Willothewisp

Archive for the ‘Food’ Category

Picture from Tyjardia's B'berry

Last night was movie night,  we do not have a TV in our household so on movie night we hook up one of the laptops to a projector and a set of speakers. The main living room is equipped with a screen that folds up into the ceiling, but on summer nights when good weather can be assured we sometimes move the entire evening outside. The kids have the choice of the main film, the one shown right after evening dinner, it is largely their movie night after all. Last night’s choice was Mousehunt with that very funny English comedian Lee Evans, a man whose face seems to be made of plastescene which can produce this stunning array of expressions. If he were ever laid deaf and mute he would have no trouble communicating with the rest of the world, his face is a shout in the quietest of rooms.

It was a glorious day here yesterday with next to no breeze, so with the weather holding I prevailled on Ty and Nonke’s boys to help me set up out in the garden so we could have the movie after dark. At least the lawn area was clean and clear ready for the movie, unfortunately with me ill for the last week with a stomach bug no one had trimmed back the outdoor dinning area Wisteria Vines. I had trimmed them a few weeks back before they flowered but now they were a riot of uncontrolled growth that I had to crouch under. Using my shears I was part way through cutting back to the trellis when big Nik dropped by, poor fellow, it was such bad timing on his part. I set him to work immediately. Nearly two hours later I realised the time and sent a long cold fizzy fruit cordial down to him and some food to sustain him. He did a wonderful job even though he is not a natural gardener himself. He even managed to muster most of my mismatched garden chairs to the table and cleaned the table down, great going Nik. Between food prep and garden chores I had to root through the store room for an hour looking for the big container of Christmas lights. This was much to the joy of my guide dog Sissi and my cat Pip’s delight, they love rooting around in there for some reason which is a pity because they rather get in the way when trying to neatly work my way through dozens of storage containers. I finally found the lights in the last box I looked, isn’t that always the way, it seems the Universe does enjoy it’s little jokes ! The boys strung the lights in the shrubs behind where the screen was going to be. It would make a lovely back drop with some five hundred grain-of-wheat size bulbs strung out across the vines and shrubs of the Roman wall, even though I was not be able to see it properly myself.

This time the choice of film for the grown ups fell to me, <Sigh>, I hate having to choose. I was going to go for De Vierde Man (The Fourth Man) but in the end decided something lighter would be better. I settled for La Dolce Vita, the 1960 Fellini film. It stars Marcello Mastroianni, probably not really known much outside of Europe and the delicious and sexy Anita Ekberg (ok, so my lesbian leanings creeping in there !), and Yvonne Furneaux. I picked it because I felt it would most suit the feel of my summer garden and the lovely family and friends that would be in it. Several of our number speak Italian and those who do not would still enjoy its wounderful lyrical ride while reading the Dutch subtitles. The subtitles would also equalise the gap between the deaf and hearing members.

Picture from Nik's iPhone

Food was a tricky balance. It was primarily the children’s evening so the food needed to have a distinctly Mousehunt orientation. I made up a Swiss cheese soup as an easy quick win with sunflower seed crackers. Keeping to theme I prepared grilled cheese toasties with some Dutch cheeses. A Roomano cheese, grilled with some pine nuts because as the cheese has a butterscotch flavour so they go well together. Yet another version I used Parrano, it is a Dutch take on an Italian cheese and cooks well as long as you are gentle with it. In fact I guess our version of grilled cheese is more like a bruschetto than an American idea of grilled cheese, as it employs good hams, sun dried tomatoes, garlic and half the bread of American grilled cheese. There is just too much bread in the American version of bread top and bottom. I made up salads using the first of the seasons leaves and herbs from the vertical garden in the solar with a Honing & Mosterd (Honey & Mustard) dressing. For deserts I baked a Mouse cake, Mouse Moose (mouse moulds), then mouse cookies for during the film. I was at the market stalls in town at six that morning, just as they were setting up stalls, and got some great early English strawberries. There are two types of strawberry that are supreme in taste, Alpine Hautbois vine strawberries and English Chandler strawberries, and to get the English strawberries from the Kent area so soon was a real coup’. I stood there in the cool of the early morning sun and dropped the most wonderfully vivid red berry into my mouth, pressed my tongue against it to squeeze it until it blew apart inside my mouth in a fireworks of sweetness, utterly, totally, perfectly balanced. My focus on my pleasure was broken by Sissi putting a paw up to ask for a taste of what was so obviously pleasing me, a moment later her disappointment with her taste of a strawberry was clear, definitely not doggy food ! It was only then I realised my strawberry tasting had gained a number of male on-lookers, all starring intently at me. I glanced down in a hurried check that my girls were behaving and had not leaked milk or risen in the cool air but all appeared well. Clearly someone thought I had put on a good show though because my order for six boxes had been supplemented with three more. It was only as I walked back thinking about the looks that I realised I was bouncing more than I should. With a bit of a start I realised I had forgotten to put my bra on when I dressed, and my white blouse was just a touch too thin for wearing bra-less against a low morning sun – Oooopps ! Still, it had been a fruitful mistake. Back home I turned one third of the stawberries into sorbet, a third into ice cream, a third as they are. I did not think that much would actually be eaten but I have learn from much entertaining to always have a little something in reserve.

Picture from Nik's iPhone

I was still preparing food when the first guests arrived early evening and so I set them to work setting the places, checking on the boys, entertaining the children. If I am providing the food and facilities I have no problem in making my guests work for their supper ! With the arrival of Jette (God daughter) and her little charge I had someone I could set to chasing Nina and finding out where she had got to. As I expected the report soon came back that Nina had spent the last few hours between the open thighs of another woman, but she was now, finally, on her way home. Some people might expect me to be angry at learning that my wife had spent the afternoon between the thighs of another while I slaved away in kitchen and garden, but I am pretty relaxed about such things. It is not the permissive Dutch attitudes that produce this sanguin approach’ but rather the nature of Nina’s job of midwife. I have often thought of having a bumper sticker made up for her and her colleagues – “Midwives Do It Between The Thighs Of Other Women”. I sent Hilke upstairs to pick out some fresh clothes for Nina, get her shower ready and stay up there to chivvy her along as soon as she got in, while at the same time more guests let themselves in.
I was throwing the chesnut sized new potatoes into the steamer, peeling garlic for the boiling water, chopping mint and getting the last of the breads ready. Somewhere in the back of my pantry was the butter from my parents farm that I wanted for the potatoes when cooked but goodness knows where, yet to be found. The slightly tangy smell now filling the kitchen was the roast peppers about to pass that point of perfection and trip down the road to oblivion unless I got to the oven double quick. It was in the midst of all this when Tayeska (deaf friend, mother of a deaf baby girl – remind me to tell you more one day) comes in ask where she can find four more chairs and place setttings. So imagine me, knife in one hand slot ladle in the other try to sign “What do you mean FOUR more ? The table sits sixteen, I am expecting twelve, what is the problem ?”

To which Tayeska replies, in sign; “Table sits sixteen, BUT you now have twenty guests, not including children !”. My reply was un-lady like and not suitable for children, but as it turned out it was the least of my problems as I dropped my knife narrowly escaping skewering my bare foot, and hit myself in my face with the ladle as I signed my expletive. Cursing further I had to rescue my grilling cheesed up breads.

Picture from Nik's iPhone

Cursing the day I had agreed to “having a few people over on movie night” I was vowing to myself to never do this again and about to have a bit of a hissy fit when Nina, along with her little chivvy shadow, wandered into the kitchen. She looked wonderful and fresh in her long white summer dress with a white and gold shawl drapped over her shoulders. She gave me a hug and I drank in the freshness of her recent shower, while still being able to pick the hint of a scent of a newly delivered baby (it tends to have a distinct smell). I told her we now had twenty guests, not sure how, and food for twelve.

“No problem, I will go and sort them out, the invited can sit at the table the self invited will have to fend for themselves. You work a miracle in spinning out what we have. It will be fine, go, go, go”

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And saying so it really was, as my Mother says, “Faith manages“.

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Picture: Tyjardia's B'berry

The light was just beginning to fade as food went out and by the time everyone was squeezed in around the table the light had gone and fairy lights and candles and table lights switched on. I could not see details by that light but I was told many times it was a good table. In the end there was enough food, the ice cream was called upon to give the ultimate sacrifice in the end. Our own little mice enjoyed their mouse hunting movie, but twenty minutes into La Dolci Vita they were asleep against various owning adults. By two am everyone had exhausted the supplied vittles, as well as conversation and had gone home to their beds and we finally locked the doors and went to bed as well. Putting the children and baby into our bed Nina and I tucked up on the bedroom couch. As I settled down I realised that through the open French doors I could see a cloud of blurry lights down in the garden, it took me a moment to realise what it was, but I asked Nina why she had left them on;

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“Well” she said, “I thought five hundred lights was appropriate, one light for each un-inivited guest that has turned up over the last eleven years by my reckoning, each leaving us only when fully fed, appropriate don’t you think. So you can see the lights then darling?”

Me; “Nahhhh, just a blurr to me now”

“Just like all those un-invited guests, how apt” she said as her white dress slipped from her shoulders to form a rippled white pool at her feet. It seems she had also gone light on underwear that day, the naughty girl, she had been naked under there all evening !

Me; ” So, tell me about this woman who kept you so late this evening.”

“Mother to her first, a boy, both well, getting to know each other now, changing each other’s lives for ever.” She said with something of a reminiscent sigh. I knew she would be recalling her own first moments with our little ones even as she said it, recalling those unique first warm minutes together with her own newborns, now sleeping in our bed. Drawing her mind back to the present she said;

” Now, how about you just show me your thighs my good Wife………………………………………………….”

The perfect ending to a movie night, and maybe the start to another, not so public story, one day.

Author: Judith.

Foot Note by Nina:-

With everyone seated, and the table fit to bursting with all manner of, well manner I guess, one of the un-invited (a Canadian lady) asked loudly if she could say grace to thank god for the food. Nik kindly replied with a hearty suggestion that HIS thanks would be going to Judith for the food and that god would do well to know that his place was to not go anywhere near Judith’s kitchen if he knew what was good for him ! The laughter was the signal to tuck in.

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Credit Default Swaps – The Biggest Fraud Ever

There is a fraud being perpetrated on all of us. I am not talking about the one that brought about the credit crunch, I am talking about the one that politicians, bankers and economists the world over are working long nights to keep out of the news.

When the MBA guys in economics designed a financial instrument called “credit default swaps”, they forgot to ask or carefully did not ask, one thing – what if the parties on the other side of the bet don’t have the money to pay up? Credit default swaps (CDS) are insurance-like contracts that are sold as protection against default on loans, but CDS are not ordinary insurance. Insurance companies are regulated by governments, with reserve requirements and statutory limits that restrain them from unfetted greed for more business that they cannot cover should claims be made. Examiners routinely check the books to make sure the money is there to cover potential claims, CDS are in effect private bets.

Any time a politican started asking questions in the USA and UK they were beaten down and told to keep quiet because the Federal Reserve from the time of Alan Greenspan has insisted that regulators keep hands off. Under Bush the message was clear, no one was to touch CDS’s because the sacrosanct free market would supposedly regulate itself. The problem with that approach is that the players have cheated with a gambler’s addiction. In December 2007, the Bank for International Settlements reported derivative trades tallying in at $681 trillion – This is a fantastic figure but to give it some context the entire world’s gross product is $68 Trillion, so it is ten times the gross domestic product of the ENTIRE world.

The idea behind Derivatives is that you can insure an investment you want to go up by betting it will go down. The simplest form of derivative is a short sale where you can place a bet that some asset you own will go down, so that you are covered whichever way the asset moves.

You do not have to own the debt to take a CDS out, so a debt could have one to ten, twenty or even a hundred CDSs on it and each one would get a pay it if the debt defaulted, in effect multiplying the debt many times over – CRAZY !

Credit default swaps are the most widely traded form of credit derivative, very widely traded. They are bets between two parties on whether or not a company will default on its issued bonds. In a typical default swap, the “protection buyer” gets a large payoff if the company defaults within a certain period of time, while the “protection seller” collects periodic payments for assuming the risk of default. Given this it is clear to any reasonable person that CDS are in fact insurance policies, clear to everyone but politicians in the USA and UK who have made huge fortunes from these instruments themselves or from the companies who make the huge profits. Politicians have had a clear conflict of interest here but as this is an unregulated market they have not had to declare any interest. They have kept it this way by not regulating the market. This is the first of the two major frauds that have taken place.

It is truly startling that there is no requirement to actually hold any asset or suffer any loss, so CDS are widely used just to speculate on market changes. For example, a hedge fund wanting to increase its profits could sit back and collect $320,000 a year in premiums just for selling “protection” on a risky BBB junk bond. The premiums are “free” money – free until the bond actually goes into default, when the hedge fund could be liable for $100 million in claims. Right there’s the catch: what if the hedge fund doesn’t have the $100 million? The fund’s corporate shell or limited partnership is put into bankruptcy, and all those who thought their losses were covered are left holding worthless paper.

This fraud is going to hit hard in some areas more than others. In the the ratings have downgraded of the “monoline” insurers and the recent collapse of Bear Stearns, a leading Wall Street investment brokerage. The monolines are so-called because they are allowed to insure only one industry, the bond industry. Monoline bond insurers are the biggest protection writers for CDS, and Bear Stearns was the twelfth largest counterparty to credit default swap trades in 2006. Monoline is not widely used outside the USA, but inside the USA many state governments and local authorities have very large sums in monoline products, funds that are used to pay wages and pensions. These players have been major protection sellers in a massive web of credit default swaps, and when the “protection” goes, the whole fragile derivative pyramid will go with it. The collapse of the derivative monster thus appears to be both imminent and inevitable. The $681 trillion derivatives trade is the last supersized bubble in what amounts to a 300-year Ponzi scheme, one that has now taken over the entire monetary system of the world. The wealth of nations like the USA and UK has been drained into private vaults by hopeless incompetent and negligent financial management, leaving scarcity in its wake. It is a corrupt system, and change is long overdue. Politicians like Bush and Gordon Brown are trying to make themselves look like saviours of financial collapse right now, but keep in mind it was them who are at the top of the heap of those responsible for the misery that is still to come.

The Ponzi Scheme – A 300 Year Old Con Trick & the Sub Prime

A Ponzi scheme is a form of pyramid scheme in which new investors must continually be sucked in at the bottom to support the investors at the top. In this case, new borrowers must continually be sucked in to support the creditors at the top. The Wall Street Ponzi scheme is built on “fractional reserve” lending, which allows banks to create “credit” (or “debt” – you always have to think of credit as DEBT which ever side of the borrow/lend fence you are sitting) with accounting entries. Banks are now allowed to lend from 10 to 30 times their “reserves,” this mean that they essentially counterfeiting the money they lend. If an ordinary citizen of the USA were to do this they would be inside a Federal Prison for 20 years, but a banker does it every day with total impunity. Over 97 percent of the U.S. money supply (M3 – now considered a state secret by Bush) has been created by banks in this way.2 The problem is that banks create only the principal and not the interest necessary to pay back their loans, so new borrowers must continually be found to take out new loans just to create enough “money” (or “credit”) to service the old loans composing the money supply. The scramble to find new debtors has now gone on for over 300 years – ever since the founding of the Bank of England in 1694 – until the whole world has become mired in debt to the bankers’ private money monopoly. The Ponzi scheme has finally reached its mathematical limits, they have put everyone into so much debt that we are “all borrowed up.”

When the banks ran out of creditworthy borrowers, they had to turn to uncreditworthy “subprime” borrowers; and to avoid losses from default, they moved these risky mortgages off their books by bundling them into “securities” and selling them to investors. To induce investors to buy, these securities were then “insured” with credit default swaps. But the housing bubble itself was another Ponzi scheme, and eventually there were no more borrowers to be sucked in at the bottom who could afford the ever-inflating home prices. When the subprime borrowers quit paying, the investors quit buying mortgage-backed securities. The banks were then left holding their own suspect paper; and without triple-A ratings, there is little chance that buyers for this “junk” will be found. The crisis is not, however, in the economy itself, which is fundamentally sound – or would be with a proper credit system to oil the wheels of production. The crisis is in the banking system, which can no longer cover up the shell game it has played for three centuries with other people’s money. Then the next fraud started, banks and rating houses started to manipulate the ratings system in order to keep the gravy train running.

THREE YEARS ago I noticed banks suddenly selling of greater amounts of debt with supposedly good ratings and I became suspicious. They knew three years ago that the crunch was coming and they acted to minimize it’s impact while still lending. This was the next fraud.

At this point I instructed my family to pay down all debt within twelve months and liquidate shares into gold and silver. I am so very glad we did.

The Derivatives Chernobyl

The latest jolt to the massive derivatives edifice came with the collapse of Bear Stearns on March 16, 2008. Bear Stearns fuelled the explosive growth in the credit derivative market, where banks, hedge funds and other investors have engaged in $45 trillion worth of bets on the credit-worthiness of companies and countries. Before it collapsed, Bear was the counterparty to $13 trillion in derivative trades. On March 14, 2008, Bear’s ratings were downgraded by Moody’s, a major rating agency despite strenuous efforts by many to stop it and on March 16, the brokerage was bought by JPMorgan for pennies on the dollar, a token buyout designed to avoid the legal complications of bankruptcy. The deal was backed by a $29 billion non-recourse loan from the generous US tax payer in the form of the Federal Reserve. “Non-recourse” meant that the Fed got only Bear’s shaky paper assets as collateral, I am sure if you are a US tax payer you are felling reassured by that right now!. If those proved to be worthless, JPM was off the hook. It was an unprecedented move and it is of very questionable legality. The US politicians said it was justified because “Fed’s Rescue of Bear Halted Derivatives Chernobyl.” The notion either that Bear was “rescued” or that the Chernobyl was halted, however, was grossly misleading. Interestingly the CEOs managed to salvage their enormous million dollar bonuses, for the shareholders, it was a total loss. Their stock initially dropped from $156 to $2, and 30 percent of it was held by the employees. Another big chunk was held by the pension funds of teachers and other public servants. The share price was later raised to $10 a share in response to shareholder outrage, but the shareholders were still essentially wiped out

Monline

The Bear Stearns hit from the derivatives iceberg followed an earlier one in January, when global markets took their worst tumble since September 11, 2001. Commentators were asking if this was “the big one” – a 1929-style crash; and it probably would have been if deft market manipulations had not swiftly covered over the approaching catastrophe. The precipitous drop was blamed on the threat of downgrades in the ratings of two major monoline insurers, Ambac and MBIA, followed by a $7.2 billion loss in derivative trades by Societe Generale, France’s second-largest bank. Like Bear Stearns, the monolines serve as counterparties in a web of credit default swaps, and a downgrade in their ratings would jeopardize the whole shaky derivatives edifice. Without the monoline insurers’ triple-A rating, billions of dollars worth of triple-A investments would have become so much junk. Many institutional investors have a fiduciary duty to invest in only the safest triple-A bonds – but as you have seen that rating system was manipulated by the banks to make junk bonds A Bonds. Downgraded bonds therefore get dumped on the market, jeopardizing the banks that are still holding billions of dollars worth of these bonds. The downgrade of Ambac in January signalled a simultaneous downgrade of bonds from over 100,000 municipalities and institutions, totalling more than $500 billion.

Institutional investors have lost a good deal of money in all this, but the real calamity is to the banks. The institutional investors that formerly bought mortgage-backed bonds stopped buying them in 2007, when the housing market slumped. But the big investment houses that were selling them have billions’ worth left on their books, and it is these banks that particularly stand to lose as the derivative Chernobyl implodes and while this does give some degree of justice for their dishonesty it is the world’s taxpayers who will pay. You can bet the bankers will still walk away with big bonuses and pensions.

Bank Bailout Schemes

Now the banks have been caught out and been forced to own up, or have they ? the truth is that no one knows the scale of the debts, in fact no one is ever likely to know because it is so complex. These avid free marketers are crying out for government intervention to save them from monumental losses, while preserving the monumental gains raked in when their bluff was still good. Tax payer will be forced to hand over their money while nothing will be done to make banks returns their vast profits. In response to their pleas, the men behind the curtain have scrambled to devise various bailout schemes; but the schemes have been sticking plasters at best.

Do you think tax payers can bail out a $681 trillion derivative scheme with taxpayer money?

As this autoroute pile up continues and the world’s financial system continues to unfold, there are going to be plenty of ill-conceived rescue attempts and dubious turnaround plans, as well as propagandizing, lying, dissembling and scheming by banks, regulators and politicians. This is all happening in order to buy time or to figure out how the losses can be dumped onto the lap the poor tax payer. The decision has already been made, bet on it, now we have to wait and see how they present it to us.

Banks in the USA are now running terrified that the US government will follow European governments lead. In England, the government agreed to bail out bankrupt mortgage bank Northern Rock, but only in return for the bank’s stock. On March 31, 2008, The London Daily Telegraph reported that Federal Reserve strategists were eyeing the nationalizations that saved Norway, Sweden and Finland from a banking crisis from 1991 to 1993. In Norway, according to one Norwegian adviser, “The law was amended so that we could take 100 percent control of any bank where its equity had fallen below zero.”6 If their assets were marked to market, some major Wall Street banks could already be in that category.

Stop press: SEC Chairman Christopher Cox has called on Congress to pass legislation that would make so-called credit default swaps more transparent, including requiring that dealers in over-the-counter swaps publicly report their trades and the trades’ value. I think this gentlemen has just shot his career in the foot, he is not keeping the Bush regime line.

Author: Tyjardia