Mole Man

A couple weeks ago in Elder's Quorum I announced to the group that I would be making a Mole (chocolate) Chile to represent us at the Ward Chili Cook-off. I was met with skepticism and doubt, seasoned with a pinch of mockery. Nevertheless, I persevered and used the following recipe.

http://www.food.com/recipe/eds-chicago-cocoa-chili-chocolate-chili-18414

Almost all of the reviews were positive and I was ready to start my quest to ROCK THE ESTABLISHMENT OF CHILI. My first photo:

THE KILLER COCOA CHILI SPICE MIX

The first step was definitely the most tedious. Many of the spices called for were not in our pantry and thus, I wound up blowing a lot of time and coin at the store to make this dish... would the results justify the costs?

COOKING WITH CHANTICO & INDUCTION

 The above shows all of the wonderful color that goes into this dish before adding the spice mix and chocolate which tends to darken the color (just a little bit :). In case you are wondering, here is some background on Chantico from Azteccalendar.com

"She Who Dwells In The House, the goddess of hearth fires, personal treasures and volcanoes. Chantico broke a fast by eating paprika with roasted fish, and then was turned into a dog by Tonacatecuhtli. Chantico is closely related to Xiuhtecuhtli. In the tonalpohualli, Chantico rules over trecena Ehecatl (wind)."

CHANTICO - MY CHILI GODDESS

 I especially like her mustache.

The final touch - 2oz of 100% Ghirardelli dark chocolate. I watched as they settled on the top of the mix and slowly devoured the stew. After the Boss intervened and doubled the brown sugar, my creation was ready for competition. I was aware that presentation would be considered, so I searched the house for something Mexican that would add a layer of artistic appeal to the dish beyond salivating, sweaty men greedy for a fattening stew.

Over the past year, I've been cleaning out the ol basement and came across a figurine that was prominently displayed in our home for many years. He was gawked at and often dismissed as "lame" or "weird" by my associates. But he hung in there against the establishment. My chili must do the same. And so he became the symbol of my passion.

I took everything to La Iglesia for final judgement and was forced to wait in a sealed chamber while the judges practiced their analytic skill on the 13 entries. I honestly expected nothing as my work was outside the norm for typical Mormondom. As I said, I only hoped to rock people's world view. To my surprise the chili actually won second place in the judges voting. In the popular vote, I got nothing. Many confided to me afterward that they shunned my chili due to the bizarre owl man and the "DARKNESS" of my offering.

So in American political terms, I had a good run in the electoral college but got slaughtered in the popular vote. But it still felt like a strong moral victory for Mole Man and the art my father preserved for years despite its unpopularity.

Hopefully Dad got to take a quick peek at his creation draped with a silver medal and a side of chips.

World War Z

Just caught up with this audio book of the Oral History describing the zombie apocalypse. First off, let me say I'm not a huge zombie fan and was more interested in this book for its allegorical messages than fan-boy fiction. I should also say the pending film appears to be a MASSIVE departure from the book. I knew this going in, which actually made me more interested to hear it as the film will probably be much thinner on substance.

The book is supposed to be oral accounts of survivors across the world compiled by a UN historian years after the war. He makes it clear the point of the book is not to detail numbers, logistics and the science behind the war, but the human spirit involved.

So onto the allegorical applications:

• An actual outbreak of a virus. This has to be taken seriously regardless of whether you favor science fiction or fantasy, God or evolution. Here is some light reading and video on the subject. Of course, Michio Kaku is in the video. (I love that guy!!) 
• http://www.christadelphianbooks.org/agora/art_less/p-q22.html
• Spiritual Plague - How would people have to band together and fight to overcome tremendous evil sweeping the earth and turning all casualties into enemies? To a certain extent some of us probably think this has been going on since the beginning and is essentially how Satan does his missionary work. 
• What if we allow vampire culture to overrun the earth? We will all turn into Zombies. 
• Others might argue this story is an allegory of the kind of disaster it would take to return mankind to sound conservative principles such as public flogging, hard work, courage and a strong military complex. Hollywood would lose all of its value when people are constantly faced with death by un-dead cannibals. That is way more exiting than any 2 or 3D movie. 
• It is interesting to note that no reason is ever given for the outbreak and no cure is ever mentioned. It was simply war for warm blood. This again implies the allegory of the book is get us thinking about pure life and death struggle and what would we sacrifice to win. 

All I have left now is to wait for the movie and hope that Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) gets at least a cameo after his fantastic voice work on the book. 

Docu-MANIA!!!

Two quick reccomendations on stellar documentaries:

1. The Queen of Versailles - Chronicles the fall of a billionaire and his shopaholic wife. It was fascinating to see the cameras continue to roll after the recession and how these people can't quite seem to catch up with reality. Its like rolling in the slop with the greased up pigs of capitalism. Disgusting is the word I keep coming back to... and loving it.

2. Searching for Sugar Man - If you don't know anything about this... keep it that way and watch this flick. Totally awesome to see how things turn out. Needless to say, I love the singer-songwriter genere and bought the soundtrack right after watching the movie. If you watch the film, the music will honestly be about 5x better. Favorite track would probably be "A most disgusting song."

And yes, I did just give two glowing recommendations for documentaries. For some of you, this is a sign not to watch these films.

Getting Real with the Bible

Recently a reality TV producer set his hand to making a high-impact production of the Bible. I tried watching about 20 minutes and couldn't stomach it. It was all about violence and the spiritual message seemed lost. Apparently, they missed the message that the Bible is primarily a spiritual book and not meant to be an action movie.

This is a reason why I really enjoy the Church's Bible videos. I'm assuming they are much more quiet than the real life events. But its intentional, and allows us to feel the spiritual message conveyed by the book. Current film tastes push for that "real/gritty" factor, but I'm not sure it works when telling spiritual messages. They need to drop the grit and just get real to the purpose of the book.

The following video is of Peter and John healing a crippled man outside the temple. But the focus is ultimately not on the healing, but the quiet moments after the healing as the man realizes what his new legs can do.