Simply Old Fashioned and Spring Events

The 15th Annual Vintage Rendezvous returns to the Paso Robles Downtown City Park on Saturday, April 22, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The event is presented by Downtown Paso Robles Main Street and admission is free. Go back in time and enjoy the showcase of sidecars, vintage motorcycles, cars, electric cars and recycled treasures.

As a business person and member of Downtown Paso Robles Main Street, are you interested in hosting a Main Street Business Mixer? Networking meetings are held on the 4th Thursday of the month and are opportunities to meet downtown neighbors and become familiar with the types of goods and services available in downtown. The responsibility of the hosting business is to provide refreshments and a door prize. Main Street will take care of fliers, speakers, etc. and run the meeting.

If interested, call the Main Street office at (805) 238-4103. Mark your calendar for the

Optimist Club of Paso Robles fundraiser on April 16, 2 p.m., at Park Cinemas. The event will feature Irving Berlin’s “Easter Parade” starring Judy Garland and Fred Astaire. Tickets are $20 and include the movie, and either Champagne and chocolate or popcorn and soda. Tickets are available at Parkcinemas.com or in person at 1100 Pine Street, Paso Robles. Proceeds will support the local philanthropic projects of the Optimist Club.

The Paso Robles and Atascadero Optimist Clubs are presenting their Optimist Kids Fishing Derby at Santa Margarita Lake on Saturday, April 22 from 8:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. Event entry along with a hot dog lunch from 12 to 1 p.m. is free. However, there is a $10 SLO County Parks fee per car for parking.

Pre-registration is necessary to be eligible for prizes, loaner poles, etc.

To register go to Registration@ eventbrite.com and search for “Free fishing Derby at Santa Margarita Lake.” For more information contact Chuck Sawyer (805) 591-9590.

While you’re marking your calendar, include May 13, when you can pick up a “Treat Mom to a Lasagna Dinner on Mother’s Day” at the historic Printery. The Atascadero Printery Foundation’s fundraiser “pick-up dinner” includes lasagna, Brian’s bread, and salad to serve four. Lasagna will have meat sauce, or vegetarian sauce.

Tickets for this delicious dinner are $45. Order now, pick up on May 13 at the Printery, 6351 Olmeda Ave., Atascadero, and bake on Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 14. Place orders and pay on the Foundation website at AtascaderoPrintery.org or call (805) 466-1961. Orders must be placed by noon on May 11.

On May 13, the Printery Foundation will also be holding its Spring Market from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Market will have flowers, desserts, gifts and more. Proceeds from both fundraisers will support the restoration of the historic building for community use.

This week’s recipes are simply old-fashioned, but combined, they make a delicious meal.

Baked Tomato Spaghetti

Ingredients:

1 pound spaghetti

2 28-ounce cans tomatoes

1/2 pound sharp Cheddar cheese, coarsely grated

• 1/3 cup (2/3 stick) butter, cut into 1/2-inch slices

Directions:

Cook spaghetti in boiling salted water until al dente and drain well. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and generously butter a 2-quart baking

Nature Stinks

You’d never know by their names what their gross profit really was.

dish. Place tomatoes in a bowl and crush them against side of bowl with back of large spoon; reserve. Arrange a third of spaghetti in bottom of baking dish, followed by a third of the tomatoes, a third of grated cheese, and a third of butter slices. Continue layering with remaining ingredients, ending with butter. Bake 50 to 60 minutes until top is very well browned (the crusty top is the best part). Serves 4 to 6 Wilted Lettuce with Hot Bacon Dressing

Ingredients:

• 6 thin slices bacon, coarsely chopped

3 tablespoons cider vinegar

1 teaspoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

2 heads Boston lettuce, washed and torn into bite-size pieces

Directions:

Cook bacon over medium heat until crisp, about 10 minutes. Add vinegar, sugar, and pepper to skillet and bring to a boil. Place lettuce in a serving bowl, pour hot dressing over it, and toss quickly to distribute dressing. Serve immediately.

Serves 6 lee pitts COLUMNIST

Enjoy the sunshine. Look for Daffodils. Cheers!

Barbie Butz is an independent columnist for The Atascadero News and Paso Robles Press; you can email her at barbiewb@hotmail.com.

One of my commandments is never write about politics and/or religion. To which I would add a third subject. Speaking from experience, it’s generally journalistic suicide to write about manure. I know this because I once wrote a story called ‘The Many Sides of Manure.’ The blowback from readers was almost as bad as the time I pulled an old loaded manure spreader with a cab/free tractor with a gale-force wind blowing from directly behind me.

We’re all uncomfortable talking about this byproduct of digestion, so much so that we’ve worn out a thousand dictionaries coming up with words that sound more hygienic. Feedlot scrapers and lagoon builders are sanitary engineers and manure composting companies are called Environmental Services, Organic Inc., or The Green Corporation.

I’ve always taken great pride in the fact that I’m a hard guy to gross out. I wasn’t even fazed back in college when we had to dissect cow pies to determine the effectiveness of dung beetles (talk about a creature that’s hard to offend.) I once judged an FFA public speaking contest where an ill-advised FFA member chose manure as her topic. It was a good speech, but my fellow judges, a home ec teacher, and a banker, turned white during the talk that left no cow pie unturned. I’m told many students have done their doctoral dissertations on the subject of manure management, which I’d think would be hard to brag about in a job interview.

The former opera singer Mike Rowe starred in a reality TV show called “Dirty Jobs,” in which he tried to make our unattractive jobs look sexy. Mike looked great scooping pig poop, but most of us are not that photogenic. So we hold our collective nose and clean water troughs, drain lagoons, load manure, drive tallow trucks, gut animals in packinghouses, and run the hotline behind a row of show cattle at the county fair. And who amongst us while working ringside or chute side hasn’t had their mouth open at the wrong time when a cow on washy feed swished her mop-like tail?

Just for the fun of it, if you really want to make a city slicker turn green, go into detail about how we get up close and personal with the reproductive tract of farm animals. Just the thought of sticking one’s arm into the rear end of a cow is enough to make any urbanite have nightmares. The only thing worse than describing the preg checking or artificial insemination process is informing them how a bull’s semen is collected (I won’t go into detail here for obvious reasons.)

There really is a big double standard going on about what grosses out city folks. While they faint at the thought of sticking one’s arm into the fistulated stomach of a steer they turn around and pick up their pooch’s poop with a plastic bag. Don’t give me any of that phony nasal sensitivity nonsense when they hold your nose every time they pass a feedlot but don’t clean

April is Upon

This is the season of the Resurrection. Resurrection proves the divinity of Christ. If He were not God, He would still be dead. I have had the pleasure of going to Jerusalem, and the tomb of Jesus is empty. Who really took the life of Jesus? Was it the Jews? Was it the Romans? No, it was neither. It was impossible that anyone could take His life. Instead, He voluntarily laid it down. This was the greatest sacrifice to humanity by a loving God. The story of the Resur- rection is filled with drama (three days of wondering if He would actually come back to life), intrigue (what would Pilate do?), betrayal (by both Judas and Peter), forgiveness (of both the thief on the cross and Peter), and love (“Son, behold thy mother; mother, behold thy son”). Lost humanity tried everything to cancel and discredit Jesus. They wanted Him dead. But death would not and could not arrive until it was His time. His work had to be complete. As they brought Him before an unjust kangaroo court, they had Him convicted before He was tried. He was whipped within inches of His life. Flesh was ripped from His body until He was unrecognizable. They took huge handfuls of hair and ripped it from His beard by the root, and spit on Him, yet they wanted Him alive a bit longer. As He hung on the Cross, they gave Him vinegar and gall to numb a little of the pain, yet He would not drink it. They made mockery of Him and attempted to shame Him before the world. These were the same people who had hailed Him as King one week and said, “Crucify Him” the next. As they pounded three nails into His hands and feet, it signified the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Those nails took care of the past, the present, and the future. The Cross reminds us that before we can truly settle a horizontal relationship with people, we need to establish a vertical relationship with God.

Hatred hung Him on the Cross, but love kept Him there. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoso- their multi-user litter box in the kitchen for a month. And there’s not a wet feedlot or chicken coop in America that smells worse, or is more gross, than a bus stop bathroom, a broken septic tank, an unkempt parakeet’s cage or a jar of stink bait. ever believes on Him shall not perish, but shall have everlasting life (John 3:16). The Cross was the instrument with which the Father used to get mankind back to Him. To this day, His hands are still outstretched. It was on Golgotha that Jesus died, then placed in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. They borrowed a tomb because He was only going to use it for the weekend!

The fact is, nature stinks. And it’s not just animals. A bale of moldy alfalfa smells far worse than a feedlot after two inches of rain and the most my olfactory senses have ever been assaulted was when I drove through a town, that shall go nameless, that turned tomatoes into tomato paste. I swear, it was almost enough to make me give up pizza.

This is not to suggest that we don’t do some things in animal agriculture that come close to grossing even me out. Please don’t remind me of the time in high school when I had to castrate a lamb with my pearly whites. I almost had to go into therapy as a result, and I’m still haunted by the memory. Now that was gross.

Lee Pitts is an independent columnist for The Atascadero News and Paso Robles Press; you can email them at leepitts@leepittsbooks.com.

To you who are reading this: don’t look for the religious God. Look for the redemptive God. The God who is no longer on the Cross, but the God who sits at the right hand of the Father. The God who purchased a place for you in Heaven.

Pastor Gabe Abdelaziz is an independent columnist for The Atascadero News and Paso Robles Press; you can email him at alphabeth@tcsn.net