To celebrate the holiday, I present to you a doodle from my marker board at work.
I was on a *really* long conference call. It was boring. I got distracted.
May you and yours have a fabulous, gluttonous day!
Photo taken by Karen Fayeth with an iPhone 4 and the Hipstamatic app.
The topic of Theme Thursday this week couldn’t be more timely. In the lead up to the best eating holiday of the year, our topic, is: Food.
But here’s my sideways twist on the theme.
Over the weekend, while on a fairly long drive, I began to riff on something The Good Man said, devolving, as I’m prone, to low brow humor. The stuff of twelve year old boys.
The Good Man isn’t so much a fan of the twelve year old boy humor, so his side of the car went pretty quiet.
Well. Fine. I am who I am. If I can’t let my inner twelve year old boy fly free at home, I’ll take the next best option…imposing it on you, my fair readers.
So, herewith, my list of food names that are unintentionally rude, just in time for Thanksgiving.
1) Head cheese. You knew I had to start there, right? I’m not going to lie, I laughed right out loud typing the words. I wouldn’t laugh out loud eating it though, because congealed gelatinous meat bits doesn’t really appeal to my palate. But whatever.
2) Cacahuete. Hee, hee, giggle *snort*. You said caca! Yeah, cacahuete is the Spanish word for peanut. But still, it’s sooooo fun to say!
3) Bubble and squeak. It’s just fried up meat, taters and cabbage and when done right is very tasty. That said, eating cabbage *does* cause certain parts of my anatomy to both bubble AND squeak. In addition, I rather like saying the name. Repeatedly. Like a toddler. Bubble and squeak! Bubble and squeak! Bubble and squeak! (making a squeaky noise as you say the word squeak is mandatory)
4) Rump roast. Yeah. Unh huh. And I’m supposed to ask for that at the butcher shop and not laugh? I’ve always been curious about what names were rejected in that marketing meeting. Ass brisket? Booty beef? ‘Tocks steak? I mean, what exactly do you call a cut of beef that is sourced from, well, here. (link is TOTALLY safe for work)
And finally…
5) Spotted Dick. I think the gold standard for rude food names has to go to this British fare. It’s a spongy concoction of dried fruit that is usually served in pudding. There is a version manufactured by Heinz available at my local grocery store. I always chortle inappropriately when I see it there on the shelves.
I mean, come on, Spotted Dick? Who thought that was a good idea?
You got any others I forgot? Leave ’em in the comments!
Ok, I’m bouncing back from complete blogger lock up yesterday with the assistance of the idea generator.**
Today’s topic: Name five things in your freezer
So without further ado, here are the first five things that came to mind while sitting at my desk at work:
1. Green chile
Only a small amount, but those few bags of the good stuff make me ridiculously happy.
Roasted it myself!
2.A bag of really, really good coffee
French roast. Ground for a melitta. Just. Yum.
Honestly, I’m not really supposed to drink coffee. It doesn’t agree with me or my tummy (or my esophagus, actually).
So when I indulge, it better be the ding-dang good stuff.
And this is it.
Served with real half and half and brown sugar, if you please.
3. A bottle of Siberian vodka
Hand carried to The Good Man by our friend who grew up in Siberia and made a visit home to see family. We coddle this one bottle of the good stuff like a colicky baby. It’s deeeelicious. Smooth. Perfect.
Best when sipped straight from the freezer.
4. Frozen fruit
I’m a little bit obsessed with making smoothies. Fruit juice, almond butter, a little egg white powder for protein, and a bunch of frozen fruit.
Blend!
Totally addicted. Now…there is a LOT of sugar in there, so I have to limit it to only one or two a week. I could have a smoothie three or four times a day if I’d let myself.
Gah!
I get twitchy when we are out of frozen fruit. There is a Northwest Triple Berry Mix you can get at Costco that rocks the house. Marion berries, raspberries and blueberries.
Yes, please.
5. Several of those blue freezer thingies that you put in an ice chest.
What the hell is that blue stuff made of anyway?
Seriously. I’ve never had one break on me, but I always wonder what sort of biochemical hazard would occur if one of those bad boys was leaked out upon the world.
Hmm…maybe that’s the basis for my new blockbuster screenplay. A truck carrying a load of those blue packs overturns. Through a series of unfortunate events, thousands of the blue packs are burst open.
The blue stuff takes on the world! Freezing things on contact. Sort of “The Blob” meets Medusa meets Outer Limits.
I like it!
**The idea generator has been pretty maudlin of late. Questions of death and dying, faith, etc. It just wasn’t working for me. I need fun, silly and weird to get The Muse off the couch.
Yesterday I talked about being nice to yourself by packing a good lunch, if packing a lunch for work is the kind of thing you do.
Today I thought I’d take it a step further and talk about a guy where I work who has taken this self-care thing to a whole new level.
I’ve encountered this gentleman, an older fellow, small, slight, and very nice, several times in the hallways and break room. What’s unique about this man is that every week he brings a half gallon of ice cream to work.
Not just any sort of ice cream, but a half gallon of Baskin Robbins. The good stuff.
He brings in a variety of flavors. One week it was mint chip, another it was strawberry. There has been rocky road, plain ol’ chocolate, and a cherry concoction that looked yummy.
Every afternoon around 3:00, you’ll find him in the break room scooping out a small bowl of ice cream. He has a ceramic bowl and a real spoon and he serves up a nice treat for himself. I can tell he really enjoys it.
There is almost a ritualistic quality to this process of scooping out, consuming and later cleaning the dishes.
I gotta say, I have mad respect for the guy.
Personally, all will power goes out the door for me when in the presence of ice cream, so I couldn’t make a half gallon last all week. I’d be eating the entire container on Monday and crying my eyes out feeling fat Tuesday through Friday.
But I respect that he can limit himself to a small bowl and can *really* enjoy that bowl once a day.
There’s something so right about living that way.
Last night, before going to bed, I took some extra time to prepare a batch of my delicious chicken salad.
I took care to make it a good batch, filled with perfectly grilled chicken, not too much mayo and my secret ingredients that make it, in my opinion, the best chicken salad ever.
Then, when the batch was made, taste tested and found to be perfect, I loaded it up into a container.
I packed that container along with an already packed container of soup, a bag of my favorite chips, and a bit of cough syrup into a small shopping bag.
This little bag of goodness was meant to go to work with me Monday morning.
I’m not trying to save money, although packing my lunch meets that goal.
What I AM trying to do is take good care of myself.
How many people think they *should* take their lunch to work, then pack a dried up lunch meat sandwich, a mealy apple and a bag of pretzels?
Or, even worse, they toss a Healthy Choice frozen entrée into their work bag and think that will satisfy them for the afternoon.
No.
I approach packing my lunch with all the care a doting mother would shower upon her cherished child.
It’s like a love letter from Sunday Night Me to Monday Morning Me. A gift. A bit of home to remind me that even though I must work in a standard gray cubicle farm, I’m still an individual. I’m different.
I matter enough to have Sunday Night Me go to the effort to make something nice and not just something slapped together.
I actually look forward to my lunch today. I’m not looking for ways to get out of eating what’s in the office fridge. Nope, I can hardly wait until noon.
And I’ll eat my meal prepared with love and I will feel loved and I will know that I did a very good thing for myself.
Heck, caught up in the swell, I almost want to write myself a note to surprise me at the bottom of the lunch bag.
“Have a good day, dear. Someone at home loves you.”
