Author: Eliot

Recipe: Morroccan Lamb with Shiraz Honey Sauce

I was SO getting into a rut with food for the last few weeks, and so I got to thinking: how about Moroccan? After all, those of us who know the Bay Area probably have eaten at Marrakesh in San Francisco, and they (at least used to) have some wonderful dishes, like this one.

This is a recipe right off of allrecipes.com.  I like that web site because many of the dishes are easy to prepare.  I am no chef.  I am barely a cook.  It took me no more than 40 minutes start to finish to cook up this little gem.  The catch is making sure you start with the right ingredients, and not to fuss about frenching the lamb rack.  (Wow that sounds obscene, anyway.  How do butchers come up with these terms?)

It’s a nice change of pace, and something easily made at home.  Just brush your teeth afterward!

Like or Dislike: Foyles War

To blow off steam after what can be a very long day, Christine and I will occasionally watch TV, like most of the rest of the world.  Most of what we watch is on DVD, and my current favorite is a show called Foyle’s War, created by Anthony Horowitz.  It’s a combination of murder mystery and historical fiction, at the outset of World War II.  Played by veteran Michael Kitchen, Chief Detective Inspector Foyle covers the beat of Hastings, an English coastal town.  Kitchen depicts our hero as a stiff-upper-lipped classic English gentleman, with a stick so far up his posterior, you wonder how he walks.

What I like about the show is that it really gives you a feel for the sorts of hardships the British endured during the war, and how they endured them.  Families were torn apart, there was very limited food to eat, there were prisoners of war, bombings, land confiscations by the government, the invasion of the American troops.  And mixed into all of this, a murder or two.

While there’s occasional blood and guts, there are no DNA labs, no fancy police cars, or for that matter, fancy getaway cars.  Just a game of wit to get you through.

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Hurray Brazil!

It’s not a very big story on this side of the planet, and with an estimated population of 201 million people, that’s a bit sad on it’s own, but we should at least take note that in overseeing elections in Brazil, President Lula Da Silva is about to achieve what is the most important thing for a government in that part of the world: a peaceful transition of power.  It’s not the first time for Brazil, either, as Lula himself succeeded Fernando Henrique Cardoso in 2003, who himself had succeeded Itamar Franco.  Another sign of the health of Brazil is that neither Franco nor FHC are wanted men, and have not been shown to have been corrupt.  This is not the way with many other countries.  Good luck to the candidates vying to succeed Lula!  They have both big shoes to fill and a great democracy to oversee.

Tyler Clementi: The real crime

I grew up in the township of Piscataway, New Jersey.  It was a town of contradictions in the 1970s, where there was a large immigrant population, a large black population, a small Jewish population, and a well outspoken bigot and homophobe population.  To be fair, this was not that uncommon in America for the 1970s- we were all learning how to get along with each other, still trying to learn the lessons that Dr. Martin Luther King gave his life teaching the world.  Indeed a nearby Piscataway school was named after him, just like many were in the U.S.  Piscataway, in fact, had a birds-eye view of what happens when people are oppressed just because they are somehow different: its neighboring town of Plainfield was the site of race riots in the 1960s.


Growing up, my family and our neighbors got to know a fellow neighbor by the name of David.  David was a wonderful sensitive boy who couldn’t hurt a fly.  He took part in school activities, and he enjoyed flash.  While I didn’t understand it at the ripe old age of 7, when David expressed interest in Elton John and Bette Midler, it later became clear that he was gay.  I do not know all the dynamics within our neighbor’s family, but they were Roman Catholics, and David had a very difficult time in the house.  Outside the house, he had an even more difficult time in high school, as he tried to find ways to express his personality.  The bigots would “kick his ass”.  Between his homelife and his school life, David’s self esteem was battered, and he later chose self-destructive behaviors.  He ended up as one of the many victims of AIDS, his behavior – not really his sexual orientation – being a contributing factor.

That was a long time ago.  I miss my friend to this day, of course, but one thing I hope is that we will have learned from the tragedies of the past, in the same way they say that the regulations of submariners are written in blood.

The Washington Post story of a Rutgers Student in Piscataway killing himself last week because he was filmed having sex with another man reminds me that sometimes, when “boys will be boys” (in this case I think one of the offenders is a woman), the results are tragic.  I’m sure the two people who committed this gross invasion of privacy could not have predicted the consequences.  That’s in part because of their immaturity and in part because of their upbringing; because their parents didn’t impress on them the need to respect not only someone’s privacy, but to consider what it would be like if they were gay.

I hope we remember the name Tyler Clementi.  What a sad loss, and for what?  Why did he think what being gay and acting on those feelings was somehow wrong?  Why?  Why was it wrong?  Who did it hurt?

The worst thing about this sad situation is that there are many people today who won’t see this as a loss because they are so blinded by ideology, prejudice, shame, and ignorance.  That to me is the real crime.