Proper stir-fries at home: Is it even possible?


Tofu, fried rice, and mixed vegetables

Stir-frying is such a good way to make low-carb suppers that, for months now, I’ve been having stir-fries for supper three and even four days a week. I had been using a large nonstick skillet, with heat much lower than professional Asian cooks use. I’ve gotten very good at skillet stir-fries, so good that it was time to up my game. That means using a wok, not a skillet.

Not long ago I saw a Lodge cast iron wok in a variety store up in the mountains. The price tag said $99.00. The wok was beautiful, almost magical. I petted it for quite some time but decided not to buy it. The price was just too steep.

Then when I got home, I checked Amazon. Amazon Prime sells the very same Lodge wok for $49.90, shipping included. I ordered it immediately. It’s a shame to cut out local merchants and buy from Amazon. But why should I make a $50 donation to a store that’s willing to overcharge its customers so badly?

The wok comes pre-seasoned, but after I took the wok out of the box I spent a few hours seasoning it a bit more, just to be sure that nothing would stick (and partly to pet it). Nothing did.

Though I have had many good, authentic Chinese meals in San Francisco and New York, and even though I survived a few days in Bangkok with nothing to eat with but chopsticks and soup spoons, I have never watched a professional Asian cook use a wok. YouTube to the rescue. (But be careful — there are also plenty of wok videos made by people who have no idea what they’re doing.)

The amount of heat that professional Asian cooks use is terrifying. Their wok stoves are like blast furnaces. Not to mention that all who are concerned with healthy eating try to keep cooking oils from overheating and smoking, because smoking oils produce carcinogens. If you do some Google searches on this subject, you’ll find several online discussions about just how high heat really needs to be for decent wok cooking at home. The woks of professional Asian cooks may reach 900 degrees F, I understand. Some foodies say that 650F is the minimum. Some claim good results at 450F. But even 650F is too high for my comfort. The smoke point of avocado oil is 500F. That’s my limit, insofar as it’s possible to control the wok’s temperature at every instant of the cooking process.

If you watch YouTube videos of Grace Young cooking in a wok, she is definitely not doing a fire show. She is the author of The Breath of a Wok, which I have ordered. I believe her book is the best-reviewed book written by an Asian for non-Asian cooks using domestic cooking apparatus.

It’s going to take weeks or months for me to get the hang of wok cooking and to figure out where the sweet spot is between a Cantonese fire show and low-smoke home stir-fries. But, even on my first attempt, though I produced a little smoke, the results were like magic. The Chinese call it wok hei, translated “the breath of the wok.” That’s the taste of fire and smoke. Asian fire-show cooks even get short flashes of fire inside their woks while they’re cooking. Don’t try that at home.

I quickly realized that you don’t have to have flash fires in the wok to get (at least some) real wok hei flavor. My first stir-fry did indeed taste like fire. The taste was primal. It was like something that had been cooked outdoors, over a fire, 900 years ago. That’s wok hei.

A friend said (in a text message) that woks are a Platonic sort of cooking vessel. That’s a good way of putting it. The word primal also keeps coming to mind. There is something ancient about the wok, about the cooking process, and about the flavors that you can get. My electric range seems to get hot enough. But if at some point I decide to experiment with murderously high heat, I’ll use a high-powered gas-fired cooking tripod outdoors on the deck.

All the work of wok cooking is in the preparation, because you have to have everything lined up and ready to go. Once you actually start cooking, it’s over in minutes.

The Lodge wok is very big and very heavy. Before you buy one, you might want to figure out where you’re going to store it. I’ll probably store my wok in the oven most of the time. On my electric stove set to high, the 12-pound wok takes about nine minutes to heat up.

Making a wok meal is an hour of patient washing, drying, and slicing followed by a few minutes fire and frenzy.

Buckwheat


Buckwheat hotcakes with blueberries (from frozen) and maple syrup

The blackness of buckwheat hotcakes is so shocking that you’d think they couldn’t possibly be good. Yet the flavor is mild — almost delicate — and nutty.

Buckwheat is not a relative of wheat. In fact, according to the Wikipedia article, it’s not even a grain, because it’s not a grass. Rather, buckwheat is the seed of Fagopyrum esculentum, which is a relative of sorrel, knotweed, and rhubarb.

Again according to Wikipedia, buckwheat was first cultivated in Southeast Asia. It made its way to Europe as a cool-weather and short-season crop. Many farms grew it in early America. Once upon a time, buckwheat was commonly grown in the nearby Blue Ridge Mountains. That is no longer the case, and if I have ever seen a field of buckwheat, I’m not aware of it. Still, older people remember buckwheat from their childhoods, and there is still a demand for it locally. A nearby mill actually grinds buckwheat flour. I have no idea, though, where they get the buckwheat. The local mill’s flour is sold in country stores in paper sacks tied with a string that always look shopworn and not a bit fresh. I’ve only ever seen it as “self-rising” flour, which is another reason I would never buy the local stuff. I have never bought any self-rising flour, and I can’t imagine why anyone would. Except that I believe many people don’t realize that self-rising flour is just flour that already has baking powder added. Why would I want baking powder added for me since I can easily do that myself? Self-rising flour also means that a flour can be used only in a quick bread, ruling out its use for yeast breads or, say, a pie crust.

Bob’s Red Mill is probably the easiest source of buckwheat flour. The label says that the flour’s dark color comes from the hull of the seed. So buckwheat flour is a whole grain (or whole seed) flour. Buckwheat groats, on the other hand, have been hulled. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten groats of any sort, probably just because the word “groats” sounds so unappetizing.

Buckwheat flour has no gluten. It makes fine pancakes, but I’d rather not attempt any other kind of bread with it. I suspect that buckwheat flour would make a decent pie crust. I’ll run that experiment soon.


A field of buckwheat — Wikipedia Commons

The long, winding road to Denmark


A festive business dinner in Denmark with a technology team from the San Francisco Chronicle and employees of the Danish company CCI International. That’s me in the black shirt, second from the right. The year is 2002.

The curmudgeon H.L. Mencken left us a rich legacy of fine quotes. One of his best is about Puritanism: “The haunting fear that someone somewhere may be happy.” Mencken is entirely right. A moral suspicion of happiness and a duty to endure earthly misery “to lay up treasures in heaven” is a theological proposition that is inseparable from all forms of Christianity, whether Catholicism, Protestant Calvinism, or fundamentalism. Evangelicals who pursue “prosperity theology” do make one and only one exception. That exception is for rich people, who get to lay up their treasures on earth as well as in heaven.

I have been thinking about Denmark lately because Paul Krugman has mentioned Denmark in two of his recent columns. One column is about the misconceptions of conservatives. The other column is about “fanatical centrists.”

Krugman on conservatives’ horror of what they call “socialism”:

“What Americans who support ‘socialism’ actually want is what the rest of the world calls social democracy: A market economy, but with extreme hardship limited by a strong social safety net and extreme inequality limited by progressive taxation. They want us to look like Denmark or Norway, not Venezuela.

“And in case you haven’t been there, the Nordic countries are not, in fact, hellholes. They have somewhat lower G.D.P. per capita than we do, but that’s largely because they take more vacations. Compared with America, they have higher life expectancy, much less poverty and significantly higher overall life satisfaction. Oh, and they have high levels of entrepreneurship — because people are more willing to take the risk of starting a business when they know that they won’t lose their health care or plunge into abject poverty if they fail.”

Krugman on the perpetual wrongness of fanatical centrists:

“But I’m not talking about the left. Radical leftists are virtually nonexistent in American politics; can you think of any prominent figure who wants us to move to the left of, say, Denmark? No, I’m talking about fanatical centrists.”

It’s a standing joke — with a lot of truth in it — that travel turns people into liberal Democrats. American conservatives can get away with lying about Europe and the Nordic countries because so many conservative voters know so little about the world. You can find many sources on the Internet that compare how Americans vote to whether they have a passport, for example, here. I will not concede that my saying such a thing amounts to economic snobbery. Many of my rural, Trump-loving neighbors drive enormous, gas-guzzling vehicles that cost more than $50,000. Many of my rural, Trump-loving neighbors also have enormous travel trailers that can be pulled only by enormous trucks. The median household income of Trump supporters in the 2016 primaries was about $72,000, well above the national median of $56,000.

Ignorance of the world is a choice.

Before I retired, I did business for some years with a Danish company that builds publishing systems for newspapers such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the San Francisco Chronicle (where I worked). I have made two business trips to Denmark. It is remarkable what the Nordic countries have accomplished. They always rank near the top of lists that measure happiness, trust, equality, and civic freedoms. Meanwhile, the United States is moving backwards, like other places in the world where the rich call the shots. Increasingly, though Europe has its own troubles, Europe feels like a refuge from American backsliding. It’s no wonder that so many people talk — maybe only half seriously — about leaving the United States. A recent Gallup poll found that a record number of Americans want to get out. The reason: Trump.

My recent trip to Scotland has made me resolve to get to Europe more often, though considerable frugalities and economies are necessary to make travel affordable on my fixed retirement income. Shortly after I arrived in Edinburgh back in August, Ken asked me if I was culture-shocked. Heck no, I said. I feel more at home here than I do at home. I meant it, too.

Still, I am not ready to throw in the towel on the United States. I am reluctant to make predictions, but, so far — especially now that Democrats have retaken the U.S. House of Representatives and the law takes it course — I believe we are approaching peak Trump. Trump is going to be brought down by the law, taking the Republican Party with him. Americans insisted on finding out the hard way (we liberals tried to warn them!) what billionaires and Republicans do when they get power. Rural white voters will continue to glorify a hell largely of their own making. But voters in the American suburbs, in the 2018 election, showed their remorse for falling for Trump in 2016. That won’t happen again. California and New York are leading the way. The suburbs are coming to their senses. Boomers will soon be leaving the world in droves, just as they entered. Young people see the world in a very different way. All roads now lead to Denmark. And we will all be happier for it.

Note: The Mencken quote is sometimes given as, “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, is having a good time.” I don’t know which is more accurate.

Apple butter brownies

My usual vehicles for chocolate fixes are 72 percent dark chocolate bars from Whole Foods. Last week, I ran out — a rare occurrence. That left me to figure out what to do with cocoa (which I always have) that would provide a chocolate fix with a minimum of carbs.

The first experiment yielded dry, uninteresting brownies. I realized that, if you reduce the amount of fat and sugar, the brownies are no fun. Then I thought of apple sauce (or apple butter). It was easy to make that connection because my favorite cake since childhood is a chocolate apple sauce cake in which the only liquid ingredient is apple sauce. There aren’t even any eggs in the cake. The pectin in apple sauce is a remarkably good replacement for eggs.

I actually made a recipe:

1 cup barley flour

1 cup apple butter

1 egg

1/4 cup maple syrup

1/2 cup cocoa

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 cup olive oil

For the flour, substitute whole wheat flour or any flour. Apple sauce or apple butter would work equally well. Honey or even molasses would work as well as maple syrup. Any kind of oil, or even butter, could be substituted for the olive oil.

Mix everything together and pour the batter into an oiled 8-inch baking pan. My brownies needed about 25 minutes at 350 degrees. They’re done as soon as they pass the toothpick test.

I wouldn’t say that these brownies are chewy, exactly. But they’re very moist and satisfying. They’re also cheaper than chocolate bars.

For your worry list, with apologies

Raven Rock: The Story of the Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself — While the Rest of Us Die, by Garrett Graff. Simon & Schuster, 2017.

The Medical Implications of Nuclear War. National Academy of Sciences Press, 1986.

Our worry lists are long. As a friend recently said in email, “…[W]e probably all have a limited capacity for despair.” This is true. But I respectfully submit that the risk of thermonuclear war ought to be (once again) on our worry lists, and on the international agenda. Many analysts are warning us that the risks of thermonuclear war are growing.

Just yesterday, Politico carried a piece by Sam Nunn and Ernest J. Moniz, The U.S. and Russia Are Sleepwalking Toward Nuclear Disaster.

For more detail from a higher altitude, consider this New Yorker piece from last year: The Growing Dangers of the Nuclear Arms Race.

In December 2018, Russia said that it has successfully tested a new hypersonic weapons-delivery missile that flies 27 times faster than the speed of sound. Such a missile would render current defenses useless. The United States is working on hypersonic missiles, but Russia seems to be in the lead on this.

Two days ago, the Trump administration announced that the U.S. is withdrawing from a 1987 treaty on nuclear forces. Yesterday, Russia’s President Putin said that Russia also is withdrawing from the treaty. Today, the story about the treaty is still on the opening page of the Washington Post’s web site, but Trump’s wall is played much higher on the page. This is a media failure as well as a potentially catastrophic failure of leadership. We are arguing about absurd political distractions such as Trump’s wall while ignoring actual existential threats such as thermonuclear war and climate disaster.

Sheer craziness is on the rise in worldwide leadership. Both Trump and Putin are anti-NATO. New nuclear weapons are coming on line, and other new weapons and delivery systems are not far off. The idea that “tactical” nuclear weapons can be deployed in limited ways is gaining advocates if not credibility. International tensions are high. Many things could go wrong.

Raven Rock is a well done history of the Cold War. It’s a miracle that we have survived this many decades without nuclear weapons being accidentally deployed. There have been many close calls.

For example, in 1979, NORAD’s computers reported that hundreds of missiles — a full-scale nuclear attack — were headed this way from Russia, aimed at a full list of American targets including military targets and cities. Underground American command-and-control facilities closed their blast doors and tried to figure out what to do, with only minutes to respond. Bombers and interceptors were scrambled. Missile silos were ordered to prepare to fire. The Strategic Air Command’s ranking officer on that shift, Colonel Billy Batson, saved civilization by doubting that the attack was real. He ordered telephone contact with the watch officer in Fort Richie, Maryland, which radar said would be one of the first places hit. They counted down the seconds until destruction. But nothing happened. SAC stood down and went to work to figure out what had happened. What had happened was that someone had put a training tape into the actual early warning system. This event helped inspire the 1983 film “WarGames” starring Matthew Broderick. There have been many other close calls.

Whatever the risks of accidental nuclear war, the risk of intentional use of nuclear weapons is increasing. Last year, the United States actually lowered the threshold for use of nuclear weapons. The use of “tactical” nuclear weapons is increasingly tempting, because of the idea that the use of nuclear weapons can be limited, without leading to all-out mutually assured destruction.

In the early decades of the Cold War, there was an effort to help the civilian population survive thermonuclear war. It was a given that millions would die, but the idea was that recovery would be quicker if enough of the population survived to restore industry, etc. Most of the effort, however, went into “continuity of government.” The government has spent untold billions of dollars on keeping enough members of the government alive to support ongoing constitutional government. Who would argue that this is not necessary? Of course it is necessary. But, since the 1980s and 1990s, we ordinary people have been on our own. We can’t even expect a warning anymore, let alone protection. Resources simply don’t exist to support the population after widespread catastrophe.

The American “continuity of government” system was brutally tested during 9/11. Raven Rock has an excellent chapter on 9/11. For hours, the administration and the military hardly knew what was going on. They were watching television like the rest of us. We failed that test. If improvements in “continuity of government” have been made with the billions of dollars that have been spent since then, there is one thing we can still be sure of: We ordinary people will still be on our own.

What should we do? I have no idea. But awareness is surely a start. And pulling a delusional administration back toward reality is the first thing on the list.

The Medical Implications of Nuclear War is not a book that most people will want to read cover to cover. I certainly didn’t. It’s more of a reference. The book is a collection of papers from a conference that was held at Stanford University in 1985. A list of the titles of some of the chapters should underscore just how scared we ought to be, even though our capacity for despair is overloaded:

Possible Fatalities from Superfires Following Nuclear Attacks in or near Urban Areas

A Review of the Physics of Large Urban Fires

Nuclear Famine: The Indirect Effects of Nuclear War

Nuclear Winter: The State of the Science

Possible Toxic Environments Following a Nuclear War

Radioactive Fallout

Acute Radiation Mortality in Nuclear War

Burn and Blast Casualties: Triage in Nuclear War

Psychological Consequences of Disaster

Expected Incidence of Cancer Following Nuclear War

Genetic Consequences of Nuclear War

Sources of Human Instability in the Handling of Nuclear Weapons

Here’s a short quote from the chapter on nuclear famine:

“The consensus that developed was stark: the indirect effects of large-scale nuclear war would probably be far more consequential than the direct effects; and the primary mechanism for human fatalities would likely not be from blast effects, not from thermal radiation burns, and not from ionizing radiation, but, rather, from mass starvation.”

I apologize for this disturbing distraction. Now let’s all go turn on our televisions and catch up on the engaging media drama of what’s new with Trump’s wall.

Update: Yesterday in the New Yorker:

Can Elizabeth Warren and Adam Smith, Defying Trump, Persuade Americans to Get Serious About Nuclear-Arms Control?

Pumpkin-leek tarte with barley crust

I posted a few days ago about a dessert pumpkin pie with a barley crust. But with more than twenty little pumpkins stored under the stairs that need to be used before spring is over, dessert pies wouldn’t be very healthy, with no one but me to eat them. So here is a quiche-like vegetable pie, with a reasonably low level of carbs as well as fat.

In my previous experiment with barley crust, I used the amount of oil that I would normally use for a wheat crust. That was entirely too much oil for the barley. The crust was too crumbly. This time I reduced the amount of oil by half (to a quarter of a cup for two cups of flour) and made up for it with water. That worked great.

My little pumpkins look so magical that I have a hard time taking a knife to them and eating them. I have to remind myself that that’s why I grew them, and that, left under the stairs, they’d only rot. I do take a portrait each time I use one. Though these are true pumpkins, they’re also like winter squash. So if you don’t have baskets of little pumpkins under your stairs, you could use winter squash for a tarte like this. I used two large stalks of leeks, lightly sautéed in olive oil. The other ingredients are two eggs, some grated Gruyère, and seasonings including a quarter teaspoon of nutmug. The top of the tarte is sprinkled with grated Gruyère and some parmesan.

The dough for barley crust is stickier and more fragile than a wheat crust. I roll pie crusts between sheets of waxed paper. To keep the barley crust from sticking to the paper, I oiled the paper lightly with olive oil.

The tarte was delicious. Many kinds of vegetables can be turned into a tarte. A turnip tarte? Why not. Next time, I’d like to impart a little roasted flavor into the tarte, maybe with some browned onions or shallots. Also, I’ll oil the pie plate next time, to give the bottom crust a bit more crustiness.

Though this tarte looks like a quiche, there is no milk or cream in it. Just two eggs and some grated cheese with vegetables.


The crust is organic hulled barley, which I grind into flour myself.


Portrait of the little pumpkin that was dispatched for this tarte, with a spice bottle for scale


The top of the pumpkin browns because I used the small oven. But the texture of the pumpkin inside is more steamed than baked.

A vegan Scotch broth

I wrote about Scotch broth here five years ago, and I mentioned that the best soup I’ve ever had was a Scotch broth. It was in Edinburgh, on my first trip to Scotland in the mid-1980s. Though it was a vegetable soup, I might not have known at the time that the stock was based on sheep bones.

With Scotch broth, the broth is everything. It’s the sheep bones, I’m sure, that give authentic Scotch broth its sturdy substance. I’ve never made broth with sheep bones, so I’m always looking for substitutes. It occurred to me that the cooking water from chickpeas might help. I’ve never tried it, but I’ve read that if the cooking water from chickpeas is concentrated enough, it will whip up like egg whites. For this pot of broth, I used about one-quarter chickpea broth, one-quarter pumpkin juice (drained from a baked pumpkin that went into a pie), and one-half water. The barley, which is essential to Scotch broth, also helps with thickening the broth.

I’ve been known to make a slightly reddened Scotch broth with a touch of tomato paste. But the Scotch broth that I had in Edinburgh was green — from split peas and leeks, I’m sure. I went for green on this pot of Scotch broth, and I got the color I wanted.

The ingredients are the stock, barley, dried split peas, some rutabaga (which I believe the Scottish call a swede), onion, carrot, celery, and leeks. The soup needs a long, slow simmer. I added the leeks for the last 20 minutes of cooking.

A chicken story with a happy ending


One of many feathers found at the scene

I was sitting at the computer upstairs when I heard the chickens screaming. I dashed to the side porch, slipped on my shoes without tying them, grabbed a broom, and ran toward the orchard yelling.

The battle was happening on the far upper end of the orchard, beyond the asparagus patch. I couldn’t see the battle clearly through the weeds and honeysuckle that grow on the fence. One chicken ran out of the undergrowth and headed toward the garden. But from the sound it was clear that another chicken was still engaged. Not until I loomed over the scene of the crime with my broom did the hawk try to get away. It crashed against the fence several times before it realized that it had to fly toward me to escape. I could have knocked it out of the air with my broom if I had tried, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

A terrified chicken got up from the ground, dazed. She didn’t seem to be injured. She stumbled toward the chicken house, climbed the ramp, went inside, and cringed in one of the nests in a corner, trembling. The chicken that had run to the garden was fine, though scared out of her wits. It took me a while to find the third chicken. She had gone to ground down below the chicken house, hiding under some brush. She answered when I spoke to her and extricated herself from the brush. I escorted her to the chicken house to comfort her sister.

If chickens have the freedom that they love and deserve, then hawks are the biggest problem. Dogs, foxes, and coyotes have never gotten through the fences here. Raccoons only come at night, when the chickens are locked safely inside the chicken house.

The local hawks — Cooper’s hawks, I believe — are not any bigger than a chicken. A chicken that puts up a good fight can escape a hawk attack. What’s funny about this hawk attack (the first attack I’ve had since last summer) is that I am pretty sure that two chickens were fighting the hawk. That’s not what I would have expected. I would expect all the chickens to run except for the one that can’t get away. One of my chickens, I suspect, deserves a medal for bravery.

Everyone who has had chickens in this area struggles with the same question: Is it worth it? Is it fair to expose chickens to a danger from which you can’t fully protect them? The chicken infrastructure here is better than what most people can provide. Most chickens here live to be several years old. Those years are good, happy years. This is my eleventh year of keeping chickens here. I’m not ready to give up. Nor can I blame hawks for being hawks. I just wish they’d stay away. I hope this one learned a lesson.

According to PETA, 9 billion chickens are killed each year in the U.S. to be eaten by humans. Worldwide, the number is 50 billion. Their lives are as terrible as their deaths. Misery on that scale is existentially incomprehensible to me. If you’ve ever gotten to know a chicken, you know what sweet, sensitive, emotional creatures they are. A happy chicken that can truly live like a chicken is a rare thing. My chickens live that way most of the time. Their vulnerability is disheartening. But it’s wonderful to see them fight for their lives — and win.

There were lots of feathers at the scene of the crime. Most were clearly chicken feathers. There was one large feather that I believe is a wing feather from a hawk. Way to go, girls.

Barley crust = pumpkin pie fit for a monastery


Pumpkin pie with barley-flour crust

I have written before about my experiments with home-ground barley flour: When is it a good substitute for wheat, and when is it not? Barley flour makes a very good pie crust.

It’s good, I would say, but not perfect. Made with the usual amount of oil, the barley-flour crust is too crumbly. But, particularly for the parts of the crust that stand above the pie and are exposed to the heat of the oven, the tasty toastiness of the barley crust is fantastic. For my next experiment with barley-flour pie crusts, I will reduce the amount of oil in the crust and compensate with water.

Over the next few days, I will eat this whole pie. So I wanted it to be as healthy and low-calorie as possible. I reduced the amount of sugar by half — from three-quarters of a cup to half a cup. It still tastes like a desert. But the reduced sugar actually enhances the pumpkin taste. And the pumpkin taste is very good. I can even imagine a savory vegetable pie based on pumpkin with no sugar at all. These are my organic homegrown pumpkins. I still have lots of pumpkins left from the 2018 pumpkin crop, stored in baskets under the stairs.

Something about the barley taste is very old-fashioned. The taste of toasted barley is so good that I Googled for “toasted barley flour,” thinking that it surely must be a thing. Sure enough, toasted barley flour is a staple of Tibetan cuisine.

The old-fashioned taste of the barley and the reduced sugar produced a kind of austere pie that actually was appealing in its austerity. Pumpkins are a New World food. But if some monks in Gaul in the 13th Century had some pumpkin pie, then this is what I’d imagine it would taste like.


One of my little pumpkins after baking. I’ll scoop out the flesh and give the rest to the chickens.


Fresh-ground barley flour

It’s inevitable

The March cover story of The Atlantic probably marks a turning point in the long process of bringing Donald Trump to justice. The Atlantic is a centrist publication that often speaks for Washington’s centrist think-tank establishment. This article makes it official: the centrist Washington establishment is done with Trump. They now understand what he has done.

Here’s a link to the article, which is magisterial: Impeach Donald Trump.

February 7 probably is the day when most Americans, who are very busy and distracted, will begin to pay attention. That’s the day Michael Cohen (Trump’s “fixer” and former attorney) starts his testimony to the House Oversight Committee. On February 8, Matthew Whitaker (Trump’s acting attorney general) will testify before the House Judiciary Committee.

My view, based of course only on dot-connecting and following bread crumbs, is that Washington already knows what has to happen — that Trump must leave office. It took time to collect the evidence and to build the legal case. It appears that Robert Mueller is almost done with that. The next step, then, is to inform the American people and to prepare the American people for what is going to happen. That preparation process is now beginning. It seems highly likely that yesterday’s reports that Trump instructed Cohen to lie under oath to Congress about the Moscow Trump Tower project (that alone would be grounds for impeachment) is a part of the preparation process. What the American people are going to learn from Cohen’s testimony on February 7 is going to be shocking. As Yoni Appelbaum points out in the Atlantic article, once Trump’s crimes start being described in day after day of public testimony in Congress, Trump (and Fox News) will have no chance of controlling the narrative. Instead, the narrative will be about the FBI’s evidence and congressional testimony under oath.