have an autoimmune disease called Hashimoto's Thyroiditis that slowly kills your thyroid. Because of that, I was very careful about supplementing my soy intake with iodine, because soy can interfere with thyroid hormone.

Yet another disease to add to the McArdle DSM: Vertigo, chronic breathing problems and now some rare thyroid thing. One is tempted to feel sympathy for her. Then one remembers that "her" is so full of shit in all other ways, she may well just be a hypochondriac. After all, if one can convince oneself that the invisible hand NEVER curls all its fingers save one to turn in the invisible middle-finger (or, for that matter, curls them all into the invisible fist), one could prolly convince oneself to be sick.

Anyway, all the usual comments about the extreme length of a post about her as compared to a post about anything else; the woe-is-me-ism, the blogging about shit no one cares about, etc. apply. So let's just point out the obligatory self contradiction. She introduces with "I have, as you have possibly noticed, been sick for months" and then concludes with:

I've actually been really sick for the last five months, though I didn't blog about it

Deary, you've blogged about scant else.

What the fuck is wrong with her? That is; actually wrong with her, not made-up-in-her-own-head wrong with her.

While the "Comment of the Week" Remains From the First Wk. of July, La Megan Has Updated the "Gadget of the Week."

Holiday Gift Guides

That's right, it's the time of year when I tell you what to buy for your loved ones. Start with the long-awaited Kitchen Guide, and stay tuned for Books, Cookbooks, Electronics, Home, and Recipes over the next few days. Plus, for the first time this year, I think I'm doing girly stuff.

Be still, my beating heart.

Thanks for Very Little

I am thankful to have the astonishing Ms. McArdle to abuse. 

I am thankful she didn't post anything today.

Keep it Simple, Stupid

Megan has simple and stupid down COLD. Today's recipe; tomato sauce.

The Atlantic, from Twain to tomato sauce in one Republican abduction.

YUM!

On an on related note; does anyone have the skinny on Ross-D removing the ability to comment from his blog? It just disappeared a little while ago and I couldn't find any post explaining why.

Palate Cleansing

McM blathers on the military & the DMV: They're awful, but the military not as much, or something.

Let me first note that in my most recent encounter w/ the State of California's DMV (a bit before Gov. Schwarzenegger's decision to make state employees suffer because the legislature can't pass a budget, & his decision to suspend Sat. hours @ the DMV). I made an online appointment to renew my ID card, arrived about three mins. late, filled out a form, waited for five or so mins., had a nice chat w/ the guy I paid & the customer at the next window about show bidness, had my picture & thumbprint taken, signed on the digital pad, & was out w/in about 30 mins. of entry, all employees were kind & pleasant, my new card showed up w/in a wk. No problem, no how. So the continuing whining about "The DMV" being the root of all gov't. evil is just a bit misplaced in my not at all humble opinion.

(Secret suspicion: White fools who have suckered themselves into being consumers, driving cars, working for a living & the like resent non-white people having what the sheep consider cushy gov't. jobs, & exercising any power whatsoever over their lives of white privilege. Were it a white person being "rude" to them [probably in reaction to original rudeness on the part of the sheep] they probably wouldn't whine nearly as much.)

But enough about me, let's talk about how I feel about Ms. McArdle.

One thing I feel is that she should identify her "former colleague." No name, & the only link provided is to one of her (Imagine that!) previous items. Granted, whoever the f. c. is, he, she or it was referring to said item, but...

At any of the tasks the military does which are comparable to a private organization, it performs worse than top-notch private organizations; it is not as good at logistics as Wal-Mart, as good at food service as McDonalds, etc. Military procurement is expensive and insanely inefficient. This is the nature of the beast; governments have all sorts of rules that are designed to achieve goals other than effectiveness.

Let's not confuse the "government" w/ the military. Most of the gov't. rules that impede "efficiency" are there to prevent "welfare queens" w/ the Cadillacs & multi-million dollar mansions that they get from defrauding the gov't. of that $50,000.00/mo. AFDC check. Rules w/o which the rat bastard Republicans wouldn't let one bill helping anyone who needs it pass, if they had to shoot themselves in the halls of Congrefs to keep humanitarians from getting in to pass the bills.

I'd love to see how efficient Wal*Mart logistics would be if they were delivering under fire, or threat of roadside IEDs. How, by the way, has that privatization of logistics worked out for KBR & Halliburton? Pretty well, huh? Their employees (Contractors, really, & how convenient is that for KBR?) may not think it's so swell. I am glad to see a vegan Megan sticking up for McDonalds & their "food service." Is that like feeding the troops? You want the soldiers & Marines to be all logy w/ a few double cheese-burgers & a petroleum-distillate shake when Jihad Jerry comes a knockin'.

Yes, military procurement is expensive/inefficient. Has something to do w/ not there not being a mass market for fighter aircraft, RPGs, or body armor, among many other things; therefore it's not quite like ordering paper clips or desktop computers. Nor does it help when people in military procurement ("Thanks for your service.") steer deals to certain corporate entities in exchange for a high-paying corporate job after they've jockeyed a desk in the Pentagon for 20 yrs. & retired at full pay. Usually a job offering post-military employment to their pals still serving (themselves) in the Pentagon. A few more prosecutions &/or (Dare we say it? ) stricter regulations & oversight might fix some of the procurement problems.

As far as gov't. health care, if Medicare were extended to everyone, putting the healthcare insurance conspiracies out of business, we would have complete & absolute free choice in drs., hospitals, you name it. As opposed to the current deal wherein the insurance cos. decide who they'll insure, for how much, which drs., etc. they'll let you see or use, & so on. Funny how the glibs forget how their choices are limited by insurance organizations, not increased.

Almost missed this piece of work (Very subtle Megan, but some of us can read.):

Healthcare spending, outside of a few categories such as vaccination, does not provide such a benefit; almost all of the benefit of modern healthcare spending is captured by the person to whom it is provided.

Why sure enough, w/ the possible exception of the zillionaire executives who've never applied a bandage or handed out an aspirin in their lives, & the parasite stockholders whose financial interests come before the well-being of the allegedly insured. And there's no benefit whatsoever to a healthy, productive, efficient (to use the cliches of make-the-trains-run-on-time-style fascism) workforce is there, little Miss I-have-a-horrible-cold-&-I'm going-to-the-doctor-so-I-can-bitch-about-how-sick-people-got-in-before-me?

When it comes to "innovation," let's just look at the example of Bill Gates & Paul Allen. They innovated this whole hideous mess of personal computing, blah, blah, blah (alright, not completely by themselves) not because they sat down one day to try to figure out what they could do to become the richest fucks in the world (That's never worked, & never will.) but because they enjoyed dicking around w/ computers, & were pretty good at it. (Maybe that's why they enjoyed it.) Eventually (after they stole MS-DOS from some guy whose name I forget) their interests, not their greed, led to me typing like a ninny here. Likewise, in a zillion other fields of endeavor, it's not greed that motivates people, it's simply the desire to work in a field that they enjoy. And if they're really good at, & really enjoy it, innovation occurs. Perhaps in healthcare people are motivated to find a cure for whatever killed Granny or Uncle Joe, or a treatment for what made Cousin Sid miserable for fifty yrs. w/o killing him. Few people decide to go into medical research to make a killing. How gov't. paid healthcare influences any innovation in medical research is beyond me.

But how about this:

On matters such as management of the nuclear arsenal, I'm not really lying awake at nights [sic]wondering whether we're spending too much or using too many personnel, or whether our warheads are really the very best they can be. But when something consumes 16% of our GDP and every innovation saves lives, you kind of have to start thinking about those things.

Uh, has Miss McA. heard the sad tale of the Secretary & Chief of Staff of the Air Force who were just fired by the Secretary of Defense BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T HANDLING THE NUCLEAR ARSENAL VERY WELL BUT WERE FLYING WARHEADS ALL OVER THE COUNTRY?! Dying in an atomic accident, not to worry, but 16% of the GDP? That's important!!! Stupid, shallow, ignorant. Big question to her: Are our warheads really the very best they can be? Try worrying about those warheads landing on your head, Megatron.

Elements of Style©: It's "soundbite," not "soundbyte." It is a bite of sound, & has nothing to do w/ Zeros & Ones, even if the sound has been digitally recorded. Even Blogger™ spell checking is aware of this.


M. B. Updates (15 August 2008 @ 1611): Uh, how did I miss the post below? And the comments? Some of which it seems I stole. Though I didn't, really...

Seriously, go the Fuck Back to South America you Fat Asshole

brad says

As much as I fucking hate saying this, if Matt Yglesias sees this, I am sorry. This post is not reflective of the tone I want on this blog. I agree with Nutella's underlying sentiment, but I don't approve of how he expressed it. I will say more when I can.

Nutella explains
If it needs to be spelled out, fine, the use of chauvinistic language on my part is ALWAYS a joke. I used it at different times for different reasons. Here, the main reason is to show what a chauvinistic asshole Matt was being by turning the tables. I think it's perfectly fair, especially considering all the racism that seethes underneath so much of what these pro-war shitheads used to make their decision to invade "Brown People Land."

I know the stupid fat fucker is techinically off our turf now, but Mr. All-Lard-And-No-Brains has decided to mock my other religious background. Our dumpy friend, still unable to reconcile his own mental retardation, is going at it again about how being anti-war from the start doesn't mean you're a genius.

I think it’s true that the mere fact of having been against the war isn’t necessarily indicative of brilliant judgment (Quakers and such who just oppose all war as a matter of principle aren’t really showing judgment in particular cases)

You fat bloviating asshole. Your stupid ass ancestors haven't managed to grow out of nap time yet and you think you get to talk down to mine?

I'm tenth generation Quaker-American on my mother's side. In the over TWO HUNDRED FIFTY YEARS my family has been here, let's do a quick run down of how well our "just opposing all war" has done as compared to your ZOMG THEY ATTACKED!!!!11! SOMEONE DO SOMETHING BEFORE I PEE MYSELF ideology.

Let's see, things Quakers got right:

Opposed all of the ridiculous bloody wars throughout history, almost the entirety of which were needless.
Were the only early settlers of America that DID NOT steal from and slaughter wholesale the Indians.
Were the earliest, most fervent, and most proactive of the abolishionists.
Early pioneers for humane treatment of the disabled and mentally ill.
Leaders of women's suffrage movements.

Things the Quakers got wrong:
WWII
The Revolutionary War (arguably)

What the fuck have your people done? Well, yeah, Nachos are pretty tasty, you're right. However, those of us who don't think of eating as a religious experience put a little less weight on that than you do.

So, Matt, please, take me up on my most recent enjoinder to go fuck yourself, you pseudo-liberal, shallow, self-important piece of shit. I wish that I weren't a fucking pacifist so I could go knock on your door and do some preemptive warring on the intellectual void that is your little section of the blogosphere. You and your idiotic clique have been so unanimously wrong about everything. How the hell do you take a pay check for your "thoughts" in good conscience?

Oh, that's right, you have none.

It is absolutely fucking "good judgment" to be a pacifist. War is the worst fucking thing that people do to each other. The horrible efficiency with which we can kill each other nowadays makes that a million times more true than it ever has been. The only time War should even be considered is in the face of genocide. This is the simplest god damn judgment you can make, and the fact that you and your idiot friends are incapable of making it shows what complete idiots you all are. Every pacifist on earth has proven themselves to be smarter than you are, Matt, and don't EVER fucking forget that.

The pacifism of Quakerism is based on the belief that all humans are equal. It's based on the belief that God is in every living thing on earth. If that's bad judgment, then you're an asshole. Well, then you're EVEN MORE of an asshole.

Yum Yum!!

The above is currently appearing in the upper right hand advertising space on the Queen of The Vegans' web log. Does she know? Does she care? Would we get one of those "I really don't care what other people do, my constant babbling about what I eat is just because everything I do is fascinating, & is in no way shape or form to be construed as a suggestion as to how to live your life, because I'm all about freedom, not horrid nanny-statism!" posts?

P. S: Bugger™ doesn't respond well to .gif, & while the advert was cycling through its various pix when I first added the image, it seems to be stuck now (or not) which means we don't get to see the Naked Lunch shots of the real beef. But you get the idea.


Immediate update:

Seems to be working just fine now. Why doesn't my Bugger™ web log work as well? brad, any hints?

Cheesy Is Right

The entire blog-o-sphere has, of course, been waiting w/ bated breath, & at last it's here!! Approx. 39 lines (not counting ingredients) of Mlle. McArdle's New Improved Mac & Cheese recipe. (May I point out that we're discussing macaroni & cheese here, in case any one's lost sight of that fact?)

Also, it will give you an opportunity to use your scale [sic]

If you don't have a food processor with a grater attachment, grate the gruyere and chedder, [sic] and chop the other cheeses fine. [sic]

Seriously, if you don't have a food processor, you lousy rotten poor person, it's no wonder you're as fat as a fucking pig!!

There's higher-dollar Mac & Cheese w/ white cheddar or something that the good folks (as they used say in the advertising business) at Kraft distribute, if one insists on gourmet fucking everything; I've even seen packages of non-Kraft M&C at places like Trader Joe's that probably are a big improvement on the Kraft crap. Therefore, why the hell anyone would waste an extra 30 seconds of his/her time on making a child's dish from scratch is a total mystery. I thought we weren't supposed to be childish any more.


Elements of Style©:

Velveeta™ is a trademark, & should be capitalized. Please show some respect for the property rights of others, Ms. McArdle. You don't want to have a letter from the house counsel @ Kraft on your permanent record.

And you might want to learn how to spell "cheddar," if you wish to be taken seriously as the world's tallest female food blogger (your future career) or at least click spell check w/ a bit more abandon. (BTW, Blogger's™ spell-check suggests Gruyere should be capitalized as well. One would expect a big ol' free-marketer to be big on capitalization, but such are life's little ironies.)

P. S.: Could anything be more pretentious than crust on M&C?

Ask the expert!

Megan is s-m-r-t smart, lately.

I've been taking notes that she's so informative.

Pondering the iPhone:

Since Reihan already had an iPhone, and I don't, he's choosing between the marginal upgrades--mostly the GPS and the 3G network, and his old phone. I, however didn't have one before, so I get to be all gee-whiz about features the rest of you have had for a year.

Tranlsation: Reihan is giving you new information whereas I am going "aw-shucks, ain't that something" about features that, if you've any interest AT ALL in an iPhone, you knew about years ago.

Here, let me recap what every other review of the first iPhone said because, while I in fact don't know shit, I assume that you know even less.

Weights and Measures:

I rarely endorse conspiracy theories, but this one I believe. Mr Morrow, tear down this wall!

The article linked is, of course, kind of stupid. It complains about the conspiracy to leave weights out of cookbooks. Of course, this has nothing to do with the fact that this is how people have been measuring shit for fucking ever (see, digital scales are new).

Hey dipshits, if you're such an advanced cook that you weigh instead of measure by volume, maybe you should memorize some fucking conversion factors. I don't bitch about the fact that rulers are mostly in inches. I remember that it's 2.54 centimeters to an inch. Sigh.

Mr Bernanke, tear down this inflation:
Megan is worried about inflation. Anyone remember when she was talking about how "core inflation was low" so everything was fine? Yea, good call there, Megan. There was definitely no reason to think that core inflation wouldn't catch up with the rest of the shit out there. Nope, none whatsoever.

I hope she starts giving stock tips. It'd be so easy to make a killing shorting what she says to buy and buying what she says to short.

Get on the scale:
And last but not least, our muse tells us that if we really want to be good cooks we should get a scale.

Thanks for the tip, McObvious. As has been pointed out in the comments, every fucking person in the planet that needs a scale to cook the recipes they make already knows enough about fucking cooking to know that they need a scale. That's like telling a fucking engineer that hey, man, you really need to get you one of those calculators before you start engaging in academic research.

Thanks, Megalicious! Should I buy a knife too, or is that only for the truly advanced chef?

An Open Letter to Our Muse

Dear Ms. McArdle,

As things seem to be so terrible for the young urban vegan in our nation's capital...

While coming back from a completely fruitless trip to the grocery store (Why do you hate vegans, Giant? WHY?)...

[...]

This tells you just how competitive American markets are these days. Marketing is a cutthroat business, one in which, increasingly, no demographic is too small to avoid the blitz.

Except, apparently, DC vegans, for whom it is too much trouble to stock soy milk, seitan, and a little extra-firm tofu.

...may I invite you to join us on my side of the country. You can be damn sure that there are several brands of soy milk in each of the gargantuan supermarket chains, from Silk© to unusual, possibly even local brands. While I've no idea what "seitan" is (or Satan, for that matter) there is plenty of tofu available as well. And I speak of Kroeger-owned Ralphs, & Safeway-owned Vons & Pavilions. Mormon-owned Albertson's I'm not sure of, but they're a distant third in the SoCal area.

Between telecommuting & gigs at Reason, I'm sure you can keep yourself busy. Plenty of biking goes on here too.

What are you waiting for?

Sincerely,

M. "Chas." Bouffant

Lazy Shorters

Megan does our work for us:

The color of food

I genuinely don't understand this. I'm pretty comfortable with the concept of privilege, but I fail to see how my choices in foodstuffs contribute to it. I'd order the book to find out, except that it sounds very, very silly.

Italics added by me for emphasis. Second "very" added by Ms. McA. for silliness.

Dep't. of Cheap Shots

Megan says:

I've been tempted to order those ridiculous detoxifying foot pads, just to see if they really do pull anything black and scary looking out of my skin the way they do on the commercials.

(Boldface mine. No further comment.)

So now we await Ms. McArdle going the full right-wing drooler route. She'll perhaps move beyond veganism or whatever into all the peculiar food fetishism, colon-cleansing, memory-improving mixtures, homeopathy, etc., for which we see advertisements on many of the more obscure right wing websites. (Those people are just plain nertz!)

P. S.: My bet? The pads will definitely show some of that scary looking black stuff, but it's a chemical reaction caused by something on the pad, activated by contact w/ human skin or perspiration or foot powder. The chances that something that shouldn't be in your corpus has been pulled out are slim & none.

P. P.S.: A scan of the comments reveals that I'm more or less correct, as usual.

Megan shows remarkable restraint.

First she quotes her some tubby mcfatterson; Matty's all upset cause the NYT went and dissed a couple of his favorite haunts, Chilli's and... no... no. stop laughing. It's not a joke. He's serious. Why are you laughing? Stop it! He's serious.

Anyway, onto Megan...

I was raised on the Upper West side by a woman who made her own croissants. I am actually one of the three people in the country who is neither an Orthodox Jew, nor living in a vegetarian cult, and yet has never eaten in an Outback Steakhouse. And there is nothing--nothing--more grating than born again food snobs writing articles like this.

Wait for it...

First of all, as Matt points out, the odds that you grew up like we did, without darkening the door of a chain restaurant, are slim-to-none. I probably meet someone else who was raised in Manhattan an average of once or twice a year. Raising two children in a six room apartment and paying half a million dollars to educate them is the province of a few dedicated hobbyists.

Wait for it!

Second of all, if there's anything sadder than people who act like having grown up in New York makes them the apex of the social universe, it's people who act like this when they grew up in Shaker Heights.

WAIT for it!!!!

And third of all, those of us who enjoyed that rare experience have a genuine sense of the exotic when confronting a suburban chain restaurant. I've been on multiple first-time excursions to various chain restaurants with native New Yorkers, and the modal reaction is to wriggle with joy like a small puppy. I have no idea why it should be so exciting to eat what is basically decent hotel food, but I suspect we all have a lingering sense of having been left out of some vast national shared experience.

WAIT FOR IT!!!!!!

Besides, I have eaten perfectly good meals at places like Ruby Tuesday's, Friendy's, Legal Seafoods, and Chili's. I like Pizza Hut breadsticks, KFC mashed potatoes, and Houlihan's stuffed mushrooms, even though these things were not easily available when I was growing up. In fact, that article made me so indignant that I'd march out right now and eat at Outback Steakhouse right now, (...)

OMG!!!! THE SUSPENSE IS KILLING ME!!!!!

if they had more vegan options.

BLAM!!!!!
Clear out of the park!

Oh man! So worth the wait!

Illiterate in Two Languages

La femme McArdle can't spell in French either. (Not that some of the other ninnies who post here are perfect, only I! In two languages!!)

Cri de cour [sic]
As I contemplate the purchase of another velocipede, this spectre haunts me

Not to mention the utter pretentiousness of "velocipede" & "spectre."


UPDATE: Earlier in the day, as she blockquoted MoDo, the very same phrase is used, yet spelled correctly. Say what you will about MoDo (or the NYT at least having editors so their columnists don't look goofy) she's a better typist/speller than MMcM. I do agree w/ her take on MoDo, taken it from this guy "Matt" she's always talking about & linking to. (Is he her boyfriend or something& we're just supposed to know who he is? I don't get it, but she may be writing for a group of obsessives who know everything & every one in her little world. You do all know who MoDo is, don't you?) Here's an idea: Moratorium on food & eating & vega-vegetarianism &...

Guess what's in my leek soup!

Leeks!

Guys, I'm gonna share with you my macaroni and cheese recipe now. Here goes

Ingredients
Macaroni
Cheese

Directions
Cook the macaroni
Add the cheese

Serve hot

UPDATE:

A couple people like the comment that I posted for the recipe, so I'll reprint here:

Wow, that looks really good. I kept putting boots in my potato leek soup and, while it was good, it tastes nothing like potato and leek soup. I now see where I went wrong.

I've also been having trouble with my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Do you have a recipe for that you might share? I like to use mayonnaise and ham on mine and again, it's good, but it tastes nothing like peanut butter and jelly! In fact, it ends up tasting just like a ham sandwich!!! What am I doing wrong?!?!