This time of year tends to bring out the organization skills in some people. I hear a lot about freezing meals ahead of time to make dinner easier when everyone arrives home. I support this concept, but as I scroll through creative web pages, blogs and other social media, I become concerned that what was started as an idea to create time-saving meals may sometimes become a problem if careful thought and planning aren’t applied to the concept.

On Thursday, February 12, the Ellis County Extension Office will offer a free noon-hour program on “Freezer-Ready Slow Cooker Meals.”  The guest speaker will be Jamie Rathbun, Midway Extension District Agent from Ellsworth.  Jamie will share tips and recipes for preparing safe and delicious slow cooker meals for the freezer.

The program will be held at noon at the Extension meeting room, 601 Main Street in Hays.  Bring a lunch to enjoy during the program, if desired.  Pre-register for this program by calling the Ellis County Extension Office at 785-628-9430.

Here are a few key ideas to keep in mind as you consider making meals for the freezer:

• How long do foods stay good in the freezer? A freezer is not designed to hold food forever.  Freezing at zero degree inactivates microbes, bacteria, yeasts and molds present in food, but quality may decline over time. As you prepare meals for the freezer, also plan to use them  while at the peak of quality.

• Do I have enough freezer space?  A rule of thumb to remember is a food two inches thick should freeze completely in about two hours. Don’t stack packages to be frozen; instead, spread them out in on various shelves to freeze rapidly, then stack them after they have frozen solid.  Be aware of how much space you have and what you already have prepared. It is always a good idea to keep a freezer inventory list of what is on hand.

•  How can I package freezer meals?  Proper packaging helps maintain quality and prevent freezer burn. Consider how you will be preparing the food when you thaw it. Will it be cooked in the microwave, slow cooker, oven or by other means? This will determine what kinds of packaging materials you will use – freezer bags, disposable foil pans, plastic containers or other safe freezer material. Ensure the material is made for freezing (thick enough to withstand time in the freezer), can seal air-tight and does not leak. As you prepare foods for freezing, label items with the date, a description of the food product and cooking directions.

• How can I prepare freezer meals safely?  When preparing meals for the freezer, leave perishable food in the refrigerator until you have read through the recipes and organized all other ingredients and packaging materials. Label bags or containers prior to beginning the assembly of meals. Working quickly and efficiently will keep potentially hazardous foods out of the temperature danger zone and help control the growth of bacteria that could cause foodborne illness.

USDA recommends that frozen slow cooker meals should be thawed in the refrigerator prior to putting them in the slow cooker to ensure food safety during the lengthy cooking process.

Planning ahead and working quickly to minimize the growth of harmful bacteria can provide safe and delicious freezer meals. When you can have a healthful meal from the freezer at the end of a busy day,  you may be less likely to go through the drive-thru or buy convenience foods for your family.  That’s a win-win situation for everyone.

Call the Ellis County Extension Office, 785-628-9430, to attend the free program on “Freezer-Ready Slow Cooker Meals” on Thursday, February 12 at noon at the Extension meeting room, 601 Main Street in Hays.

Linda K. Beech is Ellis County Extension Agent for Family and Consumer Sciences.

Valentine’s Day is one of my favorite holidays. There is no good reason for this since I was almost always single for the most dreaded singles’ holiday of the year.

In high school, all of the cafeteria tables would be left up after lunch and as deliveries of flowers, balloons and stuffed animals arrived at school, the cafeteria would fill. All day long, the lucky girls with a delivery awaiting them would receive a red note from the office saying “You’ve got flowers in the cafeteria!” Despite the fact that I never received one of these coveted notes, I would get wrapped up in the anticipation that maybe something romantic and wistful would happen to me on Valentine’s Day. It never did, but I never lost hope.

I still look forward to Valentine’s Day like a heart-sick teenager, but no longer do I wish for a delivery of flowers from a secret admirer or a note in my locker from the boy I happen to have a crush on. It’s exciting enough just to see the little ways people celebrate throughout the library: a red shirt, a bag of candy hearts in the break room or a vase of roses on the front desk.

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I’m featuring a cooking class for couples on Thursday, Feb. 12th at 5 PM. Usually, my cooking classes feature German cuisine, but this time I’m going to draw from my Italian roots for gourmet pizza! Participants will make their own pizza crust and sauce and add their own gourmet toppings like fresh mozzarella and ricotta cheese, pancetta, olives, pesto and tomatoes. Each couple that participates will complete the class with a large pizza and an extra crust to take home. Registration is required, so please hurry! Spaces are limited and filling up quickly. You can register by sending me an email at [email protected] or calling 625-9014.

Continuing in the romantic vein of Valentine’s Day, the next wine tasting with Clayton Cutting will be Friday, Feb. 27th at 6 PM. Learn about and sample some of the best wines from around the world. There is no cost for this class, but registration is limited and you must be 21 to participate. Please reserve you seats in advance by calling 625-9014.

I had a good response to last month’s inquiry about starting a genealogy group at the library. The first meeting of the group will take place on Saturday, Feb. 21st at 10 AM in the Kansas Room. This meeting will be informal and exploratory. Whether you are a beginner at genealogy or a seasoned expert, please feel free to participate as all levels of experience are welcome. At this meeting we’ll be discussing potential meeting topics, presenters and meeting dates. Come, one and all!

My final program for the month is a staycation to Nicodemus, KS in honor of black history month. Nicodemus is the only remaining all-black settlement west of the Mississippi. It is also a National Historic Site. Participants of this staycation will receive transportation to Nicodemus, a guided tour by local historian Angela Bates, a meal catered by Ernestine’s BBQ, and a historical reenactment of the Politicians of Nicodemus. Space is limited for this excursion, so please call me to reserve your seat!

Happy Valentine’s Day to all my readers. I hope it does not disappoint.

The Kansas Room is located in the basement of the Hays Public Library and is open from 9 AM to 4 PM Tuesday through Saturday, and by request.

Lucia Bain is Kansas Room Librarian at the Hays Public Library.

Alarm over the current measles outbreak that began mid-December in Disneyland, California — more than 100 cases in 14 states reported in January — has renewed debate about laws in all 50 states and the District of Columbia mandating that students be vaccinated for certain diseases before entering school.

At issue are the religious and personal belief exemptions granted to parents who choose not to vaccinate their children.

While all 50 states allow medical exemptions, 48 states offer religious exemptions — reflecting our nation’s historic commitment to liberty of conscience as guaranteed under the First Amendment.

Twenty of the 48 also provide a broader opt out based on “personal beliefs.” Only two states, Mississippi and West Virginia, limit exemptions to medical reasons.

Although no one has died (yet), reports of babies at risk and children being kept home from school have focused media attention on the growing anti-vaccine movement in the United States — and the relative ease with which objecting parents can now invoke religious and personal belief exemptions to opt out of vaccinating their kids in many states.

What’s at stake is maintaining herd immunity – the public health principle that when at least 92-94% of people are vaccinated, their immunity prevents contagious diseases like measles from spreading.

According to a 2013 study published in Scientific American, “many states are dropping below safety thresholds” because “parents are opting out of state vaccination requirements for kids entering public school despite a dearth of evidence that vaccines are harmful or unnecessary.”

Consider San Geronimo, Calif., a pocket of opposition to vaccination near San Francisco, where fully 40% of children in the local elementary school have not been vaccinated against measles.

Despite a looming public health crisis of significant proportions, scientists and public health officials are having a difficult time convincing the swelling ranks of naysayers.

No matter how clear and compelling the scientific evidence about the safety of vaccines, many parents still refuse to vaccinate their children out of fear, religious conviction, anti-government animus, commitment to a “natural” lifestyle, distrust of pharmaceutical companies — or some combination of the above.

Some anti-vaccine advocates reinforce the fears and distrust by promoting bogus science, including a 1998 study that claimed to have found a link between vaccinations and autism — a study that was soon debunked and retracted.

Education helps, but it isn’t enough. States need to re-visit their laws and find ways to make opting out of vaccinating children more difficult for parents.

Right now, religious and personal belief exemptions are far too easy to get in most states, requiring little more that filling out a form stating a personal objection to vaccination. Personal belief exemptions are the most common — and they are on the rise.

The measles outbreak should be a wake-up call. The time has come to eliminate broad “personal belief exemptions” entirely and tighten guidelines for religious and philosophical exemptions.

State legislators are beginning to act. This week, a group of California lawmakers are preparing legislation that would get rid of that state’s personal belief exemption.

Also this week, a committee of the Mississippi House of Representations turned back an effort to amend the law to add personal belief objections and voted instead to retain the state’s policy allowing only medical exemptions.

Unless states act soon, high-risk people — including babies who cannot be vaccinated in their first year and children who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons — will contract measles with potentially fatal results. Medical experts tell us that for every thousand children who get measles, one to two of them will die.

Ending all non-medical exemptions — a remedy suggested by some public health advocates — would be both politically difficult and counter to our religious freedom tradition of accommodating, when possible, claims of conscience based on deep religious or philosophical convictions.

Instead, states should continue to grant a limited number of exemptions to those who articulate clear religious or philosophical grounds for their refusal to vaccinate their children. States should also thoroughly inform all parents about the scientific evidence supporting the benefits of vaccination — and the health risks to the community of refusing vaccination.

Eliminating personal belief exemptions and tightening guidelines for religious exemptions should lower the number of parents opting out. If that works, we can restore and maintain herd immunity while still providing exemptions for genuine conscientious objectors.

However, if narrowing the grounds for exemption doesn’t work — and parental opt outs continue to rise — then states will have little choice but to follow the example of Mississippi and West Virginia by limiting exemptions to those with legitimate medical reasons.

Protecting individual rights is a core American value. But when the lives of children are at risk, public health and safety must necessarily trump even the most sincere claim of conscience.

Charles C. Haynes is director of the Religious Freedom Center of the Washington-based Newseum Institute. [email protected]

Jamie Dimon is annoyed. He’s fed up with the populist attitude that’s sweeping the country. He’s not going to take it anymore.

That’s why he recently bleated to reporters that “banks are under assault.”

Well, not every bank. He was talking about JPMorgan Chase — America’s largest Wall Street empire, which Dimon heads.

Government regulators, he snarls, are pandering to grassroots anger at Wall Street excesses by squeezing the life out of the JPMorgan casino.

But wait — didn’t JPMorgan score a record $22-billion profit last year?

And didn’t those Big Bad Government Regulators provide a $25-billion taxpayer bailout in 2008 to save Dimon’s conglomerate from its own recklessness?

And isn’t this Wall Street popinjay raking in over $20 million in personal pay to suffer the indignity of this so-called “assault” on his bank?

Yes, yes, and yes. Still, Dimon says regulators are piling on JPMorgan.

“In the old days,” he whined, “you dealt with one regulator when you had an issue. Now it’s five or six. You should all ask the question about how American that is,” he lectured reporters, and “how fair that is.”

Golly. One reason JPMorgan has half-a-dozen regulators on its case is because it doesn’t have just “one issue” with regulators.

It has beaucoup issues — including deceiving its own investors, cheating more than 2 million of its credit card customers, gaming the rules to overcharge electricity users in California and the Midwest, overcharging active-duty military families on their mortgages, illegally foreclosing on troubled homeowners, and…well, so much more.

Dimon should ask himself “how fair” all that is. Then he should shut up, count his millions, and be grateful he’s not in jail.

OtherWords.org columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer and public speaker.

Voluntary conservation plans are talked about in coffee shops, schools, after church, in meeting rooms and just about every place else in Kansas. Landowners, farmers, ranchers, home owners and builders see such measures as a way to protect land, wildlife and valuable water resources but also as a way to keep them in business.

Talk to western Kansas ag producers and some will tell you they’re the ones who should be listed on the threatened or endangered species list. Many believe the federal government is already too close to mandating how cattlemen raise livestock; how, where and when farmers plant, nurture and harvest crops; and whether or not they’ll be able to pass their family farms to the next generation.

Many Kansans believe the listing of the lesser prairie chicken as a threatened species is unnecessary and unwarranted, especially during a tough drought that lasted three to five years in the western part of the state.

Western Kansas farmers and stockmen believe this endangered listing could stop some agricultural production practices including irrigation and pesticide use.

They believe forcing them to take drastic measures now to aid the lesser prairie chicken doesn’t make sense. It will only make farmers’ and ranchers’ current financial distress due to the drought even worse.

Crop farmer Jarvis Garetson believes the listing of the lesser prairie chicken as endangered would have a devastating effect on his family farm and his ability to provide for his family, employees and Main Street.

Main Streets in Copeland, Manter, Ulysses and Minneola rely on farms and ranches surrounding these small communities. Agriculture remains the economic lifeblood for these communities and others in this region of Kansas. Without the ability to continue farming successfully these small towns will cease to exist.

“If we cannot operate our farm in the manner we’ve been doing and the lesser prairie chicken is listed as ‘endangered,’ this will be game over for a lot of folks,” Garetson says.

Jarvis farms with his brother, Jay, and parents, Jesse and Jerra, on nearly 7,000 acres in Haskell, Gray and Finney counties. He’s the fourth generation to farm the land homesteaded by his great-grandfather in 1902.

The farm includes irrigated corn, milo, wheat, triticale, soybeans, cotton, and dry land wheat, milo, and cotton on owned, cash rent and crop share acres involving 17 landlords.

Garetson and wife, Amber, have five boys and live in rural Haskell County. This family farm is committed to agriculture and to rural America.

“We’re raising our sons and running our farm with an eye to the future generations of our family who will feed the world from our lands,” he says.

Already the “threatened” listing of the lesser prairie chicken species has impacted his community and the region where his family farms.

The pursuit and development of oil and gas has dropped and several wind farms are slowing down, Garetson says. In some cases new development of wind farms has stopped altogether.

Continued growth and expansion in the oil, gas and wind energy industries has been instrumental in the growth of this region of Kansas for decades. Further expansion in these industries has helped offset hard economic times.

“We need all the income streams available to us,” the Haskell County crop producer says. “We can’t afford to have the lesser prairie chicken listed as an endangered species.”

Inhabitants of these southwestern Kansas communities and the farmers and ranchers surrounding them do not care for the far-reaching hand of the federal government telling them how to use their land and make a living.

“Whether it’s my grandparents, my parents or my own blood, sweat and tears, being told what to do with my farming vocation and lifestyle is not the American dream I grew up with,” Garetson says. “It feels like my freedoms are not only being taken away, but jerked away.”

During the short 40 years he’s been on this land, Garetson has experienced more than his share of droughts. He believes the lack of moisture has contributed to the once declining lesser prairie chicken populations.

He also believes with increased moisture, populations of all species will begin to increase again; however, this takes time.

“Living out here is part of an ever changing cycle,” Garetson says. “It’s the nature of this environment. I’m just thankful to be living in western Kansas.”

And while he understands that creatures like pheasants, coyotes, rabbits, and yes, the lesser prairie chicken will return with continued life giving moisture, Garetson would like to see an increase in the population of humans in this region of Kansas as well.

“Droughts are tough on animals, crops and the humans who live here as well,” Garetson says. “I’m convinced we can do a better job of weathering these cycles than intervention by the federal government.”

John Schlageck, a Hoxie native, is a leading commentator on agriculture and rural Kansas.