mixing it on Sunday morning
Poblano, a lightly spicy green pepper. Ever since first experiencing it at Los Olivos, a small Mex or Tex-Mex restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona back in 1969, it's been a favorite, chili relleno, baked poblano stuffed with cheese. I remember the formula Linda gave me as I left Newport to fly to San Diego to sign a contract for our first house purchase in Chula Vista, and stopped over in Scottsdale to visit her parents. Pete took me to Los Olivos with my instructions to order a chili relleno, a chicken enchilada, and a green corn tamale. It was delicious and captured me on Mexican food. I nearly always order just that at Los Antojitos.
Shopping at TAFB Commissary before Christmas, I picked up a bottle of green salsa, made with poblano and marked "medium" to have here over Christmas with Joe and company. These things don't always work out, though, and the bottle wasn't opened until yesterday, Saturday, when I poured some in a small glass bowl for dipping crackers: for Christmas I received several fascinating different kinds of crisps to dip.
This one is Lesley Stowe raincoast crisps fig and olive crackers. For supper Friday evening I had several of them with a couple of cheeses I bought or received as gifts; and remembering the unopened bottle of green poblano salsa Saturday midmorning, I opened up for a snack with fourth cup of hot and black coffee. Friends and loved ones find it easy to buy gifts for me on the foundation that "Looka here! this is something really weird that only Tom/Papa would eat."
Papa/Tom does have limits: I have waded out into the surf and stood in chest-high breaking waves to officiate weddings and funerals, but I will not officiate a wedding involving parachutes; I will never again eat tripe with creamed onion; and I would not join Anthony Bourdain in eating a still-pulsating cobra heart.
But I do have here in 7H, a wide selection of hard, runny, yellow, blue-veined and white cheeses from Thomasville and all over Europe and the USA to enjoy with this assortment of crackers, crisps. Also dipping fig and olive crisps in creamy green medium hot & spicy poblano salsa. I'd laid in several interesting treats for us to enjoy while Joe was here, that because of delayed arrival and short visit we never got round to, including a package of Scottish salmon lox and to go with it a cup of a delicious, soft and spreadable goat cheese from TJ's - - and the poblano salsa from TAFB.
Linda does not, will not, eat my weird food, so this is lone post-Holiday Season snacking.
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For me, the origins of unusual dishes include Edmund Pevensie eating the magic food of the White Witch on his first visit to Narnia, and being taken under her spell. She gave him delicious charmed hot cocoa and Turkish delight. Noon dinner Saturday - - eggplant parmigiana, ahi tuna stove-top or oven-cooked, a touch of ranch dressing with capers, and I may open another icy cold can from Proof Brewery in Tallahassee, so far so good although the sweet brown ale was startling at first.
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Loosing the dancing fingers to tippy-type at will, what's actually in mind is today's News and my own personal certainties over against the certainties of others. The absolute evil that the Iran government is and is determined to sustain, cost what it will, hang whom they wish, currently Earth's most evil government against its own population of good people; the purposeful evil of hardline Zionist racism that the government of Israel is deliberately descending into and will employ against its nonJewish population; the unconscionable evil that for four years and through January 6, 2021 appeared that the U S government was trying to pull off and was in danger of plummeting, s danger that continues. All relatable to my observation that the greatest sin, the most evil of human evils, is self-righteous religious, dogmatic certainty used as a political device to force people; in today's world, right-wing Islam, Judaism, and Christianity which goal to force everyone into their pens and under their control. Catholicism in Ireland up into the 20th century. Islam or the Sword in its era. Islamic Republics. Peoples Republics. Anglicanism v Catholicism in England after the 16th century Reformation. Early colonies in North America brutalizing and hanging religious dissidents. The poison of certitudinous Right Wing Christianity throughout America today. Every place and Time in the human ages where and when Religionists take control of society and assert their morals and certainties on a population. The majority religious-certainty-based U S Supreme Court eliminating Choice and now considering taking up contraception, LGBTQ rights, minority privileges ... . Darkness at Noon, 1984, Animal Farm, four legs good, two legs bad, four legs good, two legs better, a chicken in every pot, and a camera in every bedroom, monitored by the righteousness police. All, religious oppression of personal preference and expression.
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Relatable in some roundabout way - - recalling, told here before, my summer 1958 introduction to the Navy duty assignment process, a day with our "officer Detailers" coming from WashingtonDC to our first Navy specialty school as we prepared to graduate and PCS to our new duty station assignments throughout the fleet. On his preference of duty card, one officer in our class had listed that he wanted either shore duty or a large combatant or auxiliary ship. I remember his Detailer saying to him, assuring him that he wanted him to be happy with his PCS orders, "Why don't you put down that you want a destroyer, so you get your first choice?"
Which came to mind decades later in a classy restaurant as I was persuaded to order ostrich from the menu. Ostrich?
Me: Okay, I'll have the ostrich.
Waiter: Excellent, and how do you want that cooked?
Me: Cooked???!!! WELL DONE.
Waiter: Sir, the chef likes to cook it rare: why don't you order it rare so you get it the way you want it?
Me: (to self: poultry rare? OMG)
Waiter: Sir, it's red meat like beef, it's not like chicken.
Me: Well, then I'll have it medium.
Waiter: How about medium rare?
Me: Okay, medium rare.
I did in fact enjoy my ostrich, as the waiter had intimated, cooked rare. It was, as he had said, like beefsteak.
Might as well order life the way you're going to get it served to you anyway, eh?
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Our gospel reading for Sunday, January 8, 2023, The Baptism of the Lord:
The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew (3:13-17)
People Glory to you, Lord Christ.
Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Than he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
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El Greco, 1600
Rembrandt, sketch
Medieval art and Middle Ages reflects baptism practice of the Church at the Time, although few with any commonsense today would visualize John the Baptist baptizing Jesus by sprinkling, pouring water over his head with his hand or with a scallop shell. It would have been old time down by the river naked confessing, full dunk Baptist immersion by the wild man of the desert.
and you can print this one out and color it to suit your own imagination. But no blond Aryan blue-eyed savior, color Jesus brown and his hair black. That's skin he's wearing, not a purple robe. In one of my books of ancient gospels here in 7H is a text of the Gospel according to Philip in which at his baptism, Jesus comes up from the water laughing. Laughing! Not dour and solemn with rules to lay down, but laughing!! That's my Lord and Savior!!
RSF&PTL
T