F16’s Don’t Kill People, 500 Lb. Bombs Kill People

Eventually, Wal Mart will just have to deal with it-or keep closing all their stores.

So there, I posted something uplifting.  

Oh. My. God.

Too funny. 

OK, I have to think this is bogus, but if it isn’t…nah, has to be a prank. Then again, it is in the Daily Mail…so it um…er…must be true.

Check out THIS guy’s toy car collection.

 Danny’s really into his toy cars as well, but he’s four and actually plays with them.

(OK, I have to admit that is really kind of cool). 

You know, unlike years past, I really didn’t mind the whole holiday season this year. I took it easy, spent time with my little boy doing baking and crafts and just generally enjoyed myself. I think Danny had fun too. We didn’t buy much, but we don’t usually go too overboard anyway with it being so close to Danny’s birthday. Santa brought everyone a lovely case of Norovirus-except Danny, which worked out well because he doesn’t really like having to share his chocolate. Oh.So.Sick.

Anyway, tomorrow is the day I drag my sick butt out to Omaha to load up on discounted chocolate at World Market and Russell Stover. Last year, World Market had expensive German chocolates individually wrapped in foil and shaped like penguins for some absurd price like .25 cents a bag. Last week, we finally finished the last penguin, so I’m hoping we can get a few more of those. They were nice to have around as a "cheer-up" kind of thing for Danny, particularly with the kind of year he’s had. Thankfully, the chocolate survived the tornado (yeah sure, we lost a car, outbuildings and hundreds of books-but the chocolate penguins would have really sucked because I don’t think State Farm would have paid on those).

See you in the discounted chocolate aisle-I’ll be the lady that looks like she’s going to throw-up.

Seriously, what good is viral gastroenteritis if you can’t actually throw up, but walk around feeling like you’re going to? What a fucking rip-off.

I walked in on Danny waving his Curious George doll around furiously screaming:

"Hey Mister, DON’T shake your baby!"

So I guess those public service messages are getting through to people. 

Linda Wertheimer is a good sport, that’s for sure. I don’t know how she got through that segment without cracking-up thinking of the "Schwetty-balls" Saturday Night Live spoof. It even sounded the same.

Well done, Linda. 

This is a bit beyond Granny’s Jell-O at Thanksgiving.

I was looking for information on historical puddings (yeah, I really was) and stumbled upon THIS site. Amazing. Just mind bogglingly amazing. Those Victorians thought of everything including dishes made of ice to keep dessert cold (no electricity). Spend some time clicking through the recipes and displays-it is really impressive. I can’t imagine taking the time to recreate one of these, much less all the stuff on the site. I am in awe. 

No, it isn’t my toilet.

I can’t believe I’m linking to THIS, but here you go.

Haaaaaaa.

Ho ho oy vey! 

Going on like, eighty. Danny has a very "old-manish" quality about him. It’s sweet, I get a glimpse of what he’s going to be like as a grandfather.

Oh my goodness, my little baby is four years old-it went so fast. One day he’s throwing up in his playpen and the next he’s throwing up egg salad between the headboard and the wall and before you know it, he’s able to run to the bathroom before throwing up. That’s our little man Dan.

I might have gone a wee bit overboard on his birthday cake (see it HERE) but you only turn four once.

Four years-I just can’t believe my baby is four years old. I’m so glad I get to be his mama. I wouldn’t want to be mama to some other stinky baby. Next week he gets registered for skating lessons, and I begin interviewing piano teachers.

My goodness, four years old. 

Sometimes, I find myself hoping the recession will be really bad so that people who spend $200.00 on a molecular gastronomy kit that contains ten bucks worth of food grade additives and a plastic syringe will have to just cook their four year old’s vegetables like the rest of us. I wish I could find something more charitable to say about THIS, but the woman is a freaking idiot. It does appear however, that her child is exhibiting some semblance of brains in his refusal to eat it.

"Opprobrious?" Really, she used opprobrious in a sentence. Yikes, she must be like, really really smart. I’ll bet she has a shiny new dictionary.

The tomato "orbs" actually did get me thinking of a nice tomato aspic for the holidays, but I’ve already committed to making a Nesselrode pudding and you know what a fucking chore that it. I wonder how well spherification would work on a Nesselrode pudding?  Look lady, your kid wants Jell-O, not carrot foam. You can mould vegetables into it-anyone remember the green thing people used to make in the 60’s with the cucumber, lettuce and Green Goddess dressing mixed with lime Jell-O? It was fucking awesome. I still can’t believe she plunked down Two Hundred Bucks for agar-agar. Moron.

Yeah, I know this sounds harsh. The part of the article that just kind of blew my mind into itsy-bitsy little molecular orbs of grey matter was where she describes serving the child vegetables at each meal although they are left uneaten. That’s standard parenting advice? Seriously? From whom? People that can drop $200.00 on a molecular gastronomy kit?  At the end of the article she mentions the child tossing eggplant on the ground as though it were charming. I’m sitting here trying to imagine what my mother’s reaction might have been if I’d pulled a stunt like that. I doubt she’d have found it cute. I have a four year old and I can assure you, there’s no throwing, tossing or disposing of food going on at our table. If they are old enough to use flatware, they’re old enough to sit there politely and eat their food. Does her kid think it’s the Middle Ages and he’s some sort of nobility? Gah, I really hate criticizing other people’s parenting, but if they are going to publish accounts of it expecting to get a pat on the back for their suffering and creativity-I’m sorry, I have to call you an idiot. You idiot.

I’m all for indulging your kids (I spent ten days putting together a birthday cake for Danny-pictures later) within reason, but they have to eat what’s given them. Once you start making a game of it, the kids know they’ve got you. Let junior go to bed hungry a few times and he’ll be clamouring for the formerly opprobrious (hey look everybody, I used opprobrious in a sentence-whoo hoo, I can write for Slate!) green beans.

I wonder what super-genius would pay me for some bicarb and cream of tartar?

Turns out, you don’t lose 45% of your body heat through your head. You also won’t gain weight eating late at night, and nothing (save not drinking) cures a hangover.

Sixteen years ago, I got a call from a friend asking for a favour. She was on the board of a private religious library and needed help pulling books to be withdrawn-a task that hadn’t been done in decades.

"Don’t worry", she assured me, "I’ll get someone to help you-all I need is an afternoon of your time."

I wouldn’t have said no anyway. I don’t usually have difficulty saying "no", but she was such a charming person I swear if she asked you to go shoot someone, you’d at least have to consider it! Thankfully, she only wanted help thinning the library stacks. That was the day I met my friend Evelyn.

I’m afraid we didn’t do a very good job getting rid of books. We were doing fine until we got to the children’s books when we found the stack that had already been gone through before we arrived.

"Hey look, someone got rid of All Of A Kind Family."

"Oh no. Put that one back. Oh, and this one too…"

By the end of the day we decided that no one really wanted to read Talmud, but that The Adventures Of K’ton Ton would be a great cultural loss. I think more than a few dry, boring religious commentaries were sent packing that afternoon.

And that was it-from that day on we were friends and though we had very little in common on the surface we managed to maintain our friendship through many years, and living overseas. Steadfast in her refusal to get a computer, we each bought stacks of airmail self-sealing letters and kept writing. When she moved home the first thing I did was take her to Jordan Marsh and go to each counter in the cosmetics department collecting skin-care and make-up samples explaining that she’d been living in the desert for a couple of years and it took a toll on her skin (Haifa isn’t in the desert by the way, but hey-she still needed moisturizer).

A couple days before I moved to Nebraska, We sat at the table in her beautiful red kitchen in Newton, Massachusetts and drank cups of her famous "see-through" (weak) coffee brewed in an authentic 1950’s percolator that she’d held on to because it still worked. Every few years she’d scour the thrift stores for replacement baskets, but otherwise, she was still boiling the hell out of her coffee in 2001 like it was 1958. I loved her coffee-her Bancha tea was quite another matter (it tastes like dirt, you know). As was our routine by that point, we hugged and promised to write and we did. The afternoon I found out I was pregnant with Danny, I didn’t call my husband first-I called Evelyn. The first time I heard Danny’s heartbeat at the obstetrician’s office, I called Evelyn. As soon as I was out of surgery after Danny was born, I got hold of my husband’s cell phone and still doped-up called Evelyn leaving what she later told me was a rambling, euphoric message on her answering machine.

"Do they still use ether in Nebraska?" she wondered.

I knew as soon as I saw the envelope in this morning’s post from her daughter that she was gone. I sort of knew already, as I had sent her a gift and never heard from her. I promptly fell apart anyway.

In my mind, it’s all wrong-she was the healthy one, save for a bout with cancer that she soundly beat to a pulp. She walked miles each day-walked everywhere. Evelyn ate a macrobiotic diet for twenty years. Never smoked, didn’t drink, wouldn’t drive if it was snowing because she didn’t want to die on the road. And like that, she’s dead and I get a letter in the post from her daughter. How the hell does this happen? When did I get to the age where my friends start dying? Where did sixteen years go? In-between trying not to cry and crying anyway, I find myself laughing and shouting up at the sky:

"I told you macrobiotics wouldn’t cure cancer! You should have eaten more steak."

Then, I lose it and start crying again, knowing she’d laugh at it too.

You know how after someone dies no matter how hard you try to distract yourself you keep being reminded of the person every five seconds? I look at Danny and he’s wearing a coat she sent him. I open a drawer and find stacks of purple mimeographed sheets she sent Danny that had been saved from when she was teaching decades ago (they were mimeographed, for heaven’s sake). I have her red dishtowels hanging next to my sink. I’m still wearing her old scarf. I reach into my junk bin in the kitchen for a roll of tape and there’s a post card she sent after the tornado. By late in the afternoon I’ve accepted that the universe wants me to go ahead and grieve, so I stop fighting it.

All that Bancha tea, and miso for nothing.

Looking for that perfect gift for the woman in your life?

THIS is so brilliant I’m jealous I didn’t think of it first.  

Still trying to make a plaster Christmas tree wired with lights for your mother-in-law? Yeah, I hear you. Here’s something quick and easy you can make without buying a whole bunch of fancy ingredients and tools-egg noodles. Eggs, flour, salt and water-and a rolling pin. You can do that, right? Bonus-they freeze really well so you can have a noodle-making party and then have them on hand as ready-gifts when people drop by for a glass of egg nog (nobody I know drinks egg nog, but if they did, you’d want to send them on their way with something and it might as well be homemade noodles). Christmas cookies are kind of overrated anyway.

Step-by-step directions with photos too!  

-well, only the bacon, but still.

Oh my goodness, busy. But not too busy to provide a link to THIS wonderful post. Damn, he’s good.

OK-I’ll try to pop in here more often. I’m still posting at the cooking blog but unless you have a hankering for Panettone, it might not be the sort of entertainment you’re looking for.