TheSnackHound

I went to Kmart a few weeks ago with my aunt.  I had no idea that some Kmarts still had the cafeteria.  We were going to get dinner in a couple hours, but I was absolutely starving, and I couldn’t decide between a hot pretzel and ice cream.  As you might have guessed, I hemmed and hawed for a little while.   The pretzel was chosen, but a not even ten minutes later I went back for the ice cream.  Usually I am not such a glutton.  It was the whole “salty or sweet” dilemma.  Actually, I was trying to balance the salt content with some calcium.  Yeah, that sounds good.

The other thing that I didn’t know was that there was still Kmart Lay-Away.  I guess I had taken it for granted, with all the changing around.  Some Kmarts are now Sears stores and vice versa.  Layaway is a great option for people who want to budget, grab an item while they see it, and avoid using credit.  When I was a teenager, I remember that there were more stores that offered Layaway and I could shop for the holidays without having a credit card, but that is no longer the case.   Kmart seems to be in the minority.

One of the best small appliances that I think was ever invented was the Toaster Oven.  I have burned out several in my lifetime because I use them so much.  Microwaves make things kind of soggy sometimes, and if you are cooking for one or two people, or are making some sort of a side item that doesn’t need a lot of room, it is more economical to fire up the Toaster Oven than turning on the stove.   Also, you don’t have to wait for it to preheat.   I have baked small batches of cookies, reheated pizza, and made different finger foods in my last one.   When I was a kid, my grandparents had one right on the kitchen table and we’d make our toast as we ate breakfast.  For under seventy bucks, they have a pretty deluxe one that I would pick. I would have a nice clean new one to enjoy in a few weeks.

On the Kmart’s site, you can enter in your zip and find out which locations offer layaway. Just don’t go to mine and take the last Toaster Oven. It would make me sad.

Besides Kool-Aid Ecto Cooler, I was sort of ingrained with the idea that you just don’t drink anything that is green.  You can eat it, but you just don’t drink it.

Back in the day, which was only a few years ago, I frequented a grocery store that had a juice bar. A number of people would show up their everyday, hold their nose, and get a shot of wheatgrass juice.   Wheat grass fed cows live a lot longer than cows fed commercial feed or regular old run of the mill grass and hay.  Wheatgrass has Vitamin C and Iron in it, but what else it does for humans is debated from curing cancer to just being another vegetable to add for variety.  What’s not debatable is that it is an acquired taste.  A small amount of people love it, the rest of the world thinks its quite simply ghastly.  I am in the ghastly camp.

I was surprised to see Odwalla juice at Costco.  Buying a big 64 oz jug was only twice as much as the tiny little individual bottles, so it was definitely a good buy.  I don’t know what possessed me, but I bypassed the Mango Smoothie and other pleasingly colored juices and went for Superfood which is the dark color of a Haas avacodo.  More properly, it is like when you make guacamole and it sits in the fridge for a few days and the top layer turns really dark.  Maybe its closer to grass after the gray slush melts off of it.  A two year old using every single crayon at once is also a good analogy of the color.  In otherwords, it can’t possibly taste good.  My decision to buy it was the dollar value and based on the nutritional value.  Oh, and the fact that apple puree was listed higher than wheatgrass.  That should be a taste buffer.

I let it sit on the bottom shelf of the fridge for a week, hesitant to try it.  Yesterday I finally did, and I am happy to report that it does not taste like seamonster bath water.  It is actually good and slightly sweet tasting, but slightly thick so someone won’t steal it and chug it down right from the container. It was met with hesitance when I got a few other people to try it.  They were psyched up to think it was disgusting, so tasting it was an anti-climax.  I recommend Superfood.  Even if it won’t turn you into a superhero, it won’t give you that bizarre reflex you get in your digestive system the first time you drink straight wheatgrass.

Once you have your kitchen/dining/living room great room decorated, you can’t just stop there, right?  In older homes, where the floor plan is divided up into smaller rooms, it is almost expected that every room can be radically different.  In an open floor plan, everything has to flow more or less.  The bedrooms, even though divided by a door, are usually no exception.  Many times, you find yourself taking a chair from the bedroom and bringing it in the living room for additional company.

One day, my aunt-in-law came over and liked the concept of being able to mix and match the furniture. She took it to a little different level than I would have. She suggested we take the bedroom furniture and put it in the living room, as the bedroom would make a much cozier setting for tea and a tete-a-tete in the winter. “We aren’t Ma and Pa Ingalls with a woodburning stove in the living room,” I said.

Metal Beds can go with about any decor. Watch the color. If the rest of the house tends to have brass, or nickel fixtures and hardware, or if you have a wrought iron look going on in the kitchen, it may dictate which bed you choose for the guest room.  The Hillsdale Furniture has a variety to choose from, and bar stools to match.  Having matching barstools may have convinced aunt-in-law that her decorating ideas were justified.

There is a website called Home-and-Bedroom.com that you can pick out your headboard and sometimes other case pieces online. What are case pieces? They are wooden pieces like nightstands, and end tables. The Fashion Bed Group has even more metal and wooden frames to pick from from the traditional to the contemporary.  Since you don’t have to sit on a bed frame to determine if it is comfortable, something like that can be ordered with confidence online.  For those that hesitate on the concept, you would have no problem ordering from a catalog, right?  Just think of it is a catalog with far more selection than what’s in print.

I learned something new today. Did you know that there as such a thing as sick glasses? When your parents used to harp on you to wash your dishes before sitting down for dinner, perhaps they were not concerned about crosscontaminating the food with your 5th grade science project or the nose you just wiped. Perhaps they were more concerned that you did not infect the glasses in any way, or somehow spoil them.

Of course, I am being facetious. Unless your parents’ Obsessive Compulsive Disorder involves making sure no one touches a glass with dirty hands. Actually, I am not trying to make fun of folks with OCD, of which I know several, but that would be the only logical explanation being that a crystal highball or a sippy cup just doesn’t seem to be able to contract disease. They can carry them from wiping your snotty nose touching hands on them, but for them to get sick themselves? Just a carrier only. There are illnesses that can jump species but I have never seen one jump to an inanimate object. Disney Studios, of course, would disagree. Just ask 3/4 of the cast of Beauty and the Beast.

On a serious note, Sick Glass Syndrome is very real.

Q: What is a sick glass?

A: I am glad you asked!  A sick glass is typically crystal, but it can also be a cheap juice glass too.   Dishwasher detergents and mineral deposits leave a cloudy film.  Mineral deposits come form hard water.  These detergents and deposits eventually scratch the glass.

There is hope for sick glasses that don’t involve any antibiotics.  You can test an area with vinegar, and if you see a little ray of hope shining through, proceed to douse the rest of the glass in vinegar.  Many glasses can sparkle like the day they were purchased, cleaned, and placed on the shelf.  Be sure to rinse the vinegar off when complete, or your whole cupboard or kitchen is going to smell like salad dressing.  On the other hand, if you were HOPING that your kitchen was going to smell like vinegar, you may want to check out the salad dressing recipe from the archives HERE.

Around the holidays, it is important to me to keep other people out of the kitchen as possible.  It isn’t because they are critical or I don’t want the help, but because I take too long to get things ready.  I have absolutely no sense of timing and just don’t manage to get all necessary elements going concurrently.  It seems I can only focus on one thing at a time, and end up having something that needs to be reheated or is overcooked.  The max I can handle is two dishes at a time.  Any more than that and I lose it completely.

I thought this year that I would enter the Charter Communications Xbox Sweepstakes. If I win, everyone else will be so occupied with it that they won’t notice I am a little pokey in the kitchen.  In fact, they will actually want to delay dinner so they can finish the game. I am primarily talking about adult persons, of course. All sorts of neat accessories like a headset come with it, so you won’t have to be scrambling in the rush to buy the extras needed to make it work.

To enter, you need to live where Charter services are offered, so check the site to see if you qualify. You can enter one of two ways.  The first is to try Charter services for thirty days risk free and save fistfulls of dollars while you get your chance at winning one of 45 game system, or simply enter on the website.

 One thing you can do with leftover pumpkin guts is to make pumpkin muffins.

You will need:

The innards of your pumpkin
4 eggs
1 2/3 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1 cup oil
1 (16 oz) can pumpkin
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda

Combine baking powder, flour, salt, and baking soda in a mixing bowl.   Take another mixing bowl and combine and beat egg, canned pumpkin, sugar and oil until fully mixed and when it starts to get a little fluffy.  What does fluffy mean?  When it is not a big gloppy heavy mess.   Then, you combine all together.  Put the combination in muffin tins.   This is the same recipe for pumpkin bars, but you are making it in muffin tins so people will think it is a whole new recipe.

Now, it comes time for the the pumpkin guts.  First, clean your spatula and whisks thorughly.  Then, take some pumpkin innards and spread it on the spatula and the beaters.  Leave on the counter or return to a dry sink.  Put a few little pumpkin innard droplets here and there on a cutting board or a little on the oven.  Throw the rest away.  Afterall, the pumpkins we carve are not good pumpkins for pies or desserts.  It is pretty flavorless.  The smaller pumpkin varieties are the most flavorful and are what are used for pies and recipes.

Take the muffins out to cool after you have baked them on 350 degrees.  Optionally, you can put frosting on them if you like.

Invite people over and make sure they come through the kitchen.  Make a big deal out of forgetting to wash out your spatulas, etc.  Make sure they see them and comment on how valiantly you wrestled that Jack-o-Lantern and how proud Martha would have been that you used up all the pumpkin innards.  The muffins came out perfect.  They weren’t spongey or mushy at all!

When redoing a dining room or kitchen, it is very important to think of fabrics for several reasons. Firstly, there is the obvious fabric use as seat covers and window treatments in the actual kitchen or dining area. The second consideration is fabrics in any adjoining areas. With many newer or contemporary homes having a more open concept, often the rooms flow into eachother or multiple rooms might be combined in a single great room. Beyond just the challenge of having an eat in kitchen or a combination kitchen and dining room, the living room and entry area may also be a part of the great room.

When I worked in the furniture and decor industry, I remember using many Robert Allen Fabrics because of the variety, value, and quality.  Fabricsandhome.com has over fifty pages of offerings from the company.  There are many coordinating fabrics, so you can easily tie in the different living areas. No need for things to match exactly, of course, but when you choose the fabrics together to recover your dining room chairs, and pick your kitchen valance you aren’t making any compromises. You don’t have to worry about how something will look with an existing curtain because you are starting fresh.