When a friend tells you she has wild roses blooming everywhere, it’s not hard to imagine where the conversation headed to next… to turning them into rose petal jam, of course. My friend Simona Quirini and her family run the beautiful Canto del Maggio, a B&B, restaurant and garden, about one hour’s drive from Florence. We arrived to catch Simona with a wooden crate in her hands, already half full of blush pink flower heads, small and as fragrant as honey. It wasn’t just roses that were bursting out of their bushes with colour and fragrance. In fact, every time I go to Canto del Maggio, I notice how lush the property is with fruit, flowers and plants, and every season there are bounties to be collected. The first time I was there I noticed the myrtle bushes and heirloom fruit trees — little tiny, red pears and apples. The garden was full of summer produce and I stole green-skinned figs harbouring raspberry-red flesh off the trees. The next time I went, we picked ripe olives off the trees around the pool and took them down to the local frantoio, olive oil mill, to press the bright green oil out of them. I also came home with buckets of corbezzoli, or Irish strawberries, to make jam. This spring, I noticed the hedge rows of flowering wild strawberries and this last visit we picked the berries off them for an afternoon snack. With the help of my daughter (who was slightly more interested in playing with Simona’s new puppy), we filled a crateful of roses and picked the petals delicately off and into bowls. We were using the rose petal jam recipe and the technique I learned between two wonderful sources — Pellegrino Artusi’s 1891 cookbook (this pastry recipe below is also inspired by it) and the Armenian monks on Venice’s Isola di San Lazzaro Island where I worked for two autumns. The secret, other than having beautiful, small and fragrant roses to begin with, is in massaging the petals with a bit of the sugar and the lemon juice until almost a pulp to release the essential oils. What did the author likely do after they returned home with buckets of corbezzoli? Pick the correct answer from the following options:  A. sold them at a farmers market  B. made olive oil  C. not enough information  D. made strawberry jam
D
(Question)
The parking lot for the Center for Addictions Treatment was in the back of the building, as was the front door. The entrance opened on the only addition to the original farmhouse, a smallish room where the receptionist sat at one of two desks. The area was called the secretarial pod. The entrance to Ray's office, both medication and technician area, was right behind the secretary's desk. To the left was another door, kept closed, which led down the hallway to the client sleeping rooms, the dining room and the kitchen. There was a phone right inside the front door (or the back door, depending upon who you asked). When Ray wanted to smoke, he would lean out the front door, propping it open with his back in such a way that he could see down the hallway if he propped that door open as well and answer the phone should it ring. Smoking was prohibited inside the building, a policy which grew increasingly unpopular with both the staff and the clients as the course of the year wore on. By December, Ray would have to do weekly fire drills around three a.m. as a way of politely reminding his anti-social and policy impaired population that any building more than a century old was actually little more than well formed kindling. After enough of those, any problem he had been having with people smoking in the building usually went away. Given the right incentives, even this population could be relatively self-regulating. The telephone rang before Ray was even half-finished with his cigarette. "Admit it now, Ray." She sounded petulant. "Fine, I admit it. Do I get the booby prize?" "That depends on whether you intended a double entendre or not." "Of course I did." "Then you lose. Get your mind out of the gutter." He took a drag on his cigarette, then made himself sound insulted. "I'm not the one sitting around naked and calling strange men in the middle of the night." Whose office was right behind the secretary's desk? Pick the correct answer from the following options:  A. not enough information  B. Ray's  C. the secretary's  D. the receptionist's
(Answer)
B
Question: Job offer many years ago. I had two, one for staff accountant and the other was as accounting manager for a holistic health clinic. The clinic job paid about 40% more and came with a “manager” title. I believed in myself and all that, but who offers someone just out of school with only 2 years of internship and no specialty in field manager level? That kept bugging me. Something just wasn’t right. Acting on instinct, I took the other job. Good thing! A few months later, I read that the owner of the clinic (an MD) and his two partners (his wife and the CFO) had all been indicted for numerous counts of fraud. They were cheating the state, they were cheating the church they were affiliated with, they were cheating Medicare and private insurance companies. The IRS was after them — it was supposed to be not-for-profit but it turns out they were living large. Not only that, but they hadn’t been sending in w/h tax for non-church member paid employees. Then there was the allegation that they were abusing mentally handicapped workers who were related to church members. The church itself tried to distance themselves, but three elders were also on the clinic’s Board of Directors. It was nasty and the entire management team ended up with at least some jail time. There was no way anyone who had any access to the records (medical or financial) could have claimed innocence. My job would have included filing false budget and financial statements with the Board, IRS and other agencies. I would have also probably known that they were withholding but not remitting tax from employee checks. Fact is, the poor kid who took the job got 2 years, so I found out. Those in on the medical fraud got even worse and the three principals all got 2-digit sentences. What kind of financial situation is he in? Pick the correct answer from the following options:  A. Strapped for cash  B. not enough information  C. Stable income  D. Filthy rich
Answer:
B