Kara Jean

I lied to a dating website. Most people believed me. Most people are stupid and are gonna see what they want to see.

This horrifying clown mannekin was reportedly placed on a hiking trail deep in the Oleta River in Aventura, Florida by a park employee who got it from the Enchanted Forest Elaine Gordon Park in North Miami.

If you went hiking through Oleta River in Aventura Florida last year, you probably shit your pants a couple miles in. (imgur.com)

whitetrashrash: kjersti johanne barli

This is the best recipe for the day.

Asparagus with Parmesan Pudding and Prosciutto

It is one of those recipes that is so perfect you kind of don’t know what you did before it. It is something I will look forward to serving every spring from now until forever.

The recipe comes from April Bloomfield’s beautiful book, A Girl and Her Pig, which is a book that always makes me want to cook. In this recipe, Bloomfield brilliantly combines the eggs and Parmesan that pair so naturally with asparagus in a pudding. Add some toasted bread and thin slices of prosciutto and you have everything you need. I made this platter for lunch on Saturday and Bryan and Katie and I all ate it up while almost constantly remarking on how good it tasted. It is one of those recipes that makes it hard to talk about much else.

The Parmesan pudding will keep for a day or two in the fridge, so feel free to make it in advance. If you do, bring it to room temperature before serving. The whole platter can be served at room temperature, so it is a nice thing to make if you have friends coming over for lunch. Of course you can serve this without the prosciutto, but it wont be as good. The next day we spread some of the pudding on toast and topped it with thinly sliced radishes and chives, which was a very good vegetarian option (pics on Instagram!).

Hope you’re all well and enjoying the growing season as much as I am!

Asparagus with Parmesan Pudding and Prosciutto (adapted from A Girl and Her Pig by April Bloomfield)

For the Pudding:
3/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup whole milk
1 small garlic clove, finely chopped
1-ounce chunk Parmesan, finely grated
1/2 teaspoon Maldon or other flaky sea salt
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk

For the Asparagus:
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil, plus a drizzle
16 asparagus spears, a little thicker than a pencil, woody bottoms discarded
Maldon or other flaky sea salt
A very small handful of small, tender basil leaves
1/2 lemon
12 thin slices prosciutto
Grilled or toasted slices of rustic bread

Make the pudding: Preheat the oven to 325°F. Combine the cream and milk in a measuring cup. Pour half of the mixture into a medium pot, add the garlic, Parmesan, and salt, and set the pot over medium heat. Let the liquid come to a simmer and cook for 1 minute, then turn off the heat. Whisk the hot mixture until it is smooth.

Combine the egg, egg yolk and the remaining cold cream mixture in a medium bowl and whisk thoroughly. Whisk in the hot blended mixture.

Pour the mixture into a small (2-cup) gratin dish. Fold a small kitchen towel into a square, put it into a large baking dish, and set the gratin dish on top. Pour enough water into the pot to come to about an inch from the dish’s rim.

Carefully put the dish(es) in the oven and cook 20-25 minutes, or just until the custard has set; it should be slightly firm around the edges but still wobbly in the middle. Remove the dish from the oven and let the custard cool in the water, then remove it. (You can refrigerate the custard overnight, if you wish. Serve it at room temperature.)

Make the asparagus: Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a heavy pan big enough to hold all the asparagus in one layer just until it begins to smoke. Add the asparagus to the pan, lining up the spears in the same direction. The oil should crackle and sizzle a bit. Give the spears a toss with tongs, sprinkle with a good pinch of salt, and spread out in one layer. Cook, turning the spears occasionally, until they’re golden brown in spots and tender but still snappy, about 6 minutes. Give one of the spears a squeeze—it should give just a little; it shouldn’t feel either very firm or mushy.
Just a minute before they’re done, sprinkle the basil over the asparagus and drizzle on a little more olive oil. Flip the spears with tongs and play with the basil a little, giving it time against the hot pan and then moving it back onto the asparagus. It’s nice if it gets just a little crispy.

Take off the heat and let the asparagus gently finish cooking in the heat of the pan, stirring now and then and sprinkling on a little more salt and a splash of lemon juice,  just until you can pick up a spear without scalding your fingers.

Serve the asparagus on a platter with the custard, prosciutto, and olive oil–lashed toasted or grilled bread alongside.

Permalink to Spring Eats | 28 comments so far

rethreads: Baseball Furies

To complement our Contradictionary, we’ve added an exchange with Kristian Williams about anarchist writing to our reading library. Choosing Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language” as his point of departure, Kristian takes contemporary anarchists to task for sloppy writing that leads to sloppy thinking. We respond with an assault on everything normative in language, calling for an anarchist writing that shakes readers free of the control mechanisms coded into English itself.

 
 
 
 
 
Anarchism and the English Language: Imposed PDF for Reproduction [56k]

athazagoraphobiiia:

“This meat will show you! you’re DEAD! gwaargh!!!!!” - 

Super Bonk 2 (Red/Hudson - SNES - 1995)

The State of California is considering legislation that would fine businesses $6,000 per employee who has to turn to Medical, the state's version of Medicaid. The bill is especially targeted at WalMart, which notoriously counsels its employees to use food stamps and other social programs to make up for the shortfall between the wage it pays and the minimum cost of staying alive:

The amount of the fine is no coincidence.

A report released last week by the Democratic staff of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, estimates that the cost of Wal-Mart’s failure to adequately pay its employees could total about $5,815 per employee each and every year of employment.

“Accurate and timely data on Wal-Mart’s wage and employment practices is not always readily available. However, occasional releases of demographic data from public assistance programs can provide useful windows into the scope of taxpayer subsidization of Wal-Mart. After analyzing data released by Wisconsin’s Medicaid program, the Democratic staff of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce estimates that a single 300- person Wal-Mart Supercenter store in Wisconsin likely costs taxpayers at least $904,542 per year and could cost taxpayers up to $1,744,590 per year – about $5,815 per employee.”

California To Wal-Mart: Enough! No More Taxpayer Subsidized Profits For You [Rick Ungar/Forbes]

(via Reddit)

(Image: Walmart-World, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from zooboing's photostream)

via azathfeld

atavus: Endre Tot - To Where

pixelclash:

Dragon Half (ドラゴンハーフ) - Micro Cabin - PC Engine - 1994

I love this game and I love this enemy. Look at him go! 

Greatest character portrait OR greatest character portrait?

A pixel comic from my twitter.

The Simply Enormous Fucking Book of Animals That Can’t Hug by Sammy "@ProdigalSam" Rhodes, chronic Twitter plagiarist, liar, and youth pastor.

Dear Prudence, 30 May 2013:

Dear Prudence, I’m recently engaged to the most honest, thoughtful, and loving man I’ve ever met. He has supported me through many hard times, including losing my job and being assaulted. Here’s the but about him: He makes no money. He has ambitions, and he’s smart, but will likely only bring a middle-class income at best. I have an OK job and I’m self-sufficient. Now here’s the but about me: I’m really, really pretty. My whole life people have told me I could get any man I want, meaning a rich man, and are shocked that I’m engaged to my fiancé, nice though he is. I’ve never dated a rich man, but it does make me curious. So part of me thinks I’m squandering my good looks on this poor man, and the other part of me thinks that I’m so shallow that I don’t even deserve him or anyone else. Am I a fool for thinking that a poor man can make me happy, or an idiot for believing a sexist fantasy? —Sincerely Shallow

Dear Sincerely Shallow,

It would only be “squandering" your good looks if the entire point of being a physically attractive woman wasn’t to appeal to men, specifically the richest man possible. It’s time to lose Brokefellow McRentalhouse and see what you can score in the way of Richman Von Moneybags.

There is no point in being in love (boring!) if you can’t also be wealthy beyond your wildest dreams, which you can be because you are so pretty, which means you deserve more money than other people. So what if your current guy supported you through hard times? “Support" doesn’t work as a bottomless ATM code, does it?

Your good looks will last forever, and no amount of love and respect from someone who appreciates you as a whole human can give you the thrill of being trotted around on a man’s arm like a beautiful watch.

I think it’s fair to say that someone in your relationship deserves better … don’t you?