DF Gingerbread Brownies

DF Gingerbread Brownies
(adapted from Epicurious)


INGREDIENTS

• Nonstick vegetable oil spray
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 1/2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted EarthBalance "butter"
• 4 large eggs
• 3 tablespoons molasses (not robust/blackstrap)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1. Place a rack in center of oven; preheat to 350°F. Coat a 9x9" (or 9x13" for thinner brownies) baking pan with nonstick spray. Line pan with 2 overlapping layers of parchment, leaving a 2" overhang on all sides. Coat parchment with nonstick spray. 
   
2. Whisk 2 cups sugar, 1.5 cups cocoa powder, and 1 tsp salt in a large bowl. 
3. In a small bowl, mix together 1 cup flour, 2 tsp cinnamon, 2 tsp ginger, 1 tsp baking powder, and 1/2 tsp cloves.  (Heap those spices!)
4. Melt 1 cup (2 sticks) butter in a medium heatproof bowl in the microwave or in a medium pot over medium heat. Immediately add hot butter to sugar mixture and stir with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula until smooth. 
5. Add 4 eggs one at a time, stirring vigorously with spoon or spatula after each addition, until batter is thick, shiny, and smooth. Stir in 3 T molasses and 2 tsp vanilla.  (I got about 2.5 T molasses before it ran out, close enough.)
6. Using a sifter or fine-mesh sieve, sift in the flour-cinnamon-ginger-baking powder-cloves mixture. 
7. Stir until well incorporated, then beat vigorously for 40 strokes.
8. Transfer batter to prepared pan; smooth top. Bake brownie until top is firm to the touch, edges are set, center is moist but not uncooked, and a tester or paring knife inserted into the center comes out with moist crumbs (not runny batter) attached, about 20 minutes.  *Note: It took about 40 minutes to bake in my oven (gas) probably because they're so thick.  Next time I'll use a 9x13 pan so that they're thinner and bake faster.
9. Transfer to a wire rack and let brownie cool completely in pan. Using parchment overhang, lift brownie out of pan and transfer to a cutting board. Cut into 16 squares.

Summer Blueberry Pie

Yesterday we did a little graduation party with friends for CP and of course he requested a pie for dessert so I made a blueberry pie, adapting this recipe from Inspired Taste to be dairy free.

Ingredients:

2 pie crusts (I used store bought for ease)
2 pounds of blueberries (about 6 cups or 3.5 pints)
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
3 teaspoons lemon zest
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt

1 tablespoon DF butter (we use earth balance)
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon almond milk

Directions:

1. Let the pie crusts warm up to room temperature then roll the bottom crust into the pie pan, pushing the edges up on to the very edge of the pan.  I had to stretch the crust a bit.  Put the pan in the fridge.
2. Mix the sugar, cornstarch, lemon zest, allspice, cinnamon and salt in a large bowl.
3. Wash and drain the blueberries, then toss in the sugar mixture to coat evenly.
4. Pull the pan out of the fridge and add in the blueberry mixture.  Mine ended up being domed, but flattened out in the oven.
5. Roll out the top pie crust and cut into 1/2 to 3/4 inch strips (try to be as even as possible).  Watch the video from the Inspired Taste for how to do the lattice top.
6. Cut up the butter and dot in the holes on the top
7. Make the egg wash and brush the top of the pie
8. Refrigerate the pie for 20 minutes
9. Bake at 400º for 20 minutes on the middle rack
10. Lower the temp to 350º and bake for 35-45 minutes until the top is golden brown and the filling is bubbling.  I had to cover my pie with tin foil 10 minutes into the 350º so it wouldn't burn, and then took the tin foil off for the last 10 minutes to get that golden brown crust

Next time I will push the edges up higher on the bottom crust to make it easier to hook the lattice, but it was DELICIOUS!  The lemon really made the blueberries even better and it wasn't too sweet.

I suggest serving with some vanilla coconut milk ice cream, but some people like their pie solo.

Keeping this recipe on hand. :-)

Save Public Education #opposeHR610

House Bill 610 makes some large changes. Inform yourselves. This bill will effectively start the school voucher system to be used by children ages 5-17, and it starts the defunding process of public schools. In addition the bill will eliminate the Elementary and Education Act of 1965, which is the nation's educational law and provides equal opportunity in education. It would repeal ESSA (Every Students Succeeds Act). ESSA is a big comprehensive program that covers programs for struggling learners, AP classes, ESL classes, classes for minorities such as Native Americans, Rural Education, Education for the Homeless, School Safety (Gun-Free schools), Monitoring and Compliance and Federal Accountability Programs. The Bill also abolishes the Nutritional Act of 2012 (No Hungry Kids Act), which provides nutritional standards in school breakfast and lunch. The bill has no wording whatsoever protecting SN kids, no mention of IDEA and FAPE.

Some things ESSA does for Children with Disabilities:
-Ensures access to the general education curriculum.
-Ensures access to accommodations on assessments.
-Ensures concepts of Universal Design for Learning.
-Includes provisions that require local education agencies to provide evidence-based interventions in schools with consistently underperforming subgroups.
-Requires states in Title I plans to address how they will improve conditions for learning including reducing incidents of bullying and harassment in schools and overuse of discipline practices and reducing the use of aversive behavioral interventions (such as restraints and seclusion).

Please call your representative and ask him/her to vote NO on House Bill 610 (HR 610).

Celebrate #BlackHistoryMonth through learning and listening

From the ActionNow news-email

Celebrate Black History Month through learning and listening:

So, how do we listen to Black History month? In all the ways above—and I would love to hear more—and, I thought, through this list. It's 31 black women, mostly activists, that are an important part of history, and who you should know, and who you (and all of us) should listen to. You might know some of them but you probably don't know all of them. I'm not linking their names, you can google them. Read more than the Wikipedia page, if they even have one. Do one a day for the month. It will take 10 minutes, and that's 10 minutes you aren't scrolling through the news and panicking, so it's double plus good.

1. Florynce Kennedy
2. Elaine Brown
3. Assata Shakur
4. Hallie Quinn Brown
5. Chirlane McCray
6. Barbara Easley
7. Chaka Khan
8. Loretta Ross
9. Maxine Waters
10. Fannie Lou Hamer
11. Barbara Smith
12. Charlotte Fortin Grimke
13. Demita Frazier
14. Ida B. Wells
15. Tamika Mallory
16. Ella Baker
17. Septima Clark
18. Daisy Yates
19. Ruby Dee
20. Alicia Garza
21. Sybrina Fulton
22. Patrisse Cullors
23. Charlotte Ray
24. Opal Tometti
25. Cathay Williams
26. Jarena Lee
27. Amy Jacques Garvey
28. Maria W. Stewart
29. Erica Garner
30. Diane Nash
31. Margaret Sloan-Hunter

How to call your Reps - Insider Knowledge #resist #callnow

Copied from a friend:

"Friends! As some of you know, I used to work on Capitol Hill as the person in charge of all the incoming phone calls to my Senator's office. I have some insider tips to make calling your reps easier and quicker.

1. Give your name, city, and zip code, and say "I don't need a response." That way, they can quickly confirm you are a constituent, and that they can tally you down without taking the time to input you into a response database.

2. PLEASE ONLY CALL YOUR OWN REPRESENTATIVES! Your tally will not be marked down unless you can rattle off a city and zip from the state, or are calling from an in-state area code. I know you really want to give Mitch McConnell a piece of your mind, but your call will be ignored unless you can provide a zip from Kentucky. And don't try to make this up; I could often tell who was lying before I even picked up the phone from the caller ID. Exceptions to this are things like Paul Ryan's ACA poll.

3. State the issue, state your position. "I am opposed to a ban on Muslims entering the US." "I am in favor of stricter gun control legislation including background checks." "I am in favor of the Affordable Care Act." That's it. That's all we write down so we can get a tally of who is in favor, who is against. It doesn't matter WHY you hold that opinion. The more people calling, the less detail they write down. Help them out by being simple and direct.

4. Please be nice! The people answering the phones on Capitol Hill already had the hardest job in DC and some of the lowest pay as well, and for a month now their jobs have become absolute murder, with nonstop calls for 9 hours every day. Thank them for their hard work answering the phones, because without them our Senators could not represent us.
What does this sound like?

"Hi, my name is Mark, I'm a constituent from Seattle, zip code 98***, I don't need a response. I am opposed to any ban on Muslims entering the United States and I encourage the Senator to please oppose implementation of any such ban. Thanks for your hard work answering the phones!"
This is how I wish every caller had phrased their message. It makes it easier for the people answering the phones and takes less time and emotion than a long script. I know that you want to say why, but keeping it short and sweet helps the office answer more calls per hour, meaning more people get heard. The bigger the tally, the more powerful our voice.

Also, when you're reading off the same script as 100 other callers that day... well...they can tell.
Pick one issue each day, use this format (I am in favor of _____ or I oppose ______), and call your 2 Senators and 1 Representative on their DC and State Office lines, and you'll be on your way to being heard."

How to get your representatives attention: Town Hall Meetings and Phone Calls

This is long, but very useful information about how to focus our efforts to block harmful legislation and Cabinet appointments. Short version: town hall meetings and phone calls.

"From a high-level staffer for a Senator:
There are two things that all people who care about our country should be doing all the time right now, and they're by far the most important things.

--> You should NOT be bothering with online petitions or emailing.

1. The best thing you can do to be heard and get your congressperson to pay attention is to have face-to-face time - if they have townhalls, go to them. Go to their local offices. If you're in DC, try to find a way to go to an event of theirs. Go to the "mobile offices" that their staff hold periodically (all these times are located on each congressperson's website). When you go, ask questions. A lot of them. And push for answers. The louder and more vocal and present you can be at those the better.

2. But, those in-person events don't happen every day. So, the absolute most important thing that people should be doing every day is calling.
You should make 6 calls a day: 2 each (DC office and your local office) to your 2 Senators & your 1 Representative.
The staffer was very clear that any sort of online contact basically gets immediately ignored, and letters pretty much get thrown in the trash (unless you have a particularly strong emotional story - but even then it's not worth the time it took you to craft that letter).

Calls are what all the congresspeople pay attention to. Every single day, the Senior Staff and the Senator get a report of the 3 most-called-about topics for that day at each of their offices (in DC and local offices), and exactly how many people said what about each of those topics.

They're also sorted by zip code and area code. She said that Republican callers generally outnumber Democrat callers 4-1, and when it's a particular issue that single-issue-voters pay attention to (like gun control, or planned parenthood funding, etc...), it's often closer to 11-1, and that's recently pushed Republican congressmen on the fence to vote with the Republicans. In the last 8 years, Republicans have called, and Democrats haven't.

When you call:
A) When calling the DC office, ask for the Staff member in charge of whatever you're calling about ("Hi, I'd like to speak with the staffer in charge of Healthcare, please") - local offices won't always have specific ones, but they might. If you get transferred to that person, awesome. If you don't, that's ok - ask for their name, and then just keep talking to whoever answered the phone. Don't leave a message (unless the office doesn't pick up at all - then you can...but it's better to talk to the staffer who first answered than leave a message for the specific staffer in charge of your topic).

B) Give them your zip code. They won't always ask for it, but make sure you give it to them, so they can mark it down. Extra points if you live in a zip code that traditionally votes for them, since they'll want to make sure they get/keep your vote.

C) If you can make it personal, make it personal. "I voted for you in the last election and I'm worried/happy/whatever" or "I'm a teacher, and I am appalled by Betsy DeVos," or "as a single mother" or "as a white, middle class woman," or whatever.

D) Pick 1-2 specific things per day to focus on. Don't go down a whole list - they're figuring out what 1-2 topics to mark you down for on their lists. So, focus on 1-2 per day. Ideally something that will be voted on/taken up in the next few days, but it doesn't really matter - even if there's not a vote coming up in the next week, call anyway. It's important that they just keep getting calls.

E) Be clear on what you want - "I'm disappointed that the Senator..." or "I want to thank the Senator for their vote on..." or "I want the Senator to know that voting in _____ way is the wrong decision for our state because..." Don't leave any ambiguity.

F) They may get to know your voice/get sick of you - it doesn't matter. The people answering the phones generally turn over every 6 weeks anyway, so even if they're really sick of you, they'll be gone in 6 weeks.
Put the 6 numbers in your phone (all under P – Politician. An example is McCaskill MO, Politician McCaskill DC, Politician Blunt MO, etc...) which makes it really easy to click down the list each day."

Shock Events

While people are busy protesting, Trump is consolidating political power. Protesters, the media, and politicians are all playing the shock event game. We must focus on the moves Trump is making behind the smoke screen!

From Heather Richardson, professor of History at Boston College:
"I don't like to talk about politics on Facebook-- political history is my job, after all, and you are my friends-- but there is an important non-partisan point to make today.

"What Bannon is doing, most dramatically with last night's ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries-- is creating what is known as a "shock event."
Such an event is unexpected and confusing and throws a society into chaos. People scramble to react to the event, usually along some fault line that those responsible for the event can widen by claiming that they alone know how to restore order.

When opponents speak out, the authors of the shock event call them enemies. As society reels and tempers run high, those responsible for the shock event perform a sleight of hand to achieve their real goal, a goal they know to be hugely unpopular, but from which everyone has been distracted as they fight over the initial event. There is no longer concerted opposition to the real goal; opposition divides along the partisan lines established by the shock event.

Last night's Executive Order has all the hallmarks of a shock event. It was not reviewed by any governmental agencies or lawyers before it was released, and counterterrorism experts insist they did not ask for it. People charged with enforcing it got no instructions about how to do so. Courts immediately have declared parts of it unconstitutional, but border police in some airports are refusing to stop enforcing it.

Predictably, chaos has followed and tempers are hot.

My point today is this: unless you are the person setting it up, it is in no one's interest to play the shock event game. It is designed explicitly to divide people who might otherwise come together so they cannot stand against something its authors think they won't like.

I don't know what Bannon is up to-- although I have some guesses-- but because I know Bannon's ideas well, I am positive that there is not a single person whom I consider a friend on either side of the aisle-- and my friends range pretty widely-- who will benefit from whatever it is.

If the shock event strategy works, though, many of you will blame each other, rather than Bannon, for the fallout. And the country will have been tricked into accepting their real goal.

But because shock events destabilize a society, they can also be used positively. We do not have to respond along old fault lines. We could just as easily reorganize into a different pattern that threatens the people who sparked the event.

A successful shock event depends on speed and chaos because it requires knee-jerk reactions so that people divide along established lines. This, for example, is how Confederate leaders railroaded the initial southern states out of the Union.

If people realize they are being played, though, they can reach across old lines and reorganize to challenge the leaders who are pulling the strings. This was Lincoln's strategy when he joined together Whigs, Democrats, Free-Soilers, anti-Nebraska voters, and nativists into the new Republican Party to stand against the Slave Power.

Five years before, such a coalition would have been unimaginable. Members of those groups agreed on very little other than that they wanted all Americans to have equal economic opportunity. Once they began to work together to promote a fair economic system, though, they found much common ground. They ended up rededicating the nation to a "government of the people, by the people, and for the people."

Confederate leaders and Lincoln both knew about the political potential of a shock event. As we are in the midst of one, it seems worth noting that Lincoln seemed to have the better idea about how to use it."

COPY AND PASTE on FB. DON"T "SHARE"

#ShockEvent

Copied from Heather Wang

Let The Record Show

http://johnpavlovitz.com/2017/01/19/let-the-record-show/

Let the record - and my actions over these next 4 years - show...

"History has been littered with horrible people who did terrible things with power, because too many good people remained silent. And since my fear is that we are surely entering one of those periods in our story, I wanted to make sure that I was recorded for posterity:

I do not believe this man’s actions are normal.
I do not believe he is emotionally stable.
I do not believe he cares about the full, beautiful diversity of America.
I do not believe he respects women.
I do not believe he is pro-life other than his own.
I do not believe the sick and the poor and the hurting matter to him in the slightest.
I do not believe he is a man of faith or integrity or nobility.
I do not believe his concern is for anything outside his reflection in the mirror.

...

And if I prove to be wrong, it will be one of the most joyful errors of my life. I will own these words and if necessary, willingly and gladly admit my misjudgment because it will mean that America is a better and stronger nation, and the world a more peaceful place."

Greece! (Part 1 - Athens)

Back in 2014, my friend Kate and I went to Greece to meet up with a friend of her's, Chris, who was traveling around the world for a year.   Here are some really belated pictures (started the post in 2014...guess I forgot to finish it!)

Oh hey MDI!

Appropriate picture of Switzerland

Geneva

The Alps

The Greek Coast

Arrived in Greece around 5pm, took their metro to the hotel and walked up towards the Plaka (old neighborhood) to find dinner!  Also found our first views of the Acropolis!

Athens Acropolis- the first view!

Acropolis

View over the Plaka to a monestary

We got a bit lost trying to find the restaurant for dinner... the cats were terrible at giving directions

Cats, the Athenian version of DC's rats

Cat and chair sanctuary

Poser

Turn the corner and there's the place we're looking for!

Turn another corner and people eat on the steps!

Ruins, ruins, everywhere...

 Back at the Intercontinental Hotel we headed up to the roof top bar!  (awful location, surrounded by strip clubs, except for the view)

Acropolis in the distance

First full day- exploring the Acropolis and area

In front of an old theater

View towards the sea

Kate, Chris and I

Ran into some Vanderbilt basketball players!

Hope from History

"The future was an industrial, urban America that these people had never, ever imagined. The Civil War was a triumph of the Republican Party, a sectional party with a very clear ideology: Lincoln's ideology. And here it is worth pausing to consider this is one of the few times where a section of the country has achieved such complete dominance over the rest of the country, and seems to have the ability to make its view of the world stand for an American view of the world. It is also one of the few times that a single political party has been so dominant—perhaps in 1804, perhaps in 1932. And it forms a kind of test case of the ability of both a section and a party to shape the country according to the view of the world. And they can't do it—not very easily."

"The Nation in 1865"
Richard White, Stanford University

http://www.humanitiestexas.org/news/articles/before-and-after-civil-war 

Hope for the next four years?