B & B Quiche

5 eggs

1 c. whipping cream

1 c. whole milk

1 t. seasoned salt

1/8 t. cayenne pepper

1/4 t. sugar

1/8 t. nutmeg

8 oz. shredded cheese -- I prefer Swiss

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

I layer 2/3 c. bacon bits on the bottom of a greased quiche pan and a handful of fresh spinach. I also like to add diced red peppers, maybe a little onions, whatever veggies you have around.

Top veggies with shredded cheese.

In a separate bowl, mix all of the listed ingredients, minus shredded cheese. Dump the egg mixture over the layered veggies and cheese.

Put crustless quiche into oven and cook for 15 minutes at 400 degrees. Lower temperature to 345 degrees and cook for 35 more minutes or until quiche reaches desired consistency.

Corn Chowder

I am putting this here just so I can "pin" this recipe on Pinterest. (If you're looking for recipes, you won't find them here regularly. In fact, I almost never post here, and when I do, it's about politics.)

I haven't found this recipe online anywhere. But it's a favorite in

my  actual recipe box, but I have an easier time finding recipes I regularly use on Pinterest. 

This soup is hearty and delicious. The sausage gives it a little kick which is offset by the sweetness of the creamed corn. I like to use spicy sausage, the kind you find in frozen rolls at the grocery store. The recipe that follows makes a ton. It can easily be halved.

This takes a little more than an hour to prepare and cook.

2 lbs. pork sausage
6 medium potatoes, chopped in large chunks
4 celery stalks, chopped 
2 chopped onions
4 cans of creamed corn
2 cups milk
Up to 1/2 cup of water

Brown the sausage and remove it from the pan. Leave as much grease behind as possible. Add a little water -- up to 1/2 cup and add the potatoes, celery and onions to the pot. Cover and let the vegetables steam until they are partially soft. (This will take between 20 and 30 minutes). Add the cans of creamed corn and continue cooking until potatoes are soft. 

15 minutes prior to serving, add the milk and sausage.

So this is awesome

America's Toilet - Detroit

Detroit is a toilet.

It wasn't always. In its heyday, it was one of the hippest, most happenin' places in America.  Motor City was the birthplace of Motown, and of course, the center of America's car universe.

I can't put my finger on the exact moment that the once great city started circling the porcelain bowl, but I can give you a few clues as to why the once great city is a cultural wasteland in which it takes police an hour to respond to emergencies -- in which 2/3 of the homes are abandoned and where the population has dropped from a once booming 1.8 million-ish to a mere 700,000 people. 

Let's talk about those poor 700,000 people for a moment, shall we? I feel them. Truly, I do. The souls remaining in decaying Detroit are there because they didn't have the resources to abandon ship. They're the modern-day equivalent of steerage passengers on the Titantic. They didn't have the means or foresight to abandon the U.S.S. Detroit before the city was underwater, and now they're likely stuck in homes with mortgages that are underwater and no relatives or friends in other parts of the country to grease an escape route for them.

This is truly sad. 

That said, I don't think the rest of America owes the pitiable people in Detroit a darn thing. We've already bailed them out once. See the now-infamous auto bailouts. The country propped up some of Detroit's largest employers -- the auto manufacturers. And it wasn't enough. Detroit is still bankrupt.

I am going to point a few fingers and lay some blame here, because it is deserved: Unions, you did this to Detroit. 

I am saying this as a person who was once a member of a labor union. I was once a Teamster. It's embarrassing to admit, but I had no choice. I worked for a company that was essentially exempt from right-to-work state laws. If I wanted that job, I HAD to give a portion of my salary to the Teamsters. In return, they negotiated for things I didn't want, like dry cleaning, and fought against things I really wanted -- like being able to work part-time.

I was on the bottom rung, making $7 an hour. And when our company came to us and said, we have two choices -- everyone can take a pay cut, or we will start doing layoffs from the bottom of the seniority list -- my fellow Teamsters overwhelmingly voted to start layoffs from the bottom.

I was truly surprised, and apparently, naive. But anyway, that was the beginning of the end -- we were short staffed long before the bottom 10 percent of employees were ceremoniously shown the door. Long story short -- already questionable service crumbled further, and the downward spiral spelled the end for the company.

Would that company still have gone out of business had the employees taken paycuts? We'll never know, but I truly believe that without a union, management could have structured salaries differently with individuals and different work groups and could've started working on making those changes earlier. 

Basically the whole of Detroit is a giant labor union with no flexibility to make changes and adapt. Labor unions are just another nasty layer of bureaucracy run on fear and corruption. I'm not a fan and never will be. Back when I was a Teamster, I believed then and I still believe now, that I can negotiate better for myself than a Union can on my behalf. 

So Detroit's first problem is its industries' love affair with shady labor unions. Those labor unions extend, by the way, to its public employees.

Meanwhile, the city itself has been run by Democrats since 1962. I'm sure Detroit's ails will somehow all be turned around and blamed on George W. Bush, somehow. I don't want to alarm anyone, BUT the problems with Detroit can't be laid at the feet of GWB.  They just can't.

Some of the blame, however, can and should be squarely placed on Detroit's many, many years of Democratic leadership, who spent more and promised more than the citizens could afford for decades -- DECADES -- before the piper came to collect.

There's a lesson there about financial responsibility. Apparently it's one of the trickiest ones in the world to learn, but it goes something like this: Don't spend more than you earn. Set aside a little of the money earned now to use later, but be careful in promising the moon and stars when  you can't even reach the leaves in the treetops.   

America should heed the lesson Detroit is learning so painfully RIGHT NOW. We won't, of course, and I fear we're heading for a situation in which the people of Kansas, Wyoming and Texas have to subsidize the poor decisions of the people in Detroit. 

It's not fair. It's not right, and I believe it could lead to more than just a war of words. If I have to pay for Detroit, I should get some say in how they operate, and rule number one is you don't spend more than take in.

You say Trayvon, I say George. Let's call the whole thing off

Dear America,

The George Zimmerman trial is not a reflection on our society, our race relations, gun rights or our culture in any way. (It is a reflection of how confusing and ridiculous the Florida judicial system is AND a disgusting reflection of our media AND a reflection of how embarrassing our U.S. Department of (in)Justice is.)

But that's it. For most of you, there is no need to take a long look in the mirror and whatever. It's no reason to write new laws.

Please note, I am writing this as the jury is deliberating. At least, I think they're deliberating. I've tried my hardest to ignore the entire circus side show, but because I have a television and the internets and socialize every once in awhile, that's impossible. 

So yes, I've seen the prosecutor's "star" witness, who may in fact be a reflection of our horrible public education system. She's a college student. Let that sink in -- the witness who said on the stand under oath that she can't read cursive -- is a college student. (I hope we're not paying for her college education, but who am I kidding? At the very least, we're subsidizing it.) AND, Florida, you already paid for her primary education. Someone should demand a refund.

I've also watched as the prosecutor was allowed to change the charges in the middle of the trial. I'm no lawyer, but WHAT?? How does that work, Florida? 

If you're not a member of the Florida bar, or likely to be charged with a crime in Florida, and you're not paying for the (mis)education of Florida youth, you have no dog in this Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin fight.

Two idiots behaved stupidly and now one of them is dead. The other is on trial. Two lives were ruined. It's a tragedy for their families and their friends. 

And now the media is compounding it by attempting to turn this sad saga into some sort of reflection on American society. It isn't.

Please don't help them out by compounding the stupid and rioting or demanding new laws. Some people will do stupid things sometimes and no amount of "legislating" or rioting is going to change that.

Get over yourselves. It's not about you.  Say a few prayers for the families involved and get on with your lives.

 

Oh man. I love this.

I don't know who this Matt guy is, but I dig this blog post. I'm not saying Matt got absolutely everything right in his post, "Yes, Christians Should Judge." 

But the main thesis is right on. He writes:

It’s not that we shouldn’t judge — it’s that we shouldn’t judge WRONGLY. The idea that we shouldn’t judge at all is 1) Absurd, 2) Impossible, 3) Very much at odds with every moral edict in all of Scripture. It’s also hypocritical because telling someone not to judge is, in and of itself, a judgement. Besides, these “Don’t judge” folks are nowhere to be found when the conversation turns to the Westboro Baptists, or domestic abusers, or the Nazis, or Paula Deen (all being responsible for horrors of equal proportion).

He makes so, so many good points. For example:

Yes, Jesus said “Judge not,” but you have to read the rest of that passage, and then THE REST OF THE BOOK...We must judge. We must exercise judgement. We must be discerning and decisive. We must expose evil and identify sin. Only we must do it righteously and truly. Judge, but judge rightly. That’s the point. Jesus tells us to judge the sin, not the sinner... Not judging the sinner means we can not condemn a man to hell. We can not see inside his soul. This is an important point, but it doesn’t mean we can’t speak harshly about the atrocities of a particular individual. If a guy commits adultery, I’ll call him an adulterer. That’s not an insult or an evaluation of his soul, it’s a true and accurate judgement based on the fruits he has produced.

I could re-iterate the entire post, but I won't. But you should read it. You really should.