When I was young, I had one of the infamous Teen Talk Barbies. She and I would have long, imaginary conversations about the sociopolitical unrest in the Middle East, the impending real estate bubble, the stylistic value of cinéma verité…you know, all the usual interests of a ten year old girl. At least, I would talk about those things. Barbie, dear sweet, plastic-headed Barbie, would spout delightfully silly exclamations, like “Wanna have a pizza party?” and “Math class is tough. Let’s go shopping!”
Actually, that’s not true. I never had one of those Barbies and I only know about the infamous Teen Talk version off the doll because it was later parodied in a Simpsons episode where Lisa’s Malibu Stacy doll proclaims, “Math is hard. Let’s go shopping!”
But let’s pretend for the sake of this post that I did have one of those dolls and in that case, alternative-reality me would be reminded of it years later when various friends and readers would flop down in their chairs, sigh, or type frowny-faced emoticons into messages and declare, “Cooking is hard. Let’s eat out.”
Now, I may never teach you to like math–I’m not even going to try; after all, this is “Have Fork, Will Eat” not “Have FOIL, Will Calculate.” I will, however, try to prove to you that not only is cooking not hard but it can also make basic math terribly tasty like these delicious make-ahead recipes that can be added to future meals for a nice boost of flavor and are easy to multiply and divide so you can make as much or as little as you want. (more…)
I can hear the battle raging on inside of Cookie Monster’s head already: “It look like a cookie. But it not a cookie. But it have chocolate chip like cookie. But it scone. But it round like cookie. How it not cookie? Cookie Monster like cookies. Cookie Monster not Scone Monster. To eat or not to eat scone cookie? That is the question.”
This was a sad week. Our household was struck down by the plague. Well, a cold. But a vicious cold. You know, like one of those snarling, drippy cartoon germs you see in commercials. It ruined all my weekend plans of…doing nothing. I mean, sure I still did nothing but I didn’t enjoy it as much. I missed the beautiful 80-degree day that was Sunday. I missed two days of work after that. So did Josh–which is how you know this was a bad cold, because Josh rarely gets sick and even more rarely takes days off because he’s sick. And sadly, I missed all my good opportunities in the kitchen–there were no baguettes baked, no pretzels dipped in chocolate, nothing. Oh the humanity!
There’s a great joke in an even greater movie, a classic work by an utterly influential artiste. Anyway, in the joke, this guy is talking to a girl he likes at a party and he lists off all these fantastic foreign foods that are sitting on the buffet, including dates. And he offers her a plate and says, “Would you like a date?” “Sure,” she replies, reaching for it. He pulls the plate away. “How about next Thursday” Hahahahahah. That, my dear friends, is the genius work of Mel Brooks in his cinematic masterpiece Robin Hood:Men in Tights.
It is a really icky day here. Cold, wet, rainy, some hail. Not exactly a vision of spring bursting forth with sunshine and warm rays and flowers and bunnies with miniature gold pocket watches in little tiny pockets.
I’m on year two of a five year plan that was put into operation about 15 years ago. I’m a little behind, I’ll admit. But the plan, the plan is still good. The plan is to take over the world. At first I thought I’d do it with my charm and effervescent wit. But that hasn’t panned out yet. So now I’m thinking I’ll take a slightly different tack. I’m going to take over the world through a slow, steady and judicious application of macaroni and cheese.
Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the 
Lemon curd
Josh and I headed down to Chi-town this past week so I could attend a work conference. It was good timing. The weather is finally starting to turn around, it was beautiful, the St. Pat’s celebration was in full swing, green river and all and I was itching to get to a bigger city and do what’s really important–eat.
