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Packers LB Walden sits out Saturday practice

DALLAS – Outside linebacker Erik Walden was a bystander during the Green Bay Packers' jog-through practice Saturday, putting his availability for the Super Bowl in doubt.

According to a pool report distributed to the media, Packers coach Mike McCarthy said no decision will be made on Walden's status until a few hours before kickoff Sunday.

"Erik's going to have to show us something before the game," McCarthy said. "Obviously we're going over early, two o'clock, so we'll have a decision right there at the deadline."

If Walden can't play, Frank Zombo would start in his place against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Zombo is a rookie who stepped in as a starter in the middle of the season, but has missed the Packers' last six games with a knee injury. Walden was signed in midseason and has played well.

Wide receiver Donald Driver, who is nursing a quadriceps injury, took part in Saturday's jog-through and is expected to play.

The Packers' offense and defense held separate practices at the team hotel Saturday morning.

"I really liked today's schedule because finally this gets you back on the routine you've been on for the last five years," McCarthy said. "We've had an opportunity for our final corrections in our meetings. The coordinators have given their last message to each unit and they had their final walkthrough, like we always do. They're done for today and we'll have a team meeting tonight."

Instead of switching hotels the night before the game as some teams do, the Packers were expected to spend Saturday night at the same hotel they have stayed at since arriving on Monday.

"I've received feedback from clubs that have left the hotel and stayed," McCarthy said. "Seeking routine and consistency in how we've operated in the past, I chose to stay in the same hotel. I've heard positives from both sides."

The players were scheduled to be off the rest of the day Saturday until an 8:30 p.m. chapel service and 9 p.m. team meeting. McCarthy will hold his final team meeting at 10:30 a.m. Sunday before the team heads to Cowboys Stadium.

"To me, the preparation stress has just left the building," McCarthy said. "I think it's very important to put the players in a mental state where their mind is clear and it's time for them to prepare themselves for the game."

OReilly: My Obama interview will be the most watched interview in history

Fox’s Bill O’Reilly says his upcoming pre-Super Bowl interview with President Barack Obama is going to make history,The Huffington Post.

During an episode of “Happening Now” that aired Friday morning, O’Reilly said that his much-hyped interview, “will be the most watched interview in history. More people will see this interview than any other interview that’s ever been done in the history of mankind.”

TVNewser, which firston O’Reilly’s ambitious prediction, added that Barbara Walters holds the current interview record for her 1999 sit-down with Monica Lewinsky. The interview had 70 million viewers.

This will be O’Reilly’s first sit-down with Obama since he has assumed presidency. O’Reilly did interview then-candidate Obama during the 2008 presidential election.

The interview will air at 4:45 ET on Superbowl Sunday.

Read more stories from The Daily Caller

Purdue F Hummel says ACL rehab going well

INDIANAPOLIS – Robbie Hummel doesn't have much of a poker face.

Purdue's star forward has missed the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee, reducing him to being a 6-foot-8 assistant coach. His frustration with that role was clearly visible as he watched No. 1 Ohio State dominate the visiting Boilermakers in an 87-64 win on Tuesday night.

"It's hard to watch guys you care about and that you're good friends with struggle through something like that," he said Wednesday. "It's never fun to get beat like that. Watching that from the bench is kind of a helpless feeling because you really can't do anything about it."

He's been there before. Hummel was second on the team with 15.7 points and 6.9 rebounds per game last season before a torn ACL in his right knee ended his season on Feb. 24. He had surgery, recovered and expected to play this season, but he reinjured the knee during practice Oct. 16 and had another surgery a month later.

Hummel said doctors have told him his recovery is about a month ahead of schedule, and his plans for returning next season are on track. Everything looked fine after the last surgery, too, but that hasn't prevented him from having a positive outlook.

"I've been optimistic about it," he said. "I'm really not doing anything different. It's really been the same. I really feel like last time was a fluke."

Hummel said the normal recovery time is six months, and he sees that as a legitimate goal. Purdue coach Matt Painter said all the signs he has seen are good.

"You can sit around and worry all you want," he said. "You have to push forward, and you have to support him."

The Boilermakers were ranked No. 3 in the nation before Hummel's season-ending injury last year, then they stumbled briefly without him before recovering to reach the round of 16 in the NCAA tournament. This season, the Boilermakers are 17-4 and ranked No. 12 without him.

"I think that we've played at a pretty high level for the last four or five games, not counting the Ohio State game," Hummel said.

Painter said Hummel has helped the young players and remains a key part of the team.

"When you're sitting over there and you're not playing, you can see things and pick up things, and it kind of comes from that coach's perspective," he said. "Any time Rob can talk to those guys and help them, it's a positive."

Hummel has not been cleared to jump yet. He has been focusing on strengthening his legs with low-weight, high-repetition lifting. He said swelling has not been a problem, and he said it is starting to feel normal.

Hummel doesn't appear injured to a casual observer — he can walk normally and said he feels normal. He said the problems would come if he tried to plant or quickly change direction.

"Last night, the student section thought I looked like I was fine and I should go in and play," he said. "I wish that was the case. My legs are still pretty weak right now because of the two surgeries and the not doing much. If I was to go in there right now, I'd be a shell of myself."

Second wave of housing bust hammers more cities

A second wave of falling home prices is battering some cities that had escaped the worst of the housing market bust.

Prices in Seattle, Charlotte, N.C., and Portland, Ore., have hit their lowest points since peaking in 2006 and 2007. Denver and Minneapolis are nearing new lows. High unemployment and rising foreclosures are taking a toll even on markets that never overheated during the boom years.

Home values are dwindling in nearly every American market. Prices fell in November in all but one of the 20 cities in the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index released Tuesday. Eight of those markets hit their lowest point since the housing bubble burst.

The damage from the real estate bubble has spread well beyond Las Vegas, Phoenix and Miami, which built frantically during the mid-2000s, and is sapping prices from coast to coast. In many places, prices are expected to keep falling for at least the next six months.

In Charlotte, homes are going for 2004 prices. Last year, more than half of the homes sold in surrounding Mecklenberg County were foreclosures, says Mark Vitner, a senior economist with Wells Fargo.

"There's a huge oversupply, and a lot of people are struggling," says Vitner, who works in Charlotte. "We're expecting it to fall even further in 2011."

The banking industry, which helped Charlotte boom over the past two decades and accounts for roughly one in every 11 jobs there, was hit hard during the recession. The city lost 12 percent of its financial jobs in 2008 and 2009, according to the Labor Department.

Adding to the region's economic woes, about a third of jobs tied to the auto industry also vanished in the downturn, said Michael Walden, an economist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Charlotte's unemployment rate was 12.8 percent a year ago, well above the national rate. It has fallen to 10.8 percent, still more than twice what it was when the recession started.

"We're feeling it, there's no doubt about that," says Mike Shaffer, owner of Century 21 Southern Comfort Realty.

Of course, while foreclosures weaken resale values, they're great for renters who want to own a home. Robert Hubbard closed on Monday on a three-bedroom, two-bath house in Charlotte that he bought for about $79,000. While it takes some looking to find the right place, the market is "saturated" with foreclosures, he says.

In Seattle and Portland, the two largest cities in the Pacific Northwest, prices peaked in the summer of 2007 and have fallen back to 2005 levels.

Foreclosures were uncommon in Seattle until about a year ago. Now they're dragging prices down, says Jim Conlan, branch manager for Century 21 North Homes Realty Inc. Home prices in Seattle were down nearly 5 percent in November from a year earlier.

"They're the anchor on the market here that's keeping it from starting to appreciate," Conlan said.

As usual after the holidays, customer traffic at open houses is picking up, he says.

The region's economy grew rapidly from 2002 to 2007 as Boeing rebounded from the post-9/11 drop in aircraft production and tech companies recovered from the dot-com bust. The region expanded at a faster clip than the rest of the country, attracting more people and lifting home prices.

"We had a bubble thing going on like everyone else," says Dick Conway, an economic consultant based in the city.

The region was damaged by the recession. One in every three construction jobs vanishes. Washington Mutual, the nation's largest thrift, collapsed and took 3,500 jobs with it. Seattle unemployment jumped from 4.1 percent in December 2007, when the recession began, to 9.1 percent in November 2010.

Portland home prices have suffered from historically low timber yields and deep cuts within so-called Silicon Forest high-tech companies.

And while Seattle's two biggest employers, Boeing and Microsoft, haven't laid off many workers, they won't need as many new people as the economy improves, Conway says. During the recovery after the 2001 recession, Boeing was a major job generator, directly or indirectly creating 65,000 jobs.

But in this recovery, "it's going to be closer to zero," Conway said.

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AP Real Estate Writer Derek Kravitz in Washington contributed to this report.

World Chefs: Santos rides on food-sharing trend

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) – Chris Santos is riding on the current trend of small plates and food sharing at his new restaurant Beauty & Essex in New York.

The restaurant's menu takes a page from its nearby sibling The Stanton Social, which opened in 2005. Both offer Santos' bite-size spins on familiar fares like tacos, pierogies and French onion soups.

The 39-year-old Rhode Island native spoke to Reuters about food sharing, creating menus and his ambitions.

Q: How long did it take you to conceptualize the Beauty & Essex's extensive menu?

A: "I started working on it in June 2009, and we opened in December 2010. I probably cooked and created about 300 different dishes during that process. Once a week I would come up with six to 10 items, spend two days preparing them and present them to my two business partners. We would eat them and have a honest dialogue on whether they are good for the menu. After I went through 300 dishes, I went back to all my notes. There were about 100 to 120 that created strong impressions and I cut them down to 40 to 50."

Q: How does Beauty & Essex fit into this trend of sharing and small plates in New York?

A: "With Stanton Social, it's the whole style we promote -- sharing everything and everyone orders and eats communally with plates in the middle where they share everything. It becomes subconsciously a social experience. I don't know who did that except for traditional tapas restaurants five, six years ago. In Beauty & Essex's menu, the very first words you see are 'start sharing.'"

Q: Why do you think this concept has grown in popularity?

A: "I think that's the way how people want to eat. As a chef, you spend your whole life honing your skills, educating your palette, defining your own style, learning these dishes and you create your menu. In a traditional restaurant, a customer has to choose one appetizer and one entree. To me it's so counterintuitive; it doesn't make any sense to me at all. To me, it's like a band you love and it has an album with 14 songs on it and you go to their concert and they play only two of those songs."

Q: You will turn 40 in a couple of months. What are some other things you still want to accomplish?

A: "The next level for me is to start branching into other cities with restaurants. Las Vegas comes to mind. Chicago comes to mind. Miami comes to mind. What I do not want to be is someone with 27 restaurants. That means I will never ever manage them properly and be involved with them enough and I'm a very hands-on guy. I'm in the kitchen every night."

Potato and Goat Cheese Pierogies with Caramelized Onions and Truffle Creme Fraiche

Dough:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tbp canola oil

1/8 tsp baking powder

1/4 cup sour cream

1/4 cup warm water

1 egg, beaten w/fork

Method: Combine flour, salt and baking powder in bowl and mix well. Add wet ingredients and knead by hand or with dough hook in a kitchen aid for 8-10 minutes.

Potato Filling for Pierogi:

2 large Idaho potato (peel, boil, hand mash, dry in oven, cool)

3/4 cup softened goat cheese

1 small red onion, minced and sauteed

1 tsp chopped chives

2 ounces heavy cream

salt and pepper

Method: Mix above ingredients except heavy cream. Add cream as needed to adjust consistency. (It should have the feel of stiff mashed potatoes).

Caramelized onions:

1 onion sliced and cooked very slow over low heat with 3 tbsp butter. Season with salt, pepper and chopped thyme.

Truffle creme fraiche:

1 cup creme fraiche

1 tbsp white truffle oil

1 tsp chopped black truffle pieces (optional)

salt and pepper

Method: Roll dough into 1/8-inch sheets and then cut 2-inch circles out of that. Place heaping tbsp of filling onto each circle and fold into half-moon shape. Seal with beaten egg.

To serve, gently saute pierogies in olive oil, top with onions & creme fraiche.

(Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Patricia )