How to: Make The Easiest Chicken Marsala Ever

Posted on October 18, 2015 by heather kingsbury

We have all seen what a great tool the crock pot is. We have mastered the world of Mexican food with our taco recipe, and our enchilada fiesta rice, but now we will be entering the world of Italian food!

Lazy chefs, today I will share with you the easiest chicken marsala recipe using our favorite small kitchen appliance.

Ingredients:

-4 Boneless chicken breasts

-salt and pepper to taste

-2 teaspoons minced garlic

-1 cup slices mushrooms

-1 cup sweet marsala cooking wine (personally, I have found that chicken broth cheaper and easier to find as a sub)

-1/2 cup water

-1/4 cup cornstarch

Instructions:

  1. Season chicken breasts with salt and pepper and place them at the bottom of your slow cooker.
  2. Top chicken with garlic, mushrooms, and marsala wine (or chicken broth)
  3. Cover and cook for 5-6 hours on low.
  4. Mix together cornstarch and water, then pour into slow cooker so sauce will thicken up.

And of course, that’s all the steps it takes! I was extremely skeptical of this recipe, since chicken marsala is typically a dish that takes a lot of work. Much to my pleasant surprise, this dish was an absolute dish with my family! Prep time is about 10 minutes, and that’s all the work you have to do!

Enjoy your dinner, cooks!

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Shooting at Zombiecon left one dead and four wounded

Posted on October 18, 2015 by dpetruch57

On Saturday October 17th, there was a shooting at the Zombiecon in Fort Myers, Florida. There were five victims, one of the five injured died. The shooting caused chaos within the streets where festival attendees fled the area. Savannah Holden, a witness who saw the incident from a hotel balcony, stated the police and ambulance vans arrived shortly.

The four injured festival goers were taken to the Lee Memorial Hospital where their non-life threatening wounds were treated. The four victims were initially reported while further investigations were to discover one victim refused medical attention and later died. The Fort Myers’ Police Department released the 20 years old man name, Expavious Tyrell Taylor from Okeechobee, Florida.

Investigations are still being done and the Fort Myers Police Department are looking for eye witnesses to help solve the case.

The Zombiecon Organization released an apology to those who were wounded and to their families. The organizers stated that they “take the safety of our patrons very seriously and take precautions in hiring security and police officers for our annual event”.

Zombiecon is a charity musical festival where Djs and artist perform downtown as  festival goers dress up as zombies. The event attracts around 20,000 attendees. The money raised is donated to Pushing Daizies, the local artist charity that organizes the annual event.

 

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Should the Non-Tobacco Community Support E-Cigs?

Posted on October 18, 2015 by bri yost

Not even accounting for underage smokers, 42 million American adults smoke and 480,000 of them die each year because of it. Tobacco is the main cause however nicotine can become very addictive which leads to prolonged smoking.  When asked most people are aware of the smoking risks but few have switched over to smoking e-cigarets simply because they do not provide the same nicotine kick that a cigaret provides. There are a number of smokers that have tried e-cigarets but reverted back to cigarets which makes up a large market who want to change their habits but weren’t satisfied with the alternative. Now there’s a new e-cigaret on the market that claims to replicate the smoking experience better than any other. The company NJOY  says their new e-cigaret targets adult smokers who have tried but rejected e-cigarets. Chief executive Paul Sturman of NJOY’s promoted the “feel,” and “the intensity of the hit to the back of the throat.” The company does not claim to completely get rid of the danger of smoking but substantially lower the risk.

The non-tobacco community has a history of not supporting e-cigarets and claims that the promotion of the alternative simply normalizes smoking and damages their efforts to reduce smoking in this era. However, with the substantial evidence supporting e-cigarets as the healthier option, it may be time for the community to start working with companies like NJOY and put a stop to almost half a million deaths per year.  The leader of the tobacco-control community Matt Myers has even said That “responsibly marketed and properly regulated, e-cigarettes could benefit the public health.” He also shares worry though that it will cause smoking to become more normalized. Perhaps it’s time to take a risk and see if e-cigarets and the end of smoking come hand and hand.

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Districts across the US find less severe punishments then suspending students

Posted on October 18, 2015 by theblacklink

Many school districts across the nation are opting for less automatic suspensions, expulsions, and calls to 911, and are instead opting for one-on-one counseling and less severe punishment.

School districts in New York, Los Angeles and Denver, have decided to take part in the  movement to move away from suspensions and move towards less harsh discipline policies. This comes after 14 year old Muslim Ahmed Mohamed was arrested at school when his teacher mistook a homemade clock for a bomb. Apart from being arrested, Ahmed was also given a 3 day suspension, even after it was clear it was just a clock.

Michael Gilbert, the head of the San Antonio National Association of Community and Restorative Justice which focuses on dialogue instead of punishment, has said “When we can’t tell the difference between a serious problem and a non-serious problem with a kid in school, the problem is not the kid: It is us.”

Apart from various school districts, state governments have also taken some actions for dialogue before punishment. Connecticut state government has limited the number of out-of-school suspensions and expulsions, Texas has decriminalized truancy, and Oregon state has limited suspensions and expulsions in students up to the 5th grade. Even the Obama administration asked schools to abandon sending kids to court and made guide lines for school personnel to resolve conflicts.

School districts such as Denver, have started implementing a restorative discipline program after being concerned about the high number of suspensions and expulsions. In Denver, the school year before the new policy took effect, there were about 11500 out of school suspensions, and 167 expulsions. Last school year after the policy went into effect, the suspensions were down to 5400 and the expulsions down to 55.

They have even gotten to the point where the students handle their own conflicts by talking with each other and the teachers just observing.

 

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Homecoming Week begins for UCF

Posted on October 18, 2015 by tvguy321

Every fall, high schools and colleges around the nation participate in a tradition known as Homecoming. Homecoming was created to welcome back the alumni of the school and create week full of events that students get to enjoy for free. The tradition for homecoming is a week-long event that usually consists of parades, performances, comedy nights and concerts and this year is no exception. Homecoming week actually kicked off today , Sunday, October 18th and the first even was the “Kids Carnival,”  which was a free event that catered to the UCF kids with games, booths and food. Tomorrow, Monday, October, 19th “Royalty Voting Opens”, which means students can begin voting for this years Homecoming King and Queen. Later on that evening is “Comedy Night, ”  where celebrity, Damon Wayans Jr is set to perform. Tuesday night is “Skit Knight” where students will be performing various skits. One of the most anticipated days of the week will be Wednesday night, which is “Concert Knight.” Big Sean will be headlining Concert Knight, with openers Dan + Shay. Thursday night is ” Movie Knight” where the movie “The Minions” will be shown along with trivia questions being asked. Two other crowd favorite events happen on Friday, “Spirit Splash” and “Fireworks.” The Spirit Splash event happens at the reflection pond and the tradition is for students to flood the pond and get wet while being thrown t-shirts and rubber duckies and guest speakers perform. The Fireworks will be done on Memory Mall. And finally, you can’t have a Homecoming week without a Homecoming game. This year the UCF Knights will face Houston Saturday, October 24th at noon .

All events are free for students and varies for non students and alumni. For more information go to http://osi.ucf.edu/homecoming/.

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How to make Digital images look like Film.

Posted on October 18, 2015 by britterler511

It seems as though when ever a new camera is announced, the first question out of peoples mouths is first, “how much is it”. Second, it’s “how filmic is the image?”. People throw around terms like Filmic, Organic, Video-ish, Digital looking. But there are so many factors that affect the final outcome of an image from a Digital camera. As a whole, digital cameras will be far sharper and higher resolution than film will ever be. And there in-lies the first issue.

If your going for a filmic look, then you need to avoid having the sharpest image possible. If you watch a video and see that the footage is ultra sharp (almost overly sharp), chances are it was not shot on film. Film inherently has more of a softer image to it. So in your digital camera, you need to first turn the in-camera sharping setting to zero. If you need to sharpen the footage at all, you will do it in post production.

Next, you will need to look at the lenses that you’re using. Modern glass is sharp and crisp, and can resolve very high resolution images very well. This doesn’t help if your going for the filmic look. In fact, Cinematographers will purposely use older lens sets on the new digital film cameras, because the older lenses are not as sharp and has a different look to them that will help to make the digital image a little more like film. I find that this makes a big difference.

Next, shoot as flat as possible. And by that I mean, if you camera has custom color or picture profiles, shoot in the one that looks as desaturated as possible. The image will look grayish in camera, but this will allow the camera to max out what the sensor is capable of capturing, give you more info to play with in post. In higher end cameras, this is called shooting on a Log profile, most manufactures have their own flavor of Log, (Sony has S-Log, Canon has C-Log, Panasonic has V-Log, etc) But they are all designed to do the same thing, give you the most dynamic range the sensor can capture. Film is very good when it comes to handling light and color where as digital hasn’t quite caught up to yet.

 

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Netflix Releases’Beasts of No Nation’, Theaters Boycott

Posted on October 18, 2015 by curry chandler

The movie industry is a behemoth that can throw millions and millions of dollars into talent and advertising and still earn their keep when a movie is finally released. We live in an age of blockbusters, an Age of Ultron, where intense action, monsters, superheroes, high fantasy, and military science-fiction reign supreme. However, could it be possible that this dynamo is afraid of something else? Can anything threaten the movie industry?

Enter Netflix. Video-on-demand has grown exponentially in the past few years and recently people have began whispering about it’s potential role in overtaking Hollywood. The concept isn’t impossible: Netflix’s early mailing service is what put businesses like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video off the street, and with Netflix’s first feature-length film Beasts of No Nation released October 16th, this may be the first step towards its next target.

Indie films can’t compete with big-budget films. They differences are too large to ignore. Studios can spend the cost of ten indie films on the marketing campaign one big-budget film without batting an eye, and they do. However, what if Netflix could steal away some of those films, both indie and big-budget, so that they are Netflix-exclusive? What if a movie could go directly to a subscription-holding consumer base without ever passing through a theater? Can Netflix even win Oscars? These are the questions that the movie industry is starting to realize, and that is exactly why they are boycotting Beasts of No Nation. However, assuming the success of Beasts of No Nation – which currently has a 90% approval rating on the review-aggregate, Rotten Tomatoes – this almost looks like the opposite approach. Rather than reject movies that go to Netflix, shouldn’t the movie industry woo them to gather audiences at the theaters? CEO Tim League of Alamao Drafthouse feels that they should, and will proudly be screening Beasts of No Nation in their locations.

Time will only tell who is right, who is wrong, and who is successful.

Beasts of No Nation is written, shot, and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, and stars Idris Elba, Kurt Egyiawan, and Abraham Attah. It is based off a novel of the same name written by Uzodinma Iweala. It was released by Netflix to subscription-holders on October 26th, 2015.

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Florida man devours 25 crab claws in under 15 minutes

Posted on October 17, 2015 by vtindall1

Chalk it up to a big appetite and a passion for seafood? I guess a little bit of technical ability came into play here, because I’m not sure any normal human being could consume 25 stone crab claws in 14 minutes.

Still, that is exactly what Aaron Sutcliffe, 39, did during the claw eating contest staged at Keys Fisheries Restaurant in Marathon, Florida.

The Associated Press reports Sutcliffe went from start to finish, cracking open all 25 crab legs and eating them in exactly 14 minutes and 20 seconds.

It was also his first crab leg eating contest; he attributes his vast consumption abilities to his never-ending hunger that he learned to satiate very quickly as a young, hungry child at the dinner table.

Even more impressive still: Sutcliffe managed to squash the restaurant’s all time record by about a minute.

There was reportedly a team portion to the competition as well, which managed to best Sutcliffe’s record by nearly half (naturally, as they had two people chowing down on the crustaceans.)

Greg D’Agostino and Rick Palmer destroyed the competition in the team portion, with an impressive 25 crab claws in 8 minutes and 50 seconds.

It should be noted that medium crab claws were eaten in this competition. That can be anywhere in length from 5 to 5.5 inches.

Small legs rank in at 4.5 to 5 inches, while large crab legs measure 5.5 to 6 (there are also jumbo and colossal crab legs, but those are too big and scary to discuss here.)

Fun crab fact: stone crabs are considered a renewable resource. After removing the claws, one can throw the body back into the water and it will grow new legs.

Truthfully, I don’t know how this feels for the crab, but I imagine it must be a traumatic experience…

 

 

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Feminist Horror Slasher Flick ‘The Slumber Party Massacre’

Posted on October 17, 2015 by michaelsoler

The slasher flick is such an ingrained part of the horror genre for modern audiences. If you ask your average Joe to name a horror movie character, most of the time they’re going to rattle off Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, Leatherface, etc.

Before Scream completely deconstructed horror movie slashers trope by trope, 1982’s The Slumber Party Massacre served as an early entry into self-parody. The screenplay was written by feminist Rita Mae Brown as satire and directed as a legitimate slasher by Amy Holden Jones.

Brown intended to use humor to lambast the misogynistic leanings of the sub-genre by pointing out the voyeuristic tendencies of the male gaze and how the audience lives vicariously through the killer. Urged by her producers, Jones took the script and filmed it as a straightforward slasher. Through this you kind of have the best of both worlds. You feel the peril of an actual slasher film but still enjoy some of the subversive comedy and jabs at the sub-genre that remained in the movie.

The plot is fairly simple on the surface- a group of high school girls having a slumber party are stalked by an escaped murderous mental patient. Underneath the simple veneer is something more intricate.

There is a clear implication that the killer is harboring psychosexual tendencies. He uses an almost comically large power drill to dispatch his victims. At times it hangs between his legs, making a phallic connection as he uses it to enter female bodies. This is reinforced near the end of the film when one of the girls cuts the drill bit in half, essentially castrating the killer and leaving him ineffective. The only lines that he has could be interchangeable with a rapist’s. “You’re pretty. All of you are very pretty. I love you. It takes a lot of love for a person to… do this. You know you want it. You’ll like it.”

As per a typical slasher film we are presented with a first person perspective through the camera lens, or the killer’s point of view. On top of that, we have scenes without the killer that feature lingering, long takes and a wandering camera that panders obviously to the male gaze. It feels creepy and overtly draws your attention when the camera slowly tilts down.

While the characters aren’t individually all that memorable, as a group they’re very fun. The dialogue between them is enjoyable and some of their ridiculous jokes are so absurd that it’s kind of hilarious.

If you’re a fan of the current FOX network show Scream Queens, you’ll probably enjoy The Slumber Party Massacre and be able to see some its influence on the material.

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Lamar Odom Was Found Unconscious at a Nevada Brothel- Find Out Who Came to His Rescue!

Posted on October 16, 2015 by jesusalberto2120

The former Los Angeles Lakers basketball player checked in into the hotel last weekend, having a great by partying every night, hanging out with some friends, all fun until alcohol and drugs mixed together. Lamar has a very dramatic past with many deaths in his life from family and friends which recently his best friend Jamie passed away due to drug overdosed, and he has been linked to the used of illegal narcotics in the past. Since he was part of the NBA, they get random drug testing done, and he has failed all of them, so he has been kicked out of many teams, right now he is in a long hiatus, his named hasn’t come up in any of the news until this dramatic night.

The hotel’s staff for some reason that has not been released yet, walked into Odom’s room and saw him laying on floor unconscious so they immediately called 911, which gave them some directions on what to do to check if he’s breathing, the were told to flip him up so they can see his face, as soon as they did it, some substances started pouring from his mouth, it was described to be like a white liquid, not fun of course.

The paramedics got there and took him into the emergency room immediately, not many update had been released of his condition yet, we just know that as soon as this all happened Khloe Kardashian flew on a private plane that night to be by Lamar’s side, even though they are divorced, she still cares for him and loves him deeply, as said by herself. Khloe hasn’t made any announcement of his conditions, but some close sources do say that he is stable, so he’s not getting better but he’s not getting worse either.

We hope Lamar can bounce back from this very soon, check back later to see any updates we might have.

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