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Balik Corbasi

This Turkish fish soup is really delicious and filling! It reminds me of Greek Avgo-Lemono (Egg and Lemon) soup. I rewrote this recipe to make it easier and faster. The original calls for a whole fish, which is cooked then strained for the stock. I had wonderful results with fish bouillon cubes.

Balik Corbasi
Balik Corbasi

Balik Corbasi

2 Tbl Olive oil
1 large leek, sliced and rinsed
1 medium onion, diced
2 carrots, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced (or use 1 Tbl garlic paste)
zest of 2 lemons
3 cubes Knorr fish bouillon
3 cups water
OR 3 cups fish stock
1 cup dry white wine
1.5# of firm white fish, 1″ cubes (I used flounder, but snapper, sea bass or cod would be fine.)
1 Tbl dill
pinch cayenne or red pepper flakes
2 Tbl fresh parsley, chopped
juice of 2 lemons
6 egg yolks
1 Tbl cornstarch
S/P taste
Greek yogurt for serving

Heat a large pot over med heat and add olive oil. Add leek, onion, carrot, garlic and lemon zest and cook until tender. Crumble in fish bouillon cubes. Add wine and cook for 2-3 minutes, then add water and fish. Bring to boil, reduce to simmer.

Whisk together egg yolks, lemon juice and cornstarch. Temper the eggs by adding several ladles of the hot stock, then add to soup. Add dill, red pepper and parsley. Add S/P to taste. Bring back to boil for a minute or two to cook the cornstarch, then kill the heat. The soup will be thick and have a lovely colour.

Serve with a dollop of Greek yogurt and lemon slices.

Tips: I used prepackaged flounder from Kroger. It’s cheap, ready to use and tasted fine. I buy it when it’s on sale and keep it in the freezer. If you have fish stock, use it, but the Knorr cubes work great if you can find them!

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I don’t WANT insurance!

This fucking Obamacare bullshit is on my last nerve. It’s a lovely idea, but it will NEVER work as long as insurance companies are involved. Period. End of discussion.

Forcing Americans to pay insurance companies whether they want to or not is crazy. Insurance and big pharma got us INTO this mess, why on earth should we REWARD them for it? It’s like everything else in this fucked up country: fueled by greed and politicians. It’s insurance and pharma’s wet dream! Hand over the American people and let the money flow.

Have you looked at what it’s gonna cost you yet? Hop on over to Kaiser and take a gander at the subsidy calculator. Like what you see? They expect us to pay almost $400/mo for insurance – NO subsidy, of course, cuz we rich. FUCK THAT. I just had a bout of nasty bronchitis and it cost me $150. Our meds cost us about $25/yr. A Dr visit is $45, when we need it – which is not often. Now, in what reality would paying $400/mo make sense for us?

Obamacare is a grandiose idea that simply will not work as advertised. I love how the cheerleaders are becoming more and more quiet as they begin to realise just how much this shit is gonna cost. It ain’t FREE you dumbasses.

If Obama, or whoever is in charge, wants to help out Americans, then BAN INSURANCE. Let the market be TRULY free. Make Doctors run their businesses like a BUSINESS, where customer satisfaction and practicing medicine are the priorities, not how many cattle can be shoved through in a day. Without dealing with the insurance bullshit, doctors could run their offices with fewer employees – rather than the legions of medical secretaries required now to file the fucking insurance paperwork. Removing that whole layer of bureaucracy would save millions! Billions!

I’ve been saying this for years: the way to “fix” healthcare in the US is to get rid of the problem: insurance. No other countries in the world have insurance screwing up their systems. None. Until the people of the US realise this, the clusterfuck will continue.

Healthcare costs in the US are absolutely out of control. Why? Because of insurance, that’s why. Take a look at the costs of various items in the US vs other countries. $178 for a Dr visit? Fuck! Glad my doctor is mostly cash based and $45. Just look at this crazy! And keep in mind, this is what is BILLED to insurance, not what the Dr actually gets. Are you starting to understand the flow of cash now? INSURANCE makes the money. NOT the Drs. Here’s another article about costs and who actually benefits.

Providers largely charge what they can get away with, often offering different prices to different insurers, and an even higher price to the uninsured. -Ezra Klein, Washington Post, March 15, 2013

If the American people had any sense (they do not) then they’d notice that these same fucking politicians who are cramming this expensive plan down our throats are the very same ones who have voted to opt themselves OUT of it. Does that not bother anyone besides me? Oh, this expensive ass plan is FINE for the peasants, but not for the royalty, eh? Politicians are out of control. They ARE the 1% and they don’t give a rat’s ass about their constituents. They are all about getting paid and living large. Why should they, the elite, have to pay for insurance? Or travel? Or postage? Or anything, really? I mean, they are SO IMPORTANT.

This whole Obamacare scenario is just one big show. It’s not to actually help anyone other than the insurance companies, who will then “help” their friends on Capitol Hill. If it’s so fucking awesome, then the assholes in our government should be forced to do it, too. We can’t vote ourselves out of this clusterfuck. But we CAN vote out every motherfucker who currently holds office. It’s all we got, folks. The power to vote OUT these assholes who are getting rich at our expense is our only recourse.

So, NO, I do NOT want insurance. What I want is a relationship with my Dr and to pay her what she needs to run her business and make money. Luckily for me, I’ve got a situation that’s very close to this ideal. Our Dr has reasonable rates and she is all about prescribing generics rather than expensive meds. She knows us and she cares about us. We are not just more cattle to run through the system. I wish everyone could have a Dr like ours. My advice? Find an independent Indian doctor. The best doctors I’ve had have been Indian doctors with their own practices.

No, we won’t be participating in Obamacare. We’ll pay the fine. I’ve got better things to do with that $400/mo, thankyouverymuch. It won’t be around long, anyway. Once the politicians start losing votes, they’ll get rid of it soon enough. And it’ll be back to the same old shitty system we’ve always had. I am happy to not be a part of it.

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Well, that sucked.

As anyone who follows my twitter feed knows, I’ve been sick for a week. It started off as the typical viral bronchitis-type thing I’ve had before. I had a bout of it last year for my yearly sick. But this time, it got way out of control. After 5 days of tylenol, advil, aleve, mucinex and cough suppressant, it was clear that this was not going away. Yesterday, after another sleepless night, I got up early and asked Nick to call the Dr for an appointment. They took me immediately.

You know it’s serious when I choose to go to a Dr. You know it’s REALLY serious when I go to the Dr w/out a stitch of makeup or even my contacts in. o.O It was that bad.

She looked me over and prescribed pretty much everything possible for bronchitis: albuterol inhaler, medrol prednisone pack, Z Pack antibiotics and codeine cough syrup. I’ve never taken this many meds at once in my life! Welcome to old age. Harumph.

Luckily we got some prescription discount cards in the mail (randomly!) and the plan did indeed seem to bring down the cost of the meds. All that stuff cost a little over $100, which seems cheap to me. Last time we got a Z Pack it was $80-90. If Nick will find me the receipt, I’ll post the exact savings from the card. So with the Dr visit, it cost me about $150. Beats the SHIT out of $800/mo for shitty insurance IMO.

I consider this whole thing to be warning #2 from my body to STOP SMOKING. All the way, not just when it suits me. Until last year’s bout of bronchitis (warning #1), I’d never had lung issues. Now I do. I must stop, so I shall. The ecig will just have to do. With my body type leaning strongly towards my father’s side of the family, I need to heed the warnings. My father, his sister and his mother all suffer(ed) with emphysema/COPD and I will, too if I don’t stop smoking. I’m very healthy in general, but clearly my weak spot is my lungs.

I’m not better yet, but I tell ya, I feel FABULOUS compared to the previous six days. I plan to watch football and movies today and resist the urge to jump up and start cleaning things. I’m going to try to keep myself on restriction for a week. Rob’s got paperwork for me, which will fit the bill nicely.

Now I’m off to walk (gently) around the yard and enjoy this lovely day. :)

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Header weirdness

If you see an odd redraw of the leaves on the right, I know about it, but have no idea why it’s doing that. The images are the same width. ??

So, yah, I know. Whatever. I’m sick of reprocessing the images over and over. It is what it is!

Happy Autumn!

Update: Qa’Pla! Victory is mine! After updating the theme, WP, purging browser cache, fiddling with header image placement and resizing the images 3x, I finally changed my max width. Problem solved. :)

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Should Everyone Attend College?

I’ve always said YES to this. I’ve always felt that college opened my eyes to other cultures and helped teach me to think and articulate ideas. I still believe this and wouldn’t give up my degrees for anything.

But lately, I’ve been reading some interesting points of view that have given me pause. So now I am softening my stance on mandatory college educations. I still think that elementary and high school educations are horrible in the U.S. and kids come out basically dumber than a bag of hammers – BUT THEY TEST WELL!! So I do feel that college is still a very valid and worthy path.

However, Mike Rowe (and my basic common sense) tell me that what this country needs is to go back to the trades. We’ve got a generation of kids (it’s about to be TWO generations) who went to school and were taught how to take multiple choice tests but can’t spell or write a cohesive essay. In addition to being functionally illiterate, they don’t know how to DO anything, either. That is a BAD combination.

When I was in high school in the 80s, the vocational education kids were looked down upon. (Yes, we had vocational ed back in the olden days! Things like carpentry, welding, electrical, etc.) The common opinion was that those kids were the ones too dumb to get into college, so they were learning a trade instead. I now see how totally OFF that opinion was. 100% wrong.

Now that I’m a grown up and have a house to take care of, I see very clearly that the trades are a wonderful and necessary thing. You’d think that growing up in a family who did construction, I’d have figured this out, alas, it took me a minute. ;)

So anyway, the point of this post is to say that I think the trades are a valid career choice and a damn sight cheaper than going to college and coming out with huge debt. I still think one should be curious and educate oneself about subjects outside the chosen field no matter which field that is.

Mike Rowe has a foundation that supports education in the trades as well as an awesome site (Profoundly Disconnected) with tons of information.

The world needs tradesmen. There are pipes to fix, hair to cut, things to build and gobs of other stuff that needs to be taught by doing. Even making jewelry is a trade because you learn by doing! I’ll no longer threaten my niece with death if she chooses to do hair or some other non-college path. As long as she educates herself on a larger scope and is not a dumbass who doesn’t know who Monet is, I’m OK with no college.

What I am against is being ignorant (like my family) and not doing anything about it. READ. LEARN. EXPLORE. I strive to learn something new every day. If it’s a word or fact or whatever. THAT is what I want instilled in young people, not necessarily college. The ability to solve problems and THINK are the most important skills anyone can have and that doesn’t come from a book. That comes from doing.