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I vote with my wallet. I can buy cage-free eggs now. I'll also buy pastured eggs at the farmer's market. So can anyone else who wants to have eggs from chickens not raised in cages.

I buy pastured pork, I can buy grass-fed beef. So can others, and the more people that do, the more there's a market for it.

If I voted for Prop 2, it wouldn't change what I eat or buy, it would just be me trying to force others to do the same. Would kinda suck if next election PETA were to fund a successful campaign to outlaw all beef or pork or chicken being raised in CA.

All the money spent pushing this proposition could have been spent on educating people on how they can get humanely raised food now. It could have encouraged them to demand it where they buy their food and where they go out to eat.

Market demand would change things a lot quicker than the 6 years before this law would take effect. An example? The iPod was introduced 7 years ago last month. There were MP3 players before it came out, but it sure changed things. iTunes is a huge seller of music, the number one seller of all music in the U.S. Market demand.
Gasoline was just shy of $5 a gallon here a few months ago, yesterday I filled up for $2.39. The reason? A shift in market demand.

Market demand changes things a lot quicker than government legislation ever will. If the market demanded food sold in CA be more humanely raised it would happen. And it wouldn't just be food raised here, but food brought in from out of state as well.

I voted for humanely raised food years ago, with my wallet, and I'll continue to do so.

The problem with any pro- or con- GM discussion is that it seems impossible to have a rational discussion.

The con- group usually is dominated by "anything I don't personally understand is scary, and scary should be banned", or requirements for any potential GM product to meet an impossible level of perceived safety before use. If new drugs had to meet the standard the non-GM people set as acceptable there'd be less starving people, they'd have died from any number of diseases by now.

The pro- group is often dominated by those with a vested interest. This may be since it's not politically correct to side with a big corporation, regardless of the topic.

Could GM crops end world hunger? Probably not, as lack of water, poor sanitation and spotty transporation are such big contributors to the problem. Also, the poor and starving don't necessarily have the money that would help the big businesses pay for the R&D.

One whole section of his book "The Botany of Desire"(2001) covered this. It's a great book, as good as "The Omnivore's Dilemma". The chapters on potatoes and apples were the more eye-opening for me though.

I've made Paella many times, love to fix and eat it. Recipes will inevitably be linked to the size of the pan, but here's some tips:
-- I usually use chicken thighs, chopped in half. You have the bone still for some "whole chicken" look, but nice sized portions. I soak the chicken for a short while in milk with a little saffron then lightly flour. Cook in olive oil in the pan you'll use for the paella. Cook almost all the way, but not quite. I like skin so I leave it on, if someone doesn't want to eat it they're welcome to skip it.
--Use the same pan to brown the chorizo, I try to get the cut ends of sliced of the sausage brown for nice flavor and a little substance when in the rice liquid.
--Adjust the oil/fat in the pan as necessary. After cooking the chicken and sausage in the pan you might want to drain some off, reserve in case you need more oil later since it's got better flavor than plain olive oil.
--Do the onions and such in the pan, then the rice and liquid per your recipe.
--When the rice is close to done, then you put in the chicken. Push them down with just the upper edge of the skin peeking out on top. This will cook the chicken the rest of the way in the saffron broth and leave a little bit of skin out where it's not going to get soggy. You could poke in the sausage bits at this time as well. Arrange with space between for the shellfish.
--When the rice is done add your peas and shellfish. Poke them in deep but with a bit peeking out for appearance. Shrimp, clams, mussels all cook quickly and will steam just fine. Not traditional, but I use snow peas in the pods. I poke them in with the tops peeking out and they cook quickly. One advantage there is leftovers. I can pull the faded ones out and put in new ones when re-heating and they look bright and green.
--Cover if you want while waiting for time to serve, but not too long.

An advantage to this approach is you can prep the chicken, sausage, even the stock ahead of time and only need to cook the rice when read to serve. The various parts cook enough in the rice to get the flavor of the stock, but not cooked too long.

We had this game when I was a kid!

Wow, I remember those. Now that I ponder it, they looked lot like the Pup-o-roni I give my dog now.

I've had mine for about 15 years and love it. I'd seen it at Sur la Table in Seattle, came home still lusting for it. Called the store, described it to the salesperson and gave them my CC number to send it to me. ( pre-WWW days )

The only possible thing that can break on it is the spring which should be replaceable. (It would work without it ) The arm is long enough that the effort to juice an orange is a tiny fraction of what the cute little Mighty OJ it replaced required.

This is the one piece of kitchen equipment I can't imagine ever replacing or wearing out.

Fear of cloning is born of ignorance. Either people just "don't know" about it, or they're worried that whomever said it's safe is ignorant.

Would I eat cloned beef? Sure. I'm unlikely to pay the big bucks for it though since cloned bulls and cows for breeding are more likely than cloned stock for meat.

The "solution" if you view this as a problem is simple. Only eat beef you know isn't cloned. If there's a market for it, there will be producers raising beef that's "certified non-cloned". Just as milk ( and Ben&Jerry's ice cream) might have the "BHT free" label, producers are free to create their own requirements beyond what the FDA or USDA mandate.

The government doesn't mandate that all meat be organic, free range, pastured or fed vegetarian diets. That doesn't stop meat with any or all of those various raising methods to be used. Best to think of gov't requirements to result in something that "probably won't kill you right away", and use your own set of requirements to dictate what you eat.

The FDA saying it's safe just means that one set of fearmongers aren't dictating what someone else gets to eat. It doesn't mean those who don't want to have to eat it.

Cuban sandwich. Hold the pickle

N.Y. Strip is fav if I'm eating out.
If I'm at home and the dog is watching, then bone-in ribeye so she can have the bone after.

My niece and nephew, who happen to be the youngest grandkids.

Any school lunch diiscussion should mention Jamie Oliver's school dinner campaign in the U.K. While there's a web site : http://www.jamieoliver.com/schooldinners but it's the the series of shows that are incredible. I think the only way to see it in the U.S. is to download them via bittorrent, but it's an eyeopener. I watched it about the time Sicko had hit the theaters. Instead of seeing someone whine about how things were bad and "someone" should fix them we saw multi-millionaire Jamie Oliver spending months trying to figure out how to serve kids healty lunches for about $0.75 a day that was also something they would want to eat and enjoy. He worked with the teachers, administrators, parents and the kids to try to make it work.