How It's Unmade: Oreos

In this educational video, all you friends of the earth can watch the complex process required to recycle Oreo-style cookies down to their constituent elements.

Waitin' for the Weekend

How It's Made: Croissants

In yesterday's post about our Mardi Gras dinner, I forgot to mention that M.P. also made from scratch two batches of the most marvelous croissants, perfectly tender and flaky, with a mouthwatering buttery taste. Don't have any pictures to show you, but as a substitute take a look at this amazing video about the making of commercial croissants - 50,000 an hour, can you believe?

The Pork Boys Do Mardi Gras 2014

Last week, M.P. and I celebrated Mardi Gras - and his long-awaited retirement from a very stressful job - with a truckload of good food, good drink, and good cheer.  Here are some pics I took that he just forwarded to me, showing what we had for dinner over several evenings, and as you can see, did we have fun - boy howdy!

M.P. is as good an artist as he is a cook - he always sets a beautiful table, and made these fabulous masks just for our Mardi Gras dinner.

The festivities began with our favorite deviled eggs - notice the two at the 9 o'clock position - they came from an egg with two yolks, believe it or not, so each half got two twirls of goo.

And then M.P. served up a platter of sweet, succulent coconut shrimp, tenderized by his own secret process, with spiced pineapple and apple dip.

Naturellement, with the shrimp we just had to have some homemade fried onion rings, done to a turn, and so light and crispy as M.P. knows how to make them. Awfully good with homemade Thousand Island dip, as shown.

Tea candles always add a lovely glow to a special dinner.

Another specialty of M.P.'s is 7-Layer Dip, a southwestern favorite:  for you Yankee boys who have never tasted this crowd-pleasing Tex-Mex dish, you lay hamburger browned with taco seasoning in the bottom of a dish, and top successively with refried beans, fresh guacamole salad you made yourself that day, sour cream mixed some more of the taco seasoning, shredded cheese of your choice, pico de gallo (chopped tomatoes, onions, and jalapenos), more shredded cheese, diced tomatoes, and decorate with some tortilla crisps to give it flair.  I know that doesn't add up to 7 layers, but who's counting?  Just shut up and eat - you ain't never had nothin' this good in your mouth.  I tell you what.

M.P.'s mouthwatering, OMG-I-can't-stop-eating, homemade Cajun jambalaya.  Which is nothing like the nasty, vinegary, inedible crap you get in restaurants, even in New Orleans.

M.P.'s signature variation on the traditional meal is Porkchops Jambalaya - here instead of whole chops, he's cut some pork loin in small pieces and cooked them in a special sauce nice and slow.  So damn good, it will make you want to slap somebody, boys, I guaran-damn-tee it.

Although M.P. is a lapsed Catholic and your Head Trucker is an Episcopalian-on-hold, we decided just for the sake of tradition to observe the first Friday of Lent with a fish dinner. From about 8 o'clock, going clockwise, you see M.P.'s wonderful breaded tilapia, moist, flaky, and done to a turn, all crisp and crunchy on the outside; also M.P.'s incredibly tender and yummy french fries, carefully deep fried; baked beans, the canned variety - my humble contribution - and fresh young asparagus with M.P.'s divine Hollandaise sauce.  
If you don't think this was some sure-nuff good eatin', boys, you ain't never had any.

It wouldn't be Mardi Gras without a King Cake, you know.  M.P. made one from scrach, bien sûr. Lovely.

Of course we washed all the good food down with a celebratory bottle of champagne, as well as our favorite White Zin, and also beer, Diet Coke, and cowboy coffee with our dessert - sugared strawberries over shortcake with vanilla ice cream and a dollop of Cool Whip too - what the hell, you only live once, right fellas?  And as M.P. says, the presentation and decoration of the table is nearly as important as the food - certainly it makes the meal memorable and twice as nice.  So all in all, we had a great time - sorry you boys couldn't be there, you would have enjoyed it too.

P.S. - Be sure to check out M.P.'s latest post on foods and cookery for the season of Lent, over on Phood Filosophie.

Marriage News Watch, 3/10/14

Delayed a day because Matt spoke at SXSW in Austin yesterday.




And here's the link to the Washington Post/ABC News poll Matt mentioned.

Jump-start for Spring

A charming little segment from yesterday's CBS Sunday Morning show, featuring cardinals and woodpeckers in York County, Pennsylvania.  I hope they succeed - I'm really tired of the cold weather now.

Fired for Being Gay

One day closeted gay Utahn Justin Utley got word at work that his partner had died. The next day, his boss, who had been monitoring his emails, fired him for being gay - which is perfectly legal in that state.

Last month, Justin and other LGBT Utahns got to share their stories with state legislators in an historic committee meeting at the state capitol. Here's Justin pleading for equal rights for gay and transgender people in the Beehive State:

Sunday Drive: Heart Still/Beating

Mardi Gras in New Orleans

Poster for the Krewe of Petronius, founded 1961,
the oldest gay krewe in town - or in the world, for that matter.

Boys, you just haven't lived till you've been to New Orleans. I tell you what.

An excerpt from a National Geographic special on Fat Tuesday in the Crescent City:




And here's an excerpt from another film - pay attention to the priest in this one. He's got the true N'awlins accent, which is not at all like what you Yankee boys think a Southern accent is - much more similar to a Brooklyn accent.




And this excerpt from The Sons of Tennessee Williams gives you an idea of how gay krewes got started, and were part of the nascent gay rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s.  The whole documentary is available on Netflix.

Marriage News Watch, 3/3/14

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:




And via Equality on Trial, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll of 1,644 adults finds a majority in favor of marriage equality, 56-39:

Click to enlarge.

First U.S. Military Drag Show a Big Hit

Can you fucking believe this?

Stars and Stripes, the official newspaper of the United States Armed Forces, reports:

KADENA AIR BASE, Okinawa — Since the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, U.S. military bases have hosted gay marriage ceremonies and potluck gatherings. But on Saturday, servicemembers here may have been the first to take to the stage and perform as drag queens on a military installation in support of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender troops.

Drag queens and drag kings, to be precise. Six servicemembers — gay, lesbian and straight — donned heavy makeup to dance and lip sync songs such as “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” for a raucous capacity crowd at the Rocker NCO Club at Kadena Air Base. The event was a fundraiser for the recently formed Okinawa chapter of OutServe-SLDN, which is the largest nonprofit advocate for the military’s LGBT community.

“We didn’t think there was much of a desire for an event like this on the island but it has actually blown up,” said Navy Lt. Marissa Greene, co-chapter leader of OutServe Okinawa.

Greene said she had hoped to sell about 75 tickets to fund some future support activities for the group, which was formed last summer and still “starting from scratch.” The event was approved as a “variety show” by Kadena’s 18th Wing through the same process as other on-base fundraisers. But an initial 200 tickets were plucked up almost immediately, so they issued another 200. “We ended up selling 400 tickets in 10 days,” she said. . . .

It is also a sign of the times within the military; just a few years ago, gay and lesbian drag performances on a military base would have been unthinkable and potentially a cause for dismissal from the service. . . .

The advocacy group agreed to avoid using the term “drag show” as part of its on-base fundraiser effort. Tech. Sgt. Kristen Baker, who was among the crowd, said the show got a warm reception and would leave a mark for civil rights.

“Everything is just accepted. It makes me really proud to watch it,” Baker said. In the military, “we are all brothers and sisters no matter what.”

It wasn't very long ago you could get beaten to death by your military comrades if they thought you were gay.  My God, how times have changed.




Actually, I should rework my title: this is simply the first drag show with openly gay and lesbian entertainers. Drag shows are nothing new in the U.S. military, as witness this pic, and a film from a 1941 show at Fort Slocum, New York: