Suncoast Scribe

I am so HAPPY MRSA is in the headlines. No, I’m not a bit thrilled that it is because of a death of a Virginia high school student. That breaks my heart to the very core. It is because my own daughter has tested positive for MRA more than once and we’ve had some scares as I took her to the ER to have her boil-like infections lanced.

We live in a clean environment and I have taught Gigi good hygiene. Nonetheless, once she started pre-school, all bets were off. MRSA is in our communities and no longer only a danger in hospitals and to the old and frail.

In my scramble to find products to help us keep a re-infection at bay, I was introduced to StaphAseptic by Tec Labs. I got in contact with a rep from their company who actually sent me a sample and the product has been a staple in our medicine chest ever since.

Thank goodness more schools are finally getting on track. Tec Labs reports that requests for their MRSA education kits have been keeping them very busy this last week. It’s my personal hope that more educators will see the light and do the same.

The MRSA prevention kit contains a DVD called MRSA: The Ticking Time Bomb, a poster, bi-lingual handouts, a printable quiz, and sample packets of the company’s product. Schools can get the kit for free by calling Tec Labs at 1-800-482-4464 and pressing “0″.

I am not affiliated with Tec Labs, but as a mother, I DO believe in their product.

Getting ready to look for a job in any given area is hard enough, even if you know the area. When you are looking for jobs in another state or country, the task gets a little trickier. Back in the days before the internet, I would use both a headhunter and order the newspaper from the city where I was getting ready to move. It took a while lot of planning and tracking. If I let myself have a couple months BEFORE my move to plan well, I would usually have three or four interviews set up for the first week I was in my new place.

The internet has certainly changed the face of job hunting. If I were to look for jobs in London, for example, I could just get online and find local community and classifieds sites that service a particular area. It’s par for the course for most people looking for employees to post the job ads online now. I could simple do a search for London jobs and narrow the search results down by job title or the general category where I am looking.

I particularly like Gumtree.com if you’re looking for community pages that can lead you to info on jobs, rentals, even dating. Community is a relative terms these days. It used to mean the literal people in your physical neighborhood. Now you can go online and find a community while sitting in front of your computer.

Last week I wrote about ordering some “Jailbait” scented Biker Groove Lube Lotion™ from Big Bad Mama Biker Body Works. It arrived just this afternoon and I wanted to follow up on my last post.

The lotion is made with macadamia nut oil, shea butter, extra virgin olive oil and other good stuff. In fact, the nuttiness of the blend made the cherry smell more like cherry almond and that is actually so mouth watering I wanted to lick my own arm after putting on some of the lotion. I refrained, but it was difficult. There is no greasy residue. The lotion has a great absorption factor. And, as it wears on I find that the cherry scent is really rising to the top. It’s not sugary sweet, but certainly the fresh fruit shines through. I love it. Plus, I rather dig the idea of having the beer bottle sitting on my bathroom counter. You can bet it will be the first thing people visiting will pick up when they are in there. Maybe it will even deter the medicine cabinet snoopers. ?

When it comes down to it, the product appeals to me because of the natural ingredients and the small business aspect of Big Bad Mama Biker and her very intriguing Body Works line of cool things to slather on your body. I’m not so into walking into one of the big mall chains and filling up a basket with the same scents everyone else in town happens to also be wearing.

Let “Mama” help you get in touch with your inner biker… and pamper your skin at the same time

BTW, I was absolutely not paid to write this. And, they threw in a free bar of their Kin Free brand of Extra Moisturizing Soap. It’s free of fragrance, colorants, petroleum, and harsh chemicals. The ingredients contain coconut oil, palm oil, olive seed oil, shea butter fruit, cocoa seed butter, and vitamin E.

I’m sure most of you have thought about what it might be like to stop working your day job and find a way to make an income using the internet. There are quite literally thousands of ways to make the net work to your benefit. You just have to find the one way that is right for your personality, comfort level and area of expertise.

How aggressive are you? How web savvy are you already? Do you like to take on the role of salesman? Do you feel OK getting friends and acquaintances in on business projects? Do you know how to find a target audience and sell a niche product?

So many questions and just as many solutions: that’s the way of internet businesses.

One option that many people choose when they are at the bottom level and have no internet experience at all, is to go with a package like the ones sold by www.StoresOnlineSuccess.com. They deal in seminars, local training, and complete packages that they say will walk you through running an e-commerce site. They are not the right choice for everyone, since we all know that in business it is never one size fits all. Nonetheless, they are an all-inclusive way to step into e-commerce. You still need to work at driving sales, but the product and the software are there for you.

Do your research. StoresOnline might be what you’re looking for. On the other hand, there are endless ways to make an income online, and this is just one of them.

You can usually trust retail stores to pull recalled item off their shelves. That is helpful for people who do not follow the news and may not have heard about the lead pain in a Dora the Explorer toy or the choking hazards of a baby sling.

Thrift stores, flea markets and some eBay sellers are a whole other story. According to a study from the Injury Prevention Journal, recalled children’s products are turning up on eBay and in thrift stores.

During a 30-day period, the study found 190 auction items on eBay that contained or were suspected to contain a recalled children’s item. Researchers culled the list of items from U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission press releases from 1992 to 2004.

This is despite eBay’s formal policy prohibiting the sale of recalled products. The study found that 70 percent of the eBay auctions of recalled items resulted in a sale.

Rely on your own wisdom and eagle eye. Be aware of what has been recalled and don’t buy at thrift stores, flea markets and on eBay before first checking online to see if the product is safe.

If you bake, and I mean REALLY bake, then you know how much easier life is with a stand mixer. A little hand-held just doesn’t do the trick when you want to power through several dozen cookies. Plus, a hand mixer cannot knead your bread for you or turn the bowl to keep the mixing even. I’ve even burned out a Hamilton Beach® Mixer (the regular hand mixer style) when I was making a particularly stiff cookie dough last Christmas. Most stand mixers don’t even bat a proverbial eyelash in that kind of task. Plus, the Eclectrics® Mixer looks hip sitting on your counter.

For example, my infamous Perfect Chocolate Cake is one of those recipes that work best with a product like the Hamilton Beach® Stand Mixer, because you need to get that batter super smooth and you have to make whipped cream that is stiff enough to hold up between the layers.

This cake, by the way, is addictive. I have more requests to bring this to gathering and parties than anything else I bake.

Perfect Chocolate Cake

1 cup unsweetened cocoa
2 cups boiling water
2 3/4 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup butter
2 1/2 cup sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Combine cocoa and water with whisk until smooth. Sift flour, soda, salt, and baking powder. Set aside.

Mix at high speed butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla until light (5 minutes) at low speed. Add flour mixture alternately with cocoa mix.

Bake at 350º in three 9-inch pans for 25 to 30 minutes. Cool 10 minutes. Remove and cool on racks.

To Assemble: Use 1/2 filling mix on first and second layers. Place third layer on top and frost (frost the sides first) Refrigerate.

Perfect Chocolate Cake Filling & Frosting

Filling:
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Frosting:
1 package (6 ounce) chocolate chips
1/2 cup light cream
1 cup butter
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar

In pan, combine chips, light cream, and butter. Heat until smooth. Remove from heat and whisk in sugar.

In bowl set over ice, beat all filling ingredients until they hold their shape.

Usually when I am ill, I just focus on getting better. My daughter is a pretty healthy kid and doesn’t usually pick up colds and flus from me. In fact, I suspect she carries them home from school sometimes and sails right through, leaving me to be the one who weathers the actual illness.

Things are different now. We are living with my mom. Although I do not talk about this a lot and may not have ever mentioned it before on my blog, she has cancer. It’s a non-curable blood cancer and she’s been living with it for several years now, due to the fact that she got through the first aggressive bout and came out on the other side where science was just then discovering new treatment methods. She was blessed to have lived into the days where doctors better know how to deal with her illness.

All of this is to say that here I sit with a VERY bad cold. My gums are sore. My throat hurts. My head feels like it weighs 50 pounds. And, all I can think of is obsessively washing my hands and spraying Lysol on everything I even thin of touching. Mom’s system cannot power through the colds and flus Gigi brings home with her like my system can. If I could just rent a hotel room for the duration, I would.

We had our own Thanksgiving traditions when I was growing up in the DC suburbs. We often did not have extended family with us, since everyone lived at least six hours away. It would just be the four of us and mom would put on the entire traditional spread: turkey, stuffing, gravy, yams, pies, cranberries and so on. One of the things we did a little different was to use cranberry juice frozen into a sorbet as a side. It was lovely and unique and just a little sophisticated.

When I was married, we started some our own traditions, like making the turkey super spicy and bold. It was a tribute to the Mediterranean food my ex was used to eating. He grew up in the Middle East and turkey was not the common holiday dish. Actually, Thanksgiving was not a holiday they observed in his family, as it’s American.

Now that it is just me and Gigi, I want to start over and make all new traditions. We will be eating with my mom and my sister and her family, but I’m going to take charge of the preparations. My idea is to go all out on the details: special serving dishes and fresh flowers and good wine. I want Thanksgiving to be small, but elegant.

I found a large soup Tureen I like on the Villeroy & Boch website. It’s from the Audun Ferme line, which is a modern take on classic toile. It’s actually based on Villeroy & Boch’s original design from over 200 years ago

Villeroy & Boch is an impressive company. They are close to 260 years old and to this day they are still family owned. They are the largest porcelain manufacturer in the world, and seeing that their products adorn the tables of the Pope, crowned royalty, and renowned restaurants the world over – I figure they are certainly good enough for my Thanksgiving table. I’m thinking one new serving piece a year from them might be a good Thanksgiving tradition. Plus, I can build up a little cache of heirlooms for Gigi.

They are running a 20% off special on serveware through the end of the month, so my timing is perfect.

I’m sick and when I am sick, I crave comfort food. Right now I am craving a sweet treat my mom used to make for us when we were feeling ill.

We used to watch “Little House on the Prairie” every week with Mom. Laura Ingalls-Wilder mentioned these little cakes in her books more than once and we were thrilled when we finally tracked down the recipe. No other scone-type recipe seems to turn out as good as this one.

1 1/2 cup white flour
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of nutmeg
1/4 cup chilled lard (can use shortening)
1/3 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 425º.

Mix flour, sugar, baking soda, and nutmeg. With cold fingers, rub lard into dry mix. Add buttermilk and work into dough.

Roll out dough and cut into six wedges to be shaped into hearts.

Grease cookie sheet and bake about 15 minutes. Dust with sugar.

I have skin like my mother’s. She has skin like her mother’s. All in all, the skin of the women in our family is all pretty much the same in both color and texture. I have to admit, I was pretty lucky to have inherited skin that refrains from wrinkles quite well. My grandmother taught my mom her skincare regimen. My mom passed it along to me, and my grandmother followed up with great tips.

It’s my place to pass along skincare tips to my own daughter. The thing is, her skin is very different from mine. I am very fair skinned. She is decidedly olive skinned. Her skin has a different texture, it behaves differently in sunlight, and I know she will need a skincare regimen that suits her needs rather than mine.

For example, her father has small, dark patches of scarring from when he had acne breakouts as a teen. He also tends to scar on the outside with larger injuries. I’m not used to dealing with those issues and as it turns out, my daughter’s skin is more like her dad’s than it is my own.

ORIKI Cosmeceuticals has products specifically for those with Asian, Mediterranean and other Olive (AMO) skin types. The products take into consideration the unique pigmentation factor AMO skin types. I am happy to have the products and the company website as a resource, because I had never given thought before to the fact that I need to take pigmentation into the mix when teaching Gigi to care for her skin.