June 27th, 2008
RollerKaty at the Rollerblog reminded me about Wacky Packs. For the uninitiated, they were stickers that sported messed up versions of household products. Who could forget such “Darn, I wish they were real!” products like Fang: The Drink for Vampires?
If you are one of those children who later moved on to Garbage Pail Kids when the whole Wacky production screeched to a halt, you might be interested, thrilled, or shocked to know that now there is a coffee table book on the very subject. All the Wacky Packages and the corresponding history are presented in their full glory, finally!
If this thought intrigues you, read more about it HERE. Do I smell a Christmas present? I know that it will definitely be on my list. It is never too early to shop.
June 27th, 2008
My mother-in-law is a good cook when thinks about it.
One would think that if they had tomatoes, ricotta cheese, veggies, and pasta, and didn’t have enough time to make a full lasagna, the following quick dishes would come to mind:
A quickie pasta primavera. Afterall, water can boil quickly.
Italian panini. I guess you could skip the pasta and grab the waffle iron.
Pita pockets with Italian stuff in them.
A salad (the fastest of them all if you also have lettuce.)
My mother-in-law doesn’t follow this chain of thought.
Two Christmases ago we had a pretty low key holiday. We decided to make pizzas at home Christmas afternoon instead of going any place fancy. We stocked the kitchen with various cheeses and veggies. My mother-in-law brought over her new Presto Pizza Maker that she was looking forward to trying out, and we preheated the oven so we could cook two or three at once.
We couldn’t figure out why everything coming out of the oven was black as soot on the bottom, and the vegetables were rubbery.
“I was hungry and couldn’t wait,” my mother-in-law explained. Then we looked at the oven and had discovered, once again, that she had cooked something at twice the heat and half the time to have something finish under the wire.
If cooking is an art, but baking, or anything involving crust, is a science, you can’t mess with science!
June 25th, 2008
Tonight’s show was the last show leading up to the finals. Of course, that may not be so if they run any sort of clip show, or take a break so Fox can air a “special.” I think it is safe by now that the viewers on the west coast have seen the show air, so I don’t have to worry about being a spolier. It is down to Christina and Petrozza, with Corey being eliminated. Quite frankly, I thought the animosity between Corey and Christina would have done them in well before this point. In fact, I will “come clean:” I missed the show for several weeks due to a personal scheduling conflict and refuse to spend money in TiVo. Call me cheap, but I prefer “appointment viewing.”
In my opinion, Petrozza is the more deserving of the two based on overall career/point in life that he is in. I remember one season of Top Chef where there where it came down to a man who was slighly older and had been in the business and just had not gotten a “break,” and a very young upstart. They were awarded the position at Ramsey’s restaurant in the UK. The young guy won, went there and then quit because he didn’t think it was the right place to raise his family. Shouldn’t he have thought about that before agreeing to be on the show? The other contestant would have eaten that opportunity up. With Christina still a culinary student, would she prepared to make the leap?
Watch me be totally wrong about the outcome.
While I am a big believer in rewarding new talent, I feel really bad for people who are equally as good but who have put in the time towards their dream.
I should really talk. I wouldn’t make it one second in Hell’s Kitchen because everyone would get salmonella or Gordon Ramsey would think what I just cooked was so ghastly it really needed to be put out of its misery.
