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Cooking With Feminists - Playlist And French Onion Recipe

by: April Wright

Not to get all maternal on you, dear readers, but I worry about your eating habits. So, I've put together an easy, quick, fairly healthy recipe that every one of you can make. To motivate you, I've objectified a band or solo artist as each ingredient, so you can make beautiful music while you make delicious food. This recipe for French onion soup serves about 3, more if you have a side dish.

2 teaspoons unsalted butter: Download: Sharon Jones - "100 Days, 100 Nights"
2 tablespoon vegetable oil: Download: Antony and the Johnsons - "For Today I Am A Boy"
2 pounds onions (I prefer white onions because they don't make my eyes water so badly): Download: The Mountain Goats - "Sax Rohmer #1"
3 garlic cloves, minced: Download: Wilco - "Radio Cure"
1/2 teaspoon salt: Download: Jason Collett - "Out of Time"
2 tablespoons flour: Download: The Go! Team - "Grip Like A Vice"
6 cups vegetable broth: Download: Cassettes Won't Listen - "Paper Float"
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard: Download: Flogging Molly - "Within A Mile Of Home"
1 teaspoon wine vinegar (optional)
About a third of a baguette, ripped into small pieces: Download: Neutral Milk Hotel - "King of Carrot Flowers"
Gruyere or regular Swiss cheese to taste: Download: Of Montreal - "Penelope"
1 beef-flavored bullion cube (These can be found in the Mexican aisle in most grocery stores; they're completely vegetarian): Download: Robyn Hitchcock - "Olé Tarantula"

1) Chop up your onions. I recommend cutting them in half, which makes it easier to peel the skin off. When peeling an onion, you just need to remove the outer couple layers so the onion feels smooth to the touch. Once the skin is off, chop the onion so you have semi-circles of onion. The comparison between an onion and the Mountain Goats is obvious: while they may taste good, there is nothing but tears inside. I chew a piece of mint gum to combat this fact.

2) Put the butter and one tablespoon of the oil in a saucepan and melt. It'll get all smooth, much like Sharon Jones and Antony and the Johnsons. Then you add the onions.

3) Mince the garlic and add it to the onions. If you have a garlic press, use that instead. Much like Wilco's "Radio Cure," the flavor of garlic is released best when crushed. Add the salt, as well.

4) Now, put the mixture on medium heat and cook until the onions are brown and tender (about 20 minutes). You might have to add a little water to keep them from sticking to the pan.

5) Add the second tablespoon of oil and the flour. Notice how the flour sticks right to the onions and won't be shaken, much like the way the Go! Team sticks in your brain. Cook another 3 minutes or so.

6) Now add the broth. It's filling and winter-y, like the new Cassettes Won't Listen track. If you want, you can add the bullion cube at this point, too. It takes great without it, but if you're craving more of a meaty flavor, beef-flavored bullion will give you just that. Also add the mustard, here represented by Flogging Molly, because let's face it, Dave King is one salty, bitter looking dude. Let it simmer about 15 minutes on low heat. While it simmers away, preheat the broiler.

7) After 15 minutes, dish out the soup into oven-safe bowls. Pile in your croutons and put the cheese on top. Gruyere cheese is sharper than Swiss, so bear that in mind when selecting your cheese. Now put bowls on a cookie sheet and put them into the oven until the cheese gets to be golden brown and bubbly (about 4 minutes). Be careful not to touch the bowls for a couple minutes when you take them out…they're very hot.

8) Enjoy, hopefully.

(April Wright)

"While no medications were taken in excess, we learned today the combination of doctor-prescribed drugs proved lethal for our boy,"

A MESSAGE FROM THE DRUNKEN HOUSEWIVES OF AMERICA!

DONT MIX YOUR PAINKILLERS!

oh and who will be @ heath's funeral.??????

"Among those reportedly due to attend are Ledger's "Brokeback Mountain" co-star Jake Gyllenhall and a former girlfriend, Australian model Gemma Ward." - STAR FUCKING TRIBUNE

HAVE A SMOKE WITH BARRY>>>>

I'm to busy cleaning the kitchen and getting tipsy to vote in the caucus. Have a smoke with Barry!

New research says preventing obesity and smoking, while it saves lives, does not save money.

Dutch researchers today released a paper saying that from age 20 to 56, obese people racked up the most expensive health costs. But because both the smokers and the obese people died sooner than the healthy group, it cost less to treat them in the long run.

If this sounds at all familiar to you, it may be because this is the defense the tobacco industry tried to put up in the landmark case in Minnesota, won by attorney Mike Ciresi, who now is running for Senate.

The state was trying -- and succeeded, as it turns out -- to recover the cost of treating the the illnesses of smokers. The tobacco industry intended to argue that there weren't extra costs in the long run, because the smokers died. But the judge in the case ruled the industry could not make such an argument.

It was called "the death credit argument," according to a 1998 report from MPR reporter Elizabeth Stawicki.

"That's one of the most absurd rulings in these cases I've ever seen anywhere, that you will keep evidence away from a jury because it's horrendous," said Phillip Morris attorney Peter Bleakley at the time. "There is absolutely no question whatsoever that cigarette smokers do not cost more in health care than nonsmokers. The net cost is less, but we're not allowed to present that evidence because we would be taking advantage of the fact that our product kills people.

“I always had brains on my arms,” she said...

this is why the drunken house wives dont use spam in our casseroles and hot dish(es)...

A Medical Mystery Unfolds in Minnesota

MAYO FUCKING CLINIC

Published: February 5, 2008

(Page 2 of 3)

As each head reached the end of the table, a worker would insert a metal hose into the foramen magnum, the opening that the spinal cord passes through. High-pressure blasts of compressed air then turned the brain into a slurry that squirted out through the same hole in the skull, often spraying brain tissue around and splattering the hose operator in the process.

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Nate Howard

ILL Susan Kruse, 37, worked at Quality Pork for 15 years but for the past year has been too sick to work. “I had no strength to do anything I used to do,” Ms. Kruse said. She had not known that her illness might be related to her job.

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Nathan Howard

Susan Kruse, a former employee, being treated at Austin Medical Center.

The brains were pooled, poured into 10-pound containers and shipped to be sold as food — mostly in China and Korea, where cooks stir-fry them, but also in some parts of the American South, where people like them scrambled up with eggs.

The person blowing brains was separated from the other workers by a plexiglass shield that had enough space under it to allow the heads to ride through on a conveyor belt. There was also enough space for brain tissue to splatter nearby employees.

“You could see aerosolization of brain tissue,” Dr. Lynfield said.

The workers wore hard hats, gloves, lab coats and safety glasses, but many had bare arms, and none had masks or face shields to prevent swallowing or inhaling the mist of brain tissue.

Dr. Lynfield asked Mr. Wadding, “Kelly, what do you think is going on?”

The plant owner watched for a while and said, “Let’s stop harvesting brains.”

Quality Pork halted the procedure that day and ordered face shields for workers at the head table.

Epidemiologists contacted 25 swine slaughterhouses in the United States, and found that only two others used compressed air to extract brains. One, a plant in Nebraska owned by Hormel, has reported no cases. But the other, Indiana Packers in Delphi, Ind., has several possible cases that are being investigated. Both of the other plants, like Quality Pork, have stopped using compressed air.

But why should exposure to hog brains cause illness? And why now, when the compressed air system had been in use in Minnesota since 1998?

At first, health officials thought perhaps the pigs had some new infection that was being transmitted to people by the brain tissue. Sometimes, infections can ignite an immune response in humans that flares out of control, like the condition in the workers. But so far, scores of tests for viruses, bacteria and parasites have found no signs of infection.

As a result, Dr. Lynfield said the investigators had begun leaning toward a seemingly bizarre theory: that exposure to the hog brain itself might have touched off an intense reaction by the immune system, something akin to a giant, out-of-control allergic reaction. Some people might be more susceptible than others, perhaps because of their genetic makeup or their past exposures to animal tissue. The aerosolized brain matter might have been inhaled or swallowed, or might have entered through the eyes, the mucous membranes of the nose or mouth, or breaks in the skin.

“It’s something no one would have anticipated or thought about,” said Dr. Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist who is working as a consultant for Hormel and Quality Pork. Dr. Osterholm, a professor of public health at the University of Minnesota and the former state epidemiologist, said that no standard for this kind of workplace exposure had ever been set by the government.

But that would still not explain why the condition should suddenly develop now. Investigators are trying to find out whether something changed recently — the air pressure level, for instance — and also whether there actually were cases in the past that just went undetected.

“Clearly, all the answers aren’t in yet,” Dr. Osterholm said. “But it makes biologic sense that what you have here is an inhalation of brain material from these pigs that is eliciting an immunologic reaction.” What may be happening, he said, is “immune mimicry,” meaning that the immune system makes antibodies to fight a foreign substance — something in the hog brains — but the antibodies also attack the person’s nerve tissue because it is so similar to some molecule in hog brains.

“That’s the beauty and the beast of the immune system,” Dr. Osterholm said. “It’s so efficient at keeping foreign objects away, but anytime there’s a close match it turns against us, too.”

Anatomically, pigs are a lot like people. But it is not clear how close a biochemical match there is between pig brain and human nerve tissue.

To find out, the Minnesota health department has asked for help from Dr. Ian Lipkin, an expert at Columbia University on the role of the immune system in neurological diseases. Dr. Lipkin has begun testing blood serum from the Minnesota patients to look for signs of an immune reaction to components of pig brain. And he expects also to study the pig gene for myelin, to see how similar it is to the human one.

“It’s an interesting problem,” Dr. Lipkin said. “I think we can solve it.”