New Recipes

I posted some new recipes I found on Yahoo Shine.  They look good!  Especially the crock pot Asian Tomato Beef thing...

What's Cookin'?  My Favorite Recipes!

 Time to go make dinner.  :)

Corrupted Moral

The teacher gave her fifth grade class an assignment: Get their parents
to tell them a story with a moral at the end of it. The next day, the
kids came back and, one by one, began to tell their stories. There
were all the regular types of stuff: spilled milk and pennies saved.
But then the teacher realized, much to her dismay, that only Janie was
left. "Janie, do you have a story to share?" "Yes ma'am, my daddy told
me a story about my Mommy. She was a Marine pilot in Desert Storm, and
her plane got hit. She had to bail out over enemy territory, and all
she had was a flask of whiskey, a pistol, and a survival knife. She
drank the whiskey on the way down so the bottle wouldn't break, and
then her parachute landed her right in the middle of 20 Iraqi troops.
She shot 15 of them with the pistol, until she ran out of bullets,
killed four more with the knife, till the blade broke, and then she
killed the last Iraqi with her bare hands. "Good Heavens," said the
teacher. "What did your Daddy tell you was the moral to this story?"
"Stay away from Mommy when she's been drinking."

Derivatives for Dummies - Explanation of Derivative Markets

Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit. She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem, she comes up with a new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later.

Heidi keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers' loans). Word gets around about Heidi's "drink now, pay later" marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi's bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Detroit.

By providing her customers freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages. Consequently, Heidi's gross sales volume increases massively.

A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Heidi's borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.

At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert traders figure a way to make huge commissions, and transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then bundled and traded on international security markets.

Naive investors don't really understand that the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb, and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation's leading brokerage houses.

One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi's bar. He so informs Heidi.

Heidi then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being unemployed alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and the eleven employees lose their jobs.

Overnight, DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS drop in price by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the banks liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community. The suppliers of Heidi's bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms' pension funds in the various BOND securities. They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers.

Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multi-billion dollar no-strings attached cash infusion from their cronies in Government. The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers who have never been in Heidi's bar.

Now do you understand?

Blender Bearnaise Sauce

Ingredients:

• 3 egg yolks
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 dash red pepper
• 2/3 cup butter -- melted
• 2 tablespoons white wine
• 1 tablespoon tarragon vinegar
• 2 teaspoons shallots -- minced
• 1 teaspoon dried whole tarragon
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper

Directions:

 

Combine egg yolks, lemon juice, salt and red pepper in container of electric blender; set on high speed and process 3 seconds. Turn blender to low speed; add butter to yolk mixture in a slow, steady stream. Turn blender to high speed and process until thick.

 

Combine wine, vinegar, shallots,tarragon and pepper in a small saucepan; cook over high heat until almost all liquid evaporates. Add to mixture in blender and process at high speed 4 seconds. Serve over meat, seafood.

 

My preference is for clarified butter.

 

This recipe from CDKitchen for Blender Bearnaise Sauce serves/makes 4