The real North Korea

Due to a famine hitting the country because of international trade sanctions, North Koreans are forced to live off of food rations from the government. The government claims that they provide their citizens with all that they need but in reality, as this photo which was secretly taken of a grocery store proves, this is not necessarily the case. This Pyongyang supermarket is for the above average (although not elite) North Korean, and shows the paltry offerings on hand, mainly apples, turnips, and leeks. Yum…

Most of the country of North Korea is starving, with a huge percentage of the population dangerously malnourished, eating rats and squirrels for sustenance. The country is therefore trying to increase its arable farmland in order to feed its people. However, due to still using farming methods from the 1700s, this isn’t really working out, with people all over the country emaciated and malnourished. North Koreans who escape to China are easily recognizable for being extremely thin, and for their tendencies to eat everything they see. 

When foreigners come to visit the Hermit Kingdom, they are taken on tightly controlled, heavily monitored tours where photographing the wrong thing may just put you in jail, or worse. This photographer risked his life by taking a photo of a nearly empty train station. North Korean citizens are closely watched, and they are not allowed to travel outside of their own town or village without express written permission from the regime. The train here is mainly for tourists, and just another cog in the regime’s propaganda machine. 

Just like in a chapter of 1984, everyone’s movements and words are monitored by the government. There isn’t a place in North Korea where you aren’t being watched, with hidden cameras and microphones located everywhere from homes to offices, parks and squares to even buses and cars! It is a not uncommon sight to see North Korean military watchtowers watching towns, making sure that everyone is in line.

Crock Pot Ham and Bean Soup!

Taking a cue from a package of Hurst's 15 bean soup package, I thought to try out an 'Owenized' version, using just the foodstuff I actually had on hand. 
 

Ingredients:

10 oz of Hurst's 15 bean soup package (1/2 a package)

2 ham hocks

½ packet of ham flavoring (included with Hurst package)

15 oz can of chicken broth

15 oz can of petite diced tomatoes

¼ onion, chopped

¼ tsp garlic

Dash of Cayenne pepper

¼ tsp of lemon juice

Directions:

For this meal I used a small 2 quart Crock Pot, that I had ordered from Amazon, as it does a great job when cooking up smaller amounts of food.

To start this recipe off, I rinsed the beans (about half the package) and added them, along with the onion, ham hocks, broth, garlic and Cayenne pepper into the Crock Pot which was set on high. The lid was put on and it was allowed to cook for 5 hours. (Note that if you boil the beans prior to adding them to the slow cooker, the time is reduced to about three hours). After that time had elapsed, I removed the ham hocks, cut off the meat and discarded the bones. I also checked the beans for tenderness. I then stirred in the can of diced tomatoes, lemon juice and ham flavoring.

I let this cook for an additional 30 minutes to allow the flavors a chance to meld. Serves about 4.

Notes: The Crock Pot I used, when set on high, reached a temperature of about 232 degrees Fahrenheit. This was hot enough to cause the contents to slightly boil or simmer.

Earth from 746 million miles away!

One Forsyth Missouri area park still open after the flood!

Forsyth MO. – After suffering from a 100 year flood, and even as two area parks (River Run and Shadow Rock) were both completely inundated with water, one small park area survived.

Empire District's small park area just to the southwest off Powersite dam was still open for business. This public park area supports picnic benches, a covered area, a boat ramp and bathrooms. And even if a few areas had water on them, most of the area was good to go when I visited on May 14, 2017. 

Even as record levels of water continued to flow over Powersite dam, the Taneycomo Lake area remained close to normal levels even as Bull Shoals was almost to that level! It's thought that both the Bull Shoals recreational areas will be closed for the balance of the year, even if no more rain were to fall. A situation deemed somewhat unlikely as more rain was forecast for later in the week of this post. 

Another global cyber attack possible on Monday!

 

Site of attempted WannaCry infections!

The war is apparently on in the global cyber world! With over 200K systems now infected with the ransomware known as 'WannaCry' the world, especially the UK is girding its loins for a tough Monday, May the 15^th!

According to an article in The Telegraph, a UK publication, the threat from the cyber attack that crippled international services "will continue to grow" as people return to work on Monday, the head of Europol warned.

The virus, (which was stopped this time by a 22 year old computer genius), is anything but over. According him, 'a further attack is likely' and he stressed that 'it's very important that people patch their systems now.' [Microsoft has a patch you can download].

The anti-hacker also stated that, "We have stopped this one, but there will be another one coming and it will not be stoppable by us.” He also admonished, "There's a lot of money in this. There's no reason for them to stop. It's not really much effort for them to change the code and then start over.”
Some experts now fear this latest coordinated attack which hit over 90 countries world wide, may only be the tip of the iceberg. In many ways, the individuals responsible are not unlike ISIS. They both are on missions to destroy entire countries. One side does this for religious reasons, while the side is in it for the money. Either way, the damage they are doing could be beyond horrific.

In a rare step, Microsoft published a patch for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows 8—all of them operating systems for which it no longer provides mainstream support.

Users can download and find more information about the patches in Microsoft’s blog post about Friday’s attack from the WannaCry ransomware.

Does anyone remember 911, and how surprised we all were that some simple minded people who were also radicalized could use a few planes to bring us down? Now, consider a cyber attack followed up with a strike at our electrical grid. It wouldn't even have to be particularity effective to throw millions into a panic.... Next day, a new Dark age. Meanwhile, we all sit staring at our TV's, cellphones and computers like mindless lemmings....

Five way Cincinnati chili!

I like chili and spaghetti, so it was nice when I first heard of this very popular dish. According to my research, Cincinnati chili originated with immigrant restaurateurs from the Macedonian region who were trying to expand their customer base by moving beyond narrowly ethnic styles of cuisine.

Tom and John Kiradjieff began serving a "stew with traditional Mediterranean spices" as a topping for hot dogs which they called "coneys" in 1922 at their hot dog stand located next to a burlesque theater called the Empress. Tom Kiradjieff used the sauce to modify a traditional Greek dish, speculated to have been pastitsio, moussaka or saltsa kima to come up with a dish he called chili spaghetti. He first developed a recipe calling for the spaghetti to be cooked in the chili but changed his method in response to customer requests and began serving the sauce as a topping, eventually adding grated cheese as a topping for both the chili spaghetti and the coneys, also in response to customer requests. To make ordering more efficient, the brothers created the "way" system of ordering.

That style has since been copied and modified by many other restaurant proprietors, often fellow Greek-Macedonian immigrants who had worked at Empress restaurants before leaving to open their own chili parlors, often following the business model to the point of locating their restaurants adjacent to theaters.

My meal selection on this day, was a five way order meal-a-deal! Following is a list of 'ways'.

3-Way: Spaghetti covered with bean-less chili, topped with shredded cheddar cheese.

4-Way: A 3-Way with onions or beans.

5-Way: A 3-Way with onions and beans.

Critique: Banquest's Salisbury Steak Meal circa 2017!

It took me quite some time before I came to the realization that TV dinners actually evolved and changed. What existed in 2015 was not what was offered in 2017! Only the price of $1.29 seemed to remain somewhat constant.

One of the changes was the masked potatoes, or what I would better describe as baby vomit. The texture was wrong and the taste a bit on the grainy side. Not cool.Even repeated nuking in the microwave did not improve that mush. Likewise, I never got a good look at the Salisbury steak as it was covered by an annealed mass of sauce. But, unlike the mashed potatoes, it tasted OK.

Gag me, totally!

On the better side of things, the corn tasted like corn (duh) with the desert being the real star of an otherwise very disappointing late afternoon encounter. Other insults that came from this 350 calorie mess were the extremely high doses of saturated fats (23%) and the completely insane load of sodium at 1340 milligrams. (Were I a much younger man sponging off of poor parents, and that was all they could afford, I could live with it. But, as an older and hopefully smarter person, I elected to dump most of it into the trash...).

I scored this a 3 on a scale of 10 and would not recommend it... well, maybe I would to my enemies.