PunkKittyDiddy

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.

Marie Antoinette Would Be Proud

Z. has just recently learned one of the most potent words in the entire English language.

"Cake."

I'm further pleased to report that her cognitive development is very much on track, and she has a solid grasp of the concept behind the word, "cake"....oh, this is no coincidental, arbitrary verbal eruption that toddlers are so prone to......nay, it's wholly unlike her grasp of the word, "elbow," which is often blurt out at random, decidedly non-elbow-related moments. 

See, we were celebrating Stepdaughter's birthday tonight, and thus for the occasion I had been assigned the task of procuring the relevant foodstuff.  So Z. and I roll into a bakery earlier today to snag us a little somethin'-somethin', and the Wee One immediately set forth to prove her emerging way with words.  Though perhaps you had to actually be there to appreciate her delivery.  Rife with nuance, it was.  It wasn't, "cake," so much as, "CAKECAKECAKECAKECAKECAKECAKECAKE!" 

You know that part in The Shining, where Jack Nicholson cleaves the door open with an ax, and pokes his head through, and says, "Heeeeeere's Johnny!"??  That's kind of exactly how it rolled off of Z's tongue, only she was saying,"CAKECAKECAKECAKECAKECAKECAKE!" instead.

Incidentally, I'm still feigning total ignorance as to whom she inherited her sweet tooth from.

The Definitive Answer To THE Question On Everyone's Mind......

The best way to prepare brussel sprouts is to braise them in cream and then serve them sprinkled with a dash of nutmeg on top.

In case you were wondering.

Hip Restaurant Charged With Serving Criminal Portions

Sunday evening, I was granted the stay-at-home-mom version of shore leave......I left the apartment without the toddler-shaped growth that is otherwise regularly affixed to my leg, and had a modest girl's night out with B. that encompassed dinner and a show.  We chose to nosh at a somewhat bustling pub/bistro type joint that wasn't too far from the theater. 

It's no secret that B. and I both harbor deep-rooted issues about chocolate.  (Actually, there's usually only one issue, which tends to be, "From where and how soon can it be procured without anyone getting hurt?")  B.'s birthday card to me this year proclaimed thusly:  "Inside me there is a thin woman screaming to get out.  I can usually keep her quiet with chocolate."  Neither of us is actually overweight, but we both concur that our shared addiction is still problematic and hurtful (especially to others) given our propensity to shove aside old ladies and small children when stampeding toward, say, an ice cream stand or pastry cart.

After dinner, we thought we would do the sensible thing on this occasion and split dessert.  It did not take long at all for us to agree upon what the menu very sardonically referred to as, "molten chocolate cake."

When we informed our waitress of our desire to share one dessert portion between two persons, she kept a straight face.......which is criminal in retrospect, because at this point in time, she was the only one of the three of us who knew full well what farce would follow.  She set the two spoons down on our table without batting an eye.  Beeyotch.

So the highly anticipated dessert item is soon after delivered to our table.  It was a bit like waiting for a blind date to show, and up he walks up to your table sporting a polyester button-down number with basketball-sized armpit stains, smiling hopefully through his overbite and comb-over, a copy of "Mein Kampf" tucked possessively under his arm........at which point your smile falters for a second and you keep looking over his shoulder toward the door, saying to yourself, "No, seriously, I'm sure he'll be here any minute now....."

Initially I assumed the item in question was some sort of chocolate dipping sauce, merely the "molten" part of the "molten chocolate cake" equation - a small vial of semi-liquid chocolate goo that we would be dipping the actual cake into once it arrived.  Ha ha - no, gentle reader.  No.  You know how in Dr. Seuss' book, Horton Hears A Who, the entire town of Who-ville fits on a speck of sand?  This dessert would have fit neatly within the doggie bag inside the handbag on the arm of the flea on the back of the cat that was skulking around in the alley behind the Who-ville Diner - and there still would have been ample room inside that handbag for a lipstick and compact mirror.  It's a good thing the chef had the foresight to sprinkle powdered sugar on top of the cake, because otherwise it would have been invisible to the naked eye.  I've created a visual (above right), albeit a sloppy one, in order to drive the point home - the Hershey's kiss is included to provide a sense of scale.

B. and I made a good show of politely taking pinpoint-sized bites so as to leave something for the other to have a go at.  But unlike your average Hollywood starlet, neither one of us has ever been interested in participating in a charade in which we pretend that simply smelling the molten chocolate goodness would sate our appetite for it. 

We were pissed off, man.  Our outrage was in inverse proportion to the actual size of the dessert.  That's outrage on a nuclear level.  I mean, the restaurant wasn't that fancy that they could pull off serving such microscopic portions.  We still got robbed given what they charged, and it's a shame we can't reciprocate with charges of our own.  "Fraud" has a nice ring to it. 

(No, it doesn't necessarily merit the same kind of media and political condemnation reserved for the whole Darfur situation.  I'm just sayin'.) 

Rollin' With My Peeps

For your perusing post-Easter pleasure, here is a compelling, highly scientific study that was done to measure the effects of smoking and alcohol on Peeps. 

If you know a Peep with a problem, please show it this cautionary site.  A little tough love won't kill it - but clearly throwing it into a beaker filled with 190 proof ethyl alcohol and a lit cigarette will.

Kick-Ass Quiche

Didn't feel like doing any of the usual yadda yadda for dinner last night, so I trolled around on Foodtv.com and came across this dead-easy, fantastic quiche recipe.  We didn't have any half-and-half on hand, so I used straight cream (decadent, that's me!), which I did have on hand after that pumpkin-pie-baking-frenzy of last week.  And sure, I threw in a tad more cheese than the recipe called for, but damn, for five minutes worth of prep time, that was one FABULOUS quiche! 

Our oven is something of a cantankerous asshole, so it took more like an hour and a half to bake - even so, well worth it!

Why Charlie Wouldn't Bother Touring A Spinach Factory (Nor Would Anyone In Their Right Mind)....

I learned a valuable lesson this past weekend, which is:  no matter how determined you are to turn over a new leaf and then eat it drizzled in a light vinaigrette dressing, thanks to a vow you made to ingest more veggies and prepare more healthful meals............. never, ever, ever waste your time with a brownie recipe that calls for spinach.  Sure, the cookbook author might attempt to entice and cajole and lure you into her web of deceit by writing things like, "These brownies fool everyone!" and "You won't believe how scrumptious these are......."  But after having a go at this recipe, I'm here to blow the lid off of these silly rumors.  Brownies made with spinach are not scrumptious, and will never be scrumptious in the manner that brownies made without spinach are.  Shocking but true.  For that matter, the word "scrumptious" has no place anywhere near a description of how this recipe actually turned out.  Just eat your spinach the way nature intended - drowned in cheese sauce. 

Because otherwise, if you actually spend some time slaving over a mixing bowl while forging an unholy alliance between chocolate and spinach, you will then be left with a heavy, misshapen, Frankenstein-like creation laying lifelessly upon your kitchen table.....only you will be the one saying, "Uggggggggggghhhhhhhnnnn!" after you eat it, and then, desperate to obliterate the memory of what brownies made with spinach actually taste like, you will hastily whip up a batch of real chocolate chip cookies (they only take 9 to 12 minutes to bake, after all), made with whole tubs of butter and several cupfuls of sugar and chocolate chips, which you and your partner will proceed to scarf down - the whole batch - while they are still warm from the oven, in the midst of which you might catch a glimpse of your 13 month old toddler tugging at your pant leg, licking her lips forlornly as she watches you scarf down chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven, so you decide it wouldn't hurt to let her have a bite - or two - and you do so, but then she suddenly transforms into that Chuckie doll, affixing herself to and gnawing at your leg, going, "Grrrrrrrraggggh!" until you let her have a few more bites, at which point a sugar rush infuses her with almost Herculean strength, and her previously harmless hobby of rearranging your living room furniture takes an ominous turn as she takes to juggling sofas and flat screen TVs above her head while cackling gleefully, and it then takes a full hour and a half for her to expend the extra energy from that sugar rush.............and as the dust settles, you see your living room in complete disarray, your partner laying half-comatose over the upturned sofa, his bloated, chocolate-chip-cookie-filled belly rendering him useless as you begin to assess the damages and restore order..............

Well, this is what happened to me when I stupidly followed a brownie recipe that called for spinach.  Your own experience may vary.

I Coulda Had a V-8! If It Was Covered in Cheese Sauce and Wrapped in a Chocolate Crepe.....

A few days ago, I.G. sent me one of those doom-mongering chain emails entitled something like, "Scary Ways You're Probably Giving Yourself Cancer Right Now This Very Second!"  I am guilty of pretty much every offense on the list.  I'm a cheese-gulpin', sugar-guzzlin', microwave-usin', plastic-clingfilm wrappin', steak-lovin', chocolate-worshippin' fool.  According to this email, fruits + veggies = good; cheese = bad....really bad.....mucus-makin', cancer-feedin' bad.  This creates a dilemma for me.  About the only way I can think of to make veggies palpable is to cover them in cheese.  So do I risk cancer by not eating enough veggies?  Or do I risk cancer by eating more veggies, albeit ones covered in cheese?   

I'm trying to mend my ways.  For the moment, I can get away with feeding Z. healthy foods as I slyly push my own veggies to the side of my plate (and under the pretense of having some dishes to wash, go cower in a corner of the kitchen, gulping down a bowl of ice cream in secrecy) because Z. does not yet possess the verbal wherewithal to say things like, "How come I have to eat this green crap if you don't?  And why are you hiding beneath the kitchen table, guzzling chocolate sauce like a rabid zombie?"  But sometime soon, I'm going to have to set a better example for her - and yeah, I wanna live for a good long while so I can be around to watch my kid raise her kids.  I've just ordered a cookbook on Amazon.com that has sneaky-healthy recipes designed for the veggie-adverse.  (OK, OK...it's about cooking for kids, if you must know, but obviously I can benefit from a stealth delivery system for veggies and fruits myself.)  For instance, you puree cauliflower and then add that to the cheese sauce of macaroni and cheese.  There's that ominous, menacing, mustache-twirling villain cheese again.  But even our pediatrician is recommending whole milk and yogurt and cheese for Z.'s diet, so dairy can't be all bad.  "Everything in moderation" is a better approach than militant veggie-ism for me and mine, I think.  If I had to go the rest of my life with no more chocolate, or steak, or coffee, or cheese, where's the joy?  Besides, I.G.'s email mentions happiness as a means of living longer, too.

Here's another tangent to consider.....B. very sanely shared with me some wisdom passed on from one of her father's old crony friends: "Assholes live forever."  This truth resonates with me as strongly as does the wisdom of eating healthy foods and exercising on a regular basis.  Maybe I need to be more of a jerk in order to guarantee my longevity.  See you later....I gotta go double-park my car in front of the apartment building for my own convenience......mwahhahahahahahaha!  IMMORTALITY IS MINE!!!!!!!!!!!! 

My Hard-Core Candy Habit

Damn Trader Joe and his capacity for filling his shop shelves with temptation!  More specifically, damn his Dark Chocolate Covered Caramels!

It's really the ultimate candy - dark, slightly bittersweet chocolate covering big gooey globs o' caramel.  An interesting and highly irrelevant bit of trivia:  the pieces are not uniform in size.  Some pieces are "fun-sized" (she said contemptuously).  Other pieces are the size of a nice steak - these are the pieces I tend to fish out first.  Sadly, one tub contains 100,000 calories or thereabouts.  This would not pose a problem for a person with self-control, but alas, after I fish out one or two (OK - four) of the pieces that are steak-sized, the tub then quickly becomes half-empty.  I realize I'll seem like a real pig if a tub of candy is laying around, already rendered half-empty in the span of five minutes, so I decide to hide the evidence in my sock drawer.  It is no longer available for public consumption - it has been demoted to secret stash.  But I figure I can now furtively turn to my sock drawer for solace during times of stress. (Stress in a household filled with one baby, two overextended parents, a tight budget, and assorted stepchild tensions added to the mix on the weekends?  Surely I jest!) 

Only, after an hour has passed, I decide I'm stressed about something stupid....like the fact that I can't stop thinking about the half-tub of dark chocolate covered caramels lurking in my sock drawer.  I buckle under the pressure of living with this dark (chocolate covered) sordid secret.  The logical thing to do is ditch the evidence altogether.  Poof!  Entire tub of candy?  Gone in 60 minutes!

In subsequent visits to TJs, I thought I'd stumbled across a brilliant solution:  by upping the ante and purchasing two tubs of these little chocolate-covered bastards.  The first tub?  Gone in 60 minutes, yadda yadda.  Fine, whatever - I've made peace with the fact that this is now a foregone conclusion.  Presumbly I'll be feeling so sick after consuming a whole tub in an hour, I won't want anymore for a good long while, and at least then this second tub would be available for the whole family to enjoy.  Till I fish out one or two (OK - four) steak-sized pieces, and the tub sits on the table, looking forlorn and half-empty....

I simply can't buy 'em anymore.  It's a caramel-filled recipe for disaster, particularly for my waistline if I keep this up.  Please be so kind as to remind me of this if you spot me in the candy aisle with, say, five tubs in my cart.  And don't believe me if I tell you it's OK, we're having a party and there'll be lots of people there.......I'm lying.  Take note of my wide-eyed hyperactivity, advanced tooth decay, and constant complaints of stomach ache - all classic signs of candy addiction.  But not everyone enjoys conducting an intervention in the middle of running their errands - and maybe you're more of the co-dependent, enabler type.  Tell you what........why don't we just pass each other casually in the dairy section and pretend nothing's wrong?  I'll ignore your four bags of potato chips in turn.  No one here has a problem, right?

Denial.  Much easier.