Family fishing vacations to the Florida Keys are very popular. The local charter captains enjoy taking the kids out and have almost as much fun as they do. If you plan to travel to the Keys for vacation, bring the kids
along they will have a great time. Just remember that a successful fishing trip with younger children is not always measured in big fish, but in big smiles.
The Florida Bay is often like a lake, making it easy to introduce young anglers to a great time. These calm days are prefect for the kids and the adults. The action is almost constant which is what you need to hold the attention of many young anglers. Your family will be fishing in shallow clear waters, so you and yours will see plenty of fish. Using chumming techniques, the number of fish behind the boat will continue to grow. Mackerel, snapper, blue fish, sharks and a variety of Jacks are just a few of the fish you will encounter.
In winter, which is the best time to visit the Keys, hundreds of Spanish mackerel will pay you a visit. The Spanish are fun catch for young and old alike with fish ranging from two to ten pounds. They are great sport on light tackle. Jacks, blue runners and Jack Crevelle, will often show en mass making it hard not to have fish on the line.
To challenge the adults, Cobia, Goliath Grouper and larger sharks will show on most trips to stretch your line. The Cobia is delicious table fare, perfect for a family dinner. In the Keys almost any local restaurant will cook your fresh catch for you.
In calm weather, the reef of the ocean side of the island offers Yellowtail Snapper, grouper and mackerel. As in the bay, chum fishing is normally used to bring the fish right to the boat for all to see. The Yellowtails are very tasty and while they can be finicky, will most often bite very well. The occasional King Mackerel, many weighing over thirty pounds are a great challenge for both the younger and older crew.
Its nearly 3 AM and I'm bored watching some fun caoons, ask me anything ! http://www.formspring.me/Andrenn
I will not waste much time with lines; for the title itself should give you the indication of what is being presented. God wants You. Maybe you've been hurt in some way by a love one or maybe you think your life is
pointless; let me tell you that God is willing and ready to receive you, He is ready to love you—if you are willing to come to him.
God by no means will cast you away. He promises that those that come to Him, He will never lose. This is a undeniable fact. Yes, God will change you; he may even point out things in your life that will need to be dealt with. However, this process is not to embarrass you or hurt you, but to make you better than you are. God is in the business of love, and love is sometimes a word of encouragement or time when he points out faults in our lives.
But what about you? I've told you the truth, for what I write is not of my own imagination, but lays firm on what God has said about you. He desires, right now, to have you as a child. The ball is now in your court, do you want God? If you do He'll have you no matter what, and don't persuade yourself otherwise; for many people have done egregious acts, but God forgives—believe it and see.
So, here I end my plea for you to come to Jesus and I hope you do.
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I just need my car to explode; then maybe the universe's bloodlust will be sated.
New Year's Eve celebrations in Burlington, Vermont are centred around family activities involving the arts. The Burlington New Year's Eve celebration is a First Night festival. This means
New Year's Eve CelebrationsNeighborhood: Celebrations and activities Burlington, VT 05403
that it is an alcohol free festival that has numerous events for children and adults throughout the downtown Burlington area.
First Night Burlington has been running for 24 years. First Night festivals first began in Boston in 1976 and there are now over 130 cities around the world holding these alcohol free, arts centred New Year's Eve celebrations. Burlington was the fourth city to adopt a First Night as its main New Year's Eve event. First Night Burlington has activities and entertainment at 25 locations throughout the downtown area with over 1000 artists participating. It is the largest single day arts festival in Vermont.
There are over 50 different events that make up Burlington's First Night New Year's Eve celebrations. Some of the most popular are:
Flynn Arts: Run by Flynn Arts this is a fun encouraging way for children to try different performing arts. Classes are conducted for different age groups ranging from age 3 to 14. Children can choose the performing art of the preference from classes in dance, theatre and music.
Firehouse Center For Visual Arts: At the Firehouse Center For Visual Arts children can enjoy a variety of activities including making their own addition to a giant painting. They can also make their masks and spirits sticks for their participation in the Drum & Dragons Parade. This event runs from 12 noon until 5:30pm.
Circus Smirkus: Be entertained by this great circus atmosphere. You will be amused and amazed by acrobats, contortionists and aerialists. Circus Smirkus is held at the Memorial Auditorium. This event and requires guaranteed seat tickets. It is advisable to buy these tickets early as this popular event usually sells out. There are two performances on New Year's Eve in Burlington, 12-1pm and 6-7pm.
The Humane Society of the United has released some damning footage of egg farms, but farmers' organizations are firing back, claiming the group wants “to remove meat from our dinner tables and eventually — pets from our families.”
According to the video above (shot undercover at Iowa farms, and extremely difficult to watch), many chickens suffer gruesome injuries when being moved from cage to cage, or get stuck in the wires of battery cages and are trampled to death. P.J. Huffstutter of the LA Times writes that in addition to releasing the footage, the Humane Society is reaching out to in 4-H to instruct them humane farming practices. The group has also stock in food companies to influence them to make more animal-friendly decisions, convincing Wendy's, IHOP, and Wal-Mart to switch to cage-free eggs. But farmers aren't happy that the interference, and they accuse the Humane Society of far more nefarious goals. Kansas Farm President Steve Baccus writes, “HSUS seeks to remove meat from our dinner tables, leather goods from our closets, animals from zoos and circuses and eventually — pets from our families.” He also states the group is “a powerful, well-funded activist organization pursuing what most reasonable observers would an extreme anti-animal agenda.”
But Baccus's words seem alarmist, given that the Humane Society's position is basically pretty moderate. The organization's president Wayne Pacelle said Wednesday, “We're not asking for an end to the confinements of animals in buildings. We are asking they not be crammed into cages and crates barely more massive than their bodies.” The Humane Society isn't PETA — they do not run billboards of naked women, or ask that we all go vegan. And, perhaps as a result of their more modest approach, they have had major successes — Huffstutter mentions California's Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act (Prop. 2), which will ban restrictive cages for calves, hens, and sows. So farmers may be right to fear the Humane Society, insofar as changing their practices might make things difficult for them for a while. But far from being “anti-animal,” these changes will be good for livestock, and for humans who care about treating them well.
Egg-Farm Video Is Latest Salvo In Humane Society's Animal-Rights Campaign
Shocking Egg-Farm Film Reignites Animal Debate
Send an email to Anna North, the author of this post, at annanorth@jezebel.com.
Cook the Book: Northern Fried Chicken
Posted by Caroline Russock, April 8, 2010 at 1:00 PM
[Photograph: Caroline Russock]
All of you fried chicken traditionalist out there take warning: This is not a typical Southern fried chicken recipe. There are ingredients and techniques within this recipe for Northern Fried Chicken from Bromberg Bros. Blue Ribbon Cookbook by Bruce Bromberg and Eric Bromberg that will go against all previous fried chicken notions.
Now that we have that out of the way, let's get down to the genius and timeliness of this recipe. In the week following Easter folks are always looking for creative uses for their leftover eggs, but this recipe addresses another holiday leftover: Passover matzo. The Bromberg Brothers' fried chicken is coated in a mix of matzo meal and flour, which gives it a crust that is worlds away from your typical fried chicken. It's lighter and crisp in a way that brings to mind a cornmeal crust. Using egg whites to adhere the coating to the chicken ensures that the crust stays put, even if your chicken sticks to the bottom of the frying pan. The last bit of atypical preparation is sprinkling the hot chicken with the Bromberg's Fried Chicken Seasoning once it comes out of the fryer. Since the coating seasoned at all, this post-fry application of the Old Bay-like spice mix is where the majority of the flavor comes from.
So, there you have it: Northern Fried Chicken thought up by two French trained Jewish boys from New Jersey. This fried chicken was like no other recipe ever attempted at home, or eaten out for that matter, but it was really tasty. On the scale of making fried chicken it was not all that time consuming since there was no need to soak or preseason. All and all, pretty good, and even when served with some honey as the Brombergs recommend.
Win Bromberg Bros. Blue Ribbon Cookbook
As always with our Cook the Book feature, we have five (5) of Bromberg Bros. Blue Ribbon Cookbook to give away this week. Enter to triumph here »
Northern Fried Chicken
- serves 4 -
Adapted from Bromberg Bros.Blue Ribbon Cookbook by Bruce Bromberg and Eric Bromberg.
Ingredients
6 cups soy oil
1 (3-pound) chicken, cut into 8 pieces (2 legs, 2 thighs, 4 breast pieces)
4 big egg whites, whisked
1/2 cup matzo meal
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
Perfect Roast Seasoning (recipe follows)
1 teaspoon Fried Chicken Seasoning (recipe follows)
Mexican honey (or any honey you prefer), for serving
Procedure
1. Fill a large pot with about 3 inches of oil. Heat the oil over medium-high heat until a deep-fat thermometer reads 375°F.
2. Rinse the chicken pieces and pat dry with paper towels. Place the egg whites in a massive shallow bowl. In a separate shallow bowl, combine the matzo meal, flour, and baking powder. Dip each chicken piece in egg white and let excess drip back into the bowl. Next press each chicken piece into the matzo mix and tap off excess.
3. Working in 2 batches, if necessary, fry the chicken until dark golden, about 10 minutes for white meat and 13 minutes for dark meat. Transfer to a paper towel-lined plate. Sprinkle immediately with the perfect roast seasoning, then coat the pieces with the fried chicken seasoning. Serve with gravy if you like, and honey, for dipping.
Perfect Roast Seasoning
- makes about 2/3 cup -
Ingredients
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons kosher salt
3 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
Procedure
Combine the salt, pepper, and thyme, and store in a covered container.
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People who don't have children sometimes complain that kids are narcissistic, sociopathic little terrors. But any parent will tell you that is an unfair assessment. They are also messy, noisy, whining, and germy.
That's why, as a parent, I loved Tiny Art Director, a new book by artist Bill Zeman. Based on Zeman's funny blog of the same name, Tiny Art Director contains images that Zeman's (now five-year-old) daughter Rosie asked him to paint. Rosie's briefs are hilarious: “A sick crocodile.” “A bone dinosaur eating a baby.” “A cat killing a rat.” “A dragon sneaking up on a girl. She's picking flowers.” Each image includes commentary from Rosie (aka, the tiny art director) that reveals her to be as fussy, capricious, self-contradictory, and bossy as many grown up art directors I know. (Click on the example above for a closer look at Rosie's style of criticism.)
My wife, my two daughters, and I read the book last night and we laughed on almost every page. Jane, my six-year-old especially likes the book because she thinks Rosie (left) looks like her (right). In fact, my wife and 12-year-old daughter thought I had somehow put Jane's photo in the book and was pulling a trick on them.
What I loved about this book is learning about the extraordinary relationship between Rosie and Zeman. Rosie is a harsh critic, but it's clear that she and her dad are having a terrific time together. I hope they put out a sequel soon!
Tiny Art Director
True confession: The first bottle of Black Dog Ale I ever bought wasn't for the taste or the price or even the reputation. What separated that six-pack from hundreds of others in the 40-foot-long beer case was the black Labrador retriever on the box. There he was — the noble profile, those silky ears, his golden eyes gazing into the distance. And to clinch the deal, behind him rolled a tree-filled alpine meadow, backed by snowy mountain peaks.
I didn't buy the beer, I bought the label. And it's not just any label. With the detailed drawing of the dog, the idealized depiction of the place, all rendered in rich colors, with an unmistakably retro vibe, it's the modern-day version of that other icon of advertising— orange crate art.
The aesthetic of the citrus labels of the early 1900s, with their lush and idealized images of trees and fields and fruit and, of course, beautiful women, are a perfect match for locally brewed beers.
Craft beers, loosely defined as local brews produced by traditional methods, reflect not just specifics of their regions but offer a peek into the psyches of their creators as well. Like any label, those on craft beers bear a brand name and product information and meet the legal requirements of state and federal law.
But the estimated 1,500 craft brewers in the U.S., who sold slightly more than 4 million barrels of beer in the first half of 2009, are an intensely independent lot. Having broken from the conformity of so-called macro-brews, like Coors or Miller or Budweiser, microbrewers naturally take the next step and produce labels as quaint and curious and quirky as the liquid in the bottles.
“The kinds of people who start microbreweries are not your typical entrepreneurs,” says Jonathan Baker, self-described “marketing guy” of the fledgling Monday Night Brewing Co. in Atlanta. “They're a little wilder, a little weirder, and they have a more artistic slant in general.”
Where the big brewers have the big money to hire branding experts, to research and run focus groups, the little guys rely more on self-expression to make their marketing statements.
“With microbrews, it's often just a couple of guys making decisions based on what they like,” Baker says. “They marry the words and the art. But when you're designing a label, you've still got to say something, you've got to have a message. It can't just be art for art's sake.”
At Kona Brewing Co., the message is all about Hawaii. Take Longboard Island Lager, for instance, where surfers backed by Hawaii's volcanic mountains ride blue, blue waves toward a broad and sandy beach. The logo itself echoes a tribal tattoo, adding to the local vibe.
“Orange crates of the past were trying to deliver a sense of place,” says Mattson Davis, Kona Brewing's president and chief executive. “Wouldn't you like to be in this beautiful field? Wouldn't you like to be eating this succulent fruit?”
Kona's label is also all about the narrative, Davis says.
“Here we say, ‘Let's go talk story,' ” he says. “That's the social engagement — let's go relax. Let's go have a beer.”
Some of the stories beer labels tell turn out to be a bit too provocative for the authorities who oversee the industry.
Nude Beach Summer Wheat Beer, produced by Stevens Point Brewery Co. in Wisconsin, was banned for the mere suggestion that the sunbathers on the bright and playful label were, well, naked behind those strategically placed surfboards and volleyballs.
State liquor authorities in Maine and New York banned the import of Santa's Butt Winter Porter, a seasonal beer that made a visual pun out of a portly Santa seated on a wooden beer keg — known in the industry as a “butt.”
And here in California, Weed Beer, brewed in the tiny town of Weed, came under fire for its bottle cap, which jokingly urged shoppers to “Try Legal Weed.”
Are beer brewers more adventurous in marketing their wares than their distant kin, the vintners? Yes, says Keith Stevenson, advertising manager for the Mendocino Brewing Co. The company's beers, like its Red Tail Ale, with a fierce hawk clutching a sheaf of barley in its talons, feature beautifully drawn raptors on the labels.
“Wine — for some reason there's a certain snobbery attached to wine,” Stevenson says. “A wine ad will have strings and piano and soft lighting. Beer labels reflect the lingua franca of the public. The beer ad is earthier; it will be in-your-face.”
In the end, though, what's on the outside of the bottle takes a back seat to what's inside, says Davis, of Kona Brewing.
“It may be the label that makes the beer really jump off the shelf,” Davis says. “But if you don't deliver me a good liquid? I won't ever buy you again.”
food@latimes.com
True confession: The first bottle of Black Dog Ale I ever bought wasn't for the taste or the price or even the reputation. What separated that six-pack from hundreds of others in the 40-foot-long beer case was the black Labrador retriever on the box. There he was — the noble profile, those silky ears, his golden eyes gazing into the distance. And to clinch the deal, behind him rolled a tree-filled alpine meadow, backed by snowy mountain peaks.
I didn't buy the beer, I bought the label. And it's not just any label. With the detailed drawing of the dog, the idealized depiction of the place, all rendered in rich colors, with an unmistakably retro vibe, it's the modern-day version of that other icon of advertising— orange crate art.
The aesthetic of the citrus labels of the early 1900s, with their lush and idealized images of trees and fields and fruit and, of course, beautiful women, are a perfect match for locally brewed beers.
Craft beers, loosely defined as local brews produced by traditional methods, reflect not just specifics of their regions but offer a peek into the psyches of their creators as well. Like any label, those on craft beers bear a brand name and product information and meet the legal requirements of state and federal law.
But the estimated 1,500 craft brewers in the U.S., who sold slightly more than 4 million barrels of beer in the first half of 2009, are an intensely independent lot. Having broken from the conformity of so-called macro-brews, like Coors or Miller or Budweiser, microbrewers naturally take the next step and produce labels as quaint and curious and quirky as the liquid in the bottles.
“The kinds of people who start microbreweries are not your typical entrepreneurs,” says Jonathan Baker, self-described “marketing guy” of the fledgling Monday Night Brewing Co. in Atlanta. “They're a little wilder, a little weirder, and they have a more artistic slant in general.”
Where the big brewers have the big money to hire branding experts, to research and run focus groups, the little guys rely more on self-expression to make their marketing statements.
“With microbrews, it's often just a couple of guys making decisions based on what they like,” Baker says. “They marry the words and the art. But when you're designing a label, you've still got to say something, you've got to have a message. It can't just be art for art's sake.”
At Kona Brewing Co., the message is all about Hawaii. Take Longboard Island Lager, for instance, where surfers backed by Hawaii's volcanic mountains ride blue, blue waves toward a broad and sandy beach. The logo itself echoes a tribal tattoo, adding to the local vibe.
“Orange crates of the past were trying to deliver a sense of place,” says Mattson Davis, Kona Brewing's president and chief executive. “Wouldn't you like to be in this beautiful field? Wouldn't you like to be eating this succulent fruit?”
Kona's label is also all about the narrative, Davis says.
“Here we say, ‘Let's go talk story,' ” he says. “That's the social engagement — let's go relax. Let's go have a beer.”
Some of the stories beer labels tell turn out to be a bit too provocative for the authorities who oversee the industry.
Nude Beach Summer Wheat Beer, produced by Stevens Point Brewery Co. in Wisconsin, was banned for the mere suggestion that the sunbathers on the bright and playful label were, well, naked behind those strategically placed surfboards and volleyballs.
State liquor authorities in Maine and New York banned the import of Santa's Butt Winter Porter, a seasonal beer that made a visual pun out of a portly Santa seated on a wooden beer keg — known in the industry as a “butt.”
And here in California, Weed Beer, brewed in the tiny town of Weed, came under fire for its bottle cap, which jokingly urged shoppers to “Try Legal Weed.”
Are beer brewers more adventurous in marketing their wares than their distant kin, the vintners? Yes, says Keith Stevenson, advertising manager for the Mendocino Brewing Co. The company's beers, like its Red Tail Ale, with a fierce hawk clutching a sheaf of barley in its talons, feature beautifully drawn raptors on the labels.
“Wine — for some reason there's a certain snobbery attached to wine,” Stevenson says. “A wine ad will have strings and piano and soft lighting. Beer labels reflect the lingua franca of the public. The beer ad is earthier; it will be in-your-face.”
In the end, though, what's on the outside of the bottle takes a back seat to what's inside, says Davis, of Kona Brewing.
“It may be the label that makes the beer really jump off the shelf,” Davis says. “But if you don't deliver me a good liquid? I won't ever buy you again.”
Guest Passes let you share your photos that aren't public. Anyone can see your public photos anytime, whether they're a Flickr member or not. But! If you want to share photos marked as friends, family or private, use a Guest Pass. If you're sharing photos from a set, you can create a Guest Pass that includes any of your photos marked as friends, family, or private. If you're sharing your entire photostream, you can create a Guest Pass that includes photos marked as friends or family (but not your private photos). Learn more about Guest Passes!
Brooklyn based photographer and digital artist Eric Martin focuses his creative energy on fashion and portrait photography where he moves through a horizon of different styles, approaches and imagery within his work.
Having been nominated has American Photo Magazines ‘10 Best Young Photographers in America’ in 2006, his work as further diversified since then and is probably best left to speak for iteself!
