witness

For my holiday baking, I'll almost certainly be doing some more batches of the Sneaky Chef's chocolate chip cookies that contain pureed beans.

That's right, BEANS. In cookies.

I hate beans. Blech. The texture is revolting. But I love these cookies because they've got that protein goodness in them and I can't taste it or detect it at all.

And I just found what appears to be a legal and free copy of the recipe online:
http://www.education.com/magazine/column/entry/chocolate_chip_cookies/

I've bought the book, but now all of you can try it too. They're delicious and reasonably healthy, for a cookie. Nobody ever believes that there are beans in there!


Recipe notes:

I omit the almonds because I don't like 'em. I do put in the optional walnuts, and have found that if I chop 'em up a handful at a time in the blender, it's faster and creates a bit of walnut paste that makes the cookies very flavourful with a wonderfully soft interior.

I use a mix of about 2/3 mini chips to 1/3 regular size chips because I find this gives better chocolate distribution.

Also, when I make the bean puree, I do it with bulk dried navy beans. All the cans I could find contained tons of other ingredients I didn't want. It's really not a big deal at all to soak them overnight, then put them on the stove the next afternoon for a good long time, then puree them in the food processor. I measure out lumps according to the recipes I make most often, wrap each lump in a bit of plastic wrap, and freeze 'em.

So much for that whole "love thy neighbor" bullshit. It's heartening to see that the catholic church hasn't abandoned its heritage of blackmailing people with death threats to get its way.

The D.C. city council is weeks away from possibly passing a law that would legalize gay marriage in the city. Though controversial with some religious groups in the city, council sources and gay rights advocates say the law is destined for passage in the nation's capital, and supporters here expect to see the first legally recognized same-sex weddings in D.C. by spring. But today, the Washington-area Catholic Archdiocese told the city that legalizing gay marriage will cost D.C. the social services and charity work the church offers to help the city's homeless and other low-income populations

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/catholic-church-says-it-will-stop-charity-work-if-dc-passes-gay-marriage-law.php

This is insanely adorable:

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Miles went to the vet yesterday. (Actually, both of them went -- they both like their doctor lady and we weren't sure just what would happen if we took one rat away for an hour and then brought him back smelling funny.) She says the foot problem is probably neurological, probably has to do with a tumor, and there's probably nothing we can do about it.

The vet, I think, was quite a bit more distressed by the news than we were. We know that rats are very little creatures with very little lifespans; this whole business with carting them back and forth to the doctor isn't to keep them alive forever, it's to make sure they're comfortable and happy while they're still living. It's always sad to lose a pet, but the only part of it that really upsets me is wondering if I should have noticed that they were sick sooner, or if I could have done anything else. And in this case -- no, he's a rat, this is what they die from, and we've already taken him in to do what we can, which was a steroid injection to help with the inflammation.

The rat personally thinks we are insane. Primarily what he thinks is amiss at this point is that he can't dig in his ear with his toenails anymore, and that this is annoying. Obviously you, the funny-looking hairless rat, should be scratching his ear for him at every possible opportunity. If you put him down on the bathroom floor for exercise time, he scrambles around and eats mystery objects off the floor and jams his face under the door to smell the hallway and chitters, which is exactly what he did before, except he does it lopsided and gimpy now. We were a bit worried that he couldn't climb the bars of his cage anymore, with only one working back foot, but as it turns out he's a furry little lying bastard and can climb just fine when he thinks we're not looking.

Nick keeps wanting to groom Miles' foot better -- he usually gets a good kick in the face for that, because Miles wants to sleep. Nick is also not very bright, so he gets kicked in the face a lot.

The vet keeps charging us as close to zero as she can get away with. We escaped the Adventure of The Whiffling Rodents with two live rats and two prescriptions for about a hundred bucks; she charged us just the "recheck fee" this time, even though Miles was coming in with an entirely new and innovative problem. If she's this thrilled to see us taking care of our rats, I hate to think what the other rodent owners in town must be like. We are far from the kind of dedicated crazy often seen in rat fanciers -- there do exist people who cook whole-wheat pasta and sautéed vegetables specifically for their purebred, papered rats, and freeze these things in ice cube trays so they can thaw out and feed the rats a variety of different meals in daily rotation. Our four-dollar generic RAT-breed RATs just eat rodent food and random leftovers, we only bathe them when they start to smell funny, and their cage gets lined with costume scraps and old pajamas that we're too lazy to actually walk out to the dumpster.

     The ruling Conservatives are moving to scrap the federal "long-gun" registry, supported by MPs from other parties who represent rural ridings.  And, once again, Quebec has proven itself to be the most civilised, intelligent and just society in Canada, although it is by no means the only supporter of the registry; sections of Ontario and BC are also overwhelmingly in favour of it, or so I'm told.

     The registry has always been controversial, since it covers not just assault rifles and auto-shotties* , but also covers single-shot rifles and shotguns that are intended for use in hunting.  In rural areas of Canada, these so-called "long-guns" are part of the way of life; people maintain single-shot long-guns for defence against large predators on farms, and for hunting for food (and for the less-than-noble practice of sport hunting).  Urban Canada, on the other hand, has no need for or interest in firearms of any sort, and consequently is more concerned with keeping tabs on where such guns are than with the slight inconvenience that rurals suffer as a result of the registry.

     Most of the police chiefs in Canada have defended the registry as being incredibly helpful, with the notable exception of Julian Fantino.  Fantino, who is presently serving as the Commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police after being fired from the Toronto Police Service, made quite a name for himself by running the Toronto Police Service into the ground during his tenure as its top officer, so I'm not about to take him seriously.  In fact, I think that Fantino's opposition to the registry is a point in its favour.

     I'm personally of the opinion that the registry needs to be maintained, but I can see why the rurals have an issue with it:  People living in communities in the Far North might have an easier time finding a moose than getting to a grocer, and they're sometimes forced to fill out mountains of paperwork in order to legally keep firearms that they have legitimate need of as a result of that simple logistical issue.  We could get around that by banning all guns entirely, but that's going to leave those aforementioned rurals with legitimate need of them in a bit of a bind, so we unfortunately need to keep them legal at the moment.  As long as they're legal, it's better to have controls in place to ensure that the police have access to a database of which-ones-are-where, because legally-purchased long-guns are occasionally used in crimes.  Thus that database is an invaluable asset to cops who are attempting to ascertain the origin of ones that get used in crimes.  Those were, as far as I know, the very good reasons we had for creating the registry in the first place, and given that the money has already been spent to create it, discontinuing it now would be to allow that money to go to waste.

     The most intelligent thing to do would be to keep the registry and repair it so that it works for the purposes it was meant for, without causing problems for Joe Crow in the BC interior who occasionally needs a shotgun to scare wolves away from his cabin, and without continuing to cost anyone an unreasonable amount of money.  However, that's unlikely to happen at this point.

     The Urban/Rural divide transcends political parties:  New Democrats and Liberals who represent back-country areas are voting alongside the Conservatives (who as a party do not hold any urban ridings at all) to scrap the registry.

     Ironic, this.  The Conservatives like to present themselves as being fiscally responsible, and also being the party most interested in "law and order" ... yet they want to abolish of something that police services say is a valuable tool, just to pander to their mostly-rural support base.  The irony only increases when one remembers that crimes committed involving firearms are far more common in Rural Canada than they are in Urban Canada. 

     Rurals may want to start stocking up on Kevlar body armour now, so that when their wish to have the registry scrapped is granted, they don't pay too high a price for it.



     * = It should be noted that "auto-shotty" is a term used by PC gamers to descibe such weapons (I first heard it used to describe a weapn available to me during a game of Counter-Strike).  I have no idea if the term is used by bona fide gun nuts.

As I was walking to the coffee shop this afternoon, I passed a house in which someone was obviously roasting peanuts. The smell was so good and so strong, and with the overcast sky and the chill in the air I thought it was a very "autumn" smell.

Then I walked by a few dumpsters that had been emptied today, and the liquid that had collected inside them had spilled out all over the ground and smelled like a giant ass. I had to hold my breath for half a block. At least it wasn't hot today.

So it's Remembrance Day - a day to remember all the naive kids who went off to the meat-grinder of two World Wars, without any real idea what they were getting into.

In the US, it's a shopping holiday. In Canada, it's a solemn event. We wear poppies and gather at cenotaphs to remember the dead, and talk about trenches and No Man's Land fenced off with barbed wire, and a generation of kids whose fathers didn't come home. Increasingly we talk about the things in World War II that can't be forgotten either - Nazism and the Holocaust first and foremost.

True remembrance can only serve the cause of peace. Maybe that's why this country was so committed in those two wars, and so reluctant since to go to war - maybe this yearly ceremony is part of that reluctance.

This year I'm thinking especially of the gay veterans never compensated for what they went through, in two World Wars. I hope the apology I proposed goes somewhere, but it seems every reporter wants to talk to a World War II vet over this, and it's too late for most of the victims in that war.

The apology should still come, though, while there's still a few around to hear it.

This woman's mind is always open. I admire that.