How to Feel Like a 4-Yr Old

I was sitting on the couch this weekend, watching something educational on TV (Celebrity Fat Club, I think), when I happened to look down at the t-shirt I was wearing and saw what appeared to be a peanut butter stain. Then, I looked down at the pants I was wearing and saw another peanut butter stain. Two things occurred to me simultaneously -- that I hadn't eaten peanut butter in 4 days (an oddity in and of itself) and that I was wearing the same clothes that I had worn 4 days ago. While I was pondering this gleefully slobby situation, I dropped the peanut butter cracker sandwich that I was preparing leaving yet another splotch of peanut butter on my clothes.

Which brings me to my tutorial on how to make a peanut butter and wheat thin cracker sandwich:
Step 1: Buy Nabisco Original Wheat Thins and Jif Crunchy Peanut Butter (blue screw top)
Step 2: Go home
Step 3: Open recently purchased brand name processed foods; dip finger in JCPB to test its delightful creaminess
Step 4: Using a butter knife, place a glop of peanut butter onto a small plate; retain knife for future use
Step 5: Reach into box of Wheat Thins and grab a handful of tiny square crackers; place on plate
Step 6: Go sit in front of TV; find a re-run of CSI or Scrubs
Step 7: Take one Wheat Thin cracker in left hand
Step 8: Using butter knife retained for this purpose, scoop some peanut butter and carefully spread on cracker (amount will vary according to taste)
NOTE: Jif Crunchy Peanut Butter is not the easiest substance to spread onto a 1.5" square surface - if not done carefully, this step may result in peanut butter stains on clothing you should have washed already
Step 9: After laying knife down carefully on plate, take another Wheat Thin cracker in your right hand, place on top of recently spread peanut butter and look at TV
NOTE: Butter knives are notoriously bottom heavy - if not placed carefully on plate, this step may result in peanut butter stains on slightly overweight cat who was napping peacefully on lap until a second ago
Step 10: Eat meticulously prepared peanut butter and wheat thin cracker sandwich; enjoy
Step 11: Repeat steps 7 - 10 as needed

Kevin Bacon or ham sandwich?

A fun game to play at work is "Which One?". Here is a list of Which One questions that have been asked and answered (answers are final):

Which one: Kevin Bacon or a ham sandwich?
Winner: ham sandwich

Which one: Ramen or pho?
Winner: Ramen, even though pho got more votes. When I'm the poster, I'm also the decider.

Which one: Wristwatches, leather band or metal?
Winner: While there was a vote for leather and a question about including other band materials, the overall winner was "I don't wear a wristwatch"

Which one: Bono or the Boss?
Winner: The Boss

Which one: Peanut butter toast or cinnamon toast?
Winner: No clear winner although all agreed that toast of any kind will always win

Which one: Buddy Holly or Halle Berry?
Winner: Buddy Holly - I can't remember why but probably because of his glasses and also Halle Berry can't move her forehead

Slight variations on Which One:

Who would you rather be stuck in an elevator with, Oprah or Martha Stewart?
Winner: Martha Stewart, by a landslide, but only because Oprah was the other choice (plus MS seems resourceful like MacGyver)

Who would you rather get a drink with, Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert?
Winner: Jon Stewart, but only because he seems more laid back - SC is hyper and might knock people's drinks over

That Sounds Dirty

The lyrics Tom Waits sang last night as I was working late:

I'll be clickin' by your house about two forty-five
Sidewalk sundae strawberry surprise,
I got a cherry popsicle right on time
A big stick, mamma, that'll blow your mind

'Cause I'm the ice cream man, I'm a one-man band
I'm the ice cream man, honey, I'll be good to you.

Baby, missed me in the alley, baby, don't you fret
Come back around and don't forget,
When you're tired and you're hungry and you want something cool,
Got something better than a swimming pool

'Cause I'm the ice cream man, I'm a one-man band
I'm the ice cream man, honey, I'll be good to you.
'Cause I'm the ice cream man, I'm a one-man band
I'm the ice cream man, honey, I'll be good to you.

See me coming, you ain't got no change
Don't worry baby, it can be arranged:
Show me you can smile, baby just for me
Fix you with a drumstick, I'll do it for free

'Cause I'm the ice cream man, I'm a one-man band
I'm the ice cream man, honey, I'll be good to you.

Beer + Cupcake

An odd but lovely combination of snacks is cupcakes and beer. This combination was introduced to me during my first friend-date with none other than MS, the co-author of this blog. I don’t remember if MS had discovered the pairing prior to our date or if it was serendipitous but I do remember that we were both hungry as well as thirsty and MS suggested getting a cupcake as it was one of the few choices of food at the establishment. We both decided that vanilla cake and chocolate frosting with sprinkles is the best flavor of cupcake. Any flavor of beer will do.

Definitely Not Anemic

Today my doctor called to give me my yearly exam results, ticking through all the things, and when she reached iron count she said, “And you’re definitely not anemic.” Which I attribute (but didn’t admit) to the fact that I eat hamburgers at least once a week. For a bit, because it’s my favorite bar and because of the ridiculously priced happy hour, we visited the People’s Pub (Die Volkskneipe) for burgers as many as three days between weekends. It sounds kind of gross, but hamburgers, especially $5 burgers served old-school cookout style with soft sesame buns, mayo, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles and fries, are addictive in a way that can only be stopped when you begin to feel ashamed by the realization that your diet resembles that of an eight year-old without any parents. At least if having the diet of an eight year-old without any parents seems shameful to you. Sometimes, it is very fun, in fact it's even better, because hamburgers go with beer.

The Daily Joke

Q: What do you call a lazy baby kangaroo?

A: A pouch potato

The Daily Confession

I'm addicted to Swedish fish. Oh God.

Something I Didn't Know

Today I discovered something while throwing food at the cat -- diced red onion travels the same distance as a puffy Cheeto. Which surprised me. I naturally assumed that the more dense red onion bit could be thrown further than the puffy Cheeto, which is essentially air covered in delicious orange powder. But I never took physics so maybe this is only a discovery to me.

Other things I discovered include:
My cat does not want to eat a puffy Cheeto
My cat does not like rosemary salami
My cat does not like having water flicked at him, even though he often goes in the bathtub and sits under the dripping faucet
My cat does like yogurt but it makes him throw up

Every Culture Has a Pancake

I learned recently that the appropriate way to add blueberries to your pancakes, in order to avoid grey, streaky pancakes and bruised and burst berries, is to sprinkle them softly into the doughy disks right in the frying pan, after ladling in your batter. I had a dream I was making blueberry pancakes in my grandmother’s condominium in Anchorage, AK—the dream wasn’t so much about pancakes as a revisit to the home she’d had my whole life, 1950s style, cramped, demure, Scandinavian, hushed, and warm. With orange curtains. Fellowship hour in the Lutheran church she brought me to when I’d stay over on Saturdays included a spread of the following: black coffee with sugar cubes, mild sliced cheddar cheese, wheat thin crackers, baby carrots, pickled herring, Danish butter cookies from the blue tin with tiny paper wrappers.

She grew up in Morris, MN with parents who had emigrated from Norway. Norwegian tradition gave us lefse each Xmas—a thin, tender potato pancake brushed with melted butter, sprinkled with sugar. Midwestern families can divide their communities according to which homes use white sugar on their lefse and which use brown—we used brown. It’s a simple, understated dessert and a good lot of work: potatoes are boiled, riced and cooled. A dough is made and kneaded, balls formed, rolled with a specific lefse roller which has ridged concentric grooves down the length of it. The pancake is floured and placed on a specific (expensive) lefse grill, and carefully cooked and turned using a special stick.

Probably I could make a decent lefse pancake without all the special tools, which I don’t own, but I never will. There are rituals we keep.

To Salt

Wikipedia says “Edible salt, usually called just salt, is a flavour enhancer, comprising primarily of sodium chloride, and is one of the few minerals commonly eaten by humans.”

What it doesn’t say is that salt makes things delicious. Even as I type, I am eating salty goldfish crackers – first I bite off the tail and then I eat the head (to everything its process). Without salt, ham would just be soft pink meat and Gatorade just vaguely sweet brightly colored water. That poor Morton’s girl would just be one more crazy kid walking in the rain with a tube under her arm. Cows wouldn’t have anything to lick and pretzels wouldn’t have the same appeal.

Oh Salt! Thank you for being in our food! You make my snacks tasty! Here is a list of my favorite salty snacks (not necessarily in order of preference):
Cheetos (puffy not crunchy)
Popcorn with butter
Goldfish crackers
Tiny ham sandwiches
Cheese (oh cheese)
Bacon
Pickles
Peanuts
French fries
Margaritas
Ramen

Ramen vs. Pho

It's not a fair fight -- ramen will alwaysalways win.

It's cold in my office and I'm hungry which makes me dream of warm noodle soup, of which there are only two varieties that I would ever fantasize about -- ramen and pho. Mmmmm, hot salty broth and tangly slippery noodles.

Things that I love about ramen (tonkotsu, please) include:
creamy salty pork broth, firm curly noodles, thick moist slices of pork

Things that I love about pho include:
clear salty chicken broth (I think), cream puff, hotsauce&plumsauce for dipping thin slices of slowlycookinginbroth beef, cream puff

I would happily eagerly eat either soup right now but if I had a choice, I'd choose ramen. And then I'd go to the pho store and get a cream puff.

The Daily Joke

Q: What's red and not there?

A: No tomatoes!

Facing My Fears

Here is a story about facing scary things:

Yesterday I made banana bread. I had read that the best banana bread is made from bananas that are black but not fuzzy or oozy which is a hard state to reach – you have to catch them and freeze them at exactly the instant they turn black because fuzzy and oozy isn’t far behind and I’m not about to touch something that is fuzzy and oozy. Except maybe a kitten covered in pudding, touching that wouldn't be so bad.

I started making this banana bread several weeks ago, saving one overripe banana at a time. I’m a very picky banana eater – the peel must be bright yellow with no blemishes or soft spots -- a bit of green at the stem is optimal. Once the brown streaks show up on the peel, it’s near the end of what I consider “edible” – after that, it’s all soft bruise-y mush, in my opinion. Anyway, out of a bunch of five bananas, I can usually eat four (one a day) before they turn on me which leaves one banana in the bank for banana bread. After five or so weeks and four wrinkly black bananas in a baggie in the freezer, it’s time to make bread.

Banana bread is one of the more perfect foods in the world. It’s fruit, nuts, and bread all in one moist delicious treat. It also happens to be one of the more disgusting things to prepare. I should qualify that by saying I have a mold phobia – mold is evilbad. Rotten food is bad and out to get me. Banana bread is made with rotten bananas or darn near close to rotten which is the same thing as far as I’m concerned.

So I had four frozen bananas that needed to thaw before I could mash them up – when I took them out of the freezer they were rock hard and inoffensive. By the time I was ready to bake several hours later, they had transformed into sickeningly soft sacks of goo, threatening to pop and spray me with fermented potassium-rich banana flesh. At arms length, I peeled each one and gingerly laid the flaccid mucus covered slug-like fruit into a steel bowl. Once I was done peeling (washing my hands obsessively after each banana) and my skin didn’t have to come into contact with the slimy bits any more, the prepping got a lot easier – I may have even whistled a happy tune. I mashed banana and sugar into a yellow pudding, added a few other ingredients and put it all in the oven. In five minutes it began to smell ohso good that the rotten food handling became a vague memory.

I ate the bread just now and thoroughly enjoyed it. I faced a fear yesterday and am now a stronger person for it. Rottenbadbad food no longer makes me shiver and I can confidently say that I will not hesitate to touch moldy food in the future as long as I’m wearing elbow-length gloves and an apron and maybe safety glasses or a welder’s mask or something.

Butter and Eggs in My Bed

According to the rivetingly detailed research portal Wikipedia, the origins of the breakfast sandwich are “unclear.” However, it is known that several types of bread can be used to constitute what is commonly known as ‘the Egg McMuffin’, including: biscuits, bagels, toast, and specialty breads.

Mmmm McMuffin. Meat, cheese, and eggs on toast, with or without jalapeno peppers, tobasco sauce, or savory jelly. Sometimes drive-through American culture produces treats that are dirty good. My favorite includes sausage with either salty american or drippy cheddar cheeses, on buttered english muffin or biscuits. Of course sausage, ham and bacon each deserve their own blog postings, to come…

Do you suppose the breakfast sandwich could be related to the breakfast taco? OH tacos.

As I was writing this very general first post of The Daily Snack, Bob Dylan sang these lyrics from his most recent album, Modern Times:

I woke up this morning, butter and eggs in my bed
I woke up this morning, butter and eggs in my bed
I ain't got enough room to even raise my head