This month we were tasked with making the French-inspired but thoroughly Filipino dessert: the sans rival cake. Flourless but rich with butter, eggs, and nuts, this cake was delicious and gluten-free, but not for those looking to slim down. But, hell, we’re approaching Thanksgiving anyway, right?

Catherine of Munchie Musings was our November Daring Bakers’ host and she challenged us to make a traditional Filipino dessert – the delicious Sans Rival cake! And for those of us who wanted to try an additional Filipino dessert, Catherine also gave us a bonus recipe for Bibingka which comes from her friend Jun of Jun-blog.

My time was on short supply this month, so I didn’t try the bibingka, which is a pity, since it looks intriguing and decidedly non-Western (not that there’s anything wrong with Western desserts, mind you). Besides, my experience with Filipino desserts is limited to Mitchell’s halo-halo ice cream, and buko/pandan shakes at Jollibee’s.

In terms of variations, these are the ones I made:

• 50/50 nut mixture of macadamia and cashews for the dacquoise (only macadamias for decoration)
• chocolate in the French buttercream only, none in the dacquoise

This wasn’t a terribly difficult recipe to make, although getting the g-ddamn dacquoises off the damn parchment paper was next to impossible. I really should have listened to the advice to grease and flour the parchment paper, although allowing them to cook much longer (like an hour, instead of 30 minutes) made them crisp enough to pull off more easily, too. I put the 2 fucked-up looking ones in the middle, and the 2 relatively nice-looking ones (although they were warped a bit because I struggled to shove them onto the same cookie sheet) on the top and bottom. So, in a manner that was typical for me, I made an ugly dessert that still tasted great.

One picture here. A few more after the jump.

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Picked up two almost identical bottles of shampoo and body wash at Trader Joe’s. The price was identical. The branding was identical. The color and viscosity of the liquid? Identical. Gosh, they even smell the same. Yet, they are distinctly different products: one is shampoo, the other, body wash.

Let’s turn the bottle around…

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Where do retailers get off charging exorbitant prices for “organic” food?!?!

Wait a minute…

On a somewhat related note, what exactly is up with people deliberately buying a fake something to pass it off as something real? We all know the fake designer handbags, usually sold on a street corner in Manhattan on top of hastily-assembled card tables (here’s how to find out the fakes), and fake Rolex and other “wrist candy” (those can be sniffed out, too); the poseurs who would rather have us believe they deserve their own Real Housewives show are usually wearing this kind of crap. But what’s the point? I personally have as low an opinion of people who are dumb enough to pay full price for the real thing, as those paying a fraction to just pretend that they are.

This month’s challenge was a fun one, especially considering that I’ve eaten this before. What the challenge (and apparently lots of Croatians) call povitica is called by my (Croatian) mother orahnjaca, from the word orah, meaning walnut. It’s a yeasted twisted sweet roulade with a layer of crushed walnuts. The change with this recipe from the dessert I grew up eating, is that the layers of dough and walnut filling were very, very thin, so much so that the roll was doubled-up on itself and lined the loaf pan 4 times.

The Daring Baker’s October 2011 challenge was Povitica, hosted by Jenni of The Gingered Whisk. Povitica is a traditional Eastern European Dessert Bread that is as lovely to look at as it is to eat!

I made 3 changes to the Daring Baker recipe that Redfilly01 shared:

• I replaced the cocoa in the filling with rum
• I used whole-wheat flour instead of all-purpose flour
• I used an egg wash instead of sweetened, strong coffee on the top

The result? Surprisingly good. I loved seeing 4 mini swirls in the sliced cake instead of just one. The whole-wheat flour didn’t make the cake heavy, fortunately, although in an ideal world, I probably would have added a lot more butter or something like it to enrich the flavor. I would probably also cut back on the rum a bit and add more in the way of spices, like maybe cloves or nutmeg.

This wasn’t the cheapest challenge (I estimate I spent about $30 on ingredients) although I did end up with 4 good-sized loaves, and these things do sell for $27 apiece online. One went into the freezer for when our whole family gets together for the holiday (yep, they apparently freeze OK for 3-6 months), another was shared at the house for homeless young adults where I volunteer, another was taken to work, and the final one was partially eaten at home and partially frozen for a rainy day.

One snafu: I didn’t want the top to get too dark, so I put foil on the top for the first 30 minutes or so. The dough, very, very thin, stuck to the foil, so I had to tear it off. The effect was that the tops of the loaves looked like they were eviscerated by some beast living in my oven, the walnut filling layer exposed beneath. It ended up creating an intriguing, almost streusel-like effect, so I’m not regretting my mistake too much.

Cutting it in half, you can see the 4 swirls that fused together to make the loaf. A few more pics after the jump…

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Wyspa na której wszystko sie wyjasnia.
Tu mozna stanac na gruncie dowodów.
Nie ma dróg innych oprócz drogi dojscia.
Krzaki az uginaja sie od odpowiedzi.

The island where everything is explained.
You can stand here on the basis of the evidence.
There aren’t any roads except the path of entry.
Bushes bend on answers.

Rosnie tu drzewo Slusznego Domyslu
o rozwiklanych wiecznie galeziach.

The tree of Justifiable Conjecture grows here
with eternally unraveled branches.

Olsniewajaco proste drzewo Zrozumienia
przy zródle, co sie zwie Ach Wiec To Tak.

The blindingly simple tree of Understanding
by a spring called Oh, So That’s How It Is.

Im dalej w las, tym szerzej sie otwiera
Dolina Oczywistosci.

The further you go into the forest, the wider
the Valley of Obviousness opens up.

Jesli jakies zwatpienie, to wiatr je rozwiewa.

If there’s any doubt, then the wind disperses it.

Echo bez wywolania glos zabiera
i wyjasnia ochoczo tajemnice swiatów.

Without a call, an echo takes away the voice
and enthusiastically explains the secrets of these worlds.

W prawo jaskinia, w której lezy sens.

To the right, a cave, where Meaning lies.

W lewo jezioro Glebokiego Przekonania.
Z dna odrywa sie prawda i lekko na wierzch wyplywa.

To the left, the lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth tears away from the bottom, and gently pops up at the surface.

Góruje nad dolina Pewnosc Niewzruszona.
Ze szczytu jej roztacza sie Istota Rzeczy.

Unshakeable Certainty towers above the valley.
From the peak, the Heart of the Matter unfurls.

Mimo powabów wyspa jest bezludna,
a widoczne po brzegach drobne slady stóp
bez wyjatku zwrócone sa w kierunku morza.
Jak gdyby tylko odchodzono stad
i bezpowrotnie zanurzano sie w topieli.

Despite its allure, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints visible on its shores
are without exception turned towards the sea.
As if it’s only possible to leave here
and dive into the deep forever.

W zyciu nie do pojecia.

In an inconceivable life.

As we head into the 2012 election season, and I see all sorts of familiar right-wing rhetoric reappear from the 2008 season, I’m reminded of a powderkeg of an issue lit by the McCain campaign, or the Obama campaign, depending on who you talk to. Obama claimed that the Republicans would try to scare voters by reminding them that he’s “different” – an allusion to his name, age, background and race (“doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills”), which is, of course, exactly what they did (birthing the Birther movement, actually).

But was Obama’s warning “playing the race card”? The McCain campaign certainly thought so. Rick Davis, the McCain campaign manager, responded quickly, with, “Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.”

But was Obama playing the race card? What exactly is “the race card?”

The way it’s commonly understood, playing the race card means accusing someone of being a racist in order to score political advantage or deflect criticism. Its practice has been levied towards Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton most frequently, although because of their history in politics and ready interest in speaking on behalf of the entire black “community” (of approximately 40 million Americans), this is not surprising. It had not been used to describe Barack Obama, who has studiously avoided mentioning racism, beyond his deep, balanced treatise on America’s complex history with race, after the Reverend Wright controversy.

It’s difficult, unless you’re hypersensitive to it, to see “my opponents will play up how I’m different from the classic US presidential profile in many different ways” as meaning “if you don’t vote for me, that means you’re racist.”

But the hypersensitive might exactly be the group that the McCain campaign would like to exploit. What the McCain campaign, which has been much more heavily reliant on negative campaigning against his opponent than Obama’s, has been quick to play as an opportunity for itself is the “race-card card,” or tapping into white resentment against perceived use of the race card by African-Americans.

Resentment against Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton reached a fever pitch during the Don Imus controversy, when Imus called the Rutgers women’s basketball team players “nappy headed hos“. Right-wing bloggers and commentators at right-wing sites like The Free Republic and Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air fumed with indignation. (For a different reason, some black commentators also wondered both why Jackson and Sharpton felt the need to inject themselves in the debate, and why right-wing pundits were obsessed with their reaction.)

But did Obama’s original comment have any merit? Has he been an target, or did he raise the spectre of racism to a naive electorate? Let’s look at the attempts to highlight (or even fabricate) Obama’s “differentness”:

• conservative online magazine Insight publishes story alleging that Obama attended a Muslim religious school, a madrassa (not true)
• Larry Johnson alleges that he has a video showing Michelle Obama calling white people “whitey” (not true)
• many right wingers feel the need to highlight the fact that Obama’s middle name is Hussein (which is true, but would most certainly never be mentioned if it were John, or Sidney, for example)
• Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, is constantly called a racist (which is not true; referring to the disgrace of the US’s racist past does not make you a racist)

While these sorts of rumors were not directly attributable to the McCain campaign, they were popular memes circulated in right-wing circles, and almost certainly helped McCain’s candidacy among a type of voter primed to believe these sorts of things. And the campaign was quick to invoke the race-card card, while it largely remains passive when stories that can be easily proven to be untrue were circulated.

Publius at Obsidian Wings had this to say:

But the bigger problem here is that the Race Card Chorus plays on white resentment — which remains a poisonous brew. I’m a child of the rural South. But you know what? Actual racism is a lot less common there — we have a ways to go, but there has been real progress on that front. The more serious problem is white resentment. A lot of white people honestly think they have been significantly deprived of various things because of minorities. And it’s hard to overstate how deeply these feelings run. It’s not so much animosity toward people who are different — it’s the animosity of the aggrieved. They feel like they are the victims. That’s why race is a losing issue for Obama — it’s not so much that people are racist, but that they feel they are being punished because they’re white (yes, I know how completely absurd this must sound to the black community). And so this whole “race card” business feeds these flames (quite consciously, I think).

The race-card card might be more effective than the race card itself.

Oh, and since Rick Santorum has proven himself to be a douche yet again with his disrespectful answer to a gay servicemember’s question at a debate a couple of weeks ago, I thought I’d add that link there.

Walking down the street, absorbed in thought. Like I usually do.

While my brain is consumed thinking about something, my eyes wander. My eyes dart from person to person as I walk past them.

I notice that my eyes have been trying to figure out why a woman’s hand is not visible to me. Is she wearing a glove? Is it in her pocket? I realize that she doesn’t have a hand. Completely mortified, my eyes widen when I realize that I’ve been staring at her wrist for far too long.

A split-second later, I realize that my look of embarrassment at myself for looking at her too long might be construed as horror at her not having a hand.

That it’s impossible to explain these things in the second they happen leaves a terrible feeling in my stomach, especially knowing that it’s probably happened to her 100 times that day alone.

Awful.

This month’s challenge was time-consuming, but oh-so-worth-it. Croissants! Like baklava from a few months ago, a good croissant has lots of layers. In the case of croissants, you create those layers by interleaving dough and butter over and over again. It works beautifully and yields a pastry that is crisp and flaky on the outside, and steamy and soft on the inside. This was worth the many hours necessary to make these things (although, in all fairness, it is not difficult to make them, just time-consuming).

The Daring Bakers go retro this month! Thanks to one of our very talented non-blogging members, Sarah, the Daring Bakers were challenged to make Croissants using a recipe from the Queen of French Cooking, none other than Julia Child!

Since the technique involved so many steps, and a friend wanted me to share it and the recipe I used, I created a how-to recipe for croissants with pictures. I did not find the process particularly frustrating – there’s not a lot that go wrong – but this is not the sort of thing you can bang out in an hour if you have friends coming over for brunch. You have to plan.

Three pictures of my resulting croissants after the jump. They were delectable!

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Napisz to. Napisz. Zwyklym atramentem na zwyklym papierze: nie dano im jesc, wszyscy pomarli z glodu. Wszyscy. Ilu?

Write this down. Write it. With regular ink on regular paper: they were given nothing to eat, everyone died of hunger. Everyone. How many?

To duza laka. Ile trawy przypadlo na jednego? Napisz: nie wiem. Historia zaokragla szkielety do zera.Tysiac i jeden to wciaz jeszcze tysiac. Ten jeden, jakby go wcale nie bylo: plod urojony, kolyska prozna, elementarz otwarty dla nikogo, powietrze, ktore smieje sie, krzyczy i rosnie, schody dla pustki zbiegajacej do ogrodu, miejsce niczyje w szeregu.

That’s a large meadow. How much grass was for each? Write: I don’t know. History rounded the number of skeletons. 1,001 is still 1,000. That one is as if he completely never existed: an imaginary seed, an empty cradle, a primer opened for nobody, air which laughs, screams and grows, stairs for the void running to the garden, no particular place in line.

Jestesmy na tej lace, gdzie stalo sie cialem. A ona milczy jak kupiony swiadek. W sloncu. Zielona.

We’re in that meadow, where it became a body, which is as silent as a bought witness. In the sun. Green.

Tam opodal las do zucia drewna, do picia spod kory - porcja widoku calodzienna, poki sie nie oslepnie.

Over there, there’s a forest with wood for the chewing, and under the bark stuff to drink. A portion of a view for the whole day until you go blind.

W gorze ptak, ktory po ustach przesuwal sie cieniem pozywnych skrzydel. Otwieraly sie szczeki, uderzal zab o zab.

Up above, a bird, whose nourishing wings cast a shadow across their lips. Their jaws opened, tooth gnashed tooth.

Noca na niebie blyskal sierp i zal na snione chleby. Nadlatywaly rece z poczernialych ikon, z pustymi kielichami w palcach.

At night in the sky, the crescent moon shone and reaped the dreamt-of breads. Arms approached from blackened icons, with empty cups in their hands.

Na roznie kolczastego drutu chwial sie czlowiek. Spiewano z ziemia w ustach. Sliczna piesn o tym, ze wojna trafia prosto w serce.

On a spit made of barbed wire, a man spins. They sang with dirt in their mouths. A pretty song about how war strikes right at the heart.

Napisz, jaka tu cisza.
Tak.

Write how quiet it is.
Just like that. 

I was a big fan of the new “reimagining” of Battlestar Galactica, a sci-fi series that ended its four-year stint on television just a few years ago (but which, thankfully, continues to exist through DVD).

Although not a natural science fiction fanatic myself (I could never get into any of the Star Trek series, for example), I’ve enjoyed the complex, layered storytelling of the world of humans living under constant seige by their progeny, called Cylons, who have been able to create humanlike versions of themselves. The entire human population of about 50,000, spread across about 50 ships, continue to grapple with everyday human quandaries along with the constant pressure of evading Cylon attacks, buoyed by the hope of reaching the mythical planet of Earth, where the lost “thirteenth colony” of humanity is rumored to live.

How BSG’s humans cope with the existential threat posed by the Cylons, who seek to destroy them as inferior progenitors in the course of natural evolution, echoes in some ways the way the West does the same vis a vis the threat posed by fundamentalist Islam (although, naturally, the threat is not nearly as dire nor as foreign). The philosophical, social, political and ethical decisions that the humans’ struggles force them to make mirror those that have continued to shape our societies in the face of the forces that threaten to erode them.

Philosophical issues: The predominant philosophical theme that runs through the series is what constitutes a sentient being, and if Cylons qualify. What exactly makes us human? Is it our physical appearance and bodily makeup, our minds and our capacity to think, is it our feelings and capacity to love, or is it something less tangible, our values and character, or a soul or spirit? For the first two or three criteria, the humanoid Cylons clearly qualify (“Boomer” shows a capacity to love that often overrides her programmed directives), so is it that they wantonly kill people that created them and that are so similar? People have been warring and killing each other since the dawn of humanity, so disregard for fellow man is obviously not a disqualifier.

There are barely-detectable (without the aid of a laboratory) differences at the molecular level between humans and humanoid Cylons, but these might be meaningless if humans and Cylons were not locked into an existential struggle against each other. What compels Cylons to want to destroy humans? It’s not clear, but their different theology suggests they think wiping out the human race would complete an evolutionary step.

BSG also explores determinism vs free will (esp as it relates to those competing motives in Cylons like Boomer), and immortality (via commemoration, legacies and memories, most vividly struggled with by Starbuck).

Ethical issues: The series’s characters grapple with ethical dilemmas that constantly test their values and ideas of justice. Ethical concepts dealt with include:

• Utilitarianism – Measuring and executing to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of humans present a neverending challenge, principally to the human leaders, President Laura Roslin, and Commander William Adama. Every decision, whether to rig votes for the vice presidency, or “jump” and leave raiders or ships behind, carries with it certain loss; the loss must be weighed against potential gain, or mitigation of an even greater potential loss.
• Justice – Human treatment of Cylon and human prisoners, what rights are extended to them, whether they are entitled to due process, and how punishment is meted, create ongoing dilemmas to those forced to make these decisions.
• Kantianism – The individual’s role in shaping his behavior vis a vis rational thought and experience is brilliantly explored through the conscious thoughts of Dr Gaius Baltar, who continually struggles to balance self-interest with moral accountability to his fellow humans.

Social issues: BSG offers a glimpse into Cylon social structures, largely collectivist, as a foil with which to contrast human society, which is a reflection of its “western”, individualist values. Appreciation for (and tolerance of) dissent, love and duty (“office romances”), nepotism and favoritism, and behavior incentivization are all explored throughout the series.

Political issues: The predominant political undercurrent is that between civilian and military government, embodied by Roslin and Adama in the series. Colonel Tigh declares martial law at one particularly chaotic point in the second season, and faces widespread noncompliance as civilians protest the dissolution of their elected government. The accommodation of a civilian government by a military engaged in constant warfare with an existential enemy is one that democratically-elected governments have had to repeatedly face in times of conflict.

…..

With the series ending, we’ve lost yet another brilliant television show that made us think (while, sadly, so many others that don’t continue to live on). But, like at least one great “thinking person’s television” show, Six Feet Under, BSG ended when the majority of its viewers continued to cherish it.