Cafe Pasqual’s cookbook checks out. I should do some of the other recipes in it that aren’t as familiar to me.
I had to adapt the corn bread because I couldn’t find my loaf pans but I think that turned out for the better—I sliced one ‘wheel’ of cornbread through the middle and it made a great sandwich. I also liked the salad, which I adopted a bit with some labne-cilantro dip in the warm mushrooms. Plus: first use of the grill this spring for the chicken.
The sorbet was ok—I think maybe I didn’t put enough honey in it, as it was rather sour.
My indifference is to Trump’s indictment, because I think it’s the worst possible case to bring against him out of at least five other possibilities. It’s the kind of scandal that should destroy a candidate or any public figure—paying hush money to a porn star while suppressing other stories of affairs while also being caught on tape talking about grabbing women’s genitals while also being sued for defamation over denials of sexually assaulting yet another woman. But it didn’t and that’s the world we live in: conservative Christians and other conservatives don’t care at all about their own moral commitments and can’t be shaken from their devotion to Trump no matter what his sexual behavior is like or how many lies he tells. Legally, it’s a tricky case to bring and win on. The only way this is something to be pleased about is if it gets the other legal authorities to go ahead and bring their indictments for far weightier crimes against Trump and some of his co-conspirators.
Why is the United States talking about another mission to the moon? Does anybody have even the faintest idea why this is a plan now? Does a permanent base on the moon seem even remotely possible at this point in terms of the expense involved? I just looked at the website for the Artemis missions and it basically boils down to “this will inspire kids plus we can do some more moon rocks things plus we’re pretty sure there will eventually be something economically valuable about being on the moon”.
Space exploration has reliably been one of the science/science-fictional ideas that I’ve been a tremendous devotee of my whole life, along with dinosaurs. But at this stage of my life, it only fires my sense of devotion if it seems like there’s a real long-term plan here that will go on regardless of anything else that happens. That is absolutely not the case in the United States or indeed the world at the moment. We don’t have a government that does long-term planning in any sense. Even if we did, I don’t think a standard-issue moonbase makes much sense. I’d rather see all that money dumped into something more like a sustainable, long-functioning Lagrange-point station or a huge new series of probes and extra-orbital scientific instruments.