TheSnackHound

I was surprised to find out that there is actually something called the Stress Institute, comprised of a team of experts. It is not a fake, made up organization like some phony seals on various drug store products.

Dr. Kathleen Hall, expert on work-stress balance issues, appears on the website in a video message stating that “stress fascinates” her. If she were to come live with me for a short time, would she be to me what Jane Goodall was to the chimpanzee? I would be studied for my unique responses to stress? What would she think about my bag of Newman-O sandwich cookies that rapidly disappear as a barometer of my stress level?

One of her suggestions for me would probably be exercise for stress reduction instead of dipping into the cookie stash.  More so, instead of offering individual consultation, The Stress Institute strives to work with businesses to make changes in mindful living, as well as launching the Mindful Living Network to educate people about balance.

Take a look at the site.  It has some worthwhile information to consider.

Awhile back I bookmarked an entry on the Sushi or Death blog.

The image just keeps haunting me.  As we know, sickeningly sweet cute things have made their way out of Japan, and it has been that way for the good part of thirty years.  Often, it involves kitties or bunnies.   At any rate, there is something slightly disturbing about cute little sushi stuffed animal kitties.   Maybe the creator of these little things was dipping a piece of maki into soy and was contemplating life and free associated when the white rice was pondered.  What else is fluffy and white?  Caterpillers? No.  Kitties!

What do you think?   Is this all a little twisted or is it just for the person who has to have a cat on every item they own?

There was a Popover Girl who came around at one of the banquet places with tongs and  a fabric lined basket full of the item she was named for.  Stop giggling!  I am not talking about a gal that is under the disillusionment that she is five dress and bra sizes smaller than she actually is.  I am of course talking about a something that was similar to bread rolls. When served hot, they are slightly doughy in the middle/similar to bread pudding in the middle or have a bit of a void

My husband and I have been on a five year search to find a recipe.  We have found one that yields an object that is similar to a corn muffin.  They were okay, but they weren’t what we were looking for.

Today, I popped into a thrift store hoping to find some older cookbooks.  I was not disappointed when I found a slim volume from Betty Crocker from the 50s or 60s concerning breads that had popovers in the index!  My smile quickly faded when I got to the page and the instructions said:

“Pour a package of your favorite Popover mix….”

What??  Is this a recipe book or an instruction manual for an oven?

I had a similar encounter recently when we desired some pancakes, but did not have mix. Surely, my 1950s Betty Crocker cookbook would understand a modern woman’s dilemma and would have plenty of ideas if one had the basics - eggs, flour, water, etcetera. To my delight, I saw “Pancakes - Quick” in the index.

“What do you mean??,” I said allowed. My husband inquired to what the matter was.

The Quick Pancake Recipe Stated:

“Open a package of Bisquick….”

If I had Bisquick, I wouldn’t be looking up how to make pancakes!

I always used to sadly joke about how my mom was the Bisquick and Spam Gourmet and I was so glad for my tastebuds that I escaped somehow with no residual desire or cravings for such, but I am not convinced that she wasn’t a sadist or someone who desired her children to have sodium overload. Quite simply, it was all right there in the book.

I still love my Betty Crocker cookbook, but Betty apparently has the philosphy, at least back then, that there are no free rides.

By the way, I still don’t have my Popover Recipe.

Well, dear readers, the party’s over for me.  No matter how much glucosimine and antioxidants I pack my meals with, my legs aren’t getting any better. 

Recently, my brother came for a much anticipated visit, as we hadn’t seen eachother in two years!  He is in the physical therapy/sports medicine field so I thought he would be an authority to declare me “falling apart at the seams at a young age.”   What the root of the problem was not a dislocated hip from a car accident years ago like I thought, but an impacted hip brought about by sitting on my rear!  You heard it here first.  You can actually do more damage to yourself by NOT exercising.  Yes, I literally broke my butt! What’s the glory in having an interesting injury like that?  What tale would I tell? 

It wouldn’t be: “Oh, the limp’s nothing.  I got it running the Boston Marathon.  They told me not to enter that morning, as I had just saved a small town from a rabid bear the night before.  I got a medal for my injuries anyway.”  It would have to be:  “You see that mean hunk of Walnut?  That’s Old Dan, the meanest library chair this side of the Mason Dixon.    You see that hairline crack in the wood?  Old Dan is lucky after I had my tangle with him. I may limp, but normal people don’t get out of that alive”

The remedy he gave me was to - you guessed it - exercise. Daily eating habits are, of course, critical in this whole equation, but you can only eat yourself so thin and so healthy unless you actually get off your rear.   I started out with very light ankle weights the first couple weeks, and some simple stretches, but I am getting a bit bored with it and am moving on to the next level. 

Since I am a Apple-Cran-Grape Juice and Neopolitan ice cream indecisive kind of gal, I think XFLOWSION would be perfect for me to try.   It is not just martial arts, its not just yoga, and its not just a dance class…it is everything at the same time.    At first I thought it was for people like my mother-in-law who bakes a cake at twice the temperature in half the time because she doesn’t have the time to wait around.  On the contrary, it is not about cramming more of your day into as little time as possible.   The change in intensity and movement actually gets you beyond that “plateau.”     When you have gotten in better shape, but have hit a wall, it helps you break through and gain muscle town, or lose those last five pounds, depending on your goal.

Eric Paskel is not just an everyday gym guy.  He is an athlete, of course, but he also has a background in psychology, and really has worked out a system that keeps people motivated.   I may just be his biggest challenge, as my brain is always multi-tasking and on to the next thing while I am supposed to be doing something. 

Secretly, what motivates me to do it more is because Shape magazine called it the “Strangest Workout You’ll Ever Love.”  I don’t usually do what the magazines tell me to do, but if its “Strange?”  I’m in!  As you know from reading this blog, I am far from cookie cutter.

I am really excited to start as soon as I get the tapes. 

Many of my friends all volunteer for one cause or another, many in animal rescue, or in missionary work.  Often, they wish they could do more, but their employment and family responsibilities on top of it make it hard for them to do as much as they feel called to do.  I am in a unique situation, being a part time freelancer, but one of my friends is not.  She remarks often that she has too many volunteer commitments to find a new job!

The problem with finding a job that allows one to flex around volunteer work and family usually involves your rear end greatly expanding while you sit in a call center, your rear end greatly expanding as you stand around serving unhealthy food that you, of course, are tempted to eat because it is there in mass quantities. Those seem like the most popular options. 

I have long considered different job ideas for someone who needs to be mentally stimulate more than “mother’s hours” at the card shop.  I remember my mom saying that between getting us off to school, volunteering, and helping with homework, a true “mother’s hours” job would be from 1:30 P.M. to 2:37 P.M.  That is all she would be able to commit to.  I thought that was kind of funny.

Ever since my brother went to massage school to become a therapist, I thought about another flexible profession: Personal Trainer.  CareerBuilder.com recently highlighted fitness training as the #9 part-time job of 2008. Of course, you need a desire to help others and to get your fitness certification That would run you around $600. Don’t worry about not looking like a fitness model.  Most personal trainers have regular bodies, they just strive to make the best of what they were born with.   In fact, I think a client would be intimidated to walk in and see a Lady Wrestler or Mr. America standing there. People that have battled the bulge or worked through a car accident or post baby weight are people they can relate to.

The bonus, of course, is getting yourself into the best health that you can while you are on the job so you can be around for those helpless offspring creatures for many years to come.

On each side of our family, there is a holiday dessert tradition.   For Christmas, my Grandmother bakes the secret family cookie recipe, and the aunts each take turns bringing the pretzel jello.  Grandma only makes the cookies once a year, and the pretzel jello had a brief hiatus from about 1991 to 1996, during a period of time my sister had ongoing health issues, and therefore did not want to see jello ever again.     On my husband’s side, everyone decides somehow to bring a dessert, and then we end up with a person to dessert ratio of 2 to 1, but at least 1 to 1.  (A “dessert” constitutes an ENTIRE pie, cake, or entire packaged of profiteroles.) It always happens accidentally.

The first Thanksgiving that we spent at our new home, we were not able to spend the holiday with our family. All of my family, and my husband’s extended family lived in two different states and we couldn’t afford a trip having had a major relocation. We sent a photo of our holiday table to friends and family, and they did the same to sort of share the day with eachother.   We talked about what we ate over the phone and who came, and were all sort of bummed out at what we missed.    The grass is always greener.

This gave me an idea!    Instead of the typical Photo Christmas Cards this year with my husband, myself, and the dogs, the theme is going to be “Ha Ha, Guess what you’re not eating!”
I would take a photo of our table with my famous giant chocolate pudding cake on it for the card and say “Merry Christmas. Wish You Were Here. Darn, look what you missed!” I would put a piece with a big bite out of it where my brother would usually sit to show that I already took a bite out of his slice.   Maybe, I would use the types of cards which required multiple photos, so I could walk around the cake and show it from different angles.

Oh, this is perfect. Doodlebugsdezigns.com has cards where you can get the back printed up also like this:

Of course, instead of someone’s kids that we don’t know, I could write up a little narrative on the back of the card. It is not really as mean as you think.  He can take it!   It probably would inspire a quick missive from a few recipients who would send a card with a photo of an empty tin with just crumbs, as they ate all of Grandma’s cookies.

Of course, I would first send a card proclaiming Glory to the Newborn King.  That of course, would be my first priority, but being a sister, I have a secondary duty in this world to be a pain in the butt in a grand, and well calculated way. Having received the initial card, he won’t suspect a second.

Years back on the Food Network, I used to watch Door Knock Dinners.  Gordon Elliot ran into people on the streets or parkings lots of America and would offer to make dinner for their family with whatever they happened to have in the house at that moment.  It would be a bonus if they had a well stocked spice rack, but sometimes, even so, you wondered what he was going to do with a package of hit dogs, a freezer burnt piece of fish and Wonder Bread.

I miss that show!

Half the fun was him looking for people to cook for.  Half the people didn’t know the show and just thought he was a crazy person.  Nowadays, if the show ran, it would be the equievelant of people roaming through New York to look for the “Cash Cab.”   Folks would be driving around slow to try to find Gordon Elliot chasing after people in parking lots.

I did an internet search for Mr. Elliot, and in none of his bios does it mention the show.   Wonder if his credits are just so vast, or was he sort of embarrassed of the show?  Who knows.  The only evidence on the net of the existence of the show was a clip of an “Iron Chef” version of the show, which you can check out on Youtube.

Okay, aspiring Gordon Elliots out there, here are the contents of my cupboards, pre-grocery trip.  What would you make of it?

- A pretty well stocked spice rack.  That is a bonus.
- A few cans of soup that have been sitting there since my husband’s been on a low sodium diet (chicken noodle)
- Canned Salmon that an Aunt bought us.   Like tuna fish…but salmon.  We have just never touched it.
- Frozen ocean perch.  I love lake perch and miss it.  Ocean perch I guess tastes different.   My husband won’t touch it.
- A Tastefully Simple Garlic! Garlic! mix presumablty to make dip.
- Chocolate Soy Milk
- Horseradish
- Pretzel Chips
- Flour

If you were also a fan of the show, let me know what you would do, besides just opening up the can of soup and calling it a meal.

We were in the grocery store last night and came across an Apple Pear.  In fact, we bought one, as it was amid the Fiji apples and I think we did so by accident.    From my previous post, The DillVinci Code, you know that if the code on the sticker is give digits and starts with an “8,” the fruit is a hybrid. This baby had the four digit code of conventional fruit, which really confounded us.

Apparently, there are Pear Apples that are hybrids, and there are Apple Pears.    Apple Pears apparently occur naturally and are not apples at all.   Rather, many varieties of pears from Asia do not have the bottom heavy shape that European pairs do.  Hence, they are apple shaped pears. I don’t know why they couldn’t have just been called something else. It is kind of like the same conundrum we had as kids when crayola had both orange-red and red-orange and yellow-orange as colors in their stable. It caused many, many misunderstandings when we asked eachother to pass us a crayon, because there is “the crayon you meant” versus the “crayon you mentioned.” Visually, you knew you rather have the red that had a tinge of orange in it, rather the orange that had a bit of red in it, but you could never keep them straight.

Most grocery stores would never have a Pear Apple and also have Apple Pears, so I can imagine being sent off to the store with a request for them, and someone being upset because they wanted an Apple Pear, and you were just supposed to leave it there if they only had Pear Apples. There would have been many moments of doubt, with you wondering if you had misheard them, or were being too literal.

Can you guess, in the photo above, which is the Pear Apple or the Apple Pear is?

Okay, you’ve twisted my arm.

In the middle, it is actually a variety of pear, even though the color would have made you think it may have some apple in there. At right is a gala apple. Plain and simple. No tricks there. The Apple Pear is actually the fruit at left. Would you have guessed it if I hadn’t told you?

I was trying to get this to work.   I can play around with the magnets, but I am still trying to figure out how to make the message “stick” to the fridge so other people can see it.   Maybe it is not supposed to “stay.”   I think the person playing with it is the only one who sees it.   However, I saw that someone left me a note!   The last thing I saw here was “Weeeee!!” from someone in Dublin!   Now, you write on it and let me see if it sticks.

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