Flavor

This isn’t about being a vegetarian, I was just reminded me of something by an article I saw online.

I had my first vegetarian meal back in the late 70s. In my perception, being a vegetarian in the 70s was not quite as big a thing as it is today, but it was a fairly widespread and popular way of life. However, there apparently had not been much in the way of work on developing vegetarian cuisine. If there was, it was a well kept secret.

Boiled vegetables – that was the dinner – boiled vegetables.

Somehow herbs were unknown to the person who cooked the meal, as was salt or the idea of roasting or sautéing. Or maybe they just preferred things that way. Maybe they saw being that type of a vegetarian as their way of doing some sort of penance; a gastronomical suffering that was good for their soul. Whatever the reason it was one of the blandest meals I have ever experienced.

Yet that meal has since been surpassed – if that is the right term – by a dish in a specific Japanese restaurant. They had a negamaki entrée, not just an appetizer. Great, I love negamaki. This was some aberrant form of negamaki and in a single bite it eclipsed the bad vegetables by being so devoid of taste that it sucked the flavor from everything else in the room and banished it down a black hole of bland inedibleness. I still rank that restaurant 11th out of the 9 Japanese restaurants I have eaten at.

In comparison the boiled vegetables were simply possessed of a poor flavor. Some form of seasoning would have helped immensely. Maybe a little butter or olive oil and some herbs. These days it seems to be more acceptable to have flavor in a vegetarian meal, which is something I heartily approve of.

We need food to nourish our bodies but we need flavor to nourish our souls. Yes, I did just say that. Food should be a pleasure. You may like mild flavors, but at least have flavor. Of course whatever your preference a meal should be enjoyable. Me, I enjoy flavor.

Tar sands

Did you know that the Keystone XL pipeline is being built by a Canadian company to ship Canadian tar sands to refineries in tax exempt zones along the Gulf Coast so that the end products can be exported out of the US and not used here?

So much for it helping the US economy and energy independence.

This does not get more oil into the US. Canadian oil production currently can’t meet the capacity of the existing pipelines into the US so this is only about making it cheaper to export tar sands oil from Canada using the US as a conduit. As a country we get all the risk and almost none of the benefit.

Unless of course you’re a corporation in the oil business, then there will be lots of profit.

Whatever temporary jobs this might create are minimal compared to what could be done putting the money into permanent sustainable energy businesses.

Further the previous health insurance post

I know that there are reports that some of those 28 states have exemptions for specific groups and easy outs for any company. That wasn’t my point.

There was no outbreak of complaint and condemnation of this level when those laws were passed. More to my point, many companies run by religious organizations already provide insurance that covers contraception. When those same groups claim that the federal law is an attack on religion and conscience that must be opposed at all costs they are being hypocrites.

They were fine with covering contraception before, those companies still provide it now, so this new outrage is a sham. These are false cries of persecution concocted for personal ideological and in some cases political reasons.

It’s a fraud.

Feigned outrage

Suddenly religious leaders are upset because federal law requires all employers who offer health insurance to their employees to include contraceptives in the coverage. But for years they remained silent even though similar laws already exist in 28 states.

The law doesn’t affect religious institutions since churches, and their employees, are exempt. Only the private businesses that a church might run and their employees are covered, just like other businesses. By next year they have to offer contraception coverage. This is not about abortion, it’s about contraception and wellness care.

Companies under the direction of those same, complaining religious leaders have been following the law and covering contraception in their employee health insurance plans for years. There was no outrage or claim of persecution before. Until now there were no complaints, no letters or sermons spreading disinformation in an effort to rally opposition to a law that does nothing more than promote women’s health. There were no objections about providing contraception coverage – they were and are providing it.

But now there are self-righteous rants about religious freedom and tolerance and ridiculous arguments about attacking religion. Suddenly, what was tolerable in some cases is intolerable in all imaginable ways and lies must be used to oppose it.

I suppose the fact that this is all happening in an election year is just a coincidence.

I really don’t think that this is anything more than petty posturing, an attempt to exert what must be perceived as dwindling authority and maybe a distraction to take peoples’ minds off of the legal problems of certain religious institutions.

It also seems to be an attractive political position to some – though many people on that side are simply making fools of themselves.

If the government said that churches could not exist and that it was illegal to express a belief in religious principles I would consider that an attack on religion.

When a religious group wants to do business as a corporation operating under and taking advantage of the laws of the United States and is therefore required to abide by all of those laws just like everyone else – that is not an attack on religion.

Uh

It occurred to me that it might appear, based on those last two posts, that I was linking my dreams to climate change. That was not my intent. After all with the dreams I'm talking about weather.

And the weather around here has been kind of cantankerous lately and far from stable.

The weather, I said the weather was cantankerous and unstable.

Dreams – the actual thing, not as in ‘hopes and …’

This doesn’t really apply or lead to anything, but…

I very often have strange dreams. They can be weird, bizarre, upsetting, distressing, funny even – the point being that when I wake up I think, ‘Boy, that was a weird dream.’.

I usually don’t remember the dreams, any part of them, for more than a few minutes. That is a good thing.

Last night I had three really weird dreams. The impression I had of them – no memory of them remember – was that they were on the high end of the weird scale. They make some of the others seem downright normal in comparison.

The level of weird seems to have been rising lately.

Is it the weather or something?

It's too darn warm

I keep hearing that no one is complaining about the warm weather - I am. Sure, it feels nice and it's comfortable outside, but this isn’t normal for this part of the world. And I say that as someone who has serious physical problems dealing with cold weather.

I have trouble breathing in cold weather - though the dry air sure is nice - and my pain levels increase dramatically, as well as the frequency of pain spikes. But, to paraphrase, this just isn't right.