1. Urban Legends
2. Take Beautiful Digital Photos, Restore Heirlooms
3. Save Money on Your Taxes
4. Phishing Alert!
5. Fr*ee Tax Filing
6. Feats of Magic Kids Can Perform
7. Collectibles and Antiques Price Guides
8. Buying or Selling a Home?
9. Homes for Veterans, for Low and Moderate Incomes
10. Googling Country Vacations
11. Adventure Vacations
12. Googling Country Vacations Abroad
13. Edda's Unique Dutch-Eurasian Cooking
14. Recipe: Cajun Round Steak and Gravy with Onions

     A fascinating site! Here's where you examine the rampant weeds of the human mind. Click on Coke, for instance. "Coca-Cola used to contain cocaine." True or false? "A tooth left in a glass of Coca-Cola will dissolve overnight." True or false?

     I'm not about to spoil it by telling you. Just click below to learn the truth about Disney, Hurricane Katrina, and the hottest 25 urban legends -- some of which will look mighty familiar. Click below to go to the site:

http://snopes.com/

     Click on the Kodak page below to learn how to take great pictures of people, animals, and scenery. It will also tell you about scrapbooking, creating photo greeting cards, restoring and enhancing old, cracked photos, and much more. Click below:

http://kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=2/3/38&pq-locale=en_US

     This Better Budgeting site is especially helpful to families. It tells how your family can save money, including tax money. The tax help page will give you U.S. tax forms, links to the IRS, and links to many other sites and articles that can be of help to you as tax time approaches. In fact, this site is a good one to explore in depth. Don't limit yourself to the tax information. They've got really wonderful information in so many areas.

http://www.betterbudgeting.com/taxpayerhelp.htm

     The e-mail scammers are hard at work pretending to be the IRS! You're taken to a website that looks like that of the IRS, if you click on the link in the e-mail. (A no-no, incidentally. A real government agency -- and the same goes for PayPal, your bank, H&R Block, and eBay -- will never ask you to click on an E-MAIL LINK to go to their site, because those links have been so abused by scammers. Many links will actually infect you with a virus or Trojan.) The goal of these fake IRS sites is to get you to fill in personal information.

     The IRS has identified twelve different e-mail schemes pretending to be from them! As soon as they shut one down, a new one appears. The real IRS says, "The IRS does not communicate with taxpayers electronically. If you get a communication from the IRS, it is via a letter in the mail or a phone call."

     What do you do if you've accidentally filled in information for a scammer? Quick! Contact the organizations whose numbers you've filled in -- your bank, PayPal, your credit card companies, etc. -- and get them to cancel those numbers.

     And if you suspect scammers may have STOLEN YOUR IDENTITY and are opening fake credit card accounts in your name, go to the Federal Trade Commission's wonderfully helpful site:

http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft/

     If your adjusted gross income is less than $50,000, you may be able to take advantage of the IRS Free File program, which "is online tax preparation and electronic filing through a partnership agreement between the IRS and the Free File Alliance." If you don't need this program, do you know someone who does? Check it out here:

http://www.irs.gov/efile/article/0,,id=118986,00.html

     Kid Zone is a really great site for kids, and the feats of magic are especially fun. There are about twenty, all explained in detail. The site even gives hints about setting up the performance to make a really big impression on the audience.

http://www.kidzone.ws/magic/index.htm

----commercial----

"Steak with onions" sounds like something you'd love to come home to. This newsletter's featured recipe in turn features T-Boy's real Cajun seasoning, which is why his Cajun customers look forward to coming home for dinner. Buy it at

http://my-url.us/pv-spice.html

And don't forget this is your last chance to celebrate St. Paddy's Day with the world's only (probably) Irish steak sauce and barbecue sauce. Same address as above.

----end commercial----

COLLECTIBLES AND ANTIQUES PRICE GUIDE

     How much are your heirlooms worth? And what value should you put on the items you find at garage sales and in antique shops -- and, of course, eBay? This site lists values of things ranging from dolls to sports memorabilia to porcelain. As an up-to-the-minute touch, it lists eBay's monthly top tens for many kinds of antiques and collectibles.

http://collectibles.about.com/od/priceguidesonline/

     Planning to move this year? Go to Realtor.com, the official site of the National Association of Realtors, for amazing information and help. Through this website you can access the central database, the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) used by realtors! This database includes 85 percent of U.S. homes for sale.

     The site has even more than that to offer. They will help you to rent as well as buy, to find a moving company and a company to finance the new house. They even tell you how to decorate and give gardening advice.

http://realtor.com/Default.asp?poe=realtor

     How about houses FOR SALE BY OWNERS? These are often bargains for both buyer and seller. You may want to list your home for sale using one or all of these sites, and do check out their listings for the area to which you're moving. Here are some sites to try:

http://www.forsalebyowner.com/

http://www.fsbo.com/

http://owners.com/

     If you're a VETERAN, you can find especially good mortgage terms here:

http://homeloans.va.gov/

     Please note that the VA offers special help for Gulf Coast hurricane victims.

     And if you're in a LOW OR MODERATE INCOME category that makes it difficult to afford a home, click on the sites below, run by government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Fannie Mae's Home-Path site helps you to find property without going through a realtor. Freddie Mac's Homesteps, on the other hand, works through realtors who choose to take part in their program.

http://home-path.com/

http://homesteps.com/

     And now it's time to dream of vacations. Vacations on farms that take in paying guests can be ideal for families with children -- and for people who want to enjoy the countryside from a hammock, by car, on foot, or on horseback. I once visited a Vermont farm in May. Not one other tourist was there, so I ate with the family rather than in the guest dining room. I got to watch the ferns unfold in the woodland and found a nest of morel mushrooms. For years my hosts sent Christmas cards thanking me for discovering those morels!

     I recently put "farm vacations" in Google's search box without quotes and got listings in Pennsylvania, Maine, Nova Scotia, Vermont . . . and in France! Nothing west of the Mississippi, though. Turned out the magic word there was "ranch." If you don't want to visit a dude ranch, Google for "working ranch vacations." (Without the quotes.) You'll find a bunch.

     To become eligible for prizes, access the Google search engine through Blingo:

http://blingo.com

Or simply go to

http://google.com

     If you like an active but structured vacation, try Hiddentrails.com, which gives you a choice between "outdoor vacations," which include "hiking, biking, rafting, sea kayaking, canoeing," including the Galapagos and the Amazon. Or you can choose "equestrian vacations" in the U.S. West and around the world, including "on horseback from inn to inn, castle to castle, wilderness rides, horse drives, working ranches." Find it all at

http://hiddentrails.com/

GOOGLING COUNTRY VACATIONS ABROAD

     The British use the word "holiday" rather than "vacation." I put "English farm holidays" into the Google search box. Google interpreted my request as being foreign farm holidays advertised in the English language. In addition to farms in England, I got a passel of Italian country places that take in guests!

     So next I did "France farm holidays" rather than "French farm holidays." Some of the French and Italian possibilities sounded quite posh -- don't forget that in Europe you can have a country vacation in a castle! And, even though I just now put quotes around those search terms, in reality I got many more leads when I DIDN'T put quotation marks into the search box.

     If you want to do horseback riding on your vacation, put into the search box something like "New Zealand farm holiday +horse," being sure to put a space before the plus.

     Now we're on a roll. You can try "Sweden farm holiday," "Czech farm holiday +horse." You can Google the area your ancestors came from! But if you prefer the English language and a warm farm welcome, don't fail to Google "Scotland farm holiday," "Ireland farm holiday," and "Wales farm holiday." All full of treasures.

     And let me put one more bug in your ear: to investigate a vacation peacefully floating through Europe's extensive canal systems, try Googling "England barge holidays" and "France barge holidays." I tried it, and they sound absolutely wonderful!

     To access the Google search engine through Blingo, which makes you eligible for prizes, click below:

http://blingo.com

Or simply go to

http://google.com

     The Internet has many other great vacation ideas which will appear in future issues.

     Edda's food is a Dutch take on the cooking of Europe and East Asia. The Netherlands is near Scandinavia, and you'll see Scandinavian dishes in her listing. It's also near Belgium and France, and you'll see Belgian and French dishes. You may especially note the Indonesian dishes. When I was in grade school, we called Indonesia the "Dutch East Indies," which it was at the time. This part of the world has had a big influence on Dutch cooking, creating unusual spice blends and European adaptations of exotic dishes. Which means that these recipes are not like any others. For example, her "Four Times Beef Stew" comes in French, Flemish, Dutch, and East Asian versions.

http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.mbaert/kook/inhoudGB.html

     This is a very simple, very authentic Cajun dish. It's the kind of homey food people hope to have waiting on the table when they come home hungry, and the seasoning is what T-Boy's Cajun customers always use on the meat they buy at his shop. In fact they helped him fine-tune the seasoning! Find T-Boy's seasonings under Spectacular Spices, at

http://my-url.us/pv-spice.html

1 two-pound round steak, not too thick, with round marrow bone
3 large onions, sliced
2 bell peppers, chopped
1/2 tsp. or so of sugar
1 cup beef stock or water
T-Boy's Gravy & Steak Seasoning
Salt to taste
White rice, cooked

     Cut the steak into 1" squares, and season with T-Boy's seasoning. In a heavy dutch oven, put enough cooking oil just to cover the bottom, and get the oil fairly hot. Add the meat and brown it well, almost to the point where you worry you may burn it. You can sprinkle a little sugar in the pot as well, to help the meat turn a nice shade of brown.

     Add the stock or water, and scrape up all the little brown bits that stuck to the bottom of the pot. Add the onions and peppers, reduce the heat, cover and cook for about 1 hour until the meat is tender. Stir occasionally, add salt to taste, and add a little more stock or water if you want more gravy.

     To serve, spoon the steak and gravy over white rice.

© Copyright 2005 Janette G. Blackwell. All rights reserved. You may copy and use portions of this newsletter for noncommercial, personal use only. You may forward a copy to someone else as long as the copyright notice is included. Any other use of the materials in this newsletter without prior written permission is prohibited.

     Tour the Sites newsletter comes out on the first and fifteenth of each month, and we'll NEVER give or sell your e-mail address to anyone else. Plus, these breathtaking "tours of the sites" are absolutely free!

     So add your name to our Tour the Sites mailing list at the bottom of this page, and let's dig up more exciting treasures!

     Janette Blackwell