Something Nice...and yummy!

Pumpkin (or Butternut Squash), Cheese and Chive Muffins

I learned to make these while living in England last fall. They are so scrumptious, but MAN are they a lot of work. 

Recipe:

275g plain flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tbsp caster sugar

100g grated cheddar cheese

275g peeled and grated pumpkin or butternut squash*

25g snipped fresh chives (dry chives will do in a pinch)

2 eggs

175g semi-skimmed milk

85g spreadable butter (I generally just used softened butter - use whatever your preference is)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 190c (basically 375f)

In a large bowl, sift together the flour and baking powder. 

Then stir in the sugar, cheese, pumpkin or butternut squash, and chives into the flour mix. 

Mix well.

In another bowl, beat eggs, milk and melted butter. 

Pour over dry ingredients and mix.

The batter will be lumpy, don't worry about it.

Bake 20-25** min

Makes about 10 in a standard muffin tin

For some extra fun you can throw pumpkin seeds on top of the muffins before they go in oven. 

*If you've never grated butternut squash, I'm telling you right now, it's the devil. The absolute devil. I shredded my nails so much my first time. The easiest way I learned to do it was to peel the skin off (I used a potato peeler) of about halve the squash, then use the part with the skin still on as a grip and just go at it with a cheese grater. If anyone has any suggestions as to make this easier, I am all ears. 

**Now, the recipe I got from my friend said 20-25 min. This is a lie. I generally have to leave it in an extra 5-10 min. I suggest leaving them be for 25 min, then checking in 5 minute intervals. You want to see them start turning golden brown. When they come out the will seem to be a bit under done once you bite into them. It is my opinion that this from all the gooey cheese and once they cool people love 'em. 

the Skinny Jeans Scourge

I once tried to explain my hatred for skinny jeans and ended up fracturing my finger, I pounded the tabletop that hard.  So when my friend asked me to write this article, my immediate response was: are you sure? To which she responded ‘type it up in a word document and send it to me.’

Now, this all sounded great when I was drunk but having sobered up considerably (or at least well enough to the point where I could type legibly), I began to ask myself some pretty fundamental questions about the Skinny Jean Conundrum such as: ‘where do they come from’ and ‘why are they popular’? Needless to say, I found myself woefully ignorant. 

           

So I began my search with Wikipedia.  Now, if its annals can be believed, skinny jeans really didn’t hit their stride until the 1950s-60s when popular icons such as Marilyn Monroe, Bob Dylan, Audrey Hepburn, and Elvis Presley began wearing them. Skinny jeans then seemed like the cool rebellious thing to wear, but I contest right here, right now, that Marilyn Monroe never looked good in them. Elvis and Hepburn however, were actually skinny enough and tall enough (in the leg) to get away in them.

But that’s just it: tall and skinny. 

Now if you’ve got a pert ass with no thighs, or are just genuinely skinny—great! Wear tapered jeans to your hearts content.  However, marketing a fad for only a certain body type is just stupid. No really, it’s bad business.  Because when you take only one body shape and ignore the 11 others (yes there are 12 body types!), you’ve not only alienated a huge demographic but you’ve rejected them as well. With this kind of strategy, it’s like the fashion industry is telling me that I don’t matter. That my body shape is neither worthy of their time, effort, nor attention.  No wonder so many girls feel so fucking ugly.

Seriously, I am a pear shaped woman. I cannot wear skinny jeans! I’ve got saddlebags god damn it, and I look horrible in them. Add some ballet flats and you might as well call Grumpy and shove me in a diamond mine for the rest of my life.  At least there, nobody can see how dumpy my legs look.  Skinny jeans are a terrible fit for most pears, but I can only imagine what brick or apple bodied people are going through. Because the worst part is, every retail store is selling them. In bulk! I can’t fucking find a pair of flare legged denim’s anywhere anymore. Wide legs? Forget about it.  It’s like the economy is so shit, that companies want to save on the cost of fabric by buying less of it.  And what better way to do that then to make everything skinny?

I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m not a toothpick, and I refuse to dress like one.   So I’m going to leave you with some hilarious quotes I found about the trend. Enjoy!

Response to Rape Fear mongering on Facebook

A friend of mine posted this image on facebook today:

I try really hard not to respond to these things, however I had such a visceral response to this, that I feel the only way to calm down is to express my thoughts. These thoughts include the following arguments:

1.     It is not my job to stop a stop myself from being raped. It is my job to ensure that I do not rape. Conversely it is EVERYONE ELSE’S JOB (both men and women) to ensure they also do not rape.

2.     We live in a rape culture where it is used to amuse and entertain – it is an adjective to the point where the word almost becomes meaningless when a person uses it to describe a supreme and total violation of self. Post like this one only continues to perpetuate this issue. Studies have shone that our culture’s propensity for making light of rape actually allows rapists to think, “everyone else is doing it, and it’s normal.”  (for example a study done in 1999 found that “These individuals’ propensity to rape was significantly related not only to their acceptance of rape myths and of traditional ideas about male and female sexuality, but also to their belief that male sexual aggression is normal.”)

3.     I find it reprehensible that people are using rape, a horrendous torture of a person with life long effects, in an attempt to block new gun regulations. REGULATIONS that don’t actually take away your guns. They close loopholes in background checks to keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. It makes extended magazines for civilians illegal, which frankly you don’t need in order to defend yourself from an intruder or to hunt. In most mass shootings since extended magazines became legal for citizens the shooter is only taken down when they have to stop to reload. So logic dictates that if they had fewer bullets there would be less people injured or killed before they had to reload (see the Gabriel Gifford shooting). Finally it takes military style automatic weapons out of the hands of civilians. Military weapons belong in warzones. You do not need an AK47 to defend your home and frankly they are counter-productive when hunting.

Finally women are so unprotected in every other way by Conservatives (god they don’t even know how to describe our bodies) that they do NOT get to play the “I’m for your protection “ card at this point. It’s waaaay too late for that.

That is all I have to say for now. I have so much more things I could say, but I'm attempting to control myself. 

 http://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/republican-anatomy.jpg