another summer salad

a dinner made of little gems we picked up at the farmers market.

Haricots Verts Salad
(adapted from NYT)

baby potatoes
cubed and boiled
green beans
parboiled
shallot & garlic
sauteed
goat cheese
crumbled
prosciutto
julienned
almonds
slivered

serve with a balsamic vinaigrette (brianna's is my favorite)
or make your own.

sissy starts a blog

her name is rachel, but we call her:

rax, finn razel, razzle dazzle, rache, oh sister


and she started a blog.
and she is pretty funny
(and quite the ham as you can see in the picture).
so the blog will be a hoot.

read it.

camera shy

we aren't really a picture family. i can count on one hand the number of times we've had family portraits done. i don't ever recall taking pictures on family outings or holidays.

we don't do it often, because when we do, all hell breaks loose.

we fight. we make fun of each other. we get all j.lo and demand retake after retake because someone looks fat. we grumble about what we are supposed to wear. and then, in a move to cut the tension my mom might make us sing something like "families can be together forever" which is the type of move that usually makes things worse....

but the other night, at cousin caitlin's* wedding--the stars aligned for a few minutes--and the white fam** took themselves some pictures. catch'em while their hot friends because this probably won't happen for another twenty years.

(bob, bonnie, kristen, nathan, caitlin, mercedes, joshua, rachel)

(mercedes, nathan, joshua, rachel)
(don't you love me and rax rocking the kimmy kardashian pose?)
(the photographer told us it would make us look thinner and we are suckers for that kind of thing.)
(does it?)

* caitlin (the bride) is our cousin on my dad's side. she cleans up pretty good eh?
** the girl between nathan and my mom is kristin, nathan's fiance. she cleans up pretty good too eh?

golden heart gets married

i realized had a kindred spirit in liz quist when she (looking at some books on my shelf) asked what i thought about allan bloom's critique of education in america. my heart probably skipped a beat. not only did this girl know who allan bloom was, she'd read enough of him to have a conversation about his ideas.

oh my world.

after a string of bad relationships* where our most interesting conversations were about where to eat dinner, i forgot that there were people out there who liked to get down to it. people who liked to talk books and religion and politics.

we spent the four months yakking our faces off. it was glorious. and even though she moved and then i moved and we haven't been able to see each other as much as we'd like, it is one of those friendships where you just pick up where you left off.

so on saturday--at her wedding--i yakked liz's head off and she was gracious enough to not tell me to shut up because it was her wedding day and she had a lot of people to talk to. dear liz i love you and am so happy for you (and dan).

trip to dc forthcoming.

pencil in an 8 hour double dinner date. we're gonna need it.

* with men

the gaff that wasn't

the anti-corporate rule crowd may be making fun of mitt romney for telling an iowa fair audience that "corporations are people" but am starting to think what is really funny is how totally off base their jokes are. while i'm not sure if i am for romney, in this instance i agree with his assertion.

in his blog post on the comment, ilya shapiro argues that corporations don't have rights, however, they are made up of people who do. the fact that a group of people form an association (corporate or otherwise) does not strip them of their rights as individuals. furthermore, "corporate money always comes from, flows through, and ends up in human hands." corporations may not actually be people, but the fact that they represent a group of people should not disqualify them from political expression in the form of media comment or campaign donations.

to suggest, as person in the iowa crowd did, that corporations pay additional taxes is basically to say that the people who work for or have interests in those corporations should pay more (as this is what corporate tax amounts to). maybe they should pay more--i don't know--but can we really expect them to pay more and also then try to revoke their right to express their political preferences?

the real life equivalent is you and me going for lunch every day. only you always pay and i always pick the place. what if everyday i want to go for sushi because i like it and it is delicious, but you are a vegetarian. shouldn't you at least be able to say, "mercedes i don't eat meat or fish"? of course you should. similarly corporations as the representatives of groups of people should be able to express theirs.

i'm starting to think i might like this mittens guy (even though i disagree with him on stuff like marriage). or maybe i'm just freaked out about the economy and he kinda seems like a knight on a white horse and i've always been a sucker for a fairytale.

we'll see.