Kara's Mjeddrah is a sight to behold: a feast for the eyes and the belly!

Feast your hungry eyes on this scrumptious photograph by none other than my blogging friend Kara. She sent it to me via email, kindly allowing me to publish it on my blog EVEN after she had  learned about my copyright criminal instincts.

If you missed the post about my brush with the law, it concerned a photograph of a bowl of beans that I had pasted on a post. This made the blog owner pissy which led to issuing a Take Down Notice on my blog. So let my experience warn potential cut-and-paste cyberspace criminals. YOU may rationalize your illegal behavior as 'free advertising' for someone else's blog, but the law considers your behavior THEFT. So even if you're a proficient cut-and-paster, DON'T Do It. Why?

Because people like ourselves, people who obey the rules just 'cuz we like doing the right thing for the good of society, have a hard time accepting our inner criminal. Inner critics are hard enough to deal with, but embracing your inner criminal can throw you in a self-hate prison for weeks (or even months) before tapping your way out of Alcatraz. If you don't understand what I just wrote, consider yourself lucky. 

After my post about the DMCA Take Down notice, dear Kara felt duly sorry for me; enough so that she not only cooked my mjeddrah recipe, she took a picture of her culinary masterpiece! Her photographs were soooo gorgeous it was hard to believe she'd made the same recipe. I got out my iPad over dinner and showed Kara's pictures to my family who raised their hands with enthusiasm and agreed: from here-on-out, they're eating at Kara's. The mjeddrah we've been eating looks like mud. 

How to Make Ugly Mjeddrah (pronounced: mi-jed-rah) 

1-1/2 cups green lentils
4 cups water or stock
3 Tb. olive oil
2 large onions, chopped
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 cup brown rice 

Wash lentils. Bring lentils and water to boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 25 minutes. Heat olive oil in another pan and saute onions and salt until onions are translucent. Add brown rice and stir for 2 minutes. Combine onions, rice and lentils. Cover and simmer until lentils & rice are soft---about one hour. Stir occasionally. Additional water may be needed, one cup or more. I always cook this in a cast iron pot, letting the liquid evaporate in the cooking without burning the food. Although mjeddrah is usually eaten with salad, we cram it in a whole-wheat Pita Pocket topped with lettuce and onions, tomatoes and cucumbers, spinach and sprouts. Drizzle a little olive oil and lemon juice as a finale. 

Now look to your right. This picture is what Kara's mjeddrah looks like without the roasted peppers and feta cheese. Doesn't it look healthy? Doesn't it look delicious? Don't you wanna grab a tablespoon and gobble it up? I love the way her rice and lentils maintain their integrity in the bowl. Each kernel rests unique. Individuated. Kara's rice and lentils have good boundaries.

My mjeddrah resembles the narcissistic family: a big blob of enmeshed objects, losing individual identity in the ego mass. (I TRY to write something about narcissism in every post but yea, that was a bit of a stretch wasn't it?) 

After cooking my mjeddrah to a fine mess, I top it with shredded iceberg lettuce and voila! Louisiana swamp in a dinner bowl. Sometimes my family eats with their eyes closed and now you know why. They aren't praying. Well, maybe they are! "Dear Lord. Please help me survive this ordeal-of-a-meal and I promise to fix dinner for Mom tomorrow. Amen"

Thank you to Kara for sending these gorgeous pictures which have been sitting on my desktop for weeks, waiting for an opportunity to post them. Now that it's raining and hailing outside, there's time to frame, post, and write a thank you note. You are a kind and thoughtful woman and I'm grateful to have met you.

Love,
CZ

Reference Post: The Creeping Crud of Self-Admiration, Copyright Criminals, and the Google Art Project

Violence and Silence by Jackson Katz & a link to Miss Representation

Ten Things Men Can Do

by Jackson Katz

1) Approach gender violence as a MEN'S issue involving men of all ages and socioeconomic, racial and ethnic backgrounds. View men not only as perpetrators or possible offenders, but as empowered bystanders who can confront abusive peers

2) If  a brother, friend, classmate, or teammate is abusing his female partner--or is disrespectful or abusive to girls and women in general--don't look the other way. If you feel comfortable doing so, try to talk to him about it. Urge him to seek help. Or if you don't know what to do, consult a friend, a parent, a professor, or a counselor. DON'T REMAIN SILENT.

3) Have the courage to look inward. Question your own attitudes. Don't be defensive when something you do or say ends up hurting someone else. Try hard to understand how your own attitudes and actions might inadvertently perpetuate sexism and violence, and work toward changing them.

4) If you suspect that a woman close to you is being abused or has been sexually assaulted, gently ask if you can help.

5) If you are emotionally, psychologically, physically, or sexually abusive to women, or have been in the past, seek professional help NOW.

6) Be an ally to women who are working to end all forms of gender violence. Support the work of campus-based women's centers. Attend "Take Back the Night" rallies and other public events. Raise money for community-based rape crisis centers and battered women's shelters. If you belong to a team or fraternity, or another student group, organize a fundraiser.

7) Recognize and speak out against homophobia and gay-bashing. Discrimination and violence against lesbians and gays are wrong in and of themselves. This abuse also has direct links to sexism (eg. the sexual orientation of men who speak out against sexism is often questioned, a conscious or unconscious strategy intended to silence them. This is a key reason few men do so).

8) Attend programs, take courses, watch films, and read articles and books about multicultural masculinities, gender inequality, and the root causes of gender violence.  Educate yourself and others about how larger social forces affect the conflicts between individual men and women.

9) Don't fund sexism. Refuse to purchase any magazine, rent any video, subscribe to any Web site, or buy any music that portrays girls or women in a sexually degrading or abusive manner. Protest sexism in the media.

10) Mentor and teach young boys about how to be men in ways that don't involve degrading or abusing girls and women. Volunteer to work with gender violence prevention programs, including anti-sexist men's programs. Lead by example.

Violence and Silence

"Calling gender violence a women's issue is part of the problem. It gives a lot of men an excuse not to pay attention." ~Jackson Katz, author of The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and and How All Men Can Help

Jackson Katz, Phd, is an anti-sexist activist and expert on violence, media and masculinities. An author, filmmaker, educator and social theorist, Katz has worked in gender violence prevention work with diverse groups of men and boys in sports culture and the military, and has pioneered work in critical media literacy. Katz is the creator and co-founder of the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) program, which advocates the 'bystander approach' to sexual and domestic violence prevention. You've also seen him in the award winning documentary MissRepresentation." ~YouTube Link

PLEASE NOTE: You can watch the documentary Miss Representation on the WoN Cinema right now. It may not be on YouTube very long so be sure to set aside an hour and a half to see this important documentary before it's no longer available! Of course, you can always purchase the video on Amazon (I did!) and encourage the production of more documentaries like Miss Representation. 

Miss Representation
(1:31:54)

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"The Rule appeared in a 1985 comic strip created by Alison Bechdel. One of Bechdel’s characters refused to watch a film unless it met three criteria: 1) it had to have at least two women in it; 2) who talked to each other; 3) about something other than a man..." ~The Bechdel Test and Miss Representation