Foolproof Giveaway

We had a fun weekend visit from Dad and my step-mother, Ellen. The kids adore Dad because he brings them gifts (this time it was light up rings), he tells jokes that they find funny (notice that they might not be objectively funny, but the kids like them), and he plays games and colors with them. One of Dad's favorite activities with the kids (especially the Boy) is drawing flags. Don't ask me how this activity got started, but Dad and the Boy will spend hours creating flags of fictitious countries or improving on the flags of actual countries. This visit Dad got the Baby in on the activity by showing her all the U.S. state flags. The Baby and the Boy thought that the New Mexico flag could use some improvement. In case you were wondering, the flag looks like this:

I think the New Mexico flag has an understated elegance, but it's not very flashy or interesting like say, the Isle of Man flag:

Honestly, I'm not sure what's going on there. Parasitic twin? Also, did you know that Andy Garcia had a parasitic twin? That link is to a list of ten celebrities with "strange physical flaws." I feel certain that many, many men have looked at Megan Fox and thought, "I'd hit that, but for her stubby thumbs."

Back to the flags. So, they designed some new flags that were more colorful than the original New Mexico flag and Dad promptly packaged them up in envelopes and sent them to to the Governor of New Mexico, who will, I am sure, put them someplace safe:

My major accomplishment of the weekend was finally learning how to properly cook salmon. For Christmas, Mom gave me a copy of the new Barefoot Contessa's aptly-named cookbook, "Foolproof." So, here's the deal with cooking and me. It's not that I'm a bad cook, I just don't like spending a really long time cooking something that only 2/5th of the family will eat and then cook several auxiliary meals to feed everyone else. It dawned on me recently that there are people who enjoy the actual process of cooking. To me this is like enjoying the process of getting dressed. Yes, I like to have something to eat and I want to get dressed, but I don't relish the steps it takes to achieve those ends.

All that being said, I really love all the Barefoot Contessa cookbooks. Does this make sense given my self-proclaimed dislike of cooking? Yes. Her recipes are fairly quick, with easy to follow directions and the resulting food will be really good. So, I made salmon and melting cherry tomatoes and it.was.so.delicious.

The good news for you all is that I happen to be too lazy to return the copy of "Foolproof" that I ordered for myself before receiving my gift copy for Christmas. The reason that this is good news is because I am giving away my extra copy!

So, I've never done a contest before, so here are my guidelines (such as they are):

1. Leave a comment with your favorite Barefoot Contessa recipe from any of her other cookbooks.
2. If you don't have a favorite recipe, make something up, i.e., "I really like her smoked turtle fritters with creme fraiche and shaved chocolate."
3. That's it.

I will announce a winner (picked via random number selection) next Monday, January 14. May the odds be ever in your favor. (Note: Despite the "Hunger Games" reference, the winner will not be required to battle to the death with other OWTL readers.)

Veteran's Day Question

In honor of Veteran's Day, the scouts in our town went to the local cemetery and placed flags on veterans' graves. Our family did the same thing in the spring for Memorial Day, and we had a little dilemma when it came to the many Confederate graves that we saw. Do you honor the military service of men who fought against the Union? Moreover, would Confederate veterans even want the flag that they fought against to be planted in their graves? I've been thinking through this issue on this Veteran's Day.  

The summer after my second year in law school I worked in Dallas. So, over Memorial Day weekend 1997, I drove west on I-20 from Atlanta to Texas. I stopped in Vicksburg, Mississippi to try to spend the night. At the first hotel where I stopped the lady looked at me like I was out of my mind:

"You want a room? In Vicksburg? Over Memorial Day weekend? Oh, honey, you've got to be kidding me. You'd better drive on to Louisiana." 

I wasn't aware of the history of Vicksburg other than a vague knowledge that something had happened there during the Civil War and it weren't purty for the south. Now I know, thanks to Wikipedia that when the Confederates surrendered at Vicksburg on July 4, 1863, the Union would control the Mississippi River for the remainder of the war. Also, the city of Vicksburg would not celebrate July 4th until after World War II. And, apparently even 130 years after the battle, it was still such a big deal that you couldn't stay there over Memorial Day weekend without reservations.

I have at least two direct ancestors who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. My three-times great grandfather, Moses Jackson (for real, that was his name) was an ardent states-rights advocate who was a lieutenant colonel in the 33rd Mississippi Infantry during. Moses was a man with a lot to lose if slavery was abolished. He owned a big plantation in Amite County, Mississippi. And, as these things go, along with the plantation, he owned a fairly large number of slaves.

I had never really thought about what Moses did after the south surrendered. I assumed that he slunk back to Mississippi, accepted defeat, and got accustomed to the new status quo. However, that would be underestimating the resolve of a man who, when he fought, used the sword that his grandfather used in the Revolutionary War and his father used in the War of 1812. I recently discovered that Moses was instrumental in disrupting the Mississippi elections of 1875 in Amite County and intimidating federal tax collectors and other "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags." It was a sobering reminder that old soldiers don't die, they just find new battles to fight.

Moses's son-in-law, my two times great-grandfather was also a confederate soldier. Johnny Walker (again, his real name, and no relation to the whiskey) was 16 when he signed up, was captured almost immediately and spent the entire war as a P.O.W. at a Union prison in Delaware. Whenever my kids complain when they're teenagers, I'm going to mention that it could totally be worse. They could be spending their 17th birthday in a prison overrun with cholera and dysentery. Johnny didn't own any slaves. His parents ran the school in town and his father was a judge. Johnny wanted to read law, but the Civil War changed all that.

Johnny married Moses's daughter, Nora after the war. Nora seems like a bit of a firebrand like her father, but by 1865, Nora was a 22 year-old widow with a baby girl and not a whole lot of options. I'm sure that Johnny, with all his limbs intact and a latent case of PTSD seemed like a pretty good choice.  The family moved west and Johnny became the sheriff of Dardanelle, Arkansas. The evidence seems pretty clear that Johnny never really recovered from his experiences in prison and losing friends, family, and property after the War. That's probably why Johnny's son, Lamar, Mom's grandfather wrote Mom an impassioned letter when she and Dad got engaged, begging her not to marry Dad because he was a Yankee. 

So, I feel like Moses would round up a posse and go after anyone who planted the stars and stripes on his grave. Even Johnny, who may not have continued to agitate after the War ended probably wouldn't appreciate seeing the flag of his captors on his grave. But, the alternative, planting the flag of the Confederacy isn't a good option for what it represents. I guess when I consider the alternatives, doing nothing seems like the best course. Now that I've thought about this issue, I feel like I have to qualify my thanks to the veterans. Rather than thanking American veterans, I want to thank all the American veterans who fought for the United States.