Cheesy pull-apart bread

Made with hand-stretched cheese that’s made to be melted, this party-sized appetizer makes an impressive entrance and tastes even better than it looks.

Ingredients

1 (700 g) round loaf of bread

3/4 cup (175 mL) salsa verde, homemade or store-bought

10 oz (300 g) Canadian Mozzarella, sliced

Salsa verde:

1 clove garlic

1/2 onion, coarsely chopped

1 jalapeno pepper, seeded

1/2 cup (125 mL) cilantro

1 can (820 mL) whole tomatillos, drained

Lime juice

Salt

https://www.dairygoodness.ca/recipes/cheesy-pull-apart-bread

Why we can't dismiss caring for the old

The health-care system must do better at addressing conditions that restrict how we live as we get old

By Kenneth Rockwood
Contributor
Troy Media

Click image for Hi-res

HALIFAX, N.S. /Troy Media/ - Should medicine be ageist?

A young trainee doctor recently proposed to me that it should. Health care is overstretched, she argued. "We can't do everything for everyone, so why spend money on old people, who have little chance of benefit?"

For her, ageism is not all that bad - in fact, it's a practical response to limited resources.

I'm unpersuaded. Ageism is not benign. We fail older people when we treat them, as typically we do, in ways that are at odds with how ageing works. Ageism masks our need to do better.

The challenge is the complexity of ageing. With age, almost all diseases become more common.

Health care has become pretty good at assembling teams that specialize in specific problems, creating focused, subspecialized care.

And patients do best when their single illness, no matter how complicated and no matter what their age, is their main problem. Subspecialized care may work very well for them.

But as we age, we're more likely to have more than one illness and to take more than one medication. And as we age, the illnesses that we have are more likely to restrict how we live - not just outright disability, but in our moving more slowly or taking care in where we walk, or what we wear or where we go.

Not everyone of the same age has the same number of health problems. Those with the most health problems are frail. And when they're frail, they do worse. Often, those with frailty do worse because health care remains focused on single illness. Our success with a single-illness approach has biased us to think that this is the approach we should always take.

When frail people show up with all their health and social problems, we see them as illegitimate or unsuited for what we do.

So would the young doctor be right if instead of restricting care in old people, she simply opted for restricting care for frail people? Should frailism be the new ageism?

For health care, such a notion would be self-defeating. If frail patients are unsuited to the care that doctors provide, we must provide more suitable care.

Frail older adults consume a lot of care. Far better that those of us in the health system treat them as our very best customers. That would improve care for everyone.

No one admitted to hospital benefits from poor sleep, but (mostly) we get away with it in our fitter patients. Not so in the frail, in whom it leads to worse outcomes: longer stays, more confusion, more medications, more falls and a higher death rate.

No one benefits from being immobilized too long. No one benefits from not having medications reviewed, or from poor nutrition, or inadequate pain control, or getting admitted when care at home would be better or in not clearly discussing goals of care. Just because the health system mostly gets away with it in fitter patients is no reason to forego change.

Changing routines to improve care will benefit everyone. But it won't happen if we see frailty as an acceptable form of ageism. We need to invest in better care and in better understanding how to design, test and implement it.

As important as subspecialties are, by definition each subspecialty group benefits a small fraction of people. The skills required to provide expert general care, particularly for frail older adults, have been less celebrated. Compared to disease research, ageing and frailty are barely on the funding radar screen.

In any guise, ageism can be insidious. We don't have to go far to find it. I find it in myself when I'm in a long line. It's not the science of how movement becomes slow that saves me then - it's realizing that slowness is not a moral failing, much less one directed at my busyness.

What we do in our health system now fails older people who might benefit if we provided better care. In that way, it fails us all.

Attitudes must change. Medicine should not be ageist. It shouldn't even be frailest. We must work to provide better care for frail older adults, especially when they are ill.

Kenneth Rockwood is a geriatrician in Halifax, N.S., and a researcher with Canadian Frailty Network (CFN), a not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving care for older Canadians living with frailty.

© 2016 Distributed by Troy Media

Getting the Kids Active Your Family’s New Year’s Resolution?/ La résolution de votre famille pour la nouvelle année est de garder vos enfants actifs?

Getting the Kids Active Your Family’s New Year’s Resolution?
Pick up a SnowPass for your 4th or 5th grader
and get them skiing and snowboarding this season!

Wondering what to do to get the kids outside and active this New Year? The Canadian Ski Council has you covered. The CSC’s Grade 4 & 5 SnowPass provides children in grade 4 and 5 with three lift tickets at each of the 150+ participating ski areas across Canada for just $29.95. That’s enough skiing and snowboarding to keep them busy from now until the end of the season.

Skiing and snowboarding are two of Canada’s hottest winter sports and millions of parents know that it’s the best way to keep their little bundles of joy active and entertained during the winter. “Learning a new sport is an excellent opportunity for families to not only bond,” comments Paul Pinchbeck, President and CEO of the Canadian Ski Council, “it’s also an exhilarating and healthy way for children to gain self-confidence, pride, and a great way to stay fit and active during the winter months.”

With a brand new year ahead of us, the Canadian Ski Council understands that budgets are tight. That’s why for the past 20 years we have been dedicated to making it easy and affordable for all parents to get their kids started in skiing and snowboarding. The Grade 4 & 5 SnowPass is a national program and can be used at over 150 ski areas across Canada, including 31 ski areas in British Columbia, 24 in Alberta, 1 in Saskatchewan, 3 in Manitoba, 31 in Ontario, 59 in Quebec, 8 in Atlantic Canada, and 1 in the Yukon. So no matter where you live, everyone can take advantage of this fantastic offer. To see a full list of participating ski areas, please visit www.snowpass.ca. Registering your child for a SnowPass is easy and any child in grade 4 or 5 is eligible (or those born in 2006 or 2007). Just visit www.snowpass.ca, upload your child’s picture and proof of age, enter your method of payment, and presto – your child’s personalized SnowPass ePass will be emailed to you. With all the snow that’s falling, it’s never too soon to get your children outside on the slopes and take full advantage of the savings that the SnowPass program offers. So bundle up the kids and get outside and enjoy the joys Canadian winters have to offer. Grade 4 and 5 SnowPass information and applications are available online at www.snowpass.ca or www.passeportdesneiges.ca.     -30- The Canadian Ski Council is a not for profit association that was founded in 1977 and works on behalf of its member organizations to increase participation in recreational skiing and snowboarding in Canada.

Pour diffusion immédiate janvier 2017

Move health research out of the academy and into the community

Health changes require greater input by people trained to create a difference - and that's not happening in Canada

By Stephen Bornstein
with Adalsteinn Brown
EvidenceNetwork.ca

TORONTO, Ont./Troy Media/ - Canada has a mismatch between the world-class health research we produce and how that research is implemented into our health-care system.

Our doctoral graduates are among the most productive and respected researchers in health services, health policy and health economics - and Canadian universities are often in the global top 10 for these areas of study. Yet our health system continues to underperform.

Where's the disconnect?

Click image for Hi-Res

The Commonwealth Fund ranks comparable health systems around the world on a number of performance indicators. It continually places Canada as one of the worst performers across a number of categories, such as timeliness, safety and efficiency of care. Only the United States routinely performs worse, sitting at last place overall.

It would be easy to point to health-care funding as the culprit but that's largely not the case.

Canada spends roughly 10.4 per cent of its gross domestic product on health, more than the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia.

The truth is, we often don't manage our health system well.

But much can be done to lift Canadian health care out of its poor standing.

Over the last several decades, a number of studies from experts inside and outside of Canada have pointed out the gap between the performance of our system and the level we should expect.

Click image for Hi-Res

Landmark reports from Manitoba and Ontario show that a patient's likelihood of getting needed surgery depends heavily on where they live. Studies also show a huge gap between what we know to be effective and appropriate care and what people actually receive. And a study from over a decade ago shows that nearly one in 13 hospital visits resulted in adverse health events with nearly nine per cent of these ending in preventable death; a follow-up study last year shows that little has changed.

We can do better, but how?

Health system changes require greater input by people trained to create and use evidence to design, implement and evaluate them. That's not happening in Canada.

Every year, more than $3.5 million is invested in the training of health-care-related PhDs in Canada. But for the majority of them, the likelihood of academic employment is low and declining. In fact, the vast majority will work in health services and management fields, not academia. Yet our doctoral programs in health sciences don't prepare them for such work.

An extensive interview-based study found that our recent health PhDs are not having the impact they could have on Canada's health system - the sort of impact that many of our most advanced graduates with PhDs see as the goal of their careers and the reason for their training. While well prepared in academic terms, they lack preparation in the managerial and leadership skills necessary to make tough decisions based on evidence with a relentless commitment to evaluation and improvement across the system.

We can change this - and we've started to.

Over the past two years, the Canadian Health Services and Policy Research Alliance has worked with experts to improve the impact of Canadian PhDs on the quality and sustainability of our health system - by changing the training and preparation they receive.

It's time to move health research out of the academy and into the community.

We now provide experiential learning opportunities during and after PhD training, where individuals get the opportunity to work with hospitals, government agencies and other health-care providers in the community - to apply their skills and findings directly in the service of health system improvement.

We're building an open source curriculum to teach health PhDs essential managerial and leadership skills they need to make sure their expertise gets translated into better decisions across our health system.

Discussions about health funding will always be important, but we need to make sure we have the personnel to make the system better, regardless of the dollars transferred between levels of government.

We have a great resource in Canada's university-based training programs in health services and PhD graduates who want to make a difference. Now we need to make sure they have the opportunity.

Adalsteinn Brown is an expert advisor with EvidenceNetwork.ca, the director of the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation and the Dalla Lana Chair in Public Health Policy at the University of Toronto. Prior roles include senior positions in the Ontario government. Stephen Bornstein is director of the Centre for Applied Health Research and a professor at Memorial University. Prior roles include senior positions in the Ontario government.

© 2016 Distributed by Troy Media

Mont SUTTON

  Here are a few other 2016-2017 holiday hits:

• The alpine touring craze is confirmed: sales of rando-ski passes are up, and so are equipment sales at the Boutique Expérience SUTTON, which had counted on the trend and acquired an even more specialized back country equipment this year.
• The boutique has also experienced a 140 % increase in helmet sales, and a 150 % increase in goggle sales, in comparison to an average year, mostly in response to its even wider selection and improved layout.
• New skiers were also three times as many to pick up a new winter sport this holiday season with our initiation packages.
• Monday pass and Friday pass sales (168 $) are still increasing, making this year their best since their introduction.

More activities to come

Even though the holiday excitement is over, Mont SUTTON is not slowing down. From January 10^th to February 16^th, those 50 and over, men, and women are all celebrated on their own 25 $ ski days: 50+ Club Tuesdays, Suits and Ties Wednesdays, and Divas on Skis Thursdays. What’s more, every weekend, skiers are encouraged to take a pair of new skis out for a run for free from our demo deck. An ideal way to try before you buy from the Boutique Expérience SUTTON! For all upcoming activities at Mont SUTTON: www.montsutton.com/activities.  

Buys Books and More

www.everydaylivng.com

http://www.everydayliving.info/

Artificial Intelligence - the solution to food waste at home.

Developers of the EatBy App have incorporated artificial intelligence into their kitchen
 management and grocery list app to reduce domestic food waste.

The latest release of the EatBy App includes a new feature - it automatically suggests
how long fruit, veg and frozen items will stay fresh for and then reminds you to use
 them up before they go off. But the clever bit, according to the developers, is
 that the app learns the storage habits of individual users.
"Not everyone's kitchen is the same, and different food storage environments
 effect shelf life. EatBy App addresses this problem by learning as it's used over time."

Domestic food waste is now the biggest contributor to the global food waste problem.
 Supermarkets have suffered the brunt of bad publicity, being blamed for massive
 quantities of unsold food being wasted. Many supermarkets and grocery stores
 have since made big changes that reduce food waste in the supply chain.
 However, the problem of food wasted at home is still massive. The Eatby
 developers believe change has to happen in our homes and  stress that we
 all need to review our grocery shopping and food consumption habits.
 In some cases households unnecessarily waste up to 30% of their food
simply from poor kitchen management. This not only has a detrimental
environmental impact, it also has a big impact on householders' wallets.
With the escalation of food prices, especially in the UK, where the
 British Pound has slumped as a reaction of Brexit, careful food
management is becoming more important. EatBy App is the leading
smart kitchen technology and its development team are one of only
a few to come up with a successful domestic food waste reduction
solution. There are a number of apps designed to share unwanted
 food but EatBy App prevents the accumulation of unwanted food
in the first place.

Initial versions of the app were praised by users and the press
 despite the user interface being described as "clumpy"
. But subsequent versions of the app have addressed this
by incorporating a much more intuitive and attractive interface.
The development team have certainly listened to their feedback to refine the app.

Designers at EatBy say they are now developing the app to make the
 best use of the freezer in an effort to make users more aware of th
e benefits of freezing food to further reduce food waste. But the latest
big news is that EatBy are developing Smart Kitchen hardware.
 "The products we're working on will make kitchen management
simple - with a big focus on beautiful design and developing
 A.I. driven 'invisible technology' that works in the background
with minimal user effort required." Steffan Lewis, co-founder of
EatBy App went on to say, "Artificial Intelligence does not need
to be scary - in EatBy's case it'll simply help make life better.
Our technology is aimed at families, foodies and people who
 love to cook. We're not interested in creating futuristic, sterile
 kitchens. We are interested in encouraging everyone to eat
delicious fresh food, reduce food waste and save money."

EatBy App is available on the App Store and Google play. Information can be found at www.eatbyapp.com
END

About EatBy App

EatBy App is a free mobile application that has been developed to help reduce domestic food waste. It is currently available on the App Store and Google play in many countries around the world.

EatBy App can found at www.eatbyapp.com and be followed on Twitter and Facebook