America’s Test Kitchen School Review

I signed up for a trial membership of  The America’s Test Kitchen Cooking School.  I stayed about an hour and tried out two of the lesson plans.  Boy was I disappointed.

...or how to make your cooking look repulsive....

Oh, they have thought of everything.  There was more reading to do than I like.  I have to read stuff all day long and the videos work just fine for me.  Yes, I admit to being lazy. The lessons include:

* IQ Quizzes – These fun quizzes appear at the start of Technique Lessons and In-Depth Course sections and are designed to both gauge your current understanding of the topic and teach you some basics before diving into course material. Detailed feedback is supplied for each response and a summary of your results is supplied at the end.
* Concept Reviews – These are interactive quizzes that test how much information you’ve learned. Do you understand the key concepts that will ensure good results in the kitchen? You’ll receive detailed feedback as you answer each question and a score at the end.
* Core Technique Videos  – These videos, found in Technique Lessons and In-Depth Courses, are focused on a single important core technique and will help build cooking knowledge. You will learn techniques that apply to thousands of recipes, such as how to sauté chicken or how to make risotto, as well as more specialized techniques, such as how to tie a roast or how to blind-bake a pie shell. Watching these videos will prepare you for the recipe tutorials where you’ll be applying many of these core techniques. Most importantly, these videos review key concepts that will increase your understanding of course material.
* Recipe Tutorials – Recipe tutorials are where the cooking happens. After we introduce a recipe to you and list the required tools and ingredients, you’ll watch Bridget cook in an extensive step-by-step video tutorial and hopefully, cook along with her – that is if you’ve got an ipad or laptop and can bring her into your kitchen.
* Discussions – Class discussion is a key part of your learning experience. Clicking the discussions icon in the upper right-hand corner will allow you to start/or contribute to these at any point in a lesson. As a student and peer, your participation is key. You will add valuable insight by participating in discussions, enriching the learning that takes place, and allowing other students to learn from you. We encourage you to participate in class discussions often!

Recipe

Instructors are available, but that’s extra.

The reason I didn’t stay a member?  I took the tutorial on Eggs.  They had the nerve to say that store bought eggs were just as good as farm fresh eggs.  Excuse me?  I raise farm fresh eggs and nothing could be further from the truth.  They also claim there is no nutritional difference.  Saying it does not make it so, you can see the difference.  I don’t care what they say.  Just crack an egg open.

They are being politically correct and not telling people the truth.  Most store bought eggs come from chickens who are eating GMO’s.  You can’t talk about food and not hit on this subject and pretend it doesn’t exist.  So, I cancelled my free membership, that I had to give a credit card number to get.  It’s so not worth it, when you can get good accurate information for free.

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Surrounded by Soybeans…

I don’t even like to think about those days, but I’m willing to share my story if it helps save even one person from the agony I endured.  My late husband and I dreamed of having a farm.  You know, a little piece of earth that we could pass along to the kids and they could always call home.

English: Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station

Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station

The trouble is, we were flat broke.  No, we were less than flat broke.  Dave was working at a winding shop, he was learning to be a motor winder and he really enjoyed it.  The trouble is it only paid $4.35 an hour, not much.  Not only that but he was paying court-ordered child support of $125.00/mo, so basically he was working to support his children and I was supporting us.

Nevertheless, I knew that if we worked hard and saved our money we could still make it happen.  On the weekends, we couldn’t really afford to do anything, so we would drive around the countryside and talk about our dreams.  We wanted a big house and a yard for the kids to play in.

Motor Winding

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53OA2pUeNq8

One day we found this house, sitting in the middle of a field, empty.  It was pretty big, it had a barn that was made from real logs split in two.  They were massive. We walked around the place. There were no doors, so we went inside, to have a look around.  It was pretty bad — all 32 panes of glass were broken, there was no bathroom, no kitchen, the furnace was about 75 years old.  We didn’t know if it would ever work.

We drove out a couple more times, located the owners and bought the place, with nothing down.

We were on top on the world, and Styrofoam.

We decided to move in right away, so we could start working on it right away.  So, once it had doors and windows (HEAP did it all for free, including insulation.  What a blessing.), we moved in.  We took turns at night stoking the fire, we slept on Styrofoam mats in front of the wood burner.  We ran an electrically cord from the barn to the house. For some strange reason there was power to the barn but not the house.

Our Farm

English: Tomatoes found in the stage before ri...

Tomatoes – still green.

The farm was located outside Toledo, Ohio on the edge of the safety zone for Davis-Besse  Nuclear  Power Plant, so we often had really loud sirens going off.  I could see those towers like they were sitting right in my own backyard.  The farm was surrounded by crops as far as the eye could see.  Life was hard there. I was constantly boiling water on a little two burner stove for baths and cooking.  A neighbor gave us a tub and we converted a closet into a bathroom. We didn’t care that there was a window in it.  We just hung a curtain over it, or in our case a towel.

I’ll never forget our second Thanksgiving in the house.  We had a bunch of people coming and  it was our first big dinner in the house. Dave was supposed to have the hot water hooked up before then.  He finally got it hooked up and installed as people were pulling in the driveway.  It was a Happy Thanksgiving!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDfVBXcQiGY

Raising Animals

We planted a garden and  raised a few pigs — 25 at the peak of things, 300 chickens each year, a couple ducks, a couple lambs, turkeys,  pheasants, a goat and of course the dogs and cats. (We didn’t eat the dogs and cats, but everything else was fair game.)    Things were good, or so we thought.

We had been there a few years without any trouble. The corn fields were a little trouble, because in the fall, when the fields were cut, the mice would come out of the woodwork.  We had a good mouser which  we bought in the house for just such occasions.    I remember the first year they planted soybeans.  I thought it was nice because we could actually see across the fields  whereas the corn was too tall to see over, in the fall.

Then came the crop dusters, and half our garden died.  We managed to save most of the tomatoes and broccoli but the corn: complete  disaster.  That night I broke out in hives, I was  itching  and my lips swelled, my face swelled, my hands swelled.  I was taken to the hospital, put on Prednisone and sent home.

Prednisone – the worst drug on earth!

8/365 -- Prednisone: The Double-Edged Sword

Prednisone: The Double-Edged Sword

I would break out a few days after I quit taking the Prednisone, which would mean another trip to the hospital. It was a  vicious  cycle.  Then I had an allergic reaction to the Prednisone and that started my prescription days.  I was taking so many medications I often didn’t even know what day it was.

I was sick  every day  after that.  I ballooned up to 270 pounds from my normal weight of 135. I could hardly breath, and could barely walk.  We didn’t even give a thought to the spray when we picked our vegetables.  I think that was the year  all my tomatoes were big, juicy,  gorgeous  and GREEN.  We had to pick them or lose them, so we picked them.

I thought, “oh, good Lord we’re going to have fried green tomatoes until the cows come home.”  Fortunately, that was not the case.  I washed each  tomato, adding about 1/2 teaspoon of bleach to a sink of water, rinsed and  dried  them well.  Then I put them back in the basket.  The  tomatoes  on the top, exposed to the air would turn red.  We had fresh tomatoes until February that year.

Drastic Changes Were Needed

If I hadn’t made some drastic changes around that same time there is no doubt in my mind that I would be dead.  I couldn’t walk, I could hard breath, I was so out of breath all the time.  I could not live my life surrounded by soybeans.  I’ll always wonder if the people we bought the house from knew there was a problem and sold the house anyways.  I guess I’ll never know.

Dave had a heart attack, it was there we found out that the headaches he was having was due to aspartame.  At that time, we was drinking three our four 2-liters a day.  He would get terrible headaches.

I was taking Vioxx for my arthritis and had told my doctor about my  heart palpitations before they discovered any problems.  I felt like I was going to have a heart attack, so I quit taking them. A year later they were pulled off the market, people were dying.

I took my health into my  own hands, but it took me ten long years of suffering and pain to recover.  Today, I live in the mountains  and I no longer see the doctors. I care for myself and treat myself with food and things from nature.  Do I live a healthy lifestyle? No, not on your life! But I know how to feel better when I hurt myself.  I avoid GMO when I can and I’m just happy to live my life, surrounded by friends and family and the people I care about.

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Eco-Responsible Wedding Flowers

With summer wedding season around the corner, many couples are deciding to go eco-chic with a green wedding by carefully planning ways to decrease the impact of their celebration on the planet.

Flowering Feijoa

Flowering Feijoa

Did you know that over half of the florists in the U.S. use imported flowers that are sprayed with pesticides and fungicides?

Not only can these chemicals be harmful to your health, they also contaminate waterways and drinking supplies. Using local, seasonal and organic flowers that are never sprayed with toxic chemicals, lowers fuel consumption and is often less costly than ordering exotic species, which must be shipped – an ideal choice for an eco-chic wedding.  

EcoFlowers is the largest online provider of eco-friendly and organic wholesale floral products. All flowers are grown in a manner that is not only environmentally friendly but also provides outstanding life enhancement programs for its farm workers and artisans.

EcoFlowers partners with select flower farms in California, Ecuador and Columbia. All of its wholesale flower farms follow stringent growing practices which are monitored by multiple certification agencies and associations. When you purchase a collection of flowers from EcoFlowers, you are helping to improve the life of a flower farm worker, their family and the local floral community while still planning the wedding of your dreams.

Selection ranges from roses, callas, tulips, gerbs, hyacinths, sunflowers, alstromeria and blue irises. All products are certified eco-friendly.

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