Weekend Bake: Lemon Raspberry Muffins

These are pretty great, especially in the mini-muffin version. The raspberry center forms a delicious little puffed pocket of pure fruit.

Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves

I am interested in educating myself about the Roma. Any suggestions for Kindle books?

Recipe: Ricotta Gnocchi with Tomato Cream Sauce

I'm not a huge gnocchi fan, as a rule (potato often makes them unpleasantly heavy) but these are dreamy.

Ricotta Gnocchi

2 cups whole-milk ricotta
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1 large egg
2 tablespoons minced fresh basil leaves
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Drain ricotta through paper-towel-lined strainer in refrigerator for one hour. Then food-process ricotta for ten seconds, add egg, basil, salt, and pepper, and process to blend. Turn into a bowl and mix in bread crumbs, flour, and Parmesan. Chill mixture for one hour, then divide into eight pieces and roll each by hand on a floured surface into a 2 cm cylinder. Cut cylinder into 2 cm pieces, spread gnocchi out on board, and put in freezer for fifteen minutes.

Tomato Cream Sauce:

1 clove garlic, pressed
1 small can diced tomatoes
1 pinch sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp chopped basil
2 tbsp cream

Saute garlic in a little olive oil until just beginning to color, then add tomatoes, sugar, and salt and cook down until thickened. Add basil and cream and stir to blend.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a low boil, spoon in chilled gnocchi with a slotted spoon, and cook until all pieces float, then for 2 minutes more. Toss gently in sauce and serve right away.

Sick Systems

Egyptian millionaire politician woos Lebanese pop singer, spending over $7 million on her. His mother refuses to consent to their marriage, so the pop star leaves him. He pays $2 million for a contract hit and has his ex murdered. Hometown reaction?

“She made him kill her, and she deserves it,” said Sherine Moustafa, a 39-year-old Egyptian corporate lawyer, an opinion that was echoed by every woman of dozens interviewed. “If he killed her, this means she’s done something outrageous to drive him to it,” reasoned Ms. Moustafa, who has no relation to the convicted businessman. Both her sister and mother, who sat next to her, agreed.
...
“We don’t want our daughters, sisters or mothers to be or look like her,” said one such woman, Soha Hassouna, a 38-year-old Egyptian banker. “I’m glad this happened so she can be an example to our children.”

I honestly don't know what to say. What is the lesson here? Don't become a Westernized pop star? That's not what got her killed. Refusing to be this guy's mistress after he wouldn't buck his mother and marry her is what got her killed.

Adventures in Contract Law

Couple contracts with surrogate to carry fetus. Fetus turns out to have Down Syndrome. Couple invokes contractual provision allowing them to request abortion (failure to abort would mean the surrogate, not the couple, was on the hook for raising the resulting child). Surrogate balks (then has an abortion anyway).

Testing the Harm Principle

So popular is the woodsy field below the ridge as a spot for gay sex (mostly during the day) and heterosexual sex (mostly at night) that the police have designated it a “public sex environment.”
Public sex is a popular — and quasi-legal — activity in Britain, according to the authorities and to the large number of Web sites that promote it. (It is treated as a crime only if someone witnesses it, is offended and is willing to make a formal complaint.) And the police tend to tread lightly in public sex environments, in part because of the bitter legacy of the time when gay sex was illegal and closeted men having anonymous sex in places like public bathrooms were routinely arrested and humiliated.

I wonder how this interacts with England's many footpaths (legal rights of way, dating back many centuries, that often take one through private land).

Writing what you know

Sometimes you can't arraign them all:

I will admit, however, to feeling irritated by Ted Hughes poems that are about Sylvia Plath. One reason for this is that I already have a whole lot of very good poems about Sylvia Plath to read, and they are by Sylvia Plath. The other reason is the same reason I occasionally refer to The Birthday Letters as You Guys, What About MY Feelings: The Point-Missing Chronicles. Which is where we actually do get into the Feminist Anger At Ted Hughes Thing. Which, as with much feminist anger, and many cultural phenomena, is not so much about a terribly sad thing that happened to one family as it is about the terribly sad things that happened to the people who heard about it. ... And it went like this:

You’re talented. You’re really talented. You might even be a genius. And your gentleman, he’s talented too, though not to the degree that you are. But you type his manuscripts. But you go to his lectures, you nurture his stardom, you play the part of his loving support and fan club. But you are responsible for his domestic comfort. Oh, you have your own successes. He even encourages those. But he’s the talent; he’s the big man; he’s the star. And then you get tossed over, for someone who is nowhere near as talented and spectacular as you, because it turns out that the talented, spectacular part of you, the part that you thought made you a couple in the first place (“we kept writing poems to each other,” was how Plath described their courtship, “then it just grew out of that, I guess, a feeling that we both were writing so much and having such a fine time doing it, we decided that this should keep on”) was never enough to keep him interested. Was never essential to him, the way it was to you. Was never a part of the purpose of you — because he doesn’t need talent or spectacular qualities in girls, apparently. Because he prefers his girls to lack those. So you wind up with all the responsibilities — the kids, the house, the cleaning, the cooking — while he goes off to be a genius for some other girl who’s way more suited to play a supporting part in his life story. Who doesn’t have within herself the potential to eclipse him, to be the one that the story is actually about; who’s safer, that way. You wind up writing all your work — your work, your amazing work, your genius — at four in the morning before the kids wake up. Because that’s the only time you can write it. Because that’s what women do.

If The Fountainhead had been a story about Nick Francon and Holly Roark, I'd have been a happier and better adjusted teen.

Hair!

My hair is longer than it's been in ten years. I can almost do the Tymoshenko braid again---last time that was true was senior prom. If it was good enough for a Prime Minister, it's good enough for me. Do you feel pressured to adopt a more conservative hairstyle as you get older?

Serial Viewing

Am enjoying Dexter a lot more than anticipated, probably because I was expecting Rita to be more of a Lisa-from-Six-Feet-Under.

This country was not founded as a Nestorian nation!

I'd like to administer something like this to various religious figures in public life. For entertainment purposes only, of course.

Made of Wien

The Secession Museum in Vienna is, indeed, the best museum.