Category Archives: food

Gelatinous

Tonight’s word is ‘gelatinous’. In an attempt to get a head start on Thanksgiving I decided to make the cranberry sauce tonight. Happy to have Jana and her girls in the kitchen we set out to make the easiest of holiday recipes.

Not.

It would appear there was too much water. Or not enough sugar. Or just plain beat cranberries. But in no way did this cranberry sauce possess the (here it comes) gelatinous consistency that we expected.

We were, however, happy to be able to use the word gelatinous more often than humanly possible.

There were years when I used to burn an apple pie, then have to bake another. I suppose the cranberries were tagged as ‘it’ this year.

 

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Filed under family, food, holidays, humor

Drinks on Us – A restaurant tale

Well, more accurately the drinks were on my poor friend. Literally.

You see the rather clueless and clumsy Maître d’ was serving us a tray of drinks when he forgot the single most important trick to serving… keep the tray parallel to the ceiling. It seems the laws of gravity escaped him.

I watched in slow motion as 2 vodka’s, 2 beers, a glass of wine (a really good pour I might add) and one ginger ale (for the designated) went flowing down the back of my dear friend. Sadly for him, the Maître d’ reacted in equally slow motion. Even sadder for him, he made the poor choice of trying to mop up the floor before making an effort to placate the patron.

Bad choice.

Bad to worse as the best he could do was tell us that ‘accidents happen’. Even after a pretty good tongue lashing from the irate husband of the sopping victim he still did not get the basic principles of restaurant groveling and could not come up with a way to make good on the disaster. Granted, said husband took perhaps a little too much sport in embarrassing the fool, but he was an easy target. To his credit he did agree to a round of drinks

At one point the entire restaurant was listening, the couple at the next table left and still neither he nor the owner (his dad, btw, who he told us was not in just minutes earlier when we asked) could figure out what to do.

That is when I could not help myself and jumped in. I felt bad for the guy for no reason other than he was just so damn STUPID.

“Listen”, I said, “Here is a little restaurant 101. Do anything to quiet the miserable customer. Buy them a round of drinks, offer to comp dinner for the dripping wet wife and pay for the dry cleaning bill. In other words… damage control.”

His response was somewhere between deer in the headlights and boxer who took too many hits to the head. To his credit he did agree to a round of drinks and dry cleaning at some point but unfortunately it was somewhere between too little and too late.

Fairly certain they spit in all our dinners before delivering the bill…

with only one round of drinks comped.

Hey, at least it wasn’t a boring evening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1f3jK0p18M&feature=fvw

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Filed under food, humor

Spaghetti Muffins?

No joke, I took this picture at the store located conveniently at the end of our block, Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace. Go ahead, click that link and listen to the music on that site. Believe it or not, every time I shop there I am subjected to that! What happened to Beatles Muzak?

Back to the spaghetti muffins, at the economical price of 3.99 each. So what are these? Main course? Side dish? Hockey puck? What do you think the binding agent in these suckers are? And just for kicks, how many points on Weight Watchers? (does WW still use points?)

So, my friends, I showed this picture to Gary who told me they are just called spaghetti muffins, that is not really spaghetti in them? REALLY, hon? What would that be then, twine?

Not going to lie, I was in there again tonight picking up some ingredients and was really tempted to buy him one of these.

Anyone in PW try them yet? Please do tell!

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Filed under absurdities, carry a camera, food, gary, humor

What Flavoured Soup Mix?

I just could not put the name of this soup in my post title for fear of what Google would drive here. Although it is tempting – being a blog whore and all – to get some cheap stats by using the word ‘cock’ in a post title. But I have enough weirdos googling things like ‘castrated men’, ‘me with bulges’ and a big fave this week, ‘orange peel penis’, which in case you missed  it was an actual blog post you can read here.

So yes, my friends, for those of you who savor the flavor, so to speak, you can go home and cook yourself a big bowl of Cock Flavoured Soup tonight. Who knows what will cum of it (sorry, cheap shot). I particularly like that this is made by a company called Grace. And just because I think it takes a lot of balls (again, sorry, cheap shot 2) to make a soup by this name I will give the dear people at Grace a little link love and let you know where you can buy this stuff. It would surely make a great gag gift (ok, I am taking this a bit too far, so sue me!)

A big thanks to Paula P for sending this one in. Truthfully, who had better friends than me?

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Filed under absurdities, carry a camera, food, products, search engine terms

Turkey Testicle Festival

Wondering what to do with those pesky turkey testicles? Well, here you go.

I love the woman who says ‘Crispy! I’m glad it’s not juicy. I just went for the crisp.’ Yikes, kind of feel bad for her significant other.

Thanks to Dani (not Danny – he just rolls his eyes at me) for sharing this little morsel of fun.

Yes, ladies and gentleman, this post is surely MFTA approved.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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Filed under absurdities, food, holidays

Hot Nuts

hot-nuts

Hot Nuts. Anyone else find this funny? Please don’t confuse these with Dave’s Burning Nuts, which quite frankly sound pretty scary to me. As the website says, ” Everyone is talking about Dave’s nuts!” Oh boy, I think I will leave it at that. (poor Dave, burning nuts AND everyone is talking about them).

Honey, when you are at the supermarket can you pick me up a bag of Hot Nuts?

Yum, I can’t wait to sit me down to watch some TV and put my hand into a big bag of Hot Nuts.

It might be cold outside, but I have some Hot Nuts!

I could go on forever. They surely must have had a lot of fun naming this one.

A little research and I found out that in February 1994, Food & Beverage Marketing named these “The greatest snack food item ever devised by mankind…”

Tall order, but hey, seriously, who doesn’t like the idea of Hot Nuts?

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visitLeaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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Filed under absurdities, food, products

Putting the Fun in Funfetti

funfetti

Around these parts Funfetti cupcakes are the bomb. Pillsbury makes this mix with cool colored morsels in the cake mix and frosting. For as long as I can remember, my kids’ friends have been obsessed with Funfetti.

The week that my son came home from camp I made sure to make a batch when the boys came over. By some miracle there were still a few left over, so I left them in a container on the counter.

I arrived home the other day and noticed a piece of green note paper in with the cupcakes. The picture above is what I found. Similar to the famous initialed banana in my fruit bowl, these boys have a way of letting me know they were here.

There are times when 17-year-old boys can all but break your heart. This is one of them. Just when you thought that perhaps you were invisible, they make you realize that you are anything but.

I texted my son to tell Mark that I loved him too, and to let him know that these cupcakes were probably better 2 weeks ago when I baked them. (hopefully I did not poison the poor kid).

Thank you Mark C, for the sweet reminder that the little things do not go unnoticed.

(now, Pillsbury, let’s see how good your social media monitoring is)

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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Filed under danny, food, friendship, moms, parenting, teenagers, trends, Uncategorized

Guerilla Holiday

guerilla_matzoh

No, my guests did not behave like primates. That’s the other gorilla!

A new record was set in my household this Passover. Menu writing to table in 23 hours. Pretty impressive, even for me.

There are those that cook ahead and plan for weeks. Their tables are set 2 days in advance (no Karen, I am not talking about you… specifically). Not me. I need to feel the pressure of impending guests breathing down my neck before I can move towards getting it together. Between work and social obligations there was simply no time to address this holiday (or any other, who am I kidding) before it was on fire.

In the past there have been many casualties: the year I spoiled the  chicken soup by putting hot matzoh balls into cold soup. Tip: this curdles the soup. Gary had to run to the Jewish deli for soup at the 11th hour that year. Or the time I dropped 2 dozen eggs in the driveway; very messy. But this year was pretty smooth. I did shatter both a tupperware of frozen soup (the soup survived) and one more crystal wine glass from my wedding registry (a miracle there are any left after 20-blah-blah years). Other than that is was smooth as silk.

Most important, I was surrounded by those I love. Sadly some were missing for out of state reasons, but we still had a great night.

And for the record, NO ONE cleans like Joanne!

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog.

For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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Filed under family, food, holidays, religion

Do you want soap with that?

Seems there is a new trend of bathing in the dishwashing sink at fast food restaurants these days. This week a group of girls bathed in the sink (in bikinis) at a KFC in Anderson, California. They of course posted the pics on MySpace because…

they are idiots! When does this generation get that pranking and posting doesn’t work out? Let’s run by some other morons who did this and lost their jobs.

Timothy Tackett, the Burger King employee who did the bathing trick in Ohio back in April. This guy is a trip. Great hair and make-up. Watch this video at least halfway through, it is worth checking out his gloves. My favorite line from him: “I had been looking at the sink for like 2 months and I thought, that’s big enough for me to take a bath in”. (hmmmm, what is that black wirey thing wrapped around my fork?)

Then there is the famous cheerleader, Caitlin Davis who got thrown off the New England Patriots squad for drawing swastikas and penises on a fellow cheerleader and posting the pics on Facebook. (I still don’t get the combo swastika/penis thing).

I once had a client who was all sorts of burnt out on biz and told me the only question she wanted to ask at work was, “Do you want fries with that?” Kind of worrying about what ever happened to her…

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at Mid-Century Modern Moms and at 50-Something Moms Blog.

For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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Filed under absurdities, current events, food, health, humor

What are you thankful for?

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After an evening elbow deep in stuffing, I realized that there was no post up for Thanksgiving. I decided to go with the basics.

My BBFF Liz tweeted this question today and it got me to thinking about all the people out there who are reading (and I know you are there because I see the numbers rising). How cool would it be if every person that reads this blog left a comment letting us know what makes them feel like giving thanks.

The world is surely on fire. At the risk of being cliché, now more than ever, is a time to share what works in our lives.

Me? Good health – NEVER taken for granted, having my daughter home, my brother and his family visiting and sharing the holiday with good friends and family. For those who are not joining us, we miss you.

Oh and a wonderful update on the blogger mom who sent out an appeal for a kidney donor for her daughter. The hospital said their lines were jammed and never have they received so many donor forms. AND, they are optimistic that they have found a match. Read more here. So, yes, I am thankful for the power of the internet.

Now give it up out there!

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at Mid-Century Modern Moms and at 50-Something Moms Blog.

For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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Filed under family, food, friendship, holidays