You don't have to (be) Lily White to make good Biscuits

Hah! So there! Take that Mary B! You see, I am against hypocracy, and for truth. In advertising, I may as well be tilting at windmills...it won't help. However, in my own private corner, I can justify my truth, and call the corporate man (or woman) what they are: big, fat, dirty LIARS. Home made biscuits? Hey, you can't disparage my battlefronts, I didn't start this war. However, you can be a soldier, too, if you know what you are fighting for. You see, it all started over a hundred years ago, when some guy thought to himself, "Hey, I can make a buck by putting non-food items in food to make food easier to cook, with more consistently mediocre results, not only will people buy it over and over, they will eventually forget that food is better for you when its not contaminated with non-food, and they will forget that food is not all that hard to cook, and they will not even think to blame their heath problems on their food." Okay, so he didn't think all that, he just thought about making a buck, and really didn't give a shit about anything else. So we have Kellogg making our breakfast (instead of bug-eatin' chickens and slop-eatin' hogs and grannies wielding cast-iron frypans) and since processed grain cereals are so nutritionally vacuous that they must be fortified, we have changed one meal from natural to completely artificial. Then we had Kayser from P'n'G who 'crystalized' cottonseed oil and made Crisco and sold it with cookbooks, so that we could make our own baked good without harming a pig, plus the demonizing of lard by the government and we have another 30% of our food that completely adulterated. And then there are the frozen, boxed meals, and we have got the whole day covered. I know, I bought plenty of frozen meals in my day, eaten more than my share of Oreos, and I am still not completely clean in my shopping. The difference now, is, I am aware and becoming more so. I recently realized I was buying a certain brand of flour just to 'make sure' my buttermilk biscuits were as light and fluffy as they could be....why??? Why am I eating bleaching agents? And DH is no better, buying the above brand frozen biscuits, ostensibly to make it easier on me not to work a little bit to make them from scratch. Why? Why eat aluminum? Why eat partially hydrogenated anything for any reason? You can make biscuits from Butter Flour Baking Powder (go for the old brands, like Clabber Girl) and Buttermilk They come out great, and I like their lumpy non-uniform personalities as well. Why the fuck must biscuits be round? That wastes dough for what...prettiness? I made jam this past weekend, and all that was in it was : Berries, Pectin, Sugar so F U J. M. & Co.. I'm not saying everything is easy. But a lot of things are far easier to cook from whole, natural ingredients than I ever suspected, because I grew up with the mindset that all cooking is NOT easy. Once you cook a little (hey, it really is just chemistry), you can cook more, you can make better, and you can do it without the addition of NON-FOOD. It IS a revolution...join me!

Homeless People Suck

So this most recent Bible lesson was from James' second chapter and urged Christians to look at everyone as brothers (and sisters) as Jesus did. Also, to not show favoritism to the rich man who enters their (church//congregation) just because he has nice rings. The pastor exhorted us to do likewise, to not tell a smelly homeless person to sit in the back of the church, but welcome him as warmly and openly as any other, and offer to help him. Pastor also read from Acts about the people who sold land, but did not give all the proceeds to the church, and then fell dead on the spot when they were confronted (and they persisted in lying about the transaction). So am I to think that this church wants me to swallow my repugnance to obviously dysfunctional people, and sell my extra stuff so that I can support a church in helping them? Because that sounds like crap to me. My aunt assured me that pastor did not mean it to that extent, but that may just be her hypocrisy showing. Because, to show no favoritism is against nature. It is not natural to show NO favoritism to your own child over some other jerk's nasty brat. It is not natural to deliberately hang out with people who bug you rather than people who don't. It is not natural to not reject those who persistently refuse to live by laws that the rest of us seem to agree with. Biologically, we favor those with 'like' traits, and admonish our families to minimize difference. I'm not talking about purple hair, I'm talking about clean hair. If your kid suddenly decides to go counter-culture by not washing his hair, are you okay with that? No, because there is a level of acceptability below which you cannot go. It may be different for different families or groups, but there is a line which crossing over turns perilous. Homeless people go way over my line. Anyone who thinks it is easier to just live by the charitable acts of others than to earn the fruit of labor is way over my line. I am not against charity. I am not against people who need help now and then. I am not against random acts of kindness and paying things forward. I AM against laziness. I am against being anti-rule just to be anti-rule, even if they are unwritten rules. On some level, homeless people revel in the fact that they don't have to get up and work like the rest of us, that they are, in their own way, beating the system, and are free. They take pride in the fact that they scam you and me out of our hard-earned money, food, and shelter. I do mean the persistently homeless, the ones who have been given opportunity to get out and time and again, manage to fail spectacularly. Why should I give them any respect? They can't see that they hurt themselves the most. They really think they are winning. I can't condone that level of stupidity (or self-deception). I don't respect them. I cannot treat them as I would my friend. I can pity them. I don't like to help them. It does not make me feel good on any level. I don't get warm and fuzzy inside. I just feel like I have been 'had'. Homeless people (or destitute people) come to my door and beg for money on a somewhat regular basis. Why? because my house is the first on the block and right off the main road and near a bus stop. They don't even have to walk very far. Some just ask for work, but few mean to do it. Besides, the jobs are already taken. I do my own lawn. If I hire out, I don't take the first to offer, I find a reliable reference. So really, they just want something for nuthin'. Well so do young kids, but do you give it to them? NO. You don't get somethin' for nothin'. You have to work. You have to earn it.

Why I HATE modern Christian music

Okay, so my Aunt dragged me to church this Sunday. It was a Calvary Chapel...not to be confused with Calvary Baptist or Calgary anything, which is a name-brand. This CC denomination was started by hippies kicked out of other churches because of their polarizing looks and counter-culture attitudes. They are a Bible-studying church (which I like), but they like the modern music, with the guitar playing and the words, but not the melody up on the screen. So, I hate the modern music...that is strike one. Well, no actually, strike one is that I am tired of church-shopping. I have given up finding a church that I would like. So the crappy music is strike two. I like the traditional music - its more solemn, and also its smarter. I mean Mozart-genius smarter. Like when you listen to it, you can feel your brain cells growing. Sing "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" and tell me you don't feel smarter afterward!?! All these guitar-folk-soundy hymns all sound the same, and they are musically boring. The reason they don't put the melody up on the screen is that it would be a series of the same fuckin note over and over again, so why bother. They are hiding their musical mediocrity, or they figure their audience/congregation is so musically stupid they can't read music if it was given to them. But why should they figure that...are they just dumbing everything down? They don't bother with any of that fancy rhyming either. Or, even worse, they rhyme words with themselves. Seriously, you can't do any better? The only variety is the bridge (thank you, popular rock music, for giving them that idea). I honestly don't mind the words. The point of a Hymn is that it is to connect you with God, that it focuses your faith, and moves your spirit in ways that simple speech cannot. The words (lyrics) are the focusing points, the revelatory portion of the song. But, the melody is the soul-moving part, and without it, lyrics are just that much talk. You need both. I hate Christian Rock stations, too. They all sound the same, all the songs sound the same, formulaic. Sure there are exceptions, and they are usually SO good, so exceptional that they cross over into Mainstream (Creed, anyone?) So send me to a church with an organ and a proper choir. If I see an acoustic guitar on stage, I am going to bolt. And all you Christian Rockers, will you please study some damn music theory and quit listening to "Blowin' in the Wind", for the Love of GOD?