The Republic of T.

I admit sometimes I look at the GOP majority in the House and wonder where these people came from. (Their districts, I know.)

Defending the Defense of Marriage Act? Hearings on Muslim Americans? Emergency meetings to defund NPR?

All this while unemployment is at 10.2% (according to Gallup), 14 million Americans are unemployed, there are 8 unemployed workers for every job job opening, unemployment adds 9 million Americans to the uninsured, so many people have been unemployed for so long that we’ve changed how we measure long-term unemployment, 1.4 million have been out of work for 99 weeks or more, and  3.9 million long-term unemployed ran out of unemployment benefits in 2010?

You can see why I began to wonder if these people came from another planet. But their latest move makes it all perfectly clear. They’re straight out of Central Casting, the stereotypical villains division.

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"Mama Grizzlies" and "refudiate" made the banished words list for 2010, but here’s some news that ought to make Sarah Palin smile. America’s obesity epidemic is proving good for business — the funeral business, that is.

It’s no secret that Americans are battling obesity. …The obesity problem not only affects how we live, but it changes what happens to our bodies when we die … and that has forced the funeral industry to change its business.

Twelve years ago, Cedar Memorial in Cedar Rapids purchased a body lift, capable of raising and lowering bodies and caskets weighing up to 1,000 pounds.

A Cedar Rapids-based company, Mortuary Lift Company, sells the lifts and the lift business is booming. Katie Hill’s company has grown 20 percent a year. Just this year, she sold more than 100 lifts in the United States and abroad. "It started out, you know, selling three machines a year on up, and now we’re actually producing quite a bit," Hill said.

Cedar Memorial president John Linge says larger loved ones also present a challenge for burial. "The funeral industry has had to respond by providing caskets, mausoleum crypts and burial vaults that will accommodate larger individuals." According to Linge, Cedar Memorial plans to add oversized burial crypts to its mausoleum in the next five years, showing that the obesity trend is not likely to end soon.

According to the Casket and Funeral Supply Association of America, oversized caskets may cost 15 to 25% more, but Linge says they help families visualize their loved ones in comfort.

So, why would this make Sarah Palin smile?

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OK. It’s too late for Thanksgiving, but there’s at least one other somewhat turkey-centric holiday coming down the pike. (In the gastronomic sense, at least.) So, I gotta do this.

I’m not sure why this article, which is over a year old, showed up in my RSS reader today, but what kind of vegetarian would I be if I didn’t remind people that eating your veggies is good for you and the planet?
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(With apologies to Gabriel Garcia Marquez.)

It began with Veggie Booty. Or rather, I should say, it ended with Veggie Booty. As was my habit, I’d tossed it into the cart during our family’s weekend grocery shopping trip. I didn’t read the label, in part because I’d read it before, to make sure there were no animal products among the ingredients, and didn’t think I needed to read it again. Then I learned about the recall.

Also, shopping with a healthy, active five-year-old doesn’t lend itself to taking the time to read labels. So I didn’t. Until I read that Veggie Booty was recalled because it was tainted with salmonella, which was traced back to a spray-on seasoning, which was eventually traced back to China. Fifty two people became sick, complete with bloody diarrhea, including an 18-month-old.

My spouse and I each take about 30 seconds or less to read a food label. Even though we’re shopping with our five-year-old son and our two-month-old son, we have all the time in the world. In fact, because of them, we have all the time in the world to read food labels. We have 1,900 years, to be exact, because it will take the Food and Drug Administration 1,900 years to catch up on food import inspections.

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People are always asking me about where to find vegetarian food in the metro D.C. area, and back in March I posted a review of several vegetarian or veg-friendly eateries in the area. Well I have another to add after this weekend, thanks to my ever-so-thoughtful non-vegetarian husband who — even though he’s so not a vegetarian — always keeps an eye out for vegetarian restaurants we haven’t been to yet. That’s the kind of guy he is, even though I like to joke that he was on the Atkin’s Diet before there was an Atkin’s Diet.

So I wasn’t surprised when he told me about Sunflower Restaurant, which was totally vegetarian and has locations in Falls Church and Vienna, VA. Initially, I thought maybe Cafe Sunflower, where Katharine and I had dinner once, had branched out of Atlanta. That would have been fine by me, but when I checked out the menu online I was even more intrigued. We made plans to visit for dinner
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I’ve seen it more times than I can count, and I’ve always thought I knew why it happened. Now I’ve seen it confirmed, somewhat. At the local Y, where we take Parker for his swimming lessons on Saturdays, there are two strategically placed vending machines. Or, rather, annoyingly placed if you’re a parent trying to hustle your kid out the door before their eyes land on the snack machine that’s positioned so that you can’t get out of the door without going past it.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve looked up from my reading, those times when I’ve sat waiting for Parker’s class to be over, to witness parents having to deal with their kids’ tantrums after being told they wouldn’t be getting anything from the vending machines. Their claims of “I don’t have any money,” “we have snacks in the car,” or “we’re going to have lunch when we get home” don’t always work. Other parents limit their kids to one or two of the healthier snacks in the machine, with fewer tantrums as a result, but little enthusiasm.

Then there’s Parker. I can count on my fingers the number of times he’s wanted something from the vending machine or when we’ve had to nudge him away from it. I’ve sometimes wondered why he doesn’t seem to want the vending machine fare as much as other kids. Now I think I know one reason why: because it’s not being sold to him by commercials.

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I don’t often blog about food or cooking, even though it’s one of my biggest hobbies. (I once applied to culinary school, got accepted and offered a grant, but decided not to go after spending a summer working in a restaurant.) I love to try new recipes, and since the Food Network is one the most-watched channels in our house, I’m always seeing recipes I want to try. When I do, I fly to the computer to find them on the network’s website, print them up and stick them in my binder. (Yes, I have a binder of recipes printed from various websites. So I don’t have to print them up again every time I want to use them.)

Deserts are a specialty of mine, and I love peaches. So when Alton Brown demonstrated this recipe for Individual Peach Upside-Down Cakes, I knew I’d have to try it.

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After grinding away most of the week on a project at work, I’ve fallen behind in my blogging and my blog reading. I’m just about through digging through my RSS feeds. (I know, there’s this handy function called “mark all read” that I should probably learn how to use, but then I’d miss something) That’s just marking the stuff I want to read. Actually reading it comes later.

Being in the habit of posting regularly is a hard habit to break. Half the time, as is the case now, I’ve got four or five posts in mind that I want to write at some point, and I spend a good bit of time thinking about what I want to write while actually doing something else. I won’t have time to write the posts that are percolating in my brain until sometime later. But in the interest of not letting things lie fallow for too long here. I thought I’d post something I’ve been meaning to write for a while.

It’s the answer to a question I often get from people who are about to visit the area. Where are the best places to go for vegetarian food in D.C.?

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Just in case you or your kids are as partial to PB & J sandwiches our son, check out this article on a salmonella outbreak linked to peanut butter. Then check your pantry, and if you have a jar of Peter Pan or Great Value brand peanut butter with a product code beginning with "2111," throw it out. Better safe than sick, hospitalized or worse. 

This sweet potato soufflé is something I whipped up to take to a holiday party yesterday evening. (For the uninitiated, those are marshmallows on top. Think of them as a meringue.) For some reason it occurred to me to take a picture of it, and then to post about it. Why? Because lately I’ve been revisiting old dreams and passions of mine (another story), and cooking is one that I’d forgotten about for the past year or so, while we were living out of boxes and waiting for the house to be completed. Now that we’re in it, and we have a functioning kitchen again, I’ve been pulling out some old recipes.

Besides, the kind of political blogging I’ve been doing takes time — time to read, time to think, and time to write. Lately that’s more time than I have. I’m not sure that food blogging takes any less time (time to cook, time to think, and time to write?), but until I finish thinking through a couple more politically-oriented posts, it’s worth a shot.

So, why sweet potato soufflé?

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Not that I ever need an excuse to eat Ben & Jerry's ice cream, but I have one now that they've switched to cage free eggs.