Jill is off in Toronto hosting CityLine for a few days, so we had to let Andrew & Tara review the Bachelor Pad this week. Watch this clip to get all the details.
Nintendo fans have been frothing at the mouth ever since Nintendo announced at this year’s E3 that a new Metroid would hit store shelves in the fall. Well fanboys and fangirls, the time has come. After months of anticipation, Samus Aron has returned to the console–this time bringing with her a very different game. Yes it’s Metroid; yes it has many familiar characters; and yes it features our favourite heroine. But, mark my words, this is not the Metroid of yesteryear.
Thanks to Karen and Teddi at Wild Grainz (1218 9th Ave SE) for sharing these delicious recipes! Karen drizzled Chai Tea frosting over hers – just a basic icing sugar mixed with chai tea instead of water. Yum! Enjoy! You’ll have to go down to Wild Grainz to buy the sticky buns – they can’t spill all their secrets 
PUMPKIN SCONES
1cup all purpose flour
1cup barley flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp Ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1tsp Baking powder
1/2 tsp soda
1/4 tsp salt
1tbsp chopped candied Ginger
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup 1/2 cup pumpkin
1tsp vanilla extract
Mix the dry ingredients and cut in the butter. Whisk the wet ingredients together then add the wet to the dry. Put in 8″ cake pan and top with coarse sugar. Bake 25-30 at 375 degrees!
CALGARY WEATHER
TODAY: 17, Partly Cloudy
TONIGHT: 5, Partly Cloudy
WEDNESDAY: 14, 40% Chance Showers
>Patience is the key!! Temperatures rising, by Thursday – but we’ve got to get there first….a little cool today, with chance showers rolling through late-day Wednesday.
-Meteorologist Andrew Schultz.
Pork Grilling Recipes for BT Friday August 27
Orange Ginger Ribs
1 cup (250 mL) Dry red wine
1/3 cup (75 mL) Packed brown sugar
2 tbsp (25 mL) Minced fresh ginger
4 Cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp (10 mL) Grated orange rind
1/3 cup (75 mL) Orange juice
3 tbsp (45 mL) Chopped fresh coriander
2 racks Maple Leaf Prime Pork Back Ribs (about 3 lbs/ 1.5 kg total)
BOIL red wine, sugar, ginger, garlic and orange rind in small saucepan for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and add orange juice and coriander. Set aside ½ cup (125 mL) in a small bowl for basting. Pour remaining marinade over ribs in a shallow dish and turn to coat evenly. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or for up to 24 hours.
PLACE ribs bone side down on greased grill over low heat. Close lid and grill for 30 minutes. Turn ribs over and using large brush and reserved marinade, baste ribs, turning and basting for about 45 minutes or until rib bones are showing and meat is tender and no longer pink. Place ribs on cutting board and tent with foil. Cut into single rib portions to serve.
Mojito Pork Chops
1 tbsp (15 mL) Grated orange rind
2 tsp (10 mL) Grated lime rind
3 tbsp (45 mL) Orange juice
2 tbsp (30 mL) Lime juice
2 tbsp (30 mL) Extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp (15 mL) Tequila (optional)
2 tbsp (30 mL) Chopped fresh mint
2 Cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp (2 mL) Ground cumin
2 Packages (6 chops) Maple Leaf Prime Pork Boneless Centre Cut Chops
STIR together orange and lime rind and juice, oil, tequila if using, mint, garlic and cumin. Set aside 1/4 cup (50 mL) marinade in a small bowl for basting. Add remaining marinade to pork chops and turn to coat. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour or for up to 4 hours.
PREHEAT grill to medium high heat. Grill chops basting with reserved marinade and turning once for about 10 to 15 minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 160˚F (70˚C). Allow meat to rest for 2 minutes before serving.
Pork Tenderloin with Cranberry BBQ Sauce
1 Maple Leaf Prime Pork Tenderloin
¼ cup (50 mL) Cranberry juice
1 Clove garlic, peeled and crushed
Freshly ground pepper
½ cup (125 mL) Cranberry sauce
1 cup (250 mL) Favourite BBQ sauce
Squeeze of lemon or orange juice
MARINATE the tenderloin in the cranberry juice, garlic and pepper for 10 minutes.
PREHEAT BBQ to medium-high.
PREPARE basting sauce by warming the cranberry sauce, bbq sauce and lemon juice in a small pan. Set aside.
PLACE tenderloin on grill and cook with lid closed for 5 to 8 minutes. Brush with cranberry BBQ sauce. BBQ for an additional 12 to 15 minutes, turning and basting frequently until the internal temperature of the meat reaches 160˚F (70˚C).
REMOVE from heat, glaze again with any remaining sauce, cover with foil and allow to rest for 5 minutes before slicing and serving.
Calorie Counter by Fat Secret
iPad – Free
Find out how much fat and how many calories are in your favorite foods! This database contains thousands of foods found in local supermarkets, and restaurant chains. Find what you’re about to eat, then check out what’s in it. It lists Calories fat content, carbs and protein. it will also let you know how much of your daily caloric intake it accounts for.
The app also has a food diary so you can keep track of those snacks as well as an exercise diary to track when you burn off calories. The app is quite US focused so you won’t find Tim Hortons on the on the restaurant chain list, at least not yet.
CALGARY WEEKEND WEATHER
TODAY: 17, Partly Cloudy
TONIGHT: 6, Clear
SATURDAY: 16, Partly Cloudy
SUNDAY: 14, Rain
>Well…it’s no secret…cooler weather is here, as we expected, just in time for the weekend! A wet start to Friday, then clearing…look for another chance of showers on Sunday.
-Meteorologist Andrew Schultz.
It’s almost time for the kids to return to the classroom! While there are plenty of ‘Back to School’ guides out there for the kids, this one focuses on the parents. If you’re nervous about your child walking to school for the first time, or concerned about who they may be hanging out with at school you’ll want to check out some of my high tech suggestions.
Some of the devices I talk about are controversial. If you do plan on using them make sure you talk to your children about them and explain why. That way they won’t accuse you of spying on them.
You can find more information about the iSafe Bag here. Yes, they do ship to Canada!
Purchasing information on the Spark Nano can be found here.
Amber Alert GPS information can be found here
iPhone Spy Stick can be purchased here
CALGARY WEATHER
TODAY: 28, Sunny **Chance evening showers
TONIGHT: 8, Chance showers
FRIDAY: 16, Partly cloudy
>Today is the warmest day of the next 7 days….gotta get out and enjoy!! Chance showers rolling in this evening/overnight…this is the Low Pressure that will cool us off…just in time for the weekend (ouch).
-Meteorologist Andrew Schultz.
Now I’m not going to make a whole big deal of this, but the fact is I’m doing an exhilarating new gig down here at Breakfast Television, whose parameters have me out of bed at 3:15 AM, down at the station by 4:30 and then going pretty much full bore until around 10:00.
It’s been a lifestyle adjustment that caused some dereliction of blog duty, which constant visitors will recall has happened heretofore. No more: I guarantee regular posts from this point forward, beginning with some thoughts about goings on around Alberta and the country.
1. The Alberta Competitiveness Review.
I don’t recall that any other province has conducted a formal, structured “competitiveness review” to figure out why economic activity was moving elsewhere, but it’s happening here because Fast Eddie Stelmach and his governing crowd screwed up, big time.
The trouble began, of course, with those changes three years ago to the Alberta Royalty Framework, by which Stelmach proposed to lift millions of dollars from the oil and gas industries. The whole exercise was enveloped in a kind of ephemeral notion that Alberta residents deserved their “fair share” of resource revenue, but the difficulty was nobody – least of all the Premier – ever defined exactly what “fair share” should be. So some guy from the lumber business was given the responsibility of figuring it out and came up with a plan which was incontestably the most ill-considered and destructive economic scheme in Alberta since the federal National Energy Program of 1982.
Back then, the oil patch nearly foundered – and so it was again in 2007. The energy industry bailed at high speed to Saskatchewan and British Columbia, where it was welcomed with warmth, but more significantly, with much more flexible tax law and regulatory enclosures. It was another year, though, before Eddie began to awaken from his imitation of Rip Van Winkle, and ordered his troops to get busy with revisions - to the royalty revisions. There had been, he quoth, “unintended consequences.” Those little oversights led to incessant tinkering and fussing, which in due course brought the royalty structure in Alberta pretty much back to where it had been before the whole stupid business began.
But the damage, which was also inflicted in part by the global recession, had been done and so the province began to rack up enormous deficits where only surpluses had prevailed before. And by last year, Fast Eddie had become fully aroused about the ancillary economic damage besetting Alberta, which in turn prompted him to undertake this ”competitiveness review.”
It would have been entirely unnecessary were it not for that silly idea – culled, incidentally, from both Liberal and NDP policy – to fool around with royalties in the first place. And it speaks to an issue about which I’ve delivered an observation or two, or three, in blogs past: the sorry state of governance in Alberta. It’s aimless and unfocused, directed by a bewildered Premier and cabinet wholly out of their depths, and based principally on the theories of governing they all absorbed when reeves or school board trustees in years gone by.
In the meantime we’re about to discover, an hour or so beyond the time of this posting, if things have improved. Finance minister Ted Morton will sally forth in Edmonton with his projections for the coming fiscal year. Experience instructs us we should fear the worst, but miracles do happen on occasion. Let us pray.
2. The Long Form Census
Enough, already. Census regulation as it’s been until now would have Canadian citizens thrown into jail for refusing to abide? The feds wished to know how often, and under what circumstances, I chose to mow the lawn, and tend the garden? Wished to know in exquisite detail my financial and investment status? (They get that every year with my tax filings, and those of my wife).
The Harper government is intent, still, on dumping this intrustion into the personal lives of Canadians, or at least getting rid of the requirement that filling out the long census is mandatory. Do it, or else.
I don’t like being told what to do, “or else,” in matters that reek of Orwell and Big Brother. Tax law is one thing: I get that, but statistical busybodying is another. I’m confident Harper will remain determined to henceforth spare us the pain.
By the way, in case Statistics Canada remains interested, my origins are Anglo-Saxon by way of Ireland, and I live in Alberta, but anything else about me is my business. Not yours.
So proceed, Mr. Prime Minister, and consign the mandatory long form census to the trash can of dumb policies.
Thank you, Sir.