Roux? Bechamel? Mornay?
One of the reasons I love– LOVE! –Tim Walz, is how he talks just like I do. Well, maybe not quite — Minnesota vs. Iowa, but close.
We Midwesterners can be great, Prize-winning! Cooks, and we don’t depend on Julia Child to teach us. However, The Washington Post may need a translator. Here’s what Tim Carman, a Post food writer, had to say about Tim Walz’s Prize-winning Turkey Trot Tater Tot Hotdish:
- “At some point, while preparing Tim Walz’s Turkey Trot Tater Tot Hotdish, I was struck by the self-effacing nature of the Minnesota governor’s recipe. The instructions call for you to make a roux, but they don’t call it a roux. They ask you to add milk and half-and-half to the roux to create a bechamel, but they don’t call it that. They ask you to add cheese to the (admittedly enhanced) bechamel to turn it into a mornay sauce, but they don’t call it mornay sauce.”
I laughed. When we’re from the Midwest, we talk in plain language. We’re more likely to have Scandinavian, German, or Irish ancestors. Most of us didn’t study cooking in France, so we don’t use French words.
It’s the same when we talk about land and water. There is not much conversation using science words. Instead, we talk about how the land doesn’t hold water so well anymore; the seasons seem to change: spring comes earlier, and summer is hotter and drier. Maybe we can also talk about the ever-increasing cancer rate.
You get the idea.
And that’s why I like Tim Walz. He’s an explainer … plain words, right to the point, all with easily understandable solutions.
- Walz: We don’t need more of the same typical politicians fighting for themselves and for special interests. We need someone to believe in our small-business owners again and someone to champion those folks who play by the rules.
- Walz: To jump-start our economy, we must leave cash in your hands – because if you’ve got money in your pocket, you’ll spend it at the hardware store or the corner market, and that will drive job growth in our private sector.
- Walz: If giving tax breaks to millionaires created jobs or grew our economy, I would be in favor of them, but they are the same failed policies of the past that just don’t work.
Coach Tim Walz and VP Kamala Harris did a SE Georgia bus trip this week that included Savannnah. In this part of the Bible Belt, Christianity is Southeast Georgia’s most practiced religion, with Protestantism being the most significant form of Christianity by affiliation. Harris is a Baptist with a Jewish spouse and ties to the Black Church and Gandhi. And Walz is Lutheran. More or less, everyone had things in common but Democrats haven’t been in that part of GA for decades.
It turned out to be a good week. Walz grew up in a small town in Nebraska, where he learned that people “may not think like you do, they may not pray like you do, they may not love like you do, but they’re your neighbors.”
“You look out for them, and they look out for you. Everybody belongs, and everybody has a responsibility to contribute,” he said. “We’re all in this together.”
Walz’s record shows he walks the talk. He looks out for people. So does Kamala’s.