We are just a few days away from the most exciting holiday of all-the Day of the Dead. In its honor, I’m actually going to make Pan de Muerto, Bread of the Dead. Along with it, it would be Mexican Hot Chocolate. I buy a prepared Mexican hot chocolate mix which comes in a bar. The brand is Nestle but its called Abuelita (little grandmother).
While the bread is not so good when store bought, Mexican hot chocolate can get close enough when bought in a package to satisfy the cravings. The directions on the box say to use an entire bar to 4 cups of milk. I use half to three cups because anymore than that turns me into a proper caffeine ghoul, jumpy and screechy. It also says to add sugar. No thanks. Sweet enough on its own.
This is what the bar looks like. 
Just take a knife and split off what you want from it.
The flavor is spicey (cinnamon is strong) and meant to be frothy. That is hard to achieve at home but you can get close enough. In a restaurant you would get a good inch of foam. At home without a steamer, a half an inch if you are lucky.
Its made with real milk which gives it a really rich flavor. I absolutely hate hot chocolate made with water. While this product does have real chocolate, its flavoring is “artificial”. I’ll be making it from scratch for the holiday though. In fact, I am going on a hot chocolate kick for a bit. I am easily entertained.
It can be made with soy or coconut milk but rice milk makes it weak. Almond milk gives it a nice extra kick. Make sure whatever you buy is not sweetened. This product has sugar aplenty.
You place the block in a pot with the milk and whisk constantly. Once its all melted you can either use an immersion mixer or else stick it in a regular blender. If you want to be authentic you can find a molinillo. I keep telling myself I don’t need one but I noticed they started selling them at a store down the street so I might just add it to my kitchen, you know, just to be authentic.
Here it is with my half inch of foam. If it were later in the day, I would add a shot of Kahlua to this which would be wonderful.
The link above btw has a recipes section. Check it out and yes, that brand (Ibarra) is much better than Abuelita. I just can’t seem to resist that little granny.
The Day of the Dead is somewhat odd to many. Mexican families cook for days and build alters to their departed loved ones. They then take the food to the graveyard and picnic. Its a trully amazing ritualistic holiday which technically runs from Halloween until November 2. The Mexican Heritage Museum in Chicago usually erects alters and some are the size of a large closet while others are built around picture frames intended to stay on mantle tops. We have a parade here in Chicago but I’m not sure if its on this year. Read more about it here and see if you can’t join in. You have a few hours still! And you don’t have to be Mexican. I’m not. Yet, I have my own dearly departed. Its a good way to honor them.
Now, I am going to have to go out and find me some sugar skulls.
We should be out celebrating today. Break out the booze. “The recession is over” cried several news channels yesterday. Each thought to poll some locals and each brought back the news that the nations citizens were pessimistic. This is a good indication that the media is starting to lose its power of persuasion at least on this matter. People are not able to buy the lies right now.
Even Obama wasn’t saying that its over. Just slightly improved. Unemployment rates were then mentioned as they pertain to the next election. All agree that this is going to be the biggest issue for Obama when he runs again. Well, yes. Since some of us will have watched loved ones starve to death by then. This is by no means the Obama economy but he stepped up to the plate and so its his problem. But its about elections, not anything else naturally. Like anybody living in a palace can relate much otherwise.
The news also mentioned that there is no emerging industry in the states that can potentially come out as the savior, for example, not Silicon Valley. No new jobs are being created as a result. I had to wonder about something at this point. I seem to recall reading that we lost much of our edge in science for example because the Bush administration had cut important funding. Whatever our scientists were working on was interrupted as a result and therefor the edge went to other nations. And so did some of our great minds. The fact that we don’t have an emerging industry, by this argument, is the responsibility of the former president and his henchmen. I have to wonder if they knew what they were doing by cutting our throats way back when? Must look further into this…..its just a thought at the moment.
So if you break out the booze, have a drink on me. I’m saving the Dom Perignon for later days.
Now the fellow student that irked me has taken an about face. Last week she seemed to be having a public meltdown. Too stressed, too this, too that-too bad. This week she is back all cheerful. And now she is trying to talk to me. I am keeping it distant and professional. The instructor most likely thought it was a cat fight when she turned me in to him because he never did a thing about it and in all our contact he never once mentioned it to me. If it was a cat fight, it was one sided and I missed out on all the fun. I think she regrets her actions but until an apology is received I have no reason to feel that she is to be trusted. I do forgive easily but I don’t forget willingly.
We got a strange thing in the mail yesterday-a public aid medical card that we didn’t apply for. We are now all covered by the state and we don’t know why. Its like we won a prize, but what strings are attached here? I am thinking that when the kids went back to school and we had to fill out the yearly lunch form (required), the school must of been shocked when we put our income in as zero. I don’t lie on official forms and despite the zero we are doing good. But it must of looked like we were in dire straights. It doesn’t have an area in which we can explain ourselves. Just zero.
I think the school shared the information with the feds and the state. The feds do need the information because this is how schools get their No Child Left Behind funding and its based on all the zeros like us, but the state does not have a right to the information automatically and besides, why would they do us the favor if we didn’t ask in the first place? Are they so benevolent that they are just looking for charity cases like us? Not likely. I am sure that if we needed this, they would make us crawl through hot coals on our hands and knees and then make us jump through hoops first.
So now I have to find our “social worker” to tell her/him that there has been some kind of mistake. We are just fine without them. Really, we are. That should take weeks of my time and a few years off my life. Bureaucracy and I just don’t mix.
I really don’t like the state in my business and I’m not sure how they got there in the first place, not really anyhow. This just seems so invasive and its a puzzle.
We went downtown for an errand and didn’t notice anything ourselves but apparently a large protest was underway outside the Bankers Association Conference yesterday. We didn’t hear about it until the evening news (my replacement for horror films and general entertainment lately).
Why?
After taking $17.8 trillion in taxpayer bailouts and backstops, the ABA and the six largest banks have spent more than $35 million fighting Congressional action on financial reform.
Read the rest here.
I had no clue that the banks have such an active lobby and that this lobby is fighting reforms. It should of been obvious but it wasn’t. However, isn’t this organized convergence too little and too late? Better late than never? I think its too late.
At any rate, stories say there were around 5000 people present from 20 different states. The news showed a calm crowd and they said that Jessie Jackson was present. He wouldn’t miss such a photo op but the news didn’t actually show him there. So that is rather strange because Jackson does not miss a photo op! This makes me wonder why he stayed away exactly? This makes me wonder who the banks were lobbying in congress on a local level. Who did they contribute to? Congressman Jackson maybe? (Jacksons son).
5000 people though? You would think we would of noticed something, like over crowded trains. Whatever. At least there was an arrest free protest for a change and it made 5 quick seconds on the local evening news. Thats something isn’t it?
This was organized by “labor unions”, not to be confused with the Laborers Union, the one that is raping my husbands ex boss for untold amounts of money on behalf of their workers though they too should have taken part in this protest since they have demonstrated that they care about the impact greed has on the ordinary man by suing one that had no more control over the economy than a single protester did.
And where were the bricklayers? Not invited. Garry wasn’t anyway. I think its sad with so many local “labor union” members out of work that a call didn’t go out for support. Or did we toss it in the trash?
So dir en grey are coming to town in November and the kids have grounded us. We are not allowed to go this time unless there is a balcony in which we elders can sit on our thrones like senile, drooling, royalty. We then can meet up again at the car if we haven’t dirtied our diapers and lost our seeing eye dogs or gotten trampled looking for our dentures or something like that.
Garry doesn’t want them to go alone because he says the venue is a druggie hangout. I don’t think that the children will do drugs just because they are in the same building as drug addicts. They do go to school after all and so far so good. But Garry won’t budge. Personally, I don’t want to go this time around. I have seen them now 3 times I think and love them as much as I do, I don’t want to see them one more time. Not for a while.
Garry didn’t like it when the boy came home from a show a month ago completely pumped up after a night of crowd surfing because “he could of gotten hurt”. I didn’t like the boys war cries and chest thumping which took him days to stop doing because this was induced by the fact that he bloodied another kids nose but what are you gonna do? He’s a boy!
The girl points out that he won’t be doing that at dir en grey because he’ll be busy protecting her from slam dancers. I am willing to bet that is half true and that is what they will say when all is said and done.
Yesterday, it rained after school and so the kids lost their “we’ll take the bus” mantra and called home a total of 5 times begging us to come and get them. I was busy being a kitchen slave and Garry wasn’t having any of it. This time, I felt guilty and was convinced that they would catch pneumonia on the way home if I didn’t comply with their demands. Garry wanted them to tough it out.
Its so strange that neither of us will let go at the same time. I have no clue what my spouse is going to do when his babies leave home but I know that I can send care packages of Vicks Vapor rub any old time and feel much better for it.
He’s going to freak out I think when it finally happens and we have an empty nest.
Bank of America is going to foreclose on a real estate developer whose shopping mall is nearly finished. Shops have been rented out and construction crews are still working. The place is near completion but well over budget and that is the sole reason the news used for the foreclosure. The mayor is going to have a chit chat with the bankers. The fate of the shops (including contracts and probably deposits) and the construction workers is hanging in the balance. The financial expert on television had no answers as to what was going on. This is one of a few construction jobs (private non government) that is active. Things are very bad for the trades.
Also on the news, this crisis (nobody calls it a recession anymore on local news) has lead to a decline in marriages. People cannot afford to wed. Further, immigration is at an all time low. People don’t want to immigrate here. So our demographics are changing. I see “For Rent” signs everywhere in my area and wonder where all the people have gone?
Personal observations. I live close to several main street type shopping districts. All have newly vacated shops. In one area, a large supermarket is empty, one that was built only a few years ago.This is no small thing in a city as large as ours.
About a week ago, my daughter wanted to make brownies for a friends birthday but we didn’t feel like doing it from scratch so we found ourselves in the boxed cake mix isle and the first thing my girl said was, “Hmm. They hardly have anything here anymore”. She meant variety. The shelves had been condensed to basic flavors. We took a walk around and noticed this to be true of many of their categories. Where before we were seeing holes in the shelves now the holes are less obvious because the stores have widened their isles and crowded their shelves to make it look as if they still had the same abundance. By widening their isles they must of gotten rid of a couple. How many? I have no idea. Take a look at your local supermarkets and try to see if something is amiss.
Despite the above mentioned foreclosure, I assure you that real estate developers remain at the top of the food chain. Case in point: my husbands old company, small business, family owned and pretty much down the drain.
Chicago is a union town. All major construction and most city contracts go to union workers.My husbands last job was no exception. In fact all his jobs have been union.
About two years ago, my husbands company hooked up with a developer who I won’t name. Within a few months, the developer was withholding payment. This put the construction people in a position where they had to give I.O.U’s on occasion, to their workers and to their suppliers, all hush hush because if the unions ever found out then hefty fines would follow. This was caused by simple greed since the economy had yet to tank.
As the developer would eventually pay, these companies kept bidding and winning contracts with him. They didn’t like him but they trusted that he would pay up eventually. Once the economy tanked, the developer still entered into contracts with the companies and continued to build. This made the world of Chicago look like it was weathering the economic collapse quite well so people were not worried as late as last January. However, since this was all based on faith and not facts, there is a current feeling among construction workers that they had been hit by a ton of bricks.
The developer now owes my husbands boss over 200,000 for one job alone! My husbands boss is being sued by the Labor Union for non payment for a very large sum and he is most likely going to lose everything he worked damned hard to achieve, including his personal assets. He has a family to care for, a mortgage and he owes men money. The men are loyal though as he has been really golden towards them so they will wait as patiently as they can. In the meantime, the developer is still taking bids for more work at last update though that can change.
So a lien is in order right? Sure. Along with 19 other companies. How this works is this: condo sells and developer gives 4% of the total sale to an escrow account and then the money is disbursed at a rate of 4% to 19 companies and the developer then keeps the rest. Thats right. Reread that line. Developer of course has a right to pay the bank back but on whose blood? My husbands boss is as close to debtors prison as a man can get (if those prisons actually exist) and this solution is nothing short of chump change in such a dire situation and for such a large amount. If somebody owes that much back pay to so many people, then there should be more serious repercussions, or so we would think.
The developer is still taking bids so then he must have a bank roll and he is actually protected while the others are not. They can get sued by the unions for example. The unions could give a shit about the developer though. Why is that? Its the little guys that are being screwed again. And do you know who this method is really protecting? The banks. They are guaranteed to get their loans paid off this way, to hell with everybody else.
So when the next financial guru says we are in slow recovery, do us a favor and through some rotten tomatoes at ‘em. They are lying, flat out. They do understand what is happening. They just choose to lie so that we all keep ourselves feeling confidant and go out to spend money that nobody seems to have.
As to jobs and homeless, I don’t have stats but I can say its another indicator of the lies. I saw a man living in his car down the street the other day. In my own neighborhood. And jobs? It might take a Ph.d to land one in McDonalds these days. The experts say that unemployment is the last to recover is such an economy. Then how does an economy recover at all if unemployment continues to climb. Where does that even make any sense? Toss another rotten tomato to that.
And this is the actual truth here. We are not seeing better days. Its not getting better, not by small or large increments.
Its so sad to see things die this time of year. The cold weather destroyed most of the neigbhoring gardens. Except for the Amaranth, mine is still going pretty strong.
I still think it looks beatiful in its death throes but thats just the romatic in me. We took it all down today, saved some tendrils in a paper bag and donated the rest to Kirsten who is going to use it for an activity with children. I completely gave up on harvesting it.
I will get at least one good sized turnip out of this effort. The others are going along doing a succession growing thing all on their own. Its nice to see turnip greens without flea beetles attacking the camera for a change.
Brussel sprouts moseying along. These have been planted since spring. I see very minute changes on every visit. At some point they should get big enough to eat. Maybe before Christmas?
And the coldframe my husband surprised me with is keeping our strawberries going so far (on the far right) and the camomile is doing well too (in the foreground. Our beets, Swiss chard and some spinach are loving it. Parsley can’t decide what to do and the icicle radish are just happy in general. I need to plant more of those, but it might be too late.
We have more that is not sheltered but will be. The garden owns pyramid frames that we are going to ask to use. They are wrapped in chicken wire and we would rap with plastic on top of that. We need to protect the carrots and kholrabi pretty soon. One miscellenous patch of something that I planted but forgot all about and some daikon and rhutabaga plus the kale, sorrel and sage that I planted in spring. A cauliflower seems to hate life but we’ll see what happens.
This is very small scale stuff. I started to worry that nothing would grow so I held back some seeds for spring instead of taking a chance on failure. We might not feast but at least I’ll know what I’m doing for next year.
Who would of thought that research on type designers would lead to religious morality lessons? I picked a most innocent looking typeface for an essay on the designer-Gills Sans. Eric Gill though was not some grease monkey working away in a type foundry, innocently and in isolation of the world around him. He was an artist, Socialist and involved in the Arts and Crafts movement. Forward thinking but also deeply spiritual.
The controversy starts like this paraphrase from a self righteous type of person, “I hesitated to post this link because of the pornographic element, but to prove my point, I decided to go right ahead and post it but with warnings.” The link goes to Gills drawings and paintings of Saints having sex. They are not identifiable as particular saints, just have halos around their heads.
I will post the link here without apology or warning. The author making the accusations doesn’t just post the link, he/she also puts this peice of art on the site in question and then claims that its Jesus having sex with a saint. I don’t see Jesus. I think this author has a dirty mind actually. And being a Catholic of some degree (even if lapsed, I still have the roots), I have read the lives of Saints. I highly recommend this one: Enduring Grace, Living Portrait of Seven Women Mystics by Carol Lee Flinders.
Honestly, when reading descriptions of these womens experiences (and some had actually been prolific writers so its a primary source of information) there is a very intense sexual element involved. But the self righteous would of burned some at the stake for suggesting such a thing back then. Why do we have to deal with that type of witch hunt even today? Good thing Eric Gill died in 1940.
Perhaps he was also aware of the sexual element and that is what he was trying to portray in his art? I may never know.
And so I have this information about the man. In the art/design world, his personal life is very basic. In the religious world, he is a pornographic, incestuous, pedophile who was sex crazed and depraved. He dared to become a Catholic and to apparently have had some influence in the Church at some level so that the Church protects his reputation even today. Hmm. Typographer and artist protected by the Church? Does that mean that they will protect me too if I were to say, go rob a bank and then do a painting of Christ robbing a bank? Silly thought.
I’m only writing this because I have done nothing but study lately and so have not a thing to share besides what I have uncovered.
This last week has been very hard as far as school work load. I hadn’t even gotten to the garden much but I went today! We are still eating from it to a small degree. Unfortunately, my amaranth suffered the first frost and I have to go back with a paper bag to collect the tendrils. I think I figured out what the seeds look like but I also think that I need a microscope to find them all. People harvest this?For profit? Hard to believe. It must be slave labor.
Anyhow, by tomorrow I’ll have pictures up of the garden. Garry took some more of the farm but I haven’t uploaded anything. I really need to break the umbilical cord to the computer right now. Been spending hours on it all week and feel a migraine coming on.
Until tomorrow then.
I have no idea why Garry insists on watching some of the worlds worst movies but he does and that is the way it is. I was still plopped on the death bed when he fired up the DVD and put on “Final Destination”. This is the movie about a kid who gets death premonitions, a cult classic I suppose and very gorey. Garry gasped and jumped out of his seat a few times while I pretended to be absorbed in knitting:) Since the movie is about premonitions, there is much foreshadowing so we could tell when something sickening is about to happen.
Ever since then, when I drive around town, I remember that frigging movie! I try to be extra careful as a result.
Then, because that wasn’t enough, he also watched the show “Scare Tactics”. This series is based on Candid Camera and Punked. Only the scenarios are really scary to some. Personally, if I was driving down a country road and came across vampires feasting on highway patrolmen, I think I would suspect that something is just not right and while I would hightail it out of there, I wouldn’t stop at the roadblock just because a cop told me to. I would keep going to the nearest gas station or else just keep going in general. On this show, people stop but that is because the driver is in on the joke. Of course by stopping, the scene is set for vampires to attack the second cop, etc.
This makes me worry about the farm being isolated. It is and it isn’t. I am not a vampire believer, but people do tend to resort to creative ways when they want to murder others. So paranoia there.
Then the boy started asking me about solar flares. The movie 2012 is entirely based on that as is the movie “Knowing”. The boy reads wikipedia entries in order to choose movies he might want to see. In this case, he did find that solar flares are not entirely fictional and so he began to panic a little. Then alot. He admitted he was scared and didn’t want to die. Dealing with that now. It’s not one of those things that gets taken care of with one conversation.
A friend suggested that I point out how prepared we are, what skills we have, what skills he has. Reiterate our escape plan, reinforce the fact that there is no reason (other than a massive solar flare that wipes out humanity entirely-not mentioning this) that we can’t survive. We can. We will.
It’s one thing to watch really scarry movies or half kitchy ones. There is a reason that those movies scare people. They purposely tap into the part of our brain that is still afraid of fire after all. But it’s quite another when movies are about our real world issues. I think many are aware that we are at the beginning of the end of our civilization. Many won’t admit it but the signs are there enough that in some unconscious way, they do get it. Solar flares and 2012 is not something I believe will happen but there is something that is going to happen by 2012, mentioned it before, and that is that the military seems to have a need for a million soldiers by then to help with conflicts based on resources. For a mother of children who would be the target of such recruiting, this is as dangerous a situation as a solar flare.
But when movies exploit such issues, they are bound to frighten people in real ways and these people are going to be the ones that so far have not prepared for anything at all, not even for their car breaking down in the middle of nowhere. What is going to happen? Will these people panic enough to raid the grocery stores? Or will they stay asleep? Or will they dig caves in remote areas and spend New Years, 2011 there? Buy up all the ammo? The water bottles? What?
