Where is the Outrage?

The country is awash in people pouring out their sadness over the violent murder of 20 innocent children in Connecticut yesterday. Facebook posts overwhelmingly express grief and sadness and, while I agree that this is so sad that if I think too long about it I will cry until I vomit, where is the outrage?

Why aren’t people furious that we live in a country where it is easy to get guns? Where semiautomatic weapons are easily obtainable. Where mental health services are hard to obtain. Where Congress is so frightened of the National Rifle Association that lawmakers in this election year didn’t even mumble “gun control” after some nutter shot up a movie theater in Colorado. That even after this wretched event in Connecticut, there will be garbled mutterings about “doing something” but how much do you want to bet not a damned thing happens to keep guns out of the hands of murders?

I, for one, am really pissed off.

We live in an increasingly violent society with a culture steeped in blood and gore. The top television shows over the past decade include various forms of “Law and Order” and “CSI,” “The Sopranos” and “Dexter.”

The typical American child will view more than 200,000 acts of violence, including more than 16,000 murders before age 18. Television programs display 812 violent acts per hour; children's programming, particularly cartoons, displays up to 20 violent acts hourly.

Video games. Don’t even get me started.

While violence in the media is another topic entirely, do not think for one New York minute that seeing all that violence does not have a tremendous effect on children. It does and that has been proven time and again.

The FBI estimates that there are more than 200 million privately-owned firearms in the US. If you add those owned by the military, law enforcement agencies and museums, there is probably about 1 gun per person in the country.

For most United States citizens, purchasing a handgun is as simple as going to your local gun store, choosing a gun, showing photo I.D., filling out the background check form, and then paying for the gun upon approval from the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which is usually instantaneous but could take three days.

The bottom line is there are a hell of a lot of guns out there and it is pretty easy to get one.

For the record, I am not the sort of liberal who quakes at the thought of shooting someone down. If someone shot and killed Georgia, I would kill them with my bare hands. If they shot themselves, I would want to find a way to bring them back to life so I could kill them with my bare hands. We don’t have a gun in the house, not because I would have a problem using it on someone who came into my house uninvited, but because I fear I would blow my husband’s head off some night when he came in late and I was bleary from sleep and fright.

If I ever did decide to get a gun, I think I should have to take some kind of test to prove that I could shoot it safely and clean it properly. People aren’t supposed to drive cars without proving that they can motor about the streets without harming anyone else, so why on Earth should someone be able to buy something as potentially deadly as a gun without proving they can wield it safely?

I would expect to get a thorough background check from the FBI, any state I had ever lived in and undergo a mental evaluation to make sure I’m not stark raving mad.

But no. Fill out an application and presto – you get a gun. If you turn up at a gun show, you can pretty much avoid “all that red tape” (italics and quotes to indicate extreme sarcasm) and go home with a trunk full of firearms.

Gun advocates are just full of reasons why this is a good idea. Let’s address a few of the “myths” – I will be nice and call them myths and not lies or rationalizations of idiots and crazy people.

•          Guns don’t kill people. People do. What genius came up with that slogan? PEOPLE with guns kill people, ass hole. And guess who makes it easier for PEOPLE to get guns? The NRA and Congress. Yes, someone could walk into a public place with a knife and start slashing, but they aren’t going to get very far with that. But those semiautomatic weapons that gun-advocates so prize, can mow down dozens of people in a few seconds.
•         The second amendment that allows us to take up arms against the government is one of our most precious rights. Does anyone SERIOUSLY in this day and age think that a bunch of maniacs armed to the teeth are going to take down the United States government? If you do, you’re an idiot. That ship sailed so many years ago I can’t even pinpoint when that became utterly impossible. Suffice it to say, that ain’t going to happen. Get over it. It is high time the second amendment be reevaluated for modern reality.
•        If only EVERYONE had a gun, they could shoot the shooter. You know, that is just so stupid that I don’t even know where to begin. In the most violent “civilized” country in the world (that would be the U.S. in case you are confused), arming more people is just going to result in more people getting shot. And not the bad guys. Innocent people. It is well documented that countries with fewer guns have less gun violence. So just shut up about that. It’s stupid and you’re wrong.
•         The founding fathers WANTED us to have guns. I am so damned sick of the right wrapping themselves in the founding fathers, I want to scream. There is no way that the people who wrote the U.S. Constitution envisioned this world we live in. And I am going to go out on a limb and say that I bet they would be really annoyed that pedantic freaks use them to justify bad ideas.

Speaking of the founding fathers, does anyone think that they sat around weeping into their lace collars about how mean the British were for that taxation without representation thing? Hell no. They were mad. They threw some tea into the harbor. They took up arms and fought for the right to be independent. While I am not advocating war, I am merely saying that if they were merely “saddened” by the state of affairs, nothing would have changed.

The civil rights movement – yes, Martin Luther King Jr. advocated non-violence (good man), but do you think he decided to fight for the rights of black people because he was “disappointed” or saddened. Hell no. He was outraged and disgusted. He organized and through non-violent actions, he changed the world. He and the thousands of people who took part in the civil rights movement were warriors.

So to all my liberal friends who are weeping into their fancy coffee drinks about this sad state affairs, stop wringing your hands and get angry. We out number the gun-clinging fools and we need to stand up, express that outrage and demand that Congress and our state lawmakers make it hard for someone to get a gun and kill a bunch more kindergarteners.

Anyone who argues otherwise simply chooses to protect guns over protecting children. And if you’re in that camp, you’re an asshole.

Waste Not, Want Not and All That

Anyone feeding a kid, especially a baby trying new things, is probably going to waste a lot of food. “Beets? Are you kidding me! NOOOOOOOO!” Then the batch of beet puree or beet/blueberry puree (because you thought hiding the putrid beet taste amid plump, juicy blueberry yumminess would make beets palatable) is without a taker. I hate beets, so what did I expect? Blueberries seriously didn’t help.

Thanks to my much beloved “Good to the Grain” cookbook, the beet pancakes I made with the leftover puree were amazing. I hate beets. I hate pancakes. Beet pancakes were amazing. Go figure.

Or you have a food snob – can I amend my wish upon a star to “not so food snobby that she won’t eat leftovers or something that has been frozen?” I fear one does not get do-overs in the wish department. So that mango/carrot/apple puree, which was devoured right out of the food processor and eaten only one more time was rejected by Miss Picky Pants once it was frozen and thawed. That made lovely smoothies with plain yogurt.

I was raised by my grandmother, who grew up in the Great Depression, and wasting ANYTHING, let alone food, is immoral. Her influence greatly informs my everyday choices. I turn the light out every single time I leave the room. I save rubber bands. I save the pages from the page-a-day Basset Hound calendar to make grocery lists on the back. The thermostat is low – we wear sweaters.

Don’t get me wrong. I throw out food. Sometimes I wait days and days until whatever in the refrigerator looks spotty is, in fact, covered in some kind of slimy, fuzzy substance so I may throw it away without guilt. But who am I kidding? The ideal is to use that food and not throw it away.

Americans waste mountains of food every year. In fact, we toss 40 percent of the food supply, which amounts to a whapping $165 billion, or for the average family of four, that means $2,275 of food each year is tossed into the trash, according to a study released this past summer by the Natural Resources Defense Council's (NRDC) food and agriculture program.

Recently, NPR did a series on food waste in restaurants. All that food, which is the largest component of solid waste, according to the NRDC, goes into landfills, and makes methane. Surely I don’t need to go into what methane does to the environment, do I? Unsold fruits and vegetables in grocery stores account for a big part of the wasted food.

So what can we do? Bake bread!

I made spinach-zucchini puree and Georgia refused to eat it. The recipe looked lovely. I tried it. It was rather gross, so I couldn’t blame her. That sent me to my rather disturbingly large collection of cookbooks to find a good recipe for zucchini bread, figuring zucchini/zucchini-spinach – same(ish) thing.

Once again “Good to the Grain” came through with what looked like a great recipe for my processor bowl of rejects. I cut back on the sugar on the hope that Georgia would eat the bread and made some tweaks since I never have everything a recipe calls for just sitting about in the kitchen. If you have wheat germ, use ¼ c of that instead of the whole wheat flour in the recipe below. If you aren’t avoiding sugar, you can use the ½ c called for, although I swear it is not necessary.

The result was pretty dang good. The bread was slightly sweet, hearty and was the color of money. Not necessarily the most appetizing color, but not terribly off-putting either. Georgia gobbled it up. Drew inhaled it. I liked it, too. Several of my friends have asked for it via Facebook. Here it is:

Spinach Zucchini Bread

1 stick unsalted butter, melted

¾ c spinach zucchini puree (or use ½ lb grated zucchini)

½ c plain yogurt

2 eggs

1 c all-purpose flour

1 c multigrain flour mix* (or use whole wheat flour, all purpose or ½ c of each)

¼ whole wheat flour

¼ c sugar

1 ½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp kosher salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly butter a standard load pan.

Combine the melted butter, spinach puree, yogurt and eggs and whisk thoroughly.

Sift the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl, pouring back any bits left in the sifter. Add wet ingredients to dry and stir, gently folding until just combined. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top.

Bake for 60 to 70 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. The bread should be dark golden brown and spring back when touched. Remove the cake from the oven and let cool in the pan for 10 minutes and then invert onto a cooling rack.

Wrapped tightly, the bread should keep for three days.

*The multigrain flour mix that Boyce alls for in “Good to the Grain” is

1 c whole wheat flour

1 c oat flour

1 c barley flour

½ c millet flour

½ c rye flour

If you don’t have the burning desire to bake with various flours like I do, or you think “are you kidding me, when will I ever use millet flour again?” mix whatever combination of these that you feel you might use again. Or just use whole wheat flour. You could use all-purpose flour, but I think the rustic element that whole wheat adds really helps out in a bread that has vegetables or fruit as an ingredient.