TheSnackHound

A bunch of time back, I had an insane moment and decided to get two dresses altered instead of consigning them and buying something new. Usually, tailoring is frugal but not when you have a skirt with a handkerchief hem and three layers, nor a dress that you purchased thinking you would hem it when its actually a foot too long. Through word of mouth I heard about Elinor who did a bang up job. She was a slip of a woman, about sixty, with plastic costume jewelry from elbow to pinky.

Little did I know that Elinor also did a few other things on the side out of her little hole in the wall storefront. She also made wine. There was a large coat closet with a sliding door, which revealed at least 12 glass jugs full of various shades of liquid, all with a little balloon on each end. Each apple juice bottle or wine jug had a name scrawled in black magic market. There was Chardonnay, Shiraz and something called “Grandpa’s Favorite.” I was afraid to ask about that one. The legal consultant in my brain quickly sorted through the files somewhere in my cerebral cortex and did not find any sort of precedent, but did alert me to the corner of the health department’s lips being curled downward about food manufacturing in proximity to people in states of undress…and, oh, Stitch Witchery.

Elinor took my jacket and hung it dangling somewhere above the intersection of  Shiraz and the aforementioned family label. A moment later, I was whisked behind a dressing room curtain and was a captive audience, unable to escape the hum of the sewing machine tapping away while I waited and wine-y stories. Elinor drank from some sort of sippy cup as she sewed. Elinor talked with her hands while she stitched, which made the process much longer.

“Ah, you noticed the wine.” I was unsure whether she was referring to the closet or her sports bottle/sip cup. “I am trying to make it just like Grandpa made it. I use the grapes from my yard.”

“You have Shiraz grapes?” I asked.

“What? No. I don’t know what they are. Shiraz just means its thicker, doesn’t it? I add flour to it. Just like making gravy. Do you want to try some? It’s Australian, you know.”

“No, that’s alright. Wine gives me headaches.” It doesn’t, but there was no way I was going to drink half fermented wine.

“Oh, come on. The headaches come from the tannins. Mine is all natural.”

At this point, I was a captive audience with my jeans hung up just outside the curtain and my dress on the machine. I could make a grab for it and throw my jeans on and make a run for it. Why didn’t I just leave? A moment later, a blue pinstriped rust bucket thundered up the driveway. Elinor’s son walked in. He flung open the closet door and grabbed the biggest jug, ripping the deflated balloon off the top end.

“What are you doing?” Elinor asked.

“I gotta drain the oil out of Bessie again. I figured you woulda snagged this.”

When I was much younger, my brother and I were entrusted with washing the dishes together. Little did my parents realize that it was less helping out than it was a form of punishment as we were stuck with each other for half an eternity. The evil dryer could slowly and meticulously buff a pan and then declare, “Rinse it again, I see a BUBBLE!”

“No! There is no bubble.”

“But now its wet again. So you have to redo it.”

“So dry it.”

“It touched the gross dishwater.”

The evil washer could retaliate by taking exactly five business days to wash a plate, going over with every square inch with a brillo bad.

“My hands are all pruney. Where are the gloves. That’s better. But now my hands feel weird. I have to go to the bathroom. I need hand cream. These gloves don’t fit.”

The most unkind cut at all would be washing the stoneware. Not the glazed stoneware mugs, but the pie dish or something to that nature. It made the best pies as it heated so gosh darn evenly. Of course, nowadays the stoneware isn’t such a paper weight and its beautifully glazed, but the dish in question was. It was very 70s. Plenty of browns. And browns. It was porous at least on one side and seemed to soak up water like an over water terracotta pot, which would be good for a plant if you were abandoning it for a vacation but allowed the washer to play mind games with the dryer. In fact, after cleaning/drying lots were cast, the washer could beg for the stoneware to be used.

“It’s still DARK. That mean’s its WET.”

“Then it can sit to dry. But if its dark it mean’s it’s dirty. YOU have to wash it again.” Touche’… maybe the dryer was learning to be equally as treacherous.

Our younger sis and cousins don’t know how good they have it with stoneware produced in such spritely colors and glazed in the nooks and crannies. Oh, yeah, and they most likely have a working dishwasher where they will never know the kind of feuding that occurred with children in their family a half a generation before.  I should just go ahead and buy a stoneware pie pan for my dear bro, though he has probably wiped the incident from his memory in an act of repression. The horror.

I was very excited to open up my mail, or should I say, read my blog comments waiting for approval. None other than the REAL Fudgie the Whale came by and commented on my post about Carvel ice cream and the similarities between the Twitter “opps” whale and Fudgie the Whale Cake.  They are like negative reverse images of eachother.  You can read more here.  Yes, THE Fudgie the Whale. I know you are all infinitely jealous of me now.  He writes:

Thanks for the mention! Yes, I too, think the Twitter folks may have had me in mind when they built their fail whale. What can I say? I’m flattered! And, yes, Fudgie is still alive & well…helping to spread the word of Carvel’s delicious ice cream to all who will listen. You can follow me on Twitter at @FudgieWhale.

Stay cool!

Fudgie the Whale

Did you READ that? Fudgie told me to Stay Cool. I don’t know if I can wash my right eyeball again (I was looking at the note with my right eyeball. Yes, I can use my eyes separately and the left eye didn’t have any inkling of it. It was zoned out.

See, Uncle Ben and Frito Bandito and Mrs. Buttersworth, the guantlet has been thrown down. I have mentioned you many times and :sniff: you have never written me back.  But then again, Uncle Ben is so retro he doesn’t have a twitter account, and Mrs. Buttersworth…well, being a Glass-American, her molded arms make it impossible for her to get out and about like she used to.  I suppose culinary icons who are a bit more regionally based have more time to tend to their fans than when someone gets as internationally reknowned as Mrs. B.  Of course, with the way the internet is, folks way beyond New England are probably craving a whale cake in the mail.

At any rate, I am going to try to come down from my celebrity encounter, maybe throw some water on my face and smack myself around. I need to get back to making lunch.

Stranger than this night….
What could be stranger than this night
Undisciplined children
And a tube of GLUUUEE…

Recently, I wrote about a friend of the family who had passed away. I frantically called my cousin to make sure that she heard about the passing from someone’s voice rather than a Facebook status update. It is quite disconcerting to find out about deaths that way.  Finding out about the OD or the untimely trampling by a zoo animal of a celebrity that you will never meet is one thing, but it is a bit weird if you actually knew the person and would normally hear through other channels.

The funeral was equally as unconventional.  Granted, I had seen it all.  One day, I will tell you about my brief stint in working at a funeral home but that’s for another day.  Some people wanted Frank Sinatra and a smog machine.  Of course, not the REAL Frank Sinatra because he’s dead, but his music.  There aren’t too many Sinatra impersonators, are there? Well they are, but they don’t call them that.  They call them “tributes” and “memories of Sinatra” versus “JimBob the Sinatra Impersonator.

At any rate, the funeral was actually quite tasteful. It was the various behaviors that made it a day we won’t forget for a very long time.  There was a child in the family that was quite amok.  Now, I love kids but I think there is a time and a place.  When I was two or three years old, I would have had a babysitter.  If I made an actual appearance at a visitation or a funeral, it would be brief and not every day of the three day affair.  Nerves ran thin and it was assumed that a three year old was capable of making her own judgement calls. Crackers, french fries and toys were all over the place.  On top of it, since apparently she had been encouraged to sing into the microphone the night before, the funeral guests were treated to shrieking and wailing during the service.  I nearly split an ear drum. A gentleman who I presumed was a family member deftly twisted his hearing aid to “off” for the rest of the ceremony.

It just went downhill from there. The tot was running around and jumped up on the kneeler to dangle her body into the casket. Not only did a parent not remove her, fearing that a major tumbling would come down, but they actually encouraged it.  They thought that she must be “expressing her grief.”  Apparently, she was smothering french fries all over her grandmother’s face, and was shrieking because her grandmother wasn’t “eating the french fries.”

I am not one to criticize other people about their parenting skills. Okay I am.  But I don’t have room to talk because I do not have children. However, I think i have at least one pinky finger of common sense.  Actually, its a different finger, but it would be very rude to hold it up to show people.  That would be crossing a line.

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of LG Chocolate Touch. All opinions are 100% mine.

This is a public service announcement from TheSnackHound.com. I have sent a missive to some dastardly individuals for our mutual benefit. Read on to find out what my druthers are in a bunch about.

Dear All You People at LG or Verizon or Something or Other,

I wish to upbraid you for your blatant disregard for my welfare. When I heard that you were coming out with the LG Chocolate Touch, I was understandably very excited.  “At last,” exclaimed I, “I will finally realize the powers of King Midas, only except things will turn into my favorite food. Although gold would be quite handy, you definitely would inspire a formal inquiry into your behavior if you tried to cash gold bars in.  So, I will never starve.  And I can sell chocolate sofas and armchairs for Valentine’s Day.”

Shirley Bassey would sing my theme song, which would be a really amateur hour rip off.  “Choc-lateFINGer… She’s the girl…the girl with the Chocolate Touch.” Yep, watch out pretty boys.  My heart is cold…er…brown…er…has either a chocolate truffle or fruit filled center.

However, I almost had a conniption fit when I discovered I had been throughly and utterly flim flammed. I would never be the woman with the Chocolate Touch.  At least the kind that I was envisioning.  No, I will have to be content with a phone merely named the Chocolate.  I should be mildly amused.  Just like I at one time coveted, the 1950s handbag called The Dachshund, not because it had a Dachshund on it, but just because it was called that, I should get some sort of I should get some sort of a minor thrill about owning a phone called the Chocolate.  Just as my interest in the handbag settled into slight bemusement, I should at least crack a minor smile at least at one side over the phone.

Where does the blatant disregard for my welfare come in?  Well, there was clearly some disappointment here.  The boat on my emotional well being was slightly rocked, but so were my teeth when I drowsily thought that the LG Chocolate was a chocolate waffle.  Oops.

If I were really excited about this Chocolate thing being a phone, I might be tricked into really liking the Iphone-esque touch features.  I may even be hoodwinked into enjoying the Dolby Sound.  You know Dolby.  That was the thing where the weird sound would come on at the beginning of movies to let you know that you were experiencing Dolby Sound and not just hearing noises.  It’s like Technicolor for the ears.

Well, wait a minute.  I can watch TV on my phone.  And cook on it.  Wait.  No I can’t do it yet.  There you go, guys.  There’s your market.  I’ll buy 20 of them if I can have a little arm that comes out so I can use it as a blender or garlic chopper.  But then it would get messy.  Oh wait a minute. There’s a 3.2 megapixel camera in there. Wait.  I want one. Gulp. Slurp.

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.

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.

Gather around and I’ll tell you the story about the very famous Cowboy who had Cashew for a head.  According to the tag that he came with, “Mom” bought him in Miami Beach back in 1940s.  Well, actually, I am reading into it.  Mom “brought” him from Florida.  We don’t know if the person’s Mom just found him and felt sorry for him and let him hitch a ride or what.  At any rate, someone had the strange idea that they should make a cowboy doll, since when tourists think of Miami, cowboys are the very first thing they think about.

Whoever made him in around 1940 didn’t have the money to buy a porcelain or wooden head from the store, so they just found a cashew nut lying around and used it.  The alternate story, and the one which I think might be preferable, is that someone found an unusual cashew that looked like a head.  Instead of being the person who found the Clint Eastwood Potato and just letting it speak for itself, they had to hammer the message in our heads and make a body for it, just so we would really be sure that we understood it looked like a head.

At any rate, at some point in time, Jeanne, who has a vintage shop on the internet, called VintageStoreFront found him toddling her way, and she offered it for sale.  A few folks decided it was the darnedest thing they had ever seen, and they Twittered it and Facebooked it around the web.Through the process, I met some gals on Twitter who thought he was just as odd, yet strangely endearing, as I did.   Even though Cashew Nut Head Cowboy sold, he has been not far from our conscious thoughts since July 30th.   @sewzinski (who makes some pretty awesome hand embroidered wallets, by the way), thought that myself and @chrissyjensen “Need to get ahold of urban outfitters. They have macrame owls when they should have nutheaded cowboys.”  We wondered for awhile, since he sold so quickly, if he was happy in his new home.  I guess there was no way to really know unless the buyer was also on Twitter and joined in on the dialogue.

The whole conversation started again when she thought of me, as she saw buckeyes on her walk.  I asked Jeanne if she had received any letters from the Nuthead about his wellbeing and she said no.  We just all hope he is very happy.   @sewzinski wonders if his preference for Endustis being satisfied, and @chrissyjensen suggested we tweet with a location so we might be able to create a local trend in the topic.

For whatever reason, we are now tagging our Cowboy Nuthead conversations on twitter with #cowboynuthead.  You can too!

Jeanne says: “Thanks for keeping him alive in everybody’s minds and hearts!”

The Emperor Nero didn’t venture outside of the house unless his astrologer said it was okay, and we all know what happened when the Andrea Gail*** crew ignored concerns about The Perfect Storm.  As for me, I just go with my gut, even if the Magic 8 ball says that things are “doubtful.”  Of course, I do pay attention to the warnings that you have to adjust your cooking time depending on your current elevation.   I lived at or near sea level before, but never lived on top of a mountain, so it hasn’t affected my life all that much.

What if there was a way to know if a family gathering was going to be a great time had by all, or whether it is going to be a crankfest?   You may not be able to tell weeks in advance, but now you can be alerted the morning of.   You see, there is now a very special website (MediClim.com) that was dreamed up by Dr. John Bart, who received his doctorate in medicine, not chemistry like Dr. Laura did, and a meterologist Dennis Bourque.   It lets you check off what weather exacerbated conditions you have and the site will alert you in the morning to weather you may find things acting up that day.   Since Mr. Bourque is Canadian, I can trust that he KNOWS all about snow and such other moist matters very well.

I decided to check off heart disease, diabetes, migraines, asthma and .  I don’t have all of those problems.  Not at all.  However, I do know people that have one problem or another.   If I am having a party in the afternoon and there is a high alert for certain things, I know that certain guests may not be feeling well and therefore I will hide any board games that require guessing and also put away the salt shaker and the vollyball net, because everyone will be in a short tempered mood and it will not be a pretty sight (OR site).  I will plan gentler games such as “Who Can Fall Asleep Sitting in a Chair Faster Than Grandpa.”   For the kids, it will be the perennial car trip favorite, “Whoever Can Stay Quiet The Longest Wins a Prize.”

Another thing that you could do would be to really impress people into believing you are highly emotionally intelligent and can sense over the phone that someone is not feeling well,  ”Hey, Bob…I am sensing that you are a little stiff today…I know Arthritis and weather don’t always mix.”

“But it isn’t raining quite just yet…but how did you know? My knee is already aching. You are so thoughtful!”

The one thing I would hope that this site would do eventually would be to predict a day or so in advance, that way people could plan their activities accordingly in their calendar ahead of time to avoid certain people….I mean….activities when achey weather strikes, or is going to.  People could plan important power meetings around it.  I, on the other hand could predict if I should bake a cake tomorrow or not.  Of course, these reports have nothing to do with oven hot spots or altitude of the kitchen.  Rather, it will have more to do in predicting the patience of the baker, therefore dictating the simplicity of the recipe.  We all know it is better for me to make more complicated things while I am aggravated because trying something new compells me to read the directions, versus “thinking i know” and royally screwing something up.

(***= No, I understand that it was not really the crew’s fault. However, if George Clooney had LISTENED to Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, things would have turned out a heck of a lot differently.  It would have been a pleasant documentary on how John C. Reilly’s accent was accurate, Diane Lane’s was quite iffy, and George Clooney was too much of a star to be required to learn one.)