Using a paring knife, trim stem and outer artichoke leaves to tender hearts.
The concerns addressed in the book — improved education, health care, existence above the poverty level — are too important to be left to the tender mercies of charity.
Medicare covers the recipients, but the donors are left to the tender mercies of the health insurance industry, which considers us pariahs because we have a pre-existing condition.
Because he gives most of the tax breaks and all the power to powerful interests, Governor Bush will leave millions of families powerless and broke, left to the tender mercies of big impersonal interests and institutions.
Yet every local authority in the land allows men like these as well as our sick, elderly and infirm to be left to the tender mercies of profiteers and cowboys.
If, for instance, I get to my destination sufficiently late that the sidewalks have been rolled up and I am left to the tender mercies of hotel room service, I can be nonchalant when I dial the kitchen and learn there's a long wait for a minute steak -- no hurry.
If passed, Afghan siblings and parents of an SIV applicant, who can independently demonstrate they're under threat as well, like Mohammed's, would now be eligible to come to the U.S., instead of being left to the tender mercies of the Taliban or Al Qaeda.
But if that policy had been in effect when the financial collapse of 2008 occurred, and the economy had been left to the tender mercies of the invisible hand (much less the invisible cyber-hand), all of the banks would have gone bust and the economy, instead of experiencing the Great Recession, would have been in total collapse.
Then I thought to myself "You really are left to their tender mercies if you can't stand up for yourself like I can".
Local councils, left to cover costs, tendered contracts out to private companies - and prices have gone up.
