In an effort to prove that I’m competitive on the good wives market, I decided to make a dish of Georgian cuisine that N loves. It’s Georgia as in country, obviously, and even though I’m not a huge fan of their food, Georgians have been fantastic in their support of Ukraine and deserve to be recognized for that.

Don’t worry, though, there’s no tabacky in tabacky chicken, and there’s no chicken either. The recipe calls for small, young birds, and the creatures sold under the name of chicken around here are huge fat hens that won’t work for this recipe. So I got a few Cornish hens instead.

The first step is to split the hen in the middle on one side, so that it looks kind of splayed, like this:

Then you have to melt some butter (yes, good wife titles are rarely arrived at by way of green salads) and mix in salt, some crushed garlic, a bit of paprika, and any herbs you happen to like:

Then you baste each little hen with the concoction and let the birds rest for 30-40 minutes:

Now we will need a roasting pan with a smooth, non-ribbed bottom. It’s crucial that the bottom have no ribbing:

Now we pack the hens into the pan. If they don’t fit, it’s OK to put them belly to belly in pairs. Then we add some water to the pan. The hens should never be immersed but the water should cover the bottom of the pan fully. And now, the most important thing. We take a big pan with a very clean bottom, fill it with cold tap water, and place it on top of our tabacky chicken:

Now we put the whole contraption on slow fire and go do something else. The water in both pans will slowly heat and eventually begin to evaporate. A delicious jelly will form under the tabacky chicken and as a result a crust will appear. It’s important to turn the hens over a couple of times while the water in the bottom pan is slowly evaporating.

Tabacky chicken should only be served with fresh raw tomatoes, cucumbers, green onions, sweet peppers, a buncj of parsley, and a bottle of red wine:

Delicious!

P.S. Forgot to mention that the whole point of all these efforts is that the meat practically slips off the bone and is very tender. I always make a lot because it tastes even better once you let it sit for one or two days.

Finally, the Congress is ready to take some steps to recognize that rape is a serious crime with the Safe Campus Act. But pseudo-feminists are opposing this legislation because for all their talk of caring about victims, they are dedicated to trivializing rape at every turn.

Hiring for personality versus hiring for skills: which strategy will win?

Why it makes sense to bring Syrian refugees to the US.

Nothing is scarier than the cynicism of spoiled overfed first-world brats who want to deny the rest of the world the comforts they enjoy.

And here is yet another confused young woman who mistakes personal insecurities for feminism.

[Russian] Little Israel in Ukraine.

Puerto Ricans want Spain to take them back.

A couple of creepy fellows roll out the tired old canard about the urgent need women have to settle for creepy fellows and stop looking for love.

As we all know, there are many issues on which I have passionate, strong opinions. However, I’m wary of people who feel compelled to have an opinion on everything. It is not possible to be equally well-informed and interested in everything, which means that such people probably are just parroting the party line. Here are some of the issues that I don’t care much about one way or another:

 

1)The death penalty. There are good and idiotic arguments on both sides. The side that supports the abolition of death penalty probably has a greater number of good arguments. However, the opposing side has one very weighty argument that, at least, balances out anything that the abolitioners can come up with. This argument is: what if the death penalty helps the families of the victims? If I, God forbid, were a relative of a victim, it would definitely help me. Actually, it would be the only thing to let me keep functioning in society. Not everybody is like me, obviously, but some people are, and the idea of the entire society betraying them is unsettling. I wouldn’t suffer if the death penalty were abolished tomorrow but I wouldn’t celebrate either.

2)The legalization of marijuana. What I find annoying about this issue is the complete refusal of the drug’s users to recognize that it has a serious negative effect on them. Marijuana can turn a person extremely paranoid and violent in a single use and it does have very heavy effects on habitual users. This doesn’t mean it should continue being illegal (as I said, I don’t care either way) but I can’t avoid having an enormous amount of disrespect towards the defenders, not a single one of whom has recognized, to my knowledge, that they have an addiction to a substance that is destroying their brains and personalities.

3)Common Core. I tried figuring out what my opinion is but both the defenders and the detractors tend to be excruciatingly mumbly. Both sides present their argument in such a garbled, unconvincing way that I have given up on trying to figure out what is happening. Curiously, this is very common in discussions of secondary education. For instance, every argument in favor or against charters (an issue on which I do have an opinion) is delivered in such a mumbly, incomprehensible manner that the discussion soon grows painfully boring.

4) Cuban embargo. I’m glad that Obama pissed off Putin by offering diplomatic relations to Cuba. Other than that, the embargo is a total non-issue. Cuba’s only hope for a future resides inside the country. The decrepit Castro dictatorship should die off and the people of Cuba should begin working on eradicating the Soviet mentality that infected them. This will take about 100 years, give or take. What the US does or doesn’t do is irrelevant to this process. Keep the embargo, don’t keep the embargo, the only purpose served by either measure is to let Americans go on feeling how crucial they are.

What issues leave you cold?

I love to visit the state of Florida on vacation but, with all due respect, the state is totally wackadoodle. Florida will be paying a $10,000 bonus for having high SAT/ACT scores. . . to its teachers. Yes, I said teachers, not students.

I’m guessing that even in Florida teachers tend to have college degrees. So it would make a bit (although still not a lot) of sense to reward high college GPA. But what an SAT score of a teacher who passed the test sometime during the Carter administration is supposed to tell us today is a mystery.