What do you do when you don't have an egg?

You find a substitute!!

I went to Target today for clothes and food....and for some strange reason, there were absolutely no eggs...strange, I know. Tonight we are having Cheesy Potato soup and I wanted some Jiffy cornbread to go with...but I have no eggs. I did a google search and came across these substitutes. I thought I would share them with you all just in case you ever get caught without an egg:o)

Egg Substitutions:

1 egg = 2 tablespoons liquid + 2 tablespoons flour + ½ tablespoon shortening + ½ teaspoon baking powder (Recipe from Substituting Ingredients by Becky Sue Epstein and Hilary Dole Klein. See my sources. Add one or two drops of yellow food coloring if desired.) 

OR egg substitute (Substitute 1/4 cup egg substitute for each egg. Using egg substitute in place of eggs tends to make baked goods rubbery, because egg substitute has no fat. To improve the product's texture, add one teaspoon of canola oil for each egg replaced. Egg substitute can't be whipped and is much more expensive than regular eggs. It doesn't work well in cheesecakes. For more information, visit the Illinois Cooperative Extension Service's Egg Substitutes page; for a recipe, visit its Homemade Egg Substitute page) 

OR egg whites (Substitute 2 egg whites for each whole egg. This substitution may make baked goods less tender. To compensate, try adding 1 teaspoon of oil per egg called for in recipe.) 

OR flaxmeal (Make flaxmeal by grinding flaxseed in a blender until it has the consistency of cornmeal. Use two tablespoons flaxmeal plus 1/8 teaspoon baking powder plus 3 tablespoons water for each egg called for in recipe. 

OR egg yolks (Higher in fat, but increasing the egg yolks in a baked good often makes it moister and more flavorful.) 

OR gelatin (To replace each egg: Dissolve 1 tablespoon unflavored gelatin in 1 tablespoon cold water, then add 2 tablespoons boiling water. Beat vigorously until frothy.) 

OR cornstarch (Substitute 1 tablespoon cornstarch plus 3 tablespoons water for each egg called for in recipe. 

OR mayonnaise (Substitute 3 tablespoons mayonnaise for each egg called for in recipe.) 

OR Ener-G Egg Replacer (Substitute 1 1/2 teaspoons Egg Replacer plus 2 tablespoons water for each egg called for in recipe.) 

OR bananas (Substitute 1/2 of a mashed ripe banana plus 1/4 teaspoon baking powder for each egg.) 

OR silken tofu (Substitute 1/4 cup tofu for each egg.) 

OR fruit-based fat substitutes (Substitute 2 tablespoons fat substitute for each egg in recipe.)

Source(s):

foodsubs.com

Chocolate Frosting Recipe

I have been in the baked goods mood again:o) But thankfully I didn't have to bake anything this time because I had some cupcakes in the freezer. I decided that I was in desperate need of chocolate on my cupcakes, and thankfully I had the ingredients in my pantry to make some homemade icing.

This recipe came off of the back of my Hershey's Cocoa box. It's called "Perfectly" chocolate frosting...or something like that:o)

1/2 cup butter(1 stick)

2/3 cup cocoa 

3 cups powdered sugar

1/3 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

This recipe truly is "perfect!" 

View That Holy City

Here is one of my favorite songs from our song book. It makes you wanna hop up out of your seat while singing it:o)

Now this version makes you want to jump out in the aisle and get crazy...this version is the more spirited version...I LIKE it;o)

 

We have been under the weather this week with a bug, so I haven't really been in the mood for crafting. We are well now, but I am swamped with hair stylist duties..I have a teacher gift in my head and I am looking forward to creating and sharing it with you all. I am hoping to get that done this weekend.
As far as the Christmas tree update...I now have 3 trees up..only 2 of which are decorated...4 more to go..yes, I know...sick;o)

What's wrong with senior executive pay – lots in my view

There are three things I do not like about top management pay: 1) they usually get paid too much, 2) way too large a part is flexible, performance-related pay, 3) often, a very sizeable chunk of it is paid through stock options.

I used to think - naively - that high top management pay was high simply due to supply and demand: these smart people with lots of business acumen and experience are hard to come by; therefore you have to pay them lots. These grumpy anti-corporates claiming their pay is too high are just envious and naive. Turns out I was (maybe not envious, but certainly naive).

Pay level

Because digging into the rigorous research on the topic - and there is quite a bit of it - I learned that there is really not much of a relationship between firm performance and top management pay. These guys (mostly guys) get paid a lot whether or not their company's performance is any good. Moreover, I learned what sort of factors push up top managers' remuneration - and it ain't supply and demand. It has much more to do with selecting the right company directors (to serve on your remumeration committee) and making sure you are well networked and socialized into the business elite.* Now I have to conclude: top management pay is generally too high, and quite a bit too high.

Flexible pay

Secondly: where does this absurd idea come from that 80+ percent of these guys' remuneration has to be performance related?! "To reward them for good performance and stimulate them to act in the best interest of the company and its shareholders" you might say? To which I would reply "oh, come on!?" If your CEO is the type of guy who needs 90 percent performance-related pay or otherwise he won't act in the best interest of the company, I would say the perfect time to get rid of him is yesterday. You and I do not need 90 percent performance related pay to do our best, do we? So why would it be allowed to hold for top managers? As Henry Mintzberg put it: "Real leaders don't take bonuses".

Moreover, one should only pay performance-related remuneration if you can actually measure the person's performance. And that is - especially for top managers - actually pretty darn hard to do. The strategic decisions one takes this year will often only be felt 5 or 10 years from now, if not longer. Moreover, the performance of the company - which we always take to proxy the CEO's performance - is influenced by a whole bunch of other things; many not under a CEO's control. Hence, short term financial performance figures are a terrible indicator of a top manager's performance in the job and long-term performance contracts all but impossible to specify. If you can't reliably measure performance, don't have performance-related pay, and certainly not 80+ percent of it. We know from ample research that humans start manipulating their performance when you tie their remuneration to some strange metric and, guess what, CEOs are pretty human (at least in that respect); they do too.

Options

Finally: stock options... Once again, I have to say "oh, come on...". We pretty much take for granted that we pay top managers by awarding them options, but don't quite realize any more why. When I ask this question to my students or the executives in my lecture room ("why do we actually pay them in options...?") usually a stunned silence follows after which someone mumbles "because they are cheap to hand out...?". I usually try to remain polite after such an answer but why would they be cheap; cheaper than cash, or shares for that matter? True, it does not cost you anything out of pocket if you give them an option to buy shares for say 100 one year from now, while your present share price is 90, but if the share price by that time is 150 it does cost you 50. Moreover, you could have sold that stock option to someone who would have happily paid you good money for it, so in terms of opportunity costs it is realy money too. No, stock options are not cheaper than cash, shares, or whatever.

We give them options to stimulate them to take more risk. "Risk?! We want them to take more risk?!" thou might think. Yes, that's what you are doing if you give them options. If the share price is 150 at the time the option expires, the CEO can buy the shares at 100 and thus make 50. However, if the share price is 90 the option is worthless, and the CEO does not make anything. However, the trick is that the CEO then does not care whether the share price is 90 or, say, 50 - in either case he does not make any money; worthless is worthless. As a consequence, when his options (i.e. the right to buy shares at 100) are about to expire and the company's share price is still 90, he has a great incentive to quickly take a massive amount of risk. Going to a roulette table would already be a rational to do.

Because if you placed the company's capital on red, and the ball hits red, share price may jump from 90 to 130, and suddenly your options are worth a lot of money (130-100 to be precise). However, if your bet fails, the ball hits black and you lose a ton of money, who cares; the share price may fall from 90 to 50, but your options were worthless anyway. Hence, options give a top manager the upside risk, as we say, but do not give them the downside risk. Therefore, we incentivize them to take risk. You might think "I seldom see herds of CEOs in a casino by the time options expire, so this grumpy Vermeulen guy must be exaggerating" but I'd reply we have seen quite a lot of casino-type strategy in various businesses lately (e.g. banks). More importantly, we know from research that CEOs do take excessive risk due to stock options (see for instance Sanders and Hambrick, 2007; Zhang e.a. 2008). I think it would be naive to think that we give CEOs 90 percent performance related pay and most of it in stock options, and then think that they will not start acting in the way the remuneration system stimulates them to do. Of course it influences their decisions, and if it didn't, there would be no reason left to make their pay flexible and based on options, now would there?

Therefore, I would say, out with the performance-related pay for top managers (a good bottle of wine at Christmas and, if you insist, a small cheque like the rest of us would do). And while we're at it, let's try to reduce the level as well.


* e.g. O’Reilly, Main, and Crystal, 1988; Porac, Wade, and Pollock, 1999; Westphal and Zajac, 1995.

Family Photos

I am so excited to share our family photos that we had made. I hope you all have a great weekend! See you next week!

Christmas Card Holder

Here is a fun craft I did a few weeks ago. I found a large frame at a yard sale for $5. I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but it had previously been a $60 frame from Hobby Lobby, and I couldn't pass on this cheapy:o) I used Krylon's Avocado spray paint to give it a new finish..and then I drew a creative blank. It sat in the garage for several days before I came up with the idea to make it a photo display.

I went to Walmart to get the burlap webbing..it was really inexpensive..I think I paid 60 cents a yard for it.

I used a staple gun to attach the ends to the lip of the inside of the frame, and starting weaving. It was really easy. 

The original intent was just to put regular pictures on it, but when I got done, I knew that displaying Christmas cards on this beauty would be the perfect use for it .

The extra large paper clips are also a Walmart purchase. You can find them in the office supplies section.

The office was the right spot for this photo holder because it is one of the few rooms in the house that is decorated in red for Christmas. 

I have most of the decorations up in the office. There are a few final touches that I want to add before showing off the finished room. I'm on the hunt for a hounds tooth hat..an inexpensive one, that is:o)

Tomorrow the kids go for their pictures with Santa...they think that they are just having Christmas pictures taken..the photographer wanted them to be surprised, so that she could catch their reaction..I can't wait!! I am also getting our family pictures back tomorrow, so I hope to share them with you all as well! 

Participating in these parties:

Craft Room Clean Up and Holiday Decorating

Are you all getting into the holiday spirit yet? I am trying my very best not to skip over Thanksgiving:o) I started doing some fall crafts with the kids yesterday, and they loved it. Today we are going to work on something involving a turkey..not sure exactly what that will be, though:o)

Anyway, I have been wanting to clean out all of our closets for several weeks. Definitely BEFORE the holiday season arrived, but I haven't had the time to do it. I finally buckled down on Monday and cleaned 5 closets out..including my craft room/closet...

it's original intention was to be a closet, but there was so much space, that I decided to turn it into my craft room

It took me 4 hours to go through all of my crafty stuff. 3 garbage bags full of trash, and 2 garbage bags full of unwanted fabric later, I was finally pleased with what I had accomplished.

Now mind you, this is a small space with A LOT of stuff in it, so it doesn't look nearly as awesome to you as it does to me:o)

Everything is organized and has it's place. It would look a lot prettier if I had matching bins in all of the little cubby holes...that's a project for another day. But I LIKE it! Everything is within arms reach.

 The hubs and I put this little shelf together. It was given to me by a friend of the family. In it's previous state, it was pine colored with the back out...there were also some hearts cut out on the top. I removed the plank with the hearts, the hubs cut a piece of beadboard for me and attached it to the back...with a couple of coats of spray paint, I had a great shelf to put my paints on.

I have the shelf tucked away in the corner, to keep it out of sight from my little ones...there was a MAJOR incident involving red paint and the upstairs carpet of which I do not want to discuss as of right now..grr:o{

On to holiday talk..

The homemakers club is having their Holiday Bonanza this weekend. Each club is in charge of providing a center piece for the tables. Because our club is co-hosting the event, we had to provide 2.

I was given the task to create the center pieces for our club.

I wish that I could hold onto these. I really like how they turned out!

 It makes me what to start decorating for Christmas:o)

Speaking of holiday decorating...I have one tree up so far...I plan to start decorating it today. I have 7 trees in my house, and it takes forever to get them up... ridiculous, I know. But it's so much fun!!

Have a great Wednesday, ya'll!