Salt. Tobacco. Toilets. Guns. Soda. Light bulbs. And now….Macaroni and Cheese??

Don’t these people ever sleep?

Even as Mayor Bloomberg’s attempted Soda ban was failing in court, a new Nanny-ish attempt at rescinding some of our most simple pleasures is in the news: Mac & Cheese.

Don’t let its innocent looks fool you: it’s a little, blue Box O’ Death.

“Weapon of Mac Destruction”

From the Metro.us:

Vani Hari and Lisa Leake launched a Change.org petition on Tuesday, which has already collected more than 50,000 signatures, calling on Kraft Foods to remove artificial dyes Yellow #5 and Yellow #6 from Macaroni and Cheese products.

Food Freaks

One of the very first posts we ever did here concerned folks who take their appreciation for cuisine to a level to which I simply can’t relate.

I mention it because I recently was privy to a conversation where two such people were complaining to each other about the lack of locally available Arame (it goes on a salad, I guess?) and then began trading superlatives over the palatability of something called Bottarga (no clue…). When one of them began to discuss how Haggis was literally wrecking their marriage, I left the room.

Hey, I’m a simple guy with simple tastes. If food does it for you, knock yourself out. It’s only when it starts to ruin other people’s lives that I have to draw the line.

Which is what made me think of this post from last April. And so, here it is:

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Let’s get it straight who I’m talking about first. Not “foodies”: Food FREAKS. Cause I’m definitely not referring to your normal, everyday person who just likes food, or really good food, …or even kinda weird food (e.g. my Bottarga aficionados above).

I couldn’t care less if somebody DVR’s the Food Network during the day, or if their kitchen looks like it’s ready to handle tonight’s dinner crowd at the Four Seasons.

NOT my kitchen (…just in case you were wonderin’...)

No such thing as a Free Lunch

Saw this initially over at That Mr. G Guy’s Blog, and almost didn’t believe it. Even as jaded as I am, I’m still kinda shocked once in a while, when something just seems ludicrous.

And this is one of those times.

From NBCPhiladelphia.com:

A local lunch lady says she may no longer be able to serve free food to her community due to a law in her town.

For weeks, Angela Prattis has run a free lunch program in the Toby Farms community of Chester Township. As many as 60 children a day receive a free sandwich, fruit and milk during the summer. The program is funded by the state department of education and administered by the archdiocese of Philadelphia which drops off the boxed lunches daily.

Prattis tells NBC10 she was just put on notice by the township however and received a letter telling her that she needs a variance to run the program in the residential area.

“It’s a letter stating, ‘shut it down or face a $600 fine,’” said Prattis.

“Apparently the township has said there was one more hurdle that she had to jump from their point of view,” said Anne Ayella of the Archdiocese. “But from our point of view she’s done everything right.”

…..

NBC10 spoke with Bill Pisarek, the Chester Township business manager, to find out what exactly she’s in violation of.

“Basically the property is in an R3 residential zone,” said Pisarek.

According to the town, Prattis is zoned residential and therefore needs a variance to offer free lunches. Pisarek told NBC10 she can apply for a variance. It costs $1,000 just to apply however.

“We’re not here to go after her, to hurt her, to take money from her or to prevent her from feeding kids that need the food,” said Pisarek.

Of course they’re not there to take her money or prevent her from feeding kids….which is why they threatened her with the fines and to shut her down. They’re just trying to help her.

Yeah.

Remember the article from yesterday, where the neighbors of the lady in Virginia showed up with pitchforks to illustrate their “displeasure” with the local government’s arbitrary rules? I’m wondering if we need to send some pitchforks over to Philly.

Here’s just a little bit more, this time from Mr. G’s post:

“You have houses here, the roofs are falling in, and they could be focused on a lot of more serious issues than me feeding children,” (Prattis) said.

Chester Township, which has a per capita income of $19,000 a year, says Prattis lives in a residential zone, hence handing out food to children is not allowed. The township says she needs to go before a zoning board to ask for a variance, which would cost her up to $1,000 in administrative fees.

“I don’t think it’s my responsibility to go to her to say, ‘why don’t you come to talk to me to see if there’s something that we can do to help your program,’” William Pisarek, the Chester Township business manager, said.

Back a couple hundred years ago, I may have agreed with Mr. Pisarek. Once, when laws were simple, ignorance of the law was not an excuse for not adhering to the law. But now? It’s absolutely Mr. Pisarek’s responsibility to contact Angela Prattis. Even the archdiocese thinks she is in compliance. Let’s face it: with the Labyrinthian zoning laws, the layer upon layer of permits, and all the blankety-blank fees (which only serve to prevent anyone from doing anything at anytime without the government’s imprimatur), EVERYONE is ignorant of most of the laws on the books, including most of the politicians.

However, I have an additional problem with this. At the beginning of the article, did you happen to notice who “funds” this program? That’s right, boys and girls: it’s funded by the “state department of education”, which means, by US. Now I’m not saying that this is a bad program; far from it. But look at the issue: one level of government “funds” the program (with taxes), it takes its share (always), then lets the archdiocese administer it. I’m sure the archdiocese has some administrative costs as well. Then, with the remaining money they buy food for the poor….except that the folks like Angela Prattis then have to pay MORE taxes/fees/dues for the privilege of doing something which she ALREADY PAID FOR WITH HER TAXES once.

It’s times like this when I realize (for about the gazillionth time) that our government looks at us like a farmer does a cow, …minus the affection and pride, of course.

What I saw last night at Chick-fil-A….

Just a brief follow-up to yesterday’s posts.

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I took Mrs. TurnRight and the two little Turns out to Chick-fil-A last night.

Three words:

• De,
• Li,
• Cious!

Additionally, what I saw there was: a spotlessly clean restaurant. GREAT food. And above all there were 4 of the nicest, most pleasant servers at a fast food place you could imagine. Not painted-on smiles, either: these were 100% genuine. The four girls working the counter loved being there, and took obvious pride in what they were doing: working for an independently-owned franchise that clearly treats them well.

There’s no need to rehash what we discussed yesterday. The Left’s faux outrage has been shown to be just as petty and contrived as one might suspect. What’s needed now is action, not words.

If you have an opportunity to visit a franchise near you, I’d urge you to do so. There is a planned Chick-fil-A “BuyCott” scheduled for next Wednesday, August 1st. Feel free to go then, but why wait? Go today, or go this weekend.

Just go.

In the business world, success is measured in dollars. We can each help fight this modern-day tarring & feathering with our cash, ….and get a great meal in the process.

Food Stamp fraud & abuse: “Business as Usual”

You can be forgiven if the Senate vote on S.3240 didn’t actually register on your consciousness. It made a splash in the news like a pebble does in the Atlantic: none.

For those of you unfamiliar with what the bill covers, we discussed it here a short time ago. And from the sounds of it, Senator Ron Johnson read our post.

Johnson came out with an extremely blunt assessment of the Senate vote last week, which sums it up perfectly:

“The 2012 Food Stamp bill – more commonly known as the ‘2012 Farm Bill’ – will spend about $995 billion over the next ten years.  Of that nearly $1 trillion, 78% ($772 billion) will be spent on Food Stamps.

“During debate on the Senate floor, I made a Motion to Recommit the bill back to committee with the simple instruction to split it into two separate pieces of legislation – a Food Stamp Bill and a Farm Bill. That motion was defeated by a vote of 40-59. Why are these measures combined? The answer is simple – to keep much of the legislation out of the light of day and to make spending $1 trillion far easier.

“This is business as usual here in our nation’s capital, and it is bankrupting America.”

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which is the fancy new name for the Food Stamp program, has doubled in under four years. Yet no one in government wants to really fix it, and risk looking like the bad guy. “Why do you want to starve poor people?” their critics will say.  But when we look at the ways in which it is being abused, we really don’t have much choice.

The first thing to do is highlight the black market which has been created with the lax/non-existent oversight of the Food Stamp cards themselves. Just look at this quote from the official Government website on the replacement of “lost” cards:

FNS (Food and Nutrition Service) proposes to amend regulations in order to provide States with options when clients request an excessive number of EBT card replacements. States would be able to withhold a replacement card until the client makes contact by phone or in-person with the State agency and provides an explanation for the excessive EBT card requests.

The State agency would need to determine what it considers to be excessive, but the threshold may not be less than four card replacements requested within 12 months prior to the request; unless the State agency has sufficient, additional evidence indicating potential misuse that warrants noticing the client sooner than the fourth card request. These might be individuals about whom the State agency has gathered other evidence of suspected fraudulent activity. In these circumstances, the State agency may require the client to provide an explanation by phone or in person before the fifth card request……..

Whoa, whoa, ….those sure are some Draconian rules! Wow, you mean that I can “lose” my card 4 times in a year, but then I may have to “explain” before I get my 5th card? You may as well put up a billboard for the crooks: ‘Please, take the cards and sell ‘em for cash, drugs or booze. We don’t mind. Really.’

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You can also see the focus of the Food Stamp bureaucrats when you look at who they are looking to hire. Are they hiring more fraud investigators? Bean-counters to lower the amount of money spent, maybe? Nope, just the opposite.

Here’s a post directly from the fns.usda.gov/snap/outreach website (emphasis mine):

The purpose of outreach grants is to implement and learn more about effective strategies to inform and educate potentially eligible low-income people, who are not currently participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), about the nutrition benefits of the program, eligibility rules, and how to apply.

State and local food stamp offices and for-profit organizations are not eligible for these grants. Applicants receive up to $75,000 per grant for outreach activities lasting for 1 to 2 years, depending on the project.

Yes, you read that right: $75,000 to come up with ways to bring even more people onto the government dole, and to get them hooked on just a little bit of “help” from Big Daddy.

Because he cares, doncha’ know.

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Senator Johnson’s suggestion of splitting the bills makes perfect sense, but an even better way to deal with this would be to get it out of the hands of Federal Government altogether. Not coincidently, Johnson’s fellow Wisconsin native Paul Ryan has been suggesting that food stamps be handled by block grants to the STATES. It has been proven time after time: the closer you get the government to the governed, the better and more efficient it is for everyone. Such a loss of power & control is something the Federal Government, and this administration in particular, is not anxious to lose…..which is a sure indicator that it’s probably a great idea.

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The bill goes to the House this week. If this topic bothers you even a little bit, you may consider dropping an email to your Representative. And if this somehow doesn’t bother you, I’ll leave you with this little graphic, showing just how much Food Stamp spending has gone up, vs. other sections of the Federal Budget.

Like Johnson said: “This is business as usual here in our nation’s capital, and it is bankrupting America“.

Comedy CLASSIC – Louie Anderson on the Tonight Show

Louie Anderson just makes me laugh.

His routines were (usually) totally clean, and his kid’s show “Life With Louie” was great. Still can’t understand why they don’t they release it on DVD. It won two Emmy’s, for Pete’s sake!

Anyway, this stand-up routine is from the Carson show around Thanksgiving 1987….and it’s just as funny now as it was then. Since it is Anderson, you might guess that you’ll hear about his family, his parents, and food.

And you’d be right.

Enjoy.

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What’s next? A ticket for drinking coffee?

I thought that Indiana was a better-than-your-average-nanny state.  I mean, we’re in flyover country (Illinois doesn’t count, because they have Chicago and it’s on a large body of water).  We’re not like New York, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco.  But now a statewide smoking ban is going into effect on July 1st.  And in the same editorial which mentions that, our local conservative newspaper, the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, gave fair warning of another intrusive overstep which may be in the works.

According to the Greenfield Daily Reporter:

Police across Indiana are calling on lawmakers to beef up a new state law that bars texting-while-driving so that it covers all activities that can distract motorists behind the wheel.

All activities?  Really?  I’ve seen a lot of strange things, especially out in LA-LA land, where folks commute an hour or more each way.

For instance, I’ve seen:

Welfare Reform…a tiny first step

This is a follow up to my post awhile back in which I lamented that welfare reform is difficult because it will negatively affect a class of people who have no say in the matter and who are not at fault:  namely, the children.

Once again, a mundane event spurs me to think about the Big Picture…my younger son and I were shopping at our local supermarket yesterday.  He’s been in the workforce some years now, buys much of his own food and is more aware than he used to be.  He was there to buy sweet corn for a pot luck that evening.  It was a good sale: 6 ears for $1.   I’m grateful that our grocery stores here have begun providing a place for shucking the corn  and disposing of the husks, right there in the produce aisle, so that one can take home ready-to-cook sweet corn.   Adam and I were husking his dozen ears when an older woman walked up.  She looked at the sign, looked at the corn, muttered something about, “Oh, you have to clean it yourself.  I’m not gonna do that.”  Then she picked up a shrink-wrapped package of already cleaned ears–which were two and a half times more expensive–and walked away.

Problem? Inconvenience? (Or Just Dog Puke?)

Problem?  Or inconvenience?  My husband growled that the dog had puked on the rug (again).  I mildly pointed out that this was not a “problem” in the grand scheme of things…only an inconvenience.  He didn’t take that very well.  But he and the baby went for a walk.

And I started thinking: the “problem vs. inconvenience” dichotomy is not my original idea.  Some of you will recognize it as belonging to a wise little story from Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten).

And there is truth in it.

But today it seems as if the inconveniences proliferate to the point where we are overwhelmed, and we have no time and energy left to think about–much less deal with–the big PROBLEMS out there, like the escalating national debt and the taming of the welfare state.

Soda is NOT the enemy

Courtesy of FOX13NOW.com:

KAYSVILLE — Davis High School has been fined $15,000 after they were caught selling soda pop during lunch hour, which is a violation of federal law.

The federally mandated law prohibits the sale of carbonated beverages after lunch is served. The program is an effort to help fight childhood obesity and to have young students make better food choices. 

Had no idea this was a federal law now, but, hey… at least this makes it impossible for the kids to buy soda at the school, which was the intent all along, right?

Sucker….

“Before lunch you can come and buy a carbonated beverage. You can take it into the cafeteria and eat your lunch, but you can’t first go buy school lunch then come out in the hallway and buy a drink,” said Davis High Principal Dee Burton.

Principal Burton said he does not understand the law with rules that seem to be contradictory.

“We can sell a Snickers bar, but can’t sell licorice. We can’t sell Swedish Fish, we can’t sell Starburst, we can’t sell Skittles, but we can sell ice cream, we can sell the Snickers bar, Milky Ways, all that stuff,” said Burton.

Sooooo, the machines are still there, but you just have to reconfigure in which order you buy your lunch and your soda?  They sell some candy, but not other kinds of candy? And this made sense…to WHOM, exactly? How does this law help anything?

———————-

Personally, I was never a fan of the soda machines in schools. Kids are there to learn, and they really don’t need Zingers and a Mountain Dew to do so. If kids want snacks, and are being asked to pay for them anyway, they can bring them to school themselves. Personal responsibility and all that….

And if you’re wondering why the schools DON’T just get rid of the machines, the answer is simple. As Joe Biden might say, it’s a four-letter word: M-O-N-E-Y.

Schools sign big, multi-year contracts with snack vendors and drink companies, which can bring in thousands, tens of thousands or even millions of dollars to a school and/or school district. Thus, the conflict between the incessantly droning ”snacks are bad” rhetoric and the hypocrisy in keeping the machines on site. It results in the liberal illogic of making the kids alter their route in order to get their sodas, and yet the food police in the schools will still be able to perform their public hand-wringing about the evils of sodas & snacks, ……..all the while continuing to receive $$$$$ from their machines which sell sodas and snacks.

So, what to do? Do we ban the sodas from schools? Do we basically do to Coke and Pepsi what we’ve already  done to Joe Camel?

———————-

Honestly, I don’t think that’s the problem. The problem is that schools feel the need to pimp themselves out to whatever will bring in more cash, so they can afford to do all the programs that need funding: sports, band, etc.,…

Much as our federal spending has ballooned out of control, so too has our spending on education. We now spend about 5x more per child for public school education than we did back in the early 1960s, and I dare someone to tell me that we are putting out a better educated student. We’re spending over $10,000/child, but how much of it is football, and baseball, and band, or even the 14th edition English book, when the 13th edition was just dandy, thank you? Lord knows that I loved music and sports, and the newest books, and everything else. But when you end up having to try to contort your logic to simultaneously vilify & allow sodas on campus, all because the schools need the money so badly to pay for all these promises that you couldn’t otherwise afford, perhaps you’ve lost sight of your priorities just a wee bit.

It is the same trap where we find our nation today with federal entitlement spending. No one wants to cut anything, since it’s all wonderfully important, and so much of what we do is “good”, and people really like it, and …..oh, spare me.     WE. ARE. BROKE. Maybe it’s time to scale things back a bit, eh? And maybe concentrate on getting the economy going again? Hmmm?

Here’s a little something that I would ask the big-brained folks in charge to try to keep in mind when they are spending our tax dollars:

**More government is not Better government, and More spending on education doesn’t mean a Better Education.**

Class dismissed.

Put WHO in the zoo?

[Note:  Although "two heads are better than one," my brother has been ably holding down the fort "single-headedly" for the past two weeks.  I'm hoping to have more of a presence here in future.  Today's post is an apt illustration of the fact that fodder for blogs can be found anywhere...]

One of my granddaughter Lucy’s favorite books is Put Me In the Zoo, the story of a fantastical creature with large spots which change shape and color.  He visits the zoo, sees the animals being groomed and fed and generally pampered, and wonders why he can’t live there, too.

Lucy loves animals and I was counting the days last month until our local zoo opening.  We’ve visited at least five times so far…including twice this week.

We are fortunate to live in the same town as the Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo, which has been voted one of the ten best zoos in the country.  With a huge African Journey section, (which includes a herd of giraffes that come to a viewing station where we can actually feed them!); Indonesian Rain Forest (tigers and orangutans, among other delights); Australian Adventure (walk-through aviary and kangaroo areas); and model Indiana Farm, this zoo is not only beautiful but focuses intentionally on educating all its visitors.

Food Name of the Year: ‘Bacon-Wrapped Meatloaf’

It’s Friday. I’m busy and hungry. So picture this:

Bacon.

Wrapped around meatloaf.

Those of you that know me are well aware that I can’t make anything more complicated than coffee, so you’ll be relieved to know that this idea is not mine. It is courtesy of the fantastic blog, ***Rantings of an Amateur Chef***.

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Bacon-Wrapped Meatloaf

Quote from the website: “This recipe is very easy to make and takes no time at all. Baking on a broiler pan instead of in a loaf pan speeds up the baking, and gives the bacon crust a great crisp. I make it into two smaller loaves, and freeze one after baking for when I need a quick prep meal another night. If you have a big family, scrap that idea, as you might not even have leftovers.”

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Click on the link for this recipe.

For the record, I will be begging Mrs. TurnRight to make this for the family over the next few days……………..

My thanks to ***Rantings of an Amateur Chef***, and be sure to browse all of their offerings while you’re there.