COME TREASURE HUNTING WITH US
You're getting Tastebud Tango, which replaces the Nostalgia Notes newsletter, because the Internet is filled with wonderful websites few people know about -- and wonderful sites not enough people know about. I hope that one or more of these sites tickles your fancy and/or reveals Internet treasures that are new to you. Here's what you'll find in this, our second issue:
---Table of Contents---
1. Slow Food
2. Barbecue Sauces Not in the Stores
3. Records on Births, Marriages, Child Abusers, More
4. Baby Panda
5. If You Suspect Identity Theft
6. Fall Walks and Hikes
7. Guided Walking Tours, Culinary Walking Tours, Segway Tours
8. New Orleans As It Was
9. Recipe: New Orleans Oyster Pie
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1. SLOW FOOD
Yes, there's a real Slow Food organization, and, yes, they're SERIOUS. In 1986 the founder, Carlo Petrini, recognized that the industrialization of food was leading to the destruction of thousands of food varieties and flavors. Ones that, once they're gone, can't be retrieved. Slow Food is taking the lead to save food after food of our world heritage! The American branch is now concerned with the destruction of classic bakeries in New Orleans, but that's only one of many projects. To learn about America's endangered foods, click on RAFT (Renewing America's Food Traditions) in the lower lefthand column of the site. To learn about projects in other countries, click on Slow Food International, in the lower right corner. To visit with people who share your concerns, click on Forums.
You and I -- and our children and grandchildren -- owe the Slow Food organization bigtime! And we'll owe them more with each passing year. Here's the address for you to click on:
http://slowfoodusa.org/
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2. BARBECUE SAUCES NOT IN THE STORES
Your Tastebud Tango lady is doing her Slow Food bit with her new condiment shopping cart. People who have spent years perfecting a certain spice blend, barbecue sauce, mustard, or hot sauce find it impossible to get them into the chain grocery stores. Every bit of that shelf space is fought over by the big corporations, leaving the little people in the dust.
I've gathered together a group of these small entrepreneurs -- each with a unique and especially delicious product -- and we're selling their condiments on my website. They've been kind enough to give me samples of their products -- and their seasonings have made my husband's and my tastebuds tango! I like to think I'm a good cook. I AM a good cook. But I've added dabs of these condiments to dishes I've been cooking for years, and what great additions they have been! They perform wonders. To try them for yourself, go to
http://my-url.us/pv-spice.html
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3. RECORDS ON BIRTHS, MARRIAGES, PRISON INMATES, MORE
Here you'll find a directory of more than 20,000 public record websites, including births, deaths, marriages, prison inmates and child abusers, court filings, property records, professional licenses, political campaign contributions and more. Most of the records can be accessed without charge. Click on the following address:
http://searchsystems.net
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4. BABY PANDA
Awww! This little guy is the joy of the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., and the first panda baby to be born in the zoo. He's not out where people can see him yet. He and his mama have their own private zoo home. BUT there's a camera in there, filming mama and baby throughout the day. And this film you can see!
You may need to get a plug-in for your computer so that you can watch the film, but, once you're set up, you can watch all you want. Some people keep the webcam on all day at work, just zooming in to watch the baby between other tasks.
Baby Panda was named on October 17. He is Tai Shan (pronounced tie shahn), which means "peaceful mountain" in Chinese. (Pandas are of course Chinese.) He's a healthy little guy, helpless but getting less so every day. Some women say that the intense relationship between him and his mama reminds them of the days when their own baby was really tiny, and their whole world revolved around just that baby.
The Internet has two Baby Panda webcams. One is from the National Zoo, which webcam often gets tied up, as only 600 people can watch it at any given time. The other webcam is on Animal Planet.
You can find Animal Planet's extensive panda section by coming here:
http://animal.discovery.com/convergence/pandas/pandas.html
And for the webcam itself, click below:
http://animal.discovery.com/cams/pandavidr.html
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5. IF YOU SUSPECT IDENTITY THEFT
My husband and I recently suspected we might be the victims of identity theft, where scammers use personal information (such as social security number and date of birth) to apply for credit cards in your name and generally ruin your life and your credit. I of course did what any right-thinking person would: I immediately went to Google.com and put "identity theft" in the search box. And immediately got back about a million items.
If you do that, you'll find lots of organizations willing to help. They even offer fre*e help. But in most cases the "fre*e help" costs something eventually.
BUT . . . I scrolled down the Google page a bit further and found the website of the U.S. government's Federal Trade Commission, bless it, where the help really is fre*e. You can access it here:
http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft/
It has every kind of information you need to get help. First, it showed me how to place a telephoned "fraud alert" with the three credit reporting companies. The system uses automatic responses ("press 1 if you . . ."). That sort of thing. Which is usually infuriating, but in this case means that a person can place the fraud alert 24/7. Great! I only needed to contact one company; that company contacted the other two. AT NO CHARGE WHATEVER, they placed a 90-day fraud alert on our accounts.
Recently Congress, bless it, also passed a law that each of us is entitled to one fre*e credit report, from each of the three credit reporting companies, during a 12-month period. Using information on the government website, I was next able to access one of these credit reports over the Internet. This system also was automated. To safeguard our records, it asked for identifying information only my husband and I would have. And there, online, was our credit report. And I am relieved to say nothing bad had happened! We're entitled to fre*e credit reports from the other two companies as well, but decided to wait a few days to see if further activities had taken place.
Perhaps you can detect VERY WARM feelings toward our government. I may be the only American who feels that way right now, as the government has messed up several times lately. But those of us who are online and are aware of the wonderful information on government websites should have at least some warm feelings. I certainly do.
-----------Oh, and the asterisk * is in fre*e because some spam filters filter out e-mails with the original word. This newsletter is NOT spam -- it comes only to those of you who requested it, and you can unsubscribe any time -- but we legitimate newsletter writers have to do constant battle with spam filters. I get several very valuable newsletters, ones I signed up for, and my spam filter still tells me they're spam. (On the other hand, things that really are spam they think are just dandy.)
If you want to help ensure you continue getting this newsletter, regardless of what the latest spam filter is doing, please put
into your e-mail address book.
One more thing: for spam-related reasons, in the item above about birth, marriage, and death records, I never put the exact type of child abuser parents are most likely to worry about. Same deal. I didn't want spam filters to think I'd used a bad word in this newsletter, but I did want you to be able to access the prison records and current addresses of such people.
----------6. FALL WALKS AND HIKES
When the air gets snappier, we get peppier. Hiking is fun at this season. Localhikes.com first lists hiking areas near U.S. cities. Just scroll down the website to your city. For hikes AWAY from metropolitan areas, click on "Site Map of Available Hikes" at the bottom of the page. This lists enough U.S. hikes to make your eyes glaze over. So use the "search" feature to find just the right trail. Click on it, and you'll find distance, hike time, highlights, difficulty, and much else. Wonderful! And here's the address for you to click on:
http://localhikes.com/
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7. GUIDED WALKING TOURS AND SEGWAY TOURS
There are a bunch, in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. A good place to begin looking is
The site lists guided walking tours all over the world. On a more local and specialized level, go to good old
In the search box, put "walking tours," naming your city or one you plan to visit, such as, "walking tours San Francisco." In many cases, Google can find guided walking tours for you in that area.
For a neat variation, put "culinary walking tours" into the Google search box. For best results, leave off the quotes around culinary walking tours. You'll see that, if you live near certain U.S. or European cities, you can take a tour where you consume delicious local specialties and walk off their calories in the same trip! A good deal if you can get it.
And, as a finale, you can put "Segway tours" into the Google search box. (My husband told me about this one. He sees Segway tours in Washington, D.C., all the time.) A Segway is a motorized scooter, a small platform over a set of wheels. You stand on the platform and motor about on your tiny personal chariot. (President Bush fell off his, which news traveled around the world -- the disadvantage of fame.)
You'll find Segway tours in Paris, Thailand, Minnesota -- you name it. You won't get the healthful exercise of a walking tour, but they do sound like fun.
-----------And now for the "tastebud" part of Tastebud Tango:
8. NEW ORLEANS AS IT WAS
This "Experience New Orleans" website gives a person mixed feelings, as it depicts the way things were before Hurricane Katrina and the flood. Hotels, restaurants -- all gleaming and welcoming. It will be that way again, but in the meantime let's look at some wonderful New Orleans recipes. The recipes are not from fancy tourist restaurants. They are from real New Orleans people who eat real Slow Food.
Let us raise a toast to the food that was, and will be again, and click on:
http://www.experienceneworleans.com/recipes.html
The following recipe comes from this recipe page, which page isn't listed on the site's main page -- I must have lucked onto this hidden treasure during my Internet wanderings. My good luck is your good luck, and here is:
9. NEW ORLEANS OYSTER PIE
Pattie Joslin says, "Here is my family's favorite recipe for Oyster Pie... It is very special to us. My grandmother made it for us at Thanksgiving and Christmas...and we are continuing that tradition. It also reminds us of Louisiana now that we live in Houston! Hope you like it!"
Ingredients:
1/4 cup oil
1/2 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup milk
1 pint oysters
1 small clove garlic, minced
1/2 cup chopped green onion, tops and bottoms
2 stalks celery, chopped
1/4 bell pepper, chopped
1/4 cup minced parsley
Hot sauce to taste
Salt, black and red pepper to taste
8-inch unbaked pie shell, top and bottom
Make a roux with oil and flour, stirring constantly over a hot burner until it reaches the hue of a brown paper bag. Add milk. Stir well. Drain juice from oysters and add only oysters to sauce. Cook for 15 minutes or until oysters have thrown off all their juice. If mixture is too thick, add some oyster juice. Add chopped ingredients and lastly add salt, peppers and hot sauce to taste. (Salt must be added last to keep milk from curdling.)
Put oyster mixture in unbaked 8-inch pie shell and cover with top crust. Start pie at 450 degrees and cook 15 minutes to prevent inside crust from being soggy. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and continue cooking until nicely browned. Serve while hot. Serves 6 to 8.
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Janette Blackwell