- RECIPE ROUNDUP

This is a WeightWatcher's friendly recipe (5 points per seving) and is also "Core"

uses 2 pounds of Salmon, fresh side, boned but skin on (I used regular store bought salmon, no skin)

for the marinade

• 2 Tbs Dijon mustard
• 3 Tbs soy sauce
• 2 tsp ollive oil
• 1/2 tsp minced garlic

Light charcoal briquettes in a grill and brush the grilling rac with oil to keep the salmon from sticking

NOTE: I discovered grilling planks. Instead of oiling the grill and and/or cooking in a basket, you lightly oil this piece of wood (we used cedar) and cook the meat right on the wood, giving it a smoky flavor. That's the way I cooked this recipe and it was very nicely received!

While the grill is heating, lay the salmon on a cutting board skin side down and cut it crosswise into 4 equal pieces (I fudged here - I put it on the soaked grilling plank and left it whole). Whisk together the mustard, soy sauce, olive oil, and garlic in a small bowl. Drizzle half of the marinade onto the salmon and allow it ti sit for 10 minutes.

Place the salmon skin side down on the hot grill (or put the plank on the grill). Discard the marinade the fish was sittin in. Grill for 4 -5 minutes, depending on the thicknes sof the fish. Turn carefully with a wide spatula and grill for another 4-5 minutes. The salmon will be slighty raw in the center, but don't worry, it will keep cooking as it sits. (because my fish was on the plank, I didn't have to mess with turning it - the side toward the grill cooked more slowly because of the wood so it cooked very evenly.)

Transfer the fish to a flat plate, skin side down and spoon the reserved marinade on top. Allow the fish to rest for 10 minutes. Remove the skin and serve warm, at room temperature or chilled.

NOTE: I saw an ad for a more expensive, very reusable plank. Instead of transfering the meat to a plate, drop the plank into the metal server and you're done! I served this with couscous (also Core) and made extra marinade and added it to the couscous - it went over quite well. There is enough left over that I can enjoy the salmon cold with the last of the couscous, along with a green salad)

For more plank recipes, take a peek here.

not daddies fighting daddies.

This is about a war against fathers. The daddies that want to be involved and can't be.

My [Glenn Sacks] new co-authored column, Choosing Foster Parents over Fathers (San Diego Union-Tribune, 7/11/07), discusses perhaps the worst verified child custody/family law injustice against a father and a daughter which I have ever seen--the outrageous Melinda Smith foster care case.

It's horrifying. Imagine a world where an unwed couple fathers a child, a little girl. The father (like so many) is involved in his daughter's life, loves her and pays child support faithfully.

Then, imagine the mother moves away, taking the child with her -leaving no forwarding address. He can no longer see her on a regular basis, but still faithfully pays the mother child support to take care of his daughter (this can happen if the father pays through "friend of the court".

It happened that the girl was removed from her mother's home because of abuse and she was placed in the foster care system.

The father was never notified.

Thomas--whose fitness as a father was never impugned nor legally questioned--continued to receive and pay his child support bills. Authorities refused to disclose his daughter’s whereabouts, and didn’t even inform him that his daughter had been taken by the County. Smith employed private investigators and attorneys to try to find Melinda and secure visitation rights, but he eventually ran out of money.

Rather than allowing Smith to raise his own daughter, the system shuttled Melinda through seven different foster care placements. An understandably angry child, her outbursts led authorities to house her in a residential treatment center alongside older children convicted of criminal activity—when she was only seven years old.

Melinda says that during this period she was told that her father was a “deadbeat dad” who had abandoned her. When Melinda was 16, she told an investigating social worker that the “most important thing” for her was to find her dad. Moved by her story, the social worker began searching for Melinda’s father--and found him in one day. In 2005, Thomas and Melinda were finally reunited.

Surely this must be an aberration, right?

Unfortunately, the Smith case is no aberration. When a mother and father are divorced or separated, and a child welfare agency removes the children from the mother’s home for abuse or neglect, an offer of placement to the father, barring unfitness, should be automatic. Yet in the report What About the Dads? Child Welfare Agencies’ Efforts to Identify, Locate, and Involve Nonresident Fathers, the Urban Institute presents a shocking finding: when fathers inform child welfare officials that they would like their children to live with them, the agencies seek to place the children with their fathers only 15% of the time.

We need to be more vocal about fathers' rights. Take a look around Glenn Sacks' site, read some of his columns and be appalled by the "system"

We went to get the new cake and it was good. The flowers were closer to what Manda had wanted in the first place (burgundy, not lavender) and the cap was close also!

She was concerned about having campers in her graduation picture, so we scouted out an empty site with lots of trees and green in the background

(pretty, right?)

and she cut the cake...

got photos with Grandma and Grandpa (not at the same time, my mom needed to sit)

And all's well that ends well... (and the cake was wonderful)

It could have been such a disaster!

The plan was that we'd have Manda's graduation on the family campout (so Grandma and Grandpa could be there) and have cake, etc. right there. Simple, right?

No - not with our family....(read the story...)

...continue reading →

HOUSE # 1:
A 20-room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house all heated by gas.In ONE MONTH ALONE this mansion consumes more energy than the average American household in an ENTIRE YEAR. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2,400.00 per month. In natural gas alone (which last time we checked was a fossil fuel), this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not in a northern or Midwestern "snow belt,"either. It's in the South.

HOUSE # 2:

Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university, this house incorporates every "green" feature current home construction can provide. The house contains only 4,000 square feet (4 bedrooms) and is nestled on arid high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in winter and cools it in summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas, and it consumes 25% of the electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifyingtanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Flowers and shrubs native to the area blend the property into the surrounding rural landscape.

HT: Mommy Life

The Feds have tied a charity in Dearborn, MI with Hizballah.

In a 2005 filing with the Internal Revenue Service, the Goodwill Charitable Organization said it helps the poor, not specifying whether the help is given at home or abroad.

But the Treasury Department said the group -- which has no connection with Goodwill Industries of Greater Detroit -- is the Dearborn arm of the Iranian Martyrs Foundation, a group with offices in Lebanon and elsewhere that the U.S. government said funds the designated terrorist groups Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad and aids Palestinian suicide bombers and their families.

I guess it makes sense in a twisted sort of way - with the male earners in a family have murdered innocents and killed themselves in the process, the family would be left without a "breadwinner" - they'd be poor.

The Detroit area has one of the most concentrated population of Muslim in the United States.

I wrote about this a year ago (I linked to two news stories; one is no longer available, the other second one - from Ohio - is available. Hashem Sayed, Osma Sabhi Abulhassan, and Ali Houssaiky were in Ohio (at two different times) with many cell phones and (the second two) thousands of dollars. All three of these men were from Dearborn, MI.

According to the story, "The [the phones] are digital for detonating car bombs and they have a particular digital frequency and that's what they're using them for," said Sheriff Larry Mincks.

Mincks says the men also had instructions on how to obtain private flights and airplane passenger information.

I have a memory of a memory that I used to have. Maybe someday I'll "tell all" (it's not abuse of any sort) and I'll generally share in a private setting (it's part of what makes me an oddity). But for right now I'm going to be very vague.

This "thing" happened to me when I was a kid. For years it "just was" - and I found out as an adult that my parents had a similar experience and that my youngest sister did also. About a year ago I spent an "all nighter" talking about it, remembering and (basically) reliving it.

After that night, I no longer own the memory.

It's a weird thing; I can remember remembering. But I can't remember the experience. And I want to know why.

There's this other "thing" about me. I am "anosmic" - I have no sense of smell. Zero - I had a gas leak in my basement and didn't know. But I can remember what certain things smell like.

I even had an MRI to rule out a brain tumor

That's sort of what this is like - I know what I should be remembering, but I don't remember.

Last week I started seeing a psychologist who uses hypnotherapy and I had my third session today. This is going to be an interesting trip through my brain.

Are Mormons Christians? Here is part of a debate between Al Mohler Jr. (SBC) and Scott Card (LDS).

Lots of Mormon information.

"The Lost Book of Abraham". The entire documentary is on Youtube!

This award-winning documentary film investigates the story behind a volume of Mormon scripture called the Book of Abraham. The story is that Mormon founder Joseph Smith translated it from an ancient Egyptian papyrus scroll he purchased from an antiquities dealer in 1835. The Lost Book of Abraham visits prominent Egyptologists and other scholars – both Mormon and non-Mormon – to learn the truth behind this fascinating episode in Mormon history.