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It’s Friday, so let’s dive into Culture & Commentary.
Ugh. Celebrities have this terrible habit of saying dumb stuff when they’ve been out of the spotlight too long. The latest example is 80’s-it-girl Molly Ringwald, who had a run as a minor character on the train wreck that was Riverdale (a show with cool retro aesthetics and a brilliant murder mystery first season that wound up being laughably bad).
As if Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas didn’t have enough scrutiny of his private life this year, now he’s caught up in a classic conspiracy theory involving secret societies when it was revealed by ProPublica that his luxury trips financed by billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow included an appearance at Bohemian Grove (BG), the exclusive gentlemen’s club and campground in northern California.
Cropped from a photograph by Sharif Tarabay via ProPublica of Clarence Thomas and billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow.
'Beware the Weak Man' reminded me of Timothy Snyder's 'The American Abyss'. To quote, it
opened, 'When Donald Trump stood before his followers on Jan. 6 and urged them to march on the United States Capitol, he was doing what he had always done. He never took electoral democracy seriously nor accepted the legitimacy of its American version.' See gifted link to the piece below.
In 'Beware the Weak Man' he takes us on the crucial journey we have embarked upon.
We just made this for our Fathers Day / summer cookout and these were a HIT! So good. Don’t scrimp on the mayo either bc the heat from the relish, w the cooling effect of the pickle mayo…. Perfect. And the spiral! Who knew! Great dish. Thank you
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When the memory of the butterscotch pudding I made last week (using Muscovado dark brown sugar) recedes, I will make this. I even have blackberries in the freezer. And raspberries . . . raspberry sauce or coulis could be gorgeous with it.
With a small household, I appreciate that the recipe makes four servings, since pudding does not age well.
David: To replace the white flour with tapioca granules or tapioca flour, would the amount be half of the amount of all-purpose flour in the recipe, as for cornstarch, as you say in your newsletter?