Lead Paint Eaters - Revisited

When Jag wrote in comments the other week,

"So much for civil discourse, someone has to stop the stereotypical generalizations. As a gay man I thought that you would have endured enough of that to not inflict it on people who don't agree with you.
"Time to stop pandering to the lead-paint-eating rabid teabaggers"
"Republican whiney-babies"
"that only the most insane crazies seem to get any play in primary elections"
You should be ashamed of yourself."

I was going to ignore it...I don't agree with him/her...but I certainly have no problems publishing opinions other than mine.

What Is Stereotyping Anyway
Stereotyping means to me, painting all of the people in one group as having similar attributes. So for instance, if I had had written, "All teabaggers are lead-paint-eating." or "All Republicans are whiney-babies." I could have easily been accused of stereotyping.

What I did say, is that it appears as though candidates like JD Hayworth are pandering to the worst types in those two groups, and the news organizations are focusing widely on what I would consider a radical fringe element.

And Jag, when some of the hate speech as described in the video below are getting more and more prevalent, it may have me start actually stereotyping:



Current Knitting
At this point, I'm almost done with the front body section of the Zaire pullover.

Unfortunately, this sweater doesn't travel well on planes (it's a bit unwieldy), so with a couple of flights scheduled this week, I haven't got a bunch of knitting finished.

Current Spinning
A while ago, I bought a Cormo fleece at Rhinebeck, with all sorts of good intentions of scouring it and carding it. I found that Cormo isn't the best type of fiber to process on a drum carder (or hand-carders for that matter!). When I threatened to throw the whole fleece out, Ted stepped in to adopt this fiber-mess. He was able to successfully have this fleece carded (beautifully, btw) by a local wool mill, and he generously gave me back some of this awesome roving.

I've started spinning this, and I'm loving it more than I can say.

Readers' Comments/Questions
RonHuber writes, "Does Thaddeus keep his cherry pie recipe a secret? It looks divine. What does he use to thicken the fruit filling?"

It's not a secret, per se, but like any pie, it's more technique than it is ingredients...and he also adapts the recipe based on how juicy the cherries are, etc., so I don't have specific amounts. He does pre-cook the cherries (sour cherries) and he uses corn starch as the thickener. He doesn't use a lot of sugar, as we both like a more tart pie. His crust uses one stick of unsalted margarine finely food-processed into the flour, and then one stick of unsalted butter coarsely food-processed in, followed by just enough very cold ice-water to bring the dough together. He wraps the dough in cling wrap and refrigerates it before rolling it out.

Another recipe-related question from Anne Marie in Philly, "Perhaps Thaddeus would kindly share his bread recipe with your adoring fans?"

It's actually not his recipe...it's the "Italian Batter Bread" recipe from Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads. He's modified it slightly to rise in two longer loaves and cooks it in one of those French loaf pans, but either way, the bread is awesom.