No Other News The Same: Don't Trust Washington

I'm going to level with you here. The reason I started this weekly Op-Ed was to hold myself accountable to actually keeping up with the news. The actual news, not news about TV shows. So I'm not quite there as of today. Yet I've been noticing (along with numerous other viewers) that my hometown of Washington, DC (the place where the government actual news happens) is being portrayed by multiple television shows right now; House of Cards, Scandal, Veep, and Homeland, to mention a few. While the show The West Wing was a source of comfort of how things could be for those liberal Democrats dealing with the Bush White House, these new shows send one big collective message: Don't Trust Washington.

Although I've just begun my foray into House of Cards (don't judge me for joining the game so late), the Washington of House of Cards is one big game. Literally, one big game of cards. This show portrays a House representative who literally controls everyone around him. Not to mention, someone who finds nothing wrong with strategically linking government inside information to a major Washington newspaper.

There's never a dull moment in Scandal, a TV show that constantly makes you question the ethics of government - from election rigging to torture to faking pregnancies and relationships. Yes, the show often goes a bit over the top, but you are constantly left wondering, "Do you think that could really happen? Does that happen?" It seems like the government is barely being held together.

The bottom line is that no one knows what goes on behind Washington's closed doors. Republicans and Democrats are both equal offenders. Yet it seems that the public assumes it's pretty shady. I'll be watching the return of Scandal tonight, and I'll keep ya posted.

No Other Dish The Same: Guest Blogger: Nutella Chocolate Chip Cookies

Dear readers, I'm switching it up a bit with my first guest post! Introducing....LP!

I pride myself on being someone who has tried as many types of cookies as possible, but my attempts at cookies is an entirely different story. Besides heating the occasional ready made stick on cookie dough fresh from the grocery store freezer, I have rarely actually attempted to make legitimate cookies on my own. Although there were those M&M cookies I made about 10 years that turned out well.....but I digress. I am moving on to bigger and better things. Namely Nutella Chocolate Chip Cookies! So after what always seems to be the exhausting experience of working my way through the trendy neighborhood market, I had all of the ingredients.....even if they were sprawled across the table in no specific order.

To start, the flour, baking soda and salt (yes salt) were placed together in a bowl as I proceeded to melt the butter on the stove top. I must point out that in an effort to make healthier choices these days, I opted to use whole wheat flour instead of the bleached stuff.

Being the manly man that I am I decided I would not need a blender for the next steps. Certainly, I thought it would be a piece of cake (pun intended) to mix the gooey bowl of flour, butter, sugar, yolk, yogurt and vanilla all at once. So you're probably wondering to yourself "how did that work out for you"? My reply would be....that it did not. With the aid of new age technology I was able to finally mix the dough with added chocolate chips to boot. Now it was time to really get down to business.

With the cookie dough now set, I was able to add the Nutella. It took everything in me not to grab a big spoon and go to town on the jar like it was a pint of Ben & Jerry's froyo but my zen like qualities prevent such events from happening. After placing a small spoonful of Nutella into the center of each cookie it was off to the oven they go and the rest is history. I became the proud father of warm delicious Nutella chocolate chip cookies and then I ATE THEM! With some help of course : )

No Other Tale The Same: The Secret Keeper

The Secret Keeper by Kate Coombs, although written for a very young audience, contains an important message, as do virtually all picture books. Coombs' simple message is that everyone needs balance. She conveys this message through charming words, illustrated with beautiful pictures by Heather M. Solomon.

In this tale, Kalli, the secret-keeper of Maldinga is responsible for keeping all of the villagers' secrets. Each time one of them reveals a secret (like a baker that charges unfairly for his products) that secret becomes a stone or other heavy object in Kalli's hand. She files the secrets away in her drawers and becomes heavier. The villagers, having gotten their deep, dark secrets off their chests, walk away a little lighter. Yet when the villagers aren't telling Kalli secrets, they shy away from her, probably in shame. Only one villager, Taln, the potter's son, never tells her secrets and always talks to her.

Finally, Kalli collapses under the weight of the secrets and isolation and can't take it anymore. The villagers rush to her side and begin to tell her happy secrets (like the old man who says he married his true love). Each secret literally takes wings in Kalli's hands - a butterfly, a bird, etc. Taln tells her he's in love with her, the secret-keeper. This secret becomes a rose.

Kalli finds her balance. She still keeps the villagers' dark secrets, yet she has Taln to help her carry the burden, and the villagers meet annually in the springtime to publicly declare their happy secrets. Why read children's books, one might ask? Often they contain more layers and wisdom than one might imagine. The way Coombs describes dark secrets as literally weighing someone down and happy secrets as literally taking flight is so simple, yet so profound. Good secrets balance out the bad, and Coombs urges her readers to find a balance of both in their lives.

No Other _____ The Same: Just Climb

While rock climbing at a gym with a friend yesterday, I thought of how simple rock climbing really is. I don't mean technique-wise. Most of the time we were just hoisting ourselves up that wall with little grace and brute force. Yet, looking up, trying to find the next rock to grab and a place to put my feet, I was completely focused. All I had to do was climb. And then laugh at myself if I fell, because I knew my friend would catch me.

No Other Angle The Same: Too soon

Philadelphia, PA
Sunday, February 23rd
10:04 am

This weekend the weather got up into the 50's, and people started shedding some layers. One man shed a bit too many. I feel ya, buddy. I want to wear shorts too. Just wait a couple months.

No Other News The Same: Don't Judge Food Decisions

In 2009, in an effort to bring fresh food into a North Philadelphia neighborhood, a Fresh Grocer was built near Temple University. It was highly publicized. Even Michelle Obama was there for the opening. Everyone had high hopes that this addition would change the health of the neighborhood. Yet four years later, a Penn State study finds that shoppers aren't eating any more fresh produce and that body-mass index hasn't decreased. Why not? Well, the simple addition of fresh food isn't enough to change human behavior. Making a change is way more complicated than that.

It's no secret that food access divides Americans. When the only option within an easy distance includes mostly processed food, it's much more difficult to access fruits and vegetables that will enhance health. Yet simply providing access to low-income food deserts isn't enough.

Of course nutrition education always plays a role in healthy eating, yet it's not fair to judge a lower income neighborhood for making the same food choices that are made al over America. "Judging low-income people for not eating enough fruits and vegetables makes little sense in a country that practically celebrates the chance to eat poorly," said Shiriki Kumanyika, an epidemiologist and obesity expert at the University of Pennsylvania. "If supermarkets alone could cure unhealthy diets, what Americans eat would look very different," she said. "The choices people make in supermarkets are bad if you look at the overall American diet. And that's regardless of income."

So what does go into eating choices? Income of course, yet beyond that, emotions, societal pressures, traditions and more. Change is not something that can happen overnight. The best bet is to work towards understanding what's behind food decisions, not judging, not thinking one person has all the answers, and working together with communities to gain control over their food.

No Other Dish The Same: Butternut Squash Ravioli

Let me just say first - YUM! When your foodie friend who is an amazing chef invites you over to make butternut squash ravioli, you accept. I need to preface this post with a couple of disclaimers.

I didn't make the pasta - it was purchased from the Italian Market.

I also didn't make the butternut squash puree - my fantastic friend did. 

However, the recipe seems fairly straightforward.

I did, however, form the raviolis, which in my mind, is the most fun! Take a square (you have to have someone precise cut them first - not it :), and add a dab of filling, wet the edges with water, press a top later on, crimp the edges with a fork...

And voila!

Pretty fancy!

The next part is super easy - boil water, put the raviolis in and wait until they rise to the top. No timing, no measuring - just wait until they float. Since it was fresh pasta - it took ONE MINUTE. Usually pasta takes 8-9 minutes!

Then my friend made this amazing butter sauce that she just whipped up with all kinds of spices - I'm sure I could never replicate it.

And we served the ravioli with swiss chard. So good!

I'm determined to try this on my own in the near future. Trip to Philly's Italian Market, anyone?

No Other Tale The Same: God's Hotel

Victoria Sweet's God's Hotel: A doctor, a hospital, and a pilgrimage to the heart of medicine delves deep into the harsh truths of modern medicine. Sweet accepts a job at Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco, the last almshouse in the country, a place that accepts anyone and everyone, that is "low-tech and human-paced" and that even allows time and space for the patients to be outside in the garden. Sweet practices what she calls "slow medicine", a practice that allows her to spend a great deal of time with her patients, to actually figure out what's wrong with them, and to allow healing to happen. It seems revolutionary in an era filled with ridiculous insurance policies, doctors who seem patients for 10 minutes, and systems that continuously force patients to advocate for themselves since if they don't, no one will.

Not only is Sweet a lovely writer, but the way in which she writes about her thought process and discovery is extremely compelling. She signs a two month contract at Laguna Honda and ends up staying for 20 years. During that time she also gets her PhD in history and social medicine and ends up making a pilgrimage to Santiago, Spain. She tests out her theories in her real life practice as much as she possibly can. Yet she also tells the heartbreaking story of how Laguna Honda changes; a team of consultants decrees that the hospital isn't efficient and therefore cuts staff, cuts costs and allows for fewer and fewer doctors to actually be able to do their job.

One of the most fascinating concepts in the book made medicine seem so simple; the System of Fours. "For premodern medicine, the cosmos was made up of four abstract elements - Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. Each of the four elements, in turn, was made up of four qualities - hot and cold, and wet and dry. Thus Earth was cold and dry; Water, cold and wet; Air was hot and wet; Fire, hot and dry. Everything in the universe was made up of a mixture of these four elements and four qualities, but in various proportions, and these included the building blocks of the body, which were the four humors - blood, bile (or choler), phlegm, and melancholia. Blood was hot and wet; and bile, hot and dry; phlegm was cold and wet; and melancholia; cold and dry. Health was thought to be the proper balance of these four bodily humors, and disease was an imbalance." (Sweet 48). According to Sweet, only by taking the proper time and care can doctors diagnose these imbalances, and frequently, the diagnosis won't come from an X-ray.

This is more than just a book; ideally, like Slow Food, Slow Medicine will become a movement. The health care system doesn't value doctors or patients anymore. As Sweet says, "The best doctor walks with you to the pharmacy and stands with you until you drink your medicine...the doctor-patient relationship [is], above all, a relationship." (Sweet 338).

* For more information on Victoria Sweet, click here.

No Other Angle The Same: What's wrong with this picture?

Philadelphia, PA
Monday, February 17th
6:05 pm

I'm pretty sure Halloween was a couple months ago.

No Other _____ The Same: Philly's Rep

Saturday evening, coming back from devouring delicious tofu hoagies and chocolate with a friend in West Philly, the trolley was crowded and rowdy. A group asked me where I was getting off. 

"Oh, Center City..." I replied vaguely. 

"Which station is Center City?" 

I told them more specifically where I was planning to disembark, noting in my head that my mother would have probably advised me against telling perfect strangers my exact travel plans. 

"Oh, that's where our hotel is!" they exclaimed. "Can you point us in the right direction?" 

I decided to trust them and showed them the way. 

"You know, you just raised Philly's reputation infinitely in our eyes," they said as they thanked me. 

"Why?", I asked innocently. "Does Philly have a bad reputation?"

No Other News The Same: Snow Days

It's been a rough winter, and the schools in Philadelphia have had 7 or 8 snow days so far. Students typically love snow days, and teachers love them (astonishingly) even more. Yet some families depend on school for more than their children's education; a safe place while parents need to work as well as the school breakfast and lunch. For those families, snow days become much more of a burden than a welcome relief.

Last year more than 21 million children nationwide ate reduced or free lunches, according to USDA data. Therefore, the snow days mean some children are missing out on two meals the families might have been depending on the school to provide. Additionally, this article notes the fact that some families struggle to pay their heating bills, so snow days mean an extra burden to make sure their children are safe and warm.

While teachers have an automatic day off, many other professionals still need to work, especially those who don't get paid if they don't work. While some professionals can work from home or manage their time differently, others need to make sure they are doing everything they can to get to work to avoid losing their jobs. At that point, parents, and especially single parents, are in an impossible situation. Some neighborhoods have come together to try to help each other out with child care.

Obviously, if students cannot get to school safely, it's necessary to make the call to close the schools. The major snow day debate surrounds the the teaching time schools might have to make up due to all the missed days. Most schools already have decided to hold school on President's Day to avoid taking time during spring break and/or at the beginning of summer. Yet it's worth noting the other issues at hand that come along with all of these winter storms.

No Other Dish The Same: Shrimp Tacos with Grapefruit Salsa

My friend came for the weekend, so naturally we needed to make guacamole. We always have plenty o' guacamole.

We thought guacamole would pair well with tacos. This salsa recipe looked nice and refreshing for a wintery night.

I've decided I don't have enough grapefruit in my life!

We used shrimp instead of fish...

...and substituted mushrooms and CSA greens for the cabbage.

Ooh - exciting news! My friend got me a rice cooker, and I used it for the first time! This is me wondering if my recipe aversion will prohibit me from using it.

Yet this was all it took....

For my rice to become this! SOOO wonderful!

It was a simple, delicious dinner (well, what we could eat of it after devouring a bowlful of guacamole). The salsa was a bit on the bitter side. Any suggestions?

No Other Tale The Same: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Images and descriptions of photographs and bones haunt The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards, a devastatingly beautiful novel about a husband who, with one lie, changes the course of everyone's lives around him. David, an orthopedic surgeon, ends up being the only one available in a snowstorm to deliver his wife's babies. One, the boy, is "perfect". The other, the girl, has Down's Syndrome. It's 1964, and David, believing that this baby girl will follow in his dead sister's footsteps with a fatal heart problem, makes a decision to have Caroline, the nurse, take the baby to an institution and to tell his wife that the baby died in childbirth. He hopes that Norah, his wife, will just move on.

Caroline decides the institution is an inhumane place for Phoebe to grow up and raises her as her own daughter. Phoebe continues to live, learn and grow. "You missed a lot of heartache, sure. But David, you missed a lot of joy." (Edwards 249). Of course, on the other side of the story, it's impossible for Norah to move on. "He had handed their daughter to Caroline Gill and the secret had taken root; it had grown and blossomed in the center of his family." (Edwards 310). Norah can't stop thinking of what she's lost, and as the years go by, she becomes angrier and more withdrawn while David's guilt completely consumes him.

Every character in this book is flawed, vulnerable and utterly compelling. Memory Keeper is the name of the camera Norah buys for David. Four voices are heard throughout the book; David's Norah's, Paul's (the son) and Caroline's. Paul grows up lonely, angry and confused. He sees his father's obsession with documenting life as a negative. "Camera, his father told him, came from the French chambre, room. To be in camera was to operate in secret. This was what his father had believed: that each person was an isolated universe. Dark trees in the heart, a fistful of bones: that was his father's world, and it had never made him more bitter than at this moment." (Edwards 381).

There is some resolution at the end of this novel, although there's even sadness in the happier ending. This novel compels the reader to look deeper and to marvel at every human emotion and moment. One example is the way Edwards describes snow through David's voice: "It was a moment when all the disparate shards of his life seemed to knit themselves together, every past sadness and disappointment, every anxious secret and uncertainty hidden now beneath the soft white layers." (Edwards 9).

No Other Angle The Same: Olympics Viewing Party

Washington, DC
Monday, February 10th
9:03 pm

Dad and Stone, the cat; the perfect way to watch the Olympics.

No Other _____ The Same: Yep, I'm 32

Tonight, at the wine store: 

Me (joking): "Aren't you going to card me?"

Checkout clerk (straightfaced): "Nope. Not gonna do that."

Me: "Ohhhh....."

No Other News The Same: In Defense of Real Chocolate

Valentine's Day is fast approaching, and of course in my mind, Valentine's Day equals chocolate. Whether your significant other buys it, you buy it, your family buys it, or your friend buys it - chocolate is clearly what should be on everyone's mind right now. And not just any chocolate. My preference is the darker the better. I'll take an 85% bar of chocolate any day. Some people don't share my superior taste. In fact, some even dare to say that white chocolate is - gasp - an option. Perhaps for some, since they believe white chocolate should be included in the chocolate family. Although they share the same name, white chocolate and actual chocolate are actually not the same type of sweet. Chocolate is chocolate. White chocolate is candy.

White chocolate is called chocolate because it is made with cocoa butter, powdered milk and sugar. Yet since this candy does not contain any cocoa solids, only the cocoa butter, it technically isn't chocolate at all. As Bon Appetit says, "Though white chocolate contains extracted cocoa butter, it lacks the component that defines real chocolate. Joy of Baking says that since white chocolate doesn't contain chocolate liquor, it's not really white chocolate. Then, of course, there's a difference between real white chocolate and fake (or what I like to call poser) white chocolate. Real white chocolate uses cocoa butter. Fake white chocolate uses vegetable oil. Of course, white chocolate is a derivative of chocolate, since the cocoa butter comes from the cocoa bean. Yet Merriam-Webster's definition of derivative is a "substance that can be made from another substance". Using that logic, is a cake eggs since eggs go in a cake? I think not.

* This Op Ed may or may not have been written as a way to win an argument. In the comments below, voice your opinion! 

No Other Dish The Same: Grandma Frances' Macaroni and Cheese

For book club this week, we had to make a dish that we associated with a story from our childhood. I could think of many. Goulash, my dad's famous spaghetti, my mom's strawberry pie, biscuits and gravy, oyster rolls, pancakes on the weekend, and the list goes on and on. I opted to make my Grandma Frances' macaroni and cheese. It's extremely simple. You cook a pound of macaroni, and dump it into a pan.

Next, you add cheese.

Then cottage cheese.

And finally, you mix it all together.

You bake it for around 45 minutes (with my oven it only had to bake for 30), and then serve! Voila! Sadly, I forgot a picture of the final product - it looks much more appetizing than my last picture. I couldn't come up with a story around this dish. After all, my grandma was Viennese, and macaroni and cheese is an American dish. All I remembered eating this tonight was the warmth and comfort I felt every time I have eaten it. 

No Other Tale The Same: Something Borrowed

Yep, Something Borrowed by Emily Griffith is complete and utter chick lit. And yes, I 'm not ashamed to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. There's something about reading a book solely focused on the inner workings of the female mind obsessed with a complicated relationship that is oddly comforting, since, as a woman, we've all been there.

The plot is fairly straightforward. Darcy and Rachel have been best friends since childhood. Darcy is engaged to Dex, whom Rachel met in law school. On her 30th birthday, Dex and Rachel start having an affair. The major twist is that Darcy is actually a pretty selfish person who constantly competes with Rachel and puts her down. The book has you torn between the two friends, wanting Rachel to be with her true love and at the same time, wanting Darcy and Rachel to remain friends and for Darcy to be happy. I won't spoil the end, in case you're due for a quick read. Even though this novel isn't Shakespeare, it's definitely a page-turner. 

No Other Angle The Same: Oh, Ringo!

Ruston, Louisiana
Thursday, January 30th
4:45 pm

Ringo is my grandma's Pomeranian poodle. She calls him her Southern Gentleman, even though he does tend to bark all of the time. He's a quirky dog who spends most of his time in my grandma's lap, begging for people food. Even though we do poke fun at him, and especially recently since he's gotten significantly bigger, I am so grateful that my grandma has a wonderful constant companion who truly adores her.