Throwing Out the Puppy With the Bathwater???

I read the article below in last Saturday's (Valentine's day, of all days) UK Times. I found many of the author's points not only valid, but sometimes poignant. I am both lover of humans, especially children and of dogs, almost all dogs. While we are staying in this campground with rather tight quarters and RVs "cheek to jowl" as the Brits euphamistically put it, I have dog concerns. Often people get into RVing so that they can travel with their pets. There are lots of people here with big dogs, sometimes more than one. I often see other dogs being walked. Every so often I see some, often elderly/older woman or man, go flying by my window holding the end of the leash being pulled top speed by an out of control large dog. The human has neither the control nor strength necessary. It gets really scary when I've got fifteen pound Taffy (whom I can hold back physically even if she is a pain in the arse) and the dogs start barking and lunging at each other. I have this device on Taffy because she used to pull me like those big dogs pull their owners. Even at fifteen pounds, when she pulled she was hard to control so I can only imagine what holding the leash of those big dogs is like. Some campground prohibit certain breeds. Some have weight restrictions.

I am aware of the "There are no bad dogs just bad owners" philosophy. I used to believe it, but I don't any more. Or maybe what I really believe now is that "bad" is a perjorative descriptor; perhaps, "potentially dangerous" is a better descriptor. The other day we were waiting our turn at the vet's, sitting in the reception area, when the door to the exam rooms area flew open and a huge pit bull flew out followed seconds that seemed like hours later by a slight young woman dragged along at the end of the leash. That woman had absolutely no control over that dog. Taffy was so traumatized she wet the floor and I was close to doing the same. Fortunately, that huge dog shot straight for the counter, stood up on it's hind legs and starting inhaling the basket of biscuits on offer there rather than Taffy, John or Me. So it was OK, but I have absolutely no doubt that if the Pit Bull had decided to snack on us rather than free holistic dog treats, there would have been no stopping it The owner couldn't even pull it's head out of the biscuit basket until it had slobbered over and eaten every last free biscuit. Then, and only then, did it stand down. The owner had to use two hands to drag it out the front door screaming, "C'mon let's go bye-bye" before tricking that monster to go out the office door and jump into in her car so she could return to the office to pay her bill.

After the fiasco was over, I complained to the vet about the incident. She said, "Well, we try to avoid incidents like those by bringing one dog back into a room before the other dog leaves its examing room. In this case the owner opened the door too soon and the dog dragged her to the front." This is exactly my point...screw-ups happen. Large dogs, I don't care the breed, can seriously injure and in fact, are sometimes capable of killing humans, adult humans as well as children. We've all read of incidents. Taffy could nip and even bite, but I seriously doubt that she could cause fatal injury unless she induced a heart attack in someone.

I agree with banning dangerous breed dogs. I'm not sure how we decide which breeds are dangerous, but before another child dies, we need to do something. Legislating morality (like people not owing a dangerous dog because they think it's wrong to take the chance) or stupidity is a slippery slope to begin down for sure.  And yes, I am sure there are nice Pit Bulls and Rotties and Dobs, but there are thousands of other breeds physically incapable of causing grevious harm and injury to humans that provide all the "dogness" we humans crave. Why isn't that enough for us? Is it about who the dog is as a breed orhow the human wants to be perceived by owning a breed that can be potentially perceived as dangerous? Banning all dogs is going a bit far, throwing out the baby with the bathwater as we say over here.

Leave me a comment and tell me what you think....

From The Times February 14, 2009

Enough whining. Ban all stinking dogs. Now

Man's best friends are no such thing. They are brutal, dirty and a primitive throwback to the days of bearbaiting

Giles Coren

The death of Jaden Joseph Mack, mauled to death by two domestic dogs in his grandmother's home near Caerphilly last Saturday, caused a ripple of anxiety in some quarters, muted calls for stricter licensing of dangerous breeds, and that was about it. Move along now. Nothing to see here.

Nothing, except a human infant shredded to burger meat by domestic pets. My God, the fuss they made over Baby P. Over Maddie. Over Sarah Payne. Over James Bulger. When the boneheaded popular press can use a toddler's death to hammer such traditional bogeymen as paedophiles, social workers, “evil” young boys and invisible foreign ne'er-do-wells, it goes at it with a drooling, wide-eyed, sociopathic bloodlust, calling for hangings, sackings and ridiculous legislative upheavals. But when it's done by a Staffordshire bull terrier, the very breed of dog most likely to have been tied up outside the shop while its owner goes in to buy a “red top” tabloid, they have nothing to say.

And government is no better, to be honest. It is astonishing to think that when a fox is torn apart by dogs in a cold field on a foggy morning, Parliament devotes 700 hours of debate to stamping it out. But when a human child is torn apart by dogs in his or her nan's front room (it's always the grandmother - usually not much more than 30 herself), Parliament does nothing. Nothing.

Now, I'm never going to stop the right-wing media from wildly overreacting to child deaths as a way to excoriate the same old demons, but I can at least beg them, on my knees, to overreact for once to something I care about. And to call for dogs to be banned. All dogs. Now.

Anything less - outlawing breeds, renovating the licensing system, muzzling potential offenders - simply won't work. And the 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act is, I am afraid, bunkum. It is concerned primarily with a lot of mealy-mouthed exceptions and exemptions that make it impossible to prosecute owners unless they are caught on camera with a Japanese tosa, deliberately feeding it live toddlers in front of a policeman and six witnesses.

The Act specifies breeds only ambiguously, and does not even cover Staffordshire bull terriers - the chosen legal street weapon of every pock-faced teenage stabber and crack-dealing hoody in the land - which were implicated not only in the killing of Jaden, but in the savaging of 22-month-old Kira Neal in Bournemouth on August 3, 2007, and of two-year-old Paige Allison in Blackburn on April 27 of the same year, and of two-year-old Joseph Johnson outside a fish and chip shop in Hull on September 17, 2008.

Not that a ban on “Staffies” would have helped 13-month-old Archie-Lee Hirst, slaughtered by a rottweiler at his grandparents' home in Chald Lane, Wakefield, the day after Boxing Day, 2007.

They've got to go. Dogs have just got to go. All dogs. Just to be safe. I'm not saying a spaniel represents a mortal danger to toddlers (indeed, if you shoot a toddler yourself then your spaniel will merely go over and point at it, and then your golden retriever will bring it back, and your dalmatian will bury it and then forget where it left it) but the problem is that owners will always get round breed-specific laws by crossing their murderous animals with others, as a disguise.

Germany, where the import of staffies is illegal, has shown us some of the way, and Israel has gone one better, making the breed illegal altogether - and I doubt there are many who flout that little law. You don't go breeding dogs to scare your neighbours when you know that one false snarl and a helicopter gunship's going to whoop into view, flatten your house, your nan's house and your local school, and then blame it on the dog.

And don't think for a minute that I would consider such a response disproportionate. I hate dogs. I am currently in the process of moving house purely and simply because my beautiful, leafy Camden street is the most turd-bespaffed thoroughfare in England. This is because I live down the road from a housing estate surveyed by CCTV cameras where the inhabitants know that if they let their little fighting dog uncurl a bronze they will be filmed and fined. So they come down the nice, middle-class streets purely to unload faeces. It seems almost a matter of honour.

These dogs get walked each day only for as long as it takes to smoke two Royals and gob a greeny at a tree. They don't even get as far as Hampstead Heath, only two minutes up the road (or perhaps they choose not to go there - the bien pensant middle classes with their wellies and labs having made of the Heath such a stinking dog toilet you'd be mad to cross it without an anthrax suit).

Every morning, on my three-minute stroll to buy a paper, I encounter at least three brand new turds, on my side of the street alone, glistening in the sun. When the snow was falling, and the street-cleaning guy couldn't get through, there were layers of turd interleaved with the layers of frozen snow like some terrible millefeuille of merde. And the thaw brought hourly uncoverings of newly revealed hound crap, kept fresh by the sub-zero temperatures, the goodness sealed in, the scent released gradually over the days.

Kill all the dogs. Kill all of them. I'll do it if you can't face it, and toss the rigid corpses on the fatty flames with a pitchfork.

For most of human history, dogs were needed. We bred them to do jobs we couldn't, or didn't want to do ourselves. And now we have machines. And don't bait bears. The keeping of dogs is a primitive throwback to a state of nature that was nasty, brutish and poo-smelling. It has no relevance now. We must grow out of dogs just as we grew out of horses (which was not, as many think, because we invented the car, but because we invented synthetic glue).

And please, don't come to me with dogs as companions for the lonely. Ye gods, has society sunk so low that we must leave it to stinking mutts to solace the old, the forgotten and the lost?

Some dogs may be innocent of killing. But all are guilty of crapping. When we were young, and one kid wouldn't own up to his crime, they kept the whole class in after school, regardless of individual guilt. My plan is like that, only with dogs. Except then you kill them.

I have felt this for a long time but always kept quiet out of respect for my many dog-owning friends. But the story of Jaden's death was so awful, so grim and primal and nightmarish - like a modern Little Red Riding Hood where the gran survives at the expense of the child - that I cannot tolerate delay.

And yet it will never happen. And poor Jaden will be forgotten. His little face will never stare up at you from the newspaper rack, above a headline telling you that the campaign starts here, and that he didn't die in vain.

And that is because unlike paedos and lefty social workers, dogs, through their feckless, simpering owners, really do rule the world

You Are Amazing

Yesterday I asked you to look at this blog in it's early stages and to offer insights and advice as to how I could make it user friendly. I also wanted to know who stopped by.  Writing a blog is one thing.  Knowing that anyone ever sees it is another. You were all terrific.  I am surprised at how many of you stopped by and truly touched by your kind notes.  My posts will probably be pretty short for the next few days as I busy myself trying to migrate files over to this new place.  I might toss in a recipe or share a news article that strikes my fancy.  I don't foresee much flowing in the way of creative juices.  Know that I am here, toiling away behing your monitor screen in an effort to bring you into my daily world, as bumpy a road as it sometimes is.  Thanks for riding along with me.  I'll stop now.  I am reminding myself of that hideous Oscar acceptance speech blubbered out below...

My Valentine's Gift to You

Dear You and You and of course, YOU,

I wish that I could be with each of you on Valentine's Day.  I don't see this day as much as a lovers' special day, but as a chance to send affectionate wishes to those who matter to us.  If I were with you, I'd make a special dinner for you tonight.  I'd probably make a chocolate souffle' for dessert.  Since I can only do that for you in my imagination, I thought I'd share this little gift video with you and you can make your own souffle'.  As my Sister-In-law Janet says, "It's ever so easy peasy!"  Do try it and let me know how it turns out for you. 

Happy Valentines Day,

Dana

I May Never Eat Again

I found this New York Times article fascinating in a repulsive sort of way...

February 13, 2009 Op-Ed Contributor

The Maggots in Your Mushrooms

By E. J. LEVY

THE Georgia peanut company at the center of one of our nation’s worst food-contamination scares has officially reached a revolting new low: a recent inspection by the Food and Drug Administration discovered that the salmonella-tainted plant was also home to mold and roaches.

You may be grossed out, but insects and mold in our food are not new. The F.D.A. actually condones a certain percentage of “natural contaminants” in our food supply — meaning, among other things, bugs, mold, rodent hairs and maggots.

In its (falsely) reassuringly subtitled booklet “The Food Defect Action Levels: Levels of Natural or Unavoidable Defects in Foods That Present No Health Hazards for Humans,” the F.D.A.’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition establishes acceptable levels of such “defects” for a range of foods products, from allspice to peanut butter.

Among the booklet’s list of allowable defects are “insect filth,” “rodent filth” (both hair and excreta pellets), “mold,” “insects,” “mammalian excreta,” “rot,” “insects and larvae” (which is to say, maggots), “insects and mites,” “insects and insect eggs,” “drosophila fly,” “sand and grit,” “parasites,” “mildew” and “foreign matter” (which includes “objectionable” items like “sticks, stones, burlap bagging, cigarette butts, etc.”).

Tomato juice, for example, may average “10 or more fly eggs per 100 grams [the equivalent of a small juice glass] or five or more fly eggs and one or more maggots.” Tomato paste and other pizza sauces are allowed a denser infestation — 30 or more fly eggs per 100 grams or 15 or more fly eggs and one or more maggots per 100 grams.

Canned mushrooms may have “over 20 or more maggots of any size per 100 grams of drained mushrooms and proportionate liquid” or “five or more maggots two millimeters or longer per 100 grams of drained mushrooms and proportionate liquid” or an “average of 75 mites” before provoking action by the F.D.A.

The sauerkraut on your hot dog may average up to 50 thrips. And when washing down those tiny, slender, winged bugs with a sip of beer, you might consider that just 10 grams of hops could have as many as 2,500 plant lice. Yum.

Giving new meaning to the idea of spicing up one’s food, curry powder is allowed 100 or more bug bits per 25 grams; ground thyme up to 925 insect fragments per 10 grams; ground pepper up to 475 insect parts per 50 grams. One small shaker of cinnamon could have more than 20 rodent hairs before being considered defective.

Peanut butter — that culinary cause célèbre — may contain approximately 145 bug parts for an 18-ounce jar; or five or more rodent hairs for that same jar; or more than 125 milligrams of grit.

In case you’re curious: you’re probably ingesting one to two pounds of flies, maggots and mites each year without knowing it, a quantity of insects that clearly does not cut the mustard, even as insects may well be in the mustard.

The F.D.A. considers the significance of these defects to be “aesthetic” or “offensive to the senses,” which is to say, merely icky as opposed to the “mouth/tooth injury” one risks with, for example, insufficiently pitted prunes. This policy is justified on economic grounds, stating that it is “impractical to grow, harvest or process raw products that are totally free of non-hazardous, naturally occurring, unavoidable defects.”

The most recent edition of the booklet (it has been revised and edited six times since first being issued in May 1995) states that “the defect levels do not represent an average of the defects that occur in any of the products — the averages are actually much lower.” Instead, it says, “The levels represent limits at which F.D.A. will regard the food product ‘adulterated’ and subject to enforcement action.”

Bugs in our food may not be so bad — many people in the world practice entomophagy — but these harmless hazards are a reminder of the less harmless risks we run with casual regulation of our food supply. For good reason, the F.D.A. is focused on peanut butter, which the agency is considering reclassifying as high risk, like seafood, and subjecting it to special safety regulations. But the unsettling reality is that despite food’s cheery packaging and nutritional labeling, we don’t really know what we’re putting into our mouths.

Soup merits little mention among the products listed in the F.D.A.’s booklet. But, given the acceptable levels for contaminants in other foods, one imagines that the disgruntled diner’s cri de coeur — “Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup!” — would be, to the F.D.A., no cause for complaint.

E. J. Levy is a professor of creative writing at the University of Missouri

Stuffed Cabbage/Golabki

 We have been having cold weather here in south Florida (today it's warm again....yay!) with lows in the low forties and highs in the high fifties/low sixties.  I was craving childhood comfort food.  It isn't always easy for me to share recipes as a lot of what I make isn't from a written recipe.  A recipe is just a framework.  If one tries to understand the basic structure, there is much room for the individual cook's creativity.  This was our Saturday evening dinner.  It's basically how my grandmother and my mother made theirs.

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Stuffed Cabbage/Golabki

Ingredients:

1 medium head of cabbage

1/3 lb salt pork

1 large onion finely diced

1/2lb ground chuck

1/2lb ground pork

1 1/2 cups cooked long grain rice (after cooking;not 1 1/2 cups dried rice)

1 egg

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1 can tomato soup or tomato sauce

How to Make this Recipe:

Cook rice until just tender, do not overcook; set aside to cool

Core cabbage and put in large stockpot of boiling water

carefully remove individual leaves as they cook and separate from head, drain and set on large platter

continue to remove leaves and cook cabbage until all leaves are tender

cut rib from center of each leaf

sautee' onion and salt pork (finely diced)

combine ground meat, rice, seasonings, egg and half of onion/salt pork mix; add half can of soup/sauce

Using largest leaves first, place meat filling in each leaf, roll up, tucking in sides as you go

If you have more meat than leaves, roll into little porcupine meatballs

Chop up any leftover leaves that are too small to stuff and put in bottom of baking dish/roasting pan/crockpot

Gently layer stuffed cabbage bundles in pan

Top with baby meatballs if you have them

Sprinkle with the rest of the cooked onion salt pork mixture

Top with the rest of the tomato sauce.

Pour over the rest of the tomato sauce (you can use as much or as little tomato sauce as you wish.  My mother never used any, but I like a small amount.  My friend Chris, pours a large amount of tomato juice over her cabbage rolls and then bakes them in a covered roasting pan).  You can bake them or cook them slowly in a covered pot on top of the stove.  I usually do mine in the oven, but this time, because we're in the trailer, I used the crockpot.  If baking, about an hour and a half at 325 degrees.  I did mine in the crockpot for 45 minutes on high then 2 hours on low.  On the stove top, cook on fairly low heat covered so that the cabbage rolls steam and the filling cooks thoroughly.