What's in this punch?

NOTE: This post was originally published in 2013 and has been updated with new information. 

The holiday season is upon us. Many employers are planning office parties or allowing employees to plan parties. You’ve heard the stories of bars being liable for their patrons after they leave the establishment or parents who have allowed parties to take place at their homes. These same liabilities are being applied to employers who serve alcohol at office parties.

Party on!

A 2015 survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Managers (SHRM) found that approximately 59 percent of companies having holiday parties plan to serve alcohol. Less than half of those plan on regulating alcohol consumption by employees. While the parties can serve as an employee reward, team building, or morale booster when alcohol is involved they can also set the scene for inappropriate behavior and/or injuries. The aftermath of which employers have to deal with or could be held liable.

Many employers seek to hold the functions at offsite locations to further enhance or show commitment to the employee event. The location doesn't release the employer of liability and may sometimes encourage inappropriate behavior by employees as the offsite location and alcohol consumption lower inhibitions.

In the most notable case to date, a California Appellate court ruled in August of 2013 that an employer was liable when an employee caused a fatal accident after becoming intoxicated at the employer sponsored party. The ruling was based on vicarious liability and the employer’s responsibility for their employee’s actions. Not all courts may rule the same in all situations, but the precedent has been set.

Why take the chance with your livelihood?

The possibility of legal action should not dampen the festivities or cause employers to cancel parties. Employers have to be aware of the issues and plan accordingly. A little preparation and foresight now may save a lot of money and heartache later.

When planning the party, consider the need to serve alcohol. If alcohol is served manage the consumption by setting limits. Do not pay for alcohol at offsite locations. Arrange alternative transportation for those who do consume.

Review company policies, update as needed, and publish. Ensure employees are aware and reminded of policies regarding alcohol consumption, harassment, and behavior. Make sure social media policies are up to date and include information about the posting of photographs/videos and are sensitive to privacy concerns.

Every effort you make will help later if you were to be sued.

Recipe for history

This is a little off topic for this blog, but struck me as a good subject. My daughter has been encouraging me to write a food blog so maybe this will be the start or the transition. Don’t expect a recipe at the end though. This is a story about what is behind a worn recipe card.

Several years ago I became interested in my paternal family history. A distant relative had already completed the maternal side and no one had looked in to the paternal side of my family. Great grandparents were traced back to Italian villages. Birth/death/marriage certificates, passenger manifests, and sundry documents were located and collected. What was discovered right in my cupboard was the impetus for this blog.

I have always treasured family recipes that live on in my daily and holiday cooking. Every family has a worn cookbook or recipe card from a relative. Sometimes more than photographs these are our connections to our heritage. The dish from the past can be created and brought to life in the modern world, living anew within our kitchen. The smells and tastes transport us to that relative’s kitchen where we helped or anxiously awaited the results from the oven or stovetop.

What set me on this culinary journey was a pastry. A little cookie that is sometimes filled with a minced citrus nut concoction. The cookies were remembered from my childhood but more recently as the cookies made their way into my children’s lives. We always knew them as Gloves as that was the name passed down by my Italian grandparents. There was a lull in the glove eating business until one day a package arrived from an aunt and uncle. Stuffed full was a box of gloves! Going Christmas tree hunting the next day the gloves accompanied us on the hunt. Every year we looked forward to the treat.

Making gloves is a little labor intensive and time consuming. Although we looked forward to the arrival of the package it did not come every year. We always got a little food gift but not always the gloves. I had family recipes but I did not have this one.

When I asked about the recipe, my aunt was quick to share. She hadn’t realized how much the gloves had become a part of my family’s holiday traditions. The preparation takes a lot of work and we all get busy during the holidays. Sometimes there just wasn’t the desire or open schedule to make the cookies. I, myself, make pizzelles every year. Some years it just seems like too much of a chore. Sometimes it takes a lot to drag out the pizzelle iron and set aside the time to make them. So I understood. I also found out from my aunt that the main reason our source dried up was because the uncle in the equation didn’t leave enough to share.

Like I needed another holiday treat to make, I never attempted to make the gloves. I did get the recipe and tucked it away. Last Christmas my daughter got me a blank recipe book for me to fill with old and new family recipes. That way they are all in one book, which could become our family’s recipe book to pass on. Certainly, all of the old recipes went in. While transcribing the glove recipe I noticed that there was an omission as to how to shape the cookies and the tool to use. Knowing that we would be visiting my aunt and uncle I put the recipe on hold until I could speak to them in person.

Once together, my aunt was more than happy to pull out her cookbook. I had family recipes, but to see the original pages and cards in her and my grandmother’s handwriting was touching. It was like visiting the family homestead in the old country or holding a certificate of marriage or birth of an ancestor. History. In your hands.

I found the information I was missing but also learned some more family history that I had never known. Turns out the crimping tool that is used to make the edges of the cookie was fashioned out of car parts by my grandfather. He wasn’t much of a conversationalist but he had an engineer’s mind and apparently (another family tidbit) was helpful in the kitchen when it came holiday baking time. When observed, the crimping tool is like any you’d see for crimping the edges of ravioli, wavy metal wheel on a wooden handle. Except it was hand made by my grandfather. Another thing to hold and behold.

Also learned was that in addition to gloves, the family called the cookies ewans. Never had I heard that reference. They were always gloves and I never questioned the meaning or origin. Just ate them. Well, my aunt and uncle could not provide any insight into the naming of the cookie. We just chalked it up to Italian-English translation diluted into family colloquialism.

But I couldn’t let it go. So once home I started researching the ingredients and names I had for the cookies to no avail. Thinking about the translation angle and no “W’ in the Italian language I was curious about the family name for the cookie “ewan”. I tried searching the Italian word for gloves, guanto or guanti. Now I know I should of started there but sometimes your mind processes the way it processes. Anyway, once that search was begun-Bingo! The recipes were filling up the search returns. Continuing the search I came across similar recipes for “wandies” and one that explained why the family called the cookies “ewands”. Finally! A connection. 

Once I had all of this information I could see how the literal translation of gloves to guanti would become wandie or ewands or even ewan. 

It was an interesting journey that made me realize all of the family history that is packed into a recipe card. Although I had enjoyed the cookies for many years and passed them on to my children I had never sought the meaning behind the recipe. 

This year will be my first attempt at these cookies. Fairly confident I’ll get it close. Maybe I can encourage some family help. Make some new traditions. But I do know that they will definitely be going into the holiday baking rotation.

Scam websites

 Note: This post was originally published on November 27, 2016 and has been updated with new information.

On top of all the safety concerns we have for shopping in the real world, you have to be careful online as well.  Not only from identity theft issues but bogus, price too good to be true deals, on fake websites and fake mobile apps.

You use to be able to look at a website and have your spider sense tingle warning that this doesn’t look quite right. But now, at first glance, it’s hard to pick out a thrown together site. Site building skills and packages are such that pretty much anyone can construct a site that looks like a multi billion dollar corporation is at the other end. When in reality it’s a small time operation or worse an out of country company that is selling bogus products or collecting personal data.

Scam Busting

One quick way to tell if the site is not quite on the up and up is to take a tour and make note of the grammar. One thing the scammers haven’t quite grasped is writing in grammatically correct English. Sites that do not pay attention to simple grammatical structure probably don’t have your best interest in mind. We’re not talking about a typo here or their or misusing there,  they’re, or their, you'll see serious grammar issues that scream no quality control. But don’t use this as your only method.

There are several “detectors” that can be found online that you enter the questionable website address and the detector gives you a report on the site, including a score, location, technical data, owner, and contact information. One such site is Scamadviser.com. [This is just one of many and no endorsements are being given.] This site seemed to provide the most detailed information that online users could use.

If you’re not sure of a site, run it through a “scam busting site”, you should be able to get enough laymen details to make a determination if the site in question is someone you want to provide your credit card.

Typosquatting

In the early days of the Internet, criminals would identify the most popular retailing websites and then figure out the commonly mistyped spellings of the retailer’s names. They create their own sites under the misspelled names. Users always misspelled Amazon, or example. Type in Amason, and you are directed to the scammers’ site. Companies figured this out and began buying up the domain names associated with the misspellings.

The technique is called typosquatting. The practice diminished but is picking up popularity again. It’s hard to think of or even buy every possible spelling combination, so criminals are able to slip past the gatekeepers. The fraudulent sites are very close facsimiles to the real sites. Once a user interacts, malware is downloaded onto the users computer and/or information is stolen.

Mobile devices are targeted as well through fake retail apps sold in smartphone stores. The apps mimic legitimate retailers, but they install malware that steal identity, financial information, and sometimes install ransomware (If you ever want to see your files again August 8, 2016) The RiskIQ cybersecurity company estimates that 1 in 10 Black Friday apps were fraudulent. The biggest app stores fall victim to fake apps. Retail apps may be safer downloaded from the retailers website.

  

Another oldie but goodie is fake shipping notices sent via in email. They are always prevalent but become more so when criminals know that there will be an increase in online shopping/shipping. The notices can look real and appear as they are from a retailer from which you recently purchased. With the flurry of shopping everyone does at this time of year, it’s easy for fake notices to lost in all the emails received. Know what you purchased and from whom, monitor the confirmations and shipping. Most companies will send out a confirmation email, a product shipped email, and possibly a follow up.  Be on guard for anything more.

It’s hard to say stick with nationally named brands and big retailers. Lots of small businesses make their living through online sales and often have good deals especially on unique items. Just as if you were shopping in the real world, you wouldn’t buy from a questionable character off the street, so do some research before you buy online. And watch out for too good to be true deals, especially on hard to find items. Use common sense.  Check reviews. Do your homework.

Be safe. Enjoy the thrill of the hunt.

See our blog archive for other posts relating to shopping safety:

Gift cards-Less than you bargained for? December 2012

Psssst...Need some speakers? December 2015

Fighting for your holiday dollar: Halloween v Christmas

Shopping in a big box hardware store in early October I had the pleasure of viewing Halloween decorations on one side of the aisle and Christmas on the other. I say pleasure, because instead of fighting it, I try to ignore the retail world’s impatience to be the first out of the gate with the various holidays. In early October, one can tweak their Halloween decorations while perusing the new offerings for Christmas. If someone needs replacement bulbs at least the store is meeting the needs of its customers.

Christmas in July 

Every year the rush to be the first retailer for any particular holiday gets earlier and earlier. Can’t say when it started but it seems like in the last five or ten years Christmas comes earlier. Soon Christmas in July won’t be a fun summer celebration but the real thing.

The holidays themselves can’t be moved (Or can they?) Halloween and Christmas have been set dates since ancient times. Doubtful a special interest lobby is going to get Congress to change the dates, but you never can tell.  The commercialism of the holidays is the variable. It comes down to being the first to grab the customer. Black Friday sales used to start at normal business hours on the day after Thanksgiving. Can’t move the Friday after Thanksgiving but retailers can open their doors whenever they want. The sales started to creep earlier, beginning at six AM, four AM, then midnight. Then the “Black Friday” sales started in the evening hours on Thanksgiving then the morning of Thanksgiving. It starts with one major retailer, then someone else will open earlier, then another and another. Until the whole holiday weekend is sales, sales, sales.

Most shoppers feel that Black Friday has encroached too much on Thanksgiving, starting too soon. But those feelings didn’t keep them away from computers. While 2015 brick and mortar Black Friday sales were down approximately 9%, online sales jumped 14%. (Variety of sources)

Impatience 

Is it the impatience of the consumers or the retailers? What is driving the need to get the next holiday merchandise on the shelves before the present holiday has arrived?  Although consumers will grab anything on sale, the drive for early holiday shopping seems to be the need for retailers to capture their market share. As individual retailers look at their bottom line the next big promotion is driven by current sales. Didn’t do well with back to school? Get out the Halloween stock. Don’t usually sell that much candy or ghoulish decorations? Clear more shelves for Christmas. If a retailer knows that they don’t do particularly well during a certain holiday they’ll try to start snagging shoppers for the next.

Rarely do retailers advertise Christmas items on “sale”. They just appear on the shelves next to costumes and Jack O’ Lanterns. Buyers have little product comparison and probably feel they are getting a good deal buying their supplies two months early.  Too much might be too much. In 2015, Target took some media heat when it ran commercials in October that had combined Halloween/Christmas themes.  

It’s like ready the Sunday comics on Saturday, it’s just not done. Stores can stock the shelves as early as they want, I’ll at least wait for the holiday month to start looking.