Free Republic

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. Planting, Harvest to Table(recipes)preserving, good living - there is no...

Eating a whole egg, yolks and all, has gotten a bad reputation over the years, but new dietary guidelines may send egg white-only omelets by the wayside. The recommendations from the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, which are now under review, are expected to downplay the importance of lowering cholesterol intake. The most recent set of guidelines in 2010 recommended consuming less than 300 milligrams per day of dietary cholesterol, which is about the amount in one egg. In the coming weeks, the committee is expected to release the report for use by the Agriculture and Health and Human Services Departments...

Before the nation's Food Nanny guilt-trips you into ditching boxed dinners on a frazzled night, know this: The first lady profited from cheese dust before she was against it. In the new issue of Cooking Light magazine, Michelle Obama takes another sanctimonious stand against processed foods. The occasion of this latest hectoring is a month-long celebration of the fifth anniversary of her Let's Move initiative. This time, she spins a slickly crafted tale of how her former personal chef challenged daughter Malia several years ago to turn a block of cheese into powder. "She sat there for 30 minutes trying...

Let's pretend it is 56 B.C. and you have been fortunate enough to be invited to a party at the home of Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, a great social coup. Piso, after all, was Julius Caesar's father-in-law and a consul of Rome. What's for dinner? You need to prepare for pig. Archaeologists studying the eating habits of ancient Etruscans and Romans have found that pork was the staple of Italian cuisine before and during the Roman Empire. Both the poor and the rich ate pig as the meat of choice, although the rich, like Piso, got better cuts, ate meat...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. There is no telling where it will go and... that...

I thought it appropriate to start with Appetizers :-) Meals made up of a lot of small, different things are my favorites; I'm very happy at potlucks, or restaurants with wide and diverse appetizer menus. Appetizers are among my favorite things to cook. I found this recipe over 30 years ago - I think it was in a Junior League cookbook. At the time it was very new to me but I learned later that ladies had been making these for decades, for cocktail or bridge parties. There are lots of variations. Some people just don't like olives; but usually,...

Could the act of ordering a “McMuffin” be less dignified than it already is? Yep, says Kate Batchelder. Significantly less.

Last year it was all about the ramen burger. But one month into 2015 and New York already has a new It sandwich. M. Wells Dinette, the French-Canadian restaurant at MoMA's PS1 outpost in Long Island City, has been selling up to 100 of its $13 spaghetti sandwiches per day since it was listed on the menu a week ago. The dish sees spaghetti in a tomato-garlic sauce take the place of a patty. The noodles are mixed with pecorino cheese then coated in egg and baked in a blini pan to hold them together.

Last spring, for the first time in 20 years, Indiana farmer Jim Benham planted his fields entirely with soybean seeds that hadn’t been genetically modified to withstand herbicides. It wasn’t because the 63-year-old suddenly had embraced the anti-GMO movement. Instead, he was drawn to a nearly 14% per-bushel premium for non-GMO soybeans offered by a local grain terminal, which sells them to Asian feed processors. Mr. Benham is among a small but growing number of Midwestern farmers moving away from biotech seeds developed by Monsanto Co. , DuPont Co. and other companies in response to lower crop prices over the...

Food is one issue that unites the far left and the Christian right in America. This hasn’t always been the case but in the last decade the Christian right has begun to embrace the radical food politics of the left. For Christians it has become a new form of asceticism. Paul tells us in 1 Tim 4:1-4: Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; Forbidding to marry, and commanding to...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-03/it-s-pork-over-beef-in-america-for-first-time-since-1952

Well, I have accepted the challenge, and this is a preview of the New Cooking (and things related) Thread. I'll post a tried-and-true recipe each week, on Friday evening; and I hope we generate lots of Good Cookin'! I'd like it to also include recommendations of kitchen-ways - equipment that people find useful, techniques from Old Folks and Old Days, and new-fangled stuff, as well. (As an example: The Husband Unit and I have a bet on the Super Bowl, and if my team wins I get to buy one of those little counter-top ovens that are run on tea-light...

Muslim imports in Minneapolis are now demanding a tax-funded “halal” non-pork food shelf at a free food pantry for the poor. As if it’s not bad enough that nearly all the “American” Muslims who have joined ISIS have been Somalis from Minneapolis, their relatives here are demanding that Americans adhere to the same Sharia Laws the Islamic State fighters are trying to impose throughout the Middle East.

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. There is no telling where it will go and... that...

UC Irvine and Australian chemists have figured out how to unboil egg whites – an innovation that could dramatically reduce costs for cancer treatments, food production and other segments of the $160 billion global biotechnology industry, according to findings published today in the journal ChemBioChem. "Yes, we have invented a way to unboil a hen egg," said Gregory Weiss, UCI professor of chemistry and molecular biology & biochemistry. "In our paper, we describe a device for pulling apart tangled proteins and allowing them to refold. We start with egg whites boiled for 20 minutes at 90 degrees Celsius and return...

Post Holdings will buy Lakeville-based MOM Brands for $1.15 billion, combining the nation’s third and fourth largest breakfast cereal makers. The deal, announced Monday morning, will give publicly traded Post a presence in the growing bagged cereal and hot cereal businesses, two of MOM Brands’ strongholds. Privately-owned MOM Brands, which has a big cereal plant in Northfield, is known for its Malt-O-Meal brand. The 95-year-old company has grown steadily over the past 15 years, particularly capturing share in the low-price or “value” segment of the cold cereal business.

A Kirksville, Mo. doctor righteously and very satisfyingly slapped down a substitute teacher after she sent a note home condemning the lunch his second-grade daughter had brought to school. The doctor and mad dad is Justin Puckett, reports ABC News. As Puckett — who is certified in obesity medicine — later observed to the principal at the school, the teacher and a cafeteria worker didn’t see the whole lunch. Sure, they saw a pickle, a bag of marshmallows, some Ritz crackers and four tiny chocolate bars. Importantly, what the sub and the lunch lady missed were four pieces of ham...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. There is no telling where it will go and... that...

When the Israeli PM travels to D.C. in March to address Congress, he apparently won’t be sitting down with the president who thinks he’s in charge of Congress:

MCNEAL — Once it housed soldiers stationed at Fort Huachuca, then it was moved to McNeal and was filled with the sounds of happy feet dancing and the chattering of ladies at coffee cloches. Now abandoned, there are new inhabitants that really are no fun — killer bees. The irritable, six-legged flying pollinators have been in the building on Frontier Road for a number of years, tending huge honeycombs and creating problems for those who walk their dogs, ride horses or just take a morning stroll. If one puts out nectar for the hummingbirds and orioles in spring within the...