WFMW - Green Beans, the easy way!

I haven't done a Works for Me Wednesday in forever, not because I don't like them anymore, just because I haven't been able to think of anything to post about. But today, I do!

I love fresh green beans. It's my go to company vegetable side dish. Easy and if in season, frugal. I just steam them for ~7 minutes then toss in a pan with a little butter or olive oil and a clove or two of crushed garlic. Easy right? Well, not if you have to cut all those little ends off. I hate that part, it takes forever...but only if you use a knife. I know what you are thinking "Why, MacKenzie, how else would you cut all those ends of if you didn't use a knife?"

I'll tell you - a pizza cutter! Just line them a handful up, more or less evenly, then run them over with a pizza cutter on both ends and ta-da! Even a several lbs of green beans can be done in a few minutes. Pizza cutters for multiple purposes - it works for me!






*Today is also the day for excessive exclamation point usage apparently, who knew green beans are so exciting!

Verse 18!

I know I just posted a little while ago but this will be quick, relatively speaking. I have still been doing my Siesta Scripture Memory Verses, I just haven't been updating my box very well. We are up to 18! Even though a verse every two weeks doesn't sound like a whole lot, it really adds up. That is already 18 verses more than I would have memorized if I hadn't taken this small step. And while I don't have all of mine completely memorized (word perfectly with references is my "completely", in every case if I read the first word or two, I can finish it on my own.

This time, I wanted to take a verse from a parable I have claimed recently. I have it written somewhere that is currently unaccessible and I couldn't remember the reference so I just googled "parable judge nagging lady" and lo and behold, I found it! The NIV bible calls in the parable of the persistant woman but I find the line between persistance and nagging is quite thin.

The whole thing is longer than I want to memorize right now so I just picked a verses from the middle that summarizes the lesson but I wanted to post the whole thing for y'all me. My memory part is in bold.

¹Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. ²He said: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. ³And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.'

⁴"For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, ⁵yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!' "

⁶And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. ⁷And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? ⁸I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"

Luke 18:1-8

Kolache Festival!

Gilmore Girls was always my show. I really wanted to live in Stars Hollow, they always had such great local festivals going on. So when we heard some friends from our home group were going to a kolache festival at a nearby town, we had to join them even if it meant getting up before 8 on a Saturday morning to spend the day walking around in the rain.

The first stand that really interested me was a sauerkraut booth that talked about classically fermented sauerkraut. You might remember my attempt at that. It didn't go so well but I couldn't have been to far off as he used the same method as me (except he had the big fancy crock and cabbage shredder instead of a jar and a knife). He was very helpful, giving me some tips and his recipe ratio (it's only cabbage and salt). I might be ready to try it again because he also had samples and it was reallly tasty, even at nine in the morning. It was the last healthy thing I ate all day.

We explored some more craft booths but quickly realized what we really wanted were the pastries!
(The pictures in this post aren't the best, it is hard to take pictures, hold and umbrella and eat kolaches at the same time so something had to suffer and it certainly couldn't be the eating part!)

We tried the sausage and the strawberry and the poppy seed and the cream cheese (my favorite) and tested as many different bakeries as possible, trying to pick a favorite. We all pretty much decided we liked the same two bakeries the best (the others were too dry) but despite the yummy temptations of the award winning chocolate cream kolache, our stomachs were about to explode and we had. to. stop.

We ran into some other church folks, found a shelter from the rain where we could rest and chat, then walked around and admired the rest of the crafts and explored the fried food options (so we would be prepared for lunch, of course). Fallon and I broke off from the crowd to head over to the quilt show and when we made it back to the group, we were ready for some more food.
Of course, Neva and I had to get ours on a stick in good festival fashion! (Thanks Craig, for insisting this be an action shot :-) Don't I look so delicate?
Then we headed home, our feet and stomachs tired from the workout and ready for an afternoon nap.

Dying Arts

I found this article, entitled "5o things that are being killed by the internet." It made me nod a lot and say, "Definitely, definitely." Some of the British ones, though, I didn't understand. I'd like to comment on some of them:

• 27) Knowing telephone numbers off by heart: "After typing the digits into your contacts book, you need never look at them again."
  I used to be really good at memorizing phone numbers. I had a number of them in my head, but now that's gone. But they say that Einstein refused to memorize his phone number, apparently because he didn't want to waste brain space, so maybe this is a good thing for me. Although I'm not sure how one avoids memorizing his own phone number.

• 29) The mystery of foreign languages: "Sites like Babelfish offer instant, good-enough translations of dozens of languages – but kill their beauty and rhythm." I think this is a good thing. While speakers of major foreign languages will always be in demand, if the US could remedy its shortage of speakers of languages like Arabic, Farsi, and Urdu with technology, that would help us out a lot.

• 30) Geographical knowledge: "With GPS systems spreading from cars to smartphones, knowing the way from A to B is a less prized skill. Just ask the London taxi drivers who spent years learning The Knowledge but are now undercut by minicabs." I don't use GPS in my car much, but it does seem like people who do fail to learn the local road system as well as people who rely on maps or Mapquest. I think it is useful to know how to get from place to place off the top of your head, or to be able to identify an alternate route on the fly, without having a pleasant voice tell you where to go.

• 31) Privacy: "We may attack governments for the spread of surveillance culture, but users of social media websites make more information about themselves available than Big Brother could ever hoped to obtain by covert means." I've noticed this, and find it ironic.

• 16) Hoaxes and conspiracy theories
  "The internet is often dismissed as awash with cranks, but it has proved far more potent at debunking conspiracy theories than perpetuating them. The excellent Snopes.com continues to deliver the final, sober, word on urban legends." I don't agree with this one. I think the Internet does as much to advance conspiracies as debunk them. The 9/11 "truther" movement lives on the internet, as do Obama birth certificate rumors. While Snopes is indeed a useful site, people tend to visit sites that agree with their world view. Conspiracy theorists are more likely to visit "Loose Change" than Popular Mechanics or other debunking sites.

Foreign Affairs Friday: Russian Gas

Russia has the world's largest reserves of natural gas (about 44 trillion cubic meters, for those counting at home). Not content to merely make money off of this gas, Russia also uses it as a political weapon. And a very potent weapon it is, because Russia supplies 25% of the EU's gas, and also controls most of the gas that comes out of Central Asia. Eastern European nations that were once part of the Soviet Union, such as Ukraine and Belarus, are particularly reliant on Russian gas. Russia uses this leverage to try to keep these countries from becoming too close to the West. Russia has shut off gas to Ukraine twice in recent years (in the dead of winter, when it is most needed) during pricing disputes. Clearly, it is in the best interest of Europe to diversify its gas supplies, and for Central Asia to diversify its customer base.

The way to do this is with new pipelines that bypass Russia. Unlike oil, which can be hauled anywhere via ship, natural gas is generally transported by pipelines, which are expensive and serve to tie producing and consuming countries together into long-term relationships. Currently, there are few pipelines that bypass Russia. One proposal, the Nabucco pipeline, would carry gas from Azerbaijan and potentially Turkmenistan to Turkey and then on to Europe.


Russia doesn't want to see diversification, of course. The South Stream pipeline on the above map is Russia's planned response. If they can lock up gas supplies, in order to keep them out of Nabucco, then that project would fail.

Russia has several advantages in this battle. One, all the existing pipelines that go through Russia. Two, their big gas company, Gazprom, is state-owned, so it works closely with the government. Three, the EU is made up of a number of countries, and getting them all to agree on the same energy policy is not easy.

As with most issues these days, the impact of China is important, as its gas requirements grow. It gives Russia another customer, which could potentially lead to increases in gas prices and more leverage over Europe. But it also gives Central Asian gas producers a new customer, which hurts Russia's attempts to monopolize natural gas.

There are signs, though, that nations like Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan want to sell gas to Europe. There are also indications that Eastern European countries are willing to get to work on building new pipelines. It is in the US' interest to free Russia's neighbors from its gas-fueled clutches. The battle over natural gas is only going to get hotter.