Dog On A Root

- jim Young When offered a serving of Jambalaya you'd likely be expecting it to include crawfish or shrimp, as at least one of those is a main ingredient most often associated with Jambalaya. This recipe however is for people (like My Shirley) who just don't care for seafood but don't want to miss out on this otherwise tasty delight.  If you're more of a traditionalist, feel free to add some crawfish or shrimp when you make it. Serves: 10 Stuff Required: 1 lb chicken breast, boneless, skinless 1 ½ tbsp paprika 3 tbsp cooking oil 1 cup onion, chopped 1 cup sweet pepper, chopped 3 stalks celery chopped 1 tsp minced garlic 1 can tomatoes, crushed (28 oz/795 ml) 3 bay leaves 3 ¼ cups chicken broth 2 cups rice, brown, long grain 2 tsp thyme, ground 1 ½ tsp salt ½ tsp pepper ½ tsp Tabasco® sauce 1 lb sausage (mild, medium or hot) cut into small bite-sized pieces Do This: Wash chicken and pat dry with a paper towel.  Rub chicken with paprika. Cut up chicken into small, bite-s...

- jim Young This year we had an exceptionally good harvest of cucumbers. Normally we don't eat that many cucumbers so we started giving some away. We even considered putting a small table at the end of our laneway and offering them for sale. However it seems all our neighbours had a good cucumber harvest as well and there were no shortage of them for others to purchase. It seemed that every time we visited our garden a new cucumber had sprouted up out of nowhere and was ready to be picked. We don't like to waste food but we don't consider feeding it to the wildlife as a waste. The problem is deer and squirrels are about the only animals that seem to like cucumbers. We don't like to encourage the red squirrels that live on our property, however and the deer probably won't be around until the Mountain Ash Berries are a little more ripe. My Shirley was already feeding me cucumber slices with dip for breakfast but our supply continued to grow. Finally I came up with thi...

- jim Young This recipe calls for mild prepared horseradish but of course you can use a hotter horseradish or add some extra Tabasco sauce if you like your sauces spicy. Use this as a dip for raw vegetables such as carrot or celery sticks, cucumber slices and pieces of sweet pepper. It makes a great topping for baked potatoes and salads and a nice side serving for scrambled eggs or a roast beef dinner.  I use it for my Breaded Fried Cucumbers that you'll also find in the recipe section at Dog On A Root. Total Time:  10 min. Yield: 1 cup Stuff Required: ½  cup drained horseradish (mild) ¼ cup sour cream ¼ cup mayonnaise 1 tbsp lemon juice ½ tsp kosher salt ¼ tsp freshly ground black pepper 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce A few drops of Tabasco sauce Do This: Mix all ingredients together in a medium bowl.

 - jim Young "Not only must justice be done; it must also be seen to be done." - Vincent Bugliosi, “Till Death Do Us Part: A True Murder Mystery”  A few years ago when running for the presidency, Donald Trump called Senator John McCain a “loser” and suggested McCain was a war hero only because he was captured. Trump added that he didn’t like people who were captured. Trump can’t deny that. Well, actually he can and often does, but who’s going to believe him? There’s an old adage that says if you tell a lie often enough, people will eventually believe you. Of course that theory was developed long before almost everything we do and say could be captured on video. So here’s the video clip that proves Trump called McCain a loser and denied McCain’s status as a war hero. More recently, The Atlantic has accused Trump of calling fallen American World War I veterans “losers” and “suckers”.  In 2018 after cancelling a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris, Trump wa...

- jim Young  “The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat.” - Confucius Last week I underwent my first test for Covid-19. I had no reason to believe I had been infected, however a prospective employer for a one-day contract job required the testing be done to protect them against any liability. Calling the North Bay Regional Centre on Monday I was pleased to learn I could make an appointment to have the testing done the next morning at 9:00 am. The job I had been hired for was just 3 days later. However, I was advised that the results from my test would not be available for 2 - 6 business days. My employer was not concerned. She was confident that should my results be positive, I would be notified much earlier. She further speculated the extra time was required just to update the website where my results would be available. The drive-through testing option seemed like the best choice for me. Not only was it more convenient, the adva...

-  by jim Young “Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility.” - Eleanor Roosevelt I have over 46,000 digital pictures on my hard drive. That doesn’t include many that I have saved to DVD.  I also have albums and shoeboxes filled with hundreds of old black and white and colour photos that had to be developed before digital cameras were invented. Safely stored away somewhere in one of my closets is a box that contains a few hundred feet of old 8mm and Super 8mm home movies. Almost everyone today has a digital camera or a camera phone and moments that were once only file d away in our memories are now readily available to share, not only with family and friends, but the whole world. Who is ever going to see even a small percentage of all these moments in time that we seem obsessed with capturing? Gone are the days when you might take one or two pictures because taking more was expensive and a waste of the precious 12, 24 or 36 picture...

- jim Young “I am not Anti-American, but I am strongly Pro-Canadian.” - John Diefenbaker I recently saw a FaceBook post encouraging me to buy Strub’s pickles because they are made with cucumbers grown in Canada and prepared by Canadian workers. So I googled it. Apparently, while Strub’s facilities in Quebec, Ontario and B.C. still process and package their pickles year round, during the winter months, the pickles are actually procured in the U.S. Do they still qualify as “Canadian Pickles”? Should I only be buying Strub pickles at certain times of the year? I have recently switched ketchups. After learning that Heinz sold its processing plant in Leamington and moved their ketchup operations to the U.S., I switched to French’s. Now I’m being told that’s not good enough because, although tomatoes for French’s Ketchup are grown and processed in Canada and the ketchup is manufactured in Canada, the French’s company is actually U.S. owned, whereas Primo Ketchup meets ALL those Canadian qual...