The criminal case against Jeffrey Epstein has been officially dismissed

Source: CNN

The criminal case against the late Jeffrey Epstein was officially dismissed Thursday, almost three weeks after the accused sex trafficker died in his jail cell.

Judge Richard Berman, who was overseeing the case, signed what's known as a "nolle prosequi," or a notice that the court will no longer pursue the charges, citing Epstein's death. The dismissal was expected, as prosecutors had filed a motion to dismiss the federal sex trafficking charges after the multimillionaire's death on August 10, which the medical examiner deemed a suicide.

Even though the criminal case won't move forward, some of Epstein's accusers were still able to make their voices heard. On Tuesday, even though the accused was not present, Judge Berman allowed them to deliver victim impact statements. Some of them felt they were robbed of justice, not just in the recent case against Epstein, but also years ago, when Florida prosecutors offered Epstein a plea deal without their input.

The case has been dismissed, but prosecutors have indicated that the investigation will continue, thanks to a count of conspiracy that was included in the indictment.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/29/us/jeffrey-epstein-criminal-case-dismissed/index.html

"Better than Trump" is just not good enough.

Hey, everyone! It's primary season! The season when we apparently all tear each other apart. One big defense I see a lot of candidate faithfuls use is "Compared to Trump, s/he's..."

Stop it. We aren't comparing our candidate to Trump. Of course your preferred candidate is better than Trump. Almost anyone would be better than Trump. That is such an absurdly low bar I can't even look at it. Jeb! would be better than Trump right now, that's how low the bar is. GWB would be better than Trump, and I sure as hell don't want that whole mess back.

It's early in the season, there are still a lot (too many) candidates, and it's important that we keep our minds open, and we keep ourselves honest and asking important questions. A lot of us have a favourite candidate, and a lot have still not chosen anyone. It's all valid. But we have to stop with "But compared to Trump..." nonsense. Of course your candidate is better than Trump. The joke is that you'd vote for a ham sandwich over Trump, but keep in mind: Not everyone would. Some people need to be excited to come to the polls. Some people need something strong and tangible to vote FOR, not just to vote against.

Several candidates seem like they'd be very good at righting the ship and getting everything back to how it was before Trump took office. Great! We need that, but remember that there are at-risk communities whose lives still weren't great then, either. Trans people were still dying in the streets. Unarmed POC were being shot by police. The poor were getting poorer and the rich getting richer. Women were losing bodily autonomy. This has been going on under D and R presidents. D and R congress.

Whoever the D candidate is needs to do more than say "I'm going to beat Trump." Of course. Of course we all desire Trump's loss and removal (and hopefully perp walk). But that candidate also has to say "... and we're going to take this country forward. We're going to look after our vulnerable and at-risk communities. We're going to try to address decades (or centuries) of systemic inequality." That is how you get people to vote FOR you, by actually offering something to the people who need it. To the people suffering. Not only that, but you have to do your best to actually deliver.

Sorry for rambling, just some frustration. Whoever the candidate ends up being, they need to be ready to move things forward. We also need to take back the Senate, and GOTV for that race, too.

More mixed fruit jam! This week is Apricot Raspberry:

Sorry if things have been a bit samey this summer in our videos. We've just been absolutely in love with mixing fruit for jams this summer, and trying new things. It's also been nice after our recent move that we don't have any roommates, so we have a bit more space, and we get to experiment a little more. This week we're blending apricot and raspberry for jam. We actually did this a couple of years ago (around the time we made our very successful apricot jam video), but we didn't film it. It is so delicious we wanted to make a video about it, so here you are!

We're getting to the end of fresh fruit season, so we're likely to move on to other things shortly. In the mean time, we've got lots of jars of amazing mixed fruit jams!

Basic Canning Method

So, this week we wanted to do a video on canning, because we've done a few preserves, and we've linked to the USDA guid to home canning, but it's important to know the whole procedure.

Here's a link to the USDA guide: https://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/publications_usda.html

Easy Cucumber Refrigerator Pickle Recipe

We've done a fermented kosher dill pickle before, but this is much simpler! You don't need to manage percentages of salt to control fermentation or anything, you're just mixing the salt and vinegar to cure the cucumbers. Much easier! It's obviously going to be a different taste, but it's a quicker pickle, and still very delicious. We got these gorgeous fresh field cucumbers, and they turned out very well.

Of course you can personalize your flavour profile with the type of spices and such that you add to your pickle brine. We add that dried chili pepper, but you can leave that out if you don't like things spicy. We also replaced dill heads with dried dill seed (we didn't have any fresh dill heads this time around).

Vegan Ranch Dip Recipe

This is a dip that my hubby has been developing based on the classic French rouille. The flavours we've chosen to go with here are based on a ranch flavoured dip, but this one is completely vegan, thickened with potato and olive oil, and stabilized with tahini and soy lecithin. We're delving just a little into molecular gastronomy with the addition of the soy lecithin, but it works very well to help the potatoes hold the oil.

This video was sort of a proof of concept experiment, and came out a little less creamy than we had hoped. The good news is that the soy lecithin would definitely allow you to add more oil to make this creamier and fluffier, approaching the texture of mayonnaise. Between the potato, the tartness of the lemon juice, and all of that fresh dill, the final product had a flavour reminiscent of dill pickle potato chips!

GOP politicians (including Moscow Mitch) Use a Russian-based "subpoena resistant" server:

Blackberry and Yellow Plum Jam Recipe

Ontario doesn't have the world's longest growing season, but all summer we get the most amazing variety of local fruits and veggies. The Niagara Escarpment has a microclimate that is perfect for wine grapes (particularly pinot noir, gewurztraminer, reisling, and cabernet franc) and also provides perfect growing conditions for many different stone fruit like apricots, nectarines, peaches, and plums. Right now we're coming to the end of apricot/plum season and just the beginning of peach season! But before it ends, I got a big mess of these amazing little golden plums. Sweet and tart, tons of flavour. Blackberry season was a little earlier in the summer, but I got some then and we froze them, and now we're making mixed-fruit jams!

Part of the reasoning here is that ripe blackberries don't have a whole lot of pectin to make jam, but these little golden plums have a lot. The blend of flavours is great, and the colour that comes at the end is gorgeous.