My Favorite Hummus Recipe… Everything’s From Scratch

Okay so this isn’t an original recipe, exactly. It’s a hybrid, relying on Michael Solomonov’s tehina sauce and hummus recipe from his Zahav cookbook, and J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s hummus recipe at Serious Eats. The biggest change I made is that I make my own tahini. So I thought I’d share it here and see what y’all think.

Quick thing, first… I realize that those links are to “Israeli-style hummus”, two of which are from an Israeli cookbook (well okay… the hummus and the tehina sauce). I’m really not interested in the debate over whether or not that’s a hummus that exists. We Jews seem to really love our tahini, because we add a lot of it to our hummus. So maybe this is more a “Jewish-style hummus”? I don’t know. What I do know is that this is a recipe, not a political post. You’re making this entirely from scratch, so you can source the ingredients from wherever you want. You don’t have to support anything you don’t want to support to make this.

And as for the debate over the Middle East… yes I have thoughts, and honestly, they’re likely in line with most of you reading and most other bloggers on this network. It is also a debate I do not like having. I have my reasons for that. Please respect that.

Let’s just enjoy a perhaps overly-complicated recipe for hummus…

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Making Soda the Simple Way

Hello everyone! Obviously my blogging has been super slow. I have a new job! I… am a stock guy and sales associate at Godiva. Still fucking retail. But it’s a paycheck, at least! I’ve decided to start sharing food posts and recipes. It won’t be often, but it will give some life to this blog for now. I do have ideas for other major blog posts, like the trilogy I did on ableism. I still want to do one about the US police and patriarchal white supremacy. But those kinds of posts take a lot of time, which I don’t have much of. I do also want to reignite my Great Guitar Solos series, but I’ve been listening to podcasts rather than music for a long time, now. I need to get back into listening to music again, so I can find more awesome guitar solos to highlight…

I’ve also been thinking about writing out my own political platform. No, I don’t plan on running for any political office. It’d be an excuse for me to really study and learn about politics in a more in-depth way… both domestic and foreign. I have so many thoughts and positions, but I also know that my views are at least somewhat shallow, and I could always stand to learn more. Such a platform would be long… several posts worth. But I think it could be fun. The first thing I’d need to learn, however, is how to actually write an in-depth political platform. I don’t actually know how to do that…

So in the meantime, I’ll do stuff like this. Food posts, recipes, etc. No, there won’t be fancy recipe cards or professional pictures. This isn’t a food blog. It’s just a blog that I’ll sometimes share fooding posts on. And I’ve done this before. I know I’ve shared several recipes here; and yes, I know the vast majority had pictures (a couple even had videos!). So this isn’t new. It’s just going to be a tiny bit more frequent, now…

So let me start with a confession… I’m addicted to soda. I absolutely adore carbonation, and I love the sweetness (I don’t care what anybody says… high fructose corn syrup is my bae).

I really don’t like seltzer, however. Don’t get me wrong… I love water (I literally have a 64-ounce water bottle that I fill once, sometimes twice, a day), but I like my water… flat, I guess. Adding carbonation to it actually does change the flavor, and I don’t like it.

And don’t get me started on “flavored seltzer”. Like… what a cheap imitation of soda. Fucking unsweetened soda? Fuck you. Shit’s gross. Give me real soda or get out of here.

So anyways…

Point is, I really like soda. But I also know that, despite my love for it, HFCS can be bad for you if you overdo it (which… to be fair… is true of everything, so). I also have a love for making things from scratch… foods and drinks, specifically. One of the things I learned how to do, and quite easily, is make my own soda.

And now I’m gonna teach y’all how, as well…

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Rock Isn’t Innovative Anymore

From reading my blog, my tastes in music should be obvious. I like Progressive Rock, Classic Rock, Psychedelic Rock, Blues, Folk, and even some experimental stuff. But my tastes tend to be rather limited. I like guitar in my songs… and not just guitar, but, at least most of the time, guitar solos. But even with those, I’m picky. I don’t like “look at how fast I can play” odes to toxic masculinity (let’s be really… straight speed is basically “look how big my dick is”). I don’t mind speed, but only as one technique in a guitarist’s arsenal of techniques. And considering that David Gilmour is one of my three number one all-time favorite guitarists, speed isn’t even the most important technique, in my opinion (though he did have it to a point, he barely ever used it).

To be fair, no guitar isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker. Emerson, Lake, & Palmer is another of my top 10 bands of all-time, and they only had guitar sometimes, with most of the leads being taken by Keith Emerson on keys, while the guitarist, Greg Lake, favored playing the bass guitar, instead. But even then…

Perhaps it’s because I’m a songwriter, but I don’t really listen to music as an escape. I don’t like going to clubs (too many people, too loud, not enough personal space), and I hate dancing (because I’m really, truly, honestly bad at it… I promise you… you don’t ever want to see me dance… you’ll have nightmares). So I’m not listening to music for the rhythm. I also don’t listen to music as background for something. The best time I have listening to music is, in fact, when I can gather a small group of friends, we can pour some drinks, grab some snacks, turn some music on, and sit and discuss it. I only got to do this rarely (and I haven’t done it in a long time… I miss it), but I have done it with Jimi Hendrix, ELP, Led Zeppelin, Dream Theater, Porcupine Tree, The Doors, Pink Floyd, Chantel McGregor, Anna Calvi, Living Colour, and Steven Wilson.

And this means that most of today’s mainstream music, including Pop, Rap, Hip Hop, R&B, Top 40 Rock, New-Age, etc isn’t my jam. I don’t hate them… I realize music is subjective, and I absolutely acknowledge the monster talents that can exist in these and other mainstream genres (Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar are just two of many, many examples [yes, I genuinely believe that Kendrick Lamar deserved that Pulitzer for “Damn”]). But, overall, when I look for music to listen to, I look, basically, for guitar-driven Rock… whatever that may mean. In short: I’m absolutely a music snob of sorts. (I still have trouble with Metal, though… I don’t like 80’s Metal at all, and I have a lot of trouble with the harsh growls and screams of heavier, darker Metal [some Prog Metal, and most Death Metal, Doom Metal, Black Metal, etc], despite the fact that the music in these genres is often incredible.)

So you might be surprised to find that I kind of agree with Steven Wilson, here…

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Defending Star Wars and Cinematic Universes

I did not grow up with the original Star Wars trilogy. I grew up with the much-maligned Prequels. And you know something… I maligned them, too. Hell… I maligned them not very long ago, twice, on this very blog. But I went back and watched them recently and… you know what? They aren’t actually as bad as I remember them. Hayden Christensen is still whiny, Jar Jar Binks is still annoying (he would have been such a better character if he had turned out to be a Sith Lord), Count Dooku came out of nowhere (likely to make up for the fact that Jar Jar was no longer a Sith Lord), and some of the CGI was bad even for the time it came out…

But Jake Lloyd actually did a pretty decent job with young Anakin, Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi were awesome, Yoda was amazing, the turn of Palpatine into Sidious was incredible, Darth Maul was phenomenal, Queen Amidala was actually a good character and Natalie Portman played her really well, Mace Windu was just plain cool, and the story was really, really good over all.

Yes, I’ve seen the original trilogy, of course, but I simply don’t have the connection to Luke Skywalker that so many have. However, I am a Star Wars fan. Not a big enough fan to have read and collected the lore or seen the maligned Christmas special and that stuff, but a big enough fan to have watched (and enjoyed) both the Clone Wars and Rebels animated TV shows, and a big enough fan to have been excited by Force Awakens, Rogue One, Last Jedi, and Solo. And as I sit here today, people are still fighting over whether or not Last Jedi and Solo were good films.

You want to know what I think?

Both Last Jedi and Solo (and Rogue One and Force Awakens) were amazing films.

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#WhoAgainstGuns – Doctor Who Fans Unite for Gun Control

I’m late to this. The deadline is March 12th.

I want to bring attention to this… it’s important.

We’ve all been moved by recent events. The survivors at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are using their voices to speak for those who cannot, to say “never again,” and demand change.

We are asking the Doctor Who community to follow their example and to shine a light on this urgent issue.

This March, representatives of all your favourite Doctor Who podcasts and some special guests will be coming together to do a podcast commentary of the 1969 Patrick Troughton story The War Games.

But here’s the thing: we’re not putting out this podcast on any one show’s feed. We’re only releasing it to listeners who provide a donation to an organization committed to ending gun violence.

Click the link to find the organizations they want you to donate to, and follow the instructions to get the special commentary podcast from there.

Even if you aren’t necessarily a fan of Doctor Who, it’s important to fight for gun control. Really, we should have done this years ago. But better late than never, right?

It’s time. It’s time to regulate an industry that has blood on its hands. It’s time to reject the NRA. It’s time to regulate guns.

Join Doctor Who. Join the survivors of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Speak out FOR gun control.

ETA: Since they announced, they’ve raised well over $10000, so back on March 6th, they added raffle giveaway opportunities. So please… donate and send them your receipt. It really is worth it.

Great Guitar Solos – Pink Floyd Plays Sorrow Live on P*U*L*S*E*

More David Gilmour because… well… it’s David Gilmour…

This is from the P*U*L*S*E* DVD (that entire show is a treasure trove of amazing solos, to be honest). It’s the song “Sorrow”, from their 1987 album A Momentary Lapse of Reason.

The song opens with a guitar solo, which ends at 3:15. The second solo starts at 3:57 and ends at 4:26. The third solo starts at 5:11 and ends at 5:31, which starts a very short ambient section. The final solo starts at 6:57, which closes out the song.

Special thanks to VolcanoMan in the comments on my last GGS post for suggesting this one…

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Streaming Service for Rare, Hard-to-Find, and Out of Print Music

I’ve already posted most of this on Facebook, so it will be familiar to some or all of y’all. But here I’m gonna expand a tad…

First, like I said on Facebook… I’ve been going over the take-down of What.CD, a private torrent site that, yes, shared official material (music, audiobooks, e-books, etc… no video, though).

Now, before I continue, I’m going to quote what I said on Facebook:

No, I don’t want to talk about how or why I know as much as I do about it, and yes, I agree that piracy is wrong, it’s right that piracy is illegal, people should support artists they love with money, and blah blah blah… we’re not having that conversation here.

And I’m gonna stress that here. We’re not here to discuss the relative morality of torrenting sites, question why I know as much as I do about the site, etc. So that’s the commenting policy. And that includes you, too, NSA, CIA, and FBI.

So anyways… I called What.CD the Library of Alexandria of music, and one of the reasons for that is because What.CD amassed an amazing collection of out of print, rare, hard to find, and/or prohibitively expensive music you basically couldn’t find anywhere else. It was incredible what could be found on What.CD, what new music you could find that you never heard before, and so on. And now that’s gone. Sure, torrent sites are like a massively exagerrated Hydra (shut down one site, a thousand more will pop up in its place), but it’s going to take a seriously long time to rebuild the What.CD Library.

But there could be another way, too… a… perhaps… more legal way… to rebuild a part of that library and make it accessible to everyone…

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