Today's Tips:

• Even though we use a tomato mostly as a vegetable, it is really a fruit. What makes something a fruit or a veggie? It is a fruit when the edible part is the seed and a veggie is when the edible part is the stems, leaves or roots.
  
• When you buy tomatoes, let them sit at room temperature for a couple of days to ripen. Then, when fully ripe, they can be refrigerated.
  
• If you freeze strawberries, rhubarb or anything like that, pre-measure them before freezing in amounts you need for your favorite recipes.
  
• If you don't have time to make zucchini bread, shred the zucchini, steam it 1-2 minutes until translucent and drain. Then measure the amounts you will need for your favorite recipes into freezer containers and freeze.
  

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Today's Recipes:

This recipe makes a really nice side dish, especially if you need to add a little color to your menu.

Tomato Casserole

8 medium tomatoes, peeled and cut into wedges
8 slices of bread, cubed with crusts removed
1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp. of margarine or butter, melted
1 tsp. each of salt, thyme and dried basil
3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Place tomatoes in a greased 9x13 pan. Top with bread cubes. Mix butter and spices and pour over tomatoes and bread. Sprinkle with cheese. Bake uncovered at 350° for 30-35 minutes or until tomatoes are tender.

Out Of The Ordinary Hamburgers:

Jalapeño Burgers I

4 jalapeño peppers, seeded and minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. cilantro
4 Tbsp. Cajun seasoning
1 lb. ground beef

Mix ingredients together. Grill or fry.

Jalapeño Burgers II

1 cup jalapeños, seeded and chopped
1 (8 oz.) package cream cheese
1 lb. ground beef

Mix jalapeños and cream cheese. Make beef into thinner patties, because you will be using 2 together. Place 1-2 spoonfuls of jalapeño mix on one patty and top with another patty. Grill or fry.

This next recipe takes an ordinary burger and makes it extraordinary. It is a great way to use that small amount of leftover baked or boiled potatoes. The next time you are making potato salad, you can cook an extra potato or, if your are mashing potatoes, save one back to use for this recipe.

You can try a lot of different twists to this burger, which I will list at the end of the recipe.

More Than Just a Burger

1 potato, cooked and shredded
1 cup Swiss cheese
1 cup fresh mushrooms, sliced or chopped
2 lbs. ground beef
1 pkg. onion soup mix

Mix hamburger and soup mix. Form into about 14-16 patties. Mix potato, cheese and mushrooms together. Place a spoon full of potato mix on one patty and top with another one. Seal with fingers and grill or fry until done.

Different Twists:

You could use frozen hash browns for the potatoes. Just fry them before adding to the cheese and mushrooms.

In place of the Swiss cheese, mushrooms, and potatoes,you could use cream cheese and sun dried tomatoes for the center mix and then top with an avocado when ready to serve.

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The Living On A Dime newsletter is published by:
Kellam Media and Publishing, Inc.
P.O. Box 844, Andover, KS 67002

What What Can a Lunatic Farmer Teach Us? Friday, July 29, 2011

In our society, people seem to fall at two extremes of the spectrum. We're either rabid environmentalists or amoral materialists, either strict evolutionists or staunch creationists, either leftist liberals or rightwing conservatives. Somehow we've grown to think that there is no middle ground to any position. In the words of those old western movies... you're either for us or against us and you better make a choice. Those who consider themselves Christians are not immune to this extreme response either.


Is there no balance, no middle ground that we can come together on in these and other matters that affect us? Joel Salatin, our guest on Off the Grid Radio this week says yes there is, and in fact Christians carry this message of balance uniquely, because we should understand that we're a part of the physical world that actually operates by spiritual, eternal, and unchanging rules. We have the opportunity to show the rest of the world what real balance is like.


Joel Salatin is the author of several books, including Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal, You Can Farm, and Family Friendly Farming. He is an educator, a farmer, a diplomat, and an ambassador for the wonderful balanced life that is found when we realize that stewardship of our lives and our environment is intricately tied into the success we'll have in living an off-grid lifestyle.


Please join us for this very special edition of Off the Grid Radio.


http://www.offthegridnews.com/2011/07/29/what-can-a-lunatic-farmer-teach-us-episode-059/


Regards,


The Off the Grid Radio Team

Dying Unnecessarily

by Robert Ringer Wednesday, July 27, 2011


Try to imagine if just one person had been carrying a concealed weapon at Gabrielle Giffords’ gathering with her constituents in Tucson … or in all those classrooms that Seung-Hui Cho shot up at Virginia Tech … or at the Labour Party’s summer camp for youth activists in Norway … or, for that matter, on each of the jetliners that went down on 9/11.

Better yet, imagine if there had been many individuals carrying concealed weapons in each of those situations. Had that been the case, it’s a virtual certainty that scores of people’s lives would have been saved — possibly thousands if armed passengers had been able to take down the 9/11 terrorists.

It angers me whenever I think of innocent human beings dying unnecessarily. And when unarmed people are faced with an armed madman (or madmen), that’s exactly what happens.

When I was in my twenties, it was a different world. Hard as it is to imagine now, I always carried a concealed weapon when I traveled. I would usually stick my head in the cockpit and, as a courtesy to the pilot, let him know I was armed. Without exception, I’d get a smile and a “thank you” in return. This is before the fascist left gained control of our culture and our legal system.

P.S. I never killed anyone. Nor did I ever injure anyone. Thankfully, I never had occasion to use my gun on an airplane. But had some nut pulled out a weapon and begun attacking people, it was comforting to know that I might have been able to take him out.

Today, I’d feel a heck of a lot more secure if I knew that many passengers on every flight were armed. I’ve never known anyone who has killed another human being, so why would I have any concern about passengers being armed on a commercial flight?

But the liberal doesn’t see it that way. The mental disorder known as liberalism has many tentacles, and no one can ever hope to completely understand it. Why? Because the liberal bases his actions entirely on subjectivism and emotion. To a liberal, good is whatever he subjectively decides it is, and, on the other side of the moral coin, he believes it is his duty to stop that which he subjectively perceives to be evil.

Unfortunately, one of the things the liberal sees as evil is a firearm. Therefore, guns must be stopped — meaning, banned. I know it’s a tired cliché, but it can’t be repeated too often: Guns don’t kill people. People do.

Jared Lee Loughner, Seung-Hui Cho, and, most recently, Anders Behring Breivik killed a lot of people using guns. But those same guns in the hands of sane, moral people would not have killed anyone.

Better still, those same guns in the hands of sane, moral people almost certainly would have saved scores of lives. Strange that the left can’t seem to grasp that. It seems so logical … but, then, that’s precisely the problem. Logic doesn’t jibe well with subjectivism and emotion. Which is good for criminals, but not good for law-abiding citizens