Small, original works of art hang at the Groovefest 3-by-3-inch art sale at The Grind Coffeehouse in Cedar City. Kina Wilde / Daily News / Kina Wilde/ Daily News

Tags : Artistry

Smuckers Simply Fruit Strawberry is spread atop peanut butter. JM Smucker Co. said Thursday its fiscal second-quarter net income fell 15 percent as the food maker faces higher ingredient costs. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Tags : Commodity

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Holiday season 2011 marks Meriden Patchs first year live as a community news source. We thought wed take the time to tell you why were here and what this site is all about. Simply put, its about you.

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Weve built Patch so that you have plenty of opportunities to comment on stories, share your opinions, post photos and announcements and add events to the community calendar. We hope that our site will strengthen the community, but we cant do it without you. So get to it!

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1. Comment on an Article

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We subscribe to the idea that news is a conversation. Much of our reporting will emanate from what readers tell us in emails, comments on our sites and in conversations around town. Share your thoughts and reactions to our articles by posting a comment directly below each story. 

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2. Ask a Question

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So maybe you want to know when that pothole is going to get fixed, or maybe youre a local expert on native trees just dying for someone to ask why their allergies are so bad this year. Patchs Qamp;A section is the place for you to ask your questions and show off your expertise, all while connecting with your neighbors. Visit  http://meriden.patch.com/questions and ask a question, or answer someone elses.

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3. Post an Event

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Do you know of a book signing at the library, a celebrity appearing at an elementary school or an art exhibit at a local coffee shop? Is there a garage sale or graduation ceremony coming up? If its not on our Patch calendar, it should be. Feel free to add events to our site at http://meriden.patch.com/events/new. 

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4. Send a News Tip

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At the bottom of the homepage, theres a link that says, Send Us News Tips. Tell us about stories we should cover. Your tip will be sent straight to Laurie Rich Salerno, Meriden Patchs editor.

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Post births, engagements and wedding announcements. Tell us who made the honor roll or share school awards, social notes and thank you shout outs. If youre looking for volunteers or searching for your lost dog, we welcome you to call on your community for help. Just remember, our Terms of Service say announcements should be for personal use and not for advertising.

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The daily Meriden Patch newsletter brings you all articles and announcements that have been posted in the last 24 hours. It is delivered to your email every day at 6 am You can also sign up for the weekly newsletter, which shows a subset of the content created and featured on our site over the last few days. It is delivered every Thursday at 10 am

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7. Claim Your Directory Listing

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Our business and organization listings arent skimpy. Our team of researchers actually hit the streets and visited businesses, schools, parks, libraries and more so we can provide photos as well as detailed information such as products sold and hours of operation. To contact us about the listing for your business or organization, email us at directorysupport@patch.com. If you own or manage a business or organization in our directory, claim it at http://meriden.patch.com/search/listings.

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You now have a way to shout out on the site without having to add a comment to an existing article. You can tell us what you have to say right now by using the new shout box at the top of the Activity Stream. Whatever you shout will go directly into the stream, right on the homepage.

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Upload videos of your high football touchdown or your Meriden Little Leaguers first home run. Post photos from local festivals, or send in a snapshot of your best holiday recipes. We invite you to share the memories that youve caught on camera with the rest of the community.

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For all advertising queries, please email our ad manager Diana Dziok at diana.dziok@patch.com or phone her at 860-485-5587.

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 11. Review Restaurants

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Do you want to be the first to tell your friends whether the new restaurant in town gets two thumbs-up? You can post a review of your favorite (or least favorite) restaurants at http://meriden.patch.com/restaurants. Or, search to find what youre craving — you can filter results by cuisine, price or seating accommodations.

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Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Meriden-Patch/130399150338620 and follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MeridenPatch. Immerse yourself in our content and actively contribute and engage via social media. Lets start a conversation together.

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Patch would like to extend an invitation to every member of the Meriden  community to submit a letter to the editor. Express your thoughts or concerns about anything that might be stirring up conversation around town, and well post it. Make sure its not longer than 300 words and e-mail it to Editor Laurie Rich Salerno at laurie.salerno@patch.com.

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The more Meriden Patch serves as an online space for community dialogue, the more useful our site will be. So next time you have something to share with your neighbors, consider taking a moment to send a letter to Patch. Chances are, youre not the only who feels that way.

Tags : Announcements

MIXED MARTIAL ARTS

UFCs Jon Jones tries to bring some artistry to mixed martial arts

Jones, 24-year-old light-heavyweight champion, has become one of UFCs most marketable fighters thanks to an acrobatic style, wide-ranging arsenal and the unpredictable way he deploys his skills.

Tags : Artistry

(CBS News)

Award-winning chef Andrew Carmellini has practiced his culinary artistry in places as diverse as his native Ohio, New York City, Italy, France and England.

Carmellini is now preparing American fare in his new restaurants,The Dutch, which opened to rave reviews in both New York and Miami.

And, in THE Dish on The Early Show on Saturday Morning, Carmellini shared the recipe for his ultimate dish: his Fried Chicken with Sides.

What is it about American food that inspires Carmellini?

When I think about American food, I think about the road, because thats how I grew up – and thats how I learned first-hand about American cooking, he says on his website. From childhood family road trips between Ohio and Florida (full of Southern grub and citrus straight from the trees); cross-country hauls in search of the Great American Breakfast; and five-meal-a-day swings through barbeque country, Ive been horizon-bound from behind a dashboard for most of my life. In big cities, Ive eaten through local cuisines from around the world in a single day thinking, this is what makes America awesome.

Carmellini has received James Beard Awards, a Food amp; Wine Best New Chef nod and a three-star review from The New York Times.

His other famous eatery, besides The Dutch in SoHo, is Locanda Verde in Robert De Niros Greenwich Hotel in Tribeca.

Carmellini has also written two cookbooks with his wife, Gwen Hyman: Urban Italian: True Stories and Simple Recipes from a Life In Food and American Flavor.

On THE Dish, a different famous chef each week reveals what he or she would have if they could have just one meal. Thats because for us, THE Dish is about the moment, the place, and the person you would share it with. Its about the emotion behind the food, its about the conversation and the meal itself. We want to get to know these chefs on a deeper level and hope our viewers do, as well.

Enjoy all our Early Show recipes!

RECIPES:

FRIED CHICKEN:

SERVES 4

FOR THE BUTTERMILK MARINADE

• 1 quart (4 cups) buttermilk
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 2 teaspoons Old Bay seasoning
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper
• 2 teaspoons Tabasco sauce
• 2 tablespoons honey

FOR THE CHICKEN

• 2 chickens (2 pounds each-you dont want huge chickens for this), cut up into pieces
• 2 quarts corn oil
• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 4 teaspoons paprika
• 2 teaspoons chili powder
• 2 teaspoons garlic powder
• 2 teaspoons onion powder
• 2 tablespoons Old Bay seasoning
• 2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
• 2 teaspoons ground celery seed
• 4 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper

TO MAKE THE BUTTERMILK MARINADE

In a large mixing bowl, whisk the buttermilk together with the cayenne, Old Bay, salt, pepper, Tabasco, and honey. Put the chicken pieces in the mixing bowl and submerge them in the buttermilk marinade. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, put it in the fridge, and let the chicken marinate for at least 12 hours.

TO BREAD AND FRY THE CHICKEN

Pull the chicken out of the fridge and let it come up to room temperature, still in the marinade (this will take about 45 minutes).

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees F.

Heat the oil in a deep pot or a deep-fryer over high heat. The oil should be 3 inches deep, and it should be so hot that it starts popping (about 350 degrees F). A good rule of thumb: if you drop a pinch of flour into the oil and it fries up immediately, youre good to go. While the oil is heating, combine the flour, paprika, chili powder, garlic powder, onion powder, Old Bay, cayenne pepper, celery seed, salt, and pepper in a large mixing bowl. Mix things around with your hands so everything is distributed evenly. Pour half of the mixture into a small bowl and set it aside.

Add the flour to the large bowl and mix well. When the oil is hot, pull a piece of chicken out of the marinade. Put it right into the dredging flour bowl and heap flour on top of it; flip it around until the chicken is completely coated. Do the same with each piece until theres no more space in the bowl.

Pick up a piece of chicken, give it a light shake (just enough to get rid of the really loose bits of flour), and use your hands or a pair of tongs to drop it into the fry pot. Do the same with the rest of the chicken pieces. (You will definitely need to fry your chicken in batches, unless youve got some really big bowls and pots.)

Let the chicken fry for about 8 minutes, until its golden brown. Pull the chicken pieces out of the fryer with tongs and put them on a rack set on a baking sheet. Sprinkle each piece of chicken with the seasoning mixture, using the tongs to turn the piece so its coated on all sides.

Put the baking sheet in the oven. The chicken pieces should rest in the oven for at least 10 minutes, so that the cooking process finishes. Meanwhile, fry up the next batch of chicken.

Hold the fried chicken in the oven until all the pieces are fried and rested and youre ready to serve it up. Then pile the chicken on a big plate, put it in the center of the table with biscuits, collards, and slaw, and let everybody start grabbing pieces. I guarantee it will disappear fast.

For more of Andrews recipes, go to Page 2.

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Tags : Artistry

Brian Manning put it nicely in a comment to my post yesterday about enterprise software:

In my opinion, enterprise technology is WAY behind consumer technology for one reason: because it can be.

In a [B2B] transaction, one good salesperson (the seller) only has to sell one person (the buyer) on the value of the technology. Once the product is sold, the buyer forces their 50,000 employees to use that technology whether they like it or not. A good salesperson with a good deck can do this fairly reliably.

And a good account manager can typically retain the client for a while; employees usually get used to the product and rarely complain enough for the buyer to cancel the contract and force the seller to improve the product. As a result, an enterprise product can suck and still flourish.

With a B2C product, this is much, much more difficult. The seller has to sell 50,000 individual users, one by one, on the value of the product without the luxury of a face to face meeting or 18 holes on the golf course. The B2C model forces the sellers product to sell itself. As a result, a consumer product cant suck if it wants to flourish. It has be good. Much better than the enterprise product needs to be.

Fortunately, as I discussed yesterday, trends like cloud-based delivery (aka SaaS) are starting to align the interests of enterprise users and buyers.

Read more posts on cdixon.org »

Tags : Enterprise

San Ramon, CA, December 02, 2011 –(PR.com)– Sunflower Systems enterprise asset management services released upcoming dates for their Sunflower Academy Training courses. Users from the industries of contract property management, federal property management, national laboratory property management, university property management, and other private industries are now able to take advantage of these new courses.

Regularly training staff on the latest functionality within Sunflower Systems enterprise asset management software will ensure that an organization is getting the most value out of the asset management system that was purchased. Sunflower Systems asset management services team ensures that courses such as these are readily available for users to take advantage of.

Functional Foundations Training is scheduled for November 28 December 2, 2011 in Arlington, VA and will address asset management properties that are fundamental to all aspects of operation to property management. Topics discussed will stem from all Sunflower Assets modules. Students will learn how to use Sunflower Assets to manage and track property from acquisition through disposal. Demonstration and hands-on practice will reinforce the concepts presented during this course.

Key concepts covered include: Lifecycle Asset Management; Sunflower Assets Structure (Core Assets and Interest Assets); Roles and Role-based Application Access; Asset Accountability; Searches and Queries; Asset Creation; Enterprise Asset Management; Asset Retirement; Administration and Maintenance; and Advanced Asset Management Reporting.

Administration Training is scheduled for December 12-15, 2011 in Arlington, VA and will address the administrative functions that are fundamental to the setup and on-going management of Sunflower Assets. Topics discussed will stem from the Sunflower Assets Administration module but will also address how administrative tasks are related to and affect the modules throughout Sunflower Assets. Students will learn how to use the Administration module to support your property management organization and maintain to the Sunflower Assets database. Demonstration and hands-on practice will reinforce the concepts presented during this course.

Key concepts covered include: Lifecycle Asset Management; Sunflower Assets Structure (Core Assets and Interest Assets); Roles and Role-based Application Access; Enterprise Asset Management Principles; Administration and Maintenance; Advanced Asset Management Reporting; and Email Notifications.

About Sunflower Systems:
Sunflower Systems provides full enterprise asset management solutions to a broad client base across multiple industries including federal agencies, state and local agencies, government contractors, universities, national laboratories, and private corporations. Sunflowers portfolio of solutions and asset management services enables organizations to improve decision-making, accountability and regulatory compliance for all types of assets including personal property management, contract property management, real property management, IT asset management, materials management, vehicle management and more. For more information, visit: www.sunflowersystems.com

###

Contact Information:
Sun Flower Systems
Jessica Dzara
1.866.209.3516
Contact via Email
www.sunflowersystems.com

Click here to read the full story: Sunflower Systems Enterprise Asset Management Services Announces Upcoming Training Courses

Press Release Distributed by PR.com

Tags : Enterprise

Its hard to believe there are still nearly three weeks of shopping days until Christmas.

With so many recent promotions and deals, including those on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you would think most people would have gotten their fill of holiday shopping.

Here are a few things I noticed:

Two days of shopping success is a boost, not a panacea

Theres no doubt that the deals and discounts offered on Black Friday and Cyber Monday were a success.

According to Chicago-based Shopper Trak, customers nationwide spent a record $11.4 billion on Black Friday. Shoppers also spent another $1.25 billion at online retailers during Cyber Monday, an impressive increase of 22 percent from last year.

But those two days still produced mixed results in overall sales for November.

Same-store sales, which are sales for stores open at least a year, for 22 retailers was 3.3 percent more year-over-year, according to figures released Thursday by Kantar Retail, a Columbus, Ohio-based retail analysis firm.

While a healthy increase, its still below the 3.9 percent year-over-year increase in October and the 5.6 percent gain in November 2010.

And Black Friday could not make up for soft sales the rest of the month. Gap Inc., which operates the Old Navy and Gap Factory Store in Union Gap, saw same-store sales drop by 5 percent for the month while Kohls, which also has a store in Union Gap, saw sales drop by 6.2 percent.

Some retailers, however, did well: Macys saw a 4.8 percent year-over-year increase, while Target saw a 1.8 percent increase.

In general, the figures show that despite a few great — even record — sales days, shopping habits are still not back to normal. With tight budgets spurred by uncertainty over the economy, shoppers only bought when a deal was offered.

Other observations

* In my Black Friday preview two weeks ago, I wrote how Target and Best Buy employees gained national attention for posting online petitions urging their stores to not open so early on Black Friday. Both stores opened at midnight this year.

While the complaints got plenty of attention, they didnt quite reach that scale locally.

One local retail employee asked his followers on Twitter to be nice to employees and not to blame them if a desired item was unavailable. Later, the same employee reported he was yelled at only once, which meant a successful Black Friday to him.

While I was out at the stores, just about all the employees were focused on getting the job done.

* The time people waited in line definitely varied from store to store. As I reported recently, the first people in line at Best Buy camped out for nearly three days. But at Toys R Us, people didnt show up for the stores 9 pm opening until about 4 pm, just five hours earlier. Among the shortest waits was the JC Penney store in Sunnyside, where shoppers did not show up until about 20 minutes before its 3:30 am opening.

Did you notice: New York Teriyaki Selah spot opens

Roy Kang will open his sixth New York Teriyaki location today in Selah, at the former Teriyaki Grille at 723 N. Park Centre.

Kangs venture into Selah came earlier this year after former Teriyaki Grille owner Doug Fairchild retired.

Kang opened the first New York Teriyaki in Union Gap in 2001, shortly after moving to Yakima.

He has since sold the Union Gap restaurant at 2518 Main St. and two others — one off 40th and Fruitvale in Yakima and one at 72nd Avenue and Tieton Drive at the Orchards Shopping Center in West Valley.

He still owns locations on North First Street in Yakima and in Moxee.

Kang said that given the smaller space, he decided to focus on teriyaki dishes and not offer sushi, as he does in his other locations.

* Mai Hoangs Reporters Notebook is published Mondays in the Marketplace section. To reach her, call 509-577-7685 or email maihoang@yakimaherald.com.

Tags : Shopping

Around the time Albert Bierstadt painted “Looking Down Yosemite Valley” and Edouard Manet exhibited “Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe” (“Luncheon on the Grass”), the American artist Elihu Vedder, who had never visited Egypt, created a brooding, emphatically plain canvas, “The Questioner of the Sphinx.”

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Enlarge This Image

Collection of the Worcester Art Museum

Elihu Vedder painted “The Questioner of the Sphinx” long before he had been to Egypt.

Enlarge This Image

Collection of The Butler Institute of American Art

This image of a man kneeling in the desert sand with his ear pressed to the unmoving lips of a monumental sculpture — good luck with that! — touched a deep chord in Civil War America. It was snapped up by a collector as soon as it was exhibited (it is now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston), and it helped make Vedder’s reputation. But the controlled color, tight line, mythological subjects and allegorical bent of his once-popular art do not resonate much with today’s tastes, which are more in tune with the sensuous, less affected approach of contemporaries like Bierstadt and Manet.

Vedder’s drawings and sketches, however, are another story, and the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers has put together a winning little exhibition that forcefully makes this point. The painter we meet in “Elihu Vedder: Voyage on the Nile” is looser, more relaxed and more spontaneous than the one we think we know from his more formal work. And why not? He was on a four-month cruise, part of an all-expenses-paid trip to Egypt.

In 1889, 26 years after Vedder had first depicted his imaginary sphinx, he was invited to come face to face with the real one by a wealthy American fan, George Corliss. Traveling initially on a traditional Egyptian houseboat and then on a steamer, Vedder got as far as Wadi Halfa, in present-day Sudan, sketching as he went. He returned home to Italy in 1890 with nearly 200 views of sand, water and sky punctuated by boats, date palms and distant figures — even an occasional landmark from the time of the pharaohs.

The show includes several dozen of these lively drawings, in pastel, pencil, chalk and charcoal. Working on different kinds of paper, sometimes stacking several images on a single sheet as he started to run out, Vedder rendered windblown trees on Feb. 12, an intense blue sky on Feb. 16, ancient rock quarries at Gebel el-Silsila (known to him as Silsilis) on Feb. 26, a glowing field of green wheat on March 6, the limestone cliffs of Gebel Sheikh el-Haridi (he calls it Shegk El Haradu) on March 26.

Laura Vookles, the curator, has also assembled a nice selection of Vedder’s Egyptian oils. Most, like “Mosque-Cairo” in the city and “Egyptian Landscape” in the country, depict scenes of contemporary Egyptian life. But there are also two sphinx paintings and an 1870s reworking of the “Questioner” (Vedder returned to this motif several times in his career). She has also collected photographs, books and other materials intended to put Vedder’s trip in context, although the show offers little biographical information on the artist himself, who was born in New York in 1836 and died in Rome in 1923.

Vedder studied in Paris and in Florence before returning home, where he supported his painting with a career as a commercial artist. After the Civil War he returned to Europe and spent, for the most part, the rest of his life there, although he made periodic business trips to the United States. His murals are in the Library of Congress in Washington and at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Me., and his 1884 illustrations for the American edition of Edward FitzGerald’s translation of “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” were a sensational success.

The excellent catalog for the Hudson River exhibit suggests that Vedder intended to use his Egyptian drawings as the basis for yet another illustrated book. But the pictures on the walls make you wonder. Images of monuments are few and far between, and his first encounter with the Great Sphinx at Giza — “I was simply struck dumb,” he wrote to his wife — is timidly rendered from behind. The locals and their customs are observed from a distance, even when the artist goes ashore for a camel excursion (which he loved but which left him “sorer and sorer” than he’d ever been).

Such choices hardly seem appropriate for a travel book meant for his public; they seem more relevant as private souvenirs. Experienced together — and this is the first time this has been possible since the drawings were dispersed after the death of Vedder’s daughter — these pictures feel like a long, lovely tracking shot, the kind of memento tourists bring back in their video cameras today. In his discursive 1910 autobiography, “The Digressions of V.: Written for His Own Fun and That of His Friends,” he described the Egyptian countryside as “beautiful, simple and grand.” Those words fit his pictures, too.

“Elihu Vedder: Voyage on the Nile,” Hudson River Museum, 511 Warburton Avenue, Yonkers, through Jan. 8. Information: hrm.org or (914) 963-4550.

Tags : Voyage

• Allison Miles bull;
• Originally published December 3, 2011 at midnight, updated December 3, 2011 at midnight

• Download PDF

• SHOPPING HOLIDAYS HELP

• For additional help with budgeting for the holidays, call GreenPath Debt Solutions at 1-800-333-4357.

If the tinsel-covered storefronts and Santa-strewn TV ads hadnt yet tipped you off, perhaps childrens ever-growing wish lists struck a chord.

Whatever the case, the truth remains that the holiday shopping season is here.

Nationwide, people will spend an estimated $465.6 billion during November and December, according to a National Retail Federation news release, while individual shoppers expect to spend an average $704.18 on holiday gifts and seasonal items.

Looking to spend wisely throughout the holiday season? Here are some tips from those in the know.

Maintain a budget.

Know who you plan to shop for and about what you hope to spend. A good rule of thumb is to spend one-and-a-half percent of ones income on holiday shopping.

Take your time.

Planning allows you time to compare prices, review circulars, look at the selection and take advantage of deals. Avoid shopping on your lunch break, as the rush might lead to purchases you dont need. Also consider store layaway programs.

Save up beforehand.

Setting back a little money over a long period of time helps ensure you have enough cash for holiday shopping. Holiday savings clubs are another option.

Consider drawing names.

This method of gift giving can really cut down on costs, especially for those with long shopping lists.

Obey the two-day rule.

Consider purchases – especially on big-ticket items – for two days before making the plunge. Take time to determine whether you need the item and if it will throw off your budget.

Remember the extras.

Holiday shopping doesnt just include gifts. Wrapping paper, gift bags, extra grocery items and more also enter the mix. Make sure to budget for those, too.

Be careful with credit cards.

If you plan on only using one credit card, just take that one to the store with you. Also, photocopy the fronts and backs of your cards so that information is available if the card would happen to be lost or stolen.

Be smart about borrowing.

Many people opt for credit cards or loans to help with holiday spending, but remember that interest payments and finance fees might play their role. Budget for these additional costs.

Shop online or with a catalog.

It helps deter shoppers from being persuaded by the many items available in stores. Remember, however, that shipping costs often enter the mix.

Consider a second job.

Moonlighting can help bring in some extra cash during the holiday season. Better yet, working a little extra throughout the year can help you save up most, if not all, the money youll need for holiday shopping.

Read the fine print.

Know whether you will face additional fees for late payments. It helps to be prepared.

If possible, save some purchases for after the holidays.

At that point, most items go on sale again, oftentimes at deeper discounts.

Sources: Melissa Goonan, market development representative for GreenPath Debt Solutions and American Financial Services Association Education Foundation news release

Tags : Shopping