| Mr. Food: Long-Cooking Roasts
This is the time of year when our supermarkets have loads of sales on long-cooking roasts like brisket, bottom round, shoulder and chuck roasts, and pot roast varieties. All of these take a little more cooking time than most other cuts, but what we like best is that they're completely no-fuss. In fact, they almost cook themselves!All we really have to do to most is sprinkle them with some seasonings and surround them with flavoring veggies like onions, carrots, potatoes, and celery. (We can even pick those up at the produce counter in combination packages where they're already cut up.) Add a little water to the pot or pan, cover it, put it into the oven or simmer it on the stovetop, and that's it! If you want to give them your own favorite touch, add a little tomato sauce, ketchup, soy sauce, or canned broth.These cuts also work well in a pressure cooker where they get that same long-cooked taste, but they're done in minutes.
Carnival Tea supports angioplasty services
An Italian tradition takes place Sunday at the Da Vinci Centre in support of a worthy cause to improve cardiac care in the city. The Ladies Veneto Society is hosting the 37th annual Carnival Tea with proceeds goint to the Save a Heart Campaign at the Regional hospital. Carnival is a Venetian-inspired event that resembles Mardi Gras, with costumes and traditional cooking. Melina Sgarbossa, one of the organizers said in the last three years the Society has raised over $31,000 to bring angioplasty closer to home. Some of the other activities include music and face painting for children. The Carnival Tea takes place from 1 4 p.m. on Sunday at the Da Vinci Centre.
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Stan Hochman: Patriots have 'The Blueprint' for winning
TOURIST, LOST IN the skyscraper maze of Manhattan, approaches a stranger. He asks, "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" The stranger replies swiftly, "Practice, practice, practice." Boston sports writer Christopher Price kept hearing people ask, how do the New England Patriots keep getting to the Super Bowl so often? So he sat down and wrote a book, "The Blueprint," that attempts to answer the question in this dynasty-discouraging age of free agency, taut salary cap, balanced schedule designed to promote parity, egomaniacal owners, inevitable injuries, and the temptations that go with fame and fortune. It's a fascinating book, not nearly as smug as "Moneyball" and thankfully lacking the blizzard of decimal points that jab the eye in anything Bill James writes.
Chandler opens $12.6 mil Tumbleweed rec center
A year and a half after the Chandler broke ground on the city's most ambitious recreation project, the $12.6 million, state-of-the-art Tumbleweed Recreation Center opens its doors today. For a two-month "soft-opening" period leading to the official grand opening, anyone can use the facility for free before normal fees begin. A second-floor running track offers the best view of the new center. Look down to the left and see the light-colored wood floor of the two-court gymnasium. Look to the right and there are dozens of cardio and weight machines. On the other side of the track, a view of the courtyard. And along the outside of the exterior walls, windows give runners a glimpse of distant mountains. .
Prime cutlets: Quick-cooking Wiener Schnitzel saves the day
There is nothing like a good pork cutlet, pounded into an escalope a scant quarter-inch thick, breaded and pan-fried to a crispy brown, so big its edges reach beyond the rim of a large dinner plate. All it needs then is a good squeeze of lemon. I was reminded of this not long ago on a trip to Germany. We had just gotten off a long flight from San Francisco to Munich and had taken a cab to a hotel in a residential suburb near where we were to pick up our leased car the next morning. There was nary a restaurant or market in sight. I felt desperate because I am never hungrier than when I finally escape the confines of a plane, make my way through baggage claim and customs, and burst into the open air. After we checked in, my husband and I dredged up long-unused German and asked the young man at the front desk where we might find a restaurant for abendessen, or dinner.
Warning over new homes carbon plan
The housing industry needs to rethink the whole construction process if the Government is to meet its target for all new homes to be zero-carbon by 2016, a report has said. According to the National Trust, a study of a housing development on Trust land near Altrincham, Cheshire, showed large scale building could deliver high environmental standards on water and energy consumption. But the project also revealed there were currently a number of obstacles, ranging from gaps between predicted energy conservation in the design and actual performance to a lack of labour and environmentally sustainable products in the UK. The National Trust said a strong sense of direction from the Government and wholehearted support from the construction industry was "vital" if the 2016 zero-carbon targets were to be met.
Healing Our World: Weekly Comment
In the gluttonous celebrations so popular today, we seemed to have forgotten the fasting and praying. The celebrations many of us get wrapped up in have little to do with honoring the Earth or our culture. Rather, the holidays present a huge challenge to the environment, our pocketbooks, and our health. A recent study by Environmental Defense calculated that 3.6 million tons of paper were used to produce the roughly 59 catalogs mailed to every man, woman, and child in the United States last year. According to the Worldwatch Institute, only three of the countrys 42 leading catalog companies surveyed reported using recycled paper in the body of their mailings, even though by switching to just 10 percent recycled content, the entire catalog industry would save enough wood to stretch a six foot fence across the U.S.
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