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Sunday Open Thread
Sunday, October 19th, 2008To start the discussion, I submit the following:
Pumpkin is autumn’s bacon. It makes everything taste better.
52 Responses to “Sunday Open Thread”
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Oh man I gotta disagree. I loathe everything pumpkin, including carving them- which sucks as I have 3 kids under the age of 8 and they and their mother love it. In fact a few years ago my son (age 1.5 at the time) was sitting in his high chair and while we carved away, he was munching on a discarded piece of jack-o-lantern mouth. I about hurled, but he was in heaven. So there’s one vote against, and 4 in favor.
Well, I loathe bacon, so that balances out.
Our local rag dig a quick review of some pumpkin-oriented cuisine. I’m with them 90% — the Kaddo at Helmand is awesome, but not the vegetarian stuff. Ground beef all the way.
Hmmm:
Pumpkin Cheesecake. Yuk.
Pumpkin Coffee. Yuk.
Cold Pumpkin Pie. mmmmm.
Pumpkin tastes good by itself, tastes like crap as a flavoring in anything else.
Roasted pumpkin (or butternut squash) goes great in risotto. And bacon makes either taste better.
Two wonderful words: pumpkin beer.
I like pie.
Pumpkin and a baseball bat.
GREAT FUN!
pumpkin pie farts may be the most toxic smell ever…
I like the salty roasted seeds. Other parts, no. My bro has some pumpkin beer from Halloween 07 that he still tries to push on me at his house.
I tried two different pumpkin beers at a beer festival yesterday. They smelled nice, but they didn’t taste very good.
Pumpkin beer sounds much better than it tastes, but I will say that I am a huge fan of pumpkin pie, pumpkin seeds, pumpkin bread, and pumpkin pie blizzards from dairy queen!
Pumpkin bacon?
You know, Radley, I’m thinking the whole “open thread” idea might not be as good as it sounds. Maybe it’ll work better on a weekday when there’s fresh news to discuss.
I don’t know Michael, I think this is really somehow a thread that is supposed to be about Powell’s endorsement of Obama… I just keep seeing visions of the headless horseman on Holloween… I just can’t put it all together… Maybe it is just SURREAL???
Don’t listen to #14 Michael. Stick in the mud. As far as pumpkin beer (several mentions), it is awesome when done right (a friend brewed some and it was perfect, really great), but I have had some that was far too “pumpkin pie” spiced for my taste. Thai pumpkin curry is typically good too, again if done right :).
Fresh news to discuss? Colin Powell just endorsed Obama. If you like the taste of pumpkin, may I recommend the sweet, satisfying, refreshing tears of the neoconservative?
Just got some pumpkin eggnog. Good stuff!
Dogfish Head’s Punkin Ale is great. Otherwise, I haven’t found many pumpkin ales that I’ve liked.
dog fish head punk. it’s the taste of fall at my house!
Does Dogfish Head make anything that isn’t great? If only they’d make a Bacon Ale… but perhaps the world isn’t ready for something that perfect.
When I was living in North Carolina, used to drive by a school named Pumpkin Elementary.
Just sat back and thought.
North Carolina.
South.
Redneck.
Pump Kin.
Ayup.
“Pumpkin is autumn’s bacon”
that sounds like the beginning of a really twisted country song…
Having extolled the virtues of pumpkin (specifically, the beer variety), may I make an off-topic comment in this open thread? I’m definitely a fish out of water here on Radley’s blog, being generally way left of center, and being specifically a starry-eyed Obama groupie. There are a lot of reasons I am thrilled that it looks like Obama is going to be our next president (not the least of which is that my five-year-old African American son’s earliest memories will be of a really smart, thoughtful Black president; that his formative image of the first family will be a Black First Lady and two little girls with nappy hair growing up in the White House — and don’t get me wrong, I would never vote for a Black candidate *just because* he’s Black, even if he were really smart and Black, but the symbolism of it for this mama of a Black boy is some powerful icing on an otherwise very sweet cake). The biggest reason I hope Obama wins is that IF there is a politician who can possibly make it possible for folks from all across the political spectrum to actually talk to one another, rather than slavishly reciting our scripts, then I think it is Barack Obama. (I was amazed at how willing he was to go off-script in his race speech during the primaries, race being one of the most scripted conversations we have in this country — there’s the “legacy of slavery” script on the left and the “personal responsibility” script on the right, and that’s pretty much it). Colin Powell spoke to this very well I think in his endorsement today. If there were one thing I would change about America today, it would not be our tax structure, or market regulation, or health care policy, or access to education; rather, I would change what seems to me to be our complete inability to actually talk to one another, and hear one another, and consider one another’s ideas, across political lines. When I say to my lefty friends that I read a Libertarian blog, they raise their eyebrows in concern. If I suggest to other White liberals that there are serious problems in the Black community (at least the one I live in) that government alone cannot fix, I start to lose my credentials as a good White liberal (interestingly, that’s not the case when I say the exact same thing to my Black neighbors). And on and on. One of the things I love about Radley’s blog is his scrupulous intellectual honesty, his clarity about what he believes, and his determination to go off-script whenever required to be true to that. I think Obama has a similar sense of rigor — I’ll admit it is tempered, but not broken, by the unfortunate realities of running a presidential campaign in a political milleu that despises such honesty and rigor. Someone here asked recently if Obama is really as liberal as he makes out to be, or whether he is just saying those things to get elected. My hope is that Obama is neither more nor less liberal than he seems, but rather that he will explode the categories of liberal/conservative and be who we really need right now — honest, smart, curious, rigorous, open, thoughtful, creative…. paradigm busting. I am fully prepared to be disappointed (it would hardly be the first time), but I think if there is any chance that a politician in this country could be that, Obama is the guy.
Pumpkin soup is also quite nice, especially with a little curry in it.
Marta Rose……that was WAY TOO LONG………
jwh: sorry! i was drinking a dogfish head punk, and definitely got carried away….
The main problem with Obama is that he thinks he has the right to take other people’s money and “redistribute” it. This is an unforgivable assumption, and he has never made any attempt to justify it, but dumb people love to hear it.
Radley, can we get a clarification on the proper use of the up/down comment buttons? As I understood when you re-instated the comments on your blog, the system was to keep people from posting hateful and vulgar comments. It now has devolved into a popularity contest to see who can post the most Libertarian comment. Why, for instance, does the comment where one person suggests the he doesn’t like bacon, get voted way down. Sure I like bacon too but come one people.
Please Radley, explain for the unwashed among us the proper use of the comment voting system.
The main problem with Obama is that he thinks he has the right to take other people’s money and “redistribute” it. This is an unforgivable assumption, and he has never made any attempt to justify it, but dumb people love to hear it.
Which politician doesn’t think this?
Getting back to the topic…
When I was growing up, squirrel-and-pumpkin pie was a staple of the holidays, but folks I talk to now express, shock, outrage, and finally, puzzlement. “There just can’t be any such thing, can there?”
Well, yes there is.
Skin and dress one squirrel. (if you have a bird feeder in your backyard, they can easily be picked off with an air rifle.) Cut into pieces, trim away any shot-damaged meat, and soak in the refrigerator overnight in salted water.
Boil the squirrel for about two hours, until the meat falls from the bones. Dice, mix with the pumpkin, and bake as you normally would.
Cheap protein, and delicious.
Onward and upward,
airforce
Last year I picked up some small pie-type pumpkins that were on a please-get-them-out-of-here sale in early November. They were an impulse buy and the absolutely best pie that the family has ever had. So of course I can’t find anything like them this year, when I’m actively hunting for the darned things. This year my impulse buys are enormous fire-orange Rouge Vif D’etampes and a looks-like-a-cheese-wheel Fairytale. If they’re any good I’m going to plant the back yard hip-deep in heirloom pumpkin next season. The kids got their carving squash for tradition but it’s unlikely those stringy gourds are going to see the inside of an oven this year.
Pumpkin beer…yck. Pumpkin mead sounds like it would taste a whole lot better.
The main problem with Obama is that he thinks he has the right to take other people’s money and “redistribute” it. This is an unforgivable assumption, and he has never made any attempt to justify it, but dumb people love to hear it.
Which politician doesn’t think this?
Bob Barr, Ron Paul.
I like pumpkin Pie… Like cheesecake better, but … what can you do?
Now if you will excuse me, I need to go clean my Sig.
Which politician doesn’t think this?
Bob Barr, Ron Paul.
Well, they certainly don’t believe it as strongly as most other politicians, but Mr. Paul has certainly helped to “redistribute” federal funds to his district. Mr. Barr has a long history of wasting tax-dollars and being, generally, an authoritarian douchebag, but claims to have converted, so I’m not sure what to think of him at this point.
Pumpkins are best used as Jack-O-Laterns- what’s wrong with you folks?
Pumpkins + Fireworks = Great Fun
I’d like to use this as an opportunity to reiterate the fact that Cynical in CA and Freedom Fan are great. POST MORE PLZZZ.
I doubt Radley suffers from any delusions of controlling how this crowd uses the arrows.
Also, not liking bacon (or at least announcing as much) is hateful and vulgar.
Make a pumpkin cheesecake.
Pumpkins are evil and will stalk you in your sleep. See my book for more details.
I disagree, bacon is autumn’s bacon. I had some organic “Sunday Bacon” from Whole Foods this weekend. It’s the best bacon I’ve ever had, but at $10/lb it should be, right?
I’m with Ganja Blue. Bacon is every season’s bacon.
I’m all for the fancy stuff, but regular bacon does make everything better. Ever had a Wendy’s Baconator? Sublime. And yet it has some of the worst bacon ever. Limp, puny, and yet it improves a regular Wendy’s double with cheese tenfold.
Vote with a pumpkin.
Correction:
Pumpkins are best used for target practice.
As a hardcore beergeek, I’d argue you can find good pumpkin beers, but the majority are overspiced to the point of distraction.
As such they don’t meet what Garret Oliver, of Brooklyn Brewery, calls the 4 pint rule, would you want to sit down and drink 4 pints of it? If not it’s too much. Big Boss Brewery had a great beer this year that meet the rule as did Port Brewing, with Buffalo out in Hayward is regarded as a classic in the style it is a bit much. In the end I buy pumpkin beers for parties or group tasting so if it’s too much you only have one beer to drink.
what the heck happened to the Colts this weekend?
Sorry… Did anyone ever hear of “artisinal pumpkin”? Just doesn’t fly…
Nothing is comparable to bacon – least of all a vegetable.
I generally don’t like pumpkin beers. Of course, my palate skews towards the German tradition so it’s rare that a spiced beer catches my fancy. That being said, there are exceptions, and Flossmoor Station (just south of Chicago) is tapping their Imperial Chocolate Pumpkin Porter next Wednesday the 29th. If there’s one beer that will make me see the light on this whole pumpkin thing, it’s gonna be that one.
http://www.punkinchunkin.com/
The finest use for pumpkins. Also for watermelons, large potatoes,
canteloupes, didelopes, neocon body parts and other immoral and undigestible stuff.
Pumpkin lasagna?
Vincent: Want some bacon?
Jules: No man, I don’t eat pork.
Vincent: Are you Jewish?
Jules: Nah, I ain’t Jewish, I just don’t dig on swine, that’s all.
Vincent: Why not?
Jules: Pigs are filthy animals. I don’t eat filthy animals.
Vincent: Bacon tastes gooood. Pork chops taste gooood.
Jules: Hey, sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I’d never know ’cause I wouldn’t eat the filthy mother*****.