Teeny Manolo

Actually, that’s pretty far off, even for a random internet quiz. I wonder what it would say about me if my fridge were this freakily futuristic fridge/table hybrid from Gorenje? The whole design does not sit well with the Fridges Rights Movement on DVice:

If I was a refrigerator, I would be feeling pretty unappreciated right now. What’s a table ever done besides hold food level? If you leave cheese on a table for a few days it’ll go bad, but if you keep it in a fridge it’ll stay fresh!

You won’t need to stand up to get the milk carton, but you’ll know deep down that you’re doing something wrong.

True enough. Convenience is one thing; the closety element of disguise here takes it to the rarefied level of those ridonkulous Victorian frilled pantaloons on piano legs. Not to mention the superstructure here makes it impossible to argue with someone sitting directly across from you…which is really the whole point of sitting directly across from someone, or is that just me?

A while back, some cookbooks were published that featured recipes with hidden fruits and vegetables.  It didn’t matter that they were eating brownies with spinach in them, as long as they were eating something healthy.   At least, that was the theory, anyway.

The author of a newly published recipe collection has this to say about the other books:

As a mother of twins and a food professional, I was appalled by this deceptive and sneaky idea. Not only are we teaching our kids to “eat your brownies, they’re good for you” (in a country where a third of kids are obese or overweight and perhaps the first generation to not outlive their parents), but we are lying to our kids and signaling, either implicitly or explicitly, that vegetables, in particular, are so yucky, they have to be hidden. That’s the worst idea I’ve heard since manufacturers decided to add trans fats to everything edible.

I can see her point on the vegetable thing, but I take exception to the “appalled by this deceptive and sneaky idea” comment.

Lying to your child has a long, grand tradition in parenting, and I’ll be darned if I’m going to let it end on my watch.

What parent hasn’t said to their toddler, “Oh, I’m sorry honey, the park is closing now. We have to go!”

Or, “Mr. Scruffles is at a big, beautiful farm, where he can run and play in the grass all day long!”

Or, “Mommy and Daddy weren’t hurting each other. That was just a very special hug.”

Those are just a few of the classics, there are almost too many to mention here. Now I’m not advocating that you baldface lie to your child at every opportunity, but there is no doubt that there are many occasions where a touch of untruth makes everything run that much more smoothly.

Each parent is the best judge of exactly how much information their child needs, given their age and developmental stage. Sometimes the entire, detailed truth is too much for them to handle, and a bit of finessed omission helps a child deal with a situation, rather than causing them to have nightmares for weeks. Parents must wing it as best they know how, and I’m given to thinking that they usually get it right.

Although to this day, I still wonder why we never went to visit Mr. Scruffles at that farm.

Love home-made pancakes and waffles, but just don’t have those lazy three minutes to throw the ingredients together? Well fret no more: the organic Batter Blaster is here!

Yes, this is real. Aerosol pancake batter.

God, I’m a sucker for ridonkulous retro commercials.

Who doesn’t love home-made chocolate cake? And who isn’t far too lazy to do their own? (okay, that’s just me)

But who wouldn’t take a shot at this make-in-a-mug and from-scratch and ready-in-five and otherwise-multi-hyphenated winner of a chocolate cake recipe from DizzyDee?

You need a 1000 watt microwave or an aptitude for math (to do the conversion) and one microwave-safe (there go those hyphens again and, come to think of it, the parentheses as well) mug for each serving. They want you to dump the finished cake out onto a plate, but they must have servants or dishwashers or something; I’d just eat it out of the mug with an iced tea spoon.

Bonus points: pig-shaped stencils on top with a sifting of icing sugar. I mean, anybody can make a five minute chocolate mug cake in a pig mug, but a five minute chocolate mug cake in a pig mug with sugar pigs on top? That’s gold star material.

Twisite over at the Basement of the Bargains has discovered a great deal on a very cute bake set. I want one too!

The always excellent and erudite Mr. Henry wrote a post last week regarding food and grandmothers. Specifically, the food our grandmothers made that reminds us of growing up. It is amazing how the food of our childhood can bring back such strong memories.

I was lucky enough to have two grandmothers who were fabulous cooks. One was German, the other Italian, neither of them much far removed from their homelands. So I took for granted all the wondrous, made-from-scratch food they made for us.

We are lucky enough to still have one grandmother with us, a great-grandmother to the Munchkin. But her days of being able to stand at the counter and cook polenta from scratch are sadly behind her.

The other grandmother, the German frau who passed away many years ago, would have recognized in the Munchkin her culinary soulmate. Butter? Why not just put it on with a spatula! Something doughy? Oh my, yes! Apple strudel and puffy German pancakes? Pass the plate please! And for her, making food and nourishing her family was her expression of love. Because bless her heart, she was a stoic woman who was not often outwardly affectionate. But one taste of that strudel, at once chewy and flaky and perfectly sweet but not-too-sweet, and you knew there was nothing but love and care in the making.

As the Munchkin gets older, I find myself wanting to connect him with his ancestral roots, and thus I have attempted to make some recipes from both grandmothers. Before he was born, I wistfully thought of the dishes that I looked forward to eating as a child, but didn’t do much in the way of actually making them. Now, I try much harder to recreate the food I equated with love and happiness, hoping to have some of that rub off on him as well.

And as for my own mother, someone who didn’t enjoy cooking in the same way her mother did, it seems that the Munchkin will always equate her with chocolate chip pancakes.

She could defintely do worse.

Think of Rachel Ray.

This is just too perfect; she wants you to spend fifteen of your hard-earned dollars to purchase a bowl into which you’ll throw your crap.

As for me, I call the place where I throw my scraps the “Garbage” but you know, her market is terribly refined.