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Internet-centered technology has advanced to the point that smartphone apps and e-commerce sites seemingly sprout overnight. Indeed, many can be built inexpensively from off-the-shelf software in weeks. Scientific breakthroughs, however, often require decades of research and millions of dollars. At the end of every year, I feature three teams of Chicago innovators whose ideas won’t hit the big-time soon but have the potential to improve, even save, our lives a decade from now.
The segment titled "Chicago: The False Confession Capital" featured two infamous Chicago-area cases in which teenage boys allegedly confessed to brutal murders but were later exonerated when DNA excluded them as the killers.
In her letter, addressed to CBS News Chairman Jeff Fager, Alvarez called the story "an offensive display" and accused reporter Byron Pitts of using only snippets of a 6-month-old interview to distort her record and make it appear she was still trying to prosecute the cases.
"Had I known that this story would completely distort my position and intentionally omit critical facts, I would never have agreed to your interview," Alvarez wrote.
One particularly damaging portion of the interview involved the Dixmoor Five case in which five men were convicted as teens of the 1991 rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl whose body was found on a path. DNA linked a serial rapist to the crime and undermined confessions from the teens. They were cleared in 2011 after spending years in prison.
Alvarez explained in the interview that one possible explanation for the DNA was necrophilia — that the rapist had sex with the girl after she'd already been killed.
That answer — which was roundly mocked in blogs and news critiques — was misconstrued, Alvarez said in the letter. She wrote that the necrophilia theory was used at trial years before she had any involvement in the case.
"I have never advanced that theory or argument, but simply responded, when asked by Mr. Pitts, that we can't say with certainty what had occurred," Alvarez wrote. "This story was not designed to inform, it was designed to undermine me and mislead the public."
Sally Daly, a spokeswoman for Alvarez, said the reaction to the piece has been vitriolic. "She's gotten hate mail, things you couldn't even publish," Daly said.
CBS News representatives did not return phone calls seeking comment.
jmeisner@tribune.com
Game consoles are no longer simply for video games, as evidenced by last week’s announcement that the PlayStation 3 is the top Netflix (NFLX) streaming device of the year. Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s (MSFT) chief marketing officer for its Interactive Entertainment Division, said this past March that Xbox 360 owners were spending more hours watching online entertainment than playing online games. And now, in a bid to bolster its efforts to conquer the living room, Microsoft Director of Programming for Xbox Live Larry “Major Nelson” Hyrb announced in a blog post that 43 new entertainment apps (mostly video) will launch between now and spring of 2013 in various regions. Ten new apps including ARTE, CinemaNow, CNET, Karaoke, Maxim, Napster, SkyDrive, SPORT1, VEVO and Zattoo will arrive this week. Microsoft’s full list of upcoming apps follows below.
1. All3M (United Kingdom, United States)
2. Ameba TV (Canada, United States)
3. ARTE (Germany, France)
4. Azteca (Mexico)
5. Canalplay Infinity (France)
6. CBC’s Hockey Night (Canada)
7. CrunchyRoll (Majority of LIVE Regions)
8. Deezer (Majority of LIVE Regions)
9. Eredivisie Live (Netherlands)
10. Fightbox (Austria, Germany, Spain, France, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, United Kingdom)
11. Flixster (United States)
12. GameTrailers (Australia, Canada, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Japan, Mexico, United Kingdom, United States)
13. Globosat Muu (Brazil)
14. Gulli Replay (France)
15. HBO Nordics (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden)
16. IndieFlix (Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, United Kingdom, United States)
17. Livesport.tv (Austria, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Sweden, United Kingdom)
18. Machinima (Majority of LIVE Regions)
19. Maxim (United States)
20. MTV (United States)
21. MyTF1 (France)
22. MyTF1VOD (France)
23. Napster (Germany, United Kingdom)
24. Pathe Thuis (Netherlands)
25. PBS (United States)
26. PopcornFlix (United States)
27. Rai TV (Italy)
28. Sainsbury (United Kingdom)
29. Saraiva (Brazil)
30. SBS (Netherlands)
31. SF Anytime (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden)
32. Slacker Radio (Canada, United States)
33. SPORT1 (Austria, Germany)
34. The CW Network (United States)
35. Televisa (Mexico)
36. TV3 (Spain)
37. Viaplay (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden)
38. Vidéo à la Demande d’Orange (France)
39. Vimeo (United States)
40. VIVO Play (Brazil)
41. Watchever (Austria, Germany)
42. Zattoo (Germany)
43. Ziggo (Netherlands)
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Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Joe L. Allbritton, the millionaire founder of Politico‘s parent company, died Wednesday of heart ailments in a Houston hospital. He was 87.
The founder of Allbritton Communications, which launched Politico and owns several television stations, built the Washington, D.C.-based media empire after controversy-fraught years as the chief of Riggs National Bank.
Born in Mississippi and raised in Texas, Allbritton was a self-made businessman, who dabbled in real estate, mortuaries and banking before entering the news business in 1974, when he purchased the struggling Washington Star newspaper.
He revived the paper. Six years later, federal regulations regarding cross ownership of newspaper and television stations forced him to sell his $ 35 million investment. Time Inc. bought it for $ 217 million.
Allbritton held on to his more lucrative media properties, including WJLA, an ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C. that took his initials, and helped launch NewsChannel 8, also in Washington, one of the country’s first 24-hour news channels.
The company he founded, which is now run by his son, Robert, has made inroads into the internet world – founding Politico in 2007 and TBD, a short-lived internet news site that the company shuttered in 2012. Though Politico is his son’s creation, the elder Allbritton bankrolled the publication and has been accused of excessively involving himself in its editorial affairs.
But, for all of Allbritton’s successes and wealth, his career was marred by a nationwide recession in the early 1990s that Forbes magazine said brought the bank to the brink of insolvency.
The economic slump left Riggs with bad loans on drastically devalued real estate, but Allbritton was also blamed by analysts for ignoring the growing suburban banking market which took business away from Riggs.
Despite these woes, he refused to give up his private jet at Riggs, even as shareholders urged him to sell the Gulfstream.
He was also criticized for his eagerness to do business with some shady customers
He personally courted Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, whom human rights groups accused of killing more than 3,000 of his own citizens during his 17-year reign.
And – in a 2001 letter to Teodoro Obiang Nguema, the dictator of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea – Allbritton praised the west African strongman’s “reputation for prudent leadership.” Obiang deposited hundreds of millions of dollars in banks controlled by Allbritton.
But little of this criticism appeared in Politico’s glowing, three-page obituary on its financier.
The piece, bylined by editor-in-chief John F. Harris and reporter James Hohmann, makes a brief, passing mention of a federal inquiry into Allbritton’s dealings with Pinochet. There is no mention of Obiang.
The man, whom the Washington Post noted – in the headline of its obituary – led once-venerable Riggs to “disrepute” is praised by Politico with a laundry list of accomplishments.
“He would wear Politico baseball caps and T-shirts while playing with his grandchildren. Sometimes, he would quiz executives at the company on business and editorial matters, sometimes pretending caustically to second-guess their decisions,” Harris and Hohmann wrote of the former boss.
“It took the publisher, adept at reading his father’s sense of humor, to assure people that he was just kidding; his main involvement in the new publication was as cheerleader.”
It wasn’t the only time Allbritton was accused of involving himself in Politico’s coverage.
In 2007, five months after the news agency’s christening, Glenn Greenwald, then a columnist at Salon, accused Politico of having a conservative bias, pointing to Allbritton’s appointment of Frederick J. Ryan Jr., a one-time assistant to President Ronald Reagan, as president and CEO of Politico.
“There is nothing wrong per se with hard-core political operatives running a news organization. Long-time Republican strategist Roger Ailes oversees Fox News, of course,” Greenwald wrote. “But it seems rather self-evident that a news organization run by someone with such clear-cut political biases ought to have a hard time holding itself out as some sort of politically unbiased source of news.”
Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News
A sharp decline in deaths from malnutrition and infectious diseases like measles and tuberculosis has caused a shift in global mortality patterns over the past 20 years, according to a report published on Thursday, with far more of the world’s population now living into old age and dying from diseases mostly associated with rich countries, like cancer and heart disease.
Children in Nairobi, Kenya. Sub-Saharan Africa lagged in mortality gains, compared with Latin America, Asia and North Africa.
The shift reflects improvements in sanitation, medical services and access to food throughout the developing world, as well as the success of broad public health efforts like vaccine programs. The results are striking: infant mortality declined by more than half from 1990 to 2010, and malnutrition, the No. 1 risk factor for death and years of life lost in 1990, has fallen to No. 8.
At the same time, chronic diseases like cancer now account for about two out of every three deaths worldwide, up from just over half in 1990. Eight million people died of cancer in 2010, 38 percent more than in 1990. Diabetes claimed 1.3 million lives in 2010, double the number in 1990.
“The growth of these rich-country diseases, like heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes, is in a strange way good news,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, chairman of the department of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “It shows that many parts of the globe have largely overcome infectious and communicable diseases as a pervasive threat, and that people on average are living longer.”
In 2010, 43 percent of deaths in the world occurred at age 70 and older, compared with 33 percent of deaths in 1990, the report said. And fewer child deaths have brought up the mean age of death, which in Brazil and Paraguay jumped to 63 in 2010, up from 30 in 1970, the report said. The measure, an average of all deaths in a given year, is different from life expectancy, and is lower when large numbers of children die.
But while developing countries made big strides the United States stagnated. American women registered the smallest gains in life expectancy of all high-income countries’ female populations between 1990 and 2010. American women gained just under two years of life, compared with women in Cyprus, who lived 2.3 years longer and Canadian women who gained 2.4 years. The slow increase caused American women to fall to 36th place in the report’s global ranking of life expectancy, down from 22nd in 1990. Life expectancy for American women was 80.5 in 2010, up from 78.6 in 1990.
“It’s alarming just how little progress there has been for women in the United States,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research organization financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at the University of Washington that coordinated the report. Rising rates of obesity among American women and the legacy of smoking, a habit women formed later than men, are among the factors contributing to the stagnation, he said. American men gained in life expectancy, to 75.9 years from 71.7 in 1990.
Health experts from more than 300 institutions contributed to the report, which provided estimates of disease and mortality for populations in more than 180 countries. It was published in The Lancet, a British medical journal.
The World Health Organization issued a statement on Thursday saying that some of the estimates in the report differed substantially from those done by United Nations agencies, though others were similar. All comprehensive estimates of global mortality rely heavily on statistical modeling because only 34 countries — representing about 15 percent of the world’s population — produce quality cause-of-death data.
Sub-Saharan Africa was an exception to the trend. Infectious diseases, childhood illnesses and maternity-related causes of death still account for about 70 percent of the region’s disease burden, a measure of years of life lost due to premature death and to time lived in less than full health. In contrast, they account for just one-third in South Asia, and less than a fifth in all other regions. Sub-Saharan Africa also lagged in mortality gains, with the average age of death rising by fewer than 10 years from 1970 to 2010, compared with a more than 25-year increase in Latin America, Asia and North Africa.
Globally, AIDS was an exception to the shift of deaths from infectious to noncommunicable diseases. The epidemic is believed to have peaked, but still results in 1.5 million deaths each year.
Over all, the change means people are living longer, but it also raises troubling questions. Behavior affects people’s risks of developing cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and public health experts say it is far harder to get people to change their ways than to administer a vaccine that protects children from an infectious disease like measles.
“Adult mortality is a much harder task for the public health systems in the world,” said Colin Mathers, a senior scientist at the World Health Organization.
Tobacco use is a rising threat, especially in developing countries, and is responsible for almost six million deaths a year globally. Illnesses like diabetes are also spreading fast.
The holiday crunch is on at the mall, and Toys R Us is opening all its stores for 88 straight hours until Christmas Eve. And, for the first time, Macy's is staying open at most stores for 48 hours nonstop the final weekend before Christmas.
In the rush to woo shoppers, merchants this year are upping the ante. Banana Republic is giving away six Fiat cars. Kohl's is picking up the tab for a shopper in each of its stores every day until Christmas Eve. And Sport Chalet will have a scuba-diving Santa at some of its stores Saturday.
Across the nation, retailers are scrambling to draw customers into stores and online in the last days leading up to Christmas, in the hope that shoppers will deliver a last-minute cash infusion at a crucial time for merchants. After a successful Black Friday weekend that netted a record $59.1 billion in sales, stores have seen an unwelcome drop-off in business.
What happens in the next two weeks may be vital not only for merchants but also for the nation's fragile economic recovery, because consumer spending of all kinds makes up about 70% of the U.S. economy.
This weekend and next hold the key to boom or bust. "This holiday, the highs have been higher and the lows lower for retailers," industry analyst Marshal Cohen said. "That means we need a good, strong finish to come out even."
The National Retail Federation is sticking to its prediction of $586.1 billion this year, up 4.1% from last year.
With an extra weekend this year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, many stores say that traffic has plummeted in the last few weeks as shoppers gave their credit cards a rest after splurging on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Independent boutiques and national retailers alike are anxiously waiting for a surge of shoppers at the very end.
Liz Williamson and last-minute shoppers like her may dictate the outcome. With a dozen family members and friends on her holiday list, "I have to get started now or I'm going to end up running through the malls on Christmas Eve," said the Los Angeles accountant, who was hunting at the Americana at Brand shopping center. "It's get-it-done time."
Shopper Colleen Chang, 26, hasn't started shopping either. "I've started feeling a little crazy," said the Los Angeles leasing agent, who has budgeted $400. "You have to know exactly what you want because pretty soon there's just nothing left and you have to take what you can get."
"Procrastinators will be the secret weapon for either a ho-ho holiday or a ho-hum one," Cohen said.
With 11 days to go, shipping deadlines loom for online orders. Christmas parties are in full swing. Advertising blares. Last-minute sales scream for attention. Holiday music won't let you alone. Time is running out.
Retailers have plenty of shoppers to win over. Nearly a fifth of consumers have yet to start holiday shopping, while 21% plan to drop into stores again after taking a break from post-Thanksgiving splurging, the research firm NPD Group estimated Thursday.
"Every day feels like a sprint. Across the board we see a lot of traffic right now both online and in store," said Brian Hanover, a spokesman at Sears, which is rolling out another round of door-busters Friday and Saturday.
Despite the looming fiscal cliff in Washington and the prospect of higher taxes next year, retailers expect that people will open their wallets for last-minute gifts.
Kevin Jewelers in the Glendale Galleria is hoping for the traditional surge of procrastinators after a disappointing two weeks, diamond consultant Grace Figues said.
"We're still waiting for the rush," she said. "Lately it's been high-low, high-low just like a normal month. We would welcome the craziness."
At the Best Buy store in Westfield Culver City, general manager Margie Kenney said this weekend is "tremendously important" and will be "one of our busiest weekends after Black Friday."
Both bricks-and-mortar and Web merchants will probably enjoy a boost during the next two Saturdays, which typically hold the No. 3 and No. 2 spots for top shopping days of the year after Black Friday, said Bill Martin of retail technology firm ShopperTrak.
"There's still plenty of shopping left," he said. "Some people are just willing to outlast the retailer and wait for the next wave of serious discounts."
At the Americana at Brand, Stella Yu of Glendale had just begun searching for gifts for her family and close friends. But the 25-year-old graduate student, a veteran last-minute shopper, is already mentally preparing herself for the thick crowds, jammed parking lots and general mall madness as the clock ticks down to Christmas.
"I hate humans during holiday shopping," Yu sighed, "especially the ones with kids."
shan.li@latimes.com
Gov. Pat Quinn on Wednesday indicated he would like to see assault weapons banned in Illinois as lawmakers this spring revise state law to allow some form of concealed carry to comply with a court ruling that tossed aside a long-standing ban on allowing people to carry weapons.
Meanwhile, at City Hall, Mayor Rahm Emanuel blasted Tuesday's federal appellate court decision as "wrongheaded" as he offered legal help to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan as she weighs an appeal.
Judges gave the General Assembly six months to make changes, and the Democratic governor suggested the new rules will have to restrict who can get a permit to carry a gun.
"We have to have reasonable limitations so people who have clear situations where they should not be carrying a gun, for example, those with mental health challenges, those who have records of domestic violence, we cannot have those sorts of people eligible to carry weapons, loaded weapons, on their person in public places" Quinn said.
National Rifle Association lobbyist Todd Vandermyde said the governor is "being very pragmatic in his approach" on concealed carry. Though Vandermyde expected gun rights groups to hold firm on a variety of points, he said his group wanted to "work for a reasonable solution and policy on right to carry."
Quinn also pressed for an assault weapons ban, saying Illinois residents "overwhelmingly support that."
"I want to say today, and I'll say every day, we need to ban assault weapons in our state of Illinois. We aren't going to have people marching along Michigan Avenue, or any other avenue in the state of Illinois, with military-style assault weapons, weapons that are designed to kill people."
An assault weapons ban has been elusive in Springfield because of geographical differences of opinion. Opponents point to the fact that Chicago had a gun ban for decades, even as criminals obtained guns and shot people.
For his part, Emanuel noted his efforts while working for former President Bill Clinton to require background checks for gun buyers and ban semi-automatic assault weapons.
"We fought against the National Rifle Association. They had not been beaten in 30 years in the United States Congress, and we beat 'em," Emanuel said.
"I think this opinion by the 7th Circuit Court is also wrongheaded," he added.
Emanuel said he has offered to make city Law and Police department resources available to the Illinois attorney general. Meanwhile, the city is reviewing its gun registration ordinance to see if it needs modification in light of the court ruling.
Tribune reporter Ray Long contributed.
mcgarcia@tribune.com
hdardick@tribune.com
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones and Alicia Keys were among the musical stars headlining an all-star benefit concert for victims of Superstorm Sandy on Wednesday, in what producers promised was “the greatest line-up of legends ever assembled on a stage.”
Organizers said the “12-12-12″ concert at New York‘s Madison Square Garden was being distributed to nearly 2 billion people worldwide through television feeds, radio and online streaming.
“How do I begin again? My city’s in ruins?” Springsteen sang. He was joined by fellow New Jersey native Jon Bon Jovi for “Born to Run,” ushering in a night of musical duets.
Next up, Roger Waters performed alongside Eddie Vedder, and Paul McCartney was due to jam later in the evening with Dave Grohl.
“This has got to be the largest collection of old English musicians ever assembled in Madison Square Garden,” Mick Jagger told the crowd. The Stones performed “You Got Me Rocking” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.”
To help with the fundraising, celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Kristen Stewart, Jake Gyllenhaal, Chelsea Clinton and Billy Crystal took part in a telethon during the concert, which was expected to last four to five hours.
Comedian Adam Sandler took the stage for a Sandy-themed spoof on Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” rhyming the title with “Sandy, Screw Ya!”
Backstage, actress Susan Sarandon recounted losing power in her New York home but said that was a small hardship compared with the real victims who lost their homes.
Steven Van Zandt, guitarist of the E Street Band, scolded “the oil companies” and “Wall Street guys” for not doing more to help.
“Even with the music business not what it used to be … we are proud to be here,” he said.
Before the concert, producer John Sykes said $ 32 million had already been raised from ticket sales and sponsorships. Organizers are hoping to raise tens of millions more.
It was being broadcast live on television, radio, movie theaters, on Facebook and iHeartRadio, and streamed on digital billboards in New York‘s Times Square, London and Paris.
EXPANDING FUNDRAISING’S REACH
More than 130 people were killed when Sandy pummeled the East Coast of the United States in October. Thousands more were left homeless as the storm tore through areas of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, causing billions of dollars in damage.
Throughout the show, celebrities shared memories of growing up in New York City or the Jersey Shore, and offered shout-outs to first responders.
“Watching my hometown get pummeled was devastating to watch,” said actor-comedian Crystal, who grew up on Long Beach, Long Island. “It’s a helpless feeling of what’s in store for us maybe in the future.”
Sykes was also involved with “The Concert for New York City” after the September 11, 2001, attacks, which raised more than $ 30 million for charity.
He said technological advances over the past decade had exponentially changed the reach of fundraising.
“We have both traditional and new media behind us in a way that we’ve never had before, and that is really going to be the ‘x-factor’ on how much money we can raise for the victims,” he said.
Donations raised from the concert produced by Clear Channel Entertainment and the Weinstein Co, will go to the Robin Hood Relief Fund, which will provide money and materials to groups helping people hardest hit by the storm.
(Additional reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Jill Serjeant, Patricia Reaney and Peter Cooney)
Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Suleika Jaouad writes about her experiences as a young adult with cancer.
For many of us, the holiday season triggers memories of food and family. That’s certainly the case for me. I can always tell when my mother, an artist who grew up in Switzerland, starts to feel nostalgic for home. It is the smell of the crispy apple tarts, the ginger cookies, and the creamy muesli full of nuts and fresh berries. The scent alone delivers a rush of childhood memories for me.
Food has always been an important part of my family. But since I was diagnosed with leukemia two years ago, food has taken on an especially central — and complicated — role in my life. My incredible doctors have been in charge of deciding which chemotherapy treatments and medications I will take. Their role has always been clear. But for my mother, who has always been in action to take care of me but often feels powerless against my mysterious disease, the prescription she draws upon is often a remedy from the kitchen.
My mother comes from a small village on the Lac de Neuchâtel where there is one bakery, one butcher and one grocery store. Even after decades in New York, she prefers home cooking to ordering in. So when I fell ill at the age of 22 and had to move back home with my parents, my mother tailored and amended the vaunted Swiss recipes from her childhood to make them as nutritious and immune system-boosting as possible. It wasn’t infrequent that a red lentil soup or zucchini stuffed with risotto was the highlight of a day otherwise spent in bed staring at my childhood bookshelves and pondering my future.
But my relationship with food has been complicated since my cancer diagnosis. Chemotherapy can wipe out the biggest appetite. It can render delectable food not only inedible, but downright unviewable, unsmellable, unthinkable. After my first hospitalization, a six-week stay in isolation, I quickly learned to be careful about which foods I chose to eat when I was in the depths of sickness. Some of my all-time favorites, like my mother’s rice pudding (extra cinnamon, with cardamon and grated almonds, plus my mom’s T.L.C.), no longer represented comfort food but triggered memories of nausea, the beeping of the I.V. machine and the fluorescent lights of the hospital room. Like other dishes, it has become a food casualty of chemo.
Having cancer changed the way I ate and thought about food. My symptoms dictated my eating habits. The sores in my mouth and the bouts of nausea, for instance, stole the pleasure of eating and made it an ordeal. At some points in my treatment, eating wasn’t even an option. During my bone marrow transplant last April, my only food came in the form of yellow-green liquid hanging from an I.V. pouch. It was the first time I considered how the physicality of eating — the cutting with a knife or slurping with a spoon or chewing of tender meat — was a big part of what I enjoyed about food. In the transplant unit, I remember wanting, more than anything, to bite into a stick of celery. I dreamt about the “crunch.”
Now, more than a year and a half since my first chemotherapy treatment, I’ve come up with a plan to preserve the memory and delight of my mother’s favorite recipes. I only eat the very best of her cooking when I am in-between chemotherapy treatments. I try to make sure not to mix nausea and my favorite foods — because I have found that it confuses not only the taste buds, but also the emotion and memory of eating itself.
As I continue to cope with the effects of cancer and treatment, I am determined to preserve one of my favorite things in life — my mother’s cooking and the many childhood memories that go with it. As a result, I have to refuse her cooking once in a while, saving her food for only my best days. I hope there are a lot of those ahead.
Birchermuesli
The original “muesli” was invented by Dr. Maximilian Oskar Bircher-Benner (1867-1939), a Swiss physician who fed his patients a small portion of this dish before each meal in his health clinic near Zürich. Derided by his colleagues for his belief in the importance of fresh food for health, he is now considered the guru of the raw food movement. The original recipe has been adapted by muesli lovers all over the world, who have swapped in seasonally available and ripe fruit where appropriate. For individuals with dietary restrictions, oats can be replaced with spelt flakes, millet flakes or other grains. In Switzerland, muesli is simply called “bircher,” after its inventor, and many Swiss eat bircher every day for breakfast or as a light meal. Muesli, a word from the Swiss German dialect which means “little purée,” and mostly known today in its commercialized version, is very different from this homemade recipe. Use whatever fresh ripe fruit you like and is seasonally available to you.
1 cup rolled oats, soaked overnight or for several hours
1 1/2 cups whole, almond, soy or other milk, or orange or apple juice
1/4 cup dried fruit, such as raisins or diced dates
1/4 to 1/2 cup hazelnuts, walnuts or almonds, finely chopped
1 large apple, grated
1 banana, sliced
1/2 cup plain yogurt, plus additional to taste
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice or more
Finely grated zest of organic lemon, to taste (optional)
1/4 cup fresh grapes, halved
1/2 cup raspberries, blackberries, blueberries or chopped strawberries, plus a few additional berries to garnish
1/2 orange or peach, chopped
1 apricot or kiwi, chopped
Brown sugar or stevia, to taste (optional)
1 tablespoon flaxseed oil (optional)
1. Soak the oats in milk overnight or for a few hours. In the morning, add the dried fruit, nuts, apple, banana, yogurt, lemon juice and zest, if using, and mix to combine. Add the grapes, berries, the remaining fresh fruit, brown sugar and flaxseed oil, if using, and gently fold the fresh fruit into the mixture. Garnish with a few fresh berries and serve.
Bircher, a raw food recipe, makes a great breakfast or snack, and will keep refrigerated for up to two days, and a day-old bircher is even better.
Yield: 4 to 6 servings
Croûte Aux Champignons (Mushrooms on Toasts)
These mushrooms on toasts are delicious and work with any mix of mushrooms, but if you can find a mix of wild mushrooms, it makes the toasts particularly wonderful. Try serving them with a simple green salad or the “Carrot and Celery Root Salad,” below.
4 to 5 slices country or whole wheat bread, preferably day-old, or more slices from a baguette
2 to 3 tablespoons unsalted butter or olive oil
1/2 medium onion or 1 large shallot, thinly sliced
1 pound mixed mushrooms, sliced
1 cup white wine or stock
Fine sea salt, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 cup heavy cream (optional)
Finely chopped flat-leaf parsley, for garnish
1/4 cup grated cheese, optional (see below)
1. In a large skillet set over medium high heat, melt the butter until foaming or warm the oil until shimmering. Add the onion or shallot, and cook, stirring, until transparent, about 4 minutes. Add the mushrooms, and cook until the mushrooms have released their liquid and the pan is dry, about 3 minutes. Add the wine or stock and cook until the liquid reduces by half, about 5 to 10 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Add the cream and cook, stirring, until the mixture thickens, about 5 minutes.
2. While the mushrooms cook, lightly toast the bread in the toaster. Spoon the mushrooms on toasted bread. Sprinkle with parsley and serve.
Optional: Heat the oven to 400 degrees with the rack positioned in the middle. Place the mushroom toasts on a shallow baking sheet and sprinkle with the grated cheese. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, or until the cheese has melted and lightly browned. Garnish with more black pepper to taste, and serve immediately.
Variation: Replace mushrooms with spinach. Or use half spinach and half mushrooms, adding the spinach once mushrooms has softened. Cook until the spinach has wilted before adding wine or stock. Proceed with the rest of the recipe as written above.
Yield: 4 servings
Carrot and Celery Root Salad
This crunchy and delicious salad makes for a great accompaniment to “Mushrooms on Toast.”
1 1/2 cups finely grated carrot (from about 8 ounces of carrots)
1 1/2 cups finely grated celery root (from about 8 ounces of celery root)
Fine sea salt, to taste
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon mustard
3 tablespoons olive or toasted sesame oil
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Place the carrot and celery root in a large bowl and toss to combine. In a small bowl, add the salt to the vinegar and let sit for 1 minute for the salt to dissolve. Add the mustard and whisk to combine. Add the oil and black pepper, and whisk to combine. Pour the dressing over the vegetables and toss to combine. Serve immediately or refrigerate until ready.
Variation: Add 1 tablespoon grated hazelnuts or almonds, or 1 tablespoon or more of plain yogurt mixed with 1 teaspoon chopped chives.
Yield: 4 servings
Lentil Soup With Tomato
1 cup red lentils, rinsed
1 dried bay leaf
1 tablespoon unsalted butter or olive oil
1 teaspoon ground coriander, plus additional to taste (see below)
1 teaspoon ground cumin or ginger
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
1 pinch cayenne pepper, plus more to taste
1 pinch sugar
1 pinch ground cloves
1 (7-ounce) can peeled tomatoes, chopped (or 2 fresh tomatoes, peeled and chopped)
Fine sea salt, to taste
1/2 cup sour cream (optional)
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley (optional)
1. Place the lentils in a medium pot set over medium-high heat, add 3 cups water and bay leaf, and bring to a simmer. Cook until the lentils are tender, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.
2. In a large pot set over medium heat, add the butter or oil, coriander, cumin, curry, cayenne, sugar and cloves, and warm the mixture until the spices are fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the tomatoes, with their juices, and 1/2 cup water, and bring everything to a boil. Add the reserved lentils and their liquid, reduce the heat to low, and simmer about 5 minutes. Add salt to taste and purée the soup, in batches, in a blender, until smooth. If you prefer, you can thin the soup out with more water. If you like, mix the sour cream with parsley, and add ground coriander to taste. Serve the soup with a dollop of the herbed sour cream.
Yield: 4 servings
Suleika Jaouad (pronounced su-LAKE-uh ja-WAD) is a 24-year-old writer who lives in New York City. Her column, “Life, Interrupted,” chronicling her experiences as a young adult with cancer, appears weekly on Well. Follow @suleikajaouad on Twitter.
Mother Nature has been a fickle manager of snowfall lately, sending an avalanche of powder to ski resorts across the country two years ago, followed by the least amount of snowfall in decades last winter.
A scattering of storms has already swept through the West this winter, but it's too early to tell if this season will be a snowy success or another dry disappointment.
But ski resort managers are losing less sleep over erratic weather conditions after making a flurry of investments over the last few years in ultra-efficient, computerized snow-making equipment.
Once powered by diesel air compressors and monitored by workers on snowmobiles, today's snow-making systems rely on computers, fiber-optic cables and low-energy fans that can be controlled by smartphone or programmed to automatically make snow when conditions are prime.
The good news for powder hounds is that the frozen spray generated by modern snow-making equipment is so close to real snow that even veteran skiers can't tell the difference.
"If I'm going down a run, I can't tell you if I just skied on natural or man-made snow," said Bruce Lee, a Redondo Beach resident who has been skiing for 30 years in Vermont, Pennsylvania, Utah, Colorado and California. "I'll bet no one can tell the difference."
Video chat: Tahoe ski resorts get a makeover
Investments in snow making have been especially crucial in California, where snowfall has always been particularly unreliable. The state is home to 29 resorts that generate an estimated $1.3 billion in spending a year.
Last year's ultra-dry season only reinforced the value of artificial snow-making systems. The 2011-12 season marked the lowest national average snowfall in 20 years, forcing half of the nation's resorts to either open late or close early.
The National Resources Defense Council estimates that ski resorts lost $1 billion in revenue because of meager snowfall over the last decade.
Resort operators that had already invested heavily -n snow-making equipment said man-made snow helped them avoid a complete bust.
"For us, the reaction to last year was 'Thank God we've done what we did in the past,'" said Pete Sonntag, general manager at Lake Tahoe's Heavenly ski resort, where 155 snow-making machines can cover 65% of the resort's skiable terrain.
Heavenly's snow-making system — the largest on the West Coast — can be controlled from a desktop computer at a pump house on the mountain or a smartphone carried by Barrett Burghard, the resort's senior manager for snow surfaces.
"I'm not going to lie and say we can make snow as good as Mother Nature," Burghard said as he glanced at a computer screen to check the water levels in the resort's storage tanks. "But it's close."
The best man-made snow, he said, is light and can be pressed into a snowball without oozing water.
He has another, very unscientific method for testing his machine-spewed snow: He tosses it against his arm to see how it bounces off his sleeve. "There's an art to making snow," Burghard said.
In the past, snow-making was a labor-intensive task that involved teams of workers taking temperature and humidity readings throughout the night.
If the conditions were right for snow-making, workers would ride snowmobiles up the mountains to switch on snow guns, which were often powered by diesel air compressors and connected to high-pressure air and water hoses bordering ski runs.
But temperatures at different spots on a mountain can vary by several degrees, making it difficult for resort operators to gauge when and where to activate the snow guns.
Modern snow-making guns use less energy than older systems, relying on a combination of portable compressors and energy-efficient fans.
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