TheSnackHound

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Haagen Dazs. All opinions are 100% mine.

Häagen-Dazs®, the makers of all of the most decadent ice cream flavors, including my favorite – the Häagen-Dazs® ice cream bars, presents he new….oh. Wait a minute. Ice Cream Bars isn’t a flavor. It’s more like a state of being. You know what I mean. Anyway, the big H-D presents Passion Profiles. PP is a series hosted by Entertainment Tonight Canada’s Cheryl Hickey and features profiles of folks all over Canada who share their culinary and creative passions. The best thing is its on the internet, for lazy….I mean really busy people who are multi-tasking.

The goal of the show is not a high profile promotional yappity-yap but the opportunity to share some tidbits that will inspire other people. If they were interviewing me, or profiling my passion for the food related, I would probably at first try to show them some oddball collection of something just to toss people off the scent.  Then, I would go in for the double whammy and share stories about the year long quest I am on for the perfect chocolate bar, as well as discuss the Golden Ratio?  Well, the golden ratio has to do with the perfect glass of lemonade.

To create the perfect glass, the Golden Ratio is 1-6-6. (Never 6-6-6 because some folks are superstitious of that number, plus you would rot all of the enamel off of your teeth.) One cup of sugar, six squeezed lemons and six cups of cold water. For larger batches, just multiply. Of course for a selfishly small batch, it would be a 1/2 cup of sugar and 3 lemons and 3 cups of water.

And everyone would say, “so what?” And then I would also whip out the three ingredient cooking recipe: 1 cup sugar, 1 cup peanut butter, and 1 egg. That’s peanut butter coolies, folks. Then I would do something that would be considered cheating. For the pre-snack meal, I would make three ingredient salmon: 1 piece of salmon, lemon and butter. Now that’s really lame because that’s just seasoning salmon. It’s really not taking three things and through the magic of science making it all something new.

The next webisode of Passion Profiles is NOT starring me (thank goodness for you guys), but Mark McEwan, owner of McEwan’s, a high end grocery store, as well as the owner of One Restaurant and Bymark, North 44)°. Why should you listen to Mr. McEwan…well he started off as a dishwasher..at the very bottom of the rung and worked his way on up. So don’t fret if you’ve got talent and drive but all they offer you at first is sweeping a few floors. Life is what you make of it…have faith.  And treat the diswasher, the garbage-emptier or the dog poo picker upper kindly because you’ll never know when they’ll be your boss someday. Catch the epi–I mean WEBisode starting August 25th.

Undoubtedly, you have already heart this over the weekend, but the story bears repeating: Yes, its true what my uncle said wen I was six years old is partially true. He always warned us not to eat too many unpopped popcorn kernels, as a corn plant would grow in our stomachs. He apparently was slightly misinformed, as it would actually grow in the lungs instead. A Brewster, Massachusetts man is quite relieved that he does not have lung cancer, nor emphysema, but a pea plant growing in his lung. Thankfully, it is now out, but he most definitely could have choked to death…just much later than the fateful day when a pea went down the wrong pipe. For more on the story, you can read what the local paper had to say.  (Okay, the Boston Globe is not really a hometown-y local paper unless you are looking out your window at the Pru’, but it beats trying to find a Cape Cod paper on the web.

Ron Sveden is indeed a very thankful man. I would chide him, though. He was lucky this time, but hopefully it will be a strange wake up all for him to quit smoking. He was lucky to have the faux lung cancer to have vanished, but he may not be so lucky next time. Ron, if you are out there reading, I hope you indeed count your blessings.

I wonder what scientists who claim that “nothing can go down the wrong pipe” think now? The coughing fit is just from the item touching the valve or the switching station, or whatever that is. Of course, uncles and parents everywhere are happy that they “told us so.” Next, a news story with someone’s face “staying that way” after they tried to put their eyelids inside out will grace the cover of every major news publication.

Where have I been?  Here I am.  After a terrifying software update, I am back to scorching brownies like I ought to be.  I was terrified of updating Wordpress.  In full disclosure, I was running the same version that I was since maybe 2008…or was it 7?  In computer years, it dates to somewhere between Lot’s wife turning into salt and the invention of sliced bread.  Doesn’t sound too tasty, does it?  However, I have met many folks who would say, “That sounds great…but where’s the butter?”

I digress.  This is really an important service announcement for People Who Should Pay Attention to Software Updates.  When you update regularly, you only have to press one button, but when you delay it for years, it involves much tedious copying and holding your breath.  I had to be brought back to life because the changeover process was so involved that I turned blue.  Not really.  But it was like starting over.  So…welcome to the brand new SnackHound.com.  But not really.  It just works a lot more smoothly and hopefully Commentluv and all the other gizmos will finally work now.

Stay tuned for a few more dysfunctional recipes and more.

Photo comments of Emmealcubo.com and is used under the Creative Commons license.

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Medical Guardian. All opinions are 100% mine.

Many seniors and folks with disabilities are living more independently than ever, which is fantabulous. I just love to hear stories about someone who normally would be perceived to have limitations is chugging along and living the good life. However, one barrier is limited access to immediate assistance. In the 80s, I made a lot of fun of medical alert systems like Medical Guardian. Remember, “I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up?”

Anyway, they aren’t just a joke, they really work, especially when most falls happen in the bathroom or the kitchen.  If you are like my friend’s mom, you might accidentally bake an oven mitt and the stove goes up in flames. It was so bad, that *I* was accused of cooking.  In reality, it was no accident.  She meant to cook the oven mitt, only she thought it was pita bread.  Things like that happen when you have macular degeneration and a stubborn streak the size of Montana and won’t ask anyone to troubleshoot your cooking.  She poo-poos the idea of cell phones and can’t see the keys anyhow, so an alert device would have definitely saved the kitchen.

Yes, Edith was a firecracker. In fact, when she lived in an apartment with an intercom system, she used to press the “listen” button even when she wasn’t expecting guests in order to hear what was going on at the front door.  She buzzed in a few random folks, but she also horned in on quite a few conversations, doling out advice.  Before she understood what it was, she tried to place “orders” with it.  When she heard a voice at the other end, she would ask for eggs or a take out order.  She was set straight, but I can’t help but think she would use a medical alert system just to try to talk the dispatchers up and find out about their grandchildren, or order them around.  It doesn’t quite work that way, but she’d try.

If you have an aspiring culinary wonder like Edith and don’t want to suggest her independence be caged, a medical alert system may give you peace of mind.  Or maybe there are some adventures you just don’t want the skinny on.

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Werever Products Inc. All opinions are 100% mine.
The growing outdoor living kitchen and outdoor living room trend has not completely passed me by. Rather, I will admit it has bumped me, almost intentionally, and knocked my snack tray over in the hallway. I first saw outdoor kitchens at homes in Florida and in California-oriented design magazines. However, the “outdoor kitchen” was a glorified grill area. The grill was still a grill, but it was enclosed more like a stove. The furniture was regular patio furniture and everything was in a screened enclosure to keep the bugs out.

On the contrary, I am now being told outdoor areas are NOT just areas around a grill but are “open air” kitchens, complete with outdoor upholstery that looks like indoor upholstery and an outdoor tv. The televisions are not your wimpy clipped to the wall affair, but include major cabinetry so you can pretend you have a 6,000 square foot home instead of a 4,000 square foot home.  The romanticism of the American hobo has just died.  Sleeping in a tent or under a tree with a three week old beard for the guys and a smell that Secret cannot hide for the ladies is going by the wayside.  Now, you can just flop on the sofa in the yard of your out of town neighbors while waiting for the next train to hop or after recreating your version of Man vs. Wild.

All kidding aside, if you have a tiny home in an historic area and you cannot expand but love the charm of your 850 square foot bungalow, creating such spaces outside might do the trick.  Entertaining in the warmer months would be a lot easier and it would expand your living quarters.  However, if you are living in Alaska or in a tropical rain forest perhaps cramped togetherness is a bit safer.

After a long hiatus, the official League for the Suppression of Celery blog is back. For quite some time, I feared that Wendy, League Representative, had succumbed to the opposition or had been kidnapped. Lo and behold, she is back, or at least someone impersonating her at the present time. For the uninitiated, the League is united against the Evil veggie, Celery. In the January 2009 interview here at TheSnackHound.com, Wendy recounted her initial trauma that set her on her path:

“…My mother handed me a celery stalk loaded with peanut butter. Moments later, my intuitive corporeal body rejected this vile veggie. Imagine a big Christmas puke-fest. Poor Mom. In a way, I suppose it was karmic for her — a more enlightened mother would have known better. Still to this day she maintains that I’m the one with the problem and I consider it a big failing in life that I can’t get my own mother to see The Truth About Celery. I’m filled with shame.People call me a picky eater, but in fact, did you know that there are a select group of people who have a natural vomitous reaction to some of the chemicals in celery? This comes from being more highly evolved, one step further ahead in the evolutionary chain than the celery-eaters.Probably this might come across as elitist, but it’s really not. I feel it’s the League for the Suppression of Celery’s job to enlighten everyone about the devil’s vegetable. It’s just like any other cause, like mosquito nets to combat malaria, needing clean water to drink, literacy issues, and getting supermodels to eat more. (In fact, if they’d stop eating so much celery they might not have so many weight-related ailments.)

To read more on the league: CLICK HERE.

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Hormel Foods. All opinions are 100% mine.

Way back when, we lived down the street from Mr. Steve. Mr. Steve was the father of two of our little friends. We thought Mr. Steve and Mrs. Lenore really really really rich because they had one of the few two story houses on the block. Actually, there were more than just one or two two-story houses on the block, but we only knew two of the families personally that lived in two story houses. I don’t know why that was so special, as a couple of the one story houses were just as big square footage-wise as their house. When you are a child of a certain age, your mind does not compute square footage; only number of stories and the number of pets that live there to equal wealth and importance. They had a dog too, so they must have been really doing well for themselves. Anyhow, Mr. Steve worked for Hormel, and occasionally he would bring stuff to barbecues or give people packages of pepperoni or cheese or some other product like that. No Spam, though. We were forced to get that ourselves if we wanted it (as if there was a shortage).

Today, when i see Hormel products at the store, I think of Mr. Steve and Ray Milland. Yep, Ray Milland. I wasn’t in the demographic group to know who Mr. Milland was at the time, but I found out later. Because there were fewer food groups back then, hormel could afford to have a star endorsement on chili, a product that sold for way less than a buck at that time.  I wonder if they paid him in cans of chili and spam to use for meals or to build a fortress with in the meantime.  Since Hormel Chili and Dinty Moore have been around for 75 years, I wonder if they are looking for a new celebrity spokesperson.  It would have to be someone that you wouldn’t expect to do a chili commercial, such as an multiple Academy Award winner such as Meryl Streep.  It is no coincidence that 20th Century Fox is also celebrating its 75th anniversary this year.  No movie tie ins?

I don’t know what I would do with all that chili con carne, as a non beef eater. I usually am relegated to eating the side dish. In those cases, it amounts to a tiny bit of shredded lettuce and cheese intended to top the chili with.  However, I have recently discovered that Hormel makes a Turkey chili and a vegetarian chili as well for those who are not big on beef. Of course, eating something out of a can may defeat the purpose of consciously trying to eat healthy, as there is always sodium in canned goods, but it works in a pinch in a mixed food preference environment.

Yesterday, I ventured into a  Schakolad Chocolate Factory store for the very first time.  I read the name in an old coupon book and just could not picture what its exact location was, even though I probably passed it 20 million times to the fifth power.  How could my car not have automatically tried to nose itself in the parking lot before.  When I was stopped at the store, I glanced over and saw an intriguing sign. The name looked like a big blob to me, but I could clearly see “chocolate factory” underneath. This sign MAY look easy to read but from the other side of the parking lot in a strip mall…it just looks like one big brown blob with the chosen font and color. “What does that say? Who cares…it says Chocolate under it.” That is all I needed to know!  I didn’t have time on that particular occasion but within a week, I found that my car involuntarily moved into the turn around lane and headed for the motherload.

I was not under any type of adult supervision, so the presidents in my wallet were in grave danger of being orphaned by me. However, the strong sense of duty…in that I needed to get some tags for my license plate…was the only thing that deterred me.  There were chocolate pianos, soccer balls, and of course the usual truffles and peanut butter cups. While it was all a feast for the eyes, I was still a little sad.  I found out that this place has been in this spot way for quite along time and I have had several years of existence not knowing it existed.  What would my life had been? Would I have feverishly saved up my pennies for a weekly visit to dark chocolate antioxidant paradise or would I have still blown it on gasoline for my car??  Who knows what the “alternate present” would have held if my life had taken so divergent with a path with that knowledge in hand. Was I the “bizarro” version of that potential self and the normal me was sitting there laughing, having eaten chocolate mini-pianos every week for the past year?

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

I always thought MacArthur Park was a silly song. You know the one. Richard Harris sang it, then Donna Summer disco-fied it:

All the sweet green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain.
I dont think that I can take it
Cause it took so long to bake it
And Ill never have that recipe again!

Watching for the weather is very important for My Favorite Guy. He farms, and if the weather is not quite right, he can’t bale. In fact, there has to be a good two to three stint of no rain to be able to cut the hay. Otherwise, the hay won’t dry. Looking at the sky doesn’t do it. The Weather Channel is good, but its annoying because when you really just want to know what the weather is, they put on a show. I know they are trying to get some viewership, but that’s not why people watch it.

AccuWeather has real time forecasts and a variety of other media, so that you can get whatever kind of forecast you want when you want it. If you want to know what it is like right now in the town your relatives will be in, or you want to find out what the weather will be like in several days in your town, it will do that, too.

How accurate is the weather, really? Of course there is no one who can predict it precisely, but you can use your best judgement looking at where the globs on the map are headed. While you may personally be a little off on time, if a big colored glob is heading towards your town, you know not to plan an outdoor barbecue that day. You could, but your french fries won’t be so crispy.  Accuweather can be accessed online at Accuweather.com, which sure beats having to wait the five to fifteen minutes to see it pop up on local television.  Of course, someone just started an interesting story and you missed it.

So…anyway…I guess where I was going with this is that it would be a shame to leave your cake out in the rain. The hay will dry eventually, but you’ll never have that recipe again.   AAAA-GAINNNNNNNN

Yesterday, I was pondering on the strange disappearance of Wendy, head of the League for the Suppression of Celery.  She may not have really disappeared, but merely abandoned the publicity, fearing discovery by the opposition of the League and therefore has not posted this year.  After all, recent discoveries have proven that celery may be key in fighting cancer.  Actually, it is not a “recent discovery.” The information was just merely recently discovered by ME, so it doesn’t count as a*true* recent discovery.  In fact, the luteolin found in celery may reduce brain inflammation and cancer.

In 2008, Richard Hammond, of Top Gear fame, suffered crash injuries that flipped a switch in his brain.  According to the Telegraph, Hammond remarked, “The only difference between me now, and before the crash, is I like celery now.”  It seems that Mr. Hammond is part of the pro-celery movement. Of course, fellow Briton Fearne Cotton is staunchly in the anti-celery movement. Why do the British folks seem to be the ones to flaunt their cruciferous affiliation more vocally than the normally more vocal American?

I hope I never hit my head badly, but if I do, I hope I crave healthy food and don’t suddenly crave chocolate ants a la Andrew Zimmern.

A few days ago, I planned to whine to you all about how I wasn’t able to follow any more. I don’t know why. Well meaning folks tell me that I just need more folks to follow me because my “ratio” is off.  Well, I am following about 3,900 people and 3,500 folks are following me. How is that so bad??  I don’t really know. I canceled any extra Twitter services that might be screwing things up and it all has amounted to nothing. I supposed I just have to hope for enough “Follow Friday” love to get me enough followers to make it all up.

However (remember I said I “planned” to write about Twitter), plans changed yesterday when a friend of the family passed away at her home. Just clarifying that it was her home. She was not over at my place, so no reaction to really bad recipes was involved. Though she was never a picture of health, it was a shock to us all. She leaves behind a husband, two children, a son-in-law and a little grand-daughter.

She was on Facebook and so is her daughter. Her daughter is a friend of mine on Facebook.  I called my cousin to let her know what happened, as I didn’t want my cousin to find out what happened based on people saying they were sorry on the Facebook wall of the daughter.  At this point, I really think I should have given everyone fake names, because its going to get too confusing to sort this all out, even though I am very clear in my mind who is here.

So I called Bictoria (not her real name), my cousin, to tell her the news before she found out on Facebook or casually posted to Velissa’s (not her real name) Facebook wall something silly not knowing what just happened. Of course, Bictoria told her parents, Jharlotte and Vohn, what happened.

The news got around to my 82 year old Grandmother, who told us, “When I die, don’t put me on Facebook!”

Grandma is a hot ticket; the type that will live to 110. I said, “Don’t worry Grandma, when you die, Facebook will be passe’ and there will be something even better.”