Color Your Life Happy

During presidential campaigns there is no shortage of entertainment.  A recent story made me chuckle for a moment, but soon turned into a sour taste.

The New York Sun published an article on Jan. 16, 2008 called  Recipes by Cindy McCain, Michelle Obama, and Hillary Clinton

The recipes probably would have had very little political impact if it weren’t for one thing.

Cindy McCain’s recipe, CINDY McCAIN’S PASSION FRUIT MOUSSE, was lifted from the Food Network Web site, according to the Huffington Post. Even though John McCain’s campaign pulled the recipe from its Web site, it was too late. It had been cached and archived all over the world.  In case you want to try it, I’ve included it below with the other candidate recipes.

According to the Political Ticker, Cindy’s mousse recipe was just one of three reported to be lifted or amazingly close to Food Network recipes.

This issue is revealing and appalling on a number of levels:

• McCain’s official website was the only one that devoted space to the Family Recipes.
  With boys being killed in an unpopular war, families losing homes to foreclosure, too many of our nation’s streets being littered with bodies by gang violence, and schools failing at their central mission, posting recipes was in bad taste to say the least.

• Cindy’s choice of recipes was condescending and insulting.
  While the McCains may enjoy Ahi Tuna with Napa Cabbage Slaw, Passion Fruit Mousse, and Farfalle Pasta with Turkey Sausage, Peas and Mushrooms, those recipes just don’t come to mind when I think of the average American dinner table. Nor can I visualize Cindy in the kitchen.

• Cindy’s deep hunger for sleeping in the White House is so strong that it made her think we (or some keen person) wouldn’t notice her deception. 

• Even more despicable, the debacle was blamed on an intern. Now, if the recipe was supposed to be an old family recipe, how did the intern get involved. Oh, I know. The intern must have been a cousin.

• Could it get worse? Yes. When one recipe was attributed to Rachel Ray, here is McCain’s insensitive response
  from the Political Ticker

The McCain campaign quickly moved to quell the controversy over cabbage slaw. “Apparently a web intern added Rachael Ray to our policy team without her knowing it,” McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds told CNN Tuesday morning. “He was swiftly dealt with and the page is down for revision. Our apologies to Food Network …but according to our press assistant the passion fruit mousse is really worth trying.”

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Before you scroll down to try these recipes I have one more observation.

If these recipes were from the spouses of the candidates why didn’t Bill, instead of Hillary, submit a recipe.

Oh, I know why.

We already know his favorite dish.

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CINDY McCAIN’S PASSION FRUIT MOUSSE

1 1/4 cups passion fruit purée
1 1/4 cups orange juice
3/4 cup sugar
Scant 1 tablespoon gelatin, dissolved in 2 tablespoons water
3 cups heavy cream, whipped
2 finger (baby) bananas
Coarse sugar
1 kiwi, peeled, cut in half, and sliced

1. In a saucepan, heat the passion fruit purée, orange juice, and sugar until dissolved.

2. Add the dissolved gelatin to the hot juice and stir to melt and combine. Strain the liquid into a bowl and place it over an ice bath. Stir it constantly with a rubber spatula and when it just starts to set, fold in the whipped cream. Pour this into soup plates or dessert bowls and chill. If storing them overnight, cover them with plastic wrap.

3. To serve the mousse, remove the bowls from the refrigerator. Peel and slice the bananas in half lengthwise and dip the flat side in coarse sugar and caramelize them under a broiler or with a blowtorch. Place them on the mousse, fanning them, and then tuck in a few half slices of kiwi.

MICHELLE OBAMA’S APPLE COBBLER

For the filling:

8 Granny Smith apples, peeled and sliced (or a bag of frozen peeled apples)
1 1/2 to 2 cups of brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup white flour

1. Mix these ingredients together in a bowl and let it sit in the refrigerator overnight so the spice goes all the way through the apples.

For the crust:

3 sheets refrigerated piecrust
1 stick of butter

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter and flour the bottom of a large baking dish. Roll out three pie crusts real thin — as thin as possible. Layer the bottom of the pan with 1-1/2 of the pie crusts and prick a few holes in it. Pour the apples with the liquid into the pie pan. Dot 3/4 of a stick of butter around the apples. Use the final 1 1/2 piecrusts to cover the apple mixture entirely (let the pie crust overlap the pan).

2. Pinch the edges of the dough around the sides of the pan so the mixture is completely covered.

4. Melt final 1/4 stick of butter and brush all over top of crust.

5. Reduce the oven temperature to 300 degrees. Bake at 300 for up to 3 hours. Start looking at the cobbler after two and a half hours so it doesn’t burn.

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HILLARY CLINTON’S OATMEAL CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

1 1/2 cup unsifted all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup solid vegetable shortening
1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1 (12-ounce) package semi-sweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease baking sheets.

2. Combine flour, salt, and baking soda. Beat together shortening, sugars, and vanilla in a large bowl until creamy. Add eggs, beating until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in flour mixture and rolled oats. Stir in chocolate chips.

3. Drop batter by well-rounded teaspoonsful on to greased baking sheets. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until golden. Cool cookies on sheets on wire rack for 2 minutes. Remove cookies to wire rack to cool completely.

Lies are woven into our lives from early childhood to the end of our lives.  They are so pervasive that many go unnoticed and barely cause a flutter.  Certain lies are so common, as a matter of fact,  that we may not even classify them as lies.

Here are the most common culprits:

Oxymorons–a combination of contradictory or incongruous words

My son swears that military intellgence fits this category. The more cynical among us would also add business ethics and personal computer. But most people would more readily place pairs like white darkness, silent scream and jumbo shrimp on this list.

Euphemisms–an agreeable word used in place of an offensive one sometime to spare feelings, other times to deceive.

rest room for toilet
working girl for prostitute
pass on for die
Nazis termed relocation camp for concentration camp

Weasel words–words used to evade or retreat from a direct statement

Saying the Corvette is virtually handmade means it’s not handmade, since virtually means not in fact.

Doublespeak–a type of euphemism that is uttered in bad faith, deliberately constructed for political purposes, thus usually being used by the government or politicians

Predawn vertical insertion –used by the Bush administration to refer to the invasion of Granada by parachutists

Wastewater conveyance facility — sewage plant

Ethnic cleansing–Serbian government’s term for forcibly removing and massacring Serbia’s Muslim population

This week we’ve explored deception in many forms and situations. It’s clear that lying at all levels is a prevalent part of our lives and that all of us are culprits as well as victims of it.

The good thing about knowing better is it’s the first step toward doing better. Perhaps the knowledge you gained this week about lies can help you avoid deception in all of its forms. Let me know what you think.

Literature and religious doctrine are full of references to lying and its severity.

St. Augustine believes lying is always a sin. Some lies are more sinful than others. Most find life very hard to live within the limits of always being truthful.  The Catholic Encyclopedia states

St. Augustine held that the naked truth must be told whatever the consequences may be. He directs that in difficult cases silence should be observed if possible. If silence would be equivalent to giving a sick man unwelcome news that would kill him, it is better, he says, that the body of the sick man should perish rather than the soul of the liar. Besides this one, he puts another case which became classical in the schools. If a man is hid in your house, and his life is sought by murderers, and they come and ask you whether he is in the house, you may say that you know where he is, but will not tell: you may not deny that he is there.

St. Thomas Aquinas, on the other, hand takes a softer view.  He believes all lies are sinful, but some are more mortal than others. He classified lies into three categories:

• officious–a lie that does nobody any injury; an excuse
• jocose–saying something for amusement
• malicious–a lie that does harm

Some folks believe that the prohibition against lying is primarily Christian, citing  that Jewish law allows lying for household peace and Buddhism allows that lying may not be a sin.

In an article by Robert W. Mitchell  we learn this about Emily Post

Although etiquette expert Emily (Mrs. Price) Post claimed that etiquette requires “honesty and
trustworthiness in every obligation” (Post, 1945, p. 2), she offered this advice for the unhappy visitor:

If you go to stay in a small house in the country, and they give you a bed full of lumps, in a room of mosquitoes and flies, on a floor over that of a crying baby, under the eaves with a temperature of over a hundred, you can the next morning walk to the village, and send yourself a telegram and leave! But you feel starved, exhausted, wilted, and are mosquito bitten until you resemble a well-developed case of chickenpox or measles, by not so much as a facial muscle must you let the family know that your comfort lacked anything that your happiest imagination could picture–nor must you confide in any one afterwards (having broken bread in the house) how desperately wretched you were (pp. 428-29).

Sissela Bok, noted philosopher, wrote the seminal book on lying, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. It’s a penetrating account of lying from ancient times until modern day.  Click on the image at the top to learn more.