Starbroken

Tag: recipe

  • There Are Four Lights

    There Are Four Lights

    (And a recipe for mushroom turnovers)

    (Click here to skip to the recipe for my great-grandma’s mushroom turnovers.)

    So I’ve been thinking about Trump’s anti-transgender executive orders recently. Specifically, that first one, the one where he purports to define sex in terms that sort every human being into one, and only one, of two distinct and immutable sexes. It’s a template that’s played out more or less the same way in state houses across the country; the language differs from instance to instance, but the concept is the same. “There are only two sexes,” these policies, bills, and orders scream out at us, “and you can’t change yours.”

    They’re wrong, of course. We know full well – because we’ve had a long time and dedicated scientists – that sex is neither binary nor immutable. The people writing these screeds know it, too. If sex were immutable, they wouldn’t have to try so hard to stop people from changing their sex; if it were a natural binary, they wouldn’t have to add carve-outs in all their bills banning sex-altering surgical procedures for children to say “it’s totally okay if the surgery is to take an intersex infant” – though they wouldn’t use that term – “and make their sex binary.” These people aren’t making definitions; they’re making demands.

    To be clear, if you’re not incarcerated, the government can’t physically stop you from changing your sex. It’s an incredibly simple and easy thing to do, physically speaking – something which terrifies right-wing operatives. All you have to do is rub a bit of the right gel on your skin on a regular basis, and you’ll find your sex changing. Some of these gels are unlawful to obtain or possess. Some aren’t. None of them are hard to obtain or possess, if you go looking. Even if the government were to successfully make it illegal to change your sex – an unlikely proposition short of complete Constitutional collapse – they couldn’t physically stop you. But they’re not trying to physically stop you.

    All the terrifying things Musk and his lackeys are doing to the government, all the policies Musk’s number one ventriloquist dummy Trump are trying to enforce, they all boil down to the same principle. These fascist goons want you to ignore reality, ignore truth, ignore learning and research, and pretend the world is what they say it is. From their stances on trans rights to their foreign policy to the way they’re constantly lying about what it is that the college fucking freshmen of DOGE are doing to the payments system of the US fucking Treasury, they want you to ignore the real world and act like you live in the world they want.

    In their world, you’re powerless to do aught but obey. There are two sexes, and one of them is better than the other. No, you’re not allowed to pick which one to be, are you some kind of communist? In their world, the only thing that matters is the power to do violence. From God down to the President down to the cops down to the man of your household down to his submissive, feminine, stay-at-home wife, to their beautiful, white, abused children, the only things that matter are power, submission, and punishment.

    I know because I grew up in that world. Anywhere from a tenth to a full fifth of the American population grows up in that world: the world of evangelical Christianity. I won’t get into the history of evangelicalism here, nor will I get into the specifics of the things evangelicals believe. Because the thing that matters most is their tactics.

    It starts with controlling information. The false reality of the right is jerry-rigged and inconsistent, so if people get even a whiff of the real world, they start to see how the false one’s coming apart at the seams. In evangelical households, this takes many forms. A ban from TV or movies, for example – explicit Christian propaganda excluded, of course. Strict parental controls on any Internet access, not to filter out pornography, but to filter out *science.* An insistence that their children shouldn’t visit the library unsupervised, and that the parents should read every book the child wants to check out, cover to cover, to ensure it doesn’t contain any unauthorized thoughts or ideas.

    Music? Art? Absolutely not. These things bare the depths of a person’s soul; these sorts of evangelicals will avoid any music or art that isn’t explicitly Christian in nature.

    Public schools teach things like evolution, and more insidiously, the idea that government should be secular. And worse, public schools are open to immigrants and queers and black people. No, best to send the kids to a private, Christian school with strict anti-queer policies and tuition fees high enough that most immigrants and people of color are excluded. The attitudes of the staff will be enough to exclude the rest.

    If these sorts of evangelical parents are doing their job right, from birth until college and even afterward, their child will never leave the bubble of false reality that’s been painstakingly held up around them. And these are the tactics that the Musk/Trump administration wants to implement in our society at large, by making their demands in the form of policy statements.

    “There are only two sexes, and you can’t change yours!” “Diversity is racism!” “The government has been persecuting Christians, and we’re going to put a stop to that!” “Canada would be better off as the 51st state!” “We’ll own Gaza!” “The Panama Canal belongs to us!”

    It is the hope of the Musk/Trump administration that if they lie often enough, loudly enough, forcefully enough, if they threaten enough journalists who call them out on their lies, they can build a world where their lies are true. Well, not true true, but close enough for government work.

    In a particularly poignant episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation, Captain Picard of the Enterprise is captured by the fascist Cardassian regime. His jailers torture him brutally for information, but he doesn’t talk. Eventually, the Cardassian in charge of Picard’s interrogation hits upon a new technique. He shows Picard four bright lights, then tells him there are five. When Picard insists there are only four, the Cardassian tortures him again. This goes on for some time, with the Cardassian offering Picard comfort and safety if he would only agree that there are, in fact, five lights.

    It almost works. Just before Picard breaks and tells his torturer that there are five lights, another Cardassian arrives and sets him free. His crew have come to rescue him. On his way out, weary and broken down, he shouts at his jailer: “There are four lights!”

    When he’s recovering on his own ship, he later admits that by the end, he was starting to be able to see that fifth light.

    The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – signed by almost every country on Earth, America included – states: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” If you haven’t ever read the UDHR – and if you’re an American, there’s a decent chance you haven’t – you can find it here, at the United Nations’ website. It’s one of the more inspiring documents I’ve ever read.

    It starts from the premise that all human beings are inherently free and equal, in a way that the United States likes to pretend it did. And it starts from that premise because it’s the truth. To be human is to be free, and to be free is to be equal. If you put human beings under oppression, inequality, or tyranny, it is our nature to rebel and resist. Maybe successfully, maybe not. But rebellion and resistance will happen.

    The Musk/Trump administration wants a world in which people are born to obey or to be obeyed, and they’re willing to pretend very loudly that we all live in that world. Their hope is that if they’re loud enough, they can drown out the most fundamental truth of human society: You’re a human being, damn it. And you were born free, and you were born equal to every other human being on Earth. Your body belongs to you, and you can do with it what you please, providing it harms no one else. You can build friendships with other people, people that are like you and people that aren’t, if you want to. You can create community together with people from all walks of life, from all corners of the Earth, with different languages and ideas and philosophy and music and art and food – and the diversity of perspectives and ideas will make this community better and stronger and more free.

    Your government can form meaningful relationships with other governments, your community can form alliances and friendships with other communities, crossing lines both geographic and linguistic – and this will make your country better, stronger, and more free.

    You can hold a deep, meaningful, powerful faith and hang onto your freedom and rights as a human being at the same time, because these things aren’t opposites. You can let people live in the places they’re from, and you can let them live in the places they want to go. You can help them defend themselves against terror and tyranny, dehumanization and erasure, and everyone involved will be the better for it.

    You can reach out to others with open hands of friendship, not closed hands wrapped around the grip of a gun, and you’ll be better for it.

    Compassion, love, peace, justice, friendship, and yes, freedom – these things aren’t weaknesses. They’re strengths.

    There are four lights.

    The Musk/Trump administration will get louder, more forceful, and more violent about their bullshit. Most media platforms, being owned by billionaire oligarchs, will cave and start pretending that the false reality painted by the right-wing is the real world, and that the siren song of liberty doesn’t beat in every human heart. The government will attempt to paint those of us who believe in freedom, equality, and dignity as crazies. Extremists, perhaps, or radicals.

    It’s not extremist, not radical, not even unusual to see four lights when the regime insists there are five.

    We’re at a turning point in America. As unelected shadow president Elon Musk would put it, a fork in the road. On one path that lies ahead of us, we don’t fight back against right-wing narratives. We try to carve out little niches for ourselves in the society of power and violence they’re trying to build; we fight for our rights, but on the fascists’ terms and on their turf. And we lose.

    On the other path ahead, we start from the bottom up. We start by proclaiming from the rooftops to the streets, by shouting from the mountains to the valleys: We’re human beings, damn it, and we are free. We build our politics and our communities around freedom and equality, we let people choose for themselves what to believe and where to go and what to think and say and do and be. And when would-be tyrants try to keep us from our freedom, we hang onto every last inch of it, with every means at our disposal. We fight tooth and nail, we salt the fields behind us. Because to be human is to be free, and I’ll die before I let anyone take that away from me.

    And I hope to God you’re with me.

    Great-Grandma Lehmann’s Mushroom Turnovers

    Ingredients (makes 25 turnovers)

    • 1/2 cup margarine
    • 8 ounces plain cream cheese
    • 1 1/2 cups flour
    • 1/4 cup water
    • 1/2 pound white button mushrooms, minced
    • 1 large onion, minced
    • 2 tsp chicken stock
    • 3 tbsp butter
    • 1/2 tsp thyme
    • 1 tsp salt
    • 1/4 cup sour cream
    • 2 tablespoons additional flour
    • 2 eggs

    Directions

    1. Mix the margarine, cream cheese, and water together, then add the quarter cup of flour. Mix by hand and form the mixture into a ball. Refrigerate for at least an hour, preferably overnight.
    2. Over medium heat, sautee the mushrooms and the onions in the butter. Add the thyme, salt, sour cream, chicken stock, and the 2 tablespoons of additional flour. Mix well.
    3. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
    4. Crack the eggs into a small mixing bowl and whisk them until they’re a nice smooth, consistent liquid.
    5. Take the ball of dough you made in step 1 and roll it out flat. Cut it into circles about two and a half inches in diameter. Place a teaspoon of the filling you made in step 2 into the middle of each of the circles of dough, then fold the dough circle over the filling to make a half-moon shape. Press the edges together with a fork to seal them.
    6. Arrange the turnovers you made in step 5 on a standard baking sheet; use a sheet of parchment paper to keep them from sticking to the baking sheet. Poke holes in the turnovers to let steam escape, and with a basting brush, give them a light coating of the beaten eggs from step 4.
    7. Bake the turnovers for 12 to 15 minutes, until they’re a nice golden brown.
    8. Enjoy!

    (Click here to jump back to the blog post.)

  • The Peace of the Justice

    (Click here to skip to my recipe for Starbreaker’s Southwest Spicy Sunrise Surprise.)

    This post was written – and rewritten a few times – before the new year, so forgive the slight discrepancy in dates within. Thanks!

    There’s a palpable sense in my circles right now that justice is dead. On Bluesky, in the streets of the very liberal city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in other places not dominated by the right, there’s an air of tragedy and grief. Trump’s election is a part of it, sure. He very obviously tried to stage a coup d’etat against America, then got re-elected America’s president anyway. He’s openly promised he’ll use our country’s legal system as a weapon against the people he despises. Immigrants, journalists, Democratic politicians. President Biden’s rumored to be mulling over the concept of preemptively pardoning federal employees to save them from Trumpian witch hunts come January, a sentence which sounds absurd.

    And the CEO of America’s most notorious health insurer was gunned down in the streets in New York. That happened, too.

    The mood after that particular event has been… enlightening. I don’t know a single person who has more sympathy for UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson than they do for the gunman. Corporate executives broadly are in something of a panic, while average joes across the country have takes ranging from “It’s about time.” to “That’s not justice, but I can’t feel sorry for the man.”

    It’s clear that something has died this year in America. But anyone who’s bothered studying a less propagandistic version of American history than most high-school textbooks will give you knows that justice died here long, long ago. From the Three-fifths Compromise to the War on Drugs, from the Trail of Tears to Vietnam, America has never truly had justice. Not for everyone, at least.

    The thing that’s died in America is the peace.

    Not “peace” generally, the peace. If you’re familiar with the peace at all, it’s probably from such classic phrases as “disturbing the peace” and “justice of the peace.” Of course, those phrases are rarer than they used to be. A lot of things that used to be “disturbing the peace” are now specifc offenses under state and local codes, when they’re not just… constitutionally protected speech, and most American states haven’t had justices of the peace for decades. So, if you’re not familiar with the peace, let me give you a refresher.

    The peace is a legal concept in America that predates the Constitution. It was brought over with the first colonists, along with the rest of England’s common law. From the legal system’s perspective, it just means what’s happening when nobody’s breaking the law. It’s the status quo ante, the way things are supposed to be. The charge of “disturbing the peace” can be anything from playing your music too loudly to just… daring to protest in public. Now, sure, the latter charge would probably get thrown out by any halfway-competent judge, but the point is that the peace, from a legal perspective, means whatever the people enforcing the law consider to be the default state of affairs. If you punch a cop, you’re disturbing the peace. If the cop punches you, definitionally, he isn’t.

    The thing is, the legal perspective is only part of it. The definition of peace used for the legal concept of the peace isn’t the same one used in “peace and quiet.” It’s the one used in “war and peace.” The English concept we imported, “the king’s peace,” had a specific alternative: bloody, feudal war. The king’s peace was a specific way of running society. If you, some noble asshole, had a disagreement with some other noble asshole, you didn’t call up your levies, ruin your harvests, and tear up all the land between your pretentious castles. Instead, you petitioned the king’s justice. The king would make a choice, tell you who owed who what restitution, and there wouldn’t be war.

    Crucially, the king’s peace wasn’t a guarantee. It was only ever as good as the king’s justice – or rather, the perception of the king’s justice. As long as people could reasonably presume that their grievances would be redressed by the king, they wouldn’t try to break the peace. Of course, it was also feudalism, so the requisite backstabbing and complete disregard for anyone who didn’t descend from some storied line of nobility was threaded throughout the whole thing, but by the time it got imported to America, it had mostly reached its final form, the one we have today.

    The peace in America is backed by the same thing that the peace in feudal England was: the perception of justice. As long as the majority of the people with power – and remember, in America, that technically means anyone who votes regularly – believe that the legal system will adequately redress their grievances, they don’t try to take those grievances into their own hands. Now, like I said, justice in America has never existed for all Americans. But most Americans have, until quite recently, believed it did. It’s even the end of our absurd pledge of allegiance we make the schoolchildren swear daily – “justice for all.”

    Whether you believe that Donald Trump tried to overthrow the United States of America and largely got away with it (He did.) or that nefarious anti-white forces stole the 2020 election from him (They didn’t.), you’re probably pretty convinced that the legal system in America is being used as a cudgel to oppress people, rather than actually providing justice. (It is.) And frankly, in a country with America’s alarming rates of gun ownership, I’m surprised we haven’t seen more assassinations sooner. There were two attempts on Trump’s life during his campaign this year, a frankly insane number of attempted assassinations of a presidential candidate. The assassination of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare has created, whether deservedly or not, a new folk hero for a huge number of Americans.

    The king’s peace isn’t the only way to live. The alternatives are a lot worse, of course; nobody wants to have their villages reduced to rubble and bloody mud. But those alternatives exist. In a feudal monarchy, the person on the throne is always deeply aware that those alternatives exist, and if they’re a competent ruler, they’ll do their best to make sure nobody ever considers them. Here in America, it’s safe to say that many people had forgotten. I don’t think anyone’s forgotten now.

    And with Donald Trump at the reins, there’s no chance we get the peace back the way we had it. Justice will be a joke fairly soon, even for the people who’ve been protected by our travesty of a legal system for decades. So what can we do? Is American society doomed to fall apart into a violent free-for-all?

    Well, no.

    To have a peace, we do need a justice. But there’s no reason the justice has to come from the President’s men. There’s no reason “making our own justice” has to mean violence. It can just as easily mean finding trusted members of our communities – our neighborhoods, our friend groups, our towns and schools and workplaces – and having them mediate. As a Christian, I know for a fact that my God wants Their followers to be peacemakers; I also know that many other religions and faiths have similar attitudes. There are a lot of people in this country that could be called upon to mediate, to make local, homegrown justice. And that justice will bring local, homegrown peace.

    Neighborhood peace won’t bind the rich and powerful, unless they choose to let it. But that’s the thing with the coin that is justice and the peace: you can’t have just one side of it. If we’re to have a peace, we must have a justice. That which protects must also bind. As the peace in America continues to fall apart, that realization will come to the people in power eventually. It always does.

    I genuinely hope that this is as bad as it gets, that there’s a great lightbulb moment in every C-suite and every Congressional office before some other grief-stricken American with a gun or a truck or a knife or a decent grade in high-school chemistry does something stupid. I wish that I could have enough faith in the people of America to believe that it won’t get worse.

    (January edit: 2025 started off with a politically motivated mass murder in New Orleans, a politically motivated suicide in Vegas, and the largest confiscation of homemade explosives ever by the FBI in Virginia. It’s looking like a lot of people with guns, trucks, and/or decent grades in high-school chemistry are going to do stupid things this year, and I hate it.)

    I don’t have that much faith in us. I think it’ll get much, much worse before it gets better.

    When it does, remember this and remind the people in your life: There’s an alternative to all that chaos. People can be part of the peace, if they choose to be part of the justice.

    Starbreaker’s Southwest Spicy Sunrise Surprise (a macaroni salad to wow the midwestern neighbors)

    Ingredients

    • 1 box elbow noodles
    • Mayonnaise
    • Yellow mustard
    • 1 can chipotles in adobo sauce
    • 1 can green chiles
    • 3 eggs
    • 6 ounces shredded four-cheese Mexican blend
    • 6 strips of bacon, thick-cut
    • 2 jalapenos
    • 3/4 teaspoon smoked paprika
    • 1/2 teaspoon granulated onion
    • 1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic
    • 3 reasonably sized scallions

    Directions

    First, cook the elbow noodles following the manufacturer’s instructions, then after draining them, place them in a large mixing bowl. Fill the pot you used to boil the noodles with enough water to completely cover the eggs, and bring the water to a boil again. Once it’s boiling, add the eggs and let them boil for 12 to 15 minutes.

    While the eggs are boiling, open the can of chipotles and remove the chipotles themselves. Pour the excess adobo sauce into the mixing bowl with the pasta. On a flexible cutting board, dice the chipotles into pieces no larger than 1/4 inch on a side, then scrape them and the excess sauce this cutting will make into the mixing bowl with the rest. Stir the mixture.

    Slice your jalapeno peppers in half lengthwise and remove the inner ribs of the pepper, taking care to not leave too many seeds in the pepper, then dice them to 1/4 inch pieces like the chipotles. Add these to the mixture.

    Open your can of green chiles and add them to the mixture as well. Give the mixture another good stir.

    Cook the strips of bacon in a frying pan; you want the bacon cooked, but not crispy. When it’s ready, chop it into pieces 1/4 inch on a side, then add those to the mixture as well.

    When the eggs are finished boiling, peel them, slice them in half, and pop the yolks out into a large (gallon sized) Ziploc bag. Take the whites and dice them up into pieces, you guessed it, about 1/4 inch in size. Add them to the mixture along with the shredded cheese, the garlic, the granulated onion, and the smoked paprika. Stir vigorously.

    Take your mayonnaise and mustard and add them to the Ziploc bag. The amounts aren’t precise, as we’ll be adding this mixture to taste in a moment, but you want a ratio of about 2 parts mayo to 1 part mustard. Once the yolks, mayo, and mustard are all in the bag together, bleed the air out of the bag and seal it.

    Using your hands, squish and mash the bag until its contents are well-mixed. It doesn’t have to be precise; a few chunks of yolk are okay. When you’re satisfied with the mixture, cut a corner off the bag (about 1/4 inch from the corner itself) and start adding it to the main mixture in the bowl.

    Stir the mixture while you add the mayo-mustard-egg yolk mix, and stop adding the mix when the mixture reaches your desired level of wetness. (I like my macaroni salads to have a good amount of mayo, but tastes vary on this matter.)

    Cover the large mixing bowl and refrigerate overnight.

    When serving the macaroni salad, take a clean pair of scissors and cut a few 1/4 inch pieces of scallion over each serving for a bit of visual – and textural – flair.

    (Click here to go back to the blog post.)

  • I’m Not Just Like You; You’re Just Like Me

    (and a tofu banh mi you can be proud of)

    (Because I’m not an asshole, you can click here to go straight to the recipe.)

    It’s the best of times; it’s the worst of times.

    For trans people, I mean. We’re in this crucial cultural moment where trans people’s existence is well and truly out of the bag, where in some places, transitioning is easier and arguably safer than it’s ever been before. And in other places, we’re being repressed.

    At the same time as trans people are finding their way onto the silver screen and into the halls of Congress, laws are being proposed and passed all over the country at a state level (and soon at a national level, with a Republican-led Congress) that aim to erase our existence from public life, force us back into our closets, or worse: “eradicate transgenderism” entirely.

    It won’t work, of course; this particular bit of toothpaste can’t go back into its tube. But that won’t stop transphobes from trying, and it certainly won’t stop them from wreaking incredible collateral damage along the way. The Democratic Party may choose to throw us trans people under their campaign buses, or it may not. It’s too early to tell (even if some results are encouraging).

    Many trans people are trying to defend themselves against this outpouring of hate by doing the same thing they did before. “We’re just like you,” they’ll say. “We’re normal, we can fit in, we promise we’re not weird or gross. We’re not like those trans people. We’re the good ones.” The few cisgender people that do defend us in the media tend to use the same narrative – trans people just want to live our normal American lives.

    They’re wrong.

    Trans people are to normalcy what vampires or Jehovah’s Witnesses are to your home: we can’t enter without permission, and you can revoke your invitation at any time.

    There’s a trick to being invited into normalcy, and it’s one some trans people have down to an art. Just don’t look or act transgender. If a trans person transitions early enough, happens to be good-looking, or has enough money to afford surgical intervention, they can look like a cisgender person. If they train themselves well enough, they can act like a cis person. Mostly.

    Of course, doing that takes a toll on a person. Hiding yourself like that is a source of constant tension, constant stress. Always worrying that your secret will be found out – and boy howdy, are people looking these days. But it can work. A trans person can be invited into normalcy if nobody knows they’re trans.

    For the rest of us, fitting into cisgender society is a precarious proposition. Maybe we’re too tall, or too short. Too fat, too skinny, too curvy, too angular. Maybe our voices are too deep, or too high. Maybe we don’t like the ways we’d have to dress, act, and speak in order to fit in. Or maybe we’re just sick and tired of being tentatively invited into normalcy for the hundredth time only to be thrown back out again.

    The truth is, most of us aren’t just like you. If we were, transphobes wouldn’t be fighting tooth and nail to stop you from knowing about us. They wouldn’t be banning our stories from library shelves, overriding the consensus of every reputable medical organization to ban trans healthcare, stripping us of our ability to have paperwork with our real name and gender. The Republicans and evangelicals, the right-wingers and TERFs, they’re genuinely convinced that trans people pose a danger.

    And they’re sort of right. We do represent a dangerous truth. Because while we might not be just like you, you’re a hell of a lot more like us than you think.

    The feeling of incongruity and wrongness that – in trans people – is called “gender dysphoria”? You’ve felt it too, I’d wager. Every time a man is bullied for his interests not being “manly enough”, every time a woman looks in the mirror, her standards set by Photoshop and Hollywood, and finds herself ugly, they feel it.

    The same surgery that right-wing politicians are tripping over themselves to ban for young trans men – mastectomy, the surgical removal of unwanted breasts – is something that’s not all that infrequent in young cis men. In fact, the vast majority of double mastectomy patients under 18 are cis boys.

    Gynecomastia – breast development in males – is hardly the norm, but it’s not uncommon, and many men who develop breasts do end up having medical intervention. It’s only a problem when it’s trans men that want that intervention, though.

    Hormone replacement therapy is incredibly common among cisgender people. Many men report a variety of symptoms, both psychological and physical, when they have low testosterone levels. Postmenopausal women have their own list of symptoms stemming from a lack of estrogen – and you’d be stunned to hear how many of those match my own symptoms precisely, when I’m low on estrogen.

    One of the things that occasionally rends my soul with grief is that I’ll never be able to bear children. My body can’t do it. And some of the people who’ve shared that feeling with me most, who I’ve bonded with over that pain? I’m the only trans person they’ve ever known. A lot of cisgender women who can’t have children for medical reasons feel those feelings.

    Hormones, surgery, not being able to fulfill one of the roles in the American nuclear family as my parents no doubt intended: these things aren’t just trans experiences. They’re not normal experiences, but you don’t have to be trans to have them. Trans people’s problems are your problems too, because you’re just like us.

    I’ve stopped asking to be let across the threshold of normalcy; it’s not a place I’ll ever be able to stay. But I do knock on the door occasionally. Not to be let in, but to invite people out into the weird world I inhabit. There are wonders out here beyond belief, and there’s family, love, and acceptance too. You’d be surprised how much you belong out here in the transgender wildlands, whether you’ve ever questioned your gender or not.

    I’m not just like you. You’re just like me.

    Tofu Banh Mi

    Ingredients:

    • One pound of extra-firm tofu
    • White vinegar (at least 3 cups)
    • Kosher salt
    • Granulated sugar
    • 1 medium-sized cucumber
    • 1 medium-sized carrot
    • Either one daikon (a large Japanese radish) or 4 regular red radishes
    • 3 tablespoons sesame oil
    • 1/2 tablespoon ground ginger
    • 1/2 tablespoon ground garlic
    • 1 cup soy sauce
    • 1/2 teaspoon sesame seeds
    • The juice of 1 lime
    • A baguette, as fresh as you can get it
    • Mayonnaise
    • Sriracha sauce
    • 1 bunch cilantro

    Preparation:

    The night before you intend to serve the banh mi, set out a large Ziploc bag and a small mixing bowl. Drain the tofu thoroughly and slice it into approximately 6 slices, about half an inch thick by three and a half wide by two tall. In the Ziploc bag, pour the soy sauce, sesame oil, lime juice, sesame seeds, ground ginger, and ground garlic. Seal the bag and shake it thoroughly until the ingredients emulsify, then place the tofu slices into the bag. Ensure the tofu slices are completely submerged in the mixture, then carefully drain the air out and seal the bag again.

    Take your cucumber, slice off the ends, and slice the cucumber in half lengthwise. Remove the seeds from the center (the best way of doing this is to scoop them gently using your 1/2 teaspoon measuring spoon, but do this over your garbage can, as it’s quite messy!), then slice the remaining cucumber flesh lengthwise into strips between 1/8 and 1/4 inch wide. Chop these strips into one inch long “matchsticks”, then cut the carrot and radish (daikon or otherwise) into “matchstick”-like strips of similar size.

    Place these matchsticks into the small mixing bowl, then pour white vinegar into the bowl until the chopped veggies are completely submerged. Add a pinch each of kosher salt and granulated sugar, then stir gently and cover with cling-wrap or a lid.

    Refrigerate both the bag of marinating tofu and the bowl of pickling vegetables overnight.

    When the time comes to prepare your banh mi, slice the baguette in half lengthwise, then cut it into sections about the size of the tofu slices. Arrange the baguette slices on a baking tray.

    Take your tofu slices out of their marinade. Pan-fry them over medium heat, using a neutral oil like canola, until they have a crispy texture on one side, then flip and cook for another minute.

    Place the baking tray full of baguette slices into your oven, then use the broiler to toast them for about 3 minutes.

    When the baguette slices have been toasted, bring the pickled veggies out of the fridge.

    Cover the baguette sections with mayonnaise on both halves, and add sriracha on the half that will become the top half. Place a liberal amount of the pickled veggies onto the bottom baguette half for each sandwich, then add a slice of marinated tofu. Use one or two sprigs of cilantro to garnish, then close the sandwish.

    Serve fresh.

    (Click here to jump back up to the blog post.)

  • I’m Not Satisfied With This World

    I’m Not Satisfied With This World

    (and a recipe for breakfast burritos)

    Hi there!

    Because this is the first ever post on this blog, I feel obligated to explain what the hell I’m doing, what you can expect if you read these writings, etc., before I actually get into the post proper. So here’s the deal: I love to write. About politics, philosophy, tech, theology – I’m an eclectic kind of gal. The posts here are going to be all over the place. However, they’re all going to have at least one thing in common, because I also love to cook. At the bottom of every post, there’ll be a recipe I love making. And because I’m not an asshole, around the top of every post, there’ll be a link that lets you skip the blog post part and just get to the recipe.

    If you want to skip to the recipe for my Arapahoe County breakfast burritos, click here.

    Ever since I can remember, science fiction has had a special place in my life. When I got my first TV and VCR – an old RCA set from a literal dumpster – I watched Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan often enough that I wore out three VHS tapes of the movie. (I only went through 2 tapes of The Voyage Home, if you’re wondering.) My bookshelves have always been packed with a range of sci-fi novels, from Banks to Leckie, LeGuin to Jemisin.

    A good bit of sci-fi does something special: using an imagined future, it paints our present in new colors, exposing the cracks in our society. Not every sci-fi book, movie, or TV series has to do that, of course. For every Octavia Butler, there are a dozen Kevin Andersons. But it’s the Butlers of the world, the LeGuins, Bankses, and Leckies, that stick with you. Because the best works of science fiction don’t let you walk away unchanged.

    The anime series Mobile Suit Gundam 00 is one of those works of sci-fi that didn’t let me walk away unchanged. In the first season of Gundam 00, a group of high-tech rebels decide that war and armed conflict aren’t allowed on Earth anymore. Using their superior technology and firepower, they “intervene” in any armed conflict that starts, killing anyone on any side that doesn’t retreat and stop fighting. “Peace through overwhelming force” is an inherent contradiction, and one the series doesn’t simply ignore as the plot barrels forward.

    In the climactic battle that concludes the first season of the show, Gundam 00‘s protagonists get what they want… sort of. The three major power blocs of Earth join forces, ending the three-way cold war that had been the status quo for years, to focus on eliminating the protagonists’ organization, Celestial Being. The Celestial Being forces lose the battle – badly. One of the four main protagonists is killed, and as he bleeds out in orbit over Earth, his last words are aimed at the planet below.

    “All you people down there, are you really satisfied with a world like this?” he asks, knowing nobody can hear him. “As for me, I hate it.”

    It’s just a couple minutes of television, but it’s stuck with me for years. Every time I see someone give up on their dream in advance, every time I hear the phrase “It is what it is,” those words come back to me. So much time and effort is spent convincing people that a better world isn’t possible – or worse, that a better world is impractical.

    In the wake of the 2024 presidential elections here in America, we’re already seeing it. Despite Kamala Harris running with Bush-era conservative talking points, despite her campaign trumpeting endorsements from Dick “literal cartoon villain” Cheney, the pundit class is already saying Harris’ campaign was too “woke”. The call is ringing out from the offices of the New York Times and from the blogs of milquetoast centrists everywhere:

    Throw queer people under the bus. Be harder on migrants. Stop banging the abortion drum so hard. Don’t call your opponents fascists. Lean right. Appeal to Republicans.

    Or, in so many words, This is the way the world is. Learn to live with it.

    Despite all the evidence showing the exact opposite, there are powerful voices trumpeting the idea that we just don’t live in a world where people want their neighbors to have human rights. That the American public, and the public of a lot of other countries, just wants cruelty, and who are we to stop them from getting it?

    The world that the “centrists” among the Democratic party and the media establishment believe in is simple: Democracy is a failed experiment, human rights are a technicality, and catastrophic climate change is inevitable. The best they can think to give us is a softer blow, a kinder suffering. A spoonful of sugar to make the hemlock go down smoothly.

    I don’t think that’s the world we live in. Truly, I don’t. But even if the sneering “anti-woke” pundits blaming Democrats’ election losses on pronouns were right, the conclusion wouldn’t be that we should just give up on trans people. Even if Democrats lost because they were too woke on the border, the conclusion wouldn’t be that we should support mass deportations.

    Even if trans rights, abortion, climate resiliency, degrowth, freedom of and from religion, and multiculturalism were losing battles – and I don’t think they are – they’d still be worth fighting for.

    I don’t know what the future looks like for America, or for trans people like myself, or for immigrants or refugees. There are a lot of battles ahead for all of us, in the courts and in the streets and in the state houses and city halls and police precincts. There’s a distinct possibility that we try our best to make a better world and fail.

    But all you people out there, are you really satisfied with a world like this?

    Personally, I hate it.

    Arapahoe County Breakfast Burritos

    Ingredients:

    • Chorizo, 8 oz
      • Important: use hard sausage chorizo, not the stuff that has a paste-like texture.
    • Shredded potatoes
      • If fresh, two medium-sized Russetts
      • If frozen, 2 cups
    • Green chiles, 1 can
    • 8-inch flour tortillas, 8
    • Large eggs, 5
    • Queso fresco, 8 oz
      • You can absolutely substitute a “Mexican 4-cheese blend” or similar.
    • Powdered onion, 1/2 tsp
    • Powdered garlic, 1/2 tsp
    • Lawry’s Seasoned Salt, 3/4 tsp
    • Black pepper, 1/4 tsp
    • Smoked paprika, 1/2 tsp
    • Curry powder, 1/4 tsp
    • Canola or peanut oil

    Directions:

    Heat up a frying pan to medium heat and add the shredded potatoes in an even layer. Add canola oil until the top of the layer of shredded potatoes barely peeks out, then season the potatoes with Lawry’s salt, black pepper, powdered onion, powdered garlic, and curry powder. Stir to ensure even spice distribution.

    Let the potatoes crisp up, about 8 minutes, then flip them and cook another 8. While the potatoes are frying, in a small bowl, crack the eggs and scramble them with a whisk until they have an even yellow coloring. Slice each link of chorizo in half, then peel the meat out of the casing. Take a knife and dice the chorizo into pieces about a quarter of an inch on each side.

    When the potatoes are cooked to a crispy dark brown color, drain the oil from the pan and pour the oil-less potatoes into a large mixing bowl.

    Keep the pan on medium and add the diced chorizo. Let it cook down for about 3 minutes, then pour in the scrambled eggs. Stir the eggs gently until they’ve cooked solid, then remove the pan from heat and pour the chorizo and egg mixture into the mixing bowl with the potatoes.

    Add the green chiles from the can, mix the contents of the bowl thoroughly, and set out your tortillas.

    In the center of each tortilla, spoon out about 1/3 cup of the burrito mixture, then sprinkle your cheese on top. Fold the sides of the tortilla in and roll, until your burrito is completely wrapped.

    This recipe typically makes between 5 and 8 burritos, each of which is a complete serving.

    Click here to jump back to the blog post.