I Like Food

I like food, I like cooking, I like trying new things. I've blogged about this before.

So, once again I sit down with my notebook of clipped recipies and try to decide what to put on next week's menu. I've been collecting recipies for years, and have a lot of them I have never tried. What shall I go with this time?

Baked pasta with spinach and sausage -- shell pasta with spinach and hot italian sausage in a cheese-heavy alfredo-like sauce

Sausage Ragout - smoked sausage in a sort of Italian stew - Italian green beans, cannellini beans, tomatoes, bell pepper (red and green) and italian spices

Crab and Avocado enchiladas - you cook some of the avocado into the enchiladas

Crab and Asparagus Bread Pudding - what it sounds like - (sounds yummy!)

Those are the four dishes I have never fixed that I am debating. As I think, the bread pudding and the ragout may just be a little too heavy. (I know, I know, Alfedo sauce isn't?) It's still warm out, and I may want to go for dishes that seem less wintery.

I refuse to limit myself only to things I know how to cook. After all, where's the excitement in that?

If it sounded good enough to cut out of a paper or magazine years and years ago, it should still be good enough to cook and eat today.

Pop Corn and Margaritas

Let's admit it, doesn't that sound good?

I'm trying to plan a menu for the week. I'm looking at things I have fixed, asking myself "What sounds good?"

Coq au vin and Cassoulet both sound too heavy for the heat of summer. Seafood-stuffed manicotti? Chicken fried steak? Both are possibilities, although the manicotti IS a lot of work.

What if, instead of buying the manicotti pasta, I make crepes? Haven't done THAT in a good many years. But if I make a full recipe of crepes, then I can put other things in them for another meal---chicken in a light sauce, maybe?

Mac & cheese (actually rigatoni in a fontina sauce with prosciutto and mushrooms)? That has the advantage of tasting even better a day or two later.

I'm making myself hungry. Microwave popcorn and pre-made margarita. I'm set!

So, I open my cook book of main dishes --I place recipes I cut out of magazines and newspapers in a loose-leaf binder-- and there is an estouffade bernaise. I've never made that. Reading through, it looks DELICIOUS!! and also a very WINTER dish. That one will wait.

An EASY chicken cacciatore -- haven't made that in YEARS!! Flag that for a meal!

Looking at fish dishes. Crab and asparagus bread pudding (agin, might be a winter dish) and one called "Pasta with Mushrooms and Scallops" A variation on scampi! Uses cream in the sauce....FLAG THAT!!

Well, I've got my menu started -- Chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and peas; Chicken cacciatore with pasta and a salad; Tuscan steak with creamed spinach (fairly easy, just sounds complicated)(add a tossed salad to this too); Pasta with mushrooms and scallops (and a salad); I may just add in Burritos for two reasons - 1. they're EASY.
2. George LOVES them.

And if I golf Tuesday, and George and I golf Friday, those two nights I don't have to fix dinner!

OK, who is coming over which nights for dinner??

A Silent Solution?

I came across an article that appeared in the New Your Times on July 9, 2010. It was written by Julia Preston, and reports on what she calls "Silent Raids" by immigration. Her article indicates that these raids are carried out against large employers who are in industries where hiring illegal workers is frequently a regular practice.

The raids are not carried out in the traditional manner. Rather than rounding up and removing employees, the immigration agent inspects the I-9's the employees fill out and the employers maintain. By auditing the records, the agents can determine which employees are not in this country legally. The employer then fires the illegal workers.

The illegal workers are not deported. HOWEVER, they are very unlikely to find work with any large employer in that particular industry.

Under the traditional scenario, a large group of agents would have rounded up all of the illegal workers and (eventually) returned them to Mexico. This new method uses only one agent to audit the employer's records. Under this new version, the illegal parties are not forcibly deported. The cost savings to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are large.

And the worker who is in this country illegally, who can no longer find work in the industry they have been working in, and possibly cannot find ANY job? He does not qualify for unemployment, or for welfare. He may very well choose to re-partiate himself back to his country of origen.

The article was picked up by various news services and portions of it were repeated in national news outlets during the next two or three days. However, no further "in-depth" coverage was done.

Simple searches show that there HAS been a major change in immigration law. Or rather, there has been a major change in penalties for hiring illegal immigrants.

It appears that perhaps the current administration has implemented a "silent solution" to the immigration crises. By examining the payrolls of the large employers, by fining the employers and forcing them to fire the illegal employees, it appears that a program is underway to make jobs less plentiful for the illegal immigrant -- whether he is from Mexico, Poland, or China.

Secure Our Borders

In the on-going discussion of immigration policy, there has been a call to "secure our borders" What, exactly does this mean?

My home is secure. No one can peaceably enter without my consent. I am secure because I have walls and locks (and an alarm system)

So, is that what is meant by a "secure" border? Secure, because no one can enter without the consent of the country? Just how would the US go about securing our borders?

The most common concept appears to be a fence, running the length of the border with sensors and cameras and such to prevent anyone from entering without consent.

There are historic models that can be examined for efficacy. Hadrians Wall was built to secure the Romans from the maruading Scots. The Great Wall of China was built to secure the empire from the outside armies. In the 20th Century, the Berlin Wall was built, not to secure East Berlin but to prevent the citizens of East Berlin from emigrating to the West.

All three of these "Border Security" events failed in their purpose.

Why would one here be any better?

The Berlin wall appears to be the closest approximation to what is needed here. Are we willing to pay for a barier of ths magnitude? Are we eager to create "Dead zones" of land mines along our Southern border? Who will we hire, train and ORDER to shoot to kill people attempting to cross into our territory?

What do you REALLY mean by "Border Securtiy" and what are you willing to pay?

It seems a bit disingenous to call for a delay in discussing an over-haul of immigration until we "secure our borders" when we are not willing to either expend the necessary monies to build a barrier or to engage in the security behavior that would make such a barrier secure.

Let me re-phrase that last remark: Are we absolutely willing to post soldiers with "Shoot to kill" orders along our border?

A Less Modest Proposition

Would it work? My prior blog "A Modest Proposal" gave a suggestion for how to absolutely STOP illegal immigration into this country: CRIMINALIZE HIRING ILLEGALS

So, I wondered, what would be the result of such an endeavor?

One of the frequent excuses heard for hiring illegals is "Legals won't do the work. If we had to pay full wages and provide benefits, our prices would have to go up and no-one would buy our product and we would go out of business."

Really?

Think it through.

If employers had to pay better wages and offer benefits, and there were no illegals to take the jobs, persons on welfare or otherwise unemployed might well take those jobs. This reduces the Foodstamp roll, reduces the unemployment rolls, and with the new health care insurance, reduces the Medicare rolls.

If there are no illegal aliens here taking jobs for bad pay, it also reduces the number of children in public school receiving free breakfast and lunch, it reduces the strain on the emergency rooms of persons without insurance, and reduces the population of some inner-city and slum areas.

In fact, as I see it, if there were NO illegal aliens here, more Americans could and would find work, putting more money into OUR economy, and leading to sufficient revenues THAT THERE COULD BE LEGITIMATE TAX CUTS BECAUSE MONIES WOULD NO LONGER BE SPENT SUPPORTING ILLEGALS!!

Something to think about.

A Perfect Day

How do you describe a perfect day?

It varies with age, with circumstance, with everything in life that occurrs.

Yesterday, I had a perfect day.

My husband and I picked up a friend and went out to breakfast. Good coffee, good friends and LOTS of good food. I stopped eating before I exploded, but although I do not usually enjoy pre-fetal chickens, my breakfast was excellent.

Then we went to play golf. Cochoti golf course is on the Santa Domingo pueblo. They do not have a casino, the course is about 25 miles off of the interstate, and is almost lost in the hills and canyons.

Yes, it was a very hot day. Yes, I played as poorly as always (2 bogies - we WON'T talk about the rest)

But the course is beautiful. The setting is beautiful, and we had a WONDERFUL time.

Afterwards, coming home, we stopped in Albuquerque for dinner. The resturant we choose happens to have a jazz band that plays on Tuesday nights. GREAT food, good music, good friends.

It was a perfect day.

How to define a perfect day at this age?

A perfect day is when you drop your friend off and DON'T heave a sigh of relief. Instead, you say:

What a Perfect Day!

Petty people get their kicks from making others cry

Two things have crossed my radar recently.

The first was an on-line article (msn.com? I really don't recall) about fear in the workplace. There was a description of a fear-dominated workplace, where people are afraid to express their hones opinions, afraid to offer suggetions, even afraid to speak with any openess to their co-workers for fear that their good ideas would be stolen and their gripes would be reported to the higher-ups. One of the points I totally focused on was about how information is diseminated in a fear-oriented workplace. It re-inforced a point I realized in my career: knowledge is power. Some managers believe that knowledge shared is power diminished, others believe that knowledge shared is knowledge enhanced via feed-back. I worked under managers in both camps. I have to admit, I prefered the knowledge-shared, fear-diminished workplace.

The second was a booklet about trust and communication in the workplace. It made a LOT of points that I wish I had been aware of when I was working. A HUGE facet of trust IS communication. They gave examples of meetings where everyone walked out feeling (very justifiably) that they understood their role in the situation when NONE of them knew what they were expected to do. For example-- your boss walks by your office and says; "We're having a problem with X" Does that mean that YOU are expected to resolve the problem? Does that mean that you will not receive what you need from X when you need it and need to go with an alternative plan? Is X about to be replaced by Y? Clearly, a huge part of trust IS communication.

I wish I had read these two items 25 years ago, when I encountered my first truely bad manager.

Now, I can look back and say: I wish I had spoken up in an appropriate manner. I didn't speak up. I thought that if I spoke up, things would become even worse. Maybe they would have. However, if I had know HOW to make my points, maybe some managers might have realized what they were doing was not right.

Oh, yes, my title of this post? Petty people do not just exist in the workplace. They exist in social situations as well. People who have NEVER been important take joy (or at least satisfaction) in tormenting people in social situations as well.