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Yes, this is another trite screed about refugees.  But it's heartfelt.

Passover is coming up, and so for family movie night we watched the Prince of Egypt.  We were watching the scene where the Jews are finally able to leave Egypt, and I turned to Yelena and wondered aloud: "Is this how my grandparents felt when they were liberated from the Holocaust?*  Is this how your family felt when you left Soviet Russia?"

We need to stop making fun of Trump.  No, I’m being serious.  I’ve been sitting on this for a while, but the bombing in North Carolina over the weekend showed me it’s time to say something.

Last week, I took a day off to atone.  It was Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar.  During the Vidui, the Confession, I recited the following:

We have sinned against you by speaking perversely;

From an email I wrote to a cousin a long time ago, this really should be on a web page:

Here are a few kid-friendly ideas, all of which are in East Bay:

- Fairyland.  It's like a mini Disney Land, but way cheaper.  It's all the classic fairy tales.  The kids will LOVE it.  You could spend all day here.

There's been a lot of talk lately about the Confederate flag, how evil it is, how the people who wave it are all bad, and how it must come down.  I know some of those people who love that flag, and I feel bad for them.  I feel bad for them because society doesn't understand them, and society ignores them when they try to speak up.

This blog is different.  Can you tell?  Probably not, which was the point.

My web host did an upgrade, which broke my blog.  The truth is this is a good thing; PHP 5.2 hasn't been supported in a very long time, and Drupal 6 is very quickly approaching End of Life.  It was time to upgrade.

Add this to the list of things that are better made by yourself, along with applesauce and peanut butter.  Our local organic box brought us a bag of fresh, ripe cranberries, oh-so-perfectly timed just before Thanksgiving.  And a week before that, a fresh pomegranate.  We'd already used half the pomegranate in fresh salads, but had just enough left for this recipe.

This is my second attempt to beat Nana's Spiced Squash & Apple Soup; the first attempt was an authentic Roman Spiced Squash.  The squash was a failure, maybe because I don't know what it's like to conquer the known world while wearing sandals.  The hash fared better.

Spicey honey fig tarts.  Holy freaking cow.
This one came from The Inn at the Crossroads, an incredible recipe blog based on the food from the Game of Thrones series.  I didn't really notice when I read the books, but it turns out there are some amazing foods described between the pages, and they're all based on real medieval recipes.  Either GRRM did a hell of a lot of homework on medieval food, or he has an uncanny knack for guessing.

I know it's been a while since I've done "Daddy in the Kitchen," but here's a quick one.  I've been starting to realize that certain things should never be bought, and should always be made at home, including apple sauce.  Once you've made it yourself, and realized how easy and incredibly delicious it is, you'll never buy another jar.