respublica

What microwaves can do to food and other things

Some brave soul put various objects into a microwave and turned on the power.  Amazing what can happen.  Don't do this yourself.  

 

Irritating BND ad

Now the Belleville News Democrat has an ad which pops up the first time the site opens which is a video.  You can't close it until the entire ad video plays.  If it happens everyday I may stop visiting the BND.

Why women's clothing sizes are meaningless

Now this is an article any woman should identify with.  Why when you go clothes shopping are the sizes so wrong?  Or are they right?  A size 10 in one store might be an 8 or a 12 in another store.  Why are pant lengths so long?  If petit means clothes for shorter, thinner women, how about the stouter, short woman.  Sizes and lengths make no sense.  

Lots of good information in the story, especially the history of how women's sizing came to be and what standards were used.  But for today's shopper it basically boils down to this:

Vanity Sizing. Women don't want to know their real size, so manufacturers re-label bigger sizes with smaller numbers.

Dog whistle

Out of the blue this political season has had one phrase pop up constantly by commentators, political reporters, candidates, supporters of candidates.  

Dog Whistle.  

I woke up this morning realizing that I've seen and heard Dog Whistle constantly lately and haven't spent any time giving it any thought.  What does it mean in our political world?  First off you have to realize that the term is most used by liberals and liberal media people to describe GOP or conservative political people. 

Dog Whistle is a type of political campaigning or speechmaking which employs coded language that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has a different or more specific meaning for a targeted subgroup of the audience. Dog-whistle politics” is a derogatory term, often employed to describe what liberals consider to be coded, subliminal racist messages “pitched” too high for the general public to recognize.

Watch for it.    

 

Planting zone categories have changed

According to a new planting map put out by the USDA, winters aren't as harsh as they were years ago which means gardeners have more variety in what they plant.  For some time St. Louis and Kansas City were in zone 5, but now are zone 6.  If you don't know what that means, just look on the back of any seed packet which has always had a graph telling you the earliest date for planting. 

Like an other data, it will all depend on the individual winter, the past two years the cold just kept coming and coming.  This year we may have a reprieve.  

2 local items of note

The Edwardsville School District has decided to layoff 60 teachers and teachers aides while reducing funding to athletics, performing arts, drivers ed, and vocational. These actions will cut 3 million dollars from the budget which is hurting because the state of Illinois is way behind on its funding and the property values in the city have declined enough that the income from property taxes is much lower than previous years.  

That is a lot of cuts.  It's brave of the school board to do this but it's shocking to see it coming from Edwardsville, one of those local districts others point to as being among the best.  

Secondly, a state legislator has submitted a bill which would end East St. Louis own private board of elections and put the city's elections under St. Clair County like every other local city in St. Clair is.  This is long overdue, it would save East St. Louis money but it would also put an end to the constant "reputation for having unfair elections."  Unfair is an odd word to use, fraudulent is the word used when arrests were made.  Not so much reputation as reality.   

Drew is moving right along

Things happen so fast with babies,

First Drew shared his cereal with Riley, one for Drew, one for Riley.  Then Drew took off on his own last night with the aid of his little push cart.

 

A really big deal!

Got an email from Jos A Bank this morning with a one day only sale offer.  Now this is one heck of a deal, it's over the top for sure.  

BUY ONE SUIT GET 6 ITEMS FREE-2 SUITS, 2 SHIRTS AND 2 SILK TIES FREE!

Or:

BUY 1 SPORTCOAT GET 6 ITEMS FREE-2 PANTS, 2 SWEATERS AND 2 SPORTS SHIRTS FREE!

They're practically screaming for us to get into the store.  Actually if Dale had time today, we'd be there.  The website doesn't mention the suit deal, it must be for previous customers.  

What's for dinner on a cold, rainy January day?

Looks like the sort of day not fit to be outside, a day long cold rain is in store for St. Louis so dinner should be kind of comforting.  Comfort Food!

This means making something which you can smell cooking all day long and what better than putting a roast into a slow cooker and ending up with roast beef sandwiches?  The only question is, what kind of roast beef sandwich, the Chicago style or the St. Louis style.  

Chicago has its own blend of seasoning but more importantly the beef must be roasted and then thinly sliced and added to the seasoned juice/gravy.  St. Louis tosses the roast into the cooker in seasoned liquid and when done, pulls the meat apart like pulled pork.  

Frankly I prefer the Chicago way, but we don't have the great bread down here that Chicagoans use so I think I'll go pulled tonight.  Let it simmer away all day.  

Rump roast or top round?  hmmm.  I guess it will depend on what the grocery store has today.  

Here's a really good roast beef sandwich recipe I found some years ago from VodkaPundit.

1 Beef rump roast.
1 giant thing (20 oz) beef stock.
1 whole onion, sliced.
1 garlic clove, thinly sliced.
4 tablespoons butter.
Four demi baguettes.
Provolone cheese, thinly sliced.
Salt & pepper.

Put all the beef, stock, onion, garlic, butter and salt & pepper (to taste) in your slow cooker on low for seven hours. Slice the demi baguettes in half, 2/3 the way down. Toast the tops, very slightly, with the provolone — just enough toasting to get the cheese a little melty.

Remove the beef. Slice thin. Pile on the sandwiches. Serve with a ramekin full up with the juice from the slow cooker. Dip and munch, baby. Dip and munch.

These are very very good.  You could also drop a few pepperoncinis into the cooking liquid as well for a bit of tang.  

 

The Mophie Juice Pack Air

Here's another product I'd recommend.  I'm finding lots of great products this January.  The Mophie.  This is an iPhone case which not only protects the phone, but charges it.  

Thanks to my sister everyone in the family received one of these for Christmas and I have to say, after I understood what it did and how it worked, it became a fantastic thing to have.  In a nutshell, you put your iphone in the case, plug the micro usb cord into the normal white Apple plug and let it charge.  If your phone needs charging it charges that first and then charges the case.  

When you are out during the day and the battery winds down you flip a little switch on the bottom of the case and the case charges your phone.  In essence you get double the battery life before putting it back on the charger.  

This is especially good on days when lots of email comes in or you have to make or receive a lot of calls.  Or, you've spent time playing games or taking photos.  

Recap of the farmers market issue

Yesterday the news was of the St. Louis County Council preparing to introduce a bill regulating local farmers markets.  This must have caused enough of a stir that last night after introducing the bill, the council voted to pass the legislation on to their Committee of the Whole for public discussion.  This will take place sometime next month.  

SLU Law moving downtown

St Louis University is moving its law school from the main midtown campus to downtown St. Louis.  The school received a gift which will allow them to renovate an 11 story building on Tucker.  This is great for St. Louis' downtown, having students around will most likely help make the area more vibrant as well as encouraging more local business.

What's surprising is this number.  SLU Law school has 1000 full and part time students!  Wow.  That's a lot of future lawyers.  

Adventures in eating

Maybe restaurant people have tricked up hamburgers as far as they can go, I don't know.  But now some chefs are offering the unimaginable:

Foie Gras hot dogs.  

These food trends make my head swim, first there is a huge outcry over restaurants evening serving foie gras, it was banned in Chicago and then the ban was reversed, banned in California and attempts to ban it in other places after animal rights activists claimed it was cruel to ducks or geese or whatever animal it comes from.  

Now they're making hot dogs out of it?  Food trends.  It's always something.

Stomp n Go

Every now and then a product comes along which works almost exactly as advertised.  Last week the grandsons were over to the house and one of them accidentally spilled some grape juice on the carpet.  I didn't notice it until a day or so later and thought I'd never get the stain out.  After all what is grape juice besides no alcohol wine and red wine is really tough to remove from carpet.  

Then I read a review on Bissell's new Stomp n' Go stain removing pads.  It sounded good enough that I went out and bought some although I wasn't at all optimistic.  Well, I'm here to tell you these things really work on rug stains.  Put the pad on the stain and step on it.  Then leave it there for half an hour or so and when you remove the pad the stain is totally gone.  

I'm amazed and plan to keep these things on hand.  

Who Lou?

A fairly new website featuring St Louis business news and business gossip.  Wholou

Debating tax returns

Ok so Romney finally released his tax returns and everyone in the media and on twitter is discussing it.  Admittedly, I am no financial genius and the tax code is like a foreign language to me, but a couple of things are worth noting in case you don't hear this on tv or in the papers or on cable news.

Romney paid approximately 15 percent of his income in taxes, an income which came almost entirely from capital gains and dividends which is topped at 15 percent per tax rate. It is money which had been taxed previously.  Most Americans do not come anywhere close to paying 15 percent of their income in income taxes.  So he paid his taxes, the taxes which were owed.  But no more than that.  And why should he pay more than the tax code requires?  We pay what we owe and don't feel bad about not giving the government a little bit more.

Plus, and this is what is probably not going to be at the forefront of the Romney tax discussion, he also gave 16 percent of his income to charitable causes.  This seems a fairly important point to make. He's rich, we all know that, but he does not seem to scrimp on giving money away.  Even God only asked for ten percent. 

 

We could use some inclement weather

Not that we want to snarl up everything, but the mild January weather has brought out the thieves in the night, stealing cars, smashing business windows and grabbing stuff.  Sort of like last spring.  Bad weather would help keep them inside instead of trolling local neighborhoods looking to steal.

More rules for St Louis County farmers markets

Update January 25.  The County Board met last night and after introducing the bill decided that it would be sent to the Committee as a Whole next month so that interested parties could have input.  

If you believe the story in the P-D, the St. Louis County Board is going to vote to add more layers of rules to local farmers markets without giving much attention to their concerns.  Market managers were surprised to see this item on tonight's agenda and are sure that these new regulations will hurt their business.  

The new ordinance includes limiting the hours farmers markets operating hours, eliminating sample tasting, eliminate winter markets (no markets 5 months of the year), and fees which could cause vendors to stay away.

You have to wonder what the deal is here, certainly these markets are popular with the public so why would they want to do something which would make them more difficult to survive? Cut their hours? Are local grocery owners behind this, believing they cut into their own business?  

The farmers markets are good for the community in which they do business, and good for local growers.  Seems like free enterprise at work, small business selling locally grown products to their community.

Here is a photo I took of some of the products at the Clayton Farmers Market.

 

 

And the early line-up in Clayton

 

 

How about Maplewood? Maplewood's market stands to lose their winter market if these rules are passed.

 

 

 Lots of people go to Maplewood on Wednesday afternoon in spring and summer and fall, including local chefs.  

 

I just don't understand why local, state and federal governments have to keep over regulating everything.  

 

Mizzou number 2

This week's college basketball rankings has Missouri at number 2 behind number 1 Kentucky.  They are followed by Syracuse 3,  Ohio State 4 and oh no...Kansas moving up to number 5.  Illinois has fallen out of the top 25.  

As exciting as this is for the Tigers, it just means every team they play will be bringing their A game.  

But for now, Mizzou Rah.  The entire list of top 25 teams is here.

The year of the dragon

Today is the start of the Chinese New Year with 2012 designated as the Year of the Dragon.  This is the only year in the cycle which uses a mythical creature instead of an actual animal.  Last year was the year of the Rabbit.  

To the Chinese the dragon is a symbol of royalty, the bringer of wealth, wisdom, courage and power.  For this reason many couples are doing their best to have a child born this year.  China's birth rate looks to rise enormously in 2012 and the country's officials are hoping this happens in order to offset what has been a huge decline in births.  

Odd, this.   This is a country which back in 1979 decreed that there could be only one child per family and now is hoping for a baby boom.  The worse part of the one child rule was that so many female babies were killed at birth or aborted because sons were considered more worthy which led to a shortage of women for men to marry and have children with.  

This leads to a lesson for our country.  We're beginning to see a trend toward sex selection, aborting the sex you do not want.  Learn from China that this plan does not end well.  

39 years of Roe v Wade.  54 million babies eliminated in the U.S.  

The Chinese New Year leads us down many paths.