Welcome to BBQ season!
What would happen if, instead of stuffing a sausage casing with meat (or meat substitute), you stuffed it with cupcake batter? I had to try!
I baked them and ended up with chocolate cupcake sausage – Cupcakewurst.
How to Make Cupcakewurst
It took a lot of experimentation to conquer Cupcakewurst. I had hoped to be able to cook the Cupcakewurst entirely on the grill, but I found that the direct heat of the grill was more than the poor sausages could handle – they kept exploding and meeting their demise on the coals. I had the same problem in the oven: when I cooked the Cupcakewurst at the standard cupcake baking temperature of 350 F, they kept bursting open. I finally found the sweet spot of baking at 325 F and only filling the casings halfway. Even so, some of the casings still got small holes in them during baking. At 325 F, however, the cake cooked enough before the casings broke that only a small amount of batter oozed out through the holes. The small mess could easily be wiped up and the sausages were all usable.
This was my first time working with sausage casing and I found it to be really fun! It’s a cross between a giant slippery noodle and a condom. It’s stretchy and (comments above about it popping in the oven aside) fairly hard to accidentally break.
Now go and get the recipe, see more pictures of this new creation, only HERE.
###
Again, our government has people who have no damn sense at all! Just want to screw us over any way they can find to do so.
Feds threaten to disrupt summer concerts
Lawmakers are scrambling to save the summer concert season from federal agents poised to seize the instruments of rock and country stars because the wood used to make them may have been illegally harvested–and without their knowledge.
“I don’t want the musicians from Nashville who are flying to Canada to perform this summer to worry about the government seizing their guitars,” said Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander.
Alexander, whose state is home to famed Gibson Guitars used by bands and stars like Van Halen, the Allman Brothers, Sheryl Crow, Ted Nugent and Paul McCartney, said Friday that he and Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden are working to protect the artists, their instruments and makers and eventually change the law governing illegal wood harvesting.
“Senator Wyden and I are going to write the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service a letter in the next couple of weeks and try to make it clear that wood harvested before 2008 to make musical instruments can’t be seized by the federal government,” Alexander said in a statement. “The Justice Department and Fish and Wildlife have said they have no intention of doing that, but Sen. Wyden and I are going to make it absolutely clear. We hope to get a clear ruling within a few weeks, and if we can’t get a clear ruling, we’ll introduce legislation to change the Lacey Act.”
For more go HERE.
###
Wife made two batches of vanilla ice cream! Nothing beats home made ice cream! Having a big container right now, with lots of Hershey syrup and fresh cut strawberries. Damn delicious I tell you!
###
Liberal nutcase of a governor! The governor of California wants to raise taxes and increase spending to eliminate the deficit of the state! The man is as crazy as all those idiots who voted him into office, again.
California Gov. Jerry Brown revealed his revised plan Monday to close the state’s $16 billion budget deficit by slashing $8.3 billion in government spending and imposing temporary tax increases. His new proposal increases cuts $4.1 billion from the January proposal.
Brown also proposed a 16 percent increase in funding for education, subject to voter approval, and funding for local governments implementing public safety realignments. The proposal would also create a permanent funding structure to give those local governments a reliable funding source in the future.
Brown plans to put an initiative on the November ballot to increase money for schools and give constitutional protection for public safety funding. The initiative will increase income taxes for top earners by three percent for seven years and increase the sales tax by one quarter of one percent for four years.
more here
###
How come a minor increase in taxes cost us $200, yet a substantial decrease in taxes saves us 20 cents?
###
An animal rights group that includes some doctors, concerned with the weight of the nation, is taking its fight to the White House.
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a non-profit group long affiliated with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is asking the White House to file an “executive order banning staged photo opportunities that show the president, the first family, the vice president, and members of the president’s cabinet eating unhealthy foods—including processed meats—that can cause cancer and obesity,” it said in a press release.
“The White House would never set up a photo op showing the president buying cigarettes, so why is it okay to show him eating a hot dog?” PCRM nutrition education director Susan Levin said in the release.
The petition says photo-ops “routinely conflict with health messages and often present in a favorable light the foods that have been shown to contribute most strongly to cancer, obesity, and premature mortality.”
PCRM frequently emerges with public complaints about non-vegetarian food in schools, hospitals, airports and spots arenas. The group recently made a splash with billboards claiming hot dogs cause — in its words — “butt cancer.”
Political candidates and rubber-chicken dinners have always gone hand-in-hand. So Americans have been snapping photos of politicians eating since the first camera hit the Sears catalog. The Ames, Iowa straw poll was a breeding ground for presidential shutterburg, as images surfaced of Republican candidates eating everything from hot dogs to fried butter.
Even Joe Biden was recently spotted on the campaign trail passing out ice cream cones at a Dairy Queen in Ohio.
The Obama administration has not shied away from junk food, despite the first lady’s focus on healthy eating. But Michelle Obama has been criticized, too, for her restaurant choices as she continues her national campaign against childhood obesity. An online petition on Change.org asks her to “stop eating unhealthy foods publicly.” Many signers say her meal choices are “hypocritical.”
read more
###
The Face of Genocidal Eco-Fascism
I am not exaggerating.
This is Finnish writer Pentti Linkola — a man who demands that the human population reduce its size to around 500 million and abandon modern technology and the pursuit of economic growth — in his own words.
He likens Earth today to an overflowing lifeboat:
Go and read about this nut (geesh, aint all liberals nuts?) HERE.
###
Rep. Shimkus exposes partisan hack writing reports for non-partisan CBO office
NOW’s Day of Protest Against Rush Limbaugh a Huge Triumph: Seven Women Participate
Grievance Tour Continues: Mother of Trayvon Martin™ to speak at Baltimore mega-church Sunday
###
Gee…wonder what tipped him off to this fact? Al qaeda flags waving all over the place?
The Secretary General of the United Nations says he believes al-Qaeda is responsible for two massive bombs that killed 55 people in Damascus last week. Ban Ki-moon offered no evidence for the claim, but says that given the size and method of the attacks that they “must be behind it.”
The attack on May 10 was the deadliest bombing to take place in Syria since the uprising began last year. Bashar al-Assad’s regime has long blamed “foreign terrorists” for stirring up a fake revolution, but the comments of the Secretary General would seem to validate their public line.
The United States and Russia have also suspected that terrorists may be entering the country in an attempt to hijack the revolution and take advantage of the chaos, rather than support the protesters. Both sides blamed the other last week’s bombings, but there is a growing possibility that a third party is now getting involved.
However, the United Nations itself is losing credibility in the country and taking heat for its inability to halt any of the violence, despite declaring a cease-fire and sending hundreds of observers to monitor the situation.
Student protesters marched in the city of Aleppo earlier this week and were attacked by pro-government forces in full view of the observers. A similar incident happened when Syrian troops fired on a funeral procession and even the U.N. vehicles have been attacked. This video captured a small bomb going off as protesters gathered around an U.N. convoy
Keep reading…
###
Funny, our secular liberals support this guy!
(Egypt Independent) — Muslim preacher Safwat Hegazy, who has been campaigning for the Muslim Brotherhood’s presidential candidate, Mohamed Morsy, said it is against religion to elect a presidential candidate who wants to establish a state based on liberalism, secularism, communism or socialism.
During Friday prayers in Nagda Mosque in Nagaa Hammadi, Qena, Hegazy called on people not to elect a candidate who participated in the injustice and the corruption of the former regime or who even remained silent watching the injustice and corruption of Hosni Mubarak and his entourage.
Hegazy said voters should choose the candidate who would apply Sharia and “who would be living in Cairo, but would tremble in fear [of God] if asked about a hungry person in Nag Hammadi.”
He described the elections as a testimony before God and a great responsibility, and said: “If you choose a man who corrupted the country, you will be responsible with him for his corruption and will be held accountable with him [before God]. But if you choose a man who abides by the law of God and establishes justice, you will be rewarded with him. Everyone will be held accountable [by God] if the next president is ill-chosen, and we should not blame but ourselves.”
Hegazy stressed that participating in the elections is a religious duty and that not voting or invalidating one’s vote is against religion. He added that buying votes is a “great sin.”
“We want a president who we can tell, ‘Fear God and His law and judge according to His Book.’ We want a president who will free Palestine and Jerusalem to tell the world that the law of God has returned in Egypt,” he said.
###
You know what? I am with these nurses! I have always believed that the easiest way to end all speculation in markets (stocks, bonds, commodities, hedging, derivatives, etc.) is to take all transactions. Sell stock? Pay a tax! Buy stock? Pay a tax! Of course, a 3 cent or a 50 cent is less than what I would go for. I would like to see a 20% tax (with a minimum of ten bucks) on each and every financial transaction. Heck, done right? The USA could erase the deficit and and have scads of money left over to put everyone not working (including those on welfare and ss disability) to work fixing our roads, bridges, water works, and so forth.
Nurses (yes, nurses) lead charge for Wall Street ‘sin’ tax
A coalition of nurses’ unions is calling for a “Robin Hood” tax on Wall Street, which they say could generate up to $350 billion a year, in the first major protest ahead of this weekend’s NATO summit in Chicago.
Their pitch: impose a tax of 50 cents on every $100 of trades of stocks, bonds, dividends and other financial transactions, which are not currently taxed. The U.S. would join more than a dozen other nations that already have a financial transaction tax, according to National Nurses United (NNU).
“I’ve been asked many, many times … ‘What are you doing here as nurses? … What do you have to do with the economy?’” Karen Higgins, a registered nurse and co-president of NNU, said to the crowd in Chicago’s Daley Plaza.
“We’re watching this every day. We’re watching patients suffer,” she said, noting that nurses were seeing people without insurance or others who can’t afford their co-pays, as well as a spike in the number of children with adult diseases due to eating poorly because their parents can’t afford healthy food. “This is serious and in some cases it is actually deadly.”
Storify: Scenes from the NATO summit protests
“We know the solution .. we are watching and seeing Wall Street throwing our money away as we see people suffer and die. It will not continue,” she said. “We pay sales tax. It is time for Wall Street to start paying back what they owe the rest of the country and they need to pay sales tax.”
The nurses’ call echoes last fall’s outcry by the Occupy Wall Street protesters over income equality, corruption and corporate greed. Proceeds from the Wall Street tax would support social services, education and healthcare.
The financial transaction tax is not a new concept. The U.S. had one from 1914 to 1966, and several politicians called for another one after the Wall Street crash in 1987, National Nurses United said.
Supporters include Nobel Laureate economists Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist, and Joseph Stiglitz, the former World Bank chief economist — both of whom have spoken out in favor of such a tax in the past.
A bill introduced last November by two U.S. Democratic lawmakers, Sen. Tom Harkin and Rep. Peter DeFazio, calls for a tax of 0.03 percent — or 3 cents on every $100 — on most non-consumer financial trading including stocks, bonds and other debts. It would raise more than $43 billion a year, according to DeFazio’s office, which cited analysis from Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation.
Read more HERE.
###
About 90 minutes ago, I watered our gardens good and deep. Get those plants, both flowers and veggies, moving on up. And my wife, bless her thinking sometimes, comes out and says to me “throw a rock at that rabbit if you see him”. I said what, why? And she said “because it is waiting for our plants to get big enough to eat”! Can’t argue with such logic, but still, that rabbit has been around here for a few years and has yet to nibble on our gardens.
