TheSnackHound

Our new friend over at Mom Most Traveled is giving away a ruffled vintage inspired cupcake apron by Carolyn’s Kitchen. Who would have thought full length, frilly, girlie aprons would come back in style, considering how unisex things are these days. Actually, I take that back. It really has never gone out of style, and women are demanding it.

Full length aprons are something I should start wearing again for two things. I tend to be the person who is very careful, though inherently accident prone, and I have a penchant for coincidentally wearing white jeans when I decide to have grape juice or chocolate syrup. You know…the one spot that never seems to come out? Also, there is more motivation to pull out some stick-to-it-iveness in putting the right clothes on for a job.

The apron comes with a set of matching gloves for the ubercoordinated. How do you win? It is very simple to enter, just go check out the blog and leave a comment. You must mention an apron style that you like that was not mentioned in the blog posting. And that’s it!

Contest ends July 6th at 9 PM CST.  In otherwords, that’s tomorrow, if the date stamp on this blog posting patches the day you are actually reading this entry.

The whole “tomorrow” thing wouldn’t apply if you are in Australia, as it is already tomorrow from where you are reading.  Therefore, it would be a little over 26 hours from whatever time/day/century it happens to be where you are.

I should have also stated the year….it is currently 2008 A.D (Anno Domini).    Yes, I still like to use the recently out of favor “Year of Our Lord” rather than this A.C.E. and B.C.E. crappola that all the sudden creeped up on us, that despite being a former “almost majored in classics in college” student, I didn’t get that memo.   (B.C.E: ‘before current era.”  Unless it really means “Before Christ’s {physical} Entrance” but I doubt it).

I won’t get into the whole Julian Calendar/Gregorian Calendar/How that Equates to Chinese New Year and how much time until the end of the contest if you are living somewhere on the Moon.

Translation: Go check it out, but hurry!

Ivory is the new color released by the Homer Laughlin Company for the popular Fiesta Ware line. Basics like the place setting (including coffee mugs), vegetable dishes, and disc pitchers are among the current offerings. Just in time for Christmas, there will be other pieces that have a fall release. I am curious to see what the offerings will be.

Since I have yet to see the new color in person, I am wondering how much of a yellow base it has. That thought did cross my mind. If the base is yellow rather than cream, I wonder how close it is to the original Ivory, introduced in 1936, which had a pale slightly “pastel side walk chalk” yellow with a cream tint to it. Vintage Ivory tends to photograph as white or off white if the aperture and flash are not just right, but in person it definitely is a nice, soft color.

Bealls and JCPenney are not yet offering the color for sale on their sites, so check live and in person in the store, or try one of the smaller shops on the web that seem to be getting the color in. Just FYI, right now, four piece placesettings at JCPenney in other colors are $26.99, while they are in the $40 range at other retailers.

There seems to be a split between themes for new Fiesta colors. There are many that are not even remotely similar to the original lineup and with others, such as turquoise, they are confusing to newer collectors. Of course, modern Fiesta pieces have much more “heft” to them, even if subtle to some, there are some that are more or less modern updates of classic hues.

We have been on two cruises in the past couple years.  Remember all of those commercials showing all of those 20-55 year old people that wear a size 4 dress?  We tried to look for those people there, and we were a little puzzled about where they all were.   A midweek cruise featured overtanned sixty year old women who complained that the cruise was too cheap and attracted “THOSE kind of people.”  My husband turned to ”Mrs. Twelve Pounds of Gold Jewelry Hide that the skin behind my sunglasses is 22 shades lighter than the rest of my face” and I could tell he was going to ask her if who “THOSE kind of people” are, and how does she disqualify herself?   The weekend cruises had a younger crowd of people who managed to get a long weekend from work.  That was to the Bahamas.   Next time, we might try Europe.There were many dining opportunities.   In fact, you could probably get a better assessment of listing times when and places where you COULD NOT dine.   With the midnight chocolate buffets and all day room service, one could potentially think Richard Simmons was getting ready to come “rescue them.”   On the contrary, my husband and I both lost weight on the cruise?

How?  We ate frequently, but ate small meals.  We ate a lot of fish, primarily salmon.   Along with that, we ate salad and other fruit and vegetables all the time also.   Our beverage of choice was water, with sometimes pineappele juice as a substitute.    So, while our dinner companions were missing as they could not handle the gluttony, we felt that we went away to the fat farm and came back healthy.

Tips for Cruising:
1) Eat frequent, small meals
2) Skip the pizza and hamburgers
3) The cruiseline usually brings food off the boat onto islands they own.  You can safely eat things that are normally a no-no at some destinations, such as citrus fruits, water, ice, and other produce.

Of course, luxurious destinations often feature restaurants and other amenties on shore that are perfectly safe to indulge at.   European and Australian destinations have many of the same health standards, even at the local haunts.  Still, be careful out there.  You might not be as likely to get Montezuma’s Revenge cruising down the Rhine on some fancy European river cruises, but watch out that no one tries to slip you haggis in the UK.   You won’t get sick due to the safety of ingredients, but your system may surely reject it!

(By the way, we were so incredibly healthy.  However, on the next cruise, we were not.  Some lady walked by and sneezed directly on me, and I caught a really nasty cold.  Actually, it was more of a flu with chills, etc.  I can’t believe she did that to me.  I was sitting and she was walking by and had to stand over me at an angle to do it!)

RollerKaty at the Rollerblog reminded me about Wacky Packs. For the uninitiated, they were stickers that sported messed up versions of household products.   Who could forget such “Darn, I wish they were real!” products like Fang: The Drink for Vampires?

If you are one of those children who later moved on to Garbage Pail Kids when the whole Wacky production screeched to a halt, you might be interested, thrilled, or shocked to know that now there is a coffee table book on the very subject. All the Wacky Packages and the corresponding history are presented in their full glory, finally!

If this thought intrigues you, read more about it HERE.  Do I smell a Christmas present?   I know that it will definitely be on my list.  It is never too early to shop.

My mother-in-law is a good cook when thinks about it.

One would think that if they had tomatoes, ricotta cheese, veggies, and pasta, and didn’t have enough time to make a full lasagna, the following quick dishes would come to mind:

A quickie pasta primavera.  Afterall, water can boil quickly.
Italian panini.  I guess you could skip the pasta and grab the waffle iron.
Pita pockets with Italian stuff in them.
A salad (the fastest of them all if you also have lettuce.)

My mother-in-law doesn’t follow this chain of thought.

Two Christmases ago we had a pretty low key holiday.   We decided to make pizzas at home Christmas afternoon instead of going any place fancy.  We stocked the kitchen with various cheeses and veggies.  My mother-in-law brought over her new Presto Pizza Maker that she was looking forward to trying out, and we preheated the oven so we could cook two or three at once.

We couldn’t figure out why everything coming out of the oven was black as soot on the bottom, and the vegetables were rubbery.

“I was hungry and couldn’t wait,” my mother-in-law explained.  Then we looked at the oven and had discovered, once again, that she had cooked something at twice the heat and half the time to have something finish under the wire.

If cooking is an art, but baking, or anything involving crust, is a science, you can’t mess with science!

Tonight’s show was the last show leading up to the finals.   Of course, that may not be so if they run any sort of clip show, or take a break so Fox can air a “special.”   I think it is safe by now that the viewers on the west coast have seen the show air, so I don’t have to worry about being a spolier.   It is down to Christina and Petrozza, with Corey being eliminated.   Quite frankly, I thought the animosity between Corey and Christina would have done them in well before this point.   In fact, I will “come clean:”  I missed the show for several weeks due to a personal scheduling conflict and refuse to spend money in TiVo.  Call me cheap, but I prefer “appointment viewing.” 

In my opinion, Petrozza is the more deserving of the two based on overall career/point in life that he is in. I remember one season of Top Chef where there where it came down to a man who was slighly older and had been in the business and just had not gotten a “break,” and a very young upstart. They were awarded the position at Ramsey’s restaurant in the UK. The young guy won, went there and then quit because he didn’t think it was the right place to raise his family.   Shouldn’t he have thought about that before agreeing to be on the show?   The other contestant would have eaten that opportunity up.  With Christina still a culinary student, would she prepared to make the leap?

Watch me be totally wrong about the outcome.

While I am a big believer in rewarding new talent, I feel really bad for people who are equally as good but who have put in the time towards their dream.

I should really talk.   I wouldn’t make it one second in Hell’s Kitchen because everyone would get salmonella or Gordon Ramsey would think what I just cooked was so ghastly it really needed to be put out of its misery.

I have been told that I am easily entertained, and I also love dark chocolate.  Not only is it delicious, it has many health benefits, too.   Of course, that is null and void when you eat a bag in one sitting and then end up in a bad state of affairs and are confined to a certain small room of your home for several hours. Since this is a food blog, I will not mention the name of said room.

All segue aside, if you go to Coupons.Com, you can score yourself a two for one coupon.  Buy one 8.5 to 9.5 ounce bag of Dove chocolate and you will receive one free.  I was so psyched about that, that I was not prepared as to what happened next. 

We went to Kmart before the grocery store, and I had coupon in hand. The Dove chocolates were 3.69 instead of 3.99 at the grocery store.  At the register, I discovered the pleasant surprise that the current Kmart offer was 3 bags for 6 dollars!  NOT 3.69 as marked.   This, of course translated to $2.00 per bag.     When you consider that I had the coupon, it was like getting 2 bags for only a buck each!

I rattled on about my awesome bargain all the way to the car, into the grocery store, and halfway home.  By that time, my husband did not want to hear about it anymore because I was acting like I was the first person in the world to ever get a good deal, or maybe the chocolate addiction was talking and it was the ramblings of a junkie.

Either way, I was not selfish, and am relating my experiences here. Go to Coupons. Com, then get thee to Kmart!

Who the heck is “Dinah?”   The second question that begs to be answered is : Who is in the kitchen with her, and why is it significant?

You may wonder just what I am going on about.
Remember the folk song?

Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah
Someone’s in the kitchen I know
Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah
Strummin’ on the old banjo!

The song is a temp change section of “‘I’ve been Workin On the Railroad.”   Kind of like how in “Last Dance,” Donna Summers starts out one way, and then everyone has been waiting until she gets to the uptempo part of the song.    Okay. Not really.  Bad analogy.   Truth be told “Dinah” had her own song, penned around 1840 and published in London.   We must travel back through history to have all those burning questions answered.

1) Does the “Someone” in the kitchen with Dinah, i.e, the phrase “Someone’s in the Kitchen I Know,” mean that someone is in the kitchen that the singer is well aquainted with?    Or does the singer imply that he/she “knows” that someone is in the kitchen.  They are aware of they whole “state of affairs” but they do not indicate who it could possibly be.

2)  In the 1800s, it would seem that kitchens were quite more utilitarian.  There were no large L-shaped counters with breakfast bar stools back then.   It was also awfully hot without air conditioning.  In otherwords, we do not “buy” the concept that Dinah regularly “entertains” in said kitchen.  The presence of a banjo playing person, or the fact that a person who is normally in the kitchen who suddenly breaks out the banjo, therefore, is highly suspect.    However, since Dinah would not have a radio to listen to while washing dishes, it is possible she sought alternative entertainment. Does this qualify?

This all leads me to believe that the song’s point was that this was not a usual occurence.  Otherwise, no one would have written a song about it.  Unless they just needed something to rhyme with “know” and   True there are other folk songs where not much happens out of the ordinary.   But it had to be something that stuck out a little in the writer’s mind to actually put pen to paper.

The original name of the song, I have discovered, was Old Joe or Somebody in the House with Dinah.  Ah-HA!   So it was JOE who was in the kitchen and strumming said Banjo.    When one question is answered, it opens a floodgate of many more!   Was he her dad?  Was he a wandering minstrel?   Was he trying to court her?   Was he the local crazy person?   Was this a commercial establishment and he worked there? We need to know!  It he was “Old” Joe maybe Dinah was very young and thought it was gross that this really old guy was interested in her.

Maybe I have left you with more questions than answers.  Never trust someone who seems to have a “useless information” area of their brains with this sort of thing.

There are many websites devoted to the preservation, mutilation, and transformation of Peeps, but not much to say about Skittles.  Yes, Skittles; the candy that announcers so haughtily demand for you to “TASTE THE RAINBOW.”  

This command was a little more humble when Skittles were first introduced during my childhood.  Someone was probably just HOPING we wanted to try them.    To be accurate, Skittles were originally a British candy that was introduced in the United States in the early 70s, which was slightly before my time, but they were not made in the US until 1981, or 1982.  Thus, the marketing that went in to targetting children who would want to eat them did not commence until then.  My brother and I were some of the children who were sucked in by those various ploys.  I do believe they hit the drugstores counters of rural Wisconsin long before the commercials did, however.  Click Here to enjoy an 80s Skittles commercial.  What a dull world we would have lived in without them.

I always knew that my brother would have some sort of culinary destiny.  What his creations lacked in artistic “plating,” they transcended many levels of daringness and creativity.   In 1984, I think it was, on a snow day, a sick day, or a vacation day - my memory is foggy now - he first set his mind on the idea that Skittles could be so much more.  It perhaps was not until 1986 that his idea became a reality.   When our family got a microwave oven, his true muse was found.

I think the microwave was a JCPenney brand, if I am not mistaken.   Perhaps the last in our extended family to jump on the trend bandwagon,  we had been spared from owning the most giant of microwave ovens of earlier years (which really defeated the purpose of being smaller than a regular oven).  At any rate, that dial was turned to thirty seconds and the rest was history.      Little did we know that there was shellac in the American version of Skittles, and if we knew we probably would not have cared.

There are many recipes floating around on the web and in books, involving making M&M cookies or cupcakes, and then  substituting Skittles.   To my brother, that would have just been amateur hour.

The tangy smell of melted skittles mixed with the heady aroma of chocolate is still in my mind to this day, for better or for worse.   It all occured on top of several paper plates.   Luckily, there was no incident of fire or destruction, other than destroying his inhibitions of combining tangy, tart, and chocolatey all in one creative expression.

I have to admit, in editorial honesty, that we never actually did eat the creation.   The Skittle “shells,” if you call them that had cracked and broken and the gelatanous innards had oozed together with the chocolate.   The effect was similar looking to ”melted crayons and chocolate.”    I think we were a little afraid it was all quite radioactive.  

A popular feature on this site has never even been mentioned by me.   Somehow, many people have discovered it.   You have found the four word phrase hidden on this site.  It is the only thing that even hints at its covert existence.   Yes, I dare you to Resist the Fridge, where you just may find that your brain cells melt away, or at least time does. Maybe you are reminded of your childhood…tossing plastic letters at the fridge of your youth. At any rate, resistance to the Fridge is futiles. I know that once you find it, you won’t be able to not play with the silly thing.

I warned you.
Don’t Click Here.