The House recently voted to cut Planned Parenthood funding and eliminate Title X funding. Planned Parenthood is consistently referred to as an abortion center by it’s critics. However, minimal searching results in PP’s 07-08 annual report where a pie chart reports that abortions make up 3% of their services. The bulk of services are contraception and STD testing and treatment. Anyone who has actually looked at services offered by Planned Parenthood locations would see that abortions are not even provided at all locations.

So what if we judged everything by what it did 3% of the time?

Hospitals exist to injure you and most of the time it’s due to negligence or as those evil doctors want you to believe, “a mistake”.

Twitter exists just to publish Justin Beiber’s tweets.

Everyone in Washington DC has HIV or AIDS. Hmm, that seems related to PP’s funding…

All of your restaurant food has spit in it. On purpose.

Women don’t deserve to automatically be considered pre-pregnant by doctors, have laws passed that limiting my control and the choices I can make regarding my own body and watch as elected officials make decisions based on their own personal dogma. Planned Parenthood doesn’t deserved to be recognized for only one type of service they provide. And that one controversial service they provide? It’s really important to a lot of men and women and it’s not something that should put a wonderful agency on the chopping block.

Check the Planned Parenthood site for ways to show your support.

(I looked up the 3% facts! They are real according to the Internet!)

In my unending quest to be a lazy Buddha lover, I Googled up some Buddhist holidays and celebrations. In not too much of a surprise, there are no “Buddhist” holiday traditions. There are Thai, Japanese, Tibetan and whatever other Eastern culture that has real Buddhist roots. I was looking for something universal, pliable and somewhat for show, like a Christmas tree. Instead I get traditions that make me feel fake for even trying to celebrate them.

I know I sound very negative about Western Buddhists but I did manage to find a balance once. See post about my wedding ceremony that I have yet to write.

Baking is much less strenuous on my quest. So here is my journey in making Neen Gow/Nian Gao  or Lunar New Year cake.

I hit up two Asian markets, one Korean and one Thai. The Thai market won for ingredient availability but it’s also a bigger store. I used this recipe. The ingredient I was most suspicious of was “brown candy”. The clerk at the Korean market was confused as me. Then at the Thai market:

What a creatively named candy!

Also some Haribo gummies. I don’t have a steamer so I got creative with the dutch oven and a metal bowl on the stove top.

The bubbles were too strong and the bowl kept moving around so I had the genius idea to flip it over and fill it with water. On top of that went a pie tin with the cake and then the lid. Ta-da! Steamer!

When the cake came out, it looked like this:

Which is how it is supposed to look! The last step of the recipe is to fry each slice which is important if you don’t like that fresh baked clay taste in your desserts.

I also made cupcakes inspired by Nian Gao. They are baked but still have the same chewy consistency of the cake. They felt heavier than the cake and were a lot sweeter. The recipe is here. I didn’t take any pictures because my cupcakes looked very similar to the cupcakes on the site.

Happy Lunar New Year!