All of this talk about unhealthy food put me in the mood for something really healthy, so I came up with this recipe. It can easily be turned vegan if you remove the chicken.

First I fried some crushed garlic in a bit of olive oil. While it was reaching a golden shade, I added some ginger and carrots. Then I added skinless, boneless chicken thighs and seared them on both sides.

This was the perfect moment to turn down the heat and add some vegetable stock (water would be fine, too.)

As the meat stewed in the stock, I added:

– jicama sticks;
– French beans;
– bean sprouts;
– some chopped tomatoes that I had left over from making a salad;
– a few spinach leaves that I didn’t want to let go to waste;
– some fresh dill;
– a teaspoon of stone – ground Dijon mustard (if you don’t have real mustard, don’t use any at all);
– turneric;
– cumin seeds.

The whole thing tasted phenomenal.

Vic Crain raises an important issue:

“I really don’t understand why people so firmly resist the idea that economics, not race, is the fundamental dimension of discrimination.”

This happens because there were concerted and extremely successful efforts to substitute the terminology of class war with the terminology of inherent, inborn, inescapable identities.

The goal was to support the “end of history” line of thought that goes as follows:

the only real divisions among humans are those of “identities”

⇓

 “identities” are the source of all problems that we experience today

⇓

“identities” are “hard-wired” and can’t be changed

=

ergo, nothing can be changed and we live in the best of all possible worlds.

It’s a nifty little trick of manipulation aimed at ensuring that everybody is so dedicated to the endless repetition of trivialities (without which no identity can exist) that economic exploitation does not even get mentioned.

As the great Spanish writer Rafael Chirbes observes, the word “class” is used today solely to signal that one is not adhering to the values of consumerism well enough. We all know what “She has so much class!” and “What a classy guy!” mean, don’t we? These expressions point to the sad, empty space where the concept of class as a social and economic category used to sit.

My students are so young! I tried discussing Sex and the City as an example of homosocial communities, but many had no idea that the show even existed. I could have used The Wire as well, but if they don’t know Sex and the City that has reruns on every other channel, what are the chances they will recognize The Wire?

And why I’m on The Wire, the upsetting thing is that the moment I get emotionally invested into a character, he gets killed. Obviously, it’s done on purpose to imitate the emotional experiences in the street but I still feel sad for the characters.