food

Hortiporn Addict

/ Diane Henders / 47 Comments

I’ve succumbed to my own sordid vices again.  I really thought I had overcome them this fall, but I was wrong.  One glimpse was all it took.

The seductive cover photo made my heart pound.  I carried the magazine home with trembling hands and smuggled it into my pile of innocuous reading material.  I swore to myself I’d be strong this time.  I wouldn’t let my base instincts overcome my knowledge of what was good and right.

But the illicit thrill drew me irresistibly.

Just one look, I promised myself.  I won’t let it consume me this time.

But one page led to another.  Each photo was more tempting than the last.  Each coaxed and promised, “I could be yours. Yours alone.  Imagine running your hands over my smooth, glossy skin.  Imagine my sweet taste on your lips…”

All that firm flesh; all those provocative layouts…

Omigod, look at the size of that…!

And then it was too late.  All my good intentions evaporated and I fell straight back into the waiting embrace of my worst weakness.

Yes, I’m ashamed to say I was drooling over hortiporn again.

It's sheer coincidence the catalogue fell open to carrots and cucumbers.

It’s sheer coincidence the catalogue fell open to carrots and cucumbers.

I swear I’m addicted to seed catalogues.  They’re terrible things.  The vegetables are so big and beautiful and blemish-free.  The flowers are so lush and brilliant.  And the worst part is, I know damn well the photos are just as air-brushed and artificially enhanced as pinups in a skin mag.  I’ll never grow anything that beautiful in my garden.  (Yes, I’m talking about vegetables.  Jeez.  Everybody knows you can’t grow hot guys in the garden… can you…?  ‘Cause I’m willing to try if there’s a possibility…)

Every year I get sucked in.  The snow swirls outside, and I curl up on the couch and dream of all the delicious and wonderful goodies I’ll grow next year.  I forget all the hard work of planting and hoeing and harvesting.  Those vivid colours drive the memories of hard labour straight out of my head, and I get out my pen and start making my list.

And the catalogues come earlier each year.  I got this one a little more than a month after I finished planting the *ahem* several hundred fall flower bulbs I *ahem* accidentally ordered last spring.  I was sure the memory of planting all those bulbs would dull the lustre of this year’s hortiporn.

Not a chance.  One glance was all it took.  I remembered how tasty the summer’s harvest was.  And how beautiful it was, at least to my eyes:

I know; it looks like work. But it was worth it!

I know; it looks like work. But it was worth it!

So the seed companies win again.  This week’s catalogue was only the first salvo in their attack, and my defences are already breached.  Soon more temptation will arrive from at least two other companies.  Then the spring bulbs and nursery stock catalogues will come.  And in the depths of January, I’ll cave and order another couple of hundred dollars worth of seeds and plants.

But I can quit whenever I want to.

Honest.

Most people dream of tropical vacations. I dream of this.

Most people dream of tropical vacations. I dream of this.

* * *

Woohoo!  Book 7: SPY, SPY AWAY has just been released on Smashwords, and I hope it’ll show up today on Amazon. (Members of my New Book Notification List will get an email as soon as it’s available.)  To celebrate, I’m giving away a signed paperback copy.  If you’d like a chance (or two) to win it, pop over to my Book Giveaway page.

Semi-Defective

/ Diane Henders / 23 Comments

Lately my brain has been semi-defective.  It works most of the time, but every now and then it shorts out, leaving me standing there wondering what the hell I’d intended to do moments ago.  Or I go to do one thing and end up doing something else entirely.

I hope it’s because I’m in the final intense writing phase of Book 7 and all my spare brain power is used up.  I really hope it’s not permanent.  And I really, really hope aliens didn’t sneak into my bedroom while I was asleep and swap out my brain for a substandard model.  ‘Cause everybody knows there’s a big market for good used brains around Halloween, so it would make sense to manufacture some cheaper semi-defective ones.

I mean, really, there are lots of things that are apparently manufactured to be intentionally inferior.

Take cotton swabs, for example – one of my pet peeves.  Any time I buy a generic brand, one end of the swab has a nice soft cotton tip and the other end is a hard plastic stick with a few shreds of cotton adhering to it, just enough to blunt the edges so it doesn’t actually slice the inside of my ear to pieces.

(Don’t bother reprimanding me for sticking cotton swabs in my ears.  I know I’m not supposed to, but I’m a rebel.  Sometimes I go out doors marked ‘In Only’.  Sometimes I drink milk that’s a day past its ‘Best Before’ date.  So sticking cotton swabs in my ears?  I laugh in the face of danger!  Ha-ha!)

Anyway…

If Q-Tips® can make cotton swabs with nice soft cotton tips on both ends, why are all generic cotton swabs semi-defective?  Do aliens open up every single package and remove the cotton from one end of each swab?

Or is there a special cut-rate supplier for semi-defective manufacturing equipment?

I imagine the following sales pitch from SemDef Corporation:  “Yeah, you could buy a machine that actually works, but for half the price, you can have a machine that only works half the time.  Is that a deal or what?”

Which actually explains a lot about the generic food market, too.  You know what I mean.  If you buy Cheerios®, you get yummy Cheerios®.  If you buy generic oatie-o cereal, you get something that tastes like the cardboard box it’s packed in.

It has the same ingredient list.  There’s no sawdust or wallpaper paste in there.  Not even the leftover cotton from the semi-defective swabs.  So that means either they’ve somehow managed to screw up a simple recipe past the point of recognition, OR…

…SemDef also sells substandard food products:  “Why spend extra money for top quality oats?  For half the price, you can get oats that have been left out in the rain for a few days.  All you have to do is scrape off the mouldy bits and ignore the grasshopper corpses, and you’re all set.  Really, you’re going to process them past the point of recognition anyway.  Who’ll know?”

Okay, I just grossed myself out.

And I’ve created a rambling blog post that connects cotton swabs, aliens, breakfast cereal, and grasshoppers.  Yet another sabotage by my semi-defective brain.

Damn those aliens anyway.

Is There A 12-Step Program For That?

/ Diane Henders / 55 Comments

My name is Diane, and I’m here to confess my addiction.  No, not my addiction to tools.  This is a different addiction altogether.

I can withstand it for long stretches of time, but it always drags me under in the end.  The high is ecstatic.  Then comes the slow sobering, followed by guilt and shame.  After that comes the steely resolve to do better, and sometimes I vanquish the demons for a while.

But sooner or later, I succumb again.  The longest I’ve ever stayed clean was several years.  I really thought I’d beaten it that time.

I was wrong.

I’m talking, of course, about Costco.  I gave up my membership years ago, but in a weak moment I asked one of my friends to take me this past weekend.  It wasn’t the ugliest relapse I’ve ever had, but it proved that I am and always will be an addict.

For those unfamiliar with Costco, it’s a wholesale-style outlet that sells everything from food to electronics to furniture to clothing.  In gigantic bulk quantities.  Usually at lower-than-retail prices, and occasionally at screaming discounts.

I have a five-pound tin of baking powder I bought at Costco over fifteen years ago.  It’s still good… but it’s also still half-full.  In another fifteen years, I might actually finish it.  I have half-gallon jugs of onion powder and cinnamon that date back to that period, too.  There’s something about large quantities of food that I just can’t resist.

Maybe it’s because my dad was a child of the 1930s Depression years.  Nothing was ever wasted in our household.  The tiniest scraps of food were saved and incorporated into the next meal, and staple foods were purchased in bulk to get the best discounts.

So I harbour two horribly conflicting attitudes toward groceries:  Large quantities are magnificent; and: Waste nothing.

You can see my problem with Costco.  They have large quantities!  Of everything!  What could be better than five pounds of chocolate chips for the price of two?  Three water bottles for the price of one?  More toilet paper than you can fit in your car?

It’s magnificent, I tell you!

When I walk into their cavernous building, my pulse races and the demons begin their seductive chorus:  “Look how much there is.  And for such a cheap price!  It’s an excellent buy!  Large quantities are magnificent!”

Euphoria seizes me and I buy.  And buy.

Then I get home and realize what I’ve done.  Yes, I scored a case of my favourite Ataulfo mangoes for a fabulous discount.  But Hubby doesn’t like mangoes, and I can only eat so many of them before they rot.

Guilt and anxiety kick in.  I must waste nothing!  I must eat mangoes morning, noon, and night!

I managed to avoid gross excesses this time.  I bought what I needed and could use within the foreseeable future.  (Except for the water bottles – I needed one, not three.  But hey, it’s not like they’re going to go bad, right?)

And I split that giant package of cheese curds with my friend, so it was a good buy.

Really.

I think I’m improving.

Maybe I should go back again this week just to be sure…

I’ll Tell You What’s Normal…

/ Diane Henders / 32 Comments

I spend my days skating on the edge of normalcy.  So far I’ve been able to avoid unwelcome attention, but that’s due more to good luck than good management.  I can get away with my quirks as long as I live in a nice neighbourhood and shower frequently, but put me on a park bench after a hard workout, and somebody’s gonna call the loony-catchers.

This was brought home to me the other day when Hubby was driving and I was sitting in the passenger seat writing dialogue in my head as usual.  He glanced over and said, “Writing again, aren’t you?”

I shook myself back to reality and asked, “How did you know?”

“Easy.  You had that thousand-yard stare.”

I have what I prefer to call an “expressive” face.  What this really means is that there’s a near-one-hundred-percent probability that if someone snaps a picture, I’ll look moronic.  Sometimes when I’m absorbed in planning or writing a particularly intense scene, I can feel my face twisting into expressions of fear, anger, or whatever.

Add that to the fact that I almost never know the date and often take two tries to correctly identify the day of the week, and I’m concerned that if I ever get hospitalized and asked orientation questions, they’ll lock me up permanently.

So in the interests of retaining my freedom, I decided it might be smart to write a short primer on what constitutes normal behaviour for me.  At least it’ll provide a basis for the authorities to shrug and say, “Yeah, she’s always been like that.  We probably don’t need to lock her up yet.”

So here goes:

  • It is normal for me not to know the day/date.  If I’m travelling, I may not always get the city/province right on the first try, either.
  • It is normal for me to lapse into an apparently catatonic state during which my eye movements mimic REM sleep and my face assumes various inappropriate expressions.  It’s also normal for me to be irritated when summarily roused from this state.
  • It is normal for me to suddenly and inexplicably groan, slap my forehead, and rush to my office to type madly for minutes or hours. This may happen at any time of the day or night, and includes bolting upright out of an apparently sound sleep and scurrying away to type in the wee hours.

With hallmarks like these, it may be difficult to determine what is abnormal behaviour for me, so here’s a handy list of danger signs.

I need professional help if:

  • I turn down the opportunity to go to a nice restaurant or a blues jam or a drag race.
  • I fail to fondle fabric when walking through a fabric store.
  • There’s a garden available and I don’t plant something.
  • I take my car in for an oil change instead of doing it myself.
  • I don’t bake when it’s cloudy/raining/snowing… unless I’m reading or writing (those activities trump baking).
  • I pass up an opportunity to shoot a handgun, rifle, shotgun, bow, slingshot, or any other projectile weapon.
  • I walk past an unassembled jigsaw puzzle.
  • I don’t dissolve into a revolting pile of sappy mush at the sight of kittens.
  • I spill beer.  That’s a danger sign in itself, but if I don’t show extreme remorse afterward, it’s already too late – I’m beyond help.

What are your danger signs?

Crack Popcorn

/ Diane Henders / 46 Comments

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been married to my husband for too long.  He knows all my weak spots.

A couple of nights ago at supper, he asked if I wanted to watch an episode of Castle that evening.  I almost never watch TV, but occasionally he suggests a show he thinks I’ll like, and I’ll watch a few episodes with him.  I’ve seen quite a few episodes of Castle over the years, so I knew I’d be entertained.

But I was busy (as usual), and I just don’t enjoy watching TV that much.  So I offered a noncommittal response and retreated to my office to commune with my computer.

A couple of hours later, he employed the most potent form of persuasion in his arsenal.

He made popcorn.

There are a few scents I’m reasonably certain would raise me from my deathbed.  Popcorn is one of them.  Hell, for popcorn, I’d come back from beyond the grave.

Needless to say, we watched the show.

I don’t know what it is about popcorn.  I can’t resist it.  Even the horrible super-salted petroleum-coated crap they sell in theatres draws me like a ball-bearing to a magnet.  I know it’s so salty my mouth will feel like the Sahara Desert the next day.  I know I won’t finish even the smallest bag.  I know that bag contains an entire day’s allotment of calories and enough saturated, hydrogenated, and/or trans fat to harden every artery I own.  But I have to buy it, and the first few mouthfuls are pure greasy heaven.

There must be pheromones in it.  Or crack.  Or something.

But I’m pretty sure it’s only a Pavlovian response.  I love the smell of popcorn because I anticipate the enjoyment of eating it.  I wouldn’t want to smell it all day long.

That got me thinking about scents I find completely irresistible, and it’s a very odd list.  Here the top ten things I’d happily smell for hours, in no particular order:

  1. Moist garden soil
  2. Leather
  3. Lilacs
  4. Sun-ripened strawberries
  5. Gun oil and/or gunpowder
  6. Balsam poplar
  7. Vinegar
  8. Engine oil and warm rubber
  9. Fresh-cut cedar or pine
  10. Line-dried sheets

Any of these scents will make me halt wherever I am, inhaling until my lungs are stretched to capacity.  If nobody’s looking, I’ll creep closer and closer, sniffing like a bloodhound on uppers and trying not to drool like one.  If I could find perfume that smelled like any of these things, I’d roll in it.

So perhaps it’s not coincidence that Hubby likes to garden, wears a leather jacket, brings me lilacs and fresh strawberries from the back yard, enjoys shooting and fireworks and camping and tinkering with cars, douses his french fries with vinegar, and owns two chainsaws.

Now if he’d just do the laundry and hang the sheets outside, he’d be perfect…

What scents do you find irresistible?

* * *

I’m celebrating the release of A Spy For A Spy!  If you happen to be in the Calgary area the evening of May 9, please stop by and see me at The Owl’s Nest Books & Gifts, 815A – 49 Avenue SW, Calgary, AB, Canada, between 5:30 and 8:00 PM.  We’ll have sips and nibbles, and I’ll be doing a short reading and Q&A session at 7:00.  Hope to see you there!

It’s Complicated…

/ Diane Henders / 33 Comments

Last week, I couldn’t decide what to eat for lunch until I looked at the weather forecast.  It wasn’t even as simple as needing to know what the current weather conditions were.  No, I needed a forecast.

On the weekend, we had discussed going to a swanky restaurant near our place on Tuesday night.  But on Monday, the weatherman forecasted a nice, warm, sunny Tuesday.  Prime opportunity to put up the Christmas lights when Hubby got home from work.

No, not so he could put up the Christmas lights; so he could hold the ladder while I put up the lights.  I’m taller than he is, and he’s afraid of heights.  I’m okay with heights, but I’m afraid of ladders unless he’s holding them.  We’re a team.

So I decided to cook a pot of stew Tuesday night so we wouldn’t have to run around trying to get the lights up before rushing off to our dinner reservation.  We agreed to go out Wednesday night instead.

But Tuesday’s forecast was wrong.  The temperature dropped steadily, a bone-cutting wind blew in from the east, and snow sifted down.  We lost interest in putting up the lights, but we ate at home and stuck with our plans for Wednesday.

Until evening, when we discovered it was supposed to dump snow overnight.  So we decided to wait and see what Wednesday morning was like before making the final decision on dinner.  Neither of us has any particular fear of driving in the snow; after all, we’re Canadian.  We’d have to confine our outings to ten minutes in August if we were afraid of driving in the snow.

But it’s annoying to fight the idiot drivers, so we tend not to actively seek out snow-driving.

Fast-forward (or, in the case of this blog post, “drag agonizingly toward an obscure but hopefully imminent conclusion”) to Wednesday noon.

I went downstairs for lunch, opened the fridge door, and realized that the only thing worth eating was the leftover stew.  Fine… except that there was enough stew for two.

So if we weren’t going out, it would make more sense for me to make something else and save the leftover stew for supper.  But if we were going out, I could eat the stew for lunch, go out for dinner1, and then eat stew again for Thursday’s lunch.

Only one catch:  It was snowing lightly.  If it was going to dump snow, we’d probably want to stay home.  If it was going to hold off until after supper, we’d probably go.  Time to check the weather forecast.

Heavy snowfall warning.

Guess I’ll make something for lunch…

Phone rings.

Hubby says, “Let’s go out tonight.  It’s going to snow, so the restaurant won’t be too busy.”

*facepalm*

———————-

1Note:  I grew up in the country.  ‘Breakfast’ was in the morning, ‘dinner’ was at noon, ‘lunch’ was at four o’clock, and ‘supper’ was at six.  Then I got out into the big world and discovered that urbanites referred to the noon meal as ‘lunch’, the six o’clock meal as ‘dinner’, and there was no four o’clock meal!  City dwellers are sick bastards.  So now I usually call ‘dinner’ ‘lunch’, and ‘supper’ ‘supper’, unless I’m going out for ‘dinner’…

Have I confused you yet?  What do you call your meals?  (And why are you trying to slap me?)

I Can Type With A Banana In My Hand

/ Diane Henders / 28 Comments

That isn’t a euphemism, though it might be fun if it was.  In case you’re wondering, I can also type with a banana in my mouth, and you can just get your mind out of the gutter right now.

I know I shouldn’t type with a banana in my hand. I’m well aware of the effects of mashed banana on the usefulness and mean-time-to-failure of keyboards.

And I learned years ago about the deleterious effects of multi-tasking when someone (no, neither Hubby nor I) cremated a chicken while watching television in the basement.  Until then, I didn’t know it was possible to start with a dead chicken immersed in boiling water and end up with a half-melted pot containing a crispy black cinder.

We first detected the stench from more than a quarter-mile away.  When we arrived, a thick pall of reeking smoke obscured the main floor of the house.  It took days to air the place out.  Nobody was happy by the end of that episode, though I’m pretty sure the chicken was past caring.

I blame the internet for my current multi-tasking disorder.  Before we had internet (yes, I am that old), I had to make a concerted effort to be distracted.  I had to get out of my chair, look out the window, drift down to the kitchen to graze on whatever snacks might be handy, whatever.

Now my ass takes root in my desk chair while I write, email, text, tweet, phone, check RSS feeds and surf the web.  I’ve gotten so used to doing umpteen things at once, I caught myself bouncing up from the table several times during lunch to rush off and do something else.  I actually had to force myself to sit in the chair and eat an uninterrupted meal.  That may be a way of life for people with families, but I don’t even have kids (unless you count my puerile brain).

Some people are good at multi-tasking.  I’m not.  I can’t even listen to music while I’m writing.

That doesn’t stop me from trying.

The other day, I found myself in the kitchen slicing zucchini and loading it into the dehydrator.  Jars were sterilizing in my canner, a big pot of jam boiled on the stove, and my laptop was open on the couch so I could work in between kitchen tasks.  When the phone rang, I fired up the hands-free and carried on canning jam while occasionally zipping over to reference my laptop.

Disaster didn’t strike that time, but I could easily have poured the jam into the dehydrator, stuck zucchini slices in the laptop, and dumped the phone into boiling water.  Try explaining that to the caller at the other end of the line.

I’d like to say I plan to turn over a new leaf, but it’d be a lie.

‘Scuse me, gotta go – my chicken’s overheating.

Get your mind out of the gutter.

P.S.  Hell, who am I kidding?  One of the great joys of life is creating filthy innuendos whenever possible.  Go for it.  You know you want to.  And you know I’ll laugh.

Thinking About Drinking

/ Diane Henders / 27 Comments

It’s autumn, and I need a drink.

It’s partly because autumn is my least favourite season, but mainly because the crabapples are ripe.  If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you may remember I mentioned I love food and I’m helplessly addicted to gardening.

The result of those traits is a back yard containing an apple tree, a crabapple tree, grapevines, raspberries, gooseberries, rhubarb, haskaps (a very cool variety of honeysuckle with fruit like blueberries on steroids), strawberries, asparagus, a hazelnut tree, and a greenhouse full of tomatoes and peppers.  My “real” garden is about 3,000 square feet of vegetables outside the city.

The back yard in mid-summer when it still looked nice

The star of the backyard show is the crabapple tree.  Every year, it droops under the weight of its crop –  deliciously sweet-tart, juicy blush-pink apples.  (The variety is Rescue, in case there are any other hungry gardeners out there.)  Every year, I cart away a couple of wheelbarrow-loads of crabapples.  I make jelly, fruit leather, applesauce, and spiced crabapples.  Then if there are leftovers, I ferment them into hard cider.

This process begins with an explosion of pulverized crabapples and ends with a product that ranges from rotgut to rocket fuel to rot (if I don’t get a high enough alcohol content).

Juicing was a laborious process until a few years ago when Hubby bought me one of those newfangled kick-ass juicers – yet another reason why he’s on the best-husband-ever list.  The new juicer works like a dream… except for one thing.  No matter how fast I slam the pusher into the chute after adding a handful of apples, the shredding action is so aggressive that bits spray everywhere.  The first time I used it, I was picking apple flecks out of my eyebrows and off the ceiling.

This year I wised up and did the juicing on the back deck where I could hose everything off afterward.  (The neighbours didn’t even bat an eye.  After the radish/toilet incident, they’re probably afraid to ask.)

Once all the juicing is done, it’s a glorious exercise in hope.  What yeast should I use this year?  What part of the process will I tweak to get the absolutely perfect batch of cider?  Then there’s fermentation, racking, fining, bottling with just the right amount of added sugar to get a delicious sparkle in the finished product.

Then there are months of anticipation.  It takes about a year before the final product is ready.

Then comes the first taste… and the final classification:  rotgut, rocket fuel, or rot.  But I keep hoping somehow, some year, I’ll magically produce something drinkable.  Well, something other people might consider drinkable.  I drink it anyway…

But in the mean time, all that work and hope has made me thirsty.  Think I’ll crack open a bought beer.  At least I know it’ll be good.

What’s your favourite autumn beverage?

Oh, and loosely related to gardening:  I can’t believe I actually managed to snap a bee in mid-flight in my garden a few days ago:

Bee in flight just below the smaller sunflower

Soup Nose: ‘S Not Funny

/ Diane Henders / 16 Comments

There are a quite a few disorders with evocative names like tennis elbow, tailor’s bunion, and vibration white finger.  Though it sounds like it should fit it this category, I’m not including plumber’s butt in the list because the person afflicted with it is completely oblivious while the innocent bystanders suffer.  And I’m not going to make a crack about that.  (Yeah, okay, I couldn’t help it.)

Recently, though, I discovered another less serious but equally irritating affliction:  soup nose.  I’ve had it all my life, but thanks to my step-mom I’ve finally discovered its correct name.

Why is it that as soon as I eat something hot, my nose runs?  After exhaustive research (with a couple of friends and a few cold beers), I’ve determined that this is a widespread, medically neglected phenomenon.  And there’s no good way to deal with it politely.

In private, it’s easy.  One good nose-honk and the problem’s solved, though I do have an unfortunate tendency to attract flocks of amorous Canada geese with that method.

But in polite company, what does one do?  Fleeing the table to seek the necessary privacy for goose imitations isn’t always feasible.  Then I have to fall back on the tissue-dabbing method, which, frankly, is annoying as hell.  Not to mention conspicuous when I do it for the umpteenth time.

I was eating soup the other day when a burning question popped into my mind:  Does the Queen get soup nose?

Think about it.  Here’s a woman who’s lived all her life in the public eye.  It’s not like she can jump up from the table at a state dinner and scuttle off to the loo for a good old nose-honk.  But you never see her dabbing at her nose with a tissue.

I mean, really.  Can you imagine the Queen harbouring a nasty little snot-soaked tissue stuffed up her sleeve like Grandma used to do?  I’m pretty sure the Queen is above snot-soaked tissues.

So that leaves me with three possibilities:

  1. The Queen simply doesn’t get soup nose.  It’s beneath her.
  2. Nobody ever serves the Queen anything hot.  She eats all her meals cold or tepid.  Or…
  3. Somebody has found a cure for soup nose!

In case one or two, I’m out of luck.  Pretty much nothing’s beneath me, and cold / tepid just isn’t my style.

But… I live in hope that there’s a cure out there.  Some miraculous drug or process by which I could actually stay seated for an entire hot meal.  I haven’t been able to find it yet, but if you hear about anything, let me know.

And since I’m on this low-brow subject anyway, I’ll leave you with the following bit of doggerel left over from my childhood.  I don’t know who the original author was, but I’ll credit them if I ever find out.

So you’re kissing with your honey
And your nose is kind of runny
And you think it’s kind of funny
But it’s snot.

Probably the author prefers to remain nameless…