America!

Picture from Facebook, story from Ricochet.

 

And:

The Burrito:  Quintessential American Food.

 

Now, I happen to agree greatly with the first, though humorously, and disagree with the second on the same grounds.

America’s food is kind of like English language.  “Ooh, that word looks good… and I like that turn of phrase… And we’ll steal this saying, but use it a bit differently… and let’s take their name for this specific group or philosophy, but broaden it out to everything like that.”

The burrito is just another example of the difference between, say, American pizza and what you’d get in Italy these days, or Chinese food (chop suey!"), or the German dishes we don’t even notice. (Dad still misses the “sausage and a bun” meals he got in Germany during Vietnam—nothing like a hot dog.)

Part of the changes are to folks’ taste, part of the changes are based on what’s around—can someone make a definite difference between the American forms of goulash, pan surprise, chop suey, and “I haven’t done shopping this week and we need to finish this stuff before it goes bad”?—and, just to make things more complicated, WE ARE NOT A PLANET OF HATS!  Dishes are different from cook to cook, let alone between families, and when you get to entirely different populations that just happen to vaguely share some culture, the type of food available and some cooking techniques.  Is a dish less “authentic” if new ingredients are introduced?  Where’s the tipping point?

 

Food isn’t a very good spot for scientific levels of precision. ^.^

Punny.

Also Geeky, but if that startles you, we clearly haven’t “met!”

The Mother Thing

This is going to meander.  It’s more of a thinking-out-loud type post than really having a specific point.  Can I call it a meditation?

So I got married.  And suddenly, like the boy thing had hit, the motherhood-thing hit.  I wanted children.

In retrospect this is vaguely puzzling.  Look, guys, I was always awkward around babies, vaguely puzzled by toddlers and often outright scared of school age mons– er… children.  So why the heck did I want kids?  Who knows?  Perhaps biological imperative.  Perhaps insanity.  I wanted eleven children.

I’ve had a mania for reading According To Hoyt for the last week or two—goodness, it’s almost like reading Chaos Manor or TOF’s Place, but more feminine in a way I can’t quite put a finger on but find highly appealing (my kind of gals!) and with WAY more folks commenting—and there are a lot of things that I have a very easy time relating to.  Not a sensation I’m accustomed to. ^.^

I’ve always understood that kids are Important, especially babies, and they need special protection—but that doesn’t mean I’m a fan of cuddling or entertaining them.  Everything you do is Important, and I didn’t know what to do, so I saw no reason to volunteer to screw up.  At the same time, I always knew I wanted a true mate and children, and knew that these weren’t contradictions; my mom was NOT the baby crazy member of her family.  Both she and my dad were thought to be “confirmed bachelors” when they met and married, ended up having the second-most kids of any of their siblings.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Thank you, moms, for all that you do.

Domestic Engineering Technician (Training Tips Part 1 of ∞)

Get some crystallized lemon. At least on Amazon it’s over-priced, but I bought mine about two years ago and use it constantly — it’s only about half gone. (Solidifies, but that’s because we live in the Soggy Blob of Seattle.  Crush the bottle once or twice and you get a few drops– and that’s all you usually need.)  
Used for everything from flavoring drinks to tenderizing meat to keeping apples and bananas from turning yucky brown.  I took the banana that Princess didn’t want to finish, put in in a bowl with a shake of lemon, a little water, the rice cereal and mashed the heck out of it.  Duchess enjoyed it, and it hasn’t turned brown and slimy. Yet.

Lemon Thyme- yes,  I have a theme showing up, unintentionally.  That said, this is a pretty dang good house plant; it smells nice, the cats haven’t eaten it in the last year or two, and Princess pulling off leaves doesn’t hurt the plant.  My next project: a mint planter.  I’ve got chocolate mint (which smells exactly like you’d expect) and I hope to find a breed of peppermint that smells right, then I’ll get some catnip so the cats gnaw on that instead of the mint, pansies and such.

Ground flax.  DarwinCatholic mentioned it in their pizza post I-don’t-know-when– along with semolina, that grainy stuff on the bottom of pizzas that greatly helps in stability– and it really does make my "dough to go on the outside of food" work better.  It wasn’t bad before, other than the pizza being soggy in the middle, but it was… really obviously home-made. I use Bob’s Red Mill because my dad liked their oatmeal at one point.

Budgeting: I’ve never had much of a problem with this, because I’m cheap as can be, but I’ve found that it’s best to grit my teeth and invest for quality in things that are used very sparingly.  They’re powerful enough to screw things up, but  the cost-per-use is tiny enough to not really matter.

Quick toddler food: keep a bulk bag of pre-cooked chicken nuggets (freezer section) around, as well as pizza sauce. (I use Alfredo by preference.)  Microwave the chicken enough to chop it– took about 30 seconds for me– take it out and microwave a serving of broccoli while you’re chopping the nuggets.  Pull out the broccoli, drain, add the chicken, microwave another 30 seconds.  Pull out again, add enough sauce to coat, add peas if you like.  Make sure the cold sauce and the peas cooled it enough for Little Miss Can Do.  Say grace, hand over the spoon, and go looking for her cup….  (I suppose you could cook heat the chicken per directions, chop, add to a cold slaw mix and add enough ranch to make it stick on a fork; add some shredded cheese, too.)

Her cup: I think I mentioned a few months back that those horrible, yuppy aimed reusable chilled drink cups are great for kids? They still are.  I advise choosing those with good straws, since that’s how my two year old keeps grabbing hers, but they work nicely.  She can even put it in the cup holder on her kid’s seat, and pull it back out– which is more than I can say for any kid’s cup. Don’t bother with the kid-sized ones, the only ones I found were destroyed by the dishwasher; if it melts from tap water, there’s an issue. (even though ours is hotter than usual)

 

And a bit of wisdom from my email:

Should I have a baby after 35?
A: No, 35 children is enough.

Q : I’m two months pregnant now. When will my baby move?
A: With any luck, right after he finishes college.

Q : What is the most reliable method to determine a baby’s sex?
A: Childbirth.

Q: My wife is five months pregnant and so moody that sometimes she’s borderline irrational.
A: So, what’s your question?

Q?: My childbirth instructor says it’s not pain I’ll feel during labor, but pressure. Is she right?
A: Yes, in the same way that a tornado might be called an air current.

Q: When is the best time to get an epidural?
A: Right after you find out you’re pregnant.

Q?: Is there any reason I have to be in the delivery room while my wife is in labor?
A: Not unless the word "alimony" means anything to you.

Q: Is there anything I should avoid while recovering from childbirth?
A: Yes, pregnancy.

Q: Do I have to have a baby shower?
A: Not if you change the baby’s diaper very quickly.

Q: Our baby was born last week. When will my wife begin to feel and act normal again?
A: When the kids are in college.

Different Views of Race

I’ve felt an urge to protect Elizabeth Warren a little bit, because I don’t have official papers to prove my Indian background, either, and I’m as Indian as she is.  Needless to say, that’s made me feel a little uncomfortable with the ribbing she’s been getting…  less uncomfortable than I am at the notion of race quotas, but a bit uncomfortable.

Then I had a bit of a revelation moment tonight—Duchess discovered red potatoes (cheaper than fresh if you get them at Cash&Carry, and pre-diced!) and thinks they’re quite nifty.  I made a crack to TrueBlue about that being proof of her being my daughter, since I’m Irish… long story short, the tradition goes that my ultimate Irish ancestor jumped off an Irish ship, so how much from-Ireland-blood we have is unsure.  It’s just… a “thing,” the way that TrueBlue makes jokes about being Sicilian. (
short version: he’s just as much Cajun, or moreso)

For us, being X group is something that’s kind of nice, but not hugely important—it’s like knowing your grandparents. (Heck, it is knowing your grandparents.  For many generations back.)

I’ve got more proof of being Indian (a picture of an umpty-grandmother with her husband, the preacher) than I do of being Irish (jack and a story), but our family acts Celtic.  It’s almost like a mini-religion, or a micro-sub-culture. (I’d put being a geek at LEAST on par…for me.  Other members of my family are pretty into it.)

I guess it’s kind of like the first wedding my uncles’ Celtic club did.  Bride and groom were “black,” going off looks and common assignments—far darker than the president, for example.  Darker than Morgan Freeman.  But the groom is a member of the club, and they were wed in kilts and… whatever the longer, girl-kilt thing is… under a giant arch of swords, to the tune of bagpipes from the Giant Piper, by a Catholic Priest. (All from memory; I was kinda small at that point.)  Didn’t really matter, at least to someone as fashion dumb as I am—I’m sure there was some fumbling to make sure that the flowers and stuff made the lady look as gorgeous as she deserved.

Being “Irish” doesn’t eat everything else.  It’s more like having green eyes than it is like having ten fingers—and I chose green carefully, because many shades of hazel are summed up as “green.”  I’ve got two different eye-colors, going from my gov’t issued ID.  Heck, my mom has the loveliest blue-shot-with-green eyes you’ve ever seen, and the DMV lists them as “hazel.”

For the record?  I don’t give two toots if the bride or groom actually had a single Germanic-area ancestor, let alone one that had lived in Celtic lands.  I care even less if it was genetically provable.

From reports, Ms Warren actually kinda cared at some point.  Heavens knows that a lot of libs care, passionately—they conflate genetics with culture. 

Booger that.

German Gold Spam

No, I don’t have anything that can live up to that title– I just loved the way it sounded.

Why, yes, I am going through the spam catcher, why do you ask? ;^)

Also, there was an automated troll comment.  That is… wow.

Self Control, Jerks and Musings

From facebook.

Came to mind for a reason I’m not going to share, but that won’t stop me from musing this little bit:
Have you ever noticed that the same folks who tear into you for the opinions you share are the same ones who don’t seem to control themselves at all?

A Real Job

….Yeah, I’m posting on that.  Some idiot talking head makes a slam at a grandmother with MS and everyone has to comment about it.  I think I have something worth saying, though, rather than just talking about it because it’s big.

I’m a stay at home mom.  A home-maker.  A house wife.

I have worked outside the home, before I got married, in a very similar field—I was a Petty Officer in the Navy, specializing in calibration. (Making sure things that measure are accurate enough.)  Before that, I was in another similar field, at least sort of—I was a ranch kid.

Perhaps some folks look at those things and are curious—what on earth is the connection between being a mother, working with cows and fixing stuff that’s used to fix planes and ships?

The hours, for one.

All of those jobs are 24/7 on-call, with holidays usually meaning that there’s more work to get done.  Cows don’t stop eating just because it’s Christmas, after all.

The job description being woefully incomplete, for another.

I was a “calibration technician,” as I described earlier.  I also did janitor work, was a security guard, maintained a half-dozen different collateral duties that included things like “mailman” and customer service.

How serious the situation is, for another.  In all of these jobs, if I screw up, a life might be lost—and it’s almost always a hurry-hurry-hurry and wait situation.  The way that if you do it for the pay, there’s a screw loose somewhere.  Probably several more, though I’ll try to avoid making jokes about uniforms.

I don’t know what other folks “hear” when I say I’m a housewife, so I’ll try to lay out what I do, trying to stick to jobs where I actually do everything a civilian counterpart would be expected to do:

Day care, house keeping, laundry lady, cook (not chef— I’m not that good), handyman, secretary, inventory management and procurement.  (explaining that last one: part of managing the house is making sure we never run out of anything, and we don’t pay too much for anything.  I just know about what the normal price is for most of the stuff we use, and I keep our chest freezer nearly full with stuff that’s on sale, be it hams for 99c or frozen veggies for a third of the normal price, knowing what brands are cheap at twice the price and which ones are over-priced if you get them free.)

After the stuff that I do, there’s the stuff we don’t do:

We don’t have to have a second car, or any of upkeep that requires. (It’s a nice-but-not-required.)

We don’t have to eat out or get takeout. (Yes, my husband brown bags it, although he does eat out to socialize sometimes.)

We don’t take days off for appointments or illness, unless TrueBlue is deathly ill.

We don’t fight over who cleans the house.  (unless I need help moving stuff)

We don’t need daycare.

We don’t fight about yard work. (Unless I need Big Strong man to move things or kill a spider)

We don’t fight over laundry and such, or pay to have clothes cleaned.

We don’t have to worry about our kids getting “quality time.”  They get all kinds of quantity time—which also lets us have mom-and-dad time without as much guilt. (Hey, rule #1 of parenting—you will probably find a dozen things to feel guilty about before breakfast.  Not counting breakfast itself.)

We don’t have nearly the stress that double income families seem to have—when TrueBlue gets home, I can give him time to decompress; when I’ve had a horrible day, it’s horrible in different way than he’s had, so my venting doesn’t add to his work related stress.  (Digression: ever notice folks that complain about stay-at-home only talking about kids only want to talk about the office?)

I didn’t take six months off from work to give birth and bond.

K, you’ve made it this far.  Notice something missing?

I didn’t make any judgments about moms who get paychecks.

I bet I still get at least one comment from someone that claims I did, though.  There’s a LOT of guilt tied up in the topic—I’d guess it has to do with the BS we’re told about being able to do everything and do it well.  Every mom I know that doesn’t have a full time paid job sometimes feels guilty about it; every mom I know that spends any time focused on anything that isn’t the kids feels guilty about it.  “Why” is a psychology type question I don’t care to look at too closely, since it’s broad enough to say more about the questioner than the topic.

Being a house wife is a job.  The lack of a paycheck doesn’t change that in the least.  I suspect that if someone looked at the background and prior statements of the woman that started this whole kerfluffle, you’d find a lot of things that are a rejection of her notion of The Way Things Were as represented in the form of whatever she’s rejecting.  Think something like the famous line about hating what they think the Church is about, rather than what the Church actually is.

Something To Talk About

Did anyone else here read that old defense of The Empire from Star Wars, written long before the new movies came out, best summed up as “great, they killed the Emperor. Hello, power vacuum– who’s going to pay the police now? Who’s going to be in charge, the Hutts?”

In keeping with the season, I offer this from NRO:
Scrooge: The First 1 Percenter.

A sample:

Either way, such actions are not really going to do much to improve the human condition. I contend that Scrooge, before he became “enlightened,” was already doing more to help his fellow man than any of the other main characters we meet in A Christmas Carol. Moreover, by giving away a substantial portion of his accumulated fortune, he drastically reduced his ability to do even more good in the world.
Scrooge was a “man of business” and evidently a shrewd and successful one. Although Dickens fails to tell us exactly what line of business Scrooge is in, a typical 19th-century “man of business” could be expected to involve himself in many endeavors — what investment advisers today refer to as diversifying one’s risk. One can infer from A Christmas Carol that Scrooge was a financier, who lent money to both businesses and individuals. He also spent long hours at the Exchange, probably speculating on commodities, buying and selling government debt, and purchasing and selling shares in various joint stock companies.

We can also infer some things about Scrooge that Dickens does not tell us directly. He left boarding school early, supposedly because his father had a change of heart toward him and wanted him home. A lack of finances may also have had something to do with it, as Scrooge’s formal education ended early and he was apprenticed as a low-level clerk to a tradesman — Mr. Fezziwig. From this low start, Scrooge exhibited a relentless drive that eventually made him rich. Along the way, his business had to survive the Napoleonic Wars, adapt to the Industrial Revolution, and fight its way through several severe economic depressions. In fact, in the year A Christmas Carol was written (1843), Britain was just coming out of a five-year economic slowdown in which only the most nimble and carefully managed enterprises survived. During Scrooge’s business life, upwards of 100 businesses failed for every one that succeeded. Scrooge must have been a very good businessman indeed.

In a nutshell, he argues that it’s a bad thing in the long run that Scrooge ended his prior ways and turned to being generous; I don’t know if I’ve ever even read the actual story, but I recall that almost everyone tells me the Muppet Christmas Carol is accurate, and I could built a refutation of the article from that; when I originally read the Star Wars one, I couldn’t– I just knew it was somehow wrong.

I already cheated and read the comments, but would anyone like to build a counter-argument here? (I do suggest reading the comments… at least, the ones that I saw so far….)

This could be a good conversation starter around the Christmas table– hopefully a safe one, too, if you keep it light!

Pop vs Popular

This is spoiler-free, for two reasons: one, I haven’t seen an episode of Mad Men, and two, I don’t want to spend an hour trying to figure out episodes and times for story points in NCIS.

From Ricochet guest writer, Richard Rushfield.

Next March, AMC’s Mad Men will return to the airwaves after a year and a half absence. It’s return will be treated as the most significant cultural event of the year. Its stars will blanket the covers of our glossy magazines. Articles will be written in the New York Times and our most elite literary journals dissecting the show’s meaning. Banana Republic will promote its high end Mad Men line.

Mad Men at its height was watched by 2.9 million viewers. In contrast, CBS’ military police procedural drama NCIS last week was seen by 19.7 million viewers. As far as I can tell, NCIS has never been featured on the cover of any major American magazine apart from TV Guide and one issue of Inland Empire, the magazine of California’s suburban Riverside and San Bernadino counties.

First, let me say– as polished and stylish as the guys in Mad Men look, let alone the lovely lady, I gotta prefer Gibbs and co. It’s nice to hear that there’s a decent number of my fellow Americans who are likewise getting their dose. ;^)

This is not to say that NCIS is more deserving of a magazine cover than Mad Men, or that ratings numbers alone should determine what gets coverage and critical attention and what gets ignored. With its layered, morally ambiguous plotting and characters, Mad Men no doubt provides much richer fields for critical inquiry than the straightforward crime of the week NCIS.

I’d say that NCIS is more deserving of a cover. There’s no shortage of writers who lived through the sixties– there’s a definite shortage of those who can write modern military stories and get it right often enough to be enjoyable. (My biggest complaint is on technology, for crying out loud, not military.)

Then again, I also think that NCIS is a lot more worthy of consideration than he’s giving them credit for. Mad Men is, from the promotional stuff, pretentiously ‘deep.’ It’s got a great big sign hanging over it with flashing neon lettering saying “I AM SERIOUS AND DEEP. DEEPLY SERIOUS.”

NCIS, on the other hand– Elf borrowed the entire series up to season six from a coworker, and I’m constantly surprised at how good it is.  If you pay attention– or if you’re watching two or three episodes in order, two or three times a week– they are amazing.  At least once a week– usually once an evening– while we were burning through the series, I’d suddenly get hit over the head with things they’d been hinting at for weeks.  The relationships between the characters, especially, are very well done.

I hate being manipulated by a show, and I know enough about narrative structure, musical tricks and basic production to catch on to the things that shows usually do as shortcuts.  Can’t count the number of times Elf has ordered me to stop thinking and enjoy something.

NCIS not only doesn’t lean on those shortcuts, it generally uses them correctly as intensifiers when they’ve already laid the story-and-acting ground, or to give a misleading impression that heightens the payoff.  (Misleading, not false.  There is a difference.)

Unlike the umpty-bazillion police shows, I generally can’t tell you who will be the bad guy in the first five minutes of an episode of NCIS, and if I can there’s a good reason for it.  (Such as that the characters know it, too, or they’re the bad guy for totally different reasons than I assumed.)

Probably part of NCIS’ success is due to their lack of pretension.  Just like actual military folks I know, they are serious, silly, noble, immoral, utter jerks and have hearts of gold at different times with different motivations.  Some things strain credibility from an outside point– like Abby’s antics– but reality does that, if you are introduced to a situation with no background.  Failure to realize that is part of why so many workplaces are soulless; new boss comes in and destroys any character that a places had.  (I’ll agree that the repeated failure of new powers to succeed in wiping out the awesome characteristics of the NCIS workplace is a bit unlikely, but there’s got to be some wish fulfillment here.)

Fish Friday

I don’t know about anyone else— at least this time of year, come Lent I know it’ll be a group obsession — but I’m constantly on the look-out for something to make that doesn’t involve carne.

Beyond the staples of fried cheese sandwiches (Thank you, George Foreman), the treat of deep-fried calamari, and various canned soups, my childhood only offers one option:

Clam chowder.

Take a big soup pot, put a glob of bacon fat in the bottom and heat it up to frying temp.
Chop a small potato per person into cubes and fry in the fat until tender or slightly translucent.
Pepper and garlic salt to taste, if you wish.
Turn down to simmering temp.
Add a can of chopped clams and add milk until the potatoes are covered, then about a quarter inch more.
Simmer until thickened and serve. (Has the big advantage of being something that doesn’t have a point where it’s ready and MUST be served right now—it can set on the stove for an hour, just fine.)

You can add some onion when you’re frying the potatoes, or add dried onion when you add milk, and probably add some other things to taste, it’s kind of like jazz.

As good as this is, my husband got tired of it pretty early, so I had to branch out; unfortunately, our budget was extremely limited at the time. Grandma to the rescue—she raised a whole flock of boys, mostly on casseroles or one-pan bakes. (To the point that we never had them when I was growing up, unless we ate at her place—my dad can’t stand them!) The format of a cup or two of carbs like leftover rice or pasta, a can or two of tuna, a cup or so of cheese and enough ranch dressing to make it stick together is very simple while leaving room for adjustment.

Substituting mushrooms or eggs for meat can also help with existing recipes.

Anyone have some favorites?

cross posted

Death to the Memes!

I’m coming to hate Perry Bots, just because they are so freaking wed to spreading memes– dumb ones, at that!  It’s not to Ronulan levels of annoying, yet, but cut it out!  You’re not doing him any good.

Same way that not all Ron Paul supporters are the annoying, brainless sort of Ron Paul supporter, not all Rick Perry supporters are these annoying cut-and-paste artists who haven’t got enough imagination to even rephrase the freaking arguments.  I’d estimate that they’re less than one in ten, actually– the Ron Paul supporter thing is highly biased by the way that folks who agree with ‘im on some points don’t want to be associated with the nutjobs.  If this can’t be stopped, Perry is going to face similar problems.  Heck, for all I know, that’s part of someone’s plan.  Heaven knows that dumber plans have been implemented, and probably even been successful. 

Focusing on the mandated vaccination for an STD for school girls, I’ll list off a few, with responses:
“It had an opt-out, it’s not really a mandate.”
That opt-out is exactly the same as for every other mandatory vaccine in Texas. You ask the gov’t to send you the form, fill it out, get it notarized and then you get permission to not be vaccinated with whatever for two years. (In theory, at least.)

“It’s horrible that Bachmann is giving support to the anti-vaccine movement!”
Possibly the locations I’m most familiar with– Seattle, Portland and SoCal– messes with the sampling I have in this, but none of the folks I know who are “anti-vaccine” are feeling validated by anything a Republican would say, because THEY ARE LIBERALS. The same sort of folks who think “organic” means “healthier” and “more nutritious.”

“It’s OK, Perry was just making it so the insurance companies would pay for the vaccine.”
Oh, that’s a lovely defense of someone going for the Republican nomination: his goal wasn’t to abuse his power and interfere with parental rights by mandating a new STD drug on little girls from a company that gave him money and hired his friend– he was just trying to force a private company to pay for something he personally thought was a good idea.

“Perry said he messed up/is sorry/wouldn’t do it that way again/etc.”
Where?  Please, seriously, I’ve asked for folks to give a link to exactly what he actually said, and nobody will do it– there is a WORLD of difference between him saying “that looked really bad,” “I shouldn’t have used an executive order,” “I should have gone with an opt-in instead of an opt-out” or “I would not do something like that again.”  Or even, “yeah, I was an utter idiot with my rhetoric on that…sorry.”  (The “pro-life” justification, the various polio claims, etc.)

“Watch this video with an interview of people who know someone who died of cervical cancer!”
Wow!  Women dying is a bad thing– I had no idea!  I am now utterly on the side of government ordered everything that someone claims could save a few in a hundred thousand lives, if someone can find an emotional argument for it, and to heck with any consideration for personal rights!

“You just hate science/are ignorant/are anti-medicine!”
No, you ad hominem slinging idiot; there’s no shortage of medical professionals who also did not think it was a great idea.  Even the “preventing cancer” thing isn’t open-shut, even with those who go from “associated with” into “causes.” While you’re at it, could you please educate yourself on HPV, and stop spreading flat misinformation?  At least figure out a bit about the various types, and pay attention to the stats that folks throw around…. While I’m dreaming about people paying attention to the facts, stop citing Wikipedia.  It’s a handy jump-off point, but it’s worthless on anything where there’s debate precisely because it’s a wiki.

[Categories and Tags added -- JH]

Semantics

As you may or may not know, I hate the phrase “just semantics.”

Think about it.  Would you ever say, to a stranger, “Oh, stop that– you’re just being picky about what I said, instead of what I meant!”  Heck, even my family doesn’t get away with that– we’ll sometimes fumble around an idea for a bit and then say “you know what I mean, not what I’m saying, right?”  Much different from stating something and then being called on the meaning of the words.

Perhaps the reason the phrase annoys so is because of something I grew up being reminded: “What you hear may not be what they’re saying.”  Even if both sides mean well, are intelligent and well informed, misunderstandings can explode from this “little” thing.  (Sometimes it’s Inigo Montoya– “You keep using that word. I do not think that it means what you think it means.”– and sometimes it’s jargon; sometimes it’s shades of meaning, sometimes regional or cultural differences and sometimes it’s a mixture of a bunch of things.)

This came to mind because someone on the radio was waxing hugely indignant about how only an idiot could believe that a feral cat couldn’t be tamed– or maybe she was against the notion, it really wasn’t too clear.

I know several answers to the notion that “you can not tame a feral cat.”  Problem being, the answer changes depending on what you mean.

Feral: born without human contact, has been living on its own without human contact, an outside cat or a cat that visits several homes but isn’t claimed by any of them?

Cat: a fully adult cat, a yearling/teenage cat or an actual still-a-baby kitten?

Tame: get them comfortable with a human, integrate them to a household, get them to be friendly to a family or get them to be friendly to people in general?

For starters, some cats are just never going to be people-cats.  I seem to remember some breeds even have this mentioned in their descriptions– they may bond with one person, or they may be aloof in general.  On the flip side, every house cat I’ve ever lived with was born to a feral queen, entered human contact no later than six weeks of age and turned out to be very comfortable with people.

 *Picks kitten up off of keyboard and puts him on the floor.  Again.*

Sometimes too comfortable….

Born-wild adult cats, it’s harder for me to know– my dad has a major way with animals, and he’s the one that feeds the barn cats, but there are still some who will vanish the instant he opens the door.  Gone-wild cats can be tamed back down in at least some cases.  The cynic in me says that the harder a time the gone-feral cat had in the wild, the easier they are to tame back down, but I do think some just like being around people.

(Why I know about this topic: my folks’ place has a huge red barn, right near the road; you would not believe how many people dump off their cats at it.  When we moved in, there was a small and starving population of house pets and a freaking biblical curse of rodents all over the place– you’d turn on the oven in the house, and mice would scatter.  It costs about a bag of feed a month and takes a few placings of the sweeter abandoned pets, but we now have a very healthy colony of feral cats…and even our neighbors have noticed how much the rodent situation has improved.  No, they haven’t wiped out the local birds, either– although they do clean up the pest-birds that die of sudden onset lead poisoning.  They even avoid the guineas, although a couple of the better hunters have brought in marmots from the fields.  This does NOT mean it’s a good thing to do to your house pet when you don’t want him– a lot of these animals die to coyotes and other predators.  You made that animal a promise when you took ownership, live up to it, or you’re the one that’s degraded.)

When I say “feral cat,” I mean one that shows no signs of having been associated with humans– they show fear or bravado when cornered by a human, generally act like a wild animal.  I don’t generally include actual kittens in this category, since most that I’ve ever seen act the same– spitting and hissing at anything.  I’ve never tried, but I don’t believe these adults can be tamed down enough to fully integrate into a household.  All the instances of truly feral cats, where they hated and feared humans at the outset but became housecats at the end, were half-grown cats– what my mom calls “teenagers,” and the animal shelter calls “kittens.”  They’re usually still pretty skittish.  (The one my uncle had, I only ever saw the tail of– someone she didn’t know showed up, she was gone.)

I don’t consider cats that have several homes but aren’t really claimed by any to be feral; they’re neighborhood cats, for crying out loud.  Doesn’t matter if they’re mooching food, cooing and scratches at three restaurants, a barber shop and a nice little old lady’s, then sleeping in the back room of the book store– they’re tame, they’re just not claimed.  Feral means a domestic animal that’s reverted to the wild, not a domestic animal doesn’t live in one house….

I’ve Got A Little List

Actually, a notebook.  It’s got a lot of lists in it, though.

I picked up a bread machine at a yard sale for ten bucks a few months back, and the book that came with it is…er… somewhat less than helpful. The recipes work just fine, it’s just that they all assume you’ll only be baking with powdered milk. Before Kit came around, that would have been a safe enough bet, although I prefer to keep canned instead of powder as an emergency staple; since both child and husband drink the horrible white stuff, though, it’s silly for me not to buy it in the bladder, and so I look for recipes that use it instead….

These go into my recipe notebook.

 Simple, old spiral notebook, first page is Nancy Cookies because I’d rather have a paper notebook than my laptop computer, and I was making a big batch for then-Fiance-Elf.  (They are great because if you put them in zipper-bags and ship them to the other side of the world, they still taste fresh when they get there, and for about a month after.)

  It probably won’t ever turn into the great packs of notecards that my grandmothers had.  Unlike theirs I’ve tried to put in every trick that I use to get results that I like– theirs were a memory aid so they knew the basic route, then their skill turned the variable ingredients into what they wanted; since my ingredients are of incredibly consistent quality and I don’t have anything like the skills they did, there are a lot of notes like “add a little extra water if they don’t look flat enough.”  I’ve got real recipe books as well, including the classic Better Homes and Gardens from the 70s or so. (Since I got it at the Base’s thrift store, it’s also stuffed with clippings from magazines…I still end up getting most of the information I need from the internet, since most of the time I just can’t remember how hot the oven should be for a pork roast, or if I’m supposed to put foil on the bird until the last ten minutes, or not do it until then….)

Adding a recipe to my little list is a sort of big deal for my cooking– there’s a ton of scrap paper around the kitchen, from a scribbled tamagoyaki recipe taped to the microwave to a scribbled list of what I need to prepare for fishstick tacos.  I have to try a recipe several times, get consistent results and really like the results for something to be added.

This is one that made it (although I still need to scribe it….)
It Came From The Bread Machine: Son of Cinnabon

The night before:
Get two gallon ziplocks and a sandwich bag.
Draw a line down the middle of one side of the bags.
On one side of the first one, write:

• 4 1/2 cups bread flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 1/2 teaspoons bread machine yeast

go to the other side, and write:

• 1 cup warm milk
• 2 eggs, room temperature
• 1/3 cup margarine, melted

Put the dry ingredients in that bag, seal, mix a bit if you feel like it, and set aside.

Get the second large bag and, on the same side you wrote the dry ingredents for the one above, write:

• 1 cup brown sugar, packed
• 2 1/2 tablespoons ground cinnamon

On the other side, write:

• 1/3 cup butter, softened

Put the sugar and cinnamon in, seal, mix a bit if you feel like it, set with the flour bag.

Get the little bag, and write:

• 1 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon salt

On the other side, or below, write:

• 1 (3 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Put in the sugar and salt, seal, put with the other bags. Pull out a stick of butter to soften overnight. Get a microwave safe bowl– soup bowl works fine– and put 1/3 cup margarine and 1 cup milk in it; put it in the fridge beside your eggs.

Put tinfoil on your cookie sheet, clear a space on the counter near the bread machine and go to bed.

When you stumble down stairs to turn on the coffee machine next morning, put the milk and margarine in the microwave for about 30 seconds. Put the eggs under running hot water, or– if you’re a desert kid like me– give the milk mix an extra ten or so seconds and make sure the eggs are mixed in well in the bread machine. Pour in bag #1, set the machine to “dough,” and go have your coffee. (Or go back to sleep for an hour, if you’re the sort who can; if not, when you’re done with your coffee and email, refill the bag.)

When the dough is done, dump it on to the counter and leave it there for about ten minutes. (Good time to rinse the bread machine and refill the ziplock, if you didn’t already.)

Roll it out to a 16×21′ rectangle– that’s “about a hand bigger on every side than the big cookie sheet” for me; you’ll find a shorthand that works for you. Cover with the butter that’s been softening overnight. Make sure that bag #2 is well mixed, then sprinkle as evenly as you can over the buttered dough. Roll it, so you end up with a dough tube that’s nearly two feet long.

Slice into even rolls– I used two and a half fingers to “measure,” do whatever trick so you end up with about a dozen, even-ish rolls. The ends will be ugly; it doesn’t really matter….

Put on the sheet, and put aside until they’re about double in size. (~30 minutes, depends; my first batch took nearly an hour, because I was enjoying the cool morning air and the room was about 60*….)

Set oven to 400*F.

Get a little mixing bowl and empty the third bag into it. (At least three times the size of a soup bowl was the smallest that worked for me.) Put the cream cheese and butter in the bowl you used for the milk mix earlier, microwave 10-20 seconds so it’s soft, mix into the sugar mix with the vanilla. Clean off the beater and put the bowl over the exhaust for your oven. (usually the back right burner– this will make it really easy to pour)

Clean up and re-fill any bags that are still empty. (This really does make it a lot nicer.)

Put the doubled rolls into the oven for about fifteen minutes, so they’re golden brown.

Pull out, dribble frosting over them– I find it easiest to do a bare dribble circuit, let it soak in a bit, and then do one or two more so that I don’t run out of frosting or make a mess. You might even want to have one or two without frosting, although I suggest either putting butter on them or eating them fresh if you do.

These taste like the best cinnabon you’ve ever had, and even two days later they were better than the worst I’ve had. (And the whole batch costs less than just one!)