Now for what everyone’s been waiting for:

RECIPES!

By
MistressNoire

I listed the two most common recipes people look for on Thanksgiving—turkey and
pumpkin pie. Take a look, and try them out! Enjoy!

Food Safety

The Wonders of Food Safety

By
LadyK

Over 75% of all cases of food poisoning happen in the home, and supers are not
immune. Think about some of the things that would keep you from going to your
favorite restaurant—cooks not washing their hands, not washing utensils. Now
think about some of the things that you do in your own home. There are things
that the home cook does or doesn't do that blind invite bad news, and food
poisoning is a PuG waiting for a team wipe.

Proper care and feeding of the refrigerator

The refrigerator can be your best friend or your worst nightmare in the war on
bacteria. A good refrigerator needs to be kept around 35-40 °F, ideally
settling in at 38 °F. Anything over 40 °F is like Spring Break for
microbes—that is, until you reach 140 °F, but that is another issue. Anything
below 35 °F runs the risk of freezing, and that is bad. How bad? Well, when
things reach a temperature of 32 °F, the water in the cells freezes. This
causes the cell walls to collapse in on themselves. Ice takes up less volume
than water, so you end up with wilted lettuce and separated sour cream. Never
let delicate things freeze!

Be careful about opening the refrigerator and placing hot things in it. Every
time the chill chest door is opened, it can raise the inside temperature by as
much as a degree. It then takes between five to fifteen minutes for the ice box
to get back to temperature. If your unit is holding at a temp of 40 °F or
higher normally, then you have five to fifteen minutes of bacteria growth.
Considering that microbes can reproduce at a speed that make bunnies blush,
that is bad.

It's a similar situation with hot foods. The heat from the food and the cooling
unit in the refrigerator are locked in an epic struggle. It's a lot like
fighting any Giant Monster. You have the fridge trying to tank out the cold
with all the little jars, bottles and containers lending support, their
refrigerated insides buffing the ambient temperature of the chill chest. Then a
quart of steaming hot soup is introduced to the party. Your fridge and the
contents are trying to maintain a constant temperature, while the heat from the
soup is debuffing the cold by raising the temperature by a degree every two to
three minutes. Only when the ambient temperature of the fridge and soup are
with in five degrees of each other can the fridge really start working on
cooling off the soup. That means that the fridge is either going to rise to
about 200 °F, the soup is going to cool to 40 °F, or they are going to meet in
the middle. However, there is a lot of time when, not only is the soup in "the
danger zone," but all of the previous contents are as well. Best thing to do in
this situation is to let the soup cool off to a "room temperature" so the
fridge doesn't have to work so hard.

Recap



Keep your fridge at or around 38 °F.



Allow hot foods to cool before storing them in the chill chest



Never let the icebox door stay open



Next week: Care and cleaning of utensils

Wait Just a Minute!

Stop for a Moment and Give Thanks!

By
~Mistress Noire~

Being in the food industry since high school, my career has gone to beauty
retail as a manager. When I moved to the United States and started working in
retail, I noticed how fast we move from Halloween to Christmas with no in
between, no time to enjoy Thanksgiving. I have come to remind you there is a
Thanksgiving, a time to be thankful for a lot of things, and most of all, a
time to be spent with family and friends.

I could sit here and write out the history of Thanksgiving, but you know as
well as I do that there is no point in me doing so. I am sure everyone knows
already. I am going to list the top five Thanksgiving traditions followed by
some recipes instead.

Top Five Thanksgiving Traditions

Turkey and Trimmings

From the first Thanksgiving to today's turkey burgers, turkeys are an American
tradition dating back for centuries. According to the Turkey Federation, 95% of
Americans eat turkey at Thanksgiving. There are so many different ways to enjoy
a turkey now, such as coffee rubbed turkey from Hawaii, salt encrusted turkey
from New England, deep fried turkey from the South, and last but not least,
oven roasted. How you choose to make your turkey is up to you.

Time Out for the Pigskin

Yes I am talking FOOTBALL, one of my favorite sports to watch now and again,
and another tradition on Thanksgiving. Remember the first intercollegiate
football championship held on Thanksgiving Day back in 1876? No? Well, the
traditional holiday football rivalries have become so popular that a reporter
once called Thanksgiving "a holiday granted by the State and the Nation to see
a game of football."

Parading Around


The first American Thanksgiving Day parade was held in 1920, organized by
Gimbel's Department store in Philadelphia—not Macy's as most people think. The
NYC Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade tradition actually started in 1924 and has
grown since then. More then 46 million people each year watch it in person or
on TV.

Making a Wish


Who fights over the wishbone? I sure do! Everyone wants to make that wish!

Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving is about giving thanks for the people that are around you and
everything you have or have accomplished over the past year. Some folks even do
pre-meals for the homeless or help out at shelters for the holidays to help
those in need. This holiday is truly a celebration of praise and thanks.



LadyK came to me, and asked me if I would be interested in helping her out with
the foodie section for the Scoop. I told her that I sure would love to. I look
forward to doing more of this, and as we get closer to Christmas time, I have a
bunch of stuff running though my head to write, and I am sure LadyK does as
well. We are going to put out heads together, so stay tuned, folks, you won’t
wanna miss out!

Frank King

This week, our art spotlight turns to Frank King who plays on the
Victory Server. His main toons are Frank King (level 50 AR/Fire Blaster 50),
Lox E Brown (level 39 Katana/Invuln Scrapper) and Wild Rose (level 50 Fire/Fire
dominator). His global is @FrankKing

Can you tell us a little about yourself?

I am a 30 year old professional archaeologist by trade and have been for the
last eight years. I have worked in every southern state from South Carolina all
the way to Texas (including Florida, Tennessee, Arkansas and Oklahoma). I have
also traveled out to the western US for my career but not for pay. I was raised
in Dallas, lived in Austin for a few years, Savannah, GA for a few more, and
I'm now located in Columbia SC. I've been married to my wife (the real Loxy
Brown) for about a year and a month as I write this. We have no children and no
pets, unless that thing growing more sentient by the minute in the fridge
counts.

Gamewise, I have played CoH since a year after launch (I waited
for the price to drop on the box version to buy it). I joined a SG called
Legion of Valor the second day I played the game and have been a member of that
SG ever since. I am the Master at Arms over both Legion of Valor and Fallen
Legion (our sister villain group), which basically means I'm the protocol
officer. I maintain the rules of our groups and deal with those who break them.
Don't worry; we have a "good cop," too. With that duty, it's hard for me to
make friends in our group and easy to lose them, but hey, somebody has to
maintain order, and I kind of enjoy keeping our SG strong. To that end, we were
voted the players' choice of Best SG and Best VG the last times those votes
were held.

What inspired you to start producing art?

I do what I do because I cannot draw. I suffer from what I like to call GSF,
"Giant Sausage Fingers." It's not a medical condition per se, but it basically
hinders me from getting my fingers to do anything I want them to do, like
drawing, jewelry repair or fine tapestry weaving. So, more to the point, I have
written fifty-two issues of what basically amounts to a comic book based on my
main toons, plus a few other toons. Well, it would be a comic book if it had
any...art in it. So I've got all this text, people tell me the story is great
over and over, I have no connections with artists who could do panels or even
covers for me, and I cannot draw worth crap. So what do I do? I learn how to
produce the art I am now producing. Which basically entails...

Which
mediums do you use for your art? Which are your favorite?

I make all my art using Poser 5 and Photoshop CS2. I do the figures and renders
in Poser and render them to an insane level of detail (some could be printed at
life size at 150 DPI), and then I put them in Photoshop CS2 and work them over.
I like to use different light effects in Photoshop to give different characters
more depth. Heroes get different lighting than villains, antiheroes get a mix
of light and dark, different arms are hidden telling you whether a character is
good or evil--that sort of thing. I'd compare what I do more to photography, but
mine is just of subjects that are entirely digital...Someone asked me yesterday
why I would make an image seven feet tall at 150 DPI. The only reason I could
come up with was, "Because I can."

What's your best experience as an artist? Worst?

Best? Knowing someone is pleased with a picture I have done for them. As
explained above, I know what it's like to have that image in your head and not
be able to get it in your hands no matter what you do. So if I can make a toon
into something someone can print out and hold in their hands, that makes me
happy. Worst? People that don't understand the limitations of what I can do.
Sometimes, no matter how hard I try, I still cannot get it right. I have a
certain style and a certain scope of what I do well. Not everyone gets why I
stick to what I do best and avoid my weaknesses.

Who has been your biggest influence, artistically speaking?

Right now? I'd have to say my friend Ondeon. We worked together on this pic,
and we are currently working together on the cover of the second issue of his
magazine Collective Consciousness (not pitching but you can read all about it
if you follow the link on his name above). I'll be featured in that second
issue. He and a few other good artists on DeviantArt.com really drive me and/or
keep me in check when it comes to putting out good work on a consistent basis.
I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention Loon right here. He's one of my biggest
fans, a fellow Legion member and has been honest when it comes to critiquing my
work every step of the way. I love you Loon, in a totally manly way.

Who are some of your favorite artists, and what is it about them that captures
your eye?

Let's see. Dali of course, just because he was so tricky. I look at his work
and I always catch something new. Comic-wise: Mike Mignola. I love how he
pushes things into a black background and part is hidden but you still know
it's there. That's something I try to do a lot. And Kia Asamiya. The way he
draws action is just amazing to me. The panel layouts and the flow of the story
just kill everything else in its class.

When you're working on art, do you have music/television/movies on in the
background? Anything in particular you prefer for ambiance?

I listen to Shoutcast via Winamp. I'll pick whatever genre I want for the day
and just let it play minimized until I hear a song I really love. Then I'll max
it real quick, write down the name of the artist (never the song) and then go
back to arting. I have a TV tuner card, too. Sometimes I'll have some sporting
event on in the background. I'll pause a picture and watch it when the
announcers sound excited.

Do you ever suffer from lack of inspiration (aka artist's block)? What's your
cure?

Doesn't everybody? The thing is that it happens when I am in the middle of a
picture. I'll be working and working and running my self down trying to get one
picture just right for like five hours. Then I'll just give up on that one and
immediately start another which I'm intending to just be for fun, and only for
me to see. Then that just for fun/throw away pic will be finished in thirty
minutes and be better than anything I've produced in months. Everybody will
love it and I'll think, "That was easy." Wish there was a way to skip the whole
getting frustrated, and go straight to the awesome picture in half an hour
every time.

Do you have some advice for up-and-coming artists?

I asked someone for advice once about how to do something technical with the
programs I make art with, and they went off giving me all this artistic advice
about how to follow your muse and how to capture inspiration whenever it
strikes. All I wanted to know was how to get the lighting right and how to make
a latex outfit look like latex. And eventually when I figured out the answers
to my questions later on, on my own, I realized how easy it would have been for
that person to just give me the answer without all the artsy runaround. So my
advice to up and coming artists would be: ask the right person for advice. And
if you don't think you are getting the right advice about how to do what you
want to do artistically, don't be afraid to ask someone else for another
opinion. That's the thing about art, everyone sees it differently...and that's
a good thing.