RecipeMuncher

“OUT Bottled salad dressing and marinades. The biggest rip-offs imaginable.
IN Take good oil and vinegar or lemon juice, and combine them with salt, pepper, maybe a little Dijon, in a proportion of about three parts oil to one of vinegar. Customize from there, because you may like more vinegar or less, and you undoubtedly will want a little shallot, or balsamic vinegar, or honey, or garlic, or tarragon, or soy sauce. …
OUT Bottled lemon juice.
IN Lemons. Try buying six at a time, then experiment; I never put lemon on something and regret it. (Scramble a couple of eggs in chicken stock, then finish with a lot of lemon, black pepper and dill; call this egg-lemon soup, or avgolemono.) Don’t forget the zest: you can grate it and add it to many pan sauces, or hummus and other purées. And don’t worry about reamers, squeezers or any of that junk; squeeze from one hand into the other and let your fingers filter out the pips.
OUT Spices older than a year: smell before using; if you get a whiff of dust or must before you smell the spice, toss it. I find it easier to clean house once a year and buy new ones.
IN Fresh spices. Almost all spices are worth having. But some that you might think about using more frequently include cardamom (try a tiny bit in your next coffee cake, apple cake, spice cake or rice pilaf); ground cumin (a better starting place in chili — in fact, in many bean dishes — than chili powder); fennel seeds (these will give a Provençal flavor to any tomato sauce or soup; grind them first, or not); an assortment of dried chilies (I store them all together, because dried chipotles make the rest of them slightly smoky); fresh — or at least dried — ginger, which is lovely grated over most vegetables; pimentón, the smoked Spanish red pepper that is insanely popular in restaurants but still barely making inroads among home cooks; and good curry powder. “

http://www.welfare.ie/EN/Press/PressReleases/2008/Pages/pr311208.aspx

The Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Mary Hanafin, T.D., has signed an agreement on social security with the Republic of Korea into legislation. It will come into effect tomorrow, 1^st January 2009. The main purpose of the Agreement is to protect the pension rights of migrant workers who move between Ireland and the Republic of Korea.

Speaking today Minister Hanafin said, “the provisions of the agreement are very similar to existing agreements with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and USA, and will enable persons who have paid social insurance in both Ireland and Korea to receive a pension on the basis of their combined periods of social insurance if they do not have enough contributions under one legislation alone.” The Irish benefits which may be paid under the agreement are: State Pension (Contributory), State Pension (Transition), Invalidity Pension, Widow’s and Widower’s (Contributory) Pension, Guardian’s Payment (Contributory) and Bereavement Grant.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/1231/breaking46.html?via=mr