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• 3 tablespoons Olive Oil
• 1 pound Lamb Stew-Meat
• 2 small or one large White Onion, sliced
• 1 tablespoon Caraway
• 5 Garlic Cloves, smashed
• 2 long sprigs Rosemary
• Rind of half a Lemon
• 1 15-oz can Whole Tomatoes
• 1 cup Water (if needed)
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Get Busy

1. Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium heat. When it is rippling and wicked hot, toss in the lamb chunks to brown. Give them a turn once the first side is sufficiently toasted.
2. Add the onions and caraway, stir, give it a little salt, and let them cook for 5-10 minutes, or until the onions are translucent.
3. Stir in the garlic cloves, rosemary, and lemon and cook for five minutes.
4. Pour the tomatoes into the saucepan and stir everything to combine. If the meat isn’t covered by the liquid, add a bit of water. Taste the ragout, add salt and pepper, then put a lid on it, drop the heat down to simmer and let it cook for at least 1 ½ hours (you can let it go for 3 if you’ve got the time).
5. Remove the lid and simmer on medium heat for 15 minutes to reduce and thicken the sauce.
6. Put on your pajamas, dress a big bowl of pasta and revive yourself.

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• 110 grams Brown Rice Flour (~3/4 cup)
• 60 grams Millet Flour (~1/3 cup)
• 60 grams White Rice Flour (~1/3 cup)
• 25 grams Tapioca Starch (~1/4 cup)
• 2 teaspoons Baking Powder
• 2 teaspoons Cinnamon
• 1 ½ teaspoons Freshly Ground Black Pepper
• 1 teaspoon Salt
• ⅔ cup Sugar
• ⅓ cup Oil (Rice Bran, Coconut, Safflower, Sunflower…)
• 4 Ugly Brown Bananas
• 2 Eggs
• 1 tablespoon Balsamic Vinegar
• ½ teaspoon Vanilla Extract
• ⅓ cup Chopped Walnuts or Pecans
• 1 tablespoon Sugar mixed with 1 teaspoon Pepper (for topping)

Get Busy

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and line a 9×5 loaf pan with parchment paper.
2. In a small bowl, measure and mix the dry ingredients (everything through the salt).
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the sugar and oil until well blended.
4. Add the bananas and mash/whisk/puree the mess with a wooden spoon/whisk/electric hand mixer. It doesn’t have to be completely smooth, but you don’t want chunky banana pieces floating around.
5. Add the eggs one at a time and stir to combine.
6. Add the vinegar, vanilla, and nuts and mix well.
7. Pour the batter into your prepared loaf pan and sprinkle the top the the additional sugar/pepper mixture (this makes a lovely crust).
8. Bake the cake for one hour, or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.
9. Let the cake cool in the pan for 5 minutes before removing it to a wire rack to cool completely.
10. Kick ass.

Solitude taught Billy to see his words as art. In silence he saw sentences graduate into paragraphs, all of them masterpieces and simply unutterable. But as he found himself with more and more time on his hands Billy began experimenting with his work fresh out of the fire. Not even allowing them time to cool, he rolled the words around in his mouth, trying desperately not to burn his tongue.  Some were small and went down without any fight, but every once in a while Billy came across some ungainly word, something that caught in his throat, stuck on its way through his system.  He never supposed that some of his creations would set forth such a reaction; this gag reflex that must have immediately sidelined said words to the realm of esoterica and academia. And yet, there they were, thorns and all, floating around in his head.

Slowly, Billy started to partake in a few more of his creations every day.  Today it was spineless, flutter and sponge. Perhaps tomorrow some words would jump into his mouth unbidden. You see, Billy found his creations waiting for him in an endless queue, backed up into each other, some patiently waiting and others forcefully pushing their way to the front of the line. The more he ate, the more he grew, blossoming into a talkative lad.

His friends certainly noticed the change. In fact, they started to invite him to their after-work gatherings, their weekend hangouts and their day-off retreats.  Billy was no longer the sad, sullen, seemingly unemployed, silent sack of a man.  He was quite a well-versed poet.  And who knew Billy could hold his own against and even outwit the snarkiest of the bunch?  He was learning to use his words.  Billy found he could bruise and batter his opponents into submission with the club-like words he so crudely swung in their direction.  Clubs that in time would be sharpened into pikes and daggers as Billy discovered the ability to draw blood with a perfectly placed attack.  These slashes demanded a precision unnecessary with the aforementioned clubs, forcing Billy to take up verbal fencing, pricking here and there, stabbing altogether too often.  He had, unknowingly, forged the most splendid array of weaponry and took great pleasure in cutting great swaths of rivals down with every word.

As the body count grew, so too did Billy’s shame. He was still, at heart, a quiet boy, fearful of where this new hobby might lead. So he sheathed the swords, scimitars and spears, cast them into a river, and wandered the streets in search of a new cohort, one that would not lead him to a life of slaughter.

Unfortunately, Billy ran across a gang of disaffected youth. You know the type, all bluster and denim; greasy fashion and unkempt hair. Their speech was utterly unintelligible, mumbling to each other in a stream of verbal refuse. Surely not blade amongst the bunch, their meaningless words forming a moat to separate them from society. The shame Billy felt at having cut down so many of his previous peers slumped his spine and cast down his eyes. Which, serendipitously, were the only two requirements for joining this new club of outsiders.

To these disillusioned young men and women language was not a gift, it was a burden under which they felt great pressure to escape. And so, with as little passion as possible they threw words away. Billy was shocked (and knew better than to express himself). This clan took his works of art, the sculptures he spent hours perfecting, and melted them into a muddy river of speech. His words were unimportant to these people. They had figured out how to speak entirely in mumbles. Billy watched them make a great pile of sibilant trash and was heartpressed.

This was not a step in the right direction.

Fortunately for Billy, his reputation as a fencer had already spread to a higher class. A certain echelon was looking for the swordsman and when they found him mired in the clogged drain of distopia, they plucked him out of the muck and buffed the boy back to his former glory. A sharpened wit, ready to strike for heart once again.

But wait! These friends wanted nothing of his old inky stabs. This society developed breadth, not just depth in Billy’s work. They wanted to teach him to paint.

Read Chapter 1…