Got your popcorn and Milk Duds?

Dim the lights, turn off your cell phones, sit back and relax, because it’s time for Clown Day: The Movie!

If you want to watch it in widescreen, please view it at YouTube.

Enjoy!

Today my sister Marlene and her husband treated me to lunch at a place I’ve only ever gone to before for ice cream.

When we pulled up to the place, I asked Marlene if instead of a real meal, I could just have ice cream for lunch.

She shut me down before I could make my case for chocolate chip cookie dough as an entree. “No, not unless you eat something healthy first.”

Poop on you!

I said “Yeah, that’s like Mom always said when I wanted junk food. Remember? She’d say ‘First you have to have meat, cheese, tuna fish or egg.’” Apparently, protein buys you cookies later.

“No, I don’t remember and how specific is that? Geesh,” Marlene replied.

I told her I loved Mom’s stock answer for its nonsensical quality and if I ever wrote a book, that’s what I was going to call it. Meat, Cheese, Tuna Fish or Egg. It doesn’t make any sense without explanation and surely, anyone reading the title would be compelled to pick up my book and flip through its pages.

And then they would laugh themselves silly reading random portions of the gem in their hands, be in awe of all the rock star authors who gave it rave reviews and wonder why my creation was deep in the bowels of the bookstore, when it should be right at the front door all by itself on an easel, with a spotlight shining upon it and a velvet rope around it.

A dreamer I was.

What I want to know from those with mothers who say weird things…. let’s have it.

Tell us your favorite motherly sayings, admonishments, crazy rules or regulations that you remember to this day.

The less they made sense, the better.

Go!

Yo.

It’s been forever since I had an item for my Food That Looks Like Stuff series.

Today, I have a laughing rhino, courtesy of my egg and cheese breakfast sandwich.

Why do I even know what my melted cheese looks like inside?

Because I never enter the perfect heat time for these stupid things. One microwave I use takes 2 minutes, another 1:45 min, and yet another 1:30.

Because I forget which is which, I usually over-melt my cheese and it comes out scalding hot.

So I lift the lid to my sandwich and let it cool down before shoving it in my pie hole.

I give you, laughing rhino cheese head!

p.s. Rhinos are yummy.

Little Miss Muffet

Sat on a tuffet

Eating her bag of Lay’s.

Along came a chip,

That she wanted to skip.

Because, really, how often do you find one with a big, fat exclamation point in the middle of it?

Or something like that.

I was incredulous.

There I was, shopping for one of my favorite kid meals. The kind of meal you still eat as an adult, but that you’d never admit to in mixed company.

Like maybe Trix cereal with chocolate milk. And a bowl of sugar on the side.

What do I jones for from my kiddom?

Steak-umms. That’s right. Steak with umm in the name. You umm when you eat ‘em.

For those unfamiliar with this delicacy, Steak-umms are thin frozen sheets of unidentifiable meat. Meat from some part of the cow, you just don’t know which one. Probably a lot of parts. Let’s just call it “Other.”

Other tastes delicious on a crispy hoagie roll, with lots of gooey cheese. And grease. And maybe peppers if you like them.

They’re so freaking good, chopped up and fried in a pan.

Now. I know we ain’t talkin’ high end steak here. I know that meat you have to peel away from paper isn’t top shelf. Not even close.

I also know that a 16-slice box should not cost a whopping $12.49.

They’re SHEETS OF OTHER MEAT!

I quickly shifted over to old people mode and started complaining aloud to no one in particular about the price of meat these days.

Since I’d already carted up all the other things needed to make my sandwiches, the Steak-umms forced my hand and I had to buy them.

But not before I asked a cashier to please check the price at the register and make sure it was really twelve forty I-don’t-wanna-pay-that.

It was.

Check again, please.

Still $12.49.

OK, so I broke my piggy bank and paid for them.

As soon as I got home, I emailed the Steak-umm people.

Hi. I just paid an outrageous price of $12.49 for a 16-slice box of Steak-umms. I had the cashier double check the price and he said it was correct. If this is what you’re charging for steak that’s not filet mignon, I have no plans to buy it again. The only reason I did was because I’d already carted all the other items I was going to make the sandwiches with.

Can you tell me if that price is really correct? I just can’t believe that it is. Thank you.

I got a quick response from someone who told me they can’t control the retail price and that “surely” I “understand that economic factors have impacted all of our grocery budgets in recent months.”

They said “surely,” which really means “You ignorant woman who must live under a rock to not realize that everything got real expensive in the last year or so and get off your high horse and just buy the damn meat if you want it so bad.”

They went on to say they don’t give out coupons and that I should look for in-store sales instead.

Something tells me they just don’t give coupons to cranky people with ‘tude.

For those of you familiar with Steak-umms, how do you make yours? Do you use Cheez Whiz? Sauce? Peppers? Onion? Toasted roll? Non-toasted?

My husband thinks somewhere in the last few months, someone swapped out his normal wife for a new one he doesn’t recognize anymore.

I’m kind of cranky this morning because, despite intensifying my workouts, I’m still only averaging a loss of 1.5 lbs a week.

When I was sitting at the laptop trying to research low-calorie meals to make this weekend, he dropped a cat in my lap and thought it was funny.

No. No, it was not.

Me: “Get him outta here! I’m cranky and I just want to shower and go to the store to shop for nutritious things!”

Him: “Wow, last year this time you were asking if we could buy two big trays of Pizza Hut mac and cheese and wanted to polish them off with cinnamon bread sticks and icing.”

Me: “Huh. You’re right.”

Him: “The grass isn’t cut yet. Why don’t you go out and grab a few fistfuls and make a sandwich?”

Me: “You’re funny. Go to hell.”

Update: So far, I’ve lost 18 lbs in just under three months. I’m changing things up with the exercise, skipping the elliptical this week in favor of 60 minutes a day of extreme aerobics. I do notice immediately that my legs and arms are more toned and tighter.

Flab bad. Tight good.

I’m also sticking to a 1,200 calorie meal plan. No cheating. I have to believe my efforts will increase my metabolism and encourage more weight loss.

Because otherwise, I may just crack and find myself at the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru waiting for them to fill my trunk with 25 dozen of their freshest glazed.

Cost of 30-pack donut holes: $3.50

Money wasted by eating only six of them and throwing the rest away: $2.80

Not digging through the trash two hours later to eat the remainder, because I was totally thinking about it: Priceless!

I’m doing well with my gym attendance and dieting and I’ve lost seven pounds. Not as much as I’d hoped, but I have confidence I’ll be successful in my journey to lose 50 pounds total.

I try to remember what my sister Ann told me after I said how I struggle with donuts and other goodies.

She said, in all seriousness, “You already know what they taste like. Why do you have to eat them again?”

I know.

Don’t you just want to slap her?

I participated in a Tribal Blogs chat last night and the subject of eggs came up. I explained how much I liked to make dippy eggs and only one other person knew what the hell I was talking about.

You may call them something else, like an egg in a basket or egg in a hole. If you’re sick of your eggs scrambled or in an omelette, here’s a funner way to make ‘em next time.

Kathy’s Dippy Egg

Step 1: Press out a hole in one slice of bread. I use a glass, some people use jar lids. Hold aside the bread you cut out, or if your pan’s big enough, throw it in to get toasted, too.

Step 2: Heat a frying pan to medium-high heat. Toss in a pat of butter (or more, the butterier, the better!)

Step 3: When the butter sizzles, toss in the bread to soak up the butter.

Step 4: Crack an egg and deposit it in the hole.

Step 5: Let it fry for a minute or two, until the egg white starts to solidify. Meanwhile, toast another slice of bread. I like extra buttered toast with my eggs.

Step 6: Carefully flip the bread/egg to “seal” the top side of your masterpiece. Allow it to fry for about a minute.

If the yolk breaks, you’re screwed and you should just start over. Feed your mistake to the dog.

Step 7: Butter the first slice of toast and place on a plate.

Step 8: Carefully scoop out the dippy egg without breaking the yolk, and flip over on top of the other slice of buttered toast bread.

I did a quick Google search on dippy eggs, and one woman said she wishes she knew what to do with the cutout. Well, duh. You dip it!

Step 9: Cut up pieces all around the egg, as well as the buttery toast underneath and dip into the egg for a savory, delicious breakfast. Bacon optional.

And there you have it. Kathy’s Dippy Egg!

Have you ever made these? What do you call them?

Anyone who’s been to the Junk Drawer before knows I have a special place in my heart for delicious bacon.

So I was over the moon when a friend sent me a link to a blog documenting the adventures of Bacon himself.

I love, love, love this blog!

Bacon’s owner, Devon Boatwright, graciously agreed to an interview so I could learn more about my new fatty best friend. 

I’m Bacon’s #1 fan, possibly in a Kathy Bates/Misery sort of way. I just love him so. Where did you get Bacon and how did you get the idea for Bacon to have his own blog?

Bacon was actually kind of an accident! My mom ordered Bacon for my sister but accidentally ordered two Bacons. Not knowing what to do with the second one, she decided to give it to us as a family gift. She kept joking that it wasn’t a big deal and we could open it before Christmas and it was just a silly gift. Well, I opened up the box and completely freaked out even more than my children.

Since I opened Bacon before Christmas and my sister was also receiving a Bacon, I was not allowed to post pictures of Bacon. Despite my begging, I posted no pictures of Bacon for 3 days! Then Christmas day I managed to wrangle Bacon from my children and was inspired to pose him with the turkey. Then I thought it would be funny if he helped Ray with the dishes. And it just went from there.

When I posted all the photos, people on my Facebook loved them and someone told me I should start a blog. I figured I would do it and make a coffee table book out of it when I was done. I didn’t realize how many people would actually think Bacon was as cool as I did! 

I don’t know if I should say that! It’s a secret! Hee hee. Really, Bacon has this wire along the sides of him that make him poseable. His mouth also moves when he says “I’m Bacon!” so that actually allows me to use the mechanics of his mouth to hang him on something. I have a thing about people handling Bacon for photographs so I try to make sure as much as possible that no one is touching Bacon when I photograph him.

If someone has to be propping him up, then I try to cut their hand out of the picture. Sometimes I snap really quick pictures as Bacon slowly slides down whatever I have managed to prop him on. I probably look like a weirdo posing Bacon in public. Especially at our night out where I took like 20 photos of one of my friends holding Bacon up on the pool table to play pool. I kept saying “I can see you in the picture and I can’t crop that!” So we’d repose. Heh.

I think we can learn a thing or two from Bacon. What is Bacon’s philosophy on life?

I asked Bacon what his philosophy on life was. After all, he’s read many books and must be quite brilliant by now. I waited with bated breath as Bacon thought long and hard about my question. Finally he answered, “I’m Bacon!” So there you go.

Bacon believes everyone should be like him. We could interpret that to mean he thinks everyone should live life to the fullest and go on many fabulous adventures and take lots of pictures. Or we could take it to mean that Bacon has a bloated self image and thinks everyone should be him.

—-

Devon, thank you for taking the time to help us get to know Bacon better. Also, if you get that coffee table book published, I want a signed copy (and I wouldn’t be disappointed with a Toilets of Rome book either!) I just hope Bacon remembers me when he gets famous.

Adventures of Bacon blog
Author, Devon Boatwright’s Facebook page

This week, the Internet went all knee-slappin’ hysterical when a video of a woman who fell into a mall fountain while walking and texting was posted on YouTube.

Yes, she was embarrassed and, of course, she’s suing because that’s what people do in this country when they should just walk away and laugh at themselves.

And that is this woman’s problem.

She does not know how to laugh like a hyena at her own stupidity.

Let me show you how it’s done, you silly woman.

I lunched with some blogger friends a few weeks ago at a very fancy shmancy restaurant. I’m more of a cheeseburger and fries kind of girl, so I was totally out of my element.

After our meal, we decided to order some dessert. The only thing on the menu that sounded exciting to me was fried ice cream.

Who doesn’t like ice cream, and holy clogged arteries, who doesn’t like it fried?

All three of us ordered it and when it was delivered to the table, the waiter approached each dish with a small serving boat, which I was hoping was full of hot fudge.

It was not.

It was full of something that set my dessert on fire when the waiter touched a flame-tipped lighter to it.

OK, so now I’m hip to the dessert. I’m getting flambéed here.

I dig it.

It’s pretty.

When my dessert flames out, I start eating. It’s good and decent, but not fabulous, as I prefer my desserts to be.

Why? Because at the bottom of my dish lay a puddle of cream mixed with alcohol.

Alcohol? Why is there alcohol in my dessert? Who puts alcohol in ice cream? I didn’t ask for it and I’m not at all pleased.

But I continue eating because my lunch mates are infinitely more refined than me and not the kind of people who go around freaking out about alcohol in their desserts.

After we say our good-byes and I get home, I immediately Google “flambé” and am surprised to learn that it’s alcohol that makes a flambéed dessert shoot up in flames when you light it.

Oh.

Oh, wait.

I knew that, didn’t I? Yes, I’m sure I knew that. I think. No, I didn’t. Did I? No. I did not.

What I’m sure of is that I’m a dumbass and my blogger friends who are just now reading about this will never invite me to lunch again because I’m just that stupid.

So, lady who fell into a fountain while texting, that is how you laugh at yourself. You do not sue someone. Instead, you realize how dumb you are and then you blog about it for other people’s enjoyment.

That should be the new American way.

People, people, people. It’s so simple.

When you stand behind me in the grocery store checkout and you inch your way ever closer to the cashier, and in the process kick my feet, you can avoid having to say “Excuse me” and I would not have to burn a hole through your skull with my angry stare.

I promise you, you will get through the line with all your stuff quickly enough, whether you’ve hopped on my back or not. I prefer you not get all up in my grill and then have to apologize for it.

Here’s today’s lesson: There is an comfortable distance that you should stand behind a person before that person gets decidedly uncomfortable. For me, that’s two feet, not two inches.

You’re not running a marathon, there is no prize for getting to the end of the line faster and all it does is make me want to squeeze your bread until it looks like one giant matzo ball.

Two feet. Not two inches. Got it?

My parents raised me right, I swear. I’m polite, courteous, respectful of my elders, and have good table manners.

But I will bare my teeth, growl and possibly stab you if you try to take food away from me. Especially if it is my very favorite dessert, The Perkins Chocolate French Silk cream pie.

It’s a treat I allow myself only once or twice a year. It’s a special thing to be preserved and protected, and certainly not wasted, for it is divine.

Which is why when I dropped a slice of it on the floor Saturday, I picked it up, plated it and ate it. The whole sad, malformed blob of it.

I did not cut off the dirty side. The side that probably spells bacterial infection.

Shut up. I did this two days ago and have suffered no ill effects.

The fact that I ate some combination of cat hair, floor wax and outside world dirt proves one thing: Mothers everywhere are all wrong. You can eat off the floor like an animal and survive.

You won’t look at yourself the same way again, but you will survive.

Bon appétit!

I know it’s not 2011 yet, but I’ve already been out to see the clock countdown to the new year.

I went to my first ever Peep Drop!

What’s a Peep Drop, you ask? Just Born, the company who makes deliciously sugary, marshmallowy Peeps, is located in my town. Every New Year’s Eve, they drop a Peep at two times: early evening (for kids and tired old people) and again at midnight, for people who can stay up past say, 10PM.

I’m a tired old person, so that meant fake midnight. My husband and I sidled up to the viewing area, and looked up to the sky to find a glowing fiberglass Peep hanging from the top of a giant crane.

As the countdown approached, screaming kids chanted “Drop-the-Peep! Drop-the-Peep!”

And then at the appointed time, Enormous Peep in all its paunchy yellow glory, was lowered to the ground to great fanfare and then fireworks.

After Mr. Peep touched down, an organizer came over to the area where I was standing and said “OK, press? You can come over now.”

OMG. She thinks I’m press. Should I go over? I can get real close and maybe hug the costumed Peep who walked around and cheeped at people.

And then I chickened out. I stayed behind while real press people got to get within inches of both real and Plastic Peep.

Sigh.

At least that’s the last regret I’ll have in 2010. Tomorrow’s a new year, ripe for plenty of new regrets.

There must be a sign on my back that fellow grocery store shoppers can see. It reads “Ask me anything. I have all the answers, even though I don’t work here.”

That sign had me shopping for baptism cards once for complete and clueless strangers.

Today it had me explaining eggs.

While I was scoping out butter, a nearby unkempt but harmless-looking young man addressed me thusly: “Can you tell me the difference between these eggs?”

Oh, God. Here we go again.

I don’t know anything about organic eggs, brown eggs, or Omega-3 eggs or the difference between them.

I don’t know if they taste different and I don’t know where they’re hatched, if they’re local or shipped-in, or if they’re more expensive or healthier than regular eggs.

I. Do. Not. Know. What about me says I know eggs?

In the millisecond it took for me to get all stressed out about this impromptu egg class, the young man followed up with this:

“The sizes. What are the different sizes? This is my first time shopping for my wife and I don’t know what I’m doing.”

I thought “OMG, dude. If you don’t know that the difference between regular, large, extra large and jumbo eggs is purely their size, then no one can help you. Ever.”

But because he was just so adorable and helpless, and I wanted his wife to have the illusion of a husband who can make egg choices all by himself, I decided to give the egg noob a straight up answer.

I said “There are large and extra large eggs. Jumbo is probably unnecessary. Just go with the large eggs and you’ll be fine.”

He grabbed the large eggs, thanked me as he walked away and I wished him a good breakfast.

Then I picked up eggs for myself. I opened the lid to see if any were cracked. Some were. At least three.

Egg noooooooooob! I forgot to tell him to see any of his were cracked!

There go my chances for becoming a Certified Egg Instructor at an accredited grocery store near you.

And I was doing so well.

Yesterday I took my oversized comforter to the laundromat. Y’all know how much I love the laundromat.

Nothing remarkable happened there except for the guy in neon orange sneakers who lifted the lid to his washing machine about twelve times during one cycle to, I don’t know, see if his socks were all getting along in there. Dude, it’s OK. They know how to mingle.

After my visit, I decided to make a run to the store. Since I didn’t have paper and pen with me, I used the Notes program on my iPod Touch to make my list.

Oooooo! Electronic grocery list. So convenient.

Except…..

When I walked the length of the store for something I hadn’t tapped out and worried I’d forget, this happened.

Apparently, my swinging hand action caused me to hit all kinds of buttons and suddenly I had a new grocery list.

Great. Now we’re having pasta for dinner, with Ld and Q on the side.

I remembered only half of the rest of the list I’d created.

And then when I got home I saw that I’d been hitting the enter key the whole time, so the rest of my list was there, just way down at the bottom out of view.

Whatever, technology. You suck.