Shagbark Hickory Syrup

We recently stumbled upon a website: FranksHickorySyrup.com and discovered the various alternatives for shagbark hickory syrup. As a skeptic myself, we ordered some and my wife spent some time trying each of the recipes that Frank offers on his website. I was truly impressed. Each hickory syrup recipe had its own destinctive flavor that in most cases was much more palatable than its sugary counterpart. And the lemonade made with hickory syrup reminded me of a recipe that my grandmother made when we would visit on the farm as a young boy.

But what is Shagbark Hickory Syrup?

We talked with Frank and asked him about his recipe. Although he didn’t want to reveal the precise details, he simply told us: “It is a syrup made from the bark (not the sap like maple syrup) of the Shagbark Hickory Tree. The Indians used to use it for sweeting dishes many years ago, so the recipe has been around for a long time.”

Frank now offers his product in four convenient sizes 8, 12, 16, and 32 oz., and ships directly to your door. If you love to cook and are looking for some new recipes from Hickory Syrup Nut Rum Rolls, Desserts, Chicken Marinades – check out his website at: FranksHickorySyrup.com.

This article titled “American pie recipes” was written by Richard Ehrlich, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 4th July 2011 14.30 UTC

New England apple pie

Shortcrust pastry to line 2 x 23cm pie plates
6-8 tart apples
225g brown sugar
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp ground cinnamon or nutmeg
30ml (2 tbsp) lemon juice
½ tsp grated lemon zest
a good knob of butter

Preheat the oven to 230C.

Divide the dough in half and use one half to line a 23cm pie dish. Pare the apples and core them, then into eights and arrange on the pastry. Mix the sugar, salt and spices, and sprinkle over the apples. Sprinkle on the lemon juice and zest, and dot with the butter. Moisten the edges of the crust, cover it with the other half of dough, and lay it on the apples. Fold the upper crust under the lower crust and press the edges together. Cut a few gashes in the upper crust so steam can escape.

Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 180C and bake for 30 minutes more, or until the apples are tender.

• This recipe is adapted by Richard Ehrlich from The American Regional Cookbook, edited by Ruth Berolzheimer (1947)

New England sour cream raisin pie

Shortcrust pastry to line 2 x 23cm pie plates
2 eggs
225g sugar
225ml sour cream
100g raisins, chopped
¼ tsp nutmeg
large pinch of salt
15ml (1 tbsp) lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 230C.

Divide the dough in half and use one half to line a 23cm pie dish. Beat the eggs, add the sugar, and beat until the mixture is light and airy. Whip the sour cream and fold into the egg mixture. Add all remaining ingredients and blend well.

Pour the mixture into the pie dish. Moisten the edges of the crust, cover it with the other half of dough, and lay it on top. Fold the upper crust under the lower crust and press the edges together. Cut a few gashes in the upper crust so steam can escape.

Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 180C and bake for 20 minutes more.

• This recipe is adapted by Richard Ehrlich from The American Regional Cookbook, edited by Ruth Berolzheimer (1947)

Peach cobbler, Southern-style

For the topping:
100g plain flour
1½ tsp baking powder
30g sugar
¼ tsp salt
50g unsalted butter
75ml single cream
1 large egg

For the fruit:
25g unsalted butter
6 ripe peaches, stoned, sliced, and tossed with juice of ½ a lemon
50g sugar
2 tsp cinnamon powder

Preheat oven to 200C and make the topping: sift dry ingredients into a mixing bowl, then cut in butter till crumb-like in texture. Beat in cream and egg until just smooth.

Smear a baking dish around 8″ square with the remaining butter. Toss the peaches with the dry ingredients and spread out evenly in the dish. Spoon on the topping in glops, leaving spaces so the fruit is partly visible.

Bake in the upper third of the oven until the topping is golden brown (20-25 minutes). Serve hot with cream or vanilla ice cream.

• Recipe by Richard Ehrlich

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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I would blame The Huffington Post, but since it is now owned by AOL, I guess I shouldn’t expect much except ridulous sensationalism hoping to create any kind of buzz to drive more traffic. It is not enough that we are celebrating our Nations Decleration of Independence but do we have to memoralize a traiter to our country in his swim shorts? Or a villinous murderer, the infamous Mao Zedong of China who was known to have killed over 50 million people during his dictatorship. I know that I should not be surprised, but I am surprised that they didn’t find an old photo of Adolf Hitler and prance him around in his swimming trunks.

Just the thought of it is enough to make you want to hurl.

And let’s not forget Ronald and Nancy? I think I would rather have a paper cut on my tongue and then soak it in lemon juice. Let’s be real. This is not news, it’s not sexy, and it’s certainly not pretty. So what should it be called when the so-called news media has to bring a collection of such photos and press them in front of the publics eye?

Perhaps it is time for AOL to change the name of “The Huffington Post” to “The Huffington Tabloids” – at least it would better represent the kind of information they seem to be reporting.

This article titled “Hacking of Fox News claimed by group with links to Anonymous” was written by Charles Arthur, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 4th July 2011 12.25 UTC

A group loosely connected to the hacker collective Anonymous says it took control of the Fox News Politics Twitter account to claim that President Obama had been assassinated while campaigning in Iowa.

The Fox News Politics account – @foxnewspolitics – was used to put out a number of fake tweets saying that President Obama had been shot in the head and died, and that vice-president Joe Biden had been installed in his place. The tweets went out at around 2am Pacific time (5am EST, 10am BST). Obama is in fact thought to be in Washington at the White House, where his schedule shows he is due to give a speech in the Rose Garden at 6.30pm.

A representative of the group ‘Scriptkiddies’ said in an interview with Stony Brook University’s Think Magazine: “We are looking to find information about corporations to assist with antisec [a concerted hacker attack on corporate and government security]. Fox News was selected because we figured their security would be just as much of a joke as their reporting.”

He warned too that Fox News might see more attacks: “I’ve looked into their security, and site defacement does not seem to be an option. Everything else is fair game.”

The Script Kiddies representative added: “I would consider us to be close in relation [to Anonymous], two of the members of our group were members of Anonymous … I was a member of Anonymous. We hope to be working with them soon.”

‘Script kiddie’ is a generally insulting phrase used by hackers about inexperienced would-be hackers who used ready-made programs to attack sites. The group’s name here plays on that.

The attack is the latest in a rapidly growing list of attacks this year on the online presence of corporations and governments since Sony’s PlayStation Network was hacked in April, exposing the details of more than 75 million users. Since then many other game and company sites have been hit, with varying degrees of disruption.

The Script Kiddie representative told Think Magazine: “It will be a never-ending battle. The names change from time to time, like LulzSec and Anonymous or Script Kiddies. But there will always be a group of people that need to stand up for everyone else and attempt to keep the government in balance with its people. Without groups like Anonymous, what is there to prevent corruption?”

The group tried to create a number of Twitter accounts, but they had all been suspended wtihin hours of being created.

Meanwhile, “AnonymousIRC” – thought to be composed of some of the leaders of LulzSec – has continued to attack web systems belonging to the Arizona police. They also leaked the user names and encrypted passwords to a survey system belonging to Apple, saying: “Apple could be [a] target, too. But don’t worry, we are busy elsewhere.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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This article titled “HP TouchPad gets ‘could do better’ on HTML5 browser performance” was written by Charles Arthur, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 4th July 2011 15.48 UTC

Sencha, those testers of all things HTML5-ish (and also CSS3-ish), have put the HP TouchPad under the microscope. (A reminder: here’s my review, and here’s Sencha comparing the iPad 2 to the Motorola Xoom.)

Their conclusion, briefly, when compared to the RIM PlayBook, iPad 2, and Motorola Xoom? Not so amazing on the Acid3 test (which is of course fairly artificial), where it scores 92/100 – principally due to a lack of SVG support in the browser. Fairly good overall. In fact, “good enough” about sums it up.

Some interesting points:

Like all other tablets, the TouchPad and webOS use WebKit as their core browser technology. However what’s unique about webOS is the whole operating system is built on web technology, so the entire UI is built using WebKit. The browser reports in its User-Agent string that it’s running WebKit version 534.6, which is a very recent build, too. On the hardware side, HP has married that core software platform with a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-core processor. This is an interesting choice of speed, since the Qualcomm data sheet lists the processor at 1.5GHz which implies they’ve under-clocked the CPU, possibly for reasons of battery life or heat emission.

Fascinating that WebKit is now de rigeur for tablets (and almost overwhelmingly for all new smartphones; we may take a look at what the prospects are like for Opera now that Nokia is throwing Symbian down a deep hole). Who would have thought so all those years ago back in 2003, when Apple announced it was introducing its own Safari browser based on open source technology… which everyone expected would use Mozilla’s Gecko? Instead it was WebKit, which is gradually taking over the world.

Back to Sencha:

At 1.2GHz, we expected the JavaScript engine on the TouchPad to be on par with any of the other recent browsers we’ve tested, so we were a bit surprised when we ran the SunSpider tests and saw the browser fell behind its competitors. The Motorola Xoom, the iPad 2 and the PlayBook are all within about 10% of each other. However, the TouchPad is on average 70% slower in terms of JavaScript execution as measured by SunSpider.

Actually, what looks more surprising in that graph is the performance of the RIM PlayBook, which seems to do far better (shorter bars) than the iPad or Xoom: in my own experience, the PlayBook was horribly slow when it came to rendering a page.

In general, the TouchPad isn’t great at CSS3, especially the more demanding versions.

Which means that when Sencha threw the TouchPad into its “kitchen sink” tests…

One of the more interesting things that we found is that while running our Kitchen Sink through the browser, the app had decent speed and decent performance, but we had issues with scrolling and touch events. The browser captured swipes as viewport pan gestures and does not pass them through to the application, so swiping your finger to scroll lists caused the whole window to move. However, when we packaged a Sencha Touch app into an IPK (webOS’ packaging format) with the Palm developer tools, and ran the app in a native shell, the overall performance was significantly better, and the swipe gestures were detectable by the application. For now, this remains the most satisfactory way to deploy and run web apps on this device.

In other words, native apps run better than web apps. This is the sort of thing that will crop up again and again, and is staringly obvious in any discussion of “will mobile web or mobile apps win?” The answer is obvious: if what you’re offering depends on performance, then an app is always going to be faster, because it has much better access to the silicon. Any web app first has to get over the hump of getting onto the device, and then being rendered, which is always – always – going to impede performance, because the browser has its own issues to deal with. A mobile web app is always going to be an app-within-an-app (performing inside the browser), whereas a native/downloaded app will be there on the device, and so can get more access to CPU cycles.

Sencha’s overall conclusion? The TouchPad’s browser is “rough around the edges, but there’s definitely a lot of potential in the webOS platform, and we look forward to future updates”. Pretty much what everyone’s been saying, in fact.

• Meantime… someone in HP had a brainstorm, quite possibly after seeing Russell Brand in “Arthur” (the remake of the far better Dudley Moore film). Dudley Moore being unavailable, they decided to go with the same flavour of English-flunky-chamber music and have Russell telling you his most intimate thoughts about how he uses his HP TouchPad.

There’s no words we can find that adequately express how we feel about this video. Watch it for yourself. If you can. Warning: does not contain Katy Perry, so keep that expectant look off your face.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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What makes ZoopsON.com so special? They are a locally owned and operated company focusing on Oklahoma Businesses. Their goal is to help their local business partners increase their customers base by offering special deals, teach them how to socially (through Internet Marketing strategies) interact with their new customer base, learn how to retain a greater number of new customers and increase their ROI.

“We believe that if we help to build our local businesses, we are building a better economy and environment for our families and future generations.” says Mathew Zupan, owner of ZoopsON.com. “It’s a win-win for everyone! If businesses are flourishing and growing, there is more money in the economy. If there is more spending power, there is more buying power and the cycle just continues!”

Mathew Zupan, one of the owners of the Oklahoma Group Deals website, is convinced that if they maintain a local presence and focus on local businesses they will be able to offer a better service, better product, and better deals to their friends, neighbors and businesses. They also believe they will be able to save local businesses 20% on their deal offerings to local businesses, as opposed to their competition – Groupon, who charges 50% of the deal price as their commission. “That’s a lot of money to local small businesses, and frankly – we feel it is too much. It’s like price gouging!” Mathew Zupan says.

Aside from great deals for the consumer, and better service offerings to business owners, ZoopsON.com for businesses offers two very distinctive features that it’s competition does not offer – “Future Deals”, and “Social B-2-B Building”. And although we are not at liberty to disclose these two features yet – from what we have seen, the business owners are going to be very please with these added features.

So move over Groupon, Living Social and Offers – there is a new Deal in Town and it’s ZoopsON.com

This report came from FirstAutoLink.com – Read: Study, Car winds out as most exciting place to have sex – to find out more.

While this census may be true, the question remains: “Which Cars are favored?” We imagine that will be the discussion of another census!

If you have any comments – let us know!

Amazing deals are coming out of this hot new penny auction site called Bidd-It.com. Big savings whereever you see the Bidd-It frog – their motto: “Hey! I’m a frog! How hard can it be?” makes it easy to register, purchase bid packages and win.

Apparently for the Easter weekend they are having a Grand Opening Two Hour sales event giving a 30% discount on all of their bid packages between 12noon and 2pm today. In the penny auction world – that is big savings. They are offering everything you expect to find on a penny auction site like:

• Starbuck’s Gift Cards
• Putters
• Drivers
• Apple iPod Touch 64Gb
• Best-Selling Books like: A Pioneer Woman Cooks by Ree Drummond and David Baldacci’s latest best seller “The Sixth Man“
• Omaha Steak Gift Cards
• Kindle 3G
• Home Depot
• and much more

In an interview we were even told that there are some really BIG auction prizes coming up like a 15″ Apple MacPro Laptop, a 40″ TV, and several other suprises.

We asked Pat (the owner of Bidd-It.com) what makes Bidd-It.com different from all the other penny auction sites that have sprung up over that last couple of years:

We plan to offer products and even services that other auction sites do not. Such as medical products that will help people supplement their medical needs. We will be having special auctions that are strickly for charities like raising money to help people affected by the Japanese Tsunami not just in Japan but here in the United States. Many people don’t realize that thousands of people have become unemployed in the United States because the Tsunami in Japan and that creates an even tougher economy.

Pat went on to tell us about some of the goals for Education Tuition Auctions that will help students afford higher education – and some just plain fun auctions.

“What do you think is going to be your biggest auction items over the next 6 month” we asked.

“By far – gift certificates and cash cards like Shell Gas Cards and American Express Gift Cards.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“The answer is simple. With the rising cost of fuel these days – it only makes good buying sense to purchase a gas card and a discount. Even if you only saved 50% on the gas card purchase that means that you can now buy fuel at $1.77 per/gallon here in Oklahoma. It just makes good sense.” Pat told us.

“Well Pat – what is one piece of advice that you could give our readers when it comes to penny auctions sites, especially for a beginner.”

“Only bid on something that you would buy anyway. If you’re going to spend $25.00 on a gift card for a friend because it’s their birthday, then bid on a $25.00 gift card. Just like almost all penny auction sites that I have researched, they all have a “Buy Now” benefit. That means if you spent $10.00 on bids for an item and you did not win, you could still purchase that item for the difference in the bids you spent and the normal retail cost. It’s a win-win situation.”

There you have it! Penny Auction saving you a pretty penny.

This article titled “Adult entertainment domain .xxx is finally approved by US authorities” was written by Joanna Walters in New York, for guardian.co.uk on Sunday 20th March 2011 00.05 UTC

A new internet domain especially for pornography is set to go ahead after the official name .xxx was approved by US authorities as an alternative to suffixes such as .com or .co.uk.

Amid controversy over the concept of creating an “online red light district”, proponents of the domain argued it would help to regulate adult entertainment content and keep it further from the eyes of youngsters.

The domain, Dot Triple-X, was approved by the international Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), which administers millions of internet addresses. It had been pending since 2003 and was resisted by the Bush government but progressed unopposed by Barack Obama’s administration.

Dot Triple-X will be managed by the online address registering company ICM Registry, which has long fought for a legitimate domain set aside for sexually explicit material on the net.

More than 230,000 pornographic websites have reserved an address ending in .xxx, in anticipation of the eventual approval of the domain name.

Stuart Lawley, CEO of ICM Registry, said the first .xxx websites would be going live by June or July of this year.

“For the first time, there will be a clearly defined web address for adult entertainment, further out of the reach of minors and as free as possible from fraud or computer viruses,” he said.

Use of the domain name is voluntary and is designed to shut out child porn and incorporate heightened security barriers, making it harder for children to stumble on sexual content online.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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This article titled “Portugal’s new tourism draws are Phantom Of The Opera and Evita” was written by Vanessa Thorpe, for The Observer on Sunday 20th March 2011 00.05 UTC

The songs of Andrew Lloyd Webber have moved audiences to tears and set box office tills ringing in London’s West End for more than 30 years, but can they help to shore up the Portuguese economy?

As the country struggles this weekend to play down new fears about an impending bailout by the International Monetary Fund, the national tourist agency has announced a plan to draw a stream of British tourists into Portuguese resorts this summer by booking a succession of popular British entertainment shows and acts.

At the top of the bill are The Phantom of the Opera, Evita and Jesus Christ Superstar. The British band Morcheeba is already booked, as is jazz singer Norma Winstone. There are also plans to bring in Lamb, the electronic trip-hop musicians from Manchester.

The entertainment scheme, called Allgarve Nations, aims to celebrate the culture of one of the favourite visiting nations each year in turn.

“For this first edition we have chosen the United Kingdom, which is our main tourism market, with a programme that includes British artists as well as national ones,” said Augusto Miranda, the co-ordinator of the campaign.

“The cherry on the cake is that we are still working on the programme and there are more surprises to come,” he added, announcing the programme of events in Faro last week.

Despite his country’s economic crisis, Miranda said he hopes to secure the normal budget of €3m for promotional schemes this year. A reliable flow of holidaymakers from Britain has been crucial to Portuguese finances for some years, but the heavy burden of the economic crash means it is no time for complacency.

The influential credit ratings agency Moody’s downgraded Portugal’s financial standing by two notches last week in view of the country’s weak growth prospects. The move prompted damaging speculation that a bailout similar to those handed out last year to Ireland and Greece cannot be far away. The rating agency said “subdued growth prospects and productivity gains” over the near- to medium-term were behind their decision, as was concern that reforms to the labour market and the justice system had yet to “bear fruit”.

On Friday the Portuguese prime minister, José Sócrates, urged his parliament to back new austerity measures. “I will do what it takes to avoid a bailout,” he said, emphasising his determination to go to the EU summit this week with a solid plan. His minority socialist-leaning government has staked its reputation on avoiding a bailout and it claims its new programme of spending cuts – the fourth in a year – will restore market faith in the economy. Opposition parties are calling for more, including a pensions freeze.

Another glimmer of hope for the Portuguese tourist economy comes from plans for more low-cost flights to the Algarve. A budget airline, Jet2, has announced that it will be adding two new British routes to and from Faro from next month. Property professionals believe the news will help to revive the plummeting local property market by encouraging investors who want to buy second homes and let them to holidaymakers.

Prince Charles and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, are due to make an official visit to Portugal next week as part of a tour also taking in Spain and Morocco. Their visit will begin in Lisbon and will, according to Clarence House, “celebrate long-standing co-operation between the Portuguese and British navies, support British trade and investment opportunities and highlight the work of the substantial resident British community”.

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