I Know a Place

I made a spicy baked meatball similar to the Greek Keftedes, but instead of lamb, I used beans and ground beef, red onion, herbs (mint, dill and cilantro), Panko, egg and garlic.  Baking them quickly gives a crispy crust and leaves them nice and tender inside.   Okay, you're thinking where's the luxurious sauce lady!?  Not to worry, the garlicky yogurt sauce with cucumber was safely tucked away in my fridge cooling awaiting the moment when my dumb ass would remember I'd made it.  You know, well after we ate the meal.  Lots of lemon and olive oil made up for it though.  Still delicious.

The football shape lets you believe you did something special, distinct from the thousands of meatballs or patties you've make before.  Oblong versus round seems like a small distinction but your mind can easily be tricked into believing silly notions.  Or, alternatively, maybe these slight variations really do make a significant difference. 

Similarly, P brought up how we no longer use, colored people to describe race but yet it is ironically still correct to say people of color.  Normally, I want to smack him for always playing the devil's advocate but that one struck me.  The same words, just reversed and an of added makes it right. 

I grew up in the 60's when it was proper to describe blacks as colored people.  It was a term of respect.  In my town, the N word was most definitely used by too many folks, so I made it clear I was not one of those eedjiots by using the decent term that now would be considered highly inappropriate.  And people of color is not it's replacement, but instead has become a term for all races.  But it does make you pause and realize how senseless our logic can be sometimes.  The term African-American is on it's way out and the kids at work only describe others as dark-skinned but I've never loved that verbiage. It doesn't feel natural for me to use.  It's also confusing because when they say light-skinned, I'm always unsure if they mean white or just a fair skinned black or possibly a Latino.  The solo word black often feels weird, just like saying white as a descriptive.  Some people pronounce White, like Trump says CHI-na, with such an emphasis that it just feels derogatory. Some WHite guy, gives me images of some  big, dumb, asshole, which is completely unfair.  Not to mention how brown sounds highly strange and then what do you do with the Asians?  I've never liked Latina to describe myself, but accept it in absence of a better word.  To me, it felt like you were void of a true Ethnic background, like you had no homeland, forced to be stirred into some giant pot of brown soup.  Mexican-American is long but correct.