Wednesday, February 17, 2021
STOP! Before You Bake Anything, Read This
You've been waiting for the launch of the Basically Guide to Better Baking for days (for weeks? for years? for your whole life?) and you're ready to get started and, most importantly, to eat some cookies.
But before you do, give these 10 baking tips a careful read. We'll tell you how we measure flour and why you should care, how we line pans (even a pesky 13x9”), and how to get around waiting for cold butter to come to room temp. We think that if you internalize this advice, you'll be setting yourself up for success. And who doesn't want to succeed?
One last thing, though. We highly recommend that you read the recipe from start to finish, too. That'll save you from the deep pain of mixing cookie dough at 11 p.m. and realizing it needs to chill for two hours before being baked.
The non-negotiable, must-buy baking tools
You know how it’s okay to guess on the SATs but not on your medical history? Well it’s fine to estimate when cooking—a tablespoon here, a handful there—but not when baking, where an extra 25° F and ¼ cup flour can be the difference between chewy cookies and super-thin mutants that spread into one giant Pangea. Together, a scale and an oven thermometer will eliminate risky guesswork, lighting your path to success. Here’s why:
Electronic scale: One cup of any dry ingredient varies in weight depending on how densely it’s packed, but with a scale, you can make sure your measurements are correct and consistent. No more cake-like cookies or brick-like cakes. Not only will a scale save you from cleaning sets of measuring cups (tedious!), but you’ll also use it for brewing coffee and figuring out how many sweet potatoes equal a pound. Click here to read more about how food director Chris Morocco fell in love with this scale—and why thinks you should have one even if you aren't a baker.
Buy It: Escali Primo Digital Scale; $25, amazon.com
Oven thermometer: Brownie bottoms burning before the interior’s cooked through? Scones slouching rather than standing straight? Sounds like you’ve put too much trust in that oven dial. Unless your superpower is to detect the difference between 325 and 375° by feel alone, a thermometer is the only way to know if your oven is actually at the right temperature, whether you’re baking biscuits or roasting chicken.
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Check Out Crowd Greeting President Trump in Florida Yesterday
Check out this crowd greeting President #Trump in #Florida yesterday! @TomiLahren says "#Trumpism" is part of the future of the #GOP. #VarneyCo pic.twitter.com/axJffmXwJr
— Varney & Co. (@Varneyco) February 16, 2021
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The swift death of the media darlings known as the Lincoln Project
As quickly as it rose to its perch as a media darling, the Lincoln Project (LP) is crashing down swiftly to its fitting end. And it has no one to blame but itself.
The beginning of the end came a few weeks ago. Co-founder John Weaver has been accused by nearly two dozen young men and boys of sexually inappropriate harassment via direct messages and texts. Weaver's LP co-founders said nothing when Axios broke the first story on an allegations against Weaver, apparently hoping that left-leaning media outlets would simply let the story die. And said media certainly did its best to do just that: In 17 TV appearances after the Axios story, the allegations against Weaver never came up once in interviews with other co-founders, including Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson and George Conway.
But earlier this month, The New York Times reported that 21 others had come forward to share their allegations against Weaver, which included receipts of the creepy conversations of the 61-year-old offering teenage boys jobs for sex. Only then did the Lincoln Project respond with perhaps the most laughable defense you'll ever hear this side of Jussie Smollett.
"It's terrible and awful," Conway told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" when gently asked about the Weaver allegations following the bombshell from The New York Times. Conway — who wouldn't see a microphone extended within 500 yards of him if not for his wife, former Trump senior counselor Kellyanne Conway — then added, "I didn't know John very well. I frankly only spoke to him a couple times on the phone early on in the Lincoln Project."
Hold the phone. You didn’t know him very well? You co-founded the Lincoln Project with Weaver while raising more than $80 million with him last year going into the presidential election. Oh, by the way, there's also an op-ed in The New York Times that you co-wrote with that guy you don't really know.
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R' Amnon Yitzchok Goes into the Gutter to Mock Harav Yitzchok Yosef
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Harris Takes Role Of President by Calling Several Heads of State
Vice President Kamala Harris has recently called multiple heads of state, a task that is normally done by the president.
Harris spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday, the White House said.
Harris “expressed her commitment to strengthening bilateral ties between the United States and France and to revitalizing the transatlantic alliance,” a readout said. She and Macron “agreed on the need for close bilateral and multilateral cooperation to address COVID-19, climate change, and support democracy at home and around the world.”
“They also discussed numerous regional challenges, including those in the Middle East and Africa, and the need to confront them together,” according to the readout.
There was no mention of President Joe Biden.
“We discussed COVID-19, climate change, supporting democracy at home and around the world, and regional challenges. @POTUS and I look forward to working with President Macron to build a better future for our two countries,” Harris wrote in a tweet.
Biden spoke to Macron on Jan. 24.
Harris shared a call with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier this month. The White House said it was her first call to a foreign leader as vice president.
“The Prime Minister congratulated the Vice President on her historic election, and she recalled fondly her years spent in MontrΓ©al,” a readout from Trudeau’s office said, adding that they discussed other matters, including fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We discussed our commitment to work closely on several issues, including combating COVID-19, addressing climate change, and expanding our economic partnership in ways that advance the recovery and create jobs in both countries,” Harris said in a statement after the call.
Biden and Trudeau spoke on Jan. 22. It was the first call Biden made after being sworn into office two days prior.
Vice presidents rarely call heads of state. The last vice president, Mike Pence, did not share calls with Trudeau or Macron, though he visited in person with heads of state on a number of occasions.
The White House didn’t respond to requests for comment.
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Halakhic ruling: Confession at time of accident is invalid
The head of the Eretz Hemda-Gazit High Court, Rabbi Yosef Gershon Carmel, recently ruled that a driver of a vehicle that hit a moving car while leaving a parking lot must pay the owners of the damaged vehicle the amount of money their car repair cost.
In the ruling, the court ruled that the fact that the damage to the vehicle traveling on the road was on the car's side and not front is evidence that the culprit in the accident was the driver who was leaving the parking lot.
The ruling also states that the way to determine guilt in an accident is based, among other things, on traffic laws, according to which the increased duty of care is imposed on a vehicle exiting a parking lot and not on the driver traveling on the road.
The court also heard the claim that the driver of the damaged vehicle drove at a higher speed than usual, and ruled that the relatively high speed does not absolve the offending driver from liability, as long as it is not higher than allowed, and that the burden of proof lies with the offending driver. .
Another question that came up in the discussion was the significance of the fact that shortly after the driver exited her car, at the time of the accident, she allegedly admitted that she was to blame for the accident because she was driving fast.
The tribunal accepted the driver's claim that the admission was said out of the pressure she was under immediately after the incident, and ruled that the confession did not bind her, for three cumulative reasons.
First, it was not an explicit admission of pecuniary liability, but rather an apology. The driver had no way of knowing at the time of the apology whether she was the one who was financially to blame for the accident or the driver of the other vehicle.
In addition, the tribunal brought the opinion of some Rishonim, according to which a confession that was not said before two witnesses is not a confession at all, but are to be considered just empty words. According to this approach, which is held by, among others, the Baal HaMaor, the Raav'ad and others, only if the confession was said before witnesses should it be taken seriously, because only in front of witnesses is a person careful and meticulous in his words and does not speak loosely.
As a third argument, the tribunal cited a ruling by Rabbi Avraham Dov Levin, who ruled that a claim that one's confession of guilt was uttered in a time of stress and under emotional influence is an acceptable excuse, which allows a confession to be revoked.
In view of all this, the court ruled that the driver's confession does not nullify her right to assert her legal rights and does not prevent her from claiming what she deserves. The tribunal therefore ruled that the offending driver must pay full damage, whether his insurance company will bear it or whether he will have to pay it out of his own pocket.
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Bill Gates thinks we should start eating ‘100% synthetic beef’
Bill Gates believes the wealthiest countries should switch to eating “100% synthetic beef” in order to help combat climate change.
The second-richest man in the world floated his ideas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a new interview with MIT’s Technology Review.
“I do think all rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef,” Gates said when asked how to cut back on methane emissions. “You can get used to the taste difference, and the claim is they’re going to make it taste even better over time. Eventually, that green premium is modest enough that you can sort of change the [behavior of] people or use regulation to totally shift the demand.”
Gates, whose book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster” is out Tuesday, also spoke of the difficulties in tackling emissions when it comes to livestock — and that faux meat may be the way to go, noting the popularity of Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat.
“There are all the things where they feed them different food, like there’s this one compound that gives you a 20% reduction [in methane emissions],” the Microsoft co-founder said.
“But sadly, those bacteria [in their digestive system that produce methane] are a necessary part of breaking down the grass. And so I don’t know if there’ll be some natural approach there. I’m afraid the synthetic [protein alternatives like plant-based burgers] will be required for at least the beef thing.”
Gates said a faux meat plan for “the poorest 80 countries” wouldn’t be viable, noting that “we’ll have to use animal genetics to dramatically raise the amount of beef per emissions for them.”
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Biden is still pushing blatant lies about the Trump vaccine plan
Why is Team Biden sticking to its ridiculous “Trump had no vax-distribution plan” claim?
Vice President Kamala Harris trotted it out in a weekend interview, yet again insisting that the new administration is effectively “starting from scratch” because of its predecessor’s failures.
Ha! After President Biden made a similar statement weeks ago, Dr. Tony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical adviser as he was Trump’s, set the record straight: “We are certainly not starting from scratch because there is activity going on in the distribution.”
In other words, the jabs administered before the end of Trump’s term didn’t just magically find their own way into the arms of more than 16.5 million Americans.
Sure, Fauci notes that Biden is greatly increasing federal involvement, but his plan is based on “amplifying” what Trump had already established.
Trump’s plan left control to the states, but that’s a reasonable choice, not a lack of a strategy. The feds partnered with and delivered doses to chain pharmacies, set aside billions for vaccine distribution, set up programs for nursing-home residents and hospital workers and provided a playbook from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to guide state plans.
Under Trump, the US gave shots to millions, enrolled tens of thousands of private providers in the vax program and organized a data-collection system that includes all 50 states.
To reduce all these efforts to a “dismal failure,” as Biden did, or absolutely “no national strategy or plan,” as Harris just put it, did, is flat-out wrong.
Nor is it remotely clear that the Bidenites’ approach is better: Their obsession with racial “equity” in vaccinations, for example, is all too likely to add paperwork and other complications, slowing everything down.
The “no strategy” line seems designed to give the new administration a ready scapegoat if anything does go wrong, which is both cheap and shameful.
Worse, it seems like Biden & Co. are looking to outdo Trump in insisting on blatantly fake “facts.”
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Sephardic Chief Rabbi: Women Are Exempt From Zachor...also the New Purim regulations
Sephardi Chief Rabbi Rav Yitzchak Yosef just issued a significant psak (ruling) regarding the coming Purim celebrations in the wake of COVID-19, according to BeChazit. Rav Yosef met with Coronavirus manager Nachman Ash to work out protocols and issues for the upcoming Parshas Zachor and to ensure some consideration would be taken for the religious when setting the regulations for the holiday.
The agreement they arrived at led Rav Yosef to issue the following halachic guidelines in relation to Parshat Zachor.
1. The first reading of Zachor in shul should be done with a bracha, before and after, as normal. The Torahs should be taken out after davening for additional readings, but brachas should not be said. They can also do readings later in the afternoon. Multiple readings should be arranged to avoid large gatherings of people.
2. Children under the age of 16, who are not vaccinated or recovering from Corona, should have a minyan arranged just for them for reading Zachor, so they will not put adults in a situation of risk or danger.
3. For Parshat Para – the minyan should be divided into multiple minyanim to avoid congregation of large crowds.
4. Women should not be machmir this year to hear Zachor, so as to avoid congregating. This year they can rely on the opinions in halacha that exempt women from hearing Zachor. Women who normally go to hear Zachor do not need hataras nedarim this year.
5. Children below the age of 13 are exempt this year from hearing Zachor. They should read the portion of Zachor at home from a chumash, for chinuch purposes.
6. Megilla on Purim must be heard from a proper scroll, and not via radio, zoom, or other similar methods. Additional minyanim should be arranged to accommodate everyone without congregation of crowds. People arranging readings for women should do so according to the guidelines.
7. The Purim seuda, on Friday in most places and on Sunday in Jerusalem, should only be held with the nuclear family and as small as possible. Extended family should be informed that because of the situation around the world the halacha is to avoid groups of people.
8. For mishloach manos, people should make do with the minimum of halachic requirements of two portions to two people, and should not send out a lot to a lot of people as might be done in normal years.
9. Matanos La’evyonim – two gifts to two poor people, and this year people should try to give more and should try to transfer via bank transfers rather than giving directly.
10. Yeshiva bochurim who normally go fundraising for the yeshiva “tatim” should not go this year but should make do with sending out requests by mail and telephone and request bank transfers.
11. All Purim parties should be cancelled in all yeshivas and all institutions. Purim celebrations should be held only with immediate family at home.
12. People should get vaccinated as soon as possible and not listen to those who confuse the public taking responsibility for issues of pikuach nefesh against daas torah and against halacha.
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