food

Un/Lucky?

/ Diane Henders / 33 Comments

Last week I got together with four friends for our annual overnight in Banff, the most beautiful tourist trap in the Canadian Rockies. We had a great time as always… but I couldn’t decide whether my luck was good or bad.

I was still fighting this rotten cold, so that was bad luck. But I’m certainly lucky to have friends who like me enough to put up with me even when I’m diseased!

At the Douglas Fir Resort, we checked into our giant 3-bedroom, 5-bed suite. For a while we sat on our balcony with drinks, enjoying the spectacular mountain view. Then, since I was likely to wake everybody by coughing up a lung in the middle of the night, I moved into one of the private queen rooms with an ensuite bathroom.

Lucky, right? Well, yes… until I realized there was no window, only a skylight. Not so lucky if you’re claustrophobic. I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that the first thing I did was clamber up on the vanity to see if the skylight would open.

Nope. Bolted shut.

I comforted myself with the thought that if I was sufficiently motivated (say, by flames licking up the crack of my ass), I could smash the glass with the wrought-iron lamp and hoist myself up and out of the skylight. But luckily I wasn’t forced to test my escape plan.

Next stop was the Grizzly House for fondue. Pricey but delicious, it’s an evening’s entertainment as well as a meal. Unluckily, one of our fondue burners began to belch gouts of flame like a deranged dragon, but luckily one of the heroic waiters swooped in to save us before the flames reached the paper placemats. Those guys have nerves of steel and fingers of asbestos – he reached through the flames, turned the burner off, and whisked it away; all within seconds and without a change of expression. Wow.

The next day we went to the Banff Upper Hot Springs. I made a potty stop in the changing room, and just as I sat down my sunglasses slipped over the back of my head. I felt them hit my back. Then I felt them hit my butt. Then… *clink*

I thought, “Oh, please, tell me they didn’t fall into the toilet!”

Yep, they did.

But luckily I hadn’t used the toilet yet.

So I squeamishly fished the glasses out and scrubbed them with copious amounts of soap. Settling them back on my face still seemed a bit gross, but I got over it. But their run of bad luck wasn’t over yet. After we got back from the pool, they fell again… onto the concrete floor of the changing room.

Smash. Frames go one way, a lens goes the other.

But the lens didn’t scratch or break and I picked it up and pressed it back into the frame, where it has stayed ever since.  So that seemed like good luck.

And speaking of good luck, the food was amazing! Buttermilk pancakes with apple compote, candied walnuts, and vanilla cream for breakfast at the Buffalo Mountain Lodge; cheese fondue, bagna cauda, prawns, lobster, scallops, elk, ostrich, and alligator at the Grizzly House with a fruit-and-chocolate fondue for dessert (yes, I was in pain afterward); and even a BeaverTail (I managed to fit that in between my ice cream cone and my candied apple). Yum!

And driving back to Calgary in the eastbound lane of the TransCanada Highway on Friday afternoon, we considered ourselves supremely lucky to not be part of the bumper-to-bumper westbound traffic.

So in the end I had just enough bad luck to make my good luck seem even better. And that makes me feel lucky indeed!

How was your week?

Beetle Chips And Other Stories

/ Diane Henders / 40 Comments

I was probably too young to remember when my mother admonished me not to eat bugs, but I’m sure she must have. I really would have preferred to follow her advice.

I realize there are some parts of the world where bugs are, if not delicacies, at least a dietary staple. Even here in Canada I’ve seen cricket lollipops and chocolate-covered grasshoppers, but I’ve never tried them. Hell, I grew up on the prairies. Once you’ve smelled the stomach-churning scent of grasshopper guts slowly barbequing on a hot engine and seen a 12” worm squeeze out of a cricket’s butt, you’re pretty much over the idea of eating grasshoppers and crickets.

Which makes the accidental ingestion of bugs that much more revolting to me. I’ve never experienced the clichéd ‘bite into an apple and find half a worm’, thank goodness. But I’ve come perilously close to devouring a couple of giant shiny black beetles.

Okay, they weren’t exactly ‘giant’ – they were probably only about an inch long. But still. That’s pretty-damn-big when we’re talking about bugs in food.

Once I was absently munching chips while reading. I don’t know what made me look into the bag at precisely the right instant, but there it was: a big black beetle lying belly-up and tastily coated in sour-cream-and-onion powder. My next mouthful would’ve had a very odd taste indeed.

Then I remembered I’d taken that bag of chips on a camping trip the week before, and apparently I’d picked up a hitchhiker. At least he died happy, surrounded by more food than he could ever eat. But I carefully avoided thinking about what he might have left behind on the chips.

Another time I was startled by exactly the same type of black beetle scuttling out of a peach pit as I cut the peach open. Fortunately I hadn’t bitten into the peach, or I’d have gotten a squirmy mouthful.

And I’m an authority on squirmy mouthfuls, after the time I drank from a garden hose and ended up with a large spider crawling across my tongue. That cured me of drinking from the garden hose without letting it run for a while first.

I’m sure I’ve eaten my fair share of carrot maggots – they’re exactly the same colour as carrots, and I’d eaten quite a few carrots before I realized what was causing those itty-bitty tunnels. And I’ve definitely had my fill of gnats or whatever those bugs are that hover in giant clouds over the road. If you’re on a bike or even walking fast, there’s just no way to avoid them short of suicidal evasive action.

All this was brought to my mind a few weeks ago when I bolted awake in the middle of the night. As I’ve mentioned before, it doesn’t take much to make me do that, but this time it wasn’t a false alarm. Something was definitely wrong.

Then I realized there was a funny taste in my mouth. And there had been a lot of fruit flies around…

Anybody else got bug stories? Have you ever intentionally eaten bugs?

I Got Ten Inches Last Weekend

/ Diane Henders / 51 Comments

Like so many of my inappropriate stories, it all started in the pub with the usual suspects on Friday evening. The waitress had been by to collect our food orders and my friend Chris and I had each decided on pizza. I had ordered a 10” medium and he’d gone for the 12” large.

Okay, I can hear you starting to snicker already. Wait for it…

The food arrived and we all dug in with enthusiasm. Except Chris, who was eyeing his pizza with a puzzled look. “What size pizza did you order?” he asked.

“Medium. Ten-inch,” I mumbled around my mouthful.

“Mine doesn’t look any bigger than yours,” he said.

By then everybody had stopped eating to listen with widening grins on their faces.

I peered over at his pizza. “You’re right. They look the same. Hang on…” I pulled out my little measuring tape. (If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ll know I always carry a measuring tape, along with a bunch of other obscure but useful stuff.)

I measured my pizza. “Ten inches.”

Somebody called out, “Now measure Chris’s!” just as the waitress arrived to see me reaching toward Chris with my measuring tape extended.

Everybody erupted in laughter while the waitress froze.

Chris salvaged the situation as best he could by gravely measuring his pizza. Then he said the words you’ll rarely hear from any guy: “Mine’s only ten inches.”

The waitress’s apology for the mistake was almost obscured by the shouts of laughter. Then she turned to me and said, “I can’t believe you have a measuring tape in your purse!”

That only increased the merriment because everybody at the table knew the story of how I used to lurk in men’s washrooms with my measuring tape. We didn’t enlighten our waitress, though. Some things are just too hard (yes, I said ‘hard’) to explain.

And speaking of questionable behaviours, Hubby and I had a chuckle over our Valentine’s Day meal, too. We avoid restaurants on Valentine’s Day because neither of us wants to eat in a crammed-full restaurant. So Hubby had picked up steaks, crab, and a lobster tail for our dinner, and I was making Eggs Benedict for our lunch.

We were out of back bacon. (I know you’re thinking, “How could Canadians run out of back bacon?” You’re right; the government will probably revoke our citizenship cards.)

Anyway, we improvised with regular side bacon, but we’d gotten some mutant package that was either the product of a novice butcher’s first day on the job, or else they’d swept up all the bits that had fallen on the floor. Or both.

But we slapped the bacon on the Bennies (no, that’s not a euphemism) and dug in regardless. A few minutes later a bacon fragment escaped my fork and Hubby looked over in time to see me groping down the front of my T-shirt.

I quipped, “Most women would spritz themselves with cologne for a Valentine’s Day lunch with their sweetie. I drop bacon down my cleavage.”

He shrugged, grinning. “Works for me.”

Ah, bacon. The universal male attractant. Or maybe that’s cleavage. Or bacon-flavoured cleavage…?

So how was your Valentine’s weekend?

 

Funny As A Turnip

/ Diane Henders / 43 Comments

A few weeks ago I noted in passing that some vegetables are funnier than others. So that got me thinking about the innate amusement value of produce.

At first I thought it might be the shape that determines the joke factor. After all, oranges are spherical and pretty boring, whereas bananas are oddly shaped and intrinsically funny. But that might be a subconscious bias on my part. Bananas come with a lot of psychological baggage as a result of their frequent misuse for purposes best left unmentioned…

Wait, why are you snickering? I was referring to the classic ‘slipping-on-a-banana-peel’ pratfall. What did you think I was talking about?

Okay, never mind; I’ll drop the fake indignation. You know me too well. But to keep this discussion pseudo-scientific, I’ll omit the phallic symbols that trigger a chortle-bias in my puerile brain. No bananas, cucumbers, or zucchini.

So let’s take turnips. Nobody in their right mind could assign a sexual connotation to a turnip. And if you’re about to inform me otherwise, please… just don’t. That’s the kind of thing no amount of brain-bleach can wipe from my mind. Not to mention it’ll make me snicker every time I go through the produce department.

I find turnips innocently funny. ‘Turnip’. It’s such a lumpish, stolid word. It’s the sumo wrestler of vegetables. Maybe it tickles my funnybone because one of my favourite sayings is ‘Strong like ox; smart like turnip’. Or maybe it’s only because other words beginning with ‘tur’ make me giggle, so turnips are funny by association.  For instance, just try saying these words out loud without cracking a smile: ‘Turkey’. ‘Turgid’. ‘Turd’.  (If you’re reading this at work, you might want to skip the ‘out loud’ part… but I dare you…)

Whatever the reason, turnips are a lot funnier than, say, lettuce.

If amusement value was influenced by shape alone, leaf lettuce should be a good candidate for some laughs. Ruffles and green colouring – it should be funny, right? (I find green funnier than red or yellow, too, but that’s a subject for another post… or possibly for incarceration and intense psychoanalysis.)

But no; lettuce isn’t funny. Maybe it’s because amusing things rarely happen while you’re eating lettuce. It’s at best a duty and at worst a punishment. I usually enjoy its crisp crunchiness and the fact that it’s good for me, but it doesn’t make me giggle. And if I want crisp and crunchy, I’d rather eat potato chips. Or if it has to be crisp, crunchy, and green, give me dill pickles. Or what the hell; dill-pickle-flavoured potato chips.

But back to my rigorous scientific analysis.

Broccoli is funny: It’s green (see, green is funny), and its resemblance to little trees is amusing. Plus, if you’re into childish humour, it stinks even when it’s fresh, and post-digestion it’s lethal if you get caught in the blast nimbus.

But just to mess up the ‘green and oddly-shaped’ theory, I also think persimmons are funny. There shouldn’t be anything intrinsically funny about a round yellow-orange fruit, but ‘persimmon’ is a giggle-worthy word in itself. When I was a kid I thought it was a made-up word; a colloquialism for a fruit that surely must have a more dignified name that the adults used. And persimmons have those little crispy-brown tutus around their stems.

Come to think of it, ‘tutu’ starts with ‘tu’…

Which fruits/veggies do you find funniest?

Virtual Cookie Exchange

/ Diane Henders / 6 Comments

cookie exchange

We interrupt this regularly scheduled blog to bring you… cookies!  And fudge!  And snackables!

My blogging buddy Linda Grimes invited me to participate in a virtual cookie exchange, and being the foodie I am, I couldn’t resist.  I promised her my simplest no-cook 3-ingredient fudge and a couple of other super-quick recipes that make you look like a holiday hero for making goodies from scratch.

Author Linda Poitevin is hosting this festival of yumminess.  Here’s a  list of all the recipes so far, and she’ll be posting another update today and again next week.

Here you go – happy snacking!

Simple Chocolate* Fudge

1 – 300ml can of sweetened condensed milk (about 1-1/4 cups – it doesn’t have to be perfect)

2-1/4 cups chocolate* chips

3 tablespoons butter

Instructions:  Melt everything together, stir well, and pour into greased 9×9 pan.  Chill.  Eat.

(Note:  If you’re using the microwave, only nuke in short bursts until the milk gets hot and then stir until the chips melt.  If you over-nuke it the chocolate chips turn to cardboard instead of melting.)

*Tip for holiday heroes:  You can make this into any kind of fudge you want – just use a different kind of chips.  White chocolate, milk chocolate, butterscotch, whatever.  If you want to be fancy, throw in some chopped nuts, crushed candy canes, dried cranberries, chopped-up candy bars, or whatever else moves you. If you want to go all Martha Stewart and give homemade fudge as a gift, make a double batch and chill it in a parchment-lined loaf pan, then slice it into slabs the way the fudge shops do.

Simple Peanut Butter Fudge*

1 cup butter

1 cup peanut butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

3-1/2 cups icing sugar (powdered sugar)

Instructions:  Melt the first 3 ingredients together, stir in the icing sugar, and press into greased 9×9 pan.  Chill.  Eat.

*Tip for holiday heroes:  Make the peanut butter fudge first, then make a batch of chocolate fudge and spread it over top.  Choco-peanut-butter fudge, hello.  This almost fills the 9×9 pan, so if you like your fudge a little thinner, put it in a 9×13 pan instead.

Ranch Crispix Snack*

1 box Crispix cereal

1 box mini-Ritz crackers

1 bag cheddar Fishie crackers

1 bag pretzel twists

1-1/2 cups roasted almonds/pecans/macadamias, whatever

1/3 cup canola/sunflower/corn oil

2 envelopes Hidden Valley Original Ranch Dressing mix

2 or 3 tablespoons dried dill

Instructions: Throw everything in a paper bag* and shake well.  Pour out.  Eat.

*This recipe might sound kinda gross to those who don’t like ranch flavour, but it’s irresistible if you like tangy, crunchy, salty snacks. And you can shake it up in anything you have handy – a turkey roaster or covered pail or whatever.

—

And now…

Since this is actually supposed to be a cookie exchange, here are my favourite molasses spice cookies.  They do require baking so they’re not quite as fast and simple as the first three recipes, but they’re soooo worth it!

Chewy Molasses Spice Cookies

3/4 cup melted butter

1 cup sugar

1 large egg

4 tablespoons dark molasses

1 teaspoon ginger

1 teaspoon cloves

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

Instructions: Mix the first 4 ingredients together, then add the rest and mix well.  Roll into teaspoon-sized balls*, dunk in sugar, and place on a greased baking sheet.  Flatten with a fork* and bake at 350 degrees approximately 12 – 14 minutes or until lightly browned.

*Note to Linda Grimes – I know this one has more ingredients than you want to deal with, but you gotta give me credit – continuing in your fine tradition, I said “balls” and “fork”.

And That Was My Week

/ Diane Henders / 32 Comments

The week after I finish a book is always interesting.  During the final stages, I’m so immersed in writing that everything else just… goes away.  Including my brain.  And it hasn’t come back yet.

I tried to come up with a coherent blog post and instead spent an hour staring into space and mumbling non sequiturs.  So I’m just gonna go with that.

Here’s what my week was like, in no particular order:

Ironic:  This week I kickboxed, lifted weights, planted a few thousand square feet of garden, shifted a ton of garden soil, mowed the lawn, did some minor home renovations, and generally abused every muscle in my body.  I was fine.  Then I hurt my back… bellydancing.

Efficient:  I finally discovered the secret to efficiency:  a to-do list.  In the morning I wrote a list of all the things I wanted to get done during the day.  Then at the end of the day, I wrote “Tomorrow” after the “To-Do” title.  Voila!  Efficiency.  Now I don’t have to make another to-do list.

Fashionable:  In my closet, I have a skirt… hey, don’t laugh!  I really do own a skirt.  It’s a broomstick skirt, which, for the uninitiated, is a skirt that looks as though you’ve rolled it up in a ball and slept on it for a couple of months before wearing it.  It suits my attitude toward dress-up clothing just fine.  I unearthed it a while ago, shook it out, and then hung it tenderly back in my closet.  You never know when I might need an easy-to-care-for skirt.

Oblivious:  I showed the above skirt to a friend about a month ago, and she said, “Oh, what a great skirt!  I remember when those were in style!”  Then the conversation moved to other topics.  Just yesterday it filtered through my thick skull that my beloved skirt had been insulted…

Illogical:  About six weeks ago I hurt my arm kickboxing.  So I ignored it, because everything gets better sooner or later, right?  But it kept hurting, and a couple of weeks ago I threw a punch and ouch!  So I went in at the beginning of the week and got a diagnosis.  Apparently I have tennis elbow.  From kickboxing.  Makes perfect sense.  (Fortunately muay thai allows strikes from fists, feet, elbows, and knees, so I can still train.  Otherwise this heading would be “Illogical and Cranky”.)

Absent-Minded:  I went for a walk, and half a mile down the sidewalk my brain suddenly shrieked:  “Wait!  Did I forget my pants?!?”  The relief was indescribable when I looked down to discover that I was actually dressed.  The subsequent question, “Are they done up?” was anti-climactic by comparison.  Unfortunately, accidentally going sans pants isn’t an inconceivable scenario for me.  I’m not in the habit of wandering around half-naked, but when I’m this distracted there’s always a possibility that I might begin to change clothes and just forget to finish the job.

Gluttonous:  Because the universe has a cruel sense of humour, it was my week to be Designated Driver.  So I haven’t even had a beer to celebrate finishing Book 8, but I compensated by eating a candy apple and a triple-chocolate ice cream cone that was as big as my head.  And I have plans for beer this weekend, so all is well in my world.

And that was my week.  How was yours?

Brain Salad

/ Diane Henders / 34 Comments

(I promise this isn’t another post about zombies, despite the title.)

So… occasionally I make Tilt Soup.  It never tastes the same twice, and the recipe is as follows:  ‘Tilt the fridge and whatever falls out goes into the soup’.  Much to Hubby’s relief, I exercise restraint with that recipe.  I’ve never actually served soup containing pickles, jam, and leftover pizza… but the potential is there.

In the same vein, there’s a mental condition called ‘word salad’, where people are capable of intelligible speech but their words come out in an incoherent jumble.  As you may have guessed by now, today’s post is brain salad – a conglomeration of oddments that have been collecting in my mental filters for some time now.

For example:  One night I had an extremely vivid dream in which I was running an online dating service for lonely single monkeys.  I have no idea what the hell I’d eaten or drunk that would generate that level of weirdness, but the dream begs all kinds of questions such as, “How would that even work?” and “For the love of God, WHY?”

And while I’m on the topic of ‘why’, here’s something else I wonder about:  Why are ‘panties’ plural, but ‘bra’ is singular?

And why did I smell gunpowder in the upscale restaurant where I ate a while ago?  I mean, really, the meat was fresh, but it wasn’t that fresh.

And why does my list of blog post ideas contain a draft post titled ‘I Got Mad Skillz’ that is completely blank?  Apparently I once had an idea for a blog post I thought merited that title… but I guess my ‘skillz’ deserted me before I could write it.

The miscellany in my blog file also includes a biker obituary I discovered a while ago and saved because I’d like an obituary like this (except for the ‘younger women’ part):

“Weary of reading obituaries noting someone’s courageous battle with death, Mike wanted it known that he died as a result of being stubborn, refusing to follow doctors’ orders and raising hell for more than six decades. He enjoyed booze, guns, cars and younger women until the day he died. He is survived by Uncle Don and Aunt Cynthia (his favorite); Uncle Dill and Aunt Dot, cousins and nephews, Baba Yaga can kiss his butt.”

I presume Baba Yaga doesn’t refer to the witch of Slavic folklore, so I’d love to know the story behind that one.

And one last thing that made me laugh this week:  You know those website captcha things where you have to interpret numbers and letters that rival Rorschach ink blots in their obscurity?  Well, sometimes they’re not obscure enough to defeat my juvenile sense of humour.  A while ago, I got ‘pness’ and ‘pemile’ in quick succession, generating a flurry of childish snickers.  I entered 8==> in the text box, but apparently that wasn’t what they were looking for…

(Hint:  Rotate that group of characters 90 degrees counterclockwise.  Or clockwise if the Viagra has worn off.)

So that’s it for my brain salad today.  Just like Tilt Soup, if you hold your nose and gulp it down fast, it might not come back on you…

Beef Is A Vegetable

/ Diane Henders / 33 Comments

Yes, it’s true.  Beef is a vegetable, and today I’m going to give you a logical explanation as to why that’s so.

And as a special bonus, I’m going to address the age-old question posed by unhappy students ever since Plato and Aristotle started flapping their gums all those centuries ago:  “When will I ever use these grand principles of logic in real life?”

The answer is ‘frequently’… if you have a devious mind and a burning desire to justify unhealthy nutritional choices.

Hubby and I have both.

Frankly, I was a lot happier when I thought the four basic food groups were sugar, salt, fat, and booze.  But then I went and educated myself about proper nutrition, not realizing how that knowledge would cut into my enjoyment of the all the tastiest treats in life.

On my more cynical days, I figure cutting out all the best yummies won’t actually make me live longer; it’ll just seem like it.  But since my main ambition is to not die of my own stupidity, I generally make an effort to eat well.  And on the days when I don’t feel like doing that, I use logic to justify my poor food choices.

‘Cause, like, y’know, logic is like, all sophisticated and stuff, so that makes me feel smarter when I’m ingesting enough saturated fat to bung my arteries solid.

I’ve already discovered a few useful pre-rationalized vices.  I’m sure just about everybody has seen the one about how chocolate comes from a bean, and beans are vegetables.  And vegetables are healthy and an essential part of good nutrition, therefore it’s necessary to eat chocolate.

Or the one about how grapes are fruit, and wine is made from crushed grapes, therefore wine is just as healthy as fruit juice.

And barley sandwiches are a super-nutritious meal, too.  (For those unfamiliar with barley sandwiches, the main ingredients in beer are barley and yeast, which are essentially the same ingredients as bread…)

If you think that’s a weak argument, never mind – I have a better one.  Beer fights cancer, so it’s actually medicinal.  And I just re-read that article and discovered that they consider a ‘healthy’ intake of beer to be up to two or three units a day for women.  Dammit, I’ve been under-medicated!  Bring on the beer!

But the people who thought up those rationalizations are rank amateurs compared to my husband.  He has actually formulated a logic chain to justify eating gigantic quantities of steak:

Beef is a vegetable.  And vegetables are healthy.

I did point out the food pyramid to him, indicating where there was a clear differentiation between meats and vegetables, but he just shook his head with the patient tolerance of a Zen scholar and proceeded to enlighten me.

“It’s simple,” he explained.  “Cows eat grass.  Grass is a vegetable.  You are what you eat, so beef is a vegetable.”

I couldn’t argue with that even if I wanted to.

Is that the sweet, sweet smell of barbeque?

I Survived V-Day!

/ Diane Henders / 32 Comments

It’s probably not what you’d expect to hear from a married woman, but I’m happy to have made it through Valentine’s Day.

It’s not that I had overblown expectations, or that I was worried about potential disappointment.  Valentine’s Day has never been a big deal for Hubby or me.  We exchange cards and go out for a nice dinner, and that’s about it.

No, the true reason for my post-V-Day euphoria is this:  I made it through our meal unscathed.

It’s not what you think.

I’m not dieting or on the wagon, so I wasn’t fighting food/alcohol guilt.

I wasn’t anxious about dining etiquette.  I’m sufficiently domesticated that I don’t attract undue attention in a nice restaurant (at least not when I choose to summon up my table manners, which I should probably do a lot more frequently).

I might, perhaps, have a small social phobia left over from the time I donned my coat with a flourish in a fancy restaurant and knocked an entire pitcher of ice water off a ledge.  And the ice water might possibly have landed on some other diners…

But that was a few decades ago and I’ve (almost) recovered from that.

I wasn’t even dreading the fact that I’d have to wear something other than my usual jeans and hiking boots.   Believe it or not, I actually dressed up without whining.  Alert the media!

No; mine was a more primal fear:  The fear of pain.

And I’m proud to say I didn’t hurt myself through sheer gluttony.

I’d like to pretend that’s a joke, but it’s not.

Last year I actually physically injured myself.  I stuffed in a magnificent meal and waddled out cradling my distended belly.  Then I bent to get in the car and… pop!  One of those horrible noises you hear in your gut instead of with your ears, and a lightning-bolt of pain.

Most normal people would put their backs out bending to get in a car.  Not I.  I’m ashamed to say my stomach was so full I snapped something (cartilage, muscle, who knows?) on my bottom rib.  It took a couple of weeks before I could bear to lie on that side, and a couple of months for the pain to go away completely.

Honestly, I didn’t think it was possible to damage my skeletal structure with too much food.  Give myself a stomach ache, sure; maybe rupture my gut if I really went overboard; but blow a rib…?  I guess I’m just special.

Anyway, a few days ago we went back to the scene of the crime.  And I bravely threw myself on the live grenade that is their menu – I had bread and an appetizer and an entrée and dessert.  But I had two glasses of wine instead of the single one I had last year, and I’m convinced the subsequent relaxation was what prevented me from hurting myself again.

At least that’s going to be my excuse whenever I need to justify drinking an extra glass:  Safety first!

Ah, the sacrifices I make…  *sighs and assumes expression of courageous and noble martyrdom*

So whew.  Made it through V-Day.

Anybody else have a V-Day survival story?

Retroactive Weirdness

/ Diane Henders / 34 Comments

This probably isn’t a revelation to anybody else, but I was a bit surprised this week when I realized the extent of my own weirdness.

I maintain a file of ideas and thought-snippets for my blog.  When something strikes me as odd or funny or disturbing, I pop it into the file.  Most of the 60 or so entries are only a sentence or two, and in the spirit of year-end cleanup I decided it was time to develop some of them into blog posts.

What’s more, I realized this post would fall on New Year’s Day.

“Well,” thought I, “What a fine opportunity to wrap up the year with a retrospective of some of the oddments I’ve discovered.”

Little did I know what a can of worms I was opening.  Here are a few of the items that amused me this year:

I discovered that it’s impossible to brush my teeth without making my nose wiggle.  And now that I’ve noticed it, it’s impossible to ignore.  I try, but I can’t look away.  Then I end up giggling and spluttering toothpaste everywhere.

I discovered that studies have been performed to determine how often people fart in a day.  That in itself tickled my funnybone, but when I found out that the testing apparatus included mylar underpants to trap and measure the emissions, I cracked up.  There’s just something hilarious about mylar underpants with a hose attached…

Also on that topic, I discovered that there is actually such a thing as fart-absorbing underwear with a built-in carbon filter.  It’s purported to control odour effectively, but there’s no word on how well it muffles the sound effects.  I guess you just have to blame the barking spiders for those.

And then there’s Poopourri, which, frankly, is right at the top of my “disturbing” list for many reasons, all of which are illustrated by this commercial.  Yes, this is actually a real product, and apparently it’s supposed to work.  I just… I got nothin’.

If you’ve managed to recover from that, here’s another goody I’ve been meaning to share with you, my poor suffering victims faithful readers:  In a small town named Torrington about an hour northeast of Calgary, there is a Gopher Hole Museum.  This museum consists entirely of dioramas containing dead, stuffed gophers dressed up and posed in various activities of human life.  Don’t believe me?  Check it out:  http://gopherholemuseum.ca/dioramas/  And yes, I went to see it, because it just had to be done.

Last but by no means least on the roster of weirdness, I discovered that it is apparently profitable to hoard food items long past the point where they are safe to consume or even possible to contemplate without gagging.  Yes, some guy sold a 20-year-old bottle of McDonald’s McJordan BBQ sauce for $10,000:  http://sports.nationalpost.com/2012/10/17/an-anonymous-buyer-spent-10000-on-20-year-old-mcjordan-barbeque-sauce/

More to the point; some wack-job bought a 20-year-old bottle of McDonald’s McJordan BBQ sauce for $10,000.  One word:  Eeuwwww.

I guess I’d better go excavate under the couch cushions and see if I can find some fossilized potato-chip crumbs.  They’ve gotta be worth something.  Or maybe a half-squished piece of two-year-old popcorn that looks like the face of some religious icon…

Come on, ‘fess up!  Somewhere in the back of your cupboard, you’re hoarding a box of Kraft dinner from 1972 that’s worth at least a grand.  Right?  …Right…?

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I’m on the road this morning, so I’ll be back to reply to comments a little later in the day.  Talk to you soon!