Daily Archives: March 14, 2010

The privacy team. Now there’s a new government facility to be located nearby to listen in to anything anyone might say. Will its installation help the economy? Yes.

Years ago we had a P-Team pre-Internet that saw dangers in banking, healthcare, insurance and other industries that would erode personal privacy. My area was cable TV, and potential interactive situations that would leave consumer information out there to be mined.

Little did we know what was down the road. I still think our own self-appointed privacy team had the right idea in the 80′s. I’m proud to have been a part of that brotherhood and to see fellow members succeed in their careers.

I did a lot of work, plugging holes in the dike and pushing paperwork. This is the first chance I had to focus (and lose big) and it shaped my life, helped me focus on the important things and know for the first time it’s OK to have enemies.

My loving husband calls me a “feminist homemaker” because I had my share of battles in the workplace, as an advocate and volunteer. Cooking is always something I come back to, a grounding force, and cooking for two is much better than one.

Yes, I get my ire up over major government issues but so should everyone, pro or con. We’ve been too complacent over the years and the biggest battle over this healthcare issue is disinformation and lack of information. Insurance companies et al vs. The Bill Payers, which is us.

Just as we financed the banks that formerly financed us, now the insurance industry wants us to fund them too, because their business is to take our money, invest it and not give anything back.

We need to take this past the healthcare issue and the newly-issued jobs and education initiatives (to make healthcare pass or mask its flaming defeat) and think about where we’re going as a nation. A serious post, Dee

There are specific and non-specific gauges. Like finding out about who likes a political candidate or the most popular television shows. Then there are specifics.

My dear husband, non-cook (but a phycist and software engineer) does grill while I’m in the kitchen preparing side dishes and setting him up for anything he needs on the grill.

The other night I made Jacque Pepin’s Grilled Lamb Robert with a 2.88 lb lamb leg cut. It was an unwieldy cut and I wanted to do the entire piece with bone and on the grill. As you may know, all of our stuff is in storage so I don’t have an instant-read thermometer.

Jim ran out to get one. What did he come back with was a tong device to instantly measure meat temperature on the grill, an instant-read thermometer, and an oven temperature gauge. Leave it to the physicist to get every gauge imaginable.

The lamb was very tasty, coming out at 135-140 degrees and resting. It turns out that at lower temps my oven seems to be 25 degrees above the set temperature, and at 350 degrees the oven thermometer registers 400. Nothing can be placed on the bottom two shelves because it’ll burn up.

Soft public opinion gauges say that measuring your oven temp and large roast temp’s are worthwhile. But that’s only my opinion. Cheers, Dee