The latest
Capstone
On February 15, 2019, Gary Martin shot and killed five people and injured six others at the Henry Pratt Company’s warehouse in Aurora, IL. According to Mother Jones’ online database, this is the most recent mass shooting in the United States.
A young black man was shot and killed in America last night. He was poor and you won’t read about it in the newspaper or see it on the news. Another victim of the violence epidemic infecting our cities. But I don’t know his name.
Columbine. Newtown. Orlando. Las Vegas. Parkland. To many people, these tragedies represent a growing problem in the United States. But they tell only a small part of the story. The story of mass shootings ignores the vast majority of violence in this country.
food
Growing up, I always knew it was a special occasion when my mom made the family tomato sauce. Packed with meat and cooked slowly on the stove for hours, I couldn’t wait for it to be finished. Served with cheese ravioli, it was my favorite dish as a kid.
With Easter around the corner, my thoughts turn to ricotta pie. An Italian staple for the holiday, this slightly sweet pie can be flavored in a variety of ways depending on your tastes. And it has a unique crust, sweeter and less flaky than a traditional pie crust, but a perfect complement to the ricotta. And to kick it up a notch, you can make your own ricotta - it’s actually really simple.
Salt and pepper. The basics of cooking. Good food does not have to be complicated. Almost any cut of meat, any vegetable, any starch - with the proper application of fat and fire - can be amazing as long as they are properly seasoned.
So for this recipe, I cross a couple of Italy’s borders to grab a French red wine and a Swiss cheese. The flavors of mushroom and beef are a perfect marriage, so I swap out the chicken stock for beef stock (or mushroom stock if you’re rocking the vegetarian train). The result is definitely a risotto in texture, but with a new flavor profile. Let’s get to it.
Panna Cotta is a silky-smooth, decadent dessert. It’s the sort of thing that might seem fancy, but it’s actually very easy to make. It’s just cream, sugar, and gelatin, usually topped with something like a fruit compote. But a lot of people are vegetarian or dairy-free these days. So I’ve worked on a couple of alternative recipes to accommodate people’s diets.
This classic Mexican dish is perfect for… well, you can fill in the blank with just about anything. A cold night, a Super Bowl party, the only food you can bring with you to a desert island. Serve it with rice and beans, on nachos, by itself. For those who like it spicy, for those who like to play it safe, for those who like it just right. You can make it with fatty pork shoulder or make a healthy chicken or tofu version. The possibilities are endless and only bounded by your tastes.
I have to admit that I’m not a fan of traditional cole slaw. It’s too sweet, and there isn’t enough sharpness to cut the richness of the mayonnaise. I spent a significant chunk of my life avoiding it and thinking I didn’t like cabbage. But it turns out cabbage is great, crunchy and peppery, and a vegetable that’s flavor shouldn’t be hidden by a mountain of sugar.
The barbecue tradition in the United States runs deep. There are as many kinds of barbecue sauce as there are regions that barbecue. But let’s be honest, in vast swathes of the country (mostly north and west), when people think of barbecue sauce, they think of that sweet ketchup you might get with your chicken nuggets at that fast food place or the overcooked baby back ribs you get at some chain restaurant. I’d say it’s vaguely reminiscent of a Kansas City style sauce, but I wouldn’t want to insult the barbecue masters of western Missouri.
Inspired by the flavors of North Africa but with a few twists, this spicy (but not too hot) and naturally sweet lamb stew will warm you on a cold winter night. Its brown and orange color palette won’t win any beauty contests, but don’t let that fool you.
Balsamic vinegar. Nuff said. Most know it. Many have had it. Some of us love it. But much like wine, that other product produced from the grape, it comes in a wide range of qualities and prices.
The blog
As I’ve said many times on this blog, I’m a skeptic. And this applies to my views on morality. I don’t believe it’s possible to know with 100% certainty what the right thing to do is in a given situation. But when faced with a problem, something needs to be done or it’s never going to get fixed. So whenever I do anything, I have to face the fear that I might be wrong. And that fear can be paralyzing. Because my greatest fear in life is being wrong especially when that leads me to harm another person. But it’s a fear that must be overcome because inaction can also be harmful.
I haven’t written anything in a while. With everything that’s happening, I ask myself what I should be doing. I’m a writer so part of me says I should write about it. But I also know what I don’t know. The kind of writing I want to do requires a lot of research and access to people who know more about it than I do. And those people have lots of better things they could be doing than talking to me.
Nonfiction
A few years ago, I interviewed Daniel Rothman, a professor of geophysics at MIT. We were discussing how hard it is to talk to the public about complicated scientific ideas like climate change. He said, “The world likes simple stories. And this is a problem that does not really lend itself to a simple story.”
Human minds strive to fill empty space. And there is no larger void than the future. I look at this blank page before me and try to envision how I’m going to fill it, dumping my thoughts out, tiny black letters one by one creating a map of pixels that my brain, and the brain of any literate English speaker, can somehow make sense of.
Fiction
Jon spent the next morning nursing his hangover and kicking himself. He didn’t particularly care that he had lost the $400 to Martin, it was the way that he lost it. As the booze worked its way out of his system and his brain began functioning again, he realized that something did not quite add up.
INT. DOWNTOWN BOSTON BAR - NIGHT
[Jack, Billy, SETH, and their friend JOSE are sitting at a bar. They drain what’s left of their drinks then stagger to their feet]
The red string vibrated, giving it weight and charge. Two other strings, one blue and one green, but identical to each other in every other way, were tied to the red string. If anything tried to split them apart, an invisible force would pull them together. The red string was very small, the force was more than enough to keep it where it was.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics. In his autobiography, Mark Twain attributed the phrase to the 19th-century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, yet the phrase never appeared in any of Disraeli’s writings or private remarks. The right statistics can reveal powerful truths about the world, but sometimes that truth is difficult to see through all the numbers.