Bacon-wrapped Jalepeno Poppers
These are insanely easy to make and delicious! The cheddar cheese will enhance the heat of the jalepeno and the cream cheese will mute the pepper’s heat a bit — both versions are good, it just depends on your preference for hot tastes. Usually these are appetizers, but I did serve these over white rice as a main dish. Enjoy! 
Photo by Linda Doell
INGREDIENTS:
- Jalepeno peppers, each cut lengthwise in half and de-seeded. Take the inner white part out too if you don’t want as much heat.
- Turkey bacon
- Cheddar Cheese
- Neufchatel Cheese or Cream Cheese
DIRECTIONS:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Fill each jalepeno half with either a slice of cheddar or a dollop of Neufchatel cheese
- Wrap a strip of turkey bacon around each pepper half. I used large peppers for this, so a full slice of bacon just covered the pepper.
- Cook 20 to 25 minutes, depending on how crispy you like the bacon.
Smoked Salmon Ravioli
SMOKED SALMON RAVIOLI
MAKES 48 RAVIOLI
Photo by Linda Doell
1, 3-oz. pkg. of smoked salmon (I used wild-caught, smoked Alaskan salmon)
2 cups Skim Ricotta Cheese
1 Tbsp. Dill Weed
1 pkg. of wonton wrappers
DIRECTIONS
1. Drain salmon and mix in medium-sized bowl with ricotta cheese.
2. Add dill weed to mixture and thoroughly mix.
3. Put about a teaspoon of the salmon mixture in the middle of a wonton wrapper, brush the edges with water and press together to seal it and fold the edges over.
4. Cook about 5 to 6 minutes in boiling water. The ravioli will float when done.
5. Serve with a light cream or Alfredo sauce
MEAL IDEA: Smoked salmon ravioli with grilled asparagus spears and a green salad.
Salsa Chicken Soup with Garlic Biscuits
photo by Linda Doell
This is a quick, simple soup that packs a lot of flavor. If you want extra heat, use a medium to hot salsa. This is a good soup to use leftovers as well and can be adapted for your needs.
SALSA CHICKEN SOUP WITH GARLIC BISCUITS
(serves 4; cost with listed ingredients, $9)
3 1/2 cups of fat free chicken broth
2 (9 oz.) cans of cooked chicken breast
1 cup of frozen spinach leaves
1 container (12 oz.) of fresh mild salsa
1 cup of dry egg noodles
1 tsp. soy sauce
1 can of butter biscuits
garlic powder
Put all of the ingredients except the biscuits into a pot. Bring to a boil and cook until the noodles are tender.
To make the biscuits: Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Place biscuits on a non-stick baking tray and sprinkle garlic powder on top of the biscuits and bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until the biscuits are golden brown.
Too subtle? I’ll use a 2 by 4 next time
I nearly jumped out of my skin Friday when the guy leaned across the table at the jewelry shop. I had been focused on making a clasp for a necklace and didn’t see him come back.
“You sure you’re not going to be divorced in the near future?” he asked. About an hour earlier, he had been looking at the women’s earrings and I, thinking he was shopping for a Valentine’s Day gift, greeted him and started to talk about the jewelry.
Then he tells me he doesn’t have a girlfriend and asks if I’m single. I smiled and told him I was married. He didn’t take that for an answer and said a couple of other things. I told him I’ve been happily married for 13 years and he said “too bad” and walked away.
I thought that was the end of it, but when he came back, I started to wonder if he’d drop it.
“No,” I replied. He didn’t say anything else, but stared at me for a couple of seconds before walking away — long enough that it creeped me out. Once the guy was out of view, I called my husband, who came over and sat with me in the shop for a bit. The guy didn’t come back or walk by again.
At first it was flattering in a way, but the guy quickly crossed the line. And certainly didn’t get the hint.
Why we do what we do
“You mean no one told you?” the paramedic asked as he helped himself to a cup of coffee in the patrol building. No, I said, most of the time the ski patrol doesn’t find out what happens to the injured once they leave the resort.
Three weeks earlier, an 11-year-0ld girl was knocked to the ground on a ski slope just up the mountain from the main lodge. She was unconscious when the first patrollers arrived on the scene.
That incident was four years ago and the memory of it is still crystal clear for me. At the mountain where I patrolled, each 8-hour duty shift had its own crew of patrollers, supervised by a hill captain. We were the Saturday night crew, and on a good night there were five of us — which meant that just one accident would take all of the available patrollers off the mountain. We had been going from incident to incident the entire night.
The girl came to while we were strapping her to a back board and she was able to tell us her mom’s cell phone number. While the other patrollers brought the girl down off the mountain, as hill captain I had the duty of calling her mother.
The ambulance paramedics had the girl flown by medical helicopter to the children’s hospital, and that was the last the patrollers had known about what happened to her until the paramedic crew was on duty again. The girl fractured the C4 vertebra in her neck — the same one the late actor Christopher Reeve broke in a riding accident.
But the girl was going to be alright. The paramedic said she was already out of the hospital, even though she had to wear a neck brace for a few months.
“You guys did good,” the paramedic told the group of patrollers now grouped around him.
I’ve been thinking about that girl a lot lately, probably because the ski patrol director and others have been asking me if I wanted to come back to the patrol after taking a hiatus due to work. I haven’t decided yet. I’d have to go through the medical training again because it has changed in the last several years. Basic volunteer patrollers have the training equivalent to an emergency medical technician (EMT) and are recognized as such in many states.
But why do it? I, like many of the patrollers I know, did it because I have to help people. I didn’t do it for the recognition because there wasn’t any. I simply can’t ignore someone in need. My heart breaks when I see a person hurting, regardless of the circumstances.
Thank you to all of you out there who serve the public, be it police, fire, military, medical or any of a number of volunteer organizations. Be assured that your work is appreciated and it is the right thing to do.
Still scratching my head over this one
Ever see one of those headlines you know you just HAVE to click on? The MSN story today about unique uses for a dishwasher caught my eye when it said to use it to cook fish and showed a salmon in the top rack. Anyone who would like to see the actual recipe (yes, there IS one) here’s the link:
http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/cooking-tips-techniques/cooking/bob-blumers-dishwasher-
I just keep coming back to the question: Why would you want to cook salmon in a dishwasher? Sure, I bet it’s moist (haha) but you could bake it with a pan of water too LOL Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. Hey, I bet you could use a hair curling iron to make grill marks on the salmon too … 
Can I get that bus wrapped to go?
Don’t you just love a good prank? I wonder if there’s something in the water or is a full moon approaching that there have been two funny school pranks within the week.
Over at Coventry Christian School in Lower Pottsgrove, Montgomery County, Pa., someone wrapped a school bus in plastic wrap, giving a new meaning to takeout:
photo by Linda Doell
photo by Linda Doell
Didn’t the cops look up?
This has got to be one of the best senior high pranks I've seen in a while. The jokesters scrawled '09 across the roof of St. Pius X High School in Lower Pottsgrove, Montgomery County, Pa. Can't imagine how long it took them to complete that. -- Photo by Linda Doell
Faces of the unemployed
The 40-something man pushed back his chair and stood up from the computer desk. “Just send it to e-mail, OK?” he asked the teen sitting beside him. The pair had been looking at job listings at a state-run career center. From my vantage point, dad brought help to navigate the Internet in his job search. Others using the center’s computers were having similar problems. Something so simple as clicking on a Web page link was beyond them.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate in this country rose to 8.9 percent in April, with a total of 13.7 million jobless. In the last year, 6 million people have lost their jobs. The losses cut across all population segments, with blacks seeing the highest unemployment at 15 percent. So where will these people find jobs? The bureau said Friday the service provider sector is expected to see the most job growth through 2016. That’s health care providers like hospitals, business consultants and the academic community to name a few.
But those jobs will need the training behind them.
