hold up: Is Charles Pierce of Esquire the same "Charlie" Pierce on WWDTM?

Yes, he's so awesome. I love me some Charlie Pierce.

See if you can find the long piece he did for Esquire on the impact of Romneycare in Massachusetts: it's really excellent.

OMG y'all. I love Pierce like more so now!

Isn't there a point at which I'm the expert?

You changed your name from ita to ita ! How can we ever trust you now?

OMG, my trip to Target was a clusterfuck. I missed my stop on the way there, and the bus never runs so I waited forever on my way home. I went to go to BK on the way in, and some system was down, so there were a shitload of irate people waiting, so I left and went into Target only to find no cafe! Only a Starbucks! So no popcorn for me. So I bought some $2 almonds at Starbucks. The layout of the place was bizarre, but I did get my return done.

So then by the time I got home, I was starving so I went to Chipotle because it was closest, even though it's not my favorite, and got a baby-sized burrito, because fuck you calories, and now I feel disgusting.

Argh. I think an apple-pear crisp later will help.

I got home from a redeye at 8:30AM, and laid down to sleep, and turned over at noon and thought "oh, I should get up" and then turned over again and suddenly it was 1pm, and then it was suddenly 1:30, and then my roommate texted me and was like 'you should get up so you can sleep tonight and so we can go shopping" and now I"m up. Sorta.

HI. I am very familiar with the gas arrow, because I'm always in rental cars. It's on most all of them now--there's a little arrow next to the picture of a gas pump, on the gauge usually. But my own car doesn't have one. But I know which side it's on.

Sorry to Scrappy. I hope it's slow growing and not awful. Ick.

My sister mentioned the principle of verified heterosexuality (ie marriage or fathering kids) being some "protection" to athletes who speak out on LGBT issues without running a high risk of damaging their rep or marketability, and that made me look up Kluwe and Ayanbadejo in wikipedia. Kluwe''s second child is a hermaphrodite. That's interesting.

I do not believe this recipe is going to work. If I turn off the oven when the breast is 120 degrees, it's really going to get to 160? Hmmph.

Okay, notoriously CI recipes seem to assume a Platonic kitchen that is not mine. This magical solution to all the problems of roasting a chicken places the cold chicken into a hot pan, and the searing is supposed to mean that the breasts and thighs come to temperature at the same time. Also, you turn off the oven halfway through, and it continues to cook in a cooling oven.

So...no and no. None of the chicken reached the safe temperatures with their method, and when I turned the oven back on, the breast did, as expected, reach 160 before the thighs reached 175. Does that sound like a fixable recipe, or one you toss?

I'd toss, but I've never had an issue with regular ole' roasting of chicken. (I also don't mind breat meat that's a little drier than might be ideal.)

I'm watching Death and the Civil War from American Experience, and man, this shit is sad. They kept saying it was inspirational or something, and maybe that's coming (Clara Barton!), but dag.

Aw, I just used that recipe (and have many times) and love it for being fast and yummy. I'm sorry it didn't work in your kitchen. All I can think is maybe start with a hotter oven and/or a smaller chicken? I don't check for doneness when I turn the oven off, I just go by time, so I maybe overlook a little but it seems to stay moist. Fwtw.

You don't go by temperature? I don't turn the oven off at a certain time--I have the thermometer in the breast, and when that pinged 120 (120? I think that was it) I checked if the thigh was the right temp, and it was, so I turned it off. Which is why I wondered if a hotter oven would make a difference. And it was the smallest one they had at the market. Not that I remember the weight. But I do have the pleasant memory of sorting through the carcasses for the runt of the litter.