TheSnackHound

John Maeda, President of Rhode Island School of the Design, declared the object which he thinks is the greatest design.   In fact, you probably have one.  Some people have more than one. Most of the time, however, people don’t really collect them, they multiply in the cover of the night.

To me, the all-time greatest design object is the grid that divides the utensils in your silverware drawer. It’s so humble I’m not even sure there is a name for it. But the minute you see it, you know exactly which job it is meant to do. Bravo!

Really? This thing?

Truth be told: in my youth it doubled as other things. We used them for stalls for tiny plastic farm animals, and found many uses in the use and maintenance of Star Wars action figures . It could be berths on a very large vehicle, the weapons storage bunker, or countless other things.  Maybe we could have actually used it for silver ware.   My mother has probably had the same one for thirty years.  It is eggshell white.  Prior to it, there was an avocado one that eventually cracked.

Now, I see many newfangled versions.  There is a bamboo version of whatever this thingie is.  It does not have the different shapes carved into it, just rectangular slots. Someone might be a little more free form on what goes well, but to perpetually structured people, that might be too much to handle.   There might be some mental lapse or panic.   I think the old basic might be a little unposh to some, but until someone makes a hand carved version out of olive wood with the proper slots, or a more progressive version comes out of Scandanavia, the original plastic version rules.

Last night, I had a dream where the fire department came.  It was a volunteer fire department and no one was on call, so they had to really get themselves together and it took them about twenty minutes for someone to get over to the house that I was in.  Of course, like in many dreams, it was not the house I was currently residing in. I am thinking about what this dream meant, and have come to a couple of conclusions. While I don’t believe the dream was in any way prophetic, I opened up my browser and found something miraculous that didn’t require any heat.

When I was a kid and my mom baked peanut butter cookies.  I would eat the cold raw dough on a spoon.  Looking back, I wonder if that recipe included raw egg.  If so, the queen of tacking Dear Ann Landers articles to my bedroom door warning parents about turtles and salmonella slipped a little bit.   By the way, I never had a turtle.  I had lizards and they never came downstairs to make cookies with me.

The cookies, when they were baked, didn’t seem as interesting to me as the cookie dough for some reason.  Imagine my delight (I can’t really do “delight” first thing in the morning, especially when I have a black eye from a home improvement injury that I will explain in a future post) when I saw what David’s Cookies sells.  They sell a set of tubs of COOKIE DOUGH.   I kid you not, LOOK RIGHT HERE!.   You get two 3 lb tubs of cookie dough to make cookies with to economize.  The site does nothing to warn people about eating raw cookie dough, so I am just going to ignore the “serving suggstion” of forming the dough into cookies and baking.  I will get in to less trouble that way.

Anyway, wth two tubs you can make 96 1 ounce cookies.  Or one giant 6 pound cookie.  You would have to use Gordon Ramsey’s oven for that, or go to the pizza parlor and use their big oven.  That would be one crispy chocolate chip.  I wonder how big those cookies are that they have at the mall that they write a birthday greeting on. You could make one of those, or a few, out of the dough.

David’s Cookies has many other offerings, of course.  All of the items are kosher, so you can be sure you will not be wedged inside of a faux passe when giving a gift to your Jewish friends.  Also, I was always under the impression that if something was kosher it was somewhat healthier or had less preservatives, then I realized some stuff isn’t that healthy for you whether it is kosher or not.   However, in my mind these cookies are healthier and have less calories than their standard counterparts, and it is all about mind over matter, isn’t it?

I have recently relocated, and have left sandy soil behind, and have traded for the dark, earthworm infested richness of the north. Unfortunately, I have to sit on my hands for a bit because there is something called winter here. There was winter down south, of course, but often there were vegetables and fruit that one could harvest twice a year instead of just once. Also, I find myself a little turned around, as normally herbs grow beautifully in the winter but not so in my new climate.  Starting from scratch with a large garden is a daunting task, but I have to think about things now, even though it is windy and cold and snowy if I want a successful crop this year.

In the past, I made due. I built enclosures out of wire hangers around what is already growing, but this time I am going to buy some beautiful enclosures so that I can really plan a visually beautiful garden. Stonebank Ironcraft has really nicely made iron enclosures for roses (shown above). My Great Grandmother had a beautiful rose garden and I think planning it out with items such as this would give the bushes a good start, and would motivate me to achieve the greatness she did. I love the look of roses on a cake.  Rose petals are edible, if you didn’t already know.   If you decorate cakes, roses and nasturtiums are the perfect choices for a garden plan.  I have put them in salads as well.

What I particularly like are the tree enclosures. They remind me so much of when I lived in the city.  To help them grow, the metal enclosures created a uniform look when the eye travelled down the street.   Also, I am sure it prevented the tree from being injured.  One couldn’t exactly put a hand through their well enough to carve their initials in it.  Check those out HERE.

Somewhere in my family, there is a picture of all my cousins (ages 13 to 38 plus spouses and significant others) gathered around a birthday cake while my 18 year old cousin is about to blow out the candles. But, in one picture, you see me with a camera in my hand. I took a picture of the opposite side of the cake from what everyone else has a picture of as it was right in front of my face. I saw a picture from National Geographic where a guy went in the water to get ten inches away from the face of a Hippo to take a photo of its eyeballs popping up on top of the water. That is how close I was,

Christmas is over, even though the Christmas season is not over, and I am all birthday’d out. There are several birthdays in the family that are on, before, or just after Christmas and my family feels that Christmas babies have the short end of the stick. Therefore, the week of Christmas is a whole week of parties. My cousin brought his girlfriend home to our home state for the holidays. She was raised Jehovah’s Witness (she is not now) and never ever had a birthday party before so he decided that it would be cool to have one for her. So we had a great time, with cake, ice cream, appetizers, and all the usual birthday fare plus dinner.

Then the next night was Christmas Eve. In years gone by, we all piled on in at my Great Grandmother’s house but since that awesome lady is no longer with us and has passed on, there really are no formal plans. My brother goes to spend time with his girlfriend’s family, and whoever is milling around with nothing to do goes to my parents house or my aunt’s.

THEN of course there is Christmas Day which starts off at one’s immediate family’s house with presents and food, continues on to Grandma and Grandpa’s house for a proper breakfast, dessert, and more food. Then some people split off and go to the “other side of the family.” We go to my cousin’s house where my dad’s side of the family gathers. By this time, my siblings have already been to their spouse or significant other’s family’s house in between brunch at the Grandparents and dinner at the cousins house. After this, if you don’t think you are ready to explode left, some people have plans with friends.

Just when you think it is all over, it is time for Emily’s party. The day after Christmas has always been when my cousin’s birthday has been celebrated. All the people who spent Christmas at my Grandparents are reunited a day later, plus people from her mother’s side of the family. More cake, ice cream, pizza, left over cookies from Christmas. This year, there was also a small chocolate fountain and taco dip.

So, then we got a break on Saturday. Today I just came home again. This time we went to Aunt Betty’s (mom’s sister) and she had dinner because she “never has everyone over and what a great time to do it.” So we had lasagna, more cake (not recycled from any of the previous gatherings), and side dishes. I could barely eat. Not because I really had a lot to eat today leading up to it, but I think it is all a cumulative effect that has built all week.

Now, all the people who don’t have some wild party to go to will be reunited yet again for New Year’s Eve. The aunts have already discussed who is bringing what. I don’t even want to think about it, or I will explode. Of course, there will be corny jokes all that day about “I am not eating for the rest of the year,” or “I won’t see you for another year, etc.”

…And then two weeks later we do it again for another birthday. Ugh. And I thought it was great having too much to celebrate instead of nothing. I will eat nothing but steamed vegetables in preperation.

I know of a few people that are still Christmas shopping.  They have an excuse.  They are not actually seeing their family for Christmas until tomorrow or until New Year’s Eve.  The reason being is that they rotate seeing their family or their in-laws every other Christmas or they were waiting for a loved one to come from overseas. There is one family that I know that missed getting together because they were all stricken with illness, as their seven year old had incubated it from having caught something from school.   That last family had no excuse though…they should have had everything ready beforehand.

These folks have little to fear because there are still last minute gifts from Kmart, as well as it is time to take advantage of sales even if the items are strictly for you and not to be given as gifts.  This has been a strange retail year in general, as retailers were hoping people would shop after the holidays to boost sales after crappy weather kept them away beforehand.  In fact, Kmart is boasting a “collection” of 25,000 quality gifts for under $25.00.  Let me clarify that statement.  You can’t walk into the store with $25.00 and come out with 25,000 items in your cart.  I meant that there are 25,000 gifts that cost you $25.00 or less EACH.  Just covering my rear end with that one.

For example, you can get a pair of Martha Stewart Nickel Candlesticks, or a Craftsman 23″ toolbox with comfort grip for your tools, or even your art supplies.  Just poke around their website or your local Kmart and see what treasures you can find to get the look for less.

On Christmas Eve, I was at a relative’s house. I imbibed on IBC Rootbeer while my other relatives had punch, wine, or beer. My uncle brought over a blueberry beer. He explained that it was a different tasting beer for people who didn’t typically like beer. With it’s red foam and deep hue, it was a bit unusual looking. My aunt thought it was delicious and rather reminded her of a wine cooler. She mingled around for a little while and wondered why she was feeling so tired.

My cousin, who used to be really into microbrews and even brewing his own (with mixed results) took a gander at the bottle. “Did you know that this had 8 percent alchohol in it? That’s not beer. It’s like malt liquor?” My aunt said, “Well 8% is low isn’t it? Afterall, fruit juice with only 8% juice is pretty junky for you.”

“No,” my cousin reiterated with an incredulous look on his face, “that means that it is more like a stiff drink. Just think if about 10 percent of this bottle was straight alcohol.”

“Oh, then I guess that is a lot.” Then my aunt who is normally a lightweight when it comes to booze, had another.

I was glad that she lived very close to my parents. I wouldn’t have wanted her to drive home like that.

The review of the Wild Blue Blueberry Beer was favorable, and above average for those that are beer drinkers and were present, though the approval rating was significantly higher for those that preferred wine to beer any day.  With many breweries coming out with blueberry beer, I consider that a little bit of a trend.  What’s next?  Raspberry?  Strawberry Beer with a whipped cream topping?

This is an embarrassing story, but I thought you would enjoy reading it.

Once I had a little fall.  There was a medflight waiting when the ambulance came.  Only, 911 misunderstood exactly what the emergency was.  They thought I was hit by a car and was trapped beneath it.  In reality, I was the one who hit the unassuming car.  With my head.   The car wasn’t moving.  It was parked, minding its own business.  I ended up falling under the car after it happened.   I was okay.   The ambulance and all that really wasn’t needed, but they told me they rather come and not be needed rather than not coming and someone dies.  An innocent bystander who only saw this all happen out of the corner of their eye was the one who alerted the authorities.

I was a little embarrassed knowing that the helicopter was waiting on the pad to burst into action if the opposite had actually been true. It was in another town, but could have gotten there in moments. I was unaware that there is actually a private air ambulance service that can be hired privately and doesn’t take away from the emergency stuff. In fact, they use it to transport patients for transplant surgeries, and to transfer patients between hospitals when an ambulance ride just isn’t practical. Afterall, sometimes there are rare conditions where one has to go to a regional hospital.   I would imagine a charity could have a fundraiser to fund a flight for someone in need whose condition their cause is about too.  Air Ambulance One is company that runs air flights.

Hmm….I wonder what the inflight menu choices are. If you are well enough to think about that, you probably don’t need to be airlifted. On the contrary, since the flights are more of less planned if you use the service and aren’t just scooped off your butt in a parking lot like I almost was, you will get catering! It only applies if, of course, your flight time runs over the normal time one would eat a meal. In otherwords, don’t consider it a theme restaurant.

At any rate, I am very glad that my little incident did not prevent someone who was in a life or death situation getting the help they needed! (And by the way, the person who owned the car never knew what happened. I didn’t make a dent!)

Marriage and Beyond is a pleasant blog about a couple in the Phillipines who are Reverand and Reverand’s wife at a church in Makati.  They have a sweet little 30 month old boy as well.  However, when I stumbled by the blog today, I found something very disturbing!  Go to Marriage and Beyond to check out what I am talking about.  I don’t want to spoil it.   The photo, that you will see there sort of brings up my curiosity of why the people at marketing companies think it is natural behavior for anthropomorphic food to appear to find the suggestion of eating others of their kind normal.  We had the M&M eating M&M’s, but at least I believe that the other M&M’s pointed this out to the one with the problem.  

Let’s not forget the Sproutwells.  I don’t understand why they apparently ordered salad, etc, and were veggies themselves.  I thought they would just consume minerals and water.  Than again, maybe their is a hierarchy to the vegetable food chain and some vegetables eat other vegetables just like some insects or mammals eat others that are in their phylum.   I wonder what vegans would think about that one.  

Of course, I would be remiss in all of the veggie vs veggie vs sausage man discourse to not to mention that sometimes plants (such as the Venus FlyTrap) eat insects.  To me, that is like plants getting their revenge against the insect kingdom.   They just decided they had enough with being stepped on, landed on and eaten.   Okay, I don’t think so, but it would appear a plausible theory.

“Over the years I got to be quite a connoisseur of soap. Though my personal preference was for Lux, I found that Palmolive had a nice, piquant after-dinner flavor – heavy, but with a touch of mellow smoothness. Life Buoy, on the other hand… YECCHH!”

-Ralphie Parker, A Christmas Story

One of my favorite holiday movies is A Christmas Story. One of my cousin’s children didn’t think that it was very credible, as who would wash someone’s mouth out with soap?  Of course, I was more than happy to inform them that I am quite knowledge about the subject, and it was known to exist into at least the late 70s and early 80s. It is nothing that you want to write in to the food column, that is for sure. Indeed, I think I said the “F” word and I think I would have been about five years old. My aunt cleaned out my mouth with Dial.

The taste doesn’t quite linger in my mind, but then that would probably be a good thing.  Of course, the act was merely symbolic, and the cruel concrete solution to a figure of speech.  It was like someone going to a chiropractor to look at their neck when their neighbor was being an idiot.   Dirty words didn’t hang out in one’s mouth, just waiting to come out, and in the meantime causing the mouth’s owner to have a very dirty one.  Soap was the sorbet of the mind, as the experience was supposed to be a palate cleanser giving you a clean slate.  On the contrary, dirty words hang out in the brain waiting for dispatch.  If you think about it, it would be technically more effective to send a little suds up one’s nose in hoping it would reach the brain.

After that, I don’t think I dared say it ever again, at least in front of my aunt.  In fact, I think that this particular incident was what made me into a little bit of a language prude.  I was the type of person that didn’t care what you said, but sure as heck didn’t swear.  That lasted until the second year in college when I just started letting it rip loose again.   Well, I was just using the language of the natives.  I was fitting in with my surroundings!

Perhaps the incident is why I gravitated towards the most bland and unadventurous diet during my childhood and early teen years.  Maybe it is not because I wasn’t exposed to many kinds of foods, but it was because my taste buds had been completely scrubbed off or damaged in some way by the soap incident.  Maybe I never ate sushi back then, not because it didn’t exist, but because I thought it all looked like little decorative soaps? Just maybe, like people can get clogged pores on their face, my tastebuds just got clogged with Dial.  Because my aunt had the sense to use white Dial soap because it went with more of the decor of her bathroom and didn’t leave a yellow mess like gold Dial soap, people thought the clogs were just spots of saliva or that I had frothed at the mouth versus looking like I had eaten crayons.

Maybe I should stop trying to pinpoint my strange childhood eating habits on a trauma and just admit that some foods are not particularly tasty to young kids, or that our family just wasn’t on the international culinary scene, but the working class midwestern cuisine scene.   I recall going to Denny’s and ordering toast with butter on the side, or ordering plain spaghetti with parmesan cheese, while the rest of the family ate all sorts of things that were colors other than white or beige or slightly yellow.

By the way, I didn’t like bananas except in banana bread.  The shade of yellow was just too colorful I guess.  I should have clarified and classified my food as “various shades of off-white unless it came to KoolAid, popsicles, oranges, or chocolate.”  I ate apples a lot, too, which you may argue are a definite hue (usually red, but green for Granny Smith), but you cannot argue that once sliced open the inside is….off-white!  You may say, depending on the species, it has a slightly green, pink, or yellow cast, but the story remains the same!

To wrap it up, I am glad that most people don’t seem to consider washing one’s mouth out with soap a reasonable nor effective means of punishment these days.  Perhaps that is why that when you go to the store today, you do not see bar soaps, dishwashing liquid, and then the other option being “soap on a rope.”  Now, the bars are still there, but many of them have been replaced by all sorts of pumps, bottles, and squeeze bottles of liquid soap.  THIS IS NOT THE SAME AS DISHWASHING LIQUID.  Now, that is in another aisle altogether.   My point being, it is not just the marketing geniuses convincing you that you must have various kinds of soap in the same bathroom or kitchen for the discerning guest, but that the need for soaps and soaps on a rope for cleaning peoples mouths out have dwindled.   If you had to use it for mouths too, the soap would be used twice as quickly, but is now going the way of the DoDo bird.Well, I was just thinking….maybe there is something to this afterall that affects not just the soap industry.

I have noticed since the soap incident that I have heard more F bombs on cable OR on live news shows where they only have a three second lag to bleep it out, and more of the lesser of the 7 Forbidden Words, and more peoples rear ends on Network TV than ever.  Well, maybe not “ever.”  Things are tamer than they were in the past.  In fact, remember NYPD Blue?  The real name of the show was “Whose Butt are we Going to See Naked This Week?” until that got old and they started getting back to business, except poor David Caruso who totally miscalculated his career just like the gal who played Tasha Yar for only one year on Star Trek.  But now he has had his own show, but he was hurting for more than a decade.  Alas, I digress.

But what if ceasing cleaning mouths out with soap really caused this whole thing, and the world would have never seen Dennis Franz’ butt, or no one would have seen Gordon Ramsey have his words bleeped out, but you could CLEARLY know what he said as he mouthed it very clearly.   I wonder what people who are deaf or partially deaf and read lips think about him…because to them nothing is bleeped out, unless you have something on a more family oriented show like Funniest Home Videos where they also put a black box in front of their mouth or blur the screen around their mouth so people who read lips wouldn’t know what the swear word was either, unless the context was so obvious.

I guess I have no point.  But, oh I do.  There is no way to know what the world would be like if parents were encouraged to clean children’s mouths out with soap.  Would the world be a cleaner place, or would be in the same boat we are now in polite society, but have a lot of people saying that there really is soap poisoning, and it causes birth defects.  Isn’t that what Ralphie Parker daydreamed about, that he went blind from soap poisioning as he grew up?  I guess that is one for the people who believe in alternative realities to figure out.  Maybe in a parallel time, where Bizarro Superman lives, it actually happens….