TheSnackHound

I received a high volume of email about my Pathogens post, so I am going to regale you with a similar mother+microscopic parasites story.

I was visiting my parents, and my mother was a little grossed out by my dogs licking my face.

“There was a guy who got TAPEWORM because he let a dog lick his lips,” she announced.

I scratched my head, “My mouth isn’t OPEN when they lick my face, and my dogs have a clean bill of health.  They don’t have worms.”

This went on for a few days.  I wondered where she heard this.  She indeed works at a vet clinic so this could be plausible.  However, she also was the one who taped Ann Landers colums to my bedroom door when I had lizards.  It was a story about someone who got salmonella from a pet turtle.  It turned out you can get it if you are a two year old who decides to lick a turtle, or to let the turtle help you prepare chicken for dinner.  Since I didn’t have turtles, nor would I ever lick my lizards, my likelihood of getting salmonella was very low.  There was also the big scare of 1995 when I got the flu or several bad headaches, she thought I must have toxic shock syndrome.  I was beginning to feel like Typhoid Mary.

Today the truth came out when i finally sat down to hear the story of the tape worm spreading dog.  I thought that I could be in for one of my mom’s “sorta kinda got half the story public service annoucements.”

“This guy’s lips were blue and they were losing him.  They found out that his spleen was rock hard and getting bigger, and they had to remove it in emergency surgery.  There were tapeworms that attacked his spleen and looked like they had been growing there for 30 years.  He was asked how could he have had tapeworms that long? It turned out that 30 years ago, he went to Cambodia.  It was the summertime, and a feral street dog licked his face and licked him on the lips, and they figured out that the dog must have had tapeworm fragments on his saliva that they passed to the guy.  All that time the man had been living with it.”

I said to her,” Okay.  First off, a feral dog wouldn’t probably lick somebody’s lips.  They would steer clear of people. ”

“Well, maybe it was a stray. Or it was a puppy.”

I continued: “Secondly, my dogs aren’t feral street dogs living in a mostly very humid country that has third world conditions in some parts of it.  They see the vet and get their shots regularly, they are on heartworm preventative and are tested every year for other worms.   They have not lately been near a river in Cambodia.”

“Well,” she said, “Fleas spread tapeworms, so you never know.  Fleas travel.”

“How does a flea who doesn’t live very long travel around the world? (BELOW: Photo of a flea performing in a flea circus…unless he is pulling around a cart in Cambodia…) How can a tapeworm fit inside a flea anyways? Aren’t they bigger than fleas?”

“Eggs.  Or fragments.”

“But if it is tape worm ‘fragments’ wouldn’t the tape worm be dead?”  I was really rationalizing now, “Like a killed vaccine.”

“You went fishing when you were a kid.  You know that if a worm gets cut in half that it can grow back the part that is missing.”

“But not if it is in twenty different fragments. And those were night crawlers.”

“Maybe it would be enough.”

“But a dog’s mouth is WAY cleaner than a human mouth.  I am more likely to make THEM sick.  But my mouth is closed.  And there aren’t too many diseases that humans can carry that can make a dog sick. So that won’t happen.”

“But it happened.  So you have to stop your dogs licking your face”.

And that was that.  So there you have it.  One guy, allegedly according to my mother, got tapeworm thirty years ago, allegedly from a dog, and not from wading in a swamp, getting bitten by a flea himself, or eating something that he shouldn’t have eaten while in a foreign land that wasn’t pasteurized or FDA approved. Go figure.

Dear Gordon Elliot,

You make me very sad.  Truth be told, you really don’t, but you make me somewhat wistful, if wistful means a tepid mixture of reminiscence and regret.  I miss your show, Door Knock Dinners.  It was on back in the earlier days of the Food Network, when they were just trying things out.  The game show, Can’t Cook, Won’t Cook was also on.   That is a topic for another day.

On the show, you wandered around a town, scouring the parking lots and the side streets for someone passing by, accosted them and asked them if you can come to their house and make them dinner.  I don’t know why that freaked people out. Women in sweat suits ran in the other direction and men in baseball caps just flipped their brims down.  They didn’t realize what they were missing!  If only they were willing, they would experience the culinary majesty of you making them a masterpiece…or at least something edible…out of the Twinkie, small portion of freezer burned casserole, a Dove ice cream bar popsicle stick, and McDonald’s mustard packets you had around the kitchen.

I have never sent this letter.  I could.  I found out that Mr. Elliot is alive and well and a produce of several food related shows, but alas, Door Knock Dinners is just a dim memory.  I don’t even have a picture or a Youtube of the show.  If I wanted to, I could probably write a letter to the production company and it might get to a publicist or his second assistant’s third assistant.  How would it ever get in to his hands without someone else already deciding if he would read it or not, and at such a moment that it may persuade him to bring back my favorite cooking show of all time?  It was all about spontaneity, persuasion, and ultimately, making due.

The only way I could think of is to find out where he is on social networks.   In fact, I have been reading about and mulling over MyLife. It is a site that aims to deliver on the promise of helping you find people from your past that you want to find. It extracts information from various sites where they may have a profile. In other words, the people in question want to be found.

The question is: Was Gordon Elliot really a part of my life?  No, I never knew him personally, but yes, he was.  The zaniness kept me company through bouts of flu, bad roommates, bad cake, and a bad relationship.  Of course, when I went through a streak of being healthy (how could I?) and worked a lot, I didn’t see as much of him. The show is now a distant memory, with the only content available occasionally being a clip of the Iron Chef edition of Door Knock Dinners. Could I potentially type him in and find out what social networking site was best to make sure that he would personally get my note? I don’t know.  He doesn’t share a school connection or work affiliation with me, so it would take some doing to wade through the sea of Gordon Elliots around the world.

If you have someone that you legitimately knew in a two way situation (you knew their name, but they also knew yours), you could possibly benefit from the site.   You might be surprised who has been wondering what happened to you, too.

For years, there were folks I knew around the Northeast that would take a day or a one night trip to New York City.  They would look at all of the fantastic Christmas window displays, buy some Christmas presents, and then maybe take in a Broadway show or see the Rockettes.   Of course, all sorts of culinary delights awaited you if you had the time.

The Hilton is promoting the Hilton Promenade at Branson Landing as the real ultimate place to go this holiday season.  Yes, Branson.   I always remember on The Simpsons that there was a brochure that said: “So You’ve Settled for Branson.”    Actually, in the past decade, it is being promoted as a “family friendly Vegas.”    There are a few different packages to choose from at both this property and the Hilton Branson Convention Center Hotel.  All of the packages are in tune with the season and have names like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.”   Packages includes features such as visits with Santa, Spa Treatments and more. For example, at the Hilton Promenade, the Santa in Branson Packages includes breakfast for four, picture with Santa, cookies and milk, and gifts for registered children.

The package that I think would be the most memorable would be the Polar Express package.  For $289, a family of four receives deluxe accommodations, first class tickets on the Polar Express, hot chocolate, a souvenir ceramic mug and more.   If you have additional children, or have other folks who would like to ride with you, additional advance tickets are available at $49.00 per adult and $39.00 per child.  Children are considered between the ages of 2 and 12.  Of course there is a Christmas Song that is “to kids from 1 to 92,” but the idea of “kid” is a little less loose here.

So, if you need a little break this holiday season, either before the festivities begin, or want to celebrate by taking a break from the relatives, Branson, with the views of the Ozarks might be a new place for you to try.

This little Mountie plate is available for sale on Etsy.  It is a souvenir of Canada, yet it is English china.  In other words, it is made in England. It may seem more appropriate than you think, as in Canada, the royals and other English accoutrements are well regarded, even when during some historical errors, it was not the same in the States. We just had too many bad memories of that business.

Despite this info, it still had me wondering what I would use a tiny plate like this for.  Would I get a tiny plate holder and display it?  Knowing me I would probably use it to put my wasabi and soy sauce.   I may even use it for change on a dresser.  What about for a salt plate?  I never seem to use things for their intended use.   In this case, I am not really sure what the intended use is.    Maybe all of the above is the intended use.  Maybe it is for someone who wants to buy every china pattern, but can’t afford to buy every single one, so they just get a tiny plate of each.

What about you?  What would you use this tiny plate thing for if you were to buy it, or if you do decide to buy it?

I will admit to having window shopped recently.  Why did I just window shop and not go in?  I decided to take a stroll at 10 P.M., and the store was closed but some of the lights in the windows were still on.  I don’t know if the sweater I was looking on was a deep eggplant color, or if it was actually really dark in there and it was supposed to be lavender, but the lines of the piece looked good.

Purple does seem to be the “it” color right now, and that is a good thing. I just don’t do well with white or beige clothing. The minute I wear something white, I am invited to share a big plate of marinara with someone, or I make chocolate ganache. Yes, white clothing seems to be a “one time use” item for me. The beautifully delicate looking cotton eyelet at left would definitely be a big fat no. Of course, I would want to try on the dress anyhow. Lucky for me its an outlet item and they don’t have my size. That certainly saves me from the latest, “Oh, let’s try white again,” kick.

A couple months ago, a video called Red Chair Confessions went viral on the internet. I speculated that the add was a tease from Red Box (though it is not really their style) or Target (why? Because of the color red.) It turned out to be neither of these companies. Although it is a bit more suggestive than I thought they were capable of…it was actually…. (drumroll)

…Talbots.

Now it all finally makes sense.  She did nothing illicit, she just can’t believe she is actually shopping at the same store that old money fifty-five year old women from New England shopped at, including her mother.  I will admit, the store window I was pressing my nose up against at 10 P.M. was Talbot’s.  It seems that the lines are still classic, but it is much more updated.

In fact, I think the company is moving in the right direction, because it seems like their website is Weenie Dog approved.  As you know, Dachshunds are a very important interest category as the two real life Snackhounds are doxies.  They always put news items at the top of my inbox when they suspect it might be related to helping out the cause of another Weenie. I fall for anything with a hotdog in it and they know it.  FOILED AGAIN!

Of course, sometimes the presence of a Dachshund is just a cheap shot. Companies around the world know that if they put a Dachshund in the ad, especially if it is a rescued Weenie, that I am automatically going to pay attention because I am a sucker. No, I am not some megalomaniac that things all marketing departments think that they need to synchronize their watches to my whims. But Dachshunds help. So does chocolate and horses. And Chevette Scooters. Why Chevette Scooters? It gives me an opening for a funny story. It involves five people, a dog, and a very long trip.

At any rate, enjoy your Talbot’s, your purple sweaters, your lap if a dog has graced it with the presence of its butt. Above all, buy up all the white button down shirts at Talbot’s before I lose my mind again and think chocolate, pasta sauce, and white clothes truly mix.

Mom recently had knee surgery.  Dad had the same surgery and was up and around within three days.  Mom, on the other hand, is taking a bit longer as hers was more involved.  She was going to be off of work for a week, and now she is home for over seventeen glorious days.  Ah, do you detect sarcasm?

I love Mom, but she is getting a touch of cabin fever.  I woke up to the strong smell of vinegar.   I thought someone must have purchased an entire vat of pickles and smeared them all over the floor, but it was only Mom cleaning out the coffee maker with a Costco sized bottle of white vinegar.   At six A.M.  I don’t rise that early, but the merriment had ensued beginning at that time.

I shuffled myself off to work in the office, occassionally poking my head out for a drink of water, or to let the little SnackHounds out to do their business.  Lo and behold, I decided to soak a pan overnight.

“You don’t have the pan soaking!  It’s not enough water.”

“What?”  I really did hear exactly what she was saying, but just didn’t understand how a pan full of water is not enough.

“See, there is a lip here.  You missed the top of the pan.  It’s not filled all the way up.”

“Oh.  Well.  That’s like two millimeters.”

“But its not to the top.  It needs to fill up and spill over.”

“Well, doesn’t the water slosh around when you turn on the faucet to rinse other stuff?  Or it might settle around at night.”

“Water doesn’t settle.”

Okay, so touche’.   I proceeded to scrub out the pan, now that the grime had been miraculously lifted despite being two millimeters shy of water.  Well, if it didn’t get completely soaked, would there be a crust there?  Maybe that’s how French chefs season their pans. They put painter’s tape over the crust they want to keep.  At any rate, I scrubbed the heck out of that thing and rinsed it about 67,000 times and then put it in the dish drainer.

“Wait, you didn’t rinse it enough.”

“What?” I asked.

“You didn’t rinse the other side again.  And there’s a very tiny mark on it.  You have to rinse off all the pathogens. There are pathogens everywhere!”

“I already rinsed it 40 times, you just weren’t looking.  Aren’t pathogens microscopic?  You can’t see them.  This pan could have a spot on it and there might be none of them.  Or it could look clean and be infested.”

Of course that is not what she wanted to here.  I sallied forth.  “Mom, get a little joy out of life.  So there’s one little spot on the pan.  Why fight people about it? Just find some happiness.”

“Well, clean dishes make me happy!”

I guess that game was over.

Moving back in with your parents after having lived in two different states, on one’s own, with roommates, married, then divorced is a big adjustment.  Of course, there are matters of personal space.  I have solved that largely by keeping all of my baking stuff in a box under my bed and then bringing out when I use it.   However, there is a big competency obstacle.  Mom thinks I am 18 years old again and I don’t know a heck of a lot about life.  Maybe she will have a different view of me as time goes on…when I finally move out…which will hopefully be soon.

There was a little take out place in a Boston suburb that I used to frequent. The Chinese food was so good that even when I moved across town, I still went for their food.   I would call right as I was getting in the car, and by the time I was there it was waiting for me.  Maybe I should qualify this whole story by saying that I am a rut eater.  I stick with one or two things until I get sick of them in regards to take out food, and then and only then, do I venture farther.  This may seem shocking coming from someone who writes about food, but there are times when all I want is comfort food.  To me, that means predictable.  I had a bad day.  I am in no mood for surprises.

The General’s chicken at Mei Ling’s had just a slight crunch or firmness to the coating. I later abandoned it for healthier fare, but for awhile I was on a General Gao’s chicken kick. Wait a minute, its General Tso. Whatever his name is, he made a pretty mean coating. Later, I found out that the slightly crunchy coating is so wrong. If you were really in Szechuan or wherever its from, the chicken should be a little more soggy and soft. I am not about to join the fan club for soggy anytime soon.

Can you imagine me winning a trip to China and sidling up to the counter to have a side of the General’s Secret Recipe, and telling people when I got back that Medford, Massachusetts, had better Chinese food than China does?  Well, perhaps for those very reasons, I will never win a trip to China. I could, however, win a Blu-ray disc player from  Sun-Bird.   No, I am not talking about the late model car.  Sun-Bird makes all sorts of seasoning mixes for Asian food that you can use in the safety of your own home.   If you want to go ahead and make your General’s Chicken crunchy or soggy, you can go ahead.  No members of the Food Police are going to come after you (as far as I know).

The Food Police may drive up to you and pull you over in China, however.  They are not there to arrest you, but to clue you in that the General’s chicken is not traditional Chinese food!  It was invented by a Hunan chef from Taiwan who emigrated to New York City.  Allegedly, the world only started shouldering the responsibility of producing the crunchy or chewy dish in the 1970s.  I don’t know when Sun-Bird first introduced its General Tso seasoning pack, but they do make one.  I always wanted to experiment to see if General Tso’s shrimp could be invented.   Maybe I will have to invent it this week.

To make the Sun-Bird General Tso, you will need to pick up a few additional ingredients. Soy sauce, oil, flour, and sugar are things that you will need to add the spice too.  Whoops.  You will need chicken, too, unless you want to be generous and make shrimp or tofu.

Sun-Bird is available at your favorite grocery store, and your least favorite one, most likely, too.  It is up to you to decide whether you prefer to have award winning customer service or not.  We are not going to force you.  To enter to win a Blu-Ray player, pick up an entry form.  They are located in your grocery store’s Asian aisle.  If your store doesn’t have an Asian aisle, don’t panic.  Wander over to the “ethnic” or “International” aisle.   Hurry up.  The contest ends October 31, 2009.   After that, you will have to just break down and buy your own Blu-Ray, knowing that you can’t possibly win because you didn’t enter.

Today is Thanksgiving all over Canada. Since Detroit is north of Windsor, Canada is technically south of me, so it is Thanksgiving in the South. Unlike the Independence days of Independence Day and Canada Day, respectively, that commemorate different events with the same theme, US and Canadian Thanksgiving Celebrations commemorate the same event. The traditions of American traveled North in this case, and Canada has been celebrating it since 1879, although the date was not fixed until 1931, when Thanksgiving and Armistice Day occurred on the same day. The holidays were split after that point. In Canada, it is now the second Monday in October, to commemorate the end of the Fall Harvest, while in the United States it is on a Thursday.

To celebrate, dear friends, here is a painstakingly accurate reenactment of the very First Thanksgiving on record.  Of course, it involved capturing it with technology that was way ahead of its time.

A little while ago, I checked out MyLife. It is a different kind of people search site. It is not one of those private investigation sites. If it was, than you would have to grow a Tom Selleck moustache or decide if you were Maddie or David. You remember Maddie and David….Moonlighting? I swear I was a little kid when that was on and wasn’t allowed to watch it.  I just remember Bruce Willis from the Seagram’s commercials. It’s Wet and It’s Dry. Whoops.

On the contrary, it sort of extrapolates all the information from social networking sites and figures out where all the folks you know are.  It also finds the people who you want to know.  Again.  You don’t have to register for Classmates.com, Reunion.com, Myspace, Facebook, Bebo and all the others to try to connect with everyone.  Luckily, since these folks are all over the social networking sites, they WANT to be contacted, and you are in no danger of contacting anyone who is now in the witness protection program by accident.

There is a dashboard area that starts off by showing you the people in your address book, and then looks for people that you graduated with, and share other associations with.  The thing that is so different is that you can find out who is trying to contact you as well.   I guess that would make people really careful what they clicked on or who they searched for.  I bet you wouldn’t search for half the people on the internet if they were able to see you doing it.  Well, I guess it doesn’t really talk about people who are searching for you, but who is looking to connect.  This is actually a great feature, because I bet there are people out there that are searching for you, and you are searching for them, but neither of you have the guts to contact eachother.  If you find that you have both been searching for eachother, I would consider that a sign that you need to get in touch. It wouldn’t be stalker-y at all to tell someone you saw them looking at you, because you know its true.  Nope, nothing stalkerish if its true.

Is there anyone, out of all the people you have ever known, that you would love to reconnect with?  Maybe you wouldn’t want to be their bestest buddy, but would you want to know how their life was going?  Would you rather keep to yourself and not know?  I wonder if we somehow break a weird law of physics by reconnecting with people around the world.  I mean, back in the day we were lucky to travel outside of our town and when we picked our covered wagon up and hauled it away, the liklihood of seeing someone again was almost.  I think I like our situation just a little better.

You know the old playground song “Found a Peanut,” don’t you? Just in case you want to get it firmly lodged somewhere in your cranial lobe, here is a sample of just some of the many, many verses** (**Of course, it goes on to talk about dying, to be told that its not your time, and then going back down to your body and then finding a peanut again.  Alas, the kids at our school were underachievers and never even got to the point about the doctor even entering on the scene.)

Found a peanut, found a peanut,
Found a peanut just now,
Just now I found a peanut,
Found a peanut just now.

Cracked it open, cracked it open,
Cracked it open just now,
Just now I cracked it open,
Cracked it open just now.

It was rotten, it was rotten,
It was rotten just now,
Just now it was rotten,
It was rotten just now.

Ate it anyway, ate it anyway,
Ate it anyway just now,
Just now I ate it anyway,
Ate it anyway just now

Well, I did find a peanut just now, too.  It is on a Caro-nan vintage basket purse.  As you can see, it is portrayed with exact realism and in exact proportions to the skyscrapers and quaint historical buildings of Savannah, Georgia.  Is the peanut smiling, or does he have enormous teeth that he/she/it refused to get braces for when it was just a mere bud on a peanut plant, if that is how indeed smiling peanuts start out.  it is much less scary than Mr. Peanut, if you have an irrational fear of monocles.

 If you would like to check this peanut out for yourself, this vintage purse is currently for sale on Etsy.  That is, if you hurry up before the peanut growers association of America finds him and takes him back to the lab where smiling peanuts have mutated and start to desire using canes and wearing top hats.

I was helping some relatives work on their house last week. They bought a place in a coastal town where if I jump up and down really crazy, a freighter will honk at me.  Maybe even someone from the other river bank will wonder why my relatives let me Out and Aboot** in my crazy state of affairs (they may think Michigan looks like a crazy state as well from their vantage point).

**= Actually, Out and About is not really spelled that way in Canada.  It doesn’t sound that way either, but its the closest I could get.  Some people who grew up watching the CBC, such as myself, and some of my Canadian friends raise to mid vowels with the onset of a dipthong when proceeded by a voiceless obstruent or a mild plosive like p, b, k, or t at the end of a word. 

In fact, I was listening to the radio while I was painting, and they were advertising what sounded like the most awesome ice cream place since awesome came to awesome town. I went to go look for it, but I was so upset because it was over the bridge! Literally, I could have ran a mile down the street, walked across the bridge and told the dude or the dudette on the other side of the bridge that they needed to tell me where that ice cream place was because it was an ice cream emergency of international proportion. Unfortunately, I looked like a hobo in my painting clothes and I didn’t have my birth certificate with me, nor an enhanced license, nor a passport. Of course, there is delicious ice cream in the United States, but it is about what you can’t have!

If you are fortunate enough to be able to wave at me across the river, pointing to your big old waffle cone and laughing, you are eligible to enter to win a kitchen makeover.  Yes, that’s right.  Maple Leaf markets is giving away a $32,000 kitchen makeover. Yup, $32,000 big ones.  Also, other lucky winners will receive one of 12 Frigidaire® fridges.

What is the meaning of all this?  Maple Leaf Market has launched a new website that features meal ideas and more.  There are new personable characters on the website: The Butcher, The Baker, and the Candlestick Maker.  I’m only kidding.  There is no Candlestick Maker.  It’s a Pasta Maker.

I don’t know what kind of integrated technology it is, but the aforementioned people do little demos for you. It is like you are at Maple Leaf on sample day, and you are walking around. It is not a video that you have to start in a traditional way. Also, check out what they do when they are done with their demos. They just sort of look around like they are waiting for the next person to come by.   I am just completely intrigued by this.  The lady at left is The Baker.

Unfortunately, these people don’t come with the new kitchen if you win. You will have to make all of your own stuff. Bummer. You can’t win, though, if you don’t enter. If you live in Canada, you can enter once every single day on the new Maple Leaf website. Just enter your email address where it tells you and you are good to go to win the Dream Kitchen or a brand new Fridge.

As for my relatives, they were tearing out the kitchen two weeks ago.  I am going to suggest putting a lasso around the whole thing.  They can wait until the river freezes and then pull it a half a mile across the water.  Then, they will be in Canada and can win a kitchen.  However, I am sure that the expense of moving a two story home across the ice would completely eat up any profit or cost savings from winning a free kitchen.  I would be happy enough to win a fridge.  However, it would be a real let down to put that much effort in and just get the fridge.

Well, they are out of luck, but good luck to YOU!