Well, why wouldn't you feel safe with these guys in charge?

So, John Kerry, allegedly our top diplomat, says Al Qaeda is "neutralized." How's that working out?\



In keeping with administration policy, Kerry talked about al-Qaeda being "neutralized" within hours of an al-Qaeda attack in Mali. He takes his talking points from Emperor Barry I, who declared ISIS "contained" mere hours before they killed over 120 people in Paris. Let's face it -- with these guys directing U.S. "smart power" in foreign policy, what could go wrong? Somehow, I don't think their "smart power" involves the same kind of "smart" most of us are used to.

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The aftermath

And it isn't pretty. I gave away a ton of food for people to take home, and nonetheless my fridge looked like this on Saturday:

And this is after several meals of leftovers and I consolidated things. God help me if the Health Department comes by.

And at the butt crack of dawn, we cooked

I got up really early Thursday to start the stuffing. The bird was so big, it had to go in by 10:30 am, so the stuffing had to be done by then. Sides could be finished later, since they couldn't go in before the bird was done at 4 pm, but the stuffing had a hard deadline. Of course, the first thing you do is chop the celery (a full head in my case, with such a large bird):

Chop up a few onions, toss them in some butter and sautee:

Toss in the celery:

Tear up a bunch of bread (stale if you got it):

You will mix the sauteed onions and celery, having seasoned it with pepper and sage, with the bread. Throw in some chicken broth (purchased is fine -- I never make my own for this), mix it up and stuff it in the turkey. Extra can be cooked in a casserole dish. I also make some butternut squash soup, which has been documented earlier on this blog. I made it for an appetizer:

People appreciated it. I also made some stuffed potato skins and bacon-wrapped tater tots as game food (both seen on this blog before -- just search those terms for recipes). The disappeared surprisingly quickly.

Finally, the bird came out. It look really good:

It was really good. This year, Mrs. Wolves bought me some chafing dishes to keep food warm. In those dishes is the gravy, stuffing, and mashed potatoes in the three nearest the camera, and corn pudding, green beans and carmelized carrots in the farther three:

Still in the kitchen, with not enough chafing dishes, were the sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, extra stuffing, asparagus casserole and more mashed potatoes:

The food was enthusastically received:

 Married into Wolves brought a chocolate cobbler, which everyone ate as their first dessert (although most people also ate a second dessert):

This required ice cream:

All of this induced food comas:

In fairness, they rallied in time to watch the Packers suck out loud against the Bears. Shameful football performance, but an excellent Thanksgiving spread.

Then came the pies

I made three pies on Wednesday, plus bread. The pumpkin pie has been detailed before. It looked good:

Then I made another pumpkin pie, called a caramel pecan pumpkin pie. It required caramel ice cream topping, a graham cracker crust, about 1/2 cup of chopped pecans, 2  3.4 oz. packages of vanilla instant pudding, 1 cup of cold milk, 1 can of pumpkin, 1 tsp of cinnamon, a 1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg and 1 8 oz tub of Cool Whip:

Smash the pecans:

Pour enough caramel topping into your pie crust to cover the bottom nicely:

Like so:

Layer that with crushed pecans (but not all of them -- you will need more later):

Take the can of pumpkin and whisk in the cinnamon, nutmeg, pudding mix and milk:

Add half the package of Cool Whip:

Mix that in:

You will put that mix in the pie crust and refrigerate for at least one hour (I refrigerated overnight). Before serving, top the pie with the other half of the Cool Whip, sprinkle more crushed pecans over the pie and drizzle some more caramel sauce over it. Gonna be good:

So good, I couldn't get a picture of it without a slice already missing.

Naturally, two pies is not enough, so we also did a pecan pie. Still Wednesday, kids. You will start with one 9-inch pie crust (commercial or you make it, I don't care), 1/3 cup of butter at room temperature, 3/4 cups of brown sugar, 3 eggs, 1 cup light corn syrup, 1 cup chopped pecans, 1/8 tsp salt and 1 tsp vanilla extract:

In a large bowl, whip the shit out of that butter until fluffy:

 Add dat brown sugar and mix it in right:

Add the eggs, one at a time, and make sure you beat them in good, too:

Add the corn syrup, pecans, salt and vanilla extract and then mix it up right:

That looks like you mixed it up right:

So put it in the pie crust, fool:

You will bake that sucker for about 40-50 minutes at 375. If you are wise, you will go in halfway through that time and cover the pie crust edges with foil to avoid over-browning. I didn't, because I don't give a damn about a little over browning. So on Wednesday afternoon, I had three great pies waiting to be eaten:

You know you wish you were here.

It started early

 Yeah, Thanksgiving is past us, but it was such a draining experience I am just getting around to posting the Turkey Day food porn. I was really busy Wednesday and Thursday, and slept most of Friday (no shit, I slept until half past noon, then went to bed at 8 pm. Today, I worked, so here we are.) so I am only now beginning to post. Thanksgiving for me began Tuesday night when I got home from work and had to brine the turkey.

Obviously, the first thing you do is bust out the turkey. Mine was 22 pounds, on account of I had so many people coming:

Then mix up the brine. Water, salt, sage, soy sauce (10 ounces):

Put some ice in a 5-gallon bucket, such as from Home Depot:

Put the damn bird in there:

More ice. Seriously, never hurts:

Pour in your seasoning mix:

Add water and ice to fill the bucket, then seal it up:

Put the sumbitch on the back porch if you live where it is at least cool at night (our nighttime temperatures were 40s and 50s Tuesday and Wednesday night, and I still had ice in the bucket Thursday morning, so I guess that was cool enough). If you live in warmer climes, I guess you better have more ice or a bigger refrigerator. I don't know. So, that's how it started.

The call of the night is strong

I don't know what else could be calling these kitties to the window. Must be the call of the night:

Unless, of course, it isn't. Not sure what call she's hearing. Maybe the call of the night is inside, too:

The fuck do I know.

The cats before the (food) porn

Mayhem does cute stuff, too. She likes high places:

And she likes taking over Mrs. Wolves' chair:

She looks so happy. How could anyone evict her?

Likes plants. Not vegetarian.

Mischief, for reasons known only to Mischief and God, likes to curl up around this plant:

I don't know what kind of plant it is, but it might taste good:

So there you have it. More cat pictures. Mrs. Wolves takes 'em, I post 'em. Happy wife, happy life.

Why does John Kerry still have a job?

John Kerry, who as secretary of state is allegedly our chief diplomat, proves almost daily that he is an idiot. In discussing the terrorist attack in Paris recently, he sure as shit sounded like he was saying the attack in January on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, in which 12 journalists died, was somehow justified:

There’s something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo [and what happened in last week’s Paris attacks], and I think everybody would feel that. [In the Hebdo case] [t]here was a sort of particularized focus and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of – not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, okay, they’re really angry because of this and that.
This Friday was absolutely indiscriminate. It wasn’t to aggrieve one particular sense of wrong. It was to terrorize people. It was to attack everything that we do stand for. That’s not an exaggeration. It was to assault all sense of nationhood and nation-state and rule of law and decency, dignity, and just put fear into the community and say, “Here we are.”
And for what? What’s the platform? What’s the grievance? That we’re not who they are? They kill people because of who they are and they kill people because of what they believe. And it’s indiscriminate.

I bolded the unbelievable part. Sure, he immediately backed off calling the Charlie Hebdo attack "legitimate," but he embraced the concept that there was a rationale that made sense. "After all, they pissed off the Islamist killers, so of course they got killed." What a douche.

I'm not the only guy who thinks Kerry should be unemployed, but really, do you think Emperor Barry I would bring in anybody better? Who? No, we're stuck with this moron until Barry I begins his transition from worst president every to worst ex-president ever. I realize he has a high mountain to climb -- in the form of Jimmy Carter -- to achieve those two goals, but I think Barry has it in him. Kerry has to be a frontrunner for worst secretary of state ever, as well.

Voluntary gun confiscation works about as well as you would expect

The city of Greensboro, N.C., recently held a voluntary gun-confiscation event that went about as well as I think normal people might expect. Of course, the media covered it as if it were a huge "success:"

GREENSBORO -- Almost 1000 people took "A Pledge of Non-Violence" Saturday at Destiny Christian Center in Greensboro.
This was to show their commitment to safety across the Gate City.
Gun owners also turned in unwanted firearms and ammunition at the event.

So, how did that commitment look? What kind of "unwanted" firearms and ammunition got turned in? Not much, apparently:

It was meant to be an event, “in which law enforcement and community members work together to solve problems.” The GPD noted that “there is no limit” to how many firearms would be accepted and that they would “not be returned.” The department also offered to pick up firearms from owners’ homes.
Police-community partnerships are a positive measure to increase public safety, but good intentions aren’t the same thing as a good (or effective) plan. A report by Time-Warner Cable News tried to put a positive spin on things by noting that “almost 1,000 people” responded to take the pledge, leading one to believe that 1,000 firearms had been turned in, but this was hardly the case. As evidenced by the footage accompanying the story, the gun turn-in apparently resulted in a single BB pistol and a single sheathed hunting knife being “taken off the streets."

Hot Air graciously provides photographic evidence of the success of the Greensboro event. Somebody got tired of his knife, apparently:

And another dude apparently decided that having a BB gun pistol was just too much to bear:

Yeah, that's it. Well, the guy who turned in the BB pistol -- that's an air gun, by the way, not an actual firearm -- also turned in some BBs, which I guess qualifies as ammunition. So they've got that going for them.

I guess that you could find at least 1,000 libtards in any decent-sized city who would "pledge" to end gun violence. Nothing wrong with opposing gun violence, of course. Hell, I oppose gun violence -- unless it is necessary. That's why I own guns. Sometimes, gun violence is necessary. It's not the main reason I own guns. Most of my guns are intended to be hunting weapons. But not all of them. Some of them are purely for home defense. And some of them can only be described as the kind of weapons one might want to own if one's government becomes too authoritarian. And,, no shit, I won't be turning those in any time soon.

Tell me again why I should support taking refugees from the Middle East

Sorry, not buying it:

I'm sure everyone who wants to come to this country from that region is totes OK with our values. Or not.

You can't resist the call of the night

Mrs. Wolves captured this image of all three kitties answering the call of the night, which is irresistable, as we all know:

Unless it isn't, of course, as Mischief seems to be hearing a different call altogether:

Reminds me of this. This is the entire movie, alas, which is a scream, but I include it only for the first little bit here:

Couldn't find a clip with just "Children of the night, shut up!" Hey, watch the whole thing. It's a riot.