So, shockingly, the BCTF has decided to initiate a job action and withhold services for three days this week. This is referred to as a job action because the words strike or holding students futures hostage or acting like playground bullies don't play nearly as well for the media, but make no mistake all three of those descriptions are more accurate than a job action. In fact what we have is a job inaction.
The teacher's union would have you believe that this strike is about:
1) The evil Liberal government . It should be noted that the evil Liberal Government is having no less success in dealing with the BCTF than previous NDP and Social Credit governments have had over the past 40+ years.
2) Improved working conditions
3) Class size
4) Children's futures
In fact this strike is about money, specifically the 15% increase over three years that the BCTF has refused to budge on since June of 2011. I will guarantee you that if the government said tomorrow: "Class sizes are staying the same, no more cash is going into special needs, portable use is increasing but we're fine with the 15% raise" that the poor oppressed teachers would break their ankles running back to work.
There is some comedy here though, despite a ban on picket lines teachers were protesting outside schools but because they were carrying their signs and not wearing them around their necks the teacher's felt they were not in violation of the no picket line rulings. Hopefully all these teachers are Semantics instructors.........or just idiots.
The job action and the government's refusal to rush back to work legislation has lead for some confusion among the opposition ranks as well. Last week, the NDP Opposition promised to delay the passage of the back-to-work legislation as long as possible, with plans to speak up to 17 hours on the second reading of the bill alone. However when the Liberals didn't call an emergency weekend sitting this lead NDP house leader John Horgan to criticize the government for their inaction, stating: "I would have thought that if the government was serious about getting kids back in the classroom they would have taken action before now,"
So what is it you really wanted John, for the Liberals to try and rush through a bill so that you could delay it ?
I used to have a great deal of respect for teachers until daughter entered the public school system, since almost day one she has been bombarded with union rhetoric while the poor teachers work 184 days a year. Among the great teacher rhetoric is that they don't get paid for the nine weeks off in the summer, true but the salary isn't prorated either and the average salary for teacher in Vancouver in 2011 was $73,792 ............ for a 43 week year with 20 non working days in it. The other great line that teachers use is the disparity between wages in BC and Alberta, to which I would reply that they are welcome to move to Alberta if they would like that pay raise. The whole situation is a farce, with an over politicized union throwing their weight around and the students, as always, are the ones who suffer .
Monday, March 05, 2012
Saturday, March 03, 2012
Fauxsagna
I'm not a huge pasta guy, I like stuffed shells on occasion and once in a while something light with shellfish, white wine and lemon but every so often I get a hankerin' for lasagna. I'm not talking about new age lasagna either with wild mushrooms, pancetta and a light layer of pecorino, I'm talking red sauce, meat and loads of cheese. While I do get the urge to eat classic lasagna I rarely get the urge to make it, the labourious layering and the inconvenience of dealing with lasagna noodles simply kills the buzz for me so............. I cheat and make fauxsagna .
You will see countless renderings of this dish listed as lazy lasagna or lasagna casserole and those descriptions are accurate but I prefer fauxsagna.
Last week in the early afternoon I received a call from work, apparently a party of 20 had cancelled and we found ourselves over staffed for the evening so I was offered the night off and I accepted. The issue was I already had dinner for that evening planned for wife and daughter, homemade chicken soup and cheese buns, and was, at the time of the call, working on marinara sauce for later in the week. Since I was now going to be home for dinner I decided to leave the soup for another day and expand on the marinara sauce base for dinner. A quick check on provisions showed some ground pork and ricotta in the fridge so I immediately thought:" Fauxsagna".
I browned the ground pork with some shallots while I cooked some pasta. The classic noodle for baked pasta is ziti which are tubes generally about two inches in length, or ziti rigate if they have ridges, but I didn't have any ziti so I cooked up a pound of tofette, which are small ridged shells, while I browned the pork. I then added the browned meat and cooked pasta to the marinara sauce and mixed well, reserving about a cup of the basic marinara. The next step is blending ricotta, egg, spinach and cheese to form the middle layer of the fauxsagna I used two cups of ricotta, blending in one beaten egg about 3/4 of a cup of mozzarella and a cup of chopped, cooked , spinach.
Now for assembly, spread a thin layer of the reserved marinara over the bottom of an 9 X 13 inch casserole dish, or any casserole dish you like, then add half the pasta and sauce mixture, spread the ricotta/spinach mix over the top, add the other half of the pasta and sauce mix and the rest of the marinara then top with a mix of grated mozzarella, or fontina, and parmesan/romana. Pop the casserole into a preheated 375 degree oven and bake, uncovered, for 40 minutes until slightly brown around the edges and bubbly. Take it out of the oven, wait 10 minutes before serving or it will burn your mouth, so you can set the table, toss the salad and open the wine, any pizza red will do, and then serve.
The beauty of this is that you can modify any way you want, use prosciutto instead of ground meat, add mushrooms, whatever. You can use any good bottled tomato sauce if you want, I like Whole Foods 365 Marinara, and if you're really lazy leave out the ricotta layer and just top the pasta mix with cheese and bake. Serve it up with a green salad, or even better with roasted broccoli or cauliflower and it's a pretty impressive dinner. The added bonus is that there are often leftovers which are great for lunches or "home from working late" snacks.
You will see countless renderings of this dish listed as lazy lasagna or lasagna casserole and those descriptions are accurate but I prefer fauxsagna.
Last week in the early afternoon I received a call from work, apparently a party of 20 had cancelled and we found ourselves over staffed for the evening so I was offered the night off and I accepted. The issue was I already had dinner for that evening planned for wife and daughter, homemade chicken soup and cheese buns, and was, at the time of the call, working on marinara sauce for later in the week. Since I was now going to be home for dinner I decided to leave the soup for another day and expand on the marinara sauce base for dinner. A quick check on provisions showed some ground pork and ricotta in the fridge so I immediately thought:" Fauxsagna".
I browned the ground pork with some shallots while I cooked some pasta. The classic noodle for baked pasta is ziti which are tubes generally about two inches in length, or ziti rigate if they have ridges, but I didn't have any ziti so I cooked up a pound of tofette, which are small ridged shells, while I browned the pork. I then added the browned meat and cooked pasta to the marinara sauce and mixed well, reserving about a cup of the basic marinara. The next step is blending ricotta, egg, spinach and cheese to form the middle layer of the fauxsagna I used two cups of ricotta, blending in one beaten egg about 3/4 of a cup of mozzarella and a cup of chopped, cooked , spinach.
Now for assembly, spread a thin layer of the reserved marinara over the bottom of an 9 X 13 inch casserole dish, or any casserole dish you like, then add half the pasta and sauce mixture, spread the ricotta/spinach mix over the top, add the other half of the pasta and sauce mix and the rest of the marinara then top with a mix of grated mozzarella, or fontina, and parmesan/romana. Pop the casserole into a preheated 375 degree oven and bake, uncovered, for 40 minutes until slightly brown around the edges and bubbly. Take it out of the oven, wait 10 minutes before serving or it will burn your mouth, so you can set the table, toss the salad and open the wine, any pizza red will do, and then serve.
The beauty of this is that you can modify any way you want, use prosciutto instead of ground meat, add mushrooms, whatever. You can use any good bottled tomato sauce if you want, I like Whole Foods 365 Marinara, and if you're really lazy leave out the ricotta layer and just top the pasta mix with cheese and bake. Serve it up with a green salad, or even better with roasted broccoli or cauliflower and it's a pretty impressive dinner. The added bonus is that there are often leftovers which are great for lunches or "home from working late" snacks.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Tired of all the Experts, a medium sized rant
So last night was the 84th Annual Academy Awards, a night full of pomp and pose that I used to enjoy watching back in the days when I watched movies in the theatre on a regular basis. I no longer watch movies in the theatre on a regular basis, or even at all really, and as a result no longer really have much interest in the show, but a chance to get together with friends we rarely see for an Oscar Party was on hand last night so I watched the Oscars.
As for the telecast, well it's 3 1/2 hours I'll never get back but at least daughter was exhausted enough after a weekend of tubing/sleepover/soccer, and uninterested enough that she actually snuggled with me on a loveseat. Daughter is almost 13 and has never really been cuddly so I've likely seen the last of that. The Thai food was solid and the banter had some moments, plus the whole thing wrapped up before 8:30 so it was a good evening out.
I had not seen any of the nine nominated films, when did that happen ?, but still got 11 correct out of 25 categories in the annual Oscar Poll with the winner getting 17. The show was fairly well paced, and while Billy Crystal did make me cringe a couple of times he was pretty solid as host. A silent movie made by Europeans, which is apparently about the way American films used to be, won best picture, and oddly was nominated for best original screenplay, Meryl Strep won, George Clooney didn't and the thing ended.
Today however, was the worst part of the Oscars as you couldn't swing a cat without running into some expert, ie: blogger, failed scriptwriter, media hack, lashing out at the selections, the production and the rampant racism of Billy Crystal doing blackface.
Really ? How about if you all just shut up.
We live in a society where I don't like it now means it's terrible and sadly the same technology that I'm using to complain about these experts is the one that provides them with their platforms, and yes I understand the irony of me blogging to complain about bloggers.
I'm tired of the experts who aren't, simply watching 100 movies a year doesn't make you a film critic, it just makes you a movie fan, I'm sick of the bloggers who monetize their opinions and then believe that they are more than just opinions, I loathe the tweeters who think that because they have 4,231 followers that they are important. Have they ever considered that 4,230 of the followers are simply there because the stuff they write is so hilariously bad ?
There was a time when critics carried some credibility because of their experience and knowledge of the industry or art form that they critiqued but nowadays everyone is not only a critic but they have an avenue to have others read their criticism and therefore give it some weight.
It's sad to me that Wikipedia, an encyclopedia where anyone with access to the internet can be an editor, is now a reference material. I am depressed that one of my favourite online Sports pages devoted its' lead today to a profanity laced rant about the Oscars written mostly by people who have no real experience in the motion picture industry. It makes me weep that consumers judge restaurants based on online reviews, especially after a New York Times study indicated that over 1/3 of all online restaurant reviews are written by people who have never eaten in the restaurant.
At the risk of sounding like an old fart, too late I know, I wish that journalism was left to the journalists, experts actually had expertise in their fields of criticism and blogs were simply a way for ordinary Joes to get their thoughts out to friends, family and wandering strangers, not a platform for shoving opinions down our throats.
I'll try to write something about food or wine later this week.
As for the telecast, well it's 3 1/2 hours I'll never get back but at least daughter was exhausted enough after a weekend of tubing/sleepover/soccer, and uninterested enough that she actually snuggled with me on a loveseat. Daughter is almost 13 and has never really been cuddly so I've likely seen the last of that. The Thai food was solid and the banter had some moments, plus the whole thing wrapped up before 8:30 so it was a good evening out.
I had not seen any of the nine nominated films, when did that happen ?, but still got 11 correct out of 25 categories in the annual Oscar Poll with the winner getting 17. The show was fairly well paced, and while Billy Crystal did make me cringe a couple of times he was pretty solid as host. A silent movie made by Europeans, which is apparently about the way American films used to be, won best picture, and oddly was nominated for best original screenplay, Meryl Strep won, George Clooney didn't and the thing ended.
Today however, was the worst part of the Oscars as you couldn't swing a cat without running into some expert, ie: blogger, failed scriptwriter, media hack, lashing out at the selections, the production and the rampant racism of Billy Crystal doing blackface.
Really ? How about if you all just shut up.
We live in a society where I don't like it now means it's terrible and sadly the same technology that I'm using to complain about these experts is the one that provides them with their platforms, and yes I understand the irony of me blogging to complain about bloggers.
I'm tired of the experts who aren't, simply watching 100 movies a year doesn't make you a film critic, it just makes you a movie fan, I'm sick of the bloggers who monetize their opinions and then believe that they are more than just opinions, I loathe the tweeters who think that because they have 4,231 followers that they are important. Have they ever considered that 4,230 of the followers are simply there because the stuff they write is so hilariously bad ?
There was a time when critics carried some credibility because of their experience and knowledge of the industry or art form that they critiqued but nowadays everyone is not only a critic but they have an avenue to have others read their criticism and therefore give it some weight.
It's sad to me that Wikipedia, an encyclopedia where anyone with access to the internet can be an editor, is now a reference material. I am depressed that one of my favourite online Sports pages devoted its' lead today to a profanity laced rant about the Oscars written mostly by people who have no real experience in the motion picture industry. It makes me weep that consumers judge restaurants based on online reviews, especially after a New York Times study indicated that over 1/3 of all online restaurant reviews are written by people who have never eaten in the restaurant.
At the risk of sounding like an old fart, too late I know, I wish that journalism was left to the journalists, experts actually had expertise in their fields of criticism and blogs were simply a way for ordinary Joes to get their thoughts out to friends, family and wandering strangers, not a platform for shoving opinions down our throats.
I'll try to write something about food or wine later this week.
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