PunkKittyDiddy

Lemon Cream Cheese Cookies

1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 - 1.5 teaspoons fresh grated lemon peel (depending on how lemon-y you like it)
1 cup flour

1. In large mixing bowl, mix butter, cream cheese and sugar until creamy.  Then add vanilla and lemon peel.  Gradually add the flour.
2. Drop dough by the spoonful (approx. 2" apart) onto ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake in 350 degree oven for about 12 minutes (edges of cookies should be golden).
4. Scoff them all down in one go, then go sit on the couch and whine about how your skinny jeans don't fit like they used to.

The End.

Very Special Company Pork Chop Recipe - For the Wrongly Convicted Chef On the Go......

Out of all domestic-related duties, cooking is my favorite by a mile.  And lately, for whatever reason, I've been on a crock pot bender.  Actually, it's a bit stupid to write "for whatever reason."  It might have something to do with the fact that I found a cookbook tucked away on the shelves of Marshall's........one which contains over 500 crock pot recipes.  Frankly, I like the idea of getting all the hard cooking work over with during the part of the day when I actually still have a modicum of energy to expend.  Yeah.  Those are not-exactly-mysterious contributing factors to the sudden crock pot phase I seem to be going through.  Even though crock pot cooking seems a bit old-school and anti-gourmet.   

Funny enough, this culinary development falls on the heels of a failed raw food bender.  I bought some raw food recipe books a few weeks ago.  Alas, most of the recipes call for exotic ingredients that you have to (a) Google for identification purposes, and then (b) drive to five different specialty health food grocery stores to find (writes the broad who once did exactly that after purchasing the Gillian McKeith cookbook.......hope, or idiocy, springs eternal).  Plus spending an hour peeling zucchini into spiral spaghetti-like strips in order to create veggie "pasta" isn't my idea of a good time.  Still, it's ironic that I go from swearing to myself a few short weeks ago that from hereon out, I shall only eat raw, organic, un-cooked veggie goodness (I could practically envision the shiny golden aura of glowing good health that would subsequently follow me wherever I went), to a phase in which I'm letting stuff marinate in a pot for 7 or 8 hours at a stretch.  But I digress.

Yesterday it was split pea soup.  Today it's chicken with Italian sausage (and let me tell you, those sausages and onions are smelling bitchin' right now.....).  Tomorrow I'm going to attempt a really wrong, wrong, wrong sounding recipe entitled, "Company Slow Cooker Pork Chops."   I mean "wrong" in the decadent sense of the word.....given that some of the key ingredients include sour cream and cream cheese.  And I'm assuming THEY mean "Company" in the outdated 50's sense of the word - when you invited "company" over to your house instead of "guests." But hey, maybe they mean "Company" as in "The Company" as in "bad guys featured in an espionage/cyber-hacker or crime drama thriller" sense of the word (like on "Prison Break").  Maybe if I make this recipe, a small squadron of evil-mongering corporate stooges, or crime ring henchmen, or government shadow figures, will show up on our doorstep, and then force me to hack into a bank's computer system and siphon some money out for nefarious purposes.  They might even want me to assassinate someone.  That's a lot of pressure when you just want to make some pork chops.  (But secretly I would find it all more than a little bit rad.) 

On the other hand, that probably won't happen.  I'm guessing the more likely of sinister outcomes here is that I'll gain a few pounds thanks to the sour cream and cream cheese.

Whatever.  I'm up for anything.

When The Going Gets Tough........

........the tough brand themselves, and "hybridize" their skills, and do other smart-sounding things that Forbes recommends in times of economic crisis.

Yesterday I got all but downsized out of another freelance gig.  The work isn't gone altogether - just dried up by about 90%.  So the better part of yesterday afternoon was spent doing a blitzkrieg tour of the many stages of grief.  There was denial....anger.....chocolate....tequila.....and some other stuff.  The tequila kind of obliterated the last couple of stages...... 

Mine isn't a dignified, Ingrid Bergman sort of grief, either.  Hell no.  I emit high-pitched sounds that fracture canine eardrums.  I leak a dizzying array of fluids from every cranial orifice.  What is a decorous trembling lower lip on some people becomes grotesque performance art on my mug.

But then I thought, screw it.  I mean, sure.....less income = bad.  But more free time?  Good!  Great!  I reminded myself that, when life hands you lemons, you should make lemonade a really intricate lemon souffle and then craft an art deco perfume decanter out of the rind, because you have the time to spare now.

Finally, I can make time for other important tasks I've been neglecting!  Like getting drunk in the middle of the afternoon.  And finishing up my Really Weird Novel.  Yeah, I decided I don't have a Great American Novel in me.  But that Really Weird One has been sitting around half-finished for forever already.  And I'm kind of excited to get back to that.

Forbes tells me I should be teaching myself Chinese, or how to decode the human genome, in my newly flexible free time, but mostly, the OCD part of my brain just wants to sit around all day doing this to watermelons:

And you know what?  I'm gonna!  When I'm not otherwise occupied with finishing up my Really Weird Novel.  Because it's my pity party, and I can celebrate however I like.

Frak Forbes!

Score one for physical fitness! (And subtract ten for the blows delivered to mental health in the process.....)

So, uh, that whole New Year's Resolution about eating only healthy food........like, ever.....is not going according to plan.  At all.  In part because following recipes for dishes like "Vegan Chili" is nearly always an exercise in futility.  (If only exercises in futility actually burned calories.......how fine would I be looking then?!)  Sure, I can throw together some sprouts and veggies in a baking dish, and drizzle it with something vaguely resembling a tomato-based sauce (there's another aggravating thing about healthy eating.....health food cookbook authors like to advocate "drizzling"......and they spurn words like "saturate" or "drown"!  Booooooo!).  But do I have to call it "chili"?  In fact......I'm sorry, but I refuse to call it "chili."  How about I call it "A Big, Stupid Pile Of Vegetables, Which I've Resigned Myself to Eating For Health Purposes" instead?  "Chili" is just too misleading.  "Chili" is a good time.  "Vegan chili"?  Not so much.

There are some upsides to this whole experiment.  My eating habits have improved.  I'm actually ingesting fruits and veg on a daily basis (er.....most days), which is a damn sight better than last year's Token Weekly Carrot Stick.  On the other hand, I was a raging idiot to think I would never eat a cupcake again.  Me?  I can devote paragraphs, or even pages, to rhapsodizing over what constitutes the perfect chocolate peanut butter cup.  (The in-a-nutshell synopsis:  Homemade.  Using extra creamy, gooey peanut butter.)  So, that was a stupid, stupid goal, in retrospect. But I figure if I continue to cut out the midnight snacking, and eat more fruits and veg, and less processed junk food, most of the time, then at least it's a step in the right direction.  Stepping in the wrong direction used to take me to the kitchen at 2 a.m., where I would stand and vow to rid the entire joint of junk food.  Using only my mouth.  Worse, I would tell myself this exercise in futility (Another one!  You see what I mean?)  would give me and the rest of the family a clean slate for starting on the path toward healthy, super organic, nearly all-raw food enlightenment the next day!  Only...a few days on an all-raw, super organic cleanse invariably sends me peeling out of the driveway in a deathrace derby to the nearest McDonald's.  (Which involves a whole lotta near-misses of vehicular homicide, in addition to artery clogging.) 

I am still getting the hang of concepts like 'balance' and 'compromise.'   

I'm getting back into the regular exercise groove again too, but I'm not sure I have attained the most zen of attitudes there, either.  Telling the Wii balance board to "Suck it!" whenever it spits out a Wii Fit Age that is not particularly flattering is probably not setting a good example for wee Z..  So I've modified my fitness goals, too.  Stop aiming to sculpt my thighs into twin monuments of chiseled perfection.  Start with backpedaling on the insults directed at an inanimate object.  

Yep.  I'm all about the baby steps.

I Resolve To Eat More Healthfully, To Exercise More Often.....blah, blah, blah........

I keep getting sucked in to watching You Are What You Eat on BBC America.  It airs at 1 a.m., which coincides nicely with my insomnia more often than not, but I also recently added it to our DVR record list, so my interest has grown more intentional of late.  It features this wee Scottish lady nutritionist named Gillian McKeith who browbeats people into eating healthfully:  "Arggggggggggggh!  This is broccoli, ya festering flabby maggot, and I'm shovin' it down yer godforsaken gob whether yee like it or naught.....!"  (OK - she's marginally more polite than that.....and she's not really a pirate.  It's just that my impersonation of a Scottsperson is weak, especially in writing.............) 

In each episode Gillian tackles a new reluctant junk food addict and attempts to give them a health makeover.  First, of course, she determines the extent to which they are on the cusp of impending death, which invariably correlates with how many gallons of soda and tons of chocolate goodies are being hoarded in their fridges and pantries.  (Eh - if this were an accurate assessment, I'd have died long ago.  But I understand that she needs to shock people into compliance.) 

And in order to estimate how malnourished they are, she proceeds to analyze the tongues, blood, and poo of her clients.  It seems a healthy tongue should not have any cracks or muck on it.  And a healthy poo shouldn't smell.  (That strikes me as a bit odd.  There's a reason that Glade doesn't manufacture poo-scented air freshener....I'm sure of it.)  What struck me as even odder the first few times I watched this show was that the BBC seemingly can't air unobstructed shots of feces, so the steaming pile has to be blurred out - much as an errant sex organ or brand-name logo on a T-shirt would be.  What's so offensive (or trademark infringing) about poo?  It's gross, sure....but offensive?

Anyway, I've been a junk and comfort food addict since...um....birth.  So one of my New Year's resolutions is to cut back on the junk and dairy, and add more fruits and veg.....and I'm not going to pretend to be excited about it, either.  In fact, it sucks.  It sucks that vegetables just taste better when slathered in cheese sauce.  It sucks that happiness is a giant pan of fresh homemade lasagna.  It sucks that I've only just become an expert at making THE perfect chocolate cream pie.  Plus nothing sends my eyeballs rolling in automatic-sarcasm mode faster than some health food proponent raving about how good raw foods can taste in their natural state.  A little relativity, please.  Raw broccoli will never taste as good as s'mores.*  Period.  (*Unless you add chocolate, graham cracker and melted marshmallows to it.  And remove the broccoli.)  I mean, I'll eat the freakin' carrot stick already.  But you won't hear me saying, "MMMMMMMMMMMMM!" while doing so.  (For one thing, the gagging sound would drown out the "MMMMM!" sound.)

I'm not going cold turkey and giving up every fabulous sort of food for all eternity. But I figure having them every day is not really a recipe for glowing good health.  I only have that perfunctory five pounds to lose (given my extreme dietary impertinence, it's not fair...I know), but it wouldn't kill me to get back into better shape, anyway.  (I've enlisted Wii Fit to achieve that particular end.  Status updates on that endeavor forthcoming.)  Moreover, I'm sick of being a one-woman phlegm factory, which dairy exacerbates, and which, yes, I've been informed of countless times already, long before Skinny Bitch slinked onto the scene.  I'd like to tackle the listless, whiny, low-energy thing I have going on, too.  According to Lady McKeith, going healthy on the food front can all but wipe out PMS.  I'm skeptical.  In fact, hearing that makes me want to wipe out the first passing nutritionist I see with my motorcycle boot.   

Plus ultimately, I know I've been setting a bad example on the nutrition front for wee Z.  I mean, I feed her all the healthy stuff I'm supposed to feed her.  I just don't always eat it myself.  And with her exponentially expanding vocabulary, it's only a matter of time before she starts pointing it out to me.  Once she adds words like "hypocrite" to her verbal arsenal, I'm screwed.

So, if there's even an iota of truth to all of this hoohah about fruits and veg, it seems like a worthwhile experiment to undertake.  But the die-hard junk food addict in me will be kicking and screaming the whole way, all while hurling five-pound, concussion-imparting bags of peanut M&Ms at those people who insist that once you wipe sugar from your diet, you don't even miss it.  Liars.  Liars!

Stay tuned...............

And For My Next Culinary Feat, I Shall Render a Likeness of the Taj Mahal Out of Mere Twix and Gummy Bears.....

It's come to this.  I'm not proud of myself.  I've officially plunged the depths and descended into a territory that I vowed I would never set foot in....

Thematic baking.

I know, I know.  I've properly humiliated myself now.  It's so cutesy and twee.  I don't know what possessed me, but I finally had to go there.  I had to make the freakin' snowman cupcakes, didn't I? 

On the other hand, it's kind of a good cover story which allows me to ingest criminal portions of homemade whipped cream frosting and marshmallows and Reese's peanut butter cups and cake batter, all under the guise of making sure I get it "just right." 

You know..........for the sake of the kids.

(Kindly overlook the poorly rendered facial expressions of the snowmen above.  I'm really more of a day laborer or sub-contractor than I am an artisan...........it was all I could do to get the snowmen to stand in a partially upright position.)

I have been served my just deserts (but I would have preferred just desserts)!

So, a copyeditor who is far more knowledgeable than I in matters of precise language (hey, precision has never been my forte) just taught me something that I didn't know.  Did you know that when you want to discuss how someone got what was coming to them, it's "just deserts"?  And not "just desserts"?  I embarrassed myself by pointing out what I assumed to be a typo in utilization of the former, only to learn that....no........I was the one who had committed the typo by spelling it the latter way.

Here - Snopes does a better job explaining it than I ever could.

Or as the copyeditor more succinctly put it, "It is "deserts" because the root word is "deserve.""

This got me to thinking...........mmmmmm, dessert.  I think I'll stuff my verbal humiliation into oblivion by whipping up one of my homemade chocolate cream pies today, remove my foot from a certain facial orifice, and shove some pie in there instead...........

WWSWD? (What Would Sam Waterson Do?)

Every year I tell myself that I am buying the candy strictly for the trick or treaters......and I actually believe myself.  Then I get sucked into the dizzying downward spiral of delusional math.  It starts off along the lines of:  "There's probably only a 30% chance that more than 30 kids will ring the doorbell - allotting 2 pieces of candy per child, this means there's a 70% probability I need to procure roughly 60 pieces of candy for humanitarian purposes, and all surplus is MINE.  So I should buy the 10 pound bag...."    

As I get hungrier and/or Halloween draws closer, I play fast and loose with the odds.  I get to thinking,  "There's really probably only a 20% chance that more than 20 kids will ring the doorbell, because we live in dangerous times, and people watch Law & Order and are well aware of the hundreds of reasons why it's not a good idea to accept candy from strangers anyway, so this means if I'm allotting 2 pieces of candy per child, there's an 80% probability I only need to have 40 pieces of candy on hand, but the 10 pound bag is still the most economical, if you do the math......"

Once I realize that I have already consumed most of the 10 pound bag of candy, the math becomes not only delusional, but kind of passive-aggressive:  "What kind of damn fools go trick or treating in this day and age, anyway?  Seriously - don't they watch Law & Order?"

Then I eat all the candy in the house, because I don't think you should encourage children to live recklessly by approaching strangers, and anyway, candy is bad for their teeth and overall health, so I am practically doing them a favor.......

At this point, it's Halloween, and I get dressed to take the munchkin trick or treating, or to go to a Halloween party, where we can eat other people's candy. I'm not that worried about the Law & Order factor at this juncture, since other people tend to not be as paranoid, greedy or as bad at math as I am.

P.S.  I'm writing this post while hopped up on Dots, peanut M&Ms, mini Twix, Peeps, and Nerds, so forgive me if it's all a bit twitchy and senseless.......

And Happy Halloween eve!!! 

Taste The Rainbow, Or The Mud Pit At The End of It.....

It's not uncommon for me to turn my back for half a second, only to find that huge leaps in technology, culture, even human evolution (genetically engineered über-race of designer babies, anyone?), have taken place whilst I was otherwise occupied doing something mundane, like vacuuming or having a sandwich.

So I just saw the commercial for chocolate-flavored Skittles.  As a general rule, I feel that anything which wasn't previously chocolate flavored, but has since been rendered such, is bound to be an improvement.  My weekend now has a purpose - I must procure some chocolate Skittles, and report back.  This new development kind of skewers Skittles' whole fruit-centric, "Taste the rainbow!" slogan, not to mention the fact that if in the past you were hankering for some small, spherical, candy-coated little chocolate candies, you ate M&Ms like a normal person.  But whatever.

Actually, in doing a bit of research, I find that all sorts of upheaval and unrest have been going on in the Skittles camp for well over a decade.  Turns out that "taste the rainbow" spiel is old hat.  Did you know they made special edition ice- cream-flavored Skittles briefly in 2006?!  Nor is this the first time Skittles have gone chocolate!  Nay - this unholy alliance was first forged way back in '98 (then discontinued in 2001). The good news is that the discontinuation didn't take.  This second edition mocha mutation was re-introduced at the 2007 All Candy Expo........the existence of which could easily eclipse the invention of not only chocolate-flavored Skittles but also even, say, chocolate-flavored broccoli.  Indeed, this raises far more pressing concerns: where exactly will the 2008 All Candy Expo be taking place, and can any ol' member of the general public simply walk in off the street and start grabbing samples?  Just let me know far enough in advance so I can rent a few steamer trunks and some day laborers.......

But to get back on point, sort of:  are fruit-flavored M&Ms only a matter of time?

Of course, Mars, Incorporated manufactures both M&Ms and Skittles.....so why futz around with chocolate-flavored Skittles, or fruit-flavored M&Ms, in the first place?   It's like that whole, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" dilemma, particularly if you throw egg-flavored chickens and chicken-flavored eggs into the equation.......actually, it's nothing like that.  Never mind.

This is starting to make my head hurt.  I'll just try some and let you know if it was worth all this rumination............

And On The Sixth Day He Created Red Dye #40, Which Begat Red Vines, and It Was Good.....

  The allmighty Diesel hath verily wrought an epic tale of candy carnage so funny, 'twould be a sin not to read it.  All I can really do is drop to my knees in awe over his mighty creation. 

Dude, you're spectacularly funny.

This works out well, as I'm feeling a bit lazy this morning, so go enjoy the fruits of his sweaty keyboard labors instead.......

Damn it.  Now I want candy too.