A cook, eh? Do you have a favorite recipe, & would you mind sharing it?
Golly...no, I don't have a single favorite. But how about some tips?
1) Learn to season with salt and pepper before trying other seasonings.
2) Add rice vinegar to your next soup or spaghetti sauce, right at the beginning.
3) For the love of Gore, do NOT cook veggies or fish too long--if you must cook them at all.
4) Mushrooms, yo. Did you know that a crimini mushroom is just a baby portabello?
5) Real broth rocks so hard over canned broth. Make it! It's easy, and you can freeze it.
6) Lemongrass is my favorite seasoning. Cinnamon is a good plot-twister.
What the heck...one recipe:
Fried MatzahEggs
Milk
Matzah
Salt
Pepper
Vanilla extract
Sour cream
Jam (or marmalade)
This recipe gives you the opportunity to eat that stereotypical big Jewish cracker (i.e., matzah) that you've probably seen or at least heard about.
I once knew the exact proportions for this recipe, but nowadays I just do it by eye. For two people, you'll want roughly two eggs, two cups of milk, salt and pepper to taste, a half- to whole-teaspoon of vanilla, and enough matzah to use up the batter.
Set the sour cream and jam aside. Heat two tablespoons oil in a large skillet. Beat the eggs in a bowl. Add the milk, stir well. Add the salt, pepper, and vanilla, and stir again. Take the matzah and crumble by hand into the bowl; stir so that the matzah gets completely coated by the mixture. Pour it all on the skillet, and stir it contanstly. It'll take a few minutes for the liquid to evaporate. At that time, the "done" period begins. If you take them off the heat then, they'll be soft and moist. The longer you cook them, the crispier they'll get. They will begin to brown, and it's especially important to stir them constantly now that they're dry. The "done" period ends when brown turns to black and your kitchen fills with smoke. Cook 'em how you like 'em. I like mine closer to the kitchen fire end of things.
Pour the stuff onto two plates. Add equal parts sour cream and jam, stir it all together. Eat it with juice or fresh fruit and something tart like a tomato.
What influenced your political views?
It was a richly gradual, organic process for me. There was never any sudden moment of awakening or change for me. I was raised in a mostly nonpolitical, but very liberal-in-spirit environment. If you separate the politics out of left-wing philosophy, what you get is high emphasis on open-mindedness, kindness toward others, respect for the environment and animals, and awareness for the consequences of one's actions, often within the context of obeying the law--for instance, littering and smoking.
My hometown was (and still is) a conservative place, but I was never exposed to the thick prejudices that define much of our modern political debate. Instead, I grew up thinking that all those past struggles like women's rights and racial prejudice were already solved, and that modern humans now knew better.
As a result of being a curious and sharp person, I began to discover politics on my own in my mid-teens. Contrary to what you might expect, I was not a partisan Democrat. Rather, I considered myself to be representative of mainstream American culture, and thus you might say that I thought of myself as a centrist Democrat.
Once I began exploring politics and learning about the issues, I slowly discovered (very slowly) that my worldview is actually much further to the left than that. First I came into the social issues, which are easier to understand. I figured out that I disagree with the Republicans on pretty much every social issue, and, in fact, even the Democrats aren't usually where I want them to be. Later on I came into my newfound economic liberalism, where originally I had considered myself center-right on the topic. Economic issues are harder to figure out, and so it took me longer to take an interest in them, but eventually I began to understand why conservative economics don't work.
I'd say my political compass finally figured itself out just in the past two or three years. It was a long journey.
Most definitely, this journey was aided by not having a religious institution breathing down my neck. My religious upbringing was totally outside of the Christian mode. I have since learned that churches are the source of almost all social conservatism. Nobody takes such stupid positions on the issues, such as valuing unborn cells over a fully-grown woman, unless they've got a powerful and persistent authority figure telling them that God would pick the unborn cells.
My education has also helped shape my politics. In this country, at least, liberalism is the friend of science and higher education, whereas conservatism views these things as a threat. More to the point, the knowledge reaped by scientific study almost always allies in part or in full with liberal political positions. Being a scientifically-minded person, scientific truth is a treasure to which I have always been open.
