Sunday Dinner at the Gormans, Again

Well, I wrote my column for Skunk today--you research for three weeks, pull the best stories on the drug war, fact check to make sure you have the whole story and then write the damned column. BUTTTTT....today, after doing all that, I tossed the column and wrote a Drug War Follies about the idiocy of the zealots who are waging war on the new healthcare law in the US, about the unimaginable idiocy of the people waging a war on women and then put in one drug war horror story that made my freaking hair curl. That story was this: In February, police in upper Michigan were called regarding a domestic dispute at the home of a guy who has a three year old son. On arriving, the policeman saw that no one was hurt and no one wanted to press charges, so no arrests. The officer left. Newspaper accounts didn't explain it very well but I gathered that the dispute was between the child's father and mother.

But the officer thought he'd smelled marijuana and called Child Protective Services to report that he thought the father, whose house he'd visited, had been smoking. In an extravagant effort to protect the child from, god forbid, pot smoking, CPS got a court order to immediately remove the child from the premises based on the father having smoked pot in front of the child, thereby endangering him, despite that not having been reported by the officer.

A couple of hours later the police arrived with two CPS officers and the CPS officers tell the dad they're taking his child away because of marijuana. The father said--and I'm only guessing here--fat freaking chance.

The police reported that in the next few minutes the father took out a small pocket knife and lunged at them, forcing one of the officers to shoot him in the chest and kill him. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. But damned sure that that father, when alive, even if he smoked pot in front of his kid was less likely to cause the three-year-old trauma than watching the police kill his dad right in front of him.

And then, of course, the autopsy showed no marijuana in the dead dad's system. None. And the police could find none in the house. Damn, well, the officer didn't say he'd seen anything, just that he'd thought he'd smelled marijuana.

So dad's dead and now the child will live in foster care for 15 years. Yeah, great solution.

Well, that was a very depressing story. But by luck, a friend called and said he was covering a story for the NY Times not far from here and wondered if he could stop by on his way back to Austin to take a driving break at dinner time.

I said sure.

So this is what I'm making:

Roasted Chicken Thighs with a touch of garlic;

Sauteed swordfish, fresh, in garlic, olive oil and capers on a bed of asparagus;

Basmati Rice;

Spaghetti squash with red pepper, garlic butter and basil;

A salad of red onion, fresh corn cut from the cob with red bell peppers in white vinegar;

Small portabella's stuffed with walnuts, celery and bluecheese.

That is one dandy feast. I think Chepa and the kids will come over, and maybe Italo and Sara and Taylor Rain, and maybe even Marco. If they do I'll have to add some steamed broccoli and cauliflower in place of their share of the asparagus since they don't like asparagus.

Here's how I make the stuff for anyone who wants a recipe:

Roast Chicken Thighs:

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Wash thighs, slice open the meat on either side of the thigh bone.

Place in a hot saute' pan, meat down.

Put a bit of sea salt and cracked black pepper on the skin.

Turn after five minutes. Put a bit of olive oil that's infused with fresh garlic on the meat side.

Turn the chicken, remove from saute' pan and put in oven baking dish. Pour the pan juice over it and cook, uncovered, in the oven for an hour or until done. If you like, put a bit of parmesan cheese on the skin when nearly finished and baste with pan juices.

Swordfish:

Place swordfish steak(s) in very hot saute' pan that has a bit of oil in it. Sea salt and cracked black pepper on top side.

Turn after about 7 minutes, when underside is a nice brown.

Salt and Pepper the brown side, now up, and in three minutes put a tablespoon of diced garlic in olive oil on each steak. When that starts to fall off the steak into the pan, add 1/4 diced red onion (per steak) to pan. Make sure to stir onion and garlic so they don't burn.

Add diced red pepper to cooking garlic and onion.

Remove cooked swordfish from pan to plate, place on freshly steamed asparagus.

Add 1/2 small jar of capers, with juice, to pan veggies, cook 30 seconds, add a teaspoon of butter for each swordfish steak, pour sauce over swordfish, serve.

Spaghetti Squash:

Cut spaghetti squash in half, lengthwise. Remove seeds with spoon.

Score the spaghetti squash with a knife lengthwise five or six times.

Put dabs of butter, unsalted, around upper edge of squash. Put a touch of salt and pepper on the squash. Bake for 45 minutes or so at 350 F, or until squash is beginning to brown.

Carefully scrape squash (cause it's very freaking hot) into a saute' hot saute pan in which there is minced fresh garlic and a little olive oil. Add finely diced red pepper to pan juices with squash. Add freshly minced parsley, stir for two minutes and season to taste.

Stuffed Shrooms, Tonight's Way:

Take 8 small/medium portabellas. Pull stems and save. Wash shrooms, then dry with paper towel. Set in small baking dish.

Mince the shroom stems after washing. Mince one celery stalk. Mince 4 tablespoons of walnuts.

Put the minced shrrom stems, celery and walnuts in a hot saute' pan that has a bit of minced garlic and olive oil. Sautee till the celery is nearly see-through. Remove and put cooked things in a small bowl.

When cooked things have cooled a bit, add 4 generous table spoons of good crumbled blue cheese (pepper and lime if you like as well) and mix well. Stuff mushrooms with the mix, tossing any extra mix into the small baking dish around the shrooms.

Dab stuffed mushrooms with butter and bake for 17 minutes at 350 F.

Remove from heat, put stuffed shrooms on serving dish, perhaps on a bed of fresh basil or sauteed spinach or fresh radish slices, and put extra stuffing mix generously around the shrooms on the serving dish.

Red Onion, Red Pepper, Corn Salad:

Cook two or three ears of fresh corn. When done, pull from water and cut the kernels off the cob. Break up the kernel sections.

Slice one medium red onion in half. Slice lengthwise several times. Slice sideways once, so that your onion is now cut in thin slices, half a length each.

Place onions in a bowl with the corn kernels.

Slice a raw red bell pepper lengthwise, finely. Cut lengths in half. Add to onion/corn mix.

Add good white vinegar to cover, sea salt and cracked black pepper to taste.

This one will last a few days whether refrigerated or not. Just make sure it's covered.

I will leave the basmati rice and the asparagus to you.

Enjoy!

PS: Madeleina notes: And if it all sucks, go out and buy a pizza.

ME: Yeah, girl, like in Texas the pizza sucks. That's why I was cooking the feast...

Her: I know it sucks, Dad, but blue cheese? That sucks as bad as Texas pizza!

ME: Madeleina! You don't have permission to talk like that! You're a young lady, not a young hooligan...

Her: Right, old man. Whatever you say...

Quite a Week

Well, it's been quite a week. Good but hard.

I finished the cover story I was having a hard time doing and I think it came out okay. It is at fwweekly.com and the title is "Your Land is My Land" and I think it's worth a read for those of you who only know me via my blog or book. Though it was rushed at least two weeks before it might have been all that I wanted it to be, the story is still strong--in part due to my fantastic, if difficult editor, Gayle R. She's got a right. She's won both a Polk and a Pulitzer.

So that was good. I put it to bed Tuesday night.

Wednesday evening I fell asleep answering emails at 7 PM and unless Madeleina woke me I would have slept till 9 AM right there on the keyboard with keys embedded into my face. But she did and I went to sleep on the couch in my office and didn't wake till about 8 AM.

Thursday I worked on the new cover story due on Friday--at least in draft--and began to clean the house because a former guest was coming over Friday. I also spent an hour learning how to do a webinar because I had a 2 1/2 hour web cast to do today. And I never did one before.

Friday morning I scrubbed, vacuumed the house, washed the kitchen, laundry room and bathroom floors, scrubbed the cabinets in the kitchen, polished the wood furniture, then did a webinar sound check, then raced to Arlington to pick up an award at the Society of Professional Journalists (Fort Worth Chapter) annual dinner with Madeleina, which was very cool, then raced home to meet the former Amazon guest who came in for the night from Mexico on his way to Nashville.

We stayed up late drinking from a bottle of Mescal he brought me--nobody drunk, just having a few drinks--then got up this morning, made a ham/three cheese/onion/garlic/red pepper egg souffle for my guest, chatted, put him on his way and then did the webinar.

Along the way Chepa, the wife/ex-wife made off with a credit card of mine to buy a new tree for her yard, and I organized dinner for everybody.

Whew! I'm still pooped.

But it's been a cool week. I like it when I'm jammed and fight through the maze.

And I especially like it when my house is clean, smells clean, and the old stuff is polished to a bright sheen.

Have a great Saturday night, everybody! I'm gonna hit that couch and don't expect to be up for eight good hours.

PS: Oh, and Sierra painted one of my legs blue night before last. It's still blue, so I guess that means I've forgotten to shower.

I'll squeeze it in.

Ain't life and the living something grand???

I think so. And if I'm allowed, I'm asking for another 20 years. Yeah, or another 50. It can only get better and it's already there.

Now Madeleina is 15

Well, today is my daughter Madeleina's 15th. She's more like 35 but at the same time she's sometimes 10.

I never wanted kids. I worked hard to avoid them. But my life would not have been as rich as it has been without Italo, Marco and Madeleina. And without Sierra and Alexa, Chepa's new babies, who this minute are clamoring for new paint because they've gone through the good water colors I've given them. Twice. I'll pause for a second to replenish the colors.

Done. So really, my life would not be as rich. I might be better read, might quote a few people with a bit more statesmanship than I can, but I'll take changing diapers for their lessons over Byron anytime, and I like/admire Byron. Not sure I'd trade what I learned changing diapers over having read Beaudelaire in the original, but it's sure close.

None of that matters really. Tonight I celebrate my daughter Madeleina's entre' into her 16th year, having finished 15 of them to get here. So she's 15 now. And I'm proud of her as can be. She's out playing with Minute, the remaining goat, now, on the newly mowed lawn I've been working for days.

Ribs and chicken are in the oven. Asparagus are ready to plunge into steaming water and they've agreed to give up their spirit to her. Good rice with better garlic is nearly done. Madeleina's brothers will be here in an hour, after work. Someone will wrap the presents. Chepa will bring the cake, I hope. We'll sing a song of celebration. Madeleina, 15 today, will behave like a good 15 year old and resent it all.

Inside she'll love the celebration. Inside she'll revel. But 15 is a tender age: Not a child, not an adult. Delicate age.

Happy Birthday, Madeleina! We love you having come into our lives. You enrich us and I hope that at least some of what we, your family, and particularly your dad, does, enriches you as well.

Well, I'm Pooped

Well, it's Saturday, Holy Saturday, the night before the biggest day in all of Catholicism. In my house, growing up, while Christmas was more spectacular, the Resurrection was the deal that set everything apart, made man God with a capital G and all that jazz.

Been a long time since I was active in that faith. I've spent more time active in the Human Condition over the last 45 years than any organized religion, though, as I've said before, where I grew up being a catholic kid and an altar boy meant feeding old people, taking them for walks, painting houses the church was giving to poor families. And my mom always said, Ignore the ignorant in the church and just do good. That's what it's about, not the damned rules and all the other nonsense.

Mom was very cool. Devout, but cool.

Anyway, so it's the Saturday evening before Easter and I'm pooped. I have been working on a complex cover story for a couple of weeks now, and I promised it to my boss today. I knew I was lying when I made the promise. I'll have it for her Monday, about noon. We go to press Tuesday evening. Gonna be close, but some stories just need some time to steep a little. Too many ideas, too much interplay among the people you're quoting and then that desire to write a piece that will have a chance to send some ripples out to change the world a little. Not so much ego as demanding of myself that I do work worthy of the scope of the story.

So while I've gotten all the dozen interviews done, and while I've read hundreds of pages of court testimony from maybe 5 story-related trials, and while I have maybe seven years of background on the subject, it's still not ready to come out. It's like an egg in the huevera of a chicken. I don't know if you ever saw a laying chicken cut open, but she'll have one egg ready to drop, another behind it that's about three days from dropping, another behind that which won't be an egg for a week, another behind that.....it's a procession of maybe 1o things that are pretty likely to become eggs in various stages of growth, but only one is developed and is an egg and is ready to go. (I'm tempted to get political here and tell the people who think a fertilized egg is a human to go look at the insides of a laying chicken and then report back, but I'll stay away from anything so clear and to the point here...).

Anyway, so my egg, my story, isn't a story yet. It's a very complex zygote but won't have a life of its own till it comes on out tomorrow. If it does. I mean, if I pop an aneurism tonight, well, that story will never be born and that's all there is to it. So long as it depends on me it's not a person, I mean story, yet. And even then I wouldn't call it a person, I mean completed story, for at least a couple of years, until it's standing on its own without any of my help.

Let's get off the politics and back to the pooped. I've been trying to work the story idea into a story and the way I do that is with physical work: Wash kitchen floors, wash windows, cut lawn. Problem is, with all the rain we've had, the lawn, in large places, was maybe up to my knee. That's like what? A foot-and-a-half? More?

And I was not going to have anybody mow it with the riding mower because then it would need to be raked. So I did a couple of the sections Wednesday, Thursday, yesterday and today: two 80' by 50' sections, a 40' by 40' section, three or four 20' by 20' sections with the electric push mower. I was having to do maybe 10 feet at a time, back and forth three or four times, then empty the bag. And the bag was filled with maybe 35-40 pounds from each little 10 foot by 2 foot section. Know how much that weight came to? As Madeleina would say on YouTube: Do your homework! Do your homework!

Yes, if you do the math it works out to be several tons of cuttings/rain/dirt and maybe 12 hours to do those little patches. And there is another acre to go--though the riding mower will be fine for that as my wife/ex-wife Chepa says she loves to rake and has volunteered to do it. HA! It's another Lucy/Charlie Brown deal about to go down, I'm sure. She will never be here for the raking.

So now I'm sitting here stalling. I ought to do one more section, not as high, that's 90' by 60'. But I'm not looking forward to it. It's not as high but still gonna be a pain in the neck, back and everywhere else.

Screw me. Grow up, Gorman.

Okay, okay. I get your point. But how old do I have to be to get to have some (misogynist comment coming here) good looking woman in a bikini walking around in front of me while I mow, you know, to keep me interested? Does anybody ever get that? (Could be cute guys for the girls as well, and cute guys for the guys for gays and cute girls for the girls for the gay girls and so forth for the transsexual community and any group I've left out). I mean, wouldn't we all do better work if someone put that carrot on the proverbial stick? Why doesn't someone have an agency with a name like: Enthusiastic Work Help! or Work Can Be Fun.com, or whatever. Maybe a dog with a good cheese cake running in front of a person trying to lose weight to keep them running long enough to earn it. Or whatever.

But no! That would be too fun. Instead you just get editors who are gonna scream at you because the story is late. Or you eat the cheesecake and gain 10 pounds and don't bother to run at all. Or you just look at the lawn and think: God damn. Now that's a creation worthy of the Creator of Everything! I mean he/she put it there, so who am I to cut it?

I told you I was pooped. Forgive the wild ride/rant.

Have a wonderful Easter/Passover/holiday. I hope you all get 100 times the love that you put out and that the whole world feels the ripple effect from all that love.

Dinner Spoiler Alert: Burrito Recipe

Okay, in the spirit of sharing recipes, I'm having a burrito tonight.

First thing to do was roast a chicken. Cut it in half, put olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper on both sides, cook skin side up in an oven at 350 F, about an hour.

While that's cooking, make your pico de gallo: Dice a red onion, two or three Roma tomatoes, depending on size, three or four good scallions and 1/4 of a bunch of cilantro, well washed. Add all ingredients together and sprinkle with olive oil infused with fresh garlic--which, as you know if you read this blog, you should always have in the kitchen and on hand. Good fresh garlic, minced by hand, not garlic press and not pre-chopped at the supermarket. Nice stuff, chopped and put into olive oil. Do three or four heads of garlic every three days or so and you will never run out, even though you need it for everything you do other than pancakes or banana bread or basic scrambled eggs--though it adds something to that as well. To the garlic oil, cilantro, tomato, scallions and red onion add enough fresh squeezed lime juice to moisten well, or even cover, maybe the juice of two/three ripe limes. Put in a bit of pink sea salt and cracked black pepper.

When the chicken is done, pull some out and put it in your burrito/wrap. Add jalepenos if you like it hot. Add a couple of slices of fresh avocado or jungle guacamole if you have it. Add good tart beans (black beans, red beans, whatever beans you like). Add pico de gallo, without too much lemon juice. Add no-fat sour cream. Add freshly shredded sharp cheddar cheese.

Fold burrito skin so that it's closed. Put a paper towel around it (doubled over) to keep it from opening. Put a second paper towel around it to keep your hands from melting with the heat.

Place in a 350 F degree oven for 5-6 minutes, until cheese is bubbling.

Eat.

Whole thing comes to 600 calories and will fill you up for a dinner alone.

For a treat, I always steam spinach, then saute it in garlic/olive oil and add that. Just to make sure I've got some leafy green.

So the whole thing takes an hour, if you're starting with fresh chicken. If you're starting with left over cooked chicken, it takes about 15 minutes from start to clean up--and you have time to clean up while it cools off enough for you to eat it.

Which ain't bad for a basically very healthy meal. I mean, you can even skip the chicken, but if you include it you've got maybe 2-3 ounces of skinless chicken, two tablespoons of beans, two tablespoons of no-fat sour cream, , a tablespoon each of fresh tomato, scallion, red onion, cilantro and lime, two thin slices of fresh avocado, three ounces of steamed spinach in olive oil and garlic and two ounces of good cheddar in a 140 calorie piece of bread.

Eating good can be quick. And if you add a side of steamed broccoli or cauliflower or zucchini or yellow squash, well, you've got maybe three servings of veggies at one meal. And that's a good thing. Particularly if at least some of them are organic.

Manga!

PS: And if my friend Morgan, who doesn't eat meat unless he's in the jungle, was here, I'd probably put some hummus in the burrito instead of chicken.

And if my friend Emily (glucose Intolerant) was here, I'd probably use a corn burrito instead of a wheat one.

And if Sky Saxon, former lead singer of the Seeds ("You're Pushin' Too Hard" from a million years ago) who's a fructarian was here, I'd probably substitute organic apples, strawberries, peach slices and tangerine sections for everything and then wrap it in a fruit rollup!

See how easy it is to accommodate people?

Have a good night everyone. I'm having a blast.

P

Something I Told Morgan About Spirit Interaction

Okay, so my friend Morgan Maher, who illustrated my book and has put together the upcoming Evolver Series on Visionary Nutrition, asked me something in an email recently about how I felt about something or other. I forget how it happened but I answered him and forgot about it. Then today he surprised me by posting my response on Facebook. And I have to say I sounded like a decent and intelligent person in my response to the forgotten question. So here it is and I'm proud I said it because I believe it.

Visionary Nutrition - Essential Elements:

“I think that once a person is aware of the life in everything, they can begin to access the spirit of everything. And once they can do that they can interact with those spirits. I'm talking about the spirit of the creek, the bricks in your house, the hundreds of spirits roaming your kitchen. This universe is full full full of life and life force. The roll of shamanic knowledge for us westerners introduced to those spirits is to spread that knowledge, make communication easier.

And if we can do that--a big task, no doubt--then the way people interact with the world and the spirits of the world and universe will change, automatically, from one of dominance to one of cooperation. And when we, mankind, begin interacting with the world, rather than trying to dominate it, well, I think mankind will be better off. The world and its spirits don't really care if we do, for the most part. Trees will be here long after we're gone, and so will stones and bricks and clouds and the moon. So it's really up to us to take an interest if we are to make the friendship of those spirits. And thus far, for most of us throughout mankind's short history on this planet, that effort has not been made. Which has left us losing out on so much we might have learned. Who knows what we have missed simply by not asking a plant what benefit it might have for mankind, rather than saying "tree, chop it and burn it for fire."

I think the universe has all the secrets of the universe. And our arrogance in trying to continually conquer the universe rather than communicate with it, has kept us from being taught those secrets. And how delicious they might be!”

Upcoming - Visionary Nutrition: Enhancing Your Health in a Psychedelic World

Another Ayahuasca Question I Tried to Answer

Someone wrote me today saying that he/she was suffering very bad pain in their solar plexus for a full day or two following the drinking of ayahuasca. I don't know the person and don't even know if they are drinking traditional ayahuasca or some syrian rue analogue. Still, I tried to come up with a reason they might be suffering so deeply following medicine sessions. Here's what I wrote:

Hello. First off, are you drinking traditional ayahuasca or something else? If it's traditional, do you know what any admixtures are, like lupuna negro, chiric sanango, catawa or what have you? Now, you say you get sick after eating food. How long after ceremony do you eat? I'm assuming your stomach is empty for at least say, 8 hours before ceremony--except for some simple sugarless tea perhaps. I let my guests eat after ceremony but limit it to a couple of small slices of fresh papaya with lime juice and maybe two or three bland crackers, nothing more. If you are eating something else, that might be the cause. Now, if it's traditional medicine, it will have some basic woody residue in it. Even if you don't vomit during ceremony you need to eliminate that before going to bed. You can't digest it, so puke it up with fingers down your throat. Also, in the AM after a ceremony, it's very important, in my world, anyway, to get to a stream or river and get your head under it three distinct times to close up your corona--which prohibits unwanted spirits from seeing the opening and coming inside. All that aside: The key think will probably be that your solar plexus is where you store your pent up pain, anguish, fear, desires and so forth. It holds things we don't know we're holding--like the time (and pardon me but this is an example that works for most people) when your mother cut you off from breast feeding. For the first few days/months you were alive there was this beautiful creature near you who nurtured you warmly. And then one day she said "no more" and never again nurtured you that way. You don't think most of us humans suffered from that? Got confused by that absolute rejection? Worse, we couldn't put it into words, and anything we couldn't put into words as a baby, we cannot put into words as an adult. But we were freaking rejected. That's the sort of pain we hold in our solar plexus and need to eliminate by vomiting it up on ayahuasca. That pain serves no purpose for who we are as adults. And since we can't even explain it and don't even know we have it, it's just dead weight. So the pain in your solar plexus might be from the need to eliminate some serious pain/dashed dreams/guilt over things you've done to people but which you have not vomited up. Now there is no blame in not vomiting. Not everyone does it, so no sweat. But you should know that an awful lot of people do not allow themselves to eliminate those pains. They hold them closely as if they remain important to us. I don't know you so I certainly am not suggesting you are doing that. But check in with yourself to see if you might be doing that. Because if for one reason or another there is bile in your life that you need to eliminate and that is not being eliminated, if there is bile that is coming up to the forefront and not leaving for one reason or another, well, that could well be a cause of the pain following the medicine. Does any of this make sense or resonate? I hope it does, even if it doesn't directly apply. I hope it suggests something to you to look into and that on subsequent visits with the medicine you can avoid prolonged physical pain afterward. Peter G

Ayahuasca Question I Answered for Someone

This morning on a forum where I occasionally post, someone posed the question of what ayahuasca--the remarkable medicine of the Amazon--was cooked in prior to the introduction of metal pots in that part of the world. So here was my answer, to which I added in a second post. Might be of interest. Hope so.

AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY CLAUDIA!!!!!! I hope it's a great year!

I can't swear that ayahuasca was cooked in them, but certainly clay pots were a standard in Amazonia for cooking until quite recently. The Auchiño (spelling) still use black clay "pans" over fire to cook their ibu coca; the Matses used--and some still do--clay pots over fire to cook down the inner bark of the macambo tree to make their nu-nu; my ex-wife always preferred black clay pots to cook rice in--over a gas fire in New York--to stainless steel. They crack and don't last long, but it only takes a few minutes for people like the Matses or my ex to make a new one--and a bit of time to get it sun-fired to be able to withstand the heat from fire--so I imagine that those same clay pots would have been utilized for making ayahuasca. The trick with clay pots, when I've seen them used, is that they are generally raised a few inches above direct contact with the flames to prevent cracking during cooking. And they last longest when cooked over red hot coals rather than actual flame.

TO THAT, I added this in a second post:

Just a side note: There is very little evidence of anything historical in a place like northwest Amazonia because there really is no stone on the Ucayali or upper Amazon. Even the stones used to sharpen machetes on the river come down from Yurimaguas and the Andean foothills on large rafts to be sold on the river. And while snuff materials in the mountains may last, traditionally for the Matses you just hollow out a reed, use it for a day or two; it cracks, you toss it and hollow out another.
For Westerners with a sense of permanence that might seem like a pain in the neck--having to replace everything from clay pots to houses to bows/arrows/blowguns/rafts/canoes with regularity, but in a place like much of the Amazon, it really gave people the freedom to move about to look for better hunting areas, more arable areas and so forth. When Papa Viejo and his several wives moved off the Aucayacu maybe 20 years ago, he simply set fire to his houses, left everything but a couple of machetes, an axe, his shotgun, a few metal pots and some clothing, and he and his wives and kids walked back to the Brazilian side to build a new camp. These days, with too many permanent and semi-permanent goods like lots of metal pots, small motors, gas cans, sometimes radios and even occasional television sets with satellite reception, well, those people cannot just pick up and leave anymore. The things they've come to accept and depend on have become an anchor and have forced many people, both mestizos and indigenous alike, to settle down and become dependent on an agrarian lifestyle, rather than a lifestyle that might have included some hunting/fishing/gathering and movement when the time was right.

A Simple but Good Macaroni Salad Recipe

Well, my friend Dana K wrote from southern France that while my food descriptions sound enticing, I don't actually give recipes. In truth, I thought the descriptions implied the recipes. But in case they don't, I'll add an occasional detail.

Tonight it's my daughter-in-law Sara's birthday. She's currently a Gorman, so that means we treat her well. And my son Italo loves her, so she gets treated extra well. And, I think she's pretty cool and she's the mom of my first granddaughter, Taylor Rain, so that's extra special.

Anyway, everybody was working tonight so there can't be a big party with volleyball or soccer. And Madeleina nixed the idea that I put fire crackers in the cake instead of candles--which I thought was horrible but brilliant if you want to start a food fight. So none of that fun. Instead, Sara asked for ribs.

So I bought a couple of packs of baby backs, cut them in half, put them on celery/onion in pyrex baking dishes. Tossed them in olive oil/minced fresh garlic, butcher ground black pepper and really really good sea salt. Put them in the oven at 290 degrees F.

Then we left to go to the store.

We came back an hour and a half later, poured off the rib fat, put on a glaze of good bar-be-que sauce (store bought but started with fresh back bacon in olive oil/garlic/onion/tomato/schallots so it had some real zing. Then I lowered the temp to 190 F, so slow slow cook the remaining fat away.

So that's the ribs. If people wanted charcoal grill, I'd take them out now and give them 5 minutes a side to grab the flavor without losing the tenderness.

Then I made the basmati rice we always eat: Two tablespoons or more of fresh chopped garlic that's been sitting in olive oil at least 12 hours at the bottom of the pan. When the garlic is done, add water per rice: You need about 1/2 inch of water over the rice you put in. Put good sea salt into the water and bring to a boil. When it hits boiling, put in rice to about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch below water level, bring back to boil. Cook/stir until rice has absorbed all visible water, then turn down to the lowest fire possible and cover tightly. Cook for maybe 45 minutes or so, open lid, fluff rice, close lid and either continue to cook if still moise (very low temp)_ or turn off pot and let it cook itself out.

Then I made beans. Store bought. A mix of sweet and tart beans but cooked in good back-bacon with garlic/fresh tomatoes, cilantro.

Then I made macaroni salad. Cooked the macaroni. Par-Boiled. Then sauted garlic in olive oil with diced red onions and red pepper with sea salt and black pepper. Then recooked macaroni till 95 percent done, then tossed in the garlic, onions, red pepper/black pepper/sea salt/olive oil mix. Then added mayo, to which I'd whipped in three egg yolks and 3 ounces of white vinegar.

Now I'll wait half an hour to see how it tastes and then season to meet its needs.

So that's a couple of recipes.

Have a good meal, everybody.

Visionary Nutrition--An Evolver Intensive

Folks: If I've told you this before, forgive me. It's been a long day and I've been asked to mention this. And I don't mind because I think this is something very cool. I've been asked by Morgan Maher, my friend who illustrated Ayahuasca in My Blood--and boy, he nailed several of those images, and I mean nailed as in caught the soul--has put together a 4 weekend series of videocasts about food, medicine, life. How it works together. How everything interacts and enhances everything it touches. When we breathe, we change the world. When we pick the food we want to eat, from the ground or from the supermarket shelf, we make choices that change the world. When we drink ayahuasca, we change ourselves and our choices and finally we change the world. I think this is gonna be a really good series and I'm very glad to have been included. Those of you who read this blog know how I feel about food. I respect it to no end. I try to treat it, whatever "it" is, as an individual and before I make a cut in that tomato or onion or piece of swordfish, want to know where and how it would best be cut to bring out the best it's got. I don't care much about the chemicals/vitamins it brings to the table, I do care a lot about the soul of that tomato or grapefruit or what goes into the banana bread and want it to be as fully realized as it can be: The more I respect it's personality, the more of its spirit it will share; the more of my spirit that can interact with its soul.

And Morgan has pushed to get this series of podcasts on the air and he's done it. Good for him. And he's included me: Good for everyone.

So if you have a couple of free hours for three Sunday afternoons and one Saturday afternoon in April, and if you've got $85 bucks lurking in a secret compartment in your belt, well, darn it, give it up. You're going to get a short masters course in food, nutrition, food preparation, food gathering, medicine and food, integrating food/nutrition to enriching your life. And Morgan has lined up some great speakers. Take a look at the link below to see what's happening. I'm the freaking weak link here and anytime I'm the weak link when it comes to a discussion of food/nutrition/medicine, well, you have one very very strong fence. So take a look and if it's something of interest, sign up. If not, take a look anyway, just to see how Morgan sees it. He's the man on this project.

Thanks for listening.

http://ayahuascainmyblood.com/visionary-nutrition

Silence in the House

Friday night, 7 PM. I just dropped Madeleina off at a friend's sleepover. Chepa called to say she was on the way to the airport to pick up her boyfriend. Italo and Sara have something to do for dinner. Marco is working late today. There is silence in the house.

I love silence in the morning, after some noise, so that I can get work done. I love silence in the afternoon when I go talk with the dogs and the goat and maybe check the tomatoes and cut a bit of lawn. I love silence at 3 AM because it means the world is, for a moment, at peace.

But I don't like silence at 7 PM. I like it noisy then. I like to hear the sizzle of saute' pans cooking up a storm. I like the house full of garlic and onion and maybe a piece of salmon or steak or chicken roasting. I like the house full of all the babies doing a million things at once. I like the house full of the noise of Chepa telling some off-color joke to Italo and Italo and Sara telling her she's crazy and Marco telling everyone to be quiet because he's got two movies going on on two televisions and can't pay attention while all that is happening and Madeleina is playing the piano. That's what I want to hear at 7 PM.

I like to hear the joy of living beings living and laughing and making a ruckus. I love a ruckus. Probably comes from my maternal grandpa, Jack Hooley. A Hooley is a big ruckus on the street in Ireland. Hooley is the base word for Hooligan, someone who makes a ruckus. I've got Hooley blood in me, along with Gorman blood, and between the two, I live for making a ruckus, dancing on the street in Iquitos, singing at the top of my lungs in public now and then, despite the embarrassment my kids have occasionally felt.

So tonight it's silence at 7 PM. Nobody is here and nobody is coming. They are all safe. They are all in good places. You have to know that makes a father feel good. But still, I'd be happier if there was a good food fight going on in the kitchen about now.

Have a good night, everybody. I'm gonna make a little noise all by myself now, just for the heck of it. To keep the house warm.

Friend Asked Me a Touchy Question...

My friend C asked me if I ever had a moment when I needed to leap forward as a kid. It wasn't phrased that way but that's the gist. The answer: Yeah. My whole freaking life. Here's what I wrote:

My whole youth was spent trying to live up to my brother, the athlete. He finally wound up playing for St. John's baseball when they went to the College World Series. He was good. Little, like me, but a player. He played semi-pro till he was about 60 and got Bells' Palsy during one game. He was a cop, a lieutenant who worked the streets of Harlem for 20 years before becoming a lawyer and now, after retiring after 30 years, he's a part time judge in Manhattan.

He invented the Strong Kids Club when he was about 12. The others in the club were my sisters Pat, 9, and Peg, 7 and me, 5. The basic tenets were to live through pain. Fill the tub with ice. Add water, up to 6 inches. Lie in it without moving for 30 seconds or start over. Do cartwheels all around the house in underwear when it was snowing in Queens. Write your whole name from a single pin prick. Fail and get pricked again till you could write Peter Thomas John Gorman. Lots of pricks to get that done.

So at 14-15 I started Aikido, then moved on to Karate for three or four years. Fought in Madison Square Garden, got killed. Was in a picture in a Karate magazine, not looking good but they said I was cool.

Never measured up. Made the ball team in high school but was not as good as the guys ahead of me who got college scholarships. Worried my whole life that I wasn't tough enough, which led me to go to the jungle--and you can see that I'm still trying to measure up. So if you're asking if there was a pivotal moment or two, I'd say my whole life has been trying to measure up. And now that I'm a dad, now that people have depended on me for years and years, I'm still questioning whether I know enough to be entrusted with the lives of my boys, my daughter, my grand baby, Chepa's babies, my clients in the jungle, my team in Peru.

Cause I'll never be as good as my brother or my dad. They were athletes, and I was just a sick kid living in the hospital with rheumatoid arthritis for months as a 5/6 year old and came out weighing 165 because I was a trial patient on the then-new drug, cortizone. How the hell do you recover from that? You don't. You just fight to be better ever day.

Pivotal moment? Yeah. When the tub was too cold. When the kids in my hospital room were wheeled out dead daily for months, when I went to school and Thomas ran backwards against me and beat me by 20 yards in a 50-yard race. When, when, when...

But you know, you keep fighting. You keep facing up. You fail. You falter. You fall. You get the freak up. You keep fighting.

And though I lost almost all the fights, I'm finally a winner. Nobody ever came back for seconds. And no matter what the circumstance, you keep getting up, catch your breath, and look for an opening. And that's okay for us losers. Just keeping on is what keeps us going. And nothing can stop us--you and me--if we keep on getting up.

So stay strong, okay? Keep trying. We'll all get across the river if we just keep swimming.

Food Blog and Everything Good with the Kids

So Chepa and the babies were visiting her boyfriend up in Amarillo last week during Sierra's kindergarden Spring Break. I was down here in bucolic Joshua, Texas, with Madeleina and my former clients and friends Emily and Devon. Could have been miserable but it was pretty fantastic. First, I hadn't seen Madeleina in weeks. Second, it was a medicine and food week.

For medicine, and for the record I'm the only one who did it, there was a 16-hour San Pedro ceremony and two frog sweat--sapo ceremonies. The frog sweat came from my friend Alberto who used to live with Pablo on the Rio Galvez in Peru at 7 de Junio pueblo, the only two men there. Pablo had four wives then and Alberto two. Alberto had about 12 kids, Pablo about 18-20. So they were really really good hunters. I mean, if every person in camp normally ate a kilo (2.2 pounds) of meat daily, that came to 40 kilos of meat. That means 3-4 small boars; 2-3 large boars; 5-6 good sized monkeys--and that's just scraping by and eating all the organs and intestines and bones, or 7 majas, a fantastic jungle rodent that weighs in at maybe 15-20 pounds with entrails--and is the best damned meat in the jungle--or two good sized caiman, or maybe 200 fish or a combination of all the above.

They depended on sapo to help them hunt as they really had a lot of meat to produce daily. And so their sapo is better than anything anyone in the world can get. They didn't scrape the frogs forever, they just took the first juice from several frogs to make a single stick of sapo. And about three years ago, Alberto sent me a stick from the Galvez. And it's one of my personal sticks. Two little burns with that will simply set you on your ass for hours and hours. That stuff cleans you out, cleans out your arteries, your kidneys, your liver, your lungs, your stomach so well that while the acute effects are gone after the same 15 minutes in which they are normally gone, it takes 8-10 hours to recuperate from all that poison running through your system trying to flush itself out. But man, worth the pain! Joyfully worth the pain!

My son Marco likes to get five sapo burns per dose and handles it well: He doesn't smoke or drink or drink coffee or anything like that so he doesn't have a lot of poison to eliminate. But when I offered him some of Alberto's stick I only gave him two burns.

"Hey dad, what are you, a sissy? Why don't you give me five like always?"

"Cause this comes from a Matses hunter who still looks at people like they are a potential lunch. A human can put a lot of food on the table."

He laughed and I gave him two burns. Ten minutes later, in the throes, he began to curse me. "You son of a bitch, dad! What did you give me? I'm gonna die!!!!!"

Of course he didn't. It's great medicine and can't kill you because all of its proteins--144 new ones identified thus far--are bioactive, but when it was all over and he'd slept three or four hours he still couldn't believe how strong the small dose had been.

That's sapo when a hunter depends for the life of his family on it.

And no, you can't have any. It's a private stash.

But nicely, Emily has a diet that restricts meat, most fish and all flour. As a chef it's always nice to have a challenge. So while I was making homemade bar-be-que sauce to put on mixed meats for Devon, I was making things like roasted portobellos stuffed with blue cheese, organic raisins and slivered walnuts for Em. And sliced zucchini stuffed with crushed corn chips, sauteed onion, garlic and tomatoes in olive oil, topped with shredded parmesan. And vegetable bouquets of cauliflower and broccoli florets with sliced zucchini and yellow squash with scallions in a sauteed diced tomato, onion and garlic olive oil mix baked with a bit of freshly grated high-quality sharp cheddar; and whole steamed asparagus with thinly sliced red pepper and sweet onions sauteed with very light garlic and olive oil and finished with a touch of unsalted butter and balsamic vinegar. And we're not done yet! She had thickly sliced organic tomatoes sauteed in garlic and olive oil and covered with grated parmesan and cracked black pepper. And steamed broccoli florets covered with a homemade curry sauce and baked with good mozzarella (given that we're in Texas and not Brooklyn it was pretty good mozzarella, anyway). And don't forget the baked spaghetti squash with a little butter and sweet red pepper. Or the jungle guacamole which is made by mashing avocados, then adding diced tomatoes, red onions and garlic in olive oil. When that's done, add it to the mashed avacado. Wait ten minutes and add the juice of a couple/few limes and salt and pepper to taste. Cracked black pepper, please, let's do it right.

And then there was other stuff that I forget because I'm remembering the salmon with sesame seeds on a bed of spinach I made for Devon and the swordfish with diced red peppers and chives and so on.

And tonight, Madeleina and I alone, well, it's just roast chicken basted with garlic in olive oil and tossed with a bit of cracked black pepper and sea salt, baked on a bed of celery with halved new potatoes, red onion pieces and organic baby carrots. With a gravy made with the drippings, of course. And served with steamed broccoli and steamed fresh spinach.

So that's where we stand. If the kids or Chepa show up, there is part of a good chuck steak, a couple of pounds of swordfish, and if that fails, well, they can have the rice and some of the dogs' chicken legs.

For a family that's very poor, we sure do eat better than most freaking kings!

The Second Thing I have to Sell You

Okay, so without meaning to push myself on you--but which I'm gonna do anyway--here is the second thing I'm gonna try to sell you. My friend Morgan Maher, the fellow who illustrated my book, has just put together a 4-part webinar for Reality Sandwich's Evolver Intensives. A webinar is when the participants have a seminar or are interviewed by the host, Maher, over the web using cameras. Those who attend the webinar are at their own computers and can watch the seminars in real time, then participate during the question and answer period at the end of the seminar. Sounds complicated but it's not. You just pay your money, get a code to type into your computer and bingo! you're part of the deal.
This webinar series is called Visionary Nutrition: Enhancing Your Health in a Psychedelic World. There are four two-hour sessions in April and if you sign on you get all four of them.
Sunday, April 8 at 3 PM EST, is Daniel Vitalis, a leading health, nutrition and personal development strategist and a great nature-based philosopher.
Saturday, April 14 at 3 PM EST, is moi, Peter Gorman, and I'll be talking about ayahuasca and diet, integrating jungle medicine into everyday living, and I'll bet we touch of foods to keep you health--as I was a New York City chef for two decades before turning to journalism full time.
Sunday, April 22, at 3 PM EST, is Morgan Brent, an ethnopharmacologist who will talk about ayahuasca and the dieta, how we learn from plants and pro-active health and spiritual evolution, among other fascinating topics.
Sunday, April 29, at 3 PM EST, is David Wolfe, one of the worlds' leading authorities on natural health, beauty nutrition, herbalism, chocolate and organic superfoods. His books include Eating for Beauty, Naked Chocolate and Superfoods: The Food and Medicine of the Future.
The series host, Morgan Maher, is an artist, photographer, writer, designer and researcher. He's one of the coolest people I know.
I think this is going to be a very very interesting webinar series. And if it sounds like it to you as well, then what are you waiting for. Sign up. The cost if you register by March 28 is $75 for the whole shebang. After that it will bust you for $85. But you know what? That's not much to listen to those others guys for a couple of hours. And I'll try to entertain you as well.

It's gonna be cool.

Click here to register and for the full course description

Two Things to Sell You

Okay, here are two things I want to sell you. And I want you to buy them because I could use the money to pay for the goat feed, dog and cat food and the mortgage.
The first is an offer of two different trips to the Amazon. They are both 9 1/2 day intensives. The first starts on June 2, a Saturday. The second is a trip scheduled to end on the day the Shamanism conference in Iquitos starts. We'll get you back in time for registration. That starts Thursday, July 5.
Cost for each, once you hit Iquitos, is $1900. I buy your food, your hotels, pick you up at the airport, put you back at the airport at the end of things. I take care of everything except any alcohol you might have in Iquitos before we leave and the money you'll need to buy presents for your friends/family back home.
Both trips will see you acclimate in Iquitos for two days--two days which will be packed with stuff a lot of people who live in Iquitos have never seen. Then we head up the river for six days into deep jungle. Deep jungle. Swamp walking, high pristine rainforest hiking and medicine learning; night canoeing, collecting edible plants and the sapo frog. Along the way we'll get to do magic mushrooms, have two opportunities to drink ayahuasca, do the indigenous Matses' medicines sapo and nu-nu, get lots of dirt under our fingernails and have a roaring good time with some very serious medicine as well.
This trip doesn't demand a lot physically: My team is bigger than the 12 guests that can come on a trip, so if you walk slowly, you'll still see gorgeous rainforest, but you might be walking with two team members at a slower pace and for a shorter length of time than some of the others. But this trip does demand that you bathe in the river, don't cry over a few lousy mosquitos, and see the best in everything. Because this is the real deal, no fooling.
So some of you who want to do something like this, well, this is the time. Others who never thought about it, what the heck, start thinking. This trip will change your life. If you are a suck human being, you will suck less when the medicines and my team are done with you. If you are already a shining human, well, we'll polish you up to a high gleam. Cool? Very. So get on it.
The next note will talk about the other thing I'm trying to sell you.
And yes, I'm hoping to make something. But just like everything I do, I think I'll give you your money's worth and a big dollop more--leaving you laughing at how you got over on me. And I'm very very happy if that's how you wind up feeling. Cause I'm here to do the work--as well as here to work.
Thanks for listening.

Like That Damned Bad Penny, Here I Am Again

Hello All: Back from Peru. Exhausted, refreshed, with my teeth looking very good and a clean bill of health on my body after a battery of tests. I missed you all. And I missed my family. Of course, I had a wonderful time with my guests and my friends in Iquitos and the jungle--when I am there I am there 100 percent--but come time to come home and I desperately miss my kids, Chepa's kids, my granddaughter, my friends.
Right now, Madeleina is playing the piano I got her for Christmas. She's learning quickly. It feels very right to be here at my dest while she plays in the next room. Just fantastic.
And while Chepa and the babies are upstate with her boyfriend for spring break, I did get to see the girls before they left and that was priceless.
And Marco and Italo and Sarah have been over, which means I've gotten to see Taylor a few times, as well. She is just perfect. Makes me laugh.
There was a party at my house for Taylor Rain's second birthday while I was away. The whole extended family and friends came--including Chepa's boyfriend, whom Madeleina resented for being in my house. I understood--we're never going to be friends, just because--but I tried to get her to lighten up on it. Resentment serves no one.
I happened to call Chepa the day of the party. There was commotion at her house and I asked what was up. "We're getting ready to go to Mr. Peter's Ranch"--my house--"for Taylor Rain's party" she said.
"Why my house and not your house?" I asked, surprised at the venue.
"Because we're going to have everybody over and we're going to make a big mess, maybe even have a food fight," she said. "And I don't want that mess at my house. Better to wreck your place."
So Chepa remains Chepa. Crazy but hilarious.
The woman taking care of my house while I was gone, Emily, got it all cleaned up before I came home.
Right now Em and another friend who flew in from Washington, are in the back yard. They are in San Pedro medicine. They are sitting on blankets under a soft blue sky. The ceremony was lovely. I hope the medicine gives them something good, something deep, something that works on their bodies, hearts and spirits. I check on them and sing a little every few minutes. I think they are doing fine.
So here I am, back again. I've already got three deadlines for stories by Monday. Then a cover story due in three weeks. I am also planning three jungle intensives for June and July, so while I'm exhausted I'm still busy.
I'm glad to be home. I'm glad Boots and the new dog and the cats and the goat--only one left--are doing well. I hope you are all doing well too.

I'm off; see you in a month or so

Okay: About to get in the car for the ride to the airport. It's sad. It's always sad for me to leave. And once I'm in Peru it's sad to come back. Oh, well. I picked it and despite its lousy moments it's a great life.
For all of you: I don't hit the computer much once I am in Peru. I don't have a laptop and don't like going to the public places too often. So I'm gonna say goodbye now for a little while. I'll be back in early March. I'll miss sharing stories with you all.
Stay safe. I'll be in touch soon.

Wishful Thinking/Hypocritical Action

I think most of you know that I write a column for Skunk Magazine. It's an irreverent but tasty marijuana magazine out of Montreal. The column is called Drug War Follies. I get to write anything I damned well please about the drug war. Most of it is rotten stuff: whether it's about the awful situation in the Mexican states along the US/Mexican border or the imprisonment of non-violent drug users or how money can corrupt; nearly all of what I write is about pain. And that makes me angry. I'd rather be writing a column about how people were nice to each other today. I'd rather be writing about how the CEO's of every company and corporation in the world just decided to give their workers a little bit bigger piece of the pie and how they're all going to start training programs, with pay, for the jobless.
Freaking bleeding heart, I know.
So this is the opening of the new Drug War Follies column that I'm putting to bed just 48 hours before tipping out and heading to Peru for five weeks. This column will probably appear in about eight weeks.
DRUG WAR FOLLIES #55
Between the time this was written and the time you read this, several thousand marijuana users in the US will have been sent to mostly privatized jails around the country, another 1,000 people will have died in the Mexican Drug War, and untold suffering will have been unleashed on medical marijuana users. All of it pointless if peace and decency is an aim. Unfortunately, for many people, peace and decency only apply to those who make the rules; those who want to live by other rules, or change the rules, be damned.
And I wish that weren’t so.
I’m writing this as I prepare to head down to the Peruvian Amazon again, my home away from home here in bucolic Joshua, Texas. I’ve got a group to take out to the deep green. They’ll ride on overcrowded flat-bottomed riverboats under the Amazon sky. They’ll see fantastic jungle and hike in slightly terrifying swamps and have the opportunity to do all sorts of good medicines—like ayahuasca and magic shrooms and the Matses’ medicines sapo and nu-nu—some of which would land them in deep trouble here in North America. They will come back refreshed, renewed and ready to face the world with new strengths and abilities.
I wish everyone could join me. I wish everyone could take a few weeks off from serving jail time for non-violent drug crimes and come with me out to the deep woods. Hell, I wish the private prison profiteers would come with me: I guarantee that when they returned they’d understand that it ain’t fucking right to make money off people’s suffering. And to encourage more suffering to keep them private jail cells filled and the bottom line fat and happy. Hell, yes, I wish I could take Joe Arpaio out to the woods and have him drink ayahuasca and then come back a different person with a whole different set of beliefs.
I wish that between the time I finish this and the time you read it amnesty gets called for non-violent drug crimes and marijuana gets legalized. I wish that in the next several weeks ALL drugs would be legalized, which would end a lot of killing in Mexico and a lot of slavery on the pot farms in parts of Africa and elsewhere. And end the need for those damned prisons. And end the fear so many people face when they get that awful knock on the door, or have the door knocked in.
I wish all that peace and decency but I won’t hold my breath. Because to ever get there from here, short of divine intervention, is going to take work. Hard work. Education, protests, pulling money from the companies that support the private prisons run by GEO and the Corrections Corp. of America and other bottom feeders whose money comes directly in proportion to the amount of suffering that’s inflicted by criminalizing the behavior of good and decent folk.
That’s a lot of work that needs to be done. And here I am heading off to Peru instead of doing it. Sometimes I feel like a fucking hypocrite for sure.

First Photo Ever on This Blog

Okay: This is the first photo I've ever put up. I just found it. It's a picture of my Cold Beer Blues Bar/Cevicheria Madeleina in Iquitos Peru. It was a very very very cool place. This was taken by JT Cathey. If he objects, then I'll take it down. But for the next few minutes, here it is.
The bar was simple, serving mostly beer and a few local liquors. We served fantastic food. We had a good selection of blues music as well as good Peruvian music. We had one of my High Times softball team jerseys on the wall. The team was called The Bonghitters and that's what people saw when they saw the jersey. We had the skull of a 15 foot black caiman on the bar in a corner and the old skin of a 20' anaconda on one wall above the windows. Our clients were US ex-pats, DEA agents, US Special Forces, Peruvian drug dealers, pilots with the CIA--sometimes all at once. Why? Because we were the only joint in town that was anything like a real New York bar--in the sense that when you came in you were who you wanted to be and left the heck alone if that's what you wanted. Hell of a place.

Okay, There's My President

So two days ago I was explaining recess appointments to Madeleina, how I really wanted Obama to make a couple of dozen of them. I wanted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director named, National Labor Relations Board members names, I wanted a couple of dozen judgeships filled around the country: You know the jobs that normally get filled either through congress or recess appointments.
And when I thought the window of opportunity had passed, I wrote that wailing last blog piece. But then, my pres came out and made the first recess appointments we needed. Good for him. Madeleina wanted to know if it was a good thing that happened and I gave her both my point of view and the opposition point of view. I think she liked my point of view that it was a good thing, that we need a president who will do what every other president has done and just be freaking presidential now and then. That's why they have the power of recess appointments--even if that power was initially given to the president because congress met much more infrequently 150 years ago.
So good. As Julio said once when I told him about meeting a terrifying entity during an ayahuasca dream: Do you have cojones, Pedro? Grab your balls! If the monster is 100 feet tall, make yourself 150 feet tall!
Good on Obama.
And then, Madeleina and I sat down to a nice meal of roast chicken with rice and gravy and a side of steamed broccoli. We didn't eat much chicken but boy that gravy on the rice was good!