Last week some may have read articles about Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s husband- who is in love with another woman. He has Alzheimer’s Disease and this isn’t a rare occurrence.

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Cranberry Upside Down Cake

8 tablespoons butter
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1 3/4 cups cranberries
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/4 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8 inch round cake pan with 2 tbsp of butter.
(Or, use a #8 *Griswold* cast iron skillet lined with tin foil, as I did)
2. In a small bowl, whisk 1/2 cup sugar with the cinnamon and allspice.
3. Sprinkle mixture evenly over bottom of pan, arrange cranberries in a single layer on top.
4. Cream remaining 6 tbsp of butter and 1/2 cup of sugar until light and fluffy.
5. Add egg and vanilla, beat until well mixed.
6. In another bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. With mixer on low speed, add flour mixture to butter mixture, alternating with the milk.
7. Spoon batter over cranberries in pan and smooth the top.
8. Place pan on baking sheet and cook until toothpick comes out clean, about 30 to 35 minutes.
9. Cool on wire rack for 20 minutes. Run a knife around edge and invert onto a rimmed platter.
10. Enjoy!

When I was a little girl I remember watching my Mom cook. She always used those old black cast iron pots and pans and skillets. My Grandmah used them as well. I grew up assuming there were no other options and that I would use these heavy clanky pans myself.

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The irony abounds once again in Great Britain. Keeping the politics out of this as much as I can, remember that your priorities might not equal those of a national health care system.

LONDON (AP) - For two years, Frances Kinley-Manton says she lived with arthritis pain in her hips, a condition that kept her in a wheelchair.

She wanted hip replacement surgery. But doctors at Britain’s National Health Service said she was too fat for the operation.

“They wouldn’t even put me on a waiting list,” Kinley-Manton recalled.

Her doctor told the 210-pound woman to lose about 30 pounds before he would consider her for surgery.

Unable to drop the weight through dieting, the 68-year-old Scotland resident took out a mortgage on her house to pay for a private operation on the Mediterranean island of Malta. She had her first hip operation in July. Now she’s awaiting surgery on the other hip.

“I had no alternative,” she said in a telephone interview from the island. “NHS said they wouldn’t operate on me because I’m overweight, but I think they were just trying to keep their costs down.”

There are increased risks with surgery to overweight people, for sure. Mrs. Kinley-Manton was/is NOT morbidly overweight however. People in the US and most other nations can and do have hip operations at this weight; many are heavier. The risks are there, but not high enough to deny someone this operation. Doctors and other medical people realize the risks of doing nothing in these cases far outweigh the small chances of problems occurring during the surgery: A hip problem increases immobility, which leads to dependence and eventually the inability to take care of oneself. Um, this often leads to nursing home placement which is much more expensive than the operation in question here.

Contrary to what the NHS considers to be vital and important, we see the NHS pays for women to have their hymens repaired, so they have the look and feel of a virgin on their wedding night.

Women are being given controversial “virginity repair” operations on the NHS, it emerged last night.

Taxpayers funded 24 hymen replacement operations between 2005 and 2006, official figures revealed.

And increasing numbers of women are paying up to £4,000 in private clinics for the procedure apparently under pressure from future spouses or in-laws who believe they should be virgins on their wedding night.

Doctors said most patients are immigrants or British of ethnic origin.

Of course this is for women who are Muslims. That’s not important in my point here. What should concern people is the stark reality of a culture that disregards a real medical condition vs. a politically correct and religiously based “demand”.

Muslim non-virgin women should be the ones going to other countries and paying for their own non essential surgeries with their own money; not slightly to moderately overweight women who could very well end up living in nursing homes for the lack of a simple and very effective surgery. Of course Mrs. Kinley-Manton could claim herself a Muslim, demand a hymen repair and perhaps as an added benefit ask for the hip replacement surgery: She would probably have a good chance of getting both.

I just remembered Teach does open trackbacks now and again and I think this article is worthy of sharing. So go over and see what he has to say…

Huh?

What a damn waste. And a cryin shame if they do this:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Here’s a sobering thought: Hundreds of bottles of Jack Daniel’s whiskey, some of it almost 100 years old, may be unceremoniously poured down a drain because authorities suspect it was being sold by someone without a license.NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Here’s a sobering thought: Hundreds of bottles of Jack Daniel’s whiskey, some of it almost 100 years old, may be unceremoniously poured down a drain because authorities suspect it was being sold by someone without a license.

Stupid regulations and ordinances create waste like this! I want those bottles to be unceremoniously poured into little shot glasses of me and my friends.

Speaking of things to drink I consider the following to be good news:

SEATTLE (AP) — Fewer coffee drinkers have been streaming into Starbucks Corp.’s U.S. stores — news that overshadowed an otherwise healthy fiscal fourth quarter for the world’s largest chain of coffee houses.

The 1 percent drop in traffic at stores open at least 13 months marked the first time the company has seen such a decline, and it helped send Starbucks shares down nearly 8 percent in after-hours trading Thursday.

Starbucks coffee SUCKS!

That’s why sales are down. In my area the Dunkin Donut shops are hoppin busy…and the Starbucks are empty. Says much.

Friday Feast is a weekly meme brought to us by Susan. The idea of this meme is to answer 5 questions about yourself, which Susan sends out each week. You leave a comment at the main site announcing your blog’s URL and participation, go visit AT LEAST 5 other Feasters and hopefully they will come by and read your feast and leave you a comment. It’s fun and a lot of people participate. Why don’t YOU??

Is this good advice?
Men and Marriage…

DON’T DO IT. And DON’T HAVE CHILDREN either.

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Built Blohm & Voss Hamburg, 1913 as VATERLAND
54,282 GRT
948 x 100 feet
Quadruple screw, 24 knots, turbines
752 first class, 535 second class, 850 third class, 1,772 passengers; 1,243 crew

The S.S. Vaterland, was built in Hamburg, Germany, as the second of three very large ships for the Hamburg-America Line’s trans-Atlantic route. Completed in the spring of 1914 she surpassed her slightly older near-sister, S.S. Imperator, as the World’s largest ship. Vaterland held this honor until 1922, when the last of the three big German liners, the 56,551 gross ton Bismarck, was delivered after a long delay and almost immediately became the British liner Majestic.

The three ships’ design emphasized luxury and comfort over speed, though their 23-knot service speed was fast enough for the North Atlantic trade. Vaterland had made only a few trips when, in late July 1914, she arrived at New York just as World War I broke out. With a safe return to Germany rendered virtually impossible by British dominance of the seas, she was laid up at her Hoboken, New Jersey, terminal, and remained immobile for nearly three years.

In April 1917, when the United States entered the war, Vaterland was seized and turned over to the U.S. Navy, which placed her in service later in the year under the name USS Leviathan. In October 1919, she was transferred to the U.S. Shipping Board and again laid up at Hoboken until plans for her future employment could be determined. These finally materialized and, in April 1922 the ship steamed to Newport News, Virginia, where she was completely refitted to suit American tastes and post-World War I standards.

As S.S. Leviathan, she was the “queen” of the United States’ merchant fleet, and operated in the trans-Atlantic trade into the early 1930s. She was not profitable, however, and, with the exception of several months of additional service in 1934, Leviathan was inactive until early 1938, when she made a final Atlantic crossing to Scotland, where she was broken up. No U.S. flag commercial ship approached her size until 1952, until the the S.S. United States was completed.

“If you work on a lobster boat, sneaking up behind someone and pinching him is probably a joke that gets old real fast.”

~Jack Handey

Most of us, I suppose, are a little nervous of the sea. No matter what its smiles may be, we doubt its friendship.

~H.M. Tomlinson