Good morning. There are two days remaining in this week, which is kind of dragging on my end. Or maybe I’ve got a touch of spring fever – unseasonably early? I blame the weather.
Today isn’t just any Thursday, but Fat Thursday, which is the last Thursday before the start of Lent.
But wait, you’re thinking, aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves here? I thought that Fat Tuesday – AKA Shrove Tuesday, and also Mardi Gras, which is the day before Ash Wednesday and the last big hurrah/indulgence before the 40-day sober season of Lent – is NEXT Tuesday, Feb. 21, isn’t it?
Yep. This is something entirely different.
In Poland, Paczki Day is more commonly celebrated on Fat Thursday, otherwise known as Tlusty Czwartek. Paczki, pronounced “pohnch-kee” not “punchkees” as is commonly said byt those not in the know, are delicious filled doughnuts similar to a jelly doughnut but not the same.
The difference is in the dough. Paczki dough uses an extra amount of enriching ingredients yeast, grain alcohol, and high-gluten flour. The end result is richer than a brioche, (already pretty darn rich), but chewier and with very few – if any – crumbs. They are usually filled with fruit jam or cream, deep fried (again, traditionally in lard), and dusted with powdered sugar/glaze.
The purpose here is to use up all sorts of ingredients that are forbidden during Lent – lard, eggs, fruit and sugar.
Most doughnuts, by contrast, are made with cake or pastry flour, smaller amounts of enriching ingredients, and baking soda or baking powder instead of yeast. The result is more cake-like and crumbly.
Just to complicate things further, there’s also Shrove Monday, which falls on Presidents Day/Washington’s Birthday (Feb. 20 observed, though our first president’s birthday was actually Feb. 22).
This is mostly observed in Germany, where it is traditional to serve meat-based dishes to use up what’s in the house, as many people give up eating meat for Lent. It’s traditional in Germany to serve bratwurst and Krapfen (a kind of donut) as well as pretzels, and also to hold parades and public events at which politicians are ridiculed.
In Great Britain, Shrove Monday is known as Collop Monday because collop bacon is traditionally eaten, along with eggs.
A few things that I learned about Lent while perusing the interwebs for information related to this post. I found them interesting, but remember, I’m a Jew, and so perhaps none of this is news to you. Did you know, for example, that:
- Sundays don’t count as part of the fast, so there are actually 46 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday.
- Pretzels are perfect Lenten snack because they are traditionally made without eggs, butter, or lard.
- The Filet O-Fish sandwich, (actually, the only thing I miss about fast food, TBH), was created by McDonald’s to cater to the millions of Catholics abstaining from meat during Lent. (Specifically, it was the brainchild of Lou Groen, a McDonald’s franchise owner in Cincinnati, Ohio, and when it debuted in 1962, it outsold something called the “Hula Burger,” which was a piece of grilled pineapple served with cheese on a bun. Um, yuck?)
Whether you select a fish sandwich or a doughnut or something else for breakfast this morning, it’s a good day to get outside and soak up all this amazingly warm air, though we will see showers developing in the afternoon. Look for temperatures to again be somewhere in the 50-to-60 degree range. YAAAAS.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden plans to deliver his most extended public remarks yet — as early as today — about the unidentified objects that the U.S. military has been shooting down, three people familiar with the matter said.
Biden will explain how he has tasked his administration with setting parameters about how to deal with aerial balloons and other objects spotted in the future.
Lawmakers in both parties are demanding greater transparency from the administration on these incidents, with several Senate Republicans saying earlier this week that Biden should address the nation on the operations.
The exact timing of Biden’s remarks has not yet been settled. The president is due to take a physical exam today that could last several hours.
There is no legal requirement to follow when it comes to the president’s checkups, and the amount of information released has always been up to the man himself. But Biden’s exam will get extra scrutiny because, at 80, he is America’s oldest president.
Senior US officials increasingly believe the Chinese spy balloon that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina in early February was originally supposed to conduct surveillance over U.S. military bases in Guam and Hawaii, but winds carried it off course.
A key China adviser to Biden, Laura Rosenberger, is set to depart the National Security Council next month as the US grapples with renewed tensions in the relationship with Beijing over the recent alleged spy balloon episode.
The FBI has conducted two searches at the University of Delaware in connection with the investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents.
Investigators retrieved multiple boxes from the college on two different days. The university, Biden’s alma mater, houses thousands of boxes of files related to his time in the Senate.
In 2011, Biden donated his records from his 36 years serving in the US Senate to the school. The documents arrived on June 6, 2012, according to the university.
Biden traveled to Maryland yesterday trying to keep the focus on Republicans’ legislative agenda after capitalizing on a viral moment over the future of Social Security and Medicare at last week’s State of the Union address.
The Biden administration issued long-awaited final rules on its national electric vehicle charger network that require the chargers to be built in the United States immediately, and with 55% of their cost coming from U.S.-made components by 2024.
The plan, officials hope, will gradually do away with the issue by building out a network of both government and private chargers that work with any EV.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer took a victory lap on Twitter after Democrats confirmed Biden’s 100th judicial nominee, reaching the milestone quicker than Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
The US is on track to add nearly $19 trillion to its national debt over the next decade, $3 trillion more than previously forecast, the result of rising costs for interest payments, veterans’ health care, retiree benefits and the military, the CBO said.
The CBO also said the Treasury Department’s ability to continue paying its bills and prevent the US from defaulting on its debt could be exhausted sometime between July and September if Congress does not raise or suspend the borrowing cap.
The Justice Department has decided not to bring charges against Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz after a lengthy sex-trafficking investigation that imperiled one of former President Donald Trump’s most ambitious and hard-charging allies in Congress.
The final decision was made by Department of Justice leadership after investigators recommended against charges last year.
Marc Mukasey and Isabelle Kirshner, attorneys for Gaetz, said they learned about the decision not to pursue charges after speaking to officials at the Justice Department yesterday.
A letter to ethics watchdogs in the House of Representatives questioned if George Santos’s seven-year marriage was a scheme to aid a woman’s immigration bid.
Santos is contemplating a nightmare scenario for House Republicans: Trying to stick it out in Congress, even if he is indicted on criminal charges.
The Federal Election Commission is warning Santos to substantiate who is in charge of his campaign’s finances — or risk a ban on raising or spending any money.
There was a time when shame was a powerful force in American politics. That time is not now. Santos is the embodiment of how times have changed.
One of Santos’ first-known forays into politics was an attempt to raise $20,000 for a pro-Trump rally in 2019 in Buffalo, N.Y. that never happened.
Santos was interviewed by police in 2017 international credit card fraud probe.
Moderna will keep its COVID vaccine on the market at no cost to consumers, even after the federal government stops paying for it, the company announced.
Pfizer, which makes the Comirnaty vaccine with its German partner BioNTech, has already promised that U.S. residents who lack insurance will be covered by its own patient assistance program.
The WHO will continue to push for studies on how the Covid-19 pandemic started, the agency’s chief said, denying an earlier media report that the mission had been abandoned because of difficulty in conducting crucial studies in China.
The report from Nature had said that WHO “quietly shelved the second phase of its much-anticipated scientific investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing ongoing challenges over attempts to conduct crucial studies in China.”
Breaking a weekslong impasse, the New York State Senate rejected Gov. Kathy Hochul’s nominee, Hector LaSalle, to lead the state’s highest court, holding an unexpected floor vote that capped a dramatic battle that had roiled Democrats in the State Capitol.
The 20-39 vote — the first time that the State Senate has rejected a governor’s pick for chief judge — amounted to an extraordinary repudiation of Hochul by members of her own party at the start of her first full term as governor.
“The nomination was brought to the Senate floor, as has been requested for weeks, and unsurprisingly, it did not prevail. There should be no further questions on the viability of this nomination,” Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said.
LaSalle watched by himself from the gallery in the state Senate as lawmakers deliberated for about an hour whether he should become chief judge.
The Clean Slate Act, a bill meant to seal many criminal records, has gained the backing of all of the newly elected members of the New York state Assembly, supporters of the legislation said.
The New York court system is weighing how to potentially expand virtual and remote proceedings under a plan released by the state’s judiciary.
The president of the New York State United Teachers union is retiring — and said that as such, he’s declaring victory against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
New York is switching to print-on-demand stickers for vehicle inspections. The new design is different, featuring large black-and-white text and a QR code, and the stickers will be printed on demand at mechanic shops and dealerships.
Mayor Eric Adams went to Albany with a simple message for Hochul and state lawmakers: New York City needs more money … or else.
Adams intimated that without help serious budget cuts to critical city agencies could follow. He also took the opportunity to propose something he’s advocated for in the past, changes to bail reform.
Adams tempered his calls for changes to the state’s bail laws with a demand that New York also pony up more cash to hire more public defenders and district attorneys to address criminal court backlogs in the city.
Adams pushed back hard on several of Hochul’s budget proposals, but both he and the governor said they continue to remain sympatico despite their fiscal differences.
The Big Apple’s shoplifting epidemic is costing retail workers their jobs, Adams said as he endorsed Hochul’s push to give judges slightly more discretion in setting bail for criminal defendants.
Adams had a chance to support charter schools, but instead failed to give clear backing for them at an Albany budget hearing stocked with charter foes.
A company co-founded by Frank Carone, Adams’ recently departed chief of staff, must pay a prominent New York City real estate firm more than $726,000 to settle a long-running rent debt, a Manhattan judge ruled this week.
Vornado Realty Trust, the developer hoping to remake the skyline around Penn Station, has put the brakes on the massive redevelopment plan for now as interest rates remain high and the real estate market struggles to recover from the pandemic.
New York University announced that its new president would be Linda G. Mills, a professor and administrator at the university for more than 20 years.
A proposed food delivery workers’ hub on the Upper West Side has sparked outrage among residents, who say the hub will be a magnet for e-bikes and create heightened traffic and fire safety risks.
After months of litigation against New York ‘s latest gun control law, several liberal groups are standing in opposition to its measure requiring concealed carry permit applicants to register their social media accounts, saying it’s “overbroad” and unconstitutional.
The gunman in a racist massacre at a Buffalo supermarket was sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole, after apologizing for his attack amid a torrent of raw emotions from the victims’ families, including one man who lunged at him in court.
“I’m very sorry for all the pain I forced the victims and their families to suffer through. I’m very sorry for stealing the lives of your loved ones. I cannot express how much I regret all the decisions I made leading up to my actions on May 14,” Payton Gendron said.
“I did a terrible thing that day,” Gendron continued. “I shot and killed people because they were Black. Looking back now I can’t believe I actually did it. I believed what I read on line and acted out of hate.”
Erie County Judge Susan Eagan said: “There is no place for you or your ignorant, hateful and evil ideologies in a civilized society. There can be no mercy for you, no understanding, no second chances. You will never see the light of day as a free man ever again.”
Prior to the sentencing, there was an outburst in court. Gendron struck a deal to avoid a possible death penalty for the massacre. Some of the family members left behind were overwhelmed with emotions.
Assemblyman Phil Steck is among the names being discussed as a possible candidate for one of three open state Supreme Court seats this fall.
Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s plan to open a 70,000-square-foot store in Clifton Park that the outdoor retailer said will serve the Albany area as well as the Adirondack Mountains.
The famed rococo stone mansion on North Broadway hit the market last September for $17.9 million. More than five months later, after one contract to purchase the palatial property fell through, Palazzo Riggi’s listing price has dipped by nearly $6 million.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is holding a virtual meeting tonight to inform the public about concerns over the Sterigenics sterilization facility outside of Glens Falls.
Three months after buying up a similar company, CommerceHub, an e-commerce firm, this week announced layoffs of 371 employees globally – including some in the Capital Region.
Attorney General Letitia James and the Norlite aggregate plant reached a settlement over a state injunction that might have forced the facility to halt operations when it produces too much dust.
After months of speculation about her political plans, Schenectady City Council President Marion Porterfield plans to launch her campaign for mayor today, setting up a primary battle with incumbent Mayor Gary McCarthy.
Lawrence M. McKenna, a federal judge who in presiding over many high-profile cases in Manhattan rejected two of Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s police initiatives as infringing on civil liberties, died on Feb. 3 in Brooklyn. He was 89.
Raquel Welch, the voluptuous movie actress who became the 1960s’ first major American sex symbol and maintained that image for a half-century in show business, died yesterday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 82.
