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There is a Chinese MMA fighter named Xu Xiaodong. Xu is not a professional fighter. He is more in the top-tier amateur. He lost his most famous bout against Andrew Pi even after he broke his opponent’s arm with a kick! So, he is never going to appear on TV in a million-dollar MMA fight.

In our continuing effort to “collapse now and avoid the rush” here at Brunette Gardens, for our recent road trip, I decided to shift to paper maps.

But first, I needed to obtain one.

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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.brunettegardens.com/subscribe

It had been about a billion years since Anthony and I took a road trip. Sure, back in our footloose-and-fancy free youth, we frequently engaged in this great American pastime. I’ve made more than one trip from the Midwest to Key West and back, and once a bunch of girlfriends and I piled into a van and trekked to the Grand Canyon via Route 66, our Thelma-and-Louise gal-pal sojourn, minus the tragic ending. Anthony’s longest round trip was between his mom’s house in Oregon and college stomping grounds in Minnesota. As American Gen Xers, we saw road trips as a right of passage; like Jack Kerouac, we were supposed to heed the call of the open road before settling into stationary lives.

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I always like to credit where I can, and this particular truism came from a former boss of mine named Mary Kirchoff. Mary was a VP at Wizards of the Coast, in charge of the “publishing line.” This meant that novels, roleplaying games, and magazines were under her. This was a sweet little business that was worth somewhere in the region of $20 million per year. But she was part of a company that had an ongoing game, Magic: the Gathering, that regularly made $150 million and was about to launch a game that would bring in nearly $1 billion (Pokemon trading cards).

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I suppose I’ve just cemented my status as a true nature nerd with this act: As promised when I invited all paid subscribers to witness this in person, I volunteered to speak at the Shutterbee Symposium on the topic of sheet mulching.

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Kitchen Gadget Links

Metal sieve press with a wooden pestle.

A potato ricer.

Foley food mill.

Spiced Persimmon Cookies

Ingredients

* 1 cup persimmon pulp

* 1 tsp. baking soda

* 1 tsp. allspice or ground spicebush berries

* 1 tsp. ground fresh or powdered ginger

* 1 stick butter, softened

* 1/2 cup raw turbinado sugar

* 1/2 cup dark brown sugar

* 1 tsp. vanilla extract

* 1 egg

* 1 cup whole wheat flour

* 3/4 cup all-purpose white flour

* 1/2 cup walnuts or pecans, roasted and chopped

* 1/2 cup raisins, chopped

* Preheat your oven to 350°F and line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.

* Combine the pulp, spices, and baking soda. Stir and set aside. Here’s the cool science element to baking: The pulp-and-baking soda mixture will turn into a gel!

* Using a hand or stand mixer, cream the butter with both sugars. Mix in the vanilla and egg. Then add the pulp mixture.

* Mix in the flour, forming a stiff cookie batter. Stir in the nuts and raisins.

* Using an ice-cream scoop, drop batter onto the parchment, leaving 2” between them. Bake 12-18 minutes until golden brown. Let them cool on parchment before moving, as they need time to solidify.

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My grandfather was a dairy farmer. When my family went to visit him, we would inevitably end up helping him with the farm. Sometimes we would mend fences, or herd cattle, or feed cattle, or milk. It depended on what needed to be done, and (it being a farm) something always needed to be done. Very often, as we were coming close to finishing a job, my grandfather would intone, “gednuff fer oo es fur.” My grandfather had an Oklahoma accent that was further conflated with a Midwestern accent and then rolled into a Western accent. He then used this mélange to regularly sauté all kinds of bon mots.

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As a followup to two previous pieces, first a review of the landmark environmental warning Limits to Growth and second, my take on it called “Welcome to the slowpocalypse,” I want to wrestle with green energy as a solution.

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