Eat your Greens for Good Luck in the New Year

This Gumbo works nicely in a crockpot. Serve in soup bowls with Rice and Louisiana style Hot Sauce. Easy to do and tastes fine.

Throw it together and let it simmer for hours. Yes, you can do it on the top of the stove, but why? This is more you-have-to-cook-dinner-365-days-a-year cooking.

Forgive the brevity and lack of direction - sometimes I get these recipes written down on the backs of envelopes. The Greens are the best part of this Gumbo for my taste. Green for Good Luck.  

Gumbo Verde

1 pound smoked or garlic Sausage, sliced in bite size pieces

2 cans of Navy Beans

1 can Beef Consomme with 2 cups Water

1 package frozen chopped Mustard Greens (10 ounces)

1 Onion, chopped

1 Bell Pepper, chopped

2 clove Garlic, chopped (optional)

Salt and Pepper to taste

Saute the Sausage with Onion, Bell Pepper and Garlic. Combine Sausage mixture with the Consomme and Water, Beans, Greens. Add Salt and Pepper to taste. Simmer slowly until the Beans become very soft and the Gumbo is thickened thereby.

Feel free to substitute cannellini or pink beans. You can use turnip greens or collards.

Potluck Panic? Make Xmas Eve Salad.

This is the time of year when Folks throw ( office, church, garage, AA, bowling team, study group, etc.) POTLUCK parties. That can be a problem if you cannot cook, or if you are too lazy to cook much, and some other fortunate Soul snags the Chips & Dip or Beer & Soda contributions.

This Salad can be your saving grace. You do not have to cook but only prepare the fruit with care and combine carefully. Everyone will think you are a whizbang gourmand. And if you are Vegan, you will have something you can eat. Use the videos on you tube on how to cut up fruit or not. There is more than one way to skin a Potluck. Happy Holidays!

Ensalada de Noche Buena

4 small Apples, cored and sliced
4 medium Oranges, peeled and separated in sections
3 cups of canned Pineapple, drained
4 small Bananas, sliced
3 tablespoons Sugar
2 tablespoons Lemon Juice
Romaine Lettuce leaves
2 cups canned Beets, drained
1/4 cup Peanuts

Combine the first six ingredients in a large bowl, cover and refrigerate until they are cold. At the moment of serving cover a salad bowl with the Lettuce leaves, mix carefully the Fruits and the Beets, and place the mixture over the Lettuce. Sprinkle Peanuts on top and serve immediately. Serves 12.

NOTE: Always wash your hands before you prepare food. Be sure to drain the canned ingredients thoroughly.
Some folks, my friends remind me, may be allergic to peanuts. So I would offer them on the side, roasted and salted, as a garnish. 

Merry Christmas Megan Pasty Pudding!

I have not watched even a clip from The View in a year. I cannot bear to look at Megan McCain or hear her petulant voice. I had to watch this one because I heart Nancy Pelosi.

Truth? I am a Roman Catholic. I want to bury my size 8 shoe, with ferocious joy, so far up Ms. Fatty Tit's dupa my shoelaces would tickle her uvula. There. I said it. doG forgive me. Tell your truth and shame the Devil.

I know - I am an evil body shamer. An rude intolerant slut. Sue me. I am also bipolar. On a bad day and presented with the opportunity, I might succumb to an evil impulse. I must avoid the "occasion of Sin." Ergo I do not watch the show. No point in arousing My Beast. Discretion is the better part of valor.

I wish my family and church had been the kind of Roman Catholics who taught "heart full of love." I think that oversight was a sort of "lace curtain Catholic" jawn. I remember terrifying Nuns and princely Priests. The Priests had these cords with big knots around their waists they beat themselves with at night, we were told meaningfully. All the better to beat you with, my wee Pumpkin. No one actually ever hit me. I was scared all the same. 

There were so many of us kids. Nuns had little clickers we were taught to obey. Click click = genuflect. Click click - stand. I went to Bethany Presbyterian to be a Girl Scout. I was taught Art and Basketmaking by Republican Miss Petty of the Junior League, social justice warrior. I remember sane Republicans. 

I have no shame. God loves me absolutely. I had to learn that from Nancy Horan, AA and the Quakes. God bless us everyone. Merry Christmas. I am working at Peace on Earth. It has to start with me.

Organic Rum and Jasmine Liqueur

I am gifting myself with a bottle of organic Jasmine Liqueur this Christmas. And one of dark Rum. Corporate distillers use additives that ordinary folks would not use, if we made our own spirits.

Making liqueurs and wine at home used to be common in American life as this scene from Arsenic and Old Lace attests. An excellent cookbook which has a chapter on home liqueur making is Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine.

Greenbar Organic Distillery makes their own Vodka, Gin, Tequila, Liqueurs and Bitters without additives, using classic distillery techniques and all organic ingredients.

A bottle of anything Greenbar makes would be a welcome hostess gift. I have nothing to gain from any transaction you make with Greenbar beyond the success of the company. Quality counts.

TRU Jasmine Martini

Ingredients:

1 1/4 oz TRU vodka
1 oz FRUITLAB jasmine liqueur
1/4 oz simple syrup

Glass Types: (Martini/Coupe)

Instructions:

Shake + strain into a martini glass
Garnish with an edible flower

Our Bill. He's a slut and I love him. UPDATE #1.

INTRODUCTION - Skip this if you have read it already.
UPDATE is marked. Soon soon there will be consolidation. I swear.

I remind you this is a Living Article Play Thing. I have a Beginning and and End typed. Soon there will be a Middle.
...............................................
When Bill Clinton was in his impeachment process, I wrote a short play about the event. I entered it into the Ten Minute Play competition and it was performed at the City Theater in Wilmington Delaware. It got a standing ovation from the audience. :::does quiet happy dance:::

Telling a story with interesting characters in 10 minutes is a challenge.

I have not looked at it for a long time. I think for giggles and because my original and only script is in tatters and scribbled all over, I am going to retype and rediscover it here. Who knows, maybe I will rework some of it into a new impeachment opus.

I am a big fan of the Living Theatre. I traveled from East Gibip to attend one of their performances. The photograph is from The Brig 1964. Prophetic?  Their work has been an influence on mine. This is a Living Article because I will be editing and rewriting as I go. Such fun. Send money. Keep me off the Street.

UPDATE begins here:.........................................................

It has been so long since I looked at the script, I forgot the title. Original title was M & M's or Mania, Marketing and Millennium. Bit pretentious, I think now.

BEGINNING:

Bella:
Occasionally, when I feel a need for companionship, I hang out at a bar in Philadelphia affectionately known to we regulars as The Toilet.

Donna:
The Toilet Bar has a large picture window (uniquely decorated for every holiday) through which one may watch exotic flora and even fauna stroll Frankford Avenue.

Bella:
So there is a woman standing on the corner at the bus stop. A white Cadillac stops, she gets in the car and it drives off. Gone 15 minutes. And she is back on the corner.

Donna:
Black Lincoln pulls up. 20 minutes. Back and tucking the green under her wig.

Bella: A Jaguar pulls up. Back at her post.

Donna;
A Lexus pulls up. At this point, the Woman has attracted widespread establishment attention.

Bella:
The whole bar is cheering. And Tommy the Bartender asks "Given stamina, what has this Woman got?" She is generic female. Neither ugly nor lovely.

Donna:
Upon investigation, it becomes clear that whenever a guy in a new car with a $50 haircut approaches, this Woman hikes up her skirt, shows her panties and hollers "Yo Baby, scratch and sniff."

.....................................getting coffee

HOT NEW COPY.

A short play for two characters. It is a play that is also a dance a la Living Theatre a bit. One day perhaps, a dance professional will help me notate it. Here is a bit from the end:

ENDING:

Bella:
I saw an ad for Right Guard. I have a Secret. I do not want to be protected from wetness. I am into sordid unprotected sex with long haired 20 year olds. These days a hard row to hoe.

Donna:
If we apply the concepts we have been discussing, you are in real need of a new look.

Bella:
Botox. Nip and tuck. Piercing various body parts?

Donna:
Ugh.

Bella: Shave the head and grow the legs. Look like a stick in a skirt? That will take off a few years.

Donna:
Too hard. Oh too hard. O tempore!

Bella:
So I went out and got a tattoo. Two eyes. One on each of my inner thighs. That way, if any wandering person should come to visit down there, it will not feel lonely and might tarry awhile.

Donna:
Honey, you still be the same old stuff.

Bella:
Yeah but I have hot new copy.

MIDDLE: Some of it.

Note; This is the part where I talked about Bill's penis. I only have fragments of a script. I am going to have to search in my papers. So no continuity at the moment. Damn.

Donna:S
Modern Life. It is 8 a.m. I am making coffee. My baby girls turn on the TV. I can tell by the lack of noise, they are rapt. Cartoons? No.

 A woman wearing too much fuchsia lipstick is intoning gravely "The President has a penis...and he uses it." Gah. Quick newsbreak 11 a.m. - "The President has a penis, it bends to the left, and he uses it often. News at noon - "The President has a lovely, loyal and intelligent wife; he has a penis and it is evidently the focus of a right wing conspiracy."

Bella:
Bill is no Spring chicken. So same old stuff. Hot new copy.

The State of Missouri is a Sexpig Rapist Peeker Pervert.

Graphic by Favianna Rodriguez.

What is happening in Missouri? 

“It is the moment that we have long been warning about,” Bonyen Lee-Gilmore, director of state media campaigns at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told Vox: “the day that abortion access is eliminated without ever overturning Roe.”

I did a series about the pervert sexpig males who populate the wombnazi movement. I had to quit because I was giving myself bad dreams. I am a rape survivor. Nevertheless, I have to write about this sexpig being paid by a US State to humiliate and degrade women. So without further comment meet Dr. Randall Williams, director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.

I am at a loss for words. Sickening? Perverse? No word or words seem adequate to describe State sponsored rape-stalking. Run the tape. How you like the bow tie?

I wrote this.

I am not sure if this is a bad poem or the opening sentences of a bathetic mystery thriller. If it is a poem, it needs a second stanza. Too sad. If it is the opening of a throwaway novel, it achieves the right level of sappy happy bathos. 

I am not sure I can do a second stanza. It is one sloppy happy thing to go on social media and leak words;  writing is another thing entirely. The word KOOL has to go. 

Dying can only be done alone.

Kool if you have loving company. 

Bad if you have cold company. 

Worse if you have none.

Mormons Are Dangerous - Real Philadelphia #3

I live in a Philly Rowhouse. My door opens right onto the street. I am hanging out at home one day minding my own business.  I hear Knock Knock on the door. I quick open it.

Standing there are two young guys who look like Tarantino Hit Men. As I was about to draw my sword in defense, I saw little name tags. It is Elders Keith and Kevin. I said "Yo guys. Where's the other K?"

Elder Keith said "We have come to share some scripture with you, Ma'am." I said "Sure. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." And the scripture throwdown was on. They quoted shit at me; I quoted shit at them; they quoted shit at me...and then, I had an Epiphany.

Elders Keith and Kevin started to look a little sweaty to me. I had a moment of intense self consciousness. I realized I was standing in my doorway in my pajamas, hair uncombed, no bra, doobie in hand at 3:30 in the afternoon. And what was going on for Elders Keith and Kevin was "Oh boy. We have only been in Philly one week and we have met our first real drug addict." I resent that. I am a writer. Context is everything.

I was so upset by the Mormon invasion that friends from St. Philomena's decided I was in dire need of crisis counseling. We went to the Toilet Bar in Frankford. I got so drunk I was treading the fine line between ecstasy and puking. So one of the Ushers took me out into the alley and rolled me a doob. I was able to avoid puking, mellow out and explain myself. Timothy is such a thoughtful young man.

It is not that I do not like Mormons. I understand the spiritual impulse. I have read The Varieties of Religious Experience. I hang out with Quakers and they are really peculiar. I have even been known to drop acid and consult the Lawn Gnomes.

No. It is not that I don't like Mormons. No. This is what bothers me. I am a mental health consumer, occasionally medicated for public safety. I still think Mitt Romney SuperMormon is coming to get me. I know Mitt Romney thinks the same.