Crust:

3 cups flour

1 ½ sticks of butter (or Crisco)

1 ½ teaspoons salt

6 Tablespoons water

In a large bowl combine flour, fat and salt. Blend ingredients well, and add water one tablespoon at a time to form a ball of dough. Knead dough lightly against bowl surface with the heel of your hand to blend fat evenly. Form into a ball, dust with flour, wrap in wax paper and chill 30 minutes.

Filling:

1 lb ground chuck

1 ½ lbs ground pork

4 carrots, finely chopped

2 onions, finely chopped

2 potatoes, peeled and chopped

½ cup rutabaga, peeled and chopped (be sure to use a rutabaga not a turnip!)

Salt and pepper to taste

Divide dough into six pieces, roll each into a 10 inch round. Put 1 ½ cups filling on half of each round. Moisten the edges and fold the unfilled half over the filled half to enclose it. Pinch the edges together to seal and crimp them together. Put six pasties on a lightly greased baking sheet and cut several slits on the top. Bake in a preheated 350 oven for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes baking, put 1 tsp of butter in a slit of each pastie and continue baking another 30 min. Remove from oven, cover with a damp tea towel, cool for 15 min. Serve with butter and ketchup. Can be served warm, or cold for a sack lunch.

Mary Lemon of Fidelity Associates was recently honored with Safeco's prestigious Award of Excellence. This is Safeco Insurance Company's highest honor for excellence in underwriting and is given to a very few agents across the country.

Kim was recently elected to the IIAB Board (Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers) for a two year term. 

We are proud of both of you!

Meet our client - Nancy Patrykus 
 

Nancy Patrykus retired to Spokane five years ago from Chicago, Illinois. In the late 40's, she met and married a returning WWII marine, and raised two sons on farms in Indiana and Wisconsin. She later worked as a hospital lab technician, and then as a medical assistant for a doctors' group. After a divorce and her two sons entering the Air Force, she relocated to Chicago, trained at Loyola University, and enjoyed working at the Brookfield Zoo Animal Hospital in Laboratory Research and Pathology for 10 years. She went on to own a restaurant/lounge near the Chicago Midway Airport, until the land was taken over for an airport parking expansion. She took a new opportunity to become a furniture dealer and opened a store which she ran for eight years, until a competitor offered to buy her out at a price she could not refuse. Nancy says, "I felt that after working for 65 years, it was time for me to retire and move on." She relocated to Spokane to be close to her remaining son and his family.

"I am now enjoying my golden years here in Spokane", says Nancy. "I am a proud Queen of our Scarlet Floozies, a Red Hat Society chapter with 40 wonderful lady members. I am also an auxiliary member of the American Legion, V.F.W, Amvets, F.O.E, and the Corbin Senior Center." She enjoys reading, cooking, traveling, dancing, canasta, sewing, crochet, plastic canvas, collecting recipes and baking for her friends.

"This Upper Michigan Copper Country Pastie (pronounced PASS-tee) recipe is from my father's family. They migrated from Finland to Upper Michigan, as did people from all over Europe. The pasties were brought over by the Cornish, and quickly caught on with the miners working in the copper mines booming there a century ago. Some of the men would carry one into the mine under their hat to keep it warm for lunch. These take some time to make, but the end results are worth it, and the house smells so good while they are baking. I make a double batch and freeze half. A real ethnic treat!"

Initiative 1082: Good for business. 

Protect workers. Promote efficiency. Reduce costs.  

The time is now.

Washington's costly, inefficient state monopoly over industrial insurance is killing jobs, discouraging re-employment of injured workers, raising costs for employers - and lurching toward insolvency. Initiative 1082 offers employers a new choice: workers' compensation insurance from insurers in the competitive marketplace.

I-1082 is good for business, good for workers and good for Washington State. A competitive private insurance market can reduce administrative costs, increase return-to-work rates, reduce lifetime pension rates and stabilize our state industrial insurance fund.

To learn more about why I-1082 is the reform we need, click here.　

Health Care Update 

An upcoming change in Washington state law will soon make it easier for self-employed people to get health insurance coverage.

The change involves small-group coverage, which under state law in recent years has been defined as businesses of 2 to 50 employees. Small-group coverage generally does not require applicants to first pass a health screening.

One-person businesses, however, have had to seek coverage in the individual insurance market, where health screening is the norm. Coverage can be hard to find, particularly for people with pre-existing health problems.