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Last year Burger King’s Summertime Menu included a Bacon Sundae but they seem intent on topping that this year with the introduction of the Burger King Rib Sandwich. An obvious copy of the popular McDonald’s McRib Sandwich, the Burger King version will be available starting May 21st through the end of the summer along with the return of a line of Memphis Pulled Pork Sandwiches and Sweet Potato Fries. The Burger King Rib Sandwich was tested in Shreveport, Louisiana and did very well there. Let’s not forget Burger King also had those Fire Grilled bone in Ribs a few years...

It was recently discovered that the Obama Administration has been working jointly with the Mexican government to inform that country’s illegal migrants to the United States of their “rights to government food assistance.” The product of this cooperative undertaking is a Spanish-language flyer supplied to the Mexican Embassy by the US Department of Agriculture. The flyer asserts that “even those who enter America illegally are still entitled to certain benefits” and explains how these “undocumented persons” may secure these benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala) called the revelation “evidence of a dangerously misguided policy....

The Department of Agriculture, via the Mexican government, assures potentially ineligible immigrants that they can still apply for food stamps on behalf of their eligible children without giving information about their immigration status, according to documents released Thursday by Judicial Watch. A USDA Spanish language flyer provided to the Mexican Embassy, according to Judicial Watch, reads that if potentially ineligible immigrants want to obtain benefits for their children they “need not divulge information regarding your immigration status in seeking this benefit for your children.” The Daily Caller has reported extensively about the USDA/Mexico partnership that seeks to promote taxpayer-funded nutrition...

The cookware giant has decided to temporarily stop selling pressure cookers at retail locations, including the Garden City store in Cranston. If you're in the market for a new pressure cooker to whip up some stew or pulled pork, don't head to the Cranston Williams-Sonoma for the time being. Williams-Sonoma, the specialty retailer of home furnishings and gourmet cookware with more than 250 stores in the United States, has pulled pressure cookers from their shelves following the Boston Marathon bombing. It was first reported that Williams-Sonoma pulled pressure cookers from shelves in stores in Massachusetts, but a call to the...

Well, this is awkward. A man was having a spat with his girlfriend at an Olive Garden in Charlotte, NC on Sunday night when he decided to resolve the matter in the utmost mature manner: defiantly building a fort of menus to shield his face from his girlfriend. Fellow diner Adam Howell caught the incident on his camera phone, tweeting it out to his 650 followers, and the photo soon went viral. "A grown ass man is mad at his girlfriend at Olive Garden & has made a menu fort," he wrote, later updating his Twitter audience that the waitress...

THE Supreme Court has frequently handed down judgments that have shaken America to its core. Now, it has turned its attention to the raisin. A group of farmers has brought a complaint about the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937, under which the government confiscates part of the annual national raisin crop. The Court is considering whether the arrangement is constitutional. But why is a country that generally celebrates red-blooded capitalism regulating the raisin trade in the first place?Since the 1940s a government agency called the Raisin Administrative Committee has confiscated a portion of the annual raisin crop: 47% in 2003 and...

Here's a little something to keep Michael Bloomberg awake at night. Has no one thought to background check this little girl? Since 1914 she has radically changed her appearance no less than six times (presumably, to elude capture by the authorities). No longer content to merely dump salt wherever she goes, this murderous miss is on the warpath, armed with scary looking technology. As the Democrats and Republicons in the Senate "debate" away our Second Amendment freedoms, let's hope they won't overlook the other menaces that threaten the left.

Diners at the Esquire Club in Madison, Wisconsin, may be packing heat, but owner John Kavanaugh has no intention of restricting handgun-toting customers from entering his 300-seat establishment. In 2011, Wisconsin became the latest state to adopt right to carry legislation. Carrying rights are now a reality in every state except Illinois, while only six states—Maine, Louisiana, North Dakota, Illinois, and both Carolinas—claim a complete ban on guns in restaurants. While each state’s legislation possesses its own language and nuance, from licensing requirements to open or concealed carry permits, many states grant restaurant operators the ability to “post” their establishment—that...

(VIDEO AT LINK) MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: Americans will always want some level of inequality because it's a representation of a meritocracy. People who work hard and sacrifice and save their money and make major contributions: we think that they should earn a little more. And they should have more resources. And that's fine. But we also however have to have a floor under which nobody falls....

Robotic automation has long been the domain of manufacturing, but of late, service robots have made an often entertaining and sometimes gimmicky leap to restaurants in China, Taiwan, Japan, and increasingly the US. Please accept the following video ode to Singularity Hub’s favorite restaurant robots of the past few years. Noodle bot: Knife-brandishing chopper of noodles, you terrify and inspire us in equal parts. You slice noodles with grim efficiency, and for that we are grateful. (VIDEO AT LINK) Sushi bot: Although the high art of sushi-making may best be suited for human hands, we hold your pace of 3,600...

As low-wage food service workers demand a doubling of their pay, an uncurious journalist never wonders how people who earn $7.25 per hour were able to organize a “nationwide” strike replete with crisply-printed protest signs. For that matter, the dullard scribe doesn’t indicate whether “nationwide” connotes thousands of people in hundreds of locations or a dozen folks on two street corners. Bad journalism is defined most often by what it lacks, rather than what it states. Incompetence, or conscious manipulation, are found in the question unasked, the fact unmentioned, the absence of context. The passive reader will never notice. Reporting...

1. Canned fruits, vegetables, meats, and soups 2. Dried legumes (beans, lentils, peas) 3. Crackers 4. Nuts 5. Pasta sauce 6. Peanut butter 7. Pasta 8. Flour (white, whole wheat) 9. Seasonings (vanilla, salt, pepper, paprika, cinnamon, pepper, taco seasoning, etc.) 10. Sugar 11. Bouillon cubes or granules (chicken, vegetable, beef) 12. Kitchen staples (baking soda, baking powder, yeast, vinegar) 13. Honey 14. Unsweetened cocoa powder 15. Jell-O or pudding mixes 16. Whole grains (barley, bulgur, cornmeal, couscous, oats, quinoa, rice, wheat berries) 17. Nonfat dried milk 18. Plant-based oil (corn oil, vegetable oil, coconut oil, olive oil) 19. Cereals...

The White House will host its annual Easter Egg Roll on Monday April 1 this year. More than 35,000 people will join the First Family on the South Lawn for “games, stories, and, of course, the traditional egg roll.” Also, because we apparently can’t just let kids have fun anymore, the day’s activities will include sports courts and cooking demonstrations in accordance with Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign. Nothing says “Happy Easter” like educating families on “smart ways to incorporate healthy eating and exercise choices into their daily routines.” I can just imagine the disappointment on some kid’s face when...

Our resident chef carlo3b (Carlo Morelli), is in urgent need of prayer. On Tuesday he underwent a complicated surgery and is in ICU on a ventilator. On Wednesday his kidneys were not functioning properly and he was taken back into surgery. His daughter reports that he is doing much better, but still in danger. He has many FRiends here at Free Republic and I'm sure he and his family would appreciate your prayers and any good thoughts you could send his way.

It looks like Mrs. 2ndDivisionVet finally has a chance to transfer back to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. As most of you might know, the economy there is much stronger than almost any other place in the United States. We will be close to her family, have much better choices in healthcare and dental and the stores in her company perform better there. She is a store manager for a large chain of eyeglass/contacts (optical) outlets. Two different locations in that area have come open and we hope that she will be picked for one. Please pray for us that she...

When the Obama EPA is not spying on cattle and pork ranches with drones, they’re illegally releasing information on livestock producers to far left extremist groups. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the National Pork Producers are furious after the Obama Environmental Protection Agency illegally gave information on livestock farmers to extremist animal rights groups. Farm Futures reported: NCBA and the National Pork Producers Council are both furious with EPA for handing extremist groups illegally gathered data on farmers who operate confined animal feeding operations. NCBA said early this week it was notified by the EPA that the agency had...

Today the NY Times has a case study on the cost of Obamacare to one small business. The business in question is Baked in the Sun, a California baker with 95 employees. Baked in the Sun does about $8 million in annual revenue, however margins for bakers are tight so their annual profit is only about $200,000. Because the business has over 50 employees, they will be required to offer health insurance to their employees or pay a fine for not doing so. The owners estimate that the cost of compliance would be $108,000 per year plus $10,000 in overhead...

Rhode Island has the highest unemployment rate in the country, it’s crushed by unsustainable public sector salaries and pensions which are protected by union control of the legislature and politicians at every level, it is one of only two states losing population and may lose one of its two congressional seats in the 2020 census if trends continue. Yet Rhode Islanders continually vote Democratic, even reelecting to Congress the disgraced David Cicilline in 2012 when even the liberal Providence Journal turned on him. The Democrat-union grip on the state never has been tighter, and Rhode Island never has suffered more,...

If Sarah Palin understands anything, it's the theatrics of a speech, and she can get a crowd riled up better than pretty much anyone in the GOP. That's how it went this afternoon at CPAC, where she launched a fusillade of caustic zingers at President Obama, Washington, and the professional political consultant class. At no point, however, was the packed audience louder than when Palin stuck it to the man by whipping out a Big Gulp full of "pop" (soda) from behind the podium and posing for the cameras while taking a big, freedom-loving sip. (VIDEO AT LINK) Outside the...

Weekly Preppers'Thread to post progress, good buys, DIY projects, advice and ideas ..

As Wendy’s Co. continues its effort to modernize restaurants, up to 130 U.S. restaurants could be closed in the coming year because they are not making enough money to be worthy of being remodeled or rebuilt. The news came yesterday as the Dublin-based company announced earnings for the fourth quarter and full year. Wendy’s is beginning the third year of its Image Activation program to raze, rebuild or remodel nearly half of its 600 company-owned stores by the end of 2015. So far, the Dublin-based fast-food restaurant has rebuilt 58 company-owned stores since 2011, and it plans to rebuild or...

I hate “eating x gives you y” stories. Nearly always, associations between particular foods and drinks and specific illnesses are weak, riddled with confounding variables and describe increases in marginal risks that shouldn’t really worry us. If eating pickled fish tongues, say, doubles your risk of developing cancer of the Lower Hobsonate Iltoid, that only sounds worrying until you realize that in the whole of human history there have only been three recorded cases of this ghastly (and wholly made-up) disease. So what do we make of the news that high consumption of processed meats such as bacon, sausages and...

Mobile, digital, radio, TV, billboards and mailings all have their perks, but restaurant marketing doesn't have to be expensive to be effective. Fox's Pizza franchisee Scott Anthony has been searching for the right balance for the past two decades. He offered some approaches that have worked for his business during a recent educational session titled "Marketing on a Shoestring Budget." Getting started, he says, means building a "USP." "A 'Universally Selling Position' is a statement that emphasizes your strengths to your community. You have to be more than a generality," Anthony said. For example, Domino's is known for delivery, while...

CITY OF NEWBURGH — Newburgh will host a gun buyback event on March 16. Gun owners can exchange their weapons for ShopRite gift cards from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Street Rock Ministries, 60 Dubois St. The event is the third in Newburgh as part of an Orange County-wide campaign called Save a Life. Newburgh police had collected 110 guns as of Friday . The program will continue to offer gift cards for weapons through March 18....

CHICAGO — Michelle Obama announced the name of the best picture via satellite for the Academy Awards ceremony in order to promote the arts among children, her principal constituency, she said in an interview on Thursday. And if people didn’t like it, she added, that doesn’t bother her. “We’re going to be approaching those filmmakers to do some things in the White House with kids all over this country who, sometimes, that’s going to be their hook, watching that movie that inspires them,” she told a small group of reporters during a two-day, three-city trip to promote her anti-obesity campaign...

Fred Deluca, the founder of privately-held Subway Restaurants, said government regulations are hurting small businesses and that this environment has prevented entrepreneurs from creating value in the market. "If I started Subway today, Subway would not exist," Deluca told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" Wednesday. (VIDEO AT LINK) Deluca said the environment for entrepreneurs in the U.S. has "continuously gotten worse because there are more and more regulations. It's tough for people to get into business, especially a small business." Effects of Obamacare The Subway founder pointed to a number of government regulations that are degrading the business environment for...

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - Darden Restaurants (DRI), struggling to draw more customers into its Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants, said Friday that its third-quarter profit could fall below Wall Street's expectations and cut its outlook for the year. The Orlando, Fla.-based chain has tried to revamp menus and marketing for its flagship chains. But revenue at Olive Garden, Red Lobster and LongHorn Steakhouse locations open at least one year is expected to fall 4.5 percent in the quarter ending Feb. 24, indicating those efforts have yet to pay off...

Billionaire Warren Buffett loves Heinz ketchup with his hash browns so much that he is driving Heinz into junk status. Maybe he actually likes Hunts Ketchup better. His love of ketchup and hash browns is transforming H.J. Heinz Co. into the most-leveraged food maker in America. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and 3G Capital Inc.’s $2 billion acquisition of Heinz may double the company’s total debt to five times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, according to Fitch Ratings, the highest of any comparable food company. The cost to protect Heinz’s debt from losses soared to a record after the...

Show a concealed weapons permit and get a discount. The owner of a frozen yogurt shop in Utah is holding a “Second Amendment Week.” He’s offering a dollar off to anyone who shows him their concealed weapons permit when they come into his store. He says he thinks gun owners aren’t treated fairly in the US...

Making everyone else's Valentine's Day plans look lame in comparison, President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama splurged with meal at Minibar last night. Obama Foodorama reports that the couple arrived via motorcade at the avant-garde Penn Quarter restaurant at 7 p.m. yesterday for a two-hour long romantic dinner. No doubt that's not an easy reservation to score at the 24-seatings-a-night restaurant, but given José Andrés' support of Michelle Obama's "Let's Move!" campaign and that whole leader of the free world thing, it's probably not a problem. Reps at ThinkFoodGroup are deferring press requests to the White House, but Washingtonian...

How safe is your tap drinking water? it’s possible pesticides or contaminants could be flowing from your faucet. Public water systems, tap waters are tested and regulated by the government. By law, municipalities have to test the water and report to consumers once a year. They can test once a year, four times a year, sometimes less. They test for 90 contaminants like copper, arsenic, lead. There is a report that tells you what’s in the water and if it’s dangerous. But they average the results. So if you live in an agricultural area, pesticides in the water spike in...

Organized crime including the Italian Mafia is "suspected of playing a major role in the horsemeat scandal that has seen supermarket shelves cleared of a series of products and triggered concerns about the contamination of the UK's food chain" as reported by Jamie Doward for The Observer: "experts within the horse slaughter industry have told the Observer there is evidence that both Polish and Italian mafia gangs are running multimillion-pound scams to substitute horsemeat for beef during food production." Last July anti-Mafia writer Roberto Saviano alleged organized crime increasingly has entered the gastronomic sector with inferior products, and said it's...

All eyes are on the Federal Reserve and their seemingly endless quantitative easing. For the most part, the massive liquidity surge has not manifested itself into South American-like inflation since our banks have most of the excess reserves still trapped in the banking system. Except for student loans, of course. This has resulted in a crashing of the M1 Money Multiplier and the M2 Money Velocity ratios signifying that the enormous increase in money supply in recent years isn’t translating into economic growth or lending. Depending on your measurement of inflation, the US has been spared South American inflation. Or...

ObamaCare’s benevolent promise to help control and curtail healthcare-related costs is already going magnificently bust; why not just extend the consequences of heightened compliance costs and pricey taxes to an entirely other but equally indispensable economic sector while they’re at it, right? As the Federal Drug Administration so munificently explains, part of ObamaCare’s overall purpose is to help provide Americans with all of the tools they need to lead healthier lives (with a universal healthcare system that requires society to absorb the costs of individuals’ daily health-related decisions, what choice do they have but to butt into those decisions?) —...

SOUTH BAY, Fla. -- From a distance it looks as if tornadoes are churning in the fields. But as you get closer, you see that the dark plumes are clouds of black smoke. And if your smell is keen enough, you realize it's sugar cane that's burning. Trucks hauling trailers full of cane stalks crowd the northbound lanes of Route 27 for a stretch just south of Lake Okeechobee. In the southbound lanes the trailers are empty. They're running between the cane fields that dominate this northernmost part of the Everglades and the Okeelanta sugar mill, owned by the Fanjul...

One of the most important measures for housing is employment. And while payrolls are SLOWLY improving, but food stamps are growing at a much faster rate. This is from Bloomberg Briefs: “An ongoing concern is that growth in jobs continues to be dwarfed by the surge in food stamps. During the first 10 months of 2012 there were 1.01 million new additions to the USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a 2.2 percent increase. During the same period, the number of nonfarm payroll jobs increased by 1.5 million, a 1.1 percent gain. The results from the end of the recession...

Viking Range Corp.'s new owner is laying off one-fifth of the company's workers. Middleby Corp., based near Chicago, said it laid off about 140 of Viking's 700 employees Thursday. --snip-- Viking cooking schools in Ridgeland, Miss., and Memphis, Tenn., will close...

An Applebee's diner refused to leave a tip for religious reasons. The waitress who exposed it wonders if Jesus will pay her bills. I was a waitress at Applebee's restaurant in Saint Louis. I was fired Wednesday for posting a picture on Reddit.com of a note a customer left on a bill. I posted it on the web as a light-hearted joke. This didn't even happen at my table. The note was left for another server, who allowed me to take a picture of it at the end of the night. Someone had scribbled on the receipt, "I give God...

A celebration of lethal flatware. A new set of deadly eating-irons added for your pleasure and delectation. The knife, fork and spoon shown in the picture all have built-in flintlock pistols. Note that the barrels point backwards, towards the user, so they're not designed for plugging your host if he makes impertinent remarks about your table manners. It is difficult to imagine a social gathering where it is appropriate to shoot off your own elbows. The fork follows the pattern of the time; it looks pretty lethal on its own account. These weapons carry the maker's mark F X RICHTER...

On August 26th, 2010 the destruction of Morningland Dairy began. Having lost a two and half year battle with cancer of the State, the interment will take place on January 25th, 2013.

What is the trigger for a revolution? Sometimes it a brutal act of repression. Sometimes it a lost war, or a natural catastrophe, that exposes the failings of a regime. But more often than not, it is soaring food prices. The easiest prediction to make for 2013 is that everything we eat will once again rise sharply in price. So where will the revolutions start this year? Keep an eye on Algeria and Greece — and if you want to feel very nervous, Russia and China. And if you are smart, keep your money out of those countries as well....

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is making a last-minute pitch to persuade President Barack Obama to stop using hunting as a “justification” for owning guns. In a letter to Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, PETA called out the president for saying after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre that “the vast majority of gun owners in America are responsible — they buy their guns legally, and they use them safely, whether for hunting or sport shooting, collection or protection.” “[T]here is nothing ‘responsible’ about making a sport out of killing, about hunting, or about teaching children to...

The iconic Wonderbread, once in jeopardy after Hostess declared bankruptcy, seems likely to return to store shelves under a new brand. A $390 million bid from Flower Foods Inc., for six of the Twinkie maker’s bread brands, was the leading bid on Friday. Flower Foods, which is based in Thomasville, Ga., is best known for making Tastykakes, which are cream filled chocolate cupcakes. The company also makes breads, including Nature’s Own and Cobblestone Mill. Higher competing bids can still be made before the final deal is approved in bankruptcy court. Flower Foods made a $360 million bid for Wonder Bread,...

The nagging nanny of New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is at it again, engaging in his favorite activity, telling his citizens what they can consume. This time, the Mayor is targeting prescription painkillers in the city’s emergency rooms. By mayoral edict, he will reduce the supply of certain pain medication in the emergency rooms owned by the city.

"Meat loaf and mashed taters, and maybe some steamed summer squash on the side. Meat loaf needs gravy or its juices, on top. At the Maggie's HQ, we make meat loaf the Italian way: Italian Meat Loaf Recipe. Italian-style meat loaf usually has a dash of nutmeg and/or allspice in the recipe, but that particular one does not. I do not think they make this in Italy. Maybe it's a modified meat-ball recipe, but they don't eat meatballs in Italy either. (Nor do Swedes cook Swedish Meatballs.) Best thing about meat loaf? Meat loaf sandwiches the next day or two....

Louisville, Kentucky - Tracy Browning, a 38-year-old Louisville woman, was jailed after she allegedly tried to purchase several iPads with a food stamp card, then fled to another location where she tried to make the same transaction. According to Louisville police, Browning went to the Valley Station Walmart and tried to purchase two iPads with an Electronic Benefit Transfer card. When the transaction was denied, she assaulted a store clerk, pushed another employee to the ground and fled from the store with the merchandise. Investigators say Browning went to another Walmart in the area a short time later and again...

"I've been preaching this since long before Gary Taubes' books came out. That's because I have a colleague who studies the physiology of insulin. From what I know, Taubes is right. A quote re Dietary Incorrectness at Powerline:...Taubes disputes the connection between dietary fat and high cholesterol. He challenges the thesis that dietary fat is detrimental to our health. He rejects a balanced diet. He advocates a high-fat diet. He opposes dieting. He doesn’t object to exercise, but he asserts that it makes you hungry. It’s almost funny. He is the dietary equivalent of politically incorrect.

Since removing constitutional rights is all the rage now, I have to ask: when does dislocation from reality become severe enough to justify involuntary commitment? A good study case is NYC's Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who recently uttered a real gem on his weekly radio show. Writes Politicker.com:

Chinese researchers have identified a bacteria which may cause obesity, according to a new paper suggesting diets that alter the presence of microbes in humans could combat the condition. Researchers in Shanghai found that mice bred to be resistant to obesity even when fed high-fat foods became excessively overweight when injected with a kind of human bacteria and subjected to a rich diet. The bacterium -- known as enterobacter -- had been linked with obesity after being found in high quantities in the gut of a morbidly obese human volunteer, said the report, written by researchers at Shanghai's Jiaotong University....

What trends will emerge — or accelerate — in the restaurant industry in 2013? Food, marketing, technology, equipment, whatever? We asked some of our most trusted experts for their opinions and came up with this compilation: "The restaurant industry will continue to be challenged by rising commodities prices. Fraud will continue to trend upward with increases in credit card skimming, and theft schemes; and the threat of late night robbery is ever present (particularly as more restaurants add more hours). Mitigating and preventing these losses with sound loss prevention strategies must become a priority to stay competitive in the marketplace."...