The RAnts of RA

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.

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!

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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In a former life I led California homeschoolers in the march for freedom. A group of us diligently fought restrictive legislation that affected Homeschooling or homeschoolers in general.

As you can imagine, we gained quite an education on how our system of government works. I know lots of tid-bits of seemingly useless information but useless is an interesting word because surely everything has worth to someone or else it wouldn’t exist, right?

For instance…did you know that…

• Each legislator has staff members who are paid out of taxpayer dollars to clip all newspaper clippings, magazine articles, articles both online and in print. Can’t they do their own scrap booking on their own time, just like the rest of us?
• How you communicate with your legislator matters a great deal, to him or her. Your letters, faxes and E-mails are assigned a certain weight. Such as one letter represents a 1,000 other individuals, one-fax represents 100 people and an E-mail represents 10 others.

While sending a letter might be good for the economy, sending a fax wastes almost as much paper. However, if you send an E-mail to your legislator, you should fully expect it to go un-read and unanswered, except of course by those annoying auto responders. Don’t you just hate to get those? That really has a way of making one feel important and respected!

If you ask me it demonstrates their lack of respect for those of us who voted them into office.

When the amount of E-mail gets overwhelming, they get dumped. Erased. Unread. If these legislators can pay someone to clip newspaper clippings by gosh they can pay someone to print off the letters, read them and compile a summary of those documents.

Where do these arrogant people get off accepting pay for work they haven’t done. It is our duty as tax paying citizens to participate in our government. Our legislators need to start doing their jobs or they won’t have them for long.

I highly recommend getting to know your local politicians and policymakers. Make sure when they are passing legislation that affects your family that he or she can’t quite get you out of their mind. They need to know that we are counting on them to do the right thing, not the easy thing and certainly not a decision that is good for their political career but bad for everyone else.

Who knows you might discover your own useless tid-bits of information.

Be a part of the solution, get involved today. I’ll be adding more details here soon.

Non-newsworthy 2008 election candidates and their issues.

Watching the network news channels, specifically Fox News and CNN, a viewer would be led to believe there are only two candidates running in the upcoming 2008 Presidential Election: Some black guy named Obama that no ones ever heard of and the infamous Hillary Clinton, feminist champion in the flesh.

On a side-note, why is it that so called “feminist” supporters tend to look so masculine. After all, I can’t think of a soul that would make the mistake of calling Hillary feminine. She will never achieve the imperial air of the illustrious matriarchal figure, Barbara Bush. Now she has the look of a great woman, even if her sons both deserved a few more trips to the woodshed in their earlier years.

At any rate…

Congressman Ron Paul announced his candidacy several weeks ago.

Now this is a guy you can get excited about. He is honest and isn’t afraid to stand-alone as he’s shown it in the past. Patriots across the country were pulling for him last year, when he introduced a bill intent on abolishing the income tax.

Talk about a guy with no fear…just try taking on the IRS sometime.

It’s like David and Goliath, kind of a one-sided battle. Of course David does manage to come out on top once in while, but who wants to be David – and have to fight the battle in the first place?

My point is not that Congressman Ron Paul is in the race but that there are at least 16 other campaigns, which have been announced as of this writing, why aren’t we hearing about them? Is it not news in this country when a man decides to seek public office, let alone the highest office in the country?

When a man — a sitting Congressman isn’t considered news worthy or relevant to this election, voters can assume one of two things: Either certain candidates are subsidizing the news, namely organizations backing women or minorities, or the station is biased toward certain candidates.

If the major news networks want to be seen as “fair and balanced,” they must start telling voters the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Stop making up ignorant news stories about “Hillary” and start reporting real news.

Who knows? Maybe 2008 will be the year that voters finally make up their minds to vote their hearts and minds, instead of voting for “the lesser of two evils.” Evil will always be evil, no matter how you dress it up.

America was never intended to be the two-party system the Congress has created. We, as voters, have a duty and obligation to vote for the best “person,” not the best “party.”

Who’s reaching out to the young people? Have you encouraged a young person or even a senior citizen to get out there and vote? Sometimes they just need a ride or someone to remind them.

Parents, are you discussing politics with your children? Do they understand the voting process? Don’t leave it up to schools or others to educate your child on not only the mechanics of voting but also on discuss your own views and listen to theirs. Take a part in the process. It’s a huge opportunity to talk to friends, family members, neighbors and co-workers.

Some crazy person started a rumor that it is impolite to discuss religion and politics. How will you ever expand your thinking? How will you gain a real education, unless you can calmly and rationally discuss your views?

If you think you can really gain an understanding of the important issues (however they are defined) by reading/watching or listening to the major news outlets, you are missing the boat. You are accepting the lies being told and having all the issues framed for you.

For a true understanding of the process and the issues you must actively participate.

• Attend a local speaking event. Your local college, community organization, or local lobbying groups often host local forums. Call your legislators’ local office and ask for a listing of scheduled events. Many even have weekly roundtable meetings.
• Volunteer for your local candidate by stuffing envelopes, manning the phones, walking a beat or handing out fliers. There are a great many positions that need to be filled in any candidacy.
• Host a political blog, website or e-mail newsletter.
• Contact your candidate; make an appointment to meet with him/her or send an e-mail with your questions and concerns.

One lady just gushed on CNN, “I’m so excited I have so many choices.” Who is she kidding? If CNN doesn’t cover it, it didn’t happen. While they are busy peddling Hillary to us with a shovel, other worthy 2008 candidates are left begging for money so they can purchase enough air time get a foot in the race.

There is something seriously wrong with our system. This is still America isn’t it? Home of the free, land of the brave! Some how that is not the image we are seeing.

I’ll leave you with one word:

VOTE!

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