Greater Milwaukee Men

I just spent a week visiting South Dakota, and while places like the Badlands and Black Hills are impressive, it was another case of making me appreciate my home state of Wisconsin even more. This is a place to appreciate Milwaukee, but MKE is in the state of Wisconsin, and its home state is to be celebrated as well. While Wisconsin is known for its outdoor recreation as one of its features, I think it is underrated for its grandeur. It may not have the scale  of natural features of some states like mountains, canyons, or the ocean, we have a lot of variety and beautiful landscapes. I have visited many regions of the nation now in my early 50s, at this point really just the Northeast rural/wilderness areas (outside of the metropoles) and as I already stated, none of them have tugged at my heartstrings more than my home state. What makes Wisconsin so great in my mind? The cliffs of the Apostle Islands

Yesterday I attended a sold out concert in an amphitheater. While I generally enjoyed myself, the experience made me not only accept that I am an introvert, but it inspired what I think is an analogy that may help non-introverts, aka extroverts, understand what its like to be introverted. Or should I say capital I Introverted? I call it the Starship Analogy, based on how deflector shields are typically described in science fiction.  I'll explain it a bit later. First, let's talk about the whole Introvert thing.

A photo of the street festival I organize.  We saw them all last year, and they are cropping up again this year. Festivals small and large cancelling. A common reaction, at least in social media announcement post comments is something like this: "Why don't you just have the festivals? If people want to go, they will go." Is it that simple? Just hold the festival and let however many people are comfortable going show up? Of course it's not. But people with this reaction won't even take a minute to ponder the consequences, and not from a public health standpoint but to the festival itself. They have no idea what it takes to put one on and what is involved and what you can lose if you even have only 75%, let alone 50% or less attendance. Or if they even have the capability to put it on still.  Let's take a quick, very quick, look at what goes into making this decision.

cr. AP J. Scott Applewhite In the realm of politics in America, in a two party system that easily lends itself to us vs. them reactions, cries of hypocrisy are common. I find myself using the term probably too often. Yes, often there are cases where each side can show the other side does the same thing. But, l et's be clear, there is no false equivalency whataboutism that can compare yesterday to the protests of 2020. The events of January 6th were a planned (and further incited) attack on THE Capitol of the nation, the representatives inside, and the process of the official, final selection of the next administration. The response by law enforcement to the event, once which again was an attack on the People's House - the seat of our national government - was far from equitable to other protests.

Poaching chicken (sous vide as well) is a great way to do some prep work to save time later, while adding flavor at the same time. I whipped up this recipe with tons of flavor using limited ingredients. It could be seen as a Clean Eating recipe, but it was created to be a Low Residue meal for prep day for a colonoscopy, following all the rules, which also works for people with IBD or similar digestive issues.

In my quest to east healthier and give up certain things as a flexitarian (or as I just made up: Fregan), I have developed an arsenal of special ingredients like smoke salt, onion and pepper water (from their jars); none are as useful and versatile as nutritional yeast. Sometimes mistakenly called brewer's yeast, nutritional yeast is known mostly as a popcorn topping, or to vegetarians and especially vegans as a cheese substitute, but it has so many more uses.  I used to in three ways in one recipe I just created that is both vegan and gluten-free: Mushroom Onion Casserole with Crispy Tofu.