From a certain angle, the war you are so anxious to avoid has already been raging forever.

It’s just a polite and ice cold conflict, often covered in Sprinkles, whatever they are, like Cuba was once covered in missiles.

The battlefield is inside you (inside us) and it can get pretty bloody.

When you pull off a tactical maneuver and win a fight, I cheer. I think We all do.

From another angle there is no war, perhaps because there is none worth fighting. It’s all tats, and tits, and not the fun kind.

Here on the Pokrovsk front, I got down and dirty with it yesterday. I cooked for real.

Shine up the battle apple anti-recipe book and I’ll show you how.

First you Sprinkle spices on your hunk of meat. I used salt and pepper and Arbol. Some people say you have to work them into the flesh, but I didn’t want to get my hands dirty, and it all worked out.

Then you grab the Le Creuset dutch oven you bought when the money was flowing like rainwater in the parched gutters, and you sear the hunk on medium-high on every side.

Cut two or three onions in half and put them face down in the pot. Use them as a trivet to keep the meat up off the surface. Add a box of broth.

You can of course add carrots and potatoes (root vegetables!) and all that at the same time, but I can’t, for keto reasons. So instead I poured the second half of the bottle of enchilada sauce on top, and then a whole stick of butter, and I put it in the oven on 300.

It was supposed to take about four hours, but I checked it after two and a half and it was way up above anybody’s idea of a food safety temperature. I let it keep going anyway, because I wasn’t done editing that beast of a video, and secretly I was hoping it would all fall apart to a gentle forking.

Complete success. But … I’ll say this, too. There is no point in going to all that effort for a two-pound roast. Next time I’ll do four at least.

As you savor the taste of victory, call your opponent out for peace negotiations.

Be generous.

The Golden Rule and all that.

Tonight there will be real tacos, not that shit in a plastic box from the Safeway deli.

Finally do not mistake this for Progress. That’s a whole different Episode.