New West Living
'Santa Paws' is a pet peeve
Idaho Humane Society to Hold Holiday Adoption FestivalFor about 23 years I asked Santa for a dog for Christmas. The fat man never brought me one. Though, to be fair, I also asked for a dog from the tooth fairy, the Easter Bunny, the turkey wishbone, the birthday candle genie, the first star I saw one night, and my parents and no one ever brought me one.
I eventually got a dog and it was a good idea to wait and pick her out myself because I got to select the one I loved most from all the wonderful homeless pups at the Idaho Humane Society.
This Saturday, Santa will be at the Humane Society, the state’s non-profit animal welfare organization, for the Holiday Adoption Festival. It is a festive opportunity to welcome a new dog or cat into your home this holiday season.
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Idaho Housing
Some Idahoans Get Restitution in National Ameriquest SettlementEveryone knows the mess sub-prime mortgages and refinancing caused the country and the state. For a while it seemed that things were continuously going downhill, but there’s a little bright news for some Idaho homeowners who dealt with Ameriquest Mortgage, the largest sub-prime lender.
Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, finance regulators and 49 other Attorneys General – not Virginia’s AG because Ameriquest didn’t do business in Virginia – and the District of Columbia settled allegations that Ameriquest used predatory lending practices.
Wasden announced that 455 Idahoans will receive more than $432,000 in restitution payments as a result of the multi-state settlement.
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Yoga On & Off the Mat
What Would Pooh Do?
Deep in the Hundred Acre Wood lives a little round bear named Pooh. Pooh is a simple-minded bear who enjoys honey, a cozy spot by the fire and being in the company of good friends.
Without knowing it and certainly without much effort, Pooh is compassionate. Pooh is humble. Pooh is, by all accounts, a yogic bear — so much so that he inspired Benjamin Hoff’s The Tao of Pooh, a small book with big implications about how humans could benefit from being a bit more Pooh-like. And with the holidays upon us, I also wonder: if I were more Pooh than person, what would I offer family, friends, and colleagues this holiday season?
So it is in this spirit—in the spirit of Pooh—that I offer a simple gift guide that is both gentle on the earth and the wallet.
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Your 15 seconds of fame
Open Casting for Next Lottery Commercial for American Idol Scratch TicketsTryouts for the next season of American Idol are not going to be held in Boise. But don’t chuck your dreams of being an American Idol just yet.
North By Northwest, a Spokane- and Boise-based production company, is looking for several people to be featured in an upcoming series of television commercials for the Idaho Lottery’s new American Idol scratch ticket game.
Okay, so there’s no Ryan Seacrest, but the prospective notoriety is pretty sweet, and on the plus side there is no Simon Cowell either.
Individuals can video tape themselves singing any audition song, turn it in and potentially star in a commercial and get $500.
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The Time of Their Lives (Again)
The 6th Annual Bozeman Adult Prom
However perfect or awful one’s prom may have been, the Bozeman Adult Prom proves that with enough willing, nostalgic partners, it’s never too late to experience the big night all over again. For those who never graced the dimly lit gymnasium floor in high school, the Adult Prom provides a perfect chance to unleash those pent up dance moves and ultra-cool attitudes buried deep inside for so long.
The original adult prom went down at a Bozeman house party. The event soon got so big that founder Phil Baribeau had to move the dance to its present home, the Eagles Lodge in downtown Bozeman. After Baribeau moved, current organizers Caitlin Magbee and Julianne Scuman happily took the helm of the prom committee.
The 2007 Adult Prom was unforgettable. There were corsages, crimped hairdos and hairsprayed bangs. There were flasks, frilled shirts, Max Headroom sunglasses and mascara-smeared faces. Glittery bodies grooved to synthesizer beats, and best of all, there was plenty of making out and no chaperones to stop it.
Click here or on the image to view photos from this very special night.
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Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat
Funding Issues Cause an Organic Response at WICThe Montana Women Infants and Children (WIC) program has decided to allow participants to continue buying organic food after all. Due to a flat-lined budget in recent years, Montana WIC was planning to remove organics from its approved list of foods on December 1st in order to continue serving 20,000 Montana families each month. But after a wealth of public outcry, Montana's WIC administrators are rethinking the ban. [more]
Season of Suppers
Meals On Wheels, Pet Hospital Collect Food for Pets Over HolidaysThere are canned food drives everywhere you look during the holidays. There are Idaho Foodbank barrels at the grocery store, in your bank, at the library. But unfortunately, people aren’t the only ones starving; there are hundreds of pets going without meals this season as well.
Hopefully there will be fewer hungry people and fewer hungry pets this year because Meals On Wheels is organizing a pet food drive.
Meals On Wheels, the agency that provides more than 600 seniors in Ada and Elmore counties with daily hot, nutritious meals, is partnering with Banfield, the pet hospital inside the Petsmart in Meridian, for Season of Suppers, a pet food drive for the canine and feline companions of homebound seniors.
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evolution of childbirth
ICAN, and The Business of Being Born
Close to 100 people filled the Roxy Theater in Missoula on Saturday night for a benefit screening of The Business of Being Born, a documentary film produced by actress and former talk show host Ricki Lake and director Abby Epstein.
The inaugural event of the newly formed Missoula chapter of ICAN (International Cesarean Awareness Network) aimed to raise awareness about the steady increase in cesarean births in the U.S. while demystifying the practice of home births and midwifery.
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Kneading a Little Dough
Joining the Cult of King Arthur
A couple of weeks ago, my husband asked me what I needed from the supermarket. He had to pick up a few things. If you're a regular NewWest.Net reader you may be familiar with my obsession with bread baking, and particularly lately, multi-day starters and ferments and so forth. Horrifyingly, I'd run out of flour. My husband knows how snobby I can be about ingredients, so he asked me what brand to get: "Ideally, King Arthur bread flour, but they don't carry it, so just get something better than store brand."
In case you're not familiar with King Arthur Flour, it's grown and milled in the U.S., and doesn't contain any icky things like bromate or other additives. It's natural. The company is based in Norwich, Vermont, not far from where I spent both my college years and many summers. I first learned about King Arthur from my sister, who lives in New England and is sanctimoniously organic about nearly everything. She bought me a gift certificate to King Arthur's baking catalog last Christmas. It is full of delightful goodies like pie shields and dough whisks and razor blades made for scoring baguettes. Definitely at the top of my catalog porn pile.
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Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat
The Genetically Modified Beet Goes On
After seven years of keeping sugar from genetically modified sugar beets out of their food, Kellogg, Hershey’s and the Wyoming based American Crystal Sugarwill use sugar made from genetically modified (GM) beets.
The decision marks a turnaround for Crystal Sugar, the nation's largest sugar producer, which declared in May of this year that it had no plans to use GM sugar beets, and indicated that herbicide-resistant varieties developed using biotechnology would not "be sold, given away, distributed, or planted in year 2007."
But according to a recent article in the New York Times, the food giants have softened to the idea because public resistance to GM foods seems to have faded. They now support the introduction because it will increase yields and, unlike other GM foods, beet sugar will have no genetically modified strands of altered DNA or proteins left in it by the time it is processed into sugar. Essentially, the genetically modified beet creates the same sucrose as an everyday sugar beet. This has been an important distinction for the industry as a way to assuage consumer concerns and expand the sugar beet market, which is the source for about one-half of American sugar.
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