Goat Cheese!

Be still my beating heart! The recipe is so simple. The most time consuming part of making goat cheese is waiting for all the liquid to depart. The comment thread has good information as well.

If all you have is cow’s milk, make some ricotta! Got cream? Make mascarpone!

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Died and gone to heaven!

I am so excited contemplating the future delights in my life that will happen as a result of randomly finding this Youtube video, How to Make Whole Milk Ricotta Cheese. My life is forever changed.

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Drunk Driving PSA by Denis Leary

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Special Comment on Health Care

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Make a contribution to National Association of Free Clinics today.

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Talk about your “entitlement programs” …

This is breathtaking:

Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maine, the state’s largest private insurer, is suing the state after Maine’s Superintendent of Insurance denied Anthem a rate increase that would have required Maine residents to pay an “additional $12 million in annual premiums for the same level of benefits.” Under

Nurse training. Care of prematurely born babies is one of the most complicated procedures which must be learned by the student nurse. Feeding, bathing and diaper changing are carried on inside the incubator, in which temperature, humidity and oxygen must be carefully regulated. The oxygen tank can be seen in the background. 1942 November. Fritz Henle, photographer. (Library of Congress)

Anthem’s proposed increases, the average policyholder would have had to spend “more than $13,000 in premium and deductibles, prior to becoming eligible to receive any health benefits under the policy.”

[snip]

Anthem, a subsidiary of Wellpoint Inc., argued that beyond simply ‘breaking-even’, the government must guarantee the company a 3% profit.

Apparently socialism, while very bad for individual Americans, is essential for for the corporate bottom line.

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Take care of your teeth — you don’t know how you might need them.

In 1963 an Italian eye doctor, Benedetto Strampelli, came up with a way to restore lost vision — osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis (OOK) surgery — but it was another Italian ophthalmologist, Giancarlo Falcinelli, who was able to work out problems which had kept it from being widely used.

It’s astonishing. It involves transplanting one of your teeth into your eye.

W.P.A. Fed. Art Project. Date stamped on verso: Dec 1 1937. (Library of Congress)

Dr. Victor Perez, a cornea specialist at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami, Florida led the surgical team who restored sight to Sharron Thornton of Smithdale, Mississippi by removing one of her teeth (literally, one of her eye teeth), drilling a hole in it, inserting a plastic lens into the hole and then implanting the tooth-lens combination into her left eye.

This is the first time this surgery has been performed in the United States. It has helped others regain lost sight in Europe and Japan, having been reintroduced in Britain in 1996.

The whole process took six months, but after being blind for nine years, Mrs. Thornton can now see the color of the sky, read and, to her great delight, see her grandchildren, some for the first time.

It’s important to note that this surgery was developed by doctors in Italy, England and Japan, countries which all have some form of universal health care that provides better outcomes for patients. It has obviously not put a crimp in their ability to break new ground in medical care and procedures.

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Frozen Food Review

The Swanson Hungry Man All Day Breakfast comes frozen, and if you care about yourself at all, it should stay frozen. If you are looking for a way to kill yourself but can’t bring yourself to pull the trigger on a gun or don’t have access to a quantity of appropriate pharmaceuticals, a week of this breakfast should do the trick.

All that being said, the review of this breakfast made me laugh so hard my stomach hurt. Not as much as actually eating one of these babies would and definitely much better for you.

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The Last Laugh

Barrels of perique tobacco during process of aging. Perique tobacco is raised in one parish in Louisiana, and this is the only place in the world where this tobacco is raised. Saint James Parish, Louisiana. 1938 September. Russell Lee, photographer.

I may be forced to quit smoking by the asshole brigade that has decided that, yeah, taxing cigarettes to the point where the average working person cannot afford to smoke is the thing to do.

Something about saving us from ourselves.

Well, a hearty fuck you to all you folks who thought that was a great idea.

And you know what? You assholes and your kids are going to get every bit of payback you deserve on this one. I laughed my ass off when I read the following this morning:

A Loose leaf sales floor. 6 August 1937. Copyright by Caufield & Shook, Inc., Louisville.

(ThinkProgress) On May 27, CNN’s Carol Costello reported on tobacco company R.J. Reynolds new dissolvable “smokeless products.” Noting that critics call them “tobacco lollipops” that are aimed at getting “kids hooked on nicotine,” Costello reported that “R.J. Reynolds will soon test three new products — Camel sticks that dissolve as you suck them, minty tobacco strips that look like breath strips, and orbs – flavored, dissolvable tablets that some say look and taste exactly like candy.”

lith. by Hatch & Co. 218 Broadway, Herald Building, N.Y. c1869 Sept. 14.

A person can literally die from ingesting too much nicotine at one time. With cigarettes you couldn’t do that. Fuck you and your secondhand smoke.

People have been smoking since as long as there have been people.

You non-smoking assholes don’t have the balls or the ability to making smoking illegal, so you take the incremental approach to make it effectively impossible for anyone who doesn’t have a six-figure salary to smoke.

Tobacco companies — still subsidized with public tax dollars — are going to find one way or another to market their important agricultural commodity.

Gosh, what a surprise. They found an even more dangerous way for people to use tobacco than even smoking!

Fuck you, assholes. Good luck keeping your kids away from it.

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