Hello, hello!  Charlotte here.  Hope your Halloween/Dias de los muertos were festive and fun, and just a little scary.  I know my 31st of October was muy excellente, the reasons for which I can sum up in three words: vegan cupcake giveaway!  Yes, there are few things that bring me greater joy than vegan food being made and distributed to the masses gratis.  (Which means I conceptually adore Food Not Bombs, even though the DC chapter does their cooking and distributing when I’m working and/or elsewhere.)  This Saturday, I decided to shake off a painful and frustrating Friday by getting back to one of my favorite activities, and then sharing the fruits of my labor with the world!  Or, at least the first twenty or so strangers I could persuade to take a cupcake from the strange woman in the red wig.  Let me ’splain:

Chipotle gives out free burritos on Halloween, to anyone who comes in dressed as a burrito.  In practice this means wrapping some part of one’s body, however small, in tin foil.  It’s fun, it’s easy, it gets me free quasi-Mexican food.  So it’s become something of a Halloween tradition for us underemployed young people in the greater metropolitan area. There’s always a crowd, which to my mind immediately means: perfect opportunity for some creative outreach.  I could put on my Halloween costume (Sally, from The Nightmare Before Christmas), go give out cupcakes, then wrap my wrist in foil, get my free burrito, and be done in time for the play my roommie and our friend Lady J had tickets for in the evening.  That was my thinking after getting out of bed.  Then I opened VCTOTW to this recipe, and that sealed the deal.  Mexican Hot Chocolate Cupcakes?  Chocolate and cayenne pepper?  What better way to celebrate the Days of the Dead?!  Clearly the spirits were sending me a message.

All right, so, the cupcakes: what exactly makes Mexican hot chocolate different from any other chocolate cupcake?  I already mentioned the cayenne pepper — just a pinch in the batter.  Plus cocoa powder (natch), vanilla and almond extracts (still a big fan of the old stand-bys), and cinnamon to round out your spices.  Instead of the usual soy or rice milk, these cakes are made with rich creamy coconut milk.  Pouring it from the can, I almost wanted to forget the cupcakes and drink it straight.  But I restrained myself, and luckily so, or the cakes wouldn’t have been so moist.  The batter also calls for corn flour, as in the substance to which we owe tasty chips, burritos, tacos–all manner of delicious things onto which one may spoon a generous helping of guacomole.  (But I wouldn’t recommend guacomole on the cupcakes.)

Either my flaxseeds have lost some of their oomphf, or my oven is dial is not spot-on (either might account for it), but these didn’t rise in the baking as nicely as other recipes have.  Probably I also took them out a smidgeon too soon.  Terry & Isa always say insert a fork into the center to test for done-ness; when it comes out clean, the cakes are baked.  Well, my testing fork was clean, but the cupcakes still looked a little gooey.  I went with it, though.  I had filled some of the liners too high, and they’d baked over the sides, sticking to the pan, which meant I had to chip a few edges off the cupcake tops to get them out of the pan.  Good for me — I ate the crumbs quite happily — not as good for the cupcakes’ appearance.  To compensate, and also because roommie wisely advised me that anyone who gets a cupcake–even a free cupcake–with no topping feels cheated, I covered each with the Rich Chocolate Ganache Topping (143).  This recipe calls for 4 oz semisweet chocolate, chopped, but I sped things along with some chocolate chips instead.  The Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips (unlike most of the Ghirardelli products I’ve come across) are actually vegan and quite good, in that pretensious fine-chocolate kind of way.

Results?  The cupcakes were an ooey-gooey chocolatey mess, and absolutely wonderful to eat.  Rich, moist, with a nice spicy kick at the end to wake you up.  But not too spicy for more sensitive palates than mine, if my roommate’s reaction is any judge.  It took a lot of willpower not to hoard them for ourselves, I tell you.  Fortunately we knew at least two friends who wanted to get in on the vegan Halloween madness, and we managed to get the rest of the cupcakes to Chipotle without inhaling them all.  The giveaway started slowly.  But my awesome roommate stuck by, handing out napkins and copies of the recipe (yes, Isa & Terry, if you’re reading this, I gave away your recipe — but I cited you!), and within an hour, we had three little cupcakes left from the original 2 dozen I’d made.  One kind man even gave us a $5 donation.  We met a nice family of tourists, and two actors from the local theater down the street.  And we saw lots of amusing costumes.  This may have to become a regular occurence.

Whew!  It’s been a loooong time since I did a cupcake recipe review — hope it was worth the wait.

While helping organize an event to commemorate the radical abolitionist movements of John Brown and Harriet Tubman, I read an excellent book: Neither Fugitive Nor Free by Edlie Wong.  The author explores the issue of freedom suits in the antebellum U.S.: legal suits in which slaves sued their masters for their freedom, made possible by the delineation of free territory where chattel slavery was illegal, and slave territory, where it was. My review of the book is posted here with Feminist Review.  I’d can’t recommend this book highly enough!

One of the great things about activism is it forces you to learn a lot you didn’t know before, because you have to have some facts in your head when you go around talking to folks.  Recently, I’ve been filling a yawning gap in my history knowledge — anything and everything to do with the Civil War, which (can’t imagine why) my high school history curriculum sidestepped — by working with some local activists under the banner of the John Brown-Harriet Tubman Historical Society.  We’re organizing a rally and march against racism on Oct. 17, 2009, in Harper’s Ferry, WV.  (Find us on Facebook or email fightingracism2@yahoo.com if you want to come!)  Better students of American history than I may know that John Brown, a white abolitionist, led a group of 21 others, white and black, in a raid on the federal arsenal in Harper’s Ferry on Oct. 16, 1859.  The plan was to take the weapons of the arsenal and retreat into the Alleghany Mountains, where they would form guerilla groups of escaped slaves and other anti-slavery fighters, who would then foment slave rebellions.  Alas, the raid was tactically unsuccessful, but Brown’s example galvanized the abolition movement and inspired the Union troops, who marched to the song “John Brown’s Body” as the Civil War broke out.  So we celebrate the 150th anniversary of this raid, recognizing the model of multiracial cooperation and hardcore commitment to equality it offers, as well as realizing how much racism is still separating and injuring us all.

Harriet Tubman is possibly the most famous “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, an escaped slave herself who helped hundreds of others reach free territory safely.  She was also (I learned through this activity) a confidant and supporter of Brown, who probably would have participated in the raid herself had communication reached her in time.  I helped to write a short piece on her association with Brown for Challenge.  It had to be combined with another article due to space and time constraints (such is a writer’s life) but I’m posting the original, Tubman-centric article here.  She was quite the human.  Enjoy!

Hi, all! Just finishing up summer myth here in the good ol’ greater DC metropolitan area. My students and I discussed the question of why “we” study mythology today, and why “we” study stories at all. Which of course plagues my mind all the time. Though my answer changes by the hour, part of it is a conviction that there is a deep psychological reason that certain humans find certain stories satisfying. Last year, I picked up an immense book on just this question called The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, which I critique here in the latest addition to the Prose page. Though I wrote it up months ago, it fell off my radar screen for a bit and only recently has returned. Go figure.

The Holocaust

Genocide was nothing new in 1939, but the Nazis under Adolf Hitler created an assembly line of murder that has been rivaled nowhere else except modern slaughterhouses.  Six million Jewish humans were killed by the Nazis and their collaborators.  If we include other ethnic groups, prisoners of war, disabled people, homosexuals, and dissidents who were also exterminated, the death toll is at least 11 million.

These events must be accepted as historical fact.  The physical and documentary evidence, not to mention living eye witnesses, belie any and every madman’s attempt to deny these events.  There are no logical grounds from which to question their historical veracity, nor moral grounds from which to approve or forget or conveniently ignore.  Instead these events ought to be analyzed with open eyes, for signs and causes and outcomes.  To deny the trauma of this history is naive and cruel.

Barack Obama

Rest assured that at any given time, I am disapproving of this human capitalist-wolf in sheep’s clothing — much as I disapprove of maligning both sheep and wolves by that trite human analogy.  I am often forced to compromise precision of meaning in efforts to communicate through the imperfect medium you call “language.”  Betty, Veronica, and I never have trouble understanding each other even without vocalization, symbols, complex syntax or grammar.

Your American president wordmaster must love the limitations of human language, however.  He can talk around any issue, leave nasty truths unsaid, and come off looking like a swell guy.  If his middle name isn’t “Potent Rhetoric” it should be.

What’s that you say?  His middle name is Hussein?  Oh yes, that’s right — much has been made of this fact, especially by him, in his recent trip to tyrannical-states/U.S. allies (is there really a difference?) Saudi Arabia and Egypt.  Let’s examine some examples of his rhetorical efficacy from his speech at Cairo University.  There was this gem:

Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong, and it does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding.

The first statement sounds great to the casual listener — the idea of anyone abandoning violence seems a “positive” development towards a “civilized” resolution of differences.  But it presupposes that Palestinians en masse are currently engaged in violent acts which they must abandon.  I can only presume Mr. Obama means to evoke the ever-useful specter of rocket fire from the Gaza strip and the image of Palestinian political party Hamas as dangerous extremists.  This rabbit has no interest in defending Hamas, but consider for one moment that they are the elected leaders of Gaza.  Is there an elected government anywhere else in the world that, if its territory were blockaded by another power and its people bombed, would be expected to respond with no show of force whatsoever?  Furthermore, if Hamas as a group is so violence-prone, and so representative of Palestinians at large, they are also remarkably ill-equipped and incompetent.  Consider that in the Israeli siege of Gaza in January of this year, 13 Israelis died–four by friendly fire–compared to 1,300 Palestinians.  That’s 100 Palestinians killed for every 1 Israeli, 4 of whom were killed by their own side.  Leading up to this, ratios of Palestinian deaths due to Israeli military activity compared to Israeli deaths due to Palestinian rocket-fire regularly topped 200 to 1.  Mr. Obama included in his speech no recommendation to the Israeli state that they abandon violence, yet these figures crudely suggest that Israel is at least a hundred times more violent than the Palestinians.  Should we conclude killing is only wrong when used to resist occupying power, not to entrench it?  Or maybe it’s only wrong when Arabs do the killing — I’m not sure which President Barry meant to imply.

One wonders what sage words Mr. Obama would have offered to the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943.  Perhaps they too should have abandoned violence?  But let’s not make unfair comparisons, eh?  Let’s grant Mr. Obama his way: he evokes instead the civil rights struggles in the U.S. and elsewhere that included leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., who committed themselves to nonviolent forms of resistance.  Obama conveniently glosses over the violent conflicts that contributed to the abolition of slavery and the formal recognition of black American rights.  He has been out of school for some time, and perhaps John Brown’s raid, the Deacons for Defense and Justice, Malcolm X, et al., were not emphasized in his history classes, but how anyone misses the Civil War is beyond this bunny.  Or at Gettysburg was it Union troops’ “peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding” that did in23,000 Confederate soldiers?  Obama’s speech also comfortably assumes that full and equal rights have been won for all American citizens.  Sure, legally, black and white Americans are no longer segregated, but geographically, socially, and economically, the divide remains — Mr. Obama’s individual rise to fame and fortune notwithstanding.  But the speech admits no room to question this presumption.

Instead, with intolerable smugness, Obama’s message to Palestinians is that “we” Americans know how to resist and end injustice like civilized, peaceable people, so take a page from our book and you’ll have your precious civil rights.  He either doesn’t know or doesn’t wish to acknowledge the full range of ways Palestinian humans have resisted and continue to resist the Israeli state’s violence against them.  These include regular nonviolent protests where and when Israel sends its young people to demolish Palestinian homes or erect apartheid-style walls.  Some Americans may vaguely remember Rachel Corrie, an American who traveled to Gaza to live and work in solidarity with Palestinians; an Israeli military bulldozer ran over and killed her in 2003 as she was peacefully protesting.  More recently Akil Sadek Sru and Basim Abu Rahmah were killed in separate incidents protesting at the separation wall near the West Bank village of Ni’lin — the site of regular protests and regular violence against these protestors from Israeli forces.

Obama spoke not a word to condemn Israeli violence, which includes not only the direct use of force and weaponry, but the day-t0-day violence of denying basic necessities like food, water, fuel, electricity, access to hospitals.  The most charming of hypocrites, he also ignored the blatant violence of his own state against Iraqis, Afghans, and Pakistanis; he ignored the fact that Israel’s violence is funded (in vast majority) by American aid.

How can he get away with this?  Why did not truth seekers shout him down at once?  Allow me to point out another instance of Obama’s sleight-of-tongue:

Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed, more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, it is ignorant, and it is hateful.

Here he prefaced his remarks on Palestinian violence with a denunciation of Holocaust deniers and anti-Semitism.  Fine.  But now watch carefully, kids, as he effortlessly allides Nazis with anyone who would dare criticize the Israeli state:

Threatening Israel with destruction, or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews, is deeply wrong and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.

Here the first phrase, “threatening Israel with destruction,” is equated with “repeating vile stereotypes about Jews,” both “deeply wrong.”  Thus the listener, if agreeing that the latter action is wrong, is forced to agree that the former is also wrong.  But to claim Israel = Jews is wrong, and erases the worldwide diaspora and those within Israel who do not endorse the violence of the Israeli state.  The fact is  “the peace that the people of this region deserve” is most disturbed not by outsiders threatening Israel with destruction (a tacit rebuke to Iran’s leader) nor by repeating stereotypes about Jews (though stereotyping indeed is a vile human behavior) but by the state of Israel itself — in breaking ceasefire agreements, in bombing a trapped civilian population, in denying basic necessities.

I’m always curious which way the wind is blowing on animal rights, especially in venues where a liberal/lefty slant isn’t a given.  A co-worker recently steered me toward this article in First Things, a publication of interreligious but orthodox theologians interested in shaping public policy.  Yes.  That’s right.  I’m terrified as well.

Interestingly, the author attempts to make the case for an alliance between the anti-abortion movement and vegetarians (and maybe vegans, too?).  At one point in my intellectual development, I was much enamoured of this idea — after all, if you consider an unborn fetus’ life sacrosanct, it doesn’t seem like much of a leap to lend a similar sanctity to the life of a chicken/rabbit/pig/cow/lobster…  Ah, youth!  My naivete seriously underestimated the speciesist outlook of many pro-lifers, and I myself hadn’t yet tackled the sticky issues of criminalization and bodily autonomy that attend the abortion debate.  But it’s a debate worth having, so let’s have it!

Once again, Charlotte will be teaching Greek and Roman Mythology.  Which means once again, Charlotte is tweaking her syllabus, lectures, and discussion plans.   She’s thinking of using the following exercise in the first discussion, but needs some raw data (i.e., idea what kind of results to expect) before committing to it.  You can help her by doing the following exercise yourself and emailing her your results or posting here.  Be as honest as you can and as anonymous as you like.

1) Picture a basketball player. Write a brief physical description. 2) Picture a baseball player. Write a brief physical description. 3) Picture a softball player. Write a brief physical description.

In the ingredients preface to VCTOTW, Terry & Isa encourage their baking padawans to collect and experiment with flavor extracts: “Collect a bunch and soon you’ll be known as ‘That Magical Extract Lady (or Man)’ and the local children will follow wherever you go.”  Vanilla and almond extract have never let me down, but there’s a lot more to the flavor world than those old stand-bys: coffee, orange, mint, maple… I could go on and on, making a deliciously different batch of cupcakes every day, solely by alternating the extracts in the mix.  No children are following me yet, but I’m doing pretty well with the twenty-something post-college set.  Parents of the twenty-something post-college set, too.

For this recipe, I have to thank mi madre for acquiring the raspberry extract and suggesting the flavor combo. Perhaps she was inspired by the luscious photo on p. 42 of the Sexy Low-Fat Vanilla Cupcakes with Fresh Berries.  While those are a recipe unto themselves, the cakes that my lovely assistant Dohn Juan and I produced were mix-and-match.  We used the standard Golden Vanilla Cupcakes (33), substituting 1/4 tsp of raspberry extract for the almond I usually give ‘em.  On top, we spread raspberry preserves, and drizzled some Skinny Confectioners’ Icing (41).  The Icing is about as simple as can be–pure confectioners’ sugar plus 1-3 tsp soy milk.  It’s a snap to make, especially when you have a baking prodigy to help stir while you pour.  My stir-er proved himself so naturally gifted–clockwise strokes, who’da thunk?–I could even overlook the silent “h” in his name.

And the taste of these cupcakes?  Wow.  That raspberry extract is magical–like your tongue dives into a raspberry-flavored swimming pool.  With the icing and preserves on top, these cupcakes are like a really good Pop-Tart, or Nutri-Grain Bar.  And you don’t even need a toaster.

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