Lives in a Shoe

Making My Family Sick

This Thanksgiving I tried a variation for the old tried-and-true mashed potatoes. Knowing that George and Marcella both love potatoes but both have issues with dairy, I warned them ahead of time and also got some Lactaid.  I promised them something really good.

 

On the big day, with love in my heart, I peeled and boiled and mashed. I proudly served the beautiful mashed potatoes in my mother's yellow bowl. We agreed that these had to be the very best mashed potatoes EVAH. I felt really good to have given them such a treat.

 

Then. First Marcella, who cannot tolerate butter, and then George, who has some sort of lactose intolerance, got indigestion. Bad indigestion.  Woe was me. Turns out you have to take the lactase stuff for three days before it's effective. I'm not sure that would have helped, but maybe.

 

Anyhow, the potatoes really were terrific. They were my midnight snack and then made a good breakfast, heated in the microwave and eaten by me.  All alone.

 

So here is the recipe..  I guess we can call this:

 

Lucrezia Borgia's Awesome Spuds

 

Five pounds of potatoes. 

One cube of butter.

One square package of cream cheese.

Salt, pepper.

Milk as necessary.

Peel and boil potatoes. Or don't peel them; I don't care. When they're cooked, drain and mash. Add butter, cream cheese. Add milk until the consistency is good. Add salt and pepper.

 

This will either make your family sick right away or it will work on their arteries in a more stealthy manner and they will keel over with a coronary in the middling future.  Lucrezia would probably consider this a win-win.

"Hope I Die Before I Get Old"

Social Security is broke; Medicare is broke. ⁽¹⁾  Government in all its incarnations is broke and incompetent. ⁽²⁾ 

Can it be mere coincidence that as we boomers age, the anxiety-ridden percentage who seek forgetfulness by smoking weed steadily increases? ⁽³⁾  Can we allow this trend to continue? 

NO, I SAY -- no longer shall oldsters seek forgetfulness in smoke only to squander their Social Security checks on Pop Tarts and Pringles.  Our deliverance is at hand.   Once again we turn our eyes to the entrepreneurs following the camel's nose of medical marijuana beneath the tent of prohibition (beat the crap out of that metaphor, eh?) hoping to have their product legalized and taxed. ⁽⁴⁾  By any responsible estimate of revenue from the largest cash crop in California and Oregon, the toke tax haul could go a long way toward subsidizing boomer geezers when Social Security and Medicare finally fall down and go boom. ⁽⁵⁾  

 

The taxman and market capitalism hand in hand, a force to be reckoned with.

 

(Sources below.)

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