Late autumn as soup season – The Islamic attacks in France – Evening statistics
Another relatively brief entry today, partly on account of the rain, which prevented me from doing much of anything. Late autumn is a good time to experiment with various soups, however, so I ventured on preparing potage St. Germain, or French pea soup. And it turned out well, but I would not be able to serve it to my vegan friends or even to my vegetarian ones without some modification: it includes butter, cream, and a touch of salt pork. It has a better flavor than the standard split pea soup because it corporates fresh peas and mint leaves in addition to the split peas and the texture is lighter and richer. I’ve seen versions of the recipe that do not use the salt port (the addition it makes to the flavor is not very noticeable), so I probably can omit that ingredient when catering to vegetarians; making it suitable for vegans will require some more innovation. Something would have to take the place of the butter and cream in order to duplicate the texture, but I don’t know what can be used as a substitute. A few of my cousins are vegan, so I will consult them for suggestions.
As far as news is concerned, we are basically in a holding pattern until the election. Most of the headlines are focusing on details of the campaigns from both candidates. The main topic outside of the election is the recent spate of killings in the French city of Nice by Muslim extremists. Except one has to wonder if they should be called extremists. When Christian fundamentalists commit atrocities, church groups in general are swift to condemn them. Representatives of mosques are much more reluctant to follow suit when fundamentalists of their own religion commit murder and rapine. A considerable number of Muslims appear indeed to be supporting them. The government of Turkey has called for a boycott of French goods after Emmanuel Macron, the French President, gave orders to crack down on the persons who aided the perpetrator of an earlier beheading of a school teacher, while Mahathir Mohamad, a former Prime Minister of Malaysia, has said that Muslims have a right “to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past.” The current administration of one Muslim country and a former Prime Minister of another: that seems fairly mainstream to me. I do not see that Muslims in general are rushing to denounce and to disassociate themselves from the more extreme actions of their fundamentalists. Some have issued statements to the effect that such actions are a distortion of Islam; but as Irshad Manji, the most clear-sighted opponent of Islamic fundamentalist violence, has pointed out: “we Muslims will repeat, ‘This is not Islam.’ But in any religion, beliefs are only theory. The behavior of believers is reality. (Qur’an 4:135)”
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide 45,298,412; # of deaths worldwide: 1,185,618 # of cases U.S.: 9,204,472; # of deaths U.S.: 234,100. Today has also seen a record number of new cases (over 80,000), with nearly 1,000 additional deaths. It would seem that we are now, like many European nations, in the so-called “second wave” of the virus, were it not for the fact that we never really came to the end of the first one. What is certain is that the reduction of outdoor activity as a result of colder temperatures will continue to drive the infection rates upwards. Virginia appears to be a relatively good location to be living in at the moment; it is 32nd in the list of states ranked by the virus’s incidence rate and 38th in mortality rate.