Tag Archives: life

The Quest to Attain a Complete Family Recipe Book

13 Mar

A rare artifact from my mother's kitchen - battered, bruised, but full of delicious potential.

It’s a wonder any recipes get passed on from one generation to another in our family.

Let me first say that our family is, in my opinion, supremely skilled in the kitchen.  We don’t do fancy things, and we don’t do particularly healthy things, but if you’re looking for some tasty, warming, homestyle yumminess, we can rock it pretty hard.

The only problem is attaining the original recipes.

From my understanding, the majority of my mother’s most delicious recipes are either directly passed down from or are a derivative of something my grandmother makes, which are mostly passed down from her mother.  I assume this is the case in most families of good cooks, but I think that the fact that any artifacts survive through our blood line is phenomenal – because the original recipes usually can’t be found anywhere.

When I ask my mother how to make something, she uses imaginary units of measurement.  Her reference to things like “a little”, “some”, and “a bunch” leave me in quite a gray area. I’m a planner – I like to plan.  So to have all the necessary ingredients gathered and to be told to put them in the sauce “until it looks right” just isn’t gonna swing it for me and my type A personality. In fact, the only way I learned how to make her super awesome spaghetti sauce was by watching her make it over and over again.    There is simply no other way to do it – the woman makes the spaghetti sauce base, and then pours all the spices and goodness on top, measuring it by “how it looks”.

Even when I manage to find a scrap of paper with true measurements on it, my mother mentions casually that it’s just a  guide and doesn’t actually reflect the amounts used in the food I grew up on.     Which basically means it’s useless.

So the only way to attain super awesome family cooking skills is to spend a great deal of time in the kitchen,  huddled over my mother’s every move.  It’s not an exact science, but it sure is an intricate one.  And if you stick it out, you’ll come away with a book’s worth of recipes, safely sealed within your head.

So this weekend I’m at home, brushing up on my imaginary units of measurement and making sure the amounts in my old school favorites “look right”.    Yesterday, I had the pleasure of finding a real, genuine recipe that I actually saw mom referencing during her preparations.   I got excited and thought maybe she was looking at something that was able to be copied and taken away for a new start to the family recipe library.  If true references actually exist, perhaps I could be the first in the family line to actually create a comprehensive guide for them!

But after I had hung out in the kitchen long enough, I realized she was just brushing up on something she’d made a thousand times.  And after helping her through the process, I feel pretty confident that I can replicate the deliciousness we created.

And I started thinking – maybe I don’t actually want to write all these things down.  I mean, I kind of like that in order to master a family favorite, I have to put in the face time.  It’s a great bonding experience, it’s a good time, and it’s really the only fair way for me to inherit all these awesome foods.  After all, why should I just be freely handed information that took three generations before me hard time in the kitchen to acquire?  It’s one of the few things in this world that’s still old school and lovely, and I like that.

Come to think of it, maybe there’s a method to my mother’s madness. ♣

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Late Nights on Long Roads

12 Mar

Holy cow it’s 4pm on Saturday and I’m just now posting.

My avid subscribers are aware that I typically post at 9am every day.  Fun fact: I actually write posts the night before and aut0 schedule them for the following day at 9am.   But last night, I found myself on a long drive home to central Pennsylvania after using my Friday evening to explore my next Lollipop Tuesday event.

Dave was driving for a good portion of it, but there’s only so long a mere human being can go with no sleep before involuntarily passing out.  And since he was up at 7, worked his day job, and then went to his night job until midnight – things can get real sleepy real fast.  And that’s when I stepped in.

Of course, I’m almost always sleepy.  I can pretty much sleep anywhere, any time, and in virtually any position.  I don’t know why – I’m just special that way.  In fact, at one point my parents were so concerned about my constant tired state that they had me submitted to a sleep test center.  You can read about the beauty of my experience here, in a post from long, long ago when I was just a wee lass.   So it’s usually a crap shoot to have me drive.  I might start out bright eyed and bushy-tailed, but there’s no way of knowing how long it will be before I’m droopy, weary, and ready to cash in.

About halfway through my shift, I began to rotate through the myriad of tricks I’ve developed over the years.  They include

  • Blaring rock music
  • Playing music I can sing to (and singing in an awful and hilarious manner for my own entertainment)
  • Rolling down the window so that my face is stung with the cold winter air
  • Drumming on the steering wheel
  • Talking to myself
  • Writing a to-do list inside my head
  • Playing out hypothetical situations with myself
  • Waking Dave up to make him talk to me about silly subjects (last resort)

To further complicate the process, we were out of windshield wiper fluid and it was a particularly dirty, wet night.    I was playing an intricate passing lane game with a truck that was constantly splooging its dirt water all over the windshield, which then required me to pull over and send Dave to get snow from the bushes.

He threw snowballs at the car and I clicked the wipers.  It was a fun, sad game.

But we made it.  Slowly but surely we crawled sleepily across Pennsylvania and pulled into our resting place at 1:30am, where we promptly passed out.  Without writing a blog post.

And so here I am, paying for my neglect on a bright, beautiful Saturday afternoon.  But hey- it’s my first truly late post (but still easily meets my midnight deadline) in my 2.5 months of postaday2011.

And that ain’t so bad. ♣

 

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The Futility of Cleaning My Apartment

11 Mar
dishwasher sign, CLEAN versus DIRTY, magnet or velcro, black and white no.2
Sign by SmallGift, featured (and for sale!) on Etsy.com. Clicky clicky.

There is something truly transformational that happens to me between the end of my work day and my arrival to my apartment.

I’m still working on the many factors that are involved, but I’ve done the math and concluded that no matter the circumstances, I’m still almost 50% likely to mutate into a terrible, heinous beast.  Upon entry, I first look to the kitchen counter, which is usually covered in the filth I’ve left there from the night before.  Then I’ll shoot a wary glance to the sink, which is stacked to the brim with pots, pans, and strange, festering bacteria.

That’s when the mouth froth begins.

While I’m deep breathing through the sudden recollection of my own filth and disgrace, I move to the living room and am promptly greeted by whatever materials I was using to entertain myself the evening before.  Without a doubt, all those same things will return to their exact same places every single night, and yet every single day when I come home I feel as if I have to put them all back in their homes.

By the time I hang up my coat and put down my bag, I’m determined to clean everything in sight.  All of it.  I want it gone.  I’m in danger of becoming a fully fledged fire-breathing dragon of cleanliness and no nonsense if I don’t act soon.  So I go change out of my office work clothes and into my house work clothes  and I begin to a whirlwind attack of adulthood all over my apartment.   I’ve done it so often and so forcefully that I’ve gotten it down to a pretty consistent 20 minutes.  That’s all the longer it takes to make my apartment look like no one lives in it.    Because that’s the goal, right?

Cleaning is so futile.  What’s the point of putting away things I’m bound to get out again eventually and use in exactly that same spot?  Why do I feel like I have to hide all evidence that I live in my apartment when other people come over?  Who made these ridiculous rules?

I’m not sure what I expect to happen to the mess I made after I left it there without any pixie dust or magical cleaning dwarves.  But somewhere in between my leaving a mess, sleeping, working for 8 hours, and returning to the mess, I’d like to think that the house cleaned itself. I mean after all, I worked a full, hard day.  Once, just once I’d like the cats to pitch in.  But every day without fail they’re lounging around with their white, furry bellies up toward the sky.

They’re such non-contributors.

So I will carry on with my burden.  Or, after enough calculation, I will be able to determine the precise factors that are most likely to bring me to this mutant state of mind and I will change them and be freed from this hex placed on me.  Or I could just stop playing along with society’s rules an accept that when I use things often, they will often be visible and on-hand.

Except, of course, for when my mother visits. ♣

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What Would You Do…for a Better Product Design?

10 Mar

The fact that Klondike bars are still such a terrible example of product design here in the freshly born year of 2011 boggles the mind.

I have recently acquired a few packs of Klondike bars (for my lovely UK readers, I believe ya’ll call it a Choc Ice).  It’s a sneaky attempt to get my body to be satisfied with one succinct 250-calorie ice cream treat.   If I succeed, I can eliminate my constant desire to down entire pints of it, thereby eliminating a significant portion of my calorie intake.

You know you’re truly overweight when just changing the type of ice cream you eat can make you thinner.

And I’ll admit that so far it’s a pretty good tactic.   What’s not going over so well, however, is the last 4 bites of every single Klondike bar. Why is it that after all these years a better method has not been developed?  I get the whole ice-cream-bar-without-a-stick thing.  But I have to admit that the fact that Klondike bars are stickless is not the reason I’m attracted to them.  In fact, when I’m tonguing the last 4 bites out of the foil wrapper and the melted ice cream from the inside of the foil is folded over and all over my hands, I feel filthy and degraded enough to just not buy them anymore.

Listen, when people got annoyed with popsicles melting and plopping all over the sidewalk in the summer, some brilliant product developers blessed us all with the Push-Pop, which was amazing and yummy and well-worth however much money it cost my mother when I was a young whippersnapper.   When people got tired of milk cartons smushing all together at the opening, they were forced to try again on the other end and this ultimately resulted in millions of cartons everywhere being poked and prodded with forks and knives after the failed triangle method.  But some lovely product developers came along and put a hole and a lid on the top instead.    So where’s the soon-to-be-famous boy genius that’s going to look at the Klondike bar and finally realize it’s ridiculous to have Americans everywhere licking and slopping up the last few bites of its deliciousness?

Let’s take a look at how much attention the Klondike folks have paid to this problem.  Here’s the product back in the early 1900’s:

Image courtesy of Klondikebar.com

And here’s what they look like now:

 

Image courtesy of my freezer

So what’s the deal, Klondike?  I demand answers.  Because after I get to the bottom of these Double Chocolate Goodness Bars, there’s a miniscule chance that I will be too tired and degraded from licking the foil wrapper to finish the 2nd pack still waiting for me.   And if you don’t come up with some kind of hope before then, I might revert to Ben & Jerry’s pints.

That will severely hinder my pudding loss project. ♣

 

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No More Pudding

8 Mar

Happy Lollipop Tuesday, folks.

Lately I’ve been feeling  very… full of pudding.  I jiggle where I shouldn’t jiggle.  It’s been suggested that it has something to do with my lifelong affair with pizza and ice cream, but it’s all pretty circumstantial evidence if you ask me.

Nonetheless, Dave’s a Hottie Mchottie and if I actually plan on being with him for any longer, I’m gonna have to lose the pudding.   So this week, I whipped out P90X.

There’s a lot of talk about P90X.  There are YouTube videos and blogs everywhere that people have dedicated to its magical powers to shape them into something decent enough for other humans to be able to stomach.   If you aren’t familiar with it, allow me to indulge you ever so slightly.

P90X is a system that guarantees it can get you sexy in your birthday suit in 90 days or you get your  money back.  But you don’t need to worry about filing a claim because the entire system includes a nutrition guide, a special smoothie you throw together after your workouts, and some butt-kicking workouts.  It’s pretty darn impossible for you to not lose weight if you follow the prompts and eat properly.    The whole system is masterminded by a guy named Tony Horton (like Horton Hears a Who), who will simultaneously make you feel like a fat slug and make you feel like it’s okay if you aren’t a fitness model.

whoa.

Of course I didn’t do the entire system.  I tried a workout – you know… to feel it out.  I’m seriously considering doing the entire thing from start to finish because it’s truly impressive how great of a workout you get in such little time.   My poison of choice was the “Ab Ripper X” workout.  Firstly because it sounds so badass.  And secondly because I thought it would be a good shock to my pudding center.

And that it was.

This workout is only about 15 minutes altogether, and it will wreck you.  At least – it wrecked me.  I thought I was all right the day after. I kept commenting to Dave (who already does it regularly) that I felt all right but I was getting a little sore.  He snickered and told me to wait until the 2nd day.

The 2nd day is awful.

Not only were my abs in total agony, but the terror reached all the way down to my thighs.  It felt like little gremlins were gnawing at my deepest muscle tissue every single time I stood up from my desk at work.   It was glorious.

I don’t typically care for workout instructors.  Even my faithful Pilates girl is awkward and talks too much.  But Horton-Hears-a-Who is so good to me.  He’s firm, he doesn’t talk too much, and he tells me constantly that it’s okay to take breaks.  I feel safe with him – like he doesn’t want me to be made of pudding, but he understands that it’s hard to make pudding do things sometimes.

So I might actually head to the store this week to get the goodies I need to do this thing.  In 90 days it will be June, and I could be a Hottie McHottie.

And then Dave will have to dump me for my insanity, not for my pudding center. ♣

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Public Restroom Paranoia

7 Mar


Are you all as paranoid in public restrooms as I am?

I’m not so sure this applies to men.  Men are usually pretty proud of whatever heinous acts have been committed during their bathroom stays and so I imagine there isn’t much to be anxious over.

But I gotta tell ya – I’m anxious.  I worry a lot.   I don’t typically like to use a public restroom to do the dirty deed, but when you have to go, you simply have no choice.

While I’m in there, I like to be quick about it.  I wait until the absolute last minute until what I dub The Decision Hour, which means I have to either decide to use a public restroom to poo, or I have to poo on myself.  There will be poo either way.

I almost always opt for the first.

But I really hate it when people know that I’ve been in there.  Like if it smells. I hate that.  I’ve considered carrying a personal anti-poo perfume just so that I can eliminate all evidence that I’ve been in the bathroom.  And it doesn’t just stop there – I don’t like to be spotted.  Which means that I will sit in the stall as long as I have to in order to exit the restroom without anyone witnessing my being there.  In large restrooms ( a la truck stops, rest areas, mega malls) this is of no concern. No one can possibly trace a smell in there and there’s too much traffic to be able to pin it to one individual with any degree of certainty.

It’s those intimate bathrooms that are tough – like one with just 2 or 3 stalls.  Or worse – one with just one regular stall and one handicapped stall.   If the regular stall is taken and I’m in The Decision Hour, I’ve gotta go to the handicapped stall.  And once I’m in there, I feel an intense amount of pressure to hurry in the event that someone disabled comes in.  They’ll be waiting on me and will be  incredibly focused on my every sound and movement.

I can’t poo under that kind of pressure.

Far more intense is a situation in which I’ve been found out.  If I enter the restroom needing to poo and am followed directly by someone I know and recognizes me, I will quickly shuffle into the restroom, pee, and leave.  I will then reenter as soon as possible after they’ve cleared the area to do the actual business I arrived for the first time.

There was a time when I thought that I was the only one with this hang up.   And you know what?  It could be the bathroom conspiracy theorist in me (see The Underground Bathroom Society post) but I seriously think I’ve spotted this same pattern of behavior in others before.  Perhaps they’ll stick to their guns if they’re spotted by a friend  instead of attempting reentry, but I’m fairly certain that women have lingered in the stall for me to clear the area before showing their faces by the sinks.

Maybe, just maybe… I’m not alone. ♣

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Someone Tell Them It’s Okay to Stop

6 Mar

We’re 6 days into March and all I can think about is who will be March’s live geriatric star.

Listen, it’s really hard to be the one to have to say this.  It really is.  Because everyone is thinking it and no one is talking about it.

But it’s time.   After Kirk Douglas’s display of confusion and incomprehensible babbling, I seriously think that maybe no one is going to say anything and maybe that’s why nothing gets done. So here:

Let’s stop asking old people do live television.

Did you see Kirk Douglas on the mess that was dressed as the Oscars last week?   Hey – I understand that he’s an icon and that people feel honored and blessed to be in the same room as him – but there are a number of ways to honor someone.  Let’s look into alternatives.

My heart ached for Dick Clark on ABC’s New Year’s Eve party.  Aside from what seemed like a costant state of disarray, I genuinely could not understand anything the man was saying.  I get it – he’s a legend.  It’s because of him that the show even exists.   But the point of being on television is to communicate a message to people.  And if all I hear is vowels and lip smacking, nothing’s getting through.

You know what? Why not have their segment prerecorded?  Or here’s a thought: subtitles.  I think geriatric can be considered a strong enough dialect to warrant it and I really think that doing so will go a long way to helping them maintain their dignity.

So listen – can we just all work up the gusto together to say what needs to be said here before this gets out of hand?

Dick, Kirk – hey.  It’s okay to stop.  Really. We’re going to leave you be. ♣

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So…hot…

5 Mar

Oh man, it’s hot in here.

The awesome thing about my apartment is that utilities (minus electric) are included in the rent, and are thus at a fixed and predictable rate.  And since the heat is gas, I don’t have to worry about opening a savings account just for winter heat.

Aside from the fact that gas heat is dry heat and dry heat makes me crazy (See Snap, Crackle and Pop post), it is also controlled by the building owners and not by me.

Hey – there are a lot of super awesome things about being the first floor apartment on the outer perimeter of the building. Like  I have windows, which means my cats have windows, which means my cats are happy.   When my cats are happy, they tend to puke on my personal belongings less.  But since I’m on the first floor, it is my sacred duty to endure the inconsistent and trying heat waves that are necessary for the higher floors to be heated sufficiently.

And quite frankly, it blows.

It’s raining outside.  It’s not even a particularly cold rain.  But if something is falling from the sky, my heat is on.  So here I am, considering renting out my living room as a Bikram Yoga space and stripping down to as little as possible without feeling like a hussy because every single window in my place is open and the predominantly orthodox Jew population in my neighborhood can see my sauna from the sidewalk.

I’m really thankful for heat.  I am.  I think it’s great that I never have to worry about whether or not I’ll have a warm place to stay in the winter.  It’s just that after so many months of waking up with super-static powers, a mouth so dry I can barely move my tongue, sweaty sheets, and high-pitched whistles of gas heat singing me to sleep, I’m just a little jaded.

Okay I have to go now.

The heat of the laptop on my legs is testing my tolerance and I shall surely throw it across the room soon. ♣

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Growing Into 25

4 Mar

I’ve been trying to “grow into” 25. 

Of course, I’m not 25 yet, but once you’re 23, you’re 25.  

Anyway it hasn’t been working out so well, the quarter-of-a-century thing.    I don’t feel in a funk, per say, because I’m always going after new things and have something on the horizon, which is a pretty groovy way to live life.  I don’t feel attached to my job, I have a fan-freakin-tastic boyfriend, and I’ve got documented proof that I’m growing as a human being.   So that’s pretty cool and stuff.

But the stinky part is how I miss college.  I mean, I don’t want to be one of those people who “misses college”.    And I guess I don’t – too many terrible personal things happened in that place and I wouldn’t go back for half a million dollars.  A cool mill? Maybe.

Well, if I’m being honest.

But what I do miss sometimes is how much darn fun it was the rest of the time.  I did some seriously crazy (and mostly legal and morally unobjectionable) things there, empowered by the energy of a group of similar-minded folks.    And looking back, I seriously miss having a spring break and then a whole summer.  I miss not paying bills and the adventure of trying to float on a miniscule loan refund each month.

I hunted out free food like a city rat and it was glorious.

But now I have bills and need to buy things and go places and do stuff.  But I’m not good enough at any of it that I feel I’ve got it covered.  Which would be nice because I could just relax.

I’m in a strange area of life that I haven’t heard enough stereotyping about to know how to act.  What are the typical symptoms of someone in my position?  Maybe I can google them, feel comforted and settle in to what I then know is the norm.

But then Dave and I were skyping with a friend, relaxing because it’s evening and evenings mean stop working.   I was making chai because in spite of how stuck up it sounds, it really is delicious.   And there in that moment, when I laughed with an old friend over the stove, I kind of thought this isn’t so bad.

Nearly-25 has it’s groovy moments too. ♣

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Genius Baby Blankets

3 Mar

You know, I’ve never been the type to heal my wounds with shopping.  One, I was poor.  And two, I was a tomboy.  Not to mention that where there is shopping, there are people.  And where there are people, there are stupid people.  That was pretty much enough to keep me away.

But I’ll be darned if I didn’t get stressed at work the other day and use my lunch to walk across the street and shop.  It wasn’t my fault, really.  I’m not sure what’s come over me.   Well, yes I do.

I’m going to be an aunt.

That’s pretty huge.  I mean it’s huge for me.  I can’t imagine how my brothers can  possibly be qualified to bring rear up a decent hellian and it’s my job to make sure they do it properly.  Oh yeah brothers is plural.  Both their wives are preggalicious, a few weeks apart.    It’s gonna be awesome soon, but right now it just means that when we have family outings, there’s usually one person sleeping and one person throwing up.

The only problem is that I can’t seem to stop buying things.  The little buns of chaos aren’t anywhere near done baking and I’m already buying adorable carrot rattles to help them teethe.

For some reason I think it will be hilarious if all the things I buy for them to teethe with are actual food items.   Or maybe it will make them want to be a chef.  I’m not really sure how that all works.   But I have a severe issue with leaving adorable baby things on the adorable baby shelves in stores.     Not long ago, I was playing with an ordinary piece of fabric the size of my palm with a bunch of tags sewn on it.  Asking price was 20 bucks.  20 bucks!?  For a piece of fabric with a bunch of junk sewn on it and some 2-cent pamphlet explaining how soothing it is for babies to play with tags and that it stimulates their brain.

They get you with the brain stimulation thing.  That’s pretty much all they have to say for me to think that for the bargain price of twenty American dollars, I can secure myself a baby genius.  So naturally, I’m going to buy the tag blanket.  How could I not?  I don’t want my nieces and nephews to drop out of high school.  I’ll buy the damn blanket.

It’s clearly a problem.  I’m working on it but it’s so hard to pass up soft, adorable, pastel creations that produce baby geniuses.

For a brief moment, I thought I wasn’t ready to be an aunt.  But then I had a moment of reflection and realized I have two cats, a musician boyfriend, and a theater degree.   All I need is a high school art teacher’s wardrobe and I’m all set.

But that will really cut into my genius baby blanket money. ♣

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