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The Queen's Tea at The Cottage Cafe and Tea Room

What better way for those of us in the states to celebrate Queen Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee than with a tea party? The opening of The Cottage Cafe and Tea Room in Central run by Loretta Foreman, who owned Country Emporium until 2012 is a welcome addition for tea lovers in the Baton Rouge area.

The Cottage Cafe and Tea Room served four types of sandwiches with "The Queen's Tea," along with a few mini quiches.

Our Queen's Tea included two scones, a cup of gumbo (we're still in Louisiana and not the U.K. after all), four tea sandwiches, two mini quiches and two mini desserts. The Earl Grey cream tea was delicious, and the staff kindly refilled pot after pot for us. Foreman and her granddaughter run the shop together, and Foreman told us they wanted it to feel like you're at somebody's house, enjoying an afternoon together. We hope they don't mind frequent house guests.

The Cottage Cafe and Tea Room, 10443 Joor Road, Baton Rouge, 70818. (225) 478-2766.

The Cottage Cafe and Tea Room is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. Reservations are required for lunch, and high tea is served on weekends only and requires reservations one day in advance. Afternoon tea is available without reservations from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. (Andrea Gallo, staff writer)

If you've never had pho, a Vietnamese soup with meat, herbs and rice noodles, this is a great place to try it. And if you're a pho-lover like me, it's a a prime candidate to become your go-to.

A bowl of steak pho from Bao Vietnamese Kitchen in Baton Rouge.

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The bone broth is some of the most intensely flavorful liquid you're likely to find anywhere. It's a top-notch meal anytime, but it's a particularly sublime meal if you're ever feeling under the weather. A lage bowl is exactly the right amount of food to leave you stuffed but satisfied.

Try it with a salted lemonade for a "fire and ice" contrast.

Bao Vietnamese Kitchen, 8342 Perkins Road, Baton Rouge, 70810. (225) 960-1293. Bao is open Monday-Thursday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., and is closed on Sunday. (Matthew Albright, assistant metro editor)

Pork schnitzel at City Pork

Confession: I was not the one who ordered the pork schnitzel. That wise human would be my husband, who 28-years-into-marriage understands what will happen when he makes the better menu choice than I do. Fortunately, he is a generous soul -- as that panko breaded pork cutlet, brown bacon gravy, creamy orzo and pickled redcabbagewere delicious.

City Pork's pork schnitzel is served with creamy orzo and pickled red cabbage.

The schnitzel itself was thin and crispy. The gravy was good, and I loved the pickled red cabbage (a throwback to the amazing sauerkraut I developed a taste for during the time I lived in Slovakia). In fact, the red cabbage dish was more similar to Eastern European sauerkraut than any I've had outside of...Eastern Europe. All that said, the creamy orzo (which I would describe as an orzo risotto) was the star of the show.

The contrast between the crisp schnitzel, the tangy cabbage and the creamy orzo created high perfect-bite potential. Most of my favorite meals are centered around getting the right ratio of different flavors and textures in a single bite. City Pork's schnitzel is an excellent opportunity to do just that. The only problem was I didn't get many chances -- since it was my husband's plate. If you're curious, I ordered the BLT, a personal favorite. It was good, but I like mine with a significant slathering of Duke's mayo and just the right dash of oil and vinegar, salt and pepper. Fortunately for me, my husband knows just how I my BLTs -- and makes them for me to welcome summer. Sufficeth to say, next time we go to City Pork, we'll both be ordering the schnitzel.

City Pork has two locations. 7327 Jefferson Highway (225) 615-8880 and 18143 Perkins Road E (225) 998-0744. Check individual locations for hours. (Jan Risher, features editor)

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The Queen's Tea, steak pho and pork schnitzel: Best things we ate this week - The Advocate

The trash situation will get a revamp ahead of next years Oak Bay Tea Party, says lead sorter Noreen Taylor.

Every year during the largest public event in the community, a small team of volunteers sorts each piece of trash into four categories compost, soft plastic, hard plastic and garbage headed for the landfill. This year there were roughly equal amounts, seven bags of each.

They were almost equal, but I believe three-quarters of it is garbage, Taylor said, fearing many plastics they sorted into recycling may have been too dirty. For example, a coffee cup, lid and sleeve each go in a different bag and all three can be ruined by an ice cream cone or half-full mustard container dumped on top.

RELATED: Heading to Oak Bay Tea Party? Dont be a litter bug

Rainy weather didnt help this year, Taylor said, noting their piles included bags of soggy, dirty clothing. As always, dirty diapers topped the list of trash.

With no way to close the venue to outside trash, Taylor believes the event may never achieve zero waste. She approves all vendors on-site to have compostable containers and cutlery, but all outside food appeared to have some form of non-compostable element.

Taylor plans to work with municipal staff to review the methodology ahead of the 2023 party.

Were going to look at how we can upgrade or adapt our recycling efforts, Taylor said, noting things have evolved even since the last Tea Party in 2019. Theres more products out there that are more complicated to recycle, more involved to recycle.

c.vanreeuwyk@blackpress.ca

oak bayRecycling

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Wet weather fouls up Oak Bay Tea Party trash sorters - Oak Bay News

Some of Colorados most prominent Republicans started tearing their hair out last week.

Just as theyd warned, Democrats had stepped into the void left by the GOPs relatively quiet and low-spending candidates for governor and U.S. senator.

On June 8, the day voters began receiving primary ballots in the mail and just under three weeks before deadline to return them on June 28, voters woke up to a pair of TV ads that seemed to be in heavy rotation on nearly every channel.

At first glance, they appeared to be attack ads, sternly advising voters that gubernatorial candidate Greg Lopez and U.S. Senate candidate Ron Hanks were too conservative for Colorado after listing some of their hardline positions, including opposition to abortion and gun control and support for former President Donald Trumps border wall.

The tell came in the disclaimer at the end of the ads, most obviously in the ad targeting Hanks: Paid for by Democratic Colorado, the narrator said.

Lopez, who came in third in the 2018 primary for governor, is running against Heidi Ganahl, a University of Colorado regent, with the winner facing Gov. Jared Polis in the general election. Hanks and construction company CEO Joe ODea, a first-time candidate, are vying for the chance to challenge Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet.

As details about the massive TV and digital ad buys emerged in the neighborhood of $1 million a week for each ad campaign it became clear that Democrats were attempting the political move pioneered by Missouri former U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, the Democrat who spent heavily in the 2012 Republican primary for her seat and succeeded in pushing the furthest-right candidate across the finish line.

Amid what could be an ideal environment for the states GOP to stage a comeback after nearly two decades on the ropes, GOP strategists are concerned the partys most reliable primary voters could sink the partys hopes of retaking some of the offices lost in the last several cycles, when Democrats won every statewide race and took firm control of both chambers of the General Assembly.

Some Colorado Republicans with long memories fear a replay of the 2010 general election, when the states electorate bucked the Republican tsunami that washed over most of the rest of the country in the last Democratic presidents first midterm election.

That year, Democrats spent around $500,000 to hammer the Republican frontrunner for the open governors seat, Scott McInnis, a former congressman from the Western Slope, for a burgeoning plagiarism scandal. McInnis barely lost the nomination to political newcomer Dan Maes, a tea party candidate, whose own scandals soon engulfed his campaign, nearly costing Colorado Republicans major-party status in the state when Maes received just 11% of the vote after former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo ran on a third-party ticket. Then-Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper won the first of two terms as governor against the divided field.

By most measures fundraising, endorsements, national support Ganahl and ODea have been the leading candidates in their respective primaries this year, though Lopez and Hanks made the ballot by winning the approval of delegates to the Republican state assembly and have pitched their bids as the partys grassroots taking on the the more moderate, establishment candidates.

Its an ideal environment for interlopers to push the under-resourced underdogs to the partys base, who might not otherwise grasp the sharp distinctions between the primary candidates without the help of more advertising than their rivals can afford.

Both parties have attempted the maneuver over the last dozen years in Colorado, though the scale and scope of the Democrats intervention in this years Republican primaries are unprecedented.

In part, thats because Ganahl and ODea have only been on their air with modest ad buys, if at all, leaving an opening for the Democrats ads to dominate.

Also last week, a series of anonymous mailers began landing in mailboxes belonging to likely Republican primary voters purporting to contrast Hanks and ODea, highlighting Hanks rock-ribbed conservative positions with ODeas less doctrinaire record, including making campaign donations to Democrats including Bennet and voicing support for the infrastructure package signed last year by President Joe Biden.

A few days later, ads paid for by the Democrats House Majority PAC, a committee aligned with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, began running similar TV ads tagging Lori Saine, one of four GOP candidates running in the states new, 8th Congressional District, as way too conservative for Colorado. The ad even touched on the same issues as the ads aimed at Lopez and Hanks: her support for Trumps border wall and opposition to abortion and gun control.

Like Ganahl and Hanks, Saines Republican rivals roundly condemned Democrats attempts to push primary voters her way, while the ads sponsors counter they are instead taking to the airwaves and cable channels to educate voters on just how conservative the Republicans are.

ODea swung back quickly with a 60-second radio ad blasting Democrats for trying to hijack the Republican nomination for Ron Hanks because they know they can beat him in the general election. To bolster its message, the ad included clips from pundits describing Hanks as absolutely unelectable in a statewide race in Colorado.

A week after the ads started, ODea filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission over the mailers that compared his record and Hanks on hot-button issues. He also sought an injunction in federal court to prohibit further distribution of the fliers and asked prosecutors to consider filing criminal charges over what he maintains are factual errors in the brochures.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee hit the caps-lock key and scolded Democrats for revealing their historic weakness by spending big in Colorados REPUBLICAN Senate primary to try and stir up drama.

Two years earlier, the NRSC did the same thing in Colorados Democratic Senate primary, though without causing as much of a stir or successfully advancing their preferred candidates to the general election.

First, early in the race to pick a Democrat to run against Republican Cory Gardner, the Republicans publicized a billboard it designed that called one of the Democratic Senate candidates, former congressional nominee Stephany Rose Spaulding, too liberal for Colorado. The outdoor ad pictured Spaulding alongside progressive hero U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New Yorker known as AOC, and her fellow Squad member U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

After Hickenlooper ended a brief presidential run and jumped into the crowded Senate race a few months later, the NRSC hired a high-tech mobile billboard to circle the venue where AOC was scheduled to headline the Boulder Democrats annual dinner. The Republicans illuminated, three-sided sign and coordinated, geographically targeted Facebook ads drew attention to similarities between AOC and Andrew Romanoff, one of the more outspoken liberals in the Senate field, declaring Romanoff & AOC One and the Same! and AOC & Andrews Agenda Medicare for all, Green New Deal, stricter gun control.

As the 2018 Senate primary neared, the NRSC took the unusual step of airing negative ads attacking Hickenlooper, who was facing Romanoff in the primary. Simply educating the voters about one of Gardners potential opponents, the Republicans said.

One ad featured Gardner who shared the cost of the ad hammering Hickenlooper over remarks hed made while still a presidential candidate, expressing his reluctance to run for the Senate. I dont think Im cut out for that, Hickenlooper said as Gardner frowned.

The other NRSC ad focused on recent findings by Colorados Independent Ethics Commission that Hickenlooper had violated a state gift ban by accepting two private plane rides when he was governor. The commission also found him in contempt after he defied a subpoena to testify at a hearing in the matter and fined him $2,750 the largest fine the commission had issued at that point.

Hickenlooper won the primary weeks later and went on to defeat Gardner in the November election.

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Parties have a history of playing in each other's primaries in Colorado - Colorado Springs Gazette

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Dear Diary: What a long week! Really looking forward to the saffron festival tonight at the Iranian embassy

Publishing date:

As Russias brutal war on Ukraine continued last Friday, Yasemin Heinbecker, deputy chief of protocol at Global Affairs, attended a Russia Day party at the Russian Embassy in Ottawa. The government has since apologized, called this unacceptable, and vowed no Canadian officials will do so again.

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In Dear Diary, the National Post satirically re-imagines a week in the life of a newsmaker. This week, Joseph Brean imagines what Heinbecker might have been thinking.

Monday

Fun weekend! But now I am back to work at protocol headquarters at Global Affairs, where our motto is our mission. Diplomats Do It Properly. Sounds better in Latin. I am here early arranging a tea service, because Mlanie Joly, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, wishes to visit. I wonder why. Ive opened a tin of caviar, as one does on such occasions. Dont ask me how much I paid for it! (Nothing. Shhh.) I have arranged some chopped onion and egg, bit of crme frache, and mother of pearl spoons. You know, properly.

Blini? I say as the minister sits down.

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Mlanie, actually, she says, coldly.

No, I mean would you like one? Theyre little pancakes for the caviar. Speaking of, did you see that New York Times trend piece about caviar bumps? Like dancefloor cocaine, off your own skin? Honestly, some people are so clueless about how little luxuries can be so obviously linked to major societal problems like drug addiction, or cartel wars in South America.

Or Ukraine? she says, nodding accusatorily.

I dont think thats where cocaine comes from, I say. More of a wheat and beet sort of place, I think.

Well, Joly says. Im glad to hear you read the newspaper. Because youre in it. At a tea party. A Russian tea party. For Russia Day. Did you go to a fing tea party for Russia Day at the Russian embassy?

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Da. I mean, yes. I mean oui. Sorry. Is that bad?

Tuesday

Turns out this is a very bad problem indeed. More than one problem, actually. There is the problem for me, for my fellow protocol experts, for the minister, the government, Canada itself. Its as if each time I open up one problem, there is another problem inside. It is like a little problem inside of a bigger problem inside of an even bigger problem, and so on.

Wednesday

This is getting worse. The minister says she did not know, but her office knew. Obviously we told them. Thats protocol. Its our specialty. Its right there on the Global Affairs protocol headquarters fridge calendar: Russia Day Tea Party, Russian Embassy, Dress: festive, but not too festive, obvs. Avoid blue/yellow combo.

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But now the minister is calling the whole thing unacceptable. If theres one thing a career in diplomacy has taught me, its that Donald Rumsfeld knew whats up. There are known knowns. Thats easy. There are known unknowns, which bother us so much. And there are the sneaky unknown unknowns. This one, however, is the rarest of all, the unknown known. Seems to me the minister knew nothing of it, any of it, all of it. All of what? Exactly.

Thursday

Out for lunch with the minister to discuss my future, as she put it, not very diplomatically. Sounds a little threatening to be honest.

What the heck is Chicken Kyiv?, I said, trying to lighten the mood. Actually, how do you feel about poutine? Im a big fan. I may be a senior Government of Canada employee, specializing in diplomatic protocol, but Id sell my soul for poutine. Such a robust connection to history. Mmmm, love that poutine, I said, en franais, as we are in Gatineau, and its proper to speak French. Not sure why everyone is looking at me.

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Friday

What a long week! Really looking forward to the saffron festival tonight at the Iranian embassy. I knocked off work a bit early to see Top Gun Maverick, which is about a pre-emptive fighter jet strike against the nuclear weapons facilities of an enemy state covered in snow and pine forests, with Cold War military equipment just lying around. So, like, China maybe? They never say. Its very intriguing, like a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, which is how Winston Churchill once described some country or other. Germany, probably. Its just like that problem of mine, in a metaphorical way, kind of like those stacking dolls. After the movie, I asked my friend if she knows what I mean.

Matryoshka, my friend said.

Bless you, I said.

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Excerpt from:
'Sorry. Is that bad?' The imagined thoughts of the protocol expert who attended a Russian party - National Post

Over the last two weeks, the U.S. House of Representatives has held public, televised hearings on the events of January 6, sharing the evidence and testimony they have collected to prove that former President Donald Trump deliberately stoked the flames of a violent insurrection.

But who is watching these hearings, and will they even make a difference in the course of American history?Dr. Ravi K. Perry, chair and professor of the department of political science at Howard University.

I dont think anyones watching, said Dr. Ravi K. Perry, chair and professor of the department of political science at Howard University. For most people, the audience really is cable news audience that do not watch Fox [News], and I think thats in general the best you can hope for.

On the first night of broadcast, when the hearings aired during primetime, 20 million people tuned in to watch the proceedings, according to Nielsen ratings. That amount is akin to the viewing audience for the Macys Day Thanksgiving Parade, but less than the numbers for presidential debates or even the State of the Union address. As the hearings moved to the daytime hours on Monday and Thursday of the following week, viewing numbers dropped by half.

Dr. Shaun Harper, a professor at the University of Southern California, said this decline might be because the hearings feel largely performative.

I do not expect anywhere close to the level of accountability that this attack on our democracy deserves. I certainly do not believe there will be any serious consequences for President Trump, said Harper. Because of this, I do not know many friends and colleagues who are wasting their time watching them.

The hearings have, for the most part, confirmed what was already known, said Harper. But scholars agree that these hearings are, in essence, attempting to make it clear that Trump should be ineligible to run for president in 2024, which Trump has hinted he aims to do.

Amos Jones, a civil rights lawyer in D.C., noted that these hearings are not trials with criminal claims, and added that no tangible results will likely come from them.

The purpose of these hearings is clearly to somehow make President Trump a neutralized figure for future office, said Jones, who also teaches media law. But its difficult to see where this could lead to a barring. Just like Margorie Taylor Greene, he has a clear path to the ballot in 2024. He will be challenged, but as the former president, he has a lot of authority still within the Republican party and influence there.

Ultimately, whether Trump ends up on the ballot or not, Jones said his election will come down to the people. These hearings are an attempt, albeit partisan, to inform the voting public, said Jones, but they are given more legitimacy by the fact that many of the witnesses, and the vice chair of the hearings Representative Liz Cheney from Wyoming, are Republican.

Perry said these witnesses are, for the most part, people who Americans would view as reasonable.

So it feels, hopefully to American people and voters, that even most Republicans knew [Trumps Big Lie] was wrong, and Trump and Trumps inner circle refused to follow the law, said Perry. My hope is that people will take this information and understand that to be anti-Trump isnt to be anti-conservative, just anti the antics that Trump attempted to circumvent hundreds of years of American law.

The first big test of the hearings usefulness will come with the midterm elections in November 2022. Jones cautions that, despite the hearings, time is a mitigating factor in voters minds.

Amos Jones, a civil rights lawyer in D.C. and professor of media law.The further in time we get from a crisis, the more the outrage dissipates. A bunch of Americans arent watching anymore, said Jones. Theyve been through two impeachments, were a year and a half away [from Jan. 6]. The American people always look to the future.

There is some hope that the invasion of the U.S. Capitol, what Jones called the temple of democracy, will stick longer in peoples minds. But for Jones, the hyper fragility of the American democracy goes back further than just the months leading up to the November 2020 election and the violent uprising it spawned. He points to the year 2008, when the Republican nominee for president Sen. John McCain picked Gov. Sarah Palin, and the Tea Party, as his running mate.

When I think about a fragile democracy, to me the fragility is not Jan. 6, its that were in full blown oligarchy and autocracy, because the very rich control the two parties that have a total lock on the system, said Jones. This two-party lockdown, with no room for independent voices, affects poor people, Black people, women, everyone. We need to look to whos running our elected officials, because its not us. Its not the people. Until the people have more of a say and influence in the way politics are done, were going to see these malfunctions, or unstable people on the fringe, getting elected and taking control of Congress.

Liann Herder can be reached at lherder@diverseeducation.com.

Originally posted here:
The January 6 Hearings - Performative, or Useful? - Diverse: Issues in Higher Education